Ibela slowly woke up face down on the stone floor, muttering something wordless to himself as he lifted himself into a seated position. Moving his jaw back and forth he seemed to suddenly find something in his mouth, picking it out with the fingers of his non-broken arm he held a knocked loose tooth.
He put it in his pocket as he looked around and laid eyes on the trio sitting there with Gilliam covering himself in a pleasant-looking pale white energy.
Ibela’s heart seemed to stop, his body froze as his eyes darted back and forth between the group, getting increasingly panicked.
“Good morning.” Gilliam commented dryly but surprisingly politely. His voice was entirely void of any emotion, he was just sitting there naked next to Cera, with Rhyan sitting against the door.
Ibela tried to talk but just stuttered a sound over and over again. He looked around for an exit but saw only the air slit and the closed door, he started to panic and retorted to bargaining.
“If... you... If you let me go, I’ll pay you. Name your price.” His eyes were wide open, almost bulging.
“No. I don’t have any money problems.” He responded. He had already pinged the ring to check its contents, and everything was there as expected. He wondered why the torturer explained that they knew it was a spell-storing ring, but it wasn’t. He would have to look into this later.
He was feeling exhausted, his Boundary was full before he started healing, so it was not magically related, but now that he could relax just a little bit he felt the fatigue of however long they had been here, catch up with a vengeance.
He just wanted to get healed, cleaned up and sleep.
Ibela was becoming increasingly panicked, looking around himself with darting eyes seeming to try to find an exit or a bargaining chip large enough to save himself.
Gilliam let him work, he wanted to heal himself as fast as possible. Though healing magic seemed like an all-heal, there was a time limit. Since healing magic was just illogically and dramatically speeding up, and boosting, natural healing, it meant that it couldn’t always heal what was already healed. A dramatic workaround was to re-do the damage and heal it if it was important enough, like a bone set wrong. It also struggled with certain scars as they were technically a part of the healing process. He was an acceptable healing mage but he didn’t have the skill of the specialists.
This considered, he still felt confident that anything remaining when he was done would be cosmetic. He knew enough about how muscles, bones, tendons, skin and all that stuff worked to at least generally focus the healing energy. Even if he didn’t, just flooding the area with copious amounts of healing mana would help drastically, but not as much as properly focusing it.
He had started with his leg, it was the worst in consideration of pain and issues. He didn’t care much about the surface wounds at the moment as the passive mana flowing around him would most likely take care of that. His second focus was the hand that was stabbed through. Though painful he could still move his hand in all ways, meaning that the torturer either missed or hit perfectly between the tendons and muscles, given his odd fascination with the topic he probably had considerable skill in the process. Either way, the hand was an important and delicate target to be mended.
Gilliam somewhat expected Rhyan to interject with wanting to deliver Ibela to authorities or something, as they were in a position to do this at the moment. The only reason he hadn’t killed him yet was that he wanted to focus on the healing as much as he could so something wasn’t worsened from movement or just time. Ibela spewed out things about giving them warehouses, more money, items, slaves or other illegal stuff. In Gilliam’s mind, this might as well be white noise as he didn’t care in the slightest, he was going to kill him. If anything the delay could count as his torture.
He was using an abnormal amount of mana to heal his wounds, he needed this to be done as well as he was capable of doing, any half-assed or skipped things could come back to bite him later with things such as lingering pain, mobility issues and so on.
Eventually, he felt content, the worst of the pain was gone and he could finally relax a little. Adrenaline was still flowing in his veins making him kind of shaky, it handled the fatigue surprisingly well but being able to relax a little with only manageable pain remaining was such a huge relief that he could probably go to sleep in seconds.
Gilliam struggled a little to get up, Cera tried to step in to aid but quickly found out that she didn't need to. He grunted as if he had pain from sleeping weirdly, but luckily that was the worst of the remaining issues. Finding himself on his feet properly he did a few test stomps with his previously shattered leg, it didn’t feel... great, like he had kicked a steel rod but just weak enough to not break anything, but there wasn’t any mobility or muscle issues as far as he could tell now.
