Northern Osiris
Tantalus finished speaking as he saw the top of Riemann’s head peak out over one of the nearby cars. He suddenly didn’t want to sober up after delivering such a pitiful story to his soldiers. Tantalus kept his eyes pointed at the ground as he spoke; he didn’t want to see their expressions.
“Wow, it really sucks that that happened,” Redgrave said.
“Tell me about it,” Tantalus responded.
If this story changed their view of him, it would probably be for the best. They should just keep their distance from the insane old man and trust him to do his job. Tantalus was their commanding officer, and they shouldn’t view him as a friend. Better yet, perhaps this would end Eska’s foolish infatuation with him. Tantalus wasn’t blind to a woman’s advances; he had been alive for long enough to pick up that much.
Riemann walked past the interposing vehicle to see the group of Revenant soldiers sitting on the ground in a circle. “I see that the Antidote spell is sorely needed here.”
Elias laughed at Riemann’s statement. “Does the game’s system recognize alcohol as a poison?”
“Naturally,” Riemann pulled the sleeves of his dress shirt up to his elbows as if he was a doctor about to perform surgery. “Now, I only have enough mana left to cast the spell three times. Who’s getting healed?” Riemann looked around at the two squads.
Redgrave and Pixie immediately raised their hands. Tantalus was tempted to raise his hand and take the third Antidote, but he didn’t want to regain the capacity to thoroughly analyze the information he just revealed to his soldiers just yet. There was no third raised hand.
“Good, then I’ll have a little mana left over,” Riemann said. “Who’s first?”
Redgrave stepped up first. “I drove here, so I might as well be the one to sober up first.”
“I need direct access to your blood in order to cast the spell,” Riemann informed Redgrave.
“Oh, I gotcha,” Redgrave drew his knife and brought it to his wrist. His hand stopped a few inches away from his wrist as if it was caught by an invisible hand.
“Right, Safe Zone,” he muttered.
Riemann unsuccessfully tried to look nonjudgmental. He held his upturned hand out toward Redgrave and said, “Just put your index finger on the center of my palm and call forth your blood as if you’re anointing a bullet.”
Redgrave did as Riemann commanded. Riemann closed his eyes and chanted, “Perdere int corpus.”
There was no flash of light or physical manifestation like there usually was with magic. For a moment, Tantalus wondered if the spell had failed.
“Woah, that’s weird,” Redgrave said. “I’m completely sober.”
“That’s how it works,” Riemann said. “By the way, you’re going to have to urinate in about ten minutes. If you don’t, you might die.”
“What?” Redgrave exclaimed.
“I think I understand,” Tantalus blurted. “It’s a form of transmutation magic that targets a certain chemical compound within the body and destroys it. The incantation was ‘destroy within body,’ or something like that. What do you have to visualize when you cast the spell?”
“You’re exactly correct,” Riemann said. “As expected of a prodigy. You need to visualize the target of destruction in the form of an organic structure.”
“The kind used in organic chemistry?” Tantalus asked.
“Precisely,” Riemann answered.
Tantalus briefly recalled the chemical formula for ethanol, C2H6O, and tried to imagine how it would form into a single compound. He hadn’t taken organic chemistry since college, but the knowledge came to Tantalus easily when he called for it. Tantalus could not immediately remember the organic structure for ethanol, but he was able to reconstruct it easily within his brain. Tantalus quietly integrated the spell Antidote into his moveset.
“If you two nerds will excuse me,” Redgrave said, “I need to go look for a bathroom, apparently.”
“Yeah,” Pixie said, “I think I’ll wait until there’s a bathroom nearby before you use the spell on me.”
Over the next ten minutes, the group of Revenants found a gas station that would allow them to use the restroom as long as they bought something. The NPC behind the counter was clearly uncomfortable with so many firearms in his store. The alcohol was removed from Pixie’s system, and most of the Revenants bought a drink or a snack from the store.
Tantalus stood alone outside of the gas station, drinking juice from a box through a straw. It was just barely above freezing, but he wanted a few minutes alone.
“Drast,” he chanted, lighting a cigarette.
Tantalus heard the sound of approaching footsteps. He turned to see Eska walking toward him with a plastic cup filled with coffee that was steaming in the cold air. She stopped next to Tantalus and turned in the same direction as him. Eska shivered slightly in the cold evening air.
Tantalus unclasped the buckle holding his cloak together. He wordlessly handed his cloak to Eska. “Sorry,” he said, “it probably smells like cigarette smoke.”
“Thanks,” she smiled, “I don’t mind.”
The Captain of the West Gate took a long drag of his cigarette before speaking once more. “Hey, Eska,” he said without looking at her. “When tomorrow’s operation is done, the two of us should go somewhere. There’s a nice restaurant near the West Gate we could go to.”
