Celyz and I enter the city from a part of it that I hadn’t been in before. There is a huge building without walls on either side of the street, their roofs are held up by large pillars of stone. Inside is a huge pool of glowing red liquid with a very thick low stone wall to keep it safely contained.

There is a Princess directing this huge forge’s workers. She snaps a tendril to order six Rykz to approach the pool with a large rectangular stone block that has holes pierced on its sides and a two metal hoops.

The workers take hold of two metal hooks with long handles. They lift the rectangular stone block by hooking the hoops and then plunge the block inside the glowing red liquid.

Celyz and that other Princess turn their ovaloid heads towards each other. I head no sound but it seems obvious that they are communicating. Celyz then suddenly unfurls some of her tendrils to wrap them around my arm, head, and shoulder.

“I’m not telling you how much I weigh.” I tell Celyz when I realize that she’s trying to measure me. “Or my height.” I add in a whisper.

“I’m sure you’re tall in spirit.” She replies with a chuckle.

Celyz wraps her tendrils back around her torso and we resume walking towards the lake. We pass through a huge plaza that could easily contain five thousand Rykz standing shoulder to shoulder.

I grow nervous as we approach the lake’s shore. The Queen is as impressive as ever with her huge size and height. I chase the thought that I might die in the next few minutes if that being doesn’t trust me enough after my attempt to escape.

I’ve been made to contemplate my own mortality enough this past week. There is no reason for Celyz to injure herself chasing me if she thought the Queen wouldn’t accept me. Besides, I’m equivalent to a worker in that being’s mind.

The lake’s water rumbles when I take a step on the lake’s rocky beach and I grow afraid. I grit my teeth and cling to my vision of the future to gather my strength. I keep my chin held high. Breaking Nobles isn’t a task for a weakling.

The Queen shakes her massive trunk. The water surrounding her billows up into a wave that quickly travels to the edges of the lake and crashes into the shore, drenching my feet inside my shoes.

“I offer my service for the price of an arm, Queen.” I yell out towards the being. The water around the trunk undulates.

“My Queen is concerned about your change of heart, right after failing to escape.” Celyz speaks up.

“I won’t lie, I can’t survive without this arm. I promise that I will repay my debt if you decide to trust me.” I pause. Maybe explaining the differences between peasants and workers would help convince her. “Human Nobility does not respect peasants, Queen. Our rulers exploit us as much as they can and violently put us down if we dare to revolt! If I rejoin human society with a single arm, I will find no work and be left to starve to death. Those who can afford to help me don’t want to. Those who want to help me can’t afford to.” A slight distortion of the truth. The waters around the Queen remain calm and I grow worried by the lack of reaction. After a long while, Celyz speaks up.

“My Queen is skeptical of your words. She doesn’t quite believe that the Empire can be so powerful while treating its base so poorly. I’ve assured her that what you said is true. My Queen accepts your service but she has conditions.”

“What are they?” I ask.

“You must make major contributions during our conquest of the Izla and contribute to my sister’s retrieval once that’s done.” Celyz replies.

“That’s too much. Just helping you take the Izla should be a fair price for the arm.” I counter.

The negotiation makes me feel horrified at myself, at how much I changed. How did I get here? When? I’m willingly going to help shatter fifty thousand lives in exchange for an arm. I can’t do this, I can’t put other people’s lives on the balance of my selfishness.

“Let me amend my price, Celyz.” I speak up, probably interrupting an exchange with her Queen. “An Izla for an arm, a Princess for an Izla.”

“My Queen won’t agree to that.”

“If you push Caeviel to the negotiating table, that would be part of their terms anyway. I’m saying that I want the same thing that you would give them if I retrieve her myself.” I argue.

“Can you do that?” Celyz asks, her head inclined skeptically. It always amazed me how subtle she can be with the simplest movements, despite how different we are.

“I don’t know but I can try, there are always factions inside a Kingdom. I think I might be able to find a way to do it.” I think about it further. “It should also be possible to infiltrate the institute where your sister is held like they did to your hive, I would just need to convince a number of humans to help.”

“We already have a small number of humans in our service.” Celyz’ calm statement surprises me.

“Oh.” I should have expected that. “Are they trustworthy?” I ask.

“No. I expect that they will complete the tasks we give them and come back to be paid but I wouldn’t trust them.”

“It’ll have to do. Do you think your Queen will agree to this?”

“Not right now, no.” Celyz shakes her head. “But I am in charge of this aspect of our operations and I will be able to convince my Queen once you give me some results to show her.”

“No pressure, huh.” I mutter. “Do we have a deal, Celyz?”

