At their leader's command, the soldiers of the Wandenreich let fly a storm of blue-white arrows and bullets.
Shinigami reflexively attempt to leap out of the line of fire, and some of them manage it, whether by ducking behind your two towering summons, by using the rubble of the destroyed statues as cover, or by getting far enough down either arm of the T-junction that abuts the ruined doors that the Quincy can't hit them. A few others raise their zanpakuto and start uttering commands, but whatever they mean to do, there isn't time.
The bulk of the attack force are caught in the open of the great hallway, demonstrating precisely WHY Silbern's internal architecture so greatly favors long, wide corridors with unobstructed lines of sight. You see some of the Shinigami dodging even then, especially among the Second Division troops - Sui-Feng herself practically dances through a rain of shot - but inevitably, the Quincy barrage starts connecting-
!
-only for the projectiles to deflect off of heretofore invisible barriers, your previously cast Spells of Spell Immunity showing their worth.
But also, their limitations.
As you'd feared, whether by dint of sheer power or unidentified technique, some of the shots are ignoring that extra defense and piercing or burning the bodies beneath.
...well, where they aren't being cut out of the air by especially adeptly wielded zanpakuto, or hitting a target with such intensely focused or simply overwhelming spiritual pressure that they fail to penetrate.
Your newest elemental has no such defense at all, and staggers back from the forced doorway with a roar like tearing earth and a dozen blue-white bolts of spiritual power peppering its hide.
Several things happen in very quick succession then.
Those Shinigami who'd started releasing their weapons finish doing so, causing their swords to transform into a bewildering array of new forms. That guy with the shiny bald head is suddenly holding a spear, his pretty friend with the feathers unfolds his sword into some sort of multi-pronged sickle, and Lieutenant Hisagi's zanpakuto goes from a straightforward katana to a pair of double-bladed scythes on a chain, to name just a few examples.
From the right-hand side of the door, the Earth Elemental surges forward, sliding through the wall with a floor-shaking declaration, / EARTH SMASH! /
From the left-hand side, your entirely unscathed Celestial Tyrannosaurus bellows in frustration as its own desire to advance and bite more things is stymied by the relative smallness of the door, and more by the rain of dazzling projectiles flying out of that space. Even with its celestial nature and all the defenses you've layered upon it, the Tyrannosaur remains an animal at heart, and can be spooked by things it doesn't understand. Briar is still atop its head, but you're not sure what she's saying to the titan.
The knights that have shields raised them at the first sight of the Quincy ambush, with the young knight bearing the particularly massive shield riding forward to cover Arturia with it as well. From what you saw, between their armor, their inherent abilities, and whatever defenses Ambrose provided, the knights have weathered the opening barrage with nothing worse than cosmetic damage, and they're forming up for one of those "indoor cavalry charges" Arturia mentioned. Their archer is returning fire, forcing some of the Quincy to dodge - although a couple of them try to counter the redhead's glowing arrows with their own, with a certain amount of success.
Exclamations of shock resound from beyond the door:
"What IS that?"
"I know I hit-"
"-huge-"
"-HAHA, A CHALLENGE-"
"-aren't dying-"
"-they find KNIGHTS-"
"-walking mountain-"
"-a traitor-"
"-a DINOSAUR?!"
For your part, you're moving towards Yamamoto, mana gathering and incantation tumbling from your lips as you shape a cut-down Spell of Scrying to peer ahead and see what guards have been stationed on Yhwach's chamber. Whatever happens here is a secondary concern; you need to get someone in to deal with Yhwach, and the plan was for the Captain-Commander to be it. Unless he's changed his mind...?
Your thoughts are briefly diverted as your spell takes form.
You see the hall before the room where the Sealed King draws near to waking.
There are no less than ten guards on station. None are dressed as Sternritter, but their uniforms are fancier than those of ordinary Soldats. In particular, your attention is drawn to a mustachioed man in a trench coat and glasses, whose body language suggests he's in charge of this detachment.
You report as much to the Captain-Commander, letting the spell end and willing your mana to cycle as quickly as possible.
Yamamoto allows himself a frustrated glare at the assembled Quincy. It's pretty clear that he really wants to deal with Yhwach himself, but it's also clear that he's doing - or has already done - that most terrible form of calculation known as "command math."
The old man is the single strongest combatant on your side, bar none. The combination of power, skill, and experience at his command is such that he could probably hold his own against three or four typical captain-level opponents at once. Even discounting you, your summons, and the knights, as long as Yamamoto is here, the Shinigami can likely hold this position. If he leaves, though...
"Change of plans," the old man says with remarkable self-control. The cane he's held all this time seems to dissolve under his fingers, leaving behind a katana that he draws swiftly. "Captain Zaraki and I will hold here. Captain Sui-Feng, Lieutenant Sasakibe, Lieutenant Hisagi, Third Seat Genshiro, proceed with the Shadow."
"Sir!" comes the reply from several directions, including an older man with a single streak of black in otherwise white hair.
For your part, you've already started shaping the Spell of Teleportation.
"No-one is going-" the Quincy leader begins in response to Yamamoto's orders, before doing a double-take - and staring at YOU with those alien, double-pupiled eyes. "What?!"
"What ails you, Jugram?" the Thor lookalike booms, from where he's wrestling with your elemental, just around the inner edge of the door.
By way of response, the man who must be Grandmaster Haschwalth forms an arrow of his own. "Stop that robed man!"
The Quincy turn their weapons in your direction, but it's too late; you have completed the spell.
The classic way to surprise someone, especially a guard at their post, is to sneak up on them from behind.
So that's what you do. Adjusting the coordinates of the Spell of Teleportation so that you land in the space between the guards and the door to Yhwach's room is simple enough, and tweaking the formula so that you and your passengers land facing the backs of the Quincy is only slightly more involved.
The world blinks out-
-and then you're there, looking down at a white-cloaked back and a head wearing a militaristic cap.
Said back instantly tenses, a reaction that you can see rippling through the five-by-two ranks of the guards as they become aware of the presences that weren't there just a moment ago. The Quincy are already starting to turn-
!
-when the Shinigami hit them like a quartet of high-speed wrecking balls. You catch a brief glimpse of Lieutenant Hisagi's grim face as his scythe-like weapons cut down a Quincy apiece, while Lieutenant Sasakibe lunges forward, stabbing one guard with his katana-turned-rapier - when did he do that? - while his off-hand flings a crackling sphere that erupts into a short-lived net of electricity, tangling and stunning two of the guards. That lasts only a moment, but that's all the time Third Seat Genshiro needs to close in.
You have the distinct feeling those two have practiced that move.
Captain Sui-Feng in particular seems to be in her element, striking one guard in the back of the neck, grabbing his limp body and dragging it around with her as she spin-kicks a second Quincy in the side of the head, before finally flinging her passenger forward to slam into two of his comrades that were in the next rank. She looks like she's about to pounce on those two, blade-covered finger first-
*BANG!*
-when she's forced to dodge as a gunshot rings out from Far Too Close For Comfort. The thin-faced mustachioed leader of the guards has produced a modern-looking and rather large handgun from somewhere - possibly up one of his trenchcoat's sleeves.
Not to be left out - and still not wanting to get shot at - you went for the guard in front of you.
Even as you go to work on your nearest enemy, you consider what your next move should be - particularly with regards to your desire for plunder. You won't be staying in this part of the fortress for very long, so if you mean to summon Earth Elementals to loot for you, now is probably the time. That said, there's the question of whether summoning a small number of Greater Earth Elementals or a larger number of lesser ones is the better idea; true, bigger elementals are also the smarter ones, and so more likely to be able to identify objects you'd really be interested in, but you could summon a lot more of the smaller sort for the same investment of time and energy, and search more of the surrounding rooms as a result.
Your Original doesn't have much prior experience with punching his enemies in the back of the neck. It's a move Lu-sensei warns his students against using, even in self-defense, as hitting another human being in that area - which has major blood vessels, vertebrae, and windpipe so close together and with so little actual protection compared to some other parts of the body - runs a high risk of causing serious injury or death.
It's one thing to punch a would-be mugger's lights out, and rather another to send him to the morgue. Even leaving aside the potential legal consequences and social stigma for being a known killer, many people just aren't ready to deal with having taken a life.
Demons WOULD be fair game for such a tactic, except that a lot of species either don't actually HAVE those particular weak-points, aren't meaningfully impaired by the level of damage an unarmed human body can inflict to them (sometimes not even with the help of ki), and/or are just better dealt with in some other manner.
That said, while your master-by-proxy doesn't allow rabbit punches in the dojo and discourages such moves in general, he's never outright forbidden them - because in some specific instances, they're necessary.
Maybe this isn't truly one of those instances, but the Shinigami certainly seem to feel it is. And so, undoubtedly influenced by Captain Sui-Feng's example, you strike at the Quincy in front of you, burning ki to ensure the blow is effective.
Your faintly glowing fist connects with the side of the guard's neck more than the back, but it's a hit all the same. There is a momentary resistance, the power within your target's soul struggling to withstand the force of your blow, but where an attack backed by pure spiritual energy might have been blocked or at least cushioned in kind, your magically empowered, Ki Enhanced, Overloaded Ki Strike forges through.
While there is no sound - or at least none you can hear over the frantic violence occurring all around you - you FEEL something in the man's neck shift unpleasantly under your knuckles. Without a sound or a second's delay, he drops to the floor, like a puppet with its strings cut.
This, incidentally, leaves you with no one standing between you and the leader of the guard unit. Fortunately, the trenchcoated man's attention and aim have been drawn to Sui-Feng, doubtlessly judging her ability to singlehandedly disable four of his subordinates in half as many seconds to be the most immediate threat.
Despite that, you can feel one cold eye glancing your way behind a glass lens.
For all the shouting, blood, and falling bodies that the Shinigami's surprise attack have produced, you can see that not all of the downed Quincy are dead. Those no-longer pristine white uniforms seem to provide them with a degree of protection, and beyond that, you can sense that same clash of spiritual forces every time a fist, a blade, or a spell-blast makes contact with one of them.
The men you and Captain Sui-Feng punched in the neck are definitely down for the count, but the two guards she flung the first one's body at are already pulling themselves out from under their ally's limp form, while the man she kicked is rolling down the hall with enough not-quite-German cursing to make it clear he's not yet out of the fight. Three of the Quincy that were slashed or stabbed aren't getting up, but one of the pair that the older-looking Shinigami double-teamed is still on his feet, while Hisagi's second target is forming a weapon even as he topples, bleeding, towards the carpeted floor.
Taking the situation into account, you decide to give the reapers as much room to work as possible, and back up a couple of steps - closer to Yhwach's presence, which you can feel through the massive doorway behind you - while taking hold of your mana once more.
You aren't overly surprised when the probable Sternritter candidate breaks off shooting at Sui-Feng and turns his weapon on you.
*BA-
!
-NG!*
Even as you Walk Through Space to avoid the shot - putting yourself on the far side of the intersection before the King's room, behind the now turned-around guards - you have to blink away the afterimage of the muzzle flash of his weapon, shaped like the five-pointed cross emblem of the Wandenreich itself.
"Where-?" you hear the man exclaim, losing a bit of his cool, self-possessed air at your abrupt disappearance. Yet he is already turning, eyes now glaring flatly behind his glasses and handgun coming around-
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
-squeezing off a couple of rounds at the three male Shinigami in passing. They dodge, but it's by the narrowest of margins, Hisagi nearly picking up a bloody scar to go with the tattoos on his face, while Sasakibe's right sleeve is torn by the spirit-bullet's passage.
You don't need Foresight to foresee that he'll get at least one more shot off at you before you can finish summoning your next elemental ally.
As the gun-wielding Quincy turns your way, your first thought is to go on the evasive like your life depended on it. You've got room to maneuver, depths of ki you haven't fully called upon, and a spell in the casting; it makes sense to start dodging, and keep dodging until you get that next elemental out and/or one of the Shinigami hits this guy while his attention is on you.
But even as you're gathering your ki, your attention is drawn to the First Lieutenant's torn sleeve. The black material makes it hard to tell if there's any blood there, and in a moment of insight, you wonder if that isn't precisely the reason that the standard Shinigami uniform is what it is. Two reasons, even: billowing sleeves and legs to make it harder for the enemy to tell exactly where the limbs are; and dark fabric to help conceal bloody wounds, to make the enemy question if they've actually accomplished anything - and also to reassure allies mid-combat.
Regardless, the point is that you've seen how fast these psychopomp samurai can move - and this Quincy grazed two of them anyway, almost as an afterthought to bringing his gun around to aim at you.
For all your own speed and the supernatural effects currently enhancing it, you are just a little uncertain that you can dodge spirit-bullets fired by someone with THAT kind of accuracy. Similarly, after seeing some of Silbern's defenders shoot through Spells of Spell Immunity, you are leery of trusting your continued physical integrity entirely to the Greater Spell currently cloaking you.
Your only other evasive option would be to call upon the Spell to Walk Through Space again, but the amount of focus that takes would delay your completion of the Spell to Summon a Monster - and perhaps more to the point, it wouldn't really solve the problem.
You've got a demonstratedly dangerous enemy here. The longer he's allowed to keep shooting, the more likely it is that one of his shots will connect, and if that happens, if this spirit gun of his is anything like as effective against spiritual targets as a mundane weapon of similar caliber would be against human targets... that will be bad for you and your allies.
You also don't think you can hope for him to run out of ammunition. Quincy weapons are cheaty like that, but especially NOW, when time is against you. You're not completely sure what was up with the Grandmaster's freaky eyes - suspicions, yes, but not certainty - but it doesn't take a tactical genius to figure out what the most valuable and vulnerable target in this entire fortress is, and why the Shinigami and other intruders might choose to attack on this day of all days.
The longer this fight goes on, the more likely it is that another Sternritter or Sternritter candidate is going to turn up to try and stop any of your group from getting any closer to their King. Every second you spend dancing with this guy is a second closer to him getting backup, your mission failing, and Auswahlen going ahead despite all your efforts to the contrary - and you simply can't have that.
Besides, as the old saying goes, the best defense IS a good offense.
With that in mind, you draw your sword and blur forward in a charge, ki for a second technique already forming-
"Too slow," the Quincy declares.
*BANG!*
-only to slip your grasp as something hits you in the chest like a kick from one of Khamsin's full-grown herd-mates, stopping you in your tracks and sending you staggering back a step.
"A word of advice?" the trenchcoated man offers from just beyond the reach of your Blade-
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
-while shooting over his shoulder to prevent the Lieutenants or Third Seat from coming at him, what the HELL?
"There's a reason why humans stopped using swords."
"Heh. A word in kind, then?" you offer.
"Hm?"
"There are reasons why humans still use them anyway."
And then, despite the pain and injury, you finish your spell.
And with a bone-rattling roar, a mountain suddenly looms behind the Quincy lines.
"Say hello to my little friend," you declare, as the elemental winds up.
"You are NOT Scarface," the Quincy retorts flatly.
And then both of you flicker away, him to avoid the elemental's massive fist-
*SMASH!*
-and you teleporting behind and slightly to one side of your summoned ally to avoid the Quincy's follow-up shot-
*BANG!*
-that would almost certainly have finished you off had it connected.
You quickly move ALL the way behind the elemental, for maximum coverage from that too-fast, too-accurate marksman, and spare yourself a moment to curse the misfortune that he was able to shoot through even Greater Spell Immunity. As powerful as the trenchcoated man's bullets feel to your spiritual sense, they're definitely NOT the equivalent of ninth-circle spells, whether taken alone or all together, which means whatever variant of the Heilig Pfeil this guy is using, it's different enough from the versions Souken showed and described to you that Spell Immunity's pre-programmed defense didn't recognize it.
Which is ANNOYING, but if anyone was going to be able to put holes in you despite your best efforts to the contrary, it would be one of the Wandenreich's top fighters.
Looking down at your aching chest, you see a hole punched through your Robe and the Suit below that - an idle feeling wells up, relief that everything you're wearing is just shadows of the Original's possessions, because you won't have to explain to Lucia how you got one of her creations shot up - while the flesh below THAT... is NOT pierced, you realize, despite what it feels like. You have what would be the makings of a very ugly and painful bruise there, if not for the Spell of Persistent Vigor you cast hours ago already working to heal the damage - you spare a moment to congratulate yourself for that one - but the real champ here is the Spell of Greater Heroism... or maybe it was the Spell of Divine Power...?
Well, one or the other. Both of them reinforce the target's vitality, making them harder to kill, and that buffer seems to have absorbed or exhausted the energy of the spirit bullet before it could pierce your body and start doing real damage.
*SMASH!*
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
*CRASH!*
*BANG!*
/ Annoying little wind-walking spirit-shooter! Stand still! /
Right, from the sound of things, your living wall is having a similar problem with that Quincy that you just did. You should probably get back into this fight somehow, preferably in a way that doesn't get you shot again, or at least not before you're finished healing.
Facts you've observed about Trenchcoat in the last few seconds flash past your mind's eye in a blur, as you consider options for dealing with him.
He couldn't follow you when you Walked Through Space, and for all that he showed himself able to shoot at targets behind his back with a worrying degree of accuracy, he had to actually turn and SEE you with his eyes before he could take aim at you post-teleport; that suggests Mind Blank messes with whatever he's using to track targets out of proper visual range. Those details tempt you to try teleporting behind him again, this time close enough to hit him with your sword from the outset - but the fading ache in your chest dissuades you from that course of action.
Another option that comes to mind is casting the Spell of Magic Missiles, pouring in as much extra power as the matrix can hold, and giving this Sternritter a taste of his own medicine with unblockable, unavoidable "bullets". That one is very, very tempting, especially since Magic Missiles are no threat to anyone but their designated target, but you know that your skills in metamagic aren't up to replicating your vision, which really brings down the damage potential.
Besides, the third option that presents itself is even better.
You focus on your magic, drawing mana and shaping the variables-
*BANG!*
*BANG!*
"Yaaaah!"
*Ching*
*Whump*
"Sir Accutrone-!" an unfamiliar voice yells.
*SMASH!*
*BANG!*
"Gah!"
"Focus on the enemy before you, fool!" the Quincy barks.
-all while the sounds of violence coming from the elemental and beyond it continue to play.
Then, spell readied, you take a deep breath and step out from behind your living cover.
In the three seconds or so you were out of sight, the battlefield has shifted. Sui-Feng is no longer throwing men twice her size around like ragdolls, and has instead focused her attention on the gunslinger-commander of this unit. The two of them are blitzing all over the hall, the Shinigami trying to get in close, the Quincy to keep the range open. She's fast enough to press her quarry-
*BANG!*
-and to avoid his shots, but not quite enough to catch him-
*BANG!*
-or to prevent him from taking the occasional harassing shot at her comrades. Trenchcoat's accuracy is suffering noticeably from Sui-Feng's relentless aggression, however, and attacks that had previously forced the lieutenants and Third Seat heavily onto the evasive are now only enough to slow them down as they deal with the remaining guards. Your elemental is lending its hands to that work, alternately shielding your allies with one massive arm - rather more cratered-looking than when you summoned it, you note - or punching at your opponents.
They are, it must be said, not so fast as their leader.
It's only a matter of time before the Soldats, or whatever their specific rank is, go down, and not much time, at that. From the frustrated expression on that mustachioed face, Trenchcoat is fully aware of it.
"Enough!" he declares, as the glove he wears on his right hand begins to blaze with spiritual power. "You will-!"
This seems like a good place for you to have a Word.
And so you do.
The moment the Resonating Word crosses your lips, everyone still conscious flinches, recoils, or casts a sharp glance in your direction. It's one of THOSE Words, after all, utterances and intonations that are vessels of power all on their own; most of the proper Spell is actually dedicated to reinforcing your own person, so that you are physically, mentally, and mystically capable of channeling the force without blowing your own head off in the process, much less focusing it to affect one singular target.
The Word is at once meaningless noise, and a shattering revelation. It is thunder and fury. It is uplifting and terrifying.
It is [ Sound ].
And though everyone within earshot catches the echoes of its power, the only one who truly hears it is the man called Accutrone. You can almost see the air around him distorting as the wave of pure sonic energy crashes upon him.
The Quincy staggers back a step, suddenly gasping for air - but he continues to move, gaze turning in your direction beneath his glasses-
You're not sure if the blood he hacks up is because of your spell, or Sui-Feng seizing the opportunity to half-punch, half-stab her target in the chest with her stinger-gauntlet, but the way the man goes flying across the hall and into the wall some ten feet away is most definitely the captain's doing.
Even as Accutrone slams into the stone, Sui-Feng pursues, intent on finishing the job, but you see flecks of blood spatter from the Quincy's lips as he chokes out a word, one made audible to you only through the auspices of your Foresight:
"Voll- stand- ig."
Spiritual energy surges wildly, pulverizing stone and forcing the Shinigami captain back as a radiant figure emerges from the maelstorm, bullets streaking in your direction fast enough that you can't even hear the report.
-ah, hell.
The contents of your latest vision have left you with a strong urge to call up an Emergency Force Sphere.
Instead, you raise your sword, focus your ki, and reach for one of the spells hanging around you.
Turtling up might save you from a single barrage of spirit bullets, but it won't protect your allies from the same, or contribute to taking down Accutrone. Sure, you could still use Walk Through Space to teleport out of the bubble and get back into the fight, or just dismiss the Sphere outright, but you'd still be out precious seconds - and mana - and up against some kind of Super-Quincy.
Considering the trouble Trenchcoat has given you thus far, you suspect you might have to resort to Maximum Power to have a chance of keeping up with him in his own super mode. You're not sure what your allies would do at that point: as a captain, Sui-Feng has a bankai almost by definition (see Zaraki), but the three men would probably be in a great deal of trouble; and your latest elemental ally would be out of luck entirely.
And really, given the choice, you'd much prefer to keep Maximum Power a secret. Its quasi-divine properties would raise too many questions, and it's far too likely to lead the Shinigami or any vengeful Quincy back to your Original - especially if something goes wrong and you don't manage to return a copy of these experiences to him.
It would just be easier if Accutrone didn't get a chance to finish powering up.
As you Foresaw, Sui-Feng hits the Quincy while he's glaring in your direction, sending him flying towards the left-hand wall.
With a twist of will, the Spell to Walk Through Space is triggered again.
The world around you flickers out and back in-
*Crash!*
-and a Quincy slams into the wall just ahead and to the left of your position.
The edge of your sword follows him, driven by the Ki Enhanced, magically augmented strength of both arms, and an additional surge of glowing ki on top of that, as you very literally go for the throat.
Incredibly, despite back-to-back impacts with enough force to bruise a regular man's brain or break his bones, Accutrone retains the presence of mind - or perhaps just the trained reflexes - to impose his weapon between yours and his flesh.
There is a shrieking squeal as the silvery metal of the gun gives way under your multiply Blessed Blade.
The glowing, five-pointed starburst symbol of the Wandenreich stitched onto the back of the glove flares brightly, and for the briefest of moments, it almost looks - and feels - like the accumulated energy within it is resisting your blow.
Then the bluish-white radiance of Quincy power is cleaved in two by an edge of Hyrulean steel and sorcery. The light winks out, the fabric of the glove parts, and there is a cry of pain, disbelief, and desperation as your weapon draws blood.
*Crunch*
You don't get the throat. Between sacrificing his weapon, his built-up power, and now his actual arm, Accutrone manages to deflect and halt your strike before it can lay open his windpipe or the blood vessels around it.
But he did sacrifice his arm. His right hand is mangled, the flesh of the forearm laid open where he interposed it, and from the angle your sword has come to a halt at, even the bone underneath wasn't entirely able to withstand that reinforced cutting edge - though it did stop it, after so much of the force of your swing was spent cleaving through gun and power.
Once again, cold eyes glare at you behind glass, and spiritual energy builds around his OTHER hand-
!
-only for Accutrone to seize up as Sui-Feng appears next to you in a blur of motion, transformed zanpakuto sliding between the Quincy's ribs with a smooth, practiced ease.
The man coughs up blood as the stinger finds his heart.
"D-damn..."
It is unfortunate that you had to kill this man, but you're not about to feel ashamed of it: he IS a servant of the quasi-divine entity making ready to dine on a thousand living souls; he WAS an obstacle to your objective of saving those souls and the lives they're currently living; and he WAS trying to kill you and your companions.
That said, you do feel that you owe Accutrone the courtesy of witnessing his last moments, one warrior's final respects to another.
With that in mind, you keep your attention fixed on the dying man-
"Hurk!"
-and even steady and support him when the second wave of the Resonating Word echoes through his body.
"What was that?" Sui-Feng asks sharply.
Glancing down, you see her frowning - at her bloodied weapon, oddly enough, which she's slid out of the Quincy's chest.
"The spell I hit him with sets up a destructive resonance," you reply, as you lower the dying man to a seated position on the floor. "The initial impact damages and disorients, the second stage damages and dazes, and the final stage damages and disables, assuming it doesn't destroy the target outright."
Rather surprisingly for a spell that weaponizes the very concept of [ Sound ], the Resonating Word doesn't deafen its victim. Granted, the target doesn't HEAR the Word so much as FEEL it, and it works just as well on deaf creatures as those whose hearing is intact...
Grey eyes glance your way, looking mildly interested, in a sort of professional manner.
Accutrone coughs up something that might be a laugh. "A very... thorough spell. I'm honored... that you felt it... necessary."
You nod. "I don't always kill my opponents, but when I do, I prefer to be certain."
