Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Chapter 85

The Sanctuary formal hall was usually bare except for those lucky enough to walk through it from office to office, but for their needs they had placed tables in the shape of a large horseshoe within it.

Those sitting were the most important, and those standing were less important but still worthy to participate. There was a horde of Cleavers on guard and a mountain of mages in and around the Sanctuary waiting for news. The Communications room had all its staff sitting and waiting for the official notices and messages to send to other countries.

Valkyrie sighed and put her hand in Tanith's, the only of the 'Dead Men' to get a seat. Tanith had completely refused a seat and snapped and hissed at Panda furiously, and Tipstaff brought Valkyrie a chair. She'd sat before it was taken away, of course, and Tanith had settled into her own with a complete turnaround in mood once she was sitting.

It was busy in the hall. Valkyrie was sitting opposite the Grand Mage – one of the best seats but the tradition was that the most important sat next to him so she was also in the worst seat – and he looked regal and powerful in his robe and high backed chair. Elder Crow was elegant as always and Corrival looked harsh but had more nods of respect than Elder Crow, though that wasn't helped by the Necromancer led manhunt happening outside their doors.

Tipstaff came in and whispered something in Meritorious' ear and left the hall a moment later. When the large doors were shut, a hush fell over the room and they all looked to the Elders.

"Now that we are all gathered, we may begin," Meritorious started formally. "I'd like to thank everyone for attending this emergency meeting. I will have to skip the pleasantries as there is much to discuss and we may not have much time. Detective Cain, would you please tell the room your story."

Valkyrie squeezed Tanith's hand and sat a little straighter, thankful her family was standing right behind her. "I was recently asked by my Necromancy Mentor, Solomon Wreath, if I would live in the Temple for a month to experience being a Necromancer and give me a full picture of their way of life. I agreed, and have been there for two weeks. There was nothing out of the ordinary, everyone acted consistently, until yesterday evening. Solomon Wreath attended a meeting where Cleric Craven…" and she completed the story, going on about Melancholia and how Militsa came with her, them both being in safe hands as they tried to stop the manhunt, and then what she found in the Temple. No one looked upset when she told them her suspicions the High Priest was dead, but they all looked concerned that the Necromancers had no home, no one to pull them in they would fully trust, and that The Torment, another lady and an unknown number of other Spiders had taken the Temple. She finished by saying, "We've had reports back that the Spiders have not left the building, nor has anyone else as far as we know of. Every Necromancer in the Temple is assumed dead or being used as a hostage, but as we aren't sure what the Spiders long-term goal is so we don't know what for."

"What is their short-term goal?" A bulgingly fat man asked when there was a pause at the end of her story.

"We believe they want to kill the Dead Men as revenge," she told the hall. There was a muttering as they all spoke of how Snake had been the one to expose them centuries ago but Meritorious put a hand up and it silenced immediately. "As I mentioned, a hitman for hire called Tesseract from Russia attacked us some weeks ago and we encountered him in the Temple where Skulduggery was able to knock out and bring into the Sanctuary where he is now. Because he and The Torment were both in the Temple, I suspect he had an inside man, and I believe that is Cleric Craven."

"Tell us more about him," Corrival growled, his deep-thinking voice.

"Cleric Craven is an annoying swine of a man that thinks he's on top and ought to be the High Priest but isn't anything like that at all. I suspect The Torment or another Child of the Spider came to him and offered to make that a reality if they'd let the Spiders take the Temple for a period of time. The fact everyone but the other Clerics, all of who could protest his anointment, were not in the Temple when it was seized and all those Clerics are likely dead now, I expect he believes he is going to be the High Priest by default rather than election."

Corrival nodded and sat forward on his chair and linked his hands on the table. "How long do you expect he's been working with The Torment?"

Crow spoke up from his place standing behind Tanith and Valkyrie. "A while ago. When the Soul Catcher holding the Remnant that ended up releasing them all was stolen from the Temple, Finbar Wrong was first visited. All he saw before he was possessed was someone wearing black. We had suspected Tesseract did that, but we now think Craven was asked to do it as he was less conspicuous."

"It's been a month since then," Corrival muttered. "That guy with the clipboard needs to write 'Catch Craven' at the top. Now get to the bit about why the Spiders want to use the Necromancer Temple."

Valkyrie nodded. "We have a few options to believe here. It may have been just to cause panic in the magic community, or it may be Craven has a further offer to give the Spiders, or maybe they've just known each other a long time and they owed Craven. I'm inclined to think they have common interests though. If the Spiders are going with their past goal of taking the Sanctuary and creating a new world, Craven might be using that to make his own New Temple, so to speak, to be in their new world."

There was a lot of nodding going around the room.

"Will they stay there then?" A lady in a nice suit asked from the standing area near the back. She got some dirty looks for speaking out when she was merely a standing person.

"We don't yet know. We need to more fully assess Tesseract and then we may have an answer, but I wouldn't get hopeful. If they're working with Craven, he might have already gotten them out of the building as it wouldn't really help them to fight for the Temple as a location to work out of, but they could be preparing for an attack."

.*****.

"That dragged," Valkyrie moaned as they made there was to the interview room.

"You did really well, Cub!" Wolf praised her, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. His other was around Weasel.

"You're really happy today," she said in concern. "Like, on drugs type of happy. Are you taking drugs?"

He laughed. "Maybe."

Weasel snorted a laugh from the other side of the loopy man. "He's not on drugs. He stayed up all night playing a game and had too much caffeine and sugar. He won't stop eating sherbet and hasn't slept in, oh, maybe thirty-six hours? It's frying his brain."

"So as good as drugs then," she said, looking at Wolf. "You're an idiot."

