Unwilling Eldritch Horror of Fortune

Half an hour later and I was left with three humans - yes, there were still three individuals, Big Bob was able to take the brain-goop from the poor man and somehow put him back together - that were much more amiable to sharing information.

“Ok,” I said to the three, “Let’s hear what you know about Ryan and his guild, and who’s actually backing your little organization.”

“Ahgu ahhhh…” the reformed man muttered with a half-smile. Ok, I said he was put back together, not that he was perfectly normal. Stuffing brain-goo back into a skull was clearly harder than it sounded, even with the abilities of a god.

Big Bob frowned at the drooling idiot, “Hm… that shouldn’t have happened, uh, give me a second with him. You know, I was the one who originally made this species, I don’t think that my skills have rusted so much that I can’t fix one brain!”

I chuckled, “If I recall, you made the prototype to the humans, and allowed nature to do most of the heavy lifting. Your skills with biology were always a little shoddy…”

While I had always enjoyed toying with the organic body, Big Bob’s love for invention was always at the forefront of his research. It was why we made such a great team when I was still acting as the Lord Arbiter all those cycles back. I had been afraid that I’d never see him again after having to abort that last plan, but luck would have it that I’d see him again. Funny how that worked out.

Thanks Noe.

“Hey, I might like the clearly superior abilities of the mechanical, but I don’t think I can’t fix one human! How much could the brain change in only a few cycles? Although I swear they were a lot smaller before…” he dragged the still mumbling individual away to a corner, “You two question those Aspirants. I’ll get this one up and running in a minute! Just you wait!”

I smiled at seeing my old friend so fired up once more, and turned my attention back on the two remaining Aspirants.

“Like I was saying,” I repeated, “Please tell us what you know about Ryan’s guild and your sponsors.”

“Yes, sir!” they shouted as one.

“Our guild-” “We are-”

I frowned and gestured for them to stop talking all at once. I still have to get this mind manipulation thing fine-tuned if I didn’t want to deal with ridiculous situations like this in a regular basis.

Xalla sighed, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just extract all the information from them, Walter? It’ll save us all a lot of time and effort.”

I was tempted to just do that, but I shook my head after a moment of consideration, “I’d love to, but I’m trying to preserve as many resources as possible, and I’ll still need these three for the future. Most of Ryan’s forces are still missing, so we’ll need a way to infiltrate them when they come back.”

…and I might not be fully awake when that happens. But I didn’t say that part out loud.

Xalla shrugged and shook a frill, “You always take the strangest path forward, Walter. Well, it’ll certainly be more entertaining this way, I know I haven’t been able to get much of that since Q left; let me know if you need any help.”

I nodded and pointed to the remaining man, “Can you take that one and see if you can get any useful intel out of him about the Overseer and his goons? I’ll see what I can do with the woman.”

“You’d want his mind intact, right?”

“If you can manage,” I responded, “I mean, if you make a mistake we can have Big Bob try to fix him again, but…”

I turned and saw that Big Bob was cursing up a storm trying to “fix” the other Aspirant. In the short few minutes I had turned away from him, he had managed to somehow expand the human’s skull to four times its size, and it was so swollen that Big Bob had to lean the man’s head against the wall just for him to stay upright.

Xalla winced, “Right, I’ll be careful.”

With the last Aspirant away, I was left with the woman who used to sit in the middle of the room. I turned to her and repeated my question for the third time, “Skip the details about Ryan and his guild, just tell me what you know about your hidden backers. I’m sure you must have heard something about them, even if you’re not privy to the whole truth.”

“I don’t know the inner workings of the guild, sir, no one but the Guild Master himself knows the whole picture,” the woman said with reluctance, “But I know who’s in charge of communications between our work here and the backers!”

I nodded, “And are they here at the moment?”

“No,” she answered, “They are gone along with the majority of our guild. We are left with a skeleton crew to monitor Pandora.”

“And do you know where your fellow Guild members are at? I know for a fact that Ryan isn’t in the training.”

“They-” the woman started to respond, but she was quickly overcome with spasms and a dark liquid oozed out of her mouth as she fought with all her strength to continue to speak.

“Never mind,” I said quickly, “You don’t need to tell me that now.”

The woman shut her mouth and her symptoms eased, although she was still convulsing rather violently. I forced her into a state of calm and waited for her to recover before I continued speaking with her. Well, it wasn’t like I wasn’t expecting the Overseer to place contingency plans in case his minions were ever interrogated.

“Now then…” I muttered as I assessed the problem, “What to do about this…”

I placed another finger on the woman’s head and tried to pinpoint what was going on here. It didn’t take me long to see the problem; the Overseer had infused this Aspirant with a rather annoying toxin - one derived from his own body if I my memories weren’t that outdated - that would automatically destroy its host whenever it deviated from its directives. The substance was infused into every cell, molecule, and atom of the Aspirant’s body, which meant that removing it would be impossible without destroying the human in its entirety.

“I’ve seen that before, nasty stuff,” Bob whispered as he stepped towards the woman, “We can remove it with the right equipment and time, but we have neither at the moment. The same thing’s applied to the guy in the back.”

