by HDA Roberts
They were dressed like that on account of some preliminary snooping on my part. I’d discovered that the prison was packed with Spelleaters, more than enough to make Magic hard for me, much less them, hence the arsenal.
This was also the reason I’d called another Archon.
I wasn’t so arrogant as to assume I could assault a place like that alone. Besides which, it was unnecessary, seeing as how I knew people capable of walking through Spelleaters without so much as flinching.
In theory, my Signet should have allowed me the same ability, but that had been denied me after the previous First Shadow went insane and started using Black Magic. The other Archons had tried to persuade the rings to give that protection back to me (once they'd started to trust me a little more), but the rings hadn't been willing, at least not yet. Paranoid little buggers.
(One might point out that the rings only had animus and personalities because of their owners, and thus were only really a reflection of them, but that wasn’t a thought I wanted to poke too hard.)
Demise and Cassandra had wanted to come along, danger and all, but I wanted them watching the house in case Myrddin tried something sneaky while I was away. They hadn't been happy about that, but recognised that if Death and three Sisters of the Skull couldn’t keep me alive, then they probably couldn’t have either.
At the bottom of the stairs was small room made of concrete, marking it out as far newer than the lighthouse above us. There was an archway to the left that hummed a little with dormant Portal Magic and a pair of thick metal doors across from the stairway, painted black and heavily Enchanted.
Because the place was so heavily Warded against remote viewing and detection Spells, I wasn’t able to get specifics, but I was able to determine that the prison (which I was simply calling the Lighthouse for simplicity’s sake) was comprised of about a dozen subterranean levels. The top five floors were relatively open plan, which I took to mean that they were administrative areas. I also spotted spaces which looked like small flats and even a communal kitchen, which I assumed was where the guards and other staff lived and worked.
Below those floors was where the actual prison began; with open areas for eating, exercising and medical care on top of five very cramped levels full of what I can only assume were cells.
The door in front of us was the only way in or out of it.
Killian contemplated it in the same way a cat would a sleeping mouse.
"Enchanted against forced entry and Scrying; it's also reinforced for strength and durability, it won't even rust... nice work."
He waved a hand and a pulse of Entropic energy reduced the doors down into a pile of dust in seconds.
"Show-off," I commented.
"Whatever you say, Man-who-broke-Camelot," he replied dryly, leading the way in.
I muttered and followed him, pursued by the sniggers of his Wardens.
Immediately, we all but ran smack into a guard post. It was in a small room, with a table at one side (covered with the remains of a card game), a reception desk at the other and a heavy metal door with an electronic card reader opposite the entrance.
Three men in riot gear, alerted by the sudden absence of their door, were on their feet, raising automatic shotguns as Killian stepped over the threshold.
I couldn’t see his face at that moment, but I could imagine him smiling as he waved a hand and cast a Water Manipulation Spell that encased those weapons in ice, rendering them less than useless.
That was all it took, really. The guards dropped their now useless guns and backed away at speed. They likely understood that there were really only four men and women who could do something like that under so many Spelleaters, and that their only chance at survival was to be as non-threatening (and polite) as possible.
Our case was no doubt aided by the simple fact that, of those four, there was only a single male, and while he might not be the most powerful, he was certainly the most existentially dreadful.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen," Killian said politely, striding into the room like he didn’t have a care in the world. "Take me to your leader."
None of them moved. One of them actually passed out, sliding slowly down the wall until he was slumped on the floor.
Killian shook his head.
“Come, come, I don’t have all day, you know! You; leader, mush!” he said, pointing at the most sturdy-looking of the remaining conscious guards. He paled, but managed to stay upright and ran an access card through the door’s reader.
Now that things were at least somewhat secure, I felt safe (enough) venturing into the prison. I winced as the full force of the Lighthouse's Spelleaters slammed down atop my Well like a boulder.
There were... a lot of them, to say the least. I figured I’d be able to get out maybe half a dozen Spells if I really had to, but they wouldn’t be powerful ones and after that I’d be a terrible liability to my companions.
I hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but when have I ever been that lucky?
“W-who should I say is v-v-visiting?” the trembling guard managed, falling back on procedure, perhaps?
Killian simply raised his signet. I raised mine, too, but I don’t think the poor fellow even noticed I was there.
The guard actually started shaking harder. Suspicion isn’t the same as confirmation, after all...
You know, maybe my friends had a point. If people were a little more terrified of me, then maybe I could have avoided my current legal complications. Then again, if more people were terrified of me, Myrddin would probably be trying something even worse, so... call it a wash, I guess.
"Th-this way, my Lord," the guard said.
We followed as he all but ran along a concrete corridor to a door at the far end, this one also made of metal, but not as thick as the ones protecting the entrance. The guard knocked rapidly until an irate voice told him to come in.
