Thessa knew something didn't align.
An Adept Warrior mind—her mind—was honed by Wizardry to maintain razor sharpness at all times. She grasped crucial details most might miss, the way she read currents in Omicron's raging seas.
First, she couldn't think of any tangible upside for pirates from Kondu to attack a Landia ship. Average pirate crews were poorly armed and trained. Mimio's escort would have dispatched them immediately, much less been cornered into distress signals.
Second, evidence of treachery stained the bodies and deck. The killing wounds—gaping holes in chests—didn't look fresh. The deck was spotlessly clean. There should have been organ fragments scattered across the fiery planks, not just convenient flames on pristine wood.
This left Thessa with only one conclusion: someone was framing Kondu for this assault.
She quickly banished those thoughts with a shake of her head. Her mission was clear: rescue Mimio from whoever launched this attack.
Thessa bounded through the broken door into the ship's interior. Despite her exile, she knew Landia vessels like her own reflection—emergency protocol would place Mimio in the Captain's Quarters, connected to an evacuation craft.
But if this was a setup, her sister wasn't meant to escape alive.
Thessa rushed through corridors of blackened Fairy-Wood, boots echoing against charred walls. More corpses littered her path—pirates dispatched by blade and fire. Then came the sight that froze her blood: bodies burnt to charcoal, identifiable only by melted Fairy-Wood armor.
Fellow Adept Warriors. Reduced to ash.
The question seized her: how? These Fae matched her level—elite Garden forces. Even an average High Terraria Magister couldn't destroy them this efficiently.
Artillery Staff in hand, she rounded the corner to face her worst nightmare.
In front of the door—covered in defensive sigils cast by the Garden's finest Wizards—stood five figures in crimson armor. Their plate seared the eyes to look upon; mail glowed between armor gaps like molten wire. Black helms crowned in living flame turned toward her; their slits revealed nothing but blood red depths.
Thessa recognized them immediately. They were guardians of the Fae Garden, elite even among Adept Warriors such as herself—one of the four great castes of bio-enhanced Fae who struck fear even in Prime Magister Wonderweiss himself.
But the question remained: why had the Inferno Caste attacked them?
Thessa would have loved to contemplate these questions, perhaps even sit down to consider how her life had arrived at this juncture. Sadly, her luck evaporated as the warriors began to move.
She had as much chance of defeating a Caste Warrior as a house cat had of felling a sabertooth tiger. With five opponents she couldn't possibly overcome blocking the corridor, Thessa's inventive mind offered only one escape route. She lifted her Artillery Staff and aimed to blast a hole through the deck above—her only path to freedom.
But Warriors of the Inferno Caste were no fools. Two advanced forward, their hands producing foldable blades that extended into swords of melting fire. The remaining three drew weapons from their belts and opened fire.
Three projectiles of concentrated plasma sailed toward the evading Adept. One glanced off her armor by mere inches, turning the wall behind her into a blackened crater. But two found their marks: the first collided with her gut, chewing through Fairy-Wood protection to sear her intestines with acid and flame; the second claimed her shoulder, drilling through bone and scorching muscle to the core.
Anyone else would have perished instantly, but Thessa's Wizardry allowed her to shut off her pain receptors long enough to complete her desperate leap through raining kindling back to the smoldering deck where this nightmare had begun.
Her stomach charred and shoulder destroyed, Thessa went down to her knees, collapsing ungracefully onto the scorched planking. Her Artillery Staff rolled from nerveless fingers. She watched the two Inferno Warriors follow her trajectory like embers from the flames and struggled to rise—a futile gesture of defiance against the inevitable.
She had exactly the chance she'd initially calculated: none.
The flaming blade thrust toward her lungs slowly enough for her enhanced reflexes to witness every detail, yet too quickly for her ruined body to evade. A second blade from his partner found her spine, severing nerves and crippling her legs before she finished hitting the floor.
It was quite a shame, Thessa reflected with fading consciousness. She'd always dreamed of becoming a Caste Warrior when she was a child.
The two Inferno Warriors observed the girl fall with a dull thud, blood slowly pooling beneath her body as light faded from her eyes. Before they could deliver the finishing thrust to her brain—a protocol they had honed into tradition—a silvery vessel rose above them.
