• Nobles of Null is a forum based roleplay site where sci-fi and magic collide. Here, Earth remains fractured and divided despite humanity reaching out to the stars. Worse still, the trans-human slaves of one major power have escaped, only to establish their own Empire, seething with resentment at abuses of the past. Even the discovery of aliens, though medieval in development, has failed to rally these squabbling children of Earth together with its far darker implications. Worse still, is the discovery of the impossible - magic. Practiced by the alien locals, nearly depleted and therefore rare, its reality warping abilities remains abstract and distant to the general populace. All the while, unseen in the darkness of space, forces from without threaten to press in. For those with eyes opened by insight, it is clear that an era is about to end, and that a new age will dawn.

Day in the Life: Aos Si Ruins on Jing

The bound Aos Si ignored Fioda, instead staring at the human, Vita, wide-eyed, then, all the present Aos Si would feel their blood pressure rise involuntarily as the bound male Aos Si shouted at Vita in anger.

"Scum of the earth! Devil from the heavens! You parasite of a species! You have the audacity to return to gloat! Once I get break out of these bonds I'm going to break your spine, burn your corpse, and use your ashes to appease all my brethren you tortured and killed!"

The Aos Si struggled against the straps that kept him to the table, growling and frothing at the mouth. This was new, yet familiar to the Aos Si. Subconscious embers that remained, or true flames that needed to be kept in check to keep the peace.
 
Gwaed knew this man. Not his name, nor his history, but Gwaed knew his fate. This building, this death factory, he knew it's very location. He knew where it still was, hidden from the public eye but never far from the public consciousness. They knew. Of course they knew. And once, they had accepted it. Many had even wanted it. Others had no choice but to accept the reality of what they were doing to the native population. To his population, his people. When he found this building the first time, he was so enraged he was unable to form diplomatic thoughts for a long time after.

What sick force thought this would be what to show them all? He approached the man strapped to the table, and with a very firm grasp, gripped Vita's shoulder. Pushing them away, perhaps more harshly than he'd anticipated, he took their place. His sword, it was at his side. He hadn't noticed it until now, for it hadn't been there until now. In their shared tongue he growled at the man, "Never forgotten, brother. Their ash will be of their own making, and all we've to do is outlast. Sleep, for the future has happened." With a gentle and entirely swift strike, he cut the man's throat, and let him sleep, as he'd done so many year ago.
 
The male Aos Si's eyes lost their light yet still open, his body slumping back down to the table, head limply turning to the side.

Still, the man spoke through his blood filled mouth.

"We're seeing brain activity." He spoke in a foggy, distant, human language. Mandarin.

"Their heartrates are stabilizing." The words became clearer.

"Thank the heavens! Thank you for saving my students!" A voice roared, bringing about darkness that quickly engulfed the party, then nothing, before a groggy light.

Gwaed, Amisra, Fioda, and Vita, along with the Erinun interpreter that got caught up with them; found themselves in a brightly lit, white room. They were all wearing medical gowns now, set on beds. Human medics were rushing up and down the aisle, checking displays reporting biometrics and refilling droppers that were streaming liquids into the patients' wrists. Bukang stood in a corner, looking visibly distressed as he rummaged through his black hair, before he was pushed out of the room by two nurses.

Sitting next to Gwaed's bed was a familiar old man, Professor Li, relief over his wrinkled face, one hand on the Aos Si's chest, the other holding his hand. He was dressed in green with red embroideries this time, an odd combination, but the superstitious, Chinese symbols for hope and vitality. "Easy there now." The professor admonished quietly. "They had to do surgery on your heart. Put a pacemaker in you. It seemed your cardiolith was causing you trouble, but they feared removing it would do worse."

The Erinun interpreter looked up at the wall blankly, his mind scrambled and lost in thought. Looking around, he spotted Vita on the bed next to him. After a few moments lost for words, he spoke to the human. "I'm sorry... for dragging you into this." He remarked weakly.
 
Like a dance, Amisra knew the steps, but added a few more. Her hand gently touched Fioda's, then Vita's as she moved past, coming to stand by Gwaed's side, and as she had before, came to hold his hand with hers, her face a frozen lake of emotion. She had guesses and ideas as to what was happening, but it wasn't a certainty until the dying memory spoke again. And for the longest time Amisra lay quietly, her ears twitching, listening.

"Thank you for coming Professor," she replied, eyes still closed. The woman knew the most important things, that Gwaed and Fioda were close. But, it was what she didn't know that interested her the most. "Where are the others?" the redheaded Aos'Si asked, her voice brusque.
 
