//------------------------------// // 11: Artificial // Story: Diary of the Dead // by AppleTank //------------------------------// Two beings walked into the Heneken family bar. The bartender looked up to find a tall, bipedal one in a cloak, and a positively tiny colt under a cloak.  “Miss Delia Heneken?” the tall one asked. “Yes?” She narrowed her eyes slightly. She didn’t recall giving her name ... unless someone else--?  “My son and I have come a long way, and are hoping to find a place to rest.” He slipped a handful of coins onto the table. “Oh, sorry, we don’t have--” as she moved to push the coins back, she saw a small folded piece of parchment. It was signed ‘From Dimitri’. Her eyes widened slightly, but she managed to hide how her spine briefly locked up. She looked at them again through clearer, moist eyes. The Dog was familiar, standing a head taller than her on short, stocky feet. A listless face and large, limp arms gave out a feeling of unintelligent brute that made most ignore him. His face unsteadily looked her way, and slowly raised an eyebrow, his sharp focus suddenly becoming visible in the lamp light. “...we may have an opening. Please wait a moment.” “Of course.” The dog moved to turn away, but paused. “Oh, and do remember to burn it when you’re done.” “Ah, yes. I understand,” Delia nodded, with wide eyes, before quickly retreating to the backrooms. The pair waited at a table, the room quiet. This early, no one had woken up yet. "How big is this place?" the colt, Cycle, asked. "Enough to be funding most of our operations," the dog, Barnabee, replied. "A decent network of distributors. A false position of management in Appleton, keeps tails from sniffing too deep." The bar door opened up again. "This way, please," Delia called. The pair followed her down the stairs, muttering their thanks. A quiet sigh of relief at reaching their safe house in decidedly enemy territory. "They're still searching?" Cycle asked, sliding his saddlebags onto the ground. “The one in charge still remembers how Agatha had manipulated his predecessor, he is taking no chances,” Barnabee explained. “Whether this paranoia will last a generation is another question. Now rest. We move at moonrise.” The moon shone brightly over the leafless trees. The Honeycomb pair loped over a series of abandoned buildings, many crumbling from a decade of neglect. There were no more guards here. Many wanted to forget the bloody battles digging out the remnants of the Enlightened. The encroaching unnatural winter from their south was only further motivation to consolidate their resources. Cycle and Barnabee landed quietly in front of a collapsed warehouse, one that used to be a trade storage post, one that used to be a hidden laboratory of dark magic. Barnabee crouched down, placing an oversized palm onto the dirt. Sparks of red electricity jumped out of his forearm and into the earth, seeking out ten pebbles of foreign origin. “Place your hoof next to mine,” he said. Cycle tilted his head curiously, but did so. “What for?” “The others, they all prefer wind and water," he paused, thinking. "And a dash of lightning. You. You can touch and know the Earth, Terrasire." A spark of green magic joins the jittering fingers of red. He feels the shape of stone pegs, hidden blocks of limestone in exact chaos. With a clench of Barnabee’s fist, ten gears of dirt solidify around the pebbles. They turn, blocks of dirt and slabs of stone shifting and sliding away, a rotating aperture opening an uneven dirt stairway onto darkness.  Cycle blinked. “Wait, you’re giving me the key to this place?” Barnabee stood up, rolling his shoulders. “If they didn’t trust you, they wouldn’t have sent you with me. Now let’s go. Vault’s waiting.” The “Vault” the little group of undead hid was one of the last remnants of the undead revolutionaries (read: terrorists) decades before. Biologics and the magical manipulations of it were its specialties, especially considering the thousands of animal and animal hybrid skeletons in crushed cages. Perfectly sliced masonry decades past collapsed on cut cages before its inhabitants could realize their escape. Twisted steel mesh littered the floor, stained rust red. Every surface was covered in a thick layer of dark dust, swirling around the newcomers’ feet as they entered. Yet, despite the destruction, precisely placed chunks of stone kept enough dirt off the forgotten paths to be just barely navigable to the back of the buried tomb. Enchanted dirt slabs kept enough of the earth still above the room to prevent a sinkhole from ruining their efforts.At the rear of the half-sunken chamber, the last repository of necromantic studies lay hidden. Barnabee slipped a scroll out of a pocket and began checking for the documents listed on the note. As they flipped through dusty shelves, Cycle looked up, taking a breath, and