Liberty and Death, Chapter 72
Chapter 72
“Right, well, fuck, consider me duly chastened, your eminence,” Cora growled, a tone undercut slightly by her still being gasping from Kyra’s little jumpscare. “I’d put a bell on you, if I didn’t know you’d shove it up my ass.”
“Nah, you’d probably like that,” Kyra said, still sickly sweet, smile taking on an edge. “Any bells you put on me are ending up in your brain, on the tip of a dagger.”
“...”
“Fair enough!” Cora said, walking past Kyra, deciding not to let her see that, yeah, she was pretty scared by that. “Get me up to speed on what you and Tania found?”
As she spoke, she ‘found’ Tania. The girl hadn’t been hiding, she'd just been behind the work area with the little girl she’d befriended. Syl, Cora had learned.
Syl was currently getting a crash course on how to use hedge clippers to get through a stubborn ribcage.
Cora had a mind to stop that, but the look of ecstatic joy and pride on the little girl’s face as she clipped through bone made her decide to ignore this absolute CPS nightmare.
“Tania’s fucking amazing, Cora,” Kyra said, smiling at the gruesomely wholsesome tableau. “Like, I know you know how sneaky she is, but when we found the mansion? She walked in. Literally. It was like she was a ghost, not even my ass would try that in broad daylight, and I’m trained to the nines, and talented as hell.”
“System magic,” Cora shrugged, then sighed. “Not like she came by that ability easy.”
“Yeah… yeah,” Kyra said, chewing on her lip. “I guess it's not like what I can do now is any less incredible, but shit, Cora, it’s like people’s eyes just slide right off of her.”
Tania looked up from where she guided Syl’s hands through the dude’s ribcage, smiling and waving at the two other women.
Cora smiled at waved back, and suppressed a shiver. Both at the gruesome scene, which she still wasn’t fully accustomed to, and also by the thought of what had happened to Tania to make her like this. So… absent, and docile, unless she let Tanya out.
Then, incredible violence was an understatement.
Kyra beckoned her over, and Tania ruffled the girl’s hair as she skipped over to join them.
“So, what did you guys find in there?” Cora asked, beaming at the young woman. “Heard you walked right in!”
“Yep!” Tania said brightly, “it’s big!”
“Uh, yeah, I bet,” Cora chuckled, “anything else?”
“Hmm….” Tania said, “well…”
Her demeanor shifted, eyes going hard, lips thinning into a scowl.
“Thick walls. Gonna need Hawk to get through, at least. Plenty of guards, but not many with levels. Better equipped than the Chains, but probably bigger pussies too: they’ll have the disadvantage of self-preservation instincts,” Tanya said, voice cold and clipped. A far cry from Tania’s gentle tone. “Real problem is gonna be the nobles. Every one I saw had a class. Doesn’t mean they’re gonna be any good at using them, but some of them might surprise us.”
“Aaaaannd the place is gonna be fucking full of them tomorrow night, great…” Cora sighed. “General levels? Able to get any specific stats?”
“Yeah, I took [Identification II], so I was able to get stat info but no skills. On average, far lower than most of our Banféinní, and Common or Uncommon classes. Not a lot of focus on physical stats either,” Tanya explained.
“Hell yeah,” Cora grinned, “that doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe it just means they’re big bags of Shimmer, ripe for the popping.”
“Oooooh,” Kyra cooed, “I wonder if the fat ones actually pop…”
“Focus,” Tanya snarled. God, that voice. It was like every word was snatched back, just before it ripped through her vocal chords at full howl. She could make a normal conversation sound like that scream from Hereditary.
It worked, too. That tone really took the jocularity out of a room. Or courtyard.
“Uh, yeah, what else?” Cora asked sheepishly, appropriately chastened.
“The waif was right. It’s big. How many actual combatants do we have?” she asked. Even ‘calm’, she sounded like she was an inch away from tearing someone’s throat out with her teeth.
“Uhhhh…” Cora started to do some quick mental math, but Kyra was ready with an answer.
“10, at least of a caliber I’d be willing to take on a mission like this. Maybe 8, discounting Jonesy and Dip. They’re… only okay, and their [Guard] classes make them a lot tougher inside Luxholme.”
“Oh shit! They got their classes?” Cora asked.
“Wha–, yeah Cora, keep the fuck up!” Kyra scolded. “Basically they get all of Lux’s bonuses doubled, and some straight Damage Resistance when manning the walls.”
“They… both got exactly the same stuff?” Cora asked.
‘[Big Sys] says that’s actually way more common than the, and I don’t know what this means, but ‘anime bullshit’ many of our combatants are getting. He is implying that this is due to his influence, but it also seems possible he is being prideful.’
“Heh, yeah, sounds about right though. And is good…. Means were not likely to run into a ton of absolute combat monsters like ourselves or the [Class Traitor],” Cora said, chewing on her lower lip till it hurt. Not a lot of combat monsters was not none, and the [Class Traitor] might be able to kill them all himself.
