Country of Champions 41

Things got worse, quickly over the next hour. Despite evidence to the contrary, Mr Lacquer had convinced several key personnel to aid him in a witch hunt. He wasn't a dumb man. There was no escaping some repercussions but a dead person had no merit. As long as Orison was gone, he could escape the worst of it and possibly even claim a share of the massive haul the young mage's team had managed to uncover.

And in the end, that's what had done it. In the other future, Mr Lacquer was a upstanding member of Avalon society and accomplished a great deal of positive things but currently he was a bitter man, grieving the betrayal of his wife and suffering under resource shortages. After Firebrand had his fit and made some poor decisions, Mr Lacquer got the bright idea to join the struggle to seize some of Blood Moon's gains.

He personally knew that the young mage was up to something big and was in the know about Orison being a returner from an alternate future. He needed gains and fast but he had no personal connections with Orison. So, when he had managed to snag a scion of the Wingright family for his daughter, he leveraged that weight to bring a team here as well. It was cake to spin a fantasy to whip up the jealousy of a young man who didn't know his fiance well but had thin skin.

Where the man had screwed up was thinking he had a week and suddenly the young mage started throwing unknown aces left and right. Things had escalated well beyond what the man had originally planned for but he kept digging deeper trying to dig out rather than fess up. It had become not only a matter of failing resources but grand theft and attempted murder.

The bait that Orison had laid for the man had been too juicy. Not only the resources but the ritual. Mr Lacquer planned on leveraging that against fear and temptation to get his way but originally had only planned on only roughing up the young mage's team.

The two things that seriously confused the young mage were how the man was in camp and alive when Orison would swear to anyone who asked that the man had dusted in the cavern. Then the young mage thought about 'Trick Shot's specialty, illusion magic. There was no telling who had died there and Orison had his hands too full to do a detailed spirit sight search.

He wondered why his abilities had such a glaring weakness for illusion when it seemed to him that they should be a strength. He also officially hated illusion magic. More than anything, at the moment, he wanted to send Mr Lacquer to Noxflora's Abyssal paradise with some special instructions. Understanding the whys and even sympathizing with them a bit wouldn't bring back Stag.

Just when he thought things were about as low as they could get before emergency help would arrive, Roy informed him that he had intercepted a broad band radio communication warning certain personnel to stay out in field because their Captain was being tortured for Roy and Orison's whereabouts. It wasn't that Adam didn't want to be rescued but he didn't want his men being dragged into his personal decision to protect them instead of giving them up.

Using some kind of code, the person sending communications switched to a private channel but Roy pegged it in under a minute. The next piece of cold news was that, Firebrand had been removed from detainment where he was receiving medical care and asked to join the search. When the man said he'd rather die than tarnish his legacy over obvious and easily discredited trash logic, Mr Lacquer had killed him and used it as 'proof' that Orison was a Mesmer capable of controlling minds and how no one who had been alone with the young mage could be trusted.

Thinking in advance, he even set up some plausible cause, stating that Orison had been alone with Triumvir LeStrange on more than one occasion. Slowly but surely he was building a life raft for himself that he could use to escape the flood of crap he stirred should he fail. Sadly, those who were taking the ride with him now were going to drown in it.

Suddenly there were reports that Orison was spotted killing people. Strangely, they were Captain Rogers' most loyal men. The huge loss of support that Firebrand had caused him were fired up as Captain Rogers shouted Mr Lacquer's specialty magic, recasting doubt. As Adam shouted that it made no sense for Orison to kill people protecting him, Mr Lacquer had 'Orison' come out from behind a building to snipe the Captain with an exploding round. Spotted too late, the Captain took one to the chest and lost his life.

Immediately afterwards, Mr Lacquer stated that the young mage was covering the tracks of his mind control. Only the ensorceled would protect a demon cultist. Other rhetoric spilled out of the man's mouth but he was shut up when the real Orison showed up on the transport circle to shoot a feather to the Captain and promptly disappear.

With a swirl of fragrant tobacco scent, the Captain was alive, if not in so great a shape. The Wingright personnel present immediately went pale and began distancing themselves from Mr Lacquer. It took several minutes of flimflam to weaken their sudden aversion but by then, the rip was opened and T3 swat were surrounding the place. Fearing that the man would escape, Orison laid down a swirling spiral formation circle cast from the ruby ring and saw a spectral version of Mr Lacquer standing still with a smirking face.

Angered beyond belief, the young mage quick cast two successive degree shifts followed by one from the ring, stacked right on the man. The sudden sickening drop of temperature knocked the man out and would have killed him outright if not for some speedy intervention from a very much alive Firebrand. As the rest of Mr. Lacquer's illusion unraveled, Orison realized that several things weren't as they seemed but it didn't matter much because T3 was taking charge of the situation and Mr Firebrand might have it out for Orison but whatever scheme he'd cooked up with 'Trick Shot', it came to a screeching halt the moment he was pulled 'back from the dead' in plain sight.

