Krav ate a plate of roasted spider meat as he watched Ulrich in a pit fight. He didn’t seem in his element for a guy that ran with a clan named the Pit Lords. He was huffing and gritting his teeth as he put up an overly defensive fight. He lacked the ferocity of his clansmen, Krav thought.

  The news of the Gordo clan’s technological dominance was enough to whip Rootwalla village into a frenzy. The Disciples were preparing for war like a regiment of finely trained soldiers. The youngest among them were using Ulrich like a pinata. The Disciples training had been solely focused on combat with the megafauna, and new tactics had to be adopted to combat a human foe. He taught them where to strike, what to look for when expecting a counterattack, and how to quickly confirm a kill.

  Gaya watched with some interest. The older warriors were accustomed to combat with outsiders, but never to this level. They had often skirmished with explorers and treasure hunters, but they had never done so with the intention of wiping out the assailants. Normally, they would kill one or two before the whole group was scared off, but now she had to be ready for a long fight. She watched Ulrich and studied his movements. Then she looked at Krav.

  “Do you really have nothing to say? No knowledge to pass on to make this war any easier to fight?”

  “Nope,” Krav said while chewing. “Don’t die, maybe?”

  Gaya rolled her eyes. “I should have left you up in that tree.”

  “Well, how hard is it to hit someone until they die? I’ve been doing it for months now. It’s easy.”

  “What about their weapons? They have my warriors scared for their lives.”

  Memories of Agua Fria singed his mind. There was something wrong with his brain whenever he thought about them. He could remember everything, but there was a haze over it, almost like a filter. Dahlia was right, the scabs hadn’t formed yet, but the wasting disease had claimed part of his mind.

  His memory seemed happier than he remembered. Agua Fria didn’t seem like a traumatizing warzone anymore. Instead, it was a beautiful dream full of smoke and fire. It was that fire that made him scrunch his nose and answer Gaya.

  “Their weapons hurt,” he said, and he lifted his shirt to show his stitched gut that Greenblatt was almost too late to sew up. “But there’s one that you have to watch out for. Jackmaw Yapyap has something that shoots fireballs.”

  The warrior raised an eyebrow, unsure of how to process that. Her posture changed as she leaned in and gave Krav an accusatory glare.

  “Trust me, it’s hard to explain. Just avoid it if you can.”

  The answer wasn’t as suffice as she’d like, but Gaya nodded and thanked Krav. After that she seemed to relax around him. Her attention was back on the fight going on between Ulrich and three girls, each no older than fourteen or fifteen. They continued to stab at him with unsharpened spears.

  One of the girls slapped him hard in the side with her stick, and while he winced at the sharp pain, he managed to grit his teeth and chastise her. “That won’t kill them! Stab them in the torso, then quickly retrieve your spear and stab them again… Ouch!” he cried. One of the girls had snuck up behind him and poked him hard in the back with her spear. The other girls giggled, and if it weren’t for the haunting fact that war was coming, he might have joined them in their irreverence. Instead, he sighed, “Yes, just like that.”

  “Don’t forget to aim for his ass!” Krav called from behind his greasy fingers. “It’s the biggest target on him!”

  Ulrich rolled his eyes, but they snapped wide when one of the girls jammed her stick into his rear. They howled with laughter as his face reddened. “You’ll only piss off the enemy with an attack like that.”

  “Girls!” Gaya snapped. She stood at her full height and towered over the teenagers. “I understand the excitement of having visitors, but training is your duty. There will come a time very soon when you will have to put these skills to the test, and failure will likely mean death.”

  The light-hearted sparring pit had gone silent beneath her words. The girls wore ashamed looks on their faces as they apologized to Gaya in whispers. Ulrich nodded and offered his agreement with the warrior. They continued to spar, this time with much more intention.

  Krav helped himself to two more spider legs before Greenblatt finally left the dreamer’s tent. He emerged from the root system of the mangrove trees with his goggles locked firmly to the floor. Even behind the mask, it was obvious that the high priestess had given him much to think on. He approached the sparring ring and took a seat next to Krav, denying the half-eaten spider leg the boy offered him.

  “No thank you. I’m… I’m not hungry.”

  “More for me then,” Krav said. He finished the leg with a few loud crunches then leaned back, satisfied.

  Gaya looked to the Black Thumbs' warlord and asked him the same questions she had interrogated Krav with. Greenblatt offered as much as he could, but his mind was elsewhere.

  On that fateful day in Agua Fria, Albert Ibram Ao Dominus-Greenblatt was trading his scrap weapons for a bowl of soup and salted vegetables. He had just sat down for dinner and given thanks for his meal when the first shot rang out. It wasn’t something he had ever heard in all of his travels across the valley.

