The air felt cold for an early spring morning, though the heavy gusts of wind had a lot to do with that. The weather these last few days had been nothing but clear skies and a cold breeze, winter’s final gasp against the incoming spring warmth and rain. Arlette would have preferred something a little calmer and balmier for this deciding day, but she’d settle for this because at least it meant no precipitation.

Trudging towards the citadel in the soft predawn glow, Arlette took in the sights of the mostly empty city one last time. She didn’t know if she’d ever see this place again after this morning. For all their planning, Arlette and the others knew that the odds of success were stacked against them. She didn’t know what would happen to her once the battle was over. If her side lost and was wiped out while she watched helplessly from above in the Otharians’ floating ship, what would happen to her then? Would she travel back to Otharia? Would they kick her out somewhere? Either way, she wouldn’t be coming back here. With that in mind, she’d packed up what little important supplies she still possessed and taken them with her.

A current of guilt had been running through her from the moment that the plan had come into form. If this was to be the final battle, then she should be there with the rest of them, fighting the good fight instead of sitting in a floating contraption in the sky, safe but alone. She understood the critical role she played in the plan—she’d suggested it herself, even—but that didn’t make the guilt go away.

Crirada itself seemed to embody her mood. The city stood largely quiet. The majority of the army would be waking soon to be ready for the final counterattack. The Ubrans often led a strike mid-morning, so it was imperative that they hit the Ubrans before then. Arlette, however, had woken even earlier so she could join the commanders in the final planning and preparations.

She arrived at the citadel just before the sun peeked over the horizon. Supreme General Erizio Astalaria must have told the guards to expect her because they waved her through without challenge or comment. She found Astalaria in his work chambers. All the other high officers were there as well, both the Eterians and the leader of the Kutrad contingent. The Kutrad leader, Commander Rhona Moor, seemed highly incensed as Arlette entered the room.

“-insanity! You’re talking about a suicide mission!” Moor protested.

“That’s correct. Look around you,” General Astalaria solemnly replied, gesturing to the others in the room. “This is all that remains. We’ve lost eleven of our best in the last few days. Each gave their lives to hold the Ubrans off just for a little longer so that we could make this one last attack. What would you prefer, that we stay holed up here and let the Ubrans overrun us? You know that the end is coming sooner rather than later. If the end has come, then let us go out in a blaze of glory.”

The Kutradian ground her teeth for a moment but said nothing at first. Finally, she turned towards the door and growled out “I have to go prepare my troops. It will take time to bring all the jaglioths down to the ground.” With that, she was past Arlette, out the door, and gone.

The Supreme General pulled out a small black vial, turned to a nearby subordinate officer, and handed it to him. “Go follow her. Make sure they don’t get cold feet.”

“Sir, but then I won’t be able to fight in the strike team!” the alarmed man argued.

“It’s more important that the jaglioths are in the fight. Besides, it’s not like you won’t be able to contribute. With chimirin, you should be able to pierce their defenses from the other end and provide a gap for the troops to capitalize on. Go now, and may your ancestor’s blessings be upon you.”

The man nodded and ran out of the room.

“What’s with that look, Demirt?” the general asked suddenly, causing Arlette to stiffen in surprise.

“Doesn’t chimirin kill anybody who takes it? Are you giving it to everybody?”

Everybody still breathing on the Eterian side knew about chimirin now. It had always been an old myth, an explanation for Otharia’s continued existence, but most people had scoffed at the idea before. Now, after several days of miraculous feats followed by horrific deaths, the brutal reality of the drug could not be denied.

“We have enough left for the underground strike team.”

“What about you?” she inquired with a twinge of disbelief.

“What do you take me for, Demirt? Some cowardly commander who is unwilling to die with his soldiers when the time comes?”

Arlette didn’t respond, in part because that had been exactly what she’d thought of the despicable man. He’d always been known as an incredibly powerful fighter, but she’d never seen him as the sort to lead his people into the breach. Rather, she’d imagined him delegating such roles to subordinates as he manipulated his assets like pieces on a game board.

