Atop a dilapidated roof in Reillys’ poorer outskirts, a cloaked figure observes as the elaborate funerary procession enters the city and the long final stretch before its final resting place. Dozens of mourners, guards and attendants march alongside the horse-drawn hearse, which is escorted ahead and behind by wagons bearing warriors and clergy.
Leading the convoy is a gigantic robed priest perched at the front of the vanguard wagon, bellowing hymns. His song of reverence, death, sacrifice and rebirth carry with unnatural clarity through the city streets, accented by priestesses scattered amongst the procession playing instruments. Insulated at the center of the formation, atop the horse-drawn hearse is an ornate coffin. It is decorated with a depiction of blue birds flying over a copse of leafless twisting trees that is skillfully incorporated into the elaborate reinforcements and runic wardings that crisscross its structure.
Throngs of people on either side of the street pause their comings, goings, or loiterings to observe the convoy. Some see the imagery atop the coffin and lose their composure, wailing or sobbing at its grim news. Others hear the giant priest’s hymns and follow the convoy, transfixed in reverence. Others still are indifferent, but some react with hostility and derision, jeering at and harassing the guards and attendants.
The cloaked figure admires their skepticism, for he is among them - though his designs for the night go further than merely hurling insults.
This level of funerary security and gravitas might be seen only upon the death of a King, but it is a peculiar time. It is not a royal lying within that casket, but a dead immortal - a fallen God. All these dozens of guards, priests, and warriors are here to ensure that Veesis is laid to rest within the depths of the Mausoleum of Divinity’s central tombs, but the cloaked figure and his comrades are here to prevent that. He is Isaac Mizser IV, but tonight he acts as Grim, leader of Team Reaper.
Alongside his friends Scythe and Shadow, Grim has haunted funerals like this for half a decade, working against the Mausoleum’s plans on behalf of the Church of Eidetic Man.
But the time is not yet right to strike, and so Grim does not give the signal to begin the attack. Instead, Team Reaper shadows the convoy, moving from rooftop to rooftop, unnoticed even in the light of dawn thanks to their stealth skills and the volume of distraction presented to the convoy.
The procession moves through the streets of Reillys in a circular, winding path, displaying their prize and singing their hymns to every sector of the poorer sections before tightening their circuit to begin proselytizing to more affluent areas. This process takes hours, and Isaac knows that eventually the conditions of exhaustion wearing on the procession’s staff, the time of day, and the layout of Reillynd’s capital city will eventually coincide such that their patience will be rewarded with the perfect opportunity to attack. But even as the walking and the carrying and the singing wears down upon his enemies’ stamina, the gravitas of his mission wears down upon him.
They cannot afford to pass up this prize. In the preceding years, the Mausoleum has become more and more adept at protecting their divine corpses long enough to bring them home. They misdirect the Church of Eidetic Man, feeding them false intelligence so that they wrongly deploy their scarce Teams of skilled Vim practitioners, using bait convoys, ambushes, and traps to prevent successful strikes before the procession can enter the Mausoleum’s more closely controlled territory.
The Church of Eidetic Man is losing the race for divine corpses, and that spells bad news for the Kingdom of Reillynd and humanity as a whole. If only the Mausoleum weren’t so powerful, ubiquitous, and adept at absorbing the followings of fallen Gods, this shadow war might be going another way, but that isn’t the world Isaac lives in.
All intelligence points towards the Mausoleum approaching a critical mass of divine dead, nearly enough to begin their grand plan in earnest, and so the Church has pulled out all the stops to make this attack work. Other Teams are engaging Mausoleum forces across the city, and several deep-set spies gave their lives to ensure the casket would legitimately contain a dead God. Isaac is as sure as he can be, but the weight of the task ahead still presses down heavily upon his psyche.
Failure would see human sacrifice on a scale unseen in centuries, Reillynd consigned to become a spiritual resuscitator for the divine. Isaac cannot abide letting that happen to the country and people he loves.
