Chapter Six Hundred – Differences of Opinion

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Chapter Six Hundred - Differences of Opinion

"Okay, so the world might end, but you're still going to jail, right?" I asked.

It felt like the whole library was staring at me, and I found myself shrinking a little under the attention.

"I don't disagree with her," Guinevere said. "He brought us valuable information and did some good work informing us about the threat, which is useful and commendable, but that doesn't exactly absolve him of prior actions."

"That's a bit ridiculous," Mathew contested. "We're not arbiters of the law. In fact, I know that we've all done some things here and there that would have us arrested. You can probably ask the Paladin."

A few eyes turned towards Bastion. He didn't even shuffle around, nor did his expression change at all, though he did nod slightly before speaking. "Black Avatar Mathew isn't incorrect. My skills relating to sensing lawfulness do paint most of you as criminals, but that is according to the Sylph judicial system, and I've come to believe that not all past transgressions of the law are necessarily misdeeds. Mister Rainnewt, however, is someone whom I have personally witnessed attempting regicide."

"Regicide?" one of the Avatars asked. "Since when is murdering a king any worse than murdering anyone else?"

Rainnewt nodded sagely. Bastion glared at him, but it was Caprica who spoke. "By that logic, it's not any better than murdering someone else, either."

"You're worried about the philosophy of murder while the World teeters on the brink of calamity?" Rainnewt asked, sounding honestly shocked.

"Murder - attempted or otherwise - is not exactly a great character reference," Guinnevere noted.

Rainnewt turned to her, then paused, licking his lips. "This threat is bigger than any crime," he said carefully. "You need all the help you can get."

"Do we?" she asked.

Heavy silence fell across the library. Some of the Avatars shifted, muttering to one another.

Guinevere looked Rainnewt square in the eye. "I can replicate your devices myself, if we really need them." she said. "And another third-tier -- though certainly useful -- is unlikely to tip any battles in our favor; not with the force we can already bring to bear."

She was probably right. As far as I could tell, they already had more fourth-tiers than I'd ever even heard of.

"Guinevere," Matthew said, frustration leaking into his voice. "You admitted that the information he brought us is valuable. Doesn't that deserve consideration?"

"I am considering it," she replied.

More uncomfortable silence.

"Uh," I said. "I don't really know what you learned from spying on us and checking up on things, but it wasn't just one attempted murder. Um. There were bombs, so--"

"It was a lot of attempted murders," Amaryllis snapped. "And also successful ones, in the Nesting Kingdom."

"And the only point of that plot was to try to force everyone to level up more by starting a giant stupid war," I added.

"That's a bit of a blemish on the old record, isn't it?" Viviane said with a snort. "Look, whatever we want to do with the guy, it's pretty clear that leaving him up to his own devices isn't a genius move. How about we lock him up for a bit?"

"'Lock me up for a bit'?" Rainnewt parroted. "Really? In this dire hour? Is that how you treat me after I came to you for aid?"

One of the Avatars opened his mouth to speak, but Viviane beat him to it.

"Just temporarily," she said. "You can cool your heels while we cool our heads."

Some of the Avatars grimaced at that.

"Besides," she went on, "I'd like to have a chat with him in less... company-full conditions. So maybe the old tower?"

"The old tower?" I asked.

"It's one of the older towers that is part of the keep," Tristain explained. "It's not exactly a cell, but it has only a single entrance and I suppose that the only way Mister Rainnewt might escape is if he grows wings."

"Powerful ones," Amaryllis said. "You know, issues aside, this island of yours is nearly the perfect prison. Over water, tightly controlled logistics, and the giant storm makes any attempts to escape suicide."

I hadn't thought of that, but I supposed it was true. With how hard it was to get to the Black Keep, escaping it would basically be impossible. That was nice. I was still going to chat with all of my friends once we returned. I wanted a system in place to tell us apart, like a secret handshake or something, just in case Rainnewt did something tricksy like replace one of us with that shapeshifting trick of his.

Plus, I had always wanted a secret handshake!

With that decided, Rainnewt's fate for the moment was put into motion. I wished there was a more final decision, maybe a gavel being smacked down, but the Black Avatars looked a little reluctant to press on with any sort of final judgement, and I honestly understood them.

Once Rainnewt was escorted away--with surprisingly few complaints on his part--we settled down for a meal. The Black Avatars that had come off the ship had brought supplies, and that meant a surplus of meat and fresh bread and other goods that wouldn't last all that long, which seemed like a good enough reason to throw a little party.

It was a little awkward at first, since my friends and I weren't really part of the local crowd, and our initial meeting had been less-than-friendly, but after a few ice breakers and after Calamity ran off and returned with some rum he had stashed on the Beaver as well as some extra food, things eased up.

I found myself talking with both Mathew and Guinivere, standing between the two, holding onto a cup of warm tea while they argued back and forth.

"I don't think you've been burned enough," Guinevere said.

"What does that even mean?" Mathew asked.

"It means that you're trusting someone that hasn't hidden the fact that he's a betrayer and a liar. When someone tells you so blatantly that you shouldn't trust them, then you should listen to them. Rainnewt is bad news."

Mathew shook his head. "I know that. But half the Black Avatars are bad news. We don't have to trust him to act on what he says."

"Sure, if what he's saying is true," Guinivere replied. "It wouldn't hurt us to verify."

"We don't need direct verification. There should be other evidence that prove him true. We have that sample--"

"Bad idea," Guinevere replied before taking a sip from her own foamy mug.

I glanced between the two. "What sample?" I asked.

"It's none of her business," Mathew said.

"She's good," Guniivere replied.

He scoffed. "Now who hasn't been burned?"

