Chapter 14 Bearers of bad news
At the grounded flagship of the Dark Guard, inside the holding cell area, the monsters of the initial attack have come to terms with their fate as permanent prisoners for almost every day they are subjected to numerous examinations, blood is taken, while some that have more versatile bodies or extra appendages like Manticores are examined even further. There are still a few who are resisting but for now, are waiting for an opportunity to escape. Sally the young manticore has somewhat gotten over her dead sister and has been observing the guards as she mentally notes how or lacked emotionally to the mamono. 'They are always silent, never to talk to each other or the mamono unless they have to order us to go with them. Sometimes quickly glances at some of the more active comrades or those who have attempted to escape before.' Sally then notices a figure on a catwalk looking down at her and as their eyes connected the dark figure walks away. 'Why is he always seem to be watching me and not the others?'
Her attention is diverted as she sees a pair of guards dragging a demon she hasn't seen before into a cell next to her. The previous occupant was a salamander until some guards took her probably for more tests but she hasn't returned since. The guards deactivated the forcefield, laid the demon down, and walked out with the forcefield turned on once they were clear.
Sally walks over to the side and speaks loudly, "Hey are you ok?" No reply or movement which is the typical sign whenever a mamono is returned to their cell from whatever was done to them. She seemed to be fortunate enough as she was escorted to a brightly lit room filled with many tools with some she has seen before while others she couldn't even guess what they do. Most of the time they extracted some of her blood and barbs and then escorted her back to her cell.
After some time has passed the sleeping demon stirs, "Hmm."
Sally hears and now sees the demon slowly moving her arms towards her head as she slowly and slightly lifts her body off the floor. She then looks around until she locks eyes with Sally.
"You ok? Can you hear me?" Sally asks a couple of questions but the demon doesn't exactly reply as she seems to be still drowsy.
*sigh* 'Well at least she is still alive but I wonder who she is? Are they looking for new captives?' Sally thinks to herself until she hears, "Wh-where am I?"
Sally refocuses on the demon as she tries to answer her question, "You are in these people's mysterious castle. And I think this is the dungeon though it's the cleanest one I've ever seen." The demon sits straight up but still supports her head with her right hand as she slowly looks around. She slowly reaches out with her left hand away from her body but Sally quickly warns, "Don't! Even though there seem to be no walls, there is some sort of magic barrier in place. Trust me, it'll sting if you poke any side of these cells."
The demon retracts her hand before looking at Sally and asks, "Who are you, and how long have you been here?"
Sally quickly replies, "My name is Sally, I was with the expedition army that travel into a whole new world but we…." She doesn't finish her sentence but answers the other one, "As for how long I've been here, I don't know. I've lost track of time."
"I see." The Demon looks around again and sees most of the cells hold a single mamono to which she asks, "How many mamono are here?"
"The last time I counted it was around fifty-five but now it seems to be declining and I think you're the only new one here. Who are you?"
The Demon answers, "I'm Lucy and I-Ghah!" Lucy gets a massive headache as she now remembers what happened to her. She remembers being bounded by multiple chains summoned by him Ricky, Michael, or whatever he calls himself. Then the darkness blinded her to the world for a second only to see she wasn't where was a moment ago. People she have never seen before as they all looked down on her with no emotions only low glowing piercing purple eyes. Their skin is like ash or dark white and their clothes were all black with various degrees of tears and holes. Fear and wonder hold her in place until she feels two pairs of hands with each one latching onto an arm. They hoist her onto a chair then as if the chair came to life, it slithered leather restraints across her arms, legs, body, and neck, making her immobile. She remembers asking, "Who are you, what do you want?! Let me go!" They never answered her as they slowly walked back into the dark until only they're shining purple eyes remained. Never once have they looked away or blinked but continue to watch her. Her fear going to new heights, she starts shaking, she franticly looks around with eyes and little head movement but ends up seeing the same all around her. A noise interrupts her search as she hears what sounded like a door opening and closing directly behind her then footsteps. The sounds between each step echoed and grow louder as she tries to move her head but couldn't as if her head is glued to the chair.
