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Nero Walker, Book 3 Ch.22 (137)
🕑 Added 2024-03-22 22:30:01 +0000 UTCLord Cosgrave had been all too happy to put the recent events out of her mind and get back to running her city. Now unencumbered by the threat of her possible execution, she was in her office catching up on the paperwork she had been ignoring. With a smile, she took a sip of her coffee and reveled in the return to the status-quo.
By now, Lord Walker should be back in the wilds, and finally out of her hair. General Branson is once again focused on the defense of the city, his handling of the density shift taking up most of his time. The Arch-mage Jennings is back in his tower, probably plotting the next pain in her ass. Even Lord Walker’s proxy, Vera Salvatore-Verena, should be busy plotting against what’s left of the Blackwoods.
At that thought, she leaned back in her chair, her smile widening into a grin. ‘Wasn’t that a delightful surprise. Who would have imagined that the famous ‘clerk of the Blackwoods’ was actually such a terror in the arena,’ she thought to herself.
As a talented player in the game, she knew how hard it was to dedicate yourself to a role over the long term. Victoria Blackwood must have been hiding her abilities for years, constantly feigning weakness while projecting a false front based on her skills in the conference room. No one doubted her abilities in the business world, but the arena? Her nuanced play in the game was a masterstroke.
‘How wonderful that she and Vera are now on opposite sides of the table,’ she thought to herself, an evil grin spreading across her face.
With a satisfied sigh, she leaned forward to resume looking through the immigration summary for the past few days. The number of villages and towns that were being evacuated was growing as expected. Luckily, they had gotten a good jump on the situation, and the losses had been kept to a minimum.
She glanced at a report concerning the village of Stratsben which had been over-run by a swarm of monsterized cows. Apparently, an essence event occurred in their fields, accompanied by a localized storm. By the time the villagers finished battening down the hatches, it was already too late. 500 over-sized cows were led by several bulls-tuned-minotaur and their wooden walls never stood a chance. Luckily a few villagers survived, and they had just checked in with Gate 4 intake.
Stories like this weren’t unexpected, but it was still concerning. Hopefully the army’s efforts in clearing out the essence disturbances around the city will slow down the shifts turbulence in the surrounding areas. They couldn’t do anything about what was happening along the outskirts of their area of control, but they needed the area around the city to remain safe enough for travel for as long as possible.
Dorchester needed those villages and towns emptied, and their citizens protected. It might take years for the essence to calm down, and anyone left out there wouldn’t survive the experience. Not to mention, Dorchester was going to eventually be hit by the beast waves, and the added bodies on the wall were necessary for its survival.
Closing the report she was reading, she moved on to the status updates coming out of the mountain gate, Gate 22. She needed that mountain city open and ready for the refugees as soon as possible. Already they’d had close to 50,000 people make their way inside her walls, and she expected that number to double in the next few days. After all was said and done, the population of Dorchester might triple by the time the evacuations finished.
Scanning the reports, she sipped her coffee and estimated their food reserves and resource allocations.
Right in front of her eyes, a new report shot to the front of her inbox. Her link tinted crimson, and the lights in her room changed to a pulsing red glow. Her normally comfortable and elegant office lost all of its charm, and she shot to her feet in surprise.
Her eyes flew across the incoming report, absorbing all the critical information in moments. The door to her office flew open, and her stern faced aide, Jessica Chandler, met her eyes with a determined stare.
“Orders? My lord,” she asked, no fear in her voice.
Taking a moment to close her eyes and breathe deeply and clear her mind, seconds passed in silence. When she was ready, Lord Cosgrave hardened her resolve and opened her eyes. With ice in her voice, she commanded, “Summon the council, and send out the general alarm. Tell Guard Dalton to coordinate with the army, and tell Lord Brinks to initiate wartime protocols. I want someone from the Tower of Distributions on site as soon as possible…”
As Lord Cosgrave barked out orders, she strode through her office doors heading for the hall of leadership. Ms. Chandler followed along behind her, dutifully disseminating her words to various functionaries that maintained Dorchester’s operations.
Everyone in the halls moved with purpose, no fear in their hearts. In the face of this new threat, the citizenry of Oglivarch would not be found wanting.
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Nero focused all his attention on carefully probing the tangled ball of essence floating in front of him. Compared to the one he’d seen before, there were several differences that stood out. For one, this one was much smaller than the one his team had dealt with a few hours ago. Also, even though the essence strings looked similar, something about them looked entirely different. It was like the difference between a ball of yarn and a ball of rubber-bands, or maybe wire. But that all seemed inconsequential when compared to the fact that this one was rotating… actually spinning in place like it was a giant, slow, music box sans musical accompaniment.
