Chapter 2

Sergeant Matoi bowed to one knee before Lord Drak as, in the background, several deployed autocranes strained against the weight of ages as the Domain era transport was righted, lifted, moved. The bulk of ten million tons of synthetic metals and composite materials blotted out the smeared circle that was the dominant sun of the Stumble system. Matoi ducked her head forward, and she spoke. “I’m sorry, sire. They had a fast launch shuttle – it hit orbit before we could track it, and they’ve gone completely dark.”

Lord Drak stood – perfectly silent as the shadow grew deeper and thicker. The only sound that seemed to come was the distant roar of the surf, the straining cables, the crack and snap of his cape as it was caught in the wind.

“It was my fault,” she said. “I had a clear shot, I-”

Lord Drak shifted from foot to foot, plastic pebbles creaking under the soles of his boots.

Matoi tensed, as if ready for a blow. It was easy to see – she had eschewed her armor for a tight fitting skinsuit with impact plating. Her head was bared and her blond hair tumbled in the blood-hot breeze, tinged with the taste of shredded plastic and burnt rubber. When the blow she expected didn’t come, she lifted her head, her nose plugs and transparent mouth-filter glinting in the sudden blaze of sunlight that came from around the transport as the cranes began to swing to the left.

“You were facing a Liminal Penitent,” Lord Drak said, his voice a dark rasp beneath his opaque mask. “They can deflect any targeting system in any power suit. You know for next time.” He turned on his heel and began to stride off. “I shall not be so lenient after the next encounter, Sergeant.”

“Yes, my lord,” Matoi hissed, her head ducking low.

Lord Drak did not look back. He focused instead on the press of the helmet against his face, on the tightness of his armor. He focused on the sound of the surf, and on the low rumble as the transport was set down. Engineers from the Victrix were already on the ground, dressed in their bright orange uniforms, holding their equipment: A motley collection of plasma cutters, gravitic winches, crowbars, hammers, sonic drills, and scrapper gel. They would work at the weak points of the transport’s hull, to get at her secure cargo hold.

Lord Drak watched – and frowned behind his helmet as the internal cameras overlaid a glowing blue figure in his field of vision. The blue faded and the figure took on the natural colors of the scene – as if the man was truly standing on the beach, not simply projecting his image to Drak from a mile and a half away. Even his pale white hair was stirred by the wind. The man was tall and muscular, broad shouldered and narrow in the face, with a fearsomely hooked nose and piercing, sky blue eyes. His uniform was sharp, and his sneer was impressive.

“Lord Drak,” Praetor Theodosius said, his voice dripping with scorn. “I hear that you’ve been bested by a little girl.”

Behind his back, Drak’s hands tightened. The cargo hold swung open and engineers cried out to one another. One went running, sprinting really, away as the chunk of hull plating they had wrested free smashed to the ground with a spray of dust and a shower of pebbles. Sitting within the hold, preserved from wind and tide for who knows how many thousands of years, was exactly what Drak had traveled eight hundred jumps to claim. The scrapper’s leader had hoped to distract the Hegemony with the new tech field he had discovered, of the old ramships. But this? This was what had brought the Victrix so far. Contrasting it against the girl, 908-101g, it seemed no prize at all. Like ashes in his mouth.

“She’s irrelevant,” Drak said, his voice growing tight. “A child, trapped on this planet. We have what we came for.”

Theodosius snorted. “What I came for, Lord Drak. Remember that. Bring the cargo to the Victrix and I may omit the fact you allowed a terrorist cell to slip off planet.” He shimmered, then faded away – dissolving first into static, then into a haze of interference patterns, then nothing. Drak’s hands tightened. He heard the creak of the gloves. And deep in his mind, he heard the voice that was not a voice. It hissed and whispered.

His head would look remarkably nice on a pike somewhere.

Drak turned on his heel. “Get that thing into the Victrix,” he snarled. His ship waited for him. The sphere closed around him with a thought and he reclined in the darkness, feeling the interior shift to his body. His hands grabbed at his helmet, and the urge to rip it off became overpowering. His fingers fumbled, questing for the latches, the catches. And for just a few seconds, they refused to give. His fingers strained and he felt his claws, his real claws, coming out, pressing against the inside of the gloves. The gloves were made so that when that pressure hit, they tightened on his fingers. Pain laced through his hands and Drak hissed, then snarled, then screamed – and the mask came apart, whirring and clicking as the machined components compacted and folded themselves. Soon, he was holding a rectangle of metal with only the faintest impresses of a face.

