Vanya's Journal, Entry 37: Parasol's CampThis is a hard-bound journal. On the item is the logo of Parasol Industries: a red and white umbrella. The logo is standard. The image relates to the Founding of Parasol Industries in another universe on an unknown date. On the item is a star in imitation gold leaf. The star is five-pointed. The image relates to the birth of Everoc's Vanya Carena in the year 188 PS. Saemin, Trebor and I rounded the last bend and found ourselves face to face with my friends, squinting at the light Saemin was shining in their eyes. They had their weapons readied: Reudh had a pike, Tedaz had a longsword, and Strohe had his knife. John stood in the back, holding a wicked-looking whip, and the scythods stood on either side of them, legs tensed.
Without a warning, Klade sprung forwards, his scythes poised to swing.
"Stop!" I cried out, ducking and shielding my head. "It's only me!" Klade landed at my feet and stepped backwards, unsure. The others started lowering their weapons.
"Hold up, what's going on here?" a wide-eyed Trebor asked. He jumped behind Saemin, who pulled a pistol from his side. "You brought us into a trap, Hotlips?"
At the sight of the gun, John readied Lurit's whip again and started to edge forward. "Don't even think about firing!" he warned. "These scythods can move faster than you can blink, and you're outnumbered five to one!" He glanced over at me, scowling. "Damnit, Vanya, if they captured you, why'd you bring them here??"
"Let her go free, I command you!" Reudh ordered, stepping forwards in an attack stance. "If you don't, you will be dealing with
me!"
"Back off!" Saemin boomed, leveling his weapon. "I'll shoot!"
I leapt to my feet, raising my hands towards both parties. "Stop!" I yelled, looking at one, and then the other. "Please, just stop! Nobody captured me! They're friends! There's no reason to fight!"
"There is always a reason to fight, if you look hard enough," Klade growled, sniffing towards the Parasol soldiers with a foreleg.
Trebor peeked out from behind Saemin. "I'm a doctor, if that eases your mind; I don't fix battles, only wounds," he offered helpfully.
The tension gradually dissipated, and I breathed a sigh of relief, hanging my head. "Thank you," I whispered in prayer, and looked towards Reudh. "Lord Reudh, where is Lurit?"
"Over here, Vanya," he replied, pointing into the darkness behind him with his pike.
Trebor walked forwards at a brisk pace, motioning to Saemin to bring the light. When we reached the old man's stretcher, Trebor knelt beside him and opened his medical chest, folding out all the little trays inside the lid. Then, carefully, he pulled away the strips of cloth Reudh had wrapped around Lurit's stump.
"Armok's beard," he whispered. "It's no wonder he's unconscious." Hurriedly, he pulled out a few syringes, and, after swabbing an area on Lurit's arm, administered the drugs. He followed this up by taking out a little vial and spraying something on the purplish, reddened skin.
Lurit awoke at once, howling in pain. "Gods, what have you done?!" he yelled, trying to scoot away from everyone. The scythods hissed at the noise, scurrying away.
"Hold him!" Trebor yelled. Reudh and Tedaz rushed forwards to assist. After the struggling, screaming man was secure, Trebor snatched another syringe from his container and slammed it into Lurit's calf. Lurit's eyes widened, his mouth agape, and then, slowly, he collapsed back onto the ground, unconscious.
"What happened?" Reudh asked.
Trebor shook his head in shock. "I have no idea," he muttered, furrowing his brow. "That shouldn't have happened at all. It was just an antiseptic..." Turning and looking towards his friend, he caught sight of Strohe, who was staring raptly at the tubular light in Saemin's hands.
"You like the light, do you?" Saemin asked quietly.
Strohe looked up and nodded vigorously. "It ain't like anything I ever seen before. Heck if I know how it works."
Chuckling, Saemin glanced back at Trebor.
"We have plenty more where that came from," the doctor muttered, shaking his head and turning back to Lurit.
"Trebor, we needa get back," Saemin prodded. "Ballpoint woulda heard his screaming, and they'll be coming for us."
