The Empire of the Locusts (closed)

[Maka]

On the third day of the Festival of the Incandescent Flame, the aged scholar Rask ga-Hadin hired the assassins of the House of Sighing Breezes to kill his friend and one-time student, Gideon ba-Soar ha’Malek, sending them to Gideon’s lofty apartment among the pure, rain-washed and vertiginous spires of Pallas, the city of prismatic light.

It was evening when the killers arrived and Gideon was standing by the balustrade of his terrace, looking out over the vast, heart-thudding drop into the waters far below. Pallas was one of the proudest cities of the Three Realms –Atlantis, Ultima Thule and Mu, and one of the most daring and innovative engineering projects that the magi-architects of the Three Realms had ever conceived. It rose straight out of the ocean on a magnificent series of gleaming, fluted transparent crystalline pillars –some as slender and delicate as a woman’s finger, others thick and broad enough to encompass palaces, but all with the same unknowable, unbreakable strength. The bases of the pillars had been driven into the ocean floor by earth elementals and their pinnacles reached into the sky. The crystal of the spires was extra-dimensional material, with mysterious properties of light and sound. Sunlight and moonlight refracted through the crystal broke into a variety of brilliant new, hither-to unknown colours. Pallas was a place of waterfalls and local rainstorms, sparkling mists and playful fountains, the soothing sound of falling water never distant anywhere in the city. A complex, delicate yet strong web of bridges and stairs connected the pillars, and the buildings were built on platforms balanced on and between the great spires.

Gideon was a tall man, his lean but muscular body toned and hardened by two decades of practise with swords. His face was strikingly handsome in the way of the aristocracy of Ultima Thule –hard, high angles to his cheeks, penetrating grey eyes and dark hair. His dress was formal but plain and simple –a leather jerkin and breeches, in the black and silver colours of his house.

There were three assassins –one of the twelve Auspicious Numbers for a hunting party. Two men and a woman. They were dressed in tight-fitting black costumes and they were covered head to toe in the swirling crimson designs of the rite. They had avoided the various wards and guardians that protected Gideon’s rooms by climbing from their sailing boat up the spire that supported his home –a thousand feet up a pillar made of material as slippery and smooth as glass. They finally pulled themselves on to the terrace just as the rays of the sunset were tinting the entire city in the melancholy, dying shades of blood red and amber.

They slipped noiselessly on to the terrace behind the Thule swordsman and yet still he turned around, his eyes showing no surprise at their presence. They shook their glistening folding knives from their sleeves and came at him without a word. Gideon was unarmed. He waited until the lead assassin was within arm’s reach and then slid gracefully to his knees. The knife-stroke went over his head and he grasped the killer’s extended arm, snapping the wrist so that the butterfly knife dropped into Gideon’s hand, then hurling him over his shoulder to drop into the sea, a thousand feet below.

It had all happened so quickly that the second assassin had no time to register his companion’s fall before Gideon was on him. It took a single slash across the face. The assassins’ knives had been treated with the drug ha-koom-na; a bringer of pleasure so intense that it caused the user’s heart to explode within seconds. The assassin’s eyes widened in joy, he let out a high keening cry of bliss, then collapsed clutching at his chest. Gideon’s attention had already left him for the third assassin, the female. She lashed out at him and Gideon neatly ducked before chopping her head with the side of his hand, knocking her out with quiet efficiency.


The assassin came to her senses in a drawing room, furnished with quiet but confident taste. A rose window to the north looked out over the roiling expanse of the Atlantean Ocean. Shelves were lined with leather-bound books and with what seemed like the curios of a highly adventurous, curious and well-travelled life. In her first glance, she took in a miniature Antikythera mechanism beside a bas-relief of Cthulhu, one of the gods that predated even Atlantean civilization. Behind the mantelpiece on the wall were two gleaming bare swords –her professional knowledge identified them as duelling blades from one of the pyramid cities of the polar jungles. She was just looking with some interest at a nude portrait that hung in pride of place over the blades, when she recalled her circumstances.

“What is your name?”

Her target was seated opposite her, in the mate of the heavy armchair in which she had come to. The details of her failed mission flooded her mind. He poured red wine from a cut-glass carafe into a cup and offered it to her. She was unable to resist its rich, spicy aroma.

“Lilia.”

He nodded.

“And Rask hired you.”

It was her turn to nod. It was contractually forbidden to lie regarding such things. Her target, Gideon ba-Soar ha’Malek, seemed to lose interest in her, instead staring into the crackling fire, and Lilia felt oddly piqued. There was something irritating about the stoic calm with which he took an attempt on his life by a team from one of the most feared killing houses in the Three Realms. He had weathered their onslaught without even seeming to break a sweat. And now he seemed almost bored, as though a deadly assassin sworn to kill him was simply a slightly dull house-guest like any other. The silence lengthened. Eventually, Lilia gave in.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why were we hired to kill you? Who is Rask ha-Gadin to you? A rival? An enemy?”

“No. A friend. A good friend and a mentor.”

“Then why does he want you dead?”