Drak put his hands to his face, forcing down sobs of frustration and agony. The false claws of his cloves – the hideous jokes that they were – rasped along his scalp His shoulders hunched and he felt his ears flatten back against his head as he lifted his hands and glared up into the darkness – the interior lights of his ship whirring on as his mind reached out and touched the magic of the ship. He coaxed the gravitic engines to life and felt it whirring and thrumming with life. The faint pressure of movement came afterwards and he tried to stretch the time out between privacy and having to put the mask on again.

The light, though, brought another torment. The interior of the ship was as reflective as the exterior – and so, with light, he could see his own bare face reflected back. Purple eyes. Black hair. The mutagenic feline ears, emerging from the top of his head, from his black hair. His eyes were rimmed with purple circles, and his skin looked greasy with sweat. His lip curled.

Drak Thale, Sub-Lord of the Hegemonic Penitents, sprawled in his chair and hated himself more and more with every second.

Praetor Theodosius preening was nearly as insufferable as Praetor Theodosius sullen, Praetor Theodosius in a temper, or Praetor Theodosius in a paternal mood. He walked along the vast gantry bay of the port cargo hold on the Victrix, parading himself before an entire regiment of shocktroopers standing at attention, and simply radiated lethal levels of smug. Drak stood beside him, impassive. Once more, constrained by his hateful mask. The Praetor stepped forward, then reverently laid his hand along the side of the cargo.

“Can you imagine it, Lord Drak?” Theodosius whispered. “It’s exactly as the programmer-archaeologists described.”

What they had described – and what now was contained within the Victrix’s cargo holds – was a fifteen meter by fifteen meter cube of matte black material that refused easy classification. Every scanner built into his mask balked when asked to even scan it. Visual light told him where it was less by reflecting and more by simply being utterly absorbed. It made the box blacker than black, and simply looking at it would have been unnerving, if Drak hadn’t been far used to being unnerved than most people. But he could tell the shocktroopers were getting restless looking at the thing.

“The Quantum Forge,” Theodosius crooned. “With this, all of human space will be the Emperor’s – something your order of pathetic sorcerers has yet to accomplish.” He turned to Drak, his eyes narrowing. Drak bristled. Ever since he had set foot on the Victrix, he had known that Theodosius had been made aware of his ... condition.

And Theodosius had nearly a year to grind that awareness into Drak’s spine. Meals being delivered to his chambers cold or simply cooked imperfectly – meat left red and rubbery in the middle, overcooked at the edges, rice that nearly broke his teeth when he chewed on it. Snubs for official functions every time that they stopped by a link in the Chain to show the Hegemonic flag, veiled and overt insults during the briefings and conferences. And he had born it all, born it because Theodosius had rank and Drak labored under his condition ... but today?

Today he was done.

Drak’s voice came out low and husky: “Do not be so proud of this technological miracle you’ve uncovered. The abilities of the Forge are as nothing without the powers of a Liminal Knight. My powers.” He lifted a single hand – and the entire Forge began to glow from within. A rainbow of luminescence flowed from the deepest core of the object, etching out lines of iridescence throughout the cube, making it seem as if another, slowly rotating cube was trapped within it. As the glow pulsed outwards, a low thrumming sound began to fill the whole cargo bay.

Drak let his hand drop as Theodosius goggled at the cube, at him. Once his hand was by his hip, the cube faded back to a midnight black. Drak turned on his heel and stalked off. He spoke over his shoulder. “I shall retire to my chambers, Praetor. If you do not need me.”

He let that last bit hang in the air – and the Praetor clenched his jaw and glared after him. The last thing that Drak heard before the doors shut was the order: Get the Forge working immediately.

