Etakkir, First Claw of Great King Iy, emerged from the harmonic path to a city in chaos.

  The discord was not yet visible to the eye, but it flavored the song of Kesteeli to such an extent that even the deafest hatchling would know there was something wrong. As the stray outerworlders were deaf as hatchlings, he well knew they would not realize how much the wake of their passage had disturbed things. Had disturbed them more, in fact, than seemed they should.

  He strode forward past lesser facets and their riding beasts, a corner of him lamenting that Iy was still tinkering with Etakkir’s mount after it had been injured by the Crystalline Entity. There could be no better person to take care of Featherclaw, but having to go everywhere by foot was tiresome. And perilously close to misrepresenting his own strength, lacking as he did one of the standard assets for any Claw, let alone a First Claw.

  Most times, a First Claw coming to the domain of another Great King was not so unusual. To be remarked, but no more than that. But this was not most circumstances, and he had not gone far before a seventh facet emerged to confront him. Mounted, the seventh-facet was nearly as tall as Etakkir, and in his eyes Etakkir could see a calculation that was woefully inaccurate.

  The seventh facet unlimbered a fine scythelance, sweeping it forward in a reasonable but still poorly-considered test. A simple seventh facet was nowhere near his level of power, and he responded with a contemptuous swat. The scythelance screamed through the air, briefly breaking the sound barrier as the blow ripped it from the seventh facet’s grasp, flipping end over end before burying itself haft-first in a distant building. The seventh facet gaped after it, shaking his half-numbed and scraped hand that had been holding the weapon, before focusing on Etakkir with more appropriate respect.

  “I am First Claw of Great King Iy,” he informed the seventh facet. “You have taken the outerworlders here.” It was not a question. The appearance of two humans and one so-called lunarian was hardly hidden, and a Tenth Claw had been swift to pass the information onward. Unfortunately, swift was not good enough, to judge by the unsettled atmosphere of Kesteeli. “What happened?”

  “They were to be guests of Great King Zys,” was the reply. There were several problems with that, among them the fact that outerworlders were not generally capable of withstanding the presence of a Great King. Even those with greater physical fortitude than the average outerworlder were affected by the sheer aura, at times contracting a sickness unto death even days after leaving an audience. Worse, Zys was a signatory of the Outerworlder Accords that had created Borealis, if at a distance, and trying to monopolize the outerworlders was a serious beach of the intent behind the agreements.

  “It is for the best that does not happen,” he told them bluntly, not caring who was listening. It was not his duty to protect their weakness. “There are others already mobilizing, realizing that with the alterations to our agreements, relative strength has changed. Where are they?”

  “We don’t know,” the other seventh facet said, clearly frustrated. Of the two, he seemed to be the brighter one, though perhaps less confident. “They broke out of our compound. But they were merely two or three facet at most! There was not even a nominal challenge when we presented ourselves.”

  “There wouldn’t be,” Etakkir said, partly disgusted by their ignorance and partly wishing for the Tenth Claw called Gratin to be on hand to explain the bizarre and alien behaviors of the outerworlders. It wasn’t merely a sort of deception – that had its own value, its proper place – but a legitimately different metric and meaning to strength. Measured by the wall that one of them had created, their strength reached up into nine or ten facets. Measured by their physical abilities, they ranged from zero to four or five at best.

  “They are simply loose in Kesteeli?” He pressed, making sure he was entirely clear on the matter. Though it would explain why the discord seemed to be only growing. Outerworlder influence came in many varieties, but it was always betrayed by the disharmony in the song of wherever they appeared. Borealis had been specifically built to counter that problem, but no other ikiski city had the built-in sound baffling required.

  “Unknown,” the smart one said. “There have been no reports of outerworlders since they vanished.”

