Serious Notice:

From now on, the rating M is a very serious one. This is to be considered Part 2 of this story but I want to keep it in the same place because nothing in the plot is changing, just some of the content is getting older. As you know (if you read what I say at the bottom) we are leading up to a war, like in the books. Valkyrie and Nadia are about to be 17 and 18 respectively, they have already done MA things, but it's going to get 'worse'. So here are some of the things you can expect to be brought up as of Part 2 of this story:

Rape

Sex

Self-harm + other mental health issues

Homophobia

Starvation

Torture

Graphic giving birth-ness

Before anyone gets scared, I will not, and NEVER will, graphically write a rape scene, it isn't happening, and that's final. BUT. And this is a serious but. I will be writing more graphically than before for some themes. I have touched on the idea of rape, sex, self-harm and homophobia before, but it will get more intense. I don't want anyone to be unprepared, so this is a warning so viewers can ready themselves, or stop reading this story if you really want to. I will always write if I think something is particularly nasty at the top of a chapter, as you have seen before, but it is only fair you get a bigger warning.

The reason I am doing this (the change in content, so to speak) is due to Valkyrie's and Nadia's age, plus I'm enjoying writing these crazy things. If anyone has a trigger on any of these themes and wants a better idea of want to expect so they don't get themselves into something they really, seriously don't want to, just PM me and I'll tell you the details so you can make that call. I've read stories before with a surprise rape in it and it's not fucking nice, so I wanted to let you know, though I will never write that in any story of mine.

I should also note that although I am writing multiple chapters ahead, I don't have a super detailed plan of what will happen, just a few ever-changing ideas in my head, so there could be more things on the list but I thought this would be the main, most horrible things for more people. I don't know exactly how horrific things will get either, so I am sorry if something adult themed happens and you don't like it, but taking the general idea of this being an MA, only for eighteens, horrible no-no stuff story as if here.

Enjoy, I guess!

Don't skip the above warning if you scrolled down.

Skulduggery – Crow

Anton – Bear

Ghastly – Panda

Dexter – Wolf

Saracen – Weasel

Erskine – Snake

Solomon – Raven

Corrival – Pa

Tanith is 7 months, 1 week pregnant

Chapter 98

Days went by and Valkyrie went on her cases and helped in her spare time to work out where the Spider's had vanished to. No leads were found. Still. Wherever they were, they didn't seem to have any intention of leaving it. Honestly, Valkyrie wasn't sure she cared as long as they all lived and died there.

Valkyrie checked her phone. Nadia was in the habit of constantly asking what Valkyrie was doing because she was so alone at home with nothing to do or anyone to talk to. She wished she'd just come as live at her house, at least she could be with Tanith there, but she was reluctant and Valkyrie refused to push the issue in case Nadia got defensive. Something had happened to make her nervous and she didn't want to reinforce the feeling.

"You're deep in thought," Raven smiled at her from Crow's chair in the Dead Man office.

She smiled at him. "Just thinking, is all."

He hummed. "Thinking about a certain person?"

She blushed. "I do it a lot."

He grinned. "You're so loved up."

She grinned back. "I never thought I'd here you say something so cutesy."

"Neither did I. I feel like a new man," he smiled. "I want to make sure it lasts too."

"I'm pretty sure Crow's obsessed with you, so you don't have to worry."

There was a grunt from the doorway and Crow came in looking somewhat embarrassed. "You better not be talking about me behind my back."

"We talk about you when you're facing forwards too," Valkyrie reminded him.

"And you can take these down to communications for your effort," he sniped playfully and gave her a sheet of paper. She looked at it.

"What's a Shunter?" She asked with a little head tilt.

"It's someone who can go between dimensions. This particular one is probably the best at it, but it's still a somewhat useless skill. This man, Creyfon Signate, is able to use what he calls 'reflective dimensions' to change where he is in the world," Crow explained. "It's a lot like teleporting except he does it slower and he has more control over his exact location because he's standing there, invisible in another dimension, and can step out whenever he wants."

"Wouldn't that sap his power?"

"It does. Every magic has its drawbacks, and that is his. That and the discipline itself is stupid because no one knows where any alternate realities are, just this one layer around our own world that only one of the shunters can access. Which is why there are only two of them, and one of them is in prison, and this one here just went missing."

"Maybe he died in the other dimension," Valkyrie said curiously, looking at the tired looking eyes of the photo. "He might have tried holding it too long."

Crow shook his head. "Signate's been interviewed about his shunting a thousand times. Once he loses concentration or power, it spits him out wherever he's standing. The thing is, we can't say for sure that he wasn't doing something dubious which led to his disappearance, and people don't like him much seeing as he can stand and watch them without anyone knowing he was ever there."

"Ah. So you're sending this to communications to spread the word of his disappearance, why?"

He shrugged. "Hope, I guess. Or perhaps the same thing that happened to Signate happened to someone else's friend or family and they'll be bolstered to talk to us just because we have a case."

