Judge: mission updated. Criminals eliminated: 3/10.
Blue Alert: mission updated. The elimination of the group of Possessed Ones has been confirmed.
To claim your reward, please visit the nearest Stellar terminal.
Miko brought her hands together as if in prayer and whispered,
“Grey, we did it...”
She highlighted several items lurking amid the legendary Technomancer’s remains. My cryptor; a weird-looking amulet; and the long cylinder of an animarium, exactly like the one Kai’s soul had been trapped in. I took a step forward and picked them up. Then I touched Gnarl’s remains.
You’ve received 43000 Azure!
Neurosphere complete!
Neurosphere complete!
Total Azure count: 5100/36300
You’ve received Schrader’s Genome!
You’ve received...
So that was it, then. He was dead. Dead the ultimate death, no other options available.
Just like the rest of them. The Black Moon cast its bright light on the ruins and the motionless bodies scattered around. The Rogues, Gnarl, Evyl, Kai, Alice – all of them lying around me, all dead. I desperately scanned the place with my psi-field but couldn’t detect a single trace of another person’s mental presence. We’d won but—
Bitter tears stung my eyes. A hot bitter wave rose within me. It was all happening again, wasn’t it? Same thing that had happened to Tara who’d been killed before my own eyes. Everybody I wanted to help, everybody I promised to protect — they’d all died. They died because of me.
There was precious little left of Kai, only a few body parts. But as for Alice...
Where had she met her death? The Beast had disappeared, his death scene a circle of scorched earth. Alice’s body lay within it. It appeared fully healed and intact – but still she didn’t breathe.
I dropped to my knees and lifted her head, feeling her cold brow. Dead? Nothing I could do – again?
And still... I could sense a flicker of life inside, a barely kindling spark of light. You had to really focus to notice it. Could she still be alive?
“Grey, her anima is still there. But it’s very badly damaged.”
I tried to touch Alice’s mind, awaken it, tried to blow up the tiny flame, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. If Gnarl was to be believed, her Enyo processes responsible for the energy information exchange within a living creature had apparently been disrupted. The Azuric shock had severed the link between her soul and her body, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do in order to restore it!
“Grey, wait a sec. What if our psi field is simply not strong enough? You’re an Enchanter, for crissakes! What have you got that amplifier for?”
Lion Face’s silver headband clicked shut on my forehead, granting my mind the clarity and brightness that came with extrasensory perception. This was my last Azure battery. I had three minutes.
“Grey, try to restore the severed link.”
Miko drew a scheme, showing me the complex tangle of the finest threads which issued from Alice’s Source, connecting it to every nerve ending in her body. With Miko’s guidance I began the finicky, painstaking process of threading her nerve endings with gossamer filaments that I pulled out of the barely glowing ember of her soul. One by one... one after another...
Suddenly I received confirmation that I was on the right track. As soon as I’d connected her Source to her body’s main nerve centers, her anima began to glow brighter and clearer, getting stronger by the second.
The blow from the Lash of Void had nearly killed her. She was saved by the fact that her mind had been taken over by the Beast who’d received the brunt of the attack. The Azuric monster within her had died, shielding her against his own will – at least I couldn’t detect any traces of any symbiotic entity still lurking within Alice’s mind.
She breathed a sigh and opened her eyes. Seeing my face, she smiled weakly and laced her arm around my neck.
“Enchanter,” she whispered.
I picked her up in my arms and walked toward the hilltop crowned by the mammoth black needle of the Monolith.
Epilogue
THE STATUE OF ANGEL had been reduced to a shapeless chunk of stone. His wings had been broken off; his face and body were dented and pockmarked with direct hits. Still, he hadn’t fallen. He stood tall on his pedestal just as he had before, as if he continued to protect his city.
But this time the sea of blue poppies surrounding him was much bigger. Every tenth inhabitant of Fort Angelo had died during the siege.
I stroked the petals of the flowers freshly planted in the loose black soil. Sweet sorrow clenched my heart as I remembered the faces of all the people who’d become my friends here.
“Knox died when they blew up level zero,” Ykie was saying. “And Rico suffocated from lack of oxygen. We never stopped believing Angel would be back. We fought as hard as we could.”
She was the only familiar face I’d come across – apart from Nerd who was stuck at the medical center recovering from a severe bullet wound. We were sitting on the parapet of the smashed fountain. Sniffling her nose, Ykie updated me on the fort’s tribulations.
The settlement’s ground level had been reduced to ugly blackened ruins pitted with bullets and shrapnel. After an exhausting siege, the Rogues had managed to storm the fort, only to get tied up in fierce street fighting. Gradually – according to Ykie – the fighting had been pushed into the underground levels where the invaders had to pay in blood for every step they took. The Angels had put up a dogged resistance — until the Rogues cemented all the exits and air vents, hoping to starve the defenders out.
