The sun was already setting over the gardens of Versailles. November meant an early sunset anyway, with the solstice not far away. The Chateau to the side was completely in the dark, without the slightest lamp or candlelight visible on any of its many windows. Cowen would have been surprised if there had been any. It looked inviting but they were not going to stay in that giant building trap, and risk anything. She doubted the French would attempt to reclaim it, as long as they had a small, but possibly overpowering, force camping next to it.
Besides, it wasn’t anything new for her. If it had been a lair, they probably wouldn’t sleep in it and camp out in the outdoors anyway. Twenty years of Labyrinth had long since removed the need for cosy quarters. She’d have loved to sleep in the beds of a – former – royal palace, but she’d endure.
Cowen noticed Myrl Douglas in animated talk with two other robed Professionals. She chuckled. Her spellcaster teammate had wasted no time once they laid Deschanel’s corpse on the side of the plaza to grab the remaining Artefacts from him, even if she did not yet have the levels to use them.
And now, people were complaining about her “hoarding” all the loot that she couldn’t even use yet.
Endless Night of the Luseverni Dread Master
Chest
Artefact
Requires: Level 829
Provides: +873 defence rating, +4 Freeze ranks, +4 Rock Spikes ranks, +262 PRE, +241 INT, +219 STR, +203 AGI, +2972 health, +2560 aether, +13% elemental damage, +8% ice damage
As if the deceased Frenchman was some Legendary guardian of, what, the lair of the Tyrant? Cowen snorted. Although part of her was slightly jealous of her teammate. The man had no equipment directly interesting to a defender build like hers.
Explicit Observer Thorebourne had pulled out a Labyrinth aether-torch, stuck it in a glass lantern over a long stick, and was still reading various looted documents from the Chateau. The other tier six Professionals kept a tight watch on the Gate proper, especially after that crazed Frenchman had made a completely unexpected run across the gardens, surprising everyone and plunging into the Great Gate.
Cowen wasn’t sure how he’d made it, but her Gauge Enemy ranks told her he’d been still alive – barely – when he reached his objective. Everyone else without that skill could only deduce it since he hadn’t fallen out of the other side of the Gate, as it would have been the case if he’d been dead before crossing the surface.
Engaging Fast Travel just moments before the Gate, while the English tried to trip him and kill him before he did? You could say anything about the French character you wanted, their greed and their craziness, but you could not fault their courage and valour. For some, that is.
“So, Observer, anything good?”
“Lots of interesting stuff, as one can expect from the true heart of the Dominion. Plans and schedules. Analysis of the Ottoman weaknesses. I wish the HMSS Sunbearer would come back sooner to ship all those juicy crates of the stuff for analysis by the war office staff back home.”
“Will it affect the current offensive?” Cowen asked.
“I hope not, but there’s a lot of stuff no one was aware of in there, Knight Cowen. Just this one note here is something I definitively did not expect,” he replied.
“What’s it about?”
“A set of instructions from the Tyrant himself, Consul Bonaparte. Very intriguing. He asks – someone? – to ‘intensify the cooperation’ with some unnamed ‘African Professionals’.”
“African… Professionals?”
“Everyone’s heard of the rumours of the fifth Gate. I know it always sounded like the stuff of novels of the mystic heart of the secret continent, but there have been enough events to hint that there is one, and probably there.”
Cowen frowned. She was not one to pay too much attention to wild rumours about mysterious lands. Hidden Professionals with private secret Gates were the stuff of wild novels like the ones that young Mary Godwin wrote by the half-dozen every year and Margie Rutter devoured when she was at headquarters.
“So… do you think the French have found a fifth Gate?”
“The document implies that the fifth Gate’s Professionals got in touch with them, rather than the opposite. Read this: ‘even if their gate closer has not performed as expected, the improvements on our landcruisers requires more schematics’…”
“Wait? The Gate Closers are not a French discovery?”
“That’s new to me as well. And probably everyone. And that worries me very, very much. We are fighting a war against the French, I do not want to find out that we were fighting a war against someone else by proxy. Especially if they are the source of the French’s weaponry.”
“And you think these documents will uncover something like that?”
“There are a lot of them to read, but that’s the first that allude something of the kind. What we need is interrogating someone highly placed who knows.”
“Too bad the Dominion cadre was away.”
“Actually…”
Cowen’s mind blanked for a second.
“You are not serious?”
“Why not?” Thorebourne asked.
“Goddamit, the guy was behind the London massacre!”
“And you think we wouldn’t have done the same damage if the Great Gate was not in the outskirts of Versailles, but in the middle of Paris? Like, if it was in front of Notre Dame or the Bastille? I was in the military, Cowen. I know what commanders do, what soldiers do, when they have an objective to take. He hasn’t done anything I wouldn’t do, in his position.”
“And that’s what makes him dangerous.”
“And that’s why we’re going to take precautions, like getting an oath beforehand and making sure he can’t escape.”
“It’s a Frenchman! And he’s escaped the Tower of London. The Tower itself!”
