- Location
- In the depts of despair.
I think it is safe to say everyone is having a really awful day already, its simply the last day on Earth for most of those Tos sorcerers and soldiers. A shame they are taking so many innocent lives with them.
Record of the Inherited Memory Girl's Efforts (isekai)
- Thread starter jseah
- Start date
- Original
Spectrum
Tell me a secret~
- Location
- Behind you~
So...did everything change when the Tos clan attacked?
- Location
- Australia
Pretty much yes.So...did everything change when the Tos clan attacked?
After Alice came up with the idea to bypass the need for Consecration, I've been wondering when the Earth Clan would catch on. Kinda naive of Alice not to consider the political fallout. (You'd think she'd have learned from the blowback Petra received. ) Though I thought it was going to be something involving Alice's sister rather than the Earth Clan straight up intercepting Lokar's messages.
Hope Alice can salvage the situation. Sounds like the attack hit at an inconvenient time for her, unfortunately.
) Though I thought it was going to be something involving Alice's sister rather than the Earth Clan straight up intercepting Lokar's messages. Hope Alice can salvage the situation. Sounds like the attack hit at an inconvenient time for her, unfortunately.
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
More like the TOS found out about the ability to bypass the consecration and decided it was an existential threat to the Earth-Power monopoly, which from the descriptions we have is an exaggeration (until you realize Alice can make more) and the result is the TOS following up old greviances and using the threat to bring the rest of the Earth Clans onside.
The Fire Clans not under attack (and possibly the other elemental clans) are probably going to get a message describing the "provocation" and stating an example is being made to reaffirm the current balance of Terror and that there will be no problems if they stay out of it. How that goes down depends on background info we haven't been shown.
Of course Alice's existance renders the TOS clan's whole reasoning GiGo and means the TOS are getting into a fight they aren't ready for and are carrying out actions that will make a united front of the elemental clans vs Alice highly unlikely, even once they realize the extent of her threat to their feudalistic setup.
Only saving grace for the TOS is that Alice is still weak and beatable - if they can identify the real menace in time.
So, out of curiosity, has Alice worked on weaponizing her admin account yet? I mean, even if she doesn't get access to modules other than her version of Skillshare, she should be able to pull off an equivalent to the corrupt version and just mindwipe anyone within line of sight.(the limit mentioned for her civilian account creation macro) All she'd have to do is pull their Skill Analysis record and push a duplicate made from an empty set of data that matched that record.
Yes, what I'm suggesting is is to use the Skill Analysis module for a given person to get a list of all their skills, then generate a duplicate list with identical names but different contents, before piping that new list back into the target's mind. It might not be possible to just delete skills that way (it would depend on creating a duplicate list of every one of those fundamental pieces of skills used to define skills that defined those bits as empty), but even if it's just things like switching someone's Common Language for say, Running would at a minimum prevent them from doing much of anything until they can rewire their brain to figure out where all their knowledge is. Especially since there's no need to just do this once, she could just set that knowledge rewiring process on a loop.
- Location
- Australia
An interesting idea. Most likely this would require Alice to force install the corrupt Skillshare onto someone and then have it upload stuff.
(even the working version would sort of work, since a huge number of downloads would knock someone out; with the added advantage of not being permanent effect)
The issue is that System doesn't have a way to force download Modules other than to entire classes of accounts (which works more like adding a #include module-name into System's installation program).
Skillshare was never distributed other than "to Guest accounts" (as Skill Analysis or the Database versions) or installed manually (Petra and other Skillshare employee accounts).
If she uses the same distribution channel as Skill Analysis, the attack will hit almost everyone in the world.
The other way she has to install Skillshare is to elevate someone's System account to Citizen (up from Guest), and then that person can go find Skillshare in the modules list and download it manually. Which obviously won't work for an attack.
Now, it is possible that Alice could modify how System distributes Modules, making the installation check by loginID and fetching an exception list to effectively say "these people specially get these Modules", especially since there aren't any other Administrators to stop her. Other ways include creating a new account class and 'promoting' people to those levels which then install the corruption.
EDIT: actually perhaps the second method would work, but she'd have to get someone's account ID first (the auto-assign one for guest accounts), which means reading it off someone's System menu.
The problem with those is that Alice doesn't have a way to write code on System. All she can do is change configuration presets, eg. which modules are required for installation or who can give Guest accounts (for example, Alice could turn off the ability for Guest accounts to create more Guests, effectively removing everyone's ability to give System to their children).
Similarly, modifying Skillshare or Skill Analysis is out of reach.
On the plus side, if Alice finds the server location for Skillshare (ie. where Petra's office was), the full module dev kit is still in that private server. So getting that far would effectively grant her god-mode for the System.
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7 - Abomination
- Location
- Australia
A/N: The 'city' the Tos and Naivi were fighting has been downgraded to a town, including in past chapters. I realized that the Fire clan couldn't possibly tolerate losing one of their two remaining cities. Not that towns are a small loss either but it's not a fight to the death of multiple major clans.
1 to 3k population is maybe big enough to be worth fighting over and not big enough to spark a major war between the broader multi-clan factions.
Rishiamaher turned nine last month and she was getting good at magic!
Everyone said that Foet was scary, but she wasn't. Foet was her good friend. The girl came to play often and she had magic too. Foet's father had told her not to teach Rishiamaher how to use magic so of course she had immediately decided to teach Rishiamaher anyway.
It was fun copying Foet's hand movements and seeing what came out. Rishiamaher could make walls pop out of the ground and throw rocks very fast, but when Foet did it, she got sticky fireballs and a spray of fire.
Rishiamaher didn't tell anyone, Foet had told her to keep it a secret. And Rishiamaher was good at secrets! She had not told Foet about Alice's secret, so she had two secrets that she was keeping!
And today, Foet was here again, trying to get Rishiamaher to learn a third hand movement.
The flare of magic in the village distracted her mid-cast.
Squad leader Ryui signaled his slave soldiers forward.
Really, there was nothing to fear, given that the lone Fire Clan Finger was already dead. Ryui had made sure to aim a generous portion of the initial bombardment at him.
Some would call it overkill to have two Palms, thirty Fingers and a hundred warrior slaves, essentially a small army, go destroy a single village with only one Finger in it. But that was also a clear statement of intent to everyone else. The Patriarch was determined to see those artifacts destroyed, no matter the cost or who got in the way.
His instructions were clear. Go to the village, kill the Fire Clan man there, destroy the artifacts. Of the villagers, there was only a single relevant line. 'Do whatever is necessary.' Ryui would level the village or wheedle his way into their good graces, as long as what he did made it more likely his mission would succeed. Afterwards? Kill them, sell them off, leave them alone, the Patriarch didn't care.
Ryui was going to sell them of course. Some extra pocket money would make the Fingers happy despite trudging all the way out here just to throw a few stones and go back home.
On the other hand, looking at the sheer destruction in front of him, Ryui didn't think there would be many survivors.
The village was... ruined was too gentle of a word. The houses were all caved in, small boulders smashed through their walls. Earthquakes from Ryui and his vice-leader Palm had thrown everyone in front of him to the ground, and also knocked down all the remaining walls. The fields were a mess with rocks and soil thrown everywhere, the crop ruined. A pity, the wheat was only a month from harvest.
The scattered villagers who had tried to run away or were out in the fields had been shot down by the slave soldiers that carried bows. Not even the houses lying outside the village center had been spared. They didn't want word of the Consecration artifact to spread after all.
Lochar was nothing but a bloody smear on the ground. The villagers' broken bodies were tossed everywhere, draped across the ground or hanging from where they landed. Courtesy of an earthquake with two Palms worth of Potential followed by thirty Fingers of continuous rock bombardment. Lochar's futile attempts to resist had merely set the wreckage alight.
Ah well. The mission came first after all, pocket money was optional.
"It's not often you get to see Palms go all out," Ryui said to the Fingers standing behind him, "one day, you'll be the Palm doing this. "
"It is impressive, sir. "
Ryui snorted at the man behind him, "your flattery needs work. But thank you. Now go with the slaves and find those artifacts. Anything else you find, you can keep, only slaves are shared between everyone. Group one with me, we'll search the Naivi spawn's house. What's left of it. "
Digging through the ruins eventually found the rods of metal he was looking for. They were buried in a stone box set into the floor of the house and had survived the rain of rocks and earthquake. Good of Lochar to make his work easy.
A handwave cracked the box open and revealed the five artifacts they were looking for. Gleaming metal, right from the age of the gods, Ryui had seen steel before and this was far too shiny and light. After confirming the artifacts had the described effect on soil, they laid the artifacts onto a tray of iron.
He concentrated, crumbling the metal to powder, and watched as the Records over the magic items faded away.
"I confirm we have destroyed five artifacts. " Ryui said formally.
His second in command, Wu, concurred, "I confirm that the five artifacts have been destroyed. "
And that was that. Now it was time to salvage some side benefits.
Kara was one of the few Fingers who actually had a brain among this bunch.
When she had detected weak magic in one of the collapsed houses, the other meatheads might have thought an enemy still lived and pounded the position until nothing moved. Instead, she had a single combat slave to investigate and after the subsequent weak fireball burnt him to ashes, she was rewarded.
It was Lochar's little girl and a little earth sorcerer. The little girl's earth magic was the reason for the pair's survival, the fallen log wall had been propped up with a crude earth wall, but that had tied up all of the illicit sorcerer's magic and rendered her too exhausted to move. Lochar's daughter still had her fire of course but she wasn't even worthy of a Finger yet.
It had taken no more than a simple shield of rock before the fiery girl ran out of magic too and Kara could pin her down safely. The screaming kid had to have her hands encased in rock to prevent any surprises.
"Get collars on them," she commanded the slaves. Two sorcerer slaves? And children at that? They would easily pay for the cost of the trip out here.
The combat slave carrying the collars squeezed his way into the space to snap the collars around them. The weak magic Kara felt disappeared immediately except what she could detect from the collars. That led to Kara hurriedly propping up the falling wall as the earth girl's magic stopped reinforcing the earth that held it up.
Kara breathed out a sigh of relief. It would be really disappointing if she went to the trouble of getting these slaves only to have them crushed. Why, she would be the laughingstock of the band for months!
She glared at the combat slaves looking at her, "what are you waiting for? Get them out of there!"
That was one of the problems with slaves, no initiative, the lot of them. After all, they were rewarded for obeying and wouldn't do anything without orders, even if said orders could be quite broad. But this expedition had been put together in a hurry and there were only slaves and sorcerers here.
The two new slaves were dug out of their makeshift shelter and draped over the biggest male slave under Kara. She turned to go.
There was a loud crack and the head of slave she set on watch exploded. The metal collar he was wearing glinted as it flipped end over end.
As bits of blood and bone landed around them, the metallic ting of the slave's collar bouncing rang out into stunned silence.
