Chapter 24: Beyond Desperate Measures

Perspective: Shadow


"Could someone please explain to me why we're having an emergency meeting at midnight?" Asked Warnado, more asleep than awake.

"There's been a…" Kay paused with a glance at the command-room table. His tone was uncharacteristically restrained. "...Development. New intelligence has come in. We know the Entity's endgame."

The entirety of the shelter leadership was gathered in the command room, some of them understandably groggy. Shadow had no such problems.

She explained: "Steve, Jennifer. Remember when we performed those tests on the crystals? The theory we had back then has been validated. The Entity's plan is to use some kind of machine to pull worlds into Nexus until some kind of critical mass is reached. From there it's just a matter of subjugating everyone. It won't be long until that plan can be put into motion."

The room fell into two different kinds of silence. The first was a shocked silence as the reality of the Entity's plan sank in. But then there was the second, which was altogether more unsettling. This silence was accompanied by the averted eyes of those who had already known: Tyron, Kay, Astro, Fire and of course Shadow herself. Their silence was filled with trepidation, with a fear that there was no good way of responding to this.

Destiny asked: "Where is this intel from?"

Fire said: "The Lady of Dreams got into a dream of the Ender, she read it from her mind and passed it on to Kay. I can vouch for her being truthful." After a short pause he continued. "The question now is, what do we do with this information? Let me hear your thoughts."

Destiny did not hesitate: "First of all, who on earth is the Lady of Dreams and why should I trust her?"

Shadow took it upon herself to explain: "She's a benevolent phantom from our world, she visits people in their dreams to give them someone to talk to. Fire has known her for thousands of years. Some of you may have been visited by her at some point."

"If it's worth anything," Kay cut in. "She's visited me before - I threw her out. She seemed pretty sincere - an extremely panicked form of sincere, but sincere nonetheless."

He then wilted away into line with Shadow and Astro behind Fire. Destiny gritted her teeth but didn't say anything.

"Do you guys have any ideas or are we supposed to do all the work?" entered Steve with a surprising aggression.

People were on edge, due to the recent mission, due to tiredness, due to reasons Shadow couldn't know. However, she trusted her brother's ability to keep the discussion on track.

Fire said calmly: "If anyone has ideas, I'd like to hear them before bringing forth my own. I don't want to make anyone feel obligated to go along with what I say."

"Of course, we wouldn't want our leader influencing our course of action," muttered Steve.

Before anyone could say anything - and Voidblade in particular looked quite ready to speak up - Kay elbowed Astro, who stepped forward. He spoke flatly and professionally, eyes sunken from exhaustion. He had a little sheet of notes he unfolded and kept looking at.

"We obviously know that the Entity has a machine with which it will merge all of creation together. We have some vague ideas of the mechanism it uses because of the crystal research. The big question is where it is and how we hurt it. So, we need to get more intel, fill in the gaps and plan our next move. To this effect the most obvious solution is to send a small team of infiltrators to gather said intel and preferably do a little sabotage while in there.

"The only problem is getting the right number of people. Too small a force and it's suicide, too large and they'll know we've been there and, to be perfectly honest, if they get noticed it would probably be suicide, too. We only escaped the Tower by the skin of our teeth last time. We're not going to get lucky twice.

"Numbers are also limited by a lack of viable candidates. The infiltrators would preferably come, um, from the leadership due to the importance of the task and the fact that we're the only ones who have much idea of the Tower's internal topology. This pool is limited even more by the presence of the magic-dampening lamps. If we send in magic-users, they would be disoriented and, in some cases, physically weakened-"

"Alright, alright," Steve laughed bitterly. "I've heard enough. We all know damn well who came up with this plan and he shouldn't be hiding behind his pal. Last time we did this, Fristad died, and the intended target got away. Surprised the plan doesn't include sending the kids in to fight the Entity."

Kay visibly tensed before slumping into dourness. Warnado and Astro were about to interject when Steve continued: "See, even he's not defending the call. He knows it was the wrong decision and he's not man enough to own up to it!"

"Steve, cool your jets," Jennifer said without enthusiasm, planting a hand to his shoulder. A sidelong glare at Kay made it clear she was only doing this out of obligation.

