~"Violet light—streaks the sky, tonight!"

"We—will bite! Devour everything in sight!"~

"EAT-YOUR-GRANDMA!"

~"We slaughter every living thing and eat them raw!"

"Then when hero come to fight we will fight with tooth and claw!"~

"TOOTH-AND-CLAW!"

~"They say it can't last forever, that someone's gonna put us down..."

"But we wouldn't mind them trying, they'll be the ones to die and,"

"Horde! Of! Hung—er! Ris—oh-hi-Mom." I was too distracted by my singing and didn't notice Cassandra enter the space. I thought of it as a space, not a room, because it was really big. Empty, too.

After there was a small avalanche just outside the temple, I had been confined back inside. I decided not to argue with it, even though I wanted to keep exploring the surrounding area. Maturity and patience, y'all!

"You sounded good," Cassandra told me. "I didn't know you were a good singer."

"Of course I am," I replied. "I'm a good anything if I want to be, so you really should have already guessed I would be. Here, listen to this."

I then launched into a Disney princesses and villains medley, interweaving some of the most iconic songs and even layering them together into a multipart, polyphonic harmony. Aside from multiple voices, though, it was all acapella—no mimicking other instruments or sound effects.

The giant, empty stone hall added some wonderful reverberation that made it sound even better. Not like I couldn't just simulate even better reverb on my own, though—but I was interested in 'singing' in a way that would be more plausible to normal people.

After being confined inside the temple, I needed to find ways to entertain myself. I ended up returning to working on music and my vocal abilities in general. Mostly, I went back to work on my personal theme song.

At this point, it was the actual lyrics that were the hardest part. I needed to put more thought into those. That being said, if the music was good enough, then some ridiculous cheesiness would serve the overall vibe. Then when hero come to fight—I mean that's not even grammatically correct.

But that was fine for this style if you could pull the rest of it off—which I absolutely could.

"Wow." Cassandra clapped for me when I finished. "How do you do that? Singing multiple parts at once? That's got to be from one of your abilities, right?"

"Nah," I lied, "It just takes a lot of practice. Anyone who says it's physiologically impossible is coping. Pure skill issue."

"Oh. Well, I came looking for you because I have something important to tell you. All three bosses have agreed to your proposal."

I blinked. "Oh shit, really? For real?"

I didn't get to go straight to music practice after being dragged back into the temple, unfortunately. Instead, Hans and Violet grilled me on everything I learned from speaking with the various peasants, as well as helping catalog some of the basic language grammar and vocabulary for their own continued benefit.

Boring stuff, but I also made a case for how we could easily take over the local settlements with literally no one being mad except a small number of people we would actually have to fight. I was confident that one, our collective might was more than a match for the concentration of opposition we would face, and two, that it would only be a fairly concentrated fight and that everyone else would support us—if we played our cards right.

I didn't expect them to actually agree so easily, or so soon.

"Yes," Cassandra confirmed, "but there are some specific conditions I think you'll want to be aware of."

"Oh." I rolled my eyes. "Of course there are."

"Look, you have to realize that no one trusts you yet. We also have limited information on what we'd be getting into, and there's also the matter of drawing too much attention."

I knew the first part and the second was completely fucking obvious, but the last caught my curiosity. "What do you mean by that?" I asked. "That last part. Drawing attention from other areas, or…?"

"Several kinds. Yes, they're wary of drawing any attention beyond the immediate area—but the concern doesn't end there. If that attention goes far enough, it's entirely possible that we draw some very bad attention back on the other side."

Is she talking about people on Earth? Star Guardians? Governments? Other syndicates? I decided to just ask.

"Yes, all of those things. We're far from the first to gain access to this kind of technology. We know that at least the United States and China are both continually advancing the capability, and at the very least France knows how. It's likely the EU as a whole is at least aware of it."

I just stared for a few seconds. "Are you fucking shitting me right now?" Cassandra looked like she was trying to figure out how to answer, but it wasn't really a real question in the first place. "Holy cats. I mean damn, that makes sense, but also, damn."

The more I thought about it, the more it was a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Sure, the Bouquet might have some powerful muscle, some good connections, a lot of money passing through—but would an organization like this really be the first to figure this shit out?

Of course not. They didn't figure it out. The Anathema cult Dad still wants me to investigate gave it to them.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Hell, my dad even confirmed during his big meeting with me that they—his faction of the Star Guardians—already knew how to deliberately trigger incursions. He didn't say anything about using them to cross between alternate realities—but he also implied they had means to travel en masse to and from Mars that the more conservative Blue faction lacked.

And I mean, his entire power revolves around screwing with reality and space itself. His portals and things are literally the exact same color as a breach. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if he could use his own abilities to travel between realities without any technological assistance at all.

Jesus. "Okay, so what I'm hearing is that we're new players on the scene in a game that two global superpowers, at least one major world power, and a bunch of Tier 7 and higher Star Guardians have been playing for—fuck, how long? Any idea about that?"

Cassandra shrugged. "From the beginning? I guess you wouldn't know this, but at this point—well, the incursions first appearing right at the point where industrialized nations were capable of fighting them directly without Guardian assistance wasn't a coincidence. The very first incursion, back in '91, was artificial. It was part of a DoD project, but the experiment that first succeeded was carried out in the UK. That's why London had it the worst."

