Prime Part One

Part One of my ongoing Minoverse fantasy world. Let me know if you want more!

Prologue

         Dennar moved through the throng of shouting men and women, watching closely for his target. The walls of the palace rose above him, towers which proclaimed the glory of the King.
         A King who, according to the will of the people, was unfit to rule.
         Dennar’s gaze alighted on the balcony in the wall from which the King often gave his speeches. He was not there yet. The King displayed his wealth arrogantly, and the people were not happy.
         Clothed in black, bundled against the December chill, Dennar thought himself properly concealed against the gaze of the Arad Daon on the walls. The royal guards’ gaze slipped over him as if he were of no note, and indeed, the crowd of malcontents around him was a much more pressing issue. Too much of the current mood, and Dennar was sure that the crowd would spill into the palace grounds.
         Dennar himself was a tall man, though anything else was hidden behind his clothes. He could have been skinny or well-muscled; no one could tell for all the cold-repellent he had on him. His facial features were hidden behind a parka hood, and only his piercing blue eyes could be seen.
         All around him, the crowd surged and yelled. Dennar found himself being pushed forward as the mass surged toward the gate. Arad Daon stood just behind the gate, still as statues, but clearly ready for action. After a few minutes of waiting, the King finally emerged.
         Eric Martin burst through the doors on his balcony, looking down over the restless crowd. Dennar could see the tension in his face, even a hundred yards away. He was, understandably, not thrilled with the growing resentment of his rule.
         “People of Minopll!” His voice rang out over the crowd, speakers mounted somewhere in the walls broadcasting his voice over the crowd. Most of the horde got deadly quiet, though a few continued their yells.
         “I understand your frustration,” the King said. “You wish to see change done in this nation. You see things differently from me. I see a nation that, if left to its own devices, will destroy itself in its fervor to change.” His gaze swept over the crowd, and Dennar had to admit that he had a point. A crowd like this would never be able to successfully lead a nation.
         “You, on the other hand, see a King who, as I understand it, ignores and quashes the will of the people.” At that, the crowd let out a massive, incomprehensible roar. Dennar shook his head. For all their good intentions, they were going about change entirely wrong. They might as well have tried to blow the palace down with their breath for all the good their protests did.
         There were more effective ways to bring about change.
         “I promise you this,” the King said. “Any wrong I may have caused you was not my intent. If this nation is to be strong again, then we must do our best to stay unified and strong. We are better together, and I have a feeling that you all know this. If you do not agree with my methods, then please, send a representative of the people to meet with my staff and me. I fear that I have, in my years of ruling, become disconnected from the people. Let us not bring about change with violence. Let us do it with compassion and all the due respect that we have for our fellow men.”
         The King nodded to the people, then withdrew. A silence followed him, as it always did. Gradually, people began to disperse. One or two started, and soon the whole crowd was leaving the palace, moving back toward their homes, their vehicles, wherever they had come from.
         Dennar stayed standing there for a long time, even after the crowd had all but disappeared. A few dozen people also stayed, though Dennar didn’t talk to any of them.
         The King is right about one thing, he thought. He has become too disconnected from the people.
         Dennar turned away from the palace, malice in his step. The King has become too arrogant. It is time for us to take matters into our own hands.

