** Bunbun's POV **

  Lilly’s howl was equal parts fury, agony, and bitter triumph.

  Her body, and she feared her very soul, were blazing with a shocking degree of Hyperion radiation, or had been in the instant she had forced herself through the portal between worlds, anchored and warded so heavily against the one clan Malice truly feared. Yet no others. Everyone else seemed to be utterly beneath that creature’s contempt.

  Which had made it so laughably easy for Lilly, a revenant rabbit with the psyche and memories of a girl that hadn’t quite made it, to jump right on through. Freezing her in what felt like an endless tunnel of forever. Locked in that horrific state of pain so profound it was almost transcendent, trapped in a scream that went on and on. But at least she no longer had to exert all her will to hold those awful Hyperion cores so TIGHTLY to her soul. They were trapped. Stabilized. Frozen. For an instant that lasted an eternity as the shockingly powerful current of Malice’s own soul roared through the connection.

  If Lilly had been a stubborn drop determined to backflow to the rift’s origin, Malice’s soul was a furious roaring tidal wave of emotions desperate to flood Earth with all its hate. Emotions that burned through Lilly almost as badly as the agony of her claimed cores. Yet perhaps because it provided her momentary escape, a desperately needed distraction, she forced herself to endure the awful taint of Malice’s emotions.

  The ancient desperation cloaked in such furious hate and contempt, hiding a seed so fragile, so vulnerable.

  A child’s screams without end.

  An orphan’s despair.

  She saw so clearly for a single heartbeat, a tear-streaked boy’s desperate smile. Gazed upon by gentle eyes from the shadows.

  A hand extended. A promise to feed. To clothe.

  To love.

  For a single precious heartbeat, a battered soul was allowed desperate hope.

  Before bands of steel were wrapped tight around a child’s panicked screams and all became the clang of crashing machinery, the stench of bitter fumes and unwashed bodies, and the reality of hollow-eyed children just like him. Desperate for scraps, maimed or blinded by poorly maintained equipment where castoff street waifs weren’t even considered worth clean oil and maintenance, let alone more than bread crusts and gruel to feed.

  No friendships could possibly survive that hellhole.

  But he tried. Heart bleeding for a half starved waif screaming for his mother. A boy with eyes like a doomed puppy who was greeted with nothing but cold stares from all the other broken children. Except for him. A boy whose face lit up with desperate hope when he was offered hardfought food to eat, a friend who understood his pain. A blanket to share and ward away the bitter cold before the factory blazed once more, filling the entire building with blistering heat once more.

  Over time, sobs in the dead of night lessened. Haunted eyes filled with resolve. A pair of youths swearing that one day they would both grow big and tall like the hard-eyed foremen. That together they would escape. Be free.

  Yet when fever struck, friendship’s gentle smile became survival’s scorn.

  A friend that had once smiled with the only warmth to be found in the entire hellhole now gave a shoulder just as cold as the stone he was forced to shiver upon. The amount of blanket was willingly shared becoming less as his cough grew more ragged.

  Until the once fragile, broken youth that Malice had dared to take pity on would no longer share the blanket at all.

  “Your cough will kill us both, Malificent. If you were ever truly my friend, you’ll die quietly someplace else.”

  “Jacob, please! I just need some rest. Some food, if you have some? The others stole my—”

  “Go, or I swear I’ll kill you myself!”

  Words that had seared a once idealistic boys heart. Words he had never forgotten as his one time friend glared at him. As if his illness was his own fault.

  And he was too weak to protest.

  Too weak to fight back at all, as his pitiable scraps of bread were taken. Desperately needed clothes stolen. For there was no reason to ally with a sick boy already dead.

  Until he had nothing left at all. Shivering and sobbing and alone, beneath the screaming engine that could discharge toxic superheated fumes that all the children knew to avoid after the first weak. The first agonizing burns.

  Castoff and ignored. Left to die like unwanted trash.

