The Rossin twisted his wings and surged upward toward freedom and the open sky. Only the narrow slice of moon gleaming through the steel grate stopped him crashing into it. He twisted midair like a falcon, and slammed his curved talons into the barrier. Then opening his wings wide, he heaved. The only thing that snapped however was his beak in rage.
Hanging there like an enraged bat was not his happiest moment in this realm. The Wrayth were cunning and so numerous that they were in fact a far more dangerous opponent than even Hatipai. The Rossin’s avian form was meant to fly, meant to dominate the air. It was not meant to be caged like this—but what was the other option?
His head twisted around, as he peered down into the darkness. He could smell the Wrayth below. He knew there would be a way out down there, for the peons to come and go. It was the only way he was going to get free of the Wrayth.
Folding his wings about him, the Rossin released his claws from the grating and dived into the darkness.
The smell of the Wrayth was stronger the farther he went; the reek of blood and flesh combined with the sharp odor of the geistlord itself. He transformed a moment before he reached the ground, and dropped to the dirt in his feline form. It was his most powerful shape; a thickly muscled cat the height of a human’s shoulder, with spotted fur and teeth made to rend. It also meant that he was silent and deadly—useful things in this situation.
As he moved forward, the Rossin crunched over the broken remains of Raed’s pack, and paused to consider. It was humiliating to even have to think about his host, but should they be trapped in a position as they had been just recently the weak creature would need his weapons and clothing. With a derisive snort through his nose, the beast took the pack in its mouth and padded on.
The heat down this deep into the Shin fortress was terrible, especially to a huge beast covered in fur. It was the mass of flesh his fellow geistlord commanded that created such a hot, humid atmosphere. The Wrayth were not known for their kindness to any creature—even among other geistlords, but the Rossin was ready to hurt them in return. They had fought in the chaos of the Otherside, a battle of survival, and now it appeared they would continue it in this realm.
The Rossin moved deeper into the hive, his ears flicking back and forth seeking any movement. The smooth walls of higher up in the fortress had devolved into rough stone passages, but his massive padded paws took them with ease, though his mortal host might have had problems with the darkness and uneven terrain. Mortals often had problems with many things. When his plan came to fruition it might well be a relief to his Young Pretender.
The Rossin paused and inhaled. The stink of the Wrayth was now overcoming every other scent, and he knew that there would be many of them ahead. He clenched his claws, their creamy length puncturing the earth. A growl remained deep in his chest and largely unvoiced.
Shoulders scything, the Rossin eased himself still deeper into the Wrayth hive.
Many geistlords used humans as tethers to this world; from his own ability to hide within the bloodline of a family, to Hatipai’s method of actually birthing a half-geist child of her own to act as a link. The Wrayth’s method combined a little of both; as was immediately apparent when the great cat climbed through a breach in the earthen wall, and peered down into his fellow geistlord’s breeding chamber.
It stank of humanity—a lot of unwashed, highly sexed humanity. At least his own host did not reek as badly as the Wrayth’s—but mainly that was to do with sheer numbers. He had found his enemy’s breeding pit. Women, all of them with their belly’s swollen in various states of pregnancy, wore very little except the brand of the Wrayth. A pair of claw marks on the shoulder. Their eyes were vacant and staring. Their skin white from lack of sun.
Moving among them were drones, males with the same mark upon them. All of them stank of the blood ties the Wrayth used. This geistlord was vast in number and the most dangerous of the Rossin’s enemies and kin. The great cat’s eyes narrowed, and his head sunk between his shoulders. He could charge down now among all those peons of the Wrayth, but there was a chance they could overwhelm him. He had rage, but they certainly had numbers.
The Rossin bathed in blood, grew strong from it, but for the peons and their geistlord blood was more than that. It was a web that bound them together in a vast network of people. Each child born here became another peon and carrier of the enemy. This was one opponent that the Rossin could not easily destroy—even with all his strength.
