No stars. There were no stars here. The implications sent a shiver of panic in the recess of human Nestra’s mind deep in the pocket where she rested. What eons must have passed not for a star to die but for all of them to do so? But that wasn’t the strange part.

True Nestra liked it. She liked it very much. She felt good here. And it was time to hunt.

Nestra raced past a vertical cliff, sending shattered ice crystals tumbling into the abyss below. The walls to her right surged high and heavy with hanging icicles as blue and sharp as frozen swords. The marks of the human expedition remained in the broken ice and footsteps she found on the way. Never had she felt that her mask kin were intruding more than now. This was a world at the end of all worlds. Only the high mana was confirmation that something lived there.

Nestra stopped. The roar of the wind lessened for a moment, and she spotted unnatural crystal formations dotting the widening path ahead. The wind returned and with it the veil of powdery ice. The crystals returned to being mere shapes in the distance like the sails of alien ships emerging from the mist. One of them was cracked open. Her horns shook with potent ice mana.

Those were monsters.

Nestra picked a target and she was ready to blast it, but something held her back.

“Oh yeah. I’m here to save people.”

She needed a plan. Curse this shape and its minuscule attention span! The raiders had killed one of the monsters before moving on. If the rest of the creatures were still here then they hadn’t pursued, or they had only pursued for a short distance. It meant they were either slow or not very persistent. Even this strange world must still be subjected to the strange pedagogical rules as its more normal counterparts, the lesson here being to avoid getting stuck in a disadvantageous fight. Normally, Nestra would kill everything until she grew bored or ran out of targets, but here speed was of the essence. Therefore, she ought to only kill those on her way. With this decided, she picked an isolated one on the right side. Killing this one meant she could just run along the wall to the other side of the herd, leaving them behind. Unharmed. Untasted.

“Maturity sucks.”

Sashimi didn’t comment. After one last sigh of resignation, Nestra adjusted her aim. With two fingers extended, she overloaded her void bolt beyond capacity thanks to arcane strike. One day she’d be good enough to use it while moving and fighting normally.

She felt relief when the dot landed squarely in the creature’s middle. The following detonation silenced even the gale. In a burst of void energy, pans of crystal burst out to reveal blue ichor and gray innards. She even spotted the distant form of a core. Her resistance improved from the tremendous burst of power that filled her being: cold for sure, and physical resistances. Bone and skin, probably.

Oh, this place was amazing.

“Go!”

Sashimi matched Nestra’s top speed with ease. The creatures rose from their slumber. They looked like moving pyramids with long limbs made of sharp crystals lashing out with surprising speed. She was forced to dodge under a well-aimed whip.

“Wow.”

She still snatched the core on her way. Sashimi tore a good chunk of flesh with a crack of crushed glass, and then they were through.

Nestra looked back. The creatures were able to cover each other with whips. It would have been tough but interesting. She made sure the medical bag was still attached to her back. Maybe later.

“Alright.”

The mountainside path was still reasonably wide here. Tall crystals that reminded her of trees started to appear as she moved on, hinting at a strange magical ecosystem. She could still see human tracks in the ice on occasion so she was on the right path. Not that there were any others.

After another ten minutes, she came across another body. This one showed a vaguely humanoid shape taller than even her. It possessed no head, or rather, that head was fused with the torso with no neck in sight. Ridges and grooves gave the vague impression of a face, as did two blue gems sitting at different heights. She knew it must have a mouth because there was a second, even larger specimen eating the first one by tearing large chunks of gray flesh it kept shoving into a maw as wide as an arm and bordered by serrated teeth as sharp as Nestra’s own. Two sapphires zeroed on her when the creature turned, somehow detecting her presence. When she looked into those cold orbs, she came to the realization that the previous, unmoving crystals were prey animals.

The corpse still had red blood frozen on its long arms. Human blood.

This was the predator.

“Well, let’s give this one a try.”

Nestra moved in carefully. Army gleams wore high-tech armor made of mana materials, and they were no slouches, so this dead creature had wounded a raider in a fight against four opponents. Being outnumbered wasn’t as bad for gleams as it was for baselines but it was still a massive disadvantage. She charged in just as the monster did the same in a strange, uneven gait that threw her off. Sometimes it moved sluggishly, then there were bursts of speed that made it almost faster than her. At the last moment, it jumped on her. Nestra pushed back her surprise at the very straightforward attack. She had a reach advantage. Her sword went up, loaded with void energy, then it struck down.

