Chapter 24.6: Useful Information

Chapter 24, part 6: Useful Information

Minkus watched as Penny did this several more times over the course of an hour: raising a weapon to terrify Wepp into feinting, then waking him with a loud crash of tools several minutes later. She would pose the same question again each time and put him out once more when he refused. 

At some point Minkus got used to the feigned strikes, no longer flinching every time Penny raised something overhead. That was good, as the woman seemed increasingly satisfied every time her method worked. And with each of Wepp’s wakings that didn’t yield the desired results, Penny was more than fine startling him unconscious again, sometimes with a swing of a wrench and others with the draw of a pistol.

Ironically, the most awkward moments were those when Wepp was asleep and Penny and Minkus were left to themselves, the only conscious people in the room. Between attempted interrogations, the two friends sat in pained silence, staring in opposite directions to avoid eye contact as they each stewed in their own thoughts. Or, at least that was what Minkus assumed they were doing. He certainly was. He’d never known a stew, of food or thought, to be so tumultuous, but here he was.

It was Penny who finally broke the silence in one of those gaps.

“Look, Biggie,” she said slowly, hefting the ratchet to its balancing point in her hand. Her eyes remained on the tool, not him. “You don't need to worry about him, OK— Vent, I mean. You don’t need to worry about Vent. You've seen what he can do with those nature powers of his. He's strong. Even if something did happen—and I don’t think anything will—he’s fought worse. We all have. He'll be OK.”

Minkus sighed. Of course he'd been thinking about that, among a lengthy list of other things, but hearing her give voice to it seemed to amplify his concern instead of diminishing it. The swirling thoughts of Penny and Jinkke’s betrayals washed to the outer rim of his thoughts, and the potential dangers to his traveling companions came to the center, as though by Penny’s verbalization they’d all become real.

“Did you hear me, Biggie?” she tried again. “Vent can take care of himself. He'll be fine.”

“Maybe,” Minkus finally replied, closing his eyes. After a second he opened them again, finally turning to look at Penny. “But what about Yissa? She's with him, and she’s not a soldier or an elementalist— at least, I don’t think she is.” He scratched his head. Altogether, his mind turned to another possibility. “And what about Jinkke? What if she went with them?”

Penny scowled, her eyes flitting away from his. She carefully inspected the ratchet again. “Your sister went with him?” she asked in a low voice.

“I don't know. Maybe,” he said. Then he quickly thought better. “No, she has projects to in Rata Sum. But she still could have.” Everything in him started moving faster again; he couldn’t let the possibilities alone. “She does things like that—I mean sometimes, at least, she has—taking on projects on a whim. What if she— what if she did that? What if Jinkke is with Ventyr now?”

“Whoa, Biggie, slow down,” Penny replied, raising a hand as if to stop him. “Vent’s fine. Your sister’s fine. Everyone’s fine.”

Minkus hung his head. The gravity of it seemed to slow the spiral of anxious thoughts. “I— I left her, so I don't know where she went. She lied to me, for a long time, so I left— to figure it all out, I guess. But if— well, if they're in trouble—” He couldn't finish those words; he couldn't bring himself to. “We just need to know if they’re in trouble, Penny.”

“Yeah, OK. We’ll get this guy to say what he knows, OK?” Minkus could tell Penny didn’t share his worry about Jinkke, but she acquiesced without further resistance. Her expression was furrowed, bordering on a frown, but her words were subdued. “I’m sure they’re all fine.”

Penny turned back to Wepp once more, this time squatting down in front of him, and she clanged her tools together. The sound rang through the room as Wepp’s eyes opened again. He blinked hard, groaning.

“Ah, welcome back,” Penny said, placing the tools beside her. Her voice was hard once more: joking and confident, but sharp. “Are you tired of passing out yet? What’s it been now, Biggie? Six times? Seven?”

“Um,” Minkus started, snapping himself to business as best he could. He counted the total on his fingers. “Yes, six.”

Minkus looked more focusedly at Wepp, and he sighed. The other asura was as much to blame for the problems that faced him as Penny was, but his belabored blinking and wobbly head made Minkus want to reach out and help in some way. Wepp had been getting slower and slower to return to full consciousness, and Minkus didn’t like that any more than he liked the jeopardy he feared his friends may be in. Feeling bad for the people who caused the other things that made him feel bad was just so confusing.

“Please answer our questions,” he implored Wepp. “We really don’t want you to lose consciousness again. I can’t see this being good for you.”

“I’ve fallen unconscious six times?” Wepp questioned, shaking the wobbles away.

“Yep, that’s right.”

“I do not have your apprentice,” grumbled Wepp. He pulled at the twine for the umpteenth time. “What in the Alchemy do you want from me?”