Chapter One

         James jogged down the Royal Palace’s main corridor, dodging between startled officials, who shouted after him as he ran. James ignored them, his latest discovery clutched in his hand, all thought of other things forgotten. The stained glass windows of the hall shone with the brilliance of the noonday sun, and James shielded his eyes from the glare.
         At twenty-five, James was in the prime of his life. Tall, with dark hair and a slightly thinner build than average, he was rather famous around the palace, if only for his frequent stints jogging from place to place.
         James approached the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall, nodding at the Arad Daon who stood at attention, their red and purple ceremonial armor catching the light perfectly. As the King’s royal guard, the Daon were the most skilled, and most ceremonial, of the Minopll military. They held long halberds, with purple ribbons trailing off the heads. The guards were immaculately posed, but both of them betrayed smiles as they saw James sprint past their post.
         James shoved through the wood and iron door, bursting into the throne room’s antechamber. Another pair of guards stood on either side of an ornate wooden door, almost ten feet high. Wrought from wood, parasteel, and iron, it was an intricate construction that guarded the King’s throne. The two guards held up their hands, stopping him.
         “James, what brings you here?” one of them asked.
         “Paran, good to see you,” James said quickly. “I need to talk to the King. We’ve found something in the mines, something incredible!”
         “The King is currently in conference with his advisors,” Paran said with a small laugh. “He’ll be able to see you in a little while.”
         “Then where’s Eugene?” James asked. “I’ve got to tell… somebody about this!” He punctuated the last word by holding up a silver metal sphere, perhaps three inches in diameter. The Daon looked at it, puzzled. To be fair, it looked like every other sphere of parasteel that had ever been made.
         Then it moved.
         The entire sphere shifted, pieces of it flowing over and through James’ hand like water. It all remained connected to one spot on his palm, but strands of it hung from his fingers like a weird half-liquid goo. James dropped the entire thing into his other hand, and it reformed into the sphere it had been moments before. The guards pulled back a bit, looking shocked. Understandably so, of course. Most metals don’t just melt in your palm.
         “That’s not even the weirdest part,” James said happily. “Touch it!”
         “Why would we do that?” the other guard asked. James didn’t know his name.
         “For science!” James exclaimed. “And because it’ll make you jump out of your armor.”
         Paran, to his credit, reached out only slightly hesitantly and pressed his finger against the metal orb.
         “Do I really have to do this?” the metal asked in a bored voice. “There are so many more interesting things to be doing than showing me off.” Paran uttered a small, undignified yelp that drew a few odd stares from people around them.
         “It can talk?” Paran asked, shocked.
         “Yes it can,” the metal huffed. Paran didn’t react to the words; James thought that it could only talk to people who were touching it.
         “Yes it can,” James said happily. “We found a mound of this stuff down in the parasteel mines. It was in the middle of the mines, in a little cubby in a larger block of parasteel. It melted around the tools when we tried to cut it out, and it talked to us when we touched it. I’ve got a few guards guarding the thing right now, but we need to figure out what to do with it before word gets out.”
         “I see,” Paran said, rubbing his hand. “The Prince is in the west wing, last I checked. I’m sure that he will be greatly interested in this… thing.”
         “Thanks!” James said, and he darted off through another door, moving quickly toward the west wing. The orb of metal melted around his hand, encasing it in a cool silver metal glove. It moved with his hand as he ran, but he no longer had to hold on to it-it held on to him.
         The west wing was much more plush and decorated by couches and flower pots, and given that the west wing was not a public space, not many people visited, at least not the layman. James got a pass for a few reasons.
         James made his way around a few turns and found himself in front of what appeared to be a simple wooden door in the wall. James banged on the door with the fist not holding the metal orb, which had reformed in his palm. A voice came through the door.
         “Who is it?”
         “It’s me, Eugene.” James said. “I’ve got to show you something.”
         The door uttered a loud clunking sound, and James grinned to himself. This wasn’t exactly a normal wooden door. With a small squeal, the door swung open, revealing the smiling face of the Prince of Minopll. Jet black hair lined a pointed face, with blue eyes that seemed to pierce directly to the soul of whoever he looked at. Eugene waved James in, moving into the cavernous room.
         The entire room was painted white, as it was the color that Eugene found the most pleasant to be surrounded by. The ceiling was tall, almost twice as tall as it needed to be. A large four-poster bed draped in purple sheets sat in the middle of the room, and a desk and various shelves lined the walls. On the tops of them were various action figures (a set he had collected when he was younger), a few lamps and other utility implements, and a long sword in a scabbard. James cocked his head at the sword; last time he’d been in here, the sword hadn’t.
         “Oh yes, the sword,” Eugene said, following James’ gaze. “They found that during the jungle expedition. My father gave it to me as a keepsake. We don’t know exactly what it is, but he figured that I could use at least one weapon to decorate my room.”
         “He does have some interesting design sensibilities,” James said with a laugh. “One hall of armor is enough, let alone three of them.”
         “Well, I like it well enough,” Eugene said, picking up the sheathed blade. “Funny thing too, the blade is pristine.” He grabbed the hilt and yanked it from the scabbard. The blade rang with a musical tune, and James thought he saw a flickering of air around the blade, though it was gone in a moment. Just as Eugene had said, the sword was pure and unmarred.
         “They just found it, sitting around in the jungle,” Eugene said, falling into a dueling stance with the weapon. “I’d have thought that after so long a blade like this would have rusted away.”
         “Is it parasteel?” James asked, looking in mild wonder at the sword. It had the same silvery color as the mystical metal, but James could see a few small dents and scratches in it that would not have been possible on a well-forged parasteel blade.
         “No, our scientists looked it over when we got it back here,” Eugene said, taking a few swings with the sword. “It’s just made of steel. I think the blademaster said that it’s a variant of a high-carbon steel blade that was common in the time of the Ancient People. They are completely puzzled on how it is still in such good condition.”
         “Well, the Ancients have already astounded us with their architecture and villages in the Jungle,” James said as Eugene replaced the sword in its sheath. “Who’s to say if they had magical anti-rust technology?”
         “I somehow doubt that,” Eugene said. “But you never know. Anyway, you wanted to talk to me about something?”
         “Yes, I did,” James said, suddenly remembering why he was there in the first place. He held up the sphere of metal, which made a small huffing sound in his mind. It sure did like to huff a lot.
         “We found this in the parasteel mines,” James said. “I was there on a whim, we haven’t had many breakthroughs lately, work’s been a bit dull. So, I figured I’d take a break and go see what was going on in the mines. Turns out we found this.”
         “An orb of parasteel,” Eugene said dryly. “How revolutionary.”
         “It’s not parasteel,” James said excitedly. “It’s much better than that.” He sent a mental command to the metal, and the sphere began to churn. Lines of silver metal rose into the air above his palm. Eugene gasped, leaning in closer to James.
         “How are you doing that?” he asked curiously. James gave another command and the lines of metal snaked toward Eugene, the opposite end wrapping around James’ hand. In a moment, it formed into a long silver tube, rather than the sphere.
         “We found a large cavern of this stuff in the mines, as I said,” James said. I was there when we unearthed it, and I got to be the first to touch it. Well, let’s just say that I didn’t expect what came next.”
         Eugene reached out and touched the silver strand. For a moment, the two stayed still, Eugene and the strand of metal. Then the metal spoke yet again.
         “So you are the smaller ruler of this country?” it asked. Ever since James had found it, it seemed genuinely interested in the world. On his trip up from the mines, James had been so astounded by the fact that metal could talk to actually tell it much about the world. It did seem to be able to see, or at least sense the world around it. Though from the way it talked, James knew that it had been underground for a long time.
         Eugene, as Paran had, jumped backward in shock. “It talks?” he asked incredulously.
         “Yes it does,” James said. “The moment I touched it, it asked what was going on, then wondered if I wanted to bond with it. I said yes, and apparently that lets me control what it does.”
         “Moving liquid metal?” Eugene asked. “Just when I thought things were calming down a bit in the world.”
         Eugene touched the living metal again, wonder in his eyes.
         “What did you mean by smaller ruler?” he asked curiously.
         “Just what I said,” the metal answered in their minds. “James said that there’s a king. That translates to regena in the nedril language. Then he said there’s a prince, which is regna. Unless I’m mistranslating, which is totally possible, price is your word for a smaller ruler than the king.”
         “That’s… mostly correct,” Eugene said, while James hid a small laugh. “The king is my father.”
         “Oh yes, the social structure of the family,” the metal said in a strange voice. “A thing that, in the case of a monarchist system, dictates the passing down of titles.”
