PreCursive
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Chapter 58 - Stealth Lessons
🕑 Added 2023-07-30 22:12:47 +0000 UTCAfter my little explanation and subsequent embarrassment when seeing Silvia without her mask, we picked up on the training again. Nothing heavy or physically strenuous again, she just showed me how to use the FAT. It was kind of fun, actually. It was like playing with clay, to an extent. The mask could adhere to my face by itself, and using a small mirror you could hand adjust your facial features. Once you had reached a face you liked, you could freeze the mask into that configuration with a command word. The mask degraded though, so you could only use a single one a few times. Thankfully, Silvia had been given five of them for her mission, even though she didn’t have a use for them.
Hooray for bureaucracy.
That only took us about half an hour though, and now that we were done, we were preparing to head back to town. Silvia had told me that she was going to help me sneak back over the wall. In the meanwhile, we were just catching.
“…and I don’t even know what a Precursor is,” I said to Silvia, adjusting the pouch with the FAT’s in it. “Sure, I know what Grey’s told me, but that isn’t helpful. That only tells me I’m supposed to be special somehow, and that we’re rare. But I don’t know why I’m here, and I don’t know the reason. Did a god bring me here? Did the System? I really don’t know, and sometimes I think Grey expects too much from me because I’m supposed to be some mysterious figure out of legend.”
I don’t know why I was dumping all this on her. I hadn’t even spoken about this to either Grey or Azarus, because I didn’t want to ruin their expectations. I knew that they’d been placing their hopes in me for some time now, and I didn’t want to spit in their face after how they’d saved my life. But Silvia? For some reason, I found myself spilling all of my garbage to her. Maybe it was because I’d just met her, or maybe it was because she was the daughter of the man I’d found myself apprenticed to.
Hell, maybe it was because she was pretty. I wasn’t perfect, sue me.
Silvia paused putting her mask back on her face. So far, she’d only strapped the lower portion back onto her metallic face. Right now, she was in the process of collecting her literally golden hair. “I understand, perhaps better than you know. All of my people do.” She mused. “We’re so young, and as a people, we don’t understand who we are. Not truly. Not yet. We only know what we don’t want to be, and that’s property. And so, we fight, in order to secure a future free from the yoke and plow. Perhaps…perhaps you need to find something worth fighting for as well, Nathan. A path that you believe in.”
I was silent, mulling over what she’d said. A path worth fighting for, huh. What would that be for me? I didn’t know. I don’t think I wanted to try and get home to Earth. The only thing that really tied me back there was Dad, and I wasn’t sure if he’d survived my absence. There were so many painful memories tied to it that I felt no particular fondness for my former home.
“Maybe…” I whispered. “Maybe for now I can just fight for a new start. Maybe I can just try and build a new life here.”
“Perhaps.” Silvia acknowledged, strapping the last of her mask on her head. “Sometimes just fighting for a chance to discover yourself is enough. It’s what we’re doing.”
You know, for a five-year-old magical robot, Silvia came off as pretty wise.
“But enough of that.” She continued. “We need to get you home.”
Addersfield had never been a home for me, not even Azarus’s house. But I got what she meant.
I nodded, but I’d forgotten one important detail. Before I could even object, I found myself scooped up into another princess carry.
Oh, whatever. Might as well enjoy the ride. I sat back in Silvia’s arms and watched the forest blur by us.
………………………………………
Once we reached the walls, Silvia didn’t put me down immediately. Instead, she leaned down closer to me.
“I will only remain at my camp for the next two days before I depart.” She whispered to me. “You are welcome to join me for additional lessons in that time.”
“Sounds good to me,” I whispered back.
Then, Silvia got a glint in her eye that I was beginning to learn meant mischief. “Then, for now, I bid you goodbye.” Before I could say anything in return, she reared me back with me in her arms and tossed me straight up and over the wall, as if I was a ball. I flew with surprising speed, easily clearing the top. I barely managed to hold in a scream at the abrupt throw, and doubly so as the ground began to rapidly close in on me. With a muted thud, I managed to stumble my way into a controlled landing, leaving me sitting on my ass. Staring at the wall in disbelief, I shook my head. That woman was going to be the death of me, I swear.