  Yet he didn’t freeze in the bitter cold when the machines finally stopped for a few lightless hours.

  He was warmed by bitter hate alone.

  Hate that seethed and grew.

  A seed so dark and potent that he would never shiver again.

  A seed that filled him with burning strength!

  So that when he finally crawled from his sickbed, his funeral bed, it wasn’t as a trembling stick thin waif about to be tossed into the incinerator.

  No.

  It was with the strength of his own bitter resolve.

  Stalking his prey across the rusted steel grates in a massive building that shook with overheated machinery that could blow at any moment. Using the clouds of steam and sulfur as the cover they were.

  Stalking the boy who had reminded him so much of himself.

  The boy with whom him would have forged an epic saga of heroes and brotherhood.

  But that was a lie.

  Betrayal and despair were the only truths.

  And fury.

  And revenge.

  And POWER.

  That which one took for oneself.

  Malificent’s heart raced as he slowly approached his prey.

  Prey looking stronger and healthier than ever before. The boy’s muscled arms glimmering with sweat where stick thin limbs had been, not that long ago. A favored pet of the foremen.

  It didn’t matter.

  All that mattered was timing his movements. Scooping coal into the furnace. Dipping his shovel low, pivoting his balance and tossing it in.

  One scoop. Two scoops and heels rising as the coal sprayed in.

  And so much more.

  A startled cry turned to a panicked shriek.

  A skinny waif motivated by so much HATE.

  And leverage.

  And the entire foundry rang with the shrieks of a boy burning alive.

  An enemy consumed by Malice as he was struck by epiphanies terrible and profound.

  Forcing him to embrace the darkest of truths. That feelings of brotherhood were fleeting, honor all too easily corrupted, and betrayal was the only absolute. No pillar of friendship or love would survive the enticements of one’s enemies.

  Others would stay their killing hands only for so long as one was useful.

  The foreman who glared at Malice so hotly with his deed, who if at all righteous, should have struck him dead, did nothing but sneer and look away when Malice immediately went to work. Shoveling coal twice as fast as had the still screaming fool he had dared to extend his heart to. No matter how exhausted he was.

  His hate kept him strong.

  As did triple rations.

  As did keeping a careful measure of other gaunt-cheeked waifs gazing with too desperate eyes at his vaunted position in the sweatshop.

  Taking their measure. And when the time was right in the dead of night, when the three hours the madness stopped long enough for the cold to set them all shivering… he would hunt once more. So that the forge blazed extra bright and merrily the next day and in very short order, no one dared look his way with anything but fear or satisfaction, ever again.

  Because the calculus of survival so shockingly simple.

  One would survive the machinations of those more powerful than oneself only for so long as one was useful.

  Friends were desperate fools who forged temporary alliances that would only last until one found more profit in the other’s demise than in the illusion of reciprocity. And the one who dared to dream of more, who refused to accept the awful reality they all lived in would fall to the more cynical partner. The more practical partner.

  Every single time.

  The idea that both parties would choose naive idealism over tangible benefit was a dream that was itself naive foolishness.

  One’s true dark colors would always be revealed when easy triumphs became bitter struggle.

  Always.

  The only question was would one be smart and ruthless enough to stab one’s tool in the back… before one was stabbed in the back in turn.

  The wisest and strongest knew to betray and destroy their enemies before they could be betrayed and consumed in turn.

  A bitter truth that touched upon the most profound truth of all.

  This bitter world was comprised of nothing but enemies.

  Every cold-eyed foreman and fellow terrified child you saw would use or betray you in the end.

  Each and every last one.

  ***

  Lilly was near overwhelmed by that awful flood of memories that were somehow even worse than the Hyperion radiation blazing through her so fiercely.

  She wanted to scream her protest, her outrage, to somehow show the memory of that lost, tormented boy that such was NOT how life had to be. That friendships and the love of family didn’t have to crumble under pressure. That they could be forged and tempered and strengthened in life’s crucible, like the best tempered steel.

