Vanya's Journals: Infiltration "So, time travel is illegal," you muse aloud, watching for the woman's reaction.
She glares at you warningly. "I said drop it."
Unfortunately, being an archaeologist, you could never resist unraveling a good mystery, and the woman across from you certainly presents you with one. You make up your mind to figure out who she is, no matter what it takes. For now, however, you are content with reading the next entry in Vanya's journal. And so you begin. When Reudh asked me to keep myself safe, my thoughts were elsewhere.
Who
was I? I'd mentioned my skulker background, but volunteering for a dangerous mission was so far removed from what I'd used to be. Who had I become? And why had I changed? I knew I wasn't the same person I used to be, but... why? Somehow, I missed the
old me: the girl who used to be afraid of everything; the girl who saw magic everywhere she looked; the girl who felt that all the world was beautiful.
The girl who always ran.
Maybe, I thought,
maybe sometimes, change can be a good thing. But in my heart, I knew why I'd become a different person, though I couldn't stand to think about it. It was because I'd lost Urist, and more importantly, because I'd lost my sister. There was no sunshine with her gone, only an emptiness devoid of shadows. If I died, what did it matter? What did I have to live for anymore?
I found the direction of my thoughts disturbing, and swallowed nervously, trying to put it behind me as I set off for the base of the next hill, following the little creek.
We were in the foothills of the Amber Barb mountain range, but the blood plains still stretched into the distance as far as I could see. My bloodstained armor would be a good camouflage, I knew, but I needed to do something with my hair and face, in case I was caught. If my experience with Ballpoint was anything to judge by, interdimensional soldiers have a certain fondness for well-groomed elven women, and I could use that to my advantage. It had been a while since I'd bathed, and I hated that, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that elves don't have nearly as bad a problem with body odor as dwarves.
After I was out of sight of the others, I knelt by the brook beneath a tangled tree and began splashing water on my face and hair. It was clear, clear enough that I could see little water-worn pebbles embedded in the bottom. The swath of clear earth stood out in stark contrast to the bloodstained terrain around it, and seemed almost inviting.
It took me at least a good ten minutes before I was satisfied, but I finally decided my hair was clean. Sitting up, I got Reudh's comb out of my pouch and started brushing my hair with it. For all its beauty, it did the job just as well as a copper one would have, but I was thankful I had it.
After I'd finished, I put the comb away, put on Jack Magnus's cap, and took a deep breath before starting forth once more. I felt cleaner, fresher, and more confident, but I was very worried about my safety. Several times a minute, the railcannon's crashes echoed around me, followed by a loud, distant thud. I knew I was in danger just by being anywhere nearby.
Creeping forward along the ground, I was careful to take advantage of any bramble bushes or trees nearby, moving slowly and staying in the shadows. I thought back to my skulker days, remembering how to stay "invisible", and I think I did well, for being out of practice.
There was a ledge of rock in front of me, and I crept forwards towards it cautiously, staying low. When I reached it and peeked over the edge, I was greeted with an otherworldly sight.
Before me was a deep trench that seemed to split the earth in two, at least 300 feet long, fifteen feet across, and at least two stories deep. I could see right down the middle, though the deeper area was heavily shadowed. There seemed to be doorways and walkways in the sides of the trench, but it was hard to tell in the twilight.
As I looked everything over, I came up with a plan: I would sneak into their camp and talk to them,
before they saw me. If they saw me first, they'd probably shoot me. I would have to be careful.
A sudden explosion broke my thoughts, drawing my eyes to its source: a single turret, its long barrel poking out above the far side of the trench. It was the railcannon, and even from where I lay, I could make out the red and white Parasol logo emblazoned on its side. Suddenly, it fired again, seeming to rock backwards with the recoil. At the same time, the hilltop far too my left erupted with a plume of earth, at the base of a huge, upright ring of metal. My eyes slowly traced the railcannon's path back to the trench, down along the valley, which was covered in debris: destroyed tanks, smoking mechsuits... it was a war zone, but no one seemed to be fighting. Really, apart from a few people in the Parasol trench, the entire area seemed completely devoid of life.
Another blast at my left drew my attention again, the spray of dirt reaching only halfway to the top of the 30-foot metal ring. Though I knew what it was, I had no idea how it was here. It was a megaportal... the largest I'd ever heard of. It didn't seem to be turned on, but as I looked closer, I could see several people in Ballpoint uniforms milling around its base. The Parasol cannoneer seemed to be loath to hit it, carefully aiming his shots around its base.
