ZETA

“Well, Natalie, were you followed?” asked the cloaked man.

“Yes, for a while, Mr. Vagos. I apologize, but she saw me. Thankfully, I lost her in the markets,” replied Mrs. Olgue.

“I see.” He scanned the area, and Zeta and Hera pressed against the wall of their hiding place.

“Natalie? I always called her Nat. And why does she sound livelier?” Hera whispered.

“Very well. Now that our business is concluded, I suppose your reward is just,” Vagos said. He reached into his cloak, and Natalie’s eyes brightened with glee. Vagos pulled out a purple cored sigma, a Grand sigma. “It took a while to ship to me, but I have it. A gift from the Pillar of Life.”

“Finally!” Natalie said as she took the sigma. She took it from his hands and embraced it, caressing it like a cat found astray from its mother, in need of the gentle warmth of a maternal figure. “Youth…” she mumbled in strange, dazed lunacy.

“Yes. In its entirety,” said Vagos. “No more of those partial aging reversals that last less than a week. You’re body and mind will be as blessed to the age twenty-five once more.”

Mrs. Olgue employed the sigma, and Zeta watched in amazement as the wrinkles on her skin smoothed out. Her hair filled with lush color and nutrition, the gray threads of decaying strands vanishing. Her curves returned to a profound definition. All traces of the elderly woman had disappeared, and a younger one stood in her place, a restored artifact of a past age.

She ran to the edge of the docks and cried upon seeing her reflection in the water. It reminded Zeta of some story from myth, although for the life of him he couldn’t remember the title. Sorry, Sir Kagan, another instance where I learned nothing from your lectures. Although, if he could recall any element of that tale, the ending was tragic.

His gut sank with that memory. Nevertheless, he continued to watch.

“Natalie, I received your last report and read it thoroughly,” Vagos said while she fawned over her image. “You’ve determined that the Harpy will not be a valuable addition to the disciples of Ms. Kurova?”

Kurova. There was that name again. The Pillar of the Mind. Hera’s apparent doppelganger. Mrs. Olgue nodded but paid no glance to Vagos.

“It’s a shame then. Unfortunately, you’ve made ties with the Harpy, and as a potential Operative, you must cut them. Do you have a plan to kill her?”

“I did,” she said wistfully, her eyes locked on the makeshift mirror. “But it’s ruined now that she saw me.”

“I understand. These things happen with the inexperienced. Given normal circumstances, I would have helped you come up with a solution.”

Olgue faced him in shock. “Given normal circumstances?”

Vagos raised his hand, and suddenly the sea water rose and wrapped around her arms and legs, hugging tightly. “Sea Bind.” Mrs. Olgue screamed as she was dragged off the dock and toward the surface of the water.

“But you see, in your ignorance, you were tracked. You useless bitch.”

“Mrs. Olgue!” Hera cried, running out of cover and to the scene. It was too late, for Vagos dragged her beneath the sea. Bubbles were all that was left. The purple-cored Life sigma popped out of the water and landed at Vagos’s feet, the sign that its user had perished.

Vagos snatched it up. All sigmas at or above the Grand grade only had one copy. It would be incredibly foolish to leave them lying around. Vagos’s menacing gaze shifted to Hera, who stood in the open in a horrified sweat.

“There you are, Harpy. Since you’re here, I’ll assume the swordsman is around as well.”

No point in hiding anymore. Zeta exited cover and faced Vagos while Hera ran to the edge of the dock, reaching into the water as if there might be a chance of saving her neighbor. The woman may have spied on her, but Hera had a heart. Even if it was put towards a vain attempt, there was compassion. Empathy.

She’s going to be an excellent Servant of Humanity.

Unfortunately, Hera fell into Vagos’s Sea Bind trap, and water wrapped around her arm before she could pull away, yet he didn’t tug yet.

“Hey! Let her go! Who are you?” Zeta demanded.

Vagos smirked. “Jorn Vagos, a Pentagon Operative. Assignment: Aspic. Technically I shouldn’t tell you that, but I doubt it’s going to matter momentarily. There’s no need to introduce yourself. I know full well who the two of you are.”

“The Pentagon?” Zeta asked. The name didn’t ring a bell, but for Hera it did.

She was sweating in terror as she tried to release the water tendril from around her leg to no success. “You're with them? Here? So Rex wasn’t speaking nonsense!”

“Balder Rex has no affiliation with us,” Vagos said. “One thing in your bravado was correct, Harpy of Aspic. The fool had no chance with the mistress of the Mind.”

“You were watching our fight?” Zeta asked. His head was swirling with questions and injected with emotions ranging from confusion to anger. “Why didn’t you step in to help? Better yet, why did you save us and then just disappear!”

Vagos shrugged. “It’s my duty to gather all kinds of information, especially on potential threats. I freed the two of you from the sewer because the Harpy was on my radar. After all the effort I’ve given to her, the last thing I needed was for her to die by drowning in that disgusting place.”