The blade sheared then stopped in the massive, conical block that looked like its head. At the same time, the impact sent her tumbling like a bowling pin.

“Oof.”

Nestra blocked one of the blade arms with her own, tucked her feet in and threw the creature over her before its other arm could skewer her. The bite of its edge in her skin brought pain and cold. It flew over her head, then for a brief moment she thought it might be sent over the edge but it merely planted its blade down to stop its drift.

Nestra stood up. Black blood oxidizing to red already froze in the dismal temperature. Fractal snakes of blue ice mana crawled briefly over her skin, then faded.

That thing was strong. It was stupid strong for a C-class monster. Worse, as she watched, the deep groove she’d carved into its helmet-like skull closed with freshly generated ice. It attacked again without waiting. When it slowled, she used momentum to teleport behind it, twirled and struck at its leg.

Thanks to the uneven steps, she knew it would still be there but once again, the creature’s monstrous resilience meant only a bit of gray blood seeped from the crack she caused before ice devoured it again.

“Well alright.”

Nestra loaded herself with electricity. She charged and aimed a void bolt at its mouth at the same time but the monster raised a blade to intercept it with blinding speed. The bolt obliterated one of its arms in a shower of shards. No blood, but another hidden gem where his shoulder ought to be.

It doesn’t have arms. It uses mana organs to generate them.

Nestra blocked the blade once, deflected it then parried the newly regenerated arm. It wasn’t often she faced something physically stronger, and never at C-class. With a roar, she smashed one arm aside, then the other to move into the beast’s guard. The arms morphed into hooked, curved horrors.

She released the charge. False electricity blasted the creature at point-blank range, seeping through its defense to afford her the breath she needed. A powerful strike carved right below the creature’s nightmarish mouth. Gray flesh, there. Using precision, she struck again in the exact same spot. The blade tore through the flesh just as hooks bit into Nestra’s shoulders. She ignored the pain, doubling down on the void coating when she twisted the blade in the beast’s innards. With a last tremor, it died.

Nestra screamed to push the ice blades away but without the creature feeding them, they fell to pieces without resistance. She was bleeding a bit. Her physical resistance had come in clutch.

“Ow ow ow.”

That fucking thing! So strong for a C-class. Thankfully, the medical bag at her back was barely scraped. Nestra couldn’t wait to have more storage space as her true form. Well, she had storage space for the bag but that would imply giving up some of her other goodies. Like her cooking supplies. No way.

Sashimi floated by looking bored and slightly judgmental.

“Look, first time facing that kind of creature. I was caught off guard, ok?”

Nestra reminded herself that time was still of the essence but ten seconds spent looting would be ok. With an expertise backed by a lot of experience cracking monsters open to eat them, she peeled off the creatures’ arm organs. Interestingly, they looked like sub-cores of sorts, a naturally occuring organ rather than a mana user addition. The eyes were a bust though: under a crystal cover, they were gooey and she didn’t have the time or tools to properly harvest them.

“Aw.”

Sashimi moved in to gobble the entire thing. The void shark was acting weird. Normally she was much more excited about hunts. The way her body perfectly merged with the starless darkness until it was invisible even to Nestra left the Aszhii on edge. Enough time had been sacrificed on fighting however, so she moved on. Nestra took off at a solid trot. She avoided another cluster of whippy crystals without battle this time. Another predator was dispatched using the same method. The temptation to draw the fight to figure out how the creature worked was ignored.

After a while, the path sloped up and grew more narrow. What had been a trail a baseline could have followed turned into a series of rocky outcrops Nestra had to jump to and sometimes even climb when the next step was too high. On one of the car-sized platforms, Nestra was faced with a tunnel leading deep into the nearby mountain. It was large enough for her to walk in without bending her head (a growing problem nowadays). It was also covered in small colonies of blue fluorescent beings no larger than a fingernail.

