Part 1 – The First Year
Chapter 2 – The deal with Leo
June 18, 2013
5:28 AM - Amerigen Standard Time
Leo Capstan Quill sat meditating in the centre of a massive warehouse. He worse loose dark pants, and his sinewy chest was bare. Leo’s raven black eyes were covered by a blindfold. His gun, the wild calla, sat fully loaded on the ground before him.
18 .360 inch rounds,
3 long silver barrels,
double action, with temperature and recoil regulation glyphs.
Only four had ever been manufactured.
Leo’s discipline was sorcery: also known as electromancy.
Put simply, it allowed him to sense or manipulate active electronics and large lifeforms at a short range, and create and control the phenomenon referred to by the Riskless as Ball Lightning.
*.*.*
So many of Leo’s missions had been diplomatic lately; he had to make sure we was in prime condition, for when he next found himself trading shots.
The next battle of our heartless war.
Leo surfaced from his meditation, and waved one considerate hand in the air, sharply signalling his monitor.
A voice came from an unseen speaker. “Training session #824 begins in five… Four… Three… Two… One…”
Leo leapt to his feet, gun in hands. He extended his energy-sense outwards, a network of electrical pulses comparable to nerves that threatened to snap and collapse inwards if his concentration broke.
He spread the threads of sense outwards several meters, tasting the concrete floor, feeling every mote of dust.
Something entered his sphere of detection to the left; it was a human sized armature formed of metal joints and sections of clay charged with animating energy by another Sorcerer. It was a 20th century Golem.
The armature’s arms ended in deadly electrified sickles that could be swung at high speed, 360 degrees without the limitation of human wrists.
The golem made an electric chirp, as its own energy-sense spotted Leo!
It took a step forward.
Leo stepped away from the primitive combat unit, just as he detected another four of the menacing figures approaching in a circle around him.
Leo recognized it to be scenario 18 of the arena. “Razors.” He said quietly.
They were immune to the effects of ‘Ball Lightning’.
He spun, shooting a single bullet at the chest plate of each of the five target before they could surround him.
Another five stepped over the fallen, dashing towards him. Leo shot the three in front of him, and spun with a kick, sweeping the feet out from under the two behind. He stood over them, just out of the reach of their flailing hooks, and finished them with shots to the chest.
8 Bullets left, he thought, leaping away from the circle of indelicately prone golems to avoid tripping on their ‘corpses’.
Leo felt perspiration building around his eyelids, caught inside the blind fold.
He willed his sphere of perception to extend outwards : It felt like dragging his skin across the concrete, through the air, to rest on crackling sickles and clay hulls.
His brain had given up labelling the sensation as pain, but it was tiring to experience. 10 Razors left.
Five of them charged at him from the corner of the arena, blades spinning, while the rest hung back.
The animation runes weren’t ‘visible’ on the chests of this batch.
To avoid being hewn asunder, he dove between the legs of one approaching golem, rolled, scaping his back on the concrete ground and landed on his heels. Leo spun around in tim to shoot four of them in the backs where he sensed their animation rune’s purple mint glow.
The fifth turned to Leo, and while a sizable chunk of its clay torso cracked off, hit in the side, its animator rune was left without a scratch. The golem pounced at Leo, who dove to the side, letting off another shot; while it didn’t hit the rune directly, it caused the rest of the already shaken clay torso to fall apart. The Razor fell to the round faceplate first, with a clatter.
Leo got to his feet. His mesh of energy-sense diminished in size as his concentration began to ebb in swathes. He’d be truly blind soon.
He wasn’t detecting any of the Razors at this range, and they had fallen silent.
2 bullets. 5 Razors.
He stepped slowly towards a fallen Razor and picked up a shard of clay, finding it by touch alone; then scraped it on both sides of his guns handle, presumable leaving a light dusting on it. He then stuck the piece inside the finger guard before laying it on the ground. He heard the light steps of one or two Razor’s approaching.
Leo muttered a spell under his breath and infused the clay dust with energy. He made the dust on either side press inwards and up. The revolver drifted off the ground animatedly. Not autonomous, but it meant he could ram the gun into the Razors if necessary. He picked up another, larger piece of clay, holding it like a gun. The Wild Calla drifted several inches away from his hand, replicating its movement. He could increase or decrease the distance with a thought. No different than-
A shot rang out.
Leo blindly eyed the falling Razor (he’d just shot) that had come very close to decapitating him, and pivoted in the other direction, right into another of the golems.
He skipped to a halt, and did a backflip to avoid the new adversary’s swipes. Then he feinted, running for the left of the Razor (which it fell for, positioning its blades to skewer him), then sidestepping, he swung the Wild Calla up and around, smashing it against the 4th last Razor’s animating rune.
Leo dispatched the next three with similar tactics. By the second last, his sphere of energy sense was less than a quarter its original size. One bullet left.
