V S M Matter over Mind

[Victor Wolfe]

Victor glared at the individual in front of him. Whilst being around elves made the emperors very skin crawl there was another group that he had no fondness for. Minor nobility. Even with much of the elven power structure being rightfully put down like the dogs they where it seemed that this had only opened up new opportunities. Whilst it was true that some industries had suffered, the baking sector recording record losses due to looting, for example, the construction, weapons and lubricant industries where at what the elves informed Victor's assistants were an all-time high. And sales of Saris had shot up two thousand per cent.

This had lead to the creation of a new upper class who had come to Victor to discuss how they could use their new positions of power to gain political influence, some of them asking if there would be plans to set up a parliament. Or if they could be assigned offices in government. The emperor was far from pleased with this idea as many of these influential "people" were of that degenerate race of abject failures known as the Dwemer. If Victor had his way the ground elves would have had any hope of advancing in this perfect society crushed until they accepted their role as the lowest of the low. But no, due to the failures of some of his subordinates even the army now had elves as more than human-sized shields to glue to the walls when under siege.

Thus Victor came up with a compromise, he would allow this social elite to pick one individual to serve on the council and have a vote on all domestic issues, whilst foreign issue would be the sole responsibility of the emperor. The social elite being defined as anyone in the top ten per cent of earners a change that the wealthy individuals who were pushing the hardest for this representation eagerly agreed with. After all, if there is one thing Victor knew about wannabe oligarchs, it's that whilst they wanted influence over the government, they never wanted a true democracy. After all, that would put them on the same level as their workers and that was something they could not stand for.

Thus after a short election, a candidate was picked and it was that individual that drew the glares from the former assassin, for stood in front of him was the finest mockery of imperialism he had ever seen. A short and rather chubby elf, with grey wiery hair hidden under a large top hat made to hide his shortness clearly. The elf wore a morning coat and a golden monocle that screamed pretentious blue blood. The elf introduced himself as Lord Snobsworth the fourth, claiming that his family at one point had been a noble house before falling on hard times and how he was so ecstatic that he was picked to be a member of the emperor's council. Victor had two thoughts towards this, either the rich folks behind this fools election had buttered him up claiming he deserved it due to family history so that he would owe them favours as a perfect little tool for their plans. Or he was smarter than Victor was giving him credit for and had managed to argue that as former nobility he would be able to persuade the emperor better than any of the other voters.

"It truly is a pleasure to be your advisor Emperor Victor, why when I heard that I had won a landslide I could hardly believe that this right honourable gentleman had been elected to serve King and country in this fine empire, may the sun never set on your reign!" He gave a small bow, reaching into his pocket the assassin half expected him to pull out a pocket watch and rush off to a game of polo he was late for. Instead, he pulled out a large pile of papers.

"Why when I heard that my ideas would influence the empire itself and knowing what a reasonable ruler you are I could not help but write up many proposals for legislation that I feel would greatly benefit our society. If you would care to hear them." Having to resist telling this self-absorbed toady to take a head-first dive from the palace balcony the assassin put on his political mask, smiling towards the elf, and the audience of electors who had gathered to see how this first meeting went.

"Why of course, I am sure that the ever so successful and wise electors have picked someone of great talent who will be a valuable asset to our society, so please do tell me what you think would be an issue that we have in our society I could address. "

"Well, I think that tax cuts for the industries that have helped to keep the economy afloat in this turbulent time of administration change would be a wise idea so that they could secure their position and continue to expand and give more jobs to the populace, many of the right honourable gentlemen in the electorate seem in favour of this idea." He said proudly as a murmur of agreement came from the gathered elite, Victors eyes where drawn to a more raggedy crowd of viewers, working class people clearly drawn to the activity at the palace started to fill the back of the halls. Elf and human alike from different backgrounds listened on as Victor made a proclamation.

"Whilst I do understand the logic in that there shall be no tax cutting to the wealthy elite. We are still in a time of economic recovery and whilst it is true that certain industries are doing rather well, there are clear areas for improvement that I have been looking into the logistics of expanding and improving. Food is a key area here, now I know we all love our mushroom soup but would it not be nice if we had a wider selection of foods to chose from? Wouldn't it be nice for us to have an established legal system, so that I would not have to hold back meetings of a wider national issue to sort out disputes over who moved the stones marking property borders? Isn't it nice that we have an army willing to die for us? Would it not also be smart to eventually increase their funding so that we do not lose so many every engagement we come up against an enemy smart enough to deal with a healing Aura? No! There shall be no cutting of tax, instead, the wealthy elite can see it as their civic duty to pay into the state that has benefited them so much and allow us to reinvest that payment to help others industries flourish making life better for us all!" A small eruption of cheers from the poorer members of the audience filled the halls as some of the elite shook their heads, others seemed to be calculating how they could muscle in on these new industries, others just glared.

Politics was a stage, and Victor was the lead man. Rousing speeches being something that just came naturally to the charismatic figure. At this point, Ahana had entered the room fully dressed for once, and actually on time. Victor had another job for his general but this meeting had gone longer than he predicted, still despite the clear want to talk with the Emperor Snobsworth took one look at the dark-skinned healer simply turned back to the emperor as he read another suggestion.

"Well sir, I know that many of our citizens come from a less, civilised society and that their culture is different but in our more enlightened elven society we feel that it should be made a legal requirement to cover up the entire torso in public spaces, and preferably only allow the upper arms, ankles, heads and necks of individuals to be seen in public without an indecency charge. It is just not right that so many of these, uncivilised folk walk around in such revealing clothing, its almost like they are asking for us to do something." Snobsworths eyes drifted towards Ahana as he almost spat the word uncivilised, his eyes also scanning the servant girls that had started to serve wine and cheese to the guests of the palace.

Victor grinned like a cat as he stood up, leaving the imperial crown on the throne he slipped his black and red assassins shirt over his head, causing gasps of shock from all members of the audience as the emperor's well-toned upper body was revealed to the world. Lighty flexing as he stalked towards the advisor he chuckled. "Now now my right honourable gentlemen, uncivilised is such a harsh term, I also noticed that you exclusively looked towards humans with that statement. You don't want to be seen as anti-human do you now Snobsworth? As for the nudity, there shall be no such ban in place, For I see this showing of skin as a proclamation of honesty, as they have no need to hide who they are under fancy tokens like top hats or monocles. It also shows confidence, a trait that should always be promoted so that we get the best out of our people."

Victor then made a show of pointing to his body as he announced "besides, who would want to hide such a work of art from the masses? As for your last part, I would say that a society who need to lock away their bodies with covering through fear that other individuals are going to grab at anything that is exposed it truly a sign of an uncivilised society. Now I am sure that I will have many more discussions with you Lord Snobsworth but for now, I need to talk to the right honourable Lady Ahana Varma, and as she ranks higher in the pecking order than you, you are dismissed until further notice, goodbye!" With a grumble, the elf left the palace with his backers all whispering amongst themselves whilst the more worker types seemed to lighten up and engage in happy discussions until only Victor and Ahana remained. A still shirtless assassin taking his seat on the throne, the crown back on his head.

"Well Ahana I am extremely sorry about the delay, but I do have a little treat for you since the xenomorph job was handled so well. Our scouts report that a group of the creatures that had captured you and the miners have been spotted in a neighbouring cavern, far closer than I would like. So I would like for you to eliminate them by any means necessary, your choice, go alone, take a squad, or take an army. Consider it like a vacation really. One where you get to mercilessly kill things at your own discretion. On record eliminate them in a way you find most suitable. Off record, go as nuts as you want."

 

[Ahana Varma]

The bunnygirl grimaced slightly when Victor referred to the illithids as ‘the creatures that had captured you’. She couldn’t exactly object to the description, as it was technically true, even if the period of her captivity had been merely a matter of minutes. Still, she didn’t appreciate the emperor rubbing it in.

That said, she couldn’t be too upset, as she did greatly appreciate the opportunity. It had been several days since the extermination of the xenomorph hive, so she could use some more action. Training fights were all well and good, but extinguishing the lives of other sentient beings was a vastly more enjoyable endeavour.

“Sounds fun, I’m in.” the bunnygirl said, grinning viciously.

“Glad to hear it.” the assassin answered, a small smile tugging at his lips, as his red eyes shone with mirth at the sight of her plainly visible bloodlust.

“Before I go off to handle that, though, I’ve gotta ask: who’s the posh guy in the top hat? A friend of Siggy’s?”

Victor gave a snort of derision, “No, nothing like that. I wouldn’t put it past him to try and use our official religion as an excuse to advocate banning revealing outfits, but I’m certain he’s not actually interested in worshipping Gal’skap. He’s just a prude, plain and simple.”

“Oh? So what’s with you acting like he matters, then? If he was some kinda priest, I could understand putting up with him so as not to piss off our good buddy, but if not…”

“He’s rich.” the emperor sighed, shrugging, “And those others hanging around him as he left were more upper class types just like him, whose backing he has. Much as I’d rather just execute them all, that’d result in a lot of unrest, and might even lead the damn knife-ears to rebelling. So I’m pretending to listen to them for the time being.”

She hadn’t noticed initially, but glancing about as he spoke, she noticed that even Victor’s servants had departed; the pair of them were completely alone here. This was fortunate, given the way he was talking openly about murdering innocent people. She wondered if his serving girls realised what he would likely be saying and had left so as to avoid risking being silenced for hearing too much, or if they were just as clueless as the rest of the common citizenry when it came to understanding their fearless leader’s true personality, and had simply been given instructions by him ahead of time that he wanted to be alone with Ahana during today’s meeting.

For a second, she hesitated before responding. Had Reinhardt or one of her other elven subordinates been present, she’d have objected to the racial slur the emperor used. As none of them were, for the time being she chose to overlook it, not wanting to pick a fight with him when he was giving her an excuse to go off and commit mass murder. Instead, she smirked, choosing to focus on another part of what he’d said, “You know, it’s a little odd for an emperor to say ‘upper class’ in such a disgusted tone. I’d think you’d have an easier time seeing things their way, what with you being the upper-est of classes yourself.”

Saying this turned out to be a mistake, as it resulted in Victor launching into an extremely long-winded lecture on economics, in which he extolled the virtues of big government, railed against the free market, and insisted that their empire would be a far better and more successful place if the rich were overthrown and all property was state-owned. The general wasn’t sure that this would actually be an improvement for the common people, as he claimed, but given that the emperor was their head of state, she had no doubt that Victor himself would benefit tremendously from such an arrangement.

She didn’t mind if he wanted to entertain notions of attaining even more absolute power than he already had, or if he wanted to engage with business leaders and occasionally grant their requests in order to convince them that they actually had some influence. It didn’t matter to her how he managed the economy, so long as he didn’t try to interfere with her army. Other than by granting them extra funding whenever he felt like it. That was a form of interference she’d be more than happy to accept.

When he was finally done giving her his full spiel, the bunnygirl was allowed to trudge out of the room. Upon shoving open the large, thick, double doors that the maids had shut behind them, she found a trio of the beautiful, young women waiting on the other side. As she passed them, they nodded respectfully, and the one in the lead gave her a sympathetic smile.

They couldn’t possibly have overheard her conversation through the walls and doors, so Ahana could only imagine that the length of time she’d been in there and her expression upon departing were enough to give the servant some idea of what had been going on inside.

The trio then filed past her, no doubt going in to pamper the assassin some more. Though the healer wasn’t really sure how much she could hold his cushy lifestyle against him anymore. If she was having to force herself to sit through meetings with the likes of ‘Lord Snobsworth’ and his cronies, she was sure she’d be just as inclined to hire some scantily-clad women to give her massages and suchlike during her downtime.


***


“You don’t want us to come along? Really?” Nisse asked doubtfully, his brows knitting in concern, “Even though those ‘illithid’ things almost succeeded in turning you into one of their mind slaves when you last fought them?”

Ahana leaned back in her chair, groaning and rolling her eyes. First Victor’s subtle mockery and now the captain treating her like a delicate flower; she was really starting to think that she should’ve been less honest when telling everyone the tale of how she’d rescued that miner group.

“The illithids are powerful foes,” Reinhardt agreed, nodding sagely, “no one would think less of you for not being able to take down one of their inquisitions single-handedly.”

She opened her mouth to dismiss his words, then paused. She straightened up a bit, cocking an eyebrow as she turned her gaze his way, “One of their what?”

“Inquisitions.” the brigadier repeated, “When the illithids send out small teams of operatives to perform minor tasks, they call those teams inquisitions. I suspect that both the group which the emperor is ordering you to exterminate and those you encountered previously would be inquisitions.”

“Huh.” she said, paying more attention now, “I’d never heard that before. Pretty sure it ain’t common knowledge. Do you know much about those guys?”

Reinhardt shrugged, “More than I know about xenomorphs. Our people had run-ins with the illithids from time to time.”

“Oh? So, what can you tell me about them?”

“Probably not much more than you already know. They are powerful telepaths who keep slaves bound to their will and eat brains. As well as the ‘inquisition' teams, illithids will sometimes be organised into larger groups called ‘cults’, which have two leaders. Beyond that, the largest grouping of illithids is called a ‘colony’ and is lead by a creature called an elder brain.

“These colonies are vastly more dangerous than the smaller groups, because the elder brains are such powerful telepaths that they are able to psychically control every illithid within several miles. As such, they will always react to threats with flawless coordination.”

The white-bearded dwemer leaned on the table, staring directly at the healer over his clasped hands, making sure he had her full attention, “It is absolutely certain that even with our entire army present, no, even with our entire population present, engaging a full colony in battle would result in a swift and utterly one-sided defeat for our forces.”

The bunnygirl frowned, “So you're saying that these things are more of a threat than the bugs?”

Reinhardt nodded, “The xenomorphs are but one species of Inverxe’s local fauna. The illithids, on the other hand, are amongst the most powerful races vying for control of this moon. They are in an entirely different league.”

“Ah. So, what happens if we try to fight them?”

“They win.”

She rolled her eyes for the second time, “Yeah, I know, you just said that. I was hoping for a bit more information. On like, how they win.”

“Well, I cannot say for certain, but based on what I know of their capabilities, I would imagine that they would quickly read the thoughts of your troops, immediately discovering the limitations of your aura, and then would charm your soldiers into vacating the area around you. Upon doing so, they would all stand, dazed and unresponsive, before the illithids’ slaves, and would be slain without mercy. It would be a massacre.” his voice was as calm as ever, belying the horror of his statement.

Ahana winced. She glanced across at the other two, trying to determine their thoughts. Nisse looked sympathetic—no doubt feeling sorry for her because he believed she would be unable to stand up to these creatures any more than she had been able to overpower the xenomorph queen—while Sapphiro remained stone-faced and silent. He hadn't exactly been in the best of moods since Beryl's death.

She sighed, “Well, I guess I'll be going alone, then.”

There was a moment's silence, during which her lieutenant continued staring straight ahead—likely so absorbed in his own thoughts that he'd not even heard her—and her captain blinked several times, a stunned look slowly crossing his face as he took in what she'd said. For his part, her brigadier's brow furrowed slightly, displaying the tiniest hint of disapproval.

Then Nisse shot to his feet, “What!? No! What kind of a stupid conclusion is that to reach?”

He glared fiercely down at her, but the bunnygirl only shrugged, “An obvious one? If everyone who comes along is just going to get forced to leave my aura then it makes sense that only I go, since I can't move far away from myself.”

“General Varma,” Reinhardt said in a cautioning tone, “It is highly likely that the illithids’ telepathy will have a greater range than your enchanted armament. As such, it is entirely within the realm of possibility that they could simply stun you, tie you up, divest you of the orbs, and then take you back to their colony for use as an unlimited supply of brains.”

Refusing to listen to reason, the general snorted with disdain, “I killed a bunch of them before, when I was armed with only b’Akphiyr. Just think of how easy it’ll be for me now. These things’re not nearly as tough as you’re making them out to be.”

“Dammit! You got lucky!” Nisse snarled the words at her, his eyes blazing with fury, “You’ll die if you try to fight them as you are now. Our only chance is to stock up on ranged weapons. Possibly the crossbows the dwemer have been known to use, or even better, those ‘lathe’ things the Rock Raiders had when they attacked our village.”

At the time, when the invasion occurred, none amongst Victor, Sigmund, Ahana or the savages had known what their aggressors’ weapons were called. Since then, however, some of those miners from the settlement on the volcano’s side had informed them of what the lathes were, and what the mecha was. Those would have been fantastic tools to have, but unfortunately they were rather expensive, and so the people of that settlement had no such tools to offer them.

“There’s no way we could afford guns that were any good, and crossbows suck. No offence, Reinhardt.” Ahana stood up now too, though her posture was much less confrontational than the captain’s.

