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Aurealis woke to the sound of her doorbell being pressed repeatedly. She realized that the loud buzz she had been hearing in her dream was coming from the real world as she groggily opened her eyes.
Her blurry vision moved to the clock beside the bed. The round device with the attached bells should have gone off hours earlier. Where the clock had been sitting was now a pile of metal debris, and the table it was on had a suspiciously large gauntlet-shaped hole in it. She didn’t remember activating her armor, but the proof was there.
She must have deactivated it just as quickly, as when she looked down, she saw she was missing the nice silk nightshirt she went to bed in. Disappointing to say the least, but not entirely unexpected. No clothing survived an armor transformation.
Had The Darkness activated the armor while she was out?
“Not a chance. I sleep when you sleep, Lady,” said The Darkness in her mind.
The loud, annoying buzz stopped, followed by frantic knocking at her apartment’s front door. Whoever was trying to get her attention was desperate to do so.
“You can just leave it there,” is what she tried to say. She suspected it came out more as a “meurgh…. mef fere.”
When the buzzing started up again, Aurealis groaned, then slid out of the bed onto the polished wooden floor of her apartment. She forced herself up and groggily walked over to the hallway leading to her front door.
Her room was always a mess. It was the only room in the apartment allowed to be a mess. Aurealis didn’t get many visitors, but regardless, the King had made sure that Aurealis’s place would always be presentable. Cleaners came by every few days to ensure that any potential visitors wouldn’t get the wrong idea.
Even when Aurealis was feeling rebellious and gave into The Darkness’s suggestions by leaving clothes and other things strewn randomly in her apartment, with yesterday’s takeout dinner… and lunch still on the table, it would be removed quickly.
It always seemed like such a waste, given she had nobody coming to visit, but the King was the boss, and Aurealis knew her own position was a bit on the perilous side. After all, she was the only member of the Diamond court granted rank by luck, not skill.
The Darkness inside her was loud this morning. “You should answer the door in just a random shirt from the floor and underwear. Your hair all messed up. Angrily ask whoever’s abusing your doorbell what the actual hells was so important. It’d be hilarious.”
Aurealis ignored The Darkness. As always, what was being proposed was absurd. A top-level representative of the Vistonian Empire, especially one as divisive as Aurealis, needed to be publicly presentable at all times. She was, after all, a Neonnis Knight.
“Who is it?” she called through the door.
“Message from the Diamonds, ma’am,” said a feminine voice from the other side with a tinge of relief in it. “Needs to be handed to you in person. For your eyes only.”
Aurealis suppressed a groan. “Just a moment.”
She moved back into her room, looking around for that formal uniform she was expected to be wearing all times when in public. It might be a silly rule, but rules were what kept things going in the right direction.
She found one copy of her uniform crumpled on a chair, unpressed and unpresentable. The other still had the whiskey stain from the late night out with the Diamond Guard. She knew she had another one somewhere, but time was short.
Thinking about how foolish she had been in not being ready for this, she closed the door to her room. Wearing the uniform was obviously not an option. Nor was allowing a messenger directly from the Diamonds to see her room in its current state.
The only thing presentable that she had was her Neonnis armor. It might be a bit overkill, but given past experience, it would not be unreasonable to answer an unexpected visitor armed.
Resigned to what must be done, she casually ran her hand across the chrome bracelet on her left arm in the well-practiced motion she had been using for almost a decade. The device glowed a blueish hue, and lines of the same color stretched down her arm, covering her whole body.
She floated a half foot off the ground as the lines began to crisscross across her body, creating a checkerboard pattern until they floated away from her, stopping a few inches away. The lines then changed to white, and the squares filled.
With a final flash, the Neonnis armor materialized around her. It was a bulky set of shining metal armor with sky-blue neon lights around several of the edges.
