Chapter 11 Part 3
Carl de Merlone was not a man meant for closed spaces or darkness, yet tonight, he was in the company of both. The dark and the dank, the confining stone walls around them, the low arched sealing that forced him to stoop to walk in the filth of these sewers. The only company save his unpersonable allies was the soft rush of water someplace not too distant and the faint whiff of something unpleasant coming from further off, deeper in the grated off tunnels.
Asking the others about the stench, they had told him not to mind it. He'd asked again, they'd told him that it was probably the rats that kept them company. Big old grandfathers of the sewers grown fat on the refuse of the city above, growing and multiplying until they gathered into vicious swarms fit to take down a man and gnaw him to the bone. He'd stopped asking after that. The others preferred it that way.
In a conspiracy, he had learned, questions were not abided. He was simply a pawn, a part of a greater whole with no reason to know more than he ought, guided only by his faith that this was the good and proper path as grandfather had insisted. It was for the good of the family, he reminded himself, a chance to regain some of what they had lost in these past few years, a chance to regain some measure of their former status and honor before their name was lost to obscurity.
He fumbled underneath the arcane garb he had been given by one of the traitor Faeries, the silky fabric brushing his skin like dry water, until at last he found what he sought. Small, cold, wonderfully reassuring. Mother's cross, one of the final mementoes of her left to him after illness had taken her away. How he missed her terribly, her softness, her unconditional kindness, and the shelter she had given from Grandfather.
He prayed for his faith, the very faith she had instilled in him, to give him strength this night and to know the proper course.
His was not to ask, but simply to listen and obey.
Which was why he put aside his fears and doubts and redoubled his efforts, keen eyes peering into the deepest shadows of the tunnel beyond. They had been told to keep watch, to be ready in ambush for anyone or anything that might try to follow down this tunnel to their hideout.
Secretly, he thought it a pointless task, simple make-work to keep the sentries out of the way of affairs within. Nothing was going to follow the Princess and her abductors through the labyrinth of the underground to this hidden and forgotten place. Standing watch down here once, he'd gotten lost just in the walk to his post!
But their leaders had not lead them astray thus far, Carl reminded himself. The Princess was now theirs, and he had seen the others earlier bringing back the witch who had drawn their Princess from the righteous path. The plan, or what he had been deemed worthy to know of it, was proceeding swiftly. If there was danger of their allies being followed, it would be their duty to stop well short of the hideout and relay the event and all related information back to their superiors through their contacts in the city above.
Eyes cast to the side, following the shadows ebbing in the torchlight, he could see little of the others hidden beneath their own Stealth Cloaks. Nothing at all save the faint ripples centered in the shadows, where his compatriots silently stood guard amidst the turbid waters. He'd have missed them entirely it if he hadn't spent the last hour knowing exactly what to look for. Tucked away in alcoves flanking the tunnel, they would have been all but invisible even without the Faerie cloaks. Now, they were the shadows themselves.
What marvels that the Faeries had at their disposal. He should know, having taken up a trade to earn his own coin. Artifacts that would have been the product of a triangle or square ranked artificer of great renown were common enough among the Fae to be surreptitiously obtained in quantity by their own traitor Fae allies.
Yet more proof that the Faeries could not be trusted. They probably hadn't even told the Crown about these cloaks. He shuddered to think of what else the Faerie Lords had hidden, hadn't told anyone about, what artifacts they still hoarded for themselves, what devious spells they might whisper in the dark.
How would humanity even know? There was no one who could tell if a Faerie was using forbidden arts when they cast. Fae magic was as alien to them as that of the Elves, the blackest of abominations. Water magic to sway hearts and trick minds, wind spells and wings to eavesdrop, entirely alien magic to make their flesh into that of beasts. Who knew what their sinisterly named 'Dark' Magic was or what it could be capable of. And 'Holy' magic? 'Music' magic?
It wreaked of the heretical, the weak stance of the Church regarding the Fae interlopers still more proof of Romalia's corruption. Perhaps the rot had already set in long ago. Who could know what dealings were whispered in the dark, with elves and Fae alike.
He'd been in the crowds one day when the Queen and the Fae Lady of the Sylphs had made an announcement. He still remembered seeing her, watching through an air lens to get his first good look of a Faerie. The intense, brilliant green of her eyes, pale, silken skin, and lustrous hair. There was beautiful, and then there was  unnatural, and he knew which she was.
