Angar ambled over to Chagan, the pair waiting near the street among the festival's ceaseless churn, the scent of sanctified oils mingling with sweat-soured revelry.
They waited on Garioch, whose turn at the poetry stall no doubt earned the Paragon's bemused scrutiny.
Seban and the others held a stubborn claim in the interminable queue for the Power Level Comparator, a hulking contraption of brass and etched alloy.
He doubted he'd breach that line snaking for hours, a serpent of both armored and threadbare bodies, all jostling to learn their comparative ranking.
Vital as forging bonds with fellow Tribute Knights was, and mending fences with Chagan, he still needed to track Simo, claim his missives, and later in the evening, there was a mandatory-attendance ball.
Still, he nursed a burning curiosity for his own score in that machine.
He'd already claimed his ranking in all the strength events they’d spotted.
On his first swing at the High Striker, Angar hefted the mallet sent the puck hurtling up the calibrated rail clean to the summit, the peal resounding like a call to worship service.
He was the twenty-ninth to ring it since the carnival's setup at New Year's Week dawn.
He’d placed exactly thirteenth in each for the Caber Toss, Stone Put, Deadlift, and Farmer's Walk.
Ranking high in strength events was inevitable.
Stats functioned as multipliers, after all, amplifying the base clay, the natural and trained endowments of flesh and will.
Not only was Angar naturally bulky and strong, but his Physique score, swollen now to heights far beyond the Tier norm, turned that foundation into something tectonic.
Those twelve who outpaced him? He’d wager his hammer they weren’t just peak Seraph, but each had cybernetic arms.
And that was true enough for the names he recognized, like Grand Marshal Hulmnir, the Iron Father, claiming first in every event.
Salvador's absence from the lists wasn't shocking, as the man loathed crowds. If he competed, he'd likely eclipse Angar too.
A strong man with Physique 10 always outmatched a weak one at the same score, ceteris paribus, all other factors being equal.
But other factors weren’t equal. Estates mattered, as did Tier and Realm.
Take three brothers, identical in form and forge. Ascend one as Crusader, another as Ecclesiastic, the third as Layman, each graced with a Physique of 10.
The Knight would eclipse the clergyman, who in turn would dwarf the Layman.
Realm compounded it further. If those brothers hit Seraph across estates, still at Physique 10, their strengths converged again, parity restored despite differing paths, even if they stood at different heights due to early-Tier Physique benefits affecting them differently.
Tiers within Realms stacked further disparities, a ladder where each rung boosted potency.
A Tier 1 Crusader, Physique at 10, pitted against a Tier 7 Crusader with the same lowly score, and the gulf gaped wide, the Seraph’s greater strength undeniable.
Cybernetics could cheat the progression, bypassing ascents' slow forge with alloy intrusions that sidestepped the organic climb.
A lowly Tier 1, if his purse ran deep enough for the finest cybernetic limb, might near parity with a Tier 7 with the same augment.
Even species tilted the scales, aiming for something like eventual parity. Reptiloids bore thick and scaled hides, so their Toughness Stat granted less of a multiplier, and so forth.
Grays, with their powerful minds, and Pleiadeans, with their shared wisdom and naturally long lives, all had tweaked multipliers.
It didn’t all work out so cleanly, as the different paths resulted in different outcomes and benefits. At Seraph, Laymen would've gained the most Stats from sacred rites and Traits, their word for Feats, but have weaker and more costly Abilities and such.
The Paragon's voice cut through Angar’s musings, inaugurating Garioch's offering of poetry.
To enter the contest, the rules demanded four lines at minimum, what they called a stanza. The Saint had complied exactly, the words unspooling like a confession of incest, forcing Angar to stifle a wince.
“I stand outside looking in
Alone and out of place
One day, maybe acceptance I’ll win
But God told me life is not a race.”
Angar wound his way through the carnival's press as revelers in motley garb jostled and jeered, their faces flushed with spirits, and hawkers cried over the clangor of distant games.
Simo was nowhere he should be, a ghost among the living.
Garioch and Chagan had fanned out to hunt for him, while Seban, Harion, and Nguri held their ground in the everlasting queue for the Power Level Comparator.
