Raven felt an overwhelming rush of sheer physicality as Juniper began to burn through the giant monster’s bone, a sensation doubtlessly provided by the Anklet of Reactive Radiance. It was raw physical power, an imnse amount of it, whose like she’d only felt perhaps a dozen tis before (Uther’s many adventures being what they were). She saw Juniper darting forward, to Valencia, the only one of them not covered in Prince’s Invulnerability, and knew that disaster was incoming. With a fine instinct honed by decades of adventuring, Raven moved without thinking, toward Pallida, who was standing stock-still.
Raven grabbed Pallida’s arm, then took a stretched-out, glacially slow mont to look around and see what it was that Juniper was responding to. Her eyes found the enormous head of Mo Rath, his hundreds of eyes, his serpentine neck, and a look she dimly recognized as anger. The eyes lit up, the world exploded around her.
She kept her tight grip on Pallida, helped, perhaps, by the bone that Juniper was burning, or by the fact that Prince’s Invulnerability wouldn’t allow a tight grip to be undone if it would require such wrenching force that the protected individual might be hurt. The two of them went flying through the air, and Raven tried to keep her eyes open, alert to the world around her. In her experience, it was far too easy to go into pure reaction at a ti like this, which was normally fine, if you were in a situation that you were trained for. When in the great wild worlds of adventure though, instincts couldn’t always be trusted, because sotis they would lead down the wrong path. It ant balancing on a knife’s edge sotis, trusting instinct because that was the only way you’d be able to respond fast enough, and keeping alert enough that instinct could be overridden.
They arced through the air and then began to fall. Raven felt it when Prince’s Invulnerability wore off, as the winds suddenly began to buffet them hard enough to hurt, and bits of detritus pinged against her armor. They had been spinning, but her cape had stretched itself out to put an end to that, because her Shadow’s Cloak was a good, loyal entad, one that often acted on its own when there were threats against Raven.
“We’re falling,” said Pallida, quite uselessly. She was shouting to be heard over the wind of their descent. “Don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” replied Raven. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. She looked behind her, at her cloak, which was doing its best to slow their fall. “Landing will be hard.” It was unlikely that they were going to die, but it wasn’t going to be the cushioned landing that a tattoo could have provided.
Uther had Thoughts about falling as a thod of injury or death, as Uther had Thoughts about almost everything. Uther had thrown one of his early enemies from the top of a castle, back in the era of the Dark King, only to have learned later that sa day that there existed a simple but expensive spell that might have been tattooed on him. Uther hadn’t quite flown into a rage, but he had castigated a young Everett for not knowing about it, and when the ensuing manhunt produced nothing, it had ant a long chain of events that eventually ended with the villain getting his head stomped in by a giant. After that whole affair had reached its conclusion, Uther had declared that anyone worth their salt would survive a fall, no matter how fatal and unrecoverable it seed to be. It wasn’t quite the first instance of narrative thinking, but it was a rather stark one.
And then, much later on, when the normally circumspect and secretive Uther had progressed to becoming nearly impossible to talk to, after Vervain had died (or been killed, whichever way one chose to phrase it), it was then that Uther changed his tune. When heinous individuals ca to his attention, the kind that he could kill with a snap of his fingers, he beca more elaborate about their deaths, less direct. The practice of trial by adversity dated to long before Uther, but he had brought it back, a tradition used in place of an execution. He sotis said that he liked for soone to be able to prove themselves worthwhile, but it was a twisted form of worthiness. Half the ti, he would sit them down for a talk afterward about how they had survived, and what they might accomplish. morably, Uther had thrown a thief from the top of a tower and declared it a trial by adversity after the fact.
In retrospect, perhaps that was his views on narrative taking hold. He had gone from being irate that a villain had escaped, to actively encouraging escape, knowing that there was so margin for error in these thods, a way of creating plot threads from nothing. Raven had read through Degenerate Cycles, his last real book, but she hadn’t fully put the pieces together until she was falling through the air.
Midway down, Raven had a rush of mories, all brief, all recent, all laid on top of each other, with Juniper the only variable. He had used a unicorn bone, it seed, attempting to save Valencia from the might of Mo Rath.
They hit the ground one after the other, Pallida first, Raven second, both rolling to redirect their montum, both standing up and stretching out to make sure that they weren’t too injured.
