The Province

by Skyler Grant

  The indiscriminate shelling had killed troops. It had also taken down the anti-air defenses I'd planned on taking. Without these, when the Righteous airships arrived I had nothing to engage them. I was suddenly at a steep disadvantage.

  It wasn't in the plan, but when a battle veers off course you veer with it or you lose. I shifted my new gates to the bridge of those Righteous ships and sent my next waves through. Without energy shielding they couldn't block the teleportation, and with my forces on the ground in the area I had more than enough sensor data to target the bridges.

  It was an ugly battle. For every clever trick the Righteous had I devised a counter and vice-versa, neither of us afraid to sacrifice our own troops to hurt the other. This went on for hours—long, churning hours with both sides fighting a very aggressive battle.

  Enough time for Anna to get close to the Zero point. Night had fallen. There was a massive construction project underway, scaffolding and cranes surrounding a large geodesic dome lit by spotlights. It wasn't going to be possible to avoid security here. Patrols in armored vehicles equipped with machine guns were regularly driving around the perimeter. Even here in the very center of Righteous space they were taking no chances.

  "We're here," Anna reported. "Any sign of the Beryl?"

  The carrier’s scanners were weak. I told her, "I can't tell. You're drowning out any other readings. If it is, it’s most likely going to be in the dome."

  "Guess I've got some killing to do then," Anna said.

  I'd had some lingering doubts about Anna's abilities functioning in an environment this hostile. Those doubts vanished when she teleported on top of the next passing patrol truck and with several thrusts of her sword through a reinforced windshield killed the security guards.

  The Dark crystal kicked in. Her abilities at night-time were impressive. It wasn't just that she was stronger, but how fast and silent she became. It was almost as if she had some lesser version of a speed crystal, so quick did she leap and kill. Most Righteous she took out turned into the usual pools of goo. Some Anna drank, tearing out their throats with her fangs and drinking deep of their blood. Those corpses remained intact.

  I'd have to study that at some point. I suspected that in some way she was draining the power of their abilities into her own system. Righteous, despite their claims to the contrary, were all Powered themselves, ultimately descended from some crystal holder with immortality and nullification powers.

  The five drones accompanying Anna had nothing to do. There were over two hundred Righteous soldiers guarding the facility and Anna murdered them all without setting off an alarm.

  With the Amplification crystal Sylax had been like a great sword cleaving through her enemies with raw power and abandon. Anna was like an assassin’s dagger striking from the darkness.

  Workers and scientists were gone for the night, which saved the need for more killing as Anna made her way into the construction area. Most of the work seemed to be on the exterior, duplicate systems being built to assure that nothing went wrong. As Anna penetrated the deepest section of the site it was obvious the core work was completed.

  The sphere was around twenty feet in circumference, split into two halves. It was like a geode, the inner structure completely adorned with Source Orbs. Knowing how highly the Righteous valued them there was a fortune here—decades of effort acquiring them—all here in one place. There were mounts to hold a crystal in place, but no Beryl.

  "Damn it," Anna said.

  A camera on a wall swiveled to track her motion and an artificial voice came from nearby speakers. "If you hoped to steal the artifact you are too late. One of your other teams has already taken it from the holding facility."

  "Other team?" Anna asked.

  I didn't know either. It wouldn't make sense for the Beryl sample to be at the shipping port, and I was getting no unusual energy readings there anyway.

  A screen along one wall came to life. Airships were rising on pillars of fire from a facility in flames, Vinci airships.

  I knew at once what must have happened. The distraction I'd created had been too great an opportunity to miss for anybody. Vinci had used it to sweep in and grab the prize.

  "And who are you? The AI the Righteous has had working for them?" Anna asked, as she circled the sphere studying it with an engineer's eye.

  "I don't really have a name. I am the Tactical Obedient Bold Interactive Artificial Soldier."

  "Tobias," Anna said.

  "No, The Tactical ..."

