***

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SECURE COMMUNICATION REQUEST

Key verification initiated

Identity verified: THAUCON.CENTRAL.INTELLIGENCE.QUICKSILVER

Quantum-secure channel established

Initiating communication

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Accept.

Quicksilver: Good evening, private. Are you in a position to communicate safely?

Cerical: Yes, except for the risk inherent in the communication.

Quicksilver: Ever so formal. Anyway, first of all I mean to congratulate you. Your report has been received and analyzed. It confirms our worry that Rakavdon base is missing more than half of its official inventory. Someone along the chain must have siphoned off a lot of money.

Cerical: Can you make regional HQ, or someone higher up, actually care about this? I can’t believe the Captain doesn’t seem to mind.

Quicksilver: Bad as the situation is, it’s not atypical for a provincial base that sees little activity. For things to be this bad, regional HQ must be involved in the pillaging, so there’s no easy way to address the situation. May the Abyss swallow traitors and profiteers.

Cerical: It must be regional HQ. The officers here are of dubious competence, but they don’t look like they’re getting rich off the job.

Quicksilver: It’s more complex than that - the Vorokan regional HQ is crooked, but it’s not just them, the whole supply system for the Agency is broken.

Between corruption and inefficient bureaucracy, it’s hard to know where money disappears. The whole financing structure of the Agency is pointlessly complex – may the Abyss swallow a few bureaucrats too.

But for Rakavdon base specifically, it turns out missing equipment and appalling lack of maintenance aren’t the only reasons to worry. There are anomalies of tampering with personnel transfers, too.

Cerical: What do you mean? Beside high brass using this base as a dump?

Quicksilver: That’s part of the problem. General Orner and other wastes of oxygen like him keep requesting personnel transfers to play petty games, so it’s hard to figure out why any specific agent got there. But there are anomalies. Your team, for example.

Cerical: What do you mean? We’re here because each of us made a superior officer angry.

Quicksilver: Is that the best you can do? Try again.

Lots of agents fuck up and get sent to remote bases – a petty, self-harming policy that lowers our overall standards, and harms our preparedness.

But most of those people are pretty bad agents – slackers who did the bare minimum to avoid disciplinary charges, or extremely argumentative ones who couldn’t get along with officers. Consider your team.

Does that description fit?

I think about it. Of course we’re here because we fucked up. What is Quicksilver even implying?

Always question your assumptions. Think seriously about any question, no matter how trivial - Professor Angver kept saying that in Intelligence School, and I want to believe her lessons stuck.

Cerical: Your description definitely fits Team Red, they’re argumentative and aggressive to the point I wouldn’t trust them on the field. Team Green fits to a lesser extent, they’re definitely low on motivation.

In our case… while it doesn’t fit exactly, I’d say we’re close enough. Sorivel and I could easily be described as argumentative. Kaelich is neither lazy nor argumentative, and got reassigned on rather harmless grounds.

But while I was lucky to end up in a mostly-functional team, we still fit the pattern of junior agents sent here as unofficial punishment.

Quicksilver: Corporal Kaelich was in the second percentile of xir cohort for aim and the first for reflexes. Private Sorivel can command five drones at once, which is extremely rare in one so young.

You had a brilliant record at Intelligence School. There’s no doubt you all made enemies. But there are many provincial bases where an inconvenient young agent can be sent. It’s quite curious that three highly talented ones ended up in the same base, in the same team.

I’ve trouble wrapping my head around that. The last thing I worried about was that my team is too good.

But Kaelich is an amazing shot, and while we didn’t work much on drones at Intelligence School, I’ve never met anyone who could control four drones at once, let alone five.

But how could this make sense?

Cerical: I concur that my companions are more skilled than I’d usually expect from randomly assigned team members – at least on their chosen specialities. They should definitely improve their procedures and professionalism.

But I feel quite confident that General Orner had no intention to covertly set me up for a good career.

Quicksilver: His hand is not the only one at work. He probably just put you up for transfer, to a base flagged as low personnel priority - that’s an euphemism for a dump.

There are a lot of people involved in deciding which agent gets transferred where, and there’s some indication your intended destination was changed at least once.

It’s at least possible someone wanted to set up a skilled team in Rakavdon. We don’t know who, nor why. But it’s one more sign your base should be kept under careful watch.

Cerical: Why would anyone care about this place? I mean, I absolutely think the base should be kept in good working order. But it’s just a provincial garrison, outside of demonfall regions. Who would want, or need, an elite team here?

