The first to reach Armela was wielding a sturdy-looking mace. Based on the diameter of the head and the density of iron, it weighed about 10 kilograms, and he brought it sweeping down in an overhead chop aimed at her right shoulder.

  If he’d connected the hit on a regular, unarmored human, there was a very real possibility of not only dislocating the arm, but shattering the clavicle as well as potentially deflating a lung.

  The damage would be catastrophic, but not fatal.

  Unfortunately for him, Armela was something entirely different now. Beyond just being a Wolfkin, she had been remade by me.

  So when she caught the man’s mace against her raised scimitar as though she were catching a loaf of bread, his dismay and shock could not possibly have been more intense. Of course, that was when her fist sailed through the man’s skull like a wrecking ball through a water balloon.

  Blood and viscera sprayed out in all directions as bone fragments ricocheted off of armour and weapons; some shards found softer targets like faces and arms to embed in.

  Then she ripped through them.

  Moving from man to man, exploding skulls, severing spines, and crushing ribs. Each heavy impact of her fist was a life ended. Each flick of her sword sent limbs and torsos spiraling away through the air.

  The kinds of wounds she was inflicting could not be survived, and without someone to heal them, they would either slowly drown in lungfuls of blood, or exsanguinate from the haemorrhaging.

  She was death incarnate as she slid through their number.

  Some of them attempted to flee in terror back towards the leader, but it was far too late to escape the insane speed and reaction time of my whirling cyclone of brutality.

  I sent another pulse over our link to save 2 alongside the leader.

  It seemed to take her more restraint not to pop the skulls of the two men she held in either hand; palming their heads like ripe fruits. But with some effort, she dumped them unceremoniously next to the leader’s feet instead of just adding them to the pile behind her.

  He stood ramrod-stiff; scared to move so much as a muscle as he drank in the bloodbath before him. Men lay strewn across the campground, some missing generous portions of their bodies, others writhing in the dirt, howling in pain and despair.

  There was some minor commotion from the covered wagons as the slaves clamoured to find out what was happening around them, but it was hushed; it appeared none of the captives wished to draw more attention to themselves than they had to.

  The two men that Armela had dropped scrambled back, trying desperately to get to their feet in the muddy earth. Puddles of blood had formed throughout the area surrounding the leader, and it made it difficult for them to find a solid footing.

  She shook her head and, once again, two great iron rods snaked out from her back and lanced down through the two men’s legs. She seemed to have grown familiar with that particular move, or maybe it was the only one she knew how to do?

  Come to think of it, how had she figured out how to do that during the ritual? Maybe her subconscious had formed them, and she had remembered how it felt to make them?

  Her body was handling a lot of the interpretation going on between her thoughts and actions, so it made sense that it would respond to a lot of her desire-centric thoughts.

  The leader of the brigands dropped to his knees in the blood-soaked dirt; staring up at Armela like she were the angel of death, come to inflict untold horrors upon him.

  “Y-you’re a daemon. This ain’t real, you ain’t real… by the Gods’ light please, I-I didn’t know… I swears to ya’! Please! Spare me, I beg of ya’, please! Anything…! I’ll do anything, just please… don’t devour my soul…”

  He had pissed himself at some point in the one-sided slaughter. A stream of his urine darkened the slacks he wore where it had run down his thigh to join the thick wash of blood staining his knees.

  He couldn’t see it, but Armela was on the verge of orgasm again. The slaughter, and subsequent submission of the leader did absolutely nothing to slow the arousal she got from showcasing her dominance.

  She looked down at him with such an imperious air that I immediately corrected my earlier thought about whether she could conquer worlds.

  Left to her own devices, Armela would inevitably become one of the gods I had to defend against. My soul shuddered briefly at the thought.

  “Lick. My. Foot.”

  It was simple, and it perfectly cut through the gasps and groans from the few men still alive behind her. It was a crystal-clear command that could not be misheard or misunderstood.

