“Of course, sir,” I said automatically, my mouth forming the words as though I were back on the front, back in uniform, at war. I was not. This was my home, these my people—my wife, my daughter. I was no longer a soldier. But one does not say no to a magiteknician. Especially not one on edge, already struck by a tainted man; his eyes sunken but bright with paranoia.

At dawn, the might of Yneska mobilizes. Twenty vanquishers, thirty-nine pilots. The vanquishers are at their full height, in their various shapes. Some are draped in elongated eyes down their throats and spines; others have slit pupils clustered on their temples. Six-limbed, four-limbed, eight-limbed. As much variation between them as there is between their pilots, who stand in their carapace armor, sleek and jointed.