Book 6. Chapter 38 |
Brin created a Mirror Image to make a graceful departure from Iola and Domingo. The Split Mind he assigned to the task would replace the illusion with a Mirror Man just in case they wanted to shake his hand or anything when he said goodbye, but Brin was already running out the door under cover of invisibility. He dashed towards the underground garden.
Even though there were windows from Machado’s dojo leading directly into the cavern, the hallways didn’t get there easily, and he wasted precious time running around the Circle of Life’s maze of offices and classrooms before finally breaking into the workrooms attached to the cave. His Invisible Eyes hadn’t found Bia yet, after having lost her when she squirmed through the washroom’s tiny window.
“Marksi! Find her!”
Marksi darted ahead of Brin into the garden. Marksi seemed to know where he was going; maybe he’d picked up her scent. Or maybe he was just smart. There were five exits from the underground garden, and only one that headed outside. Neither of them had never been through that way, but Marksi seemed sure that’s where it went. Brin had Invisible Eyes on all of the exits just in case, but he bet Bia was heading towards the one Marksi was aiming for.
A [Scout] had some pretty good Skills for stealth and if Brin wasn’t watching it, he probably would’ve missed it when two workers opened the back door and she slipped through and passed them like a faded wind. But stealth wasn’t invisibility.
Unfortunately, that doorway was warded against illusions and he felt his Invisible Eye freeze and fizzle out when it tried to follow her. Those were the Tower wards that targeted and negated any magic trying to go in or out. So that exit really must go straight to the outside surface.
He crossed the underground garden, dampening the sound with his footsteps and keeping away from any ground that looked loose enough to move from his steps. He had to run wide around the plants and other people so it wouldn’t disturb them with the wind of his passing, but he thought he was making good time, until he noticed his log blinking at him.
Brin 2: Whoa, slow down please.
Brin 2: Stop.
Brin stopped, sending Marksi on ahead.
Main: What’s wrong?
Brin 2: The glass is getting hard to control from this far away. And Iola wanted a hug.
Main: That’ll be like hugging a rock.
Brin 2: I’m handling it. Just give me 30 seconds.
Brin waited, suppressing the urge to tap his foot while Bia got further and further away.
Brin 2: Go, go, go.
Brin started running again. Luckily, Marksi had left the exit door open, and Brin ran through. The Tower’s wards attacked his invisibility, forcibly removing his magic, but Brin was far enough down the tunnel by the time he was fully visible that he didn’t think anyone would’ve been able to identify him from inside the tunnel.
He’d wondered if there were stairs or something that would lead up to ground level, but instead it was a straight horizontal tunnel, a stone cylinder. The one plus side was that there wasn’t any place for Bia to get lost in here; there was only one direction to go.
He sprinted down the hall, and quickly passed the two walking workers who’d been at the door when Bia went through. At the end of the tunnel, it opened straight into open air. Looking behind, he saw that the view of the Tower was partially blocked by a steep hill, while looking forward he saw an entire section of Steamshield that he’d never seen before.
The dirt roads in the immediate area spoke of a poor section of town. It had the slight scent of horse manure that hung over every place horses were allowed to go, but otherwise didn’t seem especially seedy or dangerous, just out of fashion compared to the other side of the hill.
Brin recast his Invisible Eyes and quickly found Marksi, who was running down the middle of a street, not hiding so that Brin would be able to see him. From there, he could see the quick shape of Bia who seemed to be taking advantage of every bit of cover and blending in with the road, all while running a full sprint.
Brin had an Invisible Eye to project his voice to Marksi, “You can stop there. She won’t be able to lose my Invisible Eyes out here. Let’s see where she goes if she thinks she got away.”
She ducked down an alley to the side, and Marksi kept going straight. Then he doubled back around the wrong direction. Brin followed Bia with his Invisible Eyes, and she zigged and zagged, probably hoping to confuse her scent in case Marksi picked it up again.
Suddenly she stopped and rocked on her heels, heaving breath in and out as if struck by something. She stumbled into an alley and leaned her back against a wall, breathing deep in and out with her eyes closed.
Brin walked towards her, not rushing. Now that they were out in the open, Brin would quickly blend in among the other people on the street. Bia’s [Scout] sense could pick up sound and scent for more than a mile around, but he didn’t think she’d be able to tell him apart from other people on the road, at least not until he was really close.
Her inexplicable delay gave him a chance to catch up, even walking regularly. He was only a block away, hidden from view by the buildings on the street, before she opened her eyes and started moving again. This time, she only moved at a regular person’s jog.