He gestured at the semi-conscious man that he had revived. At least the guy’s head was the right size now. Xalla returned with a comatose individual and dumped him on the floor, sludge was starting to pooling from every orifice.

“Same with mine,” she said, “The Overseer’s thorough, I’ll give him that.”

“So we’re at an impasse,” I sighed, “Guess we do this the old-fashioned way.”

Big Bob shook his head and muttered a curse, “Oh no no no, Walter. We're not doing it the old-fashioned way.”

"Do you see a better alterative?"

He sighed, "No."

Xalla raised a frill, “What are you talking about?”

“Bob and I have encountered something similar to this in the past,” I explained, “And the only way to circumvent the stupid toxin is to figure out exactly what the victim can and can’t say. Then we have to figure out how to ask them the right questions, and if any alternative method of communication would work.”

She nodded, “That sounds tedious, but not awful.”

“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Bob added with a shake of his head, “Just watch, you’ll see why it’s a pain in the behind soon enough… It’s a good thing your suit’s waterproof, wish mine was.”

“What do you mean?”

She found out what that meant soon after.

“That’s disgusting!” Xalla screamed, “Does it have to puke every time you ask it a wrong question?”

“Yes,” I muttered, “And it only gets worse… help me stabilize her again, Bob.”

My friend cursed under his breath but helped in any case, “You owe me so much for this, Walter.”

“Think of it as paying me back for that visit to the Overseer’s waiting room.”

“Fine…” he grumbled, “This is one thing I never thought I’d need to do again after establishing my own company!”

“Stop talking and get back to work!” I muttered, “The faster we’re done here, the faster we can do literally anything else.”

We continued.

“It’s- it’s leaking from both-” Xalla started to say as she backed away from the Aspirant, her feelers shuddering in pure disgust.

“We know!” Bob gagged, “Just… just try to monitor it’s life signs, tell me if it’s dropping too much.”

“I- I think I finally understand why Humans are so disgusting to eat,” she muttered, “I have to apologize to everyone I tricked into trying one before… Why did you make such a horrid creature, Babylon?”

“Look,” Bob answered, trying his best not to breathe, “I was in my experimental phase when I decided to try my hand at seeding life. It was a mistake letting evolution do its thing! It’s… it’s not my best work, ok?”

I almost chuckled at how wrong he was there. Humans were a lot of things, but whatever magic Bob and evolution did with the species over the span of just a short few centuries was amazing. There really was no other lifeform with the raw, untapped potential that the humans had. The only problem was trying to access that potential while trying to keep the fragile body in one piece.

“Oh… oh!” Xalla exclaimed, “is it supposed to be bloating up like that?”

“No,” I shouted, “Bob, help me out here! We gotta get that stuff out of it!”

“Not again!” he grumbled, “You might want to step back for a bit, Xalla.”

It took agonizing hours to find out precisely what we could and couldn’t ask, and several more hours extracting that delicate information out of them, but Bob, Xalla, and I did manage in the end. It was a process that I never wish to experience again, and I hate the Overseer that much more for forcing that upon me.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to eat anything ever again…” Xalla mumbled in defeat, “That’s…”

“Something I will never help you with again, Walter,” Bob grumbled, “But at least we’re done. I’m leaving clean up to you, though.”

“Alright, alright,” I sighed, “Why don’t you two go get cleaned up, and I’ll deal with the mess here?”

“Agreed,” they said as one before leaving as quickly as they could. I didn’t blame them, the smell in the room was abysmal even with Noe cutting off the majority of my olfactory senses.

“Alright the three of you,” I muttered, “Stand to the side and… try to clean yourselves as much as you can.”

They nodded and did as they were told. The interrogation had done a number on their stamina, and each of the Aspirants could barely do as they were told. I’ll have to let them rest before using them further. And also allow them a shower.

“Actually, go take a shower first,” I added as I looked at the state they were all in, “Try not let anyone notice you if you can. Just come back in half an hour.”

They muttered something that resembled a confirmation and shambled out the door. That left me with a room that looked like an industrial runoff storage container than the once resplendent welcoming hall. I was never more glad to have even a fraction of my former power, because trying to clean this when I was still asleep would have done more mental damage than all the Trials put together.

Still, the information that I managed to salvage from the compromised Aspirants was insightful, although I wasn’t sure if it was worth what I had to do to get it. To summarize, the three guild members left here were relatively low in the overall hierarchy of Ryan’s guild. They knew just enough to differentiate important details from the trash but weren’t privy to any of the inner workings of the guild. They did, however, know the people who were in charge.

Unfortunately, they didn’t know where the others went, nor did they know exactly when they’d be back, other than the fact that it’ll be a while. Most likely all of Ryan’s people would be gone until after the Restus had destroyed Pandora. Knowing that in of itself was useful, since the Overseer wouldn’t go to such lengths to ensure their safety if he didn’t think them valuable. It seems that I’ll have to pay closer attention to Ryan and his newly founded guild in the future if that were the case.

I made a mental note of all the other smaller bits of information before opening a portal into the Abyss and sending all the horrible discharge off into the eternal gloom. Speaking of which, I was also in desperate need of cleaning as well. A dip into the moving shadow solved that quickly, although I think the smell will take a lot longer to dissipate.

 

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