Chapter 12-5 The Frame (II)

Chapter 12-5 The Frame (II)

+Our Glaives are dead. The Agnos is gone.+

+What? How? The Paladin was+



+Its not him. Hes good and snuffed. There was an unforeseen variable.+

+Unforeseen? Unforeseen? The Conflagration should have left her little more than a vegetable. How did she+

+Not the Agnos. A Regular. Former Regular Jelene Draus. She ambushed field cell three before they could move to support. And then she intercepted field cells one and two at the target location. She mustve received an automated message from the Agnos somehow. She+



+A Regular? One? You had eighteen Glaives. With Incubi support!+



+She triggered a Thoughtwave Disruption before she went in. The resulting fight+



+You lost the Agnos to one! One Gold! Eighteen of our best couldnt stop one Regular? What the hells is wrong with you? Why do we keep you when+

+Elder [Redacted]. I speak to you now with the utmost respect. If the next words cast at me are an insult directed toward my comrades who just died serving the Republic, I will find you, kill you, kill your husband, kill your children, and kill every last member within your immediate blood lineage. I will then turn myself in afterward for a formal investigation to account for the question of why I did what I did.+



+...I apologize. My calm was compromised. Startling. Only one.+

+You were not part of the war effort, Elder. You dont know how many lives fighting her like cost us. We need to pivot. Im requesting additional resources to choke off their escape before they can ascend the Tiers.+

+Granted. Anything. Everything. But keep yourself in check: Kae Kusanade must be taken alive.+

-Glaive [Redacted] and Elder [Redacted], Ori-Thaum

12-5

The Frame (II)

Kae Kusanade, Cas drawled. She got up to some pretty revolutionary shit before the Silvers cooked her skull. He looked over at Draus. She tell you about what she was doing?

The Regular ran her tongue along her inner cheek. Avo had seen that tell enough to know Draus was thinking about killing the man across from her. Nah. She wasnt in much a talkin mood when I found her. Hells, she wasnt in a talkin mood even after she got chromed.

And you didnt look into it yourself? he continued, spreading himself wide as he leaned back. I dont know about you, Reg, but Id be pretty curious what would make Ori-Thaum attempt to captureand then framean Agnosi for the murder of a Paladin. He looked down to nonchalantly smooth out an unseen article of clothing beneath his veil. You know they were together, right?

Draus looked away from Kaes character profile and glared at Cas. What?

The Paladin, Dawton Morrow, and your consang there were a thing. He shrugged. Sure it wasnt permitted on her end and they tried to be sly about it, but hell, sometimes sparks fly in across Nether, right?

Draus turned back and stared into Kaes shimmering visage again. Fuck.

Yeah, Cas agreed, fuck, indeed. He eyed Avo. Zein said something about you knowing how to fix her? That true?

Got a theory, Avo said. Will need to see if it survives practice. Experiment with test subjects first. See if the supports I have in mind can last. His gaze briefly drifted over to Chambers.

The ex-enforcer blinked. Whywhy you looking at me like that, consang? He placed his arm along the wood beams of the terrace and shot a look out over the lily-paded waters.

Avo didnt give him an answer, instead choosing to pursue a question of his own. Why? he asked, gesturing at the sprawl of people and details stretched across the map. Why do this to her? And what is Godshaper.

A mistake, Sunrise intoned.

A major reason why the Stillborn-pattern Liminal Frame even exists, Denton said.

Wanted to keep his mind, Avo said, throwing out a vague response. Again, he wasnt really thinking when he restored all three companions into a cadre, but Cas had a point: Chambers was more captive than ally despite his constant sniveling attempts to ingratiate himself with the group.

That being said, the stalemated calamity within his mind presented useful avenues of research and a potential component to Kaes salvation.

Ultimately, Chambers possessed little threat on his own. The man mightve had an imbued Heaven, but Avo still had easy access to his mind. Stripping his senses and crippling his brain functions would take less than a full thought. Even should he escape, a lone Fallwalker was easy prey to a hungry city.

From what we could piece together, Denton continued as if the digression had never happened, Agnos Kae Kusanade was commissioned by Highflame in the immediate aftermath of the Fourth Guild War to restart the Godshaper project. This time, however, the reignition of the project followed closely behind another, seemingly unconnected incident.

