Scion Bonus

The BOUDICA wasn’t much, by Divine Machine standards. It was compact, little more than powered armor. Even then, the “powered” part wasn’t obvious. It didn’t have the usual bells and whistles you expected from ambrosia tech; the glowing lines, pulsing symbols, and whirring prayer-motors. All that frippery was well and good, but Ephraim didn’t need it. 

No, what Ephraim needed was a no-frills suit that could punch out a cyclops, take a sideways blow from a fire giant, and keep on running with the little maintenance he could scrape together. The BOUDICA did all of that in spades, even if it was starting to look a little worse for the wear. He knew a breakdown was coming, but he hoped it was at least another three missions away. That would push the mech just shy of its breaking point, and Ephraim felt damn guilty about it, but there wasn’t a good alternative. 

At least, not until the Freehold came calling.

This call came in the form of a gray-haired woman — short but stately, with steel rod posture, a handshake like a vice, and an easy smile that was equal parts inspiring and intimidating. The only people who could smile like that were the ones who knew that they were the biggest fish in their pond and any nearby ponds in a hundred mile radius. 

“Come work for us,” she said, and Ephraim noticed when she almost said “me” instead of “us.” Her smile grew all the brighter when he said he’d think about it, and she left whistling something old and cheery. 

He didn’t want to work for her, and he didn’t want to think about it, but one by one every lead he had dried up. Local governments and minor corps always wanted an extra Scion on hand, especially one who came at a price like Ephraim’s. It didn’t matter how many krakens, dragons, or giant gorgons came rampaging out of the Great Lakes. No one was hiring. At least, no one was hiring him. So, he bit the bullet. 

The Freehold was on the Canadian side of the lakes, smack dab in the middle of a pristine spruce forest. One second you were riding a gravel road, and the next, you were looking at a sprawling compound of immaculate buildings lit with the strange, twilight glow that wrapped itself around anyplace powered by an a-tech reactor. If they had one here, it meant they had deeper pockets than he’d thought — deep enough to justify a rotation of Scions on hand just to keep the reactor running at peak. 

Maybe that’s what they wanted him for, another body to keep whatever scuttled mech they were using for the reactor core going while they switched someone else into the field. It would be a cherry job, nice and safe, but he could already feel himself getting a fatal case of boredom from the thought alone. 

Ephraim’s legs almost gave out when he saw what they wanted him for. 

The woman — Alyssa Chartier, a Scion herself in the border wars of the 80s — introduced him to the CÚ CHULAINN as if the mech was just another casual acquaintance and she hadn’t expected to find it here. It was fifty feet tall, plaited with some ambrosial alloy that gave it a silvery-gold sheen. The point of a seven-pronged spear rested just above the concrete floor, grasped in its hands like a lightning bolt. By the time he got close enough to touch the mech’s towering heel, he could feel its divinity in his teeth, as if every bone in his body had turned into a tuning fork. 

“That’s a good sign,” Chartier said, “he’s responding to you already. We’ve had a dozen different Scions try and take him for a spin, and he’s never had that kind of reaction. Maybe he likes you,” she said, waggling her eyebrows. She knew that Ephraim couldn’t say no to a chance to pilot something like this. He looked back to a bay where a few of the Freehold’s technicians were examining the BOUDICA for repairs (part of his fee, naturally) and felt a twinge of guilt. Ephraim Wu cheated at cards and on the battlefield, but it shocked him in the gut to think he could cheat on his mech. 

His heart sank when he got into the cockpit and the Demigod’s systems pulsed to life like a dog greeting an old friend long absent. Arcs of harmless golden electricity leapt from the console to dance across his skin, and his senses synched in naturally: his eyes of flesh fluttered to a close, and CÚ CHULAINN’s flared to life. He was the mech, and the mech was him, and together they were so violently alive that it burned like hope, like joy, like victory. 

These Demigod eyes weren’t as limited as his human ones. In his mind, new awarenesses bloomed. A little flicker of his attention and he could sense temperature, pressure, electromagnetism, and that numinous radiation that came off every piece of a-tech. That last one is what caught his attention most of all. 

He could sense the reactor, of course. And six active Hero-class Divine Machines in the midst of drills. And then, beneath the lake —

“You can sense it, can’t you?” 

Chartier’s voice came in clear on the comms, cutting through the noise in Ephraim’s head. “I can sure sense something down there. What the devil is it?”

“A spawning pit,” she said, and all that carefully curated warmth went out of her voice. “And quite frankly, the bane of my existence. Do you know what it’s like to have to camp out right on top of something like that? It’s two, three kaiju a week, and that’s if we’re lucky.”

“Bomb it. Send in some Heroes. You’ve got six in the field right now and what feels like five more in repairs.”

“It’s deeper than that,” and her voice did something strange when she said deeper. It gave the word spin and gravity.

He understood. He didn’t know how he understood, but he did: this wasn’t just a physical thing, or place, or whatever. It was a knot of congealed Legend, or Fate, or something else with a capital letter that he’d only ever heard of in passing. Heroes fought monsters, but if you wanted a whole realm wiped off the map, you sent a Demigod. Even if the realm was a tucked away, hand-me-down, sideways place. 

The spear sparked alive in CÚ CHULAINN’s hands, sizzling with the same golden electricity that filled the cockpit. The World quivered as the Demigod took its first steps, steady as the dawn, towards the water. 

“I don’t suppose I get to keep it?” Ephraim asked as he walked into the icy waters.

“That all depends. Do we get to keep you?”