As he realized the person tied to a pillar was one of Firebrand's men brought back by the precious feather, the young mage gritted his teeth in sickening hatred of illusion magic. On the plus side, the man was heavily grateful and singing like a canary about the conversation he'd overheard that got him 'volunteered' for martyrdom to begin with. That was T3 business and the whys or hows of a failed scheme had little interest to anyone but them.

Using spirit sight, Orison found the captain. He also found that Adam HAD been under some kind of mental manipulation. Within a few minutes of being captured, a hidden mentalist within Lacquer's camp had started tinkering with the captain's recollection of events. Under the watchful eye of a T3 magic specialist, the young mage cast a 'Remove Curse' on him that didn't completely clear up the issue but had the man relatively back to himself and out from under the spun tripe of the mentalist.

Over the next few days, the entire expedition of Blood Moon through the Barrens had been hashed, rehashed and trouble shot. T3 had experience with untangling the lies and deceptions that an illusionist or a mentalist could individually repaint into truth. That process turned into a tangled horror for the victims and witnesses when they worked in tandem.

It threw a great deal of Mr Lacquer's dealings into question. Even the future knowledge that Orison had of the man made a darker kind of sense when viewed under such light. Particularly how the man had crawled out of his bad situation there.

While the investigation was running tiring circles around him, the young mage had to deal with Aurora's serene but far more terrifying interrogations where he was forced to spill just about all he could without giving away vital and damning parts. It didn't help that he was tripped up and beaten a few times in the process but he took the lumps as his due and managed to even get some guilt relief from the suffering.

Knowing Aurora, it could have been part of her plan all along. She was used to dealing with powerful and stubborn people who wouldn't get the help they needed. She was also used to being the help when people couldn't find outlets for things they simply couldn't share. Orison was a 'B-train' double trailer semi-truck full of both.

In the aftermath, a few good things came from all the terrible ones. In a worked out deal/ cease fire between Orison and Firebrand, Adena was given over to the custody of her aunt Genevieve. He swore an oath under Aurora's watchful eyes to not involve himself in any way intentionally, the young mage's personal or professional life.

Orison had to make some promises of his own to avoid repercussions for costing Firebrand his manhood but he retained the satisfaction of knowing that the expensive replacement therapy couldn't restore fertility. The man had a problem with that to begin with but it had become a sealed deal. In a strange way, that knowledge seemed to mellow the man out a little and directed his focus on his grandson.

In a private moment, Aurora shared, "I find myself enjoying your particular brand of cold and balanced truth and that scares me. We should associate less. You disrupt the purity of my desired truth."

"Since it is both Gavati's and your truth to desire no interaction, I will assure it somewhat. Your intentions and the positive outcome of them do not erase your disregard for others' truth in the moment but the balance of reality's truth can never be ignored. Not without grave consequence.

"She desired I share a truth with you that she finds baffling and hoped you could help her with through me. She says that Pelenel was an older woman who transformed herself into a boy to avoid detection of her husband's 'origin'. She gave up the ability to return to original form in an effort to save Gavati's life by giving her the other vial Pelenel had.

"Their evolving relationship over many long years and the loss of Gavati's memories complicate the matter. She shared with me that you were close with Pelenel, like family. Can you help me with this effort to help Gavati with her truth?"

Slightly entranced but unaware, Orison said, "We share a similar fey heritage and that is the cause of that familial sensation, according to Pelenel. It is that same heritage that caused friction between me and Gravat. I haven't personally met another tribal fey of my same lineage other than my own... that's private. I will tell you that the name of our shared heritage is Danann and would appreciate it if you didn't push further."

Shaking her head, Aurora said, "I miss Dr. Odd. He was always so much better at untangling these knots. Do you know when he'll return?"

Orison shrugged. "I don't know if he can but the merge will bring a lot of things back or us to them depending on viewpoint and the winner between the struggle of world wills."

Looking sad, Aurora said, "Once, it was a certainty that Beta Prime would win the struggle but the consequences were too dire for all that lived on this world. That's when the artifacts came. The Eye of Time, The Weird and whatever it is that the Third Triumvir uses that has no specific truth, they were sent to us from Alpha Minoris to help save lives but I think that The Eye of Time was sent to reverse the winner of wills.

"The constitution of Avalon has a set date when the Triumvir is supposed to disband into a democracy. The date that was set, it is my truth that date was the original time of merging. Use of The Eye has shortened the nearness of that event many times over."

