January (Wednesday)

Author's Note: Refer to chapter 47 for Neve's prominent appearance.

Judas Contract Subject 003
Codename: Delphyne
In keeping with draconic tradition, Sorvel only has the one true name. She was, among a few others in this contract, trained by the former Strength (hereafter referred to by his declassified first name, Wallace) before his betrayal, expulsion, and corruption. When the refugees from what was Tersol arrived in K-66, they spent some time apart before forming the guild that would become the Rider-Waites. During this time, Wallace took on a number of apprentices which he brought back with him, including Sorvel and Lucien Idagon.
Though the two were close when the guild was formed, he quickly surrounded himself with much more powerful peers, especially when she reached her physical peak. How close exactly they were is unknown, but within the year he was no longer her sponsor, instead being trained and assigned missions by The Chariot.
Sorvel has been a dedicated guild member and a fierce protector of civilians since her very first mission. She pays particular attention to crowd control, and can be quite the glutton for punishment. Though she has the best of intentions, this passion could of course be exploited through words or magic. Notably, in the past she has shrugged off such control if sufficiently angry through a sort of berserker’s rage.
This is the crux of her fighting style. Her scales are as hard as well-forged adamantine, lab-tested with samples willingly provided. They are similarly resistant to most elemental magics, though due to the cold-blooded nature of the hybrid dragon ice attacks may be particularly effective. Through her rage, she becomes resistant or immune to psychological attack, as well as illusions and enchantments. Stealth is possible but difficult, given her naturally sharp senses and Truesight glare.
In a battle, Sorvel’s foremost trait is her endurance. Little can put her down and that which does, does not keep her down for long. She has herculean strength, capable of sparring equally with any Ace of Swords while enraged, and holding her own against The Chariot in his default state. She moves across the battlefield like a dragoon leaping around, but she treats herself as the spear, often entering battle with a flying kick and attacking relentlessly with lunges and leaps. She can also utilize chi and draconic magic through her breath to a variety of effects, most often fire or lightning based. The fire she conjures cannot be manipulated by pyromancers, though it can be dispelled by other chi-based fighters.
Due to her fighting style, prolonged battles are inadvisable. A few agents from [REDACTED] given sufficient preparation could potentially sneak up on Sorvel to neutralize her as a threat, though it’s difficult to imagine anyone incapacitating her in a single strike. Piercing damage works best against her scales, though in a peaceful state she reveals her soft, **** belly. Despite appearances, her skull is much thicker than a human’s, further protected by her horns. Her eyes are another physical weak point, though they’re resistant to arcane magical attacks.
Similarly, in a peaceful state her mind is **** to attack. However, the resulting pain may agitate her and make the attack itself less effective. Thus, pacifying through mental magic would be much more effective. Illusions will never work, but if her mind can be modified subtly enough to keep her peaceful, she could potentially be avoided altogether.
If you find yourself in a prolonged fight with Sorvel, you may be able to exploit her lack of fateweaving capability. Change the barrier you’re in to your advantage, either to buy more time to recover or to escape her. Notably, her sheer strength would allow her to escape most trap barriers, so she can always retreat. However, any time spent outside of a fight cools her down and gives you time to recover.
More than anything else, escape if she becomes too powerful. Nobody knows her limits now, not even The Chariot. If your quarrel is impersonal, there is a good chance her blind rage will allow you to escape if she is sufficiently distracted.
Addendum: Following my last mission, Sorvel has been captured by Wallace and [REDACTED]. I’ll note the time she spends captured here and hope she can resist their corruption as Crossfire did. Time Captured: 26 Days

Another day, another contract. John stroked his hand down the **** redhead’s back as she stretched idly in their bed, reading his new contract notification with his other hand.

Abigail, on the other hand, pecked the sleeping Jenny on the cheek, nuzzling her sleeping lover briefly before standing beside John at the foot of the bed. Though he didn’t have Party Chat on, her raised brow and stolen glances toward his phone communicated her thoughts well enough as he held it out for her and whispered, “Back to Valvia.”

Direct Contract Request: Phoebe Cross of Valvia has put in a direct contract request for The Gamer ID 12351 based on previous contract work for [Hostile Species Eradication] and [General Consultation].

Caution, [General Consultation] is rarely requested from Swords members, do you trust this person? You may reject this contract at no penalty.

Personal Message: We’ve been having some trouble with the non-local flora lately. I figured you’d want to protect your investment. I put that ten platinum to good use. Bring your bike if you can.

