The problem with escaping from a death trap is that it means someone was trying to kill you and they still have a reason to keep trying. That was the first thought that went through my head as I struggled to get up off the ground and find out how the others were doing. The second thought that went through my head was ‘I probably needed those muscles.’ That was in reference to deep stab wounds I’d taken to the right shoulder and left leg.

I’d been hurt before, even stabbed repeatedly. That didn’t make it any easier to get by with the wounds the bone stealer had inflicted on me though. As it turned out, the blood loss made me light headed enough that the pain was only unbearable. Under the circumstances that was actually a good thing. If I was any worse off I wouldn’t have been able to stay conscious and I was pretty sure that passing out would be a death sentence.

“Fari, Darius, you still with me?” I called out.

The explosion that had dropped us back on the surface had been due the teleportation portal overloading when I smashed it. The magics in the crystals were enchanted to transport people back up to the surface. They’d been controlled by various limiting spells to prevent unauthorized people from leaving the facility, but smashing the crystals directly had been enough to release the transport spell from the restraints placed on it.

Of course it could just as easily have transported us to a million separate places, or smushed us into one very tiny one. We’d been lucky there. I wasn’t sure the same was true for anyone else in the Deep Run Containment Facility though. The amount of power stored in a teleportation crystal was tremendous. The facility was huge, well shielded and built out of solid stone. It was also buried in magma and reliant on protective spells to survive. Even assuming the blast from the exploding gate didn’t kill the people left there, it could easily have disrupted the prison’s defenses and allowed the molten rock to begin burning its way in.

“Mel! Are you ok?” I heard a grinding, inhuman voice ask. Turning my head, I saw a bone stealer twice the size of the one’s we’d fought in the prison. It was looming over me with its claws and pincers paused as though they were waiting for me to try to escape.

“Fari, that’s you in there right?” I asked. If it wasn’t I was dead. I could barely move much less fight and even at my best it would have been hard to take out something that big.

“Yeah. I can’t let these things go or they’ll spread out and look for new victims.” she said.

I breathed a big sigh of relief, then I noticed the Memory Eye floating over us.

Memory Eyes are remote sensing spells. They allowed mental anima casters to view areas hundreds of miles away. From what little I knew of them I gathered that they took a significant amount of power to sustain. That meant it wasn’t a permanent observer spell. Someone had cast it recently. Probably when the teleport disk blew up.

I looked around to see what the Eye was taking in. It had a good view of the surroundings from it’s position about fifty feet above us. Despite being on the ground, I could see most of what it could, thanks to the damage the portal had caused when it exploded. The ruins of the entrance facility lay all around us. There had been two small buildings and a guard post when we’d landed. Add to that the transport ship that Lt. Mara’s team had brought us in and you had four things that had been reduced to tiny bits of scrap by the explosion.

The iron door in the mountain that appeared to be the entrance was dented and crumpled too. Behind it I saw a lattice of glowing spell lines. It had been part of the teleportation mechanism but without the transport disk it wasn’t going to moving anyone in or out of prison any time soon.

I didn’t look too closely at the wreckage that was left of the buildings. I’d seen a few people in there when we’d first landed. I didn’t know if they were still around when the explosion went off. Given the rubble the buildings had been reduced to, I had to guess that finding the answer to that could be unpleasant.

“I can’t believe we’re still alive.” Darius said, limping over to stand near me. He shook his head to clear away the fuzziness of the nearly fatal teleportation effect.

The Eye tracked to him, and then back to Fari and I.

“That might not last.” I told him.

“We’re out of the prison now, and it sounds like Fari has control of that monster. I can call in some support for us.” he said. The Eye floated down closer to him.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.” I said.

“We’ve just lost one of the most secure facilities the Hellsreach Common Council has. Whether it’s a good idea or not, I have to call this in.” he said.

The Eye turned from a semi-translucent white to a deep red as Darius tapped on his comm device. I didn’t need to know exactly what it was doing to know that it couldn’t be anything good.

“No connection. We’re still being jammed.” he said. “Maybe we need to get farther from the blast site? Can you check on the Lieutenant while I see if they’re ok  I can get a link back to base?”

“Bit of a problem with that.” I said and pointed at my leg where the blood had soaked through the fabric of my pants.

“You’re hurt? Why didn’t you say something!” he said.

“I’ll be ok. I’ve stopped the bleeding with an internal anima spell. I’ll just need time to mend the wounds themselves.” I said.

“I’ll check out the squad then.” he said.

“Maybe we can help each other out.” I said to Fari as Darius went over and began inspecting his fallen comrades.

“How?” she asked.

“Can you get rid of that Memory Eye?” I asked her, glancing upwards to where it hung in the sky.

“Yes, or I can also reverse it if you like? Give us a glimpse of whoever’s spying on us.” she told me telepathically while at the same time saying “No.” outloud.

“That would be amazing.” I replied on the telepathic link.

I felt Fari’s mind touch mine directly. It was what I imagined standing on the shore of a vast sea would feel like. From that light contact, my vision and hearing were pulled out of me and along on a riptide of magic until a scene resolved itself in front of me.

Following the other end of the Memory Eye lead us to a luxurious study. The dark woods of the floor and walls shone with a deep luster in the subdued candle light that illuminated the small room. Bookshelves lined every wall and were packed with tomes and scrolls of all kinds. It was the center of the room that drew my attention though.

The casting circle in the center of the room gleamed with reflected light. In its center sat a man in long red robe, wearing a helmet of solid bone that covered his head. He couldn’t see out of the mask without some form of magic, but I took it as a given that he had that to spare.

I saw him jerk into alertness as Fari’s spell revealed his room to us. He made a few simple gestures – counterspells unless my guess was off – but they didn’t produce any effect. Seeing that, he settled back into the casting circle and began weaving a separate spell.

“Interesting. I haven’t had to face a mental caster of your caliber in some time.” Red Robes said.

“You don’t know what you’re facing.” I said, counting on Fari to project my words without opening a link that he could use against me.

“A Crystal Guardian and her apprentice. And you, I believe, are the apprentice.” Red Robes said. “Tell me, has your master abandoned you already?”

“No. She’s on her way to you now.” I said, hoping to rattle him a bit with that news.

“Is she now?” he asked.

“Don’t lie to him.” Fari said on a private channel to me. “He noticed it. He’s got a truth seeing spell going.”

“I rather believe she’s not. In fact, I think she didn’t make it out of the prison at all.” he said. “Bravo. It was low odds that she’d be taken out by anything as simple as that, but I think you might have managed it.”

“Would you like to congratulate me in person?” I asked.

“I doubt that would go well for either of us.” he said.

“Perhaps I’ll go talk to your competition then.” I said.

I saw him flinch at that, ever so slightly. I’d guessed right that he was moving surreptitiously because there was a faction that was opposing his. I wasn’t sure if that would necessarily help me but it was good info to have.

“I wish you luck finding any. There is no one standing against me.” he said.

“Its funny you think that given that I’m here.” I said, and gestured to his room.

“No one of consequence.” he said with a frown. I was starting to aggravate him. It wasn’t much yet, but aggravating arrogant jerks like Red Robes was a skill I’d spent time working on.

“You’re not really that stupid are you?” I asked. “Do you really think there aren’t going to be consequences to assaulting two Crystal Guardians when they were flying here on a mission of peace.”

“Of course there were going to be consequences. The Empress was going to lose two of her Crystal Guardians and the Imperium was going to learn not to interfere in matters that don’t concern it.” he said.

“A couple of things wrong with that. First the Empress hasn’t lost any of her Crystal Guardians and second, the Empire isn’t really in a ‘non-interference’ phase at the moment.” I said.

“There’s no need to posture. Even you believe your master is dead. Just as you know that your own fate is already sealed as well. As for the Empire, if they do not learn their lesson from your loss then the lesson will need to be repeated with the next Guardian who shows up.”

“You really think you can do this? Take on the Empire and win? All by yourself?” I asked.

“I’ve already won. You’re just too naive to understand that yet.” he said.

“But you’re still talking to me. Still stuck in that circle, afraid of what I might do to you if you leave it’s protection.” I said.

“Am I?” he asked and rose to his feet. With a confident smirk on his face he stepped out of the circle and closed the distance between us. Fari’s projection of me couldn’t move back without passing through the walls of the room and those looks like they had all sorts of spell defenses layered on them.

My mind raced to figure out what his actions could mean but it was my heart that gave me the clue I needed. I felt cold radiate out from the center of my chest. I was in danger. Immediate, serious danger.

“You weren’t hiding in there. You were playing for time.” I said.

He smirk widened.

“Cut the link.” I told Fari on our private channel.

My senses reeled, recoiling back to my body where the icy sensation had spread out to my arms and legs.

“They’ve been poisoned. Some kind of sleep venom.” Darius said, coming up to me with a medical pack. It took me a second to work out that he was talking about his squad. They all lay on the ground, but Darius had arranged them near each other and us and positioned them so they would be comfortable.

That saved their lives.

“We’re under attack.” I said and cast a circle of my own.

Where Red Robes’ circle had been specially prepared and enchanted to make his casting easier, mine was a desperate creation taken from half remembered lessons of my childhood. Master Raychelle had been planning to work with me on that but there were other skills that I’d needed to pick up first before I moved to an advanced technique like raising a protective barrier of Void anima.

I wasn’t the best at raising protective shields but I had a track record of being good enough. Despite that, when the city killing bomb fell on us, I screamed.

Traveling cloaked in darkness has its benefits, but sneaking past a nest of monsters can be pretty unnerving even when you’re sure they can’t see you. Fari had been able to plot us a route back to the entrance room, but none of the paths were completely clear. I’d thought about fighting our way through the bone stealers that we encountered – we were going to have to deal with them eventually after all – but the first fight had convinced me of how bad an idea that was.

My wounds were mostly healed, thanks to the magics I’d stolen from the bone stealer Darius and I had fought together. ‘Mostly’ is not, however, the same as ‘completely’. I had a decent physical anima shield. I’d also been draining the monster as we fought. Despite that it had hit me with more than a dozen stab wounds. The wounds slowed me, even mostly healed as they were. Part of that was because the bone stealer had been trying to live up to its name every time it pierced my skin. I’d spent as much energy keeping my bones in my body as I had healing myself. That made it all too easy to see how the prison had fallen. Each attack was deadly on its own but, if any of them landed, you could find yourself suddenly missing your skeleton, which most people were rather attached to.

That image was lodged in my mind as we crept up the spiraling stairway a trio of the monsters had decided to burrow into to create an ambush trap.

Unlike the stairwell we descended, where there was a wide open area in the middle of the stairs to facilitate the transport of equipment, this stairway was for human and Garjarack use only. The walls on either side of us were cut through the stone superstructure of the prison. The bone stealers had modified that slightly, digging pits into the walls where they could lie in wait for anyone foolish enough to walk into their grasp. That gave them extra room to maneuver but left us cramped for space on the single file stair.

All of the paths that lead from the detention areas to the exit had chokepoints like that. Areas where a small number of guards could keep the prisoners from escaping in the event of riot or other loss of control of the facility. What the architects hadn’t planned for was the release of a magical bio-weapon of sufficient power and speed that it would be able to overcome and kill nearly everyone in the prison before reinforcements could arrive. To be fair, I’m not sure there are a lot of good plans for “a problem we’re completely unaware of, with capabilities beyond what we can predict”

My hope was that we’d get to show the people who summoned the bone stealers what that felt like in person. To do that we had to survive and escape though.

I stopped Darius when we were at roughly the center of the bone stealer’s trap. They’d strewn more empowered bone shards on the floor as a sensor network. The Void anima I had us cloaked in prevented us from being noticed, but I couldn’t stop them from noticing if the active feed from the bone shards went dead if we stepped on one of them.

So I picked the shards up.

“Is that safe?” Darius asked over the mental link he’d established between us. The blocking spell that was preventing me from contacting Master Raychelle wasn’t able to affect the “touch range” telepathy spell that Darius had cast.

“Not at all.” I said. I’d been pretty sure that moving the shards wouldn’t alert the beasts. Master Raychelle had taught me about about a similar spell that I’d encountered and, while I couldn’t cast one like it, I had a general sense for how that sort of trap worked.

I would have left them alone entirely but seeing the shards had given me an idea. As usual for my ideas, it wasn’t a tremendously good one.

“You’re free to lie me you know.” Darius pointed out.

“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked him as I led us past the last of the ‘little’ bone stealers. At six feet long it felt strange to call it ‘little’ but compared to what lay ahead of us it was an accurate description.

“So does that mean you were telling the truth that you could handle the one that took my squad?” Darius asked.

“Time will tell.” I said. It would have been easy to play on the Crystal Guardians’ reputation and offer him easy assurances. It also would have been easy for him to point out that I wasn’t really a Crystal Guardian yet. More importantly though, I didn’t want him to be too relaxed for what was to come. I had a plan, but the key to making plans work was being aware of when (not if) they went wrong and being primed to act and adapt on the fly.

As it turned out, when we got to the entrance chamber the plan went wrong almost immediately.

“Why are there two of them here?” I hissed over the telepathic link.

