After AnimeCon: The Hunt (Patreon)

/// Not sure if this section will fit in before or after the rest of the Brian/Rebecca moment that's in the works, but it can go either way and I did finish writing it first.

    Five high-end escorts in evening dresses lined the edge of the hotel bed, sleeping while sitting upright with perfect poise. Their faces were flawlessly sculpted, carefully corrected to his tastes, and while they were here all of the girls went silent and slipped into unconsciousness whenever his attention wasn’t on them.

    Judas preferred them that way.

    No bullshit or drama, no pointless chatter—there was no chance of guilt or starting to grow attached to them, or any nonsense like that. The escorts even benefited enormously from his talents, with him altering their bodies to perfection and conjuring currency to pay them extremely well with. So long as that money was deposited or spent before it evaporated back into puffs of magic smoke, of course.

    He considered himself a very benevolent Master. Even though he was going through a pretty difficult patch in his career and needed some extra intimate attention, he didn’t rough up the girls or abuse him. That had never been his thing. Judas enjoyed feeling suave and debonair with women. He was no gentleman, but enjoying classy drinks, some back and forth seduction and charming wordplay, and then a night full of sex made him feel downright sophisticated. Certainly compared to the tastes of most other Masters he knew.

    The row of beautiful faces in patient repose was also nice to look at as Judas paced back and forth the hotel room, holding his phone to his ear—the girls were a much needed reprieve. Calls from the circles had been pouring in lately just about nonstop, and scant few of them had been welcome ones.

    “So it is possible you allowed Patrick S. Chadley to be captured?” The voice demanded. “It’s possible.”

    “No, no,” Judas denied. “Chad was effectively killed in action. In my report, I—”

    “The name of Patrick S. Chadley is obscured in the Records rather than concluded—which usually indicates capture.”

    The Rules were a lot less lenient on having a partner captured than they were with having one killed, and for the past several days Judas had been in a back and forth with various parties of the different circles which were trying to interpret events their own way. That there even was back and forth was a point in his favor, because it meant he was a competent mid-circle Master who was valued by his peers. Some of his peers, at least. Enough of them. 

    He had failed a mission in spectacular form however, and that meant a drop in position. A drop in position meant his former peers were now his superiors—with interest in how best to use him—and his former underlings were now his contemporaries, his competition. Worse yet, Chad had somehow or other been very well-liked among the other young Masters of his ilk, and the outer circle was still abuzz with ‘RIP CHAD’ and ‘GOODNIGHT, SWEET PRINCE’ memes, or posts lampooning Judas culpability, even a whole month after Chad was gone.

    “Alive—technically, perhaps, but effectively brain dead,” Judas insisted. “He suffered the consequence of having his La Grande Petite Morte thrown back at him… probably the best way he ever could’ve gone, all things considered. But, he is gone, gone for good. I confirmed this. In the report I confirmed this. I recovered his Focus, so even if they have him, he’s completely useless to them, he’s just meat. Mindless, magicless meat. Everything is documented in the after action report, if only you would care to read it.”

    “Your report—a litany of excuses that meant very little to me.”

    “They were amply prepared for us,” Judas insisted. “The other side claimed to have a precognitive, and yeah, we were blindsided by a vampire warded for anti-magic. Everything pointed her way was instantly fucking counterspelled, so I had every reason to take her at her word. Walked away from that with my life only because they wanted to send a message, and so, yeah—message received.”

    The Rules had a provision or two that kept the circles off his back while he was recovering, but now that he had restored his disintegrated arm, it sometimes felt like he was catching nothing but flak from all directions. Judas had hoped that this whole nonsense with invincible antimagic vampires was actually secret inner circle infighting of some sort, because then it would all get swept under the rug and forgotten. Apparently, however, the unknown group that vampire code-named Misandry belonged to really was somehow a completely foreign power, that no one seemed to know jack shit about.

    Which is fuckin’ worst case scenario for me.

