“As I’m sure you guys might be aware, clans are groups within tribes that share one or more common traits that differentiate them from the baseline form of the tribe, the Amasarans and Thropycs being variants of humans and polymans respectively. Like most human clans, Amasarans gained new traits and abilities after living in an area with a higher than average concentration of ambient Aura over a period of generations, theirs being enhanced physical prowess, heightened affinity for PK, and an inability to conceive male offspring. The Thropycs are said to be the descendants of a group of human criminals from the first age deemed too dangerous to be jailed in proximity to populated areas and were banished to a wild and untamed dimension, but what the ones that did the deed didn’t know was that it was also a dimension where several communities of beastmans sent individuals that had temperaments too hostile and belligerent to live in a pack, and after a while they sort of, uh, cross pollinated.

“Thropyc clansmen utilize a unique application of Return to manifest at least one part of their beastman lineage’s Form, or the traits and biology found in the animal an individual beastman most resembles, onto any part of their body regardless of the relative morphology similar to how I can now use Monster Hunter. What they both have in common is that they’ve taken up interdimensional banditry and hate each other more than anything else because whenever they’d end up going after the same mark they’d get into a big fight with the mark escaping in the process. I figured since my mother was able to kill three of their elite upper officers, throwing her name out there would give me the psychological advantage, a note I took from your book.”

Alzolami looked at Nick strangely, in that she was looking at him with eyes, a face, a voice, and a body not her own. “If they can’t conceive male offspring, what does that make you?” Nick shrugged. “A billion to one genetic anomaly?” “I would say ‘fair enough’, but I feel we’ve already wrung that one dry.” “Fair enou- whoops.”

Currently, Nick and Yohan were pretending to be subjected by the binding-type Power of Ophidyk, the lower officer in charge of the Thropyc clansmen dispatched to Ualiqula. Alzolami was able transform into him after using her Power on Cluck before Nick incapacitated her in the long term with a hold invented by his mother guaranteed to render anyone unconscious for twelve hours at minnimum. Ophidyk was tall and lean with a shaved head and numerous tattoos throughout his body depicting green circles of varying sizes connecting into chains and wore a light leather vest over baggy silk pants covered by a leather skirt.

“We got a good one. Unlike the others here, he’s known for his good sense of pragmatism and respect for logic, so it wouldn’t be strange for him to be taking prisoners especially since his Powers are equipped for doing so.

“Psycho Tongs allow him to paralyze any living creature as long as they are being bitten by the snake-like heads he can manifest. Psycho Hook allows him to forcefully suppress the PK of any living creature he can wrap the snake-like tails he can manifest around. Psycho’s Glare allows him to do both as long as he can maintain direct and constant eye contact with them with his human eyes.

“Plus it would help our cause if some of them started believing their commanding officer betrayed them.” “It’s been bugging me for a bit, but why do you think you turned into him when she seemed to have such a dramatic response to Morgou and I?” “That’s been on my mind for a while too, I’m starting to think my Power is a bit more responsive to positive emotions than negative ones. When I concentrate really hard, I can see that Ophidyk has a suspicion that Cluck has a crush on him. I need to remember that.” Yohan, not the first time, began scratching at the scale-covered tendril wrapped around his neck. “Well can you remember to not tighten your grip when I breathe a bit too hard? I know it’s a reflex, but still.”

Thankfully, their journey to the central citadel of northern Ualiqula was uninterrupted. Either the Elder loyalist Guardians were called to quell Morgou’s rampage or any hidden Thropyc vanguards decided not to interfere with their officer’s business. Eventually, after a few hours trekking across the industrial wasteland, they had arrived at their destination. Unlike the normal central settlement in a civilized dimension, this one was designed purely for militant purposes rather than comfortable habitation. Instead of the lumber, plaster, mortared stones and cast iron that structures were constructed and reinforced with in the lush and fertile south, this multi-leveled fortress was constructed from concrete and factory-forged steel, with walls of finely polished and laid cement reinforced with metallic gates, doors, spikes, and the occasional autonomous gun turret that thankfully ignored them.

The transformed Alzolami walked before the metallic gates with her pretend prisoners wrapped in her serpentine arms. “I captured these southerner mercenaries. There might be more hired by the Younger in an attempt to marshal an invasion force, so we’ll need to squeeze any intel to make sure the game goes on without a hitch.”

