Session 29: Kisha and Everyone Who Stands Between Her and Death, Being Patient, Lightkeepers, Adsmir the Admin, Zippy the Lawyer, Tilvum the Other Admin Who is Probably Working For Kisha, Two Enemies in One

General Summary

There is only four days until GG’s trial and we are all sitting around with thumbs up asses, no idea what it is we should do.
No! This is not even true! I am knowing what to do – we must kill Kisha in most painful way possible! But how are we to be entering base to get to her? That is harder question! Others, they are not so certain that even we should be infiltrating base at all. They are worried it is suicide mission. Are you believing this shit? Completely fucking useless. So, I guess unless I am coming up with genius plan that can somehow convince others, then Kisha will just keep whispering in my head whenever it is she...
Fuck that! Thought of hearing her voice again at all, much less taunting me in my head… I cannot! If they will not go with me, then I will go in alone. How many missions have I soloed for fucking Academy? How many people have I killed without even the breathing hard? I have strolled into places that are being way more secure than this without the problems. The hit on Andreyev… well, I had help there, but little base of Kisha’s is fucking lemonade stand compared to that! I am assassin of Academy! I am cleric of Death God! Killing people is what I fucking do. Everything else is just little details.
But… and I am hating to admit this, even just here in little book full of scribblings, but it would be so much fucking faster with team behind me. Even if it is only these assholes. Even with delay while we play little game of being the detectives, it is faster. If I am working solo there will be scouting and logistics, and… fuck. It will take me weeks to put in place things so I can go in by myself.
So here is me sitting down with rest of them and sticking thumb way, way up my ass, as we all agree to send Skreek out to gather more information, hoping he will learn something that will give us way in.
Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!!!
She fucking tortured me! She stabbed me right in heart and killed me! She stole Mama’s ring from my finger… and there is nothing I can…
Ok, ok… you have made choice Belov. It is time to wait. You can wait. You are very good at waiting. Just few more days maybe. 
Just few more messages whispered in my…
Enough.
Here is Skreek, returning with report. He followed directions we got from guy back at warehouse and found very deep fjord, right where guy said it would be. Way at back of this fjord there are docks, training grounds with many drow, and big tower where it looks like they are doing who knows what. There are also many more drow and other peoples working around dock area. Skreek says there are two ships that are docked there. One of ships does not have any identifying marks he could see, but other one has flag, which grandfather recognizes as flag of gnomish trading house.
At opening of fjord, there are two “giants” (this is what Skreek calls them, but I have many doubts that Kisha has actual giants on payroll) who stand watch with ballista. It looks like they get to their watchpost by boat, and then they climb straight up cliff, where they can shoot down at anyone who is trying to come in.
Well, we are knowing more than we did before, but still there are no genius ideas on how to get in. So we ask Skreek to stay there for little bit more and continue to observe, while rest of us return to cove to get rest. We want to know if there is path up to ballistas other than just climbing straight up wall. Also, we are wondering, if there are boats that come in that do not belong to Kisha, how do “giants” know not to shoot at them? Is there some kind of signal they give when they approach?
Back at cove, before they let me sit for meditation, everyone yells at me to send message to GG. I will be honest, I do not give much of shit about GG right now either, but I send message like good little team player. “Where can we find Adsmir? What evidence is there against you? Who is testifying against you? Where were you arrested? Anything else?”
Immediately, he is responding, “Adsmir is my assistant. Maybe his home, my office or the Bibliography.” (This, I know, is tavern at top of lightkeepers spire.) “Speak with Dead, physical evidence, blood. Arrested in my office around noon.”
This is just stupid. Seriously. Thing I can tell you right away is that using spell called Speak with Dead does not mean you will for sure get truthful or accurate responses. Any confusion or agenda someone is having before they die – this will very much still be there after they have died, even when actual soul is not. So it is very much possible that Syllar might think he was killed by GG, when actually it was some other asshole in GG disguise.
As for evidence which is physical? These are things which are so easily planted at scene of crime! Even little children can do the frame up! I am ashamed of Lightkeepers for being so easily fooled by this. There is nothing subtle even here. Like GG would go crazy, kill this guy brutally, then just leave bloody clothes or whatever laying around?! That is actions of stupid, stupid person, and GG, he is not stupid.
I have just enough juice left to reach out to him one more time, so I try to think of anything else which may be helpful for us to know. “What do you know about Isador Gregorev?” I ask. (That is Unseen mole that we learned about from guy we questioned at safe house.) “What did you argue with Syllar about? Have we been implicated in this?”
He answers, “Don’t recognize him. Ahhhhhhhhh…Syllar felt you had excessively preferential treatment, and I’m too close. Then you were gone. Came up again now that you…”
Now that we are back from stupid time loop. Well shit, we have made things bad for GG at work. That is giving me vague feeling in place where once there lived a conscience. It would be nice to kill someone so feeling goes away, but all available targets are still of somewhat use to me.
