Harder still, when none who come are known.
These were the trials that found Gru, when the devil’s claws were done with him.
Even among those sworn to man—trust cut deeper than any blade.
It is said the wise first knew Gru’s worth, and the strong followed after.
Saint Gloria, blessed with foresight, knew the Forest’s choosing when she saw it.
She spoke the truth before any other.
Yet even then, the brute Saint Joya balked—
Doubting the man fallen before him, doubting the signs that crowned him.
But stubborn hands can be turned by stubborn hearts.
And when the Forest laid its judgment bare,
Even the doubter bent the knee.
Thus were all three bound together—by mercy, by stubbornness, by destiny itself.
___
The vine struck fast toward the falcon as it climbed, aiming for Gloria.
Gloria cowered behind the wide belt she had been holding, hoping that the ancient relic would protect her from its creator’s rage.
Plasma-based heat soaked through the vine as it collided with the in-flight projectile that was Kildra.
The falcon’s body destabilized, the heat disrupting the cohesion of its nanostructure.
With a crackling hiss, Kildra collapsed back into her fundamental dormant state—ice-like chunks of nanites raining down onto the forest floor just in front of Gloria.
Surprised by the Forest’s intervention—normally neutral in such affairs—Gloria looked around in wonder at the fallen ice.
She knew exactly what they were.
You didn’t dedicate your life to studying Golden Age technology without recognizing passive-state nanites when you saw them.
They were still active—just dormant, sealed into a self-protective mode by the influx of energy that had overwhelmed them.
Scrambling quickly, Gloria snatched a probe from her tool belt and dropped to one knee.
She began scanning the frozen fragments scattered across the forest floor, extracting data from the construct while it remained harmless.
Who knew what secrets, what wonders of the past, might be hidden inside a WISP’s memories?
What lost miracles could be uncovered?
Her face blossomed with joy as she looked over to Joya, eager to share her giddiness—only to find a very worried, almost apathetic man.
Rarely had she ever seen such emotions cross her husband’s face.
He made the sign of the Forest as he watched.
Following his gaze, she trailed it toward the man across from her, now wrapped in a vine of his own—a vine caressing him like a lover’s hand.
The man, however, was not in the best state.
Blood ran down his chest, gushing from his mouth. His eyes squinted against pain, a hoarse grunt escaping him as he tried to curl into a fetal position.
“Oh. He’s having de-bonding sickness. That’s… how it’s said to look,” Gloria said aloud.
“It’s fatal, Joya.”
“Nah. We can’t let this hap’n, Glory. We can’t!” Joya cried, his hands flinging wide.
“Look at the Fa’rest! It saved ’im—not you, not me—him!”
He jabbed a finger toward his wife, still scooping nanite ice into her probe, and then back to the man on the ground.
“For some re’son, nah be known… the Fa’rest loves this man,” he said, gesturing urgently at the vine’s tender caresses.
“We must do some’tin’, Glory!”
“Umm… maybe the belt?” she said hesitantly. “It’s actually made for this—originally. But… Joya, all his gear—it’s Golden Age. He’s practically a walking ruin-haul. Maybe… it’s better if he passes?”
“No!” Joya roared.
“He sav’d me in me rage, Glory! We hav’ a life-debt!
If you can save him—you do it, wo’man—
or lo’, the Fa’rest will know!”
“Okay! Okay!” Gloria shouted back, hesitation in her voice. “Fine.”
She hurriedly picked up the belt from where it had fallen and ran over to the vine-wrapped man, uncertain how to reach him—
—when the vines peeled back, opening a path.
She froze.
The Forest had heard Joya’s plea.
Gods, if she hadn’t acted—what would have happened to them?
Swallowing, Gloria rolled Chen onto his stomach and leaned over him.
“This belt should help stabilize your debonding, okay?”
Chen merely grunted in response.
She hesitated again, calculating angles.
“You have no idea how lucky you are I was here today for this.
You owe me big time.
I fully expect you to share your stuff after this.
You… you owe us a life debt now.”
“Glory! Quit yer grift! Tis ain’t a time for bargains! He’s dyin’!” Joya barked from across the way.
“Fine!” she snapped back—muttering under her breath, “Heroics it is, then.”
She leaned down, speaking low to Chen: “This is gonna hurt... I’m sorry... you poor bastard.”
Placing the belt flush against his spine, Gloria stepped hard onto it, using her body weight to drive the sharp embeds deep into his back.When she judged it secure, she pulled out her probe and activated the belt.
Electricity surged through the device, the sharp teeth biting deeper as they latched onto bone.
A second later, the belt’s dormant neutral nanites flooded into his bloodstream—clashing violently with the foreign swarm already inside him.
Pain exploded behind his eyes as Kildra’s old nanites were ripped apart molecule by molecule, leaving a single, searing moment of void—only to be forcibly overwritten by the newcomers.
