"Succubae, as I have already imparted, are wicked female temptresses who I have studied long and hard, with holy vigour; the better to fight their uxorious deceit. These fiends breed true, spawning daughters who are just the same as them! They claim that a strong-willed or powerful father leaves the offspring more human, but they lie! They will even claim that a young succubus is a Hero's daughter – even your own! – if it helps their vile cause; do not trust their lying female tongues! And though the always-male progeny of incubi often appear more human, do not trust them when they say that it is because the child grows in a mortal womb! I may have spent far less time inuring myself to their lies, but I know that it is another falsehood! It is just because the wickedness of the woman allows the child to pretend to be human more convincingly, but know this; all the evil of their mother dwells in their heart!"
– Pope Aegis X, "Lectures on the Wickedness of Women, Part XXXI"
…
It was a dark and somewhat cloudy night. Clearer skies seemed to be moving in from the east, but they would not arrive until early morning.
It was also punishingly cold. Dressed in her full plate armour, Louise shivered and huddled closer to the tiny fire in a pit she had her minions dig for her. She couldn't have a proper fire which would warm her up, oh no, because that would risk being seen by the patrolling flesh golems on the island. And it was the depths of winter and her demon-forged plate just wasn't warm enough to be out in this kind of temperature. She could see her breath coming out in great smoke-like clouds.
Oh, she just bet Heroes never had to be out in weather like this, carrying out deeds which from a certain point of view would be considered dark. They probably got to… to carry burning torches into nice warm dungeons. They didn't have to put up with the nerve-wrecking experience of waiting for their sister to report that she had got safely onto an island home to a wicked necromancer, knowing that if anything went wrong Cattleya would be ashes.
She wrapped her scarf tighter over her mouth and nose, and huddled down, trying to read by firelight.
"Despite the obvious utility of this ritual," she read, "it is excessively aggravating to cast. The ritual components are expensive and hard to procure; though it only needs a drop of blood from a virgin, she must be of the highest breeding and carry a royal bloodline. I recommend kidnapping a child from such a family; she can serve you well as a source of blood for such rituals for many a long year, though she must be guarded with great force."
Louise frowned. "That's stupid," she said, scornfully. "Why would you need to go to all those lengths when you can just use your own blood? And why does it have to be a girl, anyway? Boys can be… um, pure just as well!" She shook her head sadly. Many of these books were very silly, and they always had to complicate things. All she wanted was a spell to make people ignore things it was cast on.
Of course, Gnarl said she had a true genius for evil magic and was very gifted at working out which bits of a ritual were actually needed and which were the posturing of some long-dead inadequacy – well, he hadn't quite said that, but she preferred her way of putting it – but it just wasn't that hard, surely?
"Sis!" crackled her Gauntlet. "You there?"
She breathed a sigh of relief. "Where else would I be?" she told her older sister.
"Well, the box is open and I'm out and still alive. Well, dead. Well, undead," Catt said cheerfully. "That's good. That'd be a nasty way to go, because I couldn't move at all over the water and when you're a mist, not moving feels really strange, you know?"
"No, Catt," Louise said, "I've never been a mist."
"Oh. Well, you certainly should try it if you can! It's all liberating, like running around in just your chemise! Anyway, on my way! I'll go take out the nasty, nasty necromancer and… oooh. I think I can see some boats on the other side, so you can probably move some of the cute blue ones to drag it back, right?"
"I will, Catt," Louise said, sighing in relief – and just a hint of frustration. She loved her sister dearly, she really did, even though she was a member of the damned living dead. But goodness, she could be flighty and distractible. And Louise had worked really hard on this plan and just wanted it over and done with. "Minions," she ordered, "wait until I give the orders before you go out to…" she let out a slow breath, "… to loot the boats."
"Awww."
"And also only blues are to do the looting, because water is involved," she quickly added, before returning to her book.
…
Feet planted flat on the ceiling, only one thing was on Cattleya's mind. Unusually, it was neither related to animals nor an all-consuming thirst for the blood of the living. It was, instead, related to the fact that her new dress may have looked gorgeous, but it really was not very practical when one's body was not aligned with gravity.
