Chapter 9 - Inquisition

It did not take long for a renovator to return to the ship to replace the steel the golem setting consumed from the doorframe. Alanea was happy to have her shiny, like-new ship, whole again.

A dim light shone from the allnight source and splayed the sails' shadows across the deck. The Murky Prospector now had eight small white gemin lights behind light-tight enclosures throughout the vessel. Most of them were on. This was the case for many of the aeros around the skies of Shosoth.

On the Prospector's top deck, Cowel and his new keygemin companion took watch. The serval sat behind him, floating in the air with a sway that did not match that of the ship. Alanea was below deck and poring over additional navigational charts they had picked up over the last few days. The leftover value of their trade did net some small quantity of gema. At least, small relative to the value of their other purchases. It would make all of their lives easier for at least half a year until the purse ran dry.

Edven was in the engine room, rubbing his hands across the kobald-forged engine machinery. His keygemin sat with him, motionless, staring at the engine components, occasionally passing over them with its golden eye beams. When this happened, Edven would look toward the automaton and say nothing. The stone and steel man seemed to take a liking to the engine room. Although, it was now very cramped.

Kuthe, in his makeshift cargo hold study room, was surrounded again by the smell of burning incense. He had been quiet the rest of the night, perusing through his many ancient tomes with information related to the keygemin forms that had manifested. The kobald was preparing a dossier to debrief the crew on what they would need to watch out for.

He presented the documents to the captain, who was preparing their navigational routes. "Here. This should come in handy, captain." The documents were astonishingly well-penned and sewn together into a rag paper signature booklet, with a thin leather cover. "Our newfound wealth will not go unnoticed for long. We are only safe in the skies here because of my clan. Other clans may not treat you so well."

Alanea leafed through the pages of the booklet that contained detailed drawings of everyone's keygemin, and the location of the gemin that sat in their core. The heart of the serval, the belly of the owl, and the head of the machination.

Cowel on the upper deck began to feel a familiar prickling sensation. He scanned the docks below with his eyes alone. Frustrated by the darkness, he pulled out his spyglass for enhanced magnification. The corners of his vision shadowed as his eyes tunneled. In his peripherals, this collapsing field of view changed into smoky shapes and images of people in cloaks. This was not his vision, and he felt a wave of unease fly across him. The cold, smoky air was from Prism? Within the vault?

He closed his eyes to concentrate on the stone below deck. The connection formed between the stone and his spirit was still there. Consumed by primal terror, Prism's attention was directed at something out into the sky. This was a subtle wrongness that could be sensed as if a scent before a shower.

In the engine room, the mechanical man swept his beam across the engine, but this time stood up rapidly. "Interloper." The artificial echoing voice boomed through the ship loud enough that the interlopers could definitely hear. Edven held his ears as they continued ringing. The mechanoid's golden beams traced across the walls of the room, revealing the position of distant approaching objects in the sky beyond the engine.

"Captain!" Cowel called across the flight deck. "Something is approaching at our aft."

Alanea was up on the deck before he finished his sentence, and Kuthe was four steps later. His obsidian eyes scanned the darkness, something they were naturally good at. "The Umbral Cult." The kobald hissed into the sky toward them. His throat crinkled and rattled. "They have found us."

As if summoned by his words, the traced figures landed from the air, cloaked in black hooded robes. They slid down the ship's lines to land on the cabin deck near the helm. They were cloaked entirely, with their faces obscured by the darkness. Approaching the nearest gem light, one of them closed its shutter, extinguishing that light source.

Two of them moved silently in the darkness. Each step made no sound on the wooden planks of the deck. They did not approach closer to the group, but went across the flight deck, extinguishing sources of light as they passed.

Cowel could feel a pressure exerted by them. That same wave of despair and confusion began to overwhelm his mind. The smoky haze in the peripherals of his vision formed the shapes of creatures and threats, compelling him to look in their direction and reveal nothing.

He stumbled backward with his hands shooting to his head. The ship seemed to tilt as if listing, and the sounds of the port below dissolved into conspiratorial whispers containing conversation directed at his personal flaws. Within him was a true hopelessness and a desire to simply give up, surrendering to what was inevitable. He took several steps toward the railing of the ship.

