Chapter 303: Restricted access (Patreon)

The blue scale mail armour that Alec made glints in the light of Big Bortha... for about three minutes, before we cover it all with grey cloth, dyed in the precise tint of the Starshade Syndicate.

That includes our helmets, which have even been fitted with grey masks. After all, we want to look the part of the anonymous agents as best as possible.

Alec doesn’t seem too broken up about it, anyway, as he fiddles with the fit on Dave’s arms, which are a little bulkier than they used to be.

We considered whether having Dave out in the open, as one of Yog’s personal hosts, would lend credence to our little group, but in the end, we decided against it. Fewer anomalies means less risk of people making reports and fact-checking our claims.

Of course, as the only actual Starshade Syndicate agent, Sudo will be in charge of the initial infiltration.

Jacob’s red eyes look stern as he considers himself in one of the many warped mirrors in Farouq’s oddly shaped mansion. With ‘Lyrack’ compromised, we naturally needed a new staging ground for our mission, and despite the peculiar spiralling shape of his abode, Farouq’s place was the obvious choice.

Anyway, Sudo is perched on his forehead as usual, now coloured the same shade of grey as his outfit.

In fact, all of our crystals are that colour, and our cuts have been altered as well, to match that of a public Starshade Agent. The only thing that makes us stand out from the average agent is the fact that we have human hosts.

Well, except for Farouq.

After Kaitlynn fell out, he volunteered to take her role in the plan, so he’s currently perched on Loudmouth, who’s doing his best not to show his sadness at having to cover his pretty new armour.

While it may have been a bit suspicious to get Yog to confiscate Loudmouth and have the Hoig delivered to Farouq, we reckoned it would be a mere blip on the radar in the complex world of Lustrous-tier machinations.

After all, Peilor don’t really view hosts as anything other than tools and commodities. They’ll just think Farouq requested Loudmouth out of sentimental reasons to do with the captured Lyrack; they’ll never consider that we may have wanted to retrieve Loudmouth because he’s our friend.

Let alone that he’d be wearing grey cloth wrapped around blue metallic armour, and gearing up to for an assault on the Voidcannon, mere hours after he was thawed from the Boreum he was delivered in.

At first we considered simply leaving Loudmouth frozen until after the mission, out of harm’s way. After all, our plan requires a minimum of only three agents. Still, redundancy is important, so when Farouq volunteered to take Kaitlynn’s place, we reconsidered.

Which is why I’m currently actually not in Farouq’s crystal, but in one that we liberated from his lounge entertainment system.

Farouq himself is back in his own crystal, though he could only enjoy it shortly before he also had to change its shape and colour to match that of the Starshade Agents he so despises.

And fine, he could’ve perhaps waited a bit longer, but I’m full of nervous energy, and not about to let preparations lie unfinished until the last second runs down on the Earthshift countdown clock.

That one is currently displayed on the still-working living room entertainment system, and it reads 5 hours, 17 minutes, and 39 seconds. 38 seconds. 37 seconds.

Come on, when are they going to start Kaitlynn’s Trial already?!

Below the countdown timer there’s a projection of a ‘news’ show, which mainly amounts to the Peilor equivalent of celebrity gossip, all stuff about who was seen where, wearing what host. At the bottom of the feed, however, a string of symbols is slowly scrolling by, reporting about even smaller events. Things like the victor of a minor tournament for the Flawed-tier—some kind of under-Hydrum sport played with urudo, that I understand involves rings they have to get around poles or something like that.

Anyway, apparently that particular feed is used by the Starshade syndicate to quietly pass messages. Encryption is rather difficult in a Realm with objective meaning, but they figured out a workaround.

Coded phrases have a certain meaning to the agents who read it, but not to the person who provides the feed. That person is simply working off a script, unaware that there are specific phrases mixed in that have a certain meaning to someone somewhere.

It’s quite ingenious. The hardest role is probably for the Peilor that has to alter the script without letting any of the meaning leak through. I guess they must’ve trained for it, kind of like Farouq, who deliberately keeps his art vague.