She had to be some sort of witch, some sort of enchantress, to sway the Crown as she had. Some trickery had been used, why else would the Crown grant them such concessions so swiftly, so blatantly favoring them? Even before the threat of invasion had pressed Tristain to seek aid from the Fae. It was as if some shadow invasion was afoot, a campaign wrought in the hallways of power far more insidious than anything that was feared from Reconquista.
It was why they had sought out those of like mind within Tristain, the other families eager to pledge themselves to the righteous cause, and also, those less interested in righteousness and more in coin. There would be many enemies of the Kingdom brought to justice soon. The Vallieres and La Ramees, the Gramonts, and all the others that had sided so swiftly with the Faeries, given them the chance to spread the tendrils of their corruption.
When the Fae and their allies were denounced, their holdings would be seized and given to those judged worthy. There had been a good many who doubtless had this as their motivation. But… Carl thumbed his mother's cross for reassurance, it was simply a necessary evil, soon things would be set right. They were so close now.
The Princess was now theirs, and where she would go from here on he could not say. It was better this way, the others said, they all knew only their places and nothing more.
But before that, they had to make it through this night, and perhaps the next; long enough for the arrangements of the Princess' extraction to Albion to be made, long enough for the Guard to start looking outward and for the agitated Nobility to start looking inward upon the untrustworthy creatures that they had so foolishly let into their midst.
His attention returned to the present, and with it came confidence as his free hand gripped the hilt of the sword-wand he had been issued, a Germanian pattern produced in bulk for the armies. More potent than a simple wand, and dangerous up close as well as at distance. Pity his sword lessons at the academy were years rusted.
But he wouldn't need swordsmanship in these tunnels. Never. Though he and the others were not the very finest of mages at the disposal of their leaders, they were well suited to this place. In the confines of these tunnels, and with the benefits of artifice surprise, there was no mage or Faerie alive who would not be noticed long in advance and charred to the bone by the flames of a trio of line Fire Mages.
And if they failed, the commanding Earth Mage, one of the foreigners who had been hired to aid them, would simply crush the attackers to jelly against the tunnel walls. He hid further back, deeper in the shadows of a catacomb that this tunnel had pierced during its construction, listening to the earth for the faint vibration of footsteps. Here, underground, it was his territory, and not even Faerie magic could change that. In the bosom of the earth, even the Fae had to walk!
A splash!
Carl's breath caught in his throat. Such a simple noise, heard often enough in the depths, stones falling from above, centuries old crumbling masonry shifting in its foundations. It shouldn't have meant anything to him, he'd heard it hundreds of times, and yet oh so subtly wrong. What was it that gave him that impression?
The noise? No, it had been ordinary enough, simply some distance away.
Perhaps because they were told to be on alert? He was just thinking the darkest of idle speculations. There could be no interlopers, none could have followed them this far.
But even then, he longed to draw his sword, just for a moment, to light the tunnel and see for sure that it was nothing. Between themselves, and their traps, the mundane trip wires and shattered tiles, and their Earth Mage ally, he should have known it was nothing. Nothing at all.
-Splash!-
He tried to ignore it. It was a normal noise of this place, an ordinary noise, he should be more frightened if it stopped.
-Splash! Splash!-
Then why was it so maddeningly wrong? He would be disciplined for speaking, for breaking silence, but he had to know. Opening his mouth, he whispered as loudly as he dared. "Can anyone else…" And then stopped as the sound of his voice died as it passed his lips.
-Splash!-
A splash, but with no echo, no noise that carried on down the tunnel into blackness. It died in a heartbeat.
A chill ran down his spine as he felt a soft puff of air behind him, hairs standing on edge as he sensed the presence of another.
Carl's hand shot down, pawing at the hilt of his sword as he tried to shout the alarm only to find his shout had been transformed into barely more than a squeak. And then sharp pain flaring across his neck, the world spinning around him as his vision went fast blurred and then black, the only sensation, the resonating, noiseless -thud- as he struck the floor, body limp as a fresh corpse.
And then, the subtle trembling of two more bodies striking the ground before noise properly reasserted itself.
"Sentries have been neutralized, sir." A voice, muffled as if by a plague doctor's mask reported dutifully.
"And the rear guard?" A voice that was barely more than a low growl asked.
"It has been done."
Carl felt gloved hands, course leather, turning him on his side, two bare fingers pressed to his throat like a physician would hold his wand. His eyes rolled open on blurred shapes, visible only in the faintest light filtering down from a grate overhead. Eyes adjusted to the dark could see them, horrors, all glass eyed and leather faced, monsters in the shapes and garb of men. Dark jackets and trousers, hooded heads, bodies festooned with pouches and knives .
