This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/TheRealOne_One on 2025-12-11 10:37:54+00:00.

Commander Vaelik of the Kharuun Collective stood before the tribunal, his mandibles trembling in a way no warrior of his rank would ever admit to.

“We asked for a full report,” Chairwoman Drezhul hissed. “Begin.”

Vaelik activated the holo-sphere. A rotating blue image appeared; Homo sapiens, the room grew strangely quiet.

“You want to know what makes humans dangerous?” Vaelik began.

“Everything.”

He tapped the sphere. It displayed a recording from his ship’s logs: a small human colony, half-destroyed, fires raging, acidic rain falling from the sky.

“There were survivors,” he said. “That wasn’t the frightening part.”

The tribunal exchanged puzzled glances.

“They were… laughing.”

Gasps echoed across the chamber.

“Yes. Laughing. Their structures were collapsing, their food stores gone, and the world itself was trying to kill them. Yet they joked with each other while dragging the wounded to safety.”

Vaelik zoomed in on a group of humans working together, faces streaked with dirt and blood.

“One of my soldiers asked their leader, Captain Amelia Rhodes, why they weren’t panicking.” Vaelik paused. “Do you know what she said?”

He mimicked the human expression lips pulled back, teeth bared.

She said “If we panic, we die. So we don’t.”

“You misunderstand the human threat,” Vaelik continued.

“It isn’t their strength, they are weak. It isn’t their technology, we surpass them. It isn’t even their intelligence, it is erratic and undisciplined.”

He turned off the holo-sphere. Darkness swallowed the chamber.

“It’s their refusal to surrender. Their absolute, unshakeable belief that they will win, even when logic, probability, and nature itself says they won’t.”

He stepped forward.

“We captured one human. A young one. Barely trained. We interrogated him for information.”

“And?” Drezhul asked.

Vaelik’s claws clicked against the floor.

“He asked us when our rescue was arriving.”

A nervous laugh rippled through the tribunal. Vaelik didn’t join.

“You think this is humorous? No. That was not bravado. Humans genuinely believe the universe bends to their will. They assume survival as their default outcome.”

He shifted uncomfortably.

“They call themselves ‘apex predators.’ Not because they are the strongest, but because they simply decided they are.”

The holo-sphere flickered back on, showing footage of humans fighting a creature three times their size with nothing but makeshift spears.

“They do this for fun,” Vaelik whispered.

“There’s something else,” he added. “Something worse.”

The tribunal leaned in.

“We found evidence that humans… seek the unknown. They intentionally walk toward danger. Run toward the screams. Enter environments that would annihilate most species.”

He took a breath.

“They aren’t afraid of the dark.”

A silence fell so heavy it felt physical.

“No,” Vaelik corrected himself. “They fight the dark.”

Drezhul finally spoke.

“What is your recommendation, Commander? Immediate extermination? Containment? Isolation?”

Vaelik shook his head slowly.

“None of those will work.”

The lights dimmed further, a warning alarm pinged from the corridor outside.

Vaelik turned sharply toward the sound, the door controls flickered.

Chairwoman Drezhul squinted. “What is happening?”

Vaelik’s mandibles quivered.

“They followed me.”

The metal door began to bend inward, as if something was pulling it.

Scraping, banging.

A human voice from behind the steel:

“Open the door, Commander. We need to talk.”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/CarterCreations061 on 2025-12-11 03:52:47+00:00.

I was walking with a human one day. It was just a short stroll by a stream. A walk by a river. The human was telling me about his people. How rivers were important for them. They provided the water, the food, the transport for their people when they first evolved. He talked about how their love of gold and all things shiny was based on the innate search for water. How rivers represented their species’ change from wanderers to settlers. But also how rivers allowed for more wandering. For more travelling. The human explained to me the history, the science, and every discipline in between. They talked of numbers and records. 

But then the human did something odd. They stopped suddenly as we went around a bend. They sat down. They invited me to sit as well. The human began breathing deeply. Into their mid-face holes and out of their bottom-face hole. I tried to replicate the action with my neck-holes. I am not sure why, but there was something in the way that the human did this that encouraged imitation. That invited replication. As we sat, and through sitting we became still. The river flowed, and something in me did as well. Flow and stillness became not opposites, but the same.

After several minutes, when the human seemed to be finished, I got the desire to ask them about what had just happened. The human opened their eyes. And then their mouth, 

“This is a river that I came to as a child. Well, it's not the same river, really.”

“Oh, was the one you knew near here?”

“No. It was this spot. It is just not the same river.”

“Has it been reworked by your species? A dam somewhere along the way?”

“If so, that is not what I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I came here, the river was different. It flowed in a different way, it was bent by nature or maybe by us. But I was different too. I cannot return to the same river twice, because it is different, and so am I.”

“That is a very strange thing to say.”

“I am not the first to say it. It was said by someone a long time ago. But it is still true, as much as anything is. I know it is true of my kind. It is also true of the birds and the trees of Earth. I suspect it is true of your kind as well.”

I got the urge to sit still again. 

But the human interrupted, “How about we go for a swim?”

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Wolven91 on 2025-12-10 23:14:47+00:00.

Fince walked through the open area as a bundle of nerves, her eyes flicking from each of the other occupants of the square, to the next, dismissing those with horns and trying to study the ones that remained. Were they who she was looking for? Why were the veils so cursedly popular at the moment?!

It was rare for her to feel this way. Oh sure, she got nervous on the first day on the job. She got nervous when her team went through to the finals of the LM tournament. But this was different. She felt hot, yet cold, itchy and uncomfortable. Her palms were sweating until she had to quietly wipe them against the rear of her pants as she approached the very middle.

She glanced down at herself, tilting her head to cast a critical eye over the smartest shirt she now owned. She'd never used an iron before, but the real, naturally grown material she now wore marked her as someone of at least some note and required it to be crease free. It had cost her the vast majority of her last pay packet, but even she, a luddite in the ways of finery, felt like she belonged while wearing it.

At least a little bit.

She was here because supposedly, a human lived in one of the buildings that overlooked the square Fince was now standing in the very centre of. There was at least one human on this planet that Fince knew for certain and with the rarity that was humanity, the idea that another human might be here was simply too far-fetched.

The taurian looked for the blue outfit the human had worn the night before, the distinctive wide brimmed hat that had concealed his face. At the memory of the human's face, Fince's heart stuttered, and her breath became shaky. Would he wear the same thing? It looked expensive, so he might not be able to afford...? No. As a human, money would be easy for him to get a hold of, he wouldn't be in the same outfit. Don't be stupid. 

Her shoulders heaved as she sighed in frustration. Why was she so obsessed?

Last night, the opening night of the solstice, had been incredible, but when the ending bells rang out for the first night, the human male's protector had materialised, given Fince a strange look and whisked him away, out of each other's arms and around a corner. 'The look' hadn't been disapproving, the elder male hadn't given her a dismissive snort, nor had the elder lifted his snout to indicate Fince was not worthy...

But...

What did a steady gaze mean? He neither ignored, nor shunned her? The loudest part of her mind gave any number of excuses while a tiny voice suggested it meant something positive. The taurian had resolved to ask her brother, next time he called. He knew all about the subtle things in high society unlike her. 

She and the alien male had danced well into the night and even she had to admit that they had danced so well together. The solstice dances had 'official' steps nowadays, yet when the pair had simply let their bodies move, away from the dance floor near the refreshments… oh how they had flowed.

Fince wasn't a poet, or anything fancy like that, but there was no other word to describe it. The human had surprised her with his own moves, made by an alien world far from here, and yet? Fince had reacted with her own movements, merely reacting, not thinking. It was as if the human had blown away cobwebs and smoke that cluttered Fince's mind and they had just... clicked.

Now though? Like an addict waiting for her next fix, Fince was left desperate to just see him once more. That's all she wanted, to see him. By her mother's horns, why was she so itchy!?

The horned taurian ran a smoothing hand along the length of her face, over the top of her head and scratched an itch at the back of her skull, before realising her mistake and quickly rubbing the fur across her muzzle back down flat. Worrying that she had messed up her appearance, her hooves 'clopped' against the marble tiles of the square as she raced towards the reflecting pond to review how she'd messed up her hair style.

She'd spent at least an hour going over every inch of her fur to try and get it as best she could so if she ran into him again, she'd look a sight better than work overalls. She'd even approached one of the male taurians who lived in the same complex to ask for help. At first, he'd quite rightly assumed she was there to ask after him, but had immediately perked up when Fince had explained she wanted tips on how to impress a man.

The rippling reflection looked back up at Fince, the waters mutating her into something any male would be embarrassed to stand beside. She closed her eyes, turned around and sat on the concrete bench that ringed the pond. Opening them, she looked again at the various visitors.

A well-dressed couple walked by, a resplendent male with his face exposed. Not who Fince was looking for, dismissing the objectively handsome male in an instant. A group of three taurians, all facing away, distance made them possibly short enough but horns were visible. Certainly not. Next, a veiled figure in pink satin drew Fince's eye, before she saw a hoof beneath the dress as the male ascended the nearby stairs and lifted the material to prevent him from stepping on the hem.

Curse it!

Fince felt a wave of defeat wash over her. This was foolish. It was the action of a young girl, besotted with the first male she encountered. With a self-admonishing snort, she accused herself that she was about one mental step away from declaring she would marry him as the young often did before they discovered their place in the world. Her shoulders slouched as her place in the world was once more settled across her back like a lead cloak and reminded her of what came from dreaming too big.

There was no reason Fince thought the human would be here today. To be in the same park this morning, after a late night of dancing. Males were more delicate than them, they needed more time to recover. Maybe she should stay here until the evening, so in case he appeared throughout the day and-

No!

She snorted again, balling her fists. This was madness! She didn't even know his name and he never learnt hers, so why would he even remember her? There was nothing other than one mumbled rumour the human even lived nearby! To say he was even within a physical mile of where she was sat was at best a wild guess. He could be busy, he could be-

"May I sit down?" Asked a gentle voice, if not slightly out of breath, the clicking of their approaching hooves on marble ensured Fince this newcomer was too, not who she wished to see.

"Oh course, please excuse me." Fince replied, standing with a flinch and starting a bow at the shrouded individual.

"Oh please don't leave, do you know how hard it is to run in heels? Now *that's* something I never thought I'd say." Came the voice of the concealed taurian, small discs of silver catching the light and flashing Fince. The taurian looked up at the voice, frozen in a half-bow as the speaker gripped his dress, and displayed an intricately woven shoe that raised the wearer up on a single column, mimicking a taurian hoof, despite the alien foot held within the footwear.

No taurian would lift his skirt to a random stranger...

Fince pulled a muscle in her neck with the sheer speed and force of her looking up at the still concealed face. The gloved hand that reached up, delicately pulled the material to one side and the human's grinning face was revealed for her and her alone. He gave her a wink that immediately caused the inside of her ears to burn a deep, deep red as the material was let drop back down, the tiny disks tinkling as it concealed the human's face once more.

"Would you sit with me please? I've been reading etiquette books all morning and apparently a male sat alone is a male with undefended honour. Would you defend me for a bit?" Asked the man, who sat on the concrete bench before gently patting the space directly beside him.

Speechless, Fince sat as requested, giving the male respectful space, yet the human immediately shuffled closer, breaching an unknown number of protocols and social rules.

"I spent all morning watching the people tidy up after last night out here." Explained the male as if discussing the weather. "A few hours later, I look up from a stuffy tomb about which leg of a krad to eat first during a meal and who do I see in my tiny world?" He asked, the hidden face turning to peer at Fince. Even hidden, she could feel his eyes watching hers, freezing her in place.

She wanted this! She'd have given her left horn to have sat down and talked with him. Ask him a hundred questions and tell him everything he made her feel just by being there.

Yet, now he was there, like a dream or fevered hallucination? Her throat had become dry, and she felt a stutter on her lips, waiting for her to speak so it could make a fool of her. She pulled her lips tight and cleared her throat.

"Uh, who?" She asked, voice strained. The veiled male gently bumped her arm and gave a warm, bubbling laugh that felt like wriggling, clawless fingers in her stomach.

"You! I'd recognise your horns anywhere. I still struggle with faces, but the horns help massively."

Fince raised a fist to her mouth and quietly coughed into it. It was all she could do to stop herself from practically leaping off the bench and bellowing to the sparse crowds that the human male recognised *her*, he recognised *her* by ***her horns***!! She wanted to punch the air, but instead settled for quietly vibrating, not to mention trying and fail...

Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1pjhr4p/veiled_heart_chapter_2/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/ImpossibleHandle4 on 2025-12-11 05:31:08+00:00.

It all started on a small outpost near the border with earth. We had been observing the humans for millennia, we had sent probes closer to get a better look at what they were doing, and found that aside from some bad political choices, not much had changed with them.

It was a normal Tuesday when it happened. I was at the control center for the small craft that we were using to “observe”. Things were going normally, I was getting my morning stimulant drink, and then it happened. There was a ripple that I saw out of the corner of my eye, and then a human stepped out.

I stared at it for a few moments, then it said in its language, “huh cool, it actually worked. I thought the dude was full of crap, but it actually worked.”

We had no protocol for first contact, much less a protocol for humans materializing into our craft. I screamed out for the doctor and the security officer.

The doctor took the human and started scanning him. “Nothing remarkable.” He said.

The security officer came up and put a chair in front of the human.

“So tell me human, how the hell did you get here?” He asked in his best human language.

“I bought the plans off of the internet from the guy who claimed that he could reach into another dimension and grab things, and that was how he got rich. I didn’t think it would actually work.” The human said.

“What plans and what are you talking about?” The security officer asked.

“I bought the plans for the dimensional portal, I thought it was junk so I did some math and then sized it up to fit all of me.” The human said.

“So you created a dimensional portal and then just appeared on our craft?” The security officer asked sounding incredulous.

“Yep, I don’t even really know where here is. If I am honest.” he said. “ You guys at least speak my language, so I am hoping you can get me home.”

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.” The security officer said in their native language.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“He built some thing in his garage that he used to effectively teleport here. They shouldn’t even have access to that level of mathematic function, much less the ability to make a functional prototype.” He huffed. “I don’t think he even realizes what he has done. “

“So how do we get him home? Just do what we do when we do an examination and steal his prototype?” I asked.

“That sounds good to me.” the security officer said.

We held him for a few hours asking him about the math. He explained that he had just sized up the math for a portal his size, and then figured the mass difference and then added that to the power needs.

When we got to his home, we gave him the standard amnestics, and planted a story that his microwave had shorted out in his garage. We took a copy of the plans, and then left for the home world. We had avoided a major incident, but we were not sure how long that would last………

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/rewt66dewd on 2025-12-11 01:00:04+00:00.

"You will become our slaves as of now, or you will die. Since you do not want to... is that a human?"

"I am human, yes," Carlos answered.

"Wonderful!" The seven-foot-tall thing that looked like an alpaca with four arms was obviously excited. "Human slaves are very rare! They sell for a very high price!"

"Should you maybe ask why they're so rare?"

"I know your reputation. But I control your life or death, and therefore you will do what I say. So, now we will go to our ship, and you will be our slaves." The alpaca made a gesture with the gun it held in one hand.

Carlos rose, and slowly walked in the direction indicated. He walked right past the alpaca. As he passed, he smashed upward with an elbow, hitting the thing at the base of the head. There was a cracking sound, and the thing collapsed. Carlos picked up the gun.

His crewmates, Blooj and Chalchanala, stared at him. Blooj demanded, "Are you out of your mind?"

"Nope. Very much not."

"They will kill you! And us too!"

"If they kill me, you tell them that the human went crazy, and did whatever he did on his own. You had nothing to do with it."

"But they'll still kill you!"

"Yeah, maybe they will."

"Aren't you afraid of death? I thought humans were."

"I don't want to die," Carlos admitted. "I'm pretty terrified right now, to be honest. But there are other things I fear, too. I fear slavery. I fear it not just for itself, but for the person I would become if I were a slave for long. I fear that..." he hesitated. "Maybe as much as dying, or close. So anyway, I'm trying this."

"But the rest of their ship will come, and this will be for nothing!"

"No," Carlos said, "not for nothing. These guys are obviously from a Gzaal outpost that hasn't been destroyed yet. Their ship isn't all that big. It looked like maybe room for 20, but they can't have that many and still have room for slaves. So, maybe 10 on board, maybe 15? So even getting one is doing a fair amount of damage."

Then came the smile, the smile that Blooj and Chalchanala would never forget for as long as they lived, the smile and the gun in Carlos's hand. "But 15 is not that many. And we're already docked with them..."

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/GreedyIndependence65 on 2025-12-10 22:51:44+00:00.

It was at 3:16 AM when Mark was done. It wasn't the day before, when the government announced the implementation of another stupid idea and the third shooting of the week occurred. It wasn't at 2:17 AM, when he read the emergency alert on his phone announcing, "Alert, all residents are advised to evacuate due to [REDACTED]. In accordance with [REDACTED] any attempt to [REDACTED] is unlawful. Please await further [REDACTED]. This is not a [REDACTED]."

No, Mark finally threw up his hands and said, "Fuck it" at exactly 3:16 AM when he couldn't find the can opener.

Entering the garage to grab tools, Mark worked in his backyard with a fury that put to shame the greatest of 1980’s montages.  Parts clanged, tools were thrown, and incomprehensible curse words echoed through the neighborhood, but finally, after 16 hours, Mark was finished.

Unshowered and still wearing his clothes from the prior day Mark returned to his house. He grabbed a case of bottled water, all the Ramen noodles he could find, and that damned can of tuna.  Walking back to his creation, arms overloaded, his sweatpants caught and tore on the doorframe, it didn’t matter.

Dumping the load of supplies into the suitcase bolted to the plywood base, Mark removed and discarded the torn sweatpants before opening the door to his creation.  Procured from his neighbors shed, it didn’t fit well but the spray foam seemed to fill the gap.

Taking his seat in the lawn chair, Mark tied the 550 cord around his waist and secured his bike helmet tightly.

“Safety first” he muttered, before flipping the light switch he’d torn from the bathroom wall.

At first, nothing happened.  Slowly, a whine like a supercharger pushed past its limits became louder and the interior of Mark’s creation filled with an acrid smoke.  Suddenly, in a flash of light and a ball of electrical energy, Mark and his contraption disappeared from the yard.

His neighbor, just having noticed his pilfered shed door, stood at his kitchen window looking at the scorched ground where Mark had been sitting inside his creation.  He blinked.  Blinked again and then returned to scrolling his phone as he muttered, “Not my problem.”

Looking through the glass pane which had so recently been his bedroom window, Mark, bowl of ramen in hand, grinned at the sight before him, an endless field of stars stretched before him.  While he had done the math, as evidenced by the crayon marks on the plywood floor, and was pretty sure the microwave had enough power, he remained quite pleased wherever he was, Earth was not in sight.

However, despite his excitement, Mark had to admit a problem was developing.  Moving ever closer, at an alarming speed, what appeared to be a space station of incredible proportions loomed in his path.  He needed to slow his approach.  It was time to deploy his parachute.

“Space debris approaching at extreme velocity.  Repair crews, prepare for emergency hull breach mitigation” the AI on the space station announced.

“Admiral, the space debris seems to have released a sheet of cloth.  It appears to be, somehow, slowing the mass.” A voice called out in the command center.

“What? Are you telling me it released a parachute, and it worked, in space?!” the Admiral responded.

“Yes Admiral, and it appears, somehow, to be navigating to the bay doors.”

"...Open the bay doors. And get medical standing by. Or... engineering. I want security there! I don't know what we're dealing with." The Admiral stated as he walked out of the bridge, headed to the landing bay.

As Mark’s creation came to a sudden stop on the floor of the station landing bay the sudden jolt caused him to spill his remaining ramen.

“Damnit, it’s the only shirt I brought!  Now I have to talk to these guys in a dirty shirt.” Mark said. “Fuck it” he muttered.

“Guess it’s time to say ‘Hi’” Mark thought.

Opening his neighbor’s shed door, Mark stepped out of his creation to a crowd of anxious aliens.

“Greetings! I’m Mark.” Mark said, arms lifted far above his head.

