A Sinner's Eden

Chapter 161 - EVO

***Tirnanog, Thich Fortress City***

***Zacharias***

“I didn't believe anyone would be incompetent enough to fail this little operation quite as badly as you did. All you had to do was to watch the subject. Right here, at the seat of our power,” I commented and shook my head while I watched the tech crew set up their equipment. Their time was valuable, so I almost hadn't allowed their deployment. “Now, I would have understood if you had lost her in that confusing airship battle or during a mission…” I let my voice trail off, seeing no need for detailed explanations.

But, for one, there was this nagging feeling called “precognition” in the back of my neck, so I had to know. Plus, the rate of strange reports of missing personnel had shot up in the past few days. In itself, it could be explained away with a dangerous critter which made its way into the city. However, given our current situation, I needed certainty.

The nervous priestess of our “One True Faith” rubbed her clammy hands together. She stood next to me and looked quite concerned at my casual comment. “Please, grand leader, nobody could have known that our enemies have access to small-scale wormhole technology!”

She babbled. “We noted their arrival the moment they entered the subject's accommodations. The only reason we didn't take immediate action was that we wanted to track them back to their base of operations to achieve maximum efficiency! I promise we had our eyes on their movements the entire time! Two people of unknown origin entered the apartment. Only one of them left and came here where he disappeared. As did the two subjects at the apartment and the other person. There is no other explanation for their disappearance unless there are impossibly well-hidden secret pathways at the apartment and here! We had everything under observation.”

I raised an eyebrow and surveyed the 'public toilet'. “And what a fine base it is indeed. Truly a hideout we would expect our enemies to use. If you hadn't come up with an ingenious explanation for your failure, I might have decided to execute you on the spot. This can still happen if it turns out that I drew away the techs without reason. Their work is quite important, as you should know.”

Her only reply was a frightened choke, so I turned my attention to the body on the floor – some nobody who got his head smashed in… on the washbasin of all things. “If it weren’t for the body, I would have assumed your team is just trying to hide a colossal fuck-up. Luckily for you, it looks like this random passers-by was in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw something he shouldn’t have. Do we already know who he was?”

The priestess nodded eagerly while fumbling with a report she had gotten from one of her underlings. “He was a clerk, working at a nearby warehouse. There is no mentionable contribution to the clan. Unpartnered, and without enough combat power to be a soldier.”

If it turned out his death was entirely unrelated, I didn't want to waste my time on this matter.

She shook her head. “It is just a holding area for mined calcium ore. Nothing worth to be killed over. He didn’t have access to anything vital.”

Calcium ore for cement production. We had that stuff indeed in abundance, I admitted mentally. Except for trade with the other clans, the calcium was practically worthless to us.

I was nonetheless still prepared to make an example out of the woman. Her failure robbed us of the opportunity to have a quite heavy bargaining chip should it come to any negotiations. When I found out about Magnus's standing in Aerie society and us having his sisters in our hands I believed myself lucky. Unfortunately, one was lost before I could do anything about it. Well, at least the remaining one seemed eager enough to work her way up through the ranks.

Had I known it would turn out this way, maybe I would have killed Magnus when I had the chance. I didn't know how, but after going through all the intelligence reports we had I was convinced he was somehow responsible for the drastic shift in Aerie's political stance. If they had just kept sitting on the asses until later this year, we would have been done with Jeng without anyone being the wiser. Then Hochberg would have been forced to join us or suffer the consequences, no matter whether their new child regent preferred the alliance with Aerie.

I regarded the dinky room, disgusted by the lingering smell of piss in the air. Who could have assumed our enemies could enter our city and extract two people who were placed under strict observation? A task I deemed impossible until now unless undertaken by an ancient like Nisha.

Her involvement was still a definite possibility, given her skill set.

On the other hand, she was still missing – which would be a convenient excuse to deny her involvement.

Nonetheless, if I would have to take a bet, it smelled more like my rebelling original had his hands in Nisha's disappearance.

No, I was convinced the Aerie were responsible for this. Nisha would have either failed to hide her presence or achieved her goal without anyone having seen anything. Nisha’s operations weren’t handled so crudely. Once she went cloak and daggers, all we would have had would be a suddenly empty apartment. Maybe some traces hinted at a short fight, but that would be all. Oh, and not to forget, our dear priestess and her team would have been found piled up dead on a rooftop or some other short-term hiding spot.

Nisha would have never left witnesses behind, no matter how well they hid themselves.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Of course, if the enemy had access to wormhole technology, even if the idea sounded fantastic, it would explain quite a lot, including things that were more distantly related.

For example, why the Aerie advanced with their fleet so quickly after the encounter at Jeng? All of my military advisers were of the firm opinion that rendering humanitarian aid to Clan Jeng would bind most of their fleet for at least the rest of the year.

Instead, they continued their campaign after a week and all our spies could report was that Jeng’s refugees had disappeared. And any spy who went with the refugees also just vanished.

I growled at the infuriating miscalculation we had allowed ourselves. Without a wormhole, Aerie's airship fleet would have been busy shipping refugees between Jeng and Hochberg. It would have taken them months! The only other option would have been an intolerable loss of life. It would have also been a lot easier for a spy to slip off an airship and return useful information to us.

But! If the refugees and our spies had gone through a wormhole to Hochberg or even Mount Aerie, getting any message back would be next to impossible. I was also sure security around such a device would be as tight as possible.

