Waterstrider

1st District, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

In the end, the trial was a simple matter. A Seiyal prosecutor asked me some questions, I answered in the way that Rachel had told me to, and the judge gave me a wink and threw away all charges.

I had been surprised when the prosecutor had asked me if I was the ‘Riverfiend,’ but I simply replied that I did not recognize the name.

The judge had quickly ruled that there was no evidence, and the case was thrown out. I held no pretensions about the fact that I would have been sent to a mining colony had Rachel not assisted me from behind the scenes.

As one might expect, there were rumors that the judges and prosecutors were receiving kickbacks from the owners of said penal colonies. There was a reason so little criminal activity took place on the station outside the protective umbrella of the major forces. With no money or connections, nothing good awaited those who stumbled onto the wrong side of the law.

As I had anticipated, my money purse was quite a bit lighter than it had been when it was confiscated. I was just happy it had been returned with anything left in it.

I left the Justice Office overall content with the situation. To escape from a situation as dangerous as the black market had been with nothing but lost money and a few broken ribs was certainly a blessing.

The moment I stepped out of the entry hatch I could almost feel the stares. My tattered attire and bedraggled appearance was at odds with the very clean and refined first district. I stuck out like a sore thumb. In addition to the normal passerby distracted by my appearance, I imagined informants from the underworld were also watching, planning on reporting my movements.

I could choose to visit the Hadal Clan, to receive treatment for my wounds and be protected from the Heirs of Ottrien, but given how a member of the clan had attacked me, I wasn’t sure that would be a wise idea. It was never smart to throw oneself to the mercy of a clan or sect without knowing the intentions of all the internal factions it had.

I decided I would meet up with Rachel before deciding my course of action towards the Hadal Clan. Perhaps they could be useful to me, but as an orthodox group there was little trust I could extend to them.

With that in mind, my first course of action would need to be finding a hospital that could treat Seiyal patients, and one that would not be likely to be owned by the Hadal Clan. This would normally be a difficult endeavor, but there was actually one nearby that was fully owned by an Exid group called the Polyxinuan Corporation. I imagined a good portion of their clients might be others who had left the office with injuries.

The hospital was a utilitarian building just a stack away from the Justice Office. The sign outside its doors just read ‘HOSPITAL’ in Staiven, with a list of different races it catered towards. Seiyal were towards the bottom of the list, but it didn’t take much to heal just a few broken ribs. I doubted there would be any issues.

I entered, finding a manned reception area. Manned reception was a rarity, as the position was easy to automate, but for a company that serviced such a variety of races, the nonstandardized nature of computer input terminals between races and cultures posed an expensive issue. For many such companies, it was cheaper to just hire someone to handle it.

There were some issues as the Staiven receptionist did not speak Seiyin, but eventually my rudimentary grasp of his language allowed him to input me into the waitlist. After a few hours of paperwork and waiting, I finally spoke to a doctor, who after a brief inspection sent me off with a vial of medicine and a healing patch. It would do.

I emerged from the hospital in the mid afternoon, having taken the time to clean up my look somewhat in the bathroom. I would stand out on the streets a bit less like this, though my robes were still pretty torn up. Now, all I needed to do was lose the informants following me and make my way to the fifth district. I walked across the street to stand by the railing, looking out on the space between the stacks.

The gap between them was only about twenty feet across, though the fall would be about fifteen stories straight down before slamming into the metal base of the station, below which its most vital workings resided. The memory of falling headfirst into the station’s depths came to mind, and I had to fight off the call of the void for a moment.

I suddenly turned around, trying to catch the eye of any of the gang informants surely stalking me, but while I still sensed gazes, I could not catch any of them. These truly were professionals.

Rather than fixate on the matter, I forced a smile before turning back to leap over the railing, falling once more into the abyss.

I caught myself on the railing one floor below to the shock of passerby, releasing the railing again after the moment to fall down another. Above me, I could see shocked individuals peeking over the railings to watch my descent. I couldn’t guess which of them were trying to track my location.

Five stories down I clambered up the railing and began sprinting down the street, movement technique at full power as I dodged past passerby and maintenance robots. I moved two stacks forward, climbed a stairwell, ran in a different direction, and dropped off the side of another level.

I continued the process for another five minutes, trying to shake off any last remnants of a tail that I might have had, before moving through an alleyway, casually merging into the flow of foot traffic on the other side, slowly moving myself towards the fifth district.

Canvas Town, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Thirdmonth, 1634 PTS

Sirena Hadal sipped at her cup of tea, inspecting the person sitting across from her.

The two organizations had been competitors for decades, ever since the Hadal Clan had arrived on the station and began setting up supply chains and control over the districts with a Seiyal majority population.

The two were meeting in a room upholstered nearly as well as her own personal residence, intended for treating esteemed guests who visited the compound. It was filled with art pieces of gold and jade, with large tapestries on the wall, and a floor entirely composed of real hardwood. Everything within the room had been imported all the way to Tseludia Station, direct from Canvas.

She rested the cup in the palm of her left hand and looked up at him with a polite smile.

