It was one thing to know a Bismuth was powerful. It was another entirely to feel it. Even when Raine had met Cato, his power had been more theoretical, more implied, than the sheer essence radiating from the Nexus. Nor had Cato been able to subdue Arene or Onswa without any apparent effort.
Raine’s tail curled into itself as the Clan Tornok Bismuth emerged from the top of the Nexus, dragging Onswa behind him. The Bismuth was dressed in gleaming golden armor, finely crafted and bearing Clan Tornok’s crest upon it, each piece of the articulated armor likely worth more than all the equipment on Sydea, collectively. Yet for all that finery Raine thought there was something ugly about the slinky, rodent-like Bismuth, some cruel and bitter aspect to the strange furred face. Reflexively, Raine used [Appraise], though the identity of the Bismuth hardly mattered.
[Grand Paladin Nikhil Tornok — Bismuth]
Onswa himself could barely move, imprisoned in golden-glowing bonds that clamped his arms to his sides and his tail and legs together, floating behind Nikhil on a lead of the same divine energy. Every Sydean knew that Onswa’s strange aether energy made him impossible to stop or slow down, to trap or deflect. He was called Onswa the Unstoppable for a reason, but when it came to the power of a Bismuth his advantages were as nothing.
“Everyone to the square!” The paladin boomed, bellowing with a volume only a Bismuth rank could produce. Raine winced, but not only was her body more robust than a normal Silver’s but there seemed to be something built into it to keep that volume from becoming actually painful.
“Is there anything we can do?” Leese whispered to Raine as the various outworlders who had been inside the Nexus obediently emerged outside, and Sydeans who had been frequenting the shops and inns warily crept out into the streets.
“We’re not powerful enough,” Raine said, tasting bile in her throat as she watched Nikhil land in the middle of the square with Onswa. “And I don’t think he is either.” She didn’t want to say Cato’s name where the Bismuth could hear it, in case it drew attention.
“All I could do is drop a railgun round on top of the city and that wouldn’t do anyone any good,” Cato said grimly. “My warframes are on their way but it won’t be immediate.”
“People of Sydea,” Nikhil said, heaping derision on the first word. “Your Platinums have strayed from the dictates of the divine System, and invited a being that calls itself Cato to be your new lord and master. The gods themselves have verified the words of one of your Coppers – a Copper with more faith than your Platinums – and they have sent me to set things right.”
“Muar,” Leese whispered instantly, and Raine nodded grimly. She had known that Muar had somehow turned into a System zealot, but as a Copper he was entirely irrelevant. Or should have been. How he had gotten the ear of an outworld Bismuth she had no idea, but the betrayal cut deep.
Nikhil’s announcement didn’t make the waves that he’d been looking for, though. Raine didn’t know how much of the truth that Onswa had put out to the general population, but the Platinums had sent messages through the Golds to all the Silvers and Coppers about cooperating with Cato. Almost everyone had seen or knew someone whose life had been made easier by Cato’s housing and equipment. The only ones who seemed impressed were the outworlders, who wouldn’t have heard things through Sydean channels.
“There is no attack from the skies that will stop me,” Nikhil boasted, eyes sweeping the crowd, though Raine felt those words were addressed specifically to her and Leese. If Muar had told his story, then surely Nikhil knew their names. Or perhaps he didn’t care, for Silvers were far beneath his notice. “I am protected by the gods themselves. The attacks that felled the other Bismuths will not work on me. Now that I am here, I will ensure that Sydea is returned to the proper guidance of the divine System.”
“Protected by the gods?” Raine muttered, glancing to Leese. As a former priestess she might have some idea if that was something special. Leese tilted her head slightly, and Raine understood there was something there — but nothing that could be discussed at the moment.
“All your Platinums are complicit with the enemy,” Nikhil boomed. “And the rot must be cut out by the roots. Perhaps someone will advance enough to govern you — or perhaps not. You reap the consequences of raising up those who would rebel against the divine System.”
