Chapter 2040

The old air raid horns had been blasting for the last half-hour, making Delilah doubt her tingling sense that it was a

good

idea to rush toward the source of the disturbance in Zone 1. But that subtle Nether Sense the Ghosthound had planted into the core of Expira was quite insistent on this course of action. So she lowered her head had the sky glittering with manatech exhaust and accelerated.

If she was being honest, Delilah had felt somewhat adrift since she had parted with Vye a few weeks ago.

Perhaps the one saving grace of the whole experience was that she hadn’t felt even the slightest hint of an image spreading out in the surrounding area, Delilah mused to herself. Her eyes were studiously down, away from the drifting smoke that rose up ahead of her. She dashed across the windy plateau toward here destination, more worried about the placement of her feet than anything else. So there might be some minor spat with Zone 1’s defensive forces, but it couldn’t be

that

bad.

Delilah loped to the top of the ridge, finally getting a line of sight on the commotion. She gritted her teeth at the sight waiting below; regret filled her. “Are you

fucking

kidding me?!?”

The Nether Sense in the world seemed almost stricken, wilting in the face of her expletive. Delilah belatedly softened her stance, but her eyes kept tracing the lines of devastation in the ground below. “Look you haven’t steered me wrong before, but very clearly something

very

dangerous is going on down there.

That wreckage used to be a Manatech rail station.

”

The smoldering crater did have some remnants of buildings and the now-curled line of rails, but mostly it was now filled with debris from shattered drones and shredded manatech exoskeletons. The whole area was vaguely smoking, with the air thick with manatech exhaust. With the interior enforcement forces seemingly completely obliterated on the ground in front of Delilah, no wonder Zone 1 was sounding all the alarms.

Her skin tingled; the reason there were no powerful images was only because the fight was already over. Her traitorous eyes flicked around; she counted almost thirty bodies slumped on the ground, in addition to the legion of broken drones. Perhaps the only reason that she didn’t pivot and flee immediately was she didn’t see any blood.

The Nether Sense nudged Delilah again. It hinted that not only was Delilah quite strong, especially in comparison to these defeated clowns, but that this wasn’t a confrontation that required power.

And

she would be heavily rewarded for her involvement with the troublemakers. It swore this fact up and down.

“I already have so many troublemakers in my life,” Delilah muttered. But she found her traitorous feet moving. As she aged, she began to have more and more doubts about her wild and reckless habit of running directly toward danger. Yet somehow, her body never seemed to notice her mind’s reluctance.

Perhaps it was because some part of her acknowledged that

she

was the troublemaker in the lives of a lot of adults around her.

She skidded down the sandy slope and sprinted across the edge of the crater. On closer inspection, all of the defense forces did seem to have been left alive, which made her slightly more confident in the Nether Sense’s assessment of safety. As she hopped over the smoldering edge, she passed two men lying in broken exoskeletons arguing with each other.

“You should have indicated a high level of danger when you called for backup!” The one raged.

The other responded in deadpan. “I figured you would be able to handle it, now that you are Master Sergeant, Clarence. Is it possible the higher-ups’ confidence in you was misplaced?”

“Are you

serious

right now?!?”

Delilah ignored their continued bickering and circled around the edges of the collapsed station, a rather modest edifice that had been crunched down to an impressive amount of concrete rubble and twisted metal. Only then could she see the responsible parties for the destruction. And seeing them made her realize she was in

way

over her head.

Any of these three could kill me.

Delilah’s skin tingled even more violently as she slowed. Their tight control over the images meant that she hadn’t sensed their capability until she saw their figures clearly. Luckily, they seemed to be in the middle of an argument.

A short-haired woman gestured emphatically to the other woman, who had her arms folded. “Now I would expect this sort of behavior from Xershi, but Fiona, what the hell? You didn’t need to destroy that weird little house, too. What’s really going on?”

The woman’s lips twisted. “We left them alive, didn’t we? But they aggressively came to us, demanding that we surrender ourselves for detainment? No. If they aren’t going to give us the respect we deserve-”

“You sound like your ex-husband,” The short-haired woman whispered. She waved her arm around her head. “We shouldn’t be here, causing a ruckus inside of Randidly’s personal world. Especially if you are dealing with-”

“I’m not dealing with anything,” Fiona pivoted away. Her fingers tightened on her arms. Her image pulsed with barely controlled fury, which caused Delilah to hiccup in fear. “I’m just… hungry.”

“Let’s postpone the rest of this conversation until we get you a meal then,” A metal man pivoted and looked directly at Delilah, which made her freeze. “It seems like an interesting little girl has shown up. I don’t suppose you can take us to find some food, miss?”

What the hell have you gotten me into?!?

Delilah mentally hissed at the Nether Sense, which pulsed placatingly, trying to reassure her that everything would be fine. Which turned out to be quite ineffective, when the metal man’s eyes had just as much piercing intensity as Randidly Ghosthound himself.

After a few strained seconds, Delilah managed to open her mouth and gulp down a half-bucket of air. Licking her lips, she tried to hide her anxiety. “Ah… you really just want some food? I can- I will take you to a place where that is possible. Just, we need to move quickly. Zone 1 will bring their defense forces around soon.”

