A Journey of Black and Red

Tonight, my sire sits on a new throne in the stone workshop as I come in from my bedroom, servant in tow. The unceasing noise of his servants clearing rubble must have bothered him, because he gestures and the sounds… stop.

I do not let myself react. Casters have long realized that sound is carried by air, and interfering with said air will silence even the most dire of thunderstorms. I was led to understand that such an undertaking requires fine-tuned control. I knew that he could call on immense power, and it also appears that he knows how to use a scalpel just as well as a hammer.

“You may rise, Ariane.”

Nirari’s voice is as smooth as caramel. It belongs in a boudoir somewhere, drinking tea and whispering amusing witticisms. I am not surprised that my foolish mortal self would fall for him.

I stand back up from my respectful bow while Violet remains prostrate. I was thankfully given a hastily made white linen dress of strange make which leaves my arms and shoulders free while wrapping around my neck. I look like an exotic dancer posing as a Roman Vestal.

Ah, I should not be so judgmental. They worked in a hurry and I would rather wear this than the grisly remains of my previous bloodstained dress. I did not realize yesterday that I was one thin thread away from revealing entirely too much breast. A dreadful proposal in the present company.

“I did not expect to see you so soon. Fate has a way to set us on a collision course when we least expect it. Do you not you agree, little warrior princess?”

“So it would seem,” I politely reply.

“I considered visiting you and having you join our cause. It is a grand one, a task that has been in the works for a millennium. The work of an epoch, soon to be completed.”

“Why did you not, then?”

“Because our foe tends to go after my servants and tools as soon as I turn my back,” he explains with obvious annoyance, “Only my financial assets remain untouched and only because she, too, relies on the Rosenthal to manage her wealth.”

“She?” I ask immediately as would be expected from someone who does not know of Semiramis.

I am in luck, because my sire is so absorbed in his own speech that the deception is taken as an invitation to continue.

“My mother. The greatest witch who ever lived and an extraordinary woman. She made me what I am. She made all of us.”

He returns his attention to me.

“You remind me of her sometimes. It takes a certain mentality to never give up, to constantly search for ways to succeed regardless of the circumstances. Of course, she was more… hungry. The world then had even less sympathy for weakness than it does now.”

He pauses as he mulls over some distant memory. As long as he speaks about himself, he does not ask me too many questions and that suits me just fine. I dare not think of what would happen if he knew that I had already met the one of whom he speaks.

“I think I loved her, once.”

“What changed?” I ask.

That was a mistake.

Master… no, my sire deploys his aura and he crushes me like an insect. I am slammed into the ground as if by a wall of cold and disdain. It does not even feel like aggression. He is just disciplining a wayward child.

The world turns blank under the tremendous pressure. My mind slows. My eyes take in a small spot of ground on the distance, every bump, every shift in color of the grey stone, simply because I cannot turn my head. A strange sense of pressure forces my jaws shut. Nothing exists, only this small expanse of rock, Violet’s heartbeats and the biting cold.

As soon as it came, the punishment stops. The abyssal pressure disappears, and I wonder in disbelief why the room has not frozen over.

“A daring line of questioning, Ariane.”

I nod because I do not trust my voice at the moment.

“What should matter to you is why I oppose her. You must have guessed.”

I know she wants to be a goddess and he wants to eat her before she succeeds, yet the knowledge is trite because it only scratches the surface. Their animosity stems from an irrepressible gap between them, the same that exists between him and I.

We are too alike.

I do not know how much of my drive is his and how much I inherited from my human self. I believe that I would have been happy making a family, creating successful companies and leading projects until the day I died without having to take on the world. My lack of arrogance was most likely wisdom. I knew the scope of what I could conquer with the limited time I had. Those considerations are gone now along with my mortality. We Devourers are not creatures of power, but of conquest. There is always another bigger prey.

“She is your last great rival.”

“Correct,” the ancient king answers, pleased, “only she still stands in the way of complete dominion. When I consume her, I will become a living god and achieve true immortality. No coalition, no Order, not even the endless tides of mankind’s armies will be an obstacle. Even the sun’s deadly embrace will fail to destroy me.”

His gaze grows distant. His expression turns thoughtful and what terrifies me is that the dream he speaks of comes with no animation, no gesture nor smile. He recites the words like an automaton, as if they had lost any meaning to him and he was just going through the motion. This terrifies me more than his aura ever could.

