The next morning, Prism parted his fog at the eastern entrance to the park to let in the five diplomatic escorts Gusa sent. One man in black and gold combat armor led the group in a lockstep march from their golden plane. The plane was slender with wings that folded up like origami. The craft had flown in a bit too quietly to be anything other than Kingdom technology.

  Four of the men wore the flowing blood-red robes of high-ranking Royalist officers. The robes featured intricate gold trim and long strips of cloth that hung down from various sections of the garments. The Queen’s golden hawthorn emblem sat at the center of each of their robed chests. The men, brown and Sguvan, had chiseled faces adorned with a variety of gold jewelry.

  “That man in front!” Srell pointed at the large screen hanging at the eastern edge of the guerillas’ sprawling camp. Wooden cabins sat empty nearby as guerrillas with big guns silently stood guard over the area. “Isn’t that the guy we duped back at Getla Base?” Srell asked Leanna.

  Ursun, Srell, Lorias, and Leanna watched the diplomatic procession on the screen while Prism created a tunnel through the fog that connected them and the Royalists. Prism traced his right forefinger in the air like a flittering butterfly, using the opaque tunnel to gain as much information about the men as possible.

  “Yes it is…but he’s dressed as a Constable…” Leanna said.

  “Looks like their mission was successful.” Lorias said. He looked at Ursun, who did his best not to shrug.

  “That was a real tragedy. Getla Base had been around for such a long time. I hear that the Destructors have been attacking Surmil more than ever since its best line of defense is gone.” Mela said. She stood between Wadaw and RED-1. Leanna looked down as if praying, with eyes that suddenly became sullen for but a brief moment.

  Wadaw had asked Mela to stay within the center of the camp with the elders to protect her identity as a Gusa-aligned businesswoman. However, news had arrived earlier this morning of the Toto Inn’s ransacking by the Sguvan military. Its staff had been arrested and likely tortured, though some had escaped. Mela was now a fugitive.

  “The fact that Gusa is using the Royalists as a “neutral party” is insane.” Kitra said. She stood beside Wadaw with a rifle in her hands.

  “You should know, former Royalist.” Wadaw chided her.

  “You bombed the academy before they made it official. Don’t you remember, old man?” Kitra said. She gave the side of his head a hard poke.

  “In any case, I’ll bring your complaints up to the Singular directly when I see him, Lady Kitra.” Wadaw said facetiously and bowed.

  “We’ll make that fucker pay.” Srell pointed up at the black-armored Constable on the screen and said with a venomous hatred. “If he and the rest of those Destructor thugs hadn’t fucked with Surmil, Jaik would still be with us.”

  Ursun and Leanna glanced at one another without saying anything. They both frowned slightly as they recalled the previous day’s surreal events.

  “Why haven’t you told the others about what happened in the dreamscape?” Prism shared privately with Ursun and Leanna.

  “It would disrupt our mission focus.” Ursun shared without looking at Prism. “Lorias and Srell took Jaik’s death a lot harder than it initially seemed.”

  “And telling anyone that Eizavoba is real and that it poses an existential threat to all of humanity…” Leanna shook her head and shared.

  “Sheer madness.” Ursun said aloud.

  RED-2 watched the others from atop the rooftops of the nearby cabins. Utcao observed the approach of the Royalists through the scope of his sniper rifle. The Royalists could only see thick, fluffy white walls that would make some feel claustrophobic. The wall in front of them moved forward with them, slowly creating a path for them. The faces of the robed men and their leader were nearly expressionless.

  “These queenies look tough, even in those silly outfits.” Utcao shared with RED-1, Wadaw, and RED-2. He also shared what he saw through his scope.

  “Those “silly outfits” are powerful suits of armor with prehensile strips called “pteryges” that can pierce and tear through more conventional armor. I’ve seen a a man ripped in half by those things when he tried to stab a Royalist officer in the back.” Wadaw shared, along with the memory he was talking about. It was a gruesome scene that yet again reminded everyone of the tech imbalance they faced.

  “Speaking of queenie tech, where’s this “good friend” you kept mentioning?” Lorias asked Wadaw.