“What even happened, after I led Crow away?” John asked, glancing sidelong at Abigail as they both touched his Waypoint to be sucked through the floating orb of mana and spit out at the other Waypoint in his dormitory.

“No idea. I was snuffed out,” Abigail replied, rolling her shoulders as she stepped out of his room and into hers through the adjacent door. When she came back, she wore a white gi under the steel-leaf vest John had made for her.

“Well, I can take as many people as I want, why don’t we see what the others are up to?” John called, taking off his battle clothes to repair them with Craft before re-equipping them and stepping out into the living room. “Where’d you get the new threads?”

“My new friend Crossfire taught me how to make them. They’re a part of me. But that’s why I’ve gotta wear the real stuff you made me too.” Abigail turned her upper arms into flame; the already-soot-stained white robe turned to flame with her. The edges of the fabric were a pulsing, looping flow of embers.

Aside from them, Amy was in the living room alone. A bowl of popcorn sat on the table between her and the television, and Ignis, curled up at Amy’s side, occasionally dipped her mouth into the bowl to lap up a few kernels. “Hey Amy, where is everyone? We’re going to Valvia for a contract, you in?”

“Grace is interning with a Wand right now, Elizabeth is on some local contract, and Mandruzzo… is here, I think? He doesn’t respond to texts super often. I just finished managing the family bestiary for eight hours, I’m good. David wants to come back, though.” The fanged necklace her beast tamer armor resided in glowed as she lifted her hand. A tiny portal appeared in her palm from which David and Vitaly erupted.

John held his arm out for his hawk, who eagerly flapped over and nuzzled his master’s cheek. After the fifth love nibble, John pulled away from his bird laughing. “Okay, David, okay. Missed you too, buddy. How did he do this time?”

“He’s a bit stubborn, but very food motivated. He completed all the same aviary courses Vitaly did, so I can’t teach him anything else about flying. He tried to initiate some hawk mating rituals with her, but she thought he was just playing. I was surprised he could tag her, he’s definitely faster.” Amy giggled as her frost phoenix perched on the back of the couch, eyeing David intently.

John and Abigail turned to go, but Amy stopped him before he could exit the barrier. “One more thing. It’s great you two are together and all, but a little irresponsible. This group, these people-”

“Oh, if you wanted in, we could talk to Jenny about it,” John said, misinterpreting her meaning as he reconsidered the woman he was crushing on only a few months ago.

“No-” Amy began, but couldn’t help but laugh in his face, interrupting herself, “no, I’m okay. I’m happy for you three, but I’ve moved on from… that. You’re a sweet guy. I’m just saying it’s a bad idea to date within the friend group. You know what I mean, you’ve had friends that have dated, right?”

The hermit pyromancer and bullied nerd shared a brief, questioning look with each other before returning to Amy with a blank stare, making the beast tamer burst into giggles again. “Right. We’re all extremely well adjusted people with normal backgrounds. Let’s just keep things simple.”

“Hey, I love you guys. I wouldn’t risk my life for everyone just to accidentally make us hate each other. Give my Charisma stat a little more credit than that,” John teased, backing out of the door (and barrier) with Abigail close behind. She jogged ahead of him in the hallway, wiggling her eyebrows at him as she stayed ahead. When he sped up to catch her, she turned around and ran backwards, outpacing him still with an implicit challenge in her smug smile. Together they raced down the stairs, passing by a tired knight trudging up the steps in grayed azure plate.

John jumped up and slid down the railing as Abigail ignored the stairs entirely and leapt from landing to landing, prompting a message from the AI to broadcast to them, “Please do not exceed fifty kilometers per hour in the stairwell.”

John and Abigail glanced at each other quickly before shrugging the warning off, bounding onto the ground and out of the lobby, John beating Abigail out of the door at the last second thanks to a well-timed Jump. “Best of two to the mirror hub?”

This time exiting the Valvian base came with a lot less fanfare. This one wasn’t in the capital, if the lack of clockwork towers was anything to go by, though it still had its fair share of towering wood and stone blocks. Huge apartments made out of roughly hewn materials and held together with little more than the magic used to construct them. John shuddered to imagine what would happen to the inhabitants if the enchanted buildings were disturbed, they didn’t seem entirely stable.

He and Abigail turned their back to the city behind and stepped up a ramp and into a waiting airship at the adjacent airport, stopping only to scan his card at the entrance. When John stepped in he quickly realized he and Abigail were the only passengers, or at least the only people not employed to be in that gaudy interior. Clearly no expense had been spared to pick him up, based on the intricate, rich wood, leather, and gold aesthetic of the tables and seats.