  Etakkir let out a whistling sigh, feeling a small amount of pity for the two. They’d been handed a far more difficult job than it seemed, and told to interact with people who thought in an entirely different way than any ikiski. Unfortunately, the end result of that was the highest facets in the city – ignoring himself as a visitor – had been bested by people who didn’t seem to be more than two or three facets. And publicly, since there were still flashing warnings along the roads about the outerworlders.

  If this were a core city, perhaps things would be salvageable, but in a fringe city like Kesteeli, where multiple factions mingled, the tension was already past the tipping point. A nice bit of internal shake-up would stabilize things, but it wouldn’t solve the underlying issue. The outerworlders were still around, and when they showed themselves again it would almost certainly cause another round of chaos.

  Worse, he knew enough about outerworlders to understand that they didn’t see a casual, healthy brawl the same way. The violence could cause them to behave rashly, or they might be genuinely hurt since their power did not work in the same way as ikiski prowess did. Worse, now it would be harder to find them and prevent them from voyaging all the way around to the south pole. Which would have been an acceptable option if the outerworlders had not shown they had their own methods to reach Borealis, but now it demonstrated weakness on behalf of the alliance that was dealing with the outerworlders.

  “Take me to a communications chord, first,” he ordered, letting some of his mantle as First Claw settle around him, the power of his presence stripping dust from the nearest street stones and sending a wind blowing outward from where he stood. “Then I will find them myself. You know not what sort of forces are involved. The Great Kings themselves stir, and we do not need the outerworld involved in the settling of our own accounts.”

  The pair flinched, though Ettakir noticed that the smarter of the two bore a certain look of relief. That one was poorly served by Great King Zys, but they were all sons and daughters of their kings, for good and for ill. It was a shame that they could not be one of Iy’s brood, for he would have been a far better ruler for them, but blood was blood and family was family. Crossing from one to another was nothing anyone would trust or understand, despite, he understood, that kind of transition being natural for outerworlders. It all sounded like uncertain chaos to him, but he wasn’t a Tenth Claw. It wasn’t his purpose to understand.

  Ettakir strode forward, and the seventh facet pair scrambled to give him a proper escort. The less intelligent of the two glanced over to where his weapon was still embedded in a wall, but he’d have to retrieve it later, on his own time. Traffic parted for them, as virtually everyone knew better than to stand in the way of someone three or four times their height, and within moments he had access to a private chord, the gemstone panels sliding out in response to his whistles. Taking a particular polished tourmaline from his pockets, Ettakir slotted it into the transmission framework, altering the harmony of the communications engine.

  “Tenth Claw Gratin,” he said, not know when or where the Tenth Claw would get the message but trusting that he would. Gratin was a distant descendant, four or five generations removed, but sometimes Ettakir wished he was closer. Few were the ikiski willing to live among such alien types, let alone gain their trust. “You are to come to Kesteeli immediately. The outerworlders were here lately, and by my estimation they have gone into hiding. I can think of no other individual they might trust, and I do not wish to apply the usual force.”

  It was frustrating that he couldn’t simply stride through the city and, as First Claw, address the problem directly. Almost every issue that arose within Great King Iy’s territory could be solved that way, unless it required Iy himself. Such as freeing those who had been victims of a crystalline entity. But that was why Tenth Claws existed, to fill in those gaps and address the various layers of subterfuge and misdirection that grew in the corners of the world.

  There was no immediate answer, but Ettakir signed off and withdrew his tourmaline, pocketing it again to ensure that the connection to Tenth Claw remained relatively obscured. It was unlikely that anyone would actually be able to misuse such a line if he was careless, but it was his job to not be careless. The attack by the crystalline entity was certainly not his best showing, but at the same time it had forced a reveal of the true strength of the surfacers. The ability to simply deny the attack of a crystalline entity was somethings sideways from anything Deep Kingdom technology could achieve. That made parleying with surfacers far from the worst idea, and helped realign an alliance that was on the verge of simply falling apart.

