Kairi emerged from the light of her teleportation, and stepped out into the middle of a demarcated space. Her eyes appraised her surroundings, and she took in the view of the large settlement established in what had once been a rural Floridian township. It was one of the several the Nomads used intermittently, based on need and duty, and served as something akin to an extended rest-stop between their more far-ranging wanderings as a collective.

The eclectic chaos of the settlement usually brought a smile to her face.

In the early morning chill, however, all she felt was a cold fury.

For five years of her life she’d waited to see her brother again, after all the grief, pain, and sleepless nights spent crying where nobody could see her. Five years she’d spent gaining strength, growing in power, and cutting her name into the collective awareness of every braggart, hunter, or fool idiotic enough to think her pretty face made her an easy mark.

Five. Fucking. Years.

“Kairi!” a familiar male voice called, and drew her from her smoldering inflection. The culprit was a tall man with messy blond hair some women probably found attractive, sea-green eyes she thought looked like seaweed, and a build like a linebacker—which only enhanced his idiot-centric image in her mind. He wore a black shirt with an Anarchist symbol on its front, a pair of comfortable combat leggings, a black jacket, and had a large two-headed greataxe nakedly sheathed across his back.

His face was a mix of ‘Abercrombie jaw’ and ‘hunter eyes’, and he walked toward her like he owned the place.

It left her feeling both annoyed, and faintly murderous at the same time.

“Jason,” she greeted the approaching man after he separated from the nearby group of Striders—long-range scouts for their faction—that had been speaking with him.

“I see you’ve returned alone,” Jason said with a hint of relief that set her on edge when he failed to fully veil it. “We got worried when you didn’t return straight away.”

Kairi’s lips flattened into a hard line at his words, and she fixed him with her coldest and most dissatisfied stare. “I ran into some unexpected complications, but you needn’t worry. Ace will come to me, assuming I don’t find him again first.”

Jason’s expression faltered at her stare and tone, and when she turned away from him and started striding purposefully for the old town hall where the Nomads had made their headquarters; he followed her quickly.

“Is it really that important to find him?” he asked with all the common sense of a tree. “I mean, how do you even know he—”

“If you want to keep your tongue, Jason,” Kairi said icily, “then shut your fucking mouth. My brother is more important to me than anything in this world, and that definitely includes your continued use of your vocal cords.”

Blessedly, Jason took the hint, and followed her in silence thereafter.

The Nomads’ time in the town would be done quickly, once she reported that she’d returned. Kairi was eager to move on, and especially to do so while looking for clues as to Ace’s whereabouts. They had only remained here for so long so that she had somewhere secure to return to.

Her [Prey Seeker] Skill hadn’t activated despite her best efforts to trigger it either, and that meant that either something was interceding with its function, or her brother wasn’t nearly as weak as he seemed. Neither option seemed feasible, and yet she had been unable to mark him when she’d tried to.

“The council has been waiting for you to return,” Jason said from beside her while they walked, and deepened her irritation in the process.

“For what?” she asked coldly while slipping her hands onto the hilts of her shortswords casually, and letting the crowd step hurriedly out of her path when they saw her coming.

“You’ll understand when you see them,” Jason said simply, and didn’t elaborate. It caused her to scowl, and people scattered out of their way as a result when they saw her coming. The Nomads had learned early on that Kairi, for all her youth, was not someone to be trifled with—and had given her a nickname to that effect, as well.

The Reaper’s Shadow, because she was ‘the last shadow before death’.

Part of her hated how extra it was, and another part of her loved it.

Ace would have loved it too, she was sure.

Her brother had always been an enabler for her silliest pursuits and wildest dreams, even when everyone around her had treated her like they were idle fantasies. He’d believed in her more than anyone else had, and had stood by her even on the most inane and ridiculous of issues for the simple fact that he was her big brother, and she wanted his support.

And she’d left him to the mercy of the strange and far-too-strong elves which had ambushed them. She’d met several different colonies of the creatures since the Incursion, and had partaken in raids against more than a few—but the ones she’d met when Ace had summoned her were different. They were all at second tier or higher, and were properly equipped and sharply trained. Even with her fourth tier strength, it had been difficult to hold them off long enough to even call out her message.

She wasn’t surprised her parents and grandparents had struggled worse. She was significantly stronger than all four of them, she knew, and even she had been forced to flee. Ace’s separation from their group hadn’t been accident, either. The elves had isolated him on purpose, she suspected.

The ‘why’ of it was what she couldn’t figure out.