“I think that’s it, we should go and find Petal, and leave this place.” He spoke to his companions, almost hearing the wish in Ibela’s head that they would forget him and just leave, but Gilliam had not.
Rhyan sighed as he got up from his door-stopper position, Cera got up much easier than the others as they headed towards the door. Gilliam could see it in Rhyan’s eyes that he knew Ibela was going to get it as soon as they left, he hesitated a little but opened the door. Taking a glance outside he didn’t seem like he could hear anything. Gilliam’s ears had stopped ringing and he couldn’t hear anything either, Ibela was holding his breath as they stepped into the hallway. And as soon as the two others picked a side and took a few steps out of view of the cell, Gilliam turned.
Reaching out both his hands in a motion almost like he was holding a large invisible ball, he slammed them together in a sphere like he was compacting a snowball. The telekinetic energy he manifested crunched, cracked, tore and compacted Ibela’s body into a horrifying blob of gore and goo. The human body wasn’t too compactable due to being made out of a lot of fluids, but like trying to crunch a tomato into a smaller size; whatever squished out, squished out. The inside of the room looked like a person had exploded before imploding, walls, cells, ceiling, floor, everything in a decent radius was caked.
Gilliam closed the door behind him and went down the same way that the others were walking.
They didn’t have to walk long until they heard weird footsteps and screams from the hallway around the upcoming corner, Gilliam recognized the footsteps but the screams were a bit uncomfortable. It sounded like a wounded man struggling.
Rhyan, again, had mixed feelings when Petal came into view around the corner. She was carrying a very nice ornamental box in her hands and was caked in blood and gore, and in the claw hand on her tail, she was dragging a man after her. She was holding onto his arm much stronger than she needed to, which had severely damaged it.
“My Lord!” She exclaimed as she walked over to him, somewhat ignoring the other two. “I think I found the crystal, it was already in the box, I just had to close it. The air tasted better afterwards, Is it the correct one?” She happily handed the box to Gilliam and proceeded to pull forth the man she was dragging with zero finesse, causing him to tumble over and face-plant on the stone floor. “I also think this is the man you spoke of.”
She was smiling wide and looked incredibly glad as Gilliam nodded and received the box, almost like a puppy wanting a reward for doing a good job. Had it not been for the gore covering her it would have been strangely cute.
Gilliam looked down to a man who looked back up once he got his undamaged hand and legs properly under control, getting to his feet they had a moment’s look between them.
The man didn’t say anything but seemed to try and slowly move his foot towards the open hallway, seemingly wanting to run.
“You won’t get far, you will die for what you have done.”
The man smiled back with an oddly creepy accepting expression before he started running. Gilliam reacted and did as promised. Not intending him to be raised either, he made sure there was nothing to raise.
A dirt brown glowing magic circle manifested in Gilliam’s hand, and a similar one manifested on the wall next to where the man was running, as the man stepped in range both spell circles collapsed and the wall extruded a square into the man, and into the opposing hallway wall, crushing him entirely. The extruded piece of wall retracted back into its original position before the magic faded.
Rhyan looked like he wanted to say something, throw up, run away and slap Gilliam all at the same time, but Gilliam didn’t care. If anyone in the world deserved that it was him. He expected Rhyan to bring this up at some point when they were to have the mentioned talk, so he’d just have to see then.
Cera just looked terrified, she didn’t know what to do with herself but still kept close to Gilliam. She was extra wary of the long-tailed demon who was quite happy around Gilliam, looking at him like a loyal pet seeing her master for the first time in months.
“Let’s go.” Gilliam ordered. “I want my coat back before we leave this place.”
Rhyan turned to continue down the hallway but paused briefly. “Is the coat that important? Shouldn’t we just focus on getting out of here?”
Gilliam couldn’t fault his logic, it was flawless with the information he had. But Gilliam was greedy on top of knowing the damage that someone could do with that coat. Not only was it good for spell storing, but the spells stored in it were... dangerous.
