assistirfilmes Chapter 220: Lesser Tendencies
Chapter 220: Lesser Tendencies
Thank you to my beta reader and editor, GlassThreads!
Wren Kain IV
I wrinkled my nose as I floated through the lesser sewers, the stench of excretion and bodily fluids scraping at my sinus cavities. My earthen chair edged around a particularly nasty buildup of dung and slime.
I’d initially been mildly impressed by the technology Agrona Vritra had managed to scrounge up for his lesser minions to use when I’d reached Alacrya. Mana panels that projected moving images, identification and functioning facilities for the majority of the populace, and more tools and items made ordinary living trivial for the common lesser.
But you can’t even properly regulate your own excrement, I thought with annoyance. The design of these tunnels is impractical. The layout is inefficient for fluid transfer and shifting of large mass.
I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on the idiot who’d designed this atrocity of a waste management system so I could show them exactly why this was an atrocity.
I slowed in my trek through the grim darkness, focusing the barest bit. Then I turned to the brick walls directly beside me as I sensed my quarry. I narrowed my eyes as the earth mana conveyed the truth of the mechanism.
Primitive.
A miniature golem of earth pulled itself from the stones beneath me, before striding forward through the muck. It tapped specific bricks in the order I knew they needed, before the entire wall folded in on itself.
My golem dissolved back into motes of earth mana as my chair hovered through the gap. Not a bare second after I’d entered the underground room, the wall closed behind me automatically.
“Interesting construction,” I snorted, peering around the rooms. They appeared to have once been well-lived in, but hadn’t seen much use in the past months. I narrowed my eyes as I floated further in, inspecting the support columns and various abandoned hallways.
I suspected this place had originally been used as a place to store rainwater for the populace of lessers above, but as magic became more engrained and the need for relying on rainwater decreased, the petty mages had no use for this cistern any longer.
And thus, some bottom-dwellers probably found an excuse to use this place as their own.
Whatever. That wasn’t why I was here.
I pulled an item from my pocket, annoyed by the dust falling from the ceiling. Why couldn’t tho
I tilted my head as I rubbed at my jaw. “You’re a smart one, aren’t you? At least for your small brain. You appear to be the only one here who figured out what I am–which means you know it would be idiotic to lie to me.”
White-hair worked his jaw, and I could hear how fast his heart was thundering in his chest. “She isn’t here, asura,” he said. “She left this place a long time ago.”
As the word asura rumbled outward, the others of this little ‘Menagerie’ shied backward or cursed in disbelief. The one called Rat reeled backward, then started to speak. “No way this hobo is a–”
Badger punched her hard in the arm. “Shut up, Rat,” he said, his spell finally snapping as he realized it wouldn’t work. “I didn’t sign up for this, you crazy witch! An asura in a sewer! By Melzri’s tits!” he cursed.
I stared at White-hair for a moment longer.
Then I sighed, running a hand through my bedraggled hair. I pointed a finger at the man, wanting to get a few things straight. “Look, lesser. I’m not here to ruin your day or mess up your little nest or whatever. But you are going to tell me where Aurora went–because you clearly know.”
“I won’t lead you to them,” White-hair said sharply, his body shaking the barest bit as he resolved himself. “I won’t be the one to doom them. You’ll have to take me to the pits of Taegrin Caelum, asura.”
I peeled back my goggles, revealing my eyes to the boy in front of me. “Do I look like a basilisk to you?” I said with a snort. “Their methods are crude and wasteful. I’m offended that you’d even make the implication.” My eyes snapped to the side. “That room over there has the most traces of sound and fire mana–the interweave of plasma is her specialty. So I know she spent time here–probably a lot, considering the notable remnants even after time. And considering your pathetic lifespan as a lesser, we both know I’m the one who will win in a contest of waiting.”
I hadn’t questioned the lessers of Fiachra, thinking them inconsequential in my search. If Aurora were to be free, I found it more likely she’d hide herself amidst the depths, not making her presence known. Yet it appeared at least some had heard of her.