"So, you are the one who holds something of great importance to our plans?" The mysterious voice asks to which Lucy counters, "Who are you people!? What do you want!?"
"Well firstly, my name is Mind Reader Josh. We are your new master and what we want is the information about your superior's plans." The owner of the voice turns into Lucy's vision and appears to be male with greatly dark white skin with the same purple-lit eyes as the rest in the background. He wears an interesting style rode to which Lucy has never seen before with curled wording she can't read and shapes of eyes dotting all over the cloth and a metalhead ban with a closed eye engraved at the center.
"I-I'll never betray my mistress to you strangers! You wouldn't get anything from me." Lucy tries to look confident but her shaking of hands says otherwise.
"There are two ways we'll get that information from you; Painless or Painful. Your choice to tell us now or I'll..well let's just say you might not be the same afterward once I'm done with you."
Lucy shudders at that statement but says nothing and closes her eyes while trying to turn her head away.
"Very well then you've forced my hand and one last piece of advice before we begin is that the more you resist the more painful it'll be for you." After that, the man places his hand on top of Lucy's head.
'Ok, he'll be doing the same thing that Ricky did before so I'll/"ARGHH!" Lucy screams as she feels what is like a dozen daggers stabbing her head. She opens her eyes and looks at the man's face and sees the head ban with the closed eye had opened as it shines a blinding yellowish-orange light onto her face.
Suddenly she begins recalling her early childhood but not by choice as she senses his influents going through her mind, forcing these memories to surface. She remembers her loving father embracing her after castings a simple spell for the first time then remembering her flight lessons from her mother. Another memory is of her playing with the other mamono kids running, and laughing, while some of the more magical ones demonstrate any spells they have learned. Those resembling of beasts playfully tackle each other or have races. Josh now starts looking into Lucy's later years which brings up Lucy mastering several spells and charms including disguising herself as a normal human female. Then later learning she is going to have a younger sister which made her go find a husband for herself as soon as possible.
The next memory is when Lucy joined Lady Druella's army as she had begun her campaign to bring the Order Nations into her mother's domain and usher in an era of peace and eternal love. She participated in her first battle and see firsthand death brought by humans and the amount of destruction. She pledged to help Lady Druella to bring this conflict to an end quickly and happily.
Lucy struggles to break free from Josh's mental grip to stop him from learning anything important or be used against her friends and allies, but whenever she pushes back, a feeling in her mind is being twisted and torn. The pain is so great that it cripples Lucy from continuing before hearing a voice, "The more you resist, the greater the pain will be with life complicates arising."
Josh resumes his search and he sees Lucy's past actions and involvement which mostly reveal Lucy luring heroes into traps and ambushes to find and capture highly important people. Then said people will give out information that pretty much told how to bring down that city, town, and a heavily fortified outpost. At this point, Lucy was getting more and more scared as Josh was seeing her recent involvements and what they have brought.
Then Josh sees the most recent memories which reveal Lucy being escorted to a big tent by an org guard, in response Lucy redoubled her efforts to break out of the mental prison and stop Josh from seeing that memory. Of course, the harder she tries the more painful it became for her to a point her consciousness was starting to blackout as she was currently feeling like her head got hit by a boulder. Mentally exhausted by the struggle and feedback, she couldn't no longer resist as she barely stay awake as Josh goes back to that memory after saying, "I guess there's something here you don't want me to see."
"P-please..noo…I-I-I." Lucy couldn't finish her plea as she has trouble thinking the words as the need to rest started to slowly overwhelm her.
"Don't worry we're almost done here judging from your reactions" Josh says before resuming his work.
"Ah, Lucy you're here. Good, I have an assignment for the two of you." Lucy looks to the side and sees Violet nodding at her then they both look back at Scarlet as she says, "I need you two to gather information on a trio of strangers that have recently arrived at the city we are about to capture."
"Is one of them the being called Carla Johnson?" Violet asks.
"Yes, and I want you, Violet to capture her by any means you deem necessary including breaking a couple of bones or making her paralyzed permeant or otherwise. Also, be prepared for a fight for your life for this Miss Johnson has been killing us in very disturbing ways." Violet nods then Scarlet turns to Lucy and says, "As for you Lucy, you'll be going after a man named Ricky, so do what you do best."