Using his psychic field, he ran his consciousness over the strings, being very careful not to accidentally kill himself again. The stress of maintaining such a firm hold over his mental projection was so strong it made his forehead sweat, and his heart-rate increase. Not to mention that it was very difficult to keep focused when the two idiots on his right wouldn’t stop arguing.
“No, You’re not listening to me! I’m not saying we can’t diffuse the essence signature as if it WERE a spawn-point. The point is that I don’t think this even IS as a spawn-point. I doubt it even meets the energy threshold. So, calling it one is both inaccurate and evidence of your ineptitude,” Nick said, while rubbing his chin in thought, his voice falling back into his old lecturing tone, complete with the patronizing not-so-sub-text.
Peter scoffed hard, not agreeing with Nick at all. As the hunter team’s mage, he was usually the one who was in charge of dealing with the essence events. He wasn’t shy about claiming to be the most knowledgeable hunter-mage in Dorchester. His nasally voice reminded Nero of the AV nerds he used to get his anime from back in high school.
“I’ve seen hundreds of these things, and I’m telling you that this is a spawn-point. The only reason the energy threshold might be under 300u’s is that it is still in the growth stage. If we were to stand here for a few days, we’d see it coalesce right in front of us,” replied Peter, his anger at being called incompetent readily apparent.
Fed up, Nero pulled back his mental probe. He sighed deeply, while pinching his nose to help alleviate his growing headache.
Nick didn’t back down from the argument. “This could turn out to be anything! If it manifests a spawn-point, then we can deal with it. But what if it forms a proto-dungeon? It’s better to report it and see what the Hunter’s Hall has to say about it. It could turn out to be an asset, one we desperately need. If this area doesn’t get a few dungeons running soon, the essence flows are going to take forever to stabilize.”
Peter responded quickly, nearly shouting his reply, “It could also be a planar rift! Or a condensation point! If you’re going to entertain all the possibilities, it might even be an ethereal rupture! But I’m telling you… It’s just an immature spawn-point. Stop overthinking it, this isn’t a class-room. No one is grading your response for thoroughness.”
Looking over his shoulder, Nero could see Sergeant Wesker calmly standing next to a bored Breanne, neither of them appeared remotely interested in the what the two nerds were saying. In fact, it didn’t look like anyone other than the two mages had a strong opinion on the matter. Everyone seemed perfectly content to let the two scholars debate each other to death.
Nero couldn’t take it anymore, and decided to move things along. “OK, enough! Nick, you think we should leave the thing because it might become useful… somehow. Peter, you think it’s not worth leaving it to chance. You’ve both agreed that without an essence con…stabulator or whatever, you can’t predict what it will be, or even what it is! All you two are doing is throwing out hypotheticals that support your positions. So, there is no point in arguing about it. How about I just tell you what I see, then you’ll have more information, and maybe we can get on with our day?”
Peter looked down at Nero, both metaphorically and literally, replying, “You don’t happen to have an essence contra-inductor on you, do you? Then what in the hells do you think you can tell me about what we’re dealing with. Can you even SEE the hells be damned thing?”
Nero didn’t get a chance to reply, because Nick took a step forward and said, “Ignore him, Nero. Just tell me what you’ve found out.”
After throwing a glare at Peter, he turned away from the annoying mage, and replied to Nick in an even tone, “It’s a smaller ball of tangled essence. The strings are much thinner, and there isn’t anything effecting the ambient essence. I’m pretty sure it’s not connected to another plane, or if it is, it’s not transmitting anything from the other side. Also, I don’t know why, but the whole thing is spinning around like a really slow top. I have no idea what that means, but I can tell you that it’s making the essence around here slowly collect. Even while you two have been arguing, I’ve seen it getting denser. Also, the thing isn’t getting bigger, it’s shrinking.”
Peter’s incredulous face was every bit as satisfying as Nero hoped it would be. Meanwhile Nick took Nero’s words at face value.
Nero watched as Nick frowned in thought, furiously rubbing his chin. Obviously something that he’d said was causing the man to worry.
Peter’s voice was full of scorn. “You’re not actually listening to this, are you?”
Nick’s arms fell to his sides, his face turning serious. “Yes, I am. And if he is right, then this isn’t spawn-point, or a proto-dungeon. Do you know what happens when you try and diffuse a condensation point when it’s still in its earliest phase?”