With a grunt of exertion, Leo kicked his most recent victim over and gathered a handful of clay fragments; they swarmed into his charged hands eagerly. He turned a small chunk in his forefinger and thumb. These would have to be his eyes and ears now; his energy-sense was almost no use this small.
He let the field of information of absorption collapse inwards; with less stress on his soul monitoring the spell, the Wild Calla floated a little more smoothly in front of Leo’s outstretched hand.
I’m blind now.
Leo turned slowly on the spot and flung a little piece of golem far ahead of himself, searching for the last Razor.
Tacker, tacker, tacker, tack. Nothing.
Tacker, tacker, tacker, tick. Where is it?
Tacker, tacker, tang. Got you.
“Come on out, deadly blade wielding golem.” He called in the direction of his quarry.
He held the Wild Calla in front of him, extending the distance to several meters.
Through it, he felt a blade swiping at the gun, then the gun pressing hard against the brick-like torso of the last Razor. Leo dashed around it, using the gun to pinpoint his foe, and knowing he could never shoot the animation rune blindly, he tackled the last Razor from behind.
His bare torso collided with its hard gritty clay segments joined by metal hinges and clasps. He felt the Razor reaching its arms back awkwardly, trying to claw at him with the blades. There was an audible electric buzz coming from them, his hair stood on end. Leo brought his arm up, the Wild Calla followed, and slammed it down again and again, cracking the handle of the gun against the Razor’s back until it stopped struggling.
He didn’t even congratulate himself.
Either I’m getting better, or these things are obsolete.
Leo pulled the blindfold off, his eyes adjusted to the light slowly as he got to his feet. His chest was slick with sweat; bits of clay and brick dust clung to his skin.
“Mr Quill, are you done?” Asked a female voice.
It was the same one that had initiated the training session; but less tinny.
Leo turned around sharply and came face to face with one of the Riskless administrators.
“Yes MS Rail, what is it?” He asked the sharply dressed, red haired woman who was looking anywhere but at him.
“I received a message from Mr Ted; he says ‘We’ve found the Geomancer’.”
Clairity Rail discovered the merits of shoe-buckle gazing while Leo unconsciously wiped clay from his torso with the blindfold.
“Show me the message.” Said Leo, finally.
He took the phone from Clairity’s hand, trading it for the blindfold, to her unease, and quickly decoded the gibberish in the text. Exactly as she’d said it.
Received 5:31 AM It was 5:57 AM now.
“Why didn’t to tell me when you got this?” Demanded Leo.
Clairity started making an excuse about not wanting to distract him.
“That will do,” He interrupted. “Return to your post.”
“Actually… Take a break.”
He surprised himself with the emendation.
“One hour. No more.”
Leo put a shirt on and left before Mr Rail could reply.
He stepped out of the warehouse and into the light of dawn.
The sky was cloudless in the Amerigen HQ of the MPA.
He strolled barefoot to the building on the other end of the facility; surprising several employees with his appearance.
Leo didn’t usually leave the Falcon’s Head building (a structure that looked like a beached ocean liner balancing on a refinery) except to go on missions.
Once he found his office, Leo showered and changed into a suit before replying to Ted. Then he cleaned his gun and began to read an ever growing stack of notes and bills while he waited.
It was like being a general, business owner and tenant all at once.
Leo heard Ted arrive in his favourite helicopter by its distinctly more experience sound that set it apart from the rest of the fleet, and stepped onto the roof to meet him.
Ted had short brown hair, onion-russet skin and blue eyes. He wore a similar suit to Leo: Dark jacket and pants, a black purple tie, very light grey shirt.
They greeted each other mildly before setting off in the helicopter.
The air began to crackly with aeromantic golden sparks, showering off the propeller. Leo took over the controls while Ted ate noodles and recounted.
“It was interviewing another one of the Harvestmen; from what we can tell, Atra Lettian is quite powerful. We need to recruit her, or at least offer her protection. She must be on the run from the Nihilists: there hasn’t been a Geomancer not aligned with them in at least four hundred years.”
Ted said all this in an amicable tone, but the news was serious.
This Atra Lettian could bring a new edge to the MPA.
She’d rallied three rival gangs that had tried to conscript her and led them to fight off an infamous necromancer named Sarrow. In two days.
Then she convinced the gangs to leave her alone. ‘Forever.’
Ted wasn’t entirely correct though: there had been a Geomancer outside the Nihilists in his lifetime. A friend, too. Kaola.
The painful memory put Leo in a mood of remembrance.
As he flew from Amerigen to the northern end of the Brythonic isle, Leo remembered footage of Ted ‘interrogating’ the chatty leader of the Huntsman gang; a man with a bleached Mohawk and arms tattooed with black cobwebs.
He remembered the gangsters recount of how this ‘totally freaky earth-quake woman’ refused to take sides as a member of one of the three spider gangs.
(Huntsman, Harvestman or Wolf.)
