Cassandra Pendragon

“Their sire,” the demon continued, “belonged to an ancient bloodline. I’m not completely certain, but I even think that I’ve heard of it before, which is quite surprising since I’ve never cared much for the undead races, despite my earlier outburst. Now, this is where it gets interesting. Tharos’ mind was wiped, most of his memories sealed away in a medium he’s going to reclaim when he gets back. Consequentially, I only saw what he was allowed to retain. Most of it was useless, a few scenes from his past and glimpses of his present. In sum, I’d call them a well crafted sales pitch. I don’t think his memories, those that he still had, were tempered with, but of course, I can’t be sure. With enough time and effort, the mind can practically be rewritten and I’d need a lot more than a quick peek to determine if that was the case.”

“So, basically, you know nothing,” Erya chimed in pejoratively. “After that longwinded introduction, I expected a little more, to be honest.”

“I’m not finished,” Mephisto grumped. “I know that the two vampires have been in this city since it’s very founding, I know they survived the cataclysm and I also know that, while they were still working hand in hand, they managed to expand their influence far beyond the borders of Free Land, possibly even to the other continent. And, would you believe it, they aren’t oblivious to an ancient, powerful sorcerer taking over the ranks of the pirates they tried to deal with for the better part of a century. Captain Dawn even has a few of his spies locked up in his dungeon. He used Tharos’ to invite us to his manor in three days time. He’s proposing a simple deal: we help him get rid of his sister, so he can start rebuilding Free Land and in exchange, he’s willing to support us. Now, before you ask, I don’t know what happened between them, why they’re trying to rip each other to shreds or how far his help would actually go and what precisely he can offer us. He made damn sure that that I saw enough of his toys, henchmen and magic to become curious, but for anything more, we’ll have to visit him in person. There’ll be a grand ceremony in the harbour to christen his newest ship and hand her over to one of his underlings and we’re welcome to join the festivities at his manor afterwards”

“Couldn’t it just be a trap,” I asked quietly. “This… Captain, he seems to already know a great deal about us and I’m not keen on walking into a reception, similar to what my family went through.” The demon shrugged.

“A valid point and one of the reasons why I said I’d go. You’ll have to make up your own mind, if you think the risk is worth it. I, for one, do, but I’m also reasonably certain that I’ll make it out of there in one piece, whatever happens. If you want my honest opinion, you shouldn’t come, unless you’re restored by then, but that’s unlikely. As for the rest, I’d easily take Erya and Viyara with me, Ahri too, but I imagine she’s going to stick with you. I’m fairly certain they’re reasonably safe, but everyone else…” his words trailed off, but to my surprise, no one contradicted him immediately. I had expected a flood of boastful complaints, that they were strong enough to take care of themselves but apparently, no one was eager to walk into the lion’s den, or the bat’s cave, in this case.

While I pondered his words, I heard a faint knock on the front door, followed by creaking wood and the nervous reply of the servant girl. I hadn’t even realised that she had snuck out of the room at some point. A few seconds later the door closed again and a piercing shriek rang in my ears.

All thoughts of plans and allies forgotten, the table immediately erupted in a flurry of activity. Ahri jumped to her feet, her wings materialising with an explosion of hot air, barley missing my head. Swaths of magic formed around Erya and Viyara, their silhouettes temporarily hidden behind a curtain of light. Mephisto barked an abyssal command and a halo of shadows formed around his body, turning him into a nightmarish apparition of darkness. Even Pete developed an unexpected level of agility, as he practically jumped from his chair. The dwarfs were the fastest, though.

Before anyone else could move more than a step, they were bursting into the entrance hall, weapons drawn. And while my friends were hot on their heels, an unstoppable force, ready to grind to dust anything unfortunate enough to get in their way, I slowly convinced my aching bones to move. I might have been able to keep up with them, but honestly, short of a veritable army, there wasn’t much that could threaten them and I didn’t particularly feel like myself.

While I got up and limped across the room, straining my impaired hearing to pick up on what was happening on the other side of the door, a strong arm slipped around my waist and I heard Auguros voice at my side: “If you want, you can lean on me. But just to be clear, I think it might be better if you stayed. Either there’s something to fight, in which case you’ll most likely be in the way, or there isn’t and you can just as well wait here. But I know you’ll ignore me.”