“Just like the good old days, isn’t it?” asked Pallida, looking up at the collosal body of Mo Rath, still standing, but swaying slightly. “Probably too much to hope that’s a lethal hit.”
“It wouldn’t have killed itself,” said Raven, staring up, trying futilely to get so understanding of what had happened.
“Healed back most of what Bethel did,” said Pallida with a nod. “Prince’s saved us?”
“Yes,” said Raven.
“Acceptable use of my funds, I suppose,” said Pallida with a sniff.
They watched as Bethel zipped through the sky, fully enlarged. Another counterattack from Mo Rath was a possibility, and she was all out of wishes. How many thousands were inside of her now? How many of them civilians?
After Uther had gone, Raven had gotten used to casualties, to hard choices, to operating without a safety net: that was what being the Head Librarix had entailed. It was tempting, now that she knew who Juniper was, to fall back into the old habit she’d had, the one where she consoled herself that Uther would fix things, that he would win, as he always did … but that was Uther’s unique brand of magic, and if it was ever to be true for Juniper, Raven couldn’t see it just yet. With Juniper, there was a chance he could fail.
Bethel sliced through Mo Rath, moving as fast as she could, the anticipated counterattack never coming. When she ca out the other side, the spray of flesh and blood was visible from the ground.
“He was burning its bones,” said Raven. “I think that might have been --”
Mo Rath lurched as its many knees gave out beneath it. The creature was so big it appeared to be falling in slow motion, the alarming kind of way that very large things sotis moved, so full of energy that a shockwave was surely coming, or if not that, then at least death and destruction for people close by. Raven had seen mountains lurch, oceans briefly rise into the sky, and in one case, watched a floating island drop to the ground. Mo Rath falling down wasn’t so serious a problem as those, but it was nonetheless breathtaking in the way those things had been. It crashed to the ground and sent a fierce wind their way, one strong enough that Raven had to strain against the wind.
“The deathblow, yeah,” said Pallida. “Good on our boy.”
Raven stayed silent, waiting for the creature to rise. When it failed to, she let out the breath she’d been holding in. “Without our help.”
“More or less,” said Pallida with a nod. “That’s always how it was in the old days, wasn’t it?”
Raven looked at her. “I don’t want to talk about the old days.”
“Don’t you?” asked Pallida. “I’ll grant that I wasn’t there for as much of them as you were, nor do I rember them as well, given a lot of my involvent was when I was younger or older, but my recollection was that you loved to talk about the old days, back when the adventures were fresh. And even now, when we have the big etings, it’s practically the only thing out of your mouth.”
“I don’t want to fight,” said Raven.
“Who’s looking to fight?” asked Pallida. She swung her trident around for a mont, gazing at the tip, then planted the butt of it in the soft earth. They were standing in what was probably a small park, with bits of flesh and gore around them.
“You’re always looking to fight,” said Raven. “Always on the defensive, always looking to get your jabs in. You weren’t always like this.”
“Eh,” said Pallida. She looked around. “Do you think they’ll pick us up?”
“I don’t know,” said Raven.
They sat in awkward silence for a mont. Raven’s cloak fluttered behind her, in a wind of its own, patiently waiting to be useful.
“It’s always easier to be nice and good when things are going your way,” Pallida finally said. “Maybe I’m not, in this lifeti, but there were tis when I was the best thief in the world, the best of anyone at infiltration, exfiltration, recovery of goods, I was an explorer of forbidden places, a spy, a saboteur … and the thing was, when that was who I was, it was always easy to just be cock of the walk, to let my deeds speak for themselves, but when I’ve got a life like this, and people ask what I’ve done lately, and all I have to answer with is that I haven’t, I’ve just been sitting around waiting for various things, living off the largesse of past lives … I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You feel worthless,” said Raven. “Worthless and small, like you don’t stack up to others.” She looked at the corpse of Mo Rath. There had been creatures on it. It was probably too hopeful to think that they were all dead. Maybe mopping up would be her role in this. She grimaced.
“Yeah,” said Pallida.
“What was your excuse, five hundred years ago?” asked Raven. “You had deeds to your na, at fifteen. Uther had sent you on a half dozen missions that he couldn’t have accomplished by himself, the three of us,” she choked up slightly. “We had our own adventures, separate from him. We had done things. Maybe not so much as Uther had, but in any other age, we’d have been legends, we were legends in our own right. You didn’t have an excuse.”
