NOVEL NEXT 54. The Webs We Weave
Things were peaceful for the next few days and finally I was at the point where I could take some shaky steps with assistance without my limbs all regressing by the next day.
"Easy now." Mitria cautioned through something I could describe as a speaker with eyes that looked oddly cuddly. Mitria was a busy person and most of the time, this was how they communicated when dealing with other patients. Patients I didn't know because many of them had equally terrible if not worse issues that they didn't want strangers to see. I didn't reply, I was too focused on trying not to fall on my face. Staring at my feet and how they landed upon the ground, I ignored the world around me. This was nothing new. I had done this before when my leg was mutilated back when I was scavenging for food. Gritting my teeth, I took another unsteady step and wobbled. For a moment it looked like I would fall, then I didn't. Only a few more steps left.
The track was just a long stretch of plain white floor with railings on either side to grab on to. Very, I want to say modern, but really I don't think I could properly describe the technology of this world using Earth's technological ages. It was all very Victorian industrial, pollution choked streets and garbage living conditions for most but things like weaponry were even more outdated, and on the other hand, things like physiotherapy and scientific knowledge were very modern. It was weird, that was the only way I could describe it.
One more step. Another wobble. One more. It was steady. Two more then I felt the telltale sign of muscles stretching. I was done. Any more steps and I would start regressing once again. I looked up. I was more than halfway through. A few more days and I could leave this place.
That was another problem. With Vinny dead, Fim missing, and their boss dead, that place was going to be under new management. No idea how badly it was going to go. I could afford a better place now but my things were still in that dump and I was willing to bet that it would cost me to get them out the legitimate way. Fortunately, I was not the most law-abiding girl. A shrunken Medea flying in, putting things inside itself and then getting summoned back to me was a simple affair. That was how I had retrieved the bottles used for carrying venom to the Emporium.
"I'm done for today. I think I'm at the limit." I called out and the flesh wheelchair (legged chair?) scrambled over to my side. That was a very fascinating construct of Mitria's. I didn't know how exactly it worked but I could tell that it was responding to pheromones they emitted in some manner. It certainly was not like a human or even a dog or a cat or something that could be trained but was otherwise largely independent.
The chair dumped me back into my bed and I was disappointed to note that there was no update regarding the hawk wasp the High Councillor had promised. The vampires taking their time was expected with the lockdown and I intended to cancel that particular deal in any case but I had expected at least a confirmation so far. Selene was still with Fahria who seemed to have stopped slime culling altogether. Instead, she was now spending all her time meditating? As in Selene was sure that she hadn't moved, even to eat or use the loo or anything for over a week. Only the steady rise and fall of her chest, and the occasional spark that leapt off her even gave away the fact that she was alive. Fahria had told me this might and to summon Selene back if she was stuck like that for more than a day to not waste the moth. As if the former Night Empress wasn't reliant on Fahria for experience. Furthermore, just in case, I sent a few other of my stronger swarm units over to protect her if she were to be attacked.
Agitjin and Novas were busy as usual, trying to track down the numerous missing person reports that the guild had ignored because they were just orphans and the impoverished. Reports I had ignored and put away when we had to reorganize everything after Arshanara's Emissary had wrecked the foundations of this city. I hated to admit it but I had been acting like the selfish bureaucrats choosing the easy way instead of the right one that had ruined my life, and that of countless others, in my old world. These people were used to it, sheltered from the worst of it, but not me, I had known and experienced what being on the other side of ignored reports was like, and still I had acted like them.
Despite my singular obsession with attaining power so that Quiraion's trait wouldn't turn on me, I had been treating other things like a story, hadn't I? Like it was just a delusion of my own making. I had thought it didn't matter and the city was just stuck like this because it was so, not because countless people just like me preferred to get out of boring work a bit earlier and with less effort instead of actually trying to improve things.
It was not singularly my fault, of course, but I was one of those people who should have known better. Getting healed and learning magic had me forget where I was actually from, not just in the abstract Godtouched manner where it didn't matter, but in the ways that had shaped me into the girl I was. That was no small part of why I was obsessively surveilling my friends and the city in general.
