Chapter 32: Brewing stormsNotes:
I had my english oral exam today and I nearly got all points! I don´t know why I was worried, but it seems this writing practice here has paid off. So, thank you all for motivating me to continue with this fic! It has helped my greatly.
EDIT: Wooooo 10000 Hits! Incredible.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Chapter 32
The day of parting had come. After a night of copying as many books from the library as possible with a combination of her computation jewel and good old-fashioned notes Tanya was rather exhausted. An old saying in the command staff had been:
"Sleep is only for the dead. So better work hard and earn your right to die."
While she had never fully agreed with the sentiment, because proper rest was essential for a good work mentality, she could understand where the other officers had been coming from. She certainly felt like dying after two nights without sleep. This got only worse with each day that passed without coffee. When breakfast was served she would have gladly sacrificed an ear or a finger for just a single cup, but alas this underdeveloped, barbaric, unenlightened country had not been blessed by the wonders of caffeine yet. No doubt Being X was resposible to spite her.
It was no wonder that as a result of all these unfortunate factors she barely registered the heartfelt farewells from a certain half-elf. Emilia´s tearful separation from Subaru went also unnoticed by the grumpy Tanya. The worst part of the morning though, was that her driver had still not shown up. A highly suspicious event that made her extremely uneasy. Thanks to her missing coacher she needed to drive in Roswaal´s carriage just like Rem had predicted yesterday. The whole affair just reeked of a thinly veiled assassination plot, but she had no choice but to comply, because Roswaal had made it quite clear that he wished for her to leave now and straining their budding relationship so soon was not an option.
Her two bodyguards helped with stowing away her belongings on the carriage. Tanya had honestly kind of forgotten these two even existed, considering that she hadn't needed them for anything and they had stayed mostly in their room. Regardless of their actual usefulness though, having a meat-shield just in case was always good.
One of them positioned himself on the back of the carriage and the other on the front besides Rem. Officially this served the purpose to make more space indoors for her and Subaru, but her real reason had been to provide her with a lookout on the road behind them and a surveillance of the blue-haired driver. After the mysterious disappearance of her original coacher she was understandably paranoid. Well, more paranoid then usual.
With the last of her energy she put on a (what she liked to call) "salesman-smile" and thanked her business partners for the stay, before she boarded the carriage and dozed off as soon as they left the gates. Her fellow passenger, Subaru, wouldn't have noticed this though, because she remained seated upright and had an illusionary formula layered over her eyes to look like they were open. This useful trick had saved her many times during "important" staff meetings in the past when she had been forced to attend after just dropping out of an active combat zone. Sometimes a fifteen minute power-nap was all it took to restore a minimum of much needed energy and she could record and replay everything that was said during her sleep anyway, so it wasn't like she missed anything by doing so.
Yes, it was dangerous for her to sleep inside the carriage that she suspected to be a trap, but she was pretty certain that Roswaal would not let anything incriminating happen to while on his territory. Subaru was also a negligible threat that she didn't need to worry about. He was a soft boy form an industrialized age of reason and progress, so he wouldn't resort to random murder all of a sudden. He had no weapons on him anyway. She checked. Nonetheless, she slept with her strongest passive barrier activated. You never knew when someone decided to snipe you from a distance or drop a bomb on your head after all.
Afterwards she felt a little bit better and decided to engage her temporary companion in conversation to form more of a personal connection with him. His knowledge and access to Emilia made him valuable enough to spend her time on him despite his annoyingly unprofessional behaviour. Dealing with real children without either a propaganda camera team or a gun on hand was not her strong suit.
"And then the massive beast stared at me like it was gonna eat me, but I still had a trick up my sleeve. I cast my last Shamak and jumped just in time to..."
Suddenly Subaru stopped mid sentence and became deathly still. His once joyful eyes glazed over and he began to shake.
"What´s wrong Subaru? Can you hear me?" she asked in worry.
When he didn't respond her reflexes took over and she instinctually fell back into combat mode. Tanya had seen this look of shock and distress on the faces of many young recruits. Whatever trauma had gotten ahold of the boy warranted immediate treatment.
"Come back to me soldier! Focus on me! Yes. Now look me in the eyes and follow my instructions. I am here and I can help. Breathe in slowly, just like that, and breathe out. You are doing fine. Keep focused soldier! Calm breaths! And stay focused!"
"What is going on back there, Lady Degurechaff? Is Subaru alright? Should I stop the carriage?" asked a distraught Rem from the outside.
"Everything is under control. He just had a panic attack. There is not much that we can do for him right now, so I am going to find out what caused this."
She gripped Subaru´s hand while still fixating his gaze with her own.
"Subaru, if you understand me please nod."
He nodded slowly with his empty eyes still staring unblinking into the distance.
One thought and a myriad of micro-calculations was all it took for her to produce a small, bright light on her fingertip which she used to test his pupil-afference. This was standard medical procedure to check the responsiveness of the optical nerves and by extension the nervous system as a whole. So far his irises contracted adequately when she exposed them to the light. Physically he seemed to be fine.
"Can you tell me what just happened?"
"N-Nothing to worry about. I just had a... very bad dream." he answered lamely.
Tanya frowned. She needed his honesty to assess what was wrong with him. It would be extremely troubling after all if a servant of her business partner suffered a mental breakdown while in her care. That would reflect badly on her overall competence.
"You need to tell me Subaru. Keeping quiet about your problems makes the mess others have to clean up later only worse. You wouldn't want to burden your superior like that, would you?"
"Emilia-tan?"
"Yes. I am sure she would want you talk about your problems. She seems like that kind of girl."
