The air reeked of brine and decay on the canted deck of the former offshore drilling platform. The sound of sea birds fighting over the bodies of jellyfish stranded on the vast tidal plain washed over Magpie as she sat in the pale sunlight. This had been her home, off and on, for much of her life, the vast stinking field of mud and shallow water created by the receding waters of the South China Sea.
Over the years, she had tried to imagine what it was like before the ice caps claimed the oceans. Where she was sitting, nearly a hundred meters above the muck, had once been under hundreds of meters of deep blue water. If she wanted, she could walk from Manila to Singapore, though it would be a monumentally treacherous and disgusting journey. Her home used to float, but now it towered, its weighted pontoons sunk deeply into the former sea floor. Soon the tide would come in and the waters would stretch as far as the eye could see. When that happened, the platform became the roost to tens of thousands of noisy, defecating gulls and terns.
Some flock indeed, she thought.
The noise of the birds, the stench of the tidal flats and the deep layer of guano all around her would normally bother Magpie, but now these disgusting elements of her environment couldn’t overcome her immense feeling of satisfaction.
I’ve finally done it, she thought. Those bastards aren’t going to know what hit them.
It had been a tough couple of weeks, obtaining intelligence, making connections and laying plans for what should have been an impossible operation. It had used every ounce of her abilities and energy to find the people who knew the people who knew the information that allowed her to even begin to plan a physical, well, virtually physical, infiltration of the Sinaloa holding in Averdale. It had only been possible because virtually everyone hated Sinaloa.
She judged that gathering intelligence on any other clan would have been an order of magnitude more difficult. Though she had started with almost no contacts on the Inside, her trainer and immediate Flock supervisor, Buzzard had been a wealth of information and connection to the various groups and factions resisting Sinaloan expansion in the Forest of Averdale. The most promising were the Wraiths of Averdale, a group of young and powerful Insiders, entirely not actual wraiths as far as she knew, who lived in the forest surrounding Sinaloa’s area of control. She was confident they would be willing to provide a distraction for her and Lilijoy.
Her Outside connections were equally helpful. She had called upon all her old trainers, except Raven of course, to put her in touch with individuals in the SamGor clan. They had a long history with Sinaloa, had even nearly merged with them at one point before becoming bitter enemies. Initially suspicious, they had been willing to share some of their less sensitive information. That in turn had allowed her to connect to the Averdale Liberation Front, a group of ostensibly unaffiliated Outsiders who had made it their life’s work to punish Sinaloa for displacing the Elves. Magpie was pretty sure they were actually supported by several other clans behind the scenes, including SamGor.
Whatever their origins, the A.L.F. had agreed to step up their activities for the next week in return for any intelligence Magpie could gather. The linchpin of Magpie’s success in convincing them was the nature of Sinaloa’s defensive perimeter.
In addition to their physical defenses, walls and so forth, Sinaloa had implemented magic wards that responded to the level of any intruder. Magpie had been unable to obtain the precise details, but it was common with such systems to ignore lower level creatures to avoid constant false alarms from forest creatures and low-level retainers. Magpie had studied the magical theory behind similar systems extensively and guessed that she and Lilijoy would be able to pass undetected, or at least without creating a major alarm.
Pays to be weak sometimes, I guess.
Her new contact at A.L.F. certainly thought so; she was all too happy to let a couple noobs mess with Sinaloa. Magpie figured that her contact wasn’t really taking her very seriously, but rather was happy to have a new excuse for some action. That was fine by her.
As the sun set, she stood and looked to the horizon, out over the millions of feasting birds.
Look at all that biomass.
She cursed the birds every time she had to navigate through the mounds and layers of guano on the deck, but the thought of harming them never crossed her mind. Life was far too precious, especially since humanity had been up against the cap from Rule 1c for decades now. Just thinking about the rule was enough for it to briefly flash on her display.
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1c. Sentient biological organisms shall never exceed one part in a hundred thousand of total planetary biomass
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It made her wonder how Guardian kept track of it all. What if there was a forest fire? Would some random population need to be culled to keep the proper proportion?
