123 (II)

Minions [III]

Shiv’s mouth opened slightly as the vampire suddenly burst into tears. He hovered overhead with his Chameleon active and just watched as Whisper demonstrated his capabilities.

The orc’s Dimensionality and Stealth Skill Fusion was already nightmarish. The fact that someone could have a ten-meter-wide Dimensional Domain that couldn’t be perceived from the outside and didn’t let sound leak from the inside made the orc’s Stealth unparalleled. Shiv couldn’t even feel the orc with any of his mana fields while the domain was active. Not even his Vitaemancy showed Whisper’s exact position.

And that was due to another capability offered by the Dimensional sphere: You could only enter if Whisper wanted you to. Otherwise, you’d just pass through the other side after feeling a slight pinch of pressure.

But the orc was also more than just a sneaky, knife-wielding juggernaut who could systematically depopulate an entire base of vampires in under ten minutes. He also had a knack for dialogue. Social Skills. Very Evolved Social Skills. Social Skills strong enough to make a vampire turn on his own kind and then break down sobbing in the aftermath.

Now, said vampire was hugging the orc’s leg, blubbering incoherently.

Another flash of flame rose over the horizon. Shiv looked, and he saw a swarm of Blood Horrors and vampires sailing through the air, their bat-like bodies flocking toward where Mortar was. But the orc would be long gone by the time they got there. Meanwhile, Tequila and Band were busy slaughtering every vampire response team they could.

As Shiv took a peek into their surface thoughts, he found Band summoning a small army of Dimensionals with his violin, while Tequila ambushed teams of vampires with his dual Dynamancy wands. Yet, Tequila didn’t finish killing all the vampires. No. He would simply leave them mostly splattered before dropping the corpse of another vampire among the regenerating horde. Thereafter, he would frame said vampire by using their weapon to stab and disfigure some Blood Horrors.

There’s always more than violence and death with them, Shiv realized. They’re all doing things to increase chaos. To make the vampires confused about who’s attacking them. Leaving bodies of their allies—vampires from another Bloodline, I think. Burning observation posts. Bombing them from afar. Using Dimensionals. It’s…

Shiv winced as he realized this was very much something he might do in combat. Chaos. Brutality and confusion. But the difference was that he generally acted on instinct, and they were methodical.

And now, Whisper was actively talking to the vampire—and Uva by extension, trying to convince her that they had a usable spy. “…But this one is ripe. You don’t need to do anything particular. He already hates being a vampire. They abuse him. All I needed to convince him was a few words. I’m not asking you to alter his mind in the field—I’m just asking for a chance. An opportunity. To work on him. To see what we can get from him. It will be worthwhile to understand their culture and current forces.”

“I can already scour their minds for these details,” Uva said. “And we have no easy way to interface with a spy on our end. Better that he be given to Elaboration.”

“Ah,” Whisper said, holding up a large finger. “But that is where I must disagree. I have experience setting up networks. Networks of… dispossessed individuals. And though you are my superior in this task, I ask that you lean on my expertise and let me show you what can be done with so very little.”

He gestured at the vampire, who continued to shake and cling to Whisper’s leg. “My friend. What is your name?”

The vampire slowly lifted his head. He was bald, with a narrow nose and dark eyes. “L-Lucian.”

“Ah. Lucian. Would you like to return to your kind? Or do you want to come with me?”

“W-with you.”

“See,” Whisper said. “Look at how they mistreated this poor soul.” And he slowly began patting the vampire on the head. To Shiv’s astonishment, the bloodsucker leaned into the orc’s touch. Whisper wasn’t even doing any Psychomancy. All that was just from a few words spoken.

“We’re going to have to keep that one away from people,” Uva told him. “Band is the mage of their group. He has every major Magical Skill—except Psychomancy, it seems. Dangerous. Flexible. But still relatively vulnerable with how he avoids direct encounters. The one called Tequila is quite fast and accurate, but I suspect you will experience the greatest ease with him. His Chronomancy just seems to slow those around him.”

“Yeah. Meanwhile, Mortar is pretty damn fast for a big Artillerist, and—”

A chain of explosions tore across the land. Shiv turned to see a wall of flame blotting out part of the horizon. And just as he noticed that, Shiv’s body tensed as he sensed Mortar manifest directly below him. He dove out from the soil like it was a body of water and slammed down on the ground beside Whisper. They shared a look—and Shiv caught a momentary baring of teeth between the two.

