A/N - Previously at this rift! Flick showed up in a desert with her parents, gave them the rundown of what’s going on, and they started walking to a pyramid in the distance where they believe the rift is. Unfortunately, the pyramid appears to be protected by some sort of spatial magic that constantly makes the pyramid remain far away from them no matter how long they move toward it. Their attempts to reach the pyramid were interrupted by the arrival of the Olympus flying overhead.

  The Olympus was incredibly imposing to look at, especially from this angle as it came toward us while we had no idea what they were actually trying to do. The main body was an orb that was five hundred meters in diameter. That’s where the bridge itself was, as well as the primary science and living areas. Then there were the three long gunships, basically cylindrical with a curved spot on one side so they could attach themselves to the orb part. They were just wide enough that when all three were attached, the majority of the core was covered by them. Each gunship stretched about twenty meters behind the orb and another hundred meters in front of it. When they were all linked up, the whole thing looked like a big ball trapped in a long metal tube with a few cracks in it.

  “Jos,” Dad started, his hand touching her arm while the other one moved to my shoulder. His voice was a very low whisper despite the distance. “If that’s the Olympus, then they must be--”

  “Yes,” Mom confirmed just as quietly. She remained right where she was, eyes locked on that incoming ship. “It’s Puriel and his people, before they… before any of that happened. But I’m not picking up any danger yet. Well, no immediate danger anyway.” Even though she was saying that, Mom still stepped a bit in front of Dad while tugging me closer to where he was so she could block both of us more effectively. “They aren’t about to shoot at us with those cannons.”

  “Unless they’re using magic to block that sort of danger sense,” Story pointed out with our mouth. She held up two crossed fingers while speaking so our parents would know it was her and not me, a signal we had worked out and explained while getting them caught up with the whole situation. “That’s what I’d do if I was about to blast a mysterious group of strangers from the comfort of my own bridge and wanted to make sure they didn’t know to get out of the way.”

  By that point, however, the Olympus had come to a stop directly over our heads. As we stared upward, it simply hovered there as though waiting for something. Then Mom abruptly turned her attention from that to a spot about a hundred feet away, down at ground level. She’d barely looked that way before a few glowing figures began to appear. A greeting party was teleporting in.

  While they were doing that, I heard Dad activate a quick spell of his own. It only took Story a second of listening to his words to inform me that it was some sort of translation magic. A pretty strong one as well, from what she could tell. Whatever language this incoming group decided to speak to us with, we’d understand them perfectly, and vice versa. Dad had been acing his magic lessons.

  As it turned out, the greeting party was full of familiar faces. As the glowing forms resolved into solid figures, I saw Sariel, Apollo--though he would be going by Lucifer right now, Charmeine, and Sachael, or Poseidon as he would eventually be called here on Earth for awhile. Which just reminded me of what I had seen him do to that desert back on the Meregan homeworld. That tall man with the long white beard and pale, pale blue eyes had basically created a giant lake with his power, where nothing but desolate sand had been before. He was undoubtedly the most powerful person in front of us, even if there were a couple I didn’t actually recognize. And not just because of his hydrokinetic abilities. He was also supposed to be the second in command of the Olympus itself. He was the Riker to Puriel’s Picard, which really raised all sorts of weird images.

  He was also the first to speak up, his voice crisp and commanding. “Greetings, travelers. The name is Sachael, of the Seosten vessel Olympus.” His hand gestured to the hovering ship. “We can’t help but notice that you seem to be attempting to reach the pyramid in the distance. Why would that be?”

  Before either of my parents could say anything, I spoke up. “We’ve heard of you and your people, Sachael of the Olympus. And it seems that you might just be attempting the same thing we are.” That was basically little more than a wild guess on my part, but it felt right given what we’d seen. I really didn’t think these guys were actually responsible for what was happening at the pyramid. For one thing, I couldn’t see why they would have the Olympus out and flying around to come meet us. Something told me they had been trying to figure out what was up with the place as well, when they spotted us on their sensors. At least they seemed to realize that we weren’t responsible for it either. But the way they’d approached like this--yeah, they thought we knew more about it than they did, which told me they barely knew anything at all about it. No, they weren’t responsible for this. They wanted more information.

  I could feel the weight of all their eyes on me as soon as I said that. Sariel, Apollo, Charmeine, Sachael, and three more who were probably minor Olympian crewmembers. All seven were staring very intently, clearly taking in everything they could about me. So it was probably a very good thing I was still magically disguised. All they would see in that moment, thanks to Mom’s spell, was a trio of ordinary, average people who they would expect to see in this sort of area.