  He waved off the seven facet pair, still hovering as they were, but offered a nod to their mounts who were clearly less than happy with the situation. Ekkatir recognized them as being of Thunderwing’s brood, and probably wasted on this particular pair, but it wasn’t his job to decide the disposition of high facet mounts.

  Once bonded, it was nigh impossible to persuade them to change their minds anyway. He’d simply send a comment to Thunderwing’s people in case there was an issue. Poor things probably needed something to stabilize themselves after having to deal with outerworlder nonsense.

  Rather than bother with any more of the local authority, Etakkir waded out into Kesteeli himself to see if he could find anything amiss. He had the advantage of at least having seen the outerworlders, admittedly at a remove, and having some concept of what they could do. Tenth Claw Gratin had provided a precis for their individual abilities, even the bizarre not-Deep-Kingdom-not-mount raptor, and while Etakkir didn’t have a direct answer for them, he was still a First Claw. If there was anyone save a Great King who could break the protections the outerworlders put in place, it would be him.

  If only he could do so before the city erupted into a useless conflict.

  ***

  Sarah Miller ran her fingers happily along the scales on Astoria’s neck. Despite everything, she couldn’t help but be continually amazed by her riding raptor. One just like Princess Kalakee, the Magical Girl who’d first made contact with the Deep Kingdoms ages ago, long before any constant connection was established. Hundreds of years had passed between her stories of the Hollow Earth and proper exploration of the polar boreholes, and outside of some particular fandoms those tales weren’t well known.

  Alas, the writings that survived didn’t have that particular dinosaur’s name, else she might have named Astoria something else.

  She rolled the kiseru between her fingers, a trick that she’d learned from Dad even if he’d used coins, watching the ikiski city flow past. For the moment she trusted her boyfriend or maybe even Lia to guide them along, taking the opportunity to try and relax just a little bit. Carrying all the illusions wasn’t entirely easy, despite Isaac’s help.

  Normally, maintaining an illusion required constant thought, constant upkeep. With Isaac making them ‘stickier,’ at least to her perceptions, it was more like just carrying around an unwieldy backpack. It took effort, but not much extra thought. She wasn’t looking forward to trying to keep it up all day, but it should be possible.

  “We gotta figure out a way to get those wings working,” she muttered to Astoria as her thoughts drifted from her surroundings back to her mount, somewhat annoyed that she didn’t have any way to interact with the crystaltech. It felt rather like that time she’d locked herself out of her mom’s apartment, but she had to assume Astoria herself could control some of it. In return, the raptor warbled back at her, feeding sympathetic reassurance through the wristband.

  “I don’t think Savage can fly, so I’m not sure how much we can use them anyway,” Isaac said, and she twitched, not expecting him to overhear her. She wasn’t used to people paying attention to her, especially since she was generally safely hidden behind her illusionary mask, and having a boyfriend that actually noticed what she was doing was still strange even if she liked it.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Can you fly?” Sarah twisted around to look at Savage, who was roughly in the middle of their formation, mostly to insulate him from the bigger dinos that occasionally came lumbering along the road.

  “Short distances only,” Savage replied. Sarah quashed the sound of his artificial voice before it escaped their little group, her smoke swallowing the vibrations. “And I don’t have any way to replace the fuel.”

  “Huh,” she said. Part of her mind went right to some kind of heist to take care of it. That was what Dad did, under Blacktime’s direction. Some things were purchased, sure, but a lot of stuff was just easier to take, but she wanted to get out of that habit and mindset. Except they weren’t up in Star City, where they could use money to buy things. So maybe heists were the better way.

  “We’re going to need to figure out something for money,” Isaac said, apparently following the same line of thought. “There’s only so long we can wander around and use the public water fountains.”

  “If you don’t mind more direct action, we can just take anything we want,” Sarah suggested. She knew that the Justice for Hire pair wouldn’t be excited, but she was sure that Isaac would be less wedded to a strictly legal solution. “We can always make a record of IOUs for the diplomatic government to pay.” It wasn’t like a few meals or hotel rooms would impact the budget, after all. Especially not compared to the rebuilding cost after the Crystalline Entity attack that had flattened most of the city.

