“We’re back bitches!” Crowed Bethy as we rode into the caves under the volcano. “We’re so fucking sneaky you don’t even know!” She leapt clear of her mount, Poptarts (I was pretty sure, I could NOT tell them apart) dissolving into her shadow as Donuts faded out from under me.
I managed to catch myself before I collapsed on the ground. “Bethy! You can’t just drop people wherever. Don’t do that to the target-”
She wasn’t listening, there was a flex of her domain as she danced through the caves, and a thin form went flying into the wall with a crash, burying in the stone as I sighed. Walking over, I grabbed a limb sticking from the rock and pulled, removing the F-ranker we’d rescued and brushing him off.
Rudy the researcher blinked owlishly at me, his oversized glasses somehow not even cracked. “I say.” He said as his brain recovered.
“You say what?” Called Bethy from ahead of us.
“Go inside Bethy.” I sighed. “He’s just getting used to things. Your Domain is a big scary place for an F-ranker.
She just shrugged and flounced off. I turned to Rudy, who was looking a bit green. “You alright there, man? You look like you’re about to vomit.” I paused. “Although I admit this place doesn’t smell great. We have some air filtration enchantments in the central cave complex.” I couldn’t smell anything, one of the wonderful side effects of my kickass mask, but it was a volcano, they smelled like sulfur.
He nodded slowly. “That place…it was so…unnatural.”
I rolled my eyes. It was easy to forget how sheltered people on Callus could be. I doubted this guy had left his hometown. Ever. And he was famous for being a researcher. I doubted a Lore wonk had much experience doing anything outside his field.
I immediately felt bad for the thought. Rudy’s planet was under occupation by cultists and terrifying monsters. It was probably the scariest thing that had ever happened to him, and me dismissing him as weak because I was better equipped to deal with it was petty and cruel. I forced myself to take a breath. “It can be. But you’re safe now. And more than that, you can help end this occupation completely.”
He raised a brow at me. “Help end the occupation? I’m not a fighter, sir. I can’t help with armies of hostile invaders. I can barely defeat armies of dust bunnies when I clean my library.”
“We’re not putting you on the frontlines.” I said as I led him through the caves toward an open chamber where most of my friends were waiting. “We need your expertise. The enemy are fielding powerful troops, and we think they’re using some local phenomena to make them.”
Wendigos were native to Callus. At least as native as flesh eating monsters could be. Whatever the catalyst was for the transformation could be found here. It stood to reason that whatever Travis was doing to create and empower the monsters involved whatever that catalyst was. Even if it didn’t though, just taking out the catalyst meant no more Wendigos, even if it didn’t stop him from empowering the extant monsters.
He looked confused, which made sense. Ramistaad hadn’t really been actively occupied, just watched. I was sure, based on the empty streets and the oppressive atmosphere, that someone had been there to terrorize the occupants, but they’d been long gone when we arrived.
We reached the makeshift war room, and I gestured him inside. “Hey guys.” I waved casually. “I see Bethy got here first. Did she fill you in?”
Chelsea smiled wryly. “Her story involved more onomatopoeia than I would have used, but we got the gist. You found Rudy, brought him back, and we’ll be debriefing him together.” She smiled at the nervous, mousy man beside me. “Welcome. Sorry for the unusual circumstances.”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, well. I understand. Needs must when the devil drives and all. I still don’t understand what you could possibly need from me. I’m simply a local history enthusiast. If you’re looking for valuable treasure or powerful weapons, I’m afraid I can’t be of much assistance. My knowledge is strictly academic.”
I clapped him on the back with a laugh. “We need academic knowledge. That’s the whole reason we came to get you. My uncle recommended you. You remember Harlequin?” That had been Zeke’s code name while he was here, since Janus was so widely known.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
His eyes widened. “The former branch leader of the Valen Wish Curse Palace?” He squeaked. “I hadn’t thought he would even remember me.”
“Well he did.” I said with a shrug. “And he said you could help us with a project we’re working on. We need to know more about Wendigos. They’re covering the planet right now, and we’ve seen them here before. There’s some kind of…item or location that creates them here, as far as we can tell.”
His brow furrowed. “The Wendigo?” He said absently. “I do know a number of stories about creatures such as those. I could perhaps dig into my knowledge and try to identify an origination point. What is your timeline, might I ask?”
“Soon?” I said questioningly. “They’ve invaded this planet. Or rather, someone else has, and they’re using the Wendigos to do it. We need to clear them out so we can spring some allies and overpower the occupying forces. If we wait too long, they’ll replenish their numbers before we can attack and we’ll be in a bad position.”
That got a frown. “Well, I’m afraid I don’t know the exact location of the phenomena you’re searching for. It isn’t like there’s a book lying around labelled ‘secret Wendigo power source’. I can perhaps collate the data from a number of sources and attempt to identify their first appearance on the planet, but that may take some time.”
