Halkegenia Online c2.0 - Chapter 10 - Part 1
KoKo rapped on the door, once, twice, the brittle echo vanishing into the night air without a trace. They waited silently for an answer, the light from the window above never wavering, nor the shadow of the man sitting beside it.
"Have they already turned in?" Miss Caramel peered up at the window. "Probably got drunk early and passed out."
"I can try knocking a bit louder maybe." The Cait woman suggested, raising her hand again to the door. She knocked once, more firmly, she didn't have to knock again.
With a low, eery creak, the door of the tailor's swung open the smallest hair, the tinkling sound of the shop bell a deceiving melody in the gloom. Before Louise could think much of it, before she could even understand what was happening, she was being shoved back by a quickly backpedaling KoKo.
"Hey?!" Louise tried to wrestle free, but KoKo had other plans, hand held firm like a vice. "What is it? What's wrong?"
"Shh!" KoKo shushed her with a distressing hiss.
Miss Caramel and the Lieutenant, formerly at ease, reacted almost instantly. With an exchanged glance, both women drew their swords and stepped quickly to the sides of the doorway. The sudden change in the manner of their martial escorts tipped off Kirche, the Germanian raising her wand to a ready guard.
Peering into the dark, Louise had her first inkling of what the others had sensed, and the realization of dread. It was hard to see at first, but as her eyes adjusted to the dark, Louise picked out the features of the room. The furniture and the miscellaneous items strewn about as if by random. And that was because it was random, chaos.
The store had been ransacked, chairs and desks turned over or shattered, dresses fallen in tatters, mirrors broken, their glass reflecting the ceiling and the few shards of moonlight creeping in through the windows.
"What in the hell?" Miss Caramel hissed, raising her free hand as if to chant some Faerie magic.
"I should have expected something like this." Agnes drew her pistol, readying the commoner weapon for any surprises. "de'Martou's contacts must have done this. Tidying up loose ends."
Louise recalled the conversation between Janglers and de'Martou, the formers insistence in ensuring silence. It appeared he had ignored the corrupt Tax Collectors advice. Which would mean…
KoKo went stiff, ears twitching about atop her head. "Agnes-san, I hear something inside."
The musketeer grimaced, but nodded thanks for the warning. "We have to assume there's somebody still here. Caramel, check the up stairs first." Agnes instructed, squinting into the darkness and leveling her pistol on the shadows.
The Faerie breathed a curse that Louise didn't quite catch, something about her name. The Swordswoman's wings had already materialized at her back, four, slender, raked geometric blades of translucent white, before lightly kicking off in a flight assisted hop to settle on the eave beside the second floor window.
"Do you see anything?" Agnes called softly, eyes never leaving the dark of the shop interior.
"Just give me a second." The Faerie leaned closer to the wall, peaking in from the corner of the window. She gave an inarticulate grunt, and then a very articulate curse. "Damn it, you better get inside and see this. I think…" Miss Caramel stopped mid sentence, suddenly kicking away from the wall like a frightened cat.
The reflexive jump might have been the only thing to save her as the wall overhead exploded outwards in a shower of Spackle, wood splinters, and something else, distressingly indistinct, tumbling and coming apart in midair. As it was, the Faerie had gained just enough distance to not be caught head on. Instead, she was picked from the sky and sent careening back into the solid stone facing of the building on the opposite side of the narrow street. The Sworsdwoman struck with a sound of stone hitting metal, bouncing, before plummeting from the sky in groaning heap.
"Miss Caramel!" Louise had time to cry before being violently pulled aside, a slender silver flash materializing in the space she had just been filling, then another, and another. Four in a row, the last striking KoKo in the shoulder, sinking to a dull corded hilt with a small hiss of pain from the Cait. KoKo's cry was drowned out by the loud, sharp -crack- as Agnes fired into the darkness, a tongue of hot flame spitting from the barrel of her pistol.
'A dagger?' Louise wondered. Those were daggers. Daggers that had been aimed at her. Her stunned senses reasserted themselves as the dark interior of the shop was turned into an inferno that crashed out into the street, breaking like waves against Kirche's guard. Someone was trying to kill them!
"Lieutenant!" The Germanian shouted to the flames in front of her. Agnes had still been standing beside the door frame Louise realized with sudden horror. In that wall of fire, she couldn't…
A shadow appeared in front of Kirche, resolving itself into something small and low, rolling backwards from the destruction, it revealed itself at once for what it was, the Lieutenant, shielded by her singed cloak, and more importantly, by the layer of fire drake leather lining that had previously been hidden beneath Royal colors.