So instead, he chose to leave them. His host would have been greatly surprised; but the Rossin was more than a mere Beast. He had his own plans and means, and when he was sated by blood he could think and act as clearly as any of the other geistlords. It was the restriction of being tied in blood. The Wrayth had found their own way around it, and that rankled.
Still they had to breed constantly lest the geistlord within them weaken. It was a vulnerability that the Rossin could not yet think of a way to exploit.
Letting a little huff of annoyance escape through his gaping mouth, the Beast padded around the room of silent and pale-eyed peons. The Wrayth’s attention was not here—not yet. The Rossin could feel it above him, flitting about among other higher-level peons.
Deeper into the hive, the warmth was now so extreme that the great cat felt it laying like a blanket on him. He let his mouth droop open and began panting. New noises filtered from below, sounds that drew the Rossin; the echoes of human pain. Despite his caution, the geistlord found himself caught by curiosity and followed the sounds.
That was how he found the cells. Swinging his head from side to side, carefully placing his massive paws down as delicately as a house cat, the Rossin peered into them. These were pregnant women too, but not happy in their servitude to their Wrayth overlord. Even the Rossin felt something close to pity for these scraps of humanity tethered to the wall, their swelling bellies attached to wasted and wretched bodies.
The smell of them was strange; not merely just the reek of shackled humanity, but an odd mixture of Wrayth and something else. The cat stood at the bars of a cell and tilted its head, regarding the woman within, for a moment confused. She carried a Wrayth child, but was not of the Wrayth herself. She was something more trained, more powerful. She looked blankly back at the geistlord, broken inside and out, but there was a flicker of her past in there.
The Rossin’s growl was deep and threatening as all trace of pity was wiped away. The prisoner’s head jerked upright. She’d been a Deacon. Though she had no Gauntlets or Strop anymore, she still nursed a tiny spark of the Order within her. Many Deacons were presumed killed by geists, but obviously not all of them had been. Intriguingly enough, it appeared the Wrayth was occupied in some kind of breeding program—though to what end the Rossin could not tell.
If they had met in different circumstances he and this Deacon would have been enemies, now they were the same; trapped in the Wrayth hive. On the Otherside the geists consumed each other and the souls of the dead, but they did not shackle each other in such a way. The Wrayth had obviously learned some new skills in this realm.
The woman lurched forward, wrapping one hand around the bar while reaching out with the other toward the great cat. “Kill me,” she gasped, her voice a rasp of horror. “Take my blood. Take me!”
The Rossin flinched back with a snarl. However other women in the row of cells had heard their fellow prisoner’s call. Soon a dozen hands were thrust through the gaps, opening and closing in supplication.
“Take me!” one howled.
“No, me,” other unseen women screamed.
“Have pity,” the first woman said, and her fingers actually brushed the fur of the Rossin.
Despite his love of blood and violence, there was something repellant about what had been done to these women. He backed away, hissing and growling in disgust.
Then, from down the corridor, came the sounds of many people coming toward him. He could hear feet slapping on the stone, and smell the Wrayth coming toward him.
<
br /> It damaged his pride to turn around and run, but on the Otherside the geistlord had learned to do what it took to survive. The Wrayth were coming, and the Rossin fled down the corridors in huge bounds, yet he snarled all the way.
He burst out into another main room, and realized immediately that this was where the Wrayth wanted him. The cat spun about growling and roaring at the surrounding peons. They reeked of the geistlord, and they held sticks and polearms. Every one of them was pale and blank-eyed, but there could be no mistaking their intentions.
“Welcome, mighty Rossin.” A voice high in the vaulted ceiling caused the cat to jerk his head up; the female creature his host’s sister had been talking to. She was beyond even his reaching, leaning out to talk to him from a balcony of stone, decorated with lapis lazuli.
“Thank you so much for visiting.” The peons below bent like wheat in the wind at her voice, responding to the whims of the Wrayth.
