15th of Moon’s Twilight, first month of the year 984:
“If there’s nothing else you are dismissed. I will give priority to meeting with Albestus. When I find the time to, I will help.”
Sorak hailed and left. The click of the door returned the easy going smile to Eve’s face, which was soon dispelled.
“I should get going too. Night will come soon and I need to prepare the process. The culprits in ‘White Rose’?” Continued Noct
Its hands clenching, it relinquished its vow of silence and shared the illusion cristal. Its determination, having substituted its smile, flared up, “I demand to go with you.”
“No.”
Noct walked out of the room, refusing to address the protests of his beloved friend. Once the door closed again, he aimed towards the dungeon.
He tried to take the short route, as he didn’t want to waste time with his grim job. Nonetheless, the world couldn’t but test his resolve, as he soon found Soral upon arriving at the central chamber, where the main stairs were, as she had left her room and appeared to be searching for something.
Getting more energetic as if she had been searching for him, she trotted the last steps and started,
“Still full of energy, huh?”
Breathing in and out, Noct asked, “What do you want?”
Surprised by his curt reply, she shrank a bit and tried to approach the subject, “What do you think about the new administrators?”
“I have yet to talk to them. You are the one that can tell me.” His feet not facing her, he retreated a bit. His eyes were already looking at the door that led towards where the downward staircase of the dungeons was located.
Too nervous to notice, Sorak charged instead of hinting to, “Well. I was, I, could you.” Her left foot going up and down, “maybe…. Teach me?”
That made Noct finally face her. “.....what?”
“You remember the work you had let me do, just before winter?”
“Yes. I had revised it and it had been grounded, as I had told you already. What does that have to do with….”
“Could you do the same with today’s?” Begrudgingly asked Soral, exasperated with the whole having to say it thing. She could but look spitefully at Noct, an expression that changed to confusion. The air around Noct had changed completely, the same way ice changes when it melts.
Looking back again at the door unconsciously, he felt the dark thoughts disappear, at least for a bit. Looking back to Soral, he said, “Now that you say it, It is my realm after all. Lead the way.” Pointed with his head towards the stairs.
Soral turned, a dozen memories resurfacing. The look of Noct had been one she had forgotten. He had looked at her with a smile he had been quick to hide. Shaking her head to defend against the bit of guilt that had come to fight her, she repeated her litany in her mind, ‘He is not the man he was, do not let him confuse you.’.
Arriving at her room, they sat in the chairs she had in front of her desk. It was full of papers, documents, letters and books. The source of her guilt, a little letter, was hiding inside all that chaos signed by the Duchess herself, not that she could have sended it so quickly as for it to arrive the very same day they had come home. It looked like a small piece of paper like any other, as its letters were facing the table. The little plot that it had sparked was but a few lines, “Grow closer to your brother. It may prove necessary.”, its dark insights not baring their teeth, yet.
Noct nodding, pride evident, at the disordered mess that was her workplace, almost put his hand on her shoulder before retracting it as it was usual. “What did you want me to revise?”
“Well, Oscar was the one who revised the reports from the labourers and he advised me that our main warehouses of the city are old and in need of repairs. At first, I wanted to just arrange a simple reconstruction, but!” She opened a map and started to point in it, ”I started to estimate the distances and I concluded they aren’t in their most efficient places! Some are too far from the workplaces they feed, others too far from the gates or on roads that face too much use to operate with ease!”
Under the vigilant eyes of Noct, who occasionally nodded along to prove that he was listening, she started to talk faster, “I have already located some unused buildings near the artisan guilds that can serve as their replacements. The cost would be negligible, and it would cut into the wasted time of transporting the raw materials and decreasing overall traffic, lowering the costs and gaining us some profit, even if it's a meagre one. What do you think?” Her excited eyes fell on Noct.
“Sound plan. It would be a nice correction of my oversights if…..” His finger fell in a building near one of the most far away storehouses and his voice faded away.
“...? Why are you pointing at a guard office?” The pieces didn’t click in her head.