“Me?” The terror in her expression only increased. Hera’s forehead was glassed with sweat. Loos strands of her hair fell above her eye returning the bangs she once had before Zeta cut them off. “What interest am I to you people! What do you want?”

When Hera pulled on the water tightly, he released her, letting her stumble and fall. “Careful not to pry where you aren’t wanted,” said Vagos. “I am a spy, or at least partially. You both did a good job slaying the so-called Lion, and I commend you, but that hardly goes a long way.”

“Answer me!”

“Does it matter? Unless you’re willing to hand over your sigmas and forget I ever spoke to you, Harpy, I’m going to kill you. You’re in Mrs. Kurova’s way.”

Zeta unsheathed Black Meridian. The sharpened edge glimmered, and he grew jittery with eagerness to test it. “Absolutely not! You will not come near Hera!”

“First Rex, now you. What the hell do you want with my sigmas!” Hera asked as she backed away.

“You share a focus with the Pillar of the Mind, so unless you’re willing to be her servant, which my late mole deemed you unfit to do,” Vagos gestured to Olgue’s drowning, “such a condition has become inconvenient.”

Hera took several angry breaths. “Lena Kurova again. She’s already a powerful Mind sigma user. What the hell does that have to do with me!”

“Powerful is not enough for the Pillars,” Vagos explained. “It’s not just Ms. Kurova. We are implementing a mass call for all their sigma focuses. Matter. Mind. Deceit. Light, and Life. No one outside the Pentagon shall possess their power. That is the order, and I will enforce their wishes.”

“Not going to happen,” Zeta declared, zipping in for his first strike. He aimed for Vagos’s head.

Vagos clasped his hands together. “Body of Water.” Zeta’s sword cut through a liquid as Vagos’s form collapsed into water that slipped into the sea.

A moment later, a titan of water emerged in his place. A behemoth, with Vagos sitting at its heart. “Sea Titan’s Aspect! Trident Spears!” He tossed his hands like a javelin, and the liquid behemoth fired several massive projectiles from its form. They bombarded the docks with more devastation, the last thing Aspic needed. A booming noise consumed the area, and Zeta leaped backward as they destroyed the local warehouses.

Wooden splinters dominated the airspace. Cobblestones functioned like pebbles fired from cannons. The dust of torn mortar and smoke obscured Zeta's vision and tickled his lungs.

At the end of the barrage, he hardly made it out of the way. I’m ready to fight again, but this is something else entirely!

Hera grabbed him. “Zeta! No! Not this suddenly. There’s no way we’re going to win as we are!”

He wanted to argue, but then he saw the titanic form Vagos adopted and realized how she could not be more right.

Vagos readied another barrage of projectiles, tossing them from his avatar as if they were extra limbs severed and regrown with ease. The three-pronged spear of water dug at the docks like a shovel excavating dirt. Only, this dirt was civilization, yet here Vagos was making it his playground.

Cannons roared in the distance as actual artillery began to land in the area. At first, Zeta and Hera thought Vagos had brought a fleet with him, and their hearts sank once more. However, this was the Technocracy, and Vagos was the target. Apparently, they didn’t appreciate the further chaos he was creating.

The cannon fire tore through parts of Vagos’s titan, and it was evident even he was outmatched. He shifted the water of his form to place gently place him on the docks.

Vagos faced them with a scowl. “Congratulations on stalling, Hera Verdure. However, don’t mistake me. I’ll come back to kill you and your friend, and any soul you speak my name to will perish as well. Know that anywhere you go, the Pentagon is watching you. They have been for several years.”

Before cannons destroyed the portion of docks he was standing on, Vagos leaped into the sea. The frigates tried to follow him, but in the water, Vagos was the world’s fastest fish. With sigma enhancements, he swam to the ocean’s horizon within minutes; he possessed enough stamina to reach the other shore.

The port was demolished, ravaged by a war in the course of seconds. Zeta and Hera were in stunned silence until forces from the Technocracy swarmed the area, initiating quarantine and reconstruction efforts. The frigates formed a blockade on the coast.

“Hera, I know we agreed to tell each other about the world on a sporadic basis, but I think this is an excellent time to inform me on whatever the hell the Pentagon is.”

“I’m astonished that you would give us a ship, Igel!” Hera said.

They found Igel while rushing up and down the port searching for someone planning a transport out of Aspic. They needed to get out of Aspic as fast as possible, but unfortunately no ship available planned to travel to the Selatin Kingdom. And all the ones returning to New Kellus were expected to stick around for several more weeks.

“Eh. Don’t thank me yet. Wait until you see it! You two will have it all for yourself.”

“What! That’s amazing!”

