“I know you’ve all been complaining of a slump in activity lately,” Geel announced in front of the entire organization. The assembly was a bit more formal than the one where the two girls had been introduced to the group. They were outside, with Geel perched on one of the rooftops. It bent slightly under his weight, a fact he seemed either unaware of or simply cavalier about. “This slump ends today. In two weeks, we have an important job in the imperial borders. So brush up on your imperial fancy talk!” He clapped his hand in a mouth-flapping motion while he continued to speak in Unkmirean. “We’re gonna be in… fuck it, what it’s called… Ralkenon! The city, not the volcano. Anyway, that’s not the kicker. That’s who the client is. Anyone want to guess?”
Nobody guessed.
“That’s right, last night, we were visited by the esteemed General Kyeren and General Jenola. This is a job from our own, beloved government! We’re finally moving up in the world. This may be our most important job in years. And that’s why everyone, and I mean everyone, no exceptions, is going to be there. We’ll need all hands on deck if we want this going as smoothly as possible.” He clapped his hands. “Dismissed!” He hopped down from the roof.
Myra elbowed her friend. “You hear that, Shera?”
“No.”
“Right, well, we’re gonna be—”
“Wait!” The crowd went silent again as Geel called out again and reappeared on the roof. “Ah! I forgot! You—” He waved his index finger, scanning the crowd for something. He finally settled on Myra and Shera. “You two! You’re a bit too green. That’s right. I want everyone, absolutely everyone, on this mission! Except for you two. Dismissed!”
◆
“The m-mission’s g-gotta be about destroying Ralkenon,” Shera said. “He knows we’re from Ralkenon. So he doesn’t want us on the mission.”
“Yeah, that does make sense,” Myra agreed, but she was already on her way to talk to Geel. “I think we should confront him anyway. We might learn something. We’ll just have to convince him we don’t care about Ralkenon or something. I mean, why else would we join the murk bogs? We’ll sell it.”
“Th-that’s worked well in the past.”
“Hey, we’ve already learned something. We know who those last two victims are, and we learned that they hire the murk bogs. Anyway, we’ve gotta keep pushing.”
They got an appointment with Geel as soon as possible, which turned out to be around eight hours after the assembly. Maybe it was because he was just busy making plans for the new mission, or maybe it was because he could smell that Myra and Shera were looking for him and made himself disappear in order to be as obstinate as possible, but in any case, he seemed impossible to find for the first time since they’d joined the group.
“Ah, you two.” Geel slid into his office where the duo was waiting for him. “You wanted to see me?”
“We’d really like to go on the mission in Casire,” Myra insisted right out of the gate.
“Well, of course, you would! It’s a very exciting mission.”
“… Right. What I mean is, we were wondering if you would reconsider your decision to exclude us from the mission.”
“I stand by what I said. The both of you are too green. That’s not to say you aren’t good at your jobs. The runes are rune-ing more smoothly than I can ever remember. But you don’t have experience on the field.”
“Maybe we could… be on standby in case you have a runic emergency?”
He scratched his goatee. “I do admit that we may be at a runic disadvantage. Perhaps we can make some kind of agreement.”
Geel…? Being agreeable…? What alternative universe did I stumble into?
He hemmed and hawed for a few moments. “I may have a way for you to prove yourselves ready. There’s a job we’ve had on our plate for some time, but we’re a little, you could say, stuck—yes!” He clapped his hands. “You might even say we’re in a bog. We’ve sunk a deal of resources into this project already, and the payday will be quite substantial if we succeed, but to be blunt, we are failing at the final hurdle. It might be something that could use your expertise.”
“Is it an interesting rune problem?”
“Possibly. It’s definitely a rune problem. Whether it’s interesting is a question best left for the philosophers.” Well, fair enough. “In short, a client in Briktone has hired us to break into a vault owned by the Unkmirean government and report its contents.”
Myra almost did a double-take. “What? Wait, wait, wait. The big mission in a couple of weeks is for the Unkmirean government.”
“That’s right.” He frowned. “What’s that got to do with this?”
“Er—”
“I’m just confused why you’re testing us with a mission that goes against Unkmire’s interests.”
Geel didn’t let up his confused frown. “The murk bogs accept clients of all interests and nationalities. You could even say it’s what we’re famous for. Our only loyalty is money. That makes us objectively neutral, and that’s why people love us.”
