“So good to see you again!” Zach was smiling broadly as Alex walked in. She gave him a quiet glare, though she couldn’t entirely mean it. Liliana had probably been intending to punish her by assigning her another couple of afternoons in the PAD, but it wasn’t going to be the hardship the team captain had intended it to be.
“Nice to know I was missed.” Alex sighed at his insufferably pleased expression and gestured for him to lead the way. “Same deal as before?”
“Of course! I wouldn’t want to let such an interesting opportunity go by. I’ll even let you go first.” Zach once again led her back to the office, where he carefully closed the door. His expression grew much more serious, and he spoke quietly. “I heard you have a new team setup. How is that working out for you?”
“Well, I managed to keep anybody from dying this time. Next time might be a bit harder.” Alex half-sat and half-collapsed into the chair. “It seems like my team captain might be setting me up for failure, so the next few days are going to be interesting to say the least. How are you holding up?”
“About as well.” Zach shrugged. “Plenty of paperwork to take care of, but in between all of that…” He brought out a tablet, unlocked it, and slid it across the desk to her. “Take a look at that.”
The tablet showed a graph, with two lines stitching their way across it, one blue and one red. She looked up. “Are these the readings?”
“Yep. The blue line shows the amounts reported by the monitors already in place.” He glanced around the room. “The red one is a…different data set, for the same period.”
Alex frowned. The lines were different, but not by any extreme amount. “So no real difference, then.”
“There shouldn’t be any difference at all, really. Not by this amount at least.” Zach held a hand out, and she slid the tablet back to him. He carefully locked it and put it back into his desk drawer. “I’m still monitoring your situation, so just keep your phone on you the next time you go out. I have a hunch that something might change soon.”
She nodded solemnly. Then she broke into a smile. “So. Were you serious about me having the first question?”
Zach blinked. Then he rolled his eyes. “Oh fine. What embarrassing story do you want to know about this time?”
“You can keep those for later, maybe.” Alex let her smile fade slightly. “When some of the Surveyors went down, I thought I saw fire. The kind of fire we see when the Grue die.”
Zach’s expression closed down. He seemed much more sober now. “Yeah. We’ve had a lot of reports about that. A Surveyor who dies inside a portal doesn’t leave a body behind. They combust, and their Talisman is left behind in their place.”
“So do the Grue, once they are down. They always burn purple, though, and the Surveyors looked like they were green, or maybe red. Do you know why that is?”
He nodded slowly. “I do, actually. Or at least, I know the theory behind it.” Zach sat down in his chair and spread his hands on the desktop. “What do you know about light?”
The question was such a non sequitur that Alex nearly laughed. “It helps us see? I guess?”
Zach smiled a little and shook his head. “Sorry, I meant the spectrum of light. You know, like a rainbow.”
“Oh. That.” Alex shrugged again. “Just the usual, I guess. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue…”
“Indigo and violet. Those last two being especially dark blue.” Zach nodded. “Notice what color was missing?”
She frowned. “Purple? But aren’t purple and violet the same?”
“No. Purple is what is called a non-spectral color. It doesn’t actually exist on the spectrum of light.” Zach smiled a little. “Effectively, it exists because our brain is trying to present an effective picture of something that would otherwise confuse us. Greyscale colors, like white, black and grey itself, are similar to that.”
Alex sat back. “So the purple fire…”
“Is probably something that your mind is having a hard time understanding, so it uses a shortcut.” Zach’s smile faded again. “Surveyors, however, don’t burn purple. Instead, each base Role appears to be linked to a color, both in their Screen and the fire when they…fall. Squires are linked to red, Porters orange, and so on.”
“Okay.” She had a brief picture of yellow fire bursting from her and shivered. “So what’s your first question, then?”
“What were your impressions of the magic levels outside the portal over the past week? Were they better or worse than they were before you went in the last time?”
It took her a moment for Alex to come up with an answer. “There definitely seemed to be a lot less there than before. More like a normal amount, I’d say. Why?”
Zach raised an eyebrow. “That could count as your question, but I’ll overlook it. I’m trying to figure out a baseline for the magic levels. The official readings and the…alternative set aren’t too far apart right now, so it might be back to normal levels.” He paused for a moment, making a note of some kind on his tablet. “Did you notice anything odd about the Grue during your Survey? Any special types or differences in behavior?”
“They were coming at us in larger groups, but aside from that…”
She went on describing her experiences, trying to remember everything she could. It took longer than she expected, but for some reason, she didn’t mind.
“Hey. Long time no see.”
