Birchshell was once a thriving border town. Built by the Oathtakers during their expansion toward the north, this place was surrounded by a dense forest primary made of birches. Kilometers after kilometers around the town were covered by black and white trunks; their tops were green in summer and spring, and auburn in winter and fall. There was no snow in the region; the terraforming done by the believers had changed the region. Where once cruel storms reigned, licking rocks from the slopes of the great mountains, now there was cold weather, filled with cool winds and occasional rains, making the locals wear warm waterproof jackets and filling mornings with white fog.
The town prospered thanks to the mining of rich deposits in the mountains. Four major roads cut through the forest on their way to the mines. In the days of the Old World, these sites were hollowed out and replaced by city blocks filled with soaring chrome towers. But after the Extinction, all this magnificent visage collapsed, got swallowed and compressed by the ground, and the deposits reappeared anew. The tragedy of the Old was used to better the lives of today’s people. Priests of various faiths visited the mines, blessing the workers and performing rituals to release whatever tormented souls were still trapped within the confines of steel and stone to a better afterlife.
Scientists and archaeologists worked double time, sending complaints to the Sector Government and pleading with them to halt the mining operation in favor of excavation to preserve the wonders of the Old World. The miners sympathized with these people, and some semblance of balance was found. The miners alerted the scientists at the discovery of an intact hall or dome, and the scientists helped keep equipment in top shape, along with dismantling the intact security systems found deep beneath the ground.
For forty years Birchshell grew. In place of the old and ruined church, a new cathedral of the Oath was built to the west of the town. With tourists began to arrive, an airport was constructed in the north, and guides led the amazed people through the auburn carpets, showing the people of the three great nations hidden rivers and small animistic temples hidden throughout the forest.
The Oathtakers were people of faith. Their founder believed that the Extinction wasn’t made by God’s hand but by people’s hands. And the appearance of powers was a sign of God’s love, a way and means to aid the struggling children to survive. All faiths were welcomed by the Oathtakers, uniting the nation in a unique mix of cultures and beliefs. Plain gray buildings were built next to intricate rainbow-colored houses and shared streets with underground dwellers, often driving mailmen and delivery drivers mad with ineffective architecture.
Triangles, squares, circles, towers, single-story buildings—the Oathtakers’ lands teemed with diversity and cultures integrated into each other. Birchshell was no exception; it, too, was changing as settlers from the Developed Core arrived and the High Priesthood worked fiercely to ensure a smoother integration between the natives and the settlers. No one was to be left behind, and no life was more precious than another. All beliefs led to God, so all beliefs were accepted. Slowly, the locals started visiting the cathedral, secure in the knowledge that their beliefs were being preserved. And the priests and shamans sent representatives from the forests to take positions and lead prayers from their sections of the cathedral. Two years ago, the first Oathsworn mayor was elected from the ranks of the locals, symbolizing the start of a new era in the city and another step in acceptance of the Oath. The first youths were admitted to become Heroes, members of elite units capable of wielding powers in the army.
Everything changed when Chosen Prince arrived. After his unwilling infiltrators spread sicknesses, plagues, and poxes in the town, after his army invaded, and after his thundering Stell Keep cast its shadow over the town, Birchshell died. It was not a noble death, but a death of a thousand cuts. The cool atmosphere changed, becoming humid and hot, creating the perfect climate for Chosen Prince’s illnesses to thrive. The birch trees, whatever was left of them, were rotting in the open. Most of them were cut down to fuel the ever-growing war machine, and the rest stood miserably. Their trunks turned brown, and bulbous growths were breaking through their barks, spewing sickly orange substances onto the ground. Instead of growing food and livestock, poisonous weeds choked life from the farmlands. The brown plants that sprouted from the ground were able to leave lacerated wounds in a potential victim. But the wounds themselves were nothing. Chosen Prince’s plants also infected an unfortunate soul, causing the wounded to experience dizziness and weakness. And when the wounded lay down to take a nap, it was all over. The weakened organism was infected, and even if the immune system could resist after awakening, the spreading plague would soon overcome the wounded, turning them into another servant for the invading army.
