Iron Writer: Iso Belle, pt. 1
Isobel rode the strand like a Western cowboy bareback on a bronco fifty times her size. Vocally she was silent, but inside she ran a string of expletives that would have made a Nikeahn sailor blush with shame. She cursed her luck for ever having been born. She cursed Carlos Bichass for chasing her away from her native Roan with his promises to make her Queen. And she cursed the rust bucket she was currently trying to spread a long-closed Strand with.
That last one she cursed the most.
And why was she doing it? All for the love of money. And the desire for power. And, of course, to prove she could.
Little Isobel, delicate and sweet little Isobel, good for nothing but to look at and to be bride to the great Carlos Bichass. The young, raven haired woman fingered the Celpo needlegun holstered at her side. She`d show them all before she was done.
Space around the little tin tug screamed in agony as it was made to do something magic had sealed it from doing a millennia ago. Isobel had to hold a leather-clad fist to her eyes to block out the blinding light. She`d been ill-prepared for all of this, from the light the first time she pressed through the Strand, to the strange and somewhat backwards cultures on Aryth, to the oppressing, depressing nature of being alone in space.
She was Celpo now, though. And she had her mission to keep her company.
After the transgression into normal space, she set the controls on her rust bucket of a ship to auto pilot, and checked the two vials of water clipped to her belt. The glass was smooth to the touch, and clear. Wax stoppers covered each end, and then a thin coating of lead covered the wax. One vial was marked Tyme, in Isobel`s tiny, precise handwriting. The other was marked Styx.
She`d gone through hell to get the water now contained within the vial labeled Tyme. Almost literally. Since the Arythian Gate had been destroyed, there`d been no contact with the place, so when she got to the River Tyme and found herself surrounded by a rather nasty looking army, she`d known she was in deep shit. She hadn`t been prepared to deal with that. And when they`d busted out with the Leashed Tanes, she`d thought her days were numbered for sure.
She`d ran out of poison needle rounds in the first ten minutes, and had to rely on her gymnastics skills to simply dodge attacks as she made a run for the River. The army, which she could only assume had come from the East, had not been happy about her presence there. While she ran for the River Tyme and then carefully gathered her small vial of those mystical waters, the Easterners had captured her vessel.
The blood weighed heavily on her mind, and moreso on her spirit. Isobel didn`t like to kill. She`d been taught that anger and hatred were wrong her entire life, been brought up to believe that raising a hand against another sentient being was tantamount to murder. Shades of gray. In Aryth though, she`d thrown gray out the window and slaughtered fifteen De`Lay`Krinn warriors. She`d been unable to unleash their three Tanes, and feared they would probably die of exposure or starvation before the Easterners found them again.
How had she taken out fifteen hardened warriors while avoiding their magic-weilding pets? She`d turned the tug`s engines on by remote control from a good hundred meters back. The Easterners had been little more than bone and ash within minutes. The Tanes had been left on perimeter guard, and so had been spared.
Fifteen lives, maybe eighteen. That was an expensive little vial of water. And she wasn`t done yet.
She`d learned about the Bastille from Celpo intelligence. She chuckled at the thought of it, as the giant prison station came into visual range. She`d always wondered how Carlos would handle the crown, and now she supposed she had her answer: he was flailing. In an effort to keep off the assassins, he`d constructed this behemoth in space. It was meant as a deterrent: any who made a transgression against the throne would find themselves clapped in irons in orbit with no hope of parole.
It was also something else, though. The Celpo had somewhat indistinct reports of a new voidship drive that had been developed elsewhere, possibly in Esper, and then produced in Carrion orbit, using the Bastille as a sort of staging yard. As a whole, the organization was unconcerned. Who needed a stardrive when you could just hop a Strand and be there in a couple minutes? Praxer himself had written it off as a waste of time. Isobel had a different opinion.
She was working on a project called Darkwater. The mission protocol was simple, one line. "If the indigenous myths regarding the existence of four unique mana producing rivers are indeed true, it would be in the best interests of Celpo to acquire samples of these waters."
It had been some time after Isobel`s induction into the Celpo when she first learned of Project Darkwater. She`d gone to her betters with a vial of water from the Styx, which had been enough proof of the existence of the other two rivers for the Celpo to assign her. She was expendable, afterall. If she perished in the pursuit of the mission, so what? And if she succeeded, some curious questions would be answered.
The River Styx had been easy. But then a problem presented itself. The River Tyme and the River Styx were in the Web of Worlds. The Styx wasn`t well known, and had fallen from past grandeur into being little more than a muddy stream in a small gorge, but it was in the web. The Arythian Gate had been destroyed, but there were ways. Ways proven by King Derik Nadair Pendouris Guardia I, and well documented by the Celpo.
These other two rivers, these rivers nobody even knew existed, were somewhere else. Isobel was chasing a whisper in a storm. In the infinity of space and time, somewhere existed her objective. Maybe. That was all she knew.
If she was to have any hope of finding the waters of Pearl and Fate, this Flat Earth Drive, this Omnibus Stardrive, was to be that hope.
Isobel rammed her tug into the side of the Bastille, screaming a whoop as she did so. The Celpo taught stealth and believed stoutly in secrecy. Isobel listened, but she preferred a much more cavalier approach. The tug made a crunching noise as it smashed into the hard nickel-core asteroid that the Bastille was built into.