Trebor continued staring at Lurit in confusion for a moment, and then gradually collected his thoughts. "Right," he said, nodding and starting to close up his medkit. "Saemin, you take him. The rest of you... Gather up whatever you're taking with you, and
be quick."
With a crooked smile, Saemin handed his light tube to Strohe, who took it with a childlike expression of awe. "Hold that for me," he chuckled. Walking over to Lurit's limp form, he bent down and scooped him up in his arms as easily as if he was a sack of plump helmets. Though Reudh and Tedaz gaped at the man's strength, John crossed his arms, unimpressed. As for Strohe, he was too absorbed in the light he was holding to even notice.
Trebor nodded with approval, and then glanced around, looking everyone else over. We all stood silently, waiting for direction. "Okay... let's go," he finally said, taking the light from Strohe. "I'll need a hand free if I'm going to work this light, so... Hotlips?"
I glared at him.
"Carry my luggage, if you would be so kind," he smiled, holding his medical kit out to me. "I'll tip you when we get to the room."
Everyone was staring, waiting to see what I would do, and it embarrassed me. I gave up and just took it from him, not wanting to start a fight, and found it wasn't very heavy at all. Everybody else seemed to relax a little, and we started back towards the trench.
"Make as little noise as possible," Trebor warned in a whisper, jogging ahead of us with the light. "If Ballpoint figures out we're out here, they'll be on us in a second. Hawkins is watching, but Ballpoint may still get off a few shots."
"Hawkins?" Reudh asked, shifting his bundles on his shoulders.
"Our gunner," Saemin said over his shoulder, panting from the weight he was carrying.
"Okay," Trebor whispered, "Hide under the covers, guys – I'm shutting off the light." With that, he flicked the switch at the end, and the glowing tube quickly faded to black.
"I can't see a darned thing!" Strohe growled, tripping over a rock.
Trebor snorted. "Don't stare at the light next time," he said, rounding the next corner. "Okay, everyone, stay –" he stopped abruptly, staring at the megaportal's hill.
I bumped into him, unable to slow down fast enough, and someone else bumped into me from behind, poking me in the back with something sharp. "Ouch!" I hissed.
"Run," Trebor ordered, pulling away and starting to do so himself.
I started jogging forwards, peering at the hill, and soon saw why the doctor was worried: several tanks were swiveling their turrets in our direction.
Tanks. They're like big, armored machines, and they can roll faster than horses... Their guns can destroy almost anything. Glancing behind me, I saw that everyone else was straggling behind, confused. "Do what he said!" I hissed loudly.
The hillside exploded above us, showering pebbles and dirt on our heads. Reudh screamed.
"Run!" I yelled, putting on a burst of speed to catch up with Trebor.
Behind me, everyone got the message this time, rushing forwards as quickly as they could. K'bahth easily caught up with me. "There are three vehicles on the northern hills," he clicked.
"I know," I answered between breaths. A boulder behind us exploded violently, scattering dust and shards of stone against my head.
We heard a familiar crash as Parasol's railgun fired a round; off in the distance, a billowing fireball lit up the night sky.
"Keep up!" Trebor shouted, leaping down the ridge I'd hid behind less than an hour before. Saemin soon followed, carefully picking his way down the slope. A shell exploded twenty feet to his left. "Don't worry," Trebor called jokingly, "We're safe as long as they keep aiming at us. Looks like they expected armored soldiers."
Everything brightened suddenly; the moon came out from behind the clouds. Although it was just a crescent, it was enough for us to see by... and enough for Ballpoint to see by, too. As John and the others ran down the Parasol side of the ridge, K'bahth shouted: "Missile! Stop!"
I spun around. In an instant, John had already translated what K'bahth had said, and Reudh and the others stopped abruptly, just in time. The ground between us exploded in a fireball.
"Move!" John shouted again. I turned and kept moving forwards, sprinting to catch up with Trebor. An artillery shell exploded in front of me, tossing up a plume of earth, and I heard another blast coming from behind.
"Strohe!" Reudh yelled, running back for his companion.
"I'm all right, your lordship!" Strohe said, standing shakily as Reudh helped him up. "Just got knocked off my feet, is all."