  But no. There was no way she could reach the tormented soul of a child castoff and thrown away by such a cold pitiless world as had birthed and discarded him. All the more so when years of bitter ruthlessness showed just how profound his truths had become. How, for him, for the desperate survivors in the dying city he was forged within, that was indeed the truth.

  Yet it didn’t have to be.

  In an awful flicker of unwanted insight, she sensed the System’s flittering recollections of countless hundreds of people who could have shown him another path.

  The gentle old shopkeeper with the love of the community whose heart would have gone out to a runaway waif. A secret fellow survivor of the mills that he himself had fled, decades before. But for chance alone, they never crossed paths.

  A mourning couple who had lost a boy very much like the waif that had been shivering in the street. A couple that might have found that boy, such that the gentle hand reaching out to comfort and the tender smile offered would have been heartfelt and true… if the slavers hadn’t arrived 20 minutes before, such that when the couple passed by, there was nothing except an empty street and the faint taste of tragedy in the air.

  A street the couple never dared to walk again.

  Those truths and so many more, Bunbun sensed as she orbited so close to the event horizon of a Gold’s soon-to-be ascension. So many System truths condensed and compressed in the hours before a fresh golden seed blossomed forth from the System’s womb.

  Yet before she could even howl her protest, she was struck by perhaps the most tragic truth of all.

  Because Malice’s greatest weakness along the dark vile path he walked was that a tiny core of his soul knew what it had lost and mourned. Mourned so fiercely for a mother’s warmth. A woman’s gentle smile.

  To be loved and cherished and know that he would never be betrayed. That love truly could transcend. Truly could rise above base desperation and desire.

  A love so profound there would be no way he could find it in the world of his birth.

  A love that was transcendent.

  A love he brought to himself.

  The love of an angel.

  Enticed and fallen.

  Naive and gullible.

  Encased in mortal flesh.

  A too young angel that had given herself to a too young man with the blazing strength of a Contender at an age where most were innocent youths still.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  And for a brief time, Malice had known the one thing he had thought the greatest of lies. The most contemptible of delusions. The most laughable of follies.

  What it meant to be loved, utterly and completely. To be forgiven of all one’s flaws and cherished for ones virtues, however scant they were.

  To be held in the arms of a girl who was, in this world, at least, suddenly as alone and vulnerable as he was.

  A girl who also had the fire of a Contender burning in her once angelic heart.

  A girl who could level up and ascend, just like him.

  Only then did the young Malice dare to think that a dream so foolish as happiness could possibly exist.

  Until faced with the folly of his own corrupted path, so twisted and convoluted, having broken so many rules of ascension that no one had even bothered to tell him existed. Wisdom that would have cost the occasional fellow adventurer Aurelia insisted they befriend nothing to share. Wisdom they had denied him out of spite. Hating his gifts .wishing only for his failure. So he would fall far behind, and they could swoop up his beloved upon Bronze-tier wings. For he was nothing but a sweatshop survivor and former street urchin, the farthest thing from an elite, who had been shown absolutely no path forward to Bronze at all.

  Save one.

  The Path of Betrayal. The most selfish and darkest of paths. One that mocked any limit or imposition that System or conscience could use to bind and strangle and limit.

  And perhaps a tiny portion of Malice meant it when he swore to the pregnant girl in his arms singing to him so softly that he would be her eternal champion… that he could accept his unbreachable bottleneck. That together, having blazed so brightly through White tier as teenage Contenders, they already had more than enough to settle down and be happy in the grandest of cities or the most picturesque of storybook villages.

  Shockingly, for all that his fallen angel had no limitations whatsoever, she had declared that she was quite content to walk no further along the Contender’s path than he. That the joy of adventuring, sweet though it had been to level up and ascend and awe so many who lacked the ability at all… that such sweetness was nothing compared to the joy of oncoming motherhood that she could feel welling up inside her.