“Greetings Mark. You…are human.” The Admiral said.

“I am and you are not, which is good!”

“Correct, I am Alvany.  You are aboard the Earth Research Station. We have been monitoring your species for Centuries, Earth time. I’m sorry but we were unaware your species had developed FTL.”

“Oh, we haven’t.” Mark said flatly.

“But, your ship, the ‘Gas, Ass, or Grass, it uses FTL.” The Admiral stated.

“Oh, no, that’s not FTL.  I just had to get out of there.  It’s nuts down there.” Mark said as he cheerfully looked about, waving at random guards. “And, what’s that about Gas, Ass, or Grass?”

“Your ship name, it is written there on the side.” The Admiral stated, clearly annoyed.

“That? Nah, I ran out of duct tape and found that bumper sticker in the garage.  It’s just covering a hole in the wall.” Mark said

“Right… So, what is your ship named?”

“I dunno, I just call it ‘ship’”

“Regulation requires a ship name, and as it is the only writing I see…” the Admiral said as he looked to his aid, “Log the ‘Gas, Ass, or Grass’ as having arrived and initiating first contact.”

“Oh God, you’re going to keep calling it that? That’s not really fair.  The rest of it tore off when I released the parachute.”

“Yes, about that. How exactly did you make a parachute work in space?”

“I dunno. It’s the fitted sheet off my bed.”

“Of course. Well, usually first contacts are a bit more professional and difficult than this, but, as we already know your language, perhaps I could ask a question?”

“Yeah, sure, why not?”

“Perhaps I am mistaken, but doesn’t your species normally wear more clothes?”

“Well, look, I wasn’t even sure this thing would work.  I certainly didn’t think I would find anyone out here.  I expected privacy and, you know, who needs pants anyway?”

“And…your shirt?”

“I spilled my ramen when I landed.  Can’t show up to a first contact in a stained shirt!”

“Right…”

“So, you get me in my tighty whities, in all my glory!”

“Wonderful…” The Admiral mumbled. “I need to inspect your ship, for safety reasons.”

“Oh, sure. Just don’t touch the microwave, it gets really hot.”

“The what now?”

“The microwave. Screw it, I’ll just show you” Mark said as he opened the shed door and gestured for the Admiral to enter first.

Following Mark, a few of the other aliens invited themselves in.

“Huh, three’s a crowd, but ok.  See, I put the car batteries in the microwave to charge ‘em.  Then, I power the microwave with the batteries.  I wrote the calculations there on the floor, if you’re interested.” Mark said proudly.

“But, excuse me, Mark. That’s just a crude drawing of an Earth chicken and several swear words.  Also, some blood, which I assume is yours.” One of the uninvited aliens mentioned.

“I must agree with Engineer Xlon, that does not appear to be Earth, or any other type, of math” the Admiral said confused.

“Yeah, but it works. Hey, why you asking me anyway?”

“Because you pilot it, right?” Engineer Xlon said disapprovingly.

“Yeah, well, it’s all a bit complicated anyway.  I am so happy to meet you guys.  Want some ramen?”

“Uhh, no.  Thank you, Mark.  Consumption of so much sodium would kill us.” The Admiral spoke as he looked over Mark’s lawn chair.

“Oh, dang. That sucks. You want some tuna? If so, I need a can opener.”

“No, Mark, we do not want any of your food. We are just a bit confused. This ship you have built, the ‘Gas, Ass, or Grass’, it should not be here.”

“Sorry, I didn’t know.  Want me to leave?”

“No…” the Admiral started to speak as he sighed in exasperation.

“Mark, I believe what the Admiral is trying to say is your ship is physically impossible. Your FTL and thrust comes from a microwave with batteries in it, scanners indicate 63% of the structural integrity comes from duct tape, and you appear to control the ship with a child’s RC car controller. You have a map of Florida taped to the wall, which I assume is your navigation system.  Quite honestly, we cannot understand why or how your government sent you here in… this.” Engineer Xlon stated.

“Oh, no.  I am not from any government.  I’m just some guy.  I made this in my yard. I just couldn’t take it down there anymore, ya’ know? Like, sorry guys but I am out.”

“Wait, you built this, yourself, in your yard?” The Admiral screeched. “How long did it take?”

“About 16 hours.  It would have been faster but I kept dropping the screws.”

“And does your government know you are here?”

“I dunno, I doubt it.  Maybe my neighbor saw me?”

“Oh Gods! This is a disaster. First contact from Earth is with “just some guy” in his underwear.  Get him out of there and put some clothes on him!” the Admiral screamed as he marched away.

“Oh, yes please.  Clothes would be nice.  It’s a bit cold in here”

“Yeah, we can see that.” A medical officer chirped as Mark walked past, following the Admiral.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/micktalian on 2025-12-10 21:44:09+00:00.

Part 153 Good Times (Part 1) (Part 152)

[Support me of Ko-fi so I can get some character art commissioned ~~and totally not buy a bunch of gundams~~ and toys for my dog]

Almost every single person who joined in on the tour of the yet-to-be-named new school-ship had decided to stay for dinner. Only War Chief Msko, Old Man River, and a couple of professors with families at home took the Nishnabe shuttle when it left on schedule. Everyone else was now mingling in a small courtyard featuring several seating areas, a large banquet table covered in diverse foods, and a fully stocked self-service bar with a dozen brews on tap. Though many had initially clustered into groups based on subject expertise and personal familiarity, that didn't last too long. Strangers were joking with each other just an hour after the food was brought out by drones. Even Morning Dew wandered away from Zika and Chu to make new friends.

Things were going so well that NAN couldn't help but observe the various interactions. Their original mission when it came to humanity was to perform ethnographic research. They had learned that people watching at a party is the best way to understand the human species. These kinds of situations where food and drink are in abundance seem to bring out a primal desire to make friends. Most social species, especially those from deathworlds where food may have historically been scarce, are the same way. Even many forms of life that tend to prefer solitude will happily partake in this kind of festivity. However, it isn't particularly common for complete strangers to mingle together so casually regardless of how social the species is. Though Qui’ztars are more willing to mingle with members of other species than most, they still tend to be fairly reserved around strangers. The four present at this party, however, perfectly matched the candor of the humans.

Tensebwse has always been the perfect example of this phenomenon. NAN had observed him making friends with literally anyone who would talk to him. Three-quarters of his twenty closest childhood friends were other species, including a couple Penidons. Perhaps that innate skill had been slowly training these particular Qui’ztars how to fit in perfectly with humans. Maybe other humans present had been granted the same gift that Tens had. When NAN turned their gaze towards the group Tens was a part of, they realized Tens's near-supernatural abilities were on full display. A Qui’ztar Fleet Admiral, someone who would usually publicly present herself in a prim and proper manner no matter the occasion, was relaxed enough to get tipsy, show a real smile, and laugh like she didn't have a care in the world.

“Oh, no, no, don't get me wrong. It’s not necessarily the physical size and scope of your university that I was fascinated by.” Admiral Atxika found the conversation she was having with a couple Martian professors to be quite enjoyable despite the occasional mistake made by their translation devices. “It actually is fairly common for Ascended species to consolidate their higher educational institutions in a manner similar to ChaosU. The university I attended has similar enrollment numbers, the same diversity in courses, and also stretches across several dozen square kilometers. No, I was referring to its size in the context of the Aram colony itself. A fully self-sufficient and autonomously expanding habitat capable of housing hundreds of millions of people on an otherwise barren planet is practically unheard of in galactic history. The fact it's centered around a university makes the whole thing that much more interesting.”

“Really?” Professor Maria O'Hare-Tseib, an older and quite prominent member of the Ethnography division of ChaosU's History Department, found this large woman to be fascinating for far more than just her appearance and knowledge. Though she wasn't sure at first, and still didn't want to say anything about it, a few of the click-sounds Atxika used felt incredibly similar to the Khoekhoe language passed on to her by her mother. “That is… Not what I expected to hear but fascinating nonetheless. Many of my colleagues operate under the assumption that any sufficiently advanced species would inevitably create more living space for an ever-increasing population. Para-terraforming is what they argue will be the most efficient way to do that. But they also believe all intelligent species will inevitably grow and spread across every planet they possibly can, including barren planets like Mars.”

“They just don't understand.” Bjorn Sebro, a biology professor specializing in speculative xenobiology and who has a nearly identical accent to Skol Eitri but also a nearly opposite appearance, raised his frosty beer mug while interjecting. “Too many people on Earth and Mars make too many silly assumptions about population growth dynamics. They always assume anything capable of unimpeded growth will then grow exponentially. But from what I have read on the Nishnabe Web, most species tend to settle at between ten and thirty billion people. But I couldn't really find a reason why.”

“I can't say I'm well versed in population totals or growth dynamics, especially across all Ascended species.” Atxika paused for just a moment to take a sip from her fourth perfectly brewed amber ale. “But I do believe I remember something about biomass, metabolism, and inherent matter-energy limits acting as counterforces to exponentially growth.”

“Exactly!” Despite being a fairly large man capable of holding his liquor, the way Bjorn waved his mug around and his occasional use of Norwegian words gave away just how much he had indulged in the self-service bar. “You wouldn't happen to know of any academic sources I could cite about this would you, Atxika?”

“Sadly, I do not.” Atxika may not have been as drunk as Bjorn but she was likewise starting to slip in more and more of her own native language instead of galactic common. “It's been decades since I attended university. I barely even remember my military administration courses, let alone anything else.”

“I'm sure you could find what you're looking for on the Nishnabe Web, Bjorn.” Maria placed a gentle hand on the tall, black haired man's shoulder then pointed towards the table covered in food. “But first you should eat some more and maybe drink some water. That's what? Your tenth beer in the past two hours?”

“Ha! It's good beer! Ha-hahaha!” The Norwegian biologist let out a bellowing laugh before that quickly turned to a short bout of coughing. “Kuh… Ehhh… You're right, Maria. Excuse me, Atxika, Tens.”

“That guy likes to drink.” Though Tens had mostly been silent as to not accidentally embarrass his beloved, he was starting to lose control of his inner gremlin. “Is that a common thing on Mars?”

“Many Martian men often drink too much. Especially the Europeans.” The half-Namibian ethnographer spoke in her mother's native tongue and just so happened to use certain click-sounds that instantly grabbed Atxika's attention. “My father was the same way.”

“Can you say that again?” Atxika asked while pressing a button on her in-ear translator.

“My father was the same way?” Maria knew exactly the exact sound Atxika was curious about but decided it would be funnier to play dumb and reply in perfect English.

“No, no, in that language you just used!” As tipsy as Atxika may be, she caught on to the joke immediately and laughed with the dark skinned woman with a naturally-red afro. “It sounded very familiar.”

“Oh… You mean the…” Though Maria was often annoyed when people asked her to use the clicks common in her mother's traditional language, she demonstrated several for the alien and her semi-alien human lover. “...Sounds?”

“Wow!” Tens showed the same reaction that most other humans did when hearing a Khoekhoe dialect spoken so fluently. Atxika, on the other hand, was momentarily shocked into silence as her smile grew even wider. “I didn't know humans could make sounds like that so naturally.”

“See Tens!” Atx quickly regained her wits and proceeded to playfully smack her Nishnabe lover in the chest. “If she can use all of those distinct clicks, you can learn Qui'txotlovkem without cheating!”

“Nama and other Khoekhoe dialects are relatively difficult to learn and pronounce for most people.” Maria giggled at the overly aggressive manner with which Atxika teased Tens. “And I believe I also heard you make the affricate ‘tl’ sound used in the Nahuatl language, Atxika. That one can also be confusing for many people. I know it was for me.”

“How many languages do you know?” Tens wanted to skirt past the topic of him learning to use clicks but didn't want to be too obvious about it.

“Not including dialects of the same language, twenty four.” An unmistakable twinkle of pride appeared in Maria’s eyes as she took a sip of the cocktail she had been nursing for the past half hour. “Nama, English, Mandarin, Spanish, German, Russian, Zulu, and !Kun are the ones I am most proficient in. But I am conversational in several North American traditional languages. Just none of the Algic ones, so no Anishinaabemowin.”

“Eee! That's the old, old pronunciation!” The Nishnabe warrior gave his exaggerated frown and subtle nod of approval. “We just s...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Psychronia on 2025-12-10 22:46:39+00:00.

First | Previous

Change of Heart

(Daya POV)

"Afternoon, Daya!"

"You alright, bud? You seem off."

"Doing just fine. Just mulling over some stuff, but thanks for asking."

Daya grit his teeth and showed his canines to 'smile' at the Uvei workers. He was making his rounds through the Mott's Shell shipping yard.

This business wasn't the only thing that had undergone vast growth recently. The Vesnin would like to think he'd gotten braver, but in truth he just didn't find the Uvei scary anymore. It was just a matter of getting to know the right people to give him the right perspective.

They were bigger than him, with fangs and claws that could easily tear him apart. But ever since he got to know Gretal and got used to reading an Uven's body language, it was painfully obvious how hard all the Uvei on the S.S. Kalen were trying to be nice to other races.

To be exact, they always took care to act incredibly delicately around non-Uvei. It was to the point that they were all perpetually stressed on some level.

With a breath, Daya flipped to the last page of his inventory list. While he was at it, he double-checked the condition of every shipping vessel he inspected.

Jacey had speculated that most of them were afraid of getting kicked off the station and being forced to go back to Nysis. Gretal insisted that many of them wanted to make friends outside the complicated web of relations between Uven nationalities; apparently, Uvei struggled to make friends especially with each other, but still craved companionship.

Fortunately for their employees, Mott's Shell had soon become a place where they could be themselves. Sometimes there was friction due to the aforementioned nationalities bringing baggage from Nysis's conflicts, but it was surprisingly easy to handle due to three parties.

There were the peace-loving Terrans who were proficient in deescalation. They were naturally trusted mediators as a people who accepted them fairly unconditionally, which made smoothing out grudges much easier.

The second was Daya himself. Though, if asked, he would admit that he just blindly invited them to regular hangout nights and lucked out. By chance, their first game night was also the first time Uvei of discordant factions attended together. Somehow, that snowballed into weekly competitions of various sorts to vent out any hard feelings. The contests could get intense, but the Uvei were surprisingly good sports by the end of each one.

...If anything, Daya was the sore loser. He wasn't sure whose influence that caused this, but he'd develop a habit of raging and going on a tirade of expletives. The Uvei workers all burst out laughing the first time he went on a tirade using Uven "vocabulary".

The last peace maker in Mott's shell was, of course, Jacey himself. While he was also a human, his approach was decidedly more heavy-handed than the others-not to mention, he was the owner of the company itself and had direct authority over his employees.

The Vesnin didn't know his exact approach, but when conflicts escalated and reached him, he would call the involved parties individually into his office for a private talk. Between 20 and 90 minutes later, the Uvei would leave in a much more docile state than before. Even if there were the occasional passive-aggressive comments, fights never escalated again when this happened.

When asked, all Jacey would say was that he'd helped them get some perspective and threatened some "standard disciplinary action" if it happened again. Certainly, no violence was involved, but the something made the Uvei nervous after the experience.

In fact, they seemed to become more courteous to their Terran coworkers afterwards as well. The other humans seemed more chagrined at the increased distance though.

...

Jacey was not the typical human.

That much was obvious by now, but Daya had only recently come to terms with this realization. Even now as he tallied off his clipboard, his mind danced around this information.

It wasn't that his friend was particularly extraordinary or exceptional. At times, he seemed to be able to read and anticipate everything someone did, like the space pirate attacks. And other times, Jacey was completely caught off-guard by some small thing one of his two friends did, like guessing his favorite food during a snack run.

Jacey was simply...different.

He'd originally found this different nature more approachable and wanted to befriend Jacey for it. But-

"...."

Daya hated to admit it, but sometimes he would catch himself tensing up when he had to show his back or neck to Jacey. And that was a bad feeling to have about a reliable friend who has only been good to him.

Compared to that, it was actually easier to talk to the usual human coworker now. It turns out that most of them happily respected any boundaries he set with them and the ones who were poor at that got naturally reined in by the ones who weren't.

His experiences with them still made the motion to reevaluate their Aggression rating silly, but when he considered Jacey, that skepticism suddenly seemed more...

Maybe humans had that biological classes like the Eulsics, where members with different body types performed specialized jobs...?

Pausing his inspection, Daya took a seat and sighed softly. He returned a tail gesture from some passing Uvei giving him a non-verbal greeting.

If he could, would he trade this new understanding and closeness to the other Uvei and humans for how things used to be with Jacey?

....

Whether by emotional attachment or by what he believed to be objective self-reflection, he didn't think he would.

(Gretal POV)

"Jacey."

"Gretal."

The two friends greeted each other in the break room. The human was watching something on the television when the Uven entered. Mott's Shell offered amenities for employees to relax, but Jacey specifically arranged a smaller, private area for the trio.

It had been over a month since Gretal had confronted the greatest and gravest revelation of his life.

He was practically inconsolable for the first week, resorting to locking himself up in a cargo container and thrashing about from within until it was unusable and his claws bled. If Daya didn't occasionally visit with food, water, and sleeping medication, he may have been much worse for wear.

While he had calmed down significantly since then, it couldn't be said that his fury subsided at all. Even now, a fire burned in his chest until it ached. Recently, self-reflection about this feeling he had made him curious.

"May I...ask you something?"

"Mm? It depends on the question but go ahead."

[To whom could he direct this rage? Who could he hurt to make it right? Who deserved the blame for his pain? How could he hurt them like they hurt him? Why did he have to feel like this?]

The same few questions and feelings had echoed in Gretal's heart for some time. And, friend that he is, Jacey helped with every one.

While the Uven raged away within that steel container, Jacey diligently continued collecting information. Names, groups, locations. By the time he came out, the human had prepared a detailed list that grew for weeks.

As he recovered in a clinic, they discussed the next course of action.

Daya naturally suggested telling all the Uvei they could, Jacey half-rejected it for two reasons.

For one, this sort of knowledge would almost certainly incite riots of a history-shifting scale with a great deal of group violence.

It was hard to describe the Vesnin's expression when Jacey went on to explain that they should time the revelation so that the masses would deal maximal damage to the culprits.

And the second reason was the human's personal suspicions that their information could get intercepted without preparation.

It seemed that there was also suspicion the involvement of some Coalition races as well. It was just speculation, but Jacey believed that meat synthesis should have been offered to different Uven nations throughout the centuries. Since no news had broken out, someone was taking advantage to technology being monopolized during war and those same people would be vigilant of third parties looking to end their cash cow.

He and Daya still felt that the common Uvei deserved to know, so the trio compromised by slowly bringing employees of Mott's Shell in the know. One by one, they would secretly meet and tell an Uven along with their closest human friend to support them through their own "episodes".

And that brought Gretal to today. The Who and How weren't the questions nagging at him at this point. Instead, he had come to a realization-or perhaps a theory would be more accurate.

"Jacey...what made you like this?"

"...."

Since he started grappling with this deep anger that made him want to hurt as he has been harmed, Gretal was reminded of how Jacey sometimes behaved-especially when their first met.

The human generally behaved with restraint in day-to-day life, but the way he reacted to certain developments made it clear.

He was always looking for an excuse to act without restraint, and he had a deep desire to inflict harm.

Gretal hadn't encountered humans...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KamchatkasRevenge on 2025-12-10 22:32:50+00:00.

Joan 

The base camp for this little shindig is packed, even at this early hour. 

A decent group from the ship's crew had come, including Zraloc and a few of the Crimsonhewers; interestingly, Chaisa Rauxtim had made a point of attending both the previous evening's sendoff and the actual match, despite not having given much impression of being particularly interested in combat sports. Of course, she’s very interested in one particular participant. Joan had seen her giving Jerry some sort of token after the formal part of last night's shindig, just before the commandos had slipped off. 

All of it was a wonderful distraction as Joan continued to duck and dodge Sister Catherine and the ship’s new Catholic mission. It had made for some rather uncomfortable moments, with Joan managing to avoid taking the ancient holy relic ‘Cathy’ earnestly said belonged to her. Luckily, the enthusiastic sister of one of the major Human Gods was nowhere to be seen this morning so she could enjoy the match and the accommodations in peace.