"Hope then," she said with an eye roll, and ran down to communications and explained to them they wanted the word out Signate had gone missing and Skulduggery Pleasant needed answers.

She could already feel how weird this one was going to be.

She got back to the room and the two men were moving about getting things. "What's happening now?"

"Nothing for me," Raven said, looking up. "Skulduggery just had an idea. You, Skulduggery and Dexter are going to go visit the other shunter in prison and see if he knows anyone that particularly dislikes shunters."

"He was imprisoned almost fifty years ago, so it's a longshot, but since we have no other case I thought we'd go on a trip."

Valkyrie grabbed her jacket. "Just let me get some coffee. I haven't slept since yesterday morning, remember?"

.*****.

Wolf met them outside Hammer Lane Gaol, the prison that Crow told her was practically impenetrable. There hadn't been an escapee for fifty-one years, making it the second most secure in the world after the moving landmass of a prison they kept the worst of the worst in. It was a taboo to even mention it in case it turned up, and of course, Valkyrie didn't believe in that type of thing, but she still made sure to not so much as think about it. Just to be sure.

Wolf wrapped her into a hug when she got out the Bentley. "There's my little baby sister!" He grinned. "What are we doing today?"

"We need to talk to a Shunter called Silas Nadir, a serial killer," Crow said, looking at the innocent looking house they had parked across from. "Do you remember him?"

"Oh yeah," Wolf said with a nod. "I remember roping in three teleporters to help me catch him and then you went and caught him without us."

Crow shrugged. "I'm good like that."

They entered easily, only telling Valkyrie after she'd walked through the door how close she had been to killing herself on the doorframe, and where greeted by Delafonte Mien, the warden.

"Dexter," he smiled when they came through and shook her brother's hands warmly. "It's good to see you again, and you, Detective. I don't believe we've met, but you are Detective Cain, correct?"

"Yes, sir," she smiled without really meaning it and shook his rough hand. She was looking behind him through the glass wall that went right down into a food hall of some type. "I didn't think mage prisons served food."

"They don't," the warden smiled proudly. "This is the common area. Only a select few prisoners have the luxury of using it, and we have a strict punishment system in place for those that abuse it. Most prisoners are thankful for time out of the cells."

"I didn't imagine them having a space like this," Crow said, looking around it too. It was empty at the moment and there were thick metal doors closing it off to the other areas which she assumed went to cells. "Does the building have other luxuries?"

Warden Mien chuckled. "We boast some reform programs to keep the prisoners sane and somewhat mentally driven, but all other amenities are for the staff only. Much of the workforce lives in the prison so the prison was reconstructed some time ago to have more space for places like staffrooms, a communal kitchen and a small library."

Crow tilted his head. "You don't have kitchen staff now?"

Mien looked somewhat surprised. "I didn't know you'd visited the prison before. Yes, we removed kitchen staff and almost halved cleaning staff to make a bigger budget for more guards, using cleaning signals to deal with the majority of the tedious tasks and allow the guards have more time to relax between shifts."

Crow nodded thoughtfully. "We want to visit a prisoner. Silas Nadir."

Valkyrie saw his eyebrow make a small tick of movement up before he smiled slightly. "Let me check the database for his prison number and I'll tell you where to find him. The name doesn't ring a bell."

She tilted her head at the same time as Crow and saw Wolf hide a smile. "He's been imprisoned here for fifty-one years," Crow said.

"We have over three thousand prisoners in this building, detective," Mien said with a small strain to his voice. He smiled suddenly as if he noticed it himself. "I'm sorry. We don't often have guests here. Would you like some refreshments while I search for Nadir?"

"No thank you," Crow said drily.

Mien said nothing in response and tapped away at his keyboard until a man with cropped black hair and a sharp nose came up on screen. At about the same moment the doors down in the common room opened and about two dozen of those three thousand prisoners came wandering into the room below. They wore a white vest with orange overalls over it and had chains tying their hands and feet together but they had some give to them, allowing them to move and use their arms more freely than a high-security prison surely must find acceptable. They sat around the room quietly and looked up at the control panel and looked right at her. Wolf watched them also and put a hand on her shoulder, drawing her gaze back to the screen.

"This is Silas Nadir, prison number two-seven oh-nine one-four, brought in for a sentence of three hundred years for the murder of multiple mages and mortals by use of his magic, which is Shunting. He died fifty years ago, almost to the day. That was only a year after I became warden," Mien said, looking over to Crow. "I'm afraid I can't help you, but you're welcome to look through his file. We now conduct interviews with our prisoners as part of our reform programs for those that wish to participate and have more information in their own words about their crimes, but this prisoner died twenty years before that started."