“Sure, I’ll do that. Thanks.” I smiled at him weakly, wrapped my arm around his shoulders and together, we took a couple of steps until we stumbled onto an almost comical scene. Provided one had a rather dark sense of humour. Otherwise it might have been a tad creepy…

Tom hadn’t fared overly well since last I had seen him. Well, his head hadn’t, I couldn’t say much about his body, since it wasn’t there. Somebody had delivered a package, a simple wooden box that laid discarded in the corner. When the girl had opened it, she had found a bloody bundle of coarse linen. As soon as she had unfolded the cloth, she had stared into the empty eye sockets of our former acquaintance and begun wailing like a banshee.

Now, my friends were forming a ring around her, bristling with weapons and magic, which probably didn’t serve to sooth her, either. On top of that, the severed head was beginning to slowly rise into the air, blood sadly dripping from its wounds. Aside from the last, final blow, Tom’s eyes had been gauged out and judging from the gaping, swollen and deformed crack that had once been a mouth, I was fairly certain that his tongue had suffered the same fate. As far as last moments went, his had been one of the unkinder ones.

“Don’t touch it,” Mephisto snarled, when Erya was taking a step forward. “And get the girl out of here, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.” While he spoke, he was already forming arcane symbols with his fingers, a translucent bubble with a reddish sheen snapping in place around the head. Erya hesitate, but only for a moment, before she gently forced the servant a few steps back and out of the way. I couldn’t understand what she whispered in the girl’s ear, but somehow she got her to her feet and led her away without too much resistance.

“I think, that’s a message,” Viyara murmured.

“You don’t say, lass. And a pretty convincing one at that.” Xorlosh was eyeing the macabre display suspiciously and I could practically see the amount of willpower it took, for him not to poke the thing with his axe.

“No, you imbecile! I mean literally. I recognise the spell. It’s… there, shut up, I think it’s going to speak.” True to her words, the mutilated mouth opened and an eerily green fire ignited in the dark, bloody holes where the eyes had been. A smooth, velvety voice that reminded me of dark nights and softly falling rain drifted through the hall, like a lazy breeze, an absurd contrast to the brutality on display, even more so, since it came from Tom’s ugly, tortured remains.

Stolen story; please report.

“My sincerest apologies for making myself known in this rather gruesome manner. I… I would have liked to welcome you in person, but I’m afraid the circumstances won’t permit it. As you might have guessed, I’m Alassara, sometimes called the queen of the night. Please, take this gift as proof that I don’t mean you harm, and if you could find it in you to return the favour, I would be tremendously grateful. I’m sure we’ll cross paths, sooner or later, but hopefully it won’t be on the hungry fields of battle. May the night protect you. And I’m sorry.” The head fell back on the floor, its magic spent and the fires in its eyes flared, consuming flesh and bone in an instant. A cloud of smoke rose up, the stench strong enough to make me gag, and when the air cleared again, a shimmering crystal sparkled in the light of the chandelier.

“At least we know what Tom was up to, now,” Pete said pragmatically, after a moment’s hesitation. “I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with him, truth be told. The little things, you know.”

“Ah’d have liked to give him a piece of me mind,” Etosh replied, “an’ he doesn’t smell of roses, either, does he? But ah guess there’s no point crying over spilled milk. Good riddance, ah’d say. Now, who wants to pick up that crystal?” I wasn’t surprised when everybody turned to me, eyebrows raised expectantly.

“Sure, let the sick one do the heavy lifting. A bunch of true gentlemen, you are,” I grumbled, but without any real fire behind my words. If the gem was a trap, I was most likely going to remain unscathed. Still, while I slowly made my way through them, I asked:

“Can one of our oh so terribly wise mages at least tell me if it’s enchanted?” Erya chuckled.

“Oh yes, very much so, and once you touch it, we’ll even know what kind of spells have been placed upon it. At the moment, I fear I can only tell you, what you already see yourself. It’s chock full of energy and there are spell formations that I’ve never seen before.”

“Perfect,” I mumbled. “Just so you know, if this bites me in the ass, you won’t hear the end of it.”

Ahri was on the verge of speaking up, probably to offer doing it herself, but I wasn’t going to allow that. We could either stand around and throw every scrying spell we had at the crystal, only to come up with convoluted explanations that wouldn’t help one bit, or I could just get on with it. I squeezed her hand in passing, took a deep breath and closed my hand around the glowing jewel.

Nothing happened, at least at first. I felt a current of magic circling underneath its surface and there was a faint reaction when I touched it, like ripples in a pond after a stone was thrown in, but no explosion followed. I relaxed slightly and straightened, the gem sitting on my palm. Only when I heard Ahri gasp and saw Mephisto reach for me, did I realise something was wrong. But it was already too late. An opaque circle had formed beneath my feet and before I could manifest my wings or move away, the floor vanished beneath me. With a curse, I fell, the entrance hall, the panicked expressions of my friends, even the rancid smell of burned meat, it all disappeared in a swirl of colours. The last thing I heard, was Ahri desperately screaming my name as she tried to catch me, her wings a blazing inferno of light behind the closing gap in reality.

