Sutoratosu

"I...see..." Lucille said. Rather than elaborate further, she moved to one of the empty counters around the room, the cats following in tow, one of them, the black furred male named Do, snatching up a peice of iron as he did so. Whatever she was doing, she seemed to be too entranced to bother explaining, taking a peice of charcoal from her garbs and going to turn on the table top, hand moving with nigh frightening speed and precision. Despite her lack of sight and her illiteracy, she seemed to have no problems whatsoever writing countless symbols and calculations at savant like speeds, the exact meaning significance of the formulas she ran through known to her, and only her, mumbling all the while. Within barely a minute, she was done, stowing the charcoal away again and seeming to come out of whatever daydream she'd experienced, the end result of her mad writing an expansive sigil lined with various runes, forming a diagram of interlocking circles. She turned to face the voice that had called itself "Armsmaster" earlier, while Do dropped the peice of Iron in one circle, and took his place in the opposite one, on her command. "You have no idea the true potential of the principles you have employed here..." She put it flat and dryly, there was no point sugar coating things if this was apparently a common occurrence in this world, "You are taking subatomic structures and somehow rearranging them in such a mathematical order that it causes an anomaly within the very fabric of reality itself, and these anomalies are what, in turn, grant your machines their functions. This process, in a way, is essentially the same as how my own people once conducted Alchemy; by combining various substances and using specialized catalysts, we too engineered such precise subatomic structures like you have made use of here, and through these complex structures, we created countless objects of wondrous power. Symbology, Harmonics, and Alchemy- they were the three roads of a true scholar's discipline, all focusing on the same basic principle- by seeking out, comprehending, and finally replicating the same mathematical patterns which occurred within the twin realms of our reality during it's birth, we could control our world like never before. Imitating these patterns in the physical realm of our world caused a response in the that of the divine, and in turn, the response in the divine would induce a change in the physical world corresponding to the pattern." She turned away from him, from all of them, and to the sigil, uttering some foreign phrase that made the ears of anyone in earshot feel as though an ungodly pressure was beginning to form in the space around them, senses of balance being put off, but whatever she said was soon over, and the sensation faded with it. The runic diagram on the counter now blazed with a soft, off-white radiance, and Lucille reached her hands out, again chanting something. The radiance only grew stronger, and before long, both the cat and the peice of iron were lost within the fires of holy union, their physical forms fading into motes of stellar light that left their respective circles and followed the lines of the diagram until they reached the innermost circle, and began coalescing. Lucille rescinded her hands, and turned back to them. "This art, this science, was known as Thaumaturgy," she continued "where I came from, it served as the cornerstone of our civilization for countless centuries, and it pushed us to technological heights far loftier than anything I have seen on this world... even your machines here in this room, impressive though they still are. But just as it pushed us to ever greater achievements, it also pushed us ever closer to our own destruction. There are some things mortal man is not ready to handle, but he yearns to have power over them regardless. Such is the fate that took all my people had made, and crushed it into ash and dust as our world ended in a brilliant display of fire and light, storm and shadow... and finally, nothing. Much to my dismay, I have little choice but to inform you, Armsmaster... somehow, someway, your people have discovered Thaumaturgy, or at least something so similar, they may as well be one in the same. And just as it led my home to ruin, it could very well do the same for yours. We, afterall.... actually understood what we were doing, poured every ounce of time and energy we could into advancing it. But you, by your own admission, have stated your world understands little, if anything at all, about how what you are doing works. I didn't want to go with those who opted to demonstrate their powers because I wanted no one else to be inspired to repeat the sins of my kind... but it seems that quite obviously, that was a moot point... you were all already going down this road." The marriage, by that point, had finished. In the center of the diagram was a single orb, and soon enough, this orb took on the shape of a feline, and as it's radiance died out, there, standing unscathed and looking just as he had prior to the ritual, was the Feral Cat named Do... Or rather, the FerroCat. For the moment the sigil lost it's radiance and the power surging through it ceased to be, he stepped out of the diagram, extracted his claws, and dug into the table with deep grooves, far deeper than any normal claw on such a small creature should've produced. They even seemed to shine with a silvery hue, before he retracted them and began to clean his paws. "This is just one of the many things that was possible for us..." Lucille went on, giving Do the unheard command to to leap to the counter in front of her and sit front and center for her point. "What you see before you appears to be an ordinary cat, but what I just did to him was... an expedited form of Alchemy, you could say. Normally altering an organisms biology like this would require a specific mutagen to be engineered and administered, but what I've done instead is essentially taken qualities from Iron and this Cat, and through the power of that sigil, directly dissembled and combined their very beings in such a way that it spawned the same types of complex structures that would've been present in a mutagen created for the same purpose. But as I said, this is merely the tip of the iceberg, as are all the machines you've made; What 'tinkerers' have stumbled upon through their powers can, and likely will, end this world if it continues to go uncomprehended."