asked. “Where did you learn that?” Barnabee tossed another scroll into the growing pile behind them. “Hmm?” “None of our other teammates cast the way you do,” Cycle continued. “It is alien to them, and nothing I’ve seen before either, from pony-watching Appleton.” “It is indeed a style of magic from beyond your shores.” He stood up, grumbling. “Led by those who will surely lead them to ruin.” Cycle leaned back slightly. “That seems like a harsh criticism. I thought you were from there?” “No. Made there.” He paused, considering, then pulled back the side of his vest. There was a tattoo of a snake eating its tail. “They claimed a calamity destroyed their former home. Forced everyone to migrate for a new place. Indeed, there was a calamity. The Impact event was used to create me and my siblings.” “That seems ... bad.” “Indeed. It was a difficult task for your superiors to drill that into me. We were created to serve their interests.” Cycle frowned. “Wait, so, how did that lead you all the way here?” “Oh, I never mentioned that?” Barnabee tapped his chin. “You are here to uphold the legacy of your home, yes?” Cycle nodded.  “I’ve spent more time around the outer cities of my home, and I admit I would be disappointed if it was all turned to smoke. In the end, I agreed with Agatha to work with her to ensure its continued survival. It would be my hope if my siblings would agree, but I rather face their betrayal than Sir Falcowolf’s blade a second time. Notwithstanding how likely it would be that the rest of the continent would gear up to eliminate us before my home becomes a threat.” Barnabee sighed, standing up and gnawing a piece of steel mesh. “Let’s get this packed soon. We’ll need to be leaving by dawn.” A few decades earlier, when Barnabee Spirit first found himself upon Plan P. The Dog growled as he tested the enchanted chains tying his body to the chair. Wally sat on a table, tapping a quill against his beak as he mapped out the Dog’s travel path. Agatha paced in front of the prisoner, claws mussing up her crest. “‘How to further the growth of your Empire’, oh Wind guide me,” Agatha seethed. “How blind have you been for you to -- right, your damn family.” She turned and slammed her talons onto the armrests. “Boy, let's get something straight. First--” Red sparks danced around Barnabee’s arms. Agatha snapped her claws. Barnabee howled as Wally wordlessly fired a buzzing blade into the Dog’s shoulder without even looking up from his map. “First, I was being nice in not giving you a lesson with you limbless,” she seethed, leaning into his face. “Second, your Empire’s goals are in direct conflict with mine, notwithstanding the amount of wannabe heroes y’all are gonna kick up. I’m barely able to keep my own people alive as is.” "Muttress is powerful!" Barnabee shouted back. "We will achieve perfection." “Oh my god there’s another one,” Agatha said, leaning back and a talon dragging down my face. She gave the prisoner an annoyed glance. “Kid, the last time a group chased perfection the entire country got together to blow them up.” “You were there?” Barnabee interrupted, ears alert. “I’ve heard about them ...” Agatha gave him a suspicious look. “Yes, and they were an abject failure. Let they be a lesson: there’s no point in achieving immortality if your first step involves pissing off everyone on the continent. Your enemies will bleed, your enemies will choke, but your enemies only need to get lucky once. You come here, asking how to get closer to it? You'll find nothing but flames ... or pretty lies.” She rapped Barnabee’s forehead. “Use that perfect brain they gave you, and think for yourself for once in your life. What do you want? No, not what your masters trained you to repeat. Actually go into the Empire you claim you want to uplift, and see for yourself. If you find an answer, or, even if you don’t, come back. We’ll talk.” With a pulse of magic (and a multi-pronged key), the chains fell to the floor. “I had hoped word of those mongrels had stayed dead and buried, but clearly I was wrong.” “...Will you? Let him back?” “Do you think me a fool? Of course I want him back if he proves incapable of learning.” “... I see. What should I prepare for?” “Let’s see. First, get up any information we have on anti-magic. If he proves unwilling to reconsider, I don’t want to give him a second longer. If he even returns. Next prepare for infiltration. We won’t have a guide if this falls through.” “And after that?” “... Hope we don’t have to cause total annihilation, because I am not in the game for another kingdom to look over. Either would bring way too much publicity. At the scale his masters seem to be operating, I doubt we’d have a chance to loot the remains for centuries. We’d need to find sympathetic elements, in any form. Or this would be the biggest pain in my rump for the next century. And I hate complications.”