Nikhil brought forth Onswa with a sneer, who had not bothered trying to speak against the Bismuth. He merely had his head raised and shoulders set, calm and collected. Yet Raine’s tail curled and her heart clenched as the Platinum reached out. With a sound that would echo in her nightmares, Nikhil ripped Onswa’s head from his shoulders and dropped the bleeding corpse on the ground.
“This is what comes of defying the gods,” Nikhil said, holding his grisly prize by one of the horns, and then negligently tossed the head out into the crowd. Leese darted forward and caught it.
Raine’s breath caught, both at what might be possible, and at the attention Leese had drawn to herself by doing so. But Nikhil merely scoffed and turned toward the Nexus building. He made a brief gesture and the golden dome over the city vanished.
“There will be no off-world travel just yet,” Nikhil stated. “Not until all the Platinums have been brought to me.” He glanced over the assembled outworlders, which were at least half Clan Tornok to begin with. “The sooner that happens, the sooner you can leave. If you have not fulfilled the System quest, feel free to do so, but I will be removing the real source.”
He vanished into the Nexus, the Bismuth-rank presence fading as he clearly took a teleport somewhere else, and Raine hastened after him with Leese by her side. There was no telling what violence would break out now that the Bismuth had essentially proclaimed there were no higher ranks protecting Sydeans, and that the Platinums all were to be killed on sight. They needed to get out of the city before the outworlders realized all the implications.
“I have Onswa’s head,” Leese muttered as they dashed toward the teleportation pylon. “Can you save him?”
“I believe so,” Cato said, the buzzing voice grim and hard. “If you hurry.”
The two of them pressed their hands against the pylon, selecting Sokhal Town where Cato had several buildings dedicated to his own strange craft. The world changed around them, and they sprinted to the exit. Sokhal Town was small enough that they could see Cato’s non-System buildings over the roofs of nearby shops, promising Onswa’s salvation.
“You two!” The voice came from behind, and Raine spun to see three Tornok Clan exiting the Nexus.
[Anhir Tornok — Gold]
[Mushal Tornok – High Gold]
[Ramshel Tornok – High Gold]
“Where are you going with our prize?” Ramshel leered at them, and Raine flexed her Skill, spear and buckler appearing as she eyed the three of them. At mid and high Gold, each of them should have been more than a match for the pair, but with Cato’s augmented bodies the terms were far more even. Except they were in a hurry, and they couldn’t risk Onswa’s head getting damaged in the scuffle.
Aside from simple respect, Raine didn’t have a personal connection to Onswa. But he had been a good Platinum, taking care of as many people as he could as best he could, and was probably the reason Cato hadn’t been forced to take more drastic steps. If he could survive past his own death, that would be both absolute proof of Cato’s power, and a demonstration that even the gods didn’t matter to Cato’s designs.
“We could use some backup,” Raine muttered to Cato. “We’re back in Sokhal.”
“Headed your way,” Cato said, but they couldn’t just wait. By mutual agreement, Leese sprinted away while Raine guarded the street. Anhir tried to breeze past Raine with a movement Skill, and she punished the attempt with a hammerblow of [Blazing Spearmastery]. Her spear, one provided by Cato, glowed red hot as it smashed home against Anhir’s armor, punching through the Gold-rank mail and forcing him to retreat with a growl of pain.
“You dare to stand against us?” Ramshel said in disbelief. “A mere Silver?”
“Yes,” Raine said, settling into her stance. She likely only had to defend for a minute or so before one of Cato’s beasts arrived, but a minute was ages in a fight. Ramshel scoffed and stepped forward, hands glowing white with some spell.
Then a blade erupted from his neck in a spray of blood.
Ramshel’s companions shouted in surprise as the Tornok Clan Gold fell to his knees, white vanishing from his hands as he reached up to the gaping wound pumping out his lifeblood. Raine didn’t let the opportunity pass by, launching herself forward with her spear blazing red-hot. She aimed it precisely at the opening she’d already made in Anhir’s armor, a sort of precision that ought to be impossible for a Silver. But that was why Anhir wasn’t ready for it, nor was he prepared for the incredible sharpness of Cato’s weapon.