One of the big bone stealers was bad enough. I had a trick in mind to deal with one of them though. Unfortunately I only had one Fari to go around which left me one short in terms of agents that could take over an active bone stealer.

I looked into the entrance room and saw that the squad was strapped to the exit portal. Still hostages. On the bright side they were living hostages since I could see the sparks and glints of living anima in them, even with the anima suppression field in effect.

That ruled out one source for the second big bone stealer. It was still a creature of horror, but I breathed out a sigh of relief anyways. The best I could do was avenge the people it had killed, but at least I still had a chance to save the ones I’d been charged with protecting.

Doing so was going to be really unpleasant though.

“Fari, can you turn off the suppression field? Or get me a copy of the pass key for it?” I asked.

“No. I checked the system earlier. The suppression field is at its lowest setting already and the authorization for the pass keys is kept off site.” she said.

“That’s what I figured they’d do. Can’t let the inmates have a chance at that kind of an advantage, especially not at the portal out of the prison.” I said.

“I’m guessing that’s going to leave it up to me then.” Darius said. “Tell me you’ve got a better plan than my walking in there and fighting my way through two of those things?”

“Better? Probably not. More likely to work? Umm, hopefully?” I said.

“Can I do anything?” Fari asked.

“Definitely. In fact you’re kind of the key to this.” I said. “I need you to crank the suppression effect all the way to the maximum. Then I need you to take over this little guy.”

I held out the core of the bone stealer that we’d fought.

“What are you going to be doing?” Fari asked.

“Helping Darius get you some spare parts to build a fighting body out of.” I said.

Darius looked at me. He was still blinded by the Void anima but he knew I could see him.

“I think I hate this plan. I think I hate it with every fiber of my being.” he said.

“I’m willing to entertain a better one.” I said.

“I am too. And for the life of me, literally, I am not coming up with one.” he said.

“Take all the time that you want.” I said. “But bear in mind that there was only one of these things here about fifteen minutes ago, so going by the current trend we’ll probably see another show up fifteen minutes from now.”

“No, with how my luck has been today, it’ll show up twenty seconds before I get the great idea that lets us beat these things without keeping turned into a chunky stew.” Darius said.

“Mmm. Chunky stew. Now I’m getting hungry.” I said.

“Should we move away from here?” Fari asked. “I’m not going to be able to access the prison’s spell web until you drop the Void anima cover from us.”

“I know, but I think we have to stay. The moment the heavy suppression kicks in, the bone stealers are going to notice. I’m guessing their response to a non-specific threat like that will be to kill a hostage, they’ve got plenty to work with, so we’re going to need to hit them as soon as you throw the switch.” I said.

“Let’s do this sooner than later then. The longer I think about it the worse it seems and the less I can think of anything better.” Darius said.

“On three then. One, two..” I dropped the veil of Void anima and sprinted into the room to make sure I had the bone stealers’ attention first.

The strength and speed that were surging through me were slammed out of me when I crossed the threshold into the suppression field. It felt like the after effect of getting violently ill, more like a surge of weakness than a return to my baseline state.

I kept just enough speed to dodge the first attack by the lead bone stealer and felt stone chips from the wall slice across my arms as it’s claw gouged a huge furrow through the rock behind me.

Then it slowed down too.

I couldn’t feel the heavier suppression kick in since my anima was locked up even on the lightest setting. The bone stealer noticed it though. Master Raychelle had said they were difficult to suppress, but she hadn’t said it was impossible.

Darius charged through the door after me. His anima blade was blazing with light, but the heaviest suppression setting apparently didn’t fully differentiate friend from foe and I watched the blade’s light dim substantially as he crossed the threshold. He still had some level of exemption from the suppression effect though since the blade didn’t wink out entirely.

That saved my life. Even slowed down, the bone stealers were still reasonably quick and they had a lot of appendages to attack with. And few vulnerable spots. And there were two of them. Both focused on me.

The second one didn’t get a chance to attack me though, despite its best efforts. Darius sliced off one claws and pitched it out into the hallway where I’d dropped both the stolen bone stealer core and Fari’s amulet.

I was able to spare a glance at the doorway and saw the claw that Darius had thrown there link up to the core. Fari couldn’t communicate with us over the telepathic link due to the suppression field but I trusted that if she said she could take control of a bone stealer then it was as good as done.

Without an anima blade of my own, I was forced into a very mobile and defensive fighting style. Also known as the way I’d had to tackle most fights I’d been in before I’d figured out how to work with anima on my own terms.

I retreated from the bone stealer that had targeted me. I stayed just inside its reach to taunt it to attack since I needed it to expose itself.

The bone stealer was all too willing to oblige on that front. It was more or less built to fight after all. It didn’t try the binding thread that it had used on the squad. The anima suppression field was too heavy for that. In fact it was so heavy that the binding thread on Darius’ squad was starting to evaporate. The thread had a material base, which was why it could survive in the suppression field at all, but not enough of one to stay solid when all of the anima holding it together was driven out.

The bone stealer slashed at me and caught its claw in the wall. It didn’t have the superhuman strength needed to tear through solid rock anymore. It also didn’t have the structural integrity to resist me kicking it to pieces. Grabbing the edge of the claw with my hands, I spun and hit it with a circular kick that shattered the arm the claw was attached to.

The bone stealer didn’t howl in pain or anger. It attacked me again. Like the spirit machine that it was.

I rolled away from the next attack and threw the claw that I’d torn off to Fari. Darius threw another bit of bone to her as well and the body she was constructing began to take shape.

It wasn’t fast enough though.

Darius took a stab wound to the leg and went down on one knee with a scream of pain.

I tried to tumble over to him but the bone stealer I was fighting blocked my path. The other bone stealer exchanged blows with Darius before scampering up and over his guard. He tried to twist to skewer it but it landed on him from behind. I yelled for him to move but I knew it was going to be too late so I pitched myself into the bone stealer in front of me, intent on breaking straight through it to get to him.

I parried and kicked and shattered a seven of the monster’s large bones, but the bone stealer got its hits in too. One stab to my shoulder took my right arm out of action and another in my left hamstring dropped me to the ground.

The bone stealers were more fragile under the suppression effect, and apparently unable to rip our skeletons out, but twenty foot long monsters were not easy to fight even when they had those handicaps.

It was Fari who saved us there. Just like I’d hoped she would.

With enough bones to create giant body of her own, she sailed into the room and landed on the bone stealer that had grappled Darius. The monster didn’t pay her any mind. From its vantage point, Kari was just another one of its own forces come to help out.

Darius and I had only thrown her a few of the bones she was using. The rest had come from the three little bone stealers we’d snuck past. The moment I’d entered the suppression effect they’d noticed their traps had been triggered. They’d also noticed their traps were nowhere near where they should have been and had raced up the stairs to discover who was tampering with pieces of themselves.

When they’d found the core of the other bone stealer with an odd crystal attached to it, they’d picked it up and tried to recreate their missing comrade. That had been my plan for facing the one big bone stealer but it had worked just as well with three of them.

Once the bone stealers made the mistake of connecting to the core Fari had taken over, they’d all become nothing more than tools in her arsenal.

The three little bone stealers had less mass than either of the big ones, but all Fari needed was enough mass to push through to the big bone stealer’s core.

The conjured horror figured out what she was doing a split second before she made contact. Its roar was unearthly. Bone stealers are creations. They don’t have true self awareness, but they’re quite capable of a response that looks and sounds like blinding rage.

That didn’t save the it from Fari’s attack though.

She slipped in and pried the monster off Darius’ bleeding form, before subsuming its bulk into the creation that she was controlling.

That’s when the next thing went wrong with my plan.

The beasts roar hadn’t stopped Fari, but it had summoned its master.

The master didn’t speak. Not to us at any rate. All I heard was chanting in a language that I couldn’t understand. I recognized the cadence and structure of the chat as ritual spell casting from the holo-plays I’d seen. The ones where someone was casting a spell to destroy a whole lot of people at once.

The bone stealer that had been attacking me leapt on the teleportation disk and tore the cover off it, exposing the enchanted crystals that lay underneath it.

I hobbled after it and managed to yank off one of it’s many legs. That didn’t nothing to get it off the teleportation disk though. I thought about trying to tackle it off the disk, but even if I could have run at it and didn’t mind stomping on Darius’ squad, I was pretty sure my mass and striking force wasn’t going to dislodge a creature as large as the bone stealer. Not with a whole lot of Physical anima to back me up.

There was only one way to get that kind of power that I could think of and without Fari to protect my mind I wasn’t sure I’d stay sane afterwards but I grabbed onto the bone stealer anyways and prepared to try draining it with the Void anima that was locked inside me.

Then the thing fell apart on its own.

“It’s transferred into the teleport grid. It’s trying to destroy the whole facility!” Fari shouted, using whatever vocal capabilities her captured bone stealers possessed to speak.

I watched the teleport crystals start to glow. It wasn’t a warm little glow. It went from bright, to blazing, to blinding.

That’s the kind of progression that ends in gigantic space-folding explosions from what I’d read so I did the only thing I could.

I hit it with a big stick.

Unsurprisingly, hitting overcharged crystals with a stick, or in this case a large femur, can provoke explosions too.

There was light without sound but no pain. My body felt too fluid to feel pain. My thoughts turned blue and gelatinous before a thump on the ground snapped me back into a human shape with my mind only slightly addled.

I blinked away the blindness of the explosion and felt strength flood back through me. I was out of the suppression field!

Looking around, I saw that we were all out of the suppression field. Darius, Fari, myself and his squad. We were all laying on the ground outside the entrance to the Deep Run Containment Facility.

In between us, I saw the scorched remains of the exterior teleport circle. It had been obliterated by the explosion. There wasn’t any way back into the prison. All contact with it had been severed.

Marching towards one of the bone stealers felt a whole lot better that trying to move through the prison and avoid being ambushed by one.  My brain took the sense of relief that came with being the predator rather than the prey as an excuse to find other things to worry about though.

“There’s something else that’s bothering me here.” I told Darius and Fari as we crept along, shrouded in the darkness of Void anima. “Why are people fighting over this world in the first place?”

“Hellsreach is a proxy theater. It lets the Gar and the Humans from Exxion 2 and Exxion 4 squabble without damaging any of their own resources.” Darius said.

“It’s not like its free to fight here though. Why are either of them spending the resources to make trouble at this point when the Empire won’t let them claim control of the place?” I said.

“I think we have very different views of what the Crystal Empire will and won’t allow.” Darius said.

“Maybe, but something feels weird about this.” I said.

“You mean this is different from the other prisons full of massacred people who’ve been reanimated as skeletal abominations that you’ve been in?” Darius asked.

The hallway we were walking down was isolated from the detention areas. It was a maintenance area, sealed so that only authorized staff could enter it. Authorized staff, or some with the control of the facility’s systems that Fari had. Tubes that ran along the ceiling of hall while it’s floor was composed of grates where additional emergency stores were kept. Both were a perfect spot for the bone stealers to hide in. Thanks to Fari though, I knew not to bother looking at them for possible attackers. The bone stealers weren’t above or below us, they were slithering through the gaps in the walls themselves. I couldn’t sense them, even with the magical sight my Void anima  granted me, but I could tell they were there from the holes that had been torn into the walls at irregular intervals.

“Sarcasm? That strikes you as helpful at the moment?” I asked Darius. In fact it was. His humor helped me ignore the undercurrent of dread that was playing through my mind. As first missions went, this one seemed a little on the “extremely lethal” side.

“No. Focusing on the task at hand strikes me as helpful.” Darius said.

“The task at hand is more than getting out of here. Your people don’t want peace. Master Raychelle’s not going to be leaving here until we get it. What’s bugging me is why you don’t have it already?”

“Probably because the two side in the war here hate each other and have for centuries?” Darius suggested. “I don’t think it’s really that complicated.”

“I’d agree with you if there were only two sides here. Especially if they were split down species lines like I thought they were. The problem is you.” I said.

“How am I the problem? Or my friends? We don’t want people fighting. We want them to leave.” Darius said.

“The fact that you exist proves that this isn’t a two-sided war. It’s got three sides at least, and probably four or more unless I miss my guess.” I said and stopped.

We’d come to an intersection . To our left, the corridor ran past a series of hydroponic gardens that were lit by a flickering blue light. Fari’s map suggested that one of the big bone stealers had take up residence in the control room for the garden. If we were going to be down here long, we’d have to come up with a way to deal with the monster if we wanted to have access to a food supply. While it was true I was starting to feel a bit peckish, I wasn’t anywhere near close to hungry enough to want to mess with one the big monsters. Except the one that I had too.

I took the corridor to our left and headed toward the secure door to the prisoner’s quarters that Fari had unlocked for us when she was in control of the facilities systems.

“Four sides? You’re thinking whoever conjured these monsters is a player on that scale?” Darius said.

I felt a smile creep over my face and was glad we were cloaked in darkness so he couldn’t see it. So many of the guys I’d known on Belstarius were just this side of plankton in terms of keeping up with an intelligent conversation. I hadn’t even been aware of how much I’d been expecting that I was talking to hear myself talk until Darius showed he was keeping up with me. Cute and smart. It felt like my birthday present had shown up early. Except for the part where we were probably going to throw down the moment our common enemy was out of the picture.