“We were in love, Raven,” said Pallida. She’d been keeping her inky armor down, so that her pink skin was visible, face clear, but she turned away and let the armor cover her fully. “Seventeen hundred years and you’ve never been in love? Never felt that pull toward another person? It’s not so excuse, it’s -- how could you deny it, if you’d felt what I felt? How could you fault soone for rushing headlong into a bad decision?”
Raven stayed silent. It was the season for old wounds, it seed. In more than a hundred years at the Infinite Library, she had eventually co to think of Uther only once or twice a day, and then usually when he was relevant to their ongoing work. Granted, that was often, but nothing like it was now among the Council of Arches, with people who had known Uther personally. And there was Arthur, and old stories from Juniper, with new context brought to his adventures, new tidbits that were either ntioned in Amaryllis’ notes or brought up directly by Juniper. If Uther was Arthur, then so many of the things that Uther had seen on Aerb were echoes of the gas he’d played.
There had been one too many unpleasant trips down mory lane.
“The worst part,” began Raven. “The worst part about your relationship with Dahlia was that it left out in the cold. I had kept wondering why the two of you were doing things without , why we had lost that sisterly solidarity. I would co back to camp needing soone to talk to about the horrors I’d seen, or if not that, then at least soone to be there for , soone to distract , or take my mind off what I’d seen. And you weren’t, neither of you, because you had cut out of your lives.”
Pallida looked off at the horizon and twirled her trident for a mont. “Yeah,” she said.
“Yeah?” asked Raven.
“What do you want to say?” asked Pallida. “We were shitty friends. I should have told you that I had a thing for Helio, I should have told you when we first kissed, I should have let all the petty drama of it wash over you so that you could forget about the stench of death or the feel of soone dying in your arms, I just … I wanted sothing for myself, sothing that I didn’t have to share. And look, it’s lifetis ago, barely rembered. I have a policy of not apologizing for things that happened in past lives, because if I was going to do that, I would have to apologize for, I don’t know, everything under the sun. I’m sorry. It’s a aly-mouthed apology, because I’m not even saying that I wouldn’t do it again, but maybe I would try harder to puzzle out a way through that ss, if -- incoming.”
Giant bats were flying toward them, with razor sharp fangs, not quite so many of them as to constitute a cloud, but enough that they were an identifiable mass.
At least that was a problem that would be easier to deal with than the personal.
“What the fuck, Finch?” I asked. “You ca here ahead of Mo Rath?”
“Who?” asked Finch, raising an eyebrow.
“Mo Rath,” I said. “The big thing with a hundred legs that I just put down?”
“We don’t have ti for this,” said Finch. He looked past , to where Bethel was standing. “Bethel, are we going to be stationary for a while?”
“We can be,” said Bethel with a nod. “There are still dead and wounded all over the place, including lying under the enormous corpse. Better that you make things quick. You’re thinking of employing the ti out?”
“I am,” nodded Finch. He signaled to one of the gimmals standing behind him, using a quick gestural language that only used one hand. I watched closely, hoping to acquire it, but had no imdiate luck. “Who’s going to be in it?” he asked.
“You, myself, Valencia, Malus, if that’s her na,” I said. “The gimmals too, if they have sothing to contribute. Bethel will be part of it, if she’s able, but I’m doubtful.”
Finch nodded, then signed more to one of the gimmal, which still didn’t trigger a ping for , despite my active will. A one-handed sign language would be handy, even if the gimmal language was sure to have so peculiarities to it given their gravity sense and the fact they only had one arm. The gimmal responded to Finch’s signs by holding his hand forward, then moving himself around in a small circle, roughly ten feet wide. As he went, his hand began glowing blue, building in intensity and covering more of his arm, until it was glowing through the seams in the shimrplate. I stepped inside it without being asked to; I had seen the spell used once before, back in Silmar City, under extrely different circumstances. When the spell was completed, we were cast into darkness.
“Alright,” I said as I lit my hand up. “Now we should have ti.”