“He doesn’t want me dead. But he understands me. I imagine that he anticipated one of two possible outcomes. The first, and for him the less desirable, was that your mission would succeed and relieve me of the weight and tedium of life. Hence your stipulated use of ha-koom-na as the weapon of choice. The other possibility was that I would survive your attack and, in doing so, be reminded of the pleasures of existence.”

“Why do you find life so tedious?”

“Look around you. The Empire of the Three Realms has consumed itself. We have explored, trammelled and categorised the world and the dimensions beyond. We have conquered or tamed all of our enemies, from the barbarians of the continents to the demons and elementals of the planes beyond. The Three Realms produced their greatest works of art and philosophy centuries ago. What’s left in this age, for a thinker or an explorer or a fighter? Ritualised assassination? Subduing a few wild tribes on the borders? This is not an age of heroes.”

“Is that really it? Is that really the whole reason? There’s always more to be done and more to be explored. Maybe you just don’t want to…”

Suddenly Lilia’s eyes drifted back to the portrait that hung above the fireplace. A girl of about twenty years, a sunkissed, slender beauty. Her short hair floated about her face in a brilliant golden areola and her deep blue eyes seemed to sparkle like distant stars, loving but also fierce and determined. An infectious grin made her already beautiful face radiant. Her hands were folded behind her back in a curious gesture, at once innocent and playfully provocative, thrusting forward huge, high and rounded breasts, looking even bigger on her slender frame, crowned with delicate pink nipples, above a perfectly toned and flat stomach running down to a shapely pair of legs.

With instinctive, womanly dismay, Lilia mentally compared herself. She could not think of a single feature in which the young woman in the picture did not outdo her. With a stab of jealousy, Lilia recognised that the girl preserved in the painting might be the only possible match, body and soul, for the god-like man in front of her.

“Soulmates…” said Gideon softly, as though reading her thoughts. He too was staring intently at the painting. “We never parted for more than days after we met… until she died, last year. Three years of adventure, three years of bliss.”

He looked straight at her, his intense grey stare causing Lilia’s heart to throb uncontrollably.

“For me, a world without my love is a world without adventure. And why would I ever want to go on living in such a world?”

“Why didn’t you just let us kill you, then? Why haven’t you ended it yourself?”

“Some of my friends say the world may change. Perhaps there will be new challenges and new adventures in a hundred years. Perhaps I’ll even be needed. There’s a monastery in the eastern mountains. Disciples are taught to go into a trance, suspend the need to eat and drink and even to breath. The greatest among them has done it for a year and a day before the abbot brought him out of his trance.”

Gideon got to his feet.

“I’m going there. I’ll learn how to enter that state and I’ll remain there for a century. Maybe the Three Reams will be different when I awake. Maybe I’ll be different.”

 

[Maka]

Apres moi: a timeline

Atlantean Reckoning Year 3,800: Gideon ba-Soar ha’Malek retreats into the snowbound mountains on the Eastern Continent and begins learning the art of trance meditation from the adepts of Vulture Peak. In three years, he masters it and retreats to a hidden cave high in the mountains, having made arrangements for his awakening in a century’s time.

ARY 3,814: Death of the scholar Rask ga-Hadin.

ARY 3,824: The Many-Sided Star, an radical lodge of magicians, claim to have established theoretical understanding of a ritual that would transcend the limits of reality itself and make every citizen of the Three Realms into a god. They are widely mocked by the more conservative lodges, yet the Triumvirate takes an interest in their discovery and funds further research.

ARY 3,830: The general Laneen sha-Misk leads an unsuccessful coup against the Triumvirate. Before her execution, she gives a widely acclaimed speech explaining that the essential motivation for her actions was love for the Three Realms. “We have conquered the world but without enemies and without conflict, we shall surely perish,” is the conclusion of her speech.

ARY 3,833: Citing agonising ennui, almost the entire population of the city of Mesgard on Mu wades into the ocean to drown. Numerous imitators follow them across the Three Realms.

ARY 3,845: The Children of Laneen sha-Misk, a fanatical and militaristic cult, begin seizing locations across the Three Realms and declaring them under their control.

ARY 3,848: The Triumvirate announce that the ritual that the Many-Sided Star proposed is being seriously considered for use and should be considered open for debate in the Senate. Controversy rages, with many senior magicians calling the theory behind the ritual ‘dangerously flawed’ while others insist that the ‘world-soul’ of the Three Realms is dying and the proposed ritual is the only possible remedy.

ARY 3,849: The Senate vote, by a narrow margin, against carrying out the Many-Sided Star’s ritual. The Triumvirate declare military law and announce that the ritual will be carried out, against the Senate’s wishes. Civil war breaks out.

ARY 3,856: The Triumvirate army is crushed by rebel forces and the victorious rebels, led by surviving senators, march on the Atlantean capital to stop the ritual taking place, now in its final hours. They arrive too late. It is unclear afterwards whether the ritual was a success or a failure. Only its effects on the physical world are clear –massive earthquakes swallow all three island realms of Mu, Atlantis and Ultima Thule and the shape of the rest of the world is radically changed by the subsequent cataclysmic earthquakes and flooding. A small number of colonies survive, planting the seeds of later civilizations in places such as the Mediterranean, Central America and the Polynesian islands. The monastery at Vulture Peak is wiped out by one quake, and all living memory of the hermit Gideon ba-Soar ha’Malek is lost, his cave buried beneath tons of stone and snow. He remains, lost in his world of thought, his spirit ranging free over infinite systems of thought, his body frozen and unchanging.