“I hate to disappoint you, but nobody here is entirely as you seem to believe. I know that while you will likely survive this day, I will assuredly not. But I will take that bastard emperor’s head with me when I go, that I can assure you.”

The non-so-subtle clicking of metal on stone saved Arlette from any further embarrassment as the uncanny insectoid Otharian Many transporter entered the room with the Otharian official—whose name Arlette now understood to be Simona Jumala—close behind. Almost immediately, the image of the armor-clad Otharian leader appeared in front of the Many.

“Alright, I’m here,” the Otharian leader said. “Is everything ready?”

“Almost. Our troops will be moving into position soon,” General Astalaria replied.

“How will you keep the Ubrans from noticing that something is different?” Lord Ferros inquired.

“We usually change the units atop the wall in about one and a half hours, before the Ubrans usual assault. As long as we strike before that time, there shouldn’t be any activity that would warn them before we attack. Once the attack begins, those atop the wall will make their way down and join in as the rear guard.”

“I see. Seems you have it all figured out.”

“Of course. You have the explosives?”

“Loaded and ready. What’s the signal to start the attack?”

“You are the signal. When this conversation is over, my strike team will descend into the tunnels. It will take us about an hour to make it to our destination, as I will have to create the final stretch as we go. Begin your attack several moments before then to create chaos and ensure the Ubran emperor moves to one of his three fortified positions. Once we hear the explosions, we will wait long enough for their emperor to relocate and then we will strike.”

“Very well, I will do that. Is there anything else?”

The general paused. “Aim well.”

The Otharian let out a loud, barking laugh. “Good one. Simona, let’s move. We need to begin loading the zeppelin now.”

“As you wish,” the woman beside the Many acknowledged. Together, the woman and the Many contraption left.

“Before you go, I need to memorize your appearances,” Arlette interrupted before anybody else could exit. “Line up as you leave, please.”

She walked around each person as they approached, taking in their features and committing them to memory. Finally, only the Supreme General remained.

Arlette looked at the man who’d been such an unmerciful villain in her life, who’d bullied and harassed her both as a child and now as her commander. She wanted to feel that same hate for him that she’d felt for all these years. He was a creep and a jerk and an asshole and had always been such, to the point that she didn’t need to inspect him to make a double; his arrogant smirk was already etched into her mind. She wanted to say something spiteful, one last swipe in their season-long verbal brawl. But looking at him now, she couldn’t find it in herself to hate him anymore. Not today, the day his story would end.

“Make them pay,” she said instead. The man only nodded and walked away.

Arlette watched as the metal loading cage rose into the air, carrying the Otharians and what little of their supplies they kept down in the citadel upward. It took a little longer, but everybody needed to play their part to the fullest. As much as Arlette—or Supreme General Astalaria, for that matter—hated it, it needed to look to the Ubrans like the leaders of the defense were not just going up to the airship but actively running away and abandoning the very people they were supposed to lead. That was why she stood in the citadel courtyard, watching the large metal cage retreat into the sky, instead of by the west gate with everybody else.

All around her stood illusory copies of the most senior officers. There was a time, long ago, when this many people would have taken everything she had. Now, provided she didn’t have to deal with anything else like fighting on a battlefield, she barely needed to try. Looking back on her conversation days ago, she realized that Peko had been right; she’d come a long way, farther than she’d admitted to herself before this. Perhaps she could do more now in battle than just create a single doppelganger of herself.

Soon enough the cage returned, setting down with a rather loud and disconcerting crash, though the compartment itself didn’t look to take any damage. The gate opened and she walked forward, her illusions all around her. The gate closed behind her without her even doing anything—how it knew, she could not say—and quickly the metal rope that the cage hung from went taut and she began to ascend.

For a moment, she luxuriated in the strange feeling, watching her surroundings sink below her while she didn’t even move, then turned her gaze to her destination above.

