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This was all a dream. I'm still dreaming it now. I don't know where it's going.

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== Unexpected dragon ==

It was a simple in and out.

The two mercenaries moved quickly. Alise took point as they got into the village, dealing out the bulk of the firepower to any of the alini frog-folk who got in their way, pushing aside wet vegetation and tribal decorations in the same motion. Martel had her back, making sure nothing followed, checking the map. They hadn't had a lot of time to prepare, but the idea was, with a mission like this, it wouldn't matter. 

The morning was wet and muggy, the coolness of the water itself a strange contrast with the air around them when it dripped on their faces, and Martel shook it off the map as they got past the last of the huts. This was the part they were after, the broad, open area before the water, with two fenced and gated enclosures a several dozen metres across, a few metres high. According to the map, they wanted the one on the left. The one with the reinforced gate, the moat, and the spikes.

Alise gave him an enquiring look and he gave the gesture to verify which one they needed to hit. The look was replaced with an irritated one.

"Nuke it?" Martel suggested, finally breaking the silence. It wasn't like the alini didn't know they were there; quite a few were watching from behind nearby huts, and it was likely even more were in the water. The way Alise had been blasting them with her magic, their target would have had fair warning, too. There would be no element of surprise here.

Alise shrugged, then smiled slightly and began the summoning. This was her favourite part. The part where she could fly, or at least experience the flight, no downsides, no danger. Martel was a more traditional mercenary, combining sword with sorcery, but Alise preferred a more specific approach, focussing on one powerful summon, and studying everything she could about the related engineering fields in order to keep making that one single summon ''better''.

The summon was a drone, fashioned after its technological equivalents, and as she finished the building motions, she cast it up into the air, linking her mind with its guidance, seeing what it saw. This was the hardest part, of course, getting it flying properly in the first place, and amongst the trees and foliage dripping wet with rain, it was particularly difficult, but after it automatically dodged the first few trees, crashed right through another, and tore up a whole grove's worth of leaves, she got it under control, bringing it back towards the frog-folk village with its silent, deadly glide.

Next to her, Martel tapped his foot impatiently.

"It's coming," Alise said.

He raised an eyebrow.

The drone, only about a metre across, clipped out of the trees and soared overhead, disappearing again almost as suddenly as it'd appeared, and the two mercenaries made ready for a fight. Martel drew his sword. A moment later, the missiles it had dropped exploded on the gate, sending it flying.

They ran toward the explosion, not even waiting for it to subside. Their target was the chief, and the intel had said he would be here today, and so here they were too, small party, quick mission.

As a result, they didn't expect the dragon that exploded out of the smoke, grabbing onto the wall and perching, flapping its admittedly somewhat singed wings. Alise was nearly knocked over by the powerful beats, and Martel just stopped in surprise before throwing up a shield to block the force of the wind.

"That's not an alini!" Martel yelled, only somewhat at Alise.

"Ya think?" she yelled back, recovering her footing.

They dodged to either side as the dragon threw a plume of acidic flame at them, and by the time they were up again, the dragon had taken off, rising into the trees.

Martel frowned. "Fireballs, then?"

"We should have had a full squad," Alise said. "We're not at all prepared for this."

"Yeah, well, we're here," Martel pointed out. "So our best bet is to just kill it and not die first."

"Oh, I'm not arguing," Alise said. "Just pointing out the obvious!" In the back of her mind, however, she was doing calculations, bringing the drone back around, trying to think how to hit another flying target. It wouldn't be easy, but if she just aimed it right, she could predict how the dragon might dodge their more traditional fireballs, and fling a pair of high-energy ballistic explosives right into it...

Martel started a fireball as the dragon swooped down for a pass at them, and Alise began to do the same, though the odds of her fireball succeeding when she was this distracted weren't very good.

The first fireball the dragon dodged without effort, but not the second, probably because the second was Alise's and completely crappy. It fizzled upward half-heartedly before finally exploding in the dragon's face, seemingly completely at random, throwing the dragon off its course and causing its own spat fire to miss as well.

With the time this bought, Martel threw another fireball up at the dragon as it winged its way back up, and this one hit with proper force.

"I'd say 'nice'," Martel said, "but that wasn't nice at all."

"Oh, stuff it," Alise said. "Next pass, I'ma drone it. Just fling the fireball straight on and it should hit."

"'Kay," he said, and as the dragon came down at them again, he did exactly that. The fireball missed completely, the drone flew by on its silent wings, and a moment later, there was a great explosion in the air above them, then raining down on their heads, then sitting smokily on the ground around them. There was also, conspicuously, no more dragon.