There were four in total, standing over their victims, himself included. Two of them wielded long, forearm length knives or short swords while a third was lifting one of the other fallen mages onto his shoulders, and the fourth kneeled before him, inspecting its work.
He tried to scream, but all that came out was a gagged breath, tongue lolling fat and useless in his open mouth.
"Is this one still conscious?" The apparition growled.
"We used one eighth dose to conform with Lord's Zolf's wishes, and your own, sir" One of the blade-bearing wraiths held a hand over its stomach and gave a small formal bow, as though it were something as mundane as a servant.
One-eighth dose?! One-eight of what and for whom? But it was growing steadily more difficult to open his eyes, and as his concentration wavered, mind sinking into darkness, he heard only one last thing.
"We don't want any needless killing." The growling voice agreed. "But don't endanger yourselves. Thomas, take your men and get these four up to the surface and then rejoin the perimeter. We'll make final preparations for the others."
"As you wish, sir."

***

In the murky deeps beneath Tristania, in the forgotten catacombs and sewers, they scurried like rats, unseen, and unheard. But unlike the rats, they had a purpose this night.
They were not proud of what they were, of the skills that had been granted to them, or the extraordinary abilities honed for one purpose alone. Awakening in this world, the revelation that they might never go home was matched only by the darker realization of what was so unwillingly etched into their own flesh, forbidden knowledge that had crawled into their minds.
No technique was special, no one thing was damning in itself, but when taken together, their knowledge of poisons and darkness, their skills with knives and crossbows, their sense of tracking and stealth. The arsenal of black magic and illusory tricks that they had collected. And finally, their knowledge of the hunt.
In ALO they had been Assassins, never facing their opponents with honor, always most comfortable in the shadows and the darkness. They had lived by the rule of making a fight unfair, taking pride in dishonor. But that was a lifetime ago, in a fantasy in which they had never spilled true blood.
The other survivors of the Transition had been unkind. Assassins and Gankers such as they had always been held in dim regard. Even now, especially now, in this real world where every life was finite and precious, they were viewed with the greatest suspicion for their refusal to disband as a guild. Two months ago they had been players who had reveled in membership in one of the most ruthless Assassin guilds of ALfheim. Now, stories and rumors of the death game of SAO had surrounded them. Insinuations that would not disappear, even now.
Those who could not endure what they had become had left, fled to find some new purpose in this world. There was no shame in that. The ones who had left were braver, willing to try something new rather than cling to what the Transition had given them, the last familiarity in this strange new world. To stay was to continue to punish themselves, that they might have need to use these skills as they were intended. A simple fact of their circumstances that led to one horrifying conclusion.
Despair. Grief. They were not murderers! Why should they have to abandon their few friends just to prove that? But their talents had suited them to little else, relentlessly specialized for PvP. They had been a skilled guild, one of the best at what they did. Now, they were viewed with suspicion, contempt, their pride ripped to shreds until nothing was left to bolster their resolve.
Death had seemed the way to many. They had the knowledge, they could make it quick. A slice of the wrists, or the throat, the right medicines in the right doses. They well knew how to deal death, even their own.
Only at their lowest had salvation come, knocking at the door of their Guild Hall one evening, bearing a crucifix and Christian bible of all things and intent on asking them if there was anything they needed, or anything they could do to help. They all needed to do their part, to help one another in this difficult time, he had said.
The man had listened to them, to their Guild Leader and to their concerns, to their despair and purposelessness. And then he had given them kind words, the first that some of them had heard in weeks. He told them there was no shame in what they had been given and that they could hold their heads high as good people.
They told him that they could only be swords. The only task they were fit for in this world was killing.
He told them that a sword could do more than kill. It could block and parry, could turn aside a killing blow. When violence was forced, a blade could save a life as well as end it. He told them that they might all need people with the strength to do both very soon. And, if they had the courage, the conviction, he had sworn to never ask them to take a life needlessly.
The quiet, gentle spoken man who called himself Zolf had lived up to his word. He had brought them out of the darkness, shamed the others who had put them there out of fear. He had given them back their pride, and in return, they had become his strength. This world was a dangerous place, difficult and unforgiving, it needed kindness, it needed those like their Lord to succeed.
And now, they were living up to the promise they had made to him, sacrificing part of themselves to save still other lives. Faces hidden behind masks, running through sewers, slipping through the gaps and cracks, blinking from point to point by darkness magic or brief flashes of their underground adapted wings. Night was as day to them, and direction an easy thing to guess. There was no place beneath the earth where they were not at home.
