Last Command of the Witheld Arc 1: Rebirth

DESALIA BARDOUL, HUMAN DREAMSPINNER, ☆☆☆ JADE LVL 19

CAMP TWINTUSK, DISPUTED TERRITORY, CATACLYSM MOUNTAINS

Elves were always so pristine that it was strange to see one filthy. These two looked like they’d been rolled in mud and beaten. Their clothes were ragged and their skin was a mass of bruises, blood, and dirt. It was impossible to tell what they originally looked like.

Desalia examined them with her Dreamserpent’s Eye graft. The Twilight World confirmed what she had already sensed. In the Twilight World, the elves in front of her did not resemble the emaciated humanoids she saw with her natural eyes. These were beings of luminous energy, filled with the power of the moons. It was so rare to find people whose Reborn displayed racial gifts that were so connected to their Class. She had been seeking out those rarities for years now.

She reached into her uniform pocket and pulled out two health packs, approaching the two elves slowly, her steps echoing slightly in the compartment. One elf was on the floor, in a meditative pose while the other was stretched out on the floor next to him seemingly unconscious. The meditating elf looked up at her approach.

The creature had yellow eyes and, though it was impossible to tell for sure through all the caked-on mud and blood, she thought it had purple hair. The elf didn’t say anything, just watched as Desalia walked up to them and placed the health packs on the middle bench then sat on the bench against the wall.

It was a long time before the meditating elf on the floor moved or said anything. Desalia was content to wait. These things took time, and there was always the chance, no matter how small, that one of them would be willing to go through the V-Proc. It would be very interesting to have a willing and an unwilling subject so that she could compare the results.

When the elf finally spoke, Desalia schooled her expression expertly, though she felt like smiling. Any conversation was progress. Every word she could pull from them would bring her closer to her goal.

“Who are you? What do you want?” The voice was husky and thick, spoken through split and swollen lips.

“I am Lady Desalia Bardoul of House Bardoul. You are a prisoner of House Bardoul now. What I want now, more than anything, is your cooperation.”

The elf on the floor fell silent, its yellow eyes closing. The one lying on the bench stirred and said, “You… need prisoners? For what? Slaves?” She thought its voice sounded slightly more masculine, though it was impossible to tell with elves.

“House Bardoul does not need slaves,” Desalia said calmly. “It’s a filthy practice. No, we only accept those who are willing to work with us.” The elf on the bench coughed a little. Desalia realized it was trying to laugh. “You find that humorous?”

The elf gestured to its entire body. “Does this look like I wanted it to happen?”

Desalia shrugged, “Sometimes it takes a little persuasion to realize what you want. It’s so rare to find anyone who really knows what they want. For instance, most people think they want to be free. What they actually want is food in their bellies, a safe place for their children to grow up, and security. But that’s not why I’m here and that’s not why you’re here. Let’s discuss what you two want.”

The elf lying down on the bench did that cough-laughing again. “We want to be healed, let free, and never bothered again!”

“That’s what I’m offering!” Desalia said. The compartment fell silent.

“Then… why…” The meditating elf on the floor started to say.

“What’s the catch?” The elf lying down said. She had thought it was still unconscious but was glad to see it was cognizant of the situation.

“How about we start with names? You already know mine: I’m Desalia Bardoul. Who are you?” She waited. It took a long time for them to answer with many significant looks passing between them before they spoke.

“Yilla Tic-Melar,” the seated one said.

“Bok Var-Hemet,” said the one lying down. It sat up and opened one swollen eye a sliver. “Now. How do we walk out of here?”

“This is going so well! I’m glad you’ve chosen to see sense. I need moon-blooded elves.” She watched their faces. The System would not reveal that part of their nature—even an Enhanced System request would not reveal that level of detail.

Neither elf made much of a reaction and she continued, “Since you are both of the necessary genetic and etheric signature, I make an offer to you both: a complete Respec into a Unique Class with five-star potential using Legendary shards plus your freedom and membership in an Imperial House.”

