end of eternity, we now have one home .
-Thog’run II, King of Aurichome
T he faintest grey light of dawn was just beginning to stain the horizon by the time we made it to the outskirts of Gloric’s neighborhood in Santa Clara. The highway had been relatively quiet after we had passed through San Francisco’s southern borders, picking up again slightly as we reached the fringes of the technological center of the world. I fought to stay awake as my normal bedtime came and went, the SUV’s ergonomically cushioned seats comfortably embracing my exhausted body.
The others had kept to themselves for most of the drive, as tired as I was and less in practice at being shot at. Alina sat staring out of the tinted windows as the city rolled past us, coming out of her shock only to heal my injuries and scratch at Buster distractedly. Tribe, for once, held onto his own thoughts, driving the speed limit and keeping to the lower level of traffic to avoid drawing unnecessary attention upon us. The silence was broken only by the sounds of the road and Tribe’s retro hip hop music, softly playing through the truck’s sound system.
I forced myself to remain alert, focusing on our current plan of action. If Tribe and Alina were correct in their assessment of Gloric Vunderfel’s abilities, the hacker would be able to gain access to the NIGHT database and trace any communications that would have happened before my mission briefing. If we could establish any inconsistencies between the intel our informants had provided and that which was given to me, we could put together some sort of proof to clear my name. Tribe’s fate would depend on the quality of evidence we were able to conjure, and so would Alina’s, as the auric and half-auric were both now undoubtedly on whatever hit list I had the honor of headlining. At best, they would be incorrectly assumed to be co-conspirators in my continued well-being. At worst, they would be thought of as collateral damage.
My lens recording would be key in putting together a believable case towards my ignorance of the downtown storefront’s true setup. Whoever was behind the faulty intel wanted me to die in that dispensary, and didn’t mind the waste of life represented by blowing up fifty or more ragers. Finding the task to be more difficult than they anticipated, they somehow tracked me to They Might Be Giant , putting Tribe and Alina under the searchlight as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to put a bead out on Buster, too.
The more my exhausted mind ran through the scenarios, the less answers it came up with. None of the night’s events made sense. I had already ruled out revolutionary involvement on the informants’ part, trusting that the auric king had enough sway over his people to have instilled the fear of dragons in any potential defectors. That left only the NIGHT higher-ups with the kind of clearance to tinker with mission information like the bomb’s timer, access codes, and the presence of innocents in the dispensary.
The composition and skillset of the hit squad sent after us would corroborate this theory. The presence of auric assassins would ordinarily suggest revolutionary involvement, but I couldn’t think of what Aurichome had to gain by killing their own people in the dispensary, or by my death. More tellingly, the assassins’ training and coordination was of a different stripe altogether. It was too organized, too similar to my own for the hit squad to have been solely the auric king’s lot. The lead assassin in particular, for all his indistinctiveness, was unlike any auric I had seen.
The image of the mancer was like a spectre burned into my vision, his pale hands moving strangely and eyes burning with an evil light. I had no idea who he was or what kind of magic he had used against us, and that worried me. He exhibited neither the shadow arts training of a Nightpath, nor the life-affirming
-Thog’run II, King of Aurichome
T he faintest grey light of dawn was just beginning to stain the horizon by the time we made it to the outskirts of Gloric’s neighborhood in Santa Clara. The highway had been relatively quiet after we had passed through San Francisco’s southern borders, picking up again slightly as we reached the fringes of the technological center of the world. I fought to stay awake as my normal bedtime came and went, the SUV’s ergonomically cushioned seats comfortably embracing my exhausted body.
The others had kept to themselves for most of the drive, as tired as I was and less in practice at being shot at. Alina sat staring out of the tinted windows as the city rolled past us, coming out of her shock only to heal my injuries and scratch at Buster distractedly. Tribe, for once, held onto his own thoughts, driving the speed limit and keeping to the lower level of traffic to avoid drawing unnecessary attention upon us. The silence was broken only by the sounds of the road and Tribe’s retro hip hop music, softly playing through the truck’s sound system.
I forced myself to remain alert, focusing on our current plan of action. If Tribe and Alina were correct in their assessment of Gloric Vunderfel’s abilities, the hacker would be able to gain access to the NIGHT database and trace any communications that would have happened before my mission briefing. If we could establish any inconsistencies between the intel our informants had provided and that which was given to me, we could put together some sort of proof to clear my name. Tribe’s fate would depend on the quality of evidence we were able to conjure, and so would Alina’s, as the auric and half-auric were both now undoubtedly on whatever hit list I had the honor of headlining. At best, they would be incorrectly assumed to be co-conspirators in my continued well-being. At worst, they would be thought of as collateral damage.
My lens recording would be key in putting together a believable case towards my ignorance of the downtown storefront’s true setup. Whoever was behind the faulty intel wanted me to die in that dispensary, and didn’t mind the waste of life represented by blowing up fifty or more ragers. Finding the task to be more difficult than they anticipated, they somehow tracked me to They Might Be Giant , putting Tribe and Alina under the searchlight as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were trying to put a bead out on Buster, too.
The more my exhausted mind ran through the scenarios, the less answers it came up with. None of the night’s events made sense. I had already ruled out revolutionary involvement on the informants’ part, trusting that the auric king had enough sway over his people to have instilled the fear of dragons in any potential defectors. That left only the NIGHT higher-ups with the kind of clearance to tinker with mission information like the bomb’s timer, access codes, and the presence of innocents in the dispensary.
The composition and skillset of the hit squad sent after us would corroborate this theory. The presence of auric assassins would ordinarily suggest revolutionary involvement, but I couldn’t think of what Aurichome had to gain by killing their own people in the dispensary, or by my death. More tellingly, the assassins’ training and coordination was of a different stripe altogether. It was too organized, too similar to my own for the hit squad to have been solely the auric king’s lot. The lead assassin in particular, for all his indistinctiveness, was unlike any auric I had seen.
The image of the mancer was like a spectre burned into my vision, his pale hands moving strangely and eyes burning with an evil light. I had no idea who he was or what kind of magic he had used against us, and that worried me. He exhibited neither the shadow arts training of a Nightpath, nor the life-affirming
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