Bog Standard Isekai

Hogg met them outside of a tall and ornate building right in the busy part of downtown. Despite being seven stories tall, it was apparently the primary residence of the Zemutre family, a nominal ally of Lumina's. They were hosting some kind of social event tonight, and Lumina thought it wise to be somewhere semi-public so that she'd have deniability in case Hogg and Brin got caught doing whatever it was Hogg had planned for tonight.

He left the carriage and then he and Hogg departed on foot. They moved down a busy commercial street, and Brin was distracted by all the crowds, the sights of the storefronts, the clashing music seeping out from different buildings, and the glowing signs and posted advertisements. It was a mesmerizing and disorienting display, and after spending so long in absolute boredom, it was hard to keep up with.

Marksi was just as excited at all the sights and sounds, and often dashed circles around an interesting person or chittered excitedly in the direction of a novelty he wanted Brin to explain to him.

Brin wasn't so distracted that he missed Hogg's cue--when Hogg gave the signal it meant that no one was paying them any attention, so Brin disguised his face with illusions. He didn't move it too far, just covered his scars and altered his nose and mouth a bit so that no one would recognize him as the same person.

Marksi understood the cue as well and zipped away into the crowd. Marksi would stay nearby, but they wouldn't see him again tonight, not unless Marksi wanted to be seen. Once in a while Brin could spot Marksi out in the wild if he sprayed lasers everywhere, but he doubted he'd be able to manage it here in the city.

They walked on, towards a nicer street. Still commercial, but less crowded, these stores all had glass displays in the front lit by either gaslamp or magic, showing off dresses or devices that ordinary people could never afford but that everyone could gaze at from outside. They turned a corner into an alley, and Hogg signaled a switch again.

Brin changed his entire appearance this time, changing his clothes to something more usual for a commoner, and Hogg did the same. Hogg did his own appearance with hard light, which was an exceptional display of skill. He looked like a completely different person, an older-looking [Collier] with clothes that looked like he'd often tried and failed to remove soot-stains. The clothing and false skin moved with perfect elasticity, even though Brin knew they were made from rock-hard forcefields.

"We can talk a bit," said Hogg, though he still disguised his voice and made it sound like he was talking about the weather to anyone who might be passing by. "I had in mind to do a bit of snooping in the Cobol city house. I can still poke my nose around here and there if I need to, but there are a few things I didn't want to try without invisibility. But before we start, I have to ask. Are you up for it?"

"Of course," said Brin. He was relieved that Hogg took the initiative to fix Brin's voice, too. He could do it, but Hogg was still a lot better at that.

"Don't get me wrong. I’m happy with the new you. Peace of mind and all that. But it’s been half a year since you were in a real life-or-death scenario. I need to know if you’re still sharp.”

Brin resisted the urge to answer with an immediate affirmative. Was he still sharp? Because despite the fact that he’d been free for a couple weeks now, he still hadn’t split his mind. He’d given the excuse that he hadn’t had a good reason to, but was that all it was? Because if he was afraid of using his powers, he might as well just reset his Class completely.

He split off ten percent of his mind, and gave it the mission to create all the Directed Threads he’d need to run his Lightmind at full capacity and send out a bunch of Invisible Eyes.

It was surprisingly comfortable; the mental muscles hadn’t atrophied. Instead, they’d healed, and he didn’t feel any of the pain he’d grown used to after the Zaff fight. He didn’t have to shove down any of the panic he sometimes felt when he did this, that every time he split his mind he was losing a little piece of himself. It was fine. It actually was. He could do this.

In fact, he could take it one step further. He spoke, and enhanced his voice with [Say What’s True] to make it extra convincing, and lowered his mental defenses completely. “I’ll be old Brin for tonight. I’m as sharp as I ever was.”

As soon as he said it, he felt the change. There was an edge to his thoughts again. An urgency of purpose.

He examined the feeds from his Invisible Eyes, shot off some instructions to his conscious thread on how to arrange them, and then split off another ten percent to create more eyes to act as a forward scout. There were no dangers in sight. No one was paying them any particular notice. Their disguises looked convincing from every angle. Satisfied, he turned his gaze to Hogg.

