Interlude: Rosemallow

Thirty years before…

Rosemallow stood in front of the sapling oak. The rain dripped down her face.

I wonder if this is what crying feels like, she thought.

"Well, Eskallia, " she said. "I hope you're happy."

She though back over the past seventy years spent with her friend, good times and bad. Mostly bad at first. In the first decade after the cohort's time in Purgatory, Eskallia had been little more than a shadow of herself, alternating between morose hopelessness and rabid fervor. At times Eskallia would leave the group in the midst of their adventures, at first for days, then for weeks or even months.

Sixty years ago something changed. Eskallia had met an Outsider in her wandering. This Outsider, little more than a boy, had soothed her somehow. The fiery hatred for all things from the Outside ebbed and transformed. The next thing Rosemallow knew, her friend announced that she would be teaching at the Academy, the very heart of all she loathed.

When Rosemallow asked why, Eskallia had spread her hands.

"It is the best place for me to grow," she said. "Why don't you join me, dear friend? I know you are still searching for your Way. Perhaps you will find it there."

After thirty years of teaching, Eskallia, now Dean Everbough of the Third Cohort, had vanished for several years. When she returned, she told of another Outsider she had met, a young man by the name of Echelon.

"Mal, this boy was not like anyone I have ever met. His mind…" she had tailed off.

Rosemallow had other concerns. Her friend wore a crown of leaves that sprouted among her golden hair, while roots twined and sought the earth at her feet with every step.

"What the holy hell have you done to yourself?!"

"I have found a path. I have been shown a path to greater growth than I could have conceived. Eskallia Everbough is no more. I have found my Way, and the first step is becoming Eskallia Treetouched."

It was not long after that, at the next Unification, that Rosemallow found her own Way and became a Gongen of the Garden. Still, with all the new power at her disposal, she could not fathom her friend's decision. Over the years that followed, they taught and fought, exploring and growing into their new status. Masgret joined them, and even Ani found a home nurturing the new minds at the Academy, setting the Insiders on their Way, guiding subtly the Outsiders towards… something better than their raw inclinations.

And now this.

"I don't understand your path," she announced to the tree. "But you sure as hells aren't taking any more steps without legs."

She stomped on the ground in anger, sending a wave of force across the rooftop gardens of the Academy.

"Now, now, Mal," came a voice.

Shadow.

"There's much more going on beneath the surface," he continued. "There always is."

Rosemallow didn't bother to look up. It had been decades since Shadow was visible.

"There's not even room for her roots here," she complained.

"Eskallia's path is now lonelier than ever. She has learned what we discovered years ago, that the surface of our minds can only grow so much. True power is found below, in the dark, away from prying eyes."

"Shadow, knock it off with the mysterious bullshit. And since when did you start referring to yourself as 'we'? You always were a pretentious sack of crap."

Shadow ignored her insults, as he always did.

"Set down your struggles, just for a moment, my dear Mal. There will come a time when all of the necessary pieces are present on the board, when the truth of Eskallia's path is revealed. I will be there for her when the time comes."

Rage filled her body. She activated the full powers of her third eye, flooding the rooftop garden with sinister red light. Eskallia's soul stood revealed, laid bare in front of her, vast and stormy. Shadow's soul was a wisp of smoke, already twining and dispersing from her scrutiny.

"You have never been there for any of us!" she roared. "Go back to your lair in Purgatory and lay your plots. I will be here, at her side, as I always have."

Shadow's words drifted to her from afar.

"Even with such formidable vision, you could never truly see. But you will…"

She stood alone again, in front of the sapling Oak that had been her friend.

The water ran down her face.

I wonder if this is what crying feels like, she thought.

She realized the rain had stopped.

Chapter 12: Sneaking

Humming a song from West Side Story, Lilijoy returned to the others, her mind whirling with the implications of all she had learned from Recolectora2166, also known as Maria Mendez. Within a few exchanges, it had become clear that the poor woman didn’t know she was in a simulation, didn’t even have the context to understand what that meant. Not only that, but it turned out she had no access to her character sheet or internal display. Lilijoy could only guess that Sinaloa had built a system that hid all of that from the user and sent it to someone else to manage.

It was manipulation on such a scale that Lilijoy could barely wrap her head around it. She could only imagine what evils Sinaloa was perpetrating upon the serfs with augsight when they were Outside.

Now imagine what they could do with the Tao System.

Her urgency to rescue Attaboy was now more than personal. Sinaloa obtaining the technology of a compliant Tao System could spell the end of what remained of human society. She imagined if it came to pass even Guardian would get involved, though given Guardian’s attitude toward human interactions she couldn’t fathom what form that intervention would take.

