Respite 8.6

  2005, July 9: Nameless Vilge, Babylon

  "Are you sure?" I asked Fortuna.

  "For the fourth time, Andy, yes. I am positive we have never experimented on children. The absolute eldest we've ever offered vials to would be considered adults according to their respective cultures."

  "You know how little that means, right?"

  "But that's the answer I have for you. The youngest on record I believe was sixteen years old."

  "Then what are the vilgers at Lordsmith talking about?"

  "I don't know. I haven't lied to you; I truly haven't had much to do with the town. Nor will I dedicate a Path to finding out. I do have more pressing concerns," she said with a tinge of exasperation.

  "Yeah, you're right. Thanks, Fortuna," I conceded. We spoke a bit more about current events before hanging up.

  I supposed it was possible for Rinke to have snuck in some experimentation without anyone noticing. That was the trouble with social manipution after all: There was always the chance that Rinke would get ideas, especially if he'd managed to convince himself that those ideas would please Fortuna.

  Still, this was Fortuna. She ensured Rinke's loyalty and she didn't make mistakes, not like this. Which meant that if those "fae children" were his doing, they were harmless to both Cauldron and Lorsmith. Which expined her bse attitude somewhat.

  The answer was simple: I would need to visit Rinke and look into the matter personally. Either he was turning Case-53s into children, in which case I'd need to ensure they were happy with their forms, or he was turning the local fauna into goblins, in which case I'd have to ask him to stop.

  And if this had nothing to do with Rinke at all?

  Well, that could be a cause for worry…

  X

  2005, July 9: Nevernd, Babylon

  I walked through the forest under the evening light. I'd returned to the b briefly to grab my armor, figuring that it would be better to appear as Hyunmu and not Andy. I didn't think I'd be deified for it at any rate.

  We had a lot more information about Nevernd than we did Lordsmith because unlike Conrad, Rinke was an active member of Cauldron. They'd cimed a section of nd deep within the forest, unimaginatively named the Deepwood, to establish their settlement. It was rgely isoted from the vilgers, so much so that no normal human could hope to make the trip within a week.

  The further into the woods I walked, the more the scenery changed from a normal, Eastern European forest to something straight out of fantasy.

  The shadows grew long as the sun began to set, but grooves within the trees came alight with multicolored butterflies with luminescent wings that only began to glow in the dim light. Beneath my feet, delicate, jellyfish-like mushrooms glowed with a cool, blue light, lending the whole forest a haunting beauty.

  Out at the fringe of my vision, I saw many creatures that had no business existing. Some looked like bigger versions of normal animals, like a squirrel the size of a sheepdog, while others were mutated monstrosities straight out of myth. I saw four-armed bears, elk with colorful horns straight out of Princess Momonoke, and even a gryphon that spied on me from atop the stone-like treetops.

  Clearly, Rinke had been busy. Then again, no one had told him he couldn't, only that he was not to harm the vilge.

  "You know I can see you, right?" I called to the figure behind me and atop the branches. He'd been following me for the past twenty minutes, swinging from the sturdy, stone-like branches like a spider monkey, or some kind of ninja.

  It was almost cute, the way he froze in arm. A hand went to an ornate crossbow at his hip, no doubt something Rinke insisted on over conventional firearms. He took shallow breaths and melded into the tree, lying himself ft against the trunk.

  He had long limbs, not enough to be grotesque, but enough that I noticed. Seeing him now, his fingers had barbed pads for grip, a little like sandpaper or shark skin. He also had a faint, reddish tint to his skin and pointed years, the tter which may or may not have been Rinke's aesthetic taste shining through. Beyond these features however, he looked almost unremarkably human.

  "Put the bow away and come down. Do you have orders to keep the vilgers away from the Deepwood?"

  His hand flew away from the crossbow as if it was on fire. Then, shooting me wary gnces, he hopped down from the tree and nded a fair distance away, far enough that he thought he could run. "I do, who are you?"

  "I'm Hyunmu. Or Andy if you prefer. Have you never heard of me?"

  "'I've seen the pictures. Hyunmu is a lot shorter."

  "I was ten. I'm thirteen now, had a bit of a growth spurt."

  "I don't believe you. Hyunmu has the Door. He wouldn't need to come through the Deepwood like this."

  I chuckled. He reminded me of Joseph, and of Riley now that I thought about it. I suspected I'd be going through this song and dance again in the future.

