When Benjamin fetched his prisoner, she took a long look at the horizon. Then, she smiled and said, “So it’s time then? Time for me to feast on Lord Jarris’s soul?”
She’d put the appearance of an attractive fox girl back on as she lingered at Ethan’s gruesome elbow. His ravaged appearance provided the maximum contrast to her impossible cartoonish beauty, but Benjamin didn’t make her change into a more suitable shape. It would have irritated her, and tonight was the wrong night for that.
“Tonight is the night we break his army,” Benjamin corrected her. “It’s only when he manages to miraculously escape that defeat and flee back to the capital that you can consume him.”
As he spoke he lifted the Prince’s jeweled phylactery from under his shirt and hung it around Ethan’s neck instead. “Once your old master delivers this to the powers that be I don’t care what you do to him, as long as its slow and painful.”
Miku smiled at that, “and my heart sings to hear it, but before we can be off to meet him. There is one more thing we have to do.”
“What’s that?” Benjamin asked.
“No one will believe that I ever brought it a prisoner in such good shape,” she smiled wickedly. “Someone will have to rough you up. Just a little bit. For show, of course.”
Benjamin rolled his eyes. “You think that letting Ethan beat me senseless is key to the plan, huh?” he asked.
“Maybe not senseless…” she smiled, leaning forward to show off plenty of cleavage, “But you know… to look like you’ve been through the ringer.”
“The torments you inflict don’t leave a mark Miku,‘ he pointed out, “but I get your point.”
Benjamin didn’t give her the opening she was looking for. Instead, he messed up his hair, tore his shirt in a couple places, and then rolled around in the dirt a bit while the soldiers that were closest to him looked at him like he was crazy.
“Better?” he asked finally.
“It would be better if you’d let me have Ethan hurt you,” she pouted. “I’d certainly feel better.”
“And if I thought it would help the plan, I’d let you, but I don’t need any distractions when I pit myself against Lord Jarris, now do I?”
Miku sighed. “I suppose not…”
“Well, come along then,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand that opened a rift to some far-flung place that was just as ashen as this one. “This place is about to become a war zone, and I don’t wish to be killed by a stray spell before I have my revenge.”
Benjamin eyed the portal with suspicion as he went through a mental checklist. Did he have everything he needed? Was he wearing all the equipment he wanted? Would anything else have been a better choice?
Part of him wished he could carry the focus with him, even though he didn’t really need it now that his soul was fixed. He had a few charged gemstones in his pocket that could easily be bombs if he needed them to be, but really, they were mana batteries for what lay ahead. He could use vampiric bolt and blood burn at quite high levels now that he had a real mana pool, but even so, having a backup was important.
The only thing he’d left behind was a weapon, but that was just as well because a captive wouldn’t have one. Besides, if all his spells and countermeasures weren’t enough to get this done, one blade wasn’t going to tilt the scales one way or the other in the grand scheme of things.
When that was done, he went to hand Ethan the rope I was carrying so he could tie me up, but she just shook her head and stepped through the portal. “Come on,” she said, “You can leave that behind. That isn’t the sort of binding that Jarris is going to be looking for when he gazes at you anyway.”
“What do you mean?” I asked as I followed the two of them through the blazing ring of fire, and it disappeared behind us.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“I mean, he will look for my mark upon you, not some flimsy hemp window dressing,” she shrugged as she got her bearings and tried to decide where they were going to stride to next. “Look at Ethan’s soul, and you’ll see.”
Benjamin hadn’t thought to do that before or even to discuss it with her, but he should have. Since there was nothing in the system, but then that made sense. Demons seemed to be beyond the systems in some ways since it was made for humans. Still, it was a last-minute wrinkle, and he didn’t like the idea of letting her get anywhere near his soul.
“We already have a pact,” Benjamin said finally. “That mark will have to be enough; I'm not letting you get your claws any deeper into me than that.”
“Are you sure?” she purred, getting close enough to him that he would have felt her heat if she’d been a real person. Instead, aside from his lying eyes, the only evidence that she existed was a faint whiff of sulfur in the air. “You know, if he looks really close, he’ll see the difference…”
“Won’t he wonder why there are two marks on my soul then, by the same logic?” As he answered, Benjamin looked at Ethan’s and saw several, like ugly bruises. On the otherwise green status bar his codex generated. He didn’t know what they meant, but he was sure they were nothing good.