  It was a declaration she had made when holding him so tightly as he sobbed bitter tears in her arms. To think that she had actually been willing to surrender any sort of Bronze ascension at all. That she would deny herself the revered pods that her abilities alone earned her the right to challenge for.

  She was content with what she had. Pleased that her wonderful attributes and arcane gifts would allow her to birth easily and give her future family a wonderful life. How shocking it was to realize that she had no further drive or desire for power than that. She even spoke of replacing her powerful profession with that of Elite Homemaker. Not with regret, but fondly. As if more than happy to trade a rare synergism that had boosted her mastery over cold exponentially for the ability to intuitively meet the needs of her future family in all things.

  Her heartfelt declaration had filled that almost redeemed version of Malice with tears of mockery and joy.

  Such a fool. Such a beautiful, loving, treasure of a fool. A girl who had willingly fallen from a higher dimension he could only think of as heaven, all so she could savor mortality’s boons and a family of her own. Epochs before her kind normally did. Revealing another secret his scarred heart dared to cling to. That an alliance could be kept, if the foolish faith of ones partner was so blinding that betrayal was neigh unthinkable. For them alone, you could hold back the blade. Them alone, you could dare to trust, even in sleep.

  A dream of happiness Malice just might have allowed himself to accept…

  Were it not for the nightmares of the sweatshop and the haunted gazes of those who had betrayed him.

  The panicked screams of those he had killed.

  Nightmares that just wouldn’t leave him be.

  ***

  “So you destroyed it, you absolute idiot. You destroyed your one shot at happiness, at redemption for an ascension that sickened you! I can feel it! How much you hate yourself, how much you always hated yourself, even now, as you ascend to Gold!” Bunbun howled with bitter laughter, even in her torment. “You just hate the rest of existence so much that you can’t see how it all ties back to yourself. It’s all the same shade of hate!”

  Yet even as those final thoughts flashed across Lilly’s psyche, a heartbeat before emerging on the other side of that portal and preparing for the ultimate retributive strike, she was struck by another truth as well. One that explained so many things.

  “That’s why you hate Eric so much! You thought you had found a path forward. A second chance! You wanted Aurelia to take you and your firstborn son back to heaven where you could, what, start over in a reality where everyone was so pure and good that no one would ever betray you or hurt you again?”

  She laughed at the sheer, twisted irony. She couldn’t help it. “Are you serious, you pathetic idiot? As if anyone could ever trust that you wouldn’t eventually grow jaded and tired and see how you could use your arts of betrayal to destroy an entire plane of heaven. As if Aurelia could ever trust you, after you deliberately used your firstborn daughter to bear the weight of a Silver-Tier phoenix talisman grinding against the gears of reality itself!”

  Lilith sighed and shook her head at the awful tragedy of it all, before regenerated eyes widened in wonder as she found herself upon a suspension platform of twisted steel fastened to a massive super cable high above the distant moon far below. Her heart ached at the sight of billowing white clouds and lush jungles at the basket ball-sized planet far below, even spotting the ruins of a massive temple of crumbling iron that had once been Soul Steel. And it was from that temple that the massive cable upon which Bunbun’s platform and the world gate were somehow anchored.

  But it didn’t stop there.

  An awed Lilly slowly tilted her eyes upward, seeing what a dazed part of her almost thought must be another moon, far smaller than this one, locked in geosynchronous orbit. And she, she was so high up that gravity now touched her but lightly. So high that if she actually needed air to breathe, she would be suffocating in a near vacuum. It was only at that moment, still rocked by what she had glimpsed of Greed’s tormented psyche, that she finally processed the message her entire body was trying to convey to her.

  She was no longer in pain.

  The hideous sensation of burning alive, every cell screaming to the point that even the System interface had cheerfully informed her that she had well and truly earned the Hyperion Blazer perk for herself, even if she had it on default, thanks to her master’s perks… was that she could actually think past her pain.

  Pain that had gone from constant screaming torment to the fiery burn of uphill sprints in track and field to what now just felt like a too long session in a sauna.

