Lt. Kayla moved fast, and the rest of us kept up.
The corridors of the base were still lit in crimson light, but the blaring alarms had fallen silent now. Following the aftermath, the damage to the base was clearly visible. A major section of the wall to the left had buckled inward.
Two officers were crouched beside it with tools, already tinkering and bickering, neither looking up as we passed. Further along, water sheeted down from a joint in the ceiling and pooled across the floor, and someone had placed a containment barrier across it, a thin line of yellow light that redirected the flow toward a drain.
We walked through the dilapidated base till Kayla brought us to a corridor in the northern block that ended with a heavy circular hatch set into the floor. She formed a simple seal with one hand, and the hatch pulled open. Below was a cylindrical chamber, lit from within, just wide enough for all of us standing shoulder to shoulder.
"In," she said.
We immediately climbed down and packed in tight. Kayla was last. She pulled the hatch shut above her, and the seal engaged with a pressurised click.
A moment later, the tube launched us upward.
The moment the hatch sealed, the pressure built beneath our feet and the floor left the ground. My stomach dropped. The walls blurred past in a rush of white light and condensed vapour, then the chamber slowed, and my body jerked back into the wall.
I felt my jaw drag lower, but eventually the nausea faded, and as my vision cleared, I spotted a second circular hatch above that opened slowly, revealing a marbled platform for our arrival.
We stepped out onto a landing platform of polished stone, and our eyes wandered around. Upper Marazan was nothing like what we'd seen till now.
The outer district had been flooded streets and silt-grey buildings half swallowed by the sea. The old quarter was darker still, cramped and waterlogged and tense. But up here, it felt like the city breathed.
Cobbled streets curved between buildings of wood, stone, and turquoise pearls, each facade set with mosaic windows that caught the light of bright, magical lamps strung along the eaves of each corner.
The glass in those windows came from the seabed. I could tell by the faint green tint and the way it scattered the lamplight into soft pools across the cobblestones.
The buildings here were tall and narrow and pressed close together, quite similar to a modern city, though not as big.
We took in the sights, mesmerised by the beauty of Upper Marazan. Nobody spoke. Even Darius stopped his grunts and just looked.
But Lt. Kayla moved without stopping, and we could only peel our eyes away from the city and continue walking, our set of boots tapping away at the stone.
She took us along the main street and then off it, down a narrower road that opened into a wide square. At the far end stood a building that rose above everything around it. Stone and timber and glass, seven floors at least, with the Awakened Corps insignia hammered in copper above the entrance, gone green at the edges from the salt air.
She pushed through the front door without slowing.
The officer at the reception desk looked up, registered her face, and was on his feet before she had crossed the threshold.
He saluted sharply.
Kayla gave him a short nod and kept walking. We followed her down a corridor that smelled of polished wood and something faintly mineral, past closed doors and framed maps of Marazan's water table.
At the end of the corridor, a glass plate sat flush with the floor, a magic circle was etched across its surface in fine lines of silver. Kayla stepped onto it and gestured once.
We scuttled and crowded on.
Moments later, the circle lit, and the floor rose.
Figuratively anyway.
All I saw were the chamber walls sliding past in my vision and the silver light catching the underside of each floor as we somehow rose above them, until I heard a soft click and felt the plate tremble under me. I was no longer rising.
No, rather, we had arrived.
Teleporation?
My thoughts stirred, but Kayle immediately walked off, leaving our disoriented group to catch up.
She stopped in front of a set of doors and turned.
"These are temporary accommodations. You'll all stay here. For now, do not go further into the building." Her eyes moved across the group. "I need to report to command."
Everyone slowly moved for the doors, but I didn't; I simply lingered behind.
Lt. Kayla noticed, and we shared a glance.
I could only assume that she had guessed my intentions, because a second later, she sighed.
"Fine", she said. "But only one of you can come"
My brows furled, but then I looked over my shoulder. Nico had also stopped behind me. Kayla's eyes moved to him, and she shook her head once. He looked at me, gave a slow nod, and walked through with the others.
"Cadet Reed. We'll be meeting Col. Ari Wazel. Don't let his appearance fool you; he's quite passionate about rules. You speak only when spoken to," Kayla said. "Not before."
"Understood."
Lt. Kayle led us down another set of corridors until my eyes fell on an office at the end of the hall, which was sparse.
A desk faced the door, a window behind it overlooking the square, and shelves of binders along the left wall. No ornamentation. Nothing that wasn't there for a reason.
Behind the desk sat Colonel Ari Wazel. He had curly teal hair that fell to his ears, a gaunt frame, and dark eyes that moved to us the moment the glass door opened and stayed there.
-
Name: Ari Wazel
Rank: ???
[Stats]
Strength: ??
Agility: ??
Constitution: ??
Intelligence: ??
Perception: ??
Charisma: ??
[Skills]
??
[Magic]
??
-
Lt. Kayla saluted, and I followed.