"Hurry!" I shouted, praying we'd all make it alive. I was sure I was inside the shield's radius by now, but the others were still fifty feet away.
K'bahth gave another warning: "Missile!"
John started to translate, but I yelled over him. "Ignore it! Run!!
Sprint!!"
The men put on a final burst of speed. As they reached me and slowed to a halt, we heard a hissing in the distance, followed by a hum; the missile exploded inaudibly against the bubble shield, which rippled with a silvery shimmer that soon faded away. Far away on the hill, there was another explosion, and a cloud of fire and smoke billowed into the air. I nearly collapsed with relief.
"Yes!! Haha, you made it!" someone exclaimed loudly, laughing. I turned and saw Katie a couple hundred feet away, running towards us from the trench. Between her palms, she held a glowing sphere of blue-white light. "The Captain does a great job with the energy shield, doesn't she?"
Nobody else seemed nearly as energetic or jubilant, only shuffling forwards towards the trench as lights began to appear within it, illuminating its length.
"Hotlips!" Trebor called from up ahead. "Bring that medical kit and follow me! The rest of you, stay put and wait for Jonah – he'll be up here soon."
Katie looked first at Trebor, and then at me, raising an eyebrow. Then, she clapped, and as if by magic, the glowing sphere between her palms completely disappeared, and she jogged forwards, slowing and turning, matching her pace with mine. "Hotlips?" she asked in a whisper. "Really?"
I glanced over at her and hesitated. Something about her seemed vaguely... unusual. Brushing the feeling aside, I frowned and nodded. "I asked him to stop, but he wouldn't."
She laughed. "He calls me 'Snowflake'."
"I'd rather have 'Snowflake' than 'Hotlips'," I said, managing a weak smile.
We reached the trench, and I looked around. Trebor was already at the bottom, thirty feet below, but Saemin was making his way carefully down a series of stairs carved into the dirt walls.
"Hurry up, Hotlips!" Trebor called out. "Don't take the ladder – I don't want anything happening to that chest!"
I started down the stairs, following Saemin.
A heavily armored blonde-haired dwarf emerged from a doorway next to the doctor, her arms crossed. "Why 'Hotlips'?" she queried, unamused.
"No reason, sis," Trebor replied, fighting a smile. "It just seemed like it suited her."
"Hmph," the woman grunted, and craned her neck upwards to look at me as I descended another flight of stairs. "Soldier, get your friend situated, and then come to my office. Trebor, you too." This said, she left, going back through the doorway. Trebor left as well, motioning for Saemin to follow him down the trench.
"I'm not a soldier," I muttered, furrowing my brow.
On my left, Katie nodded. "I didn't think you were a killer. You don't even seem like the type that would wield a gun. Even so, the captain will probably call you 'soldier' until she gets to know you."
I glanced over at her thoughtfully as we reached the base of the trench, going in and out of shadow as we passed the lights affixed to the walls. "You're very perceptive for a human..." An idea struck me. "You're
not all human, are you..."
She laughed in delight, and with a finger, she pulled back her long, wavy hair, revealing her right ear. It had a blunted point to it. "I'm part elf, part dwarf, and part human," she said, before putting her hair back. "And
you're very perceptive, too, for a dwarf."
It startled me, and I looked over at her quickly. She gave me an impish smile and playfully snatched Jack Magnus's cap from my head. I grabbed at it reflexively, trying to keep it on, but she was too quick. "Stop it!" I hissed.
"You're
not all dwarf..." she whispered with a smile, giving a meaningful nod at my ear before carefully placing the cap back on my head and straightening it. "I
knew it! You're part elf, too."
"I'm
all elf," I countered, readjusting Jack Magnus's cap.
She gave me another impish grin. "How do
you know?" she whispered, dancing away. Then, louder, "I'll see you at supper, okay?"
"Okay," I answered hesitantly, watching her disappear through a doorway behind me.
I'd never encountered someone from multiple species before... I hadn't thought it was even
possible. Confused, I followed Saemin down the trench, trying to put it out of my mind.
