Opening her eyes, Erica found herself floating in a starry void. She tried moving, finding she couldn't change her orientation. Or at least, she thought so, as there was no sensation of movement as she pumped her arms and kicked her legs. As one, several figures gradually came into view, solidifying from the vast blackness of the void. Turning her head, Erica counted seventeen in all. Each had a different robe from the last, each carried something different. A sword, a scythe, a sickle, a hammer, a trident, a child of indeterminate species, a pickaxe, appraisal tools, among others.
These couldn'tbe... Erica thought, both in awe of what she was seeing and wondering how she got here in the first place. All she remembered was drifting off to sleep... was this a dream?
"So," The largest figure, taller than a mountain, clad in alabaster armour, face hidden behind a helmet and wielding a double-headed glaive, rumbled in a voice that Erica could only describe as divinity itself, "this is our candidate?"
"Yes," A feminine figure, a good deal shorter than the first, clutching a bundle of scrolls and rulers, said with a voice that told Erica that they had schemes beyond count, "she was the one chosen."
"This is a farce," A hooded figure, hunched and twisting a dagger between its fingers, its voice the promise of things going wrong, "The selection was a farce, what you propose we do is a farce. We already have pieces in play, and you'd all throw a wildcard into the game?"
"With respect," The alabaster-clad one spoke, "your opinion holds little sway. Be thankful you and the other... upstarts, are still allowed here."
The hooded figure harrumphed but said nothing more. A tiny shape Erica had nearly missed in her count earlier giggled in a high pitched voice, flittering about the void excitedly, swinging what looked like a sewing needle around like a sword, "Are we gonna do it then? It looks like she sees us."
Erica could swear she could feel the intensity of seventeen sets of eyes all at once. She gulped, completely vulnerable in this empty space she couldn't move around in.
"Balahaad's experiment is on the move," A being in light armour and holding a sword and shield at ease announced, some measure of anticipation in its deep feminine voice.
"It will not interfere," said the alabaster one, "This one... Yes, this one will do nicely."
It outstretched a finger on its free hand, and a golden drop of light flitted from it. Each of the other figures did the same, drops of light of differing colours floating toward the space above Erica. They coalesced, merging into a single point of white. Before she could protest, the light dove straight for Erica, piercing her chest. She gasped, but searing pain immediately gave way to a new sensation. Energy, power, flowed through her veins, spreading from her chest and filling every corner of her body. It pulsed, out of sync with her body, but gradually lined up with her heartbeat, her breath, until it was one with her. She was energized, capable of so much more than she was a moment ago, she reached out-
Erica bolted upright in her bed, gasping for air, flinging the covers off as her hand reached for something that was no longer there. She was in her room, gravity holding her to the bed. No stars, no looming robed figures. But, the energizing feeling lingered. It wasn't just her, though. She could feel latent energy in nearly everything around her, from the bed to the walls to the furniture. She could see, if not light, motes of power drifting by like dust. Erica tried to make sense of it, looking for a spot uncluttered by this noise. Her armour, stacked neatly on the vanity, was silent. No energy ran through it, no visual noise settled on it. As she focused on that, she was startled by her mother slamming the door to her room open.
"We have to go. Now." Her mother hissed, clearly flustered and panicked. She hadn't even gotten dressed and was still in a nightgown.
"W-what's goin' on?" Erica managed to say through a mouth that felt like it hadn't been used in days.
"Houses are catching fire. It's only a matter of time before they come for us!"
Erica swung her legs over the edge of her bed, steadying herself against the wall as she willed her body into compliance. It protested, unsure what to do with this alien energy flowing through it, as she stood. She reached for the matrix maigum on her bookshelf instinctively, almost too distracted with herself to notice.
"Leave it! We don't have time!"
Erica still grabbed the silver chain, but forced herself forward. "My weapons-"
"Will do nothing! We have to run!"
Erica's blood ran cold. Fire, needing to run, weapons being ineffective. No guhr raid or sawt attack combined all of these things. No, there was something that was covered in her guard training, a plan for what to do when this time came. There would be no heroics, no standing one's ground and fending off whatever threat came their way, simply an evacuation plan to be followed to the best of their ability. The worst-case scenario.
Diezens. The Diezens had come for Copperwood.
Erica stumbled toward the door, steadied by her mother when she reached it. Her mother looked at the glowing matrix, standing out in the dark, "What is that? Why are you stumbling around like you're drunk?"
