Slumrat Rising

I have been using my brain too much.

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No, I mean, thank you for being less of an asshole, but no, I mean, I need to be more direct. I have stirred the pot here and there, but it’s time to add more serious teeth to the threat my imaginary mastermind presents. Stop moving pieces around; start taking them off the board. Draw out bigger hitters from Starbrite rather than getting Level One and Two rookies moved around.

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The Four Seas Bank has a regional branch here- I’m thinking of a smash and grab again, but this time making a point of targeting the high-level managers and security. Also targeting any bank records we can reach, popping open the vault if we can, the whole bit.

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Yeah, I’m going to cheat. Most of what we want is chaos and killing. So, having just spent some quality time in Siphios…

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Yup. Also, while I want to shoot for as much success as possible, I’m planning for failure.

I know.

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Truth struggled to activate the scales portion of Incisive. It was a little hurtful that, apparently, it was a stretch to think he might be a senior manager from out of town on an inspection visit. Which okay, he was young, but come on! Was it more believable that he was the ruthless heir to some ancient hidden family than a goddamn white-collar prick from the internal audit team?

Apparently, yes, it was. He banged his head against it for a while, trying to find some version of the identity that wouldn’t cost an exorbitant amount of energy to run. It slowly dawned on him that while he had seen loads of guys in their twenties on management tracks, skids generously greased by nepotism, he had never seen a senior manager who was less than fifty. “Arrogant young master” was a comparatively easy lift against the reality of gerontocracy. And given that a working life could easily stretch into your ninth decade for the decently leveled, a senior manager at fifty could be said to be a stunning high flier.

There was no trouble seeing him as a member of security, however. Effortless, in fact. He tried not to be salty about that. He didn’t expect many people to see him at all, or certainly not for long, but he wanted to be prepared. He prepped his summoning talismans, bought a gray hat and a gray shirt to go with his gray pants, and walked right into the marble-floored lobby of the Gwaju Branch of the Four Seas Bank.

The bank branch was “tastefully” designed to look exactly like every other damn branch, with an added abstract statute of a fish to “Recognize the city’s historic connection with the sea.” Truth looked around and checked on an actual security guard. F-Tier drone. Barely Level One, with all the alert competence of a narcoleptic sloth.

On the one hand, he was probably going to kill this dweeb. On the other hand… it kind of felt bad. The energy expenditure to kill this guy versus the value of killing him would absolutely be a loss for Truth, and Truth was pretty sure he could kill him with a finger poke. Truth marked him down for collateral damage rather than an actual target. Little guy might just make it after all.

The uniforms were the same solid gray he remembered normal Starbrite Security wearing. He would pass well enough. Not like he was expecting this to go well. Truth sighed and turned away from the hundred-and-eighty-centimeter, hundred-and-five-kilo little person and turned towards the back of the bank. Amulet-controlled access to the elevators and to any rooms off the main floor. Naturally. He sighed again, snagged the card off Tiny, and went exploring.

First stop was the security control room. Easy enough to find- it was the usual bank of scry balls showing the dozens upon dozens of recording talismans coating the interior and exterior of the building. There was the hideously dense network of wards and spells designed to protect the vault from physical or magical intrusion, as well as heavy employee surveillance because there was no threat quite like an insider threat. Most of the employees were below C-Tier. Management had the system. The tellers did not. Nor did security.

Truth carefully looked over the densely inscribed control nodes. The amount of energy flowing into and through them made the hairs on the back of his arm rise up and a certain thrill run along his spine. Say what you like about the F-Tier drones of Starbrite Security; their commercial security division was absolutely top-notch. Redundancies upon redundancies, backups, shunts, independent power supplies, automatic lockdowns, it was a pure nightmare for invaders.

He pulled a three ring binder off the shelf, flipping to the evacuation procedures page. Found it. Naturally the executives wouldn’t be queueing up with everyone else. They got evacuated through a secure air bridge to a nearby office building. Literally looking down on the teeming employees below. Striding through the air on a bridge of pure magic.

Truth smiled gently. It was 9:15 AM. The office had been staffed for the last three hours, and even the most decadent of execs would have been at his desk by 8:00. He tapped the controls on a scryball. Yep. Badge check in showed full attendance, minus excused absences and business travel. He looked around the security center once again. A small armory was bolted to the back wall, needlers and a couple of non-lethal devices. Nothing too spicy. It would do.

Truth looked at the F-Tier security, sitting back and drinking their coffee while watching the surveillance. These nobodies couldn’t see him. Couldn’t perceive his touch. Already so unreal to him. But it felt bad. He shook his head, set a few talismans in place, then walked out of the heavily armored room.

