LIGHTNOVELONLINE CHAPTER 26: NEW SUBJECTS
Desalia Bardoul, Human ☆☆☆ Jade Dreamspinner, lvl 19
Camp Twintusk, Disputed Territory, Cataclysm Mountains
Desalia Bardoul
Race
Human
Rank
☆☆☆ Jade Dreamspinner, lvl 19
House
Bardoul
Racial Gifts
Minor House Seal, Enhanced System Access, Unlimited Inventory, Dreamer, Gills
Attributes
Dominion
500 [Serpent] /500 ☆
Speed
221 [Poison] /500
Precision
500 [Discipline] /500 ☆
Growth
358 [Void] /500
Arcana
500 [Secrets] /500 ☆
Tensa Pool
386.9 gs
Gear
[hidden]
Core Grafts
Worldsnake [Serpent]
Neutralize Poison [Poison]
Scholar of the Hidden Worlds [Discipline]
Pact of Emptiness [Void]
Two Can Keep A Secret [Secrets]
Class Powers
Attack
Snakebite [Serpent]
Death Fog [Poison]
Toxic Touch [Poison]
Dreampoison [Poison]
Destroy Sleep [Void]
Defense
Shed Skin [Serpent]
Assert Reality [Discipline]
Movement
Dreamstep [Secrets]
Utility
Heat Sense [Serpent]
Dreamserpent's Eye [Serpent]
Voidspeech [Void]
Arcane Encryption [Secrets]
Dream Interpretation [Secrets]
Eidolon
Anima Construct [Discipline]
Support
Lucid Dream [Discipline]
Blessings of the Outer Things [Void]
Morpheus' Ruby [Secrets]
“What resistance remains in the camp, Lieutenant?” Desalia glanced up at the uniformed soldier standing at attention in front of her and started walking toward the clearing where the main camp was located. It stank of burning plastic and blood, but Desalia didn’t seem to notice. She had been rereading the news on her Systablo for the fifth time.
House Vasilias somehow beat us to the Imperial Senate, she thought furiously. How did they achieve Great House status without our spies knowing? How did they so thoroughly outmaneuver us? She didn’t let her distress show on her face, of course.
Desalia Bardoul looked completely out of place in the barren wilderness of the Cataclysm Mountains. She was a tall woman with long, honey-blonde hair that she wore in a thick braid; hard blue eyes that never missed a single detail, and complimented her sharp intellect; she held herself like she was the most capable person in any place she happened to be. This used to get her in all kinds of trouble until people started realizing that she was the most capable person in any place she happened to be.
She was dressed in the formal uniform of the House Bardoul Nightmare Corps Warlock Commandant: the black-and-crimson combat robes were cut to militaristic lines, layering tensa-infused cloth over a half-dozen defense and movement enchantments. She held her Systablo in one hand and her other hand rested on the carved grips of her holstered combat wands, unconsciously stroking them.
The soldier fell into step beside her: a promising young woman from a vassal family though Desalia Bardoul couldn’t quite place the genetic background. Her black hair and olive skin suggested House Ulthus or maybe House Oloron, but her height and cheekbones made Desalia think she maybe had a bit of the common stock in her. It was intriguing.
She had a crisp way of speaking: straight and to the point, “My Lady, the camp is almost entirely pacified. Token resistance remains isolated at the northern side of the camp. There’s an armored RV with one of their combat-ready teams—what do they call them?”
“The word they use is toh-yeh.” Desalia frowned. “Don’t engage with the toh-yeh anymore. We have what we need now; any further risk to personnel or equipment is no longer acceptable.”
They picked their way through the still-smoldering remnants of burned tangles of hardy brambles and poisonous plants. They’d been planted here as a last defense, or maybe as some kind of monster barrier. It hadn’t taken the Nightmare Corps very long to burn through it with fire grafts and infused weaponry.
Desalia glanced back over at the soldier. She still couldn’t decide if she was an Ulthus or Oloron, so she wouldn’t chance it. She couldn’t let the officer’s ignorance infraction slide, though; there were House standards to maintain after all.
“You’ll need to report for cultural education, Lieutenant. Remember, the first step to defeating an enemy…” she trailed off leadingly.
“Is to know your enemy, yes, My Lady. I’ll report for training immediately—” The young woman began a salute and stopped at a curt gesture from Desalia.
“Not right yet, Lieutenant,” she said shortly. “I have need of you here, at least for a few more minutes.”