Seeing the musketeer safe, Kirche drew her wand close to her chest, beginning a hurried spell, but one conducted with a surety and economy of movement that left Louise dumbstruck. She'd never seen Kirche look this… this serious. Then, as if her wand were a duelists foil, the Fire Mage took a practiced step forward and thrust towards the source of the jet.
The flame wall folded, turned in on itself and its caster with a shout of surprise. It didn't appear that their unseen assailants were at all happy to have their own magic turned against them, not one bit.
Good, Louise thought viciously, burying her head against KoKo's shoulder as the hissing of the flames grew to a banshee scream, and then, as suddenly at it had started, became deathly, numbingly silent. The quiet lasted for only a heartbeat to be replaced by sound like a thunder clap and a bone shaking reverberation that caused KoKo to cover her ears and nearby windows to either shatter in place or else shake free from their frames.
Smoldering debris was thrown out onto the street as the flames guttered away, smoke cleared in the blink of an eye by the squall that emanated from the wreckage, giving Louise and the others a clear view at last of just who had attacked them.
Standing near the back of the ruined shop, there were seven of them in total, all but one crouching or still recovering from their near immolation by Kirche's surprise counter attack.
It was the last that struck fear in Louise's heart, standing ahead of the others, face just as garbed, but something in the line of his jaw triggered a sense of recognition, the reptilian sharpness making her look harder. Without a doubt, she knew who this was, who it had to be. And it seemed that he knew them.
"You." Janglers growled under his breath, head nodding to Louise and KoKo.
Louise her shook her head. "Me? You!" Not the best comeback, but about all that she could manage in the heat of the moment.
"Your instructions, Sir?" One of the men behind Janglers queried. "Shall we capture them?"
Capture!
Janglers clicked his tongue in disgust. "No. There's no reason now, besides, they couldn't have compromised anything." Janglers shook his head, speaking as if he barely cared for their presence. "I should have shown better judgment the other night when meeting with that idiot. Kill them, and then follow through with the diversion effort. Burn it all to ash."
Kill! Louise's heart raced.
"Sir!" The men spoke as one, hardly hesitating an instant before leveling their wands.
Louse felt KoKo squeezing her tightly, body tensing up to take flight when the air between the conspirators and their stunned party sparked, and then blossomed into flashes of light and smoke. An eath-flame combination spell.
"Louise, KoKo!" Kirche was sprinting towards them, wand waving wildly at the smoke cloud as she blindly snapped off a flame whip and another barrage of the small smoke bombs. A barrage of blind fired spells punched holes in the smoke screen, narrowly missing, some barely grazing. Louise blanched as a wind spear sliced a few strands of fiery hair, but Kirche hardly seemed to notice. "Are you okay?"
"Us?" Louise shook her head. "What about the Lieutenant and Miss Caramel?"
Behind Kirche, Louise could see the Faerie Swordswoman struggling to her feet, throwing aside the object that had erupted through the wall along with the wind hammer. It was a person, or rather, it had been a person. Louise felt sickened, she hadn't realized what it was before, being forced through a wall hadn't left much to be recognized. Most likely, it was one of the proprietors.
Kirche gave one glance over her shoulder. Her attacks and smokescreen had made the conspirators concentrate on her, opening the path for the Lieutenant to help the dazed Faerie Swordswoman to her feet, but they were now separated from Louise, KoKo and Kirche.
"They'll be fine!" Kirche decided loudly.
Miss Caramel was shaking her head slowly, holding a hand to where her hair was fast growing matted with blood. She didn't look okay at all, not well enough to fly, and they wouldn't be able to escape with her on foot.
If there had been fewer attackers here, one, two, even three, then maybe they could stand their ground and fight. But seven was simply too many. They hadn't expected this. Hadn't prepared for it in the heart of Tristania. The conspirators acting so brazenly. Louise knew this, and yet.
"No! We can't"
Kirche's glare could have melted stone. "Valliere! For once in your life, don't argue with me. The only thing we can do at a time like this is run." She turned batting, aside a fist sized fire ball with her wand. "Run, and wish every one luck… Ugh-" Another fireball, a flurry of them, striking again and again, forcing Kirche to devote herself to defense, parrying brilliantly but losing ground all the while.
