Garth followed the stream of Tzetin relaying orders back and forth, meandering through the hectic battlefield until he found what he was looking for: A Tzetin much grander than the others, carapace pale with age, overseeing the battlefield with steady determination.

As he came close, several ant-people raised their weapons and waggled their antennae in the Threatening/Protective gesture.

“Yo Itet, is that you?” Garth shouted, waving his arms just outside the Tzetin kill range, Linda standing beside him. The enormous Tzetin roused, seemingly exerting effort to look at them.

“Who is this disrespectful one?” the queen asked.

“He’s Garth.”

“The living one, or the dead one?” she asked, clambering painfully to her feet.

“The dead one.”

“Really!?” The ten-foot tall queen bent low to study him. “His mandibles look different. Our Garth was more handy than handsome.”

“I can be both,” Garth muttered. He held up his hand and focused on a spore floating directly above his palm. In a breath, a sundew formed on his palm.

“Charlie, the immortal sundew.” Garth said, presenting it to Itet. Linda frowned, but that made sense. Charlie was a bit of insider information about them.

Itet’s antennae began to twitch wildly, studying him even closer.

“How?”

“Trade secret.” Garth said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s illegal in all fifty states. Unlike animal fucking.” Lotta half-animal people running around.

 “So…what does your hive do for a living right now?” Garth said into the awkward silence.

“As you see.” Itet said, motioning to the battlefield with her stiff joints.

Garth did see. Seemed like a few too many Tzetin getting maimed for OSHA standards to apply. He wanted to help, but…

“I thought you wanted to get away from your hive being used as mercenary forces.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy it, but it’s what is expected of our race. We have made excellent strides, though. My hive is never underpaid for our efforts, due to the formation of the lawyer caste.”

“Really?” Garth said, frowning.

“Yes, a scholar who navigates the law, fights dishonesty, and can even engage in some from time to time, on behalf of the hive. It was the crystallization of what my Queen had always wanted. Every now and then a youngling is hatched with the predisposition.”

“As a matter of fact,” Itet turned her head to the side. “Chi’tet, come here.”

A slender, dark carapaced Tzetin came over to them, holding some kind of binder tucked in the elbow of one of her arms.

“Yes, my Queen?”

“Chi’tet, this is an old dead friend of mine who has returned from the grave to visit.”

“Did he ask for money?” Chi’tet asked, turning her focus on him, her antennae lowered in suspicion “Offer a quick credit, or a convenient solution to a problem?”

“Isn’t she precious?” Itet said, patting the smaller bug on the back and nearly causing her to drop her binder. Queens are big.

A mercenary army of Tzetin might come in handy.

“Actually, since you’ve got the soldiers –“

“I’ll tell you the same thing I told her,” She pointed at Linda with her antennae. “I won’t risk my entire Hive trying to overthrow a Clan.”

That wasn’t entirely unexpected.

“How about one of them lawyers, then?” Garth nodded at Chi’tet.

Itet considered, her antennae twitching thoughtfully.

“My Queen!” Chi’tet said. Garth wasn’t sure exactly what the posture her antennae were in, but he guessed it was aghast.

“Prove you’re Garth, end this conflict quickly and save a few lives of my hivemates, and you may have Chi’tet here.”

“My Queen!”

More aghastness.

“Tut, child. You needed to go on your Journey sooner or later, If the human is who I he says he is, you should have quite the story upon your return. Or you’ll be dead.”

Hmmm…Kill a bunch of people, receive one free lawyer? Garth glanced over his shoulder at the siege going on behind him. He wasn’t exactly comfortable just walking in and mowing them down without knowing the score, but he was afraid that even if he knew the score, he’d still be reluctant to take a side.

“Please tell me that’s a castle full of pedophiles.” Garth pointed his thumb behind him.

“The current people of Greencastle took it away from the country of Endora a hundred and forty years ago. Now their great grandchildren defend it.” Itet said.

“And what’s going to happen to them when they’re routed?” Garth asked.

“They’ll most likely be purged from the castle and replaced with people from Endora.”

“No such thing as a good war, huh?” Garth muttered, before a thought occurred to him.

“You take POWs?” Garth asked.

