The target of my rage eludes me, slipping away out of reach because of my own weakness. If I’d stayed, there’d be more dead, but I can’t guarantee that he’d have been one of them.

This isn’t how it’s meant to be.

Clenching my fists, I gaze back at the city walls, wishing that I could bring the ceiling of this cavern down over the city. Crushing Loekan and his whole army, the very thought brings a smile to my lips, though I know it’s not real.

It takes serious effort to keep from sending the rather bloody and violent messages that I’ve drafted, I just know that sort of childish nonsense would come to bite me in the arse but it’s so very tempting. Biting my tongue, I wipe the words away.

“You keep looking at it like that and you might just make the city walls collapse.” Eshya says with a laugh, pulling me closer. “It’s over. Relax. Who knows how much time we’ll have before the next fight.”

“We have class.” I say. “We can relax in class.”

“Class is for learning.” Adler says, and I jump in surprise as I turn to look at her.

“I… I forgot you were with us.” I say, shaking the shock from my head. She could have died back there while I was distracted, and I wouldn’t have known it. No matter what was happening, I should always know where my lovers are. That they might die while I’m not there to save them is just unacceptable.

Everything still feels fuzzy, as if my limbs either grew or shrunk by a few millimetres, my head is heavy like my brain has suddenly grown heavier, and my skin crawls with random sparks and shocks that might or might not be real. Nausea brings bile to the back of my mouth and even swallowing it back down, the sour acidic taste still fills my mouth. It’s nothing I can’t deal with, but I’m growing uncomfortable in my own skin.

“I was keeping an eye on everything.” Adler continues, “It was… an experience.”

“It was.” I reply. “There’s some things we should probably discuss. You get to play at being my therapist for a bit if you’d like, we can have a long talk about just how evil I am. Just not now.”

“You’re not evil… but I understand. I’m still digesting it all myself.” She says, gazing out towards the city far more distant now than it was before. The wall hides and protects our enemies.

A loud cheer resounds around the deck from many different voices. It takes a moment to see that Red’s at the centre of it.

“We live!” Red shouts, waving me closer. “We should rejoice in that, celebrate for those who can’t.”

I step up beside her facing the desperate faces of our warriors, as drinks are passed around. Korgan, our resident dwarf and alcohol expert is in charge of readying it apparently. Some of the warriors here are weeping, but few. Most seem too weary for it, and others, those new to this sort of battle, are looking about with wide eyes seeming lost.

“We live.” I say after Red.

“Together!” The shout rises from a familiar little creature, riding along the shoulders of my army. I’m glad to see Shen still doing well. Soon we’ll have to count out the dead, but not right now.

“Together.” I agree. The word rising around us, as we drink together. There isn’t enough to get even tipsy, but the taste of it is grounding, it’s enough to rinse out the gritty ash, the metallic blood, and the sour bile that fills my mouth.

People start talking again, but there’s still too many soldiers looking around for someone, unable to find a friend.

This was a victory, but it doesn’t feel like one. Red’s inspiring people to celebrate our survival, but it’s impossible to ignore the faces that are missing.

Looking at this as a commander, the mission was a great success. We defeated an enemy elite, gained significant information on our greatest foe, and slayed many of their forces. The only strategically regrettable thing was showing our hand to the enemy, but that sort of thing is necessary in war. If you’re about to be dragged into a brawl, you don’t waste any effort hiding a gun behind your back.

However, as a person. As me, Kyra. I can only see the death. The people we lost in the fight. None were people that I was particularly close to, but they were still mine.

It doesn’t feel worth it. It feels like a bad trade, even though I know that if we left Loekan and Paskel alone more would die anyway. Logic can’t make this feel any better.

The fear, pain, and loss sours in my heart before being fed to the cold flames of rage inside me. A chill passes down my spine, and the world becomes a little more clear.

If I was more powerful, Loekan wouldn’t dare hurt my people. If I was more powerful, I’d be able to protect them.

