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Interlude Five: Celeste Alone
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Interlude Five: Celeste Alone
Celeste hates being away from Serena for several reasons. The most prominent being that her existence always feels… fuzzy, while apart from her sentinel. The powers she shares with Serena work more intermittently, and it’s harder to maintain true invisibility — something she’s never really been very skillful at anyway. Mother had always prioritized her connection to the Celestial Truths to the more basic skills most familiars learn in their short time as true centurions.
Despite this, Celeste doesn’t blame Serena for sending her to follow the smelly men. It’s the right move, as the men are quite obviously up to no good. But really, when was the last time these apes took a bath? And their breath… stars, it’s like they’re sentinels trying to gain poison powers.
Serena never smells this bad, Celeste considers as she watches the men sort through items in the Mercurial Compound. Serena always smells like that vanilla perfume she likes so much, the same perfume her mother used to use.
It saddens Celeste to think about Serena while forced to be away from her, even after just an hour or two. Already, Celeste had begun to feel at home with Serena. Her vanilla scent, her hands stained with graphite from drawing, and even her sweatiness after practicing archery. After the strangeness of this new world, Serena has been Celeste’s anchor.
That incursion zone, though… Celeste shivers. It had been like the Volcora knew that Serena’s team was going to be there — and Audrey on top. In Celeste’s mind, the incursion had been less about invading Shinara and had been more of an assassination attempt. What better move for the Volcora to make than to wipe out one of Japan’s top sentinels and an entire team’s worth of Centurion royalty. But how could they have known?
Celeste isn’t under any preconceptions that the Volcora aren’t a supremely cunning and dangerous enemy. Oh, the majority of them are near mindless, certainly, but it’s the smart ones that need to be watched for. The mind flayers, the overlords, and… whatever their leaders are. Not that their leaders are any specific type of volcora. Physical restrictions like that are constructs of this dimension — even Celeste hadn’t had a body until she’d arrived here. Physical matter just doesn’t make sense on the other side.
Although… that’s slowly becoming less and less true. The closer the worlds draw to convergence, the easier it will be for centurions to take on physical forms and interact in small ways with the physical, even without a human companion. In the same way, however, it will increase the number and strength of incursions the volcora can send.
Sadly, the humans don’t see things correctly. Something Celeste will have to help Serena with as the convergence draws closer. They haven’t ever been told that the volcora and centurions are actually the same species. Two warring factions certainly, but they are the same — discounting their preferences in mana use. And now, that war has come here, and both sides are fighting to gain a foothold over this wonderous place where physicality can exist.
Both sides, the Centurions and the Volcora have sent vanguard forces forward in different ways. Ways that mimic how the fight had always gone in Celeste’s home dimension. The centurions have always been fewer, but individuals matter far more when they can be so much more powerful. In contrast, the majority of the Volcora forces are weak masses who’d driven themselves mad by abusing Stygian Mana. This means that most volcora are ultimately too stupid to really fight effectively against a centurion. But the smart ones, though… they can be just as devastating as a centurion individually and can control thousands of their lesser alongside.
That mind flayer… it had known, it must have! What are they planning? How are the Reavers involved? That’s what Celeste needs to find out here. If she’s going to protect Serena from the threats she doesn’t even know exist, she needs to start acting now.
[Oh mother… why won’t you just let me tell Serena what’s really happening?] Celeste thinks, projecting the thought, but not towards her bonded partner. It would be so much easier if Serena could help with all of this.
[Soon child…] a distant feminine voice whispers into Celeste’s mind. [We will protect her, but we cannot yet allow the humans to know the full truth. Not even the ones we love.]
Celeste shivers again, to think that mother is powerful enough to start partially crossing the dimensional boundary to commune already…
She shakes her head, attempting to clear her thoughts. She stayed behind for a reason, and it wasn’t to dwell on her secrets.
The man, Adrian, and his team of grungy thugs had finished their shopping at the Mercurial Compound and now stride through the gloom of the shadowed streets. Smog swirls, so thick as to be visible to the naked eye, but the men breathe easily. To them, it’s as if the air isn’t toxic.
Celeste considers this fact as she slips silently along behind them. Everyone on these dark streets either wears a mask to filter the air or looks as if each lung-full pains them. Not these men, though. But why? Could the answer be related to those black runic markings on their skin?
Taking a risk with her weak invisibility, Celeste scampers closer to the men, attempting to stretch her senses and determine if there is anything strange about those tattoos. Luckily, the men, engrained in their conversation, don’t notice the mostly invisible familiar approaching from behind.
The tattoos definitely don’t seem natural to Celeste, and… yes. There is mana in those tattoos. Stygian Mana, but of a form closer to Tributary Mana than she would normally sense from a Volcora. It’s still much closer to Stygian Mana, but there is an element of having been earned. This isn’t Stygian Mana that will drive its user mad, but Stygian Mana that has been earned after it was gained by the user.
