Acrid ozone and the heavy copper stench of blood choked the air. Beneath my boots, the superheated soil had vitrified, crunching like shattered glass with every step.
Down in the depression, a localized mana storm raged. Blue-black currents spun like a thousand invisible bandsaws, grinding any loose rock sucked into its vortex into fine dust.
Selena lay dead center in the maelstrom.
The fallen Empress of the Cloud Summit looked like a plucked, bleeding parrot. Her white-gold ceremonial robes—symbols of absolute divine authority—were shredded into mud-caked ribbons. Most brutal was her back. The right wing had been violently torn off. Jagged bone spurs poked through the tissue, leaking unregulated golden god-blood into the dirt.
“Let me finish her!”
Garza’s roar rattled my eardrums. He swung his greatsword, trying to force his way into the crater. The moment he clipped the storm’s edge, invisible wind blades gouged deep trenches into his heavy black-iron plating.
Forced back, the Wolf King gripped his hilt with his remaining left hand—pure, concentrated murder burned in his single eye.
All around us, the wolf packs rumbled with bloodlust. Hundreds of green eyes stayed locked on the pit, waiting for the vortex to vent the last of its pressure so they could tear the Empress apart.
Standing beside me, Zayla had her short swords already drawn. Her amber slit-pupils were dilated, her breathing shallow and ragged. Twelve years of blood debt had finally hit the collection date.
Tension ratcheted up, snapping point imminent.
Suddenly, a white-gloved hand plucked at my hem.
Jasta.
The refined fox-kin pulled me a few paces back, his voice dropping into a rapid, clinical murmur.
“Alex, you must block them. Selena absolutely cannot die today.”
I frowned, scanning the diplomat’s sharp features. “Why? She’s exceeded even the most generous tolerances for atrocity. This is the optimal time to secure the loyalty of the wolves and cats by letting them vent.”
“If we don't preserve her today, we get buried tomorrow.”
Jasta locked eyes with me, his tone stripping away morality for cold political calculus.
“Analyze Garza’s compliance. Why did he submit to your chain of command? Because he needed our heavy ordnance to crack Selena. If she expires, the wolves lose their target and their natural predator. Where do you think a newly liberated, heavily armed Wolf King points his blade next?”
Pointing a gloved finger at the distant wreckage, he continued.
“Skyreach needs a reconstruction phase, not another civil war. We require a common stressor—an enemy only you hold the containment keys for. As long as the Empress breathes, the Wolf King remains cautious. He stays dependent.”
He paused. “Bipolar systems are built to fail. Real stability requires a three-point balance—it’s the only way to hold the weight of power.”
Silence settled over me.
Jasta’s words acted like a coolant flush, instantly stabilizing my racing systems. It was a ruthlessly pragmatic, ethically bankrupt proposal. But running the structural model through my head, the physics of his political engineering checked out. He was right.
“Understood.”
Taking a deep breath, I pivoted and strode toward the crater's lip.
“Step back, Garza.” I planted my boots squarely in the enraged king's path.
“Move, human!” Garza vented hot breath, blood dripping from his blade onto the toe of my boot. “You’re shielding her? Did you forget how she fed my people into her furnaces?”
“Your kinetic impact will just trigger a mana chain-reaction at the bottom of the pit and turn us all into ash.” I stared him down, holding my ground. Raising a hand, I pointed into the depression.
“Sheathe the sword. You don't need to lift a finger—she’s already running on fumes.”
The violent, blue-black storm suddenly emitted a high-pitched hiss, like a blown gasket. The seemingly impenetrable barrier of wind blades flickered, RPMs dropping drastically.
With a thin wheeze of escaping pressure, the wind blades crumbled into blue-black grit, drifting down to vanish in the slag.
Selena let out a muffled groan. The last drops of her divine energy evaporated. Without it, her skeletal support seemed to fail, leaving her slumped in the charred mud, lacking the torque to even lift her head.
...
Thirty minutes later.
We dragged Selena like a scrap heap to the base of the floating island wreckage jutting from the mountainside.
