Also, she was not an elf. Aneshti had been locked in the same cell. She was attached to the wall by a single manacle, but it looked like someone had stuck her arm in acid. She was visibly weakening, even with such a small contact with the metal. The elf they had been locked up with was looking worse.
‘They come and unlock us every couple of hours,’ the woman said.
She was, on better days, a very attractive vertagi with lustrous black hair, dark eyes, and a substantial bust. Right now… This was not one of her better days. Her clothes looked like they would have been considered ‘finery’ when new. Now they appeared to have been through several hedges, a few mud puddles, and a war. ‘Well, they unlock me every couple of hours to recover. If they want you alive, they’ll do the same to you.’ She was talking to Aneshti. Now she glanced at Kana. ‘You I guess they’ll leave chained up.’
‘Great,’ Kana said. ‘Who are you and what caused you to incur Cadorian’s displeasure?’
‘My name is Reyanna Ravenhair. I haven’t incurred his displeasure. He just doesn’t want me running away.’
‘Huh?’
‘He wants me as a consort. When the ritual is done with, he says he’s going to take me south. He says there’s a land to the south which Serpens won’t go to.’ It was fairly clear that Reyanna was not happy with the idea. Or the iron was weakening her to the point where she just looked sick all the time.
‘That’s nothing but a legend,’ Aneshti said. ‘The land beyond the southern sea. It can’t be reached anyway. The currents in that sea will carry any ship out into the open ocean. You’d be lost forever.’
‘That’s what I said, but he seems sure that there is a way.’
Reyanna shook her head. ‘He’s gone mad. Maybe he always was mad.’
‘He’s helping the dracs bring Serpens back,’ Kana said. ‘So are a bunch of satanists. I don’t get it. What do they want from this?’
‘The satanists believe they can control Serpens when he turns up.
Serpens and Satan have a deal, apparently. I’m not sure I believe it and I’m sure Cadorian doesn’t. He expects Serpens to do exactly what you would expect: destroy everything. He can’t stand what’s happened to the world since he left. He hates humans for weakening the elves, and he hates the elves for letting the humans take Soken. He sacrificed the army we vertagi gave him to fight Serpens to prove to the dracs that he was sincere about helping them. And he knew what the satanists were missing from their ritual.’
‘The thing in the crate,’ Aneshti said.
‘He found it?! He found the heart?’
‘Heart?’
‘To bring Serpens back, they need his skull and heart.’ Reyanna’s words were rushed, worried. ‘When Cadorian killed the creature, they knew he could be resurrected, so they buried the skull beneath what’s now the Dragon Blight and they moved the heart to somewhere in the north where it would never be found. He didn’t know exactly where they were taking it, but he knew the general location. And he’s found it. We… We’re doomed.’
‘Maybe,’ Kana replied. ‘They have to prepare, which gives us time to think of a way to stop them. Stories like this always have a point where it looks like the heroes can’t possibly win. Then they do.’
‘This isn’t a story, human!’
‘It’s Kana. Kana Shimizu, to be precise. And I think this is a story, or an anime. We haven’t hit the credits yet.’
Reyanna looked at Aneshti. ‘What in Soansha’s name is she talking about?’
Aneshti shrugged. ‘Give her a couple of hours and she can explain all that stuff, but we should really be working out how to stop Cadorian, so I think you’ll have to go unenlightened.’ Aneshti turned her attention to Kana. ‘I’m more worried about the others.’
‘Yeah,’ Kana agreed. ‘Especially Constance. I’m not exactly sure who Habarus is, but he didn’t seem like he was going to serve her tea and cakes and discuss her betrayal in a civilised manner.’
~~~
Constance was terrified. She was not chained to a wall, but she was chained to something. They had stretched her out across a heavy oak table with enough iron to make her magic essentially useless. Habarus had watched while she was secured. Aside from the chains, she was naked, but the lich appeared not to notice.
Constance had always wondered what becoming a lich would be like.