“I’d like that,” Eska said from Tantalus’s right.
There were a million things Tantalus wanted to say in that moment, but he couldn’t muster up the courage to say them. He wanted to tell her all the reasons this would end poorly, he wanted to question her taste in men, he wanted to call her a liar. Instead, he said nothing, and a long moment of silence passed over their little corner of Osiris. The silence wasn’t awkward; it was strangely comfortable.
This silence ended when the Revenants within the store all left through the automatic doors at the same time. All of them stumbled as they walked except for Redgrave and Pixie who led the way.
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“All right, back to Hotel Acheron!” Redgrave shouted from the front. His shout was met with a chorus of drunken cheers from behind. “Are you two coming?”
“Aye, aye, Pied Piper,” Tantalus responded. He stamped down on his half-smoked cigarette, and he moved to follow Redgrave.
The group of Revenants began walking back toward the parking lot. They were talking about something in an excited chatter, but Tantalus couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He puffed contentedly on his cigarette and blew a large smoke cloud into the air. Tonight was going well, all things considered.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of Tantalus’s neck stood on end. It was a feeling he had become quite accustomed to over the past few days. He was being watched.
Tantalus jerked his head like a zebra looking for a lion, and then he saw the origin of the feeling. Across the road from him, a red-haired man in a bomber jacket and aviator sunglasses with yellow rims stood with his hands in his pockets. A sparse crowd of both NPCs and Revenants leaving Elysium occasionally passed between the man and Tantalus. The red-haired man was the only person on the sidewalk who wasn’t moving, and his gaze was locked directly on the Captain of the West Gate. He wasn’t wearing blue or visibly carrying a gun, so he seemed to be an NPC. His eyes, however, had the distinct look of recognition, and his mouth was upturned in a mirthful grin.
Slowly, the red-haired man removed his hand from his coat pocket. He raised up his hand to point directly at Tantalus with his index finger, middle finger, and thumb extended in an approximation of a handgun. He pressed his thumb forward and jerked his hand backward simultaneously as he mouthed a single word. “Bang.”
A palpable feeling of fear suddenly seeped into Tantalus’s bones, and a million questions entered his brain. Who was that? Why did he do that? How did he know how a gun worked? Why was he wearing sunglasses?
His thoughts were murky as if he was wading through ankle-deep water. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t put the pieces together in his current state. There was a puzzle there, and Tantalus knew the answer was right at his fingertips. He just couldn’t put it together through the mosaic of drunkenness.
The red-haired man extended his hand in a wave as he turned to walk away from the Captain. The insolence was unacceptable, Tantalus thought. He growled audibly and slammed a new mental image over the incomplete jigsaw puzzle in his head. It was the organic structure of ethanol.
Tantalus pressed hand against his heart as if he was checking his own pulse. He visualized his own circulatory system as the target for the spell. “Perdere int corpus!”
Immediately, the mosaic disappeared. His full mental faculties came roaring back into action. The puzzle came together almost automatically as soon as Tantalus could think again. He felt foolish that he couldn’t solve such a simple puzzle, even when intoxicated.
The blonde man was wearing sunglasses because he wanted to bypass the Identify special ability, and his use of the finger gun indicated a knowledge of firearms that normal NPCs didn’t have. Only Deluvians and NPCs that worship GM would be aware of the nature of firearms. Tantalus instantaneously formed a hypothesis that, while unlikely, would explain the strange man’s behavior: he could be a Deluvian, perhaps a Wendigo, disguised as a Revenant who had come to Osiris to try to intimidate a leader of the Revenants.
The red-haired man could just be a Revenant dressed as an NPC, but then he would have no reason to be wearing sunglasses at night. As far as Tantalus was aware, the Revenants weren’t hunting for any criminals. All crimes or acts of violence reported to have been committed by a Revenant were committed against NPCs. No Revenant would bother chasing down those people. Therefore, Tantalus deemed his hypothesis to have an approximately 25% chance of likelihood. It was enough to act on, Tantalus figured.
“Hey, Tantalus!” Riemann shouted from a few feet away. “You shouldn’t cast complicated transmutation on your own blood when you’re drunk. You could’ve killed yourself!”
Tantalus, now fully aware and mentally prepared for battle, turned to the group of mostly drunk Revenants. He spoke quickly, “Sorry, Riemann. I don’t have time to explain, but I need to leave right now. It was fun, everyone. Let’s do this again, sometime.”
Before anyone could respond, Tantalus had sprinted off toward the blonde man. His cigarette flew off, taken by a cool evening breeze.
