We go feet-first, sir!
Beta'd by Sesparra
I made it back down to the house at about the same time that Harry returned, Susan and Yoshimo (seeming to almost meld into the background shrouded in her freshly upgraded cloak compared to Harry's sweeping coat and Susan remaining in her fancy dress, both drawing the eye) in tow. "Ivy said she could only spare one Warden," he said apologetically, "and I had to promise Luccio that you'd keep her out of too much trouble."
"Well," I drawled, one hand resting on my sword's pommel, "we're going in to go have a chat with Nicodemus, so I can't promise perfect safety, but I'll do what I can to make sure she makes it back home."
He opened his mouth, something sardonic clearly about to cross his lips, but his eyes flicked over my shoulder and he visibly thought better of it. "Right, so, uh… let me get started, then. Should I… circle of salt, or go outside and break out the chalk?"
"Outside, if you please," Mom said, not quite disapprovingly but like she was expecting to be disappointed. "I had Shiro put the… hand out there, on a sheet of aluminum foil to prevent it from staining the concrete."
"Right-o," he said, swooping outside with somewhat more billowy motions than usual, and it took a moment for me to realize that his coat was a lot lighter than normal.
"The hell happened to the leather coat?" I asked, frowning.
"Miss Valmont happened," Susan said, looking at me half like I was a rabbit that had just torn out the throat of multiple knights of the Round Table and half like I was an apple too enticing to be true for a moment before tearing her gaze away ashamedly. "He was… investigating matters, earlier today, and she managed to separate him from it before one of the Denarians attacked."
I gave the idea a moment of thought. "Yeah, sounds about like him." I paused for a moment. "Hey, I made you something."
She looked more than a little awkward, "Look, uh…"
"Not like that," I said, rolling my eyes despite not knowing why, exactly, she was feeling awkward as I unwrapped the chain from around my waist and offered it to her. "You need something you can actually use your strength with, and you won't always have a convenient table leg, plus this is a lot more concealable than most options."
She took the chain gingerly, testing its heft and then giving it a test swing. "I… why?"
I almost blurted out "I've seen what your corpse looks like and would rather not do so again", which… on top of taking a wrecking ball to the conversation, I didn't really know Susan well enough to trust her with that. Hell, I wasn't sure I'd trust Klaus with that, right now, and he'd been my mentor in the future-that-wasn't. Being super irreverent… well, given that she'd been so familiar with Harry, she was probably used to that sort of thing, but I didn't trust that to not blow up in my face either, so a more measured response would probably do best.
"You mean, aside from 'I had five minutes'? Mostly, because Harry trusts you enough to not try super hard to force you to sit this one out." I shrugged. "That, and I've got a feeling you'll be needing it, sooner or later."
"...Right," she said, looking more than a little spooked, but she let it lie as she wound the chain around her arm and turned her attention to Mom, who hadn't missed the implication in my words and was giving me a worried look. "So, Mrs. Carpenter, is there any coffee left?"
I drifted over to the couch as Mom answered, plopping myself down and drawing my spellbook into this world as I did.
Aside from the eyes surrounded by stars picked out in silver on the cover, a concession to both my mother and the Theurgic tradition that I ended up following, it was a simple leather-bound tome, full of off-white parchment and scraps of expended scrolls that I'd scrawled notes on.
I didn't think Locate Person would be of any more use than Harry's thaumaturgical tracking, but Locate Object could be very helpful if Nicodemus was keeping the Shroud separate from himself, and a second's focus had the spell fixed in my mind, ready to be cast at a moment's notice.
After that, I skimmed through the rest of the spell-forms I'd recorded, trying to find something that could be worth using in the fight to come, until Harry strode back into the house, his pentacle amulet tugging at his hand and Nicodemus' severed limb wrapped up in foil in his other, held at arm's length with a more than mildly disgusted look on his face.
"Tracking spell's up, let's move out," he said, not missing a step as Susan, Dad, Sanya, and Yoshimo spilled out of the kitchen.
As I got up to join them, the Forge flashed, and a handful of pillars rose up around the one that had grown to display Aine's chip. Closest to the center was what looked like a die-cut metal section that had been removed from a burnished sphere, with three turquoise, gently glowing circles set into it. Surrounding the circles was a gently pulsating pattern of orange lights, which were in turn surrounded by a network of grooves and raised areas, and the whole arrangement was resting on one of those display stands that sometimes come with high-end models.
On the rest of the pedestals were a vaguely spherical device, made of what looked almost like chrome or maybe even polished silver, that housed a single, glowing photoreceptor, as well as a teardrop-shaped ship in the same chrome-looking metal, a suit of armor that looked similar in design sensibilities but was much more matte, and a pair of what were essentially seeds, which I just knew would grow into what was a power plant that would never run dry, at least not before the other components wore out.
Memories flashed through my head, flitting around the ecumene in a luxury liner and performing amateur physics experiments with technology that made the Infinity look like a Baby's First Spectrophotometer, but they quickly subsided.
