Rough Divide
Indecision warred on Arvina’s face, the wolfborn struggling to choose which battle was more-important to her. Certainly, she could elect to race to the rabbit’s aid in realspace, but her playing ability in UltraCraft would suffer as a result, or even become outright impossible; the endless waves of Grief would not allow a half-measure, and the invasion of Velody was a fight they needed to win for the sake of preserving World 2.
Thankfully, Lacey was there to support her owner.
“Go,” she said sternly, fixing the wolfborn with a serious expression, before aiming it at Herdsplitter in turn. “Both of you.”
“Lacey,” Arvina snapped back, her brow creased in concern. “I can’t just leave you in the middle of this.”
“We can take care of Bunny here,” the mini-cow insisted, sliding over to replace the kneeling wolfborn. Carefully, she helped her owner transfer V’s head to her lap, allowing a comfortable pillow for the mewling bunnygirl. “You need to leave, now.”
“M’ fine,” V muttered, trying to rise; the bimbo’s forceful hands on her shoulders held her down, preventing her ill-advised maneuvering.
All around her, the battle raged on, the vanguard arranged in a protective wall to shield V and Lacey. The lack of forward momentum had only made them a better target for the Grief, the monsters that had lagged behind finally able to catch up to the stationary target. Still, Naomi and the Claws fought alongside the vanguard soldiers with an unrivaled determination, preventing the tide from escaping behind their line.
“What’s going on?” Genevieve shouted distractedly over her shoulder, engaging herself in holding back the swarm of red-black creatures away from the fallen Herald.
“A minor change in strategy,” Herdsplitter answered back, seeking to keep her allies from asking too many complicated questions. “The Wolf Lord and I must see to an urgent development.”
“Where even are you?” Arvina snapped at her littermate, her hackles raised by the threat to her girlfriend. “You said you'd be watching her.”
“And I am,” the other wolf snarled, undaunted. “There were … sensitive matters that required my direct attention.”
“Then you might as well stay here,” Arvina returned viciously, glowering back at her. “I'll take care of her myself, if it's so inconvenient for you.”
“You may be closer,” Herdsplitter growled aggressively, “but I am leaving just the same. The Herald of Twilight is essential to our cause, and this fight is meaningless without her ⸻ and by now you should've realized why you won't salvage her without me.”
Before her littermate could argue any further, Lady Bloodwolf produced a small, crystalline cube from her inventory; crushing it in her hand, she faded away in sparks of light, teleported to somewhere else.
“Goddamnit,” Arvina swore, searching her own inventory for a similar item. Clutching it in her fist, she called out to her allies. “Naomi, you’re in charge of Bunny while I’m gone. Do whatever Caper tells you to, and don’t let a single Grief near her or Lacey.”
“Right!” the buff cowgirl replied, bringing her monolithic hammer down onto the skull of one of the chittering creatures. “We’ll keep them safe.”
As the wolfborn disappeared in the same manner as her littermate, Caper knelt down next to Lacey. Most of the smaller girl’s combat power was inside her towering dual automatons, leaving her free to fix problems (or, more likely, cause them) with her own two hands; a worried expression creasing the lines of her face, she gave V a once-over as well.
“Is it safe to move her?” she questioned, more to simply voice the concern than in an expectation of an answer.
“She hasn’t suffered any physical wounds, so it’s probably okay,” Lacey reasoned, drawing what conjecture she could from the limited information available, obscuring her diagnosis to hide the fact that V wasn’t actually an NPC. “I don’t know how bad her, um … ⸻ her status is, though.”
“Is she like, hexed or something?” Caper tried, searching for an in-game reason as to why the Herald had so suddenly collapsed.
The conversation slipped further and further away from V, her perception blurring under the disorienting pain of her stack collapsing. Holding onto a single thought was difficult, but not impossible, her mind barely capable of focusing as it was overwhelmed with sensory input that it was now struggling to process. High-traffic pathways were closing off at an alarming rate, and the elasticity of the system ⸻ as well as V’s physical brain itself ⸻ had trouble compensating despite trying its best to do so. Still, the fact that she hadn’t simply faded from existence was proof of something important: whoever was trying to kill her was doing so in a controlled manner. If the goal had been to simply assassinate V, it would’ve been as simple as turning off the power and unplugging the backup generator; the fact that she was conscious of the damage to her neural net meant that someone was sabotaging her instead.