“Imagine a world at peace, guided by a benevolent hand towards a unified goal rather than mired in petty squabbles as it is now. So many resources are wasted on meaningless pursuits while we could achieve so much as a unified people under my wise rule. Mortals, mages, vampires, all working towards common purposes for the benefit of all, for who better than one who has lived so long can envision so much? Who has a better long-term goal than he who will live to see it? It will be our golden age and you, too, can be a part of it.”

“You will not be satisfied,” I almost spit, caution thrown to the winds.

My sire shows no anger despite my challenge.

“Of course not, and neither will the mortals. We are designed to expand and fill the world with our progeny, yes? Luckily, I have a way to circumvent this difficulty. Are you perhaps familiar with the latest advances in magic?”

The information clicks in my mind.

“The other realms.”

“Quite so. If there is one, then there are more. It will take some time to find them. I do not mind. Time is what I have.”

Conquest without an end. Endless wars. Unending subjugations. Until he tickles something too powerful and our entire civilization is wiped out from an uncaring universe.

That is not the worst. The worst is that even if Nashoba and Amaretta’s prophecies prove correct and I manage to stop both him and Semiramis…

What will prevent me from doing the same?

As he said, we are alike.

My silence affords me a minute grin from the seated king.

I do not lower my guard. He may be pleasant now, yet the steel below the surface is ever present and I would be a fool to think him in high spirits.

“Enough banter. I have not yet decided what to do with you, little princess. Until I do, you will make yourself useful. I have a task for you.”

I perk up. Thinking that far in the future is a waste of time when I am not even sure I will survive the night. Yet another problem for future Ariane, may luck favor her.

“Did you notice a corridor with a large pool of dried blood on your way here?” he asks.

“I have.”

Even in this relatively cold temperature, the stain has started flaking and giving off a heavy, rancid stench.

“You will clear it to its end then return to me. You do not have my permission to feed until you do so.”

“I understand.”

Frustration wells up until I force myself to calm down. I expended a lot of vitality putting myself back together. I should be fine for another day or two.

Maybe.

I remember that restraining the blood supply is a common, if risky, method of control. Constant Thirst is not conducive to deep thought and planning.

Nirari dismisses me with a casual gesture and I leave from the door behind me, Violet in tow. We arrive at the four-way corridor. The stone workshop is at our back, my ‘bedroom’ and the way out to my left and my destination forward. Tan men and women attack stones with bars and pickaxes, sometimes casting a hesitant glance in my direction as if unsure of the proper protocol. When I do not react, they go back to their labor with renewed energy.

The corridor beckons.

I stop at the edge of the pool of blood and turn to Violet by my back. I know that she communicates via hand gestures, but I do not know their code. We will have to work the old-fashioned way.

“I will ask you a few questions. Nod for yes, shake your head for no. Do you understand?”

The servant fidgets nervously, face suddenly paler. She quickly relents when my expression turns cold.

“Did someone die here?”

Nod.

“Was that person one of your numbers?”

Nod.

“Did you see how it happened?”

Shake.

“Do you know what killed him?”

Hesitant nod. I need to be more specific.

“Was he killed by a trap?”

Nod.

“Was this trap magical in nature?”

Frantic nod. I suspected that it might be the case given the obvious camouflage, but I was not quite certain. I still cannot pierce the veil of illusion marking whatever the corridor truly contains, a sign of professional work as most mirages unravel once their presence is made obvious.

Hmm.

I suppose that time has finally come for some real-life application of my studies.

“Violet, do you know of the tool room? The one with smithing equipment?”

Nod.

“I want you to get me a rune engraver, a long bar, and a few plates, if you find any.”

Her charcoal eyes gaze at me for a full second before she answers and in them I see something I had not expected: relief. I remember that she was tasked to help me. Perhaps she expected me to use her as live bait? That would be wasteful and slovenly.

I consider her a bit more as her retreating back turns into the corridor. She and her companions have very angular traits from a race I do not recognize. They are not cattle. Does this mean that my sire has a domain somewhere from whence he pulled them, or did he ‘borrow’ a contingent from a Dvor lord? My understanding is that both he and his mother spend a significant amount of energy and resources destroying each other’s fiefs. It might just be that some have started to survive. I fear the implication.

I turn back to the empty alley and pick a few pebbles that I throw forward. After five or so, I have thoroughly explored the boundaries of the illusion. The false image of normalcy starts six or seven paces away, just after the limit of the bloodstain. It curves outward slightly due to the enchantments being placed on the wall. This will make my attempt easier.

