Parson smacked his lips as he observed the gaping hole in the gate. Then he just looked at Sanko, bobbed his head a little, and proceeded to do as he was told without another word.
Once he was gone, Sanko turned her attention up toward Lawrence, who was still watching from atop the gate. “Bring me the officers who took these photographs!” she yelled.
Lawrence nodded and disappeared from view.
She turned her attention back to Zeff and Axiolis. “Now. Explain why Salazar was visiting you.”
Zeff folded his arms. “She said she was abandoning the Vanguard. She wanted us to join her. We did not appreciate the offer very much and instructed her to leave.”
“And you simply let her go?”
‘Rather than fight a Vanguardian general in our own home?’ said Ax. ‘Yes. You’ll have to forgive us for prioritizing the safety of our children.’
“I see,” said Sanko. “However, a mere day before this photo was taken, Juliana Salazar and several of her subordinates stopped reporting for duty. A large number of important items disappeared along with them, including weapons and classified documents. Their actions have jeopardized many sensitive operations all over the world. So I am sure you can understand my reluctance to trust your word alone.”
‘If we’d taken Salazar up on her offer, then we would have disappeared with her,’ said Ax.
“They would have also avoided a lot of trouble,” said Rayen Merlo. “Instead, they chose to stay--for the good of your organization. And look how their loyalty has been rewarded.” And when Sanko offered no response, Rayen only seemed to grow angrier. “How do you plan on rectifying this situation?”
Sanko glared at her. “Be silent. Circumstances here are more complicated than you seem to appreciate, and I did not ask for your opinion.”
The Lady Merlo scowled. “I do not answer to you, Gargoyle.”
“You do today.”
Octavia pressed a tiny hand against Rayen’s arm. “Calm your blood.” But she also spared a look for Sanko. “And you can bark orders all you like, but remember that we are not Vanguard.”
“You may not be, but the Elroys are.”
‘No, we aren’t,’ said Axiolis. ‘Not anymore.’
Sanko stared at him now. “You claim you are not traitors, yet now you tell me you have abandoned your duty?”
“You cannot honestly expect them to stay with you!” said Rayen.
“They are Rainlords first and foremost,” said Octavia.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
What do you mean, why this is going SWIMMINGLY WELL FOR EVERYONE.
ReplyDeleteZeff? Time to ascend to the heavens on a column of pressurized water, then flash-freeze yourself in a chunk of aerodynamically sculpted ice charged with several trillion joules of kinetic force, on an intercept course with the Moon. You're immortal and your power is materialization, you can come back when you feel like it. Sanko may not be so kind.
ReplyDeleteWell by the time,does he become a god?
ReplyDeleteSwimmingly as in they'll all be swimming when a tsunami crashes down over them.
ReplyDeleteSanko turned [her] attention up toward Lawrence,
ReplyDeleteFixed, thank you.
ReplyDeleteThat is such an awesome idea. I think this is the first major plot-hole I've seen. It seems technology is up to snuff for moon travel, so why haven't any of the 'remain hidden and build power' types done this?
ReplyDeleteThese Vanguard people piss me off. Isn't the Vanguard an organization. A Job? Aren't people allowed to quit their jobs? The whole 'if you're not with us you're against us' strikes me as an extremely childish attitude from people who are centuries old. As if things are so black and white.
ReplyDeleteSanko is a moron.
Actually, there is a reason. Just hasn't come up yet. :)
ReplyDelete's not quite the same thing when quitting your job means innocent lives are put in greater danger. And stealing weapons and documents before you go is kind of a bummer for your old boss.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the whole "if you're not with us, you're against us" attitude isn't quite accurate. That would imply that that they also consider people who were never affiliated with the Vanguard to be their enemies, which isn't the case. It's more a matter of worrying about defectors who then grant insider knowledge to the enemy, ultimately resulting in a lot of dead good guys. In their eyes, anyway.
More aptly translated to "Holy fuck, now I need to think of something!"
ReplyDeleteMy guess: Space bears
Strangely, lady... they might argue that Vanguard turned on them, first. :P It's a little stupid to expect loyalty from people you've just mauled. Without reason, in their eyes. <_<
ReplyDeleteHaha, nah, I've dropped couple hints about it already. Hell, me pointing it out like this is kind of a hint, too. Someone might actually figure it out now. Hmm... SHIT. NO MORE CLUES ON THIS SUBJECT. DANG COMMENT SECTION.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reply. And yeah, I see how you're right. This situation just reminded me of all the bad things that happened to Mehlsanz because of the Vanguard. I never quite got over how pigheaded, and, well, homicidal they were about her situation.
