Sortius' granddaughter was named Octavia and she herself was only around an eighth Serpent-Man by blood. As Sortius had insisted, that meant she had little in the way of outward signs of the Blood of Set, only having slightly more pronounced canines, and even then they were well within human norms and a more swarthy tinge to her skin than normal for someone with Scottish and Dutch ancestry. Considering Sortius had yellowish-green mottled scales and slitted pupils, it was hard to believe that anyone who'd be looking to get at the old Half-Blood through his family would have figured out the familial connection. Not unless they'd been watching the family. That was why the main theory was that Octavia had gotten lost or run away after visiting the only Arcade in Starkesboro with friends since that was the last place anyone recalled seeing her.
Accordingly, I began my search there. Granted the trail was five days cold, but I figured it was as likely a place as any to start from. Unfortunately, the owner, a recent Portuguese Immigrant from Occupied East Timor named Rafael Silva hadn't seen anything, and the only security cameras he had were inside the Arcade. Fortunately, I had the Greensight to be able to look into the past and the future, though currently, with my powers so weak, I was limited to remote viewing of events within a single week of the past and future. Fortunately, the five days that had gone by since Octavia's disappearance were within that time frame, as I sat down at a table inside the Arcade where various people could sit and eat snacks and opened my mind to the flow of time.
Almost instantly, I felt my mental self bathed in a river of events and dates. If I were to let the river's current carry me forward, I would be able to see into the future, watching events unfold as they would absent of further changes for up to a week. Instead, I swam against the current, throwing my mental self back in the timestream. It was mentally taxing, but not nearly as much as I had feared to travel five days. I would not want to do this for extended periods, to look back on events even a year distant would see my mental self drown in the currents of the time stream from fatigue, but five days was more than doable.
As I swam to my destination, I looked out and saw that this was far from the only river. Dozens of timestreams all flowed concurrently around me, hundreds, no thousands of timelines, separated by the walls between universes all flowing to their inevitable conclusion. Before I could ponder that too closely, and even begin to think of a way to turn this power towards potential multiversal travel that wasn't reliant on a faulty Planeswalking Spark, I had arrived at my destination. Exiting the timestream like a swimmer climbing onto the bank of a river, my surroundings shifted and I saw the Arcade as it was five days ago.
Octavia was finishing up a last round of Street Fighter with one of her friends before saying goodbye. She waved goodbye to the owner, who waved back, before heading out of the arcade and into the night. My mental self followed her, floating around like some sort of Christmas Carol-esque Ghost of Kidnappings Past. I was sure that this was a kidnapping we were dealing with, as Octavia found a blowdart sticking out from her neck as she cut through an alleyway between a bowling alley and a movie theater to avoid cars on the Main Street Downtown. Her Serpent-Men blood was letting her stave off the effects long enough to begin stumbling toward the alley mouth, only for another blow dart to stick her and overwhelm whatever toxin resistance said bloodline provided.
As I watched, a man in a white cape and skull mask made his way out of the shadows at the other end of the Alleyway to pick Octavia up in a fireman's carry and bundle her into a waiting van. As my Mental Self followed the clear presence of Taskmaster in Starkesboro, I realized that Taskmaster had been hiding upwind of her to avoid any potential that she could have smelled him, using optical camouflage to deepen the shadows. He'd done his homework, which meant he knew exactly what was in this town. As I followed him to a rundown brick building in a residential area with few actual residents, I found out exactly why he'd known.
He took Octavia into a basement where the door was protected by a keypad requiring a four-digit code to enter. The code in this case was six-nine-six-nine, which was very classy when you had an unconscious pre-teen in your arms, Taskmaster. If I'd actually been present physically instead of just being a mental observer, I might have given my presence away from how hard I was rolling my eyes at the code. Regardless, I followed Taskmaster down into the basement where, as the lights powered on, I got a look at where he was keeping his captives.