The Rossin crouched, and even though he knew the pointlessness of it, sprang among them. He bit and raked his claws through their flesh. He broke bones and tore muscle, and even while he did, they did not scream. It was like cutting grass or biting water, and just as fulfilling.
Even though their blood flooded his mouth, it offered him nothing. Humanity should not be like this, and every part of the Rossin was disgusted by it. No strength came to him; the Wrayth’s power slipped out of the peons before he could absorb it. Finally, he stood shaking bits of rent peons from his jaws, blood splattered on his patterned fur, and a growl emanating from his mouth.
“Are you done?” the Wrayth above asked, her voice stained with amusement. “As always you are limited, and as you can see, we are not.”
The peons that were still capable formed up another circle. Some were dragging broken limbs, or their own eviscerated bowels, but they still moved to the controls of the geistlord in their bodies. At the same time, fresh peons from the rear came forward. They were carrying polearms, and on the end gleamed weirstones.
It was always this way; geistlord competing to devour geistlord. The Wrayth would have him and all the power that remained from Hatipai. However when the woman spoke, the words she let loose were not the ones that he expected.
“You will make an excellent experiment. Once you return to your host, we will find out what new lines he can form with our female peons. What interesting creatures might be made with your power and ours.”
She turned, and his host’s sister appeared on the balcony as well. She looked down on the snarling cat with such hatred that even the Rossin felt it.
He would not change. He would not surrender himself to that. He would breed nothing for the Wrayth. Then the peons were on him, pushing him with the weirstones, and where they touched, they burned. In this way they drove the Rossin out of the main hall and down into the hive.
Though he battered at them, charging, snarling, ripping an odd one or two down, they kept coming in a relentless fashion that he could not match. Eventually they pushed him, just by sheer numbers and determination, into a cell, much like the one their female prisoners occupied.
It was a tiny space for the massive feline, and he could barely turn around. The door was slammed shut behind him, and the Rossin let out a roar that shook the vile nest of the Wrayth. Yet, he would not release the form. If he did, then his host would become like the women, used for their breeding.
“How long can you wait?” a peon spoke. His face was slack, his eyes unfocused but the voice that came out was high-pitched and unnatural. “How long can you burn before you have to give us what we want?”
The Rossin snarled and crashed against the bars, but they were built strong—stronger than anything a human would make.
“Eventually you will give us what we want,” the peon intoned, and then stepped back away from the bars.
Soon all of them departed and the Rossin was left to the sound of weeping and screaming women. His roars of outrage merged with theirs of despair.
Zofiya drew in her first conscious breath, and felt her body react with violent disagreement to this event. If her stomach had contained anything she would have thrown it up immediately. She twisted about, spitting and choking on her dry mouth. It was then she realized that she was tied, tightly and effectively, in place.
“Yes, unfortunately the phase effect on simple folk is rather unnerving.” A voice to her right gave her reason to open her eyes. “However in your case I think it is something else as well.” It was a voice she recognized, and her stomach clenched. Lying on a simple iron-framed bed her bones ached, her mouth was parched, and she knew she was in great peril. It was not the peril she was used to: a blade in the night, a conspiracy of minor nobles or an angry servant.
Del Rue, or whatever his name was, smiled at her. He was crouched down, hands on his knees, grinning at her as she lay bound more tightly than a spring roast. “Very interesting. Something about you is more…open shall we say…than your average plain stupid human. I wonder how that happened.” He sounded genuinely curious.
She ran her tongue around her mouth to loosen it, since it was as dry as a pile of Orinthal sand. “Keep wondering,” she replied as tartly as she could, “and while you wonder, I shall enjoy, as my brother executes you in front of the whole Court.”
“Now, why would my good friend do that?” The older man spread his hands as if in great shock. “It was those pesky Deacons of the Order of the Eye and the Fist that kidnapped you. Why one of them was even in your bed.” He waved a finger at her. “You naughty girl, I hadn’t expected that, but it nicely took care of that Merrick Chambers. It was very helpful of you.”
