The hand tilled the ground with its little and ring fingers, as if the lonesome hand was ready, and willing, to fight the group of mobile task force soldiers.
The wind was particularly hostile on this day; it easily pierced through the standard issue black gear that the group tryouts for Alpha-1 wore. Though the gale wasn't as cold as the chill that ran down Ygri's spine as she saw O5-4's severed, animated arm. The hand tilled the ground with its little finger, as if the lonesome hand was ready, and willing, to fight the group of mobile task force soldiers.
It vigilantly stood on its fingers, each digit fitted with a gold ring. A black smoke billowed slowly from its stump, unaffected by the breeze. The ring and index finger rose up in an attempted to appear like a threat, while the three other fingers provided the hand's ability to stand. Everything below the furthest bends of the fingers had transmuted into an amethyst shaded metal with the fingertips sharpened and elongated.
The tryouts took in the sight for a bit. They each tried to understand the situation they found themselves in. The impromptu collective inspection of life choices ceased as Ygri cleared her throat to secure attention. "Right, uhh…" started Ygri. She scratched the back of her head with the barrel of her service pistol. "Bag it, I guess?"
Her dark, short hair was ruffled further than it already was by the gun. A drop of sweat rolled down a long scar that ran from her right temple, between her eyes and ended on her left cheek.
"I'm not touching that," protested one of the unhelpful spectators.
"Shit's cursed," another accurately assumed.
"What if it crawls down my throat? Like, you know," a third incomprehensibly suggested as they circled a hand.
Ygri pinched the bridge of her nose and groans. She waited for a few long moments filled with silence from the other tryouts of the Red Right Hand and used this time to consider her options. She had sort of wished that her target was something she could kill.
The unit hovered around awkwardly. It wasn't a surprise that they were afraid to act, a brief introduction round earlier revealed that their experience in missions varied widely. They had each been picked as potential members of the Red Right Hand based almost purely on combat ability. When outside of said combat, they were surprisingly shy.
A situation reminiscent more of a gallery viewing than a mission. But after Ygri had idled around, she eventually came to a conclusion; She had to act or fate would. So, she locked her eyes on the troublesome body part. It lowered itself, as if ready to leap.
"Why's the hand so important anyways?", delayed one of the other rookies, the interruption restarted Ygri's passive state anew.
The group looked to him, the middle-aged man who brought way too much bulk for a simple search-and-retrieve mission. He had at least two assault rifles and pistols, a machete, a knife and a bandolier. He notably had an obsidian black amulet hung around his neck. The volcanic glass seemed to stand out explicitly in the white background.
His bald head and unkempt, red beard brought the intensity of his green eyes out. He seemed remarkably untouched by combat; no scars or evidence of past fractures. The face of a statue with an expression as sturdy as one.
A foolish man who had been insanely lucky to stumble through enough missions to make it to the Alpha-1 tryouts, Ygri would think to herself and scoffed at what she labelled the Brute.
Another newcomer, a thin man with a pair of wary eyes, stepped near the front of the group, crossed his arms and staring the hand down. Oddly, his gloves and boots seemed to have a different design from the rest - a grey camouflage pattern opposed to their jet black equipment. Ygri mentally labelled him as a Thinker.
The Thinker would sigh and raise his eyebrow as he looked to the Brute with a bewildered look: "A residual limb is a thaumaturge's greatest asset. It creates ideal circumstances for rituals and curses upon the entity which it originated from. The only thing thing more ideal for reality bending from unlimited range is an essential organ."
This man, and his rather formal stance, seemed to be small and slender, not a sign of military training one would expect of a soldier. He also had a mere pistol as his arsenal and seemed to have as many pouches and satchels as the team had bodies.
The Brute nodded and glanced to the hand whose thumb tilled the snow repeatedly like an angry bull. "Right, got it. We're afraid of spell-shitters in the middle of Greenland."
A third soldier moved up next to the Thinker and placed her riot shield in the snow to lean on. Notably, she also had a mere pistol, though it was firmly in its holster by her flank while she circled a baton idly. She pulled up her balaclava and revealed her face. Ygri labelled this one the Shield.
Ygri couldn't help but note that this woman was large. The largest person here. Golden piercings ran down her nose and ears, ritualistic scarification ran vertically down her eyes and were flanked by sigils, presumably of a thaumaturgic origin. Her apparent confidence and appearance made her stand out the most, a captivating individual with a mighty physique and personality.
The Shield eyed the Thinker with an amused smile and winked. "Maybe Santa's a bit of a freak, eh?"
A few laughed. More than that groaned. The entire dozen of enforcers seemed to cope with the bizarre situation in a variety of ways. This brief break in protocol and professionalism ended when three of the men collapsed. Their blood sprayed out onto the snow from the tennis ball-sized holes in their heads. The rookie in front of Ygri slowly crumbled like a puppet with no master. She watched as his expression went from amused to cold, how his eyes lost focus. He fell to his knees.
His bones produced a sickening crack as he landed. Then he just laid there, a thick and viscous substance painted the snow beneath his head a blackened red.
No longer did he move.
Two other tryouts collapsed.
The thing that'd normally grab one's attention in an ambush was nowhere to be found; The gunshots were missing.
No commands were barked by an enemy force.
All one could hear were projectiles whirling through the air and the sound of flesh, bone and mind breaking and tearing apart.
No, it took something else to activate Ygri. An arm wrapped around her torso, the force from an impact and screamed words she couldn't quite make out due to the whirling sound flying past where her head would be. She landed roughly on the ground as the third round of corpses crumbled.
As she finally overcame the shock, Ygri gathered her wits and contextualized herself to the situation. Her handgun still in her grip, a body laying heavily on top of her. Though, it didn't stay long and moved almost as soon as it was sensed. Ygri rolled to the side and faced the attackers' suspected direction. "Alright Sunshine, time to rise! Need you on your feet!"
Ygri looked to the voice and spotted the Shield. She blinked a few times in awe and surprise. Ygri's savior had unfolded her shield so that it was almost as large as its user. A clear disc with a fragile look, but held with an absolute trust.
As an invisible projectile slammed against it, the woman inhaled sharply and held fast. When another hit she gained a grin, though Ygri believed she saw a masked uncertainty in it.
Though, she had no time to speculate. Ygri got up in a quick motion and scanned the surroundings. Snow, snow, snow, all around. The hand had started to sprint off, as fast as it could on five digits, and had left tracks outlined in purple. She didn't have time for the small dot on the horizon though, given her attention was grabbed by six pale shades in the corner of her sight.
Each of the beings carried the fur of a polar bear as a cloak. They had longbows, as tall as themselves, pointed in their direction. It was hard to miss the human skull on the bottom and top of the bows. The bowmen started to draw again— despite the fact they had no arrows notched.
They each had a scowl, an angered look that seemed so rooted that one could swear that their frowns were carved into their expressions. They all seemed fragile and old, many had white and grey beards that hid the skeletal appearance their faces took on. They were motivated.
This wasn't something Ygri could change though, so she did what her instinct told her to; Return fire.
As the first bullet fired, so did the implant in the back of her head. She watched how the bullet became visible, how it slowed to the speed of a car. Then she fired another bullet. Then a third. It took three bullets directly to the entity's head before it collapsed.
It fell almost like a piece of cloth suddenly being let go of.
As the combatant fell, Ygri's pupils dilated.
Her limbs felt weightless.
Her heart beat enough for two people.
The taste of almond filled her mouth as the world slowed down around her.