Gangs which graphited, vandalized and fought in the city of Glascran, Atra’s home. They apparently also drove cars with eight headlights.
She must be really convincing, to have gotten those gangs to work together, Leo supposed.
Then his thoughts wandered and replayed his conversation with Ms Rail. Clairity. Was she actually scared of him? The thought struck and stuck like blazing inspiration. Leo began to worry that the rapport he used to have with the other members of the MPA had faded… Over time…
God, has it really been that long?
Leo remembered joining the MPA (they were called the Mortal Protectors at the time), when he was 14 years old.
A motley crew of magic users who were courageous enough to work with the demi-god Dalnius Lightwinder and his kin.
Leo had become the mortal leader that the Mortal Protectors had needed; a go between who organised the magicians effectively when the demi-gods were too busy. Leo had become good friends with Drex Golderlace, Dalnius’s brother and trusted lieutenant in the war against the Nihilists and the other evils of the world.
But Leo was almost 40 now, and he’d become almost as busy as the demi-gods he served under. He realised he no longer gave rallying speeches like he sued to.
Do I still have that skill?
He no longer knew everyone’s name.
How must a new employee feel upon joining this cause out of charity, and seeing a distant, cold leader?
‘What’s the deal with Leo?’ He tried and failed to imagine an older employee answering with anything both positive and realistic.
‘Of, he’s real efficient.’
‘He’s ruthless, but at least he’s on our side.’
“I really wish I knew.”
Who am I?
Leo was shaken out of his spiralling thoughts by the realisation that they had landed at the Glascran base.
Ted gave Leo a knowing look of heartfelt concern. Was I… Talking?
“Have I become a distant and cold leader?” He asked Ted, plainly.
His protégée and old friend gave the question a bit of thought. Truth, please.
“Not for me or most of the other Emissaries; but… You do act rather brisk around the other staff.”
The staff that glue this company together, thought Leo. Small roles compared to battling world ending plots, but vital all the same.
They bake our bread, fix our guns, sort our funds…
Leo thanked Ted for his honest opinion as they got into Leo’s car.
They drove off through the cold Glascran mid day air to Greenhollow road, and Leo promised himself that the MPA would have a better CEO in the future.
“Leo?” Ted asked, as if realising for the first time that his friend and superior was present.
“Yes?” Leo said, examining a clipboard; it had a low resolution photo of Atra Lettian, and a transcription of several interviews. The bio hadn’t been filled in yet; they’d have more information soon enough.
“You never said you were coming on this mission.” Ted replied, speeding down the highway adeptly.
“And yet here we are. Just as it took so long for you to realise. I think my subconscious decision to join you on this assignment only surfaced… Now.” Leo smiled at Ted, slightly embarrassed. “Aren’t you glad I’m here?”
Ted took a moment to reply as he turned off into the suburbs. “Oh yea. Its been to long since you’ve been on the kind of mission where you aren’t hopelessly outnumbered or outmatched.”
Leo raised an eyebrow with written skill. “Hopeless? I’m alive aren’t I?”
Ted didn’t answer until they purred to a stop outside Atra’s house a little while later.
“The odds are always against us. It is far easier to break something than to fix or protect it.”
*.*.*
1:13 PM KMT / 8:25 AM AST
Ted flanked Leo walking up the path to Atra’s little house.
While he was a relatively high ranking Emissary, Ted had not learnt any of the disciplines of magic.
Instead, he specialised in hacking and driving any and all vehicles.
Also his unique genetics made his skin almost bullet proof, and this unusual DNA allowed him to do a neat party trick involving a third arm.
It was a quaint place, like a haunted house that someone had attempted to liven up. The outside walls had been painted emerald or covered in moss from the ground up to about 3 meters, but the upper story was still a dingy whitewashed black.
As Leo knocked on the door, Ted got out his phone and researched the address through an MPA browser he had coded himself; it allowed him to bypass many of the riskless security measures.
Had he been a Sorcerer like Leo, attuned to electricity, then hacking into the real estate’s system would/could simply be a matter of willpower and not overheating or corrupting his conduit to the internet.
Sorcery was indelicate.
If Leo tried it with magic, odds were he’d temporarily absorb all information on the house stored online anywhere, but not before simultaneously destroying the phones battery, jamming nearby radio signals, magnetizing his car, and causing everyone in the area to receive a text message containing the words, “I really hope this doesn’t blow up in my face,” In binary.
Ted’s method was a little more… Riskless, thought.
He smiled internally at that thought. Lol.
A crow landed on the house with a foreboding ‘Caw’.
The website loaded when Ted remembered to step outside the five-foot bubble of lag that occasionally orbited Leo in times of stress.
It used to be a duplex, Ted revised.
The upper story was in disrepair. Atra had bought the whole building, but probably hadn’t gotten to renovating the upstairs yet.
He saw pictures of the inside of the house, empty of furniture and full of dust.
In the corner of the photo he spotted that the passage upstairs had been plastered off. Creepy.