Peter snorted at the implication that he didn’t know what could happen. His reply was full of venom, “You said this was ‘mark’ was assigned to you, don’t you think they would have taken into account the first sighting time-line? There’s no way a condensation point takes longer than two days to appear.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Nero saw Sergeant Wesker stand up straight, then take a few steps closer to them. His voice was full of worry, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to interrupt, I know it’s protocol to let the mages handle essence events. But you should know that the two marks I chose for this expedition were just the closest ones listed near the encampment. They were fresh sightings, so I figured we’d knock them out on the way to the base-camp. My orders were to pick two marks on the way to our destination, and make sure to get there before nightfall.”
Peter’s eyes widened in alarm, and he stuttered for a few seconds before managing to get out, “You’re telling me that this event might not have had time to stabilize? Are you insane?!?”
Nick started chuckling, then walked over to pat Nero on the shoulder. Leaning down, he whispered, “Good job, Nero.”
Nero watched as Peter stomped over to Wesker and started shaking his finger in the man’s face. Breanne got in the middle, trying to break up the argument. Voices were raised, and accusations were hurled. All too quickly, it had turned into an argument worthy of a slot on a daytime talk-show.
Cathleen stepped up, questioning the intelligence of the mage for making assumptions. The hunter team was split between berating Peter and defending him. It really turned into a free-for-all. Luckily, it didn’t rise to the levels a Jerry Springer episode, but there was still a lot of yelling and finger pointing.
Nero looked up at Nick and said, “So Wesker pulled this target from the wrong list, so what? How bad could it be?”
Nick grinned and replied, “If this IS a condensation point, and we’d treated it like a spawn-point, then when we tried to diffuse it, it would have exploded.”
Nero glanced around Nick to stare at the floating ball of essence, then looked back at Nick with a frown. “When you say ‘exploded’, do you mean like a bomb? Because I’m pretty sure that essence over there doesn’t have any material properties at the moment. Would we even feel it?”
Nick shook his head, and said, “It would disperse all the essence it had collected into the local ether. We’d have a localized essence storm dropped on top of us. Basically random lightning strikes, harsh winds, spontaneous beast materializations, probably a few trees gaining limited sentience and trying to kill us. The surrounding area would turn into an angry forest almost immediately. It probably wouldn’t be that bad, after all it’s only been active for a day or two, but it’s stupid to risk it. We just need to bleed off the essence and release it back into the ether in a controlled manner.”
Nero nodded dumbly. ‘No matter how much I learn about this world, it’s still one thing after another that makes no damn sense. Why can’t things just be simple. Reality, in any form, always manages to piss me off,’ he thought to himself.
While the sergeant and the hunter team’s mage debated who was at fault for almost unleashing a localized apocalypse, Nick led Nero closer to the essence event and said, “Now watch closely. This is how you funnel essence away from an essence knot. This will work for any non-solidified planar event. But, don’t do this on a fully manifested spawn-point, or you’ll end up summoning a mob right on top of you.”
Nero nodded along, dutifully paying attention to what Nick was doing in the ethereal plane. ‘I need to get my ass to the base-camp. I could really use a few hours to read my mission packet and maybe re-read some of those books Jennings gave me. I’m starting to think I might have missed a few things,’ he thought to himself.
Comments
Leetle Sheet
Thanks! I really want to write more little side stories and stuff, but I haven't really had the time. So much is going on in the background, that it's hard to limit what I put in to only relevant events that pertain to the MC.
Mad Man M
I love the different perspectives - it adds heaps to the storey and makes it so interesting - as long as you don’t make them too long (which they haven’t been) and we get back to the MC antics in good time then they are prefect. I love your writing style, it’s very refreshing
Leetle Sheet
Maybe I went a little overboard, but I really wanted to show how despite their differences, motivations, and backgrounds, the culture here is all about coming together when it matters. In my head, I figured people might assume (rightfully so) that the people in charge might try and take advantage of the situation to bring down their enemies and raise their own position in the city. I didn't want that. I wanted the focus to remain on the threat and to show the other side of the political machine that has been screwing with Nero since he'd arrived. I might have take it too far, but I like the characters and didn't mind giving them their moment on the page.
stakadi wer
I feel like some prechapters [the begining of the chapter] are excessive and redundant, while i do love some of them and they may show the motivation of side characters . Do we really need to see the threat from 3 different prespectives? I feel like its not moving the story forward and focusing on the unimportant.
