Chapter 129 - Two Blades and a Tail X
Oranges and reds filled the sky as the sun made its way beneath the horizon. Reflecting the firmament was a similarly coloured ocean, sparkling as would a sea of jewels. Its otherwise infinite glimmer was broken apart by long shadows, cast by ancient palms, colossal chains, and floating islands, with the lattermost culprits the most prominent.
Standing atop one such airborne rock was a confused halfbreed. Her frame was hidden almost entirely beneath her cloak, with only the tip of her tail protruding out from beneath it. She stood at the island’s edge, brow furrowed and ears strained, listening carefully to the eerily silent landscape that was the citadel. On any other night, the settlement would have been bustling with noise; it was already late enough for most of its populace to have started drowning itself in liquor, and yet, she heard not the rambling of drunks nor the clinking of mugs, only the gentle waves below and the obnoxious birds above. Even the wind was deathly silent. She could feel it against her face, but the breeze was hushed as a corpse with a knife stuck in its throat.
Though filled with a sense of foreboding, she soon shook off her worries and walked through the town, travelling not through the main street, but rather the back alleys.
Her trek through the back roads soon led her to encounter a bizarre creature, a palm-sized duck made of some sort of metal. The construct, the artifact, kept its head focused on her as she walked, its eyes glowing with a soft red light. The unnatural stare sent shivers down her spine, but she ignored it and slipped into another alley, out of its line of sight. She was almost certain that she had escaped, but turning around and looking down the new street revealed another identical individual. Darting away from it, she hurried through the town as quickly as she could, but the birds were omnipresent. Their ranks were filled not only with an excessive number of ducks, but also the occasional raven. Unlike most of their peers, who either fled or attacked on sight, the black feathered birds remained as silent observers, flying off whenever she drew near.
Annoyed by their stares, she tried mowing them down with shards of ice, but they would always retreat before her attacks could reach. They slipped right out of her range, often by scampering along the walls like ants. She tried to nab them with force magic, but she never quite managed to catch them. Somehow or another, they were resisting her vectors, just like the purple-skinned goblin.
Claire was tempted to rush the artifacts down and destroy them, but shirked the idea upon recalling her priorities. Meeting with the cat-sith was more important.
It didn’t take long for her to arrive at the temple that was his home. She didn’t knock immediately, taking a moment instead to consider the choice presented by the celestial. Alfred wanted her to kill at least half the group’s members, and his demand wasn’t one that could be easily dismissed. Its reward was enticing, but she still found it difficult to say if she was better off taking his side. Allying herself with the cat-sith didn’t appear entirely unviable, in part because she wanted to do the opposite of what the old human asked, and in part because it was difficult to identify the party pressured by the status quo. But whatever the case, she decided to postpone the decision. Killing them while they were all together was beyond her means.
Decision made, she raised her hand and rapped her knuckles against the door’s wooden frame. It shook when her fingers made contact, but there was no sound. It remained perfectly silent, even as it opened to reveal its owner.
Beckard ran his mouth as he greeted her. Reading his lips revealed that he had bid her good evening, but again, she heard nothing. The only noises her ears detected were the very same ambient sounds that had been present upon her landing.
“I can’t hear you.” Even her own voice was silent. The words vanished from her lips, dissipating before they reached her ears.
Chuckling to himself, Beckard produced a piece of metal from his robe and presented it atop one of his paws. It was an odd rectangular clip about as long as a finger and thin as a piece of paper. Though its shape gave away very little about its function, she understood upon its receipt that she was meant to crush it between her fingers. Her artifact skill had injected its use straight into her mind, even though she had never seen anything even remotely like it.
Following the internal instructions, she wrapped it in her palm, channeled her magic through it, and squeezed. It crumbled immediately, turning into a thousand bits and pieces of dust. Her sense of hearing was restored as its powdered specks slipped from her grasp, with all the sounds that had previously slipped her by suddenly hitting her like a brick to the face. The shouting of drunkards, the clinking of cups, and the crackling of flames, accompanied by a hundred beating hearts, some closer, some further away.
“Well then.” The cat brought a paw to his chin as he looked between her face and her hand. “I didn’t think you would know how to use it.”