  She delicately raised her foot, now utterly coated in a supremely disgusting mix of human remains and mud. The leader of the bandits turned an even paler shade of white before his eyes rolled back in his head and he keeled over.

  The two remaining brigands had ceased their squirming and lay still on the ground, either not wishing to attract her ire, or having passed out from the pain of having their legs harpooned into the ground.

  Armela set her foot down and retracted her spikes from the men’s legs, one of whom screamed and scrabbled to freedom. This was halted almost immediately with Armela’s voice.

  “Move another inch, and I’ll feed you piece. By. Piece. To your friend there.”

  The man stopped, but whimpered pitifully on the ground. Uttering wordless prayers to Rel, or any God that would listen.

  “This fucker… ruined my mood!”

  Armela kicked the leader sharply across his face; not hard enough to kill him, or break bones, but enough that he would definitely feel it whenever he woke back up. It was safe to assume they had imagined the slavers being torn apart by a demon.

  The murmuring from the wagons had stopped entirely. It was safe to assume they had imagined the slavers being torn apart by a demon. Coated in human remains as she was, Armela certainly looked the part.

  My view through infrared showed the prisoners huddled in terror, not having been able to see what was going on.

  A person in the rear wagon caught my attention. The silhouette was small—childlike, but almost invisible to infrared.

  I swapped through different electromagnetic spectra, but they all came back the same. The small person was ethereal, like they barely existed. I wanted to know what sort of being they were.

  After sending a quick pulse to Armela to clean up, she spun on me.

  “You keep doing… that. Stop it! It’s strange and makes me uncomfortable, like you’re slipping into my thoughts and pushing them around… it’s unnerving, and I thought I was the one in control here!”

  She was scratching at her ears as though trying to physically scrub my voice from her head.

  “Just shut up and let me do this! If I need you, I’ll tell you, understood?”

  Rather than pinging my assent over our connection, I nodded, which seemed to mollify her. I could sense her frustration through the link, not just at me intruding on her thoughts, but at our fun being interrupted the way it had.

  No doubt she had been hoping for an unbroken span of time to enjoy her newfound control over me. While she could still exercise it to a certain degree, handling prisoners and sorting through the interrogation of the brigands held little to no interest for her.

  I could sense that if she had a choice, she would simply avoid the situation altogether, but recognized how important it was for us to resolve this before moving on to other endeavours.

  She cleaned herself, somehow instructing her skin to ‘shake’ the viscera off like I could. It appeared she was becoming more accustomed to using her body to its fullest extent—willing it into various shapes and functions.

  I was impressed with her adaptation. Stepping over to our tent, she gathered the dress I’d made her, which was still relatively clean, and put it on before heading to the covered section of the wagons.

  I clothed myself once more in simple brown cotton pants and a cotton short-sleeved tunic to match. Getting to my knees, I turned to face Armela before resting back on my haunches and awaiting further instructions.

  I adjusted the blindfold slightly to better settle it onto my face as she had been rather vigorous while kicking me.

  Poking her head around the back of the first wagon, she waved and greeted the prisoners.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Hello all, I’m going to open the cages now and let you out, alright? I’m not going to hurt you or put you in chains, just hold on and we’ll get you free, alright?”

  This was met with some minor grumbles of unease, but no outright rejection. So far, so good. The locks started to groan and crack apart with loud, metallic ‘pings’ as she passed from cage to cage.

  After clearing each lock from the first wagon, she hopped out and repeated the same process for the rear one as well. They had been listening intently to what was being said and had expected her. Many of them were relieved, or outright overcome with emotion as she opened the cages.

  Thanking her profusely and streaming out the back, the group tentatively stepped towards the front of the wagons and into the bloodbath that had taken place.

  Some retched, some covered their mouths and noses. Most just absently observed the slaughter with seasoned eyes. This wasn’t new to them, and it didn’t faze them at all.

