I run across the tunnel, doing my best to avoid looking at institute's experiments but can't really help myself as I detect a Rykz worker laid on a table. It's dead and so is the Rykz warrior in the next cell.
They've both been for weeks if I go by the level of decomposition, likely from the results of a dissection considering that they've been split open from the middle. Yet, the madwoman kept them.
My symbiont and I feel the same anger at witnessing these drones left there to rot. They could have contributed to the Hive. The thought almost makes me pause as I hadn't expected it but I press forth.
With another turn, I find a wide wooden cell door. I accelerate, thinking that it might contain something similar to the beast I just came across. I quickly scan it as I go past, finding out that I'm wrong, so very wrong. I come to a full stop, my boots scraping against the floor.
“Is there someone?!” A woman calls out.
“Please, let us out.” Another begs but the tone betrays her lack of hope.
“We'll do anything.” A third one adds in a dead voice.
I raise my scimitar and use an entire portion of energy to create a lightning-armor-piercing construct. Using a lot less flow than I would need to cut through the thick hard wood door with a normal armor-piercing construct.
“Stay away from the door.” I call out.
Unnecessary considering they're chained to the walls. I strike out at the thick lock. The metal flares golden for a moment but fails to counter my construct and so it is cut in half. I seize the large handles and use a burst of energy in my strengthening construct to pull one of the double doors open.
The scene painted in front of my eyes is beyond revolting, a dozen women in the late stages of pregnancy, shackled with little regard for their well-being. The cell isn't dirty but they weren't even given some straw for comfort and have been made to sleep on the stone ground, at least they have clothes.
“W, who a, are you?” The youngest, a redhead with very attractive small breasts, asks fearfully.
“Jes.” I pause to control myself. “Elizabeth Vil.” I reply softly.
“Who?” The first woman who spoke, a brunette, asks.
“It doesn't matter. I'm going to free you.” I tell her.
I walk up to her. She moves back until her back hits the wall. I look down at myself. I find that I am, unsurprisingly, pretty much covered in blood but the reason for their fright is likely my left arm which the improvised bandage isn't really covering very well, probably because I jammed it into someone's torso.
“D, on't worry, I'm a friend.” I tell them, choking on my tears which arise for too many reasons to pin a singular one down.
“O, okay.” She stutters.
I drop Turpin, caring none about the fact that his head slams into the ground. I slowly flip my scimitar around and slide the spike into the round metal link that secures her shackles to the wall. I leverage my weapon against the stone and pull. The wall flashes golden around it but the metal still gives out.
“Ssssssssiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.” The shriek makes them all jump in surprise.
“You're safe now, don't wo, rry.” I utter with difficulty, moving on to the youngest one to free her.
“Is, is she nearby?” She asks, apparently too scared to attempt to escape if Suxen is anywhere near.
“Yes.” I answer honestly. “But not for long, I'm going to kill her.”
“D, did she do that to you?” She questions, looking at my left arm with a grimace.
I shake my head in the negative, gritting my teeth. I break her chains and move on to the next women, too shaken to pay much attention to their reserved words of thanks. I can't blame them for doubting my motives. What, by the Lake, is Suxen doing?
“Wh, hy are you here?” I ask, fearing that Suxen tried what she threatened to do to me, inseminating them to create something new.
“I'm to be number twenty-one, he, or she, is to be twenty-two.” The young one replies with a sob.
I nod, appalled but also relieved. At least, they haven't been drugged yet. I liberate the last one and give them all a moment to stretch. They're all keeping their distance from me but don't hesitate to turn their backs on me to give each other brief relieved hugs.
“I, um. I'll escort you out.” I timidly speak up. “I think I set the building on fire.”
“You aren't going to be much help in the state you're in.” The brunette declares. “Get yourselves sorted out!” She calls out to the rest.
“I'm, um, pretty strong.” I interject. “I can protect you.” The woman responds by throwing me a dubious glance.
“Th, that wo, woman, sh, she needs to die.” The stuttering young redhead interjects. “We'll be fine, we know a few ways out.” She adds as I shake my head.