The Victrix Imperita had been commissioned by the first Emperor, Daniel Haram Nebuchadnezzar I. It had taken two centuries to construct in the orbital facilities of Eudemonia, crafted by hand rather than via mana. It would have been infinitely faster to use the vast rivers of mana on Eudemonia, but Nebuchadnezzar had wanted a ship that would be immune to the machinations of the Liminal Knights – that had been in the days before the creation of the Hegemonic Penitents and their vast replica temple, built to exactly mimic the AI temple on Home. And so, the people of Eudemonia had hand-crafted every part of the ship, painstakingly recreating the machinery of the ancient past, but without the ghostly touch of the Machines lurking in her bones. They had needed to make do with alternatives for dozens of minute control systems, and the result of their makeshifts could be seen through every corridor in the hissing, squealing pneumatic cables, the redundant bulkheads, the grainy screens that projected in monochrome and in the constant, pervasive scent of oil and ozone. Machine oil, worked into every single crack and cranny, smoothing everything out. Ozone, from the imperfectly insulated, imperfectly copied gravitic superconducting plate.

Drak hated the ship. After nearly ten years in the Liminal Temple on Eudemonia, being on the Victrix felt like being sliced out of the flowing currents of magic that he had grown so used to. The only whiff he felt of it came from the insulated control systems of the shocktrooper’s power armor and the faint thrum of his own mask’s optics. And, of course, from his own ship ... and his own chambers.

The tall, triangular shaped pressure door leading to his sanctum hissed with steam as it lowered into the floor. The two guards on duty by the door snapped to attention. “Sire,” one said. “You have a message from EDC. From Prince Adams.”

“You ... Private Glickson,” Drak said, his voice a low hiss. “You ... checked my ... private correspondence?”

Glickson and his counterpart exchanged a glance, their sudden worry clear despite the goggles covering their eyes and the smooth face-plate of their shocktroop armor.

“You are both dismissed,” Drak growled, his hand clenching. Pain stabbed through him as his claws attempted to sprout and his glove reacted as it had been programmed – clenching on his fingers. Trying to train him out of the reflex through agony.

“Sir, we-” Glickson started.

Drak spun to face them. His threshold blade leaped to his hand and the monomolecular edge exploded from the hilt with a roar of split air. The holographic guiding light that indicated where the edge was – normally, the blade was invisible to human eyes – flared into existence and turned his chosen color of brilliant gold.

“Leave!” He bellowed. “Now!”

The two shocktroopers saluted, then sprinted as fast as they could down the corridor. Once he was in the room, Drak grabbed his mask and tore. It whirred and clicked as it came off his face – in his sanctum, it was programmed to come off easily. He threw it to the floor, gripped the handle of his threshold blade and formatted it into a sledgehammer. The nanites did their work with such speed and efficency that the friction of their movement and the kinetic energy of their industry washed his face with heat. He brought the sledgehammer down into the mask. It bounced into the air, cracked in half. He brought his hammer down again and again and again, until the mask was nothing but obsidian black shards.

Drak bit down onto his glove and tore it off his hand with a jerk of his head. His freed claws dug into the other glove and he ripped it off. His claws ached, and his fingers trembled from the remembered pressure from the gloves. Drak wriggled, shoved, and got his tail free. It lashed from side to side as he reached out with his mind. Coaxing the hard-light projectors into life was one of the trickier cantrips he had been taught by Supreme Lord Vorsoth. The projectors in the room were low quality and cracked, but he didn’t need much.

The image of Theodosius, carved out of light and minute quantum-pixels, appeared before Drak’s eyes. He leaped onto him, his legs sending him rocketing right at the smug bastard’s face. Unfortunately, the simulacrum had no animating intelligence. There was no widening of the eyes. No shocked expression. No cries of pain or f ear as Drak’s claws bit into his throat and tore with a savage twist. Drak panted, softly, looking down at the crackling, geometric patterns that his claws had torn into the blue-white shape under him.

It was never satisfying enough.

-Kill him. Feel his blood on your claws-

The thought pinged into Drak’s head without actually forming in his own mind. A cold, sharp stick, thrust into his skull from beyond. He tossed his head, like he was trying to get his hair out of his eye, and panted as he stood up. The image turned into a cloud of glittering sparks – the blue white motes dancing, almost like ancient Terran fireflies. He walked through the cloud and into his sanctum’s bedroom. Since sundivers were, by their nature, large ... and worldkillers were larger still to fit the Hegemony’s strategy of utter dominance through obscene overcompensation, Drak’s sanctum was closer to an entire apartment suite. The central chamber was a circular room with a large reflecting pool set into the floor, the seven stars of the Hegemony done in glittering gemstones under the water. Branching off of it, like the limbs of a tree, were rooms leading to his training room, his armor, his communications room, and his bedroom.