Martel nudged one of the smoking bits with his foot. "Mmm, dragon bits," he said.

Then there was another explosion in the woods and he jumped.

"Er, sorry," Alise said, wiping sweat off her face. "I might have slightly lost control of the drone."

"Slightly," Martel said, his hand on his heart. "Only slightly?" He looked around worriedly, but all the alini were still hiding.

"Was that it, then?" Alise asked. She was shaking slightly.

He shook his head with a shrug, and trotted off back to the enclosure the dragon had come from. Alise followed at a walk. Somehow, even with all the adrenaline, she was too exhausted to move any faster.

The enclosure was basically empty, and somewhat on fire. What looked like a huge nest was shoved against the far walls. Bits of pottery and broken bones were all about the ground.

Martel shook his head. "So the chief was a dragon?" he said incredulously.

"I... maybe?" Alise said.

"Well, there certainly isn't anything else here," he said. "Let's move out, then."

She nodded and followed closely as they made their way back out of the frog-folk village. This time, none dared get in their way.

== Motto I ==

Later, once they were back in the open jungle, Alise asked, "How the fuck did we even survive that?"

"That should be our motto," Martel said.

"I think that ''is'' our motto," Alise said. 

== Payment for an assignment done ==

When Martel and Alise got back to the Great Hall at the grand city of Ateris Malor, they went straight for the assignments office.

Alise cornered the clerk who had given them the assignment, getting between him and his desk, and glared down at him in his chair.

Martel said, sidling in to also loom over the clerk, "You sent us to kill an alini."

"So?" the guy said.

"The alini was actually a dragon," Martel said.

"Eh?" the guy said.

"Like it was disguised," Alise explained. "A dragon disguised as an alini, so everyone thinks its an alini, like a dragon in a pond doing a duck impersonation," she went on, flatly. Then she just glared at the guy for a moment and added, "Except this dragon wasn't disguised at all. Or doing a duck impersonation."

"It was just a dragon," Martel added helpfully.

"It tried to kill us," Alise went on.

"We killed it," Martel finished.

"We expect to be paid for this," Alise said.

"Dragon," Martel said.

"For this dragon," Alise agreed.

Meanwhile the clerk was looking quite uncomfortable, having completely given up on getting in any words edgewise with these two mercenaries who were standing entirely too close to him. Then, realising they'd finally finished, he said, "Er."

"We expect to be paid," Alise repeated. "You gave us a job, we did the job, turns out the job wasn't quite accurate in its description, so we expect recompense for that too."

"It's not rocket science," Martel pointed out.

"I know rocket science," Alise said. "It really isn't."

"Look, guys, it doesn't work that way," the clerk said, waving his hands defensively. 

Alise and Martel exchanged looks.

"But I can give you for the contract," the clerk added hurriedly, "and a bonus for the dragon, since those all have standing warrant anyway. That good enough?" He held up a pair of bags.

Alise made a show of thinking about it.

Martel watched her for a moment, then said, "No."

"Er," the clerk said, what little colour he had left draining out of his face. It's not that mercenaries would normally beat up the folks in the office, but it did sometimes happen. And some of the particular companies could get quite creative about it, too. Not that he was entirely clear which company these two belonged to. He didn't recognise any sort of insignia on them at all.

"It'll do," Alise said finally, handing over the confirmation and then deftly plucking the bags out of his hands. "Next time, make sure they get the description right, yes?"

"Right," the clerk said shakily. "Before you go, what company did you say you belonged to?" he asked, then added hastily, "For the records."

"We're Ellis Company," Martel said, pulling Alise back out of the narrow desk space.

"Oh," the clerk said. He'd never even heard of that one.

Martel smirked. That was the fun of it, really. Nobody ever had.

Most companies had specific requirements and purposes, taking on very specialised assignments and growing in size and power as they found more like-minded individuals interested in doing those assignments, but Ellis wasn't specific at all. Their entire company was a hodge-podge of complete randoms, with everyone there for all manner of reasons. As a result, they did pretty much everything, from the simplest of jobs to the most important assignments. Martel liked it for its unpredictability, and had joined for exactly that reason. Alise had apparently joined because it had been the first one she'd seen and she'd figured 'good enough'. And others... had other stories.