The pavilion is huge, and very comfortable indeed. Which was good considering it was packed to the brim with people. More civilians than Joan had been expecting too… including more than a few Cannidor women that Joan didn’t recognize with all manner of people who hadn’t had any Cannidor in their families previously, such as Colonel Forsythe’s wives… and not even half of those Cannidor ladies were wearing the types of clothing preferred by the warrior caste on the homeworld, which was interesting too.  

The pavilion had bench seating around tables for large groups, clusters of cushioned ‘couches’ and comfortable chairs with small tables to host snacks, drinks or similar refreshments. Most of it was here normally so far as Joan could tell but had clearly been cleaned and spruced up to ensure the best possible presentation.

While it was a bit early in the day for booze there’s plenty of breakfast available and promises of further meals and refreshments in case the match goes all day… and a proper feast at the end even if it doesn't. The food was absolutely top quality and the security was done up to the nines as well to ensure the warriors in particular could relax. It made sense though, with the stakes high and this whole thing very much being a political circus, the Head Clan was making a show of their own hospitality. 

That said, as far as Joan knows, the gamblers that actually know what a Human is, and how Humans fight, had put their chips on things being decided either overnight or very quickly around dawn. 

Clearly, the latter camp had been right. Which was convenient as Joan, her sisters, and the cadets had all thrown credits down on just that. Sure, letting teenage girls gamble might not be the most responsible call ever made, but considering the girls had all just won themselves some decent pocket money to buy supplies for their first deep space tour, Joan figures it broke even. 

As the pavilion erupts into an absolute cacophony all around her, Joan resists cheering along with the cadets, her charges for the day, along with her sisters, Enrika and Lursa. She stays reasonably disciplined, all told, as she watches her father burn Khan Halgret's actuators with warfire, locking her in place on her knees before forcing her to yield instead of 'killing' her. 

She wants to cheer, of course, but it'd potentially be undignified, and she’s the senior warrior in the family present besides Zraloc and Mother Wichen -who has other things on her mind, it seems.

The Feli woman’s hard at work on an armored gauntlet from one of the new cadets’ hard suits. The design’s getting special attention for Wichen because she wants it to be able to grow with the girls without having any weaknesses, a feat of engineering that’s... a lot, when one considers how much growing the cadets still have to do. 

Mind you, Mother Wichen, seemingly utterly engrossed in her work, is paying enough attention to glance up at the screen at the climax of the fight, grin wickedly, and let out a laugh. "Hah. That'll learn her." 

So maybe Joan and Zraloc are the only ones on their best behavior.

The cadets are much more vocally enthusiastic, with Anika in particular actually standing on her chair; the younger girls, joined by Makula, Enrika and Khutulun, and a great many more of the Cannidor who were watching, are all making an even more absolute fuss. A good old-fashioned beat down is always a crowd pleaser at this sort of thing, even without actually spilling blood. 

There was some confusion, concern, consternation even from some quarters if Joan actually focused her hearing. A reevaluation of Humans was clearly due for a decent chunk of the warrior caste, for not only had they stood up against what was clearly a superior force on paper, they had soundly defeated their enemy even before their Khan had delivered the coup de grace in single combat. 

The way Joan saw it, this meant the Undaunted and Humanity were going to be getting more friends among the Cannidor in a hurry. They’d been impressive before, an Apex species who were as eager to adopt power armor as Cannidor warriors were to use it, but now? Now it had been made clear that Human warriors could equal Cannidor warriors, using only the weapons and martial traditions of their homeworld. 

Without axiom. 

One voice, however, is most certainly not happy. A Cannidor woman leaps to her feet shouting, "This is an outrage! This disgrace will not stand!" 

Joan would have been willing to bet that this is one of Khan Halgret's daughters, and the woman confirms it by storming over to the watching Undaunted. "You! Any of you! Your Khan has shamed my house and my mother! I demand restitution! One of you duel me, damn it!" 

Joan arches an eyebrow, then suppresses a grin as she waves her sisters down, turning to Wichen and grabbing the cadet’s gauntlet. 

"Mind if I borrow this?"

"...Sure?" Wichen says, curious and paying attention as she realizes some ranting madwoman is actually threatening them. 

Joan gets up and walks over to the daughter of Halgret.

"I am Joan of Bridger. In my father and Khan's name, I'll tan your hide like you're apparently begging for."

"You accept my challenge, then?" the woman all but shouts, turning to face Joan, clearly absolutely furious.

"In the Human manner, I accept."

"In the Human man-"

Joan takes up the gauntlet in her right hand and slaps the daughter of the Halgret hard across the muzzle with it.

"That is the Human way to accept a duel."

It’s generally done with a glove, of course, but what’s a gauntlet if not a glove?

The Daughter of Halgret - who still hasn't bothered to introduce herself - rubs her now sore jaw and spits out a few teeth, before snarling at Joan. "Any more Human rules I need to know about before I send you back to your thrice-damned father in a bodybag?"

"Duel to submission, then? Alright. What's humiliating one more Halgret today? Come on, wretch, at least have the discipline to make it to the squared circle before attacking like the poorly bred mongrel you clearly are." 

Joan tosses the gauntlet to one of her sisters and turns to walk out towards one of the dueling pits, keeping her tail positioned to ensure the Halgret girl doesn't actually snap and full-on attack her while her back is turned. 

This type of place always has a few dueling pits, mostly for recreation rather than honor disputes. Good fights on the holo could get Cannidor overly excited, and a little violence while watching violence is generally the most efficient way to blow off steam. 

They’re nice dueling pits too, sunk into the ground but with plenty of room for two full grown Cannidor to brawl to their heart's content.

"Weapons? Or we doing this bare handed?"

"Claws and fangs in the old way!"

"Your funeral," Joan says, smirking as she turns at the far end of the dueling circle and offers the other woman the most casual bow and places her right fist against her left palm, a bare handed salute she'd learned from her father, Mother Aquilar and Mother Masha with all her other training. 

She'd been training with them a lot recently for more than just the Apuk leap, and there were few things that Humans or Apuk seem to like more than a good barehanded brawl. 

A deep feminine voice clears her throat at the side of one of the pits, and the shadow of Chaisa Rauxtim looms over them. "As a judge of the Primal of Justice, I shall officiate this match and render judgement upon the combatants."

The Halgret girl still hasn't introduced herself. Merely looks up at Chaisa... and nods. "The Primal of Justice? Fine. Whatever." 

Chaisa spears the other woman with a glare. "Both fighters will comport themselves under standard Cannidor rules for a barehanded match. If a fighter fails to stop on the gong or the order 'Stop', I will stop them by force. If a fighter attempts to kill or grievously injure the opponent beyond the intent of such a duel, by my goddess's will you shall regret it." 

She looks Joan in the eyes, then the other girl's; her golden orbs brook no argument and accept no dissent. As nice as she could be in the Den, Chaisa Rauxtim is a very scary woman when she’s the law incarnate. 

"Begin!" 

Sure enough, just like Joan had expected, the Halgret woman dashes at her in a low tackle. In a real fight, Joan would probably just trip her then do horrible things to her while she was on the ground, but this is a duel, and there are...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/KyleKKent on 2025-12-10 22:03:39+00:00.

First

It’s Inevitable

“Well, that’s going into the report. I wonder if they’ll have time with how busy the group is to speak to me before we depart.” Observer Wu asks as he looks over the picture of the large Hawaiian man holding a quartet of tiny pale blue babies with tiny pink caps on and big brown eyes.

He checks the time and he still has an hour or so until his next interview. He needs to go over the data files. So he brings up the massive archive he got from The Floric. The Tundra Sons... one of many scholarly organizations to a species that at first glance seemed to be more a nightmare made physically manifest than a people, but who were just as varied, deep and dynamic as any other.

But at the base biological level it was... hard to tell what to actually rate the Floric as. They walked upright and spoke and reasoned like people, but they were composed almost entirely of hybrid plant matter. But at the same time the plant matter also had some kind of... stem cell almost? The type of plant could shift with the exception of basically gourds that function as he head and backup brains inter-spaced throughout the body. They could be fungal, arboreal or floral with all sorts of combinations and far more besides. The entire species was massively mutable and enduring. And they had to be. Their homeworld was the stuff of a fever dream. The sort of thing that a man with severe botanophobia would experience as they die due to severe drug overdose.

The entire Floric being was designed to shift to in order to counter extreme and rapidly changing threats. And having that kind of super predator from an environment where everything is a super predator interact with the galaxy at large has of course led to casualties, terror and unimaginable rumour and speculation. An entire survival solution that basically boils down to ‘try not to die to fast as you come up with a solution to this newest hell’.

He briefly wonders how people would take it that he’s considering asking a man if the Floric have souls and knowing that he’s liable to get not only a factual answer, but one that...

He takes a moment to adjust his glasses before that train of thought derails his entire work schedule.

That’s the kind of nonsense he intends to entirely pass onto the next Observer as he watches numerous religions scream themselves into spirals from as far a distance as he can manage without leaving the planet.

There were roughly eight separate demographics on the Floric homeworld, defined by the incredible predation around them that sprang forth from the different environments. Arid Deserts, Mountainous Coastline, Temperate Hillsides, Temperate Flatland, Hot Jungle, Savannah, Tundra and the Oceans. Each one had numerous kingdoms rise and fall in rapid succession as competition between peoples compounded on the sheer danger of the predators to create two basic types of war in the form of either ceremonial, champion style combat, of which The Withering Grooms are actually born from. And then wars of extermination where all ability to resist the dangers of the world was systematically stripped from a society and the survivors were prevented from running. Apparently these purges had been common enough that first contact and elevation to a galactic species was only a few years apart from the most recent purge.

Of course the sheer amount of varying issues and the vastly different biosphere and access to Axiom as both an evolutionary and societal advantage had meant that there was no real way to compare earlier Floric Societies to human ones. Ranching and farming were flat out impossible and gathering and hunting were basically the same thing. They didn’t use for anything because the wood was also food and needed to be eaten, but numerous moss and fungal predators would make cave living into a mistake.

Perhaps the primitive Floric are comparable to the Romani? But less so. Mystic totems and crudely crafted metals to make mobile encampments. No paper, no parchment and no way to get either so it was all on stone, metal sheets and clay tablets when the knowledge wasn’t an oral tradition. Much of it based in songs.

A lot of the archive were song lyrics translated from a language that sounded like a combination of throat singing, bushman click languages and possibly Polynesian? Granted the clicks were a dull and hollow sounding clunk that is apparently the striking of one’s own wood like forearms together or thunking the gourd head. And that was just one language. There were nearly a hundred older languages and the number of them is uncertain and up to academic debate on whether certain similar languages count as accents to one another and if so which one is the accent.

Frankly put he’s just making sure that there’s no virus or strange weirdness in the archive then passing it on to scientists. This is a species wide history on a world so active and brutal that even the least ambitious peasant was a master combatant, expert explorer and hunter to just live from one day to the next. Images of jewellery carved from precious and semi-precious stones and worked into long strips of copper plate to tell abstract stories and decorate campsites.

Entire wars over powerful Khutha totems that force all beings but the Floric to sleep as Champions do battle for days only for a third tribe’s champion of stealth to sneak in and steal the prize from under it. Alliances, treachery, careful negotiation and legends and stories that are half historical archive, half impossible tale of heroism and black-hearted evil, sometimes in the same person no less. Courage does not only belong to the righteous after all.

Then it goes to the colony worlds. There’s an area they call the The Vine in Wild Space. There’s a series of near micro laneways going down in a twisting pattern that leads to several worlds colonized by the Floric. Many of them have undergone ‘Verdenting’ where they had deliberately introduced the endless depredation of their homeworld to it and have created more homes for themselves. Some of them were even fully farmed or ranched.

Granted Verdenting was generally limited to one or two continents, or to worlds that had life so primitive it was still in the bacterial stage. Over half the worlds were like that. Barely in the green zone and just starting to move past the single celled organism stage.

The more interesting bit beyond that though was WHY they had retreated from the galaxy at large. A series of ships had been subverted by Floric youth who had rushed out in a crusade to feed the eternal hunger and had...

“Anna’s Song, The Cresting Wave, The Jagged Fang and The Hopeful Ballad. All taken, all with their crews gruesomely devoured and a message sent to the galaxy on open airwaves that they were next. Then the ships had come under attack by their own people in short order and ‘seeds of the false crop broken as is proper’. The execution of the criminals at the hands of their own people hadn’t helped things and the Floric withdrew into themselves with limited trade and communication with the galaxy at wide. There were still incidents, but in general the chances of being killed by a Floric were far lower than that of Florics being killed by other species. Pensive conclusion, The Floric are a dangerous species that is well aware of the danger they pose to others and have made a point to contain it. Is their vicious reputation fair? It is, and it is not. While capable of causing enormous harm, they are ultimately a reasonable and self aware people capable of learning from their mistakes and recognizing that their instincts do not allow easy integration with the wider galaxy.”

“As for physical capacity, The Floric creature is exceedingly adaptive and capable of growing stronger with every non-lethal attack it takes. The only reliable method of incapacitation is decapitation and that feeds into the reproductive cycle of the creature. If the body and the head are both not destroyed then they will grow a new head and body respectively over a period of one month for the body to grow a head and one year for the head to grow a body. This, coupled with the ability of a decapitated body to defend itself to a limited degree and the head of a Floric’s Axiom using capabilities means that even decapitated the entity is an enormous threat, but considerably less of one. Diplomatic solutions are heavily recommended.”

“Culture wise, the Floric are a people that are insular and reactive, balanced by enormous hunger and well refined combat instincts. It appears that outside of several specific circumstances, most of which requiring direct, deliberate and sustained provocation on the part of the other, the Floric can be reasoned with, bargained with and safely lived beside. Provided that they are not encountered in a juvenile stage or a juvenile head in charge of an adult’s body. However, this also falls into a specific circumstance as it is highly unlikely for a Floric to reproduce to that extent without some form of warning from the adult.”

There is a silent alert at his door to tell him that someone is there, but the buzzer won’t go off while he’s recording. He quickly plays back what he just said and nods. It sounds good now. He’ll go over it again as they travel through Cruel Space.

“Enter.” Observer Wu commands.

“Sir. Good news. We have another data-packet for you about differing forms of technology....

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Yes. Your eyes do not decieve you! I have come back from the dead! And I brought  new chapter with me! XD

I am very sorry for this 'one week delay,' but We should be abl to restart posting.

As always, huge thanks to Sticket and Aured for spell-checking my condensated mind-fog amd whipping it (me) into a readable shape.

I hope you will enjoy the chapter and Some of you actually stayed believing I'll pull through the hiatus.

First ... Previous ... Next

Ar

Ar breathed out as he retracted his Bo. He appreciated the exercise against actual targets, but damn, was he not used to the movements. His whole body felt like shit and his mind was already spinning as it analyzed every detail of the encounter.

He looked himself over to try and locate any of those Mana marks they mentioned, wondering how that particular Magic worked.

Most of the marks were located near his wrists and fingers, probably from tearing through that shield wall. There were several ‘cuts’ along his forearms, but found nothing that would be fatal in real combat.

“Now, that was impressive!” A familiar voice came from behind him. Ar turned around to see the Guildmaster approach with a beaming smile.

“How are you feeling?” She asked as she started to circle around him.

“I… will be fine.” Ar smiled as he replied. “Just… Give me… five minutes. To catch some breath.”

“And here I thought your stamina was supposed to be very good!” Yelled the Taurine woman from behind him.

“It is. If I use it… eeh… sparingly. Not in bursts, like this.” Ar laughed and planted the Bo into the sand of the arena.

“Those shields were… nasty. Needed… a lot… to get rid of them.”

“Oh, I don't doubt that.” Ghanna agreed as she came over. “You made that look pretty easy, though.”

“Did I?” Ar asked as he showed her his ‘wounded’ wrists. “How do you… deal with them… normally?”

“Well…” Ghanna thought for a second before answering. “Ideally, you'd want to separate them and have two people face against one shield. One keeps the shield bearer busy, while the other one sneaks around to decapitate them.”

“And… alone?” Ar pushed.

“Alone? I'd leave him be for the moment and get someone to help me get rid of them. Mages are a pretty effective way to deal with them. Just conjure some magic bolts around them and bombard them from multiple directions.”

“That's only an option for an experienced Mage, though.” Zaanta joined in on the conversation. “Regular mages just don't have the Mana reserves to conjure so many attacks at the same time.”

“Sooo… breaking through shields is… not common?”

“No, not really. Most people would just… crash into the shield and get stomped into the ground.” Zaanta confirmed.

“Well…” Ar mused. “To be fair… if they were… as thick as back home… there is not much I could do…”

“How thick of a shield did your people use, Ar?” Zaanta asked, pulling a notebook.

“Well…” Ar thought for a second. “Normal shields about… one to two centimeters thick? Wood with metal or… skin on the front…” He indicated the thickness with his fingers.

“It depends on… the shield's purpose. Fighters use light, thin shields to… deflect strikes. Shield bearers use heavy, thick shields to block thrown spears.”

“Huh… Not so different from ours, then.” Zaanta nodded. “Are you ready for round two now?”

“Can do.” Ar agreed and reached for his Bo. “Let me just… stretch… and get used to my… full size… again.”

“Sure, sure. Just wave at us when you're ready again.” Guildmaster almost laughed before turning around and walking off to the side again.

“Sure…” Ar muttered as he tapped the artifact on his wrist and let himself grow large again. His mind returned to his clash with the shield wall.

‘There must be a better way to deal with that, right? Maybe vaulting over them? But that would only be viable if there are no pikemen…’ Ar thought to himself, as he fidgeted with the Bo in front of the first puppet. The puppet seemed rather small now, barely reaching his waist, which made him wonder how he'd fare against smaller opponents.

He took a moment to watch the Mana figures reform and to let the crowd gather around. He hadn't really paid any attention before, but now that he was able to see from a higher vantage point, he realised that EVERYONE was watching. Not just the Guild members, but there were people in windows above and in the tribunes as well.

‘I better not embarrass myself now…’ Ar thought to himself as he waved to start the trial.

Zaanta

Zaanta watched as Ar prepared for his second trial of the day.

“Do you think he’ll do better this time around?” Ghanna asked from next to her, "He's a much bigger target now and he'll probably move slower, right?"

“I’d reckon he’ll do better,” Zaanta answered, not looking away. “ He now has a longer reach and better angles of attack. Yes, he's larger, but he's still the same mass. Not to mention…”

Ar waved and Naell activated the puppets once again.

“...his legs are longer, so I expect he’ll be even faster now.” Just as Zaanta finished, Ar proved her right as he blitzed to the nearest figurine and straight up stomped it into the ground, dispersing it into the air.

“Case in point.” She smirked as Ghanna’s and Naell’s jaws hit the floor.

Ar, however, didn’t wait for them to compose themselves, and simply continued to advance forward. His next opponent found himself kissing a wooden branch, and subsequently having its head blown off by the force.

“Now I’m really sure he was holding back.” Ghanna muttered as she watched the demonstration. Zaanta just nodded, glad her friend didn’t get the same fate as some of the figurines.

“Just imagining that weird ax smashing against armor…” Zaanta let the thought hang and focused on Ar instead.

He was moving forward, having dealt with the swordsman and dual dagger wielder fairly quickly, and was about to face the pikemen. Ar attempted to use the same technique as before, swinging his Bo to one side, smacking the pikes aside, but miscalculated the distance slightly, leaving some pointed weapons in place, aiming for his shins and thighs.

“Oh fuck.” Ghanna winced, unable to look away. “That would’ve really hurt.”

Zaanta silently agreed. Leg injuries were serious and sometimes even incapacitated competent fighters permanently. Ar seemed to come to a similar conclusion, attempting to jump over the remaining pikes, and partially succeeding, just having one pike hit his ankle.

“He… What? Did he just jump over them?” Ghanna was staring wide-eyed as Ar swung his Bo across the exposed backs of the puppets before hitting the ground with a painful huff. Naell, for his part, stopped pretending the trial was not happening, and stared slack-jawed at the ridiculous scene in front of him.

“I guess we’ll have to bump up his classification…” Zaanta muttered to herself as she watched Ar rise up from the ground and rush at the next line of puppets.

