Cato and Dyen

Cato and Dyen are bound by a temporary transactional alliance shaped by mutual need, guarded disclosure, and incompatible purposes. Dyen assists Cato indirectly by protecting Raine and Leese from the Assassin’s Guild and other pursuers, while Cato represents a possible route to the power Dyen needs for his own revenge. The arrangement never becomes trust: Cato treats Dyen as a useful but dangerous contractor, and Dyen treats Cato as the strongest available means to punish the people who took his wife.

Formation and Terms

Dyen enters the relationship through his pursuit of Raine and Leese after an Assassin’s Guild contract is placed on them. When Leese contacts Cato through a radio lizard and reports that she and Raine have encountered Dyen, the alliance is revealed as a developing practical arrangement rather than a friendship. Dyen follows the sisters across portals and worlds, initially remaining hidden even after they notice him. Raine refuses to explain how she detected him, attributing the discovery simply to Cato instead of revealing the operation of their capelets. That omission establishes the central rule of the relationship: cooperation is possible, but sensitive information remains compartmentalized.

Dyen then makes his expectations explicit. At a defense quest where Cato’s warframes have gathered, he asks for anything capable of breaking Stealth skills as payment for his help, along with a method of contacting Cato. Cato agrees that the first request is feasible but only says he will consider the second. The division is revealing. Cato is willing to exchange a tool for a demonstrated service, yet he refuses to expose the radio-plant network that could disclose which worlds contain his presence. Dyen receives a controlled benefit, not entry into Cato’s organization.

Dyen’s Service to Raine and Leese

Trailing Raine and Leese proves more profitable and more interesting to Dyen than he expected. The pursuit takes him across different worlds, exposing him to native races, unfamiliar landscapes, and skies, while also giving him a steady supply of enemies to kill. The bounty makes the sisters targets, but Dyen’s presence complicates that danger: he is himself an Assassin’s Guild member, yet he cannot determine exactly how the hunters locate them, and he suspects that information about their movements is being bought and sold, possibly by Guild members unwilling to confront them directly.

Dyen’s assistance has a concrete military value. Raine and Leese can eliminate Gold-tier opponents with ease, and their strength allows them to defeat mid-Platinum enemies despite relying mainly on C- and D-tier equipment, mostly Gold gear with some Silver-Rank trinkets. Platinum opponents remain a problem because the sisters lack specialized weapons, armor, and accessories capable of making their Skills more flexible, bypassing armor, or countering movement abilities. Dyen is better equipped because killing other assassins has allowed him to inherit items suited to his build, but even his improved body and equipment would not make him confident against the sisters. His contribution therefore lies less in overpowering them than in removing threats, gathering experience, and accompanying them through territory where the bounty remains active.

The sisters also use Cato’s resources while keeping their own advantages concealed. Their new postbiological bodies, styled with the lineage surname Uriv, contain full electromagnetic communications and can be tracked from orbit; they can also be backed up continuously without relying on the earlier pseudo-bioweapon workaround. Cato’s surveillance keeps watch over Raine and Leese and adds Yaniss to the same matrix, while Dyen travels with them without being granted equivalent access. The contrast reinforces the alliance’s asymmetry: Dyen operates beside Cato’s agents, but he does not become part of the protected informational core around them.

Cato’s Suspicion and Dyen’s Motive

Cato’s judgment of Dyen is marked by an earlier failure of restraint. He once let Dyen go, not considering the cold-blooded murder of a man who was visibly upset and, in Cato’s later assessment, had reason to be so. Subsequent events change that calculation. Cato now regards Dyen as an enemy, even while accepting his assistance. The relationship therefore carries an unresolved contradiction: Dyen’s usefulness does not erase his status as someone Cato considers morally and strategically dangerous.

Dyen’s own objective is equally uncompromising. He does not intend to die before punishing the people who took his wife. Even reaching Bismuth or Azoth rank would ordinarily leave him at a severe disadvantage against ancient opponents who have had centuries to accumulate equipment and improve their Skills. Cato’s gifts could close that gap. Dyen consequently intends to cash in every unit of aid he provides; his loyalty is not emotional, and his cooperation depends on the prospect that Cato’s power can turn revenge from an impossible ambition into a genuine possibility.

This motive explains both Dyen’s persistence and his caution. He follows Raine and Leese rather than seeking a direct confrontation with Cato because the sisters’ route offers immediate work and a path toward eventual payment. Yet the arrangement also keeps him away from worlds where Cato has established power, and Dyen has heard no defense quests that would reveal such locations. Cato’s secrecy frustrates the bargain, while Dyen’s need for future leverage prevents him from abandoning it.

Boundaries, Payment, and Narrative Function

The relationship reaches its clearest expression when Dyen asks to be equipped against stealth and given a communications channel. Cato’s response separates compensation from trust: anti-stealth technology can be delivered as a commodity, but direct contact would risk exposing the distribution of Cato’s selves and networks. Cato’s Sydean operations already require restricted System-compatible frames, partial connectivity to a prime self, and careful management of information across divergent versions. His dealings with Dyen follow the same logic of controlled interfaces and limited disclosure.

Dyen’s temporary alliance with Cato also places him between several competing systems of power. He remains associated with the Assassin’s Guild, yet kills assassins who pursue Raine and Leese. He is motivated by personal revenge, but accepts Cato’s technological assistance. He travels with the sisters, though they do not treat him as a fully trusted ally. Cato, meanwhile, is fighting the System while preparing food and other aid for entire worlds, including populations and kingdoms that may be politically opposed to his companions. In that broader struggle, Dyen is neither a converted follower nor a permanent lieutenant; he is a dangerous independent actor whose interests briefly overlap with Cato’s.

The alliance’s significance lies in that overlap. Cato needs the sisters protected and benefits from Dyen’s ability to eliminate assassins; Dyen needs access to Cato’s superior technology and eventual power. Each side gains something specific, but neither surrenders strategic independence. The resulting partnership is effective precisely because it is narrow: service can be measured, payment can be negotiated, and trust can remain absent. Dyen’s aid advances Cato’s campaign while preserving the possibility that, once their immediate interests diverge, the same relationship may become an adversarial one.