Skip to content

Chapter XV#

Strange Glow#

as opposed to a star

Warning

Chapter illustrations currently WIP.

Two sets of headlights sliced through the tunnel’s darkness, carried by a pair of white speedboats. On each were several cultists, all clad in various red combat gear with those same double-eye sigils. The others back in Evedast… it was Evedast, right? I forget – but they’d all worn robes, and the same pins. I counted at least fourteen.

All of them were around tier four or five, which wouldn’t be enough to take us out, much less the tier forty-fifty something Arodorros. Possibly a scout group that got too excited. They would pay for that, I grinned.

“Right, how do we use these?” Rosa asked as we ducked behind a railing.

Lloyd held his hand out and Rosa tossed. He pointed at the handle. “Here, you have to calibrate the – ”

“There’s literally one button,” I said, snatching the device twirling it once and shooting a cultist in the forehead. I passed the thing back. “There a name for these things?”

“Dunno,” Lloyd said. “I don’t remember half my ability names either.”

“Hey, can we get moving?” Bia yelled. “The speedboats are catching up!”

“Righto,” I said. “Bee and Ell. Team dynamics.”

“Oh, but it’s been a while…” Bia mock whined. “I’m not sure I’ll remember.”

Lloyd shot her a fist bump. “You’ve been murdering monsters for six years. I’m sure some cultists won’t be much different.”

“Alright idiots,” I complained. “Bia, stay here, heal, keep them distracted. Lloyd and I will scramble over the walls and rend them skin from bone.”

“What do we do?” Dan asked.

“Stay close to Bia and she’ll shield you. Fire your… devices, I guess. I don’t want you two getting caught in direct combat with t-fours.”

“Lame!” Rosa said, and jumped out from the railing. A massive bang echoed through the chamber and a piece of metal scissored through the air from her weapon. It clanged off a speedboat and did absolutely nothing.

“Aim, dumbass,” I said, leaving her a shield before jumping off the boat to claw onto a wall. “Lloyd, the left one. I’ll take these.”

“Righto!” he said and followed onto the other wall.

Lloyd used a chain of dash abilities to ram his way into the roof of the other boat, immediately breaking through and unleashing hell. Bia cast healing spells and projectile redirecting blood blades in his direction. I winged onto the other and summoned a ring of shields. My dagger manifested in front of me and telekinesis shot it forward through into a cultist’s face. He fell dead as the dagger looped right back around into my hand. A flurry of low tier projectiles slammed against my wings, now up to shield me.

I pointed my dagger at what looked to be their ringleader.

“Lay down your weapons and surrender.”

“You think you can take us all?” asked the ringleader. His eyes were glowing white like all the others. Part of their… uniform, I suppose. Cultural wear? I had seen some fancy glowing contact lenses circulating in Troltano.

“Certainly. I’ve already done one,” I gestured at the corpse on the floor.

“Different things,” the cultist said gruffly and hefted a sword. The others readied a variety of weaponry. One cultist had a staff fancier than Lloyd’s vocabulary. “Glory to Rattesse.”

And they charged. I sighed.

“Okay. Let’s fight.”

I slashed forwards and the ringleader raised a blade to receive the flat of his own sword to his face. He stumbled back as I slipped sideways to dodge an arrow and another knife, weaving between to stab him in the side of the chest. Another kick flew him through several more mooks and into a nest of light blades I summoned behind. I’d been waiting to try the cheese grater strat for quite a while.

Golden lights flared from the other side of the tunnel. Lloyd’s single target specialization made him a little less efficient with crowds, but he got the job done nonetheless, especially against these incompetents. Dan, Rosa, and Bia shot any escapees into the river. The Verosavs’ weapons weren’t able to do any real damage, but swimming wasn’t enough to catch up to the boats. I planned to leave none.

I twirled to slice my wings across the cultists. A perfect ring of blood lacerated the floor like flattened firework sparks. They snapped back in to shield from the next volley of attacks and echoing strikes blazed through them. I sliced back out of the wings like a butterfly from a cocoon, launching straight towards another to kick him into the speedboat’s cabin wall.

The dagger tossed itself away to cleave at their torsos again, then demanifested with a bang to be replaced with a wildly impractical broadsword, flying right through a cultist to meet my grip. The corpse still stuck onto the side of the blade, I whacked another cultist of the boat with the corpse and snapped a finger as the broadsword exploded in his face.

The cultists were foolish to be so forward, running entirely on faith and neither skill nor experience. Their combat styles were lacking, more suited to fast movement and dodging than their current aggressive barrage. Weak low-tier limbs were scissored from their sockets and skulls splattered with the same ease as fingers as they attempted to block blade and fist several times denser than their thickest bones.

