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[LitF] 59. Missing in Action
🕑 Added 2023-12-25 16:00:31 +0000 UTCPrevious Chapter - Table of Contents - Next Chapter
[A/N: Merry Christmas!
\o/
As stated in the previous chapter's author notes, this is a late chapter. The next chapter, which was supposed to come out last Saturday, will be released before 2024.
Delayed Chapters: 1
Notice: After the next chapter, the next Lost in the Future chapter will be on 01/13. In other words, I'll take a week off. I feel more tired each day and believe it's the right thing to do. It's been forever since I took a real vacation to decompress.
If you want a refund this month, just comment below or DM me. No questions asked, no hard feelings.]
The air was heavy in the underground hideout.
Emily was still asleep as usual, but Graham was awake. His soul was still injured but considerably better. Since his mana stats last improved, he remained awake for progressively longer periods. Currently, he kept conscious for two hours per day. More importantly, he could speak—slowly—during that time without exhausting himself.
Tamara stood to the side. Even awakeners required rest, and her body was on the verge of exhaustion. The same skill that made her look human also prevented dark circles from appearing under her eyes, but Arthur could feel how tired she was. She had not stopped working that entire month except for a few hours of sleep now and then.
Arthur himself felt refreshed, at least physically. His mind, on the other hand, was in turmoil. He still couldn't accept Sophie's absence. He had moved their underground hideout to below the hotel where they were supposed to meet and kept looking up, using his Mana Sight to check whether she would arrive late. Staying in that place was a security vulnerability, but even Tamara knew better than to say anything about it.
In fact, she knew better than to say anything at all. Everyone did. Arthur knew he should speak, that he was being a lousy and irresponsible liege, but he didn't want to be better. Not when Sophie was missing.
What was the use of winning this war if he lost her?
Alas, he sighed and looked at his servant and knight. He had been trained to be king, meaning his wants would often come second to what needed to be done. If Sophie was dead... He didn't want to think about it. But until he had confirmation, he would remain functional. That was the only thing he could do.
"I have information for you," he told Tamara. "I discovered interesting things about Terrell."
He took a couple of notebooks from his spatial storage ring. He had recorded everything he knew in there, ranked by how trustworthy he considered each piece of information. Although Lord Paixi's accounts had been of limited assistance to Arthur, Tamara could use it.
The maid quickly read through everything. Unlike when the prince had read it beside the Paixis, she had no need to stop to ask questions or listen to him speak slowly. She was done within a couple of hours.
Graham apologized and went back to sleep while she read. His input would be appreciated, but he was in no condition to genuinely help.
"Most of this fits what I learned, master," Tamara replied after she was done. "Terrell has countless businesses, but it's mostly a form of tying people to him or vice-versa, for power and networking. Even when given shares as bribes, he uses them for other purposes. His actual direct profit isn't that significant. That's the reason I sent you to the casinos first. As far as I can tell, those were his primary sources of income, on top of being a den of blackmail material against the clients. I should've guessed it would be a trap."
Tamara didn't waste their time asking for an apology. She had done her best. Both parties knew there was no perfectly safe path to walk in a war.
The maid then shared everything she had learned with him. She could speak fast, but it still took almost five hours. She had learned many things about Terrell by interrogating people from all social classes about him. Learning which business he partially owned was actually the easiest part of her investigations. The challenge was determining how they were used and how much it would hurt him to lose them. She had always sent Arthur to the places that would do the most damage without being overly risky. After this meeting, however, he could take more significant risks if he wanted.
"But I strongly recommend against any excessive measures, master," she added after she was done. Her soul vow demanded her to share her opinion. "Lady Brimstone is missing. We must assume she was captured and forced to reveal everything she knew, and I trained her to replace me. She would know a lot of my means. I must double-check everything I learned, as it might be false information fed to us to send us into a trap. The way I check for such schemes will change now that the enemy might be aware of my methods."
Arthur hated hearing that. His instinct was to lash out at Tamara, but he controlled himself. Instead, he replied, "Do what you must, Tamara. I'll not tell you not to take extra precautions. Your life is also valuable to me. But you should know I'll act as if she has not betrayed us." He formed a metal chair with the bits he kept floating nearby and sat down. "I heard the people nowadays have renamed our glassening tactics to 'carpet bombing.' Terrell will experience it, in a way."
