Technomancer: Birth of a Goddess

After finding a small clearing a few metres wide, Emily drops her prisoner to the ground and pulls the barrier disc out of her belt.

She then takes out an extra water and light crystal, slotting them both into new sockets on top of the disc before activating it and tossing it up into the air.

The anchors fire out into the surrounding trees, suspending it above their heads, and almost immediately the metal disc pulses with mana, releasing a burst of thin water vapour that arcs out in a half dome. The vapour hangs in the air, forming into a thin mist.

“What’s with the barrier change?” Pretty Boy asks, stepping up to the mist and reaching his hand out to touch it, watching in fascination as it passes through without resistance.

“Step outside for a few seconds,” Emily replies.

He eagerly nods and steps through the mist before turning back to face them.

Emily snaps her fingers, conjuring a ball of glittering white light at the apex of the barrier, just below the disc.

After a few moments, Pretty Boy steps back inside and his eyes widen in surprise as his gaze snaps up towards the light.

“Incredible,” he mutters in awe, drawing the curiosity of their squad mates, who all step outside to see what has caused him such shock.

As they step back in, they all share his surprise.

“Did you make that yourself as well?” Ice Petal asks the moment she re-enters the barrier.

“Yes,” Emily nods. “Liberte’s barrier inspired me to upgrade an existing tool I had. Unfortunately, it doesn’t completely hide our presence, only obscure it as you saw.”

“It’s still impressive no light leaks out,” Whistler says, slinging down the bag she has carried from the men Emily killed and pulling a sleeping roll from the spatial pouch at her belt. “We can make a fire in here, right? We’ve been eating dried rations for no reason.”

“Yes, but it burns magic crystals. Keeping this barrier up in this setting will drain two crystals within three hours,” Emily explains, choosing not to mention that she could have been cooking for them with her fire magic anyway.

No one complains after hearing about the cost.

Emily leaves her squad to discuss setting up camp among themselves after dropping a hunk of archite flesh in front of them to cook.

She pours mana into the spatial enchantments in her bag, drawing out a dense purple mist that forms into a workbench covered in various implements from beakers and jars to functioning terrariums and trays of powdered crystals.

Her squad mates all cast incredulous glances at her set-up as she pulls out a cauldron next, starting a fire below it with a snap of her fingers.

“What are you making?” Ice Petal asks while dividing up the tender archite into reasonably sized portions.

“Dead Man’s Breath,” Emily says, pulling out the mental crystal she took from the mage and holding it up to the magical light above to inspect the runes, carving them into her memory.

“I’ve never heard of that one before. Is it from Modo?”

“Sort of. It’s not a well-known brew. I found an excerpt about it when I was digging through the library of The Covenant, but it only included a few of the ingredients and the potion’s purpose,” Emily explains, grabbing an empty metal tray and crushing the crystal into it.

“How are you going to make it then? Can’t working out recipes take weeks?” Ice Petal asks as she skewers chunks of meat on the ends of the spare crossbow bolts.

“For one this complicated it could take a skilled alchemist months.” Emily’s gaze roams the cluttered ingredients covering the workbench, picking out a jar of pop frog bile to mix with the crystal powder. “But I think I’ve already worked out most of the recipe. I’m still a little shaky on the timings, since my simulations won’t have been completely accurate, but it should only take a few tries.”

Ice Petal stops asking questions and Emily narrows her focus on the brewing process, preparing several mixed components while heating her cauldron of water and luminis leaves. Her secondary cores draw in her scattered scouts as she works, setting up three birds in the trees around their barrier and two spiders in small nooks among the tree roots.

Within half an hour her preparations are complete, and she removes the leaves from the now slightly glowing water filling the cauldron. She pours in the viscous, powder and bile mixture first, placing a hand against the side of the cauldron and conjuring a small whirling current within it, helping the bile to mix in evenly.

Next, she pours in a powdered blend of sandworm skin, ocelax fangs, and dried wyrmroot veins, before quickly placing the lid back on and continuing to mix the concoction without further intervention. She silently stares at the closed cauldron, maintaining the current for five minutes before opening the lid and throwing in the next mixture, this time including the bloods of several magical beasts.