Before long, I Saemin led me through a crude doorway and into a well-lit room: the infirmary. Taking a good look around, I found it was the first place there that appeared otherworldly: the walls, floor and ceiling were covered with metal panels, and four beds were backed up against one wall, covered in long sheets of paper. Next to each were a number of monitors, most of them turned off. Trebor stood behind the nearest bed, holding his blue-gloved hands in the air, a sky-blue cloth cap over his hair. Though it had been too dark to notice before, I found that his beard was clean-shaven.
"Right over here, Saemin," Trebor said, smiling, "I'm all dressed up with nowhere to sew."
Carefully, Saemin set the unconscious Lurit down on the bed and left the room. I set the medical kit down on one of the other beds, looking at Lurit worriedly. "Will he be all right?" I asked.
Trebor was already moving quickly, hooking Lurit up to the monitors, which lit up, displaying numbers and graphs, many of which fluxed with Lurit's heartbeat. "Don't worry about a thing," he assured me. "I've never lost a patient. Matter of fact, I never lose
anything."
I nodded cautiously and swallowed.
"Have you seen my stethoscope?" he asked suddenly. I wasn't sure if he was joking, but he answered before I had a chance to ask. "Kidding, kidding."
"Are you really the only doctor here?" I asked, awkwardly watching him rush between Lurit and the cabinets at the edges of the room.
He glanced up for a moment as he filled a syringe with a bluish liquid. "There were others, but I'm the only one left. You might try Jonah, though – Ballpoint's mistaken him for a battlefield medic several times, I guess because he's the mild-mannered type."
"It was
once," someone said from the doorway. I spun around and saw Jonah standing there, a smile edging at his lips. "Instead of telling tall tales about me, Super Mouth, why don't you try leaping off a tall building in a single bound?"
"Can't help it, Jonah," Trebor grinned, injecting the liquid into Lurit's arm. "My stories are more powerful than a locomotive."
"And with great power comes great conversation, I know," Jonah replied, shaking his head with a smile. He started to leave the room, looking over his shoulder at me as he did. "Vanya, come. The Captain has been waiting for you. And Trebor, you come, too, once you're done here."
I didn't hesitate, following him out of the infirmary. He was silent the whole way there.
"You're an elf."
I was standing across from "The Captain" in a little room near the surface. Jonah was standing to the side. The Captain's "office" wasn't much more than a little room with wooden boards holding up the walls, a few chairs, and a desk at one end. The thing that stood out the most was the table that stood between the captain and me: there was a rough clay model sitting in the middle of it. It had little needles stuck here and there in its surface, and a wire ring standing upright on a little hill in the center. It didn't take me long to figure out that it was a crude map of the surrounding area.
"You're an elf," she said again, looking at me suspiciously. "Remove your hat."
"She's an elf?!" Jonah exclaimed, astonished.
Reluctantly, I did so, putting Jack Magnus's cap into one of the pouches at my waist.
Jonah scratched his beard, shaking his head. "She
is an elf... How about that..."
"Does it matter, ma'am?" I asked respectfully, feeling my cheeks grow warm. I already knew what they were doing; they were singling me out because of what I was.
"You will address me as '
Lieutenant Almory,' Sleeper, and
never as 'ma'am'," she said with a harsh glare. "You will say 'sir' if nothing else. I am your superior officer, and I expect you to respect me."
"Yes, sir," I said quietly. If she wanted me to call her "sir", I didn't have a problem with it. "I thought you were a captain, though..."
"I
was a captain. I used to be an admiral, even. But that doesn't matter anymore." She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. "Why are you here? And why have you brought a Ballpoint soldier along with you, and those scythods?"
"
Ex-Ballpoint, sir," I corrected her. "We're seeking refuge, and trying to get back to Spearbreakers." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jonah frown for a moment at the mention of the fortress.
"There isn't any refuge to be had here, Sleeper," Lieutenant Almory said sternly. "This is a dead end. Spearbreakers is portal-shielded, as of a year ago, following a Ballpoint attack. Nobody can get in. Ballpoint is going to wipe out this encampment any day now, and nothing can be done about it."
I hesitated, glancing at Jonah's face for a moment. He hadn't even flinched at what she'd said. "Are you really going to just sit here and wait for the end?" I asked.