Tamara felt a lot more concern for him than what she revealed in her voice. "Master, that is unadvised. As is unadvised to share your plans with me."
Arthur snorted. "Let's not keep fooling ourselves, Tamara. A High House without a property or people is nothing. The security procedures we have in place are to protect a much larger structure than what we have. If Sophie was really compromised, and you get captured or killed, I'll have nothing left. Graham is a knight. At best, I'll wait for him to get better, and we'll send Terrell a challenge to face him head-on and wait for him to kill us with his warheads. Revealing my current plans to you changes nothing."
The maid gritted her teeth, then took a deep breath before saying, "Master, you're not acting rationally. Miss Brimstone wouldn't want that."
The prince let the cold fury he felt at that remark wash over him. How dare she attempt such a pathetic psychological trick to change his mind? The icy anger was evident in his void as he replied, "Well, she won't be around to have an opinion about it, will she? So it doesn't matter."
Her following words surprised him, "Then, master, we should act as if she's your wife and you have hidden her. High-Priority Diversion Tactics."
Arthur took a few instants to understand what she was getting at. That was one of the worst ideas possible when dealing with a missing operative. If Arthur had meant to hide his wife, he would've done that before anything else. She wouldn't have had as much willing contact with the enemy as Sophie, who was trying to be in the right place at the right time. She would also not know anything about their plans, even if she had been trained by Tamara.
They would act much more freely, borderline recklessly, to protect a high-priority entity with diversion tactics. Arthur had been creating chaos to thwart any diviners from finding Sophie or Tamara. But if his wife—his family—was at risk and hiding, there would be much fewer lines stopping him from placing himself in danger. His safety would matter much less than Sophie's. Arthur and Tamara would move with less consideration for information fidelity and their own safety because anything less might mean the enemy locating the one the enemy was actively and insistently seeking—his family.
In other words, Tamara was saying that if he was going to behave as an idiot, he should put her life on the line, too—and they should go all-in on the stupidity to see what happened.
The prince looked at her—truly looked at her—for the first time. He had been so distracted by Sophie's lateness and his own feelings that he hadn't cared about anything else. About anyone else. He knew Tamara was also saddened, but he hadn't paid any attention to it.
Now, he found a woman who, deep down, was as furious, sad, and afraid for Sophie as he was. One that still put her duty before herself in trying to pull her liege from a path that potentially led to self-destruction. But one that, failing that, was more than willing to make the people who had likely killed Sophie pay. And if she died in the process, so be it; at least she would've died without attempting to hide her traces like a little afraid rabbit.
Should Arthur be part of an actual High House with other members, her suggestion would be treason. But Arthur was the only member of his House. She was acting according to his wishes, and there was no one else to punish her for it.
He smiled slightly, "That sounds like an excellent idea. We'll operate as one. Let's trace a plan."
Soon, both people knew where and when Arthur would strike. That was riskier for him, but it would allow Tamara to take extra advantage of the chaos to acquire information, often more forcefully than usual. She would undoubtedly be noticed, but that would, in turn, create extra protection for the person they were helping "hide."
Deep down, they wanted to believe that was the case; that they were hiding Sophie. Sophie could have infiltrated Terrell's troops so well that taking a weekend off to meet with Arthur would be too dangerous. But even then, she should've sent a message. Skipping that, too, was still possible but even more unlikely.
Arthur and Tamara would act as if she was hiding too well to contact them, hoping for the best, but they knew Sophie was likely gone.
More than anything, their upcoming rampage would be a desperate attempt to find her corpse.
"This is it," Arthur concluded after a few days. Their plans were comprehensive, complex, and filled with failsafes. Yes, there were plenty of secondary plans if something went wrong. They would behave recklessly but not suicidally. "Let's kill some diviners."
Tamara had previously found various possibilities for where Terrell's chronomancers might be hiding, but from less than credible sources. Arthur's tales had allowed both to make better guesses. Now, they would hit fast and hard in multiple places. Most would be wrong, but if even one ended with a diviner dead, it would've been worth it.
Graham had also offered his input, and as someone who was more or less out of the loop, his outsider's perspective assisted more than one might guess. His being an experienced grand knight also brought other things to the table about which order to attack and how the enemy would react. They had reorganized when they would strike a few places thanks to that.
"I'm ready whenever you are, master," Tamara replied.
