Sixth Sin: The Blooming Beasts (Pt. 7): Infiltrating The Overgrown Library

  --- Mercer ---

  “Okay not stupid enough to go in there guns blazing…” He sighed, having gotten more than his fill of just that while breaking into and out of the floral duo’s lair. (I really need to upgrade my arsenal before the next time I try to go ‘one man army’.)

  The fact that Clocky might’ve given him some real fire power for going on the assault tempted him very briefly.

  Right up until the sane and survivalist parts of him teamed up, bitch slapped that greedy idiot before locking him in a closet with all of the highly repressed trauma he forced psychics to look at when they tried to read his mind.

  (Especially since I should be able to stop all of these Blooming Beasts by just putting a gun to their boss’s head…)

  Now normally finding said boss might prove… problematic with them being able to simply give orders and hang a safe distance back. (The reason long distance Puppeteers are a nightmare.)

  Thankfully, given what he’d seen of the flora, what he’d seen of the husband, and the crazy couple’s lab, he’d come to a few relatively simple conclusions.

  First was that the blooming beasts were relatively simple minded creatures, which while capable of following simple orders could not accomplish complex or conflicting orders. That combined with the fact that the lab had both magic and science, as well as the fact that the husband handn’t used magic, meant that the wife was somewhere in the library. Her presence directly necessary to both keep the flora on task and to deal with any magical defenses Tris and Kur’Silo had set up.

  All of which is why he started taking in the library structure, more than familiar with it given how often he broke into the hunter sibling’s home, but also fully aware that that was the exact reason Tris had made the thing so hard for him to get into.

  “Really, Tris you and your ‘boundaries’ are making my job just so difficult. Why can’t you be comfortable with me breaking into your house?” He asked, having his phone translate that with speech to text.

  He then sent said text to Tris -her name marked on his phone by a glaring emoji and a witch’s hat- both as a valid complaint and a heads up that he was here to help if she wasn’t currently in the middle of fighting for her life. (Which I could help with if she’d just let me keep breaking her windows to get inside her house!)

  With a shake of his head at the general unreasonableness of the people he called ‘friends’ he took off and did a quick scouting track around the building, while of course making sure not to reveal himself to the horde of hateful herbs down below.

  This revealed that the building was in fact swarmed, and that there was a chance the flowers hadn’t completely overwhelmed the building given how he noticed several get zapped by whatever protective enchantments were built into the library’s very foundations.

  It also revealed that one of the building’s doors were open and thoroughly clogged by feral flora, meaning that they had gotten inside and were likely forcing the hunters inside to defend their home. Something emphasized by the occasional flash of light that he could see through the windows (that I cannot break through because someone is a pissy little bitch) and the echo of gunfire from within the building.

  Crouched on a roof ledge he tapped a finger against his knee as he quickly ran through his various contingencies for breaking into the building.

  (Windows are out. Doors are out. Don’t have any explosives. Don’t have time to get one of the boys. Same for a jackhammer to the roof. Is there a liquor store nearby? No… molotovs are out too…) “Oh!” He snapped his fingers as it came to him. “Smuggler’s route!”

  The Way, as anyone anyone that just looked at it knew, was a hotbed of criminal activity. Both due to its location within the city, reference to the river, highway, abandoned subway, and numerous buildings abandoned and refurbished from the Rift Riots a couple decades prior.

  Now while this didn’t mean that every building had a smuggler’s route to get into it, it did mean that a lot of the bigger older buildings had at least one underground entrance. If only due to the various criminal organizations, government conspiracies, and occasional cult trying to stay on the down low.

  (And given how Tris and Kur’Silo’s father basically ran an underground railroad for Travelers during the Riots…) There was definitely a connection in the basement to the underground network that connected everything.

  Of course, getting into that underground network wasn’t the easiest thing in the world. What with how everyone who’d contributed to it over the years before cannibalizing everyone else’s work did not want this underground route to be known by the public.

  Still given how before his adoption he’d been a street rat that occasionally camped out in those underground rooms… He knew how to identify which manhole covers led to the regular sewers and the too big sewers and storm drains that Crawk’s homeless encampment sometimes used to get around unseen.

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  The fact that it took him six attempts to find one of said manhole covers was something he hated given the current time crunch. Almost as much as he hated the fact that while these sewer pipes were actually brick work corridors to allow smugglers through, they were also still sewers. Sewers that had apparently backed up enough for him to land in black water that made him very glad his helmet blocked out most smells. (Still going to have to burn these pants and boots though.)

  “Guess I should just be glad that Mrs. Flower power doesn’t know about these tunnels.” He sighed as he started moving, benign sure to constantly compare his above ground map with the underground one he was slowly sketching inside his head.

