Daneel needed a moment to process the truth that he had just pulled out, but as soon as he understood it, a broad smile came on his face.
Looking at it was enough for the three a.s.sa.s.sins to know that they were in for quite an "interesting" time during their stay on the continent, but first, they waited for the king to call off the 20 guards behind him.
Strangely, even though they continued to look at him, nothing changed, so finally, it was the reptilian who asked, "Um… Can you get them to look away, now? You no longer need to use them… And it"s quite uncomfortable to be locked in the sights of so many fanatics."
Daneel had been busy scanning the eye, as he knew that they would have to make their exit soon. So, when Husare"s words made him snap out of his task, he laughed and said, "You"re not the only ones who can act."
Saying so, he flew towards them, and even as they watched him with abject confusion on their faces, Daneel went past the place where they were standing and proceeded toward the ones in the room who had not moved so far.
The system had said that he needed to touch them if he wanted to get all the data possible, and as soon as he did so, the three behind him finally became aware of the situation.
"You were acting! You don"t have them under your control! You just trapped them, didn"t you? You can"t control them? So that means… That even touching them will wake "em up! We need to get the f*ck out of here!"
It was the feline individual who finally spoke, and even his voice was one filled with growls and other rough sounds that one would expect from one of the chief predators of most jungles on earth. It did break a bit, though, and whenever it did, it went to a weird high pitch which made it hard to understand what he was saying.
He had figured it out perfectly, though, so Daneel only nodded without even turning back, following which he heard a curse from Husare in that language that he didn"t understand.
At first, she stopped with one, but as her anger and frustration did not abate, she continued cursing until the system told him that he was finally done, and that the time was approaching for the minute to be up.
Dusting off his hands as if he had done something as simple as taking out the trash, he took one last look at this foreign place while looking forward to the moment when all of its secrets would be exposed for him to peruse.
Hoping that it would be soon, he turned around finally and said, "Time to go, unless you want to face the wrath of some very angry Church folk. I"m pretty sure that they will insist that you stay, possibly forever. Is it enough if I kill these four?"
His words make the three a.s.sa.s.sins understand that they could react in safety later, so putting aside everything they were thinking and feeling, Husare grit her teeth and said, "Yes. They are the controllers - without them, the eye will only float back to where it came from. There is no chance of them sending it back - losing one set of controllers, itself, is such a huge drain on resources that in comparison, the value of the rest of this thing is not even worth mentioning. Still, to salvage everything they can, the return will still happen. Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?"
Without answering, Daneel simply raised his hand, following which a blade of wind cleanly cut through all the veins that were connecting the four controllers to the fleshy part of the eye.
If they were so valuable, his plan had been to take them with him, if possible, but alas, it seemed that this wouldn"t be the case.
The moment the veins were cut off, all four began to choke, and not even a second later, they all fell to the floor, dead.
It didn"t stop there. After their chests stopped heaving, their unearthly, always open eyes finally closed, and this was accompanied by their bodies disintegrating from the inside out.
By the time 10 seconds had pa.s.sed, there was no sign of them left, and even though Daneel had asked the system to do whatever it could to stop this destruction from happening, it had simply said that it was not possible.
Just like the precautions placed on the Heroes still stuck in the air above, the controllers were such that they would never, ever be allowed to be taken hostage. Daneel didn"t even know what they were, but for some reason, at the moment of their death, he thought he had almost seen a feeling of… relief, in their eyes.
Now was not the time to dwell on this, though, as there were barely 3 seconds left before the members of the Church would awake.
After checking again on the spell that would make them forget everything they had seen here, Daneel nodded to the a.s.sa.s.sins and made his own way outside.
The mosquitoes came with him, and they were the ones which bit a hole through the wall, and then through the ma.s.s of flesh that they had pa.s.sed through initially to get to the control room.
Flanked by these creatures which warily kept looking around to ward off any threats that were foolish enough to target their mother, father, and creator, Daneel tasted the open sky of Angaria again, but instantly, the pressure of the continent struck him with full force.
He knew that this was going to happen, as he hadn"t waited for Husare to come out and activate the Artefact that had protected them during their ascent.
Going down was always easier than coming up. Without fighting the pressure, Daneel allowed it to push him down, and as he started to fall back like a comet coming to grace the land with fire and destruction, he looked back and saw that he was right - even Husare and the other a.s.sa.s.sins were not activating the Artefact again, and were instead letting the pressure propel them to Angaria.
Smiling once again as he saw their expressions that exposed that they were not at all looking forward to seeing him again, Daneel turned toward his home and laughed freely, letting himself revel in the moment.
With the wind in his hair and the power of the Heavens at his back, it felt as if the entire world was under his control, and as he fell, he drank in everything there was to see. At the beginning of the fall, Angaria really was like a small sc.r.a.p of land surrounded by the sea for as far as the eye could see. This meant that whatever natural barrier protected them from being detected or seen by external forces was either outside the range of his vision, which would be simply incredible as he could definitely see thousands of kilometers of sea stretching out infinitely, or was invisible to all those within.