Briktone was a sea-faring nation to the south of Unkmire. It was Myra’s understanding that tensions had always been high between the two nations, and historically, they were frequently at war, though they’d been at relative peace for at least all of Myra’s life. She understood that much of the tension had to do with Unkmire trying to secure its trade routes across the sea in the face of Briktone’s large piracy problem. Briktone either couldn’t deal with its pirates, or it deliberately used them to disrupt Unkmire’s operations, depending on who you asked.
Anyway, this sounded like exactly the sort of murk bog treason that people always mumbled about. It definitely wasn’t a loyalty test.
So either Geel’s position could be taken at face value, that they just needed to prove out their skills, and the specifics meant nothing.
Or…
Myra looked at Shera to guess what she was thinking. The girl looked clueless. Right. Geel’s refusal to speak a language Shera can understand is really getting old.
Innumerable concerns aside, there was nothing to lose at this point. “Of course we’ll help,” Myra said. Considering how she could present even more of a can-do attitude, she added, “We joined so we could do stuff like this, all you had to do was ask.”
“Great! Let’s take a walk.” He grabbed some kind of fruit candy bar from his desk and led them outside.
“The vault lies in a hollowed-out tree near the government building in Krinph. Unfortunately, we aren’t specialists in this kind of infiltration work. We’ve been able to subvert the first few levels of security without tripping any kind of alarm, but we’re stuck on the next obstacle. Some kind of large runic wall.”
“And who’s the client again?”
“It’s a small company. They seem to be some kind of private investigators—bit of an odd lot. Personally, I suspect they might have ties with the Briktonese intelligence agency, but that’s neither here nor there. They paid us to not ask many questions, so I can’t tell you what interest they have in this vault. But I can tell you they’re very interested, even after all this time, in getting into that vault.”
“I see. Sorry, do you mind if I explain this all to Shera?”
Geel shrugged. “Hey, don’t let me stop you.”
So she relayed all the information to Shera.
“I have a qu-question,” Shera asked, once she finally understood the full situation. “How long have you been working on this project?”
“I believe we put the project on hiatus a few months ago, thereabouts. Roc’s been keeping an eye on the vault, so he’ll know if the status has changed at all. To my knowledge, there’s been no movement. Come, I’ll introduce you to Roc, and he’ll get you ladies up to speed.”
Roc was the name of the group’s weaponsmith. His workshop was in one of the small utility buildings near the border of the platform, similarly styled to the rune workshop. Roc was busy tending to the forge; he was a tall, broad-shouldered man, strong as an ox, but with white hair and an aged face, wrinkled and sunken. The girls had needed to interact with him on occasion, but they had been non-events. Roc was reliable, and he didn’t speak beyond what was needed for his job.
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His usual role in the organization was to pump out pistols, identical and unfailingly to specification, a task he performed steadfastly. At the wall at the back of his workshop, however, there were weapons with more individual touches. There was a spear with an engraving along the shaft, for example, but there were some real oddballs, too. A sword with a built-in pistol, a sniper rifle with elaborate knobs and levers that assisted your aim by God knew what method… There was even a halberd connected to a prosthetic hand made of bronze.
“Roc, my man!” Geel called out. “We’re looking at starting up the ol’ vault project. Our new runists might be able to help with that rune wall bullshit.”
Roc grunted affirmatively.
“You’ll take it from here, yeah?”
Grunt.
Geel left, which was always a good thing.
“There are many layers of security,” Roc said, getting down to business immediately. He hadn’t moved from where he stood, and he stared straight ahead of him, not looking at either of the girls. “Fortunately, there have been no surprises with the intrusion detection. Thus far, the information from our clients in Briktone has been accurate.”
“How does the intrusion detection work?”
“Intrusion detection is very difficult to begin with,” he explained. “Nothing can sense a person protected within their own domain.”
Except maybe Emmett Massiel’s security system.
“Of course,” Myra said.
“The detectors can sense some second-order effects of your presence. Airflow, sound, shadows. Once you learn how to control those, it won’t be a problem.”
“You need us to personally go into the vault?”
“Of course. You’ll need to examine the rune net. The last thing you’ll need is the ability to get past its teleportation defenses.”
Suddenly, Myra perked up, her frustrations melting away as an exciting possibility opened up. “And how do you do that?”
