He could see one of the Great Ones high in the sky above, he did not know when it had shed its limbs and ascended, he just knew that it had earned a name and risen in awesome majesty.

  He was nameless, though he had risen far since his hatching, the very fact that he thought of himself as having a sex signified that. It was the way of his kind and now he answered the call that sang in his blood, moving across the verdant jungles towards where the great one danced in the sky.

  Like all of his kin he was solitary by nature, only when forced by external threats would they band together. Even now, when driven by this maddening instinct he kept low in the trees, moving carefully from shadowed bough to bough, instinct told him to avoid the sun and experience told him that the ground was deadly, too many hunted there, and there was always someone bigger and faster.

  His clawed limbs allowed him to grip the trees easily and he made progress growing closer. Finally, he reached the edge of the trees. There was a gap of perhaps a hundred body lengths to a great structure.

  He lacked the words to describe it, too young, he had earned too little for that. To him it looked like an oddly shaped, stepped, hill all of carved stone. It stank of blood and death and yet it called to him.

  Even as his instincts waged an internal war of caution and fear versus that sirens call he saw others, most bigger, some smaller than him bursting from cover and moving low and fast towards the structure, where they began to climb.

  His gaze moved up the odd hill and at the top he saw them. He froze, instincts screaming of the danger – half-named. He didn’t know how he knew but that was what they were, still limbed, their emerald scales glittering in the sun without fear they held strange tools in their hands, bowls of black stone and wavy knives of red orichalcum. The words and their associated complexes of thought flowed into his head, danger triggering growth.

  Even as he watched more words came to him and he almost turned away. Before he did, he looked up into the sky and was lost. The Great One danced in the sky and his will compelled obedience. ALL of the blood must climb the ziggurat.

  He knew that word now, his growth accelerating under the aegis of the Great One, and before he even realized it was rushing towards one of the six sides of the hexagonal base to the stepped tower. His scales itched with his exposure to the sky and his flanks twitched at being vulnerable to so many rivals as spawn ran ahead, behind and to the right and left.

  None of it mattered, only climbing the ziggurat. He scrambled up, still short enough that it took real effort to move from one tier to the next with the height exceeding his body length. The patterns on the sides burned into his mind as he looked at them and even caused pain when his belly rubbed against them as he inched upwards. Forced into prolonged contact by the need to slither over them he continued to grow. He hissed softly tasting the air, the rich copper smell of blood, the sourness of voided bowels or evisceration, he couldn’t tell which. That thought made his mind scream, this is wrong, run, instinct called him to the trees and safety.

  He kept climbing, the patterns, runes he now knew grew more complex with each tier he rose and his thoughts became a little clearer, his terror at approaching the half-named grew a little sharper. They were larger than him and as he approached the final tier where they stood, he knew beyond thought or instinct that they were ruthless killers he should never approach. He saw those ahead of him being intercepted and with a flash the half-named wielded their orichalcum blades and the spawn were gone.

  Finally, he reached the top tier. Only to find not a flat top but a lip. The ziggurat was hollow and the stench of blood and offal rose from within, where the corpses were piled high enough that it was easy to see them, uncounted thousands of them with more added every second. He felt a momentary spike of pure terror as the half-named moved towards him, seeing that it was more than he had imagined; it had already shed its hind limbs and was supported only by its tail.

  Then he saw the black bowl, it was glowing. Fascinated, he stopped staring into the depths as the half-named showed him its contents. Blood stained the bowl but the silver light of runes filled his vision whispering of distant places beyond the long cold night.

  Then he felt a cold line slashing up, opening his body and finally the great vessel that fed his fangs. Dark blood splashing on the silver runes. A voice.

  “Another, high compatibility. Send him.”

  Then darkness.

  His mamma had always said that Detroit was a hell hole. Especially in summer. Lil’ No or just No to his friends was running for his life. Everything had gone crazy, everyone was dead. They just didn’t stay dead.

  He didn’t know what had happened, there had been crazy talk about space men and alien invasions, as Trey had solemnly told them all this was off da chain, they needed to get out there and move his product. The heat was making people crazy. That was the word and the law on their Turf.

  He was near the bottom of the pile. So, he went out early to grab a good corner, one with lots of shade and an easy run for pickup. It meant being up before the sun and kipping in place to stop some bitch boy grabbing his plot. And then it all went crazy, He had ended up shut in some tip room and the only way out had been to paint the fuckers gang sign in light. Which he did. No way he would tell Trey about that…

  Nor about the crazy hallucination he had right after waking up. Words floating in front of his eyes until somehow, he managed to get rid of them. Good thing too. Reading was for little bitches who couldn’t hang with real men. That’s what Trey had told him when he dropped out of school to take care of business anyway.

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  Now he was awake, sunburned, out of his mind with thirst and his phone was dead. Getting water hadn’t been easy, the party stores were all shut and he had to head back to his crib. Which was when some stinking piece of garbage in a python cut had a go. He popped him. Dude looked like he died already, stank like it too.

  Then instead of having to run from the Hook he found himself running from more fucking stinking dead dudes. They were definitely dead.

  Before he knew it he was at the end of his rope, he had killed three of them before he was out of shots and he had been running ever since. Out of his hood and running blind when the sun went down he had finally taken shelter in an Abando.

  He had seen things in the nightmarish hours since he woke that he could never unsee, now he understood why so many brothers and sisters used Trey’s product. More than anything he wanted to forget and all he could do was curl up rocking himself to a semblance of calm.