Kairi’s fists curled tightly around her sword hilts, and her pace increased while the shame and self-recrimination burned through her. Step after step, she put distance between her arrival point and closed distance with the headquarters, as if the latter could erase the sting of the former.

She’d left him. Her brother. Her blood. Her best friend. She’d left him.

“Kairi? Is something wrong?”

Jason’s voice, concerned, stupid, and so blatantly infatuated drove her mad in the worst way. It was like a needle in her ear, slowly driving deeper against the thin skein of self-control that she maintained. Today was probably the worst one since she’d fallen out with her parents, and Jason just wouldn’t take a hint.

The tall blond had been after her for months, since her boyfriend Ethan had died, and Jason seemed to think that since she’d been with his former rival—who had been killed by the Alliance—that his status as the ‘survivor’ made him somehow a fitting replacement. After all, Kairi was young and beautiful, and Jason was young and handsome. It was a perfect fit, according to the tall blond gorilla.

In his eyes it was fate.

To Kairi, it was nausea-inducing.

Her fingers trembled on the hilts of her swords, and angry tears glistened in her eyes. Since she was a child, she’d cried when she was angry. It didn’t matter why she was angry, or how angry she was: she always cried. It was an infuriating and embarrassing trait, but one that she’d been forced to grow accustomed to quickly after the Incursion. Now she simply let the tears sit there, accumulating until they spilled, and ignored them as if they didn’t exist.

She’d even gained a nickname because of the quirk: the weeping death.

It wasn’t as bad as it could be, but it still made her want to hit someone when she heard it.

“Kairi, let me help you.” Jason said again, and with a tone of forced understanding that sent a shudder of disgust along her spine. She wished she could just cut his throat, but the blonde giant was actually one of their best Striders, and she wouldn’t be able to justify killing him to the rest of the Council easily. That, combined with the fact he actually was fairly dangerous, stayed her hand.

For now.

Kairi forcefully diverted her thoughts when she crossed past a group of packing Vanguards; each of them adorned in stereotypical hollywood ‘operator’ attire, and enhanced by varied styles of partial armor over their combat fatigues, all of which served the purpose of a post-apocalyptic version of kevlar. Vanguards always acted in cells, she knew from experience, and were largely inseparable even off of deployment.

If they were gearing up to move, it meant someone had made a big decision.

The tension within her breast ratcheted up immediately at the thought.

“Ho, Kairi!” the leader of the band of Vanguards said when she strode past. “You’re back!”

“And you’re leaving, Michael,” she responded tersely. “Anywhere specific?”

“Ah, you know I can’t tell you that.” he said good-naturedly.

“I’m on the Council, Michael.” she responded flatly.

“And I answer to Andrea, not the Council,” the man said with an apologetic shrug. “Just ask one of your spooks, they’ll have the details anyway—or Andrea herself!”

“I intend to. Can you at least tell me which direction?”

The Vanguard Captain hesitated, glanced at his peers—who shrugged or shook their heads to distance themselves from the decision—and then turned back to Kairi. “North,” he said at last. “We’ve been deployed North.”

“Toward where?” she pressed.

“North,” he repeated again stubbornly.Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“Why?”

“You know I can’t—” he began, before she cut him off.

“Fine! Whatever.” Kairi said while walking off again them. “Just be careful, Michael!”

“We will!” he called after her. “Take care!”

Kairi waved a hand with a mix of fondness and irritation, and continued on her way.

“I guess that settles it, then, if Michael himself is being deployed.” Jason said from beside her, undeterred by her silence to his previous offer, and with an actual useful piece of information for once. “I guess they’re going through with it, if Andrea’s sending him.”

“Going through with what?” Kairi asked sharply while they moved.

“You’ll see,” Jason said with a sense of mysterious superiority that made her want to bury her nails into each of his eyes. She didn’t do that, though, and instead simply made her way along the thoroughfare, and toward the arched ceiling of the distant town hall.

A small cadre of practicing Nomadgi—the idiotic name that the Nomads had come up with for their spellcasters—stood nearby when she crossed the main square of the township, and she appraised their progress while they engaged in duels. The whole lot of them looked like a mix of Harry Potter cosplayers and early 2000s scene kids.

Their uniform consisted of universal black robes, and their own myriad styles of dress from ripped jeans and fishnet shirts, to spiked bras and exposed midriffs with leather leggings, all the way to full-blown goth outfits with mohawks, multitudes of piercings, and even the occasional bare-chested boy or girl with nipple rings on proud display.

The chaotic conglomerate of Nomad society had no rules against nudity in the apocalypse, and as long as people were prepared for the fights, confrontations, and darker attention such appearances attracted; nobody would police anyone else. The only law among Nomads was that strength dictated position.