Pain upon pain flooded his brain as nerve roots were physically replaced—stripped and rewoven without mercy.
Behind his closed eyelids, Chen saw a cascade of lights.
And then—the second flood—possibly more painful than the first.
Memories once stolen now roared back into him in a howling deluge.
First—a voice, familiar and warm, came to him as he lay on the ground.
“Gru? … Sick? … Again?”
“Dying? … Again?”
A memory.
A small room surrounds me. I built this room. With my own hands, with a sharp shovel.
This tree’s huge base made a perfect hobbit-like den.
All I needed was large hairy feet.
The medicine wasn’t working anymore.
The root concoction was only a near-antibiotic—not a true one.
And the infection was getting worse.
Much worse.
I died.
I remember the feel of nothing.
No shining tunnel.
No grand parade.
Just a slow fade—tiredness filling me—and the thought: this is the end.
And then… nothing.
So much different from dying and coming back via Kildra’s resurrection protocol.
There, it was simple: one moment dead, thinking I’ll be back, and then—back.
The finality of the first death was suffocating.
A weight no revival could ever erase.
No one there.
No one to remember.
“You… were… missed.”
A flash—
I see myself.
Not the dying Gru.
Not the rotting figure lost in the forest.
Myself.
Both were me—but this one…
This one was younger.
No, not in body. I had not aged under Kildra’s hand, not truly.
It was something deeper.
My soul itself felt younger.
I’m in a memory I don’t ever recall.
?
I stand at the beach, looking out toward another island with a town at its center. It’s small—barely a dot at this distance—but I can clearly see its bustling life.
Anger bleeds into me.
Why, I don’t know.
I just know those people must pay.
Somehow, I know their only crime was refusing to worship me.
Odd. These are not my feelings. They are Kildra’s. She is in my body again. Except this time, I’m not in control.
I turn from the beach inland, where an accompaniment of at least a hundred men await my orders.
All wear armor of the same design, some sets more advanced than others. I recall—no, Kildra recalls—the rule: the higher your rank in the organization, the better the kit you receive.
Makes sense, coming from a WISP who could forge miracles out of dust and patience.
Some of the lower men—cannon fodder—wear only ragged clothes, desperate to prove themselves to me.
The women gather mostly by the vehicles, though a few men stand with them. Three of my wildest, most trusted lieutenants are women.
They each remind me of…
…My ...Gilda.
A memory not my own. A love forged from duty, then broken by freedom.
A pang cuts through my chest, sudden and wrong.
I miss her still.
No.
That isn’t my thought.
That was Kildra—remembering her original Herald.
Why is it bleeding into my mind?
Everyone salutes me—the same salute my Rangers once used.
Hand over heart, arm thrust outward.
Kildra called it a Roman salute once.
Whoever they were.
Oh. I remember now.
We are standing on the shoulders of titans, aren’t we?
“Secure the western dock. Burn the merchant hall. Leave their temple untouched.”
My voice rolls over them like thunder.
Another salute.
A fever burns behind their eyes as they break formation and scatter.
I see Gilda’s face in every lieutenant.
My gaze tracks each of them, waiting—for the inevitable betrayal.
Just… like… Gilda.
Her love and her treachery braid themselves into my chest, fire twined with thorns.
Vehicles roar to life.
They plunge into the sea—and float.
Boats masked as beasts, growling across the water toward the far shore.
Two beautiful women press themselves to my arms, smiling as if we share a secret.
We move toward the command tent.
Images flicker in the edges of my mind:
Kildra, using my body to taste what she was never built to know.
A flash—
I walk through the aftermath.
Prisoners kneel in chains, begging for forgiveness.
I grant it with a gesture, and they weep.
Another flash—
I sit enthroned within their temple, my court gathered at my feet.
Women and men alike—young, but not children.
Thank the stars, she spared them that indignity.
The town shifts beneath my reign—pirate law replacing democracy.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Another flicker—
I grow bored.
I create a council, crown them with false titles, and hand them my hollow authority.
Seventy years rule this island, and I leave it without grief,
Nothing here to anchor to. Nothing holds me. Nothing ever did.
I fall—not downward, but inward—into a new memory.
It is fresher. Just before we found the City. Just before… we made the City?
Schronienie was our creation? When!?
This memory is different. Here—I am in control.
Younger souled, yes, but aware.
Annoyed with Kildra. Annoyance earned over long, broken years.
Perhaps she had grown lonely—and, out of pity, loosened the leash just enough for me to dance.
The old saying holds true: Every Wisp has her Herald.
I only ever had the… the illusion of freedom.
I’m walking through a forest.
Ninety years ago — Iceland’s only forest — a place the few locals who remained claimed was cursed, having sprung up over fertile farmland in only a fortnight.
Kildra and I were moving westward toward the sea, hoping to trade for a ride to the European continent — or, if desperate, build our own boat.