Interesting, have these criminals really figured out a way to utilize Stygian Mana safely? It’s not impossible, plenty of volcora do it, but Celeste very much doubts they figured it out themselves. Someone is helping them, perhaps someone from or formally from the Sanctum Collective or GDF.
But what are the tattoos for? Are they really just to help the men breathe more easily down here, or is there more to it? The amount of mana required for such a breathing effect is only a mere fraction of the total amount she can sense from the men, so the tattoos very likely have several purposes.
With this discovery made, Celeste drops back from the men and settles in to listen to their conversation once more.
“-still think that we should call off the whole thing,” one of the men is saying. Celeste had been listening in long enough to know that they call this one Little Tom. “I mean, Adrian, there are sentinels involved.”
Their leader, Adrian, grunts in response. “There were always going to be sentinel’s involved Tom. We’re opposing the GDF.”
“Still, the way that one looked at us…” Little Tom continues, shivering. “That thing is not human. Not anymore.”
“No sentinel is human,” Adrian confirms with a grim nod. “They give that up in exchange for power.”
Celeste heavily disagrees with that statement. Sentinels are still humans, just with their bodies heavily augmented by mana. That mana ultimately guides them closer and closer to being like Celeste, whose body and soul are exact matches. On the other hand, Celeste would grow more and more able to interact with the physical world as if she had been born a real physical creature.
“Well, what are we going to do about that one, then?” Little Tom asks. “I have a feeling that she isn’t just going to let this go.”
Adrian nods, his face contemplative. “Sentinels aren’t strong all the time, and the bosses have people inside the GDF. We can just ask them to learn more about her; then, we just find her in her rest state and kill the bitch.”
Celeste starts; this isn’t the first time the men had mentioned trying to kill Serena — they’ve been talking about that rather a lot, actually — but it is the first time they’ve mentioned people inside the GDF. Initially, Celeste had been very dismissive of the men talking about killing Serena in her rest state; how would they ever find her? Serena being a sentinel isn’t public knowledge, and the only times she’s out officially as a sentinel, she will be either wearing her assault state or so surrounded by other sentinels that an attempt would be suicide.
With people inside the GDF, though, that becomes a very different story. If those people have access to Serena’s records, they could find her home and come after her or her father while she’s sleeping. A much more credible threat. Celeste wonders if she can convince Serena and her father to sleep in a GDF Apartment for a while. They’d still be vulnerable at school, though.
Hmmm, I’ll need to come up with a better plan, Celeste considers.
Rather than contacting Serena immediately about the threat, Celeste decides to continue following the men and learn all she can before delivering one big report to her sentinel.
The men continue grumbling about sentinels and Serena in particular as they make their way deeper into the city. This far in, even the intermittent people Celeste had noticed around are no longer present. Without a way of filtering the smog — or simply not needing to breathe, in Celeste’s case — this place would be absolutely awful on the lungs.
Celeste keeps following the men, hoping they’ll mention something about what they need the equipment they purchased for. From what they’ve said before and what they’ve purchased, Celeste assumes they’re trying to rob someone. But who? And why?
Sadly, all these men seem to want to talk about is how very, very much they dislike sentinels. Hopefully, they’ll report to someone when they arrive wherever they’re going, and Celeste will be able to learn more then.
It takes a lot of walking; cities are quite large, after all, but eventually, the men arrive at a pile of rubble. Perhaps some demolition that had never been entirely cleaned up? Or maybe the Reavers had brought this rubble here. Either way, it isn’t too out of place in the mess of these dark streets.
Adrian and his men walk into the field of rubble, finally seeming to take care and look around themselves. Celeste, so far from Serena now, can only really manage to make herself mostly translucent. So, instead of trusting in it, she shrinks to the smallest form she can manage and ducks behind a bit of rubble. She tucks her wings in tight to her back, waiting a few seconds before slowly poking her head around the cinderblock she’d hidden behind.
The men had finished looking around and return to their grumbling as they move through the rubble as if searching for something.
Celeste starts and whirls on the noise, seeing a skyscraper behind her, one of the ones with a solid bottom, have a false stone panel slide away to reveal a dark passage. The men immediately start towards the passageway, so Celeste stays hidden until they pass her and then slips silently along behind them.
Idly, Celeste considers how much fun it would be to just pop back into visibility in the middle of this base. She’d already gotten to do that once today, and doing it a second time with the same group would surely be amazing fun. Sadly, it makes much more sense to keep hidden so as to not alert the Reavers of her presence. If the GDF does decide to come down here, Celeste wants to make sure that the Reavers don’t know they’re coming.
