Ira Invidia (VII): The Wall Attempts Murder (Twice)
--- Booker H. Freeman ---
(Gluttony: Duck.)
“Duck?” He blinked, tilting his head to the side just as a loud bang tore through the air and something cut along his cheek.
“Shit, run!” Lydia yelled, tugging at his arm and dragging him away from the walls as another bang tore through the air and he felt something piercing through his arm.
(Gluttony: Running is good too.)
With a growl he sprinted after Lydia as she ducked into a nearby alley, one with a number of holes right along the edge of its opening.
“This… this should be far enough.” His ward informed him with a slight pant. “They tend to stop firing once you get moving.”
“And why did they shoot me?!” He growled, shifting the cloth of his shirt to see how bad the injury was.
(Sloth: Looks like a through and through.)
“Because Ira Invidia is one massive prison?” Lydia scoffed, before giving his arm a worried glance. “Are you going to be okay?”
He considered the bleeding hole once more, and took note of how it wasn’t actually bleeding.
(Wrath: It won’t stop our work.)
(Gluttony: It’ll just make us hungrier for the kill.)
Taking a calming breath he gave the child a reassuring smile. “I’ll be fine. Doesn’t even hurt.”
(Envy: It does. You’ve just had worse.)
(Gluttony: The pain means we’re still alive.)
It seemed to work as Lydia gained a relieved sort of look. “Good.”
“Now then.” He coughed, in an attempt to regain some of his previous decorum. “While a little late, I don’t suppose you know much about the Walls’ defenses?”
“I know they’ve got guns and guards.” Lydia shrugged, before adding that. “Most people just need them to kill you once to learn to stay away.”
“Experience?” He wondered.
His companion refused to meet his eyes as she answered, “Not mine.”
(Sloth: Good, she knows to let others make mistakes for her.)
(Pride: The ability to learn is such a dreadfully rare skill.)
(Speaking of…) “If we want to overcome the wall then we’ll need to study it a bit more.” He told Lydia as he started down the side of the alley opposite the way they’d entered.
“Is… is that a good idea?” Lydia asked with one of her hideous frowns as she caught up to him. “I mean, they just shot you.”
“True.” He conceded, because facts were facts. “But I sincerely doubt two lurkers who fled are enough to send them on high alert. Still we won’t be getting as close as we were, we’ll simply follow along at a distance to see if we can’t find an advantage of sorts to make use of.”
“Uh, I don’t… think that’ll work the way you think it will.” Lydia confessed.
(Sloth: She knows something. Ask her what.)
“Oh?” He smiled, even as the girl shrunk away. “Do tell.”
“Everyone who wants out tries walking the wall. It was… It was one of my first attempts at getting out of here. I loaded my backpack with enough supplies to last a week or two on the outside and walked the wall for something other than the main gate.” Lydia explained. “I mean, it’s not like they could wall up the entire city, r-right? There had to be a hole or a weak part of the fence I could find my way through.”
“Given the way you’re talking…” He found the edges of his smile drooping, even if they remained in the shape of a grin.
“I ran out of supplies without even lapping the city, and I’d spent every day just walking for two weeks straight.” Lydia grimaced.
(Pride: Given the average human walking speed, even if she only walked for three hours a day, that’s still a perimeter of eight-four miles… If she actually spent all of her time walking then, that would easily swell to over three hundred miles most likely more…)
(Sloth: I will go on strike if you attempt to walk that far.)
“That’s… troubling.” He admitted as he slowed to a stop.
“Yeah, the weirdest part of it is that when I finally gave up and started back home? It didn’t even take me an hour to get home.” Lydia chuckled mirthlessly. “Almost like this place was taunting me about how pointless it all was.”
“Very troubling.” He corrected himself, as his eyes drifted to the greater wall.
(Pride: It also sounds… impossible, from a purely logistical perspective.)
(Envy: Not if we’re throwing magic in.)
He found his eyes drifting higher to the massive magic circle in the sky.
(Pride: You’re right. Is this an effect of the barrier or the spell circuit, perhaps? When Lydia brought us to the wall from the hotel, that didn’t even take an entire hour. I’d dismissed it due to our unfamiliarity with the region but… does all travel simply take an hour?)
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
(Envy: Spatial compression is… dangerous but possible. On a smaller scale than a city… then again that circuit is covering a lot more than this city…)
(Pride: Oh, so many delightful questions to ask… But we’re going to need more data to figure the answers out.)
(Meaning…) “I need to get closer to the wall.” He realized before redirecting his path once more towards the object of his current fascination.
“What? Why?!” Lydia stumbled as she raced to cut him off. “They just shot you!”
“There’s a barrier of some kind connected to the wall. I need to get closer to figure out what it’s doing.” He explained as he walked around her. “I was willing to leave it be for a more mundane study, but given how fruitless that appears to be, I’ll have to take a more direct approach to figure out how much of a hindrance it will be.”
Lydia glanced between him and the greater wall before groaning. “Of course the super wall has magic… Oh… fine! But we’re going to have to be careful. I can’t afford the cost of dying here.”
(Greed: We really can’t. Time, Sin, or whatever else, dying now would be too expensive.)
(Pride: Which is why we’ll just be doing a quick inspection.)
(Envy: Even remembering the basics I doubt we could manage much more than that.)