30,000 BC: The Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave is used by Paleolithic humans as a site for shamanic rituals, drawing on dim and misunderstood traditions of Three Realms magic.

2270 BC: Sargon of Akkad conquers the Sumerian city-states

360 BC: Plato discusses the fall of Atlantis in the Timaeus and Critias

330 BC: Alexander the Great defeats the forces of the Achaemenid Empire at the Persian Gates

44 BC: Julius Caesar is assassinated

407 AD: The heretical Christian theologian John of Cyprus is burned at the stake for his Gnostic beliefs, among them the idea that there was once a ‘realm of the blessed’ whose citizens attained pure contemplation and ascended into the Godhead.

1101 AD: The interstellar Locust Empire makes its first peripheral contact with Earth, sending a small ‘diplomatic mission’ (scouts, in actuality) to the court of the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos.

1312 AD: The Knights Templar, descendants of a group of magi claiming knowledge of Atlantean magic, are disbanded.

1925 AD: Artists and psychics across the world report nightmares brought on by the stirring of Cthulhu in sunken R’lyeh.

1939 AD: Ernst Schäfer’s Nazi expedition to Tibet, hoping to find evidence of a secret Aryan master-race, almost stumbles upon the cave of Gideon ba-Soar ha’Malek.

2060 AD: Unofficial beginning of the ‘Second Cold War’ or the ‘Silk War’, between India (and its satellites, among them the USA) and China.

2100 AD: Millenial Treaty of Concordance is signed between the two power-blocs.

2109 AD: A skirmish on the border of Lebanon and Israel involves their immediate allies (Syria and the USA respectively), which in turn leads to the involvement of China and India. The Treaty breaks down and chemical weapons ravage the planet.


1 New Era: After five centuries of anarchy, humanity’s slide into barbarism is halted by the rise of a charismatic leader, Anna Boronsky, who welds together several of the warring city-states in what was once central Russia, then begins to spread the influence of her state further.

700 NE: The war between the empires of Muskovy and Japan ends with a treaty of mutual disarmament.

1,000 NE: Beginning of the so-called Afternoon Cultures, a period of unprecedented flourishing in art and science.

1,300 NE: Total control over the climate of the planet is achieved and placed under the control of an artificial intelligence known as Ariel. Her counterpart, Caliban, is the strategy-oriented artificial intelligence placed in control of the Earth’s military forces and weapons.


Year 1 of the Locust: The aliens known as the Locust Empire arrive, easily smashing through Earth’s advanced orbital defences and suborning Caliban. The Locusts establish their headquarters in Prague, and set about destroying the last pockets of resistance.

Year 9 of the Locust: The Locust warrior Walks-Alone becomes the first and only one of the aliens to turn on his species and adopt the human cause, after hearing Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony for the first time. He is still at large, although the Locust satrap in Prague has put a huge price on his head.

Year 20 of the Locust: Locust mining operations in Tibet uncover a strange crystalline cave.

Year 21 of the Locust: The present.

 

[Bardic]

There were two publically accepted and one or two less favorably viewed options during the Locust occupancy. There was of course cooperating, which had benefitted the nations that had attached themselves to this alien empire with vast riches, peace, access to technology and on par for the course of surrender, the favor of their masters. That was the caveat of the bargain. Simple surrender of their right to exist on their own. Such nations have since quickly turned against their fellows; criminalizing talk against the Locusts and their collaborators, imprisoning rebels, loading their media with wave after wave of propaganda extolling the virtues of their new ‘allies’. One could almost believe the lies steaming across the airways if they didn’t think too hard on what happened the first few years after the Locust invasion.

The second accepted option was to not surrender, and subsequently die in a fashion befitting the new way to be a traitor. Die in a slave labor camp, die after being exiled by their people, die in an underground arena after being bought by less scrupulous individuals, or supposedly die after one is taken to Prague, where they simply disappear. After all, rumor had it that Locusts had acquired a taste for people. Rumor like that was quickly hushed up in the polite company of those who valued what scrap of freedom remained in those controlled nations.

A third and decidedly more criminal option was to not surrender and not die, an option vehemently denounced by the world’s new leaders. Humanity was no stranger to rebellion, and these fighters took to this most ancient of traditions with the fervor of those who had all to risk for all to gain. They remembered what it meant to stand and choose to risk their existence for the soul of their race. Despite the propaganda and attempts to quash of the Locusts and their human puppet leaders rebellion existed in small pockets throughout the world, connected to one another with the aid of Ariel, the AI designed to control the climate of Earth. The AI proved resistant to the Locusts unlike her twin Caliban, and had begun to connect the Locust fighters to one another.

-----------------Present-----------------​

Constance ran the whetstone along the edge of her blade with care, preening the blade as though it were a part of her. The edge wouldn’t go dull in this life even as it was, but the action soothed her nerves. She turned the flat of the blade toward her face and sets a kiss on the dark metal, garnering a playfully lascivious glance from Tapps, one of her companions.

