Azure: Gunner

Chapter 6-1

The city of Lost Angels is the greatest, and only, metropolis remaining in the region. It was first established nearly fifteen miles to the north of the present-day location shortly after the Wasted War. The rise of the undead in what became known as the Quarantine Zone led a coalition of fourteen of Old Lost Angels’ wealthy families to fund the early construction of a second city much further from the QZ.

Their vision proved to be prescient. The Undying War eventually reduced the original city to rubble. A mass exodus of the surviving population settled into what was then called New Lost Angels, subsequently shortened to Lost Angels. The founding families profited immensely from the sale of land within the protection of their new city wall, and became known as the Fourteen Families. Hundreds of years later, in the present day, they remain among the wealthiest and most powerful forces in the city.

- Fodorick’s Lonely Traveler – Guide to Lost Angels, Introduction

Lydia stepped to Yuri’s body and started to crouch down, but a sharp word from Thompson stopped her. The Healer looked up in confusion.

“Head Instructor, I – “

“Quiet. Azure, how long since he died? Just before we arrived, yes?”

I nodded. “I felt the Essence right after he stopped moving,” I admitted.

“We have time, then. Lydia, check Azure first.”

“He should be revived as soon as possible, Head – “ the Healer tried again, and my thoughts blanked for a moment even as Thompson cut her off again. It hadn’t occurred to me that Yuri could be brought back. I’d gotten his fucking Essence, hadn’t I?

“Azure first, Healer. That’s a direct order. We’ll determine what to do with Trainee Kalmár once I’ve heard her story.”

The Healer snapped her mouth shut and obeyed, coming over to crouch in front of me and taking my head in both hands. She peered closely at the cut running down the right side of my face and frowned.

“This is partially healed already – did you take a potion?”

I couldn’t shake my head in her firm grip so I replied verbally. “No, my teammate G’hala used a healing Skill on me after I called for help on the Comms.”

“Get on with it, Lydia,” Thompson said impatiently.

“Fine, this will – “

I gasped as the burning sensation, which had nearly faded, surged back to searing intensity. Lydia’s eyes widened in shock. She released my head, then pulled the canteen from my belt and opened it. A moment later she was pouring water over my face, scrubbing away the blood with a cloth she’d produced from somewhere.

“There were traces of a paralytic agent in her system, but, this doesn’t make sense,” she stated, and I blinked, trying to clear the water out of my eyes while wondering what had happened. The only time I’d felt anything like this when being healed was…

“She shouldn’t have felt any pain when I healed her, unless a significant amount of corruption had entered the wound. That shouldn’t be possible, not this close to the dungeon, and not in just a few minutes. Look at her eye – it’s obvious the corruption has increased.”

JJ examined me critically and nodded.

“The blue ring is thicker than before,” he agreed. I wished I had a mirror, but the only ones in the dorm were downstairs in the bathrooms. Thompson’s face was rigidly controlled.

“What did he cut you with?” she asked curtly before changing her mind. “No, just start at the beginning.”

It didn’t take long to recount what had happened.

“I didn’t actually see him cut me, but when I shot him, he dropped a knife somewhere.”

JJ got down on the floor and quickly located it under the spare bed. When he couldn’t immediately reach it, he simply lifted the wooden frame up with his other hand as if it was weightless, then plucked the dagger off the ground with his gauntleted hand. Holding it up, he passed it to Thompson, who examined it intently as JJ watched closely.

“This is a torturer’s blade,” she said in a cold voice, and my eyes widened.

It just looked like a regular dagger to me, but I was five feet away from her. I stood and stepped closer, looking at the very tip where she was gazing. It almost looked bent to me at first, then I realized that there were tiny protrusions on each side of the blade, just fractions of an inch from the tip. When she turned the blade slightly so that I was looking at the edge, it appeared to form a tiny cross.

