Chapter 96: Long-Awaited Arrivals

Chapter 96: Long-Awaited Arrivals

FUCKING PRELATE. FUCKING TEMPLE! FUUUUUUCKING CATS! This was supposed to be a vacation start! Not the "oops I accidentally fundamental truths". Again. AAAARGH.

Ok. Fine. Whatever. It seems to be fairly well self-managing, at least. But good grief, I so do not need yet another metric fuckton of publicity on top of everything. Because of course priests did not even think about keeping this quiet. Nope, no way. Let's instead tell everyfuckingoneever that "Lady Gillespie did it again! Not sure what that is and why, but she totally did it." My only saving grace is that we DO depart in the evening. The airship is ready, the luggage is ready, all the possible matters have been settled, in spite of my best efforts to pile in even more issues to deal with, arglbargl.

So... last doublecheck. Everyone who needs to be alerted is alerted? Yes. Affairs sorted out and set to take care of themselves? Yes. Outstanding issues to deal with? None. Rooms? Cleaned up and prepared to be covered up for the duration of our absence. So... What else is there to... do?... Oh. Ooh. OOOOOOH fuckbisquits why.

To explain my most recent bout of dismay? My long-play with the assassin heads had borne fruit. And how. This person? That's the fucking Old Man On The Mountain himself. I've had been given descriptions of him, and he matches them to the tee. Golly, that's quite a lot of people around. Some of them interestingly garbed and armed, too. Not quite the Assassin's Creed here, but they do wear this distinct set of clothes inside of their own keep. Presumably, to set the "chosen" apart from the commoners tending to the daily humdrum any fortification tends to invite. So what do we have here... Huh. That's actually pretty neat. Unlike the historic Alamut, this settlement is built inside the caldera of an extinguished volcano, and the keep encircles it, being cut into the crater edges and built atop it. Impressive, and the resulting fortified town could probably last for decades if sieged. There are gardens inside, and volcanic ash grounds are probably pretty fertile, so starving them out is not a problem. Wonder how they handle water, though, volcano should... Ooh. Hot springs. Gods damn it, that's like... the perfect spot for a stronghold.

So... What do I do about it?... Oh. Yeah. No. Not tolerating this. Now, they're... ah. Good. I was wondering if they will bury the heads, but apparently when it's only a few remnants of a body, they just put them on the memorial pillars in the mausoleum of sorts. Huh, that's funny. Lots of unoccupied pillars, but each one has an inscription... Do they put a pillar in as soon as one gets indicted? Morbid.

I leave the heads and mausoleum behind. Nothing worthwhile in there. Note to self - experiment with mass shunting sometimes. How do I do it? And can it be done by someone else? Because it's not the teleportation trick I cribbed from oijans. Might be my own quantum fuckery that I simply didn't look into deep enough... Oh well, time to think about it later. Right now, infestation. Let's go full-on zerg on this place. First... Infiltrate and survey. There is remarkably little magic around here... And what little there is seems to be dedicated to detection. But detection of large beings. My eyespiders are flatly ignored by the magical tripwires, for the lack of a better term. Wonder why. Some kind of aversion to magic? Or just lack of aptitude? Or maybe they see little reason to bother and only put those out of a sense of duty and tradition rather than any actual security consideration? That is, if they even use those. So far all that I have found had been made decades ago at least, and lasted so long mostly due to not having been tripped at all. Hm.

I crush the rescue party. Literally. A couple of towers next to the one in question shudder and shed the stone shell, the flesh within heaving globes of acidic mucus on top of the doomed party. Which is crushed and melted in short order, prompting a lot of despair in the tower with survivors. I let the "towers" collapse on themselves, no reason to let villagers see more than distant glimpses of some kind of calamity. They appear to be lacking any sort of martial presence by now, I guess everyone who was used to fighting went with the rescue party. Now... the tower.

It appears that people are really losing their marbles there. Oh. Well, that's just peachy, because the Old Man was just beheaded by his own disciples and head tossed down to me, apparently in hopes that I will grant mercy for this act of betrayal. Actually... why not? In the next moment, every single clump of mass I have secreted through the tower conjures a needle. Frangible design, it would on the environs density change split into sectors and fan out. The survivors so far are.. well. Shredded would be the best way to describe it. I am quite confident none of them had lived long enough to process the signals enough to understand they're dead. And that is a wrap. Pulling the mass back is an effort, but trivial in comparison. I do leave plenty of me secreted throughout the keep, dormant, just in case someone gets the bright idea to restart. The remains (whatever I didn't eat, at least) are all piled into a messy pile in front of the gates, with Old Man's head on top. All the documents I could find went into the fireplace along with a generous helping of fire magic.

Hashishins... exterminated. I wonder if I should make another public push... Nah. Too early. Salaadin needs to verify his "trump" turned out to be a low card. I wonder if that would be enough to make him willing to negotiate, or I would need to deprive Sultanate of something else later to get him to swallow the pride. Time will tell, I suppose.

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Back in Parsee, things are processing apace. Lily-Anne returns from her visit to her folks (she went to see Abe and Monica before going on a vacation with me, which is eminently understandable and I would have suggested it if she didn't do it first), we all pile onto the ship and depart the Academy amidst much fanfare from students and professors alike. I wonder if they're glad to send me off to vacation or just glad to see me going?

"Well then..." - I suggest as I lock the course and turn around to face my girls - "Vacation ahoy."