I’ll just have to do that then. There’s plenty of mana in this world, I’ll absorb all that I can, processing it and forcing my body to get used to it.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of corpses coming my way that I can use to fuel this growth.

My gaze turns to the glowing waters beneath us, the twins are down there playing with a massive shadow. It’s the same whale sized beast that they’ve been hunting since they came here. I’m not sure if it’s harassing us, or if the twins are harassing it.

Either way we should be safe enough here, neither Loekan nor the gremlins seem keen on swimming or flying out after us. If we were heading through the forest instead, I can almost guarantee that we’d be endlessly harassed.

“Vii, how are you doing?” I ask as I stand beside my feathered friend. She jumps at the sound of my voice but doesn’t turn towards me.

“I’m… good.” She replies.

“I’m not pressing you, but is there anything you want to talk about?” I ask.

That powerful flash of mana that surrounded her before she warned us about the attack must have had something to do with her secret. With the mana radiating around her in that moment, I can understand why she’s concerned about keeping it quiet.

“I…” She pauses.

“We should talk through messages.” She sends, looking around at our allies, with a little caution. “I’m still not sure if I should tell you anything, but after what happened back there I can’t keep quiet about everything.”

I wait for her to continue, taking her hand in mine. Thinking about her problems is a perfect distraction from my own.

She meets my eyes chewing on her lip nervously before she shakes her head and turns away with a sigh.

“I can see the future. It’s a talent, and I don’t fully understand or control it.” She sends, instantly bringing to mind a dozen different movie and TV plots. She shifts her feet around while still looking away from me, her hand a little sweaty in mine.

“I saw the attack coming, and I saw you get hit. You died. That shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t even be possible.” She starts biting her lip again, turning back towards me with teary eyes. I quickly pull her closer into my arms.

She watched me die?

“It’s okay. I’m fine.” I whisper, rubbing her back as she quietly shivers and sobs.

I didn’t die and I’m not going to. What she saw was an alternative future that never happened. Hearing that she saw me dying should shock me more, I’m sure, but it just feels so unreal. The idea of me dying just seems so ludicrous, impossible.

Something I should maybe note down to bring up to a psychologist when I have the chance.

“Why do you think it shouldn’t be possible?” I ask her, it’s the question she’s obviously leading me to.

“I saw the future. Not when you died, but the real future. Many hundreds, thousands of years from now.” She continues. “You weren’t dead.”

“I live for thousands of years? What am I doing?” I ask.

“No one knows. You went missing at some point, there’s all sorts of crazy rumours about what happened.” She chuckles to herself, a moment. “Some say that you killed god and stole his throne.”

“Sounds like me.” I say with a laugh.

“It’s not actually true. But anyway that’s long into the future, which can only mean that you died back there because I interfered with things. I should never have come here. I should never have met you.”

She squeezes my hand tightly, and I squeeze back, only holding back because of how much more mana dense I am at the moment.

“Or, you always came here, always met me, and always saved me.” I reply with an easy shrug. From all the many time paradoxes that I’ve watched and read, my one main takeaway was that you should do whatever the fuck you want.

You went back in time and became your own grandfather? So what? Sure, you’ll be embarrassed at family reunions but is that really the end of the world?

You went back to the Jurassic period, killed a mosquito, and now the Nazis won WW2? Go back again and keep killing things until you like where you’re at. Eventually you’ll find a timeline you like.

The same concept is true for seeing the future, but without having to directly experience all the fuckery.

“I don’t think that’s how it works.” Vii replies.

“I don’t care.” I reply simply. “Vii. You’re mine now. If you decide to run off ‘to protect me’ or whatever other stupid reason you might come up with, I’m going to chase you down and drag you back home. I’ll keep you tied up until you pull yourself together.”

She snorts a laugh.

I wasn’t joking.

“I guess I don’t have a choice, then. I have to stay.” She sends back, easing a little.