A surge of fear spiked through me, as I lost my grip and tumbled down a long, winding tunnel. My imagination ran wild and with the memories of what Tom had been subjected to still vivid in my mind, I felt like I was drowning. I remembered how it had felt to be staked beneath Shassa’s statue, turned into a helpless, writhing thing, used to power someone else’s schemes until I’d be wrung dry only to be discarded afterwards like an empty battery. I remember how it had felt to be alone in the dark, alone and afraid, hopeless and forgotten… Enough! Never again! Never again would I allow anyone to use me like this. Whatever awaited me at the end of the rift, I’d make sure that they were going to rue the day they had decided to cross me. I might not be at my best, but I sure as all hells was still capable of causing trouble, whoever waited on the other side. With a mental twist, I shoved the rising panic away and allowed my fear to slowly transform into anger.

While the suffocating images disappeared behind a curtain of burning fury, my thoughts cleared. There’d be time to freak out later, once I was back at Ahri’s side. It wasn’t the first time I had been pulled through a portal and for a moment I toyed with the idea of unfurling my wings to rip the closely knit strands of energy around me apart. While I was decently confident that I would manage, I feared that I might be catapulted into the ocean, or even another plane, if I disintegrated the spell that pulled me along. My chances to deal with whatever I might find once I arrived were considerably better, I reasoned. Plus, ripping through an inanimate spell wasn’t nearly as satisfying as beating the shit out of an undead wannabe queen. If it even came to that.

Now that I wasn’t running in circles within my own nightmares, I realised that I probably wasn’t headed for a fight. Trying to kill me or anyone else for that matter, would have been a million times easier with a heavy crossbow or by simply blowing the house up while we were still inside. Since Alassara definitely knew where we stayed, neither would have been tremendously difficult. Which led me to believe that she… and I came up blank. Why the subterfuge, the message, the enchantment? She couldn’t even be sure that I’d be the one to pick up the gem, not unless she already knew us quite intimately. If she had figured out that I was impervious to magic, it wouldn’t be hard to arrive at the conclusion that I’d be the one to interact with a suspicious, unknown artefact.

But how could she have known? After everything I had been through, I immediately thought that there might be another traitor in our ranks and, as much as I didn’t want to, I directly envisioned Pete, striking a deal behind our backs. No, I wouldn’t mistrust my friends without any proof and after everything we had lived through together, I considered the gangly human a friend, even with all his whining. Oh well, in the end, it didn’t matter too much, I’d find out one way or another. Either someone was going to try to kill me, as soon as I arrived, or I was going to have a rather enlightening chat. For now, I had to make sure that the former wouldn’t go over as smoothly as planned. I expected to hate myself tomorrow, but for now, I needed my wings.

Grinding my teeth, I willed them to manifest. The exhilarating rush I had come to expect when the power from my core surged through my veins, didn’t come, though. Instead it felt like an injection of acid, burning like fire, consuming parts of my body while it spread through me. If I had been able to, I would have screamed, but in the strange non-space I was in, all I could do was to curse silently and hold on. The tormenting sensation didn’t last for long, though. With every moment, it became more bearable and when the multicoloured walls around me crumbled, spewing me back out, I was almost fine. Not quite, but it would have to be enough.

With a stroke of my wings, I turned and landed on one knee, sizzling torrents of energy playing behind my back, my tails fanned out wide. I was ready to fight or bargain, to kill or talk, but what I wasn’t prepared for was a dry sob, which reached my ears as soon as I materialised completely.

I was in a sparsely decorated chamber, barren stone walls with etched glyphs turning it into something closer to a cell. I saw an unmade cot, a low table with a blood crusted bowl on top of it, and a small assortment of torn clothes, discarded in one corner. On the cot, a small body trembled with suppressed cries and when I raised my head, the glow from my eyes illuminating the room with a silvery light, a young girl, not older than Reia, scrambled to get to her feet.

Beneath a disheveled mane of blonde hair, piercing blue eyes focused on me, red from crying. She was tall and willowy, the faintest lines of her developing curves were visible beneath the dirty dress she was wearing. If I hadn’t been raised amongst kitsune, I would have called her stunningly beautiful, despite her age. As it was, not much registered with me, though, aside from the tiny fangs that poked from behind her lips when her mouth opened wide in surprise.