PreCursive

  Only mier, I found myself staring at a horrifying and gruesome se.

  The still, bloodied form of Wisp.

  After Crook, Sylvia, and I had left the pza apanied by the SED Agents, the three of us who were Noes had made a beeline for the rooftop we had inally departed from. Our former, and perhaps still, enemies had followed along silently, appearing to guess where we were ing from.

  After all, they had been given the ce to collect their own dead before we’d left. The SED operative who I was suspeg had been the oo fight Wisp had the tact to not follow us up here, instead hanging back down on street level with their own dead rade and the unscious one Dusk had taken out.

  Even though I had been expeg the sight of Wisp’s body, it still khe breath out of me. The rooftop was ruined, and the that we had been doing our reaissander had been torn down pletely, ying in heaps of splinters and scattered every which way. I don’t know how the battle with the SED agent had gone, but it looked to have been a quie. I’m not sure Wisp even had the opportunity to fight back before she’d been jumped. It looked to me that after having been…stabbed several times, she’d crawled her way over to rest against the door to the lower floors, and then simply…bled out. Her head was hanging over her chest, and her mask was starting to fall off her face.

  I…I’m not sure how willing to work with the SED agents I was, after seeing something like this. There had been an implicit agreement among Crook, Sylvia, and I in the moments after leaving the pza that there was moing on underh the surface of Elderwyck than we knew, and it involved SED in some way. There had been talk of ‘fas’ and how SED had been hounding Rhiannon in particur for months now, and we o know what was going on. Dusk, or rather Liora, had essentially sacrificed herself on the possibility that we could solve this mystery.

  I didn’t want to waste that opportunity, but right now all I wao do was turn around and tear out the throat of the two silently watg SED Agents.

  That is, until something pletely ued happened.

  Under our disbelieving eyes, the ‘corpse’ of Wisp abruptly took a deep gasping breath before coughing up a mouthful of blood. I saw one unmasked eye crack open and look around deliriously before settling on both us, and the SED agents at our back. “Am I halluatin’,” A hoarse, fused voice escaped the apparently not dead woman. “Or are there SED behind you?”

  I ignored her babbling, veritably telep to Wisp's side as I began to focus extremely hard oask ahead. Once I had skidded to my knees in front of her, I began to rapidly withdraw supplies from my pouch. I vaguely noticed that Crook and Sylvia had joined me, but I almost pletely disregarded them. I may not know Crook very well, but I did know that Sylvia had limited ability when it came to perf first aid. I, oher hand, had an omnidisciplinary Profession capable of battlefield surgery.

  I had more important things to do than pay attention to anyone else but Wisp.

  I ripped off the mask of the delirious woman and began p a variety of different potions I had on me dowhroat. Ohat was done, I spoke to my panions without looking at them. “Hold her down,” I said curtly. Without further prompting, Crook and Sylvia plied, grabbing the delirious Wisp by the shoulders firmly.

  Taking off my gloves, I reached out and id my bare hands against the bloodied figure of Wisp as she struggled weakly. Fog, I fell into my Aetherial Melding trance.

  And got to work.

  Ten minutes of tense melding ter, I rexed out of my trand sighed, sitting bay hands.

  God, it had been a while since I’d had to do something like this. As far back as Addersfield, I’d say. My Aetherial first aid was sloppy, and very draining on me. But it worked.

  Wisp would survive, at the very least until we could get her to a real Healer. She’d passed back out halfway through my treatment, but she was stable now, and no longer losing blood at a risky pace. Crook and Sylvia hadn’t o hold her down after the ent had lost sciousness, and had taken to guarding the two of us. When I looked up again, I saw Crook in the middle of a staring match with the SED Agents, while Sylvia had lifted her mask to smile down at me in pride.

  “Well done,” She said quietly, ying a hand on my shoulder and squeezing. I could see relief thi her gaze that we hadn’t lost anyone in what had turned out to be a pointless flict. I y my own hand on top of hers, aurhe squeeze with a tired smile. After a moment, I used her hand to leverage myself to my feet with a groan. After both the fighting and the impromptu surgery, I was feeling pretty worn out.

  “Crook,” I said quietly, causing said Agent to turn her head slightly in my dire. I noticed that she didn’t pletely take her eyes off of the SED group, though. “I need you to carry her.”

  After a moment, Crook nodded slightly and then stepped back to gather the atose form of Wisp in her arms. As she did so, I stepped forward, drawing the attention of the SED operatives. I was feeling much, much more charitable towards them now that I knew Wisp hadn’t been killed by the guy down oreet.

  We just had to see if they were feeling the same way, as I khat the person Wisp had shot was very, very dead. Last I’d seen, their head was only hanging on by a thread of sinew.

  “Now what?” I said bluntly, doing my best to focus through my exhaustion. I was the best option we had betweehree of us to iate with members of the rival spy anization. For the moment, at least. Sylvia was just too…awkward with strangers, while Crook struck me as someoh a grudge. The buck stopped with me, for now. I couldn’t wait to pass this whole situation on at the first opportunity.

  The SED member that had protested their leader surrendering themselves stepped forward. “I am Number Seventeen, and this is Number Forty-Five,” They said, their voice obscured by the entment of their illusionary mask. “At this point, we…request the opportunity to speak with your leader, in order to discuss the step.”