“We do, Jessica.” She extends a tendril towards me and I hesitantly shake it. “The arm will be ready in four to six days as I’ve already told you, we won’t see each other until then. I have to reorganize my plans if you are to lead those humans.” My eyes widen. “I have expectations of you, Jessica. But don’t worry, there are only nine of them and they’re already organized in squads. You will only have two under your direct command.”

“What kind of people are they?”

“Three peasants turned bandit that we caught in the mountains. Four mercenaries that we hired, they arrived on the Izla a week ago by boat. The two that you will lead are new additions like you. A huntsman and someone specialized in demolition constructs, these two are in a village south of here.”

“How did you find and contact them?” I frown.

“I gave the order to occupy that village as soon as we detected you in the tunnels. They expressed their interest when we offered gold in exchange for their skills.”

“Did no one notice? How isolated is that village?”

“Middle of a forest, there was little risk of anyone showing up there within the month and if someone did, their disappearance wouldn’t have raised alarms in time. I’ll take you and the others there once you’ve recovered.”

“That’s not ominous at all.” I whisper. “Thank you for your time, Queen.” I exclaim loudly towards the huge Rykz.

“You really don’t need to worry about being polite.” Celyz chuckles.

“Can’t hurt.” I shrug.

“You don’t extend the same courtesy to me, I notice.” Her voice vibrates almost threateningly.

“If you really cared, you would’ve said so earlier.” I reply flatly, unaffected by her posturing.

“You can find your way back?” She asks.

“Probably.” I throw a glance to either side of the shore. “Yes, that way.” I say, pointing at an arrangement of buildings that I recognize.

“I’ll see you in a few days.”

Celyz turns around and departs. I make my way to the building that I left just yesterday morning. I was filled with so much hope for my future then. It probably isn’t a coincidence that Celyz isn’t providing me with new quarters to sleep in.

I can’t forget how cunningly manipulative she can be. I’ll have to move carefully and watch my back. The arm is probably a huge risk that I shouldn’t take. I need it to deal with her. I know, shut up.

I walk in the empty room. I fail to stop my gaze from wandering to the bed we slept in together. My feet move towards it on their own. I hop over the frame and lay down on the sheet mattress before I can stop myself. I wrap my arm around my chest. I close my eyes and tears start flowing down my face.

— — —

I wake up in a dark room. It’s night outside. I manage to resist the temptation of lingering in bed and slip out of it. I then make my way towards the lavatories. Once there, I find that the set of clothes I left hanging over the edge of the window hasn’t been moved.

I find an empty copper basin and throw the clothes in. I walk to the well with the basin in hand and get naked to clean up, caring little about the cold air of night. Once me and my old clothes are rid of all the brown stains left by Rykz blood, I dress up in the fresh clothes.

I make my way to the nearby forge. There are already workers inside making small tools. Do they never stop or do they work in shifts? I grab an iron bar from the barrel and walk back to the well.

I chose to change from a diagonal slashing lion strike to an overhead strike. I don’t want to use a stance that she’ll be able to immediately counter from her experience using it.

I assemble a lion strike construct and attempt to execute a first training blow, it feels natural. I encounter very few problems as I get used to this new stance. It turns out to be a perfect fit for me since the movements are almost exactly the same as those that I used when plowing fields with my old pickaxe.

This is actually easier since I don’t need to lean in and hit the ground at the end of the arc. My expression darkens when I realize that hitting people won’t strain my back as much as plowing did.

“Once more.” I don’t forget to utter the words between each successive attempt at a strike. The old habit brings me much comfort. The sound of it in my ears is enough to chase the dark thoughts that would have otherwise risen in the silence.

I lose myself in the repetitive training so much that I fail to notice the worker that brought me a basket of food at noon. The night and morning both went by in a flash. I eat quickly to get back to the endless loop. I take the stance and throw the overhead blow. Over, and over, and over again.

I feel no boredom during the afternoon either. I’ve learned very young that to accomplish a repetitive task without torturing myself at the same time, I need to find my rhythm and stick to it. “Once more.” My work mantra is a crucial part of the process.

Night falls but I don’t stop. “Once more.” I whisper in a quiet voice. It would feel wrong to make loud noises in the dark. Every time I consider going to sleep, the fear of being alone with my thoughts convinces me otherwise.

After a while, I don’t even think about stopping to rest. “Once more.” The mantra supports me and as long as I focus on it, nothing doesn’t cross my mind.

“Once more.” My eyes start closing on their own and every single one of my muscles hurt. “Once more.” I croak out of my throat. “Once more.” The iron bar escapes my fingers and hits the ground with a loud cling.

My arm falls limply to my side and I start limping back to my sleeping quarters. I feel so physically and mentally exhausted that I think I’ll faint as soon as I touch…

— — —

Daylight awakens me. I am laying flat on the ground in the middle of a street.

“Uh.” I grunt. It was much more comfortable to sleep on my L.