Kara hit the ground almost at the same time as the falling collar. She knew the sound of a stone bullet spell and glanced around for the shooter. Had one of the other Fingers decided to kill her for some reason?
No. As the slaves milled around in confusion, Kara spotted the head of a girl sticking out above the waist high wheat at the edge of the planted fields, right next to the border of the forest. Another earth sorcerer?! One that could cast actually dangerous attacks?
"Kill her!" Kara commanded the slaves. She saw them charge out into the fields and cursed herself at giving too broad an order. The man carrying her prizes was charging off with them! Kara snarled and held out a hand, ready to shoot back or shield the moment the girl moved. She could always countermand the slave after she killed the attacker.
Wait, what was that long metal tube the girl was pointing at her-
Foet groaned to herself as she bounced on the big man's shoulder.
The collar was heavy and her head hurt from throwing fireballs at the evil woman and she was so tired, but she had enough awareness to know they were heading off into the forest.
For what or why, Foet was too preoccupied with her own hurts to wonder. The man holding her and Ri over his shoulders grunted as they crashed through the thick undergrowth and Foet had to shield her face from leaves and low branches.
There were ear-splitting cracks and screams and terrible noises all around, and after the panic of the initial bombardment and the numb horror of the ruins of her home village, all she could do was cry.
More shouts and cries passed her by, the man underneath her grunting with greater exertion as he plunged down a gentle slope. She grunted as his shoulder dug into her belly.
Their carrier tumbled to a halt after a particularly loud crack, sending Foet hurtling straight into a bush. She spat out soil and leaves, crying miserably at fresh bruises.
It wasn't often that Foet thought of her mother, as her father took his wife for granted and his daughter copied him, but the little girl who wasn't trying to be a fire sorcerer to impress her father remembered gentle touches and soft words when her father was away. Even the occasional head pat.
Foet wanted nothing more than her mother now.
There was a soft rustling of leaves behind her and a familiar voice.
"Foet?"
She curled up into a ball of private misery, but the voice, hesitant and unsure, came back.
"There, there?"
The gentle hand that brushed away the broken twigs in her hair was too much for the little girl and she burst into relieved tears.
Alice patted Foet's hair as the girl clung to her and sobbed. Fortunately, she hadn't seen any blood outside of a few bad scrapes. The collar worried her but it didn't seem to be doing anything yet, so Alice dragged Lochar's daughter up to go find her sister. Ri had landed in a bush nearby as well.
In the forest, Alice had been able to put her child size and hunting skills to lose the soldiers sent after her. Though why the soldier carrying Ri and Foet had come along, Alice didn't know. That was a good stroke of luck.
She had been planning to lie low when she first saw the destruction. Firing at a clearly military force filled with sorcerers without enough bullets or Potential to kill everyone was just suicide. Ten year old Alice had no way of fighting off adult soldiers, much less sorcerers.
But Alice recalled the cold fury that filled her when she saw her sister and friend being carried out of her fallen house.
Petra had never killed even an animal in her long life and while Alice was far more used to blood and violence in her hunting, she hadn't fought humans before either. Still, she could recall every motion of her hands, every cloud in the sky and burning house in her village. Her mind empty of everything but the will to kill every last one of them.
She recalled shooting and reloading with a methodical precision that outdid her best practice shots.
One to the woman with the bow. One to the woman sorcerer who was giving commands. The sprays of bright red blood as their heads exploded. The panting of her own breath and arms wound tight with tension. She shot them one at a time as they approached, she retreated into the forest and shot them some more. The canopy was deep and the undergrowth was lush, with plenty of places for a child to hide in.
Alice knew the forest just like her father, where the slopes with the bad footing was, where their animal traps had been set up to catch stray feet. Where she could hide in the bushes to ambush. It hadn't taken long for Alice to lead the four surviving soldiers into traps for bigger game and cripple them or just find an opportunity to shoot.
But her kinetic launcher was not quiet and by now the rest of the soldiers would be after them. And Alice had only a handful of shots remaining, certainly not enough to fight off another band of enemies.
She shook Foet's shoulder, trying to dislodge the crying girl. Foet just sobbed harder.
"Come on, we're not out of it yet," Alice said, "we still have to get Ri and more of them will be after us. "
At the mention of Ri's name, Foet finally managed to pull herself together, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. Alice tried to reassure the girl with a pat on the back before turning to find her sister in the bushes.
As it turned out, the fall had woken Ri up and she also needed precious moments to be comforted before they could move.
"Sis," Ri complained once Alice tried to get her moving, "my arm. It's painful. "
Alice looked at the bruised and deep scrapes. The splinters of wood stuck through her sister's skin bothered her but they could worry about infection and the Potential cost of healing after they were hidden.
"Remember the gully near the river?" Alice asked. Ri had the same Skill Share in hunting as herself and theoretically knew the land just as well, though her sister had never taken to hunting despite that advantage.
Still, they had played in that shallow cave before, more like an overhang, close to the bend in the river. It was hidden behind drooping branches of the slanted tree above and hard to spot if you didn't know it was there.
Ri nodded.
"Can you lead Foet there? Hide there and I will join you soon," Alice said.
She got another acknowledgement from Ri and turned to Foet.
"Where are you going?" Foet asked.
Alice fingered the last four bullets in her pocket. "Just cleaning up. "
The two men who had merely been crippled by her father's traps were still there and still trying to free themselves. The shallow hole filled with barbs was hard to get out of, as Alice could testify from her efforts at trying to get her kills free from them. Alice wondered how they were still struggling.
She had heard tales from her father about hunters who forgot where their own traps were. Alice was quite sure that the perpetual sleep they got stuck in for weeks was due to their civilian healing graft trying to fight off infection. Nevertheless, the pain should have been debilitating.
The two men were in pain but were still struggling to free themselves. In fact, one of them had gotten out of the trap already and was working on the other. When Alice stepped into view, they both looked up at her.
She gulped as the freed man started to hobble towards her. He couldn't even walk fast and was bleeding badly through the crude wrappings on his leg wound. There was no way he could catch Alice with his bronze short sword but despite that, he still came on.
The strange crazed smile of anticipation and glee on his face was unnerving.
Alice glanced down at the trapped man and took a step back involuntarily. That one had the same twisted desperate grin.
Almost without thought, the kinetic launcher came up to her shoulder and barked its sharp cry. The grin on the face of the approaching man disappeared. Even while blood showered the trees and bushes, Alice felt herself grow lightheaded.
The faces of the charging soldiers shimmered in her memory, the ones she had killed in a cold rage. The same grin was on their faces too. Only the Earth Alva woman had anything like a normal expression.
The man trapped in the hole tried to pry at his leg faster. Alice shot his arms on reflex, blowing off both limbs and the trapped leg.
This was no battle lust, no people driven to desperation through their circumstances. Not once had they tried to speak other than to signal to each other. None had asked for mercy, none of them had even tried to stop.
And that grin was haunting her. Petra knew that grin from the horror stories of her age.
While the dying man bled all over the trap, Alice approached the collar. She brought out her new rune tool. She had to know.
Placing one end against the collar, she saw the light at the end of her tool light up. It had a Record. Alice felt her heart sink.
With quick twists, she injected a tiny set of runes that would perform a useless calculation and proceed to loop until the potential of the collar ran out. Depending on how much potential the collar contained, it could take minutes to drain dry.
Alice barely managed to scurry behind the nearest tree before the collar exploded and removed the last soldier's head. The sharp report was the worst sound she had ever heard. No easy freedom either.
Alice had to handle her sister and friend very carefully. And whatever survivors from her village. And maybe her parents were dead or worse. And there were far more 'soldiers' under the command of that clan and possibly other clans.
The depth of horror in her belly seemed to sink deeper and darker with every step. Her breakfast was left behind under a log, her knees wobbled and protested. The insects of the forest rasped their protests at the humans. Trees loomed menacingly.
But there were two new victims of this sick and twisted device and they were relying on Alice. She forced herself onwards to their hideout.
This was the worst case scenario. Anathema. Atrocity. The very thought of having to learn how these things worked to free her family made Alice want to scrub herself raw.
Those collars were Record corruption devices.
The series of sharp cracks had of course attracted attention. Ryui had immediately recalled some of the searchers and led a small force to investigate.
Too late as it turned out. All that were left on the ground and among the wheat were the headless bodies and splatters of blood.
"What happened here?!" Ryui demanded, sending his subordinates scurrying around to find traces.
Wu looked up from Kara's body, her head just as missing as the other bodies. The exploded heads looked like the sort of injuries a rock bullet spell would inflict.
But if there was a hostile Earth sorcerer sneaking around, trying to steal the Consecration artifacts, then attacking a lone Finger was just giving away surprise. Or was there a bigger ambush waiting for Ryui?
"I don't think this was done with rock bullets," Wu said.
The squad leader looked at his second in surprise. "But these are clearly rock bullet wounds!" Ryui exclaimed.
"With one shot to each person's head? With no other injuries? There's no Palm or even Fist who can do that," Wu pointed out.
"Toron of the Flash could do it," Ryui grumbled. But Wu just raised an eyebrow. If the Flash was here and opposing them, the Fist of Earth would just kill them all in the open. Not that there was any reason for one of the legendary Fists to be here.
"No, I think this is a monster's work," Wu concluded. "I've seen similar wounds from riolas before. "
"Riola beams set things on fire, not blow off heads!"
"And I'm telling you I've seen it before. Before I married into the Tos, I was a Finger from Om and the monster domain we guarded would constantly spawn riolas. Yes, their common sweeping beam will set things on fire but those bird monsters can also fire all of the beam in a single instant. Instead of burning, you just explode. They don't do it very often, thank goodness. It's one of their nastier tricks and impossible to dodge. "
Ryui looked at the line of bodies of the slave soldiers leading into the forest. Riolas couldn't fire quickly so to cause this many casualties, there must be quite a few of them.
Kara must have sent her slave soldiers to chase the monsters and then died before she could pull them back.
Was Ryui to send more soldiers into the forest to retrieve the collars of Kara's command? Those collars were moderately expensive and losing them would eat into their reward.
There was a loud bang in the distant forest, accompanied by a flight of birds. A short pause then another bang. The monsters were still out there.
"Leave the slaves in the forest, we're not here to hunt monsters," Ryui commanded, "collect the collars from the dead you can reach and someone take Kara's body. Get ready to leave! I want to be gone before those monsters come back for us!"
At least making slaves of the few survivors would help offset the damage.
"Those damned vultures!"
The curse was punctuated by a clatter of falling cutlery. The slave servants in the room immediately set about cleaning up the mess of fallen food and drink. The slaves crept quietly and fearfully, not wanting to draw the man's wrath.
The Tos Clan Patriarch growled, staring into space. Clenched in his hand was a letter.
Supposed allies were only giving half-hearted support. Merchants were happy to sell the new power in town anything he wanted, but only for cutthroat prices. His clan people were dying day by day while the small forces of neighbouring clans sat around 'enforcing the blockade'.