However, the moment the blood hits the surface of the brew it starts to emit a pungent odour.

“Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue, pouring water mana into the cauldron and using it to lift the failed attempt out, dumping it on the ground behind her where it bubbles, burning all of the grass it touches and creating a small dead zone.

Sandman and Ice Petal both notice the hissing and look over, grimacing when they see the noxious liquid seeping into the ground.

Emily doesn’t spare it a second glance, filling the cauldron with water and luminis again while preparing another batch of the ingredients she has wasted.

Her next three attempts all fail before she adds the catalyst, and it takes her two more attempts after reaching the point of eliminating the brew’s impurities to finalise the timings and correct a few faulty ratios she was working with. Finally, on her eighth attempt at brewing, she pops the lid of the cauldron and watches as it releases a faint, silvery-blue mist with a sickeningly sweet scent.

“Finally,” she says with a satisfied nod, reaching down and activating The Clock.

***

After repeating the day once again, Emily only takes one attempt to brew the potion, eating a few skewers as she works.

Once it’s done, she lifts the silvery-blue liquid from the cauldron and deposits it into ten vials, nine of which she tucks away into her bag.

“What does it do?” Ice Petal asks as they sit the captured mage against a tree and gather around him.

“Dead Man’s Breath has two main functions,” Emily explains, crouching down in front of the man and grabbing his jaw, lifting his head up and sending a stream of machina beneath his skin, using it to burn away the remnants of her sleeping draught. “First, it compels the consumer to tell the truth and only the truth, as if willingly.”

The captured mage’s eyes snap open, and Emily pours the potion down his throat before he can process what’s happening, clamping his mouth and nose shut once again. He gulps down the liquid, choking for breath and clasping at his throat as she releases him and steps back.

“Secondly, it forces the consumer’s magic circles into a gradual discharge, expelling all of their mana within ten minutes and making it impossible to gather any more.”

Everyone in the squad shivers, but Pretty Boy’s eyes glint with curiosity once his fear fades.

“Why is it called Dead Man’s Breath if it’s just a truth potion?” he asks, watching the captured mage go pale as faint, glowing blue veins creep up his neck.

“Well, that would be because of the main side effect: death,” Emily states in a matter-of-fact tone, causing the captured mage’s eyes to widen in dread as his fate sinks in. “The potion just so happens to be made from ingredients toxic enough to kill a normal human. You can only use it on mages, and even then, it kills them once they run out of mana. It’s a faulty recipe, but it’s the best one I have for now.”

The veins covering the mage’s skin finally meet at the crown of his head, and his hands drop limp at his sides while his eyes dilate, signalling the potion has reached full effect.

“Now, let’s start with something simple,” Emily says, reaching out and tilting her captive’s face to force him to look at her. “What’s your name?”

“Raphael Landry,” the man answers in a slightly slurred mumble.

“What circle are you?”

“Second.”

“Good.” Emily nods, holding her other hand out and pouring light mana from it, forming it into a shimmering image of the map she found on him. “What’s this map?”

He stares at it vacantly for a few seconds, slowly processing what he’s seeing before responding.

“Our patrol route.”

“Why are you patrolling so deep into no-mans-land?”

“The job paid well.”

“What was the job?” Emily asks, trying to refine her questioning.

“To hunt New Denntimo scum,” the man answers with surprising vitriol for his disoriented state.

“Do you know why you need to hunt them?” Emily continues, not batting an eye at the insult as her squad mates bristle behind her.

“To win the war.”

“Tsk. It doesn’t look like he knows anything important.” Emily’s brow creases, but her irritation fades almost immediately.

We’ll just have to hunt more of these squads until we work out where they’re guarding.

“Why did you have your patrol route in your pocket?” she asks, giving up on asking for Denros’ objective.

“To sell it.”

“You were going to sell it? To whom?”

“Black Skull Merchant on Frosthorn Street. They pay well for information on our jobs even after they’re done.”

Emily’s brows rise again as the name rings a familiar bell.

