Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Little Light Treason
+++++Ezra+++++
The faint green glow of the portal persisted for a full two seconds after Ezra hopped through - enough time that they could have sent two or three people in after him to assist. But they didn’t. The green light fizzled with a final little pop of aquamarine that would have left afterimages if Ezra had normal eyes. But he didn't. Even at a faint glow, his eyes easily took in what would have been a room of nearly pitch black. He gasped.
"Turn that goddamn light off, Frundel!" somebody muttered.
Ezra found himself in the middle of a bunkroom deep within the bowels of the Lord Chamberlain's Extended Projects Facility. At least that's what the blueprints they'd bribed their way into suggested the place was called. They hadn't considered that there might be a permanent contingent housed within the facility. A contingent of the lord chamberlain's own battle-mages, no less, to judge from the pins and piping of the lieutenant's uniform Ezra spotted on one of the nearby chairs. He decided his best bet was to sneak his way out of the lion's den.
"Oh, for fuck's sake…" one of them muttered. "Who's… oh sweet lord fuck!"
Perhaps Ezra should have kept his eyes completely extinguished, but even he would have had difficulty seeing in such pitch darkness. Unfortunately, it made them quite visible to anybody awake enough to glance in his direction. The lighting crystals flickered on, men started scrambling, and Ezra dealt out as many magical flechettes as he could as quickly as he could - which, fortunately, was pretty quickly.
"Ow! What the…"
"My arm!"
"Fu…"
A single magical projectile wasn't much to worry about, but Ezra could toss them perhaps a third as quickly as a draughtsman's eye could, which was damn quickly. Anise, who was otherwise much, much better at magic than Ezra, could manage maybe two per second, which was about ten percent of what Ezra could manage. He aimed for faces when he saw them and hands when he didn't, shooting invisible magical razor blades flying at the battle mages.
These men were all likely 4th elevation - nobody above that elevation could be convinced to live in a bunkhouse underground for anything short of a king's ransom. That was pretty middling as far as far as mages went, but enough that they could do some pretty serious battle magic. Indeed, Ezra felt himself buffeted by kinetic attacks that would have knocked almost anybody off balance and got blasted by at least two firebursts, the crackle of lektricity, and a throwing knife deep into the flesh of his shoulder for good measure. He also managed to suck in the energy from three spells, replenishing more than what he'd just expended. The six men in the bunk couldn't say that they hadn't put up a fight, but it took more than middling magic to deal with somebody who sucked in spells (weak ones, at least), tossed magical razors more rapidly than an AK-47, and wasn't particularly phased by stab wounds or having a limb knocked out from under him.
"Who… who are you?" one of them asked.
Ezra pondered what to do - the four who were still conscious gave every sign of surrendering, and he wasn't sure he had it in him to murder four surrendering combatants in cold blood. He could tie them up, he supposed, but he didn't imagine it would take long for a 4th elevation battle mage to work his way out of ropes.
"Mr. Gladion sends his regards," Ezra said. He and Fenrik were enemies, so would they buy it? Probably not, but he liked to think it might give the bastard some fraction of the trouble he'd inflicted upon the Old City. He made a point of waving his pack around. "I'm planting an explosive tripwire outside this door… don't get within a foot of it, and it probably won't go off…"
"Probably?"
"It's pretty sensitive," Ezra said. The actual amount of explosive he had was whatever was packed into the three-shot alchemical pistol that Lusha had given him. He barely knew how to use the thing beyond activate-aim-squeeze trigger, though he could load and unload like a champ. He tapped the holster of the pistol. "So is this."
"The lord chamberlain will have your head."
Ezra took a leiutenant's jacket - it was mostly blood-free and had only a few small flechette tears. "He already wants my head. Are you suggesting that I should be less discriminating in who I kill?"
"No…"
"Good. Stay put… or don't. But, like I said - it's a very sensitive tripwire."
He dipped out into the hallway and made a show of placing a wastebin in front of the door. Hopefully, that would keep the battle-mages occupied and administering first aid to one another long enough for him to get in and rescue Rill.
