Saturday, July 23, 4 S.E.

  Kairia Yunalesca Paendrag entered Dawnhaven unbowed.

  She and a single Vanguard Squad had boldly approached the main settlement of [Unclaimed Sector 117] absent fanfare or announcement, but had done so with a white flag to signify their intentions. It had proven to be a wise idea, too, when they’d been quickly and efficiently confronted by a full ‘platoon’, as she thought of it, of the local Fantasies.

  Golden-armored knife-ears, resplendent in their invaders’ regalia, had halted them thirty meters shy of the gate—moving in a calm, confident formation that spoke of discipline and considerable training. Even at Elite rank, Kairi had felt certain she wouldn’t have been able to handle them, given the fact that her own force of seven, including herself, was far less prone to such synergistic teamwork.

  It had been a tense moment of confrontation until she’d revealed the local currency she wanted to exchange, and the list of supplies they’d made as an excuse for visitation. The words ‘Reaper’s Shadow’ had left the lips of the platoon’s leader more times than she’d have liked—but her genuine desire to trade had seemingly swayed the opinion.

  They’d been given strict instructions to obey the city's laws and told, in no uncertain terms, that local enforcement would act first and ask questions later if they were involved in a conflict, which Kairi had accepted easily enough. There was no reason to fight, after all, given that their purpose was reconnaissance, not assault. Hers was a more personal matter, but the golden-armored Fantasies didn’t need to know that.

  Once the ‘Lance-Master’ of the ‘Dawnguard’ force, as she remembered they were called, cleared them for entry—begrudgingly, she noted—and handed out identification scrolls, Kairi and her six escorts had entered the city without much hassle so long as they had the scrolls ready for inspection when needed.

  As much as she hated to admit it, the City was beautiful.

  Dawnhaven was a rare jewel of prosperity in a world gone mad.

  “This is uncanny,” Larissa, the cropped-cut dark-haired leader of her Vanguard Squad, said quietly as they walked. “Look at it, Reaper. The stalls, the shops, the outfits—where the hell do they even get the materials? This place looks like it stepped out of a goddamn video game.”

  “I told you it wasn’t the same as the rest,” Kairi responded neutrally, her sapphire gaze meeting Larissa’s brown and then shifting out to take in the spectacle again. “These Fantasies aren’t like the others. They came here ready. Prepared. This place is a fortress as much as it is a landing zone. These aren’t people looking to settle peacefully. They’re going to want to expand.”

  “And the Quest needs us to take this on?” Larissa asked skeptically. “Even if we had three Nomad Clans, I don’t know that we could—”

  “Fighting isn’t going to resolve anything for us. We need to retrieve the item surgically,” Kairi said in return, while giving in to her curiosity and wandering over to where a human man was hawking what looked like hotdogs. “Conventional force would just end with us crippled or dead. We’re not as dumb as the other factions. Forget the Alliance and Coalition, the Visigoths are far dumber than we are, and that’s to say nothing about the Defiers or the Reclaimers.”

  “They’re crazy if they think they can stop this…” Larissa said as she trailed off.

  “Humanity lost already, Larissa,” Kairi muttered. “All we can do now is figure out how to make the best of it.”

  The vendor, it turned out, was running a hotdog stand—albeit an odd one. It sold old-style sausages instead of the mass-produced ones she was used to, but she still ended up buying seven, one for each of them, and distributing them to the delight of her Vanguards. How long had it been since they’d eaten food like that?

  She didn’t want to think about it.

  “God, this is good,” Tristan, one of the Vanguards, said behind her. “The onions, the sauce—whatever the hell this blue stuff is, we need some, Reaper.”

  “I’ll add it to the list,” Kairi said dryly, and nodded her thanks to the vendor.

  “Y’all new here?” the man asked as she turned, stopping her short.

  “What gave it away?” Kairi responded when she turned back, casually.

  “The fashion,” he said with a laugh. “Ain’t many folks ‘round Dawnhaven dressed so damn normal, miss.”

