Tanisha stepped over one of the destroyed S-10s when she felt a pulse of Aether that made her skin prickle. She glanced up just as a thunderous concussive force erupted around her, nearly knocking her off her feet. In a blink of compressed space and howling air, the S-17 materialized inside the atrium. The pressure wave from its arrival slammed into her like a hammer.
A thunderclap roared through the air, followed instantly by a searing burst of white-gold light as its main cannon fired.
The spot where Tanisha had been was simply erased. It was a beam of aether so deadly that there was nothing left. She came to her senses, heart hammering, cradled in Aurelius’s arms. His Flash Step and unreal speed had already carried them a full block away before she could even process what had happened.
“You okay?” Aurelius asked, voice calm but taut.
“I’m good.” Tanisha said. “Thanks for the save.”
There was another pulse, then another and another. The Siegebreaker was blinking in rapid succession. each jump punctuated by deafening shockwaves and craters of displaced earth and shattered metal. It was tracking them successfully and more worryingly it was keeping pace.
Aether lanced toward them again, and Aurelius darted into a narrow alley, the beam scorching the edge of a building as it tore through the city like a surgical scalpel. Tanisha dismissed her water orbs and instead focused totally on her Electrokinesis.
Another explosion, and suddenly the S-17 was ahead of them. It had anticipated their route, materializing with its aetheric guns already unleashing a torrent of deadly light.
“Up!” Tanisha shouted.
Aurelius leapt, rebounding off crumbling walls as the alley disintegrated behind them in a storm of shrapnel and aetherfire. Tanisha extended her hand and launched lightning toward the warframe—only for it to flash uselessly against a ward of shimmering energy.
“We’re not going to outrun that thing,” Tanisha said grimly.
Aurelius made it to the top of the building. Tanisha felt the aether pulse but before it could Blink a streak of white sliced into the metal. Ice erupted from the point of impact and Tanisha’s eyes widened.
She leapt from Aurelius’s grip to the rooftop below, needing to see it with her own eyes. Fuyumi deflected a few shots her way then. They were all making their retreat. This time the behemoth of a warframe didn’t follow them.
“We are going to Laxy’s Lab. I don't trust the city.” Aurelius said.
Fuyumi appeared in a Flash Step. “Agreed. We don’t know if that thing will follow the same rules as the other units. But it can't fit up there.”
***
Everyone was silent as they stepped into the R&D department. It was a heavy pregnant silence. They faced setbacks before of course but this one felt different. It settled on their shoulders like ash.
They were entirely overwhelmed in that fight. Tanisha herself would have been dead if she didn’t have a mage body. Even their retreat had been a barely-contained disaster. The S-17 wasn’t even the final unit. They still had the S-16 and it was supposed to be worse.
They went into the meeting room and Fuyumi and Tanisha both took a seat. Aurelius didn’t. He paced back and forth. His eye brows knitted and jaw set. His aura leaked from his skin flickering like fire burning from a dying coal.
Then, without warning, he slammed both palms down on the table with a loud crack. His head bowed, long hair falling forward to hide his eyes.
“That could have gone better.” Tanisha offered.
“We went in not knowing what we were going to face.” Fuyumi said, “We were just going to test out its mobility today anyway.”
“We didn’t even scratch that thing,” Aurelius growled, voice low but vibrating with fury. “We’ve survived everything this place has thrown at us. We fought, grown stronger, but now at the finish line… Even if we didn’t know what it could do after everything we’ve been through. We should have stood a chance. But that thing—that thing just… split us up and hunted us down like-like rats.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Tanisha said. “We still have time.”
He looked to get angrier. “We don’t have time! Every second we waste on the S-17 is a second we’re not dealing with the S-16. The longer that takes, the more monsters we let manifest out there in the world. Monsters that are going to kill people. Innocent people. That’s on us when we could have stopped it sooner. So no, we don't have time.”
He raised his head looking at Tanisha with burning eyes.
“You froze out there when we did our initial attack. Why?” Aurelius said with fury.
Tanisha’s jaw tensed. “My construct was destroyed. I took core backlash—ripped straight through me.”
“That means you weren’t channeling your magic completely through the Walking Armory.” Fuyumi said. “If you manifest the weapons through the Armory, if they break there won't be a backlash.”
Aurelius turned sharply. “And you, Fuyumi—you didn’t retreat when I gave the order.”
“I stayed to cover Tanisha,” Fuyumi replied, calm but firm.
“She was already moving,” Aurelius snapped. “If you’d pulled back, we might have avoided the first Blink. We could’ve regrouped before it started ambushing us in isolation.” He straightened to his full height, voice rising. “And Tanisha, you ran the wrong way. You fled into an uncleared sector. If there’d been even one more S-Series warframe in that zone, you’d be dead. We’d all be dead.”
