August Intruder- Chapter 213- Childlike Wonder (Patreon)

The coin bouncing along his knuckles did not calm him as it usually did. Listening to the council bicker—what was left of it—did not bring him pleasure.

Teofil studied the table, looking at those around. Where there had once been twelve, only seven stared back at him. The death toll in over a month had been staggering. Whatever the [Sage] was doing, he was good at it.

Chances were that he had actually studied all of them and knew their weaknesses. It was the only explanation to how he was so easily killing them. That was something to think about. Did the [Sage] know of his dealings with the council? Did the man know about Oaths or that he was an Oath?

Too many unimportant questions were plaguing him right now. But as plagued as he was, they remained unimportant.

“We have to find a way,” Nechifor said to Dorin. He looked visibly worried.

Dorin nodded. “A portal appeared in my home and, for some reason, I was not allowed to enter it. I know we’ve never entered a portal before, but I did not know that we could not.”

“It is good to know that I am not alone,” Nechifor frowned. “A Chaos Run appeared near my home, and I had to battle it out with a few creatures. I had to leave, I haven’t been home for a long time. It is not that the monsters are powerful, it is that they are a lot. I cannot be worrying about monsters and worrying about some [Sage] walking into my room in the middle of the night to slit my throat.”

They’d found Radu in his home with his throat slit from ear to ear and a hole in his heart just three weeks ago. It seemed the portal incident had done nothing to slow down the [Sage]’s hunt for them. What the injuries told them was that the [Sage] knew that they had to be killed twice and was completely sure of it. It also told them that he was cocky, arrogant. The space between their first death and their resurrection was significant, and the man was more than willing to stay and wait.

Teofil sighed and tossed the coin to the side. It pinged off the wall and bounced on the floor. All the eyes in the room turned to him.

He ignored them. Just thinking about how he had been dragged out of his safety by a portal and deposited into a warzone continued to piss him off. Just what was this [August Intruder] that the interface deemed him useless. It had ripped him from his safety simply because the [August Intruder] was no longer on Earth? It was baldadash.

He hated the very idea of it.

Getting up from his chair, he turned, picked it up, and dashed it against the wall as well. His shoulders heaved in quiet anger. His eyes were open but he saw nothing, he could not shake the quiet anger, and that angered him more.

Maybe, just maybe…

He stood straight and let out a calming breath. There was no maybe about this.

It was time to find one of those goody two shoes Oath. He would need information from them, information required to satisfy his curiosity.

It was time to get his hands on this [August Intruder].

…

It had been over a month since the event of the portals had happened. What was funny and interesting was that the world still hadn’t come to an agreement on what they were going to call the event. Some were calling it the day of reckoning, some were calling it the herald of the end, the religious were calling it the end times.

Honestly, it was becoming a lot.

Did Chetam care? No. He was more concerned about important things.

His eyes were focused on the laptop screen in front of him. He was currently watching the display of his satellite tracking. There were very little red pockets on the blue world map on the screen, but there were at least three on each continent. They were problems, but the real problems were the ones in the bodies of water and the ones in Antarctica.

Moving his cursor, he zoomed in on Nigeria, expanded the map, zeroed in on the red pocket. There was no exact estimate on how many constituted that amount of red.

“Looks like a lot,” Ruth said from over his shoulder.

He didn’t look up from the screen when he answered. “The map won’t track it as a red pocket unless there are at least a thousand of them in close proximity.”

Ruth nodded slowly, reaching forward to place a finger on the screen. “I guess that means the Sambisa forest is gone. I always liked that place.”

Chetam sighed again. He couldn’t help it. A lot had changed in the span of a month. The portals had spared no place. Right now, there was a chance that Antarctica belonged to alien creatures. There hadn’t been enough time or Delvers to close all the portals when they had appeared from the update he had gotten. Because of that, there had been a lot of Chaos Runs.

Then there had not been enough clean up teams or Delvers to control the Chaos Runs, so there had been a lot of monsters that had eventually ended up flooding Earth and getting lost in its ecosystem.

Now, they lived among the monsters.

The seas were already deadly places to traverse. Just last week a ship had gone down while transporting cargo. Reports described the creature that had taken it down as some kind of mythical kraken. And no one even knew just how powerful the creatures in the sea were.

