As the daggers rained down around her party, Vivye's staff touched down upon the ground where she stood with a resounding tonal shift; outputting subsonic frequencies.
"I can only mitigate this," She exclaimed, "brace!"
Arduen swiftly drew a small, spherical, blue capsule out of his jacket pocket and threw it down between the four of them as the air started to vibrate parallel to Vivye's shift, outward from the party.
"Just keep it going until they detonate, As soon as they do, stop casting and everyone drop!"
The first dagger touched the ground, and in a virtual instant went from coal-black to red-hot.
"ON YOUR STOMACHS!"
The dagger achieved criticality and detonated, setting off a chain reaction as each piece of matter what comprised the weapons in question reverted to energy and set off a cataclysmic ignition sequence. The combination of this attack, Vivye's spell and Arduen's contraption forced the blast outward from the origin of the vibrations, but the shockwave would still have been enough to separate anyone's head from their shoulders if it stood above the dual-areas of effect, of which three naturally did. Thanks to Arduen's warning however, everyone was merely shocked, and not beheaded. A full 90 meters of forest outward from where they stood had been erased. Not even decimated, just... gone, from the forest floor up, with white smoke rising into the air from what had once been. The four stood; with Reice still crying out, but no longer in sight, Daritz sighed in relief after confirming the vitals of his teammates.
"The hell did you two do to divert that?"
"No time to explain, ready up!"
A great electronic whirring came roaring in from the South and a few seconds later, a hulking metal mass leapt impossibly through the sky, blotting out a small portion of the Rising Blue Sun before barreling back down to the surface with the full force of a 20-meter meteorite.
"Abyss' Wretch... that's the fucking stolen inventory," Arduen stammered.
The whirring intensified and the hulking entity raised a long barrel at the team as light itself was drawn into the canister and focused for all of five seconds before the briefest of silences fell while the immediate area around the barrel dimmed in luminosity. Once again, Vivye's staff tapped on the ground and an energy shield rose from the blasted surface of the forest just in time to block a beam of light racing at them from the South.
"Oh by the three moons, they really decided to jailbreak the damn thing?" Daritz scowled, "Lexo, trace their scent. The ones operating it must be nearby!"
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
About one hundred twenty meters North from the defending party, the atmosphere beneath the canopy began to shimmer and distort; revealing the process of a cloaking spell being dispelled, and three veiled individuals under its umbrella. Each of them cloaked in black, sporting dark grey sashes.
"We've been made, what is our next move 109?" One of the figures asked with his eyes to a spyglass of inocuous origins.
The foremost gazed onward with a thousand yard stare while other who stood behind him dragged his fingers deftly across a tablet of precious, refined metal, responding to their musings with transponding signals being sent toward the battlefield.
"237, set engagement parameters to Eximus-Matriarch-Judith."
"We're upping the ante, 109?"
"346, is our perimeter clear?"
"Last I checked 109, it was the same as before," The one with the spyglass confirmed, "Only now, their bloodhound is on our trail. Aside from him, we're in the clear."
The foremost chuckled. 109 reached into a bag on his person and threw about dust from within it.
"Then we may as well be wraiths in the wind-."
He cut himself off as an nigh imperceptible sound resonated for only themselves to hear.
"Oh, what now? Was intel wrong, again!? 346, I swear unto-!"
"It was clear a moment ago! Someone must have tripped the proximity alarm! 237, set those parameters up now!"
"They're almost set-!" 237 frantically traced patterns on the tablet, but stopped when he blinked and reopened his eyes to find himself tracing air. "What... the-."
"237, the fuck are you doing!? Input those-." 346 stopped himself as his spyglass was taken from him before he had time to process he had been fished. "Who-?"
109 cleared his throat as he reassessed his posture.
"And who might you be?"
Lee Kühren twirled the spyglass between his fingers while he slipped the tablet beneath his robes.
