"Operations protocol request. This is Gathered Might of the Militat. We are encountering unexpected resistance. Please advise."
"Thousand-Faceted Nelumbo. State the nature of the resistance." Nelumbo grumbled a little under her breath. Might was being excessively laconic, as was her wont. Her Clarity profile was growing higher, as tended to happen with age.
"Primitive sailing vessels. They are proving oddly resilient for their construction. Also, they are manned by free po spirits and animated corpses." The colossus sounded offended, as well she might. In a closed system, it was necessary to recycle the dead, but to use them as automata was another matter.
Nelumbo peered at the hologlyphic images Might sent her. Might was correct; these largely-wooden vessels should have been no match for her. Some of them were even badly holed and ought to have sunk, but were remaining impossibly afloat. "Necromancy." Records of the science of undeath were sparse in Autochthonia; there was no realm of the dead there as legend said had been true in Creation. Still, there were traces.
"Undoubtedly. Nelumbo, I have an Essence flux reading from one of the rearmost vessels. The closest match is to a Soulsteel caste Exalt, but there are distinct differences." The new hologlyph showed an immense black sharp-toothed fish thrashing in foam.
Nelumbo took a moment to ponder this development. "Are you in danger of taking serious damage, Might?"
"I do not believe so. The Exalt, if that is what she is, is not reading as powerful enough to readily challenge one of my stature." Nelumbo raised an eyebrow at that.
"Beware your assumptions," she told Might after a moment. "The Exalted did not wait to maximize their power before attacking the Primordials. They did not even have the advantage of numbers, if one counts the entire demon horde. Yet they prevailed. You have barely begun to analyze this threat."
"Correct," Might said finally, sounding chastened. "I acknowledge my error. Nonetheless, I have not yet been more than scratched. I still believe the primary analysis is correct: they cannot do me serious injury unless they are hiding more powerful weapons."
"There may be an opportunity in this," Nelumbo pointed out. "We expected to have to scour the Underworld. That may prove unnecessary. Prepare to withdraw and reconfigure. Don't worry...we'll be back."
"Well, captain?" Xander had spent the last few days trying his best to be part of the crew, swabbing the deck and very literally learning the ropes. Some glared at him, some ignored him, and at least a few refused to let him do anything to help. Now, though, something was up.
Captain Redfang came sliding down the mast. "I don't like what's ahead. We shouldn't be seeing Skullstone flags out here, but there's a small fleet of them in the distance. I don't like to think what they're up to."
"Zombie ships?" The captain had done his best to fill him in on the political situation out here, but there were gaps in his knowledge. Communication was fairly slow at sea. Moreover, sometimes Xander just didn't have the background for what the captain was trying to explain. For instance, supposedly this Skullstone Archipelago was claiming to be a haven for the living and the undead alike, and Xander knew for a fact that would never work. Redfang agreed with him, but said he knew a lot of people who dealt with the Archipelago on peaceful terms.
"That, and something I don't understand." Redfang rubbed his forehead thoughtfully. "A big blocky thing, not a ship so far as I could tell. It rose up out of the water and vanished into thin air."
"Through a portal?" That might come in handy. "Swirly lights of any kind?"
"I couldn't see. As far as I could tell, it just...the top of it cut off, and the part of it I could see rose up to that level and was gone. Doesn't mean it won't be back." The captain sat down on the rise in the deck. "I don't like strange things around Skullstone ships-I don't like Skullstone, period-but it'll take days to go around, and they've probably spotted us by now anyway. Our best bet might be to act friendly. Unless you think you can pull some more Solar magic out of your breeches."
Xander thought about that for a moment. "I can do that, Captain. Just be aware that a lot depends on what they can do and who's making these zombies. I'd rather not pick a fight either." Buffy would no doubt go in fighting, but he was starting to get the idea that his powers weren't even remotely the same as hers. Maybe he could develop super-strength in time, but he sure didn't have it now.
Redfang grunted. "Dealing with Skullstone, if there's a fight, you aren't going to be the one picking it. Of course, they might just be a trade mission. You never know with them."
Fred sighed. It hadn't worked. What had she done wrong? Just for a moment, she thought about going ahead and hunting the cockroach-maybe her intuition was wrong-but then she'd have to eat it at the end. Luna seemed not to want this particular honor.
She unfolded herself and stood, touching the glowpanel pad. The lights came back up. There was one remaining alternative: she could go among the Dragon-Blooded as herself. That would tip off Sage of the Depths and his friends. Also, there was no reason they should see her as a friend. If they had any plans, they'd certainly do their best to hide them from her.
