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Earl Garner

I pull my feet out of the dreary and nasty sewers with Elizabeth hot on my heels. Primrose is above me on the ladder, literally dragging Icarus by her hair as the woman does her best to climb despite it. The Coltsmith is… unique, to say the least.

"Let me go, you fucking whore! I'll rip out your damned eyeballs and stick 'em onto a stock just so I can feel 'em burst against my shoulder!"

She's struggling against Primrose, but the lady, a little crazy herself, has paralyzed Icarus with her poison. Something I'm thrilled about as the sun touches us for the first time in almost two days.

The escape through the sewers was… uneventful yet horrible. I'm sure the stench of decay, feces, and long-dead matter will linger on me for weeks. But it was the best option I had. And as I step out to feel the warmth of the sun and the lack of the brain-melting odor, I see Primrose move quickly to hit Icarus on the head. The Coltsmith is knocked out cold almost instantly before the woman pushes us back into the sewer drain. Icarus just dangles from Primrose's hand as I go to question her.

A harsh whisper reaches Elizabeth and me before we can speak. Primrose's voice harbors zero negotiation with only blunt judgement.

"Quiet! The Resistance is in the street. I saw a man with a mask. We are going back to find another way."

Primrose then jumps off the ladder and lands on the stone of the sewers with absolute silence. Confused, Elizabeth and I both follow her, Elizabeth asking what we are both thinking.

"So what about a masked man? Why can't we go? And won't the Resistance be on our side?"

Primrose shakes her head and makes us follow her through the sewer again. I scrunch my bag around my nose to make it more bearable. But, man… we were so close.

"No. I saw a man with a special mask. A smiley facade on steel painted white. You two must not be familiar with him. The leader of the Resistance. There is a reason why Johnny started his own rebellion. Myriad is just as mad as the Prime; only one can get thousands to support them."

Curious but frustrated, I ask some more. I want to know about this damned man making me stay underneath in these forsaken sewers. I mean, does no one ever come down here? At all? I readjust the makeshift torch of wooden and metal scrap before speaking.

"So… what makes him so mad?"

Primrose laughs slightly as she returns to dragging Icarus now that the Coltsmith is quiet.

"It's said he became an Angel almost a decade ago, but he got the fucking short end of the stick of a Power. The man was a well-known resistance fighter who always wore a mask for his safety and to make it appear like there were more of him, but when he took the leap to Angelhood, he changed. He gained the ability to split himself. Only he found out after first using it that it also splits his mind, memories, and all. I know he tried to refrain from using it, but the Power is… frankly, near-omnipotent without the downside. So, over time, he began to break down more and more. Some say he even prays to false Gods. These rumors have gotten worse and worse. Until now, where he leads the Resistance with an iron fist that slaughters any in his way."

Damn. That… sounds horrible. He got a Power that forced him to go insane? Can that happen to anyone? I suppose they can. So, we don't want to be seen by him? Any attention is bad attention, that's for sure, especially when we have this high-priority target in our hands.

I go silent with thought as Elizabeth does the same. Even our resistance against the Estates are shitty. Fuck. Just as I think this, Primrose speaks up once more.

"It's not all bad, though. I've heard from sources here in Blackreach that the Bloodbeast is trying to right the Resistance himself, righting it into a proper Revolution. Edward Dudley doesn't play around. And with his father killed, his accusation and sentencing to death, and his allies abandoning him, the man has nothing to lose. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what was about to happen up there, infighting between the rebels."

The conversation ends there as Primrose promptly turns a corner and leaves our sightline. Elizabeth and I must hurry to catch up, lugging all our nasty stuff. After a few minutes of walking, with only grumbling between Elizabeth and me, Icarus wakes again. Mouth spewing once more.

"Hey! Cocksucker! Help me out! You want a gun to shoot an Angel? A sword to cut a Forerunner? A fucking bomb that'll wipe out a block? Help me out, and I'll do anything for you, promise."

I laugh at her insanity. She's been talking like this for the past two days. I'm pretty sure those claims against her weren't false. She's fully fucking psycho. At first, I thought they might be, but no, this girl is fucking insane to the max.

"I'm good, Morgan. I can make my own weapons and tools."

She scoffs and grinds her teeth at me as she's being drug in front of me.

"Don't call me that! I'm Icarus! I can give anything the wings to fly! And I'mmmm suuuuure you can make weapons. What can you make? A flimsy knife? A spoon? Don't tell me it's a spork!? Aahahaha… Ow!"

In the middle of her maniacal laughter, Primrose slams her into the wall, eliciting a crack from the lady's head.

Doesn't stop her from talking, though.

"Ow! You whore! I swear, I'll remove those small little gourds of yours! They'll look great on some armor!"