As they headed back out into the main commons, they relaxed a bit, back in normal company, in normal times. It was a vast hall, awash with chatter, where many of the different companies congregated, mercenaries coming and going, others loitering about, and even a few other folk coming in for various reasons. A few stood out, either for particularly bright attire, or particularly fancy, but beyond that it was all sorts and all styles.

Martel nodded to a few folks he recognised.

The job done and paid, so too lazy to do any maths or arguing, Alise split out half the monies and dropped them in Martel's hands, and he didn't feel like arguing either. They'd both contributed. They'd both even survived, somehow. Good enough.

That done, Alise scuttled over to a stall and bought a pie, and when Martel followed, bought him one too.

"Food," she said contentedly, taking a deep bite into her pie. She didn't complete the thought. That was perhaps all there had been to it in the first place.

"Food," Martel agreed, then added, "Thanks."

As they headed back to the Ellis hall, he asked, "So you doing anything later?"

She shrugged. "Got exams. Was just going to go loiter by the wall for now, unless there's anything too interesting to pass up in the books."

"The wall?" he asked. He knew which wall she meant. She meant the Shimmer wall, the ruined wall in the Serin swamps that wasn't a wall at all, but instead a portal, a thin place between realities. The Shimmer was the one place in the world where the living could pass into the dead realms without any magic at all.

Why in the world would she want to go there?

Perhaps she read the real question on his face, because she said, "I like it there. It's nice."

"Nice," Martel repeated flatly.

"For certain definitions of nice," Alise said. "Look, I go there, people leave me alone, and I can actually get some work done."

They ducked into the Ellis hall and the noise level dropped almost immediately. Their headquarters was basically just a room full of sofas and tables and some mats for sparring, with another room with snacks, and another with beds and crap. Some folks glanced up as they entered. A couple waved.

"Hey, Bob," Martel said to one. This only narrowed it down slightly; they had something like five Bobs.

"Martel, you're mercenaries," Alise said, much more quietly now that they were out of the noise of the commons. "You folks get better by practising your magic and swordplay and all that, but for my stuff to get better, I need somewhere I can sit and think and do calculations. I go to the dead lands, ''nobody'' bothers me."

"Why?" Martel said. "You're a merc. A sorcerer, aren't you?"

She grinned and shook her head. "Naw, I'm an engineer. I just cheat via sorcery."

He gave her a confused look and she just laughed and plopped down on a sofa. And then fell over. And then fell asleep.

"Right, then," Martel said, and wandered off to the showers.

== Motto II ==

Later, Martel asked someone who ought to know what the company motto actually was.

"I dunno, wasn't it 'We do stuff' or something?" the guy, a certain Merrow Tilsa said. Merrow was one of the company leaders, mostly due to a technicality. Granted all the leaders seemed to be leaders due to a technicality. It wasn't entirely clear what had even happened to the original leaders, and despite the resulting fuzzy hierarchy, nobody had bothered to do anything about it since. If they ever needed a true leader, they could worry about it at the time.

"Oh," Martel said. That wasn't a very satisfying motto at all. "Maybe we should change that."

"Probably," Merrow said.

"How about 'Doing everything'?" Martel suggested, and only as soon as he said it did he realise this was hardly an improvement.

"Sure," Merrow said.

== The Shimmer ==

The Shimmer consisted of about 50 metres worth of old stone wall jutting out of a tract of relatively dry swamp that, for all intents and purposes, simply wasn't there from one side.

Instead, there was a window to a roofed-over walkway, supported by dark stone columns, that just so happened to be shoved right up against a bunch of swamp. One could look through it, though the lighting from this side seemed wrong enough to give one considerable headache. One could step through it, though the very notion would fill a man's heart with dread.

Even so, Alise did this now, walking through the Shimmer wall like it was the most ordinary thing ever, going from slightly spongy moss to hard dry stone in the space of a single stride.

The other side was cold and grey, dark, but vast. Beyond the pillars was a plain of dry, dusty hills rolling off into the distance. Trees, alien and old, thrust inky blackness against a stormy sky. The air, if it even still was air here, felt electric.

There was no colour this side of the shimmer. Everything was blacks and greys.

Alise glanced back, just to check. It always threw her a little off, but the walkway itself was next to a wall on this side, too, with the shimmer forming a 50 metre window looking out on the suddenly alien colour of the swamp. But here, the wall was complete, snaking off into impossible distance, the walkway all along its side. It was that distance that got her. That sheer length of wall.

Looking back out on the dead lands, she smiled in spite of herself. One of the columns had a sign affixed to it. The sign said, in large text, "THESE ARE THE DEAD REALMS," and in smaller text under that, "Home to the Dead God. Do not bother the Dead God, who does not like people, and you will be welcome here."