"But I'm your idiot," he said fondly, kissing her cheek. "I love you!"

"Love you too," she said just as fondly.

They got to the interview room and saw Tesseract chained to the floor with a dozen Cleavers, two Reapers and a Sensitive who was probing his mind for all his secrets.

"Only a few minutes now," Crow muttered, stretching the arm that had to be reassembled from eight different fragments. It turned out, this Bonebreaker didn't need magic to cause damage.

"To the Observation Room!" Wolf announced.

They followed Wolf's hyper ass to the Observation Room, which had quite a few people in it due to the seriousness of the investigation, but they parted like the Red Sea. Tanith was practically manhandled by Panda into a chair and Valkyrie was sure her sister tried to take a bite out of his hand – he moved away from her quickly and Tanith crossed her arms angrily. She needed a catch up with her sister and Tanith surely needed time away from Panda. In an attempt to make her feel less like a vulnerable victim, Valkyrie pushed between Tanith's legs and perched on her. Her sister put a gentle hand on her back.

"Any news?" Bear asked.

The room looked at him much like how a dog does when they're doing really well at obedience. "Nothing so far," one of them reported. He kind of grinned at Bear like a dog too. It was so uncanny Valkyrie had to look away and stop thinking of dogs. Then again, maybe a dog was exactly what she needed to think about with all the stressful things going on.

They waited for barely ten minutes and the psychic finished her assessment of Tesseract. They left and met her in a quiet part of the hallway.

"Detectives," she said as soon as they stopped in front of her. "I searched the Russian prisoner Tesseract for information on The Torment, Children of the Spider and any plans, in general, he knows about. I have a great list of things."

They nodded at the lady even as Valkyrie tried to work out what her accent was. "Start with the Spiders and Torment," Crow commanded.

"The Torment is leading the Children of the Spider and had a safe house in Sligo where Tesseract thinks there are more Spiders, but he doesn't know for certain. He was being paid for his long-time service rather than by the job, and has made over three million with more of the same to come," she said. "And before you ask, he's been in contact with The Torment for nearly six years, doing small jobs, but he suspects The Torment was just pretending it was him once they met and it may have been someone else that had spoken to him for the smaller work before. From the messages and talks he's had, I'd say the same. The language is totally different."

"Which shows The Torment's long-term contact with the other Children of the Spider," Valkyrie muttered. "They might never have been out of contact. Did you see where Divina Marr is?"

She grimaced. "The Torment killed her and her sister. He wrapped them up and ate them in his Spider form. Even Tesseract felt ill when it happened, and I saw some pretty disgusting things he did."

Crow asked her a few more questions about The Torment and the tasks he'd set Tesseract, but it was all fairly basic things they could have guessed. Some kills of people that would have been powerful oppositions, the attempts on them during the Remnant attack and both of them generally being sick people. He was being sent straight to the most secure prisons in the world, Coldheart, and Valkyrie felt a lot more comfortable knowing that.

Despite that task being done, they still had a long day ahead of them and Valkyrie could already feel the tiredness. They went to Corrival's office.

"Ah, Valkyrie," he said when they went in. She smiled at him. "I missed you these past two or so weeks. How are you?"

"I'm alright, just tired I suppose. Yourself?" She sat opposite him and accepted the tea. Tanith got one also and he gestured his head to the tea set in the corner for the others. Ghastly went to it sulkily.

He shrugged with his arms crossed. "The work is more than I expected and also far more boring. They send me everything to do with tactics, Cleavers and security wise, but it's all about rotas and checklists and codes of conduct. I've gotten my teeth into a few things recently, but they won't last me 'til summer."

"When is the start of summer?" She asked suddenly.

"It'll be in July," Tanith asked, knowing she was asking school time summer. Nadia's summertime break. It was already halfway through March, so it was barely another four months. Her stomach twisted a little and she sipped her tea. "Corrival, do you know any way of making Ghastly leave you alone for more than an hour?"

"Travel," he said immediately. "And if that doesn't work, burn all his tea bags and throw the kettle in the street until he learns his goddamned lesson. Boy, why are you getting in the way of this young lady?"

Panda stood with his cup of tea like a small child holding a teddy getting told off. "I'm trying to stop her exhausting herself. She had another fainting spell a few days ago."

"And how is that your business? Miss Low knows the risks and everything else that comes with her pregnancy, and if she wants to do something, even if could lead to a fainting spell, I'd imagine she knows exactly how far she's willing to push. Standing, for instance, is within the realm of what she's willing to do. Miss Low, have you been looking after yourself today?"

"I've tried but every time I get up I get another shadow. He stopped me going to the toilet six times before I screamed it at him and he stopped pushing me back into the chair. If he did it one more time I'd have broken his wrist," she said angrily, glaring at Panda and talking through her teeth. Someone was at their wit's end, obviously.

"My boy, if you want this lady to come anywhere near you with that baby, you might want to stop pestering her," Corrival said with all his wisdom. "It's like a live bomb. If you want to disarm it, you have to be careful. There are parts of it you mess with, and there are parts you leave well alone lest it blows you up. Stop annoying Miss Low or she's going to blow up on you, essentially. You won't get my sympathy," he laughed. "I'll make sure she goes free, actually."

They chuckled at Panda's flushed face and Tanith looked happier.

Heeeee so many people are talking to me, it's so fun! And some very important things are happening in the story, so you better be excited!

IMPORTANT: Tomorrow's post is a one-shot, posted as a separate story, and more may be coming. So if you want to read the one-shots, which I will write to be a part of this story but not important things, if that makes sense. Just read it, okay! To entice you, I'm writing this first one to be from someone else POV. You want it, I promise.