Final version of the cover art has arrived! Thanks again to RHL_Shen, what an amazing piece! https://i.imgur.com/tyc9Z1O.jpg Check her out on instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/rhl_shen/

Chapter Text

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Delmutt The Woodcutter, Present Day

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Delmutt was feeling a little better after a day and a half at the bunker. Sean had shown Miss Haley something that had really excited her, though Delmutt hadn’t really grasped the finer points of it- how could one just declare oneself a master craftsman, even in whatever silly game was powering her magic now? But Miss Haley had disappeared into the basement room with the entire gold stash for 8 hours that very afternoon, before coming up and declaring that was “Her limit” for the night. The next day she did it again. Whatever they were working on, Delmutt hoped it would succeed. She could not take her mind’s eye off the images of the vessels stacked like cordwood on the side of the road, or the great black buzzing things over the refugee camp that Sean called “Black Hawks.” They looked nothing like the birds she had seen, but they were entirely menacing. This world was too hostile to her kind. A savior was needed.

She’d used their “Cell phones” to speak with Ayen, at the stadium. The military had not moved them- instead, they had bundled several thousand more refugees into the building, and sealed all exits with barbed wire and barricades. The food situation was good, and morale was holding- the vessel breeding pits were still operational so there was hope yet of replacements for the feeble and infirm among their vessels, and no major diseases ran rampant, but the general sense at the camp was of unease. The men outside could kill them at any time, and their human friends had all been removed. Some infomorphs had tried the barriers and been summarily shot, but aside from those casualties they had not fired on the crowd. The army was waiting for something, Ayen felt. But she continued to recruit new members to the cause, and there were several promising service tunnels that they hoped to use when the day came for an escape. Only one of them seemed to have any human activity, though what they were doing bustling in and out of that place, nobody knew.

Delmutt spent her free time learning how to drive the truck, a task made awkward but not impossible by her elongated forelimbs. Human technology fascinated her. The power that one of these vehicles contained, that every person had seemingly at their fingertips- no wonder they had covered the world in their cities. She also spent a lot of time with Miss Skylar. It had been so long since she had nurtured such a young soul, it was her heart’s delight to speak with her about this world they were both discovering for the first time.

“What were your parents like, where you came from?” asked the dragon-girl, crouched down on her belly in the field outside the garage. Even lowering herself so, Delmutt still barely came up to her chin.

Delmutt reminisced. “Oh, I grew up in a house with two siblings, an intermix of 10 or so parents who’d all agreed to share portions of themselves in our creation. It was chaotic, a big brickwork building in the middle of a busy city. When I first woke up I knew a little bit about so many things! How to speak, how to make paper, how to throw a punch, how to breed vessels. I just didn’t know what any of it meant to me. They were in and out so often, their faces became a blur.”

The big girl snorted. “I know what that’s like. Father never has time for us. After Mother passed on, he sent us off to the neighbors for homeschool or just let our oldest brother and sister raise us. Hunter and Piper were more like my mom and dad, and now he’s- he’s,” she inhaled a big sniffle, “dead, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. The others didn’t even care!”

Delmutt hugged her giant snout. “They do care, there’s just something wrong with their minds, right now. Miss Haley said they’re caught up in that monster’s story. We’ll get them out, somehow. And I think… you’ll always have her as a friend, after what you’ve done for her. She and Sean have no children. I’m sure they’d think of you as one of their own.” Delmutt wasn’t really sure about that, she didn’t quite understand the whole ‘Biological reproduction’ thing, but the child clearly needed comfort.

And that pendant! Once she knew the source of the dragon magic, she had quickly bartered with the young woman in the event that she was able to remove it some day. The girl considered it a curse, but Delmutt thought it might be the ultimate blessing. They were all trapped in one body or another here, in this harsh land with no spare vessels. Why not make it one with the armor of a soldier, the wings of a scout, flaming breath beyond anything she’d seen before- it was a dream.

Beyond that, she worked with Sean. Miss Haley had reached some kind of magical next-stage soon after they arrived, and used something on him called “Infernal Healing,” apparently a spell considered evil by the rules of her inconsistent powers , though Delmutt couldn’t see why. Within a minute, wounds that should have taken months to heal had knitted closed, and his leg had recovered full functionality, though there appeared to be a bit of lingering nerve damage- or else his mind was not keeping up with his body. In either case, he was a bit shaky on his feet for the next day, and they spent the time walking the woods outside the bunker.