Sentries were silenced, traps disarmed, the path was marked for those that followed.
At last, they reached a place where the tunnel gave way to smooth stone walls, old passages bisected by the buried fortress, the hidden bastion that was La Forace prison. They pressed themselves to those walls, oozing up them, climbing and squeezing themselves through narrow shafts and crevices. Dark magic pulled them upwards, allowed them to navigate even here, blinking from ledge to ledge, escaping from deadly falls.
This place had once been impregnable. Long, long ago. Now it was on the verge of collapse. Uncared for, decrepit, only secrecy provided it in any security now; secrecy, and the men within, perfectly willing to kill every last Faerie of this world if it would please their masters.
They found their places, atop ledges and beneath arches, peering in through iron grates, counting heads and memorizing the terrain. This was the terminal point of the conspiracy, their secret base beneath the capital, the nexus of the corruption afflicting Tristain. And now, it was about to be cracked open.
They had done as they had been asked, they had cleared the path. There were silent whispers, prayers of thanks and for luck as they watched from on high, the ledges of the outer prison where guards once had kept watch over a now defunct underground highway, the path that had once brought prisoners to this place where they would never leave.
Emerging from the dark, the procession moving forward quietly under their careful watch, the Royal Knights in full gear, ready for battle rather than for parade, armored Salamanders and lightly geared Cait Syth and Sylphs, Puca Orchestral Troops playing their silent songs to shrink the noise of their passage into oblivion, and Spriggans gathering the dark close to cloak them to the last moment. High above, standing over the gateway of the prison, a final Imp winked into existence in a puff of displaced air and black smoke. The Hogei-sen watched from behind glass eyes as Lady Alicia, fitted in form fitting golden armor fit for an assault, stepped up to the fore, a tiny fleck of light held at the tips of her fingers…

***

La Forace Prison.
To those who knew its name, it was always spoken of in a whisper, in tones of fear and remembered malice. Ashcroft's Dungeon, the Torturer's Keep, the den of the mad and the condemned, built to house the most dangerous, the most depraved of criminals and heretics. It had rarely housed them for long. Between the monstrous conditions the inmates were expected to endure and the daily torture intended to extract confessions, being sent to La Forace was for all intents a death sentence. Once they were brought here, the prisoners would never leave. Even in death, their bones were buried deep to become part of the foundations that burrowed into bedrock.
Some suspected that had been Lord Ashcroft's intent, constructing the prison beneath his very own estate so that he could personally watch over those he had sentenced as judge and jury, sometimes on the most questionable of grounds, with the full power and authority of warden and executioner.
Even after the First Lord Justice's death under equally questionable circumstances, the Prison had remained along with its grim purpose. Other Lord Justices had come and gone, each in turn finding use for La Forace, each making their own additions, modifications, expanding the dungeons and galleries and tortures. Hidden ventilation shafts had been sunk from the surface, and pumps had been built for dredging still deeper levels below the water line. Living quarters for the Guards and Wardens had been built and added to, some rivaling the opulence of the Manor of the Lord Justice above.
Year by year, decade by decade, it had grown like a nascent tumor beneath the city, its slowly sinking walls piercing through the old tunnels and catacombs, incorporating the pieces that fell within its dominion, sealing them off behind a curtain of smooth, mage shaped stone encircling a central shaft seemingly intent on burrowing all the way to hell.
A Fortress of the Legal Collegiate built beneath the streets of the capital like some darkly inverted castle, it stood mute testament to the ugliness and brutality beneath the veneer of enlightened civilization of Tristania.
Staffed by companies of Gendarmes and the Lord Justice's own interrogators, it had once been fit to sneer at any attempt to escape from within, or to be breached from without. The prisoners, deprived of magic, or even the simple blessing of light, were left to scrabble in the dark, blinded by even the passage of guards barring lanterns. If a prisoner even had the strength to escape, to by some miracle slip his shackles and guards and find a gap in the walls, a chink in the prison's legendary armor, they would find themselves buried alive within a labyrinth without end.
Any effort to break in from the outside had been equally doomed to failure. Simply finding the prison would be difficult enough without intimate knowledge of its location. La Forace's walls had been kept heavily warded, almost impenetrable, and the surrounding tunnels had been well mapped, the approaches carefully guarded where any hypothetical intruders would be funneled into a few easily defended choke points long before reaching the prison itself. And if all else failed, the same pumps that had dredged the lowest levels could be re purposed to channel flammable oils into the surrounding underground, burning to death anyone trapped outside the prison walls and asphyxiating any survivors.
