We should’ve just flown, thought Lukas, frustrated by the slow pace, sitting inside the carriage drawn by the gargants, a distant relative of the earthly ox, only this one had six pairs of limbs, and moved at speeds that would’ve made earthly deer green in envy. Unfortunately, the mists had engulfed the town after sunset, and in the reduced visibility, the gargants’ speed had crawled down to a point where he could’ve walked his way faster.
Unfortunately, walking was for commoners. A nobleman pedestrian was an irregular sight in town, especially with the mists around, and he couldn’t afford to appear conspicuous. Also, as Solana repeatedly drilled into his head — tonight, he was a Noble. Or at least, the enforcer of one.
They passed a large crossroad square, with a large fountain in the middle of it, dedicated to the storm god Susanoo, depicting him in a dramatic pose, subduing Fujin and Raijin, the yokai gods of wind and lightning. He could hear beggars calling out from the streetsides, their pitiful voices walking a fine line between audibility and annoyance. The gargants trudged on.
Three streets over, he found another set of crossroads, again, with withering beggars and malnourished children lying around on the sides of the road. Reflexively, his hand reached for his purse.
“Don’t bother,” said Solana. “They are vagrants, Aguilar. People who have either been driven off their homelands by Asukan clanlords, or worshippers of the Old Folk forced to convert to the Empire’s doctrine. Or worse, half-breeds caught by the Cobalt Army.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Does that surprise you? No dalliance between Asukans and other breeds is allowed under the Holy Eternal Light.” Solana threw her head back and let out a wicked little laugh. “Naturally, it happens all the time, so long as Asukans clean up after their messes.”
“I… I didn’t see anything like this in Haviskali.”
“ Lord Naowa’s father, the former Ether King, rose from common blood. The Llaisy Kingdom is rather welcoming to every race out there. Had this been, say, Luthar, there’d be bodies of young boys and girls floating downstream into the Sea of Mone after Asukan Lords have had their way with them.”
A beggar woman let out a most piteous whine as the carriage passed them. Solana took one look at Lukas’s face, and threw a small pouch of mezals out of the window. The sounds of coins jingling reverberated into the night.
“I’ll have a platoon of yurei visit this place tomorrow.”
“So that they can possess them?” Lukas asked, annoyed. “How is that any better?”
“Their lives mean nothing, Aguilar,” said Solana. “Not even to their own kind. At least their bodies would be of some use to us, and when we overthrow the Empire and rid the world of the accursed Eternal Light, the future generations shall reap the benefits.”
“Still doesn’t make it right.”
“You’d better keep that attitude in check,” warned the skinwalker. “You’re about to meet a Sacred Eight member, and that lot are bloodhounds when it comes to this. I cannot have my enforcer seen harboring disruptive feelings about the Empire.”
Lukas rolled his eyes.
“And don’t forget, always refer to me by my moniker.”
“Lady Kandra,” Lukas intoned. “The Whore Mistress of Balthagor, the Mother of Skulls, and the Exarch of the Baramunz Kingdom.”
It had come as a mix of hilarity and incredulity that Solana, the six-century old skinwalker and yokai leader, was secretly an information broker feeding information to various Clanlords in the South-East, in exchange for mezals, resources and favors. From Shoguns to businessmen to adventurer guilds to the Sacred Eight, Lady Kandra was a name that penetrated all but the highest echelons of the Empire. Whether Lady Kandra was a single individual or an organization working under that name was subject to speculation, and Solana knew perfectly how to armor herself with their doubts.
The fleeting amusement died down as the stench of death flared against his nostrils and he didn’t hear anything this time, not even the scrambling sounds of beggars. The thin, dark alley was clogged from the other side, and he sensed twelve… no, thirteen individuals around them, every single one of them boasting a lifeforce rivaling a Level-3 muspel, and the distinct sense of pressure that he had come to associate with Tanya.
Aeromancers.
“We’ve arrived,” said Solana.
Following protocol, Lukas got down first to gauge his surroundings and… froze.
The cobbled street in front of him was littered with corpses, their twisted limbs shadowed by the mists and haunting in the dim light. The people hadn’t just been killed, they had been torn apart. Limbs lay separated from torsos, sticky, dark blood splattered everywhere. The stench of blood drying slowly, as three large and hairy beasts gobbled their way through bremetan flesh without a care in the world.
Igriotts, Lukas realized, suppressing the urge to tear them apart. Monstrous creatures illegally bred by the Shimizu to slaughter enemies. Each of them was slightly larger than the average ifrit, and easily twice as long. But to set these beasts free on weak, hapless beggars….
What kind of person would order something like this?
The door on the other side of the carriage opened and the person that stepped down looked nothing like Solana. Instead, she was a brunette woman with glossy curls running down either side of her face. She was tall, even without her high heels, her eyes carrying a deep, cunning intelligence hammered with strength of will enough to dominate any man. Slender waist, flared hips, long, shapely legs — she looked ready to enthrall with her beauty, an ethereal conjuration over dead flesh.
