“I’m not a darkmage,” he said, pulling her in close so that her head rested on his chest. Her black-as-night hair spilled over his white silken bedrobe, her long locks dishevelled in a way that would’ve made most girls look ugly – but with her it only enhanced her beauty, her vulnerability.
“I never said you was, m’lord,” Osantya murmured. She lithely flipped her whole body over, turning her face to him but keeping her head where he’d placed it. “It’s just scary, is all I mean. They’re all over the news these days. I’m glad them Cannibal Six got got.”
It blistered somewhat, that the favour of the common people was so flighty. A month ago he’d taken down Vowtaker single-handedly, an arch-sorcerer of not-inconsiderable might. It was all forgotten in moments when some rich lords were uncovered as darkmages.
Nonetheless, this new Feychilde had done him a favour. He’d always hated Termiax and Rissala.
“They were dark?” He played the part of the vapid noble as carefully as possible.
“The darkest, they says,” she whispered. Then, as if remembering what she was there for, she giggled and kissed him.
She settled her head back on his chest, and he spent a minute thinking about how to move forward.
She’s attractive enough. I’ll give her the full treatment.
“I’m a champion, in point of fact.”
She sucked in her breath and sat bolt upright. “Which one?” Her fingers tightened, clawing into his silken gown.
He smiled. “I’m Redgate.”
“Wow! I mean – really? The… the s-sorcerer?”
He nodded solemnly.
“Wow!” she said again, with just a trace less enthusiasm. “So, what’s it… you know… what’s it like?”
“Dangerous. Bloody. Terrifying.” He met her eyes. “Exciting.”
She was drinking it all in. Her body’s curves were barely hidden by the nightgown he’d supplied her with, matching his own – she coiled and tensed upon the satin sheets of his bed, and he eyed her appreciatively.
“Can I, you know… see something?”
He grinned. “I’ve got a little… something I’m preparing in the cellar, truth be told. You’d be interested?”
She started to answer but he held her gaze, and the words died in her throat.
“It’d be dangerous, my love,” he warned.
“And bloody?”
“Terrifying.”
“But exciting…” Her chest rose and fell with anticipation. “Okay. Okay, Redgate. I’m in!”
Always so much easier when they cooperate.
He slipped from the bed, drained his half-full goblet, and softly padded through the doorway, slow enough to be an invitation for Osantya to follow. His bare feet made almost no noise on the varnished birch planks of his bedroom floor. Behind him he heard her quickly copying him, finishing her white wine in two or three nervous gulps and hastening after him.
There were over a dozen rooms on each floor, and four above-ground floors that comprised the main building of his mansion – if he got out of her line of sight she could well have been lost for half an hour, and that would only be if she didn’t manage to wander into one of the servants’ wings.
He was headed for the cellars, which he’d had adapted to their current labyrinthine layout – the entrance to his sanctum was hidden away between the walls, where even the most discerning magister would (hopefully) fail to look. Not that he expected such an inquiry. As far as Special Investigations were concerned, he was clean. But it didn’t hurt to take precautions.
Lyferin slowly progressed down the wide, carpeted stairs, tracing the smooth polished bannisters with his fingertips as he went. The curtains were drawn over the windows to help fend off the late afternoon chill, further reinforcing the sense of security he’d sought to instil in her. She followed, and he could feel her thrill, building and building inexorably. He left her in silence, left her languishing in the moment before the storm hit.
He could feel his own thrill building when they reached the ground floor, and again as he let them into the cellar-door and started the descent into the chill.
The stairs here were no less fine a grain, the corridors ahead just as well-lit – but the air was cold all of a sudden, close and cloying. He wondered what was going through her mind right now, whether some small part of her soul might be shivering as her footsteps carried her into the shadow of her doom.
He pressed on the wall in a seemingly-random spot, high overhead, and there was a satisfying click, followed by the gentle hum of well-oiled chains running through cogs. In an alcove farther along the corridor, a new doorway appeared.
When he led her into this doorway, and onto the freezing stone stairs hewn into the living rock of the manor-house’s foundation – then her footfalls faltered for the first time.
“So…” Her voice broke the silence unalterably, like the timid song of the first morning-bird to awaken in the pre-dawn darkness. “So, what is it we’re gonna do?”
Despite the faltering, she kept pace with him. Now the darkness was real. There were no glowing globes ahead of them, only unlit candles waiting for him to exert one of his powers.
She was abysmally stupid. All these lowborn love-house girls were uneducated, of course, but she had such poor intuition he was surprised she’d lasted even this long. He could have been one of the very darkmages she’d just been talking about, for all she knew, and here she was meekly following him into his sanctum. Anyone could claim to be a champion. The gods Illodin and Glaif might not be fooled, but the people…
That’s why I chose a love-house girl, not a courtesan of Enye, he reminded himself.