“None taken.” the bearded elf replied, smiling slightly. He didn’t stand, and neither did Sapphiro, who was now gazing intently at his hands, which rested on the table.

“Crossbows would be better than-” Nisse began, but the healer held up a hand.

“Shut up. I’m doing this, okay? You got to kill that queen bug, so now it’s my turn to show off. You ain’t gonna change my mind, so stop trying already.”

Her lover looked ready to argue further, opening his mouth to continue. He was beaten to it by the brigadier, however, “Do not bother, Captain, she is serious. You will not be able to convince her.”

Nisse paused for a moment, then cursed, glaring down at the ground, fists clenched so tightly at his sides that his knuckles had gone white as bone. He blinked rapidly, obviously trying to keep his eyes from tearing up, and the general grunted condescendingly.

“I just recently started to almost respect you a tiny bit,” Ahana drawled, crossing her arms, “don’t screw it up now by acting like a pussy.”

The skinhead glared at her and spat, “You’d better not do anything stupid out there, you dumb bitch. I’ll never forgive you if you get yourself killed.”

The bunnygirl snorted scornfully, and Sapphiro finally seemed to realise that he wasn’t alone in the room. He said coldly, “You’re both idiots, and your pitiful excuse for a relationship is all kinds of screwed up.”

Ahana had to laugh at that, even if he was just stating the obvious.


***


The next morning, when Ahana awoke, Nisse was already up, though he had yet to leave their bed. He simply lay there, glaring into her eyes.

“Mornin’” she said, then smiled slyly and propped herself up on one arm, so that the sheet fell down to about her waist. “You up for some fun before I gotta go?”

“No.” the skinhead growled, not so much as glancing at her bare chest.

“Pity.” she sighed, “Would’ve been a nice send-off.”

“Yeah, and that’s why I’m not interested. You don’t deserve it if you’re gonna act so fucking stupid.”

She snickered, “That’s not what you seemed to think last night.”

As the healer had discovered that night, Nisse was an awfully aggressive lover when angered. He’d been rough enough that if not for the fact that she was protected by her magic, she was sure he would’ve hurt her. As it was, she’d enjoyed the experience immensely.

“I was just letting off some steam.” he snarled, sitting up and looking at her as if he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to hit her or kiss her.

“You’re more than welcome to do so again.” she offered, grinning smugly as she leaned in, taking up about as much of his personal space as was possible without actually touching him.

“Fuck you.”

“I wish you would.” the bunnygirl lamented.

“Ugh,” the captain groaned, shoving her away, “just hurry up and go get yourself killed before I’m tempted to murder you myself.”

She laughed, and slipped out of bed. She then donned her sari, making no effort to do so with any degree of haste. Nisse’s gaze drifted over her curves as she dressed, but he made no move to approach her. He was a stubborn bastard, the general thought.

“Well, see you soon, I guess.” she said once she was fully clothed, beckoning to the Sextuple Enfilade where it sat atop a small table in one corner of their room. The six spheres rose into the air and drifted over, then began orbiting slowly around her, like a half dozen moons, “Keep up your training while I’m gone. I’ll leave you in an instant if I find you getting flabby by the time I’m back.”

Her tone was somewhere between taunting and teasing, but the skinhead didn’t respond at all, apparently giving her the silent treatment now, as he got out of bed and pulled on his loincloth, then his robes. In stark contrast to his glare from before, he now studiously avoided looking at her.

Rolling her eyes, the general left the room without another word. Her captain had his good points, but he was entirely too sentimental. For all his oddities, what Nisse really wanted was a generic, lovey-dovey, fairy tale romance with her, which wasn’t something that would ever happen, obviously. Frankly, he was lucky she hadn’t decided to lock him up in that kinky sex dungeon which Victor had for some reason ordered built beneath the barracks, as soon as she found herself actually interested in him.

The way she saw it, other people existed to be her peons and playthings, or at least to entertain her in some way or another, as was the case with her co-conspirators, Victor and Sigmund. Their dreams of empire and proselytism were nothing more than enjoyable distractions in her mind, and the same could be said of her relationship with the skinheaded tribesman. Alas, he clearly did not see it in the same way. Nisse would make both of their lives easier, she thought, if he wasn’t so attached to her.


***


After departing their quarters, she exited the barracks, then the city. The other officers would keep things running in her absence, she was certain. She knew that being without her wouldn't cause any problems, as she'd never really involved herself in the day-to-day management of the army in the first place. The main benefit of having her around, in fact, was simply that her healing aura enabled them to train more intensively, such as through duels with real weapons and with no restrictions on harming one another.

The previous day, before retiring with her captain for the night, she’d spoken with the scouts Victor had mentioned, who'd originally been the ones to discover the illithid operation. She wasn't sure why they'd decided to report straight to the emperor, rather than to her people, but in this case she was glad they'd done so. The reason being—as they had informed her when she questioned them—that the illithid group was much larger than just several individuals.

She was sure that this must be what Reinhardt had referred to as a ‘cult’, rather than merely an ‘inquisition’. The others would have been even more opposed to her going alone to face such a host, so she instructed them to severely downplay their foes’ numbers when discussing their findings with anyone else from that point onwards… at least until after she was well and truly on her way. The scouts had looked markedly uncomfortable at that instruction, but even so, they swore that they would comply.

Given that that had occurred the previous day, and there had been no attempts at stopping her when she left the city the next morning, she could only assume that they had kept their word.

Unlike the previous mission—which had simply required a leisurely stroll through the well-trodden tunnels between Neo-Nippur and the crystal cavern, followed by a walk across the wide, open flatlands of the surface—this one involved proceeding down passages that twisted and turned and split off at random junctures. Thankfully, the leader of the scouts had thought to offer her a map they'd drawn of their route, as there was no way she'd have remembered all this on her own.

She was making good time, she thought, but although the emperor had described the cavern in which the illithids had been found as ‘neighbouring’, it wasn't nearly as close as the term made it sound. Whilst it could technically still be said to be beneath the volcano—as were their own city and village—such a statement would have to completely overlook the matter of depth.

The area in which the mind flayers—as those tentacle-faces were also called—had set up camp was far beneath Neo New Babylon’s fair capital. She hadn’t initially appreciated how long the descent would take her, thinking only of the actual distance between the two points, rather than the length of the tunnels she would need to traverse. While it was a long way down, had the path been a simple, vertical shaft, climbing down a ladder or stairwell would have taken her merely several hours.

Having to take all the long, winding detours she was finding, it finally occurred to the bunnygirl that her journey was going to last days. She’d only been kidding when she’d said to Nisse that he’d better not get fat while she was gone; she’d not actually believed the trip would take her so long that he’d have time for that, even if he gave up on exercise entirely. It now seemed, however, that she’d be away much longer than she’d anticipated.

Admittedly, having an enemy force camped out less than a week away from their capital city was by no means ideal, so she could see why Victor and the scouts had been of the opinion that this ought to be considered nearby, as it would surely seem entirely too close to them. They would no doubt prefer their foes to be based at a location which would require weeks or even months of travel to reach, so that the sentries would have ample time to take stock and issue a warning, should their enemies begin preparations for an invasion.

Ahana, however, being the self-centered individual she was, didn’t particularly care about the potential massive loss of civilian life. If the illithids felt like setting up camp directly outside their walls, that’d mean much less travel time for her, which could only be a good thing, as far as she was concerned.

Sighing wistfully at the thought, and longing for foes like the Rock Raiders, who’d been willing to come to them, rather than vice versa, the general plodded onwards.

Post Word Count: 3,626
Community Quest Word Count: 3,626/20,000 (0 + 3,626)

 

[Ahana Varma]

On the first day, Ahana didn't eat a thing, as she came across nothing edible during her journey. On the second day, despite not having found any lava chambers or hot springs with which she could cook, she began to contemplate self-cannibalism.

Some might have said that resorting to eating one’s own flesh after a mere two days without food demonstrated either an extreme lack of willpower, or perhaps an even greater appetite. However, to the bunnygirl, who had her Divine Conflagration to endlessly heal her wounds, doing such a thing was far less serious than it would have been for a regular person.

Not only could her flames infinitely restore her to full working order, but having them do so did not even tire her, meaning that there was essentially no reason why she couldn't cheat the second law of thermodynamics by consuming her own mass to acquire the energy her body needed to avoid starvation. Magic sure was handy.

Of course, that was all well and good, but hacking off her limbs would still be tremendously painful, so it remained something of a last resort. Not to mention, with no means of cooking, she’d be forced to eat the meat raw, which was hardly ideal. Thankfully, before she could grow desperate enough to do that anyway, she found something better.

She almost missed it, as she had not thought to bring a torch or light crystal with her, and so had been resorting to clenching her fist tightly around a sharp-edged stone which she'd picked up. Ordinarily, it's edge would have cut a person when grasped in such a manner, which meant that it posed enough of a threat for her magic to react to it. The golden flames which sought to block anything that would harm their mistress danced across the rock's edges, helpfully illuminating her surroundings. Alas, as she was holding the rock, most of the light was blocked by her hand, which meant that the actual amount cast about the tunnels was rather low.

This was why everything around her looked dull and shadowy to her eyes, and therefore why she almost failed to notice the plethora of mushrooms and toadstools which filled a small cavern she passed through. Their stalks were short enough that she initially didn't see those at all, only spotting their rounded tops, which made them look to be no more than pebbles and small rocks.

Unlike most of the mushrooms in the crystal cavern, these ones didn't glow. In fact, the only reason she even discovered what they truly were was because she accidentally stood on one. When it squished beneath her toes, she realised it wasn’t made of stone.

Holding her light close to the fungi after that, she found that of the many varieties within the cavern, she didn’t recognise a single one. Also, most of them were spotty and brightly-coloured. She was pretty sure those ones were poisonous. The most menacing mushroom she came across was a half-foot high one with a bulbous, black head and stalk, with dark purple, skull-like blotches on its top, and which smelled strongly of vinegar.

Naturally, she ate it. And then ate a whole bunch of the others too. After which she took a nap, then had another meal when she awoke, before gathering up an armful of the mushrooms and heading onwards, occasionally snacking on them as she walked.

It sure was good to be immune to toxins.


***


Despite her fungal feast sating her hunger, the toadstools had apparently been rather high in salt, as they only made her thirstier. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem like an underground spring was likely to show up any time soon, as no such waterway was shown on her map. Though she wasn’t keen on relying on it too much, as the only annotation over the area she’d found the fungi was a small, skull-and-crossbones icon inside a triangle. Not very informative at all, really.

The mushrooms may not have been the tastiest lunch she’d ever eaten, but she still vastly preferred them to starvation, yet that cryptic sign could have resulted in her walking right past them without ever knowing they were there. Their scouts, Ahana thought, really needed a symbol specific to poisonous food, rather than simply using the same one to indicate anything and everything which was toxic to humans.

As her thirst grew worse, it eventually occurred to her that she should’ve taken one of the lava lizards which the scouts frequently rode when she set off on this trek. Not only would such a beast have been strong enough to haul around an ample amount of supplies, but it would’ve made reaching her destination a much faster process. Riding a mount also had the advantage of being less tiring than walking everywhere oneself, though in her case, this didn’t really apply, as the magic flowing within her body and imbuing it with power increased her stamina enough that she didn’t really need to worry about ever getting worn out from simply walking.

Alas, having a lot of energy and not suffering from the effects of dehydration were two separate things, unfortunately. She eventually got so thirsty that she tried slicing her tongue with the sharp rock she was using to generate light. Her hope was that any liquid—even one as salty as blood—would quench her thirst somewhat.

But it was not to be, for her protective fire was too strong, and no matter how much she sawed at her tongue with the sharp-edged stone, she couldn’t so much as scratch herself. Eventually, she was forced to give up and stumble onwards, her eyes peeled, on the lookout for any reflected light, which might indicate the presence of still water. She also strained her ears, seeking even the tiniest noise which might indicate that there existed a subterranean river somewhere nearby. The map made no mention of one, but her hearing was far greater than a human’s, so she would not be surprised if she picked up something which one of them might miss.

Sadly, she found neither.

Her efforts did not go completely unrewarded, however, for after an interminable amount of time had passed—the bunnygirl having long ago lost track of the passing of hours and days—she heard movement, way off on the edge of her earshot. She followed the noise, but almost immediately realised that she would be forced to leave the trail she was following in order to reach its point of origin.

Scowling, she hesitated for a few minutes, dithering as she stood at a junction, unsure whether to keep following the map or turn off down the side-passage from which the faint sounds originated. These weren’t the noises of wild animals fighting or wandering around. They were human or dwemer, she was sure. Based on what she could hear, she was sure that at least one or two members of the group wore hard-soled boots. They weren’t Rock Raiders, whose soles were rubber, and neither were they savages of the sort that she, Victor & Sigmund had encountered in the crystal cavern, who went barefoot.

So not as advanced as some groups on Inverxe, but likely people with some level of technological advancement beyond the stone age. And surely any remotely civilised party wandering through these tunnels would be better prepared than she was, the general figured; as such, it was only reasonable to assume that they would have food and water on hand.

In the end, her hunger won out over her desire to avoid potentially getting lost and never making it back above ground. She wasn’t a complete idiot, though, and so decided to mark the walls at regular intervals, so as to enable her to find her way back here. She would have also marked her route on the map, but she had no writing utensils on hand.

Following her ears, she made her way through the tunnels, approaching the sound. She did eventually find what she sought, though not before having to turn back a couple times, when she realised that the strange acoustics of these subterranean passages had confused her, and resulted in her heading down the incorrect tunnel. In each case, she was forced to scratch off the marks she'd left on the walls and replace them with new ones, indicating the correct direction.

It was a time-consuming process, especially as she had to do it as quietly as she could manage, so as to avoid tipping off anyone that she was heading their way. She worried that the group might pack up and go before she reached them, and she'd miss her chance to rob and murder them.

Thankfully, that fear was not realised. She got nearer and nearer, until she was right around the corner from them, and in all that time, they didn't do anything to even give the lightest indication that they might be considering switching locations. In fact, none of them spoke a word in all the time she listened. This close—plastered to the wall right by the corner, her ears perked up attentively—she could hear much more clearly what they were doing. Unfortunately, the sounds they made didn't give her much to go on.

Someone was moaning in pain, and another three were shuffling about. Two of those three wore boots, but the third did not, and was much larger than their compatriots. There was also a fifth figure, whose breathing she could faintly detect, but who didn't seem to be moving at all.

Her attention was drawn to the moaning one, who seemed to have been shoved up against a wall by the others. Her mind drifted back to her second confrontation with the illithid hive. There had been six of her soldiers taken by the bugs and strung up on the walls, with facehuggers clamped onto their heads. The insects had then left them there for the chestbursters to gestate within their torsos. Could the same thing be happening here?

Whilst it was clear that the ones doing the pinning were not xenomorphs themselves, that didn't necessarily mean that they weren't trying to breed xenomorphs. After all, Victor had requested that she bring him back the eggs of those creatures; presumably for that exact purpose. And if such a thing could be done, what were that chances that an off-worlder like him would be the first to concoct such a plan?

Of course, as well as them being an unrelated group with the same idea, it was also entirely possible that the assassin had already made a start on his project, and that this group were Neo New Babylonian bug-breeders who'd come out here—well beyond city limits—for the purpose of rearing chestbursters with no danger of being found out by the public. It likely wouldn’t do their benevolent ruler’s reputation any favours if the citizens discovered him kidnapping and sacrificing their friends and family in order to breed uncontrollable monsters.

She wondered if Sigmund’s religion had any commandments forbidding the use of human sacrifices for the purposes of amassing an army of mindless abominations which lived only to spread death and destruction throughout the universe. Probably not, she imagined. That sounded like the sorta thing the high priest might be into himself, actually.

The more she thought about it, the more certain the bunnygirl grew that her assumption was accurate. And so when she finally stepped out from behind her corner—once again squeezing her sharp stone tightly, to bring forth the light of her Divine Conflagration—she was grinning lopsidedly, totally at ease, expecting to easily be able to bully the emperor’s pawns into giving her their supplies.

That smile froze on her face almost immediately. Things might have gone differently for her then, had she more quickly processed and reacted accordingly to the sight that met her eyes in that instant. The sight of two human men and one wampa of uncertain sex attempting to stick half a zombie (probably female) to a rock wall in the centre of a three-way junction in the passages, whilst it moaned and lashed out at them with its arms and entrails (which moved as if they were tentacles), and an illithid (sexless) looked on dispassionately, arms crossed over its chest.

“Uh...” she said, which was the most eloquent response she could manage in that moment. Blinking in confusion, the healer wondered if she was seeing things and that if rubbing her eyes might clear a speck of dust from them and reveal this preposterous scenario to be something less absurd.