“Not usually, no.” Itet said.

“It’s within our authority on the battlefield, but seldom is a single soldier’s ransom worth more than the amount it takes to keep them prisoner and negotiate their release.” Chi’tet supplied.

“Garth, don’t – “ Linda began.

“What if I took them prisoner back in L.A?” It was a lot more appealing to Garth than killing people whose only crime seemed to be living there.

Linda slapped her forehead.

“How the hell are you going to feed and care for ten thousand prisoners?” Linda demanded.

Garth frowned. Easily?

“Apparently, you forgot who the fuck you’re dealing with.”

Garth put his hand to the ground and focused in a single spore.

You’re gonna be a two-stage rocket filled with soporifics.

Garth supplied the information to the plant, a simple combination of two of his favorite go-to traits. Then he wrapped the seed in two layers of Recursive Casting and stepped away.

A missile shaped green cactus grew out of the ground, standing about ten feet tall.

“So, if I can end the fight right here, you wouldn’t mind carting them back to my home base under cover of night?” Garth asked, leaning against the missile.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Linda said, arms crossed.

“It’s certainly safer than fighting. I would not mind.” Itet said.

“Cool.” Garth took his hand off the rocket and ignited it. The green cactus sailed high up into the air, then split into a hundred, then ten thousand, clouding out the sun with green rockets.

With a mental nudge, the rockets turned downward, aiming to saturate the castle with their payload.

It was odd watching the gigantic trail of white smoke made by the rockets filling the sky, drawing a line above the castle that Garth was fairly certain was visible from space.

When the rockets were only a couple hundred feet away from the castle, a beam of crackling lightning shot out from the walls, detonating the tightly packed missiles prematurely in a chain reaction that lit the entire sky.

Garth whistled as the distant thumping that sounded like ten thousand M-80’s going off in unison washed over them.

“Dayum.” Garth said, his jacket flapping in the sudden breeze.

“It was a good try.” Linda clapped him on the shoulder. The old woman had a bit of a smug smile.

“You that slowly settling smoke?” Garth asked, pointing. “That’s not smoke.” He frowned. I hope I’m not breaking some kind of multiversal wartime laws. He turned to Itet.

“There isn’t some kind of Spheres Geneva Convention against using chemical warfare, is there?”

“It’s rare and expensive, not worth the cost, and barely regulated.” Chi’tet supplied.

“Psssh, Plants make chemicals for free.” Garth could have just as easily filled the castle with mustard gas.

The defenders on the walls began to sag, slowly succumbing to the torpor of sleep.

“Wait maybe ten minutes, then send your people in to collect my prisoners,” Garth said, reaching into his jacket and producing a Garth-Aid™.

“Want some?” Garth asked, making a wooden straw and offering it to Itet.

“Please,” she said, accepting the soft-drink.

“My Queen!”

“So,” Garth said, taking out another Garth-Aid™ and popping the top before he turned to Linda. “Tell me about that Church.”

*****

Wheelbarrows formerly full of dirt were now going in the opposite direction, laden with POWs. They were primarily the crimson-skinned Benkei, but there was a remarkable amount of diversity amongst Garth’s sleepy new hires. A couple minotaurs, some Shinta, a handful of those little pale halflings, corio, quite a few orcs.

More than half of them were women and children. Each wheelbarrow with a sleeping child in it reassured Garth that he’d made the right choice, despite it being the messier one.

And really, it was no trouble at all to feed and organize any number of people, why not take advantage of that by unnaturally swelling the size of the city? A few weeks in the paradise he’d created for them, and he was sure the majority of his prisoners would convert, defending their new home while frothing at the mouth.

And if they didn’t he’d kill them.

Garth had a sudden epiphany. One of Beladia’s inherent strengths was manpower. He could simply afford to build and feed a bigger army than anyone else, so why not take advantage of that fact?

And with Mrs. Banyan handling logistics, it’s no skin off my back. She’s the entire executive branch of the government. Hah, branch.

Garth took a sip of his drink. I hope she’s not mad at me.

Out of the corner of his eye, Garth noticed Linda watching him closely.

“You fight like a Clan. Cold, Indifferent, and using overwhelming force from a distance, not even getting your clothes dirty.”