Louise felt an arm coiling around her stomach, lifting her from the ground, KoKo pushing her back to her feet, pulling at her hand, pulling her away from the fight and towards the darkness of a side alley as wind bullets chased after them, punching holes in the wooden walls of a nearby building. Her last sight of Kirche
was the Germanian trading fire with a pair of mages, the other four storming from the dissipating smokescreen, giving chase to her and KoKo, and then they were into the alley, the darkness, and the safety of the mazes of the Capital's back streets.
If they could get enough of a lead, they could lose themselves here and make it to safety. There had been a gathering starting in the market square nearby, if they could get there, then maybe…
For a time, Louise wasn't sure how long, the only thing she could see was KoKo pulling her by the arm. All she could hear was the sound of shoes striking cobble stones, and the pounding of her own heart. And all that she could think of was the corpse that had laid at Miss Caramel's feet.
She'd barely paid it any mind, but now that she knew what it was, what had to have been. Older, gray haired, he would have been a distinguished looking man. Almost certainly the proprietor . .. Her mind was filling in the details, the blank, lifeless eyes, the pit just above the temple where the air needle had clinically ended him.
They'd done that, done that to keep him silent! Silent about whatever it was that they had gotten Terrance de'Martou to extort him for. Which also very likely meant… if that man had been one of the proprietors, there would have been others tailors and seamstresses. Those men had probably been hunting them all down, killing them off. And fire… They'd mentioned fire. A fire to erase the evidence.
And now, men that could think like that, do things like that without flinching were chasing them, going to kill them! Louise felt the contents of her stomach beginning their forceful rise. She couldn't help herself. Heels digging in, Louise yanker her hand free from KoKo's, turned to the wall for the support, and then began to wretch uncontrollably.
"Louise?" KoKo panted, blinking her eyes rapidly, her face had darkened into a feverish flush.
It would have seemed strange if Louise had been in any condition to pay it any mind. Maybe if she had, she would have done something differently, realized sooner.
KoKo was by far the fitter of the two of them, so she should hardly have been winded just yet. In fact, if she'd been in a right frame of mind, she would have been asking herself why KoKo hadn't immediately grabbed her and taken to the air. The Cait woman wasn't as strong as Klein, but she should have been able to manage the two of them to skim the distance to the safety of the Palace walls, or even a trafficked street.
"Away." Louise whispered under her breath. "Away. We have to get away. Have to get away from here. Have to find help, have to, have to…"
"Louise!" KoKo raised her voice as high as she dared. "Stop. Take a breath. Look at me Louise-chan, look at me, and… and…"
"KoKo?"
Worry for the Faerie's strange mannerisms replaced Louise's fear for her life, broke her from her litany. The Cait seemed like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. Her legs gave out, trembling, sending her to ground with a soft shake. KoKo raised her arms, hugging herself, hands on her shoulders. One hand rested just beneath the hilt of the knife still buried in the meat of her shoulder.
'Oh no.' Louise felt a sick churning in her stomach. She was glad that it was empty, because she would have spit it up all over again now.
"KoKo? KoKo!" Louise whispered softly, quickly, raising a hand to feel the older woman's temperature. She pulled her palm away almost at once, fearfully. She was already showing a strong reaction.
"Sorry Louise-chan." KoKo chuckled weakly, as if making light of the situation would make it all go away. "I'm just feeling little under the weather."
"No you're not!" Louise said, ignoring her protests. "That knife… Why didn't you pull it out?!"
"What are you talking about…" She panted. "And I didn't want to risk losing too much blood… Already getting light headed… "
"You're light headed because you've been poisoned!" Louise reached for the dagger hilt, batting aside KoKo's hands when she tried to protest. The Cait might have been the bigger of the two of them, and usually the stronger, but right now, she was helpless as a kitten.
"If it's like the ones mother showed us, then there's an internal reservoir, the poison will be mixing with your blood." She didn't add that normally the poison used in such a weapon was strong enough and in great enough dosage to kill a bear. The only reason KoKo was still breathing, much less consciouss, was doubtless her Faerie constitution.
Carefully, oh so carefully, Louise took the hilt, pulling tenderly and cringing as KoKo hissed in pain. The blade must have been shaped so it would be hard to remove without causing more damage. A murderer's weapon through and through. But leaving it in would be far worse, looking at her patient, Louise could see the poison taking its toll.
Thinking quickly, Louise grimaced. She would do everything possible to make up for it afterwords, but for now, she reached to KoKo's belt, drawing the knife she kept for defense. The same knife she'd used to protect Louise and Silica when they had first met.