A single shot from that railcannon would utterly destroy me, and I knew it. With this in mind, I crawled cautiously over the rocky ledge and began to slink downwards. Slowly, quietly, I inched my way forwards. From where I was, all the way to the trench, there wasn't any cover to be had; not a bush, not a tree, only small craters and fallen rocks that made my journey all the more difficult.
Suddenly, I hit my head against something...
hard. I backed up, gingerly rubbing the sore spot and trying to stay quiet. After a few minutes, I looked upwards, and was astonished to find that there didn't seem to be anything there. After waving my hand around in front of me a bit, I found that while I could definitely
feel something there, I couldn't see it. It was as if there was some giant, invisible barrier blocking my path.
Mindful of where I was, I looked back down at the trench, and found my point of view was too low to see the bottom, or even anyone inside. This emboldened me slightly, and I got carefully to my knees, feeling along the invisible surface, slowly working my way higher and higher with my hands. Whatever I was touching didn't seem to end anywhere near.
"What
is this?" I whispered, bashing my fist against the wall, which is what it felt like: nothing happened, besides my hand starting to hurt.
I soon found that I couldn't move forwards even when I put my whole weight against it, which was eerie: it really didn't look like there was anything there. On a whim, I looked upwards, and that action sucked away any hope I'd had: there was a giant, shimmering dome above the Parasol trench. From so close, I couldn't see it, but the farther away I looked, the more obvious it became.
The trench was shielded. There was no way I was getting in.
At least, so I thought.
With a whoosh, the bubble disappeared, and without the shield to support me, I tumbled forwards onto the ground. Recovering, I leapt to my feet, only to knock my head solidly against the shield. It
hurt, and I had to fight to stay quiet. As I bit my lip, gently massaging the second bump on my scalp, I felt around... and discovered to my dismay that the bubble had closed
behind me. I was trapped.
I laid myself flat against the ground as quietly as I could and began crawling forwards, hoping nobody had seen me. My plan might still work.
A feminine voice knifed through the air. "Stand up and put your hands on your head!" I jumped, startled, and the voice rang out again. "Do it
now!"
As I got to my feet, my heart sinking in my chest, I looked around for the source. My eyes quickly came to rest on a human woman standing less than two hundred feet from me, holding a pistol in her hands. I had no idea how she managed to get so far from the trench without my noticing, but I did as she asked, putting my hands up on my head. It was hard to see where she was in the dark... it was almost as if she was cloaked in shadows.
"I'm not here to hurt you!" I shouted, praying that she wouldn't shoot. "I work for Parasol!"
She ignored what I'd said. "Don't move!" she yelled. There was something about her voice that seemed familiar... almost as if I felt a certain kinship with her, and unless I was imagining things, it sounded like she was as scared as I was.
As she began walking forwards, keeping her weapon trained on me, I took a closer look at her. She was wearing a Parasol uniform: white with black stripes and sky-blue detailing, fitting closely to her slender form. She didn't really look that threatening, and seemed to be about sixteen or seventeen... It made me wonder why she was a soldier at all. Oddly, she was only a few inches taller than me... and that's short, for a human.
I started taking a few steps forward, myself, closing the distance. "I don't have any guns! I'm just -"
"Stay where you are!" she yelled, adjusting her two-handed grip. She actually seemed frightened... yet somehow excited at the same time. "I'll shoot you!"
I stopped and remained still as she picked her way around little craters and rocks, closing the gap to about ten feet. Then, she stopped, and after brushing her long, wavy brown hair out of her eyes, she put her right hand to her side and unfastened a PEA from her hip. "You don't
look like Parasol... Hold still," she ordered, trying unsuccessfully to one-handedly tap on its screen. Finally, she gave up. "I'm going to lower my weapon," she said, watching me with fearful, cautious eyes. "Don't move, got it?" Her eyes seemed to stand out, being such a bright blue.
"All right," I said softly, watching her. From so close, she hardly seemed threatening at all, even
with a weapon. She seemed too
pretty to be a killer, if that makes any sense.
"I mean it! Don't move!"
"I won't move," I promised.
With an uneasy glance, she shifted her weapon in her hand so that she could hold the PEA, too, and started tapping at the screen, holding it slightly towards my face. After a moment, her eyebrows furrowed, and she looked almost as if she'd seen a ghost. It was as if she couldn't believe what she was reading. "Vanya Carena..." she whispered.
"You've heard of me?"
She snapped out of it. "No! No, not at all! I just... It..." she looked aside for a moment. "Hello."
