On the way down, I summoned Prince.
After all, I didn't know how to fly — but I also knew, from what Izabel had told me two days before, that the Infernals had other types of pets besides the Tyrannomorphs, but none of them flew. It was an approach advantage I intended to exploit down to the last meter. However, that didn't mean I could simply destroy the enemy structure by dropping bombs from above. According to Izabel, the Infernals' constructions were extremely resistant — capable of withstanding even a nuclear bomb without collapsing. It was one of the reasons why simply bombing that planet wouldn't work. What needed to happen was exactly what was happening: a ground attack. Boots on the ground. Blood on the ground. People on the ground.
Prince carried me with familiarity — the claws firm on my shoulders, the enormous wings beating at a rhythm I already knew by heart. But something was different. The griffin was gasping. Each wingbeat demanded more effort than normal, as though the air around were thinner, more sparse, insufficient to fill lungs that needed more. And it was. The planet had a rarefied atmosphere — breathable, yes, but only in the technical sense of the word. Each breath of mine, as well as of the griffin carrying me, demanded a conscious effort, as though I had to remind the body that breathing was necessary and that the air, however scarce, was still there. It was like breathing through a wet cloth — the sensation that the oxygen arrived, but never enough.
Even with the discomfort in my lungs, I looked up.
And what I saw made me forget, for an instant, that I was in a war zone.
The sky.
Four gigantic ships filled the firmament like colossal paintings suspended in nothing. They weren't points on the horizon — they were colossi. Each occupied a slice of sky so vast that, even from that altitude, I could understand they were truly megalithic structures. They were shells of dark metal that absorbed the scant light of that planet and returned it in reflections that resembled scars shining on black skin. The silhouette of each ship stretched nearly from one horizon to the other like a second inverted earth — a floor in the sky, with details that, at that distance, looked like reliefs on an impossible surface. Communication towers. Launch docks. Rows of cannons I knew existed, but that, from so far away, looked like mere textures.
It was frightening.
And it was fascinating.
Humanity's capacity to create something of that size — to take raw material, fuse metal, assemble structures that defied comprehension and launch them into the vacuum as though gravity were a suggestion and not a law — left me simultaneously proud and terrified. I knew some families transformed entire planets into construction shipyards. Planets. Whole worlds converted into work sites where thousands of people — perhaps millions — labored for decades to raise a single one of those colossi that now painted the sky above me like sleeping gods.
I shook my head. I couldn't let my curiosity make me lose focus.
"Prince, try to stay two hundred meters from the defense structures."
Not having any creature capable of intercepting me in the sky didn't mean I was invulnerable in the air. The advantage I had was that I knew exactly the capacity of the enemy's anti-air battery — and it was considerable. By the map I had engraved in my mind during the days of planning, the base's protection covered practically the entire structure and still extended in an external perimeter with a radius of nearly a kilometer. Anything that flew within that radius became a target. Anything that entered through the sky directly above the base would be destroyed before touching the ground by at least a dozen of what appeared to be turrets the size of small houses that fired laser beams capable of evaporating even the most formidable creatures of the Oasis.
Unfortunately, that prevented me from entering directly from above.
But I could enter from the side.
"Let's descend to the marked point."
In the distance, I could see what seemed like an enormous hole — a crater that opened in the planet's surface like a fresh wound, with irregular edges darkened by the residual heat of the impact. I knew that had been made by the ships painted across the sky — a surgical bombardment that opened the exact point where I was supposed to descend. The hole sat at the limits of the anti-air perimeter, outside the direct reach of the batteries, but close enough for me to advance on foot to the antenna.
Of course that was nowhere near the real destructive capacity of that ship. That hole was a needle prick. A pinch. The minimum necessary to open a door without tearing down the house.
In truth, if I stopped to think about what those ships could really do, the answer was frightening even for those on their side. Any of the four painted across the sky was capable of destroying that entire planet — not in theory, not in simulation, in practice. The capacity was there, loaded, ready, waiting for a button nobody would ever press.
Because pressing was the problem.
The moment humans used that kind of power, they would open a precedent no diplomacy could close. The Infernals would understand that anything goes. The other races would understand that anything goes. And in a universe where at least a hundred civilizations had weaponry capable of terraforming planets, escalating force was the same as inviting everyone to a game where nobody would come out unscathed. The escalation had no ceiling — and whoever pulled the trigger first only guaranteed they would be the first to die, not the last.