  Kairi glanced down at herself at his words. She’d chosen a simple black jacket, an old punk rock band shirt, and a pair of belted blue jeans for the journey—leaving her combat attire and weapons stored in her [Spatial Storage Ring]. Her companions were dressed the same, almost universally in old pre-Incursion attire.

  “We’re from down south,” Kairi said vaguely, and nodded out to the city. “What’s it like here?”

  “Here? Hell, miss, it’s a damn sight better than wherever y’all are from, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so. The Haelfenn are a bit prickly, but they’re good to us for the most part, and the humans control the Merchant Council mostly, which helps avoid business issues.”

  “Merchant Council?” Kairi asked with a flicker of genuine curiosity, rather than for intelligence-gathering.

  “Yep! Folks’re in charge of managing the markets and the sales taxes and what-have-you. Good folk. They get a bit greedy sometimes, but then the Princess or the Dusk-Lord sits ‘em down and gives ‘em the what fer, and mostly they grumble but accept it. Constant cycle, that. Good old human greed.”

  “The Fan—Haelfenn let you govern yourselves?” Kairi asked with a careful correction, her hotdog forgotten in her hand.

  “Oh, yes and no, miss,” the vendor said with a chortle. “We get rights, we get protections, they give us a roof over our heads, clean sheets, and warmth—but unless yer a Citizen, the rest y’gotta earn yer own self.”

  “Are you a Citizen?” Kairi asked with genuine interest.

  “Resident,” the man said easily. “I didn’t serve in the Army or one of the Guards, and I don’t make enough profit to buy my Citizenship yet, so I’m afforded normal rights but some of the nicer stuff what lurks in the Peacock District and whatnot ain’t available fer me.”

  “That sounds like… a lot,” Kairi said, pursing her lips.

  “Oh, it ain’t all bad,” the man chuckled. “Not since the Black Knight, especially. Them Haelfenn have been real nice to us all since him.”

  “Black Knight?” Larissa chimed in, “Who’s that?”

  “Gosh, y’all really are new here,” the vendor laughed and turned, slapping a poster on his stall’s wall that said ‘Black Knight eats free!’ with a grin. “The Black Knight! First Archon of Terran Blood, Defier of the Heavens, Slayer of the Nine-Headed Hydra, the mad bastard who managed to make himself a damn Earl.”

  “Does this mythological hero have a name?” Kairi asked dryly.

  “Yeah, Achilles,” the man said with a grin. “Mad, right?”

  “Achilles?” Kairi asked carefully. “A moniker?”

  “Sure, a moniker,” the man said agreeably. “If y’all wanna know more, there’s a damn-near shrine to him at the Arena,” he said, and pointed to a distant, circular structure towering a distance away. “Y’all can find out more there. It could be worth y’all checking it out, if you’re lookin’ for strong humans to talk to. He’s a man of the people, the Black Knight.”

  Kairi relaxed a little at the revelation that it was a moniker.

  She’d almost thought the man meant another Achilles, but that seemed improbable. Hydras were Initiates at their weakest, and her brother hadn’t even been level one when she’d met him. Ace was probably goggling at hot elven women, if he wasn’t locked up. That was what she was there to figure out, at any rate. She wasn’t going to leave him to the tender mercies of the Fantasies.

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  “Thanks for the ‘dogs,” Kairi said genuinely. “Have a nice day, sir.”

  “Y’all too! Be safe now, ya hear!”

  The Vanguards raised their hotdogs in appreciation to the man as Kairi led them away, and her lips downturned into a frown of thought.

  “Problem, Reap?” Larissa asked casually.

  “No, I don’t think so,” Kairi said mildly, and pressed on through the crowd. “The name just had some commonality, but I can see someone as pretentious as a ‘Black Knight’ using Achilles as a moniker.”

  “You know someone unironically named Achilles?” Larissa asked skeptically.

  “My big brother,” Kairi said with a small shrug. “Our parents are total nerds.”

  “Better than ‘Sheldon’,” one of the Vanguards, named Sheldon, chimed up morosely.

  “I’d take Sheldon over being named after a video game character,” Kairi said back dryly, and earned herself a round of chuckles.

