“Irene!” Samsara screamed in my mind.

  Panic flooded our connection.

  “We shouldn’t have let her go!” Samsara cried, her thoughts frantic and jagged. “We should have been with her! We left her alone!”

  “We couldn’t have known,” I said. Besides, I was pretty sure she didn’t want us around. Why else would she want to leave the village without our protection?

  “She’s gone! They have her!”

  I focused on the soul link, trying to grasp the thread of Irene’s presence. I could feel her location, rapidly moving away, likely loaded onto a juggernaut.

  Then, the sensation stretched thin and vanished. I couldn’t track her anymore.

  Was this the effect of those drugs? Would I have to use [Sacrificial Soul Transfer] each time to save her? How annoying.

  “This isn’t the time to be annoyed!” Samsara panicked. “We have to go save her!”

  “I’ll be annoyed at the Monster Purifiers instead,” I said. “They took Irene from us even after we rescued her. Plus, Irene is one of our worshipers, so they're indirectly messing with us.”

  “Yeah,” Samsara agreed, already slithering towards where we last felt Irene.

  I began jogging with her. “Wait, we should get Aisling to help us out. There were a lot of mechs and Unbound. Some of those mechs even looked bulkier and bigger than the ones we have fought before.”

  “Ugh, but that’s time wasted on not heading directly towards Irene,” Samsara complained.

  “I could control Aisling to follow us instead,” I pointed out. “Although, I don’t think you’ll like that option.”

  “No,” Samsara agreed, slithering instead towards Lateo. “Definitely not.” I followed her back to the village.

  I rushed back into the valley, Samsara slithering frantically beside me. The peaceful illusion of Lateo dropped as we crossed the threshold, revealing the stilted houses resting peacefully on the mountainsides.

  We found Aisling near the river, letting Nara slide down her arm as if it was a playground slide.

  “Aisling!” I shouted, my voice booming off the valley walls. “We need to go. Now.”

  “What’s wrong?” Aisling asked, her voice echoing slightly. Nara looked between us, her tail twitching nervously.

  “They took Irene,” Samsara blurted out. “The Monster Purifiers. There’s a massive army in the Wild Lands, burning down the forest to flush out Kaijus.”

  Aisling gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. Nara looked horrified.

  “We need your help,” I said, cutting straight to the point. “We’re going to get her back. But there are too many of them for just us to handle quickly. We need all the help we can get.”

  Aisling shrank back, pulling her head slightly into her shell. “An army? Like… the ones that captured me before?”

  “There’s no blimp this time,” I told the truth. “But there are lots of mechs and flying Monster Purifiers.”

  “I…” Aisling looked down at her hands, then at Nara. "I remember the airship. Before you saved me. A few humans came out. And they shot beams. They hurt. They burn."

  "They can’t hurt you like they used to," I said, stepping closer. I made sure to tower over her slightly, projecting confidence. I put a hand on her shoulder, feeling the warmth through her scales. "Look at you, Aisling. You aren’t a tiny turtle girl anymore. You are a Kaiju. A Tier 2 Kaiju. You’re several times bigger than the humans that captured you."

  “But you just said they had a lot of mechs,” Aisling stammered, shaking her head. “If there are that many, they’ll just capture me again. I can’t go back to being part of that blob, Ramona. I won’t survive it a second time. I don’t want to abandon Nara again.”

  And this was the problem with the truth. If I had lied now, Aisling would have been absolutely scared facing the mechs later. I had to convince her now so she could mentally prepare.

  “Think about it,” I pressed. “It will be a lot harder for them to capture you when you can melt their mechs before they even get close. Like I said, you’re a Kaiju. You have your acid. You have your thick armor. And you have your invisibility mutation. Last time, you didn’t even have any of those. Plus, we’ll be with you.”

  “They wouldn’t capture you anyway,” I thought to myself. They won’t waste time trying to to turn you into a battery. They’ll just kill you. But I kept that little nugget of truth locked away. I needed a fierce Kaiju, not a panicked turtle.

  Aisling looked down at Nara, who was gazing up with wide, fearful eyes.

  "Please, Aisling," Nara whispered. "Save Irene."

  Aisling took a deep, shuddering breath. Her reptilian eyes hardened. “Okay. For Irene. And because… because I worship you.”

  “Good answer,” I thought.

  “Let’s move,” I commanded.

  We left the valley, moving at a brisk pace. The sun was dipping lower, casting long, orange streaks across the skies. The scenery passed in a green blur, but Samsara’s mind was heavy.

  “We should have known,” Samsara’s thought spiraled into my mind, heavy with guilt. “We let her go out there alone. We should have sent out a projection as a scout, or… or checked the area first.”

  “We can’t pause our lives every time someone wants to take a walk,” I countered, keeping my eyes on the horizon. “She wanted freedom. She got the risks that come with it.”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “That’s callous, Ramona,” Samsara scolded me. “We are their Demiurges, aren't we? Their protectors. If we can't keep them safe, what good is the worship?”

  In my mind, the protection was just a byproduct of us wanting them to worship us. I didn’t really care what they did with their lives outside of that. Of course, if somebody was harming or kidnapping them, then yes I would care. Just like I would care if somebody tried to rob my belongings back in Utlond. I worked hard to get those things.

  “You really need to stop comparing people to things,” Samsara pouted, folding her arms. “Still, there has to be a better way than mounting a rescue mission each time.”

  “We could have prevented it,” I admitted, running over a small river. The water didn’t even reach the top of my ankles. “We could have forced everyone to stay in the village. Locked it down. Made a rule that only Kaijus are allowed to leave the barrier. No exceptions.”

  Samsara hesitated. “That sounds… excessive. They aren’t prisoners, Ramona. They’re our worshipers. If we lock them inside the valley, how are we any different from the humans who kept them in labs?”