Drak considered leaving the message from Prince Adam for later.

But...

No.

He sighed. “Lets get this out of the way.”

When Lord Drak stepped into the communication room, he was Thale once more. His ears were out and up and his tail twitched languidly through the air. He had stripped off his gambeson and was left in his leggings and the undershirt, which had been torn several times during his trip down the Chain. He’d never gotten around to fixing them. He leaped into the central chair of the communications room and sprawled, hooking his legs over one armrest and letting his back curl up against the other. His arm dangled, low to the ground, and he twirled his threshold blade’s hilt through his fingers, spinning it around and around and around. The blunt base made a low, grinding sound as it rasped against the metal deck plating.

Thale twitched a finger. The communication grid booted up and a feminine voice asked: “You have ... one new message from Eudemonia Defense Command. Message is in text from ... Prince Adoran Adams of Elthas. Do you wish the message to be projected or simmed?”

Thale sighed. “Simmed.”

Thanks to Adams’ own training in the arts of the Machine, his personality and mannerisms were more deeply etched and encoded into most comptech than their actual encryption rituals. The comptech that was laced through the projection system could do a better job of faking being Prince Adoran Adams of Elthas. Gods, did he have to sign it with his full title every single time he squirted a message down the Chain? Thale shook his head, while the comptech crunched the numbers, worked up a simulation, and activated the projection suite.

Unlike the hard-light projectors, these were more commercial tech, the kind used in billions of Hegemony homes to bring in excitement and adventure between their shifts in the techfabbers. The projection of Adoran was achingly perfect: From his dumb blond hair to his gormless perfect smile to his bright blue eyes to the broadness of his shoulder to his tight fitting and yet utterly hideous pink tunic and skintight white shirt. He was simmed like he was seated on the console in that way he always sat on Thale’s desk: Legs kicked out, teasing, hands set to either side to show off his chiseled physique. Did he have to show off his eight pack every goddamn time? Thale hissed softly as the simmed message remained paused for a moment, the comptech adding in tiny details it remembered. A mole there, right where his neck and his neckline met. Right where Thale like to nibble. A faint twinkle to those blue, blue eyes. A drumming pattern from the right hand.

“Dear Thale,” Adoran’s husky contralto – countertenor – voice filled Thale’s ears. “We all miss you here in the temple. Enriquah gotten this new trick with her hair, it’s insane.” He laughed, shaking his head. “She’s coated every follicle with a nanite mesh that she grew out over, like, three weeks. Then, gods know how, she figured out how to get the nanite mesh to, like...” He interlaced his fingers. “Flex. Twist. So, she can whip her hair like they’re snakes. She claims she can use it to climb around too, but we’ve been finding whole chunks of it wrapped around ceiling girders. I think she’s trying and its ripping out.” He winced, hissing. “Ouch, right?”

Thale snorted. “Quah is still crazier than a basket-full of irradiated snakes, I see...” he muttered.

The simmed Adoran laughed. Thale felt his heart clench. His claws dug into the upholstery of his chair. He was tempted to get the rest of the message printed in text, but Adoran continued talking before he could order the comptech to banish the holographic phantom. “Lord Vorsoth came back from another one of his missions up the Chain. I think that they’re really going to try attacking Castle.” He shook his head. “I don’t get why, Castle’s ... well, it’s Castle.” He sighed. “But I hope that you’re safe out there.”

He paused. “We all miss you.” His eyes flicked down. His voice became somber. “Stay safe, Thale.”

And then Adoran did as Adoran always fucking did. He pursed his lips, his eyes closed, and leaned forward. The comptech knew Adoran did that when he sent a holo. And for all Thale knew, Adoran had signed the text message with “hugs and kisses”, the fucking dork. And the comptech did as it had been commanded. It simmed Adoran. Right down to refusing to back down once a kiss was offered. Thale grumbled. He looked over his shoulder, at the empty Sanctum. He looked back at Adoran.