  “Man, I miss video games…” one of the other Vanguards said, which immediately and naturally prompted an argument about which console had been better, which then devolved into the Console versus Computer argument, which Kairi promptly tuned out. Even in a post-Apocalypse, people had their favorites.

  “Where next, Reap?” Larissa asked as she finished the last of her hotdog. “And are you gonna eat that?”

  Kairi snorted and handed her the hotdog without complaint, while eyeing the distant aspect of the Arena. “We’ll go see this Shrine. Maybe the Black Knight could help us, if he’s as magnanimous as the vendor believes.”

  “Help us with what?” Larissa asked skeptically as she bit into the hotdog.

  “I doubt he wants some Cataclysm thing threatening the people here,” Kairi said casually, and stuck her hands into her pockets as she walked. “And he’s not a faction leader, so he won’t have anything to gain from the Quest. It might help us to recruit him.”

  And I can see if he’s heard of Ace. Their names are similar, after all.

  The seven of them moved steadily from that point, winding unobtrusively through the crowds, other than the occasional odd look their attire attracted. A patrol stopped them twice on the way to the Arena, but true to the Lance-Master’s word, the presentation of their scrolls resulted in a relatively cordial interaction and a calm reminder to obey the City’s laws before they were moved along.

  The Arena itself was massive when they finally reached it, open but largely ignored in the immediate, likely because of the lack of active entertainment, Kairi supposed. They approached it idly, looking around until one of the Vanguards whistled and pointed out what they wanted: a mural, of all things.

  The image had been painted onto the Arena’s white walls on the outside, and as Kairi drew closer, she raised her eyebrows. It was a twelve-foot-tall depiction of a presumptive Terran man in obsidian warplate, his red-edged black sword planted before him through the massive head of a draconic creature, while scarlet and violet lightning blistered around his body in a maelstrom of tangible power. The winged helmet he wore bore a pair of radiant crimson eye-lenses, each one seeming to burn menacingly.

  The mural seemed to glow faintly, shifting with subtle movement that seemed partially aetheric in nature. A red cloak, the color of blood, flowed out from behind him, and beneath the Mural were painted the words ‘Black Knight of Dawnhaven, Terran Champion’.

  Larissa let out a low whistle as she examined the depiction.

  “I feel pregnant,” she said mildly, munching her hotdog.

  “Aren’t you gay, Riss?” one of the Vanguards asked in amusement.

  “Nobody’s that gay, Josh,” she replied idly.

  “Nobody’s that straight, either,” Sheldon muttered. “Can you imagine if this dude were with us?”

  “The Alliance would shit themselves,” said Jocelyn, another of the Vanguards. “Damn.”

  “Feels like the mural’s got power all its own, doesn’t it? Freaky shit,” Larissa said again. “What do you think, Reap?”

  Kairi narrowed her eyes at the depiction and shook her head.

  “They make him look like a myth, not a person. No way this clown is that strong. It’s gotta be overblown.”

  “I suppose you’re ri—”

  “You take that back!” a young voice shouted, drawing the Nomads’ collective attention as a boy—a teenager, Kairi thought—stormed toward them, attired in fine-looking black clothes trimmed in purple. “How dare you!”

  A young girl around the same age and two exasperated-looking adults hurried in his wake, and Kairi mentally clocked the older pair as the boy’s parents.

  “Pardon?” she said to the young man when he drew closer, looking at him evenly.

  “You take back what you said! He’s not overblown. You can’t just insult him like it doesn’t matter!”

  “John!” the girl following him hissed, passing an apologetic smile to Kairi and her companions and grabbing the boy by the arm. “You shouldn’t be yelling at people, John. The Duches—”

  “They insulted my Senior Brother!” he shot back. “I have to defend his honor!”

  This kid reads too much Xianxia.

  “John,” the girl said with worry as she eyed Kairi, “this isn’t a good idea.”

  The girl’s sharp, Kairi thought mildly. Smarter than he is, for sure. She can tell we’re not just random citizens. Good kid.

  “I—I can’t just leave that insult, though, Sonya! I’m a Knight!”

