Chapter 35
"The Abyssal Tea Party, Part 3"
Hannah walked the foggy hallways and turned her head around with a casual expression. Her scratched and bruised uniform clung to her with dirt from her time in imprisonment and left her forearms bare. She mumbled and rubbed her back where her claymore used to rest before it and her wrist-guards were confiscated by Alice before the tea party.
Where did she put them, hm? She better not have thrown them away, they´re custom-jobs after all and not the easiest to hide from those cranky old men back home. And I´m going to need them before carrying out the rest of my visit here…
The sound of a collapsed wall got her attention before she disregarded it like nothing and kept walking.
I need, my weapons back…
She seemed to have a relaxed face as she approached another door, this one with a carved in sign.
"Trash room"?
She raised an inquiring eyebrow and slowly opened it.
Huge piles of precious objects sat piled up in the chamber and up over the walls. Gold rods, gold coins, all kinds of jewelry thrown and blended together carelessly with a layer of dust over them. Silver rings and copper earrings, bracelets plated with sapphires and rubies the size of eyeballs. Several necklaces in various forms and shapes, one with a diamond that seems to be worth a fortune, cast aside on the floor like a piece of charcoal. Skulls with gold teeth leered silently back at her from the piles, most of it could be sold for a high price in any human settlement.
Even gold plated armor lay scattered around over the piles, property to commanders of city guards and officers. Swords with silver plated handles and jewelry engraved in their handles as testimony of mankind´s vanity in her eyes.
A couple of bodies in the room as well, buried to their necks in gold, some of them had a raised hand in silent prayers while the insides of their ragged robes contained as much jewelry and gold that they could carry. Mummified remains of scavengers blinded by greed before they met their maker.
Hannah ignored every coin and jewel and distraction in the chamber. She scoffed at the sight of a corpse with crushed teeth and jewels inside its mouth. Her attention remained on a huge chest in the middle of the treasure piles. She approached it and tried to open the lid. It was locked tight and a smug smile crept up in her face. She sat down on the lid and looked down at the numerous treasures in the room.
"It´s trash after all, which means that the content of this chest is the only valuable thing here."
A faint hiss moved above her from the ceiling along with a clinking of metal against stone.
She felt a distorted color of yoki above her and rolled out of the way as it crashed into the chest.
An awakened one of unidentifiable gender, trapped in a state of semi-awakening and a metallic frame of gears and bones, glared at her. Its torso, arms and head remained humanoid with a famished, thin body, resting in a clockwork contraction of old iron and bones. The lower half of its body ended into a single fleshy and organic appendage. It served as a tail with a set of claws along the sides of it, in the very end like a giant wasp´s stinger. The forearms showed scars of dismemberment and been reattached in the opposite direction, bending backwards while the mechanic legs clattered and allowed it a spider´s mobility with its four appendages and ticking gears.
The hands had assumed a half-finished awakened appearance with sharp claws protruding out from its fingertips. Scars decorated over its humanoid body and it had got its eyes sewn shut. Its maw went from ear to ear and displayed long snake fangs when it opened. Its tongue, an organic purple snake, came out from its maw and smelled the air. A small pair of golden slit eyes opened vertically across its head.
It whimpered while it clawed its scars and bit its elbows in a feeble escape attempt from the frame which dug into its thin body ruthlessly. It swayed its tongue and slammed its tail around, scattered the treasures with each swipe.
Hannah inhaled and sighed heavily with a bored gaze at it. Her perception gave away the being´s aura of a double digit, somewhere around the numbers of thirty to forty, over the distorted color merged into it. It proved not much of a challenge in its current state and not for her in her opinion.
The being sniffed the air with its tongue. Something wrapped around it caught her attention.
A silver key grafted into the flesh under the snake head that swayed in the air. It shimmered in the candlelight before it retreated into its maw.
Hannah laughed in her mind as she picked up one of the fancy swords from a treasure pile. She brushed off the thick layer of dust across the gold-plated blade against her knee.
If one locked chest means valuable, then a guarded locked chest would be invaluable.
She looked back at the being that prepared to engage in combat with her. She maintained a tricky smile while she raised her sword.
This Awakened wouldn´t even prove to be a challenge to her even if it had been in a good condition. She swayed with her blade and scoffed over the quality on it.
"Cheap toys… hopefully it won´t break too soon…"
It lashed out on its fake legs like a adder. She swung her sword with a sly smile in her face and let a short laughter escape her lips as she carved into its flesh in mid-leap.
22, Lena, nervously turned her head around while she kneeled by Grace´s side while they took a break in one of the hallways. She constantly had her hand on the sword handle and with quick hyperventilated breaths. Grace could in a way understand her anxiety. The fog that reached up to their waistline just seemed to cling to them with its persistent eerie thickness.
"So… are you an offensive or a defensive type?" Grace asked while she tried to break the compact silence around them.
Lena looked back at her for a moment to answer. She quickly glanced back in the hallway behind them with wide-open eyes and flickering gaze.
"Offensive… you?" She said.
"I don´t know… to be perfectly honest."
A raised eyebrow from Lena that didn´t provide any answer.
"How can you not know?"
"It´s simple really. No one ever told me what type I was…"
"Okay… in a fight, what´s the first thing that comes to mind?"
Grace couldn´t stop wondering how this suddenly felt familiar to her.
"Well, what do you think about?" Grace asked.
Lena turned her head towards Grace again, for a longer moment away from her anxious vigilance.
"I think about one thing… How to kill my opponents. Perhaps a little too much…"
"What do you mean?"
Lena sighed while collected her words in calm sentences. She glanced up into the ceiling as she thought about it.
"Well, I have always been one to just kill yoma. I always wanted to give them a payback for what they did… And you have to admit that it feels good to thrust the edge of the claymore into their nasty heads."
"You don´t say?"
Grace frowned in concern over Lena´s mental state.
"Yeah… the only moments of emotion I had before all this happened. I haven´t got the opportunity to kill a yoma for weeks… Hey, how about we find one of those servants and kill it? And if we run into more then I will let you have your share…"
Grace suddenly felt a need to change topic before it went too far.