No, she needed a way of slipping through their quarters unseen, or at least unnoticed.
Fred unfolded her legs, rose to her feet, and walked out into the corridor. The chill blue hallway stretched out for what seemed like miles. This stretch of the hall thronged with Deep Sages, who peered curiously at her as she passed. They were like her half-squid form and yet were not. Their high-domed bulbous heads resembled those of their progenitor, and differed from her long, conical shape. More, where Fred's arms and legs formed from squid arms and tentacles, the Deep Sages retained a human-like skeletal structure and had octopus arms around their mouths. She supposed it wasn't any less biologically-sound than her own shape, considering that vertebrate limbs were completely different structures from cephalopod arms anyway.
The Deep Sages bowed, if slightly, as she passed. She wasn't on the level of their patrons, of course, but they acknowledged her both as an Exalt and as one of their own kind. The Shadow Swimmers weren't quite as deferential-or more accurately, it bothered them that they had no counterpart shark-Exalt for Swims-In-Shadow to mentor. Never mind that there weren't that many Exaltations to go around. They probably didn't know that.
Out of the main corridor and into a more elaborate side hallway, which opened out into a large antechamber. Flickering torches-a symbol of power and wealth, down here where the air had to be eternally scrubbed-marked the entrance to Throth-Shulgu's home. Fred closed her eyes momentarily and took on her half-squid form-her war-form, Sage of the Depths insisted on calling it, though she couldn't imagine it was ideal for combat. But it was a polite way of meeting with Throth-Shulgu, a very smart woman who headed Luthe's technological research department. For one thing, it let them converse in Advanced Cephalopod, as Fred thought of it. Though in all honesty, she was still learning how to speak it. The Sage had had to use a charm just to speak with her that first time. Still, the scientist always acted as if it were a great honor even to give her language lessons.
Throth-Shulgu's door slid aside, creaking slightly, and the Deep Sage bowed to her. Fred reflexively started to bow back before stopping herself; Throth-Shulgu had been mortified the first time that happened. Instead she smiled and let a pleased greeting flicker across her skin.
"It's fascinating studying your equations," Throth said. "Are you certain you really need me? I see so much familiar in them, and yet in unfamiliar forms."
"I promise I'm just a novice," Fred assured her. "I may've had some important insights, but that doesn't mean I understand all the implications. And really I learned a lot from my professors. Most of it, probably."
Throth blinked slowly. "I don't suppose any of the names Devon, Salina, or Silur mean anything to you?" At Fred's puzzled head-shake, she added, "Those were the founders of the three great schools of sorcery. There are bits and pieces of their work in the equations you drew up for me."
Fred sidled up to a seat. Throth wouldn't sit unless she did first, and the octopus-woman was getting on up in years. "Well, I mean, reality is reality. That is, any valid theory of magic would have to come from the information embedded in the world already. It's like string theory and quantum gravity. We can't resolve which is which until we figure out how to get experimental data, and since they deal with aspects of the world that are hard to get at, there's no telling when we'll find out the truth."
"How fascinating!" Throth beamed at her. Fairly literally; the cephalopod beak wasn't built for smiling. "Silur would never have said that, but it could have come from the mouths of either Devon or Salina, depending on how it was meant."
Fred swished her highest set of arms around irritably, and folded them. "The important thing is that it doesn't have to come from any of them. You can describe things in an infinite number of different ways-"
"Now Silur," Throth said softly.
"-but either they match and mesh, in which case they're frequently all true and correct, or they don't, and you can tell it by careful examination."
Throth knotted a pair of her mouth-tentacles together. "I wonder. Could it be I'm in the presence of the founder of a fourth great school? That would be beyond amazing."
Fred blushed. She could do that as easily with her squid face as her human one. "I'm only just starting, ma'am."
"Everyone starts somewhere. And the founders' work built on one another. Salina was Devon's pupil. If you succeeded in integrating them all, extracting useful principles from each-"
"Please let's not get ahead of ourselves. I still need the basics, ma'am." She bowed her head, as much from calculation as embarrassment. Throth hid her eyes behind her mouth tentacles from shame at shaming an Exalt. "Look, let's start with the derivation of Essence. Energy comes from a lot of sources, but given what you say about the structure of Creation and its surrounding universes, I'm thinking that perhaps the primary energy flow, what you call Essence, maybe comes from the differential between universes."
"Please go on. I will try to follow."