Guinevere ignored that last barb and turned towards me. "When we were initially working with Rainnewt... no, before that. We ran into one of those Evil Roots and took note of it, but it was early on and the dungeon was still functional. But we did take a sample."

"Did it do anything?" I asked.

"It moved around a little, but we keep it well-contained," Mathew said. "Once Rainnewt came around and explained more about the Evil Roots and their connections to the dungeons, I wanted to experiment with the root some more, but I was outvoted. So I'm still just running the original experiment, which has proven very safe."

"What are you doing with it?" I asked.

"Feeding ambient mana into it to calculate its rate of growth," he said. "Don't worry, there are dozens of failsafes around it. If it breaks quarantine, the experiment chamber will be ejected off the side of the island and incinerated."

"Oh," I said. Well, I supposed that if they were being safe about it, it wasn't all that dangerous? "But you want to do more?"

"Obviously. Especially now, knowing that the roots are artificial. I can at least test that claim properly. I rather suspect that they're a natural occurrence that was altered in some way to be more efficient or effective. Someone had to start from somewhere. A sword isn't made from nothing, but is crafted from base materials."

"You don't need Rainnewt around to do that," Guinivere said. "I even agree that it's not a terrible idea to--"

She cut herself off, then stood a little straighter. I noticed at that same moment that a lot of the conversations going on across the room had stopped, though some of them took a while to catch up with the silence.

Tristain, who had been chatting amicably with Amaryllis and one of the Black Avatars I didn't know, bounced up onto his feet, standing on the couch. "Viviane, check on the prisoner. Nicholas, outside, get me a report. Mathew, go protect the core."

Just like that, three of the Black Avatars darted away, two moving so quickly that they were basically blurs to me.

"What's going on?" I asked, my ears sticking straight up from tension.

Guinevere looked at me, then tried a smile on, but it wasn't terribly comforting. "Many of us have senses attuned for trouble," she said. "It's the kind of skill that keeps you alive long enough to make it to our level. And right now, something is triggering that."

Percival stomped into the room, face set and serious. "The storm's shifting," he said. "We might have intruders."

"Intruders, up here?" Calamity asked.

"Could be a whale," one of the other Black Avatars said. He didn't sound certain of himself with that statement.

Percival shook his head. "The sky whales usually skirt around the storm, this feels like it's coming in closer."

"Let's go greet them, then," Tristain said. He moved over to the table in the centre of the table, then pushed tea kettles and plates of dried fruit aside before he opened the top of the table up and pulled out a staff that would have been a walking stick for anyone taller.

All of us shuffled out of the room, then down one of the long corridors of the keep. Viviane reappeared at some point, and confirmed that Rainnewt was still in the prison tower. "I saw something out there," she said. "Thought one of the arrow-slits. Don't know what it was, but it's big, and it's coming through the storm."

That rather concerning message had us all moving with a bit more alacrity towards the exit. Some of the Black Avatars peeled off to grab things on the way, but they usually caught up quickly, often with weapons.

Then we were out and rushing onto the docks. It was raining, which didn't strike me as odd until one of the Black Avatars grunted and pointed upwards to where the upper edge of the storm was slowly swelling inwards, the top of the funnel fraying apart.

As soon was I was on the same level of the Beaver, I could see what Viviane had glimpsed.

Out in the storm was something big. For the moment, it was little more than a large collection of long, sinuous shapes moving behind the storm-wall, but they were growing larger, and as they approached, I could start to make out the scale of them.

The edge of one of those forms finally broke through, then more came and... what was I even looking at?

It wasn't an airship. The thing was far too organic for that. Rather, it looked like a massive, aerodynamic squid, but the main body of it had that sort of dark-brown texture that I'd expect on the skin of a coconut, and the long tendrils flowing out behind it were more like long vines.

The whole not-airship was maybe half as long as the Beaver. So was the second one that burst through the cloud wall. And the next one. And the one after that.

The storm clouds tore apart as a vast round shape punched through them - it reminded me of the balloons of the largest airships, but this was neither lightweight nor hollow. The immense coconut-brown hulk seemed to force the clouds apart as it came into view, carving a tunnel through the storm clear out to the blue sky. Water cascaded down its sides in great flows, like a dozen waterfalls. Even as the storm howled and shook the other, smaller vessels, this one held steady, moving ever closer at a speed that looked like a crawl.

It was a seed. A massive seed, larger than the Beaver, and split open lengthwise so that it formed two interconnected halves with a massive tangle of vines within. The top and bottom were both smoothed out, though there were breaks and cuts in the thick seedwalls, leaving some room for little towers both above and below.

There were no flags, markings, or symbols, but as a wave of magic pulsed out from the biggest of the seeds, I saw that it didn't need one.

Whatever that was, it radiated the same malevolent energy as an Evil Root.

***

A note from RavensDagger

Ah, back home and things are more normal! 

Also, almost done writing Vol 5. Like...4 chapters + epilogue left to write? Once that's done, I might up the posting speed for the last bit! 

Also (x2) Stray Cat Strut Volume Eight has just launched on Amazon and Audible! 

If you've been following the series, thank you. Seriously. Eight books is a ridiculous amount of Cat, and I'm still delighted people keep coming back for more.

And if you've been meaning to catch up, well, now there's even more of it waiting for you.

Amazon: https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0GLSTRTKN?maas=&ref=

Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/Stray-Cat-Strut-8-A-Cyberpunk-LitRPG-Audiobook/B0GLT6CK5Z

Also (x3) I'm gonna be on a weird podcast thing tonight, hosted by my favourite boomer, PopPop! 

Here, at 8pm: https://www.youtube.com/live/LCUOBOFM3i4?is=InB0kYpCwQpBm8ma