A few days after returning to camp, Sera found herself called to a room she’d never entered before by Tiriana. When she arrived, she found both Tiriana and Vivi present, standing in front of a round pedestal of some sort, with a lens set into its flattened top. It was the only piece of furniture in the small room, which would only have fit one or two more people inside.
“Oh, hi,” she said lamely, surprised by Vivi’s presence. “What’d you need me for?”
“We’re about to talk to a liaison with the Seventh Fleet. Since you were there when we encountered the nachzehrer too, I wanted you present in case they have anything they want clarified,” Tiriana explained.
“I thought you were submitting some kind of report?” Sera asked, having expected that to be a written report. “Also, what about Layla and Rinnie?”
“We did; this is a follow up that they requested. I tried to get the other two in here, but Rinnie already vanished and Layla was a hard no,” the mage replied with a roll of her eyes.
“I tried to guilt her by looking pathetic but she’s immune,” Vivi added.
“Well, I guess that’s not really a surprise. How am I going to understand them if they’re not here, though?” Sera asked.
“You’ll be connecting to the beacon here as if it’s a person. It’s designed for compatibility with translation spells since they’re so commonly used,” Tiriana answered. “Ready? They’ll probably be calling any moment now, so this is the last chance to ask any questions.”
“Well-” Sera began, but she was cut off by the beacon’s lens lighting up. Tiriana leaned over to tap the lens in response and an image appeared above it of a man in a green uniform. He was an elf that looked to be fairly young, sporting a neatly trimmed beard. The image was so vivid that he could have been in the room personally if not for the fact his feet were missing, cut off to put him on a level with the three women in the room.
“Good afternoon. Tiriana and I have spoken before, but for the others, I am Lieutenant Meriocu.” He paused for a moment to glance around, apparently able to see the three of them on his side. “Were there not five people present for this event?”
“It was an impromptu party and the remaining two refused to cooperate…or rather, the one I was even able to locate did. I was only able to bring our cleric, Vivi, and the mistwalker, Sera,” Tiriana replied, nodding at each woman as she introduced them.
“Unfortunate, but such is the way of adventurers, I suppose,” the officer sighed. “I requisitioned an official scouting team, but there is little chance of the request being approved, so I would like to gather as much information as possible on these…nachzehrer.”
“Of course. Everything I know was in the report, though, so what did you want to ask?”
“You’ll have to forgive me if some of this seems a bit…fantastical. You’re not only reporting a pre-existing magic-using society in the frontier zone, but a technological one opposing it? That defies our current understanding of many subjects.” Tiriana looked like she wanted to object, but he held up a hand to stop her. “We’ll move past that, as there’s no point arguing about it until we’ve acquired some of the samples you’ve mentioned and sent them to independent workshops for verification. For now, let’s assume those claims are true.”
“What I find most concerning are a pair of points, one of which I suspect we will not be able to address to my satisfaction without your scout present. Your report indicates that the technological society has access to air travel. It does not specify whether or not that access extends to the nachzehrer. Could you shine any light on that matter?”
“Unfortunately, no. While we have reason to believe the nachzehrer may have participated in an attack on the magical society using ground vehicles, it remains unclear whether they were working with their creators at the time or independently. The military base we found might have been abandoned using aircraft, but we don’t know who was in control of it at the time,” Tiriana answered. Meriocu looked frustrated by the ambiguity, but pressed on.
“I can’t offer any official requests, much less a reward at this time, but please make investigating that a priority if you could. That information may greatly affect our response to the situation. Our initial survey indicates the frontier is unusually vast, so the force deployment required for a full investigation is more than we can get authorization for without evidence,” he told them.
“Uh, if you don’t mind me asking, how did the survey team miss all of this? From what we can tell the fighting was pretty recent- it might have even been active at the time,” Sera interjected, raising her hand hesitantly.
“I’ve looked into that, and it appears the scouting teams never reported a fortress on the scale you encountered. Our best guess is that it possesses some sort of cloaking enchantment that was taken offline when the primary core was destroyed. I can’t see how else it could have been missed.
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“We knew about the other civilization present but…there were no signs of life in any of the settlements we found. Communications were sent out in case there was anyone in hiding, but there were no responses. The official verdict was that the region was occupied, but had been evacuated prior to being fully taken by the mist,” the lieutenant explained in response to Sera’s question.
“That’s plausible if the frontier is as big as he says. They would have had plenty of time to react,” Vivi contributed.
“Precisely. Now, my other concern is your theory about the nachzehrer taking bodies. Are you certain about that?”