All four of them turned slowly to face her.

†Found already!?† a shrill voice hissed in her head. It didn’t have a sound, as such, but it felt loud. A mere two words, and already she felt a headache coming on. Fucking telepaths, †Tell me how you knew to look for us here...! No. Actually, before that: who are you, and whom do you serve!?†

The general felt herself compelled to answer, and made no attempt to fight the compulsion, not seeing any need for secrecy, “Ahana Varma, general of the army of Neo New Babylon.”

The mind flayer looked puzzled, its eyes narrowing. It surely knew that it she couldn’t have lied to it when answering under the influence of its power, so suspicion couldn’t be the reason for its perplexity, she was sure, †Neo New Babylon? I have never heard of such a place… and what kind of fool uses two adjectives with identical meanings to describe a single noun?†

The bunnygirl was still being forced to answer, but in this case she thought the question was probably rhetorical, so simply gave a shrug and mumbled something that sounded vaguely like ‘I dunno’. She then took a few steps forwards.

†STOP!† a voice barked in her head, its ‘volume’ even greater than before… though in this case, ‘volume’ simply meant ‘the amount of pain accompanying the arrival of the word in her thoughts’. She almost winced, but managed to turn the involuntary twitch into a sneer, †Do not move another inch! Stay right where you are!†

Ahana froze completely, not able to even blink. Her head was held high, though, as she looked down her nose at the illithid and its cohorts. She never heard it give instructions to its minions, but all three of them suddenly released the half-zombie—which peeled off the wall and fell to the floor with a wet slap—and headed her way. Upon reaching her, one of the men pulled out a dagger and stabbed her in the chest.

He succeeded in nicking her top, but the instant the point of his blade touched skin, golden flames flared into existence and kept it from moving any further. The slave blinked in surprise, his eyes widening.

†What are you!?† boomed the telepathic voice, in the same moment that the wampa—having moved behind her—lifted her by both arms and began straining to tear them from their sockets. She'd have cried out in pain, if not for the fact that she still couldn't move. Fortunately, her magical defences kept the monster from succeeding in its endeavour, even if they weren't quite as potent as she'd have liked.

Although she couldn't speak, the general still experienced an urge to reply to the mind flayer’s question, and so found herself thinking the words, †A person… with bunny ears.†

Had she been raised in a society with a better educational system, Ahana could have perhaps given him a more precise answer, with the name of her actual genus and species. As she was not, however, this was the best she could manage. Though it likely didn't matter, as she was fairly sure that that had been a rhetorical question anyway.

†And is this sort of power common amongst your kind?† the voice hissed, as its human subordinates—both wielding knives now—attempted repeatedly to impale her, to no avail.

†Nah.† she thought back, giving him her true and honest opinion on the matter, †I’m pretty much the pinnacle of all sentient life in existence… except maybe for the gods. Maybe.†

The illithid stared at her, knowing full well that she couldn’t have lied to it; that she genuinely believed what she was saying. It blinked a few times, as if struggling to comprehend her response. She couldn’t imagine why. It then sighed. And as it did, the humans fell back, presumably having received another command, †Very well. You are clearly too durable for it to be a simple matter for me to devour your brain, so I will be unable to absorb your knowledge—what little of it you have—in the usual manner. Instead, I command that you tell me why exactly you have come here. Once I am satisfied with your answer, this wampa will beat you to death.†

Ahana would’ve laughed at the foolish flayer’s enormous underestimation of her, if she could’ve acted of her own volition. Instead, she simply hung there, frozen stiff and in pain, as the great, white beast continued to strain its muscles in an attempt at pulling her apart. And her thoughts drifted involuntarily to all the events which had led her to this point.

She started with her early childhood, and was swiftly ordered to hurry it up. This instruction gave her the leeway to provide her interrogator with only a vague summary of most events, and fortunately she was able to tell her story without giving out much information about her magic. At the moment, the mind flayer knew only that she was extra-durable, not about her healing ability or even the true purpose of her Orbs of Desolation, which were currently hovering in the air around her, doing nothing and likely looking like mere decorations.

And then, about three quarters of the way through her silent recitation of events, the psychic stun wore off. Ahana experienced an instant of surprise, but then broke out into a broad grin, “Hey, you lot, do me a favour and die, will you?”

Focusing and directing one of the Enfilade spheres, she sent it rocketing up and backwards, towards the head of the beast holding her aloft. The other three watched with wide eyes as the sphere flew straight into the lower half of the wampa’s face, which caved in instantly, then burst through the beast’s skull entirely, and splattered gore everywhere.

Its grip loosened as it toppled backwards and she slipped gracefully from its grasp, landing in an elegant crouch, before surging up and darting forwards, bringing her right arm around in a sweeping arc that would send three of the other spheres at the surviving trio.

†STOP.† the illithid’s voice commanded for the second time. She obeyed, and her orbs froze as well, then slowly drifted back to hover beside her.

†Idiot woman.† the creature thought condescendingly, sending her the mental impression of being an ant, opposing a giant. Its contempt and utter lack of respect for her was not subtle, †You had but a moment to act when my mind blast wore off, and rather than use that time to strike at the commander, you simply attack one of my pawns? You fool. Is it because I told you the wampa would be the one to kill you? Did you think that I would have no way of defeating you at all with it gone, as these two could not harm you with their blades? Or, perhaps, did you simply not think at all?†

†Yes. No. No. Yes.† her treacherous brain told her tentacle-faced captor, who projected into her brain the sensation of enduring utter humiliation and being viciously mocked for it. That, and a powerful burst of pain.

†Alright.† she was told, as the agony abruptly vanished, the tone of the illithid’s thoughts suddenly growing cold and serious, †Enough frivolity. It is clear that these two pitiful, human slaves will not be able to scratch you, but that does not mean that you are immortal. You will come with me now and allow yourself to be slain.†

The general did her best to picture laughter in her mind, wanting the mind flayer to pick up on the image. It was the closest she could come to doing what he’d just done when he’d forced her to experience those things. He might be able to stop her in her tracks for a short time, and force her to answer his questions honestly, but there was a substantial difference between truth serum and making someone dance like a marionette on your strings.

She highly doubted this creature really had the power to force her to obey its every whim… even though it was clear from the slaves it still had that the illithid could dominate the minds of lesser beings, surely that wouldn’t apply to her as well, would it? She was special, after all.

She wasn’t sure if her captor noticed her thoughts or not, but to her, its next words seemed like a response to them, †You are such a feeble-minded woman… hardly smarter than the rabbits whose genes you share. I am far from the most powerful illithid in our cult, but even I am easily able to charm a person with such insignificant willpower as the likes of you.†

And then the mind flayer snapped its fingers. She felt something wash over her, like a warm breeze, and all of a sudden, she was no longer stunned. Ahana straightened up. She blinked. Her mind felt a little odd… fuzzy… but she didn’t give the sensation much thought. She grinned lopsidedly at the tentacle-faced humanoid, “You are pretty charming, I admit, but don’t push your luck; keep calling me dumb and we might have a falling out.”

†No, we will not.† it told her.

“Heh, okay, I guess not.” she said agreeably, smiling and shaking her head.

†Follow the one in the lead.† instructed the mind flayer, as one of its slaves headed further down the passage, while the other moved to stand behind the healer and his master, so that he could take a rear guard position.

“Sure thing.” she responded lightly, and did so. As she passed by the half-zombie, though, she glanced down at it, “What is that thing, anyway?”

It moaned in pain and its entrails snapped out, lashing at her legs and doing nothing more than getting her sari dirty. It stank of rotting viscera. This close, she could see that the unliving corpse had indeed once been female, as she’d guessed. At this point, though, applying any sort of sex to the mindless lump of putrid meat and bone felt ridiculous in the extreme.

†A failed guardian.† the suave, purple-skinned gentleperson by her side replied succinctly. Its statement told her nothing much, except that it had wanted this zombie to protect something… though how such a feeble creature would do so, she couldn’t fathom.

“What would you like done with it, sir?” asked the man behind them. Ahana glanced back to see him looking at the mind flayer. He nodded once, as if he’d received a reply, and they all carried on walking. Nothing more was said about the half-zombie, which was left behind. She briefly wondered if they were setting it free or planned to come back for it later, but then decided she didn’t really care.

They walked in silence for a little while, taking one turn after another, and the bunnygirl enjoyed being able to let her thoughts drift. It was nice to not have to constantly look at that map of hers—which was currently folded up and stuck into the waistband of her skirt, as she had no pockets—and to be able to leave all the thinking to these guys. She recalled that she’d been marking the tunnels previously, but didn’t see any point in asking her new acquaintances to slow down so she could keep doing that.

She imagined they’d all be happy to guide her back to where they’d started after she’d visited wherever it was she was being led. That thought made her wonder where exactly they might be headed, and so she asked.

†Where are we taking you? That should be obvious.† her tentacle-faced companion thought, and she got the impression that he was sneering at her, despite him not having a human mouth with which to do so, †As my slaves were too weak and feeble to kill you themselves, I have decided to take you to a creature which can. And once you are dead, I will hopefully feast on your brain, assuming it is left intact.†

The healer chuckled. These illithids had a weird sense of humour. She knew that some people would consider it poor taste to joke about killing and eating a friend, but Ahana wasn’t the soft sort who got offended by every little thing. If her new buddy wanted to be coy and keep its secrets then she’d let it. She was sure the truth would be revealed soon enough.

It wasn’t much longer after that—only a few more turns into different side-passages—before they reached what was apparently their destination. It was another three-way junction, but hanging on the wall where the three paths met was a huge, twisted lump of flesh, which seemed to have somehow spread across and congealed on the wall. Unlike the half-zombie from before, it was clear that this thing was stuck fast where it was. The monster stunk of putrefaction, yet seemed to still be alive (or at least undead), as it began to moan unintelligibly upon noticing their approach.

“Woah, what is that?” Ahana asked, staring wide-eyed at it.

†A successful guardian.† the illithid informed her, with a hint of smugness in its tone.

“Seriously? So this is the same sorta thing as that weird zombie from before?” she shook her head slowly, sceptical of the proclamation, in spite of their similarities.

†Yes. It may not appear so from this distance, but take a closer look and you will soon see as much for yourself.†

“Oh?” she asked, then shrugged, “If you say so.”

She then skipped down the hall to stand before the obese, tumorous mass of rotting flesh fused to the stone wall. The smell was so bad here that she gagged, and her eyes began to water. Holding a hand over her mouth and nose in a futile attempt at keeping out the worst of the monster’s vile gasses, the bunnygirl inspected its bloated carcass, but still couldn’t find anything about it that looked much like the first ‘guardian’ she’d observed, beyond the obvious detail that it was rotting.

And then a tentacle-like appendage which had been lying limp and inert sprung to life. The limb whipped through the air with such speed that a cracking noise resounded loud and clear in her ears. Had it not been tipped with a razor-sharp shard of bone, she likely would have had little to fear from the tentacle. As it was, however, it took her head clean off.

Ahana stumbled backwards, a torrent of blood gushing from the stump of her neck, as her head went flying. She fell, her body toppling lifelessly to the ground, and landing with a soft thump.

Post Word Count: 4,535
Community Quest Word Count: 8,161/20,000 (3,626 + 4,535)

 

[Ahana Varma]

Ahana lay on her back, her head reforming amidst the flames of her Divine Conflagration. When the fire waned, she craned her neck and looked back at the trio behind her. All three of them were visibly shocked, and the two humans were gaping outright.

She grinned, focusing on the leader, “Bye-bye.”

One of the spheres that comprised her enchanted armament shot backwards, straight for the mind flayer.

†ST-† the tentacle-faced creature attempted to say, but the orb obliterated its skull before it could get the word out, and its skinny frame was flung to the floor. Its slaves blinked confusedly for a second, then turned to gaze in astonishment at the remains of their erstwhile master.

Alas, the general’s enjoyment of the spectacle was somewhat spoiled when the guardian screeched—as if in anguish at the loss of its illithid overseer—and began to writhe and flail madly, with the tentacle that had struck her, as well as with the further three tentacles which it apparently had in addition to that one.

It swiped at the five floating spheres which still hovered in the air about her—the sixth having shot off down the corridor somewhere after decapitating the mind flayer—and did manage to land a few solid hits. But though its bone blades had the power to easily cut the bunnygirl herself, they didn’t leave so much as a scratch on the magically enhanced, cherrywood balls. All the rotting beast achieved was knocking them about a bit.

And then Ahana made the mistake of trying to stand. The moment it noticed she was still moving, all four of the organic knives embedded themselves in her torso, with far more force behind them than any regular sword ought to have held. Hissing in pain, she was immediately slammed back down onto her back.

Only to then be almost immediately lifted up. She felt the tendrils of fetid flesh coil and twist within her, wrapping themselves around her bones and organs as she was lifted higher and higher, their sharpened tips cutting her insides to ribbons. She gritted her teeth, squirming in their grip as she sought to free herself by clawing and tugging at the appendages. Unsurprisingly, this proved a futile endeavour.

She coughed up a gout blood, then swore and wiped her mouth. She’d be damned if she’d let this mindless corpse kill her after having gotten the better of a foe capable of controlling her very mind. Snarling, she glared at one of her remaining orbs, all five of which had fallen when she’d been impaled. She struggled to concentrate, but slowly, the ball began to drift upwards. Then the abomination strained its tentacles, seemingly seeking to tear her apart, and she gave a muted cry from between clenched jaws, the sphere dropping again.

“Fuck!” she cried in annoyance, slamming a fist into one of the tentacles, for all the good it did. The vile beast continued to pull her torso in four different directions, and she gasped as she felt her ribs bending and straining. It this rate, it might actually succeed in tearing her in half.

“Move, dammit!” she yelled, glaring at the fallen orb, and to her surprise, it did. The Enfilade struck the guardian with a wet crack—like a hand slapping the surface of a pool, magnified tremendously—which splattered blood and gore everywhere. The monster wailed and thrashed, its tendrils swinging wildly, smashing the bunnygirl against ceiling, walls and floor. She tried to keep her focus on the enchanted armament, but it was hopeless.

She wasn't sure if being literally ripped to pieces would actually be enough to kill her, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant. This already hurt like hell, to the point that she knew she'd be screaming if not for being robbed of her breath by all these impacts. Golden flames were all that she could see, and the only noises she heard were the guardian's moans and wails, and the sound of her own body striking solid stone, over and over.

And then, with one last impact, it ended. She slammed into a wall, fell to the ground, and gasped for breath. After several seconds, fully healed already, she looked up at her foe. It moaned and whined, its tentacles flapping listlessly. She laughed, and stood back up, grinning from ear-to-ear. The idiotic creature had tossed her away. When it couldn't kill her quickly, it had decided simply to be rid of her, she imagined. She laughed long and loud, for she knew she had won. It had stupidly thrown her beyond the reach of its tentacles, and being immobile, it had no way of closing the distance between them.

She raised a hand, fingers splayed, palm down, and all five of her orbs rose along with it—the one buried inside the monster's body causing it to wail as it burst back out—but before she could launch an attack, the fleshy mass spasmed and convulsed, then split open and spat something out. For a moment, she took the long-tailed, roughly spherical object to be one of the guardian's organs, but then it shuddered and flicked its appendage at her, launching something from the tip.

It flew far too fast for her to see, let alone evade, and she staggered back, swearing, after the thing slammed into her head and embedded itself in her eye socket. It hurt, obviously, but compared to what she'd been enduring less than a minute before, this was nothing, and the general merely grunted as she tugged the object free. Inspecting it, she found she was looking at a spike of bone, not dissimilar to those on the ends of the parent-creature's four tentacles, though it seemed that this mini-guardian could launch its bone, unlike its sire. Not that such an ability would do it any good. It had just failed to kill her after throwing away its only weapon, after all.

Straightening up again, she smirked. She hadn't imagined that this abomination could split off a part of itself, but it made no difference. Her triumph was still assured. She raised her hand, and the orbs once more followed suit.

Only for the guardian to convulse and spit forth another of the almost tadpole-shaped lumps of fetid flesh, which promptly whipped its tail at her, just as its elder sibling had done. This time the shard of bone struck her left thigh. Snarling, she was forced back a step. Tugging the spine free, she straightened again, only for another of them to immediately take her in the gut, and cause her to stumble backwards yet again.

“Godsdammit!” she yelled in frustration, wrenching that one out as well. There were still only two of the little monsters, though; no more had yet been born from the guardian. It would seem that they were able to regrow those tail spikes of theirs, and quite quickly at that. Grinding her teeth, she swiped a hand through the air, as if swatting a fly, and a pair of the Enfilade balls mirrored the motion. Each of them smacked into one of the two little monsters, utterly annihilating both in twin explosions of gore.

