Lwyn left the library, her thoughts preoccupied with her new agenda, the new task she had to accomplish. The challenge she was suddenly to face was immense, but she would not turn from it, instead she would keep moving onward, walking as if in a hypnotic trance.
"Yhse, daughter, do be careful. You might know more about your enemy than I do, but I know they are dangerous. They will not be easy to deal with." Khaexyn wasn't wrong, she knew just how powerful the three girls she hunted were. The three of them were friends to this Lwyn, someone she was no longer. Her father had cleared her mind of their manipulation, had set her free from their lies. Yhse owed him for it, and would return that debt with the death of his enemies.
Yhse waved at her father as he went back to his work. He was hard at work at erasing the chains of hate shackling the world, trapping it under the guise of a gift. He would still need more time to keep going, and she would need to ensure she could buy him that time. While outnumbered, she knew she had an advantage. All three of them were separated, letting her deal with them individually. Additionally, they all seemed to find value in her, still thinking she was so completely manipulated by them. She could turn that against them, catching them completely unaware.
Still, that wasn't enough of a plan. Being also separated from them, she had no idea where they even were. Worse, she knew what they were capable of, a surprise attack might not be enough by itself, so she needed a way to invite further advantages for herself. To do that, she needed more information. A map would have helped, but she knew the book from the library which would typically handle such was still left at the facility, along with the veil core. Her father was not impressed to hear such news, but was more alarmed by her dizzy spell, recalling such details. He had warned her that she needed to be careful for that reason as well, the tampering of her mind left by the other three girls could have harsh repercussions if she let herself get too distracted by thoughts. She needed to remain focused on her objective at hand.
The basement levels of each Spire had their own secure rooms, with a lot of extra supplies. The bottom of the nearby fifth spire contained a very detailed map, like a spoiler for the entire Fortress layout. She took the news provided to her and set off for that location, following her father's guidance. Such guidance was only betrayed when she found the path had caved in, leaving her in a bit of a predicament. She considered the layout, and found she wasn't certain of any alternate path. Instead, she summoned a sphere, passing it the instructions to find her a way forward. The orb however simply fell from her hand and shattered. That did not help, she got the feeling that such implied all the passages were equally blocked, or that this was the only path.
She contemplated for a moment destroying the rubble before her, but recalled that this could bring the roof down above her. With consideration of a roof falling, she got an even further idea, maybe she could cause the roof below her to fall instead. She was aiming for a basement, going down was just part of the plan. She backed off a long distance and threw forth a sphere, which coursed towards the center of the hall and crashed into the ground at high velocity. The impact caused the ground to give way, forming as a ramp downwards. She then tried her guidance sphere again, which this time proceeded down the makeshift ramp. Yhse chased after it, still considering the rest of the details of her plan.
Mhyl paused in alarm as the path before her suddenly caved in violently. Well, that direction wasn't an option any longer, she would have to find another path. As she turned around, she thought she saw a faint flicker of something moving from her headset, but it was gone quickly. She suspected it might have just been things sliding in the collapse. Mhyl backtracked along the path, plotting out a new course. She had found that suddenly she had ran out of enemies to fight, instead she was passing wreckage of shredded enemies. She was pretty certain she was travelling in circles, but couldn't see another way forward. She had tried to back-track, but that had only lead to a caved in portion of the path. Realizing she might be trapped, Mhyl tried to erase a bit of the rubble blocking her path. As she could only expect, disturbing the fallen rubble simply shifted the ceiling, causing more rubble to fall nearby dangerously. However, this time it had cleared enough of the area above her that she could go up.
Mhyl struggled on the surfaces of the climb, wishing she was even half the climber Lwyn was. There was nothing simple about this climb, and she couldn't even warp it like Qheria could, or grapple up like Thanrie. Struggling in despair, Mhyl settled back down, deep in thought. Well, if Thanrie and Qheria used their gift, why couldn't she? She looked at the obstacle before her, considering her options. Flying would be the easiest thing, if only.. actually, she made her book float through the air, why couldn't she? Right, because using herself as a target of her gift was dangerous at best. But then, couldn't she just stand on something valid? She looked upon the book she held, too small, even as a platform. If she didn't have what she needed, she would have to create it. Shimmering into the air before her was a transparent sheet of crystal, almost glass in its design, but more like plastic. She sat upon it carefully as she used her gift to lift it up. Surpassing her obstacle, she took a step to the ground before suddenly rethinking her move. There was almost nothing to the design for her floating sheet, and not only did it move faster, but it took less of her stamina than all this walking. A smile forming upon her face, she relaxed onto her accommodation as it set forth in the air along the path.