The officer obviously had ambitions. Her obedience was immediate and professional. Of course, anything less would be grounds for immediate re-education, but there was something about this officer that Desalia had decided she liked.
The development with House Vasilias was troubling indeed, but it didn’t affect House Bardoul’s current path. She would need to find out more of course. She had contacts in Aragon and she had more than one mole in the House Vasilias guard that she would tap soon. But there was other business to attend to at the moment. It was the whole reason she had traveled so far from home.
They had reached the perimeter of the clearing for the main campgrounds. The orcs and their kin had been approved for settlements on the borders of the Cataclysm Mountains in Safe Zones, but it never stopped a few of them from splintering off and trying to strike out on their own. These were fair game for pickup and both Bardoul and Vasilias patrols watched assiduously for signs of the camps.
This camp was bigger than normal, and much better supplied than she’d seen lately. It was worrying. She suspected that Vasilias weapons and ethershards were being funneled to the Safe Zones, but they’d hidden any trace of it well. Of course, with a datamancer like Rikael Vasilias heading the House, it wasn’t surprising that their records would be pristine. This nomadic camp had RVs, food supplies, and even fighters; much better equipped for the dangers of the region.
There was a beat-up RV in front of them with a few plasma burns through it. The smell of burning plastic had intensified. Black smoke poured out of the mobile home in a thick, choking miasma. They went past it and further into the camp past more RVs. Not all of them were burned out, which was good: resource recovery would be able to comb through them and find any infused items.
Desalia looked at her Systablo as they walked, sifting through menus until she found what she needed: the report from the raid. She looked over the casualty numbers for her Nightmare Corps and smiled grimly: no casualties at all.
“This should fill our quota of subjects for the quarter. How many goblins were in the camp?”
The officer glanced up and thought for a moment before she reported, “Forty-three, My Lady. And twenty-eight orcs, nineteen trolls… there were six ogres, but four died in the pacification. That’s all of the monster races. Then there were fifteen humans and two elves.”
“Two elves? The ogres are fantastic… shame there were only two but it’s hard to capture any alive. Make sure the team responsible for their capture is slated for a schedule two—no, make that schedule three bonus. They’ve earned it.
“Where are the elves being held? Do you know what clan they’re from?” Desalia stopped walking, put her Systablo into her Inventory, and focused on the officer, who was once more standing at attention, “Who captured them?”
The officer cleared her throat, standing a little straighter, “I did, My Lady. They’re being held in Carrier Nine. Their clan markings are a little unclear—they’ve undertaken some effort to disguise themselves. We think they’re from the Glimmerwood in the western half of the province of Aragonia.”
“We shall see soon enough, Lieutenant,” Desalia replied.
Her eyes glittered with red sparks, her pupils turning into slits momentarily. The skin around her eyes turned into fine silver scales as she used her Dreamserpent’s Eye graft to peer into the Second World, which she knew by its more poetic name: the Twilight World. If these elves were the kind she was looking for, they wouldn’t be able to hide it from her. They wouldn’t be able to help it.
It was rare to have a graft or ability that allowed any insight into any of the nine Hidden worlds and she had managed to tease out all the utility she could out of the graft over many years. The echoes she could detect in the Twilight World would reveal if they would be merely useful or especially interesting.
The world around her shimmered and shifted subtly as her graft allowed her to peek into the Twilight World. Even outside of the Twilight World, the Cataclysm Mountains was a chaotic place: there were bizarre circulations and concentrations of tensa here causing unpredictable interactions with what little local flora and fauna were left. But in the Twilight World… the place was a nightmare of confusion. Desalia had to narrow her eyes against the wild colors that exploded in her vision.
In reality, the area they were in was an arid, rocky hellscape peppered with dry scrub, twisted trees, and the occasional wild and impossible oasis of life caused by the tensa fluctuations. In the Twilight World, however, reality was a constantly metamorphosing place where the colors were blindingly saturated and mixed in jarring, unnatural ways. Desalia turned her vision toward the camp, her eyes following glowing cords of shimmering crimson and violet light as thick around as her torso: these were the lifelines of the elves, expressed in the Twilight World.
