Somnus V - Chapter 37

Kat opened her eyes and immediately wished she could pass out a second time. She was zip tied to a metal chair that was welded to an enclosed truck bed. With each bump in the road she jolted against her restraints sending a spike of pain through her leg. About three paces in front of her was a samurai slumped up against the back of the truck’s cab, sleeping with an all too familiar submachine gun in his lap.

 She hissed as the truck rattled, stabbing another flash of agony into her calf. The sound was loud enough to make her guard stir. He glanced up at her and grunted before leaning over to the back of the cab and knocking on a hatch.

 It slid open with a screech of metal on metal revealing a pair of blue eyes.

 “Miss,” the man said, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the engine. “Prisoner is awake.”

 Quietly, Kat began mouthing the words to Cure Wounds II only for a crystal embedded in the wall to begin glowing a deep green.

 “She’s casting,” Ice Cobra replied, “zap her.”

 The samurai stood up, pressing one hand against the wall of the truck while he pulled out a collapsible baton with the other. Electricity arced around its end and the smell of burnt ozone assaulted Kat’s nose.

 He jabbed the metal rod into her side, and every muscle in her body convulsed. She twitched and spasmed for a couple seconds as her nerves stuttered. Then the guard retracted his baton, leaving Kat to hang limply from her restraints.

 “That’s better,” Cobra said smugly. “Nothing like a little electrocution to drain the fight from you.”

 “If you say so miss,” the samurai replied, shrugging. His image blurred as Kat felt her eyes closing on their own. “Can’t say I’d like to try it as a method to calm down myself.”

 “Is she still awake?” Ice Cobra asked. Kat’s body felt heavy, the restraints biting into her wrists and ankles as she slumped bonelessly.

 “I don’t think so, miss,” her captor said, poking her once with the butt of his baton to see if she’d react. “She seems pretty out of it.”

 “Well make sure she stays that way,” Cobra responded. “There’s still a long drive until we reach Montreal and I don’t want her waking up and wrecking things at a Feral Quebecois checkpoint. Remember, if the crystal glows green, someone’s using magic. It might be Mr. White or me, but you should jab her with the stun stick just in case.”

 “Got it miss.” Kat felt the side of the baton tapping her on the shoulder. “When it doubt zap her out.”

 For a moment that seemed to drag on for minutes there wasn’t any sound other than the hum of the car's engine. Finally, Cobra replied, her voice dryer than any desert.

 “I bet that sounded pithy and cute in your head.”

 “It did rhyme miss,” the samurai answered. “I do like rhymes. They’re catchy. Make for great slogans. I was gonna do public relations and marketing for Millennium before everything went sideways. This samurai thing is more something I fell into than my real passion.”

 “Being a triggerman for hire isn’t your real passion?” Ice Cobra asked, sarcasm dripping from each word. “You don’t say. I’ll talk to Dad about making sure that we have some art appreciation classes for the samurai. Maybe poetry lessons.”

 “That’d be great actually,” the samurai replied, his voice perking up noticeably. “Not that the benefits are bad or anything, but I know a bunch of the guys really wanted to develop some outside hobbies. Jim has been really getting into stand-up and he’s doing an open mic next weekend. It would really mean a lot to him if-”

 “We can still kill both of them,” a second male voice interjected. “Our orders were never to take Erinyes alive anyway. Given the casualties taken on the raid, no one will question one less samurai returning with us.”

 “Hey,” the guard said nervously. “I’m right here?”

 “That is still up for debate,” the second male voice replied. “Colby. Just kill Erinyes and this fool. I don’t know what you hope to accomplish by bringing her back to Montreal. The goal was never to capture and interrogate her or any of that nonsense. We are here to stop her from climbing the tower. Nothing else.”

 Kat felt her breath catch in her throat, some of the lethargy fading from her system as adrenaline began to pump through her veins.

 “She’ll die eventually,” Cobra replied, her voice dropping into a growl, “but she’ll die in one on one combat with me. I lost my first fight with her because I was outnumbered. We brought her down the second time because we outnumbered her. I refuse to admit that some coddled corporate darling is a better infiltrator than me. I will have a rematch.”

