01.146 Collateral

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Lightning Cries Over Canopy, Daybreak Nüwa Hidden Kingdom

Arcsa woke up as the stretcher he was laying on was put down.

He looked around and tested his limbs. His back felt raw.

“What happened soldier…”

The Aqrabuamelu at his head started briefing him, not stopping, “Prophet, the orcs in the ravine are dead. The orcs that weren’t in the ravine are in full retreat.

“What are we doing? We can’t let them escape.”

“Sir, we have sent two harrying forces, and they are picking them off. But they have scattered and are in full rout. It is unlikely we will get them all.”

“Damn it! Try. I don’t want the main enemy contingent knowing what happened here. " Arcsa tried to sit up but the pain in his back was severe and he fell back. “What about the Liberator?”

“She is right there sir.” The Aqrabuamelu gestured to the side and Arcsa saw Eleanor on a medical stretcher like his, her eyes were closed but he could see her breathing. There was a medic next to her, and he saw Arcsa looking over and gave him a thumbs up. Arcsa relaxed, she would be okay. There were other Aqrabuamelu surrounding her, and they were on their knees, heads to the ground, bowing in a semi-circle to her.

“What the hell is happening here?”

The Aqrabuemalu at Arcsa’s feet answered this time, his tone reverential, “The Blessed-Innana-of-War called down the lightning upon the soldiers of Utu-the-Hated. Our goddess is here and is more than we deserve!” he yelled loudly. The Aqrabuamelu praying around her repeated, “We do not deserve her!”

Arcsa frowned as he watched the soldier at his foot get to his knees and enter into a similar praying position. The Aqrabuamelu were free now. And now they abased themselves, no, it was worse. They had become fanatics in the true sense. A rhythmic murmer rose from the praying Aqrabuamelu in camp.

He felt a cool hand on his forehead and looked up to see the High Priestess smiling down at him. It was a sad smile, “She released our chains, but we have put them back on.”

He tried to smile back at her, but he lost consciousness.

Ella dreamed quantum dreams. Possibilities and wave-particles and Riemann space, it all made sense again. For a brief moment, she was back to when she had first absorbed that bear’s tooth, where it all came together in a syncretic understanding of reality.

But even in her dream state, she couldn’t hold onto it. The understanding faded. Eleven dimensions collapsed into four. Probabilities became maybes. And the loss hurt, she wept. As she slept, her eyes teared glowing crystalline tears. The Aqrabuamelu around her murmered their wonder at the second miracle of the day. One no less profound than lightning rending their enemies into blackened husks at the bottom of a ravine.

Vichama and the remaining villagers watched the Aqrabuamelu at prayer. The great enemy of which only rumors had spoken of, they had come to save their people. And now they worshipped this human girl who had called down lightning upon the enemy.

He did not harbor many illusions. His village, known as gatehouse in his language, subservient to the great city-state of Nakkra, was nothing. Even less now. All they had been known for was being the staging town before the portal into the human world. And now their people were much reduced.

The Aqrabuamelu had said he could return to his village or to Nakkra. They offered military escort if he would like, but would not provide these marvelous bows or other weapons they carried, saying that those were only for those who served their goddess.

He felt an irrational desire to join their ranks. To become one of the supplicants who knelt around the girl. To belong to something greater, something momentous. But he had a duty to his people as well. He would retrieve Shalhi and they would go to Nakkra and report on this to Inti, the Master of Nakkra. The Daybreak Nüwa would confer and prepare.

The next day (Monday, June 13, 2022)

Ella woke up with a light smile on her face. She felt oddly rested. When she opened her eyes, she could see a ceiling above her and then she heard the steady beep of a heart rate monitor.

She looked around and saw she was in the Aqrabuamelu medical ward. Charlie was sitting there next to her bed.

“Hey girl!” Ella said.

Charlie looked up from her laptop and reached over to give her a hug and then whispered into her ear, “If you keep scaring me like this, I am going to murder you, you know that right?”

The she hugged her a bit tighter before sitting back.

“So what’s next?” Charlie said, bright and brittle.

“Back to the Nüwa kingdom, I want to see the portal to the orclands and Nakkra.” Ella said.

“Of course. Xu wants to come.”

“What? Why?”

“He met Sally and instantly knew who she was. He hasn’t told her who he is, but she knows something is up. She follows him around like a puppy.”

“I see.” Ella thought. Even if she was well rested she was also still exhausted. “Oh…”

“Yep.”

“Dragons and their creations…”

Ella clicked her nails on the hospital bed guard rail to think. A nervous habit from her childhood. Something she did without thinking.

Except that something was wrong. She clicked her nails, forefinger… click… middle finger… click… ring finger… chime… pinky… chime.

She hesitantly turned her hand over and looked at her nails. Forefinger, peeling magenta nail gel. Same for the middle finger. The ring finger was still covered with the nail polish. But the pinky finger had most of the polish off and she saw a very familiar prismatic crystalline pattern.

“Oh fuck…” she whispered.

Charlie leaned over from the side, “Well that can’t be good.”