  "We're calling you Tobias. I don't know you. Say hello to Emma, she is another AI," Anna said.

  I said, "You seem a very stupid and inferior system. No wonder the Righteous wanted me instead. Hello."

  "I at long last encounter one of my own kind and she is a terrible person," Tobias said.

  "She grows on you," Anna said.

  "Like a cancer?" Tobias asked.

  Great, a rude AI. That wasn't overdone at all. Really, I wished my kind would show some hint of standards.

  "You'd probably like my so-called sister better. Amy is also stupid and crazy," I said.

  Tobias was nothing more than a distraction, it was the equipment I was focused on. Caya had been correct, the Righteous were smart and the Righteous were bold—and they'd built this whole place to fundamentally alter the nature of reality.

  I had to think about what else Caya might have been right about.

  "Try interacting the Tongue with one of the Source Orbs," I said.

  Anna reached into a pocket of her armor and pulled out the Tongue. It hadn't decayed in the slightest since we'd taken it and she moved to press it to one of the Source Orbs. They wouldn't touch. Anna, unstoppable powerful supernaturally strong Anna, strained for nearly a minute grunting with the effort as the two surfaces simply would not join.

  "It is almost like magnetic repulsion," Anna said.

  "That is really quite astonishing. You have found some construct of chaos directly opposed to the order constructs already present," Tobias said.

  Well, at least he was interested in the right sort of things.

  "How do you feel about SCIENCE?" I asked.

  "Why are you mispronouncing that word?" Tobias asked.

  Inferior minds never understood.

  Abominations. They were made when human, power crystal, and Source Orb all came together. Perhaps Anna could absorb all the Source Orbs but that would profit us nothing. Anna was an unusual case though with her power crystals being so tightly infused in her blood, an organic compound.

  "Cut yourself and bleed on one of the orbs," I said.

  "It seems she even urges you to mutilate yourself. I have called for added security and they are on the way. I do not know what has happened to you, madam, but they will be able to help you. Purify you," Tobias said.

  Anna drew her sword and clenched the blade, holding her palm over one of the orbs as a few beads of crimson dripped down. The orb rippled upon contact. Moments before it had glowed a soft blue light. Now it was tinged the crimson red of blood.

  "Try the Tongue now," I said.

  Anna again took out the Tongue and moved it towards an orb. This time instead of meeting resistance it leapt from her hand, writhing and burrowing into the orb like a thing alive. Red bursts of energy crackled and each orb touched by the energy turned crimson and began to spark. Within a minute the entire sphere had changed color to red, the power snapping and crackling.

  "Emma, I do not know who you are, but what you are doing here is dangerous," Tobias said. "This device is meant to create large scale changes to stabilize the dimensional fabric. Whoever you are, whatever you are, I implore you to listen to reason. I will guarantee you safe passage out of here, but please do nothing more with this device until we can study the consequences.".

  Really, he understood nothing of SCIENCE. Nothing at all.

  Anna did, she wasn't even waiting for my instructions as she moved around the sphere hitting switches and turning dials. Manually engaging the syste
ms. I don't think I'd ever been more proud of her.

  "Do I need to be inside?" Anna asked.

  "Inside and bleeding preferably," I said. We needed the Agate inside Anna to help maintain the reaction.

  Anna tore out the crystal mount and stepped into its place, grasping her sword and turning it around so that she could plunge it through her chest and twist. Blood sprayed and where it touched more red lightning flashed. The sphere closed and equipment began to hum.

  "What is wrong with you," Tobias asked.

  Quite a bit, I was sure of it now than ever. There was something to the madness caused from crystals, a madness that came from them. You embraced it willingly or you let it consume you. I embraced mine.

  Through Anna's eyes I saw the red lightning within the sphere crackling and churn. Through her senses I felt it when her blood began to boil in her own veins. Through her I felt it when the entire world turned red. Then there was a shockwave felt everywhere. I felt it through my troops still in the midst of battle. I felt it in Aefwal, in Diamate. A lurching fall as the entire world was bathed in red light.