The streets and sidewalks still bore craters; no one bothered to repair them. Houses had fallen, and a tent city had grown in their ruins, filled with the unwilling slaves of the dreaded majesty. Sick, rotting, and mad were made to obey the Condemned and the Oracles of Chosen Prince. Under their orders, a Factory was built in the middle of the town, a place of grinding of rusting clockwork gears, a place of pain where the poisoned were sliced apart by rusty knives and their limbs were replaced with malfunctioning metal, turning the zombies into somewhat deadlier fighting units. Legs were replaced by piston-driven stalks or growling treads; eyes were popped by dirty needles and replaced with oculars; arms were sawed off by never-cleaned chainsaws, and guns or claws took their place. And people—those who had not yet succumbed to the sickness in full—felt every bit of this torture, their consciences eroding with both mental and physical agony.
The cathedral was desecrated; the priests faced a fate worse than death, becoming unwilling tools in slaughtering their flock, and new armory was built within the cathedral’s walls, producing tools of murder day and night. Fountains spewed poisonous goo, and the waste from the Factory polluted the very soil of the town. The mines were shut; the conquerors cannibalized upon the captured town, tearing down and smelting everything to sustain the Factory and the armory. Children’s laughter disappeared from the street; the fate of kids who had failed to escape in time was gruesome. Words and life almost disappeared from the streets, replaced by groans of shambling zombies and the occasional commands of the stationed Condemned garrison. For Chosen Prince there was no tomorrow, only a never-ending now, stretching into infinity, in which he always ruled. As such, the tyrant saw no reason to build for tomorrow and no reason to care for his subjects. All he needed were bodies and weapons, and only these he created, along with the bastions his minions built in the city's south.
But retribution was coming. Chosen Prince had faced his demise in Stonehelm, in a titanic battle against Lord Steward, the ruler of the Oathtakers. Two Abnormals, two beings at or near Eugenia’s level, faced each other, tearing and mutilating each other’s bodies. Body manipulation and manipulation of sickness met each other, and one gave in. Without Chosen Prince’s will, his plagues grew stale, no longer self-evolving to adapt and overcome the immune systems and bring him more slaves to rule.
The Northern Army was advancing. Abnormals: Templars, Heroes, thousands of infantry units, armored brigades, artillery, medical units—too many to count... The Oathtakers were bringing their full wrath to bear, burning plague city after plague city with cleansing napalm and overcoming enemy positions with precision artillery fire. Birchshell’s husk will burn, but its people will return, its buildings will rise from the ashes like the wings of a phoenix, and children’s laughter will once again fill its streets, along with a new birch forest that will be planted as an ultimate fuck you to Chosen Prince and an apology to all who have perished. The tyrant tried to eradicate the locals, but in the end, they will inherit the future, hurt but alive. And Chosen Prince will fade into the past. Birchshell will live again, stronger and more prosperous than before.
Ratcatcher tried to focus on these thoughts as she crept through the town’s ruins. The bad guy was dead. But the war raged. Chosen Prince’s minions fought for every meter, throwing hordes of zombies after hordes of zombies in a vain attempt of achieving… What? She struggled to comprehend their motives. Who wants to live in the midst of destruction, decay and misery? Surrender or escape and start your life anew, unshackled by the villainy. Build rather than destroy. Moans of the shambling zombies, whistling of the overheated wind, buzzing of insects nesting in folds of rotting flesh, sounds of giant gears grinding, and occasional scurrying of insects’ legs were filling the street. A graveyard animated by a power. If there was a hell on earth, this was it. No future. No life. Just rot and war. The Condemned and the Oracles were both humans; some of them were drafted against their will, and some had risked and given their lives to sabotage Chosen Prince plans. Why are they staying here? For what cause do they fight?
So this is war. She thought, sneaking toward her target. The bones of dead townspeople filled the ruins and streets, their flesh eaten by insects. In movies, a war always ended with the death of the main bad guy, and his or her forces would scatter at once. Not so much here. The Oathtakers were retaking their territory, kilometer by kilometer, through force. And their opponents have been trying to dig in, creating minefields, not unlike the one she passed through during the infiltration. Thankfully, the Condemned did not have enough forces to guard every approach to the city, and the zombies were dumber than most urban dwellers in a wasteland. By utilizing the electronics of her armor, the girl and the others evaded the mines and entered the city, spreading toward their targets. Ratcatcher stopped, hearing the rustling of heavy metal boots against the road ahead, and darted into a space between two ruined buildings.
