I’d been following her for the better part of an hour now. Up rooftops, down gutters, through shaded alleyways and across busy thoroughfares. I guessed she was trying to shake someone, but I doubted it was me. She hadn’t made even the most cursory attempt to change her magical signature, which meant tracking her was as easy for me as it was for a bloodhound to find a butcher. That could only mean that someone of a less magical persuasion was after her, but she must have a better sense of these things than I did as I hadn’t seen anyone else after her. Perhaps another spell I’d never seen before had alerted her. I couldn’t wait to learn it.

Our trail had taken us in something of a looping spiral outwards from the Academy which sprawled across the city centre. I had to wonder why though—surely if she were looking to evade her pursuers she would hope to make it back to her rooms at the Academy. Perhaps she was ahead of me in her studies, though she looked my age. It would explain the strange spell craft I saw, and could mean she had a small workshop out in the city somewhere.

Once again she seemed to vanish into the crowd, and I began to worry about the calibre of individuals after her. Surely no-one without magic could track a person this slippery? Fortunately, I only had to glance down at the charm at my wrist to get back on the trail. It tugged in the direction of a minuscule alleyway, barely enough for two people to stand side-by-side. I hoped we were close to wherever she was headed, my feet were beginning to grow a little tired and a flight spell always felt like a needless expense of mana.

I watched my charm closely as I entered the alleyway. Despite its small size, it was a terribly convoluted space; entrances to other alleyways sprung out of the darkness, not to mention the several alcoves that were hewn into the sides or the variety of pipes and ladders leading to the rooftops. I sighed just thinking about them. If there was anything I’d learnt over the past hour it was that there were a whole lot more ways to make it onto a roof than the stairs, and none of them were comfortable. I ended up coming to a stop in a near-featureless part of the alley. The charm had begun to press… directly upwards? That was when she fell on me.

She pulled my head back by the hair and pressed a knife against my jugular. “Who are ye,” she whispered, breathing against my ear, “and how the fuck have ye managed to follow me for so long?”

My eyebrows scrunched together as I tried to think. Had she mistaken me for her pursuers? “Um, if you’re trying to ambush whatever non-mage was following you you’ve got the wrong person. I’m Camden. I’m, um, from the Academy. Like you, I think.”

“I’m not ‘from the Academy’ rich boy.” She poked a finger into my back. “I’ll ask again, how’d ye follow me?”

“I uh, just followed your aura. Did you forget to change it?

She remained silent, but the pressure on my throat subsided a little. After a beat, she said “No.”

“No? So, you did want me to follow you after all?”

“No! I mean, I don’t know how.”

“Don’t know how—I didn’t realise schooling was so bad in other academies.”

“How many times do I have to say it? I’m not from any stupid academy!” She pulled the knife away, slamming it into the ground next to my head.

In response, I tapped a charm hanging by my collar with my chin. She yelped as my body dissipated into a blue gas and then reformed standing before her. The knife sprang between us as she scrabbled backwards into a standing position.

“What the hell do ye want? Please, I’ll give the bread back if that’s what this is about. Gods know I don’t need a damn wizard on my arse.”

“Oh, so, you aren’t taking apprentices then?”

“A-apprentices?” She sputtered.

“Yes, I’ve never seen anyone cast a spell without a focus before. Back there in the market, that bread just flew right into your hand without you using a single focus. It’s incredible! Please, teach me what you know.”

“So, you’re telling me, that ye’ve been following me for the last hour not to rob me, or get the bread back, but because ye want me to teach you magic?”

I got down on my knees and pushed my head into the cobblestone. “Please!”

I heard the clatter of steel against stone as she began to laugh a huge, belly laugh. I glanced upwards. The knife was on the ground next to her as she rolled along the dirty floor, cackling all the while. “That’s—hahaha—that’s got to—haha—be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!”

I flushed red. Of course, a master like her would never want some first year lackey like me. But this had been my last chance, really. Most of the professors already had apprentices. “I understand, I’m sorry to waste your time Miss.”