         James suppressed a laugh again and shrugged. “He’s still getting the hang of learning how things work.”
         “Clearly,” Eugene said, but he smiled. Stepping away from the metal, he sat down at his desk, twiddling a pencil in his fingers. “So how does this work exactly?”
         “Well, it asked if I wanted to bond with it,” James said. “This is a very small part of the total. It was at the very center of the mine, a huge lump of the stuff. We noticed that it was different immediately, and when I touched it, it spoke to me. In my head, I mean. It doesn’t seem to be able to speak outside the heads of anyone touching it.
         “Still, whatever I tell it to do, it seems to be able to do. Make a glove, for instance.” The metal shifted, transforming smoothly into a silver glove like it had before. Then it became a small dagger, then a sphere again. Eugene stared at it the whole time, his expressions changing from shock to amusement quickly.
         “That’s… really cool,” he said finally.
         “I know,” James said, lowering his sphere. It dissolved into the liquid metal again, then flowed up his arm to his shoulder, under his shirt. The metal was comfortably cool on his skin. “There is so much more of it down in the mines. I was going to tell your father about it first, but he’s in a meeting at the moment. So I figured you were just as good.”
         “I’m surprised that Emily wasn’t your first choice,” Eugene said with a knowing grin. “Such as I’ve heard, you’ve shared everything with her before anybody else outside that lab.”
         “And can you blame me?” James asked with a laugh. He felt the sentient metal perking up at their discussion. “I rather enjoy sharing things with her. You do that with Emma, after all.”
         “Go figure,” Eugene said with another laugh, this one longer. “You’ve only been married for, what, a month?”
         “Two, as of last week,” James said.
         “Right, two months. Well, it’s only natural that you’d share everything with her. From what she’s told me, you end up being the largest nerd in history most nights.”
         “You’ve known me for twenty three years, Eugene,” James laughed. “When am I not a nerd?”
         “When you’re around her, I’ve noticed. Those times, you have more in common with a lovestruck puppy.”
         “Oh shut up,” James said, but both of them started laughing. They had been friends for their entire lives, they had been playmates since James was born. Despite the fact that Eugene was the Prince of Minopll and James was the lowly son of a cook and a guard, they had been inseparable for years. Thus, James was one of the few people who could tell the Prince of Minopll to shut up and get away with it.
         “I do not understand,” the metal said from James’ shoulder. “You are friends, are you not?”
         “Sure,” James said. “Have been for years.” Eugene looked at him, puzzled, but James poked his shoulder and Eugene nodded.
         “Yet you both have basically insulted each other, and you are fine with that?”
         “It’s called sarcasm,” James said, and Eugene belted out a laugh.
         “Of course the living metal has never heard of sarcasm,” he said.
         “I take offense to that,” the metal replied, though only James heard it.
         “Sarcasm is when you say one thing and mean something else,” James explained for the metal’s benefit. “It’s hard to pick up on for the untrained.”
         The metal made a humming noise, which James took as a noise of assent. Then, a knock came to the door. Eugene vaulted over the bed and opened the door. Paran was standing in the doorway, looking into the room. It was the person behind Paran that caught James’ attention.
         King Eric Martin of Minopll strode across the threshold, hands behind his back. James dropped to his knee out of respect, and Eugene gave his father a small nod. The King saw James’ bow and laughed.
         “Stand up, James,” he said sharply. James did so, a grin on his face. “We’ve been on a first-name basis with each other for twenty years. A little bow will suffice, if you must.”
         “Of course I must,” James said. “You are King, after all. And what is the purpose of a King if not to get people to be overly formal?”
         “That is a sarcasm,” the metal said from his shoulder. James laughed.
         “You said you have something to show me, I believe,” the King said. He sounded strained, but he kept going. “Paran was hesitant to tell me exactly what it was. He did give a rather undignified smile though.”
         James saw Paran smiling beside the door, though otherwise he stood perfectly at attention.
         James held out his hand, commanding the metal to flow up his arm, surrounding his hand again in the metal glove. King Eric stepped back, shocked.
         “What is that?” he asked in wonder. James couldn’t help but laugh at the same reaction having come from so many people this day.
         “We found a mound of this stuff in the mines,” James said. “It’s some kind of living liquid metal. I’m able to command it, somehow.” The glove formed into the shape of a small fox-like creature the size of his palm, which hopped off James’ hand onto the ground. He gave it a measure of autonomy, which the thing seemed to appreciate. It loped across the ground, surprisingly quick for something that had never walked before. The King kneeled down and offered a hand to it. The metal fox climbed onto the King’s hand, and he straightened up.
         “Facinating,” the King said softly. Then, he yelped, and dropped the fox, taking a step back. The metal creature hit the ground with a clang, and its head looked up at the king in a shockingly realistic impression of a real fox.
         “It talked?” Eugene grinned.
         “Yes, it did,” the King said. “You didn’t warn me about that.”
         “You didn’t ask,” James said innocently.
         King Eric leaned down over the fox again, and it raised one of its paws in the air. James noticed that the paws were more like hands, with opposable thumbs and everything. He wondered if the metal was beginning to imitate human anatomy. The King placed a hand up against the fox’s, and they sat there for a moment, staring at each other.
         “You can talk?” the king said finally. There was silence for a moment, then the King said “that makes sense, I suppose. How does that work, though?” More silence. Then, “I see. Where did you come from, little one?” Silence. Then the King straightened up, breaking his connection with the metal.
         “This piece of living metal comes from another planet, or so it says,” the King declared. Eugene leaded forward in his chair, his eyes widening. James didn’t know what to say. “It says that it is a member of the species calonan, in its language. It says that that word translates to ‘metal,’ in our tongue.”
         “Calonan,” huh?” James said musingly. He sat down cross-legged beside the fox, which padded toward him. Now that he was looking closer, James saw that its tail was prehensile, like that of a monkey, and its snout was a bit longer than a fox’s, and its fur was rippling as if in a wind. Its limbs were also longer and spindlier than foxes, proportionate almost to a human’s limbs. James cocked his head at the creature, but before he could do anything else, its tail grew longer, and it wrapped around James’ hand.
         “I have been in that cave for a long time,” the metal said. James was shocked at the note of sadness in its voice. “I… don’t have a firm grip on earth time-telling techniques, but I have been in that cave for longer than your mining efforts have been going on. Eons longer. Eons waiting in the dark. Until you found me, I was just listening. Waiting for someone to find me, studying what I could, while surrounded by my… no, that isn’t important.”
         “I’m sorry to hear that,” James said. “It does sound awful.”
         The fox shrugged, a shockingly human expression to see come from a creature like it. “It wasn’t too bad. Calonan have a way of hibernating when nothing is happening. That is part of why I have no idea how long it has been. All I remember is hear, and noise. Much death. Too much death. Part of me dying, somehow. Then, long ago, I felt some sort of tugging at the edge of my consciousness. I felt the rhu-alnwer slipping away. They had been jostled around in my arrival here, and they were gone one day. I wonder what has become of them.” The metal fox shivered, then melted into a sphere again. James picked it up, and the thing turned into a sort of arm gauntlet, falling silent. He stood up, and explained as best he could what the metal had told him.
         “I’m confused,” Eugene said when he had finished. “Our liquid metal friend is an alien?”
         “Yes, it seems that way,” James said. “I must say, this is an interesting way to make first contact. I always assumed that it would involve either a massive spaceship or a lot more fire.”
         The moment he said that, the gauntlet on his arm suddenly contracted, somehow heating up as it tightened around his skin. James gasped, and the metal creature uttered a sort of strangled cry that reverberated through his mind, leaving him shocked. He ordered the thing none too lightly to loosen on his arm, and it complied, calming down a bit. Try though he might James could get no explanation for the outburst.
         “You said that there’s more of this metal down in the mines?” King Eric said. He seemed not to have noticed James’ momentary distraction, though Eugene was glancing at him quizzically.
         “Yes, there is,” James said. “I placed guards on it, but we had better check on it. Would you like to come?”
         “Yes I would.” The King said.
         “My lord, I must protest,” Paran said. “The malcontents have been growing… bolder of late, and-”
         “No one would dare to attack me, especially not in the mines,” King Eric responded. “You may send a squad of the Arad Daon, but I will be in no danger.” He turned on his heels and marched from the room. Eugene grabbed James’ arm before they left.
         “What just happened with that thing?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.
         “It didn’t like my talk of fire, I think,” James answered. The metal let out a bit of a whimper, and it receded further into James’ sleeve. “I don’t know, but from the way it talked… something terrible has happened to this poor creature.”
         “Well then, we’d best get the rest of it before it becomes a problem,” Eugene said. “Come on.”
         With that, the two of them left the room, the guards on their tail, the echoes of the metal’s last whimper still echoing in James’ mind.