A blockade that was useless now the messengers had escaped. Naivi's allies and the accursed behemoth of the Yio Clan were starting to move and if he did not crush the Naivi soon, the entire war would start to run into serious resistance.
Calling in everyone to deal with the threat to Consecration had worked, up until commitment was required. Iki, Hui and Om were all too happy to let the Tos take the losses, and the heat, then move in for the benefits immediately afterwards. They knew the Tos had to attack, given that Naivi villages were primarily Consecrated by his clan and artifacts that could duplicate Consecration were going to rob them of too many resources. They also knew that the Tos could not possibly hold the entire town to themselves afterwards.
If the Tos managed to take over the town, then they would claim their rights as allies and helpers. If the Yio got off their fiery asses and squashed him? Well, they would just disavow everything and run.
The only good thing in this mess was that the kill team had successfully reached their destination without being detected. No matter what happened here, the Consecration threat would be gone.
The one time his clan pushed the Naivi hard and they were about to break, that accursed woman arrived. That was not a good day. The Tos had to find a way to kill that Naivi leader, and hopefully seize that huge potential fragment from her. Then the Naivi defence would collapse and he could sweep them off the board. The Yio would find the cost of reducing a fortified Earth clan far less than any possible benefit, but if they caught the Tos still embroiled in a battle...
He just had to win before he lost.
1 to 3k population is maybe big enough to be worth fighting over and not big enough to spark a major war between the broader multi-clan factions.
Rishiamaher turned nine last month and she was getting good at magic!
Everyone said that Foet was scary, but she wasn't. Foet was her good friend. The girl came to play often and she had magic too. Foet's father had told her not to teach Rishiamaher how to use magic so of course she had immediately decided to teach Rishiamaher anyway.
It was fun copying Foet's hand movements and seeing what came out. Rishiamaher could make walls pop out of the ground and throw rocks very fast, but when Foet did it, she got sticky fireballs and a spray of fire.
Rishiamaher didn't tell anyone, Foet had told her to keep it a secret. And Rishiamaher was good at secrets! She had not told Foet about Alice's secret, so she had two secrets that she was keeping!
And today, Foet was here again, trying to get Rishiamaher to learn a third hand movement.
The flare of magic in the village distracted her mid-cast.
Squad leader Ryui signaled his slave soldiers forward.
Really, there was nothing to fear, given that the lone Fire Clan Finger was already dead. Ryui had made sure to aim a generous portion of the initial bombardment at him.
Some would call it overkill to have two Palms, thirty Fingers and a hundred warrior slaves, essentially a small army, go destroy a single village with only one Finger in it. But that was also a clear statement of intent to everyone else. The Patriarch was determined to see those artifacts destroyed, no matter the cost or who got in the way.
His instructions were clear. Go to the village, kill the Fire Clan man there, destroy the artifacts. Of the villagers, there was only a single relevant line. 'Do whatever is necessary.' Ryui would level the village or wheedle his way into their good graces, as long as what he did made it more likely his mission would succeed. Afterwards? Kill them, sell them off, leave them alone, the Patriarch didn't care.
Ryui was going to sell them of course. Some extra pocket money would make the Fingers happy despite trudging all the way out here just to throw a few stones and go back home.
On the other hand, looking at the sheer destruction in front of him, Ryui didn't think there would be many survivors.
The village was... ruined was too gentle of a word. The houses were all caved in, small boulders smashed through their walls. Earthquakes from Ryui and his vice-leader Palm had thrown everyone in front of him to the ground, and also knocked down all the remaining walls. The fields were a mess with rocks and soil thrown everywhere, the crop ruined. A pity, the wheat was only a month from harvest.
The scattered villagers who had tried to run away or were out in the fields had been shot down by the slave soldiers that carried bows. Not even the houses lying outside the village center had been spared. They didn't want word of the Consecration artifact to spread after all.
Lochar was nothing but a bloody smear on the ground. The villagers' broken bodies were tossed everywhere, draped across the ground or hanging from where they landed. Courtesy of an earthquake with two Palms worth of Potential followed by thirty Fingers of continuous rock bombardment. Lochar's futile attempts to resist had merely set the wreckage alight.
Ah well. The mission came first after all, pocket money was optional.
"It's not often you get to see Palms go all out," Ryui said to the Fingers standing behind him, "one day, you'll be the Palm doing this. "
"It is impressive, sir. "
Ryui snorted at the man behind him, "your flattery needs work. But thank you. Now go with the slaves and find those artifacts. Anything else you find, you can keep, only slaves are shared between everyone. Group one with me, we'll search the Naivi spawn's house. What's left of it. "
Digging through the ruins eventually found the rods of metal he was looking for. They were buried in a stone box set into the floor of the house and had survived the rain of rocks and earthquake. Good of Lochar to make his work easy.
A handwave cracked the box open and revealed the five artifacts they were looking for. Gleaming metal, right from the age of the gods, Ryui had seen steel before and this was far too shiny and light. After confirming the artifacts had the described effect on soil, they laid the artifacts onto a tray of iron.
He concentrated, crumbling the metal to powder, and watched as the Records over the magic items faded away.
"I confirm we have destroyed five artifacts. " Ryui said formally.
His second in command, Wu, concurred, "I confirm that the five artifacts have been destroyed. "
And that was that. Now it was time to salvage some side benefits.
Kara was one of the few Fingers who actually had a brain among this bunch.
When she had detected weak magic in one of the collapsed houses, the other meatheads might have thought an enemy still lived and pounded the position until nothing moved. Instead, she had a single combat slave to investigate and after the subsequent weak fireball burnt him to ashes, she was rewarded.
It was Lochar's little girl and a little earth sorcerer. The little girl's earth magic was the reason for the pair's survival, the fallen log wall had been propped up with a crude earth wall, but that had tied up all of the illicit sorcerer's magic and rendered her too exhausted to move. Lochar's daughter still had her fire of course but she wasn't even worthy of a Finger yet.
It had taken no more than a simple shield of rock before the fiery girl ran out of magic too and Kara could pin her down safely. The screaming kid had to have her hands encased in rock to prevent any surprises.
"Get collars on them," she commanded the slaves. Two sorcerer slaves? And children at that? They would easily pay for the cost of the trip out here.
The combat slave carrying the collars squeezed his way into the space to snap the collars around them. The weak magic Kara felt disappeared immediately except what she could detect from the collars. That led to Kara hurriedly propping up the falling wall as the earth girl's magic stopped reinforcing the earth that held it up.
Kara breathed out a sigh of relief. It would be really disappointing if she went to the trouble of getting these slaves only to have them crushed. Why, she would be the laughingstock of the band for months!
She glared at the combat slaves looking at her, "what are you waiting for? Get them out of there!"
That was one of the problems with slaves, no initiative, the lot of them. After all, they were rewarded for obeying and wouldn't do anything without orders, even if said orders could be quite broad. But this expedition had been put together in a hurry and there were only slaves and sorcerers here.
The two new slaves were dug out of their makeshift shelter and draped over the biggest male slave under Kara. She turned to go.
There was a loud crack and the head of slave she set on watch exploded. The metal collar he was wearing glinted as it flipped end over end.
As bits of blood and bone landed around them, the metallic ting of the slave's collar bouncing rang out into stunned silence.
Kara hit the ground almost at the same time as the falling collar. She knew the sound of a stone bullet spell and glanced around for the shooter. Had one of the other Fingers decided to kill her for some reason?
No. As the slaves milled around in confusion, Kara spotted the head of a girl sticking out above the waist high wheat at the edge of the planted fields, right next to the border of the forest. Another earth sorcerer?! One that could cast actually dangerous attacks?
"Kill her!" Kara commanded the slaves. She saw them charge out into the fields and cursed herself at giving too broad an order. The man carrying her prizes was charging off with them! Kara snarled and held out a hand, ready to shoot back or shield the moment the girl moved. She could always countermand the slave after she killed the attacker.
Wait, what was that long metal tube the girl was pointing at her-
Foet groaned to herself as she bounced on the big man's shoulder.
The collar was heavy and her head hurt from throwing fireballs at the evil woman and she was so tired, but she had enough awareness to know they were heading off into the forest.
For what or why, Foet was too preoccupied with her own hurts to wonder. The man holding her and Ri over his shoulders grunted as they crashed through the thick undergrowth and Foet had to shield her face from leaves and low branches.
There were ear-splitting cracks and screams and terrible noises all around, and after the panic of the initial bombardment and the numb horror of the ruins of her home village, all she could do was cry.
More shouts and cries passed her by, the man underneath her grunting with greater exertion as he plunged down a gentle slope. She grunted as his shoulder dug into her belly.
Their carrier tumbled to a halt after a particularly loud crack, sending Foet hurtling straight into a bush. She spat out soil and leaves, crying miserably at fresh bruises.
It wasn't often that Foet thought of her mother, as her father took his wife for granted and his daughter copied him, but the little girl who wasn't trying to be a fire sorcerer to impress her father remembered gentle touches and soft words when her father was away. Even the occasional head pat.
Foet wanted nothing more than her mother now.
There was a soft rustling of leaves behind her and a familiar voice.
"Foet?"
She curled up into a ball of private misery, but the voice, hesitant and unsure, came back.
"There, there?"
The gentle hand that brushed away the broken twigs in her hair was too much for the little girl and she burst into relieved tears.
Alice patted Foet's hair as the girl clung to her and sobbed. Fortunately, she hadn't seen any blood outside of a few bad scrapes. The collar worried her but it didn't seem to be doing anything yet, so Alice dragged Lochar's daughter up to go find her sister. Ri had landed in a bush nearby as well.
In the forest, Alice had been able to put her child size and hunting skills to lose the soldiers sent after her. Though why the soldier carrying Ri and Foet had come along, Alice didn't know. That was a good stroke of luck.
She had been planning to lie low when she first saw the destruction. Firing at a clearly military force filled with sorcerers without enough bullets or Potential to kill everyone was just suicide. Ten year old Alice had no way of fighting off adult soldiers, much less sorcerers.
But Alice recalled the cold fury that filled her when she saw her sister and friend being carried out of her fallen house.
Petra had never killed even an animal in her long life and while Alice was far more used to blood and violence in her hunting, she hadn't fought humans before either. Still, she could recall every motion of her hands, every cloud in the sky and burning house in her village. Her mind empty of everything but the will to kill every last one of them.
She recalled shooting and reloading with a methodical precision that outdid her best practice shots.
One to the woman with the bow. One to the woman sorcerer who was giving commands. The sprays of bright red blood as their heads exploded. The panting of her own breath and arms wound tight with tension. She shot them one at a time as they approached, she retreated into the forest and shot them some more. The canopy was deep and the undergrowth was lush, with plenty of places for a child to hide in.