Guess it would depend on whether Guardian actually needs us around, and to what extent. Otherwise, it might be easier to wipe the slate clean.

Soon, she was telling Magpie, Jessila and Skria all about Maria and what she had learned from her.

“It turns out that Sinaloa likes its serfs to be low-maintenance. Every day they are sent out from their living quarters and spend about twelve hours gathering ingredients. When they are summoned back, they turn in whatever they found during their time in the woods. They don't carry any tokens. There's just a path they need to learn that keeps them from triggering any wards.”

“What’s the catch?” asked Magpie. “There’s always something.”

“As far as I could tell, she almost never saw anyone other than the other gatherers and a handful of overseers, aside from the occasional encounter with a patrol. My guess is that their housing isn’t located anywhere near the rest of the base.”

She couldn’t wait to tell them the next part.

“I guess it makes sense,” said Magpie. “If you think like Sinaloa. Wall off the workers from everything else. Then no one else has to see them or deal with them. So we can get in, but it wouldn’t do us any good. Kind of like breaking into a prison.”

“Maybe… if the prison had exactly what we needed...”

“You mean...” Skria said.

“No way!” Magpie said.

Lilijoy watched their surprised expressions with satisfaction.

“She told me that the top overseer has a crystal, a huge white crystal the size of her leg. Once, when she found a whole cluster of dragon’s nest fungi, whatever that is, she was allowed to touch the crystal, and see her family as a reward. Her family on the Outside.”

Magpie shook her head. “This sounds way too good to be true. Oracle stones aren’t as rare as they used to be, but I can’t imagine Sinaloa would use one just to reward the serfs. There are way easier ways to reward people like that.”

“I thought about that when she told me. Maybe it’s part of how they manage their systems remotely, like Sinaloa needs to be able to communicate with their systems from the Outside or they would start getting Inside notifications or something.”

Skria looked at them with a confused expression. “This is making my head hurt. You Outsiders make no sense.”

Jessila grunted her agreement.

Lilijoy couldn’t help but agree. The manner in which the Inside and Outside communications were blocked, except not really, gave her a headache as well. All of these workers that Sinaloa controlled and imported had to be stashed somewhere Outside, so why couldn’t Sinaloa manage their systems at the site of their bodies? She envisioned a giant warehouse full of pods.

Except Sinaloa wouldn’t even bother with pods, she realized. They probably just put in an IV and hose them down once in a while.

She shuddered.

“It still sounds sketchy to me,” Magpie said. “But I didn’t think that you pretending to be a forest gnome would pay off either. How long before they return to the dorm?”

“There’s a horn call when it’s time, but she said it had been a long day already, so it might be pretty soon. I was thinking we might not need to follow them anyway. If it all works the way she said it does, there should be really obvious tracks the closer we get.”

“Do any of us have a tracking skill?”

Skria raised her arm. “I have Woodcraft at Journeyman, but I’ve never put any points in it. I’m sure I can follow the trail that a group of humans takes every day, though. I bet we all could.”

“Then we should hurry,” said Lilijoy. “It would be best to get there before the workers return.”

They followed the shadow of the Top for a few minutes before Skria began to find faint evidence of workers passing back and forth. Their surroundings became bright and green as they passed into the area that had once been shaded by the Greatwood and the sky revealed itself. Soon, they missed the clear dark of the forest floor, lumpy as it was, when thick thorn bushes and tangling grasses snared their legs. After a few minutes of suffering the overgrowth, the trails of the workers became as plain as day and they found a narrow dirt path cleared by the daily passage of dozens of feet.

The terrain became undulating and irregular, with steep hills and gullies, which Lilijoy soon realized were caused by the enormous roots of the stump that towered above them. The path wound among the roots and dense thorn bushes, following the path of least resistance. Several times it ventured under great arches, where the earth had eroded beneath the massive roots.

“They’re really not worried about anyone following the workers back to the dorm,” Magpie observed. “We haven’t passed through anything that would cause a high-level scout the slightest problem, as long as they can fool the level wards.”

“I know,” Lilijoy whispered back. “It seems like you would have heard about this from one of your contacts.”

“That’s what’s bothering me. This dorm didn’t show up on any of the maps of the compound.”

“Maybe they built it recently?”

“Or they normally have many more patrols, and pulled off most of their forces to repel the attacks today. It’s been a couple decades since there was an offensive like this. They could have been caught off guard.”

Skria caught their attention from her perch on Jessila’s shoulder.

“There’s no more green ahead of us.”

