My back.
The sockets where my tenacles struggled to re-grown, they ached the most.
I was still half delirious, my mind lost to mana and pain. All I could while the others chattered about plans, betrayal, and reiterated just how far up shit creek we'd gotten before Tequi ran off with the paddle.
I had my thoughts, and I wanted answers, but I couldn't find the words to ask.
Instead, I watched the little jellies and strange, ghostly leviathans that swam in the world revealed only by my Arcane Soul. There was so much strange beauty that lurked in the ether between the world I knew and whatever lay beyond. I'd often wondered if this was what the world looked like to monsters, and to all those who crossed too far into the Wyld or the Divine and Entropy. Did every Saint see some version of this?
Did Temperance? Had the Iron Knight?
Was the secret to transcending beyond a Path, to freein' oneself from mortality demand this sense of the-
"Roche!" Snapped a voice, "wake up, boy. Cara, feed him another elixir, no not the tainted ones," Margarette ordered as someone pried my lips apart, "those are for when he's lucid. If he ever is again."
"Is Mister Roche going to live?" Asked Vin from out of sight, the boys voice low, soft, and just a little broken.
"He's alive," Cara assured as I tasted the power of the Apothecary's Gift passin' my lips and down into my core, "he's just expended an alarming amount of lifeforce, even physically powerful people, those with vitality restoring Abilities can run dry."
Ah. So that's what was up.
Figured I was just chewed so bad my mind was full of holes, but burn-out made sense too. Wasn't just mages and spell casters that could draw too deep on the 'ol well. While it was as spectacular for those who walked more Martially oriented Paths, we didn't freeze over or explode in a shower of mana suffused gore, it still wasn't pretty to reach the bottom of your bottle.
It was cripplin' too, sometimes whole Abilities were damaged, Steps on the Path reverted, progress lost.
Better than bein' permanently cripples though...
I drew in a breath and forced my mind to ignore the sprits above as I tried to fixate on the faces around me. Slowly the forms resolved, and I found the worried gazes of Captain Margarette, Vin, and the two women, still silent, but now with a little color in their cheeks, and a bit of a spark in their eyes.
"Finally," Margarette said, her voice harsh, but thin, "boy, what the fuck happened out there? Why did you and Tequi break off? The plans was to regroup at the docks if things went bad. Why did my son have to risk his life to-"
"Weren't Mister Roche." Temjun cut in, his deep voice comin' from near the large iron door at the end of the room, "I saw it when I followed their lights. Mister Tequi, he shot Roche, right after that big monster separated him and us," he shook his head, his heavy features like land cracked by an earthquake, "I said that mama, I said Mister Tequi was lookin' wrong. Lookin' at Roche real bad, just cause he changed some."
"Tem-"
"He's right," Cara cut in, "I know you wanted to smooth things over Captain, after what Tequi said last night, we should've watched him closer."
Huh. Keepin' secrets then. I had wondered what they talked about while I was off stuffin' my face and washin' away the blood and grime from my newly mutated form. Guess there was a little conspirin' afoot.
"No," Margarette said, lookin' between the three of us and pursin' her lips, "That doesn't make sense. Tequi's a fool, but not a traitor. He would find no more shelter in the mayor's arms than he had in our cell. While it's true I was wrong to underplay his reaction to Roche's Path, I don't believe for an instant that he would sabotage our way out merely because of some... prejudice."
She was wrong. I knew it.
"Captain," Cara said gently, "I knew them well before this. Well before Murkwater came to look on the outside as it always had been within. Tequi was a company man. A good, maybe. Treated his people well, stood up for the indentures when no one else would," she shook her head, "but he always believed in order. It's possible he thinks he can still reason with... Someone in power. Maybe Sergeant Lux, if he's still alive," Cara's face fell and I could see just how terribly tired the former guard was, "or maybe he just broke. Either way, the proof is right there."
She pointed a grimy finger to the hole in my face.
Yep. That'd do in a courtroom, so it should certainly suffice for our needs.
Tequi was most definitely a traitor. The obvious had been thoroughly established.
"Gon kill him," I whispered, my words slurred, wet, "gonna kill him dead."
Margarette sighed, another ten years etched in the lines of her face as she leaned against a large iron barrel behind her, "Whatever, it doesn't matter anyway. Whatever Tequi does, we have more immediate problems." She took a deep breath and stared me down, "Roche, when Temjun brought you here, he also brought all the things that had chased you. The wards on this armory are strong, but most of Murkwater is currently clawing at the brickwork. And that's besides the... Thing that came as we neared this place."