As the bowmen let go of their drawstrings, she could see narrow shockwaves ripped through the air towards her. Death was a second away, and it took less than half a second to crouch under the two whirls that flew right past her and kicked up snow behind her. She avoided the invisible missiles with a proficient ease.
The sound of a projectile slammed against the warrior woman's shield rung hollow. She let out a slightly pained groan followed by an attempt at laughter, nervous but alive. She still fended off attacks.
The sound of bullets finally rang from somewhere else. A quick glance revealed that the Brute from earlier had hid behind two bodies stacked on top of each other.
He returned fire from his assault rifle, though curiously didn't even seem to aim the weapon. Instead he stared the enemy down and made no attempt to even pretend to line his weapon up. He simply fired from the hip and had the ordinary accuracy of a trained soldier.
Ygri followed the bullets with her eyes, she traced them in a state of hypnosis. She tilted her head and let her jaw drop a bit, she watched the way the bullet created waves of pressure. A state she was snapped out of as she spots another shockwave that raced towards her.
She was left with a mere moment to pull her head back. The blast grazed the bridge of her nose.
Two of the attackers collapsed after they took a full magazine from the Brute's fire. They fell slowly, softly, with elegance, like clothing.
Three remained. They started a chant in a deep and harsh tone, a stark change of display of their graceful fallen. Their teeth had a dark grey hue. Before them appeared a round disc outlined by a white glow. The wards hovered chaotically, like they were kept in place by two unstable magnets. The Brute quickly reloaded his rifle and Ygri felt herself frozen by the hypnosis. The Shield took this opportunity to sprint ahead with a sound that parodied glee. The terrain did not seem to slow her in the slightest.
She relied on pure strength to run ahead. No, she charged ahead, as her shield glowed in a beautiful color of the sky that flew the banners of the setting sun. One of the foes flew back and landed way further than a stone toss away with a sickening noise.
He didn't get back up again.
As the Shield had cleared her way there, the bullets stop and were replaced by the Brute's gruff voice. "Out of the way, woman! I'm trying to kill them! I need to kill them!", he furiously barked out.
This frustration was deafened by the sudden clash of shield against shield. The snow imploded into the air and obscured the line of sight, much to Ygri's dismay. All she could see was a sudden splash of clear liquid flew out of the fog of war.
Then another. Then a third.
Each followed with a pained groan.
The outline of something tall with a small torso was visible, its arms and legs way too long. A head rolled out of the snow screen. It didn't bleed.
As the cloud slowly settled, a twisted Thinker became visible. His eyes shone red, his mouth like a wolfhound's. Yet the teeth seemed to be blades. Each of his arms had split in twain and revealed long, serrated swords. His feet had also split in two at the shin, which made way for a curved set of blades that he stood on. A monster. The sharp appendages raised him above ground by a meter. Fiend was his new label, Ygri imagined.
This terrible shape slowly retracted though, much to the Shield's surprise. Slowly, the adrenaline ceased. All of the enemies were left on the ground. The Fiend calmly looked to the three others, who slowly start to gather by the corpses of their enemies.
Each exchanged a look, it wasn't entirely clear to each other what one thought of them. The Brute felt indifferent. The Fiend felt annoyed. The Shield tried to smile. Ygri felt a sharp headache at the back of her head as the implant winded down. She suddenly felt like she was heavier.
Ygri rolled her shoulders and sighed deeply as she glanced at the tracks the hand left behind, nowhere to be seen despite the short duration of the shootout. She felt bitterness at the lack of an enemy.
…
Silence befell those who remained.
Eight soldiers had fallen, each with their brain matter slowly leaked from the holes in their head. The snow slowly absorbed the corpses' shades of gore. Ygri had kicked over one of the assailants' corpses to inspect them and found that they didn't bleed. The decapitation and the bullet wounds did release a minor leak of clear fluid that became mist after being exposed to the air though. It exuded a smell of waste that made the Fiend gag.
Despite being, at least presumably, dead, they had an expression of utter disregard.
They wore rusted chainmail armor, metal helmets and each had necklaces with a depiction of two birds that flanked an eye. The four took in the sight for a bit, before Ygri looks up. "These emblems surely represent Odin, right?"
"Perhaps. It is likely." answered the Fiend as he crouched down to inspect a bullet wound. The mist that came from the man that inspected the wound quickly dispersed. The Fiend covered his mouth with his glove, which Ygri now could see had special zipper openings for the monster's transformation.
"Are— are these shitters like— zombies or some shit? Why the hell do they not bleed?" quipped the Brute as he checks the magazine of his rifle. He looked over his shoulder with a frown.
"Might be, might not be. Not entirely our mission to figure out what they are, but they sure are killable. That's always good!" said the Shield with a smile that now seemed way more sincere and holstered her baton. The shield, as in the protective equipment, was returned to the woman's back after a short struggle. "Right. Yeah. Shootable. We have another issue though, little shit ran off." said the Brute who looked towards the odd tracks where the hand had made its escape. "Can't even see it anymore."
Ygri sighed and took a deep breath. She looks back at the pile of corpses that were their fellow soldiers and felt her heart sink. The adrenaline-activated implant activated in a short burst. She shook her head and tried to disregard this emotion.
The Fiend retrieved a flare from his belt and twists the top off. He tossed it on the ground with little visible care. "Someone else will have to clean this up. Or torch it. We have to catch Four's estranged body part before it shakes the wrong hands."
The group collected their gear and wits. Eventually the Shield gave Ygri a harsh but encouraging pat on her back that propelled the smaller woman into a walk forwards. The two others exchanged a look and followed along after the Brute emptied a sigh from his lungs and the Fiend adjusted his gloves.
"I didn't know we were working with, uhh, a monster? Didn't quite listen in the introduction round…" quipped Ygri after a sharp breath. She had woefully interrupted the silence that had so peacefully reigned.
"I'd appreciate if you didn't center my whole being around my combat-specific ability. You can call me Test Eight. Or just Test if the number is too high to count for you." answered the Fiend with a humored grin.
Ygri blinked a few times before she stuttered out a weak "Oh! Right." She looked straight ahead with a puzzled look. "Ygri, by the way." she added after a period of time longer than socially accepted had passed.
"Nice to meet you, Ygri. Quite the quick reaction time you got." complimented Test with a smile. Ygri froze. Was that commentary on how long it took her to state her name? The implant made the half a second it took Test to respond feel like half a minute. "Saw you dodge a shot. Didn't know it was actually possible to do that."
Before Ygri could muster a response to waive the praise, the Shield let out an excited exclamation when she heard this: "Wait, really?" The Shield looked to Ygri with an eyebrow that could lift heavens. "Those shots had to move, at least barely subsonic, how do you dodge that? I don't know a lot of people who dodge shots rather than blocking them."
"Oh, well. It's a long story, but there's this implant and-" began Ygri with a polite smile, though she was interrupted by Test Eight. "Look, the tracks move to the right." The group paused and inspected the trail they followed. Sure enough, their gaze was guided to the right in a sudden, sharp angle.
"Little cheirophiliac freak can't decide where it's going or something?" quipped the Brute and pulled out a cigarette from a pouch. Before he could reach for his lighter, the Shield lit it with a snap of her fingers and ignited a purple glow. He nodded in an appreciative manner, though it was made with that same stern expression he had carried throughout the mission.