“So what’s our plan?”

Hogg seemed to be satisfied with whatever he saw in Brin’s eyes, because he nodded and said, “We need to hit the Barros city house. Then we can see what we have time for after that.”

They started walking again, and Brin said, “I remember Lord Raimond of Barros from the war. Bald guy. Fights with his hands.”

“That’s the one,” said Hogg.

“He’s not a [Mage]. Why is he one of Lumina’s chief rivals?” asked Brin.

“He’s a close ally of Duke Xander of Cobol. A lot of his people were assisting with that secret experiment Cobol was running that went bad,” said Hogg.

“Lumina mentioned something about that. A black site that was supposed to be developing something strong enough to rival Lothar."

"That's right. We still don't know much about what they were doing there. Mostly just the name. The Motley Shroud," said Hogg.

"Ok. Um. Huh."

"It's obviously a code-name," said Hogg.

"Right," said Brin. "But the word 'Shroud' is encouraging. It sounds like an object. Maybe something stealable."

"We can hope," said Hogg.

"Lumina said the entire project went bad and everyone died, including an [Archmage]. A water based one?”

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“The Crashing Wave. Xander’s first cousin,” said Hogg. “It’s just as well that there’s little chance that you’re going to spec into water magic. House Cobol pretty much owns the Circle of Water,” said Hogg.

“What’s a Circle?”

“We talked about that, didn’t we? Anyways, you’ve got a lot of catching up to do. But tonight isn’t the time for it. We’re here.”

The building in front of them didn’t have a single window open to the outside. It was built right into the buildings to either side, but was so plain and unadorned that it looked more like a random stretch of wall with only one small door.

He could see it was a security precaution rather than aesthetics, because the inside had all the beauty you'd expect of a rich aristocrat's home. The structure was a square around a very cozy garden in the center, with balconies on all five stories that looked straight into the branches of upward spiraling peach trees, covered in pink blossoms still this late in spring.

They were obviously paranoid about something, because now that he looked, he noticed that several plainclothes guards were patrolling the street, and they were staring suspiciously at him and Hogg even though the two of them hadn’t even cast a single glance at the building in question.

The only door was a plain steel door, and Brin couldn’t even see what was inside, though he doubted it was unguarded.

“Can we get in from the roof of the building next door?" asked Brin, making sure to use Silent Voice.

"They've got something for that. It has to be from the front," said Hogg.

"Then even invisible, I’m not sure how we’re going to get in there. We could climb to the roof if you brought a ladder or something, but my Vitality is still too low for me to want to try to climb up bare handed,” Brin said.

“You're right, the only way in is from above, and we can’t scale it. The walls will sense anything touching them. But with your invisibility, it shouldn’t be too difficult,” said Hogg.

Hogg and Brin walked down the street, blending in with the light foot traffic and keeping out of the way of any of the street cars--none of those were drawn by horses, not in this part of town.

They turned down a blind alley, and Hogg had Brin turn them both invisible. Hogg tore a paper enchantment to remove their scent, and then they went back the way they came.

Hogg picked a spot about three feet away from the wall and said, "Make a three-foot-wide cylinder of invisibility. Make it go all the way up to the roof. We have about three and a half minutes for this part."

Brin tasked a mind with creating that, and while it put the spell together, thought about what made Hogg think he could know how long they had so precisely. The foot traffic mostly stayed a bit closer to the center of the street, but it wasn't impossible that someone would randomly walk into Brin's spell.

No, Hogg was predicting the paths of the plainclothes guards. Their movements seemed random, like they were simply lounging around, and moving around idly, but Brin realized it was actually a well-thought out pattern. They were physically moving through all the space of the street in a way that looked random.

Brin 2: Spell is done.

Hogg grabbed Brin's shoulder before he could step into it. "Have you ever crossed into an invisiblity field while wearing another invisibility?"

"I... don't know," said Brin.

"It's tricky, and there will be distortions in the air if you do it wrong. Make a door. Here, on the wall-side."

Main: Did you get that?

Brin 2: On it. Alright, there's your door.

