TR: 19

Chapter Nineteen: Mortal Lessons

The Interloper’s boots reverberated against the wrought-iron steps of the winding staircase before he stepped out onto the second floor balcony of the library. Before he could make his way down the final flight to ground floor, a noise from below caught him and he quickly dashed behind a pile of dusty old boxes leaning against the railing. Peeking through the rails of the old banister he watched as four young novices entered the hall, giggling and chattering like drunken schoolchildren.

There were two men and two women, one of which was an elf, though he couldn’t tell which specific yan from his vantage point. The tallest of them, a two-blade plus moa cren quietly closed the door behind them and turned to the others with a cheeky look on his face, holding up a finger to his mouth and hushing the rest.

“Wouldn’t want that old toad Ruminus hearing us now, would we?” said the moa cren in a deep voice, though the immaturity of his youth crept through in his tone.

The other male novice, this one dai cren and much slighter of build, came over and wrapped his hand around the larger’s shoulders.

“Oh, don’t be so prudish. Ruminus couldn’t hear himself fart alone in a cave, the old bat’s so faelin’ deaf. Besides, I don’t think there’s enough room for the headmaster in here. There’s only so many holes to go around.” The man turned and licked the cheek of the other, the moa cren shivering in delight.

The larger man turned and grasped his partner and the two embraced in a lewd pairing of tongue and lip, vulgar hands grasping at sensitive areas. The two others, the elfess and a tow-headed male cren, snickered and quickly followed suit, wasting no time as they joined their companions in melding flesh. The tow-head yanked the collar of the elfess’s robe down, revealing a tan-colored breast which he quickly took up in his mouth. The elfess purred and pivoted around, slamming the man on his back atop the remnants of the shattered table. In seconds, both parties were grunting and groaning as pleasureful tones emanated around the hall and the smell of sex wafted into the air.

The interloper gaped in disbelief at the scene before him. Never had he seen such primitive, base behavior. To see grown adults acting in such a way, eschewing their work ethic to divulge in meaningless, trivial desires, enraged him. These were the people who would eventually inherit Rynn and her institutions–the very same institutions he and his forefathers had all fought to build and maintain. And here they were, fael’ing it all away.

This was no Order of respectable means; these were animals he was dealing with.

Standing up from behind his box of forlorn scripts, the interloper gazed down in contempt at the grunting, writhing mass of naked flesh below him. He pulled the hood of the cloak over his head, concealing his face and he stepped up onto the box, leveraging himself up onto the railing where he stood for a moment before letting his weight carry him forward over the edge. He landed gracefully on the smooth jade tiles, the six-blade plus drop seeming like a hop from a small ledge. He had learned that Ydra spells could be used for more than just opening locks. The sound of his boots against the stone attracted the attention of the yan female who, legs sprawled with a cloaked figure thrusting vigorously between them, shouted in surprise as she looked past her lover’s arm to the strange figure standing nearby, watching them in silence. The others were quick to act, pulling up trousers and fastening robes, the elfess hastily tugging her robe up to cover her exposed chest. The four of them rounded on the interloper and the moa cren held a finger at him.

“What are you doing in here? How long have you been there?” he demanded, face flushed and a sheen of sweat already having formed on his brow.

The interloper stood in silence as he faced them, the sparks of a fire beginning to kindle inside.

The dai-cren male laughed, stroking his dark partner on the arm. “Ooh, you’re so hot when you’re angry, babe.”

The man leaned forward, examining the newcomer. “Hey, is that you Alamm, come to join in on the fun?”

He turned and looked back at the elfess over his shoulder.

“Probably, come for you, Nuri. He’s always gawking at your tits in Alchemia.”

Nuri glowered at the man and put an arm across her chest defensively. “Shut up, Basel. What do you know of it?”

Basel laughed. “Everyone knows it. But don’t be so coy.”

The man strode over towards the interloper. “I think Alamm is just trying to reclaim what belongs to him. A prince after his princess. Am I right, Alamm?”

