Greg held the hatch open for me to climb. As soon as I got my head through it, I froze, my hands gripping the wooden stairs tightly. Even in the pale light of a few torches, a burst of vibrant colors greeted my eyes, but that was not what made me stop. On one side, a sharp, black ebony beak jutted out like a pair of gigantic pincers, a beak that could snap an arm like a fragile twig.
A giant eye, like a dark jewel set within that sea of vibrant feathers, sparkled with an intelligence that seemed beyond mere animal nature and focused on me. Then, it blinked.
After the initial shock, I realized that the owner of that eye was Mytrides, a giant bird. A talking giant bird.
<
I was surprised to get an answer from Identify, as it was essentially built on data from a different world, but maybe the name was just a made-up term based on the bird's name. The levels did provide some information, especially about the amount of magic accumulated in the body, but it would be an error to consider a human with level eleven to be the equivalent of such a beast.
"Come up, I don't bite... usually," the bird said, turning its head to point its beak at me. As if that would be less threatening.
Greg, the paladin, chuckled.
"Always ready to make fun of visitors, aren't you Mytrides?" Greg said.
I climbed the last stairs, and the bird moved a little further, causing a heavy metal chain to rattle behind it. The poor bird was chained to the roof like a dog in the yard!
I stopped thinking about it as I saw Meowra about ten meters behind the bird, her limbs bound on a huge X made of thick wooden bars. Her head had fallen to one side, her dark red long mane hanging over, covering her face. She didn't move, showing no signs of life, not even her fluffy ears.
Anger and worry welled up in my heart as I saw her.
“Do you know what's happening downstairs?” someone suddenly asked, interrupting my thoughts.
I turned to see who was speaking. A woman dressed in a simple leather suit was at the edge of the roof, looking downstairs. There was no parapet at the end of the lightly inclined roof, nothing stopping one from a free fall in case of a false step, but the woman didn't seem to have any problems leaning and looking down.
<
“Hello, Lena! There was some alarm,” the paladin exclaimed. “I guess our lord is running an alarm drill.”
As they spoke, the bird came closer to me again, looking insistently right above me, probably at my horns currently hidden by an illusion. Instinctively, I put a finger on my lips, and it seemed to have gotten the message as it looked once again into my eyes, then turned towards the paladin, looking at him slantwise.
He didn't make any jokes about the lord, as he had done previously with the guards. Lena shook her head.
“No. The lord is not here. I would know if he were here. Something is not right. Look! Again! See! They run away! They RUN. Why would those guards run like that?”
“Maybe the lord, or the captain, told them to run?”
She turned to look at him.
“Are you stupid or blind? Don't you see?”
The paladin approached the edge carefully. He looked down, holding himself on one of the many small statues that lined the roof's edge. After a couple of moments, he exclaimed.
“Hm, maybe you are right, but...”
“I won't put too much faith in that statue,” Lena said. “Those are fragile.”
“Oh,” the paladin said, pulling back, then exclaimed, shocked, “What's that?”
Lena turned to look down and cursed.
“No! No, no, no! That can't be possible! Are those spells?”
I didn't see what they were looking at as I approached Meowra.
Mytrides walked beside me. The bird made me a little nervous, so I tried to engage it in conversation.
“Are you a prisoner, too?” I asked.
It raised its leg with the chain, looked at it, and then shook its giant bird head.
“You mean like her?” it said, nodding towards the catgirl. “No, but we all are prisoners in one way or another.”
“What do you mean?” I inquired.
Mytrides shrugged, and I couldn't help but smile at how expressive it was.
“I am chained here and meet all those condemned by our lord to death. They are my visitors, so many faces that I meet only for a couple of days before they are gone forever. Lucky me, Greg, and a couple more come to visit me. I am allowed to fly only with her. Someday I should be the lord's mount.”
