Darkness offered protection, but the deeper they went into the Kymellian Clan's civilian district, the more strongly both the Gene-modded Warriors and the Praetorian Guard sensed the sorcerous presence in the air. The air was silent to the point of congealing. The lightproof Steel Dome cut off the starlight, and the night was so thick it seemed one could carve off whole slabs of it and smear them across the settlement's white walls.
As a Praetorian Guard, Derrick Xian knew far more about the Outer Dimensions than anyone present.
He knew that terrifying psychic entities existed in the Outer Dimensions. He also knew that there were dreadful aberrations in the universe so closely linked to the Outer Dimensions that they had completely escaped the path of evolution, controlling and parasitizing shells in the Material Plane. By comparison, although the Kymellian Clan did not rely entirely on the Outer Dimensions to survive and reproduce, these Mutants' true danger lay in their ignorance of the knowledge they possessed.
Kree Empire wizards would not teach the Kymellian Clan's sorcerers a complete system of knowledge. Even the Kree Empire wizards themselves could not fully comprehend the works left behind by the higher intelligence that created the Kree. The Kree did not even know whether the cells of that higher intelligence were built upon carbon frameworks or supported by silicon and ammonia. Everything had been drowned in legends and myths. The Kree could only understand that they themselves were products of genetic engineering—thus, the Kree Empire wizards' cataloging of dangerous knowledge concerning the Outer Dimensions was utterly fragmented and highly random. The Kymellian Clan wizards educated by them were no better—now, these Kymellian Clan sorcerers were like people standing before a dense forest at night, shouting loudly and hoping someone would hand them a particular