Alex looked up from her lunch to see Clara in front of her, holding a tray full of food. She shot up from her seat. “Clara! Are you okay? I didn’t hear that you were out of medical.”
The Acolyte gave her a tentative smile. “Yeah, I’m doing all right. Mind if I join you?”
“Of course not, go ahead!” Alex gestured for her to take the seat across from her, and Clara sat. She noticed the Acolyte was still moving a bit gingerly, as if her wounds were still hurting her. Alex silently renewed her promise to even the score with the Killer responsible, and then forced a smile. “So. I heard you guys were heading into the portal today.”
Clara nodded, picking at her food. She didn’t seem to want to meet Alex’s eyes. “Yeah. We’ve got another couple of Surveyors on the team now. Ruth Swenson and Marcel Smith.”
Two more of the survivors from other teams, probably. Alex felt a brief flicker of jealousy and resentment and then shrugged it aside. She settled for stabbing her fork into some mashed potatoes. “I’m sure they’ll do well. You guys are good at taking care of each other, anyway. You’ll be fine.”
The Acolyte smiled. “Maybe. I think it’ll be hard to do it without you there, though.”
Alex chewed her bite and swallowed it a little. “At least most of your team will have worked together. It’ll help a lot.” She reached across the table and patted Clara’s hand, trying to sound reassuring. “It won’t be nearly as bad as it was before. We just went in yesterday, and it was more… normal.”
Clara relaxed a little. She ate some of the fruit that she had stacked up in a cup on her tray. When she spoke again, she seemed a little less hesitant. “Audrey said you keep getting stuck in the PAD, lately. You really shouldn’t get Liliana so mad at you, you know.”
“What’s she going to do? I don’t think they’d let her fire me, not when they need E rankers to throw through the portal here, and my team came back intact.” Alex shrugged. “It’s worth a little heat if it means everyone gets home safe.”
“Easy for you to say.” Clara’s smile turned a little brittle. “I just keep reliving seeing that arrow come through the window. I don’t know if I can go through again, not when it might…the Killer….”
Alex set down her fork and grabbed Clara’s shoulder. She shook her gently. “It’s not there, Clara. The C ranker killed it, or it ran far enough away that it’s not a problem. If I see any sign of it, I’ll hunt it down and destroy it myself. Okay? It’s not going to get you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Clara looked up at her, and the Acolyte’s eyes were full of tears and bitterness. “Thinking about you going after that thing alone always makes me think that it’ll get you next. Who’s going to drag you back to the portal, then? You don’t even have any healing on your team. What if the next time you go through the portal, you don’t come back?”
The question made Alex sit back. It was a fair question, but for some reason she’d never really thought about Clara being worried about her making it back. It was the Acolyte that had taken the hit last time. Why wasn’t she more concerned about her own safety?
When she found the words, she spoke carefully. “I’m not going to do anything too risky, Clara. I’ve got an entire team to look out for, and I have way too much to do for a Grue to get me now.” She tried a gentle smile. “You don’t need to worry about me, okay? And Joanna and Audrey are going to take good care of you today. You’ll be fine.”
Clara nodded. Then she took a deep, shaky breath, and nodded again, more firmly. “Yeah. Okay.” She looked up and looked determined. “You have to promise me, though. You’ll be careful. You won’t go off hunting that Killer on your own.”
Hunting an advanced Grue seemed like a suicide mission, especially when she knew the difficulty was going to spike now that she was level two. It was easy enough to nod. “I promise. I’ll make sure to watch my back. You just need to promise me the same thing, okay? I don’t want to see you in the infirmary again that quickly. You gave me way too much of a scare. Besides, you have a scholarship to earn.”
“I suppose I can promise you that.” Clara smiled, a soft, fragile thing. “The scholarship seems a little far away now, though. What am I even going to study after all this?”
“Well, I’ve been making plenty of friends down in Portal Analysis if you want to head in that direction.” Alex grinned a little as Clara snorted. The Acolyte scooped up some more fruit as she continued. “Seriously, though, they might need all the help they can get. These guys are hopeless.”
“Oh, really?” Clara’s smile grew a little mischievous, something that nearly shocked Alex. “I heard one of them came to visit you in the infirmary.”
“How did you—you know what, never mind.” Alex shook her head, trying not to recognize that her cheeks were growing heated. “He just wanted to check up on me, since he heard things went sideways on the Survey. That’s all.”
Clara’s smile grew a little more. “You don’t say. What’s his name? Is he cute?”