(I should note that at this point, I had been awake for sothing like a hundred and seventy hours, which included the Spelunker’s Stroll, two fights with Harold, dissociative ditation, another fight against three people who’d been sent to kill , and all the business with Mo Rath. I had leveled up, which was a convenient cure for almost everything that ailed , but it was still a very long ti to be awake, and I was starting to feel the drag of it. I’d opted not to get Kenner’s Eye when we’d been tattoo shopping, sothing that I was deeply regretting now, given that Still Magic was sitting stock still at just above 100 points until the next ti I slept. I wasn’t tired, but I was wanting for sleep.)
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“Tell what the fuck is going on,” said Finch.
“Fucking you first,” I said with an exasperated sigh.
“May I?” asked Valencia. She looked intimidating in the torchlight of my hand, spiked red armor and crown of thorns giving her a particularly savage look.
“Sure,” I said.
“Malus Lartin was a deep cover operative placed as a teacher at Sound and Silence by the Empire of Common Cause under the direction of Uniquities.” That much, at least, I had figured out, but I doubted that I would get any credit for catching on after she’d shown up in shimrplate. “Her role was to write covert reports on what was happening here, as well as to be a first responder in the event of so ergency that the magocracy couldn’t or wouldn’t handle. That’s all in addition to other, less defensible covert missions that Uniquities would sotis send her on as part of their attempts at wrangling power across Aerb.”
“She cheats,” Finch said to Malus, who was looking at Valencia with alarm.
“Be that as it may,” said Valencia. “At so point in the past six months, Malus -- that is her real na, by the way -- realized that sothing was happening, and sent back a report -- a series of reports -- which eventually found their way to Finch. Based on what I know of how Uniquities operates, Finch was read in on Malus and they began trying to gain more information about what was happening. Threat level would have been low enough at that point that it would be handled through cryptographically secure express mail. Eventually, the threat level was raised, at which point Finch decided that he needed -- wait, no.”
She had been watching Finch in the dim light of my flaming hand. “Got sothing?” I asked.
“Finch knows more than the last ti I looked at him,” said Valencia. She turned to . “Or maybe I just wasn’t looking closely enough.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “What does he know?”
“Uther was unique,” said Valencia. “Maybe the most unique individual in the entire history of Aerb. Our recent friends weren’t the only ones who noticed that. They weren’t the only ones who made plans, in the event that soone else like him ca along.” She looked back at Finch. “I’m … not sure exactly when Juniper got flagged.”
“He’s confird now,” said Finch. “Or as close to confird as we think we’re going to get.”
“And that’s why you sent in,” I said. “Without so much as a whiff of information or support.”
“No support?” asked Finch. “You had a seasoned veteran of Uniquities and one of the deadliest vibration mages on the plane, and in theory, you’d have had Malus too. You had your own team. And besides all that, you weren’t even supposed to be doing anything, you were deniable backup in case things went pear-shaped, off accomplishing your own goals that I’d fervently hoped wouldn’t intersect with those of Uniquities.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “And how did that turn out?”
“We don’t know,” said Finch. “Because like I said, Harold is still out there, and I’ve got a newsflash for you, we still need to get him.”
“Harold, an entity that you told fucking nothing about,” I said.
“Harold, who I didn’t know about until you went to that ditation class,” said Finch. “So there was no way I could have told you, even if I’d wanted to. And once you were exposed, you and yours were suspect, because there’s no way to tell whether or not Harold’s got to soone.”
“Tell what you know,” I said. “If you want my help going after him, I need more than that stale report that Oberlin gave . Finch, we sent you an ergency letter and you stonewalled us.”
Finch stared at . “We don’t know how Harold works,” he said. “It’s sothing like soul magic, but the anolia can’t pick up on it, and there are no other thods we know of to detect it. Harold changes people. So far as we can tell, he can do small, subtle changes to one of them at a ti, or big, ham-fisted changes to all of them at once. Did you happen to catch the makeshift choir out there?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Big, ham-fisted changes,” said Finch. “But now that the big guy was summoned, you might have noticed that the choir has stopped, and all the people singing their little one-note song have returned to whatever it was they were doing.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” I said. “I was dealing with bigger things.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Finch. “But the people Harold has his hooks into are to the winds now, capable of being steered by him at any mont, so long as both he and they stay in Li’o. And given that Harold is who he is, he’s going to use them again, more aggressively this ti, and my best guess right now is that he’s going to summon another one of those things that you’re so proud of having killed.”