Thale scowled.

The simmed Adoran waited.

“Fucking...” Thale stood, his cheeks burning, then leaned in. The kiss was phantasmal – a faint tingle against his lips. Then nothing. When he opened his eyes, Adoran was gone.

Thale was a Sub-Lord of the Liminal Knights. He had bested men in battle. He had flown his ship in combat. He was a master of an ancient magic.

He flung himself into the throne, curled up, and burst into tears.

Thale had been here before. His eyes were unfocused for a moment – seeing only the hazy light of greens and blues and gold. He floated in that unfocused moment, letting the reality of the moment come only once it needed to. His eyes blinked once and he saw that he was standing in a forest glad. His bare feet pressed into the grass and his nose flared as he breathed in the deep, rich scents of this place. The smell of the grass. The smell of the water, rich in the air. The smell of the bark, rough and raspy and thick with cinnamon. Then his ears twitched, bringing in the sounds of the forest. The wind in the leaves, the rustle of the brush. The cheerful babbling of the brook.

Thale grinned and started forward, feeling his sleek body move to his command – and reveling in his nakedness. His freedom.

This place had been his for years. Ever since the powers of a Liminal Knight had called to him, he had been able to come here – to the sanctum within a sanctum. It took a certain amount of effort most of the time, but there were occasions where his mind fled here during sleep, crawling in and curling up to escape from the pain of the outside world. He had no idea which planet the forest, the brook, the pool was based on. It might have been Home. It might have been a thousand others that humanity had found and used magic on to tame and shape into a replica of their long beloved homeworld.

Personally, Thale didn’t really care where it was.

It was his.

He came to the water and crooned at the sight of it. He leaped up and landed in the pool, his body sending up a wave of pale blue water. It was shockingly cold, but his body adapted faster than it would have in the real world. Soon, the water felt like bliss, and he cupped his hands to splash it into his face, blinking away grit and tears. He stepped backwards and stood beneath the tumbling waterfall that poured over the lip of the grotto’s back. The water cascaded along his spine and he let out a gasp of pure pleasure. His eyes closed and he stepped forward, his hands rubbing along the many scars that crossed his body.

Old training mementos. Reminders of the Emperor’s disfavor. His fingers paused in their question – and his eyes opened.

And then he saw the girl.

She was naked, like him, though her body was half hidden by a tree that she clung to and hid partially behind. But her eyes were focused on him like a pair of lasers – and they were as deep and rich as the bark she stood beside. Brown, but laced through with tiny flecks of gold. Fatty deposits had no right looking so utterly enchanting. Her hair was chestnut brown and unruly, tumbling along her skinny shoulders like the waterfall behind him, coming to frayed tips. Her face was narrow and angular, like she’d missed a few meals and had been tanned to a warm hazel. That fact didn’t hide the constellation of freckles that started at her cheek bones and swept out and down like the wings of a star phoenix. The tiny dots continued along her shoulders, then swirled in intricate chaos along the modest swell of her breasts, fading out only to return with a vengeance around her belly button and her skinny, bony thighs. She had an unruly tuft of pubic hair nestled between her legs, which themselves were sleek. Athletic. Her feet were rough and hard used – and yet the urge to caress them tingled along Thale’s lips.

The girl gaped at him. Then she and he moved – his hand clapped over his groin. She ducked her entire body against the tree, concealing herself as best she could. What skin she showed had turned from hazel brown to crimson red.

When she blushed ... she blushed.

“H ... Hey,” she said. Her voice sounded like honey. Thale’s heart leaped into his throat. He gulped it back down. She bit her lip. The dimpling made Thale’s fingers tighten into near fists. He wracked his brain for something, anything, to say.

“Hey,” he said. The girl smiled, shyly as Thale kicked himself for that genius bit of dialog. “H-How’d you get here?” He asked. He didn’t want it there, but a tiny note of possessiveness crept into his tone.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice sharp. She turned her back, her head vanishing behind the tree. But her voice floated out. “What’s your name?”

Thale could picture her on the other side of the tree. His member grew harder and harder, his tail twitched from side to side. He wanted to go there. To the tree. To tug her out and interrogate her. How had she gotten here? To his sanctum? She had to be a Liminal Knight. But ... no Liminal Knight could be here unless ... unless ... his brow furrowed. He shook his head, slightly, and realized she was waiting for a name. Immediately, the first thing that came to his lips, was...

