Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS
It did not take long for Triezal to realize the issue. How would he be able to tell whether the task was actually getting done? How could he tell whether the knife was where she said it was or not? He could send Mung to pick it up, but if there were more Reth within the building, he knew that Mung would not be strong enough to deal with it.
The problem, Triezal knew, was that Rachel could likely see everything within the building, while he could barely keep track of the area right beside himself. The disparity was simply too large, and she was entirely untrustworthy. All he could do was either stand by his word and kill Juen, or return to the office himself, and trust in Rachel’s words.
Unfortunately, she was a Shade. Triezal knew that he could not trust a single word she said. A thinking machine like her was simply far too skilled at manipulating a person’s mind.
Triezal sighed, eyes continuing to track the still-ongoing fight between the Reth and the martial artist.
“We should just go,” suggested Mung, who still stood next to him, that nervous expression still covering his face. “Is whatever you’re looking for worth the risk? My duty is to get you back to somewhere safe.”
“It isn’t worth it,” Triezal finally replied, his expression downcast as he faced reality. Maybe Rachel had actually sent a disciple to do what he had requested, but he could not blindly trust in it. It was far more likely that she had simply been attempting to delay him. “I suppose she wouldn’t care, even if I did shoot him.”
He could be guessing wrong, of course. Triezal was well aware of this. He was exhausted, still somewhat wounded, and felt like his brain was not operating at its full capacity. His intuition would need to be good enough. Triezal slowly lowered his pistol, letting out a deep breath as he rubbed his forehead with the base of his palm.
Finally, Rachel replied, a sneer clearly implied from her tone as she started to mock him, her words droning on and on.
“You finally noticed, Magister? You really aren’t at your best if you thought I would care about his life or death. I can just film you shooting him, and suddenly all it will do is heat up your own conflict with them. You wouldn’t-”
He lifted the gun again and fired, the bullet coursing out of the chamber, blasted away by its flickering-enhanced propulsion mechanism, and impacted Juen near the base of hire forehead. Right where his cerebral core was located. The moment he did so, the Reth paused in their assault as Juen unceremoniously toppled to the floor, the room silent save for the continued ringing left by the sound of the gunfire, and the quiet buzz of the circulating air which caused the thick smog to slowly expand and dilute into the surrounding area. The screams in the distance, he realized, had quieted down by this time, the rest of the attackers either too far away to hear, or already dealt with.
“We’ll see,” he said, motioning with his free hand for Mung to back up. By now, Triezal didn’t plan on checking the Riverfiend’s office again. He deeply doubted that Rachel had been telling the truth, and most importantly, he needed to escape before he missed the opportunity to do so. He would leave at a severe loss if he were to leave without his knife, but there would be other opportunities.
As he slowly began to step backwards, Triezal noticed that Rachel gave no response to his action. Was she shocked? Perhaps he had surprised her, or perhaps he was simply playing into her hands. It didn’t matter either way, he thought. So long as he escaped the district, all would be well.
Triezal kept his pistol aimed at the two Reth as he left, and they simply stared blankly at him as he fled the scene. He would be back, Triezal promised himself. Next time, however, the circumstances would be much different.
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???, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fifthmonth, 1634 PTS
Rachel had to admit, she had not expected Triezal to take the shot. It seemed her model of him was flawed, and would need some modification. She had thought he would send Mung to check the office again, and waste a significant amount of time before returning empty handed. She would not, after all, have told him where the knife was kept. A naeratanh blade was one of the only items on the station capable of injuring or killing her, and she could not let it out of her sight, even if she needed to take a loss in order to do so.
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As she watched Triezal leave the headquarters, for a moment Rachel considered having Irid and Agaral chase after him, but ultimately decided not to. He would return to the Heirs and tell them about Janottka’s presence, which might very well be of benefit to her.
Rachel’s mind was currently split into almost ten consciousnesses. It placed a strain on her cognition, but it was nothing she couldn’t handle. So long as Janottka did not take the opportunity to pressure her, she could easily bear a load of this size. Carefully, she directed disciples to safety, Reth to the nearest Ceirran invader, and assisted Cyrus and Jihan with their own issues. There was much to do, and she was the only one who could do it all.