“There are two things. You need to force your way past the disruption field, and you need to avoid getting caught up by the redirection rod. I take it you will need instruction in both?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “We have an instructor qualified to teach you.”
Yes! Oh, finally, something good was coming up this dreadful loop.
“You’ll need to see Nesr Wald.”
◆
“Are you gonna be okay learning from Nesr Wald?” Myra asked once the two of them were alone.
“Of c-c-course,” she said, quite plainly not meaning it.
“Okay, well—” Myra patted her shoulder. “We’ll be working under him together. He won’t be able to try anything.”
She turned to go, but Shera stopped her.
“Hey! Um, on a different note, d-doesn’t this seem odd to you?”
Myra laughed darkly. “Everything seems odd, Shera, what specifically are you referring to?”
“The runes? Like—They’ve been stuck on this rune problem for m-months, right?”
“That might be the least weird thing to happen, though,” Myra said. “It finally explains why they wanted runecrafters.”
“No, it doesn’t! When you called them at the beginning of the loop, they said they didn’t need anyone. Then they suddenly turn around and hire you a few d-days later, but they don’t even mention this whole thing except incidentally because you asked for a chance to prove y-yourself?”
Myra scratched her head. “Okay, yeah, I guess the way they went about it is still pretty weird.”
“Th-think about it, you called out of the blue offering your rune services, and he hangs up instead of thinking, ‘Hey, m-maybe they can help with the high-paying vault project’?”
“Maybe he just needed a few days to mull it over, and the rudeness was just Geel being Geel.”
“He didn’t even ask for your contact information.”
“Okay, fine. You’re right. It’s an abnormal level of weird. Everything about these fucking people is weird… Maybe they forgot about the project, but then it suddenly becomes more important for some reason? That would maybe explain why they were handing out posters around this time last loop…”
But if Geel was lying about the parameters of the vault mission, he was doing a great job of covering up. They asked around the organization, and everybody confirmed that the vault project had been stalled for months. Chrysji even showed them the contracts they’d signed with the Briktonese group, which were dated about eight months ago, together with an intelligence file on the vault provided by the same group. Many individuals were able to explain how they had contributed to existing progress. Obyl even agreed it was pretty weird that Geel didn’t hire them for the vault project the first time she had called.
“I’m starting to th-think trying to read into Geel’s decisions might be like reading into soap bubbles,” Shera finally concluded. “Totally random and meaningless.”
◆
The lessons with Nesr Wald started almost immediately.
“The vault has a redirection trap. Do you know what that is?”
“I heard it’s like a lightning rod for teleportation that—”
“That was a rhetorical question. Don’t bother answering. A redirection rod is commonly known as a device that traps anyone trying to teleport to a nearby location. Instead of appearing where they intend to, they arrive at a trap destination. For this government vault, the redirector is probably set up to ensnare anyone trying to subvert its defenses. Now, many mages think that a redirector works by “pulling” in your tele-endpoint like gravity, or electromagnetism. In fact, a redirector does nothing of the sort. All it does is trick the caster into teleporting to the wrong spot. Do you know why wasps are attracted to flames?”
“I read that—”
“It was a rhetorical question,” he said again. “Don’t bother answering. The reason is that wasps usually use the sun to navigate.” That’s what I was going to say… “Therefore, bright lights confuse them. A redirection rod is very similar. Mages can instinctively feel their way through auraspace using the natural auraflow of the universe. The solar channel, the lunar channels. You may not realize you rely on this, but you do. It’s the same way you use the accelerometer in your inner ear to know if you’re standing up right or not. You don’t even think about it, but you do.”
I guess that makes sense.
“So can you guess how a redirection rod works? That’s also rhetorical. It messes with all the aura flow in a space so that you get disoriented and move your endpoint into the redirector without thinking about it. Fortunately, if you know how it works, there are many ways to course-correct by properly understanding the correspondence between physical space and auraspace. Let’s practice now.”
Nesr Wald brought out a rod for practice. It was shaped like a rod, about a story high, that branched like a tree at the top, splitting outwards in a complex, ever more fine fractal pattern that glowed with a soft rainbow in the mid-morning light. He had them practice teleporting, marking an ‘X’ in the dirt a few meters from the rod and asking them to reach the ‘X.’
