The eastern continent wasn’t what I had expected. That wasn’t a very accurate way of putting things, as I had no expectations going in, but it still failed to meet my non-existent expectations. I knew there had to be some form of civilization going on, unless the activity I had noticed was someone skulking about– no one would be foolish enough to risk such a crime– but the utter lack of technology here was astounding.

All I had to work off of in my understanding of the eastern continent was our records from the inception of the projects, and the commentary essentially showed no real progress. They still seemed to be a collection of feudal city-states, minimally trading with the other nations. It was surprising so many were even standing with the stagnation present, but I suppose I could understand why, given the bio-weapon’s continued presence in the area. I wish I knew how those were still occurring, as all means of production for them were to have been shut down with the cessation of the project.

If the people were as underdeveloped as they still seemed and the bio-weapons were running about, it made sense that their continent had stagnated so much, but I didn’t understand how it could have come to this. It would merit more personal investigation.

I wove a veil of camouflage and gated outside one of the cities, confident that I could pass without being seen, the magic detection of the people likely woefully underdeveloped by my observations. There were no detection seals, no defensive formations– the city couldn’t be called defended by any measure back home. One attack by someone trained in siege magic would devastate this city in a heartbeat.

As such, I thought it would be easy to sneak up behind someone else being checked into the city when I was halted in my tracks. “Hey, you can’t just walk in unchecked,” the guard said, blocking my movement with his sturdy form.

He stared at where I was, even though it was as though his eyes were looking through me. “You… you can see me?” I stuttered, shocked at the competence this member of the guard was displaying. Maybe they weren’t as incompetent as they looked. I muttered a quick cantrip, searching for activity of a detection spell or something of that nature, but nothing was showing up.

“I don’t need to see you to sense you. You’re still exuding scents and sounds, you know. You have what, a chameleon’s beast soul? Camouflage doesn’t perfectly hide your presence if you know what to look for, and I have experience,” the guard crowed, looking all too proud at his accomplishment.

A chameleon beast soul? I couldn’t say I was exactly sure what that was, but that didn’t mean I had to agitate the guard. “It’s something like that,” I said, glad that my translation spell had been up ahead of time. If I had to run into the foreign language unprepared, that would have made things far too uncomfortable.

I dispelled my camouflage, given that it seemed to be worthless in the face of the guard’s senses. Perhaps things weren’t as pathetic as they seemed around here.

The guard let me pass on through, my appearance thankfully seeming in line with the fashion of the other city dwellers. That’s why one doesn’t rest all of their precautions in one methodology. It would have been nice to be out of sight the whole time, but given they can evidently pierce through my camouflage with unconventional methods, the next best thing was blending into their society.

It was strange that the seed villages that had been placed here ages ago had only developed so far, even with the bio-weapon’s presence. What was the cause of the stagnation? The bio-weapon program had been abandoned… wasn’t that a sign it wasn’t useful enough to continue researching? The files I had on the program were few and lacking meaningful detail, which made this all the more difficult to research the area.

With so much confusion lingering in my thoughts, I took a moment to observe the city, to try and get a feel for how things were on the eastern continent. Direct observation that could be recorded for further studying to compare against the records for the seed villages to compare the anthropological progression of the city states over the centuries. It wouldn’t be a fast process but it could very well be utilized for a thesis for an enterprising researcher… if only I didn’t have more important duties to attend to here. Such was the nature of work, always eroding at pleasure.

The flow was so odd compared to the cities back home. Urgency of the same kind was absent. Without any real commerce to attend, the streams of activity were filtered to singular spots, absent a multitude of options to diversify. It was a marvel that they called this loose conglomeration of people a city, compared to the spires and towers that littered the area I called home. This was the acclimation of centuries of effort, a sad monument to how little things had progressed.

I couldn’t get too lost in thought, as a pre-arranged alert went off from my background routines. I summoned them to the forefront, studying the results. What I read brought a smile to my face, the result I had been looking for already popping up.

I walked back over to the guards, unwilling to hide any longer as I needed to confirm from the locals what I would be running into. “Say, do you know of any gathering of people somewhere in that direction?”

I pointed opposite the city gate, staring off into the distance. The guard followed my gaze as it wound through the fecund swamp, the hazardous quagmire host to many dangers. “Through the swamp? Yeah, there’s supposed to be a city on the other side, but you’d have to travel for some time to get there. I wouldn’t know how to get there. You’d have to ask a merchant.”

Travel beyond cities had suffered that much. How strange.”Are the merchants better equipped to travel that distance?”

He stared at me with a crooked head, gaze trying to scrutinize the thoughts out of my sealed lips. “Well yes, they know the proper paths to take to minimize spike feeder attacks. What makes you even want to travel in that direction if you haven’t done so before?”