That insult. That single insult that provokes Primrose's breasts, which are, admittedly, relatively small, freaks her out more than I've ever seen. And she's put a knife to my eye before with a threat to remove my testicles and then proceed to feed me them.

The woman of poison twists, lifts Morgan Weiss into the air, and screams at the top of her lungs at the other woman. Every word is enunciated with more rage than I thought was possible in such a frame as Primrose's body. Elizabeth and I share a glance that says, "Is this bitch crazy?" before returning our focus to the spectacle.

"You. Have. One. Last. Chance. Teach. Him. How. To. Make. The. Guns."

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With another laugh, Icarus spits at Primrose, and I immediately cringe. Wrong answer.

"No! Don't wanna! Let me go! I'm too valuable to kill! Hahaha!"

A grumble comes from Primrose as warning bells go off in my mind, and I rush to stop the woman from what she's about to do.

"Valuable, my taint."

I'm not fast enough to stop her, however, and in less than a second, Morgan Weiss' skull is three inches deep into the stone below. Unmoving and unbreathing. I just stand still in shock as Elizabeth screams at Primrose.

"What the hell did you just do! We came all this way, months of travel and investigation, just for you to kill the woman!? Are you fucking stupid, insane, or a literal child!"

Primrose shakes her head and stomps the head of the unmoving body before walking away, her scarf waving in the air.

"None of the above. This bitch would never work for us. She's simply more trouble than she's worth. Search her for anything that might be useful. Earl is ten times the mind than she was. The woman's broken inside. I've seen it before. Don't know what they, whoever they are, did to her, but she's just… gone. Her mind is there technically, but it has no morality or rationality. She knows she's valuable and will use it to do heinous things. Seen it before. It has no place in Johnny's rebellion. We don't want to become like Myriad."

I take a moment to look at the dead body of Morgan Weiss under the flickering flame of my torch. Her crushed head, bruised skin, and lacerated flesh from the previous captors, the dragging, the killing. I suppose Primrose is right. This bitch has been so unpleasant. I… can't imagine working with her to develop, create, and test weapons. That would… be soul-crushing, to say the least.

I'd instead work on my own.

I sigh as I kneel down to her body; a voice comes from behind me.

"What are you doing, Earl? Let's just cut our losses and get out of here. I can't take this stench anymore, and even if Primrose is right, she's driving me fucking nuts."

I wave her off and let her know she can continue without me.

"Go on ahead. I will see if she has any plans or sketches for inventions."

She looks at me a bit odd from the light of her torch but shrugs and moves on. While she does, I turn Morgan over and start looking in her pockets, hands, and shoes. Anywhere that something could be hidden.

Minutes pass as I look over, trying to get over the embarrassing fact that I'm searching for a dead woman not that different from me in age. The fact that her head is splattered all over the ground, however, honestly makes it a bit less weird. Fuck, man… My life is strange now. I just wanted to create cool shit, from potions to guns. Now, I'm stuck searching a mad hatter for what they might have left behind.

I start to lose hope, but at the end of the search, as I disregard the moral factors of this search, I find a crumpled piece of paper inside Morgan Weiss' bra. I uncrumple it and look at the contents under the torchlight. The words are hard to read… but they seem to be some kind of formula. Several formulas, in fact, are separated by small gaps in scribbled writing. Math? Yeah. It's just almost entirely letters.

B = μ0I/(2πr)

F = qE + qv × B

I = V/R

Y = MX +B

These equations mean just about nothing to me besides the last, and I can obviously tell that they have near zero relation between them. The final is how to find a slope of a line. That was something I had to learn to calculate the amounts needed for things like explosives or simple powder that creates light.

But what is really interesting is the short phrase scribbled in complete madness underneath it, as if some entity possessed the author. It is near impossible to read, but I extrapolate some of the words based on where they are in the sentence. It makes sense.

Any problem, any equation, and any situation has as many solutions as there are contenders.

Contenders could be contemptors as the writing is scuffed, but I think the first makes more sense. But then again, Icarus didn't make much sense. The words, however, hold some truth to them, at least in math. I remember this being in one of my books. An equation with a certain n degree of a variable may have n solutions. As a fellow… I don't know, mathematician, if that's what Icarus was; I am surprised by her assumption.

I am even more surprised by the fact that she left it in her bra. I guess madness is madness. I tuck the piece of paper into my pocket in case it might be important somehow and stand up. But as I walk away thinking about what to do next, a phrase from The Cabin comes to mind.

Your oneness with nature has increased, and as such, it will answer your inquiries and aid your survival should you ask.

Hmm… At first, I thought this would apply to plants, but it doesn't say that, does it? It just says nature. And people are from nature, no? All things are just in their own ways, and we return to nature when we die. Perhaps… no, indeed! Undoubtedly it will work. I just need to try it out.

