Maya awoke to a rumbling noise and her world rocking slightly. She blinked her eyes and realized there was a bandage covering her vision. She moved it aside to see a familiar sight.

Maya looked up the cracked rainbow sky. Every color imaginable twisted its way across the dome above her. They didn’t seem to move, but with enough time Maya could make out the small shifting of the colors, seemingly bleeding into one another and slowly being consumed and replaced. Among those colors, as if someone had taken a sharpie to the sky, ran jagged black lines. They weren’t as numerous as they had been when she first arrived to this plane, but they still marred the otherwise eye aching rainbow of the sky.

“You’re awake,” a voice said.

Maya took her eyes away from the sky and shifted to her right. A figure backlit by the sky was walking beside her. Maya realized she was lying on her back, on a bed of some sort.

That caused her to peer at her feet to see that it was a travois; twin poles digging into the gray earth and leaving marks behind, only to be beaten out of existence from the footfalls of orcs trailing behind. The rumbling noise that filled the air, footsteps.

Maya lay back for a moment; the memories of current events flooded her head and she sighed. She had managed to bring everyone who had been fighting beside her, who hadn’t been able to teleport out, with her into the Rainbow Sky Hellscape.

“Anisa?” she asked.

“I’m here too, boss,” a voice added. Maya craned her head to see Tender was the one pulling the travois she lay upon.

“Good to see you, buddy.”

“Good to be seen,” he responded.

“What happened?” Maya asked, half sitting. “I don’t remember passing out.”

“We are in retreat,” Anisa stated. There was a tinge of exhaustion to her voice. Maya noted she was a mess, her armor tattered, covered in blood and dirt and other unidentifiable things. Yet she still carried her sword on her shoulder and her eyes scanned the semi-gloom of the RSH.

“Retreat?” Maya asked. She rubbed her head. There had been the Flesh Army, hadn’t there? “Why aren’t we headed toward the ship?”

“The ship isn’t here,” Tender said.

“What? The Flesh army wasn’t that far from the Hangy.”

“Something appears to have occurred when we were brought here,” Anisa said. “From what I understand, the Dimensional Mage Black Horizon shifted the threshold as we were trying to escape it. Instead of arriving to where the Flesh Army was located, we were sent to the Motherland.”

“Mother-“ Maya jerked up and nearly fell off the travois. “We’re in Fleshy territory?”

“Yes,” Tender said.

Maya tried getting to her feet, but she was weak. The world did a slow flip and she ended up slamming her face into the dirt. Hands were about her immediately and righted her back onto the travois.

“What the hell,” Maya muttered, spitting out dirt. “What’s wrong with me?”

“Unknown,” Tender said. “I have very little medical data, but my guess is that you’ve over extended yourself once more, boss. Opening two thresholds and evacuating everyone, that’s cause for some strain regardless of your Tier and Grade. You were talking and walking one moment and the next you were out.”

Maya groaned, holding her head.

“How long?”

“Tender says its been two standard days,” Anisa said.

“We’ve been on the run for two days?” Maya asked, sitting back up. She felt Tender’s hands steady her. Exhaustion was clawing at her sense again and she shoved it away. “What’s our status?”

“You need to rest,” Anisa said gently.

“Tender.”

“Two hundred and ten orcs, one hundred and twenty crows, fifty two humans, and seventy of Asoltolia’s people arrived into this plane two days ago. Of that, a fifth have died from injuries and battle.

“We have little food, water, medical supplies and weapons. There is a horde of Tarvana at least seven thousand strong looking to kill us. They are not Flesh Army, instead they seem to be opportunistic hunters of a sort.”

“We’re free food,” Anisa said. “It seems fresh meat doesn’t usually fall from the sky and even though we have teeth, it hasn’t deterred them from chasing us.”

“Where is Chu?” Maya asked.

“He and those that can fight are fighting in the rear,” Ansia said. She looked over her shoulder, beyond the ragged group of orcs that was following them. “You’ve been saddled with the honor guard, me and the orcs are here for your protection.”

“And the injured?” Maya asked.

“The Drones are handling most of their transportation,” Tender said. “Currently there are two dozen drones left.”

“I don’t remember bringing the drones,” Maya said.

“You did not. They followed, as they were not protected by your shields, they suffered heavy losses.”

Maya winced. She hadn’t even thought of them.

“What about Asoltolia’s people?” Maya asked.

“They are with us,” Anisa said. “We had a little chat after you killed Asoltolia. They’re her family, kinda, but they realized where they were and what that meant. Their only chance to survive is with us.”

“They have been difficult to deal with,” Tender said.

“We’re all mid-grade or lower,” Anisa clarified. “They won’t take orders from low leveled people. I can barely get them to do anything beyond marching and not getting in our way.”