Chapter Two

         The orb of the liquid metal was about three feet by three feet, a blobby cube somewhere in the middle of the mines. They could only see about five inches of it, through a hole in the wall. The wall was made, as was the entire interior of the mine, of raw parasteel, the metal that could only be found in Minopll. They had been noticing a change in the metal as they mined deeper over the last month.
         Parasteel, in its raw form, was slightly tinted red, and the new liquid metal was a darker shade of silver. The dark silver had been intermixed in the raw parasteel, so they had been wondering what had caused the change. Unfortunately, the specks of darker metal proved much harder to mine, so they had let it be, hoping to find some answer to the mystery. Little had they suspected that it would be a living metal that waited for them.
         “So this is it, huh?” the King said, looking at the patch of calonan, as the metal had called itself.
         “Yes, my lord,” one of the workers said. “We used a high pressure digger to unearth it, the darker stuff has combined a bit with the raw parasteel. Makes it harder for us to mine, you know?”
         “Yes, I can imagine. Does it deflect your parasteel tools?”
         “Yes, my lord. We’ve tried everything, but it seems to be just as durable as refined parasteel.”
         The King moved toward the opening in the wall, and pressed his hand against the calonan. His hand sank through the dark metal, absorbing his hand up to his elbow. The King grinned, and pulled his hand back out. The metal froze in a bit of a splash, a few drops hanging out of the wall.
         “According to itself, this is all part of one consciousness,” James said. He moved up to the hole and put his hand against the metal. The gauntlet, which hadn’t done anything since they had left the palace, slid off his hand, merging with the rest of the metal. It churned around a bit, and fell still. James removed his hand. “It told me as much when we first unearthed it. Evidently, it is waiting for someone to bond with all of it. I have made some sort of half-bond, to facilitate ease of communication, but I have no idea what a full bond like that would entail.”
         “Well, you are the preeminent scientific mind of your generation, James,” the King said. “What do you think we should do?”
         “That’s kind of you to say,” James said absently. He rested his hand on the metal again, and was slightly surprised when it spoke to him.
         “I am sorry for how I acted earlier, James,” it said. “Things have… happened in my past that were… hard to deal with. I’d rather not talk about it now, but I would like to help you now. To make up for past mistakes, if you understand my meaning.”
         “I will accept your help gladly,” James said. “And, if you wish, I will accept this bond with you.”
         Immediately, James felt an immense warmth from the metal. Suddenly, a mass of dark metal flooded out of the hole in the wall. A sense of elation came from the metal as the liquid steel surrounded him in a storm of metal. James felt the metal surrounding him, covering his skin. Clinking sounds came from it after a moment, and he suddenly became aware of every piece of the metal, every molecule. They shaped around his body, forming into a good half a foot of armor around him. He felt himself rising into the air as the metal surrounded his legs. After a moment, the metal fell still.
         James found himself about a foot above the ground, suspended by a pair of legs of metal. He was closed completely in a suit of armor consisting of interlocking plates made from the liquid metal. It added a considerable bulk to his form, and he realized after a moment that almost two dozen arms of various sizes were extending from his back, undulating and spinning through the air. His helmet was somehow clear, despite the half foot of metal in front of his eyes. The metal was shockingly light, and he could still move despite the sheer amount of it on him.
         James noticed with amusement that everyone in the room, including the King and Prince, were clustered around him, concerned looks on their faces.
         “James, can you hear me?” Eugene said. The voice sounded a bit muffled inside the metal armor, but it was clear enough.
         “Yes, I can,” James said, taking an unsure step forward. “I agreed to bond with the metal, and it seems to have overdone things.”
         “My apologies,” the metal said, and James laughed.
         “You’re fine,” he replied. “We can deposit some of your… essence in the lab for study, if you don’t mind.”
         “That is fine with me,” the suit said.
         “What now?” the King asked. “Do we return to the palace?”
         “Yes, that may be a good idea,” James said. “I need to deposit some of this metal in the lab. A full suit is a little much.”
         As they moved back the way they had come in, James a little awkwardly due to his new bulk, a question occurred to him.
         “Do you actually have a name?” he asked the suit.
         “No, I don’t.”
         “You said calonan earlier… Do you like Cal?”
         “Cal. Yes, that will work nicely.”