  Chaos quickly erupted, and that was something Greenblatt was accustomed to. Years of being in the wrong place at the wrong time had prepared him for a raid of any nature. Most of the time, he could offer his aid to the local law enforcement and command his lobotomites to help, but this time felt different. He commanded his creations to hide.

  Intelligence breeds curiosity, and Greenblatt was no idiot. He skulked among the stalls and shops, hiding in the shadows of spreading flames. The denizens of Agua Fria were dying faster than any raid he had ever witnessed. In the past, he had seen raiders overwhelm settlements with reckless abandon. He had also seen them use tact and guile to infiltrate the townships and provide easy access to the whole clan.

  This felt like an overwhelming strategy, but the fact that the raiders either had to use the elevator or slowly descend the side of the canyon’s walls made it seem like more of an infiltration. It was surely an inside job, and to Greenblatt, that demanded answers. He slowly crawled along the rubble, then he saw something that made him reconsider.

  He didn’t know it at the time, but it was the first moment he laid eyes on Mac. The girl was high out of her mind; he could tell by her wide eyes and blown pupils. She was shrieking and letting off a chain of bursts from her blinker. It was hard to count how many times it fired, but it cut down three citizens and one officer before the weapon clicked and signaled it was empty.

  She went to reload it, but her mood quickly turned when she couldn’t find what she was looking for. As she ran off to find more of the holy Ammo, Greenblatt stayed behind, stunned. Chaos and destruction aside, the tech that they used was incredible. He tried to piece it all together in his head, imagining its machinations and applicable uses.

  He continued his journey to skulk along the ruins of shops and stands when he found himself in a tavern. The windows had been blown out and bodies littered the floor, but he hid among the shadows and studied the enemy. That was where he was when he was knocked unconscious. The first of the pipe wielders appeared and sniped a citizen in the neck. The shot was big enough to decapitate the woman it hit and send her head spinning to the floor before her body could fully collapse. Greenblatt crept around one corner to get a better view of the weapon and found the one spot he shouldn’t have.

  The floorboards depressed, and he knew exactly what was next. Growing up in the Black Thumb clan, he knew traps. There was a click beneath him, and he snatched a table to put between himself and the landmine hidden beneath the tavern. He didn’t blame the barkeep for arming it, it was his place to protect, after all. But the blast rattled Greenblatt’s brain and sent him flying. The place collapsed, and he awoke in the morning covered I ash and coughing up smoke.

  “Some sort of combustion ignites a projectile in their weapons and sends it flying out,” Greenblatt finally said to Gaya. He was rubbing his skull as if to put the memories back into place. “An all-out assault will surely get you all killed.”

  Gaya nodded. “We have the jungle on our side. So long as the fighting is done amongst the trees, we have the advantage.”

  “No, you really don’t,” Greenblatt smiled into his mask, but he still shook his head at her ignorance. Then something lit up behind his goggles. He quickly straightened. “But perhaps you could try to match their technology.”

  Snapping his fingers, Greenblatt drafted up ideas of what they’d need. A plethora of ideas flooded his brain, and he called for 001 to bring him a piece of charcoal and parchment paper before remembering his guard was in pieces somewhere. It didn’t matter. He could just leave and reassemble them, as well as a whole host of other inventions.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “I have to go. I promise I’ll return, just hold off the fighting until I do. Do you know anywhere I can get some metal? I’ll also need a place to shape it. Oh! And if I can get my hands on some shale, I might be able to make something that will help us in the long run.”

  The hopeless conversation he had just had with the high priestess was suddenly forgotten beneath the deluge of ingenuity. Schematics and drafts filled his mind, and he looked to Gaya for an answer. The warrior woman rubbed her chin, then frowned.

  “There is such a place in the jungle, but no one’s allowed to visit it. Long ago, it was a place where people outside of the valley came to conduct experiments on the god blight. It might have everything you need, but the high priestesses of the past have strictly forbidden it.”

  “If you want to win this war, you just might have to break a few of their rules.”

  Gaya frowned at him. It obviously hurt her to go against the teachings of her clan, but she saw the sense in his words. “Alright. I can lead you there. But I won’t go in.”

  “Fine!” Greenblatt said. He nearly jumped out of his skin. “That’s just fine! Let’s get my pack beast and bodyguards and we can set out immediately.”

  “Better sooner than later, I suppose…” Gaya said. Her tone of voice suggested that she was already regretting the offer, but she stood and led him away before turning to Krav. “Eat your fill and spar with our trainees, if you don’t mind.”

  “Just don’t get mad if I kick their asses,” Krav said. He watched the two of them disappear and leave the village. Once they were gone and it was clear Ulrich was thoroughly distracted by his lessons, he snuck off himself.

