“On the planet Orsoth, on the Deraan continent, where the sun, water, and fertile soil create a veritable paradise for great civilizations to rise to prominence, there exist dozens of kingdoms vying for supremacy under the oversight of the Emperor. Each of these kingdoms is ruled by a family of people with special, magical abilities. For the sake of convenience, we’ll call them Alia. That’s Outsider for ‘Quicksilver-souls’.

“Now on Orsoth, there are dozens, if not hundreds of different Houses and bloodlines of Alia, each with their own unique power. Of those, two houses stand above them all. They are the Royal houses.”

Carol ticked off her fingers as she spoke, sitting beside him in Reese’s beat-up sedan as he drove.

“Kinzeth the Omnipresent, and En’hol the Omniscient.” She paused, letting those two monikers sink in.

“Below them are the three Great houses, constantly competing with each other to rise to the rank of Royal, but never quite achieving it, due to interference from the other houses. They are Honnekun the Immortal, Morkel the Spiteful and Alakesh the Bountiful, richest of the houses.

“Below them are the minor noble houses. They are—”

“What does this have to do with Lily?” Tom interrupted as he took a sharp turn, having nearly missed the street.

“I’m getting to that,” Carol snapped. “Now, where was I?”

“The minor noble houses,” Tom said, craning his neck to check the lane next to him.

“Right. The minor noble houses are mostly cast-offs, bastards, and meatheaded pawns, whose talents cannot be used to accrue wealth or power.”

She gave him a thin-lipped smile. “You can’t operate a bureaucracy based on your ability to throw fireballs, can you?”

Tom nodded. “Probably not.”

“Well, for hundreds of years, this model was a stable example of how the empire’s power was structured. The various kingdoms fought regularly, almost by rote. Each of them was subordinate to one of the two royal houses—except the Morkels, but nobody likes them—who would fuel proxy wars by providing aid to the minor kingdoms—just enough for the balance to be maintained, for the outcome of an escalation of hostilities between the royal houses was beyond estimation.”

Tom frowned. He’d heard about things like that in history class, about the Cold War, where two superpowers just stared at each other while funding proxy wars all across the globe.

“Whenever the Emperor dies, a new one is selected by vote between all the kingdoms. The minor houses are cowed by the royal houses, and inevitably, an Emperor is chosen from one of the two royal houses. The Morkels always vote for themselves, even when they could be a tiebreaker. The chosen emperor then is disowned by their family and acts as the final arbiter in the conflict between the houses. While the emperor no longer has any legal attachment to their former family, you can’t simply strip away a lifetime of loyalty, so it’s always beneficial to have one of your own acting as the Emperor.”

“So where does Lily come in?”

“You’re terribly impatient, aren’t you?” Carol asked.

“Yes,” Tom said, glaring at the truck so close to the sedan’s rear bumper that he couldn’t see its grille anymore.

“House Ku’leth was a recent addition to the minor nobility. They were a relative unknown, but minor noble houses rise and fall every decade or so, so there was no major response. However, within the span of fifty years, they gained an enormous amount of power. In short order, they were approaching the level of a Great House.”

“I suppose that didn’t make the Great Houses too happy,” Tom said, rubbing his chin before shifting gears.

“Shut up, skinsack, I’m telling the story. So the Great Houses weren’t happy with that, but House Ku’leth was already too powerful to destroy without uniting all three great houses, and Ku’leth had strong ties to house Alakesh, who had profited greatly from their ascension. Should only two houses attack Ku’leth, there was a possibility they might lose enough power for house Alakesh to rise above them and include its name among royalty.

“In the end, the remaining great houses decided to offer the Ku’leth a poison pill, with the royal houses’ permission. The Royal Houses drafted an official letter to house Ku’leth that they would be acknowledged as a Great House should they retake the Dinamor Stretch from the Vith.

