Risen Chapter 26: A Gray Dust Powderkeg

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It took some time for me to find myself. I don’t mean that in some sort of philosophical sense. Rather, it was more difficult than I had expected to find the building where my optera-self lay in broken pieces. I supposed that I could have left it there; it’s not as if it would bleed out. That, however, would have been a waste. I had very few unified Risen left at hand within Dihaim itself, and knew that extra eyes would be extremely important in the near future.

Eventually, I managed to locate the area through a combination of tracking the strange connection that I felt to all my Risen - a more difficult endeavor than it seemed, as I had raised uncountable Risen at this point. Bugs, in particular, had been easy for me to find and raise. Reaper’s Grave was filled to bursting with my minions, to the point that I had a difficult time looking anywhere in the area without seeing at least one of my Risen.

It was an unexpected drawback to raising a veritable horde, but one that I would have to accept.

Regardless, I eventually managed to home in on my optera-self; between the dubiously-helpful connection and the body that had splattered the street, it wasn’t an impossible task. The Spectral Guard had already arrived at the scene, casing the area for the culprit. While I would have loved to inform them of what had transpired, I was less than capable of that for now, destroyed and mangled as I was - not to mention the lack of any ability to communicate in my optera form.

I would still need to talk to them at some point. Hopefully, by then I would have decided what to do about the whole alley-situation that had gotten them so worried.

Fortunately, the presence of the Guard had managed to scare off the unified Risen Raven that had been on the rooftop earlier. I was unsure if the Gray Woman and her compatriots had simply decided to abandon the building due to my presence and the possibility of others knowing about it, or if they had already been on a shifting schedule anyway. After all, having a place where one could be readily ambushed defeated the purpose of the cloak-and-dagger work that had been involved in Alex setting up the meeting.

Eventually, I managed to fly my mangled body away from the rooftop, traveling back towards the Pits where Markus was waiting.

It gave me a lot of time to think about the Gray Woman and what to do about her.

I knew, unfortunately, that I would have to wait for another opportunity to arise before I could do much. I had no way of knowing where she had gone; she had simply disappeared into thin air with the help of that portal. Still, I knew that it was likely that we would run into one another again. Heroes and villains would always clash.

In this instance, certainly, I would make sure of it.

I could still hear the terror in Alex’s voice, the rage and the fear as he was dangled over the rooftop’s edge. He was a rather abhorrent individual, and I couldn’t discount how easily he dealt with the belief that he and his companions had murdered me. Yet I could still hear the Gray Woman’s worthless apologies as she dropped him.

That, I think, only made things worse. It seemed that she believed that the things she did were for a reason; she believed that she worked towards some purpose, rather than out of pure sociopathy or greed. That was dangerous. Villains with such thoughts were the most troublesome of all, based on what I had always heard.

A villain who worked for themselves purely out of the desire to break the law for enjoyment, self-aggrandizement, or profit was not easy to deal with. Yet, they paled in comparison to those villains that held an ideal. Though they differed in nature and outcome, it was similar to the ideals held by heroes - in that it provided a ready-made reason to go on, despite turmoil and difficulty. To escalate.

This could get dangerous. This would get dangerous, I knew - especially given the bits of conversation that I had overheard.

I had no doubts that the Gray Woman was a natural superhuman, like me. It was clear that her power revolved around the creation of the gray dust that was troubling the Spectral Guard recently. What was more troubling, though, was what I was given to understand regarding the withdrawal that it could create.

I had seen the way that Alex had behaved. He had been paranoid, jumpy, overly aggressive, reckless, and altogether vile. Previously, I had attributed all of those attributes to his inherent nature but now...I wasn’t entirely sure about that. While that might have been true to a degree, I suspected that there was far more to the situation than that.

The desperation that he had was a troubling sign. He had been stupid, in the reckless way that he had tried to get his hands on more dust. Even the dumbest junkie would know better than to challenge someone they had no chance of overcoming, when they might instead wait just a little bit longer - or perhaps find some other drug to take the edge off.

Instead, he had been willing to die for the chance.

More and more, I was beginning to believe that it was because he knew that, without it, he would die anyway.

Different overheard conversations came together, after that. Alex’s companion, saying that he would be cut off from the gray dust, and that he wasn’t willing to die with him. The brief mention of someone named Chris, whom I now suspected had died due to gray dust withdrawal. The Gray Woman’s foreboding mention of some sort of ‘timer’ running out, when referring to testing the effects of withdrawal.