He continued. “Greg is a prisoner down there, guarding his door. What else is his life? He thinks he is free, but he is not free. Lena, look at her, she is a prisoner here with me. Yes, she has no chains, but she and her sister, one of them are always here with me. Is this not the life of a prisoner?”
"Wouldn't life as a mount be better?" I asked.
He turned to look at me askance.
"They don't trust me yet," he said. "The last tamer had an accident, so that's it..."
"An accident?" I wondered.
"He fell from the roof and died," he said, "but some parts were already missing so they said that I did that..."
He shrugged.
I didn't know what to say.
As I raised my hand to touch Meowra, Lena yelled from her place.
“Who gave you permission to touch the prisoner!”
“Lena, she came to talk to her sister,” Greg voiced his disappointment from the side.
“Sister, eh!” Lena spat in my direction but then turned to look down again.
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“Machau, what's happening!” Greg yelled to somebody.
That somebody answered something, but I couldn't make sense of what he had said. Lena, however, seemed to have understood.
“He said something about a lich,” she said.
“You mean that?” the paladin said, pointing at something just as we heard a distressed yell. The two looked at each other.
“We are so screwed!” Lena exclaimed.
She turned to look at the bird, then back to Greg.
“You go down and bring the key here!”
“What key?” the paladin asked.
“The key that you were guarding, idiot!”
“I don't know of any key. I guard the entry to a room!” he stressed.
“That's not a room but a closet, and there is nothing of value inside that closet but the key to this chain,” she said, pointing at Mytrides' chain.
"I've never been inside," he said with a shrug.
“Who is guarding it now that you are here?” she asked. “Theor?”
He shrugged. “I don't know!”
She looked at him, then at me.
“Damn, you left the room unguarded?”
“I... I was told to bring the visitor,” he protested.
I wasn't sure if he truly believed that or just wanted to, but she gave up asking.
“I need the key," she said, "go and bring it here!”
He shook his head. “I don't know of any key.”
“Go and take the key from the room!” she insisted.
“I don't know where it should be or if there is a key in that room. Besides, you are giving me no orders!” he spat back.
They stood there looking at each other for a couple of moments, then she huffed and walked to the trapdoor. “You'll pay for this!” she threatened as she went down the stairs.
“What happened?” I asked as soon as she was gone.
He was mumbling, visibly shocked.
“The lich.... the story about the lich is true and he is free! I saw him killing Machau just as we talked. What's happening?”
I did not answer. I turned towards the bird.
“Do you want to be free?” I asked.
He raised his leg with the chain, looking slantwise at me, not saying a word.
“I can cut that,” I said, “but I need you to help me take Meowra away.”
“What are you two talking about?” Greg asked. “You are not going to free the prisoner, the lord would kill us!”
“If the lich is free, we are as good as dead,” Mytrides said.
“She is innocent,” I said, running to Meowra with the bird following me. I started to cut her bindings.
She woke up. “What's happening?” she babbled. “Is it time already?”
“No!” I answered, calling on the paladin as she now hung from one hand's bindings. "Help me, Greg!”
He still protested against freeing the prisoner but came to help. The power of the succubus spell seemed to still work. As I let her rest on my shoulder while trying to cut the other bindings, she raised her head trying to see from under her hanging hair.
“Lores?” she wondered.
I shifted her into Greg's hands to cut her legs' bindings more easily. She seemed dizzy, half awake, half swooned.
Once finished with her, I turned towards the bird, leaving her in the paladin's arms, and took my circular saw out of my inventory.
“I'll cut here,” I told Mytrides. “I'm afraid to cut the ring at your leg, as I might hurt you. The ring would stay for the moment, is this okay?”
He looked slantwise at me.
“You still think you can cut that? It's an enchanted chain!”
I infused the saw's disk with mana as I did before when cutting the runes on that door and started to cut. The infernal noise of the circular saw cutting through the chain filled the air while sparks flew everywhere. However, it didn't take more than ten seconds before the chain fell.
Mytrides shook its leg.