The figures stumbled forward. Six of them, breathing, but not living. They were clad in a simple exoskeleton, with additional armor plating placed over exposed wires. Their swollen, pale flesh was bulging out of the armors’ joints, often hanging down as disgusting sacks that wept pus on the stone. The helmets of the two of them left their faces open, and Ratcatcher almost vomited at the terrible misalignment of their facial features. Fishlike eyes were almost popping out of the sockets, and rows of metal fangs served the zombies for teeth. The swelling of the necrotic flesh was so intense that the eyes moved closer to the cheeks, and their whole appearance gave off a false sensation, almost as if someone had put an overweight person in a really tight suit of armor as a joke. The shamblers sucked in air with almost desperate efforts, exhaling it along with bits of pus clogging their throats.
Rusty was their armor, and similar rust had covered the oversized machine guns. Their legs moved with a strain but never halted. Undead marching to war, long after their master had fallen. Ratcatcher hid in the darkness and let them pass before climbing to the top of the wall to survey the situation.
She was clad, or rather enveloped, by a nanomachine power armor. A truly expensive type of machinery, it looked like a skin-tight suit, but the impression could not be any more deceptive. Rows of formed nanofibers covered every inch of her body, leaving only her face free, pushing her physical limits far beyond the normal realm. Her face was shielded by a visor, a piece of machinery capable of projecting a HUD and serving as a night vision or heat vision device. With communications jammed, her connection to the team was severed and the machine operated in autonomous mode, updating the known map of the town based on the visuals.
A rebreather was formed within the armor, automatically tailored for her physiology, and its air tubes slid down her throat. Ratcatcher grew up in Scrapyard, she was exposed to and, sometimes, drank toxic and radioactive waste. But even she would catch sickness if she were to breathe the poisonous fumes in this area for a prolonged time, and the pulsating sludge on the ground might cause skin lesions. Both of her eyes couldn’t see it, but, catching her desire, the armor helpfully turned on the biohazard visibility, allowing the girl to witness bacterial clouds in the air. They were coming from the shamblers and seeping out of the tents where the Condemned were sleeping. How these men and women survived a poison capable of dropping a full-grown man in less than an hour, she had no idea. Only Jumail and Augustus could operate here without rebreathers, one because of his natural omnivorous physiology and the other because of the excessive bio-modifications in his body. Maybe Carlos too, but he would never agree to test his limits for no gain.
Speaking of Jumail, Ratcatcher spotted the boy crossing the roof half a kilometer ahead. The visor zoomed in, adding his last known location to the map. Jumail’s armor had been loaned to him by the Shadows’ R&D. It did not focus on increasing his physical strength, but rather provided complete light absorption, making the black armor a patch of darkness even against the brightest light. It also suppressed the inner workings of the battleplate, giving Jumail the ability to achieve near-perfect stealth.
His goal was a vehicle depot near the armory, a place where the prepared artillery vehicles waited for the coming battle. Jumail’s armor was loaned to him by the Shadows’ R&D. It did not focus on increasing his physicals but rather ensured full light absorption, leaving the black carapace armor a spot of darkness even against the brightest light. It also suppressed the inner workings of the battle plate, granting Jumail an ability of almost perfect stealth.
And he needed it. A trio of zombies patrolled the roof in the boy’s advance. To his left was a street filled with tents and around sixty zombies shambling around. To his right were ruins. Jumail could either take a detour or…
He chose or. The eight-legged body sprang into action and came down at the dead flesh walking. The tips of his claws pierced chest cavities, but the quivering bodies refused to shut down. Even with their spines cut in half, the zombies had tried to raise the machine guns to fire a warning shot. Jumail never gave them a chance and pushed his legs out, landing blindingly fast hits against their heads, ending the unlife. With no brain to control, the infection shut down, and the bodies started going cold. The Malformed caught the falling bodies, ignoring the gray matter and blood that stained his armor. He put the corpses aside and moved on.
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Ratcatcher felt a sudden fear of arachnophobia, followed by aggression and, at last, calmness. Edward. The boy signaled the team that Jumail had engaged the enemy, but was still unnoticed. The twins were in the mountains, sitting fifteen kilometers away from the town, preparing to assist all teams by using Ratcatcher’s map to see the whereabouts of their allies.
Most sniper kills were happening at a range of a kilometer or two. But the twins chose rail gun sniper rifles as their weapons, a very unorthodox choice for an explorator. Their weapons used anti-tank slugs for ammunition and high-powered optics to see for vast distances. Inside every anti-tank slug was installed a microcomputer that could adjust the trajectory mid-flight for perfect accuracy. Esmeralda served as a spotter; her broader range of psychic powers allowed the girl to pinpoint the enemy’s location. Edward served as a comms operator, using his better control to send emotions into his teammates’ heads and keep them informed of the situation.
