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Save Point: Initial Conditions

Unidentified Back Alley, Azatlan City

"Hey Sethkill. Child of Kith-Rhiannon. We need to talk," says the Old Man.

That's definitely not something he should know.

"You've met my daughter already, but soon you'll need to meet my son. And one other as well I'm not related to, although of course I knew her father. Your brother is about to do something vastly bad, even by his standards. It's all about family, really, although that wasn't really apparent at the time. These things happen, I suppose."

Sethkill is intrigued, but also not impressed. There's something about the hint-dropping of the Old Man that reminds him of the sort of cheerful false fortune-tellers who set up tents at outdoor events and make vague claims of vast insights that they can never quite be called on, while their apprentice witchling out the back hastily performs an additional divination in the form of a weave search designed to find out everything about your life.

"And now I'm supposed to ask how you know these things."

"Yes, exactly! I'm cheating of course. You're not supposed to actually look at the future, it takes all the fun out of it. Unfortunately, things have gone down a bad path here and there's nothing I can do to stop it that doesn't make it worse. You should see some of the other options. When the total destruction of the greatest city on earth is the least-worst outcome, well, you know it's not going to be good. I'm really not sure myself quite how it came to this. Normally you can make a few tiny adjustments earlier and it fixes it. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions."

"That was an excellent vague prediction."

"Thank you! I've always wanted to do the mysterious seer thing and just tell someone. Everyone always gets so upset about it though. So, detailed predictions you can call me on. Tonight, around about midnight or so though it's not entirely accurate, your brother Kilseth intends to destroy the entire central territory of Azatlan. It will look like a successful first strike by the Rama Empire."

"Shouldn't you be, perhaps, fleeing the city or something?"

"Oh, I'll be fine. And no-one's listening to one crazy old man fear-mongering about our oldest and least relevant enemy, against whom he presumably bears a long standing grudge. He doesn't even have any evidence, does he? Except that I've seen it. I can see it now, if I care to look that way. We're close enough now that the rubble is getting crisp, instead of being a generalized blur of all the possible places it might fall. And a week or two after that, there's nothing. Nothing but ocean."

The Old Man, Sethkill realizes with concern, believes every word he is saying.

"You're asking me to believe you based on nothing. So give me some proof. Where's Keselt?"

"She's perfectly safe, just very far away. It'll be like a tropical vacation for her."

The dismissive comment puts Sethkill on edge, and he reflexively reaches back over his shoulder for the grip of his sword-spear, not really intending to draw, just making a point.

The Old Man sees a tooth half-bared and smiles. "Perfect! Fight me! What is proof unless you put it to the test? Trial by combat for an idea!"

"There is one of you, you are old, and all you have is that cane," Sethkill growls. By Wolfmother, he must sound like his brother now, threatening people like this. "Admittedly it's a very nice cane but are you serious?"

The end of the sentence comes out on an escalating pitch because the old man has just jabbed at him with the cane, quite successfully. It isn't even painful really, it just caught him at a weak point, but how did he even get that close that quick?

The Old Man strolls casually sideways and jabs him again, but Sethkill refuses to draw. If this is in fact some crazy old guys idea of a test, he doesn't intend to be drawn in.

A great many impossible jabbages later, none of which seem to do any damage and which he can't evade with bared palms or parry, he finally draws, spinning the blade casually over his head as is traditional at the start of a match. The Old Man hardly seems to be moving, or even breathing for that matter, and the differences in Sethkill's physiognomy compared to his (not to mention sheer number of hours racked up in weave combat simulations) should give him an absolute advantage in terms of reach, length and combat skill.

Sethkill essays his own short jab, also not intended to do any damage, and the Old Man just leans slightly to one side as though he knew it was coming, but instead of striking back, he parries the blade in a slither of metal on black wood around the cane, seemingly unconcerned about the new consequences of razor-sharp metal against softer surfaces. Clearly he does not feel endangered by the situation, so Sethkill ups his game, executing a series of standard attacks of the sort that have wireframe drawings in a manual but present a limited risk to the target if they're also aware as to what defense each stance might attract.

The Old Man does not defend. It's an odd approach he's never seen before, in which his opponent is always just coincidentally in the right place to miss getting stabbed and parry the results. There are no movements or evasions, just counters.

He pauses for a second and retreats. Clearly there's something he's missing. "Aren't you afraid I'll scratch your cane?" he asks. "It is a very nice cane."

"I won't be needing it after tonight," says the Old Man casually, as if he weren't some sort of grand master picking a fight in an alley. "And you could do this too, if you understood how. Possibly one day you will. But please don't hold back, I need you to be certain."

Baffled, but interested and maybe a little bit challenged at the same time - no harm seems really to be intended, after all, and he's not sure if he could cause any - Sethkill lashes into an advanced attack, charging and slashing in a spinning whirlwind of extended steel.

The sequence has a name, meaning 'slicer of thrown fruit', but the situation is surreal, as he can hear vehicles and chatting pedestrians moving past the end of the alley, yet somehow they are not disturbed as the Old Man parries everything with quite minimal effort, always in the place where the oncoming blade is not, in some cases striking the flat point-first with the tip of the cane in a manner that is blatantly impossible. Sethkill extemporizes with a sequence that combines single-handed overhead stabbing with counter-balanced bare-palm techniques, and is interested to find that the more random his approach is and the less idea he has what he's doing himself, the more effective it seems to be. At one point the Old Man is eventually forced into a sideways parry which bites into the dense wood, not going that deep but leaving a distinct mark.

"Enough, enough," Sethkill sighs, flicking the blade sideways to free it from the wood and sliding back over his shoulder into the holster, feeling for the lower sheath with the tip to make sure that it slides back in correctly. "You couldn't have possibly done all that unless you could actually see what I was going to do next. I'm still doubtful about the whole 'seeing the future' thing, but clearly you know something I don't. And if you don't want to share how, then don't. But what do you have in mind that you need me to be certain for?"