Any further words are forestalled as Accutrone chokes and almost slams himself against the wall, the final "echo" of the Word hitting at last. You don't hear anything so horrible as bones breaking or organs being crushed by the internal shockwave, and the trenchcoat makes subtle details like ripples or sudden bruising of the skin impossible to make out, but the way his body seizes and twitches makes it all too easy to imagine what your spell must be doing.
As Accutrone's head droops and a final breath sighs past his bloodied lips, you reach up and close his eyes, being mindful not to dislodge his glasses.
"Rest in peace, my enemy."
You press one hand against his chest and carefully lever your Blessed Blade free of the man's arm, and then rise, flicking off the worst of the blood. Most of the rest, you know, will be gradually cleared away by the spells you've layered upon your sword - after all, they're meant not only to MAKE it sharp, but KEEP it that way, and buildup of blood, fat, and other organic residues is one of the things that causes a weapon in use to gradually lose its cutting edge.
Looking around, you see that the other three officers have finished subduing the remaining guards. Some of those are definitely dead, but others might still be alive, just unconscious.
You don't object to the latter, at least.
Best to finish your part in things, so the Shinigami can get on with theirs, and you can have the elemental try to grab something from the rooms around here before you need to teleport out and sound the withdrawal.
It turns out that the door to the King's Room lacks a portcullis above it, so the earth elemental simply reaches into the wall near the hinges of the door, pulverizes them, and lowers the whole thing to the floor with a dull *whump* of displaced air, rather than the clanging boom that accompanied the collapse of the door to the Royal Quarter. Then it "moves aside," melding into the right-hand wall to look around.
Ordering her subordinates to hold the spot against any attempted reinforcements, Sui-Feng moves forward.
Maybe it's just your Original's compulsive nosiness speaking, but you think that it would be a shame to have come all this way and not at least laid eyes upon the enemy that you're trying to thwart. Scrying Spells are all well and good, but they lack a certain something compared to actually being there in person.
Also, if any last lines of defense are about to go off, you'd probably be best-served by being there to see them and start working on counters - or evacuation - immediately, rather than waiting precious seconds for the Second Captain to deliver a report.
Speaking of defenses, though, you take a moment to raise a couple of additional layers of protection for yourself as you follow Sui-Feng into the King's Room, hardening your body with ki and then wrapping it in an aura of spiritual armor.
The captain glances back at you, likely having sensed the movement of spiritual energy, but says nothing.
Her lack of comment might have something to do with the oppressive atmosphere of the room you've both just entered. The darkness of the chamber is broken only by the light streaming in from the open doorway, and that radiating from the figure that lies unmoving atop the bier at the heart of the room. From what you can see, nothing about Yhwach has changed since your Original last looked in on him: the red blanket remains undisturbed; the white sleeping gown seems the same; and his arms are still folded over his chest, which rises and falls slowly.
Most critically, his all-seeing eyes remain closed.
Aside from the ruined door, the Chamber of the Sealed King looks just as it did through a Spell of Scrying, but - illustrating your point about remote viewing not always giving you the whole story of a place - the FEEL of the room is entirely different, now that you're experiencing it in person. What you remember as just a dark room occupied by an admittedly very dangerous man, faintly ceremonial and solemn, now registers as more akin to the inner chambers of a shrine or temple - something sacred, if not truly holy, upon which you are intruding without invitation, permission, or claim. Without being told, you are keenly aware that only descendants of the Quincy bloodline should set foot where you now stand, and even then, that only a select few, the chosen among the chosen and trusted beyond trust, would ever be allowed to see their King in this, his most undignified and vulnerable state.
If Sui-Feng feels any such thing, she gives no sign of it, or at least not of being troubled by it. She advances towards the dais at an ordinary run, taking the handful of seconds offered by that relatively mundane pace to size up her objective. Her right arm comes up, stinger-shaped zanpakuto readied to thrust forward and end the threat.
Between one moment and the next, the room's shadows are chased away and its aura of ominous sanctity intensified to the equivalent of a thundering chorus, as the space between Sui-Feng and Yhwach is filled by a radiant figure that overflows with spiritual energy.
It isn't high-speed movement.
It isn't even teleportation.
The new arrival is simply THERE, as if he'd always been standing between the captain and the King. That is abjectly impossible, for though he wields a black-bladed sword and circular shield that you didn't see on his person before, the man who bars the way to Yhwach is instantly recognizable as the Thor-like Quincy from the ambush at the doors to the Royal Quarter.
Granted, he's more battered than you remember. The red cape he was wearing has been torn away in its entirety, the little wing on the left side of his helmet is missing, and helmet, shield, and wielder alike all appear scratched, scuffed, and singed - though there is, you note, curiously little blood on the man himself. For all of that, though, he's clearly still fit to fight, and a nimbus of power radiates from him, spiritual energy so strong that its expression brings tears to your eyes and presses upon you like a tangible weight.
There is something else there, however, not quite a power separate from that of the Quincy, but rather a quality that you've not encountered from any of them before, save from Yhwach himself.
It is expressed in the pale gold light of the warrior's aura.
It is the feel of divinity.
It makes the back of your hand tingle, as the shadow of the echo of the Triforce reacts to something not entirely dissimilar to itself.
THE MIRACLE: GERARD VALKYRIE
"Poor form, little lady," the seemingly Norse Quincy scolds, looking down at where his shield has stopped Sui-Feng cold, as surely as if she were a normal woman trying to stab through a mountain. Without another word, the warrior sweeps his shield arm forward and sends the small captain flying through the air in your direction.
In a less serious confrontation, you might try to catch Sui-Feng. As it is, you don't want to distract yourself and potentially give the really dangerous warrior who just appeared out of nowhere an opening.
So you quickly shift to your right, and allow the Shinigami captain to go flying past you - noting in the process that Sui-Feng is doing something with her spiritual energy that seems to be bleeding momentum and increasing her control over her impromptu flight, so that an attack that probably should have sent her flying back out the door and into the main hall will instead likely end with her skidding to a halt still inside the King's room.
Of course, even that recovery is going to take her a second or three, and until then, you're left facing down the newcomer.
Raising your Blessed Blade to the ready and activating your Vambrace of Force-Shielding in case it's needed, you size up the Quincy warrior. Physically, he's about on par with your idealized adult form in terms of height and build, and the casual manner in which he flung a woman - however small - halfway across the room with only one arm tells you he's got strength to spare. His motions as he pushed Sui-Feng back were also easy enough to reveal that, if he's sustained any internal injuries since you last saw him, they aren't meaningfully impairing him. That, the location of some of the damage to his outfit, and the underwhelming extent of the burns to his skin, make you wonder if this guy has some kind of accelerated healing.
Spiritually, it's apparent that he outclasses you. A bit of that is your Original's age and relative lack of training in that field showing through, but for the most part, it's down to this guy having a monstrously powerful soul, enough to compete with Captain Zaraki's potential, and possibly even exceed it. There's also that hint of divine power to consider. It's not strong enough for this Quincy to be a god or even a demigod, but it doesn't feel like the aura of a priest or chosen one channeling the blessings of their patron, either - it's too much a part of the man himself to be derived from an external source.
Some of that energy is surging through his equipment, as well. The slightly tattered pants, greaves, gauntlets, and one-winged helmet all feel like they're merely being reinforced by their owner's power, but the black-bladed, v-hilted sword has a distinct aura of its own, one that feels of... hope?
...not the first thing you would have thought to associate with a weapon wielded by a quasi-Viking.
In every other field you can consciously measure, you would give yourself the clear advantage. Magically, it wouldn't be much of an exaggeration to say that you are to this Quincy what he is to you in the realm of spirit; you wouldn't go so far as to declare him entirely untalented in that field, but untrained, inexperienced, possibly even unaware of any potential he might have for the arcane arts? That much you will say, without hesitation. Any psychic talent he might possess is similarly undeveloped, and while his life-force is certainly fitting of a strong, experienced warrior, it lacks that particular feel that distinguishes a ki adept. As for youki, Fae essence, and demonic taint, the Quincy is a complete null.
Then there's the flickers of possible futures you glimpse through the Spell of Foresight. From what you can see in those brief seconds-
-strike to the right parried, blows exchanged, maneuvering, shield comes around and BAM-
-strike to the left blocked, move to evade counterstroke, shield pushes you back into the line of the CUT-
-strike down the middle parried, blows exchanged, maneuvering, dodge shield slam, dodge follow-up punch-with-sword-hilt,
-strike to the right parried, raise Force-Shield to intercept response, counterattack blocked by enemy shield, blade sliding over the top in a STAB-
-guard raised, mana gathers as you shape a spell, only for the foe to charge in.
"Magic, is it? Then have at you, sorcerer!"
Hey, he actually guessed right-
-as you gather power for a Sword Beam, the enemy watches cautiously.
"What's this, now? You hardly seem a Shinigami, yet that sort of skill..."
The Sword Beam flies, but is intercepted by the shield!
"Oh-ho! Not one of theirs, after all! Then perhaps I should attempt it?"
And power builds around his weapon, he's doing it wrong, but you duck and cover anyway, anticipating an EXPLOSION-
-Ki in one hand, mana in the other, and bring them together to spark a blaze of gold.
For a moment, the warrior's guard falters as surprise overtakes him.
"...do I face a lost brother?"
...eh?-
-trying to attack this man alone is unlikely to go well for you.
While you're considering your opponent, he's returning the favor, or attempting to. Judging from his frown-
"Like staring into an empty mirror."
-and muttered remark, Mind Blank is causing him some problems.
In a clearer voice, the Quincy inquires, "What are you, stranger, and why do you side with the Shinigami?"
"I am one who objects to the murder of the innocent," you tell the Quincy Viking, figuring that should answer both his questions.
"And you side with the SHINIGAMI?" the warrior asks in disbelief. "Have you any idea-"
"-that they destroyed the Lichtreich a thousand years ago, and then culled the Quincy population on Earth eight centuries later?" you cut him off. "Yeah, I knew. Honestly, if I'd been present for the first round of hostilities, I might have picked a different side, and I definitely wouldn't have worked with the Soul Society for the second round - but considering YOUR lot sat that one out and let the Earthbound Quincy be exterminated, I wouldn't have been working with you, either."
That heroically proportioned jaw tightens in a grimace. Disappointment? Anger? Guilt, perhaps?
Or maybe he's just readying himself to fight again, because that's when Sui-Feng comes charging back.
Based on her somewhat mistrustful behavior towards you thus far, you figure that the Shinigami captain would be disinclined to cooperate with any suggestions you might make at this time. Then too, anything you said out loud right now would also be heard by your mutual opponent; Sui-Feng is facing the wrong way for sign language to work, assuming she can even follow your personal "dialect"; and your grasp of telepathy just isn't at the point where you'd trust it in a serious fight. That leaves magical communication, which would take a few seconds to set up and require you to drop one of your current buffs in its favor.
As such, you keep your guard up and divert some of your attention to following Sui-Feng, trying to figure out what she has in mind and waiting for an opening.
At first, it appears that the captain is charging straight at the Quincy. Given he's twice her height and must outmass her four times over, if not more, to say nothing of how he just showed himself able to overmatch her in a direct contest of strength, you have your doubts - and indeed, as she gets closer to her opponent and he lets loose with a horizontal slash of his blade, Sui-Feng veers off to the left and accelerates, trying to stay ahead of the arc of the attack, but close enough to her opponent's position that she won't lose any more time than absolutely necessary as she circles around him and closes the distance to her REAL target.
Against another opponent, it might have worked. Another Shinigami would either have had both hands on his zanpakuto and been committed to his opening attack, or else had but one hand free to try and punch or grab a small, fast-moving target - and in the latter instance, to subsequently hold her in place, in spite of momentum and her own strength. Many a Quincy would have had to redirect their arrows to chase the woman as she went past them, and Sui-Feng is quick and nimble enough that she might well be able to outrun such projectiles, or otherwise evade them.
A man with a shield, though, can just lash out with it, "hitting" a far larger area than his hand alone could ever threaten-
"Ha!"
-which this one does.
From the way Sui-Feng all but leaps to evade the incoming disc of steel - moving considerably farther towards the right side of the room than you think she wanted to, and with rather less grace than usual - it occurs to you that she might not have experience fighting opponents who use the classic sword-and-board style. From what you saw of the released weapons in the attack force, an opponent armed with a two-handed sword, a spear, or an axe wouldn't be unfamiliar to her, even if the differences in weapons design between medieval Europe and the feudal Japanese era Soul Society resembles might require some adjustment to the techniques involved, but the only Shinigami you've seen so far who uses any sort of serious armor was Captain Komamura, and even he didn't have a shield.
Whether it's their seeming institutional preference for speed over armor, the basic Shinigami fighting styles already having giving both hands plenty to do with zanpakuto, kido, and/or unarmed strikes, or some other factor you just aren't thinking of, worn shields simply don't seem to be a thing for the Soul Society. They wouldn't be useful for most Quincy, either, given their fondness for bows, and what you know of Hollows suggests most of them wouldn't have the wits to make such a thing or the resources to make it worth much. That leaves the odd Hollow whose body happened to develop a shield-shaped mass of armor on one or more arms... which probably isn't impossible, given what you've been told about how wildly the hungry spirits can diverge from their human origins, but likely isn't very common, either.
So, yeah. Captain or not, Sui-Feng's skillset may just not have a good answer for this kind of opponent.
Good thing she has backup, then.
Given how well the Spell of the Resonating Word worked out against the previous Sternritter, you're rather tempted to try it again. There are a couple of issues, though.
First is the difference between the two Quincy elites. Accutrone was wickedly fast and lethally precise, but he didn't appear to be exceptionally buff by the standards of supernatural warriors, something that made him a pretty good target for a spell that cannot really be dodged, only resisted or endured. Not only was the Resonating Word reasonably likely to be effective against the trenchcoat-wearing gunslinger, it took more out of him than it would have from a beefier target, at least proportionately speaking.
Valkyrie, on the other hand, is built more like your idealized adult form or Captain Kenpachi, and while increased size and strength don't always translate to increased durability, the intensity of the various vital energies you can sense within this man make you think he really is every bit as hearty as he appears to be. The Resonating Word strikes you as rather less likely to be as effective as you'd like. You might still use it, but for the second matter.
Namely, that your goal here isn't to defeat the Quincy Viking. It's to eliminate Yhwach, and the threat he poses. Putting down the King's bodyguard-from-nowhere is one route to doing that, but it's far from the only one, and probably not the most ideal, either.
After all, you know so very many spells of elemental destruction, and Yhwach is in absolutely no condition to dodge... but then again, Valkyrie is big enough that he might be able to cover his liege-lord if you blew up the room, even if he had to use his own body to do it. So it would behoove you to at least attempt to slow or stun the big warrior first, to prevent that from happening.
As Sui-Feng zips past you, you start gathering mana.
As the captain is forced off her chosen course by the enemy, you shape the formula, sparing a moment to thank the Goddesses and whichever spellcaster first codified the Spell of the Resonating Word for the rite being as simple as it is. No components and no gestures means that much less visible evidence to potentially give away what you're doing...
Until you speak the Word itself.
As [ Sound ] once again booms in the depths of Silbern, you see Valkyrie flinch - but then he grits his teeth and forges through the pain with a roar of his own, while simultaneously keeping Sui-Feng at a distance from the dais.
"I'll not be stopped so easily, sorcerer!"
Hey, he actually guessed right.
...
Okay, first of all, to quote Keanu Reeves, whoa.
And second, does it still count as deja vu when the effect is coming from a spell that gives you actual precognition?
Shaking off that momentary, Foresight-granted sense of disorientation, you ready yourself to cast your second spell.
Unfortunately, THIS magic does require gestures, and now that the Norse Sternritter knows what you are, the moment he sees you making arcane gestures-
"Have at you, sorcer- OH NO YOU DON'T!"
-his attempt to charge you down is thwarted by the need to fend off another high-speed advance from Sui-Feng. The warrior bears down on the small captain in a blur of movement and hits her like a runaway freight train going downhill with a full load of cars, sending Sui-Feng flying for the second time in this fight. Without missing a beat, he whirls around-
"Hrgh!"
-and is momentarily staggered as the echoes of the Resonating Word surge through his body, leaving him to drift backwards through the air on the remaining momentum of the charge that hit Sui-Feng. He only gets a few feet before once again shaking off the full effects of your spell, at which point he rockets towards you once more-
*Blink*
-but at the last moment before his blade reaches you, you invoke the Spell to Walk Through Space and blip over to... ...the rear left corner.
Rematerializing at the back of the room, you have a moment where you can see everyone and everything in the chamber, or at least as much as the low, godly glow emanating from the central bier and the aisle of light pouring in through the ruined door will allow.
You've landed facing Yhwach at an angle that lets you see most of the left side of his blanket-covered body. Forty-five degrees to your left and forty feet away is Sui-Feng, crouched in a "landing pose" after Sir Valkyrie's latest round of "Toss the Shinigami", while the Quincy himself is five or ten degrees to your right and probably some forty-five feet away.
"WHAT-!?"
Perhaps it's because your previous use of teleportation to bypass the ambush at the gate to the Royal Quarter has conditioned the Quincy elites to assume that you'll always use that ability to go where they would least want you to be. Maybe you made a noise on landing, or Sui-Feng reacted to your relocation in a way that Valkyrie was able to detect. Or it could just be that the man understands the chaotic flow of battle well enough to always assume the worst of an enemy he doesn't have eyes on, until proven otherwise.
Whatever the reason, even as he voices that cry of confusion and alarm, Sir Valkyrie is whirling about to face the rear of the King's Chamber - and whether by fluke of chance or blessing of the Goddesses, he makes that turn to his left, buying you a few extra fractions of a second before his gaze falls upon you, and he sees the yellowish sphere of hissing, roiling energy that you're gathering between your hands.
You see the moment of realization flash across the warrior's features, and the resolution that immediately follows it.
Out of the corner of your eye, you see Sui-Feng start to move.
Raising the seething globe of elemental acid before you, you cry a warning to your ally: "Fire in the hole!"
And then, even as the Sternritter surges forward to defend his King, you unleash your magic.
The sphere in your hands expands violently, the Caustic Eruption passing over, around, and possibly through you without incident, even as everything within thirty feet of your position in all directions is hit by a wave of concentrated acid. The "explosion" is rather quieter than that of Fireballs and other incendiary magics you've set off in the past, as the air is merely being momentarily displaced by the corrosive liquid, rather than having its oxygen consumed, the remaining gasses superheated, and the resulting expansion of the shockwave causing a short-lived vacuum before the cooler air can crash in to fill it.
For all of that, the noise of the aftermath is remarkably similar. True, the sizzling comes from purely chemical reactions rather than thermally induced ones, and the eye-watering smell is unpleasantly acrid instead of smoky or disturbingly like cooked pork, but they are still present.
And then, of course, there is the screaming.
Somehow, Sir Valkyrie managed to get around the bier and interpose himself between Yhwach and the oncoming wave of acid. From the look of things, he extended his shield to cover the King's head and upper body, while taking as much of the rest of the acid as he could with his own form.
Bathed head to toe by the Eruption, the warrior's scream is as furious as it is pained - but it is also triumphant, for it is his pain alone.
Even as he cries out, the Sternritter whirls around, seizes the blanket that covers his liege-lord, and whips it off of Yhwach's body and away from the bier. As he does so, you catch sight of a dark, seething stain along the lower end of the fabric, a discoloration that is already smoking as you watch.
Through all of this, Yhwach remains silent, his breathing steady and his eyes closed.
Incredibly, almost impossibly, Sir Valkyrie has succeeded in protecting him-
*CLANG!*
*SCREEEEE-!*
-and then he does it again, as Sui-Feng, utterly unmarked by your corrosive explosion, appears before him and tries to stab the Sealed King in the throat.
This leaves the Sternritter's broad back turned towards you.
You have a Staggered Flicker prepared. You have a sword in your hand. You have a target before you.
As the acid-spattered wall and its corrosive-drenched hangings hiss and steam behind you, you raise your Blessed Blade before you with both hands, take aim at your opponent, and begin channeling mana through one hand and ki through the other.
The energies surge together, blend, and BLAZE into golden fire. Simultaneously, your sword begins to give off a low-pitched hum, which quickly rises to a metallic ringing, and then a high-pitched keening, as you pour even MORE Power into the technique, pushing it past its already-tentative safety limits.
It should be fine. You're only planning to use this Overloaded Power Blade for a moment, and if worse comes to worst? Your Blessed Blade is only a Shadow, after all.
Before you, you see Valkyrie's broad shoulders twitch in unrestrained shock as the light, sound, and feel of your technique reach him. Even as his helmed head turns in your direction, right eye visibly wide as it and the expression of surprise around it enter your field of view, the muscles along his back tighten in preparation for something. Flinging Sui-Feng away from his King again, striking at her with his dark sword, turning to face you - who can say?
Faster than the blink of an eye, you vanish from your spot near the corner, closing the distance before the Sternritter can finish his own move.
Something strange and familiar happens then. As the crying steel of your Power-wreathed sword comes into contact with the Quincy's aura and body, that OTHER golden force you glimpsed earlier flares up in response-!
The next thing you know, you aren't in Yhwach's Chamber, or anywhere in Silbern. You appear to be hanging in the night sky over an unfamiliar landscape, all rocky slopes, ancient forest, and rough coastline, half-buried under a light blanket of snow. The moon is full and bright, and the sky full of stars, as well as the dancing rainbow haze of a brilliant aurora. You should be cold, but the lights above seem to radiate warmth as much as they do illumination, and you can hear whispers of sound besides, almost words...
*Ba-dump*
Before you stands the Sternritter, Gerard Valkyrie, weapons and armor discarded. There are strange M-shaped markings about his eyes, which seem blank and blind, yet you know he sees you as surely as you see him.
*Ba-dump*
Bound to his bare chest by chains whose composition alternates between the same silvery spirit-metal that the other members of the Wandenreich use for their weapons, and wisps of gold-tinted divine power doubtlessly harder than any metal you could name, there is a Heart.
*Ba-dump*
Though attached to nothing, the organ continues to beat slowly and steadily, each deep pulse sending forth a noise like distant thunder and a burst of golden energy. Some motes of the latter cling to Gerard's flesh or hang in the air about him in a thin haze that bleeds away into the air almost as quickly as it is replenished.
*Ba-dump*
The Sternritter stares at you, white eyes wide and wondering.
"Do I face a lost brother... or the very Shadow of the Soul King?"
*Ba-dump*
It occurs to you that your sword is still in your hand.
The temptation to speak is great, but you refrain. You know from prior experience that these Power-triggered visions don't last long-
You can't help but wonder: what set THIS one off? Previously, you or the Original have always been in Maximum Power when this sort of thing happens, fighting someone who was similarly exerting themselves. What's different about this instance, and which of those differences is the critical one?
Is it that you used a Power technique, carrying fleeting traces of the essence of the Triforce and the Goddesses, against another entity with its own divine power? Was it the addition of Power Overload? Is the medium of your Goddess-given Blessed Blade significant?
An abundance of questions, and no time to seek their answers.
-and that their contents have been governed more by symbolism than by physical fact. Kahlua doesn't ACTUALLY have perpetually bloody claws, Altria isn't being followed around by invisible Fae enchantresses - that you've noticed, anyway - and your Original isn't accompanied by an army of darkness everywhere he goes.
Symbolically speaking, the first thing you do here will be Important. It will set the tone for the rest of this... encounter... even more so than it would for a face-to-face meeting in the physical world. If you choose to speak to Gerard-
Idly, you muse how spooky it is to just KNOW someone's given name without having been told it.
-that may well be ALL you're able to do. Or perhaps it won't; you don't know enough to say for certain one way or the other.
Even leaving aside the possibility of metaphysically locking yourself into some specific course of action, there's also the matter of how brief these visions have been in the past. From the outside, they're so fast that they might as well not have happened; from within, they seem to last a few seconds at most. That's not a lot of time to work with.
In another time and place, you'd be more than willing to take the opportunity to indulge your inquisitive instincts and learn more about this facet of your Power, but here and now, in the middle of a battle for a thousand souls? You simply can't justify it. You HAVE to do something to advance this fight, to seek an advantage over the imposing and increasingly unfathomably lucky opponent you're facing.
It's for that reason, more than any other, that you raise your sword, still shining with an aura of intense Power, and strike at one of the chains wrapped about Sir Valkyrie's broad chest.
You don't know exactly what that Heart is, or who or what it belonged to, but you are certain that the original owner must have been a divine entity. It's the only explanation for the golden energy that surges from the pumping organ with every new drum-like beat. With that in mind, you are reluctant to strike at it directly - it's too much like something Ganondorf would have done.
The idea of striking the Quincy himself is one you dismiss even more quickly. It just feels wrong to take advantage of his moment of clear confusion and misunderstanding to stab him, and besides, you've seen how tough the guy is in the real world. Who's to say that his representation here would be any weaker? For all you know, he might be even stronger in this state, where the limitations of a physical body don't exist to hold him back.
With those facts in mind, you turn your attention to the chains. There was an entry in the Japanese Spirit Dossier about the "Chain of Fate" and its importance for lingering souls, particularly with regards to becoming Hollows, but the alternating links of bright silvery metal and glowing golden power look nothing like the description Isshin and Masaki's little folder gave you. That's before you consider the fact that the Chain of Fate was made out to be a singular phenomenon, whereas that Heart looks like it's been bound with half a dozen glowing chains.
While you doubt your Blessed Blade's ability to cut through a link forged from concentrated divine power, it was a mere minute ago that your sword shattered a gun made of that curious silver metal. Even if there were multiple layers of enchantment at work, you KNOW that your weapon can overcome that substance, and you call upon that certainty now, trying to impress it upon the reality of the vision and the golden flames that ARE present.
