Remote Work

Ireena had spent days recovering in the Draenei medical tent. She’d been given as much food and water as could be spared, and firmly asked not to exert herself. It was absolutely maddening; she felt fine. In particular, she felt fine when compared to her only consistent companion in the tent.

The pale, blue haired elf had been carried in and dropped in one of the few beds, near Ireena. The Draenei had stabilized her injuries as best they could, but they didn’t have much mana to spare. Ireena insisted that they redirect some of the healing set aside for her, since according to them radiation sickness was more of a long term issue. The Draenei were kind, but they made no bones about triage; their own broken bones came before any outsider’s injuries.

The elf, whose name proved to be Felore when she had brief moments of lucidity, was a real headache for Ireena’s hosts. She panicked any time she saw the Draenei, identifying them as Eredar and thinking herself captured by demons. Wanting to be useful and perfectly capable of monitoring a semiconscious woman, Ireena offered to be her caretaker while they both recovered. She grew tired more easily than she might otherwise hope, but from what the Draenei claimed she was already largely out of immediate danger. No, radiation was a slow and insidious killer at the levels still found in her body.

She sat with the elf, especially after one of the mages granted her the ability to communicate with the woman. They would chat whenever Felore was able to stay awake, which led to its own set of problems.

“There is a community of my people to the south.” She said conspiratorially, clutching Ireena’s arm, “After the Legion caused their foul magic to rain down upon us, the local wildlife started attacking unprovoked. I worry they may be in danger. Please, Lady Ireena, help me return to them.”

“You can hardly stand.” Ireena said, “I’ll see what I can do. Can you tell me more than just that it’s to the south? How far?”

On some level she suspected that Gil would want Ireena to offer Felore a pact, but the idea made Ireena feel dirty. Only if someone truly had no where left to go would she even consider doing such a thing.

••••••••••

Rose didn’t frequently get alone time while she was on patrol, not anymore. She’d slipped away too often, usually trying to draw in more assets for Gil or complete one of her missions. The director, a morbidly obese and thoroughly unpleasant woman by the name of Piggot, had taken issue to such unprofessional conduct. She ordered the other Wards, many of which were boys younger than Flechette, to keep an eye on her so she wouldn’t go rogue.

Rose wasn’t a mindless automaton for Gil, but she didn’t actually have much loyalty to the Wards or the PRT either. Her sense of professionalism pushed her to do every task she attempted to the best of her ability, whether that meant completing missions for Gil or clearing scum off the streets of Brockton Bay. For both tasks, Kid Win was basically ideal.

Chris was a skilled individual, clad in light powered armor and armed with a few firearms, all of which he’d built himself. To Rose they were all basically magic, but the Lily side of her could recognize how impressive it was for him to be able to make guns able to nonlethally knock out people without any long term negative effects. On the other hand, he had a friendly nature and tendency to get distracted, so he didn’t keep anywhere near as much of an eye on her as someone like Weld.

After their first arrest of the night, near the edge of Chosen territory, it was easy for Flechette to slip away while Kid Win called it in. She used her grapple to reach the rooftop, ostensibly to keep watch, and pulled out the small stone statue Gil had provided her. It resembled a small eyeless bat, with tinted purple glass wings. Macabre, but pretty in its own way.

As instructed, she held it up to her mouth and whispered into its ear.

“Your target is Nessa Bierman, also known as Menja, the woman I am picturing now.” She said calmly and clearly. “She is somewhere within five miles of this location, likely in a place full of muscular Caucasian humans. I command you in the name of Gil, the lord of this retinue.”

Most members of the former organization known as Empire 88 had publicly known identities. This was not their preference, but the massive data leak made it easy for Rose to provide the parasite with excellent information.

The small figurine shuddered to life, swelling in size until it was nearly as large as her head. A long, scorpion-like tail extended from its backside, though no other limbs formed. It stretched its wings and flew off in utter silence. Flechette tracked its movements, and though it flapped its wings the movement seemed performative, completely divorced from its actual motion through the sky.

She didn’t have long to watch it, as Kid Win was already finished calling in the arrest. His voice sounded in her ear, asking for confirmation that they could continue their route. She had no objections. She’d finished the only task she had in mind that day.

••••••••••

Zena crept through the castle, nearly invisible to the beasts that roamed the halls. She didn’t fight anything much, but she kept Vahn and Mei from being ambushed. She wasn’t even willing to get close enough to use pick pocket unless her allies were right there with her. Unfortunately, this castle guarded the only accessible path towards Mt. Rikuroa.

The two Ra-Seru agreed that the most reliable way to protect Noa would be to clear the mist away from her. The beasts that roamed the land would be a minimal threat to the spunky young woman if she wasn’t being actively hunted. Vahn had nothing to say, as usual; it was eerie how he wandered through life with squared shoulders and a determined expression, nodding or shaking his head at most. Mei, being a mouse, had no input whatsoever.

