Groaning, Saskia picked herself up off the ground, rubbing her aching jaw. “If it feels like this when you pull your punches, I’ve got to wonder what it’s like when you go all out.”

“If I did not hold back, your mortal vessel would not stay conscious long enough to feel much at all,” said Padhra. “And you would not be on your feet again so soon.”

“Have I ever told you how glad I am that you’re on my side?” said Saskia.

“More times than I can count, Old One.” Padhra assumed her fighting stance. “One more round, before the morning meal.”

Inhaling deeply, Saskia balled her fists, preparing to receive another walloping.

As she made her way into the temple, nursing another black eye and split lip, Saskia wondered what her followers thought of their goddess getting the crap so thoroughly beaten out of her each morning. Shouldn’t a real goddess be indestructible or something? On they other hand, they did get to witness first hand the miracle of her accelerated healing, so she was fifty-fifty on whether her daily training sessions were damaging or bolstering her image in their eyes.

Regardless, the pain would be surely worth it in the end. Whether in this world or another, her enemies would come for her. She needed to able to defend herself.

After a month of intensive training every morning, she’d improved by leaps and bounds (or at least punches and kicks; leaping and bounding was generally not advisable in a real fight, unless one had the body of a troll). She still stood no chance against someone of Padhra’s skill level, but she was confident she could take out one or two untrained opponents, even if they got the jump on her.

Padhra, for her part, was even more deadly now than she had been when Saskia had first met her. As her first and only vassal on Earth, her bodyguard now had access to Saskia’s combat telegraphing ability, not to mention the threat identification that came with their shared minimap. It had been a surprise to both of them that someone without a hint of potential as a magus could become her vassal, but the Lingya woman hadn’t hesitated to accept the mysterious bond Saskia had unwittingly offered her while they both slept in their separate beds, quite far from the keystone.

They weren’t the only ones who had been training hard. On their way to the dining hall, they passed the now-familiar sight of Ivan kneeling on the hardwood floor, building a wall out of playing cards; each of them balanced perfectly on its edge. He’d moved way beyond spinning coins in recent weeks. Not even Minganha could keep up with him, and she’d had a nearly six month head start.

Saskia wondered what weird and wonderful tricks he might be able to perform if he became her vassal and gained access to her vast bounty of essence. Ivan hadn’t been too keen on the idea of having her tentacles embedded in his spine—not even in a metaphorical sense. On the other hand, there was always the chance her oracle abilities would interfere with his magic, even if she didn’t actively share them with him, so maybe it was for the best that he’d declined her offer.

“You still up for a weapons test later?” asked Ivan, without looking up.

“Of course,” said Saskia. “Those rocks will never know what hit ’em.”

When they brought the hexapod out of the vault later that morning, she was met with the usual excited chattering from the locals. This wasn’t the first time she’d taken the hexapod for a walk. Despite their best efforts to keep her presence low-key, something as big and stompy as this was not something one could keep secret for long. There were townsfolk from Tengsanpalem who would make the pilgrimage to the temple just for a chance to glimpse the thing in action.

Glimpsing it was easier said than done, though. These days, there was nothing to see but a bug-shaped ripple in the air. The dream she’d had weeks earlier—of her trollish self and her Arbor Mundi friends showing up in the distant past—had revealed the existence of that particular feature. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out how to activate it.

The stealth field bent light around the hexapod’s chassis, making it difficult to identify up close, and all but impossible to spot from afar. Without it, she’d have been far more reticent to bring the ancient machine out—and not just because of nosy locals. The ancient machine was very likely big enough to show up in satellite photos if anyone happened to be looking at the right place at the right time.

Nestled deep in the webbing at the hexapod’s core, Saskia could barely perceive her own body—the beating of her heart, and the stirring of her flesh-and-blood arms and legs. For all intents and purposes, as long as she was jacked in, she was the metal monstrosity.

The sensor stalks arrayed atop the machine’s bulbous carapace afforded her a panoramic view of her surroundings. Its limbs moved as if they were her own legs—except there were six of them. That had taken some getting used to, but not as much as she’d have thought. There must be some robotic equivalent of a motor cortex acting as intermediary between her conscious mind and the machine body.

