One calm afternoon on Palix Four, while the research vessels had gone away to pick up materials for study at a secondary location, and the small armada of fishing boats were still reeling in their catches for the day, a section of the beach southwest of the Lighthouse was left relatively unguarded. Not that there was much there, simply being a less-frequented area due to a lack of entrance to the underground facilities or the base of the Lighthouse itself. But something was there, and had been there since Vermillion had arrived on this world and raised this island out of the seafloor. That something was a small fairy fort hidden under the shade of the trees that bordered that beach, and from it came a shimmering passageway.
Lachlan leapt out, a trail of blood spewing from the wound Ercillia had pierced through his lower torso, and as he clutched his side, glanced back for a moment as the portal closed, making sure that every barrel of explosive he had stashed inside his shack on Gefnia was primed.
The fissure in reality stitched itself up, and Lachlan stumbled out onto the sand, watching the gentle waves lapped at the sparse snow on the beach, pulling it back into the sea. There was a small patrol vessel out in the waves today, and it was coming right at him.
He slowly sat down on the beach, using the damaged deacon’s coat as a towel, and hugged his knees as he waited for the boat to close in. It swung to the side, and offloaded a small squad of soldiers with glossy black ponchos and heavy assault rifles who waded up the short towards him. Their commander also wore a poncho, but its attached hood was down, revealing her short blonde hair that was a touch longer than any other military would have liked.
“Nice weather today,” he called, staring at the officer.
Evelyn Winters stopped a few metres from where he sat, a large breaching axe in her hand. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could be asking you the same thing. Last I heard, you were having an awful time fitting in.”
She grip on the handle of the weapon visibly tightened. “Go back to where you came from. You know our protocols.”
“No can do. Fact of the matter is I’m not actually here by choice, at least this time. I need to speak to your council.”
Evelyn scoffed. “And how many people fall for that?” She began circling around him, while the other security personnel’s guns remained trained on him, lowering for a moment only when Evelyn blocked their line of sight.
“This isn’t some trick. I hope you know that. Why don’t you call someone higher up the chain? Tell them I know about Project Lugh. They’ll come running, I’m sure.”
Evelyn looked at him for a moment, and then nodded at one of her men, who backed off to use his radio.
“I haven’t seen you since the wedding. How have you been, hmm?”
“Seems like I’m doing better than you, if you need help from the likes of us.”
“Come on, Miss Winters. How condescending do you think I actually am?”
“Plenty, actually.” She stopped directly behind him.
The soldier who had been on the radio walked back into their gathering. “Council’s in session, captain. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Good,” she said. “Go back to the boat. I’ll deal with him.”
One by one, the team took their guns off Lachlan, and waded back to the patrol boat by the beach. Hallways through, however, he saw the shadow to his left shift.
Lachlan spun around just in time to catch Evelyn’s descending axe inches from his face, his fingers around the bit of the shaft just she of the reflective steel head, wickedly sharp from what he could see. “The hell!?”
Evelyn leaned into the axe, counteracting his inhuman strength with her own weight, staring into his eyes.
“You fucking psycho!” He began to push back, but then the runic symbols on the axe began to glow, and he felt the skin of his hands start to burn. Instead, Lachlan shoved the axe, and by extension, Evelyn to the side, rolling out of the way and scrambling to his feet. “Stop!”
She twirled the axe around, her gloved hands unaffected by its repellant capabilities. “Oh I’m the psycho here now?”
“I just want to make a deal, Evelyn! If you kill me, what are your bosses going to say?”
“Oh they’ll thank me.” She smirked, and pulled her axe hand back.
Knowing exactly what was going to happen, he quickly leapt to the side, out of the way as the axe flew past him and buried itself in the sand further along the beach. Evelyn came in with her knee raised, striking him across the jaw with it and flipping him over, before turning around to plant her boot square on his chest, knocking the wind out of him and forcing more blood to spurt from the wound he already had.
He grabbed at her leg, trying to pull it off himself. “You know this…isn’t how I envisioned the two of us being…”
“I’m sorry, did you imagine yourself on top?”
“Kinda.” He let go of her leg and with a twitch of his fingers in a specific pattern, the arm with the wristwatch slid out from under him, the beginnings of a fireball already contained within its palm.