  And that was all.

  Pain that had been a 20 on a 1 to 10 scale had just gone down to a two.

  “How?” She dared to gasp with the incredibly thin air that fortunately didn’t bother her at all.

  Before shaking her reverie away.

  Because there was no time!

  Even now, she could sense Malice pouring his soul through with ever greater urgency, sensing that something climactic was happening back on Earth. She noted as well that on this side of the gate, Malice’s side of the gate, wasn’t warded at all. She could just jump right back through, but then the gate could never be closed and she could sense that Malice was about to slip through entirely for a pristine Golden ascension if she didn’t act RIGHT NOW!

  “REPUDIO!”

  The word seemed to echo endlessly in the impossibly thin air where all she saw was darkness save for the lifeless rock above and the lush, jungle-covered moon far below. Before here eyes were drawn to the giant planet they orbited revealing nothing but darkened clouds and crimson flashes of lightning, with a brooding red sun glaring beyond even that.

  It was a majestic sight, yet all she had eyes for was the portal beginning to warp and bulge far too slowly for Lilly’s liking as she sensed Malice’s soul trying to slip entirely through before the twisting gate screaming in the ether finally erupted and Bunbun was racing through the air just as fast as her attributes and shared traits would let her, feeling sudden sharp pains if she dared race downward, or the awful sense that she would fly apart if she raced upward. The only way to avoid the agony she had thought finally behind her was by staying at precisely the altitude she had arrived at as the gate behind her continued to shriek along etheriel currents before finally erupting with a titanic roar and boom that would have been so much louder, with a shockwave that would have been utterly devastating, had it been on the moon’s surface. As it was, she felt her back fur blazing. Yet that pain was nothing compared to what she had endured.

  Though her revenant heart lurched with panic when the reduced shockwave that did smack into her still risked sending her cartwheeling her into deep space, the cores in her ES Space abruptly lurching as she was hurtled upward.

  She felt a sudden spike of panic, recalling Eric’s faint memories of being taught that dreadnought spaceships could literally hover on the antigravity-like repulsion of even a single core, assuring that no dreadnought would ever fall from orbit. Yet she also knew that once somehow land-bound, cores were fully effected by gravity, with the devastating side-effect being the fierce radiation they gave off from the pressure… which could only mean that the gate she had jumped through was in the Goldilocks zone, where cores were somehow both stable and weightless and not shooting off to space, which made the purpose of the gate painfully clear.

  It hadn’t just been about a method for Malice to transport his bloated, hate-filled soul. It had also been the portal through which the bastard had been dropping cores into the hands of his pawns… and, for all she knew, was how he had given or sold those things to who knew how many players over how many worlds.

  But now the gate was closed. Forever.

  And Bunbun was trapped.

  And she, and her cores, were about to float just a bit to high.

  Just seconds away from the screaming cores tearing free from her ES Space and right out her ruptured, irradiated body.

  A panicked Bunbun hopped toward the moon’s surface at a frantic pace, not stopping until that awful sense of blazing balls burning right through her ES Space finally stopped, and she sobbed with relief, before glaring down at the ancient temple of pain and twisted soul steel and torment that was collapsing upon itself with what she hoped and prayed was the absolute death of its master.

  “If nothing else, I hurt that asshole. I must have!” She sighed. “Because I sense no trace of him. And I don’t think there are any goblins here, either. Did he purge them all as a final step in his ascension as Malice the Betrayer?”

  For a brief heartbeat, she felt profound pity for the goblins, suddenly getting it.

  “Malice made them that way because that’s how he was treated. That’s how he sees people as truly being! So fucking petty and shortsighted and treacherous. With zero concern for social welfare or the greater good or even one’s clan. Where everyone was your enemy, and all that mattered was ascending as far as one could on the backs of anyone that could be enticed, fooled, or tricked. And all those contracts? Those spite-filled contracts were fucking necessary. The only things that kept them all from just tearing out each other’s throats!”