Test Eight approached the corner of the tracks and knelt down. He looked down both ways with a hum. "Well, let's follow it. I'm not sure a dismembered hand has much decision-making beyond incredibly base instincts. It's after something, I wager." Test crossed his arms in contemplation and drummed his fingers on his biceps. A hint of concern had embedded into his calm expression.
The Brute rolled a shoulder and bobbed his head from side to side. "Or it can run forever and it's forcing us to run ourselves out so it can get the jump on us." Ygri inhaled sharply and twitched an eye. The Shield just listened with a polite and patient smile. The Brute pulled out a pistol and checked the magazine. Test Eight stood back up and lead the group down the tracks with a firm nod.
"Alright sword-fucker, when are we going to admit that Four's shit-wiper is lost?" asked the Brute who had been pressured to share his name long ago; Guillaume.
"Look, the guy has a plan! Just focus up and follow it! How did you make it to the tryouts for the Red Right Hand if you can't handle a morning stroll?" answered the Shield with a wide smile, she too had delivered her name; Rijae.
Four hours had passed. Quickly, it had become apparent that the hand had changed directions numerous times, sometimes even crossed over its previous path. Guillaume had lost his patience about three hours and forty-five minutes ago when Test pointed out the sun hadn't moved. Nobody seemed to care to question how Test was able to spot a difference in the sun's position from a fifteen minutes time frame.
The group fell silent again, the four man band only really let their breaths and the crunch of snow be the soundscape for a few minutes. There was an odd tranquility to be found in this wasteland on the arctic island. They had found themselves in a valley, oddly flat and completely covered in snow. Nothing could be seen for miles. Though, it was this that made Ygri stop and start to look around with a deep frown.
"Wait, stop." she commanded and lifted her left forearm up to her face. She clicked open a small device that had a dusty screen and a few buttons which each had different levels of functionality. It had a worrisome, oily scent. One could only ponder the origins of the smears between the buttons, though it had all gathered into a rather atrocious crust that had dated cracks in it.
The group looked at the woman in silence for a bit until Guillaume could no longer fight his frustration and set his new record of waiting quietly at 13 seconds. "Well? Did one of Big Claus' elves' send you some mail about the futility of our march?"
"No…" stated Ygri as she finished tapped away at the device. "I can't see the flare."
"Obviously," clarified Test Eight with a dismissive wave. "It would have run out after an hour."
"Oh." said Ygri with a blank look and almost let her arm fall before she noticed something on the screen. "Right, well— it's one of them fancy flares with a tracker in them, right?" continued Ygri and moved the map she had found on the device around with her finger. She slowly gained a worried expression.
"Well, they did clarify that we were given prime, state of the, uh, anomalous art gear, didn't they? Surely that'd mean we'd have flares with trackers in 'em!" reasoned Rijae and tapped the side of her forehead with a finger. Her smile was infectious.
Ygri sucked her teeth. "Then why can't I find the tracker?"
Test Eight blinked. He flipped open his own screen and navigated it, his device in much better shape. He too gained a worried expression and swiftly looked up to the two others. "Check your screens. It has to be here somewhere." And so they did. Or, well, Guillaume did for himself and for Rijae, who had struggled to find the map option.
"No spots? At all?" lamented Ygri with a frown so deep it could be mistaken for a buried landmark. "Not even the exfiltration zone." said Test in a hushed voice and squinted his eyes. He glanced around the horizon and clicked his tongues in a snappy rhythm.
Rijae simply shifted her weight and placed a hand on her hip, she fell into a hum as she thought. "Might be one of those ritual spaces, no? The ones where you have to do something specific to gain access. Pretty common, though it takes a lot of skill and energy to set something like a repeating space up."
Rijae held up her hand and turned the palm towards herself. "Maybe our little guy literally knows the way there… Like the back of its hand!" She tapped her nose and smiled. "It's doing a ritual!" Ygri blinked a few times, and looked down the tracks they followed. "So how do we know we aren't stuck in a loop here, waiting to fulfill a condition?"
Test Eight hummed and tapped away at the device. He pulled a little antenna out of it and glanced to the group. "If these tracks aren't made by the hand, they've been placed anomalously, no? We have detectors for that."
"Yeah, those hume things, yeah? But if it just measures whether something is anomalous or not, ain't it also going to let us know a dismembered freak took a stroll through here too?" added Guillaume who had grown more cooperative, though he'd never admit.
"The hand is simply animated, but if tracks are being replicated, that's magic being cast in the moment, right? Spells always require more energy to be suddenly conjured forth, than a lasting one uses in the moment! The hand -has- to use less energy by basic magic principles."
Rijae crossed her arms and nodded in satisfaction at her explanation. "Always deviations, but if there's a deviation to this, we might be dead anyways, so let's look at this with optimism, yeah?" finished the woman and beamed a particularly bright grin to Guillaume who simply perked his eyebrows at that targeted statement.
"I suppose you are a more traditional thaumaturge, if I recall that fight. Made quite a blast…" mused Ygri with a quizzical look. "Didn't strike me as the type."
"What, why else would I carry around a wand?!" said Rijae and pulled her baton forth with a wink. It was, notably, an incredibly mundane-looking baton. A simple tool of tyranny. "Huh." quipped Test Eight simply and returned to his survey. "Then I suppose we follow the tracks until the hume levels rise…"
The display showed a horizontal line, that expanded into a waveform when Test held it near the tracks. An intrusive thought possessed him. He pointed the antenna towards Ygri. She crossed her arms and tilts her head in response. A slight fluctuation, definitely some manner of anomalous presence to her or anything embedded in her.
Then the thought compelled Test to scan Rijae, who flexed her arms with a smile. A slightly larger result, almost like a heartbeat. That seemed ordinary to Test, given that it probably reacts to her ability to use thaumaturgy.
And then the inspection went to Guillaume who groaned and let his shoulders drop. "Can we get on with it? Would prefer getting home without losing my dick and balls to frostbite." Test didn't respond. He blinked. Squinted his eyes. Tilted his head. He moved the antenna away from the man, then back. No no, it wasn't a fluke. "Are you… Fully anomalous? Machine here thinks there's something about you that's fundamentally out of sync with mundane circumstances…"
Guillaume averted his gaze and sighs. "Yeah, ain't relevant. I'll explain it if we get the hand back, and if Four doesn't execute us for this shit goose chase." The man waved a dismissive hand. "Let's get moving, yeah? Take the lead, big guy." Test Eight did so after a moment of hesitation. He decided not to push it any further, especially not when the basic detector in his device wasn't able to detect the full extent of the odd man's strange hume level.
The three of the group began to walk, but Rijae couldn't shake that sense of curiosity instilled by that odd interaction. She waited for the group to go a bit ahead before she meagerly followed. She traced a simple sigil in the air. Form an arch, three dots above it. A dot below, circle that dot. The pastel-colored sigil glowed faintly, and activated the spell to sense magic.
She stopped in her tracks and dropped her mask of confidence. With widened eyes and her mouth agape, she tried to overcome the disbelief that had frozen her.
A monster hovered behind Guillaume, transparent and outlined in a dark shade of red. The bat-like wings from its shoulders covered most of its back, but it was a large, muscular creature, which very faintly looked humanoid. It was the huge, clawed hands that caught her attention after the wings, for they were almost the size of Ygri's torso, the owner of which was idly phased through the creature without reaction.
The creature passively levitated behind Guillaume. She couldn't see its head, its form hunched over enough to hide such from her. She noticed a faint trace of mana from that amulet that Guillaume had around his neck. It glowed a red that had spots of black which interrupted the light. Her attention and spell was broken shortly after she gathered her wits as Ygri yelled something to her. She didn't quite catch what it was, but to her it was a reminder to focus up and return to the group, and so she did.