A loud buzzing rang out from the gates and they opened halfway with two figures emerging. The one on the right was short by human standards with a dark complexion, green eyes, and had a brown afro. The one on the left was above average height with a tan complexion and long blond hair. Both of them had the same armor of steel plates, leather, and rubber as Cluck, only with pants, skirt plates, and boots accompanying. The one on the left shifted into a straight posture. “Ssstabs!” The one on the right followed suit. “Sssnips!” Alzolami shifted her posture forward. “Down!” and they both shifted to their previous crouched posture in response to their clan’s version of the at ease command.

Alzolami narrowed her eyes. “Show me in, but both of you stay close to the prisoners.” They both responded in unison before turning into the fortress. “Yesss sssir.”

The interior was barebones for military habitation. White walls surrounded them that had a few pipes and electric boxes spaced out over a distance while the hall itself and the occasional branches were illuminated by fluorescent lights, each of which was large enough to accommodate twenty human-sized mortals standing side by side and a mortal standing five times Nick’s height. “What’s the status of the hostage and the defector that brought it here?” Snips grumbled before responding. “The girlll wasss calllm for the firssst day and night, but after the sssecond morning, she began asssking to ssse her father. When the backllline wardensss and the defector ran out of excussses, ssshe got very fusssy ssso they ssstarted to get rough with her.” Stabs made a raspy laugh. “Ssshe cried nonssstop for three daysss. She onllly shut up after the defector sssliced her cheek with one of thosss weird ssswords, if you can calll sssomething asss terrifying as thossse thingsss ssswords!”

Nick and Yohan got a little worried after they sensed some mild hostility from Alzolami’s Aura, but their recent string of fights had honed their sensory abilities enough to tell that her anger was tense like a predator waiting to pounce. They hoped that the guards weren’t proficient enough to tell the same. “We have no idea how clever she is, for all we know she might be making some kind of foolish escape plan. I’m thinking if we lock these familiar prisoners up with her, she might calm down and relax.”

Stabs snickered in admiration. “Clever asss alllways, sir. I know I sssay thisss a lllot, but you’re a shoe-in to be the nexsst upper officer the nexssst time they have an opening! I hope you’lll remember usss lllittle guysss!” Snips hissed in annoyance. “Ssstop being sssuch a kisssup brother! That attitude isss probabllly why we were put on the backllline! Onllly merit mattersss in the clllan, not connectionsss! I’d hoped you’d figured that out by now.”

Both brothers grew silent for a duration. After going around a few more bends, they were met with something that had Nick, Yohan, and Alzolami utterly stupefied. From the wall to their right stepped out Laquil, phasing through the solid concrete, but instead of his previous attire he was now dressed in a blue version of the lamellar armor standard to the southern Guardians. “I sensed two familiar Auras enter this domain and an alarm had not been raised. I trust you intend to incarcerate the prisoners Ophidyk?” Alzolami paused for a second before responding. “You trust correctly, defector.” “Perhaps you would allow me to expedite your trek to the holding cells, but first I would like to bind your prisoners with these anti-reactant restraints.” From the arms held behind his back, Laquil produced two pairs of shackles. Alzolami relaxed her grip on their necks, a que that meant to get ready to fight. “I think not, for all we know, they might try to use them to their advantage.” “Ah, yes. I wish I’d have thought of that. But I suppose I didn’t need to on account of the local factories producing anti-reactant restraints with the anti-reactant material only lining the interior that touches the prisoners. I had a feeling something was off when I noticed that your Aura, despite having the same signature, had less mass than before. A Limit for a Power, Alzolami?”

As Alzolami completely undid her grip on Nick and Yohan, she attempted to use Psycho’s Glare on Laquil, only for him to completely disappear before she could activate it. As their bindings unraveled, Nick and Yohan took the initiative and hit their guides with an intensified Aura kick and intensified Aura bullet, knocking them out cold.

Before Nick and Yohan could ask Alzolami what to do next, the floor beneath them tore open into two holes, with them falling in as the holes closed above them. Alzolami roared as she intensified her Aura. “WHERE ARE THEY LAQUIL?” She heard him tsk-ing from nowhere. “Keep a level head, my girl. For the moment I assume they’re fine. It’s a handy ability to even the odds, but the trade-off is that the only thing I know about where they went is that they’re still in the structure. Thankfully, I arranged for a fortress-wide alarm to be raised right… about...”