Ted’s bright blue eyes widened as the door swung open, frozen in place.
‘Caw, caw!’
*.*.*
1:46 PM KMT / 8:46 AM AST
Welcome aboard, Atra, I mean Beth!
Leo watched Beth Arkwright get out. She held a list of instructions and was ushered off into the centre of the building by the life-blood-paper-pushers of the MPA.
He turned to Ted. “You’ve been meaning to say something, haven’t you?”
Ted nodded, clearing his throat. “She isn’t human. At least, not entirely.
I can definitely smell something… Extra. It’s possible she had divine ancestry.”
He spoke as if this were everyday conversation. For him, it probably was.
Leo glanced once more at Atra’s receding, admittedly striking figure once more, before replying “Ah, that does not surprise me. With those amethyst eyes…” Leo trailed off. “Do you think she knows?”
Ted shrugged. “Depends who she is related to, which god… The Nihilists would definitely have known.”
Leo agreed as Ted pulled out of the carpark.
“Regardless, I am sure she will be an invaluable addition to the Emissaries.”
There was a ‘boop’ from Ted’s phone. “Oh!” He started.
“What is it?” Leo asked sideways. After falling silent, he’d begun planning how to increase his involvement in Beth’s retraining.
“The admins have faxed Ms. Arkwright’s initial application to our superiors” (Dalnius, Drex, etc.)
“We know they rarely have the time to examine that stuff, it’s just protocol.”
Ted slowed the car, ready to turn around, focused on finishing his explanation.
“Dalnius has reviewed it… He wants to meet Ms. Arkwright!” Ted exclaimed with some excitement and confusion.
This day was shaping out to be very strange; geomantic recruits, Leo going on 4th level clearance missions, and not a single 9th or 8th level threat had interrupted them.
Leo’s thoughts raced. Tonight, Dalnius was on a mission to deal with a 12th level threat in the Hellenique sea, a demon he fought in a past life that was reawakening. Ted didn’t even have the clearance to have been told this.
It was far bigger than he knew.
*.*.*
4:47 PM KMT / 11:47 AM AST
Leo waved to Ted and ‘Beth’ as they got into the helicopter destined for Nethus, where Dalnius awaited Atra’s arrival.
Leo dashed along the cold metal path through the inner workings of the MPA’s Glascran base and out the other side. An identical helicopter waited for him.
He glanced again at the message he had received before deleting it.
Alumnus had found the Korangar. She is in Luandan.
*.*.*
10:25 PM KMT / 5:25 PM AST
Off the west coast of Glascran we come to the outer isles of Erimos.
The largest island, jointly named ‘Dares & Saize’ is our subject of interest.
Or what is above it, anyway.
Feel the cold atmosphere at your fingertips.
The sky is singed, wool and wolf mane riddled with white cracks, like the blood of gods spilled across the heavens.
The air is thin up here.
5,000 feet above ground level.
Hello, Atlas Sahrana!
A man who’s cheek bones are high, and who’s (goggled) eyes, hair and skin are complementary shades of brown : shortbread, chocolate and caramel respectively.
4,350 feet.
There are faint, anxious creases under his eyes, and a sharp focus manifesting the knowledge that he has seen to much for his twenty three years alive.
3.784 feet.
Atlas has worked with the MPA since he was sixteen.
He really likes This work: Takes on every assignment he can.
His superiors can’t refuse. The work Is there.
No time to chat Leo, no time to feel guilty for sending me to my probable death.
That’s the deal.
We are both busy. Busy men with busy numbers.
2,304 feet.
Oh.
1,613 feet.
Oh dear me.
1,048 feet.
This young man seems to be falling very quickly.
735 feet.
I hope he knows how to use that parachute clinging to him with inanimate fear.
477 feet above the terthe.
Everyone wears two parachutes, they take the reserve for granted.
310 feet above a foaming charcoal sea.
A, he did something!
The Kevlar canopy billows outwards.
It spreads painfully slowly, with intentional, precise delay.
Instant parachutes hurt ‘more’.
260 feet above an emerald shard of land.
We won’t see much of Atlas. He doesn’t have much to teach us.
107 feet above an enemy.
Slowly but surely, air bubbles into place.
He should have released his parachute at 2,000 feet.
73 feet above an ally.
Maybe its magic? Or he could just be in a hurry.
40 feet above the ruins of a church.
Watch out for those beautiful verdant stone peaks.
Erimos is famed for its spiky rocks…
17 feet, inhale.
Get ready now.
5 feet, exhale.
Land on the balls of your feet, then kick to the side. Let the force spread through your body and into the ground.
Ugh.
Sounds like a body meeting gravel in armistice.
Atlas could almost be a geomancer!
Except he isn’t… Atlas Sahrana has no discipline.
He was born without magic. Very much like you.
2 Sturdy feet.
If they carry him fast enough, he might find his brother before sunset.