They craned their necks to see an egg-shaped craft descending from overhead. It cast no shadow; light refused to obey normal laws inside the Twisted Garden. But they could clearly see a woman in black Magister uniform balancing atop The Ambassador's curved hull.
"Artemis, start prepping Wonderweiss' Plan B," Magister Vienna ordered as she launched herself toward the deck of the Landia Caravel below. "I will handle the clown car."
Vienna descended like judgment itself, turning into a soundless blur of black as though launched from a cannon. She landed between Thessa and her would-be executioners; the deck splintered beneath her impact. The Inferno Warriors stepped back instinctively, confronted by eyes of steel—the same eyes which had brought fear to their very founders.
"Disappointing," Vienna's words rumbled like a beast awakening. "Luna created you to protect her people, and you dare do this?"
The Magister vanished, reappearing before one Caste Warrior with her knee as greeting. The Inferno saw her move—could track her trajectory—but nothing he attempted could prevent the high-velocity knee from crashing into his skull like a cannonball. His helmet, designed to withstand bullets and kinetic blasts, shattered into crimson fragments; blood streamed from his nose as his eyes rolled back.
For the Inferno who escaped the first strike, time crawled as his brother-in-arms shot off the mystical Fae Caravel like a rocket, smashing through the wooden bow and into the empty void with no hope of return. In desperate fury, he retaliated with his Burning Blade while drawing his sidearm for support.
His blade swung with precision meant to cleave heavy infantry in half, only to be stopped dead by an armored hand. Vienna's free arm shot forward, tearing off his limb and flinging away the appendage still clutching the signature Pyrite Pistol.
As expected of a mighty Caste Warrior, losing a limb didn't distract this man one bit. Pain receptor control and biological enhancement worked in concert to cauterize his wound instantly. He dropped his Scorch Steel sword and lunged at Vienna with a desperate jab.
He had made a fatal miscalculation; in close-combat, the Champion of Thousand Battles stood unrivaled.
Born ordinary in a warzone, Vienna grew amid history's most tumultuous conflicts with merely average Wizardry talent. Limited by nature, she focused solely on what she understood best: velocity control within the Kinetic School. While other Wizards diversified, Vienna perfected this single discipline through relentless focus—personalizing this one spell for extreme efficiency.
This was how she moved like a living projectile, an unstoppable force who'd made Newton's Third Law her doctrine. At the moment of impact, Vienna captured and redirected her own recoil, nullifying damage to herself while doubling her striking force.
That was Vienna's sole legendary spell: Velocity Shift.
A punch landed with such velocity it broke the sound barrier—delivered in a single stroke through the soldier's chest, exiting the other side before he could draw breath, much less complete his counterattack.
Vienna dropped the flaming blade she still held. She gazed at her protective gloves, now burnt away to reveal a silver prosthetic limb: a reminder of a fiery battle with her rival.
"What a disappointment," Vienna said, leaving the corpses of her enemies behind. "Your little matchsticks are nothing compared to Elvaine."
She walked to the hole Thessa had made and jumped down, coming face-to-face with three remaining assailants. Her eyes met their visors—silent communication made and severed as action erupted.
An Inferno raised his Pyrite Pistol as Vienna activated Velocity Shift. The Caste Warrior trained his weapon with supernatural grace, ripping apart the floor where his opponent had been. His visor's HUD pinpointed her projected trajectory; he knew the fundamental weakness embedded in speed-increasing techniques—the inability to alter direction mid-flight—and responded accordingly.
Unfortunately for him, Vienna never approached her craft with half-measures. Unknown to most, the Fastest Magister had earned her title by integrating one particular discipline into her skill set: the Adept Warrior's reflex and mental acuity, taught by Luna herself.
Her opponent never anticipated the Magister changing direction diagonally toward the ceiling above him. He aimed again and fired ninety degrees upward. Yet to the eternal embarrassment of Caste Warriors everywhere, Vienna—who had merely dabbled in their School as supplement—outpredicted his move. She sailed effortlessly past the projectile that opened another hole into the deck, palmed his helmeted head, and shoved him through the Fairy-Wood floorboard.