"Yes, ma'am."
"As for the third one, we'll ignore her for now, and depending on what kind of information we can get from them will help us deal with that one. One last thing is that Lady Druella will be here soon, one reason is that there is that werewolf called Gin who is afflicted by some unknown energy by Carla so she'll try to heal her. Reason two is that she wants to lead this assault and maybe take on the last one if we didn't deal with her before the next morning fog."
Lucy asks, "So we got last than a week then?"
"Yes, so be quick and be ready. That is all, good luck." With that Violet and Lucy leave the tent thus bringing an end to the memory search.
"So that's when your attack begins, the next morning fog which is tomorrow. Hmm, I guess we better be getting ready now. Thank you for the information, Lucy, you can sleep now." Josh says then leaves as a pair of guards emerge from the dark towards Lucy.
"Lady Druealla, Mistress Scarlet, everyone I'm sorryyyy…" exhaustion finally takes over and Lucy falls asleep.
(Back to the present) "H-Hey are you alright!?" Sally scoots closer to the barrier without accidentally touching it.
"No, No I'm not ok, everything is not ok! I've doomed my superiors and a great many sisters in arms. I need to get out of here and warn them!" Lucy hastily stands up and she begins to charge a spell but then the floor lights up and Lucy gets a very painful shock. She falls to her knees as she tries to breathe but seems to be having trouble. Lucy then falls onto the floor and gasps for air like a fish out of water.
Sally very startled by what's she is seeing but quickly got over it and starts yelling, "GUARDS, HELP! HELP!"
Sally's yelling gains a lot of attention as the numerous imprison mamono look over as well as several Dark Guardsmen until a trio of them approach the two's cells.
"Help, I think she is hyperventilating." Sally quickly says.
Two of the guards entered the cell while the last one stood outside. The guard on the right kneels and places his hand on her forehead but before the guard touches her, Lucy grabs the guard's arm and uses it as leverage to get up and gets behind him. Lucy was now holding the guard like a hostage as she places her left hand under the guard's chin and grabs it while the right hand forcibly bents the right arm behind the owner's back. The second guard backs out of the cell quickly while the third pulls out a strange musket-liking pistol.
Lucy speaks very loudly for all to hear as she makes her demands "Alright listen here, I want you to transport me back onto the ground near the city or I will kill this man by breaking his neck!"
Most of the mamono whisper and gasp out this threat since the current Demon Lord took power, killing a human for no reason other than self-defense is seen as a serious crime with the punishment being executed as a heretic. While the mamono converse with each other, the other guards stood there including the one inside the cell with them just staring with emotionless faces.
Lucy starts to step around the one guard but as she was about to step out, "I thought you Mamonos don't kill people much less take hostages and the like."
Lucy looks for the owner of that voice until she looks up and sees a man with an oppressive aura staring down at her and see the man who interrogated her at his side and what she saw next gave her an udder shock. She sees two guards dragging Violet to the same room where she was and Violet seems to be unconscious.
The man speaks again, "As you can see, you have nowhere to hide and we have gotten all the relevant information from you. Your friend here will fill in the missing pieces and soon we'll have everything we need for your upcoming attack."
Lucy is at a loss of words, seeing that both Violet and herself have not only failed their mission but have gotten themselves captured by this unknown faction. What's worse is that they know everything but leave Lucy with one question.
"Why are you here? Wh-who are you?"
"We are the ones you should have not attacked. If you want to know more then ask the young manticore beside you, she'll tell you what happens when you invade our world. But first, stand down and you won't be harmed, refuse then you'll suffer greatly." At that, the man motions the ones around him to follow him into the room to interrogate Violet.
Lucy was confused by that statement as she watch the group leave, she is quickly reminded by the *hostage* as he purposely coughs to snap her out of her thoughts. The guard then says, "You better let me go now or this floor will electrocute you until you let go of me."
"You'll be electrocuted too you know, we are both in the same cell together." Lucy retorts.
"I no longer feel pain or any kind of emotion for a long time. So, when this floor lights up, you'll be on the ground screaming and I'll simply walk away. NOW, what is your choice? The guard glares at Lucy out the corner of his left eye as he waits for an answer.