"Thing?" I wheezed.
Cara shook her head, eyes distant as if she didn't quite believe whatever memory she recalled, "It was big. Made of... made of people. Everyone that was executed in the square, all the sick the mayor had put down right before we lost control." She shivered, and I watched gooseflesh rise on her pale skin, "it was just a great, crawling, biting mass. Walked on screaming limbs, so many mouths, so hungry," she shuddered hard, "It's out there now, trying to get in just like the others..."
I closed my eyes, and the nightmare the Strix had sent when I crossed through the gate came floodin' back. The dead. The rot. The hunger.
That pile of people and parts, left to fester in the square.
That was probably what she meant.
I twitched the partially grown stumps of my tentacles, most of them barely a third their former length. I flexed the muscles of my legs, felt the aches in my bones. I gritted my teeth and bit back the pain of my shattered jaw. Then I just told it all to shut up, and pushed myself to sit.
"Captain, Cara," I said as I rolled my neck and heard the pop of stiff vertebrate, "Temjun, Vin" I nodded to the big man, "and you ladies," I nodded to the survivors, "we're not going to die here. I swear it. I'm going to kill that thing, and then I'm goin' to kill the mayor, and then I'm goin' to burn this motherfucker down. Then we're goin' to sail for civilization."
I said it. Said it without a whit of doubt. I was too tired to consider exactly why none of that was likely to occur. I didn't have time to think about that, because if I did I'd realize just how fucked we were, and I might stop fightin'.
I couldn't' do that. Not now, not before, not fuckin' never.
"First things first," I said scanning the large entryway we were sat in. Looked like a kind of militarized foyer, a few hard benches against the wall, a heavy door at the front, a barred cage between anyone who came in and the rest of the armory. "We need to see what kind of goodies we have in our little store," I grunted and stood from the bend I'd been laid on, "Vin, knife." I said fanning out three stumps to receive my loaned weapon.
The Vin didn't hastate to draw the old salt adn rust stained blade and give it over, handle first.
"Good man," I said and stepped over to the cage that secured the door from the semi-public space we occupied, "my eye focused, searchin' for whatever runes contained the warding magic. They weren't likely to be so brazen as those craved into the door frames of the manor, them were made to keep a home safe, these were made to protect the wealth and might of a city.
"How are you going to do it Mister Roche?" Asked Vin as he moved to offer a hand and help me toward the cage, I shook him off.
Didn't need no damn kid to walk me to a door. I wasn't so broken as that.
"Like the others," I said as I ran a tentacle over the cold metal of the bars, the barest impression of carefully carved shapes and symbols evident to my touch, but completely invisible to mundane sight, "most wards have a kind of, keystone I guess. I don't know the technical bullshit, but-" I paused as a flood of information and memory washed over my mind.
Little pieces from all the times I broken wards and locks before hit me hard, hard enough to scatter the migraine headache I'd nursed since waking up. It was like a breath of fresh air in a stale room, and I let out a gasp.
It wasn't just that I had a good idea on how to break the powerful passive spell laid upon the armory doors, I could do even more than that. Subvert it, change who it ought to affect and how. From lethal to just a shock. If I scratched out the right run, used my knife to extend a symbol here or a disrupt a circle there, I could even weaponize it.
Free all the energy stored to in a single, catastrophic event.
In other words, I was half sure every ward I met could become a bomb, if I asked real nice.
I smiled, as best as a man with a hole in his monster's face might.
At the very least, I had some idea about dealin' with Cara's monster, maybe the whole damn horde outside.
And... probably a good chunk of the city where the armory used to be. I couldn't really guess at exactly how much power was locked in the words, that was beyond the scope of my abilities, but I had to imagine it was a lot. Especially sing the building was full of ammunition, powder and gods knew what else.
Let the cleansin' fire come for all I cared. Let me ride it into the sun.
Disaster and despair? For some reason they seemed to grow father away every time I looked them in the eye. Every brush with doom and death made those thoughts and fears smaller and weaker.
And this most recent liaison with the Strix, why, it had left those parts of my mind all but crippled.
"Boy, what are you doing?"
Captain Margarette, her voice still tired, but edged with a kind of concern that spoke to her age, to her own experiences. She looked me in the yes, the normal, human ones, not the little fella's beneath my cracked face shell.
