To the esteemed, illustrious, and most magnanimous Inquisitor Sijik:
I, Master-Advisor Oldsmith, must apologize. I apologize in each way and every way. I apologize in all the ways you know and do not. I have been temporarily indisposed, however, due to an injury sustained to my person.
The situation within the gate is worse than we feared, I’m afraid. There are attacks on a daily basis, and the Gate Lord is quickly losing control of the situation. Why, just recently, an agent of Aviary destroyed several buildings and slaughtered innumerable guards. The death toll, I heard, is just under a thousand.
A thousand!
Can you imagine losing a thousand Pathbearers in a single day within your own gate? Unheard of, the scandal that would appear back in the Capitol’s papers at such atrocious incompetence.
But enough about the Gate Lord, let me again assure you that I’m doing all that I can. I will inform the fool of the Educator's coming, but he is obstinate, short-sighted, and arrogant. I fear that she will flay him with her wit and her might. And I, feeble scholar, delighted in the joy of the arts, and silver-tongued automaton that I am, can do nothing more than my best.
And that might not be enough. I await the Educator’s judgment and shall beg for her mercy.
But I also beg of you, Inquisitor Sijik, to inform her of what lies ahead.
To inform her of the unreasonable, irrational actions that she can expect in this place, and the great danger that lurks.
Finally, I would ask you to redouble your efforts in trying to find Lady Stormhalt. I would never tell you how to do your job, but you understand that Lord Stormhalt is a dear friend of mine.
And if anything happens to his dearest kin, even as estranged as they are, it would see me drastically diminished. I pray that your glorious efforts may bring about many Skill Evolutions to come.
I will do what I can.
Yours truly, Master Advisor Oldsmith.
-Message of reply from “Master-Advisor Oldsmith” to Inquisitor Sijik
70 (I)
Base
“Well, your slugs seem to be eating well, at least.” Such were Shiv’s first words to Guardshead Leu, moments after Uva pulled him across the district.
They were once again hiding in Leu’s home. Everyone had made it through. However, the Graven Cage was nowhere to be seen.
As Shiv searched for the Necromantic construct, Uva’s thoughts guided him. She cast a memory into his mind, one of Leu applying a blanket of invisibility over the cage and hiding it within her dimensional enclosure. Shiv laughed. It turned out that the thing he sought was exactly where he’d been looking the entire time.
Somewhere in the air above the feeding slugs, the Graven Cage hovered in wait. Waiting to be used on a certain Animancy Core. An Animancy Core that might be a bit harder than he expected to secure.
“Master Shiv!” Leu gasped, her voice brimming with excitement. She almost touched him but held back, afraid to disrespect his person. Her single red eye was bright with enthusiasm as she gestured between all his allies. “When you said that you would return with assistance and aid, this is more than I could have possibly imagined. I—just the Great Valor Thann alone…” She stared, her eye practically alight with boundless joy. “Two Heroes, yourself, and the Legend… Truly, truly, I thank you.” She began to laugh. “Soon, we will take everything from Confriga. Soon he will die slowly and miserably, as everything he ever dreamed of turns to ash.”
She looked down at her enclosure, at her slugs, and let out a satisfied breath. “I will see him among the many dead, his body dedicated to my beasts, and at long last will my clutch brother know peace.”
“Yeah, about the many bodies thing…” Shiv muttered. He looked at the mounds of waste the slugs were feeding on, and he noticed that there were many, many more dead bodies than he saw the first time—there weren’t just a few dead bodies in there.
There was already a mound, now it’s more like a mountain, he thought. “What exactly is happening in the gate? I’m pretty sure I was just gone for a little while.”
“Yes, and in those few days, the Gate Lord has unleashed his fury and ire upon the populace. Anyone that he suspected, he killed; and those he questioned were most of the city’s least trustworthy individuals—this included slaves, mercenaries, bureaucrats, and representatives from other nations. Most diplomats are now constrained to their homes and need to check in with a Voltaic escort if they want to do anything. The slaves have little choice in the matter, and additional efforts have been inflicted upon them. Psychomancers now intermittently scan their minds to make sure no subversive thoughts or behaviors take place.”