"So how did you end up here Lena? How was your life before this?"
Lena considered it and threw a quick glance backward. She replied in a stoic voice.
"Well, I was sent to the lands of Lautrec to kill a big group of yoma. Apparently I ran out of luck since the Empress looked for more servants in the same town. End of story."
"Did you try to run off?"
"Well, no… It´s the Empress, Grace, I figured out that I just as well can hold my ground. You can see how that went…"
Lena changed topic this time while she gave Grace her constant attention.
"Speaking of which… how did you do it?"
"Do what?"
The confusion in Grace´s face appeared and Lena sighed. "How did you oppose her? She literally stood right next to you, yet you didn´t even flinch. How did you accomplish that?"
"What do you think?"
"Well… the only people I know that can accomplish that feat without flinching would be humans, but they can´t feel yoki so it´s not that strange. And then there´s the Top Five. Are they the same ones since last time I was out?"
"I think so…"
"Give me their nicknames…"
Grace counted on her hand while she involuntarily shivered for a short moment.
"Well, there´s number 5, Rae "The Shadow blade". There´s "Berserker" Amelia, number 4. "Bloodlust" Desiree number 3. Psyche "Hell Eye" number 2. And then we have our current number one…, "The Silent One" Gabrielle."
"There´s a new number five?"
"Yes…"
"What happened to "Stalking" Medea?"
"Well…"
Grace searched in her mind for something to say that wouldn´t sound implausible. After five minutes, she nodded and turned to Lena.
"I killed her after she awakened."
Lena stared wide-eyed at her.
"You´re joking…" Lena said.
"Nope."
"It´s Medea we´re talking about here… The one who could swing her claymore like nothing while under suppressants. The predator that can get right behind you and you would never notice."
"Well, Nevertheless, I had to kill her…"
"So you are a single digit then?"
Grace let the thought linger for a moment. A closed-mouthed smile spread over her face while she tried to suppress it with flustered cheeks. She quickly turned away from Lena while she quickly fanned in front of her face with closed eyes. Her heartbeat raced while she tried to scatter the image of her in the single digits.
"Oh don´t say things like that. I don´t deserve such flattery…" Grace mumbled.
"Flattery? What do you mean?"
Lena frowned and looked back into the hallway again with anxiety in her gaze.
Grace turned around and only saw the flickering candlelight over the fog.
"What is it?"
"There´s something there…"
"I don´t see anything…"
"It´s there… I know it."
"Yoma, Awakened or warrior?"
A sign of doubt in Lena´s eyes as Grace waited to answer.
"I…don´t know."
Grace raised an eyebrow in an inquiring manner.
"So how do you know?" Grace asked.
"I…I…I´m certain! There´s something there!"
Her tone of staggering false safety didn´t covered over the paranoia in her voice. Grace perception rendered it completely possible that there could be someone there. It seemed like Lena refused to move until she was certain that there would be nothing behind them. Grace sighed while she looked down at her newly acquired weapon.
Well… I have to try it out.
"Lena, I think that you might want to step back a little…"
She wrapped it up in one move, small sparks flew from the friction when it hit the wall. She inhaled slowly while she swayed with the whip and did a couple of practice swings over her shoulder. Lena clung up against the right wall to get out of her way. Grace muttered for herself as she carefully let it sway with small movements.
"Okay… you have seen this before Grace. Just do like those wagon riders do." Grace mumbled.
There was not enough room to sweep it to the side and she slowly raised her arm to swing it vertically. Grace inhaled as she made one fast move forward.
Crack!
The end of the antenna made contact with the ground three meters ahead of her. She gritted her teeth with a scowl when a long clean cut opened over her right cheek and went deeper over her right pauldron and shoulder. She put her left hand over the wound and felt the pain go away as she closed it.
"Grace… never ever do that again!" Lena shouted.
Grace threw a glance over her shoulder in response to Lena´s dread. A huge cut had carved an arc across the wall and through several candles that had gone out when cut apart. The cut was just a hand´s length above Lena´s head. She gazed up at it with visibly paler tone over her cheeks and her lower lip trembled with a gaze on the engraved cut.
"Sorry… I haven´t used a bull-whip before…" Grace said while she rubbed the back of her head.
The cut in Grace´s face shrunk neatly and she wiped the blood out from her cheek. It had hurt a little bit, but she shrugged it off as she considered her luck to not have her arm cut off by accident instead. They both took another look into the hallway as its silence and emptiness greeted them. "See? There´s nothing there. So can we move on?"
She turned around to face Lena and something hit her in the back of the head. A slimy membrane of sluggish mucus slowly dripped down over her neck and shoulders. Grace looked back again.
A huge shadow moved towards them across the ceiling. It hanged in supportive girders like a big monkey with bulky arms. It watched them from afar with bright golden eyes glowing in the dark and scowled deeply.
It fired several smaller projectiles from its circular maw and hit the candles, the hallway filled with darkness as the light went out. Grace began to back away and pulled Lena´s arm to get her along. She had defeated that cockroach thing only fifteen minutes ago and needed a little more rest before engaging a full combat with another opponent. She hadn´t learnt how to use the whip, the only real weapon she had that could do some damage. Lena pulled her sword out while they began to run from the new Awakened one.
They ran for fifteen minutes, jumping over fallen rocks and bodies in their way. Before Grace decided to test an idea she had come up with, Lena took one look back and noticed Grace begin to swing the whip. She dodged down to the ground while covering her head with her arms and used the claymore as shield.
Grace swung with several air breaking cracks up towards the Awakened with enthusiasm.
The lashes cut into the walls and through the candles, reached the Awakened on the ceiling and cut into its chest. It emitted a distorted gargle from the pain and lost its grip, crashed down on the floor. Lena slowly got back up and noticed that the Awakened tried to get back up again, its chest covered in blood from the cuts in the fur. Grace didn´t faired any better with several cuts over her body. Hurt more than her opponent in terms of injuries inflicted from the whip. Her wounds shrunk until they ceased to exist and she panted with aching pain in her shoulders.