“We have to be better.” He said. “There’s no room for second chances. Every mistake counts. Every slip-up moves the doomsday clock forward. Do you get that? We already lose, even if we win. Now every moment longer it is our family and friends that we fail. That’s the cost now.”
Tanisha stood, fire flashing in her eyes. “So what—you think we just fell flat on our faces? That we don’t know what’s at stake?” She stepped forward, toe to toe with him. “We’re still breathing. We’re still fighting. I lost control for seconds after getting shot through the heart. And I still stabilized my magic. Fuyumi held that monster back so I could do that. Don’t act like we were reckless.”
“That is not the point.” Aurelius said. “What if you ran into a shadowmaw? What if you awakened a second swarm of Silhouettes or another invisible unit? What if Fuyumi stayed back too long and was pinned down before we could help her?”
“Well what do you have to improve on?” Tanisha asked, her voice rising. “I am sorry that when I got shot in the heart I got turned around. If Fuyumi didn’t hold the Siegebreaker attention I wouldn’t have made it far in the condition I was in. My body was shutting down and I needed time to stabilize my magic or I would have died.”
“You were shot in the heart?” Aurelius asked with genuine concern.
His eyes lingered on the hole in her armor just over her heart. It wasn’t large, big enough to fit a finger through, but it told a grim story. His eyes softened as he took a step back.
“I should have kept a better eye on everything.” Aurelius’s gaze lowered. “After the first attack failed I immediately went into fallback mode before reassessing. I lost track of you in the hail of fire but saw you using your teleport magic to get back. I made too many assumptions and did not lead like I should.”
“Out in the Chaos Lands, when you fail, you die. But here? Here, if we fail—we die, and everyone we love dies with us. Our families, our cities, our continent.” Aurelius took a breath and fire returned to his eyes. “There’s no margin left. Not for any of us.”
Tanisha’s voice turned hard. “Don’t you dare act like you’re the only one carrying that weight. We all have people to protect. We all know what the stakes are. Monster tide and all!”
He stepped up to her again, she was taller. The demonic aspects of her alloy leaking into the air from her breath. Red-gold smoke curled from her lips.
Then Fuyumi clapped her hands together, loud and sharp. “Enough.”
The sound broke the tension for a breath.
“We’re all rattled,” Fuyumi said, standing now too. “We didn’t expect that. We need food. Air. We come back clearheaded. Because right now, this? This isn’t productive.”
Tanisha huffed, breaking eye contact but not the tension. “Fine. I’m going to shower. Or does our fearless leader want to keep telling me how much I fucked up?”
Aurelius opened his mouth then stopped.
“Go,” Aurelius finally said.
She stormed out of the room leaving without another word. He was acting like they didn’t all have people that she cared about. Like she intentionally froze in battle, or ran the wrong way while severely injured.
She didn’t even notice when she finally made it into the showers until the hot water fell on her bare skin. She leaned into it while breathing in deeply.
She reached through her bond to feel Bjorn but it was silent on his end. It had been months. They could hide emotions from each other but this was concerning. He had been totally cut off, hiding everything from her. She didn’t know what it meant and no one here could tell her.
“Bjorn, where are you?” Tanisha said almost pleadingly. “Come back soon.”
***
Lunch was quiet. Everyone had eaten at different times, scattered by exhaustion or contemplation. With little else to do, Tanisha had returned her damaged armor to Laxy. She described what happened and why the armor failed.Laxy had only nodded, her hands already working as Tanisha spoke. Laxy threaded metal with her hands almost like fabric, but there were no questions.
It was interesting to see how the gynoid repaired things but it felt kind of weird to just watch her work. Tanisha sighed with nothing else to occupy her time, she wandered back to the meeting room.
Aurelius was meditating at the far end. He was close to a breakthrough in cultivation. She had only seen him break through one realm so far and this next one was apparently far more dangerous. He had to prepare his body and mind for what was to come when he did finally cross the threshold. The Heavenly Tribulation that will temper the body, spirit and mind or break them.
Fuyumi sat at the table in a simple white tunic and pants, a porcelain teacup cradled between her palms. She gave Tanisha a nod without words, her eyes fixed on Aurelius. Someone had to monitor him during the transition. Even the most seasoned cultivators could lose themselves in the crossing.
Tanisha sat down, “is he oka—”
She didn’t finish. Her head snapped east, toward a place far beyond the compound’s walls. Her chair clattered to the floor as she surged to her feet.
Then it hit like a wave. Emotions. All of them, everything Bjorn had felt over the course of months. It forced its way through the bond in a single heartbeat. Her knees gave out. She hit the floor hard, sobs tearing from her throat unbidden.
Terror. So absolute it hollowed her lungs.
Grief. Heavy and endless, like drowning in black water.
Pain. Blinding. All-consuming. Colorless.
Resolve to endure. Bitter, scorched-earth vengeance. Confusion. Isolation. Endurance that had cut deep into him, deeper than she’d realized.