The door opened to reveal a man in the same grey jumpsuit that the guards had worn under their riot gear. ‘Warden’ was stencilled over his right breast and his name (Osborn) was sown into a small cloth strip over his left. He looked to be in his late forties, with greying copper hair and eyes that were careworn; his face lined from a life spent frowning.
He started to berate the guard for his interruption, but then he spotted Killian and deflated like a balloon.
"Ah," the warden said instead. "You can go, Laurence."
Laurence nodded, swallowed loudly, and scarpered as quickly as he could.
"You know who I am, then?" Killian said, stepping into the warden’s office, his voice deep and intimidating.
"Of course. I also know who he is," Osborn said, pointing at me. "Your man Glass has been warning me that you were coming for weeks."
"Bring him to us now," Killian said without preamble. "Along with all his people."
"I can't do that, my Lord. They are enemies of the state and cannot be allowed to leave."
"I think you're labouring under a bit of a misapprehension," Killian almost whispered. "I was not making a request."
Osborn pulled a file off the top of the stack on his desk and handed it to Killian, who glared at the man, but pulled it open.
"You're joking," Killian said, his eyes darting up to meet the warden's.
Osborn shook his head and handed him another folder. Killian opened that one, too.
"That's impossible. He's dead!"
Osborn handed Killian another folder, and another. My brother's face actually grew paler with each name he read. He recognised them all.
"We aren't here for our own amusement, Lord Killian," Osborn said. "We guard the very worst human beings who ever lived; people who can't even be trusted to live at the Farm for fear of what they'd do to the other inmates and the staff. People we can't even kill without risk to the world at large. I can't let any one of them out, can't you understand that?"
"The people we've come for aren't like the rest of these... animals," Killian replied. "They were arrested on false pretences and brought her
e to keep them out of the way!"
"That's not what their files say," Osborn countered. He rummaged through the stack and came out with twelve more, laying them out for Killian.
"Ephraim Glass, leader of a coven of Black Magicians and Shadow Mages, consisting of eleven other members; pioneered a method of group Magic-sharing and consciousness. We read his Aura when he came in, and that proved exposure to, and likely passive-use of, Black Magic."
Killian looked over at me.
"Not news to me, but he's never done anything nasty with it!"
"True, Telepathic interrogation revealed no crimes committed as yet, but the group's use of Black Magic is growing and becoming more skilled as time goes on. History has taught us that he will begin human experimentation within twelve to fifteen years, if not prevented by an outside agency. Like us, for example."
"You can't imprison a man for a crime he hasn't even committed!" I argued. "Anything could happen in the next decade."
Like me smacking Glass about the head and telling him about the terrible things I'd do to him if he didn't stop pissing about with Black Magic...
"That isn't for me to say, sir," Osborn replied. "All I know is that I must never allow someone who comes through my doors to leave, not without an order from the Conclave and the Primus."
"My authority supersedes theirs," Killian said. "And you'd better believe that, because I am beginning to get... cross."
To Osborn's credit, he didn't even flinch. He simply sat back in his seat... and slapped his hand down on a crystal set into the wall behind him.
I felt a brief, awful pulse of energy, and then something truly terrible slammed into my Mental Defences. I managed to remain on my feet, grunting under the sudden strain, but Killian and his Wardens dropped like stones, their minds overwhelmed by the suddenness and brutality of the assault.
It had to be one of the ugliest pieces of Magic I’d ever had the misfortune to experience. An impossible projectile of Life and Death Magic, the two disparate energy types forced into the same construct and then merged with a Telepathic probe. It tore and wrenched at my mental defences, which only held because my stolen Telepathic Affinity let me put such an overwhelming amount of power into them.
That, though, had only been the delivery method for the real attack. This too, was an amalgam, but the two elements were actually complementary this time. The first part was an empathic pulse, intended to fill the target’s mind with terror. This would render the psyche too unfocussed to fight the final section of the attack; a Telepathic Smothering Spell, designed to suppress every higher thought in the target.
Between all those elements, a victim of the Spell would end up as little more than a terrified animal, cowering as if before a cruel master.
It helped that Killian and the Sisters hadn’t been expecting a mental attack in the midst of all those Spelleaters. That wretched thing could have been designed to play on the arrogance of a Sorcerer... or an Archon. Thankfully for me, Myrddin had made me so paranoid about Mental Defence that I didn’t even drop my barriers to take a bath anymore. Otherwise, I’d have gone the same way as my companions, Affinity or no Affinity.
If Osborn was surprised when I didn’t go down, it didn’t seem to affect him much. He wasted no time going for a truncheon, which was holstered on his equipment belt, in turn hanging on the wall behind his desk.
Seeing that, I did the sensible thing... and went for a gun.
One of Killian's Wardens had fallen over right beside me and I dropped down next to her. I almost stopped when I saw her face. The look in her eyes was one of sheer, awful horror; the veins on her neck bulged as she fought against whatever terrible things had been conjured in her mind. I wanted to help her, or at least offer comfort, but there was no time.
There was a pistol holstered on her left hip and I dragged it out even as Osborn was jumping over the desk, club in hand.