A series of stasis tubes lined the walls, each with their own monitors showing vital signs and biological data. There were six tubes and only two were filled currently, one with a teenaged boy whose appearance was only slightly more reptilian than Octavia's was, and one with a twenty-something woman whose appearance was more markedly reptilian, being completely hairless, with a snake-like nose, greenish cast to her skin, slitted pupils, pronounced canines, and talon-like fingernails, but otherwise looking human. If I had to guess, the Woman was a quarter Serpent-Man while the Teenage Boy was maybe a few percentage points more than Octavia.
It was as I was looking around that Taskmaster hooked Octavia up to various sensors inside a third Stasis Tube before closing the hatch on her and adding her to the collection. I had no earthly idea why he was doing this, aside from being paid to, obviously. The man was a mercenary, after all. I needed to know the who and why of it, though, if I wanted to make any headway on the root cause of his presence here. Fortunately, waiting a few subjective days inside Taskmaster's Base revealed the answer. Doctor Otto Octavius wanted genetic samples of Serpent Men and was paying Taskmaster to obtain them. I discovered this as I watched Taskmaster take a video call from his employer. Doc Ock wasn't exactly thrilled at the slow progress either.
"What am I paying you such an obscene amount of money for if you are going to dawdle like some form of lazy cretin?" Demanded Otto over the call.
"You wanted me to grab six targets with varying levels of serpentine characteristics, of varying ages, and from varying backgrounds. I have to do research before each capture just to make sure I'm filling the orders to spec! That slows things down! Unless you want to scrap the parameters, then this is a game of patience and stealth more than of quick snatch and grabs!" Protested Taskmaster.
"Now you're starting to sound like Sergei. If I wanted a long-winded speech about the patience of a hunter, I would have hired the whelp that took his place!" Scoffed Octavius.
"If you're unsatisfied with my performance, I can always stop now and return your money." Pointed out Taskmaster.
"Don't you dare! The data you've already sent me has opened up an entirely new avenue of research! I require more to complete the Amrita Serum! Think of it, you short-sighted hireling! An injection that can grant anyone the ability to utilize forces that are superstitiously termed magic! I require more samples, not less! Just see to it that you complete my order!" Berated Octavius.
As the video call cut out, I could hear Taskmaster complaining about shit clients under his breath. For a few moments, I was sure he'd break his contract with Octavius, but one look over at a duffel bag stuffed with cash put paid to that idea. There had to be at least three times as much money in the Duffel Bag as had been in the doubloon chest in the Library Basement Treasure Chamber, though doubloons were a hell of a lot heavier than dollar bills. I'd be taking that for myself once I swooped in for the rescue. Speaking of rescuing the captured, Taskmaster only managed to grab a fourth person in the time I had to see him. This one was in his late thirties and was somewhere between the twenty-something and the teenage boy in terms of the amount of Serpent-Men Blood, clearly having the greenish cast to his skin and the slitted pupils and pronounced canines, but he wasn't bald like the woman, nor did he have the preponderance of serpentine features.
I was taken out of the past and shocked back into my body shortly afterward, as Rafael Silva informed me the Arcade would be closing at nine at night and it was fifteen minutes till. I thanked him for his time and headed back out onto the street, getting into my Camaro and making my way directly to Taskmaster's base. As luck would have it, I caught him just after his unmarked van had pulled into the driveway and he was hauling a six-year-old girl who could have been mistaken for an entirely normal human if not for the tiny fangs out of the back of the van. As soon as he saw me get out of the Camaro, on the other hand, he stopped doing that.
"Who are you? Whatever, not important. You oughtta walk away or you're gonna be in for a world of hurt." Warned Taskmaster.
"Can't do that. Your little operation here's upset the Town Elders. I need them on my side for something I need to do, so that puts us at odds." I sighed.
"All right, I'm gonna repeat my first fucking question, then. Who the fuck are you? I've been in this game a while and nobody worth checking out had your description. That means you're a newbie. You've gotta be or I'd have heard of you by now. If you want some free advice, get the fuck back in your car and drive on by. You don't wanna tangle with me, I fight guys like Spider-Man for a living, some newbie wannabe hero like you won't last two seconds." Scowled Taskmaster.