It appeared that you lost any libido you might have had, which was a good reason not to do it in her book. She would have been laughing her ass off at that if it were not for the fear.
When she had spent the night in the Dragon Blight, she had dreamed of being captured by her ex-friends among the satanists.
She had dreamed of torture, mind-numbing pain. The one difference she was expecting here was that she was going to die from it. In her nightmare, she had never got to that part, but here…
Not that they had done anything to her aside from chaining her down. Habarus had told her that he was not going to deal with her himself. Others were better suited to the task. More passionate.
He had left and so had everyone else, and Constance had been left alone.
It was a form of torture. She was being left to worry over what was about to happen to her. It was, she had to admit, very effective. Ever since the Blight, she had been afraid of dying alone. She did not think the others had noticed, but she spent as much time with at least one of them as she possibly could. The alternative was being alone and worrying what might happen. It was not exactly a paralysing fear… normally. Now…
She heard the sound of a key in a lock and voices from beyond the metal bars of the cell door. They were coming. It was about to start and there was nothing she could do about it.
~~~
There were… sounds. It was hard to be sure, but they sounded like screams. It was putting Kana off her food. More off her food. The food which had been brought in was not exactly appetising.
Mystery-meat stew and bread which looked like it had been made with the husks of the wheat. That was bad enough, but there were the sounds too. Somewhere in the complex of tunnels cut into the mountain, someone was being tortured. Kana was fairly sure she knew who.
A pattern of sorts had been established. Every so often, a trio of dracs would enter the cell and unchain Aneshti and Reyanna.
They would be allowed to recover their strength for a while and then they would be chained up again. Without it, the draining caused by the iron would sap their strength to the point of death. With the evening meal – or what Kana thought was the evening meal since there was no way to really tell – had come the longest respite while they were allowed to eat without the chains. The elves had. Kana remained attached to the wall.
Their gaoler only bothered to lock the cell door when the prisoners were unchained. It was counterintuitive, but Kana thought she understood. Mages were only a real danger when they were not constrained by iron. With the prisoners chained to the wall, the dracs figured there was no chance of them escaping.
Kana had decided that that would be their downfall. Eventually.
She had to work out the best time to do something.
That now was not the best time became clear when Cadorian appeared at the barred door, demanding to be let in. The dracs opened up the gate and locked it behind him. Even with the elf hero there, they were taking no chances. Maybe because the elf hero was there they were taking no chances. It was tough to tell with dracs, but it did not really look as though there was much trust going around.
‘It will be over tomorrow, Lady Reyanna,’ Cadorian said, ignoring Aneshti and Kana. ‘We begin the ritual in the morning. By midday, Serpens will be here. You and I will leave in the evening.’
‘As you say, lord,’ Reyanna responded.
Cadorian heaved a sigh. ‘You’ll come to see that this is for the best, lady.’
‘I have come to see that I’ve no choice. When I allied myself with you to take an army into the swamp, I made myself, unknowingly, into a traitor.’ Reyanna held u
p her hand to forestall his response. ‘Whatever you may think, the vertagi will see me as a traitor. I can’t go back, even if you fail. My future is intertwined with yours, Lord Cadorian.’
‘It will be a bright future.’ Cadorian’s gaze shifted to take in the other two women in the room. ‘For some of us.’ Then he turned and started for the door.
‘Not if I can help it,’ Kana muttered.
1 st Thokarte.
It started as the drac gaoler finished locking Reyanna into her manacle and headed for the door of the cell. Breakfast had been served and eaten. Unless Kana was really unlucky, he was going to pull the door closed behind him but not lock it, which meant that the keys he kept hung from a hook on his belt would not be used.
Kana beckoned to the keys just as the guard put them back on his belt after unlocking the door. They lifted from the hook and then dropped down low to the ground before slipping silently to one side. The guard pulled the door closed behind him, took one look in through the bars, and then walked off down the corridor. Kana let out the breath she had been holding and pulled the keys across the cell and into her hand.
