2103:12:02:23:45:00

  Crowsong and I arrived at the meeting point fifteen minutes later than promised. Through no fault of our own, of course. Nth-Sight just had to contact me about this exact same mission and ‘convince me’ that I should go through it despite ‘my disagreements’ with Crowsong. What those disagreements were supposed to be, we still didn’t know.

  As per Crowsong’s standing instruction, I played along and agreed while trying to get him to give up some extra information. Unfortunately, my interrogation and/or negotiation skills are… not great. Outside of the fact I was ‘needed there to ensure a good outcome’, he let nothing slip.

  As to what it was we were doing, we were on our way to another joint mission with the Sentinels for another attack on another Jannacht base.

  By this point, I felt they should’ve been running out of bases, but it was more likely we’d only seen the tip of the iceberg. The Jannacht had, according to Nth-Sight and the Sentinels, brought fifteen masked in the city by now, going up to as many as twenty – and who knows how many more they’ll bring. Compare this to, Magistry, the only other international gang besides the Jannacht, who only had an active roster of six, and Motorgang, once the largest gang in town, who had ten villains total.

  Well, nine villains now.

  Yesterday’s attack had left twelve people dead, all but three of them from Motorgang. And that despite the fact the attack had been an ambush by Motorgang, that Motorgang out-masked them three to two, and that the heroes had responded quickly to said attack, the battle had left Motorgang with surprisingly big losses.

  Including the villain Black Lung. The second masked casualty for Motorgang.

  Which was odd, considering that in the battle for Charm overall, it’d been the Jannacht that loses more often than not. It was overall but a small reversal of fortune in the grand scheme of things, but that certainly didn’t help Motorgang’s already vengeful mood, and was another spark to light the ever-growing powder keg that was Charm.

  But if there was one powder keg in the city that had not yet been lit, it was Little Europe. Unlike other parts of Charm, the district hadn’t gotten its fair share of action solely due to the fact that Magistry had staunchly refused to engage with the Syndicate. Like, at all. To the point that their nominal territory had been all but subsumed by Jannacht, with only the relatively small interests of the Numbers Room and the Dusk Bandits in the district preventing them from taking it wholesale.

  Either Magistry was playing a different game, or they knew something no one else in Charm did. But that was a mystery for a later date. Today, it was time for another targeted strike.

  One in Little Europe, in fact.

  I hoped we weren’t the one to light the fuse here.

  As Crowsong and I arrived at the agreed-upon meeting spot – not a rooftop this time, but an alley behind Master Burgers (no, the burgers weren’t made by masters) – I spotted two familiar masked, and one unfamiliar: the half-naked veteran Jagar Natha, the officer-like junior Marching Orders, and the still-unknown-to-me Elegast.

  Like Jagar Natha, Elegast was an older vigilante. Unlike him, Elegast preferred to cover himself up, wearing a blood-red, medieval-looking plate armor that stretched from head to toe. It was an amor of his own make, and it carried with it not only an odd, dim red glow, but an effect that made the hero seem taller than he actually was. Something similar could be said of the longsword dangling by his side, seeming larger, longer and sharper than its ordinary appearance would suggest.

  Since he was a mage-type maker – an enchanter in older, outdated terms – I assumed the effects were on purpose.

  “Crowsong, Jester, good to see you again,” Jagar said. He elbowed Elegast, the ring of invulnerable skin versus maker metal creating a fine ringing sound. “Go on, introduce yourself to Jester.”

  The knightly masked looked at his leader for a moment, then turned to us and took a step forward. He held out his hand.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice echoed and amplified by whatever he’d enchanted his helmet with. “Nice to meet you. Looking forward to our future cooperation.”

  I shook his hand. For as confident and professional as he sounded, the words and handshake itself were mechanical. From March’s crossed arms and rolling eyes told me that he was probably just awkward.

  Still, no need to be rude. “Likewise,” I said, and after three more pumps we simultaneously let go. Well, at least he knew proper handshaking protocol.