Lena stared in her direction and didn´t see the gloved hand reach out from the fog behind her. Grace turned her head and pointed at it with a surprised look while the hand grabbed a piece of Lena´s armor. It tried to get the sword from her and tried to pull her beneath the mist. Lena nearly jumped at the roof like a scared cat, figuratively, and gave the owner of the hand a kick. A cloaked figure with grey attire and several dark leather stripes strapped to the back rose up from the fog blanket. It jumped back and dodged her attack.
Lena looked at something in the opposite direction and opened her eyes wide.
Grace threw a glance of something blocking her path as it rose up the mist.
Three yoma stood up from the fog, apparently part of the obstacles in the two warriors´ way. She spotted the huge Awakened one stand up on its feet behind them.
A tall humanoid with oversized arms and covered in thick brown fur over its back and chest. Its melted head stared at them with three eyes around a jagged cross-shaped maw with saw teeth. Its exposed skin and flesh appeared melted like candlewax. Its eyelidless head opened wider and it reached after them with a tentacle hand.
"You two! MOVE!"
The woman in pale armor shouted and kicked Grace out of the way. She opened up the cloak with her arms swiped to the sides as to attack.
A young and slender woman´s figure appeared within it, dressed in pale plated armor, an armored corset over a grey bodysuit and thigh-high leather boots. Multiple small quivers were strapped around her limbs and waist: two strapped to the outsides of her thighs, two beneath her arms and four across her corset. The black cloth of the Organization decorated her uniform over her throat.
The unknown woman pulled something out from behind her back, hidden by the cloak. A crossbow in the length of her forearm with a wooden box on top where the arrow should be, and a lever connected to it.
Her thoughts got cut off as the yoma roared their distorted cries. They raised their hands and charged at the woman. She aimed her crossbow with her left hand on the lever. The yoma shot out their fingers and she snorted in victorious contempt.
The yoma received several arrows in quick succession into their heads. They fell backwards from the force and she aimed against the Awakened. Sixteen more arrows went into its body, higher and higher towards its head. The sharp thuds moved in speeds that turned the arrows to blurry rapid projectiles.
The box clicked and the arrows stopped.
She tilted the crossbow down while she removed the box over it with, marked with a second click. The Awakened looked down on the arrows in its hairy body and attacked in three heavy swings with its arms, throwing chunks of the wall at her. She dodged out of the way and yelled at the spectators.
"Get out of my way! Leg it!"
Grace and Lena looked at each other and got their distance from the battle immediately. The awakened one began to shoot more projectiles from its mouth as it retracted its teeth into its gum.
It approached them while it bashed its chest with a furious roar. The woman raised her crossbow and fired a volley of arrows against the awakened one. It raised one arm to cover its head and several arrows sunk in it. The other arm slammed the wall and tore off a large chunk of it in the process.
The woman stopped to reload once more and the melted one rushed forward. It swung its arrow riddled arm. She followed the heavy swing through another wall and got thrown into a large chamber. The melted one roared a distorted shriek as it followed her.
The woman landed on the ground and lost her grip of her crossbow. It slid a couple of meters from her in the destroyed living room, furniture wrecked around and towards a huge circular hole in the western wall. The melted one crashed down on a large table as it landed.
The woman looked at the crossbow as the Melted one crashed through the room and bashed its bleeding chest in fury. She dodged for the crossbow while the awakened put a piece of the wall in its maw and crushed it with its gums for more projectiles.
Grace looked back and stopped Lena with a hand on her shoulder. Stone splintered and wood tore apart beyond the hole in the wall. Grace hesitantly glanced back at it.
"Wait…" Grace said.
Lena stopped reluctantly and glanced over the shoulder at her.
"What?" Lena asked.
"We can´t just run off like this. We´ve got to do something…"
"Why? As far as I see it, she tried to steal from me…"
"It´s still not your sword you know."
A loud tremor boomed as a heavy impact shook the halls. They both looked into the hole´s direction while Grace sighed.
"What if it´s her sword?"
"You don´t know that! And I am not giving up this weapon!"
"We don´t know until we ask, and it will be pretty hard to do so if she´s dead…"
A second impact and several arrows flew through the hole.
"…And besides, we warriors must stick together…"
"That one isn´t a part of the Organization anymore!"
Grace shook her head and looked straight into Lena´s with a serious stare.
"And what does that have to do with anything?"
"It means she´s a deserter! A rouge element, we have no obligation to interact in this manner…"
Grace sighed in tiresome frustration. Lena refused to budge or move anywhere near the battle.
"Okay then… let me ask you a different question instead. Does this look like Organization territory to you?"
"Huh…"
"I doubt there are any handlers around here, and it´s only a violation against the rules if anyone gets hurt from it. And in any case, if she is a rouge element then should it not be better to capture her for later interrogation instead?"
Lena considered it for a couple of seconds as she got thrown off guard. She quickly turned around and stiffened as she spotted something in the mist. Grace couldn´t see what it was, only the soft fog´s waves. The noise slowly grew stronger from the depths of the corridor.
Slush…Slush…Slush…
Lena immediately turned around and pushed Grace in the opposite direction, away from the noise and towards the broken chamber with enthusiasm.
"Well, then, you are the single digit here! All responsibility falls on the one with the highest number! Right! So let´s get as far away from here as possible and arrest that rouge one!" Lena said while she anxiously glanced over her shoulder. "No need to linger here…"
Lena constantly threw nervous glances over her shoulder as she dragged Grace along. Her voice contained a bolstered security that tried to cover for the lurking fright beneath it. They moved straight towards the big, broken hole and stopped ahead of the chamber.
The warrior in white gritted her teeth as the melted one refused to fall or show any fatigue despite her efforts. The warrior had shot multiple arrows in its body. Blood poured out from the impact holes and some of the arrows waggled when the melted one contracted its muscles. The Awakened one had gotten several hits on her in exchange with its stone projectiles. The hood had blown off in the attacks and revealed the warrior´s face.