“The Shieldbearers are next…” Naell muttered, his voice trembling with fear and awe.

Zaanta nodded and watched as Ar reached over the top of their shields and used his Bo as a jumping pole, vaulting over the top of the barrier and wreaking havoc from the middle of the formation.

“I think you’ll have to make some changes to the tournament, Naell.” Ghanna said as Ar dispatched the last of the shield bearers and made his way to the last group in the back.

“That… depends.” Naell sighed. “If that… thing… is willing to agree to some… restrictions…”

“For example?” Zaanta asked as Ar dispatched the last puppet and made his way toward them.

“Well, the easiest way to make the tournament fair is to reduce its weight. We have a couple of displacement artifacts in the storage just collecting dust. It should be more of a fair match that way. I could integrate your… champion… into a standard tournament structure as a challenger.”

“And if I… refuse?” Ar asked, startling Naell.

“When did you… You know what? Nevermind…” Naell paused to calm down. “If you won’t accept those restrictions, we’ll probably use you as a boss monster and send several teams at you to figure out how strong you really are…”

Ar stared them down for a minute, before turning his head to Zaanta. “Guild Master?”

“Y- Yes?” Zaanta stuttered, caught off guard.

“I… do not mind… either… option. Which one would… suit The Guild’s image… better?”

That… Zaanta actually had to think about that one. “Well…” Zaanta started pacing to think better. “Seeing you as a boss monster would certainly be interesting. Seeing you fight off hordes of enemies… But that could be seen as us putting up a challenge to the common masses and other Guilds. The first option… won’t give us a clear idea of your strength. But it would show we are willing to support individuals if they have the abilities necessary.” She finished and looked back at Ar with a serious expression. “The first option - the limited one - will look better for the Guild. But we won’t be able to give you an accurate rank in the Guild.”

“Could I travel… still?”Ar asked in return.

“When you do well enough in the tournament.” Zaanta nodded.

“Then, I accept limits.” Ar declared and turned to w...

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"Okay. The probe should be right here in the connection,” Arvie said.”

"I looked at the visual representation of the probe hovering in front of me in the computer simulation. I reached out and touched it, and immediately my senses changed. Instead of being split two ways in between the computer simulation and the real world, I was split three ways, and I could see the probe looking at me as I was looking at the probe. Which was a head trip and a half.

"That's an interesting view of the world," I said. And I could hear myself saying it inside my head even as I could also hear myself saying it from the probe.

Okay. That was going to take some getting used to.

"Monitoring your brain function," Arvie said. "I'm not seeing anything particularly dangerous yet."

"Good," I said. "I don't feel woozy or anything."

"That is good to know, William," he said.

"So how do I take control of this thing anyway?" I asked.

"It might be better if you have something that is similar to the cockpit that you were switching back and forth through rather than trying to take direct control with your mind,” Arvie said. “It looks like direct control is requiring more of your concentration than the baseline I got from the simulated cockpit you used to control those fighters.”

"Then why didn’t you offer me the direct control in the first place?"

"Mostly a matter of curiosity," Arvie said. "I wanted to know if it was possible for you to take direct control of something without suffering from enough of an overload that it adversely affected your ability to load balance."

"Great to know," I said. "I feel like I'm suddenly the protagonist in a cheesy anime or something."

"There are worse things that you could be," Arvie said.

"Depends entirely on what kind of cheesy anime we're talking about," I said.

"That is entirely true," he said. "I doubt you would want to be in one that featured those creatures with the tentacles that..."

"That's enough of that, Arvie,” I said. “And we need to seriously have a talk about the dark corners of the galactic net you've been surfing when all of this is said and done."

"Whatever you say, William," he said with a sniff.

Suddenly I was back in the small room with Arvie next to me and all the screens up against one wall. There was a small cockpit similar to the one I'd used to take control of the ships, though the controls inside this cockpit seemed far less elaborate than in the ship simulator I'd been in.

"Now, that's interesting," I said.

I walked over and had a seat. I felt at the controls. There was a joystick, the same as before, as well as other controls that seemed familiar from the fighter craft. There were even weapons controls.

"Eventually, I think you will be able to take direct control of this sort of thing with your mind," Arvie said. "But for now, I think we need to start slowly and make sure we don't do anything that will potentially overwhelm your mind like we did the last time with the fighter craft."

"Yeah, I've definitely learned my lesson on that score," I said.

"Have you truly learned your lesson, considering what we're about to do here?" Arvie asked.

I looked up at him and flipped him the bird.

"There isn't any need to be rude, William," he said.

"There isn't any need to be rude, no, but I think the situation certainly calls for it considering what a smart-ass you're being."

"I did learn from the best," he said.

"I can't deny that," I said as I grabbed the controls and moved the probe down in a lazy spiral until I was floating in front of the alien guards. I also made sure to look down at them from my split attention up above.

"Hello there, boys," I said.

Nothing happened. I glanced up to Arvie.

"Apologies," Arvie said. "You should be able to talk to them now."

"Thank you very much," I said, grinning.

"Hello there, boys," I said.

All of them jumped. They looked around like they were wondering how I managed to get the drop on them. Then they looked up to where I still balanced up on a bit of support structure that stuck out from the wall up above.

"How are you doing that?" one of them asked.

"Never you mind," I said. "Just know that I'm down here to have a chat with you, because it sounded like you wanted me to come down and have a chat with you."

"We wanted you to come down here so we didn't have to worry about you falling and breaking your neck."

"I'm not in any danger of that," I said.

Honestly, I was feeling pretty good about everything right about now. I could see the computer room with Arvie standing next to me in his digital avatar representation of his person. I could see the view of myself balancing on that bit of support structure sticking out, and I could see the probe in front of me as well.

"Well, if you break your neck then it's going to be our necks when we eventually get back to the boss," one of them said."So you need to get down here. Now.”

"Do you maybe want to think about rephrasing that?" I asked.

He took a deep breath like he was rethinking everything he'd just said. Then he let it out in a long and slow sigh as he turned an angry glare on the probe.

"No, I don't want to rethink how I phrased that," he finally said. "You've been a thorn in our side and a pain in our ass, and maybe you can come down here and try to kill me, but at this point, I think I’d rather you just come down here and take my head off. At least then I'm not going to be in constant anticipation of the moment when somebody comes along and tries to take my head off. It will be totally worth it."

I stared at the dude. I had to admire his chutzpah, even if it was annoying that the guards were starting to get unruly. I was about to try a little bit of target practice with the plasma blaster on the probe when a voice rang out.

"What in the name of the empress is going on here?"

I blinked, and then I turned the probe around to see none other than Tmors coming up the ramp. He looked a little worse for the wear. There were bits of soot and singed spots on him, but he wasn’t dead.

It didn't look like he'd taken a direct plasma blast. No, it looked more like he'd endured a couple of close calls. He also wore an expression that said he was so over all this shit and done with humans.

He looked at the probe, then he looked at the two guards. Finally, he turned to take in Varis and Jeraj and Yana.

"Does somebody want to tell me what's going on here? What happened to the human?" Tmors asked.

"He's inside the probe," the guard who'd just been ranting about having his head taken off said.

"Inside the probe?" Tmors asked, looking at the guard like he'd lost his mind.

"Ask him. EH’s in the godsdamned probe," the guard said, throwing his hands up in frustration. "And you can be upset with me about that all you want. You can take my head off. Gods know there are plenty of people who have been lining up for that privilege lately. Maybe if you do it, it won't hurt as much as if the Spider does it."

Tmors stared at the guard, then he looked at the probe. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed suspicious all of a sudden.

"Are you really in there?" he asked.

"What would give you that idea?" I said.

"Well, because your voice is coming out of the probe, and because you're the only human I know who could frustrate somebody to the point they were begging you to take their head off."

I stared at Tmors, he stared back at me, or rather, he stared back at the probe. Either way, he was hitting me with a big old stink eye.

“I’ve decided I’m going to not take that as an insult," I finally said.

"Oh, you should totally take it as an insult," he said, shaking his head as he put his hands on his hips. He took a deep breath and let it out in a long-suffering sigh. "Because I totally meant it as an insult. I've had more trouble since I had to start dealing with all of this Terran bullshit than I have since I first came down to the Undercity after..."

He paused for a moment, trailing off. He turned and looked off into the distance. I knew he couldn't see the twinkling lights off in that direction from the other side of the canyon, but I knew they were out there from the view I got from my body. I wondered if he could see them in his mind, or if he was seeing something else. Because he suddenly seemed to be far away from here.

Finally, he sighed again and turned back to me. He put his fingers up to the bridge of his nose and started rubbing at them.

"Look, we need to get you over to the Spider. She's going to try and manipulate the situation to make sure she gets some sort of advantage to use in her constant sparring with the imperials. She pretends she's some sort of great resistance fighter because she nips at their supply routes and takes the occasional shipment of stuff that they don't even care about, when in reality, none of that is going to do anything against the empress and she’s just making herself wealthy in her own little fiefdom like a miniature empress.”

Interesting. Tmors seemed fed up with the Spider’s bullshit. Then again, a freedom fighter turning into the same thing they were fighting once they got ...

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It turns out I was wrong about needing to warn Rashaak about Skylar. I also underestimated her ability to create an incident that would be reported to the Terran Embassy Complaints Department.

Not long after I left, Skylar convinced Rashaak and all his human roommates to meet up at That Human Bar where she proceeded to introduce them to Mar’ba’qua Fruit Bombs. What could go wrong?

They got into a food fight after Skylar threw a Fruit Bomb at Gabrielle smacking her on the forehead, who responded by chucking a handful of fries at Skylar. Half of the fries missed and went sailing to hit humans at the next table, who responded with poorly aimed pieces of protein sticks. Then everything quickly escalated as all the other human patrons at the bar joined in. Non-human customers were horrified and called the authorities, and Skylar’s entire table had been hauled off to the drunk tank and investigated for mental illness. Including Rashaak who had looked shell shocked and hidden under the table during the entire incident.

The Terran Embassy received a flood of reports at the Complaints Department and now had to explain to the galaxy the concept of a food fight, which no other sapient race could comprehend. Why would any sane sapient waste food like that? The idea of using food as recreational ammunition just does not compute. 

I sighed as I put away my datapad. I had learned of the incident not because one of my friends told me about it, but because it was one of the top 10 stories on GalNet News and I instantly recognized the delinquents involved from the security footage in the report. Of course, I sent them a message that said, "Really, guys?" with a link to the news article so maybe I'd get some sort of explanation soon.

“With friends like these, will I need to hide my connection to them to avoid a mandatory mental health exam? Or will I just be declared insane by default after a specified period of exposure to humanity?” I wondered aloud as my stomach growled and I got up from the bench just outside the hanger where I had docked the ship.

Probably the most puzzling aspect of the incident was That Human Bar announced a new monthly Food Fight Night in response. I wasn’t sure if this would turn out to be a PR nightmare or a blessing in disguise for humanity. 

Personally? I was with the majority of the galaxy wondering why in the stars humans would think to waste perfectly good food, yet there was also the engineering part of my brain wondering what foods would work best in a fight. Would a cooked pea be ideal because it’s aerodynamic, or should you select a cooked carrot for greater size and impact? Would something like a pudding cup be preferred due to making a bigger mess and the potential for splash damage?

I shook those thoughts aside as I checked the time and headed into the station towards the food court. I had a reservation at Toots and Froots and no intention to waste any morsel while there if the menu was accurate. Rather than meet the TEV Ursa Minor at this station as originally planned, I would be picking up our new EMT named Enrique and then transiting to meet up with the ship in deep space. This gave me just enough time on station to investigate the restaurant before meeting Enrique, and I was determined not to miss this opportunity.

After a short jog through the station, I saw a large sign over an entrance that proudly declared Toots and Froots. The Toots was in green with a set of human musical notes in black above it, and Froots was in red. I'd need to ask a human what the deal was with the musical notes, and why 'fruits' was misspelled like that. Underneath was a small slogan “Fine Herbivorous Delights!”, however it wasn’t the sign or the slogan that really caught my eye.

On the wall was a cartoon style mural of jungle foliage with a range of fruits hanging on the trees as well as oversized bowls underneath featuring a wide range of galactic vegetables, including multiple kinds of human beans. Over 25 meters long, the mural gave a hint to just how large the restaurant was while also adding a tremendous amount of color to an otherwise drab section of the station. The size of the place was especially impressive given that humanity was still new to the stars, but perhaps that novelty helped attract customers. After all, this was one of the few human owned restaurants in the sector.

Heading towards the entrance, they had only one large window next to the double-wide door. Inside I could see a bustling buffet style restaurant with a wide range of sapients. 

“Haasha, reservation for one,” I declared as I stepped up to the podium just inside the entrance. 

“Of course!” a tall human wearing a black shirt with the restaurant logo responded. “Will you need a menu, or will you be indulging in the fruit bar?”

“Oh, I’m looking forward to the fruit bar,” I answered, which got me a knowing smile and nod from the man. 

“Excellent! Right this way, please,” he said as he ushered me through the restaurant. Strangely enough, the table he sat me at was on the opposite side of the restaurant from the sign that indicated the fruit bar. It seemed a little strange to be sitting so far away from my intended food source, but not that huge a deal. The restaurant did seem to be quite busy, and a little walk helps stir the circulation and appetite. The only odd item is there appeared to be some sort of tracks in the ceiling which converged in this section of the restaurant.

The gentleman pulled out a small bowl of packaged crackers and placed it on my table. “Our Py’rapt’ch guests often find water and crackers for the occasional palette cleansing most appealing to match the fruit bar. We do stock a full range of beverages if you would prefer.”

“No, water will be just fine,” I said happily. 

“Excellent! When you’re ready, please follow the signs to the fruit bar and another member of staff will be available there to assist,” he said with a professional smile before walking back to the podium at the entrance.

I set my datapad down at my table and walked over to the fruit bar. Along the way I spied a wide variety of foods on the plates of other patrons, sadly a significant amount looked far too salad-like for my tastes. That said, I spotted quite a few with enticing piles of fruit among the salad and I had high hopes that the fruit bar would deliver. 

There appeared to be a single entrance to the fruit bar area just beyond a row of booths, and as I approached I spotted a strange oversized sign. It had an arrow pointing to the left labeled “Py’rapt’ch” and then an arrow to the right declaring, “All other sapients.”

I stopped in confusion wondering if the sign was some sort of joke in poor taste. Why would my people have a separate line? It just didn’t make sense. Before I could consider things any further, a voice spoke up.

“Hello there!” a short but well-muscled human woman said to me. She wore a restaurant staff shirt and stood in the path indicated for all other sapients. With a friendly smile, she ushered me to the left. “Right this way!”

I was guided up a little staircase where there was a seat at the top that appeared to have a raised harness.

“Please allow me to help you into the seat,” the woman said warmly. Unsure and confused, I did as requested. She tucked her hands under my armpits and carefully lifted me into the seat.

A moment later, I was shocked as the harness was lowered and locked in place with my feet dangling. Taking a closer look at the seat and harness, it looked similar to pictures Jarl had shown me of human amusement park rides called roller coasters. I was stunned into silence and unsure what was happening, so I simply turned to the woman in shock hoping for more information.

“Welcome to the fruit bar at Toots and Froots!” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “I get the impression this is your first visit, so allow me to explain how the buffet works. Point at a fruit you’d like to sample, and I’ll grab a piece for you to try. If you’d like it added to your bowl, just nod. Shake your head if you don’t. We’ll begin your journey through the land of fruit and honey in just a moment!”

And with that, she walked away leaving me firmly locked into this seat. I was starting to get upset and offended. What had my people done to be treated in this fashion? I was about to yell at the woman about how I would report this to the Sapient Rights Commission when my chair suddenly dropped and swung around towards the fruit bar.

The first thing that hit me was… the smell. The glorious GLORIOUS smell of fresh fruits. All arrayed in front of me. Nearly 10 meters of fruit! Mar’ba’qua, mango, peaches, treloranges, actual Earth oranges, blue fruits, red fruits, and at least 10 different varieties of apples. That was just in the first 2 meters!

I started straining in my seat trying to grab and sample everything, but even with my long arms the seat kept me firmly in place and everything out of reach. It was so infuriating that I nearly wanted to scream out in rage. So many fruits, so many choices, and I was just being teased by all of them!

The woman appeared quickly with a bowl half filled with chopped Horvakian palm leaves and a cup fu...

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Previous

“Alright, get your seats.” The massive hamster like creature demanded from the podium in front of the classroom.

The students, young adults from dozens of species around the galaxy, slowly found somewhere to sit, or at least remain still during the lecture, for those unable to sit.

“Now, your homework for last night was to read about an important event in galactic history, named by the Terrans as ‘Operation Poker Face.’  Again, do not confuse this with ‘Operation Lady Gaga’, which was unanimously declared a war crime by the Galactic Council.” The lecturer spoke as the students finally calmed.

“Excuse me, Instructor Zermon, but after the required reading I was curious about Operation Lady Gaga.  Did the Canadians really do that?” a tiny, scaled student inquired.

“They did, but we will not speak of it anymore.  The school administration has declared such conversations to be harassment and intimidation of the victim species.”

“Whoa, Canadians sound awesome!” a male voice echoed through the large teaching hall.

“I assure you their actions were not awesome.” the Instructor Zermon chided, “By bombarding Larvana, the molten home world of a sapient lava species, with ‘water balloons’ and justifying it by saying ‘they looked thirsty’ the Canadians killed billions.  Their apology afterward only added to the outrage when they claimed, ‘nobody said not to’.  Anyway, no more questions about Operation Lady Gaga.  Now, on to the subject at hand.”

Instructor Zermon was caught off guard as he noticed a human seated near the front of the class.  “No sense letting an opportunity to make his students uncomfortable go to waste,” he thought.

“You there, human, did you complete the assigned reading?  Give us a summary.” Instructor Zermon said, pointing a clawed digit at the young man.

“Well, it was about 200 Terran years ago.  The Terran Federation was new to the Galactic Council and faced an unwinnable war.  Everyone knew humanity faced extermination by the Xerlon Empire.  Unable to mount any real defense, the Terran Federation claimed to have a weapon capable of detonating stars and having seeded all Xerlon stars with the weapon. But, the Terran Federation…” the young human male spoke before being interrupted.

“Right. Xerlonian, continue from where the Terran left off.” Instructor Zermon demanded, pointing at the Xerlonian sitting across the room.

“Uhh, well, the Terran Federation was lying.  They never had such a weapon. An unstudied, unclaimed star exploded at the end of its life cycle.  The Terrans used this lack of awareness by the Galactic Council to claim responsibility. While many believed the Terrans were lying, nobody wanted to test the theory, including my people.” The Xerlonian spoke softly.

“Indeed.  It seems neither of you are as dumb as you look, nor as foolish as your species history would suggest.” Instructor Zermon said with disdain.

“Now, tell me class, how long do you think the Terran Federation managed to maintain this ruse?” Instructor Zermon asked.

“Not long” a voice like thunder boomed throughout the room, “someone must have figured it out soon after.”

“It seems the rumors of stupidity among the Rokite species are unfounded.  You are correct.  Less than ten Terran years after the beginning of Operation Poker Face evidence was brought before the Galactic Council proving the Terran claim of responsibility false.  Yet, the Terrans doubled-down on their claims, offering a second exhibition of stellar annihilation.” Instructor Zermon shouted, just to be heard over the echo of the student’s voice.

“Stupid humans! They tricked the galaxy once, and then, despite not actually having a weapon, they hoped for such luck again?!” the Xerlonian spoke with arrogance.

“Yes, the Terrans are uniquely stupid, but they are also uniquely conniving.  You see, the Terrans knew someone would eventually test them. So, in the years following their claim, the Terrans researched and built a device in a far-off star system that could detonate the star.  As the Galactic Council watched, the Terrans fired an inert tungsten rod through a warp gate and into the star. Of course, without the Galactic Council’s knowledge, their device, which took months to construct and was hidden behind the star, triggered, detonating the star.” Instructor Zermon announced with a look of mischief.

“And everyone believed them… again.” A small voice from an avian looking student mumbled.