Truthfully, Tanya couldn't care less about the aches and pains of the boy in front of her at the moment (she was way too tired for that), but emotionally manipulating him into opening up would only benefit her in the long run.
"Ehm..."
Abruptly his expression of confusion shifted quickly to one of horror and then of determination. How intriguing.
"Oh... yes... I remember now. Tanya, something terrible will happen soon and we need to be prepared for it. In guess that in... about half an hour we will reach a fogbank and there is something inside..."
Subaru shuddered.
"And how do you know that? That seems awfully precise for a guess."
"Well... I can´t really talk about it..."
"Can´t or won´t?"
"I... can not." he reluctantly stated.
He appeared comletely sincere which was strange.
"Is it like a curse?"
"Yes. Every time I try to tell someone about it, it feels like my heart is going to explode."
The magic in this world was retarded! If not surprisingly useful. Perhaps she could curse her subordinates as well to force them into secrecy? It sounded unethical, but very effective.
"So this happens more often."
"...Yes."
"Can you see the future?"
It was the only logical conclusion, regardless of how asinine it may appear at first glace.
"...In a sense... Yes. Yes I can see the future."
That was incredible! Tanya was now more glad than ever to have the Emilia camp on her side. This was a unbelievably powerful ability to have at your disposal. Even she would be hard-pressed to compete against a foe who could accurately divine the future. How that was even possible in the first place was anyone´s guess. Being X for all his supposed power had never been able to do so after all. Otherwise he would have noticed long ago that he wouldn't be able to break her.
All of that was of course only correct if Subaru spoke the truth and was not simply lying or hallucinating. She had met enough raving madmen in her last life and didn't need more. No thanks.
"If I give you the benefit of the doubt here and choose to believe what you are saying then that means that you just saw half an hour into the future where we travelled through some fog and met something or someone inside, correct?"
"Correct."
"Do you have perhaps more details?"
"Ehm... There was a giant eye and then whatever it was it was gonna eat us! And you made a huge explosion, but it was still going. It... It almost looked like a really creepy whale? A white one."
"The White Whale?!" screamed a guard from outside.
Out of two things which disappointed Tanya in this moment she knew not which was more of a disgrace: That the carriage walls offered no privacy or that her own bodyguards possessed so little self-control.
If the description of a white whale could drive the normally stoic men into such frenzy then the beast must have quite the cultural significance. What could inspire a reaction of fear like this?
Oh, no! She had read about the three demon beasts that periodically plagued Lugnica, but she had written them off as an overdramatized legend. One of them was the White Whale Hakugei who was said to live within a dreadful fog. Everything matched Subaru´s description perfectly.
"Do you know what else the monster did? After I caused the, quote on quote, ´huge explosion´?"
"It could fly, I think. Because you were evading it in the sky and it followed you up."
"A flying whale does indeed sound ridiculous, but it makes somewhat sense. How else would the beast move over the land without legs?"
"But that´s not everything. I-I am not sure about this... but I believe it wasn't only one whale. I mean in one moment it was alone, but after the smoke had cleared from your explosion it looked like there were three of them."
Now that made matters much worse. If a beast that couldn't be killed for four hundred years was not already bad enough then they stood no chance against three of them.
"We have to stop the carriage!" yelled a guard as if mirroring her thoughts to which the other responded: "This is suicide!"
Tanya leaned out of the window and created an optical formula to enhance her eyesight. A holographic display of green numbers and lines formed in front of her face and focused on a spot in the distance. A gigantic wall of white mist was indeed obscuring the horizon and approached them rapidly.
"Rem can you please turn the coach around. We are going back to the mansion."
"I fear that is impossible without stopping Milady. The road is much too narrow for that."
"What´s the problem. If we just stop and slowly turn around then that shouldn't be an issue."
"Lady Degurechaff, the Divine Protection of wind evasion will not be able to be used again by this ground dragon if we were to interrupt his run. We would have to travel at a much slower pace for several hours before he can recharge it."
So, the choice was either to turn around at a comparatively glacial speed and hope that Hakugei wouldn't catch up with them or keep going in its direction. Wonderful.
"Subaru, did we make it out alive?" she whispered in order to not frighten the guards.
"I have no clue... At least I didn't." he said gloomily.
Tanya couldn't afford to lose such a valuable resource. Not now when she had just discovered his incredible potential. With his help she could discern threats before they even became reality. Subaru was invaluable. To save him she needed more information.
"How big was the explosion you saw me create?"
"Pretty big. Like at least a dozen meters in diameter."
That meant she had been serious in Subaru´s vision, but it had apparently not been enough. Had she been desperate enough to...? No, hopefully not. She had to find out.
"Did anything unusual happen before I cast that spell?"
"No? You just... flew up and shot at it."
That was a relief. Sadly, she hadn't brought her gun. Only her pistol could be used as a catalyst for her magic. As a result she practically had no ranged combat options. Tanya would need to fight tooth and nail if she wanted to accomplish the impossible. Her mental boosters kicked in and her bloodstream was flooded with artificial drugs. The only visible sign that she was nearly overloading her brain with enhancement magic was that her eyes began to glow an eerie cerulean blue.
A small eternity of six seconds was all it took for her to work out a strategy. This was going to suck, but she now had a plan of action.
"Rem, drive as fast as you can! We are going through the fog. I have plan."
Notes:
Next chapter will be number 33 and that is not unintentional...
Also, who spotted the Game of Thrones reference? (Tip: It´s not actually said in the show.)
EDIT: Due to feedback I received I need to think over my immediate plans for the story which will take time. It could be a while before the next update, because I want this to be the best quality I can achieve. Thank you for your criticisms.