“Exactly.” I don’t blink or turn away, making sure that she’s not faking it and planning anything stupid. She blushes at my attention, but that just seems like her normal reaction.

Good.

I relax and turn back towards the rest of the problems filling the ship. If I want to be the leader here, then I can’t just stand around quietly.

We didn’t have the fortune to bring many of our dead with us in our retreat. Hira was an exception, Lakesh personally carried her back here, and even now she’s clearly heavy on his mind.

I’m not a perfect sympathetic ear, and perhaps I’ll end up screwing this up worse, but I refuse to be the sort of leader that just ignores issues like this one.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” I say, walking up beside him.

He doesn’t reply, and as I start to get worried, I look over to him, but his gaze hasn’t strayed from her body. Her chest is still opened up, a complete mess of scattered blood and shredded organs.

“She confessed her love to me.” He says eventually. “Back home. I refused her. We’re soldiers, we don’t get to have that kind of life, and I don’t want to play around with pretend. It’s not like either of us are capable of bringing life into this world, all we’re meant to do is kill and protect.

“Then… we came here, a new future. A new possibility. Nel told us that there’s options for us, ways to have children if we wanted. She seems quite knowledgeable about that sort of thing, and…”

I stare down at the cold corpse, unable to reconcile it with the person that it once was. The walking, talking, fighting warrior that died following my orders. Fighting my battles.

“There was hope again.” Lakesh says in a whisper.

I try to say something, but there’s nothing to say. Anything I say now would be empty, cheap. Even my rage would be unwelcome, as much as I want to rant about what I’ll do to Loekan in vengeance.

“Thank you.” He says, still not looking away from her body. “You gave her that hope, thank you for that. She was so much brighter, happier…”

“All I did was convince the bus driver to bring you back with me.” I rub at my temple.

“I’m a bus driver, now? What exactly is a bus?” Arduelle asks, via messaging. I spare her half a spare mind to explain.

“That was enough.” He replies. “Do you think we’ll have a chance for a proper funeral?”

“I’ll make sure of it.” I say, taking that as my queue to leave.

Never again.

I barely even knew her, and I can’t bare it.

Never again can I let my people die like this.

I flare the magic inside me, forcing it, cramming it into every part of my flesh that hasn’t yet tasted it. A shifting, chaotic cycle moving throughout my flesh. I press on the dense core shards floating through me, feeling out every strange way it perverts my body, making it that much more magical.

“Kyra. The operation went well.” Red says, joining me. “The new gear works well, but we have to be careful with it. Overuse will make us predictable.”

“We’ll have more weapons soon enough.” I say, barely able to meet her eyes. She seems completely unbothered, which is what I expected. She’s been through far worse than this before, no doubt.

I have too, but never before has it been my responsibility.

“We’ll have better trained soldiers, too.” She says. “They’re blooded now. It’ll make them easier to train.”

“Is that a thing?”

“It is.” She replies. “From this I can tell which ones are going to break, and which ones are going to get stronger. Most of them will put extra effort into their training from today, too.”

“I thought they were already training to their limits.” I reply.

“They’ll find new limits.” She says. “From today, I’m going to have to make extra sure they don’t push themselves too hard. I hope I don’t have to do that with you?”

“I’ll be fine.” I reply, glaring down into the waters beneath us and the battle still raging down there. “I have four lovely young women who’ll make sure I take some time off now and again. I did promise a date with Nel, too.”

“Oh, young love. How sweet.” She says, chuckling. “Whatever works for you, I guess.”

“Do you think we’ll be able to hold out against Loekan?” I ask to change to topic. “He’ll be even more in his element around our base. The trees and roots and all that.”

“It shouldn’t be that bad.” She replies confidently.

“What makes you think that?”

“He was that powerful because that was his home.” She says. “Those trees that he was using, if I’m going to guess they’re something like your armour. He probably grew them up from saplings, feeding them his mana the whole while. Something like that at least. I’ve had to fight plenty of people with something like that up their sleeve.