“They’ve got to be. They were able to take out a major facility of one of the three active factions with only a few hours notice. Imagine if instead of a prison they’d unleashed these bone stealers on one of your major cities?” I said.

“Not a pretty picture. We’d get it under control but the damage would be appalling.”

“That’s what’s making me think there’s possibly five factions at work here.” I said.

“The Garjarack fleet, the the Human fleet, us, the bone stealer boss and whoever they’re hiding from?” Darius guessed. I felt my knees wobble. I was really going to hate having to fight him.

“It’s possible those last two are members of one of the first three factions.” Fari said. “It’s not uncommon for there to be hidden powers within organizations of that scale.”

“You could be right. You probably are in fact, but I think we can still consider them their own factions. From the galactic histories that I’ve read, secret cabals rarely have the best interests of their host organizations as a top priority.” I said.

“Why is that important right now? Aren’t we supposed to be collecting the ‘bait’ you talked about?” Darius asked.

“We’re still heading for it, right Fari?” I asked.

“We’re heading for where it was. I can’t access the facility’s systems while we’re cloaked.” Fari said.

“If the facility’s sensory spells can detect these things, why can’t we?” Darius asked.

“The facility has better coverage. They have sight receptors set up almost all over the place.” Fari said. “Also its warded to prevent scrying spells apart from its own systems from working in here.”

“That’d make it harder to plan a break-in I guess.” I said.

“What will do we if the bone stealer has moved?” Darius asked.

I pressed my free hand to his chest to stop him. I’d felt a chill pass through me at his words, and I’d learned even in the short time that I’d been aware of my powers what that meant. There was danger nearby.

I looked down at where Darius would have stepped and saw a vanishingly faint glow of physical anima. It was embedded in a tiny bit of bone, one so small that Darius’ footfall would have snapped it like a twig. I’d seen a trap like that before. One poised to trigger when the anima that made it up was disrupted.

In the back of my mind, I felt a silver thread of Aetherial anima dissolve as I thwarted the fate binding’s attempt to get us killed. I tried to reach and find the source of the fate spell but the thread disintegrated faster than I could follow. That was aggravating for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that it meant the Aetherial caster had a clue that we were alive and capable of destroying their oh-so-subtle workings against us. Where the fate binder had gotten away though, the bone stealer had not.

“We’ll call it to us.” I said looking at the little enchanted bone and seeing it for the two edged sword that it was. “Are you ready?”

“Still blind, but otherwise yeah.” Darius said.

“I’m going to drop the cloak in about five seconds. Get ready to defend yourself in case the beast gets by me.” I said.

“What can I do?” Fari asked.

“Link into my senses and shout a warning if I miss anything.” I said.

I felt the warm touch of Fari’s mental anima mingle with mine, radiating up from the center of my chest where I wore her amulet to encircle my eyes and ears.

Taking a calming breath, I slammed my foot down on the trapped bone and pulled the Void anima cloak into a ball in my hands.

I thought we might have to wait for the bone stealer to appear but it defied my expectations and shot out of one of the holes in the wall like it had been launched from a bolt caster. It was one of the small ones, though in this case that meant it was only around seven feet long rather than thirty.

With the speed of my unfettered Physical anima backing me, I slid into the monster’s path and parried the bone stealer’s attack. I met its slicing talons with the ball of Void anima I’d coalesced into my left hand and ripped its power away from it.  Shattered bones and ones that fell apart as their magic failed rained off the monster. In exchange I felt power surge into me. Power and raw hate. As with it’s larger cousin, absorbing the bone stealer’s power meant absorbing some of the mental anima it carried too.

That was as dangerous as hellfire it turned out. Bone stealers aren’t complex creatures, but they are incredibly focused ones. Riding on top of the rage they were born from, they also carried the pain and fear and anger of the people they’d murdered to create their bodies. Getting carried away by that riptide of emotions was an extremely likely scenario for anyone who tried to draw out the magic that was in them. Especially anyone who was still new to spell casting and didn’t know how to safeguard herself. Fortunately, I had Fari with me.

“I’m guessing you don’t want the berserker anima bonus from this thing right?” she whispered in my mind. My reaction was going to be a wordless snarl, until I felt the sanity smothering flood of emotions wash off me, leaving only my own fear and anger and excitement behind.

“Right.” I said, as I sized up the bone stealer. I felt the spell that she wove settle on my head like a helmet. It touch on my Void anima and sluiced the tainted power into the infinite well of emptiness that the Void led to.

The bone stealer’s attack had carried it past both Darius and I. My parry had thrown it still further against the wall on the other side of the hall where it clung like an enormous, grisly spider.

It’s perch on the wall put it about five feet away from me and slightly more from Darius. I was moving pretty fast in reaction to its first attack so I was able to see the summoned beast let out a hiss as it coiled its remaining bones together for another leap. From my side I also saw the bright glow of Darius’ anima blade spring to life.

Less than a second after it landed, the bone stealer leapt at me again, exploding off the wall hard enough to shatter the rock there. I wondered at its choice of targets. I’d already wounded it, as much as a creature like that can be wounded, which should have made it wary of me. Darius was the one with the visible weapon though, and the anima blade was something which the bone stealer could have been programmed to be careful of. Seeking out the unarmed targets was a great strategy for being able to reproduce more of its kind.

As long as the unarmed target wasn’t me.

Instead of fleeing or cowering, I moved the way Master hanq had taught me to. I stepped into the attack, robbing it of power and catching the bone stealer off guard. That sounded great and it probably saved my life. It didn’t however mean I got away from the attack without injury.

Catching the bone stealer “off guard” meant that I only got about a dozen puncture wounds from it before I was able to slam it into the wall and tear its head off. Being fast and strong is great. Being skilled is wonderful too. None of those mean you’re invulnerable though.

There’s a funny thing with bone stealers that I pretty much saw coming at the start of the fight; pulling the head off a magical animated pile of bones doesn’t do a lot to slow it down. Even shattering the aforementioned head doesn’t accomplish much beside ensuring that it can’t bite you in the ankles. From what Master Raychelle had said, I had to destroy its heart to shut down a bone stealer. The problem with that was that all the parts that weren’t its heart were devoted to shredding me before I got anywhere near the thing’s one weak spot.

That’s where Darius came in.

None of my encounters with anima blades had been pleasant ones. Not until that moment. I was draining the bone stealer’s flailing limbs of power as fast as I could and using the stolen magics to repair the damage it was doing, but it was a miserable way to fight. That pain was distracting and I wasn’t sure I was going to pull it apart faster than it could tear me to ribbins.

That is until Darius slashed off half of the bone stealer’s body. He hit it with a focused swipe of his anima blade and the ribs and sharpened bone shards on its right side where sliced completely away from the monster.

That exposed the bone stealer’s core and from there the fight was over in less than a second. I ripped the core out of center of the beast and encased it in Void anima, sealing its power away. Cut off from its heart, the rest of the monster fell to the floor in front of us like a puppet whose strings had been severed.

I let the power I’d stolen flood through my body, closing up puncture wounds and slashes as best it could. I flinched at the pain that remained as the power ran dry and scowled. I hadn’t expected the little ones to be that bad.

“And now we get to tackle the big one that’s ready and waiting for us.” I said, looking at the stairs that would lead us up to what might be our final battle field.

I’d warned Darius that the trip back to the entry level was going to require some faith on his part. I don’t think he’d been fully prepared for what I had in mind though.

“I can’t see anything. I’m surrounded by body destroying monsters, everyone else is dead or capture and I can’t see anything.” he said telepathically. The edge of panic in his mental voice was both natural and reasonable, but I could hear him fighting to keep it under control anyways. He was brave, in the real sense of the word, where you got scared and went on anyways. The guys I’d known on Belstarius (with some exceptions) had thought being brave meant never being afraid at all. The ones that managed that weren’t brave though. They were suicidal.

“I know this is freaky, but its the safest way to get back to your squad.” I told him, also telepathically. He’d wondered why I’d had him set up a telepathic link between us when we were within whispering distance of each other. It didn’t seem like he was entirely pleased with the answer though. “I can see through this darkness just fine, and I don’t think the bone stealers will be able to see in.”

“What if you’re wrong? I’m not going to be able to fight at all like this.” he said.

“I’m not asking you to fight. You’re a part of the squad that I’m supposed to protect, the same as the others.” I told him. “But if it comes to a fight, I’ll drop the cloak. We won’t need stealth then.”

“This is crazy. I don’t even get how you’re doing this. Whatever that stuff is, it feels wrong.” he said.

“It’s Void anima.” I told him. “And it’s not wrong, its just unusual.”

“It doesn’t feel like any anima I’ve ever seen before though.” he complained.

“That’s its nature. It’s the unknowable, the empty. It’s the thing that you can’t see or touch or feel.” I said.

“How did you ever learn to cast that? It’s just so backwards from everything I’ve ever been taught.” he said.

“Someone dropped a bomb on me.” I told him.

“What kind of bomb?” he asked.

“A city killer. That’s the first time I can remember using my Void anima. It was reflexive, I shielded myself and someone I was with in a protective circle that devoured the bomb’s power before it could hurt us. Was kind of surprised I could do that, and I had no idea what Void anima was at the time. The truth is though, I think I learned to work with it long before that, back when I was a little kid.” I said.

The fragments of memory that I’d touched on months ago came back to me again. I was three or four years old and studying some really strange stuff from what I could recall. I could remember so little beyond that though. Drills. Shapes. Painting and learning symbols. I remembered who taught me them too. My mother. I had just the barest glimpses of her and every time I recalled those images wanted to scream.

For years I hadn’t thought about my parents. I’d buried the trauma of losing them under anger and then swallowed that anger to push the memories of them as far away as possible. I think I’d been ripped apart by the betrayal of their leaving me. When she wasn’t training me, Master Raychelle spent a lot of time talking about that. About how we don’t process things as they are, but rather as we see them. She was an orphan too, and the feelings she described having when she was a kid were like the echoes of my own heart from years gone by.

I’d survived something when I was little. There weren’t any records that suggested what, at least none that we’d been able to find so far. From the few memories I did retain though I knew it had been bad. Whatever it was, my mother had known what was happening and had gotten me away from it. Looking at it with the eyes of a young adult, I knew that she’d probably died saving me. That didn’t make it easier to take than being abandoned or betrayed though. If anything, it brought the anger back that I’d pushed down for most of my life.

Untangling that psychic knot wasn’t a short term project. It was one thing to know why I probably felt the way I did, why I’d connected so strongly to the Void anima I carried. It was another thing to get to the point where those particular wounds would heal.

When Master Raychelle and I had first started talking about it, I hadn’t even been sure I necessarily wanted to “heal”. I’d been afraid that the thing I’d just found that made me “special”, the one gift I seemed to have, would go away if I lost the pain that had given it to me.

She’d submerged an entire city into night in response to that. Darkness everywhere. All to show me the kind of thing I could do if I could get out of my own way.

“The pains we experience can teach us, they can motivate us and broaden our empathy, but they don’t need to define us. In overcoming our pains and in letting them go, we grow as well. As memories they can serve us, but we don’t need to cling to them as limits. Our true limitations change with time and they’re rarely what we believe them to be.” she had said.

I hoped she was right about that because I wasn’t certain that taking out the bone stealer that awaited us was going to be all that simple. In fact, I expected it to be a bit beyond me. Fortunately I wasn’t alone though.

“I’ll lead you up ok? Just give me your hand.” I told Darius.

He held out his left hand out blindly in front of himself. I took it in my right and was surprised at how warm and soft it was. My own hands were a bad measuring stick in that sense though. Working with Void anima always left me feeling chilled and years of martial workouts had left me with enough callouses that my hands felt like boiled leather most of the time.

“What about Fari? Where did she go?” Darius asked.

“I’m still here.” she answered on the mental link. I felt Darius stiffen in surprise at that. He hadn’t cast his telepathy spell to include her, but with her talents that wasn’t much of a problem if she wanted to speak to us.

“Right. Millennia of practice.” he said, regaining his composure.

In truth, I don’t think Fari actually had the equivalent of millennia of practice under her belt. She was millennia old certainly, but most of that time she’d been “asleep” while the Jewel of Endless Night that she’d been bound to had lain dormant. The times when she’d been “awake” had been brief, exciting and absolutely the sort of thing she never wished to see again.

There was no denying that she was good with manipulating mental anima, but I think she came by the talent naturally. It was probably why she’d been the one selected to as the controlling mechanism for the Jewel her consciousness had been embedded into. The transfer itself probably helped in some ways too. From what I’d seen, she was most adept at manipulating direct expressions of mental anima – essentially modifying or changing mental anima spells. Directing those spells at living minds was more difficult for her.

“I can’t access the facility’s systems while we’re cloaked, but I can point out the route back to the entranceway that had the fewest bone stealers.” Fari offered.

“Thanks. The last thing we want is to get lost in here. I have this sneaking suspicion that Master Raychelle is going to expect us to be ready to leave in a hurry once she’s done.” I said.

“What’s she doing?” Darius asked.

“Fari, you’d said there were thirty of the giant bone stealers when you first scanned the facility. How many were there just before I cloaked us?” I asked.