“The Great Houses had a plan: Either Ku’leth would barely succeed and be severely weakened, allowing them to be dealt with at their leisure, or they would fail, and would be officially prohibited from gaining rank and attaining a seat of the Council until the current emperor died.

“Harol Ku’leth was a clever man, but as is so often the case, clever men make bigger mistakes. He was aware of these two pitfalls, and he intended to fall into neither of them. A soulmonger profits from war, something that had until that point been a well-kept secret amongst the family.

“Well, the En’hol probably knew, but there’s little they don’t. Turn here.” She pointed, and Tom turned, the centrifugal force of the car pushing him to the side.

“So Harol designed Crypts, and distributed them among the most trustworthy of his vassals. He also made a few other things, such as The Hose, and the Infinite Spectrum. These artifacts allowed house Ku’leth to stomp through the Vith and retake the Dinamor stretch.

“Harol Ku’leth’s plan worked. House Ku’leth suffered no damage during their retaking of Dimanor Stretch. As a matter of fact, House Ku’leth succeeded so overwhelmingly that they actually swelled in power by a factor of ten, simply from the abundance of Vith souls taken during the war.”

So many questions, Tom thought, keeping his mouth shut. He couldn’t afford to lose any more time.

“Of course, clever little Harol never considered what might happen if he made all the other houses afraid of them.”

“He succeeded too well,” Tom said, nodding.

“Pitfall number three.” Carol held out her fingers with a grin, her tattoos forming a fingerless glove. “Alakesh, their former trading partner, now realized they were holding the leash of a ravenous beast, and the Royal Houses were distinctly conscious of the possibility of being upstaged. So they did what anyone would do.”

Carol shrugged. “They killed them.”

Tom glanced over at Carol, who didn’t seem particularly bothered by the loss of her former employers.

“Of course, they had to come up with a justification everyone could get behind—rather than admit they were afraid—so they targeted crypts, claiming that the Ku’leth were trying to usurp powers that rightfully belonged in the hands of the houses.”

“That’s awful.”

“Well, they were trying to do that,” Carol said with a shrug. “House Ku’leth had already reverse-engineered several different Bloodline abilities in secret, including Kinzena dimensional travel, which is how Lily got here. The only ability that truly mystified them, was that of En’hol seers. If they had known how to read the future, they wouldn’t have been caught with their pants down and gotten slaughtered.”

“…That’s a lot to process,” Tom said. “So why Earth?”

“Lily chose to flee to Earth because it was a secret. Kinzena have visited and documented thousands of worlds, and they keep a few of the ones most hospitable for life under wraps. They keep the address of these sanctuary worlds under lock and key so that, should the family ever need to escape, they will have a place to go that no one knows about.”

“Like escape tunnels in castles, but…more,” Tom said, processing the fact that Earth was a glorified panic room.

“Sure. You could live a hundred years on Earth and Kinzena would never visit again. Plenty of time to rebuild Ku’leth.”

“Why did Lily choose me?” Tom asked. He had some dark suspicions, but maybe Carol could shed some light on them.

“I have some guesses, but they’re likely the same as yours,” she said with a shrug. “She never informed me of any specific reason to breed with you, but she obviously had a plan.”

She had a plan. Tom’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel for a moment before he forcibly relaxed them. The question of whether or not Lily had any feelings for him was entirely a moot point right now. She was dead, and there was no point second-guessing her motives.

Ellie, though... That baby didn’t have a plan. She was an unwilling participant in this avalanche of bullshit, and her dad was going to set things straight.

“Right here,” Carol said, motioning to a hollowed-out apartment building with some mean-looking dudes sitting out front. They had a real hard-bitten look to them, barely glancing up at him and Carol before returning to their card game, crumpled five-dollar bills resting in a pile between them. That guy was missing a finger.

Huh.

“What are we doing here?”

“We’re here to get some more guns.”

Tom frowned. “Shouldn’t we have brought some money?”