Their parent-monster wailed, and spasmed again, about to bring forth yet another of its young. This time, though, the healer got the upper hand, as with a flick of a finger she sent a third sphere to strike the spot where it would split to spit out its spawn. There was another spray of icky, putrid gunk, and another mournful moan from the mother-creature.

It wasn't dead yet, but with its tendrils too short to reach her and its ability to rapidly reproduce removed, it no longer posed a threat. Naturally, Ahana took her time finishing it off. This had been much more of an ordeal than it ought to have been, and she savoured the creature's anguished moans as she blew it apart, bit by bit. It was quite cathartic.

Eventually, she was done, and the pitiful remnants of the guardian’s once bulbous mass didn't so much as twitch. She stared at it for several seconds, a satisfied smirk plastered to her face, but was broken from her reverie by a hesitant question that came from behind her, “Did you really defeat it?”

Glancing back over a shoulder, she beheld the two men poking their heads around a corner, staring straight at her, visibly awestruck.

“Of course.” she drawled, shrugging dismissively and turning away from the mess she’d made of the massive monstrosity, “I’m immortal. My victory is inevitable. Always.”

“I-immortal?” the other man asked, wide-eyed, as the pair stepped out into the open.

“Yes.” crossing her arms, she waited as they approached her uncertainty. She cocked an eyebrow, and the duo fell to their knees together, causing her to laugh. They bowed so deeply that their foreheads pressed against the stone floor.

“I-if I may ask, g-great one… you said to the mast- uh, the illithid, that you were j-just a person with b-bunny ears… a-and I don’t know h-how you liked to it, b-but that’s clearly not all! P-please, w-won’t you tell us wh-wh-what you really are?” the stutterer went on, trembling.

They both held their hands out before them, clasped as if in prayer. It was clear what they expected her to say. She smirked, and decided to play along. She hadn’t been lying to the mind flayer, of course, but if they wanted to believe that she was some sort of deity then she’d not be the one to rob them of their delusion, “You’re right enough. I’m no average person. In fact, what I am is-”

Her stomach rumbled.

It totally ruined the moment.

“-hungry.” she finished lamely.

The pair shot to their feet, reached into pouches on their belts, and quickly offered up some pale, brownish-yellow bars to her. The first man spoke, “We’re sorry, great one, but these ration bars are all we have… please, eat as many as you’d like.”

She picked one up, sniffed at it, her lip curling in displeasure at the odd scent. Now was hardly the time to be picky, though, so she took a bite.

And immediately spat it out, “Ugh. This tastes like sawdust.”

The two men cowered under the baleful glare she shot their way, “W-w-we’re sorry! They’re a-all have h-have, great-”

“And you can cut that out too!” she snapped, tossing away the remnant of the food bar, “Like I told old tentacle-face earlier, my name’s Ahana Varma, and I’m a general. Address me properly, instead of just making up your own stupid titles, okay?”

“Yes, General, of course!” the pair chorused, “We’re very sorry!”

“Whatever. Now, more importantly, do you idiots know your way around here?”

“We’ve not been in the area long, General, but our previous master did take us with him on his errands, so we have a general idea.” the more composed man said, while his partner nodded enthusiastically.

“Good. I want to eat and drink. Show me where to go.”

The two shared a nervous glance, “Uh, o-of course, G-General. Th-there's not really anywhere i-in the area with any f-food w-worthy of you, but i-if it's an emergency th-th-then there is somewhere w-w-”

“Alright already, lead the way!” she snapped, irritated at how long it was taking the twitchy slave to stutter his way through a single sentence.

The men did as instructed, leading her back the way they’d come, and she gathered up her sixth orb when they passed it. The journey didn't take nearly as long as they’d needed to get to the guardian’s junction from the spot where she'd first encountered their group, though she guessed they were still walking for about an hour.

And part way through that time, the slightly more confident of her guides worked up the courage to voice a question which took her by surprise, “General, if you don't mind me asking, do you plan on assaulting the cult's base and taking the rest of their slaves?”

“Hm?” glancing over at him, her head tilted sideways slightly in thought, and her eyes narrowed a fraction, “Taking slaves? Do I look like a slaver to you?”

“Ah, no! Of course not, I merely meant… freeing the slaves so that they might voluntarily dedicate their lives to your worship whilst living in an ascetic manner and asking for no remuneration, as all true priests should.”

She looked at him flatly for a long moment, waiting until he eventually broke eye contact before saying, “That’s the same thing, moron, you just phrased it slightly different. I don't keep slaves; I'm only making you show me where to find food and water because I'm hungry and thirsty. After that, you can fuck off wherever you feel like.”

The pair froze, turning to stare at her in open astonishment, the second stuttering, “You're r-really f-f-freeing us?”

“Sure.” she said, shrugging nonchalantly as she continued walking, forcing them to hurry and catch up, “You can return to Neo-Nippur with me if you’ve not got anything better to do, or go your own way. I don’t really care.”

She wasn't actually sure of the wisdom of simply letting them leave, should they decide to do so, since she didn't have a clue where she was at the moment, so might end up never finding her way back home without help. So that offer might possibly turn out to be a lie. But she chose to act all benevolent for the time being, because she was enjoying their awestruck attitudes.

“Anyway, to answer your question; I will be going back there to take care of the rest of the illithids… just, not straight away.” she hesitated, “I have something to do back at the city beforehand.”

She didn’t want to admit that she’d vastly underestimated the illithids and was now retreating. It felt good to get some actual respect for once, so she’d let them keep thinking she was invincible for as long as possible.

Upon arriving in the little cavern they were taking her to, the bunnygirl was amazed by the picturesque grotto before her. It was warm and humid, with a bubbling hot spring running through it, the boiling water sparkling as it reflected the pale, warm light of the plump, bioluminescent mushrooms which lined its banks, alongside the occasional boulder. Beyond the fungi, a thick carpet of light green moss coated the ground, and up above, the ceiling glittered where the light struck tiny rubies embedded in the stone.

Around the sides of the cave furthest from the only entrance, large spiderwebs hung like drapes, and though she caught no sight of them, she heard small animals—perhaps rodents—scurrying away to hide in amongst the mushrooms as they stepped into the room.

She whistled softly, “This is a nice place you've got here. Good job.”

She strolled over to the stream's bank, smiling, and began peeling off her bloodsoaked clothes. She had been more interested in sustenance than cleanliness when coming here, but as this place clearly had an ample supply of warm water, she saw no reason not to bathe—and clean her clothes—while she had the chance.

“Wh-wh-what are you d-doing!?” shrieked the shaky guy, and glancing back, she found both men red-faced and averting their eyes.

She snickered, “Just taking a bath, it's nothing to get so worked up over.”

The stutterer started to splutter something about decency, but she ignored him. His companion, however, was not so easily dismissed. He rapidly closed the distance between them and grabbed her arm, “Wait, General! This isn't a hot tub! The bubbles here aren't merely caused by trapped gasses escaping, this water is actually boiling. If you touch it, you'll-”

“Quiet.” she commanded, then smirked as she pushed him back and finished slipping out of her sari, before allowing herself to fall back, toppling into the water with a splash.

“General…” the man muttered, eyes wide as he stared straight at the spot she'd sunk beneath the surface.

And then Ahan’s head and shoulders reappeared. Grinning, she brushed her hair back, out of her eyes, “Ahh, this feels great.”

He gaped at her, “You're… not harmed?”

He made his words a question, and she gave him a smug look, “Of course not. I am immortal, after all. It takes more than a little warm water to hurt me.”

“Warm…” he mumbled, staring at the boiling liquid, and she chuckled.

“I'd invite you to join me,” she said, then shrugged and shook her head, “but you humans are so fragile, even something like this might cause you discomfort.”

“Discomfort? Uh, yes, General Varma, I dare say you’re right about that.” the former slave said, with a weak smile.

“Heh.” she grinned, “Well, you’ve led me to food and water, like I asked, so we’re even now. You two can fuck off if you wanna. Enjoy your freedom.”

She hadn’t forgotten that letting them leave was far from the smartest decision, but she was feeling generous right at this moment, and thinking about the future had never been her strong suit, in any case.

“I want t-to stay!” the nervy dude shouted, though he looked frightened when he did so, as if worried she’d be mad.

His companion nodded, “Me too. If you’ll let us, General, we’d like to accompany you.”

“Oh?” she asked, making a start on washing the partly-dried blood out of her hair, “Well, if that’s what you want. I’m sure Vic won’t object to any more human citizens for his little empire.”

“Uh… Vic?” stutters said, managing to keep his voice even for once.

“The emperor of Neo New Babylon. My boss. He’s a racist who hates elves, and unfortunately for him, most of our people are dwemer. So yeah, I’m pretty sure he’ll approve of anything that might tip the population balance a bit more in his species’ favour.”

“Your leader is r-racist?” he sounded unsure now, and she gave him a smirk.

“Reconsidering? That’s fine, I get it. Bigotry is dumb, so if you wanna find somewhere less stupid to live, that’s cool.”

“No. We’ll stick with you.” the calmer guy told her, after briefly glaring at his friend, “Bigotry may or may not be dumb, but it’s just a fact of life on Inverxe. The illithids and dwemer both consider themselves superior to other sentient species, and view all humans as invaders, while the majority of the miners consider both races mere savages, and don’t care at all about their rights. As for those of us who’ve actually lived alongside the mind flayers, we have even lower opinions on them. I’m sure I speak for us all when I say that I’d have no objections to genocide when it comes to those tentacle-faced pricks.”

“Hmm… well, I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” she mused.

“You don’t agree, General?”

She shrugged, “Killing is fun, so I don’t need a reason to do it. If Vic wants some people dead, I can take care of it for him; I ain’t gonna object ‘cause it’s immoral. But still, hating a specific group of people just for being a bit different is pretty thick.”

Both men looked away, and the better speaker said, “I see. Well, if you’ll excuse us, we’ll get started on gathering food to boil.”

From his sudden desire to drop the conversation, she figured he wasn’t too pleased at being called thick. Still, though she may have a low opinion on racists, she didn’t actually care enough to try and mend their ways, so she didn’t press the issue, “Sure, just leave some for me.”

“We’ll collect enough for the three of us, of course, so please take as long as you need, General.” so saying, he turned and moved away, his friend following.

She had only meant for them not to eat everything themselves, but if they wanted to forage for her as well, she’d not object. They were probably too accustomed to slavery for their own good, she thought.


***


After washing her hair and body, Ahana also cleaned her enchanted armament and clothes. Without soap, there was a limit to what she could do, of course, but the boiling water helped. By this point, the men had managed to snag a couple spiders the size of rabbits, as well as a few lizards they’d found in the arachnids’ webs—which looked like nothing so much as scaled mice—and had gathered several of the bioluminescent mushrooms.

All of these they wrapped in strands of spider web and dangled in the stream to boil them. Once done with her washing, the bunnygirl left the water and laid her sari on one of the bigger boulders to let it dry. Her entourage were embarrassed by her nakedness, but when they questioned it, she simply dismissed their concerns out of hand, stating that modesty was for mortals, and that as a higher form of being, she had no reason to concern herself with such trifling details.

Oddly enough, they actually appeared to accept this. It wasn’t a surprise that they didn’t object further, for of course they must both have known that she could kill them in an instant, should they irritate her, but what was strange was that they both grew markedly less flustered, as if so truly convinced by her words that they ceased even thinking of her as a woman. This sort of behaviour may not have been what the healer would’ve expected, but she certainly wasn’t about to complain about it.

After their meal—which was absolutely scrumptious by comparison to both the toxic toadstools which she’d eaten raw earlier in her journey, and the meal bars which the ex-slaves carried—she showed the pair her map. It was now partially bloodstained, but thankfully a lot more legible than it might’ve been, and her guides were able to point out their current location and plot a slightly faster course back to the city than the roundabout way she’d taken to get here.

That done, she was all for setting off immediately, but her followers reminded her that they would require sustenance for the trip—though they seemed to be under the impression that even if she experienced hunger, she couldn’t actually die from it—and asked permission to boil some mushrooms for the journey. She graciously allowed this, and lounged around while they plucked a large amount of the fungi, cooked them, and wrapped them up in what was left of the webs of the spiders they’d slain, to make them easier to carry.

Once they were finally finished, she dressed herself and the trio set out on their way back. Now having quenched her thirst, taken a hot bath and eaten a good meal, she felt well and truly refreshed, which put her in a good mood for quite a while. As they travelled, however, and the hours passed, she began to visualise her not-so-triumphant return.

At least she’d managed to retain her sari this time, and even if it had been damaged somewhat in the fight, it still covered everything Sigmund and his prudish priests would want hidden, so from the perspective of any random bystanders she encountered on her way to the barracks, she’d look ‘decent’. Not to mention, it’d be clear she’d done a better job of not getting torn to pieces than in her battles with the xenomorphs.

Still, she wasn’t keen on explaining to Reinhardt & Nisse that she’d tried to fight their foes, only to come close to being defeated by a single illithid. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, based on what the mind flayer and his former slaves had said, it now seemed that there would be a ‘cult’ of illithids to face, rather than merely one of the the smaller groups which the brigadier had called ‘inquisitions’.

Based on the emperor’s suggestion that this task would be ‘like a vacation’, she could only imagine that he too had assumed that there would be only a handful of the mind flayers needing slain, for of course, any remotely large quantity of such potent psychics would be vastly more threatening than the hive of oversized insects she’d overcome previously. Which meant everyone had underestimated the danger these interlopers posed. And that was even before taking into account the strange ‘guardians’ which they seemed to command.

As a result, it was all too clear to her that she’d need support—and a lot of it—if she was going to return to face the mind flayers. Unfortunately, this would mean admitting to her overprotective aides that she’d been wrong, and that they’d had the right idea all along. Ugh.


***


The mushrooms didn’t taste nearly as good cold as they had when freshly cooked, but they were enough, eaten sparingly, to get the three through their days of walking. The journey was monotonous in the extreme, but eventually it ended.

By this point, the bunnygirl almost didn’t mind the thought of the dressing down she was sure to get, she was so eager to be out of these tunnels. She grinned when the gates of Neo-Nippur came into view, and quickened her pace.

“So this is your city, General?” asked the nervous guy, who was still scared easily, but had more or less stopped stuttering around her, now that he’d become more accustomed to her presence.

“Yeah. I can’t promise it’ll be the best place ever to live, but it can’t be any worse than being a tentacle monster’s mind slave.”

“Such glowing praise you give.” the calmer one said wryly, and she smirked.

“Halt!” shouted a young-looking guard in dwemer robes, as they approached the gate, “Who goes there!?”

They stopped. Ahana stared at the soldier, cocking an eyebrow and gesturing up at her rabbit ears and the six, magical orbs that hovered about her shoulders.

The youth’s partner—a rugged-looking savage with salt and pepper hair—sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Sorry, General, she’s newly assigned to gate duty. She insisted she’d always wanted to try saying that, so I said she could deal with the next people passing through. If I’d spotted you coming sooner, I’d have told her to keep her trap shut and wait for someone less important.”

“Uh-huh...” the healer gave the woman a doubtful look, but the young elf was happily bouncing on the balls of her feet, seeming totally satisfied at having fulfilled her odd ambition, “Well, whatever. We’ll head on in now.”

“Of course, General.” said the male guard. Then he smiled, “But before you go, I guess congratulations are in order, since you seem to have managed to complete your latest mission without losing your clothes this time.”

Her cheeks flushed slightly, but she forced a smile, “Uh, yeah, something like that.”

And then she hurriedly strode through the gates before either of them could press her on the issue. Thankfully, her two companions followed immediately, rather than stopping to inform the guards that she’d actually managed to slay only a single tentacled telepath. She didn’t doubt they’d find out eventually, but she hoped she was out of earshot when it happened.

The less she had to listen to her subordinates talking about how badly she’d failed, the happier she’d be. Sadly, with her hearing, she imagined she’d not be able to avoid much of it.

It would be nice, one of these days, to actually manage to do something by herself, but just like with the xenomorph hunt, here she was, once again having to retreat with her tail between her legs, forced to fall back and call in reinforcements.

Her daze was disturbed when the nervier dude spoke, “So, we’re in the city now. What next, General?”

“Hm…? Oh.” she stopped walking. She’d not really given any thought to how these two would actually go about starting up new lives here, now that they’d made it to Neo New Babylon. She supposed she could just tell them to fuck off and go figure it out for themselves… but that might not be the best solution. She supposed she should try asking someone smarter to deal with them, “Well, I don’t really know, so why don’t you just stick with me for a bit longer. I’m heading to the barracks now, to go speak to my officers. One of them can probably give you some advice or something.”

