Indel leads me deeper into the tunnel system.
“The Evokers have been etching their runes along the walls, and have not yet had time to stabilise them; the others are scattered about the compound. If we can trigger a cascade reaction, we will only need contend with the sentries aboveground, in the castle itself. There are but a few.”
And Mae’ll be safe in the dungeon, I’d wager. Okay. Let’s do it.
The scariest part is how easy it is. With Indel to direct me, we’re on the landing in no time, ready to hoof it up the stairs after we trigger the first rune — which is right before us, waiting for an attacker to foolishly charge into the complex.
As I ponder the best way to trip the trap, a creaking to my left snaps my attention away. Emerging from a side room is the shaggy white fur on the damned raccoon — Svelgi’s murderer; her red eyes lock directly on me. I send my hammer flying, but she ducks it on all fours, skittering up the slick wall to dodge my follow up blast of frost. She springs forward and tries to get her hands into my shoulders, but with my modified, supernatural reaction speed I catch her by the neck, her feet kicking uselessly against my chest as she dangles in the air.
I forge the mana into a glistening ice spike, but rather than set it free I hold it in my hand and drive it through her side. The faint glow of Restoration magic surrounds her. I stab again. The force of it drives her back so fast she gains momentum — momentum she uses to swing forward and wrap her thighs around my sides, breaking out of my hold and sending me against the wall. She takes stab after stab, healing it just as quickly.
We tumble to the floor and she surges forward. I’m expecting a bite, but instead find her shockingly soft lips against my own. “I gave your friend release,” she whispers, barely audible over the squelching of her flesh. “Release.”
The reminder of Svelgi is too much. I wrench her off me, the spike clattering to the ground, and throw her bodily down the tunnel. She bounces off the floor and slams against a rune — it’s only thanks to my enhanced reflexes that I turn and bundle Indel up the stairs before the wall of flame, ripping through the tunnel complex, burns us both alive.
In my arms, the Princess squeezes her neck against mine and almost sobs, “it’s not fair! How can any ask me to see a Goddess in motion and not have her? Please.” She kisses my neck, and it’s hard not to stop halfway up the stairs and give her what she wants.
Still, I keep my wits about me until we emerge into a flush kitchen with warmth spilling from the cookfire. All the benches are ice, yet the toasty (honestly, uncomfortable after I got used to the depths) room doesn’t melt any — doesn’t touch the long central bench, with half-skinned mammoth and generous cuts of raw sabertooth along it.
I take a bite of some gristly (just how I like it) boar meat and let the blood in my mouth urge me forward. Before I can open a wide double door, Indel puts a talon on my hand — for a second I’m about to pull her into me. “Let me scout ahead, love — they will trust me.”
I can’t deny it’s a good plan, as long as she keeps her bracer covered. But then, the Princess hardly looks out of place walking with her head high and her arms behind her back.
With eyes screwed shut I try and attach a bit of myself to Indel, and find I’m looking through her eyes and mine both. She walks prim and proper through the glacial palace. It’s far nicer up here than it was below — the hallways are richly carpeted, the walls decorated with tapestries and huge elephant tusks and old oak oars.
The Princess emerges into a sumptuous throne room dominated by a high dais, the carved ice throne waiting atop it like snow capping a mountain. Maddie paces before a table at the base of the platform, face screwed up in concern. “Thank the Gods,” she says, when she sees Indel. “I felt the ground shake; is everything alright?”
“There was an accident, but we are no worse for wear. Do not trouble yourself — I am merely here for a status report.”
Maddie nods, the relief visible as her shoulders slack. “Well, I’ve got Gertrude on the east gate, Alice on the west, Fallah on the north. And I have a good view of the south from up here,” she says, climbing the dais. Indel’s footsteps echo behind her. “Oh, plus Brilla and Ivandi out scouting, but I think they’re a lost cause-”
Indel and I notice it at the same time — Maddie’s eyes are fixed on the frosty alcove, watching Indel approach with suspicion. She spins around, lightning crackling in her hand, but the paralysis spell finds her just in time, her face forever frozen in cold accusation.
Indel pulls Maddie’s head back and drags a talon across her throat with one smooth motion, spilling her blood against the icy window.
She dispatches the other three sentries with a similar cold brutality. Seeing her kill so skillfully, and her own allies, for me… it stirs me. When she returns to the throne room, I can’t control my body’s reaction to her closeness; I slam her into the wall, bury my hands in her feathers, kiss her full and hard. More than ever before, Indel drives me genuinely out of my mind. The only thing I can think about is my hands, huge against her slim frame.