To Celeste’s surprise, the inside of the passageway isn’t what she expected. Upon first seeing it, she’d assumed that the bottom floor of this building wasn’t nearly as solid as it appeared, but that is apparently wrong. Only a small section of the building’s base had been carved into to allow for the passageway and the stairs down underground. Very curious, do the Reavers have some sort of underground complex down here?
That would make a kind of sense, actually. Wealth and class in Shinara, as Celeste figured it, are about how high-up you can live. Living on the ground is only for the poorest, with a middle-class area around the skyway level, and the richest of the rich live at the top of the highest skyscrapers. In this way of life, who would ever consider wanting to go down further than ground level? Being underground would likely be considered as only for the lowest of the low — the criminals and people hiding from society.
Celeste follows the men down multiple flights of stairs before arriving at a second passageway that travels underground for a good distance. The passageway is dark, lit only by widely displaced bulbs that flicker occasionally. Even the Reaver men seem to respect the silence of this place, not talking as they walk through the silent tunnels like people walking through a graveyard.
Still, they move with determination, clutching at the packaged items they’d purchased from the Mercurials. Their sheer intensity sends a chill down Celeste’s spine all the way to the tip of her tail. They might joke and grumble with each other up above, but these men are serious. Men with morals long since stripped away to leave remorseless killers.
Celeste imagines that these men could kill Serena and not lose a wink of sleep after it. Stars… they would probably joke about the sound of her screams afterward.
This fact hardens Celeste’s resolve. Serena is her partner for life, her sister from a different world. Celeste refuses to let any further harm come to Serena… not after her failure to protect her sentinel in the incursion zone.
Shaking her head, Celeste attempts to clear those kinds of thoughts. She has a job to do here, and there is a light at the end of the tunnel… literally.
“Finally,” one of the men grumbles. Celeste isn’t quite sure which one had spoken in the dim lights — other than Serena, most humans sound similar to her.
The light glimmering in the darkness of the tunnel is a glowing keypad mounted to the side of a thick steel door. The leader of the group, Adrian, walks up to the keypad and rapidly presses a series of buttons while covering his hand with his other. Evidently, his men aren’t authorized to know the code. The keypad lets out a satisfied beep, and the door slides open.
Celeste follows the men into the room on the other side of the door, looking around with wide eyes. She’d expected some kind of hideout filled with men with dirty blankets and dead eyes. Instead, this place looks clean and clinical.
Stepping through the steel door is like stepping into a lab. The concrete walls and floor had been freshly whitewashed, and the room filled with immaculately clean computer equipment, as well as a freezer, a steel table, and several distinctly uncomfortable looking chairs.
Four men wearing uniforms of the Independent Watch stand around holding very intimidating assault rifles, and Celeste pauses upon seeing them. Serena had long suspected that the Independent Watch could be easily sold out to whatever gang was on the rise and had voiced this to Celeste, but seeing them here, blatantly guarding a Reaver compound, is chilling.
Celeste briefly wishes she had some kind of camera or ability to capture this room and provide proof of what she’s seeing. Sadly, though, even if Celeste could access Serena’s inventory from this distance, there isn’t one there. Not to mention her lack of thumbs, which would make using it hard. Maybe she could use Serena’s phone camera? No, that’s stupid, she needs to make sure that-
“Where’s the doctor?” Adrian asks, cutting off Celeste’s thoughts. He and his men had strode into the room, all dirty and grimy and not seeming to care about dirtying everything they touch.
One of the men from the Independent Watch glances to Adrian with obvious distaste. “He’s in his lab; I don’t think he’d want you walking in on him while he’s working.”
“He’ll want to know about this,” Adrian says confidently, striding to another thick metal door — this one without a keypad — and pushing it open.
Adrian’s other two men stay in the room with the men from the Watch, so Celeste only has a moment to dart forward and get through the open door before it swings shut behind Adrian. Celeste scurries to the side of the hallway she’d exited into, desperately trying to hold her invisibility as it keeps wanting to fade. As she does, she takes in this new hallway with sinking horror.
The hallway is lined on either side with barred cells, cells occupied by people. The people are dirty and grimy, and more than one of them looks sick. They watch Adrian pass by their bars with hopeless eyes, and Celeste feels nauseous as she realizes that more than one of them is a child. The entire space reeks of unwashed bodies and excrement; stars… what kind of monsters are these people?
So far in her life, Celeste has only hated one group. The Volcora and their evil ways have been the enemies of her people for hundreds of generations, and Celeste hates them with every fiber of her being. She’d never expected to be able to feel hate on the same level for another group… but this? These men are a mockery of what people like Serena stand for.