"Lads, lads!" Urist interjected, accent slightly stronger than usual. "I know we all have thoughts on tha ambush, meself included, but we can't let it swamp us down like that. I've seen this before and let me tell ye, it didn't end well, just results in pulled lev'rs and magma-flooded keeps... If ye get me metaphor."

Fire nodded. "It would be best if we kept this civil, we are on an uncertain timer. Putting that aside, do we have more opinions on a suggested course of action?"

Destiny shrugged morosely before saying, "Hit the Tower. Send a primary force to hit the Tower and draw the defenders away while a team of around fifty go in through a back route to raid the labs. From there: smash and grab."

"Exactly," Steve said. "I've fought a lot of bad guys in my time, and I would have killed for an army a tenth of this size. Jennifer and I held off an entire undead army with just a small group of our friends. We need to use this!"

Lucy was sitting further back due to the limited space around the table, holding her notebook. She looked exhausted but determined. She said: "According to our last inventory we only have enough high-quality armor to equip a fourth of our soldiers, half of them if we count the armor pieces of lesser quality. Our weapons are also sub-optimal. We know they have artillery, which makes it very possible that they have some sort of grapeshot-type munitions, which would shred through unarmored troops."

Shadow thought back to the ambush, then brought forward another point: "Our trees took out all but one of their casters, we don't have that luxury in an offensive battle. It also stands to reason that they have higher-tech weapons at their disposal. I saw what kind of suit their head scientist runs around with, against non-magical foot soldiers anything of that caliber is basically a one-man-army."

"So what?" asked Destiny. "Inside the Tower like one in ten of their mages will be capable of putting up a fight. The main body just needs to show up, look scary and run off. The actually important stuff will go down inside the Tower."

Warnado tried to speak but was again cut off. Shadow didn't feel like speaking, she decided to wait until more details were set in stone.

"You keep saying inside the Tower," said Astro with an eyebrow cocked like a gun. "How exactly do you propose we do that?"

"I…" Destiny heaved in a deep breath and closed her eyes before continuing. "There's a portal near here that leads back to Minera, my world. It's deactivated but mostly intact. With a bit of fire, we could reactivate it. I… already did it once, accidentally. I go there to drink every now and then, was screwing around with fire magic and accidentally put it back in commission. Put it out immediately after, but it was functioning.

"We could hop through the portal, travel across Minera until we find the portal David and I entered through. It leads directly behind enemy lines - somewhere beneath the Tower. Then, like I said, smash and grab."

"Y'know, that might…" Kay said before trailing off. He pulled the Book out of his pocket and began reading through its pages. "Hold on, come back to me."

"No, it wouldn't," Tyron cut in, with his tone of heroic experience. "That will absolutely useful later, but we can't blow a shot like that on intelligence-gathering. As we can't currently make portals of our own, any we do learn how to use must be treated as invaluable resources with which to deal the killing blow. We can't afford to use it calling attention to ourselves."

Kay removed himself from reading and concluded, though not with his usual confidence, "Besides, if the Entity shows up fifty men is not enough. Believe me, that thing is literally a host unto itself, and it will send more than one manifestation after you. What's more, assuming the Entity's out that day, if they decide to cut that portal off, everyone we send in is screwed." He slammed the Book shut with finality and shook his head before starting to pace furiously. "Like Tyron says, if we use that route, it's all or nothing. We commit hundreds to it, or we commit none."

Rose looked up from a knife she'd been inspecting and said: "Thing about stealth missions is that you want to avoid raising the alarm at all costs, I've been on enough of those to know that once they're suspicious it becomes infinitely harder to sneak and blend. As much as I'd like to go there and tear some shit up... hate to say it but using our force as a distraction would both put it at risk and shoot our infiltrators in the foot too."

There were murmurs of assent throughout the room. A large force was off the table.

"Okay, why not just send me in?"

It was Warnado. Everyone at once began to dismiss him until Amanda intervened.

"Let him talk!" She shouted with volume none of them had though her capable of. The room silenced, she patted the quarter-demon on the shoulder. "Go ahead, Helix."