Regarding the tool in her hands, almost too big to be called a simple knife. It was meant for cutting things, killing things, and any other number of tasks. All that mattered to Louise was that it was sharp and tapered to a point. It would have to do.
"Louise?" KoKo asked as the mage brandished the knife like a hilariously over sized scalpel.
"It's okay." Louise said for both of their benefits. "I have to get the dagger out now. Don't worry… I-I've done this before in class." Once, as part of anatomy studies and reagent harvesting. But for all of her bravado, the trusting look that KoKo gave her did much more to steady her shaking hands.
Two cuts, short incisions, widening the wound barely enough to free the blade. Louise pulled it free slowly, letting KoKo bite into the sleeve of her blouse. In the moonlight shinning down on the narrow street, the dagger glittered the colors of silver and blood, a clear fluid weeping from the channel cut down its center.
Louise was careful not to touch the blade, to not dare nick herself on its deadly edge. Whatever the poison was, she doubted that she would stand up to it half so well as KoKo. Still, she took the weapon, folding it carefully in the fabric of her cloak, anything that might help to identify the specific agent. Now she had to get KoKo back to the Palace. If there was anyone who would have access to the right antidote, it would be the Royal Physicians.
But, how was she supposed to do that? She looked at the Cait, it was clearly all that KoKo could do to lean up against the wall.
Could she leave her here? Come back with hel?. Louise discarded that idea swiftly. Not with their pursuers looking for them. KoKo would be killed in a heartbeat while she lay here, defenseless. And if the conspirators didn't find her, then she might expire before Louise could make it back.
Which only left… "KoKo, do think you can manage to walk if you lean on me?" Louise asked, already pulling the Cait's arm over her shoulder.
"What?" KoKo blinked in confusion. Obviously not thinking too clearly now. But that was okay, Louise didn't need her to think, just to move.
Hefting her load carefully, Louise felt renewed confidence. Sometimes, when Cattleya's condition acted up, Louise had done much the same when her sister insisted on getting out of bed on her own. And compared to Cattleya, KoKo was a lightweight.
The tiny glimmer of optimism vanished almost at once as she heard the shouts and fast beating of boot heals echoing through the abandoned street. She wasn't a good ear, but that sounded like four, and the chances were they had given chase expecting to find a dead Faerie and a helpless girl. She wasn't going to let them have either.
"Come on, one foot in front of the other." Louise instructed, coaxing the dazed woman forward. KoKo stumbled drunkenly, but her gate was still what could generously be called a walk, as long as Louise was by her side, they could do this.
They didn't even have to make it very far. Someplace beyond this maze lay the main streets, and from there the safety of anonymity and hundreds of witnesses, many of them Nobles. Luckily the moons had come out, and at this time of night they were as good a gauge as any to find their way. All they had to do was follow the moons and they wouldn't be turned around.
A shout at her back caused Louise's heart to skip. Now, the only question was whether they would make it to safety first, or would be caught. And worse, the load on her shoulder was getting heavier.
"Just a little bit further.
A small, weak chuckle, it might have just been an exhalation. "Louise-chan is such a good girl." KoKo whispered hoarsely. "Daisuke would have liked you. I wish I could have introduced you to him."
"What are you saying?" Louise looked over her shoulder again, she wasn't sure if that was a shadow or a man in a hood that had just turned the corner.
The sound of wood cracking and glass shattering just beside her head answered the question well enough. Pulling her own wand free she pointed shouted the shortest chant she could think of, with predictable results. The man brought his wand up to perry, but he obviously wasn't very good because he wasn't even able to defend against Louise's normal, pitiful burst. The figure was thrown from his feet with a shout of surprise and pain. At the same time, Louise let out a hiss of pain as her hand was grazed, wand flying free and into the shadows. She didn't dare stop to look for it, there was no time. She would just have to hope she'd made them a bit more cautious.
"Louise-chan is a good girl." KoKo repeated. "But she doesn't need to sacrifice herself for me or anyone else."
Tears were forming, hot and angry. No… KoKo couldn't be telling her this. It wasn't right. It wasn't fair! She wouldn't allow it! The same grim determination that had dragged her through every set back of her life took hold once more. This unfair world… she would succeed just to spite it! It gave her the strength to go on, to endure.
One final corner, one final turn… Louise broke.
It was a wall. Not metaphorical, a very tall, very substantial wall, barring the path ahead. A dead end.
"No. No, no, no." Louise looked up and then to either side. The walls were solid stone, no windows on the first floor. The only way forward was back into the alleyway, right back into the path of the pursuing mages. In other words, suicide.
