August 19, 2152
The first order of business was deciding how to deal with Tethys. Since Emory already planned to meet Innes and Gwen, she only had to message Innes to bring along Gatrie while she and Sam brought Tana. As it was temperate in the habitat unit, the group found an open spot to sit in the courtyard. Emory recounted the tale of what happened with Tethys and the Commission, making sure to describe every detail in case it sparked any additional information in their minds and even including the credit transfer she had successfully received that morning. When she finished, silence set in over the group as they took in the events.
Innes was the first to break the silence, "I've heard of the Commission before from my family. They used to be a black ops division of the military."
"Used to be?" Tana piped up, "Did they get disbanded or kicked out?"
"The way I heard it, they got into some weird stuff after first contact with the Mantoan. Switched from a black ops team to some sort of top-secret research group. After a few months, the group went dark and disappeared from the military," Innes explained.
"What kind of weird stuff?" Sam pressed, "How dark do you have to go for the military to deep six the idea?"
Surprisingly, Gatrie interjected, "Genetic modification. Human-beast mutations. Unshackled A.I. You know, the normal stuff the government can't be seen having a part of."
"That's crap," Gwen laughed, "What, are you some kind of conspiracy theorist?"
"That's a hurtful way of putting it. I'm knowledgeable about some things; this happens to be the things! I know some shady people," Gatrie started sulking.
Innes, clearing his throat, came to Gatrie's defense, "Actually, I don't know how he knows that, but he's right. The biggest rumor I heard was that they were messing around with making super soldiers, either through A.I. or genetic modification of live test subjects." The others gasped and turned to Gatrie, who turned away and pretended to pout.
"That would explain the creatures I saw," Sam reasoned, "And it might explain Tethys's crazy fighting skills. But what about that black energy?"
"I might have an idea about that. Sam, I'm surprised you didn't think of it. There's a legend of a sphere that rivaled the Arcane sphere called the Void sphere," Gwen muttered slowly.
"The Void sphere?" Sam repeated with incredulity, "That's a story to scare children. How come no witch has ever had it before?"
Emory interrupted, "Wait, what's the Void sphere? I've never heard of it before, and I'd thought I'd heard of all the spheres this time!"
"The Void sphere isn't a really a sphere. There's this old myth that the first council passed onto us from the Magisters about encountering a power that rivaled even their magik. They called it the Void sphere because it seemed to be devoid of the life energy present in magik. Some clans even have a farewell that goes 'Invoke not the Void'," Gwen explained.
"That's why I didn't consider it," Sam claimed with a finger pointed at Gwen, "It's just like referring to a god figure, a figure of speech."
"Except not, right? I mean, Emory saw something and that something matched her sphere," Tana said as she chomped into an apple she had brought along.
"And that's my point," Gwen pointed back at Sam, "Look, I'll be the first to be skeptical about claims based on fables. But facts are facts. First, there's no dark sphere that's pure black. Second, it matched the Arcane sphere. Third, it didn't follow the normal rules of magik. All signs point to the Void sphere."
Emory moved in between Gwen and Sam with her hands raised, "While it is important that we figure out what that energy was, for now, we can call it whatever we want as long as we understand how powerful it was. Most importantly, we need to decide what we're going to do about Tethys. I don't believe she has left the school; she just got a pass for the weekend."
"What are our options?" Gwen asked, "It's not like we could, you know." She made a throat slashing gesture at this remark.
"No, we're not offing anyone. I meant should she remain with our group, or should we stay away from her?" Emory replied as she rubbed her temple over the idea of killing her.
Tana began slowly, "This might not be popular, but I say she should stay with us. If we kick her out, she'll still do the stuff she was doing before, and we won't have any eyes on her. However, if she stays within our group, we can at least track her whereabouts."
"Until she stabs us in the back," Gatrie retorted, "I say we kick her to the curb. Better safe than sorry if you ask me."
"Do we have any kind of failsafe to keep her in check if we let her stay? Plus, didn't you say that they did in fact pay you? Maybe they're not completely evil, or at least, they honor their commitments," Innes added.
"Does the school have a forge?" Sam posed to the group, causing a short pause and several stares, "It's related, I swear."
Gwen answered after thinking for a moment, "I think there's a smaller one in the basement under the practice holodeck. What are you thinking?"
"Well, I say we talk to Tethys and ask her. Though I imagine she wants to stay with us, she might have changed her mind after the fight. The reason for this is my plan needs her to go along with it," Sam explained, "If she does, we explain to her that we will allow her to stay, but only if she wears specially forged bracelets. Her Creation is level two, so she can deboss glyphs into the bracelets."
"And how do the glyphs help? She'd have to have help from one of us to imprint something," Gatrie complained.
"Life Sow works both ways, right?" Sam questioned Emory, who nodded her head slowly, "Perfect. We'll just have Emory help Tethys by embedding Life Drain into the bracelets with a trigger. If she attacks one of us, they start sucking away her stamina and don't stop until she's unconscious or someone says the trigger word." What she was suggesting was indeed a less harsh punishment that death but not by much. Emory thought about it hard as she would be the one to empower these restraints; Tethys was just the binding catalyst.