Gwaed's hand felt the comforting presence of Amisra's. Warm despite the ice she showed to the world, it grounded him in the wrong moment. Grounded in a moment they had had together once before, and so when that moment became untrue again he was thrust into consciousness. And that comforting hand was gone. He was alone again, on a table, like that man had been. His hand grasped for a sword that wasn't there as he lashed out, eyes wild as his hand grasped the Professor's clothes.

His other grasped for a hand that wasn't there anymore.

Pausing, no longer driven by an instinct for survival, he examined the Professor with eyes that cleared of fear and rage, replaced by confusion. "Professor?" His hand let go, dropping to the bed below him. "What have they done to me?"
 
"They cut open your ribcage and planted a pacemaker onto your heart, to stop it from beating erratically." Professor Li elaborated on his previous statement, drawing a line across Gwaed's sternum-analog, a centimeter above his chest. They could all feel a tube lead out of their skin from the upperleft side of their chests, ending at a flat, metal trinket taped across the left chest, right below their left shoulder blades. "You're going to be weak for a few weeks, your body needs time to adapt to the implant, but you'll still be whole, your heart, your heartstone, all intact, eventually." He shook his head, turning around to look at Amisra. "The same cannot be said of the Erinun Aos Si. They have... lost their minds."
 
Vita woke up, quickly sitting up with wide eyes. They quietly stared at their surroundings. Including the doctors. Having a hard time figuring if the things around them was still a dream or a reality.

As the interpreter gives the weak apology their eyes dilate and then focus strangely. Their hand finds itself on the metal implant. The metal colder than the skin around it, yet slowly adapting to their body temperature.

“This scene is…”

They feel around the bed they’re on, slowly getting a grip on it before pushing themselves up from the bed with some vigor and surprising wakefulness. What sort of maddened being is this awake in the morning?

“Could we be told of what was seen on your end? After we fell”

Vita says to the doctors. Cracking their neck and seemingly stretching their arm.

“I know my experience was V E R Y unpleasant.”
 
One of the doctors checked Vita's vitals first on the monitor next to them, before explaining.

"Once you were carried out of that site, you were immediately brought over to Wangpo (King's Hill). The whole entire time, you looked entranced; your facial muscles were still engaging, we saw brain activity, but your heart completely stopped. Nothing we did could get it started. Then, by the time you arrived on the station, your brain activity stopped, but your heart started again, erratically. When we decided to put you on the operating table and put the pacemakers into you, we witnessed random muscle twitches and twisted facial expressions. It got so bad that we had to strap you down to complete the operation."

He pulled out his datapad. "You said your experience was unpleasant. How so? Besides the heart failure."
 
"It was like a dream," Amisra recalled. "Or, more a nightmare. One we had shared before," she noted after a moment more. Laying upon the bed in a patient's gown, the redheaded woman looked at the others. "I suppose now there are more of us who have shared this moment from the past," Amisra sighed. "Discovering 'Area Forty Three' was something I pushed out of mind so that it may feel distant and long ago, but this was quite fresh. Crisp even," the woman admitted. Closing her eyes again, she placed a hand on her heart. "That aside, you said they lost their minds? How so?" the once-ranger asked.

Looking into herself, she reached for the threads of mana between herself and her heart of hearts like she had done so many countless times before - a simple check.
 
Amisra's mind was instantly flooded with imagery and sounds.

At once, she found herself in her childhood home in Nosildor, her parents at her side in front of a desk as she read "The History of Goedwig: Origins of the Goedwish".

Then, she stood by Gwaed, venturing through the woods near Hillsong, in her golden armor, red and green garments, bow in her hand.

Then, a rainy, muddy day, her clothes tattered and filthy, as she attempted to hold her breath under a fallen log bridge, as the invaders with their soulless masks, their metal armor, and machine pets, walked above her, wielding weapons that threatened to blow apart her organs in an instant.

Then, another desk, but in a foreign city, a foreign building with unusually large, glassy walls, dressed in invader garments, reading on a brightly lit tablet, a false book, "Introduction to Interplanetary Economics", surrounded by the invaders.

Finally, she stood proudly up on a stage, wearing a richly embroided dress, hand over fist to another invader in similarly rich cloth, to the clapping of a mostly human audience, some Aos Si mixed in. The founding of New Age Technologies.

"Amisra?" An old man's voice interrupted her thoughts, along with a beeping at her chest, bringing her back to the hospital bed with her companions. A nurse walked over, carefully pulling down her gown to reveal the battery, with an orange flashing light.