Soon, Lilijoy could see what she meant. It looked like Sinaloa had burned all the growth ahead of them fairly recently. Bare dirt and the charred remains of stems and sticks lay ahead, with only a few shoots of green popping through here and there. The burn extended in front of them as far as they could see, which was only about twenty meters, due to the irregular terrain.

“Okay, now I know where we are,” said Magpie. “They cleared everything within two hundred meters of the outer wall. If the gatherers' dormitories are outside of the main compound, they should be just ahead. Skria, it’s time for you to get cozy.”

“I am not looking forward to this part,” the tiny glider said, as she made her way up Jessila’s back under the cloak of shadows. Lilijoy heard some muffled complaints emanate from the wriggling lump, and noticed Jess wince several times, when Skria’s sharp claws found skin instead of leather. Still, it was the only way they could hope to escape scrutiny from any watchers above, as Skria’s skill wasn’t up to defeating Sinaloa’s Stealth-detecting goggles.

Jess pulled the hood over her head and faded into the background.

I guess it really was the right thing to stay in that contest. Otherwise we would have had to leave half our party behind, Lilijoy thought.

For the next twenty minutes they moved in turn, advancing through the exposed area as cautiously as they knew how, always staying on the path worn by the workers' feet. This close to the compound, they could hear screams and shouting from the distant combat, and the explosions from the ongoing bombardment shook the air.

Hope they’re all looking up. Lilijoy thought.

She had no illusions that she would be able to hide from an observer with high Stealth if they were to carefully scrutinize the cleared area. She just had to hope that those watching from above were distracted, and perhaps complacent with their fancy goggles.

Lilijoy was hot and itchy by the time they reached the squat earthen building that could only be the dormitory they were seeking. The smell of the burnt earth was stale and moldy, and she was using her system to suppress the coughs from the ash that seemed to find her throat every time her face approached the ground.

She examined the building, a broad single story building with no windows. A low curving wall of earth formed a courtyard in front of the entrance. There were no guards visible and the courtyard gate was open.

Looks like no one is home. I wonder if they even bother to lock the door? Or if they even can lock the door?

The front entrance was a pair of doors that looked as if someone had lazily bound some small logs together, tied them to a post, and called it a day. Really, the whole building reminded Lilijoy of something she might have made from mud during the rainy season, scooping piles of rough earth into a mound and then using a stick to beat it into shape. Her hopes that they would find an oracle stone in such a primitive and neglected setting plummeted.

“What do you think?” Magpie’s whispered voice came from just behind her.

“I wonder what happens when it rains.”

There was a hint of exasperation in Magpie’s reply. “Stay focused. I’ll go ahead and scout the entrance.”

Lilijoy watched Magpie’s progress to the door. It wasn’t that hard to follow someone in stealth, if you knew where they started and where they were headed. She could see small disturbances on the ground, and catch a glimpse of an outline from time to time. She thought of Jack, who might also be called Raven, based on Magpie’s yell to the treetops, and wondered where he might be lurking. He had said he would be observing them for the whole infiltration, which boggled her mind a little.

Of course, he could have been lying about that.

After a few minutes, Magpie returned.

“The good news is that I couldn’t detect anyone past the door. The bad news is that it’s barred from the inside. The other good news is that there’s a gap big enough for Skria at the top.”

There was a muffled sound from nearby, where Jess had parked herself.

“Almost there.” Lilijoy heard her whisper to her passenger.

Another few minutes of careful creeping and they were inside, door safely barred behind them. Ahead of them stretched a hall, with openings every ten feet or so on both sides. The rustic mud theme extended to the interior, with loose straw scattered everywhere adding a farmyard ambiance.

When Lilijoy looked through the first door opening she came to, she saw a small room, with another opening on the opposite wall, through which she could see another small room. This pattern seemed to continue for at least another three rooms, though it has hard to know for sure because the openings didn’t line up very well.

This is more like a hive than a building for people. But I guess this isn’t a building for people, not in Sinaloa’s view. This is a building for serfs, who fortunately don’t need to eat or go to the bathroom. I’m amazed they didn’t just put holes in the ground and cover them with sticks or something.

Magpie gestured to the only other door in sight, a formidable iron-bound slab at the other end of the hall. It looked out of place in the crumbling earthen wall. “Someone barred the door to the outside, so I’m guessing they’re in there,” she whispered.

They were about halfway down the hall, carefully screening each side opening to avoid surprises, when Lilijoy heard footsteps from the other side of the iron-bound door. She dove into the nearest opening, hoping the others would get the message from her actions. She looked back as soon as she could, to see that Magpie and Skria had already disappeared, and Jessila was in the process of squeezing through the opening on the other side of the hall from her.