The two men shared a glance, then nodded at her. The calmer of the pair said, “It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do, so please, lead on, General Varma.”

Post Word Count: 4,759
Community Quest Word Count: 12,920/20,000 (8,161 + 4,759)

 

[Ahana Varma]

Sapphiro was despondent and unresponsive, as had become his norm, lately. Reinhardt would’ve looked impassive to anyone who didn’t know him well, but to the bunnygirl’s eyes, his expression was stony. And Nisse was fuming. Practically spitting with rage. His eyes blazed as he glowered across the table at her.

She sat casually, leaning back in her chair so that it stood on two legs, her feet up on the desk, legs crossed at her ankles. Behind her, their two new citizens stood nervously. She was smirking mockingly at her lover, not so much because she was actually enjoying listening to his loud and frequent insults of her intelligence, but more because she could see that doing so was pissing him off, and if she had to suffer through this miserable meeting, she was damn well going to do everything in her power to make sure he didn’t derive any satisfaction from it either.

He went on and on and on, ranting and raving like a madman, though she knew he was only upset because he had been worried about her. Stupid, sentimental cretin that he was. She had informed him that he should really try not to get so attached to other people, and that she wouldn’t be bothered in the slightest if he died. Shockingly, this had not improved his mood.

As she sat and listened to him yell, she wished that she had a way of turning off her hearing. Truth be told, she had to will herself not to reach up and cover her rabbit ears, which were far more sensitive than her human ones. This meeting had been going on for over half an hour already, and she’d had a headache since about five minutes in.

She regretted telling them the truth about her misadventures down below. If she’d thought of claiming that there had simply been so many of them that it would have taken her so long to kill them on her own that she had decided to come back for reinforcements, that’d probably not have sounded too weird. But no, of course that hadn’t occurred to her earlier. Instead, she’d given them an honest account of events, and now all three of them knew how close she’d come to losing her life.

“Nisse.” her brigadier said softly, and the captain shut up abruptly, “I think it is clear that our fearless leader is determined not to take in anything you say, so why do we not move on for the time being?”

The skinhead’s face was flushed, he was breathing heavily, and his fists were clenched tightly, but at his superior officer’s words, he took a deep, shaking breath, and nodded to the dwemer, “Yes, master, of course.”

As the apprentice sunk into his chair, looking exhausted, his teacher addressed the healer, “So, General, could you please introduce to us these two men whom you rescued from the mind flayer?”

“Uh…” she hesitated, letting the smug expression drop, “No, I can’t.”

Reinhardt raised an eyebrow at that.

She shrugged, “It’s not like they matter at all, so I never bothered learning their names.”

The brigadier didn’t react to this announcement, but Nisse rolled his eyes. Behind her, the calm guy sighed, then said, “You really are a shining beacon of heroism and nobility, General Varma. An example to us all.”

She snorted, “Since when did I ever call myself a hero? Much less claim to be ‘noble’. All I ever said was that I don't keep slaves. No matter what happens to you idiots, it's no skin off my back. Just ‘cause I’m not gonna personally enslave you, doesn’t mean I’m your guardian angel.”

“Ignore her.” Nisse told the pair, “Our commanding officer may be too dense to see it, but anyone with intimate knowledge of the enemy's location and the layout of their base could easily be of great value to us. Even more so if either of you happen to know anything of their plans or intentions here. Would you consider joining our military?”

“No!” said the nervous man, almost shouting.

“No, thank you.” his friend agreed, before elaborating, “After escaping the mind flayers once, we're not exactly eager to rush back into their clutches.”

“That's perfectly reasonable.” Reinhardt said, nodding and stroking his beard, “What would you like to do, then?”

There was a pause, as the two ex-slaves shared a glance, before the more confident man spoke again, “We're not too sure, really. We have no money, so it likely won't be easy for us to make livings here… but all the gold on Inverxe won't do us any good if we're killed or enslaved, so we’d still rather keep our distance from the illithids.”

The dwemer nodded again, “I see. Well, why not share what you know with us now, and we can pay you for the information. It will not be as much as you could have earned from joining our army, but the money should enable the two of you to get by for long enough to find work.”

The pair brightened up at that, and Ahana was forced to sit through a tediously, excruciatingly long discussion as her brigadier and captain insisted upon going over every detail multiple times with their two guests.


***


“Well, then…” her lover said, after the former slaves had left the room, “we're screwed, aren't we, master?”

Reinhardt smiled slightly, “It would appear that this is quite the predicament, yes. As we originally anticipated, there can be no doubt that the illithids will quickly realise that General Varma is the source of our troops’ longevity and will do everything in their power to separate them from her. I do not expect they could control all of our soldiers at once, but it is not hard to imagine that they could whittle down our numbers much faster than we could slay them. Especially if they are smart enough to engage our forces only when in close proximity to one of these ‘guardians’ of theirs. There is no way that we can possibly allow our soldiers to attack them.”

“So what, you want me to go back to Vic and tell him I can't beat these things?” the bunnygirl demanded.

“Yes. Would that not be a better option than losing hundreds of lives for no reason?”

“Not really.”

“I won't let you destroy our army for the sake of your pride.” snarled Nisse, getting to his feet and glowering at her.

Eyes narrowing, she rose as well, “Oh yeah? I think you've got the wrong idea after that fight with the xenomorphs, pretty boy, but you're not stronger than I am. You only killed that queen bug because of my magic. Without it, you've been dissolved in a second. You don't have the power to keep me from doing whatever the hell I want.”

One of the skinhead's hands fell to his rapier’s hilt, and Ahana's orbs rose to hover just above her shoulders, three on each side, trembling slightly as she prepared to loose them at a moment's notice.

The brigadier coughed, “Captain, stand down. Committing treason won't help anyone.”

“Ha!” the healer said, putting her hands on her hips and giving her boyfriend a gloating look.

Nisse’s expression was one of surprise and confusion, with just a hint of betrayal. He had not expected to be rebuked for being unwilling to condone the senseless sacrifice of hundreds of loyal soldiers. But after a moment's hesitation, he lowered himself back into his seat, and said meekly, “Yes, master.”

“And for your part, General,” the brigadier continued, “you are free to lead our entire force to their deaths if you would like. That is your prerogative as our commander. But if you want to actually triumph over your foes, we will have some preparations to do beforehand.”

“Preparations?” she asked.

“Triumph?” Nisse said simultaneously.

“Yes.” Reinhardt replied, smiling at his student first, then his superior, “Your magic is wild and uncontrolled, is it not, General?”

“Huh? Magic?” she looked to her lover, but he seemed just as perplexed by the conversation's abrupt shift in topic, “Uh… no, not really. Not any more. I've gotten strong enough that I can choose who to heal now.”

“Perhaps,” the dwemer allowed, “but for most of your life, you haven't been able to do so, and even now, you have to specifically decide not to heal someone, as your ‘aura’ automatically affects everyone alike.”

“What're you getting at?” she growled, feeling like she was being insulted here.

“I am saying that if we work on improving your control of your magic, rather than simply relying on it leaking out and healing those in your vicinity of its own accord, it will likely be possible for you to enhance its power, or at least use it in a more convenient manner. For example, if you were to become able to grant a soldier the ability to heal any wounds they took for a set period of time, rather than the effect being based on their proximity to you, then it may be possible to arrange for our entire army to be affected for the entire duration of the battle. Needless to say, this would give us a great advantage.”

It took a moment for his meaning to sink in, but the bunnygirl soon realised what he wanted from her, and was already shaking her head by the time he’d finished speaking, “Nuh-uh, no way. You want me to study, don’t you?”

She made her question sound like an accusation, but Reinhardt merely inclined his head slightly, not denying it. She continued shaking her own head, “Not a chance. What kinda nerd do you take me for? I’m immortal! I’m a higher form of being to you elves and humans! You can’t order me around. I won’t study. It. Is. Not. Happening.”


***


Ahana sat at the desk, slouched over, her head propped up on the knuckles of her right fist, her elbow resting on the table. Lazily, she turned a page of the magic textbook that sat before her, groaning loudly and feeling much put-upon at being forced to study this crap.

She and her brigadier were in a classroom, inside a school, though thankfully after hours, so at least she didn’t need to endure the company of any little brats whom she might be tempted to murder out of sheer boredom. No doubt this was by design. They could easily have arranged to come here earlier on in the day, so she knew the brigadier must have arranged for them to visit in the evening precisely because he would rather not risk her slaughtering a bunch of children.

The table at which she sat was right in the middle of the room. Reinhardt had told her to sit here, before claiming his own desk off in the back corner. Up at the front, tapping the blackboard with a piece of chalk, was her magic instructor. He was a blond, bespectacled elf with a beard that didn’t even reach his shoulders, and looked quite young… though being a dwemer, he was likely still older than she was. Hell, some of the children he taught by day were likely older than she was.

As a magic instructor in this city, it had come as no surprise to her to learn that he’d been having a tough time making ends meet. The reason for this was that his teaching job was only part-time for the moment, due to there simply not being enough interest in magic for the school to require a full-time teacher for the subject. Despite being elves, and therefore having a much higher natural aptitude for magic than humans, dwemer were not generally very fond of it.

This city had been something of an exception, with many magic users amongst its leadership, but even here, the commoners generally preferred to rely upon easily-applied technologies, rather than having to spend their lives with their faces buried in dusty, old tomes, just to cast a few spells that likely wouldn’t even be all that useful in their day-to-day lives anyway. And that opinion had only become even more prevalent after the fall of their previous government.

And now Ahana knew how those citizens must feel.

Magic sucked, she had decided. She’d thought that her natural affinity for healing meant that she would get out of studying like a lame, ordinary wizard would have to, but apparently not. And now here she was, stuck in a private lesson with this nerdy neckbeard, who was mumbling dreamily about the mysterious majesty of magic, and how he was sure it would one day lead elvenkind to unravelling all the secrets of the cosmos.

It sounded as much like a sales pitch as it did a lesson. She cast an annoyed glance back at her subordinate, who was ignoring the teacher utterly, instead focusing on reading from a thick tome—much larger than the flimsy textbook she was leafing through—and had a number of other books of similar size stacked up on his table, as well as three that he’d already finished, sitting at the foot of the desk.

Reinhardt wasn’t actually trying to learn magic, as she was supposed to be doing, but instead was researching spells, incantations and rituals, hoping to find some which would be of use to their army, could they be successfully taught to her. Nisse and Sapphiro were off in Neo-Nippur’s main library doing the same.

“This is boooring.” she whined, and her officer looked up.

“This is necessary. Get back to work, General.”

She sighed heavily and turned back, only to find the blond glaring daggers at her, “Boring, is it? Well, I’ll show you. After you see this demonstration, you’ll be so awed that you’ll never again be bored by anything arcane! Watch and learn, as I demonstrate the true power of magic! Soon you’ll be more than happy to study this subject!”

“Oh?” she asked, her tone sceptical.

“Indeed!” the young elf said, reaching under his desk, lifting a jar with a small frog inside, unscrewing the lid, and tipping the little amphibian out onto the table. It croaked.

“Now behold, the power of transmutation!” the tutor then snatched up a short, slim wand and flourished it wildly, while incanting the words of his great and powerful invocation.

“Ribbity-rabbity, ribbity-roo,
Into a toadstool, I change you!”

With a small pop, the green frog was replaced with a white and red toadstool, which fell over immediately.

The healer looked on silently for a moment.

When no response was forthcoming, the instructor’s expression lost a little of its surety, “Well? What do you say to that, then? Wouldn’t you like to be a great mage like myself one day?”

Ignoring him, the bunnygirl turned back to Reinhardt, “Come on, look, this is clearly a waste of time. This idiot has had years of practice, and this is the best he can manage? There’s no way I’ll learn anything useful any time soon. We should just swarm the illithids with the whole army and hope for the best. It’ll be more productive than this crap.”

The brigadier raised his eyes, glanced at the tiny toadstool, at the somewhat distraught-looking teacher, and then at his commanding officer, “You have far more natural talent than the average elf, so I am sure that you will be able to do much better than that before long. But as I have said several times already, if you truly want to, I cannot stop you from leading our entire military to their inevitable deaths… of course, I would have thought you would prefer not to have the high priest and emperor consider you an incompetent fool, but if that is what you want…”

“Ugh! No, it’s not!” she moaned loudly, slamming her head into her desk.

“Then might I recommend getting back to your studies?” Reinhardt replied, as calm and collected as ever.

She groaned, but raised her head and tried once more to focus on the monotonous textbook before her.


***


The door slammed open, and Sapphiro took two strides into the room before stopping dead in his tracks.

“Mwahahaha!” the general cackled, her head thrown back as she laughed villainously. Her right hand was outstretched and a small flame hovered a couple inches above her palm.

On the floor before her, on all fours, head hanging despondently, was the blond dwemer who’d agreed to teach her the basics of magic.

“Witness my awe-inspiring power, mortals!” the bunnygirl roared triumphantly.

“… What?” the lieutenant asked irritably, scowling at her.

“Oh, heya Sapph. Look what I can do.”

“Okay, first, don’t ever abbreviate my name again, we’re not friends. And second, you’ve always been able to make gold fire, this isn’t new. Did you take a hit to the head? Accidentally erase your own memory?”

“No, of course not, don’t be dumb. This isn’t the same at all. My normal fire is for healing, and I can’t make it appear at will, it just happens. This stuff is for harming people, and I can make it appear. It doesn’t even need to be touching me.”

“Amazing.” the blue-eyed savage said, utterly deadpan, “You now wield all the offensive power of a candle. I guess you won’t be needing the Enfilade any longer, then?”

She sneered at him, “You’re just jealous because you suck at life so much that you couldn’t even stop some dumb bugs from killing your cousin.”

In a couple strides, he closed the distance between them and landed a right hook on her jaw with enough force to send her smashing into and flipping over the desk behind her. She crashed to the ground, the table toppling with her, but only laughed mockingly at his attempt to harm her. She may have been light enough for him to knock over, but with the Conflagration having leapt to her defence, she didn’t experience so much as a twinge of pain, much less any actual injury.

Her subordinate snarled, and looked like he might leap onto her and make an earnest attempt at pounding her skull into the floor, but then Reinhardt spoke up, “Lieutenant, calm yourself. You know as well as any of us that general Varma only says such things to get under your skin. By surrendering to your anger, you are only giving her what she wants.”

Sapphiro took a deep breath, visibly struggling to compose himself, and the healer laughed again. Scowling, he looked down at her and spat in her face, then said, “You disgust me.”

Then, without waiting for a response, he looked across at the tutor, who was still on the floor, “What’s up with him?”

“Heh.” the bunnygirl said, wiping his saliva from her cheek as she got to her feet, “He’s jealous of my power.”

“Right, right… but seriously, what’s actually his problem?”

Ahana glared at him, and Reinhardt sighed, “She is actually telling the truth. He truly is envious of her natural affinity for magic.”

“What?” the loincloth-clad savage asked, sounding sceptical.

“It’s just not fair!” moaned the young teacher, raising his head. His eyes were red-rimmed, as if he’d been crying, “Do you know how many years it took me to learn basic light magic? And she manages such a feat in a single evening? It’s hardly past midnight yet! And she’s barely even attempted to study!”

The lieutenant held up a hand, closing his eyes and grinding his teeth in frustration, “Alright, whatever. We have more important things to be concerned with than your pride, so just shut up, will you?”

For a moment, the meek and mild-mannered mage looked as if he might object, opening his mouth to speak, but then he seemed to take stock of the individual before him and realise that—magic or not—this barely-dressed yet heavily bejewelled man was more than muscular enough to snap his skinny neck like a twig, should his patience run out. And that was something which appeared perilously close to occurring.

Licking his lips nervously, the tutor nodded.

“Good.” the officer growled.

“So, Lieutenant, what brings you here? Have you found something?”

Sapphiro was the one to nod this time, “Yes.”

He dropped three, thick tomes down on the dwemer’s desk, that he’d been holding beneath his left arm, then flipped the first open to a bookmark and pushed it across for Reinhardt to read, pointing to a particular passage.

The dwemer scanned it quickly, “A ritual for binding wild or out of control magic… with an approximate three percent chance of catastrophic failure resulting in a gateway to hell opening and unleashing a small horde of demons to tear apart the user’s body and drag their soul back to the nether realms to be tormented for all eternity.”

The brigadier slowly looked up at the lieutenant. He cocked an eyebrow. Sapphiro shrugged.

“That probably won’t happen, and it’s best to get the wild magic sorted out first. The other spells have much higher odds of failure if we don’t perform that one beforehand…” he tapped the two books which he had yet to show the dwemer. He then glanced over at his boss, “and besides, if it does go awry… it couldn’t happen to a nicer woman.”