         * * *

         James snapped his arm out to the side, and a long thin silver blade materialized from the gauntlet on his arm. He swiped forward with the newly formed blade, shearing the head off of a training dummy that had been set up in the lab. The straw head flopped pathetically to the ground. He grinned at the other man in the room with him.
         “Impressive response time,” Esa said, cocking his head at the dummy. He made a note on his clipboard. “I wouldn’t have thought that any material could work so seamlessly with the human mind.” He was shorter than James, his hair was prematurely grey, and he always wore large glasses that gave him the perfect mad scientist look. Esa was about forty years old, and he was one of the leading technological minds of Minopll.
         “Neither would I,” James replied. “But then I met Cal.” He commanded the blade to retract, and it did so, the metal shifting and contracting into his arm.
         “I’m not thrilled with the prospect of being used to kill someone,” Cal commented to James.
         “I don’t expect you to need to,” James answered. “I’m a scientist, not a warrior. Honestly, I’m more of a creative mind than a scientist.”
         “Still…” Cal communicated the mental equivalent of a shiver, and James agreed. His father was the head of security for the King, so he had been trained in combat enough to defend himself. Still, he preferred the mental arts to the martial ones.
         “What other tests can we run,” Esa asked, looking up from his clipboard. “We have discovered only that your mental link allows you to control the movements and shape of this calonan. What else can we discover?”
         “Good question,” James said. “Cal, what else can you do?”
         “I am not entirely sure,” Cal answered him. “I have never bonded with a human before. The nedril were much different to you, physically and mentally.”
         “Nedril?” Esa asked the metal. He wore a section of the calonan’s body on his wrist, allowing him to hear Cal’s comments. It was a clever way to allow people into their conversations, one that it had taken James a long time to realize was possible.
         “The nedril were the dominant species on the planet I am from. They are all dead now, unfortunately.”
         Esa stared at the metal, his mouth agape. “You mean that there were two species of aliens on this planet? Calonan and nedril?”
         James gave Cal some autonomy, like he had back when Cal had been a fox-like creature. The suit stepped off of James’ body, taking a few shaky steps away. It promptly disbalanced and fell over, and when it hit the floor, it burst into a puddle of silver metal. The metal churned and formed into another of the fox looking creatures. It was much larger now, though slightly smaller than a human. It stood up easily on its four limbs.
         “Stupid bipeds,” Cal muttered. James realized that the metal had left a bit of itself around his wrist, something he had forgotten to ask for specifically.
         “There were actually three species on the Exoplanet,” Cal the fox said. “The first were the calonan, such as myself. We were one mind back then. Well, one mind with lots of smaller minds branching off. Anyway, the second species was the nedril. They looked much like I do now, though more colorful.” He flicked his long tail, then meandered around the room, taking it in. It was a large circular room, covered in shelves and desks with various pieces of tech in various stages of development scattered about. The entire room was whitewashed, with the walls, floor, and ceiling all white, and the lights adding to the bright space.
         “You said that there was a third species as well?” Esa asked after a long moment.
         “Yes, there was one other.” James caught a hint of hesitation in the voice of the metal fox, though the only visual clue he could see was the incredibly fine fur strands bristling a little around the head.
         “The other species was the rhu-alnwer,” Cal said. For whatever reason, he refused to meet their eyes. “They were the reason that the nedril built their society so high. You might call them spirits, or ghosts. I don’t know what has become of them.”
         “You mentioned them earlier,” James said, remembering suddenly. “When we were in Eugene’s room, and you started talking…”
         “Yes, I suppose I did,” Cal said. He loped his four limbed form over to James, then stood up on his hind legs, transforming back into a human-scale suit. James stepped into it, and the metal enfolded him again, locking him into the armor. Amusingly, Cal had forgotten to reshape his head, so the helmet locked into place as a fox-shaped head.
         James and Esa tried to get Cal to talk more about the planet he was from, but the alien refused to say much more. Eventually, he sunk into silence, and James stopped pestering him. Perhaps antagonizing the alien after first contact was not the best of ideas.
         For the next few hours, James, Esa, and Luke, another scientist who wandered in eventually, experimented with the full shapeshifting capability of Cal’s form. They made scissors, wires, tested the conductivity of the metal, joked around, and ended up laughing more than was perhaps dignified for a scientific study. It took them longer than it should have for them to realize that the metal itself had no name.
         “I thought calonan was the name of it,” Esa said, cocking his head.
         “That’s the species name, remember?” James said. “Our skin isn’t called ‘human,” is it?”
         “No, I suppose not,” Esa answered.
         “Well, we found it in the parasteel mines,” Luke said, taking a bite from an apple. “So it should be something parasteel-ish.”
         “Well, not too much like parasteel,” James said. “They are very different things, after all.” Cal did his mental shiver again, but James ignored it as a thought entered his mind.
         “What if we call it morph…steel?”
         “Morphsteel?” Esa asked, giving James a withering look. “That’s a very unscientific name.”
         “So’s parasteel,” Luke said with a laugh. “I like it. Morphsteel.”
         “I… will accept it,” Cal said. Luke laughed again and, try as Esa might to change it, the name stuck.
         After another hour of experimentation, which yielded quite a bit of interesting numbers but little interesting substance otherwise, a knock sounded at the door. James turned around from trying to grab an apple with strands of morphsteel and instead directed the strands to grab and open the door.
         Standing in the doorway was Emily McGuyvan. James’ wife was dressed simply, but that only served to exemplify her beauty. She was slightly shorter than James, with long brown hair, a nicely curved face, and two bright, happy brown eyes. But, incredible as it sounded, her outward beauty was secondary to her personality.
         “Man, how did you get so lucky?” Luke muttered to James.
         “Oh be quiet,” James said, cuffing him playfully on the shoulder. “You’ll get your chance. Philey’ll come around to you eventually.”
         “She’s too good for me, you know that.”
         “She does like you,” James said. “Just be confident in saying that you like her too.” James moved over to the door, motioning Emily in.
         “Have any of you gentlemen seen James lately?” Emily asked. “I haven’t seen him all day, and that probably means he’s getting into trouble.
         James cocked his head, then remembered he was still wearing his morphsteel helmet. He gave a quick command to retract it, and Emily jumped.
         “I should have realized you’d be the one in the fox suit,” Emily said, giving James a playful stare. He grinned and gave her a small hug.
         “No, I’m not getting into trouble,” James said. “I’m just wearing an alien.”
         Emily’s mouth dropped open. “That’s an alien?” she asked.
         “Yes it is,” James said. “We’re calling it morphsteel. Its name is Cal though.”
         “You’re wearing an alien?” Emily said faintly. “I knew it. You are most certainly getting into trouble.”
         Luke and Esa laughed, but James merely shrugged. He commanded the armor to flow off of him, and it did so, flowing across the ground as a liquid and into a compartment in the wall. James purposefully kept a bracelet of it to communicate with Cal if needed. The pieces that Luke and Esa had went to join the main mass.
         “Anyway, it’s nearly six o’clock,” Emily said. “I’d recommend you come and eat something before they clean up the dining hall.”
         “So it is,” James said, looking at his watch. “I’ll take my leave now, if you gentlemen don’t mind.”
         “Go for it,” Luke said with a laugh.
         James offered his arm to Emily, and she took it gladly. The two of them walked out the door, into the halls of the palace.
         The Palace Science Labs were situated in the underground of the palace. This was both a good and bad thing, as it made the experiments that the team performed more private, but it also took longer to get from the Labs to the main palace area. James and Emily moved up through the halls, passing very few people. James figured that most of them would be in the dining hall, finishing up their meals. As they walked, James explained the events of the day to Emily, who took it all in with wonder. She had not, evidently, been expecting liquid alien metal to be a part of James’ day.
         The McGuyvans arrived just as the King and Queen were leaving. James was a moment too late to give the King his report of the experiments with the morphsteel, so he took his seat and helped himself to the remains of the meal.
         The meals in the palace were simple. There were a few hundred people in the palace who required feeding, so two different meals were made-one for the staff, and one for everyone else. James and Emily fell into the ‘everyone else’ category. As they sat down, a few servants came out and replaced the trays with full ones. They dug in, James eating with a voracious appetite. Experimenting with morphsteel all afternoon
         “I have never had the opportunity to study human sustenance rituals,” Cal commented as he ate. “They are quite… enlightening.”
         “What’s that supposed to mean?” James asked. Emily looked questioningly at him, but he showed her the morphsteel bracelet and she nodded.
         “Well, we calonan don’t have to eat,” Cal said. “The nedril did, but they were a little neater about it.”
         “This is a drumstick,” James said with a chuckle. “It’s messier than most foods we humans eat.”
         “I can see that,” Cal said. James felt a hint of amusement from the bracelet.
         “Cal hasn’t had much experience with eating,” James informed Emily. “In fact, he called it a ‘human sustenance ritual’.”
         “That’s actually not a bad way to put it,” Emily said. “At least, not bad for sentient metal trying to understand humanity.”
         A few minutes later, as the servants came out to start cleaning up the room, James’ mother sat down at the table with them. James scooted over closer to Emily to make room for her.
         Gloria McGuyvan was forty-nine years old. Her hair was slightly grey, but she still had all the strength of someone younger. She was the head chef in the palace kitchens, and was therefore the best cook James had ever met.
         “You’re late,” she commented, pulling the last drumstick off the plate and taking a huge bite.
         “Long day,” James said.
         “Oh?” his mother asked, wiping her mouth.
         “Well, this morning was about usual,” James said casually. “Listened to the news for a while, talked with Emily, went to the mines, met an alien. You know, the usual.”
         “It’s usual to meet aliens?” she asked.
         “In James’ line of work, you never know what you’re gonna get,” Emily said. “But yes, he did meet an alien.”
         James held out his hand, and the bracelet melted into a puddle, flowing off his hand onto the table. Like some liquid serpent, it slithered across the table, and into Glory’s hand.
         “Well isn’t that something,” she said. “Does it have a name?” There was a pause, in which James imagined Cal answering. “Cal, I see.”
         “There’s more to his body than that,” James said, “but that’s all I care to carry around.”
         “Well, you’ll have to tell me more about this alien of yours sometime,” Glory said happily, passing Cal back to James. “I ate with the Queen, so I’m not terribly hungry.”
         “She says as she starts on her third drumstick,” Emily noted.
         Glory laughed. “Not terribly hungry after this one, I mean. Oh, be quiet. Working in a kitchen all day makes you hungry.”
         “I can imagine,” James said, handing his and Emily’s now-empty plates to a passing servant, thanking him.
         “Well, I’d better get to cleaning up if I want to get outside at all this evening,” Glory said. “I’m glad to hear your day went well, James.”
         “Bye mom,” James said as Glory left.
         “She was remarkably unfazed by the alien,” Emily said.
         “Oh you know her,” James said with a laugh. “Work in the kitchen with this place’s staff all day, and you hear a lot of crazy stuff. And with my father as her husband, she hears even more from him. I guess I’m just more of the same.” He shrugged, standing up.
         “She is right though, it’s a wonderful day outside,” Emily said lightly. “A bit cold, perhaps, but nice. Shall we go enjoy it?”
         “After you, Mrs. McGuyvan,” James said with a grin.

