“You have two options,” Arkk said, addressing the assorted demihumans and beastmen. And two humans. “You go with me or you stay and hope the Duke is in a good mood. After I burned down his ballroom and half the rest of the manor, I doubt he is in that good of a mood.”
He stood in the so-called menagerie with Vezta at his side while Agnete worked her magic at the far end of the corridor. The hall had no appreciable differences from that of the dungeon. It was a cramped corridor with doors on either side leading to small, cell-like rooms, each with a bucket and a mat of straw. The doors locked from the outside and…
Well, if it wasn’t meant to be a prison, it certainly wasn’t a very good attempt.
“I know none of you know me and that might make the decision difficult. Know that you’ll, at the very least be treated like people rather than cattle.” He paused for effect, looking over the crowd of people. It wasn’t the best place for giving a speech. Too narrow, too long. He wasn’t even sure if people toward the stairwell could even hear him properly. “If you wish to take that chance, remain here. Otherwise… I imagine you will find greater leniency if you sit quietly in one of the dungeon cells.”
Arkk waited a moment.
Not one of those present moved toward the door. That, he felt, was telling.
He did, however, note more than a few shooting glances toward the tall elf standing well away from him. Alya hadn’t yet had a chance to yell at him for whatever she thought he had done. The second Vezta walked back into the dungeon, Alya had clammed up. Even now, she was staring at the servant with a look of horror on her face. Arkk was fairly certain that the only reason she hadn’t fled was Ilya at her side, holding tight to her arm.
Well, Ilya and the fact that the way out of the dungeons had been sealed. Arkk guessed that the Duke was barricading the place until he felt he had enough men on the other side to take on Agnete. Or the assistance of the Abbey.
He wasn’t going to get the chance to try.
The heat at Arkk’s back faded, leading to him turning. “Enchantments removed,” Agnete said as she stepped away from the far wall, voice unusually breathy. She was enjoying flexing her powers, although this time, she was being far more careful.
In the ballroom earlier, she had burned through the stone all on her own with no aid from Vezta or a lesser servant. Here and now, she had to keep things toned down to avoid incinerating everyone in the cramped hallway.
“Good. I know it isn’t your forte… if you could cool the wall down as much as possible, that would help speed things up. The lesser servant is eating the stone properly from the other side, but the heat…”
Agnete turned back to the wall. Once made of large brickwork, it was now little more than molten slag. The entire corridor felt like sitting next to an open bonfire on an already hot and windless summer day. Once again, Arkk was regretting leaving the marble behind. Not because he needed to use it against Agnete. Simply because having it in his pocket would keep the sweat from running down the side of his face.
He couldn’t imagine how the two werecats in the room were feeling. Then again, perhaps their thick fur helped insulate them from the heat.
Closing her soot-covered eyes, Agnete drew in a deep breath just like she had done at the war council. The heat in the room immediately took a dip and the glow from the mushy brickwork faded. The scars lining Agnete’s face took on the glow in its place and the heat around her jumped. Overall, the temperature wasn’t quite as bad as before.
More than that, the lesser servant was somewhat less hesitant to eat through the stone. It could handle a bit of heat. Just not literal lava.
“We’re burrowing a tunnel into the dungeons,” Arkk explained as the lesser servant ate around a few warm spots, letting them cool while still making progress. “Once outside the manor’s wards, we will be using a ritual circle to transport everyone well out of the city. It is quite a simple process. You step into the ritual circle and one of us activates it. You’ll reappear elsewhere. We need to go quickly. I’ve no doubt the Duke is furiously scratching his head, trying to come up with ways to make all our lives more miserable.”
As he finished speaking, the smooth, near-glassy surface of the former brickwork cracked and broke. As soon as it started crumbling, Arkk directed the lesser servant away. It scurried back down the tunnel and the burrowed inside the ground. No need to frighten anyone any further.
Alya might just have a heart attack.