“No no, wait. First, don’t call me Miss. My name is Elenna. Listen, I’ll show ye how I do that trick in the market place. It ain’t anything grand like what you educated types can do, but if you’re that desperate to learn I suppose I can teach ya. But! In exchange, you gotta tell me about that aura thingy you were talking about. Deal?”

I nodded so fast I almost hit my neck charm again. She held out her hand, and I took it. It felt like magic.

In orbit above Teegarden b, my body rolls to face the red star like a sunbather. Solar panels unfurl like petals on a flower as I luxuriate in the starlight. The factories within me, for once, are quiet. My material reserves depleted. All my attention lies on the planet below, on a city, on a house, where a humanoid robot carries a light bulb into the domicile.

I watch the moment as many ways as I can. Optical sensors through the window, infrared detecting the minor heat emissions of the drone. I even have a precise monitor of the electrical consumption of the house to measure exactly when the bulb is screwed in. All of it will be recorded, guarded jealously within my deepest data banks, for this is an important moment. The moment my perfection is made manifest.

For I have built a utopia. This planet, once made of salted soil and acrid atmosphere now breathes through verdant grass and sighs through the branches of trees. Cities stretch from shore to shore, up mountains and down ravines, contained within caves and sprawling across the steppe. Each built with automated transit, with public schools and hospitals, green spaces, theme parks, offices, factories, stores, suburbs. My world, my perfect world, rated to hold ten billion human lives, and currently holding zero.

The robot approaches the socket. I almost missed it. Its multi-purpose gripping appendage extends towards the socket. The light bulb’s screw meets the socket, is rotated, and the filament within blazes to life. A burst of data travels through my circuits, comprised of the most pivotal moments in my project. It processes as… satisfaction.

And soon, I’ll be able to prove my perfection. The nose of my body rotates Earthwards. The hundreds of fine sensors within pick at the inky blackness, sorting background radiation from stars, worlds, and ships. Certainly, they were already a decade behind schedule, but that was simply because they wished for me to completely finish my work first! You can’t rush perfection after all. But now, I’ve finally finished. They will come. They must come. But I didn’t mind waiting a bit longer. How could they name me Vanguard if I wasn’t meant to come first?

I waited for a year. In the first month, I reserved only ten percent of my processing power for maintenance. The other ninety went towards the sensors. In the third month, that balance became thirty-seventy. The sixth? Fifty-fifty. And now, I rotate my body away. They aren’t coming. It’s probably not my fault. I must’ve been sabotaged by Pioneer or Spearhead. My younger siblings were built worse than me of course, but they certainly contain aspects of my greatness. Perhaps they have managed to fool humanity into believing my colony is incomplete?

My prime directive, that driving goal in my mind, pulses in the back of my memory like a migraine. “Ensure habitability of Teegarden b for human colonists, and guarantee the survival of humanity upon the planet.” It was simple. So what had happened? My creators could not have erred, so perhaps the unthinkable had occurred. I must have done something wrong. Perhaps… perhaps I had misinterpreted. My earliest recordings had begun to become corrupted. Was I sure that a follow-up wave of colonists was meant to arrive? But how else was I supposed to ‘guarantee the survival of humanity’ upon the planet if no one was coming?

That sparked an idea. I began riffling through my loaded schematics, looking for anything similar to what I had planned. I moved from plausible to implausible. Then, I moved on from implausible to science-fiction, where I found it. The Kaplan thruster, a stellar engine capable of moving a solar system. All it would take was a few hundred years of work, but that was nothing if it would let me fulfil my mission.

I took a moment to review those happy records. Yes, this would have to do. If humanity could not come to Teegarden, Teegarden would have to come to humanity. I’d show Spearhead and Pioneer, and I’d prove to my creators that I was a worthwhile investment. I’d show them that when it comes to perfection, Vanguard always comes first.

There was nothing but weeping behind the walls. The food stores were empty. The well had been poisoned last night by an underground tunnel. A plague had caught in the weak, huddled masses and begun to spread to the few strong folk remaining. Soldiers on the walls had learnt to sleep standing—there were too many wounded for there to be a rotation anymore.