Constance had grown up in the rebellion and was well aware of the figure she had grown into. One was force to, with the attention the received. Her bright hair, kept short, always seemed to make a frame around her lovely face. Fiercely blue eyes could change from grim to glad in an instant sparkled in the light that well matched her lips, always hinting of a grin. Scarred in places from battle, her naturally tanned skin was still perfect and a body hardened from battle and toned to perfection with curves that defied the rigors of her life. Full breasts filled out her slender frame with a pertness that made one wonder if gravity had taken leave of them, though often times she remained covered in her fatigues and wrapped in a dark gray shawl. After all, there was little time to flaunt her body to men with a war going on.

“Y’know Con, I never figured a man could be jealous of a blade.”

Samwell, his brother, nudged him with a smirk as Constance slide the blade into its sheath along her back. “Shush, Tapps. You know Con knows how to handle a blade better’n a man.” He gave Constance a brotherly grin before he went back to his rifle.

Constance smirked as she loaded a stack of ammunition bricks into her vest and one in her rifle. “Find me a man who can kill bug humpers like my sword and that could change.”

After Constance joined the fight against the Locusts her ability to survive had become something of a legend among the rebels and their enemies. Those who fought with her joked that the only bounty higher than hers was the Locust defector, Walks-Alone, and even then they weren’t certain. The squad’s leader, Anora, ducked into their tent with a pad. She set the thin screen on their work table, where it expanded its image across the surface to give them a view of their target.

Anora looked to each of them, then back at Omal as the heavy man stepped in behind her. “Folks, just got word from Ariel. The Locusts found something they want in these caves, and that means we want it too. They just ramped up operations to the point of making their guards work in the mine. New workers and soldiers will arrive within the next 24 hours at the most, so we have an opportunity to hit them while they’re tired and distracted.” She tapped the holographic layout of the mining base to zoom in on the main entrance. “Omal, you and Sam will be our diversion. Set up a turret here and here. Don’t flip the switch ‘til you get the go-ahead. Ariel will be helping us out with a blizzard, but all that does is buy us time before they scramble their air. Our own transport is in transit, and should, I repeat, should be here before theres. This fight has the potential to go south in a hurry.”

Constance peered over the map before the grabbing the image to copy onto her HUD, slipping the display over an ear. “And I’ll see about taking out their air support. There’s a spot on the northeast wall where a group of rocks gives cover from the cameras. Slip in, gut the sentry and I’ll see what I can come up with.”

Anora gave the girl an annoyed glance, half from being interrupted and half from having the words taken out of her mouth. “...Yes. Dammit girl, you gonna let me give the plan?” The dark skinned woman chuckled and waved to Tapps, hammering out the details of the plan.

Several hours later, the promised storm drove heavy sheets of snow into the mountains, giving them the best cover they could hope for. Even under the thermal gear Constance shivered in the frigid mountain night. Constance breathed into her hands, mentally counting the timing of the cameras. She darted between boulders diving to and fro with only half-seconds to spare at some points. The outline of the wall towered a few dozen yards away and Constance took a moment to calm her mind, enjoying the white hot stream of steam coming from her nose. She tapped out a count of four against her thigh before she sprinted to the wall. She ducked down as she neared the wall, skidding to a halt and sending up a white cloud of a snow to bury herself in just as the cameras settled on her covered self.

Her breath melted a touch of the snow before she palmed the wall with a glove, skittering up the barricade. The footsteps of the expected sentry were right on time, as were his swearing about the cold. Constance pulled herself onto the walkway as the guard turned away, pulling her knife from her vest. The blade severed his spine after he checked in, buying a moment before suspicion set in. The snow masked the sound of her approach quite nicely, as did the occasional sound of the drills cranking off and on. She weaved through the patrols and slaves, a simple thing as most were indoors during the blizzard and set up a handful of crawling mines that spider walked their way to the drones, clamping themselves just inside of the engine housing. She crawled her way to one of the spare drills, setting another mine before retreating to a dark corner. If Sam didn’t get this signal, she’d have his hide.

The explosion shattered the drill’s housing, tipping over and crushing a foreman. Slaves ran and Masters shouted futile orders. Omal’s turrets hammered at the entrance, pulling guards to the entrance to give Tapps and Anora space to move in where Constance had entered. Klaxons wailed as the aerial drones fired up and lifted into the air, only to pop like overfed mosquitos.

The assault was well underway, with only Anora being wounded with a graze on her side from the wild retaliation of the unprepared soldiers. The turrets finally tore through the main gate with Omal and Samwell following in its wake, their Locust-tech shields absorbing the redirection of attack as they laid down cover fire for the trio inside. With a nod from Anora, Constance slipped through the whitewashed battlefield and into the mine’s entrance. Time was short, and their own transport was nearing every second in preparation for whatever the Locusts had uncovered. Even in the few short moments she had been in the mine, the blizzard’s cover was fading.

Constance met little resistance in the mine with only a few guards and slaves that had take shelter from the attack. Only humans and one half-Locust science experiment that the Locust leadership used as proxies in their place. Any personal interest the Locusts had in this place had not become too personal just yet. She noticed the odd crystalline walls that became more prevalent as she moved deeper in, until the cave itself was entirely crystal. Nothing she was familiar with, she noted, as it gave off its own odd glow. Drills ahead of her stilled whined against the stress of moving through the crystal until she heard the distinct pop of its motor giving out. Hard stuff, apparently.

