The Way Ahead

Edwin had half expected Valenasis to be a ghost town when they arrived, but on second thought he wasn’t entirely sure why. Certainly, the hundreds or thousands of people going about their daily lives didn’t care that some random Adventurer had come into town, made a bit of a commotion, and then run off. The same thing would apply to the guards and other local people of power; why would they leave on the word of some random non-citizen?

It did mean Niall was likely still around as well, because Edwin realized that from his perspective he would have scared Edwin off, after which the Salutary Alchemist could return to his regularly scheduled dissections. That Edwin might return just a couple days later with an enforcer in tow probably wasn’t even a consideration.

He had to admit, however, that having a high-ranking government official just wave away inquisitive guards was very satisfying after his prior experiences.

Rillah had gone off to retrieve Yathal and Kyni, but Inion was metaphorically clinging to Edwin, standing within arm’s reach of him at all times. Even being brought near a river didn’t seem to be sufficient for her to properly recover, compared to whatever strength their contract gave her. Her floaty presence attracted more than a few curious eyes, but Tara’s shining armor made her the biggest attention magnet in the group.

Edwin noted an almost conspicuous lack of homeless and poor out on the streets, but thanks to Memory he knew it was just his brain playing tricks on him- there just weren’t that many vagabonds in the Empire’s cities outside of specific slums, for whatever reason. Personally, Edwin suspected strict enforcement of some stripe, but the optimistic side of him hoped it was just easier to be a productive member of society… no, Outlaws meant they were just kicked out?

Ah, whatever. He couldn’t solve all of society’s ails and he wasn’t the right person to try anyway. He’d focus on what he could affect.

A slightly too-fast motion with his arm caused his shoulder to twinge in pain as his not-quite-healed bones flexed. Inion was right there before he could even say anything, a bit more healing feeding into his back. He’d gotten quite a bit from the experience, so it wasn’t really a loss, but it would be a day or two before his… severed bones were fully healed.

Man, that was a weird thought.

Level Up!

Skill Points 1198→ 1229

(Alchemy: 101; Stamina Manipulation: 33; 10/25 60-point Paths)

Adaptive Defense Level 54→60

Alchemical Analysis Level 50→52

Alchemical Dismantling Level 56→57

Alchemy Level 100→101

Anatomy Level 48→51

Arcadian Elixir Level 40→41

Fresh Air Level 46→ 47

Longstrider Level 55→56

Mana Infusion Level 92→93

Memory Level 68→69

Numeracy Level 56→57

Outsider’s Almanac Level 140→141

Overcharge Level 35→36

Refining Level 46→47

Ritual Intuition Level 56→57

Skillful Assessment Level 55→57

Stamina Manipulation Level 28→33

Unbound Tether Level 37→40

For putting yourself in the way of a devastating attack for the sake of another, you have unlocked the Self-Sacrificial path!

For overpowering the Skills of someone significantly stronger than you, you have unlocked the Undaunted path!

For using Stamina to dispel multiple hostile effects, you have unlocked the Internal Endurer path!

For ?????, you have unlocked the Feyblood path!

The Feyblood path worried Edwin… probably an adequate amount. The only time he’d seen question marks in a Path notification was with Lefi, but apparently there was something mysterious about how he got his latest fey-oriented option. It clearly had something to do with Inion, but what?

Something to, once again, worry about when he wasn’t standing right outside of Niall’s door. He’d gotten an honestly insane amount of levels in the past two days, which he could only guess was the result of being in genuine danger for the first time in a very long while. That, and he must have been close to a level on a bunch of them, but…

He was getting distracted again, and Tara was looking towards him like she’d said something. She’d already dismissed the guard that had been standing outside, and was preparing to enter… ah, of course. A quick flicker of Memory confirmed what she’d said, and Edwin was up to speed.

“Uh, sorry. Ready now.”

“Good. You are to come with me, fey, you remain out here.”

“Nuh-uh. No way are you taking Edwin away from me.”

