Xiao flipped through the hefty instruction manual that he had found in the control room, labeled ‘Locus Operation and Maintenance Procedures, Volume III: Alteration Methods.’ “Okay, it says here that in order to connect a secondary power source to magnify the effects of this thing, we need to deploy…” He unfolded the page, which tumbled down halfway to the floor. “...A few matrices, ‘as outlined in the Ambient Thaumic Manipulation matrix compendium’.” he looked up at Yang, who was sitting on the floor staring at the Locus. “How do we need more books? This is insane!”
Yang looked at the pulsating sphere of energy floating in the middle of the room. The Locus flashed, hummed and vibrated with such speed that she could only look directly in short bursts, so she preferred to keep it in her peripheral vision while she looked at the rest of the wall.
The room the Locus was located in was shaped like an upside-down wedding cake, split into half a dozen terraces connected by ladders. The circular walls of each terrace were all covered in dozens of different scripts, all of which glowed in tandem with the same rainbow light as the Locus itself. Yang noticed tiny flashes of the the multicolored light in Orsinus’ eyes. Was that just the spooky light reflecting off of the normally stark blue eyes, or was the sheer magic-ness of the room already filling Orsinus with its power? Or something. Yang had no idea what she was talking about.
Xiao tapped her shoulder, snapping her out of her reverie. “Yang. Yang, you good? You hear me?”
“Wh- Uh, yeah.” Yang got up. “Well, we don’t need to put in a power source. We just need to hook this guy up and we’re done.” She snapped to bring Orsinus over and patted him on the shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I checked that too. We’ll need even more stuff for that, and it’s still mostly untested.”
“Mm-hmm…” Yang stole another glance at the Locus. “But what’re the safety risks again?”
Xiao grabbed another manual. “Well, under ‘general safety’, it says that handling the Locus poses minimal danger to operators, but may disrupt the Ley Line systems. We’ll only be in actual danger if we try to channel the energy into the room.”
“Then what if we get a little experimental with this?”
“Yang, I don’t have much experience with this magic stuff, but I can still tell that you don’t really get much more advanced than this. We can just hire somebody who actually knows what they’re doing rather than just eyeballing this. Do you seriously want to put the one thing keeping us in the castle at risk like that?”
“Yeah, but… Hang on, we can talk on the way out.” Yang climbed up the nearest ladder and made sure Xiao was following her while Orsinus wasn’t. “Sure, it’s probably safer if we take things slow, but you heard about what happened to Salazar. Things are super unstable right now, we need a way to keep the peace while he’s out of commission.”
Xiao followed her. “The guard captain got hospitalized and one other guard was blinded. That still leaves ninety percent of the force in active duty. Meanwhile, we’ve probably got a bigger target on our backs than anyone else in Tragnil. We’re foreigners not only to the city but to the dimension, we’re unfamiliar with local customs, our claim to power is shaky at best, and you have just about a day of actual leadership experience. You did a pretty decent job with what you had, but mustering an army doesn’t have much overlap with managing a city. And I would once again like to stress that you were in charge for one day.”
“Yeah, your point is?” Yang entered the monitoring station adjacent to the Locus room, where a darkened window offered a safe view of the magical sphere while dozens of glowing lines of ‘text’ presumably provided some form of status display that was far too oblique for either demon to decipher. “This place has some of the biggest, meanest, deadliest creatures ever conceived. Tragnil has living houses. A lot of them. You saw them outside the castle. There are things, more importantly people, who can take us out without needing to worry about the lightning guy. Our best bet is to just make sure nobody can even come close so that we don’t…” She saw Xiao’s expression. He didn’t believe a second of it.
“Yang, you’re never this paranoid. What’s up?”
“Oh, no, nothing. Just being safe, Y’know how it is. Like I said.” Yang slid open a funnel that led to an acoustic megaphone-like funnel on the opposite side of the wall, then snapped. The sound was amplified and echoed by the metal walls and entered the Locus room, letting Orsinus hear the command.
Xiao watched Orsinus raise his arms and begin floating into the air, electricity arcing off of his body and into the Locus. “Yang, you can talk to me. It’s just us. And remember, we said we’d never act like we’re alone in any of this, we’re supposed to be there for each other. You, me, and Long.”
“Yeah, because everything went great for him,” muttered Yang.
Xiao decided to ignore her comment. “So are you seriously just going to be like this? We still made that promise. You’re the same Yang as always, you can’t act like I’m beneath you just because you’re theoretically my boss.”
Xiao’s words snapped Yang out of her enraptured staring as Orsinus started levitating in the direction of the Locus, the lightning flashes becoming more frequent. “Wha- hey, no! That’s not what I- you’re still… Don’t put me on the spot like that!”
“Like what? You shouldn’t even need to deal with a question like that, just talk to me!” Xiao stopped himself. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to yell. I want you to be open, we’re a team. You know that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I do, it’s just…” Yang trailed off again. This was partially because she was trying to avoid talking about what had happened earlier that day and what was happening in the room in front of her.