The woman´s face has sharp features that gave her the presence of a hawk. The hair, short and combed back on her head, exposed her wide forehead. She bled from several smaller circular impact wounds, the result of the stone attacks.
Grace didn´t get a chance to see much more before Lena pushed her onward and over the edge.
"Don´t slack off!" Lena said.
Grace landed crouched down and the melted one turned its attention towards her, much to her displeasure.
She gritted her teeth and scowled.
It turned around and roared as it tensed its muscles up and let them bulk out. The arrows in its body snapped like toothpicks.
She wrapped up the whip antenna around her arm while Lena attacked from above. She pointed the tip of her claymore towards the melted one´s head. It looked up at her and opened its maw. Multiple stone projectiles fired in her direction. Grace swung with her whip impulsively to the sides. She managed to hit the Awakened one´s body at the expense of nearly dismembering her arm from her shoulder.
Lena got hit multiple times from the projectiles and grunted in response. She landed roughly on the ground with the sword beneath her. The awakened one turned to Grace, who covered the deep cut in her left arm from her whip. The melted one curled its hands to fists and went at her with a couple of haymakers. She jumped away from them with the wind from the blows through her hair and got the wall against her back. The melted one aimed a punch straight for her with full force. Grace dropped down on her knees and pushed herself away from the wall.
The impact made a crater behind her when the melted one´s fist slammed in the mountain.
Grace looked up while folded back over the floor and among rubble. The fist had missed her with inches. She glanced down at the awakened one´s feet. As she felt one of them grab her legs and hold her down in a firm grip.
A second pair of tentacle hands with thinner tendrils and webbing between the 'fingers' wrapped around her and secured the grip further. The right foot grabbed around her chest and smashed her up against the wall. The whip slipped out from her hand in the process and it landed next to her feet. Lena got back up on her feet with bleeding wounds over her body and a broken arm. The Awakened one raised another clenched fist to smash Grace´s head in while she was trapped.
Lena stepped forward despite her fractured organs and tried to divert her yoki between her muscles and halting the internal bleeding. She felt the stones inside her like jagged bullets that pressed and moved as her flesh tried to knit itself together. She contorted her face in pain and she realized that she couldn´t lift the sword in her hand as it refused to move.
Grace tried to kick herself free and hit the handle of her whip with her foot. It rolled over the ground and away from her.
"Not yet… I´m not going to die at the hands of a candle-doll!" Lena hissed and her body trembled.
Lena straightened her back and unleashed ten percent of yoki. Her eyes shifted to gold and the rocks forcefully pushed out from her jagged wounds. Half of them came out; the rest failed to made it out as she lost her breath and had to drop her yoki to recover.
"Hey, miss Paranoia!"
Lena turned to the woman who called her out. She held out one hand in her direction and her furrowed eyes gazed at Lena´s.
"Throw me the claymore!"
"Forget that!"
The woman let out a frustrated sigh and aimed her crossbow in Lena´s direction.
"Hand it over or I will take it by force anyway!"
Lena clenched her fists in defiance before she threw the claymore over to the woman. The warrior dropped the crossbow on the ground and brought something from behind her back. It unfolded with one fast move and into its full length.
Lena stared it in astonished awe.
What in the world is THAT!?
A huge longbow, shaped as a pair of gigantic collarbones strapped together with a string of tendons and eight small and shiny golden eyes aligned across the frame towards the center, rested in her hand. Organic in appearance, too large for ordinary arrows, and a couple of the eyes blinked with vertical transparent eyelids as they glanced around and at Lena.
The woman grabbed the middle of the bow with one hand and the handle to the claymore in the other. She aligned it with the bow in the height of her head and pulled back the enforced bowstring slowly and forcefully as it creaked.
Wait… Is she doing what I think she is…?
The woman´s face distorted and her eyes turned gold as her yoki flowed within her. She pulled back her arm with great effort as the bowstring resisted and built up force. She quickly charged up to fifty percent and her arm muscles bulked up to draw the bow at full length. Her arms shivered from the forces involved and the tip of the claymore pointed out ten centimeters in front of the bow.
The awakened one swung its fist down at Grace.
The woman let go off the bowstring and her sword turned to a silver flash heading straight towards the Awakened one´s back. The broadsword pierced through and out from the melted one´s hairy chest and into the wall right above Grace´s head. The mountain rock cracked over the wall and from the sword´s impact point. The Awakened one gurgled blood with a crimson colored vertical tunnel through its chest and its attack stopped for a couple of seconds. Its grip around Grace´s body eased up from its relentless pressure.
Grace immediately did what came natural and grabbed the handle to the broadsword right above her. She pulled herself up from the tentacles´ grasp and got a foothold with one of her feet. She pulled and punched straight into the wound, grabbed its ribcage as support and pulled the claymore before she noticed how reluctant it was of leaving the entry wound.
The bones in her chest seemed ready to give in from the increasing pressure before. Grace lifted her feet and stood vertically on the wall while she tried to pull the blade out. She unleashed ten percent of yoki and with a sharp cling, the sword came out like a tooth. She swung out with it at the awakened one.
The Awakened one collapsed backwards from the force and crashed down at the ground. Grace stood up on it and raised her claymore to impale the Awakened one through its throat. It roared and bashed with both fists on its chest, Grace jumped away from the attack with gritted teeth. Several arrows dug into the melted head and through the mouth as it roared.
After a safe landing on the floor Grace looked back to Lena.
Lena had picked up the improvised whip and held it in her hands with hesitant glance. The woman had folded the large bow together and picked up the crossbow once more. She yelled at them.
"Make a run for it! Follow me if you don´t want to die!"
"What are you talking about? It´s down!"
"Look again."
The awakened one slowly got back on all four, still alive with seven arrows into its thick skull and without any blood from its wounds. It garbled and looked around in a daze.
"How can it…?" Lena asked in disbelief.
The warrior interrupted her as she grabbed her shoulder and pulled her away.
"It´s a "Seasoned" Awakened! Headshots won´t bring it down this easily! Just make a run for it!"