Evelyn threw herself out of the way of the burst of flame, and kicked him in the face before he could get up.
He did so anyway, holding onto his hole in his abdomen. It felt as if his insides were at risk of being forced out and herniated, and even for a puppet-construct, that would hurt like hell, he knew from experience.
“Council’s available, ma’am!” the radioman shouted from the boat.
“They’re coming,” Lachlan said to her. “Let’s stand down and we can talk this out, yeah?”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes! For fuck’s sake, yes!”
“Too bad.”
He formed another fireball with the same extra arm, ready to blast her again. She was certainly in range, but if he hurt her to much, the Council-
She casually reached out with her open right hand.
Lachlan stared at her confused for a second, until he remembered where they were now standing, and ducked in time to dodge the axe spiralling back to Evelyn’s hand. He thrust the fire mage arm forwards, letting loose a blast of flame…or so he thought. Instead there was only a small puff, while the intensity of the runic enchantments on Evelyn’s axe glowed, and the axe head caught on a bright orange, almost white flame.
She had stolen his spell. Fucking counter-magic.
In almost a panic, he grabbed hold of the hand on the robot arm before she could slam it down onto the beach, the immense thermal energy stored within the axe immediately making the sand around them erupt and glass, producing spikes that would have lacerated him in more places than Ercilia’s handiwork had he not just phased himself through most of it. Now, however, his feet were sinking into the sand as if it were liquid, and he turned and waded through the sand to get out of the forest of sharp glass, as quickly as he could given that it felt like walking in a vat of viscous honey. Once he was clear he deactivated the arm’s phasing, and pulled himself out of the sand, wincing as some of it poured out of the hole in his belly.
Another shadow moved up ahead of his own on the ground before him, and when he turned around, he knew he was done for. Evelyn was already in the air, having ramped off the glassed sands and with the axe in both hands, poised to swing downwards at him, and there was no time to react.
Instinctively, Lachlan closed her eyes.
The swish of the axe went past his face, and opened them to see Evelyn crouched behind him. He grabbed at his face and his torso, and realised that aside from the growing pain of his organs slowly freaking out at the presence of sand inside his body, he was unharmed.
Evelyn stood up, holding the fire mage’s arm she had taken by severing the invisible thread that held it to the device on Lachlan’s spine.
“That’s…”
She held up her own left arm, displaying the watch on her wrist, identical in model to the puppeteered arm’s own. “This is from a Vermillion flame mage. Did you think I really wouldn’t notice?”
“I didn’t realise.” He lowered his arms to his side, struggling to relax them. “You could’ve just told me.”
“Who did you kill?”
“If I remembered I would tell you. But it was far, far away from here. Likely, they’re not even dead, just unarmed.”
She glared at him, and then her expression softened as she looked past him, towards the tower.
Lachlan followed her gaze to a small entourage of even more security personnel, some masked soldiers in brilliant white coats that he identified as the Council’s own bodyguard, and a woman with fox-like ears at the top of her head who wore something between a cloth gown and dress that stretched to just above her ankles. Her jaw was squarely forged from some kind of metal, and despite her lack of lower lips, she held a small wooden pipe with faint red smoke drifting out of it.
“My my, what do we have here?” she asked in her smooth, sultry voice that made even Lachlan shuddered, and winced again. That action hurt.
Evelyn approached the woman, and held out the arm by its wrist like a trophy. “I’ve recovered something that was taken from us, ma’am.”
She looked it over and smiled. "Very good work. You should be more careful, Lachlan." She side-eyed him. "You can call me Hana. Everyone does. Now, what is it you know about Lugh?"
Lachlan sighed. "Finally. Look, I recovered one of your lost data discs for it. I'll trade it - and that arm - for some high-level information."
The fox lady struck a thoughtful pose. "Hmm. For Lugh…you do make a compelling offer. This information you want…"
"I want to know how the Metaphysical Engines work," he said. "It's taken someone. I need to get them out. Unscathed."
"Straight to the point. I can appreciate that. Okay, Mr. Lachlan. Let's see what we can do for a fellow ally of the Fae."
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