Chapter 46.4: Ventyr’s War

After a few turns, Ventyr was all but lost; the way out was longer than he recalled and far more twisted than he’d recognized under the blindfold his captors had used. With each corner Minkus bounded around, Ventyr could all but feel the promise of an imminent exit, but each one was a lie. The halls and doorways continued, one after the next after the next, and though his elemental training insisted that Ventyr temper his deepening impatience, he didn’t. The whirlwind of fire and air storming through him felt too good, too rare. Most importantly it felt too powerful. Alongside Minkus’ rejuvenating magic, that swelling storm inside was the only thing keeping Ventyr’s battered body moving.

That of course, was not to say that Minkus’ contribution was small. Somehow the asura was not only running them out of the complex but also funneling his innate healing into both Ventyr and Yissa in an effort to prepare them for what came next. He said it wasn’t a problem, but Ventyr knew enough about magic to know better.

The winds through the complex continued, until at last they reached the main hall. It was a tall, diamond-shaped corridor that Ventyr remembered from the moment just before he’d been passed from the humans to the asura and blindfolded. He embraced his anger at the injustice, focusing his attention on the daylight he could see growing at the end of the corridor. He’d been much too long in this darkened pit of a facility.

“Once we’re outside,” he said between breaths as he worked to keep pace with Minkus, “we need to search for any form of transport that may contain that jade.”

Minkus slowed, nearing the door that led to the outside world. Ventyr caught sounds of conflict in the distance.

“Transport?” Minkus asked. Hands to knees, he panted. It was the first he’d really shown of the toll his efforts were taking on him. “You mean— like a wagon?”

“Is there a wagon outside?”

“Yes, sir,” Jindel confirmed, approaching from the rear of the pack. “The whole load of asura out there were gathered around a wagon when we came in. You think they actually have this stuff on a plain, old wagon?”

The bark of Ventyr’s brow shifted, furrowing. It was a reasonable question. With the myriad technologies these asura had at their disposal, why would they transport the most destructive anti-personnel weapon they had on some ordinary, animal-drawn cart? For that matter, why were they transporting it at all, and to where? He honestly wasn’t sure he’d get answers to all those questions, but he could get at least one.

Ventyr slipped past Minkus to the open doorway, taking in the scene outside. His eyes focused, pupils narrowing to handle the afternoon sunlight.

What in Tyria was going on out there? The others had tried to explain the outside circumstances to him as they’d swept through the complex, and what he saw was roughly what they’d described. And yet, it was also so much stranger to see it himself.

The basic layout of the space was as he remembered it: a broad strip of open land, dissected by a single dirt road and hemmed in on both sides by a row of asuran structures, one of which he was currently inside. The buildings across the way were multiple stories tall, built directly into the bluffs behind them, and capped with diamond-shaped pinnacles that were even more ominous now that he’d been a prisoner beneath them. To his surprising satisfaction, one of those buildings was now on fire. Perhaps fate’s justice would bring this whole place to the ground.

Between the two rows of buildings, a skirmish was well under way, and that was what deserved his attention. Just as the others had said, the conflict appeared to be between the Inquest and a human group positioned mostly at points north of them, up the ravine. It served to reason that these were Veritas’ thugs, and judging from fallen bodies dotting the landscape, they were winning. Many of the dead and injured asura appeared to have been unarmed.

Amid it all, there were two wagons, not just the one that he’d been told about. One sat nearer to them, in the road at the southern end of the facility. That one was stacked high with crates and had only one asura positioned at its defense. The other was farther north, at the heart of the conflict, and it was hard to make out its load, but two small teams of humans positioned themselves against it, and only a handful of asura defended it.

“Someone tell me what’s happening here,” Ventyr said, eyes locked on that northern wagon.

When he received no reply, Ventyr looked back to the people encircling him. They exchanged uncomfortable looks.

“We don’t really know, sir,” Jindel finally answered. “This fight broke out about the time we made our entrance.” Her face hardened. “The bandit who killed Crusader Braxus has something to do with it, but that’s all we have.”

