Chapter 174 - Gambit Begins

Jaeda ran, ran for everything she was worth. A scream cut through the dark behind her, the shrill shriek of a woman slowly distorted as it drug on. The interior of the adventurer’s hall is always kept well-lit; there are duties in the night that people have to attend to, but tonight the flickering lights embedded into the wall failed to cast enough light, failed to infect her with the feeling of safety she was so used to. 

Footsteps behind her. Fear makes her turn, finding Car Amalis running down the hallway behind her, no doubt heading to the same place. But, just past him, she sees a woman slip into the hallway, a monster given human form. They had been confused at first, a loud crash at the front doors pulling in late-night staffers from all around the building, only to find a starving beggar standing over the corpse of that one guard…whatshisface. Then the woman vanished, disappeared into thin air, only to reappear an instant later with her bloody hand protruding out the other side of Manager Cressida’s neck. Jaeda started to run then, barely catching the moment when the manager’s eyes began to burn out of her skull with violet fire, the distorted screams of the woman chasing after her. More screaming behind her spurred her onward, the inner halls of the adventurer’s hall never looking more confusing than they did now. 

Car notices Jaeda staring past him, notices the woman at the far end of the hall. She is so different now that Jaeda would never have guessed they had been the same demon if it weren’t for the clothing. That creature in the foyer’s skin had been sallow, sunken in, but the creature at the end of the hall, staring at them with a crazed smile, appears more vibrant and beautiful now than Jaeda ever believed that she had. The monster takes a step forward, and the two guild workers flee.

Jaeda collides with the office door when she reaches it, something in her shoulder snapping, but the pain rides far behind the blinding fear. The knob won’t turn, and she screams, banging on the door, begging. The space between the sound of the door unlatching and the knob slowly rotating feels like an eternity. Not fifteen feet behind her, she hears a sucking gasp, a yelp as Car is lifted off his feet by the monster on their heels. Jaeda hardly registers Kefin’s face as he cracks open the door, shoving her way into the room, but in his big brown eyes, she sees the reflection of violet fire as Car begins to scream.

The door slams shut as she shoulders Kefin aside, sliding the bolt home and throwing down three latches. 

“Wh—what…” Kefin tries to ask, his eyes locked on the door.

Jaeda grabs him by the collar, trying to drag him away, only to be stopped by a stabbing pain across her collarbone. “We have to call out!” She can’t help but scream the words, can’t even really think. “There’s a monster! We have to call!”

Kefin’s big, brown eyes turn toward her, then look past her toward the bowl of silver liquid set out on a dais in the communications room. “We can’t reach the other halls with the barrier still up,” he says.

“Call the duke! Call the prince! Call anyone!” 

Kefin and whatever excuse he was about to make vanish as a heavy door falls on top of him, squashing him flat into the floor. Jaeda stares at the spot the man had just stood in as a splash of red begins to creep from beneath the wood to pool around her nice, brown shoes. The reverberation from the crash still shakes through her bones, her ears beneath her hands whining with a tinny ringing sound. Light from the hallway spills in, a looming shadow falling over her. 

“Found you,” Kessa says. Her prey doesn’t even have the chance to turn and see its attack before her claws strike home, skewering the office worker’s liver, igniting all the mana inside her body. 

Kessa beams, looking down at the spreading pool of blood on the floor that brilliantly catches the moonlight, forming a brilliant crimson mirror. The woman staring back up at her is a beautiful figure, what she always imagined as a girl she might look like in her fondest fantasies. She sighs, so fleeting the change is. But tonight, tonight, she would enjoy it. After all, things were only just getting underway. 

“Hurry along now,” Sigrid says, shoving the woman ahead of her. 

Evilynn Ca’Mari stumbles, just managing to keep her feet as she is herded into the next room. Around the chamber of tan stone, orange lights gently glow from their recesses in the wall. Just beyond the small outlet room the three emerge into, a hallway lined with iron-barred cells leads away, the light growing dimmer as the cells go on. The last of the prisoners in the duke’s dungeon, those whose crimes he considers exceptionally heinous, linger in the pitch dark all the time. 

These aren’t even the worst of the cells, Evilynn knows. Once, when she was still a young girl, her father had taken her to see the true face of the duchy, the one lying beneath the painted-skin facade everyone plays at in the daylight. The Mari’s are known for their summoning magic, their ability to make compact with those beings residing deep within the earth, in the Three Hells. Learning to work with such dark powers does not come without a certain price paid. 

Sigrid hums as she strolls in through the shadowed archway, dragging along with her a tied and struggling young elven woman, her mouth gagged and her eyes wet with spilled tears–Priscilla Ca’Mari.

Two guardsmen notice the intrusion, the door to the dungeon still shuddering from where it slapped into the stone. The two men are brave; they do not hesitate to rip the covers from their spears and charge down the hallway toward the three women. Evilynn shudders, the compulsion to yell a warning to the men an instinct she must shove down deep. She grabs tight onto the fabric of her dress while the monster in human shape behind her grins. 

The air itself cracks, the whip too fast to track with the mortal eye. The first guard slows as he races down the hall, his gait faltering to a walk before he stands still in the hall, preventing his companion from moving forward. The man stares down at his chest, puzzlement on his face as he sees his bare skin there, his uniform and armor torn away. There is a dark hole in his torso, a wound of perfect uniformity that doesn’t bleed, doesn’t even hurt. He turns, looking back to his companion, wanting to ask what had happened from the other man’s perspective, finding himself incapable of drawing breath.

