”Aurelie.” Aetius greeted his friend with a nod and a friendly smile as soon as she walked into the command tent. He noted that Verus and the trio of reds also came along, and knew that this was not a social call. Not that he had really expected it to be, but one could always hope. His friends certainly could use some social time together. Maybe then something might finally develop between the two. “What brings you here? I doubt you’re supposed to be the reinforcements I requested.”

Aurelie gave a sad smile. “No, unfortunately not.” She knew Aetius would not like what she was here to say. That wouldn’t stop her of course, but that didn’t mean she would take delight in it. “First, I’d like to point out that I am here as the official-unofficial representative of the council.”

“Official-unofficial?” Verus asked with an amused look. He had not quite grasped the serious atmosphere that had suddenly fallen between his friends just yet.

“Official as in what I’m about to tell you comes directly from the council. Unofficial in that if anyone asks, I never told you any of this, and that nothing I tell you here leaves this tent.” Aurelie’s serious voice finally wiped the amused look off Verus’ face.

“We understand.” Aetius assured her, though looked a little skeptically at the three red-sashed individuals standing near the tent flap. Was it really a good idea to discuss something secret with the trio present? Did Verus not have time to warn Aurelie of their suspicions? On the other hand, Aurelie was one of the reds, and secrets were exactly what the reds dealt with. If she thought it was fine, then it should be fine.

Aurelie noticed Aetius’ look and acknowledged his worries with a small nod. “This matter has to do with them as well. Before anything, the council would like to thank you for the very effective defense of Io with very limited resources, however…”

Before she got to go further, Aetius interrupted her with a vexed voice. “Wait, wait, wait! This sounds like you’re about to remove me from my command. Don’t tell me I’m being blamed for losing two forts in my sector when I wasn’t even here when that happened? I barely got here!”

However, it wasn’t Aurelie who answered him. Instead, Dee voiced some of her suspicions. “That’s not it, is it? He’s not being punished for doing badly. In fact, he’s doing better than expected.”

Aurelie nodded towards Dee. “She has probably already figured it out. Like I said, the council thanks you for the excellent defense, but they would also like you to stop. Or at the very least not do so well at it.”

Before Aetius managed to protest, Dee once again managed to interject her suspicions with a small grimace. “So it really was supposed to be a trap. We suspected it might be, but couldn’t really act on that suspicion alone.”

Aurelie made a playful pointing motion towards Dee. “Got it in one. Only those that needed to know were informed, and I guess your group was not included.” Her tone implied that there was more to it than what she said, but now was not the time to get into that.

Aetius finally managed to voice his frustration. “So, what exactly? Were we supposed to lose? Did you send me on a mission with the purpose of me failing? Do you think so little of me?!” He demanded with an incensed tone. He knew Aurelie had recommended him for this position, and now wondered if that recommendation was due to his friend looking down on him. He had taken it as a vote of confidence before.

“No, I recommended you for a very specific reason. I knew you had the tenacity to form an effective defense to keep the forts that were meant to be kept, even if one part of the front was collapsing. It takes a certain kind of leader to not panic and throw all their forces away in an attempt to plug a gap in their lines. I knew you would make the best of a bad situation, but I also knew you did not have the ability to perform miracles with your own personal power and connections.” She stopped and looked pointedly at Dee and her companions. “At least you were not supposed to be. The idea was that you would not be able to defend Io, but that you would be able to defend everything else without losing your cool and your forces to prevent a breach that we wanted to happen. You might ask why you weren’t told, but you were supposed to make a much more convincing performance if you didn’t know about the trap.”

“That’s quite specific.” Araqiel stated a little sarcastically. She had faced the brunt of plenty of unreasonable orders and had a certain amount of sympathy for Aetius. She also felt that Aurelie was simply trying to soothe Aetius’ ego. In her mind, Aurelie had known exactly what Aetius was capable of and that he would be found wanting. The rest was just trying to justify things afterwards.

“That’s why they came to us reds with that specific demand. If they wanted any random general who would just lose, the greens could pick one just fine.” Aurelie’s voice took a slightly condescending tone as if explaining basics like this was pointless. In fact, she was perfectly capable of what Araqiel was suggesting, it just happened to not be true in this case.

Verus smartly decided to stay out of this as he didn’t want to get involved in an argument between his friends. Aetius rubbed his closed eyes in frustration but soon calmed down enough to function. He was a general. His own concerns could wait. “Alright. So what does the council need? This plan of yours seems somewhat botched now. Our three friends here kicked the dragons back a little too thoroughly for them to make a true effort to come back. Come to think of it, if all three of you are here, who’s watching the portal.”

“The mountain is.” Dee replied with a flat tone.

“The mountain?” Aurelie asked with obvious confusion. She had seen a mountain as soon as she entered, something that big was hard to miss but had not paid real attention. She was under the impression that the mountain in question was just a normal mountain.

“You don’t want to know.” Verus said with a tired voice. He didn’t want to consider the damage the mountain might cause during this meeting while unsupervised.