That was why the expeditionary force existed. That was why soldiers had to die. Blood on the ground. People dying in ways that seemed primitive in a universe that had invented weapons capable of erasing stars. It wasn't incompetence. It was a message. A carefully calibrated notice to the rest of the universe: "we strike, but we strike gently. This is a knife fight, not guns."
And everyone, of every race, understood the notice — because they all had the same weapon stored in the same locked cabinet, with the same key nobody wanted to use.
While my mind flew, Prince finally reached the crater. He cut the air with the urgency of someone who knows each second in the sky is one more second of exposure — and even so he gasped. The wings beat at a rhythm growing ever more irregular, each beat demanding more than the last, the different gravity and the rarefied air charging a price his body wasn't prepared to pay. Prince was a creature of the Oasis. Strong in there. Out here, without the system sustaining his capabilities, he was, like the vast majority of creatures that dominated the air, fragile.
"As soon as we arrive, you go back into the Vivarium."
Prince had many advantages — but only when I thought of the Oasis. Outside of it, he was still a vulnerable creature, incapable of withstanding the anti-air battery, incapable of using a magic that would truly destroy futuristic structures, incapable of doing anything that justified the risk of keeping him exposed. Even his strongest magic was useless there. In the end, outside the Oasis, he was transport — and good transport, transport I loved, transport that had saved me and allowed me to get far — but only that.
When we were at nearly thirty meters of altitude, Prince released me while I stored him again.
The air whistled around my body as I fell. In the same movement — fast, rehearsed in my mind hundreds of times during the days on the ship — after the griffin vanished into my item, I summoned my daughter.
Arachne materialized in the air beside me, giant as always, healed and at full capacity.
Her body blocked the scant light of the crater like a living cloud — twelve meters of chitin and legs and black eyes that descended upon the terrain below with the same tactical reading I was making. I landed on her back. She received me as always: without gesture, without adjustment, just the silent certainty of someone who knows where the father will be before he arrives.
From above, after the impact, I saw.
Two Infernals.
They were entering the crater's edge — and even at that distance I could identify their details. Each had only one tail, which meant they weren't royalty. The caprine horns were small, curved backward with the timidity of something still growing — a sign of youth and inexperience. Exactly what Izabel had said I would find at the outposts: young soldiers, poorly trained, placed there not to win, but to delay, while the real force was where Izabel was at that moment.
They noticed us.
It was hard not to see such a giant creature.
The screams came first — sharp, guttural, at a frequency something not made for my ears to process. The weapons they carried rose in Arachne's direction and fired. Lasers. Beams of concentrated energy that cut the air with a hum I felt in my teeth — weapons capable of killing Drakes, capable of piercing armor, capable of opening holes in things that shouldn't have holes, forbidden in the Oasis.
But they didn't know what Arachne carried.
On top of my daughter, a small quadrilateral structure of two by four meters began to glow.
A structure coupled to her dorsum — which until that moment seemed like just another piece of equipment, inert, with no visible function — lit up with a metallic luminosity that pulsed in waves. And then it disassembled. Not like something that breaks — like something that wakes. Thousands of living metallic particles separated from the original structure like ants leaving an anthill, each one shining with its own light, each one moving with purpose. Like a liquid made of metal and intelligence, the mass began to spread across Arachne's body — filling each space, each junction, each vulnerable point between the chitin plates.
"Activate the Living Armor at one hundred percent efficiency."
I spoke into a device shaped like a watch on my wrist. The response was immediate.
The armor covered Arachne's entire torso in seconds — each particle finding its place with the precision of something that already knew where to go before being told. The living metal adjusted to her form like a second skin, shining with a silvery tone that darkened as it solidified. Only the mouth remained free — Arachne's mandibles, the same ones that crushed stone and spat silk, exposed as the only part the armor knew it shouldn't cover.
The coverage arrived at the exact moment.
The Infernals' lasers struck Arachne dead on — beams of energy that should have pierced chitin and burned flesh. However, instead of crossing through, the lasers were sucked into the armor. Absorbed. Converted. The metallic surface shone brighter for an instant — as though it were digesting the attack — and then returned to normal.
The Living Armor.