Vaguely aware of the sensation of being carried (though unable to discern if it was in realspace or UltraCraft), V queried her stack, working through the incredible agony assaulting her to try to assess the damage in real time. The results didn’t exactly shock her, but they were still unpleasant to contemplate.
Clearly, her attackers had been briefed on how “V” worked, but the finer details had evidently eluded them. While the lattice used a great number of common servers to manage her short-term and working memories, each persona core was mostly separate to their own dedicated racks. For now, the damage was localized to those systems, with other pieces of her brain largely caught in the crossfire due to proximity. If she had to guess, someone was taking an axe (figuratively, or maybe even literally) to the entire rack based on its position inside the basement, likely seeking to excise the persona cores rather than simply killing V outright.
She could only think of one reason why someone would both bother to do so, while also having such a limited working-understanding of what should be a secret and unintelligible mess to the outside observer.
Annoyingly-enough, he was more than happy to announce himself.
At some point in time, the party had moved to a cluster of taller buildings, finding themselves trapped inside a T-shaped alleyway. While Grief assaulted them from two sides, the third was blocked by a number of heavily-armored soldiers, playing bodyguard for one of the most insufferable men V had ever had the displeasure of knowing.
“Surprise, bitch!” Vincent cackled, safe behind his iron wall of hired hands. “I hope they’re not ripping you up too badly in there, V, since I still need to use that garbage heap when they’re done.”
The lack of red-black jaws snapping at his heels suggested that whatever power had allowed Genevieve to aim the Grief, now belonged to Vincent instead. Content to let the party deal with the encroaching monsters, the sorcerer and his guards held back, exploiting the fact that the Claws now lacked their primary ranged attacker.
Closing herself off from as much of her realspace body as she could, V focused on puppeting the Herald of Twilight. The pounding headache never went away, but it became much-less debilitating when filtered through her RealDimension equipment; though she didn’t have as much command of her neural net as she once did, the physical damage had the helpful side-effect of circumventing some of the “lock” that UltraCraft had imposed on the self-manipulation of her cognitive processes. Concentrating as much of herself as she could inside her RealDimension mirror, she was finally glad that the game had entangled her with the Herald of Twilight’s saved data; whatever copy of her that existed on UltraCraft’s servers was evidently untouched by the realspace attack, allowing her bunny-body to move properly.
Glancing around, she took stock of the situation; the vanguard soldiers were no longer present, and both Alex and Dark were missing. Caper and Genevieve were holding off the Grief that stumbled over each other in the enclosed space, while Naomi shielded Lacey and the fallen bunnygirl with her bulk. Overall, it wasn’t the best circumstances, but it could’ve been worse: Victoria had always been much-more lethal than her partner.
Standing on unsteady feet, severed from herself, the Herald of Twilight faced down her hated foe.
“Naomi, sweetheart,” she growled, holding out her hand as she glowered at the gloating wizard. “Can I borrow your hammer?”
Caught-up in his villainous monologuing, Vincent barely paid any attention to the bunnygirl’s movements. “Just give up, V! If you turn yourself over right now, I promise I’ll let your little friends walk out of here unharmed.” Cackling to himself with a private humor, he fixed Lacey with a disgusting leer. “Mostly unharmed.”
Gingerly accepting the massive warhammer from the cowgirl, V turned her attention to the mini-cow instead. “Do you still have your daily-use skill?”
“Of course,” Lacey answered, looking absolutely clueless (which was, of course, something of her default expression). “What for?”
“When I give the signal,” she began, outlining her plan as she tested the heft of the weighty weapon, “can you command the soldiers?”
“I can try,” the other girl hedged, still fixating on the bunnygirl’s well-being. “I don’t know if you should be moving around, though.”
“I’ll be fine,” V insisted, waving her off. “Just give me a little bit of room.”