Penny blinked at him. “Gods, we’ve gone over this six times,” she remarked, turning briefly to Minkus, who now stood beside her. “Maybe this really is bad for his head.”

Minkus let the statement pass right by, directing his attention instead ot Wepp. He had to get some answers. “You said you were sorry for our friends going to Brisban. Why? What did you mean?”

For the first time since they’d started this mad interrogation, he wasn’t instantly oppositional. “I can’t say with certainty,” Wepp said with a sigh, “but there is a notable likelihood that they might encounter some unwanted attention in that region. That— that’s all I can say. Can I please go now?”

Minkus had no idea what that meant, but he didn’t like it. Apparently neither did Penny.

“Yeah, that’s not news. We gathered as much when you said that place was ‘dangerous.’” She glowered at him for a moment before gesturing at her pistol. “You know I can just scare you stupid again, right?”

“I don't know what information you expect me to divulge,” Wepp whined.

“Yeah you do, little man.” Penny leaned forward. “You're going to tell us what you don’t want to, the thing you keep stopping short of. What kind of trouble is Vent in?”

Wepp sighed again, shaking his head. It took him a moment, in which Minkus recognized the expressions of rapid calculation and conclusion that were all too common for their people. Minkus had no idea what in his estimates was changing Wepp’s mind, and it still took him a second to commit to his course, but the potbellied asura tied to their desk chair was about to talk.

“Fine.” It was a simple word, but with that, Wepp let the information pour out of his mouth. “There's factually very little to tell, and thus I shouldn’t be bothered to, especially when I have no hard evidence to support my trepidation. But, considering my predicament, and your relative inability to impede anything, I will acquiesce.”

For just a second, he hesitated again, looking almost afraid, but he went on. “The site leader who first discovered that jade monstrosity—the same one who has been in pursuit of those shards ever since—she is known to espouse fairly barbarous methods of— well, everything. Working under her is commonly held to be a rather perilous endeavor, which is to say nothing of working in opposition to her.” Wepp shivered slightly.

“Right,” Penny said incredulously. “And what does any of this have to do with us?”

Wepp nearly rolled his eyes, but he managed to maintain a respectful tone, even as he made an unsuccessful effort at shifting in his bonds. “How do I put this so you might comprehend? She's quite, quite unfond of your sylvari associate, as he has so exquisitely complicated whatever project she’s so adamant about right now. I would not want to be near if she discovered them. My ears, I certainly wouldn't want to be near if she coincidentally also needed test subjects.” He blinked, raising an eyebrow and suddenly mumbling to himself. “And yet, here I am pursuing a position with this lunatic. Great Alchemy, why do I listen to Skixx?”

Minkus processed the information, mulling Wepp’s words as he twiddled his ear. There was an abundance of subtext he didn’t follow, and he had no questions ready to help him understand. One thing was quite clear, though: Ventyr was in trouble, which meant Yissa was also in trouble. And if for any reason she was still with them, Jinkke was in trouble. Once again, that was enough to start his heart racing and his mind spinning.

Wepp sighed again. “There? Are you happy? Please let me go now.”

“So,” Penny said, settling down on the floor, “some little asura overlord is pissed at Vent for stealing her rocks? Why? What’s anyone going to do with a handful of dead-monster rocks?”

The question snapped Minkus out of his wayward thoughts. Yes, that was one of the questions he should have asked.

Wepp blinked at her, then rolled his eyes. “I keep trying to give humans the benefit of the doubt, but you really do severely lack imagination, don’t you?”

“Says the genius tied to a chair,” Penny groaned. “Just answer the damn question.”

Wepp exhaled deeply, letting his head fall to his chest. He looked up at them again, only a hint of condescension in his voice. “What could someone do with the ancient, magic-infused remnants of a construct that drove a squad of Vigil soldiers to madness and death? At even a cursory assessment, my mind goes to recreating the construct with new subservience parameters. One could imbue either melee or projectile weapons with that madness-inducing magic, depending on which offered the greatest applied output. If a more benevolent tack were taken, one might find a means of reversing the magical polarity and formulating a sort of elixir for other types of mental illness. Of course, there’s also the option of applying the same magic to the core design of a new construct, likely a golem in our paradigm. That would allow you recreate the original capabilities with far fewer—”

“OK, OK,” Penny broke in.” Lots of things you could do. I get it.”

Her question more than answered, Penny was already moving down her next line of inquiry internally. Minkus could see that. But, he was stuck on the last series of statements, though not in the usual sense. He understood everything, or at least most of what Wepp was getting at, but he couldn’t shake certain details that felt so much like they intersected somewhere. Madness-inducing magic? Constructs? Golems? Why do they seem like they should go together? he wondered.

“Biggie, don’t let this guy spook you,” Penny said, facing Minkus now. “This Brisban’s a big place, right? What are the odds Vent even runs into this little freak? He's probably just going to join his Vigil friends anyway. He and the bookworm—and anyone else with them—will be perfectly safe.”