A loud, periodic buzzing filled the halls. “I just love technology, the people of the south don’t know what they’re missing. Well, at least not for long.” Alzolami, hissed as she shifted back into her normal form. Thankfully, they experimented with the relationship between the memories of her transformation and the information she can retain afterward and had discovered that she can indeed retain information that she conveys to another as long as they relay it back, so she still had her knowledge for the interior of the citadel and a list of notable list of combatants.

Alzolami shifted her arm into a blade and swung it around in front of her. “Come out and fight like a PK Master! Or has your cowardice seeped into your fighting style?” “It’s pointless trying to bait me, every PK Master knows that a win is a win no matter how you do it.” “Why don’t you tell that to Tomahk, or Rosey?” “Why don’t you consider for a moment that maybe I had a justifiable reason for doing what I did? Perhaps you’d like to listen to a story? It even might give you a few hints towards beating me. I swear that we won’t be disturbed.” Alzolami hissed once more. “You have five minutes before I start blasting!”

Laquil sighed. “I suppose I’d better start early in my career as a Guardian. I served Tohmak the First and was quite the legend if I do say so myself. I wasn’t an all-breaking fighter like Morgou, I valued efficiency above all else. After defeating a horde of bandits one hundred strong by myself, I earned my epithet as Laquil the Omnipresent. At my ceremony of merit, I’ll never forget how my Lord made his speech acknowledging that his era as our greatest protector was over and that he was going to focus his efforts towards statesmanship before presenting me with his personal weapon. I had many great adventures after that, I earned the love of the people and loved them in turn. Eventually, my wife gave her life to bring our daughter into the world. She grew up to be a lot like you, to the point of developing shadow-based Powers. Eventually, she developed a teleportation Power of her own, she swore that she would become the second-generation Omnipresent Guardian ‘on my father’s grave.’” Laquil gave a sad laugh.

“I was planning to present her with my weapon after her apprenticeship was completed but merely a week before, her team was ambushed by a group of Fairy Beasts that could assimilate infectious diseases to inflict them on others. She returned by herself, overcome by disease. All of the dimension’s healers were already preoccupied with a new epidemic, so I decided to search for a rare herb that grows in patches that pop up in a random place every year. It took me nine months of constant searching to find the herbs, but I found out too late that she was already dead for seven of those months. I even missed her cremation.

“For a long time, I tried to console myself with our dimension’s philosophies of ‘come from nature, live with nature, return to nature’ but years later I was left feeling completely hollow after learning her symptoms could have been cured with medicine you could find in any urban dimension’s general store.

“I realized then and there that Ualiquila needed a change. And over time I stopped caring about how that change would be achieved. Eventually, a spy from the north told me that I could receive amnesty and a large number of shares in the coming industrial age in exchange for a favor and loyalty. I know that the advisors intend to leave with everything of value anyway, but now after everything that’s happened, guess I don’t really care about anything anymore, except feeling something.”

Laquil was being honest about his oath for them not to be disturbed, but like the efficient fighter he was he didn’t just tell his life’s story for no reason. A demiman’s body is a direct reflection of their mind and its current state, their thoughts and feelings can influence them to the point where overwhelming distress alone can kill them. If a demiman were to attempt to fight an opponent they don’t truly wish to harm, their attacks would fail to do any real damage and they would sustain greater injury from their opponent’s attacks, physical and PK-based. But the opposite is also true. If a demiman fights someone they want to utterly destroy, their attacks become all the more lethal while any incoming attacks will just temporarily hinder them.

Laquil’s story, meant to instill pity and sympathy, had only caused Alzolami’s anger to condense into a burning yet adamantine hatred. She enlarged her other hand into an extra large set of claws while adding serrations to the sword she previously made. “Is that all you have to say for yourself? The old ‘I suffered so it doesn’t matter how much my actions make others suffer’ schtick like a cheap comic book villain? If you expect that to be a good excuse for what you did to Rosey… well, let’s just say you’re not going to have a good time!”

Laquil sighed from nowhere. “Well, I’ve said my piece. I’m resigned to the result of whatever happens next. The only question left is…” Four blades of solid energy appeared, surrounding Alzolami. “Are you?”

Alzolami swung her blade around herself in a circle, with the intention of hitting a hidden Laquil. However, the blades merely rose up above, aimed their points at her, and thrust down all at once. Alzolami attempted to shield herself with her large clawed hand imbued with Aura, but blades wove around it and impaled themselves into each of her four limbs.

Alzolami merely hissed and grew four extra arms to wrench the blades out, she attempted to throw them, but they disappeared from her grip.