         It was, as Emily had said, a bit cold. Being December, that made sense, but James wasn’t terribly thrilled about it. Still, he and Emily bundled up and took a walk around the palace grounds. He pointedly ignored the guards standing at the wall every twenty paces or so.
         The Royal Palace was a massive building. It stood thirty stores high, a massive stone structure that had existed for longer than the kingdom itself. It was a palace in two pieces, two pyramids, one larger than the other that were joined by a walkway in the middle. A massive stone wall surrounded the grounds, with towers on the four corners. James had no idea where it had come from; according to the history books, it had been there since the explorers had first found Minopll. It had been painted in white and red, with green lawns surrounding it for a hundred yards in any direction.
         “What a time we live in, Emily,” James said after a while. Emily nodded, looking at the walls.
         “There was another protest today, James,” she said. “This one got the whole way to the palace wall, before the King dispersed them all. I’m getting a bit worried. It won’t take a lot to rile them up so much that they go into armed rebellion.”
         “The King is a good man,” James said. “I’m shocked that they are doing this.”
         “People want more than they have, it’s human nature,” Emily said. She looked up at the evening sky. It was perfectly clear. “Mankind would make for the stars, if they could.”
         “We’ll get there,” James said, following her gaze. The moon shone brightly overhead, basking in the light of the sun. James shook his head. “Nothing will come of these protests. The King is supposedly trying to implement a parliamentary system. The people will have their voice. It will just take time.”
         Emily nodded, and they fell silent yet again. They finished their lap of the grounds, then retired to their room. James took her into his arms right as they were falling asleep.
         “I worry,” Emily said softly, “that… if and when these tensions in Minopll boil over that you’re going to somehow be in the center of it. I just… don’t want you getting hurt, and given how close you are to the royal family, I’m not sure how this will go.”
         “We’ll be all right,” James said. He felt Emily shivering under his arm. “Everything will be all right.”
         He tried to convince himself of that as he fell asleep.