Dawn to dusk. Just another long day…
Chapter 2 – The deal with Leo
June 18, 2013
5:28 AM - Amerigen Standard Time
Leo Capstan Quill sat meditating in the centre of a massive warehouse. He worse loose dark pants, and his sinewy chest was bare. Leo’s raven black eyes were covered by a blindfold. His gun, the wild calla, sat fully loaded on the ground before him.
18 .360 inch rounds,
3 long silver barrels,
double action, with temperature and recoil regulation glyphs.
Only four had ever been manufactured.
Leo’s discipline was sorcery: also known as electromancy.
Put simply, it allowed him to sense or manipulate active electronics and large lifeforms at a short range, and create and control the phenomenon referred to by the Riskless as Ball Lightning.
*.*.*
So many of Leo’s missions had been diplomatic lately; he had to make sure we was in prime condition, for when he next found himself trading shots.
The next battle of our heartless war.
Leo surfaced from his meditation, and waved one considerate hand in the air, sharply signalling his monitor.
A voice came from an unseen speaker. “Training session #824 begins in five… Four… Three… Two… One…”
Leo leapt to his feet, gun in hands. He extended his energy-sense outwards, a network of electrical pulses comparable to nerves that threatened to snap and collapse inwards if his concentration broke.
He spread the threads of sense outwards several meters, tasting the concrete floor, feeling every mote of dust.
Something entered his sphere of detection to the left; it was a human sized armature formed of metal joints and sections of clay charged with animating energy by another Sorcerer. It was a 20th century Golem.
The armature’s arms ended in deadly electrified sickles that could be swung at high speed, 360 degrees without the limitation of human wrists.
The golem made an electric chirp, as its own energy-sense spotted Leo!
It took a step forward.
Leo stepped away from the primitive combat unit, just as he detected another four of the menacing figures approaching in a circle around him.
Leo recognized it to be scenario 18 of the arena. “Razors.” He said quietly.
They were immune to the effects of ‘Ball Lightning’.
He spun, shooting a single bullet at the chest plate of each of the five target before they could surround him.
Another five stepped over the fallen, dashing towards him. Leo shot the three in front of him, and spun with a kick, sweeping the feet out from under the two behind. He stood over them, just out of the reach of their flailing hooks, and finished them with shots to the chest.
8 Bullets left, he thought, leaping away from the circle of indelicately prone golems to avoid tripping on their ‘corpses’.
Leo felt perspiration building around his eyelids, caught inside the blind fold.
He willed his sphere of perception to extend outwards : It felt like dragging his skin across the concrete, through the air, to rest on crackling sickles and clay hulls.
His brain had given up labelling the sensation as pain, but it was tiring to experience. 10 Razors left.
Five of them charged at him from the corner of the arena, blades spinning, while the rest hung back.
The animation runes weren’t ‘visible’ on the chests of this batch.
To avoid being hewn asunder, he dove between the legs of one approaching golem, rolled, scaping his back on the concrete ground and landed on his heels. Leo spun around in tim to shoot four of them in the backs where he sensed their animation rune’s purple mint glow.
The fifth turned to Leo, and while a sizable chunk of its clay torso cracked off, hit in the side, its animator rune was left without a scratch. The golem pounced at Leo, who dove to the side, letting off another shot; while it didn’t hit the rune directly, it caused the rest of the already shaken clay torso to fall apart. The Razor fell to the round faceplate first, with a clatter.
Leo got to his feet. His mesh of energy-sense diminished in size as his concentration began to ebb in swathes. He’d be truly blind soon.
He wasn’t detecting any of the Razors at this range, and they had fallen silent.
2 bullets. 5 Razors.
He stepped slowly towards a fallen Razor and picked up a shard of clay, finding it by touch alone; then scraped it on both sides of his guns handle, presumable leaving a light dusting on it. He then stuck the piece inside the finger guard before laying it on the ground. He heard the light steps of one or two Razor’s approaching.
Leo muttered a spell under his breath and infused the clay dust with energy. He made the dust on either side press inwards and up. The revolver drifted off the ground animatedly. Not autonomous, but it meant he could ram the gun into the Razors if necessary. He picked up another, larger piece of clay, holding it like a gun. The Wild Calla drifted several inches away from his hand, replicating its movement. He could increase or decrease the distance with a thought. No different than-
A shot rang out.
Leo blindly eyed the falling Razor (he’d just shot) that had come very close to decapitating him, and pivoted in the other direction, right into another of the golems.
He skipped to a halt, and did a backflip to avoid the new adversary’s swipes. Then he feinted, running for the left of the Razor (which it fell for, positioning its blades to skewer him), then sidestepping, he swung the Wild Calla up and around, smashing it against the 4th last Razor’s animating rune.
Leo dispatched the next three with similar tactics. By the second last, his sphere of energy sense was less than a quarter its original size. One bullet left.