The warrior began to run for the large tunnel in the wall. It tilted downwards as the others discovered in their escape. The three of them slid down in it and passed through several hallways and rooms, demolished by the force that had made the tunnel. The warrior shouted while waving with her left hand. "Jump into the next hallway when I do!"
Grace and Lena didn´t have much choice as the awakened one followed behind them. They threw themselves to the left and into a second hallway with waist high fog. They ran as the Awakened one arrived right behind them, grabbing the edges of the tunnel to stop its further descent. The woman guided them as they ran through the mist with the awakened one ten meters behind them. Grace had sheathed the blade while descending to this level and noticed that the warrior looked for something.
The archer shouted back at Grace and Lena.
"On my signal, hit the ground!"
"What?" Grace asked.
The Awakened one got closer and closer, focused entirely on them and nothing else. The warrior dived down beneath the mist and something broke the sound of their steps.
A rope that snapped apart.
A huge rock pillar swept down from the ceiling. A battering ram with a sharp pointy edge and strapped up with wood and rope.
They hit the ground immediately as the melted one looked up in lack of targets. The pillar flew like an upside down mousetrap and hit the Melted one through its head from below and pierced through its skull. The sheer force shattered the wax-like skin and bone splinters flew out from its head. The melted one flew backwards from the force and crashed in the ground, headless and unmoving.
Grace and Lena got back up on their feet after that the pillar stopped its swing.
"That was too close…" Grace mumbled.
Lena didn´t answer and looked back at the warrior instead. She pecked Grace on her shoulder.
"We have company…"
"I know…"
"More company…"
Grace turned around and noticed three more figures in pale cloaks rise from the mist. They whispered something while one or two pointed at the claymore Grace held on to. One of the cloaked ones addressed Grace.
"You, hand over the sword. Nice and peacefully…"
"Give me a reason." Grace asked.
"It´s ours!"
"Prove it!"
One of the cloaked ones bowed down as to sigh and snapped with its fingers.
Two more figures appeared behind Grace and Lena, one of them put a hand over Lena´s mouth and forced something down her throat. Lena´s eyes turned brown before they rolled back and rendered her motionless.
The other tried to do the same thing to Grace who fiercely resisted and bashed her head backwards at the cloaked figure.
"Like I would let that happen to me twice!" Grace shouted with a hand over her mouth.
The cloaked figure looked at the one of the others that seemed to have the most authority among them. The one with a sword sheathed on her back and the others waited for her orders.
"Go ahead…"
The cloaked figure that held Grace smirked in delight. She put a suppressant pill in her mouth without chewing or swallowing while elongated her right arm around Grace´s body to restrict her movements. Grace looked down as her restrains tightened and rendered her immobile.
Grace felt how the pressure applied all over her body and how it slowly squeezed the air out from her lungs. Black spots flickered in front of her eyes.
I won´t open my mouth…I won´t open my mouth…
The cloaked warrior behind her grabbed her chin with its left hand and looked into her eyes. Grace only saw a pair of silver eyes within the cloak and the hint of an amused smirk. The pressure increased even further in a sudden pull and she let out a short pant. Everything went dark as the cloaked figure´s head moved right up to her and closed in.
Everything turned black.
Trash Room
"That was almost too easy…" Hannah remarked as she played with a dislodged bloodied gear between her fingers.
Hannah remarked for herself while surrounded by dismembered limbs and body parts. She sat on the awakened one´s chest while she wiped the key clean of blood with a rag. Scattered gold piles and impact marks from the being´s stinger decorated the room with violence. The awakened one´s head rested on top of the chest with its body buried beneath a pile of jewelry, broken and distorted into pieces, while the color of its aura drained away and slithered into the cracks, away from her and the shell.
"Now… to the big surprise…"
She gazed on the chest she sat on with pleased eyes. She rose from it and unlocked the chest using the key.
There were just a couple of things inside, a jar filled with teeth and a piece of armor. She smiled a little.
"There´s my vambraces…" She whispered.
She picked the piece of armor up and put them on again. A pleased smirk spreads over Hannah´s face as she touched her vambraces.
"I almost felt naked without them…"
Someone approached her from behind and she could feel the nature of the yoki coming from it.
An average yoma.
It had assumed its monstrous form and tried to sneak up on her. She giggled a little and dodged the leaping attack from the yoma. It turned to the left and she grabbed it´s chin from underneath with her right hand. She pulled something small out from her wrist-guard with the other hand and then rammed the sharp object right into its head. The yoma stopped moving and fell down on the floor, bleeding from a small wound in the temple.
Hannah still smiled a tired smile with her weapon in hand.
"Let me give you an advice…" She pulled her hand out and revealed a blood-drenched stiletto, attached to her wrist and one of a dual set. "…always have a trick or two in your sleeves."
She inserted the stiletto back after wiping it clean. A quick look around and she remarked with irony in her voice.
"Well, it´s trash after all…"
She left the room without taking a single piece of gold. Instead she brought along that little jar filled with teeth.
Social Hall
"Get out of my way!"
Faren shouted as he shoved two aggressive yoma out of his way, nailing them with the two spikes to the walls. Their bodies slumped down along them as he let go. He grumbled and scowled as he pulled the spikes out and kicked the corpses out of his way.
"Oh, you just wait Empress… you are definitely going to pay for this…"
A month of the Empress´ hospitality and punishment for disorderly behavior repeated itself inside his head. He only got angrier and angrier as the Empress been treating him like a chew toy, in multiple ways.
"I´m a First… I don´t deserve this treatment… Who does that little brat think she is!"
He stopped and leant up against the wall as his mind wandered back to the past.
"I told them it was a mistake to make female warriors… I told them… but what did they do?" He shook with his head. "They made more…" He gritted his teeth and they turned to jagged triangles in his mouth.
"Women don´t belong on the battlefield… That´s the duty of the men! They should stay at home… It´s how things are supposed to be." He snickered. "They aren´t fit to be warriors… Despite how many they send after me, I´ll prove the Organization wrong again and again until they finally learn their lesson." He clenched his hand and let his teeth turn to normal.
