Sunday, June 12, 2022 Lightning Cries Over Canopy, Daybreak Nüwa Hidden Kingdom

When they arrived to the base of operations, Eric Peterson just about pissed himself. First, this girl had lifted him up with one hand and thrown him into a tree… easily. Those glowing eyes had been freaky as hell.

They arrived to a camp filled with fully kitted out soldiers carrying modern hunting bows, swords, and axes. But some of them were half-human and half insect.

Another woman walked up, she was tall and willowy with sharp angular features and blue-grey eyes walked up to them. She was cleaning the blood off a dagger. “Liberator, I have their numbers and dispositions, we can dispose of these as unnecessary.”

“Davcina,” the girl, Ella, said, “I want to squeeze this one dry…” She gestured to Eric. “If we catch anyone higher rank, you can have him to play with.”

Davcina didn’t even look at him but smiled and jumped up and down… “Thank you! I may take the others to practice on for now, the last one died before I had fully mapped out their anatomy.”

Peterson looked and then looked to where the girl had walked from. There, on a table, was an orc, its body splayed open. Organs and vessels were carefully spread out, still connected to the body.

“Davcina, I cannot condone this.” the woman said sternly. “We are all going to pay for our transgressions in this life. You will be paying for that orc’s life just as much as this human’s.”

“Blessed Liberator, I will pay whatever price is needed…”

The girl, no the one they called Liberator, looked like she would argue more. But she visibly held herself back and dismissed Davcina.

“Tie these up and treat the orc’s wounds. Lieutenant Peterson, do you care to tell me what the plan is here? Or shall I expose my hypocrisy and give you to Davcina?”

Eric couldn’t take his eyes off of the dissected orc body on the table. No, it had been vivisected. He was just pulling a paycheck here, and it definitely wasn’t worth this. This woman’s eyes were crystal white and terrifying in their impassivity.

“Ma’am. The assault here was to be a test case of orc training, but when we came, our firearms failed to function. So we were forced to use primitive weapons. We took the lizards out on the ground and they retreated to the trees. Our main contingent went north to the city.”

He took a breath, letting the words spill out of him, “We planned on burning them down, but couldn’t get a fire going either. We began to take the trees one at a time. " Eric Peterson wasn’t dying here, and he was definitely not ending up like that poor orc bastard on the table.

Ella walked into the command tent, “I have more details, but nothing surprising. The orcs are blooded, but still learning modern weapons and doctrine. The Emperor manipulated one of their hidden kingdom to breach into this one directly, there was no need to transport them.”

Arcsa raised an eyebrow at that. Him, along with a significant number of the Aqrabuamelu, had taken on their half-scorpion forms, free to be themselves as they hadn’t been in millennia. It meant Ella had to crane her head up to look at him.

“That might be a significant tactical advantage…” Arcsa understated.

“It’s a problem.” Ella agreed. “There’s more. Breach point is about 12 klicks north. There is also a main contingent of orca that went further north to sack the city of Nakra.”

“Through the gate, the orc realm is rolling plains. Villages and children. Minimal guard. We take these down and then push in.”

Arcsa smiled. “General are we now?”

Ella suddenly felt self-conscious. Damn if her cheeks didn’t feel a bit warm.

“You aren’t wrong though,” Arcsa continued smiling to take the sting out of the rebuke. “But we don’t know enough yet. Is it one of the orc realms or all of them? How armed are they and what is the distribution of them? What are the lines of retreat? Do they breach into the world anywhere else?”

Arcsa laid down a map of the current realm, “We sent up several drones last night to get this layout. I am going to deploy them to the breach, infrared should pick up any additional hostiles to the breach.” He pointed to a tree, “Adra has made contact with the Nüwa, they are somewhat hesitant to abandon their position without a clear line of retreat, but we are getting that ready… here”

He traced a line between two embankments. “The Nüwa here are part of what they call the Daybreak tribe. Bright yellow with red spots, but a few, including your Sally, are teal with darker spots. The teal colored Nüwa have some special status among them, but we still don’t know what that is. The Nüwa will be sending a representative to review our preparations and plan tonight. Adra is remaining as a hostage to good behavior.”

“Okay, let’s review the battlefield and then I’ll get cleaned up.”

Adra sat and watched the Nüwa children play in a neighboring tree. Next to him were two Nüwa guards and a Nuwa liaison named Quenti.

“Our passage to your world has always been porous - it typically opens up every few months. We have a few rings to disguise ourselves that are precious and would allow selected Nüwa to go to retrieve items, search for our creators, or even live among the humans there for a period of time. Shalhi’s mother was one of our greatest scholars, she lived in the human world for almost five years. When the orcs attacked, she stole two of the rings and Shalhi with her.”

