Ar'Kendrithyst

Fifteen days ago, Slave Intake #45 had been a collection of different structures all designed like a meat processing plant meant to process around 100,000 people a year.

Slave Intake #45 was now House Benevolence, the original structure ripped out to the roots and replaced in white. Eternal stonewood was the building material of choice, and that material made apartments, offices, extra work spaces for whoever wanted to have one, strip malls, learning spaces, food halls, an entire sewer system, as well as defenses to keep all of that working well. Erick and his Overseers and the resurrected of the Waiting Room had worked hard to make that happen. Almost none of it was actively being used except for the essential places, but it was there for the using, as soon as people got around to it. They were in the middle of a war, though, so no one really cared about the economy at the moment.

Slave Intake #38 was a relatively 1-for-1 copy of Slave Intake #45, but the internals were all different.

Erick investigated those internals now.

The series of black structures known as Slave Intake #38 stood amid the tan wasteland and took up about 40 square kilometers of land, with each building connected to each other via well-controlled underground tunnels. There was some above-ground movement here and there, but people only moved above-ground when they were at this or that ‘processing zone’.

To be seen moving above ground outside of those specific zones was to be shot at by the turrets that rose above the place on tall black towers.

In the center of the Intake was the spaceport. Ships of all kinds and sizes —but mostly 400-meter-long transports— rested on black stone, while slavers and slave-soldiers moved would-be-slaves into the facilities, shuffling them off the tarmac toward the left. Those new would-be-slaves numbered in the thousands. Slave Intake #38 had just finished a raid, and the captured people were yelling and spitting and cursing and hating. Those that got too rowdy often got blasted with vile light from cruel captors, causing no real damage to their ‘livestock’ but a whole lot of pain. Those that got rowdy in those large transports often had their fellow captured people drag them down and away from the bars, so that they didn’t all get blasted with pain over and over again.

There was screaming. Some of it was because of the pain. Some was because of sorrow.

On the right side of the spaceport’s tarmac a much different flow of people came out of the ground, to head off to much smaller transports, to head off to sale. The difference in the number of people heading into the facility on the left and coming out of the facility on the right was maybe 8 to 1. For every 8 would-be-slaves, only 1 got ‘processed’ to satisfaction. The rest got eaten by demons, which was not technically a soul sundering. Not yet.

They did the sundering on Layer 1.

The demons ate the souls of the ‘failures’ here, digesting them for as long as they wanted, and when it came time to actually rid themselves of those souls, the demons usually went to Layer 1 and completed the digestion process.

Erick moved his gaze onward, investigating defenses and barriers to ingress and the locations of targets and infrastructure.

All across Slave Intake #38 were black turrets on tall black towers. They were mostly Vile-based laser-based defenses; useful against people. Not so useful against anything else. They did have guns with bullets and automatic targeting systems and such, but the real defenses of this land were the demons and talents in this place.

Those guys were in the main eviscerating area; the largest area.

Erick looked to the receiving station, first.

The receiving station was about five square kilometers of various structures that were more or less jail cells on steroids. This is where the main breaking took place. Unlike Slave Intake #45, where they captured families and broke people by having them break their loved ones, this place identified pairs of people through some sort of demonic intelligence. Erick watched as the processed people were forced to walk through scanners.

These people were elves, which were the most prominent people in the universe. These particular elves were some sort of forest elves, with slight brown skin and green-ish hair. As they walked through the scanners, light flickered and burned away whatever clothes they had, and then branded them on their back with big numbers. Burned flesh instantly healed over under different sorts of light. It was not a pleasant experience.

People screamed as they were forced to walk through the pain.

The jailers called them ‘weak shits’ and more. They were taunting whoever they could. When the captured people tried to fight they were incinerated from the outside in, and slowly, so that everyone walking by could see.

When the enslaved got past that intake, they were paired up based on their numbers and then stuffed into cells. Erick rapidly deduced that the pairings were made to inflict maximum emotional pain on the pair, with the person who had a dot burned onto their shoulder the one that they expected to survive.

The next part of intake stuffed people into cells, where only one left alive.

Those ‘victors’ got on to the next part of the whole ordeal, in which a pair of Contracts appeared out of the walls of the room, under protective glass so that the Contracts couldn’t be injured. A lot of people were trying to injure the Contracts and also failing. Videos played on the screens of those cells, showcasing ‘this is how good of a life you will have!’ if you signed the bigger Contract; the one they wanted you to sign. The smaller Contract was if the person wanted to be ‘processed’ more.

That smaller Contract imparted tracking and auto-pain magics into the person signing it, to be used at the discretion of any slaver.

The larger Contract had the contents of the smaller Contract, and also a lot of soul and body control curses. The larger Contract promised to get them out of here and into their new lives as slaves.

People signed the smaller Contract, mostly, but only when the water started filling the room.

No matter which contract the people signed, they ended up moving in the same direction.

The newly-Contracted people went to the main building where they learned what was expected of them in their new lives —from cooking to cleaning to simple obedience, to worse— and were disciplined when they failed to live up to their demands. This area of Slave Intake #38 was the largest by far, at over a full 20 square kilometers of the place. Multiple teaching buildings, the main administration center, main housing for demons and slavers; all of that, and more.

Erick wasn’t quite sure what signing the different Contracts got a person, if anything; it seemed to be a way to torture them more.

‘Graduates’ of that main area —which took about 4 months based on what Erick was reading and hearing— then moved on, all of them under heavy Contract, which was the large contract of the first offering, and more. ‘Failures’ of the main area got ‘walked’ into an ‘inferno exit’ in the center of the main area, whereupon they were incinerated and eaten by demons. The slaves were free and even encouraged to walk through the ‘inferno exit’ whenever they wished.