“We’ll have to sort that shit out,” Maya said. She rubbed her face again. “What’s our food and water situation?”

“About zero,” Anisa answered. “We’ve consumed all we had in the last two days. It wasn’t much to begin with, anyway. No one was considering a long term fight inside the Cage and Canton had us only carry, weapons, armor, and ammo. We have a few dozen water stones and other items that can produce water, but not enough for everyone.”

“I have access to my Inventory again,” Maya said. “I always made sure to carry a full stack of ration bars and a food processor with me.”

“Really?” Anisa asked. “Why?”

Maya waved her arm around. “Take a look. I was trapped here for months before I made it back to Earth. I only had what I had in my food truck and what Tender was able to sell to me. I never wanted to be put into that position again. Although I hadn’t been expecting to feed an army of three hundred.”

Maya craned her neck. “Where’s the nearest trash pile?”

***

“Is this wise?” Chu asked, walking up to Maya. He dusted off his armor, battered and beaten like everyone else’s.

“Good day to you too, Mr. Chu,” Maya said, looking up from the tablet she was working on. “Glad to see my miraculous recovery and awakening has brightened your day.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Chu said. “We’re fighting for our lives here and you want to stop to pick through trash? Two days of running and we stop now? Those mad fucks are going to re-organize and come back at us. They’re not smart and they’re not tough, but there is a fuck ton of them.”

“Did we lose anyone?” Maya asked.

“We lost two orcs and a crow,” Chu replied. “Bent Snout, One Ear, and Thin Feathers. Good people, just back luck.”

Maya nodded. “We can’t keep running. We’re exhausted and half dead,” she said. “The people need a rest; they need to eat, treat their wounds, and equipment needs to be repaired.”

Chu looked over his shoulder, back toward the one hundred soldiers that were sluggishly making their way to the camp. Maya could see that her words were sinking in. He sighed and deflated a bit.

“I’m so fucking tired,” he said. “This fucking place is hell.”

“I agree with you there,” Maya said. She continued working on her tablet and then Inventoried it. “Help me up.”

Maya painfully got to her feet, limping beside Chu. Every cell in her body was aching, but she was managing to get back control. How many times had she pushed her body too far? If not for Tier 2 healing abilities, she’d have been a wreck by now.

“Trash piles,” Maya said, gesturing toward the pile near them. “They’re what saved me when I first came here. They held tools, weapons, materials, and equipment that I needed to survive. It’s all junk that’s been pulled into this dimensional plane during dimensional instabilities back in the Multiverse. Most of its System Tech stuff, there are the occasional goodies like enchanted gear and mana cores. Spend enough time inside a pile and you’ll find that they’re filled with wealth.”

“That’s how you got so rich?” Chu asked. “Digging through trash?”

“Interdimensional Garbage Merchant,” Maya grinned.

“What that?”

“Just a name,” Maya replied. They rounded a corner, a massive stone block the size of a two story building, and came to a work area. Tender, some drones, and some orcs worked with metal and were cutting, shaping, and building a skeleton of a vehicle.

“You’re making a wagon?” Chu asked.

“We got a bit of injured men and women,” Maya said. “We have to get them moving. I need the drones to be used in other activities other than carrying the injured.”

Chu frowned but nodded.

“We still have the tesseract packs? Emilia and Anisa’s mage?”

“Yeah,” Chu said. “They’re the only things keeping us alive so far.”

“Good, we’ll need them. We’re going to make this our stand, right here,” Maya said.

“Jesus, Maya. There’s about seven thousand of them. There’s only three hundred of us.”

“We need biomass,” Maya said, stopping.

“Biomass?” Chu asked.

“I’ve got enough ration bars to feed our entire group for three days, if we stretch it, five days. After that we starve. I have a food processor, small as it is, but it can supplement our food source. Unfortunately it requires biomass, which does not exist in the RSH. Biomass has to be gained from living things. And…”

“The only living things are us,” Chu said. He gulped. “And the Fleshies.”

“Yes.”

“That’s disgusting,” Chu said.

“Either that or starve. The processor does a great job of stripping out anything poisonous, only keeping all the right nutrients we’ll need to survive.”

“Still, it’s horrible,” Chu muttered.

“I can’t summon the threshold back to the Cage,” Maya said. “We got screwed by Black Horizon and now are stuck in the Motherland. I have no idea in which direction the Hangy is and we’re low on everything. We need to build up and we need to secure biomass.”

Chu shuddered but nodded. “We’re killing them, might as well eat them, too,” he said.

“Either we eat them or they’ll eat their own,” Maya said.

Chu shuddered again.

***

“You are?” Maya asked.

