"Take them out! Quick!" Several shouts followed the first one through the doorway. Caeden did his best to get out of the pile of equipment he had ended up in, but he was still disoriented from being violently thrown across the room. His metal mess was still attached to his back, so at least he wasn't unarmed.

That comforted him for all of a second before a bang rang out across the room, and the equipment next to him was blown apart. Shrapnel fragments bruised into his arm, making him hiss in pain. Caeden had no idea what sort of weapon that was, but it packed a punch. More than that, it was fast. He hadn't seen what was flung at him.

Not wanting to experience a direct hit, Caeden dove behind more equipment as more bangs echoed through the room. More equipment shattered, and Caeden kept moving, trying to circle around the equipment while unseen. He could move as loudly as he wanted, the constant explosive release of the revolutionaries' weapons drowning out any sound he could make.

Finally shifting around the ethertech that was swiftly being turned into junk, Caeden saw his attackers for the first time. There were four of them, wearing the familiar rough-spun clothing of continentals. They were all holding long, thin metal weapons, with black and yellow-red ether crystals built into the area around their grip. They would pull a trigger reminiscent of a crossbow, and that loud bang would sound out. Caeden couldn't help but be fascinated. This must be what Anthony had referred to when he mentioned the weapons the Revolution held.

They were all busy turning advanced equipment into junk, so Caeden took the opportunity to attack with Sharp. He wasn't sure how he felt about killing these people, but he knew how he felt about dying, so that decision was made for him. Once his shroud made contact with their bodies, Caeden noticed several things. First, they had a similar resistance to his shroud that the walls of this place did. Though, it was less potent.

Trying to get his shroud through the walls of this place was like stabbing a fork into cement. Trying to get into the revolutionaries' bodies was like using the same fork on mud. It stuck and resisted, but Caeden could shove it through, given a moment. That was where the second problem came in.

All of the revolutionaries were wearing ethertech collars that he hadn't noticed before. When his shroud touched them, those collars lit up with a white light mixed with red and blue. Immediately, all of them stopped firing and looked around wildly before whipping their weapons around to point at him. Caeden rolled onto his side, with his metal-covered back facing the armed assailants. He was short on options. All he could do was hope that they had a limited amount of projectiles and his makeshift shield held up.

He was curled up in a ball as the shots rang out, slamming into his back with heavy blows. They weren't getting through yet. Hoping it would help, Caeden sent Physical Reinforcement into his shield. The shroud still moved like molasses, but he managed it. Immediately, the amount of kinetic force that made it to him lessened. Caeden hoped that represented an increase in the durability of the shield itself.

The shots continued on unabated for what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few minutes at most. The revolutionaries seemed content to spam their weapons into his back until his shield broke. Finally, the constant barrage ended with confused cries coming from the revolutionaries. Spinning around, Caeden saw them bound up, their limbs bound together and all of them bound to each other by the glowing white of a shroud.

"Whew! That took a minute. You ok, Caeden?" Erik stood up from a pile of mostly scrap metal. Caeden felt immediately relieved. He had had little time to worry about Erik once the shooting started, but he had been afraid the man had been shot down in the first salvo.

"I'm fine. Thanks for saving my ass. How'd you pull that off?" He waved at the bound people struggling to free themselves. "I tried to get them with one of my shrouds, but it was like pushing through mud."

"Yeah! What the heck is up with that?" Erik nodded in agreement, "I was like 'Whaaaat?' and it took me a couple of tries to figure it out."

"Figure what out?"

"So, when you're trying to push through someone else's shroud, they have a sort of rhythm to how they block you. If you match the rhythm, you slip right in. Lucky me, all these guys have the same rhythm, and it wasn't that complicated. Just repeats the same thing over and over again." Erik expounded, sounding like he was conveying some sage wisdom.

"I have no clue what you're talking about, but that resistance definitely comes from those collars." Caeden moved to try and take them off. The revolutionaries protested, but Erik used his shroud to pin them in place. The latching mechanism wasn't straightforward, so it took Caeden a few minutes to figure it out. During that time, Erik's face became progressively tenser. Caeden could tell the effort of holding four people through the collars' interference was taxing him.

