Vigor Mortis

Chapter 102: Stealth Mission

It's time to attack.

After learning that Sky is most likely going to attempt to cause a perception event, we pulled out all the stops. The last tenday has been nothing but plans, intelligence gathering, and preparation. Penelope bought about three dozen tracking dogs, which I then killed and put inside the bodies of rats. Risen are pretty much exactly as intelligent as they were in life, and we needed animals smart enough to follow relatively complex orders but small enough that nobody would pay them enough attention to figure out that they were dead. The dog-rat undead squad, with Vitamin acting as their coordinator and commander, was tasked with scouring the sewers to locate wherever it is that Capita teleports metal from, or failing that, any sort of organized collection of people or supplies underground. The fact that theyre mine helps a lot with communicating complex ideas, since my orders more or less transcend language barriers. We didn't have to retrain the dogs in order for them to understand exactly what I wanted. Two days ago, we hit paydirt, and found an artificial tunnel extending out from and far below the sewers where Sky's minions have made a base. We directed the whole dog-rat swarm down there, and soon enough they reported someone matching Capita's description, or at least someone matching the best description we could give a dog. A bit more stalking and we have our best guess on where she teleports the metal from.

For our purposes, it's good enough.

The plan is simple: when Penelope and Sky meet up to do the biomancy treatments, she'll stall him as long as possible while Lyn, Rowan, and I descend underneath the city to ambush and murder Capita. I'm going, obviously, because I can kill her instantly if I get close enough. Rowan is going because he can make us invisible and inaudible, which should make getting close trivially easy. Lyn is going because she's stubborn as fuck. Ostensibly, she's there as additional muscle in case things go wrong, but I'm pretty sure she's just pissed off and wants to see Capita die. When I told her the reason she's scared of Capita is that Capita soulfucked her, well rage is a powerful way to stave off fear.

Anyway, once Capita is my Revenant she can show us where the metal is and start reversing all the work shes done. Skys plans will be ruined, the city will be saved, and we will be heroes that cant tell anyone that any of it ever happened without getting our asses absolutely fried by the uproar that would follow.

Plus, we wouldnt get to keep all the metal.

So heres the sewer map, and heres the tunnel map, Vitamin says, handing two sheets of paper over to me. Theyre about as to-scale as I could make them, which isnt very but it should be good enough.

"Great job, Vitamin!" I praise her, handing the papers off to Rowan and scooping her up into a huge hug.

"Damn, Vita," Lyn says. "I wish I had a daughter this talented. How did you raise her so well?"

"Memory cloning," I answer, giving her soul an annoyed poke. "Also, rude."

"Remus did this kind of thing a lot for the hunter's guild," Vitamin answers, shrugging as best she can while caught in my deadly cuddle grip.

Oh yeah, Remus. I haven't seen the man that trained me to be a hunter since Litia.

"What happened to him, anyway?" I ask.

"Penelope says he got charged with gross negligence," Vitamin answers hesitantly. "I think he's a slave for the Army now or something? At least for the duration of the sentence."

I try to hide my surprise, not actually expecting to have gotten an answer. I don't really think much about how Vitamin technically has all of Remus's memories. I suppose I can absolutely see her asking Penelope about it when I'm not around. In the way that Penta is me and Penelope, Vitamin is me and Remus, even if she had hardly any time to integrate with either of us. It's odd to think about, and I vaguely recall Vitamin calling Remus her dad when we first met at which point I told her not to do that, which might explain why she's never talked about him with me around.

"If you want, I can see if there's some way we can go talk to him sometime," I tell her. "I'm sure it would be kind of awkward, and we obviously can't tell him who you are, but"

"Yes please," Vitamin says quickly. "I'd like that."

"Okay, we will!" I promise her.

"Also, um, while we're at it," Vitamin starts, snuggling extra close to me, "can I come with you guys? I promise I can help!"

"No, Vitamin," I tell her firmly. This isn't the first time she's asked. "You were a super big help coordinating the Risen for me, but it's too dangerous to bring you into a fight. If you get hurt, we can't heal you."

"You're not even bringing Penelope," Vitamin pouts. "You won't be able to heal yourself either."

"Well, we don't plan to fight at all anyway. The fewer people with us, the better. Rowan will have his work cut out for him just keeping the three of us invisible. You know this."