I was almost certain that withdrawal from the Gray Woman’s dust was deadly - and, given that Alex had stated that it had been eleven days since he had any gray dust, I suspected the aforementioned ‘timer’ lasted for about two weeks.

What could a supervillain accomplish, I wondered, when her power could chain people to her will in such a way. Sure, some would react as Alex did, attempting to salvage their dwindling lives through sheer force and violence. I doubted that was the norm. Most, I believed, would be more compliant. They would be desperate to please the Gray Woman, eager to receive the power-created substance and extend their lives.

Even more, that was discounting the supposed effects that active usage of gray dust could provide. I had seen the easy manner with which the Gray Woman had manhandled Alex. I had seen the way that she had thrown him - with a single hand, even - clear across the rooftop. I had seen the way that his nails failed to leave scratches on her skin. I had seen the man’s complete and utter helplessness.

That sort of power could be addictive, I knew. It could be tantalizing - even to the point of willingly submitting to the heel of another. In a way, it was just trading one problem for another. Still, there were many who would give up everything to solve their immediate problems.

I had only to look at the beggars, the homeless, and the refugees to understand that. Dihaim was a city filled to the brim by desperate circumstances that bred desperate people in increasingly-desperate situations. It was as if someone had already built a powderkeg and provided the matches.

I could see how easily gray dust could fill that barrel. I could see how easily things might explode.

The only question was why they hadn’t already.

There must have been some limit to the Gray Woman’s abilities. More than likely, there was a limit to the amount of gray dust that she could create; otherwise, she could have taken over the city at any time that she wished. Even unwilling recruits could have been made, given a taste of the gray dust only to find themselves with a chain forever around their necks. She could have dangled the promise of continued life in front of them like a carrot on a stick, rewarding them for compliance while propelling them forward with the threat of certain death.

She didn’t - or at least, didn’t yet appear to be doing so in large numbers. As of yet, the Dusters were a faction that was few and far between.

Despite that, I knew things could change. The Gray Woman and Dusters both had mentioned moving stockpiles; it was possible that they were stockpiles of something other than gray dust, but I wasn’t willing to be complacent. I knew that I should assume she could be forced to escalate if I acted recklessly.

I needed to find those stockpiles; I needed to see what they were gathering for myself - and if necessary, I needed to destroy them.

It would be easier said than done, particularly with the capabilities that I had witnessed. I had my doubts that I could simply rely on Roy to find another group of Dusters - or even the same ones - with any degree of immediacy. I didn’t know how the Gray Woman’s partner’s Mark worked, but it was clearly effective. Not only had it allowed for the Gray Woman and her group to work with an admirable - and extremely annoying - degree of secrecy and subterfuge, but it was clear that the portals he created had some level of conscious control involved regarding who could travel through them. The Gray Woman had been pulled through the portal, yet my Risen self had not. Additionally, it hadn’t escaped my attention that the man had been touching the Gray Woman both times - upon arriving and leaving through the portal.

Sneaking through to see what was on the other side might be altogether unmanageable. It was a disappointing thought, being unable to capitalize on that extremely satisfying aspect of [Unity]. Still, it had at least managed to help me gather far more information than I otherwise would have been able to.

It was convenient, too, that it might help with the High Market guard contract that I had agreed to assist Katrina’s Killers with. I now understood why the Spectral Guard had been having such difficulties in catching the robbers; not only were they unnaturally strong, but they also had the advantage of the man with the portal on their side. I had wondered how, in a city where even simple insects could serve as trackers and second eyes, the robberies had been successful.

What I had witnessed had explained that. When robbers could simply disappear into thin air if given the chance, leaving any Risen trackers helplessly behind where they had previously stood, the only option was to overpower them with brute force. That, in itself, was a tall order. From what I had heard, the robberies were committed while under the effects of gray dust. It was more than difficult to overpower men that could throw someone across the room with one hand.

Without overwhelming power of your own, it was near impossible.

That wasn’t even accounting for the fact that the dust-enhanced robbers likely employed Risen of their own as well. In a way, they might have been even more troublesome than the Gray Woman herself in a straight fight. They had the same power and the same durability, but that was before the confounding factors of Risen and conduits were put into play.

I could imagine a dust-enhanced man with the conduit combination of someone like Katrina, a human weapon that was ridiculously difficult to injure and could heal from every successful attempt with nonchalant ease.

Fortunately, Will had made it sound like Katrina was one of the lucky ones - with an overwhelmingly powerful combination of conduits that wasn’t possessed by many.

I could only hope that was true.

I had a feeling that the High Market guard detail was going to be significantly more difficult than I had originally anticipated.