The interior of the airship’s cabin held a bar against one wall with an automated clockwork bartender behind it; a suite of buttons lined the customer side of the table to set the automaton to work. There were six sizable stools facing the bar, simple leather seats in design but their trim gleamed in the sun from the rising airship’s windows.

Another section of the cabin featured two wide benches facing each other, one of which Abigail dove onto as the reality of the situation hit both of them. The joyful brunette sank into the plush, enchanted leather of the white seat below her. John joined her, taking a seat at the edge of the bench across from her as they rose higher, eventually shifting forward in the air as they flew toward their destination.

The section across from them and next to the entrance held a small dining table with four seats of similarly polished wood and white leather. Cabinets lined the wall next to it, though John couldn’t see how the small cupboards could hold much given how close they were pressed up against the windows which made up the walls of the cabin.

The last section across from the bar wasn’t windows at all but steel, separating the passengers from the crew. A tall, tanned man with sharp ears and sharper teeth stepped out of the sheer, smooth steel door embedded into the wall and smiled at them briefly before pulling two glass bottles of water out of an expansive cupboard next to the dining table and offering it to them. “Welcome to our luxury board, investor and guest.”

“John is fine. So I’m an investor now, what exactly does that mean? You work for her, I guess?” John asked, taking off his ‘wooden glasses’ in the safety of the airship to more easily allow himself to drain half the water bottle in his other hand. He tried to remember the last time he sat down to relax like this, but as the cool water slaked away his thirst and worries, it didn’t seem so important.

“Nice name. I’m Johnny, Johnny Cross. Miss Phoebe used the funds from your purchase of her prototype to expand the company. You paid double what she hoped to get by selling it, so she reserved five percent of her personal stake to an escrow account transferable to you,” Johnny explained, leaning against the serving counter that separated the dining section from the middle walkway and other seats. “I’m a junior magitech engineer, so I’ve only got a percent myself.”

“Cross, like, Phoebe Cross? You’re related?” Abigail asked from beside them, stretching for a moment before she sat up on her bench.

John had another question, “You’re a partial owner too?” The man’s eyes widened in surprise at Abigail’s question and he looked like he didn’t know how to answer, but when John asked his, the tension left his face.

“No, not like that. My tribe found Phoebe when she was a baby and we raised her like our own,” Johnny explained, pointing at his pointed ears and elven lineage. “We don’t have the same concept of ownership most humans do, everything within the tribe is shared, so Phoebe was nice enough to extend that same courtesy to us. Pretty atypical for Valvian business, from what I understand.”

The three of them made small talk for the next hour or so. Abigail’s curiosity was piqued by the wildly different familial values of the Valvian elves, whereas John wanted to catch up on Phoebe’s business.

“So, how are we getting to her convoy? Will it be wherever the ship lands?” John asked as they slowed down over the top of a dense forest. The great mass of steel hovered over a thick cover of lush green trees which stayed rigid despite the great backwind from the dirigible. Unlike the unyielding trees directly below them, off in the distance John caught a glimpse of dense twisting vines among the distant canopy.

“Oh, you misunderstand, we only use the convoys for merchant duties and shipping now. You’re going to be meeting her in our workshop,” Johnny said, pointing down through the floor and to the trees below.

Before them the tree cover bent away as if the roots themselves stepped out of the ground, welcoming them to Phoebe’s workshop with twisting branches clearing the landing pad atop the main building for their airship to land. The moment their ship touched down, a flurry of wooden limbs and dense, vibrant leaves covered the sky; a myriad of miniscule holes allowed the natural light to seep through while protecting the factory from prying eyes.

Thick, green vines dark like seaweed shot from the trees, though John couldn’t see if the vines were growing from them. The fibrous limbs swung across the roof in an attempt to sweep the three off. Abigail vaulted above a vine and blasted a wave of flame out with her at the epicenter. John sidestepped into the path of the friendly elf, manifesting a shield out of Mana Construct to take the brunt of the blow meant for both of them. He was surprised by the strength of the foliage as it shattered his shield, though Cinder’s fiery appearance kept it from advancing any further. “What the hell is this?”

John ushered his ward behind the ramp of the airship, and took a breath as he prepared to defend their guide. However, before this renewed **** could reach them, the vines were pierced by thick branches. John squinted into the trees; activating Symphony of the Night gave him the barest glimpse of the elven woodshaper that subdued his vine enemy before a ring of mages much like Johnny revealed themselves from the brush, reaching out with a thick branch and a bed of leaves to descend them to the ground. “That,” Johnny explained as they stepped onto the tree-elevator together, the elf saluting to his brethren, “is why you’re here. Partially. Phoebe’ll explain it better than I can.”