Alice knew the forest just like her father, where the slopes with the bad footing was, where their animal traps had been set up to catch stray feet. Where she could hide in the bushes to ambush. It hadn't taken long for Alice to lead the four surviving soldiers into traps for bigger game and cripple them or just find an opportunity to shoot.
But her kinetic launcher was not quiet and by now the rest of the soldiers would be after them. And Alice had only a handful of shots remaining, certainly not enough to fight off another band of enemies.
She shook Foet's shoulder, trying to dislodge the crying girl. Foet just sobbed harder.
"Come on, we're not out of it yet," Alice said, "we still have to get Ri and more of them will be after us. "
At the mention of Ri's name, Foet finally managed to pull herself together, sniffling and wiping at her eyes. Alice tried to reassure the girl with a pat on the back before turning to find her sister in the bushes.
As it turned out, the fall had woken Ri up and she also needed precious moments to be comforted before they could move.
"Sis," Ri complained once Alice tried to get her moving, "my arm. It's painful. "
Alice looked at the bruised and deep scrapes. The splinters of wood stuck through her sister's skin bothered her but they could worry about infection and the Potential cost of healing after they were hidden.
"Remember the gully near the river?" Alice asked. Ri had the same Skill Share in hunting as herself and theoretically knew the land just as well, though her sister had never taken to hunting despite that advantage.
Still, they had played in that shallow cave before, more like an overhang, close to the bend in the river. It was hidden behind drooping branches of the slanted tree above and hard to spot if you didn't know it was there.
Ri nodded.
"Can you lead Foet there? Hide there and I will join you soon," Alice said.
She got another acknowledgement from Ri and turned to Foet.
"Where are you going?" Foet asked.
Alice fingered the last four bullets in her pocket. "Just cleaning up. "
The two men who had merely been crippled by her father's traps were still there and still trying to free themselves. The shallow hole filled with barbs was hard to get out of, as Alice could testify from her efforts at trying to get her kills free from them. Alice wondered how they were still struggling.
She had heard tales from her father about hunters who forgot where their own traps were. Alice was quite sure that the perpetual sleep they got stuck in for weeks was due to their civilian healing graft trying to fight off infection. Nevertheless, the pain should have been debilitating.
The two men were in pain but were still struggling to free themselves. In fact, one of them had gotten out of the trap already and was working on the other. When Alice stepped into view, they both looked up at her.
She gulped as the freed man started to hobble towards her. He couldn't even walk fast and was bleeding badly through the crude wrappings on his leg wound. There was no way he could catch Alice with his bronze short sword but despite that, he still came on.
The strange crazed smile of anticipation and glee on his face was unnerving.
Alice glanced down at the trapped man and took a step back involuntarily. That one had the same twisted desperate grin.
Almost without thought, the kinetic launcher came up to her shoulder and barked its sharp cry. The grin on the face of the approaching man disappeared. Even while blood showered the trees and bushes, Alice felt herself grow lightheaded.
The faces of the charging soldiers shimmered in her memory, the ones she had killed in a cold rage. The same grin was on their faces too. Only the Earth Alva woman had anything like a normal expression.
The man trapped in the hole tried to pry at his leg faster. Alice shot his arms on reflex, blowing off both limbs and the trapped leg.
This was no battle lust, no people driven to desperation through their circumstances. Not once had they tried to speak other than to signal to each other. None had asked for mercy, none of them had even tried to stop.
And that grin was haunting her. Petra knew that grin from the horror stories of her age.
While the dying man bled all over the trap, Alice approached the collar. She brought out her new rune tool. She had to know.
Placing one end against the collar, she saw the light at the end of her tool light up. It had a Record. Alice felt her heart sink.
With quick twists, she injected a tiny set of runes that would perform a useless calculation and proceed to loop until the potential of the collar ran out. Depending on how much potential the collar contained, it could take minutes to drain dry.
Alice barely managed to scurry behind the nearest tree before the collar exploded and removed the last soldier's head. The sharp report was the worst sound she had ever heard. No easy freedom either.
Alice had to handle her sister and friend very carefully. And whatever survivors from her village. And maybe her parents were dead or worse. And there were far more 'soldiers' under the command of that clan and possibly other clans.
The depth of horror in her belly seemed to sink deeper and darker with every step. Her breakfast was left behind under a log, her knees wobbled and protested. The insects of the forest rasped their protests at the humans. Trees loomed menacingly.
But there were two new victims of this sick and twisted device and they were relying on Alice. She forced herself onwards to their hideout.
This was the worst case scenario. Anathema. Atrocity. The very thought of having to learn how these things worked to free her family made Alice want to scrub herself raw.
Those collars were Record corruption devices.
The series of sharp cracks had of course attracted attention. Ryui had immediately recalled some of the searchers and led a small force to investigate.
Too late as it turned out. All that were left on the ground and among the wheat were the headless bodies and splatters of blood.
"What happened here?!" Ryui demanded, sending his subordinates scurrying around to find traces.
Wu looked up from Kara's body, her head just as missing as the other bodies. The exploded heads looked like the sort of injuries a rock bullet spell would inflict.
But if there was a hostile Earth sorcerer sneaking around, trying to steal the Consecration artifacts, then attacking a lone Finger was just giving away surprise. Or was there a bigger ambush waiting for Ryui?
"I don't think this was done with rock bullets," Wu said.
The squad leader looked at his second in surprise. "But these are clearly rock bullet wounds!" Ryui exclaimed.
"With one shot to each person's head? With no other injuries? There's no Palm or even Fist who can do that," Wu pointed out.
"Toron of the Flash could do it," Ryui grumbled. But Wu just raised an eyebrow. If the Flash was here and opposing them, the Fist of Earth would just kill them all in the open. Not that there was any reason for one of the legendary Fists to be here.
"No, I think this is a monster's work," Wu concluded. "I've seen similar wounds from riolas before. "
"Riola beams set things on fire, not blow off heads!"
"And I'm telling you I've seen it before. Before I married into the Tos, I was a Finger from Om and the monster domain we guarded would constantly spawn riolas. Yes, their common sweeping beam will set things on fire but those bird monsters can also fire all of the beam in a single instant. Instead of burning, you just explode. They don't do it very often, thank goodness. It's one of their nastier tricks and impossible to dodge. "
Ryui looked at the line of bodies of the slave soldiers leading into the forest. Riolas couldn't fire quickly so to cause this many casualties, there must be quite a few of them.
Kara must have sent her slave soldiers to chase the monsters and then died before she could pull them back.
Was Ryui to send more soldiers into the forest to retrieve the collars of Kara's command? Those collars were moderately expensive and losing them would eat into their reward.
There was a loud bang in the distant forest, accompanied by a flight of birds. A short pause then another bang. The monsters were still out there.
"Leave the slaves in the forest, we're not here to hunt monsters," Ryui commanded, "collect the collars from the dead you can reach and someone take Kara's body. Get ready to leave! I want to be gone before those monsters come back for us!"
At least making slaves of the few survivors would help offset the damage.
"Those damned vultures!"
The curse was punctuated by a clatter of falling cutlery. The slave servants in the room immediately set about cleaning up the mess of fallen food and drink. The slaves crept quietly and fearfully, not wanting to draw the man's wrath.
The Tos Clan Patriarch growled, staring into space. Clenched in his hand was a letter.
Supposed allies were only giving half-hearted support. Merchants were happy to sell the new power in town anything he wanted, but only for cutthroat prices. His clan people were dying day by day while the small forces of neighbouring clans sat around 'enforcing the blockade'.
A blockade that was useless now the messengers had escaped. Naivi's allies and the accursed behemoth of the Yio Clan were starting to move and if he did not crush the Naivi soon, the entire war would start to run into serious resistance.
Calling in everyone to deal with the threat to Consecration had worked, up until commitment was required. Iki, Hui and Om were all too happy to let the Tos take the losses, and the heat, then move in for the benefits immediately afterwards. They knew the Tos had to attack, given that Naivi villages were primarily Consecrated by his clan and artifacts that could duplicate Consecration were going to rob them of too many resources. They also knew that the Tos could not possibly hold the entire town to themselves afterwards.
If the Tos managed to take over the town, then they would claim their rights as allies and helpers. If the Yio got off their fiery asses and squashed him? Well, they would just disavow everything and run.
The only good thing in this mess was that the kill team had successfully reached their destination without being detected. No matter what happened here, the Consecration threat would be gone.
The one time his clan pushed the Naivi hard and they were about to break, that accursed woman arrived. That was not a good day. The Tos had to find a way to kill that Naivi leader, and hopefully seize that huge potential fragment from her. Then the Naivi defence would collapse and he could sweep them off the board. The Yio would find the cost of reducing a fortified Earth clan far less than any possible benefit, but if they caught the Tos still embroiled in a battle...
He just had to win before he lost.
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- Location
- Elsewhere
So the Earth Clan intercepted the communications about the artifacts, the question is how perfectly they intercepted it.
If one message got through, or somebody talks afterwards, the information can get out anyway.
If the Fire Clan figures out why this happened, or anybody discovers that the consecration artifacts are a possibility, then that would spawn a lot more turmoil.
If one message got through, or somebody talks afterwards, the information can get out anyway.
If the Fire Clan figures out why this happened, or anybody discovers that the consecration artifacts are a possibility, then that would spawn a lot more turmoil.
- Location
- Australia
Edited, thanks for that.
Classic man in the middle attack. Just buy out the messenger. A little friendly spying.
Tos probably didn't believe the whole "can replace Consecration thing", wondering at what this could mean for Naivi internal politics. But then when Lochar fails to ask for another Consecration on schedule...
Also, the information did get out. The Tos used it to draw in their allied Earth clans to help.
The low numbers (5) makes the matter less explosive than "Consecration is obsolete", plus that Lochar needed all 5 for his village. Yes, having the ability for non-Earth sorcerers to use their Potential for Consecration is good, but it still takes time, especially since you have to walk all over with it instead of meditating for a few hours. Since no one thinks artifacts can be made, it's just a small bonus that might let Naivi dodge buying Consecration while still getting mono-crop level yields.
The Yio for example, the biggest Fire clan, would like to have it but can easily go without. They're certainly not going to fight another major clan for those things. They're already contracting Water and Air for irrigation and weather manipulation, on top of fertilization; that is if their main incomes are even farming at all. Naivi can't afford that.
For the Tos however, since the Naivi are buying all their Consecration from them and the Tos aren't much larger than the Naivi, this is much more important.
Now I imagine a guerrilla campaign of just making endless 'consecration' sticks to screw with the Tos in revenge for killing her village.
"It's the darnedest thing. Wherever the Tos go to consecrate the sticks are found, but only where the Tos go. "
"I've actually heard of one group wanting to hire them out just because they think that if they do then they'll find sticks themselves!"
"It's the darnedest thing. Wherever the Tos go to consecrate the sticks are found, but only where the Tos go. "
"I've actually heard of one group wanting to hire them out just because they think that if they do then they'll find sticks themselves!"