When she was satisfied that the tug had plowed solidly enough into the prison, Isobel tapped out a series of commands on the ship`s systems control board. She cracked a small smile, checked her holstered needlegun again, and spoke a simple phrase that would set this whole thing in motion, "Computer, release the neuro-toxin."
Iron Writer: Iso Belle, pt. 2
The neuro-toxin was not of infernal design, but it was of Celpo. And that was good enough for Isobel`s plans. As soon as she had issued the command to the minuscule ship computer, she`d pulled a small mask from the satchel at her waist.
The beauty of designing your own toxins was that you subsequently had the exact chemical map of the compound, and countering the effects was then incredibly easy. The mask that would keep the toxin from reaching Isobel`s brain was black, and less than a millimeter thick. It fit the lower part of her face and nose like a glove.
She`d rammed the tug into the part of the Bastille that was still asteroid for two reasons. The first was that just below the surface at many points lay the air ducts and oxy-scrubbers that made life in space viable -- a perfect place to deploy a neuro-toxin. The second reason was the apparently the proximity sensors on the middle asteroid portion were few and far between. So she stood a very good chance of not tripping any alarms until she was too far into the structure to be stopped.
This is what she banked on the most, as she leapt from the nose of the tug into the air ducts it had pierced. When she had struck the Bastille with the tug, the tug had simultaneously plugged the whole it had made. As long as it was there, the air would remain inside the Bastille. That`s what she banked on second most, because running back to the tug while holding her breath was not high on her list of favorite things to do.
So with utmost speed and stealth, Isobel ran hunched over down the lengths of air ducting. She climbed any ladder she could find, because she knew that the thing she was looking for lay in the high upper levels of the Bastille, above the portions used to house prisoners of the crown. When she saw that she was no longer in ducts that passed through asteroid, she kicked out and access panel and leapt through.
She landed with the grace of a jungle cat, and had her needle gun in hand in the same fluid movement. The precaution proved unnecessary, however, because when she gave the corridor a quick sweep she found nothing but men keeled over in the throes of pain. The were not dead, but when they woke up hours later they might well wish they were.
No longer in any immediate danger, Isobel holstered her needle gun and set off down the corridor at an easy pace. She acted as if she owned the place, because at the moment she might as well have. By now, the neuro-toxin would have permeated the entire structure, unless the overseers of the compound had seen it coming and sealed off either the extreme top or bottom. But even if they had, what did that matter to Isobel? Without masks of the exact same composition as Isobel`s, anyone who entered the contaminated areas would instantly keel over and feel like his head had just been blown off and mailed to Foo, via express MogNet service.
The Celpo had acquired detailed schematics of the Bastille before construction had even been finished, and before leaving on her mission Isobel had committed every last detail to memory. She used this knowledge now to find the shortest route between her entry to the prison portion of the space station and the upper levels where the prototype stardrive would be. Everything had gone according to plan, better than she`d ever hoped, until she turned a corner and a nasty-looking energy weapon was pointed directly in her face.
"Celpo?" she asked.
The barrel of the energy cannon lowered slightly, and Isobel saw that her first guess had been wrong. The man who`d caught her unawares was hardly a man at all. He was tall, taller than her anyway, but had a fresh look about him that very few managed to carry past their teens. His hair was a bright, messy, shock of red placed haphazardly on his head, his face long and pale, his expression somewhat bemused. The boy`s clothes were was really threw her though. He was wearing jeans, and a green, hooded sweatshirt that said "Dyluck Good Band" on the front.
Hardly the apparel of a prison guard, or of an inmate.
"No," the boy said, his tone jovial while his ice-blue eyes remained cold. "Are you?"
Isobel realized her slip. In her wild hopes that her captor was one of her own number, she`d let it be known who she worked for. A definite indiscretion. "No," she said. "I am Isobel of Fenwyr, and I work alone." After that, she clamped her red lips into a thin, pale line.
The boy laughed.
"Well, Isobel of Fenwyr. I am Run, and I believe you have some things to answer to."
"I will answer nothing," Isobel snapped. "You can torture me to my death, or leave me in a state very near death for as long as you like -- I will answer nothing. And as far as answers go, why aren`t you passed out? This neuro-toxin should have knocked you out cold."
Run`s bemusement seemed to pass, and Isobel couldn`t tell whether he was angry or worried. The way he leveled the energy cannon on her though, she was banking on angry.
"Everyone is passed out because of a neuro-toxin then? Blast it all, you may have blown my cover, wretched girl. I was just beginning to enjoy this life, too! If I have to go back because of you. . ."
Isobel didn`t like the way the boy`s eyes looked, then. It was if cogs and sprockets of demonic design were turning just inside his prison of flesh, and they had just clicked into place, sealing her fate.
"The mask must be why you are not effected," the boy reasoned, cocking his head slightly to the right. "I will take you to my uncle -- and when he sees me, the mask will be why I am unaffected, as far as he is concerned. You will be my prisoner, at that point. Goodnight, Isobel of Fenwyr."
Run`s hand whipped out then, with a speed greater than Isobel had thought possible. It snatched off her mask, and as the thin thing came off it felt like her head had gone with it. For the briefest of moments she saw violently exploding lights.
