Max was the one who hid the book. I could feel it in my gut. It was not a conclusion based on a wealth of hard evidence, rather, I was thinking through the situation as if it were the climax of a story. He was returning to the scene of the crime after making away with the tome – leaving him in a precarious position indeed.

I didn’t like the sound of either Hoffman or Veronica getting their hands on it, given her sudden turn in antagonistic behaviour. The book was simply too dangerous to be left in their hands. Genta had presumably been using it responsibility for his research for decades, but the moment outside influences got involved that changed.

There was a vector here that they could exploit. I could imagine the shadowy figures gathering in a meeting room at WISA’s headquarters so they could discuss the military implications of summoning demons onto the battlefield. A handful of people would rightly point out that it was a horrible idea, but they’d be browbeaten into submission by bigwigs with too much at stake to back down and reconsider.

But I was getting too deep into the realm of the hypothetical. It was equally possible that the government was simply concerned with getting it out of the Scuncath’s possession. It was all too easy to ascribe a hidden motive to organizations like the government and their agencies.

“Why are you here?” Hoffman asked.

“I was just... trying to see what all of the commotion was about. Feldstein went missing when the explosion happened.”

“You’ve picked a poor bloody time to show your face, then.”

Hoffman did not suspect him in the slightest. There were supposed to be guards and masons in the room at all times of day. They were the ones who were most likely to stab him in the back and steal the tome for themselves because they knew the schedule and location of all the moving pieces. They could find the perfect time to slip between the cracks in that schedule and rob him blind.

Max didn’t notice me hiding in the corner, so when he saw Veronica for the first time he blurted out an important piece of information.

“Maria?”

Veronica shook her head. It was only on closer inspection that he noticed she was an entirely different person. It was a silly thing to say. Veronica’s hair was much shorter than mine, and she was taller than me too. It was with that that he turned his head to the side and spotted me hanging with Samantha behind one of the pillars. He did a double take and compared us directly, just as Sam did before.

“That’s enough of the comedy act,” Veronica declared, “That storehouse isn’t the only place where I’ve planted some deadly surprises for your men. If you won’t talk – then I’ll blow holes in your clubhouse until the police come running. Picking through the place with their help will be more constructive than trying to squeeze information out of you.”

“And if the book is destroyed in the process?”

Veronica shrugged, “Collateral damage. I can honestly take it or leave it.”

“Then I won’t say a thing,” Hoffman asserted, “It can remain lost to you.”

“What is she looking for?” Max ventured.

“The book! She’s looking for the book. So stitch those lips, lad.”

That was his way of telling Max to keep it quiet. Hoffman hadn’t accused him of stealing the book, but if Max was responsible, he wanted him to let no details slip to Veronica. But that was especially problematic to Hoffman because Max wasn’t on his side in the first place.

If Max had reason to believe that Veronica was working with the police to get everyone free, then he’d offer whatever information it took to make that happen. Veronica leapt at the chance and started laying out her bait.

“I’m with the police. Don’t tell me that you’re one of these true believers.”

I hated to admit that it was a smart move. She was hedging her bets and offering him a way out that got him what he wanted. Max didn’t know what was really going on here. He didn’t even understand what was at stake, but he didn’t bite down just yet. He hesitated. Why was this so-called policewoman so intent on retrieving the book first? The one that allowed the cult to summon a dangerous demon from the other side.

It didn’t pass the smell test. Max was a sheltered boy from a noble house, but he’d heard enough detective stories by proxy from Claude to understand that not everything was as it seemed. She was asking him to give up what leverage he possessed in exchange for nothing at all.

“If I did know where the book was – would you even be able to evacuate everyone in exchange for it? That’s what you’re trying to offer me, isn’t it?”

“I am.”

Max played his role, “I don’t care about what happens to these people. Hoffman promised to show me a path worth walking, and that I could rise to be the head of our family at that. Save your empty promises for someone who’ll listen.”

Veronica’s eyes narrowed. The game was afoot, and all three players were doing their best to pry the truth away from one another. My nerves started to fray. I wished that I was in Max’s place, that I was in control of the situation instead of him. I had no clue as to what he was trying to do. I hated that sort of uncertainty.

“He won’t be showing you anything if I pull this trigger. He was the one who convinced you to turn on your family, after all – without him, you won’t have a reason to keep the book hidden.”

“Why do you keep assuming that I know where it is? I only joined this morning. I’m hardly well placed to keep a secret like that.”

What a horrendously stupid situation this was. Veronica didn’t know who had the book, Hoffman didn’t know either, and now Max was pleading ignorance about it too - but Hoffman was seemingly under the impression, correctly, that he did know. Veronica couldn’t twist Max’s arm with threats because she didn’t have a read on which side he was dedicated to.