"Like I said, I can't do that." I repeated, pulling my Wan-Shen out of my Bag of Holding and engaging my Chi Enhancement and Matukai Techniques. I took up a stance and waited for Taskmaster.
"All right, your funeral." Shrugged Taskmaster, grabbing his shield and drawing his sword.
As we circled each other, I could tell he'd copied his shield use from old Captain America footage. The guy just held the shield in the same way, and I was willing to bet he'd throw it at me like Cap often did at some point too. The shortsword he had was held in a low guard, arm out below his hip but with the point of the blade jutting upward and slightly to the left in a textbook form from Di Grassi's True Arte of Defense. He'd definitely copied these moves from watching someone else since I doubted there were many Renaissance Italian Fechtbuchs floating around the black market for mercenaries to snap up.
For a few moments, nothing happened as we both stared each other down. Then he flung his shield at me like Captain America would, trying to put me off guard so he could gut me with a follow-on thrust from his sword. Instead, I parried the shield away with my Wan-Shen Defense and forced him to backpedal as the Valyrian Steel Blade of my Polarm didn't stop moving after the parry, presenting its wavy, guandao-like blade in front of me as he moved in. He stopped on a dime, throwing himself into a desperate roll as my defense transitioned seamlessly into attack, just like the Matukai trained to do. My Wan-Shen cut into his cape, which he attempted to use to entrap my weapon to no avail. The Valyrian Steel, Force-Forged, Blade was too sharp to be trapped by cloth, even bullet-resistant nanocloth like his cape. I spun the blade around and tore through the attempt.
Taskmaster was undeterred, however, tossing a series of pellets at me that I was forced to redirect telekinetically with the force to avoid what I was told was likely not a good outcome by the Force. The pellets splatted against a nearby tree before hardening into a sort of super-polymer that would have stuck me in place long enough for his follow-on thrust to gut me. Instead, I spun around, avoiding the thrust as I did so, before lashing out with the butt of my Wan-Shen that smashed into Taskmaster's side, force-assisted movements knocking him off balance and allowing me a shot to end the fight with a single cut of my Wan-Shen.
Fortunately for Taskmaster, he seemed to figure out that I was going to try for that and even if he couldn't stop my setup for the fight-ender for lack of speed, he was able to throw himself into another dodge, avoiding the blow from my Wan-Shen that would have cut into his sword arm deep enough to ensure he wouldn't be able to fight anymore. He tucked himself into a roll and tossed out a sphere that landed near me, hissing for a moment to release a pale, odorless, gas only for me to incant a mystic word and disperse the gas with a burst of Aeromancy. Taskmaster was already moving, however, pulling a pistol in a quickdraw he obviously copied from watching Westerns and firing at me.
I drew on the force to increase my reaction times and lend me speed. Time slowed down around me as the bullet streaked for me and I began my Wan-Shen maneuver. As time sped back up, I cut the bullet out of the air with the blade of my Wan-Shen, force-forged Valyrian steel carving through the Vibranium bullet thanks to the mystical capabilities of the weapon, which were further enhanced by the Mightstone. Two more shots followed and were similarly cut out of the air before I snarled out an incantation a Ferokinesis spell. The fourth attempt by Taskmaster to shoot me wound up destroying the gun as the spell I'd cast jammed the weapon, and with the jam being comprised of a Vibranium bullet, the absorbed energy had to go somewhere. It went through the breech of the pistol instead of out of the barrel.
With a growl, Taskmaster tossed the ruined pistol away and raised his right gauntlet, triggering a hidden laser to fire at me, though I moved fast enough to dodge out of the way. Taskmaster kept firing laser bolts at me with his gauntlet pulse laser, keeping me dodging while I tried to figure out a way to end the fight quickly. It wasn't until I fired off a blast of Phonomancy, a mystical sonic scream unleashed at Taskmaster, that I finally got my chance to end the fight. My sonic attack managed to crack the focusing lense that Taskmaster's gauntlet pulse laser was using, while it messed with his equilibrium at the same time.