The actual building itself was a rough piling of raw wooden cubes, not entirely dissimilar from something John might see abandoned in the industrial district except for its material, way out of place among the harmonious forest. The section to his far right opened three enormous wooden gates, two convoys like the one he had helped Phoebe protect left them and one returned as Johnny led the two of them into the main door of the factory.

The layout of the factory was very open. Rows of manashaper elves weaved magic in and out of magitech engines through tiny openings in the complex machines along one wall, preparing the delicate machines to be inserted into the frames being shaped by great wooden limbs controlled by woodshaper elves waiting next in the assembly line.

Johnny waved and smiled at his compatriots while he led John and Abigail through a central path to the back of this enormous room. While the left was dedicated to elves using all manner of arcane and wooden magic to assemble and shape motorcycles nearly identical to the one in his inventory, the right was dedicated to a host of screened machines, most lifeless.

John spied Phoebe working on an enormous metal snake, her head in its mouth as the glowing yellow eyes of the automaton considered the three newcomers. John stepped forward to greet his contractor, but recoiled when the snake lunged at him. Thankful for his Agility gains, John sidestepped its mechanical lunge as the steel serpent curled up around the mechanic previously working on it.

“Calm down, Cydra, it’s just Johnny,” Phoebe explained, turning around for a moment and gently rubbing the snake’s metallic maw. When she took in the two newcomers before her, she slammed her head on the bottom of the serpent’s mouth as she tried to stand up in surprise before stepping away from it. “Oh, Gamer! Hi. Glad to have you back.”

“Let’s go with John. Good to see you again, Phoebe. Is Josephine around?” Though he didn’t remember the aggressive elvish woman very well, with Phoebe around Josephine liked to be close behind.

“She’s scouting right now,” Phoebe explained. She pressed a thumb onto a spot on the snake’s head, and its eyes went dark as it coiled around a cushioned cone near the wall. “Nice to know you care. She’d just roll her eyes if she heard you ask.”

“Usually we have a pretty good relationship with the forest. Our tribe has lived in this place for centuries, some people are old enough to attest to that. Originally some thought the introduction of magitech into the forest caused its anger, though its clean-burning properties brought humans, elves, and nature together. A couple of weeks ago, some of the forest turned against us. We’ve lived close to these trees for a long time; the tension and betrayal among the elves and nature is palpable. The tree-speakers say that something else has changed the forest. The trees as they are still live and thrive, but they hear whispers to end us. Sometimes screams. It has to stop,” Phoebe explained, dismissing Johnny with a nod as the elvish worker quickly disappeared into a door in Phoebe’s workspace.

“We have some experience with that,” Abigail joked. She elbowed John as his mind wandered back to the forest barrier with her. He could already see the gears turning in her head as she considered how to turn this into another competition.

“That’s great! Josephine sent word recently that there were some strange, non-native vines consolidating in a clearing not far from here, it’s a straight shot left out the door you came in. If you can join her there and kill the root of the issue, we’d all be grateful. And when you get back, we can talk about your status as an investor. Leave your bike here, I’ve got some small upgrades to make,” Phoebe explained, reaching over to the table next to her serpent and dragging a toolbox into her hands with an eager look. “You did bring it, right?”

“Those vines might be a bit closer than you think. Talk to your security about it. We’ll head out now and try to stop it,” John explained, crouching down and manifesting his bike in front of them. Out of sight, he slipped the Rider-Waite invitation under the seat for her to find, “Always a pleasure, Phoebe. Make sure you adjust the seat for me, will ya? At top speed it jiggles sometimes.”

“What were you thinking for tonight?” Kimberly asked, settling down next to Keith on their couch with a bowl of popcorn and hovering her hand toward the remote. “We could always go to Gluttony.”

After a few moments of silence, Kimberly looked over to her husband, whose hulking form was hunched over his tiny phone screen, face inches away. She leaned forward and put her head on his shoulder as she teased, “We could go to Lust too.”

“More attacks,” Keith finally replied. “Enough already. We should go. I packed up everything I could. We’ll swing by Jenny’s, she already practically lives at the Inferno anyway. She can make John her plus one. I’ll be an alchemical bartender, or fight in Wrath if not.” He handed her his phone, allowing her to read the panicked messages of their Springfield peers.