Then she was lying on an uncomfortable couch in a very utilitarian room, and it felt like somebody was trying to pack sand into her head via her ear. She shook her head to try and rid herself of the sand, but that only made it feel like the sand had been replaced by an icepick. She felt that trade was something less than equitable, so she stopped the motion.
The gray room gradually began to attain pale colors, though the most of it remained a flat, lusterless, gunmetal color. The swimming shapes then formed themselves into Carlos Bichass, sitting at a large metal desk. This Carlos Bichass looked much older than the one she remembered though, and he also looked as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. In a way, she supposed, it did.
"I guess it would be asking too much to hope that you`d gotten my email and come to visit," Carlos asked, his dark eyes sad.
"What email?" Isobel asked, holding her head. She was holding it because the thought if she let go it might fall off and roll across the floor.
"Nevermind," Carlos said. He stood slowly and walked around his desk to sit on it. "You look well, Is. You have no idea how good it is for me to see you again. So. . . Run tells me you`ve hooked up with the Celpo. I hadn`t expected that from you, but I can`t say I`m really surprised. You`d always do anything just to prove you could, wouldn`t you Is?"
"I work alone," Isobel said. Then her expression softened somewhat. "Don`t try and get me to tell you anything, Carl. I`d kill you first."
"Ouch."
"Yeah, well, I`m not the same girl you knew before you left for University. I`m all grown up, and I`ve got stuff to do."
Carlos shook his head. "Stuff like breaking into my prison station? Huh, Isobel? Stuff like stealing from the Crown of Roan? Stuff like that?"
"Well, I. . ."
Carlos cut her off, and lifted something from behind his desk. Something large. Something familiar. It was the energy cannon Run had pointed at her. Carlos hefted the thing, seeming to admire it`s weight -- while Isobel admired the strength Carlos had acquired since their last meeting -- and then tossed it across the room to Isobel.
"Is this what you were looking for?" the King of Roan asked.
The weight of the cannon nearly knocked Isobel over, but she grunted and managed to support it before setting one end on the floor. She glared death at Carlos, but said nothing.
"Run had it when he brought you in a couple hours ago. He said he was trying to keep it safe, in case you had any others with you. I don`t trust him though. He was probably trying to steal it himself in the confusion, when he ran into you."
"You don`t trust your own nephew?" Isobel asked, her eyebrows knit. "And come to think of it, I thought Adelaide was your only sister, and she`s way too young to have a boy Run`s age."
Carlos nodded. "He`s adopted. And there`s something. . . not quite right about him. I can never place a finger on what, though."
"He seems like a somewhat unsettling person," Isobel agreed.
Carlos stared into her eyes for a moment. "Isobel. . ." he said, before trailing off. He stared for a moment longer, and Isobel felt butterflies well up in her stomach. She saw what was coming in his eyes.
"Please don`t," she whispered, too softly for anyone to hear unless their ear were pressed to her lips.
She whispered it far too softly for Carlos to hear, and the young king fell to his knees from the desk. His head turned upwards to her, his expression desperate, pleading. "Isobel. . ." he said, his hands clasped. "Isobel, please come back to me. I love you more than I love myself. I love you more than I love Roan. Please. . . what will it take? I`ll do anything, Is." Here he reached up and took her limp hands in his. "I`ll give up Roan for you. I`ll give up the crown, and we can go anywhere you like."
Isobel was silent, and she looked away.
Carlos`s voice became tremulous. "Is, please. Please, I know you love me."
Isobel looked back to the young king, her childhood sweetheart. She shook her head.
Carlos fell back, as if struck, his face lit in horror. "No," he said. "You do, I know it. I know you love me, Isobel. I know it! If you don`t, then say it."
Isobel physically forced the emotion from her eyes, from her expression. She washed herself in the cool, calculating, sterile nature of the Celpo. "Carlos," she said, primly. "I do not love you."
She could not. She was Celpo: she could not afford to love.
Still, it hurt her to see Carlos this way. The young man stumbled to his feet, looking as if his best friend had just died. And maybe in his eyes, she had. He stumbled to the door, his motions making it seem as if he no longer cared about anything. A soft clicking noise told that he had unlocked the door, and he turned to face Isobel.
"Then go," he said. "If you don`t love me. . . then go. In my heart of hearts, I was always afraid you didn`t love me. I always knew I wasn`t good enough for you. Even with the crown of Roan on my head, I`m not good enough. Take the stardrive, too. If you`d rather have it than me, then take it. I`d rather you have it than Run, anyway."
Isobel hefted the cumbersome stardrive, which looked like a hand held energy cannon. She crossed the room to Carlos, and place a hand on his shoulder. He shrugged it off. She looked in his eyes, and said his name.
He turned his back.
And she knew it was time to go.
The way back to her tug was clear. It seemed that Carlos`s self-loathing had proven clairvoyant, in this case. The only explanation for her unobstructed path was that the King had purposefully cleared the way. When she reached the bottom of the upper prison section, she climbed back into the air ducting, and pulled the stardrive in behind her.
She was surprised to find three technicians standing in front of the tug. They wore voidsuits and held a large piece of plasteel, but did not look at her. She didn`t blame them. She`d just shafted their king. She tossed the stardrive into the tug, and then turned to the nearest technician.
"You," she said. "Tell King Bichass. . . tell him, tell him that I think he is a good King, and that he would be an even greater Emperor. And tell him that hope springs eternal."
