Brekko got up slowly, turned around and looked at the other Sources, all of whom were brought in after him.

His soulclaw snapped up. It was golden, edged with green. A big shift from where he’d once been, able to include others he didn’t know as people worth trusting and helping.

“This is a weapon to fight with. I... am a weapon to fight with,” he began slowly, conveying his thoughts to the others. “Right now... there’s no real enemy out there. There’s only the system of the Imperial Government, weighed down by time and the Warp, turned into this heartless thing that wants to grind us down and turn us into chaff thrown at the Warp.

“But I can tell what’s gonna happen. We’re building something new here, something different. It flies in the face of the Empire and how things are done, and at some point... we’re gonna have to fight to keep what we got. Be it from the Empire, some aliens bent on killing us, the Warp... whatever.” He clenched his fist.

“So, I got no one to promise to fight against right now. But I’m joining up with Sama, I’m gonna get my Citizenship, and become somebody.

“My Oath is this: I am going to work to become a Ten, and when the time comes, I, and those who follow me, will be ready!”

He wasn’t a Ten, so the power of the Oath wasn’t huge, but I could still feel it, rippling in the air, and bending causality in his direction, helping him on the road of his Oath, and anyone who followed him.

“Did you all feel that?” The other Sources nodded slowly as I clapped Brekko’s shoulder, and he sat down. “That’s your first Oath. It’s not that strong, but you all know, little, incremental things is how you shift things in your favor. It will become stronger as you become stronger.

“Most importantly, it can be fulfilled, and another Oath take its place... when the time comes, and you are ready.”

“Lisha, let’s hear yours...”

-----------

-MOM!-

My girls weren’t going to call me Sama, because they were all Samas, too. They also weren’t going to call me Sensei or Sage, just because I had a few Levels on them. Since it was the least annoying and most amusing option, and I definitely wasn’t their sister, Mom it was.

I didn’t mind. Grandma did good work on the Curse, I was definitely going to take advantage of it.

Still, they didn’t usually call me, preferring to call one another, since I was literally always doing a dozen things at once. Also, not having the Marktell made fast response a little slower.

-Celestia?-, I /replied. The white-haired girl’s Talent was Ice Cold, which gave her a preternaturally level personality and a bonus to Intimidation checks. The fact she was all in caps was very unusual.

Celestia was in the bladeboy dueling leagues, a very popular gladiatorial competition for mindblade users. She was naturally going up against full psis, who generally had a lot of tricks to throw at her, which were all generally pretty useless. So, it came down to actual mindblade duels, and naturally she cleaned their clocks when it came to actual dueling that way.

Bleep! She sent me a link. I clicked on it, and a Boole-site popped up.

Big guy, decked out in a brutally simple set of power armor, a crackling hammer in his hands. Heavy brow, massive bone structure, overlong limbs... okay, heavy on the Ancient genes.

Somebody somewhen had the idea of bringing back Neanderthals to be combat machines for humanity, so they went ahead and mixed in old derivative genes, gorillas, High-G stuff to support everything, and ended up with what were once called Ogres, Brutes, Thugs, and other names indicative of stupidity and strength combined. While technically they weren’t any dumber than the average person, they tended to instinctively shun tech and preferred simpler lives, not really dreaming of bigger and better things. They were prized as obedient soldiers and bodyguards... until the Warp came in and turned a whole bunch of them into human-eating horrors that rampaged over many worlds until they were stopped or chased off into the Warp.

It had been a long time since then, but nobody made up companies of what were politely called ‘Ancients’ now. The genework was recessive and rare, with maybe one being born in a hundred million people. ‘Half-ogres’, basically just big, beefy humans, weren’t all that uncommon in comparison.

I had met a lot of genotypes by now, Opening and Awakening many, but I’d not yet met an Ancient. While the danger of mass numbers of them was still being told in history classes today, there was remarkably little stigma attached to individual Ancients... because they were all natural Sources.

I was absolutely sure the corruption that had swallowed the original Ancients had started with the youngest and most vulnerable of them, and the oldest, pissed at how they were treated, basically went along with it for revenge against those who thought them cannon fodder. Most of the corrupted ones had been flesh-mad and simply fought until they died, glutted on human corpses, while the oldest sailed off into the stars and got away, to find their own worlds to settle on and become legends.

Seeing an Ancient in power armor was quite a sight. He had to be at least eight feet tall there, and there were vids over there on the side showing Briggs the Borg Beater...

Full stop.

My eyes might have widened a tiny bit. I reached out and blew a close-up of all the crags and mountains of that hairy face.

