NOVEL NEXT B3 - Lesson 20: “... Blades Out."
The heart of Halirosa at night was a current of bodies and voices, laughter cutting through the hush of distant bells and the slap of boot soles on stone. Hugo melted into the stream, letting the crowd's flow disguise the shift of his pace. The city's underbelly had its own rhythm, one he'd learned to echo years ago — never hurrying, never still, always half an eye on the next shadow. Light spilled from the eaves of late-night taverns and dim noodle stalls, painting the wet cobbles in gold and scarlet. Out here, even the guards traveled in pairs and the wise kept their coin purses tight.
He murmured under his breath, barely moving his lips, "We've got shadows at our heels."
Alpha's voice came crisp and quiet in his ear, threaded through the ambient city noise. "Confirmed. Three hostiles. Your friend from the Den and two in matching furs. They're keeping formation. No visible weapons yet."
Hugo didn't so much as flick an ear. He ducked around a pair of bickering merchants and let the crowd fold over his passage. He kept his gait relaxed, pausing to study a faded map tacked to a lamppost. One of the tails lingered back, pretending to browse a barrel of apples. The others were less subtle, their scowls open and posture tense. A couple of passersby hastily turned and made their way in the opposite direction.
He drifted away from the light, turning down a narrower lane where the noise of the market became muffled. Here, the air hung thick with the scent of rain-washed brick and distant cookfires, shadows crowding the walls in jagged, uncertain patterns. A cat darted across his path, yellow eyes wide, and vanished through a drain.
Alpha's next update was dry as flint. "You're leading them well. Keep going. [Wasps] have three vantage points ahead. Cut left at the herbalist's sign, then down the stairs. Alley's clear."
Hugo's mouth twitched. The city was as much Alpha's domain as his own now, a chessboard mapped in red and gold. He followed the AI's directions, winding past shuttered doors and rows of potted moss plants left out for the dew. Footsteps echoed behind him, clumsy and too eager now, close enough to smell their cheap liquor and hear the frustrated muttering.
He played it up, slowing his pace, peering at a cracked window as if searching for a number. One of the thugs snorted behind him, making a joke at Hugo's expense — too quiet for him to hear at this distance, but easily picked up by the trailing drones. Their confidence was growing. Just as he'd hoped.
A final corner, a broken lantern overhead, and the night pressed in cold and damp. Here, even the stone felt older, the weight of Halirosa's history pooling between the worn bricks. He let himself stumble slightly, as if he'd misjudged his step, and then slipped between two sagging refuse bins and into a side alley.
Alpha's voice was barely a whisper now. "Perfect. They're closing in. All signals clear."
The footsteps behind him slowed, voices rising.
"End of the road, old man!" barked the rough-looking man whom Hugo had bested at the table only a short while ago. He shoved his way into the mouth of the alley, past two equally rough-looking men who wore matching wolf-fur vests. His voice bounced off the stones, too loud for the hour, the threat in it edged with an uncertain tremor.
But the alley was empty.
"What the…? Where'd he go?" one of the fur-vested thugs grumbled, squinting into the gloom. The second, taller and wiry, let out a sharp curse, spinning to check the street behind them.
"Don't look at me," said the first, "he was right there —"
"Maybe he ducked out a window. There's no way he climbed that wall —"
"Shut up, both of you!" The leader's voice broke a little as he stepped deeper into the shadows, trying to save face.
One thug absentmindedly kicked at a rubble pile to the side of the alley. It was just enough to mask the nearly inaudible whir of Hugo's optical cloak disengaging.
Behind the tallest thug, the air seemed to ripple like water disturbed by a stone. A figure shimmered into existence, solidifying from thin mist into the form of a much younger man—broad-shouldered, stubble dark across his jaw, black hair swept back from a sharp brow. The ant-like armor gleamed pristine in the faint alley light, its joints hissing as he moved, a far cry from the battered shell of his disguise.
They never saw him coming.
Hugo struck in a blur. His elbow cracked into the tall thug's neck, sending him crashing face-first into the opposite wall. Before the others could turn, his fist flashed out, catching the second man beneath the ribs, then sweeping his legs out in a single, practiced motion. The man grunted as he hit the stones, breathless and stunned.
The card player whirled, shock plain on his face. For a heartbeat, he stared, not at an old, broken gambler, but a predator in fresh carapace. "Who—"
Hugo's fist met his chin with surgical precision. The man's legs buckled, and he folded like laundry onto the pavement.
All three men sprawled across the damp alley stones, groaning or unconscious, limbs askew. The city's muffled bustle was distant here, replaced by the faint echo of boots on stone and the slow drip of rainwater from a rusted gutter overhead.
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He crouched beside the ringleader, methodically searching the man's pockets. Out came a short-bladed dagger, its grip worn smooth, two bent silver coins, and a tightly rolled scrap of paper reeking of cheap ink and sweat. Hugo unfolded it and glanced at the crude notes before tucking it away.
Alpha's voice murmured in his ear, bone-dry and faintly amused. "Nicely done."
Straightening, Hugo adjusted his armor until the plates settled with a sound like distant rain, their dull sheen blending into the alley's shadows. He flexed his hands, staring at them as though not quite sure they were his own.
"So this is what [Golden Spirit] feels like…" he muttered. Not long ago, facing down a high [Silver Spirit] and two peak [Bronze Spirit] cultivators alone would have been laughable. Even with Alpha's gadgets, it should have been a near-impossible fight. But now, victory had come with barely a struggle.