Brin moved inside the narrow tunnel leading up, and saw that Hogg had already summoned a ladder of hard light. That was one thing they'd learned early on about hard light. Hogg couldn't use it to lift himself, but he could summon his hard light and then climb up on it. Hogg went up, practically sprinting up the ladder. Clearly, he didn't want to depend on his three-and-a-half minutes.

Brin checked to make sure his split mind closed the door in the invisibility behind him, and then raced up the ladder himself. He didn't push himself as hard as he thought he could go; he was more than capable of pushing his muscles harder than his body could handle, and he didn't want to sprain an ankle climbing up a ladder in the first moment of the job.

Still, even an ordinary person could climb a ladder pretty fast if he had to, and Brin got up the four stories in half a minute. The top was tricky because he had to jump from the very top rung of the ladder to the roof three feet away, but there was nothing wrong with his Dexterity. He made the simple jump and landed next to Hogg.

He couldn't see him with his eyes, but since it was literally his magic keeping Hogg invisible, there was no way he'd lose track of him.

Together, they crept across the rooftop. Brin was already looking for the next security precaution they'd need to overcome, but the Barros family didn't seem to have stationed anyone on the roof.

"Watch your feet. Footprints in dust are as obvious to a [Rogue] as tracks in mud are to you."

"Watch them how?" asked Brin.

"Stay on your toes, and step on the top of the curve of the tile," said Hogg.

At the other end of the roof, they peered down into the courtyard. Looking with his real eyes now, it was a beautiful little scene. An artful classical garden that looked very well kept, but also wild in a way. The peach trees especially seemed to grow completely free, as if it were only luck that they'd chosen to grow so nicely symmetrical.

Down under the trees little walking paths crawled through rows of flowerbeds, with little patches of manicured grass with stone benches.

The only thing out of place was a much more practical training area towards the far end. On a grass of a more rugged variety stood few training dummies. A young man was practicing his sword forms against them, and he'd worn out the grass in circles around them. Maybe he was Lord Barros' son? He doubted any random servant would be allowed to mess up their perfect garden.

He was shirtless, and frankly ripped, nearly as muscled as Hedrek with none of the modest layer of fat the big [Knight] carried. He worked through his forms smoothly, with all the smooth elegance that Brin would've expected from Govannon or Aeron. Although he didn't exactly tap the dummies lightly, Brin could tell he was holding back and could shear through the leather-coated steel dummies without difficulty. The majority of his battle was in his head as he worked through whatever strategy and counter-strategy he was imagining right now.

He stopped after a bit and a maid immediately leapt to his side with a chilled towel on a tray. He grabbed once for the towel, missed, then grabbed it. He wiped his brow, his chest, and then handed the towel back, missing the tray completely and dropping it on the ground.

They both bent down at the same time to pick it up, and knocked heads, pushing the servant to the ground.

Despite her protests that she was fine, he bent over to help her back up, but somehow when he pulled away he got her shirtsleeve caught in his sheath and tore the cuff straight off when he pulled away.

He apologized profusely and she insisted that it was her fault. Brin got the feeling this type of thing was a regular occurrence.

"What am I looking at here?" asked Brin.

"Have you [Inspected] him yet?" asked Hogg.

"Not yet. I like to draw my own conclusions first, unless it's urgent. I think it helps level up the Skill," said Brin.

What else could give him clues? The young man's hair was a little odd. Longer than was fashionable, and more bristly than the normal Frenarian curls, but not outlandishly so. What really had him curious was how someone so good with the blade could also be so clumsy with everything else. Even as they watched, the man got both his arms caught in his shirt as he tried to pull it on, and struggled until the maid helped him pull it down.

"He's one of the people we're here to see. You were wrong about one thing before: Not everyone who went into the blacksite died. After the initial loss of contact, Lord Barros sent a group of his own people inside to investigate, and two months later, one of them returned. Going in, he was a young [Warrior] from a minor subordinate house. Coming out? See for yourself."

Brin used [Wyrdic Inspect], and felt a lot of power, including a great deal more authority on magic than he'd expect for someone that good with a sword. But what the actual message said was even more surprising.

Name: Vitor Ellvas

Class: Thirsty Blade

Age: 17

Level: 45

"As luck would have it, young Vitor down there will start school the same time as you."