At the mention of Razorfist, Ventyr clenched his jaw. Even that hurt.

“What do we know about that wagon?” He asked, pointing to the vehicle nearest them. They had to determine which one, if either, held the jade. Then they had to burn it to ash.

Crusader Jindel opened her mouth again, but Ventyr cut her off, raising a finger of silence before gesturing again. There was movement on the other side of the southern wagon.

The one asura he’d spied at the defense of the four-wheeled cart waved, flagging down a small cohort of other asura and a domed golem that rushed out of a darkened doorway on the other side of the courtyard. The golem went to the front, where one asura lashed the wagon’s reins onto its back, and the additional asura either pushed to get the wagon moving or jumped on board. The newcomers held some manner of weapons or tools, but he couldn’t make out what they were.

Wheels creaked into motion, and Ventyr saw his window for action closing quickly.

“On me,” he instructed, stepping out into the open. “We stop that wagon.”

Jindel was the first beside. “What about Fjornsson, sir?” she asked. “He’s not here yet.”

The sylvari didn’t stop, though. Jindel was right; he’d wanted all the strength they could muster. But their time to worry about tactical disadvantage was over. “We can’t let that jade away from this facility.”

“Jade, sir? How do you know—”

“I don’t,” he retorted preemptively. “But it is on one of those carts, and that one is moving.”

“Ventyr, wait!”

That voice was Minkus. It was urgent and interruptive, and it was Minkus: things that seldom went together. Ventyr stopped, spinning back to scan for trouble. “What is it?” he asked, gaze moving from the corridor to the neighboring buildings and back again. “What’s wrong?”

Ears downturned and eyes wide with alarm, the thick asura made a clear effort to collect himself. “The pack,” he said. “The pack!”

“What?” Ventyr asked.

Minkus turned to Yissa, who was now standing and moving on her own, thanks to Minkus’ channeling. He leaned out to look at her back. “Where is the pack?” he repeated.

“The what?” the scholar asked, eyes red and worn.

“Wait,” Jinkke demanded. She flailed a hand to grab her brother by the chestplate and spin him around, inspecting his back. She spun him back just as quickly, her pale, purple eyes virtually glowing with disbelief. “Big Brother, what did you do with the anti-agony projector?”

Minkus gulped, shoulders rising to his ears in an exaggerated shrug. “I— well, I gave it to Yissa— you know, the first time I found them. I— I thought they might need it.”

“Smoke and sparks!” The sister raked a tense hand through her hair. “You did not— Minkus, that device is our only viable defense against the magic that broke the minds of those creatures.”

Ventyr’s eyes widened. Maybe he could let that golem move the wagon a small distance after all. “What do you mean, defense?” he asked, coming back toward them.

Minkus focused again on Yissa. “Where is it now?”

“Where is what?” she said, returning his desperate gaze. “I know nothing about a projector or a defense or a… pack.” She paused, thoughts coalescing on something before their eyes. “My ears,” she yipped, “that skelk really rattled my processor. Do you mean the backpack you tossed me before leaving the testing facility? Is that what we’re talking about?”

“Yes!” Jinkke said, stepping between the two. “Although it isn’t, strictly speaking, a backpack. The shell is, but the interior houses a prototype technology built explicitly to counteract the mursaat magic at the center of all this madness—the magic from your jade. Our device projects an energy shield that should dissipate any such magic coming into contact with it, in effect defending those inside the shield from precisely what happened to the test subjects we just spent so much energy fending off. It’s based on a design presumably similar to what the Inquest stole from the stacks in Rata Sum, which leads me to believe they have a similar but opposite device somewhere in this facility—well, that and the presence of those brain-addled animals. At least that is the operating theory.”

Yissa squawked, staring wide-eyed at Minkus. “You created a counteragent to a millennia-old magic? I’ve spent my life studying the mursaat, and— I have so many questions, I can’t even decide where to begin. If you…” Her rambling trailed off just long enough for the weight to hit her. “Minkus, that’s what I was holding?!”

