Icarus Awakens

Over the next few days, the groundwork was set for retaking the Arcadian and opening free travel between Eido and the Octyrrum. It sounded far simpler than it should to Daniel, like Rome burning, but they'd already beaten the final boss in the main power core. All that was left was to circle back and clear out the side quests. He would have to manually cleanse the remaining three power cores, two lower section and one in the tower, and then anyone could clear a rift and have it be automatically cleansed.

Even if he had to go there at some point, that didn't mean he had to fight. Wingcraft was on hiatus, perhaps for as long as a month depending on how things shook out. Evalyn was spending time with her family in Eido, Murdon joining her on the island for the sole purpose of providing another bonded individual Lograve could target. Shuni was over there too, just for today, as every second she spent away with the gate down pained him. The rest were either training, attempting to awaken more abilities, or in Hunter and Tak's case pregaming the planned grinding session most would undertake in Kallical.

In Daniel's case, he'd already settled matters as best he could with his family. Kara had been skeptical, initially, when faced with a son who claimed a talking cat as a brother and a half-bird as a lover. This was all in the context of her having everything she'd known about the world turned upside down, again, though at some point the rational clinician took over and the conversation grew productive if guarded.

In the case of Alex he had yet to fully reconcile. It could take some time for her to forgive him, depending on whether his Spoke did anything to force her to hunt. The sucky part was that she might blame him for anything that happened to that effect regardless of who or what had been responsible, though Daniel just took that as a challenge to provide his sister the means and opportunity to do whatever she chose and nothing else.

Which brought him to one of the coolest experiences he'd had on the Octyrrum that didn't involve flight. Daniel, Zolyra, and a few others observed a window floating in mid-air within the lower aft power core. It had become the defacto staging area despite the damage Evalyn had caused given its proximity to multiple corrupted rifts. Only the ones tied to cleansed power cores were visible on his map, they'd need to focus down the other cores to get an idea of how many there were in total, though the people who would be removing the corruption had to get used to the fights before punching at that weight.

"This is Eagle, we're approaching the target zone," the armored mercenary captain spoke into a sending stone. Of all the mercenaries she had adapted the quickest, though Lograve and Chris were to blame for that. Apparently Chris had floated the idea of using the mercenaries to help out on the Octyrrum back before the first gate had been created, and had only been all the more fervent when he learned Daniel had found the Arcadian. He hadn't known the corruption was cleansible, though, and had envisioned them as a detail that would go in and clear out the astral projections whenever an incompletely purged rift regenerated them. They were the perfect solution in that regard, soldiers with some of the best fighting experience Earth had to offer, without magically empowered souls that would worsen the astral projections spawned to defend rifts. Daniel was all too happy to co-opt Chris' idea without giving him any of the credit.

This was the first field test, and they were stacking the deck. They were hitting a small, nearby rift, Zolyra had an active scrying spell tracking them, and Daniel had supplied the ten man squad with enchanted weapons. Not armor, and only level 1 gear in case they tried something stupid. No one was trusting these people, though the fact that most Blessed could handily defeat them with powers helped alleviate the concerns about letting them loose in the Arcadian. Oh, but they had been given one more edge.

"Do not forget to prime the cutters," Padri advised, holding a sending stone linked to the same network as Eagle's. Zolyra had provided a translation spell for the avianoid, well traveled enough to have encountered a need to develop one. "They will not respond to attack commands without performing this step."

"Acknowledged." The woman known only as Eagle had the presence of mind to disable the sending stone before they overheard her team's complaints of being live fire testing dummies. The scrying spell picked it up anyway.

"How's the war suit going?" Daniel asked Padri while Eagle snapped at her men and gave the appropriate orders.

"Displeasingly slow," the Engineer sighed. "I have begun making more, yet developing proper movement and combat commands is difficult. Tlara had been distracted as well with family issues. Spirits. I suppose I understand, but she neglects the potential of these constructs."

"Have you asked other Beastmasters for help?" Daniel would have thought to mention Zolyra or Lograve as well, but they had their own irons in the fire.

"The nature of the work is sensitive, and…" Padri didn't continue that line of thought. "The test subjects, they are moments from first contact."

"I don't know if I'm comfortable calling them that," Zolyra murmured. "Not the first time I've been somewhere that used those words for people. Never ends well."

"Sacrificial victims, then," Padri said, showing that he wasn't without humor. On the illusory screen, the front two humans wearing the black armor they'd used to storm Eido withdrew already deployed walls from bags of holding and used them to cover their approach.

The rift they'd targeted was labeled as a cafeteria, though no tables or chairs had been left behind by whoever had looted the ship. It was essentially a large empty room, though as Zolyra changed the angle of her spell to view over the walls, Daniel saw that wasn't entirely true.

