The Mission Central building had been vacated completely to make space for the tribunal. Guards circled the outer walls and milled about the perimeter. Apparently they didn’t want to risk any Awakened with abilities that heightened their senses to discover any of the information to be discussed inside.
Their eyes were not friendly as they watched Eik trudge up to the double doors of Mission Central, surrounded by what could best be described as three jailers.
“You’re late,” an older, portly man complained the moment they stepped inside.
The secretary made a face. “I’m sorry, sir. He insisted on… feeding his cat before we left,” she said shamefully with a deep bow. The face that the round man could no longer see was alight with fury, however.
“How could that possibly take that long?”
“We couldn’t find the cat, sir,” the armored woman said, stepping in. “and he insisted on feeding it by hand.”
“That’s how I always do it,” Eik said with a nod. “If I don’t, she won’t eat at all, y’see.”
Judging by his rapidly reddening face, the portly man didn’t appear to enjoy Eik’s antics. He didn’t get the chance to get any angrier since people were starting to gather on one side of an enormous long table that hadn’t been there last time Eik was inside. Some faces Eik knew but most were unknown to him.
Travis Lockwood too was shuffling up to take a seat near the middle of the table. The way he was mindlessly chewing on a grilled cheese sandwich, eyes like those of a zombie, made him look like he might want to be present even less than Eik.
C-ranker Andrew Brooks was sitting on a chair against the wall looking exceptionally uncomfortable with the whole situation. Eik caught his eye once but the man looked away immediately.
Maybe he had looked further into the case of Heath’s injuries as Sonja had suggested and found something disturbing. He was a good man, but now that the black and white paradigm of monsters versus man had been muddled into gray, he was probably having a hard time identifying his own loyalties.
Along the opposite wall stood another familiar face. Cecilia, the tall woman whose main weapon was a spear almost twice as tall as her, had been sporting a perpetual grin since the moment Eik entered. She winked at him when their eyes met but he wasn’t in the mood to play along anymore. This whole thing was a little too surreal at this point.
A glance over his shoulder told him that two scowling guards had stepped in front of the front doors on the inside. Despite the freedom he had enjoyed until now he was nothing but a game piece, after all. That didn’t sit well with him. It ground on his principles of personal liberty.
“It would seem everybody is ready to start the proceedings,” the portly man said, his face having now returned to a healthier color. “To reiterate, this meeting has been arranged with the purpose of interviewing the person serving as the interim liaison between us, Forest, and the alien invasion force, the Nidafjeld Alliance. For anyone unaware, the liaison, chosen at random by the hostile woman who was the first to visit us by traveling through a fracture portal, is this man here, F-ranker Eik Magnasen,” he said theatrically with a flourishing gesture at Eik.
“Uuh,” Eik said, raising a hand for attention. “I’m actually E-rank now.”
Cecilia and a couple of others burst into laughter. Even Travis, whose head had been lulling gently to the rhythm of his own breathing, seemed to be amused enough to wake up a little. Andrew just massaged the bridge of his nose.
The round man tried but failed to keep the annoyance from showing on his face. “Refrain from speaking unless spoken to, please. As I was saying, we will interview him to gather information about this Nidafjeld Alliance. Furthermore, we will be instructing him in how to negotiate with the Alliance.”
He looked around at the gathered faces, all of them important people of Forest in their own right. “Thirdly, while a final decision can come later, we should also discuss the possibility of launching a counterattack on the Alliance.”
Eik snorted and the speaker sent him a sharp look.
“Let us get started then,” the man said and made his way around the long table to take his own seat on the opposite side.
“Where do I sit?” Eik asked.
“You don’t.”
“Pardon?” Eik asked, puzzled.
The man pointed to the middle of the floor. “You will stand there so we can all see you properly.”
“You’re kidding…” he drawled but walked the few steps to the assigned spot.
“Would anybody like the first word?” the portly man asked the room.