Yhse made sure to return her father's map to its safe confines, not wanting for even more of such things to become lost to him. She did take a moment to consider though how much value there was in that, the Fortress was obviously a lost cause in its ruined state. Still, it might not matter, it was better to leave things as they should be, her father would look after the rest. It had been his life's work, certainly she could keep order for him in such a minor gesture of appreciation. In that light, it wasn't even her place to envision how things would be after his work came to light, she would simply figure things out as they were presented to her.
The map had even done it's work, and shown her exactly what she needed. There was a perfect room in the bottom levels of the eleventh spire, the only exit was from above and the room itself was full of wireframe bridges over a giant spanning room. The contents of the room were all experiments, sealed in vats that worked hard to expend the growing heat from the furnaces within, glowing with the heat generated. But, in case things got out of hand, there was a backup measure in place, to flood the room with ice water in order to deal with any disasters, which could also be drained. Yhse couldn't think of a more perfect room, to make use of. However, first she would have to reach the control room, and cause a bit of chaos. She was apologetic for misusing her father's work like this, but there really wasn't any better option.
Continuing towards her destination, Yhse heard sounds echoing down the hall. Someone was approaching. She climbed up the ceiling and hid behind the infrastructure, much like she had done around here in the past. The footsteps got closer, and she looked down at the one named Thanrie wandering by. Thanrie had however paused, getting the feeling she was missing something. She continued looking around, not sure what she could be missing in an empty hall, and just shrugged. Not once did she look up. Thanrie had a pretty good idea at least that she was no where close to where she should be, and that she was totally lost. What really bothered her was that, the more she travelled around, the more she saw absolutely no signs of life anywhere. When they were last here, the place was full of people doing all sorts of things, but now there was nothing. She had found what was probably the kitchen earlier, completely in a state of disuse. She had some idle hope that she could have found someone who knew their way around, that someone knew where stuff was, but she had found nothing. At the very least, she had found no signs of death either, but things still seemed grim in that regards.
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Continuing along the halls, she confronted yet another enemy. Still faced with more aethyrnz, she sighed, getting bored. "Halt, aethyrnz patrols are not permitted at this hour. Curfew has passed already, please return your head to my scythe for routine rest." Thanrie mocked her enemy as she sliced into it. It didn't help much, she didn't even have her friends around to see it. She had a feeling Lwyn would have sighed in reaction to seeing such a performance.. actually, wouldn't she have normally laughed? Laughing at such a thing was much more like Lwyn, Mhyl was the one who would usually sigh at her for such banter. Didn't matter either way, no one was here. The way things were going, she was getting the feeling it was going to be far more important to find her friends before anything else. They just needed to regroup, discuss their findings, and work things out. Qheria and Lwyn usually had a plan, after all, they just needed notes. It was sad she didn't think she could provide many of such notes, she was generally at a loss here.
Yhse sighed at Thanrie's behaviour, watching her continue on her way and around the corner. Disrespecting her father's creations like that was pretty rude, she would need to make sure Thanrie was taught a lesson for that one. Still, now wasn't a good time, she needed an opportunity to get everything ready. It was at least good to know where one of them was, even though they were going opposite directions and would be long separated by the time she was done. Considering Thanrie's approach, and the layout of the halls, it was obvious Thanrie would either get lost going circles in the central area, or end up at the spire she had just left. With that information, she might want to consider targeting someone else when the time came, just out of matters of opportunity. Maybe the best target to start with would be Mhyl, especially considering the arena she would have set up. There was also the fact that Thanrie's intuition often seemed far too good, setting the stage might be easier with Mhyl, especially since Mhyl had exposed herself so much more to the aspect known as Lwyn than any of the others.
Yhse pondered the third of the group as she traveled. Qheria might in the end prove to be the biggest problem, considering her nature. Being so defensive made her difficult to reach, being able to teleport made her the hardest to avoid. However, Qheria got most of her gift from being able to slam the ground, something which would become very difficult in the arena she was setting up. As such, she was certain that she would do best by making sure Qheria was not involved at the start of the fight. She would need to set measures to warn her if any of them were approaching, so that she could prepare accordingly. But such measures could wait until she was ready to confront Mhyl. Having only arrived at her destination at that moment, Yhse set about preparing the resources of her plan, making sure everything would be ready. It wasn't the most complicated plan, sure, but none of them would see it coming until it was too late.