“Deathless! I got the last of their outer observation posts.” Mortal staggered away from Whisper as he grinned up at Shiv. “The blood-lovers are finally scrambling their elites. Saw some of their Master-Tiers through some of my mortars, I did. Caught a few of my bombs before they fell too. One’s real quick. Quicker than me. Probably got a Hero in the field now. Would love to stick around and get bloodier, but I think we left enough of a mess. Most of their outer observation’s burning. Last patch of space before we start getting too close to that big scab they got here.”

Calling the local First Blood Fortress-City a big scab was an apt description indeed. But it was also kind of a heart. Connected to each of the observation outposts by subterranean arteries was a metropolis forged from luxury, slavery, metal, bone, and Biomancy. Right now, they were still on the far outskirts—the periphery of First Blood territory. Past this point, they would be marching toward Ur-Abathur, which was around forty kilometers of vampire-run metropolis guarded by uncountable amounts of Blood Horrors and more than a few viruses lingering in the air.

Despite this, it was obvious that Ur-Abathur was lacking in proper Pathbearers after the recent losses they took trying to take Gate Theborn. They still had uncountable amounts of Blood Horrors, but after all the skirmishing the orcs had done, it seemed vampires were primarily fielding Initiate and Adept-Tier teams as fast-response groups. It took the First Blood getting bombed for hours before their Masters and Heroes finally responded, after all.

Pair that with how they couldn’t find any Court Leviathans, and it seemed the vampires weren’t going to be able to muster another run on the gate in the next few days.

So. We got a little breathing room with the vampires, at least. More now, maybe.

“Right. Good work.” Shiv said.

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Mortar just grinned at him—then the grin faded as he looked at Whisper again. “What you got there, sneaky.”

“A friend,” Whisper replied, scratching the vampire’s head like one would a puppy.

“A pet, more like,” Mortar replied. “Planning on nurturing another rat, are we?”

“Maybe,” Whisper said. “Planning on murdering another one of my spies before they be useful?”

Mortar let out a disgusted snort as he looked over at Shiv. “Not unless the Insul says so.”

“How obedient,” Whisper replied.

“Just prefer burning my enemies down directly. You can’t rely on pets. They’re too easy to domesticate.”

Shiv narrowed his eyes at the statement. He wasn’t sure if this was a deliberate performance between Whisper and Mortar, but there was some kind of tension between them. A difference of thought and an existing history.

“That might be something we can use,” Uva said, noticing the same thing. “We can leverage them against each other.”

“Or maybe this is just them playing with us,” Shiv replied. “I wouldn’t put it beyond them. Hells, I would bet on it. They’re orcs, Uva. They’re hyper-attentive. They won’t start giving us anything easy like this. This is just a little too sloppy.”

Psychology 13 > 14

The Umbral replied with a hum of agreement. “You might be right. Still. Parts of how they feel are genuine. There is something there—they might just be exaggerating it to make us react a certain way.”

Shiv let out a sigh. “Can’t let down your guard around these creatures.”

“I did it!” Tequila giggled. “Finally. Far too much work, but it finally paid off!” The orc’s amused laughter flowed through Uva’s Psychomancy strands, and Shiv directed his attention over to the wand-wielding orc. From behind Band’s veil of Aeromantic invisibility, Tequila looked on as two vampire patrols and their Blood Horrors crashed into each other. Shiv blinked as he noted some vampires already lying dead between the groups. The corpses were dressed in the fashion of the responding patrols as well.

“I managed to get two Bloodlines to fight each other—to make them think the other was behind the attacks.” Tequila rubbed his hands together and took a drag on his smoke as he watched the bloodspawn tear into each other. “Challenger, this was a thing of beauty. Love it when the prey do the fighting for me.”

Shiv frowned as he noticed Tequila to be a bit of an instigator. Probably needed to watch him too. But another detail that almost went missing was how easily Tequila and Band worked together. It seemed some orcs had more cooperative instincts than the others—and could even befriend or partner with other orcs. There was quite a difference between Band and Tequila’s interactions compared to Whisper and Mortar.