  “Clearly we wouldn’t be turning them into meat blob batteries,” I stated with clarity. “I think they would prefer living in Lateo to being completely deprived of free will.”

  “I’m still not sure about this.”

  “It’s safety,” I argued. “If Irene was stuck in Lateo, she wouldn't be strapped to a juggernaut right now. She’d be bored, sure. Maybe annoyed. But she’d be safe.”

  “Is it worth it?” Samsara asked as we ran. “To live trapped in a place just to survive? That’s what we did in the apartment, Ramona. Hiding from the world. It was miserable, not going to lie."

  "We were alive," I pointed out. "And now we’re strong. Irene isn’t strong. Weak things need to hide."

  “Or they need strong friends to walk with them,” Samsara retorted. “We should have been there.”

  “We can’t be everywhere.” I knew Samsara wouldn’t agree with this. Thus, that leaves only one option left. “The best we can do is bring down the Monster Purifiers.”

  “Yes,” Samsara agreed.

  We ceased the discussion as the scent of smoke hit us. It was thick, chemical, and acrid—the smell of burning sap and industrial fuel. Our Demiurge enhanced hearing allowed us to hear the distant stomps of mechs accompanied by the wheels of heavy machinery.

  "Stop," I ordered out loud.

  Aisling skidded to a halt, her scaled feet digging furrows into the earth. Ahead, the sky was stained black and grey.

  I activated [Color Camouflage II].

  Aisling nodded. She focused, her turquoise scales shimmering before vanishing completely.

  We crept forward, cresting a massive ridge that overlooked the Collum forest.

  The sight was impressive. A wall of fire ate away at the ancient trees. And marching through the inferno was the line.

  Mechs. Dozens of them. They walked shoulder to shoulder, their blue and gray chassis gleaming in the firelight. Behind them, the tanks sprayed streams of fire, ensuring nothing biological could hide in the brush.

  Thankfully, we were far away, so they wouldn’t be able to hear us talk.

  “Attacking that head-on is impossible,” I analyzed coldly. “Even with three of us. There are too many mechs and many of them look bigger than the ones we’ve fought before. If all of them attack us at once, even our regeneration won’t keep up.”

  "We have to fight them to get Irene!" Samsara insisted. "She’s on a juggernaut!"

  I scanned the line. Behind the mechs, pairs of flamethrower tanks and juggernauts rolled steadily behind them. My eye caught a lone flamethrower tank between one of the mechs.

  I looked past the formation. Faint tracks in the mud and ash led away from the line of vehicles, heading straight back across the plains.

  “They already sent her back,” I realized. “That lone tank over there. She’s not here. She’s en route to an outpost.”

  "The big one?" Samsara asked. "OU-M-7? The one Seraphina is at?"

  "The one Seraphina is at," I confirmed. "I can track Seraphina, and I can track Viola. I know exactly where that base is."

  “Then I know where it is too,” Samsara’s eyes lit up.

  “We should get going then,” I told her.

  Samsara looked at the army of mechs blocking our path. The formation stretched for kilometers. “How do we get past them? If we walk, they’ll clearly notice, even if we’re invisible. They'll see footprints. If we fight, we get bogged down and Irene will get turned into a meat blob.”

  “We don’t walk,” I said, looking at the spacing of the mechs. “We jump.”

  “Jump?” Samsara asked, furrowing her brows. “They'll hear the landing. It'll sound like a meteor.”

  “Exactly,” I grinned. “But look at their formation. They have the juggernauts and flamethrower tanks behind them for a reason. If they turn the mechs around to investigate a noise behind them, they break the wall. They’ll leave the tanks and juggernauts exposed to the forest. I have a good feeling they wouldn’t do that. They’ll probably think it’s just an Earthquake or something, since they already were coming from that direction.”

  "And if they do chase us?"

  “Then we’ll take them down one by one,” I said. “They won’t be able to maintain the formation going after us, and besides, we might catch up to that juggernaut and free Irene. Plus, we’re probably faster than the mechs.”

  Oh, we should also tell Aisling the plan. I got into the habit of just speaking mentally to Samsara.

  I turned toward where Aisling was standing. It looked like I was looking at nothing since Aisling was invisible. Wait, I didn’t look like anything since I was invisible.

  “Aisling, do you think you can make a big jump?”

  “I… I can try,” she said nervously. Her heart was beating fast seeing all of the mechs. “Are we going over them?”

  “Yep,” I nodded my head. Of course, she couldn’t see that. “We’ll have to leap.”

  “How will I know where to go though?” Aisling asked. She furrowed her brows. “We’re invisible, and if we become visible, then they’ll see us!”

  “I’ll hold your hand,” Samsara said soothingly. Samsara gracefully grabbed Aisling’s hand. Still, Aisling’s nervousness was bouncing around her body. “On three. Got it?”

  “Got it,” she stammered.

  “Okay, we’re going to run now,” I called out.

  All three of us dashed towards the edge of the ridge. Aisling and I crouched low, and Samsara coiled her tail.

  “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  We exploded upwards.

  The ground beneath us shattered, sending a shockwave of dust into the air, but we were already gone. We soared through the smoke, arching high above the mechs. I looked down. The pilots didn't even look up.

  Soon, we were directly above the mechs.

  Gravity took hold. We descended.

  Aisling and I landed in a crouch, while Samsara bounced on her tail. The impact pulverized the rock and sent a tremor rippling outwards for hundreds of meters.

  I didn't wait to see if they turned around. I immediately broke into a sprint, keeping my [Color Camouflage II] active. Aisling landed heavily to my left, stumbling but recovering quickly.

  Samsara glanced back. The line of mechs paused.