  “Now that that’s out of the way,” Crowsong said. “What are we looking at? Same situation as last time?”

  “For our sakes I hope not,” Jagar joked, though his normally jovial tone sounding strained. Rhennish’s injuries must weigh heavily on his mind. That, or he was remembering our first joint strike against the Janancht.

  Crowsong had similarly picked up on the tone and echoed my thoughts. “Is Rhennish’s situation that bad?” she asked.

  “Losing his legs has shook him something fierce, even if it was only temporary,” Jagar said. “If Needle Knight hadn’t come when she did, we might’ve lost him entirely.” Behind him, March’s tsked in either irritation or anger. “Hopefully today will count as a pure win. For vengeance if nothing else,” Jagar concluded, nodding toward Elegast.

  Elegast explained the situation. “One of our friendly augurs – the same one that told us about the post office – has informed us of a new location. This time, it is not a distribution center, but an information plant.”

  “Information plant?” I asked.

  Elegast nodded. “Information plant, data center, intelligence office. Think server farms, records and archives, network hosting, data gathering and processing – everything an enterprise at scale needs. Except in the case of the Syndicate, these get funneled to whatever augurs they possess,” he explained. “If our informant is correct, this is the nerve center of the Syndicate’s information network, second only to their augur office itself. Though I suspect that one is located far outside Charm. Perhaps even centralized at their HQ in New York.”

  I nodded, but Crowsong was more skeptical. “And it is here of all places?”

  Here being in a serene, mundane business park in Little Europe.

  “Hiding the tree amongst the forest, I suspect,” Elegast said by way of answer. “And Charm’s Syndicate chapter is still in the process of being set up. Whatever information plant they possess is likely not expansive enough to require a standalone location or a refurbished warehouse.”

  “And your source on this information?” Crowsong asked.

  Elegast remained silent, perhaps uncertain about what he should say. It was difficult to tell when he was perpetually stiff and covered in a suit of metal just as stiff as him.

  Thankfully, Jagar stepped in. “Plenarian. A rogue we’ve been in contact with for the past seven years. He’s always proven reliable.” There was an edge to his voice. “Why the suspicion, Crowsong?”

  Crowsong remained silent for a moment. “Never trust an augur,” she said eventually.

  I didn’t react outwardly, but was surprised nevertheless. Why did she not share her suspicions of Nth-Sight?

  Jagar, however, simply snorted. “You take too much after Blackhawk,” he said fondly. “You planning to take up the mantle?”

  “I already did,” Crowsong said.

  “Except for the name,” Jagar returned.

  Was the name and/or power inheritable? That would explain some of Crowsong’s focus regarding her mentor’s legacy. Although, it was more than a bit of a faux-pas on Jagar’s part to bring it up like that.

  “Perhaps once I’m of age,” Crowsong said bluntly. She turned to Elegast. “So, the data center. Where is it?” she asked.

  X

  The where wasn’t far, but it was unusual.

  Unusual, in that for the first time, our target wasn’t a stand-alone building but part of a larger office tower – an office on the twelfth floor, to be exact. It was near the top at three floors down from it, meaning we thankfully didn’t have to walk the many stairs, or stand awkwardly in a lift together.

  My ascent was easy, as usual. A shift into a crow – now one of many crow forms I possessed since figuring out a mimic could take a bullet for me – a quick fly up, a shift back and I was there.

  Not so for the rest of our team. Jagar Natha said he could jump that distance if he stored enough power, but doing so would crush the road beneath him and might ruin the surprise part of the surprise attack. Likewise, Elegast had no flight enchantment, and while Crowsong could likely climb to the top by herself, the office tower was almost entirely made out of glass.

  I doubted my mentor could make it there without breaking a single pane of it.

  Thankfully, Marching Orders was not so limited. With a wave and a ring of the tiny bells dangling from her fingers, two pale-red and transparent, harpy-like beings sprang into existence. One by one, the junior vigilante ferried the other masked to the top of the building.