Fred had spent all night wracking her brains, trying to work this out, and she thought she had a working hypothesis. "Energy flows from greatest concentration to least, and it sounds as if the greatest potential in these parts is in the Wyld. All the other worlds were made from the Wyld, and the most potential for change is there. So much that it's barely controllable. Then that energy flows through Yu-Shan, then Creation, and finally into the Underworld. You can tap it at any point that you can reach it, but its characteristics are different because it has different surroundings and a different energy density."
"So a demesne is?" Throth asked deferentially, as if she was the student.
"A thin spot where the energy can flow through from 'higher' dimensional planes at a faster rate. You can tap into that by setting up a structure that interacts with it like a mill, and that's what you call a manse."
"Like a mill?" That seemed to be amusing, confusing, and startling all at once. "How curiously simple."
"Well, in the most basic sense. The Essence passing through interacts with some aspect of the structure and sets it in motion, and then the rest of the structure is pushed along by that motion and transforms it into other kinds of energy. The higher the energy level, the greater the potential for change; that's what energy is."
"What about Elsewhere, then?"
Fred pondered that for a moment. "My best guess is that Elsewhere is a sort of dammed-up region inside Creation or Yu-Shan. I know that's sort of the opposite of what the texts say, that it's outside."
"What the texts say is irrelevant, Exalted One." Throth's face shone again. "Even the greatest minds can be wrong. So says the only surviving document written by Devon himself, the explanation of why he burned his books."
"Um. Well. Anyway, I think Elsewhere is a low-energy region that would be part of the Underworld, if Essence were allowed to flow into it. But somehow the flow has been stopped up, and so there's no change there at all except the occasional introduction of new items in storage. It seems as if it should be outside, but geometry is relative after all, and you couldn't block a space that was really outside. Essence would leak in around the edges."
Throth nodded. "I believe that makes sense. It isn't like any school I've ever read about, but it hangs together. I suppose the only test would be to get you initiated into sorcery and see what you can do with it."
Fred blushed at that. "I dunno. I've done some pretty freaky things with nothing more magical than a toaster. You might not want to see me as a sorceror."
"You have an unconventional mind." Throth stood. "And, yes, that is a compliment. Pardon me, Exalted One, but I must ask if you are hungry. I certainly could use some refreshment."
She gave a nod and a shrug. Her appetites seemed to be shifting, the last few days. Though she still wished she could find a taco. Maybe these people had better ingredients. "What's on the menu?"
Xander was busily trying not to barf. The Skullstone delegation wasn't attacking-which was good, because he didn't think zombies would frighten as easily as pirates-but they had begun negotiations by bringing up an undead cow from the hold. Some part of his mind acknowledged that yes, it could be a practical way of preserving and transporting meat that he would have eaten under any other circumstance...and was promptly seized and beaten to a pulp by the rest of him, which was screaming about horrible unclean abominations.
"Are their ships always like this?" He had Captain Redfang alone for just a moment-except for the zombies trying to wait on them, and those clearly couldn't hear or they'd have taken the cow away. Still, he kept his voice as low as possible. "It looks like they were in a fight with that thing."
"No. No, they can make their ships float with giant holes in the hull and move with torn sails, but generally they don't." Redfang dealt with all this by growing very wry.
"They give you any clue what it was they were fighting?" As far as he was concerned, any enemy of theirs was probably a friend of his.
"Not a hint. I don't think they know themselves. The few living crewmen I've encountered sounded terrified. One of them mentioned a giant man of metal and clay. I have no idea what that could be." The captain absently popped a shred of meat into his mouth, then seemed to realize what he'd done and spat it onto the deck.
"You." The voice was hard, flat, and full of malice. "Solar. What are you doing here? And with them?"
"You talking to me?" He tried to keep his own tone light. Contrast mattered. "I'm here because I was dumped on a deserted island by..." Hmm. Who had it been again? "Someone who said they were my friend."
"Not the good Captain or her lovely ladies?" The woman-he thought-had cut her green-black hair as short as any of the Tya, which certainly gave her a butch appearance, but something about the way she carried herself was different. Also, while he wasn't sure that all of the Tya were what Willow would have called trans men, none of them would have worn the soulsteel bustier this woman was wearing. The ones who wouldn't have objected to the emphasis on their breasts would still have said it was ridiculously impractical as armor. Admittedly, if she wanted him to stare at hers, she'd put the skull and crossbones in the right spot. "What are you looking at, Solar? I know what you are."
"You can call me Roberts. The Dread Pirate Roberts. Don't think I've had the pleasure." Captain Redfang was grinding his teeth. Every now and then he had trouble thinking of the captain and his crew as men-but not in this woman's presence. Her body language was completely different from theirs.