“Confound it, Cowen. Despite your prejudice, the French aren’t beasts. I’ve fought them. Both before the Gate opened, and just after until they ran me through the Gate in 1801. Despite lurid tales in the newspaper, the French do respect their word. They let defeated armies withdraw if they got a surrender that allows that.”
“He’s going to bolt as soon as he’s resurrected.”
“He’s going to be naked, with Lingering Death. You brought him down half-naked in London. You killed him fully empowered here. He’s no bogeyman. And I’ll bring Alfred John’s team along as well, in case. If you can’t get him before he runs out of view, your Profession is a lie.”
Cowen’s furious look turned slightly surprised.
“I’m going to get him up in the Village, not here next to an escape route. I need those answers, and the resurrection timer is ticking. So, that’s an order.”
Deschanel’s tired eyes turned up and took the scene in the middle of the Village area. Then, he hiccupped but valiantly restrained his nausea.
“Merde de dieu. Thatz not a sight I expected,” he finally said, before adding, “Ou quoi que ce soit.”
“Coordinated Pathmaker Deschanel,” Thorebourne said drily.
The Frenchman turned back to heave a little bit, before answering.
“To who do I have ze honour? I know well ze honourable Knight here, but not you,” he asked.
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“I am the guy who decided to bring you back from the dead because you know things, and Great Britain would probably prefer knowing things to not knowing them. The question is, can I have your word that you are not going to escape now? If you are looking to warn your master, I am pretty sure he knows by now, since we had a runner.”
Deschanel’s brow furrowed, as he took in the – probably familiar – surroundings of the Village. Finally, he said, “I swear to God that I will not attempt to escape until Napoleon haz crossed ze Gate to Earth again.”
“Interesting clause. Why?”
“If you can not stop him coming back, you have lost already.”
Deschanel could not guess the origin of the smile on Thorebourne’s face at the clause. Cowen was sure the French demon hadn’t thought to check his location descriptor. Why should he, if he knew he was still on Earth where he'd been killed and unable to use a Gate.
Or maybe he had only useable Gates in his list.
“I’m not going to agree with that general idea, but I can accept your conditional oath. How did you escape the Tower anyway?” Thorebourne asked.
“My task waz to make sure no Professionals could stop our Gate Closer group. I knew I would end up zere, without anything left on me. So I prepared a full puppet with everything I needed to break ze walls. I was right in thinking you did not use enough too high tier materials for those anyway. Since the works were done years ago.”
“You were stripped and searched thoroughly,” Cowen scowled.
“Well, there are places where your wardens didn’t search…”
----------------------------------------
The Donerkal zone looked perfectly normal, grassy rolling hills, with a handful of wandering upright bovine critters in the distance when the six came out of the Gate. But then, the only thing disturbed, so far, seemed to be the Gates, or rather some specific Gates.
“First thing, is making the round of all the Gates here. The only ones we know with issues here are Castikal and Szinkal connections since many in the raid had them as destinations instead of this one,” Jonas reminded them.
“Time’s an issue?” Ira asked.
“No really. There are teams getting all over to check the Gates we know are disabled from location descriptor lists. We’re just checking the ones around here to confirm while the other trunk-enabled scout elsewhere.”
“Good. Let’s move then. And show those bulls we don’t need their… output,” Ira said.
They turned and started following the border, headed for a full circle around the zone. Jonas knew the trunk zones were all very small, barely a day to cross. The full circle would take them no more than two, given the speed at which they neutralized any local enemy. The Elders “lair guardians” would be the only ones mildly challenging these days, and they were mostly far from the border.
But first, the tier-one connection.
Transit: Donerkal – Szinkal
Integrity: 100%
Power Off
Stability: 11%
The Gate was empty of its usual light. Save for the fact that it was metallic instead of stony, it even reminded Jonas of the brick “sculpture” they had found at the end of the trunk, down in Szinkal. Just a large hoop made of cubic metal blocks, and the descriptor, which he assumed to be visible for everyone now, not just the Adjusted team.
“That looks similar to the Great Gate in Argenmart,” Jonathan noted.
“The numbers are different. It’s at full integrity, for instance.”
Jonas turned toward Guss to reply to his remark, “But it stopped working due to some form of instability. Now we know why people who have it marked can’t access that Gate at all. There’s nothing to walk out from.”
Jonas spotted Ira reaching to the Gate but had no time to speak before his friend jerked his hand away, a visible spark jumping.
“Be careful,” he admonished him.
“No kidding. I lost… a thousand vitals in an instant. Every vital, including aether. I’m almost out on that.”
“It’s like when we restarted the Gate. I think we can… send our vitals into the Gate,” Jonas speculated.
“To help repair it?” Laura asked.
“Well, its stability hasn’t budged,” Alton noted.
The Abiding Stabber reached and yelped when a similar spark jumped to his hand.
“You were not kidding. I have… 10 aether remaining. It’s all gone.”
“And stability is unchanged again,” Laura added.
“It probably needs a lot more than we can give it. I mean, back when we reopened the Great Gate, we barely had a thousand in our best vital, and a lot less for the rest. And that was with the Gate already at 100% on both sides,” Jonas said.
“Well, that might be a free Adjustment milestone without Professional burden,” Jonathan noted.
All of the team looked at him askance. He grimaced.
