Chapter 300 – Dangerous Involvement

After nearly ten days of radio silence, the fleet finally receives orders asking them to ambush an approaching mercenary band moving to reinforce a nearby mechanoid siege. Emily and Silvia gladly accept the request, leaving The Mothership to sit upon a nearby asteroid and wait for their prey to stray too close.

Emily wraps them in darkness to completely hide their energy signatures, and Silvia wraps an arm around Emily’s waist to pull her in close to her side. Emily lets her head rest on the vampire’s shoulder and gazes out into the distant sea of stars, the glistening lights far brighter than any night sky she’d ever seen on Ulea.

They sit in comfortable silence for hours before either of them breaks it.

“You’ve mentioned your first girlfriend a few times now,” Silvia eventually says, making no move to lift her head from resting against Emily’s when she tenses. “What was she like?”

“Pretty. Kind… Naïve,” Emily responds with a sigh, in no hurry to find the right words, relaxing as Silvia’s sharp nails trace patterns on her side that she can feel through her armour. “She… we met after I first awakened. At the time, my home country kept magic a secret, and she was the one assigned to introduce me to The Covenant: the group all mages joined for education. She was bubbly and happy, the complete opposite of me and the scum that sent me there. She was far too friendly. I was a little dubious at first, but after another party reassured me that she didn’t align with those who sought to control me, I let her in. I tried to teach her a little, but, though she was happy to listen, she wasn’t really all that interested in pushing herself to develop…”

“Mmmm,” Silvia hums, wordlessly urging her to continue.

“She was… safe. She had a strong aversion to violence, but I didn’t really mind. I don’t think I ever really saw it lasting, but… I wanted an escape. For a while at least. Then, reality caught up with us. The time came for me to see my revenge through. We both knew she didn’t have it in her to follow, and I could never bring myself to stop. We ended on good terms, and she’s found someone since.”

“Have you met them?”

“No. I was too busy developing my factories. I didn’t have the time.”

Emily can feel Silvia smirking against her head, even if she doesn’t say anything, and lets out a huff.

“My crafts take years of dedication to perfect, and I’d spent far too long fighting and not enough time researching by the time I even found out she existed. Seriously. I’m happy for them.”

“Sure you are,” Silvia agrees, though her tone suggests otherwise.

Emily rolls her eyes, but she only detects a light undertone of amusement.

“What about you?” she asks instead. “What was Enna like?”

Silvia’s hand pauses against her side, and Emily moves her metal hand to trace patterns on the vampire’s leg in turn.

“Free,” Silvia eventually decides. “She was beautiful, make no mistake, but what really drew me to her was her unabashed desire to do as she pleased. She was a Drycilian, a minor vampiric race-”

“A plant-vampire hybrid,” Emily finishes for her, aware of the species thanks to The Network.

“Exactly. She dealt with more judgement and disdain than anyone I’ve ever known, but she never seemed to let it get to her. She even somehow managed to persuade Yorn to treat her with respect, how I’ll never know. We were… never explicitly together – a mistake I’ll never make again – but I loved her for the short while we were involved.”

The gentle pressure at her side turns to a firm grip that Emily gladly leans into.

“I think you would have liked her.”

“Really?”

“She had strange tastes. She would’ve thought your son adorable.”

“He is, isn’t he?” Emily asks pointedly, a teasing smile playing on her lips that slowly fades as silence settles between them again.

“Did you… develop mental demons after her death?”

“No,” Silvia responds, catching the hesitant note in Emily’s voice and placing a soothing kiss against the top of her head, “but it was a close call. A large part of my pre-awakening training, and some post-, was on developing the correct mentality for an ascended being, along with emotional regulation and control. I spent a lot of time meditating and sparring to keep myself grounded in the wake of her loss, to the point where I developed a bit of a reputation among the crew…”

“How many did you send to the med bay?”

“Enough.” Silvia chuckles. “Why else do you think I ran from Hipaeha?”

They move to lighter conversation for the rest of their wait, and it isn’t long before they receive a message from Lethia.

“Look alive. Targets are due for arrival in five minutes.”

Emily and Silvia stand up, not yet rousing their energies to remain concealed beneath Emily’s spell.

Emily glances back over her shoulder at where she knows The Mothership and their other large vessels are waiting, feeling an odd disconnect as she senses a large build-up of energy within, thanks to Harriet still dwelling in their systems, that’s undetectable from the outside. She does, however, sense a series of odd, contained fluctuations of space from outside the barrier, and braces for what’s to come.

A countdown in her mind ticks towards the time Lethia indicated. The moment it hits zero, a wave of energy and spatial fluctuations wash over Emily and Silvia, freezing the open space before them, just outside the asteroid field they’re hiding in. Twenty ships seem to blink into existence instantly, shuddering against the force holding them in place, which vanishes after a beat, letting them start accelerating again far too slowly to escape.

Silvia leaps forward to punch through the energy shield closest to them while Emily calls upon her lightning connection and releases a thick bolt of charge that strikes the exposed ship’s thrusters, disabling them in an instant, before leaping off to the next. It only pierces five shields before fading, but the fleet behind her opens fire and stops the other ships from picking up speed as she casts again. Rotwin and Rotlith join them in the vacuum, aiding Silvia in boarding the disabled ships to cull their crews.

They make quick work of the enemy fleet.