To a casual observer, the chest area, pauldrons, arms, and boots would be considered oversized in their bulk. However, motors in the suit itself ensured that movement wasn’t restricted while wearing it. The technomancers all called it “top-of-the-line power armor.” Aurealis called it “comfy.” Zane said it looked straight out of “rocking-man” or some other nonsense. It was always nonsense and jokes only he understood when talking with the Technosiah.
She quickly brushed the hair of her helmetless head down and walked back over to the door. She carefully turned the handle in her hand and watched the door swing open.
The small woman at the door recoiled slightly as she saw the armor. She wore the red uniform of an official castle messenger, her hair neatly tied in a bun under a hat and wearing a red fabric skirt and high collared jacket.
The Darkness said, “Hey, you know her. From, like, the before times.”
The messenger recovered her poise and cleared her throat.
“Message, for Neonnis Knight Aurealis P. Kasmir,” she said, with a tremble in her voice, “directly from King Viston, Emperor of all Vistonian lands, including the Macolyte collective.”
The messenger held out a shaky red envelope. Seeing it caused an old memory to leap to the front of Aurealis’s mind, despite being almost a decade old.
The memory was of a time when another messenger had been holding a bunch of letters Aurealis had tried to send to a recipient in the collective, never delivered. Atop was a newspaper clipping about a factory in Edge City exploding, all inside perma’d, including a former Macolyte potions-master. The undelivered messages were returned, as the deceased didn’t usually maintain a mailing address.
That had been an evening with a lot of tears and whiskey.
Thankfully, the package in front of her now was not nearly as depressing. She took the red “high priority” envelope gently in a gauntleted hand as the messenger quickly retracted her own.
Aurealis would need to take the gauntlets off to open it, which meant she would read it later. The armor was all-or-nothing, so de-transforming to read it would only be socially acceptable once she was alone again.
“Thank you,” she said to the woman, who was not meeting her gaze. “You serve your King well.”
It was the expected response. However, The Darkness pushed for more.
“She was one of our retainers. Be nice and ask her about how life’s been. It wouldn’t be that big a breach of your oh-so-important protocol.”
The Darkness was right. Aurealis said, “Have we met before?”
The woman gave a small shudder. “No, ma’am, you’re mistaken.”
“No, you’re not.”
Aurealis thought hard. What was the girl’s name? Then it hit her. “You’re Lacey, right? My old attendant?”
The messenger grunted in frustration, before politely saying through her teeth, “No. You’re mistaken, Lady Kasmir.”
Aurealis mentally said to The Darkness, “You see. This is why I don’t listen to you. Now I’ve made things weird.”
“He’s really done a number on you if you think having a memory is ‘weird.’”
Aurealis understood, though. If Lacey wanted to forget the pre-peace days, that was fine. It was a lifetime and multiple changes ago. Aurealis was a hero back then, not the bringer of the genocide. Aurealis didn’t even want to be associated with herself. How should she expect anyone else to?
“I see. And I understand completely,” Aurealis said, ignoring the tightness in her throat. “In which case, I thank you for the message.”
Aurealis began to close the door when the woman placed her hand on the other side to stop it.
“Wait,” she said.
Aurealis reopened the door.
“I,” she said, almost whispering, “I’m happy you remember me… Auré. That man changed too many things. Trust me, this is not how our lives were supposed to go. I wish we could go back and undo everything.”
This caught Aurealis by surprise. Very few people reminisced about the Eternal War.
Before Aurealis could reply, the woman named Lacey quickly bowed, said “Sorry,” then ran off down the hallway like someone escaping an awkward social situation.
If Aurealis was being completely honest, though, a part of her missed those days too. While the technological advances made by the technomancers and their Technosiah had made living easier, there was a simplicity to the old ways. Aurealis had a purpose. She was a soldier, not just an overpowered decoration, like she was now.
Everything had changed when Zane fell from the sky. He had lived up to his promise and ended the war with his Esrup weapons. He taught the technomancers how to make their own, and within the year, the war was over. The Macolyte collective had surrendered, becoming vassals to the Vistonian King and the Diamonds.
