Chapter 104: The Double Fakeout

Jairus thought sourly, taking in his accommodations. They were nearly identical to those that he’d housed The Deceiver in a few hours ago. The crucifix restraining him was made of laminated Leviathan scale bound by some kind of resin, with silk bonds that outperformed any rope Jairus had ever heard of. There was a bit of bend, but it was easily as strong as the steel he’d secured the Deceiver to. A small part of him beneath the controlled fear, was impressed by the material and dimly wondered what else it could be used for. There were reportedly at least a hundred fervent Believers on board Shimmer, as well as the low-focus Tangled pet that William Oh seemed to be fond of. That was fertile ground for his particular style of Abilities. Something that they were surely aware of, given how painfully secure his gag was. Jairus moved his lips around the gag. “Gag off?” The young man asked. Jairus nodded. The Master Decoy pulled out a dagger and held the point to Jairus’s throat, the tip pricking the skin under his throat. “You understand if I feel any Charge, or if you start a sentence with the word ‘nonbeliever’, I’ll have to kill you?” Travis asked. Jairus nodded again. Blade still held to his throat, the Decoy leaned up behind him and yanked the gag loose with his other hand. “Let’s talk details.” Jairus said, working his lips over dry teeth. “Whaddya want?” Travis asked. “I don’t know yet.” Jairus responded with the closest to a shrug he could manage. “Not ‘set me free’?” “Not if it lands me in the middle of the ocean or gets me captured again. I need to know what is going on outside before I can make an informed decision. I might want to be let go, I might want you to deliver a letter, or maybe just ask you to kill me before your leader can get any useful information.” “So what you’re saying is…you want me to spy for you? For free?” The youngling gave a dramatic sigh and moved to put the gag back over Jairus’s mouth. “Half now, half later.” Jairus interjected before the Master Decoy could cover his mouth. “Well, now I’m interested.” Travis said, pausing. “What stat do you want?” Jairus asked. seaʀᴄh thё NovelFire.net* website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality. “Focus.” “…Pick something else.” The young man’s eyes narrowed. “Why?” “Because the Stat point is coming from me. If I give you a point of focus it cripples my Build.” “In what world do you expect to win without sacrifice?” Travis demanded. “You’re acting like you’re getting out of this alive.” Jairus thought about it. “Fine. I need to kiss your forehead.” “Seriously?” “No, I’m going to kill you with my Exploding Kiss Ability, then proceed to commandeer the ship with nothing but my lips. Get your fucking face over here.” Jairus growled, his sailor slipping through. The young man cautiously leaned forward, putting his head in front of Jairus. “Take a portion of my Focus and carry it into battle, my champion.” The Master Decoy’s eyes widened as his Focus suddenly shot up. Meanwhile, Jairus’s Focus dropped precipitously. “Now get me some information,” Jairus said, ushering Travis away. “Nah, twenty-eight points to my Focus was plenty. I’m not greedy,” Travis said, raising the gag again. “How long do you think it’ll take Your Party to notice the extra Focus?” Jairus asked. “They see your status if they want. Sooner or later, it’ll come up.” The brown-haired young man paused, staring into the distance, obviously calculating his odds in his mind. “Alright.” Travis said, stuffing the gag back into Jairus’s mouth. “Be right back.” He was not right back. Over the next eight hours, Jairus tested his bonds every way he possibly could, only pausing when their Nuker and the Tangled came to watch him use the chamberpot, something of them were happy about. Will visited twice over that time, asking odd questions about the organization of the Church of Granesh. Who reported to who, where they were outside The Tower, what responsibilities different parts of the church had in the day-to-day tasks of running such a large organization. These were largely questions that weren’t even secret. Any Acolyte pushing a broom across the church floor understood the organization’s hierarchy, and therefore how they could expect to climb it. It was strong institutions that led to human advancement. As Granesh intended. Meanwhile in another section of the ship, Loth and Will were poring over a map of Graneshian Churches, organized by hierarchical importance and their ability to rapidly deploy messengers to any corner of the ring. Based on what the Graneshian believers had told them from casual conversation, they were able to confirm large portions of what Jairus told them about the organization of the church to be true. And everything else…merely highlighted what was important enough for jairus to lie about. Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators! Those tiny inconsistencies drew their attention to two possibilities: “Well, it’s either this one or this one,” Loth said, pointing at two different churches. “The scribes of the Laniston church have a strange amount of independence from the hierarchy of the church. Robust logistics supporting a nearly independent intelligence agency. Their outward facade as scribes and messengers serves as an excellent cover for disseminating prophecy, sending out messages in large quantities and transcribing your friend’s ‘prophecies’ for later dissection by scholars.” Will heard Loth’s quotation marks around ‘prophecies’ without her having to make any gesture at all. “You don’t think he’s a real prophet?” “I’m a firm believer in self-determination.” Loth said with a pointed look. “I am where I am and I am because of superior talent and superior efforts.” Loth said. “Yeah, but what if you were always destined to have superior talent and superior efforts?” Will asked, always enjoying poking the Loth. “That’s a circular argument,” Loth said, brushing aside the conversation with a wave. “Which is why I detest certain branches of philosophy.” “You taught me about philosophy.” Will replied with a frown. “Yes, so that you could learn enough to hate it too,” Loth replied, eliciting a chuckle from Will. “Okay, what about the other one?” Will asked. Loth’s black claw glided across the map of the Ring to point out another location with a large painted mountain that looked vaguely like a femur. “The home of the military arm of the Church of Granesh, Bone Mountain, where the leadership of the Church of Granesh resides. The level of security there is fitting for protecting a so-called ‘prophet’; not a single priest there is under level twenty and there are nearly a dozen Saints represented among their numbers. More than we could hope to subdue. Bone mountain also has it’s own message system that they use to send relayed orders up The Tower. It’s the only other place with the infrastructure to send word of your movements fast enough to take any advantage of it. “So we’ve narrowed it down to these two as the only ones able to send a message fast enough to hound me like they’ve been doing, and the only two with the internal authority to hold a valuable asset like a prophet and thumb their nose at the other arm of their organization?” “In any large organization, there are rivalries.” Loth said, scanning the map. “These two are reputed to be particularly bitter. If we go after Laniston, their allies will be slow to defend them with arms, but if we go after Bone mountain, the spies of Laniston will be unlikely to warn their bretheren, and even if they did…” “They’d laugh them off,” Will mused, scanning the distance between the two locations. Only a few hundred miles. A high level Climber could cross that space in less than a day. I Will shook his head, briefly remembering a time when he thought level four was respectable. “Either they’re keeping him safe through obscurity,” Will said, tapping the monastery. “Or through force of arms.” He tapped the impregnable mountain range. “Defeated with blistering speed…or careful planning. Respectively.” Will mused. “All we’ve got are possibilities. We need a way to be which one your friend is at.” Loth said. They’d danced around the issue and only asked easily verifiable, oblique questions to Jairus because they didn’t want to tip their hand and reveal what they were after. “But we run the risk of Jairus getting word out and warning the church what we’re after.” Will mused. “What if he did?” Loth asked. Will cocked a brow at her. “What if he did get a message out?” She asked. “We could follow it back to the person it’s supposed to be warning…” Will mused. “Assuming we ignored the acclimation period.” “You’re not afraid of a little fever, bulging bloodshot eyes, coughing, pustules, necrosis of the extremities, paraphilia, parasitic twin growths, and death, are you?” Will did the math. There were five floors between them and the outside world. Five days on the Fifth, four on the Fourth, and so on. Fourteen days of waiting, in total, since the first floor didn’t have an acclimation period. A relay message system could get a letter back outside The Tower in a single day. If they could intercept the letter, and reach the destination first… Will thought. It was the higher floors that skipping Acclimation would kill someone, but skipping the Acclimation phase of multiple floors in a row would still add up, and by the time they got outside the tower, the Miasma sickness would probably be crippling. “I a little adverse to those things, yes,” Will admitted. “Well, I have an idea for how we might be able to…fudge it a little.” Loth said with a grin, a row of insects marching across her arm. “It won’t be pleasant, but I think It might just work.” Will shuddered. He knew what it meant when Loth said something would be unpleasant. “But we still have to give Jairus the right prod to get him to risk his life to send word.” Will mused. Will and Loth locked eyes and nodded. Two weeks later, Travis slipped into the holding cell, carrying Jairus’s daily meal. Still gagged, Jairus merely glared at him. “What? It takes time to get information without being suspicious,” Travis said, loosening the gag. “We aren’t rejoining the flotilla. We’ve been moving, and fighting. I can tell. Where are you going?” Jairus asked as soon as the