Bok Var-Hemet said something in a language Desalia didn’t understand, but she knew that everything was being recorded and there would be a translation when she needed it. She thought she knew what was coming though, and she prepared herself. The two elves spoke to each other for a few moments in their shared language.

Desalia watched their expressions, fascinated. Bok Var-Hemet seemed to be trying to convince Yilla Tic-Mar of something, but it didn’t seem to be succeeding. Yilla Tic-Mar had a fierce expression on its face as if it had made a terrible decision.

Before this could escalate any further, Desalia decided to try to break the tension. “It won’t work,” Yilla Tic-Mar looked sharply at her, yellow eyes narrowing. “You’re in a House Bardoul transport rated for containment of high-rank Reborn. There are deadening enchantments layered a dozen deep here. Anything you try will be—”

She was cut off as Yilla Tic-Mar screamed and its eyes bulged. Its hands had formed into painful-looking contortions, snapping and popping. Desalia stood up from her bench and backed away, watching the transformation in silent fascination.

The elf’s flesh rippled and shuddered, breaking out in rivulets of sweat. Its hair fell out and its body bulged as the elf shrieked and clawed at itself with hands that had transformed into grotesque claws. It grew three times its original size, muscles boiling on top of one another in lumpy ropes. Its skull flattened and elongated, deforming into a snarling monstrous wolf’s head, with huge sharp teeth, a muzzle, and pointed canine ears. Silver fur grew in mold-like tufts all over its body until it was covered in a thick coat of it. The entire metamorphosis from beginning to end took place in less time than it took Desalia to draw breath.

The elf’s transformation from ba eaten-down elf into a menacing wolf-elf hybrid didn’t alarm Desalia at all. She had taken out a small notepad from her breast pocket and was jotting down observations as she made them. She noted that the transformation had not impaired the creature’s cognition at all, which was encouraging.

The werewolf didn’t waste any time stumbling around and acting like it didn’t know what was going on. It slammed into the wall, rocking the whole transport. It clawed at the armored walls of the transport, easily rending the thick enchanted metal with the ear-piercing shriek of tearing metal. Desalia didn’t move from her spot, continuing to write her notes. The other elf, she noted, had made no move to join its friend.

The werewolf continued to claw at the walls, ripping huge gaps in the metal. Normally, the spells laid over the transport would prevent such aggression by rendering the prisoner immobile with nausea. The more aggression the prisoner displayed, the sharper the symptoms. It had proven effective against even Sapphire rank Reborn, but the transformed moon-blooded elf seemed to be immune to the effect.

Debilitating nausea was not the only enchantment the transport employed to render its prisoners compliant. With the repeated failure of the nausea, a more aggressive and theatrical enchantment activated. Arm-thick bolts of orange lightning blasted into the werewolf from where they had clawed into the wall, each one dumping a hundred megasparks of electrically-infused tensa into it.

The choking smell of burnt hair and flesh permeated the air as the compartment filled with thick black smoke and the werewolf was flung back into the center, its back slamming into and crumpling the metal bench in the middle of the transport. It shook its head, recovering quickly from the shock and bounding to its feet. It then turned its attention to Desalia, its huge bloodshot eyes crazed with rage and pain, focusing for a moment on her before it launched itself at her, mouth gaping and claws extended.

Once more, Desalia did not react in any way to the approaching half-metric ton of elf/wolf hybrid monster charging at her. She finished her note and her eyes flicked up. The transport’s protective enchantments activated once again, interposing a wall of invisible force between her and the creature.

Its face smashed against the invisible wall, spraying blood and broken teeth across its surface. It didn’t spring to its feet immediately after that hit. It scanned the entire compartment, breath coming in heaving gasps. The secondary effect of the protective enchantments was subtle at first: they didn’t do any physical harm to captives, they simply drained their tensa to batteries used to empower the security enchantments. Very efficient.

Of course, tensa deprivation was a debilitating condition, especially for creatures (like the werebeasts that moon-blooded elves could transform into) who relied on it to empower their Attributes. Reborn who could enact body transformations typically had grafts and abilities which enhanced their new bodies, so long as they had a steady supply of tensa.

