Chapter 1

Hellfire on the Beaches

The Frontier jutted out of the ocean, the fog wasn’t quite thick enough to reduce it to a silhouette, but it wasn’t fully visible either. Hate gritted her teeth as she looked out at it. The rock formation was less like an island and more like a mountain rising straight out of the sea. It was a huge ring, open on one side. The infinite possibilities of the future swirled overhead in a huge dark storm cloud, they would pass through the Frontier to become a new memory soon. The Frontier was the focal point of the Lifetime, that instant that was the present.

Hate glanced back at the others behind her in the boat. They sat with grim expressions, waiting. They were the Thoughts, subservient to her and her fellow Queens. Most Thoughts were just ordinary citizens, but many of the ones in the boat behind her were her Haters. They were skeletal warriors in Kevlar vests, with helmets and riot shields, armed with shotguns, automatic rifles, and nightsticks. Blue points of light shone in their hollow eyes.

There were at least a hundred other boats bobbing in the water, waiting in the waves for the signal. Each was filled with teams of Haters, all silent and tense in anticipation.

A shape under the water caught her attention, and from the water next to the boat rose the sectioned, metal neck of a mechanical sea serpent. It had a broad, finned head, and holding onto those fins was one of Greed’s mecha-beast tamers.

“Hail, Queen of Hatred,” said the young man, who was mostly naked, except for leather leggings and a necklace made of teeth. His pink braids were dripping down his back.

“What news?” asked Hate.

“Her royal Highness Pride says that the moment of attack is nigh. The Queen of Sloth has moved her warships into position. Each one is taking aim as we speak. The new memory should be forming shortly. She wished to reiterate that there will be two barrages, and wishes to remind you to wait until after the second one to storm the beaches.”

“Of course she does,” muttered Hate irritably, “What about Greed?”

“My Queen has instructed us to follow up your beach assault, our mecha-beasts will come in and provide support for your Haters after the first wave.”

“Very good,” Hate said. She looked him up and down.

“Have you ever seen battle?” she asked him.

“No, ma’am,” he muttered, “but I’ve trained long and hard for this moment, I won’t fail you, or bring disgrace to the Queen of Greed.”

Hate snorted.

“The Queens of Lust, Envy, Gluttony and Hope are on that island,” she said, “Lust will give us the most trouble. Have you ever seen an angel, young man?”

“No, ma’am, only heard about them.”

“Lust’s Angels rain hellfire down on their victims,” Hate said, “they’ll try to swarm us and hold us at the beach in a giant flock. Do you have any ranged attacks?”

“I, um, yes ma’am,” said the tamer. She could tell he had been trying not to think about it, “most of the tamers’ mecha-beasts have blasters or missiles, and many of us can deploy bubble shields to protect us from all sides.”

“Good,” said Hate. She wasn’t challenging him or anything, she told herself, she was just making sure he was ready, “The next problem will be Hope’s Flower Girls. They’re skeletons held together by rose-vines, their strength is in close quarters. They come at your with rapiers, but they can also shoot razor-sharp flower petals off of their body like shotgun blasts.”

She glanced back at him and realized she was scaring him. He really had been doing his best not to face the reality of what was about to happen. She sighed. He was probably going to die anyway, that was what that usually meant.

“But we won’t see any Flower Girls unless we get in really close,” she said quickly, “their more of a personal guard than frontline soldiers. Hope can’t make a whole lot of them. Gluttony’s Nightmares will be guarding their main headquarters, but on the beaches we’ll probably mostly be facing Angels and maybe a couple of Envy’s Mages, but Envy is a bit of a coward, so I don’t expect we’ll see a lot of that.”

She could tell that didn't help a much as she had hoped. Before she could think of anything further to say, she was aware of a massive rock that was careening towards them. It perfectly nailed on of the boats, blasting it to pieces.

“They've spotted us!” Hate called out, her voice full of relish, “it seems like the plan has gone out the window!”

She raised a flare gun and fired it into the sky, signaling to her soldiers to scene, and signaling to the other Queens that she didn't intend to wait.

In response, the fog behind her thundered, and the scream of projectiles flying overhead joined in with the thrum of the boat engines. The waves of water craft lurched forward as the shells hit the mountains and beaches, exploding green and lighting up the night. Hate could see in some places the tiny outlines of Mages running to try and find cover.

The next thundering wave of artillery crashed into the tops of the mountains, and Hate saw what she’d been waiting for.

From the highest peak of the mountain range, like a warm of angry bees, a yellow cloud began to emerge.

“Here they come folks!” Hate shouted, and the skeletons behind her jumped to their feet, raising automatic rifles to their shoulders.