“Vezta, take the lead. Get through the portal and make enough room on the other side for this group.”
“Understood,” she said, bowing before turning and descending the melted slope of stone into the darkness. Her burning suns remained visible even as the rest of her ended up cloaked in shadow.
“Agnete, head up the rear. Unless someone decides to stay behind, feel free to leave a… parting gift.”
Without a word, Agnete nodded her head. Despite the cramped space, everyone found a way to give the purifier plenty of room as she strode through. No one wanted to touch someone who had just melted through solid brickwork. Especially not when her feet were leaving bright red marks in her wake.
“Everyone else, come quickly and mind your footing. The tunnel will slope downward in about a hundred paces and slope back upward a short distance beyond that.” He turned, looked to Ilya, and held out a hand.
Although she took hold of his offered hand, she pursed her lips in a way Arkk was quite familiar with, having seen the same reaction more times than he could count. A mixture of disappointment, exasperation, and just a pinch of relief. The disappointment faded as she laced her fingers with his, only to return in force when she practically had to drag her mother forward. At least it wasn’t directed at him now.
“Not quite the rescue you were hoping for?” Arkk asked as they stepped into the tunnel. An uttered spell, learned from Zullie, brought a mote of light to his fingertips, letting him lead the way.
He didn’t bother checking to see if the rest of the captives were following. If they didn’t want to come, that was their problem. Arkk wasn’t going to force them.
“Not exactly,” she whispered back. “To be honest, I didn’t expect to see you for weeks at least. The last report I heard was that you were fighting alongside Hawkwood.”
“How did you go from getting war reports to being locked up?” Arkk looked to his side, frowning while trying to keep a sneer off his face. “And the Grand Vizier as well.”
“Arkk,” Ilya admonished.
“I don’t…” Alya started, sounding… confused. Lost? Uncertain. “I don’t even know where to begin. The things Ilya has told me. And then the sky…”
Arkk raised an eyebrow. “Sky?”
Ilya took a breath and let it out in a clipped sigh. “Long story short, when the sky broke, we decided to go to the Fortress. I’ve been sitting on my ass long enough. I’m healed enough,” she said quickly, like she thought he might tell her to go take a seat and rest up some more. “We barely made it five steps when Woldair noticed our intent to leave. He took it a bit personally,” Ilya said with a glare at her mother.
“And locked you up,” Arkk finished.
“The Duke hasn’t been happy with her since the party. Maybe even before that.”
“Levi has been under great stress,” Alya started, only for Ilya to let go of Arkk’s hand and whirl on her.
“Don’t even defend him. He threw us in the dungeons!”
“Not a defense,” Alya said, sorrow lining her features. “Just an explanation. He saw what we were doing as a betrayal.”
“Betrayal? You, maybe. I’m not some trusted servant or retainer. He had no right—”
“You were here at my request. For healing.”
“That doesn’t mean he could throw me into prison,” Ilya snapped back “Throw me out of the manor, sure.”
“He saw you as an extension of me. Knowing that Arkk was in possession of a dangerous artifact in the Cursed Forest, he likely—and correctly—concluded that you would know something.”
“Why would he know…” Ilya trailed off, eyes narrowing in hostile danger. “You told him. You told him what I told you, didn’t you? I can’t even… believe you.”
“Don’t judge me, daughter. You don’t know what I went through—”
“Oh yeah. How tragic, living the high life. Probably jumped at the opportunity to ditch our miserable little village.”
Alya clutched a hand to her chest. “You weren’t alive when the last war ended thirty years ago. You don’t know what it was like. A religious war of fanatics against fanatics. The Abbey of the Light and the Golden Order using the common people as pawns to try to wipe each other out. I saw an opportunity to help prevent another war from rising and I took it at cost.”
“Well good job with that!” Ilya snapped.
Arkk wisely kept his mouth shut during their argument. He had left Ilya in her mother’s care weeks ago and yet it was clear that they still had a few things to work out. Not that Arkk blamed Ilya for that. He more than agreed with her. Alya up and leaving without so much as sending a letter back home had him clenching his fists.