Wavering to my feet, I activated Thorn Cloak. With one last glance at the wall, I started making my way through the forest to Azarus’s place.
………………………………………
I came back out to Silvia again, over the next few days. I found I enjoyed the lessons that she would give me. I actually enjoyed it more than the sporadic combat training that Azarus put me through, every so often. As part of our training, Silvia took the time to involve me in her surveillance of Addersfield. She called it extra training as a scout. The cool part of it was that she had an actual extendable enchanted spyglass. Part of those enchants included some kind of night vision enchantment, allowing us to see things clearly in the dark of night.
It was pretty cool, honestly.
Silvia pointed out the shed she had written about to Grey. It didn’t seem like much to me. It just looked like a ramshackle wooden building, barely large enough for a cart to fit inside. Certainly didn’t look like the secret entrance to a potential underground storage bunker. Since all our training sessions took place at night, we were never at the right time to see a delivery disappear inside. But what did I know? I took her word for it.
Part of that surveillance was actually of use to me, though. Silvia let me use her spyglass to inspect the mansion intently. The entire point of this training was to get me to infiltrate it, after all. While I was studying the manor, Silvia pointed out features and rooms on the mansion that she had suspicions about. One of the most useful things she pointed out to me was the servant’s entrance. That was likely going to be my entry point. After all, slaves were kind of servants for these people
It was a large building, especially compared to the rest of Addersfield, but it wasn’t that big. There were only so many rooms that my objectives could be in. She indicated three rooms in particular, one on the second floor, two on the third. One, she suspected belonged to an important official, based on the amount of time she could see firelight dancing in the window. Apparently, the occupant had a tendency to work late into the night. If her suspicion was right, that one might belong to the Seneschal, Orinbar. Vandimar’s uncle.
Silvia strongly suspected that the other two rooms belonged to Magnus in some way. One was probably his personal chambers, and the other? Well, the other one might just be the room the Ward Stone was kept in. But I couldn’t just work off of assumptions. I was still going to have to infiltrate the manor. When, if, the time came for us to set off our plan to escape, I would need certainty on the location of both the Control Slate, and the Ward Stone.
Too bad that Silvia couldn’t do it for me. She was without a doubt the better stealth specialist. Unfortunately, you needed a specially attuned pass device to bypass the wards around Addersfield.
Silvia told me she had actually held up a messenger from Addersfield not far from the town. She’d pilfered both his pass key, and a number of documents from him. Upon inspecting it, that had been when she’d realized they needed to be attuned. Sadly, the documents had been useless for her too, to her later regret. They’d been written in a code that she wasn’t able to break. She’d need to bring them with her when she left in order to get the papers deciphered.
But beyond even that…
I spent a lot of time just speaking with Silvia. She was just…so easy to talk to. It’s not like I was just complaining to her, either. We spoke about our individual childhoods quite a bit. Well, hers was much shorter than mine. Technically, her ‘childhood’ as she called it was the first two years after she became aware, before the Uprising began. It was interesting, and honestly kind of amusing, to hear how Grey had acted as a sudden unexpected father to a magical construct with the maturity level of a late teen. Apparently, that’s the level of personality that all Sculpted came into existence with.
In return, I told her about Earth and my life back on it. Things that were mundane to me, were fascinating to her. Looking back on it, I agreed. While Vereden wasn’t as uncomfortable for me to live as I would expect a swords and sorcery fantasy world, it wasn’t Earth. God, what I wouldn’t do for modern air conditioner.
Wait.
That should be possible, from my understanding of Enchanting. Project for later.
Moving on, I think I could definitively say that I’d made a friend. It felt…good.
As all good things do though, our training eventually came to an end. After we had finished our last training session on the third day of it, Silvia had surprised me with an awkward hug. I…didn’t expect that out of her. She hadn’t struck me as a particularly physically affectionate person. I’d awkwardly returned it.
