6.14 Brewing Tempest
Father Winter’s Embrace, 6310
“Isn’t it beautiful, High Enchantress?” the Emissary’s sweet voice asked her. The gaunt woman had her hands on the monarch’s shoulders, whispering from behind into her ear in an almost sensual manner.
What she spoke about was the giant machine in front of them, a monstrosity of black tubes feeding a steel contraption that spun and spread the blue glow of its core through the whole former throne room. The spinning lights danced on the marble of the halls around them, and looking at it made her feel sick. There were multiple compartments, for ‘sacrifices to the machine’, once it was ready to do its vital work, as well.
Humans in white coats worked on the contraption, shouting commands from one to another and setting the last few pieces of their strange technology in place. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have been allowed to even set foot into this hallowed castle of light, but these were desperate times for desperate measures.
She looked once more upon the machine which the emissary called ‘beautiful’.
It is revolting.
“It has its… charms, Mistress Fames,” she lied, and she could tell that the Emissary saw through her minced words. Instead of bringing the wrath of the gods down on her, however, the ethereal woman appeared amused by her declaration.
“You cannot truly see the appeal behind it. I understand. You will see it in time, once it opens the path and feeds your population,” the Emissary whispered into her ear, and Lilieth nodded.
A man approached them. One who came with the rest of the humans, and looked like one himself, though she could see the glimpse of a triangular gemstone in an amethyst color on his forehead as his bangs swayed with his steps. He wore a black ‘business suit’ from Earth, neat without a single crinkle, with a little pin worn over his heart that was a foreign symbol to her. White and red stripes interchanged, and white stars shone on a square of blue in one corner.
“It is done, cousin. We are ready to bring… salvation to your friends,” the man spoke with carefully chosen words, then he turned and bowed to Lilieth.
“High Enchantress? My cousin Fames here speaks very highly of you. As a fellow emissary of the divine, I’d like to reassure you that we are here to free your people from their plight of starvation.”
“This machinery doesn’t look very divine to me. It looks Earth-made,” Lilieth spoke her thoughts dryly, and the man let out a chuckle.
“Ah, of course. You probably imagined more golden lights, a figure descending, cloaked in radiance and wielding a scepter, restoring vitality to your land with a single command… our own people have legends like this, I assure you. What you call the divine is simply the next step above your plane of existence, and we in turn have a divine of our own,” Fames explained to her.
“So very sobering to hear,” Lilieth exhaled, staring at the revolting machine again.
“But I don’t have the luxury of being picky. The longer we wait, the more my people will suffer. Let us begin, then.”
December 2384
Annette walked through an alley, in which purple and blue neon light intermingled as screens and speakers tried to outdo each other for the attention of any passersby. Another way home from her soul-crushing job in a cubicle, developing user interfaces for apps with no other goal than to fuel the mindless consumerism of the people around her and siphon ever more money from the lowest rungs of society into the pockets of the mega corporations.
She passed through the door of Mega Hab 38-B, her home, and the large courtyard greeted her.
Fifty floors, with an interior courtyard to (theoretically) let in sunlight. It was now built shut, with crude metal flooring on every level as unregistered or even straight-up illegal businesses took residency between the gallerias of the hundreds of apartments built in a square shape around this center. Rainwater collected on every level and dripped down to the lower ones, making them perpetually moist and gross.
Annette took the elevator with a dozen other people, leaning against the wall as she had to wait almost five minutes to reach her level, with the device stopping on almost every floor, with people getting on and off, exchanging words, handshakes, or even threats at one point.
Her goal was on the 35th floor, where her apartment was located, and her favorite noodle stand besides. She left the elevator and put on her jacket’s hood to avoid some of the dripping water.
The noodle stand had its own little roof, ensuring that at least none of the higher floors’ water came in contact with the food, and Annette was grateful for it. She sat on one of the bar stools, facing the chef on the other side.
“Same as always, Annie?” the man asked, already stir-frying her yakisoba. Annette nodded.
“You eat this every day, and I like the money, but you need to vary your diet, too, girl! Too many people die from the stuff that’s in the artificial flour, I tell you.”
“Not a great sales bargain you’re driving here, Gendo.”
“Bah! I’ll still take your creds, but you should order something else, too. Like veggies.”
“Once you put real ones on the menu, maybe.”
“Ahaha! Do I look like a higher-up corpo to you? Real veggies, don’t make me laugh,” the cook grinned and put down Annette’s portion in front of her inside a square carboard box.
“Here you go. Even put some extra pork-flavored protein strips on that.”
“Oh, you spoil me, Gendo!” Annette exclaimed with a grin, taking her portion and accessing her ocular implant. She wired him the usual creds with a generous little tip and saw a small animation of a spinning credits symbol above his head before he replied with a thumbs-up.
The noodles were just the right degree of salty for her tastes. She knew that they were considered low-end food for the poorest, but she didn’t care. She didn’t want to taste anything better and become a slave to the ever-eluding promises of luxury that this city liked to throw at its workers, to string them along and bleed them dry, only giving a small hit once in a while to keep them hooked. So, she ate crappy yakisoba with fully synthetic ingredients, and drank Genejuice, which was won from some kind of engineered chimera of a plant that she didn’t want to think about too hard.