Gatrie commented, "I don't think I've ever seen Life Sow. Is that the level four general spell? What does it look like?" Emory got a little flustered as she didn't often use it due to its costs. She bent down and found a dandelion just beginning to bud in the grass. Then she hovered her hand just over the top, closed her eyes, and began to concentrate. Over the course of a minute, the flower bloomed and grew nearly a foot before Emory started breathing hard and collapsed to her knees. All the while, her hand continued to hover over the flower, sprinkling what looked like glitter over the top. Then she let out a deep growl, and her eyes, now fully open, turned a dark blue, bordering on black. In an instant, the dandelion shriveled up and died as well as the grass within a foot of it.
"That's both expressions of it," Emory huffed as she got off the ground, "You can either put pure magik into a living thing or drain it of its life energy. It's very taxing to put it into something and not the best conversion of energy to take out. But I think the bracelets would be effective."
"Life Sow is a powerful inhibitor. Even if it doesn't block the black energy, she'll be too weak to control it. I support the idea," Gwen affirmed as she went over to examine the area Emory had cast her spell on. One by one, everyone slowly agreed with the plan, even Gatrie who was greatly swayed after seeing Life Sow in action. Finally, Emory nodded her head as well, though she hadn't helped craft an item before and was a little worried about how taxing this process would be. Then again, there was always the possibility that Tethys would not return, though this was a small chance in Emory's mind.
After talking through the options, the group was in no mood to run, so they decided to head to the cafeteria and get breakfast instead. Over the meal, everyone decided it would be best to stay together for the weekend until Tethys showed up again. Sam suggested that they check in the library for more information about the Void sphere, the Commission, or any number of dead ends they had run into. So, they headed to the library and scoured the books, hoping to find a lead. At first, they only seemed to run into more dead ends as the books seemed to have nothing to do with what they wanted. Emory started in the war section and had combed through about half of the area when she came across an interesting book about secret missions during the war with the Mantoan. She continued to scan over the pages until she finally came across a chapter on the Commission.
The story detailed here talked about their covert missions during the beginning of the war which explained the way humanity was able to disable key enemy systems early. Using prototypes and unproven research, the Commission was able to infiltrate the Mantoan lead ship stationed over Earth without being detected and set it on a crash course for landfall deep in the Rocky Mountains. Once the ship crew had been neutralized, the Commission suspended all military operations and became solely focused on the disassembly and containment of the ship's contents. After the collection process was finished, they changed their focus area again to concentrate on cutting edge research, driven by what they found. Still, a year into the war, the Commission had nothing to show for their work and was disbanded shortly after their yearly review.
Emory started to close the book when a sentence caught her eye. "Though the Commission was formally disbanded in 2142, it is believed that the black ops group continued to operate and indeed did produce successful results from their experiments sometime later," the book read. She wondered what they were trying to produce that showed success and, more importantly, what they had uncovered in the lead ship that led them to this success. Unfortunately, this was all the book had to say about the Commission, though to be thorough, Emory checked every page for anything else about the group.
After checking the library from top to bottom, the group decided to take a moment to go over anything they had found and take a short break. Out of the six of them, only two of them were carrying a book to the table, but Emory's book was much smaller than Gwen's. As they sat down, Gatrie let out a loud sigh, "How did you two find anything? Looking through all those books wore me out, and unlike you two, I have nothing to show for it."
"This book doesn't have much that we didn't already know," Emory explained, "But there is an odd remark I came across that I thought could lead us to something."
"Have no fear then, for I have found an encyclopedia of information about the Commission, tucked away in corner of the library," Gwen grinned as she slammed the thick volume on the table. The echo reverberated through the shelves and table nearby, causing several dirty looks in Gwen's direction.
"What did you come across?" Innes asked, "That doesn't look like a standard library book."
Gwen fanned through the volume, "It's a collection of battle reports. It's not just about the Commission, but if they were a black ops group, at least we could find some redacted commentary here, right?"
"Before we all look through this, let's look at the small book first," Sam stopped them, "Emory, what did you find for information?"
"It says they may have continued to operate and produce results. Otherwise, it largely stated the conjectures we had were true: black ops group turned to secret research. The text pointed to this switch happening when the lead Mantoan ship came down; maybe we should look at the records surrounding that incident," Emory suggested. Gwen scanned the table of contents before rapidly flipping the page to the correct report. When she did, the whole group got close and leaned over the book to read it for themselves.
The Fall of Mantoan Ship Alpha (Codenamed: Operation Quick Strike)
April 20th, 2141
Operation Quick Strike began at 0700 hour with two forces. Alpha Team, composed of Allied Forces from several different factions, engaged enemies on ground 1mi from target while Bravo Team, The Commission, invaded the target from below using Machine Aleph (redacted) confiscated during Operation Prodromos. After successful infiltration, Bravo encountered limited resistance onboard, consisting of three light infantry units. Bravo defeated infantry and proceeded to move to target, confronting token forces and culminating in a confrontation outside destination with heavy infantry unit believed to be vessel leader. Unfortunately, Bravo commander was forced to deploy Component A (redacted) entirely on self to eliminate hostiles. Component A proved effective, enhancing strength, speed, and stamina by 300%, and allowed commander to overpower heavy. Clear of enemies, Bravo arrived at primary target and installed software virus to onboard computer. Virus successfully neutralized propulsion technology while Bravo maintained location and safely delivered cargo to REDACTED. Bravo volunteered to decommission cargo. Alpha successfully routed ground forces and reassigned to Operation Homestead.
Full Debrief: OQS 7-20-4-41
"Gwen, where did you say you found this book?" Innes whispered.
"From that corner over there," Gwen pointed, "Why do you ask?"