One person was ‘walking’ that way right now, under strict orders to go through the inferno, but she clearly did not want to do that. She was standing as still as she could right now, and yet even her simple body movements had her breathing away from the exit, the movements of her body that moved away from the exit causing agony. Looking through the nearby past, Erick saw that the woman had tried walking away, but she fell to the ground in agony. And so, she walked sideways from the exit and simply cried as she desperately tried to ‘do what the demons wanted, except exit’. They were giving her orders, and promising that if she did those orders she could be free of the inferno exit.

She did not want to die. She tried to do what they wanted.

But what they wanted was her painful death. Invariably, with small movements and accidental stumbles as she moved in an arc from the watering station to bathrooms to clean them up, she ended closer to the exit. From what Erick was hearing, she had been ‘walking’ toward the exit for three days now, because of some made up shit by the slavers, just to show off what they could do.

… Moving on.

The exit area had slaves under heavy Contract, and then under orders to sign new Contracts, which were just about the harshest things that Erick had ever seen. Bones would automatically break in fingers if the slave stepped out of line. Body parts would rot away…

Erick couldn’t read anymore.

He had only been looking over Slave Intake #38 for 20 seconds, and even that much was too much.

Every moment he delayed meant yet another person was subjected to the horrors of Slaver’s Den.

And so, 25 kilometers away from Slave Intake #38, under a considerable number of illusionary and other hiding magics, Erick conjured an eternal stonewood tree and then Shaped it into an actual defensive structure. Some walls. A thick, domed roof. Spaces for defensive valkyries to stand and to watch, and to defend. Ingress through one direction only. It was completely inadequate for any sort of true defense. It would be wiped away with a single nuclear bomb. But for the actual defense, there was Erick.

Currently, he was a 20-meter tall dragon. It was more than enough.

And then Erick cast some magic, combining [Spellsurge Weave] and [Blood of the Valkyrie] into a spellwork at the center of the forward base.

Carnage red glows floated above the solid white ground, and up above, high over the domed roof of the central structure, a red light began to glow, to cascade. The weaver was up, but it was not actively infecting people with [Blood of the Valkyrie]. Not yet. The glows in front of Erick began to change into a map of the area.

Down below that Valkyrie room, Erick cast an [Infinite Imaging], tuned to finding people. Outside, a white orb began to manifest and cascade into the air. In a much less worrisome way, people began to appear as blue dots on a white map.

Erick returned to the red map. Erick imagined the red map was a little less precise than the white one, a little more sloppy, and less refined, because he was worried about propagative effects spiraling out of control with unintended targets, and erring on the side of ‘this is not a target’. But no. The red map was just as well-made as the white. Whatever he wanted to infect, he could infect.

“And this is it, Erick,” he said to himself, floating above the red map.

Any target he picked would be the infection-vector for the rest of the propagative spell, and from there the valkyries would… spread. Erick cast a glance down below, to the white map, to see 37,000-ish blue dots pop up all over the 40 square kilometers of structure. Erick had that map search for ‘Good people’, just because; he wasn’t even sure why he picked that option.

19 people showed up. Erick was not one of them.

He kinda laughed at that.

And then he searched for ‘people about to die inside Slave Intake #38’.

783 targets.

… A bad idea, that one. The spell would fail pretty fast if it had to infect that many people at once, since each infection cost 50,000 mana.

‘Guards of Slave Intake #38’ had the same problem, but worse, at around 7,200 targets.

“How about ‘Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death’,” Erick asked himself, as he cast into the white map down below.

Erick’s eyes went wide, and then he let out a breath he had been holding. Erick wasn’t sure why he had picked that option, but it soon proved to be the better option. Only 8 targets. He imagined there would have been more, or maybe less for whatever reason, but perhaps Slave Intake #38 killed all of those who wished for death.

He didn’t want to think too much about it.

Erick gazed down upon the red map.

He began pumping it full of [Renew], and soon, the map was absolutely crimson with density. The light of the red weaver above began to drip sharp crimson, smoke grey, and shine black and gold at the same time. It was ready.

Erick cast [Spellsurge Weave] into the red map, intoning, “Graduates of Slave Intake #38 who wish for death.”

- - - -

A bloody crystal orb suddenly appeared over the black roofs of the graduate center, and then it descended fast. It smacked a ‘guard’ standing tall outside of a doorway, passing through the man, coming out the other side and taking the man’s entrails with it. The man was not dead yet, but he would be soon. The other ‘guard’ beside the first one had a surreal moment and failed to raise any alert at all.

The red ball was already gone.

The orb flew down a corridor, following the center path, but angled slightly. It went right past two demons in lab coats and deteriorating bodies, ignoring them. The demons looked at the orb as it passed, and then at each other and then at the orb again. They ignored it and walked on.

The Blood aimed for a woman down the hall who was ‘mopping’ the floor with her own spit and tongue while a nearby guard —an elven man this time— watched the woman mop, while also making her life more miserable by dribbling something nasty onto the ground.

The Blood caved through the woman’s shoulder, chest, and then went out through her hip and out the other side. The guard paused, unable to process what had just happened.

The Blood took a sharp turn through a wall and passed through that wall without impediment.

It killed a guy in a bunk unable to sleep because his bunkmate below had been kicking the bed. Gore splashed on the bunkmate.

The Blood took another sharp turn through the floor and caved a person in from their head to their feet. That person had been playing cards with real guards and losing their clothes in the process and now that person was gore on the ground. The guards complained of ‘what the fuck!’ and ‘shitting pranks.’

The Blood went through four more people, each of them actively wishing to die. It finished in some leader’s office, killing a woman who had been dusting the shelves while the leader went over progress reports and news of Erick’s resistance to Slaver’s Den. That cleaner’s gore splashed over those reports, and over the face of that leader.

The leader was stunned for a moment, then he frowned, saying, “What fool put auto-destruct pranks in the Contracts again?! What the fuck was she even doing to… trigger… Hmm.” He stopped talking.

For the body, lying broken on the ground with a hole in its chest and stomach, was subtly glowing. And then all subtlety was gone. The gaping wound flashed bright red and inflamed with light, both black and gold. Veins of red and grey spread throughout the corpse in a flashing instant.