As she wolfed down her noodles, she suddenly received a notification, tinting the upper left corner of her vision red from the half-open letter icon.
She didn’t stop eating, grunting a little as she focused both on chewing and controlling the neural implant to open the message.
It was a chatroom message from a name she hadn’t seen in at least two years.
‘Zach (Ka’Zarr): You there, Annie?’
Annette stopped and furrowed her brow. She quickly responded as she continued to chew her noodles.
‘Annie (PPiper): That’s a surprise. Didn’t you block me when I didn’t put out after you gave me the coordinates? Trying your luck again? Sad to say I’m not interested.’
‘Zach (Ka’Zarr): Screw you, Annie. I’m not here for that. I need you to know that your ‘ghosts’ are in danger.’
That one made her stop entirely, and Gendo groaned.
“Stop browsing with your implant while you eat, for fuck’s sake, you’re almost dropping your noodles back into your box! If you gross out my other customers because you’re slobbering and regurgitating all over the place, I’m going to bill you for damages!”
Annette gulped her bite down and gave Gendo an apologetic smile, then she looked at that message again.
‘Ghosts’. That was a term that players of World of Infinity used to avoid the net censorship regarding NPCs that appeared too lifelike, almost like they were real, or ghosts in the machine. Last she knew, Zach was firmly in the camp that denied the existence of living NPCs.
‘Annie (PPiper): Didn’t take you for a believer, Zach.’
‘Zach (Ka’Zarr): Well, I met this girl who sent me and the guys to Valhalla again and had a talk with her, and now I see what people are on about. However, you should really have a look at what’s going on in the game right now. I got this notification earlier, and it’s big. Big enough that reading it made me lose a fight.’
He attached a link to the official World of Infinity net page, so Annette immediately opened it. She froze as the first thing she saw was the very same 2020s Earth that Bellona was from.
‘Raid Event! Special World Coordinates to be Revealed!’ the title read, and Annette quickly scrolled through the rest. It was a mass assault on Earth, written plain as day. There were some instructions in there that were confusing, like ‘If you see elves, help them! They are allied NPCs!’, and something more complicated involving some sort of beacons that the players were supposed to plant all around the city. Annette didn’t even finish reading it all before she grabbed her box of noodles and dashed for her place.
Gendo could only look on in disapproval, getting back to work while grumbling.
Father Winter’s Embrace, 6310
Taenya looked on as the forces of the High Enchantress were equipped for battle. The quartermasters walked down the rows of helmeted soldiers, rendered docile by their poisoned needles, and handed them strange devices. Telescopic poles that were to be rammed into the ground and activated. She was given her own earlier and examined it in her hands.
The devices themselves were simple, silvery rods with strange lights attached to the top that weren’t active as of now. Supposedly the heads would also spin once activated. They arrived in large boxes that bore strange heraldry. Three eyes arranged in a triangle, with the top one being a purple crystal and the other two being a red color.
She would have asked Maria if she knew anything about the family this heraldry belonged to, but that was the next problem: the emissary of the gods had her subdued with a poison needle as well. The stronger variant, which the Dread Enchantress strived towards, all those years ago, and now perfected for the High Enchantresses’ goals.
Said goals were, at this point, to feed her population. She would have preferred to attack during harvest season, to get the most out of Earth’s fertile fields, but just as everything was ready, Maria had to attack Earth on her own and lose. They were informed by the emissary later that this would delay the date for the invasion, and that instead of stealing whole fields, they would have to make do with the warehouses, which would of course only be a temporary solution to their problems.
“We might inevitably have to fight the puppeteer then…” she mumbled, putting the strange pole away as she heard someone approaching. It was the emissary, currently engaged in discussion with the High Enchantress.
“So, these rods will…?”
“Connect your world to theirs. You can grab their resources as if they were right next to your castle if everything goes smoothly.”
“Does it prevent counterattacks?”
“If you only take those pieces of land, of course!”
“And the puppeteer? We’re only sending a small force to deal with her. Will they be enough?”
“Oh, don’t you worry. I have prepared a little… surprise for her. It shall keep her occupied enough that she won’t interfere.”
Taenya furrowed her brow. Everything sounded way too perfect, but it wasn’t her place to question her mistresses’ allies.
Someone approached her. With a glance she confirmed that it was Maria in the guise of the Dream Empress, standing at the ready with her scythe. Her eyes behind the mask looked empty, just like those of the soldiers all around them. In a way, she pitied Maria. This headstrong woman, who was living for little more than revenge was now a husk, a shadow of her former self to be commanded around like a puppet.
Taenya could do whatever she wanted to her, if she so pleased. She could cut off her arm without complaint from the woman, she could command her to charge headfirst into impossible odds or throw her life away in other ways. She wouldn’t complain. She would obey. As long as she wore that mask with the poisoned needle.
Taenya raised her hand and waved it in front of the human’s mask, sighing. She looked at the ring she wore, which allowed her to command a group of puppet soldiers, and then at the so-called Empress again.