“The only thing we’re certain about is the lack of corpses. Between the fortress and military base I’ve found exactly one, and it was both in poor condition and very difficult to reach. They may not have even realized it was there before leaving that base,” Tiriana responded.
“I was the one that proposed the idea, but it was just a theory. For all we know they’re using the bodies for food, or experimentation, or resources- the trees apparently have metal in them, so who knows what’s in the people?” Sera added. She hadn’t expected her offhand comment to garner this level of scrutiny and wanted to emphasize that it was little more than a passing thought.
“Let’s hope that there’s nothing to it. If the worst case scenario comes to pass and they can not only replicate themselves with the dead but have done so with the entire frontier’s population, then it was probably too late to stop them from the start. A war on that scale…”
“…would potentially be the next great incursion,” Tiriana finished. “But even knowing that’s a possibility, the fleet still won’t muster?”
“An incursion is a possibility every time there’s a frontier. Even if we could manage it logistically so far from home, we don’t have enough ships in the entire fleet. And the number of frontiers is only going to increase,” Meriocu regretfully stated.
Sera frowned. “What happens if a full-on incursion happens but there’s no adventurers around to catch it?” she asked, feeling as if the system didn’t quite make sense.
“We’re not actually relying on the reports we get from adventurers so much as we’re using them as an additional source of information where available. Our scrying network will pick up anything passing over the second ice ring and a battleship group is always ready to deploy while the rest of the fleet is reactivated.” It was the officer’s turn to frown. “At any rate, it seems the most important questions will have to go unanswered for now. Do you have any other observations you’d like to share?”
“Anything we could think of was in the report, but we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as we learn anything else. I’m sure some of the others are ranging further out by now as well, so I’ll have to see if I can get anything from them,” Tiriana replied. “I’d like to lead an expedition to one of the settlements you mentioned, but we don’t have the resources for it at the moment.”
“Ah, well, on that front I may have good news for you. I heard that an investigator’s travel permit was approved yesterday. If all goes well you may be seeing more company out there soon enough, though I can’t guarantee they’ll be willing to cooperate with you,” Meriocu told them with a wry smile.
“An investigator…for a private investor, I assume? That is good news, and faster than I expected. Someone must have already had their eye on the area to have made a request that quickly. I’ll make sure to stay at our base to meet with them, since no one else around here is liable to anyway.”
Lieutenant Meriocu said his goodbyes and ended the call, leaving Tiriana, Sera, and Vivi alone in the little communications room.
“I was expecting more questions,” Sera admitted once the call had ended. “Why bother to call us just to ask about those two things?”
“He thought those two questions were important enough to warrant a call,” Tiriana disagreed.
“The Lieutenant is worried. He thinks the situation will escalate and is hoping to gather enough information to make the politicians back home react sooner,” Vivi observed.
“Do politicians ever react quickly? Back home they usually didn’t do anything until it was a few decades too late,” Sera said, but Vivi shook her head.
“I think it’s a little different here. Your world had no gods, right? Here, we started making our leaders give oaths to the god of Law thousands of years ago. They must act in the public’s best interest, or a paladin will be sent to judge them as an oathbreaker.” Vivi looked unusually serious as she spoke. “The issue here is that their own perception determines if they have broken their oath, which generally prevents them from hiding things. But if they genuinely believe they are acting in the public’s best interests, they’re not doing anything wrong.”
“How is ignoring threats in the public’s best interest?” Sera asked in disbelief.
“Meriocu said it himself: there’s not enough ships to investigate every frontier. The people up top are probably getting plenty of false alarms from the rim every day. They have to decide whether each one warrants a closer look and which are a needless drain on resources that could be better spent elsewhere,” Tiriana answered, giving a helpless shrug.
“Sounds like everything is going to rest on whether we can convince that investigator that coming out here is worth it, then.” Sera couldn’t help letting her worry show on her face. It felt like they were in a precarious situation, where they suspected they might be in grave danger but lacked a shred of evidence to convince anyone of it- and their continued survival depended on making someone believe them anyway.
Retreat was technically an option, but Sera had met enough of the other adventurers now to understand how stubbornly they would fight that decision. Between Broviss’s exile status and Layla’s low opinion of the enemy’s intelligence, acquiring a consensus would be an uphill battle.
“I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with that. That turtle fortress is an archeological goldmine, and that’s forgetting about the implications of mana in other worlds. The bigger question is whether we can convince the research team we end up with to look at anything else, but even basing ourselves out there would give us an advantage when it comes to exploration,” Tiriana assured her, placing a hand on Sera’s shoulder.
“I just hope a few of them are more talkative than the current crew, personally…” Vivi noted with exasperation.