At least it isn’t all bad, he thought, even if he didn’t truly believe it. The Chaos Runs had eventually closed on their own after a while of being active, so they hadn’t pumped an infinite amount of monsters into the world. Still, they had pumped enough.

For all anyone knew, there were SS-rank monsters living in the ocean along with whatever had always lived there that nobody had ever known about.

He sighed again.

“That’s the eight one in the last ten minutes, Cheta,” Ruth pointed out. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a break?”

Chetam needed to take a break. But did he want to? No.

Shaking his head, he adjusted on his chair and pulled up another window on his screen. “The Sambisa Forest should be restored in about a month,” he said, ignoring it. “My worry lies in the places closest to human civilization.”

He pulled up another part of the map, temporarily ignoring the window he had just opened. He placed a finger on it and circled it.

“This is Abuja,” he said. “Right where we are. This part, Bwari, it doesn’t have a lot of forests, but there’s enough lack of civilization over here.”

“And?” Ruth asked.

“There might not be any red pockets here,” he continued, “but there have been monster sightings in this area. Ten confirmed dead so far in the last week.”

“What of the last month?”

Chetam shook his head. “No reports. That’s what bothers me.”

“So, what are you thinking?” she asked. “False reports or they simply didn’t report past sightings?”

“Worse,” he answered, zooming out of the map a little. He tapped on the nearest red pocket that wasn’t very close. “There is a path that leads from here to that community. I’m thinking migration. The monsters are probably trying to reach far out, looking for a new ecosystem, new territories.”

Ruth moved from behind his chair to hover beside him. She stood straight, arms folded. There was a thoughtful purse to her lips. She was thinking, the problem was if she was thinking as the Oath of Shield or as Ruth.

Are they even different?

By the life of him, Chetam doubted there was any Oath alive still capable of thinking of themselves.

“Isn’t Pain currently in Cameroon?” Ruth asked. “We can send him there to check it out. You know how he likes exploring.”

Chetam was already shaking his head. “He left for America yesterday.”

“Why?”

“Something about a child he was sponsoring waking up from a coma.” Chetam shrugged. He had no idea what it was about, but the Oaths still had their own lives to live. “I’m thinking of sending the Oando company to check it out.”

Ruth blinked. “The gas company?”

“Yes.” Chetam returned to the window he had opened and ignored. “They finally succeeded in getting their Delving license a week or two before the portals reappeared.” On the new window, he pulled up a list with the word Oando serving as the topic. “They have a few interesting Gifted that might be suitable for the job. They should be fitting.”

“Are you sure? Sounds like a new team. You really want to send a rookie company to deal with matters directly involving civilian lives?”

New as they were, Chetam knew for a fact that they had already been operating as a Delving company even before receiving their license through back door dealings. They had entered more than a handful of portals, coming back with rewards that should’ve gone to other companies.

Why had he said nothing about it? Because there were systems in place to handle them and he was not one of those systems. Also, they were working for the good of humanity even if they had their own ulterior motives.

It was not his problem but the problem of the Gifted and Delving associations in whatever branch of the government that was responsible for it.

“They can handle it,” he said, in the end. “I’m more worried about the other thing.”

“The Promise programs are going well enough in the schools,” Ruth answered, as if that was the other thing that worried him.

In all the chaos Chetam had forgotten about the Gifted program. It was irresponsible of him considering he had been the one to pitch the idea and work the hardest to have it enforced. The entire point of the program was to create a specialized team of Gifted who learnt how to work and Delve with the sole aim of supporting a single member of the group or team. Why had he proposed the plan in the first place, so that if the [August Intruder] came in later generations or rose up from among the young, it would be easy to find teams that could work hand in hand with them.

“I wasn’t worried about that,” he clarified. “I was talking about the Hunter’s association.”

The Hunter’s association was the latest implementation of the rulers around the world. The idea was to create a body of Gifted separate from Delvers whose duty was to go out into the world and hunt down the monsters roaming.

Why couldn’t they simply have Delvers do it? Decentralization of power.

Delvers were already beginning to see themselves as gods, knowing that the world depended on them to solve the problem of appearing portals. No one wanted to know what these Delving companies would do if the world also depended on them to sort out the immediate problem of monsters at the doorstep.