And then she leapt into the tug herself, sealed the rust bucket off and slowly backed out of the Bastille. There was a short burst of crystallized air when the tug left the hole, but it stopped almost as soon as it began. The technicians had sealed the hole with their plasteel.
That portion of Isobel`s mission had most certainly not gone according to plan. She set the autopilot to bring her out past the Carrion asteroid belt, and moved back to the engine section to begin wiring in the stardrive. She had gone to the Bastille expecting to walk away with the stardrive, but she had certainly not expected to meet there with Carlos Bichass, a living phantom of her past.
And even then, she had not expected to break his heart. When he`d given her the stardrive and let her go free, everything had gone straight out the window. She`d never expected something like that from Carlos. It had thrown her. But then she realized something: the man truly loved her. If he thought she`d be unhappy with him, then all he wanted was for her to be happy elsewhere.
"Thanks, Carl," the Celpo agent muttered, as she tried to wire the stardrive into the engines of her own ship.
She`d chosen the tug obviously not for outward appearances, but for the powerful engines that took up the whole back half of the thing and continued on outside of it for half again as long as the little ship was. According to intelligence reports, the testtype engines onboard Omnibus`s Three Ships were self contained. They were thrust, impulse, and stardrive all in one. But the prototype was simpler. It required an external engine to function properly.
Isobel made a mental note to thank Omnibus if she ever met him. The stardrive was proving incredibly easy to wire in. She wasn`t sure if Omnibus had designed it that way or not, but it didn`t really matter. She found the control nodes and the power source and backflush valves, and had the whole thing secured before the tug had even cleared the Carrion belt.
Congratulating herself on a job well done, and on some level fearing what might come next, she kicked back in the pilot`s chair and tossed back a Red Mog. Her head still hurt from the residual effects of the neuro-toxin, but her constant battle to maintain mental clarity was beginning to push that back. The Red Mog cleared her head the rest of the way, and she pushed the thrusters up to redline. She wasn`t sure exactly what would happen when she activated the stardrive, so she wanted to be clear of any large spaceborn objects when she activated it.
She counted down the minutes, she counted down the seconds, she tossed back another Red Mog. And when the time came, she punched it. And then she screamed.
Space distorted around the tug, it stretched like taffy and the tenuous mana that held it together started to snap. Reality burned, and space was set ablaze. What was coming next was coming, and the tug was no longer in the Carrion system.
The tug was no longer in the Web of Worlds.
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Iron Writer: Iso Belle, pt. 3
Isobel took a deep breath to assure herself she still could. For a moment the air inside the tug seemed gummy, but shortly it was back to normal. After first spreading a closed Strand to enter Aryth, and now using Omnibus`s stardrive to go. . . somewhere, she was becoming increasingly grateful towards regular old travel via Gates and Strands.
Her sensors failed to tell her exactly where she was. It was obvious even without them though that this place was not the Carrion system. It was just as obvious that it wasn`t Esper, Mana, Crystal, Gate, Dragon, or even anywhere in the Fringe. She had never been to a place like this.
Space was dark. There were no stars.
"Computer. . . what is our present location?" she asked. She didn`t expect an answer, and she didn`t get one. The main video read out terminal flashed the word "UNKNOWN" and she let out a bone-deep sigh.
In the middling distance was a dark orange sun, and a small blue-green world. According to the legends of her native Roan, Dantic orbited around an orange sun and was a verdant world of blues and greens. She didn`t honestly think that the stardrive would take her to the correct place right from the get go, but stranger things had happened.
Like Bichass letting her walk off of the Bastille untouched.
So she set course for the small planet, and fell into a standard orbit. There was no sign of high technology, though sensors did say that there was a large population on the surface. Only a couple million, small compared to the standards of the Web, but respectable in a world without technology. She located the largest river on the planet, crossed her fingers, and initiated planetfall.
That was the other reason she had chosen the decrepit little tug when preparing for her mission. Most vessels the size of the tug could never hope to make planetfall and subsequently achieve escape velocity. The tug, with her enormous engines, could do both with ease.
The landing was considerably less than four-point though. It was more like three point. The point where the tug smacked into the ground, the point where it bounced about a mile away, and the point where it slid another half a mile and came to a rest on the steps of what looked somewhat like a large city.
When Isobel stumbled out of the tug, she decided it looked somewhat like a very old large city. Old in design and execution though, as it also looked very clean. The whole thing was circled by a tall wall, large as it was. The wall was studded with sentry stations, all manned. This place was either at war, or expecting war.
True to that observation, ten armed men had her surrounded only moments after she left the ship. She scoffed at them. The carried short spears, and wore no armor, but instead were clad in leather vests, short pants and tall boots. They looked almost comical, and the only thing that stopped her laughing was their eyes.
To a man, they had murder in their eyes. And she was the object of their ire, Isobel was certain. If they had more modern armaments at their disposal, Isobel had no doubt that they would have been formidable against any force. They didn`t have those armaments thought, and Isobel was Celpo.
The five nearest men fell with needles protruding from their chests. The sleeping serum contained within the Celpo needles didn`t care how tough they were. Isobel didn`t either, as she ducked and flattened herself to the ground in order to dodge first a flung spear and then three of the men who leapt as one. They collided over her previous position, and Isobel pistol-whipped one of the two who had hung back.