  “Maybe for dinner,” Isaac said, steering Shay around a fountain, his voice full of frustration. “Even better if we can get out of here and do it in another city entirely. Or whatever settlement we can reach.”

  Sarah was a little annoyed by how stubborn Isaac could be, or at least was sometimes. That was one of the few things Mom had complained about with Dad, and Sarah saw why now. Columbuzz had that kind of focus too, sometimes, so maybe it was a male thing, but she’d also seen a lot of useless dithering among the ganger boys and she sure didn’t find that kind of thing attractive. She was clearly her mother’s daughter when it came to taste in men, so it was probably a quirk she had to live with. Or maybe, perhaps, Isaac’s power could do something about it.

  For the moment, he needed to focus on just using his power to keep them going. They were strangers in a strange land, pretending to be what they were not, and only by the grace of their combined powers were they not immediately outed. Her own illusions, Lia’s translation, and Isaac’s ability to boost their disguises to something that wasn’t instantly broken.

  An enormous ikiski strolling past broke her from her idle thoughts, a larger one than any she’d seen before, his mere presence threatening the integrity of the illusions and driving home how fragile their combined strength was. The big guy had some sort of actual presence that she could feel through her smoke, and from the way his head swiveled around he was clearly looking for something. She had to assume it was them, and made sure that their illusionary selves looked appropriately humble, mimicking other people nearby.

  Lia and Savage clearly caught the same degree of danger, the two of them pausing to settle into a rough formation as the massive lizardman stalked past, each of his footfalls shaking the ground. And that wasn’t even a Great King, if she understood things right. A thirty-foot-tall lizardman was almost unimaginably huge, but the Great Kings were supposed to be skyscrapers.

  The oversized ikiski moved alarmingly quickly for something of that size, even if he picked his way along the road carefully enough to avoid stepping on anyone. His head remained visible over the tops of the nearest buildings until he took a turn toward the outer, taller section of the city and vanished into the scenery. In his wake, there was an uncomfortable tone to the surrounding chirp and warble of the lizardfolk.

  “Is it my imagination, or does it feel like something big is about to go down?” Sarah muttered, wishing that they’d get some sort of break. Though they were on the run from the authorities, even if they’d been taking it easy. She knew in Star City, there’d be some pretty strict patrols if someone was on the run, either from Blacktime or from Star Central.

  “You are correct,” Savage said, his synthetic voice dialed down enough that Sarah could barely hear it. “I don’t understand all of the local dialect, but there is a general feeling something is wrong. An imbalance that must be resolved.”

  “It might be us,” Isaac said. His expression swapped abruptly from a hard-edged wariness to an aged weariness, fast enough that for most people she’d suspect him of putting it on. But after seeing the way his power worked and affected him – no matter what he said about trying to develop some kind of immunity – she knew it was just the way he worked. “Maybe they’re not like Star City, with lockdowns if someone dangerous is out and about, but there’s probably some kind of alert. And then there’s whatever my talent is doing. I definitely showed it can affect more than just me.”

  “I think you’re worrying too much,” Sarah said, not entirely dismissing his worries, but she doubted they were somehow inciting panic just by wandering around incognito. “You didn’t make the ikiski start a brawl, or make the crystalline entity attack. They’re plenty unstable on their own.”

  “True,” Isaac said, his face losing some of its sag. “But if they’re going to kick off again, we need to get out now. Getting stuck in some obscure native ceremony will blow our cover real quick, no matter what I’ve done.”