The image of blood over his palms appeared for a moment before it flickered away and he laughed.
"They even stopped sending them… means that I am too good for the Organization to handle! But that´s not enough." He shook his head. "Not until they either start making male warriors again… or all female ones are dead… Along with the rest of the first ones…"
He calmed down and lowered his head. "No matter how many times I have to take on the pilgrimage to make that reality…"
"You wish embark on the pilgrimage?"
The white-dressed priest asked as Faren stood at the church gates in a humble robe.
"In fact I do." Faren said. "But I don´t know where to go from here…"
"So you came here for guidance?" The priest smiled and Faren didn´t answer. "Very well then, you will have to seek out four altars hidden deep in this world before you can be granted passage here."
"Fine… Where should I start?" Faren shrugged.
"North first, you must travel within the perilous deep mountains and among the beasts haunting it. If you fully embrace the Rabonian God, then you should survive and reach the altar. From there, head south to Mucha and its hellish deserts, if you can survive it, you will find the altar in the garden beyond these walls of sand. From there, head west and the thick forests of Lautrec, if you can ignore their temptations and reach the altar, you´re on the right path. From there, head East and to the Altar right in front of Hell´s doors. If you can avoid their witches, you still have to return here to the center of the world and inside the cathedral to have your journey acknowledged. Do you understand?"
"I´m not stupid." Faren scowled while he imagined the bloodshed that would follow his path. He smiled. "Anything else?"
"There is one thing…" The priest said and offered him a golden pendant with a winged lance "You need to put this in the altars as you visit them, that will be the proof that you made the journey. You can´t lose it or you won´t be able to try this again. Do you understand?"
Faren glanced down at the trinket and shrugged with half-open gaze.
"Sure thing… See you in a year or two…"
He waved the priest goodbye and headed north.
Faren slumped down along the wall and glanced down as picked up a golden pendant from his pocket. "Well, we have seen a lot, haven´t we? How many times have we climbed the mountains? Waded through the sands and traveled through the forests here?" He paused and nodded. "How many weaklings have we killed in our task for redemption?"
He thought back and sighed over the countless journeys.
He had to stay in human form while entering the lands of Alphonse. The awakened there were infamous for being territorial and they watched any trespassing awakened from the other lands. Those beings would defend their territory with everything they had and kill anyone that threatened it. Faren had to struggle to just get a little human guts for himself up there, since nearly everything wanted them for themselves.
The lands of the south seemed pretty beautiful. But the awakened ones lurked underneath the desert sand and adapted to the environment. They didn´t seem so hostile like the beings in the North, but the southern ones had developed poisons to catch their prey. It didn´t work on the claymores, but it could affect other awakened in unpleasant ways. This poison made sure that only the awakened being it came from would be able to eat the prey. Faren had only made that mistake once, and then resorted to eat people that could still move instead.
The western lands had the Empress, and nearly no awakened in the entire area. He hadn´t let the opportunity to challenge slip out of his reach. Victory had eluded him every time before he was forced to retreat.
The Eastern lands had all the claymores. No awakened there for obvious reasons. He had contemplated the idea of going inside their headquarters and kill them all. He knew they had seen him every single time, but the knowledge of what lurked in Staff´s darkest abyss held him back from an all-out assault. He instead wreaked havoc on the cities in the area and goaded the Organization with his presence before he moved on with hope that they would send a hunting party after him.
Before he headed back to Rabona.
Faren burst out in laughter and scared away a shadow in the fog.
Rabona´s sacred rule of preventing anything unholy to enter the city made it lucrative in the eyes of the desperate that wished to escape the dangers of the yoma. The rule that only managed to keep out the obviously affected by the force of yoki that ran through the veins of claymores as they couldn´t keep it hidden within them. The yoma and the awakened ones could come and go as they pleased. All while keeping a human disguise.
He himself had seen the number of Awakened beings residing there. They had adapted to eat outside the city limits to stay in there. That city proved to be a perfect shield against the Organization and the claymores had no allowance there. Even though it didn´t stop them from infiltrating the city and hunt from there.
Faren had counted to thirteen beings in Rabona during his last visit. They pretended to live normal lives to such degree that he couldn´t do anything but mock the humans in his thoughts. One of the Awakened ones, number 3 of the first female generation, had the nerve to settle inside the cathedral itself. She lived as a nun on top of that and moved freely among these so called "holy" men. Faren had nothing against her, she´s a good sort that didn´t mind visitors and laughed with him at the human stupidity…
"Humans… what a joke." He mumbled and glanced down at the pendant. "But Rabona wasn´t that bad…" He scowled. "…Until they allowed women to join their ranks and military that is…" His fist clenched around his token of pilgrimage and slowly squeezed.
She had also suggested to Faren after his thirty-fifth pilgrimage that he should settle down. He had considered it.
It was not something the claymores would know about. It was not strange that Awakened beings settled down in their old hometowns after a while of roaming the lands. The beings that could resume their human forms that is, some unlucky ones had forgotten how their human forms looked like. Faren had met several of these awakened that tried to live normal lives during his pilgrimages.
He clearly remembered one, a female and former claymore that had actually tried to have a human relationship. The fact that all awakened are still sterile from the hybridization process lead to childless relationships. Many men wouldn´t want to have a woman that couldn´t give them children in these times. But that didn´t stop some of the Awakened to reclaim what they lost. It was still possible to blend in like that, since those horrifying stigmata disappeared after awakening. He had met this woman and they recognized each other as awakened.
Faren still remembered how that human man that was her "husband" held an arm around her without knowing the danger. Faren had introduced himself as a humble associate to his wife. Faren had just asked a couple of questions and then wanted to talk with her in private. He had asked her…
"…And what will happen if he ever finds out who you really are?"
She had just answered that she wouldn´t let that happen…
That man had died two months later…
Faren knew that getting involved with humans, other than the usual meals with their guts, wasn´t worth the trouble. Even though playing around with the nice looking claymores did light up his day when they collapsed in heaps of blood and flesh from his attacks afterwards.