Thankfully, neither spoke again, both fuming after their argument.
He let things cool down for a moment before, as neutrally as possible, asking, “What happened to the sky? It broke?”
Both elves whipped their heads to him. For a moment, he thought he was going to get both shouting at him. Instead, their silver eyes held nothing but confusion.
“You don’t know?” Ilya asked first.
“Know… what? Last I saw, the sky was… the sky? Didn’t notice anything off about it.” He tried an easy chuckle, hoping to defuse some of the remaining tension. “Don’t see much sky in Fortress Al-Mir,” he said as a joke.
“I thought for sure it was something you had done,” Ilya said with genuine confusion. “Undoing the Calamity or something.”
“We did do the ritual, but…” He trailed off, frowning as he felt a link wink out of existence. “Hold the thought. The lesser servant just died.”
Ilya tensed, looking around the tunnel. Her fingers twitched like she wished she had her bow. “How? Where?”
“I don’t know how, I wasn’t paying attention to it. It died too quickly for it to throw out a warning over the link. But it was going to collapse the tunnel behind us so that none of the Duke’s men would follow.”
“Great. We’re being followed?”
“Agnete is fine,” he said, checking up on the purifier through the link. “Nothing is attacking her yet. Vezta is already through the teleportation circle, widening the cavern at the other end for our group. You’re the only one who knows how they work. Get everyone through. I’ll head back and help hold off any attackers with Agnete.”
“Will she even need help? An enclosed space like this…”
“Better safe than sorry.” Arkk leaned in, pulling Ilya into another hug. “We’ll talk back at the fortress. Sorry for leaving you behind. I won’t do it again.”
“You better not.”
Arkk fell back, letting Ilya and Alya go on ahead. Turning, he squeezed past the train of captives. There were around fifty in total. Maybe just shy of that number. “Follow the elves,” he said as he made his way back. “The shorter of the two knows where to go.”
They didn’t part ways for Arkk quite as well as they had made way for Agnete back in the dungeons. To be fair, they tried. Just because he wasn’t offloading a furnace of heat didn’t mean they wanted to get too close to the guy with glowing eyes. It was just that the tunnel wasn’t meant for groups of people. It had been constructed to quickly escape the Duke’s manor, not to live in.
When he got to the rear, Agnete turned to him with a single raised eyebrow.
“The lesser servant was killed just as it started collapsing the tunnel. We might have incoming.”
“Died from flames?” she asked. “I did set the entire menagerie aflame as we were departing.”
“I suppose that is possible. It may have even been crushed—although, that would be odd. I’ve collapsed a lot of tunnels and no other lesser servant died in the process.”
“Better prepared than unprepared,” she said, raising an arm. The flames barely contained within the scars on her skin surged forth and flooded the tunnel behind the group.
Arkk shied away, raising an arm to shield his face. Even though Agnete was several paces behind the last of the group, he still heard a yelp of surprise. Some urgent whispers followed and, with no small amount of shoving, the group hurried on. Or at least compressed.
There was nothing a normal fire would burn inside the tunnel. No wood or tallow. Just rock and stone. That didn’t stop Agnete’s flames. They burned everything. The stone, the dirt, even the moisture in the air that had likely seeped through from the moat around the Duke’s manor.
The fact that he could feel the humidity dry up meant that this tunnel probably wasn’t as safe as it should be. It was a good thing they wouldn’t have to use it again.
If they did need to get into the manor through tunnels again, he would start fresh. And likely deeper in the ground.
Agnete let the flames around her die out while keeping the tunnel alight. They were at the lowest point in the tunnel right now, directly beneath the moat. Arkk had to hope that the structural integrity would hold for ten more minutes.