This had always amused Alise, perhaps in large part because she didn't much care for people either. "Hail the dead god," she whispered with a smile. She wasn't entirely sure who that was, or if it even was anyone at all, but it didn't really matter. She just generally avoided everyone here. It was a good place for that. 

She headed for the table she kept under the old squiggle tree, leafless and ancient, growing twiggage in squiggles. There, she laid out her drone designs and got to drafting some changes, committing them to its crystal as she went.

A few hours later, it occurred to her that she did also have exams and should probably study. Unlike most, Alise had elected to go through schooling on top of joining a company - normally it was an either-or arrangement, in which folks did one to get out of doing the other.

So she did some of that, too.

A few hours after that, she went back to working on her drone. She tested some general spells, just for kicks, to see how the environment changed them. She wondered how the drone's performance would be affected here, and did some calculations to try to account for what it would take to fly purely on magic, building the results back into the main design for the time being, not bothering to test them.

Quite a few hours later, it occurred to her that perhaps she should go back and eat and sleep and do all the things living people tend to do, as well as find out what day it even was at this point. Being in this place with its strange physics and rules and life seemed to put her needs on hold, she had found, but it still seemed like a good idea to get back and eat. And sleep. And everything.

When she passed back through the Shimmer, the day was fading into dusk.

== Exams ==

The exams were a complete pushover. Having spent all her time studying things that actually seemed useful to her, Arise had completely forgotten that the exams themselves only covered the general baseline of topics, and never even got into things like specific subrace history or multispacial calculus or fluid dynamics.

Even so, they were a decent excuse to spend a night pretending she was normal and partying with the other students, though at the end of that it had become pretty clear that she wasn't normal at all among them, either.

She supposed she should have seen this coming. Trying to straddle both worlds, then on top of that chronically avoiding all people and spending most of her spare time past the wall, wouldn't have helped any.

== Assignment ==

More assignments meant more money and more prestige. Alise cared more about flying than about either of these, but she didn't object to them, either, and since assignments often meant an excuse to fly, assignments she did.

The latest pulled from the bucket was a stronghold. They would assault it in a team of six, take out the folks hiding out there harassing the citizen-class, and generally check the place out for oddities. None of the six really knew each other that well, but they all had someone who would vouch for them saying that, yes, this guy knows what he's doing and shouldn't get you all killed. Nobody was particularly worried.

The journey was a few days.

The stronghold was a fortress halfway up a mountain full of rock people. They set up camp on a hill opposite the mountain with a good view, and better cover.

Martel was along again, as well as a healer named Jessa, two guys named Bob who were, unhelpfully, also doing the same thing as each other (they were gunners), and a heavy blade by the name of Amalia.

Amalia never said much. Jessa wouldn't shut up. Every time someone tried talking to a Bob, it got confusing. The unofficial team leader wound up being Alise just because she kept coordinating things on the way there because nobody else would do it.

"So that's a stronghold," Jessa said, peering out over the cover they'd set up.

"Yup," Martel said.

"It looks really strong," Jessa said.

"Have you ever done this before?" a Bob asked.

"Nope!" Jessa said cheerfully.

The Bob sighed heavily.

Amalia, cleaning her swords off to the side, glanced over with an unimpressed look on her face.

"Shouldn't matter so long as she follows orders," Alise pointed out.

"I'll do whatever you say," Jessa said.

"Stay alive and heal the rest of us if we need it," Alise ordered.

"Right!" Jessa said.

A Bob snorted.

== Assault ==

They spent the next two days watching, noting patterns.

They struck the following night, at the changing of the guard outside. First they rammed an uprooted tree into the gate before the guards could close it. Then they killed the guards outside. All the guards outside. Then they moved inside.

...

== Stuff ==

...

== Past the borderlands ==

Once through the Shimmer, Alise didn't wait to see if Sargayen would stop following. If he didn't, it wouldn't be worth the cost, and given that he had followed this far, she rather doubted that the simple wrongness of dead realms would slow him down any. So she didn't slow herself, instead sprinting out across the open grey hills, looking for anything, anywhere, that would not just provide cover, but perhaps outright mislead. She didn't just need to get away, but disappear. 

Nothing near the wall would do. Trees wouldn't do. She needed buildings. People.

Passing by the squiggle tree, she glanced back in time to see Sargayen's burly figure lumber out of the walkway's cover, and drove herself to run faster, further. It was possible here. Here, she couldn't tire.