  “It might be time to risk a teleporter,” Lia suggested. They’d been circling around the city, and had located a couple other of the gemstone devices, but had yet to see someone actually use one. There was no telling if the song they had recorded would work, or for that matter where exactly they would be going, since none of the names on signs meant anything to them. The best they could do was eyeball the angle and hope they were making progress toward Austrealis.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Isaac said, patting Shay and taking a quick swerve from the traffic jam that had been left in the wake of the oversized ikiski. Sarah steered after him, her power working overtime not only to keep the illusions in place but also to try and keep an eye out through her smoke. Lia’s runes flickered now and again, some aspect of the magical illumination making them incredibly difficult for Sarah to suppress with her ability, even more than the mechanical sounds made by Savage’s cybernetics.

  She was pretty sure at this point she was better than she had been before being depowered. Not in terms of scope, because she still couldn’t produce the same volume of smoke, but the way her power responded had been so tuned by Isaac’s own power that it was the difference between driving a comfortable old jalopy and a brand new sports car. His words, not hers; she had never really found cars to be all that different.

  The traffic un-jammed itself as they maneuvered away, starting to pick up in that almost-chaotic way that was very familiar to Sarah from Star City. Everyone knew something was coming, and were trying to get where they wanted to go before it started. There were no sirens or alerts that Sarah could spot, but everyone else seemed to notice something.

  Most of the people making haste were the smaller ones, human-sized and below. Those of Gratin’s size, especially, with equally-scaled riding raptors were darting around and under the larger traffic. Though it didn’t feel like panic, the way it did in Star City. While she could hardly read ikiski body language well, the air was more like people trying to get into a stadium.

  Thankfully, not everyone wanted to stay. While the teleporters hadn’t seen any use during their meandering through the city, such was not the case now. The nearest one, and the one Isaac was headed to, pointed vaguely in the direction of an amethyst mountain to the south and east, hundreds of miles closer to their destination. Several ikiski piled into the center platform as they watched, and Sarah quickly fumbled with her pin to record the song. Having any ability to record in such a small object was miracle enough, so she wasn’t going to grumble that the ability was so limited that they needed to rotate through the comm pins if they wanted to record different things.

  Four of the assembled ikiski started to chirp, warble, and hum in chorus, making the gemstone panels light up in a familiar sequence. The crystaltech device closed around the singing reptiles, the long rod at the top shining from within and then suddenly sending out a bolt of light. It shot off into the distance, toward the amethyst mountain and the city around it, and for a moment Sarah felt very uncertain about using the teleporter. It was one thing to take a tear through space like she’d seen Nebula use, and another to be rendered into light and sent off into the void.

  But then she shook it off. Obviously it worked, and they’d already used it over far, far greater distances when they’d descended to the Deep Kingdoms in the first place. Besides, trying to go overland to such a place was impossible. Maybe if she weren’t a city girl she’d be willing to risk it, but the Green Grove meant that she’d only ever been in parks, not in true wilderness. Not that people from the Five City Alliance wanted to, given the monstrosities the Druids kept at their beck and call.

  “I got the recording for this one,” she said, and Isaac gave her a warming smile. They were all inside the illusions, and so they mostly saw each other as they really were. There was a vague outline for most of them, but she hadn’t yet cracked perfect illusions. In fact, she was the only one who could feel them, such as with her cigarette or the kiseru, or the clothes. It made the acting easier, but nobody else could actually touch her creations like she could.

  There was another group ahead of them, but it seemed queueing was a habit that wasn’t restricted to humanity. Despite the ikiski propensity toward violence, it didn’t manifest in something like waiting in line, so there was no pushing or shoving to get into the teleporter chamber. Once it was their turn, however, Sarah tossed her pin over to Savage, who had the only ability to broadcast of the group, amplifying the tinny sound to the appropriate volume for a chorus.

  Savage played the music, and the teleporter lit up, closing gemstone walls around them. The crystalline walls cycled through colors as esoteric powers energized them, the teleportation tune interacting with whatever strange crystaltech requirements existed and bringing them from one city to another. A flicker later, the teleporter walls lifted and revealed that they weren’t in a city, but rather inside the mountain.

