"Could you repeat the last part? Are you trying to say he had some kind of device that disabled not one, but hundreds of Infernals at the same time, and on top of that an adult Drake? Could you also reformulate how exactly this device worked?"
The great hall was packed.
The space was enormous — cylindrical, vertical, with floating chairs arranged in layers that climbed the walls to heights the eye could barely reach. In each of them, an unfamiliar face. And in each face, the same spectrum of expressions: skepticism in most, disdain in some, and in a few a deliberate indifference so pointed that it was itself a form of insult.
Carla stared back at them, with anger and exhaustion at levels she hadn't known were possible to feel. The answer came out before she could polish it for the environment she was in.
"A goddamn box. How many times am I going to have to repeat these things? We won the goddamn fight. Didn't we?"
The faces soured further. But the truth was the truth — crystalline, irreducible, indifferent to the discomfort it caused. A few human newcomers had done the impossible. And the impossible, when it happens, doesn't ask permission to be inconvenient.
A chair that had been positioned higher in the hall began to descend.
It descended slowly, with the deliberate slowness of someone who wants everyone to see who is descending. The man in it was large — fat in a way that communicated wealth, not weakness, the kind of corpulence that exists only in those who never had to worry about the next day in their entire life.
"I apologize for the insistence, Miss Carla Von Unicorn. However, I'd like to make clear that the account you're giving us is simply…"
He looked at something distant, searching for the word with the coldness of someone wanting to choose the one that fit best in that moment.
"Impossible."
In the end, he failed to be subtle or polite. There was no way to be.
Every word that came out of that girl's mouth was impossible. Yokais with coupled bombards. Gunpowder mines. Griffins in bombardment formation. A box that fit in a hand and disabled Infernals. Weapons born from nothing. And, as though none of that were enough, all concentrated in a single individual.
The man had a very specific desire in that moment.
To take that girl to his own planet and tear from her every tooth and every finger until the truth — the real truth — finally came out. But her name stopped him. Von Unicorn wasn't a name you tortured without consequences. There, in that hall, was the only place and the only moment in which he could pressure her legally, within the rules, under everyone's eyes.
There were people behind him who would kill him if he didn't discover what had happened.
And there were, he suspected, people who would kill him if he did discover it.
It was an uncomfortable position to be in. And he didn't like uncomfortable positions.
"I want you to know, Duke Bastion…"
Carla's voice cut the silence with a firmness that surprised even Carla herself.
"I was there. Your son was there too."
The hall grew one degree colder.
"Unfortunately, he didn't come back to tell what he saw. But know that I would never be capable of lying about this. However insane it all seems, what I'm saying here is exactly what I told my father and my uncle. There is no intrigue. And, in case you don't know — my unicorns can be many things, but they most certainly aren't capable of destroying an entire army of Infernals on their own."
She had a point.
For everyone in the floating chairs, after nearly eight hours of interrogation, nothing she had said had produced a contradiction. No detail had come apart under pressure. No version had conflicted with another. If she was lying, she had built a perfect lie — stitched with a consistency that no lie sustains for eight straight hours.
And that was exactly the problem.
Having won that battle had brought too many problems. They were supposed to have died. That was the script — human newcomers enter a purge against Infernals, human newcomers die, the universe keeps spinning as it always has. The anger in the hall wasn't about the lie. It was about the truth. Defeating the Infernals in direct confrontation meant something nobody there was prepared for it to mean.
"I think we've had enough for today."
The voice came from the only fixed seat in the hall.
However much Carla tried to focus on the figure — and she tried — she couldn't identify it. It was as though her eyes slid off the outline before fixing on it, a shadow the entire hall seemed to agree not to see clearly. But she knew who it was.
It was the only person her father truly feared.
Someone with a velvety, reasonable voice — sensible, soft, the kind that never needed to rise to be obeyed. And that was exactly what made every bone in Carla tremble. The fear of hearing that voice was of a nature she couldn't explain to anyone who had never heard it directed at them. It was visceral. It was childlike. It was the sudden and humiliating urge to wet herself that she had felt only once before, years ago, when that voice had addressed her for the first and only time.