Each one of the cultists was dispatched with ease. A final barrage of light blades shot down the remaining forces except one. Lloyd was still finishing up on the other boat, but Arodorros was already slowing his yacht.

I approached the last cultist, the ringleader now backing away into a wall. One hostage was enough. I raised a fist to knock him out – but a silvery projectile beat me to it. The man fainted despite it only clanging off a new tear in his forehead as it failed to penetrate his tier five skull.

“My kill!” Rosa cackled from the boat. A bang and a golden beam smashed down on the other speedboat, signaling the end of Lloyd’s act. Arodorros shifted the boat backwards between the two speedboats.

“It didn’t kill him, idiot,” I rolled my eyes. “And we do need one hostage for questioning. I know for sure Lloyd ain’t leaving any with that power set of his.”

Arodorros ducked out of the cabin. “Anything useful on the vessels?”

“Checking,” I said and dove into the interior of the speedboat.

The cabin door had been slung off its hinges during the fight, but the walls blurred Rosa chattering away outside. Possibly some kind of security enchantment. The room was empty save for the control console and a single item thrown haphazardly on the hardwood deck.

Item: [Aura Beacon] (Device)

Tier: V

Made by: Rattesse Industries

When activated, summons a powerful aura shock that can be specifically tracked by a paired device. Aura shock momentarily debilitates nearby targets without discrimination.

I looted the cultists’ corpses. Not much of note. None of them would dissolve and leave loot like a monster – too low rank, but the Governance dropped any belongings into my inventory. I raised an eyebrow, but continued on.

Picking up the beacon and the cultist, I swept the room across with my eyes again. Nothing jumped out, so I did and boarded our boat. On the deck the others were sat at a bench. Lloyd was just returning from the other speedboat, an identical beacon in his hands. As predicted, he left no survivors.

I joined the group at the bench and roughly dropped the prisoner and the device on the ground.

“Any more?” Bia asked.

“Just the one,” I gestured. “And the aura beacon. They were definitely scouts.”

Bia set to work, taking a set of manacles out of her dimensional bag.

“Their commanders won’t be happy they pulled ahead then,” Lloyd arrived.

“Faith can show you great things,” I said loftily. “It can also just gouge your eyes out and give you fake ones.”

“That’s the most blasphemous shit I’ve heard out of your mouth,” Rosa grinned.

“She’s definitely said worse,” Dan had somehow procured a newspaper to read while sat like a stereotypically irresponsible father.

“I call to the strings of fate: grant this sinner new jurisdiction whilst your mercy still remains,” Bia chanted. The cultist twitched a little before settling.

Ability: [Incarcerate] (Suppression)

Incantation: I call to the strings of fate: grant this sinner new jurisdiction whilst your mercy still remains

Cost: high mana

Cooldown: none

Damage Output:

  • None

Effect:

  • Tier I

    • Suppress another’s abilities, whether granted by the Governance or otherwise. Requires an unconscious or willing target.

  • Tier III

    • Physically limits the target from exiting the range of the user’s Presence.

  • Tier VII

    • Can put a target into a state of stasis for extra mana cost. Stasis requires mana per second to maintain.

Adventurers with Incarcerate and other suppression-style abilities like it were often hired by adventuring teams who were out on a bounty or other missions to capture a target. Such abilities were pretty much the only efficient way to take a tiered target alive, though I had hear rumours of tech companies developing a device to do it. I had also heard rumours that the prototypes got the job done, but also killed the subject anyway.

Lloyd handed me the other aura beacon. The Governance turned up the same profile.

“Any use for these?” I asked.

“Keep them,” Arodorros said, standing up. He had been kneeling by the prisoner, inspecting their equipment. “Could make a good decoy.”

“Right,” I said, stashing them in the dimensional bag. “Bia, how long until he wakes up?”

Despite her blood and death aesthetic, her sanguine manifestation did lend itself to a small suite of medical abilities, including one for seeing injuries and analyzing bodily damage.

Ability: [Cell-Seeing Eyes] (Perception)

Incantation: passive

Cost: passive

Cooldown: passive

Damage Output:

  • None

Effect:

  • Tier I

    • Your vision highlights injuries and maladies on a target

  • Tier III

    • Your vision identifies physical weakpoints on a target

  • Tier VII

    • Your vision identifies metaphysical weakpoints on a target.