What Max wanted to hear was a genuine assertion that revealing the book to Veronica would help us get out of here, but that was hard for her to do when she was the only one here. There was no police presence waiting in the wings to bust down the front door and start cracking skulls.

I didn’t judge Max for making a mistake – but he’d screwed up.

By trying to play both sides, he had revealed where his true loyalties lay. Veronica picked up on that and started to ruthlessly exploit it. She turned her gun from Hoffman’s back and tilted it in the direction of the group where his Father was hiding.

“If you don’t tell me where the book is, I’ll start killing all of the people in this room, one by one.”

Whether she was willing to follow through with that threat was a genuine mystery. Her handlers dispatched her to rescue them from the cult, not kill them herself. She wanted to get her hands on the book and was trying this gambit to do so. Max looked to me as if to ask for advice, but I couldn’t say anything that would help him now.

I nodded.

That was all the prompting he needed to understand. This situation was not going to be resolved through words, there had to be a shakeup first. There were too many hostages in the room and not enough options for getting them out without being harmed.

“Fine. I know where it is. I saw where they hid it.”

Hoffman was visibly betrayed by this - but not to the extent that he turned into a raving madman. In his eyes, it was simply the outcome of a boy who was still too afraid to let go of his connections and take hold of his own destiny. It was a disappointing outcome but not one that was unexpected.

Max’s use of an unknown ‘they’ to levy the responsibility onto did keep the door open for him to appeal to Hoffman later. He was doing the smart thing and keeping his options diverse in case he needed them. He was very sharp – and I hadn’t even taught him to do any of this.

Veronica was paying close attention to where his eyes went. She singled out Claude, Samantha, Adrian and I as the additional leverage she wanted for her plot.

“You three, you’re coming with.”

Bad, really bad. I wanted to escort the rest of the hostages out of the fort first, but she wanted to keep a close eye on me. I stepped out from behind the pillar and approached my Father on the other side of the chamber so we could discuss this offer.

“You aren’t really considering staying, are you?” he asked me under his breath.

“I don’t have a choice. You should take the opportunity and leave here before the police arrive. If you go through the door I showed you and straight ahead, you’ll reach one of the main roads into the village. She doesn’t care about any of that. She’s here for the book.”

“That’s...”

I gave him a knowing look, “I already know who she is. I’d be blind not to see it.”

Damian stared wearily over my shoulder at the woman with the gun.

“We’ll have a long talk once we get home. I promise. I suppose it’s about time that I told you everything.”

“That’s right. Once we get home. So, I need you to lead these people out of here.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Damian was taken aback - but for what reason, I was in the dark. He saw something in me in that moment that he’d never considered before, bubbling to the surface now that I was in the same room as my Mother. A reunion seemingly thirteen years in the making.

“I should be worried, but when you say it like that I can only see you making it through this without a scratch,” he chuckled.

“We’ll be right behind you.”

Damian rallied the hostages to his side and escorted them out of the throne room, leaving only Hoffman, Veronica, and me with the others. The real shock came when I noticed that Adrian had stopped behind for whatever reason. He was still standing in the same place, having nobody to pull him along and out of danger.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m not leaving.”

“I already know that, why aren’t you leaving?” I reiterated.

Veronica cut us off, “I don’t care. If you’re going to stick around, don’t get in my way. Over here – now.”

I wasn’t going to get an answer so easily. We headed back over to Samantha and the others while Veronica busied herself with preparing for our next movement through the fortress.

She grabbed Hoffman by the scruff of his neck and checked his pockets for any additional weapons. She found another pistol and some magazines, which she quickly confiscated for herself. There was also an ornate-looking knife in his coat’s front pouch.

“Any other surprises for me?”

Hoffman kept his silence, content to stew in the knowledge that his plan was on the rocks without his noble sacrifices.

“Genta!”

The bumbling scholar emerged from the same back passage that Veronica used and shuffled into the middle of the room. His eyes widened in shock at the scale of the summoning circle the cultists had constructed using his book. It was wide enough that five adult men could lay end to end and still not reach the edge.

“S-Shall I do what we discussed?”

“Yes. Stay here until I return. I’m going to retrieve the book now.”

Genta hurried over to one of the discarded hammer and chisel sets by the wall, taking them and staring down at the circle. Hoffman was forced to look straight ahead, marching away from the dais and towards the main entrance. Veronica kept the gun held to the back of his head and urged us to navigate towards the area where Max had hidden the book just moments ago. He must have been experiencing serious déjà vu by this point.