Pale violet eyes...

There was a Briggs here?!?!

How had he... did they... how long...

-Brain fried!-, I /announced to her. -But... mineminemineallmine!-

Bleep! There was another link. Click, and it opened up winking on a restaurant two hundred and thirty-two miles away in Upper Twindlespire.

“Chalice!” I ordered, and feeling hugely amused at my mood, poof, we were lived-lining to a highway Fyr had rumbled through on a twenty-four-hour distance marathon that came into mid-Twindlespire.

My girls were always on the ball.

---------

It wasn’t hard to find him, because he loomed over everyone at eight feet tall and change. Only a fully body-modded cyborg would be close, or you were looking at brain-borgs who went all in on being mechanical, who could naturally be of any size.

He came walking out of there with a cyborg gal with a silver-metal mohawk, standing six-foot-six and built like a chrome-fitted supermodel. She was 60% artificial, and probably slapped on power armor to accentuate her combat implants. By the looks she was giving Briggs, she probably wished a lot more of her was still real.

I just stepped out in front of the two of them, whose sizes were naturally clearing the way, and the circle in the plaza vacated rapidly.

The two of them stopped immediately, because you just don’t run into the range of a 50+ Charisma effect without registering WTF on your Oh Shit meter. My eyes met Briggs’, and I smiled widely despite myself.

I don’t know why my sense of aesthetics was so screwed up, but that brutal face just looked so damn cute to me.

“Hey, bitch, what do you think you are doing?” Silver Mohawk spoke up, taking a step forwards.

I flicked a glance at her, and she froze, having the sudden and irreversible impression that if she tried anything, I was going to disassemble her.

Briggs’ pale violet eyes widened, and his very big hairy fists slowly clenched. “Can I help you?” he asked in the most wonderfully modulated abyss-deep bass you could possibly imagine, and every woman in the area promptly turned to stare at him in awe.

“” I asked... in Jotun.

He froze right in place, and I turned my hands over, my shit-eating smile not going away.

He blinked slowly. Teeth, nails, no chest, knows who he was...

“Sama Rantha?” His voice was too deep to choke, but he almost managed it.

I just opened up my arms, and he took three steps so fast that everyone around backed up another two steps in shock that someone so huge could move so fast. I was snatched up by arms like steel cables and crushed so hard my bones were creaking and tendons crunching and spine popping and mmmmmmm, his goddamn Source Sun was blowing past me like the most ticklish damn bonfire in the whole world...

My Band lit off with a thousand tings. [NOSEBLEED!] [KISSKISSKISSKISS][ASK FOR HIS BROTHER] [PDA’S NOT ALLOWED!][HIS DATE’S GONNA KILL YOU] and a zillion other things rang out from the cheering section.

I dangled two feet off the ground and made emote faces back at them all. Hey, multi-tasking, don’t need no hands.

It took him a minute to stop, which was just wonderful and I didn’t complain at all. I didn’t try to match his strength or claw at him, but that was fine, because he didn’t even bother to let up, his Source streaming against my Null... and my Null didn’t move at all.

He knew I could take it.

His silver mohawk date could only stand and stare at us, wondering what the heck was going on, and feeling her metaphorical chances go straight down the shitter. Briggs was all organic and couldn’t have tolerated personal intimacy with her, so this was basically sparing her the let-down later. Swapping in a sex-stimuli kit wouldn’t change that.

He didn’t bother to let me down, grabbing me by the shoulders and holding me out there at arm’s length above the ground. I crossed my arms and raised an eyebrow at him, unruffled.

“Sama Rantha. It has been an awful goddamn long time.” I inclined my head, and he looked over his shoulder. “Crescent, I’m afraid I’m going to have to call our date at an end. An old friend I’ve waited a very long time to see is here.”

Her face was still mostly organic, as the venom with which she looked at me was pretty plain to me, and the longing as she looked back at him was quickly disguised. “Sure, Briggs. Another time.” She turned and walked away, pretty much believing that there would be no other time with me there and acting so familiar with him.

He set me down without effort, just staring at me in great interest for a long moment.

“I imagine the tailor who made that suit for you got a very big tip,” I noted, looking over the precisely tailored semi-tux he was dressed in with a critical eye.

“The tie.” He tapped the silk pattern on his chest with a sausage-sized finger. Well, not silk, some synthetic. “They don’t have the material for decent ties available to cut. Had to go with a fake.” He shrugged magnificently.

“You wanna go talk?”

“You have no idea.”