Two things happened next, first, Taskmaster's gauntlet pulse laser overloaded, exploding in a puff of flame that scorched his right arm. Second, Taskmaster stumbled as his eardrums burst under his mask from the sonic assault. Down an arm and with his balance shot, I was able to slam two strikes into him, the first smashing his ceramic armor plating, and the second, cracking a few ribs and knocking him down. Before I could properly capture him, however, Taskmaster hit a button on his belt and disappeared in a burst of yellow light, having teleported away. I wasn't sure where to, but the Force was telling me that it was far enough away from Starkesboro to not matter at the moment.
Entering Taskmaster's Base, I put in the four-digit code to the basement lair door just in time to abort a remotely triggered self-destruct that would have blown up the safehouse and taken part of the block with it. True, I didn't have a passcode to do it with, but whoever had built the self-destruct didn't account for Ferromancy. Granted all I could do with it at the moment was disable machinery, and not even disable more than a few things at a time. Fortunately, it seemed that disabling a timed detonator was within the current capabilities of my powers, if only just. The self-destruct hit zero and nothing happened.
From there, all that was left to do was to stash the duffel bag full of money in my bag of holding for later deposit and wake up all the captives in stasis. I started with Octavia and moved on from there until four, groggy, Serpent-blooded Townfolk were all out of stasis and mostly unharmed. They'd all had blood samples taken and analyzed, the results sent off to Doc Ock remotely via computer, but I wasn't exactly a Master Hacker and had messed with the computers to disable the Self-Destruct anyway, so it wasn't like I could track down where Doc Ock was even if I had the hacking skills.
OK, maybe I could, but it wouldn't be advisable. It was a moot point anyway, as I lacked said Hacking Skills to begin with. Regardless, once everyone was awake and on their feet, I led them upstairs and out onto the street, before putting a call into the Adder Lounge. Fifteen minutes later, Sortius arrived, along with two full cars from the Starkesboro Police Department. I spent the next two hours giving official statements to a Detective O'Rourke, whose features had just enough of a greenish tinge to them to let me know he had Serpent-Men blood in him as well, even if he was with the Police. By the time I was finished, it was just edging past midnight, and I made my way over to the Gilded Egg Inn, where the Town Elders had agreed I would be able to stay while I ran their sidequests for them.
In the morning, I'd head to the Old Cannery to see what could be done about the Gremlins there. . .
XXXX
Meanwhile, in Carpasia, the Army of Mors Cruentia was encamped on the road to Sárta, around three miles south of the City. Mors Cruentia's Army was an odd one in that it often marched through the night when most armies would be sleeping. Mors Cruentia himself was a Vampire, though of a breed that was merely sensitive to the Sun as opposed to actively harmed by it. Sensitivity was easily solved with sunblock and a pair of sunglasses, unlike the burning the Sun inflicted on local Vampires. Indeed, had anyone dared to ask him about that, he would tell them that he was a Vampire from a place called Innistrad, whose Vampires were the result of Alchemy and for whom Vampirism was more of a Condition of the Blood than a Curse or Virus. At least, he would have told them that before silencing them permanently.
No, the real reason Mors Cruentia's Army marched primarily at night or in the twilight hours, was to force their enemies to make various assumptions about how Mors Cruentia and his Undead Forces operated. As was about to become perilously evident, the Carpasians had made those assumptions and were gambling on them hard to push back Mors Cruentia's Army. It would avail them very little in the end and only serve to spend the last of Carpasia's strength in a trap. For now, however, the only activity that could be seen in the afternoon camp came from Albanians going about their daily business, drilling, cooking, and taking care of all the necessities that a large body of living men required to campaign properly.
Meanwhile, the single Company of the Carpasian Tank Force, supported by Infantry and Super-agents, advanced on the Camp. M-eighty-four tanks formed the spearhead, with the Super-Agent Strélac riding with one of the Infantry Squads in their OT-M-Sixty Armored Personnel Carrier alongside them. Their goal was nothing less than a quick assault to overwhelm the Albanians and force them to rout. They viewed the Albanians as inferior in every respect to a proper Serb Soldier, thinking they could put them to flight easily and then set to massacre the undead while they slept the day away.