The public didn’t even know Zane had a name. To them, he was the Technosiah, a savior from a far-off land who brought everyone into the enlightened age. Aurealis knew the truth, however. Possibly more than she should, but Zane had let slip a few too many things in her first encounter. Comments about history lessons and altered timelines clued her in to where, or more accurately, when he was from.
Why they went with a cover story instead of the equally unlikely truth was anyone’s guess. Given how little Zane cared about anything, she suspected the cover-up was ordered by the King.
Once the war was over, the technomancers moved on to creating things for everyday use instead of weapons. The pre-peace world of thirteen years ago was a completely different place than now. Zane aided with not only support but also suggestions based on what he had experienced on his “land.”
“Since I’m stuck here,” he had said, “may as well make this shithole livable.”
Now they had coffee, indoor lights, electric razors, pizza, and a million other things Aurealis couldn’t imagine living without. All thanks to one weird man from the sky.
But despite everything, he always made Aurealis’s skin crawl. Even after a decade, his presence made her itch like a wound that never healed properly. Yet, he was revered as a god amongst men. A true leader who brought the savage Vistonians into the enlightened age in only a few years.
And worst of all, Aurealis owed him. He was the reason she was a Knight. The reason she had a purpose after the war ended. While he had the personality of a dog, he wasn’t bad per se.
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Lady.”
Aurealis closed the door and took a moment to push away the guilt of the war. After what a normal person would consider a long time, she moved into her room to get dressed for real. After all, making a coffee was difficult when your hand was twice the size of your head. How she had activated it in her sleep and slept through the transformation, again, was something she still hadn’t wrapped her head around.
She dismissed the armor, falling back the half foot to the ground. The chill of the air brushed against her bare skin.
Ignoring the large windows in her living room, as they always had the curtains down, she quickly moved back into her room in search of anything to wear. She opened a drawer and put on the first thing she found, a long wool sweater, and a neatly folded pair of underwear. As she picked the sweater up, she noticed that underneath was the final clean copy of her uniform. Cursing, she pulled it out and laid it on a surface for later. After the alarm clock fiasco, she would need to go shopping.
Dressed enough for the moment, she moved to her kitchen. She needed a drink.
As the midday sun poured through the window, Aurealis grabbed a mug and a pack of coffee powder, adding hot water to it from her always-ready boiler. Her wake-up juice would be ready in about a minute.
While it steeped, she turned her attention to the letter. She opened it and confirmed what Lacey had said earlier. The letter was in King Viston’s handwriting.
It was a summons for the annual Neonnis conference, where the six Neonnis Knights would meet with the Diamond royal family and the Technosiah to report on news and decide what policies needed to be implemented for the future to continue to be as bright as the post-war world had been so far.
What was interesting—and different—about the letter this year was the threat. Any Neonnis Knight who refused to attend this year would be stripped of their rank and their armor.
The meetings had always been understood as being optional. In the previous year, the only Knights in attendance were Aurealis and The Old Man. The Old Man because he was unfailing in his loyalty. Aurealis because she still needed to prove she was legitimately one of the Knights, and not just “the extra one they let in because the Technosiah asked nicely.”
It made for a very quick meeting that year. It also meant there were fewer targets for Zane to annoy, so Aurealis took the brunt of it. That was a long weekend, filled with far too much Zane.
“Hey, Alice.”
“Alice, babe! There you are!”
“Where I’m from, it’s customary to greet with a hug.”
“Alice, kindly tell me if this looks infected?”
Aurealis shuddered thinking about it. With all of the Knights there this year, she could at least hope he would have his attention divided.
“Skip it. Even divided attention isn’t worth it.”
Aurealis never understood why The Darkness hated Zane so much. He was a pain, but harmless.
She took a sip of her now ready coffee. Checking the calendar on the wall, the meeting would be in three days, likely to give the other Knights time to arrive. As she was already in the Vistonian capital of Vistonia, it meant she had more than enough time to prepare.
Her first priority would be getting a new alarm clock.
Check the books page for the rest.