Waterstrider

8th District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

“I would not have wagered on him showing up at a black market run by the Depthists,” mused Triezal idly.

He was inspecting a glyph slate as he spoke, the blindfold lifted slightly so that he could actually see what he was looking at. Kalthen paid little attention to the other man, focusing instead on the information on his own slate.

Kalthen had known the situation would become chaotic, but this was beyond his expectations. When his informants had told him that the Seiyal had found the thief in an 8th district black market, he had contacted the nearest force the Heirs controlled, ordering them to try and capture him. It was clearly not going well.

The two of them and their squads had hastened to the nearest skydock in hopes of arriving on the scene in time to assist, but ten minutes of transit was far too slow.

The anticipation felt like it lasted hours as they could do nothing but wait and watch as the situation escalated further and further. It was already the largest battle that had been fought on the station in over a decade, and was at great risk of growing even further.

Kalthen’s uncle had asked him to capture the thief, this Riverfiend, as the Seiyal were calling him. Uncle Deuvar hadn’t mentioned it, but according to Triezal, what the leadership really wanted from the thief was not revenge, but rather to retrieve what he had stolen. The details did not particularly matter. What mattered was that he had been told to use every resource available to accomplish the mission, and his very life might be on the line if he failed in his mission.

He would not allow that to happen. All forces he controlled were converging to the battlefield. Even if the Hadal Clan wished to continue protecting him, enough to further escalate the conflict, the Heirs of Ottrien would not falter.

He continued keeping up to date on the flow of the battle as they approached the site. According to the data, the thief was fighting with an enforcer at the moment. The footage enraged Kalthen a bit, bringing to mind memories of the annoyance that the man had posed to fight when he himself still had an enforcer to pilot. He sighed in annoyance.

His contemplations were interrupted by the sharp and direct voice of Kande.

“Sir, the skydocks have all been shut down.”

“What?” he asked. “Let me see.” He maneuvered his way to the window in the tight confines of the aero. Sure enough, A vehicle had already attached itself to the skydock’s port. “Damn,” he said. “Are there any others nearby?”

Kande tried her best to imitate a shrug.

“Hard to say whether or not they’ll be the same. It’s possible that more factions than just ourselves and the Hadal are taking action.”

“Damn it. Damn it!” Kalthen’s rage grew, and he felt the urge to break something.

“Wait, brother,” spoke Triezal, placing his hand on Kalthen’s shoulder. At some point the blindfold had slipped back over his eyes, and he bore an amused expression on his face.

“What is it?” Kalthen asked.

“Let us not bother finding a dock. The price of the vehicle can be considered a cost of doing business.” As he spoke, Triezal was checking the straps on various odd metal boxes he had attached to his body at various points.

It took Kalthen a few moments to gather the meaning of his words.

“What? You can’t be serious.”

The other man didn’t bother looking up, merely continuing to check his equipment.

“I would rather crash the vehicle and arrive in time to do something useful than wait an hour to find a fucking place to park it, Kalthen. Don’t forget how important our mission is.”

Kalthen couldn’t fault his logic, but Triezal’s tone did nothing to improve his mood.

“...fine. Kande, bring us down near the barrier. Carefully.”

“Understood.”

One of the woman’s appendages slowly reduced the throttle, banking back around towards the barrier as she nudged the nose of the aero downwards. Kalthen desperately strapped himself down as their altitude continued to lower. As he did so, he realized that Triezal had stood up, walking over to the door of the vehicle.

“What are you doing?” he asked. Triezal smiled.

“I have somewhere to be.”

He pulled the door’s emergency open handle, causing it to shunt open with a mechanical thunk. Air rushed in through the new orifice in the aero’s hull.

“Are you insane!?” shouted Kalthen, his face paled.

Triezal shrugged and leapt from the vehicle, falling into the open air below. Kalthen could see the ground imminently approaching, and though he would be ashamed to emit it, a shriek of fear erupted from his lips in the instant before the vehicle crunched with great force into the stone ground, cracking the foundation of the floor, and sending them into the lower layer of the stack.

For some reason, the only thought in Kalthen’s mind at that moment was that Kande had certainly not been careful at all.