"Eagle, I'm seeing fourteen projections ahead of you," Zolyra reported, in English. She'd learned it scarily fast. One of her hands manipulated runes floating in air, the scrying spell adjusting accordingly to an angled overhead shot. "Seven impaler and mauler types each."

"No wardens," Daniel commented. "If they can take them down quickly, this could work."

Javelins struck the shield wall, but they couldn't pierce the enchanted fur and clattered to the ground. The ten remained in cover, one man in each ordering cutters forward and assigning targets. The rest aimed for the legs of the maulers, but the initial burst of gunfire only chipped the substance they were made of. Daniel frowned at the sight, both because of the weapons' ineffectiveness and what they reminded them of. He'd tried to scan both the mercenaries' assorted gear and the railguns to no effect. For whatever reason the Octyrrum couldn't generate formulae for him to use.

"God damnit Eagle, couldn't you have picked demons our guns could kill!" one of them yelled. "Feel like we should be carrying holy water instead of hand grenades."

"Got the next best thing, Condor. Just watch." Eagle poked her head out and almost immediately pulled it back before another javelin would've impaled it. Daniel winced, beginning to wonder if this was the fairest thing to do even for people like this, when she and the other drone controller gave the order to fire.

An elemental confluence of ice, fire, and lightning washed over the front line of maulers, who quickly succumbed. The rift released mana pulses as normal, two in rapid succession. Eagle's team had been briefed and took cover as the cutters began to pursue the impalers. "No ill effects," Eagle reported, risking another glance and grimacing at the remains of the maulers.

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"They didn't absorb the mana?" Daniel nodded at Zolyra. "You were right."

"Unleveled mortals don't have a mana pool," she explained. "I confirmed it with this Eagle, just in case Earth natives are different. She's indistinguishable from one of us so far as my spells can detect, other than an oddly high attribute array. Keep her identified at all times, she's close to a class."

Daniel's phone vibrated before he could respond.

Arcadian Security Alert

>Corruption at Lower Main Cafeteria node fully purged.

>Total remaining corruption: 65.2%

"Already?"

On the screen Eagle stood with arms spread, looking at where she assumed they were watching from. "How's that for a test run, 'Commander'?"

"Efficient," Padri murmured. "No damage to any of the cutters' cores. This was a best case scenario, but it is promising, Commander. Commander?"

Zolyra didn't turn from the scrying spell. "That could be the most dangerous human I've ever seen without a level. You find some places that recruit standing armies out of people like her, but they just get slaughtered. Or levelled. There's no place in this world outside of fight pits where anyone gets this sharp. Not even Aughal, Daniel's living proof of that. I'm starting to wonder if that woman doesn't know exactly what she's going to get out of this deal." Daniel was a bit taken aback by the seriousness in Zolyra's tone, until he noticed what he hadn't before. Eagle was staring straight at Zolyra's sensor. "That's not someone who's going to take us at our word. She'll be constantly looking for a way to escape. Don't get me wrong. Based on what you said this is the best way to take control of the Arcadian, but we have a viper in our grip."

"Is it that bad?" Daniel asked, surprised by Zolyra's concern. "We can keep track of the items they have, scan them before they go back to Earth. Once we free them they wouldn't have any reason to fight us either. It's not like they think they could beat the rest of us, and if a Torch Cleric says they're untrustworthy we put them in jail somewhere."

"To someone like her, she may as well be dead when she's done with what we want." Zolyra cleared her throat and spoke to the still-waiting mercenary. "Eagle, you're free to return." That was all she said before breaking the connection, after which she continued. "We can't have high-level people hatchsitting them every moment they're over here. I barely have the time for this diversion, we're not going to have eyes on them for most of their duties. They might 'lose' something down a random corridor after a week of good behavior, build up an arsenal and try to break free when the job's almost done. Wouldn't put it past them to try altering the commands of your golems, or finding loopholes."

"A shame I cannot trust such drive to help improve them, then," Padri sighed. "I agree, Commander. They are dangerous, but an ideal use case to prove my design. Perhaps those standing armies you mentioned would benefit from my work when the inevitable tide of monsters come."

Daniel knew he was being stupid, but he said it anyway. "It's too bad Sigron can't resolve this with his bond."

"To someone like that, emotion doesn't factor in as much. She'd doubt what she was feeling even if the power gave her an intrinsic sense of correctness. I've seen her type, dated them too." The Commander gave a wry grin with that. "Don't worry kid, this is my problem. You're welcome. We'll just make sure they don't go anywhere near civilians and pray to the gods they don't do something stupid before they've cleared enough of the ship that our teams can take over. Or worse, something smart." She dismissed the spell and went to handle the returning mercenaries. Padri moved toward to follow, mind on his drones, but Daniel stopped him.