He smashed the wall while his hunger raged in his body. Faren had starved for weeks and just wanted to munch on human guts to his heart's content. Two weeks without guts had turned his thoughts to a shrouded veil and he couldn´t focus for the semi-awakened state without energy and replenished stamina. At most he could turn a limb or two but it wouldn´t be enough for the challenge ahead.
"Things to do… First, find guts… second, eat guts…third, go into awakened form and give the Empress a hole in the head…"
He nodded for himself over his default plan. He shoved the pendant back in his pocket and dusted himself off.
"Sounds good enough."
His eyes turned gold while he sniffed around for blood. In a place like this, it wouldn´t prove difficult to find it. Blood trails remained all over the place and it became a question of where the blood scent came from. Faren followed the hallway and passed several doors that didn´t catch his sense of smell´s interest.
The sound of rope that snapped beneath his feet stopped him.
A battering ram of wood swooped down from the ceiling. He pushed his back against the wall and watched how the ram swung back and forth without hitting anything but empty air in front of him.
"Booby traps?"
Faren waited until the trap stopped.
I see… wildlife traps, designed to be three times heavier than the intended target. And judging from the size of it, I would say awakened in their awakened forms would not survive them.
The battering ram hung in the air and Faren snorted in contempt. He moved on and followed the blood even further with his eyes on the floor for any possible surprises in the fog.
Library
Alice sat in another room with her teacup in her hand and used a tentacle from her hair to whirl it around. She sat cross-legged on a comfortable couch while playing a game of chess with one of the guests. She had made all the pieces herself, carved from skeleton bones with the black ones dipped in ink before drying. The pieces didn´t look like ordinary one. She had added her own careful touch on them in form of people, warriors and awakened forms.
A game of "Claymore Chess"
The White pieces represented the Awakened ones. The King of the North in his abyssal form stood as the King, Alice and her abyssal form as the queen. The bishops as top five awakened. The knights as single digit awakened with the rooks as the double digit awakened. The pawns were all yoma.
The dark pieces represented The Organization. Pawns were black coats. Rooks were double-digit claymores. The knights single digits and the bishops Top Five. The Queen was the number one of the top five and the King was the Board of the Organization.
To play it was a challenge as it had different rules then in ordinary chess with some additions, and presents with quite amusing results as it played on. The rules eluded and broke the minds of people who played it for too long.
Alice lifted up a bishop and put it down after moving it three squares forward and two to the left.
"Your turn…" She stated.
She looked up at her current opponent while sipping her tea.
The dark-haired man with hand wrappings pulled down his scarf and furrowed his eyebrows as he gazed down on the chessboard with compact concentration.
Chess had kept her busy for five years when combined together but the number of opponents had shrunk to an exclusive circle that had the patience to play with her. Yoma couldn´t play the game without chewing on the pieces. Alice had disposed of them for such crime against common manners. She had ripped their heads off and used their teeth for a new game. Humans could understand it and were disposed of when their minds broke. Other awakened and claymores presented different results and grew increasingly frustrated with her way of playing it.
"I still don´t get this game, why are my pawns behind the line of the other pieces?" The man asked.
"Common sense." Alice shrugged.
"And why are your rooks only capable of moving diagonally and ending in a loop?"
"Because they try to ambush you of course…"
"Then why can´t I make the same moves?"
"Because Claymores don´t do such things… and you can´t take a top five awakened with a double digit…"
"I will never learn this game…"
"Why not?"
The man looked up at her with a raised eyebrow.
"Because this game doesn´t have any rules."
"There´s rules…"
"Who do you think you´re fooling with that statement?"
"Phhhh!"
Alice puts away her teacup for a little while to change the mood.
"Allow me to inform you something that you should know by now. Rules are highly overrated in this world. They are outdated, outlived and out of practice, they hold people back from their true potential. I can provide countless examples… for instance, the Claymores and the Organization, a perfect example of wasted potential. They value the strong ones since us the Abyssal ones exist as dreaded opponents. But they are more than willingly to sacrifice anyone below the top five to senseless and plain suicidal missions. All warriors have the potential to become so incredibly strong, all they need is training and experience…"
"What stopping them?"
"The rules! The rules of the Organization hold them back, and they don´t want warriors to become so strong. So they basically either send the warriors to die at the hands of myself or up north."
"I assume there are other examples as well…"
"Yes there is. The awakened also fit here, they are forced to adapt to the human society and the rules there to avoid being killed. A awakened without rules is a soon to be dead one. They rampage through the villages and the humans send request so claymores can kill it..."
"Oh, you´re talking about that…"
A nod of understanding from him as he moved another piece.
"Indeed, and it´s because of these stupid rules, the others can´t reach their full potential."
"I guess you have a solution to this "problem" then?"
"Just make a place without these rules. Then bring others to this place, ripped away from the outside world and watch them adapt to it… and that is what my Tea party consists of…"
"So how does it work out for you?"
Alice sipped from her tea while she moved a pawn two steps to the left.
"Well, the first fifteen years where actually pretty busy. New adjustments and all that moderate changes had to be done. Parts of my mansion collapsed from smaller arguments. Some of the claymores did some damage, trying to get out. I had to reconsider my opinion of rules after the first five years."
"Let me guess, they missed their rules?"
"I think so as well, but they adapted after fifteen years as I brought in more and more guests, including humans as food supply to keep the awakened happy. There´s food for warriors as well…"
"How many guests do you have here?"
Alice looked up at him, frowned and counted on her fingers.
"One…two…three… 126 of them… 86 Awakened of varying strength levels, 40 Claymores… then add all the yoma and humans here…"
"126? Not more?"
"On what do you base that statement?"
"Let's see here… you send out invitations for the Tea Party once in every third month, which means four in a year. According to you the Tea Party have been going on for a long time, sixty years if I recall it correctly…"
"Your point is?"
"There should be more guests here…"
"Well, some don´t survive in this place…"
The man didn´t raise an eyebrow while his hand hovered over the board and hesitantly tried to pick a piece.
"Are you not going to attend to them?"
"No reason, they are free to do what they want as long as they wish."