Violet returns in short order with everything I asked, including a half-torn iron plate covered in fuzzy red rust.

“Block your ears,” I tell the woman. She obeys without hesitation.

I grit my teeth and apply the carver against the plate. Soon, the abominable shriek of tortured metal covers even the clangs of the excavation. I finish tracing and inspect the results.

Loth taught me how to disrupt spells when we worked on his shield breaker spheres. My construct is quite complex and shows the Dvergur runes for disrupt, reveal, and unmake. The reveal sigil takes the central position for an illusion-specific countermeasure.

I prick my right wrist and trace the drawing with black blood, muttering in the sharp, gravelly tongue of my old friend. They soon shine blue and eager.

I fling the thing until it lands at the point I identified as a nexus.

At first nothing happens. Then the air shimmers and the color of the stones beneath shift from marble-white to obsidian-black. Rather quickly, a crackling circle of white bolts form in the air. It expands outward like a popping bubble.

The spell breaks with a clear chime and the spectacle before us changes entirely. Gone are the naked rock and sterile appearance. Complex glyph patterns now adorn the walls, centered around metal panes set in the very stone. Above, the strange yellow lines that provide illumination radiate with renewed ardor.

A few glyphs fizzle where the threshold used to be and reveal behind them a long metal pane with a horizontal slit.

Tacky.

“It appears that you were wrong, Violet, this is a mechanical trap,” I conclude.

The enticing scent of stark terror soon teases my nostril and I turn when I hear a light thump. The devoted servant is on her knees, forehead stuck to the ground.

“Rise. There will be no punishment this time.”

She springs back up like a puppet on strings, face filled with gratitude. I have no time for this. I need to escape quickly, or they will find ways to control me through pact or coercion. She is an enemy, albeit not a serious one, and I do not want to spend the effort to create bonds. She and her companions are clearly indoctrinated like the most dedicated Eneru subjects. I will treat her decently since I would not benefit from gratuitous cruelty, but I will kill her if she gets in the way.

Sensing my disdain, the woman lowers her head and I return my attention to the now unveiled corridor to come to an immediate and definitive conclusion: whoever did this was completely bonkers. Mad as a hare. And dangerous! It must have taken a hundred hours of work for a competent mage to design, create and install this deathtrap.

Even Jonathan would be impressed by the depths of paranoia involved in this project. I feel like whistling in appreciation.

Unfortunately, I will have to solve this Gordian knot and, who knows, perhaps I can escape that way and leave a few traps active?

I immediately start to inspect the defenses and I am once more grateful for the inhuman sight which allows me to decipher the defenses without getting closer. The first trap, the one that already claimed a victim, is a mechanism springing blades horizontally from both walls with a magical trigger based on perceived movement. I think it has a way to rearm itself too. There are also pressure-activated fire spells on the ground in case someone gets cute and decides to crawl across. The disarming mechanism on those is trapped too.

And this is just the first layer of defenses. There are two others, plus some contraption where the corridor angles connected to the metal pane of the blade trap. Oh well, at least this is interesting.

“You might want to move back and to the side, Violet.”

I turn to see her point to the side with some confusion.

“Move back and to the side,” I order. This time, she obeys without hesitation. Note to self, my sire does not cultivate the art of ‘insistent suggestions’ among his followers.

“Spiderwalk.”

I cast the spell in English as I need very little power. Nirari did not react to me using Likaean during the fight. Perhaps he did not recognize the tongue? In any case, I would rather not force my luck.

I crawl up the wall. If I were in my armor I could simply walk on the surface. Sadly, doing so in that dress would mean that my eyes would be covered instead of my unmentionables.

Once I am above one of the panels, I use the rune engraver to disarm the trap preventing access to the inner mechanism, then repeat the same thing on the other side. After I am done, I drop and take care of the fire spell on the ground.

Now for the mechanical one.

I see no obvious gap in the pane. Sometimes, when there is no point of ingress, you just have to make one.

I lean against the wall and raise my gauntlet.

“Stone breaker.”

This spell is specifically designed to break hard material in a small surface. I added it to my repertoire for out of reach metal locks and other annoying things I want to demolish from afar. It shares the ‘disrupt’ glyph with the reveal spell which is convenient since there are only so many runes that can fit in a gauntlet frame. The other three are opposition, shatter, and diamond.

A narrow purple ray emerges from my hand to hit the distant panel. The contraption rings like a broken bell.