"Ah, see; I can't let you kill them at the moment. I'm in a bit of a bind, and they seem just a tad bit less inconsequential than yourselves, plus I've met them before. But perhaps you could-."
"That did not answer my question, boy!"
Lee hushed up for a brief moment, before a nasty grin appeared on his face. He opened his pocketwatch.
"Nobody of Consequence," He wound the hour hand a full rotation counterclockwise, "and that's all you need to know."
"You think you're cute?" 109 quipped incensed, their face turned a slight shade of red, filling out slowly with a hue of anger. 109, 237 and 346 all drew blades hidden within their sashes and charged at Lee.
"No, but you're about to become live contemporary art." Lee set the minute hand to the mark of nine and pressed the button in.
The toll of a grandfather clock from everywhere and nowhere rang out once and suddenly 109 found that he could not move a muscle. Much the same with 237 and 346, Lee groaned disappointedly as he walked up to 109.
"I hope it's as surreal as it sounded coming out of my mouth," Lee smirked, "I frankly loathe people who don't understand the hospitality of a simple 'hello.'" Lee rolled his right shoulder three times and throttled a suspended 109 in the jaw.
A chain of explosions off to the south of where he was attracted his attention.
'I can only have one function active at a time, right?'
'If you're worried about them, I wouldn't. You managed to swipe the control mechanism before they could input anymore commands. It's in autopilot until a new command is received, and they should be able to handle it long enough.'
'I hate waiting.'
'Well, at least that sentiment is shared.'
Lee tapped the watch. 'You still haven't answered my question.'
'You -should not- have more than one function active at a time, for now. Your spark has only just settled, but it has not been set yet. If you were to over-exert yourself this early on, you'd unravel it from the core out.'
"WHAT THE FUCK!? WHAT KIND OF POWER COMES WITH THAT STEEP A PRICE???"
'Quiet the hell down! You should be able to maintain any single configuration indefinitely until turned off so long as I am around to balance the Law of the Three Primes out, but that's not to say you'd capped out as soon as you came here. This is not a power to be taken lightly.'
'Yeah, no fucking shit!' Lee spat back.
'And it would be ridiculous to be given such a gift only to be limited thusly. But patience is necessary or you will write yourself out of existence. Arius may have graced you, but that doesn't necessarily mean he can give preferential treatment whenever he pleases without consequence. Something had to have happened to permit him to speak with you as freely as he did.'
'Oh yeah, what was he trying to call me? I couldn't make it out.'
There was a moment of silence.
'If you couldn't tell, then unfortunately, it's not my place to say. I don't want to rouse 'the purpose' of his gift, I'm sorry Lee.'
'No, it's fine. I get it, it's probably better I don't know yet, right?'
'I genuinely couldn't say. I was 'technically' only born yesterday. How could I hope to comprehend the mind of something that supersedes even the Supreme Deities you met?'
______________
Seventy meters due South of Arduen, Vivye and Daritz; a lumbering amalgamation of metal and nature continued firing a stream of low-criticality mass and heavy photon beams, while Lexo was trying to track down the scent of the operators, being approximately fifty to the North of them. Looking back toward the robot briefly however, the Lycan noticed something.
'The attack patterns have become stagnant,' He thought to himself as he kept running in the direction of the scents. 'If they decided to steal and jailbreak that model then that would be unlike them to simply leave the engagement parameters as they are... these guys had this planned out, it's not as though they're idiots... but then why?'
That's when he noticed, something about the perpetrator's scents seemed off.
'They're not moving, at all. Not even a heartbeat, wait... no, there's still-'
Lexo burst into a full sprint, fearing the worst.
________________
Another stream of daggers embedded into the ground began to glow red hot like the ones before it.
"Oh no you don't!" Vivye brought down her staff once again and the ground opened up around the daggers and closed up again. The result was a sub-surface chain detonation that, while mitigating the blast itself, served primarily to change what form the shrapnel would take. As chunks of earth began to soar through the air, Arduen pulled out a red cube and threw it into the air, reaching its peak above the Forest Elf.