White eyes widen with alarm, and Sir Valkyrie raises one hand in defensive denial. "Wait, don't-!"
*Ching*
The sound as your Power-wreathed Blessed Blade scythes through a single silver-steel link, about five segments to the right of the Heart, is surprisingly soft, yet it carries clearly, as all other sound in the winterscape seems to die off. Even the steady beating of the Heart appears to pause, as the fragmented bits of metal are consumed by the golden energy hooked about either end.
Gerard stares down at the severed link and the brightly shining ones adjacent to it, and then looks up at you in dismay.
"What have you done?" he whispers.
*Ba-dump*
Immediately, the big man closes one hand around the broken chain, his spiritual energy rising as he forms a new link-
*Ba-dump*
-but the glow of the energy-links intensifies and spreads into the next pair of metallic ones, consuming them as quickly and completely the broken bits of the first. Nor is that the only damage; where the burning fragments of the sundered link touch other parts of the chain, silver links "ignite" and golden ones "flare" as the divine energy begins to slip its bonds. Moreover-
*BA-dump*
-as each new beat of the Heart sends more of that mist of godly power into the air, it seems to feed the reactions. Golden chains shine brighter and wilder, while metallic links burn faster and hotter.
And while Sir Valkyrie's attempts at damage control are visibly slowing the initial spread of the golden fire, he only has two hands. The burning shrapnel hit too many other parts of the binding, starting too many small, fast reactions-
*Ba-DUMP*
-which are only accelerating as the pulse of the Heart grows louder, fiercer, and faster.
The Sternritter struggles valiantly, forging new sections of spirit-steel chain and reinforcing damaged ones, but it's clear that the effort is a doomed one. Already, a quarter of the bindings are aflame, and the Heart is beginning to bounce away from his chest with each new beat-
*BA-DUMP*
-as if it had a will of its own, and was seeking to escape.
"My King," Gerard murmurs, looking down at the failing binds and the escaping Heart, "is this what you saw?"
*BA-DUMP!*
*Cha-ching!*
It is to the loudest pulse yet and the chorus of a dozen pieces of metal being sundered at once that the Heart is freed. Drifting away from Valkyrie's chest, it hangs in mid-air between the two of you, pounding steadily.
*BA-DUMP!*
*BA-DUMP!*
*BA-DUMP!*
And then it opens an eye, with an iris of bright gold, and regards you with... something.
"...hi?"
It is, perhaps, not the wittiest or most formal introduction you might have made, and it could have stood to be more self-assured. Speaking frankly, though, you are at a bit of a loss as to what exactly is going on, and that uncertainty, at least, is accurately expressed.
The Heart's response to your "greeting" is to blink its eye at you, and pulse-
*Ba-dump*
-once, spraying more of those golden particles of energy. They seem brighter now than they were before, and as the mist expands about you, you experience a rush of sensations, of emotions not your own.
Acknowledgement.
Gratitude.
Curiosity.
Apology.
Determination.
Some of those feelings, you sense, are not aimed at you. Despite having been chained to him, the Heart registers no hostility or bitterness towards Gerard - it is, in fact, thankful to him, for reasons you can only guess at, and on some level regrets the loss of their connection. Yet the Heart is also resolute, and will not be re-connecting itself to its bearer.
"But then, the King-! Surely, you will not-!"
*Ba-DUMP*
The intensity of that response, the WEIGHT of the emotions carried within it, seem to stagger the Quincy more than any of the spells you threw at him.
Refusal.
Apology.
Sorrow.
Anger.
Denial.
Gerard closes his eyes and hangs his head, and for all his size, strength, and previous vigor, he suddenly looks defeated. "Then we are doomed."
*Ba-dump*
Correction.
Gratitude.
Affection.
Protection.
Offering?
...that last one, you realize, was aimed at you as much as it was at the Quincy. Both the Heart's singular eye and the colorless gaze of Gerard Valkyrie are fixed on you, projection a similar look of inquiry.
"I... have no idea what's going on right now," you admit.
The corners of the Heart's eye crinkle at your admission, in a manner that makes you think it is laughing at you-
*Ba-dump*
Amusement.
Instruction?
-correction, that you KNOW means the Heart is laughing at you.
"The Heart of the Soul King is both the source of his divine life-force, and the embodiment of his connection to his people, and all other living things," Gerard explains. "It is compassion, courage, hope, and love made manifest, a power beyond reason or logic-"
Oh, THAT sounds familiar.
"-but for all of that, and for all that it has its own will, its ability to ACT is limited. That is..." He breaks off, sighing over the steady, quieter drum-beats of the Heart. "That was, my role. To be the vessel through which it could act upon the world, to inform its decisions and give form to its power. And though it bears me no ill-will for our binding, it will not renew it. Another path calls to it, now... another will?" White eyes widen once more. "The Soul King is...?"
*Ba-dump*
Apology.
Secrecy.
Chiding.
Haste.
"...ah, yes. The Heart will take no further part in this struggle, nor allow itself to be used for such, even if its loss will surely mean my defeat, and my King's death." Fists and teeth clench at that admission. "For the Heart loves all the Quincy, regardless of the station or circumstance of their birth, and the plan for His Majesty's revival... offends it."
*Ba-DUMP*
Anger.
Sorrow.
Rejection.
Protection.
"Yet despite the Wandenreich's actions, it loves us still, and would not trade our lives to save the Earthbound Quincy any more than it would accept their lives being taken to restore the King," Gerard continues. "And it wishes to thank me for our time together, so it offers me its aid one final time, for the sake of our people."
*Ba-dump*
Affirmation.
Gratitude.
Offering?
"The Heart is also grateful to you for your... intervention," the Sternritter adds, if a bit sourly, "and so it asks if you will accept its blessing."
You have so many questions-
*Ba-dump*
Haste.
Offering?
-but you suspect there isn't time for them. Gods aren't usually in the habit of explaining their actions, and even if the Heart agreed to entertain your inquiries, that sense of haste, hurry, time-running-out makes you think it can't afford to delay for more translations.
So with no time to inquire after details, no idea what form this divine gift might take, how it could interact with the Goddesses' favor, and/or whether or not it would be properly passed to Original Alex, you have to make a call: do you accept the Heart's blessing, or not?
You feel a not-inconsiderable urge to politely decline the Heart's offer. Quite aside from all your unasked questions about the blessing itself, it's not like you came on this raid knowing that the Heart even EXISTED, much less that it was being held against its will. Rather than the result of any true intent on your part, its freedom is a happy accident, the chance outcome of a spur of the moment decision that could easily have seen it being stabbed instead.
Should you really be rewarded for blind luck? Especially when you're ALREADY set to profit off of the invasion of Silbern and the deaths of a number of Quincy? Accepting a blessing from an entity that claims them as its people, when you're mixed up in breaking and entering, assault, grand theft, some flavor of homicide, and various other offenses against one branch of the Quincy, feels a bit... off.
That's how you think your Original might react in this situation, anyway.
For your part, it comes down to a simple question: is having a divine blessing better than not having it?
Objectively, the answer is yes.
Oh, you don't doubt that there will be consequences for carrying the favor of the Heart of the Soul King, or for that matter, for even knowing that the Heart exists in its current state. Seriously, the idea that the nominal head-of-state of a planar power bloc - much less a ruler who is a true god - could have its arguably most vital organ just floating around, independent of the rest of its body, feels like the kind of information that either is, ought to be, and/or soon will be considered a state secret by the Soul Society. That's not even getting into the implications of the Heart's self-awareness, its choice to align itself with the Quincy, or how Gerard briefly mistook you for the "Shadow" of the Soul King.
You already know that there are elements within the Soul Society that aren't thrilled at having mortals mixed up in their business. You can't imagine they'd be pleased to learn that you now know about something like THIS, or that, through you, the Golden Goddesses are now aware of it.
Sucks to be them.
As for the matter of how the Goddesses themselves would feel about you getting blessed by another deity, you think they should be okay with it. Din certainly would not object to you claiming a reward for exerting your power, and Farore shouldn't have an issue with you getting someone's help, even if said someone is another god - just look at all the favors from lesser divinities Link picked up, down through the ages. Even Nayru will likely approve of you allowing the Heart to clear whatever obligation it feels it holds towards you, rather than leaving the debt unclaimed to potentially disturb the Heart AND give the forces of cosmic balance - and the Powers involved in them - leverage to make your Original's life more interesting.
So it is that you look the Heart in the eye, bow respectfully, and say, "I accept your offer."
The eye quirks in that mouthless smile-
*BA-DUMP!*
-and the vision around you ends in a flare of golden light.
The next thing you know, you're standing behind Yhwach's bier, sword extended before you in a two-handed thrusting grip. The flames of your Power have vanished, and with them has gone Gerard Valkyrie; the only signs that the Sternritter was ever even present are the damage your Caustic Eruption did to the room, the once-white blanket laying on the floor - now discolored and smoking as the lingering acid does its grim work - and the aura of divine energy that covers... well, everything within YOUR sensory radius, at least.
Quickly giving yourself an internal once over, you find that you don't FEEL any different...
Standing across from you, Sui-Feng looks around, stinger-gauntlet raised to intercept an attack that never comes. After a brief pause, the Captain of the Second Division turns and half-glares, half-stares at you.
"What. Did. You. Do?"
"Honestly, I'm as confused as you are right now."
Sui-Feng's half-glare shifts in a manner that makes clear her doubts about THAT claim.
Suspicious, isn't she?
"How about we deal with this guy first, and leave the questions for later?" you add, nodding down at Yhwach's still unconscious form.
"Kindly do not tell me how to do my job," Sui-Feng retorts, even as she raises her zanpakuto to a striking position, and stabs the stinger into Yhwach's unprotected chest.
A wordless, choked-off cry escapes the Sealed King's lips, and his body thrashes about, instinctively trying to pull away from the source of the pain, yet the man's eyes still don't open-
!
-but SOMETHING responds, as the air around him, already heavy with the pressure of his soul, suddenly surges.
Practically in the same instant that her attack connects, Sui-Feng recoils, wide-eyed and choking, and staggers backwards a couple of steps as if struck. Her unarmed hand comes up to clutch at her chest... in the same spot where she stabbed the Quincy King.
A spot, you can't help but notice, that is quickly being covered by some sort of glowing crest, four curved arms vaguely reminiscent of a butterfly's wings. The same mark has appeared on Yhwach's body, though it's much more noticeable there, against the white of his sleeping gown, than it is on the black material of the main Shinigami uniform.
Somewhat more alarmingly, the strange mark is located right over the heart.
"Suzume... bachi?" Sui-Feng coughs out.
/ ! /
For a second, you think you hear something replying to her - a small voice, maybe female? You can't make out any words, just a general tone of fear and anger... and something buzzing?
Maybe it's just your Original's history speaking, but for a second, all you can see is Sui-Feng with her own fairy partner hovering over her, which for some reason - the name, perhaps? - appears in your mind's eye as glowing the shade of bright, angry yellow seen in several poisonous insects.
Even as you entertain that curious image, you're considering your next move. Part of you wants to use up your remaining Staggered Flicker to circle around Yhwach's resting spot, get to Sui-Feng, and start casting the Spell of Regeneration - no matter how much tougher the Shinigami Captain actually is than a human woman would be, heart-shots are nothing to mess around with. Another part has noticed that there's remarkably little blood seeping into Yhwach's nightclothes, certainly not enough to suggest that he's been stabbed through the heart, as was clearly Sui-feng's intent.
If the damage to him wasn't that bad, perhaps her injury is similarly limited?
Quite aside from that, you're turning over the implications of this latest development in your head. It seems that even unconscious and without his loyal followers to guard him, Yhwach still has at least one layer of defense left. How to breach it, then...?
Given that it's clearly a supernatural defense, dropping an Antimagic Field over the bier should be enough to block its effects, unless of course the protection arises from Yhwach's own divine nature. Another possibility would be to dismiss one of your current buffs, put something like the Spell to Resist Fire or the Spell of Protection From Fire in its place, and then hit Yhwach with an elemental attack that wouldn't be able to bypass your defense.
...you might not use Fire in that instance, though. Burning to death is a pretty horrible way to go, by all accounts, and you'd rather not acquire memories of such a thing. Maybe if you cast Resist Cold and then stabbed the guy with a giant icicle...?
The other option that immediately comes to mind is just throwing someone who's tougher than Yhwach at this defense of his, or a whole lot of somewhat less resilient individuals, and letting them wail on the barrier until the King dies from the accumulated damage and they're left battered in the aftermath. Sui-Feng is probably not up to that on her own, but you've got three other Shinigami waiting in the hall, yourself, and whoever catches up now that the Heart has (probably) done its thing with the surviving Wandenreich members.
Which begs the question of what, exactly, the Heart did, but you put that aside for the moment.
You're about to expend your remaining Staggered Flicker when two things occur to you.
First, it takes a while to gather and shape the energy required to cast the Spell of Regeneration, and simply zipping over to Sui-Feng's side won't speed that process up.
Second, the injured and visibly confused ghost ninja may not react well to having an effective stranger suddenly appear in her space like that. Especially given said stranger's sheer size.
So, while you do still hurry over to help, the "hurrying" is more in line with ordinary human speeds, giving you a bit more time to gather energy, and allowing Sui-Feng plenty of opportunity to see you coming.
"What happened?" Lieutenant Saskibe calls from the doorway, as he enters the room.
"Some kind of reactive defense," Sui-Feng replies. "It copied my attack." At his concerned frown, she adds, "I'm fine."
"The hell you are," you reply bluntly.
"The wound isn't that bad," the captain insists. "And I can dismiss the crest on my own." There is a whisper of spiritual energy, but as it passes, Sui-Feng blinks in confusion and looks down at herself, moving her hand to better see the unchanged mark on the front of her uniform. "What...?"
/ ! /
There it is again. This time, though, the buzzing not-quite-a-voice sounds entirely angry.
You glance over your shoulder at Yhwach. "He's still marked, too."
"Of course he is, I didn't try to..." Sui-Feng abruptly falls silent, staring at Yhwach's recumbent form with sudden suspicion. There is another faint spiritual pulse, and this time, the crest over Yhwach's heart vanishes, taking the mirrored mark on Sui-Feng with it.
She looks quietly furious at this development.
The First Division Lieutenant looks a bit put out himself.
You take the opening, reaching out and touching the captain's arm-
"Hey!"
-discharging the spell.
Sui-Feng glares at you as she yanks her arm out from under your hand. "I told you I'm... fine?" Blinking again, the captain absently pokes at her "wound" and straightens out of the slight hunch she'd adopted after being hit by the emulation of her attack. After a moment, she lowers her hand and raises her head, expression intent. "How thorough is that spell?"
"As long as the target's still alive, it can completely regenerate severed limbs, broken bones, and destroyed organs," you reply.
"Including the heart?" the ninja asks, gaze trailing back to Yhwach.
"Before we talk about mutually destroyed hearts," you interrupt, "I have a couple of things I'd like to test."
"Please hurry, then," Lieutenant Saskibe says. "Even if the living Quincy did just disappear-"
"Wait, what?" Sui-Feng asks, turning his way.
"-I don't trust this place not to throw more surprises at us."
You nod and turn back to the bier, holding your Blessed Blade before you and calling on your Power.
"What the-!?"
Ignoring that for the moment, you lower your weapon until its magically-honed edge and the golden flame wrapped about it touch the Quincy King's right forearm, and then press down while drawing the blade back, using just enough force to cut fabric and flesh.
Even as a thin, bleeding line appears on Yhwach's arm-
Once again, the man shifts in his still-unbroken sleep, though this time the flinch is far less pronounced.
-your own arm registers pain in the same location. As quickly as it came, it starts to fade, the Spell of Persistent Vigor making short work of such a minor injury, but still, the test proves that Power alone won't penetrate this particular defense.
It's also interesting to note that you didn't trigger a vision this time. Is that because you didn't Overload the technique, or because Yhwach is still unconscious? Or could it have something to do with this reflective shield...?
"Are you done?" Sui-Feng asks, raising her weapon.
"One more thing," you reply, as you begin casting a Spell to Summon Monsters.
If you're going to do this, you might as well go all-in.
So it is that the arrival of the largest Earth Elemental you've yet summoned is accompanied by countless motes of golden light, erupting from the floor like an inverted rainstorm as the entity rises to its full-
/ Whoops, low cave. /
-okay, MOST of its height. Even Silbern's towering interior architecture doesn't provide ceilings quite high enough for a creature somewhere past forty feet tall to stand up straight and feel completely comfortable. Fortunately, there's plenty of space for the elemental not to feel crowded in the other directions.
What you've summoned is an Elder Earth Elemental, the oldest, largest, and most intelligent of their kind. Becoming an Elder is not necessarily the final stage of an elemental's life-cycle, but it is the last phase that a common elemental can achieve simply through age and growth; any further development hinges on personal achievements, divine favor, and similar external factors.
And this particular Elder has clearly achieved a few things in its time. For starters, its body has a much smoother and more symmetrical appearance than the other elementals you've summoned today, making it look more like an organic being than a mass of earth and stone shaped to approximate such an appearance. Polished stones and crystals of many colors - carefully arranged for aesthetic impact - hang about the elemental's thick wrists and immense shoulders on metallic wires as many-looped bracelets and a necklace, while a fourth line of stones runs from its left shoulder, down and across its chest to its right hip, and then up the back. They remind you of nothing so much as strings of prayer beads - huge ones, to fit hands that could each pick you up unassisted. Lines have been carved into the elemental's otherwise mostly smooth stony hide, and some of them filled with colored dyes, so that the network of small fissures gives the same overall impression to be found in tattooed flesh.
...who and what did you just summon?
/ Summoner, I stand ready. /
Quickly suppressing your surprise at the results of your semi-random spell, you greet the / Honored mountain / and explain the situation - ancient ruler about to reawaken, innocent souls in danger of being devoured, damage-reflecting defensive mechanism, etc.
The Elder listens, and shakes its head, saying, / I am glad to be merely summoned for this, because that defense sounds like it would be VERY annoying to deal with in the stone. /
Heeding your request, the elemental bends forward slightly, raises its huge right hand over Yhwach, and extends an index finger bigger than both of your legs put together. The tip is not really sharp, but being made of rock and coming to a point, it will focus the pressure the elemental can bring to bear well enough for your purposes.
There is a whoosh of displaced air and a faint thump as the enormous finger taps down on Yhwach's left arm, unquestionably hard enough to bruise, but probably - hopefully - not with so much force as to break bone.
Once again, the sleeping King grunts in pain.
The Elder Elemental shifts in place, making a noise of discomfort.
You... feel nothing.
You wait a few more seconds to be sure, but as they tick down with no sign of a reaction, it seems more and more certain that you've found a way to bypass Yhwach's last line of defense.
"Well, then," you say aloud, and in Japanese. "That answers that question."
You gesture for Sui-Feng and Sasakibe to step back, saying, "Let's give the Elder some room."
"An elder of what, exactly?" the lieutenant wonders, glancing at the gigantic earth spirit.
Said elemental is shifting the acid-ravaged carpet aside with motions of its lower body that you'd call kicks, if it had proper legs. Once it's cleared a suitable space, your summoned ally backs away from Yhwach a bit and starts sinking into the stone floor, descending far enough that it loses nearly half of its height.
While that's going on, you start casting the Spell to Create a Wall of Force. You keep it relatively simple, just large enough to screen you and your two allies and catch any... shrapnel... from what is about to occur.
Now in position, the Elder peers down at Yhwach for a moment, before raising its gemstone eyes to you. / For the record, small summoner, I am not fond of taking a life in this manner, even if that life has truly earned it. /
/ I have concerns with this course myself, Honored Mountain, / you admit, / but time is against us, and this is the quickest way I can think of to shatter him, without eroding any of my soft allies in turn. /
/ Just so we understand each other, / the Elder notes. / Now, considering how watery you soft ones are, this is likely to get messy. Are you prepared? /
You let the spell take effect, blocking off a twenty-by-twenty foot square of space between your group and the soon-to-be-obliterated bier. / I am. /
The Elder nods and raises both enormous hands above and then slightly behind its head, interlocking its thick fingers as it winds up for an utterly immense hammerblow. Even with the fifteen or more feet that it's phased into the floor, the length of the elemental's arms and the sheer size of its fists mean that its upraised knuckles threaten to scrape the ceiling.
The car-sized mass of living stone hangs there for a moment, and amid the Foresight-granted images of what comes next - which you are doing your best NOT to look at too closely - your mind briefly conjures up a vision of a different sort: of that last, hushed moment before a seemingly stable cliff-face rips away from the rest of the mountain and comes roaring and crashing down on whatever is unfortunate enough to be caught in its path to the ground.
It abruptly occurs to you that you REALLY ought to cover your ears, and so you do.
And then, with a roar halfway between the rock-tearing rumble of an earthquake and the kiai of a martial artist - and which resonates through the floor, up through your legs, and from there into the rest of your body, regardless of your muffled hearing - the Elder brings his fists down.
You avert your eyes-
!
-as the entire fortress seems to rock from the impact, the thunderous echoes of which rebound through the King's Chamber like a series of bombs going off.
Also, there is now a horrid smear of largely (but not entirely) red stuff spattered across the other side of your Wall of Force, and from what you can make out, parts of the floor beyond.
The Elder, meanwhile, has been blown backwards from what remains of the bier and its occupant-
Not looking, not looking, you are NOT looking...
-fetching up against the back wall of the chamber in a manner rather like the landslide you momentarily compared it to. The entire front of the elemental's rocky body is cracked and indented like it just went a couple of rounds with Din Herself, the legendary Biggoron, or a Link armed with the Megaton Hammer.
/ ...ow, / the Elder belatedly rumbles, as it straightens up. / I didn't realize I could hit QUITE that hard... oh, Entemoch, this is disgusting. WHY must you soft ones always SQUISH like this? Is it really so much to ask that you just shatter like decent people? /
"I freely admit that I don't speak Rock," the Shinigami lieutenant notes in passing, "but am I the only one who thinks that creature sounds VERY put out all of a sudden?"
"You are not," Sui-Feng agrees.
It's occurred to you that Yhwach's blood would make for an exceptionally potent magical reagent. You're not sure what you'd use it for, but this will undoubtedly be your last chance to collect any.
/ I cannot account for the effects the whims of the gods and the outcome of random chance have had upon the development of my kind, Honored Mountain, / you say with a note of contrition. / I can only extend my apologies for putting you in such an unpleasant situation, thank you for seeing the task through regardless, and offer to conclude this summoning promptly. /
/ Please do, / the Elder rumbles. / The less time I have to process these memories, the easier it will be for my true self to suppress them. /
/ So be it. Thank you again, Elder. /
And with that, you end the spell.
There is an unpleasant SPLAT as the gore that caked the Elder's fists and spattered along its front falls to the floor, left behind when the elemental's summoned form dispersed.
That disgusting sound reinforces your desire not to go picking through what's left of Yhwach's body, and just burn the whole mess to ashes, but even so, that desire isn't quite strong enough to overcome your more acquisitive impulses.
Rationally, it makes sense to collect a reagent. Yhwach was a near-divine entity, and any portion of his being would be of great value for the proper sort of magical ritual. For all you know, this could be your only chance to obtain such potent magical material; is that really the kind of opportunity you're willing to pass up?
Even if you don't end up using what you gather here in one of your projects, keeping a sample of Yhwach's blood would be handy for other reasons. Maybe it's just your Original's paranoia talking, but Ganondorf was too good an example of a powerful evil being treating death as a temporary inconvenience for you to blithely assume that others wouldn't attempt or achieve similar feats - and that was BEFORE you narrowly avoided getting dragged into Dracula's resurrection, or discovered Yhwach's own revival scheme. And while you've helped to thwart that plot, can you really be sure that this is the end for the Quincy King?
Honestly, you don't think you can.
Yhwach's plan to cheat death took a thousand years to resolve, and involved a vast commitment of material and human resources. If he was willing and able to devote that much effort to a backup plan while fighting a war against the Soul Society, who's to say that he didn't have ANOTHER plan, in case the backup failed? Once again working from recent precedent, you know Dracula had mortal followers, who contributed to his revival; can you rule out the surviving members of the Wandenreich attempting to restore their fallen lord in a similar manner?
For that matter, what about plain old reincarnation? You've done nothing to prevent Yhwach's soul from moving on, and while a soul that passes through the cycle of rebirth would normally start out its next life as a clean slate, powerful souls DO tend to be influenced by their prior incarnations.
That's not even getting into the question of CONSCIOUS reincarnation, which - again - you have secondhand personal experience with.
So, yeah. In the event Yhwach IS reborn, having a blood sample from his past life would give you a shot at tracking down his new incarnation before he can get up to mischief. Not a great chance, admittedly, but it would at least be POSSIBLE - without that link, even the most powerful Divination Magic might fail.
And so you dimiss your Wall of Force-
*Splat*
-and step gingerly around as much of the gore on the floor as you can as you make your way towards the bier.
"What are you doing?" Sui-Feng asks, as you take the empty Clay Bottle out of your pocket.
"Collecting a sample," you reply in a tight voice, as the smell starts to register.
"...sorcerers and scientists have that in common, then," she concludes sourly.
"Speaking of scientists," Lieutenant Sasakibe interjects, "should one of us collect... something... for Captain Kurotsuchi?" His tone is bland, but he's eyeing the mess distastefully.
"If Kurotsuchi wants samples, he can come get them himself," Sui-Feng says bluntly, as she turns her zanpakuto back into a conventional sword.
"I suspect travel to this location will be complicated, going forward."
"My heart bleeds for him. You said something about the Quincy disappearing?"