I was hoping for trade. I doubted Kildra meant a Golden Age ship materialized from mist.
“You should have seen them, they were huge!” Kildra exclaimed. “Like someone took giant ants, crossed them with reptiles, and then added a man just to even out the recipe.
Heads like pincers the size of your forearm! Four arms like tree trunks! And if you managed to shoot an arm off, the suits would seal it up. Some say if you left them long enough, the arms would grow back!
Oh, by the Wisp — the suits! Looked like reptilian scales had grown over our standard World Union jumpsuits, with a forcefield that reflected fire right back at you!
It took us two years to come up with frequency-shifting ammo that could even scratch them.
And you think you’re good at hand-to-hand, Chen?
The Chala regulars would have torn you to pieces. Absolutely none.”
Kildra rambled on ahead, moving in her robin-shell body.
I was about a kilometer behind her, listening.
Every time she told her stories of the Chakalexy Invasion — now some three hundred years past — the grandeur grew.
Some facts stayed constant: the human die-off within a decade, the conscription of Tekniak prisoners, the abandonment of continents.
Other details shifted: troop sizes, ship descriptions, the scale of the enemy. Always growing.
We had been living off the land for fifteen years by then, moving up the eastern coast — scavenging, bartering, stealing when necessary.
We never stayed longer than needed.
Kildra constantly told me we didn’t need to stop at all — she could conjure clothes, shelter, tools from her mist at will.
Though not the “smart fabric” she sometimes wistfully mentioned from the Golden Age, her creations were durable, practical.
So much so that it was easier to throw a poncho over my strange, perfect clothing when entering a village to avoid the gawking and trouble.
“I remember one time Gilda and I were in a mech,” Kildra continued —
“a small armored walker — had to go single file through this narrow gorge.
And out of nowhere, a Chala beast — part dog, part bull, part scorpion — charged right at us!”
As it reached them, Gilda had drawn her plasma blade —
“a giant knife that glows and cuts through anything,” Kildra bragged — and cleaved the monster in two mid-jump.
The creature’s innards had sprayed over their line, melting one mech entirely.
After that, they’d learned to quantum-backup themselves on other hosts —
“Just in case we got eviscerated,” Kildra said casually.
Her rambling monologues often taught me more about the Golden Age than any direct questions ever had.
But sometimes they reminded me how alien WISPs were —
how little they understood about the need for a kind face, a shared meal, a warm body near your own.
For all her millennia, sometimes I felt she hadn’t lived at all.
That was why, against all logic, I would stop by villages.
Why I craved the danger of human contact.
?
“Oh look,” Kildra chirped into my ear. “I found a cabin out here. I’m going to take a closer look — since that’s what you like to do.”
My dreaming self wanted to tell her: leave it.
Move east.
But instead, I heard myself say:
“Good. But wait until I get there first. A talking bird might spook these island folk — they’re superstitious.”
“It’s a peninsula, Chen,” she corrected. “Hasn’t been an island in a long time.”
“Sure. Just stay out of sight.”
Ever since I told Kildra I hated when she inhabited my body, over two decades ago, she’d grown harder.
She tested weaknesses.
Exploited them when she could.
“Oh, don’t worry. I’m in mist form now. Invisible,” she said sweetly.
Gods help them if they saw her.
“Relax,” she continued. “There’s only two adults and a child.
And — check this out — they have a plasma dagger. Kobe Defense Systems.
Probably over three hundred years old. Nonfunctional, but fixable.
Maybe we trade them for it, Chen. I have the perfect designs ready.”
?
I crested a ridge and saw the homestead:
A clearing in the forest, a stream cutting through it, a sturdy log house and a small barn.
Four horses wandered behind a rough corral.
A woman tended a fire outside.
Tall, brown-haired, cloaked in hides.
A man skinned an elk nearby.
Their son — no more than twelve — helped him.
Simple.
Peaceful.
Until they saw me — and worse, saw the mist.
The boy cried out.
The woman screamed.
The man grabbed his bow.
Kildra, floating out of the house, mumbled in my ear about the “stupidity” of humans.
An arrow flew — a stone-tipped shaft aimed at her.
Passed through harmlessly.
Kildra froze.
“Did… did he just attack me?” she whispered.
“Stay calm,” I urged, picking up my pace. “They’re scared. Stay calm.”
But her pride ignited.
“THEY ATTACKED ME!” she howled in my mind. “HOW DARE THEY!”
“No! Stop!” I shouted as I neared the family, who had huddled together in fear.
I screamed the old words:
“World Union! Golden Age!”
The man hesitated.
Lowered his bow.
Kildra drifted behind me, seething but still.
The man spoke with uncertainty.
“Welcome. I am Eric Valssen. My wife Hogna. Our son, Blaer.”
Relief flooded me.