Mere moments after their informant told the Hadal Clan that she had discovered the Riverfiend’s whereabouts, Karie had headed for the nearest aero and flown all the way from the second district to the eighth. This was an opportunity she would not miss.

She had not quite gathered the details, but she knew that her mother wished to offer the man a deal of some sort. Not if she had anything to say about the matter. The Hadal Clan would most certainly be making no dealings with a member of the unorthodox path.

It was only a matter of time until he became insane and went on a rampage. If they were to trust him it would only increase the damage he was capable of inflicting.

No, it was her responsibility to handle the issue in advance, before he became a direct threat to the clan. So she justified it to herself, but she was forced to restrain herself from grinning with anticipation. She thought of the fame she would receive if she defeated him in single combat, the idea compelling her to run faster.

After leaving her chauffeur behind at the skydock, Karie had begun to charge across several sets of bridges in order to reach the warehouse where the Depthist black market had been located.

The area was surrounded in one vast barrier array, likely some trick of the celans. While the use of such a thing would be expected of the Depthist faith, such a powerful construction far eclipses their capabilities. Indeed, only the celans had both the need and capability to generate one of such size in this location.

She approached the barrier curiously, reaching out with her hand to inspect it. The contact slightly seared her skin, and as she pushed deeper inside the heat increased as well as the density of whatever energetic material it was composed of. She would need to find another way inside.

Karie frowned at the annoyance. Perhaps she should have gone to find one of her older brothers before coming here. As she tried to determine a method of entry, her eyes were drawn to an open area on a nearby stack, where she could see a group of martial artists in her clan’s robes. She approached in a flash of movement as she sought their assistance.

A large, husky man started in shock at her sudden appearance, but righted himself before performing a greeting with a bow. Karie had seen him around before, but they had never spoken to one another until now.

“Eiri Duzu greets you, Young Mistress Karie. Might I inquire what you are doing here?”

“I was in the area and felt like assisting,” Karie replied.

Eiri looked strained.

“It would probably be best if you returned to the second district. This is not a safe place to be for one of the clan’s heirs.”

She nodded in response, carefully maintaining decorum in front of one of her family’s vassals.

“I’m afraid I cannot acquiesce, Practitioner Eiri. There is something I must do before I leave. Now, tell me the situation,” she ordered.

Karie had found that it was best to be direct and clear when one wanted a vassal to do something they did not wish to. If he were to argue further, she would then claim that by disrespecting her he was besmirching the dignity of the Hadal Clan. It really was too easy to get her way like this.

Eiri nodded glumly, explaining how they were the force from the seventh district safehouse, who had arrived to assist but found themselves trapped outside of the barrier.

“A spirit refiner should be arriving shortly, but we were trying to think of alternative methods of entry rather than simply waiting for them.”

Karie nodded. It was right of him to proactively search for solutions.

“Are there any you have come up with so far?” she asked.

“The two we have are not ideal. We could either search for the barrier’s generator, hoping it is not located inside, or there should be a tunnel on the lower level that leads up into the warehouse. We were discussing which to proceed with.”

Karie considered the options. In theory, destroying the barrier generator would be faster, but there was no telling where it was or even what it looked like.

“We’ll head below. Lead the way,” she ordered, pointing towards the nearest stairwell on the side of the stack.

Eiri responded with a nod, beginning to order his force to surround and protect her as she moved. A part of her was annoyed at the treatment, feeling it was mildly demeaning, but she had grown accustomed to it long ago. The power her status provided her came with far too many such mild annoyances to consider.

As they started to run for the stairwell, Karie could not help but anticipate what the day would bring. If all went well, that man would soon die by her hand, no matter what her mother thought of him.

Pseudoplasmic Barriers: [An advanced technology grasped by the Celans, pseudoplasmic barriers harness the inherently chaotic nature of flickering miasma to condense and superheat a microfilament mesh. These barriers are quite strong while active, able to prevent entry by any force up to that of a projectile accelerating at a rate of 1% of the speed of light. As such, they are incredibly versatile and useful inside of inhabited areas, where weapons of such power are unlikely to see use. The cost of their power is immense, however, requiring the use of a total of six celan power cores for a mere half hour of activation time. Alternatively, a single lesser ashatic torus is capable of powering the barrier for a full thirty hours straight before needing to be refurbished.]