By the time Tantalus had reached the entrance to the alleyway, he saw the back of the man turning onto the road on the other side of the alley. The red-haired man started to run a moment after Tantalus had spotted him.
“Stop!” Tantalus shouted at the fleeing man. He chased the man through several alleyways and side streets. The man passed over chain-link fences and through abandoned buildings. He was fast, and Tantalus had to sprint at full speed just to keep up.
Eventually, Tantalus turned a corner to find the man had suddenly stopped within a small twenty-by-twenty-foot park. He was standing under a large metal umbrella, and he was only partially illuminated by the flickering streetlamp above.
“Who are you?” Tantalus demanded while trying to catch his breath.
“You’re a smart man, you figure it out,” the red-haired man responded. His voice was completely level. Even after sprinting through several city blocks, he wasn’t out of breath at all.
“What do you want?” Tantalus tried unsuccessfully to keep his voice level.
“I’m here to deliver a message,” the man said in a sadistic voice filled with mirth. “We know about the Duke’s assault tomorrow. If you want to save lives, convince him to call it off.”
Tantalus closed a single eye and opened the Direct Message function. He began typing a request for reinforcements to Redgrave. The man spoke before Tantalus could finish typing. “There’s no point calling for reinforcements, Captain, I’m already gone.”
“What are you talking about?”
The streetlamp flickered, causing the man to be completely shrouded in darkness for less than a second. When the light came back on, the man was gone. In an instant, he had disappeared.
Tantalus took a step back. He turned his head in all directions to see if the red-haired man had disappeared to somewhere nearby, but he was completely alone on that street corner.
----------------------------------------
Two hours later, Tantalus stepped into the front door of Hotel Acheron. Ashcroft, Mander, and Cordelia were informed of Tantalus’s strange interaction with the man in yellow sunglasses. There was very little to be told. The enigmatic man had only really said two things of substance: some group knows about the assault, and blood will be spilt if the assault occurs.
Tantalus tried to speak to the Duke, but he was only able to speak to General Dogwood, the commanding officer of the O.R.D. Tantalus informed the General of his belief that the Deluvians were aware of Operation Reunion, and they would try to ambush the soldiers as they traveled to New Arcadia. Tantalus’s words, predictably, fell on deaf ears. He spoke for an hour to his brick wall of a commanding officer with no results.
Tantalus sat heavily on a couch in Hotel Acheron’s lobby. More than a dozen Revenant soldiers milled about the lobby. Kuro had rented out four of the hotel’s floors at this point, so it was more of a barracks than a hotel. All of Tango Company’s necessary personnel stayed in Hotel Acheron.
Redgrave soon appeared from the elevator. As he stepped out, two soldiers from Gator’s group entered. Redgrave saw Tantalus sitting on the couch deep in thought, and he approached.
“What’s up?”
“I didn’t even get to talk to the Duke. General Dogwood was the highest up in the ladder I could reach. According to him, it was only natural that the enemy would be aware of an attack of this magnitude, and my ‘gut feeling’ isn’t enough to warrant the cancellation of a ten-thousand-man military operation.” Tantalus spoke with a tone of tired acceptance that had become so natural for him over the past few days.
“And how do you feel about the assault tomorrow?”
“Let’s just say that I have a bad feeling. No, that’s not completely correct. What I just witnessed was… foreshadowing. It’s as if GM is telling us what to expect from the attack tomorrow. Whatever happens during the operation, it won’t be easy. Hell, it might be impossible. We need to be prepared to retreat at any moment.”
Redgrave looked confused, “Do you think that man you saw was GM?”
“Maybe,” Tantalus looked conflicted, “or maybe there’s something I’m not seeing. God! I’m missing so many damn pieces! I don’t know how the Deluvians’ military works, I don’t know where they get their weapons, and I don’t even know what the Hell a ‘Dark Apostle’ is! Any serious strategic analysis I do has a huge blind spot, and the Dark Apostles are at the center of it!"
Tantalus let out an uneven growl of annoyance. “Whatever,” he got to his feet, “we’ll see what happens tomorrow. There’s no use thinking about it tonight.”
“I think you’re overthinking this,” Redgrave said. “It was probably just GM trying to get under your skin.”
Tantalus smiled mirthlessly. “I hope you’re right, Simon.”
Less than five miles away, the red-haired man in yellow sunglasses stepped into one of the few remaining rooms in a bombed-out building on the outskirts of Osiris. The roof of the room had caved in, and the room was lit by moonlight. Three cloaked humanoid figures stood within the room.
To prove his identity, the red-haired man pulled his shirt down to below his collar bone. A single symbol stood out like a brand on his pale skin: I.
The First Dark Apostle entered the room and rejoined his brethren.