Change my Destiny 10: The Fool Part 3
Hey everyone. Sorry this took so long. I got a job at the hospital so the 12 hour shifts have been taking most of my time. But I managed to scrounge this up so I hope you enjoy. Also kindly leave a review and tell me what you think!
-Change my Destiny-
Avalon and Tabitha made their way down the grassy plains, hiding among the tall grass to avoid the guards patrolling the area. From what Avalon could sense, there were five guards total manning the perimeter of the building. One at the main entrance, two at the rear, and the remaining two circling the outer balcony.
"Is this kind of security normal?" Avalon asked as he and Tabitha scouted from afar. Tabitha nodded.
"I suppose the count wouldn't want to raise suspicion for whatever it is that he's doing... Do you feel anything odd?"
Tabitha shook her head. "How to proceed?" she asked. Avalon grinned.
"Well do you want to go in the easy way or the fun way?"
Tabitha gave Avalon a blank stare, her eyes narrowing slightly. He laughed nervously at her irritation.
"I guess she doesn't like to joke around on the job."
"You could learn a lot from her for that alone."
"Oh come on Kavaid, I messed up one time!"
"Failing the same exam for different reasons every retry doesn't count each failure as one time."
Avalon sighed. Everyone was a critic.
"At least I keep you on top of things."
"Fair point."
"Easy way it is then," replied Avalon. He reached for Tabitha's hand before stopping. "May I?" The silent girl consented and reached out.
"Now this is probably, most likely, almost positively, going to be very weird. I'm pretty sure you guys don't have invisibility spells?"
Tabitha's eyes widened a margin. "High class spell. Very taxing. Not used very often."
"Well then that gives me a one up, because I can use it whenever I want." Channeling his mana, Avalon muttered an incantation and let the spell flow through his hands, turning himself and Tabitha invisible.
"Don't let go of my hand. If I lose you, the spell will wear off. Ok?" Avalon waited for several seconds before he realized what happened. "Tabitha, I can't see you. You're gonna have to speak."
"...ok," she replied softly. He could hear the embarrassment in her voice. Suppressing a laugh, the pair moved along, searching for a way to enter the premises. Getting past the garden was the easy part. Avalon led the way, making sure that their footsteps were not seen nor heard as they avoided open fields. But breaking into the mansion itself proved to be more difficult. No matter the distraction, the guards would not leave their posts. Either they were paid well, or they feared their boss more than any threat the pair could give.
They moved on, finding an open window with a maid airing out the laundry.
"Ok, so we can either climb up holding hands, or you can climb onto my back and I climb, or I drop the invisibility spell and we risk climbing up that way. How do you want to do this?"
Avalon heard no reply. Instead, as the maid moved away from the window a gust of wind surged, catching Avalon and the maid by surprise. He felt himself towed along by Tabitha up and through to the second floor, landing as quietly as he could and off to the side. Thankfully the maid was distracted at the sudden burst of the elements, frantically moving to fix her uniform. Thankfully, none of the clothes lines were destroyed, only mildly disturbed.
"What in the world was that?" she asked in confusion, staring at the window. Avalon and Tabitha stood very still, waiting with baited breath as the maid slowly approached the window, took a moment to look outside, them quickly sealed the window shut. "I'm not paid enough for this. First it's those monster wails at night and now this? I should have listened to my mother and gotten married," she muttered under her breath before quickly leaving the room. As the door closed behind her, Avalon slowly released a sigh, but his body was still a bit shaken.
"That was dangerous. We could have been caught if I didn't hold onto you."
"I trusted you not to."
"Ok, thank you, but still!"
"...sorry."
"It's alright.. Now... How do we get to the basement from here? Or whatever. The cellars. The dungeons. I don't know what you call it. Whatever is going on, it's below ground." Talking helped ease the nerves, but he could feel the energies of magic with much more clarity. And it scared him.
"It's alright Avalon, we've trained for things like this."
"I know. But it still creeps me out. It better not be zombies. Or mad science experiments. Or Godzilla."
"Or all of them rolled into one."
"Can you not please?!"
"Main floor first. Underground after." Taking the lead again, Tabitha led Avalon along, expertly guiding him through the second floor, to the main staircase and down to the entrance hall.
"You seem to know your way around."
"Similar architecture."
"To?"
"My home. Now be quiet."
Now there was an interesting tidbit. Taking in his surroundings, Avalon examined the hall. It was rather modest, built for function rather than fancy. The way that the staircase and the second floor lined up to face the central entrance doors spoke to his instincts a bit, almost as if the first thing you would see would be your hosts… Or a line of knights and mages. The carpets were a dark maroon, softening the sounds of their footsteps, and the walls were lined with various display cases of valuable sculptures, pottery and crafts. Many of them were of dynamic poses and obscure structures, the faces of the men and women depicted distraught and afraid.
They quickly continued around the second floor from the east to the west wing, and although Avalon tried to take the lead again, Tabitha quickly showed him she knew where to go. He secretly wished he could start teasing her, but thoughts of Teresa's daughter brought his mind back into focus.