She sneered at Xander, then gave Redfang a look that was clearly meant to be a leer but came across more as if she were sticking out her tongue. "Call me Ebon Siaka...Roberts. You're not the first Solar I've met. Though Darktide has far more sense than you."
"Well, you're definitely the first...whatever you are...that I've run across." Something about her made his skin crawl. She breathed without thinking about it, yet something about her made him think of Angelus all the same. Not even Angel, who at least pretended to goodness-Angelus at his worst.
"I serve the Silver Prince," she said. "That's all you need to know."
"The Silver Prince had a lot of trouble with giant robots lately?" He doubted he could pump her for information with any success, but it hardly hurt to try.
She gave him a blank look. "Giant...what? No, I don't even know what you're talking about, Roberts." Well, that was more than he'd expected. She'd fought a giant something. Also, he suddenly noticed she was wearing a sidearm-an actual gun of some kind, though it looked as if it might be more of a raygun than a bullet-gun. Strange.
"A giant...metal man?" Siaka stared at him, then gave a snarl. A second one to the Captain, and then she turned away.
"Done with you, Roberts. You've got nothing to trade. Help us make repairs and we'll go back to port and leave you be."
Xander gave Redfang a conciliatory look. "That sounds like a bargain where she's concerned. I say we take it." Ebon Siaka half turned, as if she'd heard him, but she just shrugged and muttered something about "respect" and "Darktide". "I don't guess you know what she is?"
Redfang put his hands up. "I couldn't tell you. She's surely Anathema of some kind-no offense, just the name they give you-but she and you seem nothing alike. Still, you both have the same...aura of power. In a way. But I can tell you I helped drop her into the ocean with an anchor stone chained to her legs. I don't know how she lived through that. She was just a pirate then."
"She's not undead, is she?" Maybe she could breathe and still be undead.
"Not in any sense I've ever heard of. Let's get back to my ship." All Xander could do to that suggestion was nod.
The Maiden kept quiet and still. It wasn't as hard as it used to be, and not merely for lack of need to breathe. Whatever else she thought of the Mask of Winters, he had taught her to exercise patience. To wait for the proper moment before her kill. A fly buzzed about her eyes. Landed on the left one. She ignored it.
She had only been awake for a few minutes. Her throat still hurt. She'd nearly bungled the masquerade. That bitch...the one who'd wrapped the Maiden's own chain around her throat...she was going to pay in screams. She'd almost gotten up and slain the woman then, but at the last moment she'd remembered the Mask's orders. She was here to observe and study. He'd promised her the random fools standing guard, and she'd taken most of them. The slaves, sadly, seemed to have gotten away.
When he was done with them, she could kill the ones he had no use for. If she had ever prayed for anything, she would have prayed he had no use for any of them.
"...not sure Anya's going to make it. She's developing some kind of infection in those cuts." That was one of the mysteries she was here to investigate-the taller of two undead demons. No one had ever raised such a creature; the Mask was convinced the Yozis would never have permitted it. The Void was more powerful than they were, naturally. Why should it not be that simple? But he could not see it.
Wait. Was the bitch going to die of her wounds? The Maiden could not permit that. Not only would it infuriate the Mask of Winters-no, more importantly it would infuriate her. She was going to peel off this Anya's skin inch by inch. She had earned that torture.
"Well, then, we've got to get her to the city!" That was the smaller demon. He seemed the more hot-headed of the two. And, again, undead. Bizarre. He had already healed from being hamstrung. An ache in her neck suggested he had fed on her, which might well explain that.
"There's no guarantee they can save her, Spike."
"It's the best chance she has! Willow's already done everything she can for her." That was the next anomaly. The blond sorceress had shown no facility with spells that required her to be more than an Enlightened mortal. The redhead, by contrast, surely had to be something more. Yet no one seemed to think she was an Exalt of any sort, and she showed no other signs. There was an outside chance that she might be some sort of god-blood; there were stories of a few of them mastering greater sorceries.
Anya herself was the next anomaly, though the Maiden was unsure what kind. The Mask of Winters had called attention to her for some reason, but had told the Maiden nothing of why he wanted her observed. Still, she had done much more damage than the Maiden expected from any mortal. She forced her hands not to twitch with the need to wrap around Anya's throat. That would be noticed. Was she going to have to save the woman herself just to have her around to kill?
