The Tower of Aeos had become deathly silent, even as falling embers kept it from perfect stillness.

Chunks of twisted, hot metal dug into Aurin's back. The Trial Circle, once a sleek, impeccably built chamber made of wrought iron and concrete, had been cast into utter ruin. It had been surrounded by seats that rose in several tiers, all the way up to a mezzanine two stories above. A coliseum of sorts, for students of the arcane arts to witness and fight in mock battles to test their Will. Now, it was a graveyard.

Aurin weakly turned her head, and a rock formed in her throat. In the seats where her classmates had sat moments before, sat ashen husks: flash-fried bodies, their hands covering their faces from the unimaginable heat and light that took their lives in a fraction of a second.

“No,” The fifteen-year-old choked, and closed her eyes. Hot tears stung her eyelids. “No. No. No.”

She looked at her own hands as her tears dropped into her palm. Instantly, they evaporated with a sizzle.

"It’s okay,” Lia whispered close by. “This isn’t your fault.”

“It is my fault,” Aurin sobbed. “This is my fault!”

“No, Aurin,” she whispered again, her voice fading into a death rattle. “We are... what we are. Please don’t blame… your...”

The smell of burning flesh stung Aurin’s nostrils.  Aurin turned her head to look at Lia, her body impossibly heavy. Her legs felt like they were glued to the floor.

Lia smiled, with tears of pain in her eyes. When Aurin saw that Lia’s lower half was gone, she screamed. Begged for Lia not to go, to not leave her with this.

Then, a voice from behind her, and a hand on her shoulder.

“Congratulations,” her uncle, the Director said. “You have just graduated.”

Aurin screamed, stood up, and before she could even stop herself, she was swinging on him. It was entirely in vain.

The Director threw her back into the nearest wall and held her there, the sheer gravity of his Will holding Aurin up against the wall, as if crucifying her.

“We are moving on to the next step,” Turin said gravely, “So you had best be prepared. There is no going back from this point.”

Aurin screamed again, only her voice wasn’t her own.

“Knife!”

Aurin “The Knife” Alcoleiz awoke from a light slumber to the dark interior of a moving car. The hover engine's mesmerizing hum gently vibrated her seat. 

“Mmm.” Aurin wiped the drool from her lip. “What?”

Fernandez shifted uncomfortably in the driver's seat, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles. He glanced over at Aurin, his eyes wide with nervous terror. “I dunno how you can drift off at a time like this.”

“Easily, I guess,” Aurin said, and rubbed her eyes. She took a misshapen pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her leather jacket, slid one out, and hissed when it tore asunder over her knuckle. She paused, briefly remembering something buried deep in her psyche — something lodged deep, like a splinter in her mind.

Rather than face it head-on, she discarded the broken cigarette into one of the door handles and pulled out a whole new cigarette.

“Just another Tuesday,” she murmured. She focused her Will into her fingertip until it glowed orange.

The cigarette crackled in Aurin's hand, and Fernandez glanced away from the road as Aurin lit the tip of the cigarette without the use of a lighter. 

“How the hell do you do that?” Fernandez whispered, awed, his pale face marred with acne scars. He wore a brown vest over a light blue button-up shirt and slacks. His cabbie hat hid a massive case of premature male pattern baldness. Fernandez continued, “Y’gotta tell me.”

“Seen me kill somebody with a glass of water,” Aurin said, “and you wanna know how I light my cigs?”

“Well yeah, it’s just so… fascinating.”

“Wouldn’t get it,” Aurin said dismissively, staring out at the darkness outside her passenger window.

Out East, the glow from Ascension grasped at the night sky, smothering the stars in a blanket of light pollution. Khagilos, the planet around which this one orbited, glowed a proud blood-orange all the same.

“What, you think I’m dumb?”

“No.” Aurin took another drag, the smoke filling up her lungs with a sweet, sickly burn. She exhaled. “Well, yes. More like I’d have to give you physics 101.”

Fernandez sniffed, rubbed his nose. He was using. Aurin could smell it. “Molecular physics. Like with atoms and shit? Bet if I sat down with a textbook or two, I could figure it out.”

“Don’t quit your day job,” Aurin replied. “What’s the ETA?”

“The boss is still behind us. Said you were the one rolling out the red carpet.”  

“And?” Aurin scanned the approaching location. “That it?”

“Said you were there for insurance. That’s it.”

“Fine by me. Could use a break.”

Fernandez tilted his head. “So, if you can light a cig with your mind, does that mean you’re, like, telekinetic or somethin’? Can you move stuff too?”