Sometimes it is best not to ponder the ghosts you see in the moment, that is an activity for restlessly lying in bed after all.
"Well, you're pale as a snowflake, so surely your ancestors must be from somewhere in Europe, right?"
"I guess? Grew up in Site-03, so I haven't really had any relation to any actual country. Other than America, of course."
"You grew up in -03? Were you contained?"
"No-no, just…" Ygri hesitated. "—ran around Childcare and Enrichment for as long as I can remember. When I turned 18, they offered to let me pick up a gun, send me to an university or become an informant living a mostly mundane life. Chose the gun immediately, never could keep myself in one place for long."
"How interesting, I didn't know they had such a, facility, at Site-03. I suppose you end up with a fair amount of orphans — when you try to suppress knowledge of the strange and wicked from the world…"
Test continued the conversation into another topic. Guillaume didn't bother to listen where, though.
Ygri and Test Eight had spent the better half of an hour in a talk about backgrounds, hobbies and mobile task force training. Frankly, it hadn't been of any interest to Guillaume. He had fallen quiet ever since he noticed Rijae had done the same. He had tried his best to suppress the paranoia that built up inside him, but a drop of sweat had formed on his forehead, even in this horrendously cold weather.
It wasn't entirely clear what her damn problem was. Her lack of chatter that he had struggled through for quite a while had died down. He was stuck between two chatterboxes ahead of him and two presences that stared into the back of his head.
He rolled his shoulders, as if he tried to remove the chill itself. Having to deal with humans was hard, he could've missed any range of small social rituals which caused one of his allies to grow disdain for him, but he hadn't quite understood which one it was this time. Ygri and Test Eight hadn't exactly reacted negatively either, therefore it must've been something specific to Rijae, concluded Guillaume with an annoyed sigh.
Whatever. These morons probably wouldn't survive the mission either, the eight others also had their own variation of some power that made them special. There's only so much you can do against being shot through the head, though. Most modern combatants who utilize the anomalous must always have a way to deal with bullets, Guillaume supposed the fallen initiates just didn't.
He stopped his thoughts about this. He was good at that, ever since he became human. Apparently this was hard for some humans, but he supposed they aren't used to the constant pull of allure that he and his former kin are. Quite easy in comparison.
It also helped that the group stopped as Test Eight held up a fist and scanned the area. "Hume levels spike here, by quite a significant margin. Looks like Rijae's theory was right."
Rijae forced a smile to mask her dread. "My theories usually are! Now what, though?" Test Eight clicks his tongue and looks around. "Not quite sure, actually. Not used to spatial anomalies."
"Well, if this is like— a ritual, surely it has to be something a hand can do, right?" quipped Ygri in the background. "Assumptions about anomalies gets you killed." Guillaume chipped in, and stuck a pinky in his ear to clean it out. "We might already be stuck here, doomed to die."
There was a brief pause in the conversation. He wasn't entirely wrong.
"Well, you know, that'd be some pretty excessive magic. Maintaining an infinite space we could get lost in would require a lot of energy. I'm not quite sure that's the case, given the uhh. Junes of this land?" mused Rijae, notably less excited than previously.
"Right, yes. The humes. They'd tell us if this would be a death trap." confirmed Test, though not as certain as he had sounded earlier.
The group fell quiet again, all of them dedicated to glance around for any hints of what to do now. Ygri drew circles in the snow with her foot. On the 13th rotation a thought clicked into her head. Her foot paused its ritualistic idle and she looked to Rijae.
"Wait, so the thing has to be something the hand had to do to get further, right?"
"Makes sense," confirmed Guillaume with a nod.
Ygri whistled a tune in a quality that may have raised several prominent artists from their grave in defiance as she crouches down at the spot where the trail supposedly ends. She tilted her head a bit and squinted her eyes, as she tried to recall something.
"The hand was weirdly animated when we caught it, you know. Maybe if we…"
She placed her hand on the snow and used it to till in much the same way the hand had earlier. Nothing happened.
Test and Guillaume exchanged a look. Rijae scratched her temple.
Then, she tried to lower her palm down, as her fingertips were stuck in the snow and mimicked a crouch. Nothing happened.
Test took the opportunity to glance around. Guillaume closed his eyes and counted to ten. Rijae worriedly glanced to Guillaume.
The final gesture she could remember was attempted. She raised up her index finger and ring finger. The ringing of a bell rung out, which caused spirals to appear in the illusionary wall in front of them. They spun across until the white, endless landscape ahead slowly faded.
The structure that was laid before them had architecture completely foreign to Greenland. Marble pillars held up a grand, triangular roof, with a mosaic tile in beautiful reds and blues that formed an eagle in the gable.
The structure itself was shaped like a square, held up by pillars on the edges. No rooms, one could see right through it into the landscape beyond. No, the one, singular purpose this structure served was as a scene to a circular staircase in the middle of the fine tile floor. The descent broke with the architecture as the pale marble faded into a dark grey and unrefined dark stone.
The group couldn't help but spend a few dozen seconds in awe. It took a confused Ygri, who had a surprised grimace on her face and excessively raised eyebrows, to bring the group back together.
Ygri finally exclaimed, as if she interrogated divinity and cosmos itself on the absurdity of the situation. "There are fucking Romans in Greenland?"
The humidity disgustingly wrapped itself around Ygri's skin. She had started to sweat and no matter how cold it was, she simply couldn't stop. The dampness in this interior was nigh suffocating, but it did put her on edge and caused her implant tingle in the back of her head. It made a few, subtle clicking sounds. It was something being whirled up.
The steps down here were uneven and eroded, which made them move at a snail pace down. The safeties on their weapons had been turned off. Ygri's grip on her assault rifle was uncertain, her gloves were already soaked in sweat. If it wasn't for the custom texturing on the grip, she might not be able to even hold it properly. But the smell, oh the smell was the worst part of this place.
It reeked of sewage and oil, a wretched combination that assaulted both Ygri's gag reflex and sense of smell. The air itself felt like a possessive force and angrily opposed the group's intrusion in these halls.
They'd spent a minute to descend the stairwell, but finally Rijae held her baton up in a signal to halt. Ygri was right behind her, a hand on the frontline's shoulder, Test's hand on hers and finally Guillaume in the back. The entryway into the larger, dark room was narrow, but Test Eight and Ygri could fit through the sides of the riot shield to clear the room.
The tactical night vision was turned on, the room was scanned and subsequently cleared. A mere empty room, a perfectly even rectangle, with the floors, walls and ceiling all that some monotone dark stone. If there had been any furniture here, it had long since wasted away, decayed into the unidentified liquid substance that took up half an inch on the floor. It swirled slightly.
The group carefully marched in, each with degrees of focus with much variety. To be blunt, Rijae had a hard time with her focus. Though she knew all she had to do was take the front, so she simply clenched her fist around the handle on her shield and raised her baton slightly up. Once it was clear nothing else could be found in this decrepit room, she circled her baton in the air and pointed forwards, to the stairs that lead further down ahead.
It was the step that immediately followed that directive that suddenly fired Ygri's adrenaline-activated implant. There was something off about it that her subconscious had picked up on. Sure, there was the small splash, the sound of Rijae's caltrops-safe boots landed on something hard and that subtle rustle of equipment.
