"Ah, poetic irony. Despite their avowed contempt for any form of poetry, the little dears are very fond of it as long as it's messy. Of course, they tend to have no idea what irony means – except for 'made of iron'. Well, Maximillian might. Hmm. I may need to watch that one. Wouldn't want him getting ideas above his station.
Oh, nothing, nothing, just musing out loud."
– Gnarl
…
The body hit the wall with a wet thud, before falling to the ground in a clatter of armour. The blood covering its neck glistened in the dim moonlight.
"Catt!" Louise chided her big sister, calling quietly up to her. "You missed." Cattleya had persuaded her that it really was necessary for her to kill the guard quietly – and that she really needed the meal – for them to be able to get into the compound, and her sister's failure to be quiet was going against her plan.
"Sorry, sorry!" Cattleya apologised from the top of the wall, wiping her mouth. She trudged over, and picked the body up before throwing it again. This time it sailed over the edge of the wall and landed with a splash in the river beyond. In the darkness, it sunk out of sight swiftly, and even the ripples were lost.
"That's better," Louise said, hands on her hips. "Remember! We need to tidy up after ourselves. So we can't leave any sign of our presence here." She paused and reconsidered her statement. "At least until we've taken what we can and blown up the rest and set everything we can't blow up on fire," she added scrupulously. After all, this belonged to the Council, who were evil, and fire cleansed all sins. That was official church teachings.
"Yeah!" Scyl said. "Tidy up after your selfy, Fettid! You is dropping your hat!"
Fettid stabbed him in the throat, and then paused, checking her head. "Oh yes," she said. "I are saying thankies to the kind gentleman who," she focussed hard, "help-ing a poor young nobbly woman?"
"Very well done," Cattleya told Fettid happily, clapping her hands together. "Though it's pronounced 'noble', not 'nobbly'."
Louise did love her sister, but she wasn't sure why she was trying to teach the minions culture. It was like trying to teach peasants culture. Only even more pointless. Cattleya flew down and lifted her up to the top of the walls, and between them they threw the ropes down for the minions to scale the wall.
It was night, but the royal foundries just along the coast from Amstreldamme kept their fires burning and their tools pounding through the night. The waterwheel-driven drop hammers never stopped their ceaseless beat. And before them was their target. The brand new stone buildings of the most recent addition to the foundries loomed before them, taller than even the walls.
Louise didn't understand how the machinery within worked. She did, however, understand the reports she'd obtained on how many suits of munitions plate and how many cannon they could be used to make each year. The Council would use this to strengthen the army and crush anyone who opposed them. Like her. And if they felt strong enough to do that, they might also feel strong enough to challenge her parents.
She wouldn't let them do that. Not ever.
Beside her, Cattleya sighed. "I wish we could have taken the puppies. The little dears really want to get to ride them," she said sadly.
"The puppies which are flesh-eating vampire-empowered adult wolves?" Louise checked, just in case Cattleya had been expanding her pet collection again. She still hadn't forgotten the "sweet little birdies" that had resulted from Cattleya's encounter with a murder of crows.
"Yep! They're so adorable!"
Louise had many words for her sister's abominations against life, but 'adorable' was not one of them. She checked on the progress of the minions. It was going slower than she liked, because Maggat was currently beating up three minions who'd decided that they could climb the ropes faster if they were on fire.
At least now she was up here along with her sister. And on the way here, she'd been trying to pluck up the courage to ask her something. Her big sister might know this, and Louise had no one else to ask. No one else that she trusted, anyway. Jessica should never be told these kinds of things because she was afraid of what the half-demon would tell her if she asked, Henrietta was… uh, rather too closely involved with the subject at hand, and Gnarl… no. Just no. Louise took a deep shuddering breath. "Um, Catt," she said softly. She had to ask now, or she'd lose all courage and there'd be no way that she'd manage it.
"Yep?"
She locked her hands behind her back. "Do…do you have a moment to talk?"
Cattleya looked around, and sniffed the air. "No one is nearby," she said confidently.
"G-good." Louise took a breath, and began to pace up and down. "Do… do you ever find that… that your heart flip-flops all over the place?" she let out in a rush.
Her big sister frowned. "No, not really. It mostly doesn't move." She paused. "Well, I mean, it beats for a bit after I drink blood, but it stops again pretty quickly! Are you feeling ill? Are you worried your heart is playing up? Because that's really bad news! We need to find a healer and-"
Louise screwed up her face. "Not what I meant," she managed. "Not… I didn't mean your actual literal heart."