Even now, years after its decommissioning at the order of the Prince Regent, a command that even the previous Lord Justice had been unable to refuse, there were still signs of the former impregnability of the now crumbling prison. The great walls may have cracked and weakened, their magics dissipated, and the lowest levels reclaimed by water, but much of the monument to cruelty remained. Echoes of the past lived on in the rows of abandoned cells encircling the central shaft scores of levels high, in the guard station a wooden cradle suspended by heavy iron chains from the ceiling, mounted with mage lanterns in their polished brass reflectors, and the countless iron doors and gates, the small, barred windows, and the halls leading deeper, ever deeper into the maze of interrogation rooms and torture chambers. These all still spoke of La Forace's past infamy, and the fear that its name still commanded. The shaft's lowest depths, once the final home of Tristain's worst outlaws, were now lost to turbid waters of unknown depths, rippling uneasily.
Looking out upon what remained of the main shaft and the upper floors that still resided above the water level, particularly the massive iron gate that sat on the highest tier where the guards would watch over the prison below, Felix de Abertneu, third son of the Baron of Abertneu, rested easy knowing that they had found such a forsaken place to make their hideout. Even in this sorry state, the La Forace was fit to shelter them for weeks if necessary as they waited for the search to die down on the surface. Or, if news reached them of the Royal Guard closing in, they could make use of the tunnels to escape.
He looked away from the barred window of what had once been the warden's office and back to the cause of this all, their prize sitting upon the wooden bench set against the back wall. She looked so sullen, hands held in her lap, lips pursed. The lovely ballroom dress had been dirtied and torn in their flight through the underground, but much of its former majesty was still apparent. It paled before the girl wearing it.
Small, delicate features, dark haired and thinly lipped, eyes of the most royal shade of blue. Princess Henrietta de Tristain was the picture of traditional Tristanian beauty. A rotting place such as this office was unfit to have her, let alone the collapsed interrogation room behind her where she ought to have been quartered. Not that they had any plans to interrogate her, no, they would of course not harm a hair on the Princess' head. Even now, she was royalty and thus deserving of certain courtesies.
Courtesies such as her freedom to move and speak. After taking her wand from her person and searching her for any other tools or weapons, her hands had been unbound and the gag removed from her mouth. The blindfold had also been done away with as a matter of courtesy. Those who had any dealings with the Princess directly were instructed to wear their masks for the sake of security.
They had brought food and drink, not of royal quality but not peasant's fare either, and arrangements were being made to move the Princess to more generous accommodations in the old warden's living quarters in the higher levels. Neither action had done anything to improve her demeanor, garnering only sullen, betrayed looks from their Crown Princess.
Though, Felix thought, they shouldn't have expected these offerings to put them on speaking terms. They were committing treason after all, no matter how well justified they were in their path.
The Princess had already grown entirely too cordial with these Faekin, and entirely too quickly. What of her loyalty to the true sons and daughter of Tristain? What of their concerns, their fears, and their lost ancestral lands? She and the Queen had already made the Leader of the Salamanders - Felix refused to refer to that creature as a titled Lord - an official advisor to the army. And what of that Faerie woman that was always in her company? The Leader of the Sylphs? At least that one wouldn't be causing them any more trouble…
A shame really. He was not entirely comfortable with what was likely to happen next, not comfortable with it at all as a matter of fact. Stories had started to trickle down, the Reconquistadors had a powerful necromancer in their ranks. A master of forbidden magic to whom the Fae woman was likely to be delivered. Who knew what else the new masters of Albion might possess… .but the Princess' life was unlikely to be in any danger. A Royal was more valuable alive than dead, and such gross measures would be surely discovered in short order if they were used. No, a more subtle form of manipulation would be needed. Perhaps that was why they were keeping the Faerie woman alive, unpleasant as her eventual fate may be.
No, all this was necessary now, to hold the changes imposed by the Throne at bay before the Tristain he had been raised up to defend was transformed into something wholly unrecognizable. The Princess was young and innocent to the ways of the world, and could hopefully be reclaimed, convinced to see reason. Her Regent Mazarin and the Queen, however, had much to answer for.
With the Princess as a bargaining chip and the Fae thrown into chaos by the loss of two of their Leaders, one to treachery from within her own guard, the other turning of his own volition, yet more proof of their inherent untrustworthiness, the Crown would have no choice but to capitulate to their demands. The rest would come naturally.