  Eventually -and after dealing with far more shit than he wanted- he managed to find a padlocked door that should let out into the library basement, (or one of them given how they also have that artifact vault in the sub-basement.)

  As he drew his gun, he briefly wondered if that fake-out paranoia was part of the reason he was such good friends with the family.

  When he shot the lock off, and opened the door he found what -at any other time- would be the actual reminder for why Tris was arguably his best female friend.

  Namely that he found himself now staring at a bricked up wall with a bit of graffiti miming out him -with an obligatory dunce cap- knocking on the library’s front door… alongside a one next to a shower head spraying water.

  Under different circumstances this would get a laugh out of him, right now though…

  “Damn it Tris, I am trying to save your ass!” He yelled into the ether, before holding down the trigger on his Rhapsody and placing it point blank to the wall.

  When he unleashed the fully charged shot against the brick work it had knocked a small hole in the wall to reveal that it was only one layer thick. (Meaning she at least had the decency to leave this open in case of an emergency.)

  A few more quick shots gave him an entrance into the library that didn’t involve fighting through a horde of Blooming Beasts with an amount of firepower that even he felt was underwhelming by comparison. (Now let’s see if I can just find the crazy behind all of this.)

  Sneaking past old boxes of basement dwelling books, and out into the old library halls he quickly fired a grapple line into the ceiling and scaled atop a book shelf. Hoping that higher ground would make him harder to detect to the flora like it would a human.

  Much like earlier in the evening most of the library grounds were covered in roots and vines of a small horde of blooming beasts.

  Unlike earlier however there were now several dozen of the plant monsters -both living and dead- littering the library. The living ones occasionally rushing out towards the sound of gunfire that he knew to be Kur’Silo’s current position given how Tris rarely used guns instead of magic.

  (Alright, if Kur’Silo is there then the wife is not anywhere near him. She can just send her floral minions to take him out. She is going to be somewhere working on chipping away at Tris’ wards or whatever.) Whether those wards were the ones protecting the observatory Tris was working, or were the actual wards of the building depended on whether the mask recognized the threat of the spell and went after the other Practitioner or double downed on getting her herbal horde inside.

  (Spent too much time just getting in here undetected, can’t waste much more lurking through the whole library. The place is too big and I know some of these rooms have spatial enchantments to screw with intruders.) He frowned as he quietly moved between book shelves that hadn’t been toppled by the blooming beasts.

  If he wasn’t magically dead, he might be able to narrow down his search by picking up on whatever weird synesthesia effect magic -or any other Deviant phenomenon- gave to people.

  Unfortunately for him that was not an option.

  Stuck waiting for a Blooming Beast to pass him by, he noticed that the beast below him was not in fact heading towards Kur’Silo’s gunfire but instead wandering somewhere else with purpose. (Well, that’s a good enough clue.)

  Moving ahead of the feral flora as stealthily as he could, he was eventually able to slowly piece together a path leading towards a side hall of the old library. One where he found a good dozen or so of the blooming beasts surrounding a redheaded woman wearing a green outfit and a leaf-like mask that covered most of her face as she focused on a set of doors with hands alight with magic.

  All around the door pale arcane symbols drifted and spun through the air, more and more of which burst out of it as the masked woman grasped one of the plants, causing it to shiver and spasm before rushing forward and exploding against what he assumed to be protective wards of some kind. Wards strong enough to leave barely any ash as the plant was completely destroyed.

  He couldn’t help but grimace as he noticed the symbols fading notably faster after a second plant was sent to sacrifice itself against the door, the wards straining under the constant barrage. A barrage that was coming from both sides of the door based on the green he could see moving outside of the windows to either side of the old door.

  (If I don’t move fast that’ll be another entrance for the plants to get in through. Which given the clogged one I saw means she wants this place thoroughly overrun before she confronts Tris…) He realized with a frown, his eyes already drifting between the dozen or so blooming beasts between him and the female mask. (Too many to take straight on with my loadout, but… all I need to do is get to her to stop these plants. At the same time though it might be safer to let her crack this door and then skip the fight by jumping her when she passes me by…)

  Of course, based on experience, magical wards could only have so many holes punched into them before they collapsed altogether. (At which point anything that gets in from a different entrance will still rush Tris…)

  Something he wasn’t guaranteed to prevent even if he rushed her here and now since she’d probably slam a few more into it before he got to her in an attempt to get reinforcements. (Then again, if I’m really lucky Tris might finish her spell by the time her family’s wards give out.)

  At which point all he’d have to do is catch the mask before she could escape.

  He drew his gun, wondering if he should just fire a concussive round at the back of the mask’s head. It would send all of her nearby plants into a frenzy, but (it’s guaranteed to save the wards by knocking her out at the very least…)

  The wards sparked as another plant detonated, pressing him to make a decision.

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