There was a sudden white light. The lights in the building went off, and screaming alarms started bouncing off the wall. Truth walked back in, trying not to mind the gorey mess. Two small bombs, but the security room was far from totaled. Everyone was dead, a lot of the main systems were disconnected from the power or non-functional, but the vault was safe, and most of the control systems were functional. Credit to the commercial security division- they knew what really mattered.

Truth tossed a small duffel bag onto the floor. “Thrush. Time to work.”

“I have done more with less, Master. Give me but seven minutes, and all will be ready.”

Now let’s just see how well they practiced their- Sweet Praeger, already? Were they waiting for the bell or something?! He watched the branch managers, the executives, those mighty local divinities, pack up their things and form an orderly queue from their exquisitely decorated offices, down the plush carpeted hall, past the anodyne pictures of great cost and little value, and out to the roof deck. The floor security team was doing a great job of sweeping their needlers around and looking very tough while the floor captains did the actual useful work of deploying the bridge.

The glittering span snapped into life. It was an evacuation route- couldn’t have it deploy slowly. The talismans had their own stored supply of cosmic energy, enough to deploy the bridge and keep it up for a few minutes. Naturally, this was insufficient to evacuate a whole floor, so there was backup- triple redundant power supply channels running through some very sophisticated networks in the armored core of the bank. All of that, talisman, power, backups, the bridge itself, all of it, overseen by the security control room.

Truth waited until they were well over the wide street in front of the bank. Orderly strolling to the other building, where they would be met with coffee and answers. Chatting lightly with their peers or casually ignoring their lessers. The bridge wasn’t some custom creation. These bridges were used for pedestrian access all over. Any sane magical engineer would put in safeties, multiple redundant safeties, to ensure that power could never be discontinued while it was bearing a load. But this bridge was made by Starbrite and installed by Starbrite, and the commercial security division was very clear on what they needed to protect.

Truth tapped a button. There was a momentary silence. A few desperate, useless flashes of charms or spells. A brief shower of suits soaked the evacuating serfs below. Then it was over.

Truth found the file room security monitor and disabled the fire suppression systems. He disabled as much security around the vault as he could, but even the security center was limited in what it could do there.

Truth left the security room at a dead sprint, heading for the record office. Rows upon rows of steel file cabinets and banks upon banks of bound spirits. All the records of loans given and deposits taken. Stored contracts. Charters. Truth smiled nastily and called the Tongue to hand. He sprinted along the rows of cabinets, slicing them open like a knife scraping the head off a beer. The banks of bound spirits fared even worse, the blessing of the Sea of Brass compounding the power of the angelic blade. They were simply annihilated. Expunged from existence. Whatever wisdom and secrets they held were lost forever. He looped back towards the door, this time slicing lower. Having turned the room into a charnel house of paper, he tossed a couple of incendiary charms and left.

The vault was next. It sealed automatically in the event of a power cut, naturally. And… it was still sealed, despite his efforts from the control room. He tried to find an override but couldn’t. Nearly a meter thick and three meters tall, made of enchanted steel, it wasn’t moving. Nor could he use his usual trick of going through the wall next to the door- it was Starbrite PMC that taught him the trick in the first place. The whole thing was a steel box. He went to the backup- stacking as many cutting talismans as he could in one place and tried to drill through the locking mechanism.

This did not work.

It… very did not work.

Truth watched the vault door just absorb the energy and begin pulsing. Steel pooling like quicksilver under it, growing in size. Legs starting to form, already rising to a waist in a spare second. A liquid steel golem, three meters of pure slaughter. He had never seen one deployed. The energy and material cost was atrocious. You would only use them to defend a fixed position like a… bank vault.

It was just slightly possible that he had gotten a mite arrogant.

The steel giant’s hand turned into a long saber. Burning orange eyes opened in the mirror flat face. No need for a mouth. There was nothing to say, after all. The saber whipped down blindingly fast. Incisive screamed, and Truth listened, bolting backward. Chips of the polished marble floor exploded upwards, tearing open the heavy work clothes. The saber was rising before the stone flakes could bounce off Truth’s skin. Burning orange eyes fixed on him. No doubt, he was spotted.

Truth moved to attack, using his sword to push the saber past him as it came in, and then slicing down. Angelic steel screeched on the refined metal of mortals, leaving a long gash behind it. A gash that filled an eyeblink later. Truth swore and took distance.

“Thrush, now!”

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