She nods glumly, leaving me surprised that she's put up so much resistance. It's not unprecedented for my Revenants to argue with me, especially when they are trying to act in what they see as my best interest. It's still a bit weird, though. Ninety percent of the time, they just snap to follow my orders. They do so, however, partially because my power explicitly compels them to but largely because theyre forced to consider me more important than anything else. It might even be possible for Revenants to outright disobey me if they believe I'm working against my own best interest, which well, I dont know how I feel about that. On one hand, it represents a lesser degree of control over them, which makes me uncomfortable. On the other hand, Im fully aware that being uncomfortable that I have less control over sapient individual people is messed up, and emphasis on the fact that Revenants are still indeed people is somewhat refreshing.

With those thoughts out of the way, Lyn, Rowan, and I descend into the sewers from the secret exit in our house. Vitamin's map really is well-drawn, and with Rowan focusing on making the three of us invisible and me on making us inaudible, we soon find the entrance to the tunnel system even further below the city than the sewers. I wonder how all of it was made. Given what I've seen of Sky's absolutely crazy talent, it's possible that he could just fly through the ground and carve through rock with nothing but pure kinetic force, but when I mentioned this theory Rowan pointed out that you can't just bore into the ground in any random direction and expect the resulting cave to be safe to travel in. Unless Sky happens to have experience as a professional miner or has a bunch of them in his gang, he probably didn't make any of this, merely found it.

Ultimately though, the origin of these tunnels doesn't really matter. There arent any torches or other things to see by, but that doesnt matter because Rowan can just create light and using my soul sense we make sure that we don't run into anyone. It's slow going, but after about an hour of following Vitamin's map, I finally feel our target.

"Well the good news is Capita is down here," I report.

It doesn't really matter how much we talk, since the three of us are in my silence bubble.

"That's great!" Lyn says. "Let's shank her. What's the bad news?"

"I feel Sky with her," I say. "Something must've gone wrong with Penelope's half of things."

"Well, that fucking sucks, but the backup plan is just to kill them both now, isn't it?" Lyn asks. "Just Sky first instead of Capita."

It is indeed, but the problem is that the backup is a much worse plan. Getting Sky and Capita individually was the goal because they are each individually quite dangerous. If things go wrong, we dont want them fighting together, we want to be ganging up on them in something thats still unfairly stacked in our favor. This is far from ideal, but if I'm being honest with myself my main objection is that I'm worried about Penelope. Her sessions with Sky normally last longer than this, and today Penelope was even using all her charm to try and keep him there. Which, okay, I'll admit that on a good day Penelope's charm is about the same as a giant, venomous snake that happens to have large breasts, but I have it on good authority that Sky does at least like breasts. He also really likes Penelope's treatments, so if he left in a hurry there's a good chance he's attending something particularly important or, in the worst-case scenario, he figured Penelope out, she's in danger, and we're compromised.

Of course, since were most of the way there already, if Penelope is in danger its probably more expedient to just make Sky into a Revenant and have him tell us where she is.

Okay, I agree. Lets pick up the pace a little.

We move into a brisk jog, Rowan grumbling a little but not outright objecting. About five minutes later, were close enough that we slow back down, and shortly afterwards we finally see light other than our own. Rowan stops illuminating us and we descend into near-perfect invisibility, undetectable except by smell, taste, touch, danger senses, miscellaneous talent-based detection methods okay, too many things, really. Penelope, Margarette, and Theodora worked their asses off trying to figure out an animancy spell (because it would have to be an animancy spell) to render someone undetectable by danger senses, but they had no luck. The upshot is that the average person's danger sense is somewhere around twenty yards, if that, and I can feel whenever someone else senses me. Sky absolutely does not have a danger sense, not unless he's also somehow immune to the feeling of dread I inflict on people. Same for Capita. He does, however, likely have lots of people in his employ that are capable of the trick, and because my fear aura makes me distinct they will most likely warn him the moment they sense me.

At that point, it's just a matter of whether or not I can get close enough before Sky notices. If it comes to a fight well, Penelope and I prepared for this. I have a few tricks up my sleeve, even if Im loath to use them.

We creep forward, and the tunnel opens up into a cavern, about two hundred feet from end to end in any direction. Many other tunnels connect to this room, some with doors but most just haphazardly placed around the perimeter, with people occasionally moving in and out. Most of the room seems to be a storage center, a hub of crates and barrels full of likely-illegal goods that the roaming gang members are moving, counting, transporting I don't know, gang stuff I guess.