  Pulling Isolde from my hip, I extended the bde until it was long enough to clip the canopy. Then, with a swift flourish, a plume of mist and ice fluttered around me as I sheathed my primary weapon again.

  "I am Hyunmu. I figured that I haven't actually seen much of this forest even though I was the one who started pnting it. I know this is the sanctuary for you lot so I hope I'm not intruding too much. What's your name?"

  His eyes widened with surprise and lingered where I'd stowed Isolde. "M-Marik. Are you looking for Peter Pan?"

  "I am, though it's not immediately urgent. If it was, like you said, I would have called via the Door. I'm just content to walk around for now."

  "I-I see…"

  "Well, now that you're sure I'm Andy, do you want to walk with me? Tell me about this pce. I know I wasn't the one who made all these interesting pnts and animals," I said with a friendly smile.

  Marik, one of the more human-looking Case-53s, turned out to be the one most commonly sent to Lordsmith so as to not arm the vilgers too much. He also acted as something of a forest ranger, though his primary role was shooing people away from the Deepwood so that they didn't accidentally fall prey to the dangerous fauna and flora. Most things here were under the control of Peter Pan, but they were doing their best to avoid accidents nonetheless.

  As we walked, he pointed out several creatures Rinke made, such as the griffins, that further helped secure the perimeter. Seeing all his creations, it highlighted just how little the PRT could have done in the old timeline had Nilbog wanted out of the Elisburg Containment Zone. They didn't keep him in; he kept himself amused.

  The closer we got to Nevernd, the more of the Lost I saw. They lived in treehouses, literal houses carved directly into the petricite. And, to Rinke's credit, not one of them had the kind of grotesque, monstrous appearance characterized by Sveta in canon. Every st one was humanoid, at least in a general, "upright with four limbs" sense. Many had scales, fur, or outgrowths like rock or bark, but some of the mildest cases could pass as simple cospy.

  Compared to them, Jamie Rinke, Peter Pan, was a thoroughly unremarkable man. In fairness, he was remarkable here purely because he was so unassuming, like the only man at a Halloween party who had not thought to bring a costume. He stood at the base of the rgest tree hollow and wore emerald-green robes embroidered with blue and gold at the edges, a man completely in-character as the leader of a forest commune.

  "Hyunmu! Be welcome," he said with a wide grin. "You know, this is the very first time you've been here. Why is that?"

  "Apologies, Peter," I said, opting to address him by his cape name. Everything about him suggested he'd prefer it to being pin ol' Jamie. "I've had a rather long nap."

  "So you have. And before that, I assume you were busy preparing."

  "It wasn't enough. I lost."

  "I think you're the only one who thinks that. You sent an endbringer running. Very few can cim the same, hero or vilin. You're a true hero, not like the Pretender."

  It took me a second to remember: He meant Scion. Fortuna had told him that he was Cauldron's final enemy, the one who'd distributed powers to the world and started this sick Cycle. The Great Enemy. "Be that as it may, I have a long way to go before I fully master my powers."

  "Don't we all. Come, come, let me show you inside. The Garden of Babylon may be your brainchild, but there is so much that has changed since your slumber."

  We stepped inside the giant tree hollow. Inside, I found that it was entirely hollow all the way through. The ceiling was so far up that I could not see it from the ground floor. A spiraling staircase ran up the wall, leading to rooms of various stripes.

  Funnily enough, I saw as many modern amenities as any five-star hotel. Bathrooms with functioning toilets, kitchens with gas stoves and fridges, and more were just beyond a few corridors. They'd been reskinned to incorporate a fae-like aesthetic but were present nonetheless. Clearly, Jamie didn't want to go without the comforts of modern society.

  Down below, I saw a basement corridor that shimmered and led directly to an eggshell-white hallway, one I'd walked several times before and knew connected to Babylon's b. Doormaker and Cirvoyant were truly indispensable.

  The tree hollow was a pale-white, not unlike fine marble. It was the natural color of petricite wood, and with the light of glowing butterflies and fungi, it left me feeling as though I'd stepped into some kind of fantasy cathedral or temple.

  "How did you build all this?" I asked, not bothering to mask the hint of awe in my voice. It really was impressive.

