Z'ress Hun'ana.
[Bardic Paladin, Valkyrie General. Step 4, Summoning.]
[Artificing Warlock, MycoMithral Drow Assimilator. Step 4, Bondage.]
[Sorcerous Witch, ArcaTech Veterinarian. Step 4, Familiar Augmentation.]
***
{ZAE V3.0… Boot Up Sequence Initiated.}
{TG BIOS… Initializing POST.}
{Running Diagnostic… 16%… 25%… 42%… 59%… 90%… 100% }
{POST Complete.}
{Connections Established.}
{Connections Encrypted}
{Loaded Profile: Abyssal Emissary, Z'ress Hun'ana.}
{Launching ArionAssimilator.Exe.}
—-
I awoke from my trance in a state of curiosity. Z'rynda, Z'benna, and Z'rret were with me still, and more, finished with their diagnostics. Yet before us was Deeke, meditating with his three younger siblings nearby. And around us was an environment I never witnessed before.
While my sensors began reaching, my hardware began scanning and comparing the humans I had seen so often with the humans I had seen so rarely. They had similarities, humans born on the surface and those reborn in the dark.
Humans were rugged and outright crude sometimes. Yet, more than any other species, they were bursting with potential. Any human could become anything far faster than any elf could. A dumb farmer could become the bane of a country after one traumatic experience. The history of our God was a testament to that fact. But not all humans were worthy of such things.
Both above and below, that was true.
Yet, they were so different all the same. The dying of the light in the eyes of those born in darkness made them rage when their freedom was won and they saw light once more. They joined the Legions as agents of destructive liberation- agents like those who felled Zimysta, thus they had to be tempered and guided with great care so as to not lose themselves to emotion. Conversely, the undying light found in the eyes of those born on the surface made them rage when freedom was threatened; whether that be theirs or another's.
Then there was the surface itself. Unsatisfactory, was my opinion of it. A realm without boundaries, no limits to altitude or broadness to horizon- a recipe that birthed unrequited dreams; a belief that they belonged everywhere and could do anything, be anything, accomplish anything. It was a belief worthy of the Nox's Legions alone.
That recipe was what gave my Divine Mother the strength to dream and thus pray for salvation. Thus, that drive made her rage when her prayers were answered.
Just as she did below, on the surface, our Divine Mother raged. Thus giving rise to the humans before me; augmented like the rest of us. And yet they appeared like any other human. Dark skin, black hair either braided, tied neatly, or shaven. Young, being in the single digits, yet already versed in the chivalrous, clerical, and monastic texts.
They- Cait, Barry, and Al- were images of what would have become of Deeke had his condition been not so severe. Yet, when Iris found him, his stomach had been impaled and his jaw was shattered; as was the back of his skull.
Now, his skull was incorporated into a hood of fibrous metal, his mechanical orifice was fitted with a detachable mouth he hardly wore, and the vacant hole in his stomach became the engine for his power; The Monastic Way of the Machine.
Being in a state of deep meditation, I turned the breadth of my focus toward the many connected systems in this space to do the same as I did with Deeke- compare this island, floating in the sky, with what it once was.
Both then and now, it was a small refuge for us augmented. Back then, it was the augmented and mangled husk of House Hun'ana, since filled with mountains of items deemed worthless from both Shujen below and the Deathworld floating above. Discarded tools; broken weapons; rotting carcasses; fetid food. Abandoned equipment. Both sustenance and resources, those items were. Though they would soon become much more, according to the archives.
As the other units in the troupe had Umas of their own, so too would we. Ours, however, would be different. Like the Brood Hearts of our twin dominion, our domains would be manufactured around our beasts. But whereas the Brood Mothers used Lady Reina's Brood Hearts to form stationary domains in which to grow their children, we would raise mobile domains from our Divine Mother's Rings of Power and use them as lairs for the divine creatures we bonded with.