“The teal one, Vichama, who is he?”

“Vichama is one of our priests. The teal ones like Vichama and Salhi can invoke the spirits and advise us to their will.”

Well, that just sounded like a caste system to Adra, but there wasn’t much to it.

They sat companionably for a time. Adra tried to not look down out of the window, it was quite a long way, and the one time he had looked at the tree he had jumped from, he had felt faint.

Eventually, as evening came, Vichama came with two armed Nüwa.

“It is almost time to meet your leaders. The orcs have good daytime and night vision, but are weak at twilight times.”

The rain was coming down hard outside, the roll of thunder a constant presence. Occasional flashes of lightning cracked across the sky. But that was par for the course since they had arrived, and the Nüwa didn’t seem to even notice.

Adra took a breath and decided to broach the most sensitive topic, “Before we go, I have one more question for you. What do you know of the Aqrabuamelu?”

Vichama looked at him closely, “The ancient enemy? We never saw them in the human world, we had thought they had died out.”

“Well, about that…”

Arcsa and Ella waited under the open tent. Adra had called and said that there were now seven Nüwa coming instead of three. Vichama was their leader, but he wanted more guards.

When the Nüwa appeared at the encampment, they were escorted by an Aqrabuamelu soldier in human form. But they paused when they saw the mix of human figures and half-scorpions. The leader, Vichama, decisively strode towards the open tent, almost outpacing his guards.

In deference to potential anxiety, Arcsa and Ella were the only ones in the tent, and the remaining soldiers were at a distance.

“I did not believe this Adra when he said he was Aqrabuamelu until he offered to transform.” Vichama did not bother with ceremony. He was dripping water. “We were enemies once.”

Arcsa stood up and transformed, “Yes. A long time ago. We no longer serve the Emperor.”

“Soldiers must serve the state unless they are to become tyrants,” Vichama said. “Mao Zedong once said, ‘military affairs are only one means of accomplishing political tasks’ and John Rawls said ‘It is of first importance that the military be subordinate to civilian government’”

“Yes,” Ella said, “Woodrow Wilson once said ’ how impossible it is… to have a free nation if it is a military nation and under military orders.’ Where did you learn that?”

“Graduated with honors in 1984 from the Kennedy school in human guise,” Vichama said, with what looked like a smug smile on his reptilian face. “So who do you serve, soldier?”

“Her.”

Vichama turned his attention fully to her. He had perhaps thought of Ella as an aide-de-camp or some similar role. While she was freshly showered and clean, her hair neatly pinned back, she was in fresh tactical gear, although unarmed except for the dagger on her belt.

“And who are you?”

“I seem to be collecting title and names lately. But as far as the Nüwa are concerned, the most important is that I am Sally’s friend and am the reason we are here to save your people from the orcs and the Emperor.”

“You must understand, although we had connection to the human world, what you speak of are just the barest hints of legends. Only a few stone tablets remain from that time and those are often regarded as fanciful tales. If the orcs hadn’t attacked, we would not believe you.”

Ella regarded the Nüwa in front of her. Vichama was a much larger version of Sally, long bodied, short powerful arms with four fingers on each, teal scales with dark spots. He wore an elaborate kilt-like skirt and that was it. His eyes were round and protuberant over his snout. And he had a tail that tapered behind him.

The guards that flanked him were more muscular and stocky. Each wore modern tactical gear, but it fit poorly, taken off of orcs perhaps. They had skirts that had been modified to carry plates from the military plate carriers as well. Each carried a curved spear that looked similar to a Japanese naginata and either a wooden bow or a modern composite bow. Many of them had recent wounds. They looked like elites.

“I am also the Emperor’s heir.” she walked around the table slowly, her palms facing forward to show no weapon. Then she let her eyes glow and the crown form. Her clothes began their transformation. It came faster each time and soon she was wearing a dress that was a cross between a Elizabethan royal gown and a saree. Ella’s theory was that her perceptions of formalwear informed what it became within certain parameters. She could not justify the time to study it further. Charlie said it was very Sailor Moon, a show Ella had not seen.

As her eyes glowed, she saw it. Vichama had magic. The others did not.

“We will not tell you about magic, for we see yours. But the Thousand Kingdoms rejoin the world at large. The People return. We are Crown Princess of the Thousand Kingdoms and oppose the Emperor. And we would see your people safe for our friend, Sally.”

“This town is one of many,” Vichama said. “Our people number in the millions. What would you do with them.”

“We intend to clear this land of the orcs. We shall also attempt to close the connection between your land and that of the orcs.”