“And if you won’t tell me anything, then I can just ask above,” I said with a snort, turning around. “Someone probably knows about a phoenix who can shoot plasma beams.”
I observed the trio around me–and aha! I snapped my fingers, noting the flashes of recognition in most present. “There, see? Plasma. That’s the key. Nobody else could figure it out or get the combination right, even among the Asclepius. She said it was because of her music that she knew the right frequencies, but…”
“Wait,” White-hair said from behind me. “Wait, don’t go to the surface. Don’t talk about it so openly!”
I turned, raising a skeptical brow. “I’m an asura, brat. Do you really think you can tell me what not to do?”
I wouldn’t risk blatantly asking random people about a phoenix–that was a good way to catch Agrona Vritra’s attention. But these lessers didn’t know that.
“She’s attached to someone. As a shade. A spirit,” White-hair eventually said. “But she’s not here anymore. She left months ago,” he repeated stubbornly, unwilling to reveal anything.
I noted the reactions of both Cat and Rat. It appeared from their barely veiled surprise that they knew who White-hair was talking about, but not this specific information. Badger just seemed intoxicated.
I ground my teeth, sensing that I probably wouldn’t get much more out of this mage. He was too determined to protect his friend–but just this information changed my entire prerogative. The phoenixes were masters of reincarnating into their own bodies–had Aurora somehow failed? Or was this lesser lacking information?
No matter. I could just find another lesser–
My body tensed up, and I was suddenly wrenched from my thoughts as I stared straight upward. The stone offered no barrier to me as I sensed far beyond it… specks. Echoes. Ghosts.
Wraiths.
My sudden movement made all present shift nervously, their fear stinking the air. “Boy, what is your moniker?” I said sharply, my eyes still focused on the ceiling.
“I’m the Spider,” he said after a tense moment. He tensed, clearly expecting me to retaliate. To offer some sort of ultimatum.
I snorted. “A fitting name, I guess,” I said. “But you’re going to need more eyes.”
I reached up, taking my goggles off my face. They were colored a sleek black, the lenses within tested to withstand nearly anything I could throw at them. The mechanisms inside–though only a prototype–pushed the bounds of what was possible with mana.
I tossed the goggles to Spider. He caught them in confusion, before engaging his magic. A yellow sheen overtook the goggles as he used some sort of inspection spell.
“Holy fuck,” Spider cursed, his hands clenching around the goggles as his eyes blew wide.
“Keep those safe, Spider–and tell nobody of her. For her own sake. You were annoyingly correct to withhold information, even from me,” I said, turning on my heels and marching away. “And if you want those cloaking artifacts improved, obscure the mana flow better. It’s too centralized,” I directed to Rat and Cat. They both shared disturbed looks as I shoved them from my mind.
Then I looked at Badger. He swayed slightly, his jaw slack as he looked back at me. Intoxicated, probably. “And you,” I said pointedly, “eat less. You are overweight for your race.”
“You’re a prick,” Badger said, seeming to disbelieve he even said the words.
“No, I’m a titan,” I said in response. “Stop saying stupid things. You have the cranial capacity for observation. Or maybe you don’t if you use that vision disruption magic on yourself all the time.”
I strolled toward the edge of the wall, internally making plans as my senses alerted me. I’d been dodging Agrona’s hunters for the better part of a few weeks, leaving half a dozen false trails and obscuring my goals, before finally reaching Fiachra. Yet they’d somehow tracked me here. The rest of the Menagerie stood in tense, uncertain silence as I faced the brick wall.
“Spider,” I said, the words pulling themselves from my gut, “did you ever hear her sing?”
The masked man shifted uncomfortably. “No,” he eventually said. “No, I didn’t.”
I sighed. “That’s a shame,” I said, my shoulders slumping. “Keep up the good work on that arm, lesser. The modularity you implemented is genius.”