The wooden head of a floating serval impacted his torso with incredible force, ragdolling his limp body across half the width of the flight deck. Reactively, as he rolled across the waxed surface, he caught himself around a tie-off rope and righted himself to standing. He shook his head wildly to see that Alanea was struggling as well. Alanea's face had gone pale, and her knuckles likewise turned white as she gripped her rapier.

"They are using a black gemin!" The kobald's voice strained. "You must resist!"

"What do they want?" Alanea inquired pointlessly under pressure.

"You know damn well what they want!" Kuthe trained his dark-seeking eyes on them, never leaving the approaching figures. "They want to corrupt it! To use its power!"

One of the figures finally stepped forward with its face still hidden in the dark of its black cloth. They raised their hand, and a sickly magenta light began to emit from their palm. A sprat of nausea hit Cowel instantly. He assumed this to be the source of the prior mental attack against him, but that was incorrect.

"Inquisitor Maitre." Kuthe whispered through his tongue with no hint of respect. "A self-titled master of the mental martial arts." The kobald looked toward the cloaked figure's shimmering purple embroidery. "Those threads look nice!... How many souls did they cost your people?"

The Inquisitor knelt down toward the young first mate. His voice was a silken whisper and bypassed Cowel's ears, communicating directly into his mind.

"You scrape through mud for shiny rocks and beg for the respect of a woman who will never love you. We can't all rise above what holds us back... because if we did... we would all be bringing each other down." The dark-robed man gripped Cowel's shoulder tightly. "I see it within you. A hunger for more, and we offer it freely. An oath, and one gemin, and you will never again be the hunted."

He stepped across Cowel's squatting torso. "---You would be the hunter. With us, your enemies vanish, and no hand will ever dare to touch what is yours again." The Inquisitor knelt down to his face that was staring at the Source's reflection in the waxed wood surface. "The black gemin whispers to us the truths that the Source itself dares not speak. Join me, and the veil will lift."

Inquisitor Maitre held his hand out to lift Cowel up. As he did so, a small cloth doll with the face of an owl shook his hand instead. Its stuffed wings gripped his fingers softly, giggling with laughter somewhere between that of a child and a parrot. Nobody could see his scowl, but it was there.

A sphere of clean water, a few feet in diameter, was propelled at a speed that was intended to be lethal. Downward, and at an angle, it pushed the Inquisitor's body toward the deck. The resulting spring of compressive force jettisoned him backward, sliding across the ship's length from cabin to bow.

Cowel shook the Inquisitor's insidious whispers from his head. "He's just screwing with your head. He's just screwing with your head. He's just screwing with your head." The young man repeated the phrase as if a mantra to block further mental intrusion. "I will not surrender to it. I will not surrender to it." He liked this new phrase better. "I will not... SURRENDER... TO IT!"

The Inquisitor's laughter was that of someone who had experienced this kind of resistance every day of his life. "So be it." He chuckled as his voice lost its silken tongue and took on a tone of high command. "Take the stone, throw them overboard, and burn the ship."

The cloaked figures surged forward just as their opponent's eyes were acclimating to the darkness. Emerging from their cloaks glinted steel blades, reflecting the dim sourcelight.

Cowel drew his weapon first, a short curved blade that he had only purchased days ago for this exact reason. Alanea, on the other hand, was already in motion. Her rapier was a blur of silver as she met the first few attackers. Kuthe remained at the center of the ship, chanting in the language of his clan as he retrieved a gemstone from his pocket.

There were only eight intruders onboard, but the battle developed chaotically. Cowel grunted as he fought back one of the cultists' strange weapons. It hissed with elemental energy of a kind he was unable to determine, but whatever it was began to damage his blade, causing it to rust and corrode.

A cultist broke through the group and lunged towards Kuthe. Without a thought, the kobald threw himself into the path of the attack as their thrusting blade was stopped with a jarring clang. A powerful pulse of air and orange light expanded in a developing sphere away from the kobald's fist. The attacker was expelled from the craft at a high rate of speed. They fell to impact the ground of the port below, drawing the attention of Kuthe's clanmates. This caused them to mobilize.

Cowel was outmatched, he knew that. The cultist was a skilled warrior. Their movements were fluid, and he wouldn't last long. Cowel, however, had a reason to fight and to win. He also had a heavy wooden cat. The serval bit into the cultist's leg and drew blood. This was just enough for Cowel to pull back his blade and twist his body. He brought his rusting karambit in a wide arc to penetrate the cultist's cloak.