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
I think revenge is getting high operator priority, yes.
Retrospective 1 - Pre-Gate Ages of the World
- Location
- Australia
The historical past known to written record can be divided into four distinct segments. This chapter serves as an overview of the historical ages, covering only the key characteristics of each era. Archeological evidence and written records are examined in greater detail later in this book.
The First and longest is the most contentious of the historical record. Blurred by time, warfare and sabotage, only scattered tales of this Age remains. All sources agree that the First Age was one of prosperity and great advancement for humankind.
Various ruins left behind dating to the First Age are vast in scope and impact. Shattered cities of millions, continent spanning roads and even an ambitious but never completed project called the Tower of the Sky. However, while oral tales claim the First Age spanned a period of hundreds or thousands of years, archeological evidence indicates that the First Age can be sub-divided into two phases.
The long early phase is marked by increasing sophistication in agriculture and political systems. This phase features relatively few Record artifacts and is estimated to last from four hundred to a thousand years. Afterwards, the First Age culminates in an approximate three hundred years of sudden prosperity, with Record artifacts appearing rapidly and globally, propelling all areas of life to immense wealth and power. The memory of this final short phase is what drives the legends of the Alchemical Kingdom or Golden Age.
The Second Age covers a period of two hundred years after the chaos of the Fall of the First Age. This age is characterized by a series of destructive wars in the aftermath. While the exchanges of superweapons in the Fall wiped out the civilizations of the First, the survivors in the Second Age blamed each other and continued the fighting. This era is most appropriately known as the Post-Apocalyptic Era.
Much of the records of the First Age were tainted by salvage efforts and many of the uses to which the surviving First Age artifacts were put was war. The surviving Administrators of the System and their successors squabbled among the ruins, bereft of most of their power from the previous era. Past tensions from the use of superweapons in the Fall and rampant warlordism eventually culminated in a multi-sided war that only ended when all the remaining Administrators were killed, with another precipitous drop in human population and whatever knowledge from the First Age that remained being lost except in a rare few places.
The following period, known as the Interregnum, was three hundred years of recovery from the end of the Second Age. The vast armies of self-replicating war machines had all but eliminated humanity. With very little of their history and knowledge remaining, the survivors eked out a living between uncontrollable powers, at the mercy of their own weapons.
The Fourth Age started with the reincarnation of Alice. The first events of the Long Odyssey up to the ending of the Age with the discovery of the Gate, will be covered in my next book, a biographical account of Alice and Petra. Alice herself, as a primary source from the First Age, features in many of the interviews in this book.
Of the time before the First, only archeology speaks for them. From the fossil record and ancient cities, humans first appeared two thousand years before the First Age, quite suddenly and without evolutionary precedent. Spreading out from the origin point at the Cape of Noyal, the pre-First Age period is marked with little or no Record usage and almost pure agricultural economies.
At the same time, there exist long scars in the land that date back to the early period of human existence, obviously the result of unspeakably powerful effects. Yet historical record agrees that humanity in that period could not have wielded such effects, without the understanding of Records or the power to do so. Strange pictograms left behind from that time reference an older more devastating war between the gods. Of those events, there are no legends and very little beyond ancient craters survives.
- The Pre-Gate Ages of the World
By Miyo, Sage Recordkeeper of Acardia University
The First and longest is the most contentious of the historical record. Blurred by time, warfare and sabotage, only scattered tales of this Age remains. All sources agree that the First Age was one of prosperity and great advancement for humankind.
Various ruins left behind dating to the First Age are vast in scope and impact. Shattered cities of millions, continent spanning roads and even an ambitious but never completed project called the Tower of the Sky. However, while oral tales claim the First Age spanned a period of hundreds or thousands of years, archeological evidence indicates that the First Age can be sub-divided into two phases.
The long early phase is marked by increasing sophistication in agriculture and political systems. This phase features relatively few Record artifacts and is estimated to last from four hundred to a thousand years. Afterwards, the First Age culminates in an approximate three hundred years of sudden prosperity, with Record artifacts appearing rapidly and globally, propelling all areas of life to immense wealth and power. The memory of this final short phase is what drives the legends of the Alchemical Kingdom or Golden Age.
The Second Age covers a period of two hundred years after the chaos of the Fall of the First Age. This age is characterized by a series of destructive wars in the aftermath. While the exchanges of superweapons in the Fall wiped out the civilizations of the First, the survivors in the Second Age blamed each other and continued the fighting. This era is most appropriately known as the Post-Apocalyptic Era.
Much of the records of the First Age were tainted by salvage efforts and many of the uses to which the surviving First Age artifacts were put was war. The surviving Administrators of the System and their successors squabbled among the ruins, bereft of most of their power from the previous era. Past tensions from the use of superweapons in the Fall and rampant warlordism eventually culminated in a multi-sided war that only ended when all the remaining Administrators were killed, with another precipitous drop in human population and whatever knowledge from the First Age that remained being lost except in a rare few places.
The following period, known as the Interregnum, was three hundred years of recovery from the end of the Second Age. The vast armies of self-replicating war machines had all but eliminated humanity. With very little of their history and knowledge remaining, the survivors eked out a living between uncontrollable powers, at the mercy of their own weapons.
The Fourth Age started with the reincarnation of Alice. The first events of the Long Odyssey up to the ending of the Age with the discovery of the Gate, will be covered in my next book, a biographical account of Alice and Petra. Alice herself, as a primary source from the First Age, features in many of the interviews in this book.
Of the time before the First, only archeology speaks for them. From the fossil record and ancient cities, humans first appeared two thousand years before the First Age, quite suddenly and without evolutionary precedent. Spreading out from the origin point at the Cape of Noyal, the pre-First Age period is marked with little or no Record usage and almost pure agricultural economies.
At the same time, there exist long scars in the land that date back to the early period of human existence, obviously the result of unspeakably powerful effects. Yet historical record agrees that humanity in that period could not have wielded such effects, without the understanding of Records or the power to do so. Strange pictograms left behind from that time reference an older more devastating war between the gods. Of those events, there are no legends and very little beyond ancient craters survives.
- The Pre-Gate Ages of the World
By Miyo, Sage Recordkeeper of Acardia University
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Or, terrible guests that blow up the house.
- Location
- Australia
Fusion warheads are a violation of the tenancy agreement.
On the other hand, the landlord is now a rapidly expanding cloud of hot gas.
8 - Going Elsewhere
- Location
- Australia
Alice looked up at the afternoon sky. Ri and Foet had been jittery and hard to calm down, they had not quite cried, but it had been close. The shock of a close shave with hostile enemies was not good for their nerves. But with some soothing, Alice had managed to get them to take a nap.
For that matter, Alice wasn't doing so well herself.
She watched her hands trembling in her lap as she sat in front of the cove. Alice wouldn't say she was hysterical or even afraid. There was no dread, no quick anger, just a numbness and hands and legs that did not want to sit still.
She was exhausted, ten year olds were not meant to go trekking through the woods and fighting battles.
But her body wouldn't let her sleep.
Instead, Alice just kept vigil over all that remained of her life, kinetic launcher ready for the slightest noise that anything had found them.
There was nothing but slowly returning insects and birds for long long hours.
It was dark when Foet first stirred. Her slow waking prodded Alice's sister into sitting up. Their collars shifted and Alice tamped down a glare that threatened to break through to her face. She would destroy those collars eventually.
"We should go back," Alice said, once they had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. "The Earth sorcerers must have left by now. "
Outside of the concealing branches, the river burbled in the evening light. It was subtly calming, as if inviting the three children to simply lay down and ignore the rest of the world.
Which Alice might be able to do. She had fiddled with her rune writer tool, trying to devise a way to make something edible. Working with the abstraction levels she had re-discovered in her various projects, Alice thought she might be able to create a Record that would break down wood into its component sugars. And with this new rune writer, the two thousand or so runes that would require would be no challenge. Between that and hunting with the kinetic launcher, it would let them survive.
Only, staying here was not a long term plan. Alice did not want to be a hermit and who knew what else might come to investigate the ruined village?
"We need to get any food we can from the houses," Alice said, "there's not much we can do here, alone, but... we do what we must. "
The two of them simply looked up at her and nodded slowly. Alice could see they had no idea what to do, something, anything would help keep their minds off the recent tragedies. They could not afford to be stuck in a stupor.
As they slowly got up at Alice's urging and encouragement, she unplugged the potential crystal and its holder from her kinetic launcher.
"Before that, can you charge this crystal?"
After a check from the forest's edge that the invaders had indeed all left, Alice led her sister and friend back into the ruins. She studiously ignored Foet biting back sobs as the destruction grew worse and worse towards the far edge of the village.
There lay a frozen puddle of stone, as if someone had stirred the ground like a soup pot and re-froze it. The charred lines and blast rings dotting the area spoke of a very different source of destruction. No one had survived near that zone.
Then it was Ri's turn to start crying, as Alice passed by their house. The bodies lying under the ruins were obvious, the house had been torn down around her family. It was only Ri's earth sorcery and hiding in the outer barn with Foet that had saved her.
"We should see what we can find," Alice said sadly.
Her family had been good to her, more real. Petra's own parents were distant both in time and in memory, she had lived for more than a hundred years and her memories of childhood were faded. Seeing Den and Erias lying among the fallen stone and wood, her brothers looking like they were just sleeping in awkward positions, was... not quite horrifying but not something Alice would have wanted to see.
Alice left Ri to grieve while she tried to find where the pantry would have ended up. On the way, she found her father's hand sticking out from under a fallen wall. Not something any of them could have moved. Alice ducked down to peer underneath, there was only rocks and a body.
Alice had found what was left of the food when it struck her. She had not seen her mother. If the rest of her family was together when they were attacked, possibly in the middle of eating, then where was her mother?
"Mama's not here," she whispered, but not softly enough.
"Mama?" Ri asked, teary eyes wandering over the ruins.
"Not here," Alice said. There was the sinking feeling again.
She glanced up to where Ri had been sobbing on the ground, with Foet squatting glumly behind her. The collars resting on their necks glinted in the evening light.
With a lurch of her stomach, Alice sat down heavily on the dusty rubble. The invaders had taken her mother. They had put a Record corruption collar on her mother.
"Where's mama?" Ri asked again, tottering up to Alice. She swallowed down her disgust.
This was no time to go to pieces. Alice had to be strong for all three of them. She was the one with a hundred year old woman in her head.
Ri and Foet wouldn't understand, they had no context to understand the sheer violation that was a Record corruption device meant to enslave and render people into... that thing Alice had confronted in the forest.
"Come on," she mussed Ri's hair, forcing a smile onto her own face, "let's find the food. "
She bent down to crawl under the fallen wall. There was a bowl she saw down there.
It was getting truly dark by the time Alice had managed to collect whatever salvage she wanted for her next step.