  Gaya and Greenblatt took an hour to find his bodyguards and capture the pack beast again. By then, they were deep in the jungle and the sun was beginning to set. The Disciple warned about being out this late and the dangers of the jungle, but Greenblatt was determined to get to the lab.

  The air was cooling off, and the danger that she was warning about couldn’t feel further away. The megafauna she was so afraid of were locked in hiding and currently avoiding the intruding group. A few pairs of glowing yellow eyes slinked away into the brush. Come nightfall, they might grow more instigative, but for now they studied them.

  Greenblatt’s mind swam with the possibilities of a derelict laboratory. It was easily a treasure trove of knowledge, and if the Disciples were protecting it, there was no telling how preserved it could be. He could craft the armor they needed, assemble his bodyguards, and even try to recreate that laser beam. He just had to keep his fingers crossed that there wasn’t a megafauna that evolved to eat metal.

  It wasn’t much longer before the lab appeared. It was overgrown to the point that the naked eye couldn’t spot it. Instead, Gaya pointed out the glimmer of its glass ceiling peeking out in the sunlight that broke the tree line. Walls of roots and vines consumed its walls, and the heavy smell of cold rot wafted from within it. Cracked concreate was barely held together as it supported itself over centuries for the sake of secret technology. It was enough for Greenblatt’s mouth to start watering beneath his mask.

  “It’s probably safer in there than it is out here. Care to join me?”

  “I’m a warrior of the Disciples. I’ll be just fine among the foliage,” Gaya said, but her worried glances at the yellow eyes that watched them spoke louder than her words did. She was shifting on her feet, looking like she couldn’t decide to take a defensive stance against the beasts or charge them head on.

  Greenblatt waved her off and steered his pack beast toward the lab. “Suit yourself. There’s no telling how long this will be, though.”

  “I’ll manage. Just try to be timely about it. You’re here to help us take out the Gordo clan, not experiment to your heart’s content.”

  The interior of the lab had opened to a grand foyer. A rotting neon sign didn’t flash its welcoming anymore, but Greenblatt could make out what it once said from its burnt-out bulbs. The place was known as the Lawrence-Hall Advanced Research Center for the Spacer’s Cause. A mouthful, Greenblatt concluded. Dust covered its floors and flowers hung from its ceilings.

  The hallways of the lab had directories that were long faded away and illegible, but Greenblatt got a feel for the building quite quickly. On his journeys away from Kiva Noon, he had many opportunities to explore the dilapidated remains of buildings left by their ancestors. Those experiences had taught him that while each architect’s work was different, their designs were always made intelligently. Often, treasure hunters would get lost and lose their lives in old warehouses and hospitals because of their confusing layouts. Greenblatt understood that every lair of madness had its own methods of construction that made sense to someone at some point in time.

  The lab was a domed complex with a series of hallways running around its perimeter. Greenblatt found smaller workstations and cafeterias in the rooms that sprung out of the halls, but the real beauty was at the center of the dome. It provided a beautiful skylight that allowed for some of the sunset to guide Greenblatt in his explorations. Inside, large vats marks, “DANGER: HIGHLY TOXIC” caught his eye and churned his brains. This had to be it, he thought. That was where their ancestors kept the shale.

  Before he could start digging through that, however, he needed to see if this place could be powered back up. He may have talked a big game to Gaya about the safety of the lab, but her warnings didn’t fall on deaf ears. Working here without any lights was just asking to stumble on a mega spider hiding in the rafters. At least with the lights, the animals would think twice about moving from their hiding spots.

  Luckily, Greenblatt put his knowledge of ancient ruins to use. A lot of these important buildings like laboratories and government offices had backup generators that could still be activated. They were often charged by the geothermic energies that ran beneath the valley. Their power stations were often detached, but it was still common enough to find them locked away in a maintenance room within.

  The rotted directories were no help still, but Greenblatt pieced enough of them together to find a maintenance tunnel that had access to most of the lab. It was through a vent in the floor of the janitor’s closet, and while Greenblatt wasn’t claustrophobic per say, the tight tunnel and the thought of slumbering megafauna gave him pause. He stared over the edge of the access tunnel, banged against it a few times, and listened. When there wasn’t a scuttling noise from within, he calmed his nerves and squeezed inside.

  Metal walls pressed his shoulders into his chest and thick wires hung like snakes above him. He had to remove his goggles to better see down the maintenance tunnel, and even then, he had to squint. Right about now, he regretted not having a torch. The only light that pierced the tunnel came through grates in the floor to the labs above him. Judging by their purple hues, he didn’t have much time before he would be stuck in the bowels of the building with no light at all. That picked up his pace, and now he not only looked for the breakers, but also a secondary escape route in case he failed.