Before she could bring her needlegun to bear once more, the final warrior had her in his powerful arms. At that moment, all of Isobel`s training mattered less than Foo. The man was just too strong for her.
"You`re a strange one, little girl," the grizzled, older man said. He squeezed harder, and Isobel found it difficult to breath. "The Tarantaans send you? No, of course they didn`t. Those monsters`d never let a little strumpet like you out of their hands once they had you. You`re even wrapped up so tight like a little present, aren`t you?"
Isobel`s vision began to fade, and along with the man`s rasping voice she heard a rushing noise, like waves at a beach. She wished for a moment that she was wearing baggier clothing than the tight leather bodysuit she had chosen for the mission. Looser clothing was always easier to twist out of in such a pinch. Better to run away from an assailant minus a shirt, rather than minus your life.
"Those were no mean brutes you took out," the older man continued. "Not even palace guard or agents of the prophetess, no ma`am. Those were Zoneknights, of my own training. Why, if that strange contraption you arrived in didn`t have us so spooked, we`d have smashed both it and you with our Zone Eaters by now. So, were`d you come from, anyway? Boggles the mind."
Isobel wheezed.
"Benton! Let her be!"
That was a feminine voice, strong and imperious. It had the sort of strength Isobel only aspired to. It didn`t have the same sort of tremulous power Isobel was so proud her own had, but it seemed to do the trick. A moment after the other woman spoke, Isobel found herself dropped to the ground.
"Prophetess, it is not safe for you at the city gates. You must return to Sienne Lumarii. Please, your safety is my responsibility."
"Your responsibilities are well known to me, Attendant. Back off from the girl, I wish to examine her."
Through blurry eyes, Isobel saw the imperious woman descend the steps from the palace gate and walk slowly across the craggy ground towards her. She didn`t seem to walk as much as glide, though. When the woman stood directly over Isobel, she saw that she was tall and statuesque, into her middle years but still strikingly beautiful. Her eyes were sad though, as if she were in mourning many times over. Her well-cut gown and robes of black stayed the course on that observation.
"You, girl," she said, going to one knee before Isobel. "What are you called?"
Isobel went up on one elbow. Her strength was beginning to return now that she could breath, but she thought a rib might be broken. "I am Isobel of Fenwyr," she said. "And I work alone."
The woman -- the Prophetess, Isobel corrected herself -- smiled. Despite herself, the smile made Isobel feel warm inside, and the girl found herself smiling back. The Prophetess`s eyes were still sad, but there was a warmth there as well. "Iso Belle," the Prophetess said, offering Isobel a hand. "The Same Girl. I have been expecting you."
Isobel accepted the hand up, and brushed herself off. Her needlegun lay on the ground, some meters distant. "How could you be expecting me?" she asked. "I didn`t know I`d be here until I got here. And where is here anyway?"
"You have come to rest on the steps of Wyndongarr, capital city of Irony on the world called Dantic," said the grizzled older man whom the Prophetess had called both Benton and Attendant. "And do not question the clairvoyance of the Prophetess of Irony, Divine of the Light."
"I. . . I didn`t mean to," Isobel said. She shifted, an awkward motion, and glanced about without moving her head. "What do you mean. . . same girl? The same as what?"
"Why, the same as me," The Prophetess said, as if that were the most obvious thing ever. "The same as my lost daughter, Devon. The same as my nemesis Penance, High Priestess of the Kult of Null, Anox Vi. The same as the archetype of womanhood aspired to by all women everywhere. We cannot all achieve this, you know." She said this last with a small wink.
Isobel was substantially confused. She supposed that most names meant something or other at some point down the line, but she had never thought about hers. She remembered her childhood, her lifetime of trying to prove to everyone that she was different, that she wasn`t common, wasn`t the same. "The same as everyone?" she asked.
The Prophetess shook her head. "No. The same as the best and the rarest. Now, you are the one from my visions I am certain. So you must have the pitcher drawn this morning from the River Pearl, and instructions on how to reach the River Fate. First though, I must counsel you as to the dangers of the road you now walk. None have gone to the world once known as Haje and returned alive. Ever."
Isobel frowned at this woman who seemed to know her deepest, innermost thoughts. She`d heard of something like this once before, while with the Celpo. Supposedly, the nation on Esper called Triangle was ran by a girl called Prophetess who could see the future. Supposedly. Personally, Isobel had doubted it.
Somehow, standing on the steps of Wyndongarr, she felt different though. She felt like she could trust this woman, this Prophetess. "I am well aware of the dangers I have faced, and those that are coming," she said.
The Prophetess chuckled. "Very well then. It bears mentioning though that you have now seen the very last of your help. Once you leave Dantic, you will find nothing but enemies, and those enemies will be the deadliest you have ever met. I can see that you are very determined though. So, first you must take the pitcher." Here, the Prophetess offered over an ornate glass pitcher, filled to the brim with a clean, clear water. "One not born of Irony cannot be allowed to see the Holy River, so I had the watered drawn for you this morning. I assure you, it is pure."
Isobel nodded, and cradled the pitcher. "Yes, I believe you."
"That is good. Because if you don`t, you will never find Haje. Once, Haje and Dantic were connected in much the same way that your Web of Worlds is today. There was travel between our worlds for reasons of commerce, academia, pleasure, all by means of Strands, Gates and Sills. But we. . . fell out of eachothers` favor thousands upon thousands of years ago. Now, only one Strand remains, and it is artificial."