She noticed him jumping at the crack of branches, and the sharp caw of the birds of this world. He truly was injured then, in his mind. To distract him she talked to him and by extension Sherriff in her native tongue, for practice. “< Why didn’t the healing work as well on Miss Haley? She used it on herself several times, and her wounds shrank but didn’t close as yours did.>” He sighed, in the way she was becoming familiar with when he was trying to think of how to explain some concept to her.

“< She has… in the game system… she has a tremendously large pool of hit points, that represent how much damage she can take. I probably only have a dozen at most. She probably has well over a hundred . The spell, it heals maybe ten points of damage per cast- >”

Delmutt thought she understood. “ <More than enough to bring you to peak health, but hardly anything to her. She can take a wound that would kill a normal vessel nine times over and survive, but->”

He finished for her. “ <but the healing will take that much more from our resources. Yes. Still I’d rather she have that health pool than not.>” He was very precious about his mate, Delmutt thought, given that she was an armored killing machine and he had nearly died the night before to a single bullet. It was sweet, but also a bit silly. Ah, love. She missed her partner.

She decided to broach a more touchy subject. “<You seem unsettled. Are you nervous about our hideaway? You were very certain of your plan, last night, what’s bothering you now?>”

He looked away, seemingly embarrassed at his own behavior, into the dense undergrowth surrounding their field. Delmutt longed to get into that brush, to chop with her limbs and haul with her strong back, but it wasn’t the time. For a long time, he was silent. She thought he wasn’t going to respond at all, but eventually he came back with a question. “ <Why did you join us out here, Miss D? Besides your fascination with dragons, I mean.>”

She considered her answer. “ <I’m not an adventurer. I don’t think any of you are, either. But I saw you trying to do something, while everyone else sat and waited. If anyone is going to reorder the world, it’s people like you. I want there to be a voice for my people, some advocate, when you have your power.>”

He nodded, but the frown didn’t leave his expression. “ <So you don’t care if we’re wrong or right, then? As long as we’re moving forward?”>

She was honestly puzzled by the question. She gestured at the world, in general. “ <To the degree that you care about what is best for others, I think you are in the right. If I find someone who cares more, I’ll let you know.>” He made no answer. Eventually, she left to find other company.

The Dog she avoided. Something about it unsettled her. Shadow creatures flickered in and out of existence wherever it went, tidying up or playing strange pranks on one another. It kept to itself for the most part, though she saw it talking with Haley in the times when she left the basement. Better to have it as an ally, she supposed, but she didn’t trust it despite the service it had rendered as they made their escape. The world of its story, where wordplay could upset the balance of nature, was fundamentally unsettling to her as a creature of pure thought. She did not want to know what would happen if she ever fell under the sway of that thing.

At the end of that second day, after Miss Haley had come up from the basement and Sean was preparing dinner for the rest of the group from the supplies he had collected, Delmutt caught up with the great gold dragon-woman. Of all of them, she was the one that commanded the most respect. Her conviction, her power , and the kindness of her heart- they were good reasons to follow. But she had not been tested, yet. Not really.

Delmutt sat with her for a while as she watched the sun slowly sink behind the horizon. “We haven’t spoken much.”

Haley seemed lost in thought, as Sean had been. “No, I’m sorry for that. You came to help us and I’ve practically been ignoring you, I’m so caught up in events. Thank you, for talking to Skylar. I get the impression she hasn’t been socialized much.”

Delmutt plucked a strand of the strange grass that grew here, chewed it in her mandibles. “I contribute where I can. Carrying a rifle didn’t seem much use, at the moment. Not with such powerful enemies. How will you beat him?”

Haley muttered a few words, and an image sprang to life. It floated in the air before them, taking up the sky over the field. It was an enormous woodcut, featuring four men on the backs of large beasts. Each was more terrible than the last. One bore a bow, the next a sword, the third a scale, and the final was little more than a skeleton cloaked in skin. Every aspect was rendered in perfect clarity. Delmutt hummed, quietly. Already she can do this and her power has only begun to manifest. Haley interrupted her reverie. “Aslan was never the enemy. This painting- Albrecht Durer, ‘The Four Horsemen.’ It’s been on my mind lately. Pestilence, War, Famine… Death. Those are the enemies.”