The demons moved away, still chattering. "...slaves ran for Paragon the first chance they got..." "...bloody fools...you hear what Buffy said they have you do there?" Heh. She herself would not think of swearing on the Perfect's scepter, even if the Void did not have her allegiance already. At least the demons had that much sense. Though had she somehow been in the place of the slaves, she'd have run from herself as well. That much was merely sanity.
She could not fathom why they had not just discarded her body and run for the city themselves. There should not be so much difficulty in carrying just Anya, and surely they had no concern for the Dune People, not that many of them should still be alive.
The last puzzle moved into her field of vision. The youngest of the group reached out as if to touch her face, then pulled back at the last moment. Apparently this one's sister resembled Kenda rather closely. What of it? It was a chance resemblance, if an odd coincidence.
Wait. The Maiden had thought of herself as "Kenda". She'd barely done that when she was alive. That was just a word her parents had used to tell her what to do. What in the name of the Void-? Kenda choked down a wave of revulsion. She had killed her brother; now the urge to do the same to this girl rose up in her like magma surging toward a volcanic vent. She was not Kenda. That name was gone. She had cast it aside like the rubbish it was. And she should not feel...sisterly...toward this girl. The worst of it was that for the barest instant she hadn't hated the little brat. She had cared for her. Like a sister. Now that moment only fueled her rage, but it had been there. She had no damned sister!
Had the girl not turned away at that very moment, she would have seen K...the Maiden reach out for her, hands clawed to rip the life from her, before wrenching back control of herself. No one-no one!-could do that to her! Was she Exalted too? No, surely the Maiden would have sensed any such charm she tried to use on her. And no one else had commented on her, or any powers she might have. The older man had even spoken about how vulnerable she was. She hadn't taken part in the fight; she had run and hidden.
What the hell was she? A ghost? A god? A demon? Or...
Shit.
Well. Tonight was going to be an interesting night.
"Cast off there!" Xander could tell Redfang was eager to be gone. All the crew were. Truthfully he shared the feeling. The Skullstoners-Ebon Siaka aside-had been pretty diplomatic, but the living ones spoke with perpetual reverence about the dead, by which they clearly didn't mean grandpa in his tomb so much as the zombies and ghosts who made up at least half the crew of the whole fleet. Some of the ghosts at least seemed like rational beings, but others had been leashed and had stared at him as if craving his blood despite their chains.
"If we don't find Fred in another day," Xander said with a sigh, "I guess we had better head for An-Teng." That was the next closest port of call to where they'd been picked up. By someone. Who? Why couldn't he place his...her...his name? Or face?
"You say she went down to some undersea city?" The captain shook his head. "I don't know that we can find her at all, unless you can breathe underwater too."
Maybe he could. Maybe. Xander didn't think it was the right time to risk that. "I don't guess the name Luthe means anything to you?" Redfang just shrugged.
"Cast off!" The last of the connecting lines were pulled free of the Skullstone ship, and the anchor lifted.
"I guess we should just head to An-Teng. We'll figure out how to reach Fred later. Or she'll reach us. I'm sure she can take care of herself now." Xander wiped his forehead. So far all he'd done was escape from an island and throw some illusions. Useful illusions, but still. He couldn't even begin to imagine how Fred could change shape like that. Anyway, clearly he was the least powerful of the bunch, just like always. By the time he got back, Anya would probably be flying around like a bird. Or granting wishes again.
Captain Redfang unstrapped the wheel. "Undoubtedly. From what you say she survived in the wilderness for years with no powers at all. She-"
The sky opened up into dizzying violet spirals. Out of the vortex descended a...spaceship? Okay, what now?
"Surrender now," boomed a voice louder than Xander's had when the Lintha were attacking. "Your ships cannot withstand us. Your free po souls are now property of the Eight Nations. Give them to us, or they will be confiscated."
A hatch opened, releasing uniformed troopers who began dropping the last few feet onto every deck in sight. And beyond those...a girl, nearly naked, with crystals sprouting from her head, elbows, and knees. She smiled-not friendly, not fierce, just...satisfied. "They won't surrender, Gathered Might. Deploy the ephemera trap. Militia, ready your motonic packs and fire at will!"
The soldiers' backpack-mounted weapons looked familiar. And out of the spacecraft above them descended a giant...huh. "Who're you gonna call?" Xander said softly.
"Captain," he said, touching Redfang's arm. "If you're looking for a chance to fight zombies...I think we're on the side of the new guys."
Redfang chuckled nervously. "I'd almost say you just wanted to get in that girl's pants. If she were wearing any. Thing is, I have to say I agree." He lifted his sword. "All right, men! Let's kick some dead mens' asses!".