The hole in the woman’s chest crushed inward, forming a ball of roiling flesh that—

The leader waved a hand and the blood splattered away, and then he tapped a black square on his desk, saying, “Get a cleanup crew in here, and get me Fa—”

Alarms blared. Softly. Was there a problem right now?

Unsure.

For that first ‘guard’s’ body had gone through the full transformation, uninterrupted, and out stepped a monster.

Three meters tall, human-shaped, androgynous with crimson skin and no sex. A peaceful face that almost looked like the man it had killed, but softer. Nicer. The man was at rest, and now came the monster with closed eyes, and a crown of eyes that blazed red and judgmental.

Thin yet strong, its muscles like cables stretched on bones of adamantine. Four blackened-gold wings hovered at its back and hips like a hundred floating swords, knives, and daggers. It held its clawed hands across its chest, as it floated there, looking dead and in a state of eternal repose, and yet like it would wake at any moment. A baleful, blackened-gold light shone from its wings and its crown. The world was darker where it floated.

The secondary guard, who had remained the whole time to see what was happening, had fallen to the ground, screaming in utter pain as his body flickered with black-gold fire that infected him and yet barely injured him. It didn’t need to injure. The infection of red veins under his skin did not need to kill.

That’s what the actual valkyrie was for.

The monster opened its eyes.

With eternal grace, the valkyrie reached over and carved away the guard’s face and pulled apart his chest, leaving the very-dead man behind as the valkyrie turned toward the hallway. The fresh gore turned to liquid and flowed together, into another valkyrie cocoon.

Down the hallway, tens of meters away, the two demons were staring at the red monster. One of them asked the other one, “Demon-spawning Contracts now? Who did that?”

“I’m not sure it is a demon, brother,” said the other demon. “It feels... weird. Can you feel that? I think… I think it is coming for us. Trying to convert us. What the black! The nerve of some youngsters!”

“Is that a conversion-pull? It seems weird, but I venture you are correct, brother.” The first demon said, “You shouldn’t try that against your elders, little demon. We’ll eat you up.”

The valkyrie advanced down the hallway, softly walking as though it were a single movement away from dancing instead.

“I think it aims to attack us! Actually attack us!” said the first demon, completely unable to understand why it would ever try that shit. “Can you believe this?”

“You seem correct,” said the other demon. “Come now then, little fresh-demon. Show us how— Ouch ouch! What the fuck is thaaAHH— FUCK YOU! AHHH!”

Blackgold fire erupted from the two demons, burning at their fleshy shells, infecting those shells with red and grey. The valkyrie advanced, its claws glinting, its smile faint.

The first demon sloughed off its skin and revealed its true nature as a four-meter-long teal-and-red slug. The slug spat acid even as it burned in the blackgold aura of the valkyrie. The second demon shed its burning flesh and stood as a skeleton made of putrid yellow bones. It went down screaming as blackgold fires tried to consume it; it had a lot more surface area to burn than the slug, and the slug was wet, so bones apparently burned a lot better than mucus.

The valkyrie flicked its blade wings around, splattering the slug’s acid onto the hallway, smoke rising from every drop, and then the valkyrie danced through the slug, blades flashing, blackgold burning slug slices went wide, each one infected with red-grey veins. The valkyrie then reached down and pulled the screaming skeleton demon apart with its bare hands, casting yellowed bone left and right.

Down the hall, the other valkyrie spawned from the mopping woman was just finishing playing in the entrails of the man that had been tormenting her. Those entrails glowed red-grey and turned to blood, coming together in another valkyrie cocoon.

Down below, amid blaring alarms and flashing warning lights, bloody playing cards turned less bloody as that blood floated into the air, away from the cards, to come together into a pair of cocoons.

A terrible roommate was reborn as another valkyrie, another tall, sexless creature of baleful blacklight and many blackened swords. Nearby, some bars were broken, sliced and twisted by incredible strength and powerful cutting edges. Beyond that open cage ‘graduates’ turned into meat, and then into balls of blood floating amid Siphoning blackgold light.

A dungeon further down, a playroom of the vile, held two more valkyries and several orbs of blood ready to be born soon enough, as soon as the rest of the valkyries siphoned enough power from those around them.

The leader of the graduate center was still alive. He was fighting.

He battled a valkyrie outside of his office while four more Siphoning orbs of blood pulled at him. He waved a hand and splashed away the valkyrie’s arm, but then the arm reformed and blackgold claws came for the leader’s throat again. Again, the leader bashed away the valkyrie, though every time he tried to form some sort of spellwork outside of his body the Siphoning orbs all around him pulled that magic apart.

So the leader ran.

Straight through his office, out the large window, the leader rushed to get away from a battlefield he could not win, triggering some tech in his office on the way out. The valkyrie followed and was promptly blown up as the office exploded around it.

The leader flew outside of his office, smiling as he looked back… His smile fell.

The valkyrie was dormant again; a ball of blood floating amid the burning wreckage of the room.

And the leader’s flesh was infected with red-grey veins.

The guy ran even more, calling out, “Margleknot! Travel to Wraithborne!”

Text appeared in the air,

You are currently infected with propagative magic. Travel is forbidden.

The same message was all over the place in Slave Intake #38, for many people were trying to leave the easy way. It was a technique that the slaves could not employ, due to ancient decrees of space and war made long ago in Margleknot, but the slavers could.

But not right now. Not in the middle of a war, and certainly not in the middle of a propagative event.

And so the leader of the graduate center flew faster, cursing and yelling and then yelling into a bit of tech he retrieved from his pockets—

Something darker than black descended, evaporating the man from his chest outward. A head went that way. Limbs and body went in other directions. All were infected with red, though. The ‘phone’ that had been in those hands fell away, some guy on the other side softly asking if everything was okay, and what was going on. When there was no answer the man’s voice turned frantic.

