Infiltration

Tornbjorg infiltrates a group that kidnaps sleepers and reminds them why they call her Inferno.

## Infiltration

It was a quiet night and a woman was walking along the street. Completely alone or at least that's how it would seem. The people in this town were getting scared, there had been a lot of disappearances in Nordland county recently. The police could find nothing but it wasn't any fault of theirs. The woman knows this well and had come here for that reason. Her name is Tornbjorg Magnüs and she had come here to investigate the disappearances. Her interest only increased when her investigations picked up traces of magical residue, someone had been casting spells.

It’s no wonder then that the local sleeper authorities couldn’t find anything. There’s context to this case that they have no way of knowing and these kidnappers are professionals, leaving behind very few clues even for someone in the know like Tornbjorg. The covenant of the Alfödr should be handling it but hadn’t been using their resources as well as they could. There are a few reasons that could be: some probably buy from this group for an easy source of human parts and potential puppets, some may be involved with the group themselves, but for the most part Tornbjorg would guess that they just don’t care. This group had shown themselves to be able to hide their use of magic from the sleepers and the sleepers have been the only targets, why should magi care?

And so Tornbjorg had taken it upon herself to deal with the group. While she doesn’t like the idea of presenting herself as vulnerable she has come to the conclusion that it’s the only way, there’s no particular pattern to these kidnappings that she could anticipate and the crime scenes had given her little to work with. So for the past few days, she’s been making herself a target. Taking a mixture that suppresses her magical signature and acting the part of an oblivious sleeper. It was starting to get tedious as she just had to hope the group noticed her and considered her worth taking which they hadn’t for a few days now.

That changes now. As she’s walking her keen senses pick up on chanting nearby, it’s a short incantation which she can tell from the words is just a simple sleeping spell. They’re not expecting to need a particularly powerful spell when they think she’s a sleeper after all. If the crime were different this would be the part where Tornbjorg would reveal her true abilities and make them regret it. In this case though there are lives at stake. As such she wants to figure out where they’re taking these people and the easiest way to do that is to let them take her there. So she voluntarily lets her magical defense down and the spell renders her unconscious.

A few hours later Tornbjorg wakes up in the back of a van. There are several other people in there with her, all bound and gagged including herself. Some are already awake while others are still under the sleeping spell. Minimal guard Tornbjorg notices, just the driver and her passenger. They’re probably mages so it’s not like they’d need much more against a small group of unarmed sleepers. It’s unlikely that anyone will try anything anyway, even if these were normal kidnappers intimidations would probably suffice. Especially since from what little she can see from the back of the van, they are on a very back road. Nowhere to run.

About thirty more minutes pass by until Tornbjorg can detect it, a bounded field is set up on the path in front of them. She shows no outward reaction to this of course, at least until they pass through it and as she suspected it was a concealment-type bounded field. What appeared as just a forest suddenly became a building with many other vehicles present. The kidnapped individuals display as much surprise as they can considering their current state, shocked at the sudden appearance of this structure.

The van drives next to the building then comes to a stop and after a moment the back doors are open, there are more guards now that they’re at the base of operations. Tornbjorg walks along with the rest, flanked by the guards as they are escorted through the building. It doesn’t take long until they reach their destination. A large room acting as a communal cell, dozens of sleepers are being kept here. These are the people she came here for then. Tornbjorg quickly looks around, a decent chunk of the guards here are the ones escorting her group and she can’t detect any spells placed in the room. Now is the time to act.

Tornbjorg immediately triggers her mana lobe, putting it into action for a simple spell. Her wrists heat up massively, melting off the handcuffs this group was using to restrict their kidnapped victims in an instant. One of the guards looks over, surprised by the handcuff seemingly spontaneously failing “What t-” before he can finish she punches him in the face, putting him down instantly. With the element of surprise still on her side she grabs the one who had been driving them and throws her into another one. Dealing with a fourth one in quick succession she sweeps their legs and then stomps on them to put them out of commission as well.

“Fy Faen! It’s her, the Inferno!” At this point the element of surprise has worn off, one of them had recognized her as a mage and which particular pyromancer she is. The remaining eight enemies in this room have prepared themselves to fight her. Knowing now that she is not just a sleeper.

