"Are you all fools? Have you all gone mad while I wasn't working?" I shrieked.

It was bad enough that a mere apprentice had practically ruined everything, but ladies of the gate were usually infallible. They were intimately familiar with all of those in the process of ascension and the situations of their homelands, and it had always been that way. I had never known them to fail, and certainly not to such a terrible extent. It was bad enough that the humans had been unleashed on the outer brinks, but they had to go and make it so, so much worse.

"You sent them by the thirties?" I demanded, and the nearest of the impossibly beautiful specters cowered a bit. They weren't used to being challenged, in the end. "Sir, I don't- despite the successes of their homeworld, they were all so weak," she stammered out. I felt like ripping my hair out. "Sending them en-masse is bad enough, but why did you deprive them of the common language? When they emerge, what will happen?" I advanced with each word, and the ladies fell back in unison. They looked more perplexed than terrified, now. "Advanced world protocol, is it not? To send them in to divine the language of their own volition?" The foremost lady asked, professional curiosity rising in her voice.

I shook my head. I had practically written that damned book, and look at where it had lead us. "I doubt they will so much as try to learn, especially not in the backwater you dumped them in. Why would you even think of setting them so close to the Kaenids? They've been gate-guarding new arrivals for centuries now!" It was back to the shouting again. It was beneath me, and especially beneath my station, but just I couldn't help it. The world was crumbling around me. "This is a race that nearly drove itself to extinction over blood-feuds! And you dumped them near the Kaenids, of all of the primitives you could have chosen?" I trembled, shivers setting in.

The ladies were far too interested now to even bother to cower. "What's the problem? They out-populate the region ten-to-one. We've set it to a slow drip, and with the Kaenids, it should balance out. Maybe they even win and get rid of those troublemakers for us, free of charge. We thought it was brilliant, actually. So far, it seems to be going alright." I shook my head. "They haven't had time to acclimatize. Did they not tell you that this was the Third world?" They each gawked, in turn. It was an expression quite ill-suited for their beauty, their elegance. Maybe they were starting to get the picture. "That world you just pushed through? That world you just dumped into a situation in which anyone and everyone will be some shade of hostile? That's Agent 3. They are the Abandoned Ones, the agents of chaos. Just that teeny tiny little trickle of them and you Ladies, of all the people in this great wide world, should know the destruction they wrought."

They scrambled. They were gone, tweaking the brew, pulling levers, and generally sending the realm into an emergency status. Only one remained, addressing me, now entirely stern and attentive. It was the first time in ages they had needed to deal with this level of trouble. "We're getting it closed out. Seventy-two thousand specimens passed through the gates between the order and current time. Of those, half were placed within the Akesh Jungle, and half in the flood-plains. The vast majority of the ones in Akesh were killed, as expected. The floodplains fared slightly better thanks to the absence of the Kaenids, but we ensured that the Challenge they received on arrival was suitably difficult to compensate. We estimate the over-all surviving tally to be somewhere under eight thousand."

Eight thousand Humans, running about, completely unchecked. Guaranteed to be the successful ones, the strong, true survivors. I couldn't fathom it.

My predecessor had once bellyached about his duty, about the challenges he had faced. He had complained about the endless modernization, the abandonment to mysticism, and therefore the way that the Ascended ceased worshipping him like a God. He had merely become a 'leader'. That was his greatest concern.

The old man could rot. He had never had to deal with anything like this.