Edge Cases

"Okay, I know we thought Wisfield was up to something, but this is fucking ridiculous," Helix panted.

He wasn't the only one. Larok and Kirsa were both out of breath, too; the three of them had been doing nothing but running for the past half-hour or so, and their legs were aching beyond belief. Kirsa was the most fit out of the three of them, and even she was struggling. She peered back around the corner.

"Nope, they're still following us," she said grimly. "You sure your magic can't do anything?"

"I only know offensive magic," Helix grumbled. He reached out with a hand, a brilliant barrier of pure mana springing to life right around the corner. "And my barriers don't last if I walk away from them."

It would buy them a little time, at least. He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath, and next to him, Kirsa and Larok did the same.

House Wisfield had, as far as Helix could tell, somehow managed to plant some sort of command in the minds of all the civilians that lived in the Wisfield district. Maybe further. It was a monumental feat that he was surprised they hadn't announced — but then again, he supposed he wasn't that surprised. This was the sort of trick they could only really use once.

They were making a play for power.

It put everything that happened with House Herastul into perspective, too. The Lord of the house using his own children as soldiers — their lack of protest in using artifacts that would eat at their own lifespans. What was surprising was that Wisfield had managed to keep all of this hidden.

Or maybe they hadn't. Maybe it had leaked, more than once, and they'd used their own abilities to cover it up; it wasn't like they wouldn't know exactly who knew what they could do and where they were. Mental magic was a barely studied field because it was so difficult to parse the minds of other people, and it was even worse because it couldn't be used offensively: without divine assistance, it could be used to read minds, but never write to them.

Except Wisfield had either found a way around that limitation or somehow gained the support of a god. Helix doubted it was the latter; there was no god that could empower their followers this much, nor make a move this bold. The other gods would almost certainly retaliate.

The worst part was that he didn't know if he was compromised — if he and his team were safe.

It was a possibility. He didn't feel compromised, but then all the civilians had seemed perfectly normal until they recognized Helix and the others, like something embedded within them had been activated.

The obvious conclusion, then, was that they couldn't go back to the rebels. It was the reason they'd just been running non-stop, trying to find a place to hide that wouldn't reveal them to anyone else — a task that was surprisingly difficult when everyone they ran into recognized them and then joined the chase.

"How many people did they get?" Larok grumbled.

"It's probably safe to assume they have everyone under some sort of compulsion," Helix said. "Our best bet is to get out of the kingdom."

"We'd need to find a way to get past the guards at the walls," Kirsa pointed out. "All the other passages we know of have a couple of rebels stationed there. We can't risk that, and we can't fight the guards alone."

"I hear Liz is back in the Kingdom, too," Helix said. He glanced at his barrier — he was powerful, and so it wouldn't be at risk of breaking until he ran... or unless Liz appeared. As one of the few Platinum-ranked Elyran soldiers, she would barrel straight over him. He didn't want to imagine what they'd have to deal with if she and her team were compromised.

Or worse, part of the conspiracy to begin with.

"Think we can rely on your brother to save us again?" Larok said hopefully. Helix managed a chuckle. Dire as their circumstances were...

"We shouldn't," he said. "But having Vex around would make things a lot easier right around now."

"Something's wrong," Sev said. They'd barely stepped outside of the dungeon, and Sev frowned, his eyes immediately narrowing slightly. He wove his fingers expertly in the air, manipulating divine threads directly, and stared at what he saw.

Divinity was present everywhere. A basic essence of divinity was that it permeated all of reality, and the threads could be adopted by any of the gods if they so chose; in effect, it allowed the gods to claim an area as their 'domain'. It was typically only really done for churches and the like.

Flooding out a domain with his own was a way to cancel the abilities of other clerics and paladins — it was how he'd stopped Jerome from using his magic, by asserting his right to the divinity in the area before Jerome could, even if he didn't use it for any particular spell.

"What is it?" Misa asked, her voice sharp, and Sev shook his head.

"I can't tell. The air seems... foul." He frowned again, poking at the threads. [Divinity Manipulation] had made them a little clearer to him, and he could tell there was something wrong with it, but he couldn't tell what. It was like a nascent god was trying to lay claim to the entirety of Elyra.

Except that couldn't be right, could it? The closest thing to a nascent god here had been Irvis, and they'd essentially vanquished Irvis — deleted him from reality.