Shaking her head, she turned her thoughts back to the infiltration plans. Or tried to anyway. She found herself drawn to thoughts of magic.
The tides were coming in, just a trickle of tiny waves flowing over the mud, but already enough to catch the feeble red light of the setting sun.
I could go under there, she thought, momentarily ignoring the fact that the water was only inches deep.
I could breathe under there if I was Inside. Maybe after this I could go under the ocean and finally breathe.
***
The next days of classes flew by, in no large part due to the looming operation against the Sinaloa clan. One wrinkle in the plans had been Rosemallow’s response when Lilijoy tentatively broached the subject.
“Great!” The huge Oni had bellowed. “Take Jessila. Don’t get captured.”
“But…” Lilijoy tried to figure out how to explain that Jessila was not, perhaps, ideally suited for a stealth mission. One that probably involved Elves, no less.
“Don’t care. Figure it out.” Her trainer pulled a round, fist sized object from her inventory. “Take this to help.”
It was a dull-gray metal sphere. Lilijoy scanned it.
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Chaotic Gravity Grenade
Created by a Master Smith and a Grand Master Earth Mage
This grenade will randomly change the gravity in a 15
foot radius from .01x to 3x normal every 5 to 20 seconds.
Five minutes per charge, two charges remaining.
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This... Lilijoy took a moment to realize that Rosemallow must have been planning this for some time.
“That’s your little ace in the hole," the Oni continued. "You and Jessila have been training under those conditions. You will need to bring in the rest of your cohort for sessions so they can adapt. I don’t care how strong the fighter or powerful the mage, if they aren’t used to working under changing gravity conditions, they’ll be at a disadvantage.”
“Thank you, Master Rosemallow! How do I turn it on?”
“Just feed it some mana and it will activate. I would keep it on you, rather than throwing it, not least because I want it back for sentimental reasons. Made it with my brother.”
Lilijoy felt her jaw drop a little. “Were you the...”
“No more questions, Three Bites. Go beat up Jessila some more.”
The power dynamic had changed in the sparring between Lilijoy and Jess. With Lilijoy’s new ability to combine Qi strikes and Flash, she could stay out of reach and pepper the larger girl with Qi blasts, which ignored Invulnerability. Jess was extraordinarily fast for her size, or any size really, but she was no match for Lilijoy’s combination of speed and acrobatics. On the rare occasions she did get a hand on her, the fight would naturally go Jessila’s way, as Lilijoy’s grappling skills weren’t nearly enough to overcome the difference in strength and mass.
Needless to say, Magpie was not thrilled by the addition to their little team. Her initial words on the subject were unkind, to say the least, and Lilijoy was very glad that Jess had not been present to hear them. This was only compounded by Skria’s insistence that she would go wherever Jessila did, which added a fourth member to the team. However, when Magpie heard about Skria’s abilities, she was mollified to a large extent.
“Let’s see,” Skria said, under Magpie’s somewhat hostile interrogation of her prowess. “I’ve got a pretty good poison gas spell and a strong wind spell that I’ve known forever. Then there’s the silence spell and the vacuum spell I learned last week. Those are still new, so they’re not great. I've got some stealth. I can fly. I mean, technically it’s gliding, but I can control the wind around me, so I do okay. I’m not bad with herbs and natural poisons for my darts.”
She took a breath and looked up a Jessila, “Did I miss anything?”
“Bird.”
“Oh, right. I have a level ten shadow owl as a companion animal. His name is Swoot.”
“Climb.”
“Thanks Jess. I guess I though it was obvious. I can climb.”
Jess grunted.
“What? Oh fine. I’m an Illustrious Master in Climbing. It’s a Petauran thing, like the Gliding. And the Acrobatics.”
Here, Lilijoy felt compelled to jump in. “Wait. Are Petaurans the tree folk who live in the canopies of the southern jungle by any chance?”
“Well, yes, I guess you could call us...”
Lilijoy squeed, just a little. “My acrobatics instructor told me about that. He thinks I should spend an experience term living there. How did I not realize? That’s so awesome! Do you think...”
“That next term we can go visit my family? Yes!” interrupted Skria. The two small people danced around holding hands while Jess and Magpie looked at each other over their heads and rolled their eyes.