"It's nothing, mom," Erica pushed through to the hallway, pocketing the matrix, determined to get where she needed to go. She had to get people out, starting with her own household. The static snow of energy particles floating across her vision was distracting, making it hard to focus on anything further in the house. She thought she could see a couple more figures in the common area. Gaining some stability, she and her mother made their way to the room by the front of the house.
"Everyone accounted for? Good," Erica's father said as they entered, holding a pump shotgun at the ready. Next to him, Rico stood brandishing a hammer.
"Those won't help, not enough," Erica said, gripping a chair with one hand and her forehead with the other. Sound was amplifying, giving her a headache. Damn it, this wasn't the time for this!
"Better than nothing," Rico said.
"We ready then? We don't have the luxury of time," their father said, "Run for town hall, meet up with others, and then head for Zellas. Got it?"
There was a quick sound of affirmation from everyone. Their father nodded, then led them all into the night.
It was hell. Houses all along the street were ablaze, illuminating everything in an orange glow. Smoke choked the sky. Screams, shouting, gunfire, all of this echoed in Erica's head as she became all too aware that she was stepping on the dirt road with her bare feet. As she bumped into her father, she looked around to see why he stopped. Her heart skipped a beat as she saw what he did.
A mechan loomed over one of her neighbors who was on the ground, attempting to crawl away from the humanoid machine. If a person was made from a metal carapace with stone joints, lacked a face except for two round red lenses protruding slightly from the head, and painted black, they would be exactly like the mechanical being that was now plunging a sword into the hapless neighbor. As they breathed their last, the Diezen mechan planted a foot on their body and yanked its sword out, a spray of blood accompanying the forceful removal of the blade. Its head then snapped to the Blaine family.
"Murder. For murder's sake!" It said in a mechanical voice tinged with maniacal glee.
"Run!" Erica shouted as she pushed her family into a sprint towards the center of town. She dared not look back as she heard rapid heavy footfalls behind her. "Don't stop!"
There was a bloodcurdling scream, a familiar voice crying out in pain. Erica spun around to see her mother fall forward after the Diezen slashed her across the back.
"Mom!" Erica was powerless, frozen in place by the pooling crimson spreading from the gash across her mother's back. Training told her to fight, but natural instinct told her there was nothing she could do. It seemed like an eternity, but in the follow-through of the Diezen's murderous cut, the mechan followed the same plunging strike on her mother as it did on her neighbor with practiced efficiency, a piercing blow to the heart. Her mother screamed out once more, then was silenced as the Diezen wrenched its sword out sideways, spattering the road in blood.
"No! Marigold!" Erica's father bellowed with pain and fury. He leveled the shotgun at the Diezen and fired, blowing off its sword arm. Unperturbed by the loss of its limb, the Diezen began stalking toward them. Erica's father racked the shotgun and fired again, and again. The Diezen recoiled with each hit, the third shot blowing its other arm off at the elbow. Her father fired again, and the left half of its head disappeared, but still the Diezen advanced on them. It was only the following two shots to the chest that the mechan finally slowed before keeling over.
Everyone tried to catch their breath, tried to process what had just happened. The screaming and shooting in the rest of the village sounded far away as they all looked at the still body of the one they had just known as mother or wife. Erica looked to her father, the man she knew as a rock steady pillar when things were bleak. He was now a man broken, tears streaming down his face as he looked upon his wife's body with eyes that no longer shone.
"Dad..." Erica had no other words to give, choking on that alone as tears began to well in her own eyes.
"You and Rico go on ahead," Her father croaked out in a quiet voice as he stepped over the fallen form of the Diezen, "I'll be right with you."
Rico was frozen in place, "Dad, we can't-"
Erica grabbed him by the front of his shirt and started to drag him away toward town hall. "He'll come," she said, more to herself than to Rico, then with more force, "He'll come back!"
Rico resisted being dragged away at first, but quickly turned and continued to run with his sister. Tears ran freely down both of their faces while they made their way through the inferno that was Copperwood. Bodies lay strewn about as the Diezens went about in haphazard patterns seeking victims. Faces Erica recognized, eyes staring vacantly into the smoked-out sky or face-down in pools of their own blood. They saw a few be killed down offshoot streets, and the sights of corpses sometimes missing heads or limbs was something Erica knew she would live with for the rest of her life. However long that was.