"That's odd." The nurse remarked, quickly switching it with a fresh cell. "These batteries are supposed to last for two decades. Must be quite the defect."

"You must've zoned out." Professor Li remarked. "The Erinuns woke up far earlier than you, apparently. At first, they seemed normal enough, simply asking for pen and paper. When provided, all hell broke loose. They started incoherent rambles, mentioning a plague, ancestry, and birthright, fanatically scribbling charts and orbital diagrams on the papers, along with mixed Aos Si script. Once the paper ran out, they attempted to write on the walls, and got physical with the nurses and each other. Security had to come in and put them in the insanity wards. If you feel well enough, we can go visit them."
 
Fioda stirred at Amisra's touch, but she didn't move beyond opening her eyes and staring up at the ceiling.

Her chest hurt.

The light irritated her.

She closed her eyes again and listened. Bed, gown - some old human man who knew the two lapdogs. Fioda took a slow, deep breath, and found that the ache was core-deep. She could move her hands, her arms - but sitting up was still a chore. One of the nurses had tied her hair aside, so she took the opportunity to start loosely braiding it as she observed the other two and the human.

The human with magic.

Fioda suddenly wanted to contact her handler and ask a metric shit-ton of questions, but even as that occurred to her, she knew they would go largely unanswered. She didn't need her hand held to figure out what had just happened; they had been shot full of real magic, and so had the priests. No wonder they went mad. Fioda had felt she was going mad, too. But it made sense in a convoluted and twisted way, and that's what the Black House dealt with. Webs within webs, plots within plots, all culminating in humanity's downfall.

In the macrocosm, anyway. In microcosm, she was probably just some sort of guinea pig. In microcosm, a human being could touch magic.

Rage rose up and choked her for a moment, but she breathed hard through her nose and tamped it down. She was in no condition to do anything about anything, in the middle of a hospital with her heart on a monitor.

"They probably saw something, too. The priests, I mean."

She finished her braid and tied it off with the hairtie the nurse had used to gather her hair in the first place.

"They probably know what happened and why."
 
Having finished their morning stretches(Always a good habit to do) Vita looked over at Fioda.

“W E L L T H E N. Why don’t we pay them a visit”

They said with a smile that was intended to be comforting. It wasn’t a good attempt.
 
Idly watching as her battery was changed, Amisra noted several pieces were falling into place, but they only made more questions than they answered.

"I surmise the truth rests with their own visions, or just as likely, their minds have been inundated with everything and everything," the redheaded replied to Fioda. "They may be our only lead, but another issue perplexes me." Her fey gaze fell on Vita, held on him like an emerald spotlight. "You seem to be 'taking this' very well, having become as your people say, 'a wizard' now," she smiled ever so slightly. Reaching out into her heart of hearts had inadvertently drained the nearest source of energy to perhaps substitute for mana...but did she dare...assume what this meant?
 
The Aos Si and the lone human were allowed to get dressed, then given maglocks to steady themselves in the low, moon gravity. The hallways in the hospital were short, wide, and clean, lit with white light, colorful paintings dotting the walls, to raise the spirits of both doctor and patient. As a hired bodyguard, Fioda was given a set of black Hanfu, a pair of polarized glasses, and her firearm returned to her. It soon became apparent why the Aos Si was allowed back to her duties so soon, as soon as the group exited the sliding airlocks of the hospital.

"Outside" had a higher ceiling, but it was readily apparent that they were underground in the city-station. Two lanes of subways took the center of the cavern, a pedestrian tunnel allowing for safe passage to the other side. The rest of the cavern was granted to pedestrians and wheeled users. Dug into the walls were various establishments labeled with signs. The ceiling was plastered with screens that showed a false sky, simulating a day night cycle for the residents.

Six reporters and their camera drones accosted the group as they made their way to their shuttle. "Ms. Yvresse, Central News Broadcasting, how will your injury affect your duties as CEO of New Age Technologies?"

"Mr. Hewyllys, Li Ming Network, the incident was captured live on Erinun TV. Given your position as a member of Parliament, how do you think it will affect Commonwealth relations with the UES?"

As public figures, Amisra and Gwaed were bombarded with questions, while Vita was left alone, but not for long. A reporter approached them, holding their data up to the pilot. "Mx. Wa Shua Li, could you comment on your experiences as the first recorded instance of human anomaly with Aos Si artifacts in HFR space, and one of few in the entirety of human space?" The Chinese reporter bungled Vita's last name, doing their best to pronounce it in the Mandarin dialect.
 