  Cocking his head to the side a bit as he regarded me, Sachael gave a brief glance to the others behind him before stepping forward. “I have given you my name, and our identity, stranger. In the interest of civility, it would be very appropriate for you to return the courtesy.” His mouth shifted into a faint smile. “And, perhaps while you are at it, you could remove the illusion that the three of you have been operating under. We should all be discussing this face to face. That way, there will be no misunderstandings or any other problems. We can discuss the situation with civility.”

  The warning behind his seemingly polite words was completely apparent. If I didn’t let them see the face behind the illusion that Mom had cast on us, this meeting would become quite a bit more hostile. They may have put on a veneer of being casual, but this was the executive officer of the Olympus, who happened to be one of the most powerful Seosten in their empire, standing here with several other incredibly dangerous crewmembers backing him up. We could almost certainly surprise them if this turned into a fight. They wouldn’t know anything about Boschers at this point, after all. But even then, I didn’t think we could stop them. Especially not when they had the Olympus right there with more reinforcements obviously ready to jump right into things. Or they could try teleporting us inside. And if Sachael was a problem, we didn’t stand a chance against an annoyed Puriel. If we didn’t want this to turn into a fight that we almost certainly couldn’t win, I either had to teleport the three of us away from here, risking not being able to get back and the Olympians getting to the magic pyramid where the rift had to be, or follow the man’s instructions by just removing my disguise.

  Or, Story put in even as that thought passed through our mind, at least making it look like we’re following his instructions. He can’t see us as Felicity Chambers, but maybe he can see us as--

  Jacob, right. I could do this. Raising a shoulder in a shrug, I replied simply, “My guards will retain their privacy. But I see no reason why the two of us can’t go ahead and speak face to face.”

  Clearing her throat, Mom looked searchingly and warningly over her shoulder at me. “Are you certain that’s a good idea? You made it very clear that secrecy was very important right now.”

  “Hey,” Charmeine snapped, “you trying to tell your boss to start a fight right now? Because to tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind skipping over the boring talking part. I need a workout. But the thing is, it wouldn’t be a very long one. Just enough to get me all worked up with no outlet. It’s not fun.”

  “Let’s take it easy, Charmeine,” Apollo--Lucifer urged, waving her off while his gaze remained leveled at me as though trying to read everything about my inner soul. It was kind of disconcerting, just how intently he was staring through me. “After all, there’s no reason we can’t all just be friends here.”

  “We can be friends,” I agreed, “but I’d prefer if you didn’t do much talking, Lucifer. You know, just so our friendship doesn’t end up coming with magical caveats.” With that, I spoke the counterspell that would disable the magic Mom had used to put the illusion on me. At the same time, Story focused on shapeshifting us into our Jacob form, complete with summoning his clothes. Yeah, we definitely didn’t fit into this area or time period anymore, but at least this meant that Flick Chambers wouldn’t be immediately identified back in the future as the same person these guys had met back in this time period. That could turn out to be just a little… complicated, to say the least.

  Sariel was the first to speak up as I revealed myself--or revealed my Jacobself. They were all looking me up and down, taking in that whole effect. “You know who Lucifer is, and what he can do.” If she had any feelings about that fact, the woman concealed them well. She was simply stating an observation. “Which clearly means you know who we all are. But we don’t know you.”

  “Um, they--uh, they aren’t from this area, or this planet.” The person who said that was one of the minor Olympians I didn’t recognize. She looked rather young, even more so than Sariel and Apollo did, like she had been the equivalent of a Seosten teenager when her age was frozen by the Summus Proelium project. She had dark brown, almost black hair fashioned into a long braid, and the sort of Disney Princess large eyes that made her look very innocent, even naive. The woman was also holding a dark green stone out to me, obviously using it for some sort of magic. “You, err, you aren’t human.” Her hand shifted to let the stone point at both Mom and Dad. “None of you are. Not… exactly.” The stone stayed pointed at Dad for an extended bit while she seemed to try to interpret rather conflicting data. “Maybe you are.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  “He’s a little complicated,” I announced simply. “And not at all relevant to this particular situation.”

  “Don’t worry, Medea,” Sachael assured the young Seosten, “everyone deserves secrets. We have plenty of our own. Though as Sariel said, it seems you know a good bit of them, stranger.”