Minkus nodded. He couldn't bring himself to smile, though. Her confidence felt thin.

Both of them looked back at Wepp, who didn’t look even as confident as Penny seemed to want to sound.  “Yes, that’s it. Safe. Perfectly— safe,” he echoed, grimacing a little.

“Excuse me?” Penny asked, snapping her head around. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Wepp stammered. “I just—”

In the two heartbeats it took Wepp to get those words out, Penny was leaning in over him again, their faces nearly touching. “Don't jerk with me, little man.”

Wepp gave a deep sigh, and all remaining tension in his body seemed to settle away. “It's just— if history is any indication, Kikka’s vindictiveness could render your assumption one-hundred percent incorrect.” He squinted awkwardly at each of them, frowning. “Due to Skixx's reports, she is aware of the damage the jade creature did to those Vigil soldiers before destabilizing.” He sighed again, breaking eye contact. “I wouldn't put it past her to intentionally use members of that Vigil outpost as a testing ground for further developments in her research. The most useful test, after all, is one with controlled variables: opponents with similar training, in similar numbers, in a controlled environment. You are quite right that she’s unlikely to lay an attack on their central encampment—or wherever they’ve established a base of operations—but some subset of them does afford a particular scientific advantage in her research on that maddening mursaat—was that their name?—magic. And that could be quite unpleasant indeed.”

Minkus shuddered as Wepp described the situation potentially facing the Vigil team in the Duststruck Moors. At the same time, he realized he’d added another word to spiraling cloud of would-be-connected ideas in his head: madness-inducing magic, constructs, golems, and mursaat. The more the things was mentioned, the more they bothered him, the more he wished the lines between those points of light swirling in his mind would come clear. It hadn’t bothered him at all until he’d arrived back in Divinity's Reach. Actually,no. He thought harder. It hadn’t been since being in Divinity's Reach; it had just been since earlier that day, since they'd passed— the Durmand Hall.

His eyes opened wide as all the thoughts coalesced. Zinn, the tome, the mursaat, constructs, madness, and golems—they were all connected, and he knew how!

Still talking, Wepp brought him back to the present conversation with a warning he seemed genuinely uncomfortable giving. “Your friend may in fact be in more danger going back to that Vigil site.”

Penny put a hand to her forehead. “Gods.”

“We have to do something,” Minkus said quickly. “I have to do something.” The words came to his mind and popped instantly out of his mouth as he scrambled around Penny and toward the door.

“And there it is,” Penny groaned, still holding her head in one hand as she gestured back at with the other. “You had to go making it sound worse, didn't you?” She spun from Wepp to Minkus, tugging at his sleeve as he passed her, “Biggie, don't listen to this guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about. No one in their right mind is going to attack the Vigil for no good reason.”

“It's not Sergeant Ventyr,” Minkus replied, still working himself into the straps of his pack. “Well, I mean, it is. And Scholar Yissa too. But— Jinkke. What if Jinkke is still with them?” He’d thought and felt so many things in the last couple of minutes, but his sister had remained firmly in the mix of it all. How couldn’t she be?

Thrown a little off balance by the weight of the armor still in his pack, Minkus sidestepped his way to the door.

“Fine,” Penny rebuffed, now standing from her seat on the floor, “but you can't just run off into the jungle by yourself.”

“Technically the wildlands aren't a jungle,” Wepp corrected, rapidly wilting under the glare the human shot his way in response.

Minkus stopped, turning back to the woman even as he placed his hand on the doorknob. He met her eyes and held them silently for longer than he thought he’d be able to.

“Penny,” Minkus said, focusing on each word as he selected it, “I'm not going to Brisban—not right now. There's something else I need to do.”

She began to rebut again.

“Please,” he repeated, cutting her off, “just trust me. You can trust me.”

Penny silenced, grimacing at those last words. Minkus frowned as well. He hadn't intended that kind of pointed remark at a friend, but he also couldn't bring himself to take it back. There was a painful truth in it, one he was still dealing with. He could be trusted where other people perhaps could not.

He shook his head, snapping himself back to his task, and turned the knob, cracking the door just wide enough to slip out of the room and into the hall. “I'll be back soon,” he said quietly, “and— well, I hope I'll have something helpful.”

Behind him neither Penny nor Wepp spoke as he closed the door between them. It clicked, and he stopped, sighing deeply and suppressing tears he now felt in his throat. He sniffed and shook his head to clear it away, and he began his walk down the orange-striped hall of the Shining Inn and toward the main staircase.

Looking back briefly at the door to their room, he rounded the bend and struck something bulbous and springy that bounced him back a step. Looking forward again, he understood what he’d hit. It was Master Gill, and he didn’t look as happy as usual.