Farouq seems to have adapted that principle to the architecture of his house as well, because I can’t make heads or tails of this place, and I don’t seem to be the only one.

“I must say, I just love your décor, Farouq,” Suri chimes politely, breaking the tense silence. “It’s very... distinctive.”

It’s enough to draw my attention away from the countdown clock for a moment, as I try to figure out what she could possibly like about it.

Pretty much everything is covered in spirals. There are spiralling windows, spiralling paintings, and spiralling furniture.

I’d half expected spiralling rugs on the floor, but that would’ve been difficult, because the entire floor is made up of two-foot-high triangular ridges, for some reason.

Farouq snorts. “It’s okay; you can be honest. I hate it too.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Suri chimes in relief. “It’s absolutely awful.”

“Yeah, I’d have to agree,” Jacob drawls, shifting his weight on one of the weird spiral-shaped seats. “Why do you even live like this?”

Farouq sighs. “It’s... symbolic, of course. The spiral symbolises the Peilor’s social structure. They try to ‘climb’ the ladder, but they don’t realise that they’re just going in circles. That the steps are crooked and don’t actually go up, just deeper in.”

“So that’s why the floor is so weird!” Alec exclaims, shaking his head in amusement. “Dude, I can’t tell if you’re a genius or a madman...”

“I like to think I’m both,” Farouq chimes happily.

“I heard you hate explaining your art,” Dave observes. “Yet you seem to do so readily now. Why is that?”

“Yes, well, I suppose I’ve kind of gotten used to it, after all of young Alec’s questions,” Farouq muses, sounding a bit surprised himself. “I must say I find it oddly liberating to discuss these things openly for once.”

“I can imagine,” Jacob starts, before being cut off by a voice from his forehead.

“There!” Sudo whisper-shouts. “The ‘blue trigot’ is being called to ‘the referee,’ that means Kaitlynn is heading for her trial.”

“You’re sure?” I ask, involuntarily flashing my Lavi from Alec’s forehead at the mere mention of her name.

“I am.”

“All right then,” I reply, taking a moment to centre myself. “That means it’s go time, people.”

Alec pointedly clears his throat, a shit-eating grin spreading over his face.

I roll my eyes. “Fine, fine, I said I would, so, hopefully for the last time ever... Blue Dragons, move out!”

We head out in a diamond-shaped formation, with Sudo and Jacob at the front. Our path towards the Voidcannon takes a bit of a detour, so it isn’t immediately obvious where we’re headed.

Just in case.

During the flight, we all maintain our silence. Each and every one of us knows the plan by heart, so until something unexpected happens, we have nothing to discuss.

Key to our plan, are two roughly identical devices.

Well, I say ‘devices,’ but they’re basically mushrooms with an Imaginary ring around the stalk.

They’re not just any kind of mushrooms, however, nor just any kind of rings.

It took us some time, but we were able to track down two of the hot-pink, yellow-dotted ‘Carriage of Dreams’ mushrooms in the Yin-Yang Realm, and through those, their yellow, pink-dotted Imaginary counterparts in the Realm of Imagination.

It really is a unique species, and I find it mightily interesting how they’re capable of straddling the two Realms, but for these two we have a more practical application than research.

Because those rings placed on them are beacons. They too, have counterparts over in the Realm of Imagination. When activated, they’ll send a signal that will travel along the mushroom’s connections to the other side, and connect to a similar ring there. Then, both rings will open into portals.

The important part here is that, much like the whistle Goddess provided for Kaitlynn to use, the rings are actually Extant, rather than conjured, which means they don’t have any traceable connections. The mushrooms technically do have traceable connections, but they’re very weak and hard to detect, as the mushrooms have really tiny Espir Pools. They’re not even sentient, let alone sapient.

The bottom line is, we should be able to sneak them inside. We hope.

To help with that, one is within Dave’s grey bag, which is an actual piece of Starshade equipment, unwilling courtesy of Sudo. It’s a double-lined bag, that contains Hydrum in the lining, meant to dampen energy signatures. Specially made to hide its contents to the energy senses of curious Peilor, and perfect for our plans.

