January 2020…
The camp fire had burned low.
Despite the initial tensions, the trio had initially managed to assuage most of their heightened feelings, and even the adrenaline-laden Beatrix had eventually been coaxed to sleep by Jaina.
Seventeen, who had volunteered for the last portion of the night watch, sat half-asleep as he stared into the embers. While he hadn’t expected the meeting to go well given their last visit to the city-state, he hadn’t anticipated an entire room full of waiters with ki-infused weaponry. The trio had been fortunate that they had loyal, highly trained mounts to usher them out of the city in the haze of confusion and chaos.
This time, the cyborg didn’t think their next visit to Merania would be under the pretext of diplomacy or even the subterfuge of their first trip. No… their next trip here would be at the head of a conquering force, he wagered. When the first and third options failed, you were left with the second option, and that’s the one that usually entailed the most destruction.
War.
Oh, joy. The cyborg’s mind wandered to yet more pitched battles where he and the two ladies would be thrust ahead as the primary spears of the Lodian army. He didn’t blame anyone, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed having to be a literal atomic weapon.
Somewhere, in the nearby foliage, a branch rustled softly. At first, Seventeen paid it no heed, but after a quick moment, he realized that there was no wind and efforts at hunting had spooked away all the nearby wildlife hours ago.
The raven-haired warrior twisted on his log and took a bolt of lightning square to the chest.
Beatrix snapped awake at the sound of the thunderclap and the resulting crash of her companion as he was ragdolled through a nearby tree. Grabbing ahold of a still groggy Jaina, the blood magus wrenched the blonde free as the sundered tree came crashing down into the center of their campsite. “We’re under attack!” She hissed as she tried to see through the cloud of dirt, leaves, and smoke that had now been kicked up throughout their cramped encampment.
Something sliced through the air a few inches from Beatrix’s right ear, and the woman dropped down low as she tried to ensure she was properly shielding Jaina. The pair had barely a few more minutes to gather themselves before the ground beneath them suddenly exploded, throwing both into the sky as the fount of earth, stone, and flames belched high above the tree line of the forest.
Removed from that earthen assault by ten or fifteen yards, Seventeen scrambled back to his feet as the initial burst of light and flames slowly died back down into the shattered earth. Clomps of seared dirt were still raining down through the distressed canopy, which had somehow not managed to catch fire. As low to the ground as he could manage, the man sprinted back toward the calamity of the camp. His ki sense could pick up the ladies, and while they’d be sore, they weren’t in mortal danger at the moment.
His focus was on their attackers, who had moved into the ruptured center of the tiny clearing and stopped. When Seventeen came out from the tree cover, he followed the age-old adage of ‘shoot first’, and he lashed out with a barrage of rapid-fire ki bursts that illuminated the dark forest in yet another show of lethal lights.
While certain he had heard at least one exclamation of pain, the raven-haired warrior barreled forward until he slammed right into someone not much larger than he was on a good day. Twisted together, the pair of adversaries crashed into the ground, with Seventeen winding up on his back in another startling example of how great this day had been.
Above him, the individual—a pale-skinned humanoid with pointy ears and eyes that seemed to glow purple—sneered as they drew back a hand that suddenly began to shimmer with similarly violet flames. The cyborg took a moment to eye the design on his attacker’s tabard, and then he angled his palm and leashed a burst of ki from close-quarters. The impact sent hie foe rolling backwards off of him when it should have punched cleanly through flesh.
After a quick kip up, Seventeen felt a twinge of vertigo as the earth beneath him seemed to tilt to the right. Up from the ground, ethereal black tendrils snaked their way up and moved to grab him. Leaping up into the air, he avoided that hazard only to be struck from three angles by various elemental attacks. Crashing down to the earth, he squeezed his eyes closed and orbed away just as another assault slammed into where he had fallen.
Seventeen rematerialized just a few feet from Beatrix, who held a bloodied and half-conscious Jaina while evading bolts of eldritch lightning. As the blood magus ducked, she found herself staring at her companion, who put a hand on both women. “Hold on.”
An imprecise distance from the camp, the trio appeared in a swirl of blue and white lights on the ground.
“We had that,” Beatrix immediately rasped as she helped Jaina into an upright position. The blonde seemed to have avoided any serious damage, but the glancing blow to her head had left a trail of blood down the side.
“We most certainly did not,” Seventeen snapped back as he grabbed the special frequency whistle that let him signal Salsa at a distance. “There were at least six of them in those woods.”
“We’ve dealt with far worse odds.”
“I blasted one of them in the chest from about six feet away.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t die. In fact, I’d wager they were more annoyed by it than anything else.”