"Daritz, shoot for Sol!"
With a deftness that would be almost definitely considered superhuman, Daritz drew his bow with a notched arrow and shot an arrow perfectly vertical without moving his head, impacting with the cube and being absorbed into it. Not even a single second after being absorbed, what was originally the one arrow came out of the other side in a stream of projectiles crackling with electricity, each one homing into the uplifted chunks of earth then coming down on the hostile automaton.
___________________
'Seems like one of the party has noticed something and is on his way.'
Lee nodded, 'I imagine their shift has got his mind in overdrive. Let's hope he's equal measure rabid as he is rational.' He walked around the three men frozen in place, pondering.
'How do you figure it's a he?'
'Probability. Plus, how do you figure it'd be wise for them to send the mage when she's half their defense?'
'Anyway, best you don't mention that rabid-to-rational ratio out loud in front of him.'
'Well, since I have you to bounce my intrusive thoughts off of, I don't have to verbalize anything, so thanks I guess.'
A slight breeze rolled in, gaining force; the leaves above rustling with increasing intensity to reflect the ferocity of the one on their way.
'Wow, that one is fast; is he-'
Lee's question was answered before it could be finished as a pressure wave cut through the trees to either side of him, barely missing himself and the three stooges, and an uneasy grin worked its way across Lee's mouth.
"Of. Fucking. Course. He's not just a Lycan, he's of The Wise."
A second rush of wind rushing directly past Lee's face on the opposite side, grazing his cheek as a single streak of blood painted itself across his face, then vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
"Those were warning shots, then?"
"Correct," Lexo's voice cut through the ambiance. "We need those three alive for interrogation, and it would appear..."
'Well this puts you in a difficult position,' Lee's mirror-soul spoke from inside the EFA*, 'You can't explain they're not dead without elaborating on your actual power, and that would be dangerous this early in the game.'
'And I can't lie,' Lee thought back to his mirror soul, 'Because he'd be able to sniff out my heartbeat at the bare minimum. Not to mention I was never a very good liar...'
'Well, two things we can do off the top of your head... you can either attempt a bluff, or you can undo the effects...'
'How about option C?'
"Did I hear your party calling you 'Lexo,' earlier? I can give you them, as they're not dead. I do have something I-."
"My party is currently in the middle of a bit of a scuffle," Lexo interjected, "So I need to make this quick. I need-"
"If you're looking for the control pad," Lee interrupted in kind, his tone much firmer than before while holding the stone outstretched, "Then look no further. Go on and shut it down."
________________________________________________________________________________________________
Several Hours later in an isolated conference room, three kilometers away...
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"So, he's the one who subdued the thieves?"
"Given Lexo's and his own testimony, as well as what circumstantial evidence, scrying, memory tracing and phantom actualization has managed to pull, we have no reason to believe he is lying; none of the tech is pulling up any discrepancies either. Even so..."
"You think he's hiding something?"
"Not necessarily something pertinent to the investigation, but probably more so intrinsic to his identity at this time. There may not be any... discrepancies, but I am still unsure if we can trust him."
"Though cold, it is wise to be wary of the hand that feeds you as far as first meals are concerned. It is, after all, how you got this far in your career as a Illuminate Peace Officer."
"If you don't mind, please... don't remind me. Getting back on track, what could you find with regard to tampering of the unit?"
"A few sub-routine code quadrants were spliced, but nothing that can't be regressed. We also managed to isolate the deadman switch and extricate it. Other than that, it's an upgrade all around. I've half a mind to contact their meta-mech and get him in touch with R&D."
"Not like you to joke about such things, Analia."
"It's been a hell of a catch, today, Daritz. Now, shall we meet this... 'Exceptional' vagabond of yours?"
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{END ACT ZERO}