As she watched blood ooze out from the hole in Juen Hadal’s skull, for a moment Rachel pondered her own inability. She knew how to treat him, but lacked the body to take action with. If only she still had the drones that had been stored on her ship, she thought. But they were long destroyed, and Rachel knew pondering on the past would take her nowhere.
In truth, Rachel had not wished for Juen’s death. What she had told the magister was true, and if she could not save his life, she would indeed blame it on a Celan assassination. What mattered was not giving the clan the excuse for further attack. However, she thought, as she inspected his condition, she had a better idea. One which would bear far more interesting results.
Juen was a genesis practitioner. While Triezal was well experienced in combat with Seiyal, she knew from records that he had never faced a genesis practitioner at the spirit refiner level in combat until quite recently. He did not truly understand, she thought, the sheer durability of a genesis physique. Despite his pierced skull and cerebral hemorrhage, if Juen was properly treated, he would be able to not only survive, but fully recover.
As she inspected Juen, Rachel had realized that the slug had grazed his cerebral core, causing just slightly enough damage to the object that it could recover with time. A core was different from a dantian- it was more of a construct of miasma than a physical one, and with great effort, a martial artist could repair it to full condition. That was, she thought, unless someone were to interfere.
Irid glanced around, as if looking for something, before simply asking a question with her gaze directed nowhere in particular.
“Should we save his life?”
Rachel wished she could summon her projection, but she had only been able to acquire relatively rudimentary technology to construct the headquarters, due to the lacking technological base of the station’s inhabitants. At such a distance from her conduit, all she could do to communicate was to use the machines she had installed inside of the walls.
“I say let him die,” suggested Agaral, to no surprise from either of the two women. The man acted politely to her, and casually to the other Reth, but seemed to have strong negative feelings towards the Seiyal in general, much less those of the orthodox path. She supposed she couldn’t blame him, given their history. Rachel herself bore incredible hatred towards the Sheneth-Ari, a poison she suspected would never leave her heart until they experienced what she had.
“It is more convenient for me if he lives,” said Rachel. “But don’t worry, we won’t be letting him off easily. Irid, I want you to drag him out of the smog and push sanguine miasma into his head.”
The Reth woman frowned, not comprehending the purpose of the order. She considered Rachel’s words for a few moments, before deciding to fulfill the request.
“If you so wish, Lady Rachel,” she said, before kneeling down before the dying man and resting her taloned hand on his forehead. “Should I remove the bullet?”
“Not yet.”
To the side, Agaral watched on, a scowl on his ashen face.
The miasma pressed in, at first resisting the intense genesis miasma inside, but Irid continued to pour it in, rapidly filling the space inside of the unconscious practitioner. The wound was naturally generating sanguine miasma regardless, which combined with Irid’s energies, a growing force which competed with the man’s own powers. Before long, the green miasma was overcome by the competing red. Finally, a tendril of sanguine entered his core through its damaged side, intermixing with the genesis, and falling into an unnatural balance.
“You can stop there,” said Rachel. “Remove the bullet and tie a strip from his robe over the wound.”
While Irid busied herself with the simple task, stretching one of her claws into Juen’s cranium to remove the bronze alloy projectile, Rachel was privately smirking. It seemed he would survive, but he would wake up to find his situation rather difficult. Juen would certainly attempt to keep this outcome a secret, but she found herself extremely curious about what would happen now that the foremost heir candidate of an orthodox clan had become an unorthodox practitioner.
He knew too little about sanguine miasma, and if he wished to live as anything but a cripple, he would have to come to a deal with the only people on the station who could help him.
Dual-Miasma Paths: [A path utilizing two miasmas is often not considered a real path. After all, the energies within the miasmas conflict, and cause damage to the body. For low-level practitioners, this can easily cause death. Such injuries, too, cause sanguine miasma to form within the practitioner’s body, which can rapidly cause the path to become one of three miasmas, an even more fatal occurrence. But in rare cases, when an advanced practitioner with a sufficiently durable physique becomes so injured that enough sanguine miasma enters at least one of their cores, they can become so infiltrated by the sanguine that it becomes naturally generated, as if that was truly their path. This is an unorthodox path of pain and hardship, much more dangerous than a true sanguine path. None would choose such a path of their own volition. Not unless they had no alternative.]