“And what is the cost of that? Humans are ever mercenaries. Are we to swear loyalty to a monarch?”

Ella let the crown and dress fade. She shook her head. “No. The Aqrabuamelu are mine insofar as they choose, but I do not want more followers. I want to make the re-emergence of the People be as peaceful as possible. So I suppose I want friendship.” Ella thought for a moment, “Oh, and also to let Sally return to her people if she wants.”

“Perhaps… You will understand if our trust of humans is rather thin.”

“And what of the Aqrabuamelu?” Arcsa asked.

“You can always trust an enemy to do what you expect them. But a former enemy? I do not know. I can only speak for our city-state of Nakra. The other nations of our world will have to speak for themselves.”

“That is fine. I do mean it,” Ella said. “Nevertheless, we plan to kill the orcs that besiege your town. How many soldiers do you have?”

And so they hovered over the maps and made their plans.

The fighting was fierce in the town as arrows flew back and forth between the various trees. A combined orc-human infiltration team was sent onto the ground to take a Nüwa vantage point but disappeared, their comms dead.

And then at dusk, the orcs noticed a complete cessation of fire. There were no noises across the way, no arrows. Cautious after months of battle, the orcs were hesitant at this change in strategy until the scouts, perched high in branches, reported a general retreat. The orcs were hungry, tired of living in trees, tired of the battle, and whooped as a collective. The human military advisors warned caution, but were still unsettled in the vicinity of creatures that they had not know existed mere months ago, and didn’t plead too strongly.

Orcs away from the front advanced to the front to provide cover as more and more orcs descended from the trees. Their numbers massed.

“That is a lot more than three hundred…” Ella said as she observed through binoculars.

“More like a thousand.” Davcina said grimly. “That stupid orc. I should have made him live longer.”

“Command, this is Sparrow. Approximately one thousand hostiles identified. Do you copy?”

Sparrow. This is Command Actual. Copy. One thousand enemies inbound.

“Fuck. Will the plan work, Arcsa?” Ella broke radio discipline to ask the important question.

“Doubtful. We didn’t bring nearly enough. Even with the Nüwa soldiers. We are going to have to perform a tactical retreat.”

Ella sat on the branch considering. The rain was coming down in sheets but she ignored it. How long of a slicing wire could she make? Could she separate the formation enough to make the odds closer to even. They had about 300 troops. A fighting retreat with the number of injured Nüwa was a disaster. Why hadn’t she waited to bring more Aqrabuamelu in? She had been so worried about the Nüwa slowly losing position, she had ended up rushing everyone and now potentially killed more of them.

“Negative. Keep the ambush. I will take care of it.” Ella said.

Eleanor. You can’t. You almost killed yourself the last time you did a large piece of magic.

“Maybe I’ll be a better martyred liberator than living goddess. I am doing this. Get the Nüwa scattered and retreating.”

“Davcina. Take two squads and set up snipers along the path. Prioritize the humans, but don’t worry about kills, just get them slow down, stay alive.”

“Yes ma’am.” Davcina lithely jumped from her branch down, swinging to another branch and then scrambling down the tree at a breakneck pace.

The orcs sent two squads of their own ahead. One with a human. Ella pulled down her mask. She let her eyes glow and waited.

Alpha squad moved forward, Sergeant Henry had the lead. He hated the orcs. Filthy creatures, worse than the arabs he had been fighting in Afghanistan. But he followed orders and so he spent his time teaching them.

They exited the tree town into the jungle, carefully following the path the Nüwa had taken in their retreat. Fucking lizards.

Suddenly Henry heard a sound. Like a cracked branch. He held up a fist for the stop and he heard the orcs behind him stumble to a stop. He looked carefully around. Minutes passed.

He signalled to keep moving and did not notice that a small bit of magic had been placed right inside his skull a small supercharged tripwire of magic. How could he have noticed, he did not have any magical senses. The wire sliced neatly through brain matter before dissipating at the skull and he dropped to the ground, convulsing and frothing at the mouth briefly before stilling.

The orcs looked at one another and pulled back. In better order than Sergeant Henry would have ascribed to them to report the death.

Ella waited. She was slowly sawing through a tree with her magic. It was slow going, she could set still tripwires, but couldn’t quite manage to move them easily, but she needed them to move slowly, but not retreat. So lethal traps, but explainable ones. Killing the human scout had been tricky as hell.

She heard the orc soldiers moving up ahead and let her magic flow through her, slowly chiseling out a wedge of the tree.

It was close, she could hear the tree creaking. The soldiers were almost in sight, so she ran away through the woods, making noise to bring them closer.

