61. The rewards of success

For the third time that day, Nox teleported the group into Akavel. This time, Rafi was thousands of kilometres to the south and locked away in the Aegis’compound, the opposite of what he’d ever wanted. She could feel his mind even now. He wasn’t saying anything, but she could feel his thoughts churning over, going around and around in anxious spirals. It made her tired. She was tired. It had been a long day of teleporting people around and evading Aegis authorities. As her friends discussed what they were going to do next, she went and found the sleeping quarters, found a corner and curled up.
Hey Rafi.
Yeah, I’m here.
How are you?
A pause, I’m alright. They just keep asking me questions.
About the spore?
About the spores. Like, they’re not treating me bad or anything, just…
They’re not letting you go, either.
No.
 
I don’t think they use the spores like you thought. I don’t think they eat the spores directly, but processed somehow.
Why?
You’re like them, but not. See what you can find out. It was odd how the seed responded as soon as you were back in NiQuintin. There’s something about your town that is making it dormant.
Like what?
Hmmm, why do they use crystal blocks to build the houses?
Simple. They’re leftovers from Numenera harvesting. The crystals are brought in and harvested for what they contain, and then the remainder is made into blocks or gravel or whatever.
It makes sense. Nox could feel herself drifting, and she didn’t want to let go of Rafi’s link, at least not just yet.
 
We’re in Akavel again. Jaden’s probably going to talk to Trilly about the seeds. They’re really smart and they’ll find a solution.
Why would she go to all that trouble? Why would any of you? Just to find out what the Aegis know?
No, Nox smiled sleepily. Because of you.
Another pause, longer and full of strong churning feelings, I’m nothing special, not like you. I’m just a street kid…
So am I, She yawned. It was getting hard to keep the contact, and my streets were a lot more boring than yours. People like you, dummy. They want to help.
People?
Yeah.
Even amazing teleporting, mind-reading, winged ones?
Don’t forget, smart.
And smart.
Yeah, She yawned again, But I’m also tired. The link will disappear when I fall asleep. I’ll pick it up again in…ten hours.
Okay. Good night.
 
Marius and Fureva-Yung were walking through the Mess Hall towards Trilly’s lab when they were stopped by Ragnia, whom they’d missed when they first arrived with Rafi.
“Hey, I’m glad I got to congratulate you over Rockspire. What did you do?”Ragnia said, offering them seats in the empty mess hall .
“Oh?” Marius said, sitting down, “What did you hear about that?”
“Dozens dead, the Gul and his monsters destroyed, and no one has any clue who is behind it.” Ragnia smiled.
“And we got our friend out,” Marius echoed the smile, “ Has it caused problems here?”
“Oh, the Exarch is more paranoid. Gul was his go-to guy. They’ve tightened restrictions, but they can’t pin anything on us."
“Well, get in touch if we can help.”
“You are unbelievably helpful.”
“Some of us are helpful,” Marius smirked, “And some of us are just unbelievable.”
 
“How would you use us?” Fueva asked, interested in the thoughts of the leader of the Patchwork Dream.
“The jailbreak was amazing. So many of our most useful contacts were freed that night.”
“So kicking Redboot booty?”
“Yeah, something like that…” Ragnia held up a hand, and the conversation ceased.
“Does something seem off to you?” He asked, slowly standing from the bench seat.
It was then that the lights went out.
 
Marius didn’t wait to be told. He dropped to the ground, rolled to where he’d last seen a clear space, and activated his cyphers. He now missed the glow from the armoured hands as the darkness around them was impenetrable. Through her sonar, though, Fureva could sense Marius move away as three humanoids stepped out of the hallway to the catacombs. The first had a proboscis like an elephant swinging before their face. It aimed something at the table they were just sitting at. Fureva ducked aside as a stream of liquid sprayed out over the area, avoiding most of the soaking. The other two unsheathed now familiar staff weapons and headed straight for Marius.
 
In the darkness, Marius had no idea the enemy was surrounding him until he heard the swish of the staff. Deftly, he spun around the first enemy, keeping contact as the other struck him. The energy of the staff was absorbed, and the crack of the staff stung but didn’t stop Marius from trying a heat ray blast at the first attacker. It missed, but in that moment, Marius gained a look at the field of battle. A moment later, another light flashed into existence in front of Ragnia. A glow globe brightened the area before the darkness seemed to rush towards it like a living thing, stifling the light. The next moment, there was a pop, and the glow globe disappeared with a curse from Ragnia
 
It was clear they had to equal the playing field somehow. In the few moments of light, Marius was able to discern that all three of the assailants were carrying cyphers of one sort or another. Proboscis face had used the sprayer on the table they’d been sitting at, a square-looking backpack that was some sort of inactive machine was carried by the second, and the third was wearing an activated wrist cypher. Unfortunately, Jaden knew none of this as she returned from the dorms to find the Mess Hall in darkness. She could hear the fighting, the cursing and the flash of Marius’ heat ray. Creeping along the wall, she bumped into a body, that of proboscis face. Instinctively, the assailant grabbed Jaden by the shirt-front and shoulder, flinging her into the centre of the room.
 