Two rotating circular saw-like blades appeared a distance from her front and back and soared towards her. Alzolami read their trajectory and applied different quantities of Aura across her upper body. Most of it to her arms and a smaller yet significant portion to her torso. However, the blades altered their trajectory mid-flight and struck her legs, leaving them hanging on by a shred. In the three seconds it took for Alzolami to restore the effects of the damage, twelve dagger-sized blades appeared around her and stabbed into her upper body at different angles.

Alzolami tried a new strategy. She made the blades erupt from her body through the twelve cabe-sized tendrils she extended, then she applied a greater portion of her Aura into their tips and flailed them around herself. Five seconds without making contact left her exhausted and forced to retract the tendrils to conserve her stamina. In front of her, a sword of energy the size of a greatsword that most mortals need to expend Aura just to lift appeared and chopped into her shoulder. It was halfway to her legs before she could stop it by increasing her torso’s density, which further drained her stamina before she could wrench it out with a couple of extra arms.

Dang. I can tell this isn’t a Power. I’ve heard of this, it’s an ethereal weapon! Made of the same stuff as me! Even among PK Artisans, there are few that can adequately handle the materials, let alone process and forge them into a usable form. They’re more like tangible ideas than physical matter and can be made to appear and disappear at will, and as such are one of the few weapons still in use that were neither invented nor improved upon by humans!

Alzolami’s hatred had prevented her from taking anything beyond superficial damage, but her lack of contact and the countless hits she’s taken had served to wear away at her normally ironclad confidence. It wouldn’t be long until she would suffer real damage from Laquil’s onslaught. Thankfully, the crisis she was in had served to activate her Rebound to give her a chance to prevail.

Left calf. Alzolami swung her Aura-wrapped arm to her leg at the moment another blade of energy slashed towards her, deflecting it.

Three in the chest. Three blades appeared with their tips pointed towards her feet and forehead. As they sailed towards her, she feinted with her weapons to appear to deflect them, then she grew three extra arms clad in Aura to intercept them as they wove towards her chest.

The neck, from the back. Alzolami elongated and extended her neck out of the way as another saw-like blade whirled down the hall a distance before disappearing.

He’s still here. He becomes tangible yet invisible when he attacks. He’s going to use another big blade and strike from above. Take the hit and use his hesitation against him. Another large blade appeared above Alzolami, just outside of her field of vision. Right as it came down, she shifted her posture and took it in her shoulder before pressing as much of her Ego she could spare against it. Then she raised her leg, aimed where she could see a vague outline, and shifted it into a spear-like shape with all of her remaining Aura focused onto the tip while thrusting it towards its chest.

The moment the spear made contact with the silhouette, Laquil appeared and staggered, coughing up blood. He tried to slide off of it, but Alzolami used the last of her stamina to extend barb-like spikes deeper into his body. She shifted her arms back to normal as the blade disappeared and dragged Laquil back towards her. His Aura was fading fast, a tell-tale sign he was no longer a threat.

“Was it worth it?” Laquil smiled and, faster than Alzolami thought possible in his present state, grabbed her left arm. Alzolami could tell from her newly acquired Skill that this wasn’t an attack, but she still flinched as she felt something distinctively forign enter her mind.

Moments later, she felt the words of Laquil following it. Among PK Masters, a weapon is qualified not by it’s capabilities or by it’s workmanship, but by the story associated with it. Tomahk the First was, in his youth, a nomadic PK Master that would use his Powers and mastery of swordsmanship to help anyone that needed it. One day, he was taking up residence among a caravan of faemans within a strange dimension with winds that could cut solid stone in two. While he was resting, he sensed that one would approach where a child faeman was playing and, against all odds, grabbed it with one hand. The caravan was so grateful that their resident Artisan forged it into a new blade that would never break. Tomahk the First christened it Subtle Zephyr and used it to accomplish many great deeds. My act of supreme betrayal has now permanently stained it’s story, so I want you to take it away from Ualiqula and give it a new one. You can use it yourself, sell it, or give it to someone that you believe can use it to its full potential. She was supposed to receive it after me, so I’m sure this is what she would have wanted.

Now, for the first time, she felt pity for this broken PK Master as he died on her spear. Every PK Master was driven by an innate sense of wonder and possibility, but if the opposite had a name, he had suffered it. She shifted her leg back to normal and stumbled. I’m no use to anyone like this, except as a hostage. I gotta go somewhere unreachable to rest. She limped with her jelly-like legs towards the wall and extended her wiggling arms towards a shadow in the top corner before retracting her soft body into it.