The soldiers were chasing her and she counted… One… two… three… four… five… And then she whipsawed the magical cutting line through the rest of the tree hard. The rain hid the sweat on her forehead and she felt a bit feint from the sudden movement of magic.

There was a loud cracking sound and Ella couldn’t help it, she looked back. She saw three orcs who had also stopped to look back. One of the large trees, the one she had been cutting, swayed a bit and then started falling, the loud crack of branches. Yells sounded further up and the tree slammed to the ground hard. There were screams of pain.

The three orcs stood for a moment and then turned to face her, faces set in snarls.

Ella drew her sword and rod, pushing them together to make them into the swordstaff and set herself.

One orc pulled a bow and launched an arrow at her in one fluid motion but she blocked it with a wave of the staff and jumped to the right, using her staff to vault over a log and into the brush.

The two other orcs were moving in closer and both pulled longswords. One of them ran up to where she was and used his momentum with a strong swing down and across on a diagonal. Ella planted her staff in the ground and blocked the swing, her hand went slightly numb from the hit, but the sudden stop in momentum caused the orc’s sword to rebound back hard. She stepped forward and stomped on the orc’s leg from the outside and heard the crack of bone. Taking her hand off the staff, she punched downwards across the face.

Then she was diving to the side again, this time in a roll around her staff as another arrow flew threw the air where she had been.

This time she went left and rolled right into the legs of the other orc, knocking him over. She sprung to her feet and started running directly towards the archer who was pulling another arrow to his bow. She wasn’t going to make it in time and she couldn’t pull the same string cutting trick again in time. She kept her pace forward but got ready to dodge. He had his arrow at full draw as she took another step. She could see the his fingers tense on the release and juked right into some brush and then spun around to change her momentum again to the left, her knees screaming under the rapid changes in direction, enforced with beyond human strength. The arrow went flying by her, slicing her cheek slightly.

She was almost in range and the orc leapt into a roll of his own diagonally towards her and pulled a short sword for a neat swing. Ella was only saved through luck as she tripped on a root that she hadn’t seen and went stumbling under the swing of the blade.

Quickly, she punched the base of the spear back and was rewarded when it struck the orc in the abdomen, pushing him back a bit. She swung around with a knee height sweep of the bladed side. The orc lifted up the leg and it swung underneath. Ella continued with the momentum letting it circle up to the side and down across where he caught the sword-end on his short sword. Ella pushed down with her strength and the orc’s eyes widened as she started forcing him down. But she could see the second orc and he was steps away now.

She pushed down hard and then let up, his sword went up at the sudden release of pressure and she pivoted the butt end into his ribs and then did another low sweep, this time catching his thigh brutally. She pulled on it, slicing open and severing muscles just in time for the second orc to arrive.

Ella danced back, leaving the third orc to fall down on the ground.

They circled carefully… Ella did not have time for this before more of the orcs would return. She feinted a thrust with the spear, circled it to smack the back of the orc’s hand, causing him to almost lose his sword. She followed again with another feint, and then swung the butt end of the spear into his sword to knock it up and out of the way. She followed that with a push kick into his gut, and then using the high position of the end of the staff, butted him in the head with it hard.

The orc staggered back and that was it, she swung the sword end down and across,catching him where his head met his neck and biting deep. The sword-staff wanted to twist out of her grip, but she kept her grip tight and kicked the orc’s head, loosening the blade enough to pull it out. Then she took off sprinting to the ambush site not even taking a moment to look back and see the incoming orc troops.

She wove through the trees, being more careful of her footing. If Zaidu had seen her trip like that, he would have made the fight stop just to punish her, she thought. She could see the narrow ravine that they had selected for the ambush and waved her spear.

“Incoming hostiles, where’s command?” Ella yelled.

Arcsa waved his hand from the left wall of the ravine and Ella scrambled up the side.

“We have a couple of minutes. They will be here. We need to bottle up as many as we can in the ravine as we can. I am going to need time though, so try and keep them in here as long as possible.”

“What are you going to do?” Arcsa asked.

But Ella didn’t have time. Her eyes were glowing again, bright and brighter. A vista opened up to her, one of quantum probability and happenstance. The feel of rain, the flash of lightning, the sound of thunder all faded as she gave herself over to it.

Arcsa watched her grimly as her eyes glowed. She would kill herself soon enough using magic she barely controlled. And if it wasn’t here and now, it would happen soon. He would have her lead his people into that better future she wanted before that happened.

A burst of static caught his attention, the radio comms here were prone to significant digital distortion, something about atmospheric ionization. Even though he couldn’t understand the words on the comm, he knew what it was.

