Jorge’s axe slammed into the sturgeon’s sparring teeth. The specialized fixtures were like retractable tusks, used not for eating but for fighting during their mating competitions. A more fundamental motivation drove the sturgeon’s furious strength. It pushed and pushed, shoving the measly two-legged assailant farther and farther away from its pond. In a contest of strength, the fish had no equal. But a monarch was not satisfied with repellency; it needed to ensure its territory was never encroached upon again. It raised its head and slammed its tusks down, striking meters deep into the earth. The two-leg had evaded into the air again, slamming the black weapon into its mantle. An audible crack echoed throughout the jungle.

The fish knew not confusion, only anger that such a small thing had such power. An unnatural enemy of the jungle. Eight pectoral fins hooked the ground. Tension built to the point of extremity. Then came the eruption. The earth shattered, dust, leaves, bark flew back while the fish lunged forward, maw at the ready.

It fell face first into the forest. Trees and rocks exploded in countless splinters. It hadn’t aimed wrong. The two-leg had struck its side again, directing its attack away. It corrected its course and prepared to try again.

Jorge’s arms tensed. His legs wound like springs. His eyes sharpened by the whetstone of survival. The sturgeon attacked the same way again. He leapt to the side and slashed with his axe.

A fish was a fish. Its mind was not too advanced. If it happened to be too fast, he jumped in the air and attacked the same spot on its armored mantle. The cracks were already present. He was ready to do this all day. And all day and night it took. When the floor was slick with oily blood, black against the moonlit sky, the fish finally grew exhausted enough to return to its pond to breathe.

By morning it had suffocated, and the pond was a bloody red. Jorge walked into the sauna-hot waters and slowly heaved the fish corpse out. He examined his work. The gills were a mess after the hours he had spent aiming for them. Victory through attrition; it was how his Paleolithic ancestors hunted mammoth. He sat down by a fallen log, satisfied, if not uncomfortable with the smell. When he was ready he made a funnel with his hands around his mouth and made the call. A similar call replied.

The Bedazi villagers streamed out of the woods, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. The young ones chanted excitedly. The adults nodded approvingly with big smiles on their faces. They each took the time to pat Jorge on the back; an Earth gesture he wished Lyosha hadn’t taught them.

He and Lyosha stood by the side as the villagers worked. There was meat here for years, if they had the ability to preserve it. Most of it would inevitably go to the countless inhabitants of the forest. And life went on.

“How long have you been here, my friend?” Lyosha asked.

“Who knows?” Jorge scratched the scruffy mass that covered his chin. “Months? A year? Never did keep the time very far.”

“Probably because you think you’re not going back.”

“I still have hope.”

“No you don’t,” Lyosha said, laughing quietly to himself. “Remember when the chief offered you a place in the village and you chose to live by yourself? Most people go insane from being alone. You prefer it.”

“Then why am I risking my life helping them?”

“Need I say it?”

Jorge grimaced. “With this, I’m done. I don’t owe them anything anymore. The land immediate to their village is safe from all threats.”

Two of the senior smiths approached Jorge and raised their hands. Jorge placed the axe handle on them. They nearly collapsed, straining for a bit before acquiring a proper grip on the weapon. They spoke rapidly, then hauled it away.

“They are going to repair and improve your weapon with the fish scale and bone,” Lyosha said.

“Hm.”

“The trust. It feels good, da?”

“Shut up, old man.”

That only spurred Lyosha’s laughter further. Jorge couldn’t refute it. The old man’s worldly smarts saw through him. It felt incredible to be relied upon for once, rather than looked at like a useless flab of meat. Intoxicating, really. He didn’t question too deeply how his body became so strong, only that it was related to the being of light. Lyosha knew little of it, and the Bedazi language didn’t have the words to accurately convey the idea of a living thing beyond death. Their brand of spiritualism was very much rooted in life itself with death as a beautiful end.

For now, Jorge enjoyed the feasts and watched their festivals from the sidelines. When the bonfires were put out, the smiths returned from their huts with Jorge’s gear. The axe had been given reinforcement along the shoulder of the handle and the belly, using the sturgeon’s bones. They had also woven the scales into the bear pelt he draped over his shoulder. He felt like he was cosplaying a caveman.

He exchanged formalities with them and left the village, returning to his own shelter by the river. Lyosha was right of course, he enjoyed being relied upon. But being alone was best. Even if he did get lonely, there weren’t any volleyballs laying around.