He froze as he saw the look in my eye.
"Turn that off," I snarled, wincing as I felt another pulse try to burrow its way into my head.
He smiled in a sickly way and leapt for me. I aimed low and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. By the time I realised that the safety catch was on, Osborn was bringing his baton down at my head. I was understandably wary about using my powers in such close quarters, especially with the amount of Magic I'd need to get through the Spelleaters. If I used too much, I could hurt not just Osborn, but Killian, the Sisters of the Skull... and myself.
But it was either that or wake up in a cell, so I let Osborn have it.
And yes, I did indeed use too much energy.
It wasn’t an elegant Spell, just the simple conversion of a lot of raw Magic into kinetic energy, which I then projected at Osborn’s waist.
It was supposed to drop him on his face and knock him out, or at least bring said face close enough for me to bash it with the pistol; the same end result in mind.
Instead, my Spell broke every bone south of his waist (and not into large pieces, either) and flung him across the room to smash into his desk.
The desk, along with him, his chair and all his files, went ploughing into the wall behind him, where the combination of man, metal and masses of paper smashed the crystal that was keeping Killian and the girls down.
The attack vanished.
Even I felt a chill as Killian got to his feet. He was moving ever so slowly, a small cloud of Entropy gently coiling around his body. It was his eyes that were terrifying. I hadn’t seen rage like that since... ever, actually. I thought I’d known what angry was, but I was wrong.
There was a dreadful, pregnant pause as Killian surveyed the room, his dark eyes finally finding the broken warden.
"You dare..." he whispered to Osborn. His voice was so quiet, but there was such... intent in it that he may as well have screamed,
Before I could stop him (not that I could have stopped him), Killian pointed a finger, and Osborn's head vanished in a puff of dust.
And Killian didn’t stop there. He was moving before Osborn’s dust hit the ground, smashing the office door off its hinges before marching deeper into the prison.
It wasn’t seconds before I heard the first screams.
Knowing that, at best, I would only get in the way, and at worse catch a stray Entropic Beam, I stayed in the office and watched over the Sisters, helping them into better positions and handing them drinks of water until they were steady again.
The first one to come back to herself asked where Killian had gone, but the screams soon answered her question. None of them went looking for their master. I suspect for the same reasons I hadn’t.
Killian came back maybe twenty minutes later. His eyes were completely grey, just as mine went black when I was fully linked with my Shadows. It was a terrifying look on him, let me tell you.
"I've found your friends," he said before looking over at the Sisters. "You alright, girls?"
They nodded in turn, but they were still a bit wobbly. It wasn’t easy to shake off that sort of mental assault.
"Did you leave any of the scum for us, my Lord?" one of the Sisters asked, her voice filled with anger, but also deep weariness.
"Sorry, my dear," Killian replied, not sounding sorry at all. "I let my temper get the better of me."
I shuddered at the casual way he said that.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Never piss off Lord Death. It's bad for your health... and the health of everyone in your immediate area.
"What the hell was that thing?" I asked, gesturing at the shattered crystal on the wall.
"Sentry Enchantment of a sort. A very powerful one; they built it with Archons in mind, the bastards. Some sort of fused Elemental, part Death, part Life, with a Telepathic component. Very ugly, it shouldn't have been possible; those are opposed energies."
I agreed, but didn't say so. Killian just needed to vent a bit.
"It's almost as if..." he started and then went over to the remains of the crystal.
&nb
sp; He peered at it, frowning, until I felt him reach out with an Identification Spell I wasn't familiar with.
His eyes went wide, "Good God!"
"What?" I asked.
"They cleaved off part of a human soul and imprisoned it within that crystal!" he said, recoiling from the thing as if it had burned him. "That's how they were able to pin so many disparate energy forms into the same construct! That is Black Magic of the worst sort! What is wrong with these people?!"
I didn't have an answer to that. Doing things to a human soul is the big no-no of Magic. Only Black Magicians could even begin to accomplish something like that, and it was considered the great Line that you did not cross. Black Magic could be tolerated by Magical society, to an extent, as long as you didn't go mad and start slaughtering people; Black Soul Magic, however... no. Never. You don't mess with Eternity like that.
And these people had.
I didn't point out that killing the warden before we'd had a chance to question him rather put us at a dead end for finding out who had created the crystal. I think that was rather big of me, bearing in mind my big mouth.
"Come on, let's get your friends and then get the hell out of here," Killian said, leading the way to a stairwell that went downwards. He led me to the lowest level, past all the other cell blocks, each of which was missing a door. The floors were dark, with the occasional flickering light, and they reeked of Death Magic.
"Bart... what did you do?" I whispered.
"There were seventeen people here, Kid, aside from your friends. One warden, five guards, eleven prisoners. Of the eleven prisoners, only one wasn't a Black Magic-riddled abomination, and that was only because he’d merged with part of an extra-dimensional Entity.”