Almost as soon as they did, I could feel my bodysuit growing more robust, and even beginning to project a simple force field- nothing particularly impressive, by Forerunner standards, but it was another thing that Anduriel couldn't just feed Nicodemus, and every trick I could play against him was a trick I'd gladly take. Then, there was a sense of pins and needles as my helmet collapsed into itself like it was being sucked through a straw, and I felt something cold snaking its way up the back of my neck and through my hair before reaching the slight bulge my neural implant made in the back of my head and activating it.
Projected directly into my brain through my optic nerve was an image of Aine, looking at once more grave and more resolved than I could remember seeing her before. "Activate a portal to the Future Witness when you get close enough to the area of engagement to start reconnaissance, and maybe we'll be able to nip this problem in the bud."
"Right-o," I said, my helmet extruding itself around my head and displaying a much-expanded HUD as I strode towards the door. "Let's go play some shadow tag."
As it turned out, Harry's spell led us to O'Hare before cutting out.
Aine managed to get into their records damn fast once we got there, sending in the eye-like platform that had come out of the Forge to connect directly to the computers they kept in the control towers, and eventually offered up a handful of flights that could potentially be harboring Nicodemus, two private planes booked by people who had paid extra to keep their names and faces out of the records and a flight down to Atlanta, of all places.
At the end of the day, knowing what I knew about Nicodemus, I was more than willing to bet on the private planes- aside from the man wanting to avoid the kind of inconvenient circumstances that came from being isolated in an environment he couldn't control, there were all manner of arcane rituals or sacrificial spells that he could do on a private plane that he just wouldn't have the space to perform on a public flight.
"Makes sense to me," said Harry, when I explained my thoughts on the situation.
Dad was giving me an almost unbearably sad look, but forced it down when I turned to look at him. "In that case, let us go remonstrate with him."
I raised an eyebrow under my helmet, but decided to leave the matter, for now, and set out after Aine's monitor, little full moon-globe emanating light behind us, which was already hovering off towards the hangars that the private planes were kept in.
After that supremely awkward walk, I withdrew my wand from where I'd been keeping it inside my coat. I was about to raise it to cast Locate Object to try and find the Shroud, but paused to look at it more closely.
It wasn't bad, and to be honest, by the standards I'd held this time last week, I would have been more than happy to use it for any number of applications.
Those standards didn't account for the fact that, given half a chance, I could out-craft all of Faerie put together.
Still, it was good enough for now, and a moment's focus had the implement laid on my outstretched palm, spinning madly for just a moment before it snapped around to unerringly at one of the hangars, a little bit off-center from my perspective.
"Bingo," I said, resisting the urge to pull my daiklave or sidearm immediately. "Alright, people, game faces on."
The wood of Harry's staff creaked under his grip as Susan's chain rattled, unspooling itself from where she'd wrapped it around her waist, and I heard Dad, Sanya, and Yoshimo working the Swords (or swords, as the case may be) loose in their scabbards in preparation to draw.
I myself checked the integrity of my shield, then, once I was satisfied it was operating at its fullest capacity, I headed for the door on the side of the hangar closest to us and slammed it open with one hand, a bead of glacier-blue ice already held between two fingers on my right hand, ready to throw since I could hear the sound of engines warming up inside and, if worst came to worst, I could at least hope to stop the plane for long enough for us to get aboard.
Just inside the well-lit hangar, as I'd suspected, was a not insignificant number of Nicodemus' fanatical soldiers, with swords or guns at the ready like they'd seen us coming (which, in all likelihood, they had), and the moment they saw me instead of one of their number, their fingers contracted and lead hurled itself my way from Uzis and Thompsons and even a Kalashnikov or two.
My energy shield made itself known, a cloudy membrane of laser-induced plasma and before I retreated, closing the door in front of me, I flicked the freezing sphere forwards, low and on an oblique trajectory likely to see it impacting in the rough center of their ranks.
The Forge flickered dimly in time with the near-blinding flash of chillingly blue light that leaked around the edges of the door, causing the gunshots to start to die off, and by the time I pushed it back open again, the only sound that was competing with the whine of the engines was one particularly fortunate bullet that had lodged itself between the door and the jamb dropping to the layer of ice crystals on the floor- which I suspected that no one else could hear, given how advanced the upgraded audio pickups on this suit were.
Just starting to wheel itself out of the now-opening hangar doors was a relatively standard private jet, albeit one with a door still open, and out of that door came the almost medusa-like figure of Deirdre Archleone, steel-gray hair rasping one strand against another as she landed halfway between us and the jet at the head of a slowly massing crowd of Nicodemus' soldiers, streaming from a room off to the side of the hangar, wielding swords and the occasional spear in their hands.
"Go," said Harry, shaking out the bracelet full of shield charms on his left wrist. "We'll handle them, you two are the only ones who can actually get to Nicodemus before takeoff."