Once he had one-off, that tension eased, and as soon as he had them all off, Erik had relaxed, his face returning to its ever-present grin. "Thanks! That was super annoying. Like having someone sing the same song in your ear over and over. Not fun. Hah! That reminds me of the time my aunt blew out my eardrums! That was funny!"

Caeden just shook his head. Erik had a warped sense of humor. "What do you want to do about this?"

Erik cocked his head, "What do you mean?"

"I mean all of this," Caeden gestured first to the bound revolutionaries, then to the door, they came through, then to the room and the building in general. "Obviously, this is where that attack that hit the War God came from. It sounds like they want to do it again. What do you want to do?"

"I have no idea." Erik shrugged helplessly, "I've never been much of an idea guy. Whatever you want to do, I'll back you up."

"Really?" Caeden was surprised by the casual faith Erik was placing in him.

"Yeah, you seem like a smart guy, and we haven't died yet, so I'm just going to call that a win. I figure if we're going to get out of here at all, we need a plan, and that's not going to come from me." He patted Caeden on the shoulder. "Don't get us killed, ok?"

"Really inspiring confidence there," Caeden rolled his eyes. Never mind, Erik didn't have faith in him. He was just casual about dying.

Focusing, Caeden ran through everything he knew about where they were and what was going on, which was very little. He knew broad strokes. Revolutionaries had a superweapon pointed at the War God and wanted to shoot it out of the sky. They had ethertech that was extremely deadly and interfered with shrouds. Overall, it was looking pretty grim. He didn't even have a time frame.

"We need to know more. We don't know enough to do anything." It all boiled down to that.

"Ok, so we get more info."

"That would be a good start, yeah," Caeden sighed, "But that's not exactly easy."

"What are you talking about? We've got them!" Erik pointed at the bound revolutionaries.

"So? It's not like they're going to give us accurate information. If you can get them to talk at all."

"Oh, I got that." Caeden watched on as Erik knelt by one of the prisoners, grabbing their head and tilting it back. He stared intently into their eyes while murmuring in a low voice. After a few minutes, he got up and clapped his hands. "All done!" With a snap of his fingers, the man's mouth was no longer stitched closed. "Ask him whatever you want."

"What did you do?" Caeden wasn't sure what Erik was getting at here.

"I guess I should explain. I told you, my family are all medical professionals, right?" Caeden nodded. They had shared the broad strokes of their lives with each other in the stairwell. "Yeah, so they have a whole bunch of books from my way back ancestor, who had a shroud. It's all this medical insight stuff about how the human body works. Honestly, it sounds like my great-great-great grandwhatever was pretty sketchy cause those books go into a lot of detail about how to take someone apart. I'm pretty sure there was some human experimentation going on." Erik looked immensely uncomfortable. "Soooo, one of the books deals with the brain, and a whole chapter went into how the brain deals with lying. For the most part, people lie when they are afraid of something. People who aren't afraid don't lie."

"So?" Caeden asked when Erik went into a long pause.

"Yeah, so. If you remove the part of the brain that deals with fear, people stop lying. They literally can't think of a reason to lie because they're not afraid of the consequences that come with telling the truth."

Caeden's eyes widened. "Did you?"

"NO! No," Erik interrupted, "The stuff I said to him was to get a fear response, then I watched his brain with my shroud until I isolated that section. Then I used Stitch to close off those neural pathways. He'll go back to normal once I release my shroud. But for now…" He waved at the man.

"...Your ancestor was definitely an assassin or something, man."

Erik shrugged.

"Fine, whatever." Caeden sighed. "I guess this works."

He turned to the man. "Ok, first of all, why are you guys here?"

The man sneered at him. "We're here to kill all shrouded. All of you are a curse on the world."

"Lovely. I meant, in this building, not your metaphorical place in existence."