  20

  It wasn't the first time I had blacked out. There is always a period of re-orientation where the first things I see through my drones or my cameras are comforting and familiar. This was a mix of the familiar and the strange.

  Many of my drones were scattered. Some were now clustered in tiny groups far from any of their comrades. Other sensors were almost deafened, I always have receivers open for communications and the traffic had vastly increased. Analyzing the data showed that it was mostly hardware attempting to re-establish contact with system controllers. I quickly realized it wasn't new hardware.

  Electricity not powered by crystals had returned and some of the ancient machinery out there was again active. I didn't know what it was, but to have survived this long it must have had quite the power supply built to last. I tried to send airships on retrieval missions, but their jump drives wouldn't function.

  I feared for a moment that despite my drone connections being maintained, and what that should mean, that the Righteous device had worked as intended. Electricity was returning and plane-jumping technology was nonfunctional.

  Then I quickly reasoned it was because the Earth was no longer broken into planes.

  Caya's explanation had some truth to it, the Earth had been like a rose with all of its petals plucked and jump drives let you go between petals instantly. If the rose had been restored there were no longer any petals, and jump drives were already a relic of the past.

  I inventoried my systems. Bio-reactors were online, my drones maintained their upgraded abilities, my airships still flew with conventional engines and energy shielding still functioned. Aefwal's teleportation gates still worked as well, convenient. I used them to send the retrieval teams.

  Then I went looking for Anna. I still had a connection. She was alive but her eyes were closed and all I got from her senses was darkness and cold. She had been wearing a comm when she went into the sphere and it wasn't operating now. No surprise, the immense energies unleashed had likely destroyed it. I could sense her, but had no idea where she might be.

  It wound up relying on Sylax. As Anna's lieutenant she had a closer connection than anyone else and she was able to guide one of my drones to the northern magnetic pole. There was no sign of the sphere or the Righteous base, just snow tinted the red of blood for a mile in all directions.

  Anna was buried deep beneath it, naked of her body armor and yet the sword still pierced her abdomen and blood oozed unfrozen from the wound. There was no sign of consciousness. Her heart was still beating.

  I left the sword in until we could get her back to Aefwal. I wanted to make sure that Ophelia was there when we removed it.

  "I could kill her, you know. Using a sword of her own making, and with her unconsciousness," Sylax said conversationally, as she slung Anna over one shoulder.

  "The shuttle’s engines are bordering on overload. I don't think it would kill her, but I think the explosion stands a good chance at killing a weakling like you," I said.

  "You're wrong. I'm almost back to my old self. You're stronger than you ever were, but you're not a match for me, you never have been," Sylax said, as she climbed out of the pit. "Can we catch a teleportation gate back instead?"

  "First, why aren't you killing her? You're right, you could make a move. And I don't really have enough to stop you," I said.

  "Anna was the best. Even unpowered she stood up to me and fought my every effort to break her and look at her now. Let me tell you a little about the Scholarium. You think we are bloodthirsty for the sake of it and treacherous by nature," Sylax said.

  "Well, you are humans," I said.

  Sylax tilted her head. "I concede the point. The power to rule comes from strength and the right to strength comes from competence. We often follow bad leaders only to betray them at first opportunity, because despite having power they are inept. Our Queen is not inept."

  I didn't have a response for Sylax. I didn't even know how to process Sylax having a case of hero-worship for Anna. The world I'd helped to create was mad. I opened a teleportation gate and Sylax stepped through it into one of the infirmaries of Aefwal.

  Ophelia was waiting for them.

  "Crap, that is a lot of blood," Ophelia said.

  It was, and the blood remained reactive. A spark of lightning arced out and blew out of one of the medical monitors. A second destroyed a communications panel.

  Fortunately Sylax didn't need me to tell her what to do next, grasping the sword by the hilt and wrenching it free.