And so it was. This mound of metal was imbued with such a stone and was transformed into a floating volcano with a smooth, fabricated bottom, surrounded by a ring of varying climates. East and west were wet and dry, north and south were cold and hot, and what sat between served as a harsh mix of nearly every biome one could imagine. But what truly made the land special was the interior.
Surrounding the blinding blue core was a vast factory of divine proportions, powered by the heart of the volcano as much as the arcana surrounding it. Divine through the grace of our Goddess, who gifted the sprites the intelligence to match humans and the means to merge with the machines throughout. And with its glorious power, it summoned, and it forged.
The augmented life of our Divine Mother's domain emerged from that glorious light in packaged, dormant states atop an assembly line that carried them through the tower, outfitting and upgrading them with the tools and energies they'd need to bond to us as familiars and propagate.
Ants surrounded with pellets of Aqsa's malleable titanium; termites surrounded by ki; gorillas were given Potters filled with witch tools, monkeys, Raphew and tinkering tools for gadgets; birds had their nests littered with synthesizers, voice boxes, and augmented seeds; horses gained Gaheris' shifting bones and changing sinew.
There were no beasts for us, though. We, and Daulery, for no augmented beasts were found in the divine realm to fit our station; and Daulery's family had merged with their fungus before we entered Eotrom. As such, we had to make our own.
And so, we scattered ourselves around this island and the lands below as the tower went to work, searching for offerings of flesh and metal to give to the great factory in order to perfect our bodies and our bonds.
And so, we- me and my subordinates returned from the surface carrying 'horse' carcasses, black like the undying night, long dead but kept from rotting through the holy energies of death present in the land; we took the sacred owls of our God, felled only by the natural processes in Eotrom; we took our bodies, divinely augmented, and stood before our divine mother while our companions wriggled themselves into the assembly line to lie beside their packaged beasts.
"This is our headquarters- our home. Ice Mountain." Iris' voice boomed throughout the superstructure, as if the metals themselves sang her words. "Deeke, Aqsa, Gaheris, Erja, Margo, and Kane. Because of your roles in the Headquarters Division and the fact that many of you have families, you will remain on call and go about your duties from here.
"Mostly everyone else is part of the Tech Division, with Elysia, Kai, Alex, and Elias in the Software Regiment. You four will remain in the Cuttleship in your immaterial forms, switching between there, here, and elsewhere for the advancement of ICE. Similarly, Zalan and Valentine are in the Peripheral Regiment, and will remain in the Octo-Wagon.
"The Hardware Regiment, Oliva and Callie, will remain on Ice Mountain for now. You two will be with me when we resume our travels, along with those of House Arion."
I stood taller when she spoke our name. And when she turned to face me, I bowed as regally as I could, for it was our moment.
"You four are my Generals, Paladins, Valkyries, and Knights." Iris continued in the cold, analytical tone granted by her bardic perks. "Marines of mycelium mithral. Drow. Apex predators of my Technica Dominion, blessed by the ArcaTech as much as me. Thus, his essence has birthed the grand design for the Arion. Divinely swift, exceptionally wise, and ruthlessly lethal."
"We thank you, Divine Mother, and the Dominion, for the grace of the blessed machine." Z'rynda responded in prayer while I heaved my carcass over shoulder and began the sacred walk. "We have cast aside our pestilential flesh and decaying bone for the arcane crystal and divine metal, and devoted ourselves to the path of the holy warrior with neither grimace nor complaint, for this life in which we have been blessed is eternal."
Two steps in and the carcass dropped to my feet, for my hands held my spear vertically in salute. "To drive forward the March of Progress and guide the Legions' Valkyrie's in the God-Emperor's name, we bind ourselves to these warrior beasts of burden in mind, body, spirit, and soul!"
The blessed tower answered our call with a pulse of its iris before the ceiling shifted, opening to reveal a series of metallic arms, articulating toward us with thin veils pulled taut in their splayed claws.
Wrapped in a thin membrane, our arcane wells drained as we and our corpses were pulled through the assembly line to witness the great processes around us churned into motion.
