Waterstrider

Spacedock, Tseludia Station, Pantheonic Territory, Fourthmonth, 1634 PTS

Thoughts whirled inside Triezal’s mind as he made connections between ideas that had long remained mysterious to him. Hestky’s words had struck a chord in him, and for the first time he now truly understood the nature of the organization he had been brought up into.

Still, he found himself unable to hate them, unable to truly blame them for concealing the truth. Hestky was certainly correct that it was a truth that could never be allowed to escape. If it were to do so, the doom of their race would become inevitable.

The storage room suddenly seemed cavernous, extending out far too much in all directions. Before him, the cackling Hestky who squirmed madly at his bonds seemed to be demonic in nature. It was like his form was shifting oddly in Triezal’s vision.

Triezal put the mild hallucination formed from the mental blows he had received aside, his professionalism helping him to regain control of himself. Regardless of what he learned, he would remain loyal, and he would do his part for his people.

He peered over at Hestky, mind still whirling.

“Tell me more about this Shade, the one that calls itself a ‘Terran’.”

Hestky laughed uproariously, causing the dim light to glint upon his cheeks, still wet with tears that continued to fall. Unlike before, this was not the wild laugh of a man who was breaking down from the intensity of his emotions such as fear and stress. There was something wrong about it, like he was seeing something outrageously funny. That was when Triezal realized that something was wrong.

He sniffed the air, and it was not the smell of dust and cooked food. There was a slight acrid aspect to the scent. Something that had not been there before.

“Poison?” he muttered to himself, looking around widely for a potential source.

He had honed his senses as much as possible, training them far beyond his natural limits, but his surprise at Hestky’s words had distracted him. Though he scanned the room in detail, there was nothing, nobody in sight but the still madly laughing Hestky, who had now fallen into a coughing fit.

“I’m… going to kill…” Hestky forced the words out between fits of coughing. His eyes glared even harder than before, but this time he wasn’t looking at Triezal, but rather off into the distance. “you… Rachel.”

The last word was spat out, an act which caused him to couch heavily again, flecks of blood splattering over his legs and the floor.

Could it be him, doing this? Triezal wondered about the matter. If he remembered correctly, Hestky had been a network personnel at a research facility run by the Epon. Presumably, he thought, the man had stumbled into files that should not have been accessible to him. Poison formulation should not be part of his skillset, and there would have been little reason to bother learning it when many of those who were searching for him were Jobu, and thus highly resistant to poisons.

That was when another idea came to mind. The Riverfiend was what was called an unorthodox practitioner. While he specialized in formless arts, there were other types of unorthodox practitioners who specialized in poison. If his guess was right, it would seem that Riverfiend had not in fact arrived at the station alone.

Triezal had started to hold his breath. He had some resistance to poison, but nothing like that which a Jobu would have, so it was best to be careful. Triezal hazarded a guess that the only reason that Hestky was already coughing up blood was the fact that he had been hyperventilating.

He glanced down at Hestky, trying to decide whether the man could be saved or not. He decided to take the chance. One of his arms gripped onto the back of Hestky’s chair, standing up and running for the door. Behind him skidded the legs of the chair as Hestky yelled in surprise. That was good, because if he could still yell he wasn’t quite dying yet. Triezal had more questions to ask the man, after all.

The hatch slid open at a touch, and Triezal sealed it behind himself once more. The air in the hallway tasted much cleaner than that inside the storage, and Triezal took deep, gasping breaths of it.

Because of the way that the station’s design handled airflow and filtration, it was rather difficult to poison the air in a room as whoever the perpetrator was had done. They must have sent quite a lot of poison through the vents, and it would not spread much into adjacent rooms unless they were to find another vent and do the same to it. Thanks to this, Triezal knew that he was likely safe, unless he had already breathed in too much of the poison.

As he carefully took deep breaths in an attempt to fully replace the air in his lungs, Triezal realized that he could hear odd sounds coming from the dining area of the restaurant. Was there a fight going on? At the thought, his blood ran cold, one hand trailing down to grab a pistol while the other held an ancient bronze knife, the sigils carved into it glistening in the luminescent glow of the ceiling lights.

Triezal carefully opened the door, feeling a weakness in his limbs that he knew had to be due to the effects of the poison kicking in. He also felt the urge to cough, but was able to restrain it. He could deal with that later.

In the restaurant, customers were fleeing out the doors while a hooded Seiyal woman fought with the squad he had told to wait out here.

The woman was wearing dark robes with purple highlights. From what Triezal knew about martial artists, these robes were rather generic, though the hood and face mask she was wearing were certainly not. He could see from the tiny bit of dark skin visible around her golden eyes that she was a farsei.