"Stay safe," I said, before reverting into my angelic form in a burst of moonlight and taking off, Aine's monitor trailing after me on a trajectory aimed directly for the still-open plane door as Deirdre hissed up impotently at us.
And that's that!
Perks Earned:
Ancilla (Halo - Forerunner Saga, 450 CP): Every personal armour comes with its own ancilla, and nearly every forerunner has their own personal armour. Ancilla are also involved in nearly every aspect of forerunner technology. The number of ancillas within the empire likely outnumber the amount of forerunners by several orders of magnitude. This is your own personal ancilla. One of the standard ancilla provided to any citizen. It is programmed to listen to you above all else. It would be stranger if you didn't have one honestly. This ancilla is at the level of a metarch ancilla.
Ancilla Shell (Halo - Forerunner Saga, 50 CP): A small metal orb, one used by the monitors, that can house the matrix of an AI, namely Forerunner Ancilla. This head sized shell is able to fly at extreme speeds, and is durable enough to withstand multiple shots from a Spartan Laser. While commonly used by Monitors, the shell is able to store the complete programming of any ancilla up to, but not including, metarch level. Offensively, the monitor shell can unleash a directed energy beam capable of depleting level 2 combat skin shields, and has a telekinetic beam capable of lifting heavy purchase comes with a Design Seed, able to make more on demand by the dozens should it be so desired. Ancilla get one free purchase.
Armour (Halo - Forerunner Saga, Free):Forerunners wore personal armour at all times, for their entire lives. This full body armour was designed to assist them in their everyday lives, in every way possible. It protected its user both physically and medically, to the extent of extending their lifespan from centuries to tens of thousands of years, gave them a near perfect memory, and afforded them heightened perception. Necessities such as nutrients and oxygen can be provided by the suit. This means that users could survive several years without having to open the armour. On top of this, most personal armour came with some form of energy shield, for additional protection. By the final years of the Flood war, all armours had one. The armour can be configured to hover a foot above the ground instead of walking.
Forerunners wearing one were provided with constant access to a vast wealth of information stored within the suit, as well as a connection to the local net. The appearance of one's armour was commonly used to denote one's role and position in forerunner society. The armour is extremely malleable and can mold itself to the shape of any other species, and can also change in appearance and colour in relation to its wearers mood.
Every armour comes with its own personal ancilla, programmed to cater to the wearers needs. This ancilla interfaces directly with the mind of the user, and is what facilitates the increased cognitive abilities as well as access to local networks. Touch is all that is required to transfer data between suits, and can be used to have silent conversations between users. For now your armour is beret of any ancilla, though one can be added with extreme ease. When taken off, the suit will fold into a compact bundle. The one you receive is a standard civilian model. Most forerunner facilities come with small engineering units that can be used to produce additional suits quickly and efficiently, and as such you will also gain one of these with this purchase. They only take an hour to grow a personal new armour around the user."
Tools of the Trade (Halo - Forerunner Saga, Free): Each rate has a different job, and accordingly each rate requires different equipment for their work. This is a selection of small hand held tools employed by the various rates for their work or day-to-day lives. A Lifeworker would have a selection of persuaders, scanners, sample bays, and more. Builders might have tools more in line with design and experimentation. Warrior-Servants would not gain offensive tools with this, but rather supporting items. These can be easily stored within the personal armour of any forerunner in out-of-the-way pockets and concealed slots. Each purchase of this will give you the tools of a specific rate.
Personal Ship (Halo - Forerunner Saga, Free and applied to Future Witness): The Forerunners had such a massive industry and advanced technology base that space travel was not a luxury but a mundane feature of life. The only real limitation people had on how fast and far they could travel was due to slipspace debt. In order to keep it at manageable levels the Forerunners created an overwatch network that would monitor travel throughout the galaxy so as to traffic it to prevent the debt from building up. It was for this reason that trips people could not simply travel wherever they wished as fast as they could. This is your own personal craft. Lacking any weaponry or notable shielding, this ship is mainly only useful for travelling between planets. Its size could be anywhere between fifty meters and 1km in length. Like most Forerunner ships, it is able to reshape itself on demand. Its form is not set.
Vacuum Energy Pylons (Halo - Forerunner Saga, Free): The main power source of forerunner technology. These absorb the energy from newly forming universes in an infinite number of separate dimensions to use for Forerunner purposes. So much energy can be absorbed that the Forerunners were capable of moving planets and collapsing stars. Due to the source of this energy, it will never truly run dry. You need never worry about running out of power, only how much you have available at any one time. These pylons were seen in one form or the other in nearly all forerunner installations. While these pylons are wondrous, the consequences of their malfunction can be equally disastrous. Don't be in their vicinity when they break without safeguards. This purchase comes with two Design Seeds, for pylons of different sizes. One for small scale personal use, and one for larger scale operations.
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