Their light was… beautiful

They formed lines and ethereal patterns slowly pulsing in the darkness. With each fleeting burst of light, the world of the tunnel took life in her Aszhii sight from monochrome to white black and blue. Despite being so desolate, there was a certain beauty to it that was quickly ruined when something emerged from the bend in the tunnel. That something was a worm. Not the one that had dug the tunnel but surely its slightly younger sibling. Nestra barely had the time to swear. She jumped over the aperture just as the creature lashed out of it with monstrous speed, sending a small cloud of icy crystals hovering above the abyss. Nestra struck as she fell and almost lost her sword when the worm pulled back.

And then it was gone, the only traces of its passage a thin line of white ichor left before ice covered its hide again. Nestra eyed the hole suspiciously. The worm didn’t attack again.

“Fucking jumpscare,” she complained.

Now what. Should she follow? A brief glance around revealed a suspiciously red radiance near her feet. She dug through stone shards and fused ice to reveal a dimming glowstick. Threshold-made. The squad had gone through there. Had they gone in? A tug on her consciousness made her realize Sashimi had flown down. With a frown, Nestra peered down from the edge. Far below, instead of the usual abyss, waited a sort of low ground tapering down to another narrow path. Traces of debris and battle could barely be seen through the ice cloud.

Shit. They fell.

Nestra looked up. to the path she’d followed until now. It kept going along the cliff, disappearing as it turned. It was clearly the main path. Some worlds were like that, offering a more direct route but also allowing for mishaps. Sometimes. This world was strange. For one, it was far too difficult.

“Well, whatever.”

Her job was to find the squad, not finish the portal in a perfect way. Barely hesitating, she dropped down. No C-class could be hurt by terminal velocity alone in a world without a ridiculously high gravity. Her human brain still screamed at her during the brief four seconds of free fall it took to reach the bottom. It didn’t help that she was attacked immediately upon landing. A creature that looked halfway between a starving rat and a frozen sculpture made of nails burst out of a snow cover, forcing her to duck and strike. Her danger sense hadn’t been too loud so she could only guess that creature hadn’t been responsible for the mess down there. After cutting down five more and improving her awareness to the maximum of her current form, she paused. There were obvious blood splotches on the ground, human blood, as well as quite a few casings. Burn marks covered the walls while frozen puddles showed signs of temporary heat. A massive set of tracks ran outward, portal wise, while three human ones headed back towards the entrance portal. Nestra decided to follow those first.

Down there, the world was even more desolate with the other side of the canyon closing in, a claustrophobic prison where the sky offered no salvation. Relaxing her guard meant death since innocuous piles of ice could hide an ambusher. She came across a couple more monster bodies, then, at the edge of the flat ground, she found a crack in the mountain from whence the blueish light she’d seen before radiated. She stopped on the edge. Someone had carved ‘TRAP’ in the rock, as well as an arrow pointing at a thin cord strung across the opening at knee level. There was a mine tucked at the end of the opening. She had found civilization.

“I’ll be back,” she told Sashimi who completely ignored her.

Nestra was armed with the foreknowledge of having been shot in the arm the last time she moved onto a squad of stranded raiders unannounced. With her expanded wisdom, she called forward in a low voice.

“Incoming friendly. Can I come in?”

“Shit,” a distant whisper returned. “It’s her?”

“No,” another replied. “Reinforcements?”

“Perhaps it is a m-m-monster,” a woman replied.

“Not a single monster has had any voice so far.”

Nestra thought back and realized that yes, that portal world was completely silent. Not even the monsters cried out in pain. Huh. She hadn’t noticed.

“Hello?” one of the soldiers said.

“Hey it’s Crescent with the —”

“Crescent? We’re saved! Come on in. OH WAIT! Watch out for the mine.”

“Got it.”

Nestra moved in at a cautious pace. This tunnel was significantly smaller than the other one. It looked older and partially caved in, forcing her to crawl and grumble about worlds designed for pipsqueaks. Yellow electric light soon flooded the tunnel and she kind of disliked it. Lights from a dead universe should be, she didn’t know, but not yellow. This felt annoyingly wrong.

The three raiders were definitely worse for wear. Their armor was tattered. Sealant was used around wounds made obvious by blood that had frozen before it could congeal. Their helmets were on because of the temperature but Nestra could tell there was a firespark slip of a woman, an amazingly muscular wood mage, and a lanky guy with an air affinity.

“You are… not cold?” the only woman of the group asked.

“No and before we do anything, here are your medical supplies.”