She was definitely going to have to talk to Jessica about this after this was over. The worst thing was her veil, because it was on the edge of departing her head entirely. The entire set-up simply wasn't working well with her long hair. At least there was something keeping her skirts in a decent manner, but even then gravity was certainly fighting them. And the less said about the uncomfortable feelings in her chest region from insufficient support when inverted, the better.
No one ever thought of the demands of being a female vampire standing on the ceiling. It was so horrid.
The person – no, wait, they probably counted as a 'body' now – she had grabbed convulsed spasmodically, flesh shrunken and desiccated. Yes, that was another thing. Drinking upside down was something she had almost no experience with. She was having to think about how all those muscles in her throat worked and control them personally to make the blood go upward.
Now, where to hide the corpse? She should probably find somewhere her sister wouldn't look for it, because Cattleya was entirely aware that Louise wasn't entirely comfortable with the whole 'superpredator' thing which was a sign that Mother and Father had done a good job with her. She really was very proud of her little sister; even when she was a technically treasonous evil overlady, she acted in the proper way most of the time! She had the right standards, even if she was doing the wrong things – but for the right reasons, Cattleya hastened to add.
She paused, holding still while the other patrolling guard passed under her. Hmm. Maybe if she started carrying some kind of cord or rope with her, she could tie bodies up to the ceiling. That'd do a jolly good job of keeping them hidden, because people never looked up.
The guard looked up.
"What the hell is thaarrrrrrrrgh!"
The scream was awfully loud, and Cattleya winced. It was immediately followed by the clanging of alarm bells.
Oopsy-daisy. Well. Sugar. Sugar, sugar, sugar.
"That no was well done," the blue minion she had placed up on the rafter – Scyl, that was his name – said. "Maybe you should try do do-over so you not get seen?"
Yes, that would be nice, Cattleya considered. But that wasn't something she could do.
Oh well. Time for Plan B. Well, it wasn't the real Plan B, because Louise had actually devised a Plan B. But that Plan B assumed that she hadn't accidentally set off all the alarms. So instead it was going to be her own super-special Plan B which totally would be the tastiest Plan B ever.
…
Louise blanched at the walls. And the ceiling. And the floor. And also at the bodies.
This last involved quite a lot of the first three. The bodies were strewn… around the place. Generally hanging about.
"Now, I know what you're thinking," Cattleya said, wincing slightly, "but in my defence, it turned out that the flesh golem-thingies were totally horrible-tasting and also that those men with the windstone gun thingies were shooting lightning at them and that made them heal so I sort of had to tear them limb from limb and there was an awful lot of blood in them."
Slightly unsteadily, the overlady made her way to the window, gulping in the fresh air.
"And and and! In my defence, like… over half the torn apart bodies here were totally here when I got here! None of the bodies on the autopsy tables were caused by me! Uh, except that one, and he just fell on it when I tore his throat out, he isn't strapped to it. And only one of the ones with all the scissors stabbed into it was me, and again, in my defence, that one had a windstone in its body so it was healing constantly and so I just had to tear out the windstone!"
"Catt," Louise grated out, "you were just meant to… to fly to the top of the tower and take down the necromancer!"
"I did! I did it right after I accidentally got seen! He wasn't there! And then I had to go through the entire place, looking for him! And then in every room there were more of these fleshy golem things made of dead women and they kept on hurting me so then I had to go hunt down the living guards so I could heal and then I tried calling some puppies to help me but there weren't any wolves on the island so there were lots of them and… oh, oops, are you angry about the revenant-things? Because that… um, was kind of my fault. But but but! I can explain! I needed some help because there really weren't any guards left and I didn't have any of your adorable minions around apart from Scyl who I put somewhere safe and there were lots and lots of flesh golems, so I sort of fed some of the dead guards my blood and made some revenants!"
"I am not pleased you have been making other vampires, no," Louise said.
"But it's totally okay! They're not really real vampires! They're more like… you know, zombies or skeletons or stuff like that! See, according to the books… when you feed someone who's already dead vampire blood the soul has already passed on, so you just get a walking, still rotting corpse which is the slave of their master! It's not like I'm damning any souls or anything or forcing anyone else to suffer the same unending existence as me!" Cattleya paused, possibly for breath. "I'll just tell them to jump in the water once it's all okay! In fact, I'll do it right now!