The outside hallway was quiet. He could hear two… no, three guards. Guards in St. Arbalest tended to do things in threes, which made a lot of sense. That way, if something like an enemy distraction arose, one of them could check it out without leaving their fellow guard alone back behind cover. And, to wit, they were discussing whatever Plenakton's people were doing outside. Something to do with a streetcar crash and a robbery. Outside, of course, was seventy meters straight up, where the Extended Projects Facility had the look of a drab clerical office with no indication of the top secret shenanigans taking place below.
Ezra passed a laboratory, where two mages mumbled to one another over some alchemical formulation. They were likely advanced students from St. Arbalest, as a high-ranking mage would have no need to work through the night if he didn't care to. One of them looked to Ezra and nudged the other one.
Ezra cleared his throat. "Do any of you know where the infernics are being kept?"
"Who are you?" the kao-alta mage asked.
Ezra tapped at what he assumed to be the rank marking on his uniform. If he recalled, lieutenants used two bronze-colored pips with a wave over them. "Where. Are. The. Infernics," he said.
"Across the hall and one door down," the borrenkin said. "You're the new lieutenant?"
"Not for much longer," Ezra said, and he let the cryptic statement stand. He nodded his thanks and strolled out, wondering whether he'd remembered to tamp his eyes down. It was easy enough to do, but it wasn't their default state.
The entrance to the infernic facility was being guarded by a pair of regular guards with alchemical rifles. From their sharp uniforms and attentive face-forward expressions, they looked like they knew what they were doing. He walked right up to them, brow knit in what was genuine worry. The guards eyed him warily.
"You're needed topside. There's been some sort of street car crash, and we're worried that somebody's using it as a distraction to break into the facility," he said.
"Sir?" on of them said.
"Come on! Up! You'd think you'd be glad for the excuse to move around after how long just standing there?"
"Sir, our orders are to…"
"Where's the rest of his uniform…" the other guard said.
Oh well - espionage wasn't easy. When the first guard lifted his rifle, Ezra yanked it right out of his hands as he changed grips and swung the butt around, striking the first guard in the nose and the second one upside the head – twice for good measure. He dodged an attempted bayonet stab and returned the favor by jabbing his own rifle's bayonet into the guard's shoulder, followed by a headbutt as the man bent over. In his time with Teak and Plenakton's people, he'd discovered that close-quarters combat was actually pretty easily, as long as the people you were fighting had reflexes many times slower than yours and didn't know any fancy magic. Fortunately, both guards had regular reflexes and no magic - and been knocked unconscious, to boot, so all he had to deal with was finding which of their keys unlocked the door and then dragging them inside and out of sight.
He got it on the very first key - his luck was looking up. He dragged them in one at a time and then took in the room, gasping at what he saw.
+++++Ezra+++++
His understanding had been that there were half a dozen, perhaps ten infernics being held captive in the facility. That's what the grainy pictograph suggested, at least. Either the photo had been misleading or they'd added quite a few since then, because the number was closer to fifty. Perhaps this was where all the people the constables had rounded up had gone to: strapped to metal-framed hospital beds in a dimly-lit underground research facility.
"Rill? Rill!" Ezra shouted, not particularly worried whether anybody heard him. If anybody came between him and Rill, he'd just have to kill them.
He ran from bed to bed - each of the imprisoned infernics was bound to the bed and sedated via a pale green IV drip... he ripped them all out. He ran from bed to bed, looking for Rill. Where was she? Panic tightened his chest - she wasn't there. They'd taken her somewhere else. Maybe they'd already killed her...
Ah!
Of course, they'd treated Rill differently. He rushed to the bed set apart from the rest, cordoned off with charred cinder block, blasts and burns around the floor, parts of the bed frame melted. There she was, her beautiful, fiery hair shorn short, a dark green IV drip winding down to her arm, far more concentrated than the others. Of course they'd need more to pacify her. She slid the needle out as gently as he could, little blebs of green splashing to the floor. He pulled the electrodes off, too... they had her connected to some sort of thrumming device, the purpose of which Ezra could only guess. Almost immediately, alarms blared. Far off near the front of the facility, there was clamoring and shouting. It was far away, but not for long.
"Rill... please, wake up!" Tears welled up in his eyes. He stroked his fingers along her cheek, the skin unusually cool. He'd carry her out if he had to.
Her eyes fluttered open, smiling when she saw Ezra before... concern... confusion... panic. Her eyes were ruddy brown with no glimmer of flame within them. She struggled against her restraints even as Ezra worked to unbuckle them. Her face, normally angelic, was a rictus of horror.