Some clothes, adult cloaks that were too long, shoes and stuffing to make them fit. Three tough bags, loaded lightly with waterskins and longer lasting food. A few carving knives, two bowls and a few utensils. And her tools. The rest Alice could make. As long as she had a knife, her borrowed carving skill would let her make whatever shapes needed for Record tools.
Alice had plans. Already, while waiting for Foet and Ri to collect the last of the food, Alice had turned a simple pointed rock into a fire starter. No more complex than the light creating Record for her family's table, the stone had taken her only a few minutes. They would need it since the collar blocked Foet's fire sorcery. It hadn't blocked them from charging her potential crystal though, Alice had no idea why.
The runic tool was a step forward, as long as she could plan her runes, Alice could make the Record.
Even the crude kinetic launcher Alice was holding could be made in less than a day, given sufficient potential to conjure materials. If she settled for a shorter barrel, it would need even less potential. Or perhaps Alice could carve one? The barrel was just a guide for the projectile. The bottleneck was both their potential storage and generation.
"Where are we going?" Foet finally asked after they had gathered at the village's edge.
"There are a few people who are not here," Alice said, then pointed at the obvious tracks of a large group of people leaving the village, "I'm going to find them. We're going to find them. "
If her sister and friend were older, they might have objected. If they knew just what fate had befallen their mother, friends and fellow villagers, they might have been too horrified to do anything but cower.
Instead, the ten year old and nine year old girls simply nodded and put all their trust in another girl seemingly their age. Just because Alice seemed like she knew what she was doing.
Alice had a lot to live up to.
Following the trail was easy enough. The group was moving slow and far too large to conceal anything, much less from a hunter as good as Denka. Alice wielded her borrowed skill shamelessly, leading the children in a chase that was just short of punishing.
A few nights were spent making the bowl scan for any sugar polymers in it and break them down into actual sugar, though Alice did not trust it with anything more than boiled tree bark and leaves. The fizz of escaping gas as the wood and leaves disintegrated was somewhat disturbing, but their food would run out pretty soon. Ri and Foet did not complain.
Alice had also been forced to make one of the stoppers for their waterskins conjure water when the trail went two days without seeing a river. The cost in potential of conjuring pure water was far too high to contemplate but with two sorcerers and practically endless sugar to feed their energy, they managed it.
This was not to say that they progressed quickly. Ten year old children did not walk fast and even though their active life in the village made her more fit than Petra's own childhood, Alice could not walk for the entire day.
If it wasn't for Alice's sugar bowl, she was sure the other two would have simply given up in exhaustion. Alice had no idea how Ri and Foet could greedily gulp down entire bowls, the leafy taste was far too strong for her. But sugar was a rare delicacy in the village, while Petra was used to much better.
Four nights into the chase, Alice was taking the middle watch again, like she always did. The concealed fire behind her kept her warm against the night but Alice kept her eyes on blackness of the light forest and night sky to avoid spoiling her vision.
In her hands, the rune tool clicked round and round, building the Record for the tube of wood she carved during their daytime rests. Unlike the arm length kinetic launcher beside Alice, this one was a short barreled, lower power weapon. It would still be very dangerous and go through most wearable armour, but the pistol version consumed less power to fire and was handier.
Eventually, Alice hoped to break her original kinetic launcher's steel barrel in two and use it to make two pistols. But that would have to come later.
There was a whimper behind her. Tonight as well then.
Alice sighed and put a hand to her side, shaking her sister awake gently.
None of their nights had been undisturbed. Either Ri or Foet would toss and turn with nightmares, though Foet tried to conceal her distress.
"Alice?" Ri asked, hugging her leg sleepily.
"I'm here," Alice said, trying to sound reassuring. The click click of her rune tool did not stop, however.
"Will mama be okay?"
Alice kept her sigh to herself and nodded, "we'll find her. I promise. "
There was a pause. "They'll make mama wear one of these, right?" Ri asked again. The metallic ting of her fingernails told Alice what she was referring to.
Alice paused her hands. How much did Ri understand? Or did she catch Alice in one of her many horror-struck moments?
"She'll be okay," Alice repeated. She had better be.
To be honest, Alice had no idea why the collars hadn't turned Ri and Foet into... those things. The collars hadn't seemed to do anything but weigh both of them down. However, Alice had no idea what the mechanism of action was supposed to be, beyond Record corruption. So maybe there was hope.
Maybe Alice could manage to free her mother from wherever slaves went. Or buy her. And also persuade whichever slavers there were to free her sister and friend. Somehow.
And to be taken seriously in her ten year old body, Alice would need an equalizer. Hence her current project.
She worked her stilled fingers, filling the night with the quiet but steady clicks.
"Do you get bad dreams?"
Alice paused again and looked at the night shrouded form of her sister, only a visible dark shape against the glow of their smouldering fire.
"I do," she confessed. Dreams of her parents turning into one of those things, dreams of Ri and Foet slowly warping, dreams of the world filled with nothing but slavering barely-human zombies wearing collars.
Alice could not afford to dwell on them.
"I keep seeing the fire and the rocks," Ri continued, "that earth sorcerer woman and her fighters. They fight and they're scary. And then they die. Sometimes, you kill them. Sometimes, I kill them. Sometimes they kill papa and mama and our brothers. "
Her sister shifted and Alice knew she was looking at the kinetic launcher. Come to think of it, Ri had been around to see her explode heads. Possibly more in the subsequent chase.
Alice had barely thought of her targets. She had killed, she had been in a stressful and violent situation with naked hostility directed at her, something that Petra's society had known should cause shock and adverse reactions. But none of that had happened to Alice. The violence she had unleashed did not trouble her.
Maybe it was the collars, she had her own demons and they were much worse than Alice killing a person who she, admittedly, really wanted to kill.
"It'll be alright. You'll be alright," was all Alice could say.
Petra had no idea how to treat shock.
Alice sat there beside her sister, watching the stars in the night sky. Her ancient memories had never seen stars like this. Not in all of Petra's hundred years. The lack of light pollution allowed the full panoply to parade overhead, a stark beauty compared to their somber mood.
"If you can't sleep, you can take the next watch," Alice said eventually, it was almost time to change over. Her sister sat up to take her place.
Alice put away her tools and lay down on the hard ground with nothing more than her cloak. Relying on ten year old children to keep watch was not ideal but Alice had to sleep sometime. Even if her sleep was on uncomfortable ground, she had to accept it. They would be pressing onwards all day tomorrow as well.
They never caught sight of the party of sorcerers they were trailing.
The first thing Alice noticed about the town was that it had been on fire.
The sorcerers they were following had entered the town, probably, and there wasn't a way to tell if they had proceeded onwards or stopped here. Before this, on the road, the party was the largest group to have passed in recent times and they stuck together. Easy to follow. The tracks had gotten blurrier as they approached the town but Alice remained confident her mother had been brought here.
The road had become more traveled as she led them towards the town, with the land beginning to be covered densely with farms, buildings grew more common until in the town itself, there was nothing but buildings and roads. There was no sharp dividing line separating the boundaries of the town, it was more a gradual transition into a place where people gathered.
Townsfolk walked past the three of them, sometimes their eyes held curiousity at the three dirty and exhausted children, some rare travellers had pity. But no one tried to talk to them.
"It's not walled," Alice noted as the town center came in sight. That let her see how one entire side of the visible buildings were damaged. Chunks had been knocked out of some and scorched ruins were all that remained of others. Men and women crawled over them, hauling rubble and items away.
"What are we going to do?" Ri asked, clinging nervously to Alice. The passing couple glanced at them, causing her to tense up. She only relaxed once the pair of farmers had passed.
"My father has family here," Foet said, looking around for anyone who might look like a fire sorcerer. "He told me stories about his cousins and sister in Cava Town. The Naivi clan lives here. "
Alice looked at Foet in surprise, this was the first she had heard of this. But the girl's face was drawn in exhaustion and she had simply not thought to explain it before. Or maybe the way both her parents were killed had left her grieving.
And she had not questioned the kinetic launcher or Alice's making of Records despite never having seen them before. Even if Alice did not explain, though, it was obvious where the Consecration replacing rods had come from.
"That's as good a plan as any. Better than my idea of trying to get a slaver to free the two of you. Your clan needs to know their village was attacked and maybe they will want to take us in. "
Oh, they would definitely want to. If it got her mother free, Alice would not mind tying herself to the Naivi with her understanding of Records. Alice glanced at Ri and decided not to mention it. Her father had been adamant that Alice would only be exploited and his quiet rants about the evils of the clans would only make Ri frightened for Alice.
For her mother, she would do it.
Foet didn't move.
"Do you know where the Naivi are in this town?" Alice asked.
The girl shook her head.
Alice bit back a sigh. She was just tired, both of them were, and Alice could not be irritable. She scrubbed a hand over her face and nodded.
"Alright, we go with my first plan. We find a place to sleep tonight and ask around, quietly, tomorrow for the Naivi. Remember that the group who attacked our village came to this town too, we don't want them to know we followed them. "
Alice got nods of understanding from her sister and friend and they set off into the dense streets to find a corner.
Her forays into the back alleys and unseen corners met with problems almost immediately.
The very first side path she stepped into found the three of them surrounded. Children sprang out from behind the broken barrels lining the side of one building while two more blocked the way back to the street. All of them wielding makeshift clubs of wood, with the oldest girl holding a battered knife. All of them had shabby clothes or just plain cloths and seemed malnourished.
Alice was acutely aware of how her sister and friend were looking more like these vagrant children every day.
She glanced around, counting eight of them, though three looked tiny and small, perhaps five or six years old. Ri and Foet were facing the two at the street, Ri looked particularly panicky. With a sinking feeling, she drew her pistol sized kinetic launcher from where it hung at her waist, thumbing a bullet into the firing position in the same action.
The big one was too unwieldy to use in these close quarters, and her potential crystal was in her pistol. But it was still a long sturdy thing made of metal. Alice blindly used her other hand to direct Foet to the stock behind her back. Ri had frozen for a moment before reluctantly drawing their cooking knife.
"Fancy dressed, you are," the lead girl said. She looked halfway to being an adult. "What are you doing here..."
Her voice trailed off as her gaze went to the collars around Ri and Foet. "Slaves? Or not?" she muttered in confusion.
Foet took the chance to draw the arm length barrel from Alice's back.
The movement caused the others to start forward but they drew back again when Alice swung her pistol up into firing position, aimed at the leader. They were visibly confused at her weapon but they could read the implied threat in her body language. She took the chance to grab another three bullets with her other hand.
"Metal..." muttered the opposing girl as the others looked to her.
"Who are you three?" she asked, finally.
Alice shook her head, not willing to answer. "We just want to find a place to sleep, let us go and we won't have any trouble. " Or any deaths. Alice prayed she wouldn't have to shoot children but she would defend herself.
