NOVEL NEXT 180 (II) Trust [I]
180 (II)
Trust [I]
"It's most of the reason why you bastards have any culture," the blade-covered Legend added. "Without the outside, what are you?" He grunted with displeasure. "You're all just a bunch of mimics. You see how we act, you see what we do, you see how we dress, and you take from that. You take from that or you decide to fight against it. You don't have any culture otherwise. Your kind isn't real."
Bonk frowned at the man. "It's very reductive. I have my violence. That is culture." The words were meant at least partly in jest, but the man just sneered.
"No, you are violence. It's a psychological flaw for you, not culture. You are just a copy of the Challenger, a copy of everyone you fight. And that's why I decided against picking up what the Challenger was putting down. I'm already a weapon, and I got no use for a bunch of weapons pretending to be people. You get me, creature?"
Bonk responded to that by smiling serenely, yet Shiv caught a glint of something in the orc's eyes. The bladed man shouldn't have said that. Somehow, in his bones, Shiv knew that Bonk was probably going to try to kill that man at some point. It didn't matter that he was a Legend. It was just that he identified himself as a worthwhile target. And worse, he made this a racial thing. And that simply escalated the scale of dominance.
Before any other barbs or words could be exchanged, the dimensional portal pulsated again, and Kura blinked into existence where her shadow stood and looked towards Shiv and the others. "It's done. But there's something you need to do."
She sounded uneasy, and the next moment, the portal splashed with Dimensionality mana, and Five emerged from within. He crawled up from the edge as the Dimensionality behind him turned turbulent. Before Shiv could ask for more details, the mana settled and slowly began to swirl.
"Alright," Five said, "I managed to negotiate our passage. Believe they have the one you're looking for. You're in a lot of luck, my friend," Five stared Shiv down. "They managed to reach your companion just in time. Any moment later, and he would have likely been recaptured by the Ascendants. One of our deep-cover Ravens helped him escape, but she unfortunately perished in the process. A shame, but that is life. Whatever the case, the operatives inside wish to see you. They want proof that you are actually with me, instead of this being a desperate attempt on my part to be extracted from this prison."
Psycho-Cartography: Subtle. Sneaky bastard is trying to get you to feel bad. To feel like you owe them something. I caught that sympathy growing inside you. He's trying to compromise us.
"See me?" Shiv said, and now his paranoia was beginning to climb. He knew that he had a price on his head, one that made him a tempting target for all the prisoners, but likely the agents of Aviary as well. Considering how Aviary worked, Shiv didn't think an individual agent would try to kill him. It didn't seem to fit their way of operating. Instead, he wondered if he was about to trade one prison for another. He could see Aviary capturing him, experimenting on him to figure out how his soul worked.
Shiv left a temporal anchor in place and made eye contact with Kura. The elf turned away but confirmed Five's words. "That is what they said. There is no lie in his words, but their intent cannot be discerned."
Even so, Shiv didn't know what better to do, and waiting was an action in itself. However, waiting meant that he ceded his initiative to the Ascendants, and that wasn't going to work out. "Bonk, if I don't show up again in about 30 seconds, you know what to do."
The orc gave the wolf man a grin, and Five's expression remained placid, to his credit. That placidity faded as he realized Kura was glaring at him as well.
"Same goes for the rest of you," Shiv said to the prisoners. "If I'm gone, that means someone has me. And there's no guarantee they'll be as easy to deal with as I am."
And now everyone was staring at Five.
"I speak the truth. This is not an act of betrayal," the wolf-man called from behind.
"Guess we'll find out in a second," Shiv said. He looked down into the twisting tides of Dimensionality and let out a breath. "All right, either I'll be speaking to Adam in a few seconds, or some Aviary assholes are going to try to kill me or capture me. Let's see which. Never a dull moment."
He hopped then, before he had a chance to regret, and as he splashed down into the mana, a tightness gripped him. However, the tightness was abated as the magic found itself held at bay by his shapeless tides. Shiv had to remind himself about how his Legendary skill worked. He kept his skill still and let the Dimensionality take him.
For a brief moment, he surged, squeezing across a narrow tunnel until he finally emerged in a new space. His body was rematerialized as motes of Dimensionality mana molded him back together. And it was that final emergence that left Shiv groaning with slight discomfort. He couldn't see any spell patterns nearby—no teleportation anchor. This wasn't the Orichalcum chamber he'd seen earlier. Instead, everything around him was bathed in steam and coated by clammy heat.
Something felt off about this place. Like his teleportation shouldn't have ended here, that it was intercepted by something. Or interrupted.
Shiv looked around and found himself standing in what seemed to be an oval tunnel. This place reminded him of a channel of some kind. Air constantly flowed around his body, causing a loud trill as it rushed ahead. He pressed his hand against the nearest wall, and he realized it was made from aluminum or some kind of softer metal. Not adamantine; definitely not Orichalcum.
This wasn't a place meant to hold prisoners. Something told him it wasn't even meant to contain people.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Greetings, Deathless."
Shiv turned, responding to the threat. He pointed his Orichalcum dagger at the ambusher and found himself staring at a shrouded figure bearing a helmet styled after a Raven's head. The Deathless couldn't help but sneer underneath his own helmet. "We're glad to see that Operative Five has not deceived us in his desperation to escape from this prison. It saves us the trouble of trying to locate you ourselves."
Shiv didn't trust a single thing the Raven was saying, but the words mostly fit Five's story. "Where's Adam?" Shiv asked. "Bring me to him. I wanna see how he is. Whatever else you want to talk about happens after that."
The Raven didn't speak for a moment, and Shiv looked over his shoulder, wondering if now was the moment he was going to be ambushed. Instead, the Raven nodded, and Shiv realized he was having a telepathic conversation with someone. "Follow me," the Raven said.