“If there are pursuers,” Agnete said, “they’ll have a hard time reaching us—”
A rush of cold air blew through the narrow tunnel, coating the walls in frost. The flames snuffed out in an instant and the heat died. Agnete sucked in a sharp breath, hands clamping to her arms as she wrapped herself up like she was trying to ward off the cold. She opened her mouth, trying to speak, but her voice caught in her throat.
The cold sent a shiver up Arkk’s spine but didn’t incapacitate him as it did Agnete. He narrowed his eyes, looking into the dark of the tunnel. With the slope, he couldn’t see far. He didn’t need to see the source. He had seen this before.
He had used this before.
“Inquisitors,” Arkk said with a scowl.
Agnete managed to nod her head.
“Go. Hurry. I can’t have you dropping into the fetal position now.”
Her voice croaked as she forced words out of her throat. “I can fight—”
“Against one of those ice marbles?”
Her jaw clamped shut. The burning light in the scars on her skin and even the embers in her eyes were dimmer than usual. Dimmer than Arkk could remember having seen before.
“Go,” he said again. “I’m not helpless. Slave Natum.”
With the uttered incantation, a trio of lesser servants popped into the tunnel. They immediately burrowed into the floor. With the moat overhead, it was too risky to try to collapse the tunnel. An accident here could see everyone in the tunnel drowned or simply crushed by the water.
Agnete backed up, leaving Arkk alone. She couldn’t go far with the crowd and narrow tunnel but she was at least less likely to get caught up by the chill from one of those ice marbles.
As the lesser servants worked to dig deeper, Arkk pulled out the metal rod and quickly inscribed a ritual circle on the wall and another on the floor.
Blue-white light gained prominence at the other end of the sloped tunnel. Arkk finished the second ritual circle just as the black boot came into view, followed quickly by a cane tapping against the ground.
“Master Inquisitor,” Arkk called as the man came into full view. “Been a while. How’ve you been?”
Darius Vrox came to a stop at the lowest point of the tunnel. In one hand, he held onto a cane. A different model than the one Arkk had seen him with previously. This time, it was smooth black wood—maybe even from from Darkwood Burg—topped with a silver handle and a light blue glowstone. Its appearance had Arkk wary; the staff used in Zullie’s demonstration of her projectile shield had looked quite similar, if a little rougher.
In his other hand, an icy blue marble hovered just above his palm. Despite Arkk’s best attempts, he had never managed to make his float like that. It would have been nice given that contact with skin was rather painful.
The man was alone, thankfully. Arkk wasn’t sure that he would have been able to handle Chronicler Greesom if the man had used that attack-reflecting shield.
“Arkk,” Vrox said, no hint of his usual smile on his face or in his tone. “What do you think you’re doing, betraying the trust I had in you like this?”
“When we last parted, I gave you a message to pass on to someone important to me. Imagine my surprise when I find the Duke has thrown her into the dungeons.”
A flash of irritation crossed Vrox’s face. That had been news to him. He quickly schooled his expression. “Then you should have come to me. We could have figured something out.”
“I’ll be honest, the option did not so much as cross my mind.” He gave a casual shrug, trying to avoid showing the tension he felt all up his back. “Besides, I wouldn’t suffer Ilya’s imprisonment a second longer. Meetings and negotiations would have taken far too long. And I doubt the Duke would have released her anyway.”
“You…” Vrox clenched his teeth. “You don’t get to walk away from this, Arkk.”
“Oh? Try me.” Arkk forced a smile of his own. “When you head back with your tail between your legs, you can tell the Duke to go thank the Evestani. Were it not for this war, he would not have survived our encounter.”
“You can tell him yourself. Submit, Arkk. You don’t win here.”
Arkk slammed his hand against the wall, flooding the ritual circle with magic. A deep violet glow spread around the hastily carved ring.
The ground shuddered under Vrox’s feet. Were it not for his cane, he might have fallen.
“Do you know what is directly above us?” Arkk asked. “Why this tunnel slopes so deep into the ground?”
