Spirit Scanning

“Thankfully, your rough entry hasn’t raised too many flags. A minor blip picked up by the sensory outposts, but nothing they could track. Still has them on alert,” Martius said as he led them into his laboratory. To the outside observer, he only had Lynn following him. In truth, Vivian had a veil over the rest of their large party, assisted by Barbara’s sound manipulation. The cloak enabled them to safely navigate the orderly grid of the city’s streets easily enough and slip into the imposing and ornately designed campus of the university.

John had marveled at the detailed stonework that made up the majority of the architecture. It reminded him of the various dwarven settings he’d seen from games and films, leading him to wonder if those were influenced by real places in the Abyss and if it was offensive to the gnomes to associate their home with dwarves.

The interior of Martius’ quarters was far more normal than John had been expecting, save for some of the furniture being more suited for the gnome’s stature. The living area had a cozy feeling, complete with a fireplace and a large bookshelf. The lab, however, was far closer to what he had imagined. Machinery both mundane and fantastical covered the shelving that lined the walls, breaking only for the number of doors that branched off into other chambers.

“Well, that’s a load off,” Aria said. “All that’s left then is the payment for this part of the job and we’ll be on our way until it's time for the return trip.”

“I would advise against leaving for the time being,” Martius said, drawing John out of his mental conversation with Senka. “While the authorities don’t know exactly what happened, they’ll be on the lookout for anyone they deem suspicious. And I don’t think I need to tell you what qualities will end up on that list.”

“Non-gnomes,” Aria summed up. “Suppose it is easier to move around with someone who can throw up an invisibility field.”

She turned and smiled at Vivian before continuing, “Guess we can wait around until you're done with whatever you need them for. Then we can go.”

The gnome grunted thoughtfully before eyeing Piper. “What are you going to do with her?”

“Just gonna send her back,” Aria answered quickly, a tad too quickly in John’s opinion.

‘She’s not planning on killing her, is she?’ he thought, suppressing a shiver.

‘It would make finding out why Vanessa wants info on Beth a little hard,’ Senka remarked.

‘I’m a bit more concerned with being an accessory to ****,’ John shot back. ‘If she was sent to kill me, I think I’d be a bit less worried about this, especially after Bill, but she was only after information. Killing her seems excessive.’

‘Not that Aria knows that fact,’ Senka pointed out. ‘Revealing that you have an ability to glean knowledge about people and things might be the only way to prevent her ****.’

‘At least we have time to work out a plan and I doubt she’d try to kill her right with us there,’ John thought.

“Well, I say make yourselves comfortable,” Martius said, eyes sweeping over everyone. “I have no idea how long we’ll be and… Where did the blue one go?”

John turned to where he’d last seen Kiera, finding her missing.

“Shit,” John exclaimed as everyone else began to look around for her. “She’s got this sort of imperceptibility thing going on. If we aren’t paying attention to her, she can just pass by unnoticed.”

“Well, that’s certainly not good,” Martius exclaimed, a mild panic settling into his voice. “There is a lot of equipment and…”

The gnome stopped short, his head snapped down the far corridor. “She has a link to Harker. She might be drawn to him.”

He took off at a hurried pace, everyone following after him.

“Would that be a bad thing if she went to him?” Vivian asked as they moved deeper into the lab.

“We have no idea what could happen if they were to come in contact,” the gnome said. “We’re dealing with very esoteric forces. For all we know, a simple touch could render their minds permanently overloaded. Caution and methodological examination is needed.”

The corridor ended in a large room, dominated by a gurney. Laid in it was Harker, looking more pale than the form Kiera had changed into earlier. The blue haired woman indeed was drawn to him, standing right at his bedside, her hand extended towards the **** man’s brow, mere centimeters from touching him.

“Kiera, wait!” John shouted, not wanting to risk any harm coming to her. Thankfully, her hand remained frozen in its place as she turned to face them. John’s breath was caught in his throat when her usual blank expression was overwhelmed with sadness, tears building in her eyes.

“Help,” she quietly said, the single word dripping with desperation.

“We are,” John carefully remarked, slowly stepping towards her. “But we have to do it carefully so we don’t make things worse. So, I need you to step back so we can do that.”

Martius moved to prevent him from getting close, but stopped short of grabbing him as Kiera pulled her hand back. She remained in place as John approached and he carefully placed a hand on her shoulder.

He gently directed her away from Harker, the tension in the room dropping as several held breaths were released.

“Alright,” Martius sighed in relief, wiping his brow. “I suppose, given the pressing matters at hand, that we shouldn’t tarry any longer.”

There was a general murmur of agreement and John gently squeezed Kiera’s shoulder, silently reassuring her that everything was going to be ok. At least he hoped such was the case.