With a grunt of exertion, Leo kicked his most recent victim over and gathered a handful of clay fragments; they swarmed into his charged hands eagerly. He turned a small chunk in his forefinger and thumb. These would have to be his eyes and ears now; his energy-sense was almost no use this small.
He let the field of information of absorption collapse inwards; with less stress on his soul monitoring the spell, the Wild Calla floated a little more smoothly in front of Leo’s outstretched hand.
I’m blind now.
Leo turned slowly on the spot and flung a little piece of golem far ahead of himself, searching for the last Razor.
Tacker, tacker, tacker, tack. Nothing.
Tacker, tacker, tacker, tick. Where is it?
Tacker, tacker, tang. Got you.
“Come on out, deadly blade wielding golem.” He called in the direction of his quarry.
He held the Wild Calla in front of him, extending the distance to several meters.
Through it, he felt a blade swiping at the gun, then the gun pressing hard against the brick-like torso of the last Razor. Leo dashed around it, using the gun to pinpoint his foe, and knowing he could never shoot the animation rune blindly, he tackled the last Razor from behind.
His bare torso collided with its hard gritty clay segments joined by metal hinges and clasps. He felt the Razor reaching its arms back awkwardly, trying to claw at him with the blades. There was an audible electric buzz coming from them, his hair stood on end. Leo brought his arm up, the Wild Calla followed, and slammed it down again and again, cracking the handle of the gun against the Razor’s back until it stopped struggling.
He didn’t even congratulate himself.
Either I’m getting better, or these things are obsolete.
Leo pulled the blindfold off, his eyes adjusted to the light slowly as he got to his feet. His chest was slick with sweat; bits of clay and brick dust clung to his skin.
“Mr Quill, are you done?” Asked a female voice.
It was the same one that had initiated the training session; but less tinny.
Leo turned around sharply and came face to face with one of the Riskless administrators.
“Yes MS Rail, what is it?” He asked the sharply dressed, red haired woman who was looking anywhere but at him.
“I received a message from Mr Ted; he says ‘We’ve found the Geomancer’.”
Clairity Rail discovered the merits of shoe-buckle gazing while Leo unconsciously wiped clay from his torso with the blindfold.
“Show me the message.” Said Leo, finally.
He took the phone from Clairity’s hand, trading it for the blindfold, to her unease, and quickly decoded the gibberish in the text. Exactly as she’d said it.
Received 5:31 AM It was 5:57 AM now.
“Why didn’t to tell me when you got this?” Demanded Leo.
Clairity started making an excuse about not wanting to distract him.
“That will do,” He interrupted. “Return to your post.”
“Actually… Take a break.”
He surprised himself with the emendation.
“One hour. No more.”
Leo put a shirt on and left before Mr Rail could reply.
He stepped out of the warehouse and into the light of dawn.
The sky was cloudless in the Amerigen HQ of the MPA.
He strolled barefoot to the building on the other end of the facility; surprising several employees with his appearance.
Leo didn’t usually leave the Falcon’s Head building (a structure that looked like a beached ocean liner balancing on a refinery) except to go on missions.
Once he found his office, Leo showered and changed into a suit before replying to Ted. Then he cleaned his gun and began to read an ever growing stack of notes and bills while he waited.
It was like being a general, business owner and tenant all at once.
Leo heard Ted arrive in his favourite helicopter by its distinctly more experience sound that set it apart from the rest of the fleet, and stepped onto the roof to meet him.
Ted had short brown hair, onion-russet skin and blue eyes. He wore a similar suit to Leo: Dark jacket and pants, a black purple tie, very light grey shirt.
They greeted each other mildly before setting off in the helicopter.
The air began to crackly with aeromantic golden sparks, showering off the propeller. Leo took over the controls while Ted ate noodles and recounted.
“It was interviewing another one of the Harvestmen; from what we can tell, Atra Lettian is quite powerful. We need to recruit her, or at least offer her protection. She must be on the run from the Nihilists: there hasn’t been a Geomancer not aligned with them in at least four hundred years.”
Ted said all this in an amicable tone, but the news was serious.
This Atra Lettian could bring a new edge to the MPA.
She’d rallied three rival gangs that had tried to conscript her and led them to fight off an infamous necromancer named Sarrow. In two days.
Then she convinced the gangs to leave her alone. ‘Forever.’
Ted wasn’t entirely correct though: there had been a Geomancer outside the Nihilists in his lifetime. A friend, too. Kaola.
The painful memory put Leo in a mood of remembrance.
As he flew from Amerigen to the northern end of the Brythonic isle, Leo remembered footage of Ted ‘interrogating’ the chatty leader of the Huntsman gang; a man with a bleached Mohawk and arms tattooed with black cobwebs.
He remembered the gangsters recount of how this ‘totally freaky earth-quake woman’ refused to take sides as a member of one of the three spider gangs.
(Huntsman, Harvestman or Wolf.)
Gangs which graphited, vandalized and fought in the city of Glascran, Atra’s home. They apparently also drove cars with eight headlights.
