Liberation of Slaves

The dark mage walked for two blocks before heading for a nearby bolt-hole dive that he had discovered the last time he'd been in the port town. "Doubt they'll follow us into here, assuming they had someone following us." mused Za'cha as he went inside, the sounds of rats and spiders scurrying around under the floorboards just dimmed by the noise of clandestine dealings. This was the seedy underbelly of Hargeon Town, and just by entering he knew every eye was on him, and every hand was close to a weapon. "Pleasant bunch aren't they?" said Tessa, whilst Pride merely seemed to soak in the atmosphere, which knowing the Dark Celestial Spirit, he probably was.

Za'cha lowered his top enough to let the Savage Skull guild mark be easily viewed, and soon enough the bars inhabitants resumed their earlier businesses. The Ex-Quip mage went over to the bar table and gestured for the man working it to come over. "One room, one night, private. Clean up not needed." he said, sliding a pittance worth of jewels over, the barman nodding before handing a key over. "Third door, right at back." he said in reply before returning to his drinking customers. The Dark Mage nodded before he set off for his room. He had more work to do this night. Now it was time for the real hunt to begin.

He went into his room and locked the door behind him, before making sure that security and silence wards were placed at several intervals. Wouldn't do well if the prey caught wind of the predator now would it?

Stats:

Once he was certain they would not be spied upon, Za'cha removed the file he'd taken from the slaver vessel and laid it all out on the floor. Soon enough the floor was covered in sheets of paper, each one a different child, a different slave, a different test subject, each one a failure... save one. The small red-headed girl wearing a floral dress, with ribbons in her hair. "She looked pretty cute." said the Spirit of the Apocalypse Weapon. The Dark Mage could only nod as he looked over each of them, not just Nakiya's.

"They all were able to summon a Celestial Spirit... Silver Keys, all of them..." he said, noting that the files also kept on record which spirit it was that the child in question had summoned that drew their attention. "Some of them even had a parent that was a Summoner... Nakiya had both her parents as Celestial Summoners." he said, Pride nodding slowly beside him. "Bloodline traits would be a factor in her survival rate, as well as marking her as an ideal candidate." the Dark Celestial Spirit acknowledged.

Za'cha read the file before bursting into chuckles. "Look at who her summon was." he said, holding the file up for Pride, who merely scowled. "The mutts." he said, looking at his host for a reason behind the chuckles. "They look like puppies here!" he said, slapping the picture of Nakiya playing with two identical puppy dogs with amusement. Pride rolled his eyes before continuing to read the file. "Seems there's another one here from her arsenal... that tricky little fox was her parents summon originally by all accounts here." he mused.

"Hmm... there's a location name, but it's not one I recognise." the Dark Ex-Quip mage said. He pulled out a map and began to look it over, looking back to Nakiya's file every so often before he scratched his head. "It's not showing up on the map... either it was too small to register..." he said. "Or it was destroyed in the process of claiming her." The Dark Celestial Spirit Pride offered as an alternative. Za'cha could only nod. "Seems more likely... judging by the other files, I'd say that's within their usual MO. The client, not the slavers. If slavers destroyed everywhere they went for new stock, they wouldn't be able to get more stock." he explained out loud before he looked over the files once more.

"So who is this mysterious client then?" asked Tessa, as she metaphysically leaned on Za'cha's shoulder, looking down at the myriad files. The human host sighed before shaking his head. "That's the damn thing... its only initials." he said, pointing at the part where it said who the client was. There was a common enough symbol for magical incantations, along with the initials D.F. "I feel like I'm missing something here..." he muttered under his breath before he looked back at the map once more.

"Hmm... pins, pins, I need pins..." said Za'cha, reaching into the dimensional space where he kept most of his loot and rummaged around till he found a small jar of pins. He quickly went to the wall and pinned the map into place, before looking at the files once more. "The names may not be here... but the coordinates still are. I'll give these slavers this much, they're damned good at their paperwork." he said before he began to dot pins all over the map at each of the coordinates.

The Dark Ex-Quip Mage frowned as he looked at the map on the wall, stepping back to the opposite wall so he could get a clear view of the map in its entirety. The map was now covered in 100 small pins, each one denoting Celestial Summoner child that had been taken by the slavers and sold to whoever these D.F. people were. He stared at the pins for a few minutes, unblinking, unwavering, as if he was trying to will something into existence as he looked at it. "Where was the ruins we found?" said Pride, breaking the silence. The human host glanced at his Dark Celestial occupant before looking back at the map. "The supposed lab?" he asked, before collecting another pin and placing it on the map. "It was about here..." he said before frowning and scratching his head.

"What's wrong?" Tessa inquired, looking at the map with a tilted head. "It doesn't match up..." he answered after a moment's silence. He indicated the pins. "They're all in a pattern, a concentric series of circles." he began to explain. "But the Slavers used the rivers and seas for their plunder... a lot of these places aren't anywhere near waterways." interrupted the Dark Celestial Spirit, who Za'cha nodded in agreement with. "That means, that they had to be going by land... and working from a central location." he said, before scratching his head. "If we assume that, then the lab should be more in the center... but..."