Eventually Magpie interrupted. “So how is it that you have all these high-level spells at...” she squinted at Skria, “...level eight?”
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Skria stopped dancing and looked a little embarrassed. “I’m a bit of a prodigy, I guess. I was born with a super high air affinity, and I bonded my source when I was little, totally by accident. The rest just kind of followed. Then I defended all the other kids in my tribe when we were attacked by some nasty shadow owls, that’s when I met Swoot by the way, so that’s when I got my titles and got tempered.”
“You have titles?” Magpie asked. She had only been half awake when she first met Skria, and didn’t remember her introduction.
Skria looked even more embarrassed. She didn’t say anything, just gestured to the air above her head, inviting them to scan her.
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Name: Skria Panadan the Fierce, Sky Rider
Level: 8
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“No way!” Magpie chuckled. “Skria the Fierce. Nice.”
Skria looked at her with suspicion, perhaps searching for mockery. Lilijoy could imagine that the cute, small and furry girl with huge eyes might have a little trouble being taken seriously. She could relate, other than the cute and furry part.
“I mean, I only got the Deathless title which, let’s face it, is pretty lame. No heroics required, just don’t die.” Magpie shrugged.
“What happens when you finally die?” asked Lilijoy. “Does the title change?”
“Never thought about it. Maybe I’ll become ‘Magpie the mostly deathless’”
“or somewhat surviving!”
Now it was Skria and Jessila’s turn to roll their eyes.
***
After Magpie finally wrapped her head around the team’s new members, they began train together in earnest. The majority of each day, and a good chunk of the night as well, was used to learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses in a variety of challenges created by Rosemallow. The shifting gravity was particularly brutal for Skria, who would sometimes end up plastered against the ground if she was caught in mid flight by a shift to the higher levels.
Skria was there less often than they would have liked, as her advisor, Dean Reunification, kept her busy with other studies, but she was able to escape often enough that the four developed a decent level of teamwork. It was a good thing too, as it turned out that Skria’s magic abilities were central to their combat style. Her poison gas cloud was much more versatile than Lilijoy expected; she could create a variety of different toxins, to damage, blind, disorient and render opponents unconscious.
The biggest problem was that the gasses also affected the other team members. One memorable debacle was the time Rosemallow had them practice running the obstacle course with gravity shifted wildly, while under the influence of a particularly nasty hallucinogenic gas Skria had cooked up. That episode ended with Magpie running off into the woods, Jessila curled up in a mud pit, and Lilijoy swinging and spinning herself over and over on one of the hanging ropes, shouting, “I’m a pretty butterfly!” Skria could keep the gasses away from herself with her control of wind, but she hadn’t learned yet how to protect the rest of the party.
Eventually, they figured out how to make use of narrow corridors of clear air that Skria could carve out of the larger cloud and Magpie was able to procure a mask for herself that could filter out the worst of the effects. They all spent quite a bit of time doing their best to resist the various effects and learning to stay focused under the influence of the gasses that caused hallucinations, sleepiness and similar mental effects.
“Remember,” Rosemallow advised, “Opponents with high Vitality or another Air mage will neutralize this approach fairly quickly. Use this against larger groups of low level, or to separate high level beings from their supporters.”
One real eye-opener for Lilijoy was sparring with Magpie. She had been feeling pretty good about her fighting skills after learning how to combine Flash and Qi and regularly defeating the mighty Jessila.
Magpie set her straight on that count quickly.
Not only was she fast like Lilijoy, her combat skills were on another level entirely. Magpie hadn’t entirely mastered her Qi abilities, so her normal kicks and strikes were often unable to damage Lilijoy, but it made not the slightest difference in the outcome when they sparred unarmed. She was able to anticipate and move around Lilijoy’s Qi strikes and close the distance between them in a fraction of a second. From there, she introduced Lilijoy to the amazing world of submission holds, pressure points and nerve strikes. At times, Lilijoy felt like that first rock golem Rosemallow had dismantled.