“Well, I like to leave a mark,” she smiled, “But if you want to leave it all on the roll of a dice like that just because you don’t want to get a little more… intimately acquainted with me…”
“My friends will come, the battle will start, and he will have no time to wonder what it is that’s happening.” Benjamin growled, tired of her flirting more than her head games. “You know the plan. Stick to it.”
“Very well,” she sighed, opening a second portal. “Come along, we’re getting closer.”
There were no Rhulvinarians in site when she opened her next rift, but after she popped open the third one, they found themselves almost surrounded by a unit they’d obviously surprised.
Despite the weapons pointed at them, Ethan followed her blankly, with no volition of his own, and Benjamin did his best to imitate the man's staggered gate and blank expression. It would have been easier.
Miku had already explained to him how the enemy used illusion magic and multicolored pyrotechnic spells to signal friend from foe, but given that there were so many black-eyed people staring at them when they exited the rift, Benjamin couldn’t help but feel that someone was about to shoot first and ask questions later. That was impossible, of course. The dark-eyed rank-and-file soldiers were incapable of independent thought. The only way that those soldiers would hurt the three of them was if they proved to be a threat or if they were ordered to do so by one of the Rhulvinarian mages.
“I am Lord Jarris’s property, and I travel under the sign of house Jarris.” As she spoke, she shifted back into her natural form of a flaming Rahkshasa and held up a gleaming coat of arms drawn in the air with light. It was a golden tower on a checked field of red and black, but it was gone before he could study the nuance of it. “Direct me to my master’s location. I have a valuable prisoner for him to interrogate immediately.”
A Summoner Lord stepped forward from the formation in front of them. To Benjamin, the guy looked like a prick, and he thought the whole plan was about to be derailed because he was more than important enough to interrogate a prisoner himself.
Fortunately this was not correct, apparently the name of Miku’s master carried enough weight that he didn’t try to interfere. Instead he unfurled a small scroll that showed the order of battle, and which units were supposed to be where. Since the force was moving all the time, he couldn’t point out the exact spot, but he could point out he right direction.
Benjamin would have loved to have studied that map, but he was so busy pretending to be a hopelessly broken man that he could do little more than glance at it. Still, that glance and the subordinate’s explanation would help with what was coming next.
They rifted twice more, and each time, they moved closer to the army’s center. Each time, there was a tense moment as the demoness identified herself, and each time, she was directed further on. Here, they had outrun any trace of the fighting coming up behind them, but they had reached somewhere where the forces of the fae were harrying them, and even the back ranks were alive with activity.
Benjamin hoped that he didn’t have to kill any fae himself during all this, but if it came down to it, he’d have little choice. He couldn’t even control where he was going as he wormed his way deeper and deeper into the enemy's heart.
Fortunately he didn’t have to wait much longer. After twenty minutes of walking, and four more checkpoints they reached the heart of the formation. Benjamin could hear wings flapping overhead, and he could see flashes of light in the distance, even as armed and armored men closed in all around him.
Any one of them could strike him dead, he realized. They would, too, if they suspected he was anything but chattel. As far as anyone was concerned he was just another dead eyed human that was bound to serve like everyone else.
As they walked, his database began to passively populate based off of all the activity. Every order with a word of control was a spell, and every spell broadcast through the ranks. He didn’t have to do a thing besides record the transmissions and the acknowledgments. This didn’t give him much beyond the publicly facing information like the soul ID.
If his original data leak spell still worked, he could broadcast that right now and in the war in a few minutes. Sadly, that was gone, and no amount of fiddling with it using the Prince’s superuser access seemed to be able to make it work again.
Despite those difficulties, that information would still be critical for what came next. After all, once he had all the usernames in the area, he only needed the passwords to go with them, and he was pretty sure he knew someone who had exactly that.
Benjamin half expected the parade of guard patrols and important people to never end. Then, they were finally there, and he set eyes on the man who had ruined all their lives by bringing him and his friends into this world: Lord Jarris himself.