Metal feet thudded into the snow as she followed Padhra along the ridgetop and down into the barren, secluded gully they’d picked out for these tests. Unlike Ivan, who sat alongside her in the cockpit, the Lingya woman insisted on running on her own two feet. She seemed to think she could do more good as her goddess’s protector from the outside. As if Saskia needed protecting when she was sitting inside a tank! But Padhra was Padhra, and when it came to Saskia’s protection, there was no arguing with her.

Besides, there remained a possibility something could go wrong with the hexapod’s systems—a power failure, perhaps—at which point Saskia and Ivan might find themselves trapped inside. If that happened, Padhra would be able to fetch help for them.

Perhaps Saskia could have carried her vassal on the outside of the robot’s chassis, free to leap down at a moment’s notice to fight off hypothetical do-badders lurking behind every rock. But the thought of catching squishy human bits between the hexapod’s swivelling turrets and flexing metal joints made her hesitant to try.

If Ruhildi were here, she’d no doubt have found a way to ride the back of this metal beast, regardless. A familiar pang swept over Saskia at the thought. She missed her friend so much, and it was only getting worse with time. In her recent dream, Ruhildi had seemed so gaunt and pale, as if she were one of her own risen corpses. What had that been all about?

Well, wherever or whenever Ruhildi was, Saskia hoped she was doing okay, and that they would see each other again.

With an effort of will, she wrenched herself back to the here and now. It was no use getting mopey. She had things to do. “Alright, let’s fire these bad boys. You might want to stand back, Padhra…”

This was their second test of the hexapod’s weapon systems. The first had been…less than successful. In hindsight, she should have known the metal monster wouldn’t have been kept fully-loaded for a thousand years.

The main guns, of which there were four, appeared to be gauss rifles, according to Ivan. When she asked him how they worked, he told her they used ‘big-arse electromagnets.’

The projectiles they fired were just solid hunks of iron or similar metal; no propellant needed, but they did need to be a specific shape and size. They’d found some empty magazines in the storage bay—reusable, thank dogs. From these—with a little help from her oracle interface—they’d been able to determine the correct dimensions for the bullets. Unfortunately, those dimensions didn’t conform to any modern ammunition designs. They couldn’t just rock up to a gun shop to purchase ancient alien ammo, even if there were gun shops within easy reach. Instead, with the help of local metalworkers, they’d made their own projectiles by hand.

Now they were putting their handiwork to the test. The bizarre dichotomy was not lost on Saskia. Here they were, having loaded up a giant robot with hunks of metal hammered into shape using centuries-old manufacturing techniques that were nevertheless still newer than said robot.

Padhra remained a little too close for comfort, but it was clear that was as far as she was willing to go. Saskia took careful aim at a nearby rock, using her own oracle targetting system rather than one provided by the hexapod itself.

“Firing in three…two…one…”

With a mental twitch, she pulled the trigger.

The nearby hillside exploded in her face.

Caught in the blast wave, the hexapod stumbled backward. A huge plume of dust rose into the air. Boulders came tumbling down the slope around her.

Casting a frantic virtual gaze at Padhra, she saw her vassal lying in an island of calm amidst a tide of falling rocks and dirt. At the same time, she felt a stirring of essence in the air; not her own essence, but seemingly coming from all around her. She glanced sharply at Ivan. Was he doing that…?

Holy crap, he must be! But all it would take was one big rock getting through…

She leapt, landing astride Padhra, before crouching low to protect her from the worst of the rockfall. This seemed to break Ivan’s concentration, because boulders began to clatter against her carapace and the great metal skirt of the outer shield panels. Dust obscured her sensors. She coughed in sympathetic response, even though the air remained clean inside the cockpit.

Soon, the sound of impacts subsided, and the dust began to clear. “Are you okay?” she called out to her companion.

“Yes, Old One, I’m…” Padhra broke into a fit of coughing. “…alive.”

Ivan glared at Saskia. “Did you have to jump in like that? I had it under control.”

“I saw,” she said. “That was very impressive, but I couldn’t be certain your magic would be enough to keep her safe.”

“And your way was better, how, exactly? What if the rocks had knocked our feet out from underneath us, and we’d fallen on her?”

“I…didn’t think of that,” she admitted. “And I’m sorry I nearly got you killed and everything, Padhra. Let’s see if I can tone down the projectile speed for the next test shot. Ah yes, here’s the setting. This time, you should stand way, way back.”

