Beyond?

“The fire lizard is a three meter long, green lizard which lives in Nict's forests. The scales on its hide are the most sturdy natural material we know of. In earlier days they were often used as arrowheads or as small knives. The fire lizard is herbivorous and likes to eat the charcoal and ash of plants.

Normally the fire lizard lies dormant and sleeps. It's a very docile animal which doesn't bother other beings if not deliberately disturbed. Even if it decides to move, it does so in a slow manner, fully relying on its tough skin and it's ability to breathe fire.

The fire lizard has two organs in its mouth which create a set of chemicals. Through mixing them with it's spit, they ignite upon contact with the air. Strong muscles in it's mouth allow it to spray a breath of fire to a range of up to ten metres.

The fire lizard is the only animal which is keeping Nict's rampant flora in check by starting big forest fires at regular intervals. Those fires keep it supplied with its main source of nourishment, charcoal.”

-Biology report III.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Azir***

I get to my feet and point at Ivy. “Take care of the kids!”

Ivy's eyes wander to the twins, who return her sceptical gaze with intense glares. “Are you sure that I-”

“You'll do fine. Didn't you say that you want to try it for yourself? Well, someone who lays eggs also has to take the responsibility for it afterwards, so see this as a free trial. You always vanish when you should do your job as a baby sitter.” I rebuke her.

“Taking care of children isn't in my job description.” She answers without bashing an eyelid.

“You are our servant and a servant, per definition, serves. Whatever I need help with, you help.” I turn and follow Stella to the stepper disc, leaving Ivy with the kids.

A minute later I am with Stella in Helen's office. The ruler of Nict looks like she had a bad day and her normally neatly arranged dress looks like she just got out of her bed.

She gestures for us to take the seats in front of her desk. “Like you heard, the South is amassing their troops. They crossed our borders and are marching towards Tri, Tetra and Penta. They are moving faster than we thought, considering that we expected them to need at least four months to mobilize.”

She sighs and throws a stack of documents into her waste bin. “So much for our plans. They have mobilized at least five hundred thousand warriors for each of our cities. It's hard to imagine how they managed to achieve that. They would have to enlist everyone of suitable age to achieve such numbers. I want to ask you what you think of the situation and if you can help somehow.” She sets her eyes on me.

I shrug my shoulders. “The first thing is that we can start bombarding their supply lines with our satellites. The nature of Nict is harsh and no matter how devoted their army is, troops without supplies don't go far.

The second point is that we can send our drones to harass them and maybe start moving more troops to the cities in question? Is my fortress anywhere close to the action? It should be able to deal with one of the armies. Unfortunately it's too slow to intercept all of them.”

Helen nods. “My military commanders already anticipated this and sent the fortress towards Tetra weeks ago. It's the farthest city to the south.”

I nod, tilting my head in thought. If there is something I've never bothered myself with then it's a military command. At least there are some capable people who are planning ahead. Given the nature of the relationship between Nict and the Southern Nations I expected nothing else.

The fact that they managed to gather such a huge army is still troubling though. Do they have reinforcements too? “Does it look like they intend to fight for the land, or are they going directly for our cities?”

I answer the question myself by linking up to my satellite network. “Their armies are marching in a straight line towards our border cities. Looks like they are not bothering with the small villages.”

Helen snorts and smiles. “Even they'd learn something from history if they fail often enough. Taking control over the surrounding land and besieging the border cities doesn't work. The Gates enable us to supply the cities with fresh troops whenever we want.

They have to take the city and deal with the City Gate. That's the only chance for them.”

Stella growls and repositions herself in her seat. “But if they shut down one of the Gates, we'd have a problem. Our enemy operated undercover for years, how can we be sure that they haven't found a way to deactivate the Gates? We shouldn't underestimate them, even if we threw them off balance.”

Helen returns her attention to me. “Is there a way to shut down the Gates? After I heard your story about your... previous life, I deduced that your people must've known how the Gates work? Surely you didn't ignore a nifty artefact directly in front of your nose.” She already knows me too well.

I squint my eyes and try to remember my studies on the topic. Of course I don't expect anyone in this time to fully understand the Gates, but if our enemy is really the Emperor's son... he should know how to do it.