“That’s when the Legionnaires came?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she winced, casting an unkind look at an approaching patrol. “They unblocked the exits and let us out. Not many of us had survived though. There was almost no air left...”
“So what’s gonna happen now?”
She shrugged. “No idea. We have no intention of becoming slaves to the City, if that’s what you mean. Megan is negotiating with them now. From what I heard, the Convoy had taken off and left even before the Legionnaires arrived...”
I suppressed a chuckle. I’d heard about it too. Having lost their leaders in the confrontation by the Monolith, the Convoy had wrapped up the siege and left for up North. Apparently, the Legion even went through the motions of going after them albeit not trying too hard: once the Blue Alert had been canceled, the City’s emergency-response unit was much more preoccupied with the fort’s own fate.
I’d already seen legionnaires in the fort: lots of them, in fact, posted on the streets and intersections, as well as by the entry gates. Trained soldiers clad in gray-and-green camo capes, closed helmets and pieces of armor which looked eerily medieval, they’d taken over from the local militia and seemed to be quite friendly, offering help to the locals. And still you had to be blind not to notice the defenders’ mistrust for the newcomers and the weapons they kept ready just in case.
The Legionnaires weren’t welcome here. Nobody liked them.
“So what are you gonna do now?” Ykie asked timidly. “You staying with us? Or are you gonna go back to the City to join your own?”
“I really don’t know,” I said slowly. “I’m not sure yet...”
“You’ve changed. The look in your eyes is different,” she said softly. “Your hair seems to be darker. I barely recognized you.”
One of the Legionnaires’ patrols posted in the square stopped in front of us. Their leader had the stripes of a Grand Allarch on his shoulder patch. A small scanning device was mounted on his helmet, its barely visible beam studying every passerby. When it ran over me, I sensed an unpleasant prickling sensation in the almost-forgotten tattoo over my right eyebrow.
The City mark: the first thing Tara had noticed when we’d first met.
The Legionnaires stopped opposite us. I took in the impenetrable visors of their closed helmets and the shoulder patches sporting the
Star of Stellar. Two of them were regular human beings, but the third one – I sensed something different about him. He had a Source. Not as strong as the ones Incarnators had, but this was definitely someone with Azuric abilities. Probably a descendant of an Incarnator, one of those fake Warriors, Enchanters or Technomancers that Timus trained up for the Legion.
The scanning grid paused over me. A bright red light flashed on the Grand Allarch’s bracer.
I heard his muffled voice distorted by his helmet’s filters:
“Sven Greyholm. Beta stratum, Timus cadet, second year. Listed as Killed in Action. How did you get here? What are you doing here?”
Before I could reply, the other two flanked me, their pulse guns at the ready.
“I’m detaining you until further notice. Follow me.”
Stellar’s Archives
Azuric Entities
The Utopian animaturgists entrusted with the task of studying the Edge eventually came across some creatures apparently capable of surviving in A-space. These creatures received the name of “Azuric entities”. They can’t be defined as either good or bad; many of them can be described as a fusion of several bizarre souls or the embodiment of some inhuman desires. Whenever some of these creatures escape into our world – a process known as the Outbreak – their invasion leads to a major catastrophe. The only way to stop them is by employing Azuric weapons.
Stellar’s system lists them under four glyphs:
Anima
Fiend
Ahriman
Sephiroth
Anima is a lost soul, an immaterial Azuric entity which can belong to any of the thousands of sentient races in our Universe. An ethereal creature that wanders on its own, it’s invisible in our material world, presenting no real danger. Every day, billions of souls follow their unique destinies as they cross the invisible Edge, completing the universal cycle of life and death. The animaturgists discovered ways to trap, control and modify them, giving rise to the research which later became the basis of Incarnation Protocol.
The second in importance among Azuric entities is Fiend.
The animaturgists tend to believe that Fiends are formed as the consequence of an anima’s extended aimless journeys over the Edge. If for some reason such souls are denied the ability to reincarnate, they can’t transcend the Edge, doomed to remain in the empty void of A-space. Gradually, the prolonged exposure to Azure alters such an Anima’s nature, transforming it into malicious vermin in possession of some rudiments of sentience. This is a highly dangerous creature which can only be countered with Azuric weapons or certain combat abilities pertinent to Enchanters. Escaping from over the Edge during outbreaks, Fiends wreak havoc and aggression, normally looking for a suitable host body. They’re not picky, often settling for the first animal, human being or Necro they come across, in which case they change class to Sauron, Lilith or Izanami. Whenever there’s a manifestation of an especially malicious monster whose power and cunning far exceed those of all the other representatives of its species, most likely we’re dealing with a Fiend. Luckily, both their sentience and their paranormal abilities are quite limited which is why these particular Entities rarely exceed warning level Red.