“No shit, Sasslock,” said Ivan.

When the Lingya woman was at a truly safe distance, Saskia dialled back the kinetic energy meter as far as it would go, and squeezed the virtual trigger.

This time, the rock she’d been aiming at exploded, but the rest of the hillside remained largely undisturbed.

“Well that was an improvement,” she breathed. “Wanna give it a go, Ivan?”

Lacking her oracle interface, her friend had to access the physical gun controls, which consisted of a holographic display with an array of virtual buttons and dials, and a physical handle and trigger that could be swivelled to direct the weapon.

Ivan took to the controls like a duck to a water cannon, obliterating a rock in the distance.

“Nice!” she said.

“That…wasn’t the one I was aiming for,” he said. “The aim is a little off. It’s these damn hand-made bullets. All the little defects mean they don’t fly very straight.”

Saskia’s shot had gone exactly where she’d aimed, but presumably her oracle interface had compensated for the wobble resulting from less-than-perfect aerodynamics. Ivan hadn’t had that luxury.

“Hold up, I’m gonna try something,” he said.

Saskia felt another stirring of essence. This time, when a rock exploded into shrapnel, Ivan let out a whoop.

She gave him a long look. “It seems being a magus is good for far more than just parlour tricks.”

Now she was feeling a little envious. Sure, her oracle abilities and regeneration were useful, but magi could bend reality.

There was only enough ammo for a few test shots, but by the time they were done, she was starting to get a good feel for the weapons’ capabilities. It was really quite versatile. At the lowest setting, it would pop a human like a microwaved gremlin. At the highest, it would do the same to a tank. She wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of popping anyone, but if it was pop or be popped…

Returning to the temple grounds, she put the hexapod in autonomous mode, then remotely commanded it to walk down the ramp into the vault, while she and Ivan waited outside. A huge stone slab rolled across the doorway, fusing seamlessly with the cliffside. Until the day she and Ivan had opened it, the locals hadn’t even realised it was a door.

Walking the path to the temple, Saskia suppressed a sigh at the sight of dozens of clanswomen awaiting their chance to greet her, pray to her, touch her. One elderly woman pleaded with Saskia to cure her back pains. If she had access to arlithite on Earth, maybe she could have done just that, but as it was, all she could do was feign a blessing and hope the placebo effect did its thing.

This wasn’t the worst she’d seen. Over the past few weeks, several clanswomen had offered up their babies to her. What they expected her to do with them, she had no idea. Eat them, maybe? She certainly wasn’t mother material.

A young boy stepped out from the crowd, shouting, “Old One! You asked me to tell you if…”

A woman reached out to pull him back, but Saskia raised a hand, stilling her. She recognised that kid. He was one of the boys who had accosted her all those weeks earlier when she passed through Tengsanpalem. She’d bribed him with chocolate.

Taking the boy aside, she asked, “What is it, child? Have you heard something?”

“I have, Old One! A group of foreigners are in Tengsanpalem. They have been asking about you.”

Saskia tensed. “How many? Are they armed? What do they look like?”

“Three—no, four of them. They look like…foreigners.” He paused, considering. “There’s a woman with them. She looks like you, Old One. But…older.”

A shiver ran through her. Could she be Yona, the real Old One?

No, she was reading way too much into this. There were untold numbers of foreign women who might look vaguely like her to the eyes of a child.

Still, if they were asking about Saskia, it was cause for concern. They could be working for her mysterious enemies or a foreign government, or they could simply be curious trekkers who had heard of her earlier exploits here. Either way, it likely meant the end of her brief respite here.

“Thank you for telling me this.” When his expression turned hopeful, she added, “I’m sorry, I don’t have any more chocolate.” She fished around in her pockets, but there was nothing of value in them.

“Here, brat,” said Ivan, flipping a coin to the boy, who caught it deftly, and held onto it as if it were a priceless jewel. “My lucky coin, blessed by the goddess herself.” He winked at Saskia.

“You overheard?” said Saskia.

“Yep,” said Ivan. “Another you, eh?”

“God, I hope not,” said Saskia. “One of me already feels like too much, sometimes.”

“Amen to that,” said Ivan.

“Hey, you’re not supposed to agree with me!”

“Oh yes I am.”

“Are not!”

“Am too!”