"Thanks," Warnado smiled with clumsy affection.

She smirked and leant against the wall, struggling not to beam and permanently sacrifice her reputation as the world-weary, cynical one in the group. As far as Shadow was concerned, Amanda had distanced herself from that kind of reputation when she helped save Warnado from his demonic side after the ambush, or more accurately added a more compassionate reputation to her existing one.

"Anyway, before you rudely interrupted me, I was going to say that I'm the obvious candidate as I'm the only one we know isn't affected by the lamps. Even those who are naturally good at hiding would be off-balance. Rose might not have her knives. Destiny couldn't just stick someone with an icicle to win a fight. Kay wouldn't have the Book and is bad at sneaking despite what he says. Shadow might start talking like a normal human being. It would be a crapshoot. But we know I'd just be good ol' Warnado, stealer of keys, planter of jam! I can do this."

The room hung in an eerie silence as this almost seemed like a reasonable idea to send the literal child into the dragon's lair alone. Jennifer's mouth hung open a little as she cocked an eyebrow at Fire. Kay looked stuck somewhere between an affectionate smile and a stroke. Finally, it was Tyron who spoke up and grounded the conversation again.

"Warnado, great pitch, but I was actually within earshot when you stole the keys at the Tower. You did great work, no one is devaluing your contribution but… the guards absolutely noticed when you swapped out the keys for jam. It didn't really matter then, but we really need no one to notice this time."

Warnado looked around uncomfortably before puffing out his chest and walking into the centre of the room.

"I can swap things without leaving jam, y'know."

"Prove it."

"I just did!" mocked Warnado, holding up a jam-free Kir. He held up his hand for a high five that Kay instinctively provided before immediately grimacing as he remembered the thing he was approving.

It looked pretty bleak for a few seconds before Tyron spoke again.

"You didn't leave jam," Tyron conceded. "You did leave marmalade, though."

He held up a palmful of orange, gelatinous conserve. Warnado bowed his head and returned to the wall with Amanda. She provided him with a conciliatory arm around the shoulder.

"Voidblade," Fire asked. "Would you be up for infiltrating?"

Voidblade hesitated, contemplating. "Yes, although I probably could not blend in with their endermen, different skin, different eyes. There are some exceptions, but questions would be asked."

Urist chimed in again: "I could probably go too in theory, might slow ye down though."

Shadow said: "That leaves Steve, Jennifer and you Fire. Five people at most, do you think we could work with that?"

At this point everyone was looking at Fire. He seemed uneasy with what he was about to say, a rare state for him. So rare in fact, that Shadow was already getting a bad feeling about what he was about to say.

Fire took a breath and then said: "The reason I waited before saying anything was to see if you'd come to the same conclusion as I did. An infiltration mission is our only hope at this point, inaction means we lose, an assault means we lose as well, just differently. I have considered that we may have been fed false information in some way but even if that is the case, the chance of it being true outweighs everything. What I am about to tell you might, no will sound crazy."

Shadow did not like where this was going, she knew her brother well and over the course of the discussion her thoughts walked certain paths that couldn't have been too different from those his had walked.

"I need to go on this mission, alone."

No, he did not! There had to be some other way.

Shadow spoke up immediately: "That's a suicide mission! I can't let you do that Fire!"

"This seems like we're pushing the definition of a 'small infiltration force' a little far," said Astro, hands outstretched as though he were preparing to catch a particularly delicate vase.

"Okay," Steve conceded. "I know I was complaining just there about leaders not taking ownership for their plans, but… I'm not sure this is the right solution. What if they get you?"

"This ain't it, chief," chimed in Warnado, once again becoming the surprise voice of reason.

Fire explained: "My point is, I'm the one who is most likely to actually make it out. Ideally, I can use an invisibility potion to get into the complex, then use my camouflage cloak to go in further, enchantments don't seem to be affected as aggressively by the lamps. We can entangle small sheets of paper to ender pearls, then periodically drop the pearls, that way I can get pieces of information out even if I get caught."

