I got out my working mobile and wrote a text to Knighthawk. Hey. I’ve got a mobile with a broken screen here. Battery is in though. Can you still track it?
He didn’t respond immediately.
“Let’s assume that I can discover Prof’s weakness,” I said. “Where do we go from there?”
“Hard to say,” Abraham answered. He was carefully watching everyone else on the street as we made our way down it. “The nature of the weakness often defines the plan’s shape. It could take months to perfect the right approach.”
“I strongly doubt that we have months,” I said.
“I agree,” Abraham said. “Prof has plots of his own, and he’s been here for weeks already. We don’t know why he is here, but we certainly don’t want to wait around and see. We need to stop him quickly.”
“Besides,” I added, “the longer we wait, the greater the chance Prof will notice us.”
“I think you’re trying to do things backward, lad,” Cody said, shaking his head. “We can’t plot anything without the weakness.”
“Though perhaps—” Abraham started.
I looked at him.
“We do have something of a trump card,” he said, nodding toward Megan. “We have a team member who can make anything real. Perhaps we can begin planning a trap, with the assumption that whatever he fears, Megan can create it.”
“That’s a leap,” Mizzy said. “What if he fears…I don’t know, a sentient taco.”
“I could probably make that,” Megan said.
“Okay, fine. What if he fears being afraid? Or being proven wrong? Or something else abstract? Don’t a lot of weaknesses come from things like that?”
Mizzy was right. The rest of us fell silent. We passed an old fast-food place on the left, crafted from a beautiful shade of blue salt. More of this region slowly bled to that color as we walked. I didn’t lead us anywhere in particular yet; we’d want to do some intel gathering later today, which was standard Reckoner protocol after securing a base. For now, I wanted to be out, to be moving. Walking, talking, thinking.
My mobile buzzed.
Sorry, Knighthawk said. Was taking a koala. What’s this about another mobile?
You said you could track mobiles, I wrote to him. Well, I’ve got a broken one here. Can you pinpoint it?
Leave it somewhere, he wrote, then move on. Your signals are all too close together.
I did what he said, setting the mobile on an old trash can and leading the others off a ways.
Yeah, that one is working enough to send a signal, he wrote. Why?
I’ll tell you in a bit, I sent, jogging back to get the broken phone. From there I turned the team left, heading down a larger street. Some of the salt signs hanging above us had already been knocked down and broken, even though we were in the part of the city that was freshly grown.
“All right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “We can’t talk specifics about fighting Prof until we get the weakness, but there are still things to plan. For example, we need to figure out how to get him to face his fear, not run from it.”
“In my case,” Megan said, hands in her jacket pockets, “I had to enter a burning building to try to save you, David. That meant I had to be sane enough, away from the powers long enough, that I wanted to save you.”
“That’s not a lot to go on,” Mizzy said. “I don’t mean to be negative, but maaaan, don’t you think we’re leaning too much on what happened to one person?”
I remained silent. I hadn’t talked to anyone but Megan about it, but something similar had happened to me. I had been…granted Epic powers by Regalia. It had something to do with Calamity, and her relationship with him had allowed her to assert that I would become an Epic.
Those powers hadn’t ever manifested. Right before that moment, I’d faced the depths of the waters in an attempt to get out and save Megan and the team. There was a connection there. Face your fears. And…what? For Megan, it had meant some control over the darkness. For me, it had made the powers never manifest in the first place.
“We should get more data,” I admitted. “Cody, I still want to talk to Edmund.”
“You think he went through the same thing?”
“It’s worth asking.”
“We’ve got him hidden away in a safehouse outside Newcago,” Cody said. “A place we set up after you and Prof left. I’ll get you in touch with him.”
I nodded, and we continued in silence. If nothing else, this meeting had helped me define my goals for Ildithia. Step one, find Prof’s weakness. Step two, use it to negate his powers long enough for him to come to his senses. Step three, contrive a way that he has to confront and overcome that weakness.
We turned another corner and then pulled to a stop. I’d been intending to wind us around toward the outer sections of town, but the path in front of us was blocked off. It must have taken a great deal of effort to move the barricade of metal chains and posts every week, but judging by the men atop the building beyond—armed with wicked-looking rifles—this force had plenty of manpower.
As a group, without needing to say a word, we turned and walked the other way. “Epic stronghold,” Cody guessed. “Someone Prof has already subdued, or a neutral party?”
“That’s probably Loophole’s place,” Abraham said, thoughtful. “She was always one of the most powerful Epics in the city.”
“Size-manipulation powers, right?” I asked.
Abraham nodded. “Don’t know how she fell into the conflict between Prof and Larcener.”
“Look into it,” I told him. But this raised another issue. “We might want a plan to deal with Larcener. I don’t want to get so focused on Prof that we ignore the turf war in Ildithia.”
“Well,” Mizzy said, “if only we had access to someone with a freakishly large repository of knowledge about Epics, and who can’t help but tell us about them. Like, all the time.”
“Well, it is my thang.”
“What did I tell you about that word, David?”
I smiled. “Larcener. By all reports, he was a teenager when Calamity rose—maybe even a kid. One of the youngest High Epics, he’s probably in his early twenties right now. He’s tall, with dark hair and pale skin; I’ll send a photo to your mobiles when we get back. I have a couple good shots of him in my notes.
“He steals powers, and keeps them. All he has to do is touch someone, and he can take their powers. One of the reasons he’s so dangerous is that it’s impossible to tell what abilities he has, as he has likely never ma
nifested them all. Prime invincibilities include danger sense, impervious skin, regeneration, and now the ability to project his consciousness and powers into a fake body.”
Cody let out a long, soft whistle. “That’s…quite the list.”
“He can also fly, transform objects to salt, manipulate heat and cold, conjure objects at will, and put people to sleep with a touch,” I added. “By all accounts, he’s also incredibly lazy. He could be the most dangerous Epic alive—but he doesn’t seem to care. He stays here, rules Ildithia, and doesn’t bother others unless he has to.”
“His weakness?” Megan said.
“I’ve got no idea,” I replied as we reached the edge of town. “Everything I know about him is limited to a few widely accepted—but far too general—reports. He’s lazy, which we can probably use. He also is reportedly slow to steal new powers; he finds it easier to let Epics who serve him keep their abilities, since they can do the hard work for him. It’s said he hasn’t taken a new power in years, which was why I was surprised to find he’d absorbed Dead Drop’s abilities.”
Abraham grunted. “I’d still rather have an idea of his weakness.”
“Agreed,” I said. “We should do some intel gathering. Today, if possible. I’d rather not fight Larcener if we can avoid it, but I’d like to have a plan anyway.”
We walked on, passing buildings that were still growing stumps. They kind of looked like teeth. Giant, lumpy teeth. Beyond those, people worked the fields. Conflicts between Epics in the city didn’t change the workers’ routine: harvest the grain, give it to whoever ended up in charge. Avoid starving.
The others gave me confused looks as I settled in here to wait, checking my mobile.
You sure it’s today? I typed.
The delivery? Knighthawk asked. That’s what the mobiles said. I don’t know why they’d lie.
Sure enough, a caravan of trucks soon approached, laden with goods ordered from UTC’s trading network. I wasn’t certain if Terms herself would be in attendance and—though it pained me, since I wanted to see her powers work—I knew I probably shouldn’t try to catch a glimpse. I did, however, spot the same overseer from a few days ago, when we’d first entered.