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  Crowsong managed to unlock the door on top of it through her usual methods. We entered the stairway, walking as quietly as we could to the twelfth floor.

  It was difficult to hold in a comment at how it must look like. A blood-red knight, a bronze-age hero, a sci-fi officer, a human-shaped crow and a cool fool ‘sneaking’ down a barren office stairway…

  I wanted to take a picture and send it to Millie, figuring she’d appreciate the comedy of the situation.

  Crowsong did her usual and picked the door. Without so much as a word, she stepped aside and let Jagar take the lead, his invulnerable skin a great shield in case we were spotted, or worse, expected.

  And expected we were, it seemed. Except not in the manner that we were expecting.

  There was no data center. The entire floor was empty – no servers, no computers, no offices, no sign of occupation whatsoever. Only barren space, walls of glass and concrete, and load-bearing pillars.

  “Shit,” Jagar muttered, fetching a flashlight out from underneath his decorated loincloth – from a utility belt he had hidden underneath, I hoped.

  Others did things to a similar effect. Crowsong retrieved her own flashlight. March summoned two floating, glowing orbs. Elegast unsheathed his sword and made it glow, casting light in an area around us.

  I shifted into a cat. Both so I could see in the dark, and in case this surprise turned out for the worse.

  “Did they know we were coming?” Crowsong asked, flashlight sweeping as all of us slowly wandered through the emptied-out floor.

  “No,” Elegast said, eyes scanning the room. “All evidence points to there never having been an information plant here in the first place.”

  Jagar kicked at the floor in frustration, throwing up loose gravel and fine dust.

  So not emptied-out then. Just empty.

  “Did we get the wrong floor?” March asked.

  “This is the twelfth,” Elegast said.

  “No, like, were we told the wrong floor?” she rephrased. “Like, by accident?”

  “Wrong floor, wrong building, wrong district, wrong city,” Jagar said, irritated. “Wrong information.” He looked at Crowsong. “Why were you suspicious earlier.”

  Crowsong hesitated again, but this time she spilled the proverbial beans. “Our own augur, Nth-Sight, has turned… unreliable as of late.” Not the full truth, then.

  “And you didn’t think to mention that?” Jagar said.

  “One augur’s not the other, and so far he hasn’t given us false information yet,” she said. “Besides, would it have changed anything?”

  Before Jagar could further the conversation, Elegast cut in.

  “I believe it is something more fundamental,” he said. “Hero response times have sped up recently while those of the gangs fighting the Jannacht have suffered. Ambushes and traps succeed less often. At the same time, what I believe to be unforeseen deaths have risen. In short, I conclude augury has grown more volatile.”

  “Someone’s been throwing up chaff,” Jagar concluded.

  “Exactly,” Elegast said. “But who?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” a smooth voice interrupted.

  We all whirled around to its source. Lights aimed at the unseen figure, who did not so much as flinch at the sudden exposure.

  “I’d like to take credit for it, but alas, I cannot. Personally, I think Magistry is to blame. It suits them, doesn’t it?” The man said. He stood further into the building, and likely had been here from the start.

  The unknown occupant of this floor wore an expensive looking costume. On his head was a puffy roundlet with a trio of red-green-blue feathers tied to a string falling from it on the right side. He was dressed in a golden buttoned dark green vest with golden embroidery with and red cuffs equally embellished with gold. He wore this over a ruffled white shirt, which was in turn accompanied by beige pants, dark red boots, red gloves and a red cape.

  The top half of his face was obscured by a red, form-fitting yet simple-in-appearance mask. The lower half was uncovered, leaving his saccharine smirk plain to see.

  It was Soliloquy, putting his reputation as a masked ‘renaissance man’ into his literal costume.

  “Though why they would help us – however inadvertently it might have been – is still a mystery,” the villain concluded.

  “Step back and head towards the door,” Jagar instructed quietly. “Elegast and I will distract him while you escape.”