  “Oh, he’s probably still in Zazi. He isn’t a fighter, per se. His work is too important for him to get identified as one of us.“ Wadaw said. He gave Lorias and Ursun a coy smile while keeping Mela out of his sight.

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  “Sounds like you’re planning around us losing.” Ursun said.

  “You’ve done the same, I’m sure.” Wadaw rebuffed.

  Ursun nodded and pointed the muzzle of his PAW into the air as he rested the barrel of the weapon against his red-armored chest. “There are too many unknowns. We do what we must,” he said.

  "And you're sure that Wadaw's nanotech won't be detected by these guys?" Leanna asked Prism telepathically.

  "Absolutely sure. I used a beefed-up version of the modification magic that let me get through the Etrysian gene-gates without a problem. To their scans, Wadaw looks like a plain-ole human who wears a mask made of simple polymers." Prism shared.

  The six Royalists walked down a wooded trail into the view of Ursun and the others. It was strange to the commander to see such dangerous enemies seemingly oblivious to his nearby presence. Prism opened a final hole in the fog a yard from himself so that the Royalists weren’t surprised by an abrupt exit in front of his armed allies. Once they stepped out of the occluding vapors, the Royalists stopped in front of Prism.

  “Prism.” The Constable said dryly. His thin, brown lips barely moved when he spoke. His eyes scanned the small spherical area of only a few dozen meters that he could see before he said, “I’m…”

  “Rhonan.” Prism said in a tone mocking the Constable’s own. Prism saw the man’s eyebrow twitch ever so slightly.

  Prism looked Rhonan up and down after briefly scanning his mind. Prism noticed that Rhonan’s right hand was completely gold. Prism knew that It was one of the cybernetic upgrades that the man had been awarded with by the Queen, but that was the extent of what he could glean from the man’s mind without doing damage to Rhonan’s brain.

  “Where is the representative?” Rhonan asked. His mean, brick-like face looked ugly and unkind to Prism.

  “I’m here!” Wadaw shouted with a playful wave to Rhonan. Wadaw walked over to Prism’s side and placed an elbow on Prism’s shoulder. Wadaw gave a cutesy salute and a wink to the Constable while saying, “Ready to support the True Twins Gospel with all my might!”

  Rhonan tilted his head slightly at Wadaw’s silliness. “And you agree to be accompanied by RED-1?” Rhonan pointed at the five members of the mercenary team he spoke of.

  “I do.” Wadaw said more seriously.

  A golden line appeared upon Rhonan’s face that ran from his right eye down to his thick jawline. The line glowed before the man’s skin returned to its light-brown appearance. “I’ll take all of you to the Ewada, then,” he said in his deep voice.

  Prism heard his allies chattering over their telepathic link about the risks associated with boarding a ship with a Constable and four well-armed Royalist officers. He listened to Leanna and Srell’s bickering, the rude exchanges between Ursun and Ruz, and the sarcasm of Lorias and Cril. Wadaw sighed at the arguments and leaned the side of his head onto Prism’s.

  “That’ll be fine.” Prism said to Rhonan before sharing, “We’ll be fine,” over the link.

  Prism heard his allies’ voices quieten in his head. The rest of RED-1 walked over to him, standing around he and Wadaw like a team of superheroes posing for a comic book cover.

  "We'll be ready at a moment's notice if anything goes wrong out there." Kitra shouted to RED-1 and Wadaw. "And we will know. Prism has made sure of that."

  “Lead the way,” said Wadaw to the Royalists. He turned around for a brief moment to share a meaningful nod with Kitra and Mela before walking with RED-1 behind the Royalists through the tunnel of fog.

  They were all soon aboard the golden aircraft, sitting in its transport bay. RED-1 and Wadaw sat in comfortable black seats along one wall while the Royalists sat along the opposite wall. Each of their eyes scrutinized the others’ as a standing Royalist pilot dressed in a red jumpsuit powered on the ship from the openly-accessible cockpit. Prism saw a simple golden headband wrapped around the back of the pilot’s bald, dark-brown head. The backwards headband glistened with tiny white circuits as the pilot caused the craft’s wings to unfold. The ship’s passengers could barely fill the ship’s movements when it began to rise into the air.