***

A couple of weeks later, after moving to reinforce FAF forces defending against the mechanoid siege they kept help from reaching, the Crimson-Blade fleet is on its way to yet another conflict zone. Emily is inside one of Elisime’s workshops, crouched low to the floor and feeding mana into an alchemical array slowly joining a pile of materials to another sheet of world-eater skin, with Silvia sitting on the edge of one of the workbenches that’s been pushed out of the way nearby, watching the process with rapt attention.

“I’ve never taken the time to watch our alchemists at work,” the vampire says. “But I have to admit, it’s a fascinating process to observe. Do you often create new materials like this?”

“It depends on the situation.” Emily shrugs without looking away from the array, actively adjusting several runes with nudges of metal mana to keep it in balance. “I’d normally tend towards using alchemical circles to melt down organic materials and give their properties to metals instead of the other wa-”

Silvia narrows her eyes as Emily pauses for a beat to stare into space before blinking back and continuing as normal.

“-y around like this, but the world-eater’s parts are too good as a base material. It outclasses my current generation of synthetic weave by several steps.”

“What was that?” the vampire asks, slipping off the workbench and stalking towards Emily.

“Nothing.”

“No, it wasn’t.” Silvia reaches out, taking hold of Emily’s chin and forcing her to look up and meet her eyes. “If it was enough to make you break one of the magical explanations you so love giving, it was more than nothing. Don’t lie to me, darling.”

“Fine, it wasn’t nothing, but it’s not important.” Emily tries to turn back to her work, her magical senses still spread through the array and keeping it running without a real need to do so, but Silvia doesn’t release her hold. She glares at the vampire, but there’s no heat behind it. “I just turned twenty-seven, that’s all.”

Silvia grins at the admission and leans down to kiss her before finally letting go of her chin. “Good girl. Was that so hard?”

“You’re insufferable.”

“You love it really.” Silvia takes her seat again. “I take it you don’t want to tell me how you suddenly knew that without checking any calendars? Age is notoriously hard to track unless you’re planet-bound…”

“Let’s call it a time mage’s secret for now. Though, now that I mention it, I wonder how my meddling with the element has affected me in the long term…”

I suppose the System tracks my physical age, not mental.

***

The fleet arrives at a plane actively being overrun by mechanoid forces and takes up the task of searching for a suspected warp gate supplying the invading forces that are hidden somewhere on it. Emily and Elwaine both try a dozen different scanning spells to search for spatial fluctuations or abnormally stable points in space, but they find nothing and have to resort to more mundane methods. Partway through searching, however, Emily receives an alert ping through the communicator linked to her children.

“Wait a moment,” she calls out to the large squadron assigned to her command, floating down from her place above the forest they’ve been directed to cover. “Gather and take up defensive positions; I’m receiving a contact request from Mensacus’ dungeon team.”

She pulls out the communicator and pours machina into it to reinforce the connection as the screen comes to life. She’s immediately concerned by what she sees.

The image is clear but shaky, still mounted firmly in place against Mensacus’ chest as he slithers over uneven terrain, his usually coiled tentacled legs fully splayed to try and gain some stability. He’s skirting along the edge of a colossal sinkhole with Silica, Pod, and Ivor scrambling along at his sides, the rest of their squad spread slightly further apart with a few members missing. There are hundreds of other awakened with them, dispersed across the walls of the sinkhole and the sky above. Most are FAF soldiers or affiliate groups, though not all of them from the collection they started the dungeon with, but there are also several mechanoids among them, seemingly paying no heed to the enemies around them.

All of them are focused on the colossal living mountain at the centre of the depression.

It’s easily several thousand metres tall, standing on two thick hunks of stone fused to the dungeon’s floor with a mass of jagged spikes clustered on its back and head. There are veins of magma running along its structure that focus around the head to form two glowing eyes and a gaping molten maw. The monster’s two arms are bigger than most spaceships, and each sweeping motion towards the circling troops scatters them like mosquitoes, creating fierce winds that could down an airship with ease.

“Mother, can you see it?” Mensacus asks, reaching out to stabilise those closest to him as some of the wild winds threaten to throw them off their feet.

“Clear as day,” Emily replies, her eyes glued to the giant creature as its arms slam down on a cluster of mechanoids before lifting to reveal a flattened patch of earth that quickly shifts, swallowing the remains of the mechanical beings and reforming into a jagged surface. “How strong’s its energy signature?”

“Fifth level, bordering on sixth. It feels like all of the energy within the dimension is converging on it: I believe it’s our final challenge and likely contains a manifestation of the dungeon’s core. The fiscushia leading us have instructed us to focus our attacks on its legs, but they’ve forbidden us from approaching the head.”

“Can you sense anything within it?”

“Yes. Though the majority of its mana is spread evenly through its structure, there’s only lifeforce within the head.”

“That’s got to be their goal. You think you can claim it first?”

“Maybe, but I’ll need more power, and only those we’re allied with have lifeforce I can use. I’ve detected several soldiers activating artefacts to commune with those outside when we first arrived here, so if we act against them, it won’t go unnoticed.”

“You think you can get rid of them first?” Emily asks, spreading spatial mana through her squadron without breaking her focus from the communicator.

“No. They’ve been watching me for a while, but…” Mensacus turns to Pod and Ivor, nudging them with his tendrils to draw their attention. “I believe they could.”

“What do you need us to do?” Pod asks, momentarily turning away from the dungeon’s monster and trusting Mensacus to bat away the flying shards of rock he was focused on dodging.

“Remove the artefacts they’re using to communicate with those outside before they can get word out.”

“We’re finally making our move?” the young mechanic grins. “Yeah, I think I have an idea.”