“Twenty six.” she said.

“Those were probably the ones that were in her path. I’m guessing she’ll have a plan to take care of the rest of the bone stealers all at once.” I said.

“If she’s capable of that, why do we need to rescue my squad ourselves?” Darius asked.

“Because we’re probably going to be a part of her plan. It’s long odds against her being able to save everyone who’s left in here. The more we can do, the more those odds will be tipped in our favor, which means the more people we’re likely to save.” I said.

“Right. That makes sense I guess. It’s just…” His mental voice trailed off as he shut that line of thinking down.

“It’s just that the Crystal Guardians look so invincible, what’s the point of having regular people pitch in?” I asked.

“Something like that.” he said with a note of guilty humor to the thought.

“It doesn’t matter how strong someone is if they’re not in the right place to use that strength.” I said. “I’ve had two teachers that I’ve respected in my life, Master Raychelle is one of them, and they both taught me variations of that. I think the reverse is true too though. What the Guardians excel at is finding people that are overlooked and putting them in positions where their strengths can be devastating. That’s basically what happened with me.”

“What did they have you do?” Darius asked.

“Kill an immortal and destroy his stellar empire.” I said. “To be fair, he really had it coming and I had a lot of help.”

“How, exactly, were you ever overlooked?” he asked.

“It’s easier than you’d guess.” I said.

“Yeah, I kinda can’t buy that.” he said. “Unless you were covered in darkness like this all the time, I’m guessing more than few somebodies noticed you.”

“Nope. Not a one. Like I said, it took a bomb going off to get me any attention.”

“He’s saying you’re pretty!” Fari sent to me on what I could sense was a private link.

It was my turn to be shocked. I didn’t think I looked bad or anything, but boys, or young men I guess, didn’t tend to flirt with me. Mostly they seemed either uninterested or somewhat terrified of me. I was tall, which didn’t help apparently, and I looked like a galactic mutt, so my skin and features hadn’t fit my homeworld’s default “beauty” standard. If I’d been soft and graceful, maybe I would have won points for “exotic” but I was honestly happier with dirt and sweat for makeup than anything else.

“We should get going.” I said. I’d practiced a lot of counter-attacks over the years. I’d even developed a decent repertoire of comebacks for the kind of jeers and put downs that street kids trash talked each other with. Flirting was weird though. I didn’t have any idea how to counter-attack that sort of a blow. Hence the evasion.

“This is path should take us back to the entrance without encountering any of the big bone stealers.” Fari said as she projected an image of the facility into my mind.

“How about the little ones? Will we run across any of those?” I asked.

“Yeah, at least one.” she said.

“Perfect!”

“Why is that perfect?” Darius asked.

“We need some bait.” I told him.

“Bait?”

“Yeah, remember where the squad is?” I asked him.

“The main entranceway.” he said. “Oh right! That’s a suppression room!”

“Exactly. Unless you’ve got the override for it, or are a creature conjured from the abyss I guess, you can’t cast spells in there. That’s the other reason why the bone stealer was programmed to pick that spot I think. It’s about the worst possible location a Crystal Guardian could be forced to fight it.” I said.

“I’m liking this bait idea more and more.” Darius said.

“Thought you might.” I said and started leading us back up to the entrance level.

People think a lot of strange things about martial training. I’ve heard guys claim that because they practice so hard they’re immune to pain for example. My old teacher, Master Hanq, was never the “gentle and lenient” sort, so I had plenty of chances to learn what pain was like. That did precisely nothing to keep the slashes and stabs the bone stealer had inflicted on me from hurting.

That hadn’t been the point of Master Hanq’s lessons though. What I’d learned from him was that pain didn’t mean you got to lay down and quit. There was a time and a place to quit, but “lost in a subterranean prison that was filled with magical monsters who wanted to eat your spine” was not one of them.

“If Lt. Mara and the rest are ok, then we need to make for the communicator.” Darius said. He was running his hand over a tracking gem on his gauntlet but it wasn’t activating. I’d seen that type of gem before. It was used by explorers as a distress beacon in case they ran into trouble and needed to broadcast a simple message across long distances. Given that the telepathy spell between Master Raychelle and I was blocked, I wasn’t surprised to see that Darius’s communication gear was jammed too.

“What part of ‘captured by a giant bone monster and webbed to a teleportation circle’ says ‘they’re ok’ to you?” I asked him.

“The part where the giant bone monster didn’t kill them like she said they normally would.” He gestured to Fari and looked to her for confirmation of his claim. She started to object to that but I beat her to the punch.

“I don’t think ‘being used as bait’ counts as ‘ok’.” I said.

“Yeah, fine. I’m sure they’re pretty miserable but I also know Lt. Mara would want me to complete the mission, rather than run into a trap and get killed.” he said. He gave up on the beacon gem and checked his anima blade. It was still functional which, under the circumstances, I was ok with.

“Do you seriously think the communications room isn’t one giant trap too?” I asked him. I was starting to get a picture of what we were up against and I didn’t like the details my mind was filling in.

“We don’t know what’s happening there.” he said. “But we do know that’s where we can contact reinforcements.”

“That sounds like a good way to get more people killed.” I said. Reinforcements were such a tempting idea, and tempting ideas give me pause. Calling for help is a basic, instinctive reaction to being lost, with monsters all around you, but I knew it couldn’t be the right course of action. Not against a smart foe who was a step ahead of us still.

“The Council can send in more than one squad. These bone stealers are bad but we’ll be able to clean them out once the regular troops are here.” Darius said.

I got up and stretched my shoulders to feel out the damage I’d taken in the fall. It wasn’t that terrible, mostly because I’d had stolen anima to burn to heal it quickly.

“I won’t argue on how well your troops can take these things out. Ultimately it doesn’t matter though. Whoever did this, whoever’s been attacking Master Raychelle and I, they’ve gone to an awful lot of trouble and been pretty damn well prepared for things so far. Do you think this is where it ends? That this is all they could manage? If they can’t stop the message from getting out in the first place, then it’s a fair bet that they’ll have something ready for the kind of troops that the Council would throw at a problem like this.”

Darius got to his feet as I spoke. He didn’t have a supply of stolen anima to patch himself up with, but I’d manage to shield him from the worst of the fall, so we were in about the same shape.

“You’re saying they’ve predicted all of this?” he asked. He stretched the same way I had, and for the same reason from what I could see.

“Not predicted, just prepared for.” I said. “If they could predict what we were going to do they wouldn’t have been this sloppy.”

“If they’re as powerful as that, why would being sloppy matter?” Darius asked.

“Look where they’re actions have got them. They have us trapped in here, but they haven’t managed to kill either Master Raychelle or me. All they’ve done is give us evidence that there’s someone behind the scenes with a lot of power and influence.” I said. It was evidence that we would have turned up eventually, but if they’d played things with more subtlety it could have taken a while.

“Enough to keep us stuck down here forever I guess.” Darius said. He was looking around the room we’d landed in. There were plenty of exits, but none of them looked particularly inviting.

“Nope. They can’t keep us trapped that long and they know it. Think about what their strategy is. They kidnapped Lt. Mara’s squad. Why do that?” I asked.

“To use as bargaining chips.” Fari said. She’d been listening to us but I’d seen that she’d been half distracted too. “The squad‘s all webbed in now and it sounds like the bone stealer has settled in to wait for its ambush.”

“What do you mean bargaining chips?” Darius asked.

“Bad description maybe.” Fari said. “The effect of having your friends alive and in peril at the exit is that we can’t even approach the teleport circle without risking their lives. It’s an implicit bargain that they live as long as we stay away from them.”

“Not just us.” I said. “They’re strapped to the teleportation circle, so anyone who forces an override on it from the outside and teleports in will be killing them too. It’s a way to slow us down.”

“Why slow you down? Why not just kill you?” Darius asked.

“Slowing us down buys them time. It boxes us in too so that they can take a more focused shot at us. As for killing us directly, well, they tried that already. The artillery strike on our airship sort of said ‘I’d like you to stop breathing now please’ in definitive terms.” I said. “Crystal Guardians don’t die that easy though. Heck they didn’t even manage to kill me, and I’ve only had about two months of training so far.”

“Two months of training with the Guardians?” Darius asked.

“Two months of training as an anima caster.” I said.

“How is that possible? Didn’t you go to school?” he asked. It was kind of freakish that I was such a neophyte at anima casting. Most kids tested out to have some kind of talent and then had specific courses to learn to develop it throughout their school years. I’d missed all of that in one sense – with my low test scores, I hadn’t ever been formally trained in any of the anima disciplines. At least not until two months ago.

As it turned out I did have some facility with casting anima spells though, thanks to the martial training that Master Hanq had given me. He’d never actually said that he was showing me the basics of spell casting. He’d shown me how to fight, and in doing so had taught me about how power moves through the body. He’d also helped me develop the discipline to focus my mind. That was still a work-in-progress in some ways but the techniques that I did have were tremendously useful with the spells that Master Raychelle was trying to teach me.

“It’s a long story.” I said. “If we get out of here alive, buy me a dinner and I might bore you with it.”

“Mel, there’s something else you should know.” Fari said. “I can’t detect the bone stealers but there are other living minds here. They’re cloaked, which is why it took me this long to find them, but they’re definitely there.”

“Prisoners?” I asked.

“And guards.” she said.

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Scattered all over. The ones where I can piggyback on their senses seem to be tied up like Lt. Mara’s team are.”

“How many of them look like they’re in good ambush locations?” I asked. I felt like I was caught in a net and was only seeing it revealed in bits and pieces.

“All of them.” Fari said.

“Do they each have their own bone stealer guarding them?” I asked.

“Not exactly. Some of them have two.” she said. I tried to imagine fighting two creatures like the one that had attacked us in the stairwell. My imagination rose to the morbid challenge and offered a variety of grisly options on what the results might be.

“How many of these things are there?” I asked.

“At least thirty.” Fari said.

“I ask again, with that much power at their disposal, why didn’t they just kill you?” Darius said.

“To be honest, I’m not sure thirty is enough to get the job done.” I said.

“You said you just started learning how to cast anima spells two months ago. I’ve been practicing for the last twelve years and I couldn’t scratch that thing.” Darius said. From the anger in his voice, I could tell he was embarrassed by that failure, so I opted not to mention that I’d torn a path completely through the beast.

“I’ve got a few tricks you don’t.” I told him. “And Master Raychelle has been practicing her skills for over sixty years now. She’s the one they’re scared of.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” Darius said. “I know the rep the Crystal Guardians have but even if she’s powerful, she’s still just one woman. She can’t win a fight with an entire planet.”

I laughed.

“That’s probably what they’re thinking too. ‘If we just hit her hard enough we can stop her, send in the monsters!’ For reference, that’s a catastrophically bad plan. It tends to make people like her cranky more than anything else. Surprisingly, I think the people we’re dealing with know that though.” I said.

“Why do you say that?” Fari asked.

“They’re not here.” I said. “If they thought the bone stealers could kill us, they would have come with their conjured beasts. They stayed away though, and that tells me they’re afraid of us. Or afraid of Master Raychelle at least.”

“She’s not here from what I can see, so how does that help us?” Darius asked.

“It’s actually excellent for us. It means they’re underestimating me and pretty much ignoring you.” I said.

“I’ve heard plans that begins with those kinds of thoughts.” Darius said. He had a look that said he’d be a lot happier if I was handcuffed again. Preferably behind bars somewhere. Ideally on a planet that he’d never heard of and was never going to visit. I inspired that look in a lot of people for some reason.

“You seem to have lived through all of them.” I pointed out.

“You want to go rescue Lt. Mara and the squad.” he said.

“How did you guess?” I asked, letting a wolf’s smile crack across my face.

“You said earlier that your boss told you to protect us.” Darius did not echo my smile. He frowned instead. Almost glowered really.

“You were listening. And you remembered. I’m impressed.” I said.

“Do you have a plan?” he asked. “And is it by any chance ‘wait for the mentor who has more than two months of experience to come along and fix things’?”

“Yes, in fact, I do. And no, we can’t wait for Master Raychelle for this.” I said.

“Why? If she’s so powerful, why can’t she deal with this. We barely survived meeting that thing and, from what I can tell, that was only because it had better things to do than to mess with us.”

“You need to check your memory. It grabbed the whole squad, but it ran away from me. I admit I’m new at this, but trust me, I can deal with that monster. That’s what Master Raychelle asked me to do, and so that’s what she’s planning on. We’ve got to rescue them so that she’ll be open to play the long game and be ready to deal with whoever’s actually behind this.” I told him.

“Where would we even begin?” Darius asked.

“I’ve accessed the central control network for the facility.” Fari said. “I have the schematics for the whole place available now. There’s five different routes that will take us back to your squad.”

“Wait, you spliced your way into the control spells that run the facility? From here?” Darius asked.

“Yes. It’s a nice system, but it’s pretty simple to interface to with a little mental anima.” she said. Darius looked at her in amazement and then closed his eyes. A moment later his head rocked back like he’d been hit by an uppercut.

“Ouch. That was a stupid idea.” he said, blinking his eyes.

“What did you try to do?” I asked.