"Let's hurry, please," Vex said quietly. His fists were clenched. "I'm worried about Helix."

"Yeah, you're right, let me just..." Sev frowned, and twisted his fingers again; a flicker of his own divine control rang out, and he claimed the domain around himself and his friends for his own.

Nascent god or not, the whiff of control it had was marginal at best. It was easy to overwhelm.

This would protect his friends from anything a divinity tried to do to them, as long as their will wasn't stronger than his own — and he was confident that with as many gods on his side as he had, he had a powerful claim when he wanted to.

Still, Sev was uneasy. This couldn't be a good sign for what was happening in Elyra — and though Helix hadn't been specific about what was happening (and his messages were, in fact, rather rushed and difficult to comprehend), he had a feeling there was something going on that was related to these polluted divine threads.

He only hoped he was wrong.

He was not wrong.

This was a problem, because they were surrounded by civilians. It was less of a problem for their team in particular, because Vex had invested in the skills necessary to restrain large groups of people, and everyone was currently held down by brightly-glowing bands of mana.

"Any idea what's going on?" he asked Vex, who gave him a perplexed look.

"I've been with you this whole time!" he said. "I don't know anything you don't."

Right. Sev grumbled a little as he glanced at the system, checking to see if they'd received any messages, but the lines seemed to be dead; either no one was able to send messages or they had been similarly compromised. He was really hoping it was the former.

Holding down random civilians was one thing. He didn't want to have to fight friends.

"Derivan," he said. "Any idea where Helix is?"

"Not yet." The armor was frowning, searching through the city as fast as he could with Shift; from what he'd said, it was actually more difficult to do when he was in the same reality as the target. It had been easier when he was in the bonus room and only needed to punch through one layer of reality. "I may require assistance."

"I've got a tracking spell I might be able to use," Vex offered. "But we need to find somewhere to hide so I can cast it. It's not fast. I could do it here, but..."

"I don't think I want to stay out in the open longer than necessary," Misa agreed. She stared out at the crowd with a disgruntled frown. "Dunno what's triggering this shit, but it happens when they see us. Better we get to hiding."

"We'll use the perception bracelets and get somewhere safe," Sev decided. "Any empty building will do. I need to talk to some of the gods and see if they know anything about what's going on."

Vex grimaced. "We'll have to be quick about it," he said. "Using it like this is going to drain the bracelets fast."

He was right, of course.

The bracelets nearly burned on their wrists as they dodged the perceptions of dozens of people at once, and Sev noticed his cracking in several places. He winced slightly — the cracks came with a feeling of loss, like he was suddenly missing something, and Sev remembered that Vex had said there was something strange in the description of the bracelets — but there wasn't the time to think about it.

The four of them broke into the first empty building they could find. It was a shop that was closed for the day, the lights turned off and bars pulled down over the windows; fortunately, an unlocking spell was easy, and there was no one inside. They locked the doors and shut the curtains for good measure.

"Better hope the owner doesn't come back," Misa muttered. Vex winced.

"They'll understand, hopefully."

It was a jewelry store, though the setting wasn't important to any of them per se. Vex gave the glass cases a passing glance, then found a small clearing in the room and began to draw up a modified glyph; Derivan joined him, empowering it with Shift so it could work a little better and faster. Misa sat in the corner, tersely monitoring the system for any messages, in case there were updates about the situation.

Sev made his way to a corner to pray.

It was a small prayer, really — effectively a ping through the divine connection he shared with Tempus, Aurum, and a few of the other gods he had created connections with in his time in the Roads.

So he wasn't expecting the response that slammed into him through the connection, louder than he could handle.

Panic.

Sev, none of us can get in contact with our priests in Elyra, Tempus said without preamble. We have been trying to contact you for hours, but it seems even that does not work unless you open the connection. What is happening?

Sev winced. He stared at the threads of divinity in the area, resonating with something that was just slightly off.

But the deeper he looked, the more he saw.

I don't know, he finally answered. But there was something there, he could see: something he hadn't spotted when he'd looked at it before. It hadn't been obvious until now, with his connection with the other gods resonating within him.

There was something there. Maybe it was a nascent god, residing in a lower layer of reality. Maybe it was something else — a parasite, chewing away at the connection that gods had to their believers here.

But there was something there — something alive — something that he could reach out to connect with, just like he had with the other gods.

So he did.

I believe I'm about to find out.