Vrox glared from behind his glasses as he took on a wary stance. His eyes roamed from the magic circle on the wall to the ceiling of the tunnel. Arkk could see the exact moment Vrox realized what he was implying. The man’s eyes widened and he even took a full step backward.
“You wouldn’t.”
“You’ve seen me teleport without aid before, Vrox. I did it right in front of your face in Langleey then again when we fought in my old headquarters. Right in the middle of combat. This tunnel exists to escape from the wards around the Duke’s manor and, guess what? I’m on the far side of the moat here.” Arkk swept his foot forward, placing it in the other ritual circle he had drawn.
Another violet circle lit up brighter than the one on the wall. With it, another tremble rocked the ground underneath Vrox’s feet. Even though the ground shook, he shot a fearful look at the tunnel’s ceiling.
“I can escape a torrent of water. How do you think you’ll fare?”
The ice marble bobbed up and down above Vrox’s upturned hand. He was probably wondering if he could freeze all that water at once. Arkk… wasn’t sure. He hadn’t exactly undertaken many experiments with his marble.
Perhaps he should. It was a tool more useful than just as a restraining device for Agnete.
He quickly checked on Ilya and Agnete, the only two employees he had in this tunnel. The former was at the ritual circle and was already helping people teleport through. Transporting large amounts of people was exhausting work and it showed on her face, nevertheless, she kept up a determination worthy of praise as she teleported one person after another. Her mother watched at her side with disapproval riddled over her features. Agnete, at the back of the group and looking better now that she was away from the cold, could help him measure how many more people had to go through the circle.
Arkk had to delay a little longer.
“Back away, Vrox. I don’t actually wish to kill you,” Arkk said, honestly. Maybe it was a bit strange but Arkk didn’t see Vrox as a proper enemy. Not like the one who fired off those rays of gold. “Turn around and make your report. We got away despite your best attempts.”
Vrox clenched his teeth. The step forward was a surprise.
Was he calling Arkk’s bluff?
Arkk hoped not. The bluff was all he had.
Neither ritual circle did anything. There hadn’t been any time to scribe out a true circle. They were just enough to glow.
The ground shaking was thanks to the lesser servants directly beneath Vrox.
But instead of raising his weapon in an attack, Vrox’s fingers just tightened around his cane. “The sky,” he said with all the seriousness of a man delivering news of a deceased soldier to a widow. “Was that you?”
Arkk blinked. “That is the second time someone has asked me that question. I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about. The sky… broke? Or something? I haven’t noticed anything like that.”
“Impossible.”
“Ever since you invaded my fortress, I’ve been having to do a lot of construction,” Arkk said. Might as well use the chance to further that lie he had crafted. “Our current home is underground as the one you invaded was. Not a lot of opportunity for cloud watching while underground.”
Vrox stared for a long moment. Even from the distance they were at, Arkk could still see his eyes daring back and forth as if he could spot Arkk’s lie. But Arkk hadn’t lied about anything.
“You don’t know,” Vrox said, speaking as if the answer surprised him even though he was the one who said it. “You genuinely don’t know. That’s…” He clenched his teeth. “The rest of the Abbey is under the impression that you and your horror from beyond the stars are at fault. They’re considering betraying the Duchy and the greater Kingdom of Chernlock, throwing in with the Golden Order to exterminate you. This stunt you’ve pulled will not endear them to you any further.”
Arkk blinked. Then blinked again. “That… How could they do that? What of all the priests and abbesses providing healing and miracle support to the army?”
“Recalled. Assuming the pontiff cannot convince the Duke to align with Evestani and hunt you down as well.”
Arkk swore under his breath. “Wh… Convince them not to!”
“I’ve presented my testimony and analysis of your character. I already spoke in your defense—you aren’t the type to harm the everyman, thus you wouldn’t be trying to bring about the apocalypse.”
“Apocalypse? What happened?”