Alex gave her a glare she couldn’t really make stick. “You know, for someone wishing me well, you sure like seeing me awkward.” The Acolyte popped another pear in her mouth and sat back chewing in an unbearably smug way. It was impossible to stay frustrated, and Alex’s glare broke down into an exaggerated sigh. “His name’s Zach, and I guess you could say he’s a little cute. Mostly when he gets going about his weird science stuff.”
“I knew it!” Clara pointed a finger at Alex and swallowed her bite. “You’re getting sent to the PAD on purpose, aren’t you?”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“No! Well, maybe.” Alex shrugged slightly, suddenly extremely interested in her potatoes again. “I guess you could say it’s more of a side benefit.”
“Oh really?” Clara leaned in close, her face practically glowing now. “And does Mr. Science Hotty know he’s a ‘side benefit’?”
Alex threw her hands in the air, suddenly wishing for a portal to jump through. “It told you, his name is Zach, and I have no idea. Just don’t… spread it around, okay?”
“Your secret’s safe with me.” Clara made a cross-her-heart gesture, still grinning like a loon. “Of course, this means you have to tell me everything.”
The rest of the lunch had been a bit embarrassing—even leaving out the parts where she was breaking into abandoned houses and spying on the Group, there was apparently more than enough material for Clara to tease her with—but it had been refreshing in a way. When she got back to the room, Alex was feeling a lot lighter, as if a burden had been lifted. She’d had no idea that she had missed Clara so much.
When she opened the door to her bunk, she almost ran straight into Joanna. The Adept looked surprised, and then stood back. “Sorry. I was just headed out.”
Alex nodded. “No problem. Good luck on your mission today.”
Joanna turned to go and stopped. She half turned to look back at her. “We’re going to miss you on the team. I know we’re getting two more people, but I don’t…know if I can count on them like I could count on you.”
The confession shocked Alex almost as much as Clara’s insistence on teasing her at lunch. Joanna hadn’t always been the easiest teammate, but she’d always been the one to take the lead. Alex hadn’t ever thought that Joanna would have relied on anyone. “They’ll come through for you. You still have Audrey and Clara, too.”
“Yeah.” Joanna hesitated for a moment and then closed the door. She turned back, her face determined. “I put in a request to get you back on our team. Liliana denied it.”
Alex felt her eyebrows go nearly to the top of her forehead. “I…thanks, Joanna. You were kind of sticking your neck out for me.”
“It was worth it. Whatever our differences, you were always helping our team do the best we could.” Joanna shook her head. “But you pissed off Liliana more than you realize. I get the impression that she’s hoping that we’ll stop acting up now that you’re gone.”
“Well, hopefully you don’t disappoint her too much.” Alex’s comment seemed to fall on deaf ears; Joanna’s expression didn’t show any sign of humor.
“I also get the impression that she wishes you would just stop being around. Permanently.” Joanna glanced at the door, as if making sure it was shut. “You need to be careful now. The first chance she has to set you up for a fall, she’ll take it. Don’t get yourself killed before I can get you back on our team, okay? I don’t want you to…to waste your potential. All right?”
It was as close to an admission of fondness that she was probably going to get from her former teammate, and Alex was surprised by how touching it was. She nodded and gave Joanna a quick hug before the Adept could escape. Alex noted she didn’t even go stiff like she’d been expecting. “I’ll be careful. Thanks, Joanna. And be careful out there today.”
Joanna nodded, her expression a little embarrassed. Then she opened the door and left, striding away through the corridor as confident and uncompromising as ever.
Alex grinned after her for a while and then went back to her bunk. She had a few minutes to relax before the next session of teamwork exercises on her schedule, and she intended to make good use of them—hopefully, while not worrying about the fate of her old teammates in the meantime.
Joanna and the others came back victorious that afternoon. They were all celebrating their advancement to second level, though Joanna seemed a little unhappy with how much less ‘reliable’ their new teammates were. Apparently, Alex’s new team was not the only one that had not been up to their previous standards, so they were having to do the hard work of catching them up. At least they had the advantage of only having to do it for two team members, instead of four at once.
Fortunately, her team wasn’t immediately called back to the portal. It gave her enough time to smuggle another pair of monitors into the containment area, which she swapped out for another pair of the defective ones. Zach reported differences in the readings for all three of the new ones, something that she had more or less suspected would be the case.
When she came back the next day, though, Ron shook his head at her. “Sorry. The Group has declared the area off limits to everyone but active personnel today. You’ll have to do you run somewhere else.”
She thanked the man and trudged back to the bus, her mind whirling. Odds are that Forsmith had arranged for the change, but why? Had he noticed the monitors being replaced, or had that convoy just gone through the portal again? Neither option sounded particularly good for her, or for any of her teammates.