“If I guessed the rough outline of the plan correctly, I think it can still be salvaged. Or it might even yield better results.” Dee stated. As soon as she had gotten a confirmation on the trap she had started running different scenarios in her head. She tried to find the one that had the best chance for success.

“You’re correct.” Aurelie agreed with a nod. “We have already come up with ideas, but I’d like to hear your input as you have a better grasp of the nuances present.”

“It’s not that hard really. All that needs to happen is for Dee and Moirai to show themselves somewhere else and then wait for the word to spread. Oh, and the mountain as well of course.” Aetius stated in Dee’s stead, coming to the same conclusion Dee had come to. It was the simplest and the most effective way, and he wasn’t a general for nothing. “I’m not entirely sure about the better results part though.”

“We might have to show ourselves in more than one place for them to really get the message, but as soon as they realize we’re not here anymore, then the rest should sort itself out. If we can give a good reason for our presence elsewhere, then that would be even better. Otherwise they might wonder why we’re relying on a mere bluff to defend Io. The better part will come from the fact that the news will most likely provoke a disproportionally large response from the dragons. They will have to strike in force just in case we managed to return here in time.” Dee explained her idea in more detail.

“Bluff?” Aurelie asked about the part that she was not certain of. The idea was not that far from what the council had thought of. Some details were different because the council had no specific information, but it was close enough to count.

“Yes, well, Dee punched out a rank eleven Azure Dragon with a single hit.” Verus explained. “Then Moirai and the mountain brutalized the next wave so badly that they haven’t really made a proper effort since then. They checked for our continued presence a couple of times since then, but even that has stopped. They most likely decided it would be easier to try and take another fort than Io. So theoretically we could move the whole group away as a proper strategic decision and just pretend to be bluffing that Io is still impenetrable when they’ve already left.”

“Punched out an Azure dragon, eh?” Aurelie looked at Dee in interest. She could tell Dee was powerful, but even a very physically focused rank twelve warrior would have trouble doing what Dee had done. Cleave one to death with a huge amount of ki and a magical weapon? Sure. Punch one out? That was more challenging. “Anyway, we’ll go over the details, but that sounds like the makings of a plan. We could feign that one of our other forts was falling, which in turn would credibly force them to help in the defense of that fort.”

The next few hours were spent hashing out the exact plan, as Aetius and Verus would have to move their command post if Io was about to fall. After the meeting had concluded, and the two generals had to prepare for their departure, Aurelie pulled Dee aside for a talk. Moirai and Araqiel wanted to follow, but Dee signaled them to stay. Aurelie would most likely feel safer when not surrounded by three unknown people and would be more inclined to talk with just Dee around. If any of Dee’s suspicions about their coming conversation were correct, the other woman might be disinclined to share too much with ‘outsiders’ even if Dee vouched for them.

“You look very young.” Aurelie stated as they found a more private place, ironically near the Living Mountain so there was a third being listening in anyway. Not that anywhere near the gate would be all that far from the large mountain. “Unless you’re making yourself look younger on purpose, you’re even younger than me.”

Dee nodded in confirmation. She wasn’t entirely sure how old Aurelie was, but she was pretty sure the woman was at least a few years older. Dee actually looked a little older than she was due to her height, although Aurelie wasn’t exactly short either. Even though Aurelie was still mostly hidden by her robe, and thus hiding most of the details, some things could still be seen. One of those things was that the woman was less than two mel tall, maybe between 1,8 and 1,9 making her taller than normal humanoid women but still more than a head shorter than Dee.

“So you likely know almost nothing of what happened. Even I was so young that I barely remember anything despite being a psion. If those from the older generations didn’t fill me in, I’d be clueless as well. Unless your watcher told you?” Aurelie half wondered to herself before posing a question.

Dee answered with questions of her own. “Watcher? Older generations?”

“Ah. So that’s a no then. So let’s start with the first question. When the hells were destroyed, the project that created us realized they were…well, fucked to be quite frank. So they set all the experiments free in the hopes that we would exact some twisted revenge for them. Some of us from the later generations were so young that we would not have been able to survive on our own. We also happened to be the creations with the greatest potential of course, so they handed us to the soldiers watching over the whole projects and told everyone to run for their lives. We ‘affectionately’ call those people that carried the young ones away watchers.” Aurelie explained. Watchers had tried to manipulate the kids, so affection was not exactly the emotion associated with them.

“We?” Dee asked the obvious follow-up question.

“Well, not that many of us survived. In the first place, we were experimental cases so there weren’t all that many of us that survived the tests. Some of the experiments, especially those from the oldest generations, were not…shall we say able to function properly. Many were hunted down by the angels and more still tried to exact that revenge I mentioned with limited success. I guess killing an angel could be called some sort of success, but not really what they were ultimately aiming for. Especially those that were meant to become soldier types went for what they were trained for and died doing it. There’s a small group of us that ended up with the Assembly. I would guess at least one or two ended up with the dragons as well and the angels might have kept one or two as a sample. Still, I have a reason to believe most of the surviving brothers and sisters ended up with the Assembly. We can get into that later.” Aurelie seemed very trusting of Dee for some reason.