It was embarrassing at first, but not as bad as when they sparred with weapons. Lilijoy hadn’t figured out how to do a Qi strike through a weapon, if it was even possible, so she was left with Qi assisted strikes which did nothing to extend her range or penetrate Magpie’s Invulnerability, had she been able to hit her. After the first few debacles with short swords, Magpie had mercy on her and slowed everything down, becoming more of an instructor than an opponent. She was able to help Lilijoy find a context for the many videos she had watched, and by the end of the week, Lilijoy had raised all her combat abilities.
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Unarmed Combat: Augmented Journeyman (15)
Weapons: Blade: Short: Augmented Apprentice (9)
Weapons: Blunt: Club: Augmented Apprentice (9)
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Not only that, but she had acquired the Weapons: Projectile: Sling skill and leveled it up to Upgraded Initiate. Rosemallow seemed to have no problem with using points to raise combat skills, so Lilijoy had spent a total of eight free points to bring up the Magi portions of the skills, plus another three points to level Stealth to Augmented Apprentice. She now had forty free points remaining and the additional twenty direct free points she had earned from her Reality Bender achievement.
She was still a little foggy on how the direct free points worked. The most she had been able to glean from a characteristically taciturn Rosemallow was that she should save them for a long, long time, possibly forever. That last part she figured was an exaggeration, though it was hard to tell with Rosemallow sometimes.
Currently, Lilijoy was clinging to the underside of the second level of hidden walkways above the main room of the Subtle Arts class. From her vantage point about thirty feet above the floor, she could watch the ongoing competition between the best stealthers play out. There was an element of desperation in play now, as the contest could end at any moment, and many students were trying to catch up to the point totals of the leaders, including Lilijoy.
She had considered abandoning the time-consuming contest altogether, since there were many other priorities in her life, but Magpie had revealed to her that the prize for winning the competition was a Cloak of Shadows. The magical garment would enhance the stealth abilities of the wearer, but more importantly for their purposes, it would also also help conceal someone with no Stealth skill at all. Since Jessila had not been able to achieve the skill despite Lilijoy’s and Magpie’s best efforts, the cloak would be a decent substitute.
If she could win it.
Therein lay the problem. Lilijoy was not currently in the lead, or even in the top three. Her many distractions had made it impossible to keep up with the students who were devoting more time and energy. If she was honest with herself, which was all too easy these days, she had become a little complacent, and it had been quite a shock to see that the leader now had almost two hundred points at 198, while she remained at 168. She was now in the position of needing to plant all five of her patches, preferably on those who were ahead of her.
Which led to her current ploy. Though there was no easy way to tell who was who, as most of the top competitors had taken to wearing hooded shirts and cloaks to conceal their identity, Lilijoy figured that those in the lead would take a conservative approach. She had discovered the first layer of walkways on the very first day, but she hadn’t noticed that there were still more narrow bridges above those until the second week, when she caught a glimpse of a lithe figure climbing up to them with her infrared vision.
The walkway above her creaked, and she heard a faint scuffle. With her augmented hearing, she tuned in to the faint whisper of breath and a calm heartbeat. Whoever was up there was not utilizing their magi skill, which made sense. Why drain their mana when no one could possibly see them? They didn’t know that they were the prey, and their predator waited just below.
A commotion broke out on the floor below; probably someone getting caught trying to plant a patch. It was what Lilijoy had been waiting for, though it was not up to her alone. She tuned all her enhanced senses onto the movements above her. If her prey was inclined to move, even just to change position to stretch a muscle, now would be the time.
The sounds echoed back from the ceiling, and Lilijoy caught a flash of her opponent with her echolocation. It was a girl, and she was crouched on the walkway, peering over at the floor below. Immediately Lilijoy engaged Flash, and increased the speed of her thoughts as much as possible.
She whipped around to the side opposite from her opponent, and planted a patch on conveniently presented heel of their soft shoe.
That’s one.
The patches were thin like silk, and clung easily, so she wasn’t too worried about her opponent noticing. If they did she would know soon enough. Another property of the patches was that they would fade into near invisibility over time, so that stealthers couldn’t just wait until the end of class and remove any that had been planted on them. There was a window of a couple minutes to find them, after which they were undetectable to the person wearing them.
