Malcolm Tent
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Wish upon the Stars chapter 686
🕑 Added 2024-08-08 00:02:37 +0000 UTCThe streets of Trevally were much emptier than I’d expected. We were stealthed, but it didn’t turn out to be that necessary. We passed a few wandering enemies but made it to the Unity building otherwise without incident. While the WCP branch had been nearly identical to the one in Valen, the Unity branch was very different, a strange bronze building with faceless hat wearing men kneeling to hold up the roof instead of columns.
“Well, this is…interesting.” I said from across the street as I faded back into view. Flicker was next to me, staring down at the construction, and for the first time I heard her chuckle ruefully.
“That’s the Hall of Hats.” She said with a amusement. “Haberdasher was the first Unity guild leader of Trevally and had…eclectic tastes. Admittedly his style of doing things worked, because almost any native Trevallian can tell you at least a vague history of that building, even those of us who grew up more in the WCP.”
Another one like Jerks then. “Fair enough. I don’t suppose you happen to know the entire layout too?”
She shook her head. “Haberdasher is a local legend. I’m sure wherever you’re from had some famous founder everyone knew about too. But it’s just cursory stuff who he was, what his costume looked like. That kind of thing. As for an entrance, I’ve never really been to the Hall of Hats, I was never Unity.”
I could have gone in the huge entrance with the double doors, but since Stella and the others hadn’t come out, I needed to assume the guild had traps of some kind that made a slow entrance necessary. In fact, I could check that myself. Triggering Eye of Revelation I focused hard on the entrance and side walls, tapping into Callie’s trap Skill.
Several places on and around the hall lit up in my vision, and I grimaced. Sure enough, the defenses were activated. Stella would have ways around that, but as backup I hadn’t needed to know them. Which meant I was going to need to slip us by them.
Luckily, this planet was pseudo D-rank, which meant we didn’t have access to Master Level trap builders, especially not in smaller cities. The building was weird, but it was also going to be easier to break into as an E-ranker. I decided to send in a clone, conjuring one through the bond from shadow and sliding in a parallel. Then, with my main body on overwatch, I sent it into the maze of traps surrounding the place.
I got about halfway in before the clone died. Wincing, I made another, then another. Integrating Callie’s trap skill with Eye of Revelation took a lot of effort, and wasn’t working as well as I’d have liked. To support, I triggered Song of the Soil, letting me get a better look underground, and that yielded better fruit.
My next clone got to the door, then finally got inside. “Alright, follow that path.” I said to Flicker. “I’m taking the quick way.” Focusing on the clone’s vision, I triggered Double Trouble, appearing behind a smaller stone statue inside. As soon as I arrived, my Danger Sense went off, and I had to dive sideways as a literal whip of magma carved through the statue. I landed and triggered Mornax, letting the whip slam into my body on the second strike and then grabbing it firmly.
The attacker, a short man with dark shin and long red hair, yelped in surprise as I wrapped it around my hands and tried to haul him off his feet, but he was able to stop me once he realized what I was doing.
Mornax made me very stable, but it didn’t make me stronger, and my Might wasn’t as high as this person’s so we ended up in a bit of a deadlock. At least until my clone came up behind him and smashed a Mercy Kill empowered blow into the side of his knee. There was a loud crack and he screamed, losing his footing and flying towards me.
I stomp kicked the flying form in the face, letting his own momentum do most of the work as he hit my (as far as he was concerned) nigh-invulnerable shell.
His nose broke, and he dropped to the ground screaming. Reaching into my ring, I pulled out some rope, tying him up securely. It took a bit of wrestling, but a few stomps on his face from my clone proved a sufficient distraction.
Flicker coalesced from smoke next to me, looking impressed. “That was a good takedown.” She said approvingly. “Most Wyndhams aren’t quite so handy in a pinch. Good to see you’re not one of the layabouts.”
I nodded. “I do what I can. I figure we could question this one. He seems like part of the main invasion force, so maybe he knows details of what’s going on.”
The captive cackled. “Fools!” He said acidly. “I’ll never talk. You can peel off my skin and drown me in boiling oil, feed me to an ant colony, pluck out my eyeballs, I’m prepared for any form of torture.”
I blinked at him oddly. “I mean…I was just going to ask you and then move on.” I glanced at Flicker. “Those sounded really persuasive though. Should we try them?” I obviously wasn’t going to torture him, aside from not even having time, I found the idea morally repugnant…but he didn’t have to know that.
His bravado faltered. “Wait, no shit, don’t do that.” His expression was haunted. “That’s just like…a saying. I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to boil alive in oil. That sounds horrible.”
I was glad I had a mask on, because watching him talk himself into confessing was making it hard not to grin and give away the game. Instead I just stayed quiet. This guy was questioning himself way better than I ever could. My implacable wooden face was probably helping, so I just waited.