Now Yilla Tic-Mar’s werewolf body was twitching and convulsing on the floor, shrinking in on itself. Within a few seconds, the terrifying and massive werewolf had shrunk back down into a skinny, naked elf. The transformation had burned away most of the blood and filth on the elf, leaving it somewhat clean.

Desalia walked forward, sitting down on a section of the bench in the middle of the compartment that had not been ruined when Yilla Tic-Mar had crashed into it. She crossed her legs primly and reviewed her notes, smiling with satisfaction. When she was done, she slipped the little pad back into her breast pocket and glanced down at the elf.

“Oh, sit up,” she said impatiently. Yilla Tic-Mar stopped convulsing and shivering and sat up slowly, wiping a string of drool from its lower lip.

“Why do you hate us?” Yilla Tic-Mar asked, its voice shaky. Now that it was clean, Desalia could see that its skin was pale and its hair was a deep lavender shade.

“I don’t hate you, I very specifically am happy that you are here,” Desalia said. “I tried to explain that to you before your… dramatics.”

“You don’t even think of us as thinking beings. I can see it when you look at us. You think ‘it’ when you look at us. Like we are things.”

Bok Var-Hemet chose this moment to speak, its voice rough, “You fool; to this human, we are things. Obviously. Look where we are. More to the point, look at yourself and look at me.” It gestured to its own beaten body.

Desalia rolled her eyes and interrupted the pointless argument, “Of course I think of you as ‘it’. You have no gender; you are asexual. You reproduce by budding and so I’m being linguistically accurate. And don’t be so sure that ‘thing’ equates to valueless. For instance, currently, you are the thing that I need. I would prefer two willing participants, but I am prepared to accept two unwilling participants.”

“I would never take anything—” Yilla Tic-Mar began.

“Unwilling. Very well.” Desalia’s voice cut Yilla Tic-Mar off as neatly as if the elf had been gagged. Throughout this entire process, Desalia had been spreading her anima out at a snail’s pace until it suffused the entire room. She had used the technique to sink her anima into the elf’s. Now she drew it taught like a sheet caught in the wind.

Yilla Tic-Mar’s eyes bugged as it found it couldn’t speak or move. The sensation of having your anima gripped like this was truly disconcerting. In such a position, Desalia could shred the elf’s anima to nothing, rendering them unable to refill their tensa pool. It tended to make one very careful about their words and actions so long as the hold was maintained.

Desalia turned to Bok Var-Hemet. “You seem to have a more practical mindset than your companion.”

“Yilla Tic-Mar… Is young and impulsive. They don’t understand some of the realities of the world.”

“And you do?”

It did that cough-laugh again as it nodded, “I also know who you are. I figured we were dead the moment we saw the Nightmare Corps. If you’re telling me we’re not… well, I’ve heard that the Bardouls are a brutal House. Brutal… but practical. You don’t think of us as people so I don’t think you’ve gone to the effort of lying to us. If what you have in mind is better than slavery and death then I’m all for it, count me in.”

Desalia leaned forward, tucking an errant strand of honey-blonde hair behind her ear, and clasped her hands in her lap, “How very fascinating,” she murmured. “An elf without the primitive mysticism and clannishness typical of the species. Where are you from?” Yilla Tic-Mar had stopped their weak struggling on the floor by now.

“It doesn’t matter where I’m from; I’m not from anywhere. Let’s just say what you’ve found valuable about me and Yilla Tic-Mar has been a bit of a, uh, a liability for us. May I?” He gestured to the health pack Desalia had placed on the bench just a few minutes ago. Desalia nodded.

It picked up the health pack and injected it into its neck, its breath hissing through gritted teeth. Its injuries sealed themselves and the elf finally seemed to unclench as whatever pain it had been in was eased.