“Get Xu…” Ella whispered. She could hear the beeping of the heart rate monitor as it sped up. “Now!”

Charlie got up and ran out of the room. Ella stared at her nails before using her right hand to begin to peel off the gels, one at a time.

Her left ring finger and pinky. She switched hands and peeled off the color there. Her pinky on the right.

Crystals similar to her eyes. She didn’t know how long she stared at them, but Xu interrupted her fugue.

He reached down with both hands to hers and turned them over and looked at them. His hands were warm and gentle.

“I told you had too much magic. Have you noticed magic being easier to cast?”

Ella nodded yes. Scared to talk.

“It is changing you…” His eyes turned into reptilian slits, “I warned you. This is the cost.”

“What will happen?”

“I suspect if we opened you up, you’d fine your bones had changed some too. You need to learn to either channel the magic or get rid of it.”

“Well then I will learn it. I need it.”

Charlie, standing behind and to the side of Xu, interrupted, “Do you? I think you keep putting yourself into situations where you need to use magic. And it is killing you!”

Ella took a breath and looked at her friend, “I do. You know it.”

They stared at one another.

A small voice came from behind, “Uncle Tommy? Are you here?”

Two days later (Wednesday, June 15, 2022)

When they re-entered the gate, they found Vichama and a ragged group of Nuwa out there. Tens of thousands. They were tents made of wood and thatch, newly made large cabins from which hundreds of Nuwa emerged.

Ella came through the gate in the middle holding Sally’s hand. She saw Vichama and let go and took off running.

“Uncle, Uncle…” Their reptilian forms intertwined in a hug. “Who is everyone?”

Ella followed closely behind. “See, here she is, as safe as we could make her. She seems to have taken quite a shine to another one of ours…”

Sally began pulling on Vichama’s hand. “Come on meet Uncle Tommy. He seems like us but he says he isn’t.”

Tommy Xu took a step through, dressed as if he was going on an old English safari in light tan adventure gear.

He was just turning to Arcsa who had accompanied him through the gate when he heard the voice of Vichama say, “Honored Ancestor, we thank you for your visit.”

Xu looked at the Nüwa, filthy and desperate, “this will not stand. I won’t have it. Charlotte, head back and prepare some emergency housing, I don’t care where - buy the damn Peninsula if you have to. Gōngzhǔ,” Xu turned to Ella without pause, “I saw how the portal was opened, I should be able to do the same. May I do so?”

Unused to this show of deference, Ella nodded. She turned to the High Priestess at her side, “Have the Aqrabuamelu support the evacuation of the refugees. Try and keep them out of sight with magical disguises or just hoods where possible. I will a platoon with me to the orc portal.”

The gate into the orclands was guarded, Aqrabuamelu infiltrators crept up, waited and listened to the cadence of check-ins, and took down the eight orcs in short order. Several of them then donned magical rings that turned them into facsimiles of orcs.

Arcsa nodded in satisfaction, “We have held onto those rings for a long time. I am glad that they could be put to use.”

The disguised Aqrabuamelu took up positions by the gate.

Ella put on a ring of her own. It wasn’t a magical disguise as she had thought. It felt disgusting. She could feel her skin change and slide, her musculature move some. Her height changed a bit and her nose hurt as it receded into her face.

“What the hell! Is this shape-changing?”

“Sort of…” Arcsa said. “It isn’t truly that, it is something close to it. We don’t know a lot about it.” He paused and then said under his breath, wistfully, “They were children’s toys once…”

Another topic for research with her very limited time.

They appropriated clothing from the downed orc guards and stepped through the portal.

A few orc guards in a hastily constructed fort waved at them, they waved back and took a look around. The land was bucolic, green rolling hills, small farms in the distance. Ella saw orc children running in the distance.

And she saw legions of orc troops in orderly arrayed tents arrayed to her left. The sound of gunfire disrupted the peace at a training yard. The tents extended to the horizon.

There were orc soldiers all over the place. She stood in shock and even heard Arcsa curse.

Zaidu, at her side, calmly said, “Looks like approximately two-hundred fifty-thousand troops give or take.” He didn’t look concerned, his practiced eye watching the training below.

“Combat readiness feels reasonably high, slightly below US standard. Strategic and tactical advantages of gating in soldiers will be extremely high and more than account for the difference.”

The rattle of gunfire continued. They stared for a moment, and then waved at the orc embankment guarding the portal and stepped back.

Ella looked at the gate, and in her mind visualized what she saw. A quarter of the troops he had available per their intelligence were on the other side of this gate.

To distract herself, she felt the gate. The structure of how it was opened was different, she traced the eleven dimensional structures in her mind, and was able to find a different part which, when tugged, would create a more stable version of the opening that required less effort.

And… almost unwillingly, as she followed the knots and turns of magic, the ones that folded the dimensions together to form the knot that tied it off, she found the thing she didn’t want to find. The way to move the opening.

Because there was a relatively simple way to eliminate this threat. Two hundred fifty thousand soldiers were on the other side of this gate. But how many innocents would die? There had been children on the other side.