No, the thing that was off to Ygri's mind was how hollow the footstep sounded. It didn't match the earlier steps. She didn't have time to process why this was wrong, nor did she understand why she suddenly reacted, but she immediately halted and froze for a few milliseconds.
She closed her eyes and listened. After four milliseconds her instincts told her she couldn't hear anything of value. Then she took a deep breath through her nostrils. There was that scent of vile substances again. Though not as powerful. Her instinct told her that this was a clue. Finally she opened her eyes, and simply felt. The room, its air, its size, its entrances, its interior, its guests, its dangers.
She felt a breeze that gathered ahead.
She had a few more milliseconds to act, less her body's mortal limitations wouldn't be able to change the situation into a desired outcome.
The first thing was handling the most likely person to be hit by the incoming attack.
Rijae had her shield raised, but she was unfocused. She looked over her shoulder at Guillaume in the moment, so Ygri had to step in. She moved her hand to grab Rijae's shieldarm.
She lamented how slow she moved.
It had always bugged her how long a moment felt. Her thoughts would race while she tried to simply reach for something. She wasn't quite sure what to do in these situations, but it was rather hard to not get distracted.
Often, she'd start to think about conversations she had, regrets she had, dreams she had, wishes she had, embarrassments she had, the people she had—
Her hand had finally reached Rijae's shieldarm. She raised it up a bit until it felt just right.
Next, the counterattack. The best time to avoid an ambush is before you walk into it. The second best time is when the enemies were focused on their attack and wouldn't expect an immediate response.
So, she pointed her assault rifle at the doorway ahead and fired. She didn't have time to move her other hand to support the rifle, so she had to account for the recoil. She hadn't had time to switch it to single fire, and had it set to a three bullet burst.
And so, she pulled the trigger. The first bullet violently surged forth. No problem. The second bullet was not as manageable. She had to use all the strength in her grip to keep the rifle on target. The third bullet made her finally drop the weapon as the kickback caused it to flip backwards over her arm.
Nothing to do about that for the next second, so she might as well ignore it for now. The next stage was management of reactions.
The group were obviously going to look at her, given she just fired her gun. Not entirely something she was able to fix, but she could help them along the way.
She pressed a button on her left glove, placed neatly on the side of her index finger for her thumb to press. A small hook shot out of a compartment on her forearm, with a thin, almost invisible string that followed behind it. However, it would surely shoot ahead, and the front would be visible enough for the group that their eyes would trace along it — towards the threat.
Then, there was her position. She had shuffled around a bit awkwardly, and was now inevitably going to get a shield slammed into her head from the backlash of the blast that was inevitably going to hit Rijae's shield. So she let herself fall backwards.
Falling while the implant was active was an experience that she never could quite stomach.
She felt trapped.
The air and gravity made her incapable to act to her full range of motion, and she always felt like she was in a coffin.
So she waited the entire second it took for her to fall. It felt like ages. Her thoughts started to race again, this time she pondered the type of stone that was used to make the basement. It didn't look local, and it very much wasn't marble like the structure above ground. It was rough too, no effort made to smooth it over. Could it perhaps be built like this on purpose, meant to be hostile?
Though her thought had to end as she had finally hit the ground. The rifle had landed on its barrel, yet luckily did not discharge, which allowed Ygri to quickly grab the grip.
She hoisted it over her shoulder, aimed it with both hands and fired off more rounds into the supposed attackers' direction.
Three bursts. Twelve bullets should be able to handle it.
And as the blast hit Rijae's shield, which predictably pushed into the area her poor head would've been at a second ago, the implant sped her flow of thoughts up. The group predictably jolted, but saw the guiding grappling hook being shot ahead. They concluded from the sound of bullets that filled the room that they were under fire.
So, they did what a shadow government death squad would do, answer uncertainty with lethal force. Test Eight fired off his rounds, around five. Guillaume ducked to the side where Ygri was on the floor to get around Rijae and emptied a few, probably a few too many, bursts from his assault rifle into the dark.
It had all happened in a small moment. In but a mere blink of an eye combat had erupted and been answered.
And as the gunfire died down and Rijae regained her senses from the sudden blast that hit her shield, a head emerged from the dark, grey and with the texture of dry season dirt. It slammed into the stone and released a small puff of mist from the three bullet wounds and crack that the sickly viking had sustained from the fall.
Ygri couldn't help but smile widely. She had pulled it off. The group, after having witnessed a vague flurry of actions from their eccentric gunwoman on the floor, had a pretty quiet, yet visibly confused reaction. "How did you—" began Rijae with a shaky voice.
"Implant?" interrupted Test Eight with a look of understanding. "Implant." confirmed Ygri through a ragged breath, her heart beat at way over two hundred a minute.
"Guess we're not out of bow cunts to kill." quipped Guillaume and changed his rifle to single fire. He took a few careful steps ahead to flank the stairs, followed by Test Eight who covered the other side. Ygri wisely spent this time to stand up and wipe off her back from the goo of mysterious origins. "Huh, bet the doctors are going to have a trip figuring out what covers the ground." she mused as she circled a foot around the thumb deep liquid.
"Probably just melted snow and wood. I'll grab a sample just in case, though." said Test as he crouched down to fill a tube with the substance. He quickly stood up and brushed off his hands when he was satisfied with his sample.
Guillaume nodded to the group to indicate clear passage and pulled the attacker up from the stairs by his thinning hair. This one hadn't bothered with the polar bear cloak, but he did have the rusted chainmail with a long tunic that reached his knees below it. He still had the bow clenched in his hand, his knuckles whitened. As if the prospect of letting go was worse than dying.
Same necklace. That eye flanked by two ravens. This one Guillaume grabbed and slammed in his pouch, he mumbled something about the glasses back home.
Needless to say, Rijae had been shaken awake, her unfocused state rattled out of her from the shock of a sudden projectile. She rolled her shoulders and lowered her stance a bit, her shield held properly and her baton held tightly. She walked down the stairs, followed by the three shadows that hovered behind her.
The next room wasn't as small as the previous one. Far from it. It felt like one walked onto the playing field of an obnoxiously large stadium, the walls replaced by thick mists, likewise with the ceiling. The floor seemed to be an inch-deep reflective metallic fluid - most closely resembling quicksilver, unless it simply was such.
But the most captivating part of the room was undeniably the large, rotten tree that haunted the middle of the demiroom. It had a particularly pale grey bark, its branches rolled in circles to form a crown that had no leaves but the maddening entanglement of wood, as if it was a tree with two sides dedicated to roots, but the above had become lost in itself.
And embedded into it was an amber orb which contained a human-shaped void that pulsated with thin tendrils that slowly and shakily idled around. There was a platform in front of this amber prison, a platform which hosted a particularly recognizable dreadful body part.
"A-ha! No way to run now, fingers-freaker!" blurted Ygri out in confidence and walked forth. Test tried to place a hand on her shoulder to urge her caution, though she had already moved eagerly ahead.
With no other perceived options, Test shuffled forth with a subtle swear spoken softly. Guillaume and Rijae followed hesitantly, they simply exchanged a short-lasting glance and a quick nod to each other.
The group felt a great rumble as they passed an invisible threshold. That acidic almond filled Ygri's mouth again for a moment, before it faded when she saw the source of the mayhem— a golden tablet rising up through the metallic water. It didn't move that fast, which lead to the whole group to stop in place and follow its ascent with keen eyes. Ygri's heel started to hop as if possessed. Finally the tablet settled with a loud thunder, absorbed into the surrounding mists.