"Then let's go," he said as he grabbed his people with his magic and dug toward his first destination.
⁂
"Where is Terrell?" Arthur asked the man he held afloat with his life domain.
Tamara and he had made plans and would mostly follow them. But if Arthur felt like changing things at any point, he would. And that feeling had to be completely random. That was one way to make it slightly more complex for diviners to see them coming. If people knowing about their future could affect that same future, it stood to reason that changing one's plans on a whim would also have consequences.
The odds of such a simple tactic working were slim. Divination depended less on plans and people's possible decisions than on matters of the arcane. Moreover, good diviners would plan for sudden changes of heart.
Even then, one's power limited how much one could see and how many contingencies one could develop. Experience was also an essential factor, and the weak awakeners of today were not as good as in the past.
And so, they lucked out in the third of the seventeen locations they would attack—which was originally the last one.
"I swear I never worked for Lord Terrell," the middle-aged man said. He was tall and lean, forty-four years old, with black eyes and hair. He was also a liar.
The prince didn't blame the man for that lie. He had just lost his mansion and unawakened wife. Unlike servants, the unawakened who belonged to the family were dealt with as if they were awakeners.
The structure had gone down in a few seconds, his wife with it. Only he, Arthur, and dozens of metal spheres remained floating above the debris, and no one was coming to help.
Mick Firestone had hid in Pasilia, considering it a safe place after Arthur left. Not long had passed since the prince's last visit, and if Terrell had tried to pressure the local government, it hadn't worked. The place was still on high alert and filled with awakeners, but no one stopped Arthur or came to do anything after the first responders reported this was related to the prince. Likewise, the League was keeping to itself—one of the few League branches in the cities the prince had acted that knew better than to bring doom upon itself by attacking him.
While Arthur dealt with Firestone, Tamara had infiltrated the local government and was acquiring more information.
"I didn't ask if you worked with Terrell," the prince said. "I already know you did. You'll already die. There is no changing that. You can only decide whether to pull Terrell with you and your wife or not. I'll ask again. Where is he?"
The level twenty-five geomancer looked down at the place his wife had just been. Arthur had killed her painlessly before the mansion fell on top of her, but Firestone wouldn't know that. He might resent the prince for it—or choose to impart similar pain to the man who caused this end, Terrell.
"Last I knew," he whispered weakly, "he was in Watergate. Visiting for a day. He's gone by now."
"Where did he go?"
Mick stared at Arthur with eyes filled with tears and anger. He laughed coldly. "Screw you." He spat on the prince.
Arthur took the attack for what it was and placed a metal sphere on the way. The man had just broken a false tooth where he hid rock grains, which he spat on the prince. They were stopped and encased by Arthur's metal.
The prince smiled sarcastically. "I get your anger. If you were half good at your job and could predict where people would go, you wouldn't be here." That was petty of him. Unnecessary. It felt good anyway. "Maybe your daughter will be more talkative."
The man's eyes widened in fear. "No."
"Yes, I know she's in Pasilia. Not where; not exactly. Not yet. But do you want to bet I can find her?"
"She has nothing to do with it," he replied. "She's a child!"
"Rita Firestone is nineteen," Arthur replied. "She hasn't awakened yet, but I bet she has been training to take over your business. As with most old diviner families, you have procedures in place to ensure the passage of power goes smoothly. I'm sure she knows a lot about your deals with Terrell. She likely was involved in many of them."
The threat felt sour in Arthur's mouth, but he did believe she would know about Terrell. Thus, she was her enemy. Unless she convinced him otherwise, he would treat her as a foe. But if she ended up being innocent, he would extend her the same courtesy as he would the unawakened from House Paixi.
Firestone seemed to understand how Arthur thought because he yelled in panic, "What procedures?! She hates this! All of it! She's nineteen, for Fate's sake! She was supposed to awaken at fifteen but doesn't want to get involved with the family business! Believe me, I tried! She knows nothing, I swear!"
He was filled with so many emotions that it was hard to tell if he was lying, but his Truth Seeker trait helped the prince assess he was likely speaking the truth.
"I don't have to ask her anything if you tell me what you know," Arthur replied.
Firestone only got more afraid. Arthur bet the man was the kind of person to make empty promises to appease the one he was interrogating—and feared the prince would be the same.