“Correction. I fight like a human. We’d been doing shit like that to each other for close to a hundred years by the time the Spheres showed up. It’s the reason we got fucked so hard.”

She frowned.

“You didn’t know that? We had long range communication tech, had the concept of nukes and WMDs, transportation, computers, viruses, medicine. Simply put, we had dangerous ideas, and they kicked our asses for it. They want their vassal states to be nice and medieval.”

“I…was young. I thought they just hated humans. It took a long time to realize there might be a more political reason for it.”

“Hmm.” Garth said, taking another sip.

“If you’re tasked with displacing people again, would you mind letting me know? I could always use more POWs.”

“Sure,” Itet said, waving a pale hand, resting on the ground as they watched the stream of sleeping prisoners go by.

Once Garth’s can was empty, he stood and said his goodbyes to Itet before dragging his prize, the reluctant ant-lawyer with him.

******

“That’s the church of the Founder,” Linda said with a scowl as they observed the church from a distance.

It was a pristine building without a speck of dust that practically sparkled in the sunlight. Statues of Jim in heroic poses battling all manner of monster littered the courtyard.

“I really like the fact that they got his glutes right,” Garth said, pointing at the clenched buns as Jim hurled a spear at some kind of giant scorpion.

“You seem awfully calm.”

“I laugh, otherwise I’d cry.” Garth said, his skin crawling at all of his brother’s statues.

The church itself was out of mass, since they had arrived so late in the day. The trip into town and visiting the bakery had cost him the opportunity to visit while they expounded on Jim’s virtues in great detail. Thank my god for that.

“So what are we dealing with?” Garth asked, glancing up at the building’s large stained glass windows. One of which detailing his own execution, which had never happened.

Garth felt his jaw get tight.

“The church is basically the local branch of the inquisition. They’ve got a spell dampening field, and sensitive equipment inside that can tell them if someone is trying to use magic. They don’t have the strength of arms the Inquisitors have, but they’re dug in like a tick. The community loves them, and they’ve got a lot of fancy doodads to prevent any unwanted intrusion.”

Garth could see the spell dampening field. When little motes of mana squiggled their way into its range, they were dragged to the ground, like they’d suddenly encountered a hundred time earth’s gravity.

Garth held his hand out, intending to test the field’s effects, but instead stubbing his finger against something like an unyielding pane of glass

“After mass, they flip a switch, and a forcefield pops up that prevents anyone not wearing a priest’s amulet from coming or going.”

She held out a hand and pressed against the same invisible pane.

“If you were to break the forcefield, they would automatically send a messenger to the empire. We shouldn’t worry about that too much, since I’m fairly certain you’ve made enough of a stink to bring them out anyway.”

“Pfff.”

“The best bet would be to sneak in with a stolen amulet and disable the orb, then leave.”

“Nah,” Garth said, studying the building. “I wanna ocean’s eleven this sumbitch.”

“What?”

“Too young?” Garth asked with a raised brow, and got a cold look in return.

“I think we should switch your curse orb out for a fake, then we can destroy it at our leisure. That would be especially important if I’m no longer related to the asshat. I also think we should do it during mass, because stealing it in front of a huge crowd would be funnier.”

“Are you shitting me?”

“Hmm?” Garth caught her unbelieving stare. “You gotta enjoy what you do or it doesn’t turn out right.”

“I’m starting to see why you got killed the first time.”

“That was one hundred percent not my fault.” Garth said. “I was totally fine until my teacher’s enemies showed up out of Bumfuque Nowhere.”

“Sure.”

“Guess I should make a plan to visit this place during mass.” Garth muttered. He needed to see what it looked like on the inside before he could figure out exactly what he was going to do.

“Can I help you, my child?” A man’s voice rumbled form behind him.

Garth turned and found that Linda had vanished, leaving him talking to himself just outside the church’s courtyard. Chi’tet was already on her way to L.A. through the tunnels beneath the city.

A priest stood in front of him, wearing a black silk robe that looked both elegant and practical. Beneath the silk, garth could tell that his body was covered in whirling mana from all the enchantments studded beneath his clothes. The guy was secretly armed to the teeth, and he was giving Garth a suspicious look.