“It’s almost too small to see, but there is a small hole just above the wings, here,” she pointed with a finger, but I couldn’t make anything out in the dim light. Overall, the blade looked quite normal to me, of good quality but nothing remarkable. That struck me as odd – I was surprised that Yuri would own something so plain.

“Observe what happens if I push mana into the enchantment.”

The metal of the blade shimmered slightly and then suddenly flowed like a liquid into a new shape. Now it was shaped like no blade I’d ever seen before. Instead of a tiny cross, it looked like the knife formed a ‘T’. Sharp metal wings now stuck out at least an inch to either side of the blade.

At first I thought it looked useless. Thompson deactivated the enchantment and it returned to its original shape. Then my mind conjured up a vision of the blade transforming when it was already inside someone and my stomach churned.

“I believe,” Thompson continued in the same icy tone, ”that we’ve stumbled across something very interesting here. Before I continue, I need you each to understand that what I’m about to say here must stay strictly between us. There is to be no further discussion of this topic with anyone outside of this room – Azure, that specifically means your team and

your mentor. Are we clear?”The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

I nodded silently along with the others.

“Good. Lydia, you are certain the increase in Azure’s corruption is significant, yes?”

“Yes, Head Instructor,” she replied intently. Thompson’s face twisted in disgust.

“Then it appears that we are doubly fortunate that Yuri underestimated Azure’s Level, and that her teammate’s Skill was able to counteract whatever agent he initially gave her.”

“Concentrated spider venom, most likely,” Lydia interjected, “there are several species native to this area that could paralyze a Tier 0. I noticed traces of a needle wound in her neck when I healed her.”

“Hmm.”

Thompson hummed softly for a moment as she considered the additional information.

“The knife wasn’t used to deliver the paralytic agent, then,” she stated confidently.

I had many questions, like how he’d gotten into my room without waking me up, but I bit my tongue. It was obvious that Thompson was talking about something more important – to her – than a single Tier 0 recruit.

“Assassinations are an infrequent but hardly unheard-of occurrence among the powerful in LA,” the Head Instructor explained, glancing at me. “It is quite rare for an assassin to damage their victim beyond the possibility of revival. This generally results in significant escalation, and often direct and indiscriminate government reprisals.

“Of course, every time a person is revived there is an increased chance of corruptive degeneration. This rarely occurs before someone has been revived at least a handful of times. However, recently there have been a suspicious number of instances where a victim degenerated on an early revival and had to be put down.

“I myself am only aware of the situation because it disrupted the Alchemist’s visit last year – she’d been pulled into the investigation of one of the deaths through a personal connection to the victim. When she arrived, she explained the situation to me. The victim had no history of corruption or known exposure to high-Tier mana that could have explained what happened.

“That death was ultimately tied to a dispute within the Syndicates and buried – figuratively, as they had to burn the victim's body after the coup de grâce.”

She paused for a moment, then stared us each in the eye one by one.

“Tonight, we have a case of minor but otherwise inexplicable corruption, and an unusual knife was used to make the wound. I suspect – though it is only suspicion as yet – that there is a corrupting agent located in the reservoir of this knife. An agent that does something considered impossible – introduce corruption directly into a wound. And the suspect blade was in the possession of the heir to one of the wealthiest and most influential families in Lost Angels.”

JJ’s eyes were blazing with anger, and the Healer looked stunned. She gave Yuri’s corpse, still lying in a pool of blood on my floor, a contemptuous look.

I was a bit overwhelmed by the information. Yuri had intentionally corrupted me? I didn’t understand – was he planning to leave me alive? Or was I supposed to be found and revived, and experience ‘corruptive degeneration’, which I’d never heard of before but sounded horrible?

Thompson looked contemplative for a moment, then her face set in a hard line. She handed the blade back to JJ, who took it with a confused look on his face.

“We have no means of analyzing this blade or anything contained within here at the Academy. I am certain I could open the reservoir given some time, but I have no idea what safety precautions might be required. For all I know, the material inside could aerosolize and infect anyone nearby.”