Distantly, an explosion of energy is briefly visible through the alleys between two buildings in the central city. As minutes pass, more signs of conflict between Vim practitioners are visible from afar in different places across Reillys, evidence that their fellow Teams have made their move, and the time draws nearer.
Hours after the procession enters the city and minutes after the other Teams begin their attacks, Isaac sees his moment. The procession, hurrying along a little faster now in response to the citywide fighting, rounds a corner through an intersection where the stone pavement has degraded and turned to mushy mud in the aftermath of the rainy season. The streets have cleared somewhat of passers-by, but trade wagons and market stands still litter the sides. The intersection is awkward and stilted, a result of the unplanned, haphazard growth of Reillys at the time it was constructed.
These factors inform Grim’s plan. Using a Vimitech device in his mask, he pings his teammates to look his way as he employs rapid-fire sign language to inform them of their tasks.
The message is sent. As the procession rounds the corner, the wagons slow as they attempt to tread through the treacherous mud at the center of the street. Simultaneously, Isaac abandons stealth to sprint across rooftops, empowering his movement with Vim, leaping from the roof on one side of the intersection to an alley on the other, movement that draws some attention from civilians but goes unnoticed by the procession for now, who are distracted.
The hearse’s axle snaps halfway through the intersection, causing the vehicle to collapse, immobile, into the muck. At the same time, a merchant wagon’s horses on the street ahead spook, wresting control of the vehicle they command from the reinsman and careening it towards the convoy. Chaos breaks loose as the procession tries to maintain its formation around its central prize against a charging merchant wagon. Isaac mentally thanks the Shadow for being so efficient and advances upon the convoy.
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Isaac picks up speed, withdrawing his weapon of choice from a pocket within his cloak. He approaches the disorganized funerary formation, whose coffin is now exposed to him, as the columns of marching guards and attendants curve around the street away from him. He weaves through a smattering of merchants and passerby, but his approach would still likely be noticed ahead of time if not for the act of the Reaper’s Scythe, still atop his rooftop perch.
The procession’s shouts of alarm intensify as shimmering golden weaponry rains down from above. Vimic hammers smash into horses, guards, and wagon wheels every couple seconds, scattering some of the weaker-willed attendants and worshippers in panic. Isaac slips between the gaps created, a cloaked blur wielding a segmented staff behind its back. He whips his weapon forwards, infusing his Vim into the metallic implement, smashing it into the reinforced coffin.
Isaac’s bo staff works as a conduit for his Vimic technique, spiritual energy flowing through it to assault the runic defenses of the coffin. He has had plenty of practice in circumventing these wards lately, given the Mausoleum’s propensity to deploy bait processions that still sometimes result in the recovery of an empty coffin. His Vimworks assault the runes, melting the crystal inlays that constitute their lettering into a less cogent state, weakening the wards enough to allow further manipulation.
He lashes out with a kick when a guard finally reacts to his intrusion enough to try to attack, smashing the man’s sword out of the way and sending him to kiss the earth with a cracked jaw. More golden hammers strike other guards and an attendant that attempt to follow their first guard in interfering and Isaac’s Vimwork continues uninterrupted, completing in another moment.
His Vimic construct is one aligned with his signature technique - a redirection of force. In particular, he turns the downward force of gravity against itself, empowered by his spiritual energy. The coffin, with Grim perched atop, lifts into the air. Isaac feels pleased with his competent Vimwork execution.
“DUCK!” shouts Scythe.
Isaac flattens himself to the coffin’s top, moments before a massive spinning projectile spins by overhead. Thanks, Marcus. He spares a moment to glance in the direction of the attacker, but he only has time to identify him as a big armored warrior beside the large priest on the head wagon before a second shout forces him to action again.
“BEHIND!”