The Locus’ humming had increased to almost deafening levels. Orsinus reached out with both arms and touched the rippling edge of the Locus. The instant his fingers made contact, his arms burst with a kaleidoscope of colors and shapes as dozens if not hundreds of glyphs seared themselves into his skin. He did not even seem to notice, and kept blankly staring into the Locus without a care in the world.
After a couple of seconds of having an impressive number of markings get branded onto his flesh, Orsinus was yanked into the Locus. The sphere went from lighting up the room like a disco to turning a uniform yellow. This new shade lasted only for a split second, however, and was immediately consumed by a brilliant pale blue.
Yang left the control room and stepped back into the other room while the Locus began to slowly fade back into its normal rainbow form. She snapped, and an arc of lightning shot out of one of the lines of glyphs on the wall all the way to the other side of the room. Yang grinned and laughed. “Guess it really is just that easy, huh?”
Xiao sat down on the edge of the uppermost terrace, watching Yang repeatedly snap and send lightning flying across the room. “So… From the way you were phrasing this earlier, it sounded like you meant for this to be a temporary solution. How exactly do we get him out?”
Yang stopped and looked up at him. “What do you mean? Why should we? We’ve got our own personal Primus who can take out anyone in the city in the blink of an eye. We don’t plan to leave this place, it’s not like we even need to get him out. Actually, hang on.”
She ducked back into the control room, then emerged a few seconds later with another manual. “Found this while you were reading up on the safety stuff. Get this, we can use some of the stuff in the control room to detach this whole part of the castle and fly it around and stuff! We’ve got a portable lightning cannon! Ooh, this whole section is just covered in ‘Top Secret’. Hey, maybe once we’ve sorted stuff out in Tragnil, we could take this place out for a spin and do some ‘territorial expansion’, wink-wink-nudge-nudge. Doesn’t that-”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“Really, Yang?” Xiao got up. “The second you get all this set up and your first thought is to get even more? You sound like Thel!” He noticed her tense up at the mention of their old boss’ name. “I mean, I assume. What I mean is, you’re just starting to do what he did. You get that, right? You always used to talk about how he had no idea what he was doing and how you could do better, but… Now? Why do you even want all…” He swung his arms around in a vague gesture. “What are you trying to get out of owning a city full of monsters that you’ve barely even seen until a few days ago? And why are you so scared of losing it? You know what? Yeah. Yeah, I’m drawing the line here. We’re not changing the subject, I’m just gonna keep asking until you’re actually straight with me about something.”
Yang sighed and walked over to where he was standing. She sat down and kicked her feet out over the six-foot drop down to the next terrace. “Hey, remind me how old you are again?”
Xiao sat down next to her. “Uh, about two, I’d say. I don’t think I remember anything before the Nabbing.”
“Right, yeah. I figure I’m about… Well it’s been about three years, and a half-half split sounds about right, so… Yeah, I’d put myself at around six. Wow, crazy to think, I’m three times your age.”
Xiao shrugged. “Not if you count from how long it’s been since Thel’s guys got to us. We were just within a few days of each other, right?”
“Yeah, thereabouts. Anyway, you pretty much just spent your whole regular-cat life chilling out in some town, yeah? Well, I had a much more… stuff-filled life.”
“I’d imagine, somehow getting through the Nabbing and all,” said Xiao. “How’d you even do that?”
“Well, I basically just let my owners do all the heavy lifting. They started moving from place to place to survive. And the only reason they brought me along was because they had this kid, you see, I’d put her at… Five years old? Six? I don’t know much about what human kids are supposed to look like.”
“Pretty sure the point is that they’re supposed to look completely disgusting.”
Yang laughed. “Makes sense. Anyway, I got adopted by this kid, probably for her birthday or something. That’s- that’s what you do for birthdays, right?”
Xiao shrugged. “I think you might be mixing it up with Christmas, but what do I know?”
“Okay, okay, no more distractions. So this kid, she gets her parents to bring me along wherever they go even after the Nabbing, because she’s just inconsolable whenever I’m not with her, like she’s always hugging me to her chest and stuff. While we’re driving, I’m just strapped into this empty booster seat next to the girl, like, they don’t even use it for anything else. I have my own seat in the car, and I can’t get out without help.”
“Why did you switch to present tense?”
“Dunno.” Yang continued without missing a beat. “But, y’know, back then I wasn’t too fond of all that. I was the adventurous, no-law-but-my own type. Maybe I still am, I dunno. But I didn’t like being cooped up in the family’s old, stuffy station wagon for hours on end, even if it was safe. Started driving me nuts after a while. I started tearing up the upholstery, biting chunks out of the seatbelt, scratching the windows, all kinds of stuff whenever I got the chance.”