Shiv wondered why Leu sounded so enthused about that fact before she continued her explanation. “This means that Lesser Marshal Confriga’s personal Psychomancers are being exhausted. They are forced to review countless minds. He sees subversion everywhere. He sees incompetence as subversion. He sees missing information as subversion. He sees anything he dislikes in anyone he dislikes as potentially aiding in Aviary’s efforts to overthrow him, or as hindering his efforts to slay this accursed spy.”
Leu laughed viciously. “He even gave the spy a name: The Corpse Shedder. And there is a mithril bounty of three million on the Corpse Shedder’s head. Certain fool mercenaries tried to fake the body using a bit of Biomancy, but Confriga is not nearly as stupid as they were, as stupid as he actually is. And so, some of them have already joined the others in feeding my slugs.”
“But you are not suspected at all?” Valor asked the Vulteg.
Briefly, she was overcome with awe, backing away from Valor. Her head tentacles twisted and offered a gesture of reverence. “Great Valor, it honors me to be in your presence!”
“Please, please, there’s no need,” Valor replied, sounding more dismissive than honored. “But continue—You are not compromised?”
“I am not even suspected,” Leu said. “In fact, I have been rewarded several times over for my competence. Confriga views me as one of his only reliable resources.” She paused. “Likely because, aside from my plan to murder him, I am, in fact, one of his few reliable resources. He kills too many at a whim, you see, butchering anyone for the smallest failure. As such, the only people that Lord Scorn and the Higher Marshals assign him are those they wish to dispose of anyway.”
“Or someone like you,” Adam said, “someone who seeks revenge beyond all reason.”
“Yes,” Leu said, sounding proud.
Through it all, Shiv noticed that Uva kept a mana string closely entwined with the Guardshead’s mind. He trusted Leu a lot more than anyone else in the room did. For the others, the Guardshead was still a strange enigma and a potential threat. She was also the sole allied Vulteg out of a good few hundred of her kind here. It was on Shiv’s word alone that they weren’t outright interrogating her.
But if Leu had any apprehensions of Uva as a Psychomancer, or even as an agent of the Composer, she didn’t let them be known.
“Because she truly cares about nothing but her revenge,” Uva said in his mind a moment after, sounding almost disturbed. “Her entire desire—I have never felt someone so completely and utterly devoted to a single purpose. Never. The Gate Lord has wounded her on such a deep and foundational level that her goal of revenge has consumed her identity. But… In a way, I can sympathize.”
Uva thought back to the dagger in her home, the dagger that killed her mother. For years, the murder plagued her—it was always in the back of her mind. But despite everything, Uva still managed to have something of a life. She had other interests, developed other wants, cultured herself, spent time with her Sisters and others, and even found something of a budding romantic relationship.
Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.
Guardshead Leu had nothing else. Her slugs were just a means to relax her mind—between her job, her plotting for the Gate Lord’s demise. But that was it.
“This is what it means to be consumed,” Uva commented, and some part of her didn’t like what she saw.
Shiv, comparatively, didn’t have their hurt. He didn’t know what it felt like to lose someone he truly cared for, because the world started him with nothing. That, and he fought hard to keep Adam, Uva, and most of his current allies from dying. And when it came to being consumed, well, he was consumed every time he fought, and every time he cooked.
Being consumed was Shiv’s natural state of being. All of him came alive in battle or while he cooked, and he drowned in the moment.
Uva hummed in his mind, but he could tell she didn't truly understand.
“I have a safehouse prepared,” Lue said. “I have a location that you all can temporarily set up. My home is mostly secure, but it is best that you operate from another place of utmost secrecy. Gate Lord Confriga rarely ever comes here, because he would never stoop so low to personally visit an inferior. You are summoned by your superiors in my culture. And Confriga—he likes to enforce that cultural norm whenever he can. I expect that I will soon be commanded to greet him in person.”
Leu paused as she considered a particular corner of her room for some reason. “Master Shiv, might I request a few bodies from you? Also, a battle wound.”