And neither could he.

The plains were boring, but straight-going, she was the faster, and the distance between them lengthened. The hills rolled. The not-grass shivered in the trembling of the air.

Alise kept going.

Sargayen kept following.

At one point she saw a building, but passing by, it was old, abandoned. Still, it hinted that they were finally leaving the borderlands, passing into the true dead realms, where the dead walked, and the mythical armies fought and clashed under the gaze of the Dead God.

It was a disturbing thought, but a battle, if that truly was what happened out here, might be exactly the place she could lose Sargayen.

The next cluster of buildings didn't look to be abandoned at all. Jutting out of the ground with severe austerity, thick and tall and dark and without doors, they seemed almost like a maze. Shiny bits glinted along the edges, a silvery line there, a not-quite-golden one there, marking odd lines through the stonework.

The last hill blocked her sight of Sargayen completely. It was perfect.

Alise darted in the opening into the tomb-like interior, and around the corner, and around the corner again. This was what they had instead of doors. Corners.

Another corner put her in a vast room of tables and chairs and, for the first time since she had fled here, people. They were sitting and standing about. Some were talking in whispers. All were wearing dark robes trimmed with one or two lines of silver or not-quite-gold. A few looked at her in surprise as she stumbled in and stopped, but there was little alarm. She wasn't very alarming, was she? She didn't think she was.

There was a table around the immediate corner from the corner-doorway, and she dropped into the chair as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

It wasn't natural at all and it was completely stupid and she didn't even expect it to work, but she was also really tired of running, even if she wasn't now physically tired at all.

The people in the room went about their business. Those who had looked over went back to ignoring her.

They were grey, she realised as she waited. All grey. Was she grey? She'd never even thought about it.

She held up a hand and looked it over. She looked more white than grey, here.

As she sat, she wondered who these people were. Were they dead? What was this building for? What were they waiting for? What did the lines on their robes mean? How did they make them so shiny?

Sargayen burst around the corner-door in a whirlwind of noise and smell. Dead leaves blew in with him as he came to a stop, staring down the room, disturbing the people in it as they looked back at him disapprovingly, as he eyed each one in turn, looking, looking, looking for Alise.

But Alise was behind him. That was the trick. Her little corner was slightly behind the door, and if he just didn't turn around...

Sargayen turned around and marched right back out the way he'd come.

Alise sat in utter shock. Her heart was practically in her throat. He should have seen her when he turned around to leave. How had he not seen her? What the hell had just happened?

A few long moments passed as she waited in utter terror, fully expecting Sargayen to come marching right back and take her, but he didn't. 

And the people in the room went back to how they'd been. They relaxed, they resumed their positions, their conversations, their general air of calm anticipation.

One of them took the other seat at the table, just sitting with her, not saying anything. His presence was oddly comforting, and slowly she calmed down, the realisation sinking in.

She'd won.

She'd escaped.

She'd lost Sargayen, and for all intents and purposes, she'd disappeared.

Even so, she didn't bother to get up. Even if she was finally free, if it was all over, she still had nowhere to go. She couldn't go back, not yet. Not while the Harrow month still lingered. 

But she was safe here. The folks didn't seem to mind. The man who'd sat with her didn't seem to mind, just giving her a reassuring smile when she'd stared at him for too long. 

She could wait. They were all waiting anyway, so what difference did one more make?

== Waiting ==

At some point, Alise lost herself in the waiting. It was the same as losing one's self to sleep, really, but instead of drifting off to sleep, she drifted off into dream, a strange waking insanity that gave her every feeling of being completely ordinary and utterly sane, but had she been anywhere else, had she had any concept of how much time had really passed, had she any inkling at all, it would have filled her with utter terror.

Instead, she simply went mad, and remained entirely calm in the doing.

Through it all, the man with her never moved.

The waiting waited on.

== Ending ==

The waiting ended when the dark figure turned the corner in silence. He stood at the entrance, robed and hooded, taller than all the others, darker than any, no lines marring any aspect of his form.

''"It is time,"'' he said, in a voice like death.

Alise startled out of her madness and nearly fell out of her chair, and the guy with her helped her up. Throughout the room, all the people were getting up, gathering up weapons and bags, putting away their miscellaneous puttering objects.

"What's going on?" she asked quietly. "What time is it?"

"Time to fight," her guy said. 

Fighting. She liked fighting. Fighting was a time to fly, to kill, to dance with fear and death, the only time to truly live. "Can I come?" she asked.