He screamed as she seared his guts, twisting the spear once before being forced back to avoid his counterblow. She ducked under the long-spiked chain, deflecting its reaching barbs with her buckler, but even as a glancing blow, the impact left long gouges in her shield. Then she drove in again, pressing her advantage mercilessly as he staggered away, crippled by his wound. With her improved perceptions and clarity of mind, she was able to track Mushal at the same time, who was engaged with the assassin who had removed Ramshel.
Like her, he was fast and precise, using it to ruthless advantage as he plied a darkness-shrouded blade against Mushal. That Gold had a spiked hammer that hissed through the air with each heavy blow, throwing huge clouds of dirt up where it impacted the unimproved road — yet completely failing to connect with the Sydean opponent. The chain of her own opponent tore through the stone of the nearby building, just as it would her own flesh if it landed.
A green-grey glow lit behind Anhir’s eyes, the spiked chain multiplying as he tried to retreat. Five different barbed lengths of conjured whip hissed through the air at her, but she invoked her movement Skill and slid between them with a finesse the prior Gold version of herself could only dream of. She slithered past him and plunged the red-white tip of her spear into his wound as she went, driving it up through his gut and into his chest, and he crumpled with one last gurgling scream.
[Gold Tornok-Clan defeated. Essence awarded. Additional Essence awarded for tier difference. D-Rank Skill token awarded]
She whirled around to the final opponent, but he was already dead on the ground. The Sydean standing over the corpse was dressed in dark leathers, equipment that was clearly aimed at stealth and finesse. There was also something about him that was familiar, and Raine recognized him just as [Appraise] revealed his name.
[Dyen Zure – Peak Silver]
“Dyen?” Raine was absolutely baffled. She had thought she’d seen the last of him when they’d parted ways after returning from the heavens. There was nothing at all tying him to them, yet there he was.
“Loot your kill quickly,” Dyen said, as one of Cato’s smaller beasts arrived, appearing from the same road that Leese had used to escape. “I doubt they’re the only group thinking about where Onswa’s head disappeared to.”
“I can deal with some lower ranks.” Cato stopped and regarded the two, back-tendrils gesturing to the Nexus building. “But I don’t have the forces to protect the whole town if too many arrive.”
“Most of them were looting Onswa’s corpse,” Dyen said with disgust. “But anyone with tracking Skills will be able to follow the trail.”
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“Thank you,” Raine said, recovering herself and bending down to grab the wallet off the belt of her kill. There wasn’t enough time to strip the corpse and she didn’t have much interest in it anyway. No longer was she scrimping and saving every token, though as the contents of the wallet scrolled past Raine had to admit an influx of Gold-rank essence tokens was quite the windfall.
Then she took off toward the edge of town, racing away from the battle site with her movement Skill. Dyen tagged along, and she didn’t protest, but the Cato-beast stayed. Presumably to slow down or distract any others that might be tracking them. If the Bismuth decided to follow, though, there wasn’t anything that could be done, so she just had to hope that the Grand Paladin was preoccupied with other things.
“I’ve got Onswa.” Cato’s voice buzzed inside her skull, and she nodded even though she realized he couldn’t hear it. It was only a minute until she reached the complex of Cato’s buildings anyway, spotting Leese standing outside one of the buildings and scrubbing at her hands with a cloth.
“Is he going to be — well, can Cato bring him back?” Raine spoke aloud, making sure to direct her question to Leese rather than Cato himself. She wasn’t sure if he wanted Dyen to know about the little communication lizards.
“Probably.” Cato’s voice came from another small beast that emerged from a room that was sealed in a similar manner to the one where he had made them immortal. “I don’t have contact with all the Platinums. Is there any way we can send a message to them to let them know they’re on the Bismuth’s hit list?”
“I can find someone with a farcaster,” Dyen said, and turned to leave without another word.
