Arkk, Kia, Olatt’an, Vezta, Zullie, and Abbess Hannah teleported into the undead storage room, the rapid movement still feeling slightly sluggish but not as bad as it had been. All carried a veritable armory of the counter-demon weapons Zullie had developed. In the five minutes since escaping the demon’s captivity, he had devised a tentative plan for dealing with the entity. He wished there was more time, but he couldn’t allow a demon to roam unchecked through his fortress.
There was so much to do. So much he needed to do.
The demon had to be dealt with first.
“What is that smell?” Hannah asked, pressing the back of her gloved hand to her nose.
“There’s a demon on the loose and you’re worried about smell?” Olatt’an grunted, his eyes never leaving the darkened chamber.
It was a large, open room, meant for holding undead until they were needed. He had first used it for the undead soldiers, then the goblins. Speaking of which… Arkk sent a mental command to the goblins under his control. They were no longer needed out in the field. Things out there had gone…
Focus, Arkk told himself.
With another thought, he teleported a dozen smaller glowstones throughout the room, dropping them into the large chamber to provide light. The light didn’t make that much difference for him—he had a near-perfect omniscience of his own territory—but it would help the others. Because of that, he already knew what he would find.
“No demon,” Vezta said.
“Would you stick around?” Hannah asked with an abrasive edge to her words, still pressing her glove to her nose. Arkk was well aware that the Abbess considered Vezta little better than a demon.
“If I thought I could ambush anyone coming after me, yes,” Vezta said. In contrast, her tone remained cool and neutral.
“It can’t attack us,” Arkk said, peering around the chamber. He hadn’t seen it through his localized omniscience, but he had hoped there would be something obvious to the naked eye. “Not as long as we and the Prince are not enemies.”
A long stretch of silence followed as the group’s thoughts churned. Based on their faces, Arkk could tell they weren’t thrilled with such a flimsy defense. Arkk wasn’t even positive that it was accurate. It was just the only thing that made sense given the situation.
Otherwise, he was fairly certain it would have killed him.
Instead, they had a brief talk, just before Vezta showed up.
One of the group decided to voice their thoughts. “What exactly constitutes his ‘enemy’ anyway?” Zullie asked, humming lightly. “Like if I say I don’t like the aesthetic of his shoes—”
“Probably best not to think of ways of becoming his enemy, witch,” Hannah said, sneering before her eyes went wide. “Oh Light,” she murmured. Her eyes darted back and forth, suddenly full of fear. “Prince Cedric summoned a demon and I’m a member of the Abbey. We’re… There’s no way I can’t not be his enemy… Oh Light—”
“Weren’t you excommunicated?” Olatt’an asked as calmly as if he were asking about the weather.
Although the fear didn’t fully flee her eyes, Hannah shot him a withering glare. “That’s beside the point. I still hold values incompatible with demons and their summoners—”
“Shouldn’t we focus on the demon? It shapeshifts, right?” Kia asked, her voice echoing with her afterimages as they looked around. “What if it turned into a rock?”
Zullie huffed in annoyance, casually swinging a black-bladed knife around her finger by the hole in the handle. “Did you not read the information packet on demons that I gave you and Claire? I didn’t go through all that effort—”
“Enough,” Arkk cut in. “Kia is right, focus on the demon. It will be humanoid. Maybe gremlin-sized at the smallest, minotaur-sized at the largest.”
Kia nodded slowly, taking that in. “Alright. If it isn’t here, where did it go?”
That one, Arkk didn’t have an answer for. “I have all doors sealed in the lower levels. Only I can open them. If anything tries to damage a door, I’ll know instantly… but I still don’t know how it got down here in the first place. It shouldn’t have gotten inside without breaking at least one door.”
“Maybe you didn’t notice?” Olatt’an asked, walking a few steps back toward the hole in the wall Vezta had made. “Too distracted with the operation going wrong?” Shuffling around, he pied off the corner with his crossbow raised. The tip of his bolt ripped through the world as he moved.
Kia moved up as well. Afterimages moved in front of her, peering out down both sides of the corridor at the same time. Apparently seeing nothing, she stepped out fully with Zullie following shortly after. The latter still languidly spun the short blade around her finger.