“You look lovely, Lady Kandra,” said a man, stepping up amidst the mists, with three bodyguards positioned behind him. Brown haired with caucasian looks, the twenty-something man wore an attitude that screamed that the world was his to command. From the destruction this man had supposedly caused, Lukas expected someone with Solana’s ferality with the silent strength of Zuken Banksi.
Instead what he found was… disappointing. He looked more like a politician than a warrior, though he certainly carried himself like the latter. Lukas would wager he was a nightmare at office meetings. He was an aeromancer, with power levels way beyond Olfric as he was now.
“Ultaf Shimizu,” said Solana lazily in a smoldering tone. “My apologies for keeping you waiting for so long.”
“I was expecting you to not show,” said the man. “It is a rare event when the elusive Lady Kandra shows up by herself.”
“I am never just by myself, Lord,” said Solana curtly. “My enforcer is always around with me.”
UItaf gave Lukas a lazy look. “One man? I don’t see how he’d make any sort of difference.”
“Trust me,” Lukas smiled. “You won’t see it.”
Ultaf then did what Lukas half expected the poor fool to do and looked up slightly at a certain spot behind him.
Without even looking, Lukas conjured a transparent ether blade and launched at sonic speeds, impaling the sniper leaning out of the window on the third floor of the building behind them. It pierced his abdomen while missing the vitals. Another pair of blades decapitated the igriotts in front of them, splattering purple blood everywhere.
“The next time you want to position some grass men, do try to find some less obvious perches,” droned Lukas. “Now if you’d be kind enough to withdraw your men from the tower to my right, and the ones that are veiled right above the building above us, we could get this farce done with.”
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“You dare kill my igriotts? For this, I could —”
“Do nothing,” said Lukas. “I’m my Lady’s blade. If anything, blame yourself for positioning your men in such hostile positions.”
He matched Ultaf’s dirty glare with his cool indifference. After all, the man Ultaf was glaring at had bright, red hair with a goatee and gray eyes.
The benefits of a Level-3 Conjuration skill.
Solana snorted. “I’m sorry, Lord Shimizu. My enforcer has trouble keeping his worst habits in check.”
That took the metaphorical wind from Ultaf’s sails. With a huff, he crossed his arms and shook his head. “Fine, let's dispense of the usual song and dance and get to the brass tacks, as they say.”
“Indeed.”
What followed proved to Lukas that no matter what world he was in, if there was something that aristocrats could be relied upon, it was to waste an ungodly amount of time making doing nothing sound important.
Two. Hours.
They had spent two goddamn hours simply going over all kinds of trivia, leaving Lukas with a bad taste in his mouth. As a student of the law, he knew the importance of various minute pieces of information, but without the right context, they were gibberish even to the most attentive listener. It didn’t help that Solana was the one asking, and Ultaf answering. Whatever the bastard wanted in return must have been important enough to make him play ball like that.
And finally they got to the main point.
“It was Banksi’s fault,” growled the man. “He must have poisoned the svartalfars’ mind. The wretched creatures chose to destroy their Well over saving their miserable lives.”
“And now Lord Naowa has even more arsenal to act against you,” concluded Solana. “Things were dire enough for your clan already without this. You should have exercised restraint, my Lord.”
“Well it's hardly my fault I can’t accept no for an answer.”
Lukas blinked. Even Solana looked flabbergasted at that response.
“And now Grandfather is facing opposition from the other Shoguns. Banksi’s lucky Grandfather wants him alive, or else I’d have gutted the bastard. His brain and heart would be left intact, and I’d make him go through eternal torment for his transgressions. And the worst part? The traitor has his memories obscured, and not even my finest psion can undo it.”
“Obscured, you say?” asked Solana, tilting her head in interest.
“My psions believe that the girl he employed might hold answers to that front. But they are in hiding, and none of my abductors in Haviskali can find them.”
“A changeling, if I’m not wrong,” murmured Solana.
“Rumors of your networks are not exaggerated, I see.”
Solana let out a small, refined snort. “Merely friendly with the administration, I assure you. And Zuken Banksi is a famous name in Haviskali.”
“If I could get my hands on that girl, and undo the Obscuration, we would get all the evidence we need,” said Ultaf. “Everything will be solved.”
The urge to clench the bastard’s throat and make him squeal out Zuken’s location rose in him, but Lukas calmed himself down.
“Get me the girl, Lady Kandra,” said Ultaf Shimizu. “Alive, and before the Shogun Meet happens. And in return, all you want shall be yours. Trust me, there is no number you can quote that’s too large for me to pay.”
The rest of the meeting went surprisingly well. Ultaf seemed to trust Lady Kandra. Lukas was simply too busy reeling from one single fact.
Elena was the one responsible for obscuring Zuken’s memories.
The realization brought with it both elation and disbelief. Elation, because his status as an Outsider wasn’t compromised. Disbelief, because it turned out that Elena could obscure memories, copy them, and implant false ones if necessary.
