They woke us up at the crack of dawn, and while I thought the Vyrane sky and sunset were beautiful, the early morning sun was nearly blinding as the huge red/orange sun rose in the sky, washing out the bloody forest to make it look like it was oversaturated in fake lighting.

  But people adapted quickly, putting on visors and goggles to block out the glare, and I found an extra set to wear that properly protected me, while Eve wore simple sunglasses, insisting her fashion sense shouldn’t be inhibited just because we were roughing it out in the wilds of a hostile alien planet.

  There was no collective camp breakfast like I was hoping, instead everyone dug into their rations and ate quickly while packing everything away, wanting to get moving as quickly as possible.

  In less than an hour, all the high-tech guard gear was stashed away, everyone had eaten, and camp had been completely broken down so it looked like we were never there in the first place. After a very quick morning briefing, we were ready to continue the march to Wesseran.

  Same as yesterday, Eve and I hung towards the back of the line with the researchers, holding hands again now that everything was totally square between us. I honestly didn’t care if we looked unprofessional in front of the rest of the mission team, I was beyond done appeasing them. And yet strangely enough no one seemed to question our relationship—no one side-eyed me that I could see, no hushed whispers as we walked past. I wondered if it was reverence for Eve and her power and how vital she would be for the mission that kept them all quiet, or maybe it was fear of what all the Predazoan could do if they offended her. Hell, maybe they were grateful she saved all their lives and didn’t want to disrespect Eve or her lover at all. Or maybe it was a simple case of sexuality being surprisingly free in the Empire after all.

  Whatever the reason, I wasn’t going to hide my relationship with Eve now; after all our other freedoms had been stripped away, being free to date Eve (even on a leash) was a freedom I planned on fully indulging in.

  Throughout the night, the soldiers had some beacon active to try and call out to any survivors from the dropship, but since no one answered the call, they were now officially declared killed in action, and there would be no available effort to retrieve their bodies. Same as they said we didn’t have time or resources to detain the Imperial soldiers, anyone who was left behind, lost, or captured would be completely on their own this mission; we wouldn’t be doubling back for anything command told us. We would be striving for all forward progress, and anything that would detract from that would be quickly abandoned.

  Although I wondered what they would do if Eve and I got lost or doubled-back or something. Forgetting what kind of trouble we might get in afterwards, it was funny to think of the soldiers trying to complete the mission without Eve, moving forward with their agenda with absolutely no way to actually see it through. Realistically, they would have to double-back, breaking their own rules or orders since their only shot at success would be through us.

  Lobae and Vinnago checked in with us every so often again, but they didn’t press the distance between us at all now, accepting the rift that had been created. Instead, they tried to attend to our needs with surprising diligence, asking if we wanted a break or needed rations, trying to be extra accommodating—acting as though they were our attendants or something. I figured they were either trying to win us back over with their subservience or just ordered to keep the handler and the asset happy after the confrontation yesterday.

  They certainly wouldn’t want to spook the nuke before it was delivered, right?

  Kianna was making more of an effort to be involved with us I could see, and while I was still a little leery about engaging with anyone working for the Empire now, Kianna was clearly trying to establish how different she was from the rest of them—how she still wanted to be our friend.

  I would still always be cautious, but I didn’t see the harm in being friendly with the researchers for now—Kianna especially. And besides, Eve and I talked about how it might be important to gather allies working on the inside.

  Now that Eve and I were engaged in conversation with Kianna, the time marching through the forest seemed to fly right by. The soldiers maintained a steady pace, and even though the researchers weren’t as active as anyone up front, they didn’t have too much difficulty keeping up with everyone else, not while the goal of being able to stay within a city wasn’t too far ahead.

  We didn’t see much wildlife while we travelled, probably too many people in our company scaring them off, but I did see what looked like a large, spikey black crow with four red eyes. And then once some deer/fox hybrid shot off beside us, either chasing some game or being chased instead, couldn’t exactly tell if it was predator or prey.

  I was shown some pictures of Vyrane during our various debriefings, but I guess since we crashed landed in the wilderness and then marched through a huge forest, I had the misconception the entire planet was going to be wild and uncivilized. But after marching for several hours, we finally broke through the tree line to find ourselves facing a busy hover-car highway.

  “Alright people, Wesseran is just ahead. We’ll be moving through urban territory now; stay focused and don’t get distracted. We’re still not in a hot-zone, but that doesn’t mean the enemy won’t be utilizing their own clandestine measures sneaking through the Empire’s established perimeters.” Lieutenant Bryx announced.

  The marines up front threw down some flashing holograms that seemed to be working like road flares, causing the traffic around us to halt. We started proceeding along the highway, and despite the lieutenant’s warning, I found I was plenty distracted.

  The civilized part of Vyrane reminded me of Earth a lot more than Entana had. It was still clearly technologically superior to Earth, but as a frontier world I could see some clearly outdated technology compared to a core world like Entana.

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  The hover-cars around us only floated maybe a foot off the ground, seeming to work much more like regular cars rather than miniature spaceships like on Entana—flying all around everywhere. The highway itself was weirdly metallic, black with red reflectors framing the lanes. Looking back and seeing the forest right beside us, it reminded me of a classic interstate highway back on Earth, surrounded by forests and empty land—a bridge between settlements. Everything seemed much shorter here on Vyrane, no massive skyscrapers filling the skyline either. As we walked across the highway lanes, I could see some spiraling offramps that turned into main roads that went into the large city ahead of us.

  Wesseran was filled with large domes, the tallest of which was probably only three stories, but some were so wide they seemed to take up a city block. There were also two layers to the road, a top-side expressway and a bottom-side that seemed like a main road, with parking and everything. It was wild how I could see so much of the city from up here on the highway, but the city was massive, so I was only seeing one small section of it. But still, even in the distance I didn’t see any tall buildings, no real deviation from the domes.