Desalia took a few careful steps forward, cognizant that the ever-shifting landscape she was seeing with her graft-enhanced vision was not a true reflection of her reality. To her eyes, she was standing on a plateau of sheer black stone against a stark orange sky with a white sun. All around her, a profusion of anemone-like swirls of light waved and stretched, extending fractal pieces of themselves into the orange sky in gravity-defying waves of rainbow color. It was dizzying. But Desalia was a Dreamweaver at Jade rank and she was peerless in her understanding of the bizarre interactions of this hidden world—this and many others.
She examined the lifelines that still shone and pulsed with the echo of the elves’ tensa pools. They were Ivory rank at least; the cords of light were too steady and strong to contain anything less than an Ivory rank tensa pool. That was interesting, certainly, but it wasn’t what she was looking for.
Desalia leaned closer and studied the lights, allowing her eyes to adjust to the brilliance. The cord was not one solid beam of light, it was made of a lattice of tiny nodules of varicolored light that blended in a complex weave. The lattice told her a story about the elves that was more eloquent than any narrative either of them could have managed by telling her.
Yes! Desalia thought, her reddened, snake-like eyes widening in surprise as she read the truth of the elves in their lifelines. These elves are moon-blooded! This is what I’ve been looking for. Now we can finally advance our research.
She let go of her Dreamserpent’s Eye graft, allowing the Twilight World to fade from her sight. As usual, her movements in the Twilight World were not connected to her reality. She had ended up in the middle of a blasted-out RV, her hands hovering over a melted pile of slag. She straightened, fastidiously picking her way out of the ruined RV. She had not felt like she had taken a single step in the Twilight World, but that’s how it was. Desalia depended on her guards to keep her from wandering anywhere unsafe when she used the power.
She glanced around and waved them away with a subtle gesture, satisfied at their immediate obedience. There was no threat here: the camp had been almost completely pacified. Prisoners were being loaded into carriers and Bardoul troops marched through the large camp of mobile homes and RVs.
This was a mid-sized tribe of nomads who called themselves members of the Kildari Federation. Whatever that was. They are brigands and criminals, pure and simple. They were rebels against the Imperial Seat and their rightful lords. But orc-kind had always been resistant to Imperial influences: it’s what made them such useful test subjects.
Groups of black-uniformed Nightmare Corps soldiers marched through the makeshift streets of the camp, securing the area and beginning their resource recovery action. The lieutenant was waiting outside of the burned-out RV. She looked questioningly at Desalia but didn’t say anything. “What’s your name, Lieutenant?”
“Virgon, My Lady. Petra Virgon. We’re a vassal of Oloron.”
“Virgon? How intriguing. It’s gratifying that there are still surprises left for me about a topic I had thought myself an expert in,” Desalia said with a smile.
Lieutenant Virgon said, “Surprises, My Lady?”
“It’s nothing. You’re to receive a schedule five bonus for the capture of the two elf subjects. You have the gratitude of the House.”
Lieutenant Virgon was speechless for a moment, then she saluted again. “Thank you, My Lady!”
Desalia Bardoul nodded and began walking again, gesturing for Lieutenant Virgon to accompany her. It was important to reward your servants for well-done work; just as important as re-education when they faltered.
“What’s your class, Lieutenant Virgon?” she asked.
“Technomancer, My Lady. I graduated from the Citadel Academy, the youngest human in my class with the highest marks of the year.”
“You graduated from the Citadel Academy top of your class? That’s impressive. You know, I went to Citadel Academy.”
Lieutenant Virgon looked away, “That’s… that’s why I went there. I wanted to be in the Nightmare Corps because that’s where you went before you joined the main House.”
Desalia considered the naked ambition on display here. Virgon was a vassal of a vassal. They were so far down the political pecking order, they barely rated a glance. And yet… The woman had proven to be resourceful. A Technomancer would have a hard time against one moon-blooded elf, let alone two.
The Class was a subset of the Mage primary and a very specialized one at that. Technomancers were not known for their offensive capabilities, especially against elves, whose grafts tended to be particularly effective against technology-based effects. That spoke to Lieutenant Virgon’s tactical flexibility and ways to work around her weaknesses.
There was still the problem of House Vasilias. Perhaps she could encourage excellence while addressing the problem of a jumped-up rival. If House Vasilias began exercising their voting authority in the Senate, it could spell disaster for House Bardoul. Even if it would not doom Bardoul for Vasilias to remain a Great House, it would set Desalia’s plans back by decades and that was unacceptable. She eyed the young woman in front of her consideringly.