Fureva watched as Jaden edged into the darkness and stumbled into the attacker with the long nose. Feeling the spray on her arm starting to harden, she leapt across the intervening space, grabbing proboscis’ face on the way down and tore it clean off. It wasn’t just a cypher; it had been surgically attached to their assailant's face, and the sound of tearing skin was followed by an ear-piercing scream of pain.
“It’s a faceoff!” Fureva exclaimed, the cypher swinging from her hand. At the same time, Marius went for the attacker wearing the wrist cypher, grabbing their arm and throwing all his weight behind it. They crashed to the ground wrist first. A small sound of breaking glass and complaining metal, and the darkness seemed to disappear into the broken device.
 
Their advantage is gone, and wrist cypher twisted under Marius’ hold, trying to get the upper hand. Marius let him, dodging free of an attack aimed at his head before returning the favour. Backpack swung his staff at Marius a second time, but without the darkness to cover their actions, Marius saw the attack coming and swung aside. Jaden, too, took advantage of the light’s return. Studying the backpack a moment, she reached out and pulled a wire, disabling the device. She didn’t know what it was supposed to do, and she wasn’t willing to find out in the heat of a battle.
 
Fureva looked down at her arm where the spray had soaked her fur. Tiny crystals were forming, clumping her hair and poking into her skin. Her sonic shield stopped much of it from penetrating further, but she could hear Ragnia screaming as the crystals shredded his face and upper body. Proboscis nose no longer, his face bleeding tears where the cypher was torn away, swung their staff at Fureva. She parried it aside with her arm and came up swinging her chain. It crashed down on her assailant, knocking them back with little fight left in them.
 
Marius aimed his heat ray on wrist cypher and blasted away a shoulder and much of his chest. The body fell into a heap as backpack, reached behind, and flicked a switch. Nothing happened.
Jaden grinned with satisfaction of a job well done.
 
Torn and defeated, Proboscis stumbled back through the door they’d come in through and ran, Fureva close behind. Jaden started confounding the last two enemies with military expletives as Ragnia hit backpack with his needlegun and Marius with a blow with his fist.
 
Fureva leapt for Proboscis, swinging her chain out to catch him across the chest. Stopping on the spot and ducking Proboscis let the chain swung over their head along with Fureva. Fureva crashed to the ground, watching her prey spring back down the hall he’d come. Even with her speed she couldn’t catch up with him in time. Instead, she sent a Shattering shout after the disappearing figure and waited for the pop.
 
The tides had turned, and Backpack was alone with Marius and Jaden.
“You couldn’t hit up when we were blind. What makes you think you can now?” Jaden taunted, kicking the assailant where it hurt. Marius, took advantage of their sudden distraction to king-hit backpack. He crumpled to the ground just as a distant pop followed by a splattering sound reached them in the Mess hall.
“Is that all of them?” Marius asked, racing to see Fureva checking the results of her Shattering shout.
“I guess all of them is there. It’s hard to tell now,” she commented, pulling crystals out of her fur.
 
Ragnia put away his gun and slumped to a bench. He’d copped the brunt of the spray, and wherever it had touched were slashed and pierced with tiny crystals. He pointed to a flashing light on backpack device.
“Should someone do something about that?”
 
Jaden was on it, quickly resetting the trigger. Now she had time to look at the device, her curiosity turned to concern.
“They weren’t kidding around with this thing,” She said as the others reconvened in the Mess Hall, Marius treating Ragnia’s wounds, “Not only is this a warp generator, any mutations sustained would be permanent. Its range was also extended. If this had gone off…”
“It would have been the end of the Patchwork dream, at least from here.” Ragnia admitted, “Thank you once again.”
 
“What’s going on here?” Trilly entered the Mess from her lab, confused at the chaos. It had only been a few minutes since the attackers turned out the lights, not enough time for the rest of the facility to realise how much danger they’d been in.
“It’s fine, Trilly. We had intruders, but our friends here dealt with them.” Ragnia assured her.
“How do you think they found you?” Marius asked. He knew it couldn’t be them. They’d bamfed straight into the headquarters, never entering from the outside.
“I really don’t know. They seemed to have come through the catacombs, but we’ve never found a way to the outside before.”
“Fureva and I will check it out,” Marius said as they prepared to follow the trail of the three attackers.
 