A hidden panel in the far wall slides open and a giant quarrel that would belong on a Roman artillery piece emerges from its recess.

A ballista trap! How quaint!

The tip expands with a dreadful ‘clang’ mid flight. Instead of a standard head, the projectile has four blades in a cross pattern.

Fishing for volume, are we?

I grab the thing with ease as it passes by, only moving forward a bit on account of its tremendous weight. Whoever designed the bolt sacrificed power in the hope of achieving surprise. A human with excellent reflexes could dodge this.

I twirl the spear-like object and think. Only the mechanical trap is left. Now how would I go about getting rid of that one? I could use the bolt and the metal bar I requested to block the blade after triggering it, thus preventing it from rearming.

Or I could go the ‘Ariane’ way.

That sounds like more fun and would let me inspect the thing for future references. I dig my talons at the edge between stone and metal, plant my feet on the wall, channel as much Natalis essence as I can and pull.

The groan of forcefully deformed metal reverberates in the corridor and the sounds of excavation stop again. I grunt with the effort of pulling the panel open. It resists for a while, then something gives in and the whole thing comes loose.

I place the trap on the ground to inspect it, keeping well clear of the path of the blade.

The contraption is quite long. The cutting edge runs its length, kept in a state of tension by a lock triggered by a spell. A system of pulleys with a powerful enchantment reloads the trap after each use. I destroy the locking mechanism and the blade snaps out. Enchanted too! Someone was not taking any chances.

I dispose of the second trap the same way and realize that I am, in fact, having fun. Disarming traps is like solving a puzzle with the added stake of something unpleasant happening if you make a mistake. How exciting! The only thing missing is a little snack at the end.

I may be more Thirsty than I originally thought.

Oh well.

I turn to Violet who has been staring at me with some measure of amazement for a while now. She looks tasty. She is also forbidden, so I tear one of the blades off and go to the next trap.

This one is designed to let off a massive amount of electricity into its victim, and is coupled with a pit with some spikes at the bottom, including one made out of silver. This one is a one time only, so I trigger the electrical part from afar, then walk closer and jam a metal bar in the opening mechanism of the pit.

I think that someone who would only see the mechanical trap could consider crawling under, which would have triggered the flame spell, or rush through with some very powerful armor or a werewolf body and the second trap would have done them in no matter how sturdy they are. Well planned indeed.

The third one is interesting as well. I find small openings which could throw darts. I also notice not one, but two decoys meant to have someone come closer with an unknown trigger hidden behind a layer of chipped paint. I try to activate it with movement, by throwing a spell through it and even by dropping my metal bar in the middle of the construct.

Nothing.

On a hunch, I draw a decoy rune of blood on a stone and toss it. The corridor flashes at the presence of flesh and a strange whistle fills the air.

“Hmm?”

A disgusting, green cloud of acidic liquid is spat from the small holes, leaving behind an acrid stench.

The strange liquid eats into the stone.

Ah, if someone had managed to pass the first two hurdles through careful analysis, a close inspection of the decoys may have turned them to meaty soup. Charming. Whoever designed this is delightfully twisted. I want to take them by the collar and throw them through their own creation to see what remains at the end. After I had a little bite, of course.

Thirsty.

Casting takes comparatively little energy. The damage dealt by Malakim’s claws must have been more severe than I first assumed. Oh well. I can feed soon. I hope.

After another thorough inspection, I finally manage to reach the end of the corridor where the hidden crossbow remains concealed and look around the corner to find…

Another corridor filled with traps with a heavy bronze door at its end.

And, as my nose had informed me, a body in the distance. This one has remained here long enough to be ripe; it reeks atrociously. Violet, who had foolishly followed me without waiting for my go-ahead, pinches her nose under the horrible assault.

This man apparently triggered the first layer of trap if the metal bar skewering his chest is any indication. He wears a full robe in purple with a golden filigree, which either makes him a cultist or a clownish villain in some traveling circus. It is hard to tell, sometimes.

In any case, I am not working under these conditions. I quickly inscribe a few runes of air and flow on yet another stone, add a pinch of blood and voila, an improvised fan. The air progressively clears as I inspect this new intellectual delicacy. Alas, this one will be much easier to deal with.

It is designed to trap people in.

Our dear departed friend fell prey to it. Come to think of it, his body is past the first layer, therefore he must have been running for his life for inertia to carry his corpse that far. Truly, cultist cultisti lupus.

I find no hidden crossbow facing

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