I widened my eyes, trying to refrain from showing too much shock. “Are you saying the attacks are common? I might be a bit… sheltered, but I heard of some possible business in that direction.”

“Lady, ‘sheltered’ might be a bit of an understatement. I don’t know what kind of world you’ve been living in but we’ve had more and more spike feeder attacks each year. Whatever kind of business you’d like to act on in that direction couldn’t be supported by our current channels of transportation. Even mercenaries wouldn’t be able to be bought into working in your service. The odds of running into an attack and coming out unmarred are unheard of.”

This was unthinkable. I understood how growth could have stagnated in the area, but the prevalence of the spike feeders– what they had to have colloquially called the bio-weapons– was absurd. The amount of them present here shouldn’t have been nearly so many. The production program should have shut down, and while they were long lived, that number should have decreased over time, not increased. This all but confirmed it.

Someone else was active in the eastern continent.

“Sorry, don’t mind me. I just realized how little I knew,” I said, my legs shaking underneath me. I slid against the stone wall, trying to weather the magnitude of the shock. This was unimaginable of. Those war weapons weren’t meant to persist like this. Not with all of the sacrifices that had been made to create the program, let alone to end it. I thought there were remnants, stray traces untouched by man, scarring the impoverished locals but this was far worse. This was a living crime. The mainland had to know about this. This was outside of the scope of the administrative access. That was a recent alert– whatever else had been working here had been more subtle, perhaps working outside of the preexisting channels. If it’s connected, then it would be worse than I thought.

“Are you alright, miss?” asked the guard, bending over. “You seemed so confident before with your camouflage but now you seem out of sorts. Is something the matter?”

“There’s a lot that’s the matter,” I grunted, “but it’s personal. Realized that my family is at risk due to our negligence. What I had thought I had known wasn’t the case, and it took the common sense of people like you to make it obvious. So thank you for that, but please, let me be. It’ll pass shortly thereafter.”

My breathing picked up, hyperventilation at the forefront as I tried to mediate my emotions back to a safe measure. Control was important. Control was the center. If I went out of control, the whole city would be at risk, and then that would mean the crucial information wouldn’t make it home. The first thing I needed to do was find some measure of composure lest I fell apart.

I focused on my breathing, counting each wisp of air passing through my lips. One, two, three, four. Like a dream coming to pass, the invitation of the lure of sleep, the calmness of mind meant to produce works arcane and unusual. If I was in control, I could interface with my programs once again and send out a message to my colleagues back home. They had to know.

While the guard had somehow broken through my camouflage, he seemingly hadn’t seen my other magic effects, meaning that I was in the clear to send a message out in the open. I composed a quick missive, implanting a copy of of the conversation for context and any other parting thoughts I had on the matter before initiating the program.

Message cannot be delivered

Excuse me, what? Why not? Why couldn’t I send my message? There shouldn’t be any restrictions back to my setup at home. I simulated the connection before departing for the eastern continent, my findings showing that while there would be a slight lag for distance, communication should not otherwise be impaired. There were a few explanations that could determine why my message failed. I had a poor connection, the destination I chose was no longer available, or my messages were being blocked by an external party.

This was easily troubleshooted. I ran a diagnostic routine, the results confirming my worst fear. My connection to the subroutines back home was still active. I hadn’t failed in my targeting. No, something was prohibiting my message from returning to the mainland. Whoever it was acting upon this continent had effectively cut me off, and I was unable to return until my scheduled gate. I was effectively moored here until I could come up with a spell to pierce whatever it was blocking all means of communications. Fuck.

The alternative being I took out whatever rogue agent that was active in these lands, given they were likely tethering the effect to themselves in case they needed to interact with the homeland. That didn’t make for much of a better option, but it was potentially faster than crying to crack through their spell encryption.

Everything… everything was wrong here. But I couldn’t get caught up in my despair. I had to confirm who that administrative user was. I had to find whoever was resurrecting old projects in the eastern continent. I had to break through and relay what I knew back home. Perhaps most importantly, I had to find some place to rest to call a home for this campaign. Panicking would do me no good. If I could find a proper base of operations, I could pivot around the expectations onto a new plan of procedure.

This was no longer solely business, this was personal. Whoever was responsible would pay. They were unearthing things better left dead. All of the blood that went into the bio-weapons project… we couldn’t absolve the sins of our fathers, but we could ensure they would never continue once again. Maybe if I moved fast enough I could prevent things from becoming worse.

But for now, I breathed deeply against the wall, trying to inhale any leaking emotions that threatened my stability. I was a rock. I was immutable. I could not be changed. I could not be altered. I would continue on until the job was done.