“A battle wound?” Shiv asked, sounding surprised. “What do you want that for?”
“For a proper story, in fact, and for what we are going to do. We are going to destroy a section of my apartment, make it seem like a bomb went off here. And then, I want it to seem like I was nearly assassinated.” Leu didn’t sound worried or nervous about taking the wound at all.
Shiv and Adam shared eye contact, and the Young Lord nodded. “It makes sense—it will reduce all suspicion from you, and it will make you seem valiant if Shiv had to shed a body and escape.”
“Correct,” Leu said. “Additionally, I have several other mana bombs ready to go off across the city, so it seems more like a second wave to an attack rather than a post-instance directed only at me.”
“You have thought things quite considerably through, Guardshead," Valor surmised.
“I have,” Leu replied. “I have been waiting years for this moment, and I can feel it. We are close to the end, so very close. I must—once again, I will give you anything, anything. Oh, great Valor, just to see my revenge through, just to see my clutch-brother laid to proper rest. Confriga must die. I must see him. I must see him fed upon by my slugs. I must see it. I will see it.”
And by this point, the sheer maniacal intensity of Leu’s speech got to Adam as well. “Shiv, there is only one thing I trust this outer-dimensional with. It’s not my life, though. I have a feeling that she will do practically anything if it means killing the Gate Lord, including killing herself and sacrificing one or all of us.”
Shiv grunted, “Good thing we’re her only shot, then.”
“So,” Adam asked, “Guardshead, where is this base you talk about? Where are we to go and use as our point of operations in this gate?”
Once more, Leu looked into her slug enclosure and slowly began to laugh. “A place that few dare to tread, and fewer still will ever think to search for you.”
Adam looked into the enclosure. His Seer of Horizons briefly flared, and he seemed confused. “I do not think I understand what you mean, Guardshead.”
“You will,” Leu said. Shiv noticed she was staring up at a chute—a particular filthy but currently unused chute. “Oh, you soon will. I have taken great pains to secure a place within the city’s very infrastructure. After all, who would expect their enemy to be lurking in an abandoned and unmapped section of its bowels?”
***
Shiv inflicted a moderate laceration on Leu before dropping one of his bodies for her use. She already had a mana bomb prepared, and a few moments thereafter, a series of rumbling detonations signalled the moment for the group to depart.
Leu told the group that she would communicate with them through Uva while back in her home—and if there are dire circumstances, they could come back down through the chute. For now, she needed to ensure that her loyalty and valor seemed ironclad.
A few seconds later, the entire group found themselves flying up through a chute encrusted with filth, human remains, and all other manner of questionable fluids. Adam gagged, struggling to stay conscious as he ascended behind Shiv. It was already pretty foul-smelling for the Deathless. So, for the Young Lord…
“Shiv, I think, I think I’m going to pass… away,” Adam moaned.
“Just hang in there, Adam,” Shiv said. Adam briefly wobbled in the air, and Shiv caught him. “Come on. We’re almost there. She said it’s not that far.”
“I don’t have long or far left in me,” Adam choked out, his eyes rolling.
Inside Shiv’s mind, Uva let out a hum. “I don’t see why it’s so bad.”
“Damn you, Sister. Don’t taunt me as I suffer,” Adam replied, sounding bitter and miserable.
“Yes, Adam,” Valor said, nudging the Young Lord from below. “Please hurry. There’s no time to be overly melodramatic in such a place.”
The Young Lord let out a groan, and for once, he found Shiv to be the only sympathetic party on his side. There was also Siggy, but she seemed to deal with filth and foul smells better than most of the group.
As they flew up through the city’s waste chute for a while, they found the white marking that Leu left, pointing for them to proceed down a narrow stretch of tunnel. As they arrived on the other side, they discovered a grate already undone, and beyond that, they found themselves inside a building—one that was layered in dust.
Shiv’s Biomancy reached a bit over 200 meters now, and he felt many small lifeforms everywhere within the structure. Most of them seemed like some kind of insect that lived off strange green clumps of moss that clung to the corners of the building. There were also large rodents here, and they, in turn, fed on the insects. But beyond those small critters, there seemed to be no people here. None at all.
