Chapter 168 - Setup

Knock, Knock!

Vern almost jolted out of his seat and lost his focus as the sound echoed in his mind. Luckily, the knock didn't come from his own door. It was room 320 across his current origin of sight, where one of the raiders had already begun executing the woman's will.

They're starting already. Fuck!

Two of the five black-purple-robed men made their exit with the woman as he 'saw' her foot falls descend down the stairs and soon out the hotel.

However, she suddenly stopped right outside, and Vern didn't dare not observe what she was doing. He quickly found himself another mirror with a better angle to their conversation and left the one from 319.

"…it should be simple now," she said, slamming her staff down the gravel as the veins on the eye atop it bulged. A mist seeped out of empty air and began to spread all around the hotel. "No one out here will acknowledge whatever happens inside for the next hour. It should be more than enough time," she said, waving her sleeve.

Clack Clack

Out of nowhere, a carriage stopped in front of her, and she ordered before getting up, "Make sure nothing escapes this place with an inkling about the child of death. Check the records and find out who else lived here during this time. Serve them the same fate. No witnesses should be left uncleansed."

Two of the men from her fleet bowed and stopped at the door.

"If someone tries to run away…" she dipped her hand in one of the robe's pockets and passed a tiny cage over to the one that looked like their leader, "Capture them. The Seraph's eye could do with some nourishment."

A shiver raced down Vern's spine as he watched it all come to pass, horror surfacing in his mind. This is a fucking death trap. How unlucky must I be to have entered the hotel right before all this went down?

Fuck me, he cursed.

Once the woman left for good, he exited out of the mirror amulet, whose shine had become a little dimmer, his heart beating rapidly as a sense of impending doom washed over him.

He got up and paced around the room. They're going to commit a massacre of mind in here!

Worse, there was a possibility that they wouldn't stop there and pass them off as nourishment to whatever the fuck's eyes.

What do I do? he brainstormed, a dark glint in his eyes.

I don't know the trace of anyone from Vigil, he realized in frustration. There was no culture of sharing each other's traces in the Vigil, and he couldn't blame them for it. Sharing information was important, but everyone's viewpoint was even more sacred.

Yet, it landed him in a situation like this where he couldn't call for help.

Should I try and ask Esther to do something about it? She was the only one he could reach at the moment, and if he remembered correctly, she had a Traveler in her family who could send someone here as reinforcement.

But he realized the flaws with this plan soon enough. She probably just left her family's mansion for some work, and even if she hadn't, there was no guarantee that she could mobilize someone with the power of teleportation on a whim.

Maybe her mother could, but things weren't as simple. There was something going on in her family, and there was a chance that they couldn't do much at all. Not when he wasn't exactly the daughter of their family, but just some guy who'd helped them indirectly once.

Yeah, no. I can't depend on that. Things didn't work like that.

Still, he decided to reach out to her pre-emptively in case there really wasn't anything he could do in this situation. It would be too late if he waited until the disaster was at his doorstep.

Without a delay, he penned, 'Hello Esther, Vern again. This is urgent. I am caught up in a potential death trap, and I was wondering if it's possible for you to mobilize your traveler or somehow send a message over to Elmhurst urgently in case I can't deal with it myself.'

There was a possibility that someone else in her family knew the trace of someone from Elmhurst.

He held his breath as he waited for a response.

Seconds turned into minutes, and none came.

Fuck, he cursed. Notes from convergence note weren't a guaranteed method of delivery. If Esther wasn't available to pen it down in a couple of minutes, the note would essentially be lost. That was to say, if she was busy with other matters, she could entirely ignore it and not know what she missed.

He furrowed his brows, I really can't depend on this. There are too many variables with this plan. It would be one thing if he'd warned her beforehand, but expecting her to write down messages when she could very well be busy in her own battles was just not done.

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Tch, he clicked his tongue. What else can I do here?

He narrowed his eyes and wondered if he could engage the raiders in a one-on-one battle. Except, that's a bad idea when I know little to nothing about their abilities.

Fighting Lucian without knowing about his visions was one thing, but this was different. There was an unknown number of foes, as well as perceptual artifacts in the equation, which he didn't understand. It would be nothing but foolish to rush out there and challenge them to a battle of guns and swords.

No, he shook his head. That's not how I do things.

I need more information about their tactics and visions. Only once I know how they're going to proceed with the matters can I find a flaw in their plans and stabilize the situation. This was one time where he didn't wish to let things destabilize before stabilizing them, as that would most probably result in tenants losing their memories.

He simulated his decisions and realized there were two choices. One was that he rushed out right away, probably saving everyone, but there was a far bigger chance he would just end up getting himself killed, and the rest of the hotel tenants would still lose their memories.

On the other hand, if he waited to understand their tactics, his chances of saving the rest and himself would go up exponentially.

There's just one choice, really. He knew he wouldn't go for the first option, no matter what.