He took a steadying breath and stood a little straighter.
He turned, eyes narrowing as he studied the sprawled men. "What do we do with them, Boss?"
A darker side of him knew what he would have done, not too long ago. But the strange, sometimes alien rules that seemed to bind his new employer made him hesitate. It had been years since Hugo had found himself on the right side of the law, and he wasn't quite sure where that line lay anymore, or how often Alpha would redraw it.
From above, a [Wasp] drone detached from its perch, dropping with insectile precision. Its red eye pulsed, scanning the alley as Alpha's presence gathered close, curious and calculating.
"Shall I alert the city guard, young master?" Alpha teased, voice laced with mock formality.
Hugo shot the drone a look, one eyebrow arched.
Alpha chuckled. "Tie up our sore loser. Maybe he'll have something to say. As for the others…"
The drone's eye flickered, and a strange ripple passed through Hugo's armor.
A thick, black vapor peeled away from the carapace and drifted toward the two prone men. They groaned and tried to swat it aside, but the living smoke coiled and pressed into their mouths, muffling their protests. In seconds, their movements dulled, then stilled. The shadows gathered beneath their bodies, forming buoyant clouds that gently lifted them off the ground. The vapor carried them up, depositing the pair atop a nearby roof, out of sight.
Hugo watched, heart pounding, a sheen of cold sweat forming at his brow.
Alpha sighed. "They're fine. I'd rather not attract attention with a few bodies in the street. Just gave them a little nap and set them somewhere they won't be found. If they happen to roll off the roof, well… that's not my problem." Alpha's laughter echoed through the comms.
Hugo forced a chuckle, nerves still thrumming. For all the Federation's strange laws, sometimes he wondered where Alpha saw himself on that line.
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<< Alpha Log –
6952 SFY — Third Era, 9 standard months since Planetfall.
Day 1 of Halirosa Exploration. >>
If first impressions mean anything, then Halirosa is a city built for contradictions: ancient bones wrapped in the trappings of progress, familiar and foreign all at once. Everything I've been told says this place has existed for thousands of years. Yet, my first day in its heart has left me more certain than ever that this world is not as isolated as its inhabitants believe.
On the surface, it looks like a standard cultivator metropolis, for as much as I've been able to gather. Spirit towers glimmering with restrained energy, bustling market squares packed with haggling merchants and scrappy adventurers. But under the skin, it's easy to see the touch of the Federation. Or at least some version of it.
Today, as Hugo and I moved through the city's veins, I found myself cataloging them with growing suspicion.
Culinary cues are the most obvious. Hugo insisted on stopping to grab what he called "skillet cakes," from a street stall. These turned out to be as close to Navy-style pancakes, the kind issued in ration packs, as anything I've seen in a dozen Reclaimed Worlds.
There's even an off-brand syrup that's a dead ringer for the corn-based substitute my cook routines could never quite perfect. When I asked Hugo if the recipe was imported, he looked at me as if I'd grown a second antenna and said it's been "Northern staple food since before anyone can remember."
Architecture tells another story. The great arches of the guild quarter, the spiral staircases wrapped around the main civic dome — these mirror Federation city design almost perfectly, though in a much older style than I'm familiar with. Not just in aesthetics, but in function: traffic flow, energy efficiency, even the acoustics inside the inner markets.
Then there are the phrases. Street hawkers call out for customers using pitches that sound suspiciously close to Federation Standard; city children rhyme off counting games using numbers in the correct order — right down to the odd phrase "tick-tock, two more blocks," which, if memory serves, was part of a playground chant on one of the first Centauri stations, before spreading. Even the local card games are similar to those from around Old Earth's third interstellar diaspora.
I asked Hugo about these quirks as we walked, framing my questions as idle curiosity. He confirmed my suspicions, almost offhandedly: "You hear most of that stuff in the north. Old folk say it was brought over in the age of the great tribes. By the time you get south past the grasslands, hardly anyone speaks that way."
It's possible that many of these quirks can be attributed to artifacts or information pulled from the so-called "Old Ruins." A gradual influx of culture over hundreds or thousands of years until the origins were lost to time. Some of it might even be parallel development.
But when looking at everything together, it's obvious that there's more going on here.
Personal Note: Investigate local 'origins' of the Old Ruins further when time and resources allow.
That said, not all mysteries are so… mysterious.
Tonight's would-be muggers proved to be rather enlightening. After their defeat, Hugo and I dragged our sore loser to a quiet corner for a chat. My methods may have tested the limits of local etiquette, but in the end, he spilled everything.
It wasn't just about cards or coin, to no one's surprise. Someone had put out word to keep an eye on "Voss," while the scroll the man carried contained a rough portrait and a description accurate enough to raise the stakes. According to the man, someone started asking about Hugo barely hours after we arrived. It seems in Halirosa, word travels on wings.
This is concerning. In less than a day, the right — or wrong — questions stirred the city's undercurrents, drawing the attention of someone with enough coin to make people talk and enough paranoia to want strangers watched. Hugo handled himself well, but I can't help but wonder if our presence has already tilted some balance we don't yet understand.
I find myself calculating, trying to predict where the next complication will come from. Are Garrelt, Maggy, and Dr. Maria facing similar scrutiny? If someone is watching Hugo, they may have eyes on the others as well. My swarm's reports from the Adventurer's Guild and the old clinic are quiet, but silence is no guarantee of safety.