For all that Nesr Wald seemed to hate teaching, he was pretty good at instructing on this arcane topic. It took the girls a couple of hours before they could reliably avoid the trap. Then they had to do it blindfolded, and finally, they had to do it from a greater distance.
After learning to avoid redirection rods, the next thing they had to learn was how to subvert a teleportation disruption field. Again, the training began with learning the theory underlying the disruption field.
The field they would have to bypass was made from a certain plant with a strong magic-blocking domain. It might have been a Billowing Elm, like the trees along the bicycle pass in Ralkenon, or it might have been a similar plant. Anyway, the plant was ground up into microscopic dust and scattered in the air.
Somehow, it had been engineered to block teleportation specifically. According to Nesr Wald, this was likely because an airborne field disrupting magic indiscriminately was considered too dangerous. This limitation was great for them, because it allowed various loopholes.
One loophole was to just telekinetically push the microscopic matter to create a free pocket for you to teleport into. However, the vault’s alarm systems would immediately go off if it detected this pocket opening up. The solution was to teleport into the pocket as quickly as possible, thus “plugging the hole” in the domain with your own.
To say the least, this was much harder to master than avoiding the teleportation rod had been. Meanwhile, time was ticking and the end of the loop was approaching. By the time Nesr Wald was satisfied that the girls would be able to get themselves into the vault, the loop only had 9 days left.
◆
On the morning of Day 19, they met with Roc for the infiltration.
“I made you some new equipment,” he said to start it off. He handed each of them a new chisel pen.
“Oh! Thanks!” The new chisels were sharp and sturdy, and they were well-balanced too. Shera inspected hers, tapping a fingernail to the side. Myra noticed that her handle was a bit smaller, befitting her hand. “Hey, did you make these just for us?”
He nodded. “Our gear has been getting a bit old. It’s time for a refresh.” That was all he said about that. “Now, the vault is here.” He pointed to a map of Krinph, using a booklet like the one Myra had used to navigate the city. “I want you to start by teleporting here.” He pointed to a little treehouse not far from the vault.
“Er, all the way from here?”
“Yes, is that a problem?”
“Er, neither of us can teleport nearly that far,” Myra said. “Not even close.”
Roc frowned. “I see. Well, then we will take the train to Krinph.”
They took the train to Krinph. Roc remained as unreadable as ever, so it was hard to tell if he was annoyed about this hiccup. In principle, he could have sent the two of them on the train and then joined them by making the long-distance teleport himself. Myra wouldn’t even have thought it rude. He did join them for the train, however, sitting in silence the entire ride.
The tree containing the vault was massive, even by the standards of Unkmire. It was over a hundred, maybe two hundred meters in diameter. Geel had described it as “hollowed out,” but Myra hadn’t quite registered what he meant. Now, she could feel immediately what he’d meant by hollow.
The ‘safe house’ wasn’t far from the tree, and it was easy enough to get to. It was almost disappointingly empty; when Roc had pointed it out on the map, Myra had pictured some kind of secret base with… you know, infiltration spy stuff. It was actually just an empty building.
Roc pointed out the exact location inside the tree that they needed to teleport to. Myra took a deep breath, held onto everything she had learned about avoiding detection, and teleported into the vault.
She made it, avoiding the redirection trap and getting past the disruption field without issue, arriving in a massive cylindrical room with walls of bark. The room was well-lit, though the light source was unclear. The light simply was. At the very edge of the room, there was a staircase leading down. That was the normal entrance, which they had obviously skipped. To move forward, they would be going up.
The stairs leading up were at the very center of the room. Roc led the way up. The device on the ceiling was familiar, but different; whereas the event hall had been controlled by an orb, this was more like a large wheel, embedded in the ceiling, but it was made of the same icy white crystal.
On the other side of this ceiling, there was nothing. Severed space, the inside of this massive trunk, shunted out of the dimension, tethered to this world by a thin thread of a manifold.
Following Roc’s instructions, the three individuals spread their domains out to cover the entire wheel. Roc took out a silver anti-wire and attached it between two carefully chosen points on the wheel’s runework. These actions together would interfere with the alarm system, giving them substantially more freedom once they were on the other side, where Myra would be tasked to inspect the troublesome component.
(Not specialists in this kind of infiltration work, they’d said.)
Finally, Roc rotated a knob in the center of the wheel, and they were sucked through.