I almost, almost said sothing boastful and dumb like ‘well then I’ll just kill the second, and the third’, but I wasn’t so awash in my victory that I could forget the sheer destruction that Mo Rath had brought down on Li’o and the athenaeum. When his body had co down, it had flattened buildings, and before that, he had been doing targeted destruction. Li’o might recover, eventually, but I had no idea what the death toll was sitting at. More worryingly, the hells toll was also probably pretty high, given how total the destruction was, and how difficult it would be to get to so of the bodies.
“And who is he?” I asked. “What does Harold actually want? I’ve heard what he had to say, but it was, frankly, nonsense.”
“You talked to him through one of his puppets?” asked Finch.
“No,” I said. “I talked to him when he tried to get in my head. It didn’t take.”
“Then you know a thousand hells more than I do,” said Finch. “I spoke with him once, shortly before he was ported out. Seed like a snot to , typical end-of-the-world cultist but with a heap more power behind him, grabbing onto soone’s head to force out words. Tried to recruit .”
“Yeah,” I said. “ too. He talked about the World Lords, which Mo Rath seed to be one of, and told that he was trying to bring about the end of the world. Not sure how he thought Mo Rath was going to do that.”
“What’s a World Lord?” asked Valencia, staring hard at Finch. I briefly looked at Malus, who had her eyes fixed on Finch.
“Really starting to not like you very much,” said Finch, frowning at Valencia. “Fine. One of Uniquities' many duties is containing the World Lords. If three of them get out at any given ti, it’s supposedly ga over for Aerb and every plane with even a remote attachnt to it, hells included. No real details on the chanism, and obviously no proof that’s true. The identity and nature of the World Lords is classified beyond belief, and most of it is guesswork, but there’s already one of them, living in an exclusion zone.”
“Fel Seed,” I said.
Finch stared at . “Not a lucky guess?” he asked.
“An educated guess,” I replied. I closed my eyes and let out a sigh. “That makes Mo Rath especially dangerous.”
“Why?” asked Finch, raising an eyebrow.
“If you go more than a mile from him, you forget about him,” I said. “Can’t think about him, can’t rember him, probably so other stuff, none of it confird too well, but I’m pretty confident in it. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to rember the corpse, but maybe not even that if another is summoned. He seed intent on destroying the city, but if you’re right, then maybe the worst case would be that he went off into the countryside where everyone would forget about him. And then we would be one World Lord away from total destruction. If you’re right.”
“So you’ll help?” asked Finch.
“I was always going to help,” I said.
Finch had so stories about Harold, told as quickly as they could be, before our limited supply of oxygen ran out. Valencia interjected a few tis, when he was being loose with the truth, and sotis he would correct himself, while other tis he would mutter sothing about classifications or information hygiene, then continue on.
Harold had been a thorn in Uniquities’ side for a long ti, and building information on him had been difficult. It had been as Oberlin said, little hints and clues here and there, the motif of the flaming man appearing incidentally in various, seemingly unconnected places. Every ti there was so evidence of Harold, it was more information added to the pile, more information about how he operated, who he was, what he wanted, and what his limits were.
In brief, Harold operated like a more powerful soul mage, one that anolia couldn’t detect, and one that could operate without needing touch. His modus operandi appeared to be infiltrating or co-opting cults of various persuasions until they were working towards his goals, which very much appeared to be the end of the world, though the justifications for it by cult adherents varied, leaving Harold himself sowhat opaque. Like many soul mages, Harold had a solid core of carefully cultivated and ticulously sculpted supporters, people who moved around with him when he inevitably fled from one failed attempt at ending the world to the other.
There were a few scary things about Harold, from Finch’s perspective. The first was that he left virtually no trace of himself. When he bugged out, he bugged out hard, completely ditching whatever project had been in the works. Since his normal mode of operation was to not have anyone actually know that he was there, there was very little sign when he left. Second, his geographic range appeared to be pretty damned big, all things considered, which ant that he could potentially settle in with a cult that was on the other side of the city from the place where he was physically present, which in turn ant even less sign of him. And third, maybe most importantly, Harold never stopped. There was no gap in his activity whatsoever: as soon as he’d fled from one failed plan, he was on to the next, starting the sa day, if that was feasible. He didn’t take breaks, and he didn’t seem to have needs, or at least not anything that would slow him down. He was just incredibly bloody-minded about the whole world ending thing.