There was wisdom in that, Delmutt conceded. “You would make truce with a monster or a madman if it let you defeat these four, in the end?”

Haley did not nod or shake her head, only stared at the image. “It unsettles me. But in a lateral thinking kind of way, making our peace with him would stave off a fight, let us both turn our attentions toward settling the rest of the world. And it would keep the rest of you out of danger. I’m not even particularly concerned about the people he might kill if we let him be, as awful as that is to say. My power should give us the means to reverse that, I hope. And who knows, maybe he really is sending the righteous ones to paradise in the meantime. The world is a strange and unfamiliar place, now. I’ll have a way to know for certain soon enough and then I’ll decide. But how to make peace, should it come to that? He requires my death, for his victory. I can’t take myself off the board.” She frowned. The image vanished, replaced by one of their human vessels, a male, being nailed to a large piece of wood. Such gruesome art, these humans create. Haley continued “I only get one shot and I can’t come back. It’s possible that he can.”

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Sean & Haley, 8 years ago

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I slammed the door to our apartment and let out a primal scream. “AHHHHHH!”

Haley slid down onto the couch, face first, her bags falling to the floor. “Oof.”

I caught my breath and went to collapse next to her. “Seriously, that was the worst. No more weddings. No more family. No more going outside. ”

She considered, from her face-down position. “Ever again? Extreme, but I am coming around to your position. No more sisters, at any rate.”

I had to disagree there. “Are you kidding? Your sister is easily the best part of these events. Hardship is what brings us together, and she’s like the obstacle course at the end of a three mile run. The kind with live ammunition.”

She turned her head out of the couch to glare at me. I thought she might actually be slightly un-sober , for once. “You’d better not ditch me for her.”

I laughed at that. “I’m saying she sucks so hard it’s like a shared trauma that brings us closer together. She managed to make that whole thing a nightmare for at least two-thirds of the guest list, that is a power move. Also, you’re drunk.”

She blew her lips in a raspberry. “Nooooo I’m not. And no she’s not. She’s always been prettier than me. Got all the attention. She was always sick, and hurting, and mom had to stay home to take care of her. She stole my boyfriends in high school. Now I have to watch her get married and the whole universe revolves around her.”

I tried not to guffaw, I had a feeling it would get me kicked, given my position next to her feet. “And look how great your life is, because of her! Even your virtues are all her, in the end.”

She nodded, absorbed in the self-pity, before the words caught up to her. “Wait, what do you mean?” She glared at me suspiciously.

“Well you went to college to distinguish yourself from her, and here you are with a doctorate. You spent most of your twenties not worrying about dating because she’d screw it up, and now you have a really good relationship with an awesome guy,” I did get kicked for that one, but lightly, “and you had to learn to rely on your own self for company so you turned out to be this incredibly wise, compassionate person who everyone loves to be around. Damn! She thought of everything.”

She was pouting but I could see laughter in her eyes. “You don’t get to mock, only child. You never had to compete for your parent’s love.”

I nodded solemnly. “That’s true, I think my parents were incapable of the emotion. But you had to compete, and as a result you give love like it has an expiration date. She’s got you again! All your virtues, simply bright reflections in a dark pool.”

She sighed, defeated at last. “We never know who we are unless we go outside our scripts. She always pushed me outside of mine. I really did define myself as her opposite, when we were young, and I grew super fast in all the ways that picture fit me. But in some ways it didn’t, and I never grew at all, there. I never figured out how to talk to people, or how to have a relationship, because those were things she was good at. But I wanted them, deep down, and that hurt .”

I put a hand on her leg to move her over. “Well, you’re doing a bang-up job now. I think… when we’re young we craft an identity by looking at the people in our lives, and saying I am this or I’m not that, and it feels like the most important thing in the world to have that mask, to be that mask. But nobody really knows themselves that well, not until they’ve been through a bit of life with that mask on. And sometimes not all the pieces fit. You’ve realized that there are parts of you, the isolationist parts, that don’t really fit. I’m really glad, because how else would we have met?”