“Raza! Raza! Are you there?! ANSWER ME RAZA!”

The former leader of the graduate zone of Slave Intake #38 was already a ball of floating blood.

- - - -

Erick sighed.

Erick had regretfully learned the leader man’s name in that last phone call exchange. He did not want to, but he had.

He saw all of the destruction as his valkyries began to multiply at an alarming rate. After he had turned off the auto-targeting for new targets, letting the valkyries propagate on their own, he had only needed to supply an extra million mana to get the system rolling. And roll it did.

Some people tried to escape the battle. Erick couldn’t have that.

And so, Erick had added another Weave to another part of the building and combined that one with [Annihilation Bolt] in order to automate the killing of runners. Annihilation was fantastic at killing in one stroke of power against targets that had no defenses against that, and not many people did. It was better than doing it himself… though he was supplying all the mana to that Weave as well, and he had to directly do that. But really, only the strong were even able to make an escape attempt.

The valkyries were advancing too fast.

- - - -

A woman burned on the ground for her hatred of being captured. She hated and she hated and she wanted to kill and kill and never stop killing.

That deep conviction proved to be the thing that changed everything for her.

A valkyrie found the woman on the way to killing others. It did not do a thing to the woman that was not already being done, and worse, but the mere presence of a valkyrie was enough. Blackgold fire infected the downed woman anyway. She died to the automatic killing systems of Intake, and then she rose again as a vengeful angel.

She was not sexless. She was the same shape as the other valkyries, but her face was her own, and her body was her own, and she stared at her hands, and at how she knew what was happening around her from all of her sisters and brothers in the fight, and how all the world was filled with red orbs of former friends and neighbors and otherwise from home.

And yet she had a new home.

She was of House Benevolence now.

And Slave Intake #38 needed to be fully purged.

She roared, the first Valkyrie to give voice to the pain inside of her soul, and then she grabbed a sword from her wings, transforming the feather into a 4 meter-long blackgold instrument of death.

She moved so much faster than her slow brothers and sisters.

She carved a ballet of blood out of the entrails of slavers and former loved ones alike, knowing that all of them would be reborn in Benevolence.

Just like her.

The valkyrie smiled.

- - - -

A woman walked toward the Inferno Exit. Her body burned with vile light.

It was a relief when that black turned to blackgold. She had been struggling so hard against that demon pit in the center of the compound. She did not want to go into that oblivion. It had been days already, and she thought the end had come.

And then there was an angel.

The angel blessed her with redgrey death that promised something better, if she wanted.

And then the angel killed her, because that is what the angels did, and that was fine. The woman was ready for death; but not for oblivion.

… And then, somehow, the woman was still alive, in some odd way. But she was not herself. The woman watched the slaughter all around, disconnected from her body, from anything physical at all, as though from inside a bubble of glass inside a red ocean—

Oh?

The angels were killing the demons?

She wanted to help.

It was a simple emotion at first, but then that emotion doubled, tripled. And became an all-consuming need for vengeance.

And so, in a way she did not understand, she extended her arms, her legs, her wings, and she could move again. She was no longer on her way to the Inferno Exit. She did not hurt. She hurt others, instead.

And she moved so much faster than her new family.

She found supreme joy in reaping the guards who had tried to break her, to then transform them into something better. Because they would be better. This was a trial for everyone right now, and the Apparent King was watching. Maybe, if she proved herself, the King would let her kill more at the next location.

- - - -

A man stood over the cooling corpse of his mother, a knife in his hand, tears on his face, and his mother’s last words eternally on his mind.

‘Kill me and live a good life, son. Don’t ever think twice about what you have to do, because they’re only letting one of us go, and I want you to live. So do it. I’m ready.’

The Contracts held on the side of the room, each of them under glass except for where the man’s signature needed to go. A red pen sat in a little nook that had extended out from the wall along with the Contracts.

And the man held the knife. He had stopped sobbing only minutes ago, because an alarm went on, and the body was still there, the Contracts were still there, and tears still flowed when they could. Mostly, though, there was anger. Fury. Hate beyond measure.

And then the monster appeared. It stood outside the cell and flicked its wings across the bars and through the man at the same time. Iron bars turned to broken shrapnel. The man turned to slices of himself.

The man died not knowing that he was dead.

He was reborn as himself, but more. Taller. Stronger. Once again connected to others.

His mother’s corpse lay on the ground. It was cold.

She was not there anymore.

But something whispered in his mind; A susurrus of general knowledge and tactics, yes, but more than that. There were distinct voices. 17 of them so far. Some of those voices knew things, and so, they all knew things.

This land where the demons had taken them was known as Margleknot. People here didn’t die unless they were sundered, and people didn’t get sundered here at Slave Intake #38, unless the demons ate them. The man’s mother had not been eaten. The man had killed his own mother. And so his mother would go and wait for a while in a room that was not a room.

If the man proved himself as worthy of the power granted unto him, he might see his mother again.

The world did not make sense at all.

But it made enough sense, for now.

The valkyrie bent a knee, gathered his mother’s corpse, and incinerated it in blackgold fire. And then he said, “Thank you, House Benevolence, for sparing me from further pain of this place. I pledge myself to House Benevolence and the Apparent King.”

With a casual touch, the man picked one of his largest wing-blades and turned it into a greatsword. He sliced through the Contracts on the wall, vindication flowing through every part of him as he burned the offensive words in blackgold flames, and then he went on to join the slaughter.

He was so much faster at killing and converting than his slower brothers and sisters, until he met a woman who moved like him; with purpose and power.

The woman smiled as she cut through a barrier and killed the huddling demons beyond. “Welcome to the war, new brother. I’m Reena. What’s your name?”

“Xai Lu,” Xai said, his main eyes focused on cutting down the guard in front of him, but his crown-eyes were on Reena. On her grace, and her sword, and her beauty. She was paler than their other brothers and sisters, almost blush-colored. Her wings were more gold than black. She was amazing. “I did not recognize my name until you asked for it, and neither did I recognize your beauty.”