He left Marksi behind since the dragonling would stand out more to Bia’s senses, and continued to approach at walking speed. If she went too far ahead, he could go ahead and order a hackney, but he was content to let her draw a little further ahead, since she wasn’t even close to his range for light magic.
She ran on for a few blocks more, seeming to wince with every step from wounds he couldn’t see. Eventually, she stopped at an abandoned building, maybe apartments at one point. It was three stories tall, and took up an entire city block.
Bia lurched over as if she were going to puke, but then held it in. After a moment to recover herself, she crouched down, this time not from fatigue or illness, but like she was preparing to jump.
“” With the command of Language, Bia jumped the full three stories. She overshot it by a good bit, flipped in the air, and then landed gently on the edge.
She stepped over to the center of the building, and then bent over again. This time, she really did vomit. But it was strange.
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It was exactly like the image was being censored in his old world’s anime. Rather than the usual contents of a stomach, Bia seemed to be puking a perfectly striped colorful rainbow. It seemed to be liquid coming out, but rather than splashing when it hit the ground, it disappeared into a puffy white cloud, shimmering with golden sparkles.
Brin laughed. He felt a little ashamed at laughing at Bia’s misfortune, but it was so completely incongruous and surprising that there was no other choice.
“She’s contracted some sort of rainbow-puking disease. I don’t blame her for running. I would want some privacy, too,” Brin projected to Marksi.
It went on for quite a while and when she was done the strain put some little rainbow colored tears in her eyes in a way that actually made him feel bad for laughing. Was that rainbow disease making all her body fluids look like that?
Brin went back through his recent memory, to Bia at the workout. The sweat had made her clothes stick to her body in a way that was very nice to recollect, but it hadn’t been weirdly colored. Then, after toweling off and getting changed, she’d gone over to the mirror, and still no sign of strange colors.
She’d done her hair, fixed her clothes, nothing out of the ordinary. Then, with one hand on the door, mouth slightly open, ready with words on her lips to tease Brin for something, she’d glanced at the mirror and saw something that alarmed her.
Her tongue was faintly, subtly… technicolor weirdness.
Now, she pulled out a pair of shortswords from some sort of storage artifact. She was sweating and tired again, but this time she displayed none of that cheerful post-workout vigor. She looked sunken and bedraggled, and not at all ready for whatever fight she was preparing for.
She slashed at nothing Brin could see, then spun and slashed again. A beam of rainbow color shot out from nowhere. She dodged, but a follow-up beam scraped her thigh.
Despite the similarities, it didn’t look like Marksi’s rainbow laser. It didn’t emit light, it was just colorful. And it wasn’t instantaneous the way a laser was, because Bia had dodged it. Just very quick.
Brin needed to see what she was fighting, and scanned his Lightmind’s menu for an answer. X-Ray felt like a good place to start. He braced himself for the Mana drain from casting so far away, and used a few words of Language to smother the whole rooftop in the spell.
The first thing he noticed was that there was no Mana penalty at all. He was casting as easily as if he were right there next to Bia.
This was his improvement to [Warbound]. For whatever reason, the System considered him to be “in battle” and it considered Bia to be an ally.
He also sensed them. Vaguely humanoid figures, flying through the air surrounding the rooftop. Now that he could get an approximate shape and location, he could use [Wyrdic Inspect].
Shroudling
Just that word. No level, no details. It was enough. The insight from the Wyrd was more. Water magic. Bia was not the enemy, she was the host. She was food. Brin couldn’t even argue with it. You couldn’t tell something it didn’t have the right to eat the prey it was designed to eat. You could only prevent it by force. The last impression he felt was water. These things were made of water.
The Motley Shroud had something to do with this.
“” Bia whispered, and then jumped towards one of the shroudlings. It dodged and spun through the air easily, but she followed it with a [Scout]’s superior Dexterity and speed.
She cut straight through it, which didn’t seem to harm it, but then slashed again, and again until whatever energy was motivating it ran out and the thing dispersed.
During that time, the others continued to shoot their water beams, and she took several more scores on the arms and legs. If this kept up, she’d be covered with as many scars as him.
Brin created shields of glass first, summoned to fly about and protect Bia as she fought. Then he summoned his Laser Drones, which did nothing except give a plausible source for his laser. When he had six of the things ready, he fired.
The lasers blasted the shroudlings, cutting straight through without resistance. He hadn’t even given them particularly strong beams, deciding to ramp them up slowly to get a feel for how much power was needed. Not much was needed at all, apparently. These things were weak to heat and light.