"Hah!" The man scoffed. "All this ether tech, obviously. This stuff will allow the Revolution to overthrow the Central Authority. Then, we can continue on to the 10,000 Empires and the lands of the Burning King. We'll throw down the church of the One Shroud and free the oppressed. We will-"

"Hey!" Caeden snapped his fingers in the man's face as he drifted into feverish ranting. "Focus up. Are you sure he's ok?" The last statement was direct at Erik, who shrugged again.

"No fear means endless confidence. He really believes nothing can stop them right now."

"Ok then." Caeden filed that little nugget away for later and focused back on his fanatic. "You said you came here for this technology. This was here before? The Revolution didn't make it?"

"No, fool. The Revolutionary Father was granted access to these sites of advanced technology. He gave his followers access to them, and now we can use them to further our understanding of ether. What you see around you is ancient, from a time long before shrouds, when men were all equal and we walked hand in hand. We will return to that age! Soon-"

"Ok, I get it! All shrouds will die! How did you all blow a chunk out of a War God?" Caeden was watching the faces of the other bound and gagged revolutionaries, seeing them slowly descend into panic. He took that as a sign that the man was being truthful. Though, some of it sounded more like propaganda than the truth.

"Ahh, now that's the beautiful part." The man smiled rapturously, "We discovered a weapon from ancient times. Something so powerful it dwarfs even the shrouds. It will make way for a new society! One free-"

"That's great, that's great." Caeden interrupted, not even touching on the idea of an ancient utopian society that also made superweapons. Obviously, some of what this guy had been told was more of a happy myth than reality. "So, any weaknesses for this weapon? Problems?"

"Oh," The fanatic actually paused for a second, and Caedenwas wondering if he was going to answer a question that was so blatantly against his interests. "Well, the overheating problem is pretty bad. We don't really know much about how the weapon works, you see. We just know how to fire it."

"It overheats?" Caeden smiled. "I can work with that."

{}

Caeden asked a few more questions, enduring the constant sermon about how wrong and evil shrouds were. It was interesting, seeing people that Caeden could sympathize with on some level but completely disagree with their actions. He learned that the superweapon was in the next room over and that there were only two technicians in there to operate it with a handful more guards. None of them would come looking for the captured members. They didn't have enough people, so the plan was to bunker down and blast anything that walked through the door.

Obviously, the revolutionaries in that room had figured out something was wrong by now, so Caeden lacked the element of surprise. He was hoping to make up for it with shock and awe. His plan went something like this. First, he changed the shape of his shield. He was almost certain he could. It was metal he had worked with his whole adult life combined with his own shrouds. Why wouldn't he be able to mould it? Plus, he was a smith. Shaping metal was his job.

All he had to do was pour his shrouds into it simultaneously while also envisioning the process of shaping it. The hammer blows he would use, the correct temperatures, and timing. It was a slow process and used much of his shrouds that he had regained. However, in the end, he had what he wanted. Then he marched right back into the room with the metal warrior.

"Intruder, vacate the premises immediately," He had noted the reflection of the laser his first time in here. He had failed to see the weapon the warrior used or the shot itself, but he had seen the burns it dug into the wall in the adjoining room. Betting on that not being a fluke, he had turned his shield into a scoop. When the laser came flying at him, he braced for it, the beam making contact with his scoop. The beam would reflect, bouncing off at wild angles. After several tries, stepping out of the room to reset the warrior, Caeden had the angle of the incoming and outgoing laser perfect. The shot hit the scoop, bounced along it, and returned, nailing the warrior in the head.

Unfortunately, it didn't die. However, it no longer seemed to be capable of seeing, so Caeden stepped out of the room, made a sword out of his scoop, and waltzed back in, the warrior repeatedly threatening to annihilate him while firing wildly around the room. It was easy to see where it was aiming, and most of its shots went wide anyway, so it was a piece of cake to walk right up and lop the laser-firing arm off. After all, his sword had Sharp imbued directly into it. It carved through the infused armor of the metal warrior like a hot knife through butter.

At this point, Caeden was out of shroud, especially sharp. His capacity seemed in some way tied to regeneration, and he had more PE than Sharp. It was something he doubted he would have noticed had he not drained both shrouds to empty on the way down from the War God. He was sitting at maybe a sixteenth of his total on PE and completely empty on Sharp. It was a good thing his plan didn't rely on either. Mostly.