  “Ah, but the trap is already sprung,” Soliloquy said, somehow hearing us clearly despite the distance, “and the doors already shut.” As the words left his mouth, the doors we entered through slammed closed and locked by itself.

  Elegast dashed out from behind Jagar, a red line blurring past at superhuman speeds, “The knight makes an illegal move,” only to be teleported back to where he started, frozen.

  Jagar jumped forward with a roar, “and the king moves but one step,” only to end up smacking face first against an invisible barrier. The loud thud reverberated throughout the empty hall, sending the windows vibrating to the point of breaking.

  Crowsong and March were the next to respond, but too slow all the same. “A treaty binds two ways.” Both of them were suddenly struggling against invisible bands, arms tied to their side under their pressure. “Children are in a league of their own, as I recall it,” Soliloquy said with a smirk.

  But I was not a child. I was a cat.

  I dashed low, hoping to escape his sight under the changing light conditions from Crowsong and Jagar dropping their flashlights.

  Soliloquy turned his eyes to me, the weight of it almost enough to make me buckle. “Beast or human; prey all the same.” The previous weight, one of inevitability, now held me in stasis.

  As I was bound for the moment, he threw one hand forth and drew the other back, a spectral bow and arrow springing into existence out of thin air.

  He released and the bindings vanished. I dodged to the side as quick as I could, yet the arrow tracked me unerringly. It pierced straight through my heart, my cat’s death painless and instant.

  I was turned back into base form and immediately resumed my charge.

  “Now, for all intents and purposes, children and adults see different worlds.”

  The world shifted and I was somewhere else. A colorful, nonsensical world – a child’s drawing of what the floor I’d just been on. It messed with my head and senses in a way eerily similar to me quick-shifting between unmastered forms. Colors of the world swirled overly-bright in my head, and muttering voices echoed from everywhere – loud enough to hear, but simultaneously too muted and indistinct to understand.

  A separate world indeed, but I had already figured out how to get past his tricks. I shifted into a rhino, my transformation breaking whatever hold his spell held on me, returning me to the world proper.

  A disproportionate amount of time must’ve passed in that strange world, because Elegast was at Soliloquy’s throat, swinging his blade and harassing Soliloquy at every step, leaving zigzagging red lines left behind in his wake.

  As the villain was occupied, I charged.

  Elegast swung his longsword in a decapitating strike, but Soliloquy stepped back and dodged it by a hair’s breadth. Despite the narrow dodge, his expression spoke of contemptuous ease.

  He was almost within reach. I lowered my head and aimed the flat of my horn at his back. Whether I should gore him or not… I had not yet decided. Let instinct decide the outcome.

  Ultimately, it didn’t matter. With an – in my opinion – ill-fitting, “Olé!” my charge was redirected, a teleportation-like effect washing over me and resulting in me dashing off to the side. I quick-shifted to base, then cat – one of three remaining – to quicken my turnaround, then back to rhino to resume my charge.

  Elegast stabbed forward once more, with the villain sidestepping it with a dancer’s grace. Elegast than zigzagged – a knight’s move, I now realized – and repositioned in an instant, his sword bearing down on the villain once again. At the vigilante’s subsequent cut, Soliloquy ducked by bending over backwards deeper than was humanly possible.

  The man was playing with his food.

  In the (relative) distance beyond the two fighting figures, I saw Jagar still slowly making his way to the battle, one slow step after another like he was struggling against the force of an industrial wind tunnel.

  And of course, Crowsong and March were still bound. Meaning it was all up to me.

  I accelerated, growing closer and closer to the fighting pair, when Soliloquy started speaking again.

  “Oh great lord of the fae,” Soliloquy said playfully bashful as he dodged another swing. Elegast must’ve sensed something, because his movements grew quicker, and his attacks more frantic. “Is it true that metal doth burn thee?”