Finally, she said, “Do you know how I reward well-placed ambition, Lieutenant Virgon? With responsibility. With power. With…well, enough rope to hang yourself if that’s what you choose to do with it. Is that what you want?”
The smaller woman nodded firmly saying, “Yes, My Lady.”
“Two moon-blooded elves…very impressive.” She trailed off and stayed quiet for a long moment. “I have a special mission for you, Lieutenant. This operation has all but wrapped up, very successfully thanks in large part to you.” She sighed, “By now, the entire Empire knows about House Vasilias’ sudden rise in power but no one knows how it was accomplished. You are going to leverage the same tactical thinking that allowed you to beat two moon-blooded elves of at least Ivory Rank to assist in our endeavor to beat the other Houses to that knowledge.”
“Yes, My Lady, of course.” Virgon was practically brimming with keenness. Desalia liked that.
“Fill out a six-person team with your best Reborn. You’ll be going to Aragonia.”
“Vasilias territory, My Lady? That’s dangerous. I assume you want us to be discrete?”
Desalia nodded, “You’ll be collecting a Bardoul resource—a Scion of the main line—from Argent City in the wild frontier of Aragonia. You’ll put your team at his disposal upon your arrival. I have a mission profile for you with tactical analysis waiting for you in this data jewel.” She took a finger-sized bright-green faceted gem from her pocket and handed it to Lieutenant Virgon. “That’s classified DatSec Level 5, so take the appropriate precautions.”
Lieutenant Virgon took the crystal and nodded, “Yes, My Lady. I’ll get started right away.”
Desalia nodded and dismissed the lieutenant. She continued through the wrecked camp, passing Bardoul Nightmare Corps soldiers and ruined RVs. No bodies though, the Corps had been very precise in their application of force. They knew the primary goal of the exercise was prisoners. Desalia arrived at the main clearing of the camp where her troops had amassed the last group of captives to be loaded into the transports. She looked over the small crowd under guard.
They were on their knees, some with bruises or other superficial wounds, others looking disheveled but otherwise uninjured. They were a representative sample of monstrous races from the so-called Kildari Federation: orcs and goblins most numerous, followed by a few trolls and slab-muscled ogres, and three or four crimson-skinned hobgoblins. Though they were on their knees, they did not appear to be cowed. It didn’t matter even a little bit to Desalia what their state of mind was.
She checked over each of the prisoners, making special note of distinguishing physical features. Once she’d finished her quick inspection, she allowed her troops to start loading them up into a nearby boxy prisoner transport. It was a long trek back to the portable lab—they were much further than they should have been—even with the portal hub that they had managed to secure only a few kilometers to the South. Desalia waited until the last captive was loaded into the transport before she turned away and strode to the carrier with a dozen elite Bardoul Nightmare Corps guards arranged around it. A big numeral “9” had been stenciled onto the side.
Desalia went to the back of the transport and a ramp extended down from it, allowing her to walk up and approach the heavily armored door. She pressed her hand into the depression and cleared her throat before she spoke the complex syllables of the passphrase: a seemingly random assortment of tones and clicks. The door released several locks on the perimeter, letting out a hissing cloud of gas.
Transport 9 was designed for high-rank Reborn. There were layered enchantments carved into every surface and it was armored in Dragonsteel: enchanted steel that had been alloyed with ground dragon scales. The door opened silently into a tiny, closet-like chamber where there was another, equally heavily armored door.
She stepped into the little chamber and the outer door swung silently shut on its own. A small yellow light turned on, bathing the little room in amber. As the outer door finished its locking sequence, Desalia felt the skin-tightening tingle of an etheric charge spreading over her.
She had her House seal encoded in her etherheart, so she wasn’t subject to the oppressive effects of the enchantments though she could feel hints of the secondary effects. It was a distinctly uncomfortable experience. She ignored it and entered another code into the interior door. The interior door immediately opened, again on silent hinges.
Desalia walked into the new, larger compartment of the transport. This was maybe ten meters long and four meters wide with metallic benches on either side and down the middle for transporting groups. There were two elves in here now, bound hand and foot in heavy restraints. One was lying on the middle metal bench, the other was kneeling on the floor, meditating. They looked like they’d been through a battle.
Of course, the House Vasilias debacle had to be handled, but honestly, that old feud was just a publicity stunt. Oh, she knew Rikael Vasilias took the feud seriously but none of the other Houses did. She resented the feud for the distraction it was. Why should she waste House resources on a useless inter-house war when she had such important research to do here?