General Auston Makes an Appeal

(General Auston out in the hallway)

This is General Auston
I will not and can not have another Gavin on my hands. Now you can blame me all you want for making a mistake with him, but I will not misplace trust and make that mistake again.
Yes, we, I were fooled by Gavin. We believe he is currently at your, Percival, tower thinking he is safe surrounded by the storm and flood waters. Yes he played us. We had gone over his psych files and played into his ego. It was, as far as we could tell going fine and he was working with us until he found something at your, Percival, home. At that point he suddenly turned.
So far from what I have seen all of you are equally unstable, and I will take every precaution going forward. When the next one of you enters this facility, there will be more even more precautions and no doubt they will shout about misplacing trust in you.
From the information and what I’ve been privy to, Gavin might have been right. You are the same. …you’d all rather let the world burn apparently over..nothing. Perceived slights against your ego by single individuals. They didn't pass the ball to you when you were eight, you think you deserved more pleases and thank yous. And now you have a bit of power...your feelings are more important than 7.8 billion people. So bitter you can't even face that someone else does care.

You did good, for awhile. Everyone always does, for awhile. If you hadn't tried to make contact with The Albino we probably wouldn't have found you. The Albino said you'd slip up, it was just a waiting game.

I have been playing a lot of catch up but I guarantee you I learn very quickly.
Mr. Pruit (Lucien old boss) paired Lucien up with you Percival with the plan for him to learn exactly what the two of you did. He thought with his loyalty to him, he’d be able to sell his to be acquired skills to the military. He pulled every string possible to let the two of you continue to galavant around until such a time he learned you’d been “weaponized, and capable.”
My understanding is you were afforded a great amount of leeway or perhaps more appropriately a very long leash.
I had nothing to do with Pruitt or his deal, nor was I intending to keep any such deal and I do not operate in the buying and selling of people be them mercenaries or weaponized psychics or anything in between.

The men here that you keep shouting your propaganda at, are here voluntarily. They chose to follow me. When I took over this operation it was under my own initiative and I fully expected to have been arrested and executed for treason, but as things have worked out, I’m not sure there is anyone even in a position to try me anymore.

We currently have a reserve government working out of Cheyenne mountain complex desperately trying to maintain a facade that our three branches of government are still functioning and if you were to try tell me that reserve are nearly all followers of this Ankroptic, I would not argue with that.

Yes, I know about Ankroptic.
Yes, I know the worshippers split into two factions and began facilitating a plan to rapidly rise up.
I know there may be other demonic forces involved including an enslavement plan.
You may even be surprised to hear I know Bobby Sunshine has aligned with his ex-wife who is one of the leaders of this Ankroptic faction to supply food for these enslavement camps.
I know about this master at Progeny, and something there took out 16 of my men after a missile strike.
I know two Ankroptic Liquidators entered Ana Hills and has half of them hostage after killing the other half.
I know your friend Damarcov has run off into some cult, Liester has gone into his bunker, and just about everyone you’ve had contact with has ended up dead. I know because we searched for someone you might listen to.

I also know the Russians began pulling things out of a void a hundred years ago and one of their soldiers went insane and defected here. Patient Zero, tucked in some basement cell.

I brought you down with a single sniper, how far do you think you’re going to go on your own? As far as I’m concerned, I only need one of you, and I will dredge up every single bit of intelligence I have to find another one if that’s what it is going to take.

We have the men, we have the equipment, we have the weapons, we have been making inroads into this other dimension. We have samples and specimens and top personnel working on analysis.

We need someone or someones, capable of empowering some of these things.
We need someone or someones to provide insight and intelligence, as well as train personnel how to read and empower these writings. And I say that with reservations that learning such things might turn some of my men into whatever selfish hyper ego things the likes of you and Gavin have become.

These are the times that test us. When we are at our lowest we can let ourselves sink lower or try to rise. I am going to hold to my belief, and not kill a veteran or member of our armed services. ...but I've not made up my mind exactly what to do with you two.

“As servant, suitor, messenger, witness, and subject fell before her so rose Siccitas Divora Lisca. Consumed by that which she will never be, she will become that which consumes her. The wealthy fled into the darkness of the Divora, and by the light of a candle the maids remained resisting their shadows flickering on the lowest cellar walls.” The Lace of Gown, do you know it? I always argued with my peers it was more a book of war than anything Sun Tzu wrote. War is easy, boots on the ground, but out there, things get confused, power, ideals, the temptation to play god, rational vs irrational, good vs evil, I told myself that was the strategy to study, learn to not let that dark overcome what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.

"You can't even understand the first lesson. Magic is largely random and dangerous to everyone around it. Even the user.