Crow kept looking at the screen and a moment later a piece of charcoal smacked against the glass exactly where it needed to be to have connected with Valkyrie's head if there hadn't been any glass. None of them jumped, but they did all look down to see a few of the prisoners glaring up. One of them had charcoal on his hands. She smiled without humour at him and he let loose a scream. The doors opened and the prisoners that weren't involved shuffled off to their cells as four of the others started attacking guards.

The warden sighed. "Excuse me. Please stay here while I deal with this."

"Of course." They watched him walk quickly out of the lobby and off to wherever he was meant to be. Crow looked at them. "Quick," he said and started running like hell.

Wolf and Valkyrie grinned and rushed after him. He led them down hall after hall and signals and protective walls of glass closed behind them with crashes and slams, all barely missing Valkyrie's head. Wolf was barely an inch in front of her and stayed by her side, in danger with her so they could at least be together.

She had no idea where they were going but took joy in blasting through doors and launching herself down stairwells, almost shrieking then an alarm went off around them. She knew that meant a breach, and one of a prisoner because it was red. If it were about them, it would have been yellow but she had no doubt they knew about them. How long did they have?

It didn't matter to Crow or Wolf, who grabbed her arm and kept her running. She was sucking in heaves of air by the time they stopped down in the deepest part of the prison. "Are we done?" She tried to say, but it came out as a few gasps.

"This is the only feeling of a body I could find," Crow said, tilting his head. He opened a door and they saw a man, hovering in mid-air with thousands of wires and tubes connecting him to… wherever they went. Crow nodded. "I had a feeling there was something strange. When I called a few hours ago, do remember when he said only two people had ever died here? He missed out this man. Why would he remember those two deaths and not this one? Being the first death of his career as Warden, you would expect he'd have remembered it."

"Is he even dead?" Valkyrie asked quietly. The man was seriously pale but he did have a little pink to his lips.

Wolf strode in and put his hand on Nadir's neck. "He's alive," he said slowly. "But I don't know if he will be if we pull him out of all these wires."

"Should I call Kenspeckle?" Valkyrie asked.

"No, we'll let the Sanctuary deal with this," Crow said. "Also, I expect Kenspeckle is busy today. Ghastly dragged Tanith off for a full check-up."

Wolf snorted. "She actually let him do it?"

"I don't think the word 'let' is necessarily the right one, as I'm under the impression it's a compromise," he said.

"What does she get?" Valkyrie smiled.

"He won't nag her about having the baby in a maternity ward rather than with Kenspeckle," Crow said.

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. "He's still on about that? Kenspeckle isn't a midwife."

"It gets better. She also told him he has to make all the reusable nappies and clothes and all sorts of other things. She was looking online at patterns as he literally dragged her out the door," Crow said with humour in his voice, and then the Sanctuary picked up the phone.

Wolf and Valkyrie grinned at each other. This baby got funnier the more it grew and they didn't even get to know the gender, let alone know what name the parents were going with. Tanith was now seven months and a bit and had a big baby bump and the whole family was giddy with excitement. It was surprising how easily a human that wasn't even fully formed could take over the lives of two women and six men, but it sure had.

The Sanctuary came in swarms some hour later when Crow explained his suspicion of Nadir being hooked up to change between portals continuously. When they pulled him off the wires he'd made a lurch for Valkyrie and very, very nearly punched her, but Wolf was fast enough to pull her back. He almost choked her, but they had no idea what else he could have done to her considering he'd spend fifty years with his magic solely going between three dimensions. She'd have been obliterated most likely.

They took him, and the warden and most of the staff, once more came to take over the prison, to the Sanctuary for questioning. It was no use though. Before they had even gotten to the interview room they knew it was too late. Nadir was a blubbering mess and it had all been for nothing on the Shunting front

"It does tell us one thing though," Valkyrie said as they walked back to the Dead Man office after attempting to make him say, draw or write something other than gibberish. "If a Shunter spends took long dimension hopping, it fries them."

Crow hums. "Except Nadir did it for fifty years and he was hooked up to god knows what which was not only sapping his magic but also potentially excruciatingly painful. We can't know if it's the same as Signate, and that's with the assumption the same thing is happening to him, and I really doubt information like this could be being passed around without one of us hearing about it."

"I doubt he's being used the same way," Wolf remarked. "It's too much of a risk for the Warden to have talked about his secret weapon. You're right, we'd have known about it long ago if he had been."

Valkyrie nodded. "True. I'd say it's more likely he was killed."

"I think so too," Crow said. "But we need to tread carefully just in case, and try to recover him alive if possible."

"As usual then," she smiled at him. She opened the door to the office and took a step back out. The boys looked over her.

"Ah," Crow said, pulling her out gently. "It may be too late."

And off we go on a new case to start off Part 2!

I skipped over a few details to save you from the repetitiveness of the book, but it was fun to write anyway. Please leave a review on your thoughts, of this or my message at the top, or PM me! I love hearing from you guys but only a few of you talk back, I need friends, please talk to meeee!