Every surviving faction had assembled. Heavily armed wolves stood at the perimeter. Cat-kin watched with ice-cold stares. Off to the side, thousands of disarmed, shivering Eagle-kin POWs huddled together.
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Striding forward, Garza grabbed a fistful of Selena’s matted silver hair, violently hauling her up into a kneeling position in the muck.
“Do it, beast.”
Despite the grime and the heavy blade resting against her jugular, the fallen god ground her teeth. Her glare toward me remained saturated with manic contempt.
“You crashed the Ark... you short-sighted lunatic! Do you have any idea what you’ve triggered?!”
Struggling against the grip, she threw a hand out toward the distant, vibrating fissures in the earth, screaming hysterically.
“That floating island was our only viable escape pod! Without me... without the Ark... When that ancient dragon fully awakens, the seismic tremors will grind you all into the dust! I am the only one capable of running the suppression curses! Executing me is suicide!”
I stepped into her field of view, looking down at the broken deity.
“An Ark shouldn't be a kite tied to a string. Genuine structural stability requires anchoring the foundation into the hardest bedrock available. If we drill deep enough into the dirt, physics won't care about a reptile.”
Turning my head, I clamped a hand over Garza’s left wrist.
“Drop the sword, Garza.”
“Give me a reason not to rip her throat out.” The king’s throat rumbled like a stalled engine. “Or I snap her neck with my teeth.”
“Because this scrap yard requires manual labor. We are assembling a new city on this blast zone.”
I jerked my chin toward the thousands of despairing Eagle war prisoners.
“She is the god of the Eagle-kin. As long as she's breathing, these thousands of laborers will bust their humps for us. You chop her down, and they turn into a few thousand suicidal insurgents.”
Leaning closer to the Wolf King, I dropped my voice and handed him the real leverage:
“Killing her is just one swing. But keeping her alive, bolting a collar to her neck, and making her haul bricks in the mud for you... That's going to hurt her a hell of a lot more than death. Don't you want to watch a high-and-mighty god crawling in the dirt like a stray?”
Garza stared a hole through me, rage boiling in his single eye.
After a long, tense moment, a cruel, rattling laugh rumbled in his chest.
He pulled his greatsword back and let go. “Human, your heart is blacker than the coal ash on this wasteland. Have it your way.”
The Wolf King backed down.
But the hardest bottleneck hadn't been cleared yet.
I turned around and saw Zayla standing right behind me.
Zayla was shaking. Her knuckles were white around the grip of her short sword, the blade humming slightly from the tension in her arm. The butcher who murdered her parents and purged half her species was kneeling right there in the dirt. One thrust could end a twelve-year nightmare.
“Alex...”
Zayla’s voice carried a heavily choked sob. Her amber eyes stared at me, projecting pure, uncomprehending betrayal.
“You promised me... You said she would pay. And now... you're letting her off?”
Looking into the eyes that had taken acid burns in the sewers, I felt a heavy-gauge wire pull tight around my chest.
I stepped up and gently wrapped my hands over hers. Her fingers were freezing, coated in a layer of machine grease and dried blood.
“I didn't forgive her, Zayla.”
I held her gaze, keeping my voice low and rock-solid:
“But if you kill her today, Garza’s ledger is wiped clean. The Wolves pack the heaviest punch on the ground right now. Once they lose Selena as a mutual threat, who do you think he swallows up next?”
“Look at the survivors behind you. Can the Cat-kin survive another frontal charge from the wolves?”
Zayla’s frame locked up. The burning heat in her eyes immediately froze over under the brutal, cold-rolled reality of survival.
Pressing my palm against the back of her hand, I slowly, firmly pushed her half-drawn blade back into its sheath until it clicked.
“I promised to build you a home. Out here in the slag, death is the cheapest way out.”
My tone softened, though the underlying iron remained. “I can't feed the entire future of the Cat-kin to the wolves just for one second of revenge. I need her breathing. She’s the anchor chain for the eagles, and the bait to keep the wolves occupied.”