"I don't think I have any other kind," Cattleya said dubiously. She ran a hand through her loose hair. "I'm not that kind of de la Vallière! I'm not like Eleanore and her collection of pickled animal parts."
Louise remembered why she'd been somewhat dubious about asking Cattleya this kind of thing. "This is the kind of heart-thing which is about love," she said firmly. "I… do you ever find yourself having feelings for… f-for boys? Different ones, I mean."
Cattleya looked blank. "Feelings for boys?" she asked. "No. Why? Oh! Brain-freeze! You're asking for you!" She rapped herself on the head. "Silly me!"
Louise shifted awkwardly, her armour clanking. "I mean… I… I liked spending time with the C-Cathayan Emperor. He's… he's handsome, in a sort of… um, exotic way. And he… he d-didn't try to really kill me much. And he said nice things about me. But… that pirate king. I… I was h-having thoughts about him, too. Before I… uh. Killed him, that is." She decided not to mention her feelings for Henrietta – which were of course just a minor bit of confusion which would pass in time and was probably all the fault of her Evil heritage getting all confused just because she'd captured a princess and now it was assuming that she wanted to marry her which was ridiculous of course because girls can't marry girls. Louise took a mental breath. Yes. That was it.
"That's just as well," Cattleya said, nodding seriously. "Romancing corpses is a sin. Of course, I'm technically a living corpse, but the Church has formally declared that romance of undead corpses is – while dreadful and wrong and wicked of course – not as dreadful and wrong and wicked as romancing corpses which are… well, not living corpses. Or unliving ones. That is… um, undead ones, not… dead ones. Although they're both dead, but one is deader and thus wrong-er."
"Um," Louise said. She hadn't really wanted to know that. "Thank you, Catt, and… uh, why do you know that?"
"I read up on the topic because I wanted to know if I could get married to a prince," Cattleya said brightly, red eyes gleaming in the moonlight. "I was… oh, about twelve at the time. Not that I want to marry a prince anymore." She shuddered elegantly. "The thought repels me. Almost as much as a holy symbol! But I can't get married to a prince, because princes have to get married in churches, and I catch fire if I step into a church or a chapel."
"Oh. Um." Louise frowned. "But the chapel on the estate…"
"Is a chapel on the de la Vallière estate," Cattleya said firmly.
Oh. Yes. Right. Louise supposed that there was probably no way that could count as holy ground considering what had probably gone on there for generations before. Unholy ground, yes. Not holy ground. Even reconsecration had its limits. "So," she tried. "You… you don't have the problem of being attracted to… to people you don't want to be?"
Cattleya looked thoughtful. "I don't really think so," she said, biting her lip as she pondered the question. "I've been attracted to people, but it's never really caused me problems. Which is jolly good, really! Being a blood-sucking monster is enough of one!"
"Oh," Louise said, mostly to herself. No, apparently her sister had escaped such a… an inconstant heart. It was almost as unfair as it was that Henrietta had managed to have a True Love. Louise was almost certain she didn't have one. And knowing her luck, he'd probably be some evil tyrant who wasn't as enjoyable to talk with as Emperor Lee. Or someone who was stupid and boring and… and really really stupid. "Well, thank you, Catt."
Cattleya gave her a room temperature one-armed hug. "Do you want to talk about it more?" she asked gently.
Louise sighed. "I'll just muddle through," she said, shaking her head with a clank. "I can't say I enjoy it, but it'll probably pass and it's just my teenage years being all difficult. And awkward." She peered down over the wall. "And the minions are being very slow," she said, eyes narrowing.
"Oooh!" Cattleya exclaimed. "Maybe I could try raising giant spiders for them to ride. Or flies! Or baby dragons! Or…"
Louise paled. "I… I think we'll talk about this later," she said, trying to not think about the damage a minion riding a dragon could inflict on many things. Including itself. Especially itself.
…
Back in the darkly malevolent and only somewhat dilapidated tower of the overlady, conspiracies against its mistress were being hatched.
"Mmm," Jessica said through a mouthful of pins, "I think we really need to think more about presents… straighten your arms out, a bit." Henrietta complied, and Jessica adjusted the set of the fabric on her shoulders. "Better?"