“We will be, go kill her.” A woman, with a bad scar on her neck, coldly declares.
“We're going, now.” The brunette commands.
The women nod in unison and start heading out of the large cell. I watch them, a little taken aback by how quickly they came to a consensus and acted on it with determination.
“You can find swords upstairs if you make two turns left, and the north facade is breached.” I spout out at their backs, feeling rather useless and ridiculous with my mask in the face of these women. “Yell out 'Tsek' when you're out and tell him to help you on my behalf.” I add. The brunette stops and turns around.
“What's your name again?” She asks.
“Elizabeth Vil.” I repeat.
She frowns but turns around and leaves, letting it go. They depart in a tight group, the fittest helping those who are having trouble walking straight. I stand there for a long moment, struggling because my anger fades in comparison to my instinctual desire to protect them.
I almost run out after them a few times but my oath and their plea to kill Suxen stops me. My symbiont seems torn as well but not nearly as much as I am, it feels more supportive of me than something it wants to do.
I absently adjust the bloody bandages over my left arm and walk out, no longer hearing sounds of battle in the other corridor and the walls are no longer glowing with flow which means the battle ended.
I blink. Shit! What if Suxen decides to go back upstairs? I pick Turpin up and rush out of the cell, taking a right turn. I find the Director and three young Numbers in clothes that are brimming with flow.
The large cold-blooded creature is dead, apparently slain by the Number that was crushed beneath the body. He likely sacrificed himself to reach the weaker stomach's scales. There is a large amount of blue blood on the floor.
The scales on the creature's face seem even thicker than the ones on its back and it has a sharp bony chin. Suxen is standing on top of it, she's gripping one of the three horns with her left hand to stabilize herself. Her other hand is easy to detect inside the cold creature's brain. She is digging through it with a pair of tweezers, looking for something.
“Suxen!” I reflexively, and stupidly, shout out.
She looks up, a polite smile on her face. Yet, her immaculate appearance is now tainted from the creature's blue blood. She even has a stain on her nose. I advance, fury rekindled at the sight of this madwoman's expression.
“Specimen.” She says without surprise. “Can you see how majestic this beast is? It isn't even the most dangerous of those that the lizards bred for the specific purpose of war, you could be the start of such a line.”
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Her confidence almost makes me pause, but instead I lion's step through the corridor, closing the distance between me and the three Numbers. They move to block, two women with shields, one man with a two-handed longsword.
Suxen casually pulls her hand out of the brain, leaving the tweezers inside. She snaps her fingers and the walls suddenly flare golden. Constructs appear all around my limbs, securing them and preventing me from moving. Turpin slides off my shoulder and drops to the ground.
“Secure the Specimen.” She orders, bringing her hand down.
The constructs move and slam me into the ground, face first. Luckily, my mask protects my nose. The Numbers walk on me, the man in the middle starts shaping a cube like the one Vikiana used to knock me out.
I have some time so I assemble a lightning construct to strike it down but, when the sphere leaves my body, I lose my link to it. The Director takes the opportunity to link to my construct and pulls it to herself.
“Suxen!” I growl.
“Quiet down, Specimen.” She responds. “It is unlikely that I'll be able to hold both you and the Princess so I am forced to prioritize. I will simply inseminate you and the parasite with the Rykz' seed and release you to the Shade. Have pride, if it works, one of the spawns should be malleable enough to be of use to the Empire. If it doesn't, well... I have no doubt the Shades will still secure the parasite for me. You might even survive the ordeal.”
I panic as the two female Numbers slam their shields on my back. Not only that but the cube is getting closer and closer from completion. I start shaping air-blades inside my body, struggling against my bindings for show.
I gather my limb's brown viscous blood from the tendrils as, from what it did to camouflage my left breast's absence, I know that it stocks up on it for emergencies or at least can spare some.
My symbiont doesn't protest despite the sheer pain involved in forcefully pulling blood out of its flesh. I can tell that it feels the same urgency as I do. I shape the blades like arrows so that the blood remains connected to my body.
