Chapter 69: Mending

-Alexander POV-

I stare down at the twitching body before me in mute shock, the sandwich I had been planning to eat while gazing upon my work now sat forgotten – dropped upon the floor with a sad squish.

‘What? How? I was gone for an hour tops!’

My bafflement at finding a man who looked coked up on every drug imaginable didn’t end for a solid five minutes, it was just so surreal. Seriously, how would you react to that? Shit was weird.

‘Wait, isn’t this guy part of that same group that attempted to infiltrate Jinzhou?’

My MIU pulled up the relevant info, quickly matching the face before me to one of the prisoners that Taizong’s government had processed.

‘He is! Holy fuck! How can you be this incompetent! Why did you go into the spooky cave?! Have you not watched any movies?!’

As I was busy freaking out, Renji quietly nudged the man with a foot, rolling him over. Going by the amount of saliva that flowed from his mouth, Renji may have genuinely saved his life from drowning in his own spit.

Which, thank God.

I did not want the first death of this place to be something that lame, imagine the tombstone I would have to make.

Oddly, it was that thought which finally shook me out of my stupor.

“What the fuck,” I finally vocalise.

Renji shrugs, “congratulations on triumphing over this infiltrator, my liege,” he simply said – as calm as ever.

I woodenly turned my head to look at him, unable to tell whether he was giving me a genuine compliment for something I didn’t do or sassing me. After a second, I decided to take the complement, I needed one right now.

“Thank you Renji,” I said blandly, turning a more critical eye to the unconscious man before me now that I was no longer so dumbstruck.

Going by the odd technology he had on him, this was a Tinker of some kind. The armour he wore, a ceramic of curious composition, was dented and scratched in a hundred different places. Most of them, I could tell with my powers, were fairly recent.

The slight trace of concrete dust in the cracks and seams of his armour indicated that at least some of that damage had come from the prison collapsing on top of him, but others were of a more supernatural nature. A particularly large gash across a shoulder pad drew my eye.

It was clean, impossibly so. Unless he ran into one of my Paragons the only beings that could do that sort of damage would be the cave crawlers.

A faint hint of static drew my eyes to a discarded radio, by his side. My eyes widened. The possibility that his teammates might still be here rose dramatically in my mind, even if they weren’t within my range.

Finally the screen he still held in his hands, their grip ferociously tight. A controller of some kind, going by the internals, the signal connecting it to something out of my range – though going by the strength it was still relatively close by.

A look at the screen before him made me wince.

Ah, so that’s how it is.

The innards of the church were in stark view, the stained windows and yellow stylised frescos were obvious, even from here.

‘Well at least now I know why he looks so out of it.’

A quick peek inside the man, not something I typically do for obvious reasons, revealed that no; the man was not on drugs.

He was simply suffering from a brain haemorrhage.

Which was not ideal!

“Oh shit, shit, shit!”

The blood-brain barrier currently resembled swiss cheese, dozens of tiny holes slowly but surely allowing blood to seep in – damaging structures along the Prefrontal Cortex. With a hiss, I sealed those shut, and transmuted the blood already present within the brain into Stem Cells, allowing them to aid in the regeneration of the dead brain tissues.

Still, neurons had been destroyed, dozens of structures changed irreparably. Even BioPunk could only give me general estimates, but even those were grim.

“Fuck!”

A runic circle scrawled itself into existence, surrounding the fallen man and erupting with a brilliant green light.

I examined the Tinker, watched as his brain started slowly shifting. Neurons spun back into existence, structures reformed and tissue reknitted itself.

I let out a sigh of relief.

It was slow going, but the worst had passed.

As the magic continued its efforts to slowly revert the damage done to the parahuman, I took another look at the still image of the interior of the church and shook my head in faint bewilderment.

What had happened to this man had been the result of the final defensive measure I had employed in the church. A ward scheme, but not one I had ever utilised before, something unique.

It was, in effect, a Genius Loci. One centred around the church itself, a sentient -though not sapient- mind that was made use of the free floating magical motes themselves. The building blocks of magic gave the being unprecedented mental acuity, capable of crunching trillions of calculations a second, should I have chosen to use it that way.

I hadn’t.

Instead I had given the being everything I had on curses and cognitohazards and told it to defend the church from anyone who dared to enter it.

With the exception of myself and Renji – I’m not that stupid.

The being had taken that knowledge, and promptly begun to iterate upon it, producing ever more horrifying curses and mental viruses.

In a way, that being was the stand in for the eldritch god of this fake civilisation. A being so far beyond current human understanding that it might as well be a god, one that can drive people insane with just the barest whisper.