"I'm still not pleased," Louise said, glowering, "but… Catt, from now on, if you want help, talk to me. Or… um, have your animals help you. I really don't want to see," she gestured around at the pale, glowing-eyed, fanged corpses her sister was controlling, "any more of these things."
"I understand," Cattleya said softly, before perking up. "And I totally found the necromancer in the end in the stables, trying to saddle up his winged horse!"
Louise nodded. She had been presented with the tied up maimed winged horse, and the head of the necromancer when she had landed. And then she had needed to explain to her sister that no, she did not have a thing for heads, and no, she had not asked for one for a present from the Emperor of Cathay, and so no, she did not want a head. She didn't even know how her older sister had found out about that. Shaking her head, she tapped her gauntlet. Anything was better than thinking about what had happened here.
"Gnarl?" she asked. "Have you identified what the magic staff does yet?"
"Mmm… hmm… oh, these are very fine cockroaches… oh! Oh yes, your evilness. Yes, I do believe I know what it is. It's a fairly typical staff which might be used by," Gnarl sniffed, "a middling to below-average necromancer. Notice the lead coating, and it seems very likely it'll have an iron core, which serves to amplify the affinity for deathly magics. I do believe it will allow a necromancer to control more of the living dead, and possibly allow him to cast slightly more dangerous spells."
"I'm not a necromancer," Louise said flatly.
"Indeed not, your evilness."
"Argh!" Louise groaned. "Why wouldn't he have been carrying some kind of magic staff which was actually useful for the sort of magic I do? I'm not a necromancer! I don't do necromancy! I never want to do necromancy!"
Cattleya raised a hand. "Yeah! Why on earth would a necromancer have a staff which is made to help him cast necromancy spells more easily?" she said.
Louise shot her a flat glare. "Are you making fun of me?" she demanded. She glowered at her sister. "You're going to need a bath when we get home," she told Cattleya bluntly, "because you smell like a butchery."
"I know. You're… you're not too angry with me?" Cattleya asked, biting her lip.
"A bit," Louise said. "You were just meant to eliminate the necromancer and… well, what's done is done." She sighed.
"And yes, I was poking fun at you a bit," her sister admitted. "You are being just a teeny bit silly. And for my part at least, I'm rather glad that he wasn't carrying a staff which makes him better at doing the sort of magic you do, because you're rather fond of using scary burny fire on everything and anything which gets in your way. For your information, he had quite enough flaming torches around, you know!"
The overlady blushed. "Oh yes," she said. "I didn't think about that." She crossed her arms. "It's a silly staff, anyway. I didn't want it. Look at the tasteless horned skull on the top."
"Garish," Cattleya agreed. "Let's throw it in the river!"
Louise grabbed the staff protectively. "No! It might be worth something! And I don't want to poison the wildlife with evil deathly magic. We'll just put it in the library. Maybe that way Gnarl will get off my back about needing to build up a collection of evil artifacts which I'll never use, but which look shiny."
"It's not shiny," Cattleya pointed out.
"Then I'll have the minions polish it," Louise said firmly. "Let's just get this tower linked up to the main one, and I can get away from this stinking place."
…
"Wonderful, your malevolence," Gnarl said cheerfully, looking out over the map room and the glowing lines which represented the newly increased range from the lesser tower. They neatly covered Bruxelles, and looking closer Louise could see tiny witchfires burning to mark out locations of sites linked to the Tower Heart.
She didn't feel like talking, though. A black melancholy had descended upon her, along with exhaustion, and she just wanted to go to bed. "Very well," she said softly. "Gnarl, organise the lesser tower being cleaned up and made… not-necromancy-ish. I'll think about how to decorate it later, but for now, it needs to smell less like a charnel house and look less like… like it does. And… get the minions to loot it properly. You can choose who to reward in that way."
"Excellent, your wickedness," Gnarl said. "I will prepare for some plans of how to outfit the lesser tower. As you know, they have much less room than a main one, and so it is necessary to specialise to a much greater degree than…"
"Yes, yes," Louise said. "I'm headed to bed."
Louise did not emerge from her room until late on the next day, and only then for food and to pick up more books. Some of it was because she was exhausted from the night, and how late she had got to bed. But that wasn't the real reason.