  This meeting could be going a lot worse, to be honest. It was obvious that the Seosten here thought we knew more about the pyramid than they did, and wanted to convince us to share with them. But at least they were doing the convincing part without open threats--well, mostly. They hadn’t gone straight to violence, at least. They were willing to actually talk to me, which was something. It also told me they were very interested in the pyramid. Not only were they talking and trying to negotiate, but they had sent the Olympus’s executive officer as well as Lucifer, who could have simply talked long enough to use his power on us if I hadn’t already known better. Which--yeah maybe I shouldn’t have revealed that I knew that much about them, but I’d had to make a choice in the moment. It was either let him talk long enough that his power would be a problem, or interrupt and reveal that I knew about that power. The latter seemed less dangerous.

  Sachael made a considering noise in the back of his throat, and I had the feeling that he was going through a very similar thought process but in reverse, trying to decide if it was better that I had revealed how much we knew about them rather than hiding it, and just analyzing the entire situation in general. In the end, whatever thoughts he had, the man kept them to himself and simply announced in a rather casual tone, “Perhaps we could start with a name to work off of.”

  “Jacob,” I informed him, giving a wide, dramatic bow with a bit of a coat flourish at the end. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. I have… contacts who told me enough to feel like I know you, but a real face-to-face like this is truly the best way to go if you want to fully get the measure of someone.”

  “And what are we measuring one another for?” That was Charmeine, suspicion filling her voice. “If you don’t want to give a straight answer, maybe we can just go back up to the ship and find--”

  “It’s alright, Charmeine,” Sachael assured her, his very pale eyes never leaving mine. “A bit of comparing sword lengths is to be expected in a situation like this, but I think we can all safely assume that we were drawn by the structure in the distance and neither side is actually responsible for its existence.” He was very clearly watching my reaction to that statement, and I did my best to keep my face as unreadable as possible. The fact that I had both Story and my face-shifting power to help were probably the only reasons I was in any way successful at it.

  “We did not make the pyramid,” I truthfully replied. “And we were drawn by the energy it’s giving off.” Hey, that was also totally true. Just a bit more literal than our friends here probably expected. “But it seems there’s some sort of protective spell around it. My assistants and I were simply attempting to test the boundaries of that protection. I, ahh, assume you haven’t reached it either.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a funny idea,” Charmeine snapped with obvious annoyance, “how about you just go ahead and tell us everything we want to know, and if you’re helpful enough, we’ll simply send you to the other side of the planet. If not, maybe we’ll decide the universe doesn’t actually need some--”

  She was interrupted once more by Sachael, though that time all he did was clear his throat to make her stop. That was all he had to do. That simple noise made her mouth snap closed. Then he offered a very faint smile. “There’s no need for any of this to turn into a direct physical conflict. Our strange new friend here, and his allies, obviously have a great deal of information. More than we’d prefer they have. But personally, I’d like to see just what information they have about people who aren’t us.” Before Charmeine or any of the others could say anything to that, he added, “After all, we are new to this planet. It would be good to have an ally to call on.”

  Okay, how was I supposed to play this, exactly? I didn’t actually know much about what was going on in the world in this time period. Hell, I wasn’t even exactly sure what time period it was, though if they were new to the world I could narrow it down a fair bit to at least be somewhat helpful. But even then, it wasn’t like I had an encyclopedia of knowledge I could share, even if--

  Ahem, Story interrupted, believe me, we can tell them a lot about the world right now, if you want to. There’s just no way to know if they always got that information from us or not. But honestly, as long as we stick to only telling them stuff they could have found out on their own with a bit of research, I don’t think we’d be changing much either way. And if they think we’re helpful allies, we might actually be able to get through this without getting into a fight with the entire Olympus crew.

  She had a very good point. Unfortunately, before I could say anything either out loud or to her, Charmeine was already moving with a muttered curse. She was coming in quick, faster than I could react. Her hand snapped out to grab my wrist, and I belatedly realized what she was doing.

  Bastion! I shouted inwardly, the code for a certain defensive maneuver we had been working on for awhile. I just hoped it would actually work this time around, since we hadn’t really tried it against a hostile invader like this. But hey, no time like the present. Or the past, such as it was.