"Hi," I replied, trying not to smile.
"I'm Katie Okablokum." She holstered her weapon, stepping forwards and offering her hand. "My PEA says you're telling the truth. I just can't believe there's anybody else from Parasol out here, that's all," she said nervously.
I shook her hand. "It's nice to meet you," I said, relaxing my tense muscles. "I
wouldn't be here, but for a series of unusual events..."
"Katie!" someone yelled. Katie jumped visibly, startled by the shout. I leaned to the right to look around her, and saw a dwarf slowly walking towards us, about a hundred feet away. I raised an eyebrow in mild surprise. I hadn't expected anyone working for Parasol to have such long hair, or to be wearing such casual clothes - jeans and a long-sleeved, plaid shirt. The jeans alone seemed otherworldly... it was the first time I'd seen any, aside from on Mr Frog's computer, and they looked very strange on a dwarf...
Katie turned around and started walking towards him, motioning for me to follow. "It's okay, Jonah," she called. "She works for Parasol, too."
"Katie, you shouldn't have closed the gap," Jonah chided, in an almost fatherly way. "Your pistol is a
ranged weapon. She could've knocked it out of your hands or pushed it aside."
"She said she worked for Parasol. I had to scan her," Katie replied defensively, passing him. I stopped and stood still, watching the scene unfold.
Jonah crossed his arms, smiling humorously at my new acquantance. "And what if she'd been lying to bring you closer?" he asked pointedly. "I said I'd be along in a moment, and Saemin's on his way, too. You wanted action, and I was going to give you some, but you need to be more careful. You should've waited until we were here to back you up."
I spoke up. "Who's Saemin? Is he in charge here?"
"Ha! No," Jonah laughed, sparing me a glance. "Not remotely, unless you mean in charge of Katie, to which I'd say, 'maybe'."
Katie spun around, seemingly hurt by Jonah's amusement. "He's a friend of mine, Vanya," she said hotly.
"Really, now? Do you regularly french kiss all your friends, Katie?"
Color rose to her cheeks. "That's private!"
A loud, deep yell interrupted them. "Katie, you okay?" A young man was climbing up out of the trench. His tanned arms and legs were heavily muscled, to the point that he reminded me of Hans. "I heard yelling. Sorry I'm kinda late."
"Saemin, everything's fine," Jonah called to him. "It's just a girl from Parasol." He paused, and tilting his head, he turned to me and asked, "What
are you doing out here, anyway?"
Behind him, Katie giggled loudly as Saemin picked her up. With an effort, I pulled my eyes away from them and answered, "I heard there was a Parasol encampment around here, and my friends and I are seeking shelter. I'm wanting to teleport back to Spearbreakers, as are a couple other friends of mine." There was something about Jonah that seemed sad, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
He chuckled sadly. "Parasol
encampment? Hardly. There are only a few of us left. I've got some things to say about Spearbreakers, though, and in particular, to that Count Splint fellow. Thanks to him, Ballpoint has practically overrun the continent. Still... Spearbreakers is pretty far away from here, isn't it, miss...?"
"Vanya Carena," I answered his prompting. "I'm from Spearbreakers, but I've been traveling for a while. Do you have a portal we could use?"
Jonah shifted his weight, taking an older-model PEA from his pocket and tapping at its screen. "Sure, we do. See up there on that hill?" He flicked a thumb towards the hilltop to my left, towards the huge megaportal I'd noticed earlier. "That beautiful portal up there is ours, property of the Umbrella, put here over two hundred years ago. Sadly, Ballpoint's captured it, curse their souls, and it's the only one in the region. If they figure out how to operate it, they'll pour their best troops through and wipe us out. Our shield is tough as hell, but it won't stand up to that kind of assault. And guess what?" He gave me a sardonic smile. "They captured it three months ago. I'd expect them to figure it out any day now."
"What??"
"You heard right. Who's with you, anyway? You said you had friends?"
I hesitated, and began counting them off on my fingers. "Two scythods, three humans, and a dwarf."
"Scythods?" He looked at me suspiciously, raising an eyebrow. "Didn't Ballpoint domesticate those?"
I felt a little offended. "
Nobody domesticated them - they're as intelligent as we are. Oh, and we also have an injured human who needs immediate medical attention," I added, remembering Lurit.