I feel Indel’s elation, but for once she has nothing to say, just stares up at me with eyes full of wonderment. Her hand has slipped into my pants now and it feels so good, so good.
The sudden agony of the spear tearing through my back is utter shock after the pleasure of Indel’s fingers. The spear passes right through me and narrowly misses the Princess. She squawks her fury and raises her hand to cast — but not in time. A golden mote of Restoration magic strikes her in the forehead and she collapses against me. How did the damned raccoon survive?
Wait, no. Mae. Covered in red. She walks toward us slowly, pulling another harpoon from her quiver. “Honestly, Hattie, fooling around with another girl? I thought you liked me.”
With the hole through me, Indel’s weight is torture, but I can’t bring myself to let her fall to the ground. I support her as I sink against the wall.
Mae is like a feral, avenging angel, every exposed patch of skin soaked in blood. I’m terrified.
“And after you made me cut off my own arm and both legs. Not very nice at all. You’re lucky I was able to reattach them.”
Gods. I should have thought to take her knife but… Gods. She’s amazing and terrible. She should be a vicious, conquering Queen. I’d lay down my life for her. Maybe I should just let her kill me here; an offering. Except, can I let her kill Indel too?
I won’t hurt Mae, I couldn’t do that. Maybe I could restrain her again? But how could I bring myself to fight her when she’s standing over me like that, bloody hair swaying softly across her face?
She’s too beautiful. You already know what your choice is.
I’m just about to hand myself over to Mae’s terrifying, blood-soaked hands when an arrow of grey and black fury throws her against the wall with an impact that shakes the palace.
Katarina hunches viciously over her. Dark bat wings have sprouted from her back, but I recognise the dark, long tangle of hair. It makes me think of a corpse. Her fangs are in Mae’s neck; she takes deep, gluttonous gulps, thrusting her spine back and forth as she swallows. Gods, she’ll drain her dry in seconds!
“Stop!” I scream. There’s no reaction.
Through the roaring, screeching pain of the spear in my side, I force myself to my feet and stagger forward. Black spots dance across my vision; I have to fight the urge to vomit, sure that keeling over will kill me.
“Katarina-” The agony is almost too much to be able to force the words out, but I manage another, “stop!” I should have saved my energy, for all the good it does. It’s like I haven’t spoken.
Finally, I stumble over to her and use the last reserve of my strength to tear her off Mae, whose eyes are fluttering in a semi-conscious daze. She turns on me, eyes fully black, and screeches her fury, lunging predator quick into my neck and plunging her fangs in like giant syringes. There’s a squelch, and a terrible pain in my neck.
And then no pain at all. The relief is such bliss that all I can do is collapse back onto the icy floor, and I don’t even feel it when the spear is pushed almost all the way out of my side. I’m aware that those gulping noises mean that she’s draining me as quickly as she did Mae, but I’m incapable of fighting. I give myself over to the relief of her venom-
A mote of gold strikes Katarina in the back of the head and she collapses against me. Mae drags her off. I actually feel the fangs pop out of my neck, and as soon as they do I feel a hell of a lot more myself.
I turn to find a group of eight mages standing in the centre of the throneroom, jacklighted. Nym is in the centre.
“Why didn’t you do something?” I demand, looking up at them from my place on the ground. Mae yanks the spear from my gut with a distant stab of pain and gets to work with her beautiful, wonderful Restoration magic.
“Um- well. She’s sort of our leader, so…” says someone in the middle of the pack.
“I was going to help when she attacked you, Hattie,” says Nym, “Only I couldn’t think of an illusion that could stop her.”
I sigh, push myself to my feet. Damn, it feels good to be uninjured.
“Nym,” I say, “you have got to get more creative with the illusions. Anyway, Mae’s on our side now, right?”
I turn to the small, blood-soaked woman and she dimples.
“Sure. I healed you, didn’t I?”
“Well then can you wake up Indel so she-”
“No need, my love!” She appears at my side, attaching herself to my arm. “I woke moments before the Restorationist dispatched the vampyr. Rest assured, I would have taken care of her myself in mere seconds. What can I do for you?”
I clear my throat awkwardly, feeling very much in love with Mae but also unable to control the physical reaction from having Indel, a woman I have been inside of, so close to me.
“Um, if you could just teleport back to the old Blaze base and get a bracelet, for Mae. Unless you guys have one?”
“Bracelets? We barely made it out alive!” Mailis’s voice is furious.