Then there was the confusing fact that wherever the Aerie flagship arrived, they seemed capable of dispensing resources and manpower in abundance. Never enough for it to be obvious that something like a wormhole was involved, but by now it was quite evident that they must have a quite effective resupply line. Too effective in fact to be explained with transport ships.

As if on cue, one of the techs brought a tablet over and handed it to me.

I took a few extra seconds to look over the results of their scans, just to let her stew, before I turned to the priestess and grinned. “It looks like you get to keep your head – for now.”

***Aerie Flaghsip***

***Vanya***

“You want me to do what?” I blurted out, feeling slightly excited by the surprise request. A day ago, Magnus requested an hour of my time. I assumed it had something to do with Gaia, so I did not anticipate he wanted mental training.

Only those who shared at least some of my abilities understood how precious it was to be surprised by anything these days.

There were a lot of scenarios and developments I deemed “unlikely to happen”, but their happening nonetheless would not surprise me. I was always playing mind games with countless fictive scenarios in my head, even if they were unlikely to become a reality. So, within this context, something happening I hadn't considered – at all – was quite refreshing, to say the least!

Well, if it wasn't for the nature of this request. Which was a letdown.

“I want you to try to influence me,” Magnus repeated. “I want to test my mental defences against you. There are several training regimes I tried recently, but without someone testing me I do not know whether my training is effective. Thalia helped as much as she could, but she pointed out that psychic abilities can differ wildly from each other.”n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

He gestured to illustrate his point. “So if I want to fortify my mind against any attack, training with different psychics is a must. Fighting a boxer is an entirely different experience from going up against a judo practitioner. Going at it alone is like trying to become good at hand-to-hand combat when all you do is practise a kata all day. Doing just one thing might prepare me for other situations in some marginal way, but it will never be as good as diversifying my training.”

“Well, Thalia isn’t entirely wrong, but from what I have seen she is at least close to my level. If she trained you, you should be able to withstand any psychic attack I know of. Don't you think your mental resistance is already quite impressive?” I hedged, remembering the two or three times I touched Magnus's and Astra's minds. The memory was vivid enough to avoid a repeat if possible.

The thought sent a shudder down my spine.

Everyone who underwent the full set of mutations was forced to endure at least some mind-altering changes. The human brain wouldn’t be able to handle enhanced speed or some of the more drastic bodily changes otherwise. Not to mention some of the more extraordinary additional senses.

But most of those changes kept the recipient very close to the human baseline, making it hard to ascribe psychic abilities to most people.

Not so in Astra’s and Magnus’s case.

They were quite obviously not ‘projecting’ psychics – psychics who could use their mental abilities to influence others. From what I knew, their mental abilities were focused entirely inward, allowing them to manipulate their minds to a degree I had not thought possible before meeting them.

Magnus shook his head. “I want to be able to battle creatures like the psyling without losing myself. I stopped it the last time one showed up, but it felt a little too close for my tastes, so I am doing my best to improve on that front while there is still time. Aside from myself, you are the only person I know of who withstood the creature’s psychic outburst.”

I sighed.

Every bone in my body told me not to do this, but Magnus had a point.

We had been told it was unlikely for another psyling to show up, but if one did, Magnus and Astra were the only ones who had the potential to fight such a creature. While I could withstand the creature’s psychic attack, the both of us were on an equal playing field. If I happened to be in the same room with a psyling without help, there was no question it would rip me apart because my physical abilities couldn’t touch it even if I was grown up.

So, the only logical conclusion was to ensure that our known working ‘counter’ to such beasts was the best it could be.

“I assume you made this appointment so we could start right away,” I asked.

“Exactly!” Magnus smiled and wriggled his fingers like some evil mastermind.

I rolled my eyes and waved for Tianna and my bodyguard to give us some space. “Would you make sure we aren’t disturbed for an hour or two? I figure if we do this, we should do it properly.”

Tianna nodded and stood up from the table she had been working at. “I will make sure the guards at the door know.”

Meanwhile, my bodyguard retreated to a corner so she wouldn’t interfere.

“Ready?” I asked Magnus and he nodded.

I closed my eyes and concentrated, feeling no reason to hide the use of my abilities. Instead, I went all out.

Using my psychic powers on a person’s mind was a little bit like trying to break into a locked room with a single door and a single lock—at least it felt that way to me. If the person was trained well, undoing the lock could be tricky—taxing even.

It was no different in Magnus's case, except for the problem that it was a little bit like trying to connect to multiple people at once. They were all Magnus, but different.

I figured that, maybe, trying to connect to all of them was the wrong approach. Instead, I had to find the right one, so I took my time evaluating each of the possible connections until I found one that felt like the one in charge.

Then I decided to just go for it, entering his mental landscape. Only to find myself on a rock no more than a few metres across, surrounded by a writhing sea of people seemingly fighting for a spot on top—all of them Magnus.

Turning, I found a version of Magnus sitting at the highest spot of the rock, having one leg swung up on his knee and grinning.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed as I stepped away from a Magnus who tried to climb onto the rock, just to be pulled back down into the sea of doubles.

“I call it, the king of the hill defence,” the grinning Magnus explained, even as another version who managed to climb the rock shoved him down into the writhing mass to claim his spot.