“I will not have your presence interfere with my investigation. Bad enough that you refuse to stay upon the ground within the bounds of the city; your simply being seen is liable to present a drastic change in behavior in the Outlaw and thus contaminate my findings.”

“Oh, but Edwin’s coming with you?”

“This was his investigation, and he shall remain with me.”

“Hey, it’s alright. You’ll be right here, just watch and see if I go crashing out of a window or something, yeah?”

She glared at him, “Fine,” she spat, “But don’t get hurt.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“Wonderful. We have wasted enough time now. Fall in after me.”

The Enforcer spun on an armored heel and pushed the door open, striding inside and towards Niall’s workshop in the back.

“Rashal! I told you I wasn’t to be disturbed!” Niall’s voice snapped out, “I’m in the middle of very important research and I can’t have any disruptions! Shoo, before you make things go bad… oh, you aren’t Rashal.”

There was a part of Edwin that felt phenomenally satisfied with how the man’s enthusiasm wilted as the fully-armored figure of Tara strode into the room, the realization of just how much he had screwed up sinking in.

“Ah,” the alchemist squeaked, “My apologies, sir. I thought you were my assistant, the foolish girl tends to get a bit squeamish about my work, you see, she can’t quite stomach some of the more… intensive procedures, and is wont to distract me at key moments.”

Niall kept talking, but Edwin stopped listening as he realized just what the ‘experiment’ he had been in the middle of was a middle-aged human, dried blood caking several parts of the body. Oddly, despite registering as human, and accordingly not dead, the man had no Class displayed upon Identification. Anatomy ‘helpfully’ informed him that this was likely due to him being technically and practically dead, but enough of his individual cells were still alive as to not properly be dead.

Hold on, how does that work? People who have died in front of me switched pretty quickly despite tissue death not setting in for some time afterwards.

As he wondered it, Alchemy piped up that it was most certainly due to some alchemical preservation method in use, which sounded reasonable enough. There was definitely some Skill running through the man’s veins, but Edwin had never seen anything even remotely similar to it to know if it was partially responsible.

“...with the blood and its use. Marvelous girl, you see, but only once the harvest is finished.

“Oh! And I do so deeply apologize, sir, I completely neglected to thank you for returning my escapee. I will take him from your hands now”

“Edwin remains with me for the moment, and I demand to see your full workshop to ensure that it is in compliance with Imperial Law.”

“You do? It’s confidential in accordance with what Magistrate Tolk… Tokl…”

“Is irrelevant. Furthermore, what was your Language level?”

“Thirty, sir. I didn’t have a need to progress beyond.”

“I suppose then, that I will be having a word with Magistrate Tokl’kori’cthail for selecting a ruling name so difficult to pronounce for a basic linguist. Edwin, can you pronounce it?”

“Tokl… Tokel’koauri...” Edwin’s mind flitted back to another particularly annoying name that he didn’t want to have to say, and grabbed Polyglot, wrenching it into complying.

“Robert.”

Tara seemed taken aback, “How did… Hm. What level was your language?”

“Thirty-six. It was an early one.”

“And you… ah. I see. That was rather clever. Now, I apologize for the distraction, but it is time for you to show me something.”

“Now wait just one minute. I was told by Magistrate R-Ro. Nevermind. I was told by the Magistrate that my experiments were to remain a secret, and just who are you that you think you can just ignore that?”

“That is similarly irrelevant, beyond the fact that I have full rights to insist you show me your experiments to ensure they comply with Imperial law.”

“Oh, I say it’s very relevant. My experiments are top-secret and if word about them got out things would—”

“That is irrelevant.” As Tara spoke, a Skill which seemed to echo past her own body and draw on something more began to stir within her. Was it leaning on some Skill of Xares’s, perhaps? “I am your Rightful Authority, and you will comply.”