“Which is why I’m here to help.” Said Chelsea reassuringly. “I’m an expert researcher. We’re going to work through your knowledge together. We just need you to write out everything you can remember, and leave the cross referencing to us.”
Rudy exhaled in relief. He was an Ascendant, and most likely one who leaned toward Focus, combined with basic physical stats, he could probably copy a whole library from memory in less than an hour or two. Especially if given decent quality paper to work with (you had to be careful about writing too fast after a certain level of Might, or the friction could set the page on fire).
“That I can be of assistance with.” He beamed. “Do you want me to write out the content? Because it would most likely be faster to enter it into a scan ring.”
I hadn’t considered that, but it was obviously way smarter. Chelsea lit up. “Oh, that’s perfect! We can share the documents among everyone, so all of us can parse the data as you type it. That’ll be way more efficient!”
“You’re such a nerd.” I said with a sigh. “Can’t you just bask in your own ignorance like us cool people.”
“My brother is taller than most.” She told Rudy sadly. “He felt pressure from a young age to be big dumb and smashy. It’s why his entire combat style revolves around whacking people with a big stick.”
I gaped at her in horror. “That….is a GROSS oversimplification.”
“Now who's a nerd?” She said smugly. “Stay in your lane, thug. Leave the brain work to us intellectuals.”
I turned to glare at her. “You used to be so sweet and polite. My friends are a terrible influence on you.”
She stuck out her tongue at me. “Actually that was you. Sorry big brother, you’re the one who taught me to stick up for myself. Can’t complain when I return a serve when you’re dunking on me.”
“And she’s mixing metaphors!” I opined, hiding my laughter poorly. “What have I done?”
The others just laughed at the back and forth, and we all got to work setting up the shared scan ring file. Once that was done, Rudy started to type. Since the holographic surface of the scan ring interface did NOT have a problem with catching fire, he was able to make much better time, hands flying over the keys as page after page of abstruse historical texts wrote themselves into existence in the file.
And so began the longest afternoon of my life. Pages appeared like drops of rain, pouring out of the surprisingly enthusiastic researcher as he shared everything in his head that pertained to Wendigos.
Which was…a lot. Books and books of notes, memoirs, poetry. Some of it was even fiction, but he took us at our word and just dredged up every single document that mentioned the creatures, doing his best to make notes of the date of each bit of information, despite not taking them down in order.
Finally, after a few hours, he stopped, hands falling down with a sigh. “And that’s all. Sorry I couldn’t dredge up more. My ability involves information storage, but it doesn’t have an organizational aspect. I’m planning to integrate that next rank.”
“It’s fine.” Said Chelsea absently. “I’ve been keeping a list and trying to sort everything. Good idea using page numbers. Give me a bit, I have to check some things.” She flicked open a few new pages, accessing different parts of the document at the same time. A list of page numbers sat beside her as she collated the data.
The rest of us were working on the same thing, but Benny was the only one who was any help. He pointed out several alternate locations with mentions of the same things Chelsea was looking for. Dates, locations, stories about mysterious deaths and their circumstances.
Finally, she stopped. “Get me a map.” She said bluntly. “I need to check something.”
We brought up a globe projection, shared access with her, and she began putting pins on the image, It took about an hour for her to completely note down every incident that seemed relevant, then she started narrowing it down by eliminating stories that had inconsistent elements and were probably just made up.
As she did the rest of us tried to piece together what exactly we were looking for based on casual mentions and obscure language. Benny was the first to crack it. “It’s a spring.” He said with a triumphant grin. “The only direct mentions call it the “Heart of Winter” but from what I can tell its just an arctic spring with some kind of spiritual cold trait.”
“And I know where it is.” My sister crowed. “Check this out.” We all crowded around the projection. “The earliest incidents of Wendigos spawning on this planet were in these locations.” She gestured to a grouping of dots. “It threw me because some of the early discoverers took some of the water and sold it. The next few centuries saw a spike of the damned things all over Callus. But after sifting out the memoirs and stories based on financial means and personality to exclude people who bought the water, I managed to get a radius.”
On the globe, a circle of red dots surrounded a small village in the northern hemisphere of the planet. “This is Valfarden.” Said my sister smugly. “And from what I can tell, the Heart of Winter is here. I don’t know why or where it came from, but chances are good that its where Travis is making his super Wendigos.”
It was a small out of the way place in the middle of the tundra. Far enough from Wintervale not to be too notable but close enough to make dispatching the monsters out into the blizzards more than feasible.
I grinned wolfishly at my friends from behind my mask “Alright. Well, it looks like we found the spawning ground. Bethy, get everyone together, we’re going to be hitting them as soon as possible. Chelsea, keep going over the information Rudy supplied, I want us to be as prepared as possible for what we find.” The first steps towards the end of this war were upon us.