Lilyth
We didn't get any more sleep that night. We were all too rattled by the encounter with Mantopter. Still… a few hours of the four of us just cuddling together was a good enough substitute.
‘I can never decide whether this keen hearing of yours is a blessing for us or a curse,’ Caei laughed.
‘Yes,’ I replied flatly, causing my Dark Sorceress to giggle and kiss me.’
Okay. We didn't just cuddle afterwards.
Still, all the good things had to come to an end, and after a fairly early breakfast we started to prepare for our trip to Kirsee’s store. During the night, Savri managed to figure out how to connect the drones to her Interface via the utilities menu and would be able to provide us with a bird's eye view.
‘We have half an hour of flight on each,’ she explained. ‘They are powered by fairly high-class mana crystals I have never seen before. Compact, but with a capacity of one ten times their size.’
‘So… that's a no on replacements,’ Deirdee sighed.
‘Nooope,’ Sav yawned. ‘We can recharge them a few times though.’
‘I thought drones are supposed to be disposable,’ I mused. ‘But those seem to be using power sources worth half the city.’
‘There are two possibilities. First, and one that will probably let me sleep better at night, is that those are just issued to special forces, which those guys definitely are.’
I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.
‘The other is that this is a cheap power source for them?’
Sav nodded with an unhappy expression.
‘It is a likely one too, since the power charger crystal is one of those too, I think. I plugged the battery from our last radio to it and, I assume, it fully charged it without losing barely any stored power. The light went from blinking to constant at the very least.’
‘The charger for my controller worked like that, so I agree with your assessment,’ I laughed.
Then Savri said something I couldn't believe I was hearing.
‘I want to give one of the drones to you, Lilyth.’
‘Sure, I’ll be ha- Wait. What?’
‘I want you to operate one of the drones,’ she repeated.
‘But I’ve never flown one.’
‘You played video games. That's close enough. Well… not really, but at least you understand some of the principles.’
‘But can’t you operate both of them?’
‘No. You’ll see why soon enough.’
She then walked me through the process of setting up the link through the [Access External Networks] Interface option. Once I was done I felt the drone right there at the edge of my mind. I sent an Activate command to it and a second view window opened in vision showing me what the drone was seeing which was me and Sav. The bewildered expression on my face was quite hilarious to look at.
What the fuck.
I tried taking a step forward, misjudged it and fell flat on my face. Seeing that happen both in the first and third person was confusing as fuck.
‘I see you found the problem,’ Savri laughed while helping me get up.
I cut the connection and began massaging my hurting face.
‘Let me take care of that,’ she said and cast [Soothe Pain] and [Lesser Healing].
I spent the next few minutes, not nearly enough time, but what could you do, familiarising myself with the drone controls. Then I poured mana back into the charge crystal, which took
‘Out of curiosity,’ I began, ‘Why not keep this one as a spare?’
‘Normally I would, but I think we can use an extra pair of eyes in the sky for this. Plus having a second person with at least cursory knowledge on operating those will never hurt.’
I had no counter argument to that.
We used the drones sparingly on our way to Kirsee’s, keeping them in large bags between each use. No need to alarm the populace by our heavily-armed party carrying creepy skulls with us. Fortunately, unless the cunts knew how to turn invisible the way was clear. For once things were looking up for us, which would be the perfect time for Mister Murphy to come pay us a visit. And this time around… well… he was driving a filled sewage truck and had an industrial fan at the ready. Funny, how there are so many different ways to say that the situation, which was already fucked beyond any recognition, was about to go South real fast, right?
Kirsee's store was shockingly non-workshop-like. A wooden countertop, a few displays of mana crystals and some doodads I didn't even have a remote idea what they were.
The proprietor herself turned out to be an attractive young elf with fiery red hair, orange eyes with red markings, similar to those Aki was sporting under them.
Fae blood?
‘Welcome, friends,’ she said with a slightly desperate smile that seemed to say there were more of us than she usually gets customers in a month. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Few things actually,’ Ren said, almost causing dollar signs to appear in engineer’s eyes.
Maybe two.
We decided to start with something simple so Deirdee unslung her magitek carbine and placed it on the counter.