“It is hard to describe,” Arkk said. “And it has only happened a few times, but when something attacks the fortress itself, there is no way to ignore it. The fortress might as well scream in my ear, hammering gongs and setting off blinding blasts of magic. It is safe to say that nothing has damaged part of the fortress without me knowing.”
“A demon will do anything to fulfill its contract, even violating laws of magic, though I suspect that takes a special kind of contract. It is part of what makes them so dangerous,” Zullie said. Snapping the knife into her grip, she slashed at the air. A black void opened up, much like the openings Olatt’an’s bolt was causing except much larger. Although it started to seal shut, Zullie reached in and, after rummaging in the void, pulled out a solid black sphere. “It can break reality as easily as I can if its contract requires. Unfortunately, we don’t know any details of its contract. All we can assume is that it is only allowed to directly harm those aligned against Prince Cedric.”
Zullie moved back into the undead storage room, waving around the black sphere. Nothing obvious happened from Arkk’s perspective, but Zullie occasionally stopped, brought the sphere close to her face, and let out a few mild humming sounds.
“Could be that it has been here for a while,” Olatt’an said. “If it can appear like you convincingly enough to fool the dark elves, who can say it hasn’t been wandering the halls as an employee.”
“If it did sneak in and manage to get hired, I would have noticed it before it attacked me. I would have been able to teleport it away and I would be able to locate it now.”
Zullie looked up from the black sphere. With the tip of the black dagger against the corner of her glasses frame, she adjusted her lenses over her empty eyes. “What part of violates laws of magic do you not understand?”
Arkk nodded his head, conceding the point. “Fair enough. But it still seems… unlikely.
“What seems more likely is the direction it went,” Arkk said, turning away from the corridor. The opposite end of the undead storage room opened up into a large tunnel. “That way leads to the surface.”
“Directly to the surface?” Olatt’an asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Rekk’ar would be complaining about fortress integrity and security right about now.”
“This room is normally full of hundreds of undead goblins,” Arkk said, mildly offended. “The path toward the tower is a labyrinth filled with all manner of traps until you reach the border of Elmshadow where the fortress proper begins. Seems like enough security to me. More than half the other entrances have.”
“Just a thought,” Olatt’an said with a light shrug. He moved up with Kia, crossbow aimed down the dark tunnel. “No doors down there?”
“There are two before the surface,” Arkk said. They were more to protect from anyone accidentally stumbling in than to keep people out, but they still functioned like every other door in his domain.
“So it couldn’t have gotten in that way without you knowing.”
Arkk almost answered in the negative, only to pause as a thought occurred to him. “I had just sent the undead out. The doors opened for them. The demon could have slipped past them.”
“That sounds like one mystery solved,” Zullie said in a chipper tone.
Arkk closed his eyes, mentally pausing the goblins. No sense recalling them now when they might just open the door for the demon to escape through the same way it had come in. He didn’t like leaving them out in the open where anyone could see them, but nothing to do about it now.
Vezta shot the witch a glare. “I am still concerned it knew where you would be, when you would be here, and how to gain access.”
“Alright,” Arkk said, sighing. He had thought they were prepared. They had weapons and tools and people like Kia and Claire. If Zullie was right, just being touched by any of them should shunt the demon back into the netherworld. It was as simple as that.
Simple.
Right, Arkk scoffed to himself. As if. Something that could break into his fortress without him knowing, assault him, and then vanish from his sight was a bit more than he was expecting. He doubted even the Golden Order’s avatar would have been able to hide within the fortress. Not that the avatar would have bothered, but that was beside the point.
And there was so much else that still needed his attention…
“We’ll head up the tunnel on foot,” Arkk said. “If we find nothing, we call it there—”
“Call it?” Hannah said with a gasp. “And leave a demon wandering around?”
“Of course not. But standing around arguing with each other isn’t productive. We have an ongoing emergency, we might have just kicked Evestani into action, and…” He pressed his lips together. “Other things have gone wrong. Stumbling around in the dark won’t find us the demon and won’t solve any other issue. We’ll need a plan. Now that we know a little more about the demon, how it can hide itself and disguise itself, and even some of its limitations, we can make that plan. And maybe, just maybe, we won’t have to worry about the demon at all.”