Reena laughed delightfully. “My thoughts are rather clear, too, so let us meet in the afterlife, my amazingly-red Xai Lu and talk about all of that which comes next. But war comes first.”

Xai Lu readily agreed, “War first.”

- - - -

Leader Sloane floated atop the main structure of Slave Intake #38, his former office, orchestrating the battle against his former home and pride and joy like an insurgent, or a wayward slave. His former underlings fought him, of course. A pair of soldiers stepped out from behind a ruined wall and fired their lasers at him. But then Sloane twisted his wings and blackgold strength deflected that laserfire. With a casual twist, Sloane turned two feathers into spears that rocketed down a hundred meters to split the soldiers into pieces.

Those pieces gathered around rapidly-departing souls, holding them in place as two new cocoons formed. Within moments, former enemies became mindless allies.

“Yet more mindless allies,” Sloane said to all of his new family, through a connection that he didn’t quite understand but he knew how to use well enough. Most of his new people couldn’t understand his words, but some could, and that mattered. He spoke to the masses, “It is a shame that more of you did not adapt well to your new gifts of strength.”

Reena was on the other side of the compound, reaping lives alongside that Xai Lu man, but Reena’s voice carried through their community link, “It is a shame that I feel beholden to not kill you again, but I would very much like to, Leader Sloane. I do not look forward to being reborn beside you.”

“I doubt I will be allowed to be reborn with all of you, anyway,” Sloane said, while he also instructed a wave of their lesser kin to overflow against some holdout powers in the basement levels. “Think less poorly of me when you go on to heaven, please, for I will be repenting elsewhere for a very long time, and I have already saved your ass five times now. Look behind you more, girl! Those turrets up there are not just for show.”

Sloane put four mindless brothers into the path of laserfire that had been aiming at Reena, their wings deflecting that bright black light. Then he made those minions go after the turret again, to duck and weave and assault that little holdout of danger, but the laserfire was oppressive. Those turrets were too well defended. Sloane had the mindless pull back, for now. The most Sloane could do against those things was to negate their effects on the rest of the battlefield.

“I have died and been reborn in blood three times already, decrepit Sloane!” Reena said, laughing through their connection, as she danced through another wall, making easy egress for the battalion to follow her into hell. “Let them try to kill me, and fail even more in that attempt!”

“You use up resources when you die, Reena,” said an unnamed woman who refused to tell anyone her name. She was killing on the lower levels, and doing well.

“A valid point about resources,” Reena said, “I will do better.”

Sloane was thankful for the nameless woman—

Someone blasted Sloane out of the sky with a sweeping beam of Void Magic.

When he came back to life far below the roof, stepping out of a puddle of blood, he said to everyone, “Reinforcements are here.”

Reena laughed. “Our King already took care of them while you were out of it!”

“Good.” Sloane flew upward, carving holes in the ceiling and turning stone to rubble. Broken building bounced off his new body as he ascended, back into the air, back into overwatch— A cloaked transport was taking off. Did anyone else see it? That shimmer in the air? Sloane instantly said, “There’s a transport—”

White lights shimmered and floated around the Intake, moving from one side to the other like streaking comets, rapidly intercepting the cloaked transport. Those white lights released black specks that drove through the cloaked ship’s hull and killed everyone inside that space. As the transport lost its cloak and its ability to remain in the air, it began crashing slowly, and then rapidly, trailing blood that turned into hovering red orbs midair. Those four orbs held in a rough line in the air as the transport crashed below, turning into a fireball. Soon, those red orbs hatched into new brothers and sisters…

None with any mind to them, though.

Sloane turned his attention back to the battlefield, diving into the minds of his new people…

There seemed to be another blockade in the intake area. The intake guards were rallying again, eh? Those men and women and otherwise were always Slave Intake #38’s best and darkest. Of course they could rally more than once; the army hadn’t crushed them yet. Sloane directed forces toward that space…

Oh? This was a final stand of Intake #38, then? Very well.

Soon, the defenses were overwhelmed and hundreds of bodies turned to mush, to blood, to float into orbs, becoming raw materials for new brothers and sisters.

From there, it was cleanup.

Altogether the battle took maybe an hour, from first valkyrie to last valkyrie. Maybe at first the battle was questionable. Could they do it? Could they kill everyone and bring them all to a better land beyond? Especially when the valkyries were all so mindless and able to be picked off with ease. But then the first mindful valkyrie was born, sharing their everything with all of the horde, and from there the outcome was assured.

By the time Sloane rose on the side of Benevolence, all that was left was varying degrees of cleanup.

And now, Sloane took to the sky with his brethren, taking into formation, to hover above the defeated land. Some of the army was already flying off to House Benevolence, to those red pillars in the sky, to be reborn far away.

Sloane and the other mindful valkyrie took one more pass through Slave Intake #38, cutting down walls and stealing important things, like paperwork and some of the nicer tech, and then they too joined the flight toward House Benevolence.

It was a glorious formation.

Over 35,000 warriors flying home, to be reborn in Benevolence.

Sloane flew high and free over the lands he had once filled with horrors. Now, he was but one of many.

Going home.

And then, hopefully, moving on forever.

On the far side of the formation Reena and Xai laughed as they flew together, twisting in the air like children with their first flying magics. Sloane could already tell that those two wished for more battle. It had been a good battle. Sloane did not begrudge them that. He wanted to move on, though—

The entire formation paused and turned as one when a great white castle appeared on the wasteland horizon, and the Apparent King strode out onto the battlefield, tall as a mountain and black as the void. His wings spread wide. His mouth was a white abyss. Lightning crackled over the King’s body, and tiny black dots appeared in that crackling.

Sloane and the others watched from a great height as The Wizard Dragon of Benevolence cast tiny black dots through the air, toward Slave Intake #38. Those dots moved slowly. Inexorably. The world whined at their passage, wind and sky and dirt crawling into those voids that were not voids at all.