Jonah didn't respond; he just kept tapping at his PEA. Finally, he stopped, holding it out and peering at it as if he was nearsighted. Grumbling, he took a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped them on. "Here you are," he mumbled, and then, louder, "Vanya Carena. Yep, you check out all right. Says you're 'guaranteed trustworthy' by some Dr. Sankis fellow. Draconik... Never heard of him." He slipped the PEA into his pocket and lifted his chin. "Not in my department," he said proudly. "I used to be a theoretical physicist, before all this mess. My wife and I were..." he trailed off.
There was a silence between us for a moment, and he turned back towards the trench. "Saemin! Get Trebor out here, she's got wounded!" Saying this, he turned to me. "We'll reminisce some other time, miss." And he walked away, shoulders slumped, scratching the bridge of his nose.
"Trebor" was a skinny young dwarf sporting a shock of rumpled, black hair. He was dressed in loose-fitting Parasol medical scrubs, and was hauling a matching medical chest. He looked a few years older than me, but it couldn't have been by much.
"I'm Trebor," he grinned, shaking my hand firmly. "And you are?"
"Vanya," I replied, taken a bit off guard. "It's nice to meet you."
"And it's a pleasure to meet
you!" he replied smoothly. "Largely because you got me out of latrine duty. I owe you a debt of gratitude. Would you like it in cash or checks?" Beside him, Saemin laughed at his jest. "Anyway, Vanya... Eh, I don't know if that name suits you. Mind if I call you 'Hotlips'?"
I grimaced, my stomach turning. "Please don't." The thought occurred to me that maybe cleaning myself up hadn't been the best idea I'd ever had. "Let's just go, please?"
"Certainly, my lady, to the ball it is!" he crooned. "Unfortunately, I spent so much on gratitude that our horse-drawn carraige is one beast short, so I'm afraid you'll have to lead."
His sense of humor switched around so often, it almost made me dizzy. "They're straight ahead. Lurit is in bad shape, so we'll have to hurry," I said, starting to walk in the direction of my friends, though impeded by the gathering darkness. "Did you bring a light?"
His response was prompt. "I really don't think now is an appropriate time to be smoking, Hotlips. Lurit is in bad shape! He's more trapezoid than square!" I glared at him, and he seemed to soften. "Easy, girl! Only joking around. Saemin, get the lamp out, but don't start it up yet."
Saemin pulled a long glass cylinder from behind his back and fiddled with the end of it. Slowly, it began glowing with a bright, white light that illuminated a huge area around us.
"I said
don't start it up!" Trebor hissed in a whisper. "Armok's beard, it's like talking to a human."
"I
am a human," Saemin replied, chuckling, and flipped it back off.
Trebor nodded dismissively. "We'll wait until we're out of the camp until we start it up," he explained, glancing at me. "If those Ballpoint soldiers see it, they'll start shooting."
I nodded. "How will we get through the shield?"
"Not the same way
you did, that's for sure. It opens briefly for every railgun shot; that's why we fire it at random intervals. You're lucky it didn't slice you in two: you would've had to put up with me while I sewed you back together." The dwarf grinned at his own joke, and then grew more serious. "We're actually already through the shield: the Captain opened it for us to pass. Anyway, what's the issue with your Lurit friend?"
"A Holistic Spawn clawed his leg off," I explained, stepping over the little brook as we reached it.
"Whoa, wait a minute there, Hotlips," Trebor said, grabbing my arm. "Are you completely sure it was clawed, and not bitten?"
I pulled my arm away from him crossly. "What does it matter? Only dwarves turn, and Lurit is human."
"That's the way it
used to be, my uninformed friend," Trebor said, motioning for Saemin to turn the lamp back on. "Ballpoint gave them the ability to adapt, and I'll have you know that the newer ones are capable of changing just about anything that's sentient or commonly domesticated!"
Saemin fumbled with the lamp, and finally got it to start up. It cast an eerie white glow around us, and I couldn't imagine what Reudh and the others would think when they saw it. I turned to Trebor, who was ahead of me now. "I'm pretty sure it was clawed and not bitten."
"Pretty is what
you are," he retorted. "I want guarantees. What have you done with the wound? And did you keep the foot?"
"No, they buried it before we found them and cauterized the wound."
Trebor choked. "They
cauterized it?! Armok's beard. I'd say it's the dark ages, but the people around here are wearing a little too much clothing for that to be true," he said, shooting me a glance.
I found myself sorely tempted to take my cap off, hoping that seeing I was an elf would get him to quit making such perverted remarks, but I didn't. Instead, I only led the way in silence, determined to ignore it.
Even
Klade had been easier company.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2278258 times)