“According to the man who gave it to me, that coat is worth more than a small fortress. The spells stored in it could aid in removing cities from the map.” He explained the truth, the improved Star Lance was an incredibly powerful spell, even in the hands of less experienced mages.
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This caused Rhyan’s eyes to widen, he seemed even more hesitant than before but seemed to put any questions into the back of his mind and started moving.
Petal ignored the gore and dirt and grabbed onto Gilliam’s arm with both of her own into a hug. She held onto it tightly as she gracefully walked to his side with a large and happy smile. Stepping in tandem with his steps she seemingly managed to not affect his stride, even though it wasn’t entirely stable.
Rhyan did his best to sneak ahead, taking the frontline position, Cera was terrified and didn't seem to know what she should do, ending up walking alongside Gilliam with twitching ears, reacting to every little sound.
Having access to his ring again, he could take advantage of the things he kept stored. Though he didn’t have much in the sense of clothes for anyone, he did have his staff. Taking it out of the ring manifested it in his hand from nowhere, it didn’t seem to affect Petal’s holding onto him nor her walking, but it gave him a tremendous boost of confidence. Taking advantage of this boost he re-did the barrier on everyone, Petal included. He wanted to make it filter further gas, so what happened before wouldn’t happen again, but he didn’t feel mentally stable enough to do that right now, so normal barriers would have to be enough.
They walked down several hallways and checked several rooms along the way. Most were empty and didn’t have anything of interest, and the ones that had people in before now only had corpses, blood and gore. Petal wasn’t covered as much as she was without reason.
It wasn’t until they had walked down a maze of hallways and rooms that they found what looked like a treasury. It was a side room, probably a storage room they just started gathering things of value in. Entering he was extremely glad to see his coat on a table, from the tools and papers around it seemed like this was a workbench, probably where they tried to learn what it was.
Cera seemed to read the situation well and ran over to the table, grabbed his coat and came back with it, handing it to Gilliam.
He smiled gently at her with gratitude in his eyes as he gave her a reassuring pat on her head. Petal took notice of it but didn’t seem to react much, if at all.
Gilliam handed his staff to Petal as she unwrapped herself from his arm, Rhyan had been looking around when Cera got the coat. “I think these are our clothes.” He had walked over to a stack of stuff and identified some clothing. Recognizing your clothing is usually easy, and his armour was there as well in a neat pile, so it made sense that it was theirs.
Taking a breather, Gilliam used a moment to clean the clothes, just in case someone had done something to them. They didn’t exactly smell clean so it was better safe than sorry. After this, they got dressed and prepared themselves. Rhyan needed a few more minutes than the others, not only to get his armour properly on and fastened but to take inventory of the remaining stuff in his bag of tools.
The room had a lot of other seemingly random tidbits, all the money was collected in a small chest on another table, and another small chest next to it was filled with jewellery and other trinkets. Though there was a lot of value here there was nothing really interesting to Gilliam.
“S... should we take the money, at least?” Rhyan seemed hesitant to even ask this, as soon as Gilliam looked at him he hastily continued almost as to redirect blame. “To hamper them, naturally. They probably use this money for whatever shit they are doing.”
Gilliam smiled a little, something that felt oddly nice after his last few days, though Rhyan’s reasoning was a bit on the cheeky side he did have a point. “I don’t see a problem with that.” he replied.
Though Gilliam still had quite a lot of reward money in his ring, and more in his bank that was just increasing slowly over time, he hadn’t even checked that since he got back but over four years should hopefully be something good.
Walking over he placed his ring hand on the chest, as his hand made contact the box and contents were deconstructed into glowing energy and absorbed into the ring in less than a second. This raised an eyebrow on Rhyan, and Cera’s eyes widened in amazement.
Gilliam considered that this made sense, he had been cheating in how the ring worked by pretending to put things in his pockets. It wasn’t like he intended to keep it permanently a secret from the others but he felt that this might have been a bad time.