The two stopped as Rico, having witnessed one-too-many bodies, emptied the contents of his stomach onto the road violently. Before Erica could turn around, a blade lashed out of the darkness of the shadow of a building. It bit into the left of her chin, and dug its way under and past her cheekbone before exiting her flesh just shy of her ear. Burning pain exploded across her face, but Erica simply broke into a sprint, dragging her reeling brother behind her. Mechanical laughter echoed behind them as the mechan who'd attacked her turned its attention elsewhere.
Erica and Rico reached the market square, where some of the village guard were funneling people to town hall at the other end of the square. They weren't in uniform, dressed in sleepwear with a few pieces of armour hastily donned before storming out. They were firing on mechans who came close, and Erica noticed some bodies here that she didn't recognize. Robed individuals, who were carrying firearms and blades of various kinds, lay where they were felled by the guard.
"Diezen cultists!" A rotund, mustachioed figure shouted at the two siblings as he noticed them looking at the corpses of strangers. He had his guard's uniform on, minus the pants. Erica would have relished the absurdity of witnessing guard captain Gerard in his boxers in any other context, but for now the gravity of the situation drained the humour from the sight. "Blaine! What took you so long? Where are your weapons? What happened to your face?"
"Sir! There was no time-" Erica started before being cut off.
"Hmph! No time indeed! Well, grab a cultist's gun, go defend town hall and, more importantly, the people there! The rest of us will buy you time before you depart for Zellas."
Erica didn't protest. Instead, she looked around the bodies of the cultists, finding a repeater rifle in the clutches of one. She liberated it and checked the magazine. It was nearly full, some-odd thirty rounds ready to be fired. The pain in her cheek wasn't subsiding. Putting a hand up to it, she pulled it away to see it coated in blood. Wiping it off on her shirt, she looked back to her brother. Rico looked dazed, staring ahead blankly rather than try to find a replacement for the hammer he dropped a little ways back. She grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him along as they made their way to town hall.
She noticed that Sadie's stall had collapsed as she passed. Looking more closely, Erica noticed that a body lay in the heap of books and paintings. Despite hoping otherwise, it was indeed Sadie lying there, a surprised look frozen on her face and several bullet wounds bleeding onto her wares and staining her nightgown. Swallowing down her sorrow, Erica pushed onward to town hall.
The largely wooden structure was ablaze, its large bell tower having collapsed in the fire, explaining why its warning toll was silent. Several villagers huddled a distance from the burning building, looking outward to spot any incoming danger. Some mechans had already been felled here, but so had some of the villagers. Erica and some of the other guards formed a perimeter after she shoved Rico toward the baker's family, noting that Astrid began fussing over him immediately. She turned her attention to the stark darkness of the outer reaches of the square, repeater raised and ready to fire.
It was only now that she remembered the alien flow of energy through her body. It was more natural now, still felt but less intrusive. If she focused a little, she could see the motes of power flickering by, agitated by the fire behind her. She noticed that in some places in the dark, the free floating energy would swirl toward a large point before disappearing, only to reappear flowing away from the light vortex. As she stared at one such point, trying to make sense of it, a Diezen mechan came stalking out of the darkness, holding a rifle in one hand and firing it at the defenders.
Ferris, one of the volunteers who joined the guard at the same time as Erica, fell first, a bullet piercing his skull despite his helmet. Erica fired at the Diezen, round after round. The shots pinged and panged off of its metal shell, denting it, occasionally piercing it, but to no visible effect. The mechan languidly turned its gun on Vivian, a guard under Erica's command, killing her in three shots.
"Its chest, damn it! Focus fire on its chest!" Trevor, another guard, and Erica's first kiss years back, shouted as the Diezen ripped into him with its rifle. Erica tried, but the repeater was just not meant to punch through armour like this. As the guards finally managed to focus enough fire into the Diezen's chest to bring it down, Erica had emptied the repeater's magazine. She tossed the firearm aside, picking up Vivian's carbine. Villagers kept flowing in, but as Erica noticed the vortexes of energy moving around in the dark, she had the sinking feeling that they were being led into a meat grinder.
Another Diezen charged out of the dark, tossing aside a presumedly empty submachine gun and booking it for a cluster of villagers. Walter, the blacksmith, stepped up from the crowd with a hammer, pulling back to swing it at the mechan. The Diezen was faster, driving its fist into his face, caving it in with a sickening crunch. It laughed as Walter fell, even as Erica and the other guards lay into it with their carbines. They were more focused after Trevor's callout and managed to fell it after it only claimed two more lives with its bare hands, wrenching the neck of one and backhanding another hard enough that they didn't get back up.