The reason for the delay in establishment in many countries now, however, was the desire to exclude already existing Delving companies from simply creating a branch for Hunters. They were trying to figure out a way to bring new entrants to set up the Hunter companies while each government created a Hunter association in charge of overseeing the rules that would guide them.

So far, it was a roller coaster everywhere.

Nigeria was almost done setting theirs up, however. There had been a lot of backlash until [Unbound] had stepped in and declared that anyone who did not adhere to the rules he was about to set down would have to deal with him, legally or illegally.

Chetam gritted his teeth at the thought of it. It was a tyrannical way of leading but it was a way that had worked in this case. And since [Unbound] had never done such a thing before, he was inclined to let it lie.

The problem was that he did not know enough about the man, and more importantly, he did not know if he could, for a fact, beat the man in a fight. [Unbound] remained the only Delver who the Oaths did not understand, who he did not understand.

“Chetam?”

Ruth’s voice pulled him out of his revelry. He blinked twice, then frowned. “The Oando company will work,” he said, answering her. “They might be new, but believe me, they know what they are doing.”

“Are you sure you’re alright?” she asked, driving the conversation in a different direction.

Chetam nodded. “I’m fine.”

He was not. When the portal madness had started, it had started with the transportation of all the Oaths. And just before they’d been sucked away, they had been informed that the reason for their disappearance was because the [August Intruder] had been taken from their world and they could not survive in their world without him due to ‘certain’ circumstances.

It was the first time he had ever seen the interface being intentionally vague. But where he had been teleported to had not been friendly in any way. He’d almost died clearing the portal. Language had died in the process of whatever she had been teleported to do. It was a stark reminder that the Oaths were not all powerful. Not all of them were designed for combat. Not all of them were walking power houses.

“Chetam.”

He frowned at the sound of his name. Doing his best, he reminded himself that Ruth cared and was only worried about him. The sad truth was that worrying about him did not matter. What truly mattered right now was the [August Intruder].

Ignoring everything on his laptop, his hand reached for his cell phone. He stopped midway.

Now is not the time, he told himself.

Aurora was doing everything in her power, stretching herself thing to hunt down the monsters that now loitered in the world. She had thrown herself to it like a hungry animal. Like a person with a purpose.

What was she trying to do?

Ultimately, the answer was not important. What was important was that he needed to find a way to convince her that it was time for the Oaths to meet their [August Intruder]. The entire debacle had escalated beyond what it once was. He had understood when she’d kept whoever it was away from them in anger and due to a lack of trust, but it was different now. Now it affected the whole world.

Their differences were not enough to keep the world at risk. Even now, he had wanted to use his interface to summon the Oaths like he usually did only to be informed that he can no longer initiate the request. Unless he was designated to, only the [August Intruder] had the authority.

This was too much.

Chetam put his head on the desk and closed his eyes. The world as they knew it was changing, becoming unmade. And if what he’d seen in the portal he’d been transported to was half of what was to become of their world…

He rose to his feet, determined.

Ruth gave him an odd look. “Is there a problem?”

“Aurora,” he said simply.

Ruth frowned. “What about her?”

“We need her on our side. We cannot continue like this. We need the [August Intruder].”

Ruth placed a hand on his shoulder. “We will find them in time. You know that.”

“We need the [August Intruder], Shield.” He turned to look at her. “Need, Shield, not want.”

Ruth searched his eyes, studied him. There was nothing hidden to see. Chetam had only one priority, and it wasn’t the world, it was finding the [August Intruder], and to do that, he needed to speak to Aurora.

He turned away only for his senses to come alive. Ruth moved into a combat stance, already prepared to back him up as the mana in the air shifted and the world shifted and a black stain appeared in it.

Chetam’s frown deepened. It was not a portal but a teleportation gate. Who was coming to him right now?

The portal gate opened completely, and someone stepped out of it.

Ruth paled slightly. “How?”

Chetam composed himself, refused to show the shock on his face.

The man in front of them looked at him with a manic smile and a tear in his cheek that was currently bleeding. It was as if he considered Ruth unimportant.

Standing before two Oaths, he spoke, and his voice was jovial and filled with childlike wonder.

“Inevitability,” he said with a grin. “It is not like you to be dissonant.”