The girl traced over the three of them and their weapons, obviously weighing her group's ability to fight them. Her face twisted into a snarl, the calculation obviously not to her liking. "Then get out, this is our turf. "
At that, the other children brandished their weapons, the younger kids copying their elders a step later.
"All right, we'll find another corner," Alice said, breathing a little easier at the de-escalation.
With a nod, the two boys blocking the way to the street stepped back warily.
Though, perhaps something useful could be got out of this encounter. No one would listen to these vagrant children after all. "Before we go, can you answer a question?"
The lead girl paused for a moment then nodded jerkily.
"Do you know where the Naivi clan are? I'm trying to find them. "
The girl blinked and replied, "they're dead. The Tos clan killed them all. "
Alice heard Foet start to cry behind her.
The woman sitting at the table put down her cup of scented tea, prim and proper behaviour befitting the tension in the room. "Unprecedented the attack may be, you must admit the Naivi provoked them by refusing to negotiate. "
Scar replied evenly, despite his rumbling anger. He did not partake of his tea. "There was no negotiation at all, I do not see any attempt by the Tos to talk, merely killing. "
Representatives of the Yio clan of fire sorcerers glared from behind his shoulders, matched by those of his counterpart, negotiator Ooi of the Hakam clan of earth sorcerers. Major powers took a long time to start moving, not due to their bulk but to avoid giving offense. All out war between the clans of the Elemental Empire was not a situation anyone wanted.
So when reports came in of a sudden and overwhelming attack by the Tos clan seemingly bent on the total destruction of the Naivi, a meeting simply had to occur before their conflict drew in neighbouring clans and sparked something larger and more regrettable.
"And there was no consultation made with their partners. The Naivi did not mention their discovery and even tried to keep it secret. "
"The Tos fired the first spell. They could just as easily have protested or escalated the matter to you. And the artifacts are still confined to a single village. "
For all of Ooi's protestations, there was still this inconvenient fact. No matter that the Naivi might have provoked the Tos clan, legitimately or not since Consecration was a service bought and paid for, the Tos clan had sparked the war and that gave the Yio advantage.
Scar could see the woman acknowledge that.
"We will have the Tos pay a full blood price for all their aggression, turn over all potential fragments belonging to the Naivi and evacuate the town," Scar started the next phase of this negotiation.
Ooi's counter was fully expected. "Impossible. You ask to ruin them completely when the Naivi were threatening to break their pact. We concede the matter of the blood price but offset with the casualties they suffered. The rest are unacceptable, the normal fortunes of war. "
And at the end, they eventually agreed to let the Tos take the town. The Yio would not budge on the matter of the potential fragments but conceded the paying of a blood price in exchange for full value of everything else captured in the Naivi clan's compounds. Outlying Naivi villages would fall under Yio control.
With great material loss in exchange for a more stable future base, the fate of the Tos were determined. Without any of them present.
Of course, they wouldn't be, the Tos would not oppose the Yio, much less the Hakam, no matter their physical distance.
"What about survivors?" Ooi asked.
That was an important question. The two great clans were distant from that conflict and by the time the agreement could reach the town, the fighting was expected to be over.
"Repatriated to us, of course," Scar replied.
"And if they were collared?"
"Release the untrained and repatriate them. " Scar hesitated here. "And if they're already trained, then the Tos pay a blood price. "
The woman's expression soured but eventually she nodded her acceptance.
Trained slaves could not be freed after all.
For that matter, Alice wasn't doing so well herself.
She watched her hands trembling in her lap as she sat in front of the cove. Alice wouldn't say she was hysterical or even afraid. There was no dread, no quick anger, just a numbness and hands and legs that did not want to sit still.
She was exhausted, ten year olds were not meant to go trekking through the woods and fighting battles.
But her body wouldn't let her sleep.
Instead, Alice just kept vigil over all that remained of her life, kinetic launcher ready for the slightest noise that anything had found them.
There was nothing but slowly returning insects and birds for long long hours.
It was dark when Foet first stirred. Her slow waking prodded Alice's sister into sitting up. Their collars shifted and Alice tamped down a glare that threatened to break through to her face. She would destroy those collars eventually.
"We should go back," Alice said, once they had rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. "The Earth sorcerers must have left by now. "
Outside of the concealing branches, the river burbled in the evening light. It was subtly calming, as if inviting the three children to simply lay down and ignore the rest of the world.
Which Alice might be able to do. She had fiddled with her rune writer tool, trying to devise a way to make something edible. Working with the abstraction levels she had re-discovered in her various projects, Alice thought she might be able to create a Record that would break down wood into its component sugars. And with this new rune writer, the two thousand or so runes that would require would be no challenge. Between that and hunting with the kinetic launcher, it would let them survive.
Only, staying here was not a long term plan. Alice did not want to be a hermit and who knew what else might come to investigate the ruined village?
"We need to get any food we can from the houses," Alice said, "there's not much we can do here, alone, but... we do what we must. "
The two of them simply looked up at her and nodded slowly. Alice could see they had no idea what to do, something, anything would help keep their minds off the recent tragedies. They could not afford to be stuck in a stupor.
As they slowly got up at Alice's urging and encouragement, she unplugged the potential crystal and its holder from her kinetic launcher.
"Before that, can you charge this crystal?"
After a check from the forest's edge that the invaders had indeed all left, Alice led her sister and friend back into the ruins. She studiously ignored Foet biting back sobs as the destruction grew worse and worse towards the far edge of the village.
There lay a frozen puddle of stone, as if someone had stirred the ground like a soup pot and re-froze it. The charred lines and blast rings dotting the area spoke of a very different source of destruction. No one had survived near that zone.
Then it was Ri's turn to start crying, as Alice passed by their house. The bodies lying under the ruins were obvious, the house had been torn down around her family. It was only Ri's earth sorcery and hiding in the outer barn with Foet that had saved her.
"We should see what we can find," Alice said sadly.
Her family had been good to her, more real. Petra's own parents were distant both in time and in memory, she had lived for more than a hundred years and her memories of childhood were faded. Seeing Den and Erias lying among the fallen stone and wood, her brothers looking like they were just sleeping in awkward positions, was... not quite horrifying but not something Alice would have wanted to see.
Alice left Ri to grieve while she tried to find where the pantry would have ended up. On the way, she found her father's hand sticking out from under a fallen wall. Not something any of them could have moved. Alice ducked down to peer underneath, there was only rocks and a body.
Alice had found what was left of the food when it struck her. She had not seen her mother. If the rest of her family was together when they were attacked, possibly in the middle of eating, then where was her mother?
"Mama's not here," she whispered, but not softly enough.
"Mama?" Ri asked, teary eyes wandering over the ruins.
"Not here," Alice said. There was the sinking feeling again.
She glanced up to where Ri had been sobbing on the ground, with Foet squatting glumly behind her. The collars resting on their necks glinted in the evening light.
With a lurch of her stomach, Alice sat down heavily on the dusty rubble. The invaders had taken her mother. They had put a Record corruption collar on her mother.
"Where's mama?" Ri asked again, tottering up to Alice. She swallowed down her disgust.
This was no time to go to pieces. Alice had to be strong for all three of them. She was the one with a hundred year old woman in her head.
Ri and Foet wouldn't understand, they had no context to understand the sheer violation that was a Record corruption device meant to enslave and render people into... that thing Alice had confronted in the forest.
"Come on," she mussed Ri's hair, forcing a smile onto her own face, "let's find the food. "
She bent down to crawl under the fallen wall. There was a bowl she saw down there.
It was getting truly dark by the time Alice had managed to collect whatever salvage she wanted for her next step.
Some clothes, adult cloaks that were too long, shoes and stuffing to make them fit. Three tough bags, loaded lightly with waterskins and longer lasting food. A few carving knives, two bowls and a few utensils. And her tools. The rest Alice could make. As long as she had a knife, her borrowed carving skill would let her make whatever shapes needed for Record tools.
Alice had plans. Already, while waiting for Foet and Ri to collect the last of the food, Alice had turned a simple pointed rock into a fire starter. No more complex than the light creating Record for her family's table, the stone had taken her only a few minutes. They would need it since the collar blocked Foet's fire sorcery. It hadn't blocked them from charging her potential crystal though, Alice had no idea why.
The runic tool was a step forward, as long as she could plan her runes, Alice could make the Record.
Even the crude kinetic launcher Alice was holding could be made in less than a day, given sufficient potential to conjure materials. If she settled for a shorter barrel, it would need even less potential. Or perhaps Alice could carve one? The barrel was just a guide for the projectile. The bottleneck was both their potential storage and generation.
"Where are we going?" Foet finally asked after they had gathered at the village's edge.
"There are a few people who are not here," Alice said, then pointed at the obvious tracks of a large group of people leaving the village, "I'm going to find them. We're going to find them. "
If her sister and friend were older, they might have objected. If they knew just what fate had befallen their mother, friends and fellow villagers, they might have been too horrified to do anything but cower.
Instead, the ten year old and nine year old girls simply nodded and put all their trust in another girl seemingly their age. Just because Alice seemed like she knew what she was doing.
Alice had a lot to live up to.
Following the trail was easy enough. The group was moving slow and far too large to conceal anything, much less from a hunter as good as Denka. Alice wielded her borrowed skill shamelessly, leading the children in a chase that was just short of punishing.
A few nights were spent making the bowl scan for any sugar polymers in it and break them down into actual sugar, though Alice did not trust it with anything more than boiled tree bark and leaves. The fizz of escaping gas as the wood and leaves disintegrated was somewhat disturbing, but their food would run out pretty soon. Ri and Foet did not complain.
Alice had also been forced to make one of the stoppers for their waterskins conjure water when the trail went two days without seeing a river. The cost in potential of conjuring pure water was far too high to contemplate but with two sorcerers and practically endless sugar to feed their energy, they managed it.
This was not to say that they progressed quickly. Ten year old children did not walk fast and even though their active life in the village made her more fit than Petra's own childhood, Alice could not walk for the entire day.
If it wasn't for Alice's sugar bowl, she was sure the other two would have simply given up in exhaustion. Alice had no idea how Ri and Foet could greedily gulp down entire bowls, the leafy taste was far too strong for her. But sugar was a rare delicacy in the village, while Petra was used to much better.
Four nights into the chase, Alice was taking the middle watch again, like she always did. The concealed fire behind her kept her warm against the night but Alice kept her eyes on blackness of the light forest and night sky to avoid spoiling her vision.
In her hands, the rune tool clicked round and round, building the Record for the tube of wood she carved during their daytime rests. Unlike the arm length kinetic launcher beside Alice, this one was a short barreled, lower power weapon. It would still be very dangerous and go through most wearable armour, but the pistol version consumed less power to fire and was handier.
Eventually, Alice hoped to break her original kinetic launcher's steel barrel in two and use it to make two pistols. But that would have to come later.
There was a whimper behind her. Tonight as well then.