She must be really convincing, to have gotten those gangs to work together, Leo supposed.
Then his thoughts wandered and replayed his conversation with Ms Rail. Clairity. Was she actually scared of him? The thought struck and stuck like blazing inspiration. Leo began to worry that the rapport he used to have with the other members of the MPA had faded… Over time…
God, has it really been that long?
Leo remembered joining the MPA (they were called the Mortal Protectors at the time), when he was 14 years old.
A motley crew of magic users who were courageous enough to work with the demi-god Dalnius Lightwinder and his kin.
Leo had become the mortal leader that the Mortal Protectors had needed; a go between who organised the magicians effectively when the demi-gods were too busy. Leo had become good friends with Drex Golderlace, Dalnius’s brother and trusted lieutenant in the war against the Nihilists and the other evils of the world.
But Leo was almost 40 now, and he’d become almost as busy as the demi-gods he served under. He realised he no longer gave rallying speeches like he sued to.
Do I still have that skill?
He no longer knew everyone’s name.
How must a new employee feel upon joining this cause out of charity, and seeing a distant, cold leader?
‘What’s the deal with Leo?’ He tried and failed to imagine an older employee answering with anything both positive and realistic.
‘Of, he’s real efficient.’
‘He’s ruthless, but at least he’s on our side.’
“I really wish I knew.”
Who am I?
Leo was shaken out of his spiralling thoughts by the realisation that they had landed at the Glascran base.
Ted gave Leo a knowing look of heartfelt concern. Was I… Talking?
“Have I become a distant and cold leader?” He asked Ted, plainly.
His protégée and old friend gave the question a bit of thought. Truth, please.
“Not for me or most of the other Emissaries; but… You do act rather brisk around the other staff.”
The staff that glue this company together, thought Leo. Small roles compared to battling world ending plots, but vital all the same.
They bake our bread, fix our guns, sort our funds…
Leo thanked Ted for his honest opinion as they got into Leo’s car.
They drove off through the cold Glascran mid day air to Greenhollow road, and Leo promised himself that the MPA would have a better CEO in the future.
“Leo?” Ted asked, as if realising for the first time that his friend and superior was present.
“Yes?” Leo said, examining a clipboard; it had a low resolution photo of Atra Lettian, and a transcription of several interviews. The bio hadn’t been filled in yet; they’d have more information soon enough.
“You never said you were coming on this mission.” Ted replied, speeding down the highway adeptly.
“And yet here we are. Just as it took so long for you to realise. I think my subconscious decision to join you on this assignment only surfaced… Now.” Leo smiled at Ted, slightly embarrassed. “Aren’t you glad I’m here?”
Ted took a moment to reply as he turned off into the suburbs. “Oh yea. Its been to long since you’ve been on the kind of mission where you aren’t hopelessly outnumbered or outmatched.”
Leo raised an eyebrow with written skill. “Hopeless? I’m alive aren’t I?”
Ted didn’t answer until they purred to a stop outside Atra’s house a little while later.
“The odds are always against us. It is far easier to break something than to fix or protect it.”
*.*.*
1:13 PM KMT / 8:25 AM AST
Ted flanked Leo walking up the path to Atra’s little house.
While he was a relatively high ranking Emissary, Ted had not learnt any of the disciplines of magic.
Instead, he specialised in hacking and driving any and all vehicles.
Also his unique genetics made his skin almost bullet proof, and this unusual DNA allowed him to do a neat party trick involving a third arm.
It was a quaint place, like a haunted house that someone had attempted to liven up. The outside walls had been painted emerald or covered in moss from the ground up to about 3 meters, but the upper story was still a dingy whitewashed black.
As Leo knocked on the door, Ted got out his phone and researched the address through an MPA browser he had coded himself; it allowed him to bypass many of the riskless security measures.
Had he been a Sorcerer like Leo, attuned to electricity, then hacking into the real estate’s system would/could simply be a matter of willpower and not overheating or corrupting his conduit to the internet.
Sorcery was indelicate.
If Leo tried it with magic, odds were he’d temporarily absorb all information on the house stored online anywhere, but not before simultaneously destroying the phones battery, jamming nearby radio signals, magnetizing his car, and causing everyone in the area to receive a text message containing the words, “I really hope this doesn’t blow up in my face,” In binary.
Ted’s method was a little more… Riskless, thought.
He smiled internally at that thought. Lol.
A crow landed on the house with a foreboding ‘Caw’.
The website loaded when Ted remembered to step outside the five-foot bubble of lag that occasionally orbited Leo in times of stress.
It used to be a duplex, Ted revised.
The upper story was in disrepair. Atra had bought the whole building, but probably hadn’t gotten to renovating the upstairs yet.
He saw pictures of the inside of the house, empty of furniture and full of dust.
In the corner of the photo he spotted that the passage upstairs had been plastered off. Creepy.