In truth, it had far surpassed my expectations for it, to the point that it made me re-work certain plans of mine.

But that was for later. For now, I needed to find the other intruders.

Seriously, these defences were meant to hold off or intimidate entire armies, that it was probably being used to traumatise a handful of people was far beyond what I was willing to allow.

“Renji, stay with this one,” I ordered. “Make sure no harm comes to him.”

Renji nodded, the at-ease posture transformed into one of vigilance and discipline.

Okay, given that the radio by the man’s side had obviously been reconfigured to powerful short range transmissions, his teammates had to be somewhere close by.

I decided to begin checking the most dangerous places and begin working down from there. A quick fly through the city revealed nothing, not a single trace of any humans visiting in the last hour.

Then it was the tunnels, Using the faint disturbances in the dust and soil, I deduced which of the six tunnels the man had come in from. Surely they would have come in from the same direction right? There’s no way they had decided to split their party up?

Remembering their previous accomplishments, which was to say: complete clusterfucks, I redoubled my speed.

I could feel my awareness spreading across the catacombs like water through a sponge, soaking in every last crevice and crack to be found. Inch after inch, mile after mile. I hurried on, only restraining my speed enough to not collide into the tunnels walls.

It was the magic that told me I was getting close, a malevolent and oppressive force that wished to twist perception, even reaching for me before I crushed the attempt like spun glass.

The hooks and barbs of magic shied away from me after that display, suddenly fearful, like a shark noticing the passing wake of a leviathan.

The cave grew darker, and considering I had used magic to set the environment at a certain light level, that wasn’t a good sign.

Then I found them, two unconscious figures lying helpless on the rocky floor of the cave. Shadowy figures danced around them, their figures distorted and shifting irregularly. Every so often one would break away from the encirclement, darting toward the two capes. Each time they did the two would shiver, and shake as if experiencing Morpheus’ worst tortures.

I knew what these were, yet more defences I had concocted.

I stepped forwards, ignoring the hissing, spitting, shadows. I deigned to give them nothing, no reaction, no sign of emotion. To do so would be to project upon them, to give them power. In truth these things were nothing, void of anything but hunger and envy - not even alive, truly.

They acted as mirrors, seeking to draw out the most extreme reactions, the most flavour. Typically that was fear. The location, the scary things I had placed around the area and the victim’s own assumptions would lead to that being the most easily drawn out emotion to feast upon.

In truth they could devour almost anything; happiness, love, regret, curiosity. So long as it was something.

So no matter how hard they hissed, begged and pleaded in those shadowy tongues, I gave them no mind. I simply knelt down next to the two parahumans before me, using a single fingernail to etch a basic rune of mind protection upon the masks they bore.

Immediately the shivering stopped, the nightmares ceasing their advance – much to the enraged howls of the darkness around me.

Was that all of them?

No, my MIU provided the answer. The team that had initially sought to infiltrate Jinzhou held eight members, and I had only found three. That was five unaccounted for.

At the very least these two were not in danger of dying, just suffering from the world’s worst migraine. With my power a quick release of dopamine and a few other ‘feel good’ chemicals flooded their brains, hopefully taking the edge off.

Then, with a single thought there was a flash, and when it faded the two were gone – deposited near Renji.

I got up, shaking myself off, my face blank in spite of the leering figures I could see prancing along the cave wall. Now that their prey had left, they were no longer interested in this place. They gave me no further mind, for I was not viewed a prey in what passes for their minds.

I followed them, knowing they would be headed for the rest, or whatever remained of them at least.

I found another man rooted in place, gazing from a side room filled with old books and lanterns. His form had been cleverly shrouded in illusions, made to appear as if he was dead. In actuality he was merely frozen in place, his body unresponsive in spite of his fervent attempts to free himself.

Poor man, even now I could feel his nerves firing pointlessly, attempting to move even a single finger while the shadows around him drank in his fear and helplessness like a vintage wine.

When I had made this defence I had thought myself rather clever. It was, at once, a security measure that would affect almost every parahuman I knew of while simultaneously being unlikely to lead to many deaths.

However, now that I was looking upon the consequences I found that thought to be both correct and hilariously wrong.

Yes, it was effective. Yes, it hadn’t led to any deaths so far.

Yet, to say it was cruel would be an understatement.

With a ripple of magic the effect was undone, causing the man to fall to the floor hacking and coughing.

He looked up. “What…Who are you?” The man asked me.

For a moment the question stumped me, before I realised that of course he hasn’t heard of me.

The man had been imprisoned before my unintended reveal to the world, no wonder!

