2nd District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS
“Rachel, what the hell was that?” I asked, whispering the words under my breath.
I was looking down at the collapsed form of a Staiven man who looked as if he had been sweating out most of the liquid in his body. Sanguine miasma slowly dripped down his face, pooling onto the floor like a puddle of blood.
She paused before responding, as if collecting her thoughts.
“It’s… complicated, and we don’t have time to talk about it now. At the very least it’s not relevant at the moment, so it can wait. Just grab the information and get out. I’ll explain it all later.”
I considered disputing her, but no matter my annoyance at being ordered around, I continued down the hallway, pausing for one last moment to take a sideways glance at the unfortunate man’s corpse.
Something was definitely going on. The guard had clued me in, but the signs had been there for some time, though I had been too distracted to piece them together.
The prophet Poluus of the Depthists had worshiped a goddess, and like the guard, he had red eyes. I had always assumed that the reason the Celans wanted the conduit so badly was because it was connected to Rachel, a powerful spirit. I had looked through the conduit myself, and it did not only connect to Rachel- it was solely a connection between Telles and the land of spirits, the place the Celans called Sakkhenat. As such, I now realized, Rachel was not the only spirit who could connect through it. The realization sent a shiver of fear down my spine. Just how dangerous was the item I was carrying around with me?
Such thoughts didn’t help me in my current situation, however. As Rachel had said, I needed to focus on what was happening here and now. Several more guards poured around the corner, and I reached into my sack for another of the explosives.
Using weapons such as these felt odd to me. They were certainly quite effective, and there was a part of me that enjoyed the sheer destruction they brought down on everything within range of them. But another part of me wanted to recoil from how dishonorable it felt. It took no skill to use them, leaving me unsatisfied after every kill. It felt demeaning in a sense for a martial artist such as myself to rely on such crude methods as these.
Still, they were effective, and the fact that just anyone could use them added to their value. In this case, it was far better to be unsatisfied but unrecognized.
The bombs exploded, but not before the guards each fired bursts of gunfire at me.
I had come to realize that Staiven firearms are substantially different from those used by the Celans. Whereas the Celans used highly advanced technology to propel normal metals at high speed, the Staiven used what Rachel had told me was a ‘low-tech’ method called a railgun. However, the Staiven ammunition was far more advanced. After being launched from the barrel it would superheat until it was white hot, splattering and burning right through whatever it made contact with.
I had already lost a shortsword to it, and had started just dodging all of the bullets, a task that was impossible without my movement technique. Small traces of the water striding steps flowed into my movement almost without my conscious thought, and I managed to pass through the fusillade without being hit.
I was lucky, having noticed that I had the advantage of guards all firing in a very uncoordinated manner. I got the impression that they were either inexperienced or very rusty with the weapons.
The explosives went off, filling the chests of the trio of guards with fragments of whatever scrap metal compound Rachel had made me toss into the replicator to make the things. Whatever it was, I was rather impressed with it, as it was even digging into the walls, despite how tough the Staiven material was.
My ears were running and the dusty air occluded my vision somewhat, but I could still sense a number of souls up ahead, around the bend.
“How many guards were there supposed to be?” I asked, remembering that it was in the information we had received, and well aware that Rachel would know the answer.
“There were supposed to be 20 here full-time, but I have no idea how long it’ll take their reinforcements to arrive. They aren’t here yet, at least. You should have around… seven guards left, considering how many you’ve killed already.”
“Understood. Station security will be showing up soon as well though, right?”
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“Eventually, but I’ve been bogging down the reporting system, so I expect they won’t get here for at least fifteen minutes.”
I peeked around the bend, only to be met with gunfire from yet another group of guards. I was forced to pull my head back around the bend. One of the white-hot bullets tore right through my baggy robes, barely missing contact with my skin.
These guards were more spread out than the others had been previously, so I grabbed two explosives and chucked them around the corner blindly, aiming for the rough location of their souls.
“Grenade!” shouted one of the guards, and I could hear scrambling followed by a clattering noise as one of the bombs rolled right back along the ground towards me. Had one of them kicked it?
“Shit!” I muttered to myself, sprinting back down the hallway in hopes of gaining as much distance as possible.
Moments later it exploded, causing shrieks of agony to erupt from unfortunate Staiven mouths. I myself grunted in pain as I failed to fully dodge the blast, several shards of scrap having dug their way into my back. Luckily, as I was in the core formation realm, my body was tougher, my skin and flesh much harder and stronger than that of a mortal. Had a mortal been hit by it, the fragments would have torn right through, possibly outright killing them.