She figured she had at least thirty seconds. The guard was not going to notice the missing keys until he needed to open another lock or he sat down. That had to give her thirty seconds, right?
She began to unlock her chains as fast as she could manage under the circumstances.
Reyanna’s eyes were bulging, but she had the sense to stay silent while Kana unlocked herself and then handed the keys to Aneshti.
Outside, the ritual to raise Serpens from the dead had either started or it would be starting really soon. The gaoler had handled breakfast with only one assistant this morning because everyone else was getting ready for the ritual. The assistant had run off as soon as Aneshti was locked up again, leaving the gaoler to deal with Reyanna. They really did not think much of the vertagi noblewoman.
Then again, they had severely misjudged the amount of magic Kana had at her disposal, even when clapped in irons. With the metal removed, Kana could feel her power flooding back. She was going to need it. It had not been anything like thirty seconds when the gaoler appeared outside the cell again, barking something in his rough language. Kana pulled together a Firebolt spell as quickly as she could and was throwing it as soon as the drac had the cell’s door open. The ball of flame burned into the guard’s chest, stopping him in his tracks. He fell forward, dead before his face hit the stone.
‘One down,’ Kana said, ‘no idea how many to go.’
‘There are over two hundred dracs here,’ Reyanna said. ‘Probably around twenty satanists. And there’s Cadorian. You can’t hope to fight him. He’s… he’s a legend.’
‘He’s going to be there for the ritual, right?’
‘I believe he intends to be, yes.’
‘Then the plan holds.’
‘Plan?’
‘Yeah. We’re going to take off and nuke the site from orbit.
Well, except we can’t actually take off…’
Reyanna frowned. ‘You’re not making sense.’
‘She does that a lot,’ Aneshti said. There was a click as Reyanna’s manacle unlocked thanks to Aneshti and the key. ‘You’re going to Firebomb the ritual?’
‘Can you think of a better way to deal with this?’ Kana replied.
‘Not right at this moment. You’re the one with training in military tactics.’
‘Well, it was more of some pointers than training. Rain’s the one who knows tactics, but I somehow think that five people storming a couple of hundred bad guys performing a ritual falls under
“don’t do it” as far as tactics is concerned.’
‘We find Rain anyway?’
‘We find Rain, Mimi, and… and Constance if she’s still alive.’
Aneshti’s face fell. ‘The screaming stopped a few hours ago.’
‘Yeah. I know.’
~~~
They found Constance in a cell further into the complex of tunnels. It was a little difficult to be sure that it was her, but the general size was right and the blood-matted hair was probably black.
Reyanna was noisily sick in the corner while Mimi bent over her friend to check, uselessly, for a pulse. There was no way there was a pulse. Kana had never seen an accident victim, but she imagined this was what it was like to see someone hit by a truck.
Blood coated everything . Constance was still tied to a table, but her arms looked the wrong shape and there was a bone sticking out of the side of her right shin. How much control the manacles provided was open to question because the limbs were probably quite capable of bending in directions human limbs were not supposed to. Constance’s beautiful face was a livid bruise under the blood.
‘They didn’t spare their efforts,’ Mimi said. Her voice cracked on the last word and there were tears in her eyes.
‘They’re going to pay for this,’ Rain said. ‘I need my sword.’
They had not bothered stripping her of her armour, which was not much use without a weapon to go with it. In fact, neither Rain nor Mimi had been chained up. Iron did not affect clerical magic, so their cell door had been locked and a guard placed outside it.
Until that morning when the guard had been relieved to take part in the ritual.
‘Last I saw,’ Aneshti said, ‘all of our gear was on Ranulf.’
‘A pack animal?’ Reyanna asked. ‘They’ll have taken it to the stables. We’d need to go outside and about a hundred paces around the wall to get there.’
‘That gives us a chance to see how bad things are out there,’
Kana said. Her gaze scanned once more over Constance’s body. She did not want to imagine half of what had been done to her friend, but the images kept popping into her head whenever she noticed an injury. Cuts, bruises, signs of… other forms of torture. The
woman had no fingernails left… Kana’s jaw tightened. ‘They’re going to pay. I just hope we’re fast enough. I’m fast enough.’