They really looked like they needed those. The three exchanged a confused look then the lanky one started distributing fresh healing sprays and stimulants. They worked in silence until the woman broke it.

“Have you come across F- F- F-... traces of someone. Else?”

“I’m guessing your commanding officer? I saw tracks leading inward but I came to you first.”

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

“We should hurry,” the wood mage grumbled.

“Can’t help her until we’re ready. We’d just be a burden. Also, Hitomi is exhausted and we can’t do anything without her.”

“I got my my… better. I got better. Mana reserves reeeecovered.”

The woman of the group, Hitomi then, fell silent. Nestra didn’t need to see her face to imagine she was dejected.

“Sorry.”

“Hitomi, you saved us all, alright?”

“I did not save. Her.”

“What I’m trying to say is that you haven’t recovered enough to kill a guardian.”

“But maybe she has?” wood mage said, looking at Nestra. Then he frowned.

“You don’t feel like a fire mage, Crescent. Did you kill the monsters on the way, or… disabled them somehow?”

“I killed those I needed to kill in order to go through safely. They’re really tough.”

“They’re only vulnerable to fire,” the wood mage said. “Messes with their regeneration somehow. Hitomi managed to keep all of our weapons coated during most of the fights, and Frida had a small flamethrower we used. I think she ran out though.”

“I assume you didn’t bring ammo?” Lanky asked.

“No, sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“But then how did you do it?” wood mage asked.

“Well. I… hit them really hard twice in the same spot. And that worked.”

The three soldiers remained silent.

“Riel. Never punch me please.”

“But that means we can go!” Wood mage insisted. “We can search for her!”

“Williams, please give me a moment.”

“I could use a summary of what happened,” Nestra told them. “Short version.”

“Well, we started off from the portal—” Lanky began.

“After the worm pushed you off the cliff,” Nestra amended.

“Oh, right. Well. We landed. Somehow.”

“We c-crashed down.”

Lanky sighed. Hitomi removed her helmet, revealing a sharply angled face. Her eyes would not meet Nestra’s own when she reached for the energy bars at the bottom of the medicine bag. Williams revealed himself next: an entirely shaved anglo with a grim expression. Lanky was last though he didn’t eat yet. Nestra judged he was of Indian or Pakistani descent, a rarity in Threshold. His gray eyes searched Nestra’s pupils before giving up.

“You met the jumpers? That’s what we call them. Okay, so we fought them off while getting away from the cliff — we expected the worm to follow. Unfortunately, the fight attracted a sub-guardian. Some sort of charging creature with two prongs on its maw. Large as a truck. Fast for its size.”

“Really resilient. Even Hitomi’s help with coating didn’t do it.”

“I was tiiiiired. I can do it now. Can.”

“Williams, you explain,” Lanky finished before shoving the entire bar in his mouth and chewing furiously.

“What Dasari forgot to mention is that we were still being attacked by jumpers. Frida ordered us to retreat to one side while she led the sub-guardian the other way. She was… she is strength aligned. She used the large one to crush the others. We split like she ordered and then we found this place. We followed protocol.”

All three looked at Nestra to see if she would throw their guilt back in their face. Their squad leader had decided that this was the best course of action, and she’d probably been right. She was also probably dead by now.

“We’ll find her,” Nestra said.

One way or the other.

“By protocol, y-you have command,” Hitomi reminded her.

Her mom had once told Nestra it was because the rescued were usually not in the best state of mind. Most of the time they’d lost people.

“I lead and take the attention, you follow and save your strength. The guardian’s probably going to be a piece of work. First we find Frida, then, depending, we either head back up or we hunker down a little more. Are you ready to go?”

Something pinged on Lanky, so Dasari’s armor.

“It’s the emergency check. Huh, a bit earlier than it should be,”

Huh.

Nestra must have reacted because Williams’ eyes zeroed on her.

“Crescent?”

“It’s nothing. Just… outer world problems. It doesn’t matter now. Let’s go.”

***

The trip back was strangely uneventful barring a small version of the whippy crystal trying its luck. By then, Nestra’s body was as strong and resilient as it would get without ascending, so much of the excess energy was bleeding into the mana part which, as usual, lagged behind. Her ice and physical resistances also kept increasing until she felt like she could basically shrug off machine gun rounds. It made her feel a bit weird.