“I told you mental anima casting was one of my strengths. I tried to interface with the control spells on the facility.” he said.

“What happened?” I asked.

“These are the most powerfully guarded control spells I’ve ever seen. You can’t be telling the truth.” Darius said, turning to Fari.

“Mel’s trained for two months. Raychelle has trained for sixty years. I’ve trained for millenia. These systems are amusing, but they’re far from the most powerful that I’ve ever seen.” Fari said.

“I did mention that she’s older than she looks didn’t I?” I asked him.

“Right.” he said, still looking uncertain, “So what’s the plan? How do we rescue them?”

Sometimes it is extremely useful to have wings. Like, for example, when a building is collapsing on you.

With the bone stealer out of sight through the door above us, I couldn’t see what had happened to the hostages it had taken, and with the ceiling plummeting at us like a river of boulders I wasn’t in a position to go find out either.

I’d like to say that I reacted calmly and thought my way clear of the situation. I’d like to but unfortunately there was a witness who could testify otherwise.

Darius was falling with me and the expression on his face was a mirror of the shock I felt. I had one advantage though. This was the second time I’d been pitched into free fall in less than half a day. Given how well the first time went that didn’t do much to make me feel better though.

What did make me feel better was that I was still wearing the flight pack that Master Raychelle had given me before we left on our insane mission, and it had been able to recharge since the last time I used it. The stairwell wasn’t quite wide enough for me to fully extend the wings and I didn’t actually want to slow my fall (since that would have let the collapsing ceiling catch up to us), but I was able to direct my fall and latch on to Darius.

“Ahhh!” he screamed in my ear. I didn’t blame him in the slightest. I barely had time to look down and see how high up we were before the ground was an arm’s length away.

I flared the wings out and pulled us into an agonizingly sharp turn through the door at the bottom of the stairwell. It had been smashed open and widened by the bone stealer that had crashed through it . The anima wings clipped the remains of the doorframe and shattered on it, sending the two of us tumbling across the long room.

We lay there, dazed and tangled up, against the far wall for what felt like an hour but was probably closer to a handful of seconds.

“Are you ok? That didn’t look fun.” Fari said, appearing beside me again.

“Ah! Who the hell is that?” Darius yelled, and scrambled away from both Fari and I.

That was an unexpected reaction for a variety of reasons, especially one in particular

“You can see me?” Fari asked.

“Of course I can see you! You’re glowing like a search light!” Darius said.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Give me one second.” Fari said. Her ghostly form went a lot more ghostly to my eyes, the brilliant blue light fading away to a pale white glow. That seemed to help Darius regain his composure.

“I’ll ask again, who might you be, Miss Ghost?”

“She’s not a ghost.” I told him. “She’s my friend.”

“My name is Fari.” she said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Fari. Now would either of you be able to tell me what’s going on here and what that thing was?”

“It was a bone stealer, right?” I asked Fari.

“Yes, but it was something more too.” she said.

“Why was it so big?” Darius asked.

“It wasn’t.” Fari said. “Or maybe it would be better to say that they can get a lot larger than that, if they have the resources to draw on.”

“That’s wonderful. What did it do with my squad?”

“Yeah, you said it shouldn’t have been able to web them up like it did. What did you mean?” I asked.

“Just that. That’s not a power that bone stealer’s have. A true sapient species like a human or a Garjarak can learn to shape their anima in a wide variety of different ways. Bone stealer’s can’t. The ways they can use anima are pre-built into them. And they can’t learn. There’s really no ‘them’ in there at all. It’s almost better to think of them as machines, like a golem, but with a more specific focus.” Fari said.

“So then how did they do it?” I asked.

“I don’t think they did. I think someone else was using that bone stealer. Casting spells through it.” Fair said.

“Why? Or how? Or I guess both.” Darius said.

“Why do I think that? Because those threads the bone stealer wrapped Lt. Mara and the others in were phantasmal conjurings. It’s same kind of magic that’s used to summon the bone stealers themselves. They’re not capable of casting that kind of spell, or almost any kind of spell in fact.” Fari said.

“What about the ‘how’? I thought this place was cut-off from outside casters?” I asked.

“It seemed to be. When you were in the suppression room, I couldn’t manifest like this. I’m having to put extra force into the effect even here in fact.” Fari said.

“And that’s why he can see you now?” I asked.

“Maybe.” she said.

“Are you very gifted in Mental castings?” she asked Darius.

“Yeah. Sort of. It’s my second best discipline. Is that why I’m about to see you?” he asked.

“Probably. I hadn’t realized you were that gifted, or that I’d need to put out as much anima as I am to manifest here. You’d missed me before so I thought it would be safe to appear again. You must have been able to pick up on my appearance casting this time because you were so close to it.” she said.

“So close to it?” Darius asked.

“Yeah, you two were practically wrapped around each other.” Fari said.

Darius and I both looked at each other and then looked away. I hadn’t thought of it due to the imminent fear of dying but I had basically hugged him tight and wrapped myself around him. That shouldn’t have been particularly embarrassing. I’d done the same to plenty of people. It was just that with most of them I’d been wrestling them into unconsciousness at the time. Darius, I was finally noticing, was kind of cute when there wasn’t a glowing anima blade between us.

Under the circumstances, though that was not at all where my thoughts needed to be going.

So of course that’s exactly where they went.

Because my brain hates me.

“So, you’ve been here all along? Are you a Crystal Guardian too?” Darius asked. He had a bit of a blush too I thought, but I only glanced at him so it might have been wishful thinking.

“No, I just like tagging along with Mel.” Fari said.

“Right into deep dark prisons filled with monsters.” I said, looking around at the room we’d landed in. It was basically a triple width hallway. The wall that we’d crashed in to was on the far end of the room from the door that we’d flown out of. There were doors to the left and right all along the corridor with heaps of ruined equipment in front of each of them.

“I’ve spent a lot of times in places like this.” Fari said.

Darius titled his head and examined her more closely.

“She’s older that she looks.” I told him.

“A lot older.” Fari confirmed.

Darius started to question that but apparently thought the better of it and put his hand down.

“We can’t go back for Lt. Mara and the others.” I said, pointing at the stairwell door. It was filled with the debris that had crashed down from above.

“We don’t even know if they’re still alive.” Darius said.

“They are. I can hear what’s going on around them.” Fari said.

“How?” Darius asked.

“You’re still linked in to their senses?” I asked.

“Most of them. Lt. Mara and Sgt. Bancryths have some training in mind shielding. I didn’t try to include them because I think they would have noticed.” Fari said.

“What are you talking about?” Darius asked.

“Fari linked into the squad’s eyes and ears to act as an early warning system in case something went wrong.” I said.

“The only problem was when something did go wrong, it went wrong too fast and nearby for me to be of much help.” she said.

“If you know that they’re alive, that’s plenty of help.” Darius said.

“Yeah, but they shouldn’t be. Bone stealers don’t take hostages like that.” Fari said.

“That’s more support for the idea that there’s someone directly controlling them.” I said.

“What are we up against here?” Darius asked.

“More ‘who are we up against’?” I said. “This has to be someone local.”

“That’s ridiculous. I know you aren’t happy with us for arresting you but, like I explained, we had a good reason. We don’t want the Empire to force a peace accord down our throats. If you do we’ll wind up stuck with the off worlders here permanently. And, if it comes to that, they’ll start murdering us rather than each other. That, however, doesn’t mean that we’d wipe out our own prison facility. We’re not monsters and we’re not stupid. We just want to live our damn lives!” Darius said. He grew more heated and passionate with each word. That was bad because it brought out the bullheadedness in me.

I felt the urge to smack him upside his cute little head rising with my anger but, as Master Raychelle had suggested, I gave him ten seconds to stop being an idiot before I hauled off and hit him.

“I think what Mel means is that whoever is behind this had to know of this place, and know enough about it to be able to get a summoned creature like a bone stealer into it.” Fari said. She looked at me and smiled. With her mental anima skills, she knew exactly what I was thinking, and what I was holding myself back from doing.

“It could still be an offworlder.” Darius insisted, though Fari’s points had taken some of the heat out of his words.

“By your definition, it could be.” I said with forced calm. “But the point is its someone or a group of someones who have been here awhile and have connections and ties that are keeping them ahead of us.”

“The question we need to figure out is: what are they trying to gain here?” Fari said.

“I think there are some questions we need to work out sooner than that though.” I said. “Like how we’re going to get out of here.”

“Maybe check in with Master Raychelle?” Fari suggested.

I shook my head and wondered if I’d landed on it harder than I’d thought. Calling her should have been the first thing that I did.

“Master Raychelle! Are you still there?” I asked on the telepathic link.

Once again there was no reply though. This time however I felt like there was something in between us. Some blockage that was preventing the call from going through.

“I can’t reach her again.” I said. I tried to hide the sense of dread that provoked. Anything, or anyone that could cut me off from Master Raychelle like that, could probably do all kinds of unpleasant things too. Master Raychelle could probably survive it. She had enough experience that I felt safe in assuming that she could survive more or less anything that got thrown at her on this planet. I think she felt the same way about me, and if so was basing that on what I’d managed to do to get into the Crystal Guardians. The problem was that I wasn’t the one who’d done most of the work. At the end it had been me, two real Crystal Guardians, two people trained to about the same level as a Crystal Guardian and around ten million other people all pitching in together. On my own I just tended to get kind of beat up.

“Miss Fari, what is the bone stealer doing with my squad?” Darius asked.

“I’m only catching glimpses of it, but it’s brought them back the entrance portal and I think it’s webbing them in place over it.” she said.

“Why would it do that?” Darius wondered.

“It’s setting a trap.” I said. “The entrance is the one place it could be programmed to know that we’d have to head to eventually.”

“What’s the point of a trap there though?” Darius asked.

“It depends what it wants. If its placing them over the teleport circle though, I would guess it doesn’t want us to leave.” I said.

Stairways make for a lousy place to fight. The bone stealer didn’t seem to mind though. It came at us less like a pouncing predator and more like a thunderous wave. The stairs and railways didn’t give it a moment’s pause. It flowed over and around them, detaching and reattaching bones to its central mass so fluidly it might as well have been a jet of water.

I watched it surge upwards and saw Lt. Mara’s troops start to react. It didn’t take an Aetherial spell to know that they were doomed though. The bone stealer out massed them ten-to-one and could move freely in the stairway. They, on the other hand, barely had room to dodge without falling into the empty shaft the stairs spiraled around. Worse, the stairs had been damaged by the beast’s earlier passage down them. It wasn’t going to take much damage before they fell apart and dropped us all a few hundred feet to a messy and painful end.

I glanced at Darius to see if Lt. Mara’s team had any aces they’d been holding back for an enemy like this. The tight fear that gripped his face confirmed what I’d guessed. They had grit, they had training and they had a ton of courage. What they didn’t have were weapons that were worth a damn against a creature like this.

Well, except for one.

Master Raychelle had entrusted them to me, because she thought I had the strength to protect them. It was true that since gaining access to my powers, I’d become stronger than I’d ever been, but I suspected that I projected an illusion of being more competent than I actually was.  If so, I hoped that Master Raychelle hadn’t been taken in by it because in the dark pit of my gut I had the feeling that no one else was going to be able to stand against the monstrous centipede-like thing that was barreling up the shaft at us.

“You should start running now.” I told Darius and shoved him back up the stairs.

Then I leapt over the railing and plummeted down at the rising monster.

In retrospect, it wasn’t one of my best plans ever. To be fair though, I had less than three seconds to come up with it and “hit things” is kind of what I’ve trained myself to do for the majority of my life.

I’d expected to land on a solid mass of bone and be able to start inflicting damage from there. Somehow it hadn’t occurred to me that if the bone stealer could flow around the stairway like water, it’d be able to do the same to me.

It tried to grab me with a talon made of braided spines as I fell towards it. I responded by immolating myself in Void anima. The talon smashed into me and I felt the bone stealer’s raw power meet my own. My Physical anima saved me from the worst of the hit while the Void anima around me slurped down the magics that held the bone stealer together.

Usually that was a fairly deadly combination in a fight, but the bone stealer’s anima was as hard to effect as Master Raychelle had warned that it would be. I was able to draw the magics out of the bones that made direct contact with me, but not instantly. What was a bigger problem was that each of the stolen bones seemed to have its own store of anima. Draining one gave me a jolt of power but it didn’t slow down the rest of the creature.

With the physical power that I consumed, I felt echoes of the creature’s mind. Anger and a lust to destroy ran up my back and slammed into the base of my brain. That wasn’t going to be good for the bone stealer, but on some level I was aware that it wasn’t going to be good for me either. Not if I let it take control of me anyways.

Not that the bone stealer was eager to have me drain any more of its power either though. When it felt that I was stealing its magics away, it lashed out at me from every direction it could. It didn’t try to crush me, in fact it limited the contact it had with me to the fastest of slashes and thrusts that it could manage. Basically trying to inflict the most damage with the least opportunity for me to tear its anima away.

The attacks were bad enough, but the bone stealer’s reluctance to stay in contact with me had a more serious ramification. Without it trying to crush me, I didn’t have anything holding me up, and so I started falling once again.  I tried to grab onto it, but the bones twirled away from me as fast as I reached for them.