Martius ushered everyone involved in the ‘breaching event’, as he called it, into a room adjacent to Harker’s makeshift hospital room. Aria and Barbara elected to not involve themselves in things and retreated to grab a bite from Martius’ kitchen and rest. They dragged Piper with them after Martius gave an offhand comment about the sensitive topics they were about to discuss.

The gnome quickly began his examination, asking them to recount everything that happened, going as far back to the Dawnseeker’s fatal encounter. While they gave their testimony, Martius waved a number of crystal topped devices around them.

Once they reached Sunday’s events, Martius’ attention became affixed to John and Kiera once John began to recount the vision and the aftermath. Given the detail they needed to reveal, John described how Observe worked, using it on one of Martius’ devices to prove its function and fidelity to the truth of something. Once they finished describing the events from a few hours ago, along with Kiera’s overall condition, the gnome rubbed his chin through his beard.

“Do you think you could do that ‘spirit examination’ on Harker?” he asked John. “If nothing else, seeing how his ‘soulscape’ is supposed to look in relation to Kiera’s could give us a clue into how to remedy the situation.”

“I can give it a shot,” John said after a moment to tap down his nerves. “Just going to need a moment to get my focus.”

“Of course, of course,” the gnome said, before looking at Lynn. “Given the reaction the girl had, perhaps it would be prudent to issue a mild sedative on hand. Just something to calm him down if he starts thrashing.”

Lynn frowned slightly. “I’m a bit hesitant to use anything like that, given his condition. It might be safer to just be ready to restrain him."

"Understandable." Martius nodded. "The gurney has bindings; we can use them as the first line of defense. We'll have to set up some equipment, so take a few minutes to ready yourself."

The gnome and alchemist hurried back to Harker to prepare and John let out a breath.

"Are you okay, John?" Vivian asked, a gentle hand coming to rest on his arm.

"Just a bit nervous," he admitted, his mouth a bit dry. "When we did this with Kiera, Mason led the way. And that ended a bit messy. I'm a bit worried about touching something I'm not supposed to and making things worse."

"Guess this is a bit more complicated than playing 'Operation'," Beth succinctly remarked. "But Mason didn't make this spirit reading thing out to be some sort of dangerous move. It's just looking real deep into someone, right?"

"It's a little more complicated than that, but Beth's take isn't too far off," Senka supplied. "What happened with Kiera was more due to how her powers interact with people."

"Right," John sighed. He shook his head. "Now's not the time to second guess things, is it? We’re here and we've got people to help. Can't chicken out after everything I've done."

He smiled at Kiera, but it faded quickly. She had been even more out of it than normally, her head remaining turned to Harker’s room.

Letting out one more sigh, John stood up and squared his shoulders. Before he could leave, Aeolia said, "I think some luck's needed."

What followed was a not too quick series of kisses by his girls, done in the order they had joined the relationship. By the time Beth, the last one, had pulled back from him, his uneasy expression had been washed away, a slight smile on his face.

"Well, now I can't blow it," he said.

"Get in there, loverboy," Aeolia commanded, playfully pushing him out the door. They followed behind him, so they didn't see his somewhat giddy expression fade back to one of seriousness, though now with far less doubt coloring it.

With his mind focused, John could pick out the magic flowing around him with Arcane Sense. It had a somewhat sterile feeling and was slick, like touching stainless steel. It left him feeling like there was meant to be nothing but serious business done here.

It helped him get the last bit of doubt out of his head as he stepped into Harker’s room. Lynn and Martius had fastened his wrists and ankles with the cuffs attached to the gurney and had a number of sensory devices arrayed around him.

John could feel a faint presence radiate from Harker. It was a pale shadow of what he felt residing in Kiera.

‘Why was his aura stronger in Kiera?’ he wondered as he fired off an Observe.

‘Well, that’s about what I expected,’ he thought, dismissing the display. ‘Kiera only got a level after she woke up. Guess it’s a fair bet he’s a higher level than me.’

John cleared that unhelpful thought from his head then looked at Martius.

“Anything I need to be aware of?” he asked as he walked up to Harker’s bedside.

The gnome looked a bit uncomfortable for a moment before answering. “Harker has a curse on him. It flared up something fierce right after the event, but hasn’t done anything since.”

“I don’t sense anything,” John said.

“It’s a deep affliction,” Martius revealed. “And with Harker in such a state, I believe it has entered a similar state to him. It should be safe for you to use your power.”

‘I do not hold his assertion of safety in high regard,’ Senka’s thoughts drifted into John’s head.

‘Neither do I,’ John remarked. ‘But we do need to figure out how to fix them. I’ll be careful.’