“Pah, let them come,” The metal man boldly declared. “I’ll handle them by the thousand. What are they going to do, throw more Mana at us?”

“Xershi, let’s work on this

hunger

for now,” The short-haired woman elbowed Xershi. Then she turned to Delilah and offered a friendly smile. “Hello, my name is Pullas. You are a native of the Ghosthound’s world, yes? We would love to find a high-class restaurant at which to dine. This whole… kerfuffle was a total misunderstanding.”

Despite how genuine Pullas’s words seemed, Delilah couldn’t help but shiver as the proof of how dangerous a misunderstanding could become smoldered around them. But the destroyed drones did allow Delilah to rip off pieces of torn sheet metal, do her best to soften the torn edges, then Scrawl together a serviceable vessel. She gestured emphatically for the trio to step on board and they took their sweet time, Xershi muttering to himself about traveling in ‘discomfort’.

I hope you know what we are doing.

Being near the trio felt like standing next to three mobile bonfires, slicking her back with sweat. Once they were situated, Delilah released her image fully and a cooling wind blew around the vessel. It lifted gracefully off the ground and rapidly began to accelerate up past the cloud layer. There, a more powerful wind that Delilah had been building for quite a while swept down and plucked up the metal vessel. At a speed that she could barely control, the group whizzed through the sky toward the South. The prow of the boat skimmed across the huge mountains of water vapor, cutting a glittering path forward.

Delilah only released a sigh of relief when she felt the group pass above the competent images of the Orchard’s dispatched defense force. She turned around to study her occupants and almost jumped overboard when she found the unhinged Fiona leaning close and studying her with intense eyes. The older woman spoke. “Interesting. Your image- exactly how old are you? And why are so many of your fears related to Randidly Ghosthound?”

“I-” Delilah did some quick mental math. She decided to err slightly on the side of the future. “I’m fifteen. And-” Her face twisted into a grimace. “You know it’s rude to peer into someone’s fears, but you would understand if you met the man. He’s not like how people describe him.”

Then Delilah’s blood drained from her face, as she realized she had snapped at Fiona as she would have at her mother, who often teased and complained about her attitude toward Randidly. For a long second, Fiona’s glittering eyes remained fixed on Delilah. Then the older woman laughed, showing an infectious smile. “Certainly, he’s nothing like what I’ve seen before. But isn’t that somewhat fun?”

“Fifteen huh,” Pullas mused. “I haven’t been that young in almost nine-hundred years… what a time.”

Delilah shot a slightly alarmed glance at Pullas, but Xershi leaned forward to get in on the conversation. “Okay, okay. Since you are such a baby, I suppose your weak image makes a certain amount of sense. But why is everyone else on this planet so weak? Did the Ghosthound just overcome the Calamities and let everyone else live in peace?”

“...it’s actually a big political issue, the Ghosthound refused to help with the Calamity-” Delilah began. Then she tilted her head to the side. “Wait, did you say Calamities? How many are there? We’ve only gone through the first.”

“What?” Pullas spoke, but all three of the powerful individuals seemed rather stunned. “What do you mean you’ve only experienced one Calamity? And Randidly didn’t help?”

Delilah shrugged, suddenly feeling anxiety for an entirely new reason; she knew Randidly’s non-participation in the Calamity was a big deal to a lot of people, but never really cared enough to pay attention to the

why

. It was just something people talked about. So she answered the first question and ignored the second to cover her ignorance. “Yea, we’ve only had one. The Pantheon is still designing the Second, I think.”

“What do you mean, the Pantheon is designing the Second?” This time, it was Fiona of the glittering eyes who spoke so demandingly.

“That silly emperor?” Xershi rubbed his chin.

After a few more increasingly incisive questions about the Alpha Cosmos and Randidly’s role in it, Delilah could only shrug again. “Look, okay, I’m not sure about some of this stuff. Normally, we could call someone from the Pantheon and ask them directly, but for whatever reason, the Nether is especially thin and they aren’t really able to respond-”

Pullas coughed awkwardly, but Delilah just continued to speak.

“-so it’s probably just best that you save all these questions and I can take you to have dinner with someone who can answer them.” Delilah raised her hands placatingly. Xershi shrugged and Pullas sighed, but Fiona continued to stare at her with that overwhelming gaze. How the hell had she known Delilah had fears about Randidly.

She pushed her image slightly beyond her comfort zone, ignoring the fact that the Scrawled vehicle began to rattle and shake. The sooner she delivered these people, the better. With the boosted speed, they traversed through the sky to the edge of the ocean in a little over an hour. Delilah started their descent, the little sheet metal boat sinking through the cloud and rushing through a blasting crucible of mist.

Then they erupted from the bottom layer, trails of water vapor streaming after them, and saw their destination. Or at least, the periphery of their destination; a swarm of speeding Scrawlers and drifting skyislands formed a semi-solid barrier that made it difficult to see the core.

“How fascinating,” Xershi laughed. “A walking metal island? And I can feel a race of automatons operating it from within. Excellent.”

Delilah nodded. “This is Kharon, it should have everything you are looking for. I’ll introduce you to Tatiana. She… ahem. She usually helps Randidly with things like this.”