Hannah looked genuinely offended that he was considering leaving even after the explanation. Arkk understood but at the same time, what did she want him to do? Camp out down in the undead storage room until it showed itself again? Shaking his head, Arkk did a quick check around him.
He counted heads, making sure there were still only the six of them, then checked to make sure all six had a link. He didn’t think it was possible that any of them could have been suddenly replaced by the shapeshifting demon, but he also wasn’t about to take any chances. Thankfully, everyone was who they appeared to be. With that done, he motioned down the tunnel.
“Let’s go. Eyes and ears open. Try to keep everyone else in sight at all times while also keeping a lookout for anything amiss.”
Olatt’an gave Arkk a look. Assuming the old orc was going to ask him to prove that he was still the real Arkk, Arkk teleported himself to the head of the group and rearranged everyone into columns behind him. There was a slight jostling as everyone adjusted but nobody questioned him.
If a demon could replicate all his [HEART]-granted abilities, they were already screwed.
“What do you mean, we won’t have to worry?” Hannah asked.
“The demon… stole my magic? Ate it? Something. I couldn’t do anything for a few minutes and I’m sure you felt that teleport wasn’t as snappy as usual.”
“Yeah,” Kia said. “Like we were swimming through water.” She paused and looked over the group. “Shouldn’t I be in the lead?” she asked as they continued walking down the tunnel. “I’m the one most likely to be able to take a hit from the thing.”
Arkk hesitated and almost waved her forward until Zullie let out a scoff.
“If we get ambushed in a relatively small tunnel like this, the demon will probably be able to pick and choose who it strikes at without worrying about who is where.”
“Point,” Arkk said, then waved the dark elf forward anyway. “Having Kia in the lead will allow her freedom of movement without the rest of us getting in the way.”
A quick shuffle occurred. Abbess Hannah positioned herself in the middle of the group, near Arkk and Vezta, while Kia took the lead and Zullie shifted to the rear. Olatt’an remained next to Zullie, keeping his crossbow raised but making sure he never aimed it at one of them.
“In any case, while the demon has to obey the contract, it still seems to have its own desires. Namely, it wants to eat magic—probably. Before you showed up to save me, I tried to tell it that Evestani and the Eternal Empire are full of magic and are already enemies of the Prince.” Arkk shrugged. “Not saying I shook hands and formed an alliance, but maybe it has decided to focus on them over us. For now.”
An uneasy silence followed. While arguing in the undead storage room had bounced between tense and lighthearted—the latter likely only there to help cover up just how tense some of his employees were—the time for games had passed. The tunnel wasn’t exactly narrow, having been designed to allow the undead to flood out to the surface, it was still a great deal more confined and claustrophobic than the storage room.
Smaller than the storage room, the lighting wasn’t quite so dim. He still supplemented the wall-mounted glowstones with a constant teleport of the loose glowstones onto the ground ahead of them, keeping everything nice and bright.
Arkk and the others made little haste as they moved. It had him growing more and more antsy with every step. Ilya was on her way back. He needed to deal with that. Most of the other groups were already back, all of whom he needed to deal with as well, but Ilya’s was the most important. The most… distressing.
And he had a demon on the loose that could disguise as him. Until he told Ilya, she would be vulnerable to it appearing in front of her. It could take on the appearance of him, her mother, or anyone else. With that, it could easily convince her to head somewhere of its choosing. Even if it couldn’t directly harm him or anyone who didn’t consider the Prince an enemy, Arkk wouldn’t put it past the demon to leave someone out in the middle of nowhere, deep inside a pit they couldn’t escape from, and let them starve to death.
Then there was the question of how much he should reveal to the rest of his employees. It wouldn’t be good to start a panic or throw everyone into a state of paranoia where they couldn’t begin to trust each other. The last thing he needed in the middle of a war was for his army to start turning on each other. At the same time, if the demon showed up somewhere he wasn’t paying attention—talking to a team in private or even managing to take command of a unit in the field—it could send his employees to their deaths with him none-the-wiser.