Basel took several more steps but stopped part way between them as the figure remained deathly still. He frowned.

“Why do you always have to be so creepy, Alamm? Can’t you see I’m advocating on your behalf here?” He motioned toward the elfess.

Nuri’s partner wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Fa’el off, Basel. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Nuri shrugged the man’s arm away. “I’m not anyone’s princess. And I’m not your property to lay claim to. You better get that in your head if you hope to get anything else this night.”

Basel turned back to the interloper, a wry grin on his face. “Sounds like a fight, don’t you think, Alamm?”

The interloper remained silent, staring down Basel from behind the veil of shadows cast by his hood. The moa cren stepped toward Basel, a look of sudden consternation on his face.

“Dear, I don’t think that’s Alamm…”

A laugh slowly percolated out from under the interloper’s hood. Basel took a step back as the interloper lowered his hood, revealing himself to be, very much, not Alamm.

“A fight would imply two parties of equal or comparative measure.” said the interloper.

“No, this will be a slaughter.”

The moa cren reacted first, raising his hand at the interloper, summoning an impressive ball of lightning hovering pinches in front of his palm. As he released it towards the interloper, the interloper redirected the aim of the arm with a subtle flick of his hand and the ball flew to his partner, not several blades away. Basel was quick, however, and caught the ball between them, holding it there with a multi-tethered ydra flow, able to contain the force of its momentum as it stayed suspended in the air. The interloper held out his two hands in front of them and clapped them together, at the same time the the moa cren and the other flying towards each other like puppets on strings, colliding into the ball-lightning as it exploded in a near-blinding, electrical flash. The two flew to opposite ends of the room with tremendous force, one smacking into the stone wall, his head striking and splitting like a melon, the other slamming into a large bookcase, collapsing to the floor as shards of wood and heaps of burnt books piled atop him. Fading contrails of electrical discharge sparkled in the air around them, fading away as equilibrium took hold. The two remaining novices hid behind a ward spell, the air rippling like water around them in a semi-spherical shield. The ward dissipated and the elfess–the caster–lowered her arm as her partner stood stunned beside her. The tow-head looked over at the bleeding mess of his two friends.

“He…he killed them Nuri! By the Thirteen, he k…killed them!” he stammered.

Nuri glanced at Basel’s body dispassionately and glared at the interloper.

“Whoever you are, you have no idea who you are messing with!” She spat.

She summoned two glowing orbs of white energy in each hand and charged at the interloper. The interloper began walking toward her, meeting her challenge. Screaming, she raised her hand to launch an attack but the interloper beat her to it, casually swiping a hand upwards and Nuri flew towards the rafters, disappearing into the blackness of the many-floored library, her screams fading out of distance. The interloper walked toward the remaining novice who appeared to have peed himself. He screamed and scrambled backwards, bumping into the table behind him. He righted himself and began shuffling backwards along the table, as hastily as his awkward position would let him. In his ambling, his trousers fell down, tripping him up as he stumbled backwards over one of the benches that had been pulled out, flipping head over heels, bare-assed, landing hard on his side. He pushed himself up on his elbows, wining and babbling mercies as he attempted to get to his feet and pull up his drawers with one hand. The interloper did not slow and continued pressing forward. The novice managed to pull up his pants somewhat, though one testicle remained comically exposed. He stumbled against the wall, sliding himself to upright as he shuffled backwards, frantically, never breaking his panicked gaze with the interloper.

“Please, just spare me! I won’t tell anyone. I won’t…”

He turned to run but, having not taken any stock of his surroundings, turned right into the sharp point of a wrought-iron lance in the grasp of a bronze statue of a first-era knight. The lance impaled the novice through the throat, striking true on the carotid as bright red blood spurted violently from around the wound. The novice gasped for air, grasping at the lance instinctively, but he had impaled himself through-and-through and was not strong enough to pull himself free. Seconds went by and the gurgling stopped, the body going limp as it hung unnaturally from the point of the lance like a wet cloth. The interloper walked over to the novice adorning the point of the lance and raised an eyebrow as he examined the corpse, now convulsing in its death throes.