Now that the warp bomb was safe, for now, Jaden asked how Trilly’s studies into the spores were going.
“I’m afraid it hasn’t been long enough for me to have any definite facts, but it does seem the seeds are designed to take root in the digestive system of a mammal and create a compulsion to find a rich numenera site in which to….germinate.”
“The Aegis they don’t seem to manifest the same way as Rafi did. Could the spores be processed in some way to give the benefits?”
Trilly sighed, “Tricky. I don’t know, I need more time.”
“Rafi’s negative effects recessed once he was back home. Could there be something about his hometown that suppresses the seeds?”
Trilly’s eyes lit with the new information, “Could be. I’ll have to think about that.”
“Do you think there would be a different response if the seed were implanted into muscle tissue instead of the digestive system?” Marius asked as he and Fureva listened in.
“No, in fact, I think it would be a similar effect. These spores are very evasive.”
Fureva handed over the flower they’d bought.
“How about non-mammal flesh?” She asked.
“I…ur…I might need to get back to you on that. I was about to go to bed. Can we catch up in the morning?”
 
Jaden took the backpack to one side of the Mess hall and started breaking it down to see what could be done with such a devastating device as Marius and Fureva went to investigate the Catacombes.
 
After many trips through the catacombs, Fureva and Marius knew them well and soon found the problem. A recently knocked-in wall into a disused sewer led straight to a service cover outside the walls of Rubble.
“It would be a handy exit if the Redboots didn’t already know about it,” Marius lamented as they headed back to inform Ragnia.
“I think it should be blocked from further access,” Fureva suggested, and when they returned, Ragnia agreed.
 
Setting herself up one end of the tunnel, Fureva started bellowing in frequencies too low to hear. The vibrations began an earthquake in the tunnel, and from the breach at one end, the ceiling collapsed just as planned. Then, the hallways ceiling collapsed, and Fureva ran just to avoid the destruction. She arrived back at the Mess grey from dust, her six eyes black pools in the matt blankness. With a shiver, the dust flew up and out into the mess hall, settling on every surface. It wouldn’t be until the members of the Patchwork Dream arrived for breakfast would the chaos be discovered.
 
Nox woke feeling better for the rest, but still rung out. Beside her, Fureva-Yung was curled up into a grey cloud of fluff. On Nox’s other side, Jaden slept, her left hand glowing with a faint yellow light from a network of lines under the skin. On her otherside, Marius lay, his face coloured by a bruised that hadn’t been there the evening before. Confused, she snapped on the telepathic network and went in search of breakfast.
 
The mess hall was full of activity. Besides the usual bustle of people grabbing breakfast before heading out on missions, there were dozens of people trying to clean up the last dregs of dust that lay everywhere. In one corner, a table encrusted in crystals was pushed aside for repairs. Ragnia, organising the repairs, was cut and scarred all over his exposed skin.
“This is not what this place looked like when I went to sleep,” She said as Ragnia came over to welcome her.
“You arrived last night with the others? Yes, while you slept, we had a short visit from the Redboots. They didn’t stay long, but their visit did leave a bit of a mess.”
 
Handed a breakfast of bacon, eggs and pancakes, Nox wondered what she’d missed out on. She ate the egg, wrapped the bacon in the two pancakes and waited until her friends dormant mind started waking.
First was Marius, his skin thick, leathery and covered in scales.
“You look weird,” She said as he sat, his own breakfast in front of him,”More than usual.”
“I might look weird, but you’ll always be short.” He replied, sipping carefully from his hot coffee.
Nox saw the logic of that. Still, better to be short and fly than tall and lizardfaced.
Jaden was next, eager to show off her latest invention.
“See, what I made with the backpack?”
“There was a backpack?”
“Oh, yes. You slept through it all. Yes, a backpack bomb that would have made everyone in this complex crippled mutants,” Jaden explained about the invaders and their evil intentions, “I was able to change the cypher to provide beneficial mutations instead. Unfortunately, the mutations don’t last very long. Would you like one?”
“Only if I don’t turn out like lizardface,” Nox gestured to Marius.
“No guarantees. All mutations are completely random.” Jaden held out her faintly glowing hand. With a spark of excited curiosity, Nox placed her hands on Jaden’s.
 
A buzzing feeling, a prickling sensation on her hand and feet and Nox could see tiny barbs growing through the skin of her hands.
“Ha! Some sort of climbing mutation. You could really be our fly on the wall now.”
“Speaking of which,” Marius said between mouthfuls of food, “We missed you during the fight. Fighting in the dark would have been a lot easier with your telepathic network up.”
Nox smiled, it was nice to be appreciated, “Mutating bombs, evil assassins, light-zapping cyphers. I don’t know if I should ever sleep again.”
“It makes me wonder if you’d want to keep Rafi on the network when you’re next in combat. You wouldn’t want him to worry.”
“Worry?” She hadn’t thought about Rafi worrying about her before. It made her feel…fuzzy, “Do you think he would?”
“Sure he would. He’d probably try to do something drastic.”
“But we’d probably be hundreds of kilometres away. Wouldn’t he worry more if I just broke the connection?”
Now, Marius had to face the logic of her argument.
 