“Well, yes,” the bigger asura mumbled. “You were in a room full of that magic, so— well, I thought it would be more helpful— for you to have it, I mean.”

The scholar shook her head as if to rattle something loose. “You threw a leather backpack at me—albeit with that strange, potentially indicative metal cap protruding from the top—and insisted I might need it. Nothing more. No description, explanation, or intended usage. And you sped out the door. How in Zinn’s golem-chassis was I supposed to discern that it was a magitechnical defense against agony magic?”

Minkus looked away, and his sister put a hand to her face before moving it to his shoulder.

The silence lasted a moment. It was space enough for the cries, shots, and clanging of weapons that still reverberated through the ravine to take the stage in Ventyr’s mind again. There would be more of that, he knew, if he didn’t stop it here. A defense against the power of the jade would certainly be an asset, but—

“Well, where is it?” Jinkke asked Yissa, cutting into Ventyr’s racing thoughts again. “The projector is clearly not here, so where did you leave it?”

“Yes,” Minkus chimed, alight with urgency again. “Where is the pack, Yissa? I can— well, I’ll retrieve it.”

“Well…” The female stammered and looked away. “Oh, Alchemy, I left it in the testing lab!” She waggled a defensive finger. “I remind you that I didn’t have the slightest indication that what I held had such a critically specific importance, so I dropped it during the initial tussle, at the rear of the room, beyond the farthest subject chamber. It’s conceivable the ongoing conflict has moved it further, or even damaged it, but as the extent of my knowledge goes—”

“This defense device is back where we started?” Ventyr spat. Jaw tight in disbelief, he inspected all three of them at once. “Where we just left Crusader Yult to handle Kikka’s golem? We have a tool to protect us from madness, and we left it there?”

None of them looked away from him, but only Yissa responded. “Yes, Sergeant. I’m afraid— well, that is the situation.”

Ventyr slammed his staff into the dirt. He could feel the calm of the earth’s grounding just beyond the butt of the weapon, just beneath his own feet, and he didn’t care. There was no time for a return through the complex, to the test chambers and back again. He’d given this notion a chance, and now he knew: however useful it could have been, it would not work. That was the end of it.

“We have no time,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Crusader Jindel as he turned back toward the vehicle moving along the road. “We’re stopping that wagon without it.” She’d remained notably silent throughout the exchange, and now, though shrugging uneasily, she gave a submissive nod.

Minkus pleaded something awkwardly, but it was too late. Hot wrath warmed Ventyr’s wrists and wreathed his mind as he turned his walk into a jog. They could do whatever they wanted, but he had to do what was necessary.

Valliford moved up alongside him, and he couldn’t sense anyone else in their proximity. He wasn’t surprised, though. Just maybe they would retrieve it and return in time to be of use, but Ventyr couldn’t bank on that. He knew what forces he actually had at his disposal.

He glanced again at the young soldier beside him and pointed forward. “You engage the asura, and I will stop the golem. Weaponry should be ordinary, but be cautious of the crates until the combatants are neutralized. We don’t know what’s in them.”

“Sir,” she asked, gritting her teeth at her own question, “are you sure we can’t wait for them to —”

He quieted her question with only another glance, and she nodded reluctantly, drawing a pair of axes from her belt as the two picked up speed. Those caught his attention. Jindel has preferred daggers on their last mission, and these new weapons, these hand axes, were of a peculiar design. Actually, their intricate, almost woven steelwork looked a lot like the ones Crusader Braxus had used.

He breathed deeply, letting that recognition, and many memories like it, wash through him, fueling him. Crusaders Pypp, Alayna, Vulmos, Keaste, Dulf, and Braxus—even the lionguard at Arterium Haven—he flooded his mind with them all, and the anger they kindled burned away the complaints of his dry, weary, nearly naked body.

Wind pushed at Ventyr’s back, and he gained even more speed, his eyes fixed on the wagon.