The cultist staggered back, with the light enough to reveal the surprise on his face. He looked down toward the wound for only a moment before Cowel's keygemin dragged him by the calf. The intruder tried to open his mouth to speak, but no words escaped. The cat threw him over the railing of the ship effortlessly, and he too dropped toward the paveway below.

With the ability to see that the tide of the battle was turning, Edven had not been idle. He came out of the cabin door with a loaded crossbow, pointed it toward the dark outline next to him, and discharged its bolt. The shot completely peeled through their body and flew out into the sky with its tip missing. He ran toward them and tackled them off the side of the deck. They, too, then lay motionless, leaking blood on the stonework.

The Inquisitor was still there, and his presence was an aware threat to Cowel, who was the closest to him. The cultist leader had not moved an inch from his spot on the bow of the ship. His arms were crossed as he watched the battle with detached amusement, as if these lives were expendable. Cowel knew that as long as the Inquisitor was there, the ship was not safe.

He looked at Alanea, and she met his gaze. She understood that they needed to take out the Inquisitor. Alanea quickly turned toward Edven, who was reloading a crossbow, but then stopped. She was forced to look up, with her view blocked by an eight and a half foot high golem with glowing yellow eyes.

The automaton swept its golden beams across the deck of the ship. After this, his eyes pointed a directed beam of light at the chest of every intruder on the ship, bathing them completely in yellow light. He took two bold steps toward one of the cultists, who, as he approached, uselessly swung an ice-frosted falchion at his stone plate armor. The sword snapped from the brittle cold, and the golem looked down toward the sword fragments.

Bathed in yellow light, almost the entire flight deck was illuminated. The cultist tried to back away from the stone man and tripped over a rope, falling to the ground. The automaton reached down and grabbed the cultist by his robe and boomed the word, "Interloper." ...before firing an orange beam of light from his hand, repulsing the cloaked man's torso across the deck of the ship toward the Inquisitor. His flying body crashed against the bowsprit and split him in twain, separating the top and bottom halves of his body.

The remaining intruders ran across the ship's rails and ropes to regroup with their leader at the bow. Inquisitor Maitre raised his hand again. He pointed it at Cowel, who again felt a searing pain within his mind. He cried out, and his vision blurred. The pain caused him to fall to his knees. Here, he saw the face of the most recent man their crew had lost, Jule. Words within were convincing Cowel that Jule's death was a result of his actions.

Just then, he felt the presence of another in his mind. It was Prism. The allgeminel was reaching out to him with its own pure, untainted energy. It blocked entirely the Inquisitor's psychic assault. Cowel started to draw strength from the connection, pushing back against the attack.

Cowel stood up, his eyes blazing with white gemlight. "You may be a master of the mind, but you are not a master of mine!" Cowel raised his hand, and a beam of pure white light shot from his palm. It was not his own power, he knew that. Rather, it was Prism's energy, flowing through his spirit as a conduit.

The beam of light struck the Inquisitor, and a barrier of black smoke formed around him. The dark barrier was consumed by the light and created a grey vapor. The Inquisitor quickly raised his hand. "The energy of the pure stone! We must go!" A purple ring on the hand of the cultist leader began to radiate an intense purple light. As quickly as they appeared, they stepped backward into the purple fissure in space the ring created, and vanished.

After a few moments of disbelief, Cowel stood on the deck of the ship with his hands trembling from exhaustion and adrenaline. The rest of the crew was no better, and the ships of the clan were starting to approach after witnessing the deaths and the rather short elemental firefight. Being a pirate port, the bodies were cleaned up quickly and made to disappear in the kobald way.

Cowel approached Kuthe for guidance as soon as he came to his full alertness. His voice was rough, as if choking back tears. "It... it helped me. It fought back through me. I felt it, it power is..."

Kuthe interrupted the novice keygemite. "Incredible? Yes. That kind of power, Cowel. It is dangerous... in the wrong hands." The kobald leveled to regain his usual dry cadence. "... and Inquisitor Maitre's hands are most certainly the wrong ones. Prism merely defended itself, and by extension, us. It acted through you, but not from your will. Its will... overtakes your own."

"We need to move quickly." Kuthe sprang into action. "Brightset is soon, and with it patrols from Argentis and Radeph. Our window of opportunity is closing."