She had full control of the tempo of battle, clearly having caught the squad off-guard. Two of the guards had managed to step back and pull out their firearms, however she was fighting in close quarters with several of their squad members, and they were clearly too scared of hitting them to fire.

Her fighting style seemed to focus on making piercing blows with her fingertips, as she kept snaking her arms around to pierce at the weak points in the body armor that the soldiers were wearing. Her fingers trailed a sickly purple smoke behind them, and the soldiers convulsed and fell soon after she made contact with them. For the Korlove it only took one strike, and for the Jobu, three to cause them to collapse.

Triezal knew that in close quarters combat, the average soldier of the Heirs would have no chance against a proper Seiyal martial artist. He could immediately tell that this woman was on a far lower level of combat ability than he Riverfiend had been, at least a full stage below. Still, the poison made her almost as dangerous.

Triezal lifted up his pistol, carefully aiming it. Normally, he would have nearly instantly been able to aim and shoot despite the chaotic melee, but he found that his hands were shaking, unable to hold still. He pursed his lips. Another issue caused by the poison, he imagined.

Since he could not hold still, he waited until there was a proper gap in the bodies between the two of them before firing. The bullet whizzed over her shoulder, and her gaze flicked over to Triezal. He got the feeling that she might be smiling.

“You’re smaller,” she said in seiyin, speaking as if she was being thoughtful, “are you the one?”

Another strike from her hand pressed into one of the joints in a Korlove man’s legs with a haze of purple smoke, and he toppled to the ground as she twirled towards Triezal with a flourish. Before he knew it, he and she had become the only combatants left standing in the room. Out of the corner of his eye Triezal could see one of the restaurant’s employees hiding behind a counter, and he knew that behind him was Hestky, who laid groaning on the ground, still tied to the chair. Hestky was likely her target. The door had swung shut behind Triezal, so it was very possible that the martial artist had not noticed him yet.

“Hard to say whether I am or not,” Triezal replied.

Her gaze met Triezal’s, and due to his weary mental state, he could almost not help but get lost in the amber beauty of her eyes. No matter how many Seiyal he met, Triezal still found those orbs to be quite beautiful.

“Given the fact that you shot at me, I should assume not. However…” she rested a fingertip on her cheek as if she were coyly playing with him. “I imagine it should be fine to kill you anyway. Unless you’re willing to just let me pass?”

“I’m afraid not,” replied Triezal, firing again. The shot grazed her side as she charged him, luck and the shaking of his arms enough to turn a heavy wound into a meager graze. He supposed that today was simply not his day.

She quickly reached him, and in immediate response his hand holding a dagger slashed out rapidly. Knowing that she was intending to kill him, he activated the dagger’s effect, causing a small orange glow to erupt under his fingers.

The blade’s arcing motion rapidly sped up as a trail of light was left behind in its wake. Cracks splintered out from the line Triezal carved, and a look of shock filled the poisoner’s face as it tore a heavy gash through her chest before she could react.

Cursing, she backed up several steps, allowing the glowing yellow abscess to float in the air between them. Brackish gouts of multicolored smoke slowly drifted from the cut like blood from a wound, pooling and sizzling the ground beneath them as a feeling of wrongness pervaded the area.

The poisoner’s eyes widened with horror as she inspected the tear in space.

“Immortals… What foul art is this?” she muttered, her accent shifting slightly, like her self control had dropped. Unsurprised by the effect of his weapon, Triezal lifted his pistol again and fired. This time it dug into her shoulder, and she stepped backwards in agony.

With another muttered curse she reached into her robes, pulling out a vial and tossing it blindly towards him as she hobbled and then ran for the door. Triezal fired again, but missed, and the bullet crashed into the doorframe behind her.

The vial she had thrown soon splashed on the wall beside Triezal. He did not dare take a breath as he dove under the lesion that he had created, crawling in a rushed attempt to stand and make his way to the exit.

Hestky was left behind, and Triezal knew there was no chance that the man would survive the next dose.

Naeratanh: [A material that is largely incompatible with reality, naeratanh, a term originating from the old Najani language, is a bronze alloy that can only be created in heavily damaged regions within the Incursion, such as that which the planet Celah exists within. When primed with flickering miasma, sharp objects forged from naeratanh are able to slice into the fabric of reality, creating wounds in reality known as lesions. In addition, this process causes the naeratanh to increase the velocity of any motion it is undergoing. It is said that this process is the foundation for the function of the faster than light slice drives the Celans used to escape the incursion and enter Telles. Naeratanh is a banned material according to the Pantheonic Government, and the Celans were forced to destroy all of their stores of it as part of the treaty which allowed them refuge inside of the Pantheonic Territory.]