Celeste knows that the humans also fought wars, but after spending so much time with Serena, she’s never seen how truly evil some humans can be. Now… now she knows. Looking at those hopeless faces peering out of the cell doors, Celeste knows that she will personally tear the people responsible apart with her claws.
Adrian doesn’t stop to look at a single prisoner as he strides down the passage and to the other steel door at the end. Celeste is forced to keep up with him or risk missing out on critical information. Even so, she can’t wait for the moment Serena convinces Kayne, Audrey, or her entire team to come down here and end this once and for all.
When Adrian opens the second steel door, Celeste slips inside after him. Once again, she almost wishes she hadn’t. If she’d thought the previous room was filled with horrors, it was simply because she hadn’t seen anything yet.
The room beyond is once again sterilely clean and painted with fresh white paint. All except for the bloodstains on the floor underneath a padded table covered in straps. The straps currently hold down a young woman who seems to be unconscious. Fresh black tattoos mark her dirty skin up one arm, and a tall, balding man stands beside her, studying the tattoo with some kind of machine that Celeste doesn’t recognize.
On a steel table beside the balding man, various blade-stained tools lay waiting for further use. The tools seem designed to rend flesh, and Celeste doesn't dare to think about what they might have been used for.
“Doc,” Adrian says, nodding his head to the man. “I’m just stopping by to let you know that we successfully picked up the equipment for the heist. We’re ready for when the shipment comes in.”
The man Adrian called Doc nods to himself, still studying the tattoo on the woman’s arm. Celeste notices with horror that the arm has started to go pale and shrivel as if drying out.
Doc sighs, watching the arm continue shriveling, “Another failure; I truly think only a sentinel’s body will be resilient enough to hold these new designs.”
“Sir?” Adrian asks, confused.
“No matter, Adrian. Soon enough, we will have what we need. Well done getting the equipment. Were there any issues?” Doc asks, still not looking away as the woman’s arm starts to look as if it belongs on a mummy. Even unconscious, the woman lets out a small whimper of pain.
Fury twists inside Celeste, angry and hot. This man, this monster, is using these innocent people to test those twisted tattoos of his? Evil… no different from a volcora in human form. But where is he getting the Stygian Mana for the tattoos from?
Adrian looks uncomfortable at the doctor’s question, glancing nervously at the woman’s shriveled arm that had started to infect the rest of her body. “Sir… we encountered a group of sentinels at the Mercurial Compound. One of them noticed us and acted hostile but was forced to let us go due to the rules of the compound.”
The doctor looks up sharply at Adrian’s words. “You saw a sentinel… and they let you go?” the man asks, his eyes blazing with anger.
Adrian winces, starting to look very nervous as the woman on the table ages at a visible rate. “Y-Yes, sir,” Adrian stammers.
The doctor grits his teeth, “Imbecile! The only reason they would let you go is so their familiar can follow you back here! I’ll bet the creature is in this room with us right now!”
Celeste makes herself as small as possible, hiding invisibly in an empty corner of the room even as she continues watching the formally young woman on the table — she looks more like a desiccated corpse now. She’d stopped breathing. Whatever this monster had done to her, it had killed her in one of the most horrific ways Celeste could imagine.
The doctor turns towards a dark, empty corner of the room, although not the one in which Celeste hides. “Rax, you’ll have to deal with this.”
Celeste opens her eyes wide... the way the man spoke... It’s like a sentinel talking to their invisible familiar, but-
The shadow in the corner of the room detaches from the wall, writhing and twisting as it takes on an approximation of a human form. Celeste’s suddenly feels cold and her tail lashes with agitation, an overlord… here in the city…
Stars save us, Celeste thinks as she watches Shinara’s doom approach her.
In an instant, Celeste’s ability to cloak herself in invisibility is stripped from her as the overload devours her power. She finds herself trembling, hiding in the corner of the room like a prey animal.
Yet, Celeste is no ordinary familiar. Rather than continue to cower in fear, she stands straight, flares her wings, and makes herself as large as she can. She’s still dwarfed by the others in the room, but she knows well that she’s already won this round. Now, the Reaver’s secret is out.
All she needs to do is reveal the location of this place to Serena and the others. Having been discovered is certainly not ideal. These men will almost definitely disappear into the smog-choked streets before Serena can arrive. Still, they’ll have to leave a lot of their research and hopefully all their prisoners behind in their haste. A victory, if not the decisive blow Celeste would have wanted.
The overload looms large over Celeste, watching her with glowing red eyes. Then, it nods in respect, acknowledging its defeat. Celeste returns the nod before canceling her manifestation and returning to Serena.
[Serena, I believe I’ve found a Reavers base. Also, we have a big problem.]
Comments
Mister Mocha
Thanks for the chapter!
Thelon
Thanks for the chapter! Let's hope Kayne takes Serena seriously.
