Realignment, Part Ten

19 March 2007

Michael set out for England yesterday, and we were brought before the Queen of Heaven to update her about our progress. Akshainie did most of the talking, since she was the one actually answering to this authority, and I mostly just answered questions when asked. It took some explanation to demonstrate why we were shifting our focus to the Brood sites rather than attacking the cult members themselves, but the Queen understood the gravity of the situation when we talked about them corrupting locus points to trap ancient entities and siphon their power. The Queen didn’t seem entirely convinced I needed Akshainie’s help for this, however, and we spent the night trying to locate our next target and worrying about whether or not she would even have clearance to leave Iravati.

It was nearing dawn when we finally managed to trace the web of connections to the actual entry on Nachash. Knowing that we were on a time limit and we’d used connections to find him in the first place, we skipped right past the pages of people affiliated with him and went straight to locations. We picked out the first few and decided we would go to whichever of those was closest to a river to begin, but before we could begin determining which that was we were brought back before the Queen. It was a grueling encounter, in which we argued for our approach and Akshainie’s involvement in it for hours. In the end, the Queen agreed that the work was important enough to see finished and that Iravati was invested enough to send a warrior, and Akshainie was sent out again on the condition that she check in more frequently and that I be open to input from Iravati about future targets. We agreed to these terms.

We presented the locations we had picked out, and granted the aid of the court staff to find the best route between them. It took some digging, as Iravati’s map collection was outdated and never particularly concerned with the human world beyond the Indus Valley region. We ended up needing to travel with a couple scribes to the river and seek information from travelers to fill in the gaps, and this at least helped us with two of the three sites we were seeking. The third was much more difficult to nail down, so we split up, with one scribe and Akshainie continuing to seek information from travelers while I took the other scribe out of the city to the physical world, where my phone would work and I could try to reach some contacts with modern maps. My initial attempts failed to yield any results, but then I reached Dr. Harris.

“Look,” she told me, “I’m rather busy at the moment. But listen, we have this situation, got this promising girl looking into it, but it sounds like she’ll need help.”

“I suppose you’d have time to look into my question if I can offer support,” I said.

“That’s the short of it, yeah.”

“Well, tell me what you know about it, and I’ll see what I can do.”

She gave me a brief overview of the situation and promised to have a case file available for me when I arrived, which I assured her I would do quickly if I could get there. She told me to let her know, and we returned to Iravati. There, I learned that Akshainie had no better fortune finding the site than I did, so we returned to the Queen and I told her about the proposal from Dr. Harris. After a conversation about the nature of Harris’ work, the Queen conceded that it sounded like the best option available. We’ve been urged to rest and gather supplies for the remainder of the day and set out first thing in the morning. After a brief conversation to inform Dr. Harris we will be arriving tomorrow and a trip through the market, Akshainie and I have returned to her family’s estate to prepare for our next mission.

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