Within her tent, Lucretia was in much the same state of mind as Rapture.

Arms folded behind the back of her head, she stared towards the ceiling and could not seem to forget the battle that had taken place in Venus that night.

The clothes on her body seemed to unravel on a whim, falling to her lap as she sat upright. This was an application of her powers, the Platinum Class’ ability known as Advanced Mutation.

This ability was, in terms of pure function, the power of shapeshifting.

The Platinum Class did not technically wear clothing because of this power; from the shirts on their backs to the boots on their feet everything they wore was made by the application of this power.

Upon her now bare back and shoulders then formed tattoos of a sort, shining with a dark hue.

She sat in meditation and exhaled as those markings slowly but surely split and expanded like a circuit to cover her naked body.

Time passed, the spread stopped, she sighed with relief and then opened her eyes.

The markings covered even her face, but they did nothing to distract from her beauty at all.

She was not the first among the Platinum Class to take in and refine foreign substances like this, in fact it wasn’t even uncommon.

They did this to strengthen themselves or to build up immunity to things, there were even some cases where they did this to take on the traits of other living organisms.

That said while this wasn’t an uncommon practice that didn’t mean it was perfectly safe. There was always a risk, and there was always the possibility of that risk ending up being outright lethal to the one taking it.

What Lucretia had taken in however wasn’t really any of these things. This wasn’t a poison she needed to build immunity to, it wasn’t a substance she wanted to integrate into her body nor was it the blood of some beast she wanted to adapt traits from.

What she’d made the Lord of Pluto, Mortuus-Vir, mark upon her flesh was something far removed from these agents. They weren’t simple tattoos though, for only when she willed them to appear would these black markings decorate her flesh. Right now, of course, they would sometimes still appear, usually flaring up in times of stress, because she was not yet used to them.

“Fortunately I’ve got time to adjust,” She muttered, “if the war arrived tomorrow...that’d be another story.”

She leaned back and pondered. Every man in Jupiter adorned these markings. You couldn’t be called a man without them really. There was a reason she’d applied them only after surviving the battle that had taken place in Venus that day, a very good but purely symbolic reason really.

The number of women who had earned this mark were scarce, but they did exist. There was no societal pressure on women to do so after all, they didn’t need to become warriors in the eyes of the country. However, nothing was holding them back from doing it either.

She huffed as she pondered what she’d done. Wearing this mark, for her, wasn’t just a sign of honour, nor of her survival, it was a tool. Her words would carry far more weight with such a brand upon her body.

The outside world was already bright. She could hear the soldiers that’d been loaned to her from Venus clamouring about.

The sights and sounds were too distracting, she had little recourse but to investigate while enduring the desire to yawn. Only then did she notice that an unprecedented sense of seriousness pervaded in the air.

She followed the gazes of the crowd off into the distance, but she could as of yet see nothing.

“Has something happened?” She asked as she walked over to their side, and then a bit of unwelcomed melancholy crept into her being as she beheld the scene below, “I see...I didn’t see that yesterday.”

“Indeed,” One of the Silver Class soldiers spoke up, “I believe the storm must’ve sent us off course, we’re a bit further westward than our planned route.”

“I’ll bet,” Said another, “But that’s not the real problem here, is it?”

Violent scenes played out in the distance. Blood curdling screams reached their ears.

Every woman here had just recently seen such a thing happen to their own city, yet not a single one among them lifted a finger to help the small settlement burning down in the distance below them.

That small Bronze Class village was being raided by a clearly larger force. They didn’t have a single Silver Class individual among their ranks but their enemy had three at the very least.

They saw streams of smoky white matter, Ash, flying up from the hands of those three men, burning everything before them.

That was the power of Manifestation, the Silver Class’ ability to weaponize the Ash within their bodies in the outside world.

That power couldn’t be used to form any complex shape or structure but what it did have was destructive force enough to pulverize an adult man’s body into dust. Often used as that statement might be, Lucretia knew first hand that it was not hyperbole.

This carnage was an all too common sight among the Bronze Class Settlements of the Centurion Kingdom. The peasantry were always fighting, men were always dying and women were always being taken away to produce children for their conquerors.

Children born to these slain men were always killed before they could grow up, if poor living conditions did not already spell their unfortunate demise.

Lucretia was a Princess of Jupiter, the Kingdom’s sole Platinum Class Settlement and its Capital besides. She knew about such things, of course, but this was certainly the first time she’d actually seen such a horrid thing play out first hand.

She looked upon the deeds with contempt and disgust, but that didn’t mean she was so naïve that she would simply jump right into the fray. She scanned her surroundings carefully then and counted everyone about the campsite.

The women surrounding her trembled as they sensed her Ash caressing their bodies like a bubble swallowing them into its membrane. She covered the whole camp in this field and only then did she reel it back with a frown upon her brow.

The women around her could sense her anger, they could even guess why. After all, they were also worried.

“Where is Rapture?”

______________________________________________

The boy in black wandered the arid landscape with a lost look in his eyes.

From time to time, he turned his eye back to face the campsite that lay now far behind.

Dawn had come, it was time, he had to return before Lucretia might awake.

Though even if she did wake, by some oddity, he figured she’d just scold him for taking the risk, he didn’t think he’d get in any real trouble.

Quite abruptly then the smell of smoke started to fill his nostrils. He paused his steps and listened as the sounds of conflict echoed in from far off in the distance.

He turned his head and saw the burning town. His body trembled. Scenes of carnage flashed before his eyes.

Venus City’s Gold District, a few men attacked his mentor, Amelia, but she finished them off…

Then a sudden attack buried them all in a ditch. She died shielding him, her back was burned bare to the organs beneath the bone…

Melany, Rusalka’s mentor and leader of the city guard, stayed to buy them time to get away…

They fought Cain’s men at the lakeshore, and with fury guiding him he killed so many of them…

They fought their way out, even blasting open the city gates which now barred them inside…

His father showed up on the back of a dragon whose scales were pitch black, the last of the invader’s perished by his hand…

Yet even that was just brief respite...

The Nidhogg General, Ahzi of Dahaka, descended upon his own dragon, whose scales were sapphire blue…

His father fought him, he lost...

Almost ten thousand lives died that night, some people he knew, many he didn’t know, a person he loved, countless he did not love.

The smoke rising before his eyes brought it all back to him, it stirred something up.

His eyes turned bloodshot and a pitch black matter, his own abnormal Ash that had been warped by his anger and despair, erupted forward from his flesh.

He screamed into the heavens as the power burned his flesh and the clothes upon his body.

He fell to his knees but his arms supported him, kept him from falling to the ground from the pain.

The boy managed to recover himself slowly and then he began to move.

He walked into the slaughter.

However he was not prey.