Even as the rock had given way to the crystal, the walls looked hewn. Not in the way the Locusts had drilled, but crafted. Even the stone was etched with patterns that grew more vibrant and complex as they moved closer to the final chamber, expanding out into a modestly sized cave. The other side of the cave was visible from its glow a few hundred feet away, but the few Half-Locusts that often acted as proxies to the Locusts in Prague were shouting orders to continue the drilling. Specifically, the lone pillar of crystal at the edge of an underground spring. Her sword quietly detached the head from the remaining sentry, allowing her to make the final three shots count. The slaves scattered as their masters slumped to the ground in a pool of blood, uncaring of the woman who stood at the edge of the pathway.

After taking a moment to make certain the cave was clear, Constance crept over to the pillar of, taking notice of the gentle humming of the crystals. She pushed the fact aside and stood before the pillar. Only ten or so feet high, five feet wide. What was this? Her question was answered as the crystals around her flickered, revealing a man encased inside. “...the hell?” Constance reached a hand out to rest on the crystal before Anora’s voice crackled through her headset.

“Constance! Get your ass topside! Bug dropship beat ours here and we need a ha-” She took another look at the man inside before she darted to the surface in time to see their own transport engaged in a lumbering dogfight with the Locust carrier. Tapps launched a handful of rockets as Omal sent a barrage of fire its way, ticking away at the armor of the Locust carrier. Few ground soldiers remained, having been mopped up by Anora’s squad.

A fire erupted from the side of the rebel transport as a bright beam of yellow cut through its armor again. The squad could only watch as the rebel pilot cast caution to the wind and rammed himself into the Locust carrier, sending both to the ground and toward the base. Omal shouted at Constance to get back underground as he grabbed an unconscious Samwell’s shoulder strap, hauling the giant man onto his shoulder to try and pull him out of the imminent blast of the crash. Anora and Tapps were nowhere to be seen as Constance dove back inside in time to catch the tail end of the crash, sending her several dozen yards down the mine corridor. The crash cut off any bit of power with the destruction of the base generators, only allowing the glow of the crystals to be a light.

Constance, struggled to her feet, feeling the side of her head and the blood that trickled out. Dammit...where the hell did... Her thoughts ceased as a wave of dizziness and pain came over her and nearly fell on her face from placing weight on a broken leg. “FUCK!” She was never fond of admitting pain, but a broken femur never felt good. With her rifle as a crutch, Constance slowly made her way back into the final cave, taking solace that there was at least some water there. She grimaced as she nearly fell again, blood loss quickly becoming a concern that was again overshadowed by throbbing in her head. She took a small step forward and fell this time, catching herself with a blood-slicked glove on the pillar holding the man. “H-hey bud...wanna...gimme a hand with-” She slumped forward against the crystal and into unconsciousness.

 

[Maka]

This is the labyrinth. You wander dusty, stony halls and galleries. Are you Theseus or are you the minotaur?

This is the rainforest, lush and verdant. You are a spore on the warm, wet tropical breeze.

This is the equation. Abstract, circular, perfect. You are the pulse of human understanding moving across the line.


It had been countless aeons. It had been the blink of an eye. Gideon had begun by reliving his childhood, then the hot, fiery pleasures of love and adventure. Then he had begun to forget the conscious self (though never her, different shapes though she might assume) and move beyond it. He contemplated new systems of mathematics and geometry, let himself contemplate the universe that they would make, like an abstract spirit examined the icy perfection of its wheeling stars and planets.

Then he brought life into his cold world and he considered, dispassionate, the laws of biological life and the rules of art, politics and culture. He contemplated the ways that human appetites first draw them from their primal states then destory them. He invented, oversaw and finally brought to their preordained destruction countless hypothetical civilizations. He outdistanced the greatest philosophers and scientists and went beyond their realms, to the home of the holy man and the madman. He enfolded himself in Nirvana, the kingdom of God, that bright light enfolding him -but whenever he felt as though he might disappear in it altogether, something brought him back down. He knew what it was. All of his power and his charisma, his success as an explorer, a scholar and a warrior -he could forgo these, leave them aside like meaningless toys to make his ascent. But not her. Never her.

And so he left the bright place and instead envisioned labyrinths -endless labyrinths, mazes of stone and green wood, both concrete and abstract -growing in complexity as the centuries rolled on.

And then a bright light tore aside the walls of stone and he saw her.



The crystal chimed once, like a huge tuning fork, and then it shattered all at once and Gideon was awake once more. His body was naked and preserved in the perfect physical condition it had been as he entered the trance state -the powerful broad shoulders, lean body, muscled arms and iron-hard, rippling chest. He had no eyes for his strange surroundings or for the unexpected nature of his awakening. Raena lay unconscious at his feet.

She looked more beautiful than ever, though dressed in strange, muted clothes. Her sunbright hair was cast about the gorgeous, hauntingly beautiful features of her face. As his eyes traced down Raena's gorgeous body, Gideon saw the dark stain of blood seeping through the legs of her trousers. His heart almost stopped. Not again. Whatever miracle brought you back to me, I'm not losing you again.

