Chapter 239: Chapter 239: The Second Call
Chapter 239: The Second Call
Draven stood in the underground war room of Bastion Seven.
Lord Commander Helion Goldmane sat across the heavy iron table. Draven had promised weeks ago not to conduct massive foreign policy operations without the Lord Commander in the room.
He was keeping his word.
BZZT.
A small, flawless black communication crystal rested on the tactical map. It pulsed with a dull, steady light.
It was Elder Isolde Renwick.
Draven activated the crystal. He expected the dry, calculating voice of a Capital pragmatist. He expected the same sharp wit she had used to demand Earl Grey tea during their first conversation.
"The Hawks are broken," Isolde’s voice filled the cold room.
There was no humor. She sounded heavy, tired, and deeply rattled. She had spent the last three days watching the only honest General in the Capital forget to save his own country.
"Report," Draven ordered simply.
"General Hadrian Kest reviewed his own deployment roster," Isolde began. "Someone used his personal clearance code to embed two Cult of the Eclipse operatives into his Dead Zone strike team. Kest confronted the man who did it."
Isolde let the silence hang for a fraction of a second.
"It was Senator Aurelio Vast," she stated. "Vast admitted it. He told Kest he had brokered a pragmatic supply line with the Cult to eliminate a rogue Bastion."
Helion’s golden eyes narrowed slightly. A Capital Senator running Cult operatives was not a rogue element. It was institutional rot.
"Kest refused the logic," Isolde continued. "He threatened to take the file to the full Senate and hang Vast for treason. I watched him leave the office."
"And?" Draven pressed.
"He never filed it," Isolde whispered.
"Why?"
"Because he is infected," Isolde said, the horror bleeding into her tone. "I watched him walk down the grand staircase. He stopped. His posture physically deflated. He went from a furious General to an exhausted, compliant clerk in two seconds. A parasite overwrote his mind, and he does not even know it."
Draven looked at the crystal. She had given him the entire picture. But he knew exactly what she was missing.
"You cannot prove a single word of that," Draven noted coldly.
"No," Isolde admitted. "My entire case rests on watching a man’s posture change on a staircase. There is no magical test for a high-tier Cult parasite that leaves no trace. Kest himself would deny it under oath."
"Then let me give you the rest of the picture," Draven said.
It was time to spend the thing he had been holding since the night they dragged that priest off the plain.
Draven looked at Helion. The Lord Commander gave a single nod.
"When we captured the Cult Priest in the Dead Zone," Draven told the Capital Elder, "I interrogated him. He confessed that his men were walked right past your border guards. He said they were operating on Capital procurement paper."
Draven leaned closer to the crystal.
"He specifically said, ’The man who holds the door is one of yours. He simply prefers us.’"
"That was not in the broadcast."
"No. Helion cut it. He had a confession and no name to attach to it, and he was not going to hand this continent a lie to hang somebody with."
A sharp intake of breath hissed through the speaker.
Isolde had just received independent confirmation from the other side of the transaction. Draven had the Cultist’s confession. She had the Senator’s confession.
"Senator Vast is the door," Isolde breathed.
"He is," Draven agreed. "And you still do not have a usable weapon against him."
Silence fell over the connection again.
Together, they possessed the absolute truth. And they could do nothing with it. Isolde’s testimony was a woman describing a man’s posture. Draven’s testimony was a confession extracted under torture in a seceded Bastion.
Senator Vast would survive both accusations without a scratch.
"I need proof," Isolde said firmly. "I need undeniable proof that General Kest is carrying a Cult parasite. I need you."
"Me?" Draven asked.
"You pulled a Treachery-Fiend out of a living man with your bare hands in Bastion Six," Isolde reasoned.
"You know exactly what the parasite’s mana signature feels like. If you come to Bastion One, you can identify it."
Draven closed his eyes.
He could. [Tactical Appraisal] could read a parasite flawlessly at conversational distance. He could walk into the Capital and identify the rot immediately.
But it required him to stand in the same room as Hadrian Kest, deep inside enemy territory.
"I cannot leave," Draven refused.
"Draven, a compromised Hawk is running the blockade against your city," Isolde argued.
"And my city has seventeen days of food left," Draven shot back. His voice was freezing. "We have a forty-eight day famine gap. Every single clearing tower has to fire on schedule. Every single black-market convoy has to arrive. There is zero slack left on the board."
Draven opened his eyes. He registered the bitter irony. He was the one who kept telling Helion to leave the city to fight the Kings. Now, Draven was trapped behind the exact same logistical wall. The machine he had built could not run without him holding the levers.
"I cannot leave Bastion Seven," Draven finalized.
"Then Vast wins," Isolde said quietly.
"I did not say I would not help," Draven corrected. "I said I cannot leave. I will send Nyx."
Helion raised an eyebrow, but he did not object.
"Your assassin?" Isolde asked.
"She bypassed a Level 200 artifact shield by walking through a diplomat’s own shadow," Draven stated. "She took out seven hardened mercenaries without making a sound. She can infiltrate the Senate."
"But she cannot read a parasite," Isolde pointed out logically. "Only you can do that."
"So we compromise," Draven planned. "Nyx goes to observe and mark. You find a way to get General Kest close enough to a sensory relay or a visual medium that I can scan through. We deal with the infiltration when the famine is stabilized."
"A delayed operation," Isolde noted.
"It is the only operation you are going to get," Draven replied.
"I have a price," Isolde warned softly.
Draven remembered their last conversation. She had asked him to promise that Bastion Seven would not launch a retaliatory strike, and he had flatly refused.
"Name it," Draven said.
"If General Kest is infected," Isolde said, her voice heavy with the terrible reality of war, "I want him saved. I do not want him killed. He is an honest man. He does not deserve to die for a Senator’s treason."
Draven did not answer immediately.
He had extracted one high-tier parasite successfully, in Bastion Six, with his bare hands. The man had nearly died on the floor while he did it.
"I can try," Draven answered honestly and coldly. "But the survival rate is terrible. The one man I have done this to nearly died on the floor while I worked, and he was a great deal younger than your General. Ripping a parasite out of Kest’s spine will likely leave him dead or permanently crippled."
He did not offer false hope.
"I accept those odds," Isolde finalized. "Because the alternative is leaving a compromised general to run a war that kills us all."
"Then the deal is struck," Draven said.
The crystal went dark. The communication severed.
Draven stood in the war room, staring at the empty black stone. He had just committed Nyx to an infiltration mission inside the enemy Capital.
He picked up the crystal and slid it into his coat.
"We hold Nyx here until the winter wheat is seeded," Draven told Helion.
Helion nodded slowly. The logistics demanded it.
The trap was fully set. The pieces were on the board. The Ghost Protocol was nearly finished.
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