"Yes, about that..."
You've done your best to use this discussion as a distraction from the sight and smell all about you, but now, having to face the bier head-on so you can see what you're doing as you reach INTO the mess with your Bottle, it becomes impossible to ignore what is before you.
There is NOTHING left that resembles a body. Yhwach was not a small man, but the Elder Earth Elemental's fists were the size of small CARS, probably weighed several times as much, and were directed with a terrifying amount of force. The BIER was reduced to fragments by the impact; the BODY that was caught between the two masses of stone just ceased to exist except as a kind of organic slurry.
You have NEVER been so grateful for the nausea-suppressing aspect of the Spell of Persistent Vigor as you are right at this moment, and you suspect that without it, you'd be busily emptying your stomach, which would contaminate the reagent you intend to acquire on top of being an all-around awful experience.
Even with THAT form of contamination avoided, there's still the issue of how Yhwach's blood has been mixed with... well, everything else. You look the scene over for a minute, and are about to give up on finding any actual BLOOD and instead just shoveling a bunch of PASTE into your Bottle, when the Goddesses have mercy on you.
Part of the shattered bier broke in such a way as to create a rough, jagged trough on one side. The residue that was formerly the body of a King has settled inside, but is too thick to properly flow through, leaving only a thin trail of blood to pass through.
You open your Bottle and hold its rim to the side of the stone.
As you wait for the blood to accumulate to a useful quantity, you hear a disturbance from the hallway: voices, accompanied by auras of Shinigami power.
And then a fiery presence sweeps into the room.
There is a moment of silence as the Captain-Commander takes in the scene.
"...this is going to be one of the INTERESTING reports, isn't it?" he says
While Sui-Feng and Sasakibe quickly report to Yamamoto, you take a moment to glance out the shattered door, to try and see who showed up with the Captain-Commander.
Mostly, you just see Shinigami black, with Zaraki looming over the crowd, but you do spot a couple of armored figures that similarly stand out. The way those two are standing a precise distance apart as they push through the crowd suggests they're flanking a third, shorter presence.
And then you turn your attention back to your work, because you don't want to risk spilling any of the extremely valuable blood.
"...collecting samples?" Arturia's voice asks after a moment.
"That is what he said," Sui-Feng confirms.
"Arcanists," the King sighs.
"Speaking of," you call over the bier, "if the Wizard wanted you to get him a reagent, you'd better make it quick. I'm planning to burn the rest of this so that the Wandenreich can't make use of it after we're gone."
There is a pause-
"Seriously?" Sui-Feng blurts out.
-and then, out of the corner of your eye, you see the knight in gold-trimmed white armor take a vial out of a belt pouch. His helmet hides his expression, but his body language is distinctly sheepish.
"The Wizard would sulk if we let the opportunity pass," Arturia admits. "And a sulky wizard is not conducive to a peaceful existence."
"You might want to avoid the spatter on the floor over there," you advise. "It was contaminated by a spell of mine. Likewise for the stuff behind me."
Eventually, you've acquired all the blood you'll be getting. Putting the lid back on your Bottle, you tuck it into your pocket.
Gained Yhwach's Blood
"What will you be doing with that blood?" Yamamoto questions.
"In the short term, just hold on to it, while I try to make certain that Yhwach really is dead, and didn't have any additional revival plans in reserve," you admit easily. "If I turn up evidence that he's been reborn or re-embodied somewhere else, outside of a proper reincarnation, I can use his blood to track him down again - hopefully before he can cause too much trouble."
"Hm." The old man strokes his beard. "And if he IS reincarnated? What will you do with it then?"
"Then I'll probably use it to make something. Maybe a focus for Divination Magic."
Yamamoto huffs at that. "Building material, is it? Ha. What an end for the Quincy King." He glances at the broken bier, shakes his head, and then turns back to you. "Captain Sui-Feng and Lieutenant Sasakibe had interesting things to say about the fight in this room. Something about a sword with a faint divine aura, and all the living Quincy suddenly disappearing?"
You were wondering when this would come up. Looks like the old man's not wasting time.
Yeah, no. If Ambrose wants to get the good reagents, he can show up to negotiate for and collect them in person. This blood is yours, and you're not going to risk devaluing it.
The white knight looks around at the pulped remnants of the Quincy King and makes a sound of mingled frustration and disgust.
"That old man is going to OWE me for this one," he mutters, as he makes his way to the broken head of the bier.
Out of arcane interest, you keep one eye on the knight-
*Squish*
"Ugh."
-as he pokes through what's left of Yhwach's body-
*Splort*
"Ick."
-looking for something that hasn't been hopelessly mashed in with the rest of the corpse, and which would be useful as a reagent.
*Schluck*
"Hmm..."
That sounds like he might have found something.
Taking a more direct look, you see Sir White fishing a squashed, rubbery piece of pinkish-grey material out of the greater mass of goo. Based on its appearance and where it was resting, you're guessing that it was part of Yhwach's brain - useful for spells meant to affect the mind in general, especially with regards to enhancement, which includes some varieties of Divination Magic. It might even be useful for prophetic purposes, if it's the part of the brain that tied into the optic nerves - but even so, it wouldn't be as good as Yhwach's eyes themselves.
The knight slides the chunk of brain into the vial, seals it, and tucks it away.
Thinking it over, you don't see any real need to go into details about the source or nature of your Power.
"The answer to your first question is that my Original has the favor of certain deities, and is able to call on their power under certain circumstances. As an extension of him, I can do something similar, just not as often."
Though that has more to do with how your conjured body would eventually unravel if you burned too much of your mana throwing magic or Power around than it does any lack of regard the Goddesses might have for you compared to your Original.
Yamamoto takes that in with a neutral, "Hm."
On the other hand, you see no reason NOT to tell the Captain-Commander about your close encounter with the Heart of the Soul King, and several rather good reasons why you SHOULD make sure he's aware of the issue.
For one thing, Yamamoto IS the head of the Soul Society's military arm. Historically, ensuring the safety and survival of one's ruler is one of the more important duties of the military in a monarchical society, and such security would be badly compromised by having a vital part of the aforementioned monarch's body within easy striking distance of a militant member of a hostile organization.
Which of course leads into the question of just what the hell is going on with the Soul King, that his Heart would be floating around the planes separate from the rest of his body. There's all kinds of issues with that, not the least of which is how part of the being that the Shinigami serve actively protected beings that are effectively their mortal enemies. Is that according to the designs of the Soul King himself, or is the Heart following its own will? That's not a question you can answer - at least not right now - but if there's anyone here that might know, it'd be the leader of the Shinigami.
And if Yamamoto DOESN'T know the answer, well, that'll be informative in and of itself.
Finally, there's the simple fact that giving the Shinigami something else to occupy their attention will reduce the time and effort they can afford to spend on pestering you and Original Alex. You haven't forgotten how at least ONE of the captains was keen on trying to get more information about you, and while it seems that Captain Kurotsuchi isn't particularly well-liked by at least some of his peers, he probably does have some official pull - the position of "captain" would be worthless, otherwise. Better to throw a new mystery to the greater organization, to distract them from you and yours.
All of that being said, it does occur to you that while the Captain-Commander himself deserves to hear what you've learned, he might prefer that his nearby subordinates not be told just yet. It IS some pretty sensitive intel, and you're not sure what sort of procedures the Thirteen Divisions use to secure such things.
"As for your second question," you continue, lowering your voice slightly, "the answer involves what may or may not be sensitive information. If you'd permit me to cast a spell to keep it quiet for the moment...?"
The old Shinigami regards you curiously for a moment, and then nods.
Your first thought had been to cast the Spell of Silence, but you don't really have the time for the ritual you'd need to modify the effect to surround the two of you, rather than simply covering you. So instead, you cast the Spell of the Silent Table. While not as absolute at blocking sound, it's specifically designed for situations like this, where a private conversation needs to be kept that way.
As the magic takes effect, the air around you and the Captain-Commander buzzes for a moment, after which the sounds around you continue to register normally.
"Did it fail?" Yamamoto asks.
"No, the spell is designed not to interfere with sounds originating outside the area of effect," you inform him, adjusting your position so that your back is to the other occupants of the King's Room. "Sounds originating inside that area, however, are much harder for those outside to hear."
"Useful," he admits, and then waits, giving you an expectant look.
You start explaining about the vision that triggered when your Power-wreathed Blade came into contact with Gerard Valkyrie's Heart-enhanced body.
As soon as you mention the Heart chained to the Quincy warrior's body, Yamamoto's expression goes flat, and when you recount Sir Valkyrie's interpretation of the Heart's will - along with his confirmation that it WAS the Heart of the Soul King - you feel the temperature increase slightly as the ancient warrior's aura shifts. Not drastically, and certainly not dangerously, but enough to be noticeable.
Apart from that sign of what you suspect is more frustration than anger, Yamamoto doesn't interrupt until you have finished your account.
"Sensitive information, indeed," he rumbles. "You realize that you've stumbled onto what is effectively a state secret of the Soul Society."
It isn't a question, but you nod anyway. "I had expected as much, yes. What's the usual procedure regarding this particular secret?"
"There isn't one," comes the answer. "I very much doubt that information about the Soul King's... condition... ever made it into any of the archives the Thirteen Divisions are permitted access to, and if it did, it was edited, buried, or simply lost long ago. I cannot speak to what the noble families may know of the matter, save that I have never received any 'suggestions' on how to deal with its exposure since being recognized as Captain-Commander. Whether that means they are ignorant of the truth, believe me to be similarly afflicted, or simply never considered that it could be revealed..." He trails off with a shrug.
So, the good news is, Soul Society appears to have no law or custom requiring Yamamoto to report, detain, or kill you for what you've revealed you now know.
Then again, that just means he's free to use his own judgment in the matter. May you should offer him a reassurance, or something?
Although you don't overly care for having restrictions imposed on your personal freedoms, you are willing to concede that offering the Captain-Commander an assurance that you won't spread this knowledge around would be helpful in keeping up a positive relationship with the Soul Society - or at least a non-violent one.
Of course, given that you are a Shadow of a mortal magic-user, your word alone might not be enough to convince this ancient godling. While you could offer to swear a magically binding oath on the matter, you decide not to bother: for one thing, the Shinigami haven't demonstrated a great deal of familiarity with arcane magic, so Yamamoto might not trust such a vow; for another, the most powerful such effect you have access to is the Geas Spell, which - as the caster - you could simply dismiss; and even if you chose to leave the effect in place, it wouldn't affect your Original anyway, and the Shinigami would have no way to verify that he actually swore the same oath using the same means.
...well, not unless you worded your Geas to require you to get Original Alex to Geas himself, but that just goes back to the dual matter of the Shinigami potentially not trusting mortal magic, and of your Original being able to dismiss a Geas of his own making.
Instead, you decide to call upon a higher authority to back your promise.
"If it will help," you tell the old man, "I'm willing to swear an oath to my Goddesses that I won't tell anyone other than them or my Original what I've learned regarding the Soul King."
"I would prefer that no one else knew," Yamamoto admits, "but that is a forlorn hope."
He's not wrong. The Wandenreich clearly know the big secret, and while the Golden Goddesses have been remarkably quiet since you left Karakura, you know they're still paying attention. Compared to a large, well-established organization that is actively hostile towards the Soul Society and a trio of major deities who are neither enemies nor allies, the security risk posed by a single helpful Sorcerer and his Shadow knowing a state secret is relatively minor.
"Will your creator be bound by your vow?" the Captain-Commander inquires.
"No, but I can request that the Goddesses require him to make a similar oath before I report to him," you reply.
"And what of your familiars?" Yamamoto continues. "If you have one, I would presume your creator does as well. Will they be bound by your oaths, or would they be required to swear their own vows?"
Sharp old man. "The latter."
"Then that will have to be enough."
You nod, and then gather your energies and raise your Blessed Blade before you in salute. With a brief surge of Power, you speak the Words: "Golden Goddesses, I call upon you to witness my oath: that I will not reveal the secrets of the Soul King that I have learned here today, save to my Original and our Familiars, and then only upon their swearing to hold those secrets in turn."
"So be it."
Yamamoto's eyes widen slightly at that.
Gained Shadow's Oath of Secrecy
With that settled, you put your weapon away and dismiss the Spell of the Silent Table-
"What was that?" Sir White asks.
-to find the rest of the room's occupants staring at you in the wake of your flash of Power. Even Sui-Feng, who at least saw the energy before, is watching you intently, probably wondering why you brought out a technique that somehow drove off a very powerful Quincy while in a private conversation with her superior officer.
"Nothing to be concerned about, Sir Knight," you reply. "Just discussing a private matter with the Captain-Commander."
Knights being knights, the mention of privacy has Arturia and her two companions letting the matter go; a nod from Yamamoto has his subordinates doing likewise.
"Right, so if everyone would care to exit the room, I'll dispose of the... remains, so they can't be misused in the future. Unless there's something that the Thirteen Divisions would require?"
"As I said before," Sui-Feng repeats herself, "Kurotsuchi can do his own dirty work."
Yamamoto glances at the mess. "How were you planning to be rid of him?"
"I was going to call on one of the Goddesses, whose Domain includes Fire."
Long eyebrows quirk in interest. "I believe I would like to see this."
And he... doesn't move.
You shrug. "Alright, but just to be clear, I will not be held accountable for any singed clothing or hair."
"Noted," the old man huffs with amusement.
Turning back to the bier, you take one last look at Yhwach's splattered self - ugh - as you gather your mana and spiritual energy.
"In the name of the Goddess of Power, be consumed by the flames of the earth! DIN'S FIRE!"
And then, there is Fire.
Within your chest, you feel a sudden warmth, which quite literally explodes outwards in all directions, becoming a transparent dome of reddish-orange energy, shot through with flecks of gold, which wavers like flame as it passes beyond the confines of your body. The hemisphere grows denser as it widens, the flame-like glow becoming flame in truth, a swirling, incendiary wall that sends a hot wind before it and drags a crushing pressure along in its wake as it engulfs more and more of the chamber.
As the Fire expands, you see and sense the damage it's inflicting upon the contents of the King's Room. Ruined flesh and pulped organs sizzle, wilt, and darken as the water within them is broiled away, while pools and droplets and smears of blood are seared dry and baked black. The half-dissolved remnant of Yhwach's blanket simply crumbles to ash, and acid-pitted and pulverized stone creak, groan, and crack under the force of the blast.
At a distance of perhaps thirty feet, the wave ceases to expand, and for a moment, it hangs there unmoving, almost like a Wall of Fire wrapped in on itself - and like a Wall of Fire, it radiates great heat, inwards as well as outwards. Whether because of your distance from the dome or because you're the one who cast the spell, this secondary property fails to affect you, beyond the audible hiss.
And then, with a sigh like a desert wind, the magic disperses.
Blinking away the glare of your spell, you wave one hand to help disperse some of the smoky haze that now hangs in the air around you, so you can get a better idea of the full results.
...
Hm.
On the one hand, you're standing in the middle of a scorch mark that covers most of the floor. Cracks run through many of the stone tiles beside and behind you, while those on the other side of the ruined bier, which were already badly damaged by your earlier Caustic Eruption, have largely been reduced to a field of broken and blackened glass-like fragments, shattered bubbles of melted stone, and ashen sand. The carpets and wall-hangings that avoided being bathed in acid weren't completely destroyed by the follow-up fire, but they're all burning quite nicely.
Yhwach's remains have been very thoroughly cooked, somewhere past "well done" and into the realms of "carbonized." Once-red blood is just blackened smears on stone, many of them already cracked and flaking apart, while the air above the main... mass... still ripples with heat, moisture, and greasy smoke. In a couple of places, fragments of white peek through the darkness of the singed splatter, bits of bone that (partially) survived being pulverized now exposed to view by the burning away of the gore that still clung to or otherwise surrounded them. The material of his sleeping gown has either been reduced to ash or set aflame, leaving a dozen tongues of fire burning like greasy little candles atop and about the shattered bier.
Glancing behind you, you see Arturia, her two knights, Sui-Feng, and Sasakibe crowded just outside the door. Even though they're a good five feet outside the blast radius, the young knight with the shield still raised it and stepped in front of his king at some point; despite the fact that Arturia looks entirely unruffled, and is actually taking in the effects of your magic with a professional interest, both of her followers are regarding you with some wariness. Standing slightly apart from the knights and a bit closer to the outer edge of the fireball than may have been entirely healthy, Sui-Feng and Sasakibe are looking a bit wild-eyed and singed around the edges. Rather contrary to his shocked expression, Sasakibe absently pats out a small flame on his sleeve, as if it's something he's done often enough for it to have lost all novelty.
Yamamoto, who was standing about ten feet behind you and a few feet off to your left when you called on the Goddess of Power, is waving the braided length of his beard about to shake off some ash stuck to it. A few more flecks of burnt or actively burning material cling to the Captain-Commander here and there, but none of it appears to have originated from his own hair or clothing.
The skin of the old man's face may be a bit more red than it was a moment ago. Maybe. Or it could just be your imagination.
Straightening out his beard, Yamamoto shifts his shoulders once, dislodging the ash and little flames from the rest of his person with an indifferent ease that puts even Sasakibe's reaction to shame. Like Arturia, he gives the room a very professional once-over, and then turns to you.
"Not a bad start," he says.
"Thank you."
Yamamoto considers that.
"I would, in fact," he admits, stepping forward, his aura once again beginning to rise. "It might not be as satisfying as settling the matter with my own hands, but it would bring a sense of closure all the same."
You back away a bit, the heat emanating off the old man having become oppressive even for someone who's used to living in sunny Southern California, and has a degree of supernatural heat resistance besides. The spiritual pressure is just as bad, though you weather that a bit better.
From the doorway, Lieutenant Sasakibe calls, "Shadow, you'll want to clear the room for this."
So it gets worse?
Deciding to heed the advice of a man who doubtlessly knows his direct superior's next move better than you do, you call on the Spell to Walk Through Space and blink behind the small crowd at the door. Even here, you notice, the temperature has risen considerably from the previous ambient - a hot wind almost seems to be blowing out of the door of the King's Room, and for a moment you are reminded of a couple of volcanoes (and one volcano-spirit) that you've visited in this life, of another that you've dreamed about, and of a certain two-headed dragon.
Definitely worse, you decide.
And then you hear Yamamoto's voice: "Reduce all creation to ashes, Ryuujin Jakka."
And once again, the King's Room is filled with Fire.
The heat and pressure increase to the point where the air before you wavers in your vision - or is that just you feeling light-headed?
"Urk!"
Glancing over your shoulder, you see that most of the seated officers assembled in the hall are either staggering in place, leaning against the nearest wall, or have fallen to their knees - which makes it a bit strange to see the old Third Seat looking fine. Captains Zaraki and Kyoraku are similarly able to tolerate the oppressive conditions, as is Lieutenant Sasakibe, but Sui-Feng and Ichimaru both visibly waver and wilt in the face of the intense heat.
As for the three knights, they each react differently. The young knight with the shield raises it a bit higher, screening more of his face against the blast, while his white-clad senior briefly closes his eyes and almost seems to be leaning into the hot wind, as if enjoying it.
Were any of the Knights of the Round Table pyromaniacs? You'd have to check to be sure.
Arturia, meanwhile, is largely ignoring the display of firepower to frown at the state it's left most of the Shinigami in.
From within the blaze, Yamamoto speaks again: "Taimatsu."
The word, meaning "torch," is accompanied by the whooshing of a flaming mass passing through the air, followed by a muffled impact. You can't see through the glare well enough to make out what's going on, and your Elemental Sense is just screaming "Fire, Fire, FIRE!" at you, but the inferno DOES appear to have concentrated itself on the center of the chamber, rather than indiscriminately filling all available space as it did a moment ago.
Like your own spell, whatever the Captain-Commander has done lasts only a moment. As quickly as they erupted into being, the intense flames die down, taking the smothering heat and crushing spiritual energy with them - to the collective and audible relief of the assembled Shinigami.
"Well," Ichimaru says, absent some of his previous smugness. "That was... somethin' else."
Looking back into the room, you see only blackened stone, crumbled ash, and wisps of smoke. The carpets and wall hangings, Yhwach's smashed and scorched flesh, and even his bones - all gone. Even the wreckage of the bier where the Quincy King lay is gone, melted down to a shapeless, sagging heap that glows from the heat imbued into it.
Yamamoto takes in the room again, nods to himself with a single sound of satisfaction, and slides his zanpakuto back into its sheath.
And then the faceless head of your next-to-latest Earth Elemental emerges from a nearby wall. / Is it safe to come out now, Small Summoner? Because some of the things I have picked up wouldn't survive the heat of an Elder of Fire. /
Oooo, loot.
After you've assured your summon that the pyrotechnics are over, the rest of its body emerges from the wall, arms curled together before its chest in a somewhat awkward manner.
/ Move aside, small spirit ones, I take large steps. /
There is some muttering and a yelp or two as certain Shinigami - still recovering from being caught on the edges of their Captain-Commander's display of power - scurry out of your summon's path.
/ Thank you. /
Then the elemental bends over, lowers its arms to the floor, and sets down a large bag of some thick red material, which you belatedly realize is a square rug of a similar style but superior make to the ones laying around the fortress halls, its gold-threaded edges and tassled corners folded over one another after being wrapped around a considerable volume of stuff.
Some of that stuff shifts and clinks as the improvised loot sack is set on the floor.
"I know that sound," one of the lower-ranked Shinigami says with a note of wonder and dawning delight. "That is the sound-"
The elemental opens the bag.
"-of LOOT."
Some of the other Shinigami regard their comrade with disapproval.
Others are staring at the elemental's sack of plunder with a mix of expressions.
mine.
There is gold in the collection, mostly in the form of statuettes, cande holders, trays, goblets, and other relatively small objects of art, or as ornamentation thereon, and there are jewels as well, again primary as adornment, though you think you glimpse a bit of jewelry amid the pile. You don't see any loose coin - or billfolds, for that matter - but some of the unopened boxes seem like they might hold whatever the Wandenreich use for cash, or just jewelry.
The bulk of the elemental's plunder-
mine.
-takes other forms. There are three rolled-up bundles of multi-colored material that you think may be tapestries, and numerous, somewhat messily-folded lengths of silk, fur, and other expensive materials that you need a moment to identify as blankets, quilts, and comforters. Pillows and cushions are present as well, though they appear to have been included mostly as extra padding for more delicate objects, such as the bookshelf - its frame carved from a fine, dark-stained wood, with glass doors along the front - that has been sandwiched between two such layers. Numerous weapons, a complete suit of plate armor on a standing frame, and shields bearing coats of arms add a certain something to the collection, especially given the battered condition of various pieces-
"That's a zanpakuto!"
mine.
-such as one of the katana-like swords, the pieces of whose blade have been mounted within a glass case.
You look at the contents of the bag, counting up individual pieces and looking for the telltale glows of magical or spiritual enhancement - you spot a few instances, mostly among the weapons that you are starting to think may be trophies of long-ago battles - while simultaneously counting up the seconds that have passed since you summoned the elemental. Your visionary encounter with Gerard Valkyrie and the Heart of the Soul King throws the latter count off a bit, but in total, you think this elemental had three minutes to work with, at most.
You stare up at your summoned supporter, impressed and a bit disbelieving that it managed to grab this much stuff in that time, much less that it managed not to obviously BREAK anything with those huge rocky mitts.
Apparently recognizing your expression, the Greater Earth Elemental rumbles in amusement. / This isn't my first ransack, small summoner. /
Apparently not.
You are abruptly distracted by Captain Kyoraku, who is staring at you, your temporary ally, and the pile of loot laid out between you. "Shadow, did you- have the OTHER elementals you summoned been looting this place this ENTIRE TIME we've been here?"
You cannot tell a lie.
...well, you could, but it wouldn't be as amusing.
"Yes," you admit, as you start casting a modified Spell to Shrink An Item, dropping the duration a bit and increasing the target parameter to hit the entire sack of stuff in one go.
Sui-Feng appears affronted by your response.
Ichimaru looks impressed.
Zaraki begins to laugh.
The elemental, incidentally, has already moved off to hit another room.
Kyoraku watches the behemoth go, before slowly turning to Arturia. "And... and the knights?"
"Asset denial is a key part of sacking an enemy stronghold," the King replies frankly. "Plunder also motivates the troops, helps defray the expenses involved in making the assault, and - depending on its nature - may offer useful insights into the enemy's way of thinking."
"Indeed," Yamamoto agrees as he leaves the smoldering wreckage of the King's Room. He sounds entirely unbothered by the topic under discussion. "But intelligence aside, looting has never been particularly useful to the operation of the Thirteen Divisions: as a rule, Hollows lack material possessions; the prior works of the Quincy were largely OF the material world, and so must remain there to preserve the balance; and criminal organizations within the Soul Society seldom manage to accumulate resources WORTH seizing. Things were different in the days when the noble families still warred with each other-"
There are sounds and looks of surprise at that, and not just from the seated officers.
"-but that was before the Divisions or the Academy were founded, when Shinigami were fewer in number and less reliable in skill or loyalty." He glances at the Shinigami who admitted to recognizing the clink of loot.
"Outer Rukon boy, here, sir," the man in question says without hesitation or shame. "Seventy-Seventh District got mean."
"It had its moments," Zaraki agrees.
Yamamoto nods. "Very well, then. Show the rest of them how it's done."
There is a moment of silence.
"...sir?" the Shinigami claiming to be from the Outer Rukon asks.
"Old Yama?" Captain Kyoraku manages, tilting back his hat to stare at his leader like he's never seen the man before.
