“Well, I guess we’re either being trapped or this is going to be a bit easier than I thought.” Urani muttered. After saying our farewells, we had ventured into the more wild parts of the jungle. With us being escorted by a plethora of magical beasts, with many other humans having had the same ideas as me and Tellur. We hadn’t come across wild animals, due to the magical beasts and the amount of people we had, no doubt. However, we also hadn’t seen any other intelligent life whatsoever. Unfortunately, Mantis couldn’t come with us at the moment, for the stealth aspect of the mission. But, he would be departing and coming towards our location in just a few days. As we walked through the quickly thinning trees, Oxy suddenly hit the ground. Following him, everyone followed, just to realize nothing had happened.

“What the fuck are we down here for?!” Arsen angrily whispered.

“There’s a group of intelligent lifeforms just ahead.” Oxy whispered back. “I’ll scout it out.” He stood up slowly, crouching and began to slowly tread through the light moss and fungus that covered the forest floor. After a few seconds, I got a bit fidgety.

“This is uncomfortable as shit.” I said, flicking some moss from my nose.

“Shut the fuck up, nobody cares.” Replied Zin, who was still quite pissed over the magical beasts issue. We sat there in silence for 15 minutes before Boro stood up. I followed him and we went after Oxy, worried, despite the urgent whispers of our friends. Suddenly Oxy came back bleeding a bit, but otherwise ok.

“There was a small patrol of strange sectapeds like I’ve never seen before, I managed to knock them all out. They fired on me, but I didn’t want to start a war so I decided to knock them out and tie ‘em up. They’ll wake up in a few minutes.”

“I’ll interrogate them,” I said. I walked with Oxy following him to the scene of the crime. Tied to each other and some trees, they looked like they were completely out of it. They were small, with six chitinous legs, and resembled ants. They were stark white, without antennae, and instead enormous fox-like ears. They also, instead of having a thick abdomen, had a much longer thin abdomen that looked like a tail. One of them began to groggily shift, and then suddenly, and abruptly, began to twist and turn.

“CALM DOWN!” I yelled at the alien.

“I WILL NOT LISTEN TO YOUR UNHOLY WORDS DEMONS!” The small insectile creature screamed.

“Why did you fire upon us?” I asked him.

“Why do you slaughter my people as you come across them?”

“What do you mean?”

“Your people slaughter my people, it is simple.”

“Come out everyone!!! This guy has some info!” I yelled back to our group. A minute later everyone was gathered around the insects, and his friends had woken up to.

“Repeat what you said.” I told the alien.

“Your people slaughter my people, it is simple.”

“We are the only humans we know of. Do you know of our brethren?”

“Of course. Everyone knows of them. They raid in the darkness, burning and pillaging. They are xenophobic and refuse contact, other than killing.” The alien said with sadness. “They are in small tribes across the land, some friendly, but most not. It is known to never trust a human. We have heard of humans that roam the jungle, helping the tribe of the Almani, but none have actually seen them.”

“That’s us!” Wrang blurted out loudly. “We are seeking to create an actual stronghold of humans, there are too few of us to be considered a nation, so we seek to meet again with our fellow man.”

“We have heard you are quite powerful. Our original mission was to attempt to befriend you, but it looks like-” Just then Cesi ran over to release the ropes that held them.

“What they say is true, and they have only good intentions. They fired on Oxy because they thought Oxy was ambushing them. What they say about our species is true. What is our next move?”

“Let’s try to reconnect with the friendly tribes and… get rid of the others.” Zin said. The next hour we spent trying to figure out what we could.

“We need something to show that we are friendly. How about a flag?” Thuli offered his idea. We’d been pondering how to show we weren’t bad guys.

“No, your race is devious, they will copy it only to get inside our walls, and then turn on us.” Said one of the insectile race that was named the Heiive.

“What about firing off a firework?” Suggested Sulf.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, we could fire off a spell that made a specific shape.”

“That would work. What should we do?” Everyone shrugged except for the Heiive, who just stood there. Then an idea hit me. I quickly began to write a shape in the dirt. Then I was done, with my symbol about to become engraved in history. It was a hexagon, with a spike coming out of the top and bottom, with a crescent on each side. The two crescents represented the the Keys and Fabricators, while the two spikes represented the enormous towers, and the hexagon represented Infinity itself. Well that’s just the excuse I used, I actually made it just because it looked kinda cool.

“That would work.,”Said Firrsic, the alien that had woken up first. “We’ve never seen something as similar. The next three hours were spent with all of the humans and two of the Heiive, who were mages. Then the signal was made, and the next week ould forever alter human history. We went as fast as we could to the nearest Heiive outpost. We were about to bring together one of the most historical meetings of factions Infinity would ever know. It took around three hours, but we got to the gates.

“Send up the signal!” I whispered loudly to Arsen. A loud whooshing sound was heard, and the flare went up. Then a flag for the scout group went up, and we went to the gates of the outpost, and as they opened, we saw strange pieces of tech pointe at us, balanced on the backs of the Heiive, which did appear to be guns.

“Back away from our brethren, you DEMONS!!” Chittered one through their mandibles.

“Put down your weapons and rejoice siblings, we have returned from our expedition with the Humans, and they bring wisdom and possible peace!” Yelled Firrsic, who seemed to be the leader of the group. And as a loud cheering went up, I asked the nearest one:

“Contact the enemy tribes, and I need access to the nearest communications center.”

The cheering suddenly died down, and one Heiive stepped forward and asked, “Why?”

“You’ll see.” I responded. “Tell them the Infinite Councils wants to speak with them.