 “Quickly then,” the man said, his voice strangely calm despite the clear judgment in his words. “Months of effort were spent drawing Erinyes out into the open so that we could make an attempt on her. This attack was a tremendous risk that burned through a substantial portion of Millennium’s remaining assets. I can assure you that your father will kill you before Erinyes allies can if she somehow manages to survive after all of this.”

 Kat managed to stop herself from twitching. There wasn’t any current danger to her, and that’s all she needed to hear. She was already exhausted and barely able to stay awake, so it only took a second to calm herself and let the darkness take her.

 The fuzziness of sleep faded away, and Kat found herself in the adventurer’s hall in the Tower. A quick hop up and down brought a smile to her face as it didn’t seem that her real life injuries were slowing her in the slightest.

 Around her, the stalls were doing a busy trade buying and selling monster parts, consumables, and enchanted items. She recognized some of the races. A merchant that looked like a pile of rocks stacked on top of each other brought back a pang of nostalgia for the first floor. Talking to it was a laconic gecko thing that slowly sifted its way through a pile of low grade skill stones.

 Kat moved past them, her attention drawn to a flash of scales in the crowd. Given her borderline supernatural dexterity, it was only a matter of seconds before she hunted down her quarry. Toorvu stood next to Jaalin, watching on as the spellcaster inspected a selection of crystals that looked a lot like the gems mounted atop her staves.

 “Hey,” she called out, trying to act as normally as possible despite her heart thudding in her chest. Entering the dreamscape had been a long shot, but it looked like things might pay off after all.

 Toorvu turned, nodding at her as Kat approached.

 “Kat,” they said, crest flowing gently atop their head. “I’m surprised to see you this early. Usually your team doesn’t go to sleep and enter the dreamscape for a couple of hours.”

 “Well,” Kat replied, feeling her mouth twist into a grimace. “I’m not exactly here under ideal circumstances. Dorrik should be okay, but I wasn’t able to escape. I’m… a bit incarcerated at the moment. I just passed out after some torture so I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay in the Tower.”

 “Excuse me,” Jaalin remarked, putting back the gem she had been inspecting. “I apologize, but I’ll have to return to make my purchase later.”

 The clerk, a squat purple creature with tusks protruding from the sides of its mouth, nodded once before sweeping the gems up and tucking them into a bag. Once the table was clear, Kat could see several sheets of paper with items and prices written upon them. Whoever the vendor was, they were dealing in fairly high end goods. The cheapest object on the list started at about one hundred marks.

 Jaalin stepped away from the stall, motioning with one of her two hands for Toorvu and Kat to follow her as she led the two of them outside the building. Trees lined the street, houses carved into their trunks. Jaalin took them down a side road before stopping in front of a fairly large tree. Writing on its trunk identified it as a shelter for Clan Ahn.

 The lokkels led her inside where a handful of artisans were laboring over a forge. None of them bothered to look up as Jaalin walked past them, opening a wooden door that led to a training room.

 Once there she turned to face Kat, both sets of arms crossed in front of her body.

 “Now what is this about you getting captured?” The lokkel asked, not leaving any room for equivocation or excuses. “Dorrik has talked about the level of combatants on your world, and I thought you were stronger than that.”

 “It was an ambush,” Kat replied, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “You know, it’s strange. I’m always the one hunting and ambushing other people. Now I’m the one trying to predict when someone else is going to jump out of a bush with a knife to get me. It’s a lot harder than I expected it to be.”

 “Regardless.” She shook her head, dismissing the extraneous thoughts, “I was unarmed and unarmored. Even my security team didn’t have weapons because we were in an area where our safety was supposed to be guaranteed by outside parties. Unfortunately, my enemies managed to smuggle in bombs and firearms. I still managed to bring a couple of them down, but we were outnumbered. It just wasn’t a fight that anyone could win.”

 “I haven’t seen Dorrik yet,” Jaalin began, the first hint of worry appearing on her scaly face.