“Can Hu?” Shiv asked. “You sense any automata? Can you do that?”
“There are no automata,” Can Hu declared. “My Binaric Sovereign would have detected their presence. We are cleared for a kilometer at a minimum from mechanical life forms.”
Shiv nodded. “Huh, looks like we have at least a good portion of this building to ourselves. Where even are we?”
Uva’s strands shivered for a moment, and then she pinpointed their rough position. “We are in the northeastern section of the gate, among the series of eight buildings meant to hold long-term storage.”
Shiv narrowed his eyes. “I think I rammed into one of these buildings when I escaped from Confriga the first time.”
“You likely did,” she replied within his mind, nested there for the trip. “I can detect no minds either, and short of perhaps a Legend or a Hero with a tremendous stealth skill, I think we are safe here.”
They followed more white markings, leading them down through a set of doors, up along a hollow chute that once held a main elevator. Then, more directions led downward until they went past even what looked like the bottom floor of the building. A large, excavated tunnel continued deeper underground as the heat spiked and more white paint guided them forward. Finally, as they entered something of a tight cave, they found a set of reinforced titanium doors open before them. On the ground, a vague symbol of a house was drawn, and beyond that point…
“Ah, a teleportation anchor,” Valor declared as he regarded the insides of their prepared base. “An interesting place to set up a safe house.” He drifted in slowly. Before he could cross the threshold, he pulled back. “Shiv, go in first.”
“Yup,” Shiv said. If this were a trap, for whatever reason, he would be the best one to die, if it could manage to kill him. Shiv had a feeling that he could probably tear his way out of a teleportation anchor now, and that the purification flames that had boiled him to death some weeks ago would barely be a discomfort now.
As he entered, he saw some spellwork on the walls, but there was substantially less than almost every other anchor he’d been in. “It’s unfinished,” Shiv said, and he looked at the doors. “But the temperature’s comfortable. Air’s clear. No foul smells—”
Adam practically launched himself into the room, taking lungfuls of deep breaths, trying to clear the torturous taste from his senses.
Uva unwove herself from Shiv’s mind and looked around. Her shield hovered behind her, its mind still nervous, begging for Uva’s approval and telling her not to mentally obliterate it again.
“No supplies here,” Can Hu said. “And the lack of dust indicates that this place was only recently prepared for habitation. I suspect this might be something of a point of retreat for the Guardshead, in case she was compromised.”
Adam paused at that. “Point of retreat… Wait… these spell patterns… Let me see if I can activate something.” He triggered his Dimensionality, and a flickering shroud of distortion-laced shadows spread out of his body. It splashed against the teleportation anchor, and the entire room practically flashed to life. A new set of patterns emerged, previously hidden.
Adam laughed. “It isn’t fully broken. The other spell patterns… If someone uses a spatial spell on it, it will trigger, and it will be able to teleport someone over here. You’re right, Can Hu. This is likely Guardshead Leu’s personal point of escape or evasion when she’s inside this gate. It shows that she's been planning this for ages.”
“Real convenient,” Shiv commented.
“Very,” Adam agreed. “Now, if I can tap into this spell, we should be able to blink back inside at any point we want. I’ll just need to open a dimensional pathway and…” He winced. “I might need to spend some time focusing on doing that. It’s a bit harder without my Veilpiercer. I am… rusty on the shaping of this spell.”
“Shiv, you said the Jealousy also had its personal teleportation anchor?” Uva asked.
“Yeah, though it was more of a feeding ground than a teleportation anchor,” Shiv said. “A big, dense, titanium-reinforced cage meant to hold a monster and about a thousand unwilling slaves.”
Uva frowned. “It might be worthwhile to discover if there are any other such places within the gate. We have much surveillance and scouting left to do.”
Shiv grunted. “Speaking of which, Can Hu, have you got any details from your bots yet?”
The Penitent paused for a beat before it responded. “They have not sent in any emergency broadcasts. I’m expecting information to arrive sometime in the next 12 hours.”
“Alright,” Shiv said, “I suppose we get settled in for now.”