"Lenn-" "..." he almost, almost let her name escape his lips, but caught it just at the last possible second, not daring to risk the chance, no matter how small, superstitious, and asinine, that by so much as uttering the mere name of the last living being in this world he- apparently -still had left, he would condemn her to a fate beyond his power to intervene in, just as the all the others had suffered, just as all the others had been robbed of their lives and their very souls by the fires of this hell. How she had survived the chaos of that night was beyond him, he'd been almost certain she had been struck down out of sheer spite by that rat-faced peice of human trash who'd seen fit to break them one by one, make them his helpless bitches, utterly unable to do anything. Afterall, the fucker had done the same to Agate, when the mighty drake had gone into a rage at the sight of his master's corpse. Well, it probably wasn't that big a mercy, either way. Chances were, she had been captured instead of euthanized solely because she was in good health and able-bodied, the bastards likely felt it was a waste to simply kill her without extorting every drop of draft labor they could... and it was far easier to control a pegasus than a full grown wyvern with a chip on it's shoulder. And just like that, any joy he might've felt over the news she was alive, was soon replaced by dread at the condition he would find her in. And almost as swiftly, dread gave way to something else. Something familiar. Something he'd felt since he first picked up the deadman's lance. Again, his grip went bone white. "No... none at all..." he answered once the rogue was finally done, trembling, but not out of fear. Far from it.... "The... sooner we get out of here... the better."

He ground his teeth, as he attempted to ignore the constant "perversion" jokes, grinding his nerves though they did. Well, if she was coming with them, at least she wouldn't be total dead weight, if what she claimed to know was true. Mercadier turned to the rogue, eyes.... not quite ornery, but nowhere near as amiable as when the man had broken them out of the cells and given his offer either. The expression he'd seen plastered on his mug earlier was one he had grown all too familiar with, a few times over the years, and not once had it ever led to anything good. How long before whatever power this fool thought he had started to go to his head? How long before the reasons he claimed to have broken them out and chosen to oppose the emperor became nothing but a mere afterthought? He didn't know, he couldn't know, and that more than anything was the most troubling. But sitting around worrying would do nothing to get them out. And like it or not, he was stuck with the rogue for now, and probably for the foreseeable future. "Look, if this is all sorted, we need to get back on track." "The Plan. What is it? You were just at the beginning before she walked in."