He reached the bottom of the steps, and waited for her.
When he touched her arm, she started in fear; he’d long-since forgotten what it was like to have to go through life with mortal senses, but it amused him all the same to see her reaction.
He gripped her firmly but gently by the upper arm and led her forward.
“We’re going to summon a demon.”
He made sure the smirk was no longer on his lips, then swept his arm up, drawing on his finthrilikar’s essence, igniting over a hundred candles in the vicinity.
Depressions in the stone walls, crudely gouged-out by demons whose talon-marks were still visible in the imperfections, served as his shelves, holding innumerable components. Some were obscure: bottles of mystical-looking fluids that bubbled as though they were boiling without any visible heat-source, or that swirled in the jar of their own accord; boxes filled with sparkling dust; sections of limbs or bowls of organs, belonging to dozens of unnatural creatures. Others were less obscure: human skulls, many-bladed knives…
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She finally saw sense, balking the instant she took in her new surroundings, trying to snap her arm out of his grip and flee back up the stairs.
But she only had half the strength she needed to do that. He held her without hurting her, quickly taking both her arms and soothing her, “It’s okay, Osantya. Seriously, calm down. I’m an arch-sorcerer, remember? I don’t need your body parts.”
“Then – then why –“
“Those things are just research. I take my sorcery very seriously. Trust me. Come over here. Do you drink red too? Of course you do. Take a seat, let me find my spare glass… I know it’s around here somewhere; I so rarely have guests down here.”
A couple of minutes later he had to hide his smirk once again, as he realised he’d actually managed to calm her down. Now she was sitting there on his altar, the raised circle of rock in the centre of the sanctum, blithely drinking what she thought was just wine. She prattled on and on, clearly elated to have the ear of a champion.
“So if you’re an arch-sorcerer, I thought you could just summon demons with, you know… Well, I don’t know, really, but…”
She looked down at the glass in her hand.
Can she taste the nailbiter? he wondered. No, but she knows something’s awry. She’s already starting to lose her manual dexterity.
Let’s move things along.
“With a click of my fingers?”
“Exactly.”
He stared down at her.
“When I killed Grandmother, I thought I knew what power was. Wealth, prestige, privilege. They’re empty things, though, Osantya. I know it sounds incomprehensible to you from your lowly vantage but if you climbed the ladder you’d soon find out – the ability to have what you want, give commands and have them obeyed, no matter how disgraceful, degrading – the pleasure soon fades. Only one thing gives without taking, endures through the years, grows and never wilts again. Only the magic. Only my sorcery.”
He saw her parsing the words, realising he was giving her information he shouldn’t have.
Realising what that meant for her.
“You have no way to escape – see?”
He clicked his fingers, calling his pedheliorph into the room.
The bird was a pitch-black void, wings and beak only visible as it wheeled this way and that. When it settled upon his shoulder (or merely hovered there – it couldn’t pierce him with its talons) it was little more than a clot of darkness, only broken up by the slight feathering at the edges one could see if they looked closely. But it trailed a crimson storm that seethed lethargically in its wake, manifesting behind him while it was perched there beside his head – a cloud rendered in such fine detail it looked as though one had been plucked from the sky, painted in blood and shrunken down to befit its new owner.
When his foes looked at the pedheliorph, their eyes were drawn to its cloud – and then they lost time, gazing into the billowing scarlet streams, watching the flicker of black lightning only their eyes could see, listening to staccato bursts of thunder only their ears could hear.
When the pedheliorph screamed at his foes, the red wind coursed through the void of its body and smashed its targets with a flesh-shredding hurricane.
He’d gone out of his way to find his own, once he’d seen Hellbane using one. Forget his mask, his house, his domains. His slaves were his greatest possession and the pedheliorph was amongst the greatest of his slaves.
She was staring at the cloud now, of course. Enraptured.
“I’ve done all I can to make this painless for you. Poor little thing.” Lyferin regarded her, sitting there swaying upon his altar; her glass-holding hand slowly lowered to her lap, and she poured what was left of the mixture all over her knees, but she didn’t react. She was too far gone now. “You see, I have access to demons that can open their own gateways between the worlds.”
He clicked his fingers again, bringing the sharadheran rolling into the sanctum.
It was a runt of a demon, a spherical, swirling clutch of hair and teeth and claws that barely came up to his knee. Its only notable feature was the small tree-shaped, rust-coloured protrusion that branched out from its ‘body’, always pointing up towards the sky no matter how the ceaselessly-stirring bundle beneath it rolled.
He wasn’t going to waste one of his knights or his anti-diviners on this like last time. The sharadheran could bring an anchor through just as well as the others.
