Evantra cursed under her breath, reprimanding herself for being carried away watching Lancelot and Galahad engage the wyvern. She was certain that Guinevere had advanced towards the building while the other Ghostslayers kept the beast busy.
The advanced scouting party she was with seemed content to remain under cover, tending to their equipment. They had likely been instructed not to give away their position and to let the Ghostslayers handle the beast.
It’s at times like this that I wish I had Guinevere’s invisibility.
The single, redeeming factor was that their attention was fixed on the battle. Evantra’s eyes widened as she recalled Galahad’s launcher at his side.
Evantra suppressed a smile as the solution revealed itself.
“Contact! Lesser earth and water elementals inbound! 2 O’clock.”
Evantra called out to the scouting party, and as their eyes snapped to fix on the encroaching elementals, Evantra slipped away as they began to unleash a hail of bullets towards the oncoming creatures.
[Ritual of concealment]
This is only going to conceal me from the Ghostslayers with cybernetic optics… I need to be careful crossing the street.
Veilsouls remaining: 31
I must have snatched up the Veilsouls of the creatures that Caliburn’s operatives are gunning down. That’s handy.
Upon reaching the ground floor, Evantra dashed further down the street, ensuring that she was out of the field of view of the entrenched scouting party. She crossed the road and ran into the building beside her, navigating around the rubble and cutting through it to get to the construction site.
Evantra crouched, pausing to time her break for the adjacent construction site with a break in gunfire. When it arrived, she dashed across the short gap from the building she was in, curling around the corner to approach the site from the rear.
Evantra approached the stairwell and began bolting upwards before she froze.
Gunfire. Coming from above.
But… it’s overlapping. Could it be that Guinevere is providing suppressive fire with someone else?
Evantra ran up the stairs, and she took solace in the fact that the [ritual of concealment] was still active. She ascended as quietly as she could manage, taking care to gauge her distance from the gunfire to prevent being caught off-guard by the sudden appearance of Guinevere or a potential foe.
She hefted her Nagantra as she advanced upwards.
The gunfire stilled. The only sounds that reached her ears were the roars of the wyvern and the sound of debris crashing into the ground and surrounding buildings. Evantra paused at the top of the stairs before falling into a crouch. She scanned the area around her, taking notice of the dusty, unmarked floor.
Evantra froze.
She heard the light sound of footsteps drawing closer to her. Caught in the middle of the stairwell, Evantra rushed to the bottom, as quietly as she could. About fifteen seconds later, she heard someone pass her, and her eyes widened as she noticed blood dripping from a single point in the air, colouring the ground beneath and marking a path.
Guinevere?
She must be injured. Not an ally then, but an enemy.
Evantra tensed as the woman continued downwards, but when she disappeared, Evantra slowly crept out of the gap underneath the flight of stairs that she was hidden under.
Evantra’s breath caught as she noticed a figure descend to her floor. She stared at it as it ran past, the figure’s head angled downwards and fixed on Guinevere’s blood trail.
W-what was that?
I’m not dreaming, am I?
The creature that she had glimpsed was bipedal and slightly taller than her. It was clothed in sleek black armour that seemed to conform perfectly to its body – reminiscent of a more compact version of Lancelot’s hexagonal plate armour.
It’s garb, however, was its least interesting feature. Evantra’s eyes fixed on the pair of wings that emerged from between its shoulder blades, trailing to the floor.
As well as the submachine gun held within its grip.
Evantra glimpsed the rear of a midnight blue head, with sharp, pointed ears emerging from either side of its face.
A Veilcreature? With a weapon?
No... Impossible. Perhaps an enemy corpo with comprehensive bionetic detailing.
What is going on?
Evantra’s heart hammered in her chest as she watched the figure disappear in pursuit of Guinevere. Evantra felt a flash of guilt seeing the Guinevere pursued, but she steeled herself, reminded of her objective.
Her eyes, which held the slightest trace of worry, went cold.
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Remember why you’re here.
There was a chance that Guinevere had already extracted what she had come in search for. Given that it seemed like the figure had successfully ambushed her, there was also a possibility that it still remained. Evantra emerged from her hiding place and continued her ascent up the building. She followed Guinevere’s blood trail, which led to the roof of the building, where the assailant must have been lying in wait for the ambush.
“What is—”
CATALYST DETECTED:
· Mistheart
Execute [ritual of consumption]?
Evantra stared at the object lying in the centre of the roof. It had a pale, blue hue and its surface was covered in droplets of water that slid to the surface beneath it. The air surrounding it was coloured by a slight, white mist. Arteries covered its surface, rising from the contours of the object. The heart was beating with weak pulses, each pulse bringing forth new droplets across its surface in a continual loop.
The enemy assailant likely left it behind in their haste to catch up to Guinevere.
[Razor claws]
Evantra pierced the tip of her finger and grabbed the artefact, bringing it into contact with her blood.
[Ritual of consumption]
Veilsouls remaining: 21
Evantra watched the catalyst disappear in a black flash before she heard the soft patter of footsteps ascending the stairs. She lurched to the side, crouching beside some crates covered in mouldy, white tarp.
[Conceal]
[Object mimicry]
[Stonerooted]
Evantra took the appearance of a crate in her crouched position, rooted in place. She watched the strange figure that she had glimpsed previously ascend from the stairwell, speaking a language unfamiliar to her. Her gaze was locked in a single trajectory, and she strained as she watched it enter her vision. The figure paused to stare at the empty spot on the roof of the building where the mistheart had been placed before.