The second man can’t meet the gaze of the first; his eyes stare up at a stretching root emerging from the wall, from the shadow cast by a lantern. Resting neatly on the root are a pair of lungs, a single spot on one slowly dripping bloody dots onto the first guard. The first guard turns up, the confusion wracking him disappearing for a moment as he realizes, ah, that’s why I can’t breathe. 

The air cracks again, six roots strike from the shadows, wrapping around the limbs and neck of the first man, ripping him apart as they recede. The second guard chooses then to run, but the crushing pressure around his ankle signals that it is far too late already. The man screams as the root lashed to his leg pulls away, dragging him back toward the cell it emerges from. The tree root about his leg does not care to use the door, forcing the man’s body through the gate of the outer bars, twisting and ending his life long before he is pulled into the recesses of shadow, lost.

“Only two,” Sigrid says, staring at the bloody mess the tree had left this time. “It seems like too few to guard prisoners such as these.”

Evilynn stares at the spot where two men had just been. It all happened so fast, a momentary cry, and then one man was gone while the other lay in pieces. An arm slaps onto the woman’s shoulder, and her body stiffens as a breath leans toward her ear, the breath of the monster that killed those men outside the room the duke had been holding her in, the breath of the monster that dragged her granddaughter into this. 

“The duke has been busy,” Sigrid says into the woman’s ear. “So many people he has locked down here now. Will it be enough?”

“Enough for what?” Evilynn asks, knowing the answer even before Sigrid slips an old tome into her hands, a familiar tome, one bound from the lavender hide of a crest devil.

“I found this,” Sigrid says, her voice almost a whisper. Down the hall, murmuring begins in the cells, hopeful voices turning toward those who would destroy the guard. Evilynn hears none of it; only the sound of the woman holding Priscilla by the neck is audible to her. “I know someone good at finding things others want hidden, not that you tried all that hard. I read some interesting things in this book, took a few days to puzzle it all out, but I did. I found this spell in the back of particular interest. Do you know it?”

Evilynn’s hands shake as she looks down at the grimoire in her hands. “It should never be cast.” She tries to put defiance into her voice, but she can’t find the heart. Her eyes keep returning to her grandchild, that defiant and flighty girl.

“You don’t think so?” Sigrid asks, turning to look at her. The big woman shrugs, stepping back, grabbing Priscilla Ca’Mari powerfully by the throat, her fingers digging into the delicate flesh of her elven neck as she is lifted from the ground. “I suppose I have no use for either of you then.”

“No,” Evilynn screams, her will broken at the first choking gasp of her granddaughter. 

Only, Sigrid doesn’t stop. The young woman continues to sputter, bound arms stretching against their bonds, hands flailing behind her back. The shaking becomes so violent the gag falls away, choked, pleading words escaping Priscilla’s throat as her eyes spasm. 

“Please,” Evilynn falls to her knees, clutching at Sigrid’s shirt. “I’ll do it! Please! I beg you! I’ll do whatever you want!”

Sigrid looks down at her, consideration crossing her features for a moment before she tosses the struggling youth to the floor. Priscilla gasps as she collides with the ground, shaking as she chokes for breath, a long wheeze escaping her throat. 

“I am so glad that you came to your senses. It is just a pity you aren’t intelligent enough not to test me in the first place.” Sigrid pats the head of the Ca’Mari matriarch. “Now, step to it if you would. If I hear that you have delayed in any way, I’ll toss your granddaughter's head down to you before I bury you alive in this building.”

Sigrid snatches the body of the shaking Priscilla from the floor before strolling from the chamber. Behind her, Evilynn’s shoulders shake, tears beginning to slip from her face as she opens the grimoire on the ground in front of her, turning the pages. Sigrid waits until she gets to the top of the stairs outside and ascends several floors before she slows, gently setting Priscilla against the wall. The shackles keeping the young elf restrained whine as they are ripped apart in a fluid motion, the metal bending beneath incredible strength. 

The body of the girl morphs, shifting and changing until eventually an unknown elven man stands in front of Sigrid. He massages his throat, though no sign of any brutalization remains. “A little far,” Morello says.

“Oh, that wasn’t even a taste,” Sigrid says to him. “Besides, you liked it.”

Morello growls, moving over to the wall and retrieving a fresh guardsman uniform from a bag lying there. With a quick motion, he rips the threadbare dress he wears away and begins to work himself into the uniform. “This seems risky,” he says. He pauses, his hand grazing something inside the bag, an orb of incredible detail that hums with power, a power seeking to draw him in.

“That’s because it is risky,” Sigrid says. “But that is a bit of the point. This was never going to be easy.”

“Still.”

Sigrid nods back down the stairway they had come from. “She is doing her best to help us. It only makes sense that we make sure her schedule stays clear.”

Morello huffs, but says no more. As he finishes dressing, her finds a second bag, handing it to Sigrid and helping her into the getup she picked for this occasion. They linger a moment longer, waiting for the time of greatest opportunity to make it away. They leave just three minutes before a dark crimson light begins to emanate from the dungeon down the stairs, before screams begin to fill the building, before the earth begins to quake.