“What if there are more guards waiting for us?” Samantha fretted.

“Oh, don’t worry about them. I’ve left another few presents for them to deal with, intended to detonate at different intervals and make sure that they never quite get their footing in controlling the damage. In fact...”

The building shook with the force of another explosion, though this one was less violent than the first.

“...That should be the trench entrance at the East wall going up in flames.”

Hoffman so badly wanted to say something in response – but he had the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of his head, and he knew that he ran the risk of angering Veronica by responding. Max led us to a far-flung corner of the building, where a lone door led into a cramped storeroom.

“Is this the place?” Veronica asked.

Max nodded, “I didn’t see where they hid it – so it might take a minute for us to find it.” Veronica looked through the open door to make sure that there were no other exits for Max to escape through.

“You and your friends can look. I’m keeping an eye on Hoffman.”

I followed Adrian and Max into the room, while Samantha and Claude remained outside. There was no privacy to be found here, and no opportunity to come up with another plan to get away from this situation. Veronica was watching us like a hawk. Max made a show of checking some of the other crates before landing on the correct one. It was a good thing that Veronica couldn’t see his face because he looked very nervous.

Eventually, he pushed the top of one of the boxes into the air and went digging deep into the contents. He returned after a minute with the red-bound book between his fingers.

“Found it.”

We returned to the group. Max kept a hold of the book and Veronica made no efforts to take it from him. She wanted to keep Hoffman under control.

“Are you sure it’s safe to have this book out in the open again?” I asked, “It would have been safer to leave it in there for the police to find later.”

Veronica sent a glare in my direction. We were still pretending to be strangers.

“That’s enough questions from all of you. We’re going back to the throne room.”

She turned around and led us back the way we came. The tension in the air was thick and getting heavier with every passing second. The gun resting against my left ribcage was irritating me, begging me to draw it and retake control of the situation.

Hoffman tried to lighten the mood with some discussion.

“For what purpose are you staying here, Roderro?”

“What do you mean?”

“You do not have any stake left in this fight. You could have gone with the rest of them and been away by now.”

“I want to make sure that you don’t come back and try this again.”

Hoffman laughed so gutturally that he almost choked on his own spittle.

“Oh! And I suppose that you’ll be the one to put a bullet in me, then? Don’t fool yourself – Adrian, you are not suited for this kind of matter. Besides, there are enemies much closer to home that you should dedicate your energy to countering.”

Hoffman stopped walking, and Veronica was forced to pause with him.

“Keep walking.”

“Why? You already have the book. For what other purpose do you need me? I’m doing the boy a favour! He’s too ignorant to know the truth, and that’ll get him killed in future!”

“What in seven hells are you talking about?” Adrian roared.

Hoffman twisted his head to the left and peered at him from the corner of his good eye. It was a twisted visage for a man who was trying his hardest to have one last twist of the knife.

“Your uncle. He was the one who told us how to get into that house of yours, he even gave us your bloody schedule as well. We knew exactly where and when to find you because of him. All he wanted in return was for you to die at our hand. He’s a ruthless dealmaker, that man.”

Now that was interesting. Even Veronica was given pause by the revelation.

Adrian shook his head in frank denial, “You honestly think I’m going to believe that? You’re wriggling like a snake. You’ll say anything to get out of this.”

I stepped in with an outside perspective; “No, it makes sense – actually.”

He scowled, “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t know who told the thief about your watch, but you just didn’t jump to the correct conclusion. Ask yourself this, what would happen to you if you were placed in a dangerous situation without it?”

“I’d die.”

“Yes, the unwed, isolated head of the house would die at the hands of somebody else. Who would stand to gain from that happening?”

“...My uncle. He’d inherit everything, he could wrest control away from my Father.”

There was a sober expression on Adrian’s face as he put the pieces together. The watch, the attack on his estate, these were all events that could have been planned by a member of his own family. He could have leaked that sensitive information to the people responsible and let them get their hands dirty, an exchange in return for the head chair of the estate.

Even so, to sell out one’s own nephew to the Scuncath was a bridge too far. It was a cartoonishly evil act from a man whom I had never met or heard of in any real capacity. Adrian mentioned him once or twice off-handedly after his Father was sentenced to prison.

Adrian did not explode into a catastrophic meltdown, in somewhat harsh contrast to his usual testy behaviour at the academy. He remained still and clenched his fists again and again while he tried to work through his feelings on the matter. I could tell from the way that his shoulders were pitched high that he was angry, but he did not want to give Hoffman the satisfaction of showing it.

“That is concerning,” he concluded, “But hardly the most pressing matter at the moment.”