The Black Dots struck the landing fields, receiving, evisceration, and packaging. Where the dots touched, they cloyed, like animated void paint. Slave Intake #38 flashed over in absolute black, and then the black pulled downward like paint washing off of glass, revealing that every wall, window, floor, tower, even the land itself, all the way down to the deep tunnels and space below, was gone. The Apparent King had annihilated Slave Intake #38. Nothing was left but four deep craters.

He could have done that with everyone inside, but instead he chose to save them.

Sloane felt vindicated, thrilled, and proud all at once.

Next, the King vanquished his white castle with another Black Dot, turning that land into another crater—

Briefly, Sloane felt a twinge, as some connection fell apart. The voices of his fellows fell away, but not a single one of them was destroyed. Blackgold wings turned dim, but still held the valkyrie horde aloft, as red skin revealed the blood that had been on all of them, instead of red glows. The world turned more real as their connections were just between whoever was closest to each other, and not very strongly, at that.

Sloane felt a great demand of war lift from him, as though he had been suffering all his life and now it was finally over. All he wanted to do was go home, to rest. To sleep. To rise again in another life. The mindless valkyries moved on, paying no attention to their Apparent King at all, for they already had their orders to reincarnate back at the House, by those red pillars in the sky.

The mindful valkyries bowed to their King.

And then they flew on.

Reena flew near Xai, and the two of them flew beside Sloane.

Reena spoke in her real voice, saying, “You made that all much easier, Sloane. I still do not forgive you.”

“I don’t forgive myself, Reena.”

Reena glanced at him with her real ruby eyes and then looked away. The red eyes of her blackgold crown kept focus on him, though, as she said, “The battle is over, and redemption exists for all, though I would prefer to never know of you ever again.”

And that was enough for her, and for Xai. They flew off away, and faster, following the army toward the red light in the distance.

Sloane flew alone—

Lightning descended.

- -

Sloane stood nude among the grasses of a land long ago. It was his real home, so far away from Margleknot, before Slaver’s Den’s ships came and took them away on black ships with black guards into black holds to write their blood oaths upon black contracts. It had been 150 years since that time, and now he was back...

But not really?

Sloane looked at his hands, and then at the grass, and then at the home that had been destroyed in fire by guards who delighted in the pain. All of this was fake. All of this could be real again. For Slaver’s Den never fully killed any world. They raided. They plucked the easiest fruit. And then they ran. That was how Sloane had come to the Den.

And somewhere between signing that Contract and becoming part of the problem himself, Sloane had forgotten home.

He turned to the man who was a dragon, and Sloane thought that black was no longer a bad color. Sloane asked, “I’m getting my wish?”

“I heard you ask to leave, and so you are getting your wish. You and many others. Got any requests?”

Sloane had a thousand. He said, “I want to be able to fight the slavers the next time they come, for even if the Den is destroyed, our home was marked as slaving-quality long ago, its location hidden except for those who came to raid. I was a papermaker last time. I want to be a warrior this time, and I never want to lose myself like I did to Slaver’s Den, or to any others.”

The Apparent King smiled softly. “Good luck.”

- -

Sloane felt softness at his back as he woke slowly, surely.

He sat up. He was on some grasses on some world with a bright blue sky, white clouds, and two suns in the sky. One of those suns was white, the other blue.

Oh gods of Margleknot and every Universe, I’m home.

It took a moment for him to compose himself, but he got there eventually. He was nude and not red at all, but he remembered being a valkyrie too much to ever forget that experience. That absolute freedom. That sense of purpose. That sense of Right and Wrong.

He had been a simple elf; breathing, moving, thinking, heart-beating. And then he had been a valkyrie; weightless, strong, breathless, still unless he moved. He was neither of those things anymore. The black gold fire was gone. The crown of seeing was lost.

But Sloane stood up in the body of a young elf, and he moved his right hand—

A brilliant white dagger appeared in his grip, lightning tracing along the edges. It wasn’t much, but it was a start—

Something roared in the treeline.

Sloane ran, exhilarating in the pumping of his legs and heart, and the depth of his breath. A big lizard, all green and frilled and maybe not that big at all, actually, crashed out of the treeline behind him, and Sloane happily called out, “I’ve seen bigger lizards than you!”

A minute of chase later, Sloane turned at the best possible moment, his lightning blade guiding his strike to rip backward, through the forehead of the snapping lizard then all the way down its back, opening it up and shredding its insides with jagged, blackening lightning. Sloane felt weaker after that, and the dagger turned into a whittling knife, but it had done its job.

Soon enough, the crackle of a fire sizzled lizard meat on skewers, filling the twilight with the scent of meat and smoke, under familiar stars and a single moon. Sloane ate well. When it was time for bed he conjured his knife again and traced it alongside a big rock, feeling weaker in the action as his knife became a dagger again, but the dagger’s trace had spilled soft moss out of the rock like a big blanket. It had done its job very well.

Sloane slept under that moss, hidden from the world.

He felt free for the first time in a century.

- - - -

Erick had his hands full for about an hour after the raid. The first thing he did was send off a whole bunch of people to other worlds; mostly those who were the ‘Big Problem’ at Slave Intake #38. That number of people turned out to be 586. He did some of those personally, but he also just [Grand Reincarnation]’d 551 of those 586 people, using some resonwork spellwork to target those for which everything else would be easier if they just weren’t around Margleknot anymore.

And then he went to the House, where 10,000 valkyries waited in line to use the single [Spellsurge Weave][Reincarnation] ‘machine’, which had a 20 second windup time, because Erick had made a mistake there. At least the valkyries were all very polite. Some of them were even talking with Ta’Kamoil, or helping their fellow reincarnated people come out of the machine, to make way for others.

Erick had identified a few different types of valkyries during their first battle.