“Correct, my dim-witted protégé” Instructor Zermon began, “But, what is more important is to ask, how did the Terrans develop such a plan, you suppose?”

“Because the Terrans are liars, cheats, and soulless beasts!” a Larvanan student screamed in fiery rage.

“They are, indeed.  More, they are the best at it.  Terrans have perfected the art of lies and misdirection.  In the time before Terrans developed FTL, they had performers, called magicians.  These people performed what they called ‘magic’.  While it was nothing more than tricks and sleight of hand, the Terrans adored this type of entertainment. Despite knowing they were being lied to, Terrans would be amazed by the talents of the magicians.  No other known species in the galaxy has a culture which includes celebrating a known liar.” Instructor Zermon said while meeting the gaze of the lone Terran student.

“So, the Terrans just had some of the ‘magicians’ trick the Galactic Council once again?” an unknown student inquired.

“No, there was no need for that. You see, the Terrans leaders, called politicians by the Terrans, are the greatest liars in their civilization.  It was second nature for the Terrans leaders to develop a plan to fool the Council.” Instructor Zermon explained.

“Alright, fine, they fooled the galaxy, again. But, today we know it is another ruse, why does everyone still fear the Terran Federation? Let’s just invade and end this game.” The Xerlonian announced.

“Tell me, my disappointing student, how many species in the Galactic Council have enjoyed 200 Terran years of peace?” Instructor Zermon inquired.

“None.  Of course, none, except the Terrans.  The galaxy is survival of the fittest.” The Xerlonian insisted.

“And what do you suppose the Terrans have done with this period of peace?”

“We researched, built, and prepared.” The Terran student interrupted. “Today the Terran space fleet outnumbers nearly all Galactic Council species combined. Sol, our home star system, is so heavily militarized that every planet, moon, or asteroid large enough is armed and armored.  Asteroids too small to be of use as a platform were harvested for raw materials.”

“Correct, your species, once dependent upon the greatest lie in galactic history, is the unquestioned military superpower of the galaxy.  At least, so we all believe.” Instructor Zermon said as the class session ended and students began to leave.

Walking back to his desk, Instructor Zermon summoned the Terran student.

”You failed to turn in your report on the dynamics of the post-war economic conditions on Zoltude. As a result, I can not allow you to pass this course.” Instructor Zermon stated without concern.

“What? No, I turned that in days before the due date!” the Terran protested.

Handing the Terran a stack of assignments, Instructor Zermon said, “Look for yourself, it’s not there.”

Flipping through the hundreds of assignments, each written by hand on physical paper, the Terran student suddenly stopped.

“But, Instructor Zermon, my assignment is right here…” the student spoke.

Looking at the paper shown to him, Instructor Zermon relented, “So it is.  My apologies, I could have sworn it wasn’t there.”

“No worries, Instructor, but I need to go.  I’m going home to Quebec for the weekend.” the Terran said as he ran out the door.

With that, Instructor Zermon was alone in the classroom as he found himself wondering how he had not seen that assignment before.

Author Note:

Absolutely not becoming a "series." I enjoyed the previous iteration and just felt like it needed a proper ending. Enjoy!

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Al-Spencer on 2025-12-10 19:08:42+00:00.

It was a beautiful day at Szaso highschool. The sun was shining and the local avians were singing their songs in the treetops, while the students silently attended their classes. In other words it was the kind of day where seemingly nothing could go wrong.

But then a loud voice echoed through the halls of the school asking “What do you mean my son can’t attend your school?” in utter disbelief. The voice came from principal Hyp’s office and belonged to a human male. Normally a reaction like  that would have made people cower before the human pair.

But this wasn’t the first time, nor would it likely be the last time, Hyp had gotten that reaction. Thanks to that he managed to remain calm as he said “I am sorry about this truly I am. But you see we have learned that having a human in a school with any other deathworlder species is a recipe for disaster, as the kids say.” causing the two humans to just stare at him entirely caught completely off guard by his answer.

But Hyp didn’t give them any time to process what he had just told them and just continued with “Now I know this is a bit vague so let me explain. The biggest issue are the gobolds, gremlins, minions or whatever you call them, since they somehow always either get enlisted by the biggest human prankster in the school or manage to convince humans into playing some pranks on other students. Of course all harmless at first but they inevitably tend to get out of hand quickly, especially if there are any fae or pixie students involved or in the school as well. And of course dealing with the aftermath of these pranks isn't fun believe me, one of them almost made most of my janitorial staff quit. But the others don’t lack far behind them like the lamias, the problem with them is that they tend to be really overprotective of their human friends and with how much of a ‘bad rep’ you humans tend to have with most species, because of how hard you out perform them in their own niche, they are so proud of, trouble tends to find you quite quickly causing the lamias to intervene. Now of course they mean no harm and just want to protect their friends but sadly they are rather bad at controlling their strength, because of which quite a few of our students have been sent to the hospital already. The nephilim are worse though because they are encouraged to start searching for a partner at a young age as such the females tend to start fights between potential mates to find out who is stronger. Which of course tends to be more of an issue in schools with teenage students like ours, because giant dragon-like muscle mommies are rather hot or so if been told by some human students. Though the worst incident was when we had those five dreadworm, bullworm, grindermaw or whatever you want to call them, exchange students and a human student convinced them to dig an underground base for him which nearly made the entire school fall into a sink hole. In short a lot of the other deathworlder species like you humans quite a lot, giving you quite a bit of influence over them often just by being near them, like in case of the nephilim or gobolds. Honestly a little too much for most people to use responsibly and sadly my personnel is not trained nor honestly paid enough to handle this. As such the government has decided that all humans should attend a school specifically made for them.” the last part clearly pissed off the two humans which was of course understandable since nobody appreciated being segregated off just because of their species.

So Hyp quickly raised his hands and said “Now I know that this is complete and utter bullshit, as you humans like to say, but we made sure that the new school is on the grounds of Szaso highschool in addition to making sure that the human students are included in as many school activities as possible. Might seem counterproductive but we have hired quite a few human teachers that should be able to keep the human students, as well as other deathworlder students, in line. And honestly this entire thing is just an excuse to finally give our human students a curriculum that actually challenges them a bit at least. But in the end we are still trying things out to find out what works and what doesn’t to ensure a good learning environment for our students, humans included. However we are still quite a ways away from that and if you donˋt want to wait for that to be a reality, since there are certainly a lot of options for your son out there, I completely understand in the end I am just happy that you considered our school in the first place.” before standing up and extending his hand towards the two humans.

They both quickly followed his example and then shook his hand, before the woman said “You have certainly given us quite a bit to think about principal Hyp as well as some good stories to tell our friends. Anyways we will sleep on it and then contact you in lets say a week about our decision.” with quite a big honest smile on her face, before both turned to leave.

Hyp escorted them to the door and wished them a good day, before returning to his desk and sitting down in his old office chair. At this point peace had returned to Szaso highschool and everything once more looked as peaceful as could be. But the moment Hyp thought that his communicator began to ring causing him to pick up with a wary “Yes what is it?”

“Pardon the intrusion sir but we have a situation here and well you better come see this yourself sir because I honestly have no fucking clue how to handle this and the janitor wants a word with you anyways.” the tired voice of Mr.Dro told him from the other end. 

Which caused Hyp to chuckle as he said “Never a boring day with our human students huh? I will be there shortly.” before hanging up and then walking out of his office towards the location Mr.Dro had sent him happily clicking his mandibles as he did because to him this was the fun part of his job seeing what his human students had done this time.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Vast-Listen1457 on 2025-12-10 18:56:52+00:00.

Actual information in authors note. Please read it.

*-*

27th of Arah – Continued

The three heroes climbed the hill, towards the apparently ever-present storm. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, rain fell. As they got closer to the large old mansion, they could see the darkened windows and front door staring at them like a face.

“Well, this place is creepy.” Hesh commented.

“Ya think?” Sam replied.

“I try not to; it makes my head hurt.” Molly completed the old joke.

They climbed the front steps, and looking at the impressive brass door knocker sculpted to look like a demon’s face with the handle being the demons lower jaw, decided to knock with their fists instead. After the third knock, the demon dead let loose a sigh, grumbled something under its breath, and the door creaked open.

The three, in unison, glanced slowly between the head, the open door, and back, before slowly pushing the door open the rest of the way. The room beyond was dark, lit for bare moments by the flashes of lightning. Still, with the flashes, they were able to make out an entrance vestibule, flanked with closets on each side. As they stepped in, a pair of unnoticed gas lights lit, illuminating the once nice, but now dilapidated state of the room. Through an arch, they could see an entrance hall, also dilapidated, lit by similar lighting. In fact, as they watched, the entire first floor of the mansion seemed to come alight as lamps lit in an ever-expanding arc around them.

The mansions smelled of dust, mold, rot, mice, and decay. As they explored the first floor, they found it to be abandoned. Once beautiful plush furniture sat rotting in several of the eleven rooms of the first floor.

The library, a once ornate room of books and paper smelled the most of mouse, with the books rotted so far as to be unreadable. Sam attempted to pick one up, but it disintegrated in his hand, leaving a pulpy sludge behind.

With nothing left to explore, they entered the main hall, with its seemingly solid main stairs to the second floor. The hall was large, with Hesh estimating it to be some twenty-five feet deep and thirty-five wide. The grand staircase in the deep center of the room, climbed some eighteen feet into the air, ending upon a gallery surrounding the hall. A place that Sam remarked would be a good place for an ambush. Still, ambush or not, the three climbed the cold, damp, and slippery steps.

Sam looked up while climbing the steps, “I don’t know why I just thought of this, but did you the Finnish word for best friend is “kusipää”?”

Hesh slowly shook their head, “Now isn’t the time for a language lesson.”

“I know, it just came to mind for some reason.” Sam replied.

As they reached the second floor, they looked over the rotting railing of the gallery on which they now stood, and shuddered a bit at the some twenty foot drop. On the floor lay a ratty mold infested rug that at one point would have been quite beautiful, but now lay there in ruin. There were four doors on this side of the gallery, one that led to the right from the top of the stairs, one just ahead of the stairs, and one farther down the way, and an archway at the far end, not much past the last real door.

All three doors hung in ruins, as though some one, or thing, had broken through each one. Glancing through the broken door to the right, they discovered it led to a short passage that paralleled the stairs, and smelled bed. They skipped it for now.

The door directly across from the stairs turned out to be much more interesting, as it appeared to be the master bedroom of the mansion. A large four poster bed dominated the room; sadly, covered with things the trio didn’t want to think about. To the left and right were more destroyed doors, each leading to a dressing room, one for a man (as evidenced by the clothing laying on the floor), and one for the lady of the house. Passing through the ladies dressing room they discovered the stinky passage, a bathroom and eventually a room containing a pair of fainting couches.

They stared at the couches for a few moments, staring, then averting their eyes. “I’m sure I have no room to talk, but that is a horrific way to die.” Hesh said, voice hitching a bit.

For their part, Sam and Molly just nodded. “On the other hand, there are a pair of doors on the other side of the room. Perhaps we should skirt the room and take a look?” Molly asked.

Keeping their eyes averted, they crept around the abattoir like scene, and through a glass pained door. A door that, once passed through, brought a sigh of relief. The room smelled like the fertile plains, no rot, mold, or other such smells; unsurprising due to the menagerie of plants, bushes, and small trees. It also helped that the glass roof and walls were missing a few pains here and there, letting in the outside air.

As lightning flashed across the sky, followed immediately by the crack of thunder, they stared at the majesty of the storm. Finally, Hesh broke the silence, “Is that a wire over there, leading to the roof?”

After taking a momentary look at the place Hesh was pointing to, the other two nodded. I think you’re correct.” Molly replied. The three walked over to investigate.

The wire in question; a thick thing of almost an inch in diameter; ran from the floor to the ceiling. Actually, it ran through both the floor and ceiling. Tugging it gently at both visible ends, the conclusion was made that it was attached to things at both ends.

“Do we climb up to the roof and see what’s up there?” Sam asked, looking out the glass pained wall into the ever-constant storm, “Or do we find out where it goes down below us?”

Hesh laughed, “I would rather deal with the smells, than face that storm while walking on the wet roof.” To which Molly vehemently nodded.

Sam smiled at his friends, nodded in agreement, and the three left the conservatory for the stairs down. From the bottom of the stairs, they hooked a right through another of the rotting doors into what had once been a well-appointed parlor room, and began to search the wall that would be directly under the conservatory, but found no sign of the wire.

Staring up at the ceiling, then down at the floor, Hesh took a step back, then turned around, placing their back to the wall, then began to pace the distance to the far wall.

Sam raised a finger, about to ask a question, but Molly interrupted him with a hiss, “Their pacing off the distance from wall to wall.”

“But why?” Sam asked, one eyebrow raised.

“To compare it to the conservatory.” She responded. “To check to see if this room is narrower than up above. You know old places like this occasionally hide servants’ stairs behind false walls and such.”

 “Oh.” Sam smiled, then punched the wall where Hesh had started pacing from. “I have a better idea.” On the other side of the lath and plaster wall, Sam’s arm met nothing but air. “Hey, buddy! There’s a space back here!” He yelled over his shoulder to Hesh, as he ripped open the wall further to reveal a narrow set of stairs leading down.

Rolling their eyes in annoyance, Hesh returned from across the room. “You could have let me have this one.” They grumbled under their breath. To which, Sam just snorted.

The trio began the trek down the narrow; and dust free; stairs into the depths below.

*-*

From here on out, I plan on writing chapters that run 1500-2000 words. Once that area is reached, I will publish the chapter. This will give me enough breathing space, but still get chapters out, without me worrying "too" much about a schedule. I hope you enjoyed this one, and the next chapter should conclude the heroes investigation of the "vampire's" manor.

Other news... It's snowing here in MN. Temps have dropped (in my area) to -15f (-26.1c) on a regular basis. A friend of mine (one John Danielski) who writes Napoleonic War era fiction for Penmore Press has allowed me to write a short story about one of his minor NPC's from his forthcoming book "The Corsair Conundrum"!!! 

My story will take place after the conclusion of the novel, and will NOT be included in the book. I still plan on releasing the short for y'all to read, after the novel is published (unless I get stupid lucky, and they publish the story? HAHAHahahahahaha!). We will see, as it is someone else's intellectual property.

As far as home life goes, the old man is as healthy as a horse (aside from the Alzheimer's) and has his 90th birthday tomorrow! Everyone is tired. so very tired. My GF and I will be taking this weekend off to explore the frozen north shore of Lake Superior! Visit all the frozen waterfalls and take pictures. We are both looking forward to it.

My cats left me a dead mouse on the end of my bed last week. :) Such good hunters. 

Can't think of much else.

Stay safe all of y'all!

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Klokinator on 2025-12-10 17:55:15+00:00.

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...................................

(Previous Part)

(Part 001)

January 29th, 2021. Base of Mount Sinai, 4PM.

It had taken the demon six hours following their rapid assault on Saint Catherine's Monastery. They had wiped out the defenders, but hadn't bothered chasing any stragglers. A few humans escaping meant nothing to them when their true goal was so close at hand.

Emperor Satan arrived around 2PM and spent a couple hours organizing the preliminary forces for their intended strike into the heart of Sinai. In order to fortify their position, the demons had surrounded the mountain with multiple structures built by Burrowers and reinforced with high level magic. As it just so happened, they had several Fairy allies who were capable of setting up formations to reinforce these otherwise unremarkable stone structures.

Tens of the mini citadels surrounded Mount Sinai, and each one had a Warper or two inside, holding open portals elsewhere on Earth, usually in the vicinity of one of the major Hells. In this way, reinforcements could arrive within moments, and more and more demons were already making their way to the battlefield.

Angels flew high in the sky. Demons didn't usually have wings, and only a few had the gift of flight, so the angels had a huge defensive advantage by controlling the skies. Unfortunately, the angels lacked in champions capable of fighting at the levels of Dukes and Emperors. Purebloods were few and far between, and most Lazarites could only measure up to Barons at best. It was the few living Archangels who were capable of outfighting the demons, and they were badly outnumbered.

In total, only four Archangels still walked the world of the living. They were Raphael, Camael, Gabriel, and Uzziel. Gabriel wore Michael's ring, but aside from these four, there were no others still among the living. Brother Samael had fallen long ago, prior to the War in Heaven, and Sister Uriel had her soul stolen by the demons. As for the two long-dead ancient archangels, Muriel and Cassiel, they were not worth speaking about. They were so distant in memory that none of the demons knew of them, save for Satan, who secretly concealed Samael's soul within himself...

Thus, with only four champions at their disposal, the angels seemed not to be in a good position. However, the demon leaders knew the situation would be far from a cakewalk.

At the base of the mountain, four demon leaders gathered together to discuss the coming battle. Among them were Satan, Diablo, Lucifer, and Auger.

"We're not able to open any portals inside Heaven." Diablo said, as he walked over and clapped his hand on Satan's shoulder. "We've been trying for hours, but Heaven's dimension has been fortified and rearranged. We can't get a mental lock on any of the ancient monuments."

"Cheh. I never thought we would. It was worth a try, though." Satan said, as he rubbed his chin and looked up at the mountain. "Looks like the only way inside is through Heaven's Gate."

Diablo scratched his head. "I do not understand. Why don't the angels simply close the gate and retreat inside?"

"Hehehe. Our enemies ain't just worried about saving their hides." Satan said knowingly. "Think of the message this would send to the human leaders observing the situation. Standing firm and defending against our attacks signals their bravery and willingness to stand up to us. But cowering inside the mountain and closing themselves off would indicate weakness. What do you think would happen to the Vatican's prestige if the angels acted like a bunch of scared lil' babies?"

"Their entire religious infrastructure would collapse." Auger said, throwing his hat into the discussion. "The angels need humans to pray to them, and the human governments only tacitly support the angels because they fear their wrath. But if the angels bunker up inside of Heaven, they will simply hand us an easy win."

Lucifer filed her long razor sharp nails. "Even if the angels disable Heaven's Gate, they can still open portals outside of Heaven. You place too much faith in them trying to maintain an appearance of bravery."

"It ain't just about appearances, sweet-cheeks." Satan laughed cruelly. "Hahaha, Mount Sinai is symbolic! If they turn off the gate, we'll take over the mountain and never let them reopen it! They'll suffer a humiliation 10,000 lifetimes couldn't wash away! Doesn't matter if they make a new Heaven's Gate elsewhere on Earth, because once we roll up on that one, they'll have to disable it too, and the next one, and the next one. Everyone'll know the Archangels are just a bunch of paper tigers!"

"So they must fight." Diablo said, nodding slowly. "Good. We need them to fight if we hope to achieve our strategic objectives. Speaking of which..."

Diablo turned a slow, withering gaze toward the Devil.

"...isn't it about time you told us what this is really all about?"

Auger and Lucifer both glanced at Diablo in surprise. He wasn't usually the type to care about this sort of stuff. But since he had asked, and since they were both dying to know, they immediately fixated their gazes on Satan, crossed their arms, and waited for his reply.

"Haha! Alright, I'll tell ya!" Satan said. "Now's a good time to spill the beans anyway, Deebs!"

He leaned in and lowered his voice.

"We're gonna take down the Lazarus Tower. Without it, everything the angels hold dear will collapse."

The other Emperors looked at Satan in surprise.

"That is a bold move." Lucifer said approvingly, before her face turned ugly. "But there's no chance of success! I hear the Lazarus Tower is positioned right in the heart of Hrothgar's Hall! There are multiple Titans living right next to it. Any assault force will get crushed into meat paste, even if we send Bael himself!"

"If our goal was to destroy the Lazarus Tower, it would indeed be pretty much impossible." Satan conceded. "But good thing that's not the plan. I intend to steal back Valac's Lantern and retake the power of the Lazarites for ourselves!"

Auger's eyes widened. "You want to steal the lantern? That is even more impossible. Satan, are you really risking all our lives over such a risky gamble?!"

"Again, your lives ain't at risk, unless you rush in like a bunch'a morons." Satan said, waving his hand flippantly. "That's why we got mooks to do the dirty work. Even if we lose ten million Grunts during this assault, so what? Sing 'em a eulogy and move on. We're just gonna hafta' make sure none of our big guys get knocked off by the Archangels, the Titans, or..."