Tanisha couldn’t make sense of any of it. She had never felt such raw unfiltered emotions from Bjorn. It hurt, it bled beneath the skin and pressed against the bone. She hadn’t noticed she had been screaming. Wailing in heartbreak that wasn’t hers.
A name whispered in her mind, unbidden.
“Mihr…” she breathed.
It meant nothing to her, but the name was soaked in Bjorn’s pain. Saturated with loss.
Hands gripped her shoulders.
“Tani, Tani!” Aurelius’s voice cut in. “Are you alright? What is wrong?”
Tanisha wanted to tell them she was fine. But when she tried to stand the world tilted.
“She’s bleeding. We need to get her to Laxy.” The voice was muffled.
Tanisha blinked slowly. Her fingers brushed under her nose and came away wet and red. Her thoughts scattered.
Then her world went dark.
In the recesses of her consciousness, Tanisha saw something she was never meant to witness. She saw through Bjorn’s eyes. There were islands in the sky, skylands and they were falling. Many of them dotted the sky. Their descent was slow at first, majestic in its inevitability, and then catastrophic as two of the titanic landforms collided. The impact was not just of earth and stone, but of raw, natural magics clashing with itself in a kaleidoscope of force. It was terrifying, breathtaking, impossibly vast.
The world bled colors no language could name. Shades that lived only in dreamscapes and madness rippled through the air. Reality frayed.
Natural miracles bloomed and died like flowers caught in a wildfire. In the wake of that collision, the sky, already sickened and fractured from the mana hurricane, peeled back like drapes torn from a window. For an instant, the barrier between worlds shuddered.
She saw not what lay beyond, but the moment the veil wobbled. And that alone that was enough to shake her mind.
Tanisha shot upright with a sharp gasp. Cold sweat clung to her skin. She was on the fabricator table in Laxy’s lab, harsh white lights glaring down as the gynoid leaned over her with steady hands.
“You are okay,” Laxy said calmly. “Breathe. One breath at a time, calm down.”
Tanisha obeyed, inhaling deeply, eyes fixed on the sterile light above until her pulse returned to something resembling normal.
The images she saw through his eyes faded into dream. She didn’t know if it was real or just a product of the transfer of emotion. It didn’t matter. What did matter was one thing she knew for sure.
Slowly, a small smile tugged at her lips.
“Bjorn’s on his way back,” she murmured. “I just wish I didn’t have to be told in such an explosive way… but I can feel him through the bond.”
Aurelius opened his mouth to say something but Fuyumi stepped in front of him. She placed a hand on Tanisha’s shoulder.
“Rest, for now. We’ll talk about it after you get some sleep… real sleep.” Fuyumi said.
Tanisha turned her head toward Aurelius. His eyes were conflicted, but he nodded in agreement.
“We could all use some rest,” he said, voice lower than usual. “We’ll hold the strategy meeting tomorrow morning. Then we begin training. I-I am glad you are alright.”
He lingered a moment, as if trying to say more, then gave up and turned away, leaving the lab in silence.
“I talked to him,” Fuyumi said once he was gone. “He has a lot on his mind.”
“Don’t all of us?” Tanisha grumbled.
Fuyumi sighed, “Our people are warriors. The wendigo and ghostborn aren’t very different in that regard. We look for challenges and conquest to test ourselves. But he is an elf, raised by humans. He has their sentimentality and they aren’t like either of our people. He’s worried. And now, as the leader of our team, he’s taking that burden like it’s his alone to bear.”
Tanisha sighed, “I know he is worried about the monster tide, but…”
“Yes. He is. And you should be too,” Fuyumi said, her voice suddenly sharper. “The wendigo weren’t around during the last tide, but it was nothing like what we’ve seen so far. This… won’t destroy the world, but the world won’t be the same after. “The lesser monsters will be as numerous as nations—millions of them. But they are small, manageable, to those that can fight. What about the farmer and his wife far from a city in the middle of the night? The kid at the creek with his grandfather? The village with one guard? The group on a pilgrimage? Normal people, not like us.”
Fuyumi paused to let that sink in.
“Then come the Calamities. Tens of thousands of monsters, each capable of stripping a city of life. Most humans can’t handle a monster. Most cities can't handle a horde of calamities. What do you think will happen when they show up?”
Tanisha went silent for a long moment. “Is it really going to be that bad?”
Fuyumi’s expression didn’t soften. “We’re going to trade machines and oil… for monsters and blood. That’s the future. And it’s our job to survive it. Aurelius sees that now. After today, he doesn’t think we’re ready.”
She touched Tanisha’s shoulder again, gentler this time. “But we will be. I’ll make sure of it.”
Tanisha nodded. “Thanks, Fuyumi.”
“Get some rest.” She turned to leave, her footsteps silent.
“I will carry you to your sleeping roll,” Laxy said. “I do not recommend attempting to stand.”