Unknown to Dee, most of those that went through the experiments had formed deep bonds with one another. There were many reasons for those bonds, some were even programmed into them, but the end result was that they trusted one another almost automatically. The trust was partially an instinct instilled in the experiments, an instinct not instilled in Dee for a number of reasons as her purpose in the minds of those performing the experiments was different. She also hadn’t faced any of the painful experiments so she didn’t form those bonds of camaraderie that built between fellow survivors. Yet the same courtesy was extended to her anyway.

“You spoke of generations several times now. It might be easier if you explain that part.” Dee suggested. She wasn’t sure why the other woman was so talkative but planned on using the opportunity to the fullest.

“Ah, yes. Remember that most of this is stuff I heard from others. I have confirmed some of it, but not all of it. Anyway, the project that created us had a couple of main purposes, but those purposes could not be achieved without some...iteration. They created a group of test subjects with a certain goal in mind and kept changing things until the particular goal was either achieved or scrapped. They would try different combinations of races, genes, and bloodlines to see what would give them the best results, and then made their conclusions. The whole project took decades, and us, the test subjects, and the methods they used improved. Instead of just combining a bunch of races straight out and hoping for the best, they started taking small parts or even single traits from several races and so on. Anyway, every time a large leap forward was made, the new group of test subjects was called a new generation. They would then try to improve another facet with that new generation without breaking what made them special from those that came before.” Aurelie’s voice was a little pained, and Dee realized that much of the testing and experimentation was hard on the subjects. Not that she was surprised.

“So if I understand this correctly, each successive generation was stronger than the last then?” Dee tried to quickly ask a question to help keep any painful memories distracting from the conversation.

“Well, yes and no. Mostly yes, although the goal wasn’t always just to increase strength or power. It would be more accurate to say that each generation was in some way superior to the ones that came before, though the difference might not have been large. In some cases, the generation change just marked a more effective method of doing something or fixing a major flaw that had existed before. Also, while the newer generations were more promising in average, there are still individual differences and different experimental groups. For example, judging from the fact that we are pretty close in age and are both psions, I’d assume we are the same generation, or at least very close. Despite that, even a cursory glance shows that there were different races used in our heritage, or at least those races developed differently. That means we were part of a different batch. They tried something on my batch, and then they tried something different on your batch. Depending on how well that something worked might leave us stronger or weaker than the generation preceding us.” Aurelie wafted a bit. She knew the two of them were superior in most ways to the older generations, but didn’t quite want to say it outright. It would have been disrespectful

“So you mentioned different goals. It might help again if you explained that.” Dee prompted.

“Right. So from what we managed to piece together, the project had two distinct goals. The more general goal was to create a new race of chimera, which is basically what we are, to use as a weapon against the enemies of the thirteen hells. Creating something like us in large numbers would have been very hard, but creating small elite groups is doable. As far as I know, some experimental groups were deemed good enough to send on missions. So in that sense the project succeeded even if it didn’t manage to make a difference in the end. The true goal of the project was a little different though. They wanted to create an ultimate being of sorts, and the whole project was called the Prime Project. What they specifically wanted from this Prime is not clear, as there are no perfect beings. There are however beings perfect for some specific goal. What the goal for this Prime was, we never found out.” Aurelie explained.

“So did they do it? Create this Prime?” Dee asked, dreading the answer a bit. She wasn’t entirely sure which she disliked more, being this supposed Prime or just being another stepping stone on the way. Umbra’s earlier words had implied much but confirmed very little.

“Mmm, hard to say. According to the watchers, perhaps. They had heard rumors of a success just before things went to shit, but in any case, that would be a moot point.” Aurelie shrugged.

“Why?” Dee asked a little confused.

“Well, just having the potential is only half the work. The project had also mapped out stringent training requirements that would have to be carried out. That training was honed on thousands of test subjects and the older generations got to go through with some of it. So even if the Prime was born, they wouldn’t have received the training necessary to get the best out of whatever they were planning. The Prime would have been just a baby. And even then they most likely died. According to the watchers, the angels were not too pleased with the possibility of something like that being out there, so they went out of their way to hunt us down. They would most likely have found the Prime as well. And if not, well there was the Purge that most demons got caught in.” Aurelie sounded angry at the thought of the Purge, and not without reason.

“So if they wanted to create the ultimate mage for example, a successful creation would not make a difference if they were never trained as a mage?” Dee confirmed with an example.

“Something like that. It’s a little more complicated as a goal like ‘the ultimate mage’ is a little vague, but that’s the basic gist of it. Now, I’m sure you have a million questions, but I think it’s only fair if you answer some of mine first.” Aurelie had an almost instinctual trust towards Dee, but it was not blind faith. Most of what she had told Dee so far was something that was admittedly hard to find out but not exactly something that put her or anyone else in danger. She also knew it was more likely to get Dee to answer some questions if she was forthcoming with such information first.

“Well, I suppose that’s true.” Dee mentally wiped some sweat from her forehead. She could already feel the psionic power of Aurelie in the air. Lying to a psion was a dangerous proposal, but it was not her first time doing something like this. Lies of omission and intentional misunderstandings were something she had used before.