It froze, the idle fluttering of its wings halted. Its gaze snapped towards her, and Evantra watched as the creature steadily approached her position. Its movements become harried, peering over the boxes with fervour, and…
Fear.
Evantra glimpsed eyes of abyssal blue housed within its midnight skin. Having a clearer line of sight to its face, Evantra stared at what appeared to bear some resemblance to a human-sized teethling. However, the creature lacked the characteristic razor teeth of its smaller counterpart. It also happened to be garbed in high-tech armour and carried a submachine gun.
Evantra felt her heartbeat begin to strain under the rigour of having to concurrently upkeep three of her skills. Her heart began to flutter, and Evantra released the first of her skills – [conceal] – in a vain attempt to maintain [object mimicry] and [stonerooted] while the creature had its back turned to her. She watched as a black helmet formed over its skull, before it jumped off the side of the building, its twin wings hastening to a buzz as it flew further into the heart of the lost territories.
Evantra released her skills and fell to the ground in a gasp. Her chest heaved and her vision began to swim, strained by how long she had held the skills for.
I’ve never heard of a sentient Veilcreature before. Chances are it’s a highly modded corpo. But those wings... Is it even possible to change someone’s physiology so drastically?
I need to speak to Noelle about this.
Still… it seems like since levelling up, the strain has eased. It could also be an effect of my cardio program. Something we’ll just have to test. Looks like there’s value to levelling as quickly as I can, even without artefacts to unlock.
Evantra bit her lip as she made her way briskly towards the stairs, her eyes scanning the skies around her for any lingering sign of the creature. Her mind whirled for a plausible explanation for her absence.
Evantra rushed down the stairs, heading back towards the ground floor. She could still hear the sounds of gunfire echoing from the distance, where the Ghostslayers were still caught up in their battle with the wyvern. The scouting party in the building opposite hers had abandoned their encampment, the side of the building having caved in from their exchange with the creatures.
Peering further down the street, she sighted the wyvern. The beast’s head was a bloody mess, but it was still persevering. Evantra watched with a mixture of horror and awe as it unleashed another fireball towards the encampment where Lancelot and Galahad had sought cover.
“Evantra, come in. Do you copy?”
“Copy, Lancelot. I was separated from the scouting party and boxed in by elementals. I’m around the corner.”
“Regroup, we’re retreating. Circle back, meet us at the first junction. If you don’t make it in an hour, push back to the checkpoint.”
She felt her skin prickle at the man’s words, delivered with cold efficiency. Reuniting in an hour was out of the question, not without further assistance or a scouting party to clear the way. Her way back was blocked off, and she would have to carve a different path back towards the checkpoint to regroup with Caliburn.
The implication was clear.
I have to make it back myself – they aren’t waiting up for me.
Evantra was wrenched from her thoughts as she watched a swarm of teethlings blot out of the sky. It eclipsed the swarm she had encountered in the Veilsurge, easily doubling or tripling the size of the prior swarm. She watched as they cut through the air like a rain of bullets, descending upon the wounded wyvern. She watched the swarm bury itself into the wyvern’s flesh, tearing through skin, muscle and sinew with deadly efficiency. The wyvern let out a roar of agony, and the gunfire ceased, marking Caliburn’s withdrawal.
Death by a thousand cuts.
The only caveat was that she had snatched up its Veilsouls, and the Veilsouls of all of the other creatures that Caliburn had massacred as well.
Veilsouls remaining: 73
***
Evantra watched as the vast swarm of teethlings scythed above her, carving a path through the air as the buzzing of thousands of wings reached her, sending goosebumps erupting across her skin. She watched the shifting mass with her [darkvision] active, having removed her night vision equipment, crouched in the recesses of a fallen building.
In the brief time since she had been isolated, she had spotted various elementals, groups of roaming gnomes and the teethling swarm that had fallen upon the wyvern. The problem was that firing her weapons at all would cause the creatures to converge on her – even the wyvern hadn’t escaped that fate.
Evantra resisted the urge to head down the path where she had glimpsed the congregation of elementals in search of a water type which could be compatible with the catalyst she had subsumed.
Seeing the ruins come to life with Veilcreatures certainly helped her to resist the urge.
She was beginning to realise just why raids into the lost territories were so risky. Noelle had told her that there were a seemingly infinite number of Veilcreatures that took up residence in old swathes of land – city centres and the urban sprawl beyond it. She hadn’t believed it when she first laid eyes on the land past the military boundary, but now?
Watching the vast swarm of teethlings shift hypnotically in the light of the stars, wind elementals fly overhead, and an unfamiliar beast stalk the streets in front of her, Evantra could believe it.
The creature had a sleek and imposing silhouette, prowling the streets openly like a panther. Muscles rippled beneath black skin, and as the bottom of its jaw lulled open, Evantra could glimpse dark, serrated teeth within capable of tearing her to pieces in minutes.
Evantra waited for the beast to continue on its path, into the street to the left. She had concurrently activated [conceal] and [darkvision] seeing as how the skills didn’t drain her significantly of stamina.
Evantra gritted her teeth as she took in the reality of her situation.
She would have to make her way out of the lost territories.
Alone.