  Kairi shook her head in faint amusement at the boy’s words as the parents finally arrived, both adults looking from their rambunctious son to Kairi and her cohorts. For their part, the Vanguards simply waved, trying to appear friendly, which seemed to only barely relax the older pair.

  “John,” the boy’s father said gruffly, “apologize.”

  “Dad! They insulted him!” he said stubbornly. “Ace isn’t even here to—”

  Kairi’s eyes narrowed, and she stepped forward without thinking, her fourth-tier speed turning her into a blur as she came to a halt before the quartet.

  All four reacted with alarm, and the parents instinctively drew the children back, staring at her in a mix of fear and defiance. The mother’s lips pursed, and she glanced around, as if seeking help, while the father seemed to be quickly counting her Vanguards—even then closing distance—as they tried to appear inconspicuous.

  “Ace,” Kairi said while staring at the boy, John, unblinkingly. “You said ‘Ace’. Explain.”

  “H-Huh?” the boy said, staring at her with wide eyes. “W-what do you mean?”

  “Ace,” Kairi repeated again, her voice cold to her own ears. “Explain what you meant by that.”

  “Miss,” the girl said before anyone could speak, her eyes peering up at Kairi quietly, “do you know Ace?”

  Kairi turned to her as the parents stiffened, clearly on the edge of doing something reckless, and Kairi inclined her head as instinct overrode caution. Something about the girl seemed to call to her, though she couldn’t explain why. “Perhaps. I have a brother who uses that nickname. His name is Leonidas.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, and she looked from the mural, back to Kairi, and then at the adults, who looked momentarily troubled.

  “Pat,” the mother said abruptly, her eyes focused on Kairi. “Her eyes, Pat.”

  The man, still holding his son to him protectively, blinked at his presumptive wife’s words and stared at Kairi more intently, before blinking again.

  “Well, I’ll be damned, Elise,” he muttered gruffly once more. “You’re right.”

  Kairi arched her eyebrow at the pair, and despite the tension in the moment, the woman smiled at her.

  “You have the same eyes, miss. The same as his.”

  Kairi’s heart hammered in her chest, and she took a step back, curling her right hand into a fist.

  “You know a man called Ace with the first name Leonidas?” she asked again, her voice schooled to as much calm as she could muster.

  “We do, miss,” the mother, Elise, said again, a cautious look in her eyes, but a smile present as well. “You, ah, just insulted him. The mural, I mean.”

  Kairi’s eyebrows rose at the words, and she—along with the Vanguards—instinctively glanced back at the mural again.

  What…?

  “Leonidas Achilles,” Elise elaborated with what sounded like faint amusement. “Earl Latherian, First Archon of Terran Blood, Defier of Heavens, Slayer of the Nine-Headed Hydra, Strategic Keystone Adventurer, and titled Black Knight of Dawnhaven.”

  Kairi turned back to Elise and felt her world fall out from under her feet.

  Behind her, someone—Larissa, she thought—whistled quietly.

  “Your brother, miss—”

  “Kairi,” she said abruptly. “I—My name is Kairi. Kairi Paendrag.”

  Elise smiled again, more warmly, and nodded.

  “Your brother, Kairi, is one of the most influential men in Dawnhaven. We also happen to live under the auspices of his Guardian.”

  “His Guardian?” she queried automatically, mind still racing at what she was hearing.

  “The Duchess of Twilight, Ceruviel Latherian,” the older woman clarified warmly. “Would you like to visit?”

  Kairi glanced at her Vanguards and then swallowed before turning back and nodding, her eyes dropping to the still-defensive-looking young man.

  “Hey, kid. You said your name was John?”

  “No, but it is,” he grumbled, looking far less frightened now.

  “Sorry for scaring you, John,” Kairi said sincerely, and earned a look of approval from his parents and the girl—Sonya—who beamed at her shyly.

  “...whatever,” John said with a small blush. “Are you gonna come see the Duchess, um, Kairi?”

  Kairi looked from John to his parents, who were watching her more curiously now.

  “I think I am,” she said after a moment of hesitation.

  God damn it, Ace, she thought to herself as the family motioned them all to follow. What the hell have you gotten yourself into?

  Kairi Yunalesca Paendrag Concept Art

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