She had shifted mental states almost as soon as they entered the lab, and almost instinctively, she found herself drawn to the various patterns all around. The cats toured the place idly all the while, with the girl occasionally jacking into their eyes and actually seeing the place in addition to her sound maps. Using both their vision and her own sense for the various esoteric properties of the machines, she made her way around to some of the more complex ones, where the sense picked up the strongest signatures... and she sensed that: Could these machines, or at the very least, their components, be made of similarly altered materials? engineered down to the smallest possible level in order to grant them absolutely extraordinary properties, which in turn worked together to provide the whole of the construct's functions? Could these people have discovered the most basic principle of Thaumaturgical Alchemy, without even realizing it? Everything Lucille knew, everything the Maven's had taught her since she was a mere child back in the Enclave... all pointed to a resounding yes. And filled her with simultaneous admiration, and dread. They had already discovered the Art of her people, and yet they admitted outright they had no general idea how, why it worked, or how to replicate the results without the creator's help... "W...who made all of... this, by chance?" She stammered as she heard around the room, listening in on the various conversations "this Machinery specifically, I mean... it's.... well.... I don't know what to say but... if your people have managed this type of engineering and you don't even understand how you did it...." she trailed off mid sentence, trying to sort through everything. Maybe her decision earlier, to come here rather than parade the powers of a Thaumaturge to the ignorant, had been a pointless one after all. Maybe this world was on an even faster track to it's own self-destruction than Arganor had been.

"Huh... all this tinker stuff reminds me of back home," Lucille idly commented after they were kicked out rather unceremoniously. Yeah, she could definitely see why the woman had done it, Mavens know what the hell some of the others had answered on the forms. "Except for the part about none of their stuff working if their not around... not being comprehensible or maintainable by normal people sounds about right though. Who knows, maybe it may have a few more similarities. And it's not like what I do is even all that impressive where I come from-" That was, of course, at least partially a bull-faced fucking lie. Her skills as a Beastheart, sure, those were indeed well... they were not common by any stretch of the imagination, but they were not so scarce either that the revelation that a child had been born with the triggers was nothing to bow down in awe about either. If there was one thing the Mavens had warned her time and time again however, it was to be careful how, and to whom, she revealed such knowledge as what they fed to her. Chosen by this "Multiverse" or no, she wasn't about to simply go in and start demonstrating those skills for a bunch of strangers native to a world she'd only set foot on. After all, by their own admission, they didn't even understand their own supernatual feats, how could she expect them to do so for those of her homeworld, at least several centuries more advanced than this dump by the point of it's fall from grace? For Mavens sakes, the people here seemed to rely on chemical propellants as their main weaponry... Now, sure, many of the Enclaves back home did as well, but everyone knew it was a serious downgrade from what once was, they only did so because there was no other option in most cases. Unless you were lucky enough to salvage a weapon from before the fall, you were stuck sending hundreds of lead rounds burrowing into something at high velocity. By stark contrast, they seemed to be this world's best option for small arms and personal defense... not it's fallback. So no... there was no way she was going to just parade about the sensitive knowledge that had brought her home to both prosperity, and the following ruin. But perhaps helping them to understand their own machines that their "Tinker" mages had conjured, if there truly were some common threads? Well, that was a slightly different story... "So uh....lead the way, I guess? I dunno, sounds more interesting than people watching me just tell these three what to do and them following without a hitch..." the three cats in question were still following her, stopping to laze about as they awaited a command, as they had since they'd first entered the building. It was... ironic, almost, considering how many believed that herding cats was simply impossible.

His eyes narrowed at the sarcasm, but having seen no tell-tale shadows or heard the breath or shuffling feet of men lying in wait, he slowly lowered his weapon. "Funny." he replied as dryly as a desert land in mid-summer "but I suppose if this was a trap, they've certainly taken too much sweet time to make any sense... and you're a bit too much of a smartass to simply be a mere pawn-" "..." Silence. Just pure and utter silence from him. He saw the logic in it, he knew that if they were not going to kill her, they would need to take her in order to eliminate loose ends. But none of that meant he liked the idea at all.

His stance did not falter, and his lance did not lower. But it did not surge forward either, despite a very big part of himself screaming to do it, that one more dead would not make a difference in their escape, that they had it coming, for the crimes that had been collectively committed here. A part that with no small amount of self-restraint, he managed to quell. But he did not silence it entirely, as he strained to see into the hall behind the woman. "Well well, seems the Help has stumbled on us, rather than retinue of guards we were expecting..." "Or are they? Who's with you, how many? Would be just like those craven bastards to send in a supposed maid of all things to try and get our guard down, then storm in the minute we lowered our weapons and gave the advantage of surprise..."