She didn’t say anything, so I continued. “The most important thing I ever learned was when to take the mask off, and how to say ‘I guess I’m not this part, after all’ without feeling like a hypocrite. You can admit you need love. Sometimes I think the whole point of the tribulations of life is to teach us that we all need love.”

I heard a snore from behind me then. She had fallen asleep at some point during my sermon. That was alright. I could tell her I loved her any time I wanted, these days. I pulled a throw over her, kissed her on the head, and turned out the light.

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Charles Kaur, Present Day

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In his dream, he was home. He knew it was a dream, but still- home . He looked out the back window at the vast yard, wide as a country mile, his three sons and two daughters playing in the grass. His wife was in the next room, alive, with him again, making dinner- that didn’t track at all, she had died in childbirth along with their sixth. This couldn’t be real, but… for a sun-drenched moment, he had not a care in the world. He let it linger, held it tightly so it wouldn’t slip through his fingers. But it passed, in the end. Eventually he turned to the red-eyed man in tight blue jeans and high cowboy boots, sitting across from him at his kitchen table. He didn’t recognize his face, but something about that cocksure grin made him hurt , deep down, the kind of pain in your joints that told you winter was coming soon, that you were old and maybe this would be the one you didn’t survive. “I imagine you’re here on business, because you sure don’t fit this scene.”

The grinning man solemnly bowed his head and intoned, mockingly: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation; He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.”

Charles grunted, and found himself decked in his own Garments. “Theology, then. Am I going to meet your Lord?”

A voice rumbled then, so loud that Charles thought it would wake him. “And your Lord as well. Greetings to you, Charles Kaur, and thanks be for your service.” It stood outside the door, in that sunlit porch. Between him and his children, flickered a thought through the back of Charles’ mind. It was regal, and huge, and good , and looked for all the world like the Second Coming. His heart leapt with joy, in secret- validation , at last, for all that he had been doing. He had been so scared that he might be in the wrong, in his heart of hearts. Had cried out for a sign. Now his lord and savior had come for him at last, and all might be set right.

But Charles was somewhat warier than he might have been, two days prior. As he’d glanced away, the man at his kitchen table had vanished. He felt his soul lighten slightly in the man’s absence- whatever that thing was, if the Lion was employing it… Charles had questions. “You’d be the one from up North, then. You the reason I can’t get any word from St. Renaud? You the one who had my men shot two days ago, at the stadium in Midland? Lord, you have a lot to answer for.”

The Lion shook his head, his great mane heaving like waves on a golden sea. “I answer to one only, and You are not Him. Your concern for your men does you credit, but fear not. Death holds no great meaning, in my lands. You will see those who pass beyond the Veil again. It is necessary, to bring about the Golden Age. Already I gather your men in St. Renaud to my side. Will you join me as well? Midland City must stand with me.”

His suspicions were not allayed. Colonel Kaur, now in his dress blues, put both hands on the table. There was something about this Lion that rankled him. The dismissal of violence, the disregard for lives- it reminded him of parts of himself that he could not look at any longer. Something he rejected, outright. “Had you come to me in peace, I’d have knelt. Joyfully . But you shot first and you had to know there was no reason for that, if you know me at all. There’s more than one god wandering about right now, or so my intel officers tell me. And the devil has been known to take pleasing forms. You’ve offered violence to my city and my men, and you bargain from a position of strength. What is it you fear? What happens if I reject you?”

The Lion growled, and the world outside his home darkened. Still it did not come in. Behind it, his children approached. Four of them were wearing crowns, but Hunter- his eldest- was glassy eyed, his shirt torn and bloody. The great cat spoke contemptuously, “Fear. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. I fear the suffering that must occur, should you stand against me. Against your own children.”

Charles started, at that. “They’re alive?! They disappeared on the night of the disaster, we- I thought-” hope bloomed again in his heart, and… anger . You could have told me then. You could have let me see them.

The Lion nodded solemnly. “They have been Chosen, son of Adam. They will be Kings and Queens of this world. When We come to the tower.”

“And Hunter?” Charles asked quietly, dangerously. Perilously close to defying a being that he truly believed might be his own God. “How did you Choose, for him?”

