Priest Arkandaeon grinned. It wasn’t a pleasant grin; instead, it reminded Serenity of a shark’s smile. “So I did. You, soldier, what’s your identifier?”

“Identifier XA-126.” There should have been no emotion in the soldier’s reply, but Serenity thought he heard something. Frustration, perhaps?

Serenity figured he’d better give the soldier some instructions. The soldiers seemed willing to follow others’ orders so far but while it was useful for keeping things quiet, Serenity wasn’t sure how far that would go and he didn’t want it to get the soldier killed. Serenity wasn’t sure Arkandaeon was the sort to break his toys, but he had no doubt that Alanaeon would.

Play along for now, but if he asks you to do anything that could threaten your life you may refuse or defend yourself.

They probably weren’t the best instructions he could give, but he’d be watching. Hopefully they would give him enough time to say something before anything irreversible happened. Blaze could heal injuries, he couldn’t heal death.

The Priest nodded. “Good, you should be a nice example then. Are the other soldiers like you conscious as well?”

“Yes.”

The Priest’s grin widened. “Excellent. Come here and .. ah, here we go. Cut yourself and bleed into that container.” He held out a small knife to XA-126.

The soldier did as he was commanded. There was no obvious sign of reluctance or hesitation, but Serenity noticed that XA-126 did the absolute minimum to meet the order: he pricked his finger and a single drop of deep green blood fell into the tiny cup Lykandeon indicated.

“Still green, good. Priest-Thaumaturge Alanaeon said she thought you might revert if the greenstone truly became inactive, but it’s clear you haven’t. It’s still bound to you. I wonder.” He was clearly thinking out loud even as he spoke at the soldier. Arkandaeon grabbed a small chunk of greenstone and dropped it into the cup on top of the drop of blood. He watched intently, so Serenity did the same.

It took more than a minute for anything to visibly happen, but when something happened it happened quickly. The entire chunk of greenstone seemed to liquefy and merge into the drop of blood.

Arkandaeon grinned and reached for a tube with a rubber cap on one end; it reminded Serenity of an eyedropper. “Too bad we can’t figure out why your blood does that. It’d make sense if it was how your blood turns green, but it doesn’t work until after that happens so that’s clearly not it. Way too useful to waste, even if we probably can’t - Lykandeon’s spit.”

The eyedropper made a tink noise as Arkandaeon tapped it against the resolidified greenstone again. “It’s supposed to last longer than that, must be the quantity. Eh, whatever, worry about it when we have greenstone working again. Still don’t see what’s wrong with it, it’s still magical, it should work.”

The second “captured” soldier arrived in the room. Like XA-126, he took a deep breath and relaxed as he walked into the green-tinted air. The guardsman leading him walked up to Arkandaeon and, unlike the first guardsman, deliberately made noise by tapping the table. His fingers were nowhere near the table by the time Arkandaeon glanced over at him.

“Samuel,” Priest Arkandaeon growled. “You know better than that.”

The guardsman - Samuel? - didn’t say anything. Serenity could see his face from XA-126’s eyes; it looked like Samuel was having a hard time controlling his expression. One corner of his mouth kept twitching.

Priest Arkandaeon shook his head; he seemed annoyed but didn’t say anything else about the noise to the guardsman. “I assume this is another of the new soldiers?”

At Samuel’s nod, the Priest got a wicked smile on his face., “Perfect. I’ve been wondering. If their blood still works and they still work, does that mean they can still activate greenstone equipment?”

That was not a question that Serenity wanted anyone asking. The answer was yes, but it was because they were no longer affiliated with the Church, not because they were somehow affected by the greenstone. Well, not exactly anyway. Indirectly, maybe.

“You.” Priest Arkandaeon pointed at the soldier that entered with Samuel. “Ready your weapon and shoot … hm. Yes. That will make it really clear. Shoot Samuel.”

Serenity reacted faster than the guard or the soldier. No, stop, don’t do that!

The soldier’s hand froze on his beam weapon; it still wasn’t pointed at Samuel.

Serenity thought quickly. This was going to make it clear that the soldiers weren’t under Arkandaeon’s complete control no matter how he handled it if he didn’t want to shoot a random guard, and he didn’t really want to. In that case, it might be time to kick things off for good. Kill Arkandaeon. If the guards interfere, do what you need to do to keep yourselves safe.

It would be ironic if he ended up killing Samuel because he didn’t want to randomly shoot him, but that was how things went sometimes. Hopefully not this time.

The unknown soldier’s beam weapon swung towards Priest Arkandaeon as XA-126 readied his own weapon, took a step back, and covered the two guards. Before any of them had even realized the soldiers weren’t following Arkandaeon’s command, a green beam sizzled through the priest’s skull. It took a moment to completely penetrate, but without a shield Arkandaeon had no hope of surviving a clean hit to his face.