  Rinke grinned wide with childlike pride, eager to talk about what was obviously his treasured sanctum. "Acid, of course. Or, well, an enzyme that behaves like acid. Petricite is wonderful stuff, Hyunmu, stops my power cold from working it directly, and it's harder than any other wood I know of, but it's still wood. I picked up some ants and modified their biology a bit. They have their venom sacs near their mandibles and secrete an enzyme that rapidly breaks down cellulose."

  "You… And where are they now?"

  "In stasis, of course. I know better than to let them breed without oversight. I made them bigger, reduced their numbers, made it so they derive nutrition from pnt fiber, and then impnted several failsafes. Fortuna was insistent about that."

  "Wow, that's impressive. It sounds like you really put some thought into them," I said honestly. I waved a hand at the scenery. "And it's clearly paid off. Really, well done. I didn't think anyone would figure out a way to work with petricite so efficiently."

  "Thank you. Of course, all my creatures have simir constraints. Not the Lost, but the animals."

  "Excellent. I'm gd you've been settling in well."

  Rinke led me to a giant flower with fttened, crimson petals. It looked like it could be a pokemon, a vileplume or something. He stepped onto a petal and tapped one of the stamen, causing it to rise into the air.

  He'd made an elevator. Out of flowers.

  He looked at my gaping face and ughed. "I did a lot of studying. Biology of all sorts, but botany especially. I had to if I wanted to do this pce justice. It took some work, and the simplified notes from a pnt tinker Fortuna found in Sri Lanka somewhere, but I figured out how to make a corrugated type of cellulose that fills and expands with water like a spring. Slowly, of course. The stamen control the water flow into the pnt, letting me adjust the height."

  "This can't go all the way up, can it?" I asked, genuinely impressed. Clearly, the Garden of Babylon might have been my brainchild, but Nevernd was Rinke's magnum opus.

  "No, no, even my power can't do that. There are several of these pnts every few floors."

  "How do you call the flower up to you if you're on a middle floor then?"

  "Oh, that's easy-" he started.

  He expined how he'd had his ants dig grooves throughout the walls, creating a network of what he called "signal branches" that poked out of the walls like elevator buttons.

  There was more. As we made for his office, he gave me a rundown of all the different amenities he'd added to Nevernd. Some were modern technology installed with Hero's help, but there were just as many things he'd innovated on his own using pnts. A few Case-53s had powers that could contribute to construction or produced materials that were versatile enough to be applicable elsewhere. Together, they'd truly created a society in the time I'd been asleep.

  His office was aesthetically in line with the rest of the tree hollow. There was a small coffee table, a section of fttened petricite log, and couches that looked remarkably soft and plush lined with a type of lichen I didn't recognize. A chandelier of glowing mushrooms lit the room with a cheery light.

  I took a seat and broached the real question: "How about the Lost? I suppose they're not really Case-53s until they decide to emigrate to Earth-Bet and get registered under the PRT."

  "Precisely. A few different names were thrown about but well, this is Nevernd. There are a few who are considering venturing outside. I am working to ensure that they are prepared in every way I can. Don't you worry, they'll be ready to face the Great Enemy when the day comes."

  He sounded so proud of that. I remembered why they were here at all, the reason I couldn't get Fortuna to stop making them in the first pce: Scion, for whatever reason, loathed looking at Case-53s. He actively averted his attention from concentrations of vial capes, so much so that their mere presence gave Cauldron's HQ some measure of privacy.

  But fighting? Against Scion?

  I almost barked a ugh of disbelief. No, they wouldn't be much use on that front. They were, at best, distractions. They would die in droves, every st one who volunteered to engage Scion, all to buy us a measly second.

  I knew that. Fortuna knew that. All of Cauldron knew.

  And yet, we were raising this army of dead men anyway, because Scion was just that dangerous. We would sacrifice thousands to save billions; that was Cauldron's remit.

  I schooled my features and forced myself to smile and nod. "Don't worry about Scion. Simply train hard, learn to work together, and, if they choose to leave Nevernd, ensure they are the best heroes they can be. That's all I can ask."

  "Of course. There is a school here, you know, special csses for those who wish to leave that are designed to better integrate them into the hero culture of Earth-Bet."

  "That's excellent. I'm gd you're preparing them as best you can. If you need anything from me, let me know, Peter."

  "Nothing at the moment. I just wanted to share some of my work with you. This forest has truly come alive this past year and I thought you should see it."

  "Yeah, it's beautiful. I have to ask though, how is it working with them? Are their bodies hard to adjust? Easy? Is there anything I can provide to ease the process?"

