Despite having collected multiple objects indelibly imprinted with her thaumaturgic signature, scorched by it, not to ntion an original mnemograph copy, with all this — divining just her general direction had been a struggle for the ages. Agmon had bled himself dry in this endeavor, employing every ans of bypassing protections, amplifying lackluster signal, clearing churned waters. The effort to unearth and maintain this faint and unreliable compass equated to that which he would have exerted to narrow down nearly any other individual’s location to within a few tres. Agmon prided himself on being able to find anyone, given an imprinted object, a trail, any hair-thin thread to pull on, and his thoughts sward a maelstrom of who his target might truly be to be so closely guarded. Her track record didn’t justify it. What he’d seen, what he’d read of her feats, of her behavior, was the work of a higher power working through the woman, using her as a blunt instrunt in the right place at the right ti, to facilitate it own plans. Then again, Agmon could not help but see such things wherever he looked; he knew well that his perspective was inevitably filtered through the lens of his discipline. From his predictions, was the last mont of opportunity for the expedient and clean elimination of this threat. If she were to be allowed to live, to go into the Beyond Frontier, certainly for the purpose of soulbeast-hunting, then she would be out of their hands. She would thereafter have the potential to obtain sufficient staying-power that a single scalpel strike wouldn’t suffice. Certainly, she could always die in the Beyond Frontier, but Agmon was no such optimist. To put it bluntly, Agmon believed if this piece wasn’t taken off the board here and now, she would outgrow their current ability to deal with, considering their nurous other ongoing entanglents.
From where he stood, at the border of even his own superb vision, Agmon discerned the camp layout and set forth a plan of assault. There were to be no attempts at capture, only imdiate and overwhelming annihilation. He had gone to great pains to force through this plan, leveraging both his position and his natural leverage as an indispensable asset to the plan to secure two things: The Benefactors’ approval to annihilate the target with overwhelming force, and the assets he believed sufficient to achieve the goal.
Observing the campsite, Agmon discerned so objects that were not known to be present at this site; four pillars of iridescent material, arrayed in a manner suggesting a position of warding, yet with no discernible arcane character of any kind. At one end, a great stele also sat, in white stone, and at its base slept a red-haired youth with what appeared to be an omniphage undersuit and… A truly aberrant astral body. It seed diminutive, stunted almost, but impossibly dense. The true concern were the layers and layers of defenses surrounding the campsite, but that could be dealt with in ti. If worst ca to worst they would just overpower it with bodies.
Ti passed and preparations for the assault moved forward. The contingent’s combat thaumaturges gathered with the specialists, the expert handlers of their vanguard, to summon forth those unfortunate many so that they might make themselves useful: The Stillborn.
First, each of the handlers opened their personal Kenoma Storage, and those of the contingent who possessed the ability did the sa, bringing out curled-up forms of chitin and steel rged together. Not alive in any sense, hence capable of being stored in this fashion, but nonetheless, only a few could be brought here in this manner, and so these were the most elite among them, each Handler’s personal pride and joy.
With anathemic relics and heaping piles of human charcoal, they conducted a rite of profane summoning to tear open a gateway through the gulf, into a kenomaic storehouse-realm, beyond the ability of any single individual to command. There was no easy way, no elegant solution; summoning a force such as theirs demanded a great deal of ti, a sturdy “bridge,” and the energy to pay the toll. In the absence of the forr two, only a surfeit of the third would suffice, and the passengers wouldn’t arrive unhard. This mattered naught.
Dozens of bodies spilled forth, ripped through the portal by a forceful current, so dismbered, others smashed up, and a few ground to paste against the border.
Agmon felt satisfied that two-thirds of them made it through in working order, even if the Handlers made blatant their irritation at the perceived waste of materiel. There was no other way around it. This was all to liquidate Blackhand, who had caused them no end of grief in such a short tispan, and none among them dared argue against that goal. Soon enough, one after another, the Stillborn host were roused to motion, sensory and weapons modules coming alive, so forming artificial wards, others manifesting artificial barriers, a few hardening their flesh or articulating shield-plates on long limbs. Of those damaged in transit, the Handlers managed to bring several to working order in quick order, and only agreed to leave those more severely damaged for later at Agmon’s insistence. He knew how these techno-chirurgeons tended to get lost in their work, and he had no intention to permit them to endanger the plan for a handful of busted up graft-beasts. They were the next generation of the Stillborn, even the lesser among them, wardless and barrierless, possessed complete body armor sches, plating shaped to them and integrated seamlessly, and their overall capabilities and stability far surpassed those deployed at Mirzaii 2. Nonetheless, Stillborn were Stillborn, and so Agmon kept his distance from the gibbering, pitiable things.
At last, having made their preparations, the task force made their advance and encircled the camp site, their advance shrouded in half a dozen distinct ways, each covering for the other, each benefiting from the dark of night. None would hold up at close-range, not with such a large force, but that was no issue, they were needed only to get them within charging distance.
The network of talismans around the camp was the least of their concerns; though irritating, these barricades and traps were comprehensible, clearly the work of a prodigious if heavy-handed warding array master. These traps were indeed the least of their concerns, for they would not live long enough to see the need to get past them. They knew it not, or at least hoped it wasn’t so, but the evoy task force had walked to their deaths.
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