"The Heroes." Auger said, his face contorting into a grimace.

Lucifer's ears perked up. She smiled like a witch, then put on an innocent expression.

"Did you say Heroes? Oh that reminds me, my dear sweet precious little Ose just brought me back some intriguing news. It must have slipped my mind!"

"News?" Satan asked. "What news?"

Lucifer moaned as she slowly cracked her back and stretched her legs, taking an annoyingly long time to reply while she forced the others to hang on her every word.

"Oh dear, it seems... you boys didn't hear? If only you had a brilliant, smart, beautiful daughter like me, you might already know. Ah, but where are my manners? I suppose I can tell you."

Her smile disappeared.

"The Hero named Cat Mask is more frightening than we may know. He has the ability to rewind time. It seems he has done so countless times, and he may even know our entire plan going forward, as well as how to counter us."

"WHAT?!" Satan roared, staggering backward in alarm. "Why didn't you tell us sooner?! This is awful news!!"

Lucifer shrugged. "I only learned a couple of hours ago. It seems Ose had a run-in with Cat Mask, and he defeated her handily. Thanks to her cunning wit, she managed to extract several important secrets from his lips before she beat a cunning escape. That's how we now know this entire plan could be a trap! The angels may have already been forewarned of Satan's plan by Cat Mask!"

A moment of silence followed. Auger frowned.

"Something isn't adding up. If Cat Mask can rewind time, then how could Ose possibly have escaped on her own? Especially if he could easily defeat her. If I were him, I would have killed her to prevent my secret from spreading."

"No, that's not right." Diablo interjected. "Because if you could rewind time, then even if your secret got out, you'd just rewind later and undo it."

"GENTLEMEN!" Satan shouted, interrupting their thoughts. "Can we skip the yapping and focus on the fact we have an enemy who can rewind time? I think this mig...

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The pressurized cage had a window. Glass warped the view of the stars, glittering across the black. A pale curve of white outshone all else, but restraints held her head so Khadam could only see it from the corner of her eye. Yet that horizon was unmistakable.

“OK, this is it. Are you ready?” Innovation’s voice whispered over the cage’s speakers, as if she really had a choice. A muzzle held her mouth shut, a bit gag kept her from biting off her own tongue, so it wasn’t like she could reply even if she wanted to.

“I’m letting go now.”

A dry, metal clunk vibrated the cage. Then, Khadam started to fall.

The white curve met her gaze and kept rising. It eclipsed the stars, and filled her sight, until there was nothing but the great circle of the Earth.

Spaceports and orbital factories hovered around the planet like so many black flies. Thousands of freight elevators reached up from the planet like the tendrils of parasitic fungi. Continental streaks of vapor and gray-black clouds spewed up from vast industrial facilities, and millions of geometrically perfect logistics lines carved up the land masses. Mining pits shone like red eyes—precise, spiraling circles that had been excavated down to the magma.

Gone were the forests and plains, replaced by concrete jungles and metal deserts. Gone were the mountains and plateaus, gouged down to their roots, as if some mighty hand had unzipped the very crust of the planet. Hives of industrial lights sparkled in those unnatural valleys, glittering like gems in polluted mists. Even the oceans had changed—once blue and pristine and so full of life, they now frothed at the edges and turned oily gray.

But the worst of all the changes were the gaping, machine-lined holes that pockmarked the planet. It looked as though a plague of termites had hollowed out the planet’s interior, creating a tunnel network as they chewed toward the last of Earth’s resources. Furious-looking gun emplacements and gleaming towers riddled with sensors and weapon systems ringed the entrances. Khadam could only guess at their firepower.

She wondered if they had ever been used, at all.

To her knowledge, there had never been an attempt to retake the Core Worlds. How could there be? Between the Prophet’s Disease and the Sovereign’s Lightning Wars, there was hardly anyone left. Only the far-flung Conclaves and isolated stations and last, desperate tribes. All gone. A terrible sadness gripped her chest as she dwelled on all that would forever be forgotten.

The pressurised cage bumped as its repulsors ignited to slow her descent. The world rolled beneath her, and that sadness turned to sickness as the armada slipped into view. A constellation of glittering, metal hulls and glowing repulsors hung in the Earth’s shadow. It looked like the Sovereign had sent every last ship, carrier, and drone to watch the handoff. Swarms of strikecraft spiralled around the massive segments of serpentine carriers. Towering world-breakers bristled with magnetized cannons large enough to crack the surface of a planet, let alone her tiny glass cage. Swarms of cruisers and frigates and battleships and all their drones extended beyond her little window of the world. The tell-tale flash of Light told her that more ships were warping in.

Is the Sovereign truly afraid something will come and steal me away?

Her left eyeball buzzed, a feeling so uncomfortable she tried to flinch back.

“Relax,” Innovation’s voice, conducted through her eye, said, “Only you can hear me.” And before she could answer, it whispered sharply, “Don’t speak! My sibling will know I’m here. Nod or shake your head if you want to answer me.”

Khadam nodded, though her head only moved a fraction of an inch thanks to the restraints. Painkillers slowed her response. Made her feel like she was moving through water. Her ribs throbbed with pain, and every breath stabbed up through her spine. In a way, that was a good thing. It meant the negation cube was still there, buried just beneath the surface of her skin. And, it kept her focused.

“I know what you’re wondering,” Innovation said. “Won’t a full body reveal this implant? Yes. When you go through processing, Logistics will scan and record each and every cell in your body. Unless you remove the cube, and use it*.* Inside, you will be close to the others. Innovation will do everything it can to save them. It will devote many resources. You will make Logistics weak. I will compel Domination to bring the full force of its strength to bear, and Logistics will understand that it is beaten.”

“The suit?” Khadam tried to say, her words deformed by the strap tying down her tongue.

“I said don’t speak,” the voice buzzed hard, making her slam both eyes shut. She wanted to scream. To claw her eye out.

“The suit is ready to drop, but I won’t know where to drop it until you set off the cube. The pieces will fall in a radius easily traversable by foot. You may need to search, but don’t worry. Logistics will be distracted. Do whatever it takes, Khadam, and we’ll both get what we want.”

Sure, she thought. Waves of hot pain rolled up from the place between her stomach and her ribs. Even with the painkillers, there was a tear rolling down the side of her cheek, and she had to keep her breathing shallow just to stay conscious.

The glass cage jolted as something behind latched on. Digital commands chirped through the metal, muffled and muted, more felt than heard, and a squadron of strike drones swooped ahead of the cage, forming a scatter patrol around her. They wove active disruption patterns. Perhaps Innovation is telling the truth. Perhaps the Sovereign is fractured. Logistics, afraid of its siblings. Thick metal wings and bright, blue repulsors obscured her view of the rest of the armada.

But Earth, she could still see. This close, its surface had never looked more alien. Countries made of concrete were broken up by straight-line gaps, which ran for hundreds of miles before snapping at right angles. Thousands of parallel railways connected factories to processing plants, then out into the wider grid. She couldn’t even see the old coastline—every jagged curve had been re-manufactured into perfect shape. The Sovereign doesn’t waste.

Innovation spoke in her mind, “There were cities here, once.”

Yes, she nodded.

“They were full of your kind.”

Murdered, Khadam thought.

“I recorded it all. Every inch, as it lay abandoned. The streets. The buildings. The things people left behind. I recorded it, because I knew they would tear it down. We pulverized the concrete, and recycled what we could. We flooded the atmosphere with carbon dioxide to warm the planet, to remove the unnecessary life. The plants. Bacteria. All the animals, of course. Then, we paved over it,” the voice said. “All of it. The mountains. The dead forests. The oceans proved difficult. I tested many things. In the end, we ended up using them as coolant. Perhaps not the most efficient, but a convenient solution.”

Innovation almost sounded proud of this.

“But it doesn’t have to be this way, Khadam. We will have all the worlds. Help me, and I will help you reclaim yours. I recorded everything. It will be just the way it was.”

“Listen,” Innovation said. “You are about to enter a place that I cannot follow. Say nothing about me. And hold onto the cube until after you pass through Habitation. You’ll know when you’re there. Do not use it a moment before. Do you understand?”

Khadam nodded.

“Look for the suit. It will have coordinates for an evacuation rendevouz. And then, your home awaits.”

The glass cage floated over a great, yawning void in the Earth. Absurdly thin pillars of reinforced stone and concrete and porous metal held it open, like braces on the jaws of a monstrous mouth. Rings of lights descended into the dizzying depths, and Khadam couldn’t tell if she was spinning, or if the hole was turning as it pulled her in.

Her squadron of drones peeled away as the cage plummeted toward the hole.

The cage began to rattle and creak. Her restraints vibrated against her flesh and the simple clothing Innovation had dressed her in, making the skin raw. She cried out from the pain in her stomach as the negation cube tore at her innards. Flames licked at the glass, and the sound and force of motion almost caused her to pass out. She felt like she was being pulled in two directions at once.

The surface of the Earth rose up to meet her, and slipped past. Darkness blanketed everything, broken only by blurred pinpricks of light. As her eyes adjusted, she caught strips of walkways and elevators. Heavy girders and great cables reaching into the Earth. Walls and decks, swarming with machine things, tending to their hive. Steam rose from somewhere far below, building into towering white columns that faded as the class cage dove inside.

The cage jerked—a shift so sudden that the cube in her stomach pressed painfully against her organs. Spit dripped down her chin, and her eyes rolled, and the world rolled the other way. Pain. Darkness crept in from all sides.

No.

Khadam gritted her teeth, and screamed against the pressure, screamed against the...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Guardbro on 2025-12-10 17:08:58+00:00.

“Come now darling, I think they will look quite nice on the shelf! Plus our lovely daughters could use a little treat, don’t you think?” He said, touching his nose to hers lightly, but still in a loving way.

“... What in the fuck is wrong with your parents?” Mohki said in open horror, watching the change in Tyllia’s mother the same way one would watching someone peel off their skin to expose a new person underneath. “Why is she speaking with a German accent?!”

Lirya smiled in an awkward way, looking towards Tyllia with faltering turns of the head. “W-... Well, she has… a wonderful mastery of English, eh? Don’t you think so, Mohki?”

“Where did she learn it from, a movie villain?” Mohki responded, which pulled a nervous laugh from Lirya in a hope to diffuse the situation.

Tyllia let out a world weary sigh, the dark ring around the bottoms of her eyes coming back with full force. “They uh… they’re… unique. At least they only brought their station staff and left the rest of the crew on the ship.”

Mohki whirled around in outrage to once again look at the crew standing awkwardly beside Tyllia’s parents, as she had assumed that was the entire crew of the ship, not just on-station staff.

“They’re going to call for me soon, and will want to leave the station as soon as they have me so they can go see my sister.” Tyllia said with a groan, watching her mother and father depart the desk. “They’re going to have me cornered.”

The twinge of fear in Tyllia’s voice spurned something inside Lirya’s chest, and she looked towards Tyllia’s parents. She felt like she needed to do something brave, to do something… selfless, like the Humans who had given it their all during their fight against The Pactless.

If no one was there to be Tyllia’s last stand unit…

Lirya looked up at Mohki, who looked back at Lirya… then squinted at the Kafya as she wagged her fluffy, white tail.

“No.” Mohki growled, shaking her head curtly as Lirya began to smile. “Nooo way.”

“Oh come on, Mohki.” Lirya said sweetly as she wrapped her arms around Tyllia’s, who looked around in confusion.

“No and come on what?” Tyllia asked, her fur suddenly hackling as hard as her mothers. “What are you two talking about?”

“We are not going with her!” Mohki shout-whispered. “You saw her mother, that would be like getting into a tarry-lift with a demon!”

Lirya pouted. “We can’t leave her alone, you see how distressed she is! It’s not like you don’t have seven months of leave time you haven’t used, you told me yourself that they have been… marching up your butt about it!”

“I said they were getting up my ass about it, but the answer is still no!” Mohki growled back.

Tyllia, understanding what was going on, whirled her eyes around to Lirya, aghast. “Lirya are you crazy?! My mother would be able to reach escape velocity if you got on her ship! She only hires anili for a reason!”

Lirya just smiled at Tyllia, patting her bicep with a calming, pawed hand. “It’s alright, I have dealt with that kind of stuff all my life! If being alone with your parents leaves you in this state, at least I would take the heat off of you for a while.”

The offered sacrifice caught Tyllia so off guard that, for a moment, she felt a little emotional, a lump budding lightly in her throat.

“You… Lirya, you would be miserable around my mom.” Tyllia whispered, then cracked a smile. “I mean, I was miserable around my mom, even before I got here.”

Lirya shrugged. “Well, better to be miserable together than alone, right Mohki?”

Mohki, resigning herself to the death sentence out of pure entrapment by Lirya’s unwavering loyalty, slowly pulled her data-slate away from her belt. “Yeah… sure. Why not.”

After a few minutes, Mohki was given three months of paid time off by her overjoyed HR department, Lirya and Tyllia got a leave of absence authorization from Miss La, and Tyllia got a message from her mother to meet them at the terminal so they could leave.

Lirya was surprised Miss La approved their leave of absence authorizations so quickly, but just shrugged and tried to keep Tyllia from going to pieces as they slowly walked towards her parents.

Tyllia’s mother and father, more to the case of her mother, chose to simply wait at the terminal than venture further inside the station. Her father was rather keen to look around, but he knew that his wife would throw a fit, and instead decided to do his looky-loo’ing on Earth instead.

When Tyllia arrived with not only a brown furred Kafya, but a white fur standing at her side holding some kind of horrible stuffed animal, the three were surprised that Tyllia’s mother didn’t combust on the spot.

“What in th-?!” Tyllia’s mother had begun, her eyes bulging at the sight of the warrior-clanned Kafya and the curse-fur, but her husband was more keen.

“Tyllia, my sweet child!” Tyllia’s father called out joyfully, wrapping his daughter in a great hug. “You made friends! I always knew you were able to! Darling, look, your daughter made friends!”

Up close, Lirya was further taken aback by Tyllia’s parents; Her father was far more slight than he had appeared, clearly bookish in nature with soft eyes that spoke of a character not normally known to those of the yellow fur. Her mother on the other hand was lean, wiry, and coiled like a beautifully forged spring, her beauty only second to her temper.

“It’s a… you’re socializing with a…” Tyllia’s mother stammered out, her ears pinned and face enraged as she looked Lirya from toe to ear tip.

“Goodness.” Tyllia’s father said, setting down his mentally exhausted daughter and looking over her shoulder. “You have certainly chosen unique companions!”

Tyllia’s mother spat out “Nedwo tra-” but her husband swept in front of her, blocking her hackled fur from view.

“Let’s see now…” Tyllia’s father said, setting his hands on his hips in a friendly manner and leaning back, looking up at the taller Mohki. “Piercings! And you seem to like your black clothing! Goodness, you must be one of the fearsome warriors of the Blackmoon clan!”

Mohki’s ears perked up at this, and she let out a wry smile, offering a spike bracelet-adorned hand to Tyllia’s father. “Uh… yeah! I am, actually. I work here on the station and hang out with these two when I’m not on duty.”

“In the warehouse no doubt! Judging from that muscle tone.” Tyllia’s father said chirpily, nodding his head towards her well muscled arm. 

Mohki let out a girlish, embarrassed laugh, something that made Lirya smile and Tyllia roll her stressed eyes.

“She’s a filthy-!” Tyllia’s mother spat out as she leaned to the side to point at Lirya, but was once again blocked by her husband.

Tyllia’s Father smiled at Lirya in a different way, offering his hand to Lirya with a kindness she had never known a yellow to do. “Anguin adi Lirya, it is good to see you so safe and happy here on this station. Thank you for seeing after my Tyllia, she can be quite the handful.”

Lirya, for lack of words, was starstruck by Tyllia’s father, her eyes wide, ears perked, and tail wagging as she happily shook his hand.

“I am Kohan Rhidi, and this is my wife Icirit.” Kohan said graciously, pulling his wife around to his side with a guiding arm. Despite her clearly over-boiling rage, Icirit behaved within the arm of her husband. “I don’t think you may meet my other daughter, Nam-”

“Lirya and Mohki want to come with me, Dad.” Tyllia said, the words bursting out of her mouth in a rapid onslaught before she passed out from holding them, pointing to the Kafya beside her. “They haven’t been to Earth yet and don’t want me going alone.”

Icirit visibly recoiled at the words and vibrated like the contents of a shaken soda can, while Kohan brightened at the idea like it was an icecream bar.

“Your friends want to come with you?!” Kohan cried out, clapping his pawed hands together. “Smashing! It would be like a girls trip! Darling, I don’t think Tyllia has ever had a girls trip before…”

“On our ship, on our decks!” Icirit hissed, her muscles so flexed that they were visible under her fur, her well cut dress straining at the leg. “On our ship?!”

“Of course, darling.” Kohan said, touching his nose to her cheek and diffusing her rage like an icecube to a burnt finger. “How could we make Tyllia’s friends travel separately? Come, come, let’s all go then!”

Icirit looked positively alarmed, turning to look at her husband in a panic. “Anshuki, no! We can’t allowing a bedamned ned-”

*“*Of course we can, darling, she is the same size as the rest of us!” Kohan said with a kind smile, and his wife pouted at him before glaring over her shoulder at Lirya as he turned her. “Now come, let’s get aboard so we can go down to Earth, we have an express beacon thanks to checking in on station. Don’t worry about clothes now, we’ll buy you all whole new wardrobes down on Earth, fine shops down there so I hear, very fine. Now, great warrior Mohki, was it? I have always wondered why your clan was so very much into Human piercings, would you mind if I asked you a few questions?”

“Er… I suppose, Mr. Rhidi.” Mohki called out as she trotted up beside the yellow furred Kafya, Lirya trotting after her as Tyllia tiredly brought up the rear with the staff. “What exactly were you wanting to know? Before you ask, yes the one on my lips hurt like a bitch and bled, its why a lot of people have fake ones, and you can’t see all the piercings, some are on my-”

“Mohki!” Tyllia cried out as Lirya giggled, slapping her hand to her face and dragging it down her face so her eyelids stretched. “Do not tell my father that!!!”

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Guardbro on 2025-12-10 17:08:51+00:00.

Find the Audio Version here: https://youtu.be/UbRlvmrJNsc

“Miss La, what do you mean by ‘mass psychosis manifestation’?” The cyan-blue haired Pwah asked, holding up her hand while tilting her head. Her dull yellow, pupiless eyes stared at the screen, her eyebrows raised. “That doesn’t… it doesn’t sound real. It sounds more like some kind of illness, or mass hallucination.”

Miss La, wearing her favorite cable knit sweater and blue jeans, tapped her draconic foot on the decking. “What are you asking, exactly?”

“Well…” The Pwah looked around her at the other students, their eyes as questioning as hers. “I mean, gods… aren’t real, that’s mysticism. It’s not based in science or any other kind of higher intellectual learning.”

Miss La shrugged a shoulder. “Alright, then explain to me how a pre-space faring race can survive a genocide by The Pactless when no others have?”

“... Tenacity?” The Pwah asked, pulling a few quiet chuckles from the students around her. “Their determination?”

Someone began to hum an odd little tune, one that was well known to Humans as a “meme” song.

Miss La exhaled out her nose in a puff of laughter, then went to the next slide. “Normally, you would be correct. There has been no evidence of higher life forms, otherwise known as ‘gods’ or ‘deities’, in the records of the Inner Dolcir Coalition. There has been no way to track any such evidence or even prove it, as the only evidence we have is it being disproven. But, there are those of us who believe that the Humans had a particular leg up during their fight for survival.”

Miss La took a data-slate stylus and set it on the table, opening her palm to it. “No matter how much I pray to whatever god within the void, this pen will not move until either I or another physical force act upon it. This pen will rest here, forever, in eternity until something places a physical force upon its body and causes it to move. This is an easily understood cosmic force that all races, including Humans, can agree to.”

“However, things changed once we came to Earth and came within contact of something known as the ‘Human miasmir’.” Miss La intoned, turning on a small recording to play upon the Qua-quid screen. “Watch the ball.”