Even looking at the massive floating object up close, Arlette couldn’t understand just how the huge metal airship didn’t plummet to the ground. After all, metal was even heavier than stone. So what kept it in the air? Were she to try to come up with her own version of a giant flying machine, she would have tried to base it on a bird, or even better, the great flying beast that destroyed Zrukhora. But both birds and that beast sported wings—large ones relative to their size—that they would beat through the air to soar through the skies, while this craft had no wings whatsoever. The closest she could find was a series of fins on what she believed to be the rear of the airship. Everything else was the opposite of wings, the main body round and bulbous with a somewhat boxy protrusion covered in what appeared to be windows jutting out from the bottom. It didn’t even seem to have anything that moved. The body and even the fins stood still, while the only motion she could see came from these relatively small circles sticking out from the body, each whirling about a central axis so quickly that she couldn’t even make out what was spinning.

Arlette’s musings ceased as she cleared the citadel walls and the cage became subject to the harsh winds whirling above. She clutched the railing with both hands as the cage swayed perilously in the air, gusts buffeting its side. She’d watched Simona ride the same compartment through the same winds without trouble, but Arlette couldn’t put the same faith in the metal contraption as the Otharian could.

The journey upward felt like an hour, though in reality, it surely was a small fraction of that. It took all she could manage to hold her illusions while the cage shook, and she found herself wanting to just close her eyes and pretend she was back on solid ground, but she needed to make sure the illusions remained and reacted properly.

Mercifully, Arlette’s ascent came to an end not too much later, as the cage entered a hatch at the bottom of the airship and came to a stop. Quickly the hatch shut—moving under its own power, somehow—leaving her standing in darkness for a moment. Then the door to the cage slid aside and another door behind it moved aside as well, revealing a hallway and one rather unenthusiastic woman.

“Welcome aboard,” Simona said, seemingly put off by Arlette’s presence on the ship.

Arlette let out a sigh of relief and released her illusions. She nodded to the Otharian and stepped out of the cage and into the ship proper. Though she knew that she was still floating high up in the sky, the enclosed environment at least gave her the feeling of stability and let her relax.

Looking around the hallway, which was all of the ship that she could currently see, Arlette couldn’t help but gawk at the alien aura it possessed. Much like the hallways of the castle below, it possessed impressive length. However, that was the only similarity she could find with the hallways she was used to. Gone were the open windows, the well-worn stone, the torches lending their pleasant orange light and whispers of flame every few paces. Instead, there was nothing but four flat planes of metal extending onward for paces and paces, with some sort of glowing crystals embedded in the walls every eight paces or so. The place felt sterile, lifeless, and eerily quiet; the only ambient sound she could hear was a low drone on the very edge of her hearing that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end.

“This craft is quite... impressive,” Arlette replied after a moment.

“Of course it is!” the Otharian woman scoffed, puffing her chest out with pride. “It was created by Lord Ferros himself! There’s nothing he cannot do!”

“It reminds me of this fortress I found in the Stragman rainforest last year,” Arlette commented. “The sliding doors and the use of metal are quite similar.”

Lightning flashed in Simona’s eyes. “You would slander Lord Ferros’s greatness by comparing it to the work of jungle savages?!”

“No, it was-”

“Obviously, you have yet to understand the miracles of my lord’s work! Perhaps a short tour will erase that ignorance.”

“No, I’m-”

“Come with me!” the Otharian declared as she spun about and marched down the hallway.

Arlette let out a sigh and began to follow. She didn’t really want to do this given that a battle was about to start any time now, but at least this would keep her from getting lost. Besides, there was only one way to go down this hallway.

Simona stopped before a small panel jutting out beside a doorway-sized depression in the long, flat wall. Arlette could make out several different colored buttons on it, though she had no clue what any of them did. The Otharian pressed the largest one, a green square with rounded corners, and suddenly the depression slid into the wall, revealing a massive room that ran parallel to the hallway and stretched back to the loading cage’s hatch and beyond.