A short woman with her hair in a ponytail raised her hand. “Yes, Chairwoman Huntley,” the man said.
“Thank you, Merchant Lord Greggers,” she said with a nod and directed her attention to Eik. “What did you see inside the fracture?”
“I mean, a bunch of stuff. Like, a huge city, a tavern where we ate dirt duck, their headquarters. Stuff like that, you know.”
Chairwoman Huntley narrowed her eyes. “Excuse me, did you just say you saw the headquarters of the Nidafjeld Alliance?”
“Yep,” Eik confirmed with a nod. “Went inside too.”
“You went inside their headquarters?” A thin, balding man exclaimed, his chair flying back as he rose in surprise.
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“Yes.”
“What did you do there? What are their defenses like?”
Boulder Fist Gary chose this moment to make his entrance, pushing his way through the guards who made to block his way before realizing who he was. “Never mind me,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Just keep going. I apologize for my lateness.” He sat in a vacant chair next to Travis.
“Go on, Mr. Kerman,” the perpetually annoyed Merchant Lord Greggers said.
The slight man called Mr. Kerman cleared his throat. “As I was saying, what did you do inside the headquarters of the Nidafjeld Alliance?”
Eik pursed his lips. “Hmm, I was shown around the premises—not all of it, since it’s basically a ridiculously large palace. And I was made to fight one of their F-rankers.”
“Why?”
“As a test. Atla wanted to see what the person she’d chosen was capable of.”
“And what did she think?” The question was asked with a distinct lack of expectation.
Eik recalled the way she had reacted when Profound Toxin was revealed as a Unique ability. “I’d call her interested, I suppose.”
“Why would she be interested in you?” Boulder Fist Gary asked with a sneer, “You’re a weakling.”
Eik just shrugged. “I couldn’t say, Mr. Fist. But given how she tucked you in with a single punch, I imagine she doesn’t see much difference between the two of us.”
“You little shit!” the large man bellowed, proving that his son’s crappy manners were homegrown as he slammed a fist into the long table and split it down the middle. Eik saw flashbacks of his walnut counter. Travis was the only person seated who managed to grab his breakfast plate and accompanying glass of apple juice from the table before the whole thing collapse with an earsplitting crack. “How dare you say that to my face!”
Eik kept his mouth shut but managed to keep a steady gaze locked onto Boulder Fist Gary. After having experienced the horror of Atla, Menka Tokanami, and the lake serpent's power, standing in front of these old men in this setting just wasn't as intimidating as it would have been before. He knew that was a dumb way to think.
Merchant Lord Greggers waddled around the broken table and stood between the two men. “Gentlemen, please. Please! Calm yourselves!” he pleaded, an arm outstretched toward each party. He called over one of the attendants and ordered them to clean up the table and arrange for a new one.
“Alright…” Greggers sighed, looking ready to just call it and go home. “Let’s move on, please.”
"I have a question," a younger woman asked. She was blonde and had looked particularly unimpressed by the tone of the interrogation thus far.
Merchant Lord Greggers nodded but his eyes didn't speak of much fondness for the woman.
"Do you think the Nidafjeld Alliance are truly looking for an amicable relationship?" Kerman and Huntley snorted derisively.
Eik hesitated. "I... I don't know. I hope so, but I can't say for certain, to be honest."
"Thank you for your honesty," she said. "Then, do you think we should take their offer to join up?"
Eik hesitated for even longer this time. Finally he just said. "Yes."
For the next two and a half hours, Eik was questioned relentlessly about this and that regarding his meeting with the people of the Nidafjeld Alliance. The old crows wanted to know absolutely everything.
They asked about his personal relationship with Atla, with Mikla, with the Alliance team he helped rescue from a foreign world as well as their parents, and even about his relationship with that blonde kid he beat in a sparring match on Atla’s orders.
He was asked about the Unified Mass, the mysterious powers everybody now possessed, and the direction in which their world was heading.
