Unfortunately, he could not simply tell his superiors of the girl’s connection to Gohvis. Even if they did believe him, they could decide to simply kill her the way Artemis would have done--or worse, begin asking questions about his involvement in the Elroy massacre.
No, it had to be more discreet than any of that. So instead, he manufactured false leads in order to convince the marshals to revive the old intelligence-gathering mission on Gohvis. Which worked out better than expected. Project Blacksong was conceived around it--though by now, Blacksong had grown into an entirely new beast with many different objectives. Excepting Jackson here, all of the marshals had their own goals for Blacksong. Jackson seemed to be of the opinion that there were already far too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
As for Gema, her name was too famous for her to become a plant inside of Abolish, but at the same time, Parson needed Abolish to know her name, otherwise Gohvis might never even realize his connection to her. Therefore, the only viable recourse was to change her family’s affiliations. If the Elroys became fugitives of the Vanguard, Gema’s credibility with Abolish would improve tenfold. Whether that would be enough or not remained to be seen, but Parson had confidence in the girl.
And besides, even if she did fail, at least the resulting conflict in Sair would offer plenty of new angles from which to work. Like Zeff, for instance. Finally, that boy’s potential had begun to surface. And then, of course, there were the Sandlords. Ideally, they would secede too, before any of the Vanguard’s maladies began to infect their ranks. Parson just hoped they weren’t too afraid of Abolish to let go of the Vanguard. He would’ve liked to take more steps to ensure their departure while he was in Sair, but the Gargoyle’s intervening had rendered that impossible.
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
Yeah, called it. I suppose all the guessing has to pay off at some point. ^^
ReplyDeleteI guess I'll stop spamming the comment section for a while now.
Typo:
"Jackson seemed to be [of] the opinion that there were already far too many cooks in the kitchen"
Fixed, thank you.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I guess you did call it. Now that I think of it, assuming that Zeff doesn't create an outright civil war among the good guys, removing the Rainlords from Vanguard's incompetent leadership seems like a decent idea.
ReplyDeleteI still like my old idea of arranging Vanguard in a similar manner to the way that terrorist organizations do it (albeit with the opposite objective). A centralized leadership that offers loose guidance and support, including backup and training, leading a number of smaller cells, like the rain and sand lords. Not only would this reduce the need for leadership and logistic personnel dramatically, it would also mean that the whole "no retirements" problem would be a thing of the past, since they could maintain need-to-know so much more easily.
... This web couldn't get much tanglier if it tried. :P I'm just wondering what effect a wandering spanner is likely to have on all this Heath-Robinsonism. <_<
ReplyDeleteThis page is missing its chapter tag.
ReplyDeleteI'd been forgetting all this time that Parson thinks the Vanguard is rotten at the core. This also suggests that his coup plans will take a long time to implement, since he thinks the Rain and Sand will catch the illness before he can cure it. (It also probably proves that his coup plans are real, and not a soap bubble he created in order to get something entirely different.)
Oh, whoops. Thank you for pointing that out. I accidentally gave it the "ch18" tag instead of the "ch118" tag. Anyone reading Chapter 18 for the first time might've been pretty confused.
ReplyDeleteI think his plan is more than just a coup. I think he plans to shatter Vanguard in its entirety because even without coordination the resulting subfactions would still be more effective than the clumsy, bloated whole that Vanguard had become. At the very least, his restructuring will be on the same level as Pope Francis' restructuring of the Catholic church.
ReplyDeleteThe Elroys were put through that crap because of this guy?
ReplyDeleteI imagine if Zeff ever finds out, Parson will be in for one hell of a fight.
I just figured out what the reason if why Parson would be at such a disadvantage if I'm right about Jackson's power. Because Jackson can mess with thermodynamics, he can force Parson's oxygen along the rest in the immediate atmosphere to react with naturally present nitrogen to form NO2, and since that would count as an attack he could soul empower it to try Overra. Instant kill with a single gesture.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean? Zeff already plans to do about the same thing Gohvis would if he gets the chance.
ReplyDelete