The first shamans of Ultima Thule, Gideon's remote ancestors, had performed their early magical feats after long periods of rest and meditation -time spent in mystical sites simply soaking up the magical energy. However long he had been in the trance state (had it really been only a century? Where were the adepts who were supposed to arrange his awakening?), Gideon realised that he felt almost overbrimming with sorcerous power. It was almost painful, the sense of potential and energy running through him.

He bent down to Raena, placing his lips on hers. Magic could be transferred through various ways -a hand tracing across the forehead, a long chanted ritual... but this had always been their favorite way with each other. Well, almost their favorite.

The kiss was tender and soft at first, letting her slowly awaken, letting him enjoy those soft, sensitive lips once more. He let the power boil under his tongue and then gradually released the magic, as his tongue slipped into her mouth and the power started moving through her, setting broken bones seamlessly straight, gradually filling and revitalizing his lost love.

 

[Bardic]

The pain in her leg was almost soothing as she slid down the front of the crystal, leaving a dark streak of blood along the pillar as her hand fell away. Constance felt her life pump out of her with each slowing heartbeat. The pain was almost gone when she finally blacked out.

The mind played stranged tricks when one was near death. In her sleep, she watched herself sitting with the man in the crystal, laughing with one another over something she couldn’t quite hear. Her dream-self and the man poured themselves a drink, sharing a long, soulful look before their lips met in a gentle kiss. She mentally mused how silly it was. After all, they’d just met and he was all stiff when she saw him. Her blood-loss caused her to chuckle at her bad joke before her body stirred.

Constance groaned into Gideon’s lips as she awoke, feeling the tingle of Gideon’s magic course through her body, knitting her injuries back together. She stirred, looking back at the memory of her dream before her eyes fluttered open to see the man’s face against hers in the soft kiss she had imagined. Bright blue eyes snapped wide open as she decked Gideon hard and scrambled backwards, unaware of the lack of pain in her leg and ribs. Having left her rifle behind at Gideon’s feet, she drew her side-arm, not quite catching the bright sparks of power arcing along the steel slide of the pistol.

“What the hell was-...who-...” Her eyes looked to the crystal, now in pieces around Gideon’s naked feet. Along with the rest of the naked Gideon, she realized. Damn. She shook her head and kept her eyes above the neckline, her pistol trained between his eyes. “Look jackass, I dunno what the hell this is, but I’ll be damned if some frozen man...thing...gets to cop a feel.”

She tried to deny that it it really was a nice kiss as she hopped to her feet, masking a slight stumble as her body still adjusted to the sudden feeling of death to health

“Who...what...are you?” Intrigue quietly overtook outrage as she looked to the man, in every way a perfect specimen. He oozed quiet confidence, gray eyes matching her own. Her stare-downs used to be famous to making others look away.

 

[Maka]

Gideon did not even flinch, despite the force behind the blow, but he did break off the kiss and move a little away. Laena was speaking in a strange language, barbarous vowels clipped and curt. He concentrated, closed his eyes for a moment and drank deep from the world soul. There was a strange black aftertaste to it that had not been there before, but there was no time to puzzle over that now.

"Laena, it's me," he said, now speaking her language with accentless perfection. "Gideon. How did you...?"

He looked about him, as confident in his powerful nakedness as another man might be in a full suit of armour.

"Did they find a way to bring you back? In only a hundred years, have they undone death?"

He looked at the beautiful, achingly familiar face and for the first time since awakening, felt something besides sheer joy.

"It has only been a hundred years? It's so hard to tell, in the deep places..."

 

[Bardic]

Laena? Constance’s look turned confused for a moment as the stranger looked on her with an eerie familiarity and only then did she take note of her not dying in a pool of blood.

“Wait....Gideon? Am I just still dying and this is a trick of blood loss, or do you have no idea what’s happening outside? If the second...why am I not dying anymore and are you with the Locusts? They seemed damned interested in digging you up.”

There would be time to figure out the Laena business later. While keeping her pistol hand trained on Gideon she knelt down, pulling the breeches from one of the dead Locust half-breeds and tossing them to the man. They were vaguely humanoid anymore and it’d help if this man had some damn pants on. It was hard enough to concentrate as it was. Thankfully it was relatively warm in here compared to the arctic conditions outside.

Outside. Shit. She held a hand to her ear and called out to Anora, receiving static back. Same from Omal, Samwell and Tapps. They were... probably just out of range. They cut their losses, figured they had to get somewhere safe. She tried to convince herself that she wasn’t making excuses for the radio silence. The blood that covered her leg was also disconcerting. This felt real enough, so if it were a hallucination she couldn’t come up with a happier one? How much blood was that, anyways?

“Look, Gideon. I’m impatient, armed, and a damn good shot. Best be talking fast. Who are you?” The second, larger pulse of power that arced down the slide of her pistol warranted a bit of attention this time.

 

[Maka]

Gideon pulled the black breeches over his legs. They were made of an unfamiliar, synthetic material. Now only his hard, flat and muscular chest was exposed. Laena was waving a black rod at him -judging by her body language and the light crackling across it, it was a weapon of some kind.