"Half of things I've done with magic I've done out of desperation for not having a better way. A gun, a knife are tools and much more predictable. Magic is like giving a 2 year old plastic explosives.

"I tried to warn you and show you what happens when people like us try to control magic. I only want to use this enough to fight the horrors that I've seen. (And yes, when you shoot my friend nearly dead, and then me, those horrors include you.) You want to weaponize it and you won't stop at stopping the Void.

"There have been some that wanted to unleash magic on the entire world. Teach everyone that could learn and see what happens. To me, that sounds like giving everyone a nuke.

"Getting involved in magic is never ending horror. I've had friends hunted, kidnapped, killed, maimed. We've seen horrors you can't imagine. Including the Meek who will inherit the Earth. We've had friends who turned into enemies. And you shoot us and maim us and THEN try to explain yourself.

"Your agent tries to manipulate us and kidnap us because he disagrees with the way we do things.

"Darkness has already overcome you. And yes, probably us too. You ask us to be rational after being maimed and after being face to face with darkness constantly for how long. You don't even realize that there are no angels only demons, and they aren't what you think.

"We just eliminated one of those transformed people who just killed his wife and children. Then we get attacked by armed forces AND the militia. A militia that wanted to kill that monster, not because it was a monster, but because it came from the south and *might* have been a monster. We probably saved the militia's lives but we were attacked by them. No matter what we do, everyone becomes an enemy or a betrayer. Our friends and teachers die. If you join us, you and all your men will probably die too.

"That other dimension is INFINITE. You can walk there and never reach anything else. If you think you have accomplished something, it seems unlikely. More likely you are deluding yourself.

"Those things you are trying to empower WILL kill you. They will kill your analysts, take them over, or turn them into Gavin before you realize it.

"Yes, Percival is Percival. But I can only imagine after the last few days, after losing two people we cared about due to these powers of ours and their randomness, after being shot, after being maimed, why would he help YOU. He is far more capable than me and probably the best chance you have, but what reason does he have to live. Like Pruit guarded me, I guarded Percival. We need him alive to win.

"But right now, to me, you are the same as Pruit, a slave master, just less sadistic. You own me, and tell me what to do, and give me no freedom. I make a mistake, you think I might escape or revolt, you chop off a limb.

"You have beaten me. I can't fight back. I can't walk. But I won't give you magic. You think you can control it but you can't. We can't. You will unleash something worst.

"I can't fight you. Don't want to. I won't kill you or any of your men from this point forward. I want to save this world. Not sure if I can do it with one foot but I'll try, unless you kill me. You might have to if you want to keep me here. Maybe you should. Courtmarshall me for what I've done. I've worked for bad men. I've killed people. Lots. Broken many laws. You wouldn't have to feel bad about it. You shouldn't feel bad about it.

"There will always be others to replace me, but you only have about 40 days to find them.

"We have the data, you're not the first, and Gavin showed a few things, we know it is not that random. We are also making progress into this grey dimension. We have Necromantic temples within sight, some sort of shifting tree with a podium like object in front of it, we've closed off a gate of some sort at a playground and have a forward base established on the edge of what appears to be a dry lake bed. We've even had success with, creating small inert zones where these meek things seem to spontaneously form. If we can sustain it is another matter. "

"This bell gadget that Gavin has acquired, I've been informed needs to be, returned. As of right now I may not know exactly what that is suppose to mean, or how, but I plan to do just that. And then we are going to continue to shut down every little single hole we find from there to here."

"Gavin, like the witches, did bad things to himself to gain power. Horrible things. More power, less randomness, more evil. More insane. I'm not that powerful. And if you are that powerful, that it isn't random, then you don't need me, and I wouldn't trust you.

"What is bumbling into a Necromantic temple going to solve?

"And here is a freebee: you need to put the Bells on that podium in front of the tree, without dying. If you truly want save the world, start there. But if you take that knowledge and somehow make the world even worse, I'll personally kill you, even with no hands and no feet.

"How are you going to return the Bells if you shutdown all the holes?

Austin: "Now that is a good bit of intel and confirms with our current intelligence. Obviously we are going to close the last one after and we already have a plan...."
Then an interruption occurs.

After The Interruption (Percival is considered in the hall and able to hear.)

Austin (Presumably talking to Lucien): "These bells...I am inclined not to, but, should something unexpected happen, or an emergency situation arise, do you know, can they be or will they, teleport? I am under the impression that there are some things that will not move even if the room they are in is...shifted."

"I don't know. If Gavin had to carry them around with him without teleporting, could he have used them in as many places as he has as fast as he has?"