Erica's heart was racing. Adrenaline was spiking as death surrounded her. She was scared, if not for herself, then for everyone around her. The Copperwood guard were failing in the face of the mechanical horror of the Diezens. Vivian's carbine was spent, and as Erica went to get a fresh magazine from her body, she noticed that one of the vortexes of power motes in the dark started moving. She wasn't prepared for another mechan, none of them were.
Fear turned to anger. Why? Why had the Diezens come to Copperwood? They've left the village alone for the past three years, why attack now? Why did so many have to die? Why did her mother have to die? Rage filled her, and as it did, the flow of energy within her accelerated. She was vaguely aware of the motes of energy now floating toward her, into her. The sensation of power within her grew, welling up and almost telling her that she could unleash it. She raised a hand toward the vortex in the dark. Now, the power said, all you have to do is picture the energy forming in your hand and cast it forth...
Erica pictured the power flowing to her palm, and when it rapidly reached what she felt was a suitable level, thought of it bolting out to the vortex. Lightning lanced forth from her hand, illuminating the night in a blinding flash and ripping through the Diezen at the heart of the light particle vortex. The boom deafened all nearby momentarily as the mechan collapsed.
Erica looked at her hand in surprise. That was shaping! Turning the maiga inherent to the world into elemental effects! Was that what she felt coursing through her veins? She'd never been capable of this before. In the past, she'd struggled to charge her room's lamp in a timely manner. The energy she just unleashed was so many times that kind of power, it was several degrees of magnitude greater. And, she felt empowered. Energy now flowed freely through her, and she felt she could start to control the flow a bit, directing it to her other hand now.
"Blaine!" Gerard shouted from the market stalls, "What by the seventeen was that!?"
"I... I don't know, sir!" Erica replied, aware that all eyes were on her now. The Diezens seemed to register her as a threat, and she could sense them, their maiga consumption, moving in the shadows beyond the blazing town hall, moving in to end her.
They could try.
Emboldened by this new power, Erica started throwing lightning at every vortex in the dark or Diezen that presented themselves in the light. Thunderous cracks echoed through the night as mechans fell left and right. The other guards stood agog, having never seen a display of power such as this. In all she heard of charging or shaping, it was supposed to drain the user as they exercised their power. However, as Erica pierced a cultist with a bolt of maiga, she felt energized. More aware, more awake, more alive. She was almost throwing lightning at enemies before they showed themselves.
Breathing heavily, Erica looked around for hostiles, both with her eyes and her new maiga sense. Nothing presented itself. The night was largely silent. No more gunfire. Little to no screaming. Just the stunned silence of the people behind her. She tried to calm herself, feeling that the nightmare was over. However, the power within her kept building. She could feel it starting to leak out of her, and saw little arcs of electricity dance across her body. She was still tense, a snake coiled and ready to strike. She was trying to uncoil this energy, this growingly dangerous, unwanted, pent-up maiga, when...
"Erica! Rico!" A deep man's voice rang out from the square. Erica looked and saw her father, covered in cuts and scrapes, carrying the limp body of her mother, approaching with a limp.
"Dad!" Erica started running toward him, reaching out to him.
The maiga responded without her will. Lightning lanced out from her outstretched palm, piercing her father's chest like so many Diezens before him. He didn't cry out, didn't react, but simply collapsed, smoke raising from his burnt clothing. Erica stopped and shrieked.
"What did you do!?" Rico's voice cracked as he screamed at her over the cries of the villagers behind her.
"I-I didn't-" Erica spun around, tears clouding her vision, only to see everyone flinch away as she turned to face them. They were now afraid of her. Some of the guards had guns aimed at her, trembling.
"Don't make me do it, Blaine!" Gerard was aiming a revolver her way as Erica turned to face his challenge, "Stand down, or it's to Mortemhiem with you!"
Erica stammered, looking for words, but none came. There was even more rampant energy in her body now than before, threatening to consume everything nearby. It was ramping up still, so she did the only thing she could think to do.
She ran.
Burning buildings flew by as Erica put one foot in front of the other as fast as she could. Tears rolled off her face and mixed with the blood on her cut cheek. She thought she might be running faster than usual, but that was in the background of what just happened.
Her parents were both gone, in one night. And her father had died by her hand. How could she ever forgive herself? How could anyone else forgive her? She hadn't meant to do it, it just happened. The lack of control wasn't her fault, she shouldn't even have the abilities of a shaper to begin with!