In the dim light, Arlette could make out what seemed to be a row of large spools starting near their position and traveling all the way back to the far end of the room. Each spool was attached to the ceiling and around the spool wound what looked to be some sort of rope, except the rope was made of metal just like the rope attached to the loading cage. A bit of the rope hung down below the spool, and at the end of said rope was some sort of massive metal claw easily six paces wide. Each of these claws grasped a wooden barrel equally as large.

Arlette let out a low whistle as her eyes followed the row of barrels down the long room. There had to be at least twenty of them in there.

“Are those-”

“Yes, Lord Ferros will rain these bombs down upon the Ubrans shortly.”

“Wow, Pari really went overboard,” Arlette mumbled to herself.

“What was that?”

“Two friends of mine traveled to Otharia a while ago. One of them makes explosives and she was the person who made these. I’ve seen what her smaller creations can do, so I’ll just say I wouldn’t want to be near any of these when they go off.”

“Ah, you are an acquaintance of the Lord after all?”

“No, well- I mean...I guess you could say I am a friend of a friend.”

“I see,” she nodded. “That explains why my Lord felt comfortable allowing you to board. He is not normally so open with others. These friends of yours, I know of them. They surely have told you much about Lord Ferros, yes?”

“Yeah, Sofie says he’s a... a very nice and wonderful individual.”

The Otharian hummed in agreement. “We are blessed that he arrived to deliver us from the darkness.”

Arlette didn’t respond, turning her head away to keep her counterpart from noticing her roll her eyes. It had been a long, long time since she’d met somebody with this level of zeal for anybody or anything. It put her on edge. This sort of devotion never led to good things in the long run.

Arlette heard a soft click and the door slid back into place, cutting off her view.

“Next, the living quarters.”

“Don’t we have better things to do?” Arlette wondered aloud as she hurried after the Otharian heading further down the corridor. “There’s a battle about to start.”

“And what can we do about that from here?”

“...drop the bombs?”

Simona chuckled knowingly. “That is not our responsibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“You shall see very soon.” They arrived at the next door and Simona pressed the green button, revealing a short passage that ended at a perpendicular hallway. Arlette could see part of a doorway peeking around the corner of the inner hallway. “This is where the living quarters are. Should the Lord require your presence back in Otharia, which I highly doubt, you will be given one cabin for sleeping and privacy.”

The door shut in Arlette’s face, barely missing her nose as she leaned in. She held back a nasty retort as anger flared inside her. What was Simona’s deal? It felt like the Otharian official held a grudge against her but Arlette couldn’t think of a single thing that she’d done to offend the other woman. Was this just how all Otharians treated non-Otharians? Stories about their hatred of others were as old as folklore and just as well known throughout the continent. Simona was the first one she’d ever met in person, however, so Arlette couldn’t say for sure.

“And lastly, our desired destination,” the Otharian said, moving swiftly towards the end of the hallway. The rest of the hallway was nothing but smooth walls and they arrived at the end of the passage in no time.

There the walls curved inward before opening up into a large room shaped roughly like a wedge terminating at the front of the craft. Unlike the other rooms, large windows lined the chamber on both sides, filling it with bright morning light. Arlette had to blink at the sudden transition from the dim glow of the crystals to the warm rays of the sun reflecting off of the varied surfaces.

The room almost appeared to be two rooms fused into one. Several seats, benches, and tables—all smooth metal without even a hint of a cushion anywhere in sight—grew out of the floor in the wider back half of the room. The other half, on the other hand, had only a single seat up near the very front. Instead, two long metal protrusions ran along the walls beneath the windows, like teeth around the inside edge of a mouth.