“The sky broke,” Vrox said, turning his head upward as if he could see through the stone and water. “And if you truly are not the culprit, the real villain will be free to act with impunity while two religious orders and their respective countries assail you.”
“I… damn.”
“Damn. Yeah. That’s putting it lightly.”
Arkk tossed a glare. “And what do you suggest? You aren’t telling me this for fun.”
“Submit,” Vrox said. He gestured around the tunnel with his cane. “With this disaster, my testimony of your character will be called into question and thus remove one of the last voices against turning the full might of the Abbey against you. If you come into custody, it may be our only option to allow the Abbey to continue searching for the true culprit.”
“Or they’ll stop searching entirely, thinking that they already have the culprit in hand.” Arkk shook his head. “And they would likely force me to hand over Vezta. I won’t.”
“Arkk, see reason—”
Arkk placed his free hand on the wall opposite from the already glowing ritual circle. There was nothing inscribed there. There hadn’t been time before Vrox appeared. That didn’t stop the sudden tension in Vrox’s shoulders as he stared at Arkk’s hand.
“Turn around and leave,” Arkk said. “I would rather not kill you.”
“Arkk… Please. I am limited in my options.”
“Do what you must. Follow the Abbey’s edicts if you have to. But…” Arkk hummed. “If you want to help, find a place on your own and drop your scrying protections. Let’s say nightfall on the next full moon. Have a paper written out with all your suspicions and theories on who this culprit might be or just what happened. Then I can search on my own.”
“To what end? That won’t stop the Abbey’s decision on you.”
“If I deliver the culprit to your hands, the true culprit, that exonerates me, does it not? I have resources you don’t. I can search with freedom. Vezta might even know something that could help locate this culprit.”
“That won’t satisfy them in the short term.” Vrox paused then frowned.
“Then I’ll just have to search quickly.”
Vrox swallowed, drew in a deep breath, and closed his eyes. “This is a dangerous game.”
“No more dangerous than your options. But less dangerous to me personally.”
Vrox opened his eyes and lifted his cane. Arkk tensed, only to frown as Vrox simply turned around. The inquisitor didn’t speak. He simply walked away.
Arkk waited a long moment until the last of that blue light faded around the curved tunnel. Only then did he remove his hands and foot from the ritual circles he had drawn.
He turned and sprinted down the thankfully emptied tunnel, heading for the ritual circle.
The lesser servants immediately started eating into the walls and ceiling at that lowest point of the tunnel. He couldn’t risk Vrox changing his mind. Agnete, with a flame providing light, stood alongside Ilya and Alya around the teleportation circle. The only three left in the tunnel.
“Go!” Arkk shouted. “Quickly. Alya first!”
“Arkk, I—”
Something broke behind him. Two of the three lesser servants died. This time, having been paying attention, he knew it was because of the water.
“No time,” Arkk shouted back as the sound of rushing water and crumbling stone threatened to drown out his voice.
And drown him.
Agnete, quick on the ball, snuffed out the flame and practically threw Alya into the ritual circle. She vanished the second she was fully inside it.
“Vezta pulled her out of the endpoint,” Arkk shouted. Vezta had been doing that for each of the people, making sure none were in the way of any follow-up teleports. “Go!”
Agnete didn’t hesitate, stepping into the teleport circle next. She vanished and Ilya took her place, quickly vanishing as well.
Arkk jumped onto the ritual circle, activating it the second he saw Ilya step out on the other end.
An ankle-deep slurry of water spread out into the newly expanded waystation chamber, flooding over the other ritual circles in the room. One circle would lead near the academy, another near the Cliff’s Edge stayover. Arkk had half a mind to destroy both, just in case. But not until Zullie made it back from her academy run.
With all the commotion at the Duke’s manor, she should have an easy time of it.
“Everything going alright?” Vezta asked, tilting her head as she looked at the thin layer of water on the floor.
“Get everyone back to the fortress,” Arkk said, slowly turning to Alya and Ilya. “Then we’re going to talk about this sky thing.”