At least I was much stronger for this mess. Not even a silver lining, just an addendum to a long list of mistakes.
NAME: ANANYA HARTFORD
RACE: FLESH AMALGAMATE
ACTIVE CLASS: [SIMMERING BLOODRAGER 21/25]
CUMULATIVE CLASS LEVELS: [320]
MASTERED CLASSES: [20]
AGE: 20
MANA: 190/190 (REGEN 38 PER HOUR)
BLOOD MANA: 470/470 (REGEN 63 PER HOUR)
STATS:
STRENGTH: 31 (-3)
CELERITY: 29 (-16)
VITALITY: 47
ACUITY: 32
WILLPOWER: 36
PERCEPTION: 27
ATTUNEMENT: 38
SKILLS:
PASSIVES:
Hivemother's Superego: 49
Fauna Archive: 26
Hivemother's Crippled Dominion: 61
Mana Conduction: 23
Unseen Slayer: 13
Blood Mana: 45
Blood Poison Cultivation: 3
Anatomist: 14
ACTIVES:
Swarm Aspect: 9
Ossific Communion: 39
Blood Fortification: 37
Superior Calcified Mana Empowerment: 40
Call Lesser Sprite: 24
Chimerism: 48
Bloodrage: 5
TRAITS:
Low Maintenance:
Dead Quiraion's Blessing:
The Knife Of Quiraion:
Asterite Encyclopedia:
Asterite Absorber:
ASTERITE: 49
My Strength and Vitality were slightly higher than they should be because of my biomancy but everything else was as they should be. The penalties from my obliterated muscles weren't as bad as they had been earlier but the difference was felt nonetheless.
I had asked Mitria if I could be their apprentice and I was rebuffed, with pointers of course. I learned that Biomancers were supposed to start with dissecting small animals and doing surgery on them and not just "pumping mana like a meathead without any appreciation for the complexity of life." So, I was doing just that and had Anatomist to show for it. A simple passive skill that gave me knowledge about precisely that. That was not all. After my current class was done, I should be going all the way back to level 10s and take [CHIRURGEON], a mana less class that specialized in mundane surgery and follow that class chain up all the way until I could create and animate new lifeforms from others without direct application of mana.
I wasn't sure if that would look more like Victor Frankenstein or Herbert West but I couldn't wait. Right now I was just forcing mana to do all the work to smooth over problems I didn't really understand, causing my creations to both be weaker than they should be and with a propensity to develop problems with extended work. I had been once again gravitating towards big numbers too quickly instead of doing things properly, as Rev had warned me ages ago. So many things to juggle and I was so incompetent.
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'Mother, this one desires to go hunting. May it?'
'Yeah sure.' What was I going to say? Starve yourself for no discernible reason?
Two days later, I managed to walk the entire length of the track for the first time. Three days after that, I was finally able to take off the mask and not fail to recognize the girl beneath it. Another five days later, with Fahria still meditating and no one finding any other lead on the dragon, I had a visit from an enforcer.
"Anya Hartford?" The woman in the mask asked from right outside my window, her voice crisp and curt. I yelped and pulled up a blanket to cover myself before realizing that neither was I undressed, nor was my face messed up anymore. Great situational awareness! Good job, Anya! The slayer of the godslayer, ladies.
"Y-yes." I let my passive mental skill steady my voice, like the social cheat it was.
"This message comes from Lady Ayn of the Illustris Council. As per the agreement brooked on the 4th of Eron, your payment for services rendered to the council, to be received in the form of the goods previously agreed upon, has been secured. It will arrive in two days and will be delivered to you." She paused. "The Illustris Council thanks you for working to protect our glorious city."
"That's all?"
"That's all." The woman disappeared.