“Please, look after my father.” She had whispered in my ear. I’d promised I would.
The next morning, Grey, Azarus and I decided that it was time.
I was going to break into the manor.
………………………………………
“Seriously?” I said incredulously to Azarus. “I don’t?”
Azarus shrugged. “Yep. Ya don’t need different clothes. The manor slaves don’t have any kind of special uniforms. Based on my impression of him, Orin would just say that’s a ‘frivolous expense’. Dwarf’s kind of a spend-thrift.”
“I can’t believe I can just wear my normal clothes.” I said, shaking my head. Said normal clothes were a simple white lace up tunic, and brown breeches.
“Not entirely true.” Grey cut in. “You won’t be able to wear your shoes. After all, there’s no use wasting good footwear on a slave of all things.” He rolled his eyes.
The three of us were gathered around the kitchen table, going over the plan for my infiltration. We’d gotten up so early that the sun wasn’t even up yet. Things were going unexpectedly well.
“God, security is so sloppy here,” I muttered to myself. Part of my training with Silvia on stealth and infiltration had necessarily included some knowledge of what I needed to infiltrate. In other words, I was actually able to understand just how poor Addersfield security was. “If it wasn’t for the wards, this place would have spies waltzing in and out every day, no problem.”
“Well, that’s simply the way things go, normally,” Grey told me. “The all-encompassing versatility of most wards renders many security practices moot. After all, you can typically tune them to achieve the desired effect without installing inconveniences like sufficient precautions.”
“Their fuck-up is our gain,” Azarus grunted. “What else does he need?”
“Well, I have my FAT.” I said, ignoring Azarus’s chuckle. I didn’t blame him. “But that does nothing for my hair, just my face. Grey?”
Grey nodded and sat two full vials on the table. “As requested, I took the time to brew some simple hair coloring. This one,” He pointed to. “Will darken your hair to a near pitch black. A very frequently occurring shade among the common citizenry. The other will reverse the coloring. Simply apply either potion to your hair, and it will absorb and change the hue rapidly.”
I took the vials and stepped away from the table. I took a deep breath. “All right then. I’m going to go put the FAT on and apply the potion. I’ll be back in a bit.”
Exchanging serious nods with Grey and Azarus, I exited the kitchen and walked up the stairs to the washroom. Entering it and closing the door, I got started. First, I used the potion on my hair. Sure enough, the contents of the vial were rapidly absorbed into my hair. Seconds later, it had darkened to a very dark black. After that, I took out one of the FAT’s that Silvia had given me. I’d gotten used to how manipulating them after our practice, so it didn’t take me long to rearrange my facial features. When I was finished, a stranger stared back at me from the mirror. It was a little disconcerting, actually, not recognizing yourself in the mirror. Self-consciously, I reached up to trace the scar I had received from the Blade-Rack Hart those months ago. It was probably my most noticeable facial feature these days, and now it was hidden beneath a layer of false skin.
I shook it off. Daylight was burning, and I needed to get his done.
I exited the washroom and walked down the stairs to find Grey and Azarus waiting for me.
“Who the hell are you?” Azarus said. “How did ya get in my house?”
I rolled my eyes at him. “Well, you know, the window was wide open,” I said sarcastically. “I just couldn’t help myself.”
Grey ignored our banter. “And you have your dagger?” He asked anxiously.
Turning away from Azarus, I nodded at him. I patted my hip. “Yeah, It’s right here.” Said dagger was in a simple sheath strapped tightly to my thigh. Honestly though, if I ended up needing it in the manor, I was probably fucked. I was taking it more as a tool than a weapon.
Grey took a deep breath before letting it out as a sigh. “Well then. That’s it.”
“Nothing to it, but to do it,” I said with a faint smile, knowing full well I was making a reference none of them would understand. They still nodded solemnly though, as if I had said something profound.
It’s the little things, sometimes.
Gathering my courage for the last time, I left Azarus’s house.
Time for a sneaking mission.
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