“He won’t be able to move them around freely. Even moving them like he just did would’ve cost him a lot. Bringing them all the way across the cavern? Doubtful.

“He’ll have a few other tricks he can bring with him, but it would be close to an even fight regardless of his favourable talent. Especially since we’ve had time to prepare. A man like him? He’s going to spend a long time preparing to take us on. More than likely he’ll be sending waves of minions at us to prevent us from preparing to take him down.

“It shouldn’t stop us though, and we’re already prepared to hunt his minions. It’ll provide our warriors with good fighting experience.”

“So, we’re just going to settle into a war of attrition for the next, what? Week, month?”

“Could be a year or more.” She replies. “And it’s not a war of attrition. A war of attrition would see us wearing each other down to nothing. He’ll be sending waves of minions at us, but only disposable fodder. The real battle will be decided between our elites and his. You, me, Loekan, Warren. You get the picture.”

“So, we prepare fast and surprise him?” I ask.

“And we make sure he doesn’t surprise us.” Red says firmly.

I breath a long sigh as the boiling rage inside me refuses to quiet down. I’m not sure I can last a month, let alone a year, especially if my people are fighting and dying in that time.

“We’ll be fast then.” I say. “I’ll get powerful enough to take him out with one spell.”

“That’s great, but his fodder aside he has other powerful minions we’re going to have to fight against.” Red says. “We all need to train and ready ourselves.”

“Then I’ll be glad for your continued teachings.” I say dryly. “First up, how do I stop myself from jumping out of this ship, swimming back to the city and running Loekan down to gouge out his eyes and scatter his brain all over the cobblestones?”

“If you can actually do it, go ahead and do it. Otherwise, think of all the things you want to live for.” Red says, sharpening her eyes down at me. “You don’t want to die this early.”

“I’m not sure that I can die, Red.” I say, meeting her gaze. “I certainly don’t feel like it, and I’m constantly on the edge of doing something ridiculously stupid because of it.”

“Then how about you think of the other people you’ll get killed.” She says, looking back at the body on the deck. “Your sweet little lovers would follow you into battle, even if it’s a hopeless one. Think of them dying and you should stop pretty quick.”

I grit my teeth at the image, but even the flickering flames of rage quiet down as I imagine them dying, not because of Loekan, or some beast or monster, but because of me.

“Yeah, that should work.” I say, regaining my calm. “I’ll be relying on you for a while yet, Red.”

“Yeah, you’re not much of a leader yet. Let alone an Empress.” She laughs, resting a hand on my head. “It’s too amusing watching you struggle. I won’t be leaving you alone just yet.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I say, with a half-smile and a laugh. “I’m an empress regardless, all my friends say so. Vii… Wait a minute…” What Vii was saying…

“What?” Red asks, but I wave her off.

Vii was worried after seeing me die that she’d changed the future. That meeting me changed things.

So why did she meet me?

Because she saw a future where I was important, and she wanted to see me for herself. To record it. She’s already alluded to as much, quite clearly at that.

What is going on with my head that I missed that?

She’s always been supportive of my claim of the title ‘empress’ and was even rather big on the ‘harem’ term. Even with a little story about it…

That story too was rather strange now that I hear of it.

Weirdly, the realization doesn’t even feel strange. It practically seems like a natural conclusion that I should succeed and become someone truly influential and powerful.

I am an empress, and I’ll see that the enemies of my empire, the enemies of my people, are struck down.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Skills & Stats

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 3092 units

~Mana distribution:

Category Current Max. Defence 0% 97% Offense 0% 73% Mana Sense 0% 97% Recovery 0% 46% Gluttony 0% 38% Misc. 49% 49% Efficiency 0% 100%

~Favourited Skills:

-Chip Shredder

-Multi-mind

-Tag

-Mana surge movement

-Reactive defence

-Fire burst punch

-Annihilation magic

-Charged casting (Annihilation)

-Mana form flow fixer

-Branching magic

-Swimming

-Annihilation fire burst