  "It's not easy," he said with a frown. "Those poor things. When they arrive here, they remember nothing. It is a noble thing that Fortuna is doing, giving them a home here. Their Shards seem to reject external influence, as if they've decided that their hosts' new forms are 'right.' It takes a lot of coaxing, minor changes over the course of weeks."

  "How minor? Can you walk me through that process? Call it professional curiosity."

  "I like to start with dead cells. Hair, nails, and outer yers of skin and the like. I typically just change the color to be more human-like or adjust the shapes as best I can. Even if the Shard rejects the changes, that rejection isn't going to hurt the host."

  "Does that happen often? Shards are finicky at the best of times and Eden's Shards aren't part of the network anymore. They tend to work off faulty information regarding humans or simply ck the same controls found in natural parahumans."

  "I'm aware, but no. Usually, simple cosmetic changes take without issues. You know how my power operates, yes?"

  I nodded, a tad grossed out. "You create a pcenta-like sac that envelops the target and turns them into organic slurry before reforming them."

  "I do," he said. He lifted his hand to show me a groove along his palm. It peeled apart a bit, revealing a red, fleshy sac. "As far as the Doctor can tell, I secrete an enzyme that breaks down organic matter. It took some practice, but I learned to selectively envelop different sections of a body and lower the enzyme concentration. It's still imprecise, but…"

  "But it's what we've got," I finished for him. "You're doing these people a huge favor."

  "I know," he sighed. "I wish I could do more for them. I start with incremental changes and move up from there, but when I get too deep, their Shard reasserts itself. It also keeps my power from fully integrating into their bodies."

  "So you don't know where all of the Lost are at any given time?"

  "No, not truly. The animals and pnts I've made, yes, but not the Lost. I would have to dissolve their brains and… I don't want people who are forced to be my loyal minions," he said softly. "It might be better for our mission, but it would be no better than killing them."

  I could see Fortuna's hand on this. This Jamie Rinke wasn't Nilbog. Nilbog had eagerly turned an entire town of three thousand into his yes-men and forged a kingdom for himself out of his own delusions. The Jamie Rinke who sat before me was in some ways the same, yet oh so different.

  He saw the Lost as his children, students to be mentored. He cherished them, just as Nilbog cherished his goblins. And yet, he also saw them as distinct people and respected their individual identities.

  Perhaps it was hypocritical of me to be relieved at this. The irony was that neither I nor Fortuna had much respect for Rinke after he triggered. She'd unched a social manipution campaign so effective that he was functionally a very different man. This was without question the better outcome, but one built on deception and manipution.

  "We do what we can with what we have," I said solemnly. That was practically Cauldron's motto, to pick the least shitty option in a host of shitty options.

  As we talked, I came to the hypothesis that Rinke's Shard was working with the dead Shards somehow. It seemed that by making gradual changes, he could work up to optimize the physical deformities present, even if he could never eliminate them. It was as if his Shard was providing some of the controls that the dead Shards cked.

  I walked away that night with a better understanding of Nevernd, the Case-53s, and Rinke himself. The visit was a long time coming, and well worth the effort, but I was no closer to discovering the truth behind the "fae children" that some in Lordsmith had seen. Clearly, this wasn't Rinke's doing. The more I thought about it, the more sure I was of my suspicion.

  It was time to examine Lordsmith more closely.

  Author's Note

  I'm having a ton of fun worldbuilding Babylon. I've decided to write at least one chapter of LT per month no matter what. It's a very imperfect story, but it's my first baby, damnit.

  As always, my science doesn't need to make sense, merely be vaguely pusible to someone with a middle school education.

  If any of you will recall, way back when, Fortuna decided that Jamie was to be told only part of the story. As far as he knows, the "Great Enemy" distributes Shards. Some of those Shards malfunction, forming Case-53s, resulting in their fwed memories. Calling them the "Lost" makes sense from his perspective; he's not just keeping up the Peter Pan references.

  Can Nilbog affect C-53s? Honestly? We don't know. I'm inclined to say yes, but in a limited fashion in the same way Amy couldn't fully heal C-53s either.

  Thank you for reading. Believe it or not, this is the seventh website I've crossposted to. I want to make sure this site catches up with the others, but it's slow, tedious work. Until then, other sites will have a much more updated library of my works. If you want to read ahead, or check out other stories I've written, you can find them all on my Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/fabled.webs.