Alice sighed and put a hand to her side, shaking her sister awake gently.
None of their nights had been undisturbed. Either Ri or Foet would toss and turn with nightmares, though Foet tried to conceal her distress.
"Alice?" Ri asked, hugging her leg sleepily.
"I'm here," Alice said, trying to sound reassuring. The click click of her rune tool did not stop, however.
"Will mama be okay?"
Alice kept her sigh to herself and nodded, "we'll find her. I promise. "
There was a pause. "They'll make mama wear one of these, right?" Ri asked again. The metallic ting of her fingernails told Alice what she was referring to.
Alice paused her hands. How much did Ri understand? Or did she catch Alice in one of her many horror-struck moments?
"She'll be okay," Alice repeated. She had better be.
To be honest, Alice had no idea why the collars hadn't turned Ri and Foet into... those things. The collars hadn't seemed to do anything but weigh both of them down. However, Alice had no idea what the mechanism of action was supposed to be, beyond Record corruption. So maybe there was hope.
Maybe Alice could manage to free her mother from wherever slaves went. Or buy her. And also persuade whichever slavers there were to free her sister and friend. Somehow.
And to be taken seriously in her ten year old body, Alice would need an equalizer. Hence her current project.
She worked her stilled fingers, filling the night with the quiet but steady clicks.
"Do you get bad dreams?"
Alice paused again and looked at the night shrouded form of her sister, only a visible dark shape against the glow of their smouldering fire.
"I do," she confessed. Dreams of her parents turning into one of those things, dreams of Ri and Foet slowly warping, dreams of the world filled with nothing but slavering barely-human zombies wearing collars.
Alice could not afford to dwell on them.
"I keep seeing the fire and the rocks," Ri continued, "that earth sorcerer woman and her fighters. They fight and they're scary. And then they die. Sometimes, you kill them. Sometimes, I kill them. Sometimes they kill papa and mama and our brothers. "
Her sister shifted and Alice knew she was looking at the kinetic launcher. Come to think of it, Ri had been around to see her explode heads. Possibly more in the subsequent chase.
Alice had barely thought of her targets. She had killed, she had been in a stressful and violent situation with naked hostility directed at her, something that Petra's society had known should cause shock and adverse reactions. But none of that had happened to Alice. The violence she had unleashed did not trouble her.
Maybe it was the collars, she had her own demons and they were much worse than Alice killing a person who she, admittedly, really wanted to kill.
"It'll be alright. You'll be alright," was all Alice could say.
Petra had no idea how to treat shock.
Alice sat there beside her sister, watching the stars in the night sky. Her ancient memories had never seen stars like this. Not in all of Petra's hundred years. The lack of light pollution allowed the full panoply to parade overhead, a stark beauty compared to their somber mood.
"If you can't sleep, you can take the next watch," Alice said eventually, it was almost time to change over. Her sister sat up to take her place.
Alice put away her tools and lay down on the hard ground with nothing more than her cloak. Relying on ten year old children to keep watch was not ideal but Alice had to sleep sometime. Even if her sleep was on uncomfortable ground, she had to accept it. They would be pressing onwards all day tomorrow as well.
They never caught sight of the party of sorcerers they were trailing.
The first thing Alice noticed about the town was that it had been on fire.
The sorcerers they were following had entered the town, probably, and there wasn't a way to tell if they had proceeded onwards or stopped here. Before this, on the road, the party was the largest group to have passed in recent times and they stuck together. Easy to follow. The tracks had gotten blurrier as they approached the town but Alice remained confident her mother had been brought here.
The road had become more traveled as she led them towards the town, with the land beginning to be covered densely with farms, buildings grew more common until in the town itself, there was nothing but buildings and roads. There was no sharp dividing line separating the boundaries of the town, it was more a gradual transition into a place where people gathered.
Townsfolk walked past the three of them, sometimes their eyes held curiousity at the three dirty and exhausted children, some rare travellers had pity. But no one tried to talk to them.
"It's not walled," Alice noted as the town center came in sight. That let her see how one entire side of the visible buildings were damaged. Chunks had been knocked out of some and scorched ruins were all that remained of others. Men and women crawled over them, hauling rubble and items away.
"What are we going to do?" Ri asked, clinging nervously to Alice. The passing couple glanced at them, causing her to tense up. She only relaxed once the pair of farmers had passed.
"My father has family here," Foet said, looking around for anyone who might look like a fire sorcerer. "He told me stories about his cousins and sister in Cava Town. The Naivi clan lives here. "
Alice looked at Foet in surprise, this was the first she had heard of this. But the girl's face was drawn in exhaustion and she had simply not thought to explain it before. Or maybe the way both her parents were killed had left her grieving.
And she had not questioned the kinetic launcher or Alice's making of Records despite never having seen them before. Even if Alice did not explain, though, it was obvious where the Consecration replacing rods had come from.
"That's as good a plan as any. Better than my idea of trying to get a slaver to free the two of you. Your clan needs to know their village was attacked and maybe they will want to take us in. "
Oh, they would definitely want to. If it got her mother free, Alice would not mind tying herself to the Naivi with her understanding of Records. Alice glanced at Ri and decided not to mention it. Her father had been adamant that Alice would only be exploited and his quiet rants about the evils of the clans would only make Ri frightened for Alice.
For her mother, she would do it.
Foet didn't move.
"Do you know where the Naivi are in this town?" Alice asked.
The girl shook her head.
Alice bit back a sigh. She was just tired, both of them were, and Alice could not be irritable. She scrubbed a hand over her face and nodded.
"Alright, we go with my first plan. We find a place to sleep tonight and ask around, quietly, tomorrow for the Naivi. Remember that the group who attacked our village came to this town too, we don't want them to know we followed them. "
Alice got nods of understanding from her sister and friend and they set off into the dense streets to find a corner.
Her forays into the back alleys and unseen corners met with problems almost immediately.
The very first side path she stepped into found the three of them surrounded. Children sprang out from behind the broken barrels lining the side of one building while two more blocked the way back to the street. All of them wielding makeshift clubs of wood, with the oldest girl holding a battered knife. All of them had shabby clothes or just plain cloths and seemed malnourished.
Alice was acutely aware of how her sister and friend were looking more like these vagrant children every day.
She glanced around, counting eight of them, though three looked tiny and small, perhaps five or six years old. Ri and Foet were facing the two at the street, Ri looked particularly panicky. With a sinking feeling, she drew her pistol sized kinetic launcher from where it hung at her waist, thumbing a bullet into the firing position in the same action.
The big one was too unwieldy to use in these close quarters, and her potential crystal was in her pistol. But it was still a long sturdy thing made of metal. Alice blindly used her other hand to direct Foet to the stock behind her back. Ri had frozen for a moment before reluctantly drawing their cooking knife.
"Fancy dressed, you are," the lead girl said. She looked halfway to being an adult. "What are you doing here..."
Her voice trailed off as her gaze went to the collars around Ri and Foet. "Slaves? Or not?" she muttered in confusion.
Foet took the chance to draw the arm length barrel from Alice's back.
The movement caused the others to start forward but they drew back again when Alice swung her pistol up into firing position, aimed at the leader. They were visibly confused at her weapon but they could read the implied threat in her body language. She took the chance to grab another three bullets with her other hand.
"Metal..." muttered the opposing girl as the others looked to her.
"Who are you three?" she asked, finally.
Alice shook her head, not willing to answer. "We just want to find a place to sleep, let us go and we won't have any trouble. " Or any deaths. Alice prayed she wouldn't have to shoot children but she would defend herself.
The girl traced over the three of them and their weapons, obviously weighing her group's ability to fight them. Her face twisted into a snarl, the calculation obviously not to her liking. "Then get out, this is our turf. "
At that, the other children brandished their weapons, the younger kids copying their elders a step later.
"All right, we'll find another corner," Alice said, breathing a little easier at the de-escalation.
With a nod, the two boys blocking the way to the street stepped back warily.
Though, perhaps something useful could be got out of this encounter. No one would listen to these vagrant children after all. "Before we go, can you answer a question?"
The lead girl paused for a moment then nodded jerkily.
"Do you know where the Naivi clan are? I'm trying to find them. "
The girl blinked and replied, "they're dead. The Tos clan killed them all. "
Alice heard Foet start to cry behind her.
The woman sitting at the table put down her cup of scented tea, prim and proper behaviour befitting the tension in the room. "Unprecedented the attack may be, you must admit the Naivi provoked them by refusing to negotiate. "
Scar replied evenly, despite his rumbling anger. He did not partake of his tea. "There was no negotiation at all, I do not see any attempt by the Tos to talk, merely killing. "
Representatives of the Yio clan of fire sorcerers glared from behind his shoulders, matched by those of his counterpart, negotiator Ooi of the Hakam clan of earth sorcerers. Major powers took a long time to start moving, not due to their bulk but to avoid giving offense. All out war between the clans of the Elemental Empire was not a situation anyone wanted.
So when reports came in of a sudden and overwhelming attack by the Tos clan seemingly bent on the total destruction of the Naivi, a meeting simply had to occur before their conflict drew in neighbouring clans and sparked something larger and more regrettable.
"And there was no consultation made with their partners. The Naivi did not mention their discovery and even tried to keep it secret. "
"The Tos fired the first spell. They could just as easily have protested or escalated the matter to you. And the artifacts are still confined to a single village. "
For all of Ooi's protestations, there was still this inconvenient fact. No matter that the Naivi might have provoked the Tos clan, legitimately or not since Consecration was a service bought and paid for, the Tos clan had sparked the war and that gave the Yio advantage.
Scar could see the woman acknowledge that.
"We will have the Tos pay a full blood price for all their aggression, turn over all potential fragments belonging to the Naivi and evacuate the town," Scar started the next phase of this negotiation.
Ooi's counter was fully expected. "Impossible. You ask to ruin them completely when the Naivi were threatening to break their pact. We concede the matter of the blood price but offset with the casualties they suffered. The rest are unacceptable, the normal fortunes of war. "
And at the end, they eventually agreed to let the Tos take the town. The Yio would not budge on the matter of the potential fragments but conceded the paying of a blood price in exchange for full value of everything else captured in the Naivi clan's compounds. Outlying Naivi villages would fall under Yio control.
With great material loss in exchange for a more stable future base, the fate of the Tos were determined. Without any of them present.
Of course, they wouldn't be, the Tos would not oppose the Yio, much less the Hakam, no matter their physical distance.
"What about survivors?" Ooi asked.
That was an important question. The two great clans were distant from that conflict and by the time the agreement could reach the town, the fighting was expected to be over.
"Repatriated to us, of course," Scar replied.
"And if they were collared?"
"Release the untrained and repatriate them. " Scar hesitated here. "And if they're already trained, then the Tos pay a blood price. "
The woman's expression soured but eventually she nodded her acceptance.
Trained slaves could not be freed after all.
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