“Wow! Free! I am free!”
“No, you damn bird, you are not free!” somebody yelled from behind.
Lena was back on the roof, advancing with fast strides towards us. She was back too soon; she probably had given up on trying to get the key.
As Mytrides fluttered his wings, ready to take off, she yelled.
“Stay!” she ordered, and Mytrides froze.
I saw how he desperately tried to shake off the compulsion but could not. Damn beast tamer!
She was too strong for me, and obviously for Greg too. This, in case he would fight for me, but I couldn't assume that he would go that far and fight his former allies. He still stood there with Meowra in his arms, looking confused at us.
As Lena came running towards us, I did the only thing I thought could help. I jumped at her from the side, pushing her towards the precipice.
“Save her!” I screamed as the two of us were falling.
I was planning to shadowmeld during the fall and save myself, but as she held me firm in her hands, I couldn't do it. It was the first time I was blocked from shadowmelding. I didn't know it was possible, but I should have assumed it; there's no spell without a counter.
Flailing around, pushing, and biting didn't help. Not even a blast of dark magic. As we fought in the air, we both fell, and she managed to end up on top when we hit the ground.
The impact emptied my lungs of air, and blackness fell over me as I passed out from the shock.
I thought that I was going to die, but it seemed that I survived. As I was slowly recovering my senses, I heard a gargling sound. Then I heard her struggling. "With whom is she fighting?" I asked myself. Certainly not with me; I felt utterly crushed and destroyed.
Once I opened my eyes, I saw a dark form looming in the air above me. It took me a couple of seconds to realize that it was her. Instinctively, I tried to move from under her, but a sudden burst of pain froze me in place, and a pained moan escaped my lips.
She was up there in the air, impaled on three metal poles - two in the upper torso and one in her right thigh.
Why couldn't I move?
The next thing I realized was that the gargling sound I was hearing was my labored breathing. Only after that did I understand that the same poles that were impaling her had passed through my body. One had pierced my right lung, and the other had gone through my left kidney. Parts of what had been my right lung, breast, and left kidney were sticking to those poles, slowly dripping back down, mixing with her blood, spit, and other liquids.
The pole impaling her right leg had probably only partly skewered my left thigh, as I felt I could move my legs. However, thousands of pins pinned my back. Looking to the side I started to understand that we had fallen onto a metal fence surrounding what appeared to be a grave or a set of graves, probably the lord's family graveyard. The fence had given way under my impact, but the poles had not.
Foam formed in my mouth, dripping along my cheek, as my vision started to grow cloudy. She balanced on those poles, muttering something incomprehensible, her spit dripping over me. Then, to my horror, I saw her grasp one of the poles and try to pull herself down, to get closer. She wanted to finish me off before she died!
In a moment of lucidity, I shadowmelded just as she reached for me.
In my shadowmelded form, my health does not worsen, but neither does it improve. It remains frozen for as long as I have mana to maintain my form.
For a moment, I stood there at the side, mesmerized, as she yelled her anger and disappointment with what was likely her last breath. I contemplated materializing myself to drain her life, but when I saw the lich appearing from the building, I decided it was better not to risk an encounter and left the area. I started to zigzag my way up the tower in my shadowmelded form.
When I reached the top of the tower, I still heard her screams and yells, but they were becoming weaker. It seemed that the lich did not kill her immediately. Up there on the roof, another surprise awaited me: it was empty. There was no trace of Mytrides, Greg, and, most importantly, Meowra. They were all gone. I had told them to save her, but somehow, even if it was inconsequential, I expected them to still be there.
I tried to look for them, but my sight in shadowmeld form is limited, especially over long distances. After waiting for a couple of seconds, I started to move towards Mehorg. I had nothing else to do here.
Interestingly, I couldn't fly through the air; I had to hug the terrain and move around things. Oh well, wouldn't it have been nice if I had received a nice description of the skill before? But I was starting to slowly get the gist of it.