Chapter 13.1: Finding the Inquest

The trip from Vandal’s Claim to the Duskstruck Moors was not exactly a hard one. Christoff and his men had travelled for less than a day, traversing nothing more than a minor rise out of the valley. Having Sheridan, Thorne’s scout, to lead them may not have been entirely desirable to the bandit chief, but it did prove helpful to have someone familiar enough with the landscape to know the paths least bothered by other inhabitants and wildlife. He was most useful, Veritas decided, when it came to finally leaving the road and moving toward the Inquest’s site in the wilderness. Without their guide, they might have wandered for several more hours before finding the right turnout between the large, tree-lined plateaus that rose up out of the hilly landscape. It was, very literally, a maze.

Then, as the sun was sinking into the western sky, seeming to settle atop one of those plateaus, they saw it. Sheridan slowed his pace to let Christoff come up beside him. The scout pointed so that his bony forefinger lined up with Christoff’s gaze. “That there,” he said, “between them thickets. That’s yer place.”

Veritas squinted, shielding his eyes from the afternoon sun. Between the vine-covered trees growing out of plateaus on either side, he could just see the electrified glow of power coils atop a dark, angular building that rose out of the long shadows. He nodded.

Sheridan, spitting a wad of chew into the dirt, stood quietly, awaiting a response. Nothing came. “Ya sure ya wanna go it alone from ‘ere?” he asked the Krytan chief.

“Positive,” Christoff replied without changing his gaze. “We’ll take it from here.”

Sheridan shrugged. “As it please ya, sir.” The man reached into the pouch at his hip for another dip of chewing tobacco as he turned on his heel to casually stroll back in the direction they’d come. “Have fun wi’ them mice,” he called back over his shoulder.

“We will,” Christoff replied in a voice too low for the scout to hear. “We certainly will.” As Sheridan quietly slipped away behind them, Christoff waved forward, and the group continued on toward their destination.

For another half hour or so, the humans pressed on toward the facility without hardly a word spoken between them, until Veritas finally broke the silence. “Remember to be cautious,” he said, looking back at the others. “These people and their creations are not to be trifled with. Be at the ready.”

The asura, he knew, were a clever race, with magic-based advancements in technology to outstrip any other modern people in Tyria. And, if anything in the rumors was to be believed, the Inquest were an especially secretive and inhumane sect of their kind. His offer, he was certain, would incite their partnership, but they’d have to safely navigate any defenses simply to have an opportunity to propose it.

They strode slowly down the ravine between those two nearest plateaus. What had, on the other side, only been dirt-brown, vertical rises of earth were, from this side, verdant walls of jungle trees and foliage, woven about with thick vines that trailed out across the grass like a hundred tails of sleeping vipers. And at the end of it stood the complex. It would have been beautiful were every man among them not staring intently between those trunks and tendrils for any sign of guard or trap.

Remi, who’d been at the head of the procession since the scout had left, suddenly stopped, his right hand slowly moving toward the rifle on his back. Everyone behind him froze as well.

“What is it?” Christoff whispered, just a step behind him. Remi said nothing, still scanning the area from beneath the broad brim of his hat. “Damn it, Remi,” the leader rasped in still hushed tones, “What is it?”

He still didn’t turn, but he did reply. “The air. It tingles.”

Christoff eyed the back of the man’s head incredulously. Remi was good at what he did, but sometimes the way he expressed his intuition sounded ridiculous to Veritas. Then he noticed it: every hair on the back of Remi’s neck stood straight up, suspended in the air as if held by a thousand tiny, invisible hands.

He looked back at the others behind him. Everyone in the party but Remi was quietly looking at one another, too nervous to laugh at the absurd sight of everyone’s hair mysteriously spread out at right angles from their heads.

Remi snatched the rifle from his back and instantly had it trained on a short, stone pylon thrusting from the ground in a copse of trees to their right. Two more popped from the ground to their left, and all three thrummed in unison, visibly charging the air around the objects. Their hair still on end, now everyone felt the tingle in the air.

“Drop your weapons,” a voice called from one of the plateaus. “Now!” All eyes turned to the source of the voice. Obviously it was an asura, though he stood half in shadow.

Four small figures appeared out of the thickets around them. They approached but came no closer than the circumference marked by the charged pylons. Christoff knew what that meant. “Forgive our caution,” he replied, “but you’ll understand our trepidation given current circumstances.”

It was quiet, given the distance between them, but Christoff heard a faint harrumph from the little person. “Fair diction, bookah, but it changes nothing. You’re trespassing. Drop the weapons.”

No one else moved, but Christoff raised his pistol and rapier to the sky and stepped forward. “I’m here to speak to whomever’s in charge. Is that you?”

“Drop the weapons,” came the refrain once more. “One more word, and we won’t hesitate to crisp the lot of you.” The guards on the ground took a step closer, and the sparking glow around the pylons intensified.

Thinking a second, the bandit chief nodded, slowly descending to rest his weapons on the ground before him. “Do as he says,” he instructed, and one-by-one his people followed his lead.

“Now,” Christoff continued, looking up again at the one on the hill, “We have a proposition for the leader of this outpost.”

The asura on the plateau spoke as if Christoff had said nothing at all. “Now step slowly forward toward my people,” he commanded, “away from your equipment.”