‘I found this while exploring and it is pretty banged up. I was wondering if you can fix it and how much it would cost.’
We figured it would be a nice little icebreaker. Especially if we agreed to pay any price Kirsee cited. The Viscount agreed to cover all the costs of this trip, so what did we care?
‘While exploring?’ Kirsee asked, surprised. ‘It takes some guts to go through places that contain old mag-’
Realisation dawned upon her.
‘You guys are the Protectors of Ror-Bhyk, right?’ she asked in disbelief. ‘You must have found this when cleansing that pocket of quiet, right?’
We got promoted it seems. Also the price probably went from highway robbery to “budget airline hidden extras”.
‘Yup,’ Deirdee confirmed, which made Kirsee giddy like a school girl.
She took the carbine into her hands as if it was a sacred relic and began examining it.
‘Lots of weathering,’ she muttered. ‘I gather this thing was lying in the open?
‘Not quite,’ I answered. ‘We found it in a forest under a tree. The poor fuck who used it got eaten by a tree if you can believe it.’
She looked at me to see if I was joking, but seeing I was deadly serious became slightly greenfaced, gulped and returned to examining the gun.
‘I will need to take it apart to see if there is any internal damage, but first let me establish make and model. The reason for that is that magitek gear can be prohibitively expensive to repair. This is due to some items either being custom made or limited production runs. This is true regardless of the age of an item. Truth be told, modern items are more likely to be limited runs than old Imperial models. Now… I can manufacture spare parts for everything, but custom ones will take both more time and money since I will possibly need to reverse engineer them and import specific materials.’
So far it makes sense.
‘Do you have any estimates on how old the gun is?’
We looked at each other and shrugged.
‘The gun found its way into the forest within the past five hundred years,’ I answered. ‘Would guess between two and three hundred. Not sure if it narrows it down.’
‘It does actually,’ Kirsee smiled. ‘If your guess is right it is either a late Imperial model or an early post-Fall one. Pray it is the former. Post-fall models weren't that great with standardisation due to non-existent supply lines.’
She took out a large dusty tome from below the counter, opened it at an earmarked page. She then began to look the gun up and down.
‘Ah! There it iii-’
She dropped the carbine as if it suddenly turned scalding hot.
‘Hey!’ Deirdee shouted in indignation.
‘I’m sorry. I cannot fix this gun for you.’
‘But why?’ the former assassin asked.
‘It is against the rules of my order to even discuss items made by this maker. If I were to give you advice, throw that carbine into the river and forget you ever had it. Bad things happen to people with their items.’
Their?
My fuckery senses began tingling.
I looked caught Caei’s gaze and pointed to her carbine with my chin.
She laid it on the countertop.
‘Is this another of “their” items?’
Kirsee began to answer something but her words quickly turned to coughs. A black spot appeared on her cheek.
‘Umm… your face…’ I stammered. ‘Is everything okay?’
The spot began turning into a hole and through it I saw the engineer's teeth getting covered by caries and then just… rotting away.
WHAT THE FUCK!
Kirsee coughed out something that sounded like “help me” and tried to extend her right arm towards us but black flakes of rotting flesh began to fall from it almost immediately dissolving into nothing. Before the movement was even half-way done naught remained but black bone which quickly began turning to dust. Same thing must have been happening to Kirsee’s legs as her pitiful form collapsed behind the counter, sparing us the pitiful view of her final moments.
I heard Savri trying to move forward, but Phosi stopped her.
‘Don’t. People just don’t spontaneously rot away.’
‘Correct!’ someone with a smooth voice said behind us. ‘Ten points to the Sconryoll!’
My first though was:
Wait… Didn't Nyx say that Sconryolls are insanely obscure?
The second, which took me a moment to process:
I heard no one enter or appear. “Not the top of our list of concerns”, eh Sav?
We all quickly turned around, Deirdee and Caei grabbing their guns from the counter first, and saw a silver-haired young woman, I wouldn’t guess she was a hair over twenty-five, sitting on one of the cases, kicking her legs and studying us with her cold amber eyes that shone with icy blue light. She was wearing a black loose tanktop and skirt, as well as leather spiked bracers, a choker, black-and-white thigh highs socks and combat boots. If not for the fact she has just murdered an innocent woman I wouldn’t have found out-of-place in one of those edgy death metal bands.