“Go blow the horn.” a low male voice came through the door. “But you get this shit next time. I’m sick of...” Here the door began to issue a series of metallic clicks that Lilijoy could only assume were latches or locks. “...dealing with these losers whining about their quotas.”

She didn’t have eyes on the door, so she could only wait until steps brought a heavyset man wearing red robes into her view. She scanned him as he walked past.

Magotón

Level 34 H.P. 118

Okay, so his Charm probably isn’t great. Also his health is on the low side for his level, and the name is a giveaway. Guess we have a mage here.

She used the ample time her thinking speed allowed to run through a few scenarios. It was obvious that the man was relaxed and oblivious as he slouched down the hall. Taking him out quietly would be the best solution, if she could coordinate with Magpie.

With that in mind, she put all of her Stealth toward moving quietly and slipped out behind the man, hopefully in full view of Magpie and others. Within a second, Magpie did the same, and the two of them were side by side, following Magotón down the hall. They exchanged glances, and Magpie showed her the garotte in her hands.

At least we never need to decide who hits them low, thought Lilijoy.

Magpie ran a three-count with her fingers and leapt, placing a foot into the small of the man’s back and whipping the garotte around his neck. Lilijoy grabbed his back foot and pushed it up with all her might. The man never had a chance. Magpie rode him as he toppled forward to the ground, too disoriented by the attack to even catch himself before his face hit the dirt floor. He twitched a few times and then lay still.

Magpie quickly searched the man’s body, with no sign of the reluctance she had displayed when confronted with looting the body of their previous opponent. Lilijoy could only assume it was the lack of stripping, or possibly the fact that a larger male body didn’t trigger the same range of emotions. She showed Lilijoy what she found, several rings and an amulet.

A quick Scan showed that the rings were pretty decent, certainly far better than what any of them currently possessed, which was almost nothing.

Ring of Mana Storage

fashioned by an Expert Jeweler

+25 to Mana Well

Ring of Flame Defense

fashioned by an Expert Jeweler

+10 defense against spells using the Flame Clade

Ring of Strength

fashioned by an Expert Jeweler

+5 to Power

The amulet showed no information when scanned, but Lilijoy could detect a glimmer of Mana from the plain silver medallion. She hoped it might be some kind of key, or pass for some or all of the wards, but there was no way to know.

She glanced back down the hall to see that Skria had stopped the door from closing fully with a stick. She gave her furred compatriot a thumbs up, and soon they ventured beyond the iron-bound wood to find a much different type of construction. A short sloping tunnel lay in front of them, with a sandstone floor and smooth adobe-style walls and ceiling. Light was provided by sporadically placed glowstones. There was a single opening just to their right which led to an ascending ladder and another iron-bound door at the end of the tunnel.

Lilijoy caught the other’s attention and gestured to the ladder, while she mimed blowing a horn. Her timing couldn’t have been better, for before she finished her pantomime a low brassy sound roared down the ladder and filled the hall. This was quickly followed by a woman dropping down the ladder shaft.

Just as quickly, she was hit from both sides, top and bottom, four nearly simultaneous blows that dropped her to the ground. Amazingly, this didn’t finish her off, perhaps because there was no particular bonus for attacking from surprise Inside. A studied attack from Stealth simply allowed the aggressor to carefully consider their target and greatly raise their chances for a critical, or as in the case of Magpie’s garotte, land a type of attack that would be impossible any other way.

The next round of blows did the trick, ending the stunned woman before she had a chance to retaliate or cry out. This time, Lilijoy searched the body, but other than a second medallion, all of the items were soulbound.

“All right,” said Magpie in a low voice. “I’m guessing that there are a few more people behind that door. I couldn’t get a level off of this one, which worries me a bit.”

“Do you think the rest of them are just as strong?” Skria asked.

“Probably stronger, sending out the weak ones to do the scut work. It’s time to play all our cards.”

They distributed the rings from the earlier encounter. The Flame Defense ring ended up on Skria’s finger, the Strength ring on Jessila’s. Magpie kept the Mana Storage ring, as it would raise her Mana Well enough to cast her Charge Bolt at full strength twice. Lilijoy and Magpie each kept a medallion, just in case. They were the ones most able to complete the mission, should they make it to the oracle stone.

Lilijoy retrieved the Chaotic Gravity Grenade from her inventory as they briefly discussed their strategy. She relished the sense of nervous anticipation and allowed her adrenaline to flow. All the work, all the planning and training had come to this moment.

The oracle stone could be just behind that door. She might know Attaboy’s location in the next few minutes.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s get that door open.”