  He found his escape route before he found the power. One of the vents he was depending on for light had been broken into, its bars bent inwards. Something had also made its way into the tunnel, and it was hard to say how recently. Greenblatt was faced with a heavy dilemma; continue on and chance an encounter with the creature or cut his losses and climb out now. The answer seemed obvious, but the crystals growing behind his eyes cursed him with curiosity. He noted the location of the broken grate and continued onward.

  The power was only a few agonizing yards away. On foot, it would have been as simple as crossing a room, but in the cramped tunnels, it was torment. By the time he finally found the power, he had slashed his hands and arms on enough metal to earn him a tetanus shot. But the breaker box welcomed him with a flashing amber light. He quickened his pace when he saw it and wrenched away the cover protecting the switches within.

  This part of the tunnel was covered in a sticky excretion. Thick goo hung in globby strands from the wires above and pooled like petroleum jelly. Greenblatt chalked it up to some byproduct coming from the lab and continued to flip the breakers until something happened. When something finally did, he nearly screamed.

  One combination of switches finally put the facility on its backup power. The place hummed back to life as export fans and climate control systems came online. Lights all over the lab flashed, popped, then stabilized. In the maintenance tunnel, the amber light of the breaker box spread to every bulb, and Greenblatt instantly realized that the goop in the tunnel wasn’t from the lab.

  Almost ten feet in front off him, Greenblatt could make out a chrysalis through the strands of excrement. It pulsed and wriggled, then it broke. The sweet smell of flower pollen bloomed into the tunnel, and an insectoid creature stared back at him.

  “Shit!” he cried, and immediately he started to backpedal. The insect’s eyes stared at him like a giant mesh thrown over two great bowls, and the entire tunnel shook as it kicked and scrambled out of its chrysalis. The sound of grinding metal was overwhelming and threatened to deafen Greenblatt with its high-pitched squeals. Soon, it had escaped its cocoon and started up the tunnel towards its first meal.

  Boots hooked into wires as he scrambled for dear life. Whatever the creature had been before was clearly more agile than it was now. Crystaline wings glittered in the emergency lights and tried to uncomfortably flutter. Its head knocked against the walls, and the tink tink tink of its spindly feet was maddening. Soon, Greenblatt felt the bars of the destroyed grate with his foot.

  A new wave of energy forced him to press on. He slashed his legs on one of the bars as he desperately tried to escape the creature. As soon as he could, he forced himself out of the tunnel. The manic flapping of the insect could be felt like a tickle on his neck as he brought himself up and into the center of the main lab at the center of the dome.

  Emergency lights still barely lit the place, and as Greenblatt rolled away from the hole, he watched a great shadow erupt from the tunnel and ascend around the dome. In the air, it looked like a majestic butterfly the size of a dog. The warlord’s chest still rose and fell, still full to his throat with panic, but he watched it with a sense of relief. Just a butterfly, he thought. Not a spider, or a carpet beast, but a butterfly. He laughed at how scared he was and leaned back on the metal wall.

  Then something snatched it from the air.

  It looked like something in the lab snared it and dragged it away at a speed Greenblatt would have assumed impossible for any creature that size. One moment, it was gliding near the glass dome, the next it was being yanked to the ground. It disappeared behind a large set of computers and instrumentations, then there was a sickening crunch. One more crunch, and then Greenblatt swore he heard a gulp.

  A sign near one door was lit with a fluorescent light rather than the amber emergency light. Red letters told him it was the main power cycle for the lab, and to only pull the lever as an emergency shut off, or to reboot after a system failure. Tentatively, he made his way towards it.

  His eyes flicked between where the butterfly disappeared and where the power cycle was. Greenblatt made himself as small as possible as he ducked behind desks, incubation tables, computer towers, and cabinets. As he got closer to the lever, he could see one wing glimmer in the amber glow. But whatever ate it was gone.

  That made his skin crawl, and Greenblatt stormed for the power cycle. His hands shot to it, and he flipped the lever, turning to scan the lab. An alarm like a ringing alarm clock sounded throughout the dome. All around him, vacuum tubes came to life, pumping air throughout the facility. The amber lights made a quick flash, then they dimmed and fluorescents filled the lab.

  There was something there for sure. Standing over the broken wing of the butterfly was something Greenblatt couldn’t describe. It was as large as a school bus, quadrupedal, and definitely reptilian. He saw it for a brief moment as a black and orange monster, then it shifted its colors so that it better blended into the sharp, cold glow of the new lighting.

  Greenblatt swallowed hard and looked for an exit.