He signalled to the other side of the ravine - the enemy was approaching. This ambush required too much choreography, too much serendipity. And that was before the numbers of the orcs had turned out to be significantly more than estimated. What had they been waiting for in those trees. The tree town had been more of a small hamlet, a suburb of a more powerful city-state.

A bird-whistle sound from a tree above him, the scout had spotted orc movement. Arcsa peered through the binoculars and waited. Soon enough he could see platoons of orcs moving through the woods, slowly being forced to the ravine.

But when they reached the mouth, they stopped. The orcs knew this was a likely ambush point. Arcsa waited. This was part of the game. Everyone here had been briefed on what to do.

Two orcs entered the ravine slowly, hugging the sides. They checked the ground for traps and eyed the steep sides. The Aqrabuamelu had carefully cleared all but a few holds for climbing, all carefully selected and hidden.

Arcsa had a bit of space and took some extra leaves and branches and managed to cover up Eleanor before the telltale buzz of a drone sounded. He had hopefully scooped enough mud onto her to cover her thermal signature.

He kept his eyes out for the drone. The telltale noise of it echoed strangely in the trees, making it hard to echolocate. Patience…

Keep waiting. The rain kept pelting them. Ella was still, focusing on something, unmoving. He was fortunate she was looking down and he had covered her, because the amount of light coming from her eyes would have been visible for miles.

He felt a bit tingly and itchy, but it was just nerves. The orcs weren’t advancing. They had left a nice trail of Nüwa tracks running through the ravine. C’mon…

Minutes passed. The orcs were conferring. Two more platoons detached themselves and started advancing. They headed south into the ravine slowly but steadily. They were soaked from the rain. Lightning exposed their featureless visages as they moved forward. At the end of the ravine, two hundred and fifty meters, they set positions and waved back. The bait was set. Steady…

The orcs began to form up in a three abreast line and move steadily. Archers were interspersed with the rest.

Now for the first part…

Arcsa tapped his radio button twice.

Wood arrows started raining down on the first platoons guarding the egress of the ravine. A high pitched keening sounded and three platoons of Nuwa warriors charged the orcs there and engaged in melee combat.

The orcs in the ravine accelerated. If the Nuwa were fighting at the mouth of the ravine, they weren’t waiting in ambush.

Arcsa waited as the main body of the orcs surged forward, steel blades began to appear as they were unsheathed at the run. At fifty yards, Arcsa sent another precoded signal. Additional Nüwa warriors ran up to the egress - to hold the end of the ravine, of course. Not nearly enough to do so. But enough for a few minutes.

There was a loud crash of thunder… it covered the sound of the army running into the Nüwa. The Nüwa held for a moment, for another moment. But it was just a matter of time.

Third signal.

Much like Eleanor had done, two precut trees fell down, cutting off the entry of the ravine, splitting the orc army into half for now.

At the same time, Aqrabuamelu archers began firing into the massed orcs from both embankments. Arcsa among them. Arrow to string, draw, aim at main mass, release. Repeat. Like a metronome.

One after another. The orcs milled about, and some put up shields whereas others pulled their bows and tried to return fire. There were so many of them that even despite the massively disadvantaged position, they were doing real damage.

“Eleanor…” Arcsa said. “If you can here me, now would be a good time.”

His skin itched fiercely now. He felt a bit of tingling in the air and he suddenly had a premonition of what Eleanor was doing.

“Call the retreat…” Eleanor said through her gritted teeth. Her eyes were blindingly bright. Her hair was matted down in disarray from mud and dirt, but a few strands were drifting upwards despite the rain.

Arcsa didn’t waste a moment. An airhorn sounded over the battlefield and the rain of arrows stopped. The Nüwa at the end of the ravine turned around and started sprinting away hard. The orcs took a moment to understand what was happening.

Ella couldn’t see anything besides atoms floating in a jumble of gas at the bottom of the ravine. A stew of electrons which she was forcing into unstable, energetic states. She coaxed them, she pleaded with them to move together, to imagine a world where they liked being close together. To switch from the atoms next to them and shove them downwards to the base of the ravine. A line of negative ionization that traversed the path of the ravine. Chemical reactions began to speed up as negatively charged oxides started to interact with available traces in the air. Carbon dioxide became metastable in its negative charged configuration as they became anions as well. Then she went further and began to shove more electrons in, don’t just take one negative charge, take two. Can you take three? No… Well, I don’t care. Take them anyway.

It was too much… she started screaming. The effort made her head hurt. Her fingers hurt. Her skin hurt.

Arcsa saw her face in a rictus of screaming, “Enough… do it.”

He grabbed her and hoisted her into a fireman’s carry.

“Wait!” she yelled. An arrow from an orc flew towards them but missed.

And then the world went white.