We all drew our weapons and pointed them at her.
She waved to us and with a smile said:
‘Hiya, I’m Persephone!’
Another Earthling?
‘Run,’ I heard Ereshkigal say with a hint of… Was that fear?
What could make the goddess of Death afraid?
Persephone disappeared from her vantage point.
‘Where’d she go?!’ Sav shouted, as we desperately began looking for our assailant around.
Suddenly, I felt hands wrap around my chest and heard Persephone whisper into my ear:
‘Tell the Bitch-Queen of the Dead that running will do you no good.’
HOW DID SHE HEAR THAT?
The touch then lifted and Persephone reappeared on the display case with an innocent smile on her face.
‘Wh-what do you want?’ I managed to ask.
‘For now… a chat,’ the woman said, the smile never leaving her face. ‘Then we’ll see.’
Savri fired her gun at her, but the magical projectile just went through Persephone’s body as if it wasn’t there and burned a hole in the shop’s wall.
‘Nice try, Daughter of Malika,’ she laughed. ‘I wouldn’t do that again though. There are people on the streets and you wouldn’t want to hurt them by accident, now would you?’
‘W-who… wh-what are you?’ Aki asked.
‘I told you, my name is Persephone,’ she replied to my wife as if she was speaking to a child. ‘As for what I am… you have recently visited the place where my poor mother had been imprisoned for millenia before that foolish girl Lendaria freed her.’
She walks…
‘This would make me your cousin, I think. This shit has always confused me. Our family tree is quite intricate, you see.’
‘Why reveal yourself now when until now you were content just watching us?’ I asked, desperately trying to stall for time.
‘Good question. It is your fault in a way. You were the one who blabbed to Ereshkigal about me. Though, the deciding factor was you making your way here.’
Persephone pointed at where Kirsee stood just moments before.
‘This one was about to provide you with answers or at least enough information to guess some of them. I have no doubt you will be able to dig them up in other ways, or knowing you stumble blind into them…’
That does sound more like us.
‘... but that will take you time and, for now, we are content with just stalling you.’
‘Why not just kill us?’ Aki asked.
‘Isn’t it obvious, coz? It is because of you. Despite your… dubious allegiances we think you may still be of some use to us. Whether you realise it or not. Why kill people who can help you? Who already helped you personally? You see… one of the women trapped in that obelisk… that was me. Luckily, you didn't strike me first so I was able to escape while you were killing my poor sisters.’
Fuck.
‘No hard feelings, by the way. I got captured thanks to their ineptitude and I spent enough time in that obelisk to develop one hell of a grudge. Fair warning - if you ever meet dear old Mom, she might not be this lenient about that particular issue. Mothers, you know.’
I wanted to ask her why she was blabbing so much, but perhaps getting her to shut up was not the best of ideas. In fact…
I briefly activated the [Swiftness of the Wind] and threw Luna at Persephone’s head. She cocked her head to the side, dodging the strike and causing the knife to embed itself into the wall. I quickly resummoned it into my hand. With this bitch, I wasn’t sure how much I could trust Luna’s indestructibility.
‘Rude,’ Persephone threw me an annoyed glance. ‘Where was I…’
She dodged that. She actually dodged that. She didn’t let it hit her like she did with Savri’s gun. Meaning…
I summoned Ereshkigal’s powers. The world became grey with Persephone shining in it like a crimson beacon. The enormity of her Sins was too much for me to handle so I tuned it out. Ere’s sword materialised in my right hand and four wings sprouted from my back.
I leapt towards Persephone, who, terrified, flew to the side making me crash through the wall.
‘Run!’ I shouted towards the rest of my companions and resumed my assault at the bitch.
She kept dodging my strikes by flying out of their way, in the process of which we completely demolished Kirsee’s storefront, but I could see that she was on the defensive. So, hoping it would work in this form, I reactivated the [Swiftness of the Wind] and lunged at her.
Persephone clearly didn’t expect the increased speed and I actually managed to cut her on the cheek as she was too slow to dodge.
‘Aaargh,’ she shouted. ‘This hurt, you bitch!’