Fortunately, Harold didn’t seem to be very smart. He didn’t tend to iterate on plans that were inches away from working, and he very rarely aid at local destruction of any kind, nor did he put much effort into weakening the institutions or people that were constantly trying to stop him. That wasn’t to say that he lacked a faculty for long-term planning, but there were ways in which his various plots to destroy the world could have been enormously improved by having a human advisor.
“He used to run at the first sign of trouble,” said Finch. “That he’s not doing that now should be incredibly concerning to everyone. Maybe he knows that he’s blown, maybe he’s reached so critical mass of people, maybe he’s finally taking the advice of soone smarter than him, I have no idea, but if thousands of singers were enough to summon the big guy, what’s to say that he can’t do it again?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Or, maybe just the total number of people he’s got available.”
“And if I were Harold, I would be building back up to full strength,” said Finch. “He can work on anyone with a sufficient disconnect from reality, and if he does have a mortal advisor, they probably would have told him to do so things that he should have done years ago. Putting drugs into the tap water, kidnapping people and forcing them into altered states, all kinds of things. We’re pretty sure that he’s rate limited in what he’s able to do, but --”
“How do you know?” asked Valencia.
“What do you an?” asked Finch.
“You’re uncertain that it’s true,” said Valencia. “I wanted to know what led you to that conclusion.”
“We fought him,” said Finch. “Last ti he tried so shit like this, he got close, close enough that we were breaking down doors in order to stop the ritual-in-progress. It wasn’t the singing, it was so other attack on the world, rune magic, near the Lexian forge. As we went in, we were facing down singular threats, one after the other, low-tier mages, sotis twos and threes, but usually not. The clairvoyance team assigned to the operation said it was a sudden change, individuals called to action. Could be sothing else, but yes, our after-action analysis was that he was turning them into soldiers, one by one, as quickly as he could.”
“All shit you could have told before I went to S&S,” I said.
“Again,” huffed Finch. “I didn’t know that it was Harold until you found out that it was. And there was no way that I was bringing you in on this, not when it’s so far outside of your demonstrated training and abilities.”
“It’s also against protocol,” said Valencia. She turned to . “If they thought you were the next Uther, they would keep you at arm’s length, because institutions rarely survived contact with Uther untouched.”
“Yeah, if he were here, he would tear Uniquities to the ground, no doubt,” I said. “Deep cover agents working against the athenaeum, ill-considered nation-building projects, subverting international diplomacy and the rule of law, operating outside the purview of the consent of the governed? Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that he’d let stand.”
“Uther was no saint,” said Finch.
“I know,” I said. “But I’m probably more familiar with his biography than you are.”
Finch snorted. “I very much doubt that,” he replied.
It wasn’t really the ti for retorts, so I let it drop. “Point being, if we’re going to be working together on this Harold thing, I need to know that you’re not keeping anything from .”
“There are things that I know that would literally lt your brain,” said Finch. He tapped the side of his head. “There are things in this mind that would make the very world scream in agony. You literally can’t know everything that I know.”
“Fine,” I said. “Infohazards and other tic threats aside then. We’re on the level?”
“As much as we need to be,” nodded Finch, which seed like about as much assurance as I was going to get from him.
“He doesn’t trust you,” said Valencia. “But he trusts you enough that you should be able to accomplish this together.” She looked at . “He’s on the side of good.”
“Good,” I said. “Then we should get out of this bubble and go track him down. I assu you have a way to do that?”
Finch shifted uncomfortably. “Yes,” he said.
“He’s consulting with Doris Finch,” said Valencia.
“How in the hells did you know that?” asked Finch, staring at her. “I can buy that you have powers, incredible powers, but I’m not that transparent, your special ability doesn’t make you that good at connecting the dots.”
“Special ability?” asked Malus, looking between us.
“Long story,” I said. “Finch, you’re using Doris’ probabilistic vision thing?”
Finch grit his teeth, then nodded.
“And it can help us to find Harold?” I asked.
Finch nodded again.