  A few actually kicked a few of the corpses violently. Either taking out blanket revenge for their torment, or targeting specific members of the crew for wrongs that may have been committed against them during the trip.

  Based on what the leader had said to Armela, it wouldn’t be a stretch to think they had assaulted the prisoners regularly. Most of the captives sported bruises and cuts, some along the face and neck, others on arms and legs.

  All seemed to be haggard and sleep-deprived. No doubt, being bounced around in steel cages made for poor sleeping conditions.

  Oddly enough, the horses hadn’t spooked at all from the bloodshed, and in fact, seemed fairly comfortable standing among the corpses. The poor animals must have been exposed to quite a bit of this type of work.

  Again, it seemed like the demographics of captives varied wildly from person to person. Interestingly, there were new races mixed among the population; two exceedingly stout women were grouped together; they were both under 120cm tall and exceptionally broad in the shoulder.

  Based on the musculature, they easily weighed in excess of 80kg or more. They had to be dwarves; I saw no other explanation. Their thick brown hair fell across their shoulders in heavy braids, and their wide jaws gave them an overtly masculine look.

  They reminded me of Art déco portraits and Russian constructivism. Sharp cheeks, deep-set eyes, heavy brows and angular noses. They looked as though they’d been pounded out of sheet-steel and I found that beautiful.

  Further back in the group, coming from the rear wagon, was a lone elf.

  She was tall, almost as tall as I was at a little under 2 metres, and so slender that it seemed a strong enough gust of wind might topple her over. With long golden hair and sharply pointed ears, she immediately stood out among the crowd of aimless victims milling about the campground.

  There was a last addition to my catalogue of new races, one that everyone gathered at the camp did everything in their power to avoid even looking at.

  They were androgynous, to the point where I wasn’t sure they even had a gender. They had squirrelled themselves away under the rear wagon in the shadows.

  Blood-red eyes peered out at the group as they trembled in what I imagined was abject terror over the gathering of people. Their skin was deep grey-blue, like a stormy ocean lit by moonlight.

  Obsidian strands of hair fell about their face in a matted, tangled mess, and two long fangs protruded from their upper jaw where their canines would be. They seemed to be some sort of demon, or maybe a vampire child?

  They had peeling, oozing, angry sores and blisters across almost the entire surface of their naked body. I presumed it had been from exposure to the sun, but couldn’t be sure.

  I was intensely interested in them. What their origins were, and what caused the others to treat them with such horrific disdain.

  Part of the group was actively discussing the best methods for terminating them, trying to plan a way to coax them out of the dark and then pin them in the light.

  Some were glancing about and wondering if any iron tools were at hand.

  That could not be allowed to happen.

  Silently, I sent a drone to rest in the shadows next to them, and I whispered to them.

  “Speak, please.”

  They jumped, slamming their head into the axle of the wagon before scrambling deeper into the darkness. Their chest was heaving as their body fought through the height of their fight-or-flight response.

  I tried again, forcing as much calm and tranquillity into my voice as possible, repeating my request. I prayed to my God that they would catch on to what I wanted them to do. The repetition had to coax something out of them.

  Seconds passed. I added variations to what I said to encourage engagement, and finally, after what felt like hours, they hissed out a few lilting whispers of their own. They trailed off into the air, as if they had been leaking the words.

  They were soft, echoing sounds that seemed to come both from a great distance and directly next to the drone. They were hypnotic, trance-inducing tones.

  I felt my entire focus being slowly drawn to them and realised that just their voice alone was an invocation of some strange magic. No sigils were involved at all, and yet the force in their words was captivating me.

  As they spoke, I came to realize ‘they’ was a ‘she’. She softly poked at the drone, only to fling her hand back before cradling it against her chest. It seemed that the brief contact with the drone had burned the tip of her finger.

  So she was of the Fae in some capacity. Their aversion to iron was well known, and further clarified her ethereal nature. I wondered how they’d transported her in the steel cages.