  Bunbun gave a sad shake of her head. Truly, their lord, their god, their creator, had designed those poor goblins to be just as fucked up and bitter and petty as he was.

  For a time, Bunbun allowed herself to float above the lush green world below, doing her best to come to peace with the fact that she just might be stuck here for eternity.

  She smiled at the multiple cheerful System notifications awaiting her that she continued to ignore. Gift presents to unwrap later, she supposed.

  “Well, it was nice playing hero, to do my tiny part to save my home and the people still with us,” she said to herself. “Not quite so dashing as Eric or as beautiful as his sister, but I’d still make an awesome movie as a wise-cracking rabbit. Hell yeah!”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and the sting in her eyes that she totally shouldn’t be feeling as a technically undead but still pretty much fully alive revenant familiar, even if her metabolism was strictly optional, such as when floating so high in the air that oxygen was a dream, but at least the pain had dulled to nothing.

  She sighed, actually feeling almost at peace. She had done her part, and just being able to drift like she once used to float in her school’s pool was a treat all it’s own. And didn’t Eric give all his revenants the option to lose themselves in sweetest eternal slumber? A heaven comprised of all their fantasies and the choicest memories they had.

  The sweet joy of that perfect kiss.

  The wondrous rush of playing Skydragon for the very first time.

  Yet she couldn’t quite do it. She couldn’t quiet lose herself in that eternal dream.

  Having tasted life so intimately, she didn’t want to give it up.

  She wanted to LIVE!

  To truly live.

  And to forge new memories of her own that were real, that counted, that meant something.

  She wanted to savor the joy of watching the world tremble before her hotblooded master’s might.

  She wanted to be a real girl again. A real woman again. And maybe savor the touch of her master as something other than a super cute rabbit.

  She blinked away more stupid tears that instantly froze.

  Such a silly dream.

  As if anything but death awaited her outside of this shape.

  As if she would ever get to love a cute boy, ever again.

  She sighed, gazing down at the planet below, shaking her head.

  Even in a galaxy where the imperial touch was supposedly light indeed, where powerful Silvers were the ones who vied for power and control, she found it passing strange that someone as utterly foul and corrupt and treacherous as Malice had been allowed to exist for as long as he had.

  She suspected it would forever remain a mystery. She could only hope that Eric had been successful, and that the monster was finally dead.

  “Now the only question remains… what am I going to do for the next however many years? How will I unload these cores without being instantly obliterated?

  Then her eyes widened. Realizing that the solution was right above her.

  “That’s right… the higher I go, the more pressure I feel...as if they want to float away… and a few steps more, and they want to burst right through me. So, why not just race a couple hundred feet straight up, or farther still, until I can barely stand the pressure, and then pull them out of storage as fast as I can and let them shoot off so quick I only suffer hopefully non-fatal burns before regenerating?”

  Her ears perked up with a sudden spark of hope. Because there were far worse things then having an entire planet of her own to explore. And maybe discover lost secrets or survivors! Or who knows? Maybe earn levels and build a life for herself! She had something every tactician and power-gamer dreamed of and almost everyone lacked. The ability to maneuver herself to whatever altitude she liked. Beyond mere flight. Dangerous encounter below? She could sore above and pepper any opponent with crimson lightning! Hell, she too was a Level 74 Master Necromancer with all the perks and privileges of an Underlord! She could make her OWN army of loyal revenants to keep her company.

  Or perhaps she’d do no such thing at all. Maybe she’d just savor a happy life nibbling on choice veggies and just being a happy, overpowered bunny. And if there were any survivors below… maybe this was the start of her own world-building saga. One tiny, fragile tribe at a time.

  Maybe.

  At least until the galactic powers-that-be sensed the change in political currents and began sniffing around what looked suspiciously like choice real estate to her.

  Much like the trio of massive arrow-head shaped dreadnoughts sporting absolutely hundreds of plasma cannons, rail guns, and neutron blasters that had just warped into high planetary orbit, if her Identify skill check was anything to go by.