Aurin squeezed the bridge of her nose, trying to get the hangover to leak out. “Chairs, mostly. Real high-level shit.”

Fernandez snorted. “Alright, whatever.”

As Fernandez hung a right down an old, cracked road, a huge and abandoned Mercator Group manufacturing facility revealed itself in the headlights. As they flew through the knocked-down gate and drove over dilapidated tarmac, more shapes made themselves clear in the black. Giant humanoid shapes stood dead-still all around them.

Old Frames waited idly for a master to come and animate them, as nature ate at their armored bodies and rust creeped up into their joints and extremities. Some were little taller than an average human, hardly more than cages with arms and legs welded onto them, others were as tall as fifteen meters and could peer over the top of a multi-story building. They were walking weapon platforms waiting to be driven into hell.

In the center of the Frameyard was a great factory, easily two-hundred meters tall and as wide as a small town. All around it, small airborne ships sat in various stages of disrepair and disuse, appearing to Aurin like piglets sucking at their mother’s teat.

As far as Aurin knew, the factory was abandoned, as the Mercator Group consolidated at the Redshift facility some five hundred miles to the north. As huge as this place was, it was a small-town junkyard compared to the city-sized Redshift, a place where ten thousand employees worked and lived.

This place had been left to the roaches and the unhoused. In the hangar, where the Mercator Group’s best engineers had built spaceships and Frames, the transient now lived in a sort of makeshift township. Aurin could vaguely see an orange glow from within, the telltale signs of makeshift fires.

The local Ministry of State Affairs hardly ever came out here, nor the other Ministries for that matter.

Fernandez brought the hover car to a crawl, and with a shaking hand, he pulled on the shifter until the car had stopped.

“What if this is a trap?” Fernandez said, nervously shifting the car into park.

“Relax,” Aurin grunted, unbuckling her seatbelt. “It’ll be fine.”

Fernandez sniffed again. “Somehow, that don’t mean much comin’ from you, Knife.” Huge shapes moved into the view of the headlights. Aurin gripped the door handle and planted a foot on the dirt. “Uh...sure. I’ll stay here.”

Aurin stepped forward and walked in front of the car, being careful as to show both of her hands. She was in front of the car now, the jets blowing her oversized bomber jacket around. The ground was packed tight, but slightly muddy, the grains crunching quietly under her boots.

A group of aliens stood in front of her, illuminated in the headlights. They were creatures from the Sister Planet of Khagilos, which, ironically, was hanging in the sky right behind them. Rather than being a homogenous species, they were a veritable collage — a genetic explosion of different evolutionary traits and anatomical oddities, selective evolutionary pressures that were incomprehensible to humans.

Each of the five of them was wildly unique to the others. One was a canid creature built like a brick shithouse, covered in thick fur and with a jaw that could crack coconuts — a hyena on two legs. Another was a man made of solid granite, his hide covered in scaly stones and his great arms boasting enormous hands.

Their spokesperson, or whatever they considered him, was a reptilian-humanoid like a Komodo dragon. He clutched a black briefcase, and his tongue flicked out, tasting the air.

Human beings were not well-versed in the body language of the Khagilosi, but Aurin could tell the beastmen were tense. After all, her reputation preceded her, and her presence could easily be perceived as an escalation.

Aurin eyed each of the Khagilosi unflinchingly. After a long time of everyone sizing up, Aurin spoke. “He’s on his way.”

“And if he issssn’t?” hissed the Komodo-man. His head turned to the side, and one eye glared at Aurin distrustfully. “What if you were jussst sssent here to kill usss, and make off with the goodsss?”

Aurin looked around. There were several puddles in the ground from last night’s rain, so the total volume in the yard was something close to forty gallons.

Aurin also glanced at the car she arrived in, which contained a thirty-gallon tank full of incredibly flammable liquid hydrogen. Not that she’d use it, but the car had another use as a powerful improvised explosive.

The Khagilosi were deathly silent, as Aurin put out the cigarette under her shoe. She cleared her throat. “Could kill you all without even showing my face. Just here to make sure this goes smoothly. That’s it.” 

“The human’s mouth is moving,” one of the other Khagilosi croaked; he was a squat, rotund creature with the head of a toad. The toad-man's eyes stared in two separate directions unnervingly. “Odds are, it’s because it’s lying.”

“If this really is a trap,” The rock-man began, his voice low and booming, “You’d best get on with it. I have been looking forward to crushing your skull since you stepped out of the vehicle.”