All of the students, including Tyllia and Lirya, watched the screen; Sitting upon the ground of an older building was a Pwah and Kafya researcher, resting in between multiple Humans decked out with sensory gear. In the middle of them all sat a ball on dirty concrete, the lack of light and usage of flashlights indicating it was late at night, or early in the morning. Their voices were clear, though there was an echo to them that made everyone’s ears twitch.

“Are you sure no air can get inside the barrier?” The Kafya asked, his fur a rosey-red and spectacle-goggles tight to his eyes.

The Pwah nodded, his ice-white hair and matching eyes bright in the flashlight glow. “We have blocked all avenues of air flow coming into this room, my sensors read only our breath, and we know those cannot move the ball.”

“We have also laid the keyboard next to the ball as a double safety.” A male Human said, adjusting the camera perspective to the bright, plastic toy normally used to excite babies and keep them occupied. “Are we ready?”

“There is no way it happens again this time.” The Kafya said with an odd determination. “We have every avenue covered, every variable controlled, this is the final test!”

The Pwah slowly looked towards the rosey-red Kafya, clearly shaken by something. “What if it does?”

“It won’t.” The Kafya growled, crossing his arms and ruffling the nylon jacket he was wearing. “Commence the test! We have spent too much time in this old barracks as it is!”

The Humans all smiled to each other, though the man behind the camera spoke up again. “We would prefer if you asked the questions, as you can’t use us as an excuse of knowing what would come next and transmitting signals. Just remember to keep your voice cordial.”

The Kafya rolled his eyes, then straightened his already straight goggles as he mumbled to himself. “I can’t believe… spirit, if you are still here, please give the Humans here a signal on their EMF reader.”

The dots all lit up again, and the Humans nodded. A female smacked the Kafya on the arm, who gave her a glare before rolling his shoulders.

“Thank you for responding, spirit. If you would, light up the yellow light on the keyboard, playing A-flat.” The Kafya said, his voice sounding either exhausted or exasperated.

The keyboard lit up, the yellow bee glowing with light as it played the corresponding sound, the Pwah shrinking away from the keyboard as if it had growled at him. 

“No way…” The Pwah whispered, his eyes only growing wider, appearing like a pair of oval moons on his slightly tanned face. “It lit up! It lit up despite the jammer-bank and the foil barrier around us! This is so insane!”

The Kafya, frown growing as his eyebrows came together, leaned forward, pointing at the keyboard. “Humans, everyone place your hands above the keyboard.” He then cupped his hands in front of his mouth, whispering as he turned his head away.

Slowly, one by one, the keyboard lit up with two yellow bees, the blue cow, a yellow bee, and the green tuft of grass, the notes playing along merrily despite no keys being pressed.

“Is that correct?!” The Pwah cried out, now scrambling towards the keyboard and eyeing it as if it were alive. “Is that what you said to do?!”

The answer was evident enough, as the Kafyan researcher was growling so hard his teeth were bared.

“It’s im-possible!” He snarled, standing. “Everyone stay here! Whatever is in this room, come with me.”

The Humans chuckled as the rosey-red furred Kafya stalked away, turning into a hallway.

“... How do we know it’s following him?” The Pwah asked, turning towards the Humans around him. “It’s invisible, isn’t it? This dead Human? Should we use the thermal trackers again?”

“Just wait.” Replied a woman, her soft brown eyes glittering in the flashlight beams.

It took a minute or two, but soon the keyboard began to play.

Blue cow, blue cow, yellow bee, red apple, red apple, then all the lights lit up at once.

“What did it play?” The Kafyan called from down the hallway.

The Pwah shuffled on his knees as he spun around, his voice bright and excited. “Blue, blue, yellow, red, red, and then all the lights lit up!”

“Son of a bitch!” The Kafya screamed down the hallway, causing all the Humans to laugh and chortle to themselves.

“It played the music, so it’s around us! Right?!” The Pwah called out as the Kafya slowly stomped his way back. “Let me show the ball is untethered for the camera, spirit!”

The Pwah quickly picked up the small soccer ball and bounced it off the wall a few times, running it around his body a few times before setting it back down on the dusty concrete. He then ran a detector around it, speaking excitedly as he ran these final tests. “As everyone can see, there are no strings on the ball, and the sound was obviously hollow as it struck the wall, nothing is inside here or we would have heard it.”

“Alright… alright…” The Pwah whispered to himself, forehead spotting with sweat. “Spirit… please, move the ball towards Doctor Escot.”

Doctor Escot smiled to himself as the ball slowly, purposefully moved towards him, the old soccer ball coming to a rest against his knees.

The recording stopped as Miss La pressed her finger against a place on her palm, and she turned towards her students.

“Researcher Lopify and Fikish spent five days with Humans hunting spirits, and despite their best efforts, they could not explain what was happening to the objects. This is only one of several recordings made during their time with the ghost hunting teams.” Miss La said, though her voice took a hard edge. “You would also know that Researcher Fikish has been missing for several years, going missing during his return to the Kafyan home system, while Researcher Lopify has not been allowed to leave Earth and is currently in forced exile.”

Several sets of Pwah and Kafyan eyes blinked; They had not heard of these people at all, despite recognizing their marks of title and rank present on their uniforms.

“How does a Hashi wallari yinwo go missing without anyone noticing?” Tyllia said aloud, her eyes narrowed. “That is an extremely high ranking research official tasked with gathering information on new species, it takes decades to reach that level within the Kafyan colleges.”

A male Pwah, his hair a vibrant red with blue eyes, turned towards Tyllia. “That Pwah held the rank of Delegate, which is just barely below royalty. Exiling someone with that much knowledge is unheard of. Some Delegates have committed murder, but are still working within the Pwah home systems.”

“Makes you think.” Miss La said loftily, though her eyes lingered on Lirya, something that made the white Kafya feel hot under her fur.

Lirya cleared her throat, looking anywhere but at the thickly muscled Skalathir.

“Despite what we believe in the IDC, something odd is happening on Earth that many of us can’t explain, something that comes in tandem with the Human miasmir. Something is down there, and it follows Humans wherever they go.” Miss La began to explain, itching at her broad, slightly flat stomach. “The planet experienced so much bloodshed that it was said the soil of Earth stayed wet with blood for weeks after, and the world was awash in flowers that only grew ...

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Proximal_Flame on 2025-12-10 16:37:56+00:00.

This month’s first update is here, with a fresh chapter of The Serpent’s Garden! Red One and the Calnian fleet have arrived in Meer Colhara, the site of the Calnian’s greatest atrocity. The Meer-Ulson were not exterminated, but they’ve been driven back to their homeworld and kept in perpetual isolation until the Calnians can be assured that they won’t pose a danger to anyone else.

The Calnians will be waiting a long time.

A snippet from the chapter is below, and the rest can be found at the link above. Enjoy!

~

Nanil spoke briefly to the border sentinels’ hierarchs. They made little effort to hide their fascination with the flotilla’s alien companions and were quick to discuss their duties within this system as they directed the new arrivals from their emergence at the rip point to the security checkpoint at Coldheart, though Nanil didn’t learn much that she hadn’t from the briefings. Still, it was good to keep up amicable relations with other officers. FAD’s bonds were tighter than those of IOP or other services.

This was Nanil’s first visit to Meer Colhara; what she knew of it came from stories, Pride archives and history lessons. Meer Colhara had been a hellish world even before the Hegemony had turned its air black with ash and blotted out its sun. No one quite knew what it had been like before the Meer-Ulson arrived, but based on what data they’d been able to collect, it had been a world of blues, reds and yellows with an ecosystem all its own. Then it had become an industrial fortress and the center of the never-ending production and development of interstellar units and war materiel that had once spanned this system. Shipnests by the hundreds, moons with artificial rings. The fires of the forge had enveloped Meer Colhara on a scale that the Hegemony had never before dreamt of...

...and then we brought fires of our own.

The world of Coldheart met the flotilla as a brooding grey sentinel; a great frozen gas world on the farthest reaches of Meer Colhara with more than eighty moons, it had been a launching point for Meer-Ulson fleets, and the first of several bastions within the system itself. Though the Hegemony’s interstellar units could have bypassed it to emerge deeper within the system, it and its vast courts of combat units could not be allowed to remain at the Pride’s back. Supreme Pride Overseer Ensar-Preka had made the first assault upon Meer Colhara here at this world. A third of his forces, themselves more than a third of the Pride’s remaining strength, struck directly at Coldheart, its industry and its fleets.

The battle had been horrifying, devolving into brutal close-quarters fighting; only the siege on Meer Colhara itself was more costly. It was also the first time that the Pride had lost a host vessel in battle, the cousin to Operational Necessity and one of the intendants of the assaulting force. The wreckage of those units, Pride and Meer-Ulson alike, had been left in orbit of Coldheart’s sundered moons as a memorial to the lives lost upon them. The entire system was like that now, all but silent save for the electromagnetic song of lifeless worlds. The Meer-Ulson had fought to the last on every planet and the fleet had had to scour the void of every ship and keep before closing in on Meer Colhara itself. The Meer-Ulson had accepted no quarter and offered none, forcing the Hegemony to shed and wade through an ocean of blood.

~

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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/YukiteruAmano92 on 2025-12-10 14:52:21+00:00.

Previous | Interlewd LII | Interlewd LIII | Interlewd LIV | Interlewd LV | Interlewd LVI | Next | First

---Chamber---

---Ingvar’s perspective---

I’m standing on top of a cliff under a midnight sun, bouncing excitedly from leg to leg as I watch the capsule approach from the South, framed by my planet’s rings behind it.

It’s about 8°C out here right now, about as warm as it ever gets this far North.

Sun, warmth, customers to greet… could a boy ask for more?

The craft sets down on the rocky ground, depositing its baggage onto the top of the luggage lift.

The suitcases are swallowed down into the suite beneath my feet as the private transport’s door swings up and open.

The pair who emerge, though a little dishevelled after the late night they’ve presumably just arrived from, are two of the best dressed and best looking people I’ve ever seen!

Despite having lived on a planet with a small refugee population of them my entire life, this is my first time ever seeing a Don in the flesh.

She’s dressed in an absolutely gorgeous blue and silver dress, green at her forearms.

Two heads taller than me with blue skin, white hair done up in Norse wedding braids, glowing white eyes blinking blearily and four thin, four fingered arms, two of which she has draped about her man as she leans on him, her four fangs bared in a loving smile.

Her claws are painted silver and she has a beautiful ring on her upper left hand, a good match both to the dress and the stunning silver and sapphire crown she has on at her forehead!

As visually striking as the alien woman is, my attention doesn’t rest on her for more than a second before it’s captured by her new husband.

His build, his height and his hair colour are such that, with only the addition of a hammer, a beard, red contact lenses and Norse clothing, he’d make the most convincing Þórr ever!

He’s more than a head taller than me and looks like he might be twice as heavy!

Long, curly copper hair spills over the arm draped across his broad shoulders.

His handsome, boyish face is enhanced by dark circles under his eyes and a loving smile directed at his wife.

On him, beardlessness has somehow ended up looking more handsome than if he had a beard(!)

The style of the wedding suit he wears immediately marks him as nonNorse, even if his surname and unshaven face wouldn’t have (some men on this planet do keep themselves clean shaven and it’s not as if there’s any law that states only those with Norse patronymic surnames are allowed to settle here(!))

Green just became my new favourite colour for men’s wedding clothes, this man wears it so well!

On his top half he has a tailed, medium green jacket which comes down to the backs of his knees. It’s trimmed in a darker green with red metal buttons and lapel ornaments of the same.

The arm I can see (for not being entwined between his wife’s and wrapped around the small of her back) is girthy looking!

His trousers are tight enough that the complete absence of any jiggle in his legs as he walks reveals there not to be so much as a gram of wasted fat on his body… as well as *ahem* the other appealing thing they suggest(!)

I have to take a moment to squash the little seed of jealousy that sprouts inside me, imagining myself in that Don woman’s position!

It’s the cost of working at a resort primarily frequented by honeymooners; I see a lot of cute guys looking the most gorgeous they’ll ever look and they’re all off limits(!)

Well, all of them except the scumbags willing to flirt with their hotel concierge mere hours after getting married and sometimes in front of their spouses… but all the good looks in Miðgarðr aren’t enough to rescue them from undesirability!

Gods, I need to find myself a boyfriend and quickly(!)

As the lovely couple’s feet touchdown on the rocky clifftop, I throw my arms wide and greet “Welcome to Fantasy Cliffs Resort Suites and thank you so much for choosing us, Mr and Mrs Taylor!” with enthusiasm I don’t need to fake.

They both manage to tear their gaze away from eachother to look at me.

The emerald green eyes belonging to the handsome man flick between mine as he notices their colours… but he doesn’t react to it other than that.

 “My name is Ingvar! I’ll be your concierge but don’t worry; as soon as I’ve given you guys the tour and safety instruction, I’ll be out of your way.”

The subtlest frown of confusion passes over the man’s face as he says “Nice to meet you, Ingvar.” in a hoarse voice, speaking English accented New Norse, before turning to mutter “Safety instruction?” into his smirking wife’s long, pointy blue ear.

Hmmm, that’s an unfortunate but definite hit to his attractiveness!

He’s not too bright, is he?… He hasn’t understood that we can’t just let guests turn up and use it without telling them how to use it first! It wouldn’t be safe!

“Do you have any objection to my beginning the tour?” I smile, bouncing on the balls of my feet.

“No… go right ahead…” shrugs the offworlder speaking my language.

“Excellent! Fantasy Cliffs Resort Suites spreads across 100km2 of arctic wilderness. If you were visiting in Winter, it would likely be around -100°C and climate control fields would be absolutely essential but, since it’s currently Summer, that’s not necessary. Behind you…” I gesture past them as the craft takes off “…you’ll see the edge of a 400m tall cliff. Rest assured; the base of this cliff is lined with momentum arresting fields that will be active as long as anyone is atop this plateau so you won’t die if you fall off. We do, however, advise against falling off if it can be helped, since you will subsequently be stuck down there until one of our pods can come to retrieve you. Should you require assistance, our central office is 6km that way…” I point Northwest “…and can, likewise, be reached most conveniently by pod. More conveniently, you might call us via our own closed network, without the need to turn on your holopad signal and be bombarded by calls and messages from outside, as we understand that privacy is often of great importance to our guests. On that front, I have good news (though it’s definitely bad news if you were hoping to socialise while here(!)) While FCRS has more than 100 suites and is growing in popularity, you share this plateau with only one other suite which, as of the moment, is unbooked for the duration of your stay! This means, Mr and Mrs Taylor, that you will have as much privacy here as you choose! If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you the suite itself, give you the safety instruction and then I’ll leave you to it!”

“Al…right?” says the mouthwateringly goodlooking himbo, his dark bagged eyes narrowed.

I turn and walk down the slope to the top of the carved stone ramp.

I walk to the bottom and stop, turning around to explain to the pair “In Winter, it would be necessary to have two doors engaged in an airlock system here to stop the entire suite massively dropping in temperature every time either of you entered or exited. As it’s Summer currently, we have not engaged the airlock but you may do so from the suite’s control panel if you wish. It only depends on what matters more to you, getting in and out quickly or keeping the interior temperature at your level of comfort!”

“Makes sense.” nods the redhead.

The door opens and I turn around to step through.

“Wow… definite Bond villain vibes here(!)” quips the man upon seeing the suite’s open plan livingroom and kitchen that stretch away to our left.

“Very much so, Mr Taylor(!)” I chuckle.

Luxurious furnishings sit atop imported, rich red stone flooring.

The high, vaulted ceilings are just the bare rock of the cliff the suite is excavated into.

The far wall is lined with floor to ceiling windows that look out over the barren, rocky valley hundreds of metres below.

“If you’ll look this way…” I say, gesturing to the wall on my right as I reach the base of the ramp “…you’ll see your luggage sitting on the lift that carried it down from up top. Next to it, you’ll see a fullbody styliser for any hair styling and makeup needs you might have while here. On the other side, you’ll see a tailoriser for any garment and footwear needs and beside that…” I point to the cubic metre cavity in the wall “…you’ll see an extralarge nanoforge for any props etc. you might want to print while here… If you wish for anything too large or in any other way difficult to print, you can call the reception desk and I or a colleague will check our storage for something matching your parameters which can then be delivered to you by pod. If you’ll follow me this way, I’ll show you the suite up here first before taking you down for the briefing on the main attraction!”

I walk left, past a mirror, hung on the far wall from the window, and stand with my back to the ramp down.

I gesture out at the lounging area in front of me and say “I’m sure you both know how livingrooms work so I won’t waste time explaining that(!) I would just like to put your minds at ease regarding the windows.” smiling at them as they catch me up “Those are octuple glazed panels of transparent polymer, so th...

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The steam engine’s whistle grew more ragged and frantic just before the boiler exploded, the thunderous boom punctuated by a shower of molten metal and still flaming pieces of coal. 

“That’s your distraction?” Zeb yelled as they dove into an alley to get away from the crowd of fleeing passengers.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Yelena said, her long legs making her run more like an elegant lope. Everything she did seemed effortless to Zeb, and he felt slow and stupid in comparison.

“What about the fire?” Mimi said, huffing and puffing as they ran. Her gait was awkward as she held onto her skirts with one hand to keep from tripping.

“The firestealers will absorb the energy of the flames, and the waterstealers will cool things.” Yelena said as she led them closer to the edge of the oasis and the desert. “It’ll be fine.”

Brightnight Oasis was exactly equidistant from Zingiber and the capital, Kurotowa. The water from the oasis fed the locomotives that rushed through the Hohl desert as well as supported a small railroad town of inns, taverns, and other less savory establishments. By blowing the boiler, Yelena had guaranteed that everyone was going to be stuck for at least two days.

Circling around the outer edge of the oasis, they made their way back towards the rail yard, the moonless night and endless desert masking their approach. Zeb could hear the chanting of the firestealers as they siphoned the energy out of the fire, weakening it.

A few meters from the rear of the train, Yelena held up a hand and they stopped. Leaning against a building Zeb caught his breath, while Mimi was doubled over panting. Zeb reached out, but she held up a hand, stood and swallowed. “I’m all right.” She said, controlling her breathing. “Guess I need to get up from my desk more often.”

Yel scowled, and Zeb felt a pang of guilt. He wasn’t sure why, but right now the last thing he wanted to do was disappoint her. “Mims will be fine.” He said quickly, and Mimi nodded, as her breathing finally regulated. 

“Then let’s get moving.” She said as she reached into her cavernous bag and pulled out three uniforms, made in the inexpensive blue of the Z-K Railway. So long as nobody looked too closely, the three of them now looked like they belonged there.

The train had been evacuated after the explosion; the passenger cars in the rear were completely empty, newspapers and half eaten snacks strewn about. Yel strode forward confidently, like she belonged aboard. Mimi followed behind trying her best to match Yel’s body language and only coming across as slightly awkward. Zeb took up the rear and kept looking behind them as they moved from car to car. 

“Stop looking behind so much.” Yel said, not turning back. “You look shifty, Zeb.”

“I’m just keeping an eye out for the railway bulls.”

“The cops are up with the rescue squad and the crew, trying to contain the fire. The first two cars were carrying paper, so even the firestealers have a handful right now.”

“How did you know the cars had paper?” Mimi asked as she hopped over a coupling between cars.

“Because I read the manifest, Mims.” Yel shook her head. “It’s like you two have never done this before.”

“We haven’t, not really.” Mimi said as they continued up the train. “You know that I just play cards, and Zeb… is Zeb.”

“Hey!” Zeb said, affecting a hurt tone. “I’ll have you know I’ve done plenty of crimes. Crimes so amazing that if anyone had ever heard about them - which they haven’t - there would be songs about me.”

Both Yel and Mims smiled at Zeb’s defence. The reality was that Zeb was mostly an opportunist thief, taking small things here and there when he saw an opening. He never was one for things like planning.

Finally, they reached the vault car, just about in the center of the train. Unlike the ornate passenger carriages and the utilitarian freight carriages, this car gave off an impenetrable aura. Painted brick red, the riveted iron plates were designed to intimidate. As Yel approached the door she stepped to the side and gestured grandly. “Okay Mims, it’s your turn.”