Sky and Capita are of course also here, chatting animatedly with each other. I see Capita giggle, placing a hand on each of Sky's cheeks and mushing his face around like a baby. He reacts with halfhearted protest, causing her to laugh harder before pulling him in for a hug. Sure enough, Sky does seem to be starting to grow a beard, though currently it's pretty light and patchy. Still, good for him. Too bad it will all be pointless when I murder him, since I'm just going to give him another man's body instead of trapping him back in his own. Hopefully that will mellow him out.

That and the mind control, I mean.

My musing comes to a stop when I get within about five feet of one of the two men standing to either side of the tunnel exit. I don't have any choice in the matter, the opening to the cavern isn't wide enough for us to get any further away. But of course, the man seems to have a weak and short-range danger sense, his soul reacting with terror immediately when I step inside his radius.

Unfortunately for him, my tentacles are longer-ranged, and I have a shard prepared. In a single fluid motion, I kill him, stuff his soul with a piece of mine, and shove it back into place. He dies standing, body staggering only slightly as undeath claims him. He stands up straight again, overcome with confusion. His partner glances at him briefly, raising an eyebrow. From his perspective, it must have looked like the other man nodded off for a moment.

"You good?" the living guard asks.

I invisibly move towards my new Revenant, getting him close enough to include him in my silence bubble.

"You will act like everything's fine," I order him, then quickly step away.

"Everything's fine," my Revenant repeats, giving his partner a thumbs up, and we continue into the room.

Holy shit, Rowan whispers, even though no one else could hear us even if he shouted.

I shudder, half with terror and half with pleasure. I didnt quite think that would work, and as tempted as I am to do it to the other guard we would run the risk of him collapsing fully before my shard takes hold, which would cause a commotion we cant afford. Rowan has seen Revenants made by me before, even lives with one, but only now does he really seem to realize the instantaneous and effortless control I constantly hold myself back from exerting en masse. Lyn is similarly chilled by the demonstration, although her reaction is mitigated by significant undercurrents of pride.

From there, we have a relatively straight shot to Sky. The majority of the gang works around the perimeter of the cavern, leaving a wide open space in the middle between where we happened to enter and Sky's position closer to the far wall. Slinking as swiftly as we can, careful not to disturb rocks on the ground or step in puddles, we close the distance. It feels like things can't possibly be this easy. We are all waiting for the moment when things go wrong, when one of us makes a mistake, when something unexpected turns everything upside down.

We aren't disappointed.

Somewhere around the fifty yard mark, Sky casually glances in our direction, as if expecting to see something. He does a double-take at the apparent nothingness before him, glancing around a bit before seeming to return to his conversation with Capita. I, of course, can feel his soul so I grab Rowan and start leaping to the side immediately. In a single, swift motion, Sky points in our direction, rips a shard of rock out of the ground, and fires it at us with a deafening crack. I barely manage to get Rowan and I out of the way, but Lyn dodges the opposite direction and ends up outside Rowan's range for the invisibility spell, suddenly popping into view.

Well, plan B I guess. I leap away from Rowan, also becoming visible in order to take attention off of him. Lyn and I have a decent chance of dodging death by Sky, but Rowan does not. Thankfully, he knows his role is over, and quickly moves away, trying to get outside of whatever radius Sky can detect us in. Considering that he's a kineticist, my guess is that he has some sort of kinetic sense, but we were banking on it being as short-ranged as the rest of his powers seem to be. Well, short ranged beyond the fact that he can just accelerate nearly anything into a deadly projectile.

"Hello, Vita!" Capita greets me happily, waving fervently.

Oh wow, she actually used my name. I dodge another lethal shot from her boyfriend, barely managing to throw my body away from the direction he's pointing before the attack comes out.

"Hey, Capita!" I shout at her, mostly because my hearing is slightly fucked.

How are you doing today!? she shouts back, likely for no other reason than because I did.

The question is weird enough to put me off balance a little, although thankfully I still manage to dodge Skys next shot.

"...You know we're here to kill you, right?" I ask her.

She gives me a pleasant smile, mana gathering around me where there will no doubt soon be a chaos magic implosion. I leap out of the way, and Lyn, substantially faster than even me, turns on Capita instantly, knife going for her throat.

"That's a poor reason not to greet family," Capita chides playfully, then teleports Lyn into the middle of the implosion.