“Tell me, what might bring the esteemed Vice-Leader of the Heirs of Ottrien to my abode?”

The question floated in the silent air for a moment while the man took a sip of his own tea. He was tall and bulky, like most Jobu, but Deuvar had a stately aura, and an understanding of the social customs of many races, such as her own. In his hands was a small teacup that was dwarfed by their massive size.

The only reason she had bothered to receive an audience with him was because he had humbled himself to make a formal request in the traditional fashion of Sunlit Hall.

She understood that most of the man’s underlings feared him for his vast capability for physical violence, but she had no such fear. He had always struck her as the sort of man who was never rash, always in full control of his own actions. Likely, his reputation was manufactured for a specific purpose.

In any case, the physical threat of a man who wasn’t even a martial artist meant nothing in the face of a spirit refiner such as herself. She could kill him in but an instant using merely the teacup she was holding. The consequences of such an action would be more than she wished to deal with, however. Despite their frailty, the Celans had built up an organization no less powerful than her own. Had they not, Sirena would have taken their territory over long ago.

Finally, the silence was broken by Deuvar’s long-considered response.

“I wish to discuss the matter of this… Riverfiend, as your people have been calling him.”

Sirena raised an eyebrow.

“What about the Riverfiend?”

The large man set his teacup down on the table, on a small saucer he had taken it from, then steepled his fingers.

“It is my understanding that the Hadal Clan wishes to recruit him.”

“I suppose I understand why you might think such a thing,” Sirena replied, taking another graceful sip of her tea. “Does your Leader have an issue with that?”

Deuvar grimaced.

“While he would… prefer that the man be dead, our organization would be amenable to making a deal with you. I still do not quite know the nature of your interest in him, myself. From what I have heard, he is a follower of the… unorthodox path, in comparison to your own orthodoxy. It is my understanding that the two schools of thought are incompatible, in some way.”

“Is this about what he stole from you?” asked Sirena, dodging the question.

Deuvar grimaced, inadvertently allowing a slight expression of surprise to sneak past his steely mask. Interesting, mused Sirena.

Though she had asked her network of informants to find out what exactly had been stolen from the Celans, they had yet to return any concrete information, particularly not anything that would be worth the effort the Celans had already expended in hunting for the Riverfiend. Particularly that incident in the eighth district. She would be dealing with extra scrutiny from the Pantheon for quite a while due to that affair. Their interest was far more than would be expected had he simply stolen some money from them.

Deuvar did not respond to the question, though both of them knew that his silence had been answer enough.

“What if we compensate you for it?” she asked, probing for more information.

Deuvar shook his head, delivering a sharp laugh.

“If you’re saying that, it means you have no idea what it was he took. You must understand, Matriarch. This thing… to be in possession of it is like handling an explosive. Possession alone is enough to earn the ire of all the developed races, my own included.”

The Hadal Matriarch frowned at his words, particularly his insinuation about her own people.

“It is useless to you,” he continued. You lack the technology to even begin to make sense of it, much less get use out of it. Nor can the Riverfiend, unless he is a servant of another force.”

“And you wish my Hadal Clan to retrieve it for you? We cannot just take the spoils of one we wish to recruit, Vice-Leader Deuvar.”

Deuvar lifted his teacup again, downing the rest of it. His eyes met Sirena’s own gaze, and for a moment she understood why the man’s underlings feared him. That cruel gaze of his... it made her wish to break him.

“I believe you’ll find that you can, Matriarch. Unless you wish for the current hostilities to continue, or even…”

The teapot cracked, and then was crushed in the bulky man’s fingers, shards of ceramic falling down to the hardwood floor. Deuvar stood, brushing off his pants before bowing towards Sirena.

“Until next time, Lady Matriarch. I trust you will make the right decision.” The Celan carefully made his way out of the room, leaving Sirena alone in the room to stew in her thoughts and anger.

Her eyes went down to the shattered teapot.

“Does he even know how much it cost to import that?” she muttered to herself.

Tseludia Station Architecture: [When the station was first commissioned, the design contract was given to the son of an influential clergyman of the Pantheonic Government, and the result is the station as it exists today. A vast, glowing dome atop a large cylindrical platform floating amidst the Tseludia System's asteroid belt. Between the dome and the cylinder, thousands of pillars rise to house tens of millions of inhabitants, connected to one another by bridges, and stairs on the side of each stack of floors to allow vertical transit. In addition, the design allowed for aerial vehicles to move around in the air beneath the dome. The station was split into nine districts, with one in the center housing public offices, government buildings, and the wealthy, while the others surround it radially. In addition, several spacedocks surround the base of the dome, serving as the station's conduit to the outside world. The cylinder serving as the base of the structure contains the station's reactors, primary life support units, artificial gravity generators, and is completely off limits to all except for certain technicians personally granted authorization by the Governor's Office of Tseludia. Ultimately, the design was considered to be inefficient, and aside from a few others constructed in other colonial systems around the same time, no other Staiven space stations utilize similar designs.]