NOVEL WEB CHAPTER 92: DEALING WITH BRUTUS
PETRA VIRGON, HUMAN TECHNOMANCER, STONE LVL 10
PROVINCE OF ARAGONIA WILDERNESS
Petra Virgon
Race
Human
Rank/Level
Stone Technomancer Lvl 10
House
Virgon
Racial Gifts
System Access, Minor House Seal, Limited Inventory, DEMI Port, Spell Affinity
Attributes
Dominion
22 [Industry] / 30
Speed
29 [Computer] / 30
Precision
26 [Spirit] / 30
Growth
28 [Magnetism] / 30
Arcana
29 [Disease] / 30
Tensa Pool
2 ms [956 ks internal pool + 1.044 ms in tensa batteries]
Gear
Legendary BOTI Bag, Twinned Spellweavers Mk VII, Tensa Batteries, Spelldatabase, Components Dimensional Storage, Beamring x 2
Core Grafts
Efficiency Aura [Industry], Combat Algorithm [Computer], Summon Guardian [Spirit], Magnetic Attraction [Magnetism], Adaptable Virus [Disease],
Class Powers
Attack
Aggressive Guardians [Spirit]
Gauss Beam [Magnetism]
Utility
Copy [Industry]
Ultra Library [Computer]
Support
Purify [Disease]
Lieutenant Petra Virgon noticed she was rubbing her temples for what felt like the fifth time in as many hours. A burst of unconstrained anima blasted out at her from ten meters away and, predictably, a large glass bottle sailed through the air right after it. Petra ducked and the bottle shattered into a tree trunk behind her.
“Keepin’ ya on yer toes!” Brutus Bardoul yelled, laughing uproariously.
This was the resource she and her elite team had been selected to exfiltrate from Argent City, then insert down in Heldon, deep in Vasilias territory. Brutus Bardoul was nominally the commander of the entire expedition, though he’d decided not to share the details of mission objectives he’d gotten from Desalia Bardoul with the rest of the group until “the right time”. They’d only arrived in the area a couple of days ago, but they’d spent every hour combing up and down the mountain without achieving their mysterious objective.
They’d set up camp an hour ago, at Brutus Bardoul’s orders. He insisted they were following coordinates from an inside source within the Vasilias team on Mt. Discovery, but he’d been insufferably vague about the true purpose of the mission. He’d been content to pull his favorite chair from his Inventory and nap while Petra and her team secured the area and made camp. He hadn’t moved, save once to get up and take a piss against Dhonab’s tent.
Dhonab had complained bitterly to her, but of course what recourse did they have? Brutus Bardoul was from their liegefamily, and he was Ivory rank. But there was only so much abuse that Petra was willing to take, even from a scion of the liegefamily.
Petra’s teeth ground so hard, she could hear them as she bit back her immediate response. He’s probably part ogre, judging by how often he bathes, she thought sourly.
Brutus Bardoul’s odor was a pungent mélange of B.O., crusted-on sweat, dirt, grease, and whatever else got caught in his wiry body hair. He was one-third hair, one-third muscles, and one third filth as far as Petra was concerned. He stood two and a half meters tall and was what might be charitably called “casually dressed”—definitely out of uniform—in that, he wore no shirt, and the pants that he decided to put on were form-fitting leather pants with an enormous silver wolf’s head belt buckle.
Somehow, he seemed to truly think that he was desirable. She was standing at attention as far away from him as she could—upwind—while still maintaining the appearance of proper respect. After all, she was ostensibly giving him the report he’d requested just a few minutes ago.
He’s a fucking maniac, Petra thought, and he’s going to get my whole team killed if he keeps it up.
Brutus tilted his head back and howled at the moons, his long, greasy hair tangled with his beard as his voice warbled up and down in a truly spine-tingling noise. He’d been drinking since she’d picked him up in Argent City and he hadn’t stopped on the entire trip. He just kept producing bottle after bottle from his unlimited Inventory; frankly, she didn’t know how he hadn’t died from sheer alcohol poisoning.
“If you would tell me what we’re looking for, Commander,” she said through gritted teeth, “then perhaps we could—” she was interrupted by a belch and another bottle smash.
Bardoul laughed again and slurred, “Y’know what? I decided. Yup, I decided,” he grinned, showing his chromed and enlarged canines, “I’m gonna tell ya who we’ve been searching for. Yeah, who. Now, love, why don’t you come a little closer to me—I’m not about to shout it out for the whole mountain, am I? Come a little closer. And get on yer knees.”
Petra sighed internally but otherwise didn’t move from her place. The man had been mystified at her refusal the first half dozen times he’d asked. Now she thought he just did it out of habit, or to specifically get under her skin. Her mouth hardened into a line as she clenched her jaw.
No more, she thought, this ends now.
With the subtlety that made her top of her class at the Citadel Academy in Oroc, she quickly programmed a new set of parameters for one of her favorite spells: one she’d named Cold Shower when she’d invented it. It still sold quite well on the independent markets, giving her a solid thousand credits a month even five years since she’d initially released it.