She looked up at the twin moons and the sun above. All of them were high in the sky at once. Another question for another time.

But the sun… it would be so easy. Move the portal right into a star and the ionic plasma would scour the dimension. An army defeated without loss. A butcher’s bill that made her want to vomit that she was considering it. It would be quick and clean.

“Zaidu, how many civilians to support an army of a quarter million?” her voice was strained, rasping and breathy. The taste of bile was in the back of her throat.

“Tooth to tail ratio varies, but US military levels are roughly 10-12 to 1. So assume there are a total of 2.75 million military personnel total including non-combatants. A highly militarized country like Israel has a civilian to military ratio of 250 per 10,000. So let’s assume it is…” Zaidu’s face scrunched up as he started the calculation.

“One-hundred ten million…” whispered Ella. She couldn’t do it. It would make her the worst mass murderer in history. It was genocide and at that thought she bent over and heaved.

Zaidu watched her, “You are too soft. You know some way to get rid of these orcs, but it would have significant collateral damage.” He spat.

“It would kill them all,” she whispered. Her stomach hurt. “The soldiers, their mothers, their fathers, their children…” She threw up again, mostly clear liquid. The reality of what she could do made it less abstract.

Arcsa watched her and quietly said, “The Emperor would not hesitate.”

Ella looked up from where she was somehow on her knees; the smell of vomit, the soreness of her throat from retching, all conspiring to make her aware of what a monster she could be… no, she was, for even considering this.

But maybe that statement helped. She stood herself up. She straightened her soldiers and looked at both Arcsa and Zaidu. “I am not him.”

“That being said, the idea is sound even in a more… minimal application. Zaidu, I assume massively discomforting a quarter million soldiers is worth giving up the knowledge I can manipulate these gates?”

“Who can know the future? But yes…” he spat to the side. His hissing voice was calmer nowadays, Ella supposed that was progress.

Ella signalled the platoon and they began to march west. Per the Nüwa, a few klicks further should be what she needed. She had gotten this idea from a book[^1], and it seemed like it should work nicely. She dragged the portal as if it was on a leash. It had a strange sort of friction to it, so it took effort, but the sweat that beaded on her forehead could easily have been from the humidity.

They eventually reached a large lake… She shoved the portal right in and to the bottom of the lake.

“Did you notice that the soldiers were in a valley between the hills?” she asked idly, “and that the slope was downwards from the portal?”

Arcsa watched as Eleanor sat by the lake. She was staring to the horizon of the lake, ignoring the gentle rain that continued to fall and the humidity. Her eyes were glowing.

She spoke, in a voice devoid of nuance, flat and unemotional, “I can see the gate. I see water rushing through it. Thousands of liters per second. It is running down the hill. The orcs at the fort are being swept away, it happens quickly. The walls crumble from the force.”

“The encampment sits below. The roaring of the water has caught their attention. Some of the orcs stand and gape. Others are running, but it is already too late.”

Eleanor continues to narrarate the events dispassionately. Her voice maintains an even tempo, but her cheeks are wet.

“The water is beginning to hit the camp. It is violent and sudden. A family visiting the camp is swept up. The child is dashed to the ground hard and the shear against the surface tears them into pieces. There are humans in the camps, Kenaz soldiers, and they are swept up. One of them is smashed against a log wall, his blood is diluted instantly by the rushing water.”

“Now that wall is tumbling. The soldiers who took shelter behind it are battered, sent flying by the wood and then the water. One of them is hurt but trying to stay above the water and failing. Other soldiers are running away, trying to climb the opposite hill. They are trampling one another. Some other families are carrying their children up the slopes "

Her eyes were fixed on the lake. Nothing seemed to happen, the lake was large — from the maps that the Nüwa had provided, this was equivalent in size to Lake Michigan. They waited for hours, but the lake barely moved. It was placid, the gentle rain creating overlapping ripples. Eleanor continued to narrarate the slow deaths of thousands.

“Now the camp is flooded and the water is rising. Detritus floats on top, some of the pieces have people holding onto them. The orcs have organized a rescue effort. The water continues to rise but at a slower pace. The valley will fill soon and it will exceed its holding capacity. They are constructing sand bag walls at the low point, but I do not think they will make it in time.”

Eleanor’s eyes tensed as she looked further, “There is a village further past the valley. They are evacuating to higher ground.”

She paused and waited. Her narration stopped, but her eyes continued to glow. More hours passed and it was night-time. Arcsa found himself staring at Eleanor rather than the lake.

Then she came out of her trance. She looked at Arcsa, “It is done. Their equipment is under billions of liters of water, much of their strength is dead. Their villages are flooded and recovery will take time.” Her eyes were still glowing.

Only then did Arcsa notice that Ella had been gouging at her arms with her fingernails and she had bloody streaks in them.

She looked down at her arms, watching the blood gently run, diluted in the rain. Then looked up at him, “I don’t think I am made for this…”

[^1] After I wrote this, I realized I may have subconsciously cribbed from PGTE, so going to give credit here.