There was the mindless version; that’s how they started. They used claws and strength and no thought at all besides animalistic urges to kill, in order to kill.

Then there were the thinkers; those who were born of souls that melded with the spellwork of the valkyrie, to take over those valkyries both physically, and in mission. Erick was pretty sure that there was some minor soul twisting going on there, but [Reincarnation] was getting rid of all that, so it was… fine. Sure. It was ‘fine’.

Then there were the mindful-mindless. These were the oddest of the bunch. They were the product of all the connections between the mindful people influencing the mindless horde. These ones had been fully mindless at the beginning of the battle, but somewhere along the way they had learned to use their wing feathers and swords and their wings as shields and now they were standing in line like perfect little soldiers, their eyes moving around as they desired. It reminded Erick a lot of Ophiel back when Ophiel was maybe a few months old; completely unable to understand anything, but still able to put a few things together on his own.

Erick was 100% sure that whatever ‘person’ eventually came out of [Blood of the Valkyrie] would be the conglomerate mind of the mindful-mindless given soul and form of its own.

Anyway.

Erick was glad to see that the valkyries were no longer infectious now that their node network of the Weave was down.

The freshly-resurrected people who came out of the valkyries had a bunch of mixed reactions. Mostly worry and relief; they vibrated between those two emotions rather quickly in some cases.

The people of the House got the newcomers settled as best as they could, as fast as they could.

Lanzoil had set up a great big welcoming feast on one side of a large area, setting out more than enough food to feed 20,000 people, which was only 70% the number of new arrivals.

Erick’s first actions were to hurriedly set up 14 more [Spellsurge Weave][Reincarnation] ‘machines’ and adjust the triggering for all of them down to a 5 second windup-time. 36,000-ish people were coming through, at around an average of an 8 second turn around, and with 15 machines, that meant it would take about 5.5 hours to reincarnate every valkyrie here.

Soon, the machines were working well.

… Erick added another 15 machines to cut down the intake time to under 3 hours.

Tomorrow he would go on another attack, but for today, he took inventory on what was going on with the valkyries and how orderly they moved and, of course…

The aberrations. The thinkers.

“We want to remain valkyries,” Reena said, as she stood with Xai Lu, both of them still nude and completely unashamed of their nudity. She stood strong, too; like a soldier. Her blackgold wings held stiff at her back. Eyes forward. Her crown-eyes wandered, though. She asked, “Please allow us to remain in the war, Apparent King.”

“No,” Erick said, standing before them, to the side of the reincarnation zone. “You’re both not in your right mind right now. You’ll go through the machines like all the rest, and then, if you choose to do this again, then we can talk. Right now you’re too ensorcelled to make your own decisions.”

Reena did not breathe, her heart did not beat. But her eyes were alight with ruby flame and her face was set in complete obedience. “Understood, sir.”

Contrary to Reena’s soldier-like obedience, Xai Lu silently bowed; that was how he accepted Erick’s judgment. Both of them had been elves before this, both from vastly different cultures.

Thankfully, both of them went back into line, to be reincarnated; there was no dissent.

There had been a lot of aberrations today, though.

Erick had based his [Blood of the Valkyrie] spell on a humanoid-form; two arms, two legs, one head, but with Exalted wings and Vile aura and a whole bunch of other magics that could make all sorts of different forms. Apparently, some people, when they were captured and born again as a valkyrie, were able to influence those malleable forms, though the minds of all of them were relatively the same; obedient.

Over there was a centaur valkyrie.

Over there was a demon valkyrie with four arms.

Color variations abounded. Some were more golden-winged than the rest. Some were darker-red-skinned. Some were pale as pastel-pink snow. Some were dark as dried blood. Or violet, even.

Over there was a valkyrie made of blackgold swords with wings made of carnage and bone. That was perhaps the oddest one. Erick wasn’t sure what its deal was, for it was not sapient like Reena and Xai Lu.

On the other side of the reincarnation line, people came out more or less normal. Physically, anyway.

Querkooda was there, dividing those who were guards from those who were enslaved, though the line wasn’t so easy to draw sometimes. Like with that first guy that Erick had killed with the [Blood of the Valkyrie], and with Sloane, many enslaved had become the slavers for this reason or another. Many graduates of Slave Intake #38 had returned to become guards at that very same Intake, for whatever reasons. Querkooda seemed to be more than able to spot problems before they began, though; his Sight was improving.

Erick was rather certain Querkooda was seeing the Lightning Path, or maybe Destiny’s [Benevolent Chaos], or rather, more likely, his own thing. Erick would let that develop however it developed.

He was glad to see that the valkyries took instruction well from Querkooda, too, and that they were non-infectious after Erick had broken the ‘[Blood Weaver]’ map back in that forward base. Those were two of the things Erick worried about most with this Propagation Magic. But the valkyries were standing beside new soldiers of House Benevolence, and no one was transforming from proximity at all.

Erick almost wanted to do some more tests with the valkyries…

But no. Tomorrow. Tests would come tomorrow.

These people had earned their new lives, and the 30 resurrection machines were working very well, and Erick was quite happy with the ‘just after puberty’ setting, because quite a few people were ecstatic to be young again and that made a lot of this a lot easier, in multiple ways. Teenagers were easier to handle than full-grown adults, too.

Erick watched as Reena and Xai split from each other to each step onto their own white circle. Rapidly, the circles turned red, before flowing through the rainbow to blue, and then finally black. [Reincarnation]s struck both of them, and both of them turned into young elves. Three-meter tall valkyries carried the still-waking teenagers off of the reincarnation zones and set them up with workers from the House. They got some new clothes and a gesture toward the feast inside the wall.

Both of the new teenage elves went off to the feast, though Xai soon broke down sobbing about his mother. Reena was there with him, and soon a social worker from the House was there with them, too, taking their mind off of their troubles with some paperwork regarding their new houses and if they wanted to learn magic and such. It was such an odd change of topic that Xai was thrown out of his sorrow.