Lastly, Fureva-Yung shuffled in. She handed Nox the proboscis cypher.
“Urgh! It still has skin on it,” Nox complained as she saw the two patches of torn flesh inside the cypher, “And why are you so dusty.”
“Collapsed tunnel with earthquake, nearly part of it,” Replied Fureva-Yung, no longer her eloquent Fureva self.
“Well, your disgusting cypher is a nose for sniffing out numenera,” Nox identified the cypher. It’s also prehensile. Do you think it would make a good tail?” She stuck it to her backside and waved it around. Several men in mess the noted the lightweight material of her skin-tight camouflage suit.
“Do you want it?” Fureva-Yung asked and Nox had to think for a moment.
“I think it would mess up my aerodynamics,” She looked at Marius,”But it would cover up his lizardface, so that would be an advantage.”
“Ha!” Marius replied sarcastically, “My lizardface as you call it, will disappear by the end of the day. That thing will be stuck wherever we put it forever.”
“Well, I’ll take it,” Fureva-Yung replied, putting out her hand for the device, “Though I will need help sewing it in place.”
“Well, just be careful with Marius,” Jaden winced, rubbing her hand in remembered pain, “He may be a great surgeon, but he forgets that others feel pain.”
“I feel pain,” Marius retorted, “I….just don’t remember the pain afterwards.”
“No pain…no bra…” Nox mumbled and had to flit away as Marius made a friendly swipe for her.
 
After breakfast, and after endowing Trilly with a heightened sense of smell, the group bamfed back to Tiltspire and a welcome home.
“You should scan Tores,” Marius said.
“Scan, don’t scan. I keep getting conflicting messages from you,” Nox complained, but still headed over to the single men’s dorm hut.
“It’s a health and safety issue. Who knows what the poor man’s picked up after months in the wilderness.”
“It was a health and safety issue for Temila, too,” Nox said a little louder than she’d wished, and Jaden’s ears pricked up.
“What was that about Temila?”
“Come on, let's find Corak.” Nox ignored the question and doubled her efforts to find the ward militia man.
 
Corak was with a small knot of other ward militia who had come to call Tiltspire home and was confused, but accommodating about the request to let Nox scan him.
“He’s malnourished, that’s all.” Nox shrugged, and that was all the encouragement Corak’s friends needed. Several of them went to find him a second breakfast while others prepared for a hunting trip.
“See, we asked permission first, and look how well it turned out,” Marius said, trying to instill appropriate behaviour in Nox.
“Yeah, but you would have made me scan him anyway if he’d said no,” Nox argued.
“Well, that would have been another discussion.”
“Instead of all the talking first, I can scan it, and then you can have a discussion. Simpler.”
 
 
Meanwhile, Jaden was finally getting around to adding an electrical charge to Fureva-Yung’s chain. Both the energy staves were stripped of components. The section that delivered the charge was attached to the metal chain and a button installed so Fureva-Yung could turn the device on and off.
“Don’t you feel the charge when you turn it on?” Jaden asked as Fureva-Yung tested her new chain.
“It tickles,” She replied and giggled as she turned on the chain, a spark of electricity ran along its length.
 
Over the next few days it was life as usual again. Nox bamfed out each morning and flew southeast as far as she could. As the land below became drier and more desolate, she listened more and more to the conversations over the network.
 
With the short-lived smelling mutation, Trilly made a discovery about the spore flowers.
“The flowers themselves give off a perfume or chemical compound that I think inhibits the growth of the seeds. It’s probably a trait evolved to stop subsequent flowers from growing too close to the parent plant. It might be what’s holding the spore at bay in NiQuintin.”
 
Rafi was interested in the news, but it wasn’t helping him get out any time soon. He was bored, and though not exactly alone, he was feeling lonely.”
“Tell me how you got into the dome?” Nox asked by way of trying to distract him as well as herself as the wasteland continued for more kilometres than she could count.
 
Three days of travel later, and in the distance, Nox was aware of a fuzzy dark smudge on the horizon. The next day, she was flying over the ruins very similar in shape to the Temple of Erini in Cerelon or the pub in Akavel. She swept across the area several times, checking for signs of life before landing just in front of the building before bamfing back to Tiltspire.
 
Finally, the quest for the Sions could be completed at last.