He took them to a massive frigate, likely the biggest in the harbor. This is what Igel acquired? Taking it from Aspic almost felt like theft considering the city’s current state. Since they didn’t have a crew, sailing to the Selatin Kingdom would be impossible, but maybe they could get to the Western Shelf and try their luck there.

Unfortunately, that is the direction that Vagos was swimming. Hera was terrified of that prospect, and Zeta was as well. However, a part of him didn’t mind if they soon crossed paths. He was eager for a better challenge.

Hera told him snippets about the Pentagon, but all were from an incoherent, garbled mess. He stopped asking and instead opted to calm her down. Being ‘targeted’ by this group really upset her nerves. Apparently, the Pentagon ‘didn’t exist,’ at least not formally. Everyone knew they were around, but no one dared to admit that fact, not even in a private space. All that was spoken of was mere speculation and conjecture.

The man they met, Vagos, was an Operative, a rumored figure that is stationed in a specific city around the world with the goal of preventing threats to the Pentagon and taking care of ‘local matters.’ Zeta shivered at the thought. That was all he could extract from Hera.

Hera nearly drooled as she glanced up towards the vacant frigate. “Holy–. Igel, are you sure it’s okay for us to use this? It’s kind of…big.”

Igel seemed puzzled for a moment, then he burst out laughing. “Oh, that’s rich! You think I mean the big one. Nah.” He pointed next to the ship, to a tiny sailboat with a withered white flag and a questionable quality of wood. “There’s your ship. Bon voyage.”

“I won’t miss you,” Hera said with a frown.

“It will have to do,” Zeta said.

They boarded the ship, and a wave of sentimentality washed over Zeta. Leaving Aspic so suddenly prevented him from cherishing the city’s value, even if others would argue it had none.

“You’re not going to question my departure?” Hera asked Igel.

He shook his head. “When we spoke a few days ago, I could sense what you were planning, and I accepted it. It’s best this way. Aspic is my home, always is, and always will be. I may not be that smart, but I sense that you need to be elsewhere Hera. Do the world proud.”

Tears welled in her eyes almost immediately, like she had been holding back a waterfall for some time now. She ran up to Igel and hugged him tightly before climbing aboard the tiny ship.

“And you,” Igel continued, glaring at Zeta. “From what I hear, she’s taken up your cause. If you lead her astray, I will find you and kill you. And is she dies before you do–”

“I get it.”

“Good. Don’t be mediocre, then. If you want to be a hero, you better be in the newspapers within a couple of years. Otherwise–”

“Yes, I know.”

He smiled. “Safe travels, you two, on behalf of all of Aspic.”

He helped Zeta push the boat into the water, and Zeta hopped in before he could get wet. Igel waved as they drifted from the coast and into the ocean.

Zeta stood at the end of the boat until the whole port city came into his field of vision. He couldn’t resist yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Goodbye, people of Aspic! Goodbye, Greenwich! Goodbye, Axle Island! I promise I will heal this world!”

“Oh, by the way, you owe me Nibbles for the sword’s repair.”

“On behalf of all the masters, I will correct it! I have help now! I’ll find others! I’ll defeat the enemies of humanity! I promise!”

“Idiot! Are you going to help me paddle or just stand there screaming?” Hera barked.

“Thank you, Sir Kagan! Thank you to all those who helped me become the man I am today! Thank you!”

“The boat’s tipping! You’re unbalancing us!”

“Right.” Zeta sat properly and took one of the paddles, managing balance in the boat.

After an hour, he glanced behind him. Aspic was but a tiny speck, and the island nothing but a thin line. But it was more than Aspic, the city he had known for so little time. Many cities like it would come and go, but he appreciated them all with the same vigor.

No, it wasn’t just a departure from Aspic, but from Fer. From the mountain and the lake in Greenwich. From Rog and from Hodge. From Igel and Berto, Gust and Crue. From Axle Island. From his fellow Servants of Humanity. From Sir Kagan. From his home.

Zeta was going to miss it so damn much.

Sea Titan’s Aspect - Liquid: Can adopt a colossal avatar of water that serves as a destructive extension of the user’s physical abilities. (33465).

(A) Force of will while rising to the surface after being sufficiently submerged in water. Requires half a ton of water to be present. The Sea Titan’s Aspect must be connected to a sizeable body of water at all times to function. By default, Sea Titan’s Aspect is merely a massive form surrounding the user in an avatar of water, however, the water is still water and still susceptible to nature. Sea Titan’s Aspect comes with an array of extensions.

(E) Trident Spears - Liquid, Devastation: Shoots tree, massive spears from the avatar of Sea Titan’s Aspect in a fan before the user. (14468)

(A) Throw an air javelin from the heart of Sea Titan’s Aspect. Aim to where the central prong should land. Expect the spears to bombard the area in a line, with a left and right spear destroying areas to the sides of the target. Can repeatedly toss air javelins from either hand to create a barrage.