Good for him, I thought. It was nice to see that someone was trying to do better by themselves for once. Hoffman was visibly deflated by his failure to make Adrian lose his cool.

Veronica found that more amusing than he did, “Nice work, idiot. Now get those feet moving before I get bored and shoot you in the spine.” She roughly shoved him forward and got the group moving again. I kept my head on a swivel and paid close attention to the intersections we passed through on the trip back.

And it was because of that alertness that I noticed what was about to happen.

As we passed one of those crossroads, movement caught my attention. A group of cultists had rounded the corner down the way at that exact moment, and they were armed. With Veronica and Hoffman ahead of us, it meant that our party was split into two halves.

I grabbed Adrian’s arm before he could cross over and pulled him back with a firm tug. We tripped backwards, but all was forgiven a moment later as Veronica ducked for cover, a hail of gunfire ripping through the hallway and smashing the wall into small pieces of rubble.

“Bloody hell!” he cried. The book slipped from his hand and slid towards Claude, who quickly scooped it up before it was lost in the confusion.

Veronica couldn’t do anything about it now. She fired back around the corner, but Hoffman was doing his best to be uncooperative, trying to break free. She smashed him across the brow with the butt of her pistol and knocked him for a loop, before dragging him away so that she could go and grab Genta.

“She’s leaving us alone?” Adrian said.

“She isn’t going to move over here and get shot to oblivion!” I replied, “Let’s leave before they find us and do the same.”

We couldn’t hide in the storeroom, but Max had been studying the building and could lead us somewhere just as good. The squad that appeared from the outside were only interested in catching Hoffman and liberating him. They didn’t seem to notice Adrian holding the book that their entire plan hinged on.

“This way. There’s a room we can hide in over here!”

Max shepherded us away from the fighting and towards a quieter section of the fort. These were the administrivia rooms intended for military officers, small spaces that allowed them privacy to formulate strategy and manage the running of the fort during times of war.

I slammed the door shut behind us and helped Samantha barricade the door using the desk. Everyone else was too busy catching their breath. We’d bought ourselves some time, but they’d be out in force trying to find the book once they realized it was missing.

Adrian slumped down against the wall and covered his face, “Why does this keep happening? What did we do to deserve this?”

Claude was looking at the book in his hands with no small amount of awe. He peeled open the cover, but those curious eyes soon glazed over as the dense, technical text inside turned his brain to mush on first contact.

Samantha was concerned about something else, “I didn’t get to say a word to my Father. He’s going to be worried sick about me.”

Max shook his head, “My Father was completely out of it. He had no idea what was going on.”

“What are we gonna’ do? They’re trying to kill us!” Claude fretted.

This was a bad situation. Everyone was losing their cool, but it wasn’t unexpected. They weren’t used to stress like this. Each and every incident they were dragged into furthered that sense of hopelessness. They were right. There was nothing they could do about this.

Perhaps the only outcome that did not demand my direction intervention was the early arrival of the police response. They must have seen the chaos that was breaking out inside the fort’s walls, and their primary concern was rescuing the hostages. Samantha and the others were still here – so their families would not allow them to go unrecovered.

Besides that, the police wanted to exterminate this Scuncath cell before they could cause any more damage. It would be a full-frontal assault on the fortress from all angles, but without their demon to help, the Scuncath would have a difficult fight on their hands.

The big question hanging over my head was whether Veronica could protect Genta. She was stupid for bringing him along, given the intensity of the situation, but she didn’t want to take any chances if they did summon the Horrcath. If she was taken off-guard by their sheer numbers and they captured him, they wouldn’t even need the book.

Even moving around the place was dangerous. I didn’t know where she had planted those bombs and they could detonate at any moment. They were likely to be congregated around the base of the walls and inside of the ammunition storehouses, but that meant they had a huge blast radius. She must have killed a lot of them with the first two detonations.

Samantha noticed the pensive pout on my lips.

“I don’t suppose you have a brilliant plan hidden from us?”

“No. I didn’t intend for us to be trapped in here. I was hoping we could simply slip out through the trench and be done with it.”

Claude sat down on the chair, “And that woman in the throne room, she looked exactly like you.”

“She did,” I admitted.

“Anything to say on that?”

“No. I do not enjoy speculating.”

“Is this really the time?” Adrian complained.

It was rare for me to be in this spot, but I was stumped. We were separated from Veronica and had the book, but those conditions did not fill me with fresh confidence. It was going to be almost impossible to escape without using my gun and clueing the others into my real identity. That was a card I had left in my hand.

Choosing the right time to play it would be key.