“He would not let me help him. He chose cunning instead of belief. His prison, and yours, is only in your own mind, yet you are in it; and so afraid of being taken in that you cannot be taken out.”

The Colonel stood, slowly, and walked to that glass door. He stood face to face with the Lion, separated only by a pane of glass. Even in a dream, the presence of that divine beast shook him to his core. But he mastered himself, looked it square in the eyes. What he saw there did not make him flinch. He had inflicted worse, in his time in the service. “I know you’re not Jesus. Not mine.”

The Lion glowered, and lowered its’ massive body like a cat ready to pounce. Lightning struck the ground outside. The thunder rattled his windows, but still they stood. “And the cause of your certainty, Charles Kaur?”

“Jesus would have known that if he ever touched one of my children, I’d stare Him in the eyes and walk backwards into hell.” The Lion sprang , and Charles knew those claws would be the end of him, dream or no. But the glass held. The fortress of his mind was still his own. It roared , and portions of the house collapsed. Charles yelled at it, mocking over the noise. “You godlings! Bring your armies and your devils and all the forces of Creation against us! Still we stand, you son of a bitch!”

The house collapsed with a roar and all was plunged into darkness. He stood there, for an eternity, wondering if death had claimed him. Eventually a match flared, and lit the space. He was seated again, at his kitchen table in the middle of a vast void. The red-eyed man was sitting across from him, hands cupped around a cigarette as he tried to light it, shielding it against a terrible wind that Charles could not feel at all. The nasty man’s clothing whipped at the edges, and he leaned in his chair to avoid being blown away entirely. He grinned at Charles, insolent, infinitely patient. “Sorry ‘bout the cat. He ain’t a tame lion, you know.”

Charles considered him. Came to a conclusion. “Doesn’t seem like the side you’re usually on.”

The man leaned back and took a drag on the cigarette. “Sides? I haven’t got a side, except my own. What did the universe ever do for me, that I should care one bit about what happens to it? He and I are walking side by side, for a time. But I’m the walkin’ dude , and I’ll ramble on long after he’s gone.”

Charles nodded. “You have a counter-offer, then?”

The man leaned forward, and his cigarette went out. There was no light in that space, but still Charles could see his eyes. Perfectly red, illuminated from within, peering at him. “No offers, no covenants. Just some advice for the future, my man. Sometimes in the game of life, the only thing you can do is flip the board.” The eyes blinked closed, and he was alone in the darkness. Perfectly alone.

He woke with a start to find Captain Kitchener hammering on the door to his office. Scrambling off the field-cot he’d had brought in, he opened the door. The Captain saluted smartly. “Sir! Reports from the field. Movement out of St. Renaud. We don’t know what . There was a- a wave of fire, every unit we had east of Copernica is just gone-”

Charles cut him off, “Call Redman AFB, scramble the bomb wing. Get any fighter coverage we have left into the air. I want every unit on alert along the 70 corridor. Armor on the roads, infantry dug in at the overpasses. He’s a god but his army still has wheels , Captain. You see anything coming West on 70, you shoot them.” He stood up, and looked up at the stadium, now one part refugee-camp, one part military C&C hub. It looked… different , he thought. Taller , more baroque. Like an old Roman colosseum. As quickly as the thought entered his mind, it vanished.

The captain stared at him in concern. “Sir! That’s a civilian road in the middle of the country! Three days ago you talked about a holy war. Two days ago you ordered a massacre of these aliens. Now you’re talking about shooting our citizens . We can’t do that, Colonel.”

The colonel shook his head. “No, captain, they’re his citizens now, and they just shot first. We defend ourselves, and this city, or we die. Maybe the whole world dies. He’s coming this way and I don’t know what he wants, but death means nothing to him and he intends to use my kids to get his way. He’ll kill the rest of us regardless. Do you trust that jumped up jungle cat, after what his men did to yours two nights ago?”

The captain considered. “No sir, I don’t. But how can we fight him? He just blew away satellites, sir. From a standing start on the ground. ”

The Colonel finished his thought, striding towards the communications building. “We can stick in his throat, Captain. We can make him work for it. Get me NMO on the phone.”