And there she was, hearing from the mouth she feared most in the universe the one thing she wanted to hear.
That there was nothing more to be asked.
Relief ran through her body like warm water. On the outside, she maintained her posture. On the inside, she wanted to collapse to the floor and sleep for a week. The eight hours in that hall had been, in a way she hadn't expected, harder than the eight hours she had spent fighting against real Infernals. There, at least, the enemy wanted to kill her openly. Here, everyone smiled while wishing the same.
And while she thought about the battle, a face returned to her mind.
Asleep. Protected by her, inside the dome, in the most fragile moment she had seen him.
He was beautiful.
Her face heated up — but nobody was interested in that. She was invited to withdraw while a new round of discussion began, one she had no desire whatsoever to follow.
✦ ✦ ✦
"Someone seems to be happy."
The voice arrived like a punch — but a punch of happiness, the kind that catches you off guard from the wrong direction.
Carla raised her head.
She knew that voice.
"SISTER!"
She ran into the arms of the only person she trusted completely — and probably the only one in the entire family who was truly happy she was alive.
"Someone has quite a story to tell. What do you think about getting some cake? I heard Interspace Cake released a new flavor from a race in a distant system."
The tears finally mixed with the smile.
"Yes, sister. Get me out of here."
The older woman felt something rise in her throat — but wiped her eyes before any tear could fall. She needed to be strong. She would have to bear everything, in full, for the little sister who had come back from a place nobody should come back from.
"Let's go."
✦ ✦ ✦
"Is it strange to think someone would be happy about my return?"
The closer she was to her sister, the less Carla needed to pretend.
And there, finally, she could say what she felt. The anguish. The fear. And, above all, the disappointment — because she had believed, with the conviction of someone who didn't yet know the world for real, that winning and coming back alive would bring glory to the family. That she would be received as a heroine. That her name would be spoken with pride.
Instead, she had brought torment. Distrust. Halls full of people wanting to wring from her a truth that didn't exist.
It was confusing in a way that even her intelligence — and she was intelligent — couldn't completely untangle.
"Don't worry, sister. Come with me, I'll explain."
The silence lasted a few minutes while the two finally left the great cylinder.
What met their faces on the outside was the light of three suns brightening everything around. Cars flying in ordered layers across the sky. People floating between buildings that defied any notion of height. Gigantic animals crossing avenues designed to accommodate them. Things Carla had grown tired of seeing before the Oasis and that, without realizing it, she had missed — the bustle of humanity's largest city, an organized chaos that made her heart race in a way no battlefield could replicate.
An enormous luxurious car descended in front of them.
The sister approached. The door opened. Carla followed her inside.
"Did you change cars, sister?"
The woman finally looked at her with an expression different from the seriousness — something closer to weary complicity.
"The other one, father had tampered with. Can you believe the son of a bitch planted several bugs? This one is mine. He doesn't even know it exists yet."
And then the seriousness returned to her face.
"Sister, I know you're happy to have come out of there alive. But we need to talk seriously."
She turned to the driver, who closed a glass partition separating the cabin. Her eyes returned to Carla.
"Is what you told them true? I mean… about the guy."
"Of course, sister. Honestly, I'm shocked myself when I think about what happened. How can someone… a newcomer…"
The sister narrowed her eyes.
But not from disbelief — from concern. Because she knew Carla wouldn't lie. And that was precisely what made everything a problem.
"You need to understand something. Much of what you told them is absurd in several ways. But the main problem is the Yokais."
A pause.
"Do you know which is the only race that controls Yokais in all the known universe?"
Carla didn't answer. She didn't need to. The answer was already assembling in her head with the cold clarity of a piece fitting into the wrong place.
"Your story fractured our alliance with the Bloodsuckers. And I'll be honest with you — if you were someone unknown, without our name, they would have killed you before you even opened your mouth in that hall."
The shock in the younger sister was clear.
Finally things fell into place. The displeasure. The poorly disguised hatred. The anger she had felt in the hall and hadn't been able to explain — it had all arrived at the exact moment she mentioned the Yokais. She had entered that place thinking she was telling a story of victory. She was, without knowing it, lighting a fuse.
