The Restored: Chapter One

I'm going to aim for three chapters of The Remembered a week, but fair warning, I may have to do two, especially while I get my feet back from under me. Writing this with everything going on IRL is difficult at times, but I don't want to keep a break up much longer.

With all that said... I hope you enjoy!

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I swept down the streets of the Undercity, and with my tall frame, heavy coat, and gun in each of my hands, most people left me well enough alone. 

Most, but not all. In my ten mile walk, there were still beggars desperate enough to try and grab my attention, tweakers who were strung out enough that they got in my face until I pushed past them, and gangsters who tried to shoot at me. 

None of them but the beggars had been able to grab my attention, though, and I paid the people around me even less mind as the faint thumping of music, colorful haze of spell-laced drugs, and the stench of too many bodies pressed together hit my nose. 

Cipher Nightclub.

Despite what Nexus’ report assumed, it wasn’t a nightclub in the literal sense, and it certainly wasn’t a power of the undercity. It wasn’t under the control of any singular member of the undercity, it had ties to a thousand gangs, and would have ties to a thousand more. I didn’t know who the current owner was, if there even was one, and whoever they were, they might end up dead in a day anyways. The report probably was already out of date about the owner, despite it believing itself to be up to date.

The fact that a place like this could operate defied all laws of bureaucracy, defied the rule of might makes right, and defied everything that might be considered logic.

Cipher Nightclub kept running, not because of bureaucracy keeping the doors open, not because of having a powerful patron intent on keeping the doors open, not because it was a powerful resource that was worth fighting over, but for a far simpler reason. 

People. 

People wanted a space to vent where there weren’t any of the powers. A place to get high and forget their worries. To find a partner they might never see again. That brought with it people who sold all of those services. 

And so, after every constable raid, every shootout, every shift in ownership, Cipher Nightclub returned from the dead. 

A nearly unlimited, unending cavalcade of pleasures that could make the Throne of Lust jealous.

I wouldn’t have been here normally. It wasn’t my scene. But the information packets I’d gotten from Nexus had outlined a list of probable locations for the Arenamater to work to sabotage and attack, like how she had orchestrated the attack on the White Rooms, the hotel, and on Jessica’s grocery store. 

There had been several dozen possible locations where she could strike next, but they were all clustered in two main areas – one to the northeast of Elucidate Labs, and one to the east-southeast. All of the locations had been populated spots, but other than that, I couldn’t see any real correlation between them. Some of them were popular airships of the overcity, some were bastions of the undercity, and some were apartment buildings for the street city.

And Cipher Nightclub was one of those locations, with the dubious pleasure of being the one that I was scoping out tonight. 

I stepped into an alleyway, then began evasive maneuvers. I shifted in circles, backtracked, headed in and out of abandoned and decaying buildings. Then when I was convinced that I was alone, I took a deep breath and let my mind spiral out to begin layering spellcraft.

The first thing I did was the basic metal sensing spell, which I then layered a mass sensing spell on top of the metal spell. While everything had mass, and my rune-bond was unstable, it still gave me enough feedback that I was usually able to see through illusions of light or shadow magic.

With my sensory spells complete, I used a spell to negate most of my mass, then lifted myself off the ground using the metal plates in my coat, anchoring the anti-divination device that Hadiya had created in the air behind me, where it would be blocked by my body and coat. I moved slowly but steadily, shifting through the dark alley and along the wall of the old, sunken factory building. The shadows were thick in the air, and the soot on the building made my dark coat blend in well, but given who I was hunting, I wanted to make sure I was also positioned in a spot where they wouldn’t normally look.

The moment I anchored myself in place with metal spells several feet above the highest not-yet-fallen railing, I drew out one of my guns and began wrapping a bullet in several layers of spells – metal propulsion, a spell to negate the mass if it encountered a force spell, and infusing an arch-star in to hide it from other people’s senses. 

Hopefully, the gun wouldn’t be needed, but I wasn’t going to take the chances. If I was able to kill the Arenamaster from here, I would. 

I didn’t especially want to kill her. Or anyone, actually. I wanted to have left this life behind me, and would much rather have been able to return to my job as an airship engineer. Maybe I’d be able to get to know Rhys better, to help Kelly get back into highschool and actually complete his education. Maybe even ask Rhys out for food together.

I only let myself indulge in the fantasy for a few moments before I forced it out of my mind. Getting distracted and missing the Arenamaster because I had to wallow in dreams and self-pity was unacceptable. After all, until I killed her and Abraham, Nexus still had me in a metaphorical chokehold. 

The offer that Devi, also known as Egress, had given me tickled in the back of my mind. To kill the members of Nexus, and improve the city as a whole. I shoved that aside too, for the same reasons, focusing on the alley. 