Reaching out with what he could recall of his magical senses, a sensation that left him feeling a metaphysical weight upon him as a faint symphony of sound began to play around him. Discordant orchestra of a thousand competing musicians, with one nearby song playing loud enough to overwhelm everything else. The sound of the wall itself.
He could piece parts of the song together and their meaning, but it was as if he could only recognize half of the instruments playing through the air. The others weaving and blending in such a way that he knew he’d be wrong if he attempted to name them.
“Uh, Booker?” Lydia asked, tugging at his shirt once more.
“Give me a moment, I’ve almost got it…” He assured her, his ears twitching as he grew ever closer to the wall.
(Lust: Oh, I am loving this sound!)
(Pride: A whole spectrum of existence just beneath the surface…)
(Sloth: It’s a pretty sound but not much more.)
(Greed: Agreed.)
(Gluttony: Do you smell that?)
(Wrath: She would’ve liked it…)
(Envy: Working on it just let me adjust the sound a bit and focus things…)
“Booker!” Lydia yelled, her tugging coming quite close to an attempt at ripping his arm out of socket.
The symphony of sounds began to narrow down, still largely indecipherable in purpose and power but as all sounds outside of the wall fell apart he found that there were two other songs playing off of the wall’s tune.
“Got it!” He smiled as he allowed the child to pull him away from the wall.
A sudden sweltering heat had him freeze in place before slowly turning back to the wall, where in an escalation of firepower a wall of flame was pouring out of the greater wall.
“Oh, my!” He couldn’t help but exclaim even as he followed Lydia.
(Envy: Well that explains why there wasn’t a smaller wall here.)
(Pride: I wonder how many weapons are built into this wall?)
“Shit!” Lydia cursed, continuing to drag him along in spite of their current safety. “I-I thought those were just… just a rumor!”
“Well, apparently not.” He noted watching the flames dim until he could just barely make out the small holes in the wall that they had erupted from.
“Right, no more messing with the wall.” Lydia decided with a shake of her head. “That’s twice now you’ve nearly died.”
“I know!” He laughed, taking the hand the young maiden was dragging him by and using it to give her a twirl. “Isn’t it exciting?”
(Gluttony: It is.)
(Sloth: It isn’t.)
Lydia stumbled out of her spin before taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out.
(Lust: I don’t think she’s happy with us…)
After a moment she tersely asked him, “What… what did you find out? I mean, you had to figure something out, after all of that, right?”
“Yes, I’ve discovered two separate songs, I mean, spells playing off of the barrier.” He explained, still able to hear the songs in the air despite Lydia’s insistence on putting distance between them and the wall. “The first one is… the same as the wall, just in the opposite direction.”
Lydia frowned quite grotesquely. “You mean… like the other side of the wall?”
“No, no… If it were the wall I’d hear it from all directions if it truly encircles the city. The fact that I’m only hearing it from one direction means it’s something else…” He explained, subtly directing his companion in that direction because…
(Envy: It’s either the same spell or a connection to its system.)
(Pride: Something worth investigating either way.)
“And the… other spell?” Lydia asked, beginning to follow him now.
“That one is… interesting…” He smiled almost wistfully. “It’s… familiar in a way that I can’t quite place…”
“Is… is that a good thing?” His companion wondered.
“I have no idea!” He admitted with a laugh. “What I do know is that in this sort of situation, interesting means opportunity!”
(Greed: And opportunity means profit.)
(Envy: Or ruin.)
(Pride: Don’t be such a downer. Where’s your sense of curiosity?)
(Envy: Focused on the thing we know is connected to our escape.)
(Pride: Valid point.)
“So, which are we going to look at?”
“Hmm?” He blinked, drawn out of his thoughts. “Pardon?”
Lydia let out a huff, before repeating herself. “Which of these ‘spells’ are we going to look for?”
“Do you have a preference?” He wondered, if only to be polite.
His companion shook her head. “No. I mean, they’re both connected to the wall, right?”
“They are.” He confirmed, mentally dissecting the songs. “The first makes sense as a focal point for the magic to take effect, an anchor for the spell work within the area of its barrier. The second though… that one is interesting because it isn’t a part of the main spellwork despite making use of it.” Or that’s what he could piece together from the bits of magical theory he could remember as of that morning.
“Right.” Lydia nodded back, seemingly considering his words. “In that case, one of them is probably part of the actual… prison system, while the other is probably… a backdoor someone built into it.”
“An apt summary.” He believed.
“Then it doesn’t matter which we go for, just so long as it gets me closer to getting out of this hell hole.” Lydia admitted, looking a little antsy as her eyes drifted around them. “So just pick whichever one you think will make that easier for us.”
(Pride: Honestly, there’s no telling which that is until we get to it.)
(Greed: Nah, that backdoor you’re talking about. It screams of a smuggler's tunnel, and whoever owns that might be willing to do more profitable business than the guys running the wall.)
(Wrath: It would also be illegal by whatever laws this place has.)
(Greed: Do we actually care?)
(Not particularly.)
(Wrath: I meant, in the sense of later problems. When the one who wrote the laws comes looking.)
(Sloth: That only matters if we’re caught.)
(Greed: And a bribe or two is just the cost of doing business if we are.)
(Envy: Actually, discretion might be the better part of valor here.)
(Pride: Either way, I’m sure we’ll get enough answers to sate our curiosity for the moment.)
“So, uh, just to fill the silence… where are we going?” Lydia asked him, having silent followed him for the last few minutes as he made he followed the song most probably leading to