Spotting a gaggle of shabbily clad serf-children huddled apart from the crowd, ragged little things with eyes too old for their scrawny frames, he approached, his cybernetic feet grinding grit into the blighted soil.
They recoiled at first, wide-eyed as prey before a Hellspawn, but he quelled that with a raised palm flashing credits and quick words.
“A credit each for a simple task," he mumbled through his wrapped jaw. "Search the base for a friend of mine. Ten to the one who finds him. Paragon Simo, older looking, graying beard, should be unarmored, one arm an implant, legs the same, though he usually hides those under pants and boots.”
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Eleven of them there were, eager as pups at the scent of reward. A quarter or tenth credit each would’ve been enough, but he was feeling generous.
After saying he’d be at the Budget Post, they snatched the credits and scattered like leaves in a gale, vanishing into the throng.
Angar watched them go, a slight grin threatening to form behind his helm.
He turned then toward the Budget Post, the sole bastion of private communion in Fort Acre's sprawl.
No need to register, as Fella had seen to that, along with the reroute fees.
Where she conjured the funds remained a riddle, and one he’d like solved.
Not only had Angar never thought to check a post station, but Hidetada's standing order was to never register his location, else he paint a target on his back for enemies to track.
He had no desire to avoid enemies, so appreciated Fella circumventing the order.
After providing the account number supplied by Seban and verifying his identification, the clerk handed over a sheaf of nearly a score of messages, bundled with a nondescript package that rattled, informed it just arrived two days prior.
Not all bore Fella's name. There was an old scrip from Madame Lieutenant Commander Tianmi of Erim’s Eyes of Providence. Curiosity caused him to open that first.
Sir Angar,
God and Empire, brother. I trust the Underworld's caprice has spared you thus far, and that you fare well in whatever shadowed corner of the stars you've been cast. This city grows eerily still in your absence.
Enclosed herein is the account number for your portion of the spoils: the husk (only 107 credits), the strange crystal, and the barbed spine reaped from that Abyssal Tyrant, the Phasorax, totaling 16,183 credits, less the cost of opening the account and this communique. The cipher to unlock it is the designation of the building where our paths first crossed in blood and fury.
OA-EEN-ZA-ER-7528.9051.89-11-TPSS1
Holy Theosis! Such a vast fortune, he thought, surprise gripping his heart.
He'd nearly forgotten that grim harvest, along with her solemn vow to split the spoils evenly.
But here it was, a windfall that completely dwarfed old hauls from stripped-down corpses, which seldom crested a twenty or thirty credits share, maybe scraping past a hundred on a rare, blessed day.
This sum plunged deep into five figures, easily triple what the highest-paid professionals recruited to Tribute earned in a year of ceaseless toil.
The Gymnasium. That had been their first crossing, among the stink of sweat and the echo of an infernal ambush.
Three missives from Venerable Sister Kenson lay among the rest. The bulk, though, were Fella's doing.
And impatience got the best of him.
He set the boxed package in his lap, retracted a gauntlet, and slit open the letter accompanying it with a claw.
On pink vellum, the words spilled out in her beautiful penmanship, far more appealing than his own harsh handwriting, the same red-painted lips pressed to the signature, the same alluring perfume wafting off it.
October 2nd, 4186
My Dearest Sir Baron Angar Mecia,
In the exalted name of the Holy Trinity, whose infinite mercy pierces the abyssal gloom of our mortal existence, I commit this epistle to the void, beseeching it to alight upon you amid the sanctified tumult of your noble Crusade of Abyssalhome.
May the Sovereign Lord's boundless grace encompass you as a bastion unassailable, directing your hand in the hallowed exaction of tribute through blood and battle, forging eternal glory for our Holy Empire.
Your gracious rejoinder has blessed my hands yesterday, Sir, a Divine intercession that uplifts my soul beyond measure.
For this precious communion, I render profound gratitude unto you and unto the Almighty, whose benevolence has heeded my fervent entreaties. I safeguard it upon my person always, a sacred amulet against the tempests of separation and doubt.
Accompanying this letter is a consignment, dispatched to traverse the stellar expanses with languor, laden with treasures I have amassed through labors both arduous and unyielding. I adjudge them of significance to your lofty aspirations, but I must implore you to handle the reports with circumspection, for they are technically illegal to possess.