Sometimes the faelk would visit, but it mostly didn’t as of recently. The last time was well over a month ago. He wondered if it sensed that he no longer needed help. Maybe it even feared him. So the days passed well, monotonous and routine. It seemed as though nothing would change.

Until Jorge woke up to a blood red sky and a choking, pungent scent. It was raining slow, ashen clumps. He reached out with a shaking hand, catching a flake in his palm. He licked it. Stone, salts, and fire. He left his shelter and jumped up a tree, digging through the canopy, breaking any branches in the way with his momentum. At the top he saw everything. The volcano that was the Heldrazi Peaks had erupted.

--

Lisŗa let go of her embrace with Chessie and Dolores. They stood facing each other, dressed in all the officiality of Faleria. Chessie in her long, armored robes, and a leather equipment satchel. Dolores in the liberal attire of a Bladedancer, where the joints were completely free from fabric, exposing her bare skin. Lisŗa in the roguish tights of the Scoutrunner, no longer a recruit. They stood in silence.

They were to deploy in moments, and yet Lisŗa found nothing to say. She tried to think about their time together, but the responsibilities of the recruit left little room for socialization. Their relationship had been steeled by parallels. The acknowledgment that they each had experienced a year of something very similar. Like sisters without the obligation of blood or the expectations of some sibling ethos. Perhaps far deeper a bond than either. And yet here they were at the end of it with nothing to say.

“Wow, what a time, huh?” Chessie remarked.

Lisŗa couldn’t hold it in anymore, and she began laughing. Dolores giggled as well in her usual, cutesy manner. A Bladedance vector was one of the most lethal things in a confrontation. Seeing someone with such a playful demeanor harbor its training was an uncanny sight. Especially someone so sensitive. Dolores sprang forward and hugged Lisŗa again. Tighter this time.

“I don’t know what happened, but you seem hurt,” she said.

Lisŗa savored the feeling of another person’s warmth wrapped around her body. It was a soothing bandage. But it wasn’t a cure. She doubted there was a cure. And she didn’t doubt she might suffer more wounds like this in the future.

The time had come, so they split up. Lisŗa didn’t look back and hoped they didn’t either. She wondered if they would meet again. The mages were all sent straight to the High Academies to prepare for when Faleria was ready to expand its borders again. Not out of hunger but out of necessity. They had subsumed Aldren, and now eight other powers remained on their continent, all much more powerful than Faleria. They needed to prepare for the worst. Where the Bladedancers went was classified. As for Lisŗa, her place was in the Karavane. Supply lines through new territory were always treacherous. An empire needed time to consolidate after a conquest, like an amoeba having stretched too thin.

Captain Yavi stood in front of a line of caravans. Tall, official, unbreakable. The Falerian ideal. Lisŗa arrived with the other successful runners. About fifty or so by a rough count. A thousand recruits had been distilled. Another thousand was filing from the entrance at the start of the hill. When Lisŗa had first arrived, she didn’t even bother looking at where she stood now. The fresh meat looked so small from where she stood. Thus burned the militant engine.

While the other professions received their welcome speeches for making it in (the mages being the most long-winded), when all the runners had assembled and Captain Yavi took a breath, he said, “Let’s see where we end up.” And their jobs had begun.

The caravans were the empire’s immense logistical veins. Tools, goods, resources, workers, all rode on the enormous carriages. The land that had once been Aldren was upturned and made fertile once again. An official news campaign told them all that as a last act of defiance their enemy had razed their own soil, and it had taken years from Faleria’s best alchemists and geomancers to return life to the land.

Powerful beasts of burden, the horned stallions, pulled the caravans through these lands now. As Lisŗa rode alongside on the Scoutrunner’s slim steed, separated from the caravans by a short distance, she looked out at the expanse of wheats they were descending into. Now when people looked out of their windows as their transports pulled into Cadeau de Chires, they would see vast, golden riches ready to be made into bread and cake and ale. The fruits of Falerian bakeries, confectioneries, and breweries. The soil, painstakingly re-cultivated by Falerian alchemic mastery. All that remained was for people like Lisŗa’s mother to age into oblivion. Thus finished the final act in the grand theater of conquest. The history of the loser’s nation was so thoroughly incinerated that the only ashes left of the word ‘Aldren’ would be on history paper and through spoken word.

Lisŗa remembered her mother’s stories of Aldren well. She knew she would have no one to tell them to.