She didn't like the side of Cattleya she had seen there. Not one bit. And Cattleya had always been her kind, sweet, caring sister who had always been there for her. It should have been so easy. Cattleya was just meant to go in, kill the utterly wicked necromancer who had been abducting peasants and… and well, if anyone had deserved to die, it had been that dreadful, dreadful man. Then she should have told Louise, and the blues could have stolen the boats and she could have bought the minions over to clean the tower out properly.
Instead, she had taken it upon herself to pick off – and drain dry – some of the human guards in the place. And then when she had been spotted, she had decided to kill everything in the building and drink their blood. She should have told Louise. She should have found another way.
… even if the guards had been in league with the utterly wicked necromancer and knew – or should have known – about the horrid things he was doing with the bodies and the stitching and the copper wires and… and... and everything. Louise hugged her knees tighter.
She hated this kind of thing. She really did. It… it was fine when she was just coming up with plans and telling minions to do things and being cleverer than everyone else. It was fine when she was working straight towards her goals, when the worst thing she might be doing was setting a bunch of goblins with sharp weapons to fighting treasonous guards, or setting bandits on fire. They weren't pretty things to do, but… but, well, people and goblins fought, and nobles set bandits on fire. They were facts of the world.
Seeing her bloody-mouthed sister in a room full of torn-apart bodies smiling cheerfully wasn't fine. Not one bit. She… she didn't seem to see a problem with killing people. Not really. Not in the same way that Louise felt sick thinking about that room full of bodies which the necromancer had been sewing together.
Admitedly, the minions didn't see anything wrong with killing things either, but they were minions. And Cattleya was her sister. And it was all her fault that her sweet big sister had got involved in all of this, where she had actually asked for Cattleya to kill someone.
The overlady dried her eyes on her pillow. Well. She had brought her sister into this mess, so she would have to just be her keeper, stop her from going over the edge. She would keep her 'Cattleya', rather than a bloodsucking fiend. And she would get this thing over and done with quickly, so the two of them could go home and… and it would be all over.
To that end, Louise went looking for Jessica.
…
She found her in the depths of the dungeons under the tower. Louise descended into darkness, following the minion who said that it knew where 'the forgemistress' was, down a long spiralling staircase. There was a dull red glow, growing stronger the deeper she went, and a clattering and clanking.
"Uh… hello?" Louise called out. "Jessica? What are you doing down here?"
A metallic face, featureless save for a single glassy eye, stared back at her. It was lit from beneath by the glow, and the dull light cast strange shadows across its blank, horrible expression. Louise recoiled in shock, eyes widening at the terrible dead gaze which locked on her.
Jessica pushed back the welding mask. "Oh, hey Lou! You want something? Just working on a fridge; let me tell you this! It's going to be the most stylishly evil fridge ever! It is going to fucking menace with spikes!" She perked up some more. "Ooh! And maybe I can acid-etch it with images of the victims trapped within! You know, bacon weeping for lost loved ones, Hibernian eggs alone on a desolate battlefield, tiny sausages impaled on spikes…"
"Um," said Louise, who had completely lost her chain of thought. "It's Louise, not 'Lou'," she said weakly. "And I'm not sure that such etchings are really…"
"Yeah, they're pretty tasteless," Jessica said. "Ha ha. Tasteless. Which is funny, because they're, you know, food."
It was one of the banes of her life, Louise thought, that she seemed cursed to be surrounded by people who thought they were funny. Surely, even the sort-of-slightly-evil deeds she'd been forced to do in the name of righteousness didn't deserve this sort of penance, did they?
"But anyway, with a fridge, I can keep some milk around," Jessica continued. "Then I'll just need to get a demonic cow, hook it up to a milker, and that'll be that." She glanced down at Louise. "You should drink more milk, you know. It'll help you grow. Especially your…"
"Demonic cows?" Louise interrupted, not liking where this conversation was going. "How do you get demonic cows?"
"Well, you just look at my cousins," Jessica said, glowering. "Bunch of demonic cows, the bunch of them."
Louise blushed bright red. "I'm… I… it… you drink… your cousins are actual cows and… um, I don't think I can…"
"Oh, urgh. Dark gods, no," Jessica said, looking nauseated. "They're just cows in the sense that, you know… in the same way that just because they're bitches doesn't mean they're physically female dogs. You don't use cow in that way?"