“I think you get the point.”

A screaming returned from above and Nuri came sailing back down to the library, striking the hard ground several blades from where the interloper stood, the sound of a box of eggs all being splattered at once. It was quite disgusting. The interloper sauntered over to Nuri’s body and turned it over with the toe of his boot, blood seeping slowly out onto the jade tiles. There wasn’t much left to distinguish who the corpse had been.

“I really don’t see what he saw in you, Nuri.” the interloper said.

Making a sound of disgust, he kicked the corpse back onto its face and he made to exit the room. As he reached for the handle, a strange thought crept into his mind. A feeling rather, similar to the one that had entered his mind when he realized he could unlock doors with but a thought and a spell. Another spell became aware to him. This time, however, it was not the door that he sensed but the corpses. What was it about them?

He turned back and looked at the three bodies lying on the ground, the one hanging from the statue. It was as if…the life hadn’t truly left them yet. Could it be something to do with their nervous systems still being intact as the body shut down? No, nothing so sophisticated. But…it was something. He closed his eyes and meditated on the feeling. Surrounded himself in it. Became it. As he wrapped himself up in the sense that was building in him, it slowly became obvious to him what it was he was feeling.

He was feeling them. The corpses. They were alive to him. Or, at least…

They could be.

Curious, the interloper walked over to the novice hanging from the lance, stepping on the corpse of Nuri like she was mere refuse in the way, and he stopped an arm’s length away from the dangling flesh bauble. There was definitely something there that he could take. There wasn’t a word for it, like the ydra spell, or if there was, he wasn’t aware. But it was a solid, tangible thing in itself, just as the feeling of rage or sadness was singular. There was a whole world there, in fact. This was just one facet of it. But what did it mean?

Perhaps, he realized, he was overthinking the matter. Instead, he simplified the process and reached out with his mind to embrace the mental object there, like grasping a ball. As he did, he could feel the novice’s life-force, suspended there in space, teetering on the verge of life and death, just as his body did so in the physical plane. But there was no life force. He knew that was all a farce parsed off for those who didn’t understand the intricacies of biochemistry and the wonderful workings of the body. So what, then, was he feeling? It was certainly a force, that much he could be certain of, as it imparted a sense in him. But if it wasn’t life, then what was it?

Death.

The answer came to him as fast as the question, as if it were the most obvious and only possible answer that could exist for the question. It was death that he felt. But he had been so wrong about death. Death was not final, or one-dimensional. Death was manifold, had many folds and crevices to explore. And there was so much of it.

Grasping the ball in his mind, he squeezed. Suddenly, he became aware of the novice’s body, part by part, until the form of the being as a whole became a muse in his mind. He realized he could do with that muse as he liked; make it talk, make it dance even. It would be as if it were alive, and it would be his to control at will.

But a theory was only as useful so far as it could be tested.

All in his mind, he willed the corpse to tighten its grip on the lance, where the novice’s hand had remained in its final attempt at freeing itself. He watched as the fingers grasped the steel, feeling a slight tingle of excitement inside as it did so. It was working! He maneuvered the other hand around the lance, two hands with a firm grasp. Then, slowly, he watched as he tasked the corpse with pushing itself off of the lance, a sickly slopping sound as flesh and cartilage slid past the metal. With a final morbid slop, the corpse fell from the lance, plopping onto the green floor, still. He had done it!

Yet…there was more that he could do.