Paramount among these is an official imperial report on the alterations wrought upon Tributeans by prolonged exposure within Terran-normal environs, wherein, to name a few topics, includes oxygen's greater profusion, the spectra of ultraviolet A and B rays, circadian cadences, serotonin, the bulwarks of immunity, and microbial legions.
The treatise delineates the transmutations in unmodified Tributeans, the other addressing those few akin to yourself, who bear the comprehensive imprimatur of genetic modification. I anticipate its disclosures shall astonish even you.
The second offering comprises an imperial report on the confluence of cybernetic implants with Tributean anatomy. Embedded therein lies a discourse devoted to your own personage, particularly the enigma of your hands.
Thirdly, I tender another imperial report, this one a compendium cataloging the trajectories of all Tributean Cloisteranage graduates, current as of September 7th. It lists the Grim Ordeals' survivors, the Knightly Chapters and companies embraced by our brethren, and their extant dispositions across the galactic expanse, which you may find useful.
In zealous service to your grand design, Sir, I have undertaken to disseminate communiques to as many of our dispersed Crusaders as my humble resources afford, fostering bonds that shall expedite their convergence when our chapter of the Lord Hungers stands arrayed in full panoply, summoning our warriors homeward in legions.
Both young Firkar and I flourish beneath the Almighty's vigilant aegis. To steel his nascent spirit against bloodshed and violence, I accompany him during the evening hours of leisure to the fighting tournaments wherein we daughters of Tribute, those of us without a Class, assert unassailable supremacy, dominating the spindly imperial girls in trials of mettle and might.
Each Sunday, Princeps Rectoria Amaral, my cherished confidante and dear friend, graciously shepherds little Firkar and myself to arenas of vocational combat, wherein I further cultivate my own martial acumen, not solely as spectator, but as contender, imbibing the arcane subtleties of conflict, that I might emerge as an ever more efficacious vessel in your exalted cause, Sir.
From these immersions, I have gleaned knowledge profound and manifold. Moreover, it appears I possess an innate astuteness for the fray's intricacies, enabling me to amass considerable credits through judicious speculations on the outcomes.
These windfalls accrue not only to my own meager coffers, but to those of Venerable Sister Amaral and her intimate cadre, potentates who command vast authority, their alliance conduits for our mutual endeavors, such as the included reports.
As I proclaimed at this missive's inception, the words of your reply have infused my essence with profound encouragement, and I humbly but fervently beg the Three on knees for further communications.
That you discern allure in my countenance quickens my pulse with an ardor irrepressible, a poignant yearning for our reunion that beckons beyond the veil of exile. My unwavering faith in you, Sir, and the conflagration of my affection, burgeon inexorably, paralleling the sublime reverence I harbor for the glorious Holy Trinity.
I understand the necessary logic by which you must elect a partner in warrior covenant, not through the lens of carnal delight, but through the prism of unerring efficacy in propelling your righteous mandates. Hence, my pledge to transmute myself into an indispensable feature in your life, not merely the most capable and adept in combat, but a sentinel attuned to exigencies you have yet to foresee.
But I entreat you, Sir, to accord Divine Providence the solemn deference it commands, for it is no trifling whimsy to be gainsaid. What God decrees shall unalterably manifest, as immutable as the celestial orbits.
Should you, in momentary lapse, anoint another girl as befitting your ambitions and inclinations, I shall, without reservation, support your decision, endorsing your edict with steadfast allegiance. I will forever support your every command as if a slave.
Yet, I harbor trepidation that the inevitable currents of fate may conspire to imperil that girl, redressing the mistake until what is ordained becomes truth, and I assume my predestined station at your flank.
I pray the Three spare any girl such a gruesome and certain end.
As always, and as shall endure eternally, you dominate my every waking thought, Sir, a perpetual sacrament interwoven with my prayers. Each dawn, I kneel before the altar, imploring the King of Kings to grant you strength unyielding, victories resplendent, and a path cleared of shadow and doubt.
May the Three bless you with abundant fields of battle, where the blood of the unholy flows as a sacrament to our Almighty Lord’s glory.
In eternal devotion and with the whole of my heart,
Fella Tormina, Student-Aspirant of Athenaeum Dhikr Cloisteranage, Puella Adsidua of the Lord Hungers