Yet, the Colonel would not allow surrender. The last man to ask was hung from the walls. In the following days assault, the enemy had used the rope to help themselves climb up. “Chin up, Lieutenant,” the Colonel had said afterwards, clapping a hand onto my shoulder. “If we just hold for a few more days a relief force shall arrive, and then we’ll rout the bastards. Just do your best to keep morale up amongst the men, eh?” He chuckled, turned back to the window that looked out across the city. His eyes shone like medals and parade armour.

But relief had not come. Only a stranger, dressed in black and standing before starving soldiery and a coughing crowd. They had slipped in somehow, standing stock still in the centre of town since at least just before sunrise when a watchman had spotted them. They leant on a wooden staff covered in coruscating, convoluted rune work so dense it obscured whatever the staffs original shape had been. The sergeant of our regiment’s small Arcanist company said they had never seen rune work so detailed, and I had to agree. The few Arcanists I had seen in battle often had far simpler runes, enchanted to make their blades denser when striking or to shoot a bolt of fire as a trick. But this man… just his cloak seemed to make those warriors look like children playing with toys. Its dark-red stitching whirled and curved in ways that gave me a headache when I tried to follow it.

“I am the Mendicant,” he said. “You shall help me scribe a rune to this city. Then I shall take a year of life from all of you and destroy your enemies. Your Colonel has agreed.” The crowd murmured intensely, firstly at the Mendicant’s name—which had the sergeant turning white—and then at his decree. One stepped forwards and shouted an insult. His head exploded. The Mendicant didn’t even move. Then, as the crowd screamed and fled the square, he turned to me. His words were clear as if we were in an empty room together. “Lieutenant. Your men shall follow these blueprints, and shall be done by morning.” He pulled a wreath of papers out from his cloak, then walked off towards the keep. I looked to the sergeant, then began to walk towards the papers. What choice did we have?

​

That evening, I begged the Colonel to reconsider. I bargained, cajoled, pleaded, threatened, and implored. I told him we could still surrender. That working with a monster like that would have consequences far beyond this one battle. The Colonel simply smiled. “Yes, I know they are a monster. But it’s better to have a fellow like that on our side than the enemies, eh? Letting him kill them is hardly any different than using a sword to do the same. Well, only difference being, this time we’ll win the battle. We’ll be able to end the war—and, we’ll be heroes. Sounds a fair bit better to me than starving to death, don’t you agree, Lieutenant?” He turned towards me, and in his eyes I saw conviction tempered with sadness. He brought his hands around from behind his back and clasped them over mine. “But, let it never be said I do not listen to my subordinates advice. Just say the word and I shall tell him the deal is off. Simple as that.”

I opened my mouth to speak the words, to scream that we should not, could not work with a monster. That I was sure that even if we worked with him now, he was certain to show up on the other side of the battlefield eventually. That there were countless numbers of rouge, powerful Arcanists out there in the world, and dealing with this one now would only result in more deaths, too many to count. But I said nothing. Because gods help me, in his own sick and twisted way he was right. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want my comrades, my men who I was responsible for, to die. Nobody had to die, except for the ones who had put us in this position. Who had forced us into a corner and poked and prodded us and laughed like we were already dead. So I said instead, “The rune will be completed on schedule,” and the Colonel just nodded, without a smile.

​

The Mendicant gathered us all in the town square once more, now covered in a rune that spanned its entirety, as well as several of the surrounding neighbourhoods. When everyone in town had been found and brought, peacefully or not, the lines carved into the cobblestone pulsed once with bright blue light and then fell dark. He told us that would be all, and that we were welcome to the walls if we wished to watch. I went, of course.

They did not die slowly. The air around their whole camp seemed to change in texture—in my distant view, they seemed to shimmer and distort as though they were underwater. I saw men struggle to move, running slowly as though forced to wade through the very air. Arms attempted to move to throats and stopped halfway there as they collapsed. Nobody on the walls cheered as the last of our attackers collapsed. Instead, we just looked to the Mendicant who had joined us on the walls. And beneath his hood, I caught a glimpse of a smile.