Standing over the corpse, he worked himself into its legs, summoning the muscles there back to action. After nearly a minute of grueling effort and focus, the interloper had the corpse standing, or rather hunkering before him, an undead pawn ready to do his bidding. He examined the lifeless eyes staring back at him. Or, that was what he had expected to see. Instead, to his surprise, he saw his own eyes reflected there. Which made complete sense: it was himself in there, after all. And then it occurred to him, if he could be in more than one place at once, just how many places could he be? Holding the corpse there with his mind, he looked over at the fallen moa cren and sensed the same latent energy there as the one which he now held in his mind. Following the same process, he resurrected the large novice until he too was standing, though this time it took longer. It was also more difficult to maintain a second, in a similar fashion to following multiple conversations at the same time. The interloper reached out to the third body–that of the one once called Basel–and summoned a new thrall. This took incrementally longer than the second and the interloper was beginning to see the limits of his ability in this regard. His best guess was that he could maintain at most five thralls.

As he pondered the implications of resurrecting the dead, the door to the study creaked open. The interloper and his three thralls averted their gaze towards the figure walking into the room. The woman had a different coloration pattern to her garments, marking her as, perhaps, an adept or even a doyen. Either way, the interloper knew it would be risky to attempt to face her while commanding three thralls as his position could compromise his chances of success.

The woman stood in the doorway holding the door open, glancing into the room at the four figures standing there.

“I thought I heard screaming a moment ago. Is everything okay in here? Did you not hear the Yccarus bell? We have been summoned to Vylanth Hall, the archbishop is to address everybody publicly. Attendance is not optional. Where…”

The woman stopped as she noticed the bloody elf body on the floor between them.

“…Oh, my. What is…”

The interloper released his hold on the three thralls and the bodies fell to the ground as the corpses they were. He felt his power surge back to its full strength and he directed his focus on the woman. The woman must have felt the change, let alone seeing three “initiates” slump dead to the floor around him, and immediately summoned a powerful gust of air, sending it flying at him. The interloper held up his hand, the gust parting around him as it sent objects flying away behind him, including a portion of the broken table and several benches. While the spell seemed formidable, it must have been something beyond that because the woman’s reaction to the ease with which he had dispelled it told him she was not used to seeing such a thing. Instead of taking a bow, he took advantage of her momentary surprise and summoned his own powerful flow of ydra, this one aimed at the door. The door between the woman and the frame. With crushing force, the door slammed the woman against the frame, cracking her rib cage and sending her sprawling face first into the room with a frantic squawk. The door slammed shut behind her and the woman rolled onto her side, holding her shattered ribs with one hand while aiming the other at him, an impressive ball of green light growing there, seeming to pull in light in vaporous streaks from their surroundings. As impressive as the spell was surely to be, the interloper wouldn’t let her get the chance to demonstrate it. He held up his hand and began walking slowly towards the woman.

“You see, that’s the problem with you people: you keep pushing, and pushing, resisting your fate–which is to ultimately be and remain unremarkable.”

The woman gasped as her spell began to dwindle, the light flickering on and off in her hand as the interloper staved off the flows like snipping strings.

“How in Rynn are you…”

“…Yet your persist with no goal in mind. An arrow nocked but aimed at nothing. And like a temporary flame, suddenly…”

The interloper twisted his hand in the air and the woman’s spell vanished.

“…you are extinguished, by the gentlest of passing breezes.”

The woman looked terrified, like she had become a little girl again and was just discovering her greatest fear.

“You…no one can control another’s flows! What sorcery is this?”

The interloper continued, ignoring her rambling. “For you see, even the breeze has a purpose: to move the air here or there. But you and your despicable cult, you are groundless. So allow me to give you some ground.”

The woman gasped as she slammed against the jade tiles, an oppressive force settling down on her. She screamed as the force intensified, her bones beginning to crack as the force mulched her against the floor. The tiles cracked as her body began to implode on itself and, with a furtive spurt of gore, the ground all but caved in around her, burying the macabre mess under dirt and splintered green in a pit nearly a blade deep. The interloper walked up to the shattered edge of the hole and examined his work. He turned back and looked at the lifeless forms slumped haphazardly about the room, another signature of his presence.