They needed to deal with this demon as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, they reached the closed door at the end of the corridor without encountering anything strange. There were no marks or damage on the door, no indication that anyone had forced it open. He had already seen that through his omniscience of his territory, but some part of him had hoped they would find the demon standing by, waiting for the undead to reopen the doors.
Unless Zullie’s information was wrong and it could disguise as something other than a person, the demon wasn’t here.
“Could it be elsewhere in the fortress?” Olatt’an asked, the first to speak in the last ten minutes. Hannah jolted at his sudden voice.
“It has to be,” Arkk said, frowning at the wooden door. “Unless it can teleport around at will. If that’s the case…”
If that was the case, they were, again, extraordinarily screwed.
“Kia, Olatt’an, Zullie. Remain here and keep an eye on the door. I’m recalling the undead. The door will have to open for them.” Unfortunately, the undead were a little odd. They weren’t employees or property, so he couldn’t teleport them around at will. They had to walk. “If you see the demon, alert me. Otherwise… Stay safe.”
The old orc snorted at that.
“Before you go,” Zullie said, stepping forward, “if you aren’t fighting demons, Vezta, mind swapping?” She held out the black dagger in one hand, asking for the curled staff Vezta carried in her tendrils. “The Veilstaff is probably better for fighting in these quarters than the Threshold Blade. Not enough reach.”
Vezta glanced at Arkk, getting a nod confirming that he didn’t intend to hunt down the demon at this moment, before tossing the staff toward Zullie. It warped the air around it, bending light ever so slightly towards it. Though blind, Zullie caught it out of the air with one hand.
“Keep them both,” Vezta said when Zullie started to offer the knife.
“Any other questions?” Arkk asked, looking around once.
Hannah had her lips pressed into a thin line but clearly wanted out of here more than she wanted to keep searching for the demon. Her fingers on both hands were clamped tight around a little ring that Arkk was fairly certain was supposed to be on her finger. Olatt’an kept his crossbow up, aimed just over everyone’s heads, while Kia was already looking in every direction with her afterimages.
“I’ll drop us off in our quarters—”
“Alone?” Hannah hissed.
“Probably better to be alone,” Olatt’an mused. “Given our enemy can appear as others.”
“But if I’m alone, there won’t be anyone else there to stop it from stabbing me in the back!”
“I’ll put you in the operations center. Keep with the scrying teams. They might still be able to locate the demon. Vezta and I will meet with Ilya and her group as soon as she is in range of teleportation.” Arkk glanced to his side, nodding at Vezta. “As soon as the undead are inside, if nothing happens before then, I’ll teleport all of you back to the operations room. We’ll decide what to do from there.”
After getting an acknowledging nod from each of them, Arkk teleported himself, Vezta, and Hannah. Hannah went to the operations center as he said. He and Vezta reappeared high up in the tower, in his private quarters.
She looked at him with a heavy frown. “You were trying to broker a deal with a demon?”
“Not like that,” Arkk said. “I was more pointing out that, if it wants magic, there is an avatar and those things the Eternal Empire has been building. Just the magic rendering them invisible has to be considerable. I’ve no idea how they’re managing it. Before you arrived, I think I was convincing it.”
“You cannot trust anything a demon says. Or does. Even if it nodded its head and said it would only go after the Evestani from now on, you should expect it to strike you in the back the first chance it gets,” Vezta said with a heavy scowl. “We need to find it. Or a way to detect it, at the very least. You cannot be compromised like this again.”
“Agreed. But that isn’t exactly why I’ve brought us here to talk.” He looked to Vezta, lips thin, and said, “Leda is dead.”
The eyes on Vezta’s face closed for a moment, then reopened. “Unfortunate. Her contract with the Walking Fortress Heart will have collapsed.”
“I had a thought. Since we opened the portal to the Necropolis—”
“Have the First and Last Primeval Lord revive her? I suppose that might be worth exploring, but we don’t know if some preparations or rituals must be done in order to revive her as a cognizant undead versus the mindless normally revived with necromancy.” Vezta paused, turning to face Arkk fully. “More importantly, it won’t repair the contract even if it works. It will have broken with her death.
“That means we have have an active but unaffiliated [HEART] out in the wild, vulnerable. It must be reclaimed as soon as possible.”