That meant sneaking through this Light forsaken castle, full of possessed people in cages and the reanimated bones and armor of the dead. Why there were undead present was a mystery, as by all accounts very few residents of the castle had actually died. From the letters they left behind, they’d all collectively donned Seru and waited inside of huge reinforced cages, as by doing so they could apparently suspend the aging process.

Intellectually, Zena was fairly sure that she could take on one of the skeletons. Vahn was stronger than her, but not by all that much, and he could fight two at once without sustaining serious injuries. Even Mei could fend them off as often as not, though she had to lean hard on Terra’s magic to do so. The civilian girl could use the chitinous green glove on her left hand to release compressed bursts of air, but that didn’t usually finish anything off; mostly it just knocked them back and bought her time for Vahn or Zena to step in. Zena wished that, if he was going to do it, Gil would just go ahead and make the green haired girl stronger now. Seriously, it was like bringing along Snow without any of her redeeming qualities.

Even so, when she saw the bare, picked clean bones animated by dark magic, Zena was a teenager fleeing from ghouls again. The first time that one of them had successfully cornered her alone, she’d panicked. The entire bead of lerasium had vanished down her throat as she swallowed on instinct. Before she knew what she was doing, the skeleton had gone flying through the air, shattering against a wall. She’d had no idea how or why such a thing would happen, at least at first, and hadn’t been in any kind of mental state to ask questions.

She’d leveled up shortly after that, to level 5, and gained a new ability. “Allomantic Instincts” was what it was called. It didn’t seem to do anything initially, but she figured it out before long.

The three of them, after a long day of creeping around the castle, unlocking doors with clearly and inexplicably labeled keys, they’d found a safe room. Meta insisted that they would be fine in the small bedroom, because it had an exceptionally thick iron-bound door, and they were all too tired to object. Even Terra, worried for Noa, had to admit that mountain climbing in the middle of the night while tired was a terrible idea.

Zena took first watch, despite both Ra-Seru insisting that they didn’t sleep and could keep watch just fine. She was far too on edge. She’d seen well over a hundred of the grey-skinned possessed victims of the Seru, which reminded her of her own people’s experiences with the undead far too much for her to go straight to bed.

Zena ended up rifling through the items in the room, looking for anything that might be useful. Her hand brushed across something in the dark that sent a tingle up her arm. Magic, and potent magic at that. Exactly what her shot nerves needed. She dug for it, and found the item in question. The young elf pulled it out, her eyes alight and ready to absorb the mana within.

It was a fork. A dull, grey, fork with two tines forming a narrow U. It contained no mana, none that she could tap in any event. However, when she stared at it she had the strangest impulse to eat it. She felt as if she were going mad, but couldn’t help but feel curious.

She bent the tine back and forth, working at it until it snapped loose, then folding it over again. She pounded it with the pommel of her dagger, so that the small chunk wouldn’t have any overly sharp bits. As a precaution, she washed it down with a mouthful of the healing tea they’d all shared before bed. If it cut anything on the way down, she would be healed just as quickly.

Almost the moment she did, she felt a curious warmth solidify within her. It was similar to, but not quite the same as the power she’d drawn out of the Lerasium. She touched it, letting it flow through her body, and it was magnificent. Magic, pure magic, flowed into every muscle and tendon of her body. Her exhaustion from the day was gone, her heart beat quickly as if with adrenaline, and every weight she carried seemed lighter than a feather. She clutched at it and felt a thunderbolt of energy fill her; she stifled a laugh, knowing that she was still in a dangerous place.

She stood and hopped in place, leaping a few feet into the air with hardly any effort. She was stronger, strong enough to lift the table one handed, but she could feel the energy depleting quickly as she latched onto it. She burnt through all of it in a few minutes, and had to restrain herself from eating more of the fork immediately. She used the last dregs of energy to quickly snap the bit of silverware repeatedly, making a dozen small beads. Small enough to swallow later, when she’d really need them.

She looked around the room a few minutes longer while actively using her new instincts, finding a few copper and gold coins, a brass candlestick, and another spoon made of the same material as the fork. Each metal felt subtly different; she didn’t think it was likely they’d all have the same effects.

Unfortunately, after the burst of energy from the fork faded she was hit with all the exhaustion of a tense day. She figured the copper was the most replaceable of the metals she’d found, so she shaved off a tiny curl from the edge of the coin and washed it down with the last of the tea.

She had absolutely no idea what the magic of copper did, and at the bare minimum it didn’t make her any stronger or more awake. It was a quiet, pulsing strength in the pit of her stomach, depleting extremely slowly, and for one of the first times since the Sunwell was corrupted Zena felt completely sated.