Gloom Rising (The Book Wielder Saga 1) (20 page)

Kat scoffed. “Trinity cunts have killed enough my friends, it’s about time we started killing them back.”

Winston knew that the unaligned Supernaturals tended to be a bit unbalanced in the head, to put it politely. It was rare but every now and then one or two would get turned and go mad with the power, and then they would do stupid and reckless things like getting revenge on their old human adversaries, mass murder, robbing places, or wanton destruction, and they seldom bothered cleaning up their tracks afterwards.

It was on these occasions that the Trinity of Old would dispatch a ‘hit squad’ to take them out quickly, efficiently, and of course discreetly. It was a hit squad’s responsibility to also plant evidence, bribe MPK’s, silence witnesses, and whatever else the situation required to keep it under wraps.

Not every unaligned was a closet lunatic; some were just loners, or didn’t want any part in the Trinity, orders, or the gangs. But Winston was sure that Kitty Cat was definitely a hit squad case.

“It pains me to say so,” Albert began, “but the Autocrat won’t be reasoned with as I first had hoped. Any chance of that died with the Trinity’s foul assassination. After you have voiced your plan, Lucius, I have some information to share that affects us all.”

      
“Thank you Albert,” Lucius continued. “My plan may seem radical at first but please bear with me. We have acquired more power than you may realise. As you know we have now become the dominant faction on Rura, and we plan to continue reaching outwards but I have no illusions of doing so alone. I came here to bestow upon Kaine the same advantage that was bestowed upon me in the hopes that he would join forces with me.” He set his focus onto Kaine. “I was hoping the rumours about your deal with the Autocrat were true, my old friend.”

“I never wanted to overthrow the Trinity,” Kaine grumbled. “I was just bored and wanted a bit of action. But those miserable old fucks couldn’t just let me go my own way, and when they saw that I was working for the Autocrat they got paranoid. When they killed his wife over nothing but a theory in their senile old heads, that’s when I knew that one day I’d make them pay.”

“We’re in – for a big piece of the pie, that is,” Kat cut in.

“Good to know that you’re enthusiastic, but please allow me to finish first,” Lucius said. “You may not like where this is going.”

“Fine, okay, sorry. Carry on,” Kat replied in a strop.

Lucius continued. “In short I plan to overthrow the Trinity of Old, either by exterminating them all or by trapping them permanently in their Catacombs, and establishing a new power structure that works in favour of the ‘modern day’ Supernatural. No simple act of violence or vandalism, no minor spat of rebellion, but full on total annihilation.” Lucius gestured towards Winton. “That is my advantage standing right there. Winston, my primary Book Wielder, acquired an artefact that allows him, and him alone, to open stable portals into the Gloom. Thanks to him we are able to trade sweets, candy and chocolate on mass for crate loads of alchemical ingredients. With the influx of rare and powerful potions being created, we destroyed the Triumvir with relative ease. With Winston onside, you too will be able to stock your gangs up with enough potions to take out your competition with the same ease.”

Winston had never tried letting another Book Wielder use the quill so he wasn’t sure if he was the only one capable of using it or not, but he understood Lucius’ lie. If any of the other gangs got too ambitious and tried taking Winston out to get the quill for themselves then it wouldn’t do them any good. Hopefully they would believe Lucius and not bother putting the theory to the test.

“Meat,” Lewis blurted to the group. “They like raw meat too.”

“Yes, and raw meat too... thank you, Lewis,” Lucius said dryly. “Are you all with me so far?”

“We can work with that plan,” Kat said impressed. “I thought you just wanted to put them in their place with a bit of healthy violence, but total annihilation sounds so much cooler!”

“I don’t condone such acts of aggression lightly, but the Trinity of Old does not have our best interests at heart, only their own,” Albert said. “And if we were to leave them with any sort of power base, they would only use it to regroup and attack us when we weren’t expecting it.”

Standing beside Kaine’s desk there was a scrawny old Werewolf male with short brown hair, a lot of untended stubble, and a pair of glasses on his nose. He nodded appreciatively in Winston’s direction. “So, you’re the Winston they’re all on about in there.”

“What, you mean the Alts in the Gloom?” Winston asked.