"Will you swear on it?" Firestone asked.
Arthur laughed unamusedly. "You have my word, but I won't swear to Fate. Not for you. The best I can give you is to remind you that I still haven't found her. The more you say, and the more I believe in you, the greater will be the waste of time searching for her. Why interrogate someone who'll only tell me what I already know?"
The man was unwilling to take Arthur at his word but understood that was the best he would get. And so, he shared everything he knew about the places Terrell liked to stay and how he had been behaving to avoid getting located. He never slept in the same place twice, and sometimes, he didn't sleep at all. He was always on the move.
"Even the best diviner will not be able to tell you where he'll be," Firestone finished. "I swear. That's all I know, all I think will help you find him. I do swear on Fate."
Mana left his body before returning to him and settling on his soul. Arthur felt it happen. In fact, he had never felt a soul so well as he did now. He could detect Firestone's soul's precise dimensions and shape as mana enveloped it.
Interesting.
The man had said a lot. Arthur had already gained double the time Tamara had asked for. It was time to wrap things up.
The prince nodded, "Very well, Firestone. That will do. I'll not pursue your daughter nor take anything in her possession."
That was an enormous mercy. If a car or residence officially belonged to Mick Firestone or his wife instead of Rita, Arthur would let her have it if she was using the vehicle or living in the house, including everything inside, even a safe or magic possessions.
Arthur was doing it because he now believed she indeed hated the family business, and Terrell was the reason. She resented doing business with the man. She might also come to resent Arthur for killing her parents and use that wealth against him, but he would deal with it as it came. For now, she had been on the right side of the war and would be rewarded for it.
"Thank you," Firestone forced himself to say through all the anger and regret he felt.
He died, and Arthur threw his body on the debris pile below—but only after he recovered the man's spatial storage ring. Storage items were surprisingly scarce nowadays, as were portals. As much as magitech had advanced, dealing with the space and time elements remained a challenge.
The same awakener Arthur had met after killing the Paixis was waiting on the street nearby. The prince instructed him to pass everything the dead Firestone couple owned to his name, except whatever Rita was using, up to three cars and one residence, then left.
He picked up the invisible Tamara on a terrace halfway to the city borders and left Pasilia for the second time in his life.
⁂
Arthur was surprised at managing to kill another diviner family and a whole diviner House as he went through his list. Things had gone a lot better than expected.
He reckoned his expectations had been twisted by the prophecies about him on the day he was born—not to mention the prophecy the Last Whisperer had gotten. Terrell had won the lottery when he managed to strike Arthur at the right time, and only because he used a unique tool and paid the price with an entire bloodline losing access to Fate. More often than not, divinations were less precise than that. Strong chronomancers were always in low supply, so it became a quantity game. You needed more diviners seeking the same thing to piece together the pieces of the puzzle. That's how Houses did in the past, and back then, awakeners were more numerous and stronger. It was no surprise that diviners had a harder time protecting themselves nowadays.
"I was also off-put by my perspective on the House Wars I witnessed in the past, master," Tamara had admitted.
After that, he visited the places Terrell might be, according to what he and Tamara learned while killing the diviners. They didn't luck out again but destroyed everything Terrell owned in those places. Arthur then did as planned and started destroying a lot of properties. He hit three cities per day for an entire week. No one could stop him.
The League officially shattered in the meantime. The elves and half the dwarves left it and banned it from their lands. That decision also put the dwarves on the brink of civil war.
What remained of the League became upset and swore revenge, but only after they dealt with the one they called the root cause of it all: Arthur.
They labeled the prince with all crimes possible, revealed his father's involvement with the dungeon and breaking the world, released an interview with Emily's father, who sobbed in despair and begged for her life, and did everything in their power to destroy his reputation. He became the perpetrator of crimes worldwide, often happening on opposite sides of the planet simultaneously. Specialists built a profile on him, turning him into the villest of all people to have ever lived. They also connected it to Sophie and claimed half-vampires—and, by extension, all half-monsters—were behind this insurrection and had to be controlled.
The Free Fate Movement agenda was pushed. There were discussions about laws to outlaw half-monsters. Riots happened throughout the human nations.
And yet, the prince continued unhindered.
Eventually, Terrell realized manipulating public opinion wouldn't be enough to stop Arthur and that he had to act. So, he gave an official statement for the very first time. It signalized he was moving more resources than he could from the shadows.