Ahana smirked at him. Sneering, he looked back to the elf.

“I see… well, if we are to try such a ritual, we will have to take precautions in case it does fail. Perhaps if our soldiers were able to slay whatever demons did appear, we could drive them off and the general would be able to keep her soul?”

“So far as I know, no one has ever survived that ritual going awry, but then, it’s possible that no one else who’s tried it has had a semi-immortal army at their disposal.” Sapphiro shrugged, then opened the second grimoire to its bookmark and pushed it over, indicating a certain section.

“‘Mattäus’ fourth evocation of thaumaturgic transference: a ritual for the splitting of a reoccurring spell and the severance of the conjunction betwixt the disparate mana source and its origin in order to enable preparation for repurposing’? That is quite the long-winded name. Do you actually understand this?” Reinhardt asked, peering doubtfully at the passage he was reading.

To Ahana’s eyes, he didn’t seem to be comprehending what he was looking at in the slightest, and she grinned, pleased to have come across something the old dwemer wasn’t a master of.

“Yes. Theoretical magic is fairly simple once you get the hang of it.” the lieutenant replied.

“I… see. Would you care to explain the finer details, then? I am afraid that I am having a little trouble wrapping my head around the… complexities of the subject.”

Sapphiro smiled, and the healer snickered. The blue-eyed savage didn’t immediately explain, though, but instead flipped open the third tome and passed it across, lightly tapping one paragraph. The brigadier looked down at it. His brow furrowed and he shook his head slightly, apparently not having any more luck with this passage than with the one previous. He then turned his gaze back upon his subordinate, who offered an explanation.

“The first ritual is to rein in the general’s power, which should prevent it from interfering with the others, and possibly enhance its capabilities somewhat, due to the higher concentration of mana remaining within her body. The second is to permanently rob her of some of that power,” here he paused to smirk at the bunnygirl, whose brows furrowed in concern; she didn’t much like the sound of this part, “and the third is an invocation of anchoring; put simply, it will allow us to redistribute the stolen power, sealing it within a specific person or object.”

“I see... so if we were to do this for each person in our army, then every soldier could heal as she does?” the dwemer mused.

“Hey, hey, hey! Hold up!” the general interrupted, “There’s no way in hell I’d ever let you bastards do that. It’ll be annoying if I have to look weak in front of Vic & Siggy, but doing something like that would make me actually weaker. There’s literally no point at all!”

“Other than ensuring our troops’ survival?” Reinhardt enquired casually, while Sapphiro glowered at the selfish woman.

She snorted, waving a hand dismissively, “Like that matters. They only exist in the first place to do what I want. Their lives are only given what little meaning they have by their usefulness to me and by the difficulty I would have in replacing them if necessary.”

“And both of those would be increased substantially if they were given shares of your own power.” the brigadier pointed out, causing Ahana to grind her teeth in frustration.

“At the cost of making me weaker! That’s not a valid price.”

“Actually,” the lieutenant interjected, “There is another way we could work this, which might suit your tastes a bit better.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, General.” the blond man said, “We would still have to split your magic, but rather than transferring the separated power to an individual, or individuals, we could bind it to a specific location.”

“Oookaaay? And what good would that do? Healing everyone inside one building would be even less useful than healing only the people near me. Are we supposed to invite the illithids to invade the city or something?”

“No, of course not. While that would be one possible way of setting up the reoccurring spell effect, it wouldn’t be the only one. We could also arrange it so that anyone entering the bound location would instead be given a weaker, temporary version of your innate power. Because it would eventually wear off, they would have to keep returning in order to maintain their healing factor, which would mean that anyone who left your army would lose access to it, and new recruits could easily be given the ability.

“We could even arrange for the spell to function in such a way that only those who had sworn oaths to serve you could be granted its boon upon entering the affected area. You could call it a ‘Blessing of the Divine Conflagration’ if you want to keep up this pretense of being a holy woman.”

“Oh?” her eyes gleamed as she considered this proposition. It certainly seemed a lot better than the initial idea… but still, “I’m not too sure. Even if doing that thing to stop my magic ‘leaking’ does offset it a bit, I’d still be making myself weaker… it just seems so counter-intuitive, y’know?”

Sapphiro shrugged, as if her decision meant nothing to him, “If you want to hold all your magic yourself then we can’t force you… but you know, most wizards who’re actually powerful wouldn’t mind giving up a little bit of their strength in order to permanently enchant their homes. There are plenty of examples of magical buildings like this throughout the Crossroads.”

“I guess…”

“In fact,” her dwemer officer added, “some mages go even further and enspell objects other than their dwellings. Your Orbs of Desolation are a fine example of this. Whilst enchanted armaments can be crafted without their creators permanently surrendering a fraction of their own power in the process, I do imagine that in order to make one of comparable power to yours, such an exchange would be necessary.”

She still wasn’t convinced, but they were making her at least consider it. If it was a perfectly normal thing to do then surely no one could call her weak for having done such a thing. Right?

“In short,” the lieutenant told her, “imbuing one’s own magic into objects is actually an extremely common practise amongst powerful spellcasters. In fact, it could even be said that it could simply be assumed that wizards at a certain level would do such things, as they would have grown so powerful by that stage in their lives that they would hardly notice the drop in power… and I’m sure you wouldn’t be so weak as to have to worry about a tiny little loss in strength, would you?”

“Huh? No, of course not. I could totally do that thing a dozen- no, a hundred times and I’d still not even notice a change in my power level!” she declared defensively, despite not having the slightest clue how the rituals he had suggested actually worked.

“Exactly.” Sapphiro said dryly, “As if that wasn’t enough of a reason to go ahead with it, though, it’s also possible that because this practice is so commonplace, any who were to insist upon hoarding their power could be regarded as mere posers by the rest of the higher-tier magical community, only pretending to be on their level by.”

“What!?” the healer was panicked now, imagining everyone laughing at her behind her back even as she revelled in her mystical might.

Then the tutor, who had gotten back to his feet by this point, interrupted, “Ahem! I think you three may be overlooking a major hurdle here! Those rituals which your half-naked friend mentioned are extremely complex! Especially the latter two. There’s simply no way someone who has been studying magic for a mere few hours could accomplish such things! Even taking into account her unnaturally fast pace of perfecting new spells, it will doubtless take months before she’s ready for such advanced techniques! Why, even I couldn’t manage them!”

Ahana slowly turned to look at him. She sneered, “Hit me with your most powerful spell.”

“Wh-what?” the teacher asked.

“You heard me. Do it. You think you’re so great because you have all this book learning, but I’m way more powerful than you. Way, way more powerful. Even if I don’t exactly have perfect control of my magic yet, I can easily manage some dumb rituals. So come on, show me what you’ve got, so I can demonstrate how vastly outclassed you are.”

Behind her, Sapphiro and Reinhardt exchanged glances. The human rolled his eyes and the elf smiled softly. They had well and truly won her over. Perhaps with a little help from the instructor, as it wasn’t all that unlikely that him telling their commander that she couldn’t possibly manage this might have made her all the more determined to try, if only to prove him wrong.

“V-very well, then. If you’re going to be so stubborn about it, I will! Don’t blame me if you have to spend a week in hospital after this! In fact, you may even die!” the young elf spat angrily. He held up both arms and effeminately twirled his wand in her direction.

“Lightning storm, heed my call,
Electric current, my foe do maul,
Shocked and grounded, shall she sprawl,
As by my wizardry, she is made to fall!”

The moment he finished his silly, little rhyme, a bolt of lightning leapt forth from the end of his wand, and struck the bunnygirl dead in the centre of her chest. She stiffened up, her jaws locking as the electricity coursed through her body.

Then she relaxed, Her clothes were slightly singed, but otherwise she was no worse for wear. Sneering, she drawled, “Is that really the best you can do?”

And then, without waiting for a response—not that she was likely to receive one any time soon, as her opponent was standing staring open-mouthed and wide-eyed at her—she nodded fractionally in his direction, and in that instant, one of her Enfilade spheres blasted across the room and obliterated his head.

He, of course, was not currently being excluded from her aura, and so was fully healed in a mere couple of seconds. Unfortunately, he immediately started screaming in horror. No one had warned him when hiring him for this position that there was a slight chance he might end up being brutally maimed (however temporarily) by his student.

After roaring at him to shut the fuck up, and waiting for him to do so, Ahana spoke again, more quietly, “Your magic is pretty weak. Also, it sounds stupid and takes way too long to cast. You’d be better off just using a crossbow. If that’s the best you can manage, I’d recommend finding yourself a new career. Even if you elves can live for centuries, I don’t see you ever managing to get on my level.”

He fell to his knees and started crying. Without giving him another glance, she left the room, her subordinates following after her.

Post Word Count: 5,415
Community Quest Word Count: 18,335/20,000 (12,920 + 5,415)

 

[Ahana Varma]

Ahana yawned.

“Are you nearly done yet?” she whined.

Sapphiro shot her an annoyed glance, “For the fifth time, yes, we will be done soon. It’ll only take another minute.”

“Ugh! You’ve been saying that for the last twenty minutes!”

“No,” he said, his jaw clenching, “twenty minutes ago I told you it would be about twenty minutes. And since then I’ve been giving you accurate estimates of the remaining time every few minutes, because you keep asking. Can’t you just sit there, shut up, and be grateful that we were able to find enough competent mages willing to aid us that your own magical ineptitude shouldn’t prove a great hindrance?”

“Tch.” she glanced across to where her tutor from the previous day’s lesson was busy working, and muttered under her breath, “Your definition of ‘competent’ leaves a lot to be desired.”

The young teacher looked up and glowered at her. Elven hearing might not be as sharp as her own, but those pointy ears of their weren’t entirely for show. She sneered at him.

The general was sitting, cross-legged in the middle of a mostly-completed magic circle which covered the floor from wall-to-wall, inside a fairly large meeting room within her barracks, which had been cleared of furniture for this purpose. Standing just outside the room, in the hallway, with the door open, were Reinhardt, Nisse, and a couple dozen of her soldiers.

They had been stationed their to provide aid on the off chance that the spell went awry and a horde of demons showed up to eat her, or whatever. She had been told not to bring her Sextuple Enfilade into the circle with her, as its own enchantments might interfere with what they were doing, so one of her soldiers was holding the orbs for her; still well within range of her control, in case she needed to snatch them up at a moment’s notice.

In the room with her were Sapphiro and another seven spellcasters. As pleased as she had been to manage that little, fire spell of hers, the blond savage had learned even faster than she, and was now at about the same level as that instructor she’d mocked.

Meaning he could purposefully cast more complex spells than she could, but wasn’t actually powerful enough to stand even the tiniest chance of beating her in a real fight. At least he was able to do his thing without spouting idiotic rhymes the entire time, though, which put him ahead of the teacher-elf, in her eyes.

The wizards in here with her were busying themselves with completing the magic circle on the floor, which had to be painted in intricate detail, in blood.

They were using blood donated by Ahana’s soldiers, since even with her aura to heal them, the nerdy mages were too wimpy to cut themselves. They’d probably faint if they were so much as pricked with a needle, she thought. Whilst she did not share her emperor’s views on the inferiority of the elven race, she had to admit that if all of them had been as pathetic as these wizards, she easily could have understood his perspective.

Ahana hadn’t donated blood to the supply used for the circle either, but the only reason for that was that she’d been busy getting her own fair share of cuts at the time. In order to conduct this ritual, it seemed that it was necessary for the person whose ‘wild’ magic was to be contained to have runes carved into every inch of their flesh ahead of time. What was more, these cuts had to remain open all throughout the process of painting the circle and casting the spell.

As such, she had found herself in the unusual position of having to give herself permission to die, to stop her magic from automatically healing her. At which point, Sapphiro and another couple wizards had begun engraving the delicate patterns onto her skin. Of course, as they had to cover her entire body, this process had required her to disrobe.

The two dwemer aiding her lieutenant in the task had assured her that she had no need to fear that they would try anything inappropriate, as one of them, a man, was gay, whilst the other was a heterosexual woman… and in fact, she was the only female mage present.

The bunnygirl had snorted in response to these assertions, mildly amused at their reasoning for choosing these three for this task; not because they had the steadiest hands or the best knowledge of the sigils required—in fact, the lieutenant had needed to continually check the book he’d found this ritual in, to make sure he was getting them right—but simply because they were the least likely to grope her.

Once that was taken care of, they’d tried to give her sari back, but she didn’t want to risk staining it if she didn’t have to, so she decided to just remain as she was for the rest of the ritual. The prudish wizards thought this was disgraceful, but she was paying them a big enough slice of her army’s budget that they didn’t really put up much of a fight before giving in to her whims.

For a little while, to begin with, as she had waited, she’d been interested in looking—and poking—at her shallow cuts, entertained by the novelty of having her injuries not heal up and vanish immediately. But as the minutes dragged past with glacial slowness, that got old.

Eventually, at long last, after that final, interminable minute, the circle was done.

The eight spellcasters then took up positions just within the boundaries of the circle, right at the edges, one mage to each of the compass points. And then they all began to chant, Ahana included. She had been coached for long, miserable hours on what exactly to say. Sapphiro had told her that even if she didn’t speak at all, there was still a chance that the magic would work as intended, but if she played her part, success would be substantially more likely.

Although the book he had found claimed that the odds of this spell failing catastrophically were only three percent, the more she learned about it, the more she was suspecting that this was not really a static figure, but instead it might be the total percentage of times which the authors knew of that it had gone horribly awry in spite of the professionals involved taking every possible precaution in order to ensure that everything went flawlessly.

She did not get the impression that this was the sort of thing which should be done lightly, or rushed at all… and yet rushing it was exactly what she was doing. The longer they waited, the more entrenched the illithids would become in that forward base of theirs, and they may even call for reinforcements after finding one of their own murdered, alongside a dead guardian.

So she said the words, along with the others, and was pleased that they were in another language. She could still hear the rhyming, but it sounded more mystical and less childish when spoken in a foreign tongue.

For the first few seconds, she felt nothing, and then she noticed a prickling sensation on her skin, which quickly grew and worsened. In under a minute, she was experiencing the sensation of thousands upon thousands of needles slowly being piercing her body, as if one was being forced down each of her pores. It was agony, and it took all her concentration to keep forcing the incantation out from between gritted teeth, her jaws clamped shut.

She couldn’t see anything wrong with her body, aside from the cuts she’d been given; nothing to suggest that every millimetre of her skin was being slowly impaled, but the pain was all too real, and where her pose had been loose and relaxed before, she was now hunched over, fists clenched and all her muscles taught, breathing deeply.

And it only got worse from there.


***


“Well done.” Sappiro said, nudging her with his foot. The general groaned, and forced her eyes open.

“Is it over?” she asked, having collapsed with relief the moment the pain vanished. As well as blood, she was now covered in sweat, and her breathing was still erratic.

He smirked coldly. It was hardly a surprise to her that he’d take pleasure in her suffering, given her habit of mocking him over Beryl’s death, but even so, she might get around to punishing him for it in some way, later on. For the time being, she was too sore and exhausted to care.

“The first ritual is over. Just two more to go now.” the blond savage said viciously, his eyes gleaming, “So sit up. It was quite impressive how long you were able to keep up with the spell during that one, before the pain got the best of you and you started moaning and screaming.”

“Fuck you.” she muttered, remaining sprawled lazily on the floor, not making any attempt at getting back up. He kicked her, and she grunted, the air knocked from her lungs. Dismissing her healing from herself had also negated the protection her magic ordinarily provided.

“It was likely that your continued chanting played a significant part in keeping the spell from failing, so we’ll need you to perform just as well in the second one. Oh, and I hadn’t mentioned this before now, but if this next ritual fails then your soul will be torn out and lost forever.”

“What!?” her eyes flew wide open and she gaped at the lieutenant, who only grinned back.

“Yeah, it’s quite important that you don’t fuck up, so what do you say you sit up and go over the details with me while we wait on these guys getting the next circle ready?” he gestured at the other wizards, who were busy doing everything from splashing buckets of water on the stone floor and mopping up the blood, to summoning water from thin air and controlling the winds to scrub the floor for them, depending on their levels of power.

“Ugh, fine.” she whined, forcing herself up into a sitting position, and feeling unexpectedly heavy as she did so, as if the ritual had added a couple stone to her weight somehow. She wondered if that was because of all the extra magic being stored inside her which had previously been her aura, or if it was just her imagination.

Sapphiro crouched down before her and opened a book he’d been carrying; the second of those three tomes he’d found. He then spent a long while repeatedly going over the words with her, until another mage came over to let him know that the circle was complete. The lieutenant still wasn’t satisfied that she could actually get the chant right, but after sneering at her one last time, he got up and took his position.