“There are ways. Like deactivating them manually, but that requires opening one of the cover plates. Since the Gates are heavily guarded I doubt that anyone could do so without being interfered with. They were constructed to be left alone after all. The creators never intended them to be switched on and off at convenience. Unfortunately the schematics in the library don't specify the exact power source for the Gates, so I don't know if that's a possible approach.”

“There are blueprints in the library?! I have to seize them. And you don't know? I thought you had surely already sneaked to one of the Gates on a dark night to inspect them. What would you need to answer that question?” Helen asks with a grin on her face.

Damn! Luckily I already copied all the books about the Gates with one of Ivy's remotes. “Well, it isn't like I can find out anything without being allowed to take a Gate apart. Can I take one of them apart?”

Helen's grin vanishes. “No.”

“Then no answer.” I state the matter of fact.

She shrugs her shoulders. “The functionality of the Gates is much more important than knowing the answer in this case. We have a huge hostile army on our soil. We can't deactivate one of the Gates even for a short period of time. Our cities are too dependant on each other.”

That's too bad, but she is right. The City Gates are in use day and night with a constant flow of goods from one city to the other. The problem lies in the forced specialization which came with the fusing of all seven cities.

While the capital is the main population centre, Mono is mainly responsible for manufacture. Di is the shopping district and Tri specializes in weapons. Tetra is our stronghold against the south, but despite that it has the biggest agricultural output. The cities to the east are flourishing with fishing products and cloth.

You could explain the web of relationships in even greater detail, but the point of the matter is this. Shut down the Gates and you end up with angry citizens, collapsing trade and huge losses.

“Then we have to rely on the guards to keep suspicious people away from the Gates.” I conclude.

“There is no need to let anyone close to the Gate in the first place. Nobody has a need to deviate from the main road which leads through the Gate.” Stella points out.

We continue our discussion for a few more minutes, but nothing particularly interesting arises. So Stella and I head home while the military handles the issues at hand.

The following days showed that we underestimated the determination of our enemies. Despite the constant use of our satellites they pressed forward, in many cases completely ignoring their own losses.

My satellites are precision devices. It makes almost no sense to use them against thinly spread troops. What they did a perfect job on was cutting off the enemy's supply lines.

They lost far more people to starvation and thirst than my satellites could've ever killed with their limited ammunition. Of course we can resupply the satellites, but that takes time. You have to teleport the whole thing down to us. That requires a few nifty calculations, which can't be done by everyone, then you have to restock it and teleport it up again.

This process can take days since you have to wait for the right time windows when you can get the satellite and send it back into space.

Nevertheless the enemies marched forward. Even a place like Nict which has resources in abundance can't support so many soldiers marching through an area. There are problems with food and water. Even in a place with so many rivers it can take you days from one river to the next.

An army as large as this one would've needed to invest the time to sink wells along the path they take. Thanks to our satellites we were able to stop every attempt at doing so. The only places which allowed them to dig their wells were under the cover of the forest's big trees. But digging a well in the dangerous forests comes at a high cost.

They even shrugged off the regular attacks of our drones, advancing despite the losses and scavenging off of their dead comrades.

The army which was headed for Tetra was intercepted by our flying fortress. A long charred piece of ground is the only thing that still reminds us of the invading force. The forest will soon reclaim the destroyed land.

My fortress proved its value to our army by a thousand fold. Helen should really channel more resources into building more of them.

I admit that our fortress got heavily damaged during the brief battle. The southerners are capable magicians and their big artillery spells pack a punch. The barrier broke for a brief moment and several attacks got through.

On top, it takes a lot of magicians to keep the fortress in the air, but even one or two more of them would make a big difference.

For the time being we have to manage with what we have. Unfortunately Helen can't summon more workers. Using so many resources by mobilizing a sizeable amount of her own clan isn't something Helen can do on a daily basis.

It was decided to send the fortress towards Penta afterwards. Tetra is heavily fortified, but it still belongs to the Eddin. They aren't exactly known for their fighting power and even though they got reinforcements from other clans they are missing the troops of the Zait.

Since Tri is another target of the invasion, my clan is concentrating its forces on our capital. Even if the forces in Penta can count on reinforcements from the fortress, they'll have to hold out on their own for some time. The top speed of my fortress is sixty kilometres per hour, which takes a long time to get from one point to the next.