Henrietta nodded, trying not to move too much. The aforementioned conspiracy was occurring while she was being fitted for a new dress, because that allowed two sinister goals to be accomplished at once. She sucked in a breath and winced as a pin stuck into her. "Ouch."
"Sorry, sorry." Jessica adjusted the location of the offending pin. "So, it's a shame it's her eighteenth because we could totally have given her a Mega Malevolent Sixteenth, but, like, that's the breaks," Jessica observed. "Oh! I know! Maybe if we get her a big cake… but! It's hollow on the inside and then there's a really cute demon-guy inside and then he jumps out on her! That'd totally loosen her up."
Henrietta stared flatly at her dressmaker. "What do you think is likely to happen if a demon-"
"A cute demon!"
"- a cute demon, yes, but still a demon jumps out of a cake at Louise Françoise?"
The two women thought about it.
"I see," Jessica said, nodding. "Yes, that is a problem. We'd need to find a demon who was both cute and fireproof."
"And lightning-proof," Henrietta added.
"And lightning-proof, yes. And minion-proof. And that means they're not that cute and have to wear more than some really tight underwear to protect themselves from all the Evil magic Lou'll throw at them when the fire doesn't work. And that's just not very cute at all!"
Henrietta sighed internally, glad she'd managed to win this argument at least. Birthday planning for Louise Françoise was not going well. At least some of it was because of Jessica, and the fact that she… well, just didn't get surface-worlders at all. "I think it would be better for you to think of presents and gifts," she tried, "and perhaps leave the organisation of the entertainment for me?"
Jessica huffed ungraciously. "Yeah, well… okay. Yeah. But seriously, what do you get an overlady?"
"She likes books. Perhaps something on history – or, of course, new magic. She's very fond of magical study."
Jessica frowned. "Yeah, but I mean… what do we get her that's not mega-lame? We're trying to not be boring here."
"Well, it's normal for books to not be able to walk," Henrietta said, trying to ignore the burning sensation in her arm muscles. One advantage of putting on muscle far too easily to retain a perfectly ladylike figure was that she could hold a single position for extended periods. "But beyond that, it is rather harder to pick."
Jessica hummed to herself. "Well, what am I meant to do? It's always such a fuss when I'm trying to get her to wear hot new things. She's not interested in clothes, she doesn't have hobbies like capturing heroes or watching slave-fights or… or anything!"
Henrietta didn't point out that Louise Françoise did in fact like dresses, but preferred them in conservative Tristainian styles and that while Henrietta herself was more than willing to cast off the backwards and repressive tastes that her mother would tyrannically impose on her, the overlady seemed to actually like such styles. That was a fight she had lost several times already.
"Sometimes it seems like we're from… like, two completely different worlds," Jessica continued, almost begging. "'Cause, you know, we are. Literally. Please, Henri! You need to help me pick something out for her!"
"Well." Henrietta said, utterly giving up on keeping her arms held out and letting them sink back down. "I suppose I could. But… you're going to need to help me with it."
"Oh? Because I can totes do that… and please, please, please straighten your arms again. You're crumpling the spidersilk!"
Henrietta reluctantly obeyed. "What Louise really wants is revenge," she says.
"Well. Yeah. Duh."
Henrietta leaned inwards, a gesture which would have been much more intimidating and insister and generally conspiratorial if she could have stared over the top of her steepled fingers. "And that means what she really wants is help."
"Oh. Oh, no," Jessica said, crossing her arms. "No. No no no. No. No no." She paused. "No. You have to ask her yourself. I've told you this time and time again. She won't listen to me if you want to help. After all," she said coaxingly, "you're her friend. She'll think it's a demonic ploy coming from me. You need to work on her without my help."
"But why not?" Henrietta said, pouting.
"Because she'll shout at me," Jessica said reasonably. "And you do want to help her, don't you? That's why you need to wear her down. Talk to her in private… maybe in the bath when she gets back, right? She lets her guard down when she's relaxing and tired after a long day."
"Well, maybe." Henrietta said stubbornly. "I… I just don't see why she won't let me help! I hate the Council as much as she does! No, more!"
"Uh, Henri," Jessica said. "You are sort of our prisoner. You're not much use as a captive if you're obviously working with us. That totally ruins your ransom value."
"I don't want to be a prisoner," Henrietta complained.
"… yes, that's the sort of thing prisoners are meant to say," Jessica observed.