They hadn't counted on mines having been laid around the camp. Of course, normally, such a thing would have been suicide for an army on the advance. They would have needed to waste valuable time clearing the minefields to proceed if these had been mundane mines. They were not, however, what they were, was a Modular Deployable Ward Scheme that Mors Cruentia had cooked up. All the explosiveness of mines, with a built-in failsafe to allow his troops to pass through without hassle. It was yet another instance of Magic nullifying conventional military strategy. What's more, the MDWS was invisible to anyone without mystical capabilities.
The first that anyone realized the counterattack was running into a trap was when the lead four tanks went up in pillars of blazing light as they triggered the MDWS. Mystical mines coring tanks with beams of white-hot coherent light shooting out from below. The attack group was forced to halt the advance to asses things, and in that time, the alarm was raised in the camp. Soon the stalled attack group found themselves engaged by not just Albanians with enchanted military equipment, but increasing numbers of undead troops. The fighting was fierce, but it seemed as if the piecemeal nature of the reinforcements arriving at the MDWS line from the Camp would allow the Carpasians to grind through.
Strélac himself flung arrow-shaped bolts of plasma with deadly accuracy. Where they landed, Albanians died and Undead Monstrosities were burned to uselessness, the magics holding them together unable to withstand such heat. For fifteen minutes, it seemed as if they would hold off attacks, as a nearby Tank blew apart a Giant Undead Monster with its one-hundred-twenty-five millimeter gun and more and more of the Attack Group lent their firepower to the line. It wasn't to last, as the stalled nature of the attack force made them easy prey for a flank attack.
Vesa Useni had previously been a young schoolteacher in a small village in the mountains east of the Town of Dinosha. Growing up in that environment had allowed her certain survival skills and her father had taught her to shoot as she had no brothers to protect their family homestead on the edges of the village from wolves or worse. When she'd moved further into town to become a teacher, those skills hadn't been left to rot. It was the only thing that had saved her when the Morvanian Military Police had entered their village of just over one hundred people. She'd fled for her family's homestead on the outskirts the second she'd heard even a whisper of the Military Police to warn her mother and father, before fleeing for the mountains. It hadn't been enough of a head start for her aged mother and father to pack everything they'd needed and flee before the Military Police came for them.
Vesa had found out two weeks later that her mother had caught cholera in the Internment camp and died, while her father had been shot attempting to smuggle medicine in for her. She'd vowed revenge on the Morvanian Military and their Serb Nationalist Backers when she'd gotten the news. That had been when Mors Cruentia had found her, planning to raid a military supply outpost on her own in a suicide mission. He'd given her purpose and a chance to actually succeed in wreaking her vengeance and she had followed his orders faithfully ever since.
Now, she used all of her survival skills to lead a flanking attack on the trapped enemy attack group from the rugged terrain to the side of the road. The hills here would cause you to break a leg or suffer a fatal fall if you didn't know what you were doing, after all. The camp had limited means for combatants to get patched up, and while Mors Cruentia's magic could stretch medical supplies, making them more efficient so that less was used to heal an injury, there were still many living fighters in their ranks. Ranks which had grown substantially with the admission of Kosovar, Bosniak, and Croat fighters from various territories within Serbia and Carpasia.
Fortunately, Vesa did know what she was doing, and her flank group managed to pick their way through the rocky hills and get into a position to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Vesa took her enchanted Kalashnikov and sighted down on the enemy Super-Agent with his arrows of burning plasma. She squeezed off a single round, whispering a prayer as she did so, and moments later, Strélac's head disappeared in a fine mist of bloody chunks of brain and skull. The counter-counterattack had begun, as several looted RPG launchers were brought forward, sending rocket-propelled anti-tank grenades into tanks and APCs from the hills. The tide had turned, and all knew it.