From then on, he would use more of his resources against the prince.
"It's been almost two months since a deranged man with delusions of grandeur decided to take upon himself the false mantle of heroism," his voice said on the TV. Arthur and Tamara watched in a café in Silvero. The prince had decided that acting more freely included revisiting the cozy city. "He paints me as a villain, but this..." He opened his arms, gesturing to the dozen microphones recording him, then pointed with his hands to the camera. "...this is who I am. A researcher. A scientist. Someone who makes our grandest dreams come true. For the first time in history, we're broadcasting live worldwide. In real time. You, my friend on the other side of the screen, are seeing and listening to me as I speak in Elemia."
He paused to give weight to his words, to let the world marvel at the technological advance.
Terrell stood on a raised platform before a tribunal and a massive statue of a blind woman holding a scale. He was inside a glass cabin, surrounded by all sides, except the front, by seven men and women in a black suit. Terrell himself wore a white suit.
Arthur's Sage's Eyes and Mana Sight didn't work through TV. He was looking at recorded light, not actual things. Still, he could tell the cabin was heavily enchanted because it was filled with tiny black runes. He was certain the suits were also enchanted. Those bodyguards should also be high-level awakeners.
Terrel continued, "This, my friends, is the kind of wonder that a barbarian from the distant past wants to take away from us all. Everything that makes your life easier, safer, better. He resents our progress and wants us to return to a time when unawakened were enslaved by awakeners in all but name. He hates the freedom and moral progress we earned through blood and tears. He wants to destroy all that we know is good because he wants to control the world, but he can't unless he stops science. Stops us all. Stops me."
The man sighed deeply and looked as if he felt the weight of the world on his shoulders. He was the image of exhaustion and suffering. He was as thin as an unawakened who hadn't eaten well for a while, and despite the eloquence of his speech, his voice sounded tired.
He was fighting for sympathy, and from the reactions of the people watching TV in the café, it was working.
Arthur hated it but drank the man's words like a thirsty man in the desert. Sophie was still missing. They had found no news about her. If Terrell had killed or captured her, he would likely brag about it in this broadcast.
The prince didn't know whether he would rather he said something or not. He wouldn't call his current ignorance bliss, but he also wasn't so keen on getting closure—as much as he fought for it.
Sophie's disappearance made Arthur feel more human than ever before.
Terrell went on, "I was repeatedly slanderer. This monster said I made—"
He never finished his sentence.
A vertical purple line appeared behind him, and he turned in panic. He was trapped because the cabin's door was from that side. Still, he had a plan B and stomped on the floor with his feet.
Nothing happened.
Terrell looked even more scaredly at the floor, then back at the vertical line, which was widening into a portal. As a biomancer, he was powerless against the cabin, but his skill element was water. He activated a skill that formed a fast water jet. He threw it against the cabin, but the glass's enchantments held.
His bodyguards outside also started using their skills and spells against the cabin—for a moment. As soon as the first strike hit, fire and light rose from the ground, and everything disappeared
The cabin had been booby-trapped to cause a nuclear warhead to explode at the first attack.
Terrell had never been in that place. There had been a giant TV inside the cabin. He had been broadcasting from another, safer place.
Arthur and Tamara had known about it. The research on three-dimensional TVs was in one of the documents she had recently found. Hence why they hadn't immediately headed to the city he had said he was broadcasting from.
But that portal...
Terrell had reacted to it, so whoever opened it knew where he truly was, not the place he had set up. Had the portal been part of a ploy? Or had someone unexpectedly opened a portal to the place he was at? Was everything pre-recorded, and he forgot to tell his bodyguards not to react? Did he want everything to blow up from the beginning and then blame it on Arthur? Did he want Arthur to investigate the blast in person to trigger a secondary trap?
The prince and the maid looked at each other with the same hope: Sophie might be alive, free, and have found—and perhaps killed—Terrell.
The initial plan had worked.
The villain's gambit had paid off after they doubled down on the chaos.
Or did it?
Until they received more news, they could only keep attacking. They would eventually learn if Terrell had died. And if Sophie had really attempted something but failed, the added chaos would give her an opening to flee. Or so Arthur and Tamara hoped.
For all his power and his Truth Seeker trait, he was powerless to figure out the truth.
Arthur hated that feeling.
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