“They need communication lizards too,” Leese remarked, as Dyen vanished down the street. “The Platinums probably should have gotten them first.”
“Unfortunately I just finished making them,” Cato sighed. “I underestimated what I’d need here, and we’re paying the price. Being able to wipe out those other Bismuths without trouble really was misleading.”
“Is the Grand Paladin actually a danger to you?” Raine asked, suddenly far less certain of her choices. If a mere Bismuth was enough to challenge Cato, how was he going to deal with the Azoth and Alum ranks that were present closer to the core worlds?
“Not to me,” Cato said, so utterly dismissive of the possibility that she nearly sighed in relief. “He’s already flung some rock at the moon base, but that’s barely relevant. No, it’s not that he can kill me, it’s that he can make me lose. If he starts killing Sydeans wholesale, or blocks off the portals permanently, or both, then there’s no point in what I’m doing at all.”
“Which he might do once he finds out he can’t really hurt you,” Raine said. She didn’t like the emerging picture, even if she was reassured that Cato truly was a powerful patron. Even an Alum couldn’t be everywhere at once – that was why clans existed – and Sydea was effectively becoming the location for a clan war. She’d only heard stories of such things, from ages ago and worlds away, but they were supposed to be devastating.
“Then we have to make sure he thinks he can hurt you,” Leese said, and the Cato-beast nodded agreement.
“I haven’t repaired any of the orbital stuff he’s wrecked, and I’m going to self-destruct the visible moon base,” he told them. “That should satisfy him that he’s doing real damage. But I can’t just sit here and let him run roughshod over your world. You can never give monsters like him an inch.”
“Then we need to lure him out,” Raine concluded.
“Not sure I can offer anything of substance,” Cato mused. “Especially since he has something that pops any warframe I put nearby.”
“He also has divine protection,” Leese reminded them.
“Which means what, exactly?” Cato turned his attention to Leese, who had finished wiping her hands and was looking for somewhere to deposit the bloodstained scrap, and plucked away the cloth with a tendril. It was a strange, almost servile sort of gesture, but Raine had already decided not to question Cato’s oddness too much.
“I only know this by some things I was told at the temple,” Leese warned. “What I’ve heard though, is that gods can temporarily grant their deity protection to others. There’s nothing in the System that can break it.”
“Oh? I can work with that,” Cato said, almost happily, as if fighting gods were easier than dealing with Bismuths. For all she knew, it was, for a being such as Cato. “Though definitely not something to deploy near a city.”
“You might have to anyway,” Raine said. Cato might be squeamish, but she thought it was far better to sacrifice a city than risk the entire planet. Leese shifted, attracting her attention, and the two of them communicated in silence for a moment. Cato, unlike many the sisters had run into, seemed to recognize exactly what was going on and didn’t bother them while they did little more than look at each other.
“What about us?” Leese said, the two of them turning back to Cato. “Why don’t we go back in the cots, and then the Copper versions of ourselves pretend to defect? If he’s talked with Muar he’d only be expecting us to be Copper, and if you’re so worried about getting into the rest of the System, the Silver versions of us can be near the portal.”
“You realize it will still be you taking the risk,” Cato warned, though he didn’t reject the idea. “If you update that way, you will be opening your eyes weaker and with the knowledge that it won’t be someone else doing it, it will be you.”
“Of course,” Raine said, still somewhat puzzled by Cato’s insistence on that point, but presuming it was simply a result of his non-System background. She and Leese had risked their lives before on multiple occasions, and Cato’s advantages only meant they could take more risks.
“Right,” Cato said. “I’ve got some bodies cooking for you anyway, I’ll just sent a diff update and wake you up.”
“What about Dyen?” Leese asked, and Raine nodded agreement.
“If the two of us come to the Paladin, he’ll naturally want to know what Dyen is up to,” Raine pointed out. “As the last of the group Muar knew about.”
“Fortunately I still have extra bodies,” Cato said. “But his isn’t going to be augmented.”