Every single finger’s width of these installations had something sticking out of it. The majority of it consisted of buttons of all shapes and sizes. Arlette couldn’t even begin to guess at the significance of any of the hundreds of buttons, but she found herself nearly getting lost in their mesmerizing blinking patterns. Almost all of the rest consisted of strange flat surfaces that, through some unknown wizardry, displayed various moving images upon them. She wondered where the pictures came from and for a moment Arlette mused that somebody, presumably Lord Ferros, had stuffed several Manys inside the cabinets, before deciding that such an idea was crazy even in this objectively insane context.

The nature of the images caught her eye, however. It took only a moment for her to realize that they were views of the surrounding area somehow being displayed on the glowing surfaces. That realization brought her back to the moment, reminding her of her priorities. Placing her pack down by the hallway entrance and walking over to the nearest window, she looked through the clear panel and down upon the city where she’d lived, slept, and fought for the past season and more. This time, the steady stability of the craft and the solid glass pushed away the unease that had bombarded her on the way up, bringing a sigh of relief to her lips.

There Crirada stood, spread out like a wheel with spokes connecting the citadel near the center to the outer wall. The city looked barren and broken, with entire areas either destroyed in the fighting or ransacked for materials by the defenders later. The area that had once been the Worker’s Quarter stood out even amidst the general wreckage, a whole massive area of the city now nothing more than empty craters.

Four massive collections of tents surrounded the city, hemming the defenders in. At the rear of the western camp, she could see three stone rings standing above the tents. A scowl subconsciously grew on her face. That was where the bastard who’d swallowed up her home lived. She couldn’t wait to see those rings crumble into ruins.

It boggled Arlette’s mind just how many Ubrans the Empire could field even this late in a costly campaign on a different continent. At least from up here, she could easily make out the holes in their blockade. Not even the Ubrans could completely encompass a city of Crirada’s magnitude.

Arlette’s balance shifted to the side as the low, almost imperceptible hum grew in volume to a moderate rumble and the land below began to turn. First, the ship rotated about slowly, stopping as the front settled on a north-northeast heading. Then, she felt the craft begin to move forward, creeping away from the citadel and moving in on the northern wall.

“Aren’t we going the wrong way?” she asked.

“Lord Ferros means to give the impression that your commanders are fleeing to Kutrad, both to complete the ruse and to misdirect attention,” the Otharian explained. “We will move north, then turn towards the western camp and come upon them from the northeast.”

Arlette just nodded, forcing down the turmoil she felt inside at the prospect of watching it all play out. She kept quiet as they cleared the northern wall and continued forward, moving at her estimate about as fast as a fit man’s jog.

“Who is controlling this thing?” Arlette finally asked, unable to hold back her curiosity any longer.

“My Lord is, of course,” the Otharian replied.

She looked around the chamber, paying special attention to the large chair at the front of the room. The two of them stood alone. “Is he here somewhere?”

“Of course not! Why should he be here when he can control the craft from his palace back home?”

“He... what?”

“Observe,” the Otharian instructed, pointing to the installation directly in front of the single chair. The large seat had previously obscured most of the panels at the very front, but now Arlette could see that the surface before the chair was covered in an array of devices not found elsewhere in the cabin. She saw what looked like levers, small flat wheels that were too big to be buttons like the ones found everywhere else, and, near the very center, a strange contoured rod protruding straight upward. The shape seemed designed to be grasped with a hand, but for what purpose she could not say.

Arlette nearly jumped as the rod suddenly tilted noticeably to the left for a moment before returning to its full upright position. Then, a lever to the left of the rod, which had been level with the floor, rose slightly. All of this gave her the impression that somebody invisible sat on the chair, secretly manipulating the controls as she watched, bewildered.

“Surprised?” The Otharian let out an amused giggle. “There is nothing Lord Ferros cannot do! This is child’s play to him!”

“But... how?”

“That is not for you to know,” she smugly replied. “So, now do you understand Lord Ferros’s greatness?”

“I guess I-”

Arlette’s statement cut off abruptly as, without warning, the stick seemed to throw itself to the left as far as it could go, the lever twisted upward until it could point no higher, and various other implements began shifting rapidly about by some transparent hand. The moderate rumble droning in the background crescendoed into a deafening roar, one that seemed to come not just from the rear of the craft but from all around them.