They wanted to know why he had been given his own suite in the headquarters, how big it was, where on the premises it was, and how many times he’d been there.
Whatever foul subterfuge some of the leadership believed the Nidafjeld Alliance had in mind, Eik was somehow expected to unveil it all as if he was in charge and not just a man tossed onto a moving train by people with godlike powers.
There was the incident the day before where Mikla had come to tell him something. They wanted to know what that had been about and Eik saw that particular piece of information as an opportunity to attempt at least a partial unification of Forest in favor of the Alliance.
“I was contacted by Mikla because he had uncovered some very important information that I had asked him to look into.”
“Which was?” Merchant Lord Greggers asked. The civil leaders were showing interest in the interrogation overall, but most of the combat oriented Awakened, like Travis, Boulder Fist Gary, and Cecilia had grown bored a while ago. Once the important information had been discussed and the trivial details were being combed through, it wasn’t engaging enough for them anymore.
“Well, he had discovered who has been sending monsters to Earth for the past nine years.”
At this everybody sat up straight and eyes widened around the room. Sharp breaths were drawn and looks were exchanged.
“I-I-I’m—, I’m sorry… Could you repeat that?”
“I now know who has been trying to eradicate humanity ever since the first phase of Earth’s induction into the Unified Mass,” Eik stated gravely. His eyes scanned the faces in the room and any pretentiousness had evaporated at those words.
“Are you saying all these years of suffering were… caused by someone?” one of the guards exclaimed from his position in front of the door. Nobody reprimanded the man. So grievous was the shock that not even this gathering of snobbish, self-important clowns noticed a person of lower social status speak up in their presence.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. It was not some force of nature. This was a deliberate attempt to extinguish our existence.”
“But why?”
Eik upturned his palm with a tilt of his head. “Power? Security? Inter-dimensional social standing? You name it. Life in the Unified Mass is not peaceful—that much I have been made aware of.”
“Who is it then?” The speaker was Travis. He was leaning over the table, an intense look in his eyes unlike anything Eik had seen before. The closest would be how the man had behaved during the Great Raid. He seemed to live for stuff like this.
“A civilization known as the Gohkamorians. They’re actually already members of the Nidafjeld Alliance.”
“And you would push for our membership in an organization that would allow such obscene actions?” Chairwoman Huntley asked as if she had already marked him a traitor.
Eik took a step forward and the guards reacted by reaching for their weapons. “You don’t understand!” he hissed. “They’re the only thing standing between us and much, much greater threats! Don’t you see? Humanity is nothing on this new game board! We’re not at the top anymore! We’re the newest and smallest.”
Eik pointed at Travis Lockwood and Boulder Fist Gary. “Those two there are among the best fighters we have. They’re B-rankers. Do you know what an S-ranker is? Do you know what an X-ranker is?” he continued, the faces of his audience growing paler by the second. “This will not end with what we’ve seen. A grain of sand in our eyes is blinding us to the view of the desert!”
Eik was in a flow fueled by frustration, anger, and fear. “My sister is in a coma because of the monster invasions so I hate them just as much as you! Letting civilizations jab at each other with the occasional monster surge is nothing but a political concession so the Alliance can justify forbidding actual, literal full scale invasions by millions or even billions of Awakened stronger than our strongest.”
He looked from one unsettled gaze to the other. “So that they can prevent entire worlds from being annihilated by immortal beings with godly strength.”
Breath coming in ragged gasps, Eik straightened and tried to compose himself, but any movement felt awkward. The room was silent after his speech as people digested the life altering news.
Merchant Lord Greggers’ voice trembled even as he cleared it, but before he could speak a commotion sounded from outside. The voices were muffled but the tone of it was unmistakably tense.
A knock brought everybody’s attention to the front door. Guessing who had come, Eik cleared his throat. “I actually invited someone to join us here today.”
The guards glanced at the leaders for instruction but the guest didn’t bother to wait to be invited inside.