Half smiling, he continued, “if we lived in a perfect world. You see, some silos house cheap goods. Wheat, potatoes, wood, and more. Those are the ones your new reforms would work perfectly on, but those are not the ones who need your relocation. Do you know why these could be moved? They are of no interest to criminals nor are their goods dangerous.” The proverbial light lighting inside Soral’s brain, she continued to look at his finger, “This one, for example, houses iron. Costly stuff, and even more regulated. That’s why it’s located near the place you have to check and corroborate your licence and cash order to out the iron to your workplace.” His finger darting to an isolated depot, he followed with, “This one? Explosive and flammable materials. Neither costly nor cheap materials, the risk of a fire is there, permanently. Put that on a regularly used street and you have got a ticking fireball.”
Looking at her, he finished, “While it is good to find the failures in the system, the second thing you need to do is think if they are intentional. If they are failures and not deliberate planning.” Soral nodded. “I am sure that a few of those you have located can be moved to better positions. Others will have to be moved to other places even more inefficient, by the standard of quick profits. Think not in months, think in years. Plan for the worst, expect the worse. Planning something thinking everything will work out as you intended is the best way to make a mess of all of your work.” His eyes warming up at the sight of the attentive Soral, he lightly patted her in the shoulder. “You worked hard, you only need to iron the details.”
Soral picked a quill and started to edit her blueprints while the cynic brother grounded her projects in reality. A few hours of peace that Noct would have sold what was left of his soul to savour for a few more minutes. But dreams do not let dreamers be immersed in them forever, they are fickle pleasures after all.
…………..
The damp and putrid air of the dungeons struck his nostrils, not that he minded, he had gotten used to the smell of faeces and blood long ago.
This atmosphere had always brought memories from the College. A simpler time, simpler offences, simpler hatred. His boots echoing in the darkness, the sights of malnourished criminals did little to shake his resolve.
While the number of law-breakers that lived after their sentences was small, almost all high tier ‘wrongdoers’, as the notion of the wrong committed relied upon the judge, lived and died in the castle’s dungeons. Isolated, with no contact, no light and no comforts, they wasted away in the underground of the castle. Traitors, criminal lords, higher ups of the ‘hands’, only those whose infractions entailed danger to the whole barony faced this treatment.
Water once per day, food every three days. No cleaning of the cells, and a sewage system that cleaned just enough to not let the cells overflow. While on paper their sentences had been permanent incarceration, in reality it was a slow execution by either starvation or disease.
Crossing dozens of cells, most devoid of delinquents, he arrived at the last cells. A spell of ‘green light’ revealed the half dead human, dressed in what once could have been noble clothes, Approaching the door, Noct hit a steel bar, rudely awakening the sleeping bastard.
“F…..food, tod…ay?” The whispering voice cracking upon the dryness of their voice. Their eyes blinded by the magic light Noct was emitting, they could not see his nemesis, the one who had brought his merchant empire to a halt and burned it with the ire of a moonlight fanatic. But they could hear him, and he, Marcus without a surname, would never forget the cold voice that had cursed him here.
“I offer you freedom. For a price, but freedom I offer.”
“Y…you!” The anger in his voice being diminished by its weakness, he tried to rise but fell again in his bed of muck.
“Do you want out, or do I search for another?”
“T…take yo…your schemes…out, out of here!” Half raising thanks to pure will, and the support of his arms, he tried to spat in his face, failing miserably as his mouth had not the water to spare. He knew that last ray of hope was a fluke, Noct would never forgive him.
Shrugging, Noct turned to continue his search but a female voice tried to make itself resonate in the underground. She, after her failure, proceeded to hit the iron bars of her cell.
Noct eyed the new offering.
“I…I heard all. I will do, do it!” Said an elven woman.
Nodding, Noct walked towards the cell and opened it, invading her cell.
“It’s an easy job.” He grabbed a blunt dagger from the shadows of the cell, the creepy light he was emitting aggravating the unholy aura of the dagger, choked full of magic runes, “I will stab you with this.” Seeing her panic, he continued, “Rest assured, you won’t bleed out. It's enchanted. If you manage to live for four hours, I will free you. Deal?”
His eyes almost bullied her into accepting it. Still, she chose the easy way to die. She knew she wouldn’t hold out.
“D…deal!”