"You alright Roche? Still... affected by that tainted elixir you were swilling perhaps?"
"Nah, nah, captain, I'm good." I said as I knelt down to get a better look at the bottom of the cage, "I'm gonna get us in there," I pointed through the bars to the door beyond, "Then I'm going to blow it all up."
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"Roche," her voice was sharper, "I need you to tell me what the hell you're talking about. That doesn't make any sense."
I looked at her, and smiled again, "The wards, Captain. I'm going to break them, turn them, then I'm going to blow them. All you gotta do is run, just like last time." I reached out with my tentacles and found a hold on the bars, another tendril meanwhile worked to subtly alter the rune that, I think, governed entry and authority over the whole thing. It was beyond me. Tentacle work.
She sighed and her eyes fluttered closed, one part exhaustion, one part exasperation, one hundred percent done with all this shit, "Roche, perhaps you should share your insights with people who haven't been repeatedly concussed in the last day, eh?" She took a deep breath, then looked at Cara, "Cara, do you know if what he's babbling about is possible? I know very little of magic like this."
The guardswoman shrugged, "Maybe. It's not my Path, but I know a ward can be overloaded at least. The contained mana freed, catastrophically. Saw it happen when I was young. The wards on our village Chantry were damaged in a riot. A lot of people died." She looked at me, "I'd rather not die."
"I'm not going to kill you," I said as my work finished with a careful, final scrape. The air grew tense after that. A heavy weight seemed to invade the space as mana leaked freely from the wounds I'd made in the ward's magic.
Margarette gave me a sharp look, then the bars, black iron, began to softly glow an angry, dusky red. Like sunset over the dunes.
"I'm just going to kill everything else."
With that, I gave the bars a yank and they came apart, no longer held together by the magic that had kept them secure. The sizzled and hissed as a deep, cancerous rust spread through them, eatin' away at the metal as if it were a rotting meat.
"Wow," said Vin, he eyes wide with something other than fear or horror, "Can you show me how to do that?" He asked, jaw set.
I looked at him, took in the sight of a boy. He was young, fifteen or sixteen, so really, only a few years junior to me. I saw... Some of me, some of me before I let the world ruin me.
Naked hope. A trust in the notion that we'd not just survive, but that he'd have a future to worry about after. Ambition, born of opportunity rather than a desperate need to escape the shit circumstances fate had dropped him in. It almost hurt to see.
"Sure," I muttered, dusting my tentacles off on my coat. The garment was already stichin' and cleanin' itself, despite it all, "maybe I will."
Vin smiled, and I returned it, and I didn't even think of the hole in my cheek.
The armory beyond was dark, the only light a low flickerin' magelight in the far corner. But as the door swung open though, a series of smaller lamps came to life.
The group behind me made to move forward and take stock of the bounty we'd nearly claimed, but I stopped short with a raised trio of tentacles.
"Wait," I said as my eyes scanned the space. There was something in the way the scattered light played off the barrels, lockers, cages and crates that lined the walls and filled the narrow aisles between, something out of place. A subtle wrongness that Fool's Lesson and my time in the wilds had taught me to recognize.
"Someone's already in here," I said aloud, "Mister Temjun, you're with me."
I turned to the big man and found him already at my side, a gore soaked saint's mercy cradled in his massive arms like it was a babe. The massive hammer looked almost small the way he kept it, the way he swung it, "No," He said gentle grabbing my ruined shoulder, "you're behind me." He pushed his bulk between me and the threshold, "You're hurt still, Mister Roche, just go sit." He nodded back toward the survivors, "I'll take care of this for you, just like you did for us."
I stared at him for a long time, my mouth open. Then, I closed it.
What was I gonna say to that?
Nothing.
Nothin' 'cept, "Thanks."
I muttered it, not used to the word, not used to sayin' it and meanin' it. Not used to being weak.
Temjun moved fast, his single minded nature as devoid of hesitation as ever.
Three steps in, he stopped.
"I can hear you breathin', Mister," he said slowly, leviathan killer in hand, "I can hear you breathin'. Come out. Don't make me come get you."
Nothin' happened.
"He will come get you," I warned, a smile playin' at my lips.
"No!" Pipped a voice that didn't sound like it was used to going that high, "I'll come out!"
And he did. A short, tan Southern man, big belly, messy beard, slipped from the shadow of a powder barrel, his hands empty and high.