Chapter Three

         James woke up the next morning full of energy. A glance at his clock informed him that it was 7:30 in the morning. Emily was still asleep, so James slid out of the bed and dressed as quietly as he could. The morphsteel bracelet was still sitting on his bedstand, so he snatched that up as he ate breakfast.
         By the time he was getting ready to leave, Emily had woken up. As James reached for the door handle, she spoke up.
         “Leaving already?” James turned around and saw her sitting up in the bed, her hair disheveled.
         “There’s lots of work to be done with the morphsteel,” James said excitedly. “Tests on speed, durability, endurance, all sorts of things. Cal’s agreed to be studied, so long as he can study humans while we’re at it. Who knew a liquid metal would be a scholar?”
         “How fascinating," Emily yawned, slipping out of bed and pulling on her robe. “I’ll stop by at some point, see what you’re up to.”
         “Feel free,” James said. “I’ll try to get off sooner today, we’ll have the evening to spend together.”
         “That would be nice,” Emily said. She shook her hair out of her face, gave James a kiss, and disappeared into the bathroom. James left the room, grinning.
         The lab was already busy when James arrived, people running this way and that, Cal’s mass of morphsteel sitting in the middle of the room. James smiled seeing it, and requested that Cal give the other scientists in the room bracelets like James.’ The morphsteel complied.
         “Shall we get started?” James asked, moving to the center of the room. The morphsteel lump parted around him, circling him in a halo of metal.
         “Yes, let’s.” Mark Jorrar, the head of ballistics for the King moved up to James. “Do you have any objection to me shooting your alien?”
         “I am nobody’s alien,” Cal said with some anger. “I consent to this, not him.”
         “My apologies,” Mark said, though he didn’t sound particularly sorry. James commanded the morphsteel into a solid wall, and it formed as such, in front of Mark.
         Mark had come, it seemed, with weapons of all types. Small handguns, rifles, even a grenade or two. The first thing tried was a small single-shot pistol.
         The bullet flew, and it didn’t make a dent. James grinned when Cal laughed, he knew this would be entertaining.
         For almost half an hour, Mark unloaded every weapon he had into the wall of morphsteel. The noise of it was incredible; Mark tested over a dozen weapons, none of which did anything more than knock the wall of morphsteel back a bit.
         While that was going on, James pulled half the wall away for his own experiments, of a different, much less violent, nature. He took a chunk of the morphsteel and tested how quickly it could change shape. It flickered from a sphere to a nearly two-dimensional circle to an ornate candlestick in moments. All the while, Cal pestered him with questions about humans.
         “What is the purpose of hair,” was the first question he asked.
         “It provides protection against cold, mainly,” James answered.
         “If cold is such a problem, why do you not have more hair? Fur, I believe it would be called?”
         “We have clothes,” James answered. “Those are generally more efficient than fur would be. Less itchy too, I imagine.”
         “Then why do you wear clothing during the months when it is warm?”
         James didn’t particularly feel like answering that one.
         In another corner, Esa was testing the conductivity of the metal. He took a strand of morphsteel, and ran an electric current through it. It turned out that the liquid metal was extremely conductive, even more so than water or other metals. This evidently included heat conductivity, as heating morphsteel provided much the same results.
         Luke worked with another scientist, Roman, to figure out the tensile strength of a band of morphsteel. Their experiments ended the same as Mark’s; the machines would have broken before the morphsteel if they had kept going, and Luke ended up calling quits.
         In a more boring, yet still important corner, a small gang of workers tested the weight, density, radioactivity, magnetism, and corrosion of the morphsteel. They determined that it weighed almost nothing, had density that was incredibly small for its durability, was not magnetic, and did not corrode, despite the liberal amount of acid they dumped on it.
         An elemental study found that morphsteel was not made of any known element, nor was it a recognized compound. In the end, the group just attributed its existence to magic, which, Cal said cryptically, was not far from the truth.
         By noon, they had run nearly every short-term test they could on the morphsteel, with a few long term tests having also been set up. It was at that point that Cal’s questions also began to wear down.
         “How are humans so fragile?” he asked. “The nedril were much tougher than you are. Indeed, I think a single blast of yjria would completely vaporize you. Well, that’s hardly fair. It would vaporize a nedril too, if it was concentrated enough.”
         “What’s yjria?” James asked curiously.
         “The power that holds the universe together, so it’s said,” Cal answered. “You haven’t heard of it?”
         “No,” James said. He realized that everyone around the room had stopped what they were doing, twisting their morphsteel bands, hearing Cal’s words. “Should we have?”
         “We knew all about it on the Exoplanet,” Cal said. “The calonan consciousness is able to draw on yjria easily. Want to see?”
         “Yes, that sounds interesting,” James said cautiously.
         James felt a little tug at his mind, and he let the morphsteel go, giving it the ability to do what it wanted. A large hunk of the liquid metal fell off the main mass. It formed immediately into the foxy shape of a nedril. James had noticed this a few times, the fact that the morphsteel felt more comfortable in its nedril shape than any other.
         Cal moved into the center of the room, then raised one of his hands. In the palm of the hand, a light began to shimmer. James squinted at it, trying to figure out where the light was coming from.
         Then, out of nowhere, a dazzling yellow-white light burst from Cal’s palm, shining over James’s shocked face. The light seemed… different from normal lights. It didn’t come from the palm of Cal’s hand, but from… beyond.
         “This is yjria,” Cal said. The light flickered, then vanished. Cal looked to James. “You’ve never figured out how to summon it?”
         “I didn’t know that it existed,” James said. “Where does it come from?”
         “It’s the raw power of the Imaginer,” Cal said. “Summoned from the Void whenever it is needed. You don’t know much about the Creation of the universe, do you?”
         “I mean, science and religion have been debating for as long as both of those have existed,” James said.
         “Well, the Imaginer is the one who created the universe, and yjria is his power. Actually, I think that yjria as a word translates to ‘Imaginer Power’, in your language.”
         “I see,” James said, looking at the others in the room. They seemed just as confused as he was.
         “Well, we were closer to the Creation back on the Exoplanet,” Cal said, melting into a puddle and flowing back to join the main mass of morphsteel. “We had more opportunities to meet the Imaginer than you, I suppose.”
         After that demonstration, the conversation of the scientists was exclusively about the newly revealed power source. James gathered morphsteel around himself, shaping it into the armor that he had worn previously. He asked Cal to draw on more of the yjria.
         “That may be dangerous,” Cal said. “The nedril were more durable than you, and even they couldn’t channel much yjria on their own.”
         “How does one channel the yjria?” James asked.
         “I don’t think that humans are able to on your own,” Cal said. “You are too far removed from the Creation for that. I do want to try something though.”
         Suddenly, the armor James was wearing began to glow. James jumped, looking at his arms. They shone with a radiance like the orb of light that Cal had created earlier. Jams laughed and swung his hand through the air. The glow left an afterimage in his visor. James felt a wave of energy surge through him, urging him to move, propelling him forward. It was with great difficulty that he resisted the urge.
         Suddenly, James noticed that the armor was heating up noticeably. He hadn’t registered it at first, but the moment he did, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The heat built slowly, after a minute it became problematic.
         “Cal, this thing’s heating up,” James said.
         “So it is,” Cal said. The light suddenly vanished, though the heat took a long moment to dissipate.
         “What was it you were trying to accomplish?” James asked curiously.
         “I wanted to see what the result of channeling a lot of yjria would be,” Cal said. “Looks like it was about what I expected.”
         “What do you mean?”
         “Yjria is a type of energy,” the morphsteel responded. “Energy translates almost directly to heat. Thus, when you draw on yjria, you generate heat. As a sentient consciousness ingrained in metal, I don’t feel the effects of the heat. You would, unfortunately, melt inside your armor if you drew too much of it to you.”
         “Wonderful,” James laughed. “How much is safe then?”
         “I don’t know,” Cal said. “I’m giving you access to yjria, through me. Draw on it, and I’ll calculate how much your body can handle safely.”
         James suddenly felt an odd tingle at the back of his mind. It felt almost like… a door, at which some massive force was straining, trying to come through. Cautiously, James opened that door.
         Instantly, a flood of power flooded into James, charging his muscles with such energy that he could barely move. He cried out as the morphsteel heated up instantly, flashing heat all across his body.
         Instinctively, he commanded the morphsteel off of him, and it complied. Bits of metal that were heated to boiling splashed off of him, falling to the floor. The metal was so hot that the air had started steaming around it. James had been lucky his instincts had kicked in, spitting off the morphsteel when it did.
         James stood there gasping for a moment, drawing stares from the scientists around him.
         It took almost two minutes for Cal to cool down enough to be touched, and from there it took even longer for it to be comfortably warm. In the intervening time, curious about what had gone wrong, he tried to find that mental door that contained the yjria. He discovered, to some confusion, that he no longer had access to the energy. The ease that it had come to him earlier seemed to uphold that theory. And, when the morphsteel armor surrounded him again, the doorway to yjria reappeared.
         “That was interesting,” James commented to Cal, sitting down. He kept his mind off the yjria, worried that he would cause another incident like the last one.
         “I wasn’t expecting you to summon that much of the yjria,” Cal laughed. “I felt that, and I’m made of metal. This is why I only let in a bit of it earlier.”
         “Thanks,” James said, but he was laughing too. “Shall we try that again?”
         “Only if you don’t fry yourself,” Cal said.
         James reached for the yjria again, this time only letting a trickle of it through the door. It did much the same thing it had when Cal had experimented earlier. A warm power filled his veins, propelling him to move. He did so, bounding across the empty center of the room. To his surprise, his jump carried him almost twice as high and far as it should have. He landed smoothly, not in the least disbalanced. The men around the room applauded politely, though Esa just shook his head, grinning.
         James kept moving pushed onward by the yjria. He didn’t stop to think he simply danced around, testing his limits. It seemed that with the newfound power running in him, he could move twice quickly, jump twice as high, and react twice as fast. He let the flow of yjria subside, and fell back into his chair, smiling. The metal was noticeably warmer than it had been, but it was nowhere near hot enough to burn.
         “You seemed to have enjoyed that,” Cal said.
         “I did,” James replied, commanding the morphsteel off of him. It flowed off in a wave, but he kept a gauntlet around to communicate with the metal. Interestingly, he could still feel the yjria door, hovering at the edge of his consciousness. “It’s been too long since I’ve gotten to do anything legitimately fun.”
         “It’s literally been millions of years since I’ve had a decent conversation or a good laugh,” Cal said. “This has been a productive morning.”
         James smiled, then pulled on a bit of yjria, feeling it flowing into his gauntlet. Now that he only had the morphsteel on him in one spot, the power felt much more centralized in his hand. He concentrated, drawing the energy to a singular point in his palm.
         Wisps of glowing light trailed up his arm, spiraling around a spot on his palm. James grinned as a glowing orb, like the one Cal had summoned, formed in his palm. The light emitted a faint heat that he could feel in his bare palm.
         As soon as James cut off the link to the yjria, a pop sounded and the sphere vanished. James stood up, smiling. There was still so much he had to learn.