“Give it a few minutes,” she said, forcing healing potion down the man’s throat. The wound left by Rosa’s shot promptly sealed itself shut. He had been quite lucky to inadvertently dodge many of my attacks, but had still been hit with a savage cut across the abdomen, which began healing as well. His hair had a disagreement with my light blades and was scorched short.

“Is he gonna be alright?” Lloyd asked. “You went quite hard.”

“You blasted all of yours into smoke.”

“I wasn’t leaving hostages.”

“You could have left loot.”

“What, did you?”

“Here,” and I dropped the items of interest onto the coffee table.

Lloyd inspected one. It was a golden pin, intricately sculpted. The base shape were two eyes, perpendicular and overlapping so that the straight-line pupil made a cross in the centre.

Item: [Haelborne Pin] (Accessory)

Tier: V

Made by: Rattesse Industries

A pin worn by all non-Haelborne members of the Haelborne.

Arodorros picked one up, then returned it and sat back onto the right of the bench. “I can explain these later when we get to the hideout. I wouldn’t discuss sensitive in the open.”

“We’re literally in an enclosed tunnel?” Rosa said.

“And high tier adventurers can hear through many metres of solid rock,” I glared at Arodorros. “Unfortunately, he has a point.”

Our prisoner stirred. I reconjured my dagger.

“what…”

“Who are you?” I said, levying the dagger at his neck.

“Nobody important,” he snarled, eyes coming into focus, slicing at the dagger in field.

“Of course you aren’t,” Bia leaned in from vision left. “You are a classic henchman character. We’re more interested in your people and their motives. Like, your fashion sense. You look like a cultist climbed out of a sewer after callousing their fingers rubbing deific pipes for decades.”

“Is that a Fireforth reference?” Rosa perked up.

“You read Klanstraun too?!” Bia grabbed her by the shoulders, a grin bisecting her face.

“Hell yes!” Rosa yipped, and they danced off to the left side of the deck. “Greatest shit ever writ – ”

“Focus, you two,” I spat.

“Fireforth is a great series,” Lloyd said, sitting to my right with a curt gaze snapped onto the cultist. “It deserves the praise.”

“Go bunk off and talk in the cabin then,” I rolled my eyes.

“No, I wanna watch,” Rosa said.

“Then shut the hell up.”

The cultist looked at us incredulously through the exchange.

“Back to you, then,” I said. “What do you hope to accomplish here?”

“They’ll know,” the cultist pointed right at Arodorros, grin bloodied. “You needn’t ask me.”

Lloyd scoffed. I shot a glare at Arodorros, who shrugged. “We can’t be heard talking about sensitive information in public like this.”

“There’s no one h – ” Bia started in annoyance.

“Spies exist,” Dan interjected from behind Bia. Arodorros nodded.

“Right,” I refocused on the cultist. “Why did you attack ahead? You were clearly outnumbered, outranked, and outskilled. Why?”

“For glory,” he responded. “Glory to Rattesse.”

“Seems like a pretty dumb reason,” Bia irked. “What’s Rattesse? A person? An Immortal?”

“Rattesse is not your concern,” the cultist hissed. “I directed our forces to attack because it was fate. The Right Hand made me, and who is a humble henchman to disobey its master, let alone the Right Hand?”

“What is the Right Hand, then?” I narrowed my eyes.

“They will not know this one,” he laughed. “You are, ironically, the closest to that information.”

“What?” I tightened my grip on the dagger.

“Goodbye,” he said.

There was a second of silence.

“What are you – ”

A blaze of orange light filled the tunnel, raining directly down onto the cultist like a pillar of divine judgement. It almost resembled Lloyd’s execute – until the sigils appeared. The same symbol as the pins had, etched onto the deck in fiery light, as the cultist collapsed forward like the gravity around him had tightened tenfold. The sigil spun and light now slammed upwards and all it captured in its path was disassembled with uniform efficiency, particle by particle.

There was nothing left.

The cultist was gone, flesh, bone, cloth, manacles and all. The only thing that remained was a strange heat in the air, and soon it disippated too. Rosa patted her hands on her pants, trying to cool the scorching heat.

“What… the…” Bia half gasped.

“Well that was melodramatic,” Dan commented.

I paid them no mind, examining the spot where the sigil had appeared. There was no damage. Nothing below the air above the floor had been damaged in the slightest, which meant nothing at all. Only the cultist had been eviscerated, wiped clean from existence with the ease of black paint over white. With the cultist gone, I turned on Arodorros.

“Who are you?”

He sighed. “As I said, you need to wait.”

I scanned into his pupils. “Your hideout better be close.”

Comments