“We should ask anyway,” Raine argued. “It won’t hurt.”
“He’s on his way,” Cato said. “I have no objections.”
As promised, Dyen returned a few minutes later, with the small Cato-beast in tow. He seemed as sour and closed-off as before, but Raine was certain that he’d be willing to help. Dyen had no interest in Cato’s crusade, but he’d certainly welcome a chance to get at a Clan Tornok Bismuth.
“What did you want?” Dyen demanded, eyeing Raine and Leese with disfavor.
“We have an idea of how to kill that Paladin,” Leese said, more diplomatically than Raine would have managed. “I think you can help.”
Dyen’s face stretched into a broad and vicious grin.
***
Cato didn’t much appreciate the brutal lesson in how fast fortunes could turn within the System. During the defense of Earth, he hadn’t been in charge of the greater battlefield, leaving that to wargamers and those with a better head for strategy, but he was all alone on Sydea. Someone else might have secured a better beachhead by being more aggressive, or infiltrated further by being more subtle.
It was knowledge he would have to ensure to pass on to his later gestalts, the ones that would be taken further into the System. That if he wanted to have the cleanest break, he couldn’t actually take the time to set the board and address humanitarian concerns. Instead he had to strike hard, a surgical blow to seize control of as much as possible.
That ran the risk of immediately dropping the planet out of the portal network, and why he was still loath to try it on Sydea. Although destroying dungeons would probably serve to lure the Bismuth out, he had no idea whether it would also make it impossible for him to spread further — and without spreading further, his entire crusade came to an end at Sydea, win or lose.
At least with people like Raine and Leese he might have the chance to do some groundwork without attracting unwanted attention. Exactly what that might amount to when there were higher ranks about he didn’t know, but that was why he needed System guides. He couldn’t expect them to do everything – after all, the very ruthlessness of the System was what he was objecting to – but he had to keep the grim utility of the natives in mind.
He knew that he shouldn’t be so solicitous of the Talis sisters or Dyen when they volunteered to risk themselves. It was true that Cato knew how to handle his various selves and their deaths, terminations, or loss of signal, but Sydeans had faced far more death for far longer. Treating the natives with too much delicacy, even if their backup was far less robust than his, was insulting to their determination to do their own part, and he’d have to stop and let them take their own risks.
Which wasn’t to say he wasn’t going to make some tweaks. The fresh frames for Raine, Leese, and Dyen all had transmitters built into them, sending updates back to his digital copies of their gestalts. He wouldn’t dare to try merging the experiences from multiple bodies, operating simultaneously, not with how poorly he understood the neural architecture, so they couldn’t act like he did, but he could update the gestalts he had already recorded.
All his adjustments were crammed into as little time as he could manage, because every second he took for preparations was another second the Bismuth was loose on the surface. At least Dyen’s message meant the Platinums weren’t inside any cities where they could be trapped, though that didn’t mean they couldn’t be found. Now that the System-gods were actually interested, the entire planet might well be under surveillance, and it wouldn’t be hard for the Bismuth to receive a vision of where they were hiding.
Cato didn’t even have warframes by most of them. Arene didn’t want one in her house, for obvious reasons, while Marek and Hirau were leery of everything Cato had provided. Even the extra housing for their towns was the bare minimum, without the extra organic equipment he’d landed in the towns near the capital. The only one of the Platinums that actually had a representative on site was Karsa, and that was not for any reasons of coordination on her part.
“Why don’t you hide me away in your moon fortress?” The extraordinarily over-muscled Sydean leaned against the leg of the forty ton warframe, in what she probably thought was a flirtatious manner. Dealing with her was becoming an ordeal, as she had refused to relent despite his explanations about what a warframe actually was. It would have been amusing, if only it were happening to someone else.
“Because you’d have to die for that to be a possibility, and you’d no longer be Platinum.” Cato tried to be as flat and factual as possible in order to discourage Karsa’s fixation. “You’d be starting from scratch and I don’t think we can afford that at the moment.”