Rowen was also on the move, the only one of their group to use two standard revolvers with silencers. Ratcatcher saw him weaving around, flying over the zombies thanks to his power, and passing through cracks and broken windows. When a stone touched by his shoulder or a piece of glass was at risk of falling, Rowen used his telekinesis to secure it and move on.
Elina ran across the rooftops; a Tauros shotgun with an added silencer was locked to her back. The sound absorbers of the nanomachine power armor were near perfection; short of breaking a stone beneath your feet, there was little that could give out the girl’s location. But when a door leading to the broken roof got opened in Elina’s path and a zombie crawled out, the girl reacted without a surprise.
Unlike Jumail, Elina had read all about the invasion and knew about the zombies’ weak points. She struck; the electric knuckles on her hands were switched off, but the strength gained through rigorous training and her armor allowed the girl to shatter the rusty neck guard. Not even a groan escaped the zombie’s mouth; Elina’s blow tore through both the metal and the bones of his neck, sending his head flying in a shower of blood and pus. Elina caught the head and body and placed them on the roof before wrapping her hands around her sides, fighting back the urge to vomit. Another volley of foreign emotions went through Ratcatcher’s head.
She shrugged them off and continued on to her own destination, a ruined water tower near the airport. The ruined structure was now repurposed for the delivery of oil from the underground storage into the armory and the Factory. A perfect target for sabotage, doubly so when the majority of enemy forces were at the bastions, waiting for the Oathtakers’ arrival.
Ratcatcher leaped from rooftop to rooftop, covering dozens of feet in a single bound, her tail tucked inside her armor and the Mancatcher strapped to her back. Her main weapons for the night would be her darts and Inferno-rifle. She hadn’t planned to use such a deadly weapon, but Augustus made her take it, emphasizing the seriousness of today’s operation. A single wrong move, a single mistake, and an army will be at their necks. And this army will not take prisoners. The girl took it to heart, advancing at full speed but utilizing the sensors provided to her by the armor to avoid encountering the zombies.
Iterna had a strict policy of non-intervention when it came to S-class Abnormals, a class to which Chosen Prince belonged. In Ratcatcher’s view, it was a selfish and stupid policy, one that left a potential threat running through the world. But she did not dispute the sheer danger of these monsters. Mad Hatter, a leader of the Gilded Horde, and Ravager created a whole new mountain range in their struggle, and the impact of their battle reached all the way to bedrock. The Thunder Emperor caused similar destruction. S-classes weren’t walking nukes; they were walking nuclear silos, filled to the brim with nukes—disasters capable of ending entire countries—and were usually stopped by another S-class, like Eugenia, Lord Steward, or Ravager.
Try as she might, Ratcatcher could not understand why the Oathtakers refused aid from the Reclamation Army when the Dynast offered his aid in repelling the invasion. Wyrm Lord, Outsider, Devourer, had all gathered at the border with the Oathtakers, but Dominator, the grand general of the Oath, had denied them entry. Could they not see how dangerous Chosen Prince was? Iterna’s policies and agreements with the Reclaimers prevented her from intervening, but the Oathtakers should have called for help! And because of their pride, so many civilians had died.
The girl stopped at the edge of the roof, dropped to her knees and cursed. A zombie stood guard at the entrance, moaning and breathing loudly. A single patrol shambler, he should be moving soon... Her ears picked up another sound, this time below her. Familiar shuffling footsteps, the wood cracking under the weight of boots. Another zombie was coming up, planning a night patrol on the roof.
Come on, leave already! Ratcatcher took the Inferno-rifle. The weapon had an angled grip and no scope; its black surface was smooth to the touch. The visor’s HUD served as a scope, advising her to fire at the enemy’s brain based on the information available. She hesitated. The zombie wasn’t alive; it was flesh animated by an infection. If anything, she would be doing her victim a favor by ending this mockery and preventing the corpse from harming anyone else. But… The zombie was a female in her previous life; she guessed this much based on the swollen face and slits for eyes. Its eyelids trembled, as if trying to wake up from a nightmare. The body convulsed. What if the person in its flesh was still alive, trapped inside, screaming wordlessly for help?
It was nonsense, of course. Ratcatcher’s armor had provided the girl with a full report. Based on the cracked scull, the bones protruding from beneath the open helmet, and the intense pus-bleeding, along with extensive necrosis, the brain was dead. Shamblers could be saved and cured; the Reclamation Army had proven it by curing a diseased slaver who had volunteered for the experiment. But they could be cured up to a certain point. When the brain died, there was no personality left to save. The woman was dead.