The other one is inside of Loudmouth’s gullet, which should serve the same purpose. Sudo only had the one bag, and we didn’t want to risk arousing suspicion by having her request another. One of the Commands on him is just meant to keep him from eating it.

I love our froggy friend, but I’m not taking any risks with this one.

Anyway, we’d hoped to acquire a third mushroom, but they’re not easy to come by, so we’ll make do.

After a somewhat circuitous journey, we at last approach the military checkpoint right outside the Voidcannon. The massive black octahedron with its ring of crystal looms oppressively over us, and that feeling isn’t lessened any by the Peilor soldiers patrolling around the structure on their huge host creatures.

The Peilor’s military hosts are clearly on another level. There are all kinds flying around, from the pistol-shrimp-like krah, to huge Astreum-jetting rays, gigantic octopi, and one truly enormous plessie.

Meanwhile, the Peilor that awaits our arrival at the gate—a free-floating ring of metal that forms a circular opening in the Inverse Gravity field—is perched on an actual adult trigot, and it’s massive.

It doesn’t strike me how massive exactly until we get closer, and I realise the soldier’s crystals are actually also bigger than that of regular Peilor.

I guess that’s something the Peilor have some level of control over...

“Halt,” the Peilor on the nose of the tri-horned trigot calls out. “I am Commander Haron of the Second Division. This is a restricted area. Please state your names and business.”

His tone is authoritative but polite. I’m guessing our obvious identities as Starshade Agents get us that much, at least.

“I’m agent Do,” Sudo rasps, “and these are agents Ri, Em, and Fa. By order of the Council, we are here to perform an inspection of the Voidcannon before the planned Voidshift.

Suri, me, and Farouq each flash our Lavi in turn when our respective codenames are mentioned. Alec had much wilder ideas, of course, but we decided to keep it simple, so we wouldn’t get confused ourselves.

The anonymity of the Starshade Agents is a powerful tool, but also a double-edged one, as it allows us to impersonate them with relative ease.

As Sudo does her little speech, Jacob wordlessly reaches into his grey clothes, and pulls out the metal plaque Yog provided us, holding it up for the Peilor to inspect.

“I wasn’t informed of any inspections,” Commander Haron replies after a moment, his tone growing if anything more serious. “Please allow me a moment to verify—”

“The Council has found that inspections with forewarning tend to garner far weaker results,” Sudo interrupts coldly. “Which is why I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist we be let through forthwith. If you would check our warrant, please, you’ll find we’ve been granted all the necessary permissions.”

Commander Haron remains silent.

If I could sweat right now, it would probably be pouring down my head in rivulets. This is the first big obstacle we need to overcome, and we can’t let them try to check our claims with a Council representative first. After all, this plaque was illegally provided by Yog, and the Council most definitely hasn’t ‘approved’ anything.

However, some reticence to let us pass through is within our expectations. As Sudo grudgingly explained beforehand, the Commander of this squadron is probably mostly worried about political manoeuvring, rather than an actual enemy attack.

After all, the Peilor haven’t been at war in centuries.

“I see this inspection is an initiative of Councillor Yog,” Commander Haron chimes after a moment, sounding rather sour. “I wouldn’t want to get in the esteemed Councillor’s way. You have permission to enter.”

“Good,” Sudo replies, already moving. “Please keep your men within the perimeter but outside of the Voidcannon for the duration, and don’t let anyone leave without our permission. Understood?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Commander Haron chimes coolly.

If he pays any attention to the bag Dave is carrying with him, it doesn’t show, and just like that, we’re inside the Voidcannon’s restricted zone.

That’s phase one concluded. Time for phase two.

Author's note:

And with that, the big final mission is finally underway! ^^

Strap in, for it's going to be a bumpy ride. ;)

I recently realised I haven't given this operation a cool name yet, an oversight which I naturally need to correct before I turn this into an e-book. Suggestions are very welcome, both good and humorously bad ones! ^^