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1315 Words
Alexi watched as her team got ready.
Their barracks room was clean and neat.
Alpha team had been preparing for their Minkalla run for the last year, and each of them was at the peak of Tier 12.
They were strong and would dominate once inside.
When they had been designated Alpha team in recognition of their exceptional advancement, everyone on the team had decided to take new names that started with As to honor Mother Virgil.
She had saved them from a life of torment and given them power.
They hadn’t had names, and she had encouraged them to choose their own.
Ashton, Arnold, Aaron, Ajay, Adam, April, Alyssa, Alana, Aurora, and herself, Alexi. It had been fun for the ten of them to come up with names, and their choices were mirrored by the other nine squads.
She was still mad at them for stealing their idea to take names that started with the first letter of the squad designation, but each team claimed to have had the idea first.
Alexi knew that as a lie, as they had come up with the idea on their own, but each team had gone through their own naming scheme.
A through I each had kept the convention.
Still, Alexi knew her team was the best. The friendly rivalry between the teams had turned heated in the last year as they prepared for Minkalla, but Mother Virgil had cautioned them against truly fighting each other, which kept tempers down to a reasonable degree.
She still wanted her team to do their best.
Mother Virgil had promised them great rewards if they managed to reach the core and reap the best prizes.
That was all her team needed to hear to set that as their only acceptable goal.
If Mother Virgil wanted it, she would get it. She had saved them from a life worse than death and had given them hope.
Even as the runes carved into their very bones increased in power and pushed their bodies to the limit with their corrupting presence, Mother Virgil always made sure to come and soothe them with her power.
Alexi hadn’t even needed to cajole her team into practicing harder after hearing Mother Virgil’s request.
They had already been working hard, of course, but going at one hundred percent at all times was nearly impossible. Still, they had managed it with that goal. That was the power that Mother Virgil gave them.
All the teams took strength from their savior and wanted to get strong enough to help protect her.
They had all learned about the other Evil Places that had once ripped the glorious Federation apart in a jealous fit, and Mother Virgil had the arduous task of protecting the survivors of the Federation.
She worked so hard to protect them and took her limited and precious time to help their insignificant selves. She had helped them recover from being cruelly operated on by the other Powers, who thought they could do whatever they wanted in Federation land and to their people.
Alpha team would be the tip of Mother Virgil’s spear, and they were determined to keep the lead position firmly in their grasp.
Their runes were the most temperamental, but it also gave them the greatest power. They worked hard to keep ahead of the evil that had been put into their bones, but they knew the only way to truly succeed was to reach Tier 35, where they could reign supreme at the top of the mundane wars.
It was more than perfect, since at that Tier, they could turn their weapons on the Evil Empire, who Mother Virgil believed were the ones to do this to them.
Not content with their false monster of Duke Waters, who they propped up with lies and propaganda, they had entered the Federation’s lands and tried to create strong people using wicked methods to fill the void.
Alexi clenched her hand at the thought as she watched Aaron, Ajay, and April checking over everyone’s weapons and gear.
They were their specialists in enchantments and crafting. Each member of the team knew their own gear, but after the initial checks, the specialists always looked it over.
Adam, their healer, was moving through each of them and inspected them before stopping at her.
“Hey, Boss. How are you holding up?” He flashed a smile and pressed two fingers to her neck, sending a wave of magic into her.
Alexi didn’t lie. Mother Virgil had explained that lying to seem stronger than they were was counterproductive. The power in their bones was growing each day, and if it grew too much, they needed to speak up and tell the official healers or herself so they could cast a spell to slow their growth.
The spells were painful in a different way, but at least they didn’t threaten to tear their skin apart.
Alexi, as the core focus of the runes that the Evil Empire had implanted in her squad, had it the worst.
A trickle of the rest of the squad’s power always seeped into her and threatened to rip her apart.
Still, right now, it was under control. While the power had built up to an almost uncontrollable limit that had threatened to kill all of them in the last few months, the head enchanter, Jecker, had come to them with a new bracelet that was better at suppressing the power of the runes.
It was good timing, and she was sure that Mother Virgil, in her benevolence, had helped the man come up with it before their all-important delve into Minkalla.
Alexi didn’t know what she would have done if she still had to endure the power levels that the runes had been outputting in the last year for the Minkalla run.
The pain had pushed them all to their limits, but now that it was gone, she and everyone felt light as a feather with their power under control.
Adam gave her a clean bill of health and moved on to helping Ashton, and going over their provisions for the Minkalla run, as was his secondary role. They would need enough food and water for the entire run, and none of them wanted to risk running low on food again.
During one of their training missions, the ration ship exploded, and they had been forced to eat bugs to survive. It would have been okay, but the bugs had acidic blood that made each one painful to eat.
None of them wanted to go through that again.
Receiving a message from Mother Virgil, Alexi popped to her feet and called out, “Last checks. Mother Virgil is going to send us off in ten minutes.”
That sent everyone into overdrive, and they were ready and in formation in under three minutes. None of them were willing to make Mother Virgil wait around for them.
While she never said so, they understood that she was busy, and every minute she spent with them was a minute she wasn’t holding back the Evil Empire. Even though they wished they could spend every moment in Mother Virgil’s gentle presence, they knew that her guiding hand couldn’t be everywhere.
All the squads, A through I, vibrated as they stood in formation and waited.
Their anticipation made the seven minutes feel more like seven hours, but Mother Virgil was perfectly on time, and they felt her warm and comforting aura seep into their bones and repress the runes inside of them.
Mother Virgil smiled at them, and Alexi was grateful for her position as the squad leader. It had been forced on her by the Evil Empire, as well as her role as the core of the formation, but it let her stand closer to Mother Virgil than the others in her squad.
That made it all worth it.
- Writer