Erik, in contrast, was nearly half-full on his shroud. Immediately after the questioning was over, he had used Stitch to knock all the revolutionaries unconscious by messing with the blood flow to their brains. Another trick from his families' books. Since then, he had been resting for the hour or so it had taken Caeden to execute his plan up to that point.

Now, with laser weapon in tow, they were ready to storm the room.

{}

Caeden kicked the door open with all the force he could muster. It flew off its hinges, slamming into someone who had been waiting behind it, possibly bracing it closed. There were seven others in the room besides the one that had most likely just been knocked out, if not killed. Caeden had to stoop to enter. He was in his full Physical Enhancement form, standing nearly nine feet tall. He had maybe thirty seconds before his shroud ran out.

Bolting across the room, Caeden felt projectiles slam into him from multiple sources. Having been blown up in this form twice, Caeden was unconcerned. They would have to hit him with something a lot bigger to do any real harm. By comparison, his newly made weapon tore through the first man like he didn't exist.

In his enlarged hand, his sword felt more normal. Due to the amount of metal, what he had made was so large in comparison to his normal build, it was comical. Nearly twelve feet long and thicker than his legs, it dwarfed him. Now, it was just a thicker longsword. Caeden was lucky it was weightless in his hands, otherwise, it would never pass for a practical weapon.

Caeden winced as two halves of a once-living man slapped wetly to the floor. He knew coming in here, he would have to kill people. Erik didn't have enough shroud left to hold so many, and Caeden had spent too much time putting this plan together. Waiting longer put his uncle and everyone else on the War God at risk. Coming in here unprepared was suicide. Waiting longer was inviting tragedy.

Still, Caeden nearly vomited, seeing the viscera and gore of his first kill splatter across the clean floor. The continuous impacts against his body were a helpful reminder that he was less than thirty seconds from being blown apart. So he carried on, heading for two more enemies and dispatching them just as easily.

"How?! The collars' should resist his shroud!" One at the back shouted in horror, watching his comrades slaughtered like animals. It was true; there was more resistance on Caeden's swings than he was expecting. However, right now, he had a sword with both Sharp and Physical Enhancement running through it wielded by a body dozens of times stronger and more durable than a human could hope to achieve. That level of resistance simply didn't matter. It was the difference between cutting through tissue paper and wet tissue paper. Either way, the result was near-instantaneous.

Before he could clear the room, though, Caeden felt his shroud leaving him. He simply wasn't fast enough. Only two were left, besides the technicians, but they were a room away. He would be dead before he made a few steps. But Caeden was never supposed to clear the room. The whole reason he sprinted across the entire room wasn't to take out all the revolutionaries. He was supposed to get everyone's attention off the door. Which he had done.

Through it stepped Erik, carrying the laser. He pointed it with some difficulty at the ethertech in the middle of the room. Caeden took a good look at the device that had nearly ended his life a few hours ago. It was massive, taking up more space than Caeden's entire house. It was also unlike anything he had ever seen before. The ethertech in the other rooms, even the metal warrior, paled in comparison. The whole thing floated, various parts swirling around each other in a kaleidoscope of infused metal and ether crystals, forming patterns in a sequence that obviously meant something, which he could not understand.

The revolutionary they had questioned hadn't lied. The thing was putting off quite a bit of heat, enough to raise the room temperature by at least twenty degrees. The rest of the facility was pleasant if a bit on the cold side. In here, it was hot. Caeden wondered how high it would go before it was irreparably broken. Hopefully, not far.

Erik fired the laser.

The beam of black and red energy threatened to toss him back into the other room, but he had secured himself to the doorframe with his shroud. The beam crossed the room in an instant, slamming into the very center of the swirling mass that composed the weapon. The effect was immediate and obvious. The parts began moving even fast, the speed ever-escalating until there was an intense breeze in the entire room. All the lights in the room switched from a uniform white to flashing red.

"Warning, Central Management System undergoing a critical meltdown. Evacuate Continent 4235A."