Braced for disaster as she was, it wasn’t a surprise, then that she received two very disturbing text messages early the following morning.
The first was from Zach’s outside line. It was brief, but all too informative.
Magic readings from the portal have spiked. Be careful if they send you through. Official readings show no change.
At least it answered the question of why they had locked things down the day before. She still didn’t know how they were making the magic output of the portal spike like that—even sending high rankers like Forsmith through should actually decrease the energy, since the Survey would sap some of the magical energy away—but at least they hadn’t noticed the monitors were being switched out.
The second text told her that both Joanna and Clara had been right to warn her about Liliana.
Your team has been assigned a Survey for this afternoon. Be present for deployment by 2pm.
Alex spent a long time reading and rereading the text. It was entirely possible that Liliana was still in the dark about what was going on at the portal. There was no reason that the Group might have needed to inform a simple team captain of their plans for the place, even if she had been connected enough to survive the firings that had claimed most of the other team sergeants.
Still, it was hard to shake the feeling that Liliana knew—and that not only did she know the portal would be incredibly dangerous today, but that she was sending in her least prepared team to deal with the situation. Alex read over the text again, looking for any signs of malice. Would the team captain really be willing to put an entire team of Surveyors at risk just because she’d taken a dislike to one of them? It would require her to be incredibly petty and shortsighted of her.
In other words, it would require her to be exactly like what Alex had seen of her this far.
Alex sighed and stood up from her bunk. She needed to warn her teammates and come up with a plan. If she was lucky, they’d all survive to complain about it later. If not… she tried not to think about the alternative.
The bus ride to the portal had been significantly quieter than the first time they had set out together. There were a lot of pale faces and sweating hands, with good reason. Alex had quietly found each of her new teammates and personally warned them that the portal was going to be extra difficult today, beyond what they had already been expecting. She hadn’t gone into details, but she’d made enough of an impression that she’d actually been worried that some of them might have decided to drop out altogether.
All four of them had still gotten on the bus however, though as they passed the guards’ checkpoint on their way to the portal, reality seemed to set in for them. Alessa’s hands were trembling, and Brian’s face was tight with stress and anger. Tim simply slumped in his seat, as if too preoccupied to think about what was happening, and Sam was staring off into the distance, searching for nothing in particular.
Alex, on the other hand, felt herself tensing up, like a spring being wound tighter and tighter. It was going to be her first level two Survey. She faced tough conditions and had the responsibility to protect a group of under leveled Surveyors who probably should not have been involved at all. Her mind was whirling with plans and ideas, none of which seemed particularly useful. Was there going to be another ambush at the portal? Would the Grue be waiting for them as they exited, or would they hit them when they were tired and trying to return home?
The bus pulled inside the inner cordon, and she followed the rest of her team as they disembarked. Liliana was there, smiling with all her insincerity at them as they stepped up to the platform. She seemed to single out Alex particularly. “I have every confidence that you will all do your best for the company. Have a fantastic Survey!”
As grating as the false wishes were, Alex still gave her a smile. One that might have promised eventual retribution, sure, but one that still bared her teeth.
Then, with the other four members of her team, she stepped forward into the vortex, and let the light claim her.
[E Rank Surveyor Alex]
[Ascension Level: 2]
[Role: Page (Role Skills: Running(8), Dodging(7)]
[Role Level: 2]
[Experience: 80/600]
[Attributes: Strength -> 2, Speed -> 4, Life -> 0, Devotion -> 0, Control -> 0]
[Current Skills: Combined Arms–Axe/Shield(15), Inspect(4)]
[Permanent Skills: None]
[Current Titles: War Maiden (Increases Skill grade of Combined Arms and Weapon Mastery by one.)]
Alex felt her breath coming a little quicker as she looked over her status. She should have been feeling confident and powerful. Her Skills had increased by leaps and bounds lately, and the Grue in her last Survey hadn’t been able to lay a finger on her. Yet now she was seeing those same accomplishments as a portent of doom.
She shook her head. The Survey hadn’t even started yet. Her mother would have been disappointed if she let the threats get to her already. Her father would have reminded her that there were lives to save. Either way, it was time to get to work.
The words faded, and then new ones returned.
[Quest Issued! Destroy eight Grue Soldiers.]
[Quest Issued! Explore the Library.]
[Hidden Quest Issued!]
[Hidden Quest Issued!]
Alex grimaced. As if she needed more things to worry about. An additional Quest wasn’t likely to help her situation, especially since her teammates wouldn’t have access to it. She wondered if it would be that much harder for her to gain experience on her own, actually; depending on what the Hidden Quests were, it could be that her teammates would catch up with her if she didn’t complete enough of her own Quests. It was yet another complication that she really didn’t want to deal with yet.