gag left his mouth. “We’ve been grinding.” Travis said, sitting down in front of him, giving Jairus a light tap with his dagger to indicate that he was still paying attention. “Will and Loth have some hair up their butt to get the entire Party up to level thirty before we move on. The last of us passed it this evening, so we’re going to be hitting the Key Point and moving floors tomorrow morning.” “And…where does that leave the several hundred people aboard this ship? What are they planning on doing with us?” “The other Climbers get the ship, and we’re going down a Floor.” “You’re going ” Jairus asked. “Why?” “Because the seventh floor doesn’t have the infrastructure to sell Saints.” Travis said with a shrug. “You’re ransoming me back to the church in Akul.” “Loth got everyone together and gave us this weird lecture about ‘Sun Tzu” and putting the enemy on ‘death ground’. I didn’t get it, but it’s above my paygrade. I’m the lowest man on the Party totem pole…aside from Brianna, I guess?” Travis pursed his lips in thought. “That’s it?” “You’re worth a of money.” Travis said with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t we want to separate the profit from the hassle that is keeping a priest of Granesh hostage? I know for one, am eager to no longer supervise your shits.” “Damned waste of a point of stat growth,” Jairus groused. “Then after that, we’re going back down to the Ring for some much-needed vacation before we go back up to the Seventh Floor. Can you believe we’ve been doing this floor for over a month? I’m starting to understand why married couples get further up The Tower.” Travis sighed. “I need a girlfriend. Or two. Three might be too much. I know an infinite amount is definitely too much, that poor bastard…” Jairus frowned. “Anyway, we’re gonna R&R and Will and Loth are gonna go visit a friend of theirs. Some kid named Jason.” “Jason Salazar?” Jairus asked, his skin going cold. “I’unno” Travis grunted. “Sounded like a friend from the orphanage?” Dozens of thoughts flickered through Jairus’s head at once. The Deceiver had gleaned the existence and Identity of The Prophet. Likely from something said or housed aboard the Floating Church of Granesh. That was the secret of Fire. The Deceiver was going after him once it got back ouside The Tower. That was what the prophecy warned of. Unacceptable. They would take two weeks to get outside The Tower once they offloaded Jairus into the hands of the Church in Akul. He would send a letter down to The Ring, and it would get there with plenty of time to allow them to move Jason out of harm’s way and set up a trap for the deceiver. The immediate problem was not letting on that he knew, and diverting attention away from the fact that he’d asked the Prophet’s name. That meant engaging Travis Oilton in meaningless conversation for at least half an hour, to scrub the exchange out of his recent memory, which turned out to be quite possibly the most uncomfortable experience of his capture, because even the was easier to relate to. “So it seems that nothing is actually required of you, by evening tomorrow, I’ll be free, and you’ll walk away with thirty extra Focus. Seems like a good deal for you.” Jairus said. “You’re backing out of the second stat point?” Travis demanded. “I don’t NEED you to anything.” Jairus pointed out. “You me to keep my mouth shut.” Travis said, leaning forward aggressively, dagger hovering near Jairus’s throat. “Go ahead, tell them you traded information to an enemy for a buff. See how that goes.” Jairus called his bluff. Travis growled and sheathed his dagger before replacing the gag and storming out of the room. On the other side of the ship, Travis marched down the Party’s hall, his posture shifting from anger to languid ease. He ducked inside the officer’s room and halted at the low Miasma that almost felt like walking into a freezer, causing an involuntary shiver to cross his body as an unknown energy began to drain out of him at a rapid clip. Lining the walls of the room were thousands, hundreds of thousands of Loth’s bugs, pulsing faintly with a miasmatic glow, while Will and Loth sat in the center of the room, where they had had their Miasma drained out of them ever since they hit level 30, ten days ago. “Seems like he bought it.” Travis said. “We heard. Close the door, you’re letting the Miasma in.” Loth grunted from under her pile of faintly pulsing insects. “And so…” “All proceeds from his ransom go to you.” Will said under from pile of bugs. “You provided the inroad, you get the prize.” “Nice. Sad I couldn’t get that second stat point out of him, though,” Travis pouted for a moment before he caught himself and headed for the door before he grew an extra limb. “I’m gonna leave you guys to…” He gestured at the two of them. “…whatever this is.” “Have fun trying to score two girlfriends,” Will said. “If you want, I can teach you how to get an infinite number.” “Ah shit, you listening,” Travis said, shaking his head as he closed the door. “I was just saying that to make him think I was stupid and shallow!” Travis shouted through the door. “You really sold it!” Will’s muffled voice carried through.