[What is it boy? What do you see?]

Kohn didn’t reply. He just stared at the crevice, ready to fly away at a moment’s notice.

“It’s a Jzanna.”

He didn’t need to whisper back since physics had determined that sound couldn’t possibly travel in space, but it just felt right to him. As if every precaution was necessary to survive.

[Are you being attacked?!]

“No. It’s in a crevice in an asteroid.”

[It’s probably sleeping then. Or it’s like that other one we brought on board. What did you call it? Hibernating?]

It sounded like a feasible option since it truly wasn’t moving, but something seemed a little off. He could see the tail and one set of its wing-fins, but there was some kind of black-grey film on it. The film stretched over the body parts that he could see almost as if there had been some kind of slime it had tried to escape from.

[This is a good situation then!]

“How is this a good situation?!” Kohn angrily whispered to Leete back on the ship. “I am staring right at a Jzanna!”

[Weren’t you the one who was promising great results from your new prototype? Something about a Buster Arm weapon that damaged my ship from the inside?]

Cringing slightly in his suit, Kohn had hoped to make Leete forget about the reason that caused the fleet to stop here at the asteroid road but instead had only made the mage recall the event.

“I guess it’s a good time to test it out then…”

Readying the weapon Kohn couldn’t help but feel like he was missing something. Trying to shake off the feeling he charged the Buster arm. A thick pipe-like bracelet slid forward over his right hand as he used his left to hold the arm steady and aimed straight into the crevice. Just as the Mana Ball started to form Kohn pushed the bracelet part back onto his arm, shutting off the formation and harmlessly dispersing the used mana into space.

Movement had caught his eye. Further up the crevice.

“Oh shit.”

[Again with that?]

[Boy, what happened? Did your weapon not work?] The Armorer had stressed the part about it being Kohn’s weapon in a poorly disguised attempt to shift the blame of a faulty weapon to him.

“I cancelled the shot.”

[…Why?]

The movement that had caught his eye didn’t come from the place where he had seen the Jzanna. Instead he had seen a tail come out of a black-grey rock further up the same asteroid.

“There’s more than one Jzanna out here.”

***

Back on the Dark Vessel Leete was standing at the command center with the vessel’s Armorer right next to him. Both were staring at a magical display that showed a magnified few of Kohn in his prototype suit.

“What did he say?” Leete inquired of the heavily muscled man next to him.

Since a little while ago the Earthling had been speaking in whispers, forcing everyone to strain their ears in order to hear him.

“There’s more than one of those things out there!”

It was possible that there were a couple out there in the road since it stretched through space for a great distance. And of course the Jzanna seemed perceptive enough to pick up spells over great distances, no matter the type used.

“Drop all scans of the rocks! Send a burst transmission to all ships in the fleet that there are an unknown number of Jzanna in the road and they are to limit all external spells. Immediately!”

The commanders around him snapped to complete his orders. They were good mages, trained personally by him.

“Get enhanced views of the road all around the Earthling! Mark any Jzanna you can see and get me a count of how many we’re dealing with!”

A group response of “YES HIGH MAGE!” echoed all around him. Quickly he felt the vessel’s external spells disappear as more displays floated around the room.

“Sector One. No sign of Jzanna presence.”

“Sector Three. No sign of Jzanna presence.”

“Sector Four. No sign of Jzanna presence.”

“Sector Two. No sign of Jzanna presence...”

From all around the room dozens of commanders called out the sectors they were viewing and denied Kohn’s claims that there were Jzanna in the road.

It might have confused the Earthlings how they could call out sectors of space, but when the Kingdom had first created their fleet of Dark Vessels they needed a way of looking and identifying where the individual commanders were looking. So they simply created an imaginary line straight out from the ship towards the region of space that needed to be analyzed and broke it into a 180 degree region which were then broken down into a predetermined pattern to name sectors of space. It didn’t matter what area you wanted to view it would always be broken into the exact same way with the exact same labeled sectors of space.

Confused Leete and the Armorer glanced at each other before he turned back to the screen of Kohn on the rock.

“Kohn, the ship cannot see any Jzanna near you.”

[Well maybe your sensors are wrong cause I’m looking right at a whole bunch of them!]

“We’re can’t use sensors. The Jzanna would be able to immediately detect spells that directly touched them and if they’re actually sleeping or hibernating they’d wake up immediately.”

[Then how can you tell me there aren’t Jzanna out here if you aren’t looking for them?]

He was right to sound aggravated and if Leete was in his place he’d probably sound more frightened at that moment. “We’re using our eyes to look for them.”

[…] Silence came back through the spell link. Leete could imagine one of Kohn’s hilarious slaps to his own face that he called a ‘face palm’.

[Armorer, you there?]

“I’m here boy.”

[Alright. Both of you, just for the moment assume that I’m telling the truth and that I am actually looking at Jzanna that you can’t see. Between the two of you come up with a way that I can show you what I’m looking at.]

There was a brief moment of stunned silence that they didn’t even think of trying to see what Kohn was looking at. The Armorer snapped out of it first.

“High Mage! Isn’t there a spell that allows you to see through the eyes of someone else?”

Of course Leete had already remembered it and was using the proper gestures at the High Command pedestal to search for the spell in the formation bank deep in the bowels of the vessel. “You are absolutely right.”

“Then what are you waiting for? Put up what he sees on the display!”

“Kohn!”

[Leete?]

He was going to have to talk to the Earthling later about showing him the proper amount of respect by using his title, but he could forgive him for now. At least while he’s in a dangerous situation.

“I’m going to be using a spell on you. It’ll allow us to see what you see through your eyes so you’ll need to look specifically at what you want us to see. But…”

[Sounds good. What’s the catch?]

“It’s an external spell so if there are Jzanna out there they might be able to feel it.”

[So it’ll wake them up?]

“…un, I don’t think so. But there is the possibility.”

[Do it.]

It was only activated a second before they heard Kohn screaming over the transmission spell.

“STOP! STOP! SHUT IT OFF!”

Leete hastily cut off the spell.

[It’s okay. They didn’t wake up.]

Leete didn’t hear him though.

[It looks like they felt it but like maybe they felt it in a dream.]

He couldn’t take his eyes off the display. From next to him he heard the bravest, toughest man he’d ever known take a very audible gulp.

[Guys? Hello? Anyone there?]

The spell sent them back a few seconds of what Kohn had seen, and the spell was setup to play it back on a loop.

All over the asteroid in front of him they could see the dozens of tails coming out of the crevice. But what was even worse was that they saw wing-fins, tails and claws coming out of black slime all over the surface of the rock.

Asteroid wasn’t entirely made out of rock and metals and that black stuff, which had been dismissed as some kind of rock, was all over the asteroid road.

Seeing that the black rocks weren’t actually rocks the commanders took another look at their displays of the road again.

“Jzanna presence detected in sector one!”

“…in sector two!”

“…in sector three!”

“…in sector four…”

The whole command center was shocked.

Now that they knew what to look for the commanders were able to visibly confirm the presence of Jzanna all over the asteroid belt.

“Is there a confirmed counting?” Leete asked, terrified to know the answer.

The commanders looked at each other, shaking their headings. Leete’s second and third in command both took a guess.

“Rough estimations… several thousands.”

“Maybe tens of thousands.”

The display was slowly being updated with highlighted dots symbolizing a single Jzanna popping up all over the asteroid road.

Leete, in an unprecedented speechless moment, felt it fitting to quote one of his favorite Earthlings.

“Oh shit.”