If the idiots wanted to expose their vital organs for ‘style points’ or whatever other braindead notion populated their minds, Kairi wasn’t about to try to stop them. She’d given up on attempting to police, or even try to correct, the disparate levels of varying survival instinct rampant within the Nomads’ anarchist collective. Gen Z had been hit hard by the Apocalypse, and some people adapted weirdly.

She barely thought about it anymore.

It also meant she had an easier time targeting vital points, if she ever needed to put any of them down. The Nomads tended to trend toward psychotic breaks more frequently than the other factions, due to the madness and high risk nature of their lives. Now and then, they simply needed to put someone that tipped over the edge out of their misery.

Kairi had learned long ago not to hesitate over things like that.

It was that, along with her Cultivation, that made most people move when she walked toward them.

The ‘might makes right’ rule had come into effect with shocking ease among the Nomads, whose eclectic mix of hyper-reactive personalities had boiled over into violence quickly enough. When the Council, which mainly consisted of their strongest individuals over time, had dictated that power was everything—in an effort to ensure survival, ironically—within the Nomads; it had at least established some form of order among the chaotic masses.

It was a rule that Kairi had always hated, to some degree, simply for the fact that meatheads like Jason could take advantage of it.

The fact she also benefited from it was not lost on her, however.

She simply didn’t care. She knew she was smart enough that it wouldn’t have mattered. Kairi would have found a place for herself with her wit, if her ruthless pursuit of Cultivation had failed her. It hadn’t, of course, but the knowledge it wouldn’t have been the ‘end’ was some small comfort, at least.

Several of the Nomadgi paused to watch her when she went past and into the town hall’s open doors, and Kairi studiously ignored them. They’d started doing that a lot more, recently, after she’d put a sword through Marissa Lencraft’s gut and opened her stomach in front of them all. She’d been selling information to the Coalition and Alliance both, and the double dealing had gotten other Nomads killed.

It had been part of what had gotten Ethan killed.

When she’d learned that fact, Kairi hadn’t hesitated.

The confrontation had been swift, direct, and extremely public. She’d wanted everyone to know exactly what happened to people that betrayed the Nomads’ trust, especially for a faction like the Coalition. The stupid bitch had been lucky that she hadn’t made her suffer for longer.

Neutrality wasn’t something they maintained just because the larger factions didn’t want to bother with them. It was a mix of the Nomads’ individual power, their hyper-reactivity to being ‘tread on’, so to speak, and their united loathing for any kind of overly oppressive control method.

But more than anything else, it was the knowledge that they didn’t get involved.

Marissa had betrayed that most sacred part of their creed, and she had paid the price for it. That balanced the scales.

The Nomadgi didn’t seem to see it that way, but Kairi figured that was because Marissa had been one of their ‘House Heads’, or whatever idiotic internal hierarchy they adhered to. Kairi had apparently put a target on her back with the kill, but she didn’t care. People had been trying to beat, capture, rape, and kill her since the Incursion first hit.

She was still there, and they weren’t.

That was all that mattered in the end.

When Kairi entered the town hall a moment later, with Jason on her heels like the world’s most aggravating horny golden retriever, she spotted her quarry immediately: the Council.

“Kairi!” one of its four members, a bubbly blonde all of five feet tall and with the biggest and silliest witch’s hat she’d ever seen, called happily. “We were just, like, totally talking about you!”

“Hello, Tasha.” Kairi greeted the woman with long-standing sufferance.

Tasha was not only the leader of the Nomadgi in every way that counted, she had also been the person to recruit her into the Nomads. The short blonde and Ethan had been the ones to find her, alone and half-dead, when she’d finally broken away from her family and struck out on her own.

If not for them, Kairi would have been a corpse in a ditch somewhere, eaten by cannibals—she still shuddered to think they really existed—or tied up in some room somewhere for far darker purposes.

“Kairi. Good.” one of the others, a man with black hair and a pair of half-moon glasses, said coolly. He was dressed in a full suit, and stood at the ‘head’ of the circular council table. “We were just discussing you, and your Prey Seeker ability. The System has given us a surprise.”

“What sort of surprise, Reed?” Kairi asked warily. The System rarely gave ‘surprises’ that didn’t involve some awful caveat. Reed was the Council’s ostensible ‘first among equals’, thanks in large part to his ‘Astroweaver’ Class, which allowed him to not only see the future—but also alter fate in small, but perceptible degrees. A critical miss here, a sudden on-target strike at the last minute there, or even affect bigger changes across a wider area; though it exhausted him to near-comatosed levels each time he used it.