The dark, tall figure at the entrance turned slowly, coming about to face her, his darkness looming above her. There was no face under that hood, no form under those robes, only blackness and power. Only death.

Alise just stared.

''"You would be welcome,"'' he said. ''"Join us, then."''

The figure lingered for a moment, then swept about and left as suddenly as he had appeared.

"Was he... is that..." Alise tried to ask, pointing hesitantly after him.

"Hmm?" the guy next to her said.

"Er," she finished.

"You'll need robes," the guy said, ushering her toward somewhere else in the building. "For identification. We'll set you up with a squad later."

"Right," she said, and followed. She was starting to be able to think straight again, and as a result, she was starting to worry a little as to just what she was getting into. Still, it seemed safe enough at this point. 

Safe by Ellis standards, at any rate. Ellis standards would probably be regarded as suicidal by most other folks.

"Whee," she said quietly.

The guy got her fitted into some robes with a not-quite-gold line around the edges, matching her to the bulk of the room, with lumpy insignias that also matched everyone else in the room. She wasn't quite sure what they were supposed to be. Then she raised a baggy sleeve and swung it around a bit experimentally. It was quite loose.

"That fit?" the guy said.

"Mmm, I think so," Alise said. "I dunno, I don't really do robes much, even if I am a sorc. T-shirt sorc, that's what I am." She paused, then added, "Don't really do insignias much, either. You lot'd probably hate my company. So disorganised. Not like this at all."

"No?" he said. "Then how do you recognise each other on the field of battle?"

"Guess we don't really do battles," she said. "Always smaller things. Smaller groups. And if there is a battle, we'll be the ones slightly off to the side looking on wondering what the hell everyone's thinking."

He frowned at her. "Are you really up for this?"

Alise grinned. "What's the worst that could happen?" she said.

"There are a broad range of possibilities," he said.

"I know, I'm over my head," Alise remarked, "But that's fine. I'm at my best when I'm over my head. It gives me something to strive to. And not die. Usually nobody dies. Except that when those two Bobs and Kerna fell off the roof. They died."

The guy regarded her for a moment.

"Sorry," Alise said. "I'm babbling." And she stopped.

He nodded, then turned, leading her out, around the corner doorways, back onto the vast grey plain of the dead the dead lands. Groups were forming, the grey soldiers gathering around their commanders and readying. Readying for war.

There were thousands.

Passing among them, in the distance, was the Dead God. She was now fairly certain that was who that had been. The Dead God. This was the warring. How far out were they? How far had she run?

How long had she been sitting there? Probably long enough, at least. The month would have ended. She hoped.

== Group ==

Alise wound up in a group indistinguishable from most any other. They were thirteen, their leader with silvery lines in triplicate, giving orders, arranging everyone. He asked her what her status was. She said she had no idea.

He nodded, and went onto the next.

They moved out as a block. Alise fished out a bag of fireballs and tied it to her belt, her fingers sifting through the ashes. Half full. Good for maybe a few hundred. She hadn't bothered to restock for the Sargayen assignment. Hadn't seemed worth it. 

On the other hand, most folks usually only had maybe five or ten fireballs on them at any given time, but they weren't Ellis. They weren't insane. They didn't try to plan for all the worst possible situations, because they didn't make a practice of winding up in all the worst possible situations.

Ellis Company tended to survive everything, but there was a reason for it: practice. Practice, and, subsequently, preparation. Bring as many fireballs as you can, even if you're just buying cantaloups. Bring heals even when you're on an assassination job. Bring a blade even when you, personally, can't use it; the heavy blade in the party might need it, and they can use it to save your arse.

It helped that fireballs in bulk were actually pretty cheap, so the company would just order a few thousand and leave them in the closet.

Maintenance didn't appreciate this, of course, but Maintenance wasn't about to argue with a band of 50-some mercenaries armed with several thousand fireballs, either.

Alise wondered vaguely if there was any particular reason individuals couldn't carry around several thousand fireballs, or if they just didn't because it seemed excessive. It didn't feel like it'd be excessive here.

They passed from plains to hills to plains again. Forests of squiggle trees reached for the stillborn storm overhead. Strange rifts erupted forth bursts of hissing substance.

The leader asked Alise what her thing was and she said, "Fireballs." Then she focussed a moment, realised what the question had actually been, and added, "Also I've got this drone thing I like to fly around. Good deeps, but a bit slow."

"A summon?" he asked.