Noct nodded and started to carve a magic spell into the cell. After half an hour, and almost with no space left in both walls and ground, as it had all been occupied with magic runes, he plunged the dagger into her guts with no hesitation. Honouring his word, the wound didn’t start to bleed but, betraying his schemes, the wound started to suck in something from the dagger , something that made her scream.
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Returning to our earlier, in undead standard, do not mind me, explanation about grey mana, we talked about a rather, unorthodox way to produce large quantities of mana, necromantic rituals. Almost all of them require an unwilling subject, a victim, that would be directly infected with grey mana that was already tuned to its casted. The invading grey mana would be unable to recognize the victim, and it would start a reaction, trying to terraform its new biome to the one it had grown in. But, as it had been tuned towards the necromancer, if the warlock extracted it, he would have no adverse reaction, as their body would not react against it.
But the injected innocent would not be so lucky, as the new mana would then start to aggressively eat its lifeforce, injuring them in the process with the trademark of grey mana, withering. The blue mana would react and try to eject this invader. The grey mana, as it was eating away at the lifeforce, would have enough power to fight fairly against the blue mana while consuming the host. Dehydration and internal damage would soon follow. As the grey mana festered, it would grow until the victim had completely withered and had turned to a dusty husk. The corpse would be rich in grey mana and a perfect battery to use in spell casting. More literate warlocks knew better than to let the future battery die too soon, because the best way to use this ritual was by prolonging it. If you started to use the growing grey mana before it could kill the future corpse, it would slow down the reaction, letting the ambient blue mana seep into the host and giving the body more time to live, fight and regenerate lifeforce.
This ritual required balance and fine tuning, and it was one of the reasons necromancers were hunted, no matter the cost. Human batteries could power a single necromancer and double the grey mana they had available. Add the extra power of the cursed substance and its better efficiency over blue mana and you have got a tough and very costly nut to crack with human resources.
Returning to the dark and damp cell, the grey mana of Noct had started its invasion, devouring the guts of the elf in mere seconds and making her blank out from the pain. Pain that, soon enough, brought her back to her senses, as if it had a thirst for her screams.
Half a minute later, it flowed to her lungs, cutting her ability to scream. While she convulsed and thrashed around, the dagger started to glow, looking like it had started to suck back the grey mana. The extracted grey mana started to flow from her stomach and into the spell’s carvings, filling it with what appeared to be stagnant. infected water. The construct started to glow a slight green and a portal of shadows opened in the back of the cell.
The elf had stopped thrashing around, the withering had already started near her belly and snapped her forces.
Noct looked at her, drenched in guilt and twisted happiness at seeing one of the murderers of his family suffer. Shaking his head, he whispered, “Four hours.”, and crossed the portal.
……….
“Damn that Pozos, did that waste of space buy his Knighthood or what? Losing against a mage in a duel without magic?!” Index Finger 14 spat in the ground, next to one of his more trusted friends and his boss. “Three times. We tried to kill that Ashen bitch three fucking times. Gods, I need a drink. Thank the goods Whiterose is a trade metropolis, I have missed my ‘Fire and Stone’. What’s the new plan?” Asked Index Finger 14 while opening a bottle of alcohol.
“Giving up is the plan.” Sighing, Thumb 4 sat on his sofa, “I fear that Demon. Write the Alpin Barony as lost and we will focus on other matters.”
“Will we not avenge Index Finger 19?” His poker face didn’t betray that he had already asked Thumb 7 to help with the murder plot, under the name of Thumb 4.
“Oh, right. Let me ask any of his grieving friends. Wait, I heard almost all of them, more like, almost all of their skulls are on pykes in the damned main square of ‘Bonfire’!!”
“We lost too much to stop trying and you know it! Four Middle Fingers and a few associates, dead. Worse, the Ashens are both alive and even more dangerous to us!”
“I am no fan of the bygones principle. We lost enough. Time to cut our losses and not throw more coins and men to the gutter.”
“But we have never failed four times in a row. We need to murder that bastard even more now that we have tried. He is not one to forgive his enemies!”
“Well, we never had failed three times in a row before and look where we are now!” He grabbed Middle Finger 14’s bottle of liquor, and sighed. “And, if he chooses to not forgive us, then we are dead meat, and the ‘hands’ will go on without us. We were a sunk cost, lad, and we missed the mark. We should be smarter than to keep investing into a doomed prospect.”