“GET BEHIND ME!” Tornbjorg orders the group she had come with. Confused but at least understanding that this lady seems to be their chance of a way out, they follow her direction quickly. Tornbjorg turns her attention back to the enemies at hand. Despite the situation, she can’t help but sport a grin as she does so. Finally after days of waiting and playing the part of a helpless sleeper, now she can let loose on a bunch of criminals who definitely deserve it.

The enemy start things off with three ranged fighters blasting away at her, a volley of magic bullets and crossbow bolts flying at her. Tornbjorg quickly advances on the closest one to her who’s unleashing a volley of magical bullets from his fingers. She dodges her way through most of the projectiles, blocking the ones she can’t with her defensive spells. Seeing her coming at him first, he charges up a particularly large blast with both his hands, trying to make one huge attack that she can’t easily block or dodge. He didn’t fully account for her physical capabilities however and upon seeing the next attack intensifying in power she leaps over it. Flying through the air, Tornbjorg comes back down with a devastating aerial axe kick, smashing him into the ground. One down.

Two of them rush at her next, one of them has the characteristic glow of reinforcement throughout her body while the other seems to have used body modification to make himself much larger and stronger. The one using reinforcement reaches her first and performs a high kick aimed at Tornbjorg’s head. She ducks underneath it and then begins moving in for her counterattack when the big guy arrives and punches down at her, making Tornbjorg cut off her attack to sidestep his. The missed punch smashes up the floor where she was. He wasn’t so bad in terms of power but with his follow ups it becomes clear that while he has more raw power he has far less technique than his comrade. Taking him out first would be easiest, so dodging and blocking their attacks she waits for her opportunity. It comes quickly as the modified enemy gets in the way of the reinforcement using one. Tornbjorg dodges the attack and then launches herself upward, delivering a powerful jumping uppercut. She then uses his body as leverage, kicking off of him and soaring at the reinforcement using enemy faster than she can react. Grabbing her head and taking her out by using the momentum to hit it against the ground.

Next up from behind Tornbjorg there comes a wave of fire. Tornbjorg turns to face it but otherwise does not react at first, just letting the heat wash over her Sol-blessed body. A part of her wonders what they expected to accomplish with that now that they know who she is. She then sends back her own larger blast of fire that instantly overwhelms and defeats the enemy pyromancer.

With that out of the way she quickly moves onto the next one. She sees that they’re using flying familiars, some moving in to attack close up while others fire magical projectiles at her. She tries to break them with her fist but they’re agile things, using hit-and-run tactics. So to increase her range she summons her fiery powers again but rather than a simple blast she shapes them into whips. As they come in she dodges then using the increased range of the whips she takes out the familars, first the melee types then the ranged ones. Finally with that out of the way, she wraps one of the whips around the mage themself. She yanks them towards her and then punches them in the gut, sending them all the way back to where they started.

Finally, another duo attacks now that they have a clear shot at her, literally in one case. From an elevated position, the final ranged attacker fires off a repeating crossbow while the other comes up close with a sword. As she moves to intercept the sword she notices arcs of electricity coming off of it and instead dodges it. This girl is good, leaving little opening for someone who can’t block her attacks while also pressing hard on Tornbjorg so she can’t focus on creating more fiery weapons. She ends up focusing on the sword wielder so much that the crossbow user actually manages to score a shallow hit on Tornbjorg’s left leg. Although the wound itself is largely inconsequential, the bolt was enchanted. Tornbjorg suddenly finds her movements in that leg to be slightly more sluggish, something the sword wielder takes advantage of.

Realizing she can’t let this continue on much longer, Tornbjorg decides to abandon evasion. She had been avoiding the blade until now but she was going to just have to take it head on and end this quickly. So the next time the swordswoman swings at her she grabs the blade with both of her hands. Electricity courses through her body but she powers through it, shocking both of her enemies which giving her time to shatter the sword. With that troublesome weapon out of the way, she punches the swordswoman’s face with a single decisive knockout blow. She then uses an explosive shot to break apart the crossbowman’s vantage point and another to take them out as they fall through the air.