“So they were armored,” Beatrix replied as she finally turned from Jaina to look at the cyborg. “We’ll adjust our tactics.”
“Dude wasn’t armored,” he quickly responded. “Unless there was some kind of magic enchantment I couldn’t discern, he was wearing just a fucking robe with some dumb ass eyeball with fingers logo on it.”
“Wh-what did you say?” Jaina was groggy and likely concussed, but the remark had pulled her from her haze. “Can you give more details on this logo?”
“This doesn’t seem like the time or place for this conversation.” From out of the bushes, Salsa and Slepinir appeared. As they were adept at doing, the pair of mounts had seamlessly eluded any pursuit en route to the high-frequency signal.
“Just tell me what it was,” Jaina spoke with far more conviction as Seventeen brushed his giant bird on the side of her head.
“Like I said… an eyeball with like … three fingers or arches going down from it, and I think it was purple.”
The blonde sorcerous scowled.
“Does this mean anything to you?” Beatrix asked.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “I’ll admit I was a little … blindsided by that attack, but I swear that magic felt almost familiar to me. But not in a good way. A bad way. A very bad way.”
“Can we talk once we’re back in Lodis?” Seventeen whispered as he swung himself up onto his mount. “I don’t want to wait around to get ambushed again in these woods.”
“I still say we stand our ground,” Beatrix replied.
“No, we have to go.” Jaina, as she often did, served as a tie-breaker. “It’s obvious that there’s too many unknowns right now. I don’t like it. I want to think.”
“You heard the blondie,” Beatrix spoke after helping Jaina up onto their horse. “Let’s go.”
***
Previously on Friends (Original Broadcast date: ‘June 2020’) …
A few months had passed since the failed diplomatic mission to Merania.
Despite their initial belief that the situation would explode into outright war, the trio had been surprised when King Reynard preached subtlety. In his capacity as the Crown Prince, Seventeen wanted to ‘tow the company line’, but even he felt a bit irritated that they were essentially being told to swallow their pride for the moment. Although armies weren’t rallied, the countryside quickly devolved into chaos as their volatile neighbor started to raid the region. While the history of the three cities was filled with this sort of back and forth, the newest batch of attacks seemed strangely personal.
Seventeen had responded to a number of them, and the carnage was nearly a bit too much for him to stomach at times. Previously, Merania would often take crops, steal valuables, and sometimes abduct farmers or people from villages. On almost every occasion, these goods would wind up being used as blackmail or sold through illicit networks to launder gold. Whether it was due to the purge of Merania agents in Lodis or a response to the failure to kill ‘the three’, the raids now bordered on ethnic cleansing.
Since the start of the year, there had been nearly three villages entirely destroyed, and upwards of two dozen farms had been burned to the ground. Blackened skeletons were often found tied to stakes in the fields.
The degree of the violence eventually caused the old king to relent in his usual policies. By the time the spring started to wind down, a dual approach had been started in response to ‘pressure’ from Merania. Armed caravans were more frequently dispatched to patrol the various central routes from Lodis to her surrounding villages. In line with this, the physical roads were all set to be redone, with genuine cobblestone used to replace what were often dirt paths that existed only by virtue of constant carriage traffic preventing the regrowth of grass.
In the long-term, the changes would benefit the safety of the realm and the facilitation of trade and transit, but in the short-term, it did little to assuage the frustrations of ‘the three’ or the handful of other hawkish individuals who held position in the King’s council.
On a particularly overcast morning near the start of the summer season, Seventeen found himself sequestered in his personal chambers. In the corner of the room, the CRT television set he’d procured a few months ago took a break from whatever sitcom he had been using as background noise to play an advertisement.
“Do you have what it takes to the best? The very best? Like no one
ever was?”
That voice …
Seventeen, who had been half-asleep in his chaise, craned his neck to see what was on the screen. Much to his disbelief, he found himself staring at a commercial for Dante’s Abyss hosted by Karl Jak. While the distinct tone of voice was familiar enough, there was no misplacing the man’s uniquely styled head of hair or the purple three-piece suit he wore.
“If you think you have what it takes,” Karl spoke with a smug grin on his face as the screen displayed a montage of combat involving people Seventeen had never seen. “You won’t want to miss out on the Crossroads’ inaugural season of ‘Dante’s Abyss’! Only the best will make it to the island, and only the most legendary of individuals will weather the storm.
“Think you have what it takes? Signups are happening all around you! Just look for your nearest Syntech Station, and our staff will be more than helpful to assist you.” The man, who had returned to the screen, blew a kiss to the audience at home. “Smooches.”
