“To become a Judge is to join the elite amongst all those who wield unnatural forces within the galaxy. The Ostaceans have their Electros, wielding their specialized tech, while Glaniece has their Faceless, bio-engineered to lethal perfection.


    Judgehood marks not a journey’s end. It can for many, but not all.


    I do not believe any of you will stop at such a lamp. Now, no ranks are given based on some arbitrary level of control over the Lightsea or your techniques mastered. Just as you became a Judge on merit, rising to the echelon of a Centurion will be no different.


    Excel. Succeed. Grow.


    Never settle for where thy feet lie, lest you wish to drown.”


    <ul>


    <li>


    Praetor Sun, in a speech to the five newest Judges under her command, Year 3993.


    </li>


    </ul>


    The quartet shuffled through Eratan with purpose, rushing past any horrifying scenes that might have come their way. With proper weapons and a stroke of luck, an untrained group could eliminate an Anaphage.


    Most civilians, however, were untrained, unequipped, and far too decadent to survive such an encounter. For every one Dante or Rejo, armed and ready, thousands and thousands lay helpless.


    To Dante, watching the hundreds of manifesting monsters ravage this megacity did something he wasn’t expecting inside of him. A knot formed in his stomach. Without thinking back to his brother, that guiding compass in his soul, he realized that this was... wrong.


    Seldom did Dante consider the life of someone who wasn’t him or a person he cared about. To him, all that mattered was that he and his were alive. Yet, after years of those he loved dying or betraying him, he sobered up to reality.


    No one likes a human. And those who do... die. Painfully. Every time. That, or he pushed them away until they lost all their love for him.


    That rule had shaped his actions for years, and mostly, it held true. Nevertheless, the screams of the dying, the sight of thousands crushed underfoot by monsters, gnawed at him.


    Regret.


    A man was hurled through a third-story window, shattering the glass and crashing onto the street ahead. The body was a corpse before it even hit the ground. Dante’s gaze fell to the leaking blood, while more glass rained from above.


    I shouldn’t have come here. I was met to die on that ship. I should’ve... I...


    A firm grip tightened around his bicep, ripping the man out of his disconcerting thoughts. A lithe woman stood on the tips of her toes to yell at Dante with indignation, “What are you doing!? Snap the fuck out of it! Take us to safety, dumbass! You know this city, not us!”


    Harsh laughter echoed from atop a car where Judas lounged, legs dangling over the side, while Rejo’s rifle kept the spawning Dirge away. Dante ignored Judas and focused on his crewmate’s demand.


    Still, he felt remorse, as he would not be taking them to safety. There was nowhere safe. There were only places with more danger and those with less. For Dante to do what he wished—to sail into the galaxy’s center, into the Heart, and make a name for himself... he had to…


    Become powerful. Become... someone that mattered, unable to be ignored or cast away.


    Dante refused to wilt like a flower. He rejected the idea of petering out into the emptiness of the stars. The last thing he would let happen to himself was to not matter, to not be anyone.


    There were things he had to do. There were also things he would never let happen to himself. Ambition, greed, and spite tore into the human’s mind while battling against his compassion.


    This time, the victory belonged to the voices in his head, not the little brother.


    Despite the family’s pleading eyes, Dante paid no attention to them in the car under Judas. It would only slow the group, possibly costing the life of Archimedes. And for what? Bringing along baggage? That result was not something Dante could harbor. He felt for the family; he empathized.


    Regardless of what their eyes expressed, Dante had to move on. He had to, otherwise, he would leave behind his future.


    Footsteps slammed into the concrete beneath Dante as he rushed along the street again, picking up his pace. The other three followed closely, and they dodged past the Anaphage on the street with Rejo blowing a hole in its chest.


    Recently spawned from the Lightsea, the creature was, of course, not dead. Its four legs of shimmering tar trembled with anger before contorting and rushing to pursue them.


    Rejo fired his rifle back again without aiming or looking, evaporating the Anaphage’s left leg. The creature stumbled and struggled to follow before the group bent around a corner, leaving it in the dust.


    “Are ‘hey all that easy?” Rejo teased while keeping up with his heavy weapon.


    Dante shook his head, reminding the mercenary of his talents as he said, “No! Your gun is illegal for its firepower, remember? A bolt-action fifty caliber is not weak! It could kill an Anarchy with a bullet into its vitals!”


    Joan and Sonna nodded in agreement, finding the statement to make sense based on the strength of Astraeus and the bestial nature of the Anaphages they had seen. Nevertheless, they hurried along, with Dante at the helm through alleyways and open streets, ducking past all danger.


    With their ammunition, Dante and Rejo promptly dealt with the creatures that came after them. They hadn’t faced many Qualae in their lives, but two had fought off dangerous wildlife before. Anaphages weren’t too dissimilar from an apex predator—dealt with a series of precise bullets.


    The chief danger of the Anaphages in these cities were their numbers, sudden appearance, and capability to grow. For now, however, the group wasn’t too concerned with them.


    This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.