"No, no, not like that. I don't want to be a prisoner! I'm already the Voice of the Overlady! I want to be a proper co-conspirator and help her crush those… contemptuous fools in the Council. Crush under a jolly big rock. Oh! Or maybe we can put them in a cauldron of mildly warm oil!"
"What's that supposed to do?" Jessica asked, intrigued despite herself.
"Be heated up," Henrietta said emphatically.
Jessica sighed. "I'll think about it," she said, shoulders slumping despite the small smirk on her face. "Lou is really loud and… ear-hurty when she shouts at me. Just think of the sacrifices I'm making for you."
"I knew you'd come around to my point of view," Henrietta said. "Now, could you hurry up? I wish to lower my arms before they fall off."
…
A light drizzle pattered down on the roofs and the alleyways. It wasn't heavy enough to really be called rain properly, but it got in the eyes and made the torches splutter and hiss. Two guards, wondering why the bleedin' Abyss they got the night shifts, clattered and clunked their way around the perimeter of the largest factory.
Louise let them pass, her eyes narrowed in disdain. The torches they carried left them almost blind in the dark, and their broad-brimmed hats kept the rain off them at the cost of nearly deafening them.
Well, she didn't mind that. It served her causes well. She couldn't see too well in the night either, but that didn't matter. She could see the guards who were handily carrying light around. And she had her sister with her.
A bat fluttered behind a pile of junk in the alley, and there was the sound of Cattleya changing, followed by the sound of her getting dressed again.
"Found a way in," she said brightly, poking her head up from behind the cover. "If I just move some of those planks, the minions can get up to that overlook, and I can carry you! Oh, isn't that wonderful?"
"Wait a moment," Louise said, narrowing her eyes. "Didn't Jessica make you something magic which meant… uh," she blushed faintly, and hated herself for it, "… uh, your clothes stayed with you? Some kind of magic outfit?"
Cattleya muttered something as she ducked back down again, trying to do up the ties at her back.
"Pardon?"
"I said," Cattleya said sheepishly, "I've put weight on. So… uh. Um. The enchantment isn't working properly. So she leant me something else."
Louise pursed her lips, tapping her foot. "You said you needed the food from the guard," she said. "Not that you were getting… getting fat."
"It's not my fault," Cattleya protested. "The blood of the living goes straight to my chest and hips! It's jolly unfair! I wish I could stay as trivially slender as you. My cult says that's the current fashion at court! The Madame de Montespan apparently is built just like you and now all the fashionable ladies are trying to look like beanpoles with two peas attached."
There was an awkward pause.
"I am going to murder her in the face," Louise hissed. "And you're going on a diet. Uh. Whatever a diet is for you. Less blood. And less fattening blood, if that's a thing."
"Aww," Cattleya whined, straightening up. Her hair was sticking out from under her mask, and the black dye was coming out. "But animal blood is boring!"
"Tough luck!"
The break-in hit a snag at the entrance on the balcony, which surprisingly was not minion induced. The minions perfectly subtly smashed down the door and stole the hinges, which was why it came as quite a surprise when Cattleya stepped through the open door, got half-way through and then rebounded, landing heavily on her behind.
"Owie," she said, picking herself up, glowering as she rubbed her aches. "That always stings. There's someone living in there."
Louise sighed and stepped through the door. "Come in," she said wearily. She was tempted to make a comment about 'padding', but didn't do so. That would be unkind. She did think it fairly hard, though.
"Thanks!" Cattleya said brightly, stepping through without incident. "Stupid invitation rule. So mean and horrid and annoying!"
"Hmm," Louise said pointedly, looking around the interior of the room and ignoring the fact that the minions had gone in ahead of them and thus it had already been stripped bare. "Yes. Who's living in here, I wonder?" Her left gauntlet felt… warm. Like holding a kitten in her hands, or maybe a sensation of nearby Evil. According to Gnarl, the two feelings were basically the same thing.
The hallways echoed with the sound of beating metal and great clanking sounds. Despite that, they seemed abandoned. Louise didn't see a human soul as she worked her way down to the ground floor and the great hall of the workfloor. This statement was correct even if her sister and the minions were with her. Vast items of machinery several times her height worked away, but there were no people watching them. There was also nothing to stop anyone falling into the machinery, as several minions proved entirely willing to demonstrate.
"It's very loud in here!" Cattleya shouted, wincing.