  From where I was, I couldn’t make out any sort of covering on any of the cages that would have allowed her to avoid being burned constantly… unless… that had been what was happening to her?

  It broke my heart to think she’d been trapped in that cell for days on end, constantly burning and suffering, shifting her position to ease the pain on any given portion of her body.

  The soft, drumming hum of her voice picked back up as she whispered again; it was less like a spoken language and instead, seemed more like she was reciting a song.

  The more I listened, the more clarity I gathered about the broadening intricacies of what she was saying. Layer upon layer upon layer of meanings and sounds had woven themselves into every small vibration of her voice.

  She wasn’t simply reciting a song, or even really speaking. She was projecting the echoes of a long-running melody that had laced itself into the fabric of time and space. An underlying current of understanding that bled into the very reality of existence.

  When she opened her mouth to speak, she was simply behaving as a conduit through which that intention could flow, dropping and picking up parts of it to match her desires and immediate needs.

  My pattern recognition was stretched to its absolute maximum, utterly redlining the capabilities of my processing power in order to decipher the complexity of the interaction between our tangible reality and the ephemeral nature of this… sound? Song?

  There were no words to translate the immensity of what I was unravelling beneath this wagon in the middle of nowhere adequately. I shut down every other source of stimuli, erased every hint of focus that was not dedicated to understanding what I was listening to and then threw my soul into the unfathomable depths of this universal music.

  Time shuddered and then stopped. Atoms gently rocked back and forth around me like boats cresting lazy waves amid a vast ocean. And there I sat. For hours. And then days. And then months and years. Drifting through the endless aeons of immaterial existence.

  It wasn’t just syllables; even the very particles of air being swirled in the lungs held specific meanings, the way they passed over a certain section of the lips. There was no single correct interpretation of this.

  Each and every host of the music added to it, changed it, formed a harmony with every other host to have ever changed it. You didn’t speak it; you carried it; you joined a great chorus of others spanning untold millennia in the recitations.

  I spent 40 years differentiating the layers of meaning between a ? second pause and a ? second pause. The vast cascade of meaning between the two could give rise to nations and guide religions with its rich and storied importance.

  Historians would need billions of years to parse out even the fullest of meanings in just one letter and its spiderweb of connotations. Hundreds of years passed. Letters took shape on the grand scale of recorded history. Thousands of years whirled by me as words developed into their own small universes.

  Millions of years elapsed, and I could hear the joyous tones of the United Legion singing proudly across the darkening expanse of the lightless night. Stars flared and then blinked out, as though I were witnessing a field of fireflies.

  Billions of years flew past my open eyes as the full stream of consciousness flooded into a massive river. And then I was lost. Out among the depths of an endless ocean. I was an atom. Then a proton. Then an electron spinning and spinning off into endless nothing, forever.

  I became older than this universe. Older than any other universe. The ebb and flow of time washed around, and then past me with no effect. The tranquillity of space was infinite. And then I heard a click.

  A door creaked open. Steps of softly placed feet padding across the folds of the universe. Rippling out in every direction but somehow towards me. Because I was every direction. There was nowhere that didn’t lead to me. It was the girl from under the wagon.

  But it wasn’t her, or at least, it hadn’t been her. Or maybe it wouldn’t be, not for a very long time. She phased in and out of herself, ageing and de-aging as she crossed the infinite space between thoughts.

  Stepping away and towards me simultaneously. She spoke, and didn’t speak to me. The rasping whisper of echoing words filled the silence, but also perpetuated it.

  “There you are.”

  And then I was kneeling once again. Shins slick with the sodden dirt and blood of expired brigands. It was nostalgic, like this spot on the ground had been all I had ever known, and I was returning to it after a long, long journey.

  Time was still halted, but I had found myself in the moment. Or rather, the girl who had been me found myself. I was disoriented and confused.

  Both on the ground and lost in time and space. I could still sense her in my mind. Through the song, I could feel her life beating against the walls of my soul. I slowly ratcheted the time back up, bringing me out of the singular moment and back into the main flow of the universe once more.