"Well see, now isn't that-"
"You mother fucker!" Shouted Cara from behind me as the man crossed into the magelight, his swollen face revealed in the dim glow, "you fuckin' traitor!"
She was past me, before I could do more than raise a tentacle to block her. My pistol cocked and clutched in one hand.
Temjun just gave her a look, like dog that had heard some distant sound and couldn't quite decide if it was worth a bark. She froze in place, just five paces from the man, his skin now slick with sudden sweat, face pale.
"C-cara, I thought you-" he started to speak, and the former guard's face only grew darker, more red with rage.
"Shut the fuck up," she hissed leveling the gun just below his belly, "you fucking rat. I can't believe it, you, of all the people who've died, you found a hole to hide in. You're such a fucking coward."
Her hand trembled, but the gun didn't move. Her finger was tight on the trigger.
"Uh," I siad clearin' my throat and striding painfully forward, "Miss Cara, not that I have compunction against vengeance or whatever, but, uh," I gestured to the barrels, "gunpowder." I waved to the large cage of alchemic mixes marked 'volatile' and pointed to the crate of grenades Temjun had begun to lean on, "maybe just beat him to death instead?"
Didn't know what he'd done to deserve it, and I didn't mean to ask. Sometimes a gal just had to execute a little revenge.
She gave me a look, eyes moving to the side like I was speakin' elven.
"He sold us out," she said coldly, the barrel of my gun lowerin' and relief plain on the fat man's face, "Mister Temjun, could I trouble you to hold him down while I beat his fat, fucking head in?"
Well damn.
I assumed by 'sold us out' she meant that the pudgy, poorly groomed bastard was a part of whatever betrayal got most of her company killed and her in that rotten lab beneath the manor. If a man's word put me in that kind of predicament, I'd cut his tongue out, before I really started hurtin' him.
The big man didn't seem to need any more encouragement than that. He just handed me his hammer, wich I immediately dropped, fuck that thing was heavy, and he swept the greasy little traitor up in a hug fit to make a mana bear cry.
"Please, I didn't have a choice!" He wailed, his voice growin' even shriller as Temjun put him to the vise.
"They never do, snitches I mean." Met plenty enough in my time in the Imperial Prisons. A man willin' to talk to the guard, to piss on that one shred of decency common between the worst in this world, that was the lowest kind of evil.
"I'm sorry," he cried again as Cara, her hands empty and her face grim, advanced on him. She wore anger like a funeral shroud, black and thin and certain as the grave.
"Sorry won't spare Anita from the rope, Cordileone. Sorry won't un-rape Suki." She punched him, her fist like the hammer of a blacksmith. It smacked into the pudgy flesh around his cheek, and when she drew it away, blood followed, "Sorry save either of them from the put."
Wham, the wet impact of flesh on flesh, "Sorry won't let Anders see his son again."
Wham.
Damn, what a thing to wake up to, and I hadn't even been drinkin' this time.
While I was fit to watch this play out, gods knew Cara deserved a little catharsis, the Captain didn't agree. Pesky morals.
"Enough." She said, her voice like the crack of a whip, "Cara, I will not stand idle while beat this man to death! It's murder, bald and plain."
"It's not murder," Cara snarled, "it's an execution for crimes. As the last surviving non-commissioned officer of the Murkwater guard, I sentence this streak of yellow shit it-"
"Wait!" Pleased Cordileone around a mouthful of blood and broken teeth, "the Sussr Station!" he cried, as if that random bit of-
Wait, Sussr Station? Wasn't I supposed to find something like that? I fumbled in my coat for the crumpled and blood stained mission bill from the guild. I tuned the brewin' conflict between the women folk out and did my best to read around the stains.
Objectives:
- Discover the cause of the incident at Murkwater Leviathan Processing Camp.
- Destroy any active threats in the vicinity.
- Secure the Sussr Station and reestablish contact with Hunters Guild and Imperial agents
Sub-Objectives:
- Locate and destroy any animating elements in vicinity of objective location if able.
- Recover surviving High Value personnel.
- Minimize destruction of Imperial assets and equipment.
Oh well sure enough. Honestly I'd pretty much forgot all the shit the Guild and the Empire had hired me to do around the time I saw the fuckin' demon summoning in the mayors manor. Hell, I had completely forgot I was gettin' paid for this.
Almost made my gapin' wounds, broken bones and severed tentacles sting a little less.
Almost.