"Louise-chan…"
"KoKo, just hold on." Louise assured. She tried to think, something, anything, there had to be something she could do.
"Louise-chan… it's okay. I want you to run now. With me it's impossible, but on your own, you might make it."
"No." Louise repeated. "No, you don't get to tell me to do that."
But what else could she do? If she abandoned KoKo, she might have been able to scale the wall up to a nearby window, force her way inside and hide. The sort of men who would murder people in the night, they would think she'd abandoned her companion and would go on to look elsewhere. And they'd be right. If Louise did that, she would be as shameful, dishonorable, disgraceful as them and… and her friend would be dead.
"Louise…"
"Enough!" Louise trembled with fear, and also with anger. "I won't hear one more word. You're saying I shouldn't sacrifice myself? But what's the reason to go on if I have to give up loved ones?"
KoKo was stricken silent.
"More than being a mage, more than living. I want… I want to keep hearing you praise me… because you mean it." Her voice shook. "And I want to taste all the strange things you make. And hear all the stories you have to tell. And I want you to meet my sister Cattleya. And I want you to be able to go back to your son." She choked. So many things to want… So many things that were going to disappear now, whether she lived or died. It simply didn't matter any more. "So don't tell me what I can and can't sacrifice for!"
KoKo leaned away from her, towards the wall for support. "You shouldn't say such things Louise-chan, you're still much too young to sacrifice…"
"I am a Noblewoman, and a Valliere." Louise shook with anger. "I have  never been too young to sacrifice."
Knuckles going white around the hilt of KoKo's knife, Louise inched towards the corner of the wall. Even if this was all she could do, maybe she could take one of the attackers by surprise, grab his wand. It wouldn't work very well without being properly tuned, it might even burn out the first time she tried to cast, but all she could manage was explosions anyways.
"There has to be something… something we can try." Louise breathed, something that would work. "KoKo, what about your magic, you can't concentrate enough to fly, but what about spells?" Louise thought she remembered that Faerie magic was a bit different, KoKo might be able to perform magic even like this.
"Maybe, I think… Maybe one spell." She blinked fast. "Maybe."
"Then try and make it count." Louise said, not because she thought KoKo wouldn't, but because that was what she thought she was supposed to say at a time like this. The foot steps were getting louder, they'd be here any second.
"Make it… make it count?" KoKo's head rolled back, looking up into the night sky, at the twin moons that were just now beginning to fall behind rain clouds. "Count…" She sucked in a breath. The light caught in the Cait's eyes, pupils slitting as she sucked in a breath past dry lips. Face set in a mask of cold sweat and concentration, not daring to misspeak of break cadence, KoKo began to chant. "Draíochta iarraidh fo leagtha nádúr…"
Stepping close, holding the knife close to her chest. Louise took the very last opportunity to ready herself and to say a final prayer to the Founder. If she died here, she only hoped that mother personally blamed Kirche.
"… athrú Draíochta cait Sidhe leagtha iarraidh…"
And yet, Louise realized, she should have been afraid. She was afraid, but as it turned out, fear wasn't nearly as scary as people said it was. This would be alright. If she died here, after doing her best, nobody would blame her. Least of all KoKo. No matter what happened, the last person she was with would not be disappointed in her.
"… fhorghníomhú!" KoKo gasped out and then nearly doubled over in pain.
"KoKo?" Louise only meant to spare her a glance, but when she saw, she stopped.
"Nnn… you said… make it count."
Or at least, that's what Louise thought she said. It was hard to tell with the way that her lips stretched, pulled back, barring her teeth. Louise nearly dropped KoKo's knife. She thought she'd seen the Cait at her worst before. But the gauntness seen then was amplified now, twisting her face into some mockery of itself as the skin stretched and stretched, form  changing beneath her skin. Tail twisting and lashing about. KoKo grabbed at her wounded arm, squeezing tightly as the hands spasmed, the muscle moving and twisting beneath kin. Her eyes opened wide, brilliant gold irises, pupils turned to razor thin slits.
Louise stumbled away.
"Just… promise me… Louise…" KoKo doubled over again. Hair falling to hide her deformed features. All that Louise could see was KoKo's mouth, lips pulled apart, and the reason that she struggled to speak… her teeth… "Promise you won't be afraid."
Louise didn't even hear the triumphant shout as the first mage turned the corner. The cry as he began to level his wand. But she did see what happened next… and she definitely heard the shouts turn to screams as the man was confronted by a nightmare of tawny fur, teeth, and claws.