"As I said, Keselt is far away from here. She is safe, and you will find her," predicts the Old Man.

"Reassuring, but not helpful."

"That being said, I need you to help me instead, with finding several different people, and arrange for them to meet. It's not something that could naturally happen, most certainly not by chance, and definitely not within the day. But since I'm reduced to the disgraceful expedience of directly intervening to try and bring about a suitable outcome, I might as well go all out."

"Well? So, what do I get out of it? What's the prize for this little job of yours?"

"You're one of the people. And if you do this it will get you what you want, evidence against your brother showing exactly what he's done, while still putting you on the correct path to find Keselt again. Plus, you'll like them, you really will. My son is a bit depressed sometimes but he'll warm to you given even half a chance, and Cleo, well, you won't even believe Cleo."

"I think you genuinely believe this is going to happen and you've got me running around on some half-baked mission designed to save your kids and your friends kids," Sethkill speculates, using a dialogue borrowed from some Azatlani television he saw to try to better express his thoughts on what he sees as the underlying real issue.

"Would that be so bad? I've already given you a free heads-up as to the danger you're in and what your brother is up to. Follow up on this and you get more, and you get to save some people. And if I'm just old and crazy, or worse yet old and cunning, so what? Even if nothing happens you've got some new friends and a useful lead. I'd throw in some money as well, but the Azatlani currency is likely to be severely devalued around midnight and so it would make you less likely to help."

Sethkill tries to consider it, looking at the problem from every angle as he tries to keep all of it in his head at once. Pretty much everything he's just been thrown might be true or it might not, all with associated consequences to everything else.

It has to be admitted, though, that there's something distinctly epic quest about all of this, kind of like the first mission of every sprawling campaign that Keselt has ever dragged him into. The first quest always starts with a leap of faith, a situation in which you can't trust the situation or what is happening or who can be trusted, and you just have to go with it. Admittedly, in Keselt's case, with a little help from the walk-through guide.

Wolfmother, how he wishes she were here now!

"I'll do it," he agrees. "Let's see what happens. I reserve the right to ditch you at any time and go running off after my girlfriend instead."

"Exactly the sort of attitude I was hoping for!" exclaims the Old Man and slaps him casually on the shoulder. It's not really a sethura sort of thing but he knows enough to roll with it.

"So where are we going first?"

"To the airport. You'll need to take a really fast flight."

~*~

"That's a nice view on the bay there!"

"Shouldn't you be, oh I don't know, filing a flight plan or something about now?"

"Already done. Admittedly it's just for local travel, but there's going to be a distraction in about three or four minutes that will have them too busy to pay close attention. Just try to look like you know what you're doing, and circle a few times, so you can find out. You need the practice."

The views 'on the bay' truly are fantastic, although he can't quite twig to why the Old Man thinks that's so damn funny, or why exactly he'd describe it that way. Azatlan city isn't a bay, but a broad peninsula, now completely encircled all the way back to the shoreline by a monumental sea wall that protects it from the mercy of the tides, or indeed the less than merciful invasion of whatever lesser civilizations happen to be passing by. The wall even extends across the peninsula itself, in a multitude of broad gates that haven't needed to be shut, even in their former incarnation as mere perimeter defense walls quarried from local country rock, since Azatlan first achieved its regional preeminence hundreds of years before.

The highways into and out of the peninsula lend their alignment to the city as a whole, the grid of streets forming a cross-work that even extends out into the water at its cardinal points, as though somehow driven to complete the maritime compass rose. Further out, at twice the distance to the sea walls, which is a substantial radius, two secondary headlands form a crescent half-circle that encloses and shelters the whole.

Some claims have been made that the whole is the result of some long ago meteoric impact, with the outer headlands as the crater walls and the peninsula the splash-back of the central droplet, as risen from the earth and fallen outward. It's hard to tell because there's now a city on top and it could be just the reinforcement of a natural shape, a convenient base-harbour which has attracted growth and then spawned a maritime empire.

Suddenly a blaze of small brilliant points spring into life, noticeable even in the daylight, starting to spin and move in mysterious though logical self-involved patterns, circles and alignments that rotate as though they were dancing. They're definitely somewhere above the ground, but the way they move, as if undergoing some sort of mathematical translations, boggles his depth perception and makes them impossible to track. Their light is so white, so pure...

"Cover your eyes and don't look at them," the voice on the radio orders, and since he's completely unable to think straight he obeys. As soon as the line of sight is interrupted, normality is resumed and he's thinking perfectly clearly again. "That's the distraction I promised. Now is the moment to head out, there's a pre-programmed waypoint marker for Hybrazeal. Just keep to the altitude and heading I suggested, and switch to the maximum speed profile as soon as you're outside Azatlani airspace, so you don't attract attention."

"Remind me again why I have to do this?"

"There are things I need to do here, and there's only so much room aboard that make and model. It's a necessary kludge to get everything to work out the way it's supposed to and I'm counting on you to get there and back in time. You've flown much harder things, this is practically child's play."

"I'll let you know if I don't hit the ground."

"I have to get off the channel, the authorities are screaming about what just happened. If they call you, don't answer, because without me to provide the technical lingo, they'll know that you're not really a licensed pilot." There's a pause. "Apparently one just punched a nice crisp circular hole in a cloud formation right above the airport! Got to go!"

Sethkill carefully flips the switch to off. "Over and out," he mutters sourly, imitating the sign-off in an Azatlani action-drama that despoiled screens across the Citadels apartment spaces. One day in their town, and he's committing an international crime to obtain information to help him recover his mysteriously missing wife. These people must be contagious.