The room is clear. She takes a breath and lets out a small post-battle laugh, that was a good workout but time to get these people out of her. She starts approaching the large group of prisoners in this cell but then it hits her. ‘Wait, that was only seven.’ In the heat of battle she had lost track of how many enemies there were. The eighth had taken advantage of that and gotten up to their own schemes using stealth spells.

“Stop right there!” Turning back towards the entrance to the room she sees the eighth one has taken a hostage, her hand pressed against their head, ready to cast a lethally powerful Gandr curse. “Take another step without my permission and she dies!” the final enemy would yell at her. “Hurt her and you’ll wish for death!” Tornbjorg yells back.

Tornbjorg and this final enemy glare at each other, stuck in a standoff. This isn’t in Tornbjorg’s favor at all. It seems her final foe had triggered some sort of alarm because she can hear more footsteps coming down the hall, sounding like many more than she had fought so far. If all of them take a hostage there’s no way she would be able to handle the situation without some deaths. If it weren’t for that slowing spell on her leg she could use a combination of magic and physical power to cross the distance in a near instant but as it is her options are few. Fortunately for her however that choice would soon become irrelevant.

She spots out of the corner of her eye some movement, a cloaked individual emerges from the ventilation, someone she recognizes pretty quickly and now there’s no more need to worry. The man jumps off the wall, coming at the hostage taker from above with what appears to be just the handle of a blade in his hands. The enemy only has time to look up at him before he’s swinging his weapon. The arc of the attack should harm both hostage and criminal but in an exceptional display of precision and familiarity with the weapon, the blade of the sword only manifests just after harmlessly passing through the hostage. The hostage breaks away unharmed while her would-be killer is suddenly without a head.

“Wasn’t expecting to see you here, Dagur.” Tornbjorg greets the man with familiarity. The man turns his golden-eyed gaze towards her upon hearing her words. “Was in the area. I sensed your magical presence and got curious.” A normal person might question why he was just in the middle of nowhere but for these two that’s hardly unusual and they had already met each other several times like this. “Well, how about we finish up here together and get these people out of here.” “Agreed.” The two would take up positions near the door, using it as a defensive choke point to protect the sleepers. Together they make short work of the remaining kidnappers, Dagur cutting his way through them while Tornbjorg really shows off her pyromancy skills.

Finally, things are completely cleared up. “An exciting day all things considered. Hm, think you can handle the sleepers while I look through the rest of the building?” Tornbjorg says to Dagur who nods. While neither had received a typical Arcane Order education, both of them are aware that large amounts of sleepers can not be exposed to magic without some pretty bad consequences from reality itself. This group was small enough to get away with it but if they don’t modify their memories and they end up getting more people to believe something magic happened it may lead to horrors, whether directly or by an indirect increased awareness of magic. So Dagur gets started on convincing them that they had still been kidnapped and rescued but without all the magic.

Meanwhile Tornbjorg starts looking through the building. There isn’t much of interest as she goes, it seems they only had the one cell so there aren’t any more prisoners and every guard in the building apparently answered that alarm. She’s about to just head back to Dagur when she comes across a magically sealed and enhanced door. ‘What do we have here?’ Tornbjorg examines the door for a little while. If she were still in stealth mode she’d try to counteract the spell and all that but seeing as there’s no one left to alert, she instead bashes it down with a couple of magically enhanced kicks. Walking into the room she sees this seems to be where they were running things from. There are plans, maps, etc.

She starts looking through them. It’s mostly just routine stuff, “x amount of prisoners today” “Need more of y”, those kinds of things. As she looks through though she notices something that does stick out, a message. She had thought this was a mostly isolated operation but… she starts reading through it and realizes that this is in fact a connected operation, they’re taking orders from someone. She continues reading through any other documents she can find, these amateurs should’ve destroyed these but she certainly won’t complain. Using a combination of transfers, requests, orders, the odd description or name, and maps she figures out where the central command is. At the same time, Dagur walks into the room.

“There you are. A couple of the sleepers grew up in this area and knew the way to the nearest town, they’re driving the rest back. Hm, what’s all this?”

“Dagur, what would you say to helping me deal another blow to this group?”

“When do we start?”