  I crossed my arms, the exposure of my face to people I’d just been fighting makich. I made sure to keep my expression ft. “And what do you see those steps as?”

  Seventeen and Forty-Five exged gnces before Seventeen spoke again. “Am I corre assuming that her of us is tent with allowing our respective rades to remain with that…woman?”

  “Obviously,” Crook growled at the SED Agents. Forty-Five turheir head to look at her, but didn’t speak. They did, however, give the impression of mutual animosity.

  Sometimes, you could just feel these things.

  Meanwhile, I frowned, but nodded. Gng to the side, I approached the edge of the building we were talking on. Looking out over it at the garden and pza we had just escaped from, I could see no trace of Rhiannon or her apparent Solstice’s Fme hirelings. They must have vacated the area as quickly as we had.

  Or at least, they wanted us to think that. By setting up this entire apparent trap for the SED forces, Rhiannon had dispyed a level of pnning, subtly, and forethought that I didn’t normally associate with the nobility. While the woman may have reminded me of Magnus, she was clearly not quite as maniacally dim as my former ‘master’ had been.

  She was an actual threat, it seemed.

  I let out a slow breath. “It’s not my call to make,” I eventually said, before turning around and looking at my panions. “Crook, you should go get Wisp looked at. You know where to take her,” I said, alluding to the Healer’s ic the Division had ties to. The same ohat Hook had beeed at following his injuries in the mausoleum. “Whisper and I hahis.”

  Crook almost looked like she was going to protest the ad hoc order I’d all but given out. And I didn’t bme her for that. Sylvia and I were much more junients than she was, after all. But Crook seemed pragmatiough to realize we had no choi the matter. I may have stabilized Wisp, but she still needed real Healing. She nodded curtly, and then turned and made a runnio nd on another nearby rooftop. In moments, the dark of the night had swallowed her and her precious cargo.

  I turned my eyes to Sylvia then. “You…should call this in,” I said, refereng the unication s obliquely. No way in hell was I going to be directly mentioning a Divisio in front of SED Agents.

  Sylvia studied me for a moment, before nodding and turning to face the doorway to the lower floors of this building. No longer g about subtlety, she drew her sword and sliced the and lock holding it closed before opening it and stepping inside.

  I sighed, now that I was aloh the SED Agents. I know I should be ed about that, sidering they were our nominal enemies.

  But after the shit show that tonight had turned into, I couldn’t give less of a fuck.

  Either they’d stab in the back, or they wouldn’t.

  Whatever.

  I kept my eyes o the very least, as we stood around in awkward silence while Sylvia went through the borious process of messaging Headquarters. It typically took a few minutes of flipping to transte a plex situation like this.

  About five minutes of all three of us standing around silently, the door opened and Sylvia stepped out. She me. “They’ve been informed.”

  Moments ter, I could feel my own indepe firmation of that fact. My location strapped to the inside of my right arm started jerking in pce rapidly. Looked like it had been linked up with a number of different other s.

  Backup seemed to be on the way.

  “Looks like you’ll get a meeting,” I said shortly, cutting my eyes back over to Sevehey just nodded silently, before leaning over and whispering something to Forty-Five, too quietly for us to hear. After a moment, he nodded and then abruptly stepped over the other side of the building to the street below. Before I could even really ask what was going on, he had returned with the other SED member who had been waiting down there.

  Apanying them was the newly reawakened person I had been fighting, as well the corpse of the person sin by Wisp. I got the impression of a dirty gnce from the Agent I’d frankly been losing against, but they didn’t speak themselves.

  Seventeen ined their head at the two new arrivals, first to my oppo, and then the one who had nearly killed Wisp. “Twenty-Two, and Thirty-hey said, half in aowledgment, half in introdu.

  Welp.

  Now it was twice as awkward up here. Not only that, but now Sylvia and I were outnumbered two to one.

  How wonderful.

  Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait around long to be saved from the situation.

  Abruptly, five people nded on the rooftop, ing to our rescue in record time. All five of them were Noe Agents, some of whom I reized, and some of whom I didn’t. However, there was a very surprising face among them.

  Hook.

  Ever since we’d started operating in Elderwyck, I had never seen our ander out in the field taking on a mission. I knew he had to have been doing things on his own beyond just coordinating the Division, sidering the personal iigation he was uaking. But I had never seen or heard of him apanying any other members.

  However, here he was.

  And he looked pissed.

  The air grew heavy with the power of his projected Mana as the dwarf took one heavy step forward. The stone of the rooftop fractured from the force of his advance, as he directed a furious gaze on everyohered here, particurly the SED Agents. And then he did something I had only seen the most powerful do.

  He projected his own ‘Mahat mysterious demonstration of might I’d seen from Grey and Honoka on occasion. Only, instead of the world darkening more than it already was, it greer.

  It was…hard to expin. It was like every puff of air, even the breeze on the wind, sprouted razor bdes. They weren’t cutting at me, no. Instead, it was almost like the very air around me was ever so slightly…shaving against my very spirit. It wasn’t taking anything away with every pass of the invisible bde. Just…making me aware of the implication of a threat.

  It rofoundly, incredibly unfortable.

  I shivered, and I noticed I wasn’t the only one.

  “What,” Hook growled. “Is this I hear about Dusk being captured?”