  As we crossed over into the next side of the highway, I could see some people getting out of their cars to look at us, cautious or worried expressions on their faces. So far, I could only see native vyranes, no other Imperial races around.

  Once we crossed over all the highways, we started marching down the side of the main road towards the city, and I could see even though we were outside the warzone, there were barriers and checkpoints established all around the city, manned by vyrane soldiers.

  The Vyrane military uniform was also less advanced, more like regular army fatigues rather than space armor. They had strange red-camo designs on their limbs, but the rest was covered by black body armor that looked like what we had on Earth, although with some control panel at the top right with an interface and everything. Their guns too looked less sophisticated than ours, but better than what we had on Earth again, like some magnetic railguns or something, long like hunting rifles with sleek, spiraling scopes on top.

  When the checkpoint guards noticed us, they activated something that caused large spikes to sprout from the street like some dangerous gate, and about a dozen soldiers appeared and dropped to shooting stances, barking out orders left and right, while in the center, the commander maybe, told us not to move.

  “Hands on your head, stay in those two lines, do not move!” The vyrane soldier shouted.

  It was kind of funny all the vyranes were quite a bit shorter than me and even most of the other Imperial races—just a little taller than Kianna. Even with the unflattering uniforms, I could easily tell the men and women apart since the men had straight black horns and the women had those curly black horns, and I could see the mix around us was split pretty even. The women weren’t much shorter than the men, and with the bulky armor I couldn’t see any obvious differences in their bodies yet. Their faces and features were all mammalian, rather symmetrical and even—attractive for the most part, nothing too weird or exotic I could see. The grey skin tones were a little unusual though, but they varied greatly from person to person, some nearly white while others were darker than storm clouds. Same with their skin tones, the hair colored varied from a golden-red mix to a nearly purple-red, with just as many shades in between.

  Our convoy formed up quickly and we all obeyed, lacing our fingers together above our heads. Eve beside me followed along too, playing her role well without any complaint. Obviously those guns wouldn’t be a threat to her, but she knew to behave when necessary.

  “Who’s in charge of this company?” The vyrane leader asked.

  “That would be me, Captain Seash of the Radiant Clandestine Special Forces Team.” He explained automatically.

  The vyrane leader focused on Seash, nodding for two of his soldiers to flank Seash while the leader lowered his gun and stepped forward, “You have orders and authorization for this sector?”

  Seash nodded once, “We do, would you like to see them?” He asked mildly.

  The vyrane leader nodded, and Seash handed off his tablet to display our orders. The vyrane leader looked at our company with a curious expression, “Is your entire party with you? Seems like you’re a few soldiers short, and I don’t see the standard Imperial soldiers who were supposed to be your escort.”

  Seash shook his head, “Our dropship was attacked in orbit, so we crashed 30 miles away from our planned landing zone. We lost several soldiers in the crash; all we have here are the survivors.” He gestured to Bryx, “May my lieutenant show you the crash logs and recordings?”

  The vyrane leader nodded, so Bryx stepped forward and produced his own tablet, showing a rather analogue display of our projected flightpath, then our deviation and mapped crash zone, and then afterwards some pictures of the wreckage with the bodies showed before them, causing a few of the vyrane soldiers to flinch away.

  “Ah, damn, surprised you got clipped when you were trying to fly around the hot-zones.” The vyrane leader said.

  Seash nodded once, “Things are off to a rocky start, yes.”

  The vyrane leader looked down the line, then back to Seash, “And no one in your company went missing for any period of time? No one acting strangely that you’ve seen?”

  Bryx shook his head, “No one’s been alone or out of sight at any point during the mission thus far. We know what we’re facing, we know what to look for; we’re not taking any chances, trust us.”

  The vyrane leader nodded along, then handed the tablet back to Seash, “Alright, your orders seem pretty clear from here, although I don’t know what all you expect to do with such a small force.”

  “We’re actually supposed to meet up with some members of your resistance. You wouldn’t happen to know where—” Seash started.

  The vyrane leader held up his hand to stop Seash, “We’re the militia, our job is protecting our citizens and settlements. The resistance is working alongside us, but we’re keeping this separate and compartmentalized on the off-chance anyone gets, well, assimilated into the enemy forces. We don’t want to risk any major information leaks, you understand.” He explained.

  “Yes, of course.” Seash said.

  The vyrane leader made some sweeping hand gesture to his soldiers, and they all lowered their guns, so then our company relaxed and took our hands off our heads; everything resolved peacefully this time.

  “We’ve turned a few local schools and community centers into emergency housing for anyone who’s been misplaced during the conflict, but if you have some credits to spend, you might want to check out one of Weseran’s hotels in the city center.” The vyrane leader explained.

  “We were thinking of doing exactly that; we might be in town for a couple days while we reach out for our resistance contact, so we’ll need to find somewhere spacious and secure to hold up while we work.” Seash explained.

  The vyrane leader made a gesture to a couple more soldiers, and they ran off towards a large hover-convey vehicle, like some covered military truck all black and grey, with a few red accents.

  “I’ll have my soldiers escort you into town, get you off your feet for a little while.” He offered.

  All the soldiers in our company finally relaxed, their moment of reprieve not far away now.

  Captain Seash inclined his head gratefully, “We thank you for your hospitality.”

  The vyrane leader bowed too, “Not at all, thank you for your help. With the way things have been going, we desperately need it.”

  Dreadspire: The Weakest Druid

  Dreadspire was a single-player game designed to break the unbreakable.

  Eryndor Leafshade, he found himself trapped in the body of a druid, the weakest playable race in Dreadspire.

  Dreadspire proves that no one was ever meant to win.

  Only the strongest may ascend

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