Worry. Calm. Concern. This roughly translated into: Are you okay? Ratcatcher blinked away Edward’s touch and threw her arm back, relying on her armor’s sensors to see the head crash through a wooden roof behind her. With a flick of her wrist, an armor-piercing dart was fired, leaving a gaping hole in the rising zombie’s head. The seam at the back of her armor came apart, letting her tail slither out like a snake and wounding itself around the dead zombie’s neck before it could fall. Along with it, she pressed the trigger.
A 7.62 mm round left the barrel, and the sound of her shot was deafened by the suppressor. Midway toward the turning zombie, a chemical process started within the bullet, heating the projectile to a temperature of 3 000 Celsius. The incandescent bullet vaporized both the steel in its portion and most of the zombie’s left lobe, along with rupturing the rest of the brain, and disappeared into the air before it could hit the stone wall behind the dead shambler. Ratcatcher dragged the first dead foe onto the ruined roof and dove, hiding the tail within the confines of her armor. She caught the falling body and set it on the ground, removing the twitching finger off the trigger. Too close. It was sheer luck that the weapon jammed; otherwise, the shambler would have alerted everyone.
She took a moment to shake the pus from her palms and look at the dead face. Who was this woman? Did she have a child, or perhaps more than one? If so, Ratcatcher hoped they were safe. The dead shambler—no, the dead woman—wasn’t a bad person; Ratcatcher was sure of that. And yet she died. All because the Oathtakers had failed her, they had failed their people. And because Ratcatcher had failed, and mu…
“May the Planet guide your soul to a better afterlife,” Ratcatcher said, the words heard only within her helmet. A person. Dead. Her body despoiled. And she can’t even give her a proper send-off or a burial. And another one on the roof. What is going on? She wanted to vomit, to scream, to rage, and to take her mancatcher and find these Oracles and make them pay and…
And the mission awaited her. Vengeance is a fool’s game. Does she want to turn into a monster like Maximillian? Hell no! Her brother and Mom and Dad wait for her! There were lives at stake, too.
Ratcatcher came to the water tower’s door. It fell at her touch; the metal was too rusted. She put the door aside and stepped inside, trying to ignore the rotting corpses on the floor and the pulsing growths on the walls, floor, and evil ceiling. These growths were fungus made of living flesh, spilling out poisonous spores without a halt. The armor assured Ratcatcher she was in no danger, and the girl reached for the explosives at her belt, securing them below the rusted tubes. Some pipes were so rusted that cracks had appeared on their surfaces, spewing out trickles of oil. Good. With safety precautions like this, and with any luck, both the underground storage and perhaps part of the Factory will follow Chosen Prince and make the situation easier for the Northern Army when it arrives here.
A screech caught her attention, and Ratcatcher looked up, noticing a hand-sized beetle perched on a pipe. The creature almost danced in place; its carapace was somehow unaffected by sickness or plague. Two mandibles clacked as green, simple eyes watched the girl’s movements. The HUD called up the database, and Ratcatcher learned this creature was a finger-snatcher, a highly aggressive and territorial freshwater bug. These bugs would attack any intruder at any opportunity, and the strength of their bite led to their name.
“I bet you never had to do something as scary as…” She said that and shut up. Who cares if she was afraid? She had work to do. Ratcatcher returned to the task at hand. “Your rivers were destroyed, am I right, buddy?” The insect’s mandibles slapped against one another at the sound of pity in her voice. She kept on talking, unsure why she was doing it. “But you can’t stay here. There is poison here too, and soon the place will go boom, and you will…” She clenched her fists when its chitin casing opened. With a buzz, the finger-snatcher flew off the pipe, sitting on her shoulder. Ratcatcher fought against the urge to smash it and finished planting the explosives. If it wants to go with her, she doesn’t mind. She could use some company in this necropolis.
Ratcatcher left the building, hushing at the bug when it clanked its mandibles at the sight of the dead body outside. Surprisingly, the creature obeyed, and the girl looked at the airport, noticing the pillar of metal, stone, and pulsing organic flesh.
This was the reason they were here. An Ascension Tower. The Ascension Tower stood tall, the radar’s disks and various equipment on its top equipment on its top obscured the moon, leaving Ratcatcher to stand in the darkness.