"Wait. You think that human was hel—"
"Of course not."
The sister cut the thought before it could complete itself.
"That race would never do anything for us. The Bloodsuckers despise humans as much as any other race they consider cattle. But the Infernals don't know that."
She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice even with the partition closed.
"Our double agent believes the Bloodsuckers are ready to declare war on the humans. Not out of anger. Out of necessity. They need to prove to the Infernals that they had nothing to do with what happened on that field — and the most convincing way to prove you didn't help someone is to destroy them publicly."
The information hit Carla like a cold wave.
She had just felt what war was. The blood. The screams. The fear. Her stomach turned at the idea that another was forming — and that she, having done nothing beyond surviving and telling the truth, had been part of what started it.
"Don't worry."
The woman looked out the window while the vehicle left the planet, rising toward a place that only she and her sister knew.
"I'm going to protect you."
And then, more to herself than to her sister, in a low voice:
"We need to be together, when hell arrives."
✦ ✦ ✦
Inora Prime
"I hope you understand that no matter what happened. It's over."
That meeting was different from all the others.
There was an irony in that. Most of the time, the spaces stayed empty and the disinterest was palpable — because the matters were usually too specific, too regional, too irrelevant to move the great races from their distant thrones. But not on that day. On that day, the entire universe was agitated, and nobody was surprised to find the place packed with countless races.
All of them were there.
Even the Burmans — who historically despised politics — were present, shouting and bellowing while laughing at what they saw. And what they saw was something rare enough to draw laughter even from a race that rarely bothered to attend.
"How dare you prevent my revenge…"
"Shut up, woman. Here you have no power."
The being that stood up had scales — and to everyone there, was someone to be respected. An Aquamarine. The Burmans' shouts only further provoked the woman, who had clearly passed the point where reason still had a voice.
"HOW DARE YOU?! WE WERE BETRAYED BY THOSE GODDAMN BLOODSUCKING SONS OF BITCHES!"
Lagherta bellowed and thrashed while others of her own race held her back.
They knew that what she was doing — confronting everyone present in that way — would bring nothing but ruin. They had lost, against all expectations, against all the logic of the universe. And dealing with that was harder than any of them had imagined, all the more so with the pulsing certainty that they had been betrayed by the only race they had trusted.
"The Oasis has already decided the winner. And not even the wounded pride of a queen changes what the rules permitted. Only humans entered that place. Only humans."
"YOU KNOW THAT'S A LIE! HOW DID THEY HAVE YOKAIS?! GRIFFINS?!"
Lagherta's desperate scream made the blood of the low ranks run cold.
Nobody wanted to be in front of that woman. Her eyes poured blood — not from injury, but from the way Infernals cry when emotion surpasses what the body can contain. And still, beneath the fear, some felt a secret and dangerous pleasure in watching it.
Because if even the Infernals could lose — the Infernals, the third strongest race in the Oasis — then the order of the universe was less immutable than everyone had been taught to believe.
And an order that can be broken is an order that can be replaced.
There was ambition in those frightened eyes. There was calculation. There was also something singular, amid the generalized confusion, the first sprout of a question that spread silently through every seat of that immense hall, crossing species, rivalries and ancient hierarchies.
A single question.
Who the hell were the humans?
Nobody knew the origin clearly. Nobody understood what that victory really meant. What everyone felt — from the most powerful races to the low ranks trembling in the corners — was that something had changed. That the status quo that sustained the known universe had fractured, in silence, on a forgotten battlefield, by the hands of a people that until yesterday nobody had bothered to name.
And that, whatever came next, there was no longer any way to stop it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe, the one responsible for all that hell finally opened his eyes.
The ceiling was familiar. The smell was familiar. The pain — that too was familiar, though distant, muffled by something that kept him whole.
And then two faces entered his field of vision.
Two women. Beautiful. Who spoke at the same time, with the synchrony of those who had waited for that moment more than they were willing to admit.
"Good morning, my Lord."
A pause.
"Welcome back to your kingdom."