    Anarchies, however, were a little more complicated, akin to a peak predator spruced up with drugs and enhanced further with implants. They were not so readily slain without the right weapons and experience.


    Unfortunately for the general law enforcement in the area, all of their communications and transportation devices had broken due to the Lightsea. Firearms still worked as long as they weren’t electronic or laser-based, but these were not common in big cities that required tracking of each and every sold weapon.


    Old-fashioned, unregistered steel, like Dante’s revolvers and Rejo’s current rifle, worked just fine.


    As long as there was no need for voltage or circuits, the tools and weapons would work without issue. Only specialized devices like those a Judge would possess could penetrate such a blackout, and even then, they diminished in power.


    As they rushed through alleyways and burning streets, no one spoke. They moved in silence, dodging danger at every turn, and imprinting the countless dead into their minds. Thankfully, the Dirge learned to leave them alone, as they were the only non-easy prey.


    Minutes later, they reached a concrete wall stretching across an entire block, a monolithic slab with no windows and no visible entrances. The words carved into it translated automatically for Dante:


    Lightjar, Home for the Troubled.


    Troubled, alright. Troubled and soon to be executed.


    Dante sighed with raised eyes. He’d have to help the others over the wall; not everyone had his augmentations.


    Without hesitation, he sprinted toward the wall and kicked off, clearing the fifteen-foot barrier in one fluid motion. His hands gripped the top, and he pulled himself up, glancing down at the others. Inches from his fingers, a turret lay, deactivated but no less threatening.


    “What the fuck!? Did you just clear a fifteen-foot wall?” Sonna shouted at the human that she definitely knew not to be manipulating the Lightsea. Her mind struggled to wrap around the human’s fitness, no matter how much she had heard about the species.


    Dante simply shook his head and hauled wire from his belt, a tiny but firm thing he stretched down for the others to grab onto. He spoke without moving his lips, scarcely audible over the din of the dying city, “So what? You just saw an Anathema eat a bomb designed to breach ten feet of concrete like it was breakfast.”


    The Weren bobbed her head, reconciling the two facts before Rejo wrapped the wire around her wrist. She turned to him with alarm, “Hey! What are you—?” Dante slung up the woman first. Then the other two followed.


    In less than a minute, all four spread out a few steps across the prison’s field. Eyes scavenged for guards, for inmates, for anything, yet they found nothing. On this side of the wall, things were utterly serene.


    Alarmingly so.


    “Dante,” Joan said, her voice laced with suspicion, “this isn’t right. According to my contact, guards are always present here. Where are they? And why are we even here? This place isn’t safe.”


    Joan spoke with sincerity, something she did not frequently do, and it hammered in the feeling of wrongness in Dante’s mind.


    Still, she scaled the wall while demanding an answer, knowing it would be more treacherous to be alone than with the group. However, once on the other side, she did not take such ignorance. Joan glared at Dante, demanding a response.


    A trio of questioning eyes quickly met the human, even from those in Rejo’s skull. Dante’s tongue ran over his teeth before he forged an excuse, “There is nowhere safe, frankly. No escaping, either. Until that Anathema leaves or dies, no starship will work. None without gross modifications, at least. So, we’re here. To get our last member before departing.”


    Rejo’s head bobbed with understanding, taking the explanation that the Araki received through translation at the glimpse. The other two, however, didn’t give up without complaint.


    Sonna stepped a little closer to Dante, poking him in the chest with her forefinger as she asked, “You promise? I don’t want to die on this planet. It’s... terrifying out here. And can this... person you want so badly bring us out of here?”


    Dante met her gaze, his mind racing. Archimedes had always been a genius with tech, achieving things that seemed almost magical. He’d gotten Dante out of tight spots before, and he had no option but to believe he could do it again. However, this time was far worse than the past incidents where they had partnered.


    Could API do that? He’ll have to. Otherwise... we’ll have to join Claudius in killing Astraeus. I’m sure he’s off gathering whatever firepower he can to help him, and if they kill the Anathema, their attention will fall on us.


    Dante nodded with a set brow, enlisting his hope in the teenager that he had worked with in the past. Back then, he stood as Archimedes’ guard and smuggler. He had seen the kid’s talent up-close. It wasn’t a final gambit, but…


    It wasn’t far off. Dante wasn’t expecting such things when he landed. The Anathema’s presence ruined ninety-nine out of a hundred of his preparations.


    Yet... it opened many opportunities. He could never do what he was about to do without the umbrella of death above.


    While heading towards the prison, Dante drew his revolvers from their holsters again, spinning them lightly to energize himself. He told the others to follow him, not showing a lick of concern on his weathered face, “He can get us out. Come on. Or would you rather wait for an Anarchy to hear us?”


    The others followed him with haste, Sonna at the very back and cursing under her breath. She swore Dante was going to get her killed someday, but without him, she’d already be a feast for maggots.


    Soon, they stood before the double iron doors of the penitentiary. Rejo peeked inward while Dante kneeled on the floor, unfurling his pack. The man’s hands worked in haste before retrieving a crowbar that he placed at the twin doors’ meeting point.