Of course we got assistance from the capital and other clans, but five hundred thousand troops are a lot! Even if the attacks of the satellites and drones reduced them to four hundred thousand, that's still a lot.

Nict has a population of about twenty million people and sixty percent of those people are living in the big cities. The capital is the biggest City with roughly four million people while the rest divides evenly to the border cities.

Furthermore it means that the Southern Nations just mobilized a force almost equal to Nict's entire military. Eight percent of our current population belong to the military, which is a huge percentage for a country if you think about it. And not all those who belong to the military can be counted as a fighting force. There are many people who only do paper work or keep the facilities running. It's a good guess that Nict has a million soldiers who can really fight.

So Tri has about one million and three hundred thousand people. Maybe a little more since the population of the nearby villages fled into the city for safety. That still doesn't boost our numbers over one point five.

In other words, the attacking fighting force still numbers over a third of our population and I am counting every citizen of Tri, including civilians, children and elderly.

I have no doubt that this will turn ugly. According to my parents Tri should be able to hold out until the fortress manages to deal with the attackers at Penta. Afterwards we can amass our forces against the troops at Tri.

So I holed myself up in my laboratory and started doing the thing which I can do best, building a device of mass destruction.

***Free City States of Nict, Capital***

***Stella***

“Azir!” I bang onto the door of his laboratory, but there is no answer. He has been inside there for three days and I am fed up. He didn't come out to eat and today the children suddenly disappeared! I couldn't find them, no matter where I searched.

Grabbing the handle of the door I apply all my strength. It doesn't budge, so I add magic to the mix. When Azir hid himself inside his lab the first time I couldn't do anything against his door, but I've gotten stronger since then. He isn't the only one who trained his abilities!

Placing a foot on the wall beside the door a few cracks appear! Finally! The door may hold, but the wall isn't as strong! My hands turn red from the applied force and finally the door breaks, together with the doorframe, out of the wall.

“What are you doing?” Ivy's voice sounds from behind me.

I drop the wrecked door to the ground. “Gaining access?”

“You could've asked. He granted me access to bring him food and drinks...” Ivy looks with sad eyes at the door. “All this dust... cleaning up will be a hassle.” She mutters.

“You weren't here! The kids disappeared.” I scold her.

She raises two big baskets with food. “I had to buy supplies. They were in their room when I left.”

I roll my eyes and enter Azir's laboratory, heading directly for his workshop.

Arriving there I sigh in relief. Azir is sitting in a chair and staring at a big block of metal. Sariel is lying with her belly on his lap and sleeping soundly. Zadkiel is hugging Azir's left leg with both feet and hands, dreaming a happy dream.

“How did the kids manage to get in here!” This is bad. Children shouldn't be in dangerous places.

Azir averts his attention from the metal block. “They came through the window a while ago.” He gestures towards the open window.

Ivy walks past me and takes a look outside. “The children's room is above us. Did they levitate down to this level?”

Great! Are their magical powers awakening? I have to check on them, but before that. “Azir, you look terrible, what did you build this time?” He has dark shades under his eyes and looks very tired. “Try to get at least some sleep!”

He snorts and stands up, taking the sleeping Sariel under his left arm. “This is the new armed multifunctional armour! I call it the A.M.A.”

“mama?” Sariel mumbles, rubbing her eyes.

“Not mama! A.M.A.!” He reaches for the metal block and places his free hand on it. Suddenly the metal turns into a silver liquid and flows along his hand up to his shoulder and then further around to cover the rest of his body.

A few moments later the liquid hardens into an armour with the colours of silver and gold. It's a sleek design with a menacing, fully plated helmet, even covering his horns. “What do you think.”

“I... I don't know? What can it do?” I ask.

“Of course it enhances the user's powers and can take any form he wishes to! With this I can go up against thousands of enemies. It'll take me where I need to be in order to stop the invasion.” He answers, proud of himself.

Ivy mumbles something inappropriate and points at Sariel and Zadkiel. “Though before that you should stop it from enclosing people who are touching you while you put it on.”

My eyes widen as I realize that Sariel and Zadkiel were caught up in the liquid metal.

Azir tries to remove Sariel from under his armpit. Dragging the foot where he was fused with Zadkiel with him, he reassures us that everything is okay. “No problem! It's just a small bug in the software. Some mistakes are bound to happen if someone is tired.”

.