Behind me, I heard someone enter the room, and soon saw a dwarf pass by me to my left, coming to a stop at the table. He had short-cropped, spiky blond hair and a matching mustache, and was wearing green pants with a red shirt that sported large, white flowers. With a curious expression, he reached out and rubbed a finger against my arm. I started to move away, but on catching a glare from the Lieutenant, I stood still.
"Ballpoint gray," the blond-haired dwarf said, furrowing his brow at the little blood-free patch on my armor, and then at his bloody fingertip. "You're wearing Ballpoint gray? Why?"
Everyone in the room stared at me suspiciously.
I felt uneasy. "Mr Frog had it made for me," I explained.
"Really?" Lieutenant Almory mused. She seemed surprised, though it was hard to tell. "Which one?"
That stopped me cold. "Which... which one? ...What do you mean?"
"There are two. One at Spearbreakers, and one... elsewhere."
"I... I've only ever heard of
one," I stuttered, lost. "I knew the one at Spearbreakers."
Blond-hair smirked in the direction of Lieutenant Almory. "The clone," he said.
Almory glared at him. "Quiet, Hawkins," she warned.
My eyes widened as I put together the pieces. "He's a
clone? Then... that explains why his memories... It was Joseph, wasn't it?" I asked suddenly. It explained so much.
Everyone seemed taken aback as the name left my lips. "How do you know that name?" Almory questioned, taking a step closer and staring me down threateningly. She was intimidating, and though my heart raced, I tried my best to breathe steadily.
"Sir..." I began, quieter, "With all due respect, I think I know more about Joseph than you do... Mr Frog noticed some of his memories were missing after he made a few deals with Joseph... I talked to Joseph myself once. If Mr Frog is a clone... If..." I almost gasped, my mind racing. "If the
original Mr Frog is at Eris..." I looked at their faces, and could tell from their glances at each other that I'd figured it out. "He
is at Eris, isn't he..." I smiled, a hint of triumph in my voice. "Joseph took Mr Frog to Eris, cloned him, kept him there, and sent the clone back to Spearbreakers, right?"
"Might as well tell her, Almory," Hawkins said, a smile twitching at a corner of his lips. "Seems she knows pretty much everything already."
Lieutenant Almory sighed and clasped her hands behind her back. "Parasol received word from Eris four months ago, in the form of a messenger. Someone in Joseph's employment arrived with a message from Mr Frog, routed through someone called 'Silena'. Parasol assumes she's a powerful leader at Eris. In the message transcript, Mr Frog noted that Joseph cloned him, and he gave the coordinates of Eris's dimension. Unfortunately, the coordinates were only of a spot within the dimension, and not of the entry portal, which is the only way to get inside the complex. The rest of the dimension is portal-shielded. The message wasn’t much help, but it’s our best lead."
"Am I late?" someone asked behind me, loudly slamming the door as he came in. I spun around and saw a grinning Trebor, likely fully aware that he'd interrupted us.
"There you are, Trebor," Almory said in an annoyed tone. "I thought you'd taken a vacation."
"Are you serious, sis? A
vacation?" he asked incredulously, taking a seat near her and leaning back in his chair. "
Crystal City is a vacation.
Earth is a vacation. This is a fungus convention in Hell."
"I am glad you could join us, either way," Almory murmured, shifting her gaze back to me. "How do you know so much about Mr Frog, Sleeper?" she asked curiously.
I honestly preferred "Hotlips" over "Sleeper". The first almost sounded like a compliment... the second just sounded demeaning, the way Lieutenant Almory said it. "I was Mr Frog's personal assistant, up until a year ago," I explained. "He sent me on a few missions to Ballpoint. That's why my armor is gray – it's so that I would blend in." As I spoke, an idea began to form in my mind, and I paused, deep in thought, my mind racing. "If you'll allow me, Lieutenant Almory," I carefully began, "I think I know how to keep Ballpoint from killing us... I think I know how we can win this battle."
I'd never strategized before, and I found it a little fun.
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Topic: [34.11] Spearbreakers - It shudders and begins to move (Read 2192583 times)