Christoff’s face began to redden. He despised being slighted, even more being ignored and ordered around by anyone without any real authority. “You are not listening,” he rebutted. “I’m here to offer—”

“No,” the half-shadowed asura interrupted with an equal edge to his voice. “You are not listening, human. I don’t care if you’re here to bake cakes and give us the keys to Rata Sum, no one trespasses here and escapes custody or worse. Don’t you feel the hairs standing up on your underdeveloped heads? The tingle running from your skulls down to your tailbones? That’s the residual static charge of our automated defense system.” He pointed down at one of the pylons. “In each of those energy turrets pulses enough electromagical energy to sizzle a skritt hovel in a single discharge. We know from experience. You won’t survive the first volley. I will not say it again. Proceed ahead.” At that, the ground guards activated rifles that also appeared to glow.

The redness boiled brighter in Christoff’s face, but wisdom won out. “Fine,” he conceded, looking back at his party. “You heard the little master. We go with them. But,” he returned his gaze to the asura above them as he walked forward slowly, “I expect my blade returned to me. It’s an heirloom.”

A couple of hours passed, and Christoff sat in a corner of an asuran cell, unable to hear anything beyond the hum of the energy barrier. He seethed as he ran a finger up and down his scar. Around him sat the rest of his party, crammed into a space sized appropriately for any asura but certainly not intended for the larger races of the world. Some in the party held tight jaws and furious, steely eyes, like he did. Others, like Remi, sat or stood calmly, appearing hardly to notice the walls of the cell. As much as he valued him, Christoff never did understand that man.

Beyond the energy gate, he could see a room only slightly taller than the cell, clearly walled, floored, and ceilinged in stone. In that regard, it felt somewhat like their cave in the Queen’s Forest. That was the extent of the similarities, though. The right angles and geometrically decorated walls made it clear that this facility was no naturally formed structure in the least. Christoff had heard of asuran stonework before, but he himself had never actually seen it. In truth, he was glad. The dull grays matched with overly saturated teals and purples were a far cry from the elegant color selections of his heritage, and however they were maintaining those flickering shafts of bluish light lining the accent panels of the room, it too was unnatural and ugly next to anything of human origin. At the moment, the room was empty; not even a guard had been present for the last several minutes.

Gregor stood, hunched over and pressed against both the back wall and the ceiling. He was the one to break the silence. “Balthazar’s balls. This job stinks.” He looked down at his chief on the floor with a grimace. “Boss, we can beat these cockroaches. Why don’t we bust out of here?”

Right then, someone stepped up to the energy field from the other side. “Because,” she said, “this barrier is built to contain destroyers. Your skull, dense as I assume it is, could not attain a velocity great enough to ‘bust out’ of it. At least not without liquefying whatever excuse for a brain happens be inside it—which actually wouldn’t be much of a loss. Be my guest to try.”

Everyone’s attention turned as the asura female spoke, but no expression matched Gregor’s, whose shock was only equaled by the apparent strain of trying to keep up with her rapid speech. She stood no taller than Veritas’ belt and had a sickly pink hue to her complexion, though there wasn’t an ounce of weakness in her, physical or otherwise. She looked as though the entirety of the wildlands and every being in them were her domain, her very possession.

Gregor growled before anyone else could speak up. “Who’re you, cockroach?”

Putting a hand on her hip, she gazed at him with the disinterest of a charr looking at a salad. “Well your bisyllabic word-choice is more impressive than I would have given a lumbering oaf like you credit for. Still, I assume you aren’t the intelligence of your little outfit, so which one of you is?”

Another asura, taller by a hand and broad-headed even for their kind, stepped up beside her. “That one,” he said, pointing at Christoff. The man recognized that voice; it was the lead guard from outside.

“Yes, I see, Comakk. I could have surmised as much.” She nodded, waving a hand to a small squad of guards standing a few yards away. “Lower the barrier. He comes with me. The rest of these oversized ignoramuses can wait right here while this bookah and I confabulate.” She stepped back and quickly took to tapping her foot as the guards hopped to, moving with intention toward the gate and its controls. “Well? Get on with it,” she demanded. “We don’t have all season.”

Somehow, that did manage to move them faster still. After the barrier operator pressed a series of buttons on the lit-up stone console, the glowing barrier faded from view, retreating into a series of crackling emitters built into the floor.

For a fraction of a second, Gregor and a pair of the men beside him lunged through the crowded cell as if they’d take the opportunity to make their daring escape. They stopped short, though, when Veritas’ hand shot out to hold the big man in place. “Don’t be an idiot, Gregor,” the overseer firmly insisted. He rose from the floor and gently dusted off his tunic. “Look at their weapons. We wouldn’t make it ten paces before all of us were dead. Just— sit down.” The large man looked down at him for a moment before reluctantly submitting and retreating back into the cell with his tail between his legs. His tone became more genteel as he turned to step through the barrier and out between the short guards with their drawn rifles. “It’s time for the lady and I to parlay.”

The asura shook her head. “Whatever, human.” She gestured to the guards again and turned to begin her path out of the brig. “Bind him and bring him with me.”

At that, the nearest guards shackled his hands and pushed him on behind her with the muzzles of their rifles. At the same time the cell operator tapped out his series of button-presses again, and the floor sizzled to life before emitting the floor-to-ceiling barrier once more.

Christoff’s men watched as he followed his captor into a corridor too short for him and out of sight.