  Without warning, without so much as a flash of light or the sound of a lighter flicking, Elegast started screaming in agony as his armor burned him alive. Smoke rose as his flesh sizzled and smoldered, despite the armor remaining intact and, to all appearances, cold. Elegast dropped his sword as he desperately clawed at his chest plate, doing everything he could to get it off of him. His metal glove rend great, bloodied chunks of metal mixed from his body as, in his rush, his gauntleted hands dug too deep.

  But Soliloquy wasn’t finished. “Or doth it banish for good?”

  The suit of armor fell to the ground, empty.

  “No!” Jagar roared.

  I added my own into the mix.

  Mine alerted the villain and he turned around in haste. “Ivory- fuck!”

  I shifted before he could complete his attack and struck at him in base form. Unfortunately, my momentum had been halted as the rushed shift had happened while one foot was on the ground, but nevertheless, my kick was swift and ruthless.

  Soliloquy stepped into it and blocked it with his thigh, though from the impact and the way his body shifted I could tell it hurt.

  He ignored the pain and threw a hook straight to my jaw. I quickly raised my arm and caught the blow on the side of my elbow, feeling it dislocate at the impact. Either he had a super sub-power, had prepared for the encounter, or his costume was more advanced than it looked.

  Refusing to let the pain distract me, I made to grab and restrain him. It should’ve been easy – him tacking my previous kick meant I was right in his face – but as my hand shot forward, Soliloquy countered it by shoving his own underneath my armpit. At the same time, he swept his foot against the heel of the still-outstretched leg I’d kicked him with, unbalancing me.

  But as he’d attacked my base form, Crowsong and Marching Orders had broken free. In attacking me he’d broken his end of the treaty that bound them, if not the actual Treaty.

  From the opposite end of Soliloquy, I saw Crowsong run in with knives out, aiming for a backstab.

  Unfortunately, he was not caught off guard. He twisted his body, taking me with it and using it as a shield against Crowsong’s attempted backstab. She tried to quickly abort her lunge-and-stab, but in the very same move, Soliloquy threw me straight at Crowsong.

  I felt my mentor’s blade dig into my shoulder briefly, but the stab-proof under-armor and Crowsong quickly dropping her knives prevented any damage.

  Before either of us could separate or even fall on the ground, Soliloquy kicked straight in the sternum. We were thrown backwards, Crowsong landing on her back with me on top.

  A bell rang in the distance – March. Two dual-wielding knights with long-blades sprung into existence and charged Soliloquy, splitting up to flank the villain from either side.

  But Soliloquy just stretched out his hand and said, “Hear me, demons! By Jedidah’s blood, I bind thee to my will!” The knights stopped, coming to a halt immediately, not caring about physics whatsoever. “Capture Marching Orders and bring her to my side.” He spoke the last bit insultingly casual.

  The knights sheathed their blades and turned on March. She yelped and did her best to dodge their grabs, all the while shouting a litany of curses. She rang her bells, trying her best to dismiss her summons or summon something else to counter them, but nothing happened.

  As quickly as I could, I shifted into a crow and jumped up-

  “Birds of a feather-”

  -and fell back on top of Crowsong, wings stuck to my mentor’s feathery cloak.

  “-flock together,” Soliloquy stated, sighing in annoyance afterward, much of his joy in the battle apparently lost somewhere along the way.

  I tried shifting back to break his spell, but for the first time ever my power outright refused to work.

  I squawked in surprise and Crowsong looked at me. Then, either in understanding or simply electing to ignore it, she jumped up and turned to face Soliloquy again. She unlatched the feathery part of her cloak and threw it to the side.

  I suddenly regained the ability to shift as she did – without the feathered cloak, I was the only bird? – and transformed back into base form. I took a stance beside my mentor while surveying the rest of the room.

  Jagar was still walking slowly toward Soliloquy step by step, but the constant change in position as the battle progressed meant he was still far away from reaching him.

  Meanwhile, Marching Orders had been captured by her own apparitions and had brought her before their new master. One of them held the vigilante within its grip, while the other stood next to Soliloquy with its blades again unsheathed.