Louise could proudly say that she did not. Except when talking about Kirche von Zerbst. "Fine, I get your point," she muttered. "The ways of the Abyss are strange and… sometimes I misunderstand what you're saying, all right! So these demonic cows are… what?"
"Demon cows. You know, so they have hooves, horns, tails… the works."
"Normal cows have them too," Louise said. Well, if there was one advantage, she thought ruefully to herself, it was trying to understand the very peculiar way the half-incubus thought was taking all her concentration. She didn't have time to think about Cattleya when she was trying to comprehend the alien concepts which seemed to come naturally to the daughter of one of the hell-princes.
"Really?" Jessica asked, frowning. "Are you sure?"
"Yes. Quite sure."
"Like… are you sure those weren't secretly demonic cows? A secret force of malevolent corruption lying to the fools of the surface world so they welcomed them into their farms before… wham! Suddenly the cows are the ones in charge!"
"Yes, I am."
"Huh. So… man. It turns out demonic cows and normal cows are the same thing. Huh. I could… I did not see that coming." Jessica frowned. "I gotta say, my human cousins are a bit more impressive if they have to deal with the flaming breath and the way they eat the flesh of men. I thought they just had wussy cows without horns and stuff."
Louise worked her mouth. "No, normal cows don't eat meat," she managed. "Or breathe fire. That's… that's a demonic thing. But they do have horns and hooves and tails."
Jessica threw her hands up. "Argh! You have to make your mind up, nature! Why would you give something horns and hooves if it wasn't a demon! It makes no sense!"
Louise massaged her brow. "How is everything going getting the forge working?" she asked, trying to return the conversation to more sane territory.
"Oh, good, good! I mean, it's actually a fair bit better than I would have hoped. There's quite a bit of mostly intact gear down here, and Gnarl says he knows a place we can raid to get our hands on a new smelter. Until I have one of those, I've got a forge set up, so I can get started on basic stuff. Nothing too fancy." She paused. "I am going to need raw materials for all of this, though, so if you find ore or raw metal, have the minions loot it. Or any of the four alchemical transmutatives; you know, albedo, rubedo and all that. They're really useful. You always need more rubedo. Or potatoes."
Louise blinked. "What are potatoes?"
"… are they another thing you don't have on the surface? Aww, man." Jessica put down the things she had been playing with, and slumped down. "Oh well. Gotta make the best of things. And no, it's not to help making stuff. I just like potatoes. What else do you make chips from?"
The overlady didn't see why you would want to make chips; things getting chipped was bad. "Anyway," she said, "I was going to be heading to Bruxelles to look for where the portal into the palace was mentioned, because I want to see its location and what it is exactly. And you do know the area, and it might be a chance for you to pick up anything you left behind."
"Oh!" Jessica said. "If we're going to Bruxelles, can we please please please delay until the Voidsday after next? It's just my cousin is going to be in town and that way I can see them at the same time as doing your thing."
"I thought you hated all your cousins," Louise said, interested despite herself.
Jessica rolled her eyes. "Human side," she said. "And technically I don't hate all my demonic side cousins because they're stupid cows who are mean and stole my dolls when I was little. Just the vast majority of them. But still, please?"
Louise thought quickly. If she did have a legitimate excuse for why she was taking Jessica to Bruxelles, then on the outside chance something happened she might have a better chance for escaping eternal torment. And it's not like a wait of a few days meant much. "Fine," she said, shrugging. "I suppose…"
"Oh, just wait a minute!" Jessica flitted off, returning with a handful of papers. "I really wanted to start talking about the uniform to give to your legion of doom! I'm thinking plate! We want them to be intimidating! But first we're going to need fittings And proofs of concept! And trials! And experimentation to see what the optimal design to get the best balance of protectiveness and style!"
The overlady noticed the lack of mention of 'cost' in those considerations. And of all the things she wanted to do today, watching minions pose around in their… their underthings while Jessica measured them up was pretty dratted far down the list. Did minions even wear underthings? She didn't want to find out.
"You can start putting some initial thought into things," she told the other girl firmly. "Right now, trying to get the minion hive working is a higher priority for me. I'm sure I'm fairly close to a breakthrough, though."
…
blort
"… I feel sick."
…