Across from the Frame simulation, four profiles rose out from the conspiracy map as Kaes form fizzled out into thoughtstuff. In her place manifested four different figures sporting various degrees of chrome and other visible implants.

Then, their final details loaded, and Avo found himself more interested in the Third Sphere-ratings of their Liminal Frame instead.

Fallwalkers, Denton said. Cadre numbered a Scaarthian with eight rusted arms, an exoskeleton-clad individual vibrating between two points in time like a frequency, a Sang with a chitinous hive growing out from her exposed ribs, and a floating spine encased within the shell of an egg-shaped war golem. The Cadre called themselves Mignights Fall, and they specialized in less than sanctioned smash-and-grabs.

Chambers snorted. Sounds like some street squire shit to me, consang.

Denton kept talking. Their targets were usually voidships or orbitals.

Sounds like a short immortality to me, Draus said. Aint no one takes too kindly to you hittin the voiders. She paused. They hit any hydroponics? Could be deniable operatives for the No-Dragons.

And the Reg doesnt miss, Cas said, smirking humorlessly.

A triple-ringed orbital connected to a central spire pulsed into view. Its name was redacted, but the damage inflicted on its hull was obvious. Whatever the Fallwalkers had done, they tore clean through one of the rings and rampaged their way into the central spine of the station.

Ori-Thaum assembled enough details to assign the No-Dragons some complicity to this attack. The working theory was that they were trying to force those in Stormtree territories to purchase their produce instead. Their biotheurgically altered produce, that was.

Course it was, Draus said without any hint of surprise. You aint one of the Great Guilds without playin some fuck-fuck games.

The problem came afterward, Denton said. From what we gather, Midnights Fall didnt return planetside immediately. Evidence from Aegis suggests that they smuggled themselves aboard a passing Voidwatch vessel during their escape. They took something from that vessel that made the Stillborn possible.

The Imitators, Sunrise hummed. The Thoughtless-Dreamers

Avo found his attention drawn to the small bees settled on his left shoulder as they flapped their wings in agitated bursts. To his surprise, he found himself able to detect a hint of tension within them, a speck of emotion that he could taste emanations of their thoughts.

Ninth Column isnt sure what the Imitators are, only that Voidwatch struck a bargain with whatever terrestrial Guild could help them secure what was stolen.

The four Fallwalkers promptly went gray.

Highflame ended up winning the bid to rectify the issue, and after their bid, they secured Voidwatchs patronage in a highly unusual bargain.

Heavily restricted information, Sunrise added. I dont have access. And Aegis wont tell.

Whatever the case, Agnos Kae Kusanade was directed to task under a Paladin team headed by one Dawton Morrow and his cadre. The memories behind the project are heavily redacted, but from what we could glean, her work proved to be highly successful. Groundbreaking. A prototype Frame was patterned from a nascent Soul, whatever the Fallwalkers stole from Voidwatch, and Highflames resources. This proved to be dangerous for the balance

Cas face flattened into a wince as he stared at Avo.

A sense of disquiet settled on the ghoul.

Val, maybe we can

He should know, Denton said without even needing to turn and look at her colleague. Zein foresaw the construction of your Frame in the paths. But she wasnt the only one. The Walton branch of the Low Masters had also infiltrated the project, and a bargain was struck between the Column and the nodes to steal the Frame from where it was held.

A beat passed. In light of recently gathered information, we also believe that it was one of the Waltons that leaked the key details of the project over to Ori-Thaum. Including Kae Kusanades involvement and the Paladins attached. Dentons eyes snapped over to Draus. To the same extent, we are also quite certain that he directed a thoughtcast of her distress over to you, Captain Draus.

Walton. Ori-Thaum. Kae.

More plays working the Great Guilds against each other. More innocents caught in the crossfire.

Silence followed as all expression bled out of Draus face. Kae Kae contacted me.

That would be impossible. Her mind was already compromised by that point, and the Incubi had used her to eliminate her lover, Dawton Morrow. She wasnt fully herself until your Thoughtwave Detonation struck. We believe that Walton sought to remove the key intelligentsia behind Project Godshaper to ensure the fruition of his own plans, but if thats the case, we cannot explain why he contacted you.

Avo felt Denton stare right through him. For when he ambushed our extraction team and stole the Frame for himself and vanished, were pretty sure everything played out just as he wanted. Which was when his nodes started turning up dead.