“Thale,” he said. The name he used only among the people who knew the real him. Stupid. Stupid! If she had been from any Hegemonic world, she’d have known Lord Drak’s name. Hells, she might have even been a fan. He shook his head. “You?”

“Venn,” she said.

Thale’s eyes widened. That wasn’t a Hegemonic name. At least, not one he recognized. But it sounded ... good. He smiled. “Venn.” He tasted the word on his tongue. “I like it.” His stomach roiled and he felt a flare of panic. Had that been ... did she-

“Thale is nice too,” she said and Thale felt an absurd urge to dance for joy. But before he could speak, before he could do a thing, his shoulder jerked to the side. He snapped his head to the left, and realized someone was shaking his physical body.

“I have to go,” he said, his voice tight.

“Thale, wait, I-” she started.

But Thale’s eyes opened. He groaned and sat up, his back stretching as he saw a hard-light servitor hovering beside him. It was a simple geometric shape, easily rendered by the projectors and easily simulated by the comptech. It had shaken him with a pincer claw, a claw it retracted back into its polygonal body. That clipped feminine voice used by every piece of equipment that had a simmed voice spoke: “Lord Drak, you are summoned by Chief Engineer and Programmer Archaeologist Ho.”

Thale rubbed at his eyes. “Tell him I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”

“Yes, Lord Drak.”

The servitor fuzzed away and Thale stretched. His spine popped and cracked and he prowled to his bed with a quiet snarl. That girl. That Venn. He wanted her. He wanted her with a fierceness that went beyond logic, beyond rationality. It was a gut deep instinct, like a fish hook in his guts, tugging up towards his throat. He came to his bedroom and flung himself down, knees first, onto his bed. Black silken sheets rumpled under his weight and he panted as he looked down as his achingly hard member. Pale. Immense. His hand gripped his base, his fingers not touching his palm as he closed his eyes. He hated his cock – it was ... unsightly.

The Hegemony’s beauty lines trended towards petite – the efficient body. In most of the neuvo-plays, if a man had a bulge, it was because he was a brute. An idiot. An animal. A disgusting animal. Thale clenched his jaw, pressure growing as he pumped his cock, viciously hard. His eyes closed and he pictured that freckled body under him, imagined spreading her legs, imagined hilting himself inside of her, imagined her back arching, her sex clenching. His hand squeezed his base and he let out a low, hissing sound. His tail lashed and he leaned forward, his palm pressing to the silk. Claws snicked from his free hand’s fingertips and dug into the cloth.

“Fuck!” He growled, his hips twitching as if he was slamming into her. His balls bumped his own knuckles and he threw his head back, growling. “Fucking yes!”

The pressure mounted. Burst.

His balls clenched and Thale tried to roar, like he really was one of the great cats. The sound came out as a pathetic, emasculating yowl. His body trembled and his back arched as his cum spurted into the bed. Thick strands spilled outwards in an elegant, spreading pattern that almost reached the pillows. His claws rasped through more of the silk as he bent forward, resting his forehead at the very apex of his splash. His eyes closed and he breathed in his warm musk, the salty buzz of his spunk burning down his nose as his tail twitched. He was posed as if he was ready for Adoran, like this. But he wasn’t thinking of Adoran, now was he.

Thale whispered. “Venn...”

He shook his head. He left the sheets for the cleaning servitor and walked, naked, to the showers. He let cold water run down his spine and thought, for just a moment: Adoran never arrived in my dreams, did he?

He took his time showering. But when he emerged, his uniform was waiting. He slid the gambeson on. He tugged on his gloves with mute resignation, curling his lip at the false claws. And then, walking to the front doors, he came to where he had smashed his mask. And there, laying on a slightly dinged and dented part of the floor plating, was his mask – utterly undamaged. Thale reached down and grabbed the mask. He looked at the blank face of it, then turned it around. He pressed it to his face – and, as always, putting it on was never when he started to want to tear it off. That feeling always came creeping in the longer and longer he wore it. Thale closed his eyes as the mask extended, locked into place, and his hand brushed his cape out.