    “What more of the potentiate?” The voice asked. “You’ve had ample time.”

    “Nothing,” Judas said. “Accessed hospital records from remote afterwards, and got nothing but noise. You know I’m good at this—ask Spook, ask Man in Black. This is what we do. If there was anything left to find, I’d have found it by now. If you inner circle Masters can’t flag him in an Akashic fractal—”

    “—Obscured.”

    “—then, yes, nothing,” Judas shook his head.

    The Akashic Records were highly regarded because they were a complete record of everything ever known, and they weren’t able to contain anything untrue. But, that didn’t always make them useful. In fact, nowadays they were rarely good for anything. As the years went on, anything and everything interesting were words censored over in black by various higher powers, obscured, and the fractal texts were becoming more inscrutable blocked out lines than they were coherent sentences.

    Someone out there presumably had perfect omniscient knowledge at some point back when the ancient system was established, but their identity had long since been swallowed up by myth and legend. The Masters’ modern means of tapping into the records and translating them from Latin wasn’t perfect, either—and the damnable thing was a pyramid scheme of the highest order. You had to submit power to the Akashic to read it, and feed it an absurd amount of magic to obscure the available information there for everyone else. No one could afford all of their secrets exposed, so it seemed everyone in the know was forced to pay into it—which then further empowered the reach of the mysterious Akashic Records.

    “I’ve seen his face,” Judas said. “That’s about it. Whatever injuries he had, the local incident reports? Already papered over. No clues even as to how they fuckin’ did it. Had a daemon hacking through the servers, nothing. Ran discreet inquiries by phone, got run around in a big loop. Everything there got scrubbed. Memory, intake records, timestamps, security footage, medical records; everything. Honestly not sure how or why our wards there got tripped in the first place, if they had those kinds of means.”

    “But, you’ve seen the potentiate’s face. You’ve met him.”

    “Yes.”

    “His injuries?”

    “It’s in the report,” Judas sighed. “Broken ribs, concussion I think. Wrist was smashed. His name was already missing from the chart when I got there, and I do mean missing. Wasn’t just put in as ‘John Doe,’ the bit of paper where a name shoulda been was ripped. Running through the inpatient records afterwards doesn’t return shit, so far as the hospital is concerned, nobody was ever there. Ambulance and police reports likewise return nada.”

    “You’ve seen the potentiate’s face,” The voice said again. “Take the clearest memory you have of him, and impression transfer to image. Put that image into Chalice, if Chalice returns anything more, find the results in the Akashic Record.”

    “Okay,” Judas paused. “That’s it? Just the potentiate—not the vampire? ‘Misandry?’ If she’s been around long enough, Chalice will have something on—”

    “Just the potentiate,” The voice cut him off. “Dealing with her, more… qualified Masters would have to take over this investigation. If a precognitive is involved, much will be redacted to starve them out. If inquisitors are involved and in possession of a precognitive, you will be redacted. This is protocol, as recognized by the Rules. Transfer the image, and then it looks like you’ll have to submit yourself to your circle Masters for… well, non-essential duties only.”

    “But—” Judas felt as though his insides had dropped out of him. Are you fucking kidding me?

    To a newly initiated Master, non-essential duties meant almost total leeway to fuck around and do whatever they pleased. To an experienced mid-circle Master, non-essential work at best meant they weren’t to be trusted by their peers—a death knell to those who thrived on their reputation—and at worst it meant they would be given dangerous jobs or downright suicide missions, because ‘non-essential’ could also mean ‘completely expendable,’ in certain circumstances.

    And, REDACTED? Fuck me.

    Being redacted from reality was just plain bad news.

    The process got talked about a lot because it was expensive, but even after decades of supposedly using it, there was a ton of speculation on whether or not it had ever even worked. After all, there was no proof—there was literally no information or recollection on anyone or anything that had ever been redacted. Just strange historical discrepancies. In theory, it was an excellent means of invalidating a precognitive’s future sight, but Judas had no idea how—the methodology of it all was quite a bit above his pay grade.