"Ezra... my fire! They took my fire!"
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Ezra loosed the last restraint and pulled her into an embrace. Fire or no, he had Rill back, if only for that moment. And fury flared in him at the idea of anybody doing this to her, to anybody making her feel this way.
"It's the thrall plug... it was connected to some sort of machine... I think it was draining you..."
"I... I can feel it welling up, and it just keeps pulling away..."
Guards stormed down the hallway outside, with important-sounding people shouting orders right behind them. Ezra didn't think they'd be as easy to deal with as low-level battle mages recovering from sleep or two confused night guards. There was no way he could make it past them with Rill still mostly-incapacitated. He handed her the healing decoction Anise had mixed for the occasion.
"Drink this and stay still... very still... I'm going to try to inactivate the plug."
Just because Ezra had memorized Fenrik's plans for the new thrall-plugs didn't mean he understood them... but he didn't suppose there was a whole lot else that an arcanite 'prime conduction filament' could do. His own arcane flow had been hobbled by Fenrik's thrall-plug, and the new design was doing the same thing to Rill - and had been transferring power to some sort of device. That wouldn't do at all. He shaped his magical energies aimed, and summoned a tiny portal right into the center of Rill's thrall-plug. He saw it immediately, a little coil sparkling with purple-blue energy. His fingers shot in and he pulled it out with the crunch and sproing of suddenly-untensed metal.
Rill winced, blood oozing from the portal in the instant before it popped back out of existence. Then the light returned to her eyes, flickering slowly at first but growing in intensity by the second. The panic in her eyes gradually gave way to wild-eyed fury. And Ezra's heart sang, because he knew he had his Rill back, that she would bounce back as long as she had her fire. And did she ever. She looked down to the thrall-plug, her face drawn into a contemptuous sneer, and the thing began to glow. Metal hissed and bubbled, slopping out to the floor in white-hot blebs that stank of ozone. The gaping hole in her chest dribbled blood - no heat would ever cauterize Rill - but the healing potion sealed it up even faster than her usual rapid healing. The whole time, the light in her eyes intensified until it rivaled the brightness of Ezra's and his skin blistered just from being near her. She stood, nude among the wisps of flame, her hospital gown completely burned away and the bedding all around her curling up in ash and acrid smoke.
"The infernics are waking up!" somebody shouted, and the first wave of guards burst into the room.
"Ready to head home?" Ezra asked.
"No," Rill said. Her expression flickered between longing and fury, her red lips trembling for moment before growing steely in determination. Of course she wanted to go home, wherever that might be, but she wanted revenge first.
Ropes of fire shot out from her fingertips, as thin as shoelaces and blazing hot. They snaked about the incoming guards, slicing through fabric and flesh alike, burning right through like a plasma torch. The shrill, panicked squeals of the badly-injured men didn't sound quite human - all reason had been branded right out of them. Five men down, some of them dying, but many more were on the way.
"Come on, let's get the others out!" Ezra shouted to her.
Something like humanity slipped back into Rill's expression, her fiery intensity softening. "Right!"
Honestly, Ezra would have left every last one of them behind if it meant getting Rill out safely. He'd have felt awful about it afterwards, but would have promised himself it was unavoidable. Fortunately, he didn't have to make that tough moral choice: Rill was a lot more likely to get out safely amid the pandemonium of fifty incensed infernics charging at whoever came down to get them.
Rill burned right through the buckles and bindings of the rousing, panicked infernics with her bare hands, and Ezra either unbuckled by hand, or else cut through with little magical flechettes, whichever was faster.
Rill's voice purred with approval. "Your magic is stronger!"
"I've learned some tricks," Ezra allowed.
She smirked. "Still weak, though."
Some of those they freed dashed into the outer hallway, seeking a hasty escape... that was foolish, but at least they might weaken the force quickly trundling down to stop them. Others had the presence of mind to free the others, often finding friends among the captured. Some roused more slowly than others, and none were without their thrall-plugs. Ezra doubted any of them were under the effects of a perpetual healing potion or had the ability to turn steel, arcanite, and tungsten into a puddle of white hot slag.
"Who here can use their magic?" Ezra asked.