I felt the blood drain from my face as she continued.

“Again, what we have now is merely a suspicion. It is unusual but not impossible that a low-Level Assassin would carry something like this around – not with his connections. It is possible that he merely intended to put it to the use it was designed for, which would be horrible enough, and the corruption Azure experienced was some kind of freak accident.

“JJ, you’ll hang onto the blade for now. Tomorrow, you have no teaching obligations after 0930, is that right?”

He nodded, looking intrigued, and Thompson gave him a cold grin.

“I hope you’ve been staying in real shape, because we’re going to find out if you’ve still got it. Think you can make the run to HQ and be back before 0600 Tuesday? I want this delivered directly to the Guildmaster, in private, with a full account of what happened here tonight. If he’s out on one of his little jaunts, put it into the Alchemist’s hands. No one else is to know of it. If possible, ask them to carefully extract a small sample of anything contained in the reservoir and return the blade to you promptly.”

My eyes widened as JJ laughed delightedly.

“Twenty hours for a little hundred-mile jaunt? I’ll be back in time to catch a nap before class!” he boasted, vanishing the suspicious dagger into his Inventory.

“Make sure you don’t draw any suspicion when you leave – or return,” Thompson warned him. “As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, we didn’t find a weapon here. Azure, the story is that you never saw the dagger again after you shot Yuri, and if pressed, you assumed it was his Class Weapon and therefore dematerialized on his death. Lydia, JJ – you never saw anything. We did not search this room, we did not recover any weapons. Clear?”

“Yes, Head Instructor,” I responded together with the others. Thompson turned to focus on me, eyes hard.

“Now, Azure, here’s what’s going to happen next. Gather your things. Set up your bedroll in one of your friend’s rooms – you can’t be sleeping here for a while. I’ll seal the room with a ward once we’re all out. Yuri will be restrained and placed under guard for the night. In the morning, you’ll come see me at my office instead of attending Physical Training.

“Say nothing to your teammates other than this: Yuri attacked you, you shot him, we arrived and restrained him. He was near death, but Lydia stabilized him and healed him. The damage was severe, which is why we were in here for so long. You’re to act angry, that should be easy enough. Keep it simple and don’t get cute.”

“What is going to be his punishment? And why couldn’t I reach my teammates on the Comms? It felt like I was shouting into a storm or something.” I asked.

“We’ll discuss punishment in the morning,” Thompson stated, leaving no room for argument. “As for the other, he was using a privacy ward,” she pointed at a small object on the desk that I had missed entirely in the dim light. “It’s barely Tier 1, so it was able to interfere with but not stop your use of the Comms. Properly blocking Comms requires a ward at least a full Tier above your Level. All of that can wait. Get your things. Lydia, get to work.”

I unlocked and opened my chest, storing away everything there into my Inventory. It felt quite full afterwards, since I had my old chestplate and new helmet in there along with everything else. I snatched up the pillow from my bed and hugged it to my chest, feeling cold.

A ragged scream of pain ripped through the air behind me and I whirled. Yuri, still covered in blood, was sitting up, face deathly white even under the warm yellow glow of the mana lamp. His eyes were wide, vacant – he looked eerily like one of the dwarven children we’d – I’d – killed in the dungeon.

Lydia didn’t look much better than her patient. The Healer had collapsed onto the other bed, and was massaging her head as if to ease a painful headache, sweating and trembling. Thompson reached down and grabbed Yuri’s shirt, casually hauling the taller boy to his feet. She slapped him hard, once, across the face, and his eyes slowly focused on her.

He coughed suddenly, turning his head and spraying dark blood over the floor. Thompson didn’t react, just continued to hold him at arm’s length. JJ stepped up next to Thompson, glaring menacingly at the – wait, had Thompson called Yuri an Assassin? I hadn’t noticed anything off about his profile when I’d Identified him as a Knife Fighter, but my thoughts were interrupted when he spoke.

“What… happened?” Yuri asked thickly, then coughed again.