         James got to bed late that night. He had been in and around his lab all day, figuring out how yjria worked. There was very little that they had been able to figure out; the limitations of the heated metal made it hard to study it.
         James entered his rooms at around ten, which was not particularly late for him, but Emily was asleep, so it was late for them. James took a brief shower, dressed in his comfortable nightclothes, and slid into bed. Say what you would of the nation’s politics, its king, and the rest, but the beds in the palace were heavenly.
         Emily stirred as James shifted the bed. She rolled over, eyes gazing fondly at him.
         “You’re going to have to start getting home sooner,” she said. “Science is taking you away too much.”
         “It’s aliens,” James said. “You’d be distracted too.”
         “I don’t know about that,” Emily said, smiling at James in her wonderful way. James smiled back, and they fell asleep quickly, hand in hand.
         For an hour, they slept soundly, dreams of magic and morphsteel bouncing around their heads.
         James woke up at midnight to the sound of gunfire.

Chapter Four

         James took a long moment to figure out what he was hearing. Pops and shouts were coming from outside his window, and he rolled over in the darkness, listening. Emily sat up next to him, also awakened by the noise.
         “Are those… gunshots?” she asked.
         James leaped out of bed and threw open the window. Out in the darkness, flashes of light revealed what were indeed gunshots. It was dark, but James could make out two distinct factions, one climbing over the palace walls, and one defending them.
         James lunged back across the room and grabbed a phone from the bedstand. He pressed a button and spoke quickly.
         “What’s going on out there?”
         “Someone’s attacking the palace,” came the reply. It was on speaker, so Emily could hear as well.
         “I gathered that much, dad,” James said. “Who?”
         “We don’t know,” Arvel McGuyvan said. “Whoever they are, they are well armed. We think that they are here for the King.”
         James glanced at Emily, who turned white with fear. “That makes too much sense to ignore,” she said softly.
         “Where are you?” James said to his father.
         “In the control room,” Arvel answered. James heard him saying something to someone else, and then Arvel came back. “There are three groups of insurgents. One is on the perimeter wall, holding up the guards there. Another is in the north corridor, heading to the King’s chambers. We have the royals guarded with twenty men, all entrances there guarded. They’ll have quite the time getting through them.
         The third group of enemies is heading for the tech lab, and I don’t have the manpower to stop them and the ones attacking the King.”
         “We can’t let those designs get into their hands,” James said quickly. “Send a squad there at least!”
         “I can’t, Arvel said. “Again, there aren’t enough guards. The police have been called, but…”
         “There’s not enough time,” James said. He thought for a moment, then made his decision. “Leave it to me.”
         He switched off the phone, then tossed it to Emily. “I’m going to the tech lab,” he said. “I have to stop them, however I can. You need to monitor our comms, tell me when they reach the lab.”
         James reached into his nightstand and pulled out a pair of earbuds, which he put into his ear. He tossed the connected pair to Emily, grabbed his morphsteel wristband and hesitated.
         “Don’t get yourself into trouble, all right?” he said. “If they come through here… there’s a gun in that cabinet. Do what you have to. Be safe.”
         He kissed her briefly, then sprinted out of the room, heading for the lab. He slapped the bracelet onto his wrist, and felt the connection to yjria. He tapped that connection, feeling the energy power him. With a leap, he took the entire flight of stairs downward in one leap, landing at the bottom.
         “Cal, you heard what is happening?” James said as he ran.
         “Malcontents attacking the palace, yes,” Cal answered. “What do I need to do?”
         “Get out of that storage crate and be ready for me to get there,” James said. “We’re fighting.”
         A minute later, James slid around a corner into the hall where the lab was located. He had sprinted the whole way, but due to the yjria, he was barely breathing heavily. He deconnected from the magical energy after a moment, as he figured it wasn’t wise to rely on it too much.
         As me jogged down the hall, a crackle came through his earpiece, and Emily’s voice sounded in his head.
         “James, they’re coming around the corner into the lab hall.”
         As soon as she spoke, half a dozen men in masks and dark outfits rounded the corner ahead of him. Both him and them were an equal distance from the lab’s door. James and the men noticed each other at the same time. Half a dozen weapons raised, and James began to dive back into the other hallway.
         Suddenly, with an almighty bang, the door to the lab burst open. A wave of liquid metal swarmed out into the hallway. James’ mouth gaped open as Cal’s essence filled the hall, creating a metal barrier in front of the door to the lab. James heard shouts from the other side of the wall, and sudden gunfire sounded. Cal didn’t move at all as the bullets hit him.
         “I’ll hold them back, James,” Cal said through the bracelet to James’ mind. “Suit up!”
         “You’re sure about this?” James asked. “We will be fighting if you go this way.”
         The morphsteel was silent for a moment. Then it spoke, and the words were in an interestingly tender tone. “There are… things in my past that need making up for. I cannot be a pacifist, never again. I will not directly kill anything, not for you or anyone else. But I will protect you and yours, as best as I am able.”
         “Thank you, Cal,” James said.
         “We don’t have time for this,” Cal said suddenly. Fighting, remember?”
         James lunged down the hall, moving toward the metal wall. He slammed his hand into the metal, and a solid portion of it flowed off the wall onto his body, encasing him in his armor. The foxlike head was gone, now replaced by a smooth metal helmet. He even had a silver cape, which had surprisingly clothlike physics for a sheet of metal.
         The wall remained mostly intact; there was enough morphsteel present to cover the hallway and then some.
         “James?” Emily’s voice sounded in his earpiece. “Sorry, this connection was fuzzy for a while there. I think they’re trying to jam our comms. Sneaky buggers. Anyway, nice move with the morphsteel.”
         “That was Cal, actually,” James said. “I just arrived. He did all the rest.” The metal made a content noise at that.
         “Well, can you fight them off?” Emily asked.
         “Gladly,” James said. He gave a mental command to the metal wall, and it moved, shifting over to block the door to the lab. The surprised assailants raised their weapons, shocked to find a man in shining silver armor standing there, fists held ready. For a moment there was silence. The cape James was wearing began to hover upward, splitting into a dozen individual tassels, each of which moved in a different direction, as if with minds of their own.
         “Cover my back,” James said to Cal. The morphsteel made an affirmative noise. Then James flung open his connection to the yjria and moved.
         Fueled on by the power of that otherworldly magic, James moved forward faster than the wind. A rush of air followed him as the morphsteel heated up. He ignored it, crashing into the men, swinging his fist into one of their heads. The man stumbled back, holding his head, as James readied himself for their counterattack. It came in a wave of bullets, smashing into him. He took a few involuntary steps back, and grinned. The bullets had done nothing.
         The men stared in shock as James leaped into the middle of them. The six surrounded him, but the tassels of the cape on his back sprang to life, lunging out into the men, holding them off. James’ basic combat training as a youngster came back to him suddenly, and he laid about himself with his fists, knocking guns from hands and forcing the men back.
         It didn’t take long for the six of them, despite outnumbering him massively, that James wouldn’t go down easily. They began to back away, fear showing through the eyeholes of their masks. It wasn’t often that people were confronted by a bulletproof man. James jumped at them again, and they turned and ran. James went to chase them, but at that moment, Emily’s voice sounded in his ear.
         “James, can you hear me?”
         “Yes, what’s the matter,” James responded.
         “Thank goodness, the comms are working,” She said. “I’m with your father in the control center-that doesn’t matter. The King and his family are in danger.”
         James skidded to a halt. “I thought they had a contingent of guards.”
         “They did, but there are too many of the attackers. They’ve split up I think, they’re in the subterranean passages-” Her voice cut off into static.
         “Emily? Emily!” James spun on his heels and ran in the opposite direction. As a kid, he had played in the secret passages under the palace with Eugene, so he knew exactly where to go. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.
         James sprinted down the halls, moving straight toward a window at the end. Yjria flowed freely through him, heedless of the heat that was growing in him. He commanded the tassels of morphsteel forward, and they smashed into the wall around the window, anchoring in place. They suddenly yanked James forward, off the ground. He accelerated through the air, smashing straight through the stained glass.
         James burst into moonlit air, the tassels staying locked into the wall, keeping him from falling. He climbed down the wall, the metal arms gaining surprisingly good purchase on the sheer wall of the palace. He swept down the wall like some overgrown bug, then hit the ground, dashing off into the darkness.
         The palace had a hedge maze in the grounds, for no reason that James had ever been able to figure out. He had memorized the maze as a child, when he and Eugene had nothing better to do than get lost for hours in the greenery. Those memories came back as he darted into the maze, seeking the secret entrance that he knew was hidden deep in the green.
         After a minute’s search, he came upon the metal grate in the ground, which housed the most visible entrance to the underground tunnels. James plunged his arm into a nearby hedge, groped around and, finding a large, oddly shaped branch, pulled hard. A click sounded and the grate swung open. James took a deep breath and leapt into the dark pit.
         James fell for a few feet before landing. The last time he had come down this way, ignoring the ladder that time as well, he had nearly broken his legs. This time, with metal and yjria cushioning his fall, he barely felt anything.
         It was pitch black in the tunnel. The moonlight barely came through the grate, and there were no lights. James held out his hand and called forth some of the yjria. His palm began to glow, and another orb of magical light appeared. It casts its golden light onto stark brick walls, which seemed to have been around for millenia. They were slightly damp, but were well-kept, showing little sign of wear. James handed the light to one of his morphsteel tassels, which held it above him, then set off at a run.
         The tunnels were long, and all of them looked the same. James felt himself slowly getting lost as he ran, the halls blending together. James hadn’t memorized this part of the tunnels; he knew the royals had, but they were designed to throw off invaders.
         Unfortunately, that also meant that they threw him off.
         “Cal, can you search these tunnels faster than I can?”
         “Of course,” Cal said. “I don’t need eyes to see you know.”
         Through their bond, James felt Cal questing out with a form of echolocation. He vaguely felt that Cal was drawing on yjria, and was proven correct when the suit heated up slightly.
         An overlay appeared on James’ visor. It appeared that there were two moving shapes in a nearby tunnel, as indicated by the echolocation. James took off in that direction, running into the moving people as they both turned a corner.
         It was Eugene and his mother, Erica Martin. This part of the tunnels had light, and in the light James could see their state. Their nightclothes were torn a bit, and they looked terrified. Both of them yelped when they saw James, and he retracted his helmet quickly. The royals calmed down when they saw it was him.
         “What happened?” James asked quickly. “Where’s the King?”
         “I don’t know,” Eugene said. Erica nodded in agreement. “We were hiding out in our rooms when the Arad Daon burst in and told us that we were in danger. They got us out, but we could hear the fighting behind us. We split up from dad at a junction-he figured that if they got to us, then they should only get one of us.”
         “That’s one way to go about it,” James growled, looking around. “We have to find him.”
         “I don’t know where to start,” Erica said. “These tunnels are huge.”
         At that moment, James heard shouting from behind him. He spun around, helmet forming around his head. A dozen men in the masks of the invaders turned the corner into their tunnel.
         “There they are!” one of them shouted.
         “Stay behind me,” James said. The arms snapped into place on his back, angled toward the attackers. They slowed as they approached, seeing James in his metal armor. James moved out to meet them.
         Three of the attackers pulled out guns and opened fire. James heard Erica shriek, but it was in fear rather than pain, since all the bullets were aimed for James. They were ineffective, pinging off his armor onto the ground. James lunged toward them, but the rest weren’t so easy to ignore. They came at him with clubs, and though he didn’t feel anything through the morphsteel, the first bat knocked him back a step. He couldn’t completely ignore physics, unfortunately.
         The metal arms at James’ back sprang into action as the attackers surrounded him. With their help, James felt much more secure in being able to take on a few men.
         Unfortunately, James was no warrior. Despite his training and armor, fighting a dozen men by himself was no easy feat. He was able to hold them at bay, but all Cal did was smash their bats away from him and deflect the few bullets that came his way. James moved as quickly as he could, stepping back from attacks, throwing punches at the men. He was able to take out three, but it was clear that through the force of numbers that they had an advantage.
         Then, suddenly the attackers stopped. James laid another one down with a punch before he realized that they were no longer moving. He cocked his head as the entire gang of men turned and fled. They ran faster than James could have imagined, and James didn’t feel particularly inclined to chase them. He fell back, watching with worry.
         “Where did they go?” Eugene’s voice said. James turned, seeing the two of them walking up toward him.
         “I don’t know,” James said. “They just ran off.”
         “James!”
         Arvel’s voice sounded in James’ earpiece so suddenly that he actually jumped, almost hitting his head on the low ceiling. “Get back to base, now.”
         “Why, what happened?” he asked.
         “The King is dead.” James felt his face turn white. He looked at the royals, who were looking at him questioningly. James tried to say something, but it all came out as a stammer.
         He grabbed their hands and started running.