As much as it would weigh on his conscience to let some of the tenants have their memories frazzled by these raiders, trying to save everyone in such a situation was nothing but foolishness.

There's a good chance there are Observers with two or even more shades in their party, he predicted. Going against them upfront was nothing short of suicidal.

Thump! he slammed his cane down once again, a sense of powerlessness gripping him. He understood the logic, but it still felt disgusting.

"Balance," he whispered to himself, repeating it like a mantra.

After spending a couple more minutes analyzing this situation, he let out a deep breath and muttered, "Alright."

Let's start by figuring out the position of each and every one of them.

He entered the world of mirrors once again and starting from the bottom floor, he picked small and safe mirrors one by one to slowly compile a fuller image of the whole hotel. He shifted from the wine glass's shine to the wall clock's gleam. From dressing mirrors to water in bathtubs.

From the furnace room in the basement to the kitchen on the ground floor to every room on each level to the terrace up top. He left not a single stone unturned, and the mirror amulet in his hand was all but out of shine once he was done with his survey.

It'll take a couple of days for it to recover from so much usage, he surmised.

Regardless, it had more than helped him get a better picture of everything around him. And fortunately, he wasn't caught staring even once. Maybe because these perpetrators were dealing with their tasks with an easy-going attitude, as if everything was under their control.

Because it is, he grimaced, watching another one of the black-purple-robed men go through the belongings of a tenants as she sat huddled in a corner, her eyes empty. All of them worked efficiently like a clockwork.

This was how they went about following the orders. They first rummaged through the tenant's belongings, and while he didn't know why, he knew what was to come after.

Once the man was done, he walked up to the woman and looked down at her with glowing eyes, asking, "Do you know Walter?"

She responded in a daze, "I…I don't."

"Good. Do you know who you are?"

"I…I am…Elmira. Elmira from Sairan. I came here to become a doctor at—"

Tsk Tsk, the black-purple-robed man interjected, shaking his head. "Wrong. You're nothing."

"I…am…nothing?"

"Indeed. Forget everything." he said, gripping her head in his palm, "Everything."

Purple mist poured out of his hands, and her already dazed eyes loosened even further as she swayed side to side.

Smack! the floor cracked underneath his cane as Vern closed his eyes, exiting out of that mirror.

Hahhh, he took a deep breath to calm himself down. He wasn't ready yet. In his all-out inspection of the hotel, he'd spotted a total of six black-purple-robed men, including the two outside.

He couldn't take them on without a proper plan. Apart from these men, he didn't find Beaumont anywhere, and surprisingly, Benedict was missing, too. Good for them if they're not in the hotel.

However, Martha was in her room 213, and so was Wilfred in 208. These criminals had yet to get to either of them, but it wasn't going to be long before both of them would become lost souls under these men's tyranny.

Fortunately, this mental jaunt through each and every corner of the hotel had supplemented the details of his perception to an unimaginable degree. It no longer extrapolated wrongly based on symmetry and limited information.

The whole structure was almost a one-to-one representation of real life but in grays. He could even make out vague outlines now that he had correct information for all the minor structures in each room, allowing his perception to gather more feedback from them all to construct moving silhouette of the people.

It was like he could perceive each and every minute vibration that went down in the hotel, just not the actual interactions, as they were fuzzy figures mixing and overlapping over each other.

But it's enough.

He mentally marked four of the figures in his perception. These were the black-purple-robed men who were going around erasing the memories of the tenants. For now, he ignored the two watchers outside.

Of the four, two were on the ground floor, one was on the second, and the last was just a couple of rooms away. Unfortunately, the rooms in between them didn't have any tenants.

He's going to come for me next, Vern reasoned.

That was a good thing. The only way to actually gauge their abilities was to let them come at him with their visions and possibly force their hand in a controlled situation.

His room was good for setting that up.

But I can't be overconfident, he reminded himself.

Yes, according to his notes, the last time someone tried to manipulate his memories, he had managed to resist it to a degree. But he wasn't going to take that for granted. Who knew? Maybe, back then, the Observer in question wasn't trying too hard. But things were different this time.

For both parties.

According to his notes, the last time he was stuck in this situation, in this very same room, he was lost. Utterly terrified and scared of all the things his opponents might be able to do. But this time? Heh, he chuckled mirthfully. Let's see who's got the upper hand.

Reaching out to his own singularity, he whispered, "Oh Lord Axiom, Arbiter of Balance, I beseech thee, grant me insight."

His own prayer reverberated in his mind, and he reached out to the star representing himself, ready to 'grant insight' at the drop of the hat.

Yes, Vern may not have enough singularity or insight to resist the suggestions of these people, but Axiom surely did.

With his heart pumping in excitement as well as fury, he cracked his neck and waited with a straight back and sharp eyes, his hands resting on the cane in a menacing posture.

Then, it came…

Knock, Knock!