“… You’ll teach us magic?” Xai asked, as though it were the strangest, most oddly wonderful thing to be given free training.

Erick smiled.

He turned back to regard the rest of the valkyrie intake, but he did copy clothes and food and a bunch of stuff now and again, because they were running out of everything rather quickly.

Erick noticed some anomalies among the revived while he did all that. Nothing concerning. But what he was seeing was definitely a result of [Blood of the Valkyrie].

Some people were pulling knives of Benevolence out of the air. Some of those people showed off their knives to others, and soon some people had knives hovering around them. Most people with knives were only able to conjure the knives into their hands. A few people manifested crowns of white light with white eyes on them. Others were able to conjure lightning-fire that cloyed onto surfaces and either burned black, or into brilliant growth. Some people radiated healing. A few radiated harm, and were rapidly told to put that away, and they did, though they were thrilled to be able to still do that.

It was non-infectious harm.

Erick breathed a sigh of relief at that.

Reena was one of those who radiated harm. She loved it, and readily learned to turn it into healing instead of harm. Her new boyfriend, Xai, had one curved sword in his right hand and one dirk in his left hand, and both of them floated on his back when he didn’t grip them. He mostly ignored the sword. He focused on the dirk, staring at it, thinking about another time and place. He was having a mixed sort of reaction to the shape of the dirk. Sorrow, acceptance, growth and pain. Reena was with him, though. That seemed to be enough for now.

Erick let it be.

Over 36,000 new stories were being born today. Not all of them were pleasant. In fact, most of them were dark in the beginning, but now there was hope again, and all the little manifestations of power that Erick was seeing were normal-enough variations on natural, mana-based spellcasting, that there was little worry.

The people would be propagative. The Benevolence inside of them would, too.

But not in any magical sort of way. Just in the normal way that societies grew and changed and succeeded in peace and prosperity. A lot of these people were already praying that this was as much of a heaven as they thought it might have been when they were inside the valkyrie. Erick hoped to fulfill their wishes… Except this wasn’t a heaven.

He told people that as much as he could.

They did not believe him right away.

A few hours after the last valkyrie became a normal person again, Erick made a speech to the crowd about opportunities and the future and of general plans going forward.

“And I finish with this:” Erick said, “Some of you have already expressed a wish to go back into war. To take the form of a valkyrie again. I urge you not to, but if you continue to feel this desire in the following days, then I will be doing experiments to see if this is even possible. I feel it is possible. So, I will be accepting the formation of a valkyrie squadron in a few days. Or maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow, you can visit Overseer Querkooda’s Office of Enforcement to sign up for that.

“But for now!

“You’re free.

“When House Benevolence has fully taken Slaver’s Den from the slavers and remade this land in our image, we will see about getting people back home to wherever you all come from. Luckily, the valkyries of Slave Intake #38 gathered a bunch of information on all that before we left. If you don’t know where you come from, and we have no information to help you, then it might take longer to get you home.” Erick said, “So for now, House Benevolence is your home, if you wish it to be. Welcome home. Opportunities abound for all sorts of good futures, and we can make them happen for you.”

Some people were sobbing in joy. Some were simmering with vindication and a call to action. Most were silent, as the weight of Erick’s words ground them down and lifted them up at the same time.

And then the crowd shouted in joy.

The parties started for real.

Erick smiled as he moved back among the people, meeting individuals and finding people who his Lightning Path called to, to help those people meet other people. It was technically night, though the sky was as bright as ever to Erick’s eyes and senses. Someone started a band. Music played.

People from Slave Intake #45 joined those from Intake #38, and the party grew.

Shadow was there, and she asked for a dance, and Erick smiled as he took that dance. It was lively. It was fun. Shadow was a great dancer, and the music was full of percussive beats and slamming feet and clapping hands and thrumming heat. Someone started a choreographed number, somehow, and the former valkyries somehow got into that, putting on a show, all of them dancing in sync.

Erick smiled at that, for Shadow was likely to blame for the choreography at least in part. Fae parties were wonderful, though.

And no one dropped any nukes or otherwise on the House that night.

Perhaps the most amazing thing was that some of the former slavers apologized, some apologies were welcomed, and generally everything was a whole lot easier than it had any right to be at all. Some former-valkyries were spreading rumors that this is what heaven should be; a time of atonement and forgiveness and moving-on.

Those seemed to be very popular rumors.

Erick already saw the start of some sort of worshiping stuff happening and he did what he could to stop it by directly saying that this was not an afterlife at all, and that life was still here…

But then people countered that life at House Benevolence, with automatic young-machines, was practically the best sort of ‘afterlife’ that anyone could ever ask for.

“So long as no one starts worshiping me, then that’s fine,” Erick eventually conceded.

Mentally, Erick moved up some plans to get other gods involved in all of this stuff, because he did not want to be worshiped at all. Cascadio would probably sign up fast enough. Who else? Who knew—

Oh!

Maybe… The gods of Veird? Yeah… But those guys were all the way over on Veird. They had no influence here… Except the influence that Erick gave them, yeah?

… Could Erick set up a Grand Unified Church for them all? Here on Margleknot?

He could probably do that. They probably couldn’t appear because Veird was under Quarantine, but as long as people didn’t worship Erick then that was a win in his book. Erick wasn’t sure exactly what his bargain with Yggdrasil for his nascent godhood was doing, and he didn’t want to find out.

He would set up that church later.

Some time during the end of the party, as the slightly shaded sky gave way to full brightness once again, Lanzoil spoke with Erick, talking of the need of a manaminer for true defense of the land. Erick agreed. It was time to get one of those, for sure. Maybe Erick could even learn what the Foundational Bans of the Script truly were, though he kept that thought to himself for now.

In that calm moment of the world turning bright and party goers making their ways to their own new beds, or the beds of new friends, Shadow spoke of a meeting with Witch Aragathara.

Erick decided to do that meeting, first.