Another thing I had been asking Mitria about were the chaos-warped hawk wasps I had read about, and while Mitria didn't have any, they had extensively studied them. How they worked and the mechanisms by which they transformed hosts into living factories that could produce more of them. And the exact opposite, wasps melding together into the form of the host if subverted by them. From Medea's shared instincts, I knew that the limiter on spider-scorpions made them find the wasps inherently repulsive. Their normal biomass integration ability would reject the creature altogether on top of that if I simply fed one to Medea. Combining both was not going to be easy or quick but integrating a wasp into the swarm and letting it infect some large animal was infinitely more doable and would get me something almost equivalent to an extra Swarm General in power. The other would be kept for… ahem… experiments.
I decided to wait until I received my payment to go visit the vampires. The wasps came sealed in globes of a hard black substance. I touched one and let my mana flow. It was all meat inside and I could sense the arboreal parasitic structure of a wasp infection snaking and rooting through its innards. The mana found the wasp queen in the center of the structure, its brain opened up like an explosion had gone off inside. The semi-destroyed brain interfaced with the structure and I could see pockets of dormant birthing pods for more wasps that would all be under the control of the queen if activated. These soldiers could get absurdly large (for wasps) if the host was large enough.
\\\\Integrate Chaos-warped Hawk Wasp Queen (female) into your swarm?
\\\\Integrate Chaos-warped Hawk Wasp Queen (female) into your swarm?
Yes to both, and I let the shells crack a bit. The queens crawled out of it and I watched, fascinated as their brains stitched themselves back together as if time itself was flowing in reverse. The tree-like structure of neural tissue and other things atrophied rapidly, and with them, the birthing pods. The two wasps buzzed threateningly around me and I was stuck with the realization that the queens weren't particularly big. I could probably crush them with ease.
And with that, Medea was off to go meet the vampires. It was more than happy to get away from the two wasps and I didn't want them to set up a deal and waste everyone's time and money or something like that.
It was Runi who opened the door this time, the other vampire was resting. How they even functioned without plunging their homeland into eternal night was a mystery to me. No, stupid question. They probably did precisely that.
"Hello, can I come in?" Runi wordlessly stepped aside and I decided that maybe I didn't need to engage in theatrics today. I skipped straight to the point.
"I have acquired the wasps. The other deals still stand but I won't require them anymore." The vampire let out a sigh of relief.
"Good. We'll have the rest of the things ready in a few more days, assuming they don't get held up at the port."
"Very well. Have a good night, Runi. And thanks. Convey my gratitude to Ylbrig when he feels better. I shall be away then."
"Oh, I'm sure he'll be delighted about the wasps. The supplier here was a pain to negotiate with." I stopped the yellow portal that was forming over Medea by abruptly breaking the mana flow. I winced when my body twinged from the backlash. Lesson learned, don't do that to cancel skills.
"Wait. Supplier here? In New Delport?"
"Yes. A biomancer. We were still trying to hash out a good deal with him since we wouldn't want you to get scammed." The last bit was said in a very pointed tone. Right. Maybe I did go overboard last time.
"I see. Maybe I shall pay them a visit then. What is their name?" It wasn't Mitria, obviously but I noted it nonetheless. The yellow portal reappeared and Medea came back to me.
It had been agitated ever since the wasps came but now it was something else. Dawning fear. Fear that I couldn't understand but prickled at the edge of my consciousness nonetheless. Something didn't fit. It hadn't fit ever since Lady Ayn personally came to ask me for help.
Chaos-warped hawk wasps were rare, but only because of how dangerous they were to handle if someone didn't know how, and as a result, expensive. The Illustris Council ruled over one of the wealthiest cities on this side of the Inner Sea. On top of that, New Delport was a city with a significant number of Biomancers around. One biomancer with control over one could have it reproduce thousands of times, with only the threat of an outbreak of wild ones, and retribution from other classers stopping them from flooding the market. Surely, as a member of the Illustris Council, Lady Ayn could just pay or demand the Biomancer give one to her. With vampires selling moths, it was expected that they would have trouble finding one agreeable enough but not for someone of Ayn's standing. No way it took them over two weeks just to find the things, even if the biomancer within the city refused to sell. Something was off.
'Mother, what if they didn't intend to pay you at all initially?'
'What?'