The humans never noticed Sashimi. The void shark swam above them in contemptuous silence and they never spotted her on a background of starless sky. She was a shadow on a shadow. Virtually invisible.

They found the sub-guardian at the edge of a cliff on the other side of the plateau. It was dead, brain melted through its open mouth by the last embers of a shoulder-mounted flamethrower. They found Frida impaled on its two prongs as well. As far as Nestra could tell, the woman had allowed the creature to kill her so she could land that perfect attack, her only chance at getting even. Nestra had never said it aloud but the soldier had been doomed the moment she decided to lead it away from her squad. Her helmet rested by her bloody gauntlet, removed after her short–lived victory.

Frida had not been a beautiful woman. Most gleams were pleasant to look at by pure virtue of having mana and the raw magnetism that came with it. Not her though, and yet, fallen here with icy crystals forming a tiara on her mousy hair, there was an undeniable nobility to her peaceful features. Like looking at the tomb effigy of a warrior queen, her master trophy still lying on her chest.

Hitomi swore softly in Japanese. Nestra grabbed her sword. With a powerful swipe, she cracked both fangs piercing the fallen raider’s chest at the root.

“We’re bringing her back.”

***

It was difficult to retrieve Frida’s remains because she was already frozen solid. Williams ended up holding her in a princess carry through the body bag, a task that left him vacillating for a moment. Nestra needled them so they wouldn’t think of the dead right away. She needed them focused though she stayed ahead of the group, killing ambushers on the path as they returned to the tunnel. Sashimi was left behind hungry, for once. As expected, the passage led up through the mountains, first narrow and then increasingly larger, with several intersections. Nestra just picked the opening with the highest mana concentration every time. Sometimes, small worms burst out from tiny openings at around face level. The first time, Nestra dodged only to realize they just tried to crawl back into another tunnel, which was a pain so she started just grabbing them mid air, smashing them into the rock and then peeling their jaws off with void claws. The three soldiers were not defenseless either, with Williams coating his squadmates’ armor with thorny growths that resisted the cold.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do it to you. You’re not wearing the proper kind of armor.”

Nestra shrugged. She didn’t want her skin symbiote to get jealous anyway.

It took a surprisingly long time for what Nestra expected to actually happen. The walls of their current tunnel started shaking.

“It’s the large one,” Nestra said.

Here, there was no room to dodge.

“Stand back,” Nestra ordered. “Hitomi, you said you’re good enough to use the fire coating again?”

“Yes!”

“Ok, I’ll slow it down, then you people hit the head with everything you have.”

“Understood!”

Nestra moved ahead near a bend. Pebbles danced at her feet. Planting them, she activated immovable.

“Come on. I’m at my strongest and most resilient.”

The sub-guardian arrived almost by surprise. There was nothing in front of her, then she was being pushed back with her armored toes digging grooves in the ground. The worm was much stronger than her and it was still pushing. It was only slowing down.

It took all of her focus to stay standing. The hungry maw right in front of her face provided ample motivation, however. And then there was heat. It brushed against her shoulder, a sensation she’d almost forgotten could exist.

“Now!”

The humans struck the head together in a rush of blows. Hitomi used a staff, Williams a mace, and Dasari a spear. The crystal armor that covered the beast’s head practically exploded under their combined blow after briefly bubbling. The weirdest thing was how the remaining temperature just prevented the ice from reforming. It didn’t even make any sense, but she could see the crystals crawl and then twist, their shapes lost. This universe had forgotten fire was a thing.

The worm’s flesh was revealed. It also slowed down, perhaps shocked by the new pain it might have never felt before. In that brief moment of weakness, while Nestra managed to get her bearing, she took one step back and charged arcane strike. She and the worm attacked at the same time. Her blow cleaved the head in two while she was propelled back only for three pairs of arms to catch her.

“We got you,” Dasari said.

A monstrous rush of power filled Nestra. Her ice and physical resistances were instantly maxed out to the limit of what her C-class body could manage. As before, the power bled through everything else, feeding the mana sun in the center of her planetarium. She felt… very strong, and very resilient. Not as fast as she’d like though. There would be time to improve that later.

Williams quietly picked up the body bag he’d left to the side. Nestra approached the body, then retrieved a large core from the base of the brain stem. She turned as an afterthought.