After resting, we head back to town, all of us except Skreek, who is still stuck watching things back at fjord. If we make many more of these rowing trips, I may not have such noodle arms anymore! Yeah, yeah, this is pretty fucking lame silver lining, but whatever. We decide that there is no point in being all sneaky when we get to town, so we head right to Lightkeeper docks and stroll in without even little disguise spell or sneakiness.
We are expecting some problems, but nobody is particularly looking at us, or yelling really loud, or trying to kill us, which is, frankly, nice change for us. We head straight for GG’s office, which is part way up spiral. As we are climbing, who is it we run into, but that guy Bartley who was so unhelpful last time. I try to ask him many questions, but he seems to be certain that it was GG who did this murder. He was witness to when they did Speak with Dead on corpse, and corpse very definitely identified GG as bad guy, for whatever reason. We ask him where we can find GG’s assistant, Adsmir, and he tells us that Adsmir is on leave right now until trial is completed, so probably he will not be at office. Then this Bartley makes noises about how we shouldn’t really be discussing this because he is investigator and we are friends of terrible criminal, GG. We say to him that don’t all of us really just want justice to be done, so really we are same team? But he does not think this is good argument, and leaves. Asshole.
Why did I not threaten to do death touch to him? This is good question, because certainly, I wanted to do death touch to him. But Grandfather, he told me while we were rowing that it would be best if maybe I was not so hot-headed when dealing with officials. Ha! He is fine one to talk! Anyhow, I have never had much experience with police (I would be very bad assassin if I had) but from what I hear, they like it when you are kissing their butt and being all “reasonable.” So this I am trying to do, because I really do think it is stupid that they think GG did this crime, but mostly because I want them to actually find person who did it, since that would be Kisha. Or one of her minions, I suppose. But fuck being “reasonable” sucks, though.
Since Adsmir is not going to be at office, we must climb all way up to top of spire to where Bibliography is. Sure, there are lifts we could take… if we were having any money that is. Real good job on getting self dead, Baermek. Goddamn, we are so fucking ridiculously broke.
When we finally climb all thousands of stairs to get up to tavern, there are not too many people there. It is morning, so I guess this is not big surprise. We ask at bar where we might find Adsmir, and barkeep, who goes by Bernard and definitely not Bubbles, tells us to look in booths near windows.
This is where we find Adsmir, and he is not looking so great. He is asleep in booth, feet sticking out from bench into air, one shoe hanging loosely from his toes. Also he is making big boozy snores and drooling little bit. Tables have already been cleared; I am guessing busser had to make several trips to empty this one.
We wake him up, which is ugly. I could help him out, but, instead of studying this morning spells of healing, I mostly have ready spells of fucking people up. Sorry guy, hangover is not going anywhere anytime soon.
After blinking blearily at us for few moments, his eyebrows shoot up in recognition, causing him to wince. “You know us?” Baermek asks.
“Yeahhhhh…yeah, I do. You’re, uh…you’re Baermek, right?”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Still have the skull?”
“Uh-huh.”
He turns to look at me. “Alyona? You must be Alyona. But, but you’re wearing armor? I thought… And you look, well, you look less…” I give him glare that dares him to finish this sentence. He does not dare.
He is feeling not so good, but still he answers our questions, telling us about big fight GG had with Syllar. It was apparently not first one. I guess there were many arguments had because Syllar thought GG was being too much of good friend to our little group of assholes. But this one was even more angry, and many things were said by both of them that maybe they did not really mean. This is why on morning after fight GG sent bottle to Syllar of Syllar’s favorite wine, along with little note. It seemed to Adsmir like they were patching things up.
But next day when Adsmir went into office, all hell was breaking loose. There were people all over office and Tilvum, Syllar’s admin, was in corner crying. Syllar had been murdered! GG had come into office that morning looking like shit, didn’t want to talk about anything, canceled appointments and holed up in his office until investigators showed up to arrest him.
We ask Adsmir what he has heard about what happened to Syllar. He says it is only rumors, but apparently it was very bloody scene. Someone had removed Syallar’s heart from his chest and thrown it out of window down into waters far below. With no heart left in body, it would be impossible to bring him back from death.
Okay, no matter how serious was this little workplace squabble, does it seem even little bit possible that GG would be so freakin’ mad that he would go to such lengths? And also be stupid enough to stroll into work next day looking so suspicious?
Of course not! So I ask Adsmir if he thinks GG did this. He does not, but many people think GG did, mostly because so many people hold against him little matter of missing shadow. This is even more stupid. Everytime I think I have heard most stupid thing about this whole mess, Lightkeepers manage to surprise me with one that is stupider.
After arrest, Adsmir went to talk to GG’s lawyer, Zippy. Zippy is not super hot shot lawyer or anything, but Adsmir thinks he is good guy who never held against GG whole lack of shadow thing. He was pretty discouraged though, about this case, particularly after hearing evidence from interview with corpse of Syllar.
We ask Adsmir how to get to Zippy’s office, but I do not hear his answer, because she is there again. In my head. She is there again, no warning at all, and I want to scream.
Always sending such sweet gifts, but the birds are completely useless. Just like Belovs.
Skreek. Fuck. My heart skips beating. If Skreek is captured, he will talk. He will tell her things, things I do not want her to know. Better she think he is useless captive. Better she kills him then asks him too many questions about me.