Lucy contemplates before she finally decides, "Fine I choose.." she suddenly attempts to rush out of the cell while using the guard as a human shield but two things happened instead.
First, the barrier turned back on before either of them could make it thus the hostage had his face planted firmly against the barrier as he grunted. Second, the floor lit up and Lucy knew what was going to happen. Electricity shoots up both of them, Lucy screamed in pain while the hostage was able to shack free from Lucy then he walked through the barrier. Once he was out, the floor shuts down and Lucy falls to the floor holding herself dearly as she whimpers.
"Told you if you refuse you'll suffer." The guard walks away with the other two.
Sally seeing the trio walk off, gets close as she can without the barrier as she speaks, "You ok?"
"He said you attacked them. If so then ALL of this is your fault?! WHY did you FIGHT them?!" Lucy's words filled with anger as she glares at Sally.
Sally flinches as she backs up from feeling the hostility from one of her kind. The only thing she can think of is to explain what happened. Sally explained to her what she and the other mamono here their mission was, how it was during the near successful capture of the town and then the arrival of the Dark Guard. Finally, they battle to escape with their lives but fail with a great many who didn't make it. Sally had a hard time explaining the last bit as the loss of her sister was a wound that still pained her greatly.
Once Sally finished, Lucy calms down a bit and says, "I'm sorry for directing my anger at you and I'm sorry for the loss of your older sister." Sally slightly nods her head and for a few moments, they were silent before Lucy asks, "So, what have they done to you? Have they asked or should I say violated your mind?"
"No, they've mostly been taking some of my blood and barbs. For what, I don't know. As for questions, they wanted to know who I am and more importantly WHAT I am."
"I see." They continue to talk about their experience with the Dark Guard until they saw Violet bring dragged into a cell across from them.
"Looks like she had her mind poked too," Sally says to which Lucy nods as she knows that these Dark Guards have more than enough information to cripple their entire campaign and the death that's about to follow.
Back at the monster camp, Scarlet waits anxiously for her two best subordinates who haven't returned or sent out a message in a while, which is abnormal for them. Lady Druella arrived this morning along with some of her guards to assist in the upcoming attack but right now Druella is currently healing Gin. As the day progress, news from the medical tent tells that Druella is struggling to get rid of the strange magic that is preventing Gin from being healed.
She starts hearing a commotion outside and decides to see what's its about, hoping it's not another Carla victim. She nears the tent entrance and an orc soldier goes through almost colliding with Scarlet, "My apologies ma'am, I didn't know you were heading out."
"It's ok. What's going on out there?" Scarlet dreading not hearing about Carla again.
"One of the parties you've sent out to capture two of the trio has returned but...I think you need to see this." The orc gestures to Scarlet to follow her, Scarlet nods and follows her.
They approach a crowd of mamono and the orc guards yell, "MOVE ASIDE MISTRESS SCARLET COMING THROUGH!" The crowd splits open giving the two to walk to the center, once there Scarlet sees why. Sitting on a log was a werecat being treated by a couple of Dark Mages as they try to heal and reattach the nearly severed arm.
Scarlet walks up to the werecat and goes down to eye level with her and asks, "What happened?"
The werecat looks back at her but her focus is that she is looking off into the distance with pain and shame. "We failed."
Scarlet places her right hand on the werecat's leg and asks, "Tell me what happened? Where is Lucy?"
The werecat starts crying and then replies, "I don't know, it-t happened so fast. I didn't think he saw me but he hit me with some kind of-of purple lighting without turning to face me. A-and when I woke, Lucy was nowhere to be seen. I-I-I'm sorry."
Scarlet couldn't believe this, her top hero capturer has lost and is now missing. Many possibilities run through her head with each one being more worse than the last and if things weren't bad enough.
"LADY SCARLET! LADY SCARLET!" A voice shouts among the crowd as it gets closer to where she is at.
Scarlet starts shouting, "OVER HERE!"
A Lizardman slips through the crowd and runs over to Scarlet, she is breathing heavily, wheezing to get some air. Scarlet walks over to her and places her right hand on the Lizardman's shoulder.