I propel the constructs at the two women's throats. They encounter golden barriers and shatter, spraying blood out. It only remains connected to me for a split second, but I'm ready for it and use my control to directly break their defensive barriers.
Blood pours out of my wounds on the constructs Suxen is using to hold me down so I shatter those I can reach as well. The cube flies at my head but I use unstructured flow to intercept it with my left limb. It detonates in my root-like fingers.
The kinetic energy projects my symbiont into one of the woman's faces, breaking her nose. I shape two more air-blades with my own blood, in my thigh and biceps. I aim them at the second woman's forehead and heart.
“Eliminate the Specimen, preserve the parasite!” Suxen shouts, looking furious.
My constructs flash out in a red burst of blood, both land and the woman drops dead before she can act on her master's orders. I shatter the rest of my flow bindings, I then use two lion's strikes to push myself off the ground and up to my feet.
The Number's two-handed longsword slams into the ground, right where my head was. The other one, who is on the ground, slashes out with her sword. The blade grazes my belly, severing the tendril fused there and cutting my abdominal muscles as well.
I jump back, assembling a lightning construct with half my flow, five portions, and activate it as soon as I have three paths of charged air aimed at my opponents.
The Number on the ground takes a bolt to the chest and dies instantly, the man however managed to reshape his barrier so he blocks the one aimed at him. Suxen raises her hand and the wall flashes golden again, blocking it for her.
The lightning construct she stole from me but hasn't yet retrieved bursts into disorganized bolts, shattering her protection. I jump straight at my scimitar on the ground, grab it with my left hand and roll, throwing the weapon.
It impacts the man's barrier, not breaking it but weakening it by a lot. I lion's step at him and punch the golden veil. It dissipates almost entirely. He hits my chest with his pommel, I gripe from the pain but respond with a right punch which, luckily, breaks his defense.
I detect Suxen plunging her hand into the creature's skull and seizing a handful of brain matter. She pulls out and runs away. I coil my arm back and finish the Number off by impaling his stomach.
By the time I retrieve my scimitar, she's once again out of my sense's reach. I pick Turpin up and rush after her, deciding to use a few lion's steps. My stomach is painful but I can feel that the tendril is reconnecting with my symbiont, an odd buzzing sensation tells me that it's likely fusing with the muscles that were cut.
Suxen enters my range, she is climbing the stairs two by two. I slow down, deciding, out of fear, that it would be best to preserve my flow as the woman is too dangerous to risk falling into her hands.
I follow, preparing myself. The woman might be the most expert in flow constructs that I've met but it's clear that she isn't a very good fighter or even tactician. If she is prepared to kill me, she had the chance to do so but her ambition seems to be her priority as long as her life isn't at risk.
No way I'm using that, I'm not risking ending up in this madwoman's clut... I pause and hurriedly set my suicidal constructs' timers back to half an hour, there were only a few tens of minutes left on it.
I rush upstairs, detecting Suxen opening a door. She slams it behind herself and I lose track of her. As I cross the corridor, I'm relieved to notice that there are at least a dozen swords missing from the dead but can hear the crackling of flames close-by.
I open the door, finding a wide staircase with no light. Suxen is almost at the bottom, twenty meters below. I stop to assemble a lightning construct, placing my hand on the metal veins. Unfortunately, I'm too late and the Director leaves my range. I swear and starts descending three steps at a time.
At the bottom, I find two dead bodies. They still have tongues so they were likely Numbers. Their throats were cut. Aisha. I keep going, finding a round tunnel. The veins running along it form runes and mathematical formulas.
I pause and place my hand on them, injecting flow into it but detecting none inside. Suxen likely took the energy as she went by. That's bad, but the fact that she didn't leave any means she won't be able to use them which is good.
I send my lightning construct into the wall and press on, finding two more pairs of dead Numbers who also had their throats slit. How fucking skilled is she with that illusion construct that she can just dispatch of them like this?
After a minute of running, I detect a crossing where the tunnel branches into three. I freeze, unable to decide which to take. If I pick the wrong one, I might not find Suxen, I'm already wasting so much time without a clue of where Cetyz is.