About two thirds of them could - most had traditional plugs that didn't siphon off magical energy. The rest would be utterly without until they get their plugs removed, however that might happen. Ezra nodded to them.
"We're about to have a lot of company down here, and if we don't deal with them and get the hell out of here, then nobody else is coming to save you. Ever. Not Plenakton, not anybody. I hope you'll fight accordingly. What do you say we show these bastards what a few angry infernics can do?"
The thirty or so present roared their approval and, following Ezra and Rill, they charged out of their ward and into the first of the guards.
+++++Ezra+++++
Ezra's magic was a curious thing, in that he wasn't like any of the native beings of Medias and he wasn't like regular infernics, either. Sure, Rill was unusual, but what made her so extraordinary (aside from everything, Ezra's heart insisted) was that she had all of her infernic powers dialed up way past eleven. Ezra, on the other hand, had the arcane reservoir of a 7th or 8th elevation mage with the output of a 2nd elevation novice. Thus, his spells were weak, but he could cast them all day and more quickly than any normal human. On top of that, he could only learn spells by absorbing them... though that wasn't quite true. If he switched back and forth mid-spell, he could mix and match effects... at least in theory.
When Ezra burst out into the hallway is it was amid a blazing inferno of screaming guards. At some future date, he would have to chat with Rill about the use of non-deadly force. But first, they'd have to escape from the monsters who wanted to rob them of any possible future.
A 6th elevation battle mage captain pushed a path through the flames and dashed through, using magical force to toss Ezra against a concrete wall. It was a hell of a toss, and Ezra felt bones buckle and break. His ulna snapped in a blazing mote of pain and his ribs buckled under crushing force - the man must have been skirting the 7th elevation. He was also paying far too much attention to Ezra, because Rill pulsed a jet of flame right through his defenses, and when he crumpled in pain, the ground beneath him consumed his body in fire.
"Save... save your energy," Ezra said. He took a deep breath and adjusted his arm, the bones slowly knitting back into place.
Infernics swarmed past them, shouting curses and using their magic with abandon. In one horrible instant, half a dozen of them collapsed, screaming in agony and clutching at their chests. Whatever mage was bonded to their thrall-plugs was somewhere nearby... and 'mere' 6th elevation mages did not command half a dozen infernics, let alone control them at once.
A squad of battle mages surged forward, using pulses of magical force to knock the infernics who were still on their feet to the side and shooting or stabbing them when it was convenient to do so. They pulsed out magic at Ezra and Rill, most of which he managed to absorb, staggering the mages as their magical attacks dissipated into nothing... but they were well-trained and remained in defensive position. They had steel shields with little glass windows to peer through - Ezra's little flechettes certainly wouldn't be much good against them. But he did still have the three-shot pistol that he barely knew how to use... and he did have nearly perfect hand-eye coordination. He raised the pistol and aimed for the smooth surface of the concrete wall.
"Ahh!"
The ricochet of concrete shards and bullet fragments shredded the side of a mage's face and he collapsed, tripping the man behind him and creating a path past the battle-mages. The ground prickled with little frost crystals and an indigo infernic in a dorthek body dashed past, pushing off the wall and stunning the remaining mages with a wave of cold.
"I think she's got the right idea!" Ezra shouted and he pulled Rill along,
They surged forward - perhaps twelve infernics with powers still with us, with another fifteen or so currently without magic following behind and cleaning up what the forward group didn't finish. Ezra could hear cracks, screams, and splats behind them. The idea of the other infernics slaughtering two dozen assorted defenders in various states of injury or incapacitation didn't sit well with him, but these people had subjected the infernics to weeks of capture and experimentation. It couldn't be said that they didn't deserve a little comeuppance. He decided to focus on escaping first and considering the rules of engagement later.
The guards at the cargo lift tried to raise the lift when they spotted the infernics coming, but the machine was too sluggish. They were beaten into submission - and their fellow infernics appeared content to leave them only bloody and unconscious, dumped to the facility floor as the lift shuddered into gear.
Seventy meters. They were seventy meters to the surface. Seventy meters to the nondescript commercial district wedged between the etudium and the Palace District to the south in which the facility was hidden. Seventy meters, and the lift churned upward. Ezra reached out, and Rill automatically found his hand. He glanced at her sidelong, her clothes long since burned to ash. Golden and nude, her eyes were aflame, and Ezra's heart yearned for her.
