Once, the wasteland beneath the waves had been known as Osaka. In its place now stood an ethereal fortress, floating atop the water on a lotus flower pedestal. The brilliant crystal walls were immaterial, phantasmal, and only once it crossed the border from Param on the other side did it take physical form, whereupon it would become both a portal and a keep for a monstrous military.
The archmage Scullchance of the Pride helmed this particular castle. The dainty girl was lounging on her golden-maned lion in the keeper’s hall, and she made no effort to right her posture for her comrade.
“Good day to you, Quldald,” she greeted. “Word reaches me that your nose is finding itself in places where it ought not to be. Particularly with the black-and-gold warrior who escaped my grasp.”
“Word travels fast then,” the handsome archmage replied. He smiled cheerfully. “It may relieve you to know that he escaped my grasp as well.” The man in the blue robe was not physically present in the room. What spoke to Scullchance was only a projected illusion of the mage himself. It matched his elegant features perfectly, only with a more ghostly, translucent aspect to it. “Must you really fault me? You know how my restraint simply fails me in the presence of such beauty.”
“As does your memory, it seems. Much more will fail you should you continue to fail to remember that the Lioness does not like her prey to be stolen from her.” The girl’s eyes narrowed slightly, an expression of stark impertinence. Her gaze, though lazily wistful at a glance, was indeed imbued with pointed anger. “I suggest you do not interfere with my hunt.”
“My, how unfortunate this is,” Quldald said with exaggerated distress. “For you see, I, too, have vowed to slay this one by my hand. And as you know, the duty of purging the western reaches of the region known as Japan falls to both of us.” His mirage shimmered. “Whatever our course, whosoever shall slay the black-and-gold warrior—it matters not to the Awakened One.”
“I should have known better than to expect courtesy from one such as you, Whirlwind.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Scullchance’s eyes and mouth sharpened into a bloodthirsty sneer. “Perhaps I ought to teach it to you.”
Quldald laughed. “Perhaps another time, my lady. What might escape the great Awakened One’s watch might not his children. Let us avoid conflict for both of our sakes.” The keeper presented a closed hand and opened it, revealing a twelve-sided object resting in his palm. On each face was a number, counting up from one to twelve. On Earth, it was known as a die. “No more words. Why not let fate speak them for us?”
“Yes,” Scullchance agreed. “Let us see whose destiny is more worthy of facing the warrior. The numbers will show us.”
The Chosen Dharva—or archmages, as the humans called them—did not regard the throwing of dice as a mere test of luck. To them, it was a very important ritual used to measure one’s fate. The one more capable of commanding destiny, the one in fortune’s favor, would roll the higher number.
Scullchance clutched her own twelve-sided dice in her willowy hand, and together they tossed them to the ground. When the rolling ceased, the top face of the illusory dice displayed an eight, while the real one presented a nine.
Scullchance giggled menacingly. “I believe we have our answer.”
“Ah, and so close!” Quldald moaned. “So be it. I will stand aside and forward my efforts on the western front.”
To most, this meeting would appear odd, meaningless. But to the archmages of Param, it meant everything.
Elsewhere, another meeting was taking place, and arguably one just as strange.
Jurota Shiba, acting as an impartial observer, did his best to make his awkward presence as inconspicuous as possible. Sitting in a row at the conference table before him was a group of the brightest, most elegant, and most peculiar individuals on the planet—the migrant sages.
“At last, our prodigal son has returned home.”
“Rudra, the King of the Storm. The culmination of the foundation laid by the Mark 0 prototype, as well as the Mark I and II thereupon. The Mark III has come to answer our prayers.”
“Colleagues! I’ve had a flash of brilliance! You must read my poem in Rudra’s honor!”
“Ah... Moving. Eloquent. An exquisite piece, my friend!”
“Speaking of exquisite, the new Devicer Three is truly remarkable. Not only does he harmonize beautifully with the Asura Frame, but he even awakened the old royal blood.”
“He is the chosen great traveler of the Path.”
“All is as it should be, for all is as it is.”
“Indeed, by the Three Vajras are we made ascended. We hapless souls adrift on the whimsical waves of destiny and the universe!”
A surge of laughter suddenly rose from the table. Shiba, try as he might, couldn’t for the life of him figure out what had been so funny. He might have been able to deal with the painfully high register of the conversation, but the inappropriately timed poetry and indecipherable interjections made the entire affair rather daunting for a plain old human. Of course, this was plain old to the elves.
Yeah, no, call the desk worker in for the esoteric convocation, he thought to himself. Leave it to intellectuals to be exceedingly unsociable. And he wasn’t even allowed to nap through the thing, for crying out loud.