Her eyes grew black and I felt immense pain in my right shoulder as my arm was blown away from it in an explosion of Rot.
My limb fell on the floor where it was immediately consumed by the living decay.
‘I was going to do this regardless, but this changes things, you know, Lilyth of Terra,’ she spat at me. ‘You, my friend, are just too dangerous to leave you running around unchecked especially if you manage to recover from your ordeals. So…’
I could sense power gathering around her. At the same time two arrows from Ren’s bow impacted Persephone in the stomach.
‘FUCK!’ she shouted in pain, but the power flow didn’t diminish.
Realising I had one last chance to end this I drew from Ereshkigal’s essence and channeled it into the stump of my right arm, growing one of pure death and once again materialising her sword in it. Feeling the insane strain of what I was doing, I looked back at my loved ones, smiled and launched my final assault.
Aki
Despite her desperate plea for us to run, we all stood there rooted in place when Lilyth began her assault at Persephone.
NO! NO! NO!
I would have chided her for recklessness, but… I didn’t think there was any other way to proceed. It was too desperate to let Persephone just blab away standing there fully at her mercy.
It was only when Lilyth actually managed to draw blood and lost her arm for the effort when we were broken out of our stupor. Ren immediately aimed her bow at the bitch and actually managed to strike her too.
YES! Divine weapons can hurt her!
I then remembered my blades were also of Divine nature and readied myself to join the fray when the room grew deadly cold. I saw a new limb sprout from the stump on Lilyth’s shoulder, one of pure void just like her wings. She turned around towards us, smiled and dove towards Persephone like a bird of prey. The birch responded by disappearing from where she was, appearing behind Lilyth and striking her in the back with an open palm. I fully expected the love of my life to fall to the ground or begin to rot, but instead she just disappeared.
No!
‘That’s one!’ Persephone spat with a vindictive tone.
She then disappeared again just a heartbeat before a powerful shot from Ren pierced the air in the place she was. She materialised next to the half-harpy and struck her in the stomach with a sideways cut of her hand, making Rennie vanish.
No!
‘Two!’ Persespone roared. ‘Any more takers?!
This was answered by Caei who, likely for the first time ever, used her [Sanguikinesis] to take control of the blood coming out of Persephone’s wounds and used it to form a [Sanguine Lance] floating in the air.
‘Interesting,’ Persephone muttered and shifted behind Caei, knocking her off her feet with a low kick and into nothingness.
‘Three!’
‘NO!’ I shouted and lunged at the cunt who took all my three wives from me.
Persephone just smiled at my effort, but it was cut short by the liquid form of Phosi wrapping around her. The bitch just shook her head, disappeared from where she was and appeared right next to where she just stood. Not even bothering to feign a strike, the cunt just flicked her wrist and Phosi was gone.
‘Four,’ she sighed and then moved in front of Savri, punched her in the Thorax and followed up with a kick to Deirdee’s head.
I was left alone.
‘Five. Six.’
Filled with despair, I resumed my charge only to be met with a punch to my chin which caused my teeth to rattle.
The last thing I heard was:
‘Seven.’
Lilyth
I found myself standing on a beach next to a blue-and-orange deciduous forest, all of my powers extinguished. My legs buckled under my weight and I fell to my back, almost immediately losing consciousness.
It was evening when I woke up. The sun was disappearing behind the horizon resulting in one of the most glorious seaside sunsets I have ever seen. Still… there was no time to enjoy the scenery. I had to figure out where I was and what had happened to my friends. I could only hope that they were okay.
Nyx?
No answer.
Ere?
The only response was a terrifying silence.
Fearing the worst I checked if my interface was still functional, and to my pleasant surprise it was. My health indicator was looking like a Christmas tree and I had a near lethal level of Shadow contamination, but I was otherwise fine. I was also still a Kitsune, which I viewed as a good sign, but I was kinda iffy about testing if I could still use magic. Still… I had to know. I tried casting the [Gust of Wind] but nothing happened.
Nothing happened.
Fuck.
My desperate hope that I was out of mana were dashed when the wind changed and an all-too-familiar nutty smell reached me.
Zalikh, I realised to my despair.
Well… fuck.
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