“What’s an Alt? I meant the Freaks. You’re pretty famous with them, even on this continent. I’m guessing you had something to do with them all speaking our language. All they can talk about since they started talking our lingo is how they want to meet you.”

“This is my Book Wielder, Wayne, by the way,” Kaine said.

“Oh, sorry – we call the Freaks who we deal with Alternatives or Alts to prevent offending them. The other crazy Freaks we still call Freaks... I didn’t realise the ones here had heard of me.” Winston wondered how the Alts across the Gloom Sea had heard of him, but then nothing much made sense in the Gloom at the best of times. It would make Lucius’ plan even easier to implement.

Wayne smiled. “Alts... I like it. We usually trade fruit – what made you think of sweets?”

“Just an accident. They’re like drugs to them,” Winston said.

“A very lucrative accident, I’m sure you all agree,” Lucius carried on. “My other Book Wielder, Lewis, who defected from the Trinity of Old to join us, made an interesting discovery too regarding their supply of Sanctium.”

“Thanks boss,” Lewis said taking the floor. “The old gits at the Trinity like to keep their Sanctium formula secret, but I learned in the Catacombs that most of their own people don’t even know this ‘secret formula’. According to them, the big wigs at the top make it, put it into vials and bullets, and store a load of it to use against naughty Supernaturals. They enchant the rest so that it turns into worthless base materials if tampered with, examined too thoroughly, or used against another Supernatural, and then they sell them for an extortionate amount of money to Book Wielders for use in the Gloom.”

“We know this already...” Kat faked a yawn.

“Chill,
Pussy
Cat, I’m getting to the good bit,” Lewis smirked. “I thought it sounded weird so I started investigating. After me and Winston battled a Demon that guarded the quill with some ‘Sanctium’ rounds, I was sure I smelt bleach, soap, pine, you know, the generic sterile cleaning product smells. On a different visit, Winston tried launching some Bleach at a Deathscythe tree and ended up melting the thing with it. So after that I went to the Shadow Market, brought some more special rounds, listened to the hocus-pocus about not tampering with them, and spent some quality time disassembling them. The special glow does fade out and all that pours out of the hollow rounds is worthless, because when I tested the extracted fluid it was just a mix of common cleaning products, and chiefly amongst them was bleach. Oh, and I tested it out in the Gloom to be sure and it reacts the same way to the surroundings, creatures, and Freaks as a round that hasn’t been tampered with.”

Albert’s eyes went wide. “You’re not serious? All this time and they actually did lose the witch hunter’s formula in Shadow War!”

Kaine almost dropped his beer. “Fuck me! The lying sons of bitches have been fooling us from the start!”

Kitty Cat smiled evilly. “Look on the bright side; no Sanctium means no threat to us,”

Lucius nodded. “Precisely, although I’m sure they have some of the substance stashed away somewhere in the Catacombs from their fights with the witch hunters towards the end of the Shadow War, so they’re not completely harmless. But if they’re going to such great lengths to lie about it, then it does hint at the fact that there isn’t enough to finish all of us off as easily as they’d like us to believe. With our horde of potions they should be no match for an alliance of likeminded gangs like us. We do still have to contend with some potent old magic that the Trinity have their disposal. The Catacombs alone may be the biggest obstacle we may face, but thanks to our arrangement with the Archivists we have our mages studying the ancient realty alteration magic. Even if only one manages to master it we’ll be able to even out the odds if it comes to an assault on the Catacombs.”

Winston had heard a little bit about the ancient magic from the few and far between, dusty, poorly written, and poorly kept records from around the time when history had just begun to be recorded. According to these documents the planet was supposedly once inhabited by ‘super-mages’ with abilities like teleportation, summoning, transmutation, and all sorts of frightening magic that rivalled on reality manipulation. Very few Supernaturals possessed even a fraction of these powers, and most of those that did, like the ones that had help construct the Trinity’s Catacombs, had been slain by witch hunters in the Shadow Wars. It was common knowledge that Silvario of the Trinity had teleportation and real world portal control, but apart from that there was no one else known with these miraculous powers.

“What about the Inquisition?” Kaine asked. “We’re going to have to do something about them sooner or later. So do we strike against them first, or the Trinity?”