“Shiba,” Nadal said from one of the seats in front of him. “About the dregs festering among the utterly decimated remnants of the Defense Force—oh, pardon me. I mean the brave and valiant souls who so courageously—and of course intentionally—ceded ground to the enemy thus unintentionally causing a domino effect of powerlessness ultimately leading to the Defense Force’s untimely demise. Those people. How are they?”
“Um. Right.”
Speaker Nadal’s sarcasm knew no bounds, a habit Shiba had become intimately aware of since becoming his military coordinator. Before that, though, Shiba had been a warrant officer for the Ground Defense until the collapse of leadership caused him to seek refuge at Nayuta. He’d gone to great lengths to keep his military service under wraps, but four months was all it took for Nadal to sniff him out.
“What do we have here? A Ground Defense reconnaissance officer with three years of experience as a drone operator?” he had been accused at the time. “If it’s all the same to you, your talents would be put to much better use with me than with that seagull you’re butchering.”
And so put to use Shiba’s talents were, as the military advisor to Nayuta’s own public defense militia. Quite the promotion for a man of almost thirty-two.
He typed on his laptop for a moment before various holograms were projected above the conference table.
“According to information gathered by our surveillance droids,” Shiba reported, “they plan to attempt to wrest control of the settlement’s primary facilities and usurp power for themselves. If you’ll direct your attention to this feed here...”
Next to his laptop were several small machines, finely crafted into the shapes of insects—house flies, ladybugs, antlions, and more. In one of the windows displayed above the table, footage was being streamed of several uniformed soldiers gathered in a large meeting room, conducting a clandestine meeting of their own. The sound data of their voices was parsed and transcribed into subtitles.
Nadal regarded the stream for a moment, then nodded. “Resorting to violence. As expected.”
“They’ve acted precisely as you said they would, speaker,” one of his colleagues remarked.
“So they have,” Nadal said, nodding again. “The bureaucrats and politicians seem to be under the impression that they deserve the same authority here as the one they practiced in the homeland they abandoned. Their squawking’s been a hindrance, and in order to quiet them, I’ve treated the Defense’s...remnants, or what have you, favorably. Allowed them to grow. In doing so, the squawking has diminished by well over thirty percent.”
The speaker recited all this like a mathematician explaining his formulas. Out of all of the speakers that comprised Nayuta’s council, Nadal Rafthul was considered to be the strategian of the group. And at first, Shiba hadn’t believed such a buffoon could possibly be as intelligent as everyone said he was. He’d written it off as another quirk of the elves when they called him as much.
But as the months went on, and as Nadal seemingly haphazardly dealt with the incessant and tiresome demands of mainland refugees on Nayuta’s policies, the old Diet members, ministers, and elite dignitaries started to finally shut their mouths. All it took was showing a bit of favor towards the military. A lot of skill, leadership, and charisma was required to be able to bring such a group of people to heel. A group of people who effectively held the power during peacetime, and the guns during wartime.
And Nadal took it further. By buttering up the Defense Force veterans and their young officers with special privileges, like priority access to fossil fuels, he not only fattened their egos, but created a rift between them and the civilians.
He practically neutered the old senior and general officers by giving them honorary titles with the militia and setting them up in fancy houses, Shiba recalled. The only ones left are the young folk holing up in that moored Aegis warship. And no one’s got a hotter head than a green soldier.
Shiba had been one of them, admittedly, but he held no special feelings for his old uniform. He did, however, feel a twinge of sympathy for the poor young officers dancing in the palm of Nadal’s hand. But only a twinge, before he focused back on the task at his hand.
“We must ready security droids for a possible assault,” a somber-looking elvish speaker said. “Counter preparations must begin at once.”
“Or perhaps we shall call upon the prodigal son,” a rather flamboyant elf added gently. Speaker Raghu El Lapan. His ash-blond hair flowed down to his waist, and his appearance stood out strikingly, even among the rest of the council. “That said, I hear there have been complications. High Priestess, you are well versed in the sciences that birthed Rudra. What say you?”
“Very little, save that the situation is...complex,” the angelic Azalin replied. “Readings show no malfunctions in either the device or its human aspects, yet Rudra remains in a catatonic state. Although the new Devicer Three has regained possession of it, armorization success rates fail to exceed thirty percent.”
“Strange, that,” said Raghu El. “Very strange for a match so compatible.”
Azalin ruminated for a moment. “The Asura Frame is a hybrid being. Both organism and machine. And it is the former that allows a god-given form to resonate with Devicers. Perhaps it is also what impedes it. Perhaps the problem lies not with Rudra, but with the boy.”