I was distracted from the peril of my fall when I heard Lt. Mara bark an order and bolt caster blasts exploded in every direction around me. I got clipped by a few of them and between that and the sheer impact force of the bones flying around I was knocked head over heels and lost all track of direction for a split second.

The blasts didn’t destroy the bone stealer. They didn’t even slow it down much. They did redirect the monster’s attention though, which bought me the opportunity to grab hold of one of the thing’s ribs. I felt numerous stab wounds on my arms and legs in the wake of the blast as well as a nasty gash across my cheek. It hadn’t been the blasts that had damaged me though. The creatures attacks had been so fast that they’d gotten partially through my anima shield.

That’s where the power I’d stolen saved me.

I burned it off to heal myself as I swung to another of the bone stealer’s ribs. The first rib dropped away, drained of power, but I was already swinging my way to the next one down. Working like that, I managed to navigate my way through the bone stealer and leap onto the remains of the stairs on the far side of the stairwell. I’d fallen several floors in process, which put me below the monster and out of reach of the people above me. I felt my blood run cold at the thought that there was nothing standing between them and the conjured death beast.

“I’ve seen these things before.” Fari said, appearing beside me.

“When?” I asked her.

“When the makers of the Jewels of Endless Night forged me into the Ravager. These creatures, and others like them, were the kind of threat they intended to use me against.” she said. “Originally I was meant as a defensive weapon. A way to reclaim planets that had been overrun by out-of-control life forms like this.”

“Any ideas how to stop this one?” I asked as I started leaping up the stairs in pursuit of the bone stealer.

“In the past my answer would have been ‘unleash a planet scouring wave of death on them’.” she said.

“Not an option any more.” I said. The bone stealer had ripped the railing off the next flight of stairs and bent them downwards at a sharp angle. Instead of running on them, I burned a bit more of the energy I’d stolen and leapt the distance to the next intact section.

“And I’m still happy about that.” Fari said, flying along beside me. “Especially since I think there’s something I can do about this thing with the powers I have now.”

“I’m open to suggestions.” I said as I dodged a spear-like bone the monster had fired at me.

“I can sense the proto-mind that’s controlling this creature. It’s not intelligent, it’s just a collection of Mental anima with some pre-set rules.” Fari said.

“And this is a good thing right?” I asked. I vaulted over a crumbled railing and managed to catch up to the tail end of the bone stealer. I was running late though. The front end was already tearing into Lt. Mara’s squad.

“I think I can override those rules and take control of it. I’ll need you to touch my jewel to its main body though.” she said. I looked up at the swirling mass of bones above me in time to dodge another two bone spikes. Getting past the beast was not going to be easy. Getting inside it was going to be even worse.

Then Sergeant Bancryths fell over the railing from a floor above me.

He was too far away for me to reach out and grab so I did the only thing I could. I jumped back into the bone stealer’s clutches again. Unlike the first time however, I wasn’t able to sheath myself in Void anima for this leap. For as useful as the Void anima was in protecting me from the bone stealer’s attacks, it wasn’t going to do anything pleasant to the poor wounded Sergeant if I grabbed him and drained all of his anima out in the process.

I felt dozens of slashes and cuts tear into me as I flew through the maelstrom of moving bones. Most of them were deflected by the physical anima shield that I was able to call up. Some got through but not enough to stop me from reaching the falling Garjarack Sergeant. What prevented that was when the bone stealer caught him and spun a web of glittering silver anima around him.

I landed on the side of the stairwell that Lt. Mara and her team were on, but a floor underneath their position. That gave me a great view to watch as the rest of them were plucked off the stairs and wrapped in silver anima thread too.

“That’s not something they normally do. That’s not something they can do.” Fari said.

“Where’s its central body?” I yelled over the fighting screams of Lt. Mara’s squad.

“There!” Fari said, pointing at a round circle of compressed bone that hung above us on the same level as Lt. Mara’s team.

I leapt directly at the creature’s body, channeling my own physical anima into a short burst of strength so that I could soar upwards at it. The problem with leaping though is that you don’t have any leverage or maneuverability while you’re in the air. The bone stealer capitalized on that by smacking me with two of it’s hundred or so claws.

The blows sent me crashing back to the stairs I’d leapt from, which promptly gave way under my weight. I plummeted to the stairs on the level below and collapsed those as well. That process might have continued until I hit the ground level if there hadn’t been an undamaged rung in the wall that I was able to grab onto.

Lt. Mara’s squad was still fighting even as the bone stealer wrapped them up. Bolt casters and other anima spells were exploding furiously above me while I looked around to find a path back up to the fight before it was too late.

The last person the bone stealer grabbed was Darius. He’d run back far enough to have a good field of fire on the creature, but not far enough to be out of its range. I saw him slash the thread that was binding him. He’d switched his bolt caster to anima blade mode, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with the threads the creature was conjuring.

“Why isn’t it killing them?” Fari asked. “Bone stealers always kill their prey and extract the bones immediately. It’s why they’re so dangerous.”

“I don’t know, but whatever it’s doing is probably going to be a lot worse than death if we don’t stop it!” I said.

I looked around again, but came up short once more. There was no easy way back to the level the bone stealer was on. I let the anger I’d felt earlier flood down to my arms and channeled my physical anima to follow it. If there wasn’t a way back up to the creature, then I was going to have to make one.

With anima enhanced strength, I slammed my left fist into the stairwell’s wall. My punch sank my arm halfway to my elbow. I reach up higher and punched a handhold in with my right arm. As fast I could, I alternated my punches and climbed up the wall like an extremely destructive spider.

By the time I got to the top, the bone stealer had Lt. Mara, Sgt. Bancryths, Krysa and the others fully cocooned. It was finishing up Darius who had switched to breathing gouts of brilliant blue fire at the beast. I could feel the heat from across the stairwell, but neither the silver threads nor the bones that made up the creature were prone to combustion.

Sensing that I’d returned the bone stealer swiped at me with its claws again. I didn’t have the anima shield to protect me but what I had in its place was the speed and strength to catch the claw in mid-swing. The bone stealer reacted instinctively to that and tried to pull the claw free of my grasp. It couldn’t break my grip but it pulled with more force than I had weight so I came flying along for the ride.

I drained the claw after catching onto the arm that was holding Darius and the claw tumbled away. I was just reaching for the threads that bound Darius when the silver light that was playing along them went out like a candle.

The bone stealer had severed the thread itself.

In fact, it had severed both of the arms that had been holding Darius.

As we plummeted into the pit of the stairwell, I watched the bone stealer slither up to the door on the top level and pour through it. In one incredibly fast and fluid motion it took it’s captives through the door and slashed at the ceiling of the stairwell, sending tons of metal and stone raining down towards us.

The most annoying thing about Master Raychelle vanishing on me wasn’t that she’d left me alone, in chains, with a group of soldier who wanted to lock me up. It wasn’t even that she’d left all of us in a prison that had been overrun by freakish magical horrors. No, the most annoying thing about her disappearance was how everyone looked at me like I was supposed to be able to explain where she went.

“Prisoner is loose.” Lt. Mara called out, bringing the squad back to order.

“No visual.” several of the soldiers reported.

“Alright, where is she?” Lt. Mara asked me.

“As an offhand guess? Looking for survivors. You know, like she said she was going to. Twice.” I said.

“It’s not a good time to be a wiseass.” Lt. Mara warned me.

“Yeah, and it’s never a good time to be a dumb one.” I said, staring back and meeting her glare with one of my own.

Leaders tend to dislike people challenging their authority, especially in times of stress. I knew that but I still couldn’t resist needling them.

“At this moment I am forced to assume that the conditions here are the result of a scheme enacted by your mentor. Can you give me a reason I should not proceed under that assumption.” Lt. Mara said.

“Nope.” I said.

“Just like that? You’re not denying it at all?” she asked.

“There’s no point in denying it. I know she didn’t but as far as you’re concerned you have no idea what her capabilities or motivations are. Doesn’t matter what I say, if you’ve already made up your mind.” I said.

“Actually, she hasn’t made up her mind yet. Not completely.” Master Raychelle said to me telepathically.

“I thought you said this spell was compromised by some mentalist.” I asked her, replying on the psychic link that she’d forged to me at the start of this mess.

“It is, but the prison is shielded, so our eavesdropper won’t be able to listen in.” she said. “I need you to stay with the soldiers. Help them reach the commander’s office safely. I will join you there or at the teleport circle depending on what I find.”

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“Not what. Who.” she said. “Whoever summoned the Bone Stealers wasn’t targeting us, not directly.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The Bone Stealers are nasty but they wouldn’t have been able to kill me alone, much less the two of us and a squad of armed soldiers. So therefor, they weren’t summoned here to kill us. They were meant to silence someone before we could speak to them.” Master Raychelle said.

“Who?” I asked.

“General Kep Vex, I believe. Also known as the Bloody Tide.” she said.

I’d never heard of the guy, but it wasn’t that surprising. Up until a few days ago, I’d never head of the Exxion system either.

“Sounds like a nice guy.” I said.

“He’s a traitor to both the humans and Garjaracks and a war criminal. The Hellsreach Council has had him incarcerated for thirty years, since well before the time when the system joined the Crystal Empire.” she said.

“You think he knows something from the bad old days? Something someone is willing to go to this much trouble to keep us from finding out about?” I asked.

“I didn’t until we got here, now I’m fairly sure.” she said.

“And the chance that he’s still alive?” I asked.

“Minimal. Bone Stealers are thorough and he’s not young anymore.”

“I thought you said age brought experience?” I said. Master Raychelle was old enough to be my grandmother and then some. Despite that I was under no delusions how a fight between us would go, even without anima casting. Just on pure skill, she could beat me like a rag doll if we ever got into a serious fight.

“Not all experiences are good ones.” she replied.

“So why look for him?” I asked.

“There is a chance he’s still alive, or that others are. Whatever their crimes, the people here don’t deserve to be recycled into monster parts. If I’m too late for General Vex, I may still be able to find notes or a memoir of his.” she said.

“So while you’re off doing something useful, I get to baby sit the soldiers who think I’m going to stab them in the back any second?” I asked.

“Why do you think I took an apprentice?” she asked in return.

“Tell your master ‘hello’ for us.” Lt. Mara said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You were distracted just now. I know what it looks like when someone’s holding a psychic conversation.” Lt. Mara said. “And while you’re telling her ‘hello’, tell her that I’m going to have to shoot her on general principle if we run into each other again.”

“She says you won’t have to worry about seeing her again, if she doesn’t want you too.” I said. Master Raychelle might not like me putting words in her mouth. And it probably wasn’t a great idea to encourage paranoia in the nice Lieutenant with the deadly weapons either. Despite all that it was still kind of fun to push her buttons.

“Wonderful. And what are you going to be doing?” she asked. I was willing to bet that she wouldn’t have been particularly upset if I disappeared too.

“I’ve been ordered to help keep you safe.” I said.

“That’s going to be a neat trick with those shackles on.” she said.

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie. They are not making the job any easier.”

“Let me see what I can do about that.” she said as she walked behind me. For a brief, foolish, moment I hoped that she was willing to be reasonable. Nobody is ever reasonable though. There’s something about sapient thought that seems to preclude it.

I felt the additional pair of manacles click in place on my wrists and reminded myself that this was the price I paid for taunting someone who already had me locked up.

“Worth it.” I muttered under my breath.

“Let’s move out.” Lt. Mara commanded her squad, ignoring me if she’d even heard me at all. I wound up in second-to-last place again, with Darius watching our backs.

The prison had the same kind of mish-mash appearance as the soldiers I was with. It wasn’t a new facility and over the years had needed quite a few repairs. The patchwork of fixes should that some of the repairmen had a better work ethic than the others did. That was unfortunate because the original hallways and offices looked like they would have been pretty spartan, and therefore difficult for ambushers find hiding spots. With the cobbled together fixes though, and the general clutter that builds up in an old facility, there were so many good hiding spots that I gave up on looking for incoming foes. Instead I shifted my shoulder to feel the jewel that I was wearing move. That helped me focus on it more clearly.

“Fari, can you sense these Bone Stealers?” I asked silently.

“Not directly.  Their minds are well shielded.” she replied.

“What kind of indirect options do you have?” I asked.

“I could eavesdrop on the soldiers you’re with. Use them as active listening posts and combine what they’re hearing and seeing into a composite of where we are. That’ll let me spot the Bone Stealers farther out if they try to charge us. If we blunder into them then there’s not much I can do.” she said.

“Sounds like the best plan we have available.” I said and let her get to work. I had a sort of danger sense that would warn me of trouble as well, but I was hesitant to rely on that. I could feel it humming along my nerves already due to the general peril I was in. Whether it would be able to pick up on the summoned creatures was something I expected I would have to learn the hard way.

We got to the first stairway down before we saw the next sign of the Bone Stealers. The walls of the stairway were cracked outwards and the stairs themselves looked like they’d been flattened by some colossal force.

“Huh.” I said, trying to imagine how the damage had happened.

“See something you recognize?” Lt. Mara asked.

“No, just putting the pieces together.” I said.