The sound of an explosion above their underground base, in their customised warehouse, made dust fall from the ceiling. Their central base of operations in the county of Astar, an enterprise in which they had sunk hundreds upon hundreds of gold coins, was under attack.
Index Finger 14 grabbed his long sword and started to scream orders after casting voice amplification magic.
Thumb 4, on the other hand, threw the cup he had been using and drank straight from his bottle of ‘Fire and Stone’. Raising from his couch, he started to make a spell circle in the ground of the room and filled the carvings with mana potions.
“Elenia’s boots, I should have drunk that ‘Liquid Diamond’ already.” Cursed Thumb 4, almost resigned to his end. He had been saving it for a special occasion. ‘Never before have I thought being alive would feel like one. Heh, maybe Hal will let me drink in the Nether if I beg well enough.’
…………….
A flying body impacted and destroyed the door, and the barricade they had hastily made. Four ‘Muscles’ shooted their crossbows towards the Demon. Enchanted bolts, they swiftly penetrated the magic shield Noct had casted and were consumed by an arm of pure darkness that rose from the shadows at his feet, after swatting at them.
Two of the ‘Muscles’ armed with swords were already charging against him. One found her legs grabbed by her very shadows after she tried to stab Noct, as the two muscles had been waiting near the barricade, and was soon dragged to the ground. The shadows consumed her legs while she clawed at the ground, trying to resist the pull. The other Muscle found himself dodging the big claw made of shadow that had shielded the arrows just to be presented to a black sword that stabbed through his shield and into his chest.
A body falling, a kick in the head was enough to let the other muscle lose her grip and be pulled into her shadows. Her screams dimmed once her mouth crossed the threshold.
Another volley met the fate of the earlier one, and the men and women unsheathed their weapons to make their last stand worthy of being called warriors.
The candles and lights of the room soon dimmed, leaving only a pair of green eyes to scan the mess of the room that was left, only carnage being the reminder of the eight people that had died there. ‘Fighting a mage in close quarters…. Karax, God of Bravery, would be proud. On the other hand, Midas ought to be laughing.’ He started to walk to the closed door at the end of the chamber. A simple dart trap went off once he tried to break, with a single kick, the door of the ‘warehouse’. and his magic shield stopped the poisoned weapon.
A magically buffed kick was enough to crack open the staircase to the secret base, and his trusty shadow blocked the dagger from the hidden ‘muscle’ waiting on the landing. A simple horizontal slash was enough to tear in two the attacker, who fell to the ground in chunks after watching his iron sword and shield fall to pieces. Walking down the staircase, his steps resonated in the cramped and small space.
While the warehouse had been a normal building of wood, the true operations centre was the man made caves of the underground. While the miners had been professionals, not one could imitate the dwarven marvels of the west, leaving a lot to be desired.
Stepping in the underground floor, the walls were cut haphazardly and, while spacious and heavily furnished, it looked more like a globin underground city than anything else. Knowing he needed to make haste, he broke the new door he was against and entered the wolf’s mouth.
A dozen soon to be corpses rushed at him. From the back, eight crossbowmen were already shooting at him from the pillars and doorframes of the next wings he needed to purge. Altering his magic shield to filter the air, he launched a spell he had readied towards the attacker that was already swinging at him.
Being hit in the guts, he fell to his knees. The spell had impaled him from one side to another. The next three strikes from two Muscles he parried and dodged, retreating to the staircase to reduce the numbers of opponents he had to face at the same time. Making alterations in his magic shield, he stabbed and slashed. Once he finished, he jumped backwards and, raising his two hands, a waterfall of fire flew from him towards his enemies. Two torched bodies fell to the ground, the other Muscles could get out of the way from the fire spell, which impacted onto the opposite wall and provoked slight tremors.
It would not have been a problem had it been bare. Alas, it was coated in wooden planks and the room was furnished full of flammable commodities. A fire started on the back of the chamber, smoke would soon fill up the floor. Desperate, the Muscles he had been fighting redoubled their efforts before they fall to asphyxia.