"You don't recognise me," he said. His voice was flat and toneless, not at all revealing the aching depths of grief and loneliness that threatened to rise up and conquer him at the thought. "Are you even... ?"

She looked like Laena. She had Laena's incomparable body, as engineered for love as it was for martial and athletic exercises. She had Laena's deep blue eyes and windtossed golden hair, Laena's angelic features -even Laena's body-language and inflections, but the real Laena would be in his arms now. No matter how long he had been in the trance state, he was still alone.

"I apologise," he said with grave courtesy. "I thought you were... someone I once knew. You look very like her. My name is Gideon ba-Soar ha'Malek. You are not dying because I took the liberty of healing you while you were unconscious. As for 'Locusts', I don't understand your question. I must be still unfamiliar with some of the nuances of your language -I understand the word to mean 'insect', 'grasshopper'."

 

[Bardic]

Constance let out a little metal sigh of relief as half of her problem was covered up, followed by a quiet chiding for thinking such things for a stranger in a bad place at a terrible time. She glanced down at another spark arcing from her finger along her pistol and released the hand, shaking it a bit with a slight look of consternation. A few more flecks of raw power peppered the ground, eyes back to Gideon as she slowly lowered her pistol.

“Gideon ba-....we’ll stick with Gideon. I’m damn sure I’d remember you if we’d met before, and I’ve never met someone naked in a big freakish cavern.”

She kept her pistol drawn, but at least not aimed at him any longer as she look around for a moment, rifling through the dead men’s clothes for any interesting and strategic knick knacks. “If you’re not lyin’ to me, you’re a far cry from anywhere you’re supposed to be from. A hundred years ago, no one talked about suspended animation. Little short jaunts, but not a century. Or in a big-ass crystal.”

She gave the Gideon a long look again before standing from her crouch. “...Locusts. Invaders? Not ringing a bell?” She waved with her pistol to one of the collapsed half-breeds who happened to groan a bit and consequently received a second shot from Constance’s pistol, silencing the creature with a sickening burst of carapace, bone and blood.

A thought clicked from what Gideon just said. “Wait wait wait...healed me? You can’t tell me we were..erm...kissing for the time it takes to slap a femur back together, or whatever else was wrong.” Constance froze for a moment. Locusts could do something like that. There was a mission she still remembered where a bullet that should’ve planted the man in the ground, only to see him up and making speeches again the next day. Bright blue power arced along with the swing of the pistol as she spun to face Gideon again.

The tail of blue caught up to the pistol with a loud snap that shattered her pistol in every sense. The steel cracked every which way with a bright flare, culminating in her side-arm falling to the ground in a pile of shards. That was new. Constance looked to the pile her of former weapon, then to her hands which still thought they held a pistol and which were now blazing with a dark violet fire creeping up her forearms. Constance with never one to let her emotions take hold of her but at this point, she screamed, shattering a good portion of the crystals around her.

Bright blue eyes looked to Gideon with confusion tinged with fear as the flames began to consume her layers of thermal wear on her arms, crawling its way up her shoulders. “What did you do!?”

 

[Maka]

The arcane flames were licking up and down the beautiful stranger's arms -yet more proof that she could not be Laena, who would have had control over the Azure Flames.

"Azure Flames," Gideon explained. "One of the first Hazards along the Left-Hand Path... "

He took in the girl's blank reaction, and took her hands in his, not without a twinge of sadness and another, treacherous sting of temptation. He could be holding Laena's hands... He concentrated, his spirit reaching out to her, and the flames slowly calmed and faded.

"What lodge do you belong to?" The terminology varied from lodge to lodge, as did the philosophical principles and metaphysics, but any true adept would have learned how to overcome basic Hazards. He held on to the delicate fingers a little longer than necessary.

"And Locusts? Are these, then, Locusts?"

He indicated the dead creatures around them. "Have they invaded the Three Realms? Where did they come from?"

 

[Bardic]

Constance wasn’t certain if she wanted to slap the man or kiss him as the flames died down. Bared arms still pulsed with ancient runes under the skin, but at least she wasn’t on fire. She gave his hands a small squeeze before he released them, flexing her hands open and closed as though suddenly unfamiliar with them.

“...Now you’ve got me confused. Why was I on fire, what’s it have to do with my left hand, and what lodge do what now?” She still stared at her hands and arms, turning them over as the arcane glyphs started to fade away.” Constance peered up at the man. She’d grown into a fairly decent judge of a liar as a rebel, weeding out spies and the like and it was disconcerting how honestly Gideon was asking those questions.

“Look, Gideon...not sure what the Three Realms are, but Earth was invaded by these things some two decades ago.” She gave her hands an experimental flick and satisfied she didn’t erupt again, she walked over to the pantsless half-breed and nudged it with a boot. “This thing is more of a proxy for Locust rule. A genetic mish-mash of humans and Locusts. We don’t see much of Locusts themselves. Aliens, Gideon. Space, crazy as that might be.” She smirked ruefully, flipping the heavy corpse over.

It still was vaguely man-shaped with two legs and two arms with a torso, but wrapped in a yellow-green chitinous exoskeleton. A collection of tentacles dangled from beneath its eyes with no discernible mouth, no ears, no hair and two sets of solid black eyes.