They punched through the ship's hold into the gundeck below and landed straight in the vessel's underbelly. Vienna then shifted her velocity to zero and decapitated her opponent with a single sweep.
Before she could rest on her laurels, Vienna heard the roar of fire from the gundeck above. She pressed a button in her gloves—micro-machines and ceramite plating assembled into a sleek steel mask covering her face.
She greeted the jet of flame—an ambush by the fourth Inferno who dared challenge her—by launching through it at Mach 25, over thirty thousand kilometers per hour. A velocity that would tear any ordinary human apart if not for her spell's innate wind-shear protection.
From his perspective, the attacker who had sneaked down to the gundeck for this ambush witnessed only a human-sized comet bursting through his flames and obliterating his entire torso. The man perished before his enhanced Adept Warrior mind could process what had happened.
Vienna blasted another hole through the hold, somersaulting to a perfect stop in front of the Captain's Quarters. Part of her felt disappointed. In exchange for teaching them her Wizardry, Vienna had helped develop the Caste Warrior concept and trained their first generation. Back then, the Inferno Caste were an elite force enhanced with Inferna Salamander genetics—granting them insane heat resistance and corrosive tolerance.
"One of those kids back then could even spit fire and ate plastic for food," Vienna grumbled as she prepared to knock on Mimio's door. "I would at least—"
She stopped; her skin crawled as she sensed another incoming sneak attack. How embarrassing. They would all receive failing grades for not confronting her three against one. Such strategy might not have improved their chances substantially, but they could have survived more than a single hit each.
The fifth one deserved an extra demerit for tactical failure. He should have packed his equipment and reported to his superior after witnessing his companions being dispatched so effortlessly. Better yet, he should have lined the ship with explosives and blown it to kindling. Instead, he prepared to leap from the corridor corner for a pot shot. Did he truly believe she possessed no ranged attacks?
Vienna lifted her robotic arm. The mechanical limb split open to reveal a barrel loaded with an aerodynamic Carbonite dart. As she had done countless times before, her spell-slot activated to accelerate this projectile from rest to Mach 1000 in a single instant—obliterating the ambusher into a spray of blood and metal fragments the moment his flaming armor appeared around the corner. The projectile continued unimpeded, drilling through the remainder of the ship and creating a perfect aperture through which she glimpsed the ever-shifting walls of the Twisted Garden.
Vienna pressed the button again; her helmet disassembled itself back into her armor. She exhaled deeply and knocked on the door.
"Hello, may I come in?"
The protective sigils around the door blinked out as Vienna pushed it open, revealing the most absurd scene she could have imagined. A blonde, long-haired Fae with Light Clan's signature pointy ears cowered behind an elderly man in traditional white Fae Garden toga; both sheltered behind three warriors in Fairy-Wood armor. The room lay in disarray—upturned shelves and furniture pried from their original positions to form a barricade that would have delayed the Inferno squad for mere seconds at most.
What drew her attention was the window displaying footage from the ship's surveillance cameras—more specifically, Vienna's methodical annihilation of her opponents.
"It is good—"
"Please don't kill us!" Mimio wailed, tears streaming down her face.
Vienna blinked. She turned to the toga-clad Light Clansman she presumed was Elder Green. "You must be Elder Green, correct? What happened here?"
Elder Green managed a weak smile before falling backward, unconscious before he could offer any explanation.
What Vienna failed to realize was that this group had witnessed the entire battle—from Thessa's defeat to the present moment. They recognized Vienna had arrived as an ally to rescue Thessa, but they had also observed how swiftly she dispatched the squadron that overwhelmed the entire ship.
The Magister had eliminated these elite warriors in less than a minute after arriving on deck. And the manner proved particularly horrific: one warrior had his limbs torn off before being speared through the heart; another decapitated; two more reduced to bloody smears destined for closed-casket funerals.
Mimio and Elder Green could only stare with widened eyes at the comical power disparity reality had presented. The dawning realization struck them like an anvil from the heavens—this terrifying force of nature would need to be escorted by them to Camelot.
"Thessa, I am sorry!" Mimio sobbed like a child in the presence of what she believed to be a monster who would tear her limb from limb. "I will behave, but please save me!"
As for Vienna, she watched the girl's breakdown with a single thought running through her mind:
How cute.