She waited a few minutes and then did it a second time, glad once again that her body weight was low enough not to shake the hanging walkway as she maneuvered. She almost felt bad for her oblivious prey, secure on her lofty perch as she surveyed the room.
Lilijoy could only hope that Sinaloa was similarly complacent. Though she wouldn’t feel bad for them if they were.
Now the only question remaining was how many patches she should plant. All five would give her forty points and subtract the same from her opponent. That would be acceptable if this was indeed the leader, but if her prey was in second or third place, it would leave Lilijoy in a tenuous position, Two hundred and eight points would barely put her into first in the current standings, but the leader would not be idle during that time. Still, this was a sure thing, while finding the other front runners might not be possible, if they were even present in this class period.
After a third patch was placed, the decision was taken from her, when the girl decided to take advantage of a particularly large commotion on the floor. Lilijoy froze as her former target rose to her feet and gently leapt to the walkways below, landing with silent grace.
She’s been watching from above for ages. I bet she’ll lead me straight to another front-runner.
The girl crept down the lower walkway. Lilijoy could tell the moment she engaged her full Stealth skill; she faded into the shadows and became invisible to her eyes, even in infrared.
She must be at a higher level than me.
It was impressive that the girl had achieved such a high level in a relatively short time, as everyone had entered the class at Novice or Initiate. Luckily, Lilijoy still had a fix on her target through her echolocation, so she was able to watch as the now indistinct figure inverted and lowered herself from the walkway to reach the hood of another motionless figure on the floor.
Are her feet glued on? As far as she could tell, her former target was standing upside down on the bottom of the walkway in order to plant a patch on the person below her. There was now no doubt in her mind that this had to be the leader. Former leader. Even with eight more points, her score would only be 182, while Lilijoy should be at 192.
Just as the girl pulled herself back up to the walkway, the lights came on.
“Class is over. Please form a line and proceed to the antechamber,” came the bored voice of the instructor. “As always, do not remove any patches you may now see.”
There were various groans and gasps as the students saw the patches they had accumulated during the class period. Lilijoy watched her target scanning herself, hoping for a reaction, but the girl didn’t think to check the bottoms of her feet. Feeling a little disappointed, she made her way down and joined the line as casually as she could.
I hope the instructors think to check there.
She was more satisfied when the girl came storming out of the antechamber on her way to check the scores, which were still located in the room with four paths. After Lilijoy passed through the inspection, carried out by some of the instructor’s anonymous assistants, she walked to the score board herself, anticipating a reasonable lead for herself.
Not so much.
Second place. Her prey had not been the leader. In fact it looked like the leader hadn’t been in that class period at all. Their score was still 198, hers was 192, and third place was 173. She could only guess that her prey was formerly in second or third. She still had two patches left, and there was one class session remaining in the day. It was seventh-day, the last day of the contest.
They planned to leave for Averdale tomorrow.
Lilijoy knew that she wasn’t ready, that none of them were even close to ready. She had run it through in her head many times with urgency and anxiety removed. It was clear that they needed months, even years, before her team was able to carry out the type of operation they had planned. Yet Magpie insisted that they had a chance, that their low levels would work in their favor, and Rosemallow had given her the Chaotic Gravity Grenade.
Even Skria’s advisor, Dean Reunification, had permitted the excursion. Lilijoy didn’t know what to make of that at all. She expected reckless disregard from her own trainer, but the Dean was another matter entirely. There was some deeper game going on, some factor absent from Lilijoy’s understanding of the situation. She wasn’t sure if it made their odds of success greater or lower, but she had decided to be optimistic about the insecurity.
She pulled her thoughts back to the Subtle Arts contest. The annoying, time wasting Subtle Arts contest.
For all she knew, the leader still had all their patches for the day. If they were keeping track of the scores, they would know she was close. Lilijoy couldn’t imagine they would sit out the next class period, unless they were an Outsider who was logged out. She couldn’t count on that though. She wracked her brain for a new idea, some way to identify the leader so she could control the outcome, but nothing surfaced.
Guess I’ll just have to play the game.