It was a scene that replayed itself all along the front, as four Carpasian Attack Groups each attempted to rout separate contingents of Mors Cruentia's Army with sudden, daylight, counterattacks, only to find that the Undead and Magic were no less potent in the daytime than they were at night. Mors Cruentia himself took the field against Grom, grounding the living lightning bolt with Electromancy before using Hydromancy to shower the grounded Super-Agent with torrents of water, creating steam that bled energy off of Grom until his living lightning body was dissipated away to nothing.
The Carpasian Attack Groups were forced to withdraw, consolidate, and attack again. Over the next three days, they attempted to counterattack again and again, and while casualties mounted on both sides, the Carpasians didn't have Undead to absorb the brunt of attacks, nor could they stretch their medical supplies with magic. Eventually, after four days, the last remaining Super-Agent, Orao the Eagle was forced to evacuate the operational area after being badly wounded by Mors Cruentia who utilized Electromancy to badly burn him mid-flight. The fifth and final day of counter-attacks saw the last of the Attack Groups repulsed yet again for minimal gains.
General Matko Hristov, commander of the remaining Carpasian Forces was forced to call a halt to the Counteroffensive, pulling back to the City of Sárta and digging in as best they could. Mors Cruentia, meanwhile, raised the corpses of those who had fallen in the Five-Day Counterattack, both friend and foe alike, replenishing the depleted ranks of the undead that had fallen to preserve his living forces. After one more series of rituals to remake the freshly risen undead into Undead Giants, Mors Cruentia's Army moved out. They would arrive at the City of Sárta within a day of moving out.
There was very little the Carpasian Forces in the city could do to stop them from taking it. General Hristov realized this before the Battle of Sárta even began, which was why he was resolved to fight only as long as he could evacuate the various VIPs within the City, as their affiliation with the Regime would make them prime targets for revenge. Unfortunately, this proved a disastrous decision, as the local populace of Sárta saw that the Military was abandoning them in favor of the General's stooges that had been running the factories and production lines, as well as the City Government, and immediately revolted.
By the next morning, Sárta was in Mors Cruentia's hands. The next stop was Crnilobara, the Capital of Carpasia, and the last bastion of the Serb Nationalists still fighting. Once it fell, any holdouts in the countryside would be easily swept away and Mors Cruentia could begin the business of actually consolidating his gains. He dearly hoped that General Vladić did not attempt to commit suicide. A Public Tribunal followed by an execution for Crimes Against Humanity would be much better for Mors Cruentia's purposes, after all. Not that even suicide would save General Vladić if he tried it.
After all, when you're a skilled Necromancer, death is no obstacle to bloody vengeance. . .
XXXX
AN: All right, so here we see the completion of two out of four sidequests and the continuing advance of Mors Cruentia's Armies against the Serb Nationalists. The Carpasians are now completely out of options, they can either surrender or keep fighting and lose. General Vladić would rather die than surrender, though, of course, that isn't the guarantee he thinks it is. As stated, Mors Cruentia is a skilled necromancer, after all. Once he takes Crnilobara. Mors Cruentia has nothing left to do but mop up any remnants of Serb Nationalist Forces, consolidate his gains, and basically dictate the peace terms to Serbia, who peaced out early pending negotiations and are not really in a position to do much more than try to get whatever small concessions they can.
On the Jan side of things, Doc Ock seemed interested in the Genetics of Serpent-Men, though not to clone them so much as to figure out a way to replicate their natural capabilities with Magic via a serum of some kind. Of course, in Canon, Doc Ock had been brought back to life at this point by the Hand for some shadowy purpose, only for that plot point to be dropped unceremoniously. Here, that purpose was to be able to create a Serum that could give people the capability to use magic. Given how the Hand is essentially an Organization of Magical Ninjas that worship the Beast, a Demon that seeks the death of everything because he's a nihilistic edgelord, their being able to create sorcerers at will is probably a bad thing for everyone. It's probably a good thing that Jan stopped Taskmaster from getting the samples Doc Ock needed to complete the serum.
At any rate, the next chapter will be Gremlins in the Old Cannery for Jan and the Capture of Crnilobara for Mors Cruentia.
Stay tuned. . .