While Edwin couldn’t quite identify exactly what the Skill did, its primary use was clear. Tara’s words did not convey her exact station, but did the certainty that she outranked any and all local authorities, as well as the knowledge that it was neither forged nor faked. It was honestly an impressive amount of information and certainty present in a single word. Two words? Polyglot was weird.

He idly marked it with Almanac.

“Now that that misunderstanding has been cleared up, you will take me to your experiments.”

“But of course, sir. I, uh, do apologize for my prior behavior and I’m certain you will—”

“Silence. Now show me.”

“These are Citizens.” Tara flatly stated, something akin to Identify flashing at the dirty, ragged individuals in the basement’s cells.

“Layabouts and thieves,” Niall dismissed with a wave of his hand, “None of them were amounting to anything on their own and I required further subjects in the name of knowledge. Their sacrifice has been most illuminating, and I am certain that you would see the results as worthwhile, just as the Magistrate did.”

“They are Citizens.”

“All convicted criminals!”

“I see no such information upon them.”

“Well, I cannot speak for how your Skill may work, sir, but all of them were found to be breaking multiple laws which carried with them a sentence in line with their experience here.”

“What were these laws, exactly?” Tara’s words could nearly cut skin with how sharp they were.

“Miscellaneous laws against thievery and improper use of public property, impeding official activities, and the like.”

“What? Were they standing in the middle of the road?” Edwin accused.

Niall didn’t respond.

“Answer the question,” Tara insisted.

“No. Though…” he wilted under Tara’s gaze, for all that her eyes weren’t actually visible. “It’s not dissimilar? It’s legal! It’s legal. The Magistrate himself desires my experiments continue, and as you well know, sir Enforcer, it is the duty of the Magistrate to set punishment for various infractions.”

Edwin’s gaze wandered to the prisoners in the cells. They sat, lifeless and with bloodshot eyes for the few who even had their eyes open. All of them had a matching scab on their arms, cut into for some reason Edwin couldn’t figure out, and not a single one seemed aware of their presence. It was… pitiful.

Tara stared Niall down, but despite a bit of cowering didn’t capitulate. Eventually, Tara relented, turning towards the stairs and waving to follow her, “Come along, Edwin. We’re leaving. No, you do not get him for this… monstrosity.”

“What? You’re not doing anything about him?”

“Oh, would you look at that. The little weakling, hoping that he could get others to do what he can’t do for him,” Niall taunted, and Tara hesitated in her step slightly. The alchemist hastily put out an apology, “Uh, no offense to you, sir Enforcer sir. Just after the previous times we’ve met, he’s always been so quick to get other people to do his job for him, but now he’s all alone. How do you like that, you… I apologize once more.”

“Adventurers,” Tara muttered.

“He’s not an Adventurer, though,” Edwin protested, “And you’re just going to let him get away with this?”

“I do not care,” she spat as she stomped up the stairs, Edwin following close behind, “Adventurers and Outlaws, both of you can burn.”

“I’ve never done something like that. I never would. Do you think he’s going to stop? He’s just going to keep going. Screw what he’s technically allowed to do, you’re an Enforcer. Xares himself is the only person you report to, and he’ll understand! The Magistrate alone is…”

He sighed, skipping in front of the Enforcer as they passed through Niall’s upper workshop, “You have to do something.”

“No,” she came to a sudden stop, finger resting against Edwin’s chest as she cut him off, “I do not. It is not my station. He was not incorrect in that Outlaws and lawbreakers duly sentenced are permitted to be used for his profane experiments, and it is not my station to question that.”

“So what? You’re just going to let this happen? Those were citizens, Tara. Citizens. I know you don’t care about Outlaws and Adventurers, they could all die painfully for all you care, but you’ve always talked about your precious citizens. And they’re in there, dying under his knife. You’re just going to walk away from that? From all of them? Because the local petty tyrant decided that he was going to publish loitering with a death-by-torture sentence?”

“Silence.”

“What’s the matter? You don’t like me saying that your laws and your code is stupid? That it can’t protect the very people you claim it does?”

“I said silence.”

