Molting the Mortal Coil

The Chameleon Mantis carefully crawled along the top of a pipe that ran along the ceiling of a hallway. Sage observed the people that passed below and started to confirm certain details about them. They all wore similar blue jumpsuits that had raised hexagrams printed on them. The patterned areas were over their joints, perhaps for protection, and made of some sort of rubbery material. After a dozen or so people had passed by, Sage noticed a difference. One of them seemed to be treated with reverence by the others. They stepped to the side when the woman in question approached and bowed their heads. Due to this phenomenon, Sage paid more attention to her.

The woman was older, her hair was greying at the temples and pulled back into a loose and low bun, giving her a more conservative look. She was quite good looking and Sage imagined she would have been quite the head turner when she was younger. Her coverall was the same as the others, except with one difference. The textured hexagram on the center of her chest was a bright gold, very unlike the black patterns on the others. With the bright symbol standing out, Sage took a closer look at the chest patterns of the other people. He noticed that they also had varying patterns and they seemed quite similar to the strange hexagrammic writing that he’d seen on the old signs in the ruined city. So they put their name tags or rank symbols on their chests, interesting.

Sage was here to gather information, so he followed the woman with the gold pattern. He still couldn’t understand their speech or writing, but a person with a higher rank should lead him to more important places within the facility. For the most part, the facility was very industrial on the inside and there were many exposed pipes and vent tubes for him to hide behind. There were only a few occasions where he had to fly through the open. He almost lost the woman a few times due to the delay, but he timed his flights so those passing below were looking in the opposite direction. Traveling deeper and deeper into the facility, Sage finally had to stop his pursuit. The woman entered a doorway that looked quite like one from a ship or vault, except of course it was hexagonal in shape like all the hallways and door frames around here. It had a sort of hexagon shaped wheel in the center and when it was turned Sage heard metal sliding against metal from inside the wall.

Outside that door, there were two large men with their hands clasped behind their back. Sage didn’t see any weapons, but since they didn’t move from their position and watched the hall with vigilance, he could only assume they were guards. Worse yet, there were no pipes leading into the hallway and it was completely clear of any obstructions. Must be an important location.

While he wanted to head inside to learn more, Sage was still at a large disadvantage. Without any understanding of their language, his information gathering would be greatly hampered. Instead, he noted the position of the hallway and important room on the map he was drawing and started to explore the nearby areas. If this was a command center or high ranking meeting room, then other nearby areas would have a higher likelihood of being frequented by important people. So, he may not be able to go into the war planning room, but he might still be able to find the bar or restaurant that the generals liked to drink in. Or at least, that was his thinking as he had the Chameleon Mantis follow the pipes and explore the nearby rooms.

He saw a doorway with a sign over it that caught his eye. Each of the doorways usually had blocky painted writing over it, like the kind left by a stencil. While Sage didn’t understand the writing, what he did understand was that the sign over this doorway had been painted over and embellished by hand. It also had a painted symbol that looked like a hexagram shaped decanter, tipping over to the side. He also heard the clinking of glass from inside and knew he’d found the room he was looking for. Unfortunately, the pipes and tubes didn’t lead over the door so in order to enter he’d have to wait till someone opened the door and also move some distance in the open to follow them inside. He thought of flying right inside, but with how close he’d have to be someone to sneak into the open door he thought they’d notice the buzzing of the Mantid’s wings. So, instead he moved down to ground level and waited by the door frame for someone to enter or exit.

He fought the urge to take a peek inside with the Twin Soul. With how mysterious these psychics were, he didn’t want to take any chances and kept his Spirit Power, Qi, and Aura very tightly contained. After a few minutes of waiting, he finally got his chance. A few hiccuping people stumbled out of the doorway, holding each other up at the shoulders. Sage had to hold back as their drunken wobbling made their footsteps hard to predict. Only at the very last instant before the door closed was he able to finally slip past them and into the bar. Of course, it didn’t look like any bar he’d seen before. The room was split up into dozens of lowered hexagram shaped rooms. The chest height ‘walls’ that separated each room had walkways on top of them that were being used by the servers to deliver food and drinks to the lower chambers. At the center of the room, seven hexagrams were joined and lifted above the walkway to create a roughly circular stage where a band was performing.

The music was unlike anything Sage had heard before, not because of the melody or voices, but because of the strange instruments they were using. He couldn’t quite make out how they worked, but one of them sounded like the buzzing of insect wings, and another like large sheets of cracking ice. He could also make out a sort of howling wind and a melodic whistling. The strangeness of the sounds almost got the mantis stepped on, and Sage quickly snapped out of it, flying up to the ceiling and hiding behind a light. This should do. I need to study the people and there’s plenty of them here acting rowdy.

He already had some hoplites studying the language of the ratmen in the Inner World, but there was no telling how long that would take. Also, now that he’d heard them talking more he was quite sure the language they spoke was different than that of the psychic humans. That meant he either had to capture one of them or learn the language the hard way. A normal cultivator wouldn’t experience a great increase in their mental faculties. While Sage had heard of certain Spirit Cultivators having great mental acuity, unfortunately he had no access to such methods. Yet, even if a cultivator’s intelligence didn’t rise, their memory would dramatically improve. Sage also had Memory Spheres and was quite experienced with their use. With their help, he could playback conversations or exchanges and isolate the sounds and gestures to try and break down and decipher what was going on.

The music continued to play and he shifted his attention from one group to another trying to build a database of what people said when they did certain things. With his attention so focused, it came as quite the shock to him when things went dark.

The Chameleon Mantis was suddenly trapped. It’s limbs couldn’t move and Sage realized it had been caught. After struggling for a moment, the insect went still. He could feel they were in motion and after a few minutes the Mantis stopped moving and light returned. Sage saw a man holding a thick cloth and closing a glass door over top of the Chameleon Mantis. The Mantis struck like lightning, shooting towards the gap. The man yelped and then the cover fell down with surprising speed. The Mantis struck against the glass and Sage realized it was not normal glass. It resisted the strike of the Mantis without any damage and the bug landed back on the floor of the cage.

Stuck in another cage. Is this going to become a theme?