“Are no—” Saskia closed her mouth abruptly. All the clansfolk were staring at them, including the boy, whose eyes had gone as round as saucers.

Yeah, this probably isn’t how you expected your goddess to behave, she thought. Frock it. Your goddess has many guises. And that was the guise of a six-year-old girl pretend-bickering with her equally childish friend.

Feeling their eyes lingering on her, she hurried into the temple, with Ivan following at her heels. “I’d better go check on these scary foreigners.”

“That doesn’t sound safe,” said Ivan. “Let me and Padhra go and—”

“I won’t be going in person,” said Saskia. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Oh, you mean your creepy spy magic. Well that’s okay then.”

Glowering at him, she settled into a comfortable position, then cast her consciousness down the slope to Tengsanpalem. The settlement was close enough for her to reach in one hop. Once there, she found her way to the headman’s house, where the new arrivals were being held under heavy guard. Having been forewarned about outsiders who meant their goddess harm, the clansfolk had apparently decided to take no chances.

Saskia appreciated their efforts on her behalf, but in this case, their suspicions were misplaced. Her heart nearly skipped a beat as she took in the sight of the four figures slouched on the floor of a tiny jail cell.

Alice Wendle, Raji Kumar, Fergus Buchanan and Dave Winfield.

Her mum was speaking haltingly in the Lingya language to an unreceptive audience. “No…hurt. Daughter. Find daughter. Saskia Wendle. Where find her, you know?”

“If you’d give us back our laptops, we could use a translation app,” suggested Raji.

Saskia let out a hysterical laugh. Trust her friends to lug their laptops all the way out here.

“What’s so funny?” asked Ivan.

“You’ll never guess who just showed up in Tengsanpalem.”

“Your mum,” said Ivan.

She blinked. “How did you know?”

“What, seriously?” He coughed. “I meant it as a joke. A bad one.”

Several hours later, she stood outside the headman’s house in Tengsanpalem, facing the four newly-released travellers.

“What the frock, guys?” she said.

“Language, Sass,” said her mum. “And it’s lovely to see you too.”

“Before you go apeshi—” Raji cast a nervous glance at Alice, before correcting his near-fatal blunder. “Before you get peeved at us for risking our lives and freedom by following you out here, you should know that we didn’t have much of a choice. We had to get the fu…dge out of dodge.”

“What happened?”

“A man tried to drag me into his van outside the bank,” said Alice.

Saskia’s stomach dropped. “Are you…?”

“I’m fine, Sass. Don’t worry about me.”

“She handed him his arse,” said Dave.

Glaring at him, Alice continued. “The self-defence training really paid off. Our guardian angel…” She looked pointedly at Ivan. “…got in touch with the four of us after that. He was most apologetic that his men let someone slip through their net, and he warned us that there would likely be more attempts to kidnap or kill us. We decided it would be safest for everyone if we came here, where at least they can’t use us as bait to lure you out into the open again.”

“You’ve met Dad?” asked Ivan.

Her mum nodded. “A very…intriguing man.”

“I don’t think we’ve been followed,” Raji assured her. “Mr Storozhenko’s guys have been greasing some palms in the area, so we had an easier time getting here than you did. We didn’t even have to walk most of the way.”

“Speaking of which, we should get going, if we want to get back to the temple before dark,” said Ivan.

“Ivan, right?” said Fergus. “We met at the…uh, funeral. Thanks for taking care of Tentacle Girl for us.”

Saskia scowled at him. “Don’t make me leave you down here.”

During the hike back to the temple, she filled them in on her adventures over the past couple of months. Saskia felt a mix of dismay and relief at their presence here. On the one hand, they were probably safer here than back home, and she was really happy to see them again. On the other, if word got out that they were here—that they were aiding fugitives—they might never be able to go back to their old lives.

“We know the risks,” said Raji. “After that cop died, the media have been calling you a suspected accessory to murder. So that makes us accessories to a suspected accessory to murder.”

“Otherwise known as accessories to murder,” said Dave.

“I saw the commentary on the trip over,” said Saskia. “Everyone seemed to think the sniper in the helicopter who ‘accidentally’ shot the cop was SAS or something. He most certainly was not, but the authorities were being all ‘we can neither confirm nor deny’ about it.”

“Nothing has changed on that front,” said Raji. “If it weren’t for Mr Storozhenko, we’d still be as clueless as everyone else about what really happened.”