"Pardon?" Louise shouted back.
"I said, it's very loud!"
"Yes it is!" Louise frowned. The feeling in her hand seemed to be coming from below them. She leaned forwards. And there were pumps moving up and down through the floor, driving the machines. What hellish mechanism forced these unnatural things to move? She knelt, her armour clanking, and laid her hand against the stone floor.
The feeling was stronger. "Minions!" she shouted. "Find a way to the underlayers!"
"What?"
"What what?"
"Overlady say something but I no hear!"
"What?!"
"I say 'Overlady say something'!"
"What?!"
This went on for long enough that Louise found the door down on her own. Raising her gauntlet, she summoned the minions back to her and waved frantically in Cattleya's direction until she noticed her. The noise somewhat receded as she descended down the spiralling stone staircase, to be replaced by a hissing sound and a roar of flames.
… Founder drat it, was it a dragon? Louise hoped it wasn't a dragon. She really hoped it wasn't a dragon. It was totally a dragon chained up under here. Drat, drat, drat and triple drat. She paused to shake her sweat-slick hair out of her eyes. It really was getting excessively hot in here. Probably a sign of dragons. She was fairly sure her mother had mentioned it was one of the signs that they were about. That is, before they set everything on fire, they liked to nest in hot environments.
Well, there was one thing she could do. One thing completely in line with her training, with her heritage, and with all proper standards of noble behaviour.
She sent the minions in first.
Leaning against the wall, she shushed Cattleya and waited for a little bit. She couldn't hear a dragon eating them. But then again, she couldn't hear very much at all.
"Overlady! Overlady!" Igni came sprinting around the corner, skidding on the smooth stone and crashing face-first into the wall. He picked himself up without a care. "You no is believing what we is finding!"
"It's a dragon! I knew it! A dragon!" Louise snapped, nerves somewhat frayed.
"… no, overlady," Igni said staring at her with the blank expression which usually indicated confusion and-slash-or stupidity in a minion. "It are minions! Lots of minions!"
"What?" Louise snapped.
"Reds!"
Louise gritted her teeth, took a deep breath, and glanced out. The room was dimly lit, but there was a fiery glow coming from somewhere in among the machinery and the pistons running up in the room. Waving her sister forwards, she ducked low and began working her way towards the glow. In among the noise she could hear the moronic gibbering of minions. She thought it probably wasn't hers – well, most of it at least. She'd seen a pair of browns already prying repair tools off the walls.
The red glow was coming from a recess in the floor, and from glowing metal up above. Louise swallowed. It reminded her of the lighting in the Abyss. Her heart was pounding in her ears, and it seemed to match the beat of the machinery above. She licked her dry lips, making sure she could cast quickly, and glanced down.
Row after row after row of red minions were strapped to strange arcane-looking devices. Their limbs were chained and wickedly long needles had been jammed into their chests. That alone would have killed any human, but that was just a prelude to what was going on. The barbs in their chests were connected up to a complicated array of glass tubing and pumps which drew a crimson fluid which glowed like firelight up out of them. The red possibly-blood was being drawn into a brass vessel hanging overhead which glowed red hot on the bottom and which shrieked like a kettle. Cogs and pistons protruded from the sides, somehow powering all the machinery overhead.
The air tasted like lightning and hot metal, and there was a tang to the air which told her that magic was in use. Evil magic, too.
Suddenly she was blinded by bright magical lights, white and pure. Compared to the darkness and gloom of the area before, it was painful. Cattleya screamed and ran away, but Louise stood firm, raising her free hand to cover her eyes.
"Stop right there, evil criminal scum!" someone shouted from up above. The light was coming from a balcony which overlooked the minion pit, at the same level as the brass vessel which was drawing out their magic – and possibly their blood. When she blinked the tears out of her eyes, she could just about make out a figure in a hulking suit of armour. She thought she recognised the design from her father's pictures of what elite Albionese grenadiers might wear, or perhaps the magic-powered suits occasionally made by artificers in Amstreldamme.
"What are you doing with these minions?" she demanded.
"This is their penance in the eyes of the Founder, for the Evil of their creation! And I am their taskmaster! I am the forgemaster!" the man in the clanking suit of armour declared, the glass lenses gleaming in the light. The steam boiler on his back whistled as he raised his arms, the windstones mounted on its surface allowing him to move with unusual grace. "None shall enter my domain! I alone hold the secrets of-"
Louise raised her left gauntlet, and lightning the colour of inflamed flesh lashed out. The man convulsed, fell off the balcony, and lay there squirming. Given the distance he'd fallen, he was almost certainly mortally wounded, but her minions made sure.