“I’m fiercely intelligent,” replied Claire. Her ears twitched wildly as she involuntarily listened in on the drunks down the street. The individual voices were distinct enough for her to pick Lova out from the crowd. The moth was speaking to what was most likely herself, reciting again and again an awkward confession of love.
“Oh, I’m sure you are.” He smiled calmly. “Now, what can I do for you today?”
“I’m looking for Sylvia.”
“Ah, yes, of course. She’s a little busy at the moment, but you’ve come to the right place.”
“With what?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t say. It happens to be rather… confidential.” Beckard raised a paw to his chin and paused. His eyes glazed momentarily as he nodded to himself and raised two of his claws. “What do you think of Alfred?” he asked, after lifting his head to face her again.
Claire narrowed her eyes and bared her fangs. “He cursed me,” she hissed. “I’d stab him if I could.” The aggressive display was maintained for exactly two seconds before she pulled her hood over her eyes and took a series of long, drawn out breaths, each slightly shorter than the last. “Why?” She didn’t speak again until her chest was no longer heaving.
“No reason,” he said, with a smile. “Now, you said you wanted to see Sylvia?”
She nodded.
“Follow me.”
Nodding again, the blueblood silently trailed him up two flights of stairs, only one of which was truly a part of the building, and moved towards the subspace that was meant to be his office. When she entered the room, she found exactly what catgirl detector had described. Three of her four remaining targets were present and accounted for. They were all sitting around, idling, with some looking more bored than others. Zelos had his hands clasped and his eyes closed, Frederick was leaning against a wall with his arms crossed, and the cybernetic huskar was reading through a piece of parchment with a glass of wine in hand.
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“Claire? You’re here early,” said Zelos. He smiled softly as he looked at her and pointed to one of the chairs placed throughout the room. “You’re free to take a seat, if you’d like.”
“Hello,” she said, as she scanned the room.
“Expected later, no now.” The goblin was the next to speak up. He grunted and waved. The motions themselves were nothing out of the ordinary, but Claire kept a careful eye on him nonetheless. Something about his tone was setting off her senses, even though she saw no reason for him to lie.
“What the hell, Beck!” The huskar shouted as he tightened his grip and squished the scroll in his robotic hand. “You let her in? Are you insane? She’s going to ruin everything!”
The elf chuckled. “I’m sure it’ll be fine. You’re overreacting, Archie.”
“Overreacting? Overreacting!?” He slammed his cup onto the desk. “She snuck into my house and strangled me! I have every right to react however I want!”
“Shut up,” said Claire. “Or I’ll do it again.” She flashed him a glare and briefly froze him in place. His voice irked her; the artifact-made sound waves sent shivers down her spine, and the urge to silence him grew every time he spoke.
Beckard clapped his paws together and climbed up on his desk. “Now, now, why don’t we all settle down?” The sound produced by the padded mitts was too quiet to be described as a clap. It was barely audible, but the message was conveyed. Archibald was the only one not to calm, but not because he was unwilling to comply. Claire continued to look daggers at him until a bead of sweat formed on his brow. Only then did she find herself satisfied enough to turn to the elf.
“Where’s Sylvia?”
Zelos didn’t answer immediately. Directing his gaze to Beckard, he waited for a nod of approval before raising his voice. “She’s doing me a favour.”
“Related to escaping Llystletein?”
The boy-sized man blinked a few times before nodding along. “Something to that end, yes. How did you know?”
“I just did.”
He paused again with his lips pursed, a silent confirmation that proved the theory correct.
“Grab records for us, she is.” The wart-skinned smith stepped in and picked up where the elf left off.
“Fre—” Archibald stepped forward and began to shout, but Beckard raised a paw and stopped him short. The huskar was still fuming; he didn’t quite seem to want to abide by the order, but he soon sat back down after taking a handful of deep breaths.
“Don’t worry, Claire. She’ll be back shortly,” said the cat-sith.
The lyrkress paused for a moment to scan her targets. Only Archibald was suspicious. Frederick was neutral, and the remaining two were fairly amicable, but something in the back of her mind told her that it was best not to press them for details. Playing dumb and ending the conversation seemed like the safest choice, if she wanted them to let down their guards.
“Where is she now?” But Claire pressed on nonetheless. No matter what happened, she was confident in her ability to talk her way through it. None of the four were as shrewd as those that thrived in the eleven-horned king’s court.