He was probably the most dangerous person in the room despite that, when considering his gravity control powers—for all that his class sounded like an overhyped math and crystals nerd.

Reed hadn’t founded the Nomads, but he’d been one of the leaders to emerge during its earlier years. Chaos and destruction had been everywhere when he had, and Reed had become a unifying force for a lot of people looking for an alternative to the extremes of the Alliance, and the dystopian pseudo-tyranny of the few ‘US Remnant’ governments and forces that remained.

The world after the Incursion was merciless.

The non-human ‘immigrants’ came with castles, fortresses, and entire armies to brave its madness—and even many of them had already fallen prey to either the world’s egregiously more dangerous wildlife, or rampaging factions of tribalistic savages whose most feral instincts had come to the fore. Civilian, military, police, official, it hadn’t mattered after a few months of the end of the world.

Humanity had always been a violent species, and the Incursion not only enhanced that, but brought it frothing to the fore.

The few havens of human civilization that still existed did so within a rapidly shrinking bubble, and it was one that Kairi had long ago understood was temporary. It would take violence and supreme power to enforce true safety in a post-System Terra, and nobody on the earth had that kind of strength.

Not yet, anyway.

“It’s a Quest, actually.” the third councilor, dressed in the same style as the Vanguards, said with a welcoming nod. Andrea was the leader of the Vanguards, and one of the first of them. Her Class, Blood Reaver, basically amounted to ‘get strong by murdering so you can murder harder’. She literally gained power the longer she was in the thick of combat. It was one of the few classes that actually made Kairi wary.

In a test of direct strength, Andrea would crush her. Luckily, they were… friendly.

“It’s a hunting directive,” Reed explained simply. “The System has announced it as an optional quest to each Human leader, from what I understand, and they can choose whether or not to share it with their people. Personally, I saw no reason not to do so once we decide on how to reward whoever accomplishes it.”

“Skip the theatrics, Reed.” Kairi said with a grimace. “I’m in a bad mood. Get to the Quest.”

“Your trip to see your brother didn’t work out?” Tasha asked sympathetically.

“Something like that,” Kairi agreed grimly. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

Tasha nodded, and looked to Reed when Kairi did.

The suited man, the same age as Leonidas, looked back to Kairi and spoke in his normal measured tone. “The System has issued a Target Quest.”

“What the fuck?” Kairi asked rhetorically. “That’s never happened before.”

“That was our reaction, too.” Andrea said sympathetically.

“So we’re going to kill them, right?” Kairi asked immediately. “The rewards must be insane.”

“They are!” Tasha confirmed with a giggle. “It’s 20,000 Aetherium, and three platinum chests!”

“So what the hell are we waiting for?” Kairi demanded.

Platinum Chests only came out of Fifth Tier Dungeons. Three of them for one person was insanity. The items within would be Epic at a minimum.

“I told them you’d want to help out,” Jason said as if the whole thing had been his idea. He’d been quiet when they’d entered, likely due to his abiding fear of Andrea and the fact that Tasha despised him, but he was still technically a Council member as well, after Ethan had died. He’d been the next most powerful Strider.

She still wanted to cut out his eyes every time he leered at her, though.

“Information!” Tasha said brightly and drew her attention. “The System didn’t give us much, and we’re pretty sure, based on context clues, that the target is one of the most dangerous people alive.”

Andrea nodded, and looked at Kairi. “We need information. All we’ve been told is which sector they’re in, and what they’re called.”

“Neither of which is very helpful,” Reed said coolly, “and now the hunt is on. Every faction will be after them for that reward. 20,000 Aetherium could change everything.”

“So what do we know?” Kairi asked impatiently.

“The only clue any of us have,” Reed answered, “is that they’re human, they’re alive, and they’re somewhere in sector 117, wherever that is.”

“I’ll put my Shades on it,” Kairi said immediately. “It can’t be that hard to figure out where that is, and extrapolate from there. What’s the rest of the information?”

“A damn warning,” Jason said from her side. “A poignant one.”

“We can’t underestimate them.” Andrea agreed with a nod. “Based on context, this individual very well may be the most powerful person on the planet, and every single human leader is going to want a piece of them. That Aetherium, like Reed said, could change everything.”

“But the name is pretty concerning,” Tasha agreed.

“What?” Kairi asked impatiently.

“The System called them ‘the Cataclysm’, which tells me we need to be very, very cautious.” Reed answered grimly.

Kairi sighed wistfully at the melodrama of the name.

Ace would have loved that one, too.

Rough Concept Art of a Nomad "Vanguard" Squad