During the invasion, the minions of Chosen Prince had been busy building them. Hundreds were dragged inside and thrown into a pile beneath a metal grating. Then a single, willing or not, volunteer was placed at the grating, usually held by a torture chair. The dread invader then used his power, expediting the plague in the victims to the point where their bodies swelled and bloomed with disease, pestilence, and entrails spilling all around. The poison mist would go up and coalesce within the tormented person on the metal platform, creeping into every pore and orifice. But the cruelty doesn’t end there.
Rather than killing the person, changes would take hold in their body, reshaping them forever into an Oracle, a spreader of pox-rule and a loyal servant to one of the strongest Abnormals. The flesh coverage that held the tower together was actually the bodies of thousands of victims, all sewn together and fused by the Chosen Prince’s power into a single mindless, or so the Ratcatcher hoped, blob that served as another conduit for the power. A very rudimentary bio-enhancement procedure, one that was deemed inhumane by the Three Great Powers.
And the ones they were supposed to save were within this hellhole. The tower no longer worked, but perhaps out of habit, or maybe out of a desire to follow the wicked rituals, the bodies were gathered there. The Condemned and the Oracles filled the Ascension Tower. On their way to the training site, Augustus received an urgent S.O.S. signal.
Prior to the invasion, Iternian corporations had several branches in the Oathtakers’ lands. The Iternian workers of one of these companies were captured by the invaders. The government had written them off as dead, for Chosen Prince spared no one. But the signal changed everything. Even if they were dead, some Iternians still lived in this town. Two at least.
In Iterna, the female workers who go to work outside of the country usually undergo a very specific bio-upgrade procedure that creates a pocket of nanomachines in their bodies. It did not improve their odds of survival of a person; rather, it shielded their unborn kids. Since many women spend decades working outside the country, in regions often attacked by raiders, such precautions have been eagerly accepted by the general population. Upon becoming pregnant, a secure case would start forming in the woman’s womb, shielding unborn children from possible mutations due to radiation or a random sickness. After all, even a passing encounter with a Glow could render the fetus deformed for life or leave a lasting effect on its psyche. Worse, it could reshape the organs too much, making it impossible for doctors to correct the mutation.
Such secure cases would form rudimentary electrical devices capable of running diagnostic tests on their patients or sending a distress signal if a parent ends up being incapacitated or deceased. After these womb cases saved the lives of dozens of infants during an avalanche over a hundred years ago, preserving the unborn for months before the rescue teams arrived, this nanomachine upgrade became super popular in Iterna and even people in Iterna itself were using them, ignoring the inconvenience of having a metal cage inside their bodies.
Augustus received a signal from one of these womb cases. Two babies were alive, most likely trapped inside their mother’s supposedly rotting body. The minions of Chosen Prince had faulty equipment; at a moment when the jamming system was briefly off line, the signal came out and was soon cut off, but Augustus learned all he needed to know. This womb case’s power supply would run out before a Shadow team from Iterna could arrive. The Shadows themselves had contacted Augustus, receiving the same information, and had offered to pay the explorator for him to hire mercenaries to handle the situation. The problem was that their craft had just entered Oathtakers Aerospace; there was no time for hiring anyone.
And it will take too long for the government to unleash one of the Elites. In addition to that, the Oathtakers were about to turn Birchshell to ash, and if Augustus tried to contact Crawler, the general in charge of the operation, with the news, there was no telling if the Oathtakers would listen. Why would they risk the lives of their own soldiers for two kids when they were willing to let their own people die for the sake of not accepting military help from the Reclaimers? Crawler was known for his cruelty because of his unique upbringing, and Augustus decided against contacting the Oathtakers’ high command for fear that they would order them to go to Stonehelm.
The leader wanted to go alone, but his team, including the pilots, had volunteered to help. There was little time to argue, and Augustus agreed, even though Ratcatcher could see it gnawing at the man to put the trainees in such danger. They left the flying vehicle hidden in the mountains; the invaders have the means to detect even cloaked ships of great size. Augustus took a few hours to survey the city and come up with a plan. Regardless of the danger, this too was the job of an explorator, and the man had done it before.
And this is how their training mission in the safety of Stonehelm turned into their first combat mission, years before they should’ve gone onto one. Augustus, Vasily, and Carlos would act as a distraction. Carlos declared them to be a ‘murder-hobo’ team, resulting in Augustus asking if Carlos was mad. Esmeralda and Edward were the support team. And Ratcatcher and the others were the diversion and rescue team. The goal was simple. Either carry the dead woman out. Or cut out the case and take it to safety.