"Wait," Shiv replied. The Raven froze. "Need to go back for a moment. I told some of my people that if I don't show up, they could deal with Five. I don't think him being dead helps either of us right now, does it?"
The Raven studied him for a moment and bowed his head slightly. "Make it quick. And tell the others with you to come along. We can accommodate more than one."
Shiv really didn't know how he felt about the Raven's words, but he didn't have time to dwell on it. He blinked back over to where his anchor was. As soon as he appeared, half a dozen faces swung toward him.
"We're good," Shiv said. "He wasn't lying."
The wolf-man hummed as he let out a breath. "Sometimes trust goes a long way."
"Yeah, not with Aviary," Shiv shot back. "Never with Aviary."
Once more, he descended into the dimensional portal, but this time, the rest of his group followed. The Raven had accepted Shiv's request quickly—as if he was expecting it. And that had the Deathless feeling some kind of uneasy. If it was Shiv, he wouldn't be so accommodating. Letting a small army of Legendary prisoners into your hidden safehouse was an act of extreme trust, and that meant the Raven wasn't worried about being compromised or slain at all.
Shiv and the other Pathbearers blinked into existence the strange, humid tunnel once more. The first among which was Urri. He was so large that he barely fit in the tunnel and let out a grunt of displeasure as a few other prisoners slammed into him from behind.
"Alright," Shiv said, staring the patient Raven down. "Now we can go."
The Raven led Shiv's convoy of Legendary-Tier accompanies without any complaint or hesitation. If that was a good sign or bad, Shiv couldn't tell. What he could tell, however, was that the steam around him was unnatural. He knew how steam moved, how the wisping smoke could be disrupted by something passing through it. This steam resembled smoke more than anything. It constantly went upward, and it didn't vibrate the right way. Shiv guessed that the steam wasn't actually steam, but probably a hidden Aviary agent. Shiv learned that assumption was right when it came with a massive spike in levels for his Farsight Skill.
Farsight 57 > 60
Yeah, really need to keep paying more attention and guessing. Having good awareness is pretty felling important.
The Raven led them down the widening tunnel, and Shiv continued studying his surroundings. Every few seconds, he would feel a vibration shudder under his feet, and in the distance, there was something humming, something that rattled aloud. Suddenly, Shiv had a vague guess about where he was. This might be some kind of mechanism, some part of the prison that controlled all the moving wheels, that might explain the constant vibrations and all the air rushing through it.
It might also explain why it wasn't made out of Orichalcum, or why the Ascendants weren't here. If it was built deep into the infrastructure of the prison, maybe it was overlooked entirely, or maybe this part was so critical or fragile that someone couldn't come here without compromising something essential. In the end, Shiv was just guessing, but he thought there were good guesses, and the exercise of thinking came with its own rewards.
"Hey, where are you taking us?" the blade-covered Pathbearer said.
"You will find out shortly," the Raven replied without turning his head.
The bladed man sneered at the Aviary agent and casually plucked a few short swords free from his anomalous flesh.
"We are in a turbine of some kind," Kura said from beside Shiv. He looked down at her, waiting for her to keep speaking. "I sent a few of my shadows out. They've walked the length of this place. There is a large mechanism that sweeps through these tunnels, pushing and displacing the wind and heat. It is meant to generate electricity. I suspect that it's used as a power source for the automata that dwell inside the Well."
Shiv didn't say anything for a moment, mainly because he didn't fully know what a turbine really was, or why the automata needed such a large structure to keep them powered. Kura took his speechlessness as understanding and continued.
"It's also lined with mithril. There are so many spells passing through this structure that it is completely choked with mana, but there's less of it the further we go. I suspect we are near the core. That might be why no one has noticed our presence—why the Ascendants have not found us. It is a place of absolute density. It is—"
A faint, azure glow emerged ahead. There came a loud crash elsewhere, followed by a heavy tremoring beneath Shiv's feet. The Deathless stopped walking. The others with him followed suit. The Raven's head snapped to attention as the outlines of three figures materialized in the dense mist.
"Move!" a voice cried.
Shiv's eyes widened. "Adam?" He started walking forward, moving toward the azure glow. "Adam! I'm here! I—"
There came a flash of color as humidity turned to dryness in an instant. Shiv froze as a massive Veilpiercer flared into existence thirty meters away from him—pointed in his direction for some reason. As it did, Adam's haggard face was revealed for the first time. A bloody gash lined his forehead, and beside him were two Pathbearers Shiv didn't recognize. One was a limping, skeletal figure comprised of sputtering embers that groaned with each step and looked ready to fall over. The other was a goblin missing her left arm. Her body was veiled with quills of Chronomancy, and she vibrated even while idle.
Adam himself was coated by a dense shroud of water. Waves crashed over his body, and his body became fluid and turbulent. But his face remained, and there was a tension to his expression that disquieted Shiv.
"Adam," Shiv called out. "It's me! It's Shiv—"
"Prove it!" Adam snarled back. "If you are Shiv, then prove it!"
The Deathless was startled. What the hells does he mean prove it?
And he wasn't the only one with questions.
"Gate Lord Arrow," the Raven said. A Veilpiercer was loosed. It struck the ground right in front of the Raven, and the Aviary agent flipped back.
The Legendary-Tier prisoners and Rebis all tensed as Adam drew another arrow back, but Shiv stopped them before they made this already chaotic situation worse. "Stop! Let me talk to him! I—"
"Shiv, if that's really you, just don't move," Adam rasped. "All of you… just stay there. No one move until I get a good look… Until I am certain about who you are. Start with you, Shiv. Show me your Vitae. Do it. Do it now." And just then, a flash of corrosive mana bled into Adam's new Veilpiercer. "Or I find out the other way."