Shadow said: "I have seen you pull off some insane things in the past, but I don't think that cloak will get you wherever that machine is, I think Fristad mentioned their science being based underground."

Fire nodded. "I can also ambush one of their endermen. With some blue glass behind the visor, my eyes will look just like theirs and they also have scales similar to mine. That way I stand the biggest chance of actually making it to somewhere where the intel I get is meaningful. I am aware of the risk, otherwise I would not be suggesting this. We need to know where this machine is, if I get really lucky, I may even be able to sabotage it outright."

That was something Shadow hated about her brother, as bad of an idea as this was in any other circumstance, as completely suicidal it was, what he said actually made sense for their current situation. Why did it always have to make sense? Of course, there was one thing left he hadn't addressed but she didn't get her hopes up, once Fire set his mind to something it would take a lot to stop him. Perhaps he was even hoping to be stopped, because the only thing that could stop him was a better plan.

"But hypothetically, you get to the machine, get the intel out but are caught and killed. What then?"

Fire's eyes took on an odd look for a moment. "I don't like this either, but we don't have much of a choice here. We need a way to stop the Entity permanently and disrupting this machine would give us more time to find one. In a way, I am the most expendable one here. If any of you die that's an important link in the command chain severed. If need be, I can be replaced by Kay."

Kay stopped pacing and looked back over his shoulder. He wasn't alone. The entire room seemed frozen in place by this brutal pragmatism. Astro looked straight at Shadow, panic in his eyes. Shadow contemplated revealing what Astro had told her but… it just felt wrong, not just a breach of trust but what would Kay do if confronted with his fate? It wouldn't help the situation at all, only weaken what little trust most had left in Kay.

"You-you're quite sure… what?" Kay stammered.

The silence that followed was positively deafening. Shadow shut out all sensation and instead looked inwards. Another thing she had talked about with Astro, her being linked to her brother in some way. She didn't know if the Prophet's words had any merit, if she really would… unravel. Stop, now is not the time for emotions. Distance is important, that's what Fire always says.

A grim determination filled Shadow, driving out the despair that had filled her when her brother first brought forward his plan. It was true, they were losing a war that hadn't even started yet, they were out of options. Fire would infiltrate the Tower and he'd either live or die, perhaps be held prisoner. But if his death really had an effect on her she'd make sure the Entity would regret its conquest. Back when Shadow left her home world, something had changed. She could already feel herself grow stronger, more able to control her Void magic. Maybe it would take years, millennia even for her to be strong enough to be able to scratch the Entity but time was not something an immortal concerned herself with. Maybe she'd lose her humanity, whatever that was, but there was one thing that would always stay with her, the memory of her brother. She'd rip Nexus, no, all of existence apart atom by atom if that's what it took to destroy the Entity. She'd be their apocalyptic insurance policy.

Shadow stopped. That was not one of her usual thoughts and neither was it something she hoped she would ever have to do but if it came to it, she would do it. It was something she was sure of.

Fire spoke again: "I will need some time to prepare, set up the redstone timers for the ender pearls, brew the potions I need. I will take every precaution I can, don't take this as me throwing my life away for the cause. This is what I think to be the option that, even if everything goes wrong, still gives us sufficient intel for any follow-up and leaves our command structure as intact as possible. Please do not try to fight me on it."

Tyron suddenly stood up, sending his chair skittering. There was a commanding pause that seemed to last forever.

"Fire," he said. "I hate this plan. It's terribly open to failure. You could even argue it's only justifiable under a sociopathically pragmatic lens. But at the same time, it's noble in its self-sacrifice. We are at war, and if you believe this is the only way to win it, I believe in you. Don't die."

And he sat down.

More stunned silence, it didn't look like anyone else could muster up the willpower to object. Shadow saw many faces in the room, faces of disbelief, of sadness, some she couldn't properly categorize. Lucy in particular seemed torn, she had always looked up to Fire in a way. He'd been the one who had given her the chance to discover her talents, given her greater purpose. Aside from myself, she'll be the one hit hardest if he doesn't make it back.

Fire too looked around, then with a suppressed sigh he said: "Meeting concluded, get some sleep everybody, you're long overdue."