Her twinned Spellweavers were engraved and infused with stealth enchantments precisely so she could rebuild spells like this without her spell being interpreted before it was finished casting. Before she began, she activated her Efficiency Aura with a slight surge of tensa from the small battery on her left pinky. The sixteen miniature robotic arms sprang into precise but erratic-seeming motion. A minor inefficiency in the spell—the only physically detectable inefficiency, she was always quick to say—caused the tensa waste to manifest as a brief puff of honeysuckle flower scent.
As a Technomancer, her grafts were much less showy than Evokers or Sorcerers. She’d never get the pyrotechnics that Fireball and Firebolt brought, but she had been very deliberate in her training and Class choice. She never wanted the flashy powers or spells: she wanted effective ones. And Technomancer delivered on that ideal for her.
Take her Cold Shower spell, for example. The only evidence of its casting was the slight smell of honeysuckle. No light or heat leakage, no sparks, no complicated invocation: she’d automated it all away when she’d designed the spell. She had to package the spell with her Adaptable Virus graft using some keywords she’d picked up when she used her Ultra Library Class power. The virus would deliver it to her victim invisibly using her Gauss Beam filtered through her Combat Algorithm.
The pulsed magnetic signal containing the virus in an infused package entered Brutus Bardoul silently and utterly undetected. Despite the rank disparity, her overall effect was minor enough that it never triggered any of Bardoul’s more aggressive resistances. All he knew was that one moment, he was taking another swig from his bottle when suddenly, he had a terrible, blinding headache.
He coughed as he clutched at his head, spewing liquor everywhere. He realized his mouth tasted like he’d been chewing on rotten meat. And then, he broke out into a cold sweat that seemed to leech his strength away, leaving his limbs feeling like water. Within moments, he’d gone from casually lounging and drinking to feeling the worst hangover he’d likely ever feel in his life.
Petra knew the effect wouldn’t last long, just long enough for him to get the point: she would not be trifled with. Since all he seemed to respect was strength, she had to speak in terms he would understand.
Though if he doesn’t even know that I did it, how would he respect any strength I have? Maybe I should’ve done it in his face, Petra thought sourly.
Petra’s teammate, Dhonab, appeared at the tree line in the clearing they’d cut to set up camp and glanced over at the lolling figure of Brutus on his incongruous lounge chair before approaching. She’d chosen him for her team because he was a rare thing in the Empire: a pure Warrior Class, which meant that with any weapon, he could become the most dangerous entity on a battlefield. He also happened to be a close personal friend.
Petra was used to feeling like the shortest person in any gathering, especially because she liked hanging out with hissk like Dhonab. He loomed, even though he tried not to, and his long black tongue shot out, tasting the air. He considered her with a large, unblinking golden eye. He had tattooed his facial scales into a riot of infused characters. There was an enchantment under all the decoration, but it was impossible to tell what exactly it was.
Dhonab was holding a Systablo in one clawed hand, and he glanced at it while he spoke, “I’ve Tasted complicated scents on the night breeze, Comman—ah, Petra. It was faint, but it tasted…salty and greasy. Very much a human taste, but with a hint of something very cold, but very distant. Starlight. Do you know what that means?” Petra held her hand out for the systablo and Dhonab gave it to her.
Hissk relied on their racial ability to Taste even more than their other mundane senses; their Taste could detect things that other abilities couldn’t. Petra had been around Dhonab long enough to trust his Taste, even if she couldn’t always interpret what in the Nine Hidden Worlds he was talking about.
She examined the readout on the Systablo. Dhonab had pulled up the map that they’d put together of the area trying to work out a route from their current location to a little pulsing dot where Dhonab had estimated the location of the scent to be. It was almost two kilometers away.
“It means we have a lead,” she muttered, considering Brutus Bardoul’s revelation that they were searching for someone. She manipulated the map, zooming in on the location and panning it around, looking at the terrain.
“What was Oadoa’s analysis?” She asked.
Dhonab narrowed his golden eyes, flicking his tongue out languidly. It looked lazy, but Petra knew that to be a sign of hissk irritation, “Oadoa’s API spirits tell him that the Oracle of Battlefields smiles fondly on that terrain. Translation: it would be ideal to hide materiel in the dense forest and cliffs on Discovery Mountain.” He rolled his eyes, “I do not know why you put up with that sanctimonious cloaca. He’s so self-righteous it’s sickening.”
“I asked for the analysis, not your opinion,” Petra said, but there was no heat in it.
Dhonab and Oadoa had been after each other since they’d met. They took the traditional hissk and draakan enmity very seriously, even after working with each other for years. Ironically, as far as she could tell, the two races were similar enough that most mistook them frequently which did nothing to ease tensions.
“Santosh has sent out those…distasteful homunculi of his,” Dhonab continued, “they’re building Oadoa’s SecNet. Disgusting little things, but they’re efficient at least; we should have visibility and secure comms in the area in about two minutes.”
Petra nodded briskly, tracing out a patrol pattern on the map on Dhonab’s Systablo. She handed it back to him and said, “Mobilize the field team; I’ll deal with Bardoul.”