“I am going to make her... personally lay the masonry for your people’s walls.”
Biting her lower lip until a drop of red leaked out, Zayla studied my face, searching the foundation of my mind for the exact ratio of calculation to madness.
She knew the math checked out.
The killing intent in her posture depressurized into an exhausted sigh.
Letting go of the hilt, she rested her forehead against my chest plate. It was the total, unguarded weight of an exile with nowhere else to lean.
“Log that promise, Builder...” She closed her eyes, her voice barely registering above the wind. “You owe me a city.”
“I'll deliver it.”
I patted her shoulder plate twice, then turned and shot a hand signal to Brad.
Grinning like a guy who just won the playoffs, Brad hustled over. He lugged a heavy, rune-etched black iron collar—the exact model of Mana-Inhibitor Selena once used to shackle the wolves.
“No... don't you dare... keep your grease off me! You defective grubs!!!”
Total structural collapse finally hit the Empress. She thrashed wildly, but Brad pinned her to the dirt with one hand.
Clang.
With a dull, heavy metallic thud, the collar snapped permanently shut around Selena’s slender neck.
Runes flared a harsh, blinding crimson, systematically severing every remaining mana circuit inside her. Selena convulsed like she’d grabbed a live wire. The last spark of divine light in her eyes was permanently powered down.
“As of today, Valsaria has no Cloud Empress.”
I looked down at her the same way I’d inspect a pallet of raw copper.
"There is no Empress here-only Laborer 001. Build her a glass cage, the clearest we've got. Let her have a front-row seat as we pave over her legacy and grind her pride into the dirt."
Sunset flooded the sky with a molten orange glare. The colossal steel peak cast long, cooling shadows across the wreckage.
Pivoting, I prepared to track down Sarak and run through the casualty and maintenance logs.
Heavy boots crunched against the gravel behind me.
Garza.
Bandaged in blood-soaked linens, half his torso charred from thermal burns, the Wolf King marched straight into my personal space. The ambient noise of the camp abruptly zeroed out. Every wolf warrior stopped moving, locking their eyes on their alpha.
Garza didn't waste breath on pleasantries. His single eye drilled into mine.
Then, the king who had never yielded to anyone—the apex predator who preferred a shattered spine over a bent knee—executed a maneuver that short-circuited the entire camp.
Curling his remaining left hand into a fist, he hammered it hard against his own ruptured chest plate.
Slowly, he lowered his proud, white-furred head.
“You pulled it off, human.”
Garza’s voice rasped, carrying the heavy resonance of struck cast iron.
“I mocked your weak frame. I laughed at your soulless machines. But you... you actually dragged the sky down into the dirt.”
Raising his head, his gaze burned with the fanatical intensity of the wastes:
“From this day forward, the fangs of the wolf pack deploy for you.”
“Until the day your bones turn soft.”
Scanning the perimeter, I watched thousands of hardened wolf warriors sequentially lower their heads.
I raised my fist and knocked it lightly against Garza’s battered chest plate.
“Relax. My bones are forged a lot tougher than your teeth. Contract accepted.”
Centuries of aerial hegemony had officially crashed and burned.
But in the bloody twilight, a new macro-structure assembled itself—a Wasteland Coalition fused from humans, wolves, cats, foxes, goblins, and even the conscripted eagles.
Pushing my safety glasses up my nose, I looked past the debris field toward the deep interior of the continent.
Out there, the massive fault line that had sheared through the crust was widening, venting a terrifying, gold-red magma glow.
The seismic tremors hadn't deactivated with the floating island's impact. Instead, they were standardizing into a steady, rhythmic frequency.
Thump... thump... thump...
That was the heartbeat of a dragon.
“The overhead hazards are cleared.”
I inhaled a lungful of scorched earth and diesel exhaust.
“Time to get back to work.”
Question of the Day: What should Laborer 001's first construction assignment be?
(Click to choose)
?? A) Digging the new latrine trenches.
Result: Brad highly approves of this structural foundation.
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