"The Wandenreich Quincy are at large," Yamamoto reminds his stunned subordinates. "Including their leader, who somehow possesses Yhwach's damnable eyes-"
Wait, what?
"-and those elite guards that accompanied him, and disappeared alongside him."
"Just when it was about to get interesting, too," Zaraki rumbles in disappointment. "The hell was up with that giant hand thing, though?"
"That," Yamamoto says, pointing the hilt of his sheathed sword at Zaraki, "is one of the questions I want answers to - and as the Knight-Captain has said, we might learn about our enemies by studying their possessions, especially writings. Failing that, we can certainly deny them some of their assets. So, be about it."
Kyoraku looks a bit like he's been hit over the head.
The seated officer, meanwhile, has started grinning. "Yes, sir! You heard the Captain-Commander, people! Follow me, and learn how to loot a place!"
mine.
Once you're done reducing your first bag of ill-gotten gains to a more portable size, what will you do next? Captains Ichimaru, Zaraki, and Sui-Feng have taken off after their subordinates - the ninja-lady yelling "information only" at her minions, the fox-faced one teasing her to lighten up, and Zaraki just chuckling - Captain Kyoraku is muttering something about housekeepers and doom, and the Captain-Commander, his lieutenant, and Arturia and her two knights appear to be heading in the direction of the entrance to the Royal Quarter.
You or your Original can always talk to these people later, but it could be a very long time before either of you get another chance to loot a fortress that ISN'T a thousand-year-old ruin.
About half of the assembled Shinigami followed their "looting expert" into one of the nearby rooms, the door of which had conveniently already been opened by one of the ninjas - who had themselves scattered to hit several of the rooms - and you can hear some instructive words being called out inside:
"Always consider how you're going to carry your take. There's no profit in loading yourself down to the point that you can't run or defend yourself, or if the stuff falls out of your robes while you're making your getaway."
"Keep resaleability in mind. Yes, gold and jewels are valuable, but that means it can take a while to find a buyer for them..."
"No, don't try to take the whole-! What? Yes, I saw the rock thing do it; did YOU see how much BIGGER it was than you?"
He seems to have things in hand, more or less.
In any event, once you've finished shrinking down and pocketing your first giant-sized bag of loot-
Gained Greater Elemental's Bag of Loot
-you cast another Spell to Summon Monsters to bring forth extra assistants for the sacking. With how well Earth Elementals have served you so far today, you decide to stick with what works, and focus on summoning as many extra hands as you can get.
The Goddesses smile upon you once again, and even one of Silbern's oversized halls starts to feel a bit cramped, as no less than FIVE huge Earth Elementals appear around you in a rough circle.
/ We come to serve, small summoner, / one of the new arrivals says. It's the second tallest of the group, a good thirty-three feet in height, and carries itself with a confident demeanor.
/ Ready to smash! / says the elemental two places to the right of the first. It's the largest member of the band, thirty-four feet tall if it's an inch and broadly build besides.
/ The summons was for looters, though? / says the elemental between the first two speakers. It's the shortest of the lot, at thirty feet and change, but burly enough to make up for any vertical lack. Its body seems the most irregular of the lot, as if constructed from a dozen different types of stone.
/ Then we smash and grab! / suggests the elemental to the left of the first speaker, one of a pair that each top out at thirty-two feet in height.
/ ...works for me, / agrees the last.
Four of the five raise their fists and begin to chant: / SMASH AND GRAB! SMASH AND GRAB! /
The confident elemental lets out a groan like settling stone and seems to deflate slightly. Then it reaches out to whack its two nearest companions over the backs of their ill-defined heads. / Stop that. /
/ Sorry, boss, / they and the others chorus.
A vaguely shaped head sticks out of one wall. / What's all the rumbling...? /
/ Greetings, Great Hilly One! / the leader says at once, perking up again and quickly leading its companions in a respectful bow. / The small summoner called upon us to assist in plundering this place. /
Earthen brows narrow slightly over gemstone eyes. / You have experience? /
The leader slides back a bit so it can spread its arms wide behind its companions. / You look upon the Boulder Brothers! /
Near Right adds, / Crushers of castles! /
Near Left continues, / Takers of treasure! /
Next to speak is Far Left. / Pilferers par excellence! /
And finally, Far Right pauses, and then glances across the circle at Far Left and asks, / ...what does that even mean? /
This time, the sigh is a collective one.
/ That's not your line, Big Boulder, / Near Right rumbles.
/ It means we're good at swiping stuff, / Far Left replies.
/ Oh. Well, why didn't you just say that? /
...you have the impression that Big Boulder may not be the sharpest stone in the pile.
You ALSO get the feeling that the Greater Elemental shares your suspicion, and is not overly impressed by the introduction, besides.
Still, you trust in your own magic and the favor of the Goddesses enough to give the Boulder Brothers a chance to prove their skills. Since the rooms would probably not accommodate more than two of them at a time without causing problems, the group splits into pairs to hit different chambers: Big Boulder and Boss Boulder together; then the pair of equal height, identified as Brick and Brock; and the last one, Breccia, goes with the Greater Elemental to show it what they can do.
As for you, after cautioning your latest summons not to argue with or squash any of the Shinigami, and to fall back and immediately sound the alarm if they encounter any Quincy, you decide to...
Hit a different room.
You managed to get directions to the rooms of three of the Sternritter from Bambietta; of those, the one you most want to investigate - read, plunder - are the quarters of the Grandmaster, Jugram Haschwalth.
As it happens, the Grandmaster's quarters are located on this very intersection, directly across the hall from the corridor that leads to Yhwach's burnt-out room. A couple of the Shinigami ninjas went in there while you were packing away your first bag of loot, but thankfully, the crowd of seated officers ignored it in favor of hitting the room to the right of the late King's - probably on account of the fact that the room to the LEFT is the one that your Greater Elemental came out of with its first huge sack of loot.
Symmetry is a thing, after all.
After directing the new batch of elementals to other chambers, you teleport over to the Grandmaster's door, noting in passing that the carvings upon its frame and lintel are exactly as fancy as those on all the other doorways around here, with just two exceptions: first, of course, was the door that leads into what's left of Yhwach's room; and the other was the main doors to the Royal Quarter.
Elementals have wrecked both of those now, of course, but the deliberately less-than-royal decor probably contributed to why the main group of Shinigami didn't think to make the second most important room in this part of the fortress their first stop when they started looting.
Entering the open door, you find a large but surprisingly austerely decorated chamber, dominated by five large white couches arranged in a pentagonal formation around the center of the room. There are small tables at each corner, and a sixth, larger one in the middle of the arrangement, all of which have various objects laid out on them: fine vases, some empty, others bearing fresh flowers; crystal drinking goblets at varying levels of full- and/or emptiness; a few books, not properly replaced on the shelves that line the right-hand wall; and silver plates, trays, and pitchers bearing a selection of fruits, cheeses, sliced meats, bread, and drink, all of which looks about three-quarters consumed. More of those Wandenreich banners line the front and back walls, framing the doors in each, but aside from that and the bookshelves, the walls have been left bare. So has the floor.
The chandelier hanging from the ceiling is rather nice, a thing of polished silver and glowing crystal that's a bit too heavy and rigid in the frame to suit a fancy ballroom, but works alright with this chamber and the militaristic culture you know dominated Silbern.
You also notice a few suspiciously empty spaces on the tables, where vases or cutlery were pushed aside to make room for other things - things that are no longer there, but would have been roughly rectangular in shape, and about the size of, say, file folders.
That's annoying.
Through the half-open door leading to the next room, you can just make out a murmured conversation going on inside of it - somewhere to the rear and left-hand side of the room, by the sound of it, though it echoes a bit curiously.
Not wanting the ninjas to completely secure all the data in this place before you even lay eyes on it, you head that way.
Pushing the door open, you blink at the sight before you.
Last year, Kahlua showed your Original the Hall of Enemies in Castle Shuzen, a collection of paintings, statues, and trophies depicting the greatest - and (mostly) deadest - foes of the Shuzen family. He also saw their Hall of Allies, which was (again, mostly) a non-hostile take on the former. This room reminds you a bit of that tour, as it's filled by a similar collection of artworks and battlefield salvage. Some of the figures depicted are clearly Quincy, wearing white uniforms that look like even older versions of the tunics you've seen Souken and Uryuu in, which are themselves clearly recognizeable as the forebears to the Wandenreich's style. Other portraits or statues are Shinigami, and there are more of those broken zanpakuto kept under glass that aren't matched up with images of their former owners.
And then there are the figures that are neither Quincy nor Shinigami. Most of these are humans: some knights, with or without banners and armor; a double-bladed war axe, such as you might expect a Norseman to have used, before a simple charcoal sketch of a dark-haired, stern-featured man who very much looks like he would have fit the part; several guns, ranging from one of the earliest "gonnes" through matchlock and flintlock to a near-modern automatic rifle, are paired off with portraits of soldiers in period-appropriate uniforms; and there are images of magic-users, such as a tapestry of a woman wearing a pointy hat with a wide brim, or the more recent painting of someone you'd otherwise take to be a court dandy from a couple of centuries back, if not for the clearly enchanted and rather gaudily ornamented rod set out before his portrait.
That said, there's images of monsters, although with the exception of a dragon - which shows up on the same tapestry as the witch - none of these seem to be terribly old. There are also far, far fewer of them than there were in the Shuzen collections, even after you take into account that this is just one room, where those were two half-wings of the castle.
You also don't see a single demon or Hollow.
The implications of that are... uncertain, for the moment.
Leaving that aside, you see that the reason for the odd echo to the two Shinigami ninjas' voices is that they're not actually in this room, but rather in another off to the left. It looks to be a filing room, full of rows of cabinets. You're able to hear the pair more clearly now-
"-like I'm the Archives-"
"-complaining and more packing-"
"-even supposed to take!?"
-and from the tone of their hissed whispers and the accompanying body language, they seem to be at a bit of a loss for what to do with the sheer amount of material they've found.
One of the tables you pass as you round the collection of couches has a couple of books piled on it in awkward fashion, with the topmost laying half on the bottom text and half on the tabletop, its pages hanging open.
Curious, you reach down and snatch up the book as you go by, flipping through a few pages-
Not English, not Japanese... probably German or the offshoot Quincy dialect, but most of your experience with those tongues is spoken rather than written, so you can't really follow the words on the pages very well.
-and then closing the book to inspect the cover for clues to its origin.
...
Huh.
You wouldn't have pegged the Wandenreich as fans of Harry Potter.
You're fairly sure that "der Stein der Weisen" is the translation of "the Philosopher's Stone"...
As you're considering how and why a translation of Rowling's work ended up in what appears to be a meeting room for the Wandenreich's second-highest level of leadership, you reach out through your familiar bond, applying your rudimentary telepathy to try and increase the link's effectiveness.
-Briar/partner?-
-Alex/partner/still alive?-
-Yes/very funny/no, I'm a ghost.-
Amusement comes back, followed by a feeling of inquiry.
With some difficulty, you explain that the main objective of the raid has been achieved, that you're moving on to looting-
-Yay/loot/shinies/the knights beat you to it, you know/very professional looting/or is that pillaging?-
-and that you've got a crew of Earth Elementals ransacking some of the central quarters, while the Shinigami are doing the same thing. You ask if your second summoned elemental is still in her area-
-It is/it's been busy/got a few piles of loot/working on a fourth/knights are putting up a contest/getting some weird looks from the dead guys/they're just jealous.-
-and then ask her to have the elemental start ferrying its spoils to the intersection outside, where the others will be dropping off their stuff shortly. Hopefully, that will make it easier for you to shrink all your ill-gotten gains.
-Will do/we moving out soon?-
-Seems likely.-
-I'll let the knights know/warn 'em to start packing up/they've got magic loot sacks/Ambrose/I kind of want a magic loot sack/and horses/I have a T-Rex, I win!-
You spare a moment to pulse inquiry at your partner when she mentions the Tyrannosaurus.
-Don't worry/he's been good/messy, but good/hasn't eaten anybody that didn't deserve it/some of the Shinigami are awfully twitchy around him, though/might be the whole "giant man-eating monster" thing/the teeth/the growling/I think Yachiru thinks he's cute/world's biggest, scariest pony.-
...you suppose that's the best you can hope for.
You're tempted not to offer any help to the ninjas, but you rather want to look through the Grandmaster's files yourself, and you can't see the two arguing Shinigami just standing aside and letting you do that. They're CERTAINLY not about to leave you unsupervised in this treasure trove of information, much less to agree to go picking up plunder for you in the process. It also seems fairly unlikely that they'd agree to let you walk off with some of the files in your pocket, unless you made copies - and unfortunately, while that IS within your power, it's not something you can do quickly enough to suit the current situation.
That leaves offering to help them cart off as much of the contents of the filing room as you can, WITHOUT stowing anything in your dimensional pocket.
Fortunately, you have other options.
As you approach the door to the filing room, the ninjas look up.
"Can we help you, Sorcerer?" one of them asks.
"Actually, I was going to to ask YOU that..."
Thinking it over, Unseen Servant is probably not the best choice in this situation. The basic spell summons only a single servitor, which fades from existence if it wanders too far from its creator; while you can modify the parameters of the spell to summon more Unseen Servants and let them function at greater distances, you can't change how SLOW the things are. Even the Earth Elementals digging through the other rooms are faster than those invisible constructs.
But if you cast a Mass Spell to Shrink Items, you could probably reduce the contents of the entire filing room in one go.
The ninjas trade glances.
"You can DO that?" the one on the left asks in disbelieving tones.
"I can. I could also copy them, though it would take more time than we can afford right now... and a whole lot of paper," you add, looking the room over.
The chamber is forty feet to a side, and its ceiling is at a much more reasonable height than the rest of Silbern has shown you so far - eight feet, rather than thirty or more. The six-foot-tall cabinets fill most of that space in neat rows, but looking over them, you can see a staircase at the back of the room, one that goes up.
"...there are more records upstairs, aren't there?"
"Three whole floors," the ninja on the right groans, slumping in place. "And all of it's in code. Deciphering it's going to be a NIGHTMARE..."
A nearby cabinet drawer sits open. On a hunch, you reach in, take out the first file folder, and flip it open to read the contents of the page.
...yup. More German-Quincy.
Eh, why not?
If nothing else, a German or Quincy translation of the first Harry Potter book is something you can use to improve your literacy in the given language.
Gained "Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen"
Other than their captain, all of the members of the Second Division that you've seen so far have been wearing masks. Despite that, you can easily make out the expression of hope that appear on the face of the right-hand Shinigami, as well as the interest that his companion shows.
"Really?" the former asks, almost pleading.
"Really - though that service won't be free."
"We'll talk to the Captain," comes the immediate reply.
"What do you mean 'we'?" his companion wonders, giving him a look askance.
The remark and look go unnoticed. "If we can't convince her to cover the cost from the ops budget-"
"Safe bet."
"-then we'll go to the teams. Between us, I'm sure we've got enough to handle the expense out of pocket."
"Hey, don't go spending other people's money without even talking to them first!"
"Would you RATHER translate ALL of this" - one black-wrapped hand gestures around at the rows of filing cabinets - "the hard way?! I sure don't! I'm willing to pay to avoid that headache!"
"Then pay with your own money!"
"I'm still paying off my new house!"
You were actually going to ask to be "paid" with access to the information itself, though?
Regardless, you won't be translating the files here and now. For the moment, the issue is transportation.
Now, you COULD cast another version of the Spell to Shrink an Item, modified to hit all objects in a large area, but doing that just once would eat up several minutes of precious time, to say nothing of the delay in having to do it twice more.
Fortunately, you've got an alternative: the mysterious power known as "delegation."
After all, why spend a quarter of an hour or more performing rituals when you can summon a group of lesser spellcasters to do it for you?
With that in mind, you cast the Spell to Summon Monsters again. This time, rather than going for elemental looters, you focus on calling for arcane spellcasters; you aren't sure if the summoning is precise enough to select creatures based on their knowledge of a single spell, but you give it a go. Worst-case scenario, you get some Transformation specialists - you know the magic CAN specify that much - ask them if they can do the job, and dismiss and/or summon again as necessary.
Summoning, go!
*Poof*
It seems the Goddesses are still smiling on your efforts, because no less than five figures have appeared in response to your call for aid. Human-sized, human-shaped, wearing pretty modern clothes-
"Whoa, where am I?" a young man asks.
"And what's with the pixie dust?" a woman coughs.
"Ah, man," another male voice complains. "Am I having a flashback?"
"But if it's YOUR flashback," another woman demands, "why am I in it?"
"So THIS is what that dream was about," a third woman muses.
-and talking like fairly modern humans, too.
The smoke thrown up by this summoning quickly clears, revealing a mix of what appear to be college students, young professionals, and one lady dressed like a stereotypical fortune-teller. All she's lacking is the crystal ball or tarot deck.
At a glance (and a listen), there are only two commonalities among all five individuals: first, they all speak English, or more specifically, American English, with one distinctly Californian accent and an obvious New Yorker, plus a couple more you recognize from TV, but can't quite place; and second, they all have the auras of practiced magic-users. Some are suppressing their energies better than others - the fortune-teller and the office-lady seem particularly good at it, the bleached-blonde tanned surfer dude rather poor - but you have no trouble picking out the telltale signs of proficiency in the School of Transformation.
"Sorry for the surprise, folks," you declare. "For anyone unfamiliar with the experience, you've been temporarily summoned to provide some magical assistance. It won't cost you more than a few minutes of your time, after which you'll be returned to the precise moment you left."
"Oh, that's good," the surfer sighs.
"What KIND of magical assistance?" the dark-skinned young woman, the one who complained about pixie dust, asks cautiously.
You indicate the filing cabinets and the ninjas. "I'm helping some ninjas raid a fortress of doom. The bad guys got away, but we found their paperwork, and we want to steal as much of it as possible for evidence."
"...okay, so we're, what, supposed to help you carry it?"
"Actually, I was hoping you'd know the Spell to Shrink Items." You look around at the lot of them.
"...huh," the somewhat suspicious lady says, in a rather lighter tone.
"It's what I did when I moved," Surfer Dude agrees.
"I do know that spell," the office lady agrees, adjusting her glasses. "But we should talk about compen- what are you all doing?"
Surfer Dude, Fortune Teller, and the other guy, who looks like such an average American - brown hair, brown eyes, middle-class business casual outfit, mostly European heritage with one or two other influences - that you're almost automatically suspicious of him, have already moved to start shrinking the filing cabinets.
"Uh, doing what he asked?" Surfer Dude replies ingenuously.
"We've been summoned, dear," Fortune Teller answers frankly, as she works her magic. "Our 'payment' is the chance to burn whatever outstanding karma left us open to BEING summoned in the first place, by fulfilling the big guy's requests."
"That, and being grateful that the request is something so reasonable," the one you're going to call Average Joe adds. "Helping steal a bunch of files without any violence beats the hell out of being called up as a meatshield by random sorcerous bastard..." He pauses to glance your way. "No offense."
"Besides," Fortune Teller adds, as the cabinet before her starts shrinking down to a cloth cut-out image of itself, "even if he DID pay you, you wouldn't be able to take any sort of material currency back with you when the spell ends."
Office Lady scowls. "What kind of a hiring system is that?"
"One set up by gods, demon lords, and primordial beings to favor themselves," Fortune Teller says frankly.
Office Lady blinks at that, huffs, and then turns and starts making with the magic.
The dark-skinned woman, meanwhile, looks rather angry for a moment, but then looks around at the other summonees and seems... not less angry, exactly, but vaguely appeased by something? You're not sure what, but it's enough for her to turn and join in on the effort without blowing up.
The two Shinigami take all of this in and then glance at you, clearly not sure what to make of you having just called up half a dozen additional mortal magic-users. Then they move to start picking up the shrunken cabinets.
Probably for the best to make your stance clear from the outset, you decide, as you interrupt the arguing ninja to clarify how you'd prefer to be "paid" for helping them translate Haschwalth's records.
The two Shinigami hear you out, but their brows furrow in very similar masked frowns before they trade speaking glances with one another.
"Are you SURE we couldn't convince you to take money, instead?" Left Ninja asks as he turns back to you.
"Captain Sui-Feng is more likely to go for that than she is to share intel with an outsider," Right Ninja explains.
You won't be swayed in this.
The ninjas sigh.
"Yeah," Left replies, "that's what I was afraid you'd say."
"Really not looking forward to this debriefing," Right adds.
"None taken."
You're not about to take umbrage with a man for expressing an objective truth, particularly not when you know a thing or two about what it feels like to have to put up with a summoner's demands.
As for the bit about "sorcerous bastards," there are some magic-users out there who merit the description, and you at least meet the first half of it. While you're fully aware that you aren't as personable as your Original, you still wouldn't consider yourself a bastard in the behavioral sense, but as for the older meaning of the term... you kind of are and aren't the son of Tony and Jessica Harris, and by the same token, both are and aren't the brother of your Original and Zelda, so maybe, for a certain broad definition...?
Or maybe you're just overthinking this.
You're keenly aware that every moment you spend on the task of securing this information windfall is a moment you aren't spending going through the other rooms in the Grandmaster's quarters and picking out shiny pieces of loot.
That said, you don't want the ninjas showing up every few minutes to ask you for another batch of summons, because the previous ones exhausted their magic or just ran out the clock on your Summoning Spell. So you leave this first batch of magic-users to their task, head to the back of the room, and climb the stairs to the third floor of the archive. Both this and the second floor are just as packed with filing cabinets as the ground floor, so it seems sensible to summon just as many spellcasters with comparable levels of power as you did below.
Summoning Two, go!
*Poof*
"I was in the MIDDLE of something, blast it!" a crotchety old man protests.
"Is that you, Al?" another aged male voice wonders.
"Eh? Frank?"
"It is you! Ha! Small multiverse, isn't it?"
It quickly becomes apparent that you've once again managed to summon a full five creatures with a single spell. You can only assume the Goddesses are very pleased with the outcome of your mission.
Regardless, this time you've got a couple of old men whose long beards, robes, and magical paraphernalia make it pretty clear that they're wizards - for given values of all those terms. Al is a balding, white-beared individual about five and a half feet tall and probably somewhere close to eighty, wearing a housecoat and fuzzy slippers that really clash with the enchanted headband, medallion, rings, and bracelets you can plainly see on his person. Frank is more traditionally attired, with a proper robe lined with arcane symbols, a staff in hand, boots on his feet - though those appear to be Army standard-issue - and some arcane bits of his own around his neck and arms. Frank looks significantly younger than his counterpart, still having all of his hair and retaining streaks of brown amid the grey, while also being close to six feet tall and built like a retired drill sergeant or something; if he's past sixty-five, you'll be honestly surprised.
Aside from those two, you've also grabbed a thirty-something woman with Native American features, an unshaven, pallid, and distinctly twitchy man about the same age, and an androgynous individual with blue skin, small black horns that almost disappear into their curly coal-dark hair, fingers that end in points which toe the line between "nails" and "claws," and a spaded tail. That one's appearance makes you a bit cautious, but you sense only youki - an unfamiliar flavor of it, admittedly - rather than outright demonic power.
You quickly explain things and put this group to work before heading down one level.
Summoning Three, go!
*Poof*
"WHO SUMMONS TORG, HELLFIRE WARLOCK?" someone booms, at approximately point two Thunderbirds.
"Gah, inside voice! Inside voice!"
"What kind of a name is 'Torg'?" a young woman wonders in musical tones.
"I don't know," comes a voice almost identical, save for its slightly deeper pitch. "Compared to all those demons with too many apostrophes and not enough vowels in their names, it's kind of a relief..."
Very, VERY pleased, you note in passing. If you keep maxing out your summons like this, you may be tempted to buy some lottery tickets.
Your last batch of summoned individuals is the most diverse yet. First up is TORG, a devilishly handsome mostly human warlock in his mid-twenties, who's dressed in full arcane regalia - heavy on scarlet, black, and gold - has glowing red eyes, the prerequisite goatee, and suffers from a case of LARGE HAM SYNDROME that probably annoys the hell out of his Infernal patron. Which may be the point.
Next are a set of excessively pretty fraternal twins, the brother with a rack of antlers that wouldn't be out of place on an elk, the sister with dazzling butterfly wings; you aren't sure if those two are hybrids, warlocks, or changelings, but the essence of Faerie is heavy about them and within them regardless.
The one who complained about TORG's lack of volume control is a woman you're tempted to identify as Plain Jane, because of her remarkable lack of distinguishing features.
Lastly, there is a very striking woman in her twenties, with bronze skin, bright golden hair that shines even in the slightly dim light of the archives, and sky-blue eyes that glow all by themselves as she glares at TORG.
You manage to avoid any issues between the obvious Aasimar and the stereotypical warlock, stating your needs-
"TORG WILL DO THIS THING, SUMMONER."
"I'll be watching you," the shining woman warns him.
"TORG ALWAYS APPRECIATES A LADY'S ATTENTION."
The Aasimar's bronze skin takes on a slight reddish hue, as a bit of gold bleeds into her eyes. "You-!"
"What's all the shouting about?" you hear one of the ninjas wonder from down the stairs.
-and putting this last batch to work.
With that taken care of, you envision the door to the archive and teleport yourself straight there, keen on getting on with your plundering.
As it happens, you have a few options for that. You could simply start grabbing items from the Grandmaster's collection, but there are five other rooms connected to this one - two doors to each wall, except for the front wall and leaving out the door to the archive - that you haven't investigated yet.
Considering the effort you've just gone to in order to make off with all of Haschwalth's records, it only makes sense to give his office a once-over. The ninjas may have hit the place already, but without your spells to assist them, there's only so much they could have fit in their pockets; who knows what interesting tidbits they might have left behind?