Qheria finally arrived at the library and looked around. As soon as she stepped in, two aethyrnz exited their storage and attacked her. So this room was guarded, huh? Odd then that Lwyn had been in this very room, left alone, as if her stay was welcomed. It instead honestly felt like her arrival was predicted, preordained, fated. Qheria smashed into her enemies with all of her pent-up fury, directly smashing into one as the motion to trigger her gift, instead of using the ground at her feet. Both enemies crushed together, smashing to pieces. However, she could find no clues of what transpired here, or where anyone had gone. All that she had was the evidence that Lwyn had let her father go, and her father had obviously lead her here. It reminded Qheria of hypnosis, just with a bit of a Celesi twist maybe. Leaving Lwyn in such a state could cause any number of problems, especially if Lwyn found either Mhyl or Thanrie before she did.
The biggest threat was that neither of them would be prepared for the state Lwyn was in, which could put them in any kinds of danger. But more so would be the sudden shock of what Lwyn might do without them knowing why she did it. Qheria remembered the other's reactions to Lwyn sending them away, it had hurt, and that was done when she was only being lightly manipulated. This time, she might do something more dramatic, and it would tear their hearts apart in confusion. She needed to save everyone, first by bringing this knowledge to Thanrie and Mhyl, secondly by restoring Lwyn to her senses. To do any of that, she needed a plan.
It was fortunate that Lwyn would not know Qheria herself was so informed, which could itself cause Lwyn to slip up to Qheria's advantage. However, if Lwyn was working with her father, she had the advantage of the Fortress to work with. Lwyn would certainly not underestimate them either, she would be working on her own plan to ensure her own success, making use of whatever resources she had at her disposal. Qheria still had no idea what kind of resources those might include, but her biggest concern was how she might get Lwyn to submit, how to remove the manipulation. Her best bet was either a resistance gift or Mhyl's healing, but in either case she had to have Lwyn unable to fight against it. Meanwhile, in a worst case, Lwyn might be driven to attack them with all of her might, and Qheria was fully aware just how capable Lwyn was in this area. Even the idea of compelling Lwyn to bleed out her stamina, that could put their lives in danger just to accomplish, with very minimal assurance of success.
Thinking things over carefully, Lwyn was probably planning on using the fact they were all separated to try and take each of them out individually. She would pick an initial target, the foremost probably not being herself, unfortunately. To break Qheria's own defenses, Lwyn would want to salvage her stamina for the big strikes. Considering everyone's potential, Lwyn would probably go after Thanrie before the rest of them. Thanrie's highly aggressive nature would make her important to secure first, and her lack of defenses would make her the easiest target. In that light, Qheria had to make sure to find Thanrie first. Thanrie would be navigating in two ways, either scythe grapples or dashing with her boots. The scythe would leave subtle marks on the wall, while the boots would scatter a dust pattern from it's wind current. Qheria set off to locate either.
After a while of exploring, she passed by a section of the floor that had collapsed. Inspecting the area, she found what was clearly section of the walls that had simply vanished. That was Mhyl's work, she had clearly been here. However, she wasn't searching for Mhyl, Mhyl would come later. There weren't any tracks around here anyway, no sign Mhyl had came up to this level, so she was probably down below somewhere. Qheria kept exploring until she found an aethyrnz with its head divided by a blade. This certainly looked more like Thanrie's work. With a few more observations, she eventually picked up on Thanrie's trail.
Yhse sighed, her hard work finally completed. Everything was going according to plan. She summoned another orb and provided it with instructions. It was to traverse the halls, searching for Mhyl, and to go completely invisible when in the presence or line of sight of either Qheria or Thanrie. Once it finds her, it is to hover over her head for a few moments, and then instead start searching for Yhse herself, still with the same invisibility requirements. This way, if the sphere returned without Mhyl, she would know they had re-converged and Yhse would need to figure out a new plan. Maybe she could then use the halls to separate them again with yet another force field? Maybe she could draft a story telling how her father had escaped and was now racing across the mountain, which would then at least give her father the time needed to complete his project. Either way, such plans would have to wait for if they were even needed, and by her calculations they shouldn't be. Instead, she would have to keep moving, to get into position to present a fitting story for Mhyl to suffer with.
Yhse sent the sphere on it's way, watching it glide casually along the halls. Meanwhile, Yhse set off towards her own destination, carefully going over all the details of the plan before everything would finally occur.