Ted’s bright blue eyes widened as the door swung open, frozen in place.
‘Caw, caw!’
*.*.*
1:46 PM KMT / 8:46 AM AST
Welcome aboard, Atra, I mean Beth!
Leo watched Beth Arkwright get out. She held a list of instructions and was ushered off into the centre of the building by the life-blood-paper-pushers of the MPA.
He turned to Ted. “You’ve been meaning to say something, haven’t you?”
Ted nodded, clearing his throat. “She isn’t human. At least, not entirely.
I can definitely smell something… Extra. It’s possible she had divine ancestry.”
He spoke as if this were everyday conversation. For him, it probably was.
Leo glanced once more at Atra’s receding, admittedly striking figure once more, before replying “Ah, that does not surprise me. With those amethyst eyes…” Leo trailed off. “Do you think she knows?”
Ted shrugged. “Depends who she is related to, which god… The Nihilists would definitely have known.”
Leo agreed as Ted pulled out of the carpark.
“Regardless, I am sure she will be an invaluable addition to the Emissaries.”
There was a ‘boop’ from Ted’s phone. “Oh!” He started.
“What is it?” Leo asked sideways. After falling silent, he’d begun planning how to increase his involvement in Beth’s retraining.
“The admins have faxed Ms. Arkwright’s initial application to our superiors” (Dalnius, Drex, etc.)
“We know they rarely have the time to examine that stuff, it’s just protocol.”
Ted slowed the car, ready to turn around, focused on finishing his explanation.
“Dalnius has reviewed it… He wants to meet Ms. Arkwright!” Ted exclaimed with some excitement and confusion.
This day was shaping out to be very strange; geomantic recruits, Leo going on 4th level clearance missions, and not a single 9th or 8th level threat had interrupted them.
Leo’s thoughts raced. Tonight, Dalnius was on a mission to deal with a 12th level threat in the Hellenique sea, a demon he fought in a past life that was reawakening. Ted didn’t even have the clearance to have been told this.
It was far bigger than he knew.
*.*.*
4:47 PM KMT / 11:47 AM AST
Leo waved to Ted and ‘Beth’ as they got into the helicopter destined for Nethus, where Dalnius awaited Atra’s arrival.
Leo dashed along the cold metal path through the inner workings of the MPA’s Glascran base and out the other side. An identical helicopter waited for him.
He glanced again at the message he had received before deleting it.
Alumnus had found the Korangar. She is in Luandan.
*.*.*
10:25 PM KMT / 5:25 PM AST
Off the west coast of Glascran we come to the outer isles of Erimos.
The largest island, jointly named ‘Dares & Saize’ is our subject of interest.
Or what is above it, anyway.
Feel the cold atmosphere at your fingertips.
The sky is singed, wool and wolf mane riddled with white cracks, like the blood of gods spilled across the heavens.
The air is thin up here.
5,000 feet above ground level.
Hello, Atlas Sahrana!
A man who’s cheek bones are high, and who’s (goggled) eyes, hair and skin are complementary shades of brown : shortbread, chocolate and caramel respectively.
4,350 feet.
There are faint, anxious creases under his eyes, and a sharp focus manifesting the knowledge that he has seen to much for his twenty three years alive.
3.784 feet.
Atlas has worked with the MPA since he was sixteen.
He really likes This work: Takes on every assignment he can.
His superiors can’t refuse. The work Is there.
No time to chat Leo, no time to feel guilty for sending me to my probable death.
That’s the deal.
We are both busy. Busy men with busy numbers.
2,304 feet.
Oh.
1,613 feet.
Oh dear me.
1,048 feet.
This young man seems to be falling very quickly.
735 feet.
I hope he knows how to use that parachute clinging to him with inanimate fear.
477 feet above the terthe.
Everyone wears two parachutes, they take the reserve for granted.
310 feet above a foaming charcoal sea.
A, he did something!
The Kevlar canopy billows outwards.
It spreads painfully slowly, with intentional, precise delay.
Instant parachutes hurt ‘more’.
260 feet above an emerald shard of land.
We won’t see much of Atlas. He doesn’t have much to teach us.
107 feet above an enemy.
Slowly but surely, air bubbles into place.
He should have released his parachute at 2,000 feet.
73 feet above an ally.
Maybe its magic? Or he could just be in a hurry.
40 feet above the ruins of a church.
Watch out for those beautiful verdant stone peaks.
Erimos is famed for its spiky rocks…
17 feet, inhale.
Get ready now.
5 feet, exhale.
Land on the balls of your feet, then kick to the side. Let the force spread through your body and into the ground.
Ugh.
Sounds like a body meeting gravel in armistice.
Atlas could almost be a geomancer!
Except he isn’t… Atlas Sahrana has no discipline.
He was born without magic. Very much like you.
2 Sturdy feet.
If they carry him fast enough, he might find his brother before sunset.
Dawn to dusk. Just another long day…
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