 “He should be fine,” Kat said with a sigh. “Most of the attackers were focused on me. I’m pretty sure that I was able to keep them occupied long enough for everyone else to escape. At least when I woke up, I was the only person there. I guess they theoretically could have executed the rest of the prisoners, but I don’t think that’s the case.”

 She shrugged before continuing.

 “It sounds like the attackers’ goal was to stop me from climbing the tower. Unless I miss my guess, everything that has happened to date has been them trying to lure me out into the open where they could attack me. Today was just the culmination of all their efforts.”

 “Understood,” Jaalin said with a tight nod. “Then what’s the plan? You have a plan right?”

 “Sort of,” Kat replied with a grimace. “You telling Dorrik that I’m strapped to a chair in a truck on my way to a safehouse in Montreal so that he can have my wealthy and incredibly powerful friends break me out is Plan A. Plan B? Well, they have a crystal that can detect mana usage so I need to somehow figure out a way to escape without using magic or putting any weight on my left leg. I’m sure I’ll figure something out.”

 “Yes you will,” Jaalin agreed, narrowing her eyes. “Right now.

 “Dorrik is a skilled warrior and with his sensor network, I’m sure that he will find you,” she continued, “but that doesn’t mean that he will find you in time. It would be a shame for a warrior of your caliber to perish in such a pointless fashion. Now, tell me more about your circumstances so that we can develop appropriate countermeasures.”

 The lokkel motioned to six stools that were shoved into the corner of the room. Toorvu grabbed a pair, handing one to Jaalin as Kat picked up her own.

 She sat across from the two silent aliens, not saying anything as she tried to take stock of her situation.

 “I’m currently injured,” Kat began. “I haven’t really been able to assess how badly I’ve been hit, but I took some serious blunt force blows to the back of the head and my shoulder. I was also shot in the calf. I was using magical armor at the time, but nothing else. All I know for sure is that it hurts like crazy, but I’d be surprised if I were able to put much weight on that leg, at least without some magical healing first.”

 “Do you think you’ll be able to heal the injury on your own?” Jaalin asked. “I know that you’ve gotten Cure Wounds up to the second level, but it’s important that we have an idea as to what you’re capable of. You’re not like Toorvu and Kaleek. You need mobility to be combat effective.”

 Kat thought for a second. She knew her leg hurt. It was one of the only things she did know after waking up on the truck, but there was a difference between pain and disabled. She’d be able to fight through the bruising on her shoulder and the headache from the ice ball to the back of her head so long as she didn’t have a concussion.

 As for her leg? She’d been shot but the submachine guns used by Millennium weren’t exactly high caliber weapons. Kat had found that out the hard way when she’d tried to take down one of the few armored opponents. Between Gravity Plane and Arcane Armor, there was no way that she’d taken that gunshot at full force, but full force wasn’t exactly necessary to take down an otherwise unarmored target.

 “I don’t know,” Kat said unhappily. “I didn’t even get a chance to finish a healing spell before they detected that I was using magic and knocked me out again. All I really know is that they said that we were heading to Montreal when they thought I was asleep and that my body feels like I went skydiving without a parachute.”

 “Then we will have to assume that your mobility is impaired,” Jaalin replied matter of factly. “You can reduce your personal gravity to almost nothing without using mana, correct?”

 When Kat nodded, the lokkel continued.

 “Does that take much of your focus? If you can keep yourself virtually weightless, that might be a way to improve your mobility even if you can only use one leg.”

 “But my flight speed isn’t nearly agile enough,” Kat said, frustration giving her voice a slight edge. “I can only accelerate using gravity and even with the improvement to my domain, that means I dodge at a fast jog. I’ll just got shot to pieces before I try anything.”

 Toorvu stirred, drawing attention from the two women for the first time in the conversation.

 “What about that water tentacle of yours?” They asked. “If you’re in an enclosed space, without any gravity slowing you down I bet you can whip yourself around pretty quickly with that. I’ve seen combat film of pre gravity control marines using tethers and cables to do some impressive stuff during zero g boarding actions.”