Col. Wazel gave a single nod as if he'd already expected our presence. The colonel's gaze shifted briefly to me, then focused back to her. He gestured towards the door.
I took a half step back and gently pushed the door closed.
"Lieutenant, report."
Lt. Kayla gave him a brief retelling of everything. The mission, the missing persons, the Argyles, Montgomery's infection, and the Soul Tick identification. The midnight confrontation, the three Deep Singers and even the structural damage.
Col. Wazel listened to everything with his hands flat on the desk, still as stone. Only when she finished did he grunt and press his fingers to his temple.
Then his eyes came to me.
"The cadet."
"Cadet Noah Reed, sir." I kept my hands at my sides.
"The Soul Tick identification was yours?"
"Yes, sir."
He paused and stretched a breath between his words, "I can only assume you came in here because you have something more to say?"
"I do, sir." I laid it out as clearly as I could.
The cursed blood seal, how it could work against a parasitic demonic entity, the principle behind it. A Soul Tick was a parasite running on demonic energy. In theory, the seal would lock it in place, stop it from spreading, and give Montgomery a chance. It wasn't a cure, but it was something, and something was more than what we had right now.
Once again, Col. Wazel listened without moving.
"Your reasoning is sound up to a point," he said when I finished. "A Soul Tick does operate on demonic energy. The cursed blood seal would react to it." He leaned back in his chair slightly.
"The problem is that the tick has already threaded itself into Cadet Burns' mana stream. It is not sitting separately inside him. It is woven through him. The seal cannot distinguish between the parasite's energy and the host's. Apply it to Burns, and you paralyse the tick, yes."
His fingers drummed the table.
"You also paralyse him. Completely. Potentially permanently, depending on how deep the integration has gone."
"But, if the spell were controlled," I said, and Lt. Kayla's eyes sharply cut to me, but I kept going. "Or if the seal were modified to target only the tick's specific energy signature rather than all demonic presence, there might be a threshold where—"
"Cadet Reed." His voice didn't rise in tone or volume, but there was a subtle roughness to it. "Modifying a spell requires testing. Testing requires subjects. You are proposing we experiment on an infected cadet with an untested variant of a spell that has never been applied to a Soul Tick host before, because the theory sounds workable." He looked at me without judgment but with resolution. "I will not do that."
My lips pressed into a line.
"Frankly. Even the theory that a soul tick would respond in such a way to the cursed blood seal is plausible at best. The seal isn't a perfect spell. No, it has many limitations. The corps has never encountered soul ticks this distinctively nor developed anything effective against them."
He let out a sharp breath and rubbed his temple again.
"What I will do," he continued, "is this. The Argyles infected in lower Marazan are still down there. They are beast hosts, not human ones. The tick's integration in a beast is shallower, the mana structure simpler. If a live infected Argyle could be brought here and the seal applied under controlled conditions, I could observe exactly how the spell interacts with the parasite. From that, I can try to create a new spell. Something precise enough to target the tick's signature without touching the host." He folded his hands. "That is the path to helping Cadet Burns without risking his life on an untested theory."
The idea circled my mind for a few seconds.
"Who goes after the Argyle, sir?"
"The corps." He said it plainly. "Or so we would, under normal circumstances. But the base took damage tonight, and it will take it again if we don't secure it before the Singers return. Every capable mage I have is committed to that work." He looked at me steadily.
"This might seem harsh, but an infected cadet is not a priority the corps can absorb right now, Cadet Reed. The base is. The city is. Cadet Burns is one person, and one person does not outweigh the security of everyone else."
A part of me knew these were the words I'd end up hearing. In the end, there was simply nothing I could do.
Col. Wazel paused again. His fingers interlocked below his chin.
"However, if the cadets choose to go after the Argyle themselves, that is your decision to make. I will not order it, and I will not stop it. That is all."
"Yes, sir."
Having received a verdict, I was practically ushered out of the office, and the door shut behind me.
-
Inside the office, Lt. Kayla remained standing.
"You could have assigned the retrieval, sir. We have personnel available."
Wazel didn't look up. "Some."
"Then why tell Cadet Reed the corps can't spare anyone?"
He turned a page, "An idea is only worth what we're willing to act on, Lieutenant." He set the page down. "If Cadet Reed believes in this enough, he'll go. If he doesn't, the theory wasn't worth much to begin with."
Lt. Kayla felt her brows knit, her lips parted, and she wanted to voice out her concerns, but the corps had never truly been a place that cared, so the words had died in her throat.
"Nevertheless, instruct a unit of C-ranks to shadow them if they move out," Wazel said. "Close enough to respond if something goes wrong. Far enough that the Cadets won't know they're there." He glanced up briefly, and a grim, taut expression crossed his face.
"After all, I am not as cold as Galahad, to be willing to send Cadets to an early grave."
Wazel's jaw tightened faintly as he voiced out Galahad's name, and then he looked through the window above the square.
Across him, a faint smile curled on the corners of Lt. Kayla's lips. She saluted again and walked out.