Zofiya swallowed hard, her eyes darting around the dark chamber. It looked like a cellar somewhere, perhaps in the Edge section of Vermillion—the damp smell clogging her nostrils suggested that. Surely they couldn’t be farther away than that. She was certainly grateful that she’d not been conscious for the portion of the journey that involved phasing through walls. She was no coward, but her experiences in Orinthal had made her leery of anything that involved runes or undead powers. It seemed that she was going to have to deal with them now.
The man crouched down next to her oozed a terrible charm. From what Merrick had told her, del Rue was quite willing to sacrifice anyone to get what he wanted. He’d wanted to murder Japhne del Torne and her unborn child—and she was sure that was not the end to his foul deeds. The idea that her brother had been locked in his privy chamber for months with this man left her raging beyond sensible thought. Yet, she had to be sensible and calm as well.
“I am not prone to kindness,” she replied conversationally, “and I suspect neither are you. Since you have my brother wound around your finger, you don’t need me. Therefore you can dispense with the formalities altogether and get to the killing.”
Del Rue smoothed his mustache, and stared at her before letting out a little laugh. “My dear Grand Duchess, if I wanted to murder you I would simply have left you embedded in the walls of the palace.”
Despite her inner strength, Zofiya shivered at that. The idea of becoming part of Vermillion forever was not a pretty one. She’d seen strange creatures and bones trapped in rock, and despite her outrage, she would have not wanted to end up like that.
“I won’t help you destroy my brother,” she blurted out as bravely as she could.
“Oh,” he replied mildly, “we don’t need your help at all since we have him quite in hand. Your brother is not as strong willed as you.” He wagged his finger at her, as if it were Zofiya’s fault somehow.
Then something moved just out of her line of sight, and she flinched, straining. Hooded figures slid out from the shadows of the room, bearing a device she could not quite make out.
Del Rue touched her hair. “So many uses for a little royal like you. Blood, breeding or leverage. You didn’t imagine you could be so useful did you, Grand Duchess? All that time trying to guard your brother and you never really thought about yourself.”
His gloating was c
ut short by one of those figures throwing back his hood. “Are we getting on with it?”
Del Rue glanced up, a flicker of annoyance passing over his face. Zofiya saw at once that he was a man that both enjoyed his moments of power and did not like to be interrupted while having them. “Yes Master Vashill,” he hissed, “I believe we are.”
The other hooded figures stepped back once more into the shadows. Del Rue pushed himself up from the floor and made way as the machine was rolled forward. The Grand Duchess ran her eye over it. Immediately apparent was the gleam of a weirstone seated within the gears and cogs of its inner workings. It sat there with blue and white light flickering over its surface. The Grand Duchess had been privy to many curious and wonderful devices brought into the Court for her brother to admire, but she had never seen anything like this.
The man called Vashill let his fingers trace the device, and pride shined from his face. “My mother said that it could not be done.”
“I am glad we could prove her wrong, but do not forget this would not be possible without my assistance,” del Rue growled. He turned and stage-whispered to Zofiya. “He is quite mad you know, but the results of combining our runes, raw geist power and his tinkering have been most impressive.”
Vashill opened up the side of the device and Zofiya could see several tall vials of liquid within. He was not comforting her with his rabid muttering. She’d also seen her fair share of madmen in her time—she just didn’t like them this close.
She wetted her lips. “What exactly is it you plan to do with me? I assure you torture will not break me; you would be a rank amateur compared to my father. If I can take his years of abuse—”
“Yes, yes, I am sure.” Del Rue waved his hand dismissively. “Compared to him I imagine I am almost a…saint.” He seemed to find some amusement that she did not in the statement. When he finally recovered from his own private joke he went on. “It is not my intention to break you merely for my own amusement.”
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