"Oh uh, hey-" I cut in as an argument between Cara and Captain Margarette went from simmer to boil.
"No I will not! You can shove your notions of civility right up your silved dusted, leathery old-"
"Shut the fuck up!" I snapped, the words echoin' in the silence of the room. The whole place fell into a hush as everyone looked at me. Even Cordileone, who had been blubberin' in Temjun's grip.
"Sorry," I said clearin' my throat, "why don't we three go outside and have a talk instead of this, hmm?" I asked, and it was right then I knew I was actin' odd. Maybe the knocks to the head and the horrific near death had left an impact.
Since when did I ever want to 'have a talk'?
Oh well. I wasn't a boy anymore. I'd grown, and that was a good thing, right?
Captain Margarette and Cara both nodded, the latter still spittin' mad and the former merely relieved.
As we exited the armory proper, Vin and the mute girls followed behind. Temjun meanwhile too his charge to the far corner of the room, and sat. Real gently he dropped the man to his knees and then kicked him over with one massive boot, the same way mama cat might flip her kitten from her teat to keep the babe from sucklin' on too long.
Then he pressed a boot to the Southern's back and started a quiet hum, just to himself.
Huh.
I blinked away the scene and followed after Cara and Margarette.
As I stepped between them I felt a little of the Apothecary provided vitality in me wane. I was a tired man, a broken man, and I was not long from bein' a dead one if things kept up. More realizations, more truths I'd denied tried to bubble up, but I just pushed them down into the nothing inside.
There, chow on them Lady of the Deep. You can have a steady meal of everythin' keepin' me from the light.
I took a deep breath, and I felt a bit of strength, real strength, flow back into me.
"Alright," I said, "Cara, what's your grievance with that man?"
"He's a traitor," she spat, her voice low, and she pointed a finger at the door. It shook with barely contained rage, "he's a lying, scheming, son of a bitch," she growled, her eyes narrowin', "he's the reason the Guards attempt to stop the mayor's madness failed. That rat is responsible for the deaths of half the people in Murkwater."
Ah, that'd explain the animosity.
"Okay then we better kill him-"
"No!" snapped Margarette.
"After we make use of him."
"No that's even worse, how can you use a person like a tool and then just toss him away, Roche?"
I shrugged, "It ain't hard. Let's not forget what you done to me." I said, a cold smile on my shelled lips as I tapped the command rune she'd forcibly passed on, "that was just as cold, if a bit less cruel."
Cursin' people with responsibility for the rest of their lives was a bit different than a bullet to the brain, to be fair. Still, it was still a raw enough deal to warrant a bit of venom on my part.
She pursed her lips, her eyes darkening a bit at my words.
"Do you mean his mention of a Sussr Station?" Margarette asked slowly, "to call for help? Rather than executing your suicidal plans with the wards? Could we rely on this traitors knowledge instead?" There was a bit of hope in that last question.
Was the idea really that bad?
Nah.
"He's... Probably telling the truth about being able to use it. He was always a coward, not a liar," she bit her lip, "and he was a guard in the station, before the mayor's pet mage had it shut down, just before the purges."
Margarette sighed, her hands wringing at her side as she thought, then, she looked to the woman across from her, "Alright Cara, I understand your need for revenge," she said, her face grim, "and you're ruthless pragmatism Roche. We need to make hard decisions, but killing this man, right now or shortly after he is of use, I won't stand for that. He isn't the mayor, no any of those who directly harmed us."
I shrugged, "Fine by me," I said, "Hang him later, then. That good Cara?" She nodded slowly, and I noticed her thumb, carefully rubbin' a ring I hadn't noticed before. Likely she was more than friends with at least one of them names she listed. I could sympathize.
Loss was a bitter, and terribly common thing in this new world.
"As soon as we are away from here, we hold a trial at sea. That's legal, yes?" She asked. I shrugged, and looked to Margarette, who gave her own.
"Sure. Yes, as an Imperially licensed Captain I can," the old woman cleared her throat and nodded, "but let us focus on using our last lifeline, shall we?" She pointed to the door, "If that man can show us how to activate that station, and we can send a message to Augustus' Hope, maybe all these bleak measures we've come to won't be necessary, maybe..."
She drifted off, eyes glassy and distant.
For all her strength, I could tell Captain Margarette was frayin' with the rest of us. Only she was a touch better at hidin' the hurt. The benefit of experience, I guess.
"Well okay, let's torture a snitch then.”