  I shot a quick look at Crowsong, who looked at me and nodded. It seemed we were ready for round two, regardless of the odds. I nodded back.

  Soliloquy, however, sighed. “These heroes, wearied of battle, stared at one another-” I tried turning my head, but it was stuck in place, “-and saw the situation was hopeless.” Exhaustion and despair welled up within me, tears stinging my eyes. “They could not fight any longer-” our stances dropped, “-and for the sake of the other, surrendered.”

  Crowsong and I stood still, bound by the spell. Only a change in situation, something that could give us hope could break the spell now, but seeing as Jagar was still bound to his one-step-at-a-time advance, Elegast was gone, and Marching Orders was bound by her own constructs, her cursing muffled… I found there was little to hope for.

  “Can’t believe I had to waste such a perfectly good line on the two of you,” Soliloquy complained as he looked at us.

  Then, the annoyance vanished as he sighed tiredly, followed by the villain clearing his throat, wiping his clothes of dust and fixing his collar, mask and hat.

  He ignored us and walked closer to Jagar. March got dragged behind him by her traitorous minion, struggling fiercely against its grip as she continued to curse. Crowsong and I, forlorn and hopeless, followed, dreading what Soliloquy had planned but… we could do nothing.

  “I came to your city peaceable,” he said, a few steps removed from the old vigilante.

  Jagar hurled himself forward another step, stopping dead cold after. He sneered, “Dozens of dead-”

  “And how many at my hands, hm?” Soliloquy interrupted, matching Jagar’s forward steps with backward ones. “I’ve been here for near two months, but it is me and mine that have mostly suffered. Until recently, that is.”

  “What did you expect to happen?” Jagar countered. “Hugs? A rolled-out carpet?”

  “I expected civility. Negotiation. Reciprocity. Diplomacy,” Soliloquy said. “I reached out to all villains and rogues. Offered to bring them to the fold or set baseline expectations for engagements. I’d expected to be met in kind. Yet instead I was met with accusations, with slander, with violence. I went so far as to reach out to vigilantes, just to see if at least there I could establish some rules of war, but was met with condemnation all the same.”

  Jagar’s eyes widened. “I’ve never-”

  “I know you didn’t – realized it weeks ago,” Soliloquy said bitterly. “But it is too late regardless. The die is cast.” A pair of red dice appeared in his hands, to the villain’s own apparent surprise. He cursed under his breath and threw them to the floor, where they disappeared as soon as they rolled snake eyes.

  He stared at the place they disappeared for a moment, perturbed, before shaking it off with a shrug.

  Then, recapturing drama, Soliloquy raised one hand outstretched to the sky. “The age of quarrel and hypocrisy-” a sword manifested, shining a piercing white like a blazing comet.

  “Wait-!” Jagar said.

  “-is ended by sword stroke.”

  Soliloquy swung vertically, and a thin white void cut through the world. Ceiling and floor sagged and a window on the far end of where we stood was blown out, but otherwise the cut was silent.

  And so was Jagar’s death. No scream of agony, sickening crunch or wet squelch, but a simple collapse of two parts cut perfectly clean.

  Soliloquy stared at the corpse in silence, grimacing. March’s struggles had stopped, body sagging in defeat as all the energy was drained out of her. Crowsong and I stood silent, still as frozen and hopeless as ever.

  Soliloquy turned to us, sword disappearing as he let it drop. He examined us for a moment, eyes angry and murderous, before scowling. “Should’ve brought Snorkel with me, but alas, hindsight’s 20/20.” He sighed. “More trouble than you’re worth indeed. Much like the city itself in that regard,” he sighed wistfully, eyes on the ceiling. “Perhaps I should’ve listened and chosen another…”

  A moment later, his attention refocused. “Don’t worry about your bindings – or the building for that matter. The latter will hold for… well, long enough, while the former will last for at most fifteen more minutes. After that, you’re free to go.” His eyes narrowed for a moment, his gaze piercing.

  But he said nothing more.

  He turned around and walked away while whistling a merry tune.