“A sermon, huh?”

At once, he raised all four thralls to standing, though it was a considerable effort on his part. He glanced at Nuri’s corpse and gagged.

“No, no, you can’t go dressed like that.”

He snapped his fingers and the corpse turned to dust, the brown particles wafting away in the stagnant air. The interloper fanned the dead elf particles that had drifted near him away from his face, choking.

“Disgusting. Where is housekeeping when you need them?”

He thought he heard a sound from the balcony above just then, followed by a significant energy flicker, but it was gone nearly as fast as it had come. Likely just a rat or another one of those wretched pigeons.

He turned his gaze back upon his remaining three thralls and nodded.

“Well fellas, why don’t we go see what this archbishop has to say. What do you think?”

The mouth of the moa cren moved up and down in inarticulate movements. “I say that’s a swell idea.”

Basel’s corpse responded in like kind, hopping up and down as hit flapped its arms like a marionette. “Yes, yes! Four is company, indeed! No one will notice us.”

The interloper stopped as he realized what he was doing. The corpses stared back at him with his eyes, watching him assess himself.

He frowned and crossed his arms. “Oh stop being so damn judgemental. It’s not like you never talk to yourself when you’re bored.”

***

The doors shut behind Kuu and several seconds later, the pram whizzed away near-silent but for the hum of the resonators as they released their energy to the inductive motors that propelled the tram along the tracks. Like the last time she was at the Industrial junction terminex, the platform was bare except for herself. And just as the last time, that was very likely due to the fact that she had ridden the line multiple times, over and over and over, until every last passenger had disembarked but herself, until the very early hours of the morning. No one, it appeared, had much to do at two in the morning.

Except herself, of course.

Kuu cradled the pod-chit between her hands, like a sacred artifact that she protected from even the slightest of breezes, or a stray violent thought. Her sensors told her she was being illogical but her executive bypasses overrode the angel on her shoulder and she couldn’t help but find herself, once again, attempting to access the Industrial sector. The strangest thing was, she had recently reflected, she didn’t even know why she was going through so much effort to help someone who may or may not exist at all. Someone who may not even need her help. But something–some rogue misplaced and malformed program from deep within her subconscious protocol–would not let it go. Somehow, she knew there was a someone and that person would need help very soon. Whether it was days or years, she did not know, but time was merely relative to a cybrid who lived an indefinite amount of it. And so, she was driven forward, there again as she slowly, step-by-grueling-step, approached the chit reader.

Much to her relief, this time the reader did not personify as the terrifying antagonist that it had the last. Kuu hadn’t thought cybrids could retain emotional damages but her last encounter with the pod reader had proven that theory wrong. She was scarred–mortified by the idea of facing the reader-as-monster again. But it was a risk she would have to continue to take. The portals were the only way to the main Industrial nexus which would take her to where she needed to go–to Old Wes itself. Like her nagging mission to begin with, Kuu didn’t know why or how she knew Old Wes was her target, but the image was as clear in her mind as if it had been etched there by a laser opticomodeller. She had been given a mission and she refused to fail due to lack of trying. Nearly every aspect of her life had been predicated on the notion of being sub-optimal; unremarkable. A filthy little cybrid. Often told she would amount to nothing special by her superiors, that she would never transcend her peers and become even notable, these were the kinds of narratives that she had let define her for the last two decades of her life. If it could even be called that. Kuu often wondered if she were really alive at all. Surely, were she a living being, others would treat her differently than they did.

Wouldn’t they?

Perhaps, there were more scars there than she had previously thought.

Interesting.

Kuu managed to get to the booth at the foot of the reader, the chit slot merely an arm’s reach away. Looking up at the large amalgam curve of the scanner, Kuu half expected sinister eyes to form and the whole of the admitting arch to sprout teeth and chomp down on her as she neared, but it didn’t. The scanner retained its mundane, completely unassuming and un-biological properties. It was just the scanner admitting passersby into the Industrial portal, into which they could catch a pod to the nexus.