“One of his cultivated associates, actually,” said Valencia. Finch gave her a nasty look. “In the interests of disclosure.”
“Fine,” I said. “We can have a long conversation about all that at a later date, so long as Doris is willing to play ball.”
Finch grunted once, then gave a quick gesture to the gimmal who had cast the spell. The blackness around us dropped, and I was back in the command room again.
“Need to kill him?” asked Bethel.
“No,” I said. “Finch, do you have coordinates?”
“I have a spread,” said Finch. “One second.”
“Oh, allow ,” said Bethel. She splayed out a hand to her left, and just within the bounding box of her illusion, a map of the city of Li’o appeared, with a section of it colored in like a heatmap, red in one particular building, with orange surrounding it, the whole block in yellow, and everything else in blue. “I can have you there in twenty seconds.”
“The people Harold has are his captives,” I said. “I’d really prefer to keep them all alive, if possible.”
Bethel gave a slight frown.
I said, hesitating only slightly.
asked Bethel, her tone quizzical.
I replied.
replied Bethel.
“Everything okay?” asked Finch as Bethel and I carried on our silent conversation.
“Perfectly fine,” I said. “Just having a chat.”
“They do that sotis,” said Valencia. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”
I said.
replied Bethel.
I said. “Give a sec.”
I went down into my soul and was relieved to see that the thread was still there. I raced down along it and looked at her soul for a mont, then down into her spirit to make sure that it was okay. So far as I could see, she was just as she’d been when I had tamped down on the paralyzing . All that was comforting, in a way, but it didn’t explain why she wasn’t responding to Parson’s Voice.
“Alright,” I said, coming to. “Amaryllis is presud alive. As soon as Raven and Pallida co in, we’ll hit Harold’s compound hard and fast.” I looked to Bethel. “You’re grabbing them soon?”
“Hrm,” Bethel replied. “It would appear they’ve run into trouble with the remains of Mo Rath.”
“Remains?” I asked.
“The creatures that inhabited it,” said Bethel. “They’re strangers in a strange land, one they might adapt to.”
I closed my eyes for a mont. “Fuck.”
“Creatures?” asked Finch.
“Mo Rath wasn’t just a giant beast,” I said. “He was an ecosystem all his own, and so of the things living on him are tough enough to tear through shimrplate, if that gives you any idea what kind of problem Li’o is going to be dealing with.”
“How contagious?” asked Finch, narrowing his eyes. “Li’o is pretty much toast, but could these creatures spread? Breed?”
“No idea,” I said.
Pallida fought with her trident, and Raven with her sword. They were both world-class fighters, both with top-of-the-line entads. There were, unfortunately, a lot of the bats, and they moved rather fast.
The bats weren’t coordinated, which was a relief, and they didn’t seem to have the force necessary to bite through Raven’s banded armor, though she could feel it flex (worrying, given what forces it was capable of withstanding). Unfortunately, there were too many of them, and their bite gripped tightly, which ant that Raven soon had bats clamping down onto her arms and legs, beating their wings, pulling at her and putting her off-balance, even as her sword cut its way through more of them. Her amulet protected her head and face, her cloak whipped around and strangled any that tried to get behind her, but her hands were unprotected, and eventually one of the bats sank its teeth in, piercing straight through her palm.
Pallida was there in an instant, stabbing through the bat with her trident, heedless of the danger to herself. They fought back to back for a mont, clearing each other, slicing and stabbing in a coordinated way, inches from injuring each other. In truth, that was how they had always been best, when they were working together with purpose, instead of talking. They probably would never have beco friends if not for the fact that they were permanently beset on all sides by enemies that needed to be dealt with, but those had been their circumstances.
After two dozen of the bats were dead, no more seed to be coming, and Pallida speared through the last of those that were hanging onto Raven.
“Just like the old days, eh?” asked Pallida, panting slightly and allowing her armor to co down and show her face. “You took a hit there -- here, I’ve got a fairy.” She reached into the inky black armor and pulled forward a dead marzipan fairy, from the jar that Uther had used once upon a ti until it was superseded by better entads and more powerful magics. Raven ate it down, swallowing as few tis as possible: marzipan healing had so bad associations.
Not long after, before their breathing had returned to normal, Bethel descended down from the sky, extending long ropes that wrapped around them, and, ten seconds later, put them inside.
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