And with that, the second evocation got underway.

This one was different from the first, though no less excruciating. She experienced the sensation of being flayed, but rather than it seeming as if her skin was being sliced off, it was as though the flaying was somehow taking place within her body… as if her organs themselves were being peeled. It was not fun.

After what felt like an eternity, it came to an end, and she slumped to the ground, trembling and panting. She could hear what sounded like a dozen conversations at once, and though she closed her eyes, bright, golden light seemed to force its way through her eyelids.

After a time, and some shouting, someone picked her up, and she opened her eyes a crack to see who. It was Nisse, and he was carrying her bridal-style, because of course he was. She half-heartedly grumbled and tried to push away from him, but she was well and truly worn out, and he was more muscular than her in any case, so it didn’t take long for her to give up and let him carry her off wherever he was taking her.

Dimly, she recalled that this was only the second of the three rituals, and wondered if it would be alright for her to leave early. Then she decided that she didn’t actually care.


***


In the end, the place her lover took her was to a bath. She had a bathtub in her own quarters, but in this instance he instead took her to the communal baths which the soldiers used, which were much larger. They seemed to be empty for the time being, though he did seek out a couple of female soldiers and order them to clean her up. He also told her that those glyphs carved into her flesh would no longer be necessary, so she was free to reactivate her magic and heal herself.

After her bath, feeling much refreshed, she was just about awake enough to walk on her own. Nisse insisted upon taking her straight to their quarters, so that she could get some sleep, and she agreed. She may not be quite at the point of losing consciousness at any moment, as she had been before, but she’d still be more than happy to get some rest.

On the way back, it occurred to her that the heavy feeling from before had vanished. Whether it was the second ritual or the bath she’d had afterwards, she couldn’t be sure, but rather than being weighted down, she now felt almost like she was floating.

The next morning, the pair of them went to speak to Reinhardt and Sapphiro, and were shown to the meeting room in which the ritual had been held. Dozens of paper talismans were now plastered to the doorframe, and the actual door had been removed completely, replaced with a thick rope which hung across the entrance. It was clearly much more symbolic of something-or-other, rather than intended to actually serve as any sort of practical means of keeping people out. Within the room was a gigantic, golden inferno, though rather than being scorching hot, the flames were merely pleasantly warm, even to those without the general’s heat resistance.

The lieutenant insisted that the papers and rope were magical, and held great significance, but to Ahana, it seemed as if they had simply wanted to make this room look like a shrine. While they were there, Nisse entered the flames, to be granted his nigh-immortality. Reinhardt said that the process required some time, as her mana had to be slowly absorbed into the bodies of those inside, so they had been telling the troops that they should pray to Gal’skap for a few minutes whilst sitting within the blaze… though this was actually completely unnecessary.

In reality, anyone who had sworn an oath to serve the general—as all her soldiers were made to do upon joining the military—and spent the allotted time inside the room would receive the same benefits, regardless of which actions they took in there. Nevertheless, knowing her penchant for masquerading as divine, the officers had assumed she would want it this way. She assured them both that they had been correct.

As those two had already received their own ‘blessings’, and she had no need for one herself, the three of them headed off as soon as Nisse was done. The brigadier had ensured that preparations were already underway for them to depart immediately, with the light infantry section of their army having had their own blessings already, and with many of their scouting corps’ favoured mounts—the lava lizards—having been brought up from the dungeons beneath the barracks, where they were being kept in an area which had recently been converted to animal pens, rather than cells or torture facilities.

When she asked why that division of their troops, Reinhardt said that it was partly because they would weigh less, so the lizards would be able to run faster for longer, getting them to their destination sooner… but mostly it was simply because she seemed to prefer them to their more elite counterparts, for some reason. She supposed it made sense that he would come to that conclusion, given that she had, after all, made such heavy use of them during the xenomorph hunt.

Before they set out to slaughter some mind flayers, though, the old dwemer had a surprise for her. He led her to the hall where the soldiers were assembling and packing all their supplies and gear on their mounts, and over to a strange-looking wooden platform with a chair on it. The platform itself looked to be made of cherrywood, much like her enchanted armament (which, now that she thought about it, she didn’t actually have at the moment, and would need to pick up before they left), while the chair was a much paler wood, almost white.

“Uh, okay… you wanted to show me a chair?” she asked quizzically, cocking an eyebrow at her brigadier, who smiled enigmatically in response.

“Please, take a seat, General Varma.” he said, indicating the chair. After staring at him for a couple seconds, she sighed, shook her head, and complied. No sooner had she done so than the dwemer beckoned to some people behind her.

Four male dwemer walked up and each wordlessly grabbed a thick, rectangular beam at the corner of the platform. Together, they heaved the entire thing up into the air.

“Woah!” the bunnygirl cried unintentionally, grasping the armrests as the platform shook and she almost slipped from her seat. The chair itself seemed fastened securely in place, though, and after a moment, she relaxed. Almost everyone was looking her way now, and many of them were smiling slightly. She chose to be generous and believe that they were merely awestruck by her majestic presence, rather than finding her slip-up funny. Had it been the latter, she’d have had to start punishing people.

“After the battle with the xenomorphs, it occurred to me that your stature is… a little on the diminutive side, General, and as you need to be able to utilise the Enfilade even when your surroundings are too noisy for you to hear your foes clearly, it would be beneficial for you to have a higher vantage point. Of course, simply standing on your soldiers’ shoulders, as you did then, is hardly fitting for someone of your status.”

“So you bought me a chair?” the healer asked, grinning.

“Indeed. Though the proper term would be a ‘litter’, I believe. And this is no ordinary litter, either. In order for it to be worth taking into battle, I had it enchanted to endure a tremendous amount of damage before breaking. It should last well.”

She laughed, immediately hopped down and, to the great surprise of everyone present, embraced the elf tightly. After a couple seconds, she released him, gave him a hearty slap on the back, and turned to the crowd, “Now this is the sort of initiative I like in my underlings! You should all try and be more like Brigadier Margrave!”

“What?” a dwemer woman with her dark hair tied back in a bun said snarkily, a hand on one hip, “So you want us to show the sort of initiative that results in us buying you presents?”

“Exactly.” the general responded brightly, causing the soldier to roll her eyes.

Reinhardt cast a sidelong glance her way, “You know, I didn’t actually spend my own money on this. I just used our budget.”

She shrugged, “Your money, Victor’s money, doesn’t matter to me.”

“So what you’re saying is that it’s okay to use military funds to buy stuff, so long as you’re happy with the result?” a different soldier asked. This guy was one of the savages, and had a long, unkempt mane of light brown hair, with dozens of gemstone beads tied into it.

“Yeah, sure.” the general said without thinking.

“Wanna go get wasted?” he asked, to some laughter and a few cheers.

Ahana opened her mouth to response in the affirmative, but Sapphiro was faster, “No! We are not going to be engaging in battle with an enemy well-known for their ability to psychically dominate the minds of the weak-willed, while you idiots are all dead drunk!”

There were some groans at that, mostly from those who’d cheered initially, and a little more laughter. The lieutenant turned to the healer, scowling, and snapped, “Don’t encourage them.”

“Hm,” she mused, narrowing her eyes, “That attitude of yours has just reminded me, I owe you some pain for the other day, after you kicked me when I was down… literally, I was lying down on the floor and you kicked me. Did you think I’d forget that?”

“Well, actually, yes, I did. In case you hadn’t noticed, I have a very low opinion of your intelligence.” he deadpanned. A few people in the crowd sniggered.

She didn’t respond for a moment, then said, “Alright, gimme back my orbs so I can maim you until I get bored.”

Beside her, the brigadier sighed, but neither he nor Nisse actually tried to intervene.

“I’ll give them back when we reach the illithids’ base.” Sapphiro said, apparently expecting her to have forgotten by then… or at least thinking that she’d be more concerned with killing their enemies than hurting him at that point.

Almost immediately after he’d finished speaking, an ex-miner carrying the six spheres in her arms burst out from the crowd. Her chin-length, dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a navy-blue boilersuit, black boots, and had a stygian silver sword belted at her waist. She smirked at Sapphiro as she offered the enchanted armament to Ahana.

The blond officer scowled at the woman, while the bunnygirl laughed and made a quick hand gesture, calling the spheres over to her.

“This is gonna be fun.” she said sadistically, a broad grin splitting her face.

Post Word Count: 3,662
Community Quest Word Count: 21,997/20,000 (18,335 + 3,662)

 

[Ahana Varma]

Before they left, Ahana had spoken to a craftswoman in the business of constructing signs. Nisse, Sapphiro & Reinhardt accompanied her for this task, trying his hardest not to roll his eyes upon hearing what she wanted of the lady. The brigadier even succeeded.

She commissioned a few signs bearing the official department name of her army, which had been simply ‘the army of Neo New Babylon’, up until that morning, when she had decided to change it. As well as the full, new title, in small enough characters that one would have to be quite close by to read them, the sign would also have, in much larger letters, the acronymised form of the name, which would be ‘the Veritable Armed Response Military Agency’.

For some reason, her subordinates seemed to be under the impression that she was being extremely egotistical. They didn’t object, though, despite the sign-maker having looked over pointedly at each of them, practically begging for someone to be the voice of reason. When no one objected, the woman had sighed and promised to have the signs completed and each stuck up on one of the barracks’ walls by the time the soldiers got back from their trip.

That done, the commanders returned to the street outside the garrison’s main entrance, where their troops were just finishing packing for the trip. They were out in force today, a hundred-strong light infantry division, setting off to crush the illithids utterly. Ahana had decided that she’d had enough of conserving her forces and giving her foes a chance to put up a fight.

This wasn’t going to be a battle; the mind flayers would be slaughtered, plain and simple.

Upon heading over to her litter, she found that some enterprising individuals had tied it to the backs of a pair of lava lizards. She had no idea if this was a remotely good idea, especially as her seat had no safety belt. Being immortal, however, the general wasn’t exactly concerned, and happily hopped on board. The others then mounted up, and off they went.

She enjoyed the ride immensely. These lizards could move really fast. She now saw why her scouts were so fond of them. It was all the more impressive because they were charging through oftentimes narrow tunnels, and seemed to have no problems adjusting their speed and direction to avoid crashing into or tripping over one another.

In fact, the creatures were so accustomed to running in groups that the bunnygirl never even needed to guide her bearers, the two reptiles simply matched the paces of the beasts around them, and she was left to sit back and relax.

In addition to being far faster, the journey proved to be much easier than it had been for the general when she had come alone, due to many of the soldiers holding glowing crystals to light the group’s way, and with everyone having food and water stored in bags and canteens strapped to their mounts’ backs.

They only had to stop for the night once through the journey, and by about halfway through the next day, they were nearing what the scouts—who had ranged out ahead of their main force—assured them were the outer edges of the illithid territory. They stopped there and stayed the night, to make sure everyone would be well-rested for their attack on the illithids.

The next morning they left behind most of the lizards, as well as a dozen soldiers to watch them. Only the scouts kept their mounts, and as before they investigated the passages up ahead, doubling back to return and deliver reports after getting a certain distance from the main force. Despite being theoretically within the bounds of the area which they were tentatively considering mind flayer land, it took a few hours before a scout returned to report that they’d found one.

Of course, the soldier had immediately turned and fled after laying eyes upon the creature, not giving it any opportunity to attack her psionically, or order its slaves to attack physically. She had escaped and made it back at speed, thanks to her mount, but they were not so far now from the forward base of the illithids, so it was entirely feasible that if the mind flayer was at all concerned about meeting the same fate as the one Ahana had slain a week or so previously, it would go back and call for reinforcements.

Even so, with no actual concerns that they might lose, regardless of the circumstances of an engagement—now that they were no longer required to stick close to their leader to heal rapidly—the army headed blithely for the area the scout had encountered the enemy.

They got about halfway there before they met the mind flayer. It and its slaves froze in their tracks, staring in shock at the massive mob pouring around a corner in the tunnels and descending upon them. Apparently, the illithid had simply given chase without even considering that the woman might pose any sort of danger to it, or might have backup.

The general’s litter was carried round the bend just in time for her to get a nice view of the purple person being overrun. His two, human slaves had attacked her soldiers to protect their master, as soon as it snapped out of its daze (and presumably commanded them to do so), but to no avail. Her people had simply jumped on the pair and held them down, heedless of the injuries they received from the slaves’ swords.

The flayer didn’t even bother to use its psychic powers to slow the rush of soldiers, it simply turned tail and fled, knowing immediately that there was no way it could hold out against such a vastly more numerous force.

But illithids were hardly the sort to rely overmuch on their physical strength, so it came as no surprise to the bunnygirl when her troops swiftly caught up to it and mercilessly cut the creature down.

The slaves were, of course, very apologetic after the fact. They were also shocked to see that the people they’d stabbed were no worse off for it. Once they’d gotten over all that, though, Sapphiro told them where to head if they wanted to wait alongside the lava lizards and the dozen troops left behind to guard them.

They were also given the option of heading off on their own, of course, if they didn’t trust the Neo New Babylonians, or simply preferred to take their chances in illithid territory rather than accompanying the army back to Neo-Nippur. Unsurprisingly, both of them took the lieutenant up on his offer of protection.

With those two sent on their way, the group continued on. They hit several roadblocks along the way, in the form of guardians waiting on the walls at certain junctions. It was at the first of these points that the general finally received confirmation on something she had suspected, but hadn’t been sure of; that the guardians were indeed a breed of necromorphs.

No one could hazard a guess as to how the illithids could be controlling the undead abominations, but there were more than a few people in the army who were familiar enough with the species to confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that those were what they were.

The first of the rotting hulks was severely inconvenient, to the point that it looked for a bit like they might have to find another way around to get past it. The mini-guardians which it occasionally spat out were little trouble to deal with, but the sheer speed of its bone-tipped tendrils meant that it was reliably landing what ought to have been fatal wounds on every single soldier who approached it, regardless of how many charged at once.

Only after a solid couple minutes of fruitless charging, right when they were on the point of having to admit defeat (even though not one of them had actually perished), did the bunnygirl herself deign to help out. She ordered her forces to split down the middle and had her bearers carry her at a leisurely pace over to the immobile undead.

She then pulverised it with a dismissive wave of her hand.

In truth, it took her far more effort to accomplish than she was letting on, as she was having to consciously direct each of her six orbs simultaneously, but for all the average soldier knew, she was effortlessly—if rather messily—destroying a creature which they hadn’t made the slightest headway against.

A cheer went up when its pulped and shredded body finally lay still. Ahana smirked at that, enjoying having gotten to show off.

From that point on, whenever they came to one of the guardians, she took the lead and dispatched it, before allowing the forward ranks to advance past her once more. The main reason she didn’t simply keep to the front ranks was that her officers insisted that she be kept in the centre of the group whenever possible, as she would be less likely to be mind controlled by their foes from that position.

She went along with their desires because it did make sense, she supposed, since her Enfilade did make her by far the deadliest person in the army, and therefore the ideal target for manipulation.

The next illithids they came across were standing by a guardian, peering at it while saying nothing, though presumably they were conversing psionically. There were three of them, with one being noticeably more fancily dressed than its peers, and so presumably of higher station. In addition, they were accompanied by a retinue of ten slaves, which looked to be a mix of dwemer and humans.

All three turned to face the onrushing tide of troops headed for them, and six of their minions drew swords, while the others raised bows and nocked arrows. Unlike that day’s earlier encounter with a mind flayer, the Neo New Babylonians weren’t taking them by surprise after coming around a corner. Unusually for this underground area, they were actually running down a long, almost straight corridor.

As such, the sword-slaves had ample time to get into a defensive formation, and the archers began firing. As close together as they were packed while moving through this thin tunnel, the arrows had barely any chance of missing. To compare the archers’ task to shooting fish in a barrel would’ve been insulting to fish.

Even with only four shooters, by the time they’d reached their foes, almost two dozen of the bunnygirl’s followers had fallen. Of course, even after being impaled on an arrow and in many cases trampled by their allies in their haste to reach the enemy, her soldiers were still practically immortal, and so they simply did their best to avoid being stepped on, then sat up and pulled out the projectiles when the main group had passed them by.

When her front line struck the enemy guards, there was a miniscule moment wherein it looked as if they would hold. The slaves fought fiercely, and though the tentacle-faces themselves didn’t appear to be doing anything, they were clearly using their psychic powers, for one-by-one, the general’s people were freezing up where they stood, stopping to look around confusedly, or even turning upon one another.

And then the moment passed, and all six sword-wielders were brought down. Five of them in the same non-lethal method as had been used previously. The other one, however, had his skull smashed in with a crystalline club by a savage woman who seemed to have taken umbrage at having his sword buried in her guts. He flopped limply to the ground.