In spite of this, they still require immediate extermination because there’s a high chance of them becoming leaders of murderous packs of monsters. The animaturgists have created special capture and extermination protocols. Fiends are also used by artifactologists in order to add paranormal properties to certain items. Those Incarnators who choose to develop the gift of Enchanter are capable of establishing contact with Fiends, as well as control and tame them.
Ahriman is the third type of A-Entities from over the Edge.
This glyph is used to describe some of the most dangerous of all super creatures, who escape from over the Edge only occasionally. According to the theory offered by the animaturgists, an Ahriman is a product of a Fiend’s evolution after thousands of years spent prowling A-space in search for any stray souls. By devouring them, it acquires some of its victims’ memories and experiences, thus becoming stronger and more dangerous with every kill. An Ahriman can be described as a tangle of souls fused together – a sublimation, if you wish – controlled by a sadistically malign mind. This is a rather powerful entity which boasts some extremely potent paranormal abilities. Whenever they break out into our world, they often become a grotesque personification of every vileness and vice: violence, aggression, greed and lust to name just a few. Whenever they invade a host body, becoming an Izanami, a Sauron or a Lilith, these spirits can be especially dangerous. Their incredible paranormal abilities, a cunning alien mind and antithetical morals can turn them into a true bane of an entire area. Whenever an Ahriman is sighted, Stellar’s system issues a combat mission, demanding its elimination at all costs. In case of the creature’s especially rapid development and the resulting major threat, the system may sound Blue Alert.
The last but not least of Azuric Entities is classified as Sephiroth.
Admittedly, Utopian animaturgists had never arrived at a consensus regarding its nature, origin, or its purpose. The study of these kinds of creatures can be quite challenging. The Sephiroth is an essentially metempirical creature, a super-entity which forms over the Edge out of billions of souls united by a single idea, religion, goal, or vice. Once the vibes emitted by a sentient civilization become stable and powerful enough, its departing animas carry such vibes back with them over the Edge. There, like-minded animas begin to merge – a process which may take eons – ultimately forming a Sephiroth which is the embodiment and the avatar of their collective desire. You could call them Gods born over the Edge. Those are infinitely powerful and equally dangerous creatures — true Lords of Azure. There can be no doubt of their supernatural sentience.
Incidents of the Sephiroth breaking out into our world can be counted on the fingers of one hand. All of them ended in catastrophes on a continental scale and required the pronouncement of Red Alerts. The access to all data pertinent to Sephiroth-class creatures has been restricted by Stellar’s Archives due to the high probability of such kind of knowledge triggering a global disaster.
A-Energents
A-Energents are creatures that exist in the form of pure energy.
When untamed energy breaks out from over the Edge, it transforms and brings to life everything it touches, resulting in the emersion of quaint creatures which come in a great variety of most unusual shapes and can only exist at the boundary of the material and ethereal worlds. A-Energents don’t possess sentience as we understand it as they’re but the personification of Azure, but still they’re capable of interacting with our subconscious, often assuming the shape of our most dreaded phobias.
A-Energents are quite common in the areas adjacent to Outbreak sites and in the zones of close contact with the Edge. They can also be found near anomalous sightings of untamed Azure. The biggest danger they present is in their immunity to physical weapons as well as in their powerful psionic abilities which pose a threat even for the most experienced Incarnators, especially when such creatures prowl in packs.
They can only be scared away by employing psionic abilities; and the only way to damage or destroy their ethereal bodies is through the use of Azuric weapons or by engaging certain combat abilities pertinent to Enchanters. The use of the Absolute weapon is known to completely eliminate A-Energents within its kill radius.
Stellar’s system lists them under four glyphs:
Void
Elemental
Golem
Monad
Voids are ethereal creatures best likened to regular ghosts. Invisible under normal circumstances, they can sometimes assume the shape of wisps of mist, wavering shadows or phantom beings. Their approach triggers a bout of anxiety, unconscious fear and an irrational sense of presence. The Voids, especially small ones, are drawn to living minds. They are attracted to them like moths to flames, instinctively striving to extinguish another creature’s consciousness. They can be encountered
in A-zones, Outbreak sites and the zones of recent contact with the Edge. They need Azure to survive, so without a strong stable source of A-radiation they gradually disintegrate and vanish into thin air. Although a single Void generally poses no particular threat, a swarm of these energy beings is quite capable of wiping out an entire Incarnator group. Like with all Energents, the biggest risk they pose is in their Azuric damage which harms a sentient victim’s anima.
Recommended defense and elimination tools:
Psionic attack;
Mind-protecting Azuric artifacts;
The Enchanter (Project Stellar Book 2): LitRPG Series Page 38