"So they are free to kill each other as well?"
"I don´t intervene with such trivial quarrels. If they wish to settle the score among each other then it´s fine for me."
"Sounds like there´s rules here after all…"
"Just common sense, table manners mostly…"
"Hypocrite."
"Not at all, they are only obliged to follow those whenever I am around. Otherwise they are free to do as they wish…"
"I guess there´s no escape from here either."
"They all know the rules, find the key and win their freedom. Strange though that they don´t seem to get anywhere with it…"
The chessboard shivered from a distant tremor and he looked up.
"Sounds like this place will break down soon."
Alice waved her hand over her shoulder dismissively.
"Don´t worry about it… I have counter measures…"
She snapped with her fingers and one of the yoma servants appeared in the doorway.
"Yes, Ruler?"
Alice didn´t turn to it as she closed her eyes and whirled with her finger in the air.
"Put the carpenters to work and repair the damages you can find."
"Yes, ruler…"
"And send the flying servants to increase the repair rate…"
"Understood."
"Now."
She snapped with her fingers again and the servant left in a hurry. Alice turned to the chess game once more with an interested glimmer in her red eyes.
"Now… where were we? Oh yes… there."
She looped one of the bishops around his king.
"Check…"
Another tremor shook the board and they both ignored it, as the man sighed with a scowl over the implausible move.
Only darkness met Grace´s eyes as she slowly returned from her sleep. A dizzy vertigo rolled around in her head and tried to find her way out. Her hands refused to move from the tight restraints around them behind her back and her feet were bound together with the harsh stiffness of an old rope.
She couldn´t feel the familiar pressure of her uniform but her bodysuit had been left on her. She sighed.
Where am I?
She tried to remember what had happened before she visited the dreamless landscape. Pale cloaks, warriors, a melted being with its head caved in, her and Lena ambushed, bound and then the pale cloak approached her with its concealed face.
Her memory went blank and she didn´t want to remember what happened next.
That…did not happen.
The effect of the suppressant lingered in her body and she felt a chill from it. She opened her eyes wide as she realized what the figure did to get the suppressant inside her mouth.
Okay… that did happen.
She lifted her knees up, while she tried to remove the piece of cloth over her face with them. She wouldn´t wait for her fate to be decided by others as a victim. Her forehead met her knees after she bent her neck forward. She grabbed the cloth with them and pulled it off. She didn´t get unharmed from it. She wobbled too much forward and hit the hard floor while her sight returned.
"Ouch…"
She looked around while she tried to determine her location.
A small chamber not unlike a holding cell surrounded her. A small chair waited in the middle of the room, the one she had fallen off from. Other than that, only candles illuminated the space and a thick wooden door in the opposite end of the room stood closed.
Grace rolled across the floor a little to get on her back, sat up with some help from her arms. Her captors seemed to know what they did when they put her here as she judged from how tight her ropes were bound. She sighed in exasperation while she prepared to try a painful solution to get free from her predicament.
She laid down on her right side and moved her body while she pressed her right arm beneath her body. The side effects of the suppression pills reminded her and she internally prepared for the pain that would come. She inhaled sharply and with a jerk, dislocated her arm with her feet.
The pain exploded through her right shoulder and she gritted her teeth to hold it back. She tried to bend her body to get her hands in the front of her, to no avail as the ropes and angles of her arms prevented and undid her best efforts.
That didn´t work… and now I have an injury as well…
She crawled over to a corner and managed to stand with a push from her left hands fingers. She climbed and pulled herself up against a wall. She turned her right side against it, pressed her dislocated her arm against the bedrock and pushed down at the floor.
The sound of her shoulder relocating ruptured in the chamber and her pain faded away. She sighed as she sat up along the wall and waited impatiently for her captors.
Hopefully they maybe will release me if I ask nicely…
The door opened up and a single figure with a pale cloak entered the room, dressed in a similar white cloak as the other ones and its face concealed by the hood. It closed the door behind it. Grace gazed up at the figure and noticed a female figure beneath the cloak.
"Who are you?" Grace asked.
"I am the one asking the questions here… Who are you?" The woman answered.
A captain´s charisma followed as she spoke. Grace scowled and tried to turn her restrains at the visitor.
"Untie me first."
"Not until I can determine if you are a friend or foe."
"What do you think I am!"
"From what I can see… you are an abomination."
Grace looked at the hooded figure in frustration.
"What did you call me?" Grace shouted while the cold within her burned with the fires of her rage and voice.
"I can repeat it as many times as I need to, until you can convince me otherwise, I will believe you´re are an abomination…"
Grace let her emotions show in her face. A fierce flame of furious yoki blazed up within her like an arson from the insult. Her muscles tensed up as her eyes shifted to silver. She pulled away with her hands and strained the rope as she got up on her feet.
"How dare you call me that…?"
She pulled her arms outwards and her ropes snapped from the force after digging into her wrists. Grace didn´t bother with the restrains around her feet and charged right at the hooded figure in a leap. "Who do you think you are!"
The hooded warrior raised one hand and grabbed Grace´s forehead. She pushed her back into the wall with minor effort and stopped the attack. The hooded one spoke to her while she pulled down her hood and gazed calmly at Grace´s silver eyes.
"My name… is Hailey."
The warrior in front of her had the silver eyes and three big scars after claws across her face. Her pale hair was cut short on the side with the scars and long on the other side, giving her a asymmetrical appearance.
Her leather armor in black distinguished her white bodysuit with greater clarity and the dark dickey around her throat. She held a broadsword behind her back while emitted an aura of authority from seemingly decades of combat experience.
She looked straight down at Grace who began to calm down. "And I am colonel for the Black Card Brigade..."
Hailey stared straight down at Grace with her arms crossed and looked down at her. She looked like she would be able to cut Grace down on the spot if she tried anything like before. Her voice held the same one like an executioner as she let go of Grace´s forehead.
"Now… I will just ask this one more time…who are you?"
(Authors Note: Provided some information in this one, along with a couple of elements in the empress domain.
Please review your opinions.
Next chapter on the way...
Note: reedited)