"Yeah," she said, getting out the crystal. "I mean, I think it'll work here."

He nodded.

"Jut let me know when you want me to pull that out, and I can cover our heads like a biiirdy," Alise said. "Or something."

"Can you stay your feet while it's out?"

"Sure," she said. "I can fight and flee and everything! Lots of practice."

He frowned.

"I'm Ellis Company," Alise explained. "We make a point of versatility. It keeps us alive when everything goes horribly wrong."

"Does that happen often?" Someone behind her asked.

"Oh yeah," Alise said. "It's not even that we're not prepared. We generally ''are'' prepared. That's how we survive it. Take too much firepower for everything, then when everything explodes, hurl entirely too many fireballs at it and not die after all." She smiled slightly and added, "If we had a real motto, it might be something like 'There's no kill like overkill'."

"So what is your motto?" One of the others asked.

Alise frowned. "You know, I don't really know. It keeps changing. Something about Bobs, maybe?"

The leader smiled and moved off to the head of the party.

"We have a lot of Bobs," Alise said.

"I'm a Bob," A Bob in front of her said, turning back with a wink.

"Hi, Bob," Alise said.

"Hi," Bob said.

== Battle ==

Later, they got to fighting. Alise's group wound up pushing through the lines, ushered forward by those around it, then out the side to take on a secondary objective. This was, she later learned, due to fireballs. Fireballs were not a primary attack among the dead legions, but where they had them, they could use them.

Had she known this at the time, she might have pointed out that fireballs weren't really her primary attack, either. On the other hand, considering she didn't really have a primary attack in the first place and when things went bad she usually just hid behind someone else, she might not have mentioned it after all.

The bulk of the battle erupted behind them as the armies clashed in noisy combat, direct and confrontational, and, largely, without terribly complex tactics. But that was the distraction, the front. The two sides yelling NO U at each other with their bodies while trying to surreptitiously sneak hands around the back.

Their group was a hand. Their target was a small fort with a possible heart kept inside. Nobody explained what a heart was.

"Now," the leader told her.

Alise nodded and began the summoning, starting small, drawing the pure energies into the crystal, then casting it up as she always did and, like she had so many times when she had first been testing the thing so long ago, fervently hoped it would fly at all.

This time, however, it was not an aerodynamic design that would make it fly, but the magic she had never even gotten around to testing.

The drone flew into the sky and then drifted lazily off to one side into a cloud.

Okay, not quite what she'd had in mind.

It was up there somewhere, she knew. Her mind's perception placed it in a whop of grey, still drifting, highish maybe. Possibly rather deep. The pressure was all wrong. She had no idea what to make of the readings and thus ignored most of them.

She made to move it forward and it continued to drift, adjusting sluggishly to its new course, and she realised the controls were now nothing like what she was used to. It was like driving through sand, and at once, like momentum didn't even apply. She didn't understand, and so shoved it around almost at random in an attempt to get her bearings.

On the ground, she realised the leader of the group was looking at her expectantly, and she said, "I wouldn't rely on this for anything. I'm not used to these physics."

He said, "Target fireballs at groups. When we get there, buildings are good collateral."

"Aye," she said, and made a point to pay a bit more attention to the battle around her as well as the oddity of the sky.

She dropped the drone out of the cloud and sent it ahead to scout, and as a result, she saw the ambush well before they ran into it, and also nearly crashed. An illogical spiral right into what should have been the gravitational force instead sent the thing back up into the clouds.

"Ambush," she said, pointing to a ridge that from where they were, looked exactly like any other.

They adjusted their heading accordingly, and while they couldn't turn the ambush about, they clashed on equal footing as a result.

Alise hid behind a bunch of swords, including the group's personal Bob, and used lasers to take out several nearby enemies with pinpoint shots while they blocked the swords.

A large fireball thrown at the ranged part of the ambush sent several of them flying, and the group made short work of the enemy forces overall.

Meanwhile she was starting to get the hang of the drone, and deciding that she might not ever entirely get the hang of this. It flew. It stopped. It did exactly what she told it. It drifted exactly as much as she told it to. It spiralled exactly how she specified. Opposing forces were just not a thing.

Except when they were and the drone went skidding in completely random directions for no apparent reason.

They pressed on. They ran into a few more groups of enemies, avoiding the larger ones, ploughing into the smaller ones with deadly certainty, leaving no survivors.

"Save your magic," the leader told her at one point.