Twisting upwards from a crouched position, Isaac brings his segmented weapon into position in time to deflect the spinning projectile a second time, sending it whirling away. Before Grim’s eyes, it glows with a red Vimic hue and halts for a moment, revealing itself as a double-bladed greatsword. Then it begins spinning again, relentlessly surging towards him. Adapting quickly, Isaac channels Vim through his upper body to empower his strength and refresh his bo staff’s energy supply, imparting that energy into the enemy implement with his second parry. It spirals away again, this time too quickly to halt and adjust its course before it sinks blade-first into the muddy street.
This time, he doesn’t need Scythe’s warning to look behind once more in anticipation in some sort of follow up - he’s been loitering in the air too long for the enemy to have failed to respond with greater intensity by now. He turns to see the large armored warrior leaping towards him barehanded, his right gauntlet curled in a fist while the other reaches for Isaac.
A hand of shadowy Vim arises from the side of the floating coffin, the Vimworks prickling against Isaac’s awareness of his own construct, and the warrior is preempted by a pushing palm strike that knocks him away and sends the floating coffin spinning backwards with an opposite force. Isaac takes a moment to recover his balance as the warrior tumbles to the ground, breaking the bones of some of the mundane guards and mourners on the way.
His Shadow has not been idle since snapping the hearse’s axle and spooking the merchant’s horses, and now more hands of shadow spring up from the shade all over the street beneath the procession, grappling guards who are attempting to bring various ranged weapons to bear on him. Isaac channels Vim through his legs to apply a directional force to the levitating coffin, directing it down the street away from the Mausoleum’s forces in a direction his allies can still cover him through.
Isaac’s heart races and his face beads with sweat beneath his mask. He worries for the civilians, for the mourners and attendants who have been misled by the Mausoleum and may yet be caught in the crossfire, and he worries that he is correct in his assessment that this is far from over, that his execution couldn’t have been clean enough for that.
The guards are occupied by the continuous interference of his Shadow, Adam Nantan, but his Scythe, Marcus Entraed’s attention is needed to stop the more capable fighters amongst the Mausoleum from pursuing, and he hasn’t cleared the conditions he needs to engage directly with a fellow Vim practitioner.
One is the towering priest, cloaked in elaborate robes and wielding no weapon - but he is one Isaac has encountered as Grim a time before, and he knows that the man wields peculiar Vimic techniques, and his voice itself as a potent weapon. He is Speaker Jarud, a high-ranking priest within the Mausoleum.
The second is the large - but still shorter than Jarud - armored warrior, holding his gauntleted hand out for his red-sheathed double greatsword to twirl back into it. He stalks forwards ahead of the Speaker, spinning his weapon, chopping the air on his left flank, then the right. Isaac doesn’t recognize him, but he knows his type - an Acolyte, a warrior sworn to defend and serve a Speaker or other high-ranking clergy.
Surprisingly, he speaks before his boss does, as the bigger man seems content to hum ominously to accompany his underling’s words.
“Grim of Team Reaper… Come to plague us holy adherents with your brigand’s brand of blasphemy, have you? My name is Maritus. I am an Excellent Acolyte to Speaker Jarud, and a Devoted to the Mausoleum of Divinity. I’ve heard a lot about you. You haven’t been having a good year, have you? Well, it’s about to get a whole lot worse. I’m going catch you. I’m going to drag you down from the sky, shatter you against the earth, and bring you to the Council for judgment. I’m going to enjoy every moment of it. Are you ready?”
Isaac pours additional Vim into the coffin’s ensnaring construct, accelerating his flight - but if he’s right about Maritus’ level of strength and athleticism, he simply won’t be able to outrun him. The masked Prince of Reillynd brings his segmented bo staff to a ready position, flushing his body and it with a resurgence of Vim, empowering trained Yield Circuits linked to his physical prowess and ability to manipulate force.
Taking his silence for an answer, Jarud bounds forwards, ahead of the Speaker, who begins chanting with fervor, a ranged weapon in song. Isaac will need to defeat them both before he can escape.