“Just a thought, right? Besides, it’s just a single Gate. There are dozens to ‘repair’, even if it is possible.”
“Let’s check the rest, shall we?” Jonas said to end the discussion.
The Gate to the upper trunk zone was full of the usual gate light membrane but displayed the type of notification they had half-expected.
Transit: Donerkal – Castikal
Integrity: 100%
Locked
Stability: 100%
“Want to bet it’s empty on the other side?”
“No bet. Some of the raiders had picked it as a tier two gate and that side says it’s available, while those that used on the tier three side see it disabled.”
“So, ‘locked’ means you can’t cross normally, but can use it otherwise for Fast Travel, while ‘powered down’ means it’s completely unusable.”
“Normally for some. I am certainly not going to test a Fast Travel through that kind of Gate anyway. I’m betting it will siphon my vitals before I make it through at the end,” Alton said.
Jonathan, whose vitals were the highest of the entire team due to his extra levels and Milestones, reached and recoiled as the spark jumped to his hand.
“1000 in all four vitals as well from this variant. Yep, way too dangerous. We may have gotten lucky that the Gate to Othary was unaffected. I might have survived by running out of the Gate…”
Jonas shuddered at the thought.
“But Laura, Guss and I all have at least one vital under a thousand.”
“We need more gear with vitals,” she said empathetically.
“Or be very careful where we step into,” Jonas said.
“Or send Jonathan, and see how fast the team descriptor drops in his case,” Ira joked.
“That’s going to be an issue for Fast Travel,” Jonas acknowledged.
“Anything else, the matching Gates tell you,” Jonathan said.
“Let’s keep going,” Jonas finally said after a while.
The team was finally back at the Othary Gate, having completed their survey of the zone. Of the other Gates in the trunk, the one to Garnjern was locked as well. Besides the ones ‘up’ and ‘down’, that made three disrupted connections out of six. Who knew what state the connections were in the tier-one trunk zone. Jonas was happy to see that the Gate to the Zulus’ sector was still available. That meant he still had his rendezvous point for the next meeting early next year… although he suddenly wondered if his Zulu contact would be able to come. Maybe their own Gates were disabled as well. He wasn’t about to check their zone, though.
“What next?” Ira asked once they’d all gathered.
“We get out and check the entire area and the Gates. I am going to assume it’s the same as what we’ve found here, pairs of locked and disabled Gates. But it’s our job to check everything.”
They crossed the Gate and started toward the last room of the Plaza Dugout lair.
Lost Mole Miner × 3
Level 65 elite
Health: 1723
Mind: 645
Endurance: 1522
Aether: 0
The mole-like critters died very fast. Against a full team of level 150 and over, they did not stand a chance to do significant damage before their ultimate defeat. The experience earned from the fight reflected that, a heavily reduced amount vs the nearly thousand XP they’d earned on their first successful combat there.
Lost Mole Miner × 3: 2467XP/6 contributors = 398XP.
Jonas threw a cursory check on the treasure chest but did not comment on its content when the descriptor indicated three separate food rations. That was the kind-of-joke part of that specific lair – three elites, three common items as a reward, every time. The upper guardian rooms had actually better loot. It might be different if they were there merely to get more items for refurbishes – then more would be better, as quality did not make it entirely for quantity.
Othary was an underpowered zone anyway, and they had outgrown it months ago. Now, it was just a way station between their trunk access and the rest of the Labyrinth.
They emerged from the ruined replica of the zone plaza under the last waning rays of the sun. Rather than start immediately, they made camp next to one broken marble pillar.
Despite the imperatives of the scouting, Jonas’s sleep came easily and he slept better than most of the nights he’d done in that same zone, both before and after their rescue.
“Next step, we check every gate. I assume the Zolferras-Ovildian setup will be the same as we’ve seen, but who knows for the others.”
“So, we make the rounds, then go out?”
“We head to the nearest immediately, and loop around the zone border. We just check the Ovildian gate in here, since the trip through Zolferras will be faster to get there, and we'll have to come back the same way anyway. So quick dip in tier-one, then turn back. After that, we start checking the Great Line. Let’s move.”
The team gathered in front of the once-familiar Gate, where traces of their old ‘need help’ sign had long disappeared. At the time, they hadn’t known it would slowly degrade and vanish unless people stayed close. But a team had been there and spotted it in time.
This time, they wouldn’t have visitors.
Transit: Othary – Markandon
Integrity: 100%
Locked
Stability: 100%
“Well, so much for confirming Warsemial. Or checking the Great Line status,” Ira commented.
“Jonas, we’re completely locked-in, right?” Laura asked.
“Only exit from our old triangle. With Warsemial down, there's no way to Markandon at all…”
“What does this mean for our future levelling?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we will level in the main British zones.”
Jonas grimaced.
“We don’t have many tier-three options there anyway. We'd have to work some access. Or we can still trek back across the Great Line from the British sector to see if the Line has more zone lockdowns along with it, then get a new destination.”
“So… Recall?”
“We got the confirmation that Zolferras is disabled and empty. Recall for now, and turn in our intermediate reports at the Scouts headquarters.”