“You don’t have to boil me alive.” He babbled. “You could just beat me, I mean wait, don’t beat me, you can throw me in prison, but I don’t want to go to prison, shit.” He looked ready to cry, and finally he let out a groan of mental anguish and wailed. “Fine, you got me, I’ll talk, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, just don’t do any of those horrible things to me!”
Holding back gales of laughter was tough, but knowing my friends might need help made it easier. “Who did they send to take Walker? Can’t be easy to pin down someone like him. Must be someone strong.”
He nodded quickly. “Definitely!” He said “They sent Bon Voyage. He’s super fast. Impossible to catch! Even Walker won’t be able to get away.”
We spent the next ten minutes trying to sort relevant details from the word vomit of Marshall’s (his real name, though apparently he went by Fire Marshall when in costume) life. He shared WAY more than we needed to know, and was seemingly unable to stop talking. By the time we left to help the others we’d officially learned enough of his life story to write a biography, but we had the info we needed.
Walker was in here, but having figured out what Bon Voyage could do, rather than face him head on, he’d retreated and activated the defenses. Super speed was less useful with no room to move around. He'd been sending people to try to root out the guild master, but wasn't having much luck. When Jessie, Benny, and the others showed up things just got more complicated and our friends had decided to look for their target rather than start a fight, which was the smart call.
Since the person who built this place had also been insane, he'd honeycombed the whole thing with secret tunnels and passageway, some of which the enemy had found but most of which were eluding them. Stella seemed to know them though, which gave them a big advantage over everyone but Walker, who had evacuated everyone else. In fact, his power was perfectly suited to using the passages against the enemy, and he'd been picking off stragglers while he avoided Bon Voyage until our team showed up.
I'd tried calling them, but I hadn't been able to get through. What I HAD been able to do was extract (for some value of that word) the last location they'd been from the prisoner.
Once we arrived, I used Eye of Revelation to pin down the location of the passage entrance and then opened it up to follow them into the passageway.
With Benny's trail (not to mention Randall's) I was able to track them with my skill easily enough, and it only took about twenty minutes to reach the end of the road. As I opened the entrance, I felt a twinge of Danger Sense, but it immediately faded as Benny's voice shouted. “Wait!”
My staff was up and flickering to life with poison fire, but at his words I froze, as did the man with the top hat and the umbrella poised to spear me through the eye. And I mean VERY poised. I’d gone into Mornax as soon as my Danger Sense triggered so it wouldn’t have killed me, but I’d never taken a blow to eyeball in my defensive form, it might have actually done some damage. The guy was FAST. “Walker, I assume.” I said dryly as Benny explained who I was. We stepped forward into the passage, the wall closing behind us.
The inside of the passageway had glowing stones set into the top that kicked on when the light from outside cut off, so we could all still see. Stelle stood behind Benny, holding a pint sized Randall while Jessie waited behind her. With a sigh of relief Jessie launched herself forward to hug me. “Shane!” She said happily. “You’re alright. There were way more of them than we expected. The speedster actually carried some reinforcements into the city at the last second.”
I winced. We hadn’t considered that option, though we should have, since it was basically the same as our plain, albeit way less well thought out. “Well it’s fine.” I said with a wave. “We have enough people to fight our way out, and we might not need to, this place has escape tunnels right? We can go meet up with Abel and Bethy.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Said Walker calmly. “The exit tunnels have been collapsed. Some of the interlopers attempted to follow my people out and they were forced to respond. We only had the one escape route, and it was designed to be collapsible in case of just such an emergency.”
Cursing, I let out a loud sigh. I’d mentioned fighting our way out, but I’d hoped that would involve all of our people. We couldn’t even count on Callie’s overwatch because this building was in an enlarged space. Views from outside were meaningless when you went past a certain level of spatial enlargement.
None of the other buildings in the city were at that level, but the branch headquarters were the most advanced premises in town, despite being so old. They kept these places up to code, weird construction or not.
“Alright.” I said after a minute. “Then we’ll need to break out of here by force. Walker, is there a way to see what’s going on in the hallways without leaving the passages?” If I had been building passages like this I’d have made spy holes or something.
Smirking, the dapper man nodded. “But of course. Follow me.” He turned setting off at a casual stroll in a seemingly random direction, and we all followed. FInally we came to a large chamber between tunnels, the walls lines with mirrors showing various points in the building. “Do you mean something like this?” I grinned viciously behind my mask. This would do perfectly.
Comments
Malcolm Tent
Nah, its just that unlike the people who carefully designed the tunnels they used to escape Shane has no clue how to calculate fault tolerances or see which walls are load bearing. Collapsing a building, especially an expanded one, on top of all of them would be...problematic. Also Pit of Despair works mostly in ten foot increments. He'd have to use it repeatedly and while he might be able to shore up the tunnels as they went it would take too long. If they stick around reinforcements will come.
Kevin McGuire
Am I missing a reason why Shane can't make his own tunnels with Song of Soil, Pit of Dispare and Dust Control? Is it a soul strain thing or can Pit of Dispare not be used on walls?