Arlette stumbled and flailed wildly as the ship lurched beneath her feet, the massive construction accelerating and pitching to the left faster than she thought possible. A shadow passed by the windows on the other side of the cabin, though she couldn’t make out the source before it passed by.

“What is-” Arlette tried to holler above the din, but once more she could not even get out a full sentence before the entire craft seemed to tilt the opposite way and throw itself to the side. Another dark shape passed by, this time on Arlette’s side of the cabin. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the object as a massive stone boulder, a hundred paces or more in diameter. The giant projectile rocketed past her viewpoint, somehow barely missing the entire structure as it continued upward through the air in a high arc.

Several moments later, she caught sight of the stone again as it plummeted back toward the earth, its journey culminating in an earth-shaking crash into the ground below. Even from hundreds of paces away, Arlette could hear the sound of the impact through the howl of the machine around her.

The floor beneath her lurched once more, though a bit less harshly this time. Another stone flew by, but it rose slower than the others and came back down sooner. The ship was rising quickly, Arlette realized rather belatedly—she’d missed the change in velocity because she’d been too busy trying not to fall over during the evasive maneuvers.

Arlette looked over to find Simona standing nonchalantly nearby. The other woman didn’t even look like she’d broken a sweat, almost as if there was absolutely nothing to worry about. She grinned, amused by Arlette’s evident worry.

“You don’t have to worry,” the Otharian said. “There is no way they can hit us with such paltry offerings.”

Arlette didn’t know if the woman spoke from experience and knowledge or merely from faith, but she decided it wasn’t worth getting into. The danger seemed to have passed, as no more boulders came flying their way in the next few moments.

Arlette glanced down and found that the ship had reoriented and they now were heading slowly towards the western camp. She let out a relieved breath.

“I guess it’s finally time,” she muttered to nobody in particular as she resumed her vigil over the land below. Everything looked to be as good as she could hope.

However, a seed of doubt began to grow inside her as time crept on. She turned to the Otharian. “Shouldn’t we be moving faster at this point?” she inquired. “Why are we going so slowly?”

“Lord Ferros will pilot as he sees fit,” came the reply.

“But we’re running out of time!” Arlette argued. “The strike team below is relying on us to herd the Emperor into position and signal that the attack has begun! If we’re even a little late, the whole plan will break down!”

Simona simply shrugged and stated, “My Lord has a plan for everything. Our place is merely to watch.”

Arlette stared at the calm, seemingly unconcerned woman and bit her lip to keep herself from breaking into a tirade. She didn’t know if the Otharian knew something or if she was simply overly trusting in her ruler. Arlette had found Simona’s demeanor off-putting from the start, but now she wondered if that was simply her instincts trying to warn her that something was wrong.

She eyed the zealous woman with suspicion. Were the Otharians going to betray everybody else? Lord Ferros had made his lack of concern for their lives abundantly plain several days ago. But no, that made little sense. Why would the Otharians bother to involve themselves in this final strike when they could just leave everybody here to die? What would be the point?

They were finally approaching the Ubrans’ western camp. She could see the Ubran troops far down below scrambling to prepare for its imminent arrival. As if on cue, the city’s western gate opened and every available soldier that could still move sallied forth and charged for the Ubran encampment, hoping to strike before the Ubrans could fully mobilize.

A boulder twice the size of the ones before shot up towards the airship from nearby in the western camp. Arlette sucked in her breath and cringed as it rocketed straight at her, but the craft did not swerve in the slightest and the projectile ran out of upward momentum perhaps fifty paces below her. She released a sigh and took a deep breath. It seemed that they were now too high to be reached, even by whatever super-Observers the Ubrans seemed to have on their side.

That didn’t stop the Ubrans from trying, however. A second rock soared into the air, then a third, and then a fourth. All missed and instead slammed into the earth with tremendous force, shaking the world around them.