I smiled softly, trying to appear comforting. “Someone who’s going to get you out of here, so don’t worry.”

He looked worried. No, in fact he looked ready to throw down.

Which, fair enough.

I was a giant blue lady with multiple arms that was currently inside of the sketchy, and traumatising, cave. If I was him I probably would have started running by now.

Seeing as he was unlikely to listen to reason right now, I decided to knock the man out with a usage of fine scale manipulation of his blood vessels.

It took less than a second for him to start swaying, eyes wide and realising something was wrong but too slow to do anything about it.

Once again ignoring the dismayed shrieks of the shadows, I took a moment to inspect the man under my care. Or, to be more specific, his costume. The lightning dotting his form, as well as the ribbons of colour dotting his legs that reminded me of a comic’s motion lines, told me the man was likely a Mover.

‘Come to think of it, the two back there were likely Thinkers, weren’t they?’ I remembered the eye shapes, the lithe -spy like- apparel as I thought of this.

Trapping the Mover in his own body. Emotionally tormenting the Thinkers…

My lips curled into a frown as I realised what this likely meant, hurriedly teleporting the man to Renji so I could quicken my pace.

Unfortunately the last two I found were in much worse condition.

Past an enormous cave in I found my first corpse.

The man was splattered against the floor, and given the bloodstains on the ceiling I can surmise that his death had been a bad one.

Lowering my head, I began fixing up the body as best I could. The ribs knitted themselves back together, the split and crushed flesh reverted to a pristine condition. If not for the amount of blood surrounding and covering him I could almost mistake him as simply asleep.

Why had they killed this one?

The thought stuck with me as I continued on, the corpse disappeared in a flash of light, once more finding itself dumped next to a -likely progressively freaking out- Renji.

Poor Renji, I’d have to speed up my plans for his new upgrades to make up for this.

Finally, I came across the last of the infiltrators that I would find, a tall and muscular man, slumped against a smooth wall and weeping blood from the lost limb at his side.

He was alive, but barely.

The next few minutes were a slow, painful, process of bringing the man back from the brink. Utilising both magic and science I was capable of it, but it had been touch and go for a few moments, such was how close he had been to death’s door.

The man’s body had been a mess, to the point that even the shadows had slunk off by the time I had reached him, no doubt assuming their prey had nothing left to give.

They had clearly taken their time with him, going by the number of lacerations, and at this point it was clear that my defences had unexpected synergy when it came to a Parahumans often cracked psyche.

Each of the team had suffered in ways that matched their trigger events, with the exceptions of the Tinker and -what I assumed to be- the Stranger. Perhaps because those trigger events were harder for the defences to bring out?

I had wanted an effective means of defending my workshop, and I had it. I had wanted that same defence to match the vibe I had been going for, and I had certainly succeeded there too.

Yet, now that I knew how it had interacted with the parahumans that had come here…

A girl weeping alone in her cell, feeling trapped and alone.

A man alone, at the bottom of the ocean, lamenting his lost life.

Well, it suddenly felt wrong.

With a sigh, and a palm against the smooth cave wall, I dismissed some of the magical defences I had set up. The divination wards were still present, as were many others, but the magic that created the cave crawlers, those mocking shadows, turned dead underneath my fingertips – the apparitions fading from the corner of my eye.

My inner drama nerd wept at the waste, yet I was adamant.

It had been too much.

I wasn’t sure what defences I would make to replace the ones I had torn down, perhaps a few biotinkered monsters, perhaps barriers that outright blocked entry, but either way it would be different.

Still lethal, sure. But not as cruel as this one had been.

Looking down at the now healed man I sighed, and picked him up.

Shuffle’s fate was already known.

As for the other, he was still missing, I had sent a signal to inform Jinzhou of the current situation, telling them to search the surrounding environment for a sign of the man. With their wide variety of drones I had little doubt they would find the man, assuming he could still be found.

I shifted the man, in my arms, attempting to find a more comfortable position for the unconscious figure – before walking back down the cave.

Hopefully Renji wouldn’t be too upset with me dumping bodies on him.

AN: Aftermath of the team’s cave spelunking adventure. Yeah, not as many died as you might first think. That’s solely due to the monsters they ended up facing, who were emotivores created by the wards surrounding the cave. They wanted to get all they could out of their victims before killing them.

Alexander seeing what happened decides that maybe building off of vibes may have been a bad idea, and turns the creatures off. To be clear he’s not upset that the defences killed or hurt the PRT team. If all they did was kill them Alexander would not have cared as much, it was the fact that the defences poked so much at the parahumans trauma that he deemed to be too much, as that’s currently a great way to push his buttons.

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