She strode back where she had left Brutus. The huge man had managed to prop himself up in his chair, though he was still holding onto his skull miserably. He glared daggers at Petra, but he made no move to attack.
Good, Petra thought, I’ll be able to keep my secondary virus package in reserve. It’s always unpleasant to see someone’s body reject their skeleton, but I think I might actually enjoy watching Brutus go through it.
“Commander,” she said evenly, “I’m sorry to see that you’re feeling poorly. This ought to perk you up: Dhonab’s detected our quarry nearby and we’re working on setting up the SecNet so we can have eyes and ears in the area along their projected path. We’ll move out once we’ve confirmed—”
“Weegrrrfulginow…” Brutus gurgled, cutting her off.
He heaved himself into a sitting position and Petra saw his skin boil and knot, staining itself an inky blue, the color of diseased veins. His bones cracked and popped, and he hunched forward, puking a steaming pile of meat, viscera, and bones. He remained hunched over for another second, his muscles spasming and bunching in huge knots on his shoulders and back, hair sprouting in spiky growths all over him. Then he straightened and where Brutus Bardoul had been, now there stood a monster.
Brutus Bardoul had turned from a disgusting, hairy man hunched weakly over a pile of broken liquor bottles into an even bigger, midnight-blue wolf-man hybrid with four blood-red eyes on its enormous head. His arms had elongated to twice their old length and his fingers were tipped with wet-looking black claws. He straightened, standing up from the chair and rolling his shoulders back. Petra heard more bone pop and snap as he took two deceptively large steps until he was looming over her. The entire transformation took about five seconds.
One enormous, clawed hand settled itself on her shoulder and she felt the tips of those claws like spikes in her back, deep enough to draw blood. Petra’s field team reacted, but too late. Half a dozen weapons were pointed at Brutus, but he didn’t seem concerned about any of them. He held his position, his mouth opening in a wolf-like grin, a long, bright green tongue lolling out of his mouth.
“Y’all are excused,” he said in a deep, growling voice, “Little Miss Thang and me need to have a conversation.”
He turned his back on the rest of them, completely ignoring them. Petra frantically signaled for them to stand down with one hand. She didn’t want to be responsible for unleashing this monster on her team.
“Lieutenant Petra,” Brutus said in a deep, animalistic voice. He leaned down by her ear, his hot breath blasting her in the face, and growled, “You and me’re gonna head off into the woods and…talk.”
His four red eyes glared murder at her and she knew if she went into the woods with him, she would not return. In his other hand, he’d conjured a glowing, red-hot length of spiked chain that smoked and hissed in the night air. He started stalking toward the tree line, keeping hold of Petra with one huge hand, dragging the red-hot chain through the underbrush scorching whatever it touched.
As Petra was desperately considering just what kind of stand she could make, an alert popped up in her—and everyone else’s, judging by the surprised cursing—System messages:
PERIMETER ALERT
::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT:: ::ALERT::
SecNet has detected five tensa signatures with the presence of a Great House Seal.
Location Fix: -86.88992 x 2.2944101 [MAP UPDATE TRIGGER]
6 X STASIS DRONES DEPLOYED
Before she’d finished reading the message, Brutus Bardoul no longer had his claws in her back. He tossed her aside like a rag doll and, hunching onto all fours, he charged into the woods in the direction of the little blue dot that represented this Scion of House Vasilias. Petra rolled on the ground painfully before fetching up against a tree.
Before anyone could react or take another move, several explosions echoed through the forest and a second later, Oadoa’s sibilant voice piped into the field headset, “SsssecNet has identified hosssstile targetsssss; five targetssss ssssso far, there could be more. Dronessss Two and Four launched their payloadssss!”
So close to the origin, the wireless comms signal was perfect, but the enemy would begin jamming soon and comms would get unreliable. They had to move fast if they were going to survive this mission.
Petra had to force the moment with Brutus Bardoul out of her mind for now. She was hurt and disoriented, and if she wasn’t performing at her very best, she would likely get herself and her team killed. She couldn’t decide what would be a worse outcome for her and her team: Bardoul’s death or his success.
If he died on the mission, she’d be blamed for it. After all, Petra and her team’s whole purpose on this trip was to be his minder. If he succeeded at whatever his true mission objective was…She remembered the murder in those four crimson wolf’s eyes as he held her pinned on his claws; he had no intention of allowing her to live after the way she’d humiliated him.
Dhonab handed Petra a health pack and she winced a little as she injected it. The wounds caused by Bardoul’s claws on her back sealed up along with the bruises from when he threw her and she shrugged, feeling the new muscles twinge a little as they rapidly regrew.
Petra turned her comms to their private channel and began issuing orders, jogging after Brutus, easily following his trail of rampant destruction. The only way she could think of to come out of this at all was to ensure Brutus Bardoul never left Mt. Discovery alive. The key would then be to convince Desalia Bardoul that his death was unavoidable. That seemed a better prospect than facing the more immediate threat that Bardoul represented. After all, they had plenty of time before they had to report back, plenty of time for anything to happen.