Dust falling from the ceiling, Noct stabbed a neck, evaded a slash by crouching and kicked the attacker. Another sword tried to cut before being eaten by his shadow hand. He severed an arm, and retreated to the stairs, scaling them to gain the height advantage. A bolt was blocked another time by the hand, a sword clashed against his and was put to a test it did not pass, breaking in half. The chamber already coated in flames, smoke filled the staircase.
Noct held for a few minutes more before the scorching hot air and breathtaking smoke did their job. Looking around, the crossbowmen had tried to run.
Noct, immune to both the heat and smoke thanks to his magic shield. He had maid the shield impermeable to external air, leaving him with a bubble of limited air, while letting everything else pass. Another spell to cool down the temperature inside the shield, and he was dealing with the wildfire as if he was taking a stroll in a park.
The problem was time. The magic shield had a volume not bigger than a casket, so he now had a little under four hours to purge the compound or he would run out of oxygen. further edited the magic shield to shield him from the heat and burning air.
Not minding the dangerous situation he was in, he started to leisurely travel through the now ignited floor. For good measure he torched all that was unburn in his wake. Closed rooms, with or without crossbowmen, were opened and made to welcome the fires, underground silos, training rooms, everything fed the flames. He had brought Nether to them, and the abundant flammable furniture together with the wooden plaques they had furnished their base with weren’t helping to quelch the flames.
Once he got bored from his senseless rampage, he casted life vision’ and searched for the lifeforce signatures of the leaders of the fort.
………………….
“That bastard is completely mad!!” Screamed Index Finger 14 while blocking the door with cloth and blankets the door to stop the smoke from coming in, “He has set fire to the whole accursed building!! Does he not care that he is in the lands of his direct Countess?!?”
Thumb 4 finished the magic construct and put a crystal ball on its centre. “I do not care about what he intends to do or not do. He gave us time in his hubris.” Smirking, he followed, “He is not the only mage here, and I have finished the spell circle! Maybe you were right, maybe we won’t fail the fourth time!” He hid an envy filled curse inside his mind. Magic binders were masters of doing spell circles from nothing, thanks to the immense concentration needed in the forge, while he had needed to physically manifest the spell circle for it to be usable. Still, it gave him an edge, as his spell was way more complex that one that could be quickly made.
“I pray you know what you are doing because if we wait too much we are toast!” They did not hear the steps of Noct with their barter and the chaos outside. Index Finger 14 looked to the door at the same time ‘Void’ stabbed via it, impaling him in the neck and swiftly decapitating him.
Another kick pushed both the door and the new corpse out of his way, only for Thumb 4 to activate his spell. The magic construct started to evaporate the liquid it holded and shined in blue light, sending its instructions and all the mana it could trap towards the crystal ball. A ray of pure and concentrated light shooted from it and made a beeline towards Noct, not minding the rushing in smoke, hot air and flames. His sword parried the attack, destroying the underlying magic behind it and dividing it in two lesser rays that diverged and missed him, hitting and melting two symmetric holes in the wall surrounding the door.
“Madness, how are you….” Thumb soon found himself staring at his own body, as his head was soon cut off and drenched in flames.
The gauntlet was the answer to his unasked question, not that he had had time to ask one in particular. If his sword destroyed magic, how could he have shielded himself? His shield spell enveloped everywhere except his right hand, where it stopped as it touched the armour piece. As his gauntlet was enchanted, not the fire nor smoke had damaged it.
As breathable air was nearing its end, Noct phased towards the surface and, evading the guards that were rushing towards the burning warehouse, crossed the portal towards his dungeon.
………….
The completely withered body of Itfill laid in mind breaking pain. Corrupted from head to toes, she was alive only thanks to her iron will and elven constitution. She had left the Ever Forest full of ambition. She had spent two centuries working in the Empire, rising in fame and reaching Knighthood, just to pick the loser horse and lose it all in a Gods forsaken frozen Netherhole.
Two millennia and a half old, she now found herself delirious from pain. She didn’t see Noct cross the portal. She didn’t see the look of repulsion and guilt. She didn’t feel her head get cut off from her body, dispelling the spell and ending her misery.
…………………………..