The archers had drawn knives, but they were even less of a hindrance, and in seconds the two lesser illithids had been cut down. Falling on its ass and holding up its arms in a futile attempt at shielding itself, the third mind flayer screamed, †STOP!†

The scream was psychic, of course, so not heard aloud… yet rather than being directed at any one individual, it seemed that it had simply been projected out in all directions, for it affected every single one of them.

To a degree.

Ahana, and those behind her, experienced only a weak impulse to stop moving, but it remained obvious to them all that that would be a dumb action to take, as it would allow their foe a chance to flee, so they ignored it. The closer an individual was to the mind flayer, however, the more strongly they reacted, and many of those near the front hesitated. In fact, a couple dozen or so men and women right beside the creature froze completely.

“A psion.” Reinhardt muttered, as the scraggly individual scrambled back to its feet and turned to scarper. During that meeting in the barracks with the first two slaves she’d freed, Ahana had learned some new things about the society of the mind flayers, and one of those details was the existence of illithid psions. These were illithids who had spent their lives training their psychic powers, and as such they were considerably more impressive in battle than the standard variety.

Ahana was too far back to launch an orb at the fleeing psychic, so she simply lounged in her chair and watched events unfold with an air of mild amusement. It took her soldiers only a couple seconds to come up with a way around their stunned compatriots, who were blocking the passage with their bodies; they cut them down.

Secure in the knowledge that their friends wouldn’t be dying from it, the soldiers hacked their way through the wall of inert flesh, and were soon dashing after the skinny, unathletic psion. Just before they caught up to it, it glanced back over its shoulder, its eyes grew wide, and it gave a squeaky yelp of fear. It would seem that the squid-heads did have vocal cords after all. And then it was brutally hacked to pieces.

Once everyone was healed up—which took longer than it ought to have, as several people got in fights with those who’d decided to maim them to get past more quickly—they once again gave their spiel to the surviving slaves, and headed onwards.


***


They knew immediately when they reached the mind flayer encampment. It wasn’t really possible to miss it. The tunnel opened out into a vast cavern, almost as large as the space which housed Neo-Nippur, though without the lava flows and precious metals. It was a huge space, but lacking anything of any real value, which explained why it hadn’t been inhabited until recently. It had now, however, been heavily fortified.

Large, stone walls surrounded the camp, and stone platforms manned by archers loomed over them. Behind those were innumerable tents, and around the outside of the walls, every rock larger than a pebble had been cleared, leaving a wide, open area between the tunnel exits and the walls. A killing field in which their archers could rain death upon any who dared approach.

It was an impressive spectacle, if somewhat crude. Given the timeframe which the mind flayers had been working with, though, no one could expect masterful architecture. Frankly, it was amazing that they could have done this much so quickly, regardless of the lack of aesthetics. This would be the benefit of mind-slave labour, Ahana supposed.

Were humans to take slaves and force them to work themselves to death, they’d no doubt require constant whipping to keep them well behaved, and guarding to keep them from fleeing. For the illithids, however, all they had to do was say the word and their minions would leap to obey, without the slightest hesitation, even if it should kill them.

No doubt, that usually gave them a significant advantage in combat. Usually. Fearless soldiers were all well and good, but unkillable soldiers were in a whole other league. While the mind flayers’ troops would fight on no matter the odds because they lacked free will, and so had no other option but to do so, Ahana’s would fight on because they knew that their victory was an inevitability.

After filing out of the tunnel, the Neo New Babylonians ceased their approach for a minute or two, as they formed up into ranks. Meanwhile, sentries on the tower-like platforms rung alarm bells, and within the encampment’s walls, the bunnygirl clearly heard people dashing around, as the enemy hurriedly prepared to repel them.

“Are you ready?” her brigadier asked, and she looked to him, on her right, then to Nisse, on her left, and grinned.

“Advance!” she bellowed at the top of her lungs, and her army began walking forwards.Then they broke into a jog, then a run. They charged straight at the walls. There were a couple massive slabs of stone acting the part of gates, but those wouldn’t be any easier to breach, so instead of even trying to break through, they’d simply scale the walls instead.

The disadvantage of having rushed to get their walls built up to their current height and thickness so quickly was that the mind flayers had had to cut corners when it came to the quality. The ramparts were intimidatingly large, but they were really just crudely cut, large lumps of rock. There were plenty of handholds which Ahana’s soldiers could make use of.

Of course, before they even reached the walls, they had a downpour of arrows to contend with. The majority of her people took hits and fell to the ground, but the projectiles barely scratched the general when they struck her, and her bearers did an admirable job of keeping themselves upright, and of resisting the urge to stop to pull out the shafts which embedded themselves in their bodies.

The charge went on, and though the slaves kept firing without the slightest hint of hesitation, the few glimpses Ahana caught of illithids scurrying across the walls told her that the psychic overseers were practically petrified. To be fair to them, she supposed that an assault by scores of immortals could hardly be considered a normal occurrence. Surely anyone would panic, in their shoes.

And then the front lines—or what was left of them—reached their destination, and immediately, the troops of the Veritable Armed Response Military Agency were climbing up the sides. For her part, their leader found herself at a loss for how to proceed. On one hand, there was no reason she couldn’t scale the walls, just like her underlings… yet to do so would mean abandoning her litter, which she wasn’t keen on.

Instead, she leaned across to Nisse and yelled to be heard over the ruckus, “You go up and over with the rest! Try to find a way to open the gate from the inside! I’ll stay here with Reinhardt!”

Her lover nodded and dashed off without a moment’s hesitation. It seemed he could manage to be obedient when he felt like it. Soon, Nisse was scrambling up the stone structure as swiftly as any monkey. Though by that point, the archers were either picking targets as they climbed, or had abandoned their bows to instead pouring pots of boiling oil onto the climbers.

Almost a dozen people had already fallen—screaming and clawing the stuff from their faces as best they could—to the hard, cold stone below. Not that it really mattered, for as soon as the oil cooled, they’d be back in action. Already most of those who’d been shot before reaching the walls were returning, having plucked the arrows from their bodies.

While she waited, the general ordered the four carrying her to take her across to the gate. Partly this was so that she could be there if and when the captain managed to get it open, but mostly it was because she wanted to do something violent, and the tops of the walls were beyond the range of her orbs, so she couldn’t simply take potshots at the people up there.

The doors were massive slabs of stone, and no doubt tremendously thick. With a dramatic flourish, the bunnygirl sent her enchanted armament straight at them. Time and again she lashed out with the Enfilade, each orb doing little more than leaving a few cracks in its wake after every impact. Stil, she was making visible progress, even if it wouldn’t exactly be quick or easy to bust through.

“It seems you’ve attracted an audience.” the old dwemer by her side commented wryly. Momentarily pausing in her attack, Ahana glanced across at him, then followed his gaze. She found herself looking up into the faces of three horror-stricken mind flayers. For all that she might wish she could shatter these gates faster, to their eyes, surely any headway at all on her end would be considered far too much.

She grinned at them and lazily flicked a finger up their way, launching a sphere at them. It froze in mid-air at the end of her zone of control, stopping well before hitting any of them, just as she’d known it would. And just as she’d hoped they would, all three illithids visibly flinched at the sight of the enchanted cannonball rocketing towards them. She got a good laugh out of that, then went back to slowly smashing their doors down.

The very fact that none of them had yet attacked her psionically told her that while they might be out of her range, she was also outside of theirs. Clearly, this trio were not the most powerful of psychics… which made sense, as they were obviously low-ranked enough to have been given sentry duty, which was hardly glorious.

Hopefully, she could break in before someone more powerful showed up and started complicating things for her.

Post Word Count: 3,643
Community Quest Word Count: 25,640/20,000 (21,997 + 3,643)

 

[Ahana Varma]

As it transpired, Nisse got the doors open before she could break them down.

With their arrows and boiling oil, the defenders had knocked many of Ahana’s people from the walls, but the inevitable reality of their situation soon became clear, as the near-immortals simply picked themselves up off the ground after falling several stories and began climbing once more. Before long, the first of them had swarmed over the top, and that was the end of that.

As they weren’t truly unkillable, there were some ways for them to be slain, and in theory, falling from a great height was one of these. In practice, however, they would need to fall from such an altitude that their body was left splattered across the ground by the impact. Mere broken bones—or even a caved-in skull—wouldn’t hinder them for long. And this wall, large as it was, wasn’t that big.

Thus, after the first of her troops had gotten in amongst the defenders, things went quickly from there. Normal folks simply could not realistically oppose immortals. The illithids managed to pull some fancy tricks with their mind powers, but stopping one or two people in their tracks didn’t change a thing when there was an army descending upon them.

Before she knew it, the great, stone doors were groaning as they slowly opened before her. Nisse stood between them, a cocky half-smile on his face. He glanced at the cracks in the stonework as the gates swung inwards, then back to her, “Hard at work, were you?”

The bunnygirl grinned and shrugged, “Had to do something to keep myself occupied while you were off having fun.”

“Heh, right.” he said, coming over to walk by her side as her bearers brought the litter through the gateway and into the encampment. Everywhere she looked, her troops were fighting slaves and illithids.

Previously, she’d been cool with them focusing down the mind flayers while using non-lethal force on the slaves, but now that there were so many of the squid-heads around, there was no way of knowing which one controlled which slaves, so it made more sense just to kill everyone who got in their way. Thankfully, most of her people seemed to have realised this as well, and weren’t bothering overmuch to try and avoid killing the enslaved.

She was borne though the chaos calmly, Reinhardt and Nisse walking alongside her litter, towards the centre of the camp, where it seemed likely that they would find the leaders of this cult. Along the way, the general occupied herself by launching her orbs at random enemies she passed. At one point, and illithid stepped out into her path and screamed in her thoughts that she should obey it. Judging by the power of its shout, and the finery of its robes, this creature must be a psion, and a high-ranked one at that.

She froze up immediately as its immense, psychic presence barged into her mind, making her feel like a minnow facing off with a blue whale. It swept through her mental defences without even seeming to notice them. Ahana immediately lost all control of her body, and a feeling of tremendous cold filling her from head to toe.

Mentally, she gasped in shock. Cold was not something she was at all accustomed to, so that actually ended up being even more of a surprise than casually being rendered utterly helpless by this psychic goliath. The presence disinterestedly flicked through her thoughts and memories, stealing all her secrets, and knowing everything about her.

Initially, she felt rage and contempt rolling off it in waves. It wasn’t at all pleased that a mere worm like she would dare to disrupt the plans of such a mighty being as itself. Then it paused, and she felt its emotional state change. She realised that it was going through the memories of the recent rituals she performed. Now excitement, elation and, most of all, greed were the sensations it was giving off.

It took her a moment, but then something clicked in her mind and it finally occurred to her what it must be intending. If it brought her back to its leader—an ‘elder brain’, she’d been told those were called—then they could no doubt compel her to repeat the process, thereby allowing the illithids themselves to attain pseudo-immortality. And this psion in particular, as the one to have captured her, would surely be greatly rewarded for its success. All in all, her future was looking bleak.

And then the presence shuddered and froze. Ahana was puzzled for an instant, but didn’t even have the time to wonder what was going on before it let out an agonised wail that tore through her thoughts—sharing its intense pain with her—and began thrashing madly. She felt as if her skull was about to explode.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun. The titanic presence tore itself apart as if it were made of tissue paper and caught in a hailstorm. Next thing she knew, she found herself on the ground, in the foetal position, taking gasping breaths and covered in cold sweat. Around her were her four litter-bearers and her lover, in much the same situation. Looking towards where the mind flayer had been, she found it lying limp and quite dead, in a slowly spreading pool of blood, having been impaled through the heart.

Standing over it, hard-faced and cold-eyed, was the brigadier. He sheathed his rapier.

Blinking confusedly, the general stared up at him, shock and disbelief written plainly on her face, “Wha…? You... weren’t affected by... whatever it did?”

“Of course I was affected. That psion was tremendously powerful. It may even have been one of the cult’s leaders. However, thankfully, I was able to hold off its onslaught long enough to draw my blade and slay it.”

A few seconds passed before Ahana realised that she was still staring, and that her mouth hung slightly agape. She coughed awkwardly and looked away, “Right, right, of course. Me too. It was totally holding it off, I would’ve killed it at any second, if you hadn’t beaten me to the punch. Good work, very quick.”

He graciously let her have her lie, “Of course, general. I can’t let you and my apprentice have all the fun around here, so I have to strike quickly when the opportunity arises.”

“Haha, yeah, of course, sure.” she said, forcing a smile and not meeting his gaze. As her carriers picked themselves up, she sat back down in her chair and was raised aloft once more, “Alright, well, uh, let’s get a move on.”


***


In the end, it transpired that that individual had indeed been one of the leaders. The weaker of the two. They found its counterpart in the midst of a great battle; having taken control of around two dozen of Ahana’s immortal soldiers, it was now using them to fend off the others.

Not wanting to have her mind ravaged again, the bunnygirl dropped off her litter and got as close to the mind flayer as she could—slipping in amongst the group of her people who were fighting the stolen soldiers—before bringing every one of the Sextuple Enfilade’s spheres down on it simultaneously, at their maximum velocity.

Judging from the explosion of gore and shards of shattered bone which splattered them all, that may have been overkill. Ahana surprised herself when she breathed a sigh of relief. She then noticed that her heart was pounding in her chest. She was extremely glad that that had worked; nigh-immortal she may be, but she really hated getting her head fucked with. So it probably shouldn’t have come as a shock to her that she’d been afraid of failing to kill the psion. Of being noticed by it.

‘Shouldn’t have’ being the key words there. It did surprise her, and it annoyed her too. She liked to think she was above such things as fear, but apparently not. The men and women around her cheered as their comrades regained control of themselves and the fight ended. They grabbed her and hoisted her up into the air, and the mood was high.

She couldn’t bring herself to smile, though. She was angry at and ashamed by her performance in that battle. Despite all her power, she’d once again had to be saved by a subordinate, and just now she’d caught herself practically cowering before one of the flayers.

She glanced about for Reinhardt, and met his eyes for a moment, before looking away. As much as she hated putting in effort, she knew she’d need to drop the transparent pretense about being able to fight off mental attacks, and get him to teach her whatever it was he did to keep the illithid out. Otherwise, she’d never be able to overcome any remotely powerful mind flayer in a fair fight, no matter how great her magic grew.

No sooner had she come to that conclusion than the necromorphs attacked.

At the time, she had no idea where they’d come from, but could only assume—correctly, as it was later confirmed—that the tentacle-faces had been keeping them hidden away in their camp somewhere. She also wondered momentarily why they’d not been utilised until after the battle was already lost, though that was answered quickly enough, when she spotted a trio of slashers running down and hacking apart an illithid.

Whatever it was that they’d been doing to control the guardians, it apparently didn’t affect the other necromorph strains to the same extent, if at all. The general guessed that the intent had been for the necromorphs to be unleashed only in the event that their plans looked set to fail; to ensure that none of their killers should survive either.

Of course, it was futile.

The undead abominations did not feel pain, and could not be killed easily. Like her own soldiers, merely beheading or impaling them would not be enough to end their ‘lives’. Unlike the bunnygirl’s troops, however, the necromorphs could not heal their wounds in mere moments, so though it was a time-consuming (and painful, for those who got within claw-range) affair, the slaughter of the zombies was as absolute and inevitable as their victory over the mind flayers themselves had been.

In the end, they never did find out how the illithids had been manipulating the necromorphs. Anyone who could have told them was now much too dead to do so. Of the hundreds of slaves which the mind flayers had commanded, most had fought to the death to protect their masters, but a few dozen had either been captured alive, or had lived long enough to surrender after all the illithids in their vicinity had died, allowing them to regain control of themselves.

They burnt the campsite to the ground, leaving only the thick, stone walls and platforms standing (and only because those didn’t burn), then left.

Upon meeting up with the rest of the troops, those who’d stayed behind with the mounts, everyone got atop a lava lizard—most of the soldiers having to double-up with a slave, to make sure everyone could keep up—and Ahana’s litter was fastened in place once again.

The journey back to Neo-Nippur was uneventful, but when they re-entered the city, their trip from the gates to their barracks had the feeling of a parade. For her part, Ahana was pleased that unlike during her two encounters with the xenomorphs, she had this time had succeeded in coming home from a battle not having had all of her clothes destroyed during it. More importantly (in the opinions of everyone else) though, of the one hundred men and women she’d taken with her to face their foes, every single one had returned alive.

There could be no denying that this had been a successful endeavour and a decisive victory.

Post Word Count: 1,986
Community Quest Word Count: 27,626/20,000 (25,640 + 1,986)