“You’re boring like that, you know? You were much more entertaining when we traded barbs, or when you scratched me during…”
No response. By now, the normal Maria would have hissed at her to keep her mouth shut about their one impulsive night of passion that they both regretted immediately after. Taenya kind of missed it.
“Attention, officers!” a voice boomed over the courtyard and Taenya turned around. Only a dozen or so other elves reacted to that instruction; former military, now the only ones in this army drafted from the commoners who still had their free will and thus the privilege to command groups of enthralled servants.
“The time of the invasion is at hand! We shall secure enough produce to last us through the winter and capture fertile farmlands besides. For this, we have allies from another world! Secured for us by the emissary herself!”
A quiet murmur went through the officers, and Taenya tilted her head. Fames, the emissary. She arrived in this world soon after the droughts and offered assistance from the gods. That was more than a decade ago. Soon after that, the previous ruler, the lady of light, died from her advanced age, leaving behind her two daughters who soon chose to become the Dread Enchantress and High Enchantress respectively. They played a sort of war game, to decide which of their methods would be best suited to build an army that could claim more fertile lands for the realm, and ultimately it resulted in the Dread Enchantresses’ death.
Ever since the High Enchantress had been busy with meetings during which she conspired with the emissary on various things. Taenya was vaguely aware that machinery from another world was brought into the highest levels of the castle, near the Enchantresses’ chambers, but she couldn’t fathom what it was good for.
It mattered little right now. The High Enchantress appeared in front of the army, carrying a silver blade by her side. Everyone’s eyes were on her as she raised the blade and declared “To war!” before various magic portals opened. Taenya saw familiar towers of metal and glass on the other side; the world in which she got humiliated by the High Enchantresses’ former unwitting guinea pigs. She rubbed her sternum, where she could still remember the pain of being shot by the lunar warrior’s arrows and her face contorted in rage.
I will have my revenge today.
A horn was blown, and Taenya’s group marched. They approached the portal and entered busy streets, and with a simple gesture from Taenya’s ring, Maria advanced, grabbing unsuspecting humans and turning them into dream bubbles to summon phantom warriors. Soon after the streets were filled with screams as the local population realized what was going on.
The invasion had begun.
Moon of Long Nights, 1068 AR
Nicola appeared behind the river fort’s battlements with her usual teleportation technique. At this point, it didn’t even faze Bernuil anymore and he acknowledged her presence with a nod.
She looked past the battlements, seeing another fifty or so enhanced warriors, mind controlled by their helmets.
“Look at that. The High Enchantress is sending us more citizens,” she remarked, and Bernuil let out a little snort.
“Truth be told, Madame, I don’t like this. Those attacks feel a little too predictable. Like she’s studying us.”
“I’ve had the same thought, Bernuil. I will send out my marionettes and then I’ll go and have a look at what she’s truly up to.”
With a snap of her fingers, the marionettes appeared again, surrounding the invading elves with pointed pikes and aimed guns. Getting the brainwashed soldiers and freeing them from their condition was a perfected technique at this point, with Nicola’s marionettes achieving even a hundred percent survival rate for the elves, with only minor casualties among their ranks that could quickly be replenished by a few hours of carving in her workshop.
She watched as the marionettes repeated their usual techniques, surrounding the elves and dragging them through the rows of pointed pikes into safety, where their masks were removed one by one.
It felt like this was just their regular encounter with the High Enchantresses’ brainwashed minions, but her eyes caught something curious.
One of the soldiers, after being unmasked, flailed and shouted something. It sounded like he was panicking. Nicola quickly wove a spell to see and hear through a nearby marionette’s senses.
“Please! No! Put the mask back on! The emissary, she made us swallow something…! She said when the mask is removed, then…!”
The poor man didn’t get to finish, and Nicola was ripped out of her marionette’s body, back behind the battlements while a headache racked her brain. From there she could finally see what was happening: the soldiers who were brought into the middle of her marionettes violently exploded in a fiery blaze, taking out everything around them. Even with the increased magical resistance of Rowan, her marionettes were simply ripped apart, as were the still controlled soldiers in the middle of the formation.
Nicola gasped, staring at the carnage in front of her as hundreds of hours of work and fifty lives were extinguished in an instance. She bit her lower lip, with her fingernails scratching against the stone of the fort’s walls. Bernuil looked on with sorrow in his eyes as well, taking a deep breath.
“A damn shame. Cowardly move on their part, and cruel, too…” he commented.
They couldn’t even collect their thoughts about what they just witnessed, as the second wave arrived. Two hundred soldiers, armed with strange ballistae and siege ladders, stood in the field, now.
“They trained me like a dog and exploited my lapse in judgment,” Nicola admitted. The ballistae let the first few shots fly, which weren’t arrow projectiles, but jars filled with strange alchemical liquids. As they splashed against the stone fort’s walls, the structure started to slowly melt away, reducing the cover the battlements offered the defenders.
Nicola clenched her fists, though she soon felt Bernuil’s hand on her back, patting it firmly.
“Well! I guess the garrison will finally have a chance to show you that flesh-and-blood soldiers can be just as good as your woodmen. Give us our orders, and we’ll defend this fort and the city with our lives!”