That dream she had... seventeen figures, and the hooded one was even called out as Balahaad. The god of betrayal. The Traitor. Did that make all of them the gods of Tarsis? Why would they all show themselves to her in that way? Why was she suddenly of interest to them? She thought back to the light piercing her chest in the dream, the feeling of energy flowing through her, the same as she felt when shaping earlier. Did they bestow this power upon her? Why? It always came back to "why"!
The maiga ahead became dense and foreboding, a miasma of tainted power. She had ran past the borders of Copperwood and was in the forest surrounding the village that gave it its name. Darting past trees, Erica ran forth blindly, evading branches and trunks as best she could. Suddenly, one trunk moved into her path, and she collided bodily with it, bouncing off and sprawling across the ground. Confused and disoriented, Erica got up and tried to run past the tree, only for it to reach out and grab the back of her shirt before throwing her back to where she started.
Erica hopped to her feet, but this time wiped away the tears and blood to get a sense of what was ahead of her. She instantly wished she had gone any direction other than this. In front of her stood a mountain of a man rather than a tree, nearly seven feet tall and covered in bulging muscle. Bare feet poked out from red plaid trousers held in place with a metal plated belt. A hairy torso that nearly resembled a bear's more than a human's was uncovered save for a single leather pauldron on his left shoulder and the straps holding it in place, and a ragged deep red cape. A huge beard with a long braided mustache obscured the lower half of his weathered face, while a mess of matching long red hair sprouted from his head. A bull's skull sat on top of his head like a hat, though it had a sinister countenance, with fangs, horns, angry-looking eye sockets and sharper angles than it otherwise should. In one hand, he held a massive double-headed axe who's blades could cover much of his torso, with a haft about as long as Erica was tall, with its heads planted firmly on the ground. A menacing aura radiated from him, quite literally as the maiga that came off of him was tainted, sinister. This demonic being pierced her form with eyes crimson as blood.
Everyone on Tarsis knew who this was: Angor, founder of his Diezens, and the murder blight upon the world.
Angor eyed Erica lazily, tilting his head to one side then the other. When he spoke, his deep voice rumbled with the promise of death.
"You... The lightning was your doing. I thought I had all the shapers here killed at the outset. You weren't nearby enough to make it in to help the village, or were you here already and hiding your power..."
Erica was panicking. There was no way she could take this monster on, even with the power running through her now. He was a true shaper, having entered the world with the ability to manipulate maiga on a grand scale. But, she had to try, she wasn't going to die here if she could help it. Actively focusing all the wild energy in her body into a focal point in her palm, she threw the ball of lightning at the huge man, where it exploded with such force she was knocked back two paces.
Angor didn't even make a move to defend himself, he watched uninterested as the ball was thrown at him and simply took the hit head on as it speared him with countless bolts of electricity. When Erica could see again, the lord of the Diezens was standing just like he had before, a tinge of annoyance crossing his eyes.
"While you cannot truly harm me, that still hurt. Now," He took a thunderous step forward, hefting his axe into his grip and off the ground, "swear fealty, or die."
Erica's mind raced. She may as well have been in a corner. Even with the forest at her back, there was nowhere she could go that would save her. This beast had her in his sights, and would have her life one way or the other.
"What would y-you have me do?" She managed, trying to buy time for her brain to come up with something, anything.
"You have killed before, I can smell it on you," Angor growled in a voice that said what patience he had was wearing thin, "I would have you do it again. And again. And again. Until there are none left to kill. Send all before you to Mortemhiem. Murder, for murder's sake. Now, choose. I tire of your pointless game."
Erica's thoughts turned to her mother, to her father. "No," she said, "I can't do that. Not again!"
Angor sneered beneath his facial hair, "Then die yourself."
In a single motion, Angor closed the distance between them and hefted his axe skyward. Pain flared from Erica's right shoulder, and as she turned to look, her arm was sailing through the moonlit air, trailing blood before it landed by the roots of a tree. She screamed and clutched the stump, trying to stem the bleeding. She turned and ran again, leaving Angor in the woods as she tried dodging trees and branches once more. She didn't know where she was going, shock was setting in. She stumbled and fell onto her back. She started hyperventilating, consciousness threatening to leave her as she felt blood seep from her wound. She saw Angor casually stroll up to her, axe poised to strike a finishing blow. In the sky above, Erica thought she was hallucinating the white fireball coming their way. As it exploded into Angor, knocking him back, Erica's exhaustion finally took over as the world turned black.