Now that the drone of the airship had died back down to moderate levels, the crash of the boulders against the earth could be heard loud and clear, even at their great height. With the threat the stones presented no longer something to fret over, Arlette found the sight and sound of them terminating their flight in failure almost cathartic. It reminded her of the dull boom she used to hear from Pari’s larger bombs, something you felt as much as you heard.

Arlette stiffened as a sudden, terrible thought crossed her mind. She turned once more to the Otharian, who stood by another window looking down upon the people below with detached dispassion. “We need to go faster and drop the bombs, right now!” she cried.

Simona glanced up for a fraction of a moment before returning her gaze to the events beneath them. “I have said it enough already-”

“No, listen!” Arlette seized the other woman’s shoulder and gave them a rough shake. “The strike team is listening for the bomb explosions, but they’re far underground! They won’t be able to tell the difference between the bombs and those boulders landing! If they attack too soon-”

Her words came to a sudden halt as she noticed the ground beneath the stone rings begin to quake. From her vantage point, it looked almost as if the land itself was shivering. In any other context, the sight would have left her overjoyed. But now, it only meant that the plan was falling apart in the worst possible way.

“Oh, no...” she breathed.

The shaking intensified as the earth moved with such chaotic force and intensity that it seemed to liquefy, becoming much closer in Arlette’s eyes to the frothing ocean than sturdy, reliable land. One by one the rings collapsed in on themselves under the incredible strain, the large cohesive stone cracking and crumbling into rubble. Arlette prayed to her ancestors that the Ubran emperor had been inside one of the rings; being crushed to death would be a fitting end for the twice-damned villain.

Suddenly the earthquake ceased and a moment later the ground beneath the central ring’s remains erupted, sending chunks of rock flying all over. Out of a hole in the center of the rubble stepped Supreme General Erizio Astalaria and the rest of the strike team. Arlette pumped her fist at their entrance. If the Ubran emperor were inside the central ring, he was surely dead now.

But then, she saw something that sent a chilling spike of dread lancing into her: a massive boulder sent from an Ubran super-Observer directly at the strike team. With almost comical ease, General Astalaria glanced at the incoming rock and earth surged upward and forward, almost as if it were alive, and deflected the projectile. But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that the Ubrans were willing to attack that location at all. There was no way they would dare to bombard their own emperor like that. It was too risky. And yet, they had done so without even a second thought. Even as she pondered that notion, more projectiles, from fireballs burning like miniature suns to humongous shards of ice, were already on their way towards not just the strike team, but also the remains of the two other rings!

“He’s not in there,” she gasped with horror.

Another equally terrible thought began to burn inside her and she turned back to the Otharian, who still looked out the window with a complete lack of care as the battle grew in ferocity.

“Why haven’t we dropped the bombs yet?!” Arlette demanded. “We’re three-quarters of the way through the camp!”

Simona shrugged again. “Lord Ferros will do whatever he deems best.”

“Best for who? For us or for you? Are you betraying us?”

“Lord Ferros does not have to explain his decisions to you.”

“Lord Ferros, Lord Ferros, Lord Ferros! Enough of this shit!” She glanced out the window and saw that they were nearly atop the remains of the stone rings, which marked the rear of the Ubran encampment. “Don’t you care what happens to the people down there?! They’re going to be slaughtered!”

A small smile crept onto the Otharian’s face and she looked down once more at the battle below, but this time Arlette didn’t find ambivalence in her eyes. She found hate. “The fewer Eterians that draw breath, the better the world,” Simona stated.

Fury surged forth from Arlette’s soul. She slammed her left fist into the Otharian’s gut, doubling her over, before driving her right fist into Simona’s temple as hard as she could. Simona slumped to the ground, out cold. Arlette stepped past, not bothering to watch as the woman fell to the hard metal floor.

She’d had enough, enough of all of it. It was time for her to have a “face-to-face” talk with one Lord Ferros.