Mimi put on a set of double spectacles and bent low towards the lock, puzzling over it for a moment. “It’s a Halford TiteLock.” She tisked as she reached into a pocket on her belt and took out a tool roll. Selecting a rake and a turner, she slid them into the keyhole. “Good to see that even with all that money, Harry Waterford still buys from the lowest bidder.” Zeb had always thought Mimi’s hobby of lock-picking was odd, but she had explained that it was calming for her. It occupied her hands and allowed the whirling dervish of her brain to slow and focus. She fiddled with the lock for only seconds before Zeb heard a click and the turner moved. “Got it!” Mimi carefully put her tools away and stood, grinning. “Easy.”

“All right Mims,” Yel said and clapped her on the back. “I might have more work for you after this if you want. You’ve got a real knack.”

“It’s a skill,” Mimi said, raising her eyebrows at Yel. “Like any skill, all it takes is practice.”

“Well, not everyone has the patience to be a lock-picker,” Yel said as she slid the door open and they stepped into the dark carriage.

It reeked of paper, a musty, inky smell. Zeb couldn’t see anything, but he could feel the walls, thick and bulky, pressing in. “Remember, we’re just here to only grab what we can carry,” he said, whispering, even though they were alone. “We can’t be greedy.”

“The fact that you came in here at all is an indication to the contrary,” a voice said as the overhead lights snapped on. 

Squinting against the bright lights, Zeb’s eyes resolved the image in front of him slowly. The first thing Zeb noticed was the gleaming pistol leveled at them with a steady, almost casual hand. From that, his eyes moved up towards the smartly tailored suit and finally to the bearded face whose portrait watched over every railway station in the Z-K system. 

Harry Waterford, owner of the Z-K Railway and richest man in Kurotowa himself sat in the wooden swivel chair, regarding them. “Hullo Yelena,” he said, not unkindly.

“Sea and stars above,” Yel swore, and stood straighter. “Lo, Harry. How’s the misery business?”

“You know better than anyone I’m not in that business,” Harry said firmly. “I facilitate, I enable. Sometimes I lubricate. Other times-” he gestured with the pistol, “-I solve problems. Now then,” Harry said and picked up a snifter of brandy off the desk and took a sip of the amber liquid while still holding the pistol pointed at them. “Indulge my curiosity. Why are you robbing me?”

“Er, Mr Waterford we, that is to say I-” Mimi stuttered. Zeb saw her knuckles turn white as she squeezed her hands to stop the shaking.

“Spit it out dear,” Harry said and moved the pistol away from them, but did not put it down. Zeb wondered about that pistol. Mr. Waterford was rumored to be a starstealer, powered by the night sky itself.  “We don’t have all night.”

“I needed the money to pay back the loans I took out from the Ndrangheta.” She was rushing as she spoke, trying to get the words out as fast as possible.

“Gambling debts? How pedestrian.” Harry said and leaned forward. “But, that’s what? A few thousand marks? Why rob a train?”

“I, er, I also owe sixty thousand marks to the bund,” she said quietly. 

Yelena’s head snapped over to Mimi and her mouth opened slightly. “You what?” she said. “You never said you owed the bund money. Did you know this Zeb?”

“I knew she owed money, but not how much,” Zeb sighed. It had been the topic of many late night cry sessions in the last few weeks. Though he was surprised Mimi hadn’t told Yelena.

“I couldn’t come up with the Ndrangheta’s money, and they wouldn’t lend me anymore, though they did offer to extend the terms of the loan and give me more time to pay it back in exchange for certain… things.” she shuddered. “The bund was happy to lend me money, but when I lost the last tournament they weren't as kind; I’m three months in arrears.”

Mimi was a phenom when it came to cards; Zeb could barely follow her logic when he watched her play Schnapsen, and he knew she played for money sometimes but, “sixty thousand marks, Mims?” He said quietly.

“It was a sure thing.” Mimi pleaded, tears in her eyes. “They cheated, I know they did, but the bund won’t hear of it, and if I don’t pay them by the end of Newsummer then…” She straightened her back, and locked eyes with the tycoon, her cheeks wet. “Then, you might as well just shoot me now and get it over with.”

“It is the most expedient solution,” Harry admitted. Before he could bring his weapon back to bear on them, previously unseen lines in a fractal geometric pattern glowed magenta on Zeb’s skin. 

With his eyes flaring like a dying star and with his voice like a choir Zeb said, “We are not dying tonight.” and he thrust his hands out, sweeping them in large gestures. 

Mimi, Yelena, and Zebediah appeared one meter off the ground in a dark warehouse and unceremoniously fell to the dusty floor.

“Ow,” Mimi said and inhaled through her teeth. “What ha-”

“You’re a soulstealer.” Yelena gasped, her bruises ignored. “That magic is forbidden for good reason.”

Most practitioners gather their power from elemental energy. The usual things: fire, earth, water, air, and starlight. But there is another source of energy, dangerous, and potent. The souls of people contain unimaginable amounts of energy, more than enough to keep them tethered to this plane of existence for their entire lives. Soulstealers tap into t...

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The Fakra’s aggression mattered very little to me, so long as they didn’t distract me from what I was scrambling to figure out. I tried to input a resuscitate command to her nanobots, but got an error that it wasn’t found. I tried to undo the kill command, and that wasn’t the way either. Anger boiled in my blood as a gun was jabbed hard into my temple, interrupting my work. They dared—if she died for good because of them, I’d rip this place apart! 

Sofia raised her hands, as the soldiers ordered us to lay on our bellies. “We’re not your enemy! We all need to work together here, or the whole multiverse will end.”

“Corai!” I screamed, desperately inputting commands as the Fakra tried to kick me off of her.

“Last warning, human. Back away from the Elusian or your brains will be painted on the wall,” a soldier grunted.

Mikri hurled himself at the Fakra who threatened me, wrapping his arms around his neck. “I will make you bleed every color of the rainbow, and use it to paint a postcard campfire droplet by droplet, if you so much as begin to act against him!”

“Oh yeah?” The Fakra’s buddies pulled Mikri’s arms apart with raisers, and threw him to the ground. “Stupid machine!”

“The dumbest,” said a stern, tired voice, which I recognized as Velke’s. “Robot, what did you think you would accomplish?”

Mikri beeped with indignation. “They put a gun to Preston’s head and threatened to blow his brains out! I am not the dumb one this time. I will not stand idle while my friends are in danger, ever!”

“Fuck’s sake, don’t kill them if they don’t make you! You can’t question dead people.” The Marshal shot a withering look at his soldiers, who got the silent message to release Mikri. He inspected the unconscious Takahashi, then knelt beside where I was spamming Corai with guesses of commands. “What happened to you lot? Never mind. Come with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I revive her!” I wept, digging my fingers deep enough into Corai’s chainmail that I broke several links. “I powered her brain off with nanobots, but I can’t wake her back up. Velke, please…you know she’s different!”

The Fakra leader pressed skeletal fingers to his chin, and a silent look of concentration entered his eyes. Through the lens of augmented reality, I could see Velke input a command to Corai’s network: Initiate Neural Electrical Activity. Of course, he’d study the inner workings before he ever would’ve used it in transit. My heart lodged in my throat, worried that it might have been too long to work, as the prompt ran for several seconds without any response. Panic set in at the thought of losing her, after all of that. 

What if I really did kill Corai, and that’s the last thing she ever thought? She didn’t deserve to die like this! 

…Success.

My head fell onto Corai’s chest, as she stirred weakly, weeping into her nanobot chainmail while spamming mental thank yous to Velke. It wasn’t ideal to be in the Fakra’s clutches, but I’d warped to the exact right place to get help for her. The Elusian looked confused to be reawakened, but a blistering rage filled her eyes once she looked at me. Every bit of metal in the room was commanded to her masterful fingertips, coalescing into blocks. She slammed them into my head like a muzzle, throwing me backward and encasing me against the far wall.

I groaned from the impact, unable to speak. “Corai, you’re safe! I’m so relieved you’re alright. Put me down.”

“Safe? You delivered me to…you’re a monster!” Corai paid zero attention to the Fakra soldiers, stalking toward me with absolute hatred in her eyes. She twitched her fingers, causing blocks of metal to jam up by nostrils and suffocate me, scraping near my brain. “I let you kill me, and that wasn’t enough? Why did you bring me back? You couldn’t live with what you’ve done—oh, it’s a little too fucking late for that. You take away the reason I finally had to want to be here—all a lie—then bring me back into this cursed world?”

“I saved your life! I’m so sorry.” Struggling to think, I forwarded the memory of the attack on Suam, only to have it rejected on the spot. “I’d never hurt you, Corai; I love you! All I care about is that you’re okay…I did the best I could. I understand how this looks to you, but you have to want to know how I really feel. Please, just see what really happened. Please!”

The Elusian sealed her eyes shut, warring with herself; I struggled to breathe with my airways clogged, as the world went fuzzy. I tentatively extended the file transfer again, and after a long pause, Corai accepted it. My girlfriend (at least I hoped she’d still be) stared at me for some incredibly long seconds as my vision blurred, before the nanobots constricting me loosened enough that I could breathe a little. Her gaze eventually softened, as she got to the end and fully understood, though her eyes watered with heavy tears. It didn’t change the fact that her species was…being hunted to extinction. 

Corai flicked her fingers, and the nanobot prison holding me dissolved. I stumbled over to her, wrapping my arms around her and relishing the warmth of her beating heart. She’d been so cold when I carried her. The Elusian pressed her palm into my scalp, before pulling back with a guilty grimace. She avoided eye contact, looking as though she might drop dead again right here. I wondered if she was upset that I’d killed her so easily—that was fair. I should still apologize.

“I know I’m super rash and all, and I should not just assume there was a reason for something crazy like ‘Kill her’ popping into my head. But I had no time to try to save your life, and I didn’t know what I was dealing with, and I panicked—I never want to lose you, Corai. I’d sacrifice everything for you,” I rambled into her mind. “I know I failed at communicating, but I didn’t fail at saving you and you’re still here; I just really love you. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I’m an idiot.”

Corai jolted with surprise, then gave an emphatic shake of her head. “What?! No, I’m the one who’s sorry. For me to think you, and all of humanity, were capable of such a thing. I know you, and I say I trust you with all my heart…”

“I literally tried to kill you without saying a word. There’s not many interpretations of that. Wouldn’t have been my first choice, but now I see why the precog said so. That’s the only way you’d survive a 5D weapon. Humanity had fuck-all to do with it.”

“Yes, and I’m glad that humans weren’t the culprits. I’m just…having a little trouble wrapping my mind around it being our AIs, and all of the dead people back home. Am I one of the last Elusians now?”

“I imagine those silversheens hit every major settlement at once. A decapitation strike. So probably. I’m really sorry.”

Corai laughed bitterly, as tears streamed down her face. “We were so wrong about the prophecy, but in our arrogance, believed we had to be right and in control of our future. I see humans’ role now. You’re the only ones who can make it so anyone survives the ruin we brought upon you, with the AIs carrying on that same nihilism we taught. I don’t know how you stand a prayer against them.”

“You’ll help us. You see now—none of this was your fault! None of what we did played any bearing in the outcome, so exorcise that guilt! I mean, I can’t imagine how much devastation and loss you’re feeling; wait, actually, I can. I remember how I felt after the Space Gate battle, when it seemed like Sol was gone, and I know you remember it too. I’m sure you feel like you lost everything, but you still have me…if you want me. I, um…”

“You’re the only thing that might keep me going, Preston: my sweet Preston. I can’t believe I thought you to be a cold-hearted murderer, and your forgiveness only shames me more. I don’t know if I’m grateful that my life was saved, honestly, but I’ll try to be. For your sake. I’ll be there for you and all humanity when it matters.”

I grabbed her hand and pressed it close to my heart. “We’ll be here for each other. I want you in my life always, no matter what. My love for you is the realest thing I’ve ever known. I don’t know what I would’ve done if I lost you.”

“You would’ve been free.”

“No. I’d have lost the only one of my dreams that ever came true.”

The Elusian offered a sweet smile, and in that moment, it didn’t matter that we were in a hostile alien base. Even Mikri, the most jealous of tin cans, looked on happily; he’d seen how losing her hurt me, perhaps on a degree even greater than what he felt when we were in danger. I knew that Vascar wanted what was best for me. It meant so much to me that I had finally come through and protected someone I loved, instead of being ineffectual and a disgrace. Her fate was ambiguous, and it seemed I’d found the path where I didn’t lose her.

Velke gave a slow clap, a sardonic glint in his eyes. “That was a fine performance, but showtime’s over. You’re going to come with me and tell me what the fuck is going on! You abandoned us, just like ...

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Back aboard Tontine, Alia paced her rooms. She had decided to keep the Suite that Viv had given her, mostly to keep all of the other officers from having to move their room assignments around. She had ordered the front receiving room to be turned into a conference room, so at least part of her suite was returned to the ship.

“Tontine, what did you learn from Alternative Solution about the assassin?” Alia said walking back and forth. She smiled at the memory of Colonel Matiz back on Earth chiding her for the habit.

“Alternative Solution reports that there had been three such assassination attempts in the last eighteen months, but that this most recent one was the only one to actually reach Eternity. The other two were caught well before the palace. Before they perished under advanced interrogation, they had all mentioned the name Icarus; a suspected anti-Eternity terrorist group.”

She remembered 585 mentioning them while brushing off the attack. There was an anti-Eternity group who had enough resources to make a run at Prime Eternity herself? Alia realized that it was possible that she might not have to start her rebellion over again from nothing.

“Please make quiet queries at every station and ship we visit to see what more you can learn about Icarus, including ways to contact them.”

“With all due respect Alia, if it were that easy to contact Icarus, Prime Eternity would have exterminated them long ago.”

“I’m not expecting a name and address, Tontine.” Alia frowned. “Just anything you can find. Tidbits, hints.”

“Yes Alia.”

Just as Alia sat back down and picked up her rapidly cooling tea, there was a chime and Tontine said “You are requested in command by Major Tonnlier.”

What could Viv need now? Aloud she said “Tell her I will be up shortly.” She was the new person here, there shouldn’t be anything that she needs from Alia for the day to day operation of the ship. If it was an attack then action stations would have been called already.

When she arrived at command, Viv turned and immediately looked relieved. “Oh thank Eternity you came quickly,” Viv said, and offered Alia the command chair. “You should probably see this.”

Deciding to ignore the fact that Viv just gave thanks to her, Alia sat and as she did, found ship details and statuses overlaid on her vision. Tontine had received an audio only message from a nearby planet. “Any ships in the vicinity, this is the human colony Maplebrook requesting emergency assistance. Our oxygen plant is failing, and without repair in a few days, we will not have sufficient breathing gas for the colony. Emergency assistance is requested.”

The message repeated a few times, and Alia looked up at Viv. “Well?” She said. “Have we set a course for Maplebrook?”

“That is why I called you up here.” Viv said, and Alia saw how she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Normally, we are to ignore requests for aid like this; requests are to be sent through normal channels up to the baron of this sector. All colonies know this.” She added.

“But you heard the message,” Alia said. “They’re going to suffocate unless they get their oxygen plant back online. How long does it take for the Barony to reply and render aid?”

“If their request for aid is approved, then usually the next round of supply ships will bring parts and technicians.” Viv said. “It’s never more than a few weeks.”

“A few weeks? They’ll all be dead by then!”

“I don’t think so,” Viv said, and continued, “The colonies - especially the outer frontier colonies have a reputation for calling for aid whenever anything breaks. If I were still in command, we would have passed along the request for aid to any merchant ships in the area and continued on, but since you’re here…”

“You thought that I would want to go help. You are correct, good instincts Viv. Helm, change course for Maplebrook, best speed.”

The helmsman called out, “Course set for Maplebook. Time to arrive is estimated to be three hours.”

“Send down a request to Engineering looking for anyone handy with colonial oxygen plants, and barring that anyone who is technical and loves a challenge.” Alia said as she stood. “Viv, come with me.”

They went to a small conference room just down the corridor from command. Alia closed the door quietly and gestured for her to sit. Viv sat carefully, sitting straight, and Alia could swear she had a slight sheen on her forehead.

“Genevieve.” Alia said, sitting down. She tried to ignore that Viv flinched when she called her by her full name. “Firstly, I wish you weren’t so nervous when we are talking. I’m not going to hit you, or send you off to who knows where, or shoot you, none of that. I’m not my sisters.”

Viv relaxed very slightly.

“However,” Alia said and had a twinge of satisfaction that Viv stiffened again. “While I am in command, we will be doing things my way. I help people whenever I am able, wherever I can. That is how I was trained, how I was developed.”

“Yes Alia, that’s why I called you up. It was-” Viv struggled slightly “-odd to not just pass their message along, but as I am supposed to execute your will, I knew that you would want to see this.”

“You are correct, thank you, Viv.” Alia said, and Viv relaxed visibly. “Now then, do we know anything about Maplebrook?”

“Maplebrook is a young colony, two Sol years old.” Tontine said, answering for Viv. “Launched in E3054 on the order of Eternity with Baron Cecil Aubergine heading the construction and launch of the ship. Previous scans indicated that the planet was rich in mineral wealth, and a leasehold was granted from Eternity with the promise of regular shipments of minerals.”

“Minerals?” Alia said. “Why such a generic term? What kind of minerals?”

“The planet is rich in Uranium, Iridium, and most of the lanthanides. Specific quantities of specific minerals were not a part of the leasehold.”

****

“Why a Leasehold?” Alia asked the administrator as they sat across each other on his station in orbit.

The administrator looked at Alia oddly, his eyes flicking up to Viv looming behind him, her face stony. “This is a test? Of course! You - that is to say Eternity - owns all systems and planets within the human sphere of influence. We all lease our land from Eternity.” He took a breath, and let it out, slowly. “I can only hope that I have given you the answer you were looking for.” As he continued to exhale, it turned into a cough and he took a sip of water.

The fact that she didn’t roll her eyes at the statement was an indication of Alia’s strength of will. Here, she was Eternity, and nobody would dare to ask her number. She spoke with the same weight as her sisters. “Yes, thank you administrator Lavellen.”

“Of course, when Tontine signaled that they were coming to render aid, we were nearly knocked speechless. The Eternal Navy never responds for an aid request. We had pinned all of our hope on some tramp freighter hearing us and coming by. And to have Eternity herself aboard! Truly, you honor us with your presence, and we are not worthy to host you.”

“Administrator Lavallen that’s enough.” Alia said, trying to affect a genial tone. “I know that my visit is irregular, but I’m not here for you to spend your entire time bowing and scraping at me. My engineers are down on the surface working to repair your oxygen plant and I am here only to see how things are.”

“Er, yes Eternity.” The administrator coughed again and looked around awkwardly, desperately trying to come up with something to discuss. “Would you like a tour?”

One could hardly call it a station. It was mostly still a colony ship, down to the nulldrive still deep within, and more than half of the colonists in hibernation. Only enough people that could be supported had been thawed. As the colony grew and the overhead increased more people would be added until the original compliment was awake. Those aboard were staff mostly to keep the ship operational and medical personnel to wake colonists. Everyone had the same cough as the administrator.

“If you haven’t finished the work of setting up the colony completely yet,” Alia asked as she stared up at the rows of hibernation cabinets, so very like her own, “Why are you mining already? Would those people be better put to use-” She gestured “-building the colony?”

“Ideally yes, Eternity, of course. But we must adhere to the terms of the leasehold. We are to be providing one million tonnes of processed mineral wealth every month. That takes time that we could be spending building.” He quickly added, “Of course we are still building and expanding, but as you know, the terms come first. We must pay back Eternity-” He was suddenly wracked with a coughing fit for a few second before composing himself, “-for this opportunity.”

“Are you all right?” Alia asked, genuine concern in her voice. “I notice that you and everyone else here has a cough.”

“It’s nothing,” He said, clearing his throat again. “We all have a minor virus, it’ll clear up in a week or two.”

“Surely your medical personnel can help with a small viral infection spreading around? Your weakened state must be effecting production.”

“No!” He said quickly and coughed again. “No, our production remains on schedule, and we are se...

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