Chapter 112: Chapter 112
Zhan shook his head. "Dragons, worldwide. As well as any other higher order beings."
Higher order beings. A bit of a nebulous term but one that tended to refer to the creatures that were powerful enough to have made it into the lexicon and consciousness of the mundane populations of the world - dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, sphinx and so on. They were the ones that often ended up in higher levels of jianghu government (or the equivalent in other regions) or at least commanding considerable influence if they were of the more hermitic sort.
More raw power meant more power in all realms, so why would they be more affected by whatever it was that The Unity had done?
"Are The Unity targeting higher order beings then? To consolidate their power?"
"We thought so at first, but it’s too widespread. We have secret reports that even beings that live in complete seclusion where no one knows where they are have also been affected," said Helen, finally taking a sandwich.
Bran settled back in his chair to think and nibble at his sandwich.
"Magic itself. It has to be that," he said. "Arthur must have done something to actual magic and...
"I didn’t do anything," piped up a voice from the door.
The four pairs of eyes, the loong’s included, turned to the door.
"He’s not talking about you," said Melody, punching her brother in the arm, as she, her brother, and Coral entered the room. She turned and beamed at Bran. "Long time no see!"
"Long time indeed," sad Bran, rising. There were only three chairs at the table, but there was a stack of a few more by the wall that he and Melody’s brother Arthur went to get.
"Oh wow... so this is what Misha looks like as a dragon," said Coral. She was standing a metre away from Misha and showed no signs of wanting to get closer. "He looks impressive."
"He does," agreed Bran. He set down two seats for the girls and they sat.
Melody’s brother drew up the final chair and sat down too, knocking a hand against Bran’s arm. "By the way, I changed my English name to Argon," he said.
"Oh? What happened?" asked Bran.
"Because we were teasing him too much," cut in Melody.
Her brother, formerly Arthur but now called Argon, scowled at her. "I originally picked the name ’Arthur’ because I like the King Arthur myths, but now that crazy guy’s ruined it all."
"Xu Yidi said you and Misha got attacked," said Coral. She picked a sandwich for Melody then got one for herself.
"Yeah, but Helen, Tuesday and Zhan helped us out."
"Did they use magic?"
"No, the people attacking you?"
"Not that I could tell. Why?"
Coral glanced at Melody. "We’ve been tracking social media, you know, all the accounts and trending hashtags and all that, and we have a theory."
"H-hash tags?" asked Bran.
Helen clapped him on the shoulder. "This guy’s from the stone age," she said. "Go easy on him."
Bran shoved her hand away and was pleasantly surprised when Misha took the chance to rest his head there instead, like a very large parrot.
"Don’t worry about hashtags," said Melody, picking up the tale. "Basically, we think The Unity has been secretly forming groups online to influence and control public opinion then use that control to control things in reality. They’ve even gotten some famous influencers on board too to do sponsorships with the physical computing."
Bran thought about it. "But you’d need a lot of people to do that," he said. "Like, a lot."
"Yeah. So they’ve been recruiting as well."
"Not exactly. There’s a kind of secret trial people have to go through to become members. We think kidnapping, or maybe even killing, magical creatures is one of them."
All eyes went to Misha.
If that was true, then that at least explained the incident on the beach. And it also laid to rest one worry of Bran’s: that Arthur had tracked Misha down. If Melody and Coral were right, then it was more likely that little Adam had just thought he was suspicious, followed him, then thought he’d hit the jackpot when he spotted the loong. Not a great series of events but one that was more manageable at least.
"So, what’s an ’influencer’?" asked Bran after a while.
The explanation took a while, all through which Bran successfully kept a neutral expression that he’d found worked well to deflect embarrassment. It had been a while since he’d had to use that tactic, what with his voracious consumption of any and all information he could get his hands on in general, but it still seemed to work anyway.
Basically, ’influencers’ were individuals with teams behind them who acted as thought leaders, had followers, and could shape public opinion, or at least that’s what he understood. Why someone would want to be a follower of one of them was beyond him, but he suspected that maybe he just wasn’t the right target audience. As someone always out of place, just meeting someone who could empathise with him was already difficult, let alone finding a group.
And eventually, the conversation wound back to exactly what had happened in those critical hours that Bran had spent asleep in a dream Coil.
Put simply, while the government had been prepared for some kind of upset, the sudden loss of magic and its people to wield it, presented a completely unprecedented situation which, coupled with The Unity’s follower’s ’physical computing’, put the whole system at a major disadvantage, leading to the current situation.
Nominally, the government was still in power, but in reality, other than basic public services like collecting the rubbish and electricity management, actual control was completely in the hands of The Unity and Arthur Penn. To put it bluntly, things were chaotic at the base, though Bran couldn’t really fault them for it. Whale Toes, who’d always taken the lead historically on all matters jianghu, was completely leaderless while the SSD, being comprised nearly eighty percent of magically inclined individuals, found itself at a loss with its number one asset cut off from them.
To make things even worse, there had then been a series of major betrayals on the legislative side of things with many legislators revealing their secret undying devotion to Mr. Penn and his magical powers which was the straw that broke the camel’s beleaguered back and solidified The Unity’s control.
Now, roaming gangs of varying connection with The Unity roamed the city, doing what they could to gain favour with the powers that be while taking all they could for themselves.
Not a great situation all things considered, though when Bran considered the timeline, certain ideas came to mind.
"I wonder... do you think the city in the sky is related to the loss of magic for the majority?" he asked.
"City in the sky?" asked Zhan.
Helen had left to go help Tuesday by providing the brawn in a dispute and Coral, Melody and Argon had all left to do important tasks they’d been assigned. In the interim, Xu Yidi had finally appeared and joined them, taking the last of the sandwiches, which left the discussion comprising of him, Zhan and Bran, with Misha as set dressing.
"We haven’t heard anything about that," said Yidi. He pulled out a notebook and flipped to a fresh page. "Where did you see it?"
And so Bran told them about his fight with Arthur Penn on top of The Unity headquarters and that strange city that had been in the clouds which led to a larger scale meeting where Bran expounded, in more detail, about his recent experience. And that meeting had led to another meeting, then another the next day as confusion and worry met with directionless desire.
No one liked the current situation and everyone had an idea of what to do, many of them being in direct conflict with another, making each successive meeting Bran was dragged to feel even more pointless than the last.
Which was how he found himself walking alone down the docks in the middle of the night.
He’d been wrong about the island being uninhabited. It turned out the northern areas of the island (the boat, when it had come in and gone into the cave, had come up in the south) had a small, but vibrant population of local folk, historically fisherfolk but now almost half were dedicated to the tourist industry.
It was a nice, relaxing place, or at least Bran imagined it had been before all the chaos with the rise of The Unity and the relocation of the SSD and Whale Toes here.
Perhaps if he had the chance, it might be nice to get a little place here and live with Misha on the coast. The loong was a big fan of fish after all and if they had a kitchen, then Bran could try his hand at cooking again. His sense of taste was back, so he thought it pretty likely.
Bran stopped and listened.
There it was again. Voices. Strained ones. Shouting ones.
He looked around. There was no disturbance on the island, not that he could see. He turned and squinted out at the ocean.
It was small, barely noticeable among the waves, but he spotted it.
A tiny boat, full to the brim with humans and non-humans alike.