Test gave it a glance over and adjusts his tactical goggles. The lenses briefly rotate out, then back in. He opened his forearm device and tapped something into it. He muttered a curse or two under his breath. "They didn't give us the translation software." he concluded with a monotone voice that could depress millions.
"Seems like they didn't know what they sent us into. That's probably why so many of us died." stated Rijae bitterly and scratched a scar that itched on her forearm. A reminder that this wasn't the first time she almost died due to improper intelligence. Despite this, Ygri leaned in closer and pretended she knows how to read the runes, she even hummed a bit to fake confidence.
Guillaume sighed heavily and gently pushes Rijae's shoulder away so he can see. "Been ages since I've read this language, but let's see…" Guillaume squinted his eyes. Given that gaze was covered by a tactical night vision headset, he needed not hide the red glow that lit up his irises. He traced a finger past the runes carved into the golden-tint tablet and slowly converted them to a language he could cite out loud:
WOE UPON THE TRESSPASSER.
YOU STAND IN A TEMPLE THAT DOESN'T VENERATE A MAN, BUT DESPISES IT.
THE MAN HELD HERE HAILS FROM A CRUDE EMPIRE OF MARBLE AND SPEARS. THEY PILLAGE EVERYTHING, EVEN GODS.
THE THING SEALED SECURELY STILL SCREAMS HAVOC AND CALLS ON THE FALL OF THE GODS, SAGES AND FANTASTICAL OUT OF FEAR. HE WOULD FELL THE ODD AND THE MYSTIQUE SO THAT NOT A TREE COULD STAND OUTSIDE A FOREST.
THE FIEND VENOMOUSLY VOICES VILE WORDS TO STIR THE UNGIFTED AGAINST THE BLESSED. IT DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF VARIANCE.
TO THE TRESSPASSER WHO WOULD DARE INVOKE THE RITUAL WHICH THE EVER-MORTAL WAS SEALED IN THE MIDST OF:
WOE UPON YOU. YOU WOULD BRING ABOUT A HUNDRED-YEAR NIGHT WAR FOR THE SURVIVAL OF THE OBSCURE, AS BEACONS OF ANTI-SPELLCRAFT WOULD MANIFEST ON GRAND LANDMASSES. LEAVE AT ONCE OR BE DAMNED. WOE UPON YOU.
Guillaume leaned back after he read the tablet out loud. At some point during this read, Rijae and Test had cooperated in a joint mission to capture the angry quintet of violence attached to a hand. They returned with triumph, the pair had been reminded of their equipment's grappling hook function to wrap it in a steel wire and had forced it into a clenched fist that could not act out its fantasies of carnage. It just sort of vibrated in place, kept under Test's arm passively. He tried his best not to express pain at the several fresh scratches on his face.
Out of curiosity, the group walked up the roots-made stairs to the being encased in the amber dome. A collection of scratches were carved into the bottom of the magic prison. The hand had tried its best to break through. Ygri moved close to the yellow surface and scanned the man inside wearily.
"Huh. He's missing a right forearm. That's—" started Ygri before she interrupted herself. The group, as if possessed by one united curiosity, all looked to the hand that protested its current circumstances under Test's arm.
"Ah. The wandering hand's body of origin, I presume." mused Test with a tilted head.
"Shitter took a gander through hell to get back to its stump?" asked Guillaume in disbelief.
"But… Weren't we told this was O5-4's hand? Why would he have someone else's hand?" questioned Rijae while she poked some of the almost fluid tattoos that circled around the forearm of the decapitated beast. The ink fled the finger's impact, almost like a school of fish.
"Pretty sure they might eject us from the Foundation, society and reality if our recording equipment picks up one more question about an overseer." said Ygri with a somewhat half-lighted smile. It was rather thin.
Rijae clicked her tongue and raised both of her eyebrows. She adjusts her equipment belt. Guillaume grunted and nodded towards the exit. "Alright, let's get moving. We're eight men down and probably shot all of the nerd boys' potential test subjects. I'm also tired of norsemen pretending to be bears."
The group collectively agreed to this with a variety of yeps as they moved ahead. Test Eight was halted, though. He blinked a few times and looked down at his foot that got stuck in something.
At first, he simply attempted to jerk his foot free, but something had caught around his ankle. Thus, he glanced down with a pair of squinted eyes. His calm demeanor was quickly overtaken by a panic.
"Hand got my ankle! Hand on my ankle!"
The quartet collectively started their own individual interpretation of frenzied stepping as they spotted the pale hand that formed out of the silvery reflections they stood on. It held onto Test's foot with a grip so powerful one could almost see the veins twitched on the thin fingers. So with panic which threatened to overtake his otherwise prized logical approach to everything, Test looks to Ygri. He tossed the hand towards her which activated Ygri's implant as her focus was filled with a monstrous fist of destructive intention.
So she had to wait, again.
She let her rifle go and switched the safety on with her index finger while the rest of her hand were moved to unwrap the grip. As that was done, and as she reached out her left arm to catch the hand, her sidearm was quickly drawn. She was ready to fire at the exact moment that her rifle rattled around on the floor.
The thrown hand was caught, much to its visible dismay. It wiggled and strained against the wire that kept it closed, which made it quite hard to hold onto it, but hold onto it she did.
Test Eight growled and slammed a fist into his solar plexus. As the crack of his rib cage rung out, his head jerked backwards violently and his cheeks split apart with a sickly noise which exposed his now jagged teeth.
The hand around Test's ankle, presumably still attached to its origin, suddenly got pulled up from this pool as Test Eight's height was enhanced by the two blades that emerged from in-between his split legs. He had fished up a pale, badly malnourished man that was covered in cyclic tattoos which ran from his chest down his arms and legs. They seemed to resemble the same runes as on the tablet.
Now with his jagged blades which had emerged from his hands, he pierced the guardian with ease. The attacker cringed in pain, his chest and back impaled all the way through. With a primal howl that seemed to carry with it three tones in a most bestial rage, the Fiend roughly slashed through the norseman.
The violence left the man in three parts that each leaked a mist and revealed an empty interior.
Rijae froze. The Fiend in front of her glared around with the eyes that glowed red that were accompanied by a horribly wide smile that reached what was presumably Test Eight's temples.
As it spotted more figures below, the Fiend quickly moved towards them with a horrendous sound of blade dragged against rock. It somehow had impossibly good balance on its blades. Rijae shook her head, able to hold the state of fear leashed for the sake of the mission. For now, at least.
She glanced to Ygri, a woman who had to fight off three vikings at the same time, which she managed as she kept up with every attempt to grapple her. She seemed to rely on raw reaction and precise gunfire and somehow made the exact movements needed to evade getting grappled. She was more like an artisan who used a tool in an experienced manner than a soldier who fought for her life.
So, Rijae took a sharp breath. She tightened her grip on her baton and placed her riot shield on her back, quickly drawing a sigil in the air. Her baton lit up in dusk-flames.
With one arch it landed onto the skull of an unfortunate guardian rose out of their spawning lake. In one moment, one could hear the crack of a skull and in the next flesh being burnt. And as that thing crumbles into a pale fog, Rijae turned around to the footsteps that approached her. A guardian had attempted to rush her with nothing but bravery on his person.
He was rewarded with a baton embedded in his thigh, that quickly caught fire. He lit up the room in those beautiful pastel shades. He briefly struggled with his balance, though that quickly became irrelevant as his skull too was cracked and ignited.