"But it's not. It's over here... actually, a few miles from where Nakiya's village was." said Tessa, the confusion the other two were undergoing now dawning on her. "But she was among the last to be taken." she said, frowning as well now. "Exactly... it doesn't match. It's all haphazard seeming, yet there is some kind of pattern here... we find the pattern..." the human muttered before Tessa made a sound. "What if its connect the dots?" she suggested, both Pride and Za'cha looking at the Death Scythe Spirit for a moment before looking back at the map. "You got string in that dimension space of yours?" asked the Dark Celestial Spirit.

Za'cha carefully tied off the last piece of the string, connecting Nakiya's pin to the pin of the child before her, before stepping back to look at the apparent mess that had been created. It took him a moment before he blinked and then began to chuckle. "Well, I'll be damned... It's a god-damned unicursal hexagram." he said, tracing the pattern in the air with his finger. "That would explain the order of captures... start with the weakest, and end with the strongest... which means..." said Pride, Za'cha nodding in agreement. "They already knew where all of them were, and had been watching them... I wouldn't be surprised if these assholes had been keeping tabs on them since the day they were born." he said, before taking a new pin and placing it in the centre of the hexagram.

"And that is where their true base lies. At the centre, where the power would gather and encapsulate." said Tessa, looking at the location of the lab ruins. "That site may have been simply where they took Nakiya for testing... you don't detonate a bomb next to your reactor after all." said the Spirit of Death's Scythe. Za'cha looked at the pattern once more before looking at the files. "D.F. Unicursal Hexagrams. Celestial Summoners. The only connection the last two have is... time and balance in several cultures..." said the human as understanding dawned on him. "D.F.... Destiny Foundation. That's who these assholes are!" he exclaimed punching the air. "The Destiny Foundation... now we have a name, and a location." said Za'cha with a smirk, looking towards the map once more.

"Careful, if they were able to obtain the ingredients required to create Nakiya's current form in the first place, then we can assume they won't like uninvited guests." warned Tessa, although she did lick her lips at the possible scenarios. "That's what I'm counting on. If these assholes could do that, then that means they have a way into Heaven, Hell and the Celestial Realms." said Za'cha with a dark smirk.

"So... who is this Destiny Foundation anyway?" asked Tessa curiously. "From what my old teacher told me about them, and what I've picked up, they're a very secretive occult organisation. They've got their fingers in quite a few honeypots, with various goals and objectives. One of them it turns out was to try and create a being capable of collecting, controlling, and using the Seven Black Sin Celestial Keys." said Za'cha, pulling out Pride's Key and running a finger over the item before putting it away.

"So... basically evil organisation bent on taking over the world mua ha ha yeah?" summed up the Spirit of the Apocalypse Weapon. The Dark Ex-Quip mage shrugged and nodded. "Pretty much yeah. Bit of a pain really." he said with a sigh before he looked back at the file of the younger Nakiya, a part of him trying to imagine how her life would have turned out if the Destiny Foundation had never taken her. "The road of What If's is a never ending, ever twisting one." growled Pride. "Best to leave that be and focus on the task at hand." he said before giving Za'cha a mental shock for good measure to refocus the human host's mind.

"Gah!" yelped Za'cha, rubbing his skull as he shot the Dark Celestial Spirit a death-dealing glare. "Quit that already you bastard!" he snarled before he shook his head and returned to the files. "Right... so, the Destiny Foundation took these children, in a unicursal hexagram pattern, supposedly so as to draw the Celestial energy into the central area where they could harness it for their experiments?" offered the human as a hypothesis.

Both the Dark Celestial Spirit of Sin and the Spirit of the Weapon of Apocalypse remained silent as they tried to ponder what exactly the true purpose behind the pattern was. "In theory. But a pentagram would have been more mana efficient than a unicursal hexagram." said Tessa with a frown. "...Unless mana conjugation wasn't the goal..." the human host said slowly before he traced the pattern once more on the map, looking at each file as it corresponded with each pin on the map. "It's believed in some cultures, that this symbol represents divine forces... what if they were trying to use this massive hexagram, as not a mana pattern to draw it to a central point..." Za'cha slowly theorised. "But instead was to summon something." finished Pride with the theory, looking at the pattern with a renewed observation.

"They started with the newest summoner child first... and then ended with Nakiya." the Dark Mage said, reiterating what they already knew as he followed the lines. "And then with the symbol complete... the Fallen Angel component, or perhaps one of the Seven Keys?" he hypothesised. The Dark Celestial Spirit mused over the idea. "Assuming they were dormant, then yes, a unicursal hexagram would act like an ignition switch... or maybe... it was to funnel the divine energies into their own engines." suggested the Dark Spirit. Za'cha slowly nodded. "That would make sense as well... melding flesh and bone together from devils, demons and fallen angels with a human child would require a significant amount of power..." he said before a thought came to him.