“Anyone wants to contest my loot?”

The soldiers shook their heads.

“W — what now? Passage is blocked.”

“We crawl by.”

Nestra moved alongside the corpse, pushing it away from her as she went. Fortunately, it was still mostly a tube so she managed to clear enough space for the soldiers to move through in their bulky armors.

“You have a strength affinity, right?” Dasari asked her.

She turned and glared. This wasn’t the right time for conversations.

“Sorry…”

The opaque helmet dipped.

“What my idiot friend is trying to say is that we’ve never seen a C-class as strong as you.”

“It’s not the time,” Nestra replied. “You are tired and wounded. Focus.”

She still had to drag these people out alive. The mood soured, and she realized she might have made a mistake. With nothing to distract them, the soldiers’ attention kept returning to the corpse of their friend. She wasn’t sure what to do about it though. After a short while, they reached an open space.

“Is that… liquid water?”

It was, seemingly gathering around an obelisk that kept it flowing despite the freezing temperatures. Nestra approached. Her danger sense remained eerily quiet. Meanwhile, Williams had taken a strange gizmo from one of his pockets, which he dipped into the water.

“Says here it’s drinkable and completely sterile,” he whispered.

Nestra removed a cup from her hidden space. She had a drink. It was very nice, incredibly mana rich. A boon for the gleams who preferred to improve by meditation. That gave her an idea, a bit risky but…

They were not in such a rush anymore. And the water would help the soldiers recover. She could feel that the guardian was very close too, from… actually she wasn’t sure how she could tell. Something about space? But the exit was definitely just ahead.

“Take ten to recover. This is it. Also, if you could take a few samples from the weird creatures growing on the wall…”

“Oh yeah,” Williams said absently. “That would be a good money bonus…”

“Maybe Frida’s sister…”

“Yeah. Ok, yeah.”

Nestra didn’t tell them not to touch the obelisk. It looked weird and a part of her told her sleeping next to it might be a very bad idea. Still, it should be fine for such a short time. She found a nearby recess and turned.

“Look, hmm. I need to transform back for ten minutes or so.”

She didn’t have to but this place was just perfect.

“We’ll cover your back,” Dasari assured her.

“Need anything?” Hitomi added.

“No, just a moment. If you could, you know, not look.”

“Of course.”

Nestra moved into the small recess, barely an extension of the cave. She wasn’t sure if it was a good idea but… the opportunity was too good. This was the perfect spot for an ice user.

With a bit of apprehension, she put her human mask on. Immediately, the ambient ice mana made her gasp, bypassing even her natural resistance. This place was… cold. Not just the temperature but…

Her eyes traveled up, towards the ceiling. Down here were remnants of life clinging to long-dead rocks orbiting around… she wasn’t sure. Up there, no stars.

No stars. No stars. No stars. She gasped, panic roaring through her veins. She was in civilian clothes here but it didn’t matter because nothing could protect her from the fact there were no stars in the sky. Not a one.

This… this universe was dead. Entirely dead. Every last piece of fusion had long been extinguished. She and the raiders were killing remnants of remnants, the last living creatures in an infinite expanse of cold nothing. How? How long did it take for a universe to perish?

“You ok out there?”

Nestra tried to slow her breathing. She failed.

“Shush. She can’t speak, or it might reveal her identity. Eyes front.”

“Sorry.”

Idiots. Idiots who didn’t get it. This was just a raid for them. Even their grief made them miss the point of this world. They saw it as just a small portal that came out of nowhere and would return to nowhere but Ashzii Nestra could just walk to the edge and push through into a dark eternity of nothing, possibly with no way back.

This was what ice was really about, in the end.

Nestra breathed deep. This universe reminded her of one of the many things mankind elected to ignore so everyone could sleep at night… and it was the right choice. There was nothing she could do to prevent the end of everything. This wasn’t the scope of her existence as a single person, whether human or Aszhii. Her only real option was to live and make use of the resources the portal world had put at her disposal. Acceptance dulled the terror. She breathed again, then settled to meditate.

The cold was all around her. She took a sip of water and then it was inside of her too. It poured into her core, chilling her chest at a metaphysical level until she shivered. This portal world was showing her what cold meant. Really meant. It was the final state of entropy, where energy was so diffused over such an infinite space that it might as well not exist. It was perfect immobility. It was the End. And it was inevitable. Absolutely, completely inevitable.