I turn to Indel expectantly to find her throwing a look of loathing at Mae, who smiles back, sweet as can be. “Go on, Princess,” Mae says. “Don’t you want to do the one thing that would actually make your crush happy?”
Indel frowns, but appears to decide to be the bigger person, clapping her hands together to teleport-
And going nowhere. I turn to see Mae, eyes wide, impaled by an icicle.
“Oh dear,” says the Princess, “I appear to have accidentally teleported an icicle into your heart instead.”
“No!” I swoop to catch her body as it falls.
“I’m okay!” Mae chuckles, throwing her head back in laughter. “Just a harmless prank.” But the next moment I’m cradling her corpse and she’s dead after all. Totally, horribly dead. What the fuck?
Nym taps my nose. “Creative enough for ya?”
I wrench her off her feet — she’s so light. “Nym!” I yell, so, so not in the mood. In return she kicks me in the chest, more annoying than anything.
“Enough!” Mailis shouts, climbing the dais and throwing her voice across the throne room. “Enough! You are all children. Little girls! Do you want to win?” A wall of confused faces meets her, and she claps her paws together, a high, sharp sound that pricks my ears up. “Do you want to win?!”
“Of course,” a humanoid girl with red scales across her cheeks answers for the group.
“Then stop fucking around!” The command in Mailis’s voice wavers as frustration makes it crack. “Orc, put the elf down.” For some reason, I do. For some reason my anger at Indel and Nym fades away, replaced by discipline. “Lock this fucking room down. Lock it down. Two on each door. We’re bunkering down until the other two exhaust themselves. Princess, keep an eye on the bat bitch. If she wakes up, tell her she’s not in char-”
She’s interrupted by a sudden stasis. We’re all stuck frozen, only able to listen as Tailina’s voice fills our minds.
“Attention students: there has been an unprecedented exploit — cheating, if we’re being honest. This will be expressly prohibited in all future games but, given it has already happened and I am, I hate to admit it, quite proud of the student responsible, we will allow it for the rest of the match, should any of you figure out how to do it.
“Oh, and to the two surviving members of Team Dawn, remember there is no shame in forfeiting a lost cause.”
Everything resumes; immediately Mailis is clutching her head in frustration. “Two Dawn members? Are they in the fucking castle? If they’re here we’re fucked, you don’t understand how much we’re fucked.”
“Calm,” the Princess says, climbing the rubble of Mailis’s collapse. “There are two scouts with no support, far from this base. I sent them to locate Hattie.”
“Okay, okay, okay. Good. Good. Then the doors. Guard the doors.”
“Another strategy might be in order,” Indel begins, as I focus.
I know Syrene’s exploit. But we both already used it, and that didn’t warrant an announcement from the Game Master. So what could she have done? What pushed too far?
And what can I do in exchange? Maybe I can find another point to patch in — bet I can wring more out of this.
“It is decided,” Indel calls, now sitting on the throne. “We shall prepare for a precision strike into the heart of Copper and turn their base to our advantage, and leave this base brimming with traps. Achillea will exhaust themselves clearing this empty fortress, while we await them in our citadel! First, Hattie, you must find a spot for us to teleport in.”
I can punish her for Mae later. But we can win this first.
“Keep me covered,” I say, sitting cross legged against the wall, closing my eyes to meditate.
I awake, floating, amidst smoke and ash. The entire hillside smolders, much like the Orc City. The once impregnable fortress is now a shattered fist of collapsed turrets, fires climbing like fleas. The gatehouse is in utter ruin, its portcullis burnt away. Out of the billowing smoke, Syrene emerges with her mouth tight and victory in her eyes. She walks slowly, firmly, a whitewood crossbow gilt with engravings in her hands.
Mistari, green scales hard to spot against the grass, staggers with a blade in hand, but Syrene meets her with a bolt of pink light from the crossbow. It rips through the Kothelli’s stomach, staggers her. The next bolt punctures her throat and sends her rolling, spilling colourful blood behind her.
Syrene’s inexorable march takes her towards the last unburnt cluster of trees, where the pigeon cowers behind Gelstra, spikes bristling.
“You won’t hurt her,” the alchemist growls.
Syrene’s face twitches in confusion before she puts two bolts through Gelstra’s chest. The pigeon falls and prays over the body, a soft cooing that Syrene pays no mind, dispatching her with a shot through the head.
Syrene turns slowly and stares right through me. At me. She sights the crossbow dead centre on my floating perceptions and jerks it up, as if to fire. She smiles.