(Ed note: Trigger warning. Torture and gore.)

The emperor’s aegis was the best of the best of Aegis, and well deserving of their title as the most elite special force under the ARES umbrella. Though their training focused primarily on defense, a wise man once said that the best defense was a good offense. Of course, nobody knew exactly who first said that, and sports coaches and military strategists around the world all laid claim to it coming from one of their forebears, but whoever said it was still an incredibly wise man.

Thus, the emperor’s aegis was also unparalleled in all areas. They could perform counterintelligence operations with the grace of a nyxian, special military operations with the ease of a reaper, and were still the strongest shield standing between Aron and those who would wish to target him.

So capturing a few terrified cultists was as easy to them as drinking water or snapping their fingers.

Twenty minutes after they had captured the last fleeing cultists, they returned to the underground base, where the prisoners were put in the holding cells for Aron to experiment on.

......

Aron stepped into the prison section of the facility and glanced around. On the surface, it looked no different from the rest of the base, with softly glowing runic lines in incomprehensible fractal patterns on the walls, but these ones were different. They had been laid with the intent to detect, trap, and trace any mana coming from any source that wasn’t him.

He stepped into the first cell, where a naked man was secured to the wall with clamps on his upper and lower limbs and around his neck, chest, and waist. Aron waved his hand and a refresh rune flew to the prisoner, waking him from his induced slumber.

The man looked around, turning his head from left to right, then realized he had been captured. “Please, please,” he begged, “I didn’t do anything. I swear, I didn’t—AAAAAAAGH!” He twitched as twenty thousand volts passed through his body from the restraints.

Tasers ranged from fifty to eighty thousand volts, depending on the manufacturer and whether they were intended for civilian or government use. However, tasers would often not only incapacitate their target, but would render them unconscious as well. Therefore, the voltage Aron was applying to the imprisoned cultist was much, much lower; it would inflict pain, while leaving no lasting damage and without rendering him unconscious.

“What do you want!?” the man screeched, his voice breaking.

“I want to see what happens,” Aron calmly replied.

“Wh-what happens when?”“When you kill yourself.”

The man was flabbergasted; he had no intention whatsoever of suicide! “I don’t want to die!” he screamed.

Just then, a purple light flashed in his eyes and his expression went slack. He stopped struggling and stuck his tongue out, intending to bite it off and bleed to death.

[Got it, sir,] Nova told Aron.magic

“Do we need anything more from this one?” Aron replied.

[No. More samples will be needed for our trap and trace, though.]

“Good thing we have spares, then,” he coldly said, then turned to the prisoner. “For crimes against humanity, I hereby sentence you to death. The sentence is to be immediately carried out.”

The voltage being passed through the clamps increased. Thirty thousand volts... forty thousand... fifty thousand.... Soon, it reached as high as 250,000 volts and the scent of burning flesh wafted off of the captured cultist along with wisps of smoke. Once the equipment measuring his vital signs registered complete brain death, the electricity stopped flowing.

Aron coldly watched the execution from start to finish. It wasn’t that he was unaffected by the brutal execution, but rather that he was enraged by the cult and felt that they all deserved to die in agony for their betrayal of the human species in service to yet-unknown extraterrestrial forces.

He turned and walked out of the cell, then into the one across the hall. The prisoners were secured to the walls, so the doors were open and the man in the cell had watched the entire process of the interrogation and execution of the first prisoner.

“I’ll talk! I’ll tell you whatever you want to—

AAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!”

Aron didn’t even bother asking any questions and proceeded to immediately pass judgment.

Half of the prisoners were thus executed before Nova managed to capture the signature of the foreign mana, so all that was left was to develop a countermeasure for the suicide signal to prevent high-value targets from dying before their secrets could be extracted.

Thirty minutes later, Aron, having completed his experiments and executed the remaining captives, stepped back into the control center. He looked around, meeting the gazes of the people within, then said, “Gear up and move out.”

Five words had decided the fate of everyone on Harstine Island that wasn’t an imperial citizen.

......

The LEAs in the woods surrounding the house where “Tim and Siobhan Roberts” had lived deactivated their optical camouflage and formed up in neat ranks outside the entrance to the base. Shortly afterward, Aron, followed by a pair of operatives and his emperor’s aegis, stepped out.

They were all wearing suits of mechanized power armor, a step up from the NUT suits and designed for frontal combat rather than special operations. Aron took a knee and pressed his palms to the ground again, silently modifying the shield he had placed around the community earlier. When he had first carved it, it was set to allow entry, but no exit. Now, it would deny both entry and exit, as well as shrink and expand as he willed on the fly.

And without a word, they moved out at a bounding run, quickly reaching a speed of 100 miles per hour as they rushed directly toward the clubhouse, where nearly a thousand enemies—or rather, unwitting targets—awaited their arrival.

Due to the need to gather intelligence from the cultists, the LEAs and humans alike were armed with charge rifles, charge pistols, and stun batons. No lethal weaponry had been issued and none would be allowed, as they were almost a hundred percent sure that one of the cult’s leaders would be among the people they were set to apprehend.

Not even five minutes passed before they found the first sentry line, which was manned by two middle-aged men in hunting camouflage. Two shots were fired, one by Catherine and the other by one of the emperor’s aegis members, and the sentries were neutralized without being given an opportunity to report. A LEA stepped out of formation and shackled the cultists, then sprinted back, leaving two unconscious, shackled people behind for the following maintenance bots to collect and bring back to the base.

Another two minutes passed and the imperial assault team reached the main body of the cultists. 263 imperials collided with over eleven hundred cultists in a shockingly swift, one-

sided massacre. Less than three minutes later, 263 imperials still stood, surrounded by 1181 unconscious cultists.

Aron ordered a squad of LEAs to circle the community center and take out the remaining sentries, then placed a small black cube on the ground.

The cube dissolved into a cloud of nanites and sank into the ground, where it would spread out and scan for any underground hideouts the cultists may have. Meanwhile, the remaining LEAs and the two operatives spread out to look for any camouflaged entrances that might lead to a cultist hideaway.

Eight minutes later, the swarm VI of the nanite colony reported that they had found a small underground chamber with six cultists in it. One adult and five teenagers, who were suspected to be awakeners.

Aron sneered, then shrank the shield to just the area around the community center. Closing his eyes, he drove his consciousness deep into his mana heart and triggered it to absorb all of the mana inside the shield, save for the mana that was naturally present in his people and protected by his own runic mark.

As the mana drained from the surroundings, a strange phenomenon occurred. Everything was drained of color and appeared in greyscale, like a black-and-white movie. Then, it began wavering like a mirage before ultimately disappearing. Soon, a perfectly hemispherical crater was all that was left where a quaint community center had once existed. In the middle of the crater were six cultists, and surrounding them were 240 LEAs.

Six charge pistol shots were fired, six people were shackled, and the assault on Hartstene Pointe was over.