Xiao chuckled. “Being a dumb animal was weird in hindsight, you know?”
Yang nodded. “And the thing is, the family I was with weren’t just a bunch of scavengers. For some reason, the dad got it in his head that it would be a good way to keep his family afloat if he became a traveling con artist.”
“That’s uh… Okay. That was a turn.”
“I know! He just traveled between fledgling towns that sprang up and collapsed in the first few months after everything collapsed for real, doing fake magic and cup-ball stuff, things like that. I’m only now understanding what all the card tricks and stuff were, and it was only when I started sifting through my memories with this new clarity that I realized how bizarre all of it was. And the dad was teaching his daughter all of his tricks, like he was trying to start some legendary bloodline of wasteland hustlers or something. But the thing is, it became really hard for him to get his groove on when he had a claustrophobic cat screaming her head off in the car six feet away.”
Yang gave Xiao a moment to collect himself after he broke down in a fit of poorly suppressed laughter. “Yeah, he just couldn’t handle it, so after a few months of bringing me everywhere they went, the parents put their foot down and left me to fend for myself. I can still sorta remember the kid screaming hysterically in the back window while they drove off.” She chuckled. “Good times.”
“So you just kinda… hung out?”
“Pretty much,” said Yang. “Spent the next few months hunting rats and stuff. All kind of a blur. I think I might be a mother, so there’s that. All in all, not much to note, but at least I got what I always wanted. No more stuffy, cramped cars for ol’ Yang.”
Xiao nodded in affirmation. “But then Erlani showed up?”
“But then Erlani showed up. Hit me with that magic blue paper thing, and here I am. Now that I could actually think about stuff, I was actually pretty hyped. This new self-actualization thing seemed like it would be fun, but instead I was handed a spear and some armor, and we kept moving west. Just a… big ol’ ball of identical soldiers, off to do the bidding of some Primus none of us had ever even seen. We were lucky to even talk to Erlani.”
“Yang, I was there. I’m well aware.”
Yang held up a hand. “Shush, I’m trying to prove a point.”
“Is it the same point you’ve been trying to prove for the last five minutes?”
“Y-” Yang dropped her hand. “Yeah, it’s the same one. It’s just… What I’m trying to say is, I’m tired. Of that kid, Thel, Erlani, all of them.”
Xiao sniggered. “One of those things isn’t like the others.”
“Xiao, shut up. You know how I was back in Greece, when I was in charge. I don’t want to be just another faceless drone, I don’t want anyone to be. I want to call the shots and make my own decisions, for me.”
“So… Exactly like the kid, Thel, and Erlani?”
“Hey, hey, no. Don’t play that card.” Yang got to her feet. “I just said that I don’t want to be another tyrant. I’m in this for everyone, all of those other demons in the army. Even if most of them are dead, I’m seeing this through. Even if it’s just you and me.”
Xiao looked over at the Locus. “And by ‘seeing this through’, you mean ‘taking over an entire city and automating the death penalty to maintain absolute power’?”
“I… Okay.” Yang sat back down, this time leaning against the far wall. “I’m taking things pretty far. Maybe even too far. But a lot of things are happening right now, and I’m just trying to keep us both afloat. It’s not easy, and I don’t want this to last forever, but… I’m not going back to being another cog in the machine. Not anymore. Sooner or later, everyone up top or whatever is gonna be dead. I’d rather hold onto this new lease on life down here than sit around and wait to die up there. So now, I’m taking the chance to do things my way.”
Xiao examined her face for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s just hope you know when to quit this time.”
Both demons heard a knock come from the door leading out of the room, about twenty feet away. Salazar entered the room, one arm hanging from a sling. “Am I interrupting anything?”
Yang got up. “Wait, you’re out? I thought you were hospitalized.”
“Yup. Healing magic. Of course, I wasn’t insured, so…” Salazar winced. He lifted his cast in its sling. “Couldn’t pay for everything.”
“Alright then,” said Xiao. “What happened? Why’re you here, is it to do with whoever messed you up like that?”
“Correct.” Salazar strolled over to Yang. “First of all, those Primoi you set me up against? Got away, just thought you’d want to know.”
Yang shrugged. “Makes sense, they aren’t the easiest target. We can just try again while they’re off-balance.”
Salazar shook his head. “Well, second, I came here to let you know that I’m done. If this is the kind of thing you’re gonna be getting us lawmakers to be doing, I’m having no part of it.”
Yang blinked. “O-okay then? Figured you’d rather try to fix things than just be out of a job.”
“I’d rather be out of a job than dead.” Salazar turned and went back to the doorway. “Consider this my formal resignation. I’m findin’ work somewhere else, y’all can go find another lamb for the slaughter.”
“Wait-wait-wait!” Yang followed Salazar on his way out. “One more job? Risk-free?”
Salazar stopped in his tracks, thought for a moment without looking back at Yang, and sighed. “Pay first. But… fine.”