  It was one thing to see crystaltech everywhere, and another be surrounded by unrelieved stretches of pure amethyst sculpted into walls, floors, doors, and windows. The monochrome purple was almost shocking compared to the vibrant multicolored crystals that made up the ikiski cities they’d seen so far. The actual buildings had been mostly stone, even if all the accents were gemstone; here, it was all crystal from top to bottom.

  “This is amazing,” Sarah breathed, wishing she had her camera to take pictures, or at least could take notes without looking extra suspicious. True, she could try and hide what she was doing, but under the circumstances she didn’t want to risk manipulating something that Isaac had enhanced. Instead, she nudged Astoria, following Isaac off the platform and into the corridors of the gemstone mountain.

  It wasn’t like a city, but rather some sort of massive, single building. Like the pictures of Tinkertown from textbooks, except wrought of gemstone instead of metal and glass. The teleporter was perched in some small niche in the wall, opening out onto a massive causeway, wide as a city block and with ceilings to match. The single hallway could have swallowed an entire district from Star City, skyscrapers and all, and yet the floor and walls were carved with just as much detail as the less grand architecture in the other cities.

  Massive cloth tapestries served to contrast the translucent purple that dominated the surroundings, thirteen-story high drapes of silk worked with patterns both abstract and concrete, describing stories that Sarah had no reference for. Vibrant blue and green and white were illuminated by crystaltech lights or massive, building-sized windows, granting depth to the enormous amethyst mountain. The scale was absolutely staggering, but they couldn’t stop and stare.

  The four of them joined the flow of traffic out into the causeway where it wrapped around the mountain, venturing out onto the broad, intricately-carved gemstone road. Isaac tapped his fingers nervously against the topaz saddle, looking around and making the illusion of his ikiski self swivel his head this way and that. Sarah wasn’t as overwhelmed, but she had to admit it was more impressive than she’d thought the mountains would be.

  “We should probably find an exit sooner rather than later,” Isaac muttered. “I have a bad feeling about this place.”

  “Yes,” Lia said simply, runes flashing on her skin as she tried to divine a way forward. It was obvious that her magical abilities were limited to local viewing, and minor manifestations, which seemed odd for a lunarian on Earth. Sarah knew, at least in a vague sense, that most of the lunarians that wound up on Earth’s surface were fairly powerful, even if they might not be sovereigns like Moonblast.

  Lia pointed to the left, and they took the coin flip, heading out at an unhurried pace so as to not attract attention. They were just one of many ikiski going about their business, though it was impossible to tell what business that was. True, there were dwellings and businesses carved within the crystal walls, but the place didn’t have the air of a city at all. It was something different.

  Perhaps it was more like a temple, given some of the freizes. As they passed one archway, she could see further inside, where a massive purple ikiski was carved in relief, sitting on some tremendous latticework throne that reached nearly to the ceiling and gazing out over the immensity of the amethyst mountain. Even if they weren’t ikiski themselves they could hear the echoing of warbling song-like speech, all merged together into a background susurrus.

  Then the statue moved.

  From the very first instant, the change was palpable, a shift not just in the currents of air and the background song of the halls, but something like the actual gravity of the place. Sarah had been in the presence of two sovereigns; Blacktime, and the supervillain Negative. Both of them had an undeniable aura, a feeling of power that was impossible to mistake. The almost electrical prickling of her senses that she felt from the massive statue surpassed both of them.

  A long, long hand rose from where it rested on the throne’s intricately worked armrest, and with a sense of dawning horror Sarah realized it was not, in fact, a carved relief. It was a living being; one of the Great Scaled Kings. And it was looking at them, a physical sensation like a gale wind kicked into their faces.

  “Imposters,” it said, booming voice not using words in any language that she understood but were perfectly understandable even so. The force blew away her smoke, and Isaac grunted as he felt the impact himself. In an instant they were revealed, two humans, a lunarian, and a cyber-raptor among the ikiski.

  “Seize them.”

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