The knight whirled on his heels as the door opened, spear in hand and body automatically assuming combat stance. Whatever he might've been thinking, whatever absolute disgust rose within him as he bore witness to the rogues ungodly sneer creeping ever closer to the mania that power brought, he put it aside... for now. Instead, he let fury wash over him, the same fury as before, the fury that was so cold, it burned his very core, turned his fingers to ice as they clutched that slim spear. Once more, his eyes were alight with the crimson fire of death, but this time their radiance persisted, searching, reaching for any easily broken fault he could find. Already, his body was tensing, legs preparing themselves, just as they had during the battle mere minutes ago. It was like a panther about to pounce.

"Someone of my occupation was bound to make many friends and enemies, in high and low places alike. I doubt you would've needed to look that hard to find out about the Ryder Company. Makes me wonder though, just how far back your little background checks extended...." His eyes flashed ever so briefly as he spoke, simultaneously gauging the Rogue's Reaction to it, if there was any at all. Countless men had seen the same sight before their ends, hell, the guards out in the halls just now had only been the latest arrivals to that sad party. Those who survived or fled.... well they seldom kept quiet about the man who'd torn their friends apart like tissue paper, right after those burning bursts of crimson... "And how credible some of your sources may or may not be... but I suppose now isn't the time for it. This is obviously the only shot at freedom any of us have, and only a fool would turn it down. You said you were going to explain the rest of whatever your plan here was, so how about you get to it, before even more guards become aware of the scene we just caused and this place starts to swarm?"

That name... it was one he'd heard before, long, long ago. Back when the names of the various powers that be within high society were still forced down his throat on a practically daily basis, among other pieces of knowledge. It was ironic, really, much of what they'd taught him had proven utterly worthless out in the real world where it mattered, but a few of some of the more basic things had come quite in handy. The knowledge that this conjurer here indeed had quite strong ties where it mattered most, being chief among them right now. "Hmph...Zentillin. A very uncommon name..." "Fine, I suppose now I know the how of your actions here, at least... yes, if you were resourceful enough, which you certainly appeared to be earlier, I suppose all that you've done, and all the information you've claimed to gather on us, is indeed well within the realm of possibility. But there is still the matter of the why behind all this. And I'm even more curious about that than anything else."

There had been now ceremony, no preamble, and no fanfare as the commanding officer died. As Mercadier had declared, this would end now, and indeed it did. His eyes glimmered once more, and much like the swordsman, he surged forward like an approaching storm, and his lance connected with the man's body like a bolt of thunder. Somewhere, a jewel was shattered, and with it the man's kneecap was smashed with the brutal force of the knight's strike, sending the oh so "superior" recruit to the floor in mere moments. And as he lay there, Mercadier gave one flourishing whirl of his lance, before he trained it on the man's open mouth, and drove it home right into the stone floor beneath him. And like that, he had, at the very least, escaped the inner most gates of hell... now if only he could make it back to the surface. But he had already decided, regardless what fate had in store, he would. There was far too much riding on his survival.... all of them, gone. Their hopes, their dreams, their final wishes.... they were all he had left of them. They were all he had driving him forward anymore... but they were enough. ******************************* Mercadier looked around the cluttered storehouse, but elected to remain standing as the others filtered in. Now that they were out of immediate danger and had a moment of respite, he took a harder look at the man who'd saved them. He seemed to lack any of the posh demeanor common in highborn folk, and his command of magic seemed rather decent... either he'd been formally trained, or simply had enough natural talent and motivation to hone it that he'd taught himself... But neither of those observations answered the most pressing of mysteries before Mercadier- how the hell had this man been able to set up this whole event? How had he infiltrated this prison camp, with the round the clock patrols and heavy guard presence constantly keeping eagle eyes on the perimeter? Just how much did he truly know about all of them? "Mercadier..." was all he offered as the others started introducing themselves. His attention remained on the rogue however...