"An artificial Strand?"
"Not exactly, but in practice it is the same. You see, some years ago the Tarantaans summoned Anox Vi from beyond, to help them overthrow Irony. In coming, Anox Vi were allowed to create a small gateway between Haje and Dantic. Without such a gateway, a dimension is closed to them. With it though. . . they can move between worlds with a thought. They have already destroyed every world once linked to Dantic via Strand or Gate."
Isobel`s breath caught in her throat, as she remembered the darkness of space that had surrounded her tug upon arriving here. If all the stars were worlds, and all those worlds had been destroyed. . . "That`s horrible."
"It could be worse," the Prophetess assured her. "Be grateful that the Sills operate differently from Gates and Strands. Otherwise, Anox Vi would have had access to your world some twenty years gone, or more. That is neither here nor there, however. This Strand which leads to Haje lies just on the other side of the Dantic sun, as you travel there from here. Your ship instruments should have no trouble finding it, once you are there.
"I caution you, though. The world Haje. . . it is now called Hajaak Prime, and is home to the dreaded empire of the Hajes, central spoke to their slaved Web. The legends you are no doubt chasing are also true -- the River Fate yet exists on that world, though it is out of phase with the reality of the Hajes. They do not know it is there, nor must they ever learn Anox Vi hides it from them. The war resulting from that discovery would consume all life in all realities."
"I understand," Isobel said, nodding to the Prophetess. "And I came prepared. My vessel. . . It has technologies capable of detecting and accessing phased realities. It was an experiment the Grand Army made during the last days of the Great War. They hoped they would be able to phase bases and ships to hide them from the Dark Wrath until it came time to strike, but it was washed out when they discovered one problem."
"What was that?" Benton asked, obviously intrigued by the talk of war.
Isobel smiled. "Well, the problem with pushing yourself out of phase with reality is you also push yourself out of phase with stuff like air, and ground to stand on."
Benton nodded, gravely. "Yes, those are things one needs to launch an attack."
"Very well, then," the Prophetess said. "If you are ready, then I suggest you go. Beware the dangers of Haje though, Isobel. Come away alive, because I have one task to ask of you."
Isobel paused, and turned back to the Prophetess. She had been walking towards the tug. "Anything, of course."
"If you return to your Web of Worlds and meet my daughter, tell her she is well thought of. Her name is Devon Fait, and I love her very much."
Isobel nodded, and then continued back to the tug. Halfway there, Benton put her needlegun back in her hand. "Be safe in yourself," the Zoneknight said.
"Don`t worry," Isobel said. "I have no intention of dying."
Iron Writer: Iso Belle, pt. 4
Isobel waited for the Prophetess and the Zoneknights to retreat back inside the walls of Wyndongarr, and then lit the powerful engines of the tug. She had secured the pitcher of water from the River Pearl, and also put a sample inside a vial she marked Pearl in her small, neat handwriting. After strapping herself into the secure webbing in the pilot chair, she punched the engines.
With an enormous expulsion of force, the tug blasted off from Dantic and screamed across the system at a breakneck pace. Isobel slowly eased off the thrust engines, and brought the tug around the Dantic sun at a safe distance. Once she had put Dantic out of sight, her instruments lit up.
"Well, I`ll be a moogle`s aunt," she said. "It`s a strand."
There on the instrumentation of the tug sparkled the smallest Strand Isobel had ever seen. It wasn`t capped off like the Arythian Strands were, or the Gate Strands had been during the Rajaat debacle. It was only small. More than large enough to accommodate a ship the size of Isobel`s tug though, and she aimed straight for it.
It was strange. Natural Strands existed at the outskirts of the solar systems of the Web of Worlds. Why would this manufactured Strand of Anox Vi be located so close to a star?
Isobel got her answer when she emerged out the other side. It was close to a star as well, an enormous, bloated, cold, red star. And the system that orbited that star was choked with traffic. Why was the Strand so close to the Dantic sun? Because the corresponding Strand in the Hajaak Prime system was also close to the star there, inside of the chromosphere, to be exact.
The electromagnetic radiation would almost certainly mask the thing -- and any others that might have been there -- from the Hajes. It had another, more immediate effect as well. Isobel became very, very hot.
Then Isobel engaged her thrust engines, and got outside of the Hajes sun just as quickly as she could. The nearest of the Hajes ships were some distance off, and she banked on them not being able to see her small tug. She decided to make the most of this element of surprise, and set a course for Hajaak Prime, just as fast as the little tug`s engines would go.
When she was halfway there, she cursed. One of the enormous Hajes ships had broken formation and set a bearing that would take it directly across her path. As it grew closer, Isobel shuddered. The thing was absolutely monolithic in size, and had an almost organic look to it. It made her want to cry out in fear. She stayed the course though, and initiated evasive maneuvers.
The tug may have looked incredibly clunky, but that outer appearance belied the powerful engines that made it incredibly spry in space. The much large Hajes ship had no hope of following the corkscrew course Isobel set, and eventually ended up flying in the wrong direction. At that moment, Isobel punched it for the planet, and slid her hands over the controls that would activate the jury-rigged phasing equipment.