“What pieces?” she asked.

“That one Bone Stealer than you folks killed? It was bugging me. A single critter that size couldn’t have been a serious threat to this prison. I mean you did good work taking it down, but the guards here probably could have managed the same thing, just with more casualties. So why is everyone dead?” I asked.

“Because it’s not a single creature, if we’re to believe your mentor.” she said.

“Even a bunch of them like the one you fought wouldn’t be able to get through the prison’s security though.” I said, pointing at the thickness of the stairway’s door frame and the locking mechanism that once held it shut. “For something like this you’d need a much bigger critter.”

“Or ones that can combine.” Darius said.

“What do you mean?” Lt. Mara asked him.

“They assemble themselves out of bones right? From the way this stairway looks, I’d say something really big came down it.” Darius said.

“Yeah, a lot bigger than any one person’s bones would account for.” I said.

“That’s going to be a problem then.” Lt. Mara said.

“Only if it finds us.” I said.

“On this sort of mission, you have to assume that scenario will occur.” Lt. Mara said.

“This sort of mission?” I asked.

“Are we fate bound sir?” Darius asked Lt. Mara.

“Too many wild coincidences. I think we have to be.” Lt. Mara said.

“Someone’s casting Aetherial spells at us?” I said. “You really need to let me go then.”

“You are our prisoner still. Don’t worry, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to fight our way through a fate binding. We’ll be ok.” Lt Mara said.

“We’ll all be ok.” she added, looking around at the rest of her squad. They didn’t seem like they entirely believed her assertion however. My guess was their experience had taught them otherwise.

“You don’t understand.” I started to say, but Lt. Mara cut me off.

“No, you don’t understand. If we are fate bound, and whenever you need to ask that question, you can be pretty sure the answer is yes, but if we are fate bound that means that chance is going to roll against us at almost every possible opportunity. We cannot afford to take risks, any risks, until we’re clear of this battle field, and you are a risk.” she said.

“What you have to risk with me is your trust. I can break the fate binding on you. I can even make it so we can get to the commander’s office safely.” I said.

“You’re an Aetherial caster? You can’t be that good of a one or you wouldn’t be trapped her with us.” Lt. Mara said.

“I’m not an Aetherial caster at all. I’m something a lot worse, but I can protect you.” I said.

“No deal. It’s too big of a risk.” Lt. Mara said.

“Everything is a risk here. You can’t let paranoia make you take the wrong one.” I said.

“You’re right. I have to go with what I know rationally. That means I don’t have the luxury of believing wild claims that would happen to be very convenient at the moment. Even if you can do what you say, you could use those abilities to vanish like your mentor did. That might be all someone’s waiting for to send the hordes in on us.”

“You fixed up my ankle and my arm, also I’ve been ordered to protect you, so it’s a safe bet that I won’t run away.” I said.

“There’s no such thing as a ‘safe bet’. Any time you gamble you can lose.” Lt. Mara said. “I won’t gamble with the lives of my squad like that.”

She turned and walked to the front of the squad to lead us down the damaged stair to the commander’s level.

“You should keep these on for show.” Darius whispered and I felt the manacles unlock from my arms.

“What are you doing?” I whispered back.

“Being an idiot.” he whispered.

“Why?” I asked.

“Stupidity doesn’t need a reason. It’s a natural human trait.” he said.

“So is self delusion. They usually go together. You’ve got a plan, and you know it’s a bad one. That says you’re not stupid, just desperate.” I said.

“You know there’s a fate binding here. I know there’s a fate binding here. The Lieutenant does too.  I’ve seen what they can do and let me say that any fate binding that starts with ‘summon monsters to kill everyone’ is one that I’d really rather have the Crystal Guardian on our side for, thank you very much.”

“I appreciate the vote of confidence.” I said.

“Well, now that it can come back to bite me, I’m guessing we won’t encounter any of the beasts and I’ll get court martialed once they see I disobeyed orders.” Darius said.

“Trust me, the odds on that are really low.” I said.

Just as the roaring started from the stairwell landing far below us.

“See. No worries.”

The Sisters who’d raised me had been big on trying to impress us that a life of crime and delinquency would wind us up in a hellhole for the rest of time. It was hard to get closer to what they’d described than the prison I’d let myself be led into.

They’d said we’d be surrounded by fire and brimstone, that we’d be trapped in the dark and cut off from the light of day, that we’d be beyond the reach of even the slightest hope of rescue. When it comes to making your prison inescapable, the Sisters had the right idea it turned out.

The makers of the Deep Run Containment Facility had started by creating an enormous building and warded it against every kind of escape magic they could think of. Then they buried it a thousand miles under the planet’s surface so that it was surrounded by magma. There was only one way in or out and using it required that you know the pass spell to activate the teleport device that would transport you back to the surface. It was the kind of place that people built when they were serious about not letting their prisoners escape. When we arrived I saw that there was one significant problem with the design though.

“It seems something got in here before we could.” Master Raychelle said.

The entranceway was covered in sigils. I’d seen a room like it before. It suppressed a caster’s access to their anima and made casting spells virtually impossible unless you had the required unlocking charm.  The sigils were difficult to remove or destroy and didn’t mind in the slightest being covered in blood. Or other less pleasant things.

“Form up.” Sgt. Bancryths called out. The strike team that had captured us unsheathed their bolt casters and took positions in a rough circle around the teleportation arrival disk.  On the upside only half of them were pointing their weapons at Master Raychelle and I.

“Deep Run Command what is your situation?” Lt. Mara called into a comm-crystal. Silence reigned for a nerve wracking moment before Master Raychelle spoke.

“They’re all dead.”

“Deep Run Command what is your situation.” Lt. Mara repeated. She scowled at Master Raychelle apparently not processing the carnage that surrounded us.

The blood and viscera that was splattered around the entranceway looked like the result of a bomb going off. The single door that led out of the room had been shredded in a way that was undeniably the result of something with claws.

I couldn’t think of anything that could tear through spell reinforced steel like it was putty but it was a big galaxy so I wasn’t too surprised. To be fair, there wasn’t a lot of room for surprise in my brain with disgust and fear fighting over who was going to make me sick first.

I’d faced off against one of the biggest, most powerful monsters in the galaxy and destroyed him. That should have made facing other monsters easier but somehow it didn’t. That might have been because I knew I couldn’t repeat the trick that I’d used to kill the Karr Khan. There weren’t cosmic class artifacts laying all over the place after all. It might also have been because killing the Karr Khan had cost me a lot. Even more than two months later I still felt the burn from channeling that much power. It got better week by week but I knew I wasn’t back up to my full strength despite being more powerful than I had been in the seventeen years leading up to learning about my abilities.

“I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Someone released a bone stealer in here.” Master Raychelle said.

“What’s a bone stealer?” I asked.

“A conjured entity. Resistant to magic and most forms of physical damage. It propagates by slaying creatures with a skeletal structure and using their bones to build copies of itself. Summoning one is illegal in the Empire and was in most of the Warlord domains as well. Its too easy for them to get out of hand.” she said.

“How do you know one is here?” Lt. Mara asked.

“I don’t know for sure, but look around you. There’s blood but there are no bodies. That’s not because the guards here survived, no one loses as much blood as we see around us and lives. It’s because something else found a use for their bodies.” Master Raychelle said.

“Why? Who would do this? And why aren’t you surprised by it?” Lt. Mara asked.

“Why? Because they wanted to kill us I imagine. Who would do such a thing? I don’t know yet. I hoped by coming here I would be able to find a clue to their identity. And as for why I am not surprised, why should I be, this is the third time today that someone has tried to kill me. I expect the trend will continue.”

“Are we staying or leaving Lieutenant?” Bancryths asked.

“Leaving.” Lt. Mara said.

“I doubt it.” Master Raychelle said.

“What?” Lt. Mara asked.

“I doubt that anyone who went to the trouble of casting a spell forbidden across the galaxy is going to allow us to escape its effects so easily.” Master Raychelle said. “I’m sure they scrambled the pass spell for exiting too.”

“We’ll see.” Lt. Mara said and held out her hand to the pale column of light that radiated off the teleportation disk. She concentrated for a moment but nothing happened.

“We’re trapped in here forever now aren’t we?” Darius asked.

“Certainly not. I wouldn’t have let you take us in here if I thought any plan our mysterious malefactor could put in place so quickly would work.” Master Raychelle said.

“Ok then share. You know all about what’s going on here. What was your plan?” Lt. Mara asked.

“Apprentice Watersward, we are currently without our magics, trapped with no ready means of escape and likely to attract the attention of creatures that it will be difficult to fight. What should be our first step?” Master Raychelle asked, looking at me.

“We need to expand our options. Probably by moving out of this room to regain our casting capabilities. Personally I’d vote for getting out of the shackles these folks have bound us with too.” I said.

“Good. And then?”

“Then we gather information. This place looks like a perfect trap but nothing’s perfect. You seem to know something about it so I’d consult with you first. If you don’t know a way out then Lt. Mara might, or failing that, exploration might turn something up.” I said.

“And the bone stealers?”

“Avoid them, unless there are still people alive in here.”

“What would that change?” she asked.

“A lot of things. They might be alive because they found a weakness in the monsters, or because they’re controlling the bone stealers. They might need our help or we might need theirs.” I said.

“And that is my plan Lieutenant. Locate any survivors, and use what I know of this facility to get us all out of here.” Master Raychelle said.

“How do you know anything about this facility? The Empire’s auditors have never been here.” Lt. Mara said.

“It’s a standard design. I’ve seen similar facilities on other worlds.” Master Raychelle said.

“And that’s how you planned to break out of here?” Lt. Mara said.

“I didn’t plan that we would stay here forever, but I wasn’t sure how we would be leaving once I had the information I needed.” Master Raychelle said. “If I might point out however, this is not the best time for an interrogation.”

“I have a facility that is probably full of dead people and you have answers. Before I march my troops in there I want to know what we’re dealing with.” Lt. Mara said. “And that includes what the real story is with you two. You’re not peace negotiators or bodyguards are you?”

“We are Guardians, not bodyguards.” Master Raychelle said. “Our remit is to defend the people of the Crystal Empire. All of them. And on that note I never said you would be marching your troops into the facility. There’s been enough death here already.”

“Then what do you think we’re going to do?” Lt. Mara asked.

“I think you’re going to keep your troops here, where you have a defensible position and choke point so that you’re not overwhelmed. I think you are also going to extend my apprentice and I a measure of trust and allow us to handle the monsters in the facility.”

“Trusting offworlders was what got this planet into trouble in the first place so, no, I don’t think I’m going to do that.” Lt. Mara said.

“Then what will you do?” Master Raychelle asked.

“With the teleporter’s pass spell scrambled this facility will be on complete lockdown. There is no way out from the inside but there is a communication crystal in the commander’s office. We’re going to proceed there and contact our surface forces. They can unlock the teleporter and extract us.”

I had to admit it didn’t sound like a bad plan. Except for the part where it was probably going to get her whole team killed.

“Lieutenant, I have a scan on something moving at the far end of the hallway behind the door. It’s not human or Gar.” Krysa, one of the Garjarack soldiers said.

“Is it heading our way?” Mara asked.

“Nope. Looks like it’s taking up an ambush position.” Krysa said.

“How smart are these things?” Mara asked.

“About as smart as a hunting cat.” Master Raychelle said.

“I don’t understand how they got in here. This room is supposed prevent any outside magic from getting into the facility.” Darius said.

“The magic was used in conjuring them. Their own powers are bent and twisted within themselves. They’re limited in how they can use anima, but they’re hard to effect with it as a result, and nearly impossible to suppress. That’s true of most conjured creatures.” Master Raychelle said.

“Do they have any weak points?” Lt. Mara asked.

“They’re fast and strong but they’re still only made of bone. Breaking the bones doesn’t destroy them but it will slow them down. Reduce the bones to dust though and the animating spirit will lose it’s hold on the material realm.” Master Raychelle explained.

“How are we set for force runes?” Lt. Mara asked.

“They’re back on the ship. Can’t bring explosive ordinance into a secure facility like this.” Bancryths said. Lt. Mara winced at that.

“Then we do this hard way.” She sighed.

The team changed their formation, staggering themselves so that only one person was moving at a time and the rest had a clear line of fire down the hall. We exited the anima suppressing room with the kind of care and precision I’d only read about in books. Part of me, I’ll admit, was kind of excited by it. That was the part that thought we might not be eaten by monsters in the next five minutes.

The lights in the facility had failed, so Lt. Mara cast a series illumination orbs the size of my fist down the corridor to see what lay ahead. That helped the soldiers but didn’t do much for me since they put Master Raychelle and I at the back of the group. Darius was stuck taking up the rear and keeping us under guard.

With the soldiers in front of me, I didn’t see the bone stealer spring forward towards an illusion that Lt. Mara had cast, but I did hear it. The clickety clack of a pile of bones rambling against each other as it struck was unnerving. Worse though was hearing its otherworldly hissing when it discovered that it had been lured out of hiding by false prey.

The soldiers didn’t need to be told what to do in the face of an enemy like that. Every bolt caster except the one that Darius was holding blasted to life. The hail of deadly fire the squad launched down the hallways connected explosively with the bone stealer, but not explosively enough to reduce it to dust.