“We will have to take them out of the equation at some point, but I see them more as a pest at the moment – a powerful pest, but a pest nonetheless. They have started recruiting civilian volunteers that are putting a bit of pressure on our dealers but it’s nothing we can’t work around. The way I see it, if we go against the Autocrat first we then leave ourselves open for a Trinity hit squad reprisal, but if we control the majority of the Supernatural society we’ll have plenty of time and allies to help rid ourselves of these pious fools.”

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but that might not be possible,” Albert said sadly.

“Why not? Is this to do with what you were going to raise?” Lucius asked, concerned.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Albert replied gravely. “I had a Nightclaw sneak into an Inquisition outpost to gather intelligence. I was still hoping to reason with the new Autocrat, but when my agent brought back his report I knew I’d never be able to reach out to him.”

“Please get to the point...” Kat said impatiently.

Albert scowled at her and carried on. “My agent managed to access one of their futuristic handheld computer things. The Inquisition is laying cables from their headquarters on Central Isle to the three continents. They’re calling it ‘phase 1 of Supernatural extermination’.”

“Then they don’t just mean to suppress us, they want us wiped of the face of the fucking planet!” Kaine shouted.

“What’s the big deal; it’s only some cables, right?” Kat said nonchalantly. “And they don’t have enough people to exterminate us anyways.”

“But they do have the technology, and it’s only getting better and better,” Albert said severely.

Lucius stared into space, working things out in his head. “They’re going to network all the computers!” he gasped.

Kat shrugged. “Hate to sound like a broken record, but... what’s the big fucking deal?”

Lucius shook his head, half in shock, half impressed by the Autocrat’s choice of tactics. “Globally networked computers means globally networked banks; every deposit, withdrawal, every blood card transaction. Globally networked surveillance, incident reports, all of it managed out of our reach on Central Isle. Everything we’ve built up with be brought down. There’ll be no way to tamper or bribe, and there’ll be nowhere to run or hide when they come for us.”

“Then we destroy the construction boats before they can finish!” Kaine said enthusiastically.

“No,” Xavier interjected, “attack Orphan Isle and kill the Autocrat.”

The room looked at him in shock. Winston and the others that knew him would have never thought he’d venture such a risky plan.
      

“They’ll only try and lay the cables again if you sabotage them,” Xavier explained, “and they’re probably waiting for us to make a move on the construction boats so they can judge our weaknesses and tactics so they can gather more information on how to eradicate us. If we go straight for the head of the Inquisition there’s a good chance the whole organisation will fall apart. And even if it doesn’t, the world will be thrown into chaos long enough for us to gain the tactical advantage from then on.”

“Bravo, Xavier – it’s ballsy but I like it!” Kaine said loudly.

“You’re right, Xavier,” Lucius said. “But how would we get our forces to the Isle, past their fleet and shore defences, and then deal with the inevitable Trinity reprisal that would follow? We would be scattered and weakened.”

“We use the Freaks,” Winston said. “We get them out into the Gloom Sea on some boats, I’ll open a portal, and they can attack the Isle directly without anyone knowing we orchestrated it. Well, they’ll probably figure it out, but what proof will they have?”

“That’s brilliant!” Lucius was amazed. “You never cease to astound me!”

Winston tried not to blush as the whole room looked impressed. “First things first, should we make a deal with the Alts here? Get things rolling here on Industria and then work on the plan to attack Central Isle after?”

“Sure thing Winston,” Kaine said. “We’re going to need those extra supplies if we’re going to take Industria in earnest. The Clockwork Angels in Industria City have made a little alliance with the Desem Patriots motorbike gang that keep the main coastal cities under their thumb. They don’t look too kindly on us at all as they’re both mainly comprised of ex-resistance members, or resistance members who deliberately went out of their way to be turned Supernatural to fight against Imperia during the war.”

“It would be better if I dealt with a big figure in there,” Winston began. “Like over in Imperia there’s an Alt version of the Governor called the Mayor. Is there someone like that over this side?”

Wayne nodded. “Yeah, there’s a thing that runs them over in the Gloom version of Industria. Going by their newly translated babbling, I think it’s called the Foreman.”