I pick the central tunnel, thinking that I'll stop twenty meters in to keep watch on the crossing. Fifteen meters in, I detect an open door with a little bit of light inside. I cautiously press on with my hand on the wall to maintain contact with my construct and ensure that I don't run into a trap.
Aisha appears in my range, riffling through a desk with a large pile of what seem to be paper documents piled on a large chair. There are entire shelves of books but the Shade is apparently only taking some of Suxen's research.
I flip around and retrace my steps. I don't have the precious minutes I would need to deal with the Shade, even if I probably should. Back at the crossing, I see light coming out of the tunnel on my left.
I move closer until I get the tunnel in range of my symbiont's sense but remain out of sight. Suxen is walking back with a torch in her left hand. In front of her is a two-meter tall reptile, its body temperature is a lot lower than hers or mine and it is shaking like the beast was.
The being is standing on two legs. Its feet only have three long and large toes that end in short curved claws, the two in front rest on the ground but the one in the back is higher up on the ankle and the creature seems to be using the point of that claw like a heel.
It only has one hand, I think I saw the other one floating in one of Suxen's vials. At this point can safely conclude that this is a Lisilese. Is the runic collar around its neck the reason why it's with the Director?
The being's head is elongated with a long and large mouth that has short triangular teeth, the scales covering it are the thickest on the creature's body. It doesn't have a nose, only two small slits at the tip of its muzzle. My symbiont clenches our hand, expecting a fight and getting ready for it.
The Lisilese sticks its tongue out to, like a snake, taste the air. It starts hissing at a low volume and lowers its stance but doesn't stop moving. I follow my symbiont's instincts and prepare my scimitar to ambush it as soon as it enters my range.
It slows down even more as it approaches the end of the tunnel, Suxen stops entirely. It allows me to inspect it in more detail, noticing two long pockets of liquid along its spine, which are slightly hotter than the rest of its body.
These pockets enlarge and shrink in sync with the steps it takes. It seems to be caused by bones linking the legs and these pockets, serving to press and pull on them as it walks. The scales form a thin vertical slit at the crotch, I first think that it's female but then realize that there is a penis hidden behind them.
So, it's a he, and I really shouldn't have been calling it, or rather he, an 'it'. I am not Suxen, I've slept with a Rykz Princess for the Lake's sake, I should be better than that. I take a deep breath and send my lightning construct out through the wall's metal veins towards Suxen while my symbiont coils up to strike out at the Lisilese with my scimitar.
It... he stops before turning the corner and slowly extends its, his, leg out into the crossing. He taps the floor with his claw, and swiftly pulls his leg back. It waits, completely immobile, for a long moment, having apparently expected something to attack.
He sniffs the air once more. His scales bristle across his entire body. I can only interpret that as apprehension because it definitely isn't acting afraid, simply careful.
His eyelids, a layer of scales, close and open so fast that I almost missed it even with my entire attention on him. Two cloudy white membranes, forming a second set of eyelids but these vertical, blink as well.
“Ka'tchuk!” The creature exclaims, slamming his smooth chest with his left wrist's stump.
I jump in surprise, my symbiont reflexively tightens its grip on my weapon. I keep quiet, unsure about what the point of that was. It might be trying to flush me out. I slowly inhale, trying not to make a noise.
“Ka'tchuk!” He repeats insistently, hitting his chest once more.
Suxen is observing with an air of intense interest on her face. That annoys me beyond my ability to assess and I activate my lightning construct. A single bolt strikes out at the ground between her feet.
I notice only now that it's activated that there is a construct there. Still, it doesn't entirely protect the Director as a few small bolts seem to bounce off and hit her.
Suddenly, the Lisilese is no longer just around the corner but immediately in front of me, his right palm's rough scales flashing at my face. My symbiont lashes out with my scimitar, forcing him to abort.
It spins on his left foot's back claw, his right arm lashes out and he uses it to redirect my strike behind his back and somehow recovers his footing staring at me, his red vertical irises locking with my own. His face is covered in blue scales with a few red ones.
“Ka'tchuk!” It barks at me, bristling and panting, apparently out of breath.