When she`d first set out on this mission, she hadn`t expected to make it this far. All she`d had to go by were old legends and myths, end even those were sketchy by mythical standards. She`d requisitioned the phasing technology on a whim, and didn`t even know if it would work. It would have to, though, or all of this would be for naught.
As the tug neared Hajaak Prime, a small device mounted on the underside of the nose began emitting a highly energized beam of bosons and mesons, all with identical spin and a strangeness not typical to those subatomic particles.
The theory, according to the GA scientist reports she had read, went along the lines that the natural state of matter was to be in phase. They had postulated that being flooded with particles of very specific specifications would simply make it too difficult to stay out of phase. Isobel crossed her fingers, and began her orbit of the world.
She would only get one sweep, if that, before the ship that had pursued her managed to catch up. She hoped it would be enough.
And it was.
Far below, on the surface of the enormous world, a vast island shimmered into being near the middle of an even larger ocean. Isobel giggled in delight. It had worked! She was about to succeed!
She was made to eat her thoughts when something struck the tug, and it began to lose altitude. "Well," she said. "That`s sure rude. I come in here, show you something that`s been hidden from you for thousands of years, and you shoot at me? Fine. I`ll show you something else then."
At Isobel`s behest, the small tug span around even as it continued a sharp descent into the atmosphere of Hajaak Prime. Then another beam lashed out from the phasing technology. This one was slightly different, however, which was evidenced as the gigantic Hajes ship seemed to be torn apart by light.
The beam had created a localized strangeness field, wherein photons, tachyons, neutrinos and other veritably massless particles acquired a small mass. This caused the particles to decay very quickly, but it also had the very interesting side effect of tearing the Hajes ship to pieces.
Isobel then turned her attentions to guiding the tug safely to ground on the island she had so recently pushed back into phase with the rest of Hajaak Prime. This time she managed a somewhat more respectable landing, if only because she had so much less to work with. She was afraid that the damage done to the tug by the Hajes weaponry might have rendered it impotent as far as further space travel was concerned.
There was no time to worry about that, though. For safekeeping she strapped the three vials she`d already filled to her belt, and palmed a third vial. "You`ve been a good ship," she said. "I hope we`ll get to work together again."
Then she was outside the ship, and running across a flat grassland. In the distance were mountains, and signs of what must have been a river. This was her destination. It had all come down to this; a question of time.
Would she reach the River Fate before the Hajes came to investigate this new continent on the world they once thought to be completely known? Would Anox Vi catch her first? Dimly, she remembered the Prophetess`s warning against allowing the Hajes to see what had been hidden from them.
It was too late for that though. What had been done was done, and all there was left was to press forward, to press on into the night and hope that day would still come. She thought her lungs would burst when she finally fell to her knees at the banks of the river she had been seeking so long. It was wide and deep, and at least as majestic as the River Tyme in Aryth. She thought that she understood the motives of Anox Vi in hiding it.
With a deft motion, she reached down and scooped up a vial full of the crystal clear water there, being careful not to get her hand wet. With the four rivers, there was no telling what direct skin contact might do.
"Hold it right there, child."
The voice froze Isobel`s blood. It was young and fresh, though something about it made the young Celpo Agent`s skin crawl, as if it were only young on the surface. Isobel thought that if you peeled those surface tones back, you`d find some dark beast as old as time and dangerous as all the evils man had ever conceived of. Still, she capped the vial and clipped it to her belt before turning slowly.
In the darkness, a young girl stood there on the bank, facing Isobel. She was taller than Isobel, but so thin as to seem almost insubstantial. Flowing, light green robes hid pronounced curves that were slightly revealed everything the wind changed direction. She was very pretty, and reminded Isobel of nothing so much as a boy she had met earlier on the Bastille.
A boy who had named himself Run.
This girl`s hair was long and flowing though, fine as straw and of a pale red color. It was done up in an elaborate style that Isobel thought could have been achieved only through the machinations of magic. Her expression was one of perturbation.
"You thieve from Anox Vi," the girl said. "And I suspect you are the one who have revealed us to the Hajes. The former deserves nothing less than death. . . but the second will prove to be much more sticky in the end. In fact. . ."
The girl`s eyes suddenly went wide, and she had Isobel by the throat. As she raised Isobel over her head, Isobel dimly thought that she`d never seen the girl cross the distance. She`d just simply been there.
"My brother!" the girl screamed. "What have you done with Marathon? Where is my brother?"
Isobel made a futile choking noise, and clawed at the girl`s hands. "I. . . don`t. . . know. . ."
The girl threw Isobel a distance no less than ten meters, and was standing over her in an instant. "Don`t toy with me," she said, not a hair out of place. "I am Penance, High Priestess of Anox Vi. I am in charge of your entire Web of Worlds, or at least I will be once I deem it time to move. I was not pleased at being recalled to this place, when the Elders saw that you had found your way into the system. But when I saw the face of my brother in your mind. . . it makes me want to kill you, girl. It makes me want to do ever so unpleasant things to you."
Isobel pushed herself backwards, trying to crawl away from Penance on her back. She was riveted on Penance though; she couldn`t look away. Here was a terror, here was a force of nature. Here was Isobel`s death. Here was. . .
"Penance?"
The High Priestess looked surprised that Isobel had spoken. "Yes, that is my name. I just told you that. Now, where is my brother, little girl?"