    “If, well,” Judas struggled to gather his thoughts. “If I put an image from Chalice to Akashic Record, you can’t even exactly hide that. Right? So—”

    “No concern of yours,” The voice said. “What cannot be redacted can still be obscured… obscured enough for our purposes. Impression transfer to image. Image to Chalice. Chalice to Akashic Record.”

    Obscuring things we shouldn’t know about creates obvious blots that will stand out to anyone else reading the Akashic Records. No better way to tip them off—no fucking clue how you all think you’re obscuring that.

    “I performed better than anyone could have expected, considering the circumstances,” Judas argued. “If there’s a chance I’m going to be fucking redacted, then there’s nothing for anyone to lose in keeping me in on this case.”

    “Nothing to gain, either,” The voice reminded him. “Not if you’re as inconsequential as you were in front of the enemy a month ago. Has that significantly changed? Are you now any more prepared for that level of challenge? A team potentially consisting of, and I quote—a precognitive, two infiltrators, a close quarter combat specialist, and at least one vampire warded for counterspelling?”

    So you DO have my report right in fucking front of you.

    Judas opened his mouth to answer, but wound up closing it again. There was no solution there that wasn’t foolish to the extreme, because that was a line-up that even any inner circle Master would hesitate against. Which on the one hand made it seem more likely that it was a bluff. But, if so, it was a good one, because if those were really the opponents this time and not a bad joke, there was no good answer to respond with. Only varying degrees of messy and costly. Infiltrators and a CQC? On their own, not a huge problem. Unless they were working with a precognitive, which always turned out to be a rather dizzying force multiplier. Even if there was only one vampire, her alone being made up as a mage masher would no-sell almost anything a Master could individually throw against her.

    “This… isn’t work for an ordinary Master,” Judas conceded. “But—”

    “It is not,” the voice agreed. “If anything can be gained by either Chalice or the Akashic, perhaps that might engage the interest of one of the old monsters and put you back into good graces. Otherwise, this is just another shitty problem with much to lose and little to gain. Much easier of course to attribute to sloppy work, failure to recover a potentiate, and the loss of—possible capture of—a Master. Which is unacceptable.”

    “With his brains spurting out across the floor and his Focus in our hands, Chad could hardly be considered a Master, anymore,” Judas frowned. “A loss is a loss, yes, but—”

    “His body shouldn’t have been left behind in the first place.”

    “Oh, please,” Judas scoffed. “There was a fuckin’ vampire—any one of you in my shoes back there wouldn’t be quibbling over food that was already on her plate. Each and every one of you’d have done the same thing.”

    “Fine. Get that impression done into images,” The voice repeated. “You said this monstrous party unknown was greatly interested in this guy? We want to know why. The inner circle has our own monsters, but they’re not losing sleep over yet another Gigachad Macgee lobotomizing himself. No one higher up gives a fuck about that, and no one on my level or in the mid-circle sees this as anything other than an opportunity to take you down a peg. Or redact you.”

    “I fucking know that,” Judas growled. I’ve been dealing with this nonstop bullshit for days.

    “Vampires and precognitives? They’re a hassle to deal with, makes great for shifting blame, sure,” The voice said. “But, it also starts to look like you’re just stacking up bullshit. You’ve had time to lick your wounds. They’re pairing you up with another dumbfuck rookie. So, either show us that you’re getting sloppy and careless and can’t be trusted, or get back in the game—get Chalice to show us something really interesting.”

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/// Supernatural infosec is fun to worldbuild. I don't know that any of the ideas are individually original, but I think they fit together in a fun way for this. What is Chalice?! I imagine it like a modern day semi-reliable workaround the Masters have built up for where/when the Akashic doesn't give them anything worthwhile to work with.

I've always loved the idea of Akashic records, but they're too gamebreakingly OP. Pairing it with a pay-to-hide scheme seemed like just the balancing act of tedious sobering dystopian realism it needed.