Black Skull? Are they related to the Crystal Skull? If they’re buying information on military missions like this from idiots like this man, they’re probably an infiltrator of some form, not local. I’ll have to ask old man Silver about it later. Maybe they’re on our side.

She continues to question the mage, trying to gather anything else helpful and coming up short. After letting her squad ask a few questions themselves, Emily puts the man out of his misery with a quick stab to the heart and buries him outside their camp.

They rest for the night, with Emily keeping one core awake at all times, sitting in the centre of the camp in a meditative pose. When dawn breaks, they pack up camp to start a search for other hunting squads.

Emily leads her squad towards the end of the line that makes up the dead squad’s patrol route before releasing more spiders from her belt, spreading the scouts and focusing their detection in a wide, sweeping arc.

They travel quietly, at high alert for beasts or mages alike, yet moving with collected confidence. Even Ice Petal falls into the steady rhythm of the hunt, blending in well with the more experienced mercenaries.

After sleeping through another night, the next morning Emily detects movement in the distance. Unlike the first squad, this time her spiders send back the image of six hazy, humanoid figures carefully stalking through the woodlands towards them.

She holds up a hand, signalling for her group to stop before holding up six fingers and pointing ahead. The others silently nod in acknowledgement and seamlessly take positions.

Whistler reaches out for a low-hanging branch, grabbing onto it and swinging herself up and around it with barely a rustle of the leaves. She reaches for another branch and continues to scale the tree, vanishing into the foliage above.

Emily soundlessly creeps forward, with Pretty Boy hot on her heels as Sandman and Ice Petal crouch down behind a nearby thicket of bushes. Emily passes a thick tree with gnarled roots sticking up beneath it and spots a small creature’s den dug away underneath them.

She points down at it as she digs her fingers into the coarse bark of the tree and pulls herself up. Pretty Boy understands and slips his lithe figure into the hole, lying in wait as Emily settles onto a branch high above, patiently watching the approaching group through her spiders.

The six figures continue carefully moving closer, completely unaware they have already been exposed.

Two of Emily’s birds land near the group, letting her confirm that the familiar non-descript robes match those of the first Denrosi squad.

The electronic motors in her Claws silently whir to life, extending her deadly blades as she spies the enemy squad through the thick branches surrounding her. She calculates their approach and leans forward slowly.

Her body slips from her perch without a sound, plummeting towards the ground below.

She slams knee-first into one of the unawakened enemies, crushing his neck instantly and driving his corpse into the ground with a heavy thud that signals the start of the ambush.

The cracking sound of snapping branches suddenly rings out and the chest of one of the robed men at the back of the group bursts open as Whistler’s shot finds its mark.

Two loud pops ring out beside the group a fraction of a second later as two bullets drill two holes into the necks of two of the other shocked men. They drop to the floor clutching their throats as Emily lashes out with one of her Claws, decapitating the only first circle mage of the group and leaving behind only a stunned second circle woman, staring at Emily in disbelief as her entire squad falls dead around her in an instant.

The stunned woman blinks, trying to force her mind into motion. She starts moving her hands, quickly bringing them together, but Emily moves before she can finish whatever she was trying, stepping forward and gabbing both of the woman’s wrists, finding a similar bracelet to the one worn by the first mage.

She looks up at her opponent’s face, watching her eyes dart to the exposed bracelet, held firm by Emily before she starts to tense her jaw. Emily drives her head forward without any hesitation, slamming her forehead into the other woman’s and knocking the light from her eyes.

“Tsssss,” Pretty Boy audibly winces in the dirt beside her, pulling himself from his hiding spot and staring at Emily in disbelief. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Not really.” Emily shrugs, slipping the leather bracelet from the captive’s wrist and scanning her body for anything more.

She only finds the expected poisoned tooth, so she grabs the woman by the scruff of her robes and drags her to lean against a tree.

“Search and clean them up,” she commands her squad with a dismissive head gesture towards the corpses before reaching into her captive’s mouth and grabbing the false tooth nestled between her molars.

Emily rips the tooth out in a single, swift motion, and a shrill scream startles a few nearby birds out of the trees.