The creature managed to dodge a few of the shots and recover at blinding speed from the rest. It was on Krysa before any of us could blink. The lizard woman had been anticipating that though I guessed (probably because she was at the front of the group) and managed to hold off the snapping tangle of teeth and shattered bones that made up the creature’s maw.

I struggled to escape the shackles I was in to help the woman, but her fellow soldiers had her covered. Bancryths and another soldier dragged the bone stealer off Krysa and pinned it to the floor, while Lt. Mara and two other soldiers stepped up and blasted the thing at point blank range.

The creature’s otherworldly hissing became an otherworldly scream as the soldiers refused to let up on their barrage. A dozen second later, they’d fire what seemed like a thousand shots into the monster and, as instructed, reduced its central mass to dust, at which point the rest of the bones collapsed into an inert pile.

“Excellent work Lieutenant. Be aware that they don’t usually hunt alone like that though.” Master Raychelle said.

“That doesn’t change the mission.” Lt. Mara said.

“No. It doesn’t.” Master Raychelle agreed. “There are survivors to search for still.”

“If we find any on the way to the commander’s office we’ll deal with them then. From what you described, I don’t think there’s going to be anyone left alive here though and I’m not risking my troops’ lives to confirm that.” Lt. Mara said.

“I never said you’d be searching for them.” Master Raychelle said.

And then she vanished.

Part of me was delighted to see Master Raychelle show up. With her as back up, neither Darius nor the other seven soldiers that had shown up were going to be a problem. Another part of me was kind of annoyed though.

“What happened to you?” I asked over the telepathic link that she’d setup for us.

“It’s not secure. There’s a very talented mentalist on this world somewhere and they’ve tapped into my spell. Let it go the next time you’re injured, please. I’d rather they not be aware that I survived just yet.” Master Raychelle said out loud.

“What?” Darius asked.

“She wasn’t talking to you.” I said as I watched the other soldiers approach. They were well armed but from the conflicting styles of their weapons and armor they didn’t look like a cohesive unit the way most military groups do. What they lacked in appearance they made up for in organization though. Master Raychelle had just begun teaching me about how proper military units functioned and from what I could see these soldiers were way ahead of me on that subject.

The seven of them split into three subteams as they approached us. Two teams stopped early and took up positions behind the available cover. The other team advanced with one of the members stepping forward while the other two members spread out to flank us at short range.

“Perhaps she’ll talk to me then.” the leader of the group said. “Lieutenant Mara Nox of the Hellsreach High Patrol, Third Squadron. You are the Imperial aliens correct?”

Mara looked to be as human as I was, but I saw that Darius’ words were true. Half of Mara’s soldiers were the lizard-like Garjaracks.

“We are Imperial envoys. Do you intend to impede us?” Master Raychelle asked.

“I believe you could say that. You are hereby under arrest, by my authority as a representative of the Hellsreach’s Common Council. I order you to stand down and surrender any weapons you are carrying.” Lt. Mara said.

“On what charges are you arresting us?” Master Raychelle asked. I was primed for a fight to start but the amused tone in Master Raychelle’s voice made me pause. She wasn’t a blood thirsty woman from what I’d seen of her so far, so I couldn’t imagine that she was amused by the idea of beating on a team of eight well armed soldiers. We could both slip away under the cover of an invisibility spell, but against a prepared group even that would be difficult. Void anima could make us invisible and absorb anima attacks but if they started detonating the trees around us we’d be shredded by the shrapnel before we got a hundred feet away.

“Illegal immigration.” Lt. Mara said.

“Our clearance documents were processed two days ago.” Master Raychelle said. “If you are actually concerned about that.”

Despite the fact that we were the ones who had multiple weapons trained on them, I got the sense that Master Raychelle was baiting Lt. Mara. It was as if each question Master Raychelle asked was a test. Lt. Mara apparently hadn’t given a failing answer yet but I suspected things would become violent in a hurry if she did.

“They were processed by the Imperial appointed Joint Exxion Congress. The Joint Congress does not have the authority to approve customs passage to Hellsreach however.” Lt. Mara said.

“And we are just learning of this now? Was this communicated to the Congress?” Master Raychelle asked.

“Official notice has been served to the Joint Congress monthly.” Lt. Mara said.

“But not to the Imperial ambassador?” Master Raychelle asked, meaning “what kind of bogus surprise move is this?”

“The Hellsreach Common Council has been given no direct access to the Imperial ambassador. All communications are handled through the Joint Congress.” Lt. Mara said, meaning “if it’s a surprise to you, its your own damn Imperial fault.”

“And what are the penalties for illegal immigration?” Master Raychelle asked.

“You will be held at a containment center until a trial can be arranged. Depending on the arbiter’s evaluation, you will either be deported and returned to space or your case will be transferred to a full immigration review panel.” Lt. Mara said.

“And if we chose to simply leave now?” Master Raychelle asked.

“I cannot allow you to do that. Part of your trial will be to determine if you were part of any conspiracies against the people of Hellsreach.” Lt. Mara said.

“And if we were?”

“Then you will be turned over to Hellsreach Security and Intel for interrogation.” Lt. Mara said.

“What will happen if we do not choose to comply with your orders?” Master Raychelle asked. She was relaxed. It was easy to mistake that for being passive. No one in the clearing was making that error though.

In some ways it’s nice to be part of a galactically famous organization. The Crystal Guardians have a terrifying reputation for getting things done. Individually, they’re assumed by most people to be among the most powerful anima casters in the galaxy. The myth goes that the Crystal Empress hand selects each one and then bestows on them the blessing of her unfettered power.

It’s a nice myth, but when I was selected it was by an acting Crystal Guardian and her apprentice. Master Opal, one of the Sapphire Guardians, sponsored me before a panel of seven judges, not all of whom were Guardians themselves.  I sat through two days of “hearings” which involved nothing more than chatting with the judges while we lounged in comfy chairs, ate some great food and they went over my record.

To be fair, they had all kinds of mental anima spells in place to prevent me from lying and our “casual conversations” covered a lot of topics that would have been difficult to answer if I’d had anything to hide. In the end they’d come to the consensus that they were satisfied that I’d make an acceptable candidate and turned me over to Master Raychelle for training and a full evaluation.

At no time did I get a super power up from the Crystal Empress though. Or from anyone for that matter. The closest I’d come to that was the bits of gear that Master Raychelle had me bring along for the mission. Anyone with enough coin or credit could have duplicated that sort of a power-up though. Like, say, with the armor and heavy bolt casters that the soldiers around us were carrying.

“If you choose not to surrender then we will be required to incapacitate you. Should you resist then we will be bring you down using whatever force is necessary up to and including lethal measures.” Lt. Mara said. “I will instruct you again. Stand down and drop any weapons you are carrying.”

I had to give them credit. For a unit that was relying on a mish-mash of supplies, they managed to appear perfectly professional in all other ways. I didn’t see fear or excitement in their eyes. However they felt about the job they were being asked to perform, they’d put those feelings aside. That wouldn’t make getting shot by them any less painful, but it was a change of pace from the out of control thugs and psychos I was used to dealing with.

I could almost believe that we’d be able to talk our way out of this, given how reasonable they seemed. Almost. Looking at Lt. Mara’s expression though I saw a resolve that was annoyingly familiar. She had a duty to perform and she was committed to it. I’d choked out the last person who’d been overly committed to doing her duty, but given the presence of Lt. Mara’s backup, I didn’t think that was going to be an option in this case. At least not until Master Raychelle took them all out, which if I wasn’t mistaken was going to take all of ten seconds or so.

Of course, as usual, I was mistaken.

“Very well. We surrender then.” Master Raychelle said.

She might as well have clubbed me over the head with a metal pipe.

“What?” I blurted out before I could stop myself. I also swung around to face her before I could stop myself and almost fell on my butt as my injured ankle gave out. I hadn’t been focusing on the physical anima brace I’d put together for it and I’d forgotten how much it hurt to walk on.

Darius caught me as I toppled backwards, dropping his sword to do so. Tactically that was a stupid move. He’d not only disarmed himself, he’d placed himself as a shield for me to hide behind and become a potential hostage if I was willing to show them what I could do.

“I don’t think this prisoner can walk sir.” Darius said to Lt. Mara as he helped me back to my feet. “She was injured when the 4X’s shot her down.”

“The 4X’s?” I asked.

“The garrison forces from Exxion IV, the human offworlders, I believe.” Master Raychelle said.

“That’s correct.” Lt. Mara said as she stepped closer. She stayed out of arm’s reach and inspected my lower leg. I saw the sparkle of physical anima dance across her eyes as she did. It caught me by surprise since the only other physical anima caster I’d met who knew spells like that had been trained as a Healer.

“It’s not bad, but I won’t ask you to walk on it unaided.” Lt. Mara said. “Bancryths, bring an aid kit here.”

One of the soldiers in the rear nodded and returned to the ship they’d arrived in.

“Please sit down and place your hands behind your backs.” Lt. Mara said.

I looked at Master Raychelle for either confirmation that she was ok with this or for a sign that she’d gone insane and I was going to have to strike out on my own. She met my gaze and gave me a tiny, confident smile. The kind that gently scolded me for not trusting that she was playing a longer game than I was aware of.

Darius helped me sit down while Lt. Mara placed a pair of restraints on Master Raychelle’s wrists. She waited until her subordinate had brought up the aid kit and treated my leg and arm before she bound my hands though. That meant having my arms locked behind me wasn’t agonizing, just uncomfortable.

Once we were secured, Mara and her troops lead us to the transport and placed us in special holding cells in the back of it. Master Raychelle went into one, while I was loaded into a separate compartment.

“Darius, you’re with the apprentice you caught. Bancryths and Selimon, you’re with the master.” Lt. Mara said, directing her troops into the holding cells as well. I watched as Darius climbed into the seat opposite the one I was shackled to. He touched a glyph on his side of the compartment and a clear wall shimmered into existence between us.

“I probably don’t need this.” he said, indicating the security wall, “But it is standard procedure.”

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were still scared of us.” I said. Lt. Mara had closed the cell door, locking us both in for the duration.

“Let’s just say we have some idea what you Guardians are capable of.” Darius said.

“That’s why we rate a personal overseer?” I asked. I would have been miffed that I only rated one guard where Master Raychelle got two, but I had to admit that she was at least twice as dangerous as I was, if not more so.

“For now. Once you’re at the containment center, they’ll do their own evaluation of you.” Darius said.

“Containment center? I thought you’d called it a prison camp.” I said.

“It is what it is.” he replied with a shrug.

“So who else do you put there?” I asked him.

“Technically? Criminals. We’re not just the Common Council’s army, we’re also their law enforcers.” Darius said.

“On a world where there are two enemy armies committing crimes though, I’m guessing you don’t find many people that you can arrest like us right?” I asked.

“Not so much. Our arrests tend to leave craters, and that’s when we can find someone in a position that we can afford to strike at. Most of the ones that we catch and put into “containment centers” are smaller operators. Saboteurs, assassins, gang leaders. Plus we’ve got the regular criminals to deal with. Just because the offworlders are in an almost constant state of warfare doesn’t mean the natives are don’t kill each other once in a while too.“ Darius said.

“You know, I was ready to punch your head off back there. If you’d lead with this kind of a story, I might not have come an inch away from doing it.” I said.

“Is that supposed to make me think you’re not still an inch away from punching my head off?” Darius asked.

“Sure, I’d say you’ve got at least two inches now, maybe three.” I said.

He grinned and shook his head.

“Listen. When you break out, try not to mess things up too much. I know some of the guards who work at the containment center. They’re good people and they follow the rules.”

“What makes you think we’re going to break out?” I asked.

“We had you turn over your weapons and you weren’t carrying any.” he said.

“We were on our way to a peace conference.” I said.

“Yes. Where you were going to act as guards for the negotiators.” he said.

“So?” I asked.

“So the only guards who don’t have weapons are the ones who don’t need them.” he said.

He wasn’t wrong about that. Master Raychelle had us leave behind anima blades and bolt casters to “project the proper image”. I was lousy with a bolt caster and still working on learning how to fight with an anima blade so that didn’t bother me. Mostly because, like Darius said, I was plenty dangerous enough without those kind of tools.

“If you think we’re just going to breakout, why stick us in the prison camp in the first place?” I asked.

“Blind optimism? I don’t know. I’m presuming the people in charge have some idea what they’re doing.” Darius said.

I chuckled. Being the one taking orders wasn’t easy no matter whose side you were on it seemed.

The transport landed and Darius withdrew the clear wall between us. He helped me out of the cell and marched me behind Master Raychelle as Lt. Mara’s troops lead us to a giant metal door in the side of a mountain.

“For the duration of your arrest you will housed here, in the Deep Run Containment Facility.” Lt. Mara said to us and then added to her troops, “Let’s get them checked in.”

We stepped onto a plate in front of the steel door and I felt a teleportation effect catch me and drag me under the earth, miles down, to an obsidian cube that was wrapped in spells and floating deep in the planet’s inner mantle.

That was how I wound up in prison on the first mission I ever undertook as part of the Crystal Guardians.