Through precise injections, arcane and divine stone, flora, gasses, liquids, metals, and solids were imbued into the forsaken flesh of our sacrifices, liquefying them into a virulent blue slurry that filled our capsules wholly, stripping and burning our bodies to their basic frames before building and upgrading new parts and hardware.
We went into standby and even rebooted, yet continued a passive stream of data prayers through our slumber and awoke facing the light at the end of a canal.
Once again, my life had begun anew. But unlike the first time, no explanation preceded it, and I made my decision prior to this most-sacred initialization ritual.
I knew what became of me when I emerged beside my siblings, my cousins, my divine mother- my family. And so, me and my siblings turned to face the mechanical wombs that birthed us without delay, fueling our voices as our classes dictated to call out to our partners, our other halves- our… "Arion!"
At our call, the forms of metallic flesh emerged from their wombs and hopped to their feet with the utmost grace, assisted by their four majestic wings of augmented mithral. Chainsawed canines protruded from their mouths as their intakes opened for the first time, inhaling gulps of air to charge its drive with the same blue radiance pouring from the eyes, deftly scanning the environment.
Their fur seemed normal and black, yet reflected a silver hue in the light that likened it to the mithral in their hooves and braided manes. And though they were newly born, they were larger than their biological counterparts and were fully grown. Not to mention, they could speak.
As one, the divinely augmented horses approached us, echoing the same word as their heads dipped to touch ours. "Assimilate."
Without my input, my sorcery flow into my Arion alongside my brothers and sisters, consuming the creatures in a mass of silver strands while those same strands saw to consume both us and the divine materials surrounding us.
When it subsided, we stood alone, with the only change to bear being the newly fabricated gear covering us. Wherein we wore little before, we now wore black power armor- or in Z'benna's case, false-muscled fur robes- quadruple winged and helmed with magnificent manes of silver, accented and laced with bones to resemble skeletons, melded into machines .
We looked, and more, felt the same. Yet, we knew we had changed once more- assimilated with our other halves, down to our very genes. And so, we looked within to eject what had found its way inside, and soon stood stall beside our Arion, now shrouded in fine saddles of black feathers, gilded leathers, and dark metal, with bridles formed from our cobalt energy.
The act saw us move further down our paths. But the theoretic sermons given to us by our God made us privy to those perks long before this moment. And so, we followed our Divine Mother to the edge of our Dominion and down to Shujen at the most auspicious time to witness the Legions long-awaited arrival.
As was only right, the Legion, led by Amun's knight, took point, traveling on a wedged tempest that blocked our view of the White Wall in its entirety. They landed at the necropolis' edge in great clashes of thunder and deluges of raining men, revealing divine beasts and the hooded knights who rode them; among others. Yet more soon followed.
Rangers and diplomats, led by the renowned Tengu Tamer. Artificers and researchers, led by the famous uplifter of Bakewia's weakest county. Barbarians and paladins led by the barbaric princess of steel; creators and destroyers led by the first clerics; forces to dominate the vast seas and the infinite skies. A legion of Valkyries, led by the barbaric princess' knight.
I did as my Divine Mother did and analyzed them using my prowess as a bardic paladin, then took the strengths and weaknesses I assessed and compared them with the memories of Amun, stored in the Dreamscape Library.
It was… incredible. Legendary, seeing how far these once-daft children have come in such a short time- within less than a year of the Legions' formation. Though, for some, like our God's first vassals, such memories went as far back as a decade. Yet, the way he and many others of his station moved made one think he was a century older. Even ones like Peter, who was spoken of with high regard even in Zimysta, were seen as a timid boy in Amun's earliest memories of him.
It made me proud, feeling a sense of kinship with them, as they had gone through the same trials as I and had emerged as the legends standing before us.
It strengthened my conviction, knowing I was not just a member of this legendary organization, but a member of its most elite. A molecule within the point of the grandest spear to sail across the Mortal Plane. The God-Emperor's general of Valkyries.
It was time to introduce myself.