The blue skinned, dark haired youth looked at her with attitude.

“Junior Lieutenant Sostanio Revvena,” she said proudly.

“Level?”

“None of your business,” she snapped.

“Easy there, kid,” Maya said, settling down on a chair she summoned. She nearly laughed at her comment, this Sostanio was probably far older than she was. “Your boss is dead. I hear you’re mercenaries. Wanna deal?”

“We serve House Revvena,” the woman said.

“Yeah, I get that, but it’ll be hell for you to be able to contact them again. You know what this place is?” Maya asked. The woman nodded slowly. “Your peeps screwed me over, you snuck in dimensional mages, captured Yosi, killed my troops, and tried to kill me.”

The woman gulped visibly.

“I should be the one who’s pissed,” Maya said. “I should be the one who is vowing vengeance and destruction.” Maya rose to her feet and stepped to the woman. There was rage in her eyes. “You broke your fucking contract with me.” Maya grabbed the woman by her armor and pulled her toward her. There was panic in the woman’s eye now. “I should kill everyone of you right now.”

Maya released her and sat down heavily in her chair again. “But a Merchant’s gotta be pragmatic,” Maya said, forcing a smile. “I have need of you. You have need of me. Our survival depends on each other. So, what will it be?”

“What are the terms.”

“Fight for me. Die if necessary. Uphold your contract and I’ll do my best to see that you return to the Multiverse alive. Nothing’s promised, we could all die because we’re in hostile territory.”

The woman nodded. “I accept,” she said.

“And your brothers and sisters in arms?” Maya asked.

“I am the highest leveled one here,” she said. “I lead them now.”

Maya stood up again and stepped toward the woman. “If you betray me, I won’t even have to kill you,” Maya said. “I’ll just leave you behind and our friendly little neighbors will be willing to rend you apart.”

***

“Maya?” Emilia asked.

“Ah, Emilia,” Maya grinned. She waved the woman over to the table she occupied with Tender, Chu, and Anisa. “Our savior.”

Emilia ducked her head at that. “No. I just did what I needed to do.”

“Asoltolia once told me that you can’t make mages, they make themselves,” Maya said. “The way of the Integrated Multiverse, I suppose. Do or die, somekind of shitty System Darwinism.”

“I just tried keeping as many people alive,” Emilia responded.

“You did more than that,” Anisa said. “You saved us. It was your shields that allowed Maya to bring us to this place alive.”

“What did you want?” Emilia asked, trying to change the subject. “I was told to come here.”

“Oh, right, that.” Maya pointed to a chair. “Sow, Whitestripe, Ironbeak, and Sostanio will be along in a moment. Welcome to the War Council.” Maya raised a bottle of water in a toast and leaned back in her chair.

Emilia stood shock still and looked around. “Me?”

“You’re the highest level mage here,” Maya said. “Seems like the right thing to involve you in things, since you’ll be a big part of it.”

“Highest level mage?” Emilia asked. She looked to Anisa. “But you party-“

“She’s only level twenty-three,” Anisa said.

“Welcome to the mid-grade club,” Chu said. “It’s where all the shitty decisions have to be made.”

Emilia only nodded as she sat down at the table.

“So everyone has Dimensional Storage now, right?” Maya asked.

“Yup,” Chu said. “I don’t have to carry all my shit anymore. I just toss it into the-“

“Well, actually that’s what I’m going to ask you to start carrying.” Maya said. “Biomass.”

“My shit?” Chu asked, horrified.

“Let me tell you a story,” Maya said with a grin.

***

Maya set down the tablet in her hand and closed her eyes. She had found a secluded spot within the trash pile. The seat from some vehicle was comfortable enough and it gave her a good view of the camp and the land beyond.

“Boss?” Tender asked as he approached her.

“Yeah, buddy?”

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Anything I can do?”

Maya watched the large four-armed AI standing waiting for her instructions. He had been by her side for so long now. Death, destruction, and ruin hadn’t stopped him from being by her side.

“No, Tender,” she said. “You’ve done more than enough. I need to handle this on my own.”

“Emotional stuff, then,” Tender said. He sat down and didn’t move for a long time. Silence stretched out for minutes and then longer. Maya wanted to order him to leave, but instead she watched his steady gaze on her.

“I’m going to destroy them,” Maya said, rage suddenly in her voice. “I’m going to destroy every fucking House Revvena fucker out there. All their Mages, all their bases, all their fucking ships.” Tears began to well in her eyes. “They’ve enslaved Yosi.”

House Sullivan Alert

Yosi Sullivan - Enslaved by House Revvena, House Patriarch Pegarios Revvena, Sword Union.

“I’ll be there beside you, boss,” Tender said.