Guillaume had armed himself with both of his assault rifles, one in each hand that he emptied into the misty walls where figures kept emerging from. He fired from the hip, not even bothered to aim down the rifle. That didn't impact his precision. Each fallen guardian made the man's amulet light up in red, likewise with his fingertips.
A hand reached for Rijae and managed to claw her armguard and device off, this revealed even more scarred skin. It'd seem that this would only contribute to the traces of battle left on her.
"Gotta go! Can't see an end to these freaks!", yelled Guillaume as he ran out of bullets in his rifles. "They're blocking my path! They keep swarming to me!" yelled Ygri out in between efficient deliveries of bullets through her enemies' forehead. "Fuck! Gotta lure them! Throw the hand to Rijae, start moving outside! Test!?" yelled Guillaume as he tossed one of his rifles over his shoulder and reloaded the other.
The Fiend still slashed and hacked away. It had left many a severed limb and bisected torso on the floor beneath it. Its head cracked itself to look over its back at Guillaume and canted an additional ninety degrees to the right as a very nightmarish signal of attention. "You're going out last! You cover the back of our retreat, we'll take the sides! Move!"
The team started moving towards the exit. Rijae had a rather prevalent issue with the sudden increase of attention as the hand was passed to her by Ygri, given the many more bodies that rose from below. Luckily, she was equipped with a perfect tool for the scenario.
Rijae cracked a skull, then another, then a third, then the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and the seventh and the eighth and she stopped counting, quickly exhausted as her energy reserves were swiftly spent. Striking with the baton became difficult as she had to manage the wiggling hand. It became harder when one of the guardians grabbed her swordarm's wrist.
With Ygri kept busy by a pack of guardians and the Fiend that seemed not particularly friendly, she decided she only has one move. One that'd leave her drained, but the intensity brought by the horde of pale men necessitated a bold approach.
"Hey, asshole! Catch, I'll get them off us!" exclaimed Rijae much to Guillaume's surprise. He looked over his shoulder. He let out a quick "Alright!", which made Rijae throw the hand.
Guillaume didn't even turn around though, yet the hand did suddenly stop in the air. Once she didn't need to use a hand for a hand, Rijae slammed a fist into the top of the guardian's elbow. The arm cracked and her wrist was released. With her weapon free to reign the battlefield, Rijae slammed it onto the mirrored lake beneath.
The surface responded and alternated between ripples and an expanding disc of yellow, purple and light red. As the waves of magic radiated out, the guardian's feet were burned off in a moment too fast for them to realize.
Then, some of their shin, the rest of their shin, their knee, their thigh and finally their waist. The waves of incineration cut pieces off their body with ease. Rijae's allies were completely untouched. They could only feel the warmth of a summer evening. Ygri seemed enamored with the colors, her mouth agape while she put a bullet in a guardian's head. A childlike joy spread across her expression as she let out a "Whoa!", which made Guillaume groan. The hand still hovered behind him. "Snap out of it princess, I'll get you a coloring book you can be at awe at if we get out alive! Move, move, move!"
And with such, Ygri shook her head. She gained a much more serious expression and spat some purple saliva out of her mouth. She nodded and started sprinting for the exit, while Guillaume jogged over to the newly exhausted Rijae and wrapped her arms around his shoulder.
With great strength he carried the woman who was bigger than him with ease. Rijae couldn't help but feel surprise at how she was hoisted up without effort. As they made it to the exit, Ygri once more gained a rather entertained expression as she shot a guardian with a bullet and ejected the emptied magazine into another guardian's face and broke his nose.
When the trio had made it to the exit, Guillaume looked at the Fiend who was at the present time occupied with a guardian's head that it had bitten into. It easily crushed the skull and ripped the top half of the head off. Guillaume raised both of his eyebrows in a measured response to this. "Alright Test, we're rolling out! Exfil!"
The Fiend, who was already in the process of beading another guardian, snapped its attention to Guillaume and let out an annoyed growl. It started to run, hunched over to crawl on all four blades. With all of them now on the run, the guardians had slowly started to reappear. Though, the few that reached them in time were pierced and stomped by an angry blade demon, whose swords slowly started to retract.
As they reached the door, Test returned to his normal form and drew his sidearm that he fired some bullets at an unfortunate guardian with. It mended his own ego a bit from the embarrassment of having used his monstrous form.
Up the stairs, through the dark room, and up the staircase. The further they ran, the less they could hear the guardians' groans. They weren't followed. And with a little effort the four unlikely survivors emerged on the surface. The anomalous space around them broke apart, as if the horizon was a mirror and had been smashed, shards of reality fell through the ground and disappeared, the mountains that surrounded the valley were revealed once more. The breeze felt nice.
Test, Rijae and Ygri collapsed when they made it out.
Guillaume stood as ever vigilant and checked his magazine idly as he sighed over his companions' lacking physiques. Ygri let out a bit of a snicker as she noticed the judgement look Guillaume gave her. "What, we can't all be unstoppable beasts when we fight for our lives!"
"This level of exhaustion would only be acceptable if you killed hundreds. You killed mere dozens." responded Guillaume who rolled his eyes and surveyed the horizon. A figure was looming in the distance, dressed in black tactical gear. Guillaume expressed woe at this too. "Big cheese incoming. Can't see his expression, but his gait is pissed off."
The group emerged in a choir of annoyed groans. "How long can I lay here, can you delay him a bit?" asked Test, raising an unsteady hand. Guillaume didn't respond and clicked his heels together. He placed his rifle over his shoulder with its friend. The hand was raised over the other shoulder and dropped in his own by the invisible force.
The group stood back up. Rijae needed a hand from Ygri and Test to do so, though both of them were almost pulled down by the woman due to their slender builds. As the four faced the soldier, Rijae let out an amused huff.
"Think it might be one of Freak Santa's goons?"
Ygri snickered. Test Eight smirked. Guillaume groaned.
The warm lighting and the mahogany furniture made this little bar seem almost displaced in Sisimiut. The red satin cushions on the stools and chairs were accentuated by the art deco styled golden lines that were present on a lot of large surfaces. To tie it all together, the candles and hearthfire swayed gently. The scent of cinnamon made Ygri almost sink down in her seat. Though as the package next to her rustled, she was quickly reminded she was here in hand-related business.
The man in front of her gently cleaned a glass. He had done so for the past five minutes while he gently tapped his foot to the rhythm of a vinyl that hosted a heartfelt song, beautifully performed by a sorrowful lady. Ygri could find no rest like the bartender though and reached out to her glass of orange juice with a small, tropical decorative umbrella that tilted over the edge of the glass.
The Marshall, Carter and Dark logo was proudly presented on it.
Two days had passed. Most of their time was spent in a shoddy hideout that last saw guests two decades ago. Ygri supposed that not a lot of things happened on Greenland.
"Nervous?" asked the man suddenly, his eyes still closed and his lips formed into a gentle smile. He ignored how Ygri jolted in place for her confidence's sake. "Yeah, uh. Supposed to meet a superior here, not entirely sure what to expect…" she responded. She spoke into the glass that she had raised to her mouth halfway through the sentence.
The man hummed and opened one of his eyes to peer over Ygri. She had been ordered to dress formally, so while her glittery red evening gown fit her perfectly, there was just something she couldn't pull off about it. She didn't like how her back was exposed. "Such is always the case with one's leaders, no? Mysterious persons that you meet in a rare encounter on top of that. I do not envy you, dearest." his smile settled into that of an apologetic one, and the song took over the ambience of the room once more. This made Ygri think as she plucked the umbrella out of her drink. She eyed the top of it. "Say. How come you allow Foundation in here? Surely this sort of place is for your clientele only."