Then I stepped forward into the wall, allowing it to subsume me. The moment the earth closed around me, I surged like a fish in water, the stone itself twisting and molding to allow me passage. I went low, allowing the call of the stone to draw me deeper as I continued to move.
I’d been playing a delicate dance with Agrona’s half-blood warriors for the better part of a month. I didn’t know exactly how they could sense me–but every time they got close, I improved my cloaking device just a little bit more, and they lost me again. Thus I was free for a time, and the cycle repeated.
If Agrona weren’t such a wasteful loon with his resources, I thought as I surged through the earth southward, I wouldn’t mind working with him. But he doesn’t know how to run a society at all. Just those sewers are enough to prove his lunacy.
This time, though–this time felt different. As I moved, my senses told me I was still being followed, even miles out from the city of Fiachra. I swerved and shifted like a Darvish sandshark, but no matter what direction I took, the pursuit continued.
I grumbled in internal annoyance as I ducked a swath of granite. My only chance was if I could find time to improve my cloaking artifact again and slip the noose tightening around my throat. But to do that…
Fine. Play it your way, I thought with simmering anger. The only person I had ever danced with was Aurora Asclepius, but if they kept insisting, I’d grant them their petty waltz.
Let’s dance, lessurans, I thought, emerging from the earth at last.
I found myself in the depths of a forest, the boughs filled with silver leaves and glimmering mana. Clarwood, I was certain. But this deep beneath the canopy, the sunlight of the sky didn’t reach the ground.
“Are you done running, mouse?” a bittersweet voice said from afar. “I wouldn’t have expected such cowardice from the great Wren Kain IV.”
I stared coolly upward, noting the half-breed as she faced me. With long hair the color of black pitch and curdled blood eyes, she looked like something out of the old stories. When the Wraith smiled, elongated fangs glinted in the low light. “My name is Perhata, asura. Know this name to be the last you’ll ever hear.”
A mass of blood iron spikes, each twisting and writhing, surged toward me from the trees. Half a dozen golems of ornate earth leapt to meet the dark attack, each wielding weapons and ready to fight. They collided in a cacophonous explosion, black lightning erupting from the center of the iron spikes and using my summoned sentinels to conduct itself toward me.
I raised a single fist as the decay-aspected lightning approached me, the half-breed lessuran nowhere to be seen. “You should use your head, lessuran,” I said grumpily, before slamming my fist into the earth.
A shockwave rippled out as the earth mana trembled. Like the effects of a stone hitting a pond, the dirt around me shuddered in undulating waves as the power I’d imbued traveled outward, uprooting trees and obliterating anything in its path. The wave of power brushed aside the black-blue lightning, the earthquake churning the stones as it surged like a tidal wave.
In barely a moment, I was left in a clearing easily four hundred feet wide. Broken trees and decimated landscape greeted me as I turned my eyes to the sky. I snorted with derision as I noticed the flitting dark figures in the air above, all having escaped the radius of my attack. Twenty Wraiths total circled me like gnats, their intent and bloodlust honing in on me alone.
Cementing my resolve, I called on the earth mana all around me. The stone itself warped and shifted as a sailing ship conjured entirely of stone slowly rose into the sky with me at its helm. Tacks and sheets flew as a hundred conjured minions worked at their stations, manning cannons and preparing for battle. A few golems hefted massive cannonballs to their stations, ready to unleash hell upon our adversaries. With the touch of Sacred Fire coursing through my magic, everything became a bit more real. A bit more true. The very essence of the heat pushed them toward reality, inching ever-so-close to true life.
And far, far more dangerous.
I stood at the wheel of the massive ship, glaring upward at Perhata where she hovered as a vanguard. The half-vritra woman carried a long sword of black iron that seemed to drink in the light, the edge crackling with black lightning.
“My name is Wren Kain IV, thousandth and last wielder of the Sacred Fire,” I said sharply, my voice traveling into the air as the Wraiths prepared for battle and my summons readied their weapons, “and you should know that your petty clones won’t scratch a hem of my robes.”