As you walk towards the waiting door, you take a moment to glance around at the contents of the gallery again, viewing the nearest objects with your Mage Sight and comparing the auras against one another.
You detect minor, slightly blurry auras that resonate with Abjuration Magic over just about everything in the room, auras that gain a degree of clarity when viewed through Spiritual Sight, confirming that the Wandenreich have set up the same kind of warding over these trophies and mementos. The effect appears to be purely preservative in nature, and not especially strong.
There do not seem to be any alarms, or at least not ones of the supernatural sort.
As far as the items themselves go, magical enhancements are a bit sparse. The broken zanpakuto all register as magical, of course, but when compared to intact examples of their kind - let alone those actually in use - their auras are faint and dull, mere shadows of what they should be. The difference is akin to that between a living being and a dead body, and you regret that comparison the moment you make it. Many of the older objects in the collection likewise register as having magical potential in the manner of reagents, and there are a few - that Viking axe, some of the knightly suits of armor, their attendant weapons - that you think might once have been enchanted, or at least wielded by people who knew some equivalent of the mana-based combat techniques that the Drakes use. Either way, the power of those items has long since been lost, most likely as a result of the damage the Quincy inflicted in the process of capturing them.
When it comes to intact, functional enhancements, you see only four examples.
One - and easily the strongest of the lot - is that excessively flashy rod next to the painting of the dandy, which you'd noticed the first time you passed through this room. For all its brightness, its aura is a bit muddled, multiple schools overlapping in a way that makes the details more difficult to pick out, to the point where you have to wonder if that was a deliberate attempt at an anti-Divination effect. Most people would use Nondetection, but the sort of mind that favored such a gaudy physical frame would not have been one inclined to subtlety...
Second is a scimitar, whose aura speaks clearly of Wind and Fire. There is no statue, picture, or coat of arms associated with this one.
Next of note is a battered heater shield, part of one of the more intact - if damaged - knightly panoplies on display. Straightforward Abjuration Magic, there, and fairly potent, which is probably why it's still functional despite the clear hammering it took at some point.
Lastly, there is a dagger, part of another unfortunate knight's kit. You almost overlook this one, partly because it's hanging on the other side of its former owner's armor, which interferes with your scan, but mostly because the magic woven into it whispers of Shadow, of Abjuration and Enchantment bent on concealment and misdirection... and something more that you can't quite discern through that "notice me not" effect, save that it is dark.
Reaching the Grandmaster's office, you pause in the doorway to take stock, because the ninjas definitely went through this place.
The drawers of the rather nice wooden desk that dominates the room have all been yanked open and rifled through, as have the three filing cabinets along the right-hand wall. There are three shelves of books on the left wall, and several of the larger volumes have been taken down and then tossed aside, while - at a glance - two or three texts appear to be missing entirely. A personal computer sits atop the desk, currently powered down, with a phone to one side and a printer/fax machine on a table in the rear right corner; beside it rests a very comfortable and obviously well-used chair, pushed back from the desk by the Shinigami during their swift search of the room. The floor is covered by another fine carpet, there are a couple of nice landscape paintings on the walls - both now hanging askew - and shaded electric lamps of clear crystal, silver metal, and white ceramic are placed about the room, waiting to provide light.
You make a short detour to grab the artifacts that have caught your eye.
The enchanted rod is easy enough to acquire, for while it is inside a glass display case like most of the other objects in the gallery, said case is small enough that you can just take the top portion in both hands, give it a good pull, and lift it out of your way. Setting the glass aside - and taking a moment to cast a Spell of Prestidigitation to cleanse it of your fingerprints, just in case - you consider the upright stand that supports the rod: two thin lengths of dark, non-reflective metal joined by a circular band at the bottom of the rod's handle, and again where the handle meets the excessively bejeweled head.
You peer closer at the display, once again searching for possible alarms, tripwires, or other security measures, but the only energies you pick up are those of the rod itself and the mild preservative ward of spiritual power layered over it. There don't appear to be any mundane precautions, either, although you have to admit that you're mostly working with notes cribbed from Ganondorf's memories for that, so you could be missing things.
Then again, considering that Hyrule's temples often counted pressure-plates, motion detectors, and freaking LASERS among their defenses, you might be better prepared by the Thief-King's memories than you realize.
Speaking of pressure-plates, the possibility exists that the rod is rigged to sound the alarm if someone moves it, or that - being magical - it might react poorly to being handled by someone other than its intended user. With that in mind, you cast the Spell of the Unseen Servant and direct the construct to take hold of the rod in your stead. As the Servant slides the item up and out of its mount, you ready yourself to react to an alarm...
...but nothing happens. The rod comes free without issue, it doesn't even try to attack your Servant for handling it, and when the construct hands the item off to you, it remains inactive.
You pocket the device and move on.
Gained Magic Rod
You're able to retrieve the scimitar with a similar lack of fuss - though it does let off a burst of warm air when you take it in hand, with a sound like a sigh of relief - but the display cases that hold the shield and the dagger are too large for you to move around by hand, without knocking over the suits of armor inside and making a great noisy mess in the doing. Searching along the edges of the glass and around the base of the displays fails to turn up any obvious method of opening them, which leaves you wondering exactly how the Quincy handled these things.
Gained Magic Scimitar
Shrugging, you draw your sword.
You put your Unseen Servant to work turning off the computer and unplugging it from its peripherals. While the invisible construct is doing that, you page through your mental spellbook, considering how to best search the office.
The Spell to Detect Secret Doors immediately comes to mind, as it would be helpful for finding anything from a hidden drawer in the desk to a concealed wall safe to a proper secret passage. It would also reveal any concealed mechanisms for opening such things, though not precisely how to activate them; it might reveal a keyhole, for instance, but it wouldn't tell you where the key was or if there were any little tricks required when using it, such as, "Turn key clockwise forty-five degrees and hold for three seconds, then turn anticlockwise one hundred and thirty five degrees," or "While turning the key, play Zelda's Lullaby."
Freaking Hylians and their obsessive-compulsive desire to turn everything into a puzzle...
The Spell to Find Traps is another strong candidate, at least once you've found something the ninjas missed in their search of the place. Any traps they found have probably already been disarmed or set off, although going by the look of the room - specifically the distinct lack of bloodstains, scorch marks, or projectiles sticking out of the walls - the latter seems unlikely to have happened.
It occurs to you that you could try to use the Spell to Locate Objects to find paperwork, but considering how much of that there still is in the room, you'd get some false positives. The ninjas didn't clear out the three filing cabinets - you make a note to take care of that before you leave - there's some paperwork still on the desk, and a few of the books might count, depending on what's in them.
There is one issue, however, and that-
You pause to accept the computer's hard drive from your Unseen Servant.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Hard Drive
-and that is that you're already running at your personal limit for self-enhancing spells. If you want to make use of any or all of those spells, you're going to have to drop at least one of your current selection.
With all due respect to your elemental allies, simply smashing the glass display cases open seems like a less than ideal approach. Quite aside from sending pieces of broken glass flying all over the place, the noise would probably startle the ninjas - and startled ninjas are something better avoided, just as a general rule.
So instead of just swinging your sword at the glass, you direct your Unseen Servant to press against one side of the case, and then place your weapon edge-on to the top of the display, slightly deeper than the inner face of that side - say, an eighth of inch.
Then, you press down.
Slowly, with a squeaky, rasping sound that grates at the ear and resonates through the display, the enchanted steel of your Goddess-given blade carves through the glass. The amount of effort required proved not to be so trivial as dragging a hot knife through butter, and that resistance plus your own lack of experience at carving up exotic materials using a sword results in an uneven cut that starts angling inward as your weapon digs deeper and deeper into the glass. About halfway down the case, you're forced to stop, withdraw your blade - producing a slightly lower-pitched variant of that bizarre sound - and make a lateral cut.
And then, of course, you have to move to the other side of the display and repeat the process.
Still, you manage to avoid shattering the display outright, and while you do cause a few cracks to form, your cuts are mostly clean, allowing your Unseen Servant to catch the severed "pane" of glass and lower it gently to the floor in MOST of one piece. Some shards fall away as the fractures spread out into spiderwebs, but they're small enough and few enough not to produce too much noise.
Uneven or not, the cut-away section gives you plenty of room to reach into the display, unlatch the shield from the vambrace, and lift it out.
Gained Magic Shield
As you pocket the item, you spare a mildly regretful glance for the rest of the armor, before moving on to the next display and repeating the process.
Gained Magic Dagger
Removing Mind Blank and Threefold Aspect was never an option, and considering what you know of the traitors within the ranks of the Shinigami, you aren't about to give up on Foresight or True Seeing, either. By the same token, most of your combat-focused enhancements should be left as-is.
In the end, it's a simple choice. The Greater Spell of Spell Immunity was set up to protect you from Quincy attacks, but now that there ARE no Quincy in the fortress - or at least not in this part of it, you're not exactly sure what the Heart's "rescue" of the Wandenreich entailed - it doesn't really serve any further purpose. It certainly wouldn't help you if Aizen or Ichimaru attacked you, or if Silbern started to self-destruct around you, so it's the spell you can most afford to lose.
Besides, there's nothing preventing you from re-casting the spell after you're done searching, if you feel the need.
Dismissing the magic, you wait for your mana to cycle, then cast the Spell to Detect Secret Doors and begin turning a slow circuit of the office, giving the Divination time to probe each section of the walls, floor, and ceiling in turn, as well as every bit of furniture in them.
Almost immediately, part of the rear wall shimmers in your sight. Pausing your sweep, you wait a few seconds for the magic to penetrate deeper, and see a square-shaped area just above the printer-slash-fax machine start to glow. It's about two feet to a side, and there's nothing to suggest that part of the wall is hiding anything: the wooden facade is a perfect match for the paneling around it, with no knotholes or uneven lengths of material; no painting hangs in front of it; and it's not directly behind the Grandmaster's plush chair, but rather a couple of feet off to the left.
As the Spell reaches its third stage, you see another glow form, lower down, and... huh. It's not part of the wall, but rather, on the printer.
You immediately order your Unseen Servant to leave the printer alone for now.
The Servant responds by handing you the keyboard, mouse, speakers, and thin-screen monitor, as well as the wires involved.
Upgraded Jugram Haschwalth's Hard Drive to Jugram Haschwalth's Personal Computer
Once all of the electronics are pocketed, your Servant goes into standby mode and you take up your sword again, using the tip to scratch small X's at the corners of the aura on the wall. You also commit to memory the glowing button on the printer - which is labeled "Feed 2" - before returning to your probe of the office.
The left wall comes up blank, as does the front wall. The floor and ceiling are both clear, which wouldn't be a big surprise in a more mundane location, as ordinary people can't exactly reach into ceilings, while the rug and the furniture would make getting into a compartment hidden in the floor quite a hassle; that said, based on the things you've seen and been told Quincy can do, it still made sense to check.
When you look over to the right wall, your spell pings for a second time, and after a few seconds, the silhouette of a door appears. Like the wall-safe you already detected, the hidden portal is about as well-concealed as it possibly could be, with the added precaution of having a small table with a vase and flower arrangement set in front of it. Seeing as how the drooping petals of the blossoms appear ready to fall away from their stems at the slightest touch, you can imagine other intruders having quite a bit of trouble getting into the hidden room without leaving evidence of it.
There prove to be two mechanisms tied into the hidden door, worked into the floor at opposite sides of the door. Pressure-triggered panels, most likely. If so, they're far enough apart that most people wouldn't be able to trigger both at once by standing on them, at least not comfortably.
Again, you raise your sword and carve some X's into the wall, designating the upper corners of the hidden door. You leave the table undisturbed for the moment.
After checking everything else, you spare a few seconds to go over the Grandmaster's desk from all angles, making a point of sliding his heavy chair out of the way so you can sweep underneath it as well. In the process, you discover four hidden surprises: two sections on the top of the desk, one near the phone and the other directly across from the chair; a third tucked inside one of the drawers, which - after some careful eyeballing - seems to be a bit shorter than the others above and below it; and finally, under the desk, a small panel. As you watch, your magic gradually reveals that there are three trigger mechanisms hidden by that panel, two of which connect to the top compartments in the desk, while the third is linked to... the hidden door?
Curious. Does that mean BOTH of the trigger mechanisms you spotted earlier are traps, or do all three have to be activated in a certain sequence? That could be very annoying, but it also makes you want to see what's in that room more than you already did.
It's worth noting that there may be other mechanisms hidden behind that panel; the three you detected were laid out in a row, and of the correct size and position for there to be one or two more triggers in there. They just don't seem to be for any sort of hidden compartment - alarms, perhaps?
Regardless, you don't carve markings into the desk. It's just too nice for that sort of vandalism.
Satisfied that you've found anything not screened by a sheet of lead in the walls, you allow the Spell to Detect Secret Doors to lapse, and quickly replace it with the Spell to Find Traps. This Divination Spell is somewhat faster-acting than the previous one, though it's also more directly reliant on your own skills.
Fortunately, you have the eyes of a...
...well, no, your eyes are quite a bit better than a boar's...
Something in your soul rumbles a porcine complaint.
Yes, yes, giant shadowy boars of furious doom don't need to rely on their lesser senses. You, however, are not so blessed - at least not most of the time - and must make do with your eyes.
There is an appeased grunt.
Putting your eyesight to work, you start sweeping the room again, moving in reverse to your original inspection.
The hidden compartment in the drawer immediately registers as trapped, as does one of the mechanisms under that panel. Lovely. Silver linings, though: the trapped button, switch, or whatever it is ISN'T one of the ones linked to the other compartments in the desk, or to the hidden door.
As you make your way back around the room, the floor-panels by the hidden door both ping your enhanced awareness, and when you finally get around to the concealed wall-safe, that one registers as well, though the printer-button linked to it doesn't.
You're not overly surprised.
Letting Find Traps go, you cast the Spell to Locate Objects, focusing on the idea of "paperwork"-
*Ping*
-and immediately get drawn towards the file folders still laying atop the Grandmaster's desk, as you expected. You pocket those for the moment-
*Ping*
-and are led towards the desk drawers. Those you leave alone for the time being, instead backing away from the desk and its contents-
*Ping*
-and bringing the shelves closer.
Over the next minute or so, you gradually identify and relocate various samples of "paperwork" that are cluttering up your sorcerous sonar. You get no readings from the wall-safe, but you aren't sure if that's because it doesn't contain any papers, or because it's lead-lined or otherwise shielded against this sort of magic.
You were able to penetrate the wards on Silbern using Greater Scrying, but that's a seventh-circle spell, and you're frankly ridiculous when it comes to Divination Magic. Locate Object is only a second- or third-circle spell by comparison, depending on the caster, so it's not impossible or even all that unlikely that the Wandenreich could have known about it and enacted proper countermeasures.
That said, the hidden door seems to have paperwork behind it. How much, you're not sure, but now that you know there's a secret room between the office and the archive, you can compare what you've seen of those rooms and the gallery that adjoins them to get an idea of how big the concealed chamber ought to be.
The answer is "not huge," there's less than fifteen feet between the office's wall and the near wall of the archival room, and some of that would be taken up by the architecture. The hidden room COULD be fairly "deep," though.
Regardless, you cancel Locate Objects and consider your next move.
Your own skills as a trap-breaker are, in all honesty, not up to the task before you. Fortunately, you have magic to make up the difference - and seeing as how Summoning Magic in particular has been serving you so well of late, you decide to give it another go.
And on that note...
FULL POWER SUMMONING, GO!
Golden light flares before you and around you, and as it clears, you behold a man just shy of six feet tall, with a broad-shouldered athletic build that's somewhat concealed by his long, tan-colored coat. He wears a blue shirt and pants under that, and has light brown hair and features that are mostly European, but suggest some Asian heritage; he'd be fairly good-looking, if not for the mask of bland indifference he wears. You'd say he's not quite twenty, though he carries himself like an older man, or maybe just one that's more experienced than most his actual age.
The Japanese-style short sword you glimpse sheathed at his side helps, there. He definitely moves like a man who knows his way around a blade.
Dark brown eyes take in you and the room at a glance, and then your summoned ally speaks in an impassive tone. "I don't know you."
"I'm called Shadow," you introduce yourself.
"I see." For some reason, that brings a brief, wry smirk to his face, but the emotionless mask quickly buries it. "Got a job for me then, 'Shadow'?"
Though puzzled by why that would be so amusing to him, you nod and quickly explain the situation. Your summoned rogue listens closely, moving about the room to inspect things for himself as you talk, and nodding slowly as you conclude.
"Got it."
He starts with the desk drawer, which he opens about halfway and quickly but carefully empties of the four cases of three-and-a-half inch floppy disks that were located inside. After peering into the drawer for a moment and sliding it back and forth a bit, he slowly draws it most of the way out of the desk, stopping when about eight inches of bare wood have been exposed. Then he slips a couple of small tools out of a hidden pocket and reaches into the back of the drawer, at which point there's no longer room enough for you to see exactly what he's doing.
You watch all of this from a few feet to the man's left, and after several seconds, you hear a faint click, but given that the stranger's face never loses that look of cool concentration, you decide it's probably not a bad sound - and indeed, a moment after that, he pulls a small, moderately complicated device of wood and metal out of the drawer. It looks like the false back of the drawer was designed so that the left-hand half of it was "solid", while the right side would press inward and slide over to the left to allow access to the hidden compartment beyond - while also priming a small, sharp, spring-loaded needle, the point of which seems to glisten.
Setting that aside, your rogue exchanges his first two tools for a simple set of grasping prongs, with which he reaches into the hidden compartment and pulls out another transparent plastic case of disks.
Not what you were expecting, but then, you're still getting used to the idea that the thousand-year-old leader of a supernatural faction would be so up to date on modern technology.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Computer Disks
Your trap-breaker turns his attention to the hidden panel, which he slides open without even blinking. A single row of five buttons is revealed, all of the same size and color.
"Which was which?" your summon inquires.
You carefully point out the middle-most button as the one that registered as trapped, while the two to its right are linked to the concealed compartments in the top of the desk. The button to the farthest left is the one that links to the hidden door, while the one between it and the trapped button didn't register as connected to a hidden compartment or a trap, leaving you uncertain as to what it might be.
After that, the rogue presses the two right-hand buttons.
The one to the farthest right causes part of the desk next to the phone to flip open and reveal a Rolodex. After you've removed that-
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Rolodex
-a second press of the button reverses the process, leaving the desktop looking smooth and seamless once more. VERY nice craftsmanship, there. Shame you can't steal the thing, but it's large enough that you don't think you could grab it without a ritual to boost your power, and you can't really justify spending the time that would require on something with no value beyond the aesthetic and fiscal.
The next one over makes a flat-screen monitor slide up out of the desk, its screen turning on automatically, but revealing only a wash of hissing static. Once again, a second press of the button that brought the screen up and turned it on switches it off and sends it back into the desk.
Leaving the other two buttons alone, your temporary ally presses the unknown one, but nothing seems to happen, or at least nothing in this room. Shrugging, he presses it a second time, and then gets up and moves over to the wall.
A tap of the un-trapped Feed 2 button on the printer has part of the wall splitting in half and sliding out and aside, revealing a wall safe with an electronic keypad.
"Got a passcode?" the man in the coat asks.
"Haven't seen a hint of one," you reply.
With a wordless hum, the man produces a small plastic case and brush that almost look like they came out of a professional make-up kit, and begins dusting the keypad.
"Looks like only the '1', '3', '4', '7', and '8' keys have been pressed recently," he reports. "In my experience, safes of this sort usually require eight or more numbers or letters for a code."
Lovely.
Brown eyes study the safe for a time, and then you are informed, "There's no external evidence of a trap. The mechanism may be purely internal."
Meaning, he doesn't add, that it's most likely meant to destroy the contents of the safe, rather than disable a would-be thief.
"I could try and crack it," he says neutrally, producing an electronic device that looks like it might have started life as the bastard offspring of a scientific calculator and a cellphone, before getting violently introduced to the contents of an electronic workshop. "No guarantees it'd work, and it could take a long time if it did. Alternately, I have explosives. Much faster, but could set off the trap."
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That said...
"Would you object if I cast some spells on you to increase your chances of success?" you inquire.
"Go ahead," comes the reply.
You nod and get started.
The Spell of Cat's Grace, to boost the stranger's manual dexterity when inserting and operating his little electronic safe-cracker, and following that, the Spell of Fox's Cunning, to try and boost his problem-solving skills for cracking the actual password.
Next, the Spell to Bestow Insight. You cast a "doubled" version of this, once again seeking to boost your ally's trapbreaking and puzzle-solving abilities. It's a bit of a shot in the dark on your part, as you're neither trained nor particularly experienced in dealing with traps, but at least you can improve his odds with the code, right? Right?
...stupid puzzles...
Next, you cast the Spell of Greater Heroism, and after that, the Spell to Grant a Moment of Greatness.
In recognition of the fact that you didn't put any extra energy into extending the duration of the Summoning Spell that brought the Man in Brown to you, this batch of spells has been tweaked for shorter duration, saving you a little mana. Even so, you can't help but notice this latest bout of casting has brought your reserves down to less than a third of your maximum capacity. If you're going to do any more serious spellwork, it might be time to quaff that last potion...
Regardless, once the last of your enhancements settles into place, the man you're just going to call Mr. Brown for now nods and turns to begin his attempt at opening the safe.
While he's doing that, you start in on an Augury, asking a particular question of the Goddesses: if your summon's attempt to open the safe fails, would it be safe to remove the mini-vault from the wall?
You're about halfway through the short ritual when Mr. Brown lets out a breath.
"I've bypassed the keypad," he reports shortly. "Getting started on the actual lock now."
You make a sound of acknowledgment and continue your spell.
The ritual finishes before Mr. Brown does, and the answer you receive from the sticks is a simple, "Weal."
The signs bode well for your backup plan, then-
*Click*
-but it may not be necessary, you think to yourself, as you turn back to Mr. Brown.
"Got it," he says, sliding the door of the safe open.
Looking past the man in brown, you see a pile of file folders - six or seven in all - two more diskette cases, and a bag just large enough that you might not be able to hold it with one hand, at least not without it spilling over the sides.
Mr. Brown empties out the safe, relocating the contents to the desk. The bag he considers for a moment before untying the knotted drawstrings and loosening them. Something like a smile of satisfaction crosses the man's face before he sets the bg down atop the file folders and lets it fall open, revealing the contents to you.
An assortment of small gemstones glitter in the light. You count twenty, easily, in a veritable rainbow of colors and opacities.
You allow yourself the chance to admire the sparkle before you pack up and pocket everything.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Emergency Stash
Mr. Brown has already turned his attention to the last set of traps in the room. Leaving his electronic device resting just inside the safe for the moment, he walks over to the right-hand wall, moves the table with the vase of delicate blossoms aside - shedding not so much as a single petal in the process, you note with some respect - and rolls back the carpet there before kneeling to take a good, long look at the floorboards to either side of the hidden door.
After a moment, he glances back at the desk, his expression thoughtful.
"Do you want me to press the button for the door?" you ask him.
"...not yet," he replies, as he turns back to the mechanisms and draws yet another tool from somewhere in his coat, something that resembles a very thin ruler made of metal, but with a slight hook on the leading end. This he slides into a narrow gap between floorboards and begins to gingerly fish about.
After a bit, he pauses, and begins to carefully draw the tool straight up.
There is a *click* beneath the floor, followed by a deeper *clunk* from within the wall.
The sounds make you a bit worried, but Mr. Brown just nods, slips his latest device out of the hole-
There's another *click* and *clunk*.
-and shuffles over to the other side of the door on his knees before repeating the whole procedure.
Once again, there's a *click* and an accompanying *clunk*.
"Pressure plates in the floor," Mr. Brown says. "Both have to be pulled UP in tandem to open the door, while pushing DOWN likely sets off the trap. Not sure how the button on the desk fits in. Could be a bypass, could be meant to 'lock' the other mechanisms in a particular position, could just turn on the lights in the next room. Hold this, will you?"
Blinking, you direct your Unseen Servant to take over holding Mr. Brown's not-a-ruler in its current position. The man's eyes narrow slightly as something he can't see begins exerting force on the tool still in his hand, but he lets go and moves back to the first of the mechanisms.
A moment later, there's a final *click* and *clunk*, followed by a grating slither as the hidden door begins to retract into the wall. After being pulled back about six inches, the wooden panel suddenly slides to the left, properly opening up the hidden passage.
It's quite dark on the other side.
"Hit the button," Brown tells you.
You do so, and there's a double *click* from the floorboards.
Your summoned ally withdraws the tool he's currently holding, and when there's no follow-up sound effects from the buried mechanism, he nods and retrieves his ruler-shaped device from your Unseen Servant, which you mentally order to let go.
Then the man in brown ducks into the hidden room.
You stay put, giving him a chance to look for any more hidden traps.
When Mr. Brown reappears about ten seconds later, he tells you, "About half a dozen filing cabinets, nothing more."
Well, then.
Is there anything you want to say to or ask of this Mysterious Man in Brown before you thank him and send him on his way?
Even at the level of mastery you and your Original have achieved, the basic form of the Spell to Summon a Monster doesn't last very long. You didn't devote any energy into extending the duration of the spell that you used to summon Mr. Brown, so it's honestly a little surprising to you that he's still hanging around most of two minutes later.
But even if it can be measured in seconds, you've still got some time left before the magic lapses, so you decide you might as well make use of it.
"If I have need of your skills in the future, would you object to me summoning you and casting spells like this again?"