"Aye," Alise said. "Don't worry, fireballs are cheap." Lasers were more so. Simple triggering event, and pow. But how to explain that, she didn't even know. It'd taken her completely by surprise when she'd finally done the calculations, and she'd even understood the maths.

He looked skeptical, but left it at that. 

Another group of hostiles put them in a circle, fighting outward. Alise and the leader and two others were at the center. Alise bounced ashes to gauge the wind. Instead of doing anything meaningful, the ashes hovered uncertainly above her hand until she grabbed them manually. She pffted at them.

Then she had the drone come in and laser the enemies from the outside, instead.

A moment later, she was thrown back, the blow knocking the wind out of her. Several of her companions were thrown as well, and as she tried to recover her breath, she directed the drone back into the clouds, away from the fight, out of the... what had even hit her? None of her senses saw anything. The drone had seen nothing. She had seen nothing.

She had a fireball in her hand without even realising, and pulled herself back up quickly, looking about. The whole group was scattered, but whatever had smashed into them, it had been indiscriminate - the enemies were also scattered, many outright dead - and they quickly began to close ranks once more, reforming.

Something grabbed her, drawing her off the ground, and Alise threw the fireball in reflex, but it bounced and nearly hit her instead before she could quench it. In the flicker, she saw an outline of a form looming over her, gigantic, impossible, its hands drawing her upward into its depths, and then depths were all there were. She felt herself losing consciousness, light-headed and not all there, and then the vastness of the form before her was not just without, but in, pressing on her mind, taking it for its own, taking her, becoming her...

She fled into the drone. This had happened before. Psychic attacks, designed to subvert the will of the target and make it no more enemy than friend, or even take over entirely, replacing everything it was with something new, but this... this was so much stronger than anything she'd encountered previously. Others could have been fought. This... this left no room at all. This was simple and absolute, too vast for anything at all.

It felt like a god in the same way that flying here didn't feel like flying at all. It was just what it was.

She dropped out of the clouds for another look, and now she saw it. The thing that had hit them was a true giant, a hundred metres tall, towering over the scurrying soldiers at its feet, their colours made indistinct by the sheer size of its presence. Veering closer, her instincts instilling a pattern of flight even when the lack of drag and pull mandated nothing, she even saw herself, so tiny, so helpless in its hands. She saw it hold her body to its face. She saw it focus all upon her.

She saw her allies throwing everything they had at its feet, and going completely unnoticed.

She felt her mind, even here, slipping slowly, unstoppably away.

The ballistic missiles would follow the same laws of trajectory as the fireballs, but hit with a far greater impact. It was time to use her real magic.

The drone passed by and flew around, as unnoticed as the mice at the thing's feet. She made her run directly, dropping payload, passing by, but her target was not the giant that held her, the god trying to take her over, but only her herself. An easy target, held still and defenceless.

The missiles struck true in fire and darkness.

And then there was nothing.

== More ==

The next thing she knew, Alise was lying on the cold, dusty deadgrass, and one of the non-blades of the group and peering down at her.

"Buh?" she said, not understanding.

"You're alive," the woman said. "Where does your allegiance lie?"

"Uh," Alise said. What? "My friends and allies, always. Those who stand at my side... you lot?"

The woman nodded. "You speak true." She turned back to the group leader. "Her mind is sound."

He looked genuinely surprised.

Alise looked genuinely confused. Finally, she asked again, "Buh?"

Someone was pulling her up, and she nearly fell over before retaking her feet, but he stopped her. It was Bob.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she realised the drone was still up, just sitting in a cloud, waiting. A quirk of the location. That certainly wouldn't work back home.

...would it?

The others were all standing and sitting around amidst the bodies of the last battle, mostly hostiles, but this time there were friendlies among the fallen, too.

"What happened?" she asked finally.

"Mahalist," Bob said. "He came right at you, tried to take you over. Probably saw you as the biggest threat, since your magic is so focussed relative to the rest."

"Yeah?" Alise said. That didn't really answer the question.

"He didn't count on your drone," Bob said.

"Right," Alise said. Nobody ever did. That was kind of the point. Then she said, "I know my drone. That should have killed me. Why am I not dead?"

"He was trying to take you for his own," the woman said. "In doing so, he shared his defences with you, but the severity of your strike was so much that he had to let go and recover his form."

"Did it even dent him?" Alise asked bitterly. As happy as she was to be alive, she couldn't help but feel slighted. That had been her best attack.

"He is a god," the woman said by way of dissent.

This didn't make Alise feel any better.

"Group," the leader said, "we still have a job. Move out."

They did, now numbering nine.