Laughter even escaped my lips.
“Thank you. I’m Chen. This is Kildra. We seek to trade.”
?
But Kildra hovered at my side.
Whispered, dark and venomous:
“I’ll show you the good of welcoming strangers…”
Mist plunged into my mouth and nose.
The world shattered into green and purple fire. My body moved without me.
Throwing knives flashed from my hands —
one sinking deep into Eric’s chest.
Another wild volley caught Hogna and Blaer in the legs.
The family screamed.
Eric staggered — tried to fight —
but I crushed his advance with a brutal headbutt.
Then the dagger was in my hands.
Then in his chest.
Again.
Again.
The words spilled from my mouth, but they were not mine:
“You are nothing.
Without me, your kind would never have survived.
I am your savior.
You — are — nothing.”
?
Mist formed again —
a silver orb blooming in my palm.
I hurled it.
The front of the house disintegrated in an instant.
The woman — the boy — caught in its sweeping field.
The house smoldered.
The earth burned.
I walked forward.
The mother lay in halves.
The boy — sobbing, bleeding — tried to crawl away.
I caught him.
He stabbed me —
my own knife driven into my side.
I snapped his neck in rage.
?
The mist left my body.
I staggered free of the house.
Inside the wreckage, I found the dagger — wrapped carefully in an old blanket, a relic of a dead world.
I took it.
And I fell.
?
When I woke, I buried the family in the field they had carved from the forest.
Took what food remained as they couldn't et it anymore.
Staggered eastward, a sweaty, bloody mess.
Kildra floated ahead in her robin shell — silent.
I walked behind, tears burning my face, unseen.
"Cry baby" Kildra scolded from somewhere up ahead.
?
New fragments of memory flood in, but only for a moment —
through the noise, I think I hear a voice calling out.
A child’s voice.
“Papa?”
Not my current children’s.
Older. Distant. Fading.
The word slices through me, too fast to catch, too sharp to hold.
I shake my head violently.
The scent of blood.
The image of a parent's betrayal burning into my eyes.
No.
No, that wasn’t real.
That couldn’t be real.
I bury the thought deep — when will this nightmare stop?
?
I open my eyes to find Joya sitting by my side.
A fire crackles nearby.
It should feel warm. Comforting.
But all I feel is ice cold.
Somehow, I am alive.
I have died many times from debonding — I remember that now.
Not once before had I survived it.
Not without Kildra stitching me back together.
Yet this time is different.
I’m alive.
And Kildra — she must be reintegrating back into the Tower now.
Stripped from me. Finally truly gone. Exorcised.
I tilt my head slightly, vision swimming, and find Joya cradling my skull with one massive hand.
The other holds a cup of steaming broth to my lips.
He has cleaned the blood from my face.
She fits the Tekniak scavenger profile a little too well.
“Str’ger, ja live?” Joya asked, nudging the cup closer to my lips.
“Here. Drink. Tis an herb. Heals most t’ings.”
I see his wife straighten up — caught like a thief at the cookie jar.
She starts gathering the weapons, the pad, my cloak — trying to hide them now that I’m awake.
This should be interesting.
I manage a weak grunt of thanks.
“Thank you. Name’s Chen. Joya, right?” I say, the words scraping out in a low groan.
My voice sounds strange. Different this time.
Joya chuckles, still supporting my head.
“Ja spek’n Tekniak?” he asks, eyebrows raised.
“Guess so,” I rasp. “Lots to me I’m just finding out, it seems.
Tell your wife to be careful with those. I want them back in one piece.”
Joya scowls over his shoulder at her.
“Aye. She knows,” he says, shooting her an ugly squint.
Gloria pretends not to notice — but I see the small, guilty twitch of her hands.
Joya chuckled low, still cradling my head, though his eyes kept straying toward the edge of the trees.
I followed his gaze.
The Forest was too quiet.
I could feel it — the breath of something unseen pressing just beyond sight.
Gloria finished gathering my weapons, slipping the datapad back into the cloak bundled over me. She didn’t meet my eyes.
I didn’t blame her.
Trust was a fragile thing, even in peace. Especially in peace.
“We’ll need to move soon,” Joya said gruffly, more to the trees than to me. “Before they find us again.”
I didn’t know who he meant.
The Cultist? The Greens? The Tower?
Or worse — the ghosts clawing through my skull?
I closed my eyes against the rising ache and let him lift me.
____
And Gloria, Saint of Wisdom and Beauty, spoke, commanding Joya, Saint of Strength and Body:
“If thou canst save him, thou must — lest the Forest know thy cowardice.”
And Joya, though slow to faith, heeded her command.
And by his hand was Gru nursed back to health, though at first he had denied his prevalence.
And so it was that the Forest destroyed the all-knowing demon.
Yet beyond the mountains and seas, in the Tower of forgotten gods, the god-machine still shuddered.