The Asukan Empire, as Solana described it, had banned all research into memory-altering psionic abilities some four centuries ago, but later developed improved versions of memory-alterations for bureaucratic usage. From the way she described it, it was quite common for people working in the upper echelons of the government to have their memories obscured, if not erased for their own protection or that of the others. The psions capable of this art were called Obscurors, and to be one was considered one of the most prestigious careers out there. You had to be a practicing Level-3 psion for at least five years, and get a clearance certificate from the Cobalt Army, before you were eligible for a license to serve as an Obscuror for the Empire, and you had to swear vows limiting your ability to use them to making it nearly impossible for you to teach them to others who were not licensed.
It was no doubt similar to Inanna’s Veil of Ignorance, or the way Solana had sealed away the knowledge of the yokai legend from her conscious thoughts.
Not for the first time, Lukas was reminded of what a strange world he had fallen into, one where people sometimes felt the need to give themselves amnesia to forget dangerous truths.
There was also the matter of how Elena, whose soul capacity suggested she could do nothing beyond Level-2 Charming at best, was able to obscure memories with such perfection. But that was a headache for another week.
“This isn’t his first rodeo,” said Elena, giving Tanya a look of half condescension, half pity. “Zuken’s year isn’t over without him stepping on some bigshot’s toes, or falling into a lethal trap, or kidnapped by insurgent groups, or forced to help assassinate an entire clan overnight, or…”
"We get the idea,” said Lukas, raising his hands in surrender.
Elena scoffed. “Zuken knew he’d be attacked. The moment Ultaf Shimizu showed up, I ran instantly. I always do. Only this time, I had to grab Olfric with me.”
“I resisted,” Olfric said defensively. “But then —”
“I’m hard to say no to, I know,” said Elena quickly. Too quickly. “Don’t worry. Without the right mnemonic trigger, Zuken can’t access those memories. Nor can anyone else.”
Given that Level-3 psions failed to do anything, Lukas was willing to cut her some slack. “How do you store these memories?”
Elena grinned. “Stored away.”
That meant featherglass. There were very few substances that were naturally available that could store memories, and with how Zuken was obsessed with featherglass economics, it had to be the one. And if that was the case….
A plan began to form in his head.
“Say…” he began, his eyes glinting what Tanya would describe as the herald of something crazy and dangerous. “How difficult will it be for you to get something from those stashes for us?”
Elena reached into her pocket and pulled out a tiny shard of featherglass, holding it in her hand. “This is all I have with me. If you need more, I have to go to Haviskali. But what do you plan to do with it?”
That Elena was so freely trusting him with something like that showed how desperate she had become.
.“I’m…. not sure. But I have an idea. This memory belongs to Zuken, and is invariably connected to him. I’ll just try to link it to Zuken himself, and then make the spell give us an indicator of some kind, so that we might tell which way it’s flowing.”
“Which way it’s flowing?” demanded Olfric, agitated. “Zuken is in a different kingdom. Are you telling me this spell will reach all the way there?”
Lukas decided not to share that Inanna had planned to use her Scrying spell to search for her real body across the entire Universe.
“I’m… not exactly sure,” he said, looking at Tanya who had found the floor surprisingly interesting right that second. “But I have an idea. The last time someone did it using my power, it didn’t work, but that was because the object didn’t exist. But I know how to do it, or at least, how it feels to do it, if that makes sense?”
“...Should I be worried that you’re apparently the brains of the operation and yet you’re clearly just making things up as you go along?” asked Olfric.
“I don’t know. Should I just leave you here with the yokai while I take the rest with me to go find Zuken?” Lukas shot back. “Listen, this is the first time I’m gonna try this, so I’ll just do what I can. And if we can do it without anyone talking, we’d all be happier.”
Olfric scowled, but Lukas didn’t care. The aquamancer was easy to rile up, and doing so made his inner child happy.
“Now everyone step back, please.”
Closing his eyes, Lukas began to work. He might be new to this world, but he had more than enough experience at maintaining his concentration as well as building complex images in his head. Lines of anomalous energy exploded out of him in different directions, moving in straight lines, only to change directions, and then straight again. Meanwhile, a thin strand of light spun a circle around him. As the spectacle slowed, he stood in the eye of a pentagon, with a circle touching its vertices in perfect symmetry.
He was deep in his concentration by now, the kind of focus that he usually tried when attempting some sort of complicated ritual that could kill him if he messed up, like resurrecting a certain goddess. But reducing his focus to a single spell, practice making it almost second nature by now, he dug the kinesthetic memory of Inanna casting the spell through his body from his inner-world, and submerged himself into it.
And then a deluge of violence blanketed his world.
After a small eternity, Lukas opened his eyes, and opened his right hand, and met Elena’s eyes. Slowly, hesitatingly, she held out the featherglass crystal, walked ahead, and careful not to step into his Circle, gingerly dropped it in his hand.
Taking a deep breath, Lukas grasped the memory crystal, pouring in more power.
The next instant, a connection was made, and close to a thousand miles away, a man’s eyelids snapped open. The color in them was not a soft brown, as was usual, but an ominous green.
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