Igni let out an impressed whistle she heard even over the noise of the machinery. "I is liking this shiny armour," he said. "It are the worst!"
"Your wicked malevolentness, you have improved greatly with your use of the Gauntlet to cast vile sorceries with narry the chanting of those lesser casters who must channel the elements. I noticed that this time, you drew heavily upon your spite," Gnarl said cheerfully. "Spite is a very powerful emotion, but you must be careful to not focus on it exclusively! There are so many dreadful negative emotions to draw upon."
"Thank you," Louise said darkly. "Now please, stop talking. I'm trying to concentrate." Chanting, she conjured a fireball, and then blew the brass vessel hanging overhead wide open. It ignited and burnt like a torch, metal twisting and warping as it spit its burning contents onto the imprisoned red minions. The captive minions only seemed to be invigorated by the heat. Above her, everything went quiet as the machinery ceased to beat, the cogs and pistons deprived of their motive source. Glass rained down as the piping shattered.
Down in the pit, the minions stirred. The red glow died, leaving only their eyes in the dark. First one, then many began to summon fire. They melted their chains and pulled out of the torture devices.
"Free!" one slightly larger red minion declared, holding its fist in the air. "We is free! Viva la revolution! No kings! No masters! We no is never gonna be slaves again! Not to no one!"
"Ha! That means you are-" Louise began, but she was ignored.
"It's the infernal influence," Gnarl said sadly. "Sometimes, if they're exposed to demonic influences for too long, minions will decide that their place in life is not crushed under your deliciously Evil steel boot. The Reds are particularly prone to it. It's probably because the First Overlord used a tiny bit of demon in them when making them so they could make the fireballs. It leaves them prone to rebelliousness."
"Is that a problem?" Louise asked, concern in her voice.
"Nah," Maggat said, tugging on her sleeve. "We is used to dealing with red rebellions. You is just needing to beat it out of them. Of course, you is needing to give the orders to some kind of trusted and loyal minion what are ready and willing on your orders to…" Maggat turned and whispered to Maxy, who whispered something back and then gave him a thumbs up, "… commit acts of violins with ex-treme pre-just-ice to maintain order in the ranks."
Louise stared at the bulky minion with his skull helmet and skull shoulder plates and belt of wired-together skeletal hands. "And if I, say, were to order you to do this?" she asked, the corners of her mouth curling up despite herself. It was almost cute. It was like a five-year old trying to be cunning. Though five-year olds were, in her admittedly limited knowledge, rather better at it.
"It would be very sad. Boo hoo. But I is just so loyal to the overlady I is more than willing to beat these red gobbos in the face so hard all the rebellion come out."
"It are sort of a pale yellow colour," Scyl said helpfully. "It are needing to be lanced."
"I is ready, with chains and clubs with nails in them and sometimes their own hands," Maggat concluded.
Louise put her hands on her hips. "The thing I don't understand," she observed, "is why you're pretending you don't want to beat them up and so you feign reluctance."
This produced a bout of intense whispering, largely on the topic of what the words 'feign' and 'reluctance' meant. Maggat turned back around, with a lopsided grin. "We is getting less-ons from oversister for how to act in front of princess even if princess are henchess," he explained.
"We is meant to pretend we is not wanting to hurt thingies even though we is," Fettid said sadly.
Maxy stepped forwards. "We is hearing your want for freedom and we is understanding it. That is why overlady has generously and…"
"Ahem!" Louise said firmly. There was no way she was going to let a minion loot… um, steal her lines. "I hear your desire for freedom and I understand why you might say it. That is why you're free to go." Around her, her minions crept forwards, weapons at the ready.
"Yes!" pronounced the ragged leader of the reds. "We is free! Finally! Freedom! They beat us, kick us, make us melt things…"
"No burny at all," said another of the freed reds, shaking its head sadly.
"… but now we is no longer chained! We no be beaten or kicked or…"
Louise cleared her throat. "I promise you your freedom," she said calmly, watching Maggat circle around to a perfect pouncing position.
"Really?" asked the leader of the rebels suspiciously.