"Leylines?" questioned Tessa, which wasn't surprising given his head space was being shared by the two Spirits. "If there are ley lines coinciding with the hexagram... but the sheer amount of coincidence for that to occur... This must have been planned for years and years... decades maybe even... and then hoping these... wait..." he said as he thought of something else. "That's impossible. No way could they predict that Celestial Spirit summoning capable children could be born in this exact pattern in this exact way... even the most gifted of prophets and seers wouldn't be able to come up with that..."

"Unless they were breeding them." said the Dark Celestial Spirit of Sin with an almost impressed look on his features. Za'cha looked at the files once more and narrowed his eyes. "Just how long have they been planning this..." the human host growled, trying to contemplate the sheer scale of the entire operation. With every new understanding of it, it raised more questions, and even more worry over the situation. "So... not just your average evil organisation bent on world domination then." the Spirit of the Rider of Death's Weapon of the Apocalypse said, forcing the Dark Ex-Quip Mage to chuckle humourlessly. "Seems that way..." he said, looking at the initials. "Destiny Foundation... they lay the foundation to lay claim to the destiny they seek. Seems almost like cheating." the Dark Mage mused.

"And yet for all their seeming power and planning... you'd think they would have found me before you did. As well as the others." said Pride with a measure of thought. Za'cha rubbed his chin. "Aye... they wouldn't have grabbed the kids if they weren't already in possession of the items... unless Nakiya's task is to be like a sniffer-dog as well?" he said. "Unless something accelerated their time scale." suggested Tessa. All of them looked back at the slaver files. "That would explain why they chose to use slavers instead of handling it themselves... something or someone forced them to accelerate their plans... which would explain why the lab we found was an utter wreck." said the Dark Mage. "It wasn't ready to house whatever they created yet... which means..."

"Which means that Nakiya herself may not necessarily be complete or ready." said the Dark Celestial Spirit with a deepening frown. "Given her transformation back at the Tower... I think we can assume that the final form this Destiny Foundation were intending would be similar in nature." Za'cha looked at the file concerning Nakiya once more and frowned somewhat, the gears turning in his mind. "If that's the case... I'm going to need to create safeguards and failsafes, and integrate them into her armour. If she... transforms again as an instinctive defence mechanic..." the Dark Ex-Quip Mage said, rubbing his chin as he tried to consider how exactly and what precisely he'd have to enact.

"It was triggered by the two gluttons feeding on her at the same time." said Tessa. "So, you'll need to limit it to a single Key at a time. And make sure that it doesn't require to feed on her life energy, otherwise she may wind up accidentally, or on purposefully, initiate that transformation again." the Spirit of the Apocalypse Weapon stated, to which Za'cha nodded. "I'll need to take into account her physiology... her mind may be human, but her body certainly isn't. Her biology's stability alone boggles the mind. Devils and Demons don't tend to get along at the best of times, and then to throw in Fallen Angel parts into the mixture... introducing a fourth element in the form of a Dark Celestial Spirit into that little biological and thaumaturgical vat..." he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as he thought.

"Unless we kept the powers strictly to the Armour itself." the Dark Ex-Quip Mage said slowly, pacing the room as he considered this new technical and magical challenge. "The armour I use for Pride's powers taps into his physical powers at the cost of my own stamina and life... if we make it so that Nakiya's only tapping into their magical abilities, then we'd only need to have it function via her magical power pool." he said, grabbing a piece of paper and a pen from his dimensional space, jotting down these ideas. "Magical power is a near constant in every realm, regardless of biology. With that basis, and utilising the Pride's Aegis as a template... reroute the lacrima and retune it here, here, and here..." he muttered, beginning to sketch out a magical circuit plan.

Tessa looked at Pride as their host muttered to himself, the pen sketching and annotating furiously on the paper. "Is he always like this?" the Apocalypse Weapon asked the Dark Celestial Spirit, who nodded, the faintest smirk playing on his lips. "Indeed. When it comes to tackling a magical challenge and surmounting it, he puts himself into it, body and soul. This may be one of the reasons why we've... bonded to use a euphemism." slowly admitted the Dark Spirit, using the language that only Spirits could understand. Tessa looked at her Wielder and slowly nodded.

Za'cha was oblivious to the two Spirits chatting, focusing on his challenge of the armour. Not only was he designing this to work with Nakiya's unique situation... but also as a silent challenge to the Destiny Foundation. They sought to try and wield the power of the Void Between Stars, the Dark Celestial Spirits, and so twisted the fates of one hundred children, taking their destinies and lives from them, all to create a singular being that they thought to try and control... he'd already proven with his Aegis that it could be done without that... but this, improving and enhancing their creation... there was also the silent hope that it would help to stabilise Nakiya, and help her control her Summons more effectively. "And the best part... the Rune Knights have just helped to fund this." he said with a dark smirk.