On the other side of the Sea of Giants, beyond the vast ever-changing ruin where the Maelstrom’s touch rose and fell, there was Caelus. The Great Continent, the Old World. It was dizzyingly large, enough to swallow Vinstraga and Zhantao both, and the Federation dominated wherever one might point. The Northern Reaches, where the ancestors of Vinstraga’s peoples once sailed from, the Western Shatter, the heartlands of Caelus where the Federation had sprung. The far east that touched the home of the people who claimed to bear the blood of primordial dragons, and the arid South that held Petrekora, and neighbored the lands of the Hvrgullites who believed the Golden Star and the Sun were their patrons. Only a century in the past, the continent had housed as many states and peoples, with all of their loves, their woes, and their conflicts, as trees in a great forest. Now, the Caelussian Federation protected- and dominated- near all of it. Yet for how deep those mystical lost woods were, not one place in it that Sglaza had been had felt like home. Only the battlefield had been a place she belonged- a place with no people of its own, but a home nevertheless.

Sglaza sat on the edge of the turret of her tank, another wanderer from the Old World, but a much newer one- not even a year old- a new year’s baby, perhaps. The night here was warm, and the breeze was a ticklish sort that did not chill the bone like the northern reaches she grew up in. Those people were whom these Vynmark folk were descended from- the Nauk, but of the Old World. She recognized some words, but the tongue had drifted apart over the centuries- even before the Federation engulfed the North. Since there was no battle for her or her people yet, she turned over the question of understanding these people. What they fought, died for. Apparently, this place had been peaceful for a very long time. Not like the Nauk of the Old World, who had known war against one another before the Federation, and found themselves conscripted afterwards in conflicts to expand the Federation’s influence.

Did they die for the sake of peace? Maybe. The peace that North Caelus had was one of subjugation, but the Federation insisted it was far superior to what had been before. That was before Sglaza had been born, but not before her father’s birth. He disagreed with the Federation’s truth. Unknowingly encouraged his daughter’s flight from a home no longer home.

“Hey, Matti boy,” she cooed down to the turret, “Why’re we here?”

“Not now, red eye,” the young gunner muttered scornfully. “Not being tricked on that one tonight.”

Sglaza smirked. He was so easy to mess with. She crossed her arms and sighed with a lean back, to look at the sky. The half-moon’s ghostly glow was prettier here than she’d ever seen.

-----