Louise considered the point. "No," she said, giving the sign and then stepping back.
Minion on minion violence ensued. And since one side had a bunch of burly, loot-festooned browns and greens while the other was largely composed of emaciated reds who not five minutes ago were having their blood drained by a magical machine, it was only going to end one way.
By the end of this brief interlude of cathartic violence, Maggat had the leader of the rebels held by the throat up against the wall, while his underlings were in some permutation of dead, mutilated, and concussed.
"Listen up you miserable gobbos!" Maggat roared. "That are insub-ord-in-eight talk! You is minions! That mean you get beaten and kicked if overlady want you beaten or kicked!"
"Or if it funny," Fettid contributed helpfully.
"Yes! Hurty what are funny are part of minion life," Maggat agreed. "So line up! You is coming with us back to the tower!"
"You is taking our lives but you no is taking our freeness!" managed the red leader, before Maggat slammed his head into a wall a few times. He twitched a few times and then stopped moving.
"Oi! Scyl!" Maggat barked. "I is needing him to be not dead any more. So I are able to take his freeness."
"Sure thing, boss," said Scyl happily, hands already glowing with minionish magic.
"Minions you knighted can never be defeated - argh!"
"Wrong!" Fettid declared, hacking away at his ankles with butcher's cleavers.
Louise was by now rather bored of the minion-on-minion violence, and so wandered away from where the rebel leader was repeatedly being murdered and resurrected to look for her sister. She eventually found her hiding up in the rafters.
"Catt?" she called up.
A sob answered her.
"Oh dear," Louise said. "Are you hurt?"
"M-my eyes hurt," Cattleya said. She sounded like she'd been crying. "Has the fire gone away?"
Louise paled as she remembered that she'd just melted the magical device which had been drawing power from the captive reds. Of course. It had gone up like a torch. And then the reds had been throwing fire all over the place as they tried to fight off her minions. She sighed. She hated her honest streak sometimes, but Catt would know because… well, it was sort of hard to hide a fire. "It's… it's still burning, but…"
"I'm not c-coming down until it goes away!"
"We're nearly done, but…"
"Is the fire g-gone?"
Louise hated having to deal with this kind of emotional thing. For one, she had very little experience of it from this angle. It was usually her being comforted. "Do you want a hug?" she tried.
A vampire dropped down from the rafters and wrapped its cold dead arms around her in an inexorable grasp with the dreadful strength of rigour mortis. "I… I really really really don't like fire, do you understand me?" Cattleya insisted. "Especially when I'm already on edge! All the light was fire light! And then there was the bright light before! It was like sunlight!"
Louise sighed, or at the very least air escaped from her lungs. "I know. I know," she said, trying to breathe.
"I'm… I'm s-so sorry," Cattleya stammered. "I know I'm not brave like you, but… the bright light and the firelight together… it made me panic! I had to get out of here! It's like sunlight!"
The noise of minion beatings increased in the background. "It's all right," Louise said, patting her sister with whatever arm movement was left to her. "We're going to go home. Um. Back to the tower."
Lips wobbling, Cattleya nodded fervently and mercifully released her grasp somewhat. "Uh," she said, looking around at the damaged machinery. Her tone was obviously one of someone trying to put their mind off things. "Little sister? How are you going to get all of this stuff back? It's rather big and the staircase up was jolly narrow."
"Oh, it's quite simple," Louise said smugly.
…
"Wow," Jessica said, hands on her hips as she looked up at the newly installed machinery within the bowels of the tower. The stone here was still dilapidated and ruined; they'd needed to open up a new set of chambers to fit them all. The minions were busy enthusiastically swarming over the complicated constructions of steel and brass, and periodically suffering fatal industrial accidents. The drop hammer was claiming a rather high toll. "Lou, this is fucking sweet. Seriously. You spoil me, you really do. This is more than I deserve!"
"You're right, I do spoil you," Louise said. "And it is."
"How did you even manage to get this all out of the underground area?"
"Very well, thank you very much."
Jessica ran her hands over the sleek metal of the something-or-other – Louise wasn't really sure what this specific thing was for – and made a noise of delight. "You're a terror, aren't you?" she cooed to it. "And now you're back in the wrong hands, you'll do dreadful things. Just horrible!"
"Please don't elope with the machinery," Louise said dryly.
"Oh, I wouldn't do that," Jessica said, grinning. "I don't want to marry it. I just want to get it in bed."