Mentally shrugging, it didn’t matter, they would find out at some point anyway.
Rhyan used a moment more to look around the room, picking up a few things here and there before he put them in his bag of tricks and turned to the group, confirming that he was ready as well.
They soon found themselves back in the hallway, Gilliam wondered if they were going the correct way to get out, now that he had his coat he was more and more fine with just glassing the whole place and never looking back.
“Petal, what is the fastest way out of here?”
“We’re going towards a large room ahead, from there we can leave to the exit.” She replied as she wrapped herself back around his right arm, in which he also held his staff.
Gilliam could see that Rhyan just had more and more questions, which was fine, they could take their time to talk about things once they got back. He needed a bath and some good rest. And to be honest, now that Petal was here and he was relaxing a little bit, certain other feelings were surging in his body, they had been apart longer than the time he had been in Lisica, after all. And sure, the cleaning magic could clean him most likely better than soap and water, but it didn’t feel as good as taking a proper bath.
Rhyan again looked like he updated a mental list before powering on, he was now in his full set of armour, shield with a sword fastened to its inside, bag of goodies and everything. He looked significantly more confident at this point, which made a lot of sense; Gilliam was the same.
They walked down the hallway, a few more doors on each side were ignored for now. Cera’s ears twitched to the side as she reacted to some sound before a side door opened. A man in black robes, a cultist-looking man with an ornamental dagger, jumped out of the door heading for Cera.
She closed her eyes and pulled at Gilliam’s coat in panic, halfway trying to pull him into the line of fire. Rhyan turned around and took a step in trying to get in the path of the attack.
The sound of squelching echoed in the hallway, followed by the splatting drip of high-viscosity fluids on the stone floor. Cera opened her eyes as Rhyan stopped moving towards her, Gilliam didn’t look phased at all. Petal’s tail had whipped past, using its unnatural reach and open claw like an open hand, crushing the cultist’s head against the wall with enough force to crush it almost like it had been stepped on by a large and heavy creature.
Petal looked even more unphased than Gilliam, she was just holding onto his arm, snuggling against it like a lovesick schoolgirl, it didn’t even halt her stride.
Rhyan looked at the scene with horrified eyes before he closed them and took a deep sigh. Gilliam could see it on him, he wanted to comment on the lack of thought before going straight to killing. He didn’t know the man intimately but based on what he did know, odds were that he wanted someone as strong and resilient as Petal to try to do things nonlethally, but at the same time, given the situation he didn't seem like he felt like taking it up right now.
Continuing down the hallway they came to a larger door than the others, this was a dual-door making it just a little more fancy.
“Though this door is the large room.” Petal explained to the group. “We can exit from there.”
Gilliam liked that idea, he wanted to see the sky again, to meet up with Savia. He didn’t know if she got hurt before or not, due to the situation he didn’t get around to properly asking about things.
Rhyan opened the door a little as he took a gander through it, he used a few seconds to look through the crack and listen before he opened it all the way and stepped through.
The rest of the group followed.
“Finally, I was growing tired of waiting.” A deep bass and almost gurgling sound commented.
Everyone looked towards the sound and a man got up from sitting in a poorly lit area of the room. Coming into the light they got a better look at him.
He was a large man, easily the same size as Rhyan, who was about half a head to a head taller than Gilliam. He wore extremely heavy armour, matte black, and certain parts like the pauldrons and one kneecap had spikes. Gilliam got a glance at some of the runes on his armour, they were darkness-focused magical runes, he didn’t get to read into them enough to get their full meaning but it wasn’t good.
The man pulled a large sword from a scabbard, the handle was covered by his hand and darkness, the crossguard looked like it was at least part of a small human skull, and the blade itself was surprisingly plain but along the blade was more engraved runes, Gilliam didn’t get to read them in the darkness, but he could feel the energy pulsing from it almost like a heartbeat.
Taking a few more steps towards the group, he showed no signs of stopping.
“The Necrolord wants to speak with you.”