“So where are you from, that you can slap a body back together, make me catch fire then not catch fire and have no idea what’s happening?”

 

[Maka]

"From another world...", Gideon said thoughtfully, looking at the felled creature. "We tried opening portals to the stars, but none of our explorers ever came back and... nightmares came through in their place. But the world has forgotten the Three Realms, has it not? We thought we would last forever..."

He straightened, giving a formal bow to the beautiful young woman before.

"My apologies. I'm a man out of time, it seems. In the age in which I went to sleep, an empire of three realms ruled the world -Atlantis, Ultima Thule and Mu. You don't seem to have seen sorcery before... has that, too, passed away? In my time, it was the greatest of the sciences. I only dabbled, but the greatest adepts could do far more than heal a wounded leg. They formed societies and sects that followed the teachings of the great adepts of the past. These were called 'lodges'."

He looked at the girl, feeling a pang at the eerie similarity. There must be something at work, some weaving in the world soul, but he had no time to reflect on the possibilities now. Her cheeks were just a little flushed with the thrill of the magic crackling through her, eyes sparkling like brilliant sapphires, perfect breasts rising and falling.

"You have the capability of becoming an adept yourself," he added.

 

[Bardic]

It was all Constance could do to not smirk at the man’s story, but of course, strange things had happened. Still, Atlantis? Mu? Those places were legends millenia before the Locusts, let alone now. A formal education enlightened her to such tales, but it seemed crazy. Her mind quietly added that it was also crazy that he was frozen in a cave, somehow started a fire on her hands, healed a leg in minutes and her world was under occupation by aliens.

“...Sorcery. Look, Gideon, I’m sure it was all well and good in Atlantis, but here, we have-” She knelt down and picked up her rifle. “-fire power. Now, Mu is the sound cows make and Thule sounds like a speech impediment. The only sort of crazy things we’ve seen have been from the Locusts and the tech they brought with them. We still don’t know the extent of it.” She swapped out the magazine of her rifle for a fresh one. “And as for me, I just caught fire and lost half of my shirt. I’ll leave that crap to you. We’ll figure this out later, but now, we move.”

She half-smiled at the look he gave her. It was that same look like he just saw a ghost of a past life. It was sorrow, but hopeful. It didn’t hurt that he was a damn fine looking guy looking at her. She shook her head and started up the path to the exit, already seeing bits of the crashed Locust craft scattered down the tunnel, growing more dense as they neared the blocked exit. A cold wind pushed through the cracks of the wreckage and brought instant goosebumps to Constance, reminding her of their place high in the Himalayas. The gunfire she heard let her know there were still people alive to fight.

“...Dammit. They should’ve been gone by now!” Constance scrambled to the wreckage and started to pull bits of scrap away, trying to make a hole large enough to fit through.

 

[Maka]

Gideon automatically stooped to help Constance, the muscles of his arms and bare chest rippling and flexing as he effortlessly pulled aside a massive chunk of fallen crystal, opening a crawlspace.

"I'll go first," he told her. "I always..."

He bit down the last remark before he could finish it. On their adventures, he'd always insisted on going first although he had never known Laena to placidly accept this as he'd have preferred. There had been a time, while they were fighting the pirates off the coast of northern Mu, where he'd had to exhaust her with a marathon lovemaking session the night before to... his gaze had drifted across Constance's lovely body. He wondered if she too, would always argue over who took point. There was something in the upturned tilt of her chin and the azure fires in her eyes that told him she would.

Rather than let himself pursue dangerous lines of thought any further, Gideon got on to his elbow and began wriggling into the crystalline crawlspace.

 

[Bardic]

Constance took a small step back when Gideon lifted the chunk of debris away. She hadn’t known anyone besides Omal who could heft something like that... She balked at his words.

“I’ll go first. I always...”

“The hell you d-...wait, always?” Before she had a chance to argue, Gideon was on his way to wriggling through the hole. Ass... She thought as she caught a glimpse of his ass as he wriggled through. Beating the thought into submission, she wriggling in after him.

“Watch your head out there, Gideon. Dunno what else we have to shoo-” A nearby explosion silenced her next words. Out of the hole, bodies littered the base’s main grounds; some from the crash, some from the skirmish that still lingered. Locust forces were a bit more plentiful than data had anticipated... The blizzard had ceased at this point, leaving only the bitter cold of the mountains blowing across the rocks.

Anora had regained her ground at the cave’s entrance, using the debris from the fallen Locust craft as cover from the scattered fire that remained. Omal and Samwell were nowhere to be seen, but Tapps was up on a wall of the base, picking off targets with his rifle. He saw Gideon crawl out of the hole and took aim, sights filled with Gideon’s head. As far as her team was concerned, if it wasn’t Constance, it was an enemy.

 

[Maka]

A red light across his forehead. It was the only warning Gideon recieved but the only one he needed. He rolled backwards, moments before a flash of red light disintegrated the rubble directly in front of him.

He felt warm, firm yet yielding flesh underneath him. He was entangled with Constance. Trying to ignore a hundred sensuous thoughts, he whispered in her ear:

"These enemies of yours must be above. There is a battle raging."