"Someone please give her something to drink NOW!" Scarlet yells towards the crowd.
Once someone got a mug of ale over for the Lizardman, she chugs the whole thing down and exhales hard. She then composes herself as she begins to speak, "Lady Scarlet, my name is Luna and I bring unfathomable grim news, for I witness unimaginable destruction that Carla Johnson can bear onto the whole mamono of all kinds."
Scarlet hoping to not hear about Carla for a single day but every time she does, news about this foe makes her appear more and more dangerous. Scarlet asks, " What is it have you seen Luna?", hoping it isn't that bad.
The Lizardman begins her tale, "I was forging around for food for the camp until I heard a booming sound, then there was another and another. I decided to follow that sound and as I was getting closer, I noticed other mamono were also going to the same sound. I and many others were approaching an opening then suddenly up in the sky was some sort of pentagraph after it appeared purple rain fell. Where ever they drop, the ground explodes killing many and at the center, I saw her. Carla was in a center with another, I think that person was a Kunoichi and they were in a duel. I wanted to go over and help but the purple rain prevented me from advancing from the forest. All I could do is watch, as soon the deadly rain stopped, I saw Carla had defeated her opponent and then….."
"Then what?" Scarlet fearing the answer she'll know what it'll be.
"Carla got down on one knee and….reduced that Kunoichi to ask."
Scarlet clutches her teeth, now knowing one of her best is dead and the other one is missing who could very well be ash as well. Murmurs and whispers erupt around Scarlet as her face shows a mixture of sadness and anger as Luna quietly finishes, "I'm sorry to the bearer of this terrible news."
Before Scarlet could reply a voice boomed over all others, "WHAT IS THIS COMMOTION ABOUT?! All heads turn to the owner of that voice and they see Lady Druella alongside Gin who is standing with the support of a Dullahan Guard. Druella joins Scarlet in the center before she asks, "What's going on? Who is this cutie?" Luna blushes a little before she continues looking around before she sees the werecat whose arm is starting to reattach. Lady Druella looks at Scarlet and asks again, "What happened Scarlet?"
Scarlet retells everything that the werecat and Luna have said to her and once she had finished, Druella stayed silent for a moment as she processes the information. Then Lady Druella walks over to a vacant log next to the werecat and steps on top of it and speaks loud and clear, "I have heard the stories about this Carla Johnson, the brutal crimes she has committed against us and the terror she has spread. Now hearing about her destructive powers it seems she is on par with other Lilims in terms of magical and physical might. Therefore when we attack tomorrow, leave Carla Johnson and her two companions to me, for they'll answer to me for these transgressions. I'll personally monsterization them then they'll know how gravely of the mistakes they have made. They'll become our greatest warriors for our next largest invasion and the fall of the Order that'll finally bring enteral peace and love!"
All around the mamono cheers at Lady Druella's words and promise as the many mamono who were considering backing out of attacking the city had their courage renewed.
"Is everything ready for tomorrow's attack?" Druella softly asks Scarlet.
"Y-yes but I'm concerned about one of my missing underlings, she hasn't come back or been confirmed perished." Scarlet nervously mentions.
Druella sighs and says, "Scarlet my dear, do forgive me for saying this but I think you shouldn't count on them coming back since these three new travelers have shown irregular strength and powers." Scarlet wanted to complain or say something hopeful that they'll come back but couldn't find the words. Lowering her head, Druella places her right hand on Scarlet's shoulder and continues, "I promise you, those three wouldn't get away with this and you can personally punish them in any lewd way you want."
Scarlet looks up at Lady Druella then softly nods her head and says, "Everything is ready to capture the city and the nearby village."
"Good, it's time we begin finishing off the Order once and for all. Then there is nothing left to challenge our peaceful enteral loving embrace." The two walk back to the tent while Gin watches them walk away before turning to the werecat and asking her about her encounter with one of the three powerful travelers.
Alright with this chapter now out, there are two things to address. One: with summer coming, things are going to get a lot busier and less time writing my stories. Second: I'll start working on the next chapter of Rise of the Gears. Wish me luck.