Seventeen clicked off the TV and let the remote fall to the ground.
“Hard pass.” If that was—somehow, someway—the same Karl Jak, there was no way the cyborg would volunteer himself to once again be blown up on one of his death island hellholes.
“Nope. I like having my organs inside,” he reaffirmed as he rolled back toward the wall.
He had experienced all of ten seconds of silence when a soft knock came on his door.
“Come on in, Jaina,” he spoke without rolling back over. Even on her worst days, Jaina always had the same knock. Never rushed. Never angry. A gentle tap.
The door opened and the blonde poked her head through. “How did you know it was me? Are you …”
“Your knock,” he mumbled as he rolled over to face her and gestured with his hand for her to come in and occupy the chair in the other corner. “You could be running from a serial killer in a hockey mask, and I think you’d still have the same knock.”
“You could have been sleeping.”
Seventeen smiled. “Yes, I was trying to sleep.”
Ignoring that gentle snark, Jaina sat down in the wingback chair and held up a sketchpad. “Do you remember the assassination and the ambush later that night? Was this the symbol?”
The cyborg shuffled around so that he was sitting, and after a few moments, he nodded his head. “Yea, for the most part. The little eyeball part was different, though.”
Jaina looked at her sketch and then back to her friend. “Different how?”
“It kind of looked like a cat eye… a circle like that one, but with a vertical line. It also kind of looked like it was… I don’t know, angry? It was hard to tell.”
The blonde scribbled an image and showed him. “Like this?”
Seventeen laughed. “Yea, that’s probably closer to what it was. Like an angry fucking cat eye glaring out of the darkness or some shit.”
“Out of the Void.”
The man shrugged, having not picked up on the subtext of the woman’s remark. “I guess.”
“No,” she muttered as she set the tablet down and ran a hand through her hair. “Do you remember that ring we found during … the events?”
Even almost a year later and Jaina still felt uncomfortable about the purge. “You said you thought you recognized it? Like it was something from where you’re from.” His eyes wandered to the television monitor, where he had suffered a similar epiphany before her arrival.
“No, I
did recognize it.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the exact same ring. “This is a signet ring that belonged to an individual who was part of a sect of wizards and witches where I am from.
I was one of them, for a time. They were a force for great good.” She held up her sketchpad with her original drawing front and center. “This was their symbol.”
“Didn’t seem like a force of great good when that dude was trying to burn me alive or choke me with purple tentacles.”
Jaina frowned. “Tentacles? You didn’t mention tentacles that night.”
The machine-hybrid shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t want to invite too many jokes from your wife.” In fact, he simply didn’t think it was that important of a detail.
His friend continued to ruminate as she tapped a finger on the sketchpad. “It’s all wrong.” She seemed to be thinking out loud, so Seventeen didn’t reply immediately. “You sound like you’re describing the Void.”
“Are you talking about a place or…” He trailed off on purpose, yet another tried and patented method to navigate conversation with a wizard who often had her head in the clouds.
“The Void exists outside of reality,” Jaina muttered. “It’s the counterpart to what we in my world called ‘the Light’. It’s a terrible thing that corrupts and consumes everything it touches. People, civilizations, and gods have all tried to manipulate the Void to their own machinations, and each of those endeavors has backfired in one way or another.”
“You think they’re trying to tap into that here?”
“Possibly,” she continued to frown. “Perhaps some rogue Kirin Tor mage predated me here and meddled with magicks they shouldn’t have…”
“Those people were on Merania’s payrolls,” Seventeen replied.
Jaina nodded her head. “You said this magus was… ‘tough’?”
“Trust me,” the cyborg spoke with a soft smirk. “I don’t often pull punches. That person looked like I had just pissed them off, and I haven’t seen something like that since—”
“Since where
you come from.”
“Yea,” he concluded. “Whatever that dude was juiced up on was something good. You can bet your ass I’m going full scorched earth the next time someone draws a staff on me.” He was smiling, but Jaina still had that taciturn look on her face.
“I fear for the people of Merania if there are those actively practicing this type of magic in their home. This could spiral. I also fear that the three of us pushed them in this dark direction.”
“It’s not our fault if they blow themselves up trying to decide new ways to kill us,” Seventeen replied. “It’s their own damn fault. They didn’t have to try and stab us in the face during our diplomatic visit, either.”
Jaina still looked unsettled, but this was one instance where she and the machine-hybrid were unlikely to see eye-to-eye.
“You know what else is strange?”
“What?”
“The Idrisids. They’ve made no movements against us. Are they usually not an active tormentor?”
“They probably learned not to mess with Lodis.”