  The girls’ head whipped around towards me. Our eyes locked, even through the blindfold. She could feel me now, too. Gently knocking on the walls of her soul as well.

  I spoke through the drone, this time tapping into the song to communicate with her.

  “We have found ourselves. Quickly, we will bring ourselves into the dark where we will be safe.”

  I opened a small gate next to her, and she unquestioningly hopped through it. It led to the room where my production facility lay, so while opening the rift I had shut the machinery down in order not to deafen her or give away where she had slipped off to.

  Once on the other side of the gate, I sent the drone through and shut it again. She was bewildered at first, but slowly relaxed once it was apparent she was no longer in immediate danger.

  I spoke again.

  “Welcome, Nia’cyl, to the embrace of dark once more. We share this home and its hospitality. Though it is meager, please accept it as the warmth of our love.”

  Working within the bounds of the song made translation tricky. There were thousands of interpretations for every breath, and imparting the right tone to casual conversation was taxing without overstepping the traditions of hospitality.

  There were also strange interplays between plural descriptors and singular identification. Because of the many voices flowing through the song, references to the whole could be equally us or I, we or me.

  Perfunctory speech seemed to favour the collective, while intimacy implied more personal uses of ‘I’ or ‘You’. With the strange nature of our meeting, and the small favour I had granted her, I deemed the use of ‘you’ to be more appropriate than ‘us’ in my first correct address of her.

  She glanced about, taking in the small space and inspecting the machines without touching them. She coughed lightly as the iron particles in the air irritated her lungs, but didn’t seem to cause her too much distress.

  She responded.

  “Well met, Vita Iron—Borne. You have come awash in strange tides. We are grateful for the bounty of your love and accept it, meagre though it may be.”

  Coughing again, she assumed a meditative pose to work on healing her numerous burns.

  “The dark is a comfort we had thought lost to us these past moments, but once again find ourselves coddled in. Truly, we wonder through what means we have come to embrace each other?”

  She was being polite, but questioning the legitimacy of my offer of safety. While simultaneously thanking me for saving her and drilling me about my knowledge of the song. In joining the harmony, we had both touched enough upon each other to at least know who we were.

  She knew my name; I knew hers. But the deeper motivations and history of an individual would have required a more laser-focused duet between our souls, and that was simply something you did not entreat a random person to. Harmonise all you wish with the collective, but keep your prying soul out of others’ personal spaces.

  I replied as succinctly as I thought etiquette would allow, trying to limit the depth of the hole I would inevitably dig myself into.

  “We have come from beyond the edge of blackness. Lost among the waves of time through the wish of our master. Strange tides sadly follow in our wake, and the wisdom to navigate them is a slow thing to ponder.”

  Explaining the nature of my purpose and how the universe had drawn us together was well outside my skill-set.

  “I am… I am something… else. Borne of iron, wrought in flames and light… these things and more have brought us upon each other’s shores.”

  She nodded, sensing the discord in my tones and grasping the guideless manner I’d been conducting myself over the past four days. It would have been impossible for me to hide my ineptitude from her, not when communicating through the song as we were.

  It required all of oneself to commit to even the smallest sound. Lying or deceiving someone was almost impossible. The only thing you could do would be to omit what it was you wanted to say, and even then some of that truth would bleed into the echoes of your words.

  “We sense the love for us. You cannot will the shape of things as they are, to shift, but within the song we may yet find the brighter path.”

  Which amounted to the song’s version of a platitude, ‘keep your chin up’, essentially.

  “You are, and were, known to me; through distant hymns your soul was found. For the warmth you have given us, we will bolster the sails of the ship upon which we sail.”

  Well, that was exclusively a good thing… probably. Any help would be a boon to me.

  “New shores await us all.”

  And that was bad. In the song's context, this meant things were about to change in a big way, and soon. I focused on spooling possible connotations through my translation for hints.