Seconds ticked by, slowly turning into minutes, then into hours, as I watched the endless stream of people. The report suggested that if anything was to happen, it would be from this general area, but I was rapidly becoming convinced that there was nothing suspicious happening tonight. 

Well, that was a lie. Cipher Nightclub always had something suspicious going on. There was just nothing that I could reasonably link to the Arenamaster going on tonight. 

It was nearing dawn when that changed. 

In my pocket, one of the brass buttons that I’d been given by my sister, a one use ward against powerful curses and esoteric magic, began to grow warm. Within seconds, it was burning hot enough to cause my jacket’s lining to start to smoke, and I used a metal movement spell to rip it from my pocket. 

It plinked to the floor below, and while most people on the street didn’t even seem to notice, one did. 

The figure was tall, over two meters, and I wasn’t sure if they were a tiny bit shorter than I was, or if that was just the distance. They gave me no impression from my metal sensory spell, so they must not have had any metal on them – a wise choice if they were really here for me, but their mass indicated that they were probably smaller than someone their frame should be. 

The moment the coin dropped, they raised their hand. Blue-green light began building around their fingers and I leapt into action. 

My coat flared out around me as I leapt into the air, and I fired off a shot at them, aiming for their knees. I wasn’t normally a shoot first, ask questions later kind of person, but if their curse had been potent enough to utterly slag a defensive one use artifact created by Zone – no, Jessica, not Zone – then they were a serious threat. 

They lashed their hand out, and a wave of pressure exploded from their fingers, bearing down like the weight of an entire ocean had been dropped on our heads. People dropped to their knees, or to the ground, and even my knees bent. 

But my own mass had been severely reduced, and they did nothing more than bend. My falsely-massless bullet rippled through the air, completely unaffected. It struck their cloak, which shimmered with a ruddy light, and through the connection to the spells cast on them, I could feel my aura draining rapidly. 

It drained my aura to power the magic fast enough that I wasn’t able to adjust the spell array to accommodate for the increase in throughput, and my spells shattered. 

It was still a bullet, of course, but without the magic supporting it, a simple force armor spell was more than enough to stop the bullet dead in its tracks. 

All of this takes time to describe, but it happened in less than two seconds. 

The figure turned and bolted away, leaping into the air. I tensed, then sprang into the air as well to follow them, using split mind to refocus. Half of me focused on the chase, while the other half focused on the spells, paying particular attention to the throughputs of each of them.

I didn’t know the range of the ability they’d just shown off. It seemed like some sort of demonic draining spell, but infused into a cloak? I’d heard of some people who ridiculously over-engineered enchanted cloaks, and maybe this was one such person, using layers of defense. But I didn’t know that for sure. They might well be able to use the ability in other ways, and with how rapidly it had drained power, I didn’t want to get caught up in it again. 

The figure landed on the roof, and blue and gold light burst around them, like an aura or incredibly inefficient spell. Whatever it was, they used the power to blur faster, leaping from rooftop to rooftop, kicking off the side of a building that was too close to the ceiling to be able to land safely. All the while, they released flicking bullets of water at me, each one spinning fast enough that I was sure if it hit flesh, it could rip through it almost as well as a metal bullet. 

I flared my hands out, casting quick reinforcement spells over my jacket’s metal plating, allowing the bullets to rip off, while at the same time forcibly pushing myself forwards. I landed on rooftops, dove under a wave of fire, kicked off of street lamp poles, bounded over a rain of spiky red light, and leveraged myself around buildings. 

The mage I was chasing spun then, launching themself at me, swinging a fist in a wild haymaker.

I couldn’t claim that I was in the best shape of my life, but the constant running and chaos of the last few weeks had sharpened my fighting instincts. I blocked the blow, shifting the plates of metal in my coat so their hand struck one of them, and they let out a grunt of pain. 

As they did, their red light flared and shot the drain on my spells through the roof again, but I was prepared, and adjusted the flow immediately, pulling my hand away. The instant we lost contact, my spells returned to normal. 

So, they couldn’t keep up their drain without a very close proximity. Good to know. I started building a new spell in my mind, with that in mind. 

They flung out their hands, and spinning water bullets were enhanced by a crushing pressure unlike anything before. A spinning serpent of water uncoiled itself from nowhere, lunging at me.

I shifted the plates in my coat to catch the bullets, reduced my mass to deal with the pressure, then smoothly fired at the serpent, unloading four shots in a moment. As I did, I caused each bullet to explode into shrapnel, tearing water chunks out of it. It faded away, back into aura, while the shrapnel hammered the force armor around the figure. I fired again, but it bounced off, and I was met with a massive wave of black water that struck me in the chest. 

This time, I massively increased my mass, and thus weight. The wave barley knocked me off course, and I finished the spell I had been building. 

“Gotcha.”