Fifty meters. Strata of rock and concrete hummed by, other levels of the facility, old sewage channels, and ton upon ton of solid bedrock. They were very fortunate - Ezra very much doubted that the designers of the facility had ever conceived of an incursion from underground or the need to defend against the escape of magically-powered infernics. Thirty meters. Twenty meters.
The whole lift shuddered. For a moment, it seemed like a little hiccup and the lift continued upward. Then it shuddered much, much harder, with the groan of metal and the hum of stressed cable. The lift dropped a meter to gasps and stumbling, and Rill clutched to Ezra's side. Then the lift jerked upward five or six meters into the sub-basement of the main building. Ezra squinted out into the dark space before them - elevators were rare in St. Arbalest, and nobody had ever bothered to invent elevator doors. Then a man swathed in blue energy burst aglow and every infernic with a thrall-plug dropped to the lift floor, screaming and clutching at their chests.
At first, Ezra thought it was Fenrik, but they sorcerer before them had blond hair and a full beard... but it was safe to say that the man was 8th elevation. Pulsing any sort of control through another sorcerer's plug took immense skill and energy. As one of only two occupants left standing, Ezra found himself hurled into the air and smashed against the wall three... four times. Bones that had healed just a few minutes before were broken again. It wasn't a good day for his bones. He'd managed to fire off a handful of magical blades, but they'd been utterly absorbed by the sorcerer's arcane shield.
Rill hovered into the air next to him, screaming in rage but able to move. Blinding white fire streamed out of her eyes and off her fingertips, but it was all siphoned into a sphere of fire encircling her body. She gasped, her eyes going wide with surprise as the fire extinguished and she struggled to breathe. The sorcerer had somehow sucked the air right out of the little suspended sphere... and, an instant later, Ezra's ears popped and he found himself suspended in a mostly-airless void, too. As he struggled for breath that would not come, he glanced to Rill. Her panic had given way to a deep sadness, and her golden skin was fading to ashen pallor. Ezra wondered whether the sorcerer would simply asphyxiate them to death or simply knock them out and bring them back to be experimented on in perpetual catatonia. His hand spasmed.
What?
In forming the asphyxiating sphere around him, the sorcerer had released some of the control over Ezra. After all, what danger did the spasms of a suffocating man pose to an 8th elevation High Sorcerer? Even Rill's fire was nothing more than a bright radiance upon her body, and that glow slowly faded as she slipped into unconsciousness. Ezra's little flechettes were useless against the man's magical shield. The energy whirling around them was far too complex and powerful for him to absorb. They were utterly at this man's mercy.
But. He still had his little portal.
As his vision started to tunnel in, Ezra summoned every scrap of willpower, every scintilla of magic. He directed his hand outward and used his flechette technique on top of a tiny portal - four times in rapid succession, far faster than Anise's arcane portal had ever done. And, as soon as the palm-sized green circle turned pink and red, he fired flechettes into it, and the air rushed around him as he tumbled to the floor in a broken heap, gasping for air.
"What... what in the blue sky did you do?" a kao-alta infernic asked. The man helped him up while a trio of others attended to Rill.
Ezra snapped his shoulder back into place and tried to shrug with mixed results. "I made a tunnel right into his brain and sent a little present along the way."
Rill eased to her feet and stumbled over to Ezra, leaping into a kiss at the last step. The color had returned to her face, her lips were hot, her skin was sleek, and she smelled only faintly of smoke. He felt her fingers through his hair, her heartbeat against his, da-thump da-thump da-thump, her bare chest pressed right against his. It occurred to Ezra that they still hadn't escaped in a meaningful sense, so he carefully put Rill down, her toes touching down first so they were still almost eye to eye before she lowered to her heels. She padded over and nudged the mage with her foot.
He lay upon the floor, glassy eyes unfocused. There wasn't a scratch on his body or any indication of injury, save for a little trickle of blood out his left nostril.
"He's still breathing," Rill said. "What do you think Teak will give us for the body of an 8th elevation mage?"
Ezra pulled her close and kissed her again. Every second apart suddenly seemed utterly unbearable.
"Let's find out," he said.