Just a boring…old…scanner.

Why then was Kuu trembling in fear? She wondered this as she watched her hand raise with the pod chit held in it, shaking violently as if she had a medical condition. The way her heart was racing, her sensors’ feedback told her it very well could be a condition, though Kuu knew what it was. She was afraid. And while Kuu knew she looked like an eight year old girl–would always look like an eight year old girl–she had several decades under her and had learned she had a protocol that could deal with fear. There was a protocol for everything. Thank the Oversight for that one. So Kuu dialed in her anxiety-relief protocol, mixed in with a meditation mantra app that she had downloaded the week prior, and watched in her HUD as her biometrics quickly began to level off back to normal. The palsy in her arm slowly began to abate and she was able to hold her arm steady.

Kuu took a deep breath, a step forward, and placed the chit in the reading apparatus.

She stood stone-still for several seconds as the reader scanned her information. Or rather, the information, as it was not hers to begin with. But they were very long seconds, she reflected while in them. Though time was relative to cybrids, it could cut both ways: extremely long bouts of time could seem short in comparison, but snippets of time could also extend way out into the vast plains of the unknown, towards the edges that may not even be there, as waiting gave way to wasting away. And that was how Kuu felt in the near five seconds that the multi-processor took to assess her/not her credentials.

But then came the chime, that oh so glorious chime, like the voice of an electronic angel bugling the call that opened the gates to the Realm itself. The chime of success.

The chit worked and she had been admitted through the portal!

Elated, Kuu retrieved the chit as it popped back out of the slot and she stepped out of the booth, her heart racing in excitement as she proceeded to the next step.

Except, she did not proceed to the next step. Bumping into the white amalgam barrier, it did not raise to admit her to the portal. And the portal itself remained steadfastly, defiantly closed.

What was happening?

And then she saw what she had missed. Flashing ever-so-subtly to the right of her periphery, a floating holo-feed read her a prompt:

PLEASE ADMINISTER SECONDARY BIOMETRICS FOR ADMISSION OR VACATE STATION TO ADMIT NEXT GUEST.

Kuu’s heart sank for the thousandth time in her life, back to the emotional pit in which she had grown so accustomed. How could she have forgotten that portals required a two-pass verification! The pod chit itself wouldn’t be enough.

She needed a biological sample from the user if she was ever to gain access to the industrial complex.

A rumbling sound from above shook her out of her self-deprecation as laughter began to fill the platform. Gasping, Kuu scurried backward, one of her shoes catching on the other as she tripped and fell on to her rear. The scanner laughed maniacally, just as it had before, though this time it seemed louder than previous.

STUPID LITTLE ‘BRID. DID YOU THINK YOU COULD FOOL ME SO EASILY?

Kuu yelped and quickly got to her feet, running back toward the boarding platform.

YES, RUN LITTLE ‘BRID, RUN! THAT IS ALL YOU CAN EVER DO–RUN FROM THAT WHICH YOU CANNOT FACE, THAT WHICH YOU CANNOT DEFEAT. RUN, RUN, RUN!

Luckily, the next tram arrived just as Kuu neared the platform. The doors slid open and Kuu rushed to the back of the car and slumped down on the immaculately-kept bucket seats. Despite the thousands of people who rode them every day, somehow, the service crew was able to keep them looking like new. But there were no service crew to thank and no onlookers on that line, and Kuu was thankful for it as she didn’t want anyone seeing her in her current state. The doors closed as the tram began to pick up speed, carrying it away from the Industrial terminex, but it would be a long while before Kuu could not hear the taunting laughter of the pod reader, following her on yet another miserable ride home.

RUN LITTLE ‘BRID, RUN! YOU WILL BE BACK AND YOU WILL FAIL. YOU WILL ALWAYS FAIL BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT YOU WERE DESIGNED TO DO.

Kuu buried her face in her hands and began to sob.