“Yeah! And I don’t care.” Several parts of Edwin were in open rebellion, trying to get him to shut up, but he was on a roll and nothing would stop him. “Niall is killing people. Painfully. I can’t just walk away from that, and I can’t believe you can ei—”

“Silence.”

Edwin’s protest died on his lips to much internal rejoicing, even as other parts of him rebelled at being forcibly stopped from speaking.

“Allow me to make one thing perfectly clear to you. I do not like Outlaws, Adventurers, or your friends. All of them are grating and annoying, stubbornly insistent on being different and troublesome simply for the sake of being troublesome. You, due to your past, are forgiven of that crime alone, as you knew no better.”

Edwin raised an eyebrow, hopeful that she might actually be about to say something positive about him.

“Regardless, I do not like you. Every time we meet, you unrelentingly make me question myself and my elders. You break every rule I live my life by and encourage me to do the same. You are a problematic element and it is only thanks to the desire of Emperor Xares himself you remain alive and not cut down where you stand for your endless insubordination.

“However, for all of your endless whining, I cannot in good conscience say that you are wrong. And for that, I loathe you all the more.”

Edwin’s mind was thoroughly spinning as he tried to keep up with the Enforcer’s rant. It seemed like it might be heading in a positive direction, maybe?

“And therefore, I blame you entirely for what I am about to do. Remain here.”

She spun on her heel and with weighty steps returned to the basement, hand reaching for the sheathed sword at her belt.

So… probably positive. Edwin strained his Perception as far as it would go, but other than some indistinct voices he couldn’t hear anything that was going on, until there was a cutting shink.

Then there was a lot more noise, several voices joining in a chorus of chaos. Edwin nearly went downstairs, but while he was still debating the merits of not ‘waiting here’ like he’d been told, rapid footsteps very different from Tara’s armor climbed the stairs. He readied one of his lead pellets; while deadlier than he might use, Niall was as fair game as anyone would ever be.

The offending alchemist’s head bobbed up the stairs just a few seconds later, and his gaze fixed on Edwin with hate in his eyes, “You-urk!”

Niall’s cry of indignant rage was cut off by a tiny, fragile sphere of apparatite, barely a centimeter across and filled with lead, striking the back of his throat. The crystal, as weak as Edwin could possibly make it, cracked under the sudden impact, and the greatly-expanded interior of the bullet suddenly vanished, increasing in size by an order of magnitude.

Shards of bone and drops of blood flew everywhere as the back of Niall’s mouth was replaced with dark metal. A hole tore itself in the man’s throat, widening as the pseudo-explosive (for all that Bomb Throwing didn’t recognize it as such, annoyingly) fell to the ground with a final clank.

But despite the insane amount of blood pouring from his nose, eyes, mouth, and throat, Niall’s sickeningly hateful gaze stayed fixed on Edwin. He should have pressed his advantage, he knew, because Niall was acting like losing half of his lower skull was nothing more than a minor inconvenience, but he froze long enough, stunned at the visceral sight, that Niall’s skin knit itself together in the interim.

“You!”

“Yes, me,” Edwin’s mouth was working on its own volition a lot today, it seemed. “Well spotted.”

Niall raised his blood-soaked hands and lunged at Edwin, who activated Longstrider and stepped away, narrowly avoiding crashing into the tables and benches spread through the room.

Niall reached out to grab Edwin. But he easily outsped the man, pulling away and turning the grapple around, holding tightly to the alchemist’s wrist. It proved to be a bit of a mistake, however, as a Skill flared and blood began to seep from Niall’s skin and forcibly absorbed into Edwin’s hand.

He jerked away, but it was too late. Already, there was some sort of poison creeping through his blood and trying to sink into his tissues. He didn’t know what it was, but it was alchemical, poisonous, and absolutely brimming with Skills.

With his Attributes still depleted from fighting off Tara earlier in the day, he couldn’t just expel and destroy it like he had previously. However, as it was an alchemical compound, he did have more than a few other options at hand, so to speak.