"I don't object to taking on odd jobs," the Man in Brown replies levelly. "Of course, I usually get paid for my efforts, but I've had enough run-ins with magic to understand that isn't really an option like this."
Not in the financial sense, at least. Granted, being summoned burns off a certain amount of mystical debt, the exact value changing according to how long the magic lasts, what the one summoned is asked to do, and how difficult the task is for them to undertake, but that's a very intangible sort of payment. Mr. Brown is obviously talking about more material transactions, which the very nature of this magic renders impossible.
That said, you know that it IS possible for another sort of "intangible" to be exchanged through this form of Summoning Magic.
"Were you aware that the memories of your time being summoned can be accessed by your original self?" you inquire.
The faintest of thoughtful frowns settles onto Mr. Brown's largely impassive features. "I wasn't."
Well, then. You've just given him a bit of "compensation," provided of course that the actual Mr. Brown manages to tap into these memories.
You could offer a bit more help to sweeten the pot for future dealings with this man; do you want to?
You quickly recount your teacher's lessons on the subject, which can be described as a particular form of meditation.
There is a strong likelihood that the real Mr. Brown won't remember any of this, and that you're just wasting time, but even a completely ordinary person has at least a theoretical chance of unlocking their memories of being summoned - assuming it's ever happened to them - and exceptional individuals like your mysterious breaker of safes and traps are much more likely to pull it off, even when they don't have the proper training themselves.
And when Mr. Brown notes that he DOES practice meditation - even if it's of the more conventional sort - that only increases the possibility that his true self will manage to tap into these experiences. At that point, this information will become very useful to him, and you'll have an avenue to "pay" him for future summonings.
With that said, if Mr. Brown hasn't been able to sort out his summoning-memories by the next time you summon him, you can make sure that the information gets to him in real life.
The long-coated man visibly twitches when you say as much out loud.
"...or," you add smoothly, "if you would rather I NOT figure out where you are, I can do that, too."
"I would prefer that," the man says dryly.
That's about the point where you feel the magic holding him start to unravel. As the mysterious man in brown looks down at his hands - which are fading out at the edges - you make one final remark: "I never got a name from you."
Looking up, Mr. Brown allows himself the first genuine show of emotion you've seen, and smirks. "Call me Shadow."
And then he vanishes.
...well. THAT certainly has the potential to be confusing.
It does explain why he seemed amused by your intro-
*BANG!*
"Son of a-!"
Your train of thought is cut off as the wall safe suddenly explodes, and you reflexively trigger your remaining Staggered Flicker.
As you whirl around to face the source of your shock with all defenses belatedly raised, you see that the blast isn't that large in absolute terms - just a plume of fire billowing a foot or so out into the office. That was still plenty enough to blow aside the already-opened door of the safe, causing it to slam into the wall next to the little vault. Fortunately, "Shadow" had entirely emptied the Grandmaster's secret stash, and all the contents are currently in your dimensional pocket... but why did the charges in the safe go off NOW?
...
Wait. Shadow's safe-cracking device was summoned with him, and would have disappeared at the same time. He also never said he disarmed the actual trap, just that he'd bypassed the keypad, which allowed him to pick the lock. So if the "pick" suddenly disappeared and the electronics registered that the safe had been improperly accessed... bang.
You wonder if Shadow did that deliberately.
Calming yourself down-
"What was that noise?"
-you turn to greet the Shinigami ninjas who have just appeared outside the office. The two of them look around, and you see definitely chagrin when they realize that you've found two hidden compartments that their earlier search completely missed.
"Gentlemen," you greet them. "Sorry for the shock, the measures I used to access the safe proved a bit... short-lived."
"Did you get anything out of it?" Right Ninja asks quickly.
"Speaking of getting things out," you add, "did you manage to clear the archive?"
"We did," Left Ninja replies.
"Good, good. We've got a few more filing cabinets to add, just let me get a final count..."
So saying, you turn and head into the opened room.
As Shadow said, there's not much in here. Seven filing cabinets in all, a couple of low-intensity lights, and a bit of dust in the corners - mute evidence that the cleaning staff isn't allowed in here, and perhaps also that the Grandmaster isn't one for housekeeping - though there are no cobwebs.
Seven in here, three out there. Right.
You quickly cast one more Spell to Summon Monsters.
"WHO SUMMONS TORG, HELLFIRE WARLOCK, FOR THE SECOND- OH, IT'S YOU AGAIN." Dread TORG looks around. "MORE STUFF TO SHRINK AND STEAL?"
"These, and the three in the next room, if you'd be so kind."
"AS BEFORE, TORG WILL DO THIS THING, THOUGH TORG DOES HOPE THIS IS NOT A SIGN OF THINGS TO COME, OR HE FEARS FOR HIS DARK SOUL." His dramatic robes add expression to the full-body shudder. "PAPERWORK, YOU KNOW."
You leave the Hellfire Warlock to his doom.
"A bag of jewels, some file folders," you answer, leaving out the mention of the computer disks. "Don't worry, I pocketed them well before the charges went off." You emphasize the statement by patting your left hip.
Left Ninja glances at that part of your robe, and then over at the smoking interior of the safe. "How large ARE your pockets?" he wonders.
Right Ninja pauses, looks at his compatriot, the safe, you, and then back at the doorway - and, you expect, the gallery beyond - in quick succession, and finally makes a kind of shrugging nod. "It's a valid question."
"Big enough," you reply.
Leaving the ninjas to pick up the results of TORG'S DARK MAGIC-
"Where are you-" Left Ninja begins.
"I'm going to make a quick sweep of the other rooms," you say as you move past the two Shinigami.
"But the files-"
"TORG will have ten more cabinets shrunk down for you in a minute."
"I meant the OTHER files-"
"Don't worry, they're completely safe. Time doesn't pass inside my pocket."
"...how does that even...?"
-you exit the Grandmaster's office and hurry across the gallery, making better use of your Ki Enhanced speed. Activating your Mage Sight and Spiritual Sight, you glance inside.
Bookcases with glass doors and light security bars are the dominant feature of this room. Their shelves cover almost every part of the walls, reaching from floor to ceiling, and bear an assortment of texts that ranges from ancient to modern, huge to small, actual books to scrolls, and Goddesses only know how many languages - at a glance, you can make out examples of almost every Earthly language you speak, several more that you can at least recognize, and some that are unfamiliar. There are also more display cases like those in the main gallery, though with the exception of a single suit of armor near the middle of the room, these are on the smaller side, and mostly contain books of particular importance.
What SORT of importance, you can only speculate.
Spiritually, there isn't much to look at beyond that by-now familiar preservative ward. A few of the books have the faintest sense of weight about them; one of those has a cross and the words "Holy Bible" emblazoned across the cover, which leaves you wondering if the four others that share the feeling of mild significance are also holy books.
Magically, there are some standouts. None of the scrolls react to your Mage Sight, but several of the better-preserved old tomes glow with arcane wards underneath the Quincy-applied one, and three of those whisper of magic the way books you've encountered at the Arcana Cabana do.
...not LITERAL whispers, mind you - you think the Wandenreich would have tried to exploit and/or destroyed grimoires like that, rather than left them locked up like this - but the energies about and within the books tells you plainly that there's some real power bound up in them. Spellbooks, perhaps? Proper magic items?
Your scholar's soul cries out to leave no book behind, and you do a quick check of the enclosed bookcases. Fortunately, aside from the preservative wards, the only locks you can find are physical ones, and only one per glass-doored case. The eight volumes you're most interested in taking with you are scattered between four separate cases, so you cast a particular spell, tweaking its parameters for reduced range and increased number of targets.
You conclude the spell by raising one hand and rapping your knuckles against empty air: "Knock, knock."
*Click*
*Click*
*Click*
*Click*
And like that, the cases are unlocked.
You quickly retrieve the books of interest, giving each tome a brief once-over between pulling it from its resting place and stowing it in your pocket.
The volume bound in metal proves to have a lock of its own, which hosts its own little twist in the overall aura of Augmentation Magic and thus makes you cautious of trying to open it without more time to investigate. Still, while the contents remain inaccessible, you can tell that the iron bindings and silver inlays form distinctly protective patterns, anchoring wards against everything from humidity, temperature, and insects to physical and magical violence. This book could survive quite a bit of abuse, if it had to.
Gained Iron-Bound Tome
Next come a couple of the tomes under more conventional arcane wards, which prove to be a matched set of old-fashioned bestiaries, containing colorful images and archaic descriptions of many creatures, ranging from mundane animals to proper monsters to outright demons. The first book focuses on land-dwelling creatures, while the second - which is actually Volume Three, when you look inside the cover - deals with flying ones. The companion "aquatic" text does not appear to be within the collection - maybe it was lost?
Gained Bestiary of Earth and Sky
Fourth on your list is the book whose aura of demonic taint put you on guard. This one you handle gingerly, grimacing at the state of the leather bindings - slashed, bearing old, faded stains of concerning colors, and one corner looking a bit blackened, as if someone tried to burn it. When you open the book and flip through the first few pages, your expression doesn't lighten, as the pages are a similarly tattered mess, with some sections crossed out, blotted into indecipherability by what you HOPE was ink, or torn out entirely. The greater part is still technically legible, though it was written by an unsteady hand in a rough dialect of English that's littered with words of a language you don't recognize; bits of it remind you of Sylvan, of all things, though it's not quite that. More understandable - and more concerning - are the arcane diagrams you find every few pages, some of which COULD be summoning circles if they weren't missing parts, while others look unsettlingly organic.
While it's faint, every page tingles unpleasantly under your fingers, and seems to give off the barest hint of a foul stench.
Part of you would really rather put this book back on its shelf and leave it there, but you don't think you can in good conscience leave something like this laying around. And while you're tempted to just burn it, you refrain for the moment - if only for the sake of the other books in the room, and for making sure you know what you're dealing with here.
Gained Corrupted Tome
Another warded tome joins your growing collection after that. At first glance, this one appears to be a private journal, but as you flip through the pages, you quickly realize that the "wards" you detected were suppressing the contents.
It's some wizard's spellbook. Just a travel version, by the size, containing those spells most favored by the original owner for use on the road, but still. Spells.
Grinning, you close the cover and pocket a most useful find.
Gained Journal of Spells
Next comes the travel-worn volume, which proves to be... some kind of cookbook?
...
Okay.
Gained Creased Cookbook
Finally, you grab the last two warded volumes, both of which, regretfuly, prove not to be spellbooks. One holds pictures of stars, planets, and asteroids, interspersed with tables and long entries of ornate text. There's enough fantastical imagery used - many-faced angels, lurking devils, animals, seemingly human figures, and weirder things, all among the stars - that you aren't certain if this is a book of astronomy, astrology, or a bit of both. Determining the truth will require a detailed read.
Gained Book of Stars
The last book is full of descriptions of demons - not demonic species, like the entries in the paired bestiaries, but specific, individual fiends whose activities made their Names notorious on Earth at some point in the past.
Gained Book of Demons
Putting the last of the books away, you take a final look around at the library, wincing at the dozens, perhaps hundreds of volumes that you're leaving behind. Even if they're not magical in and of themselves, they represent a great amount of knowledge all the same, but you simply don't have the time or the pocket space to take them all with you.
...well, not unless you get TORG over here, whether by re-summoning him or just calling him over from Jugram's office, and put him to work shrinking the bookcases. He ought to be done shrinking those filing cabinets by now, right?
Dread TORG did say something about not wanting to deal with more paperwork if it could be helped. While stealing library books isn't "paperwork" in the usual sense, you suppose there are enough commonalities to be an issue.
So you summon some of your other assistants instead.
Summoning... Six, you think? GO!
*Poof*
"Whoa, where am I?" a familiar young man asks, in exactly the same tone of surprise he used before.
"Didn't I just leave this party?" a crotchety old man grumbles.
"That makes two of us, Al," a somewhat less old man agrees.
Through the fading smoke, a figure with shining golden looks about cautiously for a moment, before relaxing with a faint sigh.
Hm. Only got four people with this one. Still a pretty good result, and one that should be sufficient for your needs.
You quickly explain your desire-
"Dude, you want us to steal someone's LIBRARY?"
"Ah, a young man with a PROPER appreciation for books!"
-and they set to work, the wizards somewhat more eagerly than Surfer Dude. The Aasimar woman's reaction is fairly neutral, all told.
Leaving your summons to their work, you re-enter the gallery and half-teleport, half-run to the next door, which was the only open door that you didn't get a good look at before, the door having swung most of the way closed by the time you arrived. As you move, you reach into your pocket for your single dose of Smoke Water, which you down to shore up your flagging mana reserve.
*Glug*
*Glug*
*Glug*
Used Smoke Water
Gained Clay Bottle
Pushing the door wide, you find not a room, but a short hallway with one door on each side, and a third at the far end. All of these look to have been briefly visited by the Shinigami as well, so you hurry along, peering inside as you pass them.
The first room on the right is a water closet, with a single sink, mirror, and toilet, with a few hand-towels hanging on bars mounted on the walls. Picking up nothing supernatural, you look across the hall.
This room is full of cleaning supplies. Several brooms share a rack with long-handled dusters, while a mop and bucket (currently dry) sit to one side. To the left of that, smaller feather dusters hang from a rack of their own, while dustpans do likewise to the right. Bottles of brand-name cleaning fluids occupy a good portion of one shelf and some of the floor, clearly having been recently moved around by someone who didn't particularly care about neatness, and that same individual appears to have gone through the drawers of cleaning cloths, and even yanked down some of the tarps that were folded up on another shelf.
Once again, you sense nothing out of the ordinary, and move down to the last door, which proves to be another storage closet. There are a few hand trucks leaning against one wall, about a dozen hand-sized motorized devices laid out on a table, and a bunch of metal bars with tacky joints at the end that remind you of nothing so much as tinker-toys half-stood, half-piled in one corner. Wooden crates of various sizes are stacked along the other wall: some of these have open lids, revealing nothing but empty space and packing material; and those on the bottom of the stacks have recently had holes smashed into their sides, revealing more of the same. A couple of crowbars and a small collection of hammers, screwdrivers, and the associated pokey bits of metal round out the room's contents.
Finding no evidence of supernatural empowerment yet again, you back out of the room, turn, and teleport back down the hall and into the gallery. The two Shinigami, you note, have just left the office and are talking about something, but immediately cut off when they catch sight of you.
"About those files-" Left Ninja begins.
Ignoring him for just a second-
"H-hey!"
-you take a few steps and look into the last of the open doors, the one that appeared to be a sitting room of a more personal and intimate nature than the big room out front with all the white couches.
That first impression bears out, as you get a better look at the single armchair and matching table that sit next to a small fireplace - cold and cleaned of ashes - with half a dozen more bookshelves spread about them. These ones aren't glass-doored display cases, but ordinary wooden shelves, and while there are a few books that wouldn't have been out of place in the main collection of centuries-old tomes and scrolls, you see a lot more modern bindings, including quite a few paperbacks. There's also a door in the left wall, currently closed.
A hint of spiritual energy fills the room, radiating faintly from the walls, floor, and ceiling as much as the furnishings and texts. At a guess, this is probably where the Grandmaster came to relax, and loosening whatever controls he usually kept on his power caused fractional amounts of it to leak into the surrounding materials. Nothing registers as enchanted, however.
Summoning Seven, go!
*Poof*
"What's with the pixie dust?"
"Ah, man, am I having another flashback?"
"If it's YOUR flashback, why am I in it?"
"Huh, deja vu."
Indeed, Fortune Teller. Indeed.
You sort out your re-summoned workers and get them to start shrinking the bookcases and their contents, as well as some of the furniture.
"You're stealing someone's ARMCHAIR?" the woman in the suit and glasses exclaims in disbelief.
"What'd the guy even do to you?" the young black woman asks.
"To me personally? Nothing. He was just about to preside over a genocide."
"...oh. Well, in that case, screw him."
"Yeah, has he got anything else you want us to shrink down?"
You consider that. With four people, the contents of the Grandmaster's reading room should be reduced to portable size in short order. It's going to take you some time to finish scanning the chamber for hidden doors and traps, but you COULD turn this lot loose on the display cases in the main gallery once they're done here...
That settled, you cast the Spell to Detect Secret Doors and start scanning the room.
...
About a minute later, you let the spell end, having turned up nothing. It looks like this really is - or rather, WAS - just a sitting room.
Just to be sure, you cast the Spell to Find Traps and start walking a circuit of the room, but as you expected, your heightened awareness isn't alerted to anything threatening.
Shrugging, you walk over to the actual door, give the handle an experimental wiggle, and - when it proves not to be locked - open it.
As the reading room was to the collection of books, so this room is to the main gallery. Instead of portraits of warriors from various nations and eras, several landscapes and still lifes hang on the walls, and rather than statues or display cases bearing the arms and armor of outsiders, you see a couple of statues with familiar Quincy features, clad in older versions of the Wandenreich's modernized uniform. One is clad much like Souken, while others wear even earlier iterations of the white tunic. Where the greater collection offered nowhere for visitors to sit, this room has a couple smaller examples of those white couches from the suite's front chamber, and where the floor among the other display cases was hard wood softened only by a few long rugs, this room is entirely carpeted.
Looking about, your still-active Spell to Find Traps doesn't turn anything up. Magically, there's also nothing, and when you drop your Mage Sight and probe into the spiritual, you see that the objects in this room have a similar aura to the ones from the reading room, built up from long exposure to a powerful individual who was taking the opportunity to relax in private. That energy feels a bit weaker here, though, suggesting that Grandmaster Haschwalth perhaps spent more of his free time reading than reminiscing over the contents of this room.
There are two more doors towards the back of the chamber. One, which leads to a room "behind" the private library, proves to be a fully appointed bathroom, with a large and fairly modern-looking porcelain tub, complete with showerhead and fogged glass door. Leaving that for the moment, you head through the bathroom's second door, which leads to a fairly luxurious bedroom. Most of the furniture looks to be hand-carved wood, and the bedsheets are definitely silk, but a more detailed investigation is delayed as you sweep this room with your ongoing Divination Spell.
It proves a good call, as you detect three dangerous mechanisms in the room. One is located at the dressing table, inside a small gilded box, while the second and third are on the back wall, to either side of the great canopy bed.
Aside from the door that you entered through and the one that you know leads back into what you decide to label the Grandmaster's living room, there's also a closet in the opposite wall. A quick glance into that reveals no traps, after which you let the Spell to Find Traps go and re-cast the Spell to Detect Secret Doors, turning back to search the last three rooms of the Grandmaster's apartment.
The bedroom has three secret doors, two of which overlap with the bedside traps. The other two rooms turn up nothing.
By the time you've finished this search, your Spirit Armor has finally given up the ghost, as it were, while the spell keeping the more recently summoned of your Greater Earth Elementals is on its last legs.
You see no real reason NOT to grab more of Jugram's collection. Granted, you already nicked the most mystically and financially valuable pieces, but what remains is far from worthless.
"Actually," you reply to Average Joe's question, "there's a whole gallery of war trophies in the next room..."
"Right, we'll hit that next."
The four summoned individuals get to work, and between them have finished shrinking down all of the bookcases, the armchair, and the adjacent table before you've swept more than a quarter of the room for secret doors. After handing over the tiny stuffed library-
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Private Library
-they start heading out.
"Oh," you add, "if one of you could check on the room to the far left, there should be another bunch of shrunken bookcases awaiting pick-up."
"I'll do that," Average Joe volunteers.
"Thank you," you call after him, as the sound of shoes striking against the gallery's hardwood floor moves away.
You've finished up looking for hidden passages and are mostly done checking for traps when, instead of Joe returning, Surfer Dude enters the room with a bunch of tiny bookcases, stacked up on a floating silver di-
No, you correct yourself with dawning bemusement, that's NOT the traditional Floating Disc. It is, in fact, a floating silver surfboard.
You have to turn and stare at your fellow Californian for that one. "Really?"
"What? It's funny."
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Literary Collection
FULL POWER SUMMONING TWO, GO!
Gold light flares, and a man in brown appears before you.
Shadow frowns slightly. "I don't know you."
You aren't surprised by that reaction - a bit disappointed, yes, but not surprised. The odds against Shadow's original self having sat down to meditate in the handful of minutes that have passed since you dismissed him, AND having successfully accessed his memories of your previous summoning in that time, were pretty long.
You re-explain the situation to your re-summoned trap-breaker, pointing out the locations of the hidden doors and the traps, giving him the same set of buffs that you did before, and then leaving him to work. As you head back into the bathroom, you lean on your familiar bond with telepathy, reaching out to your partner.
-Briar/partner?-
-Alex/partner/yes/need something else?-
-Busy looting/taking ALL the things/summoned a bunch of magical looters and a break-and-enter expert/I've got TWO shrunken libraries, a whole computer system, and a chair in my pocket-
-Seriously/for real?-
-Seriously/I like books/the chair could actually be useful.-
*Doubt* radiates down the link.
-Anyway/explain later/have some faith, one of my Greater Elementals is about to go pop/kind of rude not to say thanks/would you mind taking care of that?-
-I guess I could take Rex for a walk/Yachiru wanted to go for a "real ride" anyway.-
...
-Thanks/I think/should I be worried?-
*Amusement* is your only answer.
Trying not to wonder too hard about how much trouble a fairy, an underage death goddess, and a Celestial Tyrannosaurus could realistically get into, you start looking around the bathroom.
You only saw Grandmaster Haschwalth in person for a handful of seconds, but the guy's pale yellow hair reached halfway down his back. From conversations your Original has had with friends - Cordelia in particular was more than a little put out when she first learned how easy magic makes it to keep one's hair neat and clean - you're aware of the necessary effort for maintaining hair of that length, much less for keeping it in such good condition, as well as some of the related issues, like hair getting stuck in and clogging up a drain. And while the prospect of plumbing for loose hairs is a bit disgusting - if less so when one has telekinesis on tap - hair is such a useful focusing agent for various spells that you really can't pass up this opportunity to acquire some of the Wandenreich Grandmaster's.
Besides, the man's got a brush just sitting there on the sink counter. It's a very nice brush and all - there's a pattern of silver worked into the wooden handle, and the bristles are made of something that feels softer and more natural than plastic - but it's been recently used, and has a few strands of faintly golden hair caught between the bristles as a result.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Hairbrush
Before you can return to the bedroom to see what progress Shadow has made, you hear Surfer Dude calling out from the living room - and behind him, the sounds of what seems like four or five voices raised in an argument.
"There you are, man," he says, as you walk into view. He turns to his Floating Surfboard, which is carrying a bunch of little cloth display cases - images of their contents seemingly painted onto the white "glass" - as well as some tiny plush portraits, and explains. "So, we got, like, maybe an eighth of the stuff shrunk before we all ran out of gas, 'cause there was a LOT of it, and Scary Office Lady said we should take the paintings that went with the stuff, because of something about identification? Anyway, I- WE, meant we, were just gonna leave it all there for you, except those ninja dudes were being sort of, well, ninja-y, and I guess Scary Office Lady didn't like that, because said we should take everything to you instead. And the ninjas weren't happy that she sort of called them thieves, so now everybody's yelling. But I got all the stuff! That we shrunk, I mean."
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Historical Collection (1/8)
What are you going to do about the argument out in the gallery?
"You realize Marvel could sue you."
"They could," Surfer Dude replies with a grin of something that approaches cunning, "but I'm not actually making any money off of their intellectual property. I just have a magical floating silver surfboard that I made myself, and use to haul stuff around."
You aren't familiar enough with copyright law to say whether or not Surfer Dude is in the clear, but he seems confident that he is-
"I know a dude studying law, I asked."
-and it's not really any of your business anyway, so you let the matter go.
Your summons are going to disappear shortly, and if they vanish before the insult that kicked off this argument has been addressed to the Shinigami's satisfaction, you're going to have a couple of offended ninja to deal with.
Rather than let that happen and have the Shinigami come to you to complain - not only potentially distracting Shadow during his delicate work, but also putting the two of them in the room when he cracks open the Quincy Grandmaster's last secret holdings - you'd prefer to go distract the psychopomps while Shadow loots the room and brings the stuff to you later.
On that note, you'd better let him know of the change in plans. With that in mind, you step over to the other bedroom door, open it, and look inside.
While you were stealing a hairbrush in the bathroom and stowing a magic surfboard's worth of shrunken loot in your pocket, Shadow has gotten to work on the hidden compartment to the left of the great bed open. It's another wall safe like the one from the office, right down to the electronic lock and the code-cracking device the mysterious man in brown has produced to open it.
Without looking up from his efforts, Shadow acknowledges your presence. "Yes?"
"I've got an argument to defuse," you say succinctly. "Would you mind bringing the stuff you find to me?"
"If I've got time," comes the answer.
You nod, because that's fair; with three hidden doors to open, two traps to disarm, and only two minutes to work - minus the time you used up explaining the situation and buffing him - there is a chance that Shadow could disappear before he finishes up, much less before he has a chance to convey everything to you. Not a big one, you think, based on his performance in the office, but not an entirely negligible one, either.
Exiting the bedroom, you cross the living room with a single teleport and re-enter the gallery, where the shouting match is picking up steam and volume.
Three of your summons have formed a line to face down the two Shinigami, although the bulk of the yelling seems to be taking place between Left Ninja, Office Lady, and the young black woman you didn't come up with a nickname for. Right Ninja seems to be trying to play peacemaker and is getting glared at by the other three parties for his efforts, while Average Joe is currently silent, rubbing his forehead as if it pains him.
Surfer Dude is hanging back near the door, and gives you a worried, hopeful look as you enter the room. He flashes you a peace sign and then disappears, the summoning that he was part of having lapsed. As for the Fortune Teller, she's ignoring the argument in favor of studying the historical artifacts that remain on display.