On the other hand, they didn’t seem to hurt the shroudlings too badly. A single puncture wasn’t enough to kill these things. They fired their water beams, and shattered each of his Laser Drones in one big volley.
He lashed out with summoned fire, but stopped the spell before it could make more than a candle’s worth of flame. That was prohibitively draining. Right, the alteration to [Warbound] only mentioned light, sound, and glass. He couldn't cast fire unless he was really present.
Instead, he used his Firestarter spell from the Lightmind. It used focused light and sound to start fires and was really only supposed to be useful to replace matches, but with the amount of Mana he could push into it, he could create a healthy blaze.
Using his X-Ray as a guide, he created pinpointed eruptions of fire on top of each of the shroudlings, and made the flames follow them wherever they tried to twist and turn.
He burned away a few of them, but annoyingly, they abandoned the attack and fled.
He only managed to follow a few of them, blasting them out of the air as quickly as he could, but the majority got away.
One of the ones he was able to track was heading towards Marksi, so Brin alerted him. “There’s a ghost flying towards you. It’s also a loser copycat who thinks it can use your rainbow laser. Show it who’s boss.”
Marksi saw it. His dragon eyes were much more attuned to magic, and he could see colors that Brin could not. The shroudling blasted a beam at him, but he snaked around it easily, pounced, and snatched the shroudling out of the air. Then he slurped the entire thing up in one go.
“Was it tasty?”
It was.
“See if you can find some more, then.” For his part, Brin had lost or killed the rest.
While Marksi prowled, Brin considered the Bia problem. She was still spinning in place on the rooftop, alert, muttering language to help her find any shroudlings that might be nearby.
Well, she already knew he was an [Illusionist], and she couldn’t have missed his spells to help her. He decided to show himself. He created a Mirror Image on the rooftop.
This time he felt the Mana penalty. He was out of combat.
You have quelled a shroudling outbreak.
Experience split among party members.
“Damn Anshar’s broken tooth, Brin! Why can’t you just stay out of this?”
“Are you ok? Do you need a healer?” asked Brin.
“I’m fine,” said Bia. She put both shortswords back into a pouch that was much too small for them and pulled out a salve, beginning to dab her wounds with it. “Just go away.”
“What were those things?”
She clicked her tongue and shook her head.
“I’m not trying to pull information out of you. I just want to help you. Are you still in danger? Do you need me to fetch someone?”
“No!” she shouted. “No. Don’t do that. I’ll be fine. It’s over.”
“What if they come back?”
“You’ve already seen everything I didn’t want you to see, so now the secret is out. You’re going to run back to the Tower and tell Lumina everything, so unless I kill you here, which I can’t even do because you’re probably three miles away from here–”
“I’m three blocks down to the north. I’m passing behind that red house.”
“I’m not going to kill someone who just maybe saved my life. Anshar’s actual surgically removed left nipple, Brin! What do you take me for? Point is, you know, so now Lumina knows, so the Master knows, so I’ve failed to hide this from anyone. If it happens again, I’ll just grab help from someone there in the Tower.”
Brin shrugged. “Since it’s out anyway, you could finally just tell me–”
“No. I’m going. I’ll see you at school tomorrow, and we can talk about anything you want as long as it isn’t this. Don’t bother following me. I’m going straight home.”
She walked stiffly to the edge of the building and hopped down. She landed hard, but stood again and made her way to a main road, where she signalled a hackney. Brin had an Invisible Eye follow her anyway, but good as her word, she went straight back to the Cobol compound.
Brin returned to the Tower, because Bia was right and he was absolutely going straight to Lumina to tell her everything. He’d probably sell all this to the Cult of Tenerer as well.
On the way, he saw Vitor.
The young friend of the Cobol family, the one who had a Class perfectly suited for fighting invisible water ghosts, was coming out of the Circle of Earth. He also had that healthy post-workout glow that Bia had sported only an hour before.
Brin approached, and Vitor’s good mood disappeared. He stiffened, and after seeing the look in Brin’s eyes, told his friends to go on ahead.
“If you’re here about Gyromia, I already apologized to her satisfaction,” said Vitor.
Brin massaged his eyes. “Sancta Solia, Vitor! What did you do to poor Gyromia? Don’t answer that. I’ll hear it from her. No, I wanted to talk to you about something else. Another lady was attacked today.”
“Say who! I will avenge her if I have the power.”
“She was attacked by ghosts. Water creatures of some kind, but they were invisible and flying and left nothing behind when they died,” said Brin. “I need you to tell me about the Motley Shroud.”