  In most cases, I could only hold a single member of the Flique in my head at once. But this wasn’t most cases. When someone else tried to possess me, tried to invade our body, they could all react to that. Every single active member of our collective was able to work together to prevent that invasion. Which meant that, the moment Charmeine entered our space, she was essentially dogpiled by several dozen of my selves all at once. She didn’t even have a chance to understand what was happening. We didn’t give her that sort of luxury. She would not touch any of our memories. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to control us. That was just too dangerous.

  So, when Charmeine possessed us, she found herself essentially grabbed from all sides and completely overwhelmed before she had the slightest idea she was even in danger. She didn’t have a chance to actually see anything she shouldn’t. In a sort of metaphysical way, her eyes and mouth were covered, her limbs captured, and she was pinned down. One Seosten invader versus dozens of me? She didn’t stand a chance. The entire Flique jumped on her, made sure she didn’t see anything in our memories, then essentially heaved and threw her right out again. We could have kept her trapped like that, but it was probably best to play a bit nicer in this case.

  From the point of view of the other Seosten and our parents, Charmeine grabbed my wrist, disappeared into me, I made a motion like sort of heavy sneeze, and in the process of jerking forward, she went flying right back out of me with a cry of surprise before landing in the sand.

  “Ugh,” the woman groaned, even as one of the other Seosten I didn’t recognize ran up and knelt down to check on her. “Damn it, get off me. I’m fine. What on the cusp of the Void was that?”

  “Charmeine,” Sachael snapped as soon as he was certain she wasn’t hurt, “you’re to return to the ship now. You’re confined to your quarters until I say otherwise. Feel grateful it isn’t the brig.” His voice may have been casual before, but now it was sharp with authority. Even Charmeine didn’t question it or argue. She knew better by that point, no matter how angry she was. Her eyes looked to me and she gave a slight scowl, before touching something on her bodysuit. Just like that, she disappeared.

  Mom, who had reflexively started to take a step toward me, spoke up. “Jacob?” It clearly took everything she had to keep her tone as even as possible. She was playing the part of a servant, not a mother.

  “It’s alright,” I assured both her and Dad. “I’m sure she was acting outside of her instructions.” Even as I said that, my eyes centered on Sachael. “And it won’t happen again. For me or my aides.” Just to make sure I was getting my point across, I focused for a moment and made a point of summoning as many ghosts as I could right then. Which meant a couple hundred intangible figures appeared around us. I arranged them in a semi-circle facing the Seosten, though I also made sure they appeared wearing very simple clothes that wouldn’t give away that they were from the future. Which, yeah, my own clothing didn’t help that, but they could also assume I was simply from another world. Or eccentric.

  Either way, Sachael took in the assembled ghosts with little more than a thoughtful grunt before focusing on me once more. The man was obviously curious about exactly how I had expelled Charmeine like that, but he didn’t ask. Instead, his head dipped in an acknowledgment. “You have my word, none of our people will attempt such a thing again. But now that it’s over, Jacob, perhaps we can proceed with comparing notes about this strange structure, and decide what we are going to do about it so that we all come away satisfied.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” I agreed. “If your side plays nice, so will we.” I absolutely could not let them see how nervous I was about all this. I had to stay in charge, had to stay cool and collected. They couldn’t realize how terrified I really felt. Hold it together, Flick. Fake it until you make it… out of this place.

  “Excellent.” Sachael offered a faint smile. “In the interest of politeness, perhaps I should introduce my people. Even if you do seem to know far more than we expected. The one who left was Charmeine. This is Sariel and Lucifer. That one there is Medea. The man behind her is Kidiea. And--”

  “And then there’s me,” the last member of their group piped up. She was the one who had moved to check on Charmeine. The girl was the smallest Seosten here, and clearly the youngest. Hell, she was basically the same size as Sarah and Sands, with dark hair that was short on one side and longer on the other.

  Taking all that in, I decided to take a gamble and extended a hand to her. I really didn’t think they’d try that possession thing again. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. Hopefully we can all learn from one another.”

  “Oh yeah, that’d be great,” she agreed while accepting my hand with her own. “I’m Cassiel. And something tells me we could have a lot to talk about.”

  here and continuing through several snippets and other non-canon chapters. There are links at the bottom of each of those chapters leading to the next one. To be clear, the version of Cassiel we are seeing right here is not THAT Cassiel, but if you are interested in seeing another version of this character, you can read those.

  Joke Tags: A Very Specific Section Of People Who Read Summus Proelium? Specifically The Noncanon Chapters? Are Gonna Need Some Water From All The Screaming