"This ends. Now." D6, Skewer the Recruit

"Much appreciated," the knight replied, taking the vial from the boy and letting a small amount of the concoction drip into the rent flesh of his shoulder. He restoppered it before handing it back to Takeshi, and before the wound had even fully closed, He had already launched himself with vicious precision towards the enemy swordsman. This time though, he wielded the lance more like a staff, bringing the blunt end around to smash the poor fool's ribs in. F5, snap a few of Initiate C's ribs

"Keiser..." in the same instant he spoke the deadman's name, he launched forward, body tensed like a pouncing tiger. Within mere moments, he'd closed the distance between them. His lance flourished with a brief spin before it's head leveled itself with the journeyman's heart, letting the momentum of the Knight's leap carry it on... G5, Skewer the Journeyman

O15

His eyes glimmered once more as the swordsman charged. Every little movement the swordsman made, every little flaw in his approach and his very being, every seam in reality itself, unfolding like a starmap before the dour knight, each vital area a major celestial body in the heavens, each connection between said vital areas like the constellations and orbits. They were, all of their correspondences, gleaming jewels of heavenly light before his eyes, and if even a single one of them was shattered, the others would surely feel the resounding ripple that would be born of the destruction. And Destruction was precisely what he wrought. The swordsman did not even so much as fully raise his blade to strike before the blunt end of the Knight's lance whipped through the air with a ferocious whistle. In his mind's eye, one of the beloved jewels shattered into a million splendid shards as he struck true... bones crunched, the initiate's wrist snapped, his hand a mangled mess, and the blade he once wielded clattered to the ground, useless. As useless as his attempt to flee Mercadier's grasp was, as he backpedaled ever more frantically- SNAP Metal on bone, a scream as yet another jewel shattered, the man's knee now bending and finally breaking as another strike made impact, sending the fool sprawling, gasping, as he looked up to the face of the night, and with eyes of pure, bright crimson shinning like twin suns gazing back down upon him, realized this was not a man he faced, but rather an agent of death itself... pure and unbridled in it's fury. "You... were the one..." he pressed his boot to the man's windpipe... just one last point to shatter, just one last blow... "you were there that day. You were the one who stuck her with your blade, skewered her like a slab of meat and then tossed her body onto the rubbish cart. I had the perfect veiw of your crime while I was on my knees. Yours is a face I vowed never to forget." Recognition. It finally dawned on him. In those last moments, as death loomed over him... he knew the day he spoke of. A vile, vile smirk caressed Mercadiers lips at the sight of it. "Yes, you didn't think you'd face any consequences, now did you? But lo and behold, all these months later... and here I am, with your pathetic life in my hands. And now..." "I intend to crush it. Just. as. you. did. hers." He raised his foot, and brought back down with every ounce of weight he had one him backing it up, the crushing force of the blow severing all oxygen for the man, and more importantly, ensuring he would never get another drop of it again. And as the last jewel shattered, the glimmer in his eyes died, as had the rest of him so long ago. and he removed his foot from the corpse. No sooner than he had, some fucker with an Axe had thought it was a good idea to bury the hatchet.... in his shoulder. He simply looked at the man, disappointment evident on his face. And it only grew as the youngsters from the cell approached one by one and were bested by the fighter- the sword fighters was knocked quite literally off his ass, the boy failed to mark him with his own axe, and the girl, while her fire had proven somewhat effective, ended up taking a gash to the knee for her troubles. His grip on the lance went bone white. "...Ridley" J6, Execute the Journey Man