Desalia gestured to a cubby in the forward section of the transport where the hygiene facilities were located, “Clean yourself up, elf. I know it’s considered incredibly rude, but I’ve forgotten your name. No, don’t remind me, I don’t actually care. From now on, your codename is Wolf. That is how you will be known to the House, and once you have completed the V-Proc, you will gain the House Seal.”

The elf stood up, a look of alarm on its androgynous face. Wolf was tall for an elf, almost two meters tall. It looked a little stretched out like it wasn’t meant to be as tall as it was. Before it went to the showers, it turned back to Deslia, worry clear on its face.

“What is this V-Proc? Is that the Respec?” It glanced down at the unconscious Yilla Tic-Mar, “And what will happen to Yilla Tic-Mar now?”

“It’s why you’re here instead of with the rest of the prisoners we took from the camp.” Desalia folded her hands in her lap and then smoothed her robes down as she stood up. She started toward the exit, gesturing for Wolf to follow. “You and your elf friend will both undergo the same process, but yours should be markedly more interesting. I’ve only ever had unwilling candidates before.”

Desalia went to a cabinet by the entrance and took out a shiny instrument made of brass and chrome with a long injector needle and three spherical glass receptacles with strange, multi-hued liquids swirling around in them. She held it out to Wolf, raising one eyebrow as the elf inspected it.

“What is it?” He asked. He was nervous to be standing so close to Desalia but he was more nervous about the injector. “And exactly how will this V-Proc change me? Change us?”

“V-Proc is House Bardoul’s proprietary method of Respeccing a Reborn’s grafts and Class. It allows a complete one-to-one graft replacement at your current level.” She smiled brilliantly for a moment, then dropped the expression and shrugged. “There are, of course, some side effects. I understand that some have found the changes to be rather distressing, but we consider the risks to be acceptable.”

“Side effects? Changes? This is why folk outside your Empire hate talking to you people! You never say what you mean!” He muttered this under his breath so Desalia let it pass.

Bok Var-Hemet shook his head and stood straighter, clearly coming to a decision. He said, “You say my free will is important. Fine. I’ve already told you I signed on. Now tell me what happens.”

So she did.

When she was done, she held the injector device out to the elf. Wolf’s eyes looked empty. It was one thing to say you were willing, it was quite another to be put to the test. Eventually, though, the elf looked up at Desalia, who hadn’t retracted the hand holding the injector. Wolf took it and injected the entire contents into his neck, wincing as the liquids rapidly dumped into his system.

“I’m so glad to see that you have decided to continue in this vein.” She glanced down at Yilla Tic-Mar, still unconscious on the floor of the compartment. “Your friend, I’m afraid, will have it a bit harder than you. Now, lie down so that you will not damage yourself when you go unconscious—it will happen within about a minute. Once you are unconscious, we will put you both in separate pods which will be your new home for the next little while.”

Wolf obeyed, laying down. The liquids in the injector had been heavily infused with tensa and Wolf could feel the potent mixture working through its body, burning like it was made of molten metal. The elf couldn’t even scream as the pain overtook its senses and unconsciousness closed in on it. Desalia took another injector from the compartment by the entrance and injected Yilla Tic-Mar with it.

It would be an interesting experiment, seeing if a subject’s free will even mattered when they went through V-Proc. Hopefully, it did, but Desalia was a researcher first so she would follow where the evidence led. After all, that’s what had led her and the rest of House Bardoul here: following the evidence, discovering the truth.

Desalia left the two elves unconscious on the floor of the compartment and then exited, smiling a tight little smile. It was good that they found these two. She had been despairing of ever finding a good candidate, let alone two, but these two were ideal. She felt her hand twitch back towards her Systablo and turned the move into smoothing her battle robes. Lieutenant Virgon was one plan, now she needed information.

There was one contact in Aragon that she could unearth, though she had seriously thought she would never speak to her again. She had, of course, been keeping close observation going on this contact. Her reports indicated that she owned a nightclub now, and was in a committed relationship with the youngest Vasilias Scion. Yes, the more she thought about it, the more she realized that she would have to contact her daughter. After all, it was rare to have a mole so well-placed in enemy territory.