 “You’ve seen what?” Jaalin blurted out, her business-like demeanor slipping for the first time.

 “I like studying military history,” Toorvu replied with its crest straightening in what Kat could only assume was the lokkel version of a blush. “We don’t talk about our hobbies all that much, but a lot of the pre Consensus military actions are fascinating. They don’t have any of the rules or conventions we do so their admirals try out truly strange ideas all the time. Most end up with primitive ships blowing themselves up because someone tried to overclock a primitive fusion reactor, but some of the tactics they come up with are truly genius.”

 Jaalin squinted at him for a second before turning her attention back to Kat.

 “Right,” she said. “We will address that later. That said, Toorvu’s suggestion has some merit. I would guess that using Pseudopod as a movement method will take some getting used to. For now, we should probably work on that. I doubt you’ll get much of a chance to practice and perfect your craft once you wake up.”

 Kat chewed on her lower lip for a second thinking over her options before nodding.

 “As far a ‘Plan B’s go, that isn’t half bad,” she said, standing up from her stool. Mana bubbled up inside of her, rapidly transforming into a tentacle of water that wrapped itself around her stomach. “I still think I would prefer Dorrik to swoop in like a knight in shining armor and save me before I can get myself shot in someplace that Cure Wounds can’t fix, but I’m beginning to suspect that I might not have that luxury.”

 “Exactly,” Jaalin replied, standing as well. “Prepare for the worst. Once Dorrik enters the dreamscape, I will be able to pass on your location to him. His sensor network should be able to find you fairly quickly once he is able to narrow down his search zone. Your job is just to keep yourself alive long enough for help to arrive.”

 “Toorvu,” she continued. “You’re the one who has seen videos of people using this tactic, I leave it to you to set up the training gymnasium for Kat. Let’s see if we can help her master this new tactic in time.”

 She followed the two lokkel down through their tree compound to an open air training ring. Almost immediately, Toorvu began setting up a series of wooden posts, creating what appeared to be a crude obstacle course.

 The next two to three hours went by in a blur. Jaalin was right. Learning how to fight while using Pseudopod for her movement was harder than it looked. Worse, any actual combat was almost impossible. Even if Kat could move fairly quickly by yanking her weightless body around, using her knife meant planting her feet.

 Kat experimented with some work-arounds, but ultimately, before she was fully comfortable with any of her solutions, she felt her body beginning to wake up. Kat settled down, opening up her stats one last time before she prepared

--------------------------------------------
Name Katherine Debs
Class Elite Gravity Adept
Max Level 14

5195 Marks
HP 125/125
MP 220/241
STA 135/147

Dodge Below Average
Damage Mitigation Poor

Strength 12
Agility 24
Fortitude 12
Endurance 15
Mind 26
Reaction 19
Charisma 13
Spirit 20

Gravity Domain Weak (4)
Gravity Enhancement (3)

Spells Known

Elementalist

Gravity
Gravity’s Grasp
Levitation
Gravity Spike
Gravity Plane
Flight
Crushing Fist

Water
Pseudopod
Dehydrate
Water Jet
Overpressure
Watershape
Scald

Light
Dazzle
Shadow
Mirage
Blind
Flare
Illusory Clone

Protection I
Ward - 11, 25%
Resist Fire - 9, 62%
Resist Cold - 8, 17%
Resist Electricity - 10, 11%
Resist Acid - 2, 41%
Resist Poison - 12, MAX

Protection II
Arcane Armor - 10, 23%
Resist Magic - 5, 85%

Skills Known
Knife 2 - 12, MAX (Dancing Blade)
Gravity II - 12, MAX
Water II - 12, MAX
Shadow Step - 12, MAX (Shadow Strike)
Light II - 12, MAX
Cure Wounds II - MAX,
Penetrate
Crossbow 2 - 12, MAX (Spell Infusion)
Leech - 12, MAX (Weakness)

Perks
Nightvision
Leaping
Sensory Dampening
Crippling Blow
Fast Healing
Second Wind
Alertness
Sharp Hearing
Throwing

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