  “Remember us, queenie?” Srell said to Rhonan with bared teeth. “We’re the ones that tricked your stupid ass.”

  Rhonan, who sat across from Prism, smirked at Srell before fixing his eyes back onto the elementeitan. Srell growled and lurched forward at the Constable, but was yanked back to his seat by Ursun’s powerful grip on the neck of Srell’s armor just as one of the robed Royalists sent a sharpened pteryges that stopped short of Srell’s nose.

  “Stand down!” Ursun yelled to his team as they began to raise their weapons at the Royalists.

  Prism saw the prehensile red and gold strips of pteryges on the Royalist robes begin to dance in front of them like snakes slithering through water. When his teammates lowered their PAWs back into their laps and relaxed in their seats, Prism saw Rhonan's gold facial mark glow. Rhonan's subordinates relaxed their pteryges, causing them to fall limply against their robes.

  “We’re here for your protection. Try and keep that in mind.” Rhonan said. He smiled smugly at Srell, who in turn bared his teeth at Rhonan like a wild animal.

  Prism expanded his vision to the exterior of the plane and watched the landscape quickly pass by beneath them. He shared what he saw with his teammates but kept their observations from his own mind so that he could make his own without influence. He looked back at the park that the True Twins made their base at, still covered in a thick magical fog that would endure for several days without him. Prism then turned his attention to the sprawling verdant cityscape that stretched out across the horizon.

  Grey structures seemingly made of marbled blocks were built into large dark-barked trees that grew in height the closer they got to the center of the city. Dozens of slate towers that had looked white at a distance, with perfectly smooth sides and the same marbling as the smaller buildings, stood equidistant from one another in a grid that spanned the inner part of Zazi. Like the trees, the towers grew taller and taller closer to the city center. One massive slate building jutted from Zazi's core along with the tree that spiraled around it. Both the tree and the building it was wrapped around stood at over 300 meters tall, and both had a massive vein of gold running along the height of them.

  The flying speedsub that Prism had seen fly into Zazi a day earlier gleamed in the sunlight as it loomed over the city. Its front section was connected to a small dock just below the flat roof of Zazi’s central tower, just as dirigibles would dock in lower-tech worlds that Prism had been to. The golden airship was held in place by what looked like massive tree branches that had wrapped around the ship’s exterior.

  The base of the tower was propped up on four massive slanted pillars about 50 meters tall. A crystalline shrine lavishly decorated with golden statues of the Queen sat at the center of the pillars beneath the tower, acting as a gateway to the depths of the city where the Ewada rested.

  "This doesn't look like the capital of an evil technological power." Prism shared. He opened his mind to messages from the others again while he observed the city's wide, dark-grey streets that were empty of both vehicles and pedestrians.

  "Even Gusa hasn't been able to tear down centuries of naturalistic Sguvan culture. These trees and buildings existed long before he did." Wadaw shared. His gaze turned to the large green valley south of the city that sat at the foot of the Central Amagadis.

  "Zazi, Nestled Within Nature." Ursun shared, quoting a well-known ancient poem. “A cradle that cultivates community and culture. A sanctum, soul-soothing, spoken of in scripture.” Prism was always pleasantly surprised when the commander revealed a nugget of ?ba’s rich history to him.

  “It’s strange seeing a city with over 20 million inhabitants so empty-looking,” shared Leanna. “The government certainly couldn’t have evacuated them all so quickly.”

  “These fanatics might’ve all killed themselves at Gusa’s command. We might be flying over a giant tomb.” Srell shared. Leanna leaned over in her seat and frowned at him. She paid Rhonan’s head-tilt at her sudden gesture no mind.

  “They're living in the seat of Gusa’s power; their outward obedience is non-negotiable.” Lorias shared.

  “There are True Twins down there right now rooting for our victory. Don't worry, friends; my people are merely protecting themselves until they know which way the winds are blowing." Wadaw shared.

  "I truly hope that's case," shared Prism. He looked down at the empty streets with a pained expression. "20 million people...that's a lot of hostages..." Prism kept the morbid thought to himself.

  The golden ship glided into the heart of the quiet city on gilded wings. It was a silent harbinger of a new era.