“Why not?” Karsa protested. “If we all have to hide from that Bismuth anyway, it’s not like we can keep order. There’s really no better time. He can’t catch me if I’m not around.”
Cato growled, because it was a surprisingly difficult argument to counter aside from the obvious. He wasn’t about to destructively digitize someone just because they were insatiably drawn to military equipment. Though in truth he didn’t need her Platinum abilities, because he had been shown he wouldn’t have the time to allow an easier transition away from the System. He’d have to start destroying anchors en masse the moment the Bismuth was dealt with to prevent any other high ranks from interfering.
The original moon base and its habitat had already been stripped and was rigged with some simple explosives. The massive barrage of rock that the Bismuth had thrown from the surface was moving quickly, but distances in space were so tremendous that he had more than enough warning. Most of his infrastructure had been relocated to the northern pole of the larger moon, where there were volatiles and metal deposits.
There were already rows upon rows of warframes of all sizes, ready to launch and descend into the atmosphere. Most of them were meant to be disposable, to be destroyed when the dungeon’s basement universe collapsed. Others were meant to keep the peace to some extent, especially once the System itself failed and everyone was operating under normal physics.
He'd been hoping to make that transition more gradually, but he couldn’t afford that now. The police-type warframes were a halfway-answer, not truly intelligent but acting more like trained dogs to enforce order on behalf of legitimate authorities. Which were to be the former Platinums. Sadly, he couldn’t even drop the forces ahead of time and introduce them in a controlled manner, not with the Bismuth running around.
The Grand Paladin in question was, in fact, running around in an almost literal sense, methodically working through the cities and towns with his anti-warframe weapon, burning away some of the protections of Cato’s refugee housing, though the housing itself remained intact. It was only a matter of time before he made it to Sokhal Town, so Cato wouldn’t have the chance to revive Onswa with the limited tech he had on the ground.
The brain was viable, but unless he wanted to risk another Orion drive ascent – one that would be easily visible from the surface and could definitely be intercepted – he’d have to transmit the man instead. He hated doing it; the propriety surrounding organic and digital life was something that had saturated his upbringing, and violating those rules was deeply disgusting. But the Paladin – the System itself – had given him no choice, so he bared his literal and metaphorical teeth to start the process.
Despite how awful he found the idea, the actual mechanics of destructive digitization only took minutes, and then only a few minutes more to update the other Sydeans. Dyen was the longest, since Cato had to get a full gestalt rather than just the differential update, but after that they left by way of the town’s teleportation pylon. Though much of his orbital infrastructure was shredded, Cato had enough functional spy satellites to at least track where the Bismuth had been. It was simple enough to direct the three of them, by way of the lizards he was using as radio communications, to places where the Tornok Clan had already been and not likely to visit again.
Sokhal Town was graced by the Bismuth’s presence less than twenty minutes after they’d left, which was cutting it a lot closer than Cato would have preferred. An expanding wall of golden light swept over the town, dissolving all the bioweapon-derived matter; essentially, everything that was laced with System-jamming equipment. A stark reminder of the difference between interference and protection.
In an odd bit of synchronicity, that visit corresponded almost precisely with the impact of the Bismuth’s mach-thirty projectiles with the former moon base. Conventional chemical explosives detonated theatrically, blowing out a cloud of debris all out of proportion to what the projectiles would actually create. His remaining surveillance even caught the Bismuth looking upward, no doubt pleased with the destruction — as destruction was all that type could ever manage.
Not that he should have been able to see it at that distance. Even if the moon was outside the System’s reach, there was clearly some magical method of sensing that acted beyond the bounds of the usual limitations. But then again, it was magic, and trying to understand things by the normal physical properties of optics was a poor idea. Such sight demonstrated that he’d have to be very careful about landing the new versions of the Sydean trio, and do it when the Bismuth was not within view of the moons, if he wanted to avoid having them shot out of the air.
Considering he couldn’t get near the Bismuth himself, he had to trust they could do the job.