Yeah. Both definitely an exaggerated performance. But also some genuine animosity there between Mortar and Whisper.Probably be wise of me to speak to Mortar since Whisper’s got some heavyweight Social Skills.

Awareness 14 > 16

The two levels of Awareness surprised Shiv, but also centered him. Awareness was more than just listening or watching. It was also taking in details. Understanding exactly what was being said and what was hidden beneath the surface. I need to keep studying them just like this. Watch them as much as they watch me.

“Deathless,” Mortar said, his tone serious. “I’m willing to stay and fight, but if you ask me, we should get gone. It’ll take them time to regrow these observation posts. They’ll have to stretch more of their troop capacity in the meantime, so they won’t be hitting anything. If our main goal is to delay, we got that. And we chucked plenty of the rats into your cape, so we got some prisoners to interrogate too.” He looked at Whisper’s personal vampire. “And maybe a rat. But we stick around, and we might be doing some dying ourselves. The vampires are stretched, but they’re not that stretched. We’re overstaying our confusion.”

And despite Mortar’s jovial nature, he seemed to be the most tactically minded of the orcs.

Makes sense, considering he’s the artillerist.

“Uva?” Shiv said. “This good enough?”

“Better than I hoped,” Uva admitted. “To see the First Blood deeply spent and vulnerable is a relief and an opportunity. I think Weave might be able to mount an operation here as well. I will need to report our finds. Thirty vampires should be enough to restore more than a few of Can Hu’s skills to a damaged state as well.”

“Yeah,” Shiv agreed, but there was an unease developing inside him.

“The orcs. Do they worry you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Shiv admitted. “Everything they did here was… They know more about this war stuff than I do. None of them really got spotted. They hit the enemy. They cut the observation posts. They led us through the territory without issue. Now we’re about to make a clean exit, and I still got no idea about their real limits. They’re playing a good game.”

“Indeed,” Uva said. “But you don’t need to watch them alone. And we might be done with the vampires, but there are other opportunities to stress test them.”

“Like what?”

“You said you needed more ingredients.”

A grin slowly spread across Shiv’s face. “Right. That. Alright. Patch me to them. Time for some new orders.” If commanding these orcs was going to come with a constant dose of paranoia, he was going to squeeze every bit of labor out of them as possible. And they weren’t just going to be used on the battlefield, but in the kitchen as well. “Orcs. We’re getting the hell out. Job’s done here. But we’re not going back to the gate yet.”

“We’re not?” Tequila replied. “Oh? Another Faith is to suffer a tragedy today, then?”

“Another place to bomb?” Mortar asked.

Shiv shook his head. “Nah. Have any of you done any cooking?”

“Yes,” all the orcs replied at once.

That surprised Shiv. “What? Really?”

“What kind of good hunter doesn’t cook?” Mortar asked. “Barbecue’s good for patience. And the way the meat drops off the bone… Mhm. Sumptuous.”

“Cooking’s good for the mind,” Whisper said. “And recipes reveal much about a culture and a people. It is too useful to ignore as a skill.”

“Food. Good with wine.” Band’s mind was a strange, jumbled echo of words. Other thoughts bled through, and Shiv couldn’t quite make sense of them.

“I like eating other orcs,” Tequila casually admitted. “They taste better with mutton, though.”

Shiv blinked. “I… Right. Well. We’re gonna make a few pit stops to collect some ingredients. I want to see if I can bag a few more basilisks.”

“Basilisk?” Whisper lifted his head.

Shiv looked down. “Yeah.”

The robed orc just chuckled. “Say no more, Insul, for you look upon an orc with a Snake-Whisperer Skill.”

Shiv’s mouth gaped. “That’s a thing?”

“Yes,” Whisper said. “So is Basilisk Riding. They make for impressive mounts if you charm them. But I suspect that’s not what you want, is it?”

It took a while for Shiv to recover from his moment of disbelief. “No. But… Shit. You can really ride them?”

“Do you want me to show you?” Whisper asked, smiling.

“Yeah,” Shiv said with a nod. “Yeah. And you better not be bullshitting me.”

Whisper placed a hand to his chest and grinned. “I swear to the Challenger that I tell no lies.”

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