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Gwaed wished he had his sword, eyes moving around trying to find it as the others in the room theorized and discussed. Of course it wouldn't be in that hospital room. It was like being reunited with one's soul when he got it back, and he could think critically for a moment. He wasted exactly no time, before even leaving the hospital, to find the Professor once more. He told the old man everything he knew, particularly that the pacemakers would serve only as minute batteries for their heartstones, just as the machines had done to their suits' life support. They would need a better solution, or the removal of the pacemakers entirely.

And now he had to speak to the professional vultures, desperate to call themselves the voice of the people, and just as desperate to out do the other voices of their profession. He had little use for them, as he was not fond of playing the public relations game with the media as a tool of control and as a weapon against one's enemies. Honestly, how he wished in the moment to pus past them entirely, but he would not leave Amisra to battle their questions alone, adept as she was at playing their game.

He was lucky he was hot. It really did make these things easier. Maybe in his own way, his upcoming slight venom would make her proud. Putting on a smile and an understanding mask, he began. "As you've mentioned, this incident was broadcast with intent to serve as a cultural landmark between our two peoples, possibly to lead to further collaboration in future. I still hold such hopes even now, despite the accident suffered by all present. I know the UES would not deign to believe foul play could occur at an event that they insisted upon."
 
Fioda had a nice, nondescript, but very businesslike hanfu, a pair of sunglasses, and the appropriate attitude. This was, more or less, the actual and legitimate job of a bodyguard.

She started to step forward and clear the path, physically if it proved necessary - her chest ached, but Fioda suspected, for no reason she could precisely name, that the pacemaker was temporary and unnecessary despite all medical knowledge to the contrary - but Gwaed started talking. They had been caught, it seemed, and if they wanted unstuck she would have to get them to shut it and move.

This was, distinctly, not her job. If they wanted to talk, they'd talk. She folded her hands at her waist and became background, scanning the crowd.

What for?

She eyed the media from behind her sunglasses, wondering if they were the sort to give her extra information, or not. She adjusted them and searched for the telltale signs of electronic controls. If they were, well, she had some searching to do with them until these two decided they got tired of answering questions.
 
Having recently been informed that they where indeed a WIZARD, Vita was a bit in wonderland. Being incredibly excited about it and also trying to figure out the best way to tell their family back home “I told you so”. Or even figure out how to get magic working for them. Like fireballs and other cool stuff like that. They would not notice any of the reporters immediately, having put their fingertips together and looking with a terrifying expression to themselves.
 
"Mx. Wa Shua Li?" The reporter pressed Vita again, increasingly confident in their mispronunciations.

Meanwhile, Fioda's sunglasses lit up in the top right corner with a screen. Tiny cameras mounted on the upper portion of the composite frame scanned her retinae, the screen displaying access granted via a blue checkmark surrounded by a circle, before bringing Fioda to a panel of icons that she could interact with just by looking at them.

A message overwhelmed them though in a black box.

Mission successful. Payment will be incrementally transferred to your account. Schedule contact at your residence. There is much to discuss.
Click to expand...
 
Fioda nudged the sunglasses up a bit higher on her nose.

Answers awaited, and probably an equally vague number of questions with them - when she had the time. At least that was something. Using the sunglasses like regular sunglasses, now, she scanned the crowd and found her attention drawn to the reporter bothering the human. Stepping forward, Fioda interposed herself, keeping her hands inside the hanfu's sleeves as she motioned just close enough to the reporters to indicate that she could, in fact, bodily make her way through them if she chose to do so.

They would speak with the priests. Then, she would go back to her quarters and speak with the Black House.

But first.

"Further questions through official channels. Clear a path."
 
Fioda and the other escorts shoved pasted the small crowd of reporters, opening the way for the group to their shuttles. The few minutes through the underground section of the station-city was uneventful, until they arrived at the mental health hospital. More sterilized, white hallways. More paintings with colorful imagery to maintain the sanity of the health workers, and what's left of it of the patients.

A doctor led a group to a series of locked doors, each of them mounted with a plexiglass window. Inside, all the surfaces were completely cushioned for the patients, the Erinun Aos Si, all wrapped up in straight jackets, huddled up in corners, their eyes blank, completely motionless except for the bare minimum of breathing, drooling, muttering in ancient languages.

The interpreter, Aithlin, winced at the sight of his people in this sorry state. "So this is what happens when one strays too close to what our ancestors left behind. We should consider ourselves lucky."

The doctor explained, "They've been like this after their initial frenzy of writing, drawing, and ramblings. Just talking to themselves. They won't respond to anything. We have to force feed them liquid food and water to keep them healthy."
 
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