I was reeling even harder now, but Cassandra held up a hand before I could say anything. "So yes, they knew from the beginning—sort of. The details of the original project aren't something I'm aware of—I don't know if any of us have access—but no, they weren't trying to make mutant supersoldiers or something.

"It was a propulsion project. Some kind of experimental rocket or jet engines, is what I heard. It was mostly the Air Force that was involved."

"Wow." I shook my head. "Okay, I don't even know if that makes it better or worse. So—what, they tried to make a warp drive, and then it tore a hole in reality and interdimensional monsters started crawling out? Honestly, that's kind of funny."

But, while I was fascinated by learning the first bit of the true history of the incursions, the original topic had been the agreement with my plan to oust the local tyrant and establish a power base in this world.

So, while I now had a decent understanding of why the bosses would be so hesitant, I still had yet to hear what those additional conditions would be. I decided it was time to re-rail the conversation.

"You're not just going to rush in and start breaking things. You're going to do this methodically and slowly, taking time to gather information and set things up as necessary. We also need it to be as small and underwhelming as possible, so as to not draw any more attention than we have to."

"Okay." I mean, that makes sense? I don't have a problem with that. "Is there anything else?"

Cassandra nodded. "Yes. The actual operation will mostly be carried out by you Anathema. Each of you, with the exception of Mook, will be paired with one of the natives. What you were able to learn about—familiaris, as you called it, that should help us keep things undercover. If someone else from Earth happens to be nearby and hears the news, they won't think as much of it."

"Huh." I hadn't thought of that, and there was one major problem I needed to call attention to. "But, uh, none of us are going to become familiars, so…"

Cassandra sighed. "Yes, of course we know that. We'll find a way around it one way or another."

The problem was that without an actual familiar bond, whichever not-demon people we chose as our figureheads wouldn't be able to use any esoteric abilities.

The division of magic I learned from that kid, Asher, was fairly simple. There were 'spirits,' like myself, which were inherently magical beings that only took on a physical form. Then, there was the stuff we did that got me shoved back here in the temple—thaumaturgy.

Translating it that way was a very deliberate choice on my part. It really could have been any number of things—ritual, enchanting, magic, wizardry—but they all had differing connotations, and in my mind, the clinical, somewhat obscure sounding thaumaturgy would be the most helpful for modern English speakers.

It differentiated it from magic in general while emphasizing the artificial, craft nature of it.

Specifically, this was all in contrast to something I chose to translate as sorcery. 'Sorcery' was what normal Guardians did, and it was—well, the impression I got was that it came with a massive amount of cultural baggage that proved difficult to untangle.

I still couldn't decide whether being known as a sorcerer was a good thing or a bad thing. I was leaning towards good, but with a certain anxious, moralizing taint. The way everyone I asked about it replied gave me the same sort of vibe as, like, Victorian era writers talking about 'actresses.' It was weird.

But there was a clear distinction between thaumaturgy and sorcery—the first was intellectual, scientific, and artificial yet also 'pure' in a way that sorcery very much wasn't. Sorcery was as unnatural as it was 'instinctual' and 'emotional,' where both carried subtly negative connotations—powerful and wild.

And then there were familiar pacts. Those were what they sounded like—bonds between people—who may or may not be proper sorcerers, though they often were—and Anathema, or 'spirits.'

That was the issue—without either their own 'sorcery' or an actual bond with one of us Anathema, anyone we chose would be left playing a game kind of similar to the titular character of Disney's Aladdin.

Of course, that was slightly different, because Aladdin—okay, so I never understood that movie. I was never able to understand what the big deal was about him lying to Jasmine and not being a real prince. I mean—he wished to be a prince, so the genie made him a prince. That's how the genie works. He didn't wish to be a fake prince.

So, like—either that means the genie didn't ever grant his wish, which would be weird and kind of derails everything else—or the genie did grant the wish, which means he is literally a prince! There was a whole song about it! He had a giant parade with slaves and servants for fuck's sake.

It makes no Goddamn sense.

But I digress—they would either have to bullshit the whole way through or get clever with technology and thaumaturgy.

Oddly, there was also a fifth thing I gleaned from my discussions with Asher, but I understood it less than anything else. He wasn't able to provide many concrete details at all, and was clearly reluctant to discuss it. Anyone else I talked to also acted like I was asking something taboo.

Weirder than that, though, was the specific translation vibe I got. The words that came to mind were, well, Anathema. Or something very similar—anathema, abomination, the corrupted, just straight up demon—it was fucking weird, because it was such a similar vibe to what we—the people of our own world—called the things that were very much not it.

Our Anathema were their spirits, and their spooky whateverthefucks were Anathema. It had honestly been fucking with me for a while now and I continued to debate whether it was just a weird coincidence.

But either way—I was happy that the bosses gave my idea the green light.

"You know," I told Cassandra, "I don't think I've met most of the other Anathema you have on hand."

"I know," she replied. "So I was also thinking—how about we return home now and set about changing that?"

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