Ignoring the pain, I jogged back to the corner, peering around once again to see two of the Staiven on the ground, and two still standing. One of those who had fallen was groaning, presumably bleeding out, while the other was still. Of those who were standing, one was wounded, holding his chest with an arm, which the other seemed unscathed, having stood presumably much further away from the blast than the others.
They were distracted, so I sprinted down the hallway towards them, drawing my shortsword from its sheath.
One slash finished off the man who was bleeding, not even able to have drawn his weapon due to his sluggish reactions. The woman had quickly brought her railgun to bear however, managing to fire off a salvo of bullets.
Unluckily for her I was too close, and had a good view of where the barrel was pointed. My strides swept around her, moving faster than she could shift her aim. With another slice of my blade she fell to the ground like her comrades.
The hallway was now empty, filled with dust, smoke, and corpses bleeding out whatever bodily fluids that Staiven had instead of blood. I carefully approached the door to the security room, knowing its location from the floor plan we had looked at. I cleaned my sword on my robes, getting it ready to face whatever might be on the other side of the door.
I stood beside the door as it opened, waiting to see if there would be gunfire. After a moment of silence I crossed the threshold and took a look at the room’s interior.
It was a small room. One wall was covered in an array of odd, warped shapes, like melted clay dolls. Another held a small weapons locker that was left open, a few more railguns and several boxes of ammunition just sitting there. There were some chairs and a table in the back, as if this had been used as some sort of break room. Several lumpy objects that looked like variations of Staiven terminals rested on the table.
Standing next to the wall of malformed objects that I assumed was supposed to be the output of security camera equivalents was a young Staiven man, likely barely an adult from the looks of him. He was short and thin, and cowered a bit as he pointed a railgun at me. The barrel shook wildly as his hands quivered with nerves. He made no move to pull the trigger.
“I’ll speak to him for a moment. If we can talk him into helping us it will go much faster.”
I silently acquiesced, honestly not all that scared of the boy shooting me. On the side of his railgun, what looked like a safety was still flipped up.
It still felt odd to hear words emerging from the location of my own mouth, but not speak them myself. Particularly when I could barely understand what they were saying.
Rachel and the kid spoke for a few moments, and after a bit he nodded fearfully, slowly lowering his gun.
“After I threatened him, he said he would authorize the files. I’ll keep an eye on what he’s doing, but be ready to kill him if I tell you, because he could wipe the data if he turns brave. That would be a problem,” whispered Rachel into my ear. I nodded in response.
Luckily for us, the kid was apparently too scared of me to try anything. Several times while working on sending the files, he glanced back at me, shivering in fear. Did my getup really look so intimidating? I supposed it might have looked something like how the ‘evil unorthodox martial artists’ were depicted in the media put out by orthodox groups such as the Hadal Clan, so perhaps he had been influenced by that. If so, I found that a bit offensive. Still, the effect was useful, so I let it pass.
After a while, Rachel spoke into my ear again.
“Done, I have the data. It’s time to get going.”
Without a second’s thought I bolted from the room, sprinting as fast as my body could take me without activating my movement technique. The last of the guards had returned to the hallway in my absence, but I ran past their surprised faces as I went back into the office with the breach in the wall, making my way back outside.
I tossed one more explosive behind me to cover my escape just in case, and kept running after making it out. Now, all I had to do was make it somewhere isolated and let Rachel take us back to the safe house.
We had accomplished our part of the deal, and next we would finally be able to move forward with the plan.
The Brink/Spirit World/Sakkhenat: [Referred to as the Brink among the Staiven, the Spirit World among the Seiyal, and Sakkhenat among the Celans, each of these terms refers to a certain higher spacetime that is in a sense adjacent to that of Telles. This is a realm with different physical properties, and can perhaps be considered a secondary layer of the same reality given how deeply entwined the two are. It is where souls and spirits reside, and where ascendants must pass through if their souls wish to be incarnated in the realm of divinity. It is also where the natural flows of ashata exist, and is tapped into every time miasma is brought into Telles. Understanding the properties of this realm is as vital to technological development as fields such as biology, chemistry, and quantum mechanics are, as races tend to rely more and more on using miasma to alter physical properties the more advanced they become. Like Telles itself, most of the Brink is considered territory under the control of various powers.]