Aurin remained silent, not letting them goad her. Khagilosi, especially those who had turned to a life of crime, were constantly spoiling for a fight. Something about preserving their honor as warriors. They were at a severe disadvantage in a situation that called for diplomacy.

However, this wasn't the War. They would either leave with what they came for, or they would leave with nothing. No stupid heroics tonight.

“You guys wanna duke it out, gonna have to have to wait until I’m off-duty,” Aurin said, the effort in doing so hardly worth her breath. "For now, just act cool."

After a tense, awkward silence, two more hover cars pulled into the main road. They were matte-black, with one-way windows and a matching windshield. Conspicuous though they were, they were invisible to thermal imaging. Unless someone was there to spot them directly with the naked eye, Ornstein’s cars travelled unnoticed over late-night motorways.

Aurin allowed herself a small breath of relief. Not that she couldn’t have taken the five Khagilosi in a straight fight, but she needed her cut badly. Her disappearing act wasn’t going to pay for itself.

The entourage came to a stop, and in the kicked-up dust illuminated by headlights, the rest of Ornstein’s crew stepped out into the dirt. 

They were huge men, all of them with shaved heads and stacks of muscles. Tattoos of dragons and other mystical beasts adorned their necks and the backs of their heads, and each man was visibly armed.

Ornstein stepped out from the rear passenger side of his vehicle. Compared to his employees, he wasn’t altogether tall, strong-looking, or indeed very intimidating… but behind his unremarkable smile and his well-kempt black-and-grey hair was the brain of an utter bastard.

Ornstein gestured calmly to his employees, signaling for them to fan out and form a half-circle around the Khagilosi. The creatures were outnumbered… and even still, could rip through these men with ease.

“If you haven’t done so already, your terms need to be off,” one of the men said gruffly, his hand tight over the fore-grip of his submachine gun. “The last thing we need is for some beat cop from State Affairs to come blundering in.”

“Welcome, friends,” Ornstein began. His voice was congenial, warm… but Aurin had also heard that same voice mark others for death. “How was the trip from the Sister Planet? You like the weather here?”

“It is the Mother Planet to you,” the canid-man snarled. “Hairless ape. And if you must know, we were born here, on Alnora. We are as Alnoran as you are. You can try not speaking to us like we’re idiots.”

“I’m sorry, friend,” Ornstein crooned, feigning a contrite look on his face, and touched a hand to his heart. “I meant no offense, but if you ask me… it’s an easy mistake to make. But this planet could never really be your home, right? This is a civilized place, after all.”

“You? Civilized?” The canid-man stepped forward, his lips bared and his teeth in full, glittering view, but the Komodo-man snapped his arm back and held his cohort in place, casting a glare at the canid-man. The canid-man stared back, and then relented, but didn’t hide his fangs.

“SsssSss… do you have it or not?” The Komodo-man said to Ornstein.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Ornstein replied, and smiled gently.

“Is our word nothing to you?” the Granite-man asked, his voice a guttural scraping of stone. “Do you understand what we had to go through to get this thing? Do you know what they’ll do to us if they find out?”

“With all due respect,” Ornstein said gently, “The War has reduced the value of your ‘word’ to that of dog shit.” he added with an amicable nod to the canid-man.

The canid-man snarled again, whites in his eyes. “Keep talking, monkey. Your bones would sit pretty in my gullet.”

Course it’s going like this, Aurin thought. Supposed to sit down for tea and crumpets? Surprised we’ve remained civil this long.

Ornstein chuckled.

"Let me break this down for you, since you don’t understand the concept of leverage,” Ornstein said, and pointed at the Khagilosi using his entire hand, speaking to them as if they were children. “Show me the goods, or we walk.”

Aurin shifted her weight from one leg to the other, feeling the discomforting pull of battle grabbing at her nerves. The Khagilosi wouldn’t dare attack first… but that didn’t rule out the mobsters gunning them down anyway. The Khagilosi were already second-class citizens and undesirables. Criminals such as these would be missed even less.

The Komodo-man’s paw gripped the black suitcase, and Aurin heard the handle squeak. “We cannot open it,” he said quietly.

“It is locked by some sort of code,” The granite-man added. “It is tamper-proof and hermetically sealed. To attempt to open it would damage it, which would go against your instructions.”

There were a few, terrifying moments where nobody moved. The Komodo-man stared into Ornstein’s eyes. The canid-man glared at the human mobsters, clearly raring to go. Ornstein’s mouth turned down into a slight frown, and his eyes narrowed.