***Tirnanog, Raider’s Valley***

***Mary Frost***

I stood by and watched as the night-terror pub slowly expired with heavy, labouring death rattles. The smoke and the heat in the tunnel were too much for the little monster, but it was nonetheless humbling to see that even a creature as feared as a night-terror was just a fragile victim in its infancy.

Its broodmother tried to animate the pub with her nose, pushing the unresponsive body around, but nothing could be done. She was the last of this nest to be taken care of.

I slowly raised the blade attached to my hand, a formidable weapon my filaments had formed once they changed their state to a silver metal. The exact, underlying process escaped my understanding, but I figured it had something to do with nanomachines.

Regarding the sleek weapon, I found the thin blade much too elegant for the job. It looked like a rapier, a cultured duellist’s weapon.

The night-terrors were intelligent monsters. I wasn’t apathetic enough to pretend I couldn’t recognise they cared for each other on some level, but their very nature made co-existence with humanity impossible. However, it doubted they had a concept of the ongoing war between humanity and Tirnanog’s natural inhabitants. They were just doing what was natural to them as one of the higher-ranked predators of this world. Maybe their intelligence was similar to the drakes’, allowing them a high amount of reasoning in some aspects, but cursing them with blindfolds in others.

Just as the drakes couldn’t conceive the thought of technology, the night-terrors couldn’t see humans as anything else than food. It was the reason why collaborating with other intelligent species was a taboo among the clans. There were too many terrible examples in history, showing just how falsely placed sympathy could go horribly wrong for humans since we tended to bond far too easily with members of other species.

Which didn’t mean we couldn’t make exceptions like with the drakes. They just had to be carefully evaluated and tested.

Nonetheless, things like the night-terrors were the very reason why the clans fought so hard to keep their ecological niche in this world.

I smiled as the blade slowly shortened in my hand and widened, taking the form of a cleaver – a butcher’s weapon. If nothing else, I could at least give the broodmother a modicum of respect by not pretending to be something I was not.

I was here to slaughter them. This was extermination, pure and simple. And it would stay this way until Tirnanog either belonged to humanity, or the monsters of this world managed to kill the last human.

But not on my watch.

The broodmother turned to me and roared. Then it charged down the superheated tunnel with no regard for its health. Despite its speed, the skin began to char merely from coming close to me.

I dodged the clawed arm it swung at me with inhuman agility, but it was only the first blow and I wasn’t built for speed.

The second swing caught me full on the sternum and drove me back, but my armour held while my feet carved two deep grooves into the ground.

The broodmother landed two more hits before it was my turn. I backhanded the creature, sending it careening into the cave wall. Despite the seeming laziness of my response, blood and sharp teeth went flying as the creature’s jaw broke.

It tried to get up, but my palm landed on its head, pressing it down against the hard ground as its flesh sizzled.

Then I brought the cleaver to bear with a single chop, separating the broodmother’s head from the rest of its body, and the job was done.

I sighed and dismissed the weapon after I had one last look around. Then I crossed my arms behind my back and slowly ascended through the labyrinth of tunnels as I returned to the surface. It would take some time to ramp down the power generation, so I wasn’t in a hurry.

Thankfully, there had been no need to go all out. The constricted tunnels had forced the night-terrors to come at me one at a time and there was no need to hunt them down. Their very nature forced them to come to me, as they were unable to accept that there might be something above them in the food chain.

I timed my arrival at the surface so that my radiation levels were back to tolerable levels.

From there, I allowed myself to cool down before I took a drake back to the flagship.

Sadly, it wasn’t like I was done with the day upon arriving back at the bridge. It sounded like the Caravaners had found a group of their renegade brethren nearby and wished to utilize some of the fleet’s power to bring them to justice. There was a heated discussion between the leading members of the mission, reminding me of the old days and why the various clans had decided to isolate themselves.

We sat at a large round table. There were three representatives for each of the great clans.

I was there for Clan Aerie with Xina and Harold Lloyd from the fourteenth strata, which was back then the fifteenth and therefore the most powerful faction within Aerie.

Hochberg was represented by Matriarch Greta and two of her underlings, a unique partnered pair who were solely focused on mental abilities. I didn’t approve of such a union, as it doomed them to always rely on the protection of others. But nobody could stop loving people from doing foolish things. I was a perfect example of that.

Zacharias represented Thich with two of his clones in tow, showing everyone how things would go if he had something to say about it. Looking around the table, there was no question that the ancients had the presidency in this meeting, but Zach was the only one brazen enough to show how little he cared about what others might have to say about the future.

Felix Wolf was there in Jeng’s name, including two of his paladins. Savannah and Ahmad stood behind the old man, forgoing to test the frail furniture with their huge, armoured bodies.