She shook off that thought.
Not because it wasn’t true, but everyone at Luxholme, perhaps herself most of all, was surprised they’d survived this long.
Complacency was death. The nobility would hit them eventually, the [Class Traitor] had made that clear. The only real chance they had was to sow some discord about where the real threat in Tyrinno was.
Speaking of..
“Hey, heard somebody say something about a plan for keeping our System data out of the nobles hands?” Cora asked, following Kyra back to the Grove. Tanya slunk behind them, silent as the grave.
“Yep! Aaaaaand an actionable path to making it happen!” Kyra declared, as they reached the base of the Heartfruit tree, where Jocasta was weaving a basket from what looked like palm fronds.
“Behold!” Kyra announced, presenting the hunched older woman, “our secret weapon of secrecy!”
“Hello dearies!” Jocasta said amicably, only looking up from her weaving for an instant. But that instant was long enough to pick up a little twinkle in those eyes.
“Heyo, Jocasta,” Cora returned the greeting amicably, but raised a questioning eyebrow at Kyra. “What’s going on here? I know Jocasta can hide us here, but that seemed like a pretty hard and fast rule.”
“Cora, I’m not sure there are any hard and fast rules with [Big Sys], and he’s the system we’re working with. Gotta remember, JoJo here has had the System for way longer than any of us,” Kyra explained.
Jocasta groaned, placing her basket down and stretching gnarled fingers. Cora knew for a fact she was playing that up a bit, the woman was old, sure, but she had End and Vit valued higher than some of their fighters. Cora had no real idea how those combated the effects of aging, but given how well they combated the effects of a fucking bullet, it had to be pretty damn well.
Performative old-person stretch finished, she smiled placidly up at the two women in front of her.
“The feisty one is right,” she said, “been playing around in the System for years. Means I got a reaaaaal good idea of what my class can do, even if I don’t have the means to access it yet.”
“Yeah?” Cora asked excitedly, “does that mean you can move your System smokescreen?”
“Mmm, that it does, but not so simple,” Jocasta answered. “It’sa skill upgrade for {Secretive Nature}, and them’s expensive.”
Cora pulled up Jocasta’s System sheet.
[Jocasta Addams][Level 7 Grovetender]
[Str:3]
[Dex6]
[End:8]
[Vit:21]
[Agi:2]
[Int:7]
[Will:23]
[Cha:4]
[Class Actives: {Verdant Heart}]
[Class Passives: {Secretive Nature}]
[Skills: {Garden Mastery III}, {Cooking Mastery I}, {Pain Tolerance II}, {Child Rearing I} ]
[Relationship Stats]
[Anger: 0/20]
[Devotion: 48/60]
[Affection: Proud]
Skill Points: 2
Cora frowned. That… was exactly the same as the first time she’d seen it.
“Right. So, I take it even magical gardening doesn’t award much Shimmer, huh?” She asked.
Jocasta, characteristically, cackled.
If it weren't for the jovial light in her eyes, it would’ve freaked Cora right the fuck out.
Imagine hearing that in the forest at night…
“Oh, enough to give a lucky old lady a class and a bit of relief from her aching bones! But no… I’ve been at level 7 for months,” Jocasta admitted.
Cora nodded, and turned to Kyra, who was grinning like the cat that ate the canary.
“So, what’s this ‘actionable plan’, then?”
That grin damn near reached her ears.
“We found an ooouuutpooossst!” Kyra sang, voice absolutely lovely.
“An outpost? Like a Chains base?” Cora asked.
“Yep yep yep!” Kyra said, still just as chipper as a child. “Looked like some sort of processing center. Not their main base, at least we don’t think so, but preeeeetty fucked up stuff!”
“Yeah? So why are you acting like you just found out dinner tonight is nothing but ice cream?”
“Becaaaaause,” Kyra said, rolling her eyes, “it means that for fucking once, we can hit them! And we can do it our way, maybe make sure our senior citizen gets to slit a few slaver throats, aye?”
“OH! Oh, fuck yeah, Kyra, that’s a great plan! You got a time in mind?” Cora asked.
“None like the present!” Kyra said, that sickly sweet violence she exuded just oozing out of her smile. “No monsters to jump us from the back, if we hit ‘em when the suns out!”
“I love the way you think!” Cora said, giving Kyra’s shoulder a friendly little shake and immediately regretting it.
Kyra blushed, and withdrew.
The pair had fallen into an uneasy, if friendly, truce.
Physical contact was not part of that truce.
Kyra had too many feelings, too many wounds, for Cora, wearing Linnea’s face, to be that familiar.
Cora turned her suddenly empty hand into a wave, trying to refocus.
“You saw what they have. Grab whoever you think we’ll need, and we’ll head out in 15, okay?”
With a hurried nod, and a single look back over her shoulder, Kyra rushed off.