All the same, she waved the Quests away and braced herself as the light washed over her…
She stepped out into the other world yet again, ready for the enemy to strike at them.
Her teammates stepped out on either side of her, obviously just as tense as she was. Their hands gripped their weapons tightly, and their eyes darted around to take in the details of the ruins around them.
Nothing sprang out at them, and no arrows made their surprise arrival known, which was encouraging. Still, the trouble hadn’t begun right away last time, either. Alex looked around at her team and nodded. They fell into formation, still tense and waiting for the next thing to happen even as they moved forward.
The only one to break the silence was Sam, who leaned forward a little to whisper at her. “Still the same Quests for us, I think. What about you, Alex?”
“Number of Grue doubled for the usual Quest.” She paused. “Got a new Main Quest too. Something about exploring a Library?”
Brian snorted. “Sorry. Don’t think we’re going to be setting aside time to read today.”
“Wouldn’t want you to have to learn something new, Brian.” A ripple of laughter went through her teammates, and the mood among them relaxed by a small, infinitesimal amount. They didn’t seem any less wary, but she didn’t want them to be. There had to be something nasty waiting for them here, and she wanted to be ready for whatever it was.
They began their patrol as usual, prowling through the streets of the ruined suburb. The grey sky continued to boil and shift above them. She’d asked Zach about the fact that the sky was never visible, and he’d said that all Surveys had reported the same thing. He’d also suggested that if the sky ever started to clear, it was probably time to run, so she kept at least a part of her attention upward.
The first sign of the way the mission was going to go was when a group of twelve Grue spilled out into a parking lot ahead of them. All twelve of them seemed larger and stronger, somehow. Their grey eyes immediately focused on the Surveyors ahead of them. Howls and growls echoed through the air as they formed up and trotted forward, their spears already prepared to strike.
Brian was the first one to speak. “All right. Let’s get to it.”
The Surveyors spread out and brace themselves. Alex resisted the urge to charge; even if she had wanted to, it would have left the others a little too open. So she stayed put, her body nearly vibrating with the tension, until the Grue were only a handful of strides away.
Then she charged, her shield ready and her axe held tight. The Grue reared back at her approach; she was moving much faster than her fellow Surveyors and faster than she ever had before. Her increased Speed meant that they barely had time to react before she was on them. She dodged the spear in front of her, using her shield to swat away another point from the left. Her axe tore out a throat. A second strike split the skull of another one, and she used her shield to knock a third straight to the ground.
She left the Grue sprawled out on the pavement and charged another. It tried to stab her in the legs, and she crushed her shield down on the haft. The spear snapped in half, and the Grue failed to back up fast enough to avoid her counter attack. Another stab came in at her head, and she ducked below it, delivering an axe blow to its leg. It howled and fell, leaving another Grue open while it was trying to attack Tim.
The Grue didn’t turn quickly enough, and she killed it with an axe hit to the back of the head. Another Grue tried to turn and attack her, but she shield-checked it into one of its friends, tumbling them both to the ground. Tim and Brian were on them only moments later, stabbing down at them. Behind her, Sam was finishing off the Grue she’d left on the ground, his spear lashing out with desperate speed.
Just that quickly, the Grue found themselves brutally outnumbered and outmatched. The two that were still standing turned to flee, only for Alessa and Brian to cut them down from behind. Then the Surveyors were left standing and panting in a parking lot full of shadowy bodies, waiting for the purple flame to claim them.
“Well…that..was…impressive.” Sam was still breathing hard, standing over the last one he’d smashed. He glanced at the others, who all grinned. “Two…down!”
Brian nodded. “Same…here.” Alessa held up two fingers from where she was leaning on her staff, as did Tim, with a quiet smile.
Alex simply looked around as the fires started. She thought over what Zach had told her, about her mind making sense of things that were inherently unreal. The Grue themselves were beings of grey, white, and black. Were they any more real than the flames that claimed them?
Then she shook off her thoughts and noted the yellow text floating beside her.
[Combined Arms–Axe/Shield has advanced to level 16!]
[Main Quest Progress: 4 of 8 targets destroyed]
She smiled grimly. “A good start, you guys. Let’s keep moving. I don’t want them to catch us if we can help it.”
They nodded. The Porters were both already recovering, though Brian and Sam were taking longer to get their breath back. She wasn’t as completely worn out, if only because she had not given the Grue the chance to resist her very much. Alex tried not to notice the burning sensation in her muscles. There would be time to be tired once it was all done.