Hours after its passing, whatever was smuggled on the ship has left its mark, as if the location has absorbed and crystallised some evil, the shadows charged with menace as Anya, Indigo, Sig and Squad search for clues. There's something eerie about the container, causing a chill to run down the spine of anyone who steps inside. The seven dead Elves have been torn to pieces, dried rivers of their blood exposed in detail by the wrinkling sunlight, bodies sprawled at terrible angles, as if they'd been taken by surprise and with devastating force.
Sig turns to Squad. "It looks, like we'll be needing those extra weapons I bought, eh?" he asks.
*
Sig and Squad are in a weapons store, Sig carrying a trolley full of axes and other sharp implements.
"You can't buy all that!" Squad complains. "You've already got a room full of weapons on Gaia."
"We can afford it," Sig assures him. "If we take the five hundred pounds you gave me and add it to my profits from investing the money, we'd have a total of—"
"Fifty pounds. And you're playing fast and loose with the word invested, there."
"Hey! I, and a lot of other members of the bullshit industry, would take offence at that comment."
They reach the counter and Sig piles the weapons up as the cashier looks on, surprised by the large bulk purchase. "That'll be two thousand eight hundred pounds, please," says the cashier.
Flashing an innocent smile, Sig giggles like a schoolgirl, taps Squad on the arm and, in a little girl voice, tells the cashier. "Daddy will pay!" before leaving abruptly.
*
"Seven security personnel dead," Anya says, observing the scene. "It looks like they didn't even get a chance to defend themselves." She turns to her brother. "Are you getting any magical readings, Indi? I'm getting nothing."
"The same," Indigo replies.
"I'll ask him," Sig smiles, kneeling down beside one of the dead Elves and talking to him. "Did you see anything?" The corpse doesn't reply. Sig explains to the others. "He says he's keeping his ear to the ground," Pointing at the Elf's severed ear, which is literally on the ground, Sig laughs, picks up the ear and speaks into it. "You found that funny, didn't you, ear?" He pauses as if listening to the ear. "He says yes."
"You know, Sig," Squad explains. "This really isn't the time for your severed ear comedy improv material."
"You say that every time I find a severed ear and start speaking into it!"
"...Maybe take that as a sign?"
"A sign saying: Do It?"
Anya smiles. "I hope he's not going to start carrying that ear about as his new sidekick."
"He can't have a sidekick, he's my sidekick!" Squad protests.
"OH, FUCK YOU!" Sig exclaims, then pretends he's listening to the ear. "He says I deserve better than this."
Indigo turns to Squad and his eyes have a golden core as if suddenly gilded with an idea. "How did whatever it was escape?"
"That's a good question," Squad agrees, his imagination rushing in torrents. "This port is surrounded by anti-enchantment spells and non-magical defences." He turns and calls to a nearby official. "Captain Savastano!"
A light-haired Elf approaches. "Yes, spectre?"
"Has the perimeter scan been completed?"
"Yes, spectre: there have been no breaches of the perimeter fence and the guards at all the checkpoints report no problems."
"If there have been no breaches of the fence, then whoever, or whatever, it was must have left through one of the checkpoints," Anya says.
Squad listens to Anya's voice, its implacable pace dragging his thoughts with it. He quickly turns to Captain Savastano. "How many people signed out of the port between when this ship docked and when these bodies were found?"
"It wasn't long," Captain Savastano replies, checking his records. "Eight people left the port in that timeframe, but they were all recognised by the guards."
Squad feels as if the solution is somewhere on the edge of his mind and he looks out over the vista of the port, the continual composite whisper of movement drawing his eye here and there, always searching for something. "The intruder might have left looking like someone else."
"Impossible," Anya shakes her head. "The anti-enchantment spells on the perimeter would automatically nullify any shapeshifting magic."
Squad is struck by a sudden realisation. "What if it isn't magic?"
*
The guards on the door to Indulkar's private study in the parliament of Tyria are surprised to see Section Chief Rizzi approaching their post. Rizzi is one of the higher-ups in the port and doesn't normally visit parliament unless he's speaking in front of a select committee. The lead guard lifts up her hand.
"Stop."
Rizzi stops just short of them and there's a strangeness to his posture, looking straight down at the floor.
"What are you doing here, Section Chief?" the lead guard asks.
The moment spent waiting for Rizzi's answer is packed with time and, when he does speak, it's in a soft, disintegrating whisper. The voice seems flaked and rusty, as if it hasn't been used for a long time.
"See...Indulkar."
A snake writhes under the guard's ribs. "You don't have a scheduled appointment, do you?"
The silence stands like a great heat, then Rizzi looks up, his eyes burning like two hieroglyphs; the magical barriers should have taken care of any illusions or enchantment, but the guard knows this isn't Rizzi. Before she can move, an animal grin spreads over the counterfeit Section Chief's face and he shoots forward, quick as a shadow flung across the room and with as little sound.
*
At his desk, Indulkar puts the finishing touches to a memo regarding the geopolitical situation in the Far East, then there's a knock on the door to his office.
"Come in." The head of his guard detail enters. "Can I help you?"
"We've had an alert," she tells him, getting closer. "Something dangerous has been smuggled into the port, with the intention of assassinating you."
He glances into her eyes and nods, standing up as the guard charges, her expression skinned alive by shock. A huge entity rips itself free of her body as if she's a skin suit, tearing her apart in the process, and jumps at Indulkar. The transformation is disgustingly physical, not magical, and the result is a fifteen feet tall, bright red alien-looking creature native to the Far East called a Kresh. Its elongated head is over three feet long from front to back and contains various layers of vicious teeth, its body covered in striking limbs ending in razor-sharp claws.