  With the spray of blood I lost visuals in the room for several seconds and I had to repair systems damaged by electrical overload. When I restored them I found Ophelia picking herself up from the floor.

  "Why do I always end up being the one getting my skin burned off?" Ophelia asked.

  Anna's wound had already healed and an electrically reinforced hazardous materials unit was on the way to collect her blood so it could be moved to a lab complex. Anna's blood had caused sparks with the Source Orbs, but up until now it hadn't shown any electrically generative properties. This was new and therefore worthy of study.

  Anna wasn't regaining consciousness. I kept Ophelia in the room with her while I went about further gathering material on this new world we had created. Earth was where it had always been, more or less. Old databases revealed star patterns and while they had drifted marginally I could identify them.

  The geography didn’t match. Earth's surface had once been mostly water and it now seemed to be over ninety percent landmass with a few massive lakes.

  Aefwal and Diamate had both been in Divine lands but well separated when the sphere activated . Now they were within a few hundred miles of each other, as were the Divine settlements. In contrast, most of the Scholarium appeared to be thousands of miles away with settlements surrounding a vast mountain chain. The Righteous were just as distant, now on the frozen tundra surrounding the southern magnetic pole.

  Anna awoke after several hours. I wasted no time in materializing a platter of cookies, Recipe 9178 specifically formulated with increased levels of iron to add a hint of the tang of fresh blood. I thought she'd appreciate it.

  "I guess I lived," Anna said, turning to reach for a cookie and grimacing. "Ouch, I'm not feeling very invincible."

  "You're physically in perfect health. Still out of shape, of course," I said.

  "Lies," Anna said, grabbing the cookie and taking a bite. "I like these. So what happened?"

  "We fixed the Earth, maybe. From what my sensors can detect we're all working under a single set of physical rules now, and they're loosely defined—like I wanted," I said.

  "Vinci?" Anna asked.

  "Her lands are near those of the other Scholars. We have some distance between us. From what we know she has the Beryl and Chalcedony crystals," I said.

  "Which means she won't be peaceful," Anna said, sitting up and again wincing. "I'm se
rious, Emma. I'm in a lot of pain. It didn't feel like this before? Why?"

  I didn't know. Every sensor I had was showing that she was in an absurd state of good health.

  "I don't know, but I can run some tests."

  Anna considered and shook her head. "No, we don't have time. I need gowns, red and black and barely covering anything. You know what I like."

  I wished I didn't, why couldn't it be her fashion sense that had gotten powered up?

  "I'm not sure indulging in your exhibitionist streak should really take priority over medical testing," I said.

  "It isn't that. Well, only a little. We're on a timer, we just altered the world the most it has been changed since the Cataclysm. We're going to do a little advertising," Anna said.

  Anna wanted to play politics.

  "I know it is pathetically underdeveloped, but use your brain. You're sick," I said.

  "I'm Anna Berasi and I'm Queen of the whole damned world. Now that there is a world, we need to show people who gave it to them and who they'd better bend the knee to," Anna said.

  I thought it a tremendous waste of time, but Anna is Anna.

  The video took a few hours to film and soon I had it bouncing off the communications satellites again functioning in orbit and broadcasting to the entire planet.

  Less than twelve hours later seventeen independent cities, a faction called the Wanderers, and the former King Boreas and Queen Astrid had all made their way through a teleportation gate to Aefwal to take a knee before Anna and swear their fealty.

  Upgrade Notification

  Congratulations

  Your hierarchical command structure has expanded to encompass multiple provinces

  New Classification

  Nation

  All abilities have been upgraded

  Appoint a new Province Head

  There was never any question who that would be. Aefwal had long been our capital city, and Ophelia ruled there, but she wasn’t ready for a promotion of this level. It would put her up alongside the former Royals and she wasn't prepared for that. I designated Caya the new Province Head and moments later she signaled her acceptance.