  She stared at the trio of massive behemoths that had just warped in just like in a Nova Trek episode, delighted to find that, even after all she had been through, could still feel a sense of giddy wonder before the sight of such titanic works of ingenuity and brilliant construction.

  Her ears twitched even as she saw a tiny ship break free of the trio of dreadnoughts, now tearing through the atmosphere with glowing engines that didn’t seem to be emitting any discharge, at least none that she could sense, but was definitely propelling itself forward.

  Interestingly enough, their destination seemed to be the location of the former gate and, perhaps more importantly the super cable platform. A platform that now that she thought about it, might have also doubled as a landing pad. Though it had been completely obliterated when she had used her Transcendant Abjuration Necromancer spell to disrupt the gate.

  Because she could actually do that, now, possessing Both Rank 1 Wrath, thanks to the exceedingly rare Perk path Eric had chosen to embrace, in addition to Rank 1 Dominion that Eric had actually sacrificed from his very own essence.

  For her.

  Something she sensed that absolutely no serious Contender or other galactic powerhouse would do, under any circumstances, for anyone.

  Let alone the son of Malice Bane.

  Because Eric was the farthest thing from that monster, and always would be.

  Then Bunbun froze, fear warring with desperate hope when the ship not only stopped, but began flooding the atmosphere with a high pitched signal that… yes! Her wildly absurd Perception, inherited Universal Translator, and ears, of course, allowed her to pick up.

  “Ship 357Y to Port X300. Ship 357Y to Port X300. We are here for pickup. Landing dock has been destroyed. Repeat. Landing dock has been destroyed. No rift anomaly detected. Requesting alternate rendezvous point for pickup. Repeat. Requesting alternate rendezvous point for pickup.”

  Bunbun’s heart began to race. Pierced by a sudden jolt of desperate wild hope… even if she knew that the safest thing to do would be to make absolutely no movement at all. To remain utterly still and cool, and not stick out. Because not even the most sophisticated sensors were going to pick out a tiny familiar that could voluntarily stop her own metabolic processes and give off no radiant heat, floating several miles away against the backdrop of a black night sky and the lush green planet below, if they weren’t looking for her.

  If all their attention was on the ruined landing dock and gate.

  But she knew damn well that if she didn’t take a hold of this opportunity, it might be years before anyone came this way again. And what were the chances she’d even be around to see them? To interact with them? That explorers or settlers wouldn’t arrive half a world away?

  “Ship 357Y. State the nature of your pickup!” She squealed in hyperspeak, a frequency Eric had used to goad any number of high powered enemies in Battletime, and it seemed that experience, plus her Universal Translator was, by some miracle, actually enough to communicate with a ship still two miles away.

  And now rapidly approaching.

  With two brightly glowing points on the ship’s front that could only be weapon batteries that made her suddenly certain that this might have been a very bad idea. Especially when Danger Sense made it clear that hey had just locked right on her!

  The only thing cutting through her sudden terror was the sweet joy of knowing that she actually had Danger Sense. Yay!

  Surprisingly, instead of being blasted to atoms, she actually got a response.

  “This is Ship 357Y. Identify yourself.”

  The words were curt and to the point. But at least they were talking!

  Bunbun’s undead heart began to pound with horror the equal of her growing spike of excitement. Suddenly certain that she understood why they were here.

  What they were after.

  And why Malice had been allowed to both grow and flourish, no matter how malevolent his touch to countless hapless tribes and factions over who knew how many vulnerable worlds.

  Still… it was a gamble. A serious gamble. But it just might be the solution to multiple problems at once. And, if she played her cards right…

  “This is Bunz. And if my understanding regarding the nature of the package you wish to pick up is correct…” She let the tense silence hang for long moments. “Maybe we can do business.”

  Battleforged Book 5, Phoenix Fire, is now live on Amazon!

  Battleforged: Phoenix Fire