It was one of the reasons why, despite humans being insects in the Oasis, outside of it we were an expansionist race of enormous capacity. Our biological weakness didn't mean that, outside the Oasis's restrictions, we were insignificant. Technology compensated — and that armor was the apex of what human technology could buy.
Buy. Not create.
Because the Living Armor, like the technology that kept that enormous ship in the sky, wasn't human. There existed only one planet in the universe that produced the material capable of creating it — and that planet belonged to the Travellers. Doing business with that race didn't involve money. It involved planets. Nothing the Travellers sold was cheap, and that armor alone — the one that now covered my daughter's body like a second skin of intelligent metal — was probably worth as much as one of the ships painted across the sky. Perhaps more.
Unfortunately, the armor had many problems.
It didn't last long. The energy that kept it functioning didn't come from a battery or a reactor — it came from the life force of the creature wearing it, as well as from energy like the beams those Infernals fired. Each second the armor remained active, it sapped life from Arachne. It was a benign parasite — it protected while it consumed, defended while it devoured. And that was exactly the reason the Unicorns themselves didn't use it on their creatures: those who could wear that armor needed to have an unparalleled vitality, a reserve of energy so absurd that the armor's parasitism was acceptable.
Arachne was one of those creatures.
My twelve-meter Yokai Queen, fed with Nectar, strengthened in each battle since the first day — was exactly the type of creature for whom that armor had been designed. The symbiosis was perfect. What would kill any other creature in seconds, Arachne would endure for hours.
BOOOOM!
The explosion of Arachne finally lunging forward onto the Infernals shook the entire crater floor. The screams of pain came mixed with the sound of metal against rock and flesh against metal — it was incredible that even the weight of a Yokai Queen advancing over the Infernals' bodies hadn't been enough to kill them instantly. The Infernals' bodies contorted beneath Arachne's legs, still fighting, still trying to free themselves with a resistance I already knew.
Infernals were hard to kill. The older they were, the stronger. These were young — and even so they endured what would kill any other human.
"Daughter, let's kill them all. We need to advance fast."
Arachne's scream tore through the crater's air — and before the echo died, she was already moving.
The mandibles opened and closed with the precision of an industrial guillotine. The first Infernal lost its entire torso before understanding it no longer had one. The second tried to spin — the tail whipping the air in a survival reflex — but Arachne was already on top of it, the front legs pinning the body to the ground while the mandibles descended and reaped what remained, staining her jaw with a deep blue. Fast. Clean. With the brutal efficiency of a predator that didn't kill from rage — she killed because it was what she did, and she did it better than anything alive on that planet.
The sound of the twisted trees around them swaying arrived afterward — as though the environment itself had taken time to react to what had just happened. A gale that came not from the wind, but from the scream.
The mark ran down my arms. The two glaives were born — the curved blades extending until they nearly touched my back, the dark metal shining with a light that didn't come from outside. The familiar weight in my hands. The balance Zaridan taught me in five hundred and seventy-six defeats.
Time was precious. The attack on the beach was only one of the distractions, and Izabel's main attack was pulling the majority of the Infernal elites away from that outpost. But that didn't mean it would be easy — and it didn't mean reinforcements wouldn't arrive at any moment.
Looking upward, I could see points descending slowly along the sky's periphery — the paratroopers of our team, the Unicorns, Bloodlines, and Crivalds who would form the perimeter while I advanced. Small silhouettes, falling slowly like seeds tossed onto a field that could yield fruit or yield death.
"Very well. If they manage to do their part, we have a chance."
My heart beat hard. From that moment on, I was alone. Arachne and I against whatever stood between us and our objective. I knew what I was going to face — Izabel had prepared me with every possible detail — but knowing didn't mean it would be easy. Only that, somehow, I would have to win.
The terrain around the crater was swampy and humid — and it made sense. On a planet that was almost entirely made of water, the little earth that existed suffered from constant rain and perpetual humidity. The ground was soft, sticky, the kind that sucks the foot with each step and demands double the effort for what should be simple. Twisted vegetation rose around like fingers emerging from the mud — trees that didn't look like trees, with trunks that pulsed in the same dark red as the Infernal structures, as though the very flora of that place had been contaminated by what lived there.
The terrain didn't favor me in the slightest.
But the antenna was there. Shining on the horizon like a beacon of flesh and metal that needed to fall.
And I was going to bring it down.
Advertisement