"Hey, quick question. You don't have to give me an answer now, but I wanted to ask if you think you could make something. We had this idea for Khare…"

…

Eagle stood at easy attention in the bowels of the strange place they had been taken. Part of her had expected this first run to be grueling, costly in both lives and the little ammunition they had remaining. Instead it'd been over in less than a minute, the floating wooden death machines enough on their own.

Most at her side tensed when the scaled terror approached, but Eagle kept her composure. The sheer presence of the woman may have intimidated her before she'd seen the monk's eyes. The man known as Chris possessed a deeper darkness than Zolyra, and not by any small degree. It didn't matter at the end of the day. Either could destroy Eagle utterly with their full power, perhaps down to her soul. She hadn't cared for anything touching on religion in her past life, the world was too real to care about anything that came after. Eagle knew better now.

"This was a good first start," the self-styled Commander spoke in what was meant to be an encouraging tone. It would've come across better if her voice could have in any way been mistaken for human. Condor, one of her greenest, looked about ready to jump out of his skin. "We'll break your teams in on these smaller rifts. Once you have a larger group ready you'll tackle the largest ones like the gateway you came through. There's four of those left, and between two and three hundred rifts total. A lot, I know, but you've more than earned it. Carry out your duty with speed and honor and you have my word you'll be allowed to choose your fate."

Eagle's face almost slipped during the 'debriefing', but she caught the eyebrow before it could raise. She was being given an exact count of the rooms they'd have to clear? Zolyra did not strike her as someone stupid enough to miss what she was giving away, so what was the play? She seemed honest, but exactly what kind of tells would a miniature godzilla have? There could be no assumptions, including of what was waiting for them at the end of this.

"Bows."

"Excuse me?" Zolyra asked.

"Bows," Eagle repeated. "I assume you use those. Some were deployed against us, as well as one crossbow. You saw the effect our weapons had on those things. The bots were enough, this time, but you're relying on us to control them. We cannot remain effective against the enemy without the means to destroy them. Someone cleared out this room, and they used their gear to do it. I've shot one before, and I have men who occasionally bow hunted in their off time." Eagle kept her voice steady, tight. No lies, no hint of deception. It was like trying to play chess against a grandmaster, she'd lose almost every game, but eventually her opponent would slip. She was the only one chained to the table. "Give us what we need to do your job. I'd like a practice space as well. It can be secured, watched, hell, you can have us under a barrel every second we're armed, but we're only going to earn our freedom if you let us."

It was a risk, a gambit, but Eagle had the advantage of knowing that Zolyra knew that she knew neither one of them could be trusted. She could only be so restrictive if she wanted to keep up the pretense of acting in good faith. If Eagle's team lost all hope they could do serious damage, especially on Earth where it was proven these people were significantly weaker. In the worst case, Eagle gained control of the means off the island and spread the word of everything she'd seen. There were satellite-linked devices somewhere, all she'd need to do was get far enough away.

"You can have a range. One person at a time, nothing enchanted. Wouldn't make a difference where you are." She deliberated internally for a few seconds, and then answered, "Two of every five man squad will get a brace of six enchanted arrows. The bows will stay mundane. We'll hold any other discussion on your equipment for after the next raid. The cutters will be constantly improved, even what you have now may be too much."

A small victory, with further asks being shut down. It was enough for now. Eagle retreated within herself as they were brought back, any attempts to hide the magical gear they'd been given made pointless by someone who could detect them. The others chattered and she kept them level with automatic responses and threats, her true attention on something else. It was still there, even after they'd returned to Earth.

Her eyes had always been the best part of her. It's why her nickname was what it was. When Eagle focused, when they made contact with the enemy and adrenaline kicked in, she swore she could see the bullets as they flew. She'd definitely caught the incoming purple spear before it had almost struck her, and it had been thrown fast. Most of all, she'd sensed the faintest glimmer of something above them once the last hostile was down and intuited it was how they were being watched.

Nothing from her past life could explain it. Perhaps a desert mirage was the closest approximation, but that wasn't it either. As best Eagle could understand, she'd seen the magic of the spell itself. Tied to this revelation was a feeling that had been building inside her, now coming to a head. Oversight, as if she were the all seeing eye of god. It cut through any concerns of psychoactive substances laced in their meals and to something deeper. Something Eagle might define as her soul.

She was chained to the table, but not just by the designs of the offworlders. She'd cracked into the power they'd claimed for themselves. If she could understand fully, buy as much breathing room as she could, she might pull more than survival. The image of the man charging through a hail of gunfire came to her again, but this time, she saw herself in his place.