A number of uneasy gazes were cast around the room, with all of them ultimately finding their way to the priest. “I suppose there’s no reason not to tell you,” he half-muttered. He pursed his snout and placed his hands behind his back as he raised his voice. “You’re sure to find out in a few days either way, and I doubt that it’s possible for anything to go wrong with how meticulous our plans are.”
“Sylvia might slip up and tell her even if we don’t,” added the elf.
Archibald clicked his non-existent tongue, but he was the only one to complain. Frederick seemed to care very little; he had already disengaged from the conversation in favour of muttering something about new weapon designs under his breath.
“My thoughts exactly,” said the oversized cat. “As Fred mentioned earlier, Sylvia is retrieving a number of records from the lost library on our behalf.”
“Why does that need to be kept a secret?”
“Hmmm…” The fae cat tapped his paws against his desk. “Well, it doesn’t, exactly, but the less we have to talk about it, the better. Alfred might catch on if we ramble for too long, not that I think it would really matter even if he did. As all powerful as he is, there isn’t much he can do with all the contractual obligations he’s placed on himself.”
“You couldn’t do it yourselves?”
The lyrkress narrowed her eyes. Both the idea and its explanation left her with nothing but more questions and suspicions. If her authority skill was not blatantly lying to her, then even she had some degree of access to the lost library. She was unwilling to believe that they had no way to inspect its records. There wasn’t any reason for them to be asking Sylvia, unless they were seeking some sort of confidential or otherwise forbidden information.
“Not exactly. We’re not really after the records in the first place,” explained Zelos. “We needed someone to test one of the artifacts we made, and Sylvie’s the only one of us that wouldn’t trip any of Alfred’s alarms.”
“Think no will notice,” grunted Frederick. “Work way we think then he no check no see.”
Oops.
Claire’s force detection went off as the goblin spoke, providing the perfect excuse to avert her gaze. The distortion on the wall began as a tiny, rectangular hole, but it soon twisted and grew, ballooning into a portal akin to the one that Alfred had provided her, a veritable maelstrom of swirling vectors too numerous to count. Upon further inspection, she found that it most closely resembled the rift that led to Crabby Crags. Its other side was obscured, and she could see nothing but the distortion until its creator emerged.
The caster was well over one and a half meters tall and had her face obscured by a large stack of books, but her identity was apparent nonetheless, revealed by the tail poking out from behind her. The most obvious giveaway, however, was related not to her physique, but rather her voice. She hummed one of her favourite tunes as she plopped the stolen documents atop Beckard’s desk and stretched out her arms.
“Whew! I think that’s everything. I grabbed everything I could find.” Sylvia wiped the sweat off her brow and turned around, only to find a hand around her wrist.
Log Entry 3932
You have completed one of “Eliminate Insurgents” objectives.
The remaining objectives will be active for another 71 hours.
Her captor had already started dragging her away by the time she realised what was happening. “H-huh? Claire? What’s going on?”
“You’re coming with me,” said the humanoid lyrkress.
“Wait, wait! I’m not done yet! I’m supposed to help them with some more stuff!”
Claire continued to drag her for a few seconds before coming to an abrupt stop. “Fine.”
“No, no, it’s okay.” Zelos smiled softly as he walked over to the desk and opened one of the books. “We can handle the rest on our own.”
“Oh… okay!” Sylvia pulled a large rune-covered key out of her tail and threw it to her father as the tug on her wrist returned. “I guess I’ll see you all later then. Bye Dad, bye everyone!”
“Thank you, Sylvie,” said Zelos. “Do make sure you come back when it’s time.”
“Don’t worry, we will!”
After hauling the person-sized fox girl out of the room, Claire reached for the door, but stopped shy of closing it. She poked her head back through the crack and directed her gaze at the resident purple-skinned wart bag. “Frederick.”
“Want what, lassie?” asked the goblin.
“Have you finished adjusting my spear?”
“Made done, I do,” he said. “Go forge and Murtt give.”
“Thank you.”
Her last bit of business concluded, she closed the door behind her and descended the ethereal staircase. The subspace’s entrance faded immediately as she stepped away from it, vanishing into one of the cathedral’s walls as would a figment of her imagination.