John slowly brought his hand up and gingerly placed it on Harker’s shoulder. He closed his eyes, putting everything else in the room out of mind. He began to send his mana into Harker, letting it flow into him as naturally as possible. A moment later, John's perspective shifted.

Harker’s spirit was even more empty than Kiera’s. There was no fog, only a dull red expanse above, below and to every horizon. At least upon first glance, that's all there was.

As John became accustomed to the void, he began to see thin strands of bright red. However, when he tried to reach them, they broke like spider webs and floated beyond his grasp.

John kept trying to reach them, modifying his approach each time, but failed regardless of method. He did notice one thing from his endeavors: every time the threads broke, they flew in the same direction, regardless of how he approached them.

'If that's not a sign of where to head, I don't know what is,' he thought as he began to follow after the threads. After what felt like an eternity, he saw something crest over the horizon. It was a towering crimson line, brighter at the center and darkening to near black along the edges.

Overpowering heat radiated from it, making John keep a bit of distance initially. He slowly inched closer, noticing thin, jagged lines of both red and black spreading out haphazardly from it.

‘Guess I have to touch this,’ John thought with great trepidation, recalling how touching the bundle of Harker’s energy triggered a reaction from Kiera. ‘Feels a lot more dangerous.’

Besides the heat, John could make out three distinct presences. One was a more frenetic version of the surrounding energy, radiating a sort of panic. The second felt more like the power that Bill had tapped into, sharp with conviction. The third was the most distinct and John could only describe it as looking down into a deep pit and the vertigo that followed.

Suddenly, John’s vision changed. He was no longer in the vast expanse of Harker’s spirit, but in a room, dimly lit by a dying fire within a wide hearth. John knew the chamber to be a lounge of sorts, books lining the walls, with a number of interesting curios placed among them. Not that he could actually see that as his vision was dominated by the visage of a pink haired woman. Her face was set in grim determination as she drove a thin blade into his guts.

Memories not his own flooded John’s mind as pain began to radiate from the stab wound. He knew this was Harker’s traitorous apprentice, and pieces of information he had gleaned began to slot into place. The blade that was stabbing Harker was the one that cursed him, the one Phantom Reach was using, the one that killed so many.

And the key to Amarlis.

John suddenly found himself back in his own body in Harker’s room, his hand still on the comatose man’s shoulder. Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, the sounds muted as everyone’s attention turned towards the door, each expression a mix of shock and horror.

Kiera stood just in the doorway, her body twisting as her powers were going out of control. Parts of her body shifted into Harker’s at random, twisting her form into a horror collage. The shifting to her legs caused her balance to fail and she fell into Vivian’s arms, the redhead struggling to keep the mercurial girl upright as she shifted away.

John could see thin red lines stretching from Harker to Kiera, some growing more prominent as the small girl’s body transformed into Harker. His eyes met both Kiera’s gray and Harker’s black and something clicked in his mind.

“Get her over here,” John ordered, his tone uncharacteristically firm. He almost didn’t recognise the sound of his own voice. “I know how to put Harker back in his body.”

Martius looked like he was about to say something cautioning against such an action but Kiera convulsed violently against Vivian, her body undergoing more rapid changes.

“Listen,” the strangled word tore from Kiera’s throat, changing from her voice during the first syllable to Harker’s at the last one, “to him, Martius.”

“Do it,” the gnome hurriedly said, moving out of the way to ensure a clear path. “Hurry!”

Aeolia and Beth sprang into action, taking the convulsing Kiera from Vivian and frog marching her to John. He saw concerned expressions on both their faces, worried eyes meeting his.

He smiled at them. “I’ve got this.”

Things seemed to slow down as he reached out to touch Kiera. A shaky arm of rapidly shifting proportions moved to meet him, the hand managing to remain in Kiera’s form when John took it.

A jolt shot through John and a feeling like thousands of tiny legs crawling over him spread out, going from the hand holding Kiera, up his arm, across his chest and back before marching down to Harker. Accompanying the sensation were arcs of red lightning that flowed out of Kiera and into the **** man, his body going rigid under his hand. Flashes of memory played before John’s eyes, going by too quick for him to be able to understand what he was seeing.

He began to feel lightheaded, and was dimly aware of worried voices around him, but he couldn’t stop. He knew, somehow, that stopping before the process was done wouldn’t end well for anyone involved. He also knew that whatever he was facilitating was nearly done.

The spirit lines began to diminish then finally stopped flowing over him. Harker took in a deep, rasping breath as his eyes shot open. In the same moment, Kiera let out gasp of her own before going slack, letting go of John’s hand as she fell back into Aeolia and Beth’s arms.

John let out a small chuckle before his eyes rolled back and he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

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