Jaina frowned. “Something foul is in the air.”
“Yea … your mood.”
She threw the chair pillow at his head.
***
Previously on Friends (Original Broadcast date: ‘Early June 2020’) …
Fortunately for Jaina, the heinous agents tapping into the Void did not bring about a great calamity in the region.
Unfortunately, that calamity still rose. It made itself manifest in reports of hideous monsters dripping with corruption and madness being spotted in the lands between Lodis and the Idrisids. It wouldn’t be for a few more weeks that Lodis would hear reports about some catastrophe that had befallen a far-away World called ‘Govermorne’.
Later incidents on Cevanti eventually filtered their way to the Hinterlands of Erde Nona. By that point, it was clear that something was seriously wrong in the Idrisids, and the monstrosities that roamed the countryside had a name: The Unmade.
“You really think this event is going to be a useful investment of our time?” Beatrix posed the question as she lazily leafed through the pamphlet that her wife had procured ahead of this little powwow.
“Unfortunately, I do,” Seventeen replied as he shut the door to the wine cellar. In all of Castle Lodis, this was one of the locations where it was nigh impossible to be spied upon, and he’d already made certain that there weren’t any devices planted here.
“It’s a … fake military game?” Beatrix inquired as she tossed the document back to her partner and looked over at the raven-haired warrior. “We have
real military engagements that we might be involved in here and now.” The woman referred to Merania, which had recently fired artillery into the city. While there had no fatalities given many of the locals in that quarter were at worship, the event was still something of a black stain on the Lodian court.
After that incident, Seventeen and Jaina had called for a meeting of the council and waylaid nearly every member of it who had delayed the inevitable collision course between Lodis and Merania (Beatrix skipped the meeting to torture the captured Meranians). The outcome of that meeting had been King Reynard officially greenlighting a retaliatory strike, but he stopped short of signaling for war. Seventeen and Jaina reacted by formally issuing a dissenting opinion and walking out of the meeting, which was the closest the two had ever come to publicly breaking with the king’s decision.
The three were left out of the planning for that retaliatory strike, and while that stung Beatrix, Jaina was happy, because it meant they didn’t have to fear that Lodis would retaliate with another magical strike force.
Even so, Seventeen, despite his public role as Crown Prince Gavin, harbored some frustration and resentment toward ‘his father’. The cyborg hated the long-game that the political types were trying to play with Merania. When pressed, King Reynard always seemed to have some sort of excuse tied to public perceptions or economic stability, and after nearly a year of this song and dance, Seventeen was starting to grow restless in his role.
“The guy who is running it,” Seventeen spoke as he pointed to the grinning maniac on the back of the pamphlet. “One of the factions is apparently comprised of captured Unmade forces.”
That garnered Jaina’s attention, who took the document to give it a more thorough examination.
Since the first Unmade had been sighted last autumn, their numbers had only seemed to grow. In the span of months, they had gone from being the rumors of travelers to attacking villages and finally, a few had started to claw and screech on the outskirts of Lodis’ city walls. In those early months, Jaina had been convinced that the blighted creatures had been related to the sect of ‘void magi’ in the employ of Merania’s throne. When they were able to capture their first unmade creature, the wizard had been all the more horrified to discover that this was yet another type of malevolent monster that inhabited the Crossroads.
“This could be an excellent opportunity to get more experience dealing with these creatures,” Jaina remarked as her gaze met that of Beatrix. “The three of us have very limited exposure, and this might help us to better rationalize this … plague.”
Beatrix rolled her eyes. “This is one of those Dante’s Abyss things,” she looked at the cyborg. “Didn’t you tell me once that this guy used to peddle these events in your home? Didn’t you use to say that they always devolved into subterfuge and fratricide?”
“That’s correct,” Seventeen mumbled after a few moments of silence. “But I think the benefits of this outweigh the negatives.” He added with a smile. “You’re not telling me that you enjoy passing the weeks in this castle or behind these city walls? Is the mighty Beatrix III turning down the opportunity to
actually showcase her skillset? Are you telling me that you’re the softest one out of the three of us?”
The blood magus glared silently for a few moments. “Fuck you, [/i]Steve[/i].”
“Hard pass,
Trix.”
The redhead crossed her arms over her chest and didn’t break eye contact with her sneering companion. “Where’s the nearest sign-up station?”
Seventeen grinned, and despite her best efforts, a small smile flickered on Jaina’s stoic visage. Even if the redhead’s two closest companions had diametrically opposed reasons, they were both pleased to be heading out of Lodis for a few weeks.
Just like that, the ‘Lodis Three’ were off to Conquest…