"Been a long time since I've seen that type of technique..." Mercad muttered beneath his breath, far toolow for anyone not immediately adjacent to hear. There was more to the boy than there appeared, that much was obvious. Oh how much his little display had reminded him of one of Keiser's arrows, crackling with light, burning flesh and armor on impact like a miniature sun.... but now was not that time. So long had passed, since the day they entered this hell together. Too long. His body, it still recalled the fervor of combat, but it did not respond with the same speed and ferocity he'd grown accustomed to. Even now as he set foot out into the main corridor, his entire being felt... sluggish. Disconnected, almost. Beaten down, made weary by the hot sun and endless labor. Just as his mind had gone weary, as they fell around him, one by one... the fractures, the shatterpoints, the miniscule, exploitable flaws inherent in the world around him, they were harder to see now than ever. Even as he focused and his eyes glimmered a dark crimson, felt reality fall away... they still remained oh so aloof. The glimmer faded, and he scoffed, the disastifaction evident on his face. Regardless of the state of his body and mind though, today, he would escape this hell. And though he was walking out alone in the physical sense, their memories drove him forward. What he lacked in the strength he once had, he could only make up for with the cold fire welling up in his chest. A fire that chilled him to his core, was all consuming with it's frigid presence. With the guards lance now in hand, he took his eyes off the boy and took a few steps more out into the hall, immediately fixing his sights on a swordsman down the way...and he uttered a single name, almost as if it were an affirmation. "Cecilia..." J7, Hold

"Well, so you're behind all these oddities, then..." the knight muttered. Unlike his cellmates, he didn't really care what type of magic the man wielded; it was quite hard to ever find reason to fear the arcane when your mount dampened it's power so heavily. He'd seen it all before, in one form or another. "I don't know who you are or how you set this up, but I don't really care either..." "This isn't how I ever expected to break out of here, but it's probably better than anything I could've put together. You had me sold as soon as you mentioned going after Nox."

"Perhaps..." he answered, "the work has only gotten harder, if anything, and naturally some aren't going to be able to keep up. Seeing a few newly empty cells at the end of a day isn't that surprising... though it is odd they'd let this much space go to waste. The last outbreak was months ago, and even then, they were pretty quick to fill up the vacant spots... once they got the corpses cleared out and burned."

and with a bit of help, Lucille answered the following:

Not saying much, Lucille slipped down and took a seat beside the girl, still staring at the paperwork. How the hell a blind woman could even "stare" was still up for debate, and the jury would be in deliberation for quite a while, but it wasn't important. "So, what does it say? And thanks, by the way. I'm usually pretty good with functioning on my own, but uh... well you can probably guess why I never became literate..."

Mercadier only scoffed at the boy's comment, idly picking over his meal "You say that as if any of them actually care. This cell could barely be big enough to fit two slaves sitting shoulder to shoulder, and they'd have still thrown us all in here, simply because it was convenient." The slop that passed for food was bland, of course. Not that he hadn't grown used to it long ago. He finished it nevertheless- calories were calories here, and if you didn't eat, you couldn't work. And f you would not or could not work, they'd kill you and toss your corpse out to feed the rats without so much as a single bit of hesitation. He knew that much first hand... "You do have a good point though, boy. Either we're about to face a summary execution, or they've got an especially vile work assignment waiting for us... which really isn't any different."

Lucille simply stared at the stack of papers, mind drawing ablank. Though through the cats' eyes she could perceive perfectly well what was printed on them, it didn't change the fact she understood none of it. And not in the manner that the vocabulary used was too complicated or went over her head either, she just literally did not know what any of the symbols before her even represented... period. How would she? She "saw" by hearing and touch afterall, and it wasn't like ink printed on dead trees was very conducive to either of those senses. "Uh...." after a few minutes, with the sounds of hurried scribbling from pens and pencils soft illustrating the space around her with their noise, she dropped the paper in her hand back onto the stack, looking around at the sources "So uh... hey, quick question: is anyone here feeling nice enough to help a poor blind girl fill out this paperwork?"

A lot of work went into this....but I regret absolutely nothing.

O11