Her core pulsed with energy, the electric part of it fading in the background. Nestra was on the verge of crystallizing something but she was a double affinity gleam, and she’d neglected electricity. That was fine, however. She understood now how to fight as ice. The Zero Aura was the true embodiment of it.

After ten minutes, human Nestra opened her eyes, flush with energy. Crystals had formed over her skin. They cracked and tinkled when she stood up. Her breath puffed in the frigid air. It was time to end this. Assuming her true form again, she stepped out.

“You ready?” she asked.

They nodded quietly.

“Then let’s go.”

***

The guardian was a tree made of ice. Its limbs hit with rushing strength, leaving behind seed pods with homing functions. Nestra didn’t want to see what dying to them would do. She jumped over a massive limb and moved in towards the trunk, near the still burning part. A powerful strike peeled more off the bark then she was out, dodging more attacks.

It was really easy with the humans distracting the guardian. They were pretty good too.

“Left side, left side!”

Hitomi’s shoulder gun roared and the seeds burst in crystalline shards. Her staff slammed down at the middle of a limb, cracking it enough that Dasari finished it off.

Well ok, but, really, was their plan to shear every branch until they could safely access the trunk?

“One more blast?” she suggested.

The squad fought the three tendrils focused on them with a level of competence that showed why they’d survived despite the worm’s surprise attack. Their thorn armor protected them well. Hitomi used a lull in the flow of battle to aim her staff forward. A spray of fire crossed the room, warming the air and shaking the tree into confusion. It landed on the trunk with good accuracy. On any other guardian this level it would have done very little but here, the last of the bark fell to reveal a pulsing growth. Nestra dodged several attacks, moving to the side in a predictable feint. The tree was slow and felt a bit dumb so it fell for it, large limbs following after the running Aszhii. As she reached the wall, she used it as a springboard, jumped towards the oncoming limbs and then warped through them with momentum, landing near the gaping breach on the trunk. She struck several times before the tree could even react, exposing the core in a torrent of white ichor. A branch reached to the ceiling, ready to squash her.

She had time.

Nestra grabbed the core and pulled it with a grunt, tearing flesh and spraying lymph or sap or whatever that white shit was all over her symbiote. It finally gave way with a wet squelch. She pushed back with momentum. The branch slammed on the ground where she used to be an instant later.

Power filled her. The portal opened, and the altar surged, showing a pile of blue gems. She’d never seen the like.

The three soldiers stood there, unsure on what to do, or so Nestra thought but Dasari spoke.

“We… are actually going to make it?”

“Never seen anyone move like this,” Williams whispered.

Williams gave a shaky sigh while Hitomi pointed a finger at the body they’d left in a corner.

“I I I—”

“I’ll carry her, don’t worry,” Williams said. “The prize?”

Nestra pocketed the core for later. She also grabbed most of the gems, then after a moment of reflection, gave the soldiers half. It was all hers by right, but… in MaxSec, they used prizes from raids for the families of the dead. The army probably did the same.

“You take it.”

“We don’t…”

“Take it. Frida’s family can use it.”

“Her sister. Yes. Yes,” Hitomi said.

They gathered everything, then it was time to return. Before doing so, Nestra paused.

“Look. There are probably people waiting for me outside,” Nestra said.

The soldiers exchanged a glance. She still couldn’t read them with their helmets on, but they looked surprised.

“You know what Hunnigan’s doing. I asked the door sentry to do a check half an hour early if someone showed up. He did it, so… I might have to make a break for it. You guys are exhausted and you might get in trouble so don’t help. I can handle it on my own.”

The three exchanged another glance and for the first time, Nestra heard defiance instead of respect in their voice.

“We’ll be the judges of that,” Dasari replied.

***

There was a fucking IFV outside. Nestra recognized the same kind of model that razed District Fifteen during the gang purge. It came equipped with a heavy machine gun pointing menacingly towards her. The team that had come to wait for her were augs, also. About two dozens. They were a bit twitchy, which hinted at reflex implants.

These were not police officers. These were mercenaries. Corpo goons for hire. Unfortunately for them, they weren’t shielded against mana. They still surrounded her in the small park clearing where the portal stood. It made them confident.