The Best Abyssal Group Chat in the History of the World
IfYouSeeM: More attacks across town. Few of my people saw it.
BlackSingularity: CCTV shows a few apartments getting hit on the East side.
NeonLights: Nothing here yet
Iron Man: Man, I’ve gotta get out of this town.
BlackSingularity: Something always pulls them back in.
PlucheCollector: There’s a place for everyone in the forest
TheBestBas: Out of town. Starting to think I shouldn’t come back.
Potion Seller: Not a bad idea. Heading to you now.

“You packed your essentials, right? We can buy most of what we need there or on the Auction anyway,” Keith called, rising from his seat and crossing their living room to the staircase added by the barrier. He flicked three light switches with a finger as he walked into his alchemy laboratory.

He gathered his dry catalysts, stirrers, and flasks, putting them all inside a box which shrank to the size of a sugar cube. Placing the stored equipment in one of the pouches on his chest, he took another pouch from his hip and pulled at the opening, stretching it far beyond its normal limits to engulf his entire ingredients cabinet, sliding it open an inch to double check its contents were properly sealed before sliding the whole thing into the leather pocket. Picking up this pouch was considerably more difficult, but once it was on his bandolier it was weightless.

Keith glanced at his phone again. The frantic messages flooded the chat, and as a tremor rocked the barrier of his apartment, his message joined theirs.

Potion Seller: They’re here.

Chugging his steelskin potion, he sprinted up the stairs as a car crashed through his drywall hood-first with Kimberly between them. Spikes of blood erupted from underneath her nails as she attempted to slow the car, but it shattered them and her wrist, bearing down on her whole body.

Keith made it to her barely in time, slugging the front of the car with an iron fist. The vehicle slammed into the ground at the sudden stop, nearly sending both of them to the laboratory below. A spindly, ridged metal tentacle pierced through the brick and drywall of his apartment, ripping a section of the walling off the facade of the barrier’s building with a broad, flat metal talon and swinging it across their living room.

Kimberly dropped prone to avoid it, and Keith caught the impromptu club before it could shatter any of the potions he wore. Another tentacle gripped the brick and **** it harder, so he flipped, holding it off with his feet and stabilizing himself against the floor with one hand as he grabbed his crystalskin potion.

Neve’s head peered over the hole with a crooked smile and empty eyes. Two more tentacles slammed into the floor of their apartment with a clunk as a fifth shot toward Keith and shattered the strong but expensive potion he was about to resort to. Another smashed the gigantification potion he was readying as a backup. “Keith Rutherford and his wife. What’s next, a love potion? No magic to negate here.”

“Why are you doing this?” Keith asked, grabbing a vial from a pouch on his back and downing it as another tentacle pinned his other arm in place with its blade-like talons. The steel across his body shifted as it became magnetic, the talons repelled by the **** generated from the potion he slipped.

Kimberly was crawling toward him, and he dove and rolled toward her before another tentacle could grab her. The section of walling strewn above them collapsed as Neve tried to slam a tentacle down on Kimberly, but it bounced off the magnetic field of Keith’s back. Her mouth opened but did not move and a voice emitted from her throat as she responded, “From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me.

“My desire was to become more, to become perfect. You didn’t see what I could be,” Neve said, standing on all eight tentacles and demolishing more of their wall. “You were always holding me BACK!”

She slammed two more down on him, and though they were repelled by his magnetism, their **** evenly distributed throughout his body destroyed the already crumbling floor, sending him and Kimberly down to the remains of his lab. The brunette began to bleed where a talon had torn into her. Keith slipped her a health potion, though she chose to keep bleeding.

Neve hung down. Where previously her legs met her torso, now resided a smooth steel dome which the eight tentacles emerged from. The six aside and behind her lowered her body into the pit of the alchemy lab as the other two reached for them. “What is your-”

Kimberly’s pool of blood rushed away from them, solidifying into something like a cloak in the air that dodged aside of the two metal hooks ahead of it and wrapped around what little organically remained of Neve, entering her bloodstream and turning all of it into solid spikes.

Both let out a simultaneous sigh of relief. Kimberly shakily got to her feet and dispelled her attack, the now-liquid crimson fell off their would-be abductor in waves. “Did I kill her?”

Keith only felt the rush of air as with blistering speed three tentacles pinned Kimberly to the ground, head, torso, and legs. Neve extended another, ejecting a blade from the center of its talon that passed over the three pinning the blood mage and cut the chest strap of his bandolier.