“Drop. Your. Weapons.” XA-126 spoke as though his voice were rusty. The fact that he spoke at all cheered Serenity; he hadn’t told them to do anything to the guards unless they interfered, so this was something XA-126 was doing based on either his interpretation of his orders or his memory of who he was before.

Samuel grabbed the table and stared at Arkandaeon’s body. His eyes were wide and he didn’t seem to have heard XA-126’s command.

The guard who led XA-126 to Arkandaeon pulled his knife and seemed to think about it for a moment before he jumped towards XA-126 while his beam weapon was directed at Samuel.

XA-126 took a single step back as the other soldier’s beam took the guardsman in the chest. He collapsed at XA-126’s feet.

Serenity realized what Rissa had meant when she said they “acted like they shared a mind”. XA-126 was covering Samuel because he knew the other soldier was covering the other guardsman; without even looking, he knew when he needed to move away because he could see it through his fellow’s eyes. Serenity could see a little of that but he wasn’t able to process it the way the soldiers seemed to be doing.

“Drop. Your. Weapons,” XA-126 repeated.

“Now,” the other soldier added.

Samuel slowly turned towards the second soldier, the one he’d brought to Arkandaeon. He wasn’t holding a weapon and he didn’t seem to know what to do.

The tableau was broken by a third guardsman who arrived leading a third soldier. The soldier was behind the guardsman with his weapon ready while the guard didn’t seem to realize anything was wrong until he saw the blood.

When he went for his sword, the third soldier shot him in the chest. It was probably a survivable wound if he got healing quickly enough, but Serenity doubted that would happen.

Samuel’s eyes widened and he sank to his knees.

Serenity’s attention was abruptly pulled away from Arkandaeon’s death when three soldiers simultaneously shot Priestess Alanaeon. None of the green beams penetrated her shield. Serenity stared at the scene, puzzled. What set that off? He hadn’t ordered it; had she attacked one of the soldiers?

No. Priest-Thaumaturge Alanaeon told the one watching her to leave. He walked away but another approached. She told him to leave as well; again, he seemed to but when the third arrived it was all three of them. They seem to have taken the command to leave as a hostile action. At least, I think that’s what happened.

Aide had clearly heard Serenity’s confusion.

This wasn’t what Serenity meant when he told them to watch her, but at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to be too upset. This was always going to come down to a fight. While he’d hoped to be able to wait until he was able to help, this really wasn’t a surprise. It was a volatile situation and he wasn’t exactly inclined to wait when things kicked off. It was legitimately too bad that he hadn’t yet gotten to figuring out who else was dangerous, but that was difficult from here; he couldn’t feel auras through the soldiers so he could really only go based on rank.

Take care of Alanaeon, Serenity told all of the soldiers. Watch out for anyone else dangerous, especially mages. Get the facility under control first and then we’ll figure out what to do next.

There was absolutely no way he could coordinate over a hundred people with no command structure. He could certainly direct individuals but that was no way to run an operation. He’d just have to watch and see if the soldiers’ own coordination would be enough.

“Serenity?”

Serenity shook himself away from the fighting he was trying to oversee down on Lyka to pay attention to his fiancee. “Hm?”

Rissa tugged on Serenity’s arm. He followed where she pulled. When she flopped down on a couch, he settled down beside her. He didn’t dare be careless around her anymore; while he didn’t weigh that much more than he had before, he was far stronger and could all too easily hurt her without meaning to.

Rissa snuggled up against Serenity. “We don’t get enough time together. Jenna’s asleep now. Why don’t you tell me what you were concentrating on so hard?”

Serenity chuckled and moved his arm around Rissa. She’d just said an updated version of “How was your day, dear?,” just like she’d asked most days before everything started. It was an odd reminder of a long-gone past.

“It’s that place at the center of Lyka. The last few Earthlings are there; they’re trying to take it. I can’t help as much as I want to, but at least we’re the only ones with working tools. Most of the mages are dead, including Arkandaeon, but Alanaeon’s still holding them off. They have a small group keeping her pinned down while they clear out the rest of the resistance. I think they’re planning to get the rest under control then concentrate on her.”

Rissa took a deep breath then let it out. “You think? Weren’t you talking to them?”

Serenity shrugged, careful not to push against anything too hard as he moved. Being next to Rissa made him especially paranoid right now. “I can talk to them but they don’t really answer back well. It’s almost like they’re smart as a group but even though I can talk to them as a group, I can only get one person to respond to me at a time and each individual isn’t all there.”

“Hmm. That sounds like they’re not individuals anymore. I don’t like that.” Rissa flipped herself over on the couch then set her forehead against his chest. “I don’t like that.”

Serenity rubbed a hand lightly across her back. “I don’t either. I don’t know how I’m going to fix them.”

Rissa chuckled and looked up at his face. “It’s not your responsibility.” Before he could ask whose responsibility it was if it wasn’t his, she had her lips over his and was doing her best to distract him.

It was a good distraction.