    “Clear. I see nothing from here,” Rejo reported to Dante before the human pivoted the steel bar with all his strength. The groaning from the metal continued for several seconds until the door’s inner-workings eventually snapped.


    The Araki took charge, bashing the tip of his rifle into the opening to help Dante stabilize his position. Together, the two forced one door open with disabled power. While stomping his heels into the slabs beneath him, Rejo held the door for the others to rush past.


    Once everyone was in the front hallway, he hurried inside with the weighty door on his tail. Rejo exhaled air with fatigue, lamenting how much he had to run today as the stench of blood entered his nose.


    The Araki peeked up to find Dante with his revolver against a bald man’s temple, and Joan held a syringe of ‘something’ already stabbed into the other’s hairy neck. Disappointment left his lungs with a sigh as he stepped up to the others.


    He wanted some fun, too.


    “Where are the guards!?” Dante’s face inched before terrified faces, his aggression echoing in the hall. Then, the two bloodied prisoners with singular zeros on their shirts shivered.


    The bald one was the first to break, desperately giving out answers while the other glared at him, “Most went to Neg-Three! The remaining ones... well... monsters got ‘em. Please. Just let me take that crowbar. We’ll be out of your hair in no time, sirs and misses.”


    Attempting to act all nice and proper didn’t matter to Dante. He could see right through this man. After all, he was just like him, only...


    Dante had never gotten truly caught for any of his crimes. Plus, he stayed away from the worst of the worst. Without some sort of code, he’d have long lost his mind. So, he had already decreed the inmate’s fate in his mind, but he first needed the answer to another question. Well, two.


    “How many? And were any bigger than the others?”


    The hairy man, with a race unknown to Dante, hoping that he would be spared if he gave valuable information, burst out with the answer, “Uhh... Five! No... four! Three scrawny bastards that ripped limb from limb and a big motherfucker that ate a guard’s grenade!”


    Dante blinked at Joan while squeezing the trigger in his hands after hearing the end of the response. The one hailed as the Skinwalker in underground circles understood his meaning, injecting the deadly serum into the other criminal. Brains soon splattered across the walls while the remaining prisoner dove into insanity and shoved Joan. Fortunately, the dark-haired woman kept her footing near the bits of debris with her spare set of arms.


    The hairy man stumbled to his feet, preparing to sprint away, but he only got four steps before he slowed. Then, at the sixth, he faceplanted, never to move again.


    Such murders shook Sonna to the core, but she did all that she could not to show it. Her gaze shifted to the other three, and she found them to be unfazed. To them, this was only normal.


    This was their lives now. Her life now. She would either acclimate or die.


    With a deep inhale, she could only follow Dante as he strolled down the hallway where the runaway now lay.


    With his footsteps, Dante flung out a casing from his pistol to reload it and explained himself, “Four ‘Phages and one ‘Archy. This won’t be easy. Rejo, high alert. Anything that moves, and I mean anything, shoot to kill. Archimedes is locked up on Neg-Two based on how they rank their prisoners, and I doubt he would have left his cell with all this going on. Kid’s too... anti-social.”


    Sonna strode up alongside the human, the interior getting harder and harder to distinguish as they left the moonlit entrance. In contrast to the fading skylight, flames licked at their feet from debris and the less-mangled corpses.


    “Hey. What are Joan and I supposed to do?” Sonna asked as she begged for a task that wasn’t fighting a monster head-on without saying so.


    Thankfully, Dante delivered a response as he kicked up a piece of burning wood with a long enough section to hold of safe material, “Eyes. We need light to fight. Joan can handle herself. Just wait.”


    Sonna turned to find an eerie smile birthed by Joan’s face. Something about it set her off-kilter, and she stepped back with the fire in her hands. Joan opened her mouth, placing a cupped palm against it, and hissed with a laugh before following Dante further into the prison.


    The Weren hurried along with a shaking head, refusing to be left behind or be useless. That was until she bumped straight into Rejo’s broad spine. Bounced back, Sonna opened her mouth to say something about him, strangling the voice in her throat when she saw what he was looking at.


    A vast, open chamber, surrounded by hundreds of bloodied and burning cells, was nothing compared to the spectacle in the center of it all. A roaring and enraged Anaphage turned to face them with several broken metal spikes stuck in its warped flesh.


    Sonna’s mind stuttered as she saw the billowing waves of the Lightsea concentrate around the Qualae. Words left her mouth before she realized what she was saying, “It’s maturing!”


    Dirge didn’t grow like sentients. They were born scrambling for power and slicing apart foes. With each slain creature or step toward their Tide, a little more light flowed into them. When enough light had gathered, whether from violence or training, they evolved.


    The news was worse than abysmal. If it successfully acclimated to the Lightsea at a higher level, then it could wield more than brutal physicality. It would possess Stigmata or wield the Lightsea’s Tides, only as an Anathema would they maintain both.


    Dante and Rejo didn’t possess her stammer and immediately let loose the lead within their guns, the echoing noise hurting all of their ears indoors. Regardless, they refused to cease their fire, even as the roar swiftly overcame the sound of their gunfire.