The squad of soldiers appeared behind Nestra. They took position behind her to support. Nestra could feel their mana flare. The aug leader was a large woman with an ugly smile. She would have towered over human Nestra. Looking up her true self’s abyssal mask, however, her smug annoyance deflated a bit.

“Sure took your sweet time,” the woman said.

“Who are you and what the fuck do you want?” Nestra replied without preamble.

The woman’s scowl turned into a grin.

“We’re here to bring you in.”

“Where is your Shinran’s signed warrant and your badge of office as member of the —”

“You know Hunnigan’s running the show, girlie. We’re officially auxiliaries for the purpose of law enforcement — or whatever is written on the nice document I got. Now resist if you want. I’ve always wanted to tag a freak.”

Nestra searched her memory. Ah yes. A slur for transformation gleams.

“It looks like you’re trying something very illegal on a member of Threshold’s armed forces,” Williams said behind her.

“Don— don’t. Mistake,” Hitomi said.

“Wha wha what?” the auged woman mocked.

Nestra could tell when the three soldiers went cold. It was Dasari who spoke next.

“Hitomi. Throw them the book.”

“Article 17-A paragraph 5. A member of the armed forces in operation must stop a crime if it doesn’t interfere with their current objective,” the woman obliged.

She sounded livid.

“I’m not coming with you,” Nestra added. “But yes we’ve all had a long week and you’re corpo brown shirts being quite rude so go ahead. I need you to act first.”

The aug smiled. She grabbed a stun baton. Bright security model 5, Nestra recognized.

“Forget that,” Hitomi added, voice hissing through her helmet. “You’re interfering with a military operation. Move or I will fucking shoot you,” she finished.

“You won’t, you good little dogs,” the aug laughed dismissively.

So Hitomi shot her. The shoulder mounted gun roared and the aug’s hand disappeared in a cloud of meat and shrapnel.

Nestra had to admit, she hadn’t seen that one coming.

All hell broke loose. A scream of agony saturated the IFV’s speakers. Nestra smashed her fist into the dumbstruck aug’s nose, then she jumped onto the next. He used a reflex module to shoot Nestra, but it was standard enough that she was able to place her blade across her chest in anticipation. Her next punch cracked the aug’s jaw. A third managed to shoot her at point blank range. Rifle bullets hit Nestra in the ribs, flattening against her symbiote. She felt the scalding tips brush the bone but it was more annoying than truly painful. The masked aug looked really surprised when she grabbed her helmet.

“It tickled,” she informed him with a smile.

She threw him at the IFV which hadn’t started shooting at all. Meanwhile, the soldiers were fighting off the augs using the last dregs of their mana. It looked like everyone had tried to avoid killing each other so far. Dasari was bleeding, though.

Nestra caught two retreating augs with her fists, catching a few other bullets on the way. Nothing penetrated.

A muscular form jumped down from a nearby building, holding an unconscious aug. The three soldiers aimed at him immediately.

“Wait wait. He’s with me. Thanks for showing up, Valerian.”

The handsome blond man nodded. He looked bored in his unmarked armor.

“But a pain spell? Really?”

“I was going to use a sleep spell but that bitch threw me off. Did you know I had to spend the whole day with my family to sign papers? And since when can you tank 10mm rounds like they’re nothing?”

“Valerian, cut it down. They lost someone.”

With the adrenaline gone and the danger passed, the soldiers sort of collapsed. At least they were safe… Nestra felt fine. The mystical cold experience she’d had stayed with her, for now, reminding her to take things with some distance. The portal sentry, Sergeant Yu, used the calm to approach from a nearby building.

“Reinforcements are on the way. I didn’t expect you to be so… proactive,” the man said.

“I’ll check on them,” Valerian said, pointing at the groaning augs. “Don’t want anyone to bleed out before they get processed. The soldiers need help as well.”

That left Nestra standing there. Hunnigan had done it now. He had gone directly against Shinran’s rules by force. She had done it too, by resisting arrest. Maybe she was in trouble.

“Oh, and another thing. Shinran just requested an emergency council session. Hunnigan has been impeached and there is a warrant out for him.”

“Huh,” Nestra replied, very eloquently. “Couldn’t he have done this before I attacked auxiliaries?”