He chose the simplest.

Fey’s Caress, he thought, not bothering to maintain cohesion as his forearm turned to what looked an awful lot like blood and dropped to the ground. He’d get it back later.

Niall took advantage of Edwin’s distraction to try and sneak past him and out into the street, but a yank with Unbound Tether sent the man sprawling and scattering across the floor. The alchemist rose to his feet, and used some Skill in his blood to hold himself fast as Edwin gave him another yank with his Tether, providing enough unexpected resistance that meant Edwin found himself almost knocked off his feet instead, but swapping to Flight ensured he didn’t go sprawling.

Before Edwin could figure out his next plan of attack, blood began seeping from around Niall’s eyes, the man’s sclera turning red as some type of Skill began to wind up.

“You’re still so weak, aren’t you Edwin? Getting other people to do your dirty work, never going for the killing blow until it’s too late. You’re weak, too weak. Now, and forever. What happens now, what happens in the future? That’s on you. I really would thank you, but I think a much better idea is-”

There was a visceral tearing sound, and Niall was bisected from shoulder to hip, his wound looking more like someone ripped a piece of paper than actually cut him in twain, but as his body fell to the ground he saw the armored, implacable visage of Tara holding what looked more like a floating collection of metal shards than an actual sword.

“How’d he get past you?” Edwin panted, eyeing the man’s puddle of blood spilling across the floor. He really hoped that it wouldn’t mix with his arm, that would be annoying.

“A quick trick which should not have worked.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“I decapitated him and went to free his captives. During that time, he reattached his head and activated some alchemical trap in the lock, gluing my hand to the bars. By the time I had cut myself free he had already made his retreat.”

“And this will do better?”

“It is a larger wound, it should be more difficult for his regeneration to overcome. Come, help me before he repairs himself.”

“Help you with what?”

“Remove his parts from one another, make it all the more more difficult to heal.”

“Can I get my arm back first?” Edwin waved his stump, the iron he’d transformed the end of it into the only thing preventing him from bleeding out.

“What did you do?” Poor Tara, she was clearly getting all the more fed up with him.

“He tried to poison me with something, so I just transformed my arm into the poison to stop it. What I think… oh. That’s not normal.”

“Is it your arm?”

“No, not that. I’ve just never seen blood give a Class when Identified before.”

Tara dropped the half of Niall’s body she was wrangling, “Damnit,” she swore, “Is it… damnit. It is. Or damn well close enough as to leave the Registrars to argue about it.”

“Can you catch me up?”

“You said he touched you,” Tara’s normal sword manifested in the blink of an eye, inches from Edwin’s face, “How quickly did you get rid of the ‘poison’?”

“Uhh… pretty much instantly?”

“Where are you from? Truly, not your cover story.”

“Okay, seriously. What’s going on?”

“Answer.”

“Earth! The United States. Four-three-zer-hey!” the sword darted out and carved a thin line along Edwin’s cheek. She stared at the wound for a moment, then nodded.

“Adequate. I will need your solemn vow of silence once this crisis is over. Do I have it?”

“What? What’s going on?”

“Do I have it.”

“Uh… probably. I don’t know! What’s going on.”

“There’s a Skill, an immortality Skill in particular, known as Being of Blood, an upgrade of Sacrifice of Youth, that turns its user into their blood, as well as any blood which they have claimed. It is insidious and nigh impossible to properly detect, and I should have known this was a danger long before now.”

“So… you’re saying that he’s turned himself into a blood-borne disease. And what, can he reform himself? Take over people?”

“Yes, and yes. If he has had anyone under his knife or Skills, they are most likely infected, possibly without even knowing it save by Identifying their blood.”

“...and if he’s been serving as the primary alchemist for this town for months, or years…”

She nodded grimly, “Anyone, or everyone, could be him. He is likely very far afield, if he is at all intelligent, and we could be dealing with a plague that will last for years to come.”