Orison said, "Be brave. The truth I'm about to share is not an easy one. It wasn't just The Eye. The Eye's effect is the easiest to define but The Weird actively seeks to find instances where a great good can be accomplished at the cost of Beta Prime's resources or secondary supports. It then subtly helps bring those things to someone's attention.

"The Caged Sun, for lack of a better name, assists with the conversion or integration of tech and magic, as you know. For the cost of life force, even a mundane person can lift and fire a caster gun, seal or hold open a rip and so on. What it doesn't help with is bring those costs to an efficient level because the excess is channeled to it and up to Alpha Minoris.

"No reason to do anything about it this late in the game. The panic the loss of the items or leaders would cause greatly outweighs any small amount of good. In fact, The Eye's usage actually limited the amount of overall harm to Beta Prime the other items could have caused and helped to strengthen individual existences through the echoes time transposition creates. More people will survive the merge because of that."

As they shared, Orison had to avoid certain topics, not only for himself but for her. Aurora had a strong intuition and it was absolutely true that spending too much time around him would result in the accumulation of a rare version of 'structure poison'. It was one caused by conflict of reality views and understandings. It was something that had slowed down Orison's study and accumulation from the books in his possession from the mad hermit.

His problem with some of the books almost entirely centered around the importance of free will. The world that the hermit had came from did not respect that at all, actively supported that all things were fixed and that freedom was an illusion. Greater reality didn't support or enforce such things but individual realities might. A person who strongly supported an opposing ideal would find themselves adverse to or even unable to see a way to such a place. But if their structure was 'poisoned', they might find themselves trapped in a hostile environment that caused their understandings to become muddled and lose progress or their abilities altogether.

Orison saw truth as a subjective and gray area term whereas for Aurora it was objective and had definition. A portion of her supernatural comprehension was centered around those clear definitions as it's structure. She wasn't 'wrong' for doing so from Orison's point of view. The moment a structure was built, flaws were going to be present no matter what was used.

This came down to another part of Orison's structure that provided flexibility and allowed for challenge to certain parts without harming his structure. That was 'inherent flaw'. If a stronger and more convincing person came around to support 'inherent perfection' then listening and conceiving doubt in his belief in the inherent flawed nature of reality, it would be structure poison.

Packing that away and focusing on what he needed before they'd part ways and begin avoiding each other, Orison said, "There's two favors I need and I have a large favor to give in return."

Aurora put on an attentive face and the young mage continued. "I need a Reese Rover four seat hover disk and I would like for you to pre-approve the addition of two citizens. Jay Cotton and his niece Harley Monroe. He's a one year employee of a Five Nations Preservation Society sponsored nursing home near Talihina by the Kiamichi River. I'm bad with the district numbering system but it was called Oklahoma before.

"Jay's no one special but his niece is. She's autistic. Not an overly important fact in and of itself but I know that she would survive two years in the UTF's Kaleidoscope Program they secretly reopened last year. There's SOMETHING special about her, just not something the M-bars can pick up... We've only got a month, maybe less, before she's selected."

Her eyes slightly widened. "From what you know of this girl, does she do anything obsessively?"

Orison's brows furrowed. Remembering that he had wanted to do something for the guy who worked at the nursing home but got to it a bit too late to really matter was fringe of the knowledge he brought back. That piece of side info about Harley was all he knew about her. He didn't even bring back what the girl looked like.

One thing that Jay said, due to being around the same time as an important event WAS remembered. "Jay had a tin cookie box filled with colored pencil nubs. She would get upset if he threw them away. Even though it wasn't worth the time, it made her happy when he found ways to make the remaining stubs useful... That's all I got."

Aurora said a little edgily, "Do you know what the Kaleidoscope Project is?"

He shook his head. "I know jack diddle about what the UTF was up to and only know that detail because of Jay."

"How does he know!?" she said, visibly agitated, which wasn't like her at all.

He shrugged. "A lot was going on at the time and he was a side note kind of thing."

It was like she had forgotten that Orison was there. The Weird was buzzing as she prepared to head an expedition to Talihina.

"You're going to scare them half to death for no good reason, Aurora!" the young mage attempted to advise.

Suddenly remembering his presence, she said, "You've got your clearance for the Reese Rover but it's on your merits. Tell Juniper your favor. Is this Jay person a friend, lover or an important team member to you?"

"A little of the first one only. I just wanted to help him out," Orison said woodenly.

Aurora said, "I've got them. Don't worry about it."

He was dismissed. After dropping off a list of all the people he could remember who had 'fluffy souls' and wouldn't survive the merge of worlds, he went to get his magic flying saucer. The whole way, he had to suppress the urge to creepy grin.