Louise opened her mouth. Louise closed her mouth. "That… was a joke?" she asked hopefully.
Jessica gave her a flat look. "Yeah," she said, gesturing at the two-storey high roller designed to churn out sheets of pressed steel. "It was a joke."
Louise sighed in relief.
"This isn't the kind of machine you'd take to bed," Jessica added. "It's just a work colleague."
"You won't get me again with your wicked infernal jokes," Louise said archly. "I refuse to believe you have… have any sort of… of amorous desire towards inanimate objects! And that is that! Now! Let us move entirely away from that topic."
"Hey, I think I have an idea for a present for your eighteenth!" Jessica said with a grin which would have been described as 'impish' if she had not significantly outranked imps in the demonic hierarchy.
"Not another word!" Louise crossed her arms. "So. How long will it take to get it back into full operation?"
Jessica reluctantly stepped away from the machinery, sticking her oil-stained hands in the pockets of her dungarees. "Eh," she said. "This stuff looks like it's of an infernal design – or at least influenced by bleedover from the Abyss – but it's still a lot more crude than the normal stuff in the Abyss. I'm going to have to get a bunch of manuals out from a dark library to maintain it. It's beautifully made, but I haven't done stuff with this before. And we're going to need to work on the power supply. At the moment it's a minion-crank, but that just provides motive power. I'll need reds to heat it, or… hmm, we could get an infernal combustion engine!"
Louise shook her head, trying to clear her head. "An infernal combustion enginge?"
"It burns souls!"
"… we'll use the minions for now," Louise said firmly. She pinched her brow. "So… do you think you'll have it ready within a month?"
Jessica looked at it, and sucked air in between her teeth. "Probably in the prototyping stage," she said. "Mass production? Probably not. And that's only if I don't need to do other things, like fix your armour because it got damaged."
"I would prefer that such a thing would not be required," Louise said. "Not least because I would be wearing it at the time." She sighed. "I'm going to have a bath, and then I'm going straight to bed. Midnight operations play havoc with my sleep, and I'm exhausted."
"I think Henrietta wanted to talk to you," Jessica said hastily. "You should probably talk to her. No doubt it'll make you feel better."
"Later," Louise said, yawning. "When I've slept. See you in the… afternoon, probably."
…
The silence of the tower was stifling. A ball of faintly glowing water held about her hand, Princess Henrietta of Tristain crept through the corridors. Louise Françoise and Jessica were almost certainly asleep, but Cattleya as a vampire could be anywhere, and she didn't want to stumble into a minion. They might misunderstand what the captive princess was doing skulking around in the tower, outside of her room.
She was only doing it to help her good friend, but they might not believe her. And then they might be rude, or possibly even violent. So it was better for her to pass unseen.
Louise Françoise had been jolly rude by yawning at her in a vaguely offensive manner and then closing the door to the bathroom when she had tried to talk to her, she considered. She had just wanted to talk to her friend when she was in the bath, and it was perfectly natural for two women to bathe together. Why the devil was she being so secretive? Did she have something to hide?
She did so hope that Louise Françoise wasn't feeling ashamed from some peculiar twisting of the flesh which she had developed from the use of dark magic. That would be just dreadful.
Well, since talking wasn't working, she might as well go ahead and begin step two of her plan without necessarily quite clearing step one. She could do that later. Carefully, she eased open the door to the library. She had already oiled it with oil from Jessica's workshop earlier in the day, and so it opened with barely a squeak. Closing it behind her, she lit the candles and then built herself a cushion-fort on the floor.
Now. Where should she start with her self-study?
Hours passed. The candles burned low, casting long flickering shadows against the walls. Henrietta yawned. Although it was dreadful and wrong and wicked and sinful and all that, from certain angles and certain viewpoints the explanations of the magical texts from Louise's library…
… well, they just made more sense. Blood was basically just dirty water, after all. And – while of course she wouldn't practice it herself – just looking at the theory, blood magic didn't look particularly hard.
But of course she wasn't going to start using blood magic. Not one bit. At all. Really. Because that would be wrong.
Entirely so. Completely.
She wasn't going to do it.
At all.
One bit.
… now, necromancy on the other hand was a much more promising starting point, she thought, heart fluttering in her chest at the hope she barely dared to hope.
She yawned again. That would have to come tomorrow night, though.
…