It leaps across so quickly that Indulkar is forced to throw himself backwards, to the ground and then, using the Kresh's momentum, kick it over his head to the opposite end of his study, slamming it into a bookcase. It spins, throwing acid from its claws on the turn and Indulkar barely raises a barrier in time, but then it's on him and he's forced to block its whipping, frenzied tearing with his forearms, feeling the acid that's in its every pore bite into his supernaturally-enhanced skin.
A strange, biting head punches out of the Kresh's torso and stabs into Indulkar's chest, aiming for his heart, and only the Elf's immense reflexes save him—he spins and throws the Kresh into the wall, sending bits of ceiling raining down on it. Loose papers scamper across the floor like rats. The Kresh spins and is up in less than a second, its barbed tail trailing after it, as it launches forward and smashes through Indulkar's heavy desk with a carving anger, slamming into him as he's magicking up his spear and knocking the weapon out of his hands.
Even with his superhuman constitution, Indulkar feels the effects of the acid and is weakened by it; the gargantuan creature leaps at him again and he holds it off with magic, levitating it in mid-air as it lashes at his weakening barrier, but its magical resistance is too high to do much else. It breaks free and lands on its many limbs, Indulkar's fighter's instincts telling him to charge and end the fight early, before the acidic venom takes a greater toll; if he was a normal person, he'd have been dead within seconds of it touching him.
Indulkar tackles the massive Kresh and they smash through the window, still fighting until they hit the ground many floors below, the Elf rolling free and recovering first, jumping on top of the huge beast, pinning its tail so it can't lash out and pummelling its head with a fist larger than a man's skull. He twists his body so it's blocking the tail, freeing up his other hand, then grips the creature's elongated jaw with both hands as it lashes out at him. He pushes up with all his might, then yanks the jaw down swiftly, before abruptly pulling it to the side, takes a knee so that it's pinning the tail down, and puts all of his weight and power into pushing the head forwards.
The Kresh screeches horribly and, with a sickening tearing sound, its head is ripped from its shoulders. Indulkar throws the three-foot-long head to the side, makes sure none of the creature's weird bits are going to jump out and start attacking him, then slumps to the side with a pained expression on his face.
Various people run to help, including several guards, plus Anya, Indigo, Sig and Squad, who've just arrived. Anya looks at the creature and gasps.
"That's a Kresh Queen! I don't think I've ever heard of one leaving the Black Jungle – they're very rare and are the only Kresh that can reproduce."
"You just killed a mother," Sig helpfully tells Indulkar. "Congratulations."
"I'm sorry, Prime Minister," Squad says. "We tracked everyone who left the port in the last several hours."
"Don't worry," Indulkar replies, gritting his teeth and holding his bleeding wounds. "You arrived just in time...to see how late you were."
"He'll need immediate and intense treatment," Anya says, beginning a healing spell on Indulkar. "The venom will almost immediately undo all healing magic until it's treated." She looks at Indulkar in awe. "How could you kill a Kresh Queen with your bare hands?"
"...I ripped its head off."
"It usually works," Sig informs the others, being an expert on the subject. "Sometimes it's best to go for a preliminary leg-rip – though that can backfire...."
*
Sig is struggling with a shadowy, three-legged insectoid creature and tears off two of its legs, the creature bouncing on its one remaining leg and turning invisible. Exasperated, Sig shouts, "YOU CAN HIDE, BUT YOU CAN'T RUN!" He furiously waves the creature's legs in his hands, trying to beat it to death with its own legs – wherever it is.
*
"...Does he often go off on a tangent like that?" Indulkar asks, still holding his wounds.
"Yes," everyone apart from Sig answers.
"But don't worry," Sig assures everyone. "Before I worked for the police in Racambad, they interviewed people about me and my neighbours all said I seemed perfectly normal...actually, that makes me sound worse."
"Sounds like the kind of reference you'd give to a serial killer," Indigo says.
"Yes," Sig agrees.
Specialist healing teams arrive and whisk Indulkar away for treatment but, before he goes, the great Elf warns Squad.
"This attack must be part of a larger plot. The resources needed to secure the cooperation of a Kresh Queen must have been extraordinary and no one would expend them as part of a normal assassination, no matter how high-profile the target. Be on your guard."
*
The Pantheon stands atop the highest hill in Night City and, inside its cavernous great hall, the ghostly flutter of trees can be heard lining the pathway on either side. On his lonely march up the vast aisle, Scipio looks up at these ancient trees and sees thousands of crows, like living black leaves, staring down at him with their wordless, clever eyes. Gripping his sword tightly, he looks around at the martial power on display, soldiers lining the entire way, dragons and other beasts flying this way and that.
He comes to a colossal throne occupied by a dark-haired Elf, who looks down on Scipio with a gaze that could strip a man of his sanity or seduce with a magnetic, terrifying addiction, depending on the owner's mood. Salazar stands, his muscular twelve-feet-tall body rising athletically as he steps down the handful of stairs towards Scipio, stopping a couple of steps above the former spectre.
"How is my grandson?" Salazar asks.
"Indulkar has been wounded by the Kresh Queen's venom and is being treated," Scipio answers.
"But he's expected to live?"
"Yes."
Salazar nods along with his own thoughts, then meets Scipio's eyes – strength and command pouring into his voice.
"Then we should move quickly."
***
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