I haven't seen anything alive down here in all two days of travel to try out my newest skill, preemptively named Inquire. Still, I did have quite the opportunity to use Instinctual during that escape in the building. It was a lifesaver to make Elizabeth's danger sense sharper while I was paralyzed and couldn't help.

So, I bend down and place my hand upon the… gooey head of Morgan Weiss and let that new, unused, instinctual flow of Ether flow according to how my Sigil dictates. Ether flows from my left hand all the way into my other hand before entering the body after a sporadic loop.

As I do so, I keep a question in my mind, primed for the answer. I want to know how to make those Colts, but I could figure it out eventually. What I really want to know is what those equations are for.

After flowing for almost ten seconds, my vision shifts, allowing me to see something I have never seen before. It is as if I see through the eyes of the dead Icarus from a long-ago memory.

I stand before a mysterious steel door as thick as an arm hidden deep within the ground. Smoke billows out of the chimney that sticks out beside the door and floats toward the ceiling, where pipes go upward. As I approach the door, I notice the intricate machinery and contraptions lining the walls, all pulsing with life. The air hums with the sound of machinery, and the pungent scent of chemicals permeates my nostrils.

Pushing open the heavy oak door, I reveal a vast room filled with bizarre devices and strange experiments. One of them even involves a man attached to a table of spikes as electricity bites at him constantly. The others are less insane and tortuous but also implicate other crazed things. In the center of the room, a large table is covered in strange tools and instruments, all meticulously organized. A man in a dark black coat with fur lining the top stands in front of it with tools in hand.

The laboratory is lit by flickering candles and dim gas lamps, casting long shadows on the walls. I hear the sound of gears turning and steam hissing, and I realize that on all the walls are gears with what appears to be blood running down them like water on rocks.

As I view the lab, I can't help but feel a sense of unease. This place is like a madman's dream, a twisted fusion of science and Ether. I shudder as I see jars filled with bizarre creatures and a single machine of bronze that appears to be some kind of dog with teeth made of bones.

This is the domain of a brilliant yet dangerously unhinged mind. A place where the impossible becomes possible and the laws of nature are twisted to the whim of its master. And the master in question stands right before me in this memory at the table. He turns and faces me, asking Morgan Weiss in the memory a question laced with instability.

"Would you kindly lay on the table, my dear? We have a lot of work to do, you know? I haven't even figured out where pain comes from yet!"

A feminine voice, one scared yet unwilling to disobey an order, responds.

"Yes, Father."

A smile twists on the man's face as I recognize him. That's… Eli Weiss! The Underground Tree! The only other 8th Sigil in the whole Territories besides Maddox Adkins and Ed Summers! I've seen him on posters before! It has to be him! That smile is the exact same, only a thousand times more devious!

Instinctively, I try to move, but all that happens is that I follow after him. This is a memory, not real life. Calm down, Earl. It's like one of Abraham's freaky dreams you heard about. Just learn from it.

Taking a moment to chill out and calm my nerves, I watch myself, who really is Morgan, lay down on the table with shaking hands and feet. Then, I see Eli pull out some kind of device that starts to produce lightning from it before he speaks out loud.

"Log Eight-Oh-Eight-Nine. Procedure Sixteen. Electricity to the highest region of the brain that has yet to be named. Charge initialized. The procedure begins."

Eli ends his speech to no one but himself, his daughter, who strapped herself to the table, and the other tortured individuals in the room as he moves the device full of lightning toward the top of his daughter's head. I can feel it getting closer before the memory breaks off as a stream of thoughts come to my mind from what I can only assume is Morgan's mind.

"By using magnets at an appropriate strength, Father can create electricity. He simply doesn't know the equation that dictates it because I hid it from him during our research. Nor does he know the way to slow or measure electrical current. Let's see how he likes to be tortured. The old man can only be hurt with a lack of knowledge."

The thoughts also come with a general understanding of what all the variables are in the equations. I quickly return to my body as these thoughts run through my brain, and panicked at what I just learned, I run away to catch up with Primrose and Elizabeth.

Did I just find out that a Pillar is some kind of mad torturer? Did he put that bounty on his own daughter? Is that why it said wanted alive!? Fucking hell. We just killed a Pillars daughter. And not any Pillar, either. We killed Eli Weiss' daughter. The only other Virtue in the Territories besides Maddox and Ed, who is said to be able to see all within the breadth of his branches.

No, wait. Calm down. If he could truly see that much, then he would have been able to find her. We are fine. There are no trees around. Yea. We are all just dandy. Only I now know how to create electricity, the harnessed form of Hura's lightning. Cool. Now I just have to find a magnet to put those equations to use.

Then? I dunno. Probably create a bomb of some kind. Quite easy for me, it would seem. Everything eventually leads to an explosion of some sort.