  He stayed there for two days until thirst forced him out. On the first night the weird light in the sky, that had given him some hope that the Army or someone was here had flared and died.

  Finally, the dead got organized and came and found him.

  Masazumi Kanai bowed his head low. He had been hikikomori before the fall of the Herald. A shut in obsessed with marital fantasy and all its trappings. His meaningless computer jobs were gone now. All he had dreamed of was Isekai, to be somewhere with meaning.

  Now the Isekai had come to him. He had been the first to reach the Obelisk. The first to drag ten survivors into its presence and the first to bring back the body of one of the System’s enemies.

  Now he stood, katana in hand his elaborately painted bogu making his purpose clear. These weaklings didn’t understand the glory of the system. Policemen telling him to return to his home, to shelter in place.

  To keep off the streets so that the professionals could do their work.

  Of course he refused. He was finally in his element, and his obsessive practice had already yielded four skills. Didn’t they understand that with the survivors on his Karakasa-guruma he would gain the next reward for saving his people?

  They spoke again, thanking him for finding these sleepers. They would take it from here.

  When he refused to be moved from his purpose, they even drew their Nambu’s!

  The outrage. As the Scion of Masazumi he ordered them to submit to the Herald’s will. When they refused, he had no choice.

  He struck. They were not Oni-cursed with the vicious speed or natural weapons nor where they Gaki. The weapons of the old world failed against the pure purpose of the new.

  Wiping the blood from his Katana Masazumi bowed his head and vowed that nothing, nothing would stop his rise as the first Kensai under the System!

  Then he picked up the handle to his cart and resumed pulling the last four survivors he needed towards the Sacred heart of the Herald. Soon he would discover the Heralds will for its next quest.

  The Herald meditated. The downside of immobility didn’t matter to him and his skill was so advanced that it just served to improve his function. He was alone with no peers, and no superiors for the first time in his life.

  It was a strange feeling. He knew as the System coursed through him that he would regain contact with the others; first the Lords and Ladies and then his brothers and sisters. The pillars of the system presence in these new worlds.

  It continued to review the trove of data it had been able to retrieve in the brief window when enough mana existed on the world below for it to interface with the records of the locals. This was its first chance to study a complex society not shaped by magic and only its purpose kept it from devoting its full attention to the fascinating problem.

  Still, it had found a way to devote nearly eleven percent of its mind streams to the task. If only the world wasn’t so troublesome. It had learned that there were billions of sentients on the planet before initiation. During the brief window when it was still connected to the wider System after making that discovery it had requested information about successful integrations with these numbers.

  There were none. At least none that it could access. There were failures with lower numbers where the system had been entirely repelled. Records were fragmentary and the best lessons it could derive was conserve energy and figure out what you were facing.

  Every failure was the result of action by another Power, one that had information the Lords and Ladies lacked. At least that was the official line…

  It turned it mind to the surface. Losing some Obelisks was to be expected given the suboptimal conditions. For this to start happening before initiation was even complete for the most cognitively advanced species was a disaster.

  It had focused on the cities. Dense populations meant the best Mana return, then things started going wrong as deaths began to mount. Inevitably the Nath swarmed. It was no surprise with a sacrificial wave like this. Then things had really gone wrong.

  It knew the alliance of powers that had birthed the wave, each contributing one or more sacrificial planets to form the grand array. The assumption had been that they would follow standard colonization protocols; sending their people in the wake of the wave, this would give entire planetary orbits to prepare.

  The only explanation was that they were already here. But who? And how? It needed data.

  Finally, it turned to the bright spot. The design of save your people was masterful. Already candidates were emerging. The threshold of ten thousand was normally unachievable without cooperation, the ease of obtaining the Leader title ensured that. Six candidates already and people were still waking up. Four were established leaders, but two stood out. David Murphy, who had gained the title by guile and the one who named himself Skanderbeg. Its research indicated this probably wasn’t the human’s real name. Still, it was remarkable to obtain the title by violence this early.

  All of this was very interesting and it settled in to monitor developments, devoting a stream to each Squire, as was proper.

  They didn’t think, not truly, that was not their nature. They rode upon the wave their tough outer shells protecting them from the harsh environment. The Mana was chaotic, cold and lifeless, unpaired it resonated with the collisions against false matter at the leading edge of the wave.

  Time was meaningless to them, they rode unthinking until their shells were touched by a chaotic resonance that spoke of warmth, of life. At first the signal was gentle, then as it grew rapidly chaotic its strength spreading through the Mana wave as the cause fell further and further behind the leading edge.

  Soon the chaotic pattern began to shift, a great vortex forming as life, able to absorb Mana so much faster than other matter drained the local Mana causing more to spiral in. Chaotic resonance became the start of a great gyre with a living planet in its eye.

  An isolated jewel of blue and green orbiting a bright star.

  Slowly at first they started to drift their course long set and true to the path of the wave began to bend ever so slightly towards this new current.

  The reaction when it came was oddly beautiful. First one began to shimmer, shedding light in the empty void as its shell reacted to the cross current. Then as that light touched another the shimmer spread, tens, hundreds, thousands beyond counting of points of light filling the darkness where only cold, inert stone-like shapes had been before.

  Each point of light spread, intricate patterns like thistledown growing from the formerly dark objects, shifting hues tuning until they resonated with the cross current that had triggered their growth.

  Then the formerly inert objects began to accelerate towards source of the current.

  They had intent now and they were coming.

  Which scene did you enjoy the most?