And why does Quicksilver, who must at least rank Captain in Intelligence, and looks like a big picture person, want an informant in this base?

Quicksilver: You tell me, Cerical. Show me your work. What’s the risk profile for Rakavdon Base?

I wish I could hear Quicksilver’s voice – it’s hard to tell if they’re being sarcastic, curious, or patronizing. It surely feels like an annoying teacher testing a student, but they might be actually asking for information.

It doesn’t matter. Once again, it’s a legitimate request, and it is what I’ve trained for.

Cerical: Yearly Demonfall risk is lower than one percent for the whole province, so, while basic response capacity should be assured, it shouldn’t be a strategic focus.

There’s little sign of Syndicate infiltration, and no known history of Hidden Schools presence – actually, Syndicate activity is so low, it’s an anomaly in itself, which should be investigated.

Beside that, the only specific focus for concern is the University of Rakavdon, most famous for its Precursor Study department and its ongoing relic excavation project.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Despite popular belief and movie plots, excavating and studying relics very rarely causes direct incidents. However, relics attract smugglers, and major relics are known to attract the interest of all magical factions – which on second thoughts, makes the lack of Syndicate activity even more perplexing.

Quicksilver: Good. You understand that not seeing the enemy can be worse than seeing it. Your assessment is broadly in agreement with ours. We have theories about the reason syndicates keep out of Rakavdon, but lacking confirmation, we won’t share them yet, not to influence your observations.

There’s one more element, however. Beside the Relics which are excavated and studied, there’s an Artifact in Rakavdon. A powerful one, of unknown purpose – the Black Door.

I’ve read about it. It’s the reason they built the University, back during the thaumocracy. It’s called a door, but it’s more like a magical barrier, and no one, not even the old Council of Mages, managed to understand its purpose.

Cerical: The Black Door is supposedly powerful, but it’s been unresponsive for centuries.

Quicksilver: Has it? Remember the university was abandoned for decades, after the Moonbreaking. According to some reports, the Black Door looked different, after those years.

Cerical: If you know some secret about the Door, either tell me, or don’t expect me to account for it.

Quicksilver: And here I was wondering why you had so many bad marks for behavior in class. Anyway, we would tell you if we knew for sure. As things stand, we don’t.

But remember Rakavdon is more than a mid-sized town lost in the snow. There’s magic, ancient and powerful, below the University. And someone is playing games, up there. The factions are stirring, all over the world. Rakavdon’s tranquility could be suddenly over. You must be ready. We must all be ready.

I sigh.

Cerical: I do my best. But the base is crumbling, and talented or not, my team is only three people, with limited experience and at the very bottom of the command chain. Our only assigned job so far is the hunt for a teenage rogue mage.

Quicksilver: forgive me a moment of impropriety, but it’s always so fun to hear twenty-years-old using teenager dismissively. Anyway, you must be observant and ready – as you’ve been so far. As for your rogue mage, I’ve promised assistance in your day-to-day job. It’s time I deliver. So, I knew of the case already, and did some work with my informants.

It looks like a young man of Kalestran origin is looking for a copy of the Art of the Veil in Rakavdon, and he’s not being anywhere as discreet as he believes.

Cerical: The Art of the Veil? They’re aiming high.

The Art of the Veil isn’t a book for a confused rogue mage trying to get by. It’s the Black Liar’s own guide to magic, focusing on the most dangerous and forbidden powers. I knew Korentis was bad news.

Quicksilver: I’ve a strong suspicion they’re just clueless.

They can’t even mask their signature - they’d be better off with the Path of the Faceless or the Mentor’s Teachings. I doubt they realize how rare and expensive the Art of the Veil is. But given its infamy, it might be the only magical book they know about.

Anyway, they’re making inquiries, mostly through Kalestran channels. Given how inexperienced they are, a simple trap could close your case.

On one hand, I’m happy to get something immediately helpful from Quicksilver. On the other hand, while they haven’t asked me to do anything irregular yet, the more help I accept from them, the more compromised I become.

Well, I accepted their deal. Information for information, and a hope for a career in Intelligence, covert or not. There’s no sense second guessing myself when I get something useful out of it.

Cerical: Thank you. I’ll need CivInt support to set a trap, which isn’t easy, but I think I’ll manage. These two mages are getting under my skin, and a successful case will help our standing.

Quicksilver: And here I thought you were solely motivated by the desire to stand between humanity and the Dark Power.

Well, update me on the case, and your base. I think we have a good picture about the infrastructure and stock, next time I’d like something more about the personnel. Especially given the anomalies we discussed.