Annoyed at being ignored, Vincent raised his voice, as though shouting would make V care about anything he had to say. “Whatever it is you’re plotting won’t work!” he yelled at the small group, frustrated that they seemed to regard him as inconsequential. “I’ve seen your character stats. There’s no way you’re going to be able to take me head-on, and certainly not without an axe.” Even still, he began readying a spell anyway, just in case V decided to do something stupid like charge his shield wall. “It’s time to face facts, V! You owe me that body. Contests are always about deciding who’s the better man, and I’m a better man than you’ll ever be.”
“Finally,” V shot back, a wide grin spreading across her features, “something we can actually agree on!”
Taking a handful of short steps forward, she pivoted on her heel, spinning in a tight circle, generating momentum. Whipping her arms around in a controlled arc, she sent the enormous blunt weapon whistling down the alleyway at incredible speed. Passing over the mesmerized guards, it crashed through its target with all the power that V’s ridiculous Strength could provide.
Reduced to half-ragdoll, half-gory mist, whatever was left of Vincent slumped into a heap in the alleyway as Naomi’s hammer continued well past, eventually slamming to a stop in the stone wall of another building.
Left nauseous from the sudden exertion, V collapsed onto her knees, reeling from the sharp sensation of her headache.
“That was a pretty good shot,” Naomi muttered, evidently worried about the durability damage her weapon had taken.
“It won’t keep him for long,” Lacey cautioned, gently petting the rabbit’s back in long, slow strokes.
“That’s fine,” V mumbled, battling against a feeling of vertigo. “Arvina will take care of him.” Putting an arm around the mini-cow’s shoulders, the bunnygirl leaned on her for support. “Somebody get me my standard; I have a war to stop.”
The battle to the steps of the castle wasn’t easy, but Genevieve capitalized on Lacey’s charms, adding the mesmerized guards to their forces. Though the Matriarch’s defenses had been prepared against the tide of Grief, Mordax’s imposing presence shook the will of the less-dedicated defenders, who were more than willing to rally behind the banner of the Herald and the commanding aura of the Champion of Velody.
Despite having limped her way to the castle itself, half-carried by either Naomi or Genevieve, V drew herself up to her full height as she entered the court; straight-backed, she strode confidently under her own power, albeit at a measured pace.
All around her, citizens of Velody huddled in fear and concern, the mass of evacuees packed in so tightly that only a narrow path lead to the Matriarch; the Maidens lined the walkway, casting apprehensive glances at V, protecting the cowering rabbits with their bodies.
The throne of Velody was left empty, though the Matriarch stood in front of it, the empty shell of V’s mother close beside her. Glaring down the approaching party, the stately woman seemed unintimidated by the soldiers entering her court.
Her awareness of her surroundings dwindling as more and more of her stack collapsed in on itself, V stayed cognizant enough to deliver what must have been a compelling speech; calling on decades of experience as a well-practiced entertainer and charlatan, the necessary words came naturally to her, boosted further by the innocent charm of her clever little cow. For her part, V retained none of what she had said, but it didn’t matter anyway: the important thing was that the barrier was returned to full power, and the Champion of Velody assumed command of the city’s administration.
Perhaps not everyone was reassured by the change in leadership, but the chance to return to their homes was greatly welcomed, though not so much the wolfborn soldiers from Rampart and the Broken Wastes. Still, with only a few weeks of simulated Velodian civilization time to work with, the narrative AI extrapolated from the city’s leadership when referencing the attitudes of the general populace, which meant that things were mostly okay. The Matriarch herself was placed under indefinite house arrest, confined to one wing of the castle, while still allowed to continue tending to her sister.
Filling in for the Wolf Lord in Arvina’s absence, Moonfang agreeably established a portion of the forces of Rampart inside the walls of Velody, housed within the armory and the temple of the Herald. Now that Genevieve had taken command, the meeting in court between the Intercessor and the bandit-queen was no longer theater as the question of the city’s indemnity was discussed.
V, of course, was involved in none of the proceedings. As soon as she had made her case, she was ferried back to her temple where Kariss encouraged her to convalesce in her chambers; though the bunny-boy likely would’ve preferred to focus all his attention on ensuring the Herald actually rested, he was soon involved in the process of preparing the Lunar Cry.
Awaiting her death, V lounged in her boudoir as her mind slowly warped and twisted, struggling to repair itself.