 The swarm of yellow split into confused sections for a moment as yet more a artillery shells raised in the higher peaks. Hate could see tiny specs of golden yellow raining down. Some angels that weren’t fast enough to get out of the range of the blast. Then, like a swarm of yellow jackets, the angels reconverged and began speeding towards the shore.

Blue muzzle flashes erupted all around her as the Haters opened fire. The boats were speeding along, skipping across the tops of the waves, and Hate heard a round pass by her ear. The angels reached the beach at about the same time as the boats did, and then all hell broke loose. Lazers shot out of the eyes of the angels, slicing neatly through anyone who was too slow to get out of their way.

Hate pulled her heavy revolver out of her jacket and knocked the head clean off of one of the angels as it passed by overhead, it’s laser-vision cutting off abruptly. The front of the boats fell open and Haters fired tear gas canisters out all over the beach. Hate pulled down her mask as her warriors raced out in a police line against the angles.

The water broke behind the boats and the mecha beast razed it’s head again. It took a deep breath and the gills lit up pink, then it fired a high-pressure jet of water from it’s maw, cutting through the clouds of angles overhead. When the beam had subsided, the beast dragged itself onto land with six small legs, and it’s scales all flared. A pink bubble of energy materialized around it, and A cluster of Haters gathered around its base, firing into the angel formations overhead.

“To me, my Haters!” shouted Hate. Her revolved knocked another angel out of the sky as a group of skeletons made a phalanx of riot shields around her.

“Forward!” she shouted, and the phalanx began to push into the trees. More mecha-beasts were emerging form the water, but the Haters and the Angels were the bulk of the fighting. The few mages that were hiding in the trees trying to shoot spells, and the mecha beasts that guarded the beaches were almost negligible in terms of ferocity.

The phalanx pushed into the woods, down the road that Hate hadn’t walked on in what felt like ages. Her warriors poked their rifles out from between the shields and fired into the sky and the trees, anything that moved was a fair target.

Overhead, the clouds began to swirl, and Hate heard a massive splash as a chunk of stone the size of a house fell from the heavens and landed in the bay in the center of the island. It was starting already.

“Faster!” shouted Hate, and the phalanx pushed forward. The other Haters from the beaches had moved into the trees as well, and the forest was alive with gunfire and lasers. Suddenly, the earth under Hate’s feet rumbled, and she dove forward, shouting, “scatter!” but her warning came too late. Roots and branches erupted from the ground, grasping at where she had been only a second before. They caught most of the Haters in her phalanx though, and they twisted together to form a gnarled tree, it’s branches growing through the Haters, tearing them to pieces.

Hate scanned the trees and her eyes fell on a lone druid, with orange eyes and hair. The druid had his hands spread, and a spellbook floated in front of him. His eyes grew wide as he saw Hate, and he tried to run back into the trees, but Hate blasted him before he could so much as turn around. Beyond where his crumpled form lay, hate could see sky between the trees.

She rushed forward and found that the forest terminated in a massive cliff. The cliffs that surrounded the bay in the center of the island. Dirt and stones rained down from the sky, forming a new bare island in the center of the Frontier’s bay. Hate could already see the center of the island had been formed, and in the center of that new island was a shallow pool.

One lone figure stood at the edge of that pool, with the earth and debris raining down all around her. A figure with golden blonde hair.

Hate nearly screamed with rage, and took a half-step towards the edge of the cliff. Then she glanced back over her shoulder. The battle still raged on in the woods. She was the only Queen in the assault on the beaches, all the others were waiting at the boats. She knew there wasn’t a good second-in-command, and that made her mad. She started to turn back to the battle, but then hesitated and looked back over her shoulder. She could see a fortress had been built on the highest peaks of the Frontier, with yellow, red, chartreuse, and magenta. It hadn’t been hit by any of the artillery shells, so it was probably protected by a ward or some other magical bullshit.

There was another flag snapping in the wind, one with multiple colors. It shimmered and changed depending on the lighting. The flag of the mysterious leader who had been the cause of all this. Hate was dying to meet them, and pay them back for turning these four louts into such a problem.

But the memory was still forming, and it was right there. Wasn’t that what this was all about? Hate could hear the battle in the woods raging on. She knew her soldiers needed leadership. Greed’s soldiers needed leadership. They’d never make it to that castle on their own.

The memory that was being formed, the decisions that were being made, they were completely under the influence of Lust. What if she was doing something terrible? What if she was doing things that couldn’t be undone? It might already be too late to seize control of the Lifetime,  there was no way to know at this point. None of them, not Sloth or Hate or Greed or even Pride knew what had been going on in the Lifetime. Hate had to know things were alright, that things were still okay. Lust’s decisions could destroy them all.

The sounds of battle faded away as the water rushed up to meet her.