I smother the thought into oblivion before I can finish it. A droplet a cold sweat rolls down from my temple. I can’t afford to keep deluding myself about who she is. We weren’t meant to be. I won’t let a ghost get the better of me, not after everything she put me through.

I get up and walk back to the well, strengthening my resolve to train towards my goal. I will forge my path, one hammer blow at a time. I will keep going until I see a broken Countess on her knees in front of me, begging for forgiveness. I will make her dance in agony for me.

I pick up the raw iron bar laying on the well’s stone platform and resume my training with a hardened determination. “Once more.” I spit between my grit teeth. “Once more.” I repeat with more control over myself. The previous strike was too wild to be of any use.

The day goes by, I eat without tasting a thing. Night falls around me, I throw the food to the back of my throat to swallow it. I keep training relentlessly. Lion strike after lion strike.

My reserves of flow run out despite the fact that I took care to use the minimum amount of energy in each lion strike construct while also spacing out the strikes to get as much out of each of them as possible.

“Once more.” I continue throwing strikes to ingrain the shape of it in my very muscles. “Once morh.” My vocal cords finally give out after two straight days of uttering the words non-stop. I keep going, forming the words with only my lips. Once more.

I make the decision to stop when my eyes start dropping this time. I get back to the building and let myself fall over the bed’s frame. My eyes close by themselves.

— — —

I wake up with a soreness in my muscles are beyond anything I’d experienced before. I make my way to the well but don’t start exercising. I pull buckets of water from the well and fill the copper basin I left there to the brim.

I strip naked kneel in front of the basin to thoroughly clean myself. The cold air on my wet breasts makes my nipples harden. The sight of it brings ideas to my mind and I let my hand wander between my thighs.

I try to get myself going for a while but nothing works. Every time I get a little excited, an image of her pops up in my mind and I have to force myself to stop my fingers. I refuse to think of her while I do this for myself. I sigh in disappointment while I get dressed.

I throw a look over the roofs towards the lake, expecting to see the topmost portion of the huge Queen. I find her but I seem to remember seeing more of her from here the last time I checked.

I decide to follow my curiosity and start making my way towards the shore. As I grow closer, the most ludicrous guess that I could think of turns out to be the right one. The Queen is indeed smaller than she was a few days ago.

She lost at least five meters in height while her eggs grew from the size of apples to the size of pumpkins. The egg’s increased weight is now visibly affecting the Queen’s tendrils and bending them so much that some are almost touching the lake’s water. It’s harder to tell, but her trunk also seems to have lost width.

“What in the Lake's name are these Rykz?” I grumble.

I turn around, feeling that it would be a waste of time to keep staring. When I arrive back at the well, I find that there is a Rykz scout waiting for me. It turns towards me and raises its spikes in a defensive posture.

I stop and wait to see what its intentions are. The creature doesn’t attack, I start carefully approaching the iron bar that I left on the ground. It doesn’t even react when I pick it up so I relax a little and walk up to it.

After staring at the Rykz for a while, I try raising the iron bar and it changes stance to take adapt its defensive posture in reaction to my movement. I attempt to throw a slow casual blow and the scout slaps it away with its spike. Huh.

I take a bit of distance and start trying to hit it with the iron bar from different angles. It flawlessly defends itself from every attack by either blocking or evading. Seeing that the Rykz shows no intention to counter attack, I start trying to break its defense more seriously.

I decide to spend that day sparring with the scout without using flow to let my reserves reconstitute themselves. I discover several gaps in the Rykz’ defensive forms by the end of the day.

The gaps only start appearing once its posture has been destabilized. It generally takes me three or four chained strikes to crack its stance and have a shot at landing a killing blow.

As the sun goes down, I misjudge the scout’s readiness to receive a blow because of the lack of light and land a heavy strike flat on its head. The iron bar bounces back and I see that there is only a small dent in the carapace.

I take a step back, placing my rudimentary weapon between us in case it decides to attack. After observing the immobile Rykz for a long moment, I decide to relax and stop sparring with the creature in fear of accidentally killing it.

The experience of fighting the scout all day and having almost all my strikes blocked gives me the idea of creating a blow that makes it through the Rykz’ defenses without having to break its stance first.

I can interpret from what Celyz said about the other Rykz that the creatures lack the ability to improvise. She also told me so a long while back in the tunnels. If I can successfully create a strike that can subvert my opponent’s expectations, then I will have an invaluable asset in reserve for the battles to come.

I try a few blows out but the only one that seems to have any real potential is a feint. Fatigue starts affecting my eyes and I decide to sleep on the idea.

I jog back to my sleeping quarters to drain the last of my energy and throw myself over the frame on the sheet mattress. The impact makes the wood groan.

“Rude bed.” I complain out loud as my eyes close.

— — —