The man shook his head and finally put the eternally cleaned glass down. "This is a bar that falls under our Refuge Sanctionné policy. Think of this, and other Refuges, as an individual entities that are willfully ignorant to any actions taken for or against our company. We do tend to take quite a large sum of payment for our patient services, however." The man paused with a smile and picked up another glass that was subject to be cleaned forevermore.
"We have a no forgiveness policy too, however. If anyone acts against a Refuge or its clients, they are barred from all other Refuges globally and interglobally. Forever. We have, as you Americans would say, a no-take-backsies policy.", the bartender concluded with a wink and an amused grin.
Ygri sucked her teeth and nodded like a machine. She didn't quite know what to do with the information, so she half-committed to store it.
…
And then, the silence flooded the conversation again. Ygri wasn't sure if she was even allowed to idly chatter with the man, but he did have a certain allure that felt impossible to ignore. Luckily, a door was opened. The wind from outside intruded inside and the hinges fought for their lives against the force that had moved the entrance to open. It was apparent that something large had entered.
Down the stairs a man in a suit and a cane in his hand descended. He was large, around Rijae's height but his shoulders were much more broad. His arms were probably the width of Ygri's head. He wore circular shades and didn't seem bothered to take them off despite being inside. He approached the stool next to Ygri and roughly sat down. He removed his wide-brim hat and placed it on the table, it landed with more force that one would expect of headwear like that.
"Whip something that energizes up for me, good man." he said in a deep voice that seemed to growl words rather than speak them. He offered a polite smile in contrast to his growled tone. The order was received and the bartender turned around in a quest to fulfill the task he had been granted.
"I—" started Ygri after a moment of silence, only to be immediately interrupted by the strange man.
"Naschalia Ygri. I understand that you've secured my hand." he stated in a tone that almost indicated that if she hadn't, she'd be expected to run directly out the door to get it. She settled on nodding sharply in response to that assumption.
"Good. I understand that many of the tryouts were killed in action. I suppose they weren't Red Right Hand material after all." There was a tinge of disappointment or sadness to his tone. She couldn't quite pinpoint which. It seemed like he wasn't about to consider the lack of intelligence that'd have saved lives.
She waited a bit before she dared to ask a question sheepishly. "Does… That mean the rest of us passed?" Ygri formed the most forced smile in recorded and unrecorded history. It wasn't entirely convincing.
"Your unit was decimated, most of it six feet under than above ground. What makes you think you could've possibly passed? No." he bitterly answered and took the shot glass that was placed down in front of him that held an orange, creamy liquid with a drop of something jet black in the middle. Ygri felt her shoulders collapse. Seemed like all her training wasn't enough. Again.
Her thoughts started to race, her adrenaline spiked violently. Her implant kicked in, replacing that acid taste of juice with an even more acidic almond. She felt the situation slow down significantly. "But—" she muttered, only to be interrupted once more, this time by the Warlock holding up a finger. "Give me another, good man." he said as he scratched his rugged chin. A droplet of sweat rolled down his forehead.
The silence intensified while the two waited for the Warlock's drink to be ordered. Ygri wanted to take a sip of her orange juice, though it felt wrong to do that. A large range of inappropriate actions were before her, where only a few wouldn't upset this nigh quasidivine presence.
So she played it safe, straightened her back and stared ahead with a thin smile. It didn't help that she was looking into a mirror that revealed that she had used excessive white eyeliner to conceal her waterline. This, she had attempted to salvage when she used a liberal amount of black eyeliner. Her eyes were encased with rings width of the Boötes Void.
Finally, the good bartender had placed another shot in front of the Warlock, who in turn reached into his pocket. He fished out a handful of die-sized cubes, each one with a texture of darkened glass that held a small blue flame within it. He placed them on the counter, and the bartender punched a few buttons on the cash register, which announced the emergence of the drawer with a satisfying cling.
As the cubes were funneled into the drawer, small flashes of blue lit up the bartender's face. He looked rather handsome with an ominous light source hitting it from below, Ygri thought with a slight, uneven grin.
"This doesn't mean you don't have your uses, though." the Warlock had spoken so suddenly that Ygri jolted in her seat once more and returned to focus. She dared to glance sideways at the Warlock, who had interlocked his fingers and stared daggers into the wall. Or did he just… Look like that neutrally?
"This… Incident has led my thoughts to wander. I'm not satisfied with how little I know of this situation." The Warlock met Ygri's gaze. There was a purple sheen to his eyes past those sunglasses, around every finger he had what looked like rings at a glance, but were golden tattoos wrapping themselves around his digits. His jaw also seemed to be made of gold, though she wasn't sure how she didn't see it before now…
"I'm considering you for a position. One that'd require a bit more…" Ygri could feel how the Warlock judged her state of being. One could suppose even a man of such high standing was still prone to judge a woman based on appearance. "Professionalism." was the word he settled on after a few seconds of deliberation. "But I suppose you're better at killing than… Charming. Your group will be informed of your new positions soon enough."
Ygri raised an eyebrow in a discreet manner, but sensed that speaking up against this man could prove fatal.
And with that, the Warlock stood up. From an inner pocket of his suit, a hand with a bit of forearm emerged, a hand that floated in the air and had black smoke behind it. The runes that crept up the forearms were very familiar to Ygri, the same variety from the boxed counterpart. The skin tone of the hand contrasted the Warlock's though, it being a black skin tone and the Warlock's being a darker tan.
His hand, which acted on its own, hovered its palm above the package that Ygri had brought along. The package slowly levitated up and docked with the purple claws at the tip of the fingers. Though something else came to mind, seeing the floating, dismembered hand. Ygri frowned. "What about the bodies of our team, did you manage to retrieve them?"
The Warlock nodded after a two second delay. "Yes. Three or four of them are viable vessels for Cairns. So we'll be preserving them well. The others will be cremated at Site-03." Ygri squinted with worry. She ruminated on this as the Warlock stood up and was accompanied by his floating, package-carrying hand on the way to the door.
"I am looking forward to your service, Captain Ygri." he concluded, his powerful voice boomed across the fine wooden room and drowned out the song. The door opened and closed harshly.
She fell her implant wind down with a whirl as her new title was stated with her name attached. Ygri looked into her orange juice, her grimace of visible enfeeblement reflected right back at her. She twitched an eye and downed the rest of the orange juice to wash away the almond taste in her throat.
Ygri's expression was eternally confused due to several factors. Why was she the captain? How did she do well enough to be part assigned captain but not the Red Right Hand? Was that actually O5-4 or was that just a dummy he sent? She slowly rotated back to face the bartender again, who offered her a bright, genuine smile.
"Congratulations on the promotion, miss! Would you like another juice to celebrate?"
"—with this proclamation I shall cast my prophecy!" yelled the man as the amber imprisonment shattered. He blinked twice. Something felt wrong. Like he had been interrupted in of a sentence and spoke over said interruption.
He was cold. A horrible breeze shot through the chamber. He did not recognize this interior. But as the grey pulse shot out from his body, his spell had been cast.
He collapsed to the ground, out of breath and exhausted from the draining incantation. The last magical energy he had mustered ran out through his toes and fingers, into the ground. Gone. He would wield the arcane no longer.
…
What was his purpose now?