Carol gave a full-throated laugh, opening the door of the sedan and walking toward the entrance, shaking her head and chuckling at full volume. A few of the guards rubbernecked at Reese’s uncharacteristic levity, frowning.

Tom hurried to follow, opening the door and chasing after her.

“Looking good! You should smile more, Reese!” one of the thugs, a big overweight bruiser with equal parts muscle and fat, shouted before his buddies started elbowing him playfully.

“Thank you! Your flesh looks wonderfully marbled, skinsack!” Carol said, waving back as they walked inside.

Tom caught the man’s confused frown before the door swallowed up him and Carol.

“I couldn’t help but notice these people seem to recognize the body you’re in,” Tom pointed out.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be hilarious.”

“What do you even need a gun for?” Tom asked. “Aren’t you like…a demon killing machine?”

“Which sounds worse?” Carol asked. “A demon killing machine, or a demon killing machine with a Gatling gun? Guns are a force multiplier, and according to the tracks around the trailer park, we’ve got an estimated fifty knights, all in need of perforating. I’m tough, but I’ll need a little assistance with those kinds of numbers.”

Tom tried to tell her about the knights, that they likely had closer to eighty, but the words died on his tongue. Whatever was stopping him from talking about them was still in effect. He found something else to say.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with you spraying bullets in the vicinity of my baby.”

Carol glanced up at him as they pushed the door open. “I may not look like it, but I’m a very careful, deliberate person. I would never do something I hadn’t put a great deal of thought into.”

The door swung open, revealing the gun dealer sitting behind a wire-reinforced bulletproof cage, with four bodyguards sitting on the couch outside. They were all watching TV, which they turned off as soon as Reese stepped inside the room.

The gun dealer himself looked the worse for wear; his face was swollen, and his eyebrow was split with a purpling bruise.

“Reese, how can I help you? Finally decide that piece was too big for your hands?” To illustrate his point, he reached under the bar and slid a lady-pistol, about the size of Tom’s palm, across the counter. It was even pink. He gave ‘Reese’ a cocky grin, daring her to try and establish dominance with so much heat around her.

Carol’s smile split her face to an unnatural degree, revealing the fillings in the side of her molars, even as her eyes remained dead, flickering red light dwelling inside them.

“Jesus,” the gun dealer said, jerking backwards at the inhuman display. Normally, making him flinch would have been enough to settle the social dominance issue. But Carol wasn’t Reese.

“Actually, I’m here to congratulate you skinsacks on that successful demon hunt a few days ago. You really showed her a thing or two! Here’s your prize!”

Carol stepped forward and punched through the bulletproof glass. She grabbed the dealer by the sternum, her talons buried around the bone.

The demon ripped the dealer’s sternum off, before throwing the bloody knife-shaped piece of bone at the first thug to rise from his seat, reaching for his gun.

It embedded itself deep in the man’s eye, perforating his brain.

Tom pursed his lips and stood in the corner of the room while Carol tore the remaining men apart.

They didn’t even get a chance to scream.

Tom locked the door while Carol licked her talons clean. If the other bodyguards stormed in, there was a good chance they’d get a couple shots off before Carol took care of them. Tom didn’t wanna get shot.

Carol wiped the rest of the mess on her hands off on the couch before popping the door off its hinges and stepping around behind the counter.

The gun dealer was shivering on the ground, seemingly in shock, staring at the ceiling, his eyes dilated from the sheer amount of pain he must have been in. His chest was a bloody mess, and Tom thought he spotted something…pulsing.

“Oh, come off it,” Carol scoffed. “None of your vital organs are damaged. You’ll pull through if you get to a hospital before infection sets in.”

The man gave tiny little pants, seemingly torn between the need to breathe, and the need to keep his chest as still as possible.

“You’re. Not. Reese,” he whispered between tiny breaths.

“No, really?” She ignored him, stepping over the viciously wounded gun-runner without a second glance.