“So if you’re here, and, well…criminals, now, what happens to Threads of Nautilum?” asked Saskia.

“Oh, we’re still making it,” said Raji. “That game was our life for over two years. We’re going to finish it, come alien invasion or zombie apocalypse or nuclear winter. We’ll even have Internet up here. Our benefactor gave us a satellite phone with a high-capacity data connection. Untraceable, he said. He sends his apologies that it wasn’t ready before you left.”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” she told him. “But the temple’s lone generator won’t be enough to keep your laptops charged. Minganha keeps it for absolute essentials.”

“But that’s not the only power source at the temple,” said Raji. “The lights and robots you told us about—they must be powered by something, right? Perhaps super-advanced RTGs.”

“What are they?” asked Saskia.

“Radioisotope thermoelectric generators,” said Dave. “They use them in satellites and space probes. Plutonium ones can last for decades, although they tend to be pretty low-powered. There are other useable isotopes with even longer half-lives, so it’s entirely plausible that someone could’ve made an RTG that lasted a thousand years or more.”

“Or it could be something more exotic, like antimatter or black holes,” suggested Fergus.

Saskia stared at him. “There’s a black hole in the temple basement?”

Fergus grinned at her reaction. “Probably not. But you never know…”

“Whatever it is, we might be able to tap into it,” said Raji. “Hell, if it’s powerful enough, we could supply electricity for the whole area.”

It was an intriguing possibility, although if it panned out, they’d have to limit their use of lights at night. Too many bright lights, and they’d begin to show up on satellite images.

“So how did you get here, if you didn’t walk?” asked Saskia. “You may have noticed there are no roads in these parts.”

“Got a heli ride, courtesy of you-know-who,” said Dave. “Dropped us off just outside Tengsanpalem.”

“And thank god for that,” said Fergus, who was getting noticeably short of breath.

“Oh, Viktor’s no god,” said Saskia. “He’s just very, very rich.”

“That’s the same thing, isn’t it?” said Raji.

“You guys should take it easy for the next few days, after we get there,” said Ivan. “This probably isn’t high enough for you to get full-blown altitude sickness, but you’ll be feeling the effects, all the same.”

“I’m feeling…something, alright,” wheezed Fergus.

Saskia eyed her mum worriedly. “What about you?”

Alice sighed. “Don’t look at me like that, Sass. I’m not some fragile old lady. I had you when I was very young, remember? I’ve scaled a few peaks in my time. And I dare say I’m much fitter than these fellows.”

“Game development doesn’t leave much time for hitting the gym,” agreed Raji, who was also breathing heavily.

Dave, on the other hand, looked as if he had been hitting the gym since she saw him last. He appeared no more fazed by the hike than did her mum.

Minganha greeted the new arrivals with her usual stoic acceptance. They too would be quartered at the temple, although some of them would have to share rooms.

Saskia wasted no time introducing them to the keystone. Of the three guys, only Fergus possessed any affinity for magic, so he alone got the anti-dampener injection—a gift he did not thank her for.

It was her mum who gave her the biggest surprise. Not only was she a magus, but after it had finished scanning her, the keystone announced, “Anima equivalency suggests the latent belongs to the master’s lineage. Setting permissions accordingly.”

Saskia gaped at her mum. She’d always assumed she was related to Yona through her father. A perfectly reasonable assumption, given that he was, like her, an interdimensional traveller. She’d never even considered the possibility that it was her mother who carried the genes of the eldritch goddess. Or maybe they both did? No, that was a bit too squicky to think about.

The keystone hadn’t called her mum a mouthlet, though. Alice Wendle was human, not eldritch. Technically, Saskia had been entirely human, too, until that day she manifested her eldritch side.

Another realisation struck her in that moment. The keystone had not used the word latent to describe Fergus or Minganha or any other magi it had scanned. Only for her mum…and Ivan.

“You understood what it said, right?” asked Saskia.

Alice nodded. “I’m a blood relative of its master. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“No, Mum, it’s not me. The master it’s referring to is their goddess, Yona. You are her descendant, just as I am. You actually have more claim to the name ‘Old One’ than I do.”

Her mum shot her a glare. “I’m not that old, Sass!”

Saskia sighed. This was going to be a long conversation.