Cerical: I will try, but I don’t have the trust of personnel outside my team. It would be difficult to get any non-trivial information about them.

Quicksilver: I’m not asking you to find about their secret lovers, just assess whether they can be considered combat-ready, and whether they take their job seriously. Just by asking in a casual conversation, you can get a lot of information that isn’t in the Agency files. That’s all I need.

Except I’m terrible at casual conversation. But Quicksilver wouldn’t know, because that isn’t in my personal file, nicely making their point.

And if I want them to consider me a valuable asset, I can hardly turn down their second assignment because I hate chit-chat.

Cerical: I’ll prepare a report. We stand watch.

Quicksilver: Untill the war is won, and the sky is mended.

***

Head investigator Malartis is a pasty, perpetually sour-faced woman whose main occupation is to argue against anything that sounds like work.

Lord of Skies, it would be so much easier if we could just run the whole investigation ourselves. ThauCon agents used to do that, but after the Zelenian war, some brilliant minister thought of offloading some detective work to civilians. On paper, that allows to have dedicated specialists even in understaffed provincial bases.

Maybe it even works, in larger cities, where CivInt isn’t a joke.

Here, CivInt is four people working in a small, squalid office in the outer base. There’s a literal dust layer on Malartis’ desk, and while she keeps looking at her computer’s screen, I’m pretty sure she’s playing solitaire. I’ve no idea what the tattoo on her forehead means, so I choose to believe it’s ‘waste of public money’.

“So, you think they’ll be looking for a book on magic,” she says, not looking at me. “But your gut feeling is no evidence. And in this city, there are no regular channels to get one anyway.”

“Evidence is what you are supposed to find,” I say, then bite my tongue before I get into a whole argument. “Anyway, the Kalestran mage stopped using magic, so he must know he can be tracked. The next logical step would be to learn signature masking. And it’s very likely he’ll try the Kalestran gray market, he must have contacts there.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” she grumbles. “Including the fact that he has Kalestran contacts. He looks Kalestran and had an accent, at least according to our anonymous source who was probably a robber. But he could be a third generation immigrant.”

Oh, the fucking pasty-faced Vorokan is trying to imply I’m racist, too – I hate self-righteous Karesians.

“He had clan tattoos visible in the metro footage, clearly indicating he’s part of the Kalestran community. And beside that, he’s not in the databases, so he never went to school in Vorok,” I say. “While there are a number of explanations, it’s very likely he’s Kalestran, and came through the airship caravans. Since we don’t have certainties, we should act on realistic possibilities.”

Malartis grunts. “Well, our time and manpower aren’t unlimited,” she says, and I bite my tongue hard not to ask what exactly she’s doing with her time, then. “The four of us can hardly keep the whole airship port under surveillance. I don’t know if you’re familiar with airship terminals, but they’re massive complexes.”

How could I not be familiar with airship terminals? Oh, I guess she assumes I only ever traveled by camel.

“Of course,” I say, “but you could set up a sting operation. You must have informants and contacts in the market, right? Just circulate news that you’re selling a magical book. Claim to sell the Art of the Veil maybe, so it will attract more attention than any real seller. If the mages come, we catch them.”

“Hm,” she says, “and on whose authority are you saying that?”

I smile. “I developed the idea together with Lieutenant Sareas, and we have the captain’s approval. Should they make a formal request?”

It’s more like I talked Sareas to death until he gave in, and he thinks he can get the Captain to sign if we really need her too. But the fear of dealing with bureaucracy seems to worry the investigator enough to make her move her ass.

“Well,” she says, “I guess it could make sense. However, an undercover operation using military personnel must follow very complex regulations, and you’re not trained for it.”

Lord of Seas, give me patience. I make an effort to keep my face blank and not to roll my eyes.

“We just need to wait for the mages in a room and jump on them. I believe we can do that,” I say.

“Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, that’s why my job exists,” she answers. “We won’t set up an operation involving agents without a written request from the Captain. It would probably require validation from regional HQ, too. But we can use our indirect assets.”

Indirect assets? Malartis actually has collaborators? Fuck, I thought their ‘informants’ were more like ‘reading the Rakavdon Daily’.

“Would your indirect assets be able to capture two mages, even untrained ones?” I ask, dubious.

“Of course,” she snaps, “we can do our job, you know. There’s a whole economy of people who work on catching rogue mages.”

Well, it’s nice to know someone works hard at catching mages, but apparently we don’t, because it requires too much paperwork.

***