“Bird?” I reply to her, hoping she does not notice how long pause is while I am fighting to come back under control. “You are right, he is useless. Enjoy listening to him talk about stupid bird things all day,” I say.
Immediately I send message to Skreek, “I hear you are captured now? What has happened? What can you tell us about where you are being kept?”
“I am fine…captured?” he asks, and voice is more confused than even is usual. “Is someone coming at me? Am I under threat? I saw a watch change, can head home if necessary.”
Ok, ok. I am breathing again. Kisha does not have hold of him. I pull out sending stone to message him again. I cannot use any more of my magics this way, not when I do not know what need I will have of it soon. “Kisha is playing game with me. She may know you are near, but maybe not. Maybe waiting for you to do something stupid. Don’t.”
“I am safe. Maybe not safe to stay. I am very tired, too, so less observant. Heading home. To cove.”
I tell others what has been said inside my head as I am putting away stone. I am very happy that there is no hitch in my voice when I speak of Kisha. But, as we head to lawyer’s office I find myself wondering again how it is Kisha has come to know magic. Surely she has not made deal with some god for these powers? What god would want to make deal with Kisha? And her voice, there is something different about her voice. Different, but maybe familiar… why is it familiar? Shit, I do not have time to think more about that bitch right now. We have reached offices of Zippy the lawyer.
Zippy is not in office when we get there and admin is not sure how long it will be until he is back. At first we think we are leaving to come back later, but then we see there are doughnuts and coffee for free in reception area, and we decide it would be good to wait here until he gets back. It’s not like we could afford breakfast or anything, Baermek.
One hour and probably five doughnuts each, and Zippy has returned to office finally. He is taking one look at us, then waves us into his personal office with sigh.
“You know us?” Baermek asks.
Again he scans eyes across all of us. “Yeah, pretty sure,” he says sounding not too happy as he settles in behind desk. “What I don’t know is why you’re here?”
“GG has not done this thing they are stupidly saying he has done,” I tell him. “We are here to prove this.”
“So, just to be clear, you’re not here to break him out and kill a bunch of people?” I do not know why, but he seems little bit skeptical.
“Of course not,” Baermek tells him with pointed look. “Because you are going to get him off.”
“Look, it’s just… I hear things. People are a bit concerned about you, about how you might react to all this.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Baermek reassures him, and almost he is sounding like old Baermek who was at least useful when it was time to talk to people. “What can we do to help you?”
Zippy studies us for one minute longer, then leans back in his chair and looks briefly up at ceiling as he gathers thoughts. “I’m not really sure. If if GG is innocent, we need to figure out who the actual murderer is. Right now there's a lot of evidence against him. At a minimum, he won’t be allowed to continue on with the Lightkeepers. That’s assuming he is not incarcerated… or worse … once Zinalla holds the trial.”
“What do they have against him?” Baermek asks.
Zippy pulls out piece of paper and hands it to us, but it is mostly just things we are already knowing, and none of it really points to GG as killer. Only thing we cannot understand is why GG thinks he might have done it, why he has memories of ripping Syllar’s heart out. So we talk about magic and spells and Grandfather remembers that there is one, very tricky to cast, that can actually change memories of person to whatever it is you want them to be. But this spell, it can be defeated by someone who knows how to remove curses.
Curses, maybe, like one that turns people into wererats?
I am ready to do this to GG, but everyone, they are quick to point out that authorities will never allow me to cast spell on their suspect. But that is not even mattering, really. It does not need to be me, does it, who is casting spell? As long as someone casts it. So we ask Zippy if he can request that Ligthkeepers cast this spell on GG themselves. He says he will ask them.
There is nothing more that we can tell Zippy or that he can tell us right now, so we decide to again hike back all way to top of spire to tavern so we can talk more with Adsmir. He is still there, but now he is looking little bit less sick.
Question we are wanting to ask him, is this: please tell us more about Tilvum, who is assistant to Syllar. When before he was talking about her, I got little sense he does not have what you are calling the fond feelings for her.
He tells us he cannot be proving anything, but they were both of them competing on who was going to be Syllar’s new admin. Adsmir was more likely to be chosen because he had so much more experience, and had been with Lightkeepers so much longer (Tilvum only showed up couple of years ago, which is very suspicious thing, isn’t it?). But then Adsmir “lost” important document of GG’s right before GG was supposed to give report to Syllar, even though never before had Adsmir lost anything like that, and Tilvum got job instead. And she would often work with Syllar at his apartments, just them and nobody else, which is definitely giving her opportunity.
We need to check this bitch out more, so we send Ingoria off to address Adsmir gives us for Tilvum. As we wait for her to get back, again I am thinking about Kisha, about her magic, about her voice…
Her voice! Deeper, rougher and… and flat. I have many, many things I can say about Kisha, but one thing I could never say is that she is lacking emotion in her voice. Scorn, contempt, anger, vicious pleasure? Yes. But never flat, not like, not like…
Holy fuck.
Not like voice of goddamn fucking Sun Knights.

Report Date

23 Nov 2023