‘How are we going to get through two hundred dracs?’ Mimi asked.
‘Probably not two hundred,’ Reyanna said. ‘I mean, there are that many here, but if they’ve started the ritual, the numbers are dropping.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Part of the ritual involves sacrificing a hundred of them. They have to have their hearts torn out and burned. Then their bodies will be subsumed into Serpens’ body when he materialises.’
Mimi grimaced, but Aneshti just looked thoughtful. ‘That gives us at least an hour, probably two, to stop the ritual,’ Aneshti said. ‘It can’t take less than half a minute to tear someone’s heart out and toss it on a fire. It’s a ritual, so I’m guessing there’s some ceremony to it. It’ll be one at a time with the hearts presented to the other ritual participants before burning.
And then there are bound to be a few preliminary and final steps to go through. It’ll take a while.’
‘Well, good,’ Kana said, ‘because we’re not ready yet. I need to recharge some more and we need to find our gear. But we don’t know when they started, so it’s probably best that we get moving.
We’ll… We’ll come back for Constance when we’re done.’
‘Or you’ll all be dead and it won’t matter,’ Reyanna said.
‘Thanks. That’s very helpful.’
‘I’m just being realistic.’
Kana laughed. ‘There’s nothing realistic about any of this. This entire world is crazy, an anime made real. And in an anime, no matter how bad the odds, the heroes always win.’
‘I don’t think things work like that.’
Kana started for the door. ‘They have to. Otherwise Constance is dead for no reason.’
~~~
That the ritual had started was fairly obvious from the screams.
A drac screaming sounded weird, but it was still the sound of pain, a relatively universal concept. Out in the middle of the caldera, Habarus was the centre of attention as he tore the hearts out of dracs who seemed to have
volunteered for the process. He had to be using magic; like that scene from that Indiana Jones movie, the lich was just reaching into the chests of living creatures and pulling their hearts out. Unlike that
scene, Habarus was leaving a bloody, gory hole where his hand went.
‘That’s sick,’ Aneshti whispered. The party were sneaking around to the stables and did not want any attention. Luckily, everyone else in the caldera had their attention fixed on the gory spectacle. Maybe luck was not a factor; Kana was beginning to suspect either divine intervention or narrative imperative. Maybe they were the same thing. Cadorian seemed like a bright guy; he should have made sure there were more guards posted.
‘Goes with the territory,’ Kana said. ‘The important point is that they’re most of the way through the sacrifices.’ Of course they were! What kind of anime would it be if the heroes did not cut things close? ‘We need to get moving.’
Finding Ranulf was fairly easy. Rain was annoyed almost immediately since her pony had been stuffed into a corner stall still laden down by all their gear. ‘I promise I’ll come back and give you a really good rubdown as soon as we’ve saved the world,’
Rain told the pony. Ranulf gave a huff which probably meant ‘I want it now, but I suppose you’ve a good reason there.’ Ranulf could be terribly expressive when you were imagining what he was saying.
‘Sword,’ Rain went on, pulling her sword free. ‘All the staffs…’
Something fell to the straw covering the stall’s floor and Rain bent to pick it up. She tossed it to Kana. ‘That’s yours, I think.’
Kana caught the small pouch and looked at it. ‘Oh. I guess it is.
Well, if it comes to it… We’ll try the explosive resolution first.’
‘You just want to set off a really big explosion,’ Aneshti said.
Her grin was somewhat forced.
‘Too right.’ Kana took her staff from Rain, looked at it, and then leaned it against the stall’s wall. ‘Okay, so here’s the plan. I’m going to rush the ceremony and do my stuff. I’m putting everything I have into this, so if there are any bad guys still standing, I’m toast. I’d appreciate it if you all rushed in to save my butt. However, stay out of sight until then because I’m honestly not sure how big a bang this is going to be.’
The Girl Who Dreamed of a Different World Page 30