As you currently lack a heavy book to slam in your preferred manner for getting attention, you decide to copy Issa a bit more directly, and put some ki into it as you clap your hands for attention.
*CLAP*
Still got a long way to go before you catch up to the master, but it was loud enough to register through the shouting and draw all eyes your way.
"Would someone mind explaining to me what's going on?" you ask mildly.
"This MAN-" Office Lady begins heatedly.
"This WOMAN-" Left Ninja says at the same moment, and in exactly the same tone.
This time, you decide to enhance your voice. "STOP."
That worked better. Not a patch on the Thunderbird, but you're catching up to TORG.
At a more normal volume, you add, "Someone a bit less angry, please."
"The lady seems not to trust strange men in masks, or much like being looked down on for being an 'outsider'," Average Joe speaks up, his tone mild. "Can't say as I disagree with her on either count. That said, the louder ninja DID mention that we're in the middle of a military operation, so I can see where he's coming from about us not having clearance, interfering with the mission, and such."
"Don't forget that Pajama Boy, here-" the black girl adds.
"It's a UNIFORM, damn it, NOT pajamas!" Left Ninja protests.
"-accused us of trying to slip something out without telling the ninja army."
"Ninja army," huh? Is that what the Shinigami are letting your summons think they are, rather than revealing the whole psychopomp thing? Well, it could work, as long as no one outside the Second Division comes in here.
"I did not ACCUSE-"
"You were kind of hinting at it," Right Ninja admits.
Left shoots his partner a frustrated glare. "Whose side are you on, anyway?"
"Hopefully, NOT the one that gets called out on the carpet by the captain later."
THAT visibly gives Left Ninja a moment's pause - and in that moment, you feel the spell holding your most recently summoned Greater Earth Elemental fade away, its energy spent.
That is probably your cue to wrap up the pillaging.
Since Left Ninja seems to be concerned that you and your summons are making off with objects of interest to the Soul Society, you quickly explain the inability of conventionally summoned creatures to take things with them - or, for that matter, to leave things behind - when the spells that brought them forth end.
"And if you're worried about pure information getting out," you add, "you can take comfort in the fact that most summoned beings don't consciously recall the events of their summoning."
"'Most'?" the Shinigami repeats.
"There are techniques for accessing those memories," you admit easily, "but given how this lot" - you gesture at Office Lady, Average Joe, and the girl - "had the same reactions to being summoned both times I summoned them, it's a safe bet they don't know how it's done."
Left Ninja seems appeased by that-
"What about her?" Right asks, gesturing at the Fortune Teller.
-at least until his partner speaks up.
"Don't worry about me," the lady in question says, waving off the attention. "I'm a professional."
"Aren't you supposed to tell people the secrets of the universe, though?" the black girl asks curiously.
Left looks even less appeased.
"Only the ones that are relevant to them and theirs," the Fortune Teller replies. "Funny thing about that; in almost ten years of business, I've yet to have a customer get mixed up with ninjas." Shawled shoulders shrug. "Might be because I don't live in Japan."
Not an unreasonable assumption, although you can't help but recall the ninja messenger that stopped by your Original's house. True, that visit only happened after Alex went to Japan the first time, but it still proved that shinobi are not limited to operating in their homeland.
"That seems fine," Right Ninja says, nodding at Fortune Teller. He turns to his partner. "Doesn't that seem fine?"
Left stares at his partner for a moment.
"Okay, fine, forget about the people who are here without actually being here, however that works." He turns to you. "What about the files and all the books YOU'VE grabbed?"
You regard the Shinigami flatly. "You did see the guy who walked through here with a floating surfboard full of shrunken bookcases, right?"
"Yyyyes..."
"So, do YOU have pockets big enough to carry all of those - and ANOTHER room's worth of books, besides - in ADDITION to all the shrunken filing cabinets you already have, without risking dropping anything? Or a large sack, even?"
The two Shinigami shift awkwardly, parts of their uniforms bulging noticeably where they've crammed in the aforementioned miniaturized cloth cabinets. Under the effects of the Spell to Shrink Items, those things ended up about three inches tall, an inch wide, and just as deep - pocketing one or two of them would be no issue, but there were three floors' worth of the things in the archive, and a few dozen cabinets per floor.
You spare a brief moment to be glad that you weren't the only person who put more thought and effort into preparing for the fight than for looting in the aftermath.
"...nnnnot as such?" Left sheepishly admits.
"Then the books will be staying in my pocket for the time being," you reply firmly, determined not to leave a single volume behind. "As for the file folders..."
"...those are staying where they are."
"But-!"
"Look, everything I said about the security of my dimensional pocket is true, and still applies, but more to the point - you don't exactly trust me to have that information? Well, has it occurred to you that I might not exactly trust YOU guys with the information YOU have? Hm? The remarkable success and low casualty count of our first joint mission aside, we've only been working together for a couple of hours, tops. Maybe, if we'd spent all that time trading our life stories in a deeply heart-moving mutual exchange-"
The ninjas aren't the only ones who give you strange looks at that.
"-we'd all be a little more trusting and trustworthy, and better people in general. As it is, we're near-total strangers who just happen to have a similar objective, and we'd be foolish to let the other party walk away with EVERYTHING this guy had on paper. With that in mind, I've set my own information-hoarding control freak tendencies aside long enough to help you guys take the archives, but I'm going to indulge my impulses a little and hold on to the rest for the time being. Call it insurance, if you like."
Left Ninja is visibly annoyed by this, and even Right Ninja looks a touch put off, but the latter also nods in acknowledgement of your point.
They've got most of Jugram's actual files, a lot of which is undoubtedly dull minutiae of managing the Wandenreich that won't really be useful to you or for the Soul Society's purposes, but with some valuable tidbits among the bureaucracy.
You've got Jugram's libraries, about two-thirds war trophies and one-third leisure reading by volume, most of which is ALSO unlikely to be relevant to Soul Society's interests, but with the potential to provide insight into the Grandmaster's thought processes - and maybe some hidden notes stashed away as well. You've also got some of his previously-hidden files on top of that, the sort of thing the Shinigami definitely want, and which you have let them know about accordingly.
...mostly, anyway.
Each side has something the other wants, and thus, incentive to continue cooperating and exchange data.
AFTER making copies, of course.
With that sorted out and the two Shinigami no longer likely to freak out when you dismiss your summons, you thank your small party of magically recruited looters and send them on their way.
"Can I just say that I am really uncomfortable with the implications of that spell?" Right Ninja pipes up then.
"Which part?" you wonder. "The idea that beings from other planes could be summoning you, that they can do it largely without your consent, that they COULD be doing it without your even realizing it, or that there may be multiple instances of 'you' running around the cosmos and being forced to work, fight, and die for someone else's convenience?"
"YES," comes the emphatic reply.
In other words, all of the above.
Fair enough.
"A ninja lives only to die," Shadow comments ominously as he appears in the doorway behind you, visibly startling the two Shinigami. "So long as his mission is completed, nothing else matters."
"On that subject," you begin leadingly.
Wordlessly, Shadow holds out several books... and a jewelry case?
Pocketing the books - and feeling Left Ninja's frustrated glare on you the entire time - you take the last item and open the lid, revealing a pair of earrings, a necklace, and two bracelets, wrought in fine silver and inset with a few tasteful gems. There's also two rings: one is silver, with a Quincy cross as its device, a single diamond at the tip of each arm and one slightly larger stone at the center; and the other is a plain band of unmarked gold.
As before, you detect nothing magical or spiritual about the jewelry - really, for how close they were kept to the Grandmaster's bed, they're remarkably lacking in signs of exposure to his power, suggesting they were locked away for quite some time. Still, three things do catch your interest: first, all the pieces other than the gold ring appear to be of the same style, as if meant as a set; second, their size and design suggest they were intended to be worn by a woman; and third - and once again with the exception of the gold ring - the metal and stones are somewhat blackened, warped, and cracked, as if exposed to fire.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Jewelry
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Journals
You look up at Shadow, questioning.
"Jewels were in the left safe," the man in brown reports, "books were in the right. The hidden room's some kind of shrine, half a dozen individual portraits of men, women, and children; judging by the art styles and the clothes depicted, they're either into historical reenactment, or they all lived centuries apart." Glancing at the one-eighth plundered gallery, whose remaining portraiture and relics kind of fit the description he just gave you, Shadow adds, "Not like this, though. These are triumph, pride, and honor - meant to be seen and talked about, or at least known. The shrine's the exact opposite."
Privacy, then, and shame - possibly defeat, or perhaps simply loss.
"No traps or hidden compartments," Shadow concludes his report.
Since his job's done, and the spell that summoned him is winding down as well, you thank the man in brown and send him on his way.
You'd probably better take a look at that shrine before you leave, just on the off-chance that there's something in there which might give you actionable intelligence on or further insight into the mind of the guy in charge of the militant Quincy faction that will be out for your aged-up head after today's events. His files and books are a good start, there, but additional data wouldn't hurt.
Besides, you're curious.
Turning on your heel, you call upon the Spell to Walk Through Space, blinking across the living room to the bedroom door. You hear Left Ninja cursing behind you - if mostly by tone - followed by a hushed pause and a lack of pursuit that makes you think Right is talking to his frustrated companion, and trying to restrain him - whether physically or just metaphorically - from making a bad decision.
Regardless, they don't follow you. At least not immediately.
As you step back into the bedroom, your gaze briefly tracks towards the open wall safes, neither of which blew up when you dismissed Shadow and any lock-picking devices he'd left in place. Are there no bombs on these, then, or did the man in brown just manage to disarm them?
Shrugging, you stride towards the open door in what was previously an unmarked patch of wall. The passage that was hidden behind it is short, needing only five steps to clear and bring you to the room Shadow described as a shrine.
It's a good term. The chamber isn't very big, maybe fifteen feet to a side and with a ceiling ten feet high. Aside from the floor, which is mostly covered by another of those white and black rugs, the architectural surfaces in here are all bare white stone, devoid of any decoration that might draw attention away from the pictures that have been set up in a loose semicircle on the other side of the room. There are braziers set up in the corners, spiritually powered things equivalent to magical ever-burning torches; they consume neither air nor fuel, generate no heat, and shed a continual light with the faintly bluish tint of Quincy energies. It washes out the color of the portraits a bit, and gives the shrine room a slightly eerie feeling overall.
As for the pictures, the central one, located directly across from the entryway, displays a young woman in a white dress, seated gracefully on a chair or couch whose form is little more than an impression. Her hair is long and dark, her eyes blue, and her expression impassive and dignified, as many old pictures are, but rather lovely despite that. Tellingly, she's wearing most of the jewelry that Shadow handed to you - and which shows no signs of fire damage, here - but her hands, held neatly on her lap, lack either of the rings. A small, roughly carved stone stand in front of the picture holds a Quincy cross; like the jewelry, the five-armed star is blackened and warped as if by a great heat.
To the right of the woman's portrait is a rough charcoal sketch of an old man, visibly stooped and with little hair left to him. His clothes remind you of the traditional Quincy tunic, but in a style you've not seen before, one that seems simpler and cruder than either the Wandenreich or any of the Earthbound Quincy wear, and visibly hard-used besides. There is no accompanying bangle for this one.
To the left of the woman's portrait is a small collection of pictures. Three in total, the farthest left of these is another monochrome sketch - seemingly in the same hand as the old man's image, though the level of skill has noticeably improved - which depicts a young man around twenty in another variation of Quincy garb that seems a step closer to the modern designs, but still distinctly old-fashioned and worn. Next is a painted portrait of the same man as he must have appeared near his fortieth year of life; his clothing here is much finer, and he seems healthier and more filled out than his earlier image, although that could just be the addition of color. Finally, there is a picture of the man as an elder, sixty or more years of age, and wearing the years mainly in the white of his hair, the lines on his face, and a certain softness about the middle. A medallion with the five-armed cross on it rests before the pictures, unblemished.
Back to the right side of the half-circle, you find a mini-gallery of color pictures that starts with an infant whose eyes are still closed and hair not yet grown out, then shows a girl of about six in one of those stuffy old dresses people used to insist on girls wearing for important occasions; in that picture, short chestnut curls descend from beneath a shapeless cap, while green eyes squint and chubby cheeks scowl in the sort of expression made by children of both genders when adults are being dumb and making them do boring things. The next portrait shows the girl in her teenage years, ringlets now falling to her shoulders and framing a slightly strained smile, which to your eye seems to be acknowledging how her fine dress is striving to make the most of a coltish figure that is all knees and elbows, but can't quite pull it off. The next picture shows a beautiful young bride seated next to a young man who appears not to have been so fortunate as to grow out of his adolescent awkwardness, and has this goofy grin. After that are pictures of the woman as a mother, with each of three different children as babies, and the two older daughters appearing in their younger siblings' paintings; the mother hardly seems any older than in her wedding portrait for the first of these, and has aged perhaps a decade by the third. Next is an image of the woman in middle age, her husband at her side and all three children before them - the youngest, a son, seems to be just shy of his teens here, while the oldest daughter must be nearly twenty. There are no further pictures, and once again, there is a Quincy cross resting in front of the collection.
Returning to the left side of the room, you see an image of a girl in her teens, with dark hair and piercing dark eyes behind old-fashioned glasses, wearing a Quincy tunic and cloak that is almost a perfect match for the style favored by Souken and Uryuu. Between that and the distinctly Japanese cast of her features, you have to wonder if you'd find a picture of this girl in the Ishida family history books. This portrait has another star-bangle in front of it, as well as a white glove with blue markings: the former is cracked in half and has lost one arm entirely; and the latter is tattered and seared at the edges.
This is all very interesting, but it's the last picture, sitting on the farthest right from the central image, that really gets your attention. It's a modern photograph, taken at some distance from the subjects, and depicts two very young girls playing in a park - tag, from the looks of it, or maybe they're just chasing each other. One is dark haired, the other light, and you know them both.
What. The. HELL. Is a picture of the Kurosaki twins DOING in here!?
You have no sooner fully registered the contents of the room than you take three steps to the right, reach out, and grab the ordinary-sized framed photograph and pocket it.
Then, sensing the Shinigami approaching through the Grandmaster's sleeping quarters, you take two more quick steps towards the right front corner of the room, where one of the "ever-burning" braziers sits.
"What are-" Left Ninja begins as he enters the room, before pausing and looking around. "...huh."
Right echoes his companion's movements for a moment, before looking your way. "And this was a hidden room?"
"It was," you reply, as you make a show of picking up the brazier and stowing it in your pocket.
Gained Ever-Burning Quincy Brazier
Then you move towards the pictures of the woman with curly brown hair.
"...okay," Right says, with the air of a man deliberately ignoring something bizarre or ridiculous. Turning back to Left, he continues, "So why would the guy in charge of the place have hidden a room full of family portraits?"
"ARE they family?" Left asks. "Because aside from those two and their kids" - he gestures at the set of pictures you're moving towards - "none of these people really look alike."
He's not wrong about that, you muse, as you set the object down and begin gathering your mana. The only points of commonality among the remaining pictures are the Quincy uniforms that most of the subjects wear - disregarding the woman with the jewelry - and the Quincy crosses left before most of the portraits or collections thereof - with the single exception of the old man. Even then, outside of some of the pictures of the curly-haired woman, her husband, and their children, no two of those outfits are the same. Taken as a whole, it's more like you're seeing examples of the traditional garment as it appeared in different generations - possibly rather far-flung ones, given Haschwalth may have been building this collection for the last thousand years.
"That happens a lot in the Rukongai," Right replies mildly, in response to his compatriot's last remark.
"...okay, that's a fair point. But most of these people are dressed too well and too DIFFERENTLY to have lived in the Rukongai. Western gowns? Quincy uniforms?" Left shakes his head. "If they'd popped up in one of the Inner Districts, we really ought to have noticed or had it brought to our attention. And if they showed up in one of the further Districts looking like this, somebody should have mugged them for everything they were wearing and carrying."
"...also fair," Right admits. "Okay, so if they're not blood-related, or at least not closely enough for it to be obvious, then what's their connection? What made them special enough for the guy running this place to make a memorial like this, and why did he keep it hidden?"
The ensuing silence makes it clear that no one in the room has an immediate answer to either of those questions.
Then you complete your spell and give the brazier a light tap that shrinks it down to a much more convenient size. With the magic still going, you reach out to the assorted pictures of the curly-haired brunette and begin tapping frames. One by one, you shrink every image in the room, your magic sufficient to handle the entire lot simply by increasing the number of targets.
As you begin pocketing the portraits, you glance at the Quincy crosses left behind.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Secret Portraits
"And with that," you say, "I think I'm done here."
"No, really?" Left snaps. "Sure you don't want to finish clearing out the gallery and the other rooms while you're at it?"
"If I'd been better prepared, or just had more time to work?" you reply. "Sure. But as it stands, I have to shrink and stow whatever the elementals have managed to grab, get back to the Gate Room to do the same with whatever the elemental I left THERE has nabbed, and THEN I have to help the Wizard open the way out - and I have more places to go and other things to take care of after THAT, which I need to leave enough energy for." You shrug. "As far as looting goes, I'm tapped out."
With that, you turn and leave the shrine room.
You'd already taken steps to secure a few examples of Wandenreich weapons technology - which reminds you to make sure you collect the hilts of those totally-not-lightsabers you had one of the Earth Elementals pick up - so it only makes sense to investigate their primary focuses. This collection, in particular, promises to offer some insights into how the design of the Quincy cross has been refined over the generations.
Fortunately, all of the emblems are small enough that there's no need for you to shrink them. You just pocket them as you collecting their matching portraits, making a mental note of which items go together. It's pretty easy to remember, given that one's burned and partly melted, another broken, and neither the photo of the twins nor the drawing of the old man had one of the silver stars to begin with; the only ones that might have given you or your Original trouble are the crosses that matched to the two mini-collections, as both of those are undamaged and of almost identical design, being medallions hanging from fine chains. But even then one is clearly a bit smaller and lighter than the other, perhaps made for a more delicate hand or more graceful touch? Regardless, you won't have an issue telling them apart.
Gained Jugram Haschwalth's Secret Quincy Crosses
Through a combination of quick, ki-enhanced strides and short-range bursts of teleportation, you make your way out of the Grandmaster's suite. As you pass through the living room and the main gallery, you can't keep your gaze from roaming over the artworks, trophies, and other items still under glass; it stings to leave all this stuff behind, but what you said to the two ninjas is accurate enough.
You make yourself a promise that, the next time your Original calls you up to help him get ready to invade a fortress, your recommended preparations will include sackers and a baggage train - preferably outfitted with Bags of Holding, Wands of Shrink Item, and other magic items useful in stripping a place of valuables.
Still, you tell yourself, as you exit the front room and re-enter the main hall, it's not like you're walking away... empty... handed...?
That thought trails off into silent astonishment as you look upon the Boulder Brothers, the remaining Greater Earth Elemental, and what their combined larcenous labors - as well as those of the other Greater Elemental, now dismissed - have wrought.
Huge rug-sacks have been laid out along the sides of the corridor in two rows of five, about half of which you realize aren't actually rugs, but rather some of the great banners hanging over many of Silbern's walls. This particular stretch of corridor, you note, is looking rather more bare than you remember - a coincidence, you're sure. Piled next to the largest bags are somewhat smaller converted carpets, twelve in number, and then there are the half-dozen chests that were simply dragged out here as they were found. Big Boulder is just setting one of those down, while Boss Boulder gives one of the carpet-bags a corrective nudge to keep it from spilling open.
You have to ask yourself: even after everything's been shrunk down, does your dimensional pocket have ROOM for all this stuff? And if it does, WHERE are you going to PUT everything after you've dismissed the Spell to Shrink Items in order to examine and put a proper value to your loot?
You're suddenly very, VERY glad your Original has that underground storeroom on Bali Ha'i. You think he's going to need it.
As for the other elementals, Brick, Brock, and Breccia are far down the hall and appear to be playing a game of catch using the broken-off head of one of the guardian statues - did they get attacked during their plundering, or was that just a bit of vandalism on their part? The remaining Greater Elemental is down the hall in the other direction, closer to the entrance of the Royal Quarter, alongside the Celestial Tyrannosaurus; the elemental appears to be talking to Briar, while she continues to keep the dinosaur in check.
*Cling-clang*
And then, there is Lieutenant Kusajishi, who has seemingly given up on dinosaur-riding in favor of opening one of YOUR loot-boxes and fishing through the contents, which - appropriately enough - seem to consist entirely of gold, silver, and gems, in a mix of coins, loose stones, bullion, and worked artifacts. Yachiru has taken the opportunity to crown herself with a tiara, which hangs so low on her head that it threatens to blind her, and also to don a few necklaces that hang to her waist. Bands of jeweled gold probably meant to be worn around the biceps of someone closer to Kenpachi's size clatter against the bangles that already threaten to slip off her wrists, and she's got several rings on, besides. Nor has she neglected her zanpakuto: a necklace has been wrapped around the saya, high enough that its dangling ends don't threaten to get caught in the wheels; and the guard, which had been forged in the shape of a five-petaled flower, has another necklace looped through the gaps between the petals in such a way that it doesn't fall off.
As if sensing your attention, the underage Shinigami looks up, grins, and waves with the jeweled golden rod she's holding.
"Hi, Shady! Your rock people are GREAT looters! I've NEVER seen this much treasure in one place before, not when Kenny and I used to beat people up for their stuff, not even when I visit Byakushi's place! It's AMAZING! SOOO many guys started crying when they saw it all! And look, look, look!" She bounces in place, arms spread in presentation and jewelry jingling. "I'm a princess!"
Clearly, Yachiru is a believer in the "more is more" school of fashion accessories.
...eh, why not?
You bow sharply, declaring, "Hail, Princess Kusajishi!" as you do so.
You can almost imagine a dark-winged chorus crying "Hail!" in the distance, before one among their number points out that Yachiru is not the Mistress of the Dark.
Yachiru's response to your dramatic gesture is a delighted giggle.
"Although," you add, straightening up, "if you're a princess... what does that make Captain Kenpachi?"
Mid-giggle, Her Highness's expression goes blank.
"...if I'm a princess, Kenny should probably be a king," she says slowly. "But Kenny wouldn't WANT to be a king, 'cause they gotta do ALL the paperwork and have meetings with ALL the silly people, and paperwork, meetings, and silly people are Kenny's least favorite parts of being a captain. And a captain at least gets to go out and fight big Hollows sometimes; kings only get to fight when there's a war on or if somebody tries to assassinate them-"
Big word for a little girl, there, you note in passing.
"-and even THEN, they got rules and guards and stuff that would just get in the way. Plus, Suichin said that any assassin who LETS their target fight back is doing it wrong anyway..." The little lieutenant frowns in frustrated concentration as she absently taps the side of her head with her shiny scepter. "What would he be, what would he be...? Uuuu, this is hard!"
For yourself, you'd figure Zaraki would be less the sort of bureaucratic king Yachiru is referring to, and more of the "conquering warlord" archetype. Then again, conquerors who don't get themselves killed eventually have to settle down to manage their domains...
Well, that's a thought for another time. You have loot to be converting to more human-portable volume and weight. Looking upon the neatly lined-up piles of plunder as you run the necessary calculations through your head, you call out to the elementals and ask them to reposition some of the loot, so that you can get the most bang for your magical buck when you start shrinking stuff.
The Spell to Shrink an Item is convenient in that, while it only works on a single object per casting, the precise definition of an "object" can be somewhat flexible, mystically speaking. A piece of firewood is certainly a single item, but put several logs together and set them on fire, and the resulting campfire is technically ALSO a single item. Boxes or bags of treasure work the same way, as did fully loaded bookcases and filing cabinets a few minutes ago, as would a dead body and everything it was wearing or carrying; the main limitations are that the larger an item is, the more powerful the caster must be to shrink it, and that magic items are immune.
You're able to work around the former limitation a bit by converting the formula of Shrink Item to a multi-targeting Mass Spell, though even then, you'll probably need two or three castings to affect everything here. As for the latter...
Once the elementals have sorted part of the pile to your satisfaction, you walk into the middle of the heap of treasure and work your magic. Three minutes of magical light and sound effects later, four of the rug-sacks, twice as many of the carpet-bags, and three of the treasure boxes shrink down to small plush versions of themselves-
*Clang*
*Thump*
-with several enchanted or spiritually empowered objects emerging from the mouths of two bags and one box even as they shrink down. This leaves a small statue awkwardly balanced atop a squashed-looking felt box, a few accessories - some metallic and jeweled, others not - spilling out of both plush pouches, and a smaller, metallic box just sitting atop one of those.
Stone lids blink audibly over gemstone eyes, and then, moving as one, four of the Boulder Brothers turn to their largest member.
/ Uh, whoops, / Big Boulder replies sheepishly. The noise of rock rasping against rock fills the air as the big elemental rubs the back of its head with one huge hand in a curious echo of Yachiru's earlier gesture. / Sorry about that, Boss. I guess I missed a few things? /
You don't really blame him. The auras on most of these are built on spiritual energy rather than magical, and the majority aren't especially strong; if Big Boulder is more used to dealing with magic than the sort of power the Quincy use, you can understand how such things would be overlooked.
That said, the statue, the metal box, and a couple of other pieces are glowing strongly enough in your senses to give you less charitable thoughts about the big guy.
"No harm done," you declare, as you kneel to pick everything up. Then, since the spell that summoned the Boulder Brothers is on its last legs, you thank the quintet for their efforts.
Is there anything else you want to say to the Boulder Brothers before they leave?