ReplyDeleteO, the answer is very simple. Reapers and through them, the servants draw there power from earths electromagnetic field. If they where to leave the planet it would be like pulling the plug on there power. There abilities might last for a little wile once disconnected, but it wouldn't recharge without the constant energy flow.
ReplyDeleteInsider knowledge? what knowledge, they are so secretive that at this point, the rainlords do not seem to know anything. At this point the rainlords seem to be more support for the vanguard, rather than members who if they defect have information to give out.
ReplyDeleteIf i had to make a guess it would be the entire plane issue. If traveling on a plane makes a reaper nervous, traveling through space would fucking terrify them. If they detatch at any point during the trip, it would be over. They are too far to make it back to earth. I suppose one could take a soul strengthened cage with them, with the reaper stuck in it. But that might kill the reaper. So sure a servant could make it to the moon, but the reaper? Hell no
ReplyDelete*Grits teeth, adjusts literary SCUBA gear, prepares to archive dive*
ReplyDelete*Plunges*
*Realizes is leaking semicolons*
*Dies*
*puts on tinfoil hat*
ReplyDeleteThey have.
In this world, the moon doesn't actually reflect sunlight. That's radioactivity.
A battle royal between servants powerful enough to get to the moon will do that.
Hyper-states, in a servant powerful enough to maintain one for six months or so.
ReplyDeleteOH. WAIT. Is the motion of reapers fixed to the rotation of Eleg, so, without a soul-empowered anchor, they can't go off-planet without being flung around at the speed of Eleg's rotation minus 30 mph or so, or whatever their groundspeed is? That's not a damning problem, unless reapers can be disintegrated by pure speed. Actually, do they move according to Aristotelian laws, sans gravity? That would be pretty annoying for any of them wanting to leave the planet.
The Abilities page still says that Nere's ability is unknown.
ReplyDeleteFigured it out lol! Pretty sure anyhow :).
ReplyDeleteI was also figuring something about them being anchored by earth's gravity. They shouldn't be moving the way that they do if the mass doesn't somehow affect them, since by absolute motion they should just spend most of the year sitting in space, and the rest mostly hurtling through the planet's core. I don't feel like doing the math, but at most a few seconds in which they can see the surface clearly enough to interact. On the other hand, that might just be a mental rule based on their frame of reference, and they could hide by waiting in the orbit for a year if they know how to break it.
ReplyDeleteTime will tell. Wait, the RAFO.
Leaving should be allowed but isn't, but Salazar did a lot more than leave.
ReplyDeleteTreating Zeff this way after the Vanguard failed to clean up its own mess and led to this is definitely unacceptable, though. I think Vanguard seem to have forgotten that they are the good guys in a lot of ways, and that they should also scale back their operation vastly. I think that they should be composed of very loyal and very powerful leaders, who offer support and guidance to all servants trying to make the world a better place, no matter who they choose to give fealty to (if anyone).
So that's what Parson's plan was. Force a confrontation between Vanguard agents and the Rainlords, then take down the weakened part who won the fight.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, things are taking a shift, to introduce a whole new player, or set of factions onto the Global power scale... all the defectors, the internal schism between both sides... Just waiting on Sai-hee's faction to make its own move on-screen....
ReplyDeleteStars don't stay in one spot thanks to having their own orbits within a galaxy. So, even sticking around a rough trajectory point wouldn't necessarily mean hitting the dirt of the planet you left any time soon. Or, even its orbit.
ReplyDeleteThey're rainlords, they can deal with a bit of water.
ReplyDeleteGood point. Now I wonder if maybe its just a subconcious protection. My other thought was that the movement capabilities of a reaper are based on their subconcious with the understanding that they are no longer encumbered by a body. They become free from some degree of speed limitation, exhaustion, and needing to deal directly with gravity or obstacles, but not free from their natural frame of reference or their need to travel through 3d space, or obstacles that they still have a body to. Makes me wonder what things would be like for a reaper who was stillborn and had no chance to develop even the rudiments of such notions.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the problem with this hypothesis is that reapers have such standardized behavior, when one would expect that at least some of them would be crazy enough to perceive (and thus experience as a reaper) space or even time differently, and some might have different ideas of just how much a body is actually inhibited especially with regards to speed.
Magnetism powers the casual creation and destruction of hundreds of thousands of tons of metal?
ReplyDelete