Zach’s motives might sound good on the surface, but I knew the man well enough to tell that in his heart he just sought power. And he was responsible for the death of my husband. I couldn’t forgive him for that. At the same time, I wouldn’t want to give up on Aerie.

Heck, it was hard not to jump over the table and chop Zach and his clones to pieces, then run out there in a futile attempt to find every last clone until I had the final one at my mercy!

I blinked, finding myself unable to make such a monumental decision for my people when there was so much unresolved baggage on my shoulders, so I looked towards the two elders at my side. Seeing my expression, both Xina and Harold shared a look before Harold stood. “We refuse any interference from outside Mount Aerie.”

Relieved, I nodded. “That’s it.”

“Fools!” Zacharias exclaimed.

“Then what do you suggest?” Nisha asked, crossing her arms.

There were more discussions involved, going back and forth that day and the following ones, but eventually, we came to an agreement nobody was happy about but most could live with. As it should be.

Gurney Camacho would repent for the war he had brought down on our heads by rebuilding the Old Camp. It would become a neutral ground and Gurney would handle the exiles from Earth in the future. Earth would assuredly not stop sending them.

To prevent the Old Camp from returning to its old power, the clans would regularly send recruiters to draw manpower away from the Old Camp. Therefore making it impossible for Earth to influence a heavily populated colony directly on the other side of their gate. Any troops they sent would have to be recruited from Earth. At the same time, it would help the clans to rebuild the forces in a controlled manner, as the exiles would be split among the clans.

The Caravaners would continue handling trade between the clans and monitor their actions. Having lost their ancient, all the clans agreed to grant the Caravaners special rights so they wouldn’t be susceptible to blackmail by the need to seek shelter with a clan during winter.

The clans would keep to their own business for at least as long as it took to rebuild.

“Are you alright?” Vanya turned to me with a questioning expression, ripping me out of my contemplations.

“It’s quite alright, girl,” I patted her head, to the shock of all the squabbling people in the room. “I just remembered meeting your parents, with everyone being so energetic. It was a long time ago.”

Who knew giving the Matriarch a head-pat would shut them up so quickly?

“I suggest we deal with those Caravaners while we are on the way,” I said somewhat jovially. “It’s not like we intend on facing the Thich at their fortress city without our reinforcements.”

“That’s a woman of my taste!” Gunnar exclaimed from right next to me and wiggled his eyebrows when I looked at him. “Are you still certain you won’t grant me the honour of a date?”

***Tirnanog, Aerie Flagship***

***Magnus***

“That’s it! You have it,” I cheered and clapped my hands once Astra finally managed to stabilize the localized space-time distortion. All the training and Gaia’s teachings had finally borne fruit. Astra was just a little behind me because she had trouble stabilizing the energy fields.

I picked up a pen and threw it into the distorted sphere above Astra’s palm while she kept her attention on maintaining the effect. The pen entered the distortion and was flung away at a right angle, its inertia changed with the spinning distortion. “See? It’s the perfect shield against projectiles and most physical attacks. You just have to get it to the point at which you can enact the effect at will.”

Astra blinked and licked her lips. “You are right. Once it gets going, maintaining and altering it isn’t too hard.”

She tilted her palm away from us and changed the harmonization between her magnetic fields, flattening out the sphere until it resembled a disc.

“Very good.” I nodded. “Though, you might want to keep it a sphere because it is easier to have objects exit the distortion in the direction you want. But as a training exercise, it’s not bad.”

“Just a little experiment I had floating around my head since Gaia taught us how to do this,” Astra explained the reason behind her actions while she reached into a pocket and brought out a glass vial with dust inside it. “Ever since I learned about it, it bugged me that this thing is so hard to use offensively. I mean, sucking away movement energy to accelerate an object is way too hard if you think about it. But the principle of this space distortion is just one alteration away from the flash step, right? So what happens if we use magnetic energy to accelerate some iron dust inside the distorted area and enclose it in a flash step bubble? We can accelerate anything affected by the magnetic field without having to overcome air resistance, right?”

“That’s…” I pursed my lips while Astra dropped what was supposedly iron dust into her distortion disc, turning the entire thing a blurry grey as it began to hum. Some accelerated air or dust particles seemed to escape the containment and create noise. I sent all my sub-personalities into overdrive as I tried to quantify the quite mad idea my partner had come up with without my knowledge.

Ever since Astra copied the lightning elk’s lightning ball attack without much thought, I learned not to underestimate her ability to ‘apply’ without ‘understanding’.

She laughed as she put more power into the effect, increasing the humming sound. Then she turned the disc and lowered it towards the table.

“Astra!” I raised a warning finger. “You might want to-”