“And I have a demon which can take it elsewhere. It amuses me to start the Incursion in Hightown, where there’ll be more for people to lose. More for me to gain. In a very particular spot, in fact…”
Another click, another demon. A simple imp, this time, of the gungrelafor breed – it had long straight horns that pointed at the ground, and four wings. The tail was stubby, not long and sinuous like most impish tails. The gungrelafor was a little taller than the sharadheran if you excluded the rust-tree atop the latter.
“To give them the power to begin, they’ll need some blood – more than I can give. And the fresher the better, of course.”
They got started. He watched.
Why don’t the Srol Heretics do this? he contemplated.
It was an idea he’d returned to several times in the last few months, since he created his first Incursion. That first time he’d been unsure it would even work – it was something of an experiment. This time, he knew for certain. But surely the heretics did too?
When the Srol summoned demons – which they did all too often – they were never those kinds for which calling more would be a possibility. Yet why would it not fit with their purposes? It made sense that your average run-of-the-mill darkmage wouldn’t be interested, but those who wanted only death and destruction?
He’d overheard some nobles possessed of scant knowledge opine that it was the Srol Heretics and their ancestor-organisations like the Five-Fold Rebellion who were orchestrating the Incursions – this was patent nonsense. Were the Incursions a part of their goals, they’d be able to summon them far more often. If one were to believe the purported eye-witness accounts, the Hierarchs appeared to treat the incidents as Lyferin did himself – opportunities to increase and augment their collections without having to run the small-but-unavoidable risks of a trip to Infernum.
Lyferin’s demons finished. He gave them their instructions and freed them from his control.
Grinning, the imp pressed a single claw-tip into the hairy, toothy sphere. They both vanished from the sanctum in a red flash.
If it hadn’t done as he’d asked, he could’ve just reasserted his dominance over it and tortured it awhile. It was too smart to disobey.
The champion stood there with the girl’s corpse, his gaze upon her.
Slowly, slowly, Osantya raised her head.
“Good girl,” he soothed.
She was staring back at him with eyes that burned purple. She’d been exsanguinated – the many wounds on her neck and wrists and ankles wept only a clear fluid as they sealed themselves. With her blood gone, her flesh had been robbed of every last bit of colour – even more so than was normal for those in her condition. She had the pallor of the gown she wore, now. Chalky-skinned and shaking, he could see her trying and failing to form words.
“Hush, my love, it’s fine.”
He went to her, stroked her cheek like the gentle master he was, but she still struggled, kept on forcing the sounds to rise in her throat:
“What –“
Her voice came seeping out of the yawning chasms of death from which he’d pulled her, hollow, echoing, almost incoherent. She was speaking Netheric instinctively.
“What – am – I?”
“I couldn’t make you a vampire, not after that; neither do you possess the marks on your soul, the burdens necessary to become a deathknight.” He replied in the same tongue; her ability to speak the mortal tongues would return to her slowly, and only after some re-exposure to this, the plane of her birth. “But I caught you quickly – you’re no zombie. I want to say wight, but you might be a ghoul – we’ll have to see if you change, see what your eating habits are like.” He eyed her sceptically. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head, looking about herself morosely.
“I’d place a platinum on wight,” he said firmly. “You weren’t expecting this, were you?”
Her amethyst eyes focussed on him. “You – killed – me.”
She couldn’t act against him, even conceive a plan to his detriment – but she could still hate him.
Which was fine by him.
“I improved you. Once you’ve had a while to recuperate you’ll be strong, stronger than any man. And almost unkillable to boot – you’ll be impervious to all but the keenest blades. Unless they take your head, set you on fire or douse you in holy water, you should be fine… I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.”
She was still staring at him in disbelief. He began to lose patience.
“Come on, it’s not like I let them eat you, is it?”
“I – am – missing.”
“And I’ll pay the love-house a handsome fee for your loss. Let’s go back up and finish what you came here for; we’ll have some more wine, then I’ll tell you a little about your new life as my slave.”
He extinguished the candles with a sweep of his arm and then gestured for the wight to lead the way back up the stone steps. She could see in the dark now, just as well as he could; it was hardly dimmer than with the candles lit.
He watched the eagerness with which she responded to his wishes, bounding forwards with her newly-undead musculature propelling her farther than she’d intended with the first few steps. Her body, her responses – they were his to command, and her mind was bound, locked in-step with his own.
But her soul? What was left of it? It made a frown of her mouth, a glower of her gaze, as she crossed in front of him.
Lyferin chuckled as he followed her up the steps, back towards the lights of the basement-level, and crooned to her: “Oh, my love. Such excitement. I hope you have your fill.”
Osantya continued on her way ahead of him, easily taking the steps two at a time; but her head was bowed, and, for just a moment, he thought he heard the sound of her weeping.