'This one may be paranoid but I ask that you look at the pieces. The Heavenly One's vestige told you that this realm is a Sanctuary where the Hidden Heavenly One can not strike you down. Is this right?'
'Yes.'
'Similarly, other Heavenly Ones can't descend directly. This is why the Dragon still roams without the Heavenly Devouring Fire striking it down, yes?'
'Yes. Why does that matter?'
'When mother came to this city, the woman of lightning and metal told you that she would prefer to remove you because you are Godtouched and that means danger to the city.'
'Yes.' A picture was forming in my mind now, a picture that I very much did not like.
'And she couldn't just strike you down, because killing a Godtouched invites the Heavenly Ones to exact retribution directly. And Kalist can trace mana, we have seen him do it to us before.' I nodded. No point in speaking anymore. Shit. I had been made. She had been playing me like she had played Kalist. She had been at this game for Quiraion knows how long.
'Why would both the Councillor and the Archpresbyter personally ask you to track the dragon? Surely an enforcer would suffice.'
'Unless there was something special about me. Like being a Godtouched.'
'And maybe they needed to personally ensure that whatever was in that crystal worked and it left a trail. The quickest way to remove the two largest problems in the city, a Godtouched and a dragon who doesn't seem to be beatable without a costly conflict—'
'is to have the Godtouched become a problem for the dragon so that it kills the Godtouched and then let a god kill the dragon.' How had she known? Did Valdima tell her? Very possible but Valdima didn't feel like the type to go along with this. No, I was being stupid. I hadn't known Valdima for long and not that well. The whole 'ruthless but honorable' thing might have been a front. I didn't know. No reason to risk it. Who did I trust? Agitjin? A huge maybe. Rev? Not really. Tiamim? Hahaha, as if she wouldn't be in on it if Valdima was. Novas? Another maybe. Fahria? Yes, but she had been meditating for a while now and I didn't know when she would emerge from it. Who else? Fim? He certainly didn't like the council but he was a crook at best, and he was missing. Mitria? Very complicated. On one hand I couldn't imagine them going along with this if their clinic was in the blast zone, on the other, they never mentioned that there was already a biomancer in this city who had the wasps.
'Mother. What do we do? We can't leave, not yet.'
I closed my eyes and thought about it. No one was leaving this city without fighting their way out of it. I thought about fighting Tiamim, Valdima, Ulgina, Ayn, the other two Councillors, enforcers, and even Kalist and for a single fanciful moment, imagined emerging triumphant like the hero of this story. For a single second, I imagined myself as the shining hero with unparalleled magical skill and equipment forged by gods with prophecies about my ascension. That was certainly a type of hero. Too bad I wasn't ever the type to care for heroics.
Nope. That was not me. I was a danger to this city and so, if I were in the shoes of Valdima or Ayn or whatever, I would have done the same. And I may be scared, I may be terrified but I was safe. If Kalist didn't fall for it then the council wouldn't try something else. That was stupid. I was an asset. Godtouched had nearly unmatched potential. Just trying to kill me when Kalist was the bigger problem was stupid. This was likely just a test. Maybe to see if I was smart enough to be useful. Maybe to see if Kalist was desperate. Maybe I was just coping and rationalizing things so that they sounded nice. I wasn't being used as bait, I was just being tested. Wow Anya, you flawlessly passed it and are now part of my inner circle! I couldn't see Ayn saying that except sarcastically.
I took a deep breath when I noticed I was spiralling again.
Fuck. Why not just pay me quickly and take the loss? That way I would not have suspected anything at all when Kalist didn't burn me to ashes. So many possibilities. Did Ayn make a mistake? She was bound to be handling so many schemes and plans at once that something slipped up. Or maybe that is what she wanted me to think. Was it all part of some grand plan that I couldn't see? So many possibilities. So many variations, potential futures. So many options. I was not equipped to deal with it even individually, let alone all at once.
'Nothing. We just wait. Kalist didn't take the bait so either he is too weak, or he figured it out somehow too. Either way, we are safe from him for now. Either the Council won't touch us or we are screwed beyond saving already.'