The Prophetess of Irony had mentioned this girl. She had called Penance her nemesis. This was another of the dangers she had warned Isobel of. . . but in Penance there was something else. Something the same. Something the same as the Prophetess, and the same as Isobel. But what was that thing? What made her the same girl?
"Your brother is. . . somewhere." Isobel smirked. "Here and there. For the life of me, I can`t remember just where I saw him last, though."
"You`re right," Penance said. "For the life of you is about to be drained out. Zealots, destroy the interloper!"
The smirk was wiped off of Isobel`s face, as somewhere between ten and thirty men surrounded her and Penance. She couldn`t count their exact number, because they weren`t entirely there. Parts of them, and sometimes all of them, simply phased in and out, like the pulse of some great, unseen beast. There was a jagged, broken rhythm to it that put fear into Isobel.
They picked her up, and she closed her eyes as their clammy hands ran over her body. This was it. She knew it. This was when she would die. The Prophetess had told her that once she left Dantic, she would leave all hope of help. She had left Dantic, and here was that lack of support. She wouldn`t have stood a chance against Penance alone, and Penance was most certainly not alone.
"You will die a most horrid death," Penance was saying, when Isobel chose to listen again. "The Hajes are already on their way to the island. When they find what we`ve been hiding from them. . . the resulting war will set reality to burn. But you will never live that long. Zealots. . . begin the dissolusionment!"
Isobel screamed out as she felt the clammy hands pass through her limbs. Where they did so, she burned worse than she had ever thought possible. The pain was worse than death. The pain was worse than living.
The pain was crystal, and she knew she would die with all the certainty of her being. She could feel herself dissolving.
"By Deus`s eyes," she sobbed. "Why. . . why now? I`ll never see if the theories about the waters were true. I`ll never. . . I`ll never tell Carlos I was lying." Her back went rigid with the pain, and then she arched it and screamed out in pain. Her words were almost the keening of a dying animal. "Carlos! Damn it all, I was lying Carlos! I always loved you, I love you now and I`ll love you forever. You were. . . you were my one and only."
Dimly, Isobel heard Penance laugh.
That laugh caused an ire to rise from deep within Isobel, from the depths of her soul. As the Zealots slowly dissolved her body and soul, she pulled strength from that anger. That ire gave power to her limbs, and she channeled it into her right arm. Slowly, over the course of an eternity, she reached down and unclipped the vials from her belt.
She didn`t know what the result of her actions would be, but she didn`t care. She was beyond caring. She would die anyway, so why did it matter? She brought the four vials to her lips, bit off the caps and poured the waters past her parched lips.
And she saw.
And she heard.
And she felt.
And she knew.
What she saw was Penance`s expression of horror. What she heard was the rushing sound of the Zealots dropping her like a hot coal. What she felt was the ground slamming into her back, her back that was once again whole. What she knew was that she would not die. She. Would. Not. Die.
"I will not die!" she screamed at Penance. "I WILL NOT DIE!"
Penance fell back, crossing her arms in front of her. A strong wind whipped up, and cast Penance to the ground. "What have you done?" the Priestess asked. "Those weren`t vials from the other rivers. . . they couldn`t have been. What have you done?"
"Only what you have made me," Isobel answered. "Only what I must. And now I know. I know that I cannot run from what I am, and what I must do. What I must do, I will do. You go now."
Isobel gestured at Penance, and the Priestess was blown away into the far distance. Isobel then turned to survey the countryside. The Hajes had already landed on the island, and Isobel could feel what was even now happening there and elsewhere. Soon, Anox Vi would clash with Hajes. Blood would be spilled, and it would flow like all four rivers together. It would flow like the Source, like the Spring of Consciousness. The Spring, which she now knew to exist, with a certainty she had never felt about anything else before.
All that blood, and all because of her unwise actions. She began crying for the lives of all those she had just killed. So many more than fifteen. So very many more.
Then she felt the strength of mana in her, the strength beyond mana. She didn`t know what it was or how long it would last, but it had come from drinking of the four rivers. She closed her eyes, and breathed. She was Iso Belle, but she was no longer just the same girl.
She was every girl.
She breathed, and when she breathed a great Seraphim stood before her. It glistened in the spare light offered by the dying sun of Hajaak Prime. It was humanoid in design, shaped like a woman, with long, tapered legs and arms, and delicate swells at the bosom. It had a crown of tears, and wings of energy folded at it`s back. Intricate patterns were picked out in a light, metallic blue on the white-silver surface of the thing.
And it was called Pneuma.
Isobel opened her eyes and marveled at the creation she had just called to her side. She didn`t have a moment to spare though, and climbed quickly inside of the thing. Once in the cockpit, Pneuma rose slightly off the land of Anox Vi on Hajaak Prime. Isobel smiled, her wounds forgotten. With a thought, the island was rephased. With another thought, the Hajes ships sent to investigate were back where they had been before. With a third thought, it was as if the island had never been uncovered at all.
Unseen by the Hajes, Pneuma effortlessly achieved escape velocity and gracefully swept towards the sun of Hajaak Prime. There, within the Chromosphere, were hidden all the Strands that Anox Vi used to access their conquests. If what Penance had said was true, and Anox Vi now had access to the Web of Worlds, there would be a strand there leading to somewhere in the Web. She had only to pick one.
And she knew it would be right.
As Pneuma entered the Strand, Isobel silently tapped out a long-range encrypted text message to the Celpo:
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