They reached the furthest door down, and as they came closer Avalon sensed something wrong with the door.
"Its trapped. If I'm going to disable it, I need to concentrate so I can't use invisibility. Can you keep an eye out?" Avalon didn't wait for Tabitha to answer but instead go and got right to work.
Avalon mused as he studied the magic blocking the door, finding the feeling of the magic in Halkeginia very fascinating. On earth, the feeling of magic was very personal, you could feel the emotion put into the spell and the amount of work they put to create it, very much like navigating a web. Here, magic is not only structured but layered, with each layer becoming thicker than the last. Rather than navigating the spell web for the weakest point like normal, Avalon had to put in varying amounts of power into the layers in order to overload their foundation and break them down.
He wasn't sure how long he was working, but the third layer took the longest to break, and once he came out of his trance, he looked over at Tabitha. She sensed his stare, and slowly the pair opened the door and walked in.
Shutting the doors behind them, they were met with a huge thirty foot expanse in front of them, with open glass windows and blue, see-through curtains flowing in the wind. The bed was king sized, with huge ornate bedposts and curtains pulled back. Avalon immediately caught the signs of struggle and the smell of sex. Torn bits of fabric, blood and wet stains on the bed.
"There's a trail."
Tabitha pointed towards the carpet drag, leading towards one of the bookcases along the walls. They moved forward and Avalon put his hand on the bookcase to examine it with a magic pulse.
"Hmm. Its definitely a hidden wall… but its not magical. Its mechanical. How interesting… especially after the door magic." Pulling the necessary book, the bookcase rumbled and slid to the side, revealing a hidden pathway underground. It was deep enough that even with his enhanced sight, Avalon couldn't see the bottom.
"I'm going to use another spell. This one is capable of hiding our presence from detection magic. I can't do it and invisibility at the same time, so we'll have to be careful."
With trepidation they went down the rabbit hole, Avalon guiding Tabitha by the hand. Using his dark vision he was able to see sixty feet down in a haze of green, and after a couple of steps Avalon was able to see the bottom. The path was cold and cramped, but had no smell strangely. Yet that didn't stop the feeling he had of this place. Strange moving shadows and the sound of harsh breaths.
They were here. The source was behind this door.
He gently pushed it open, and a fire was lit inside him. Rows of cages filled with the dead and dying children, whimpering and struggling to breathe, bowls of stained water and piles of hay to lay on. Those still alive didn't even register the pair as they slowly walked in. Avalon looked over at Tabitha, whose expression was his own: stone cold anger. It was pitch black, so he doubted she could see, but you didn't need to see it to smell the mix of human waste, sweat and blood.
Teresa's child was further in.
Meanwhile outside, Louise, Teresa stood silently, holding each others' hands. Though she would normally have shied away from such close contact… she could feel Teresa's daughter's life fading away.
"Avalon… Hurry…"
More cages. More children. Hundreds. Many of them bones as they went deeper into the basement.
The straight hall eventually opened up to a balcony leading to a giant medical lounge below. Lanterns and candles lit the room, the tables covered with bloodstained sheets and used tools and blades. Robed men walked about, some with papers next to candles, others dissecting bodies.
Avalon was about to jump them, but Tabitha pulled him back, once again surprising him with her strength.
"We can't. Teresa's daughter is our priority," she said.
"That's the longest phrase you've ever said to me," replied Avalon, pulling his arm back. "But you don't have to worry about that. She's right there. Or at least, her essence is."
At the back of the room was a twisted parody of a human body. It was naked though had no genitals. The monster's upper body was a massive muscular form, easily six times the size of a regular man, its flesh stretched and tearing from the absurd size of hands, instead of human hands, were claws made from bone and other transmuted metals into a strange mesh only possible through alchemy. On its back were dragon wings, and Avalon could see hints of a tail from behind its thin looking legs that couldn't possibly support the upper body weight, but did anyway. Or maybe it wasn't done.
Surrounding the monstrosity were a group of mages, chanting and transmitting their magic into the circle below the titan. One man stood out from the rest.
"Essence?" Tabitha asked, but she was cut off as the one nobleman began to speak.
"At last, my army is almost complete. With this success, we will be able to build more, and make them stronger, faster, and more magic resistant. That little prince may think he's in control, but none of them are ready for what's to come. The whole world will know that Count Mott hasn't lost his edge. Those magic stealing revolutionists thing they can take away my magic?! They can come and try!"
"Whatever they did to transmute that thing… to make it come alive, they used Teresa's daughter's soul. And its fading away." Grimacing, Avalon turned away. "We've failed… we have to—"
It happened so fast. His footing slipped as the wood beneath his feet gave way, and the two were forced to fall. Shouts came, and Avalon felt a wave of spells being prepared to be fired. He shielded Tabitha, ready to put up a barrier.
And then the monster woke up, and went on a rampage.