Father and the rest would understand when this was all done, that he was acting only in the best interests of family and Kingdom. Even if those interests brought Tristain under the dominion of Albion for a time, that influence could never last, but while it did, it would make Tristain quite the unappealing place for these interlopers to reside. And if done properly, as the conspiracy promised, there would be little blood shed by either side, only what was needed. Even the Fae might escape with their lives, most of them at any rate, if they only learned their place in respect to humanity once they had fled to other nations.
This was a good and proper course of action, the difficult but right choice for Tristain. He kept telling himself this, but the look of accusation in the Princess' eyes said otherwise. By the flickering lamp light, oil lamps set before their little brass reflectors, he could see her fidgeting, fingers interlocking in strange patterns as she murmured under her breath.
Whatever she did please to do, he knew better than to say anything. But even so, their mission was fraught with peril and there was no certainty that he would be alive at the end of it. Either way, the opportunity to address his Princess was unlikely to ever arise again.
"Your Highness." He whispered softly, unsure if she could even hear him. If she didn't, he decided he'd stop. "With all due respect. You must think something of your present circumstances."
"Quiet up now." The guard to his left, standing in the corner, muttered.
He rather hoped she didn't hear, so that he might go back to standing guard in silence, he and the two others, equally masked and unknown to him. But that was the way of the conspiracy, an alliance of strangers who knew nothing but their shared motive.
"Eh?" The other in the opposite corner shrugged. "Humor him."
Without batting an eye, barely moving her lips, the Princess replied. "Not particularly. It seems like everything's been said and done by now, one way or the other."
It was the indifference, the thoughtlessness that surprised him most. Felix had known that Royals, proper Royals, were taught to think little for their selves and only for the Kingdom, but this detachment had come entirely unexpected.
"With all due respect, your highness, don't you see what has happened tonight? Don't you feel betrayed by the Fae?" Her own adviser had turned against her, had nearly done in Prince Wales and enabled the diversion that had lead to her capture. "By the Leader of the Salamanders?"
The Princess' eyes widened like saucers, and then a slow shake of the head. "That… was not Lord Mortimer."
Snorts of disbelief from the men to either side.
A ridiculous notion. Who else could it be? The Gala had been arranged by the Crown itself, the Royal Guard had been providing security, checking for any form of illusion, any disguise that might hide an infiltrator. If that had not been the Salamander Lord, then it was a disguise so perfect as to be beyond any but the most powerful magics. And how would said magic be used on a being who was guarded as heavily as any Prince or Duke?
No, the measures to take such a man by surprise would be too great to bear considering. Simpler was that it was as their Leaders had told them. Mortimer was no fool, he had seen that the winds of war would not favor Tristain and that the coming struggle would decimate the small Faerie population. He had accepted Reconquista's most generous offer, made after seeing the effects of his plan executed at Newcastle and York. The Salamanders would be allowed to retain their holding in Tristain and suffer no aggression from Reconquista in return for their allegiance to the cause.
This news had only been disseminated to them tonight, just as they began to take action. It explained so much of what had happened in the past weeks. The assassinations conducted by that Spriggan, an agent of Lord Mortimer despite his public claims to the contrary, and the acquisition of the Fae Stealth Cloaks and paralysis agents that had been instrumental in the kidnapping of the Princess and Lady Sakuya.
It also told the story that they had all already suspected, that the Fae were not nearly so unified as they appeared on the surface.
"I'm afraid that would be rather unlikely, your highness." Felix offered softly, explaining all that they had been told. He knew it would be difficult to receive. A member of the fairer sex may refuse it outright.
"Oh?" Princess Henrietta's eyes glinted in the lantern light. "I know Lord Mortimer, and I know his people, he would never betray us like you describe. Do you really believe he would only think of the Salamanders and not the other Faeries? You know that they're all one people where they come from, don't you? No, that had to be a fake at the party. And when the real one gets here, I hope you have your apologies in order."
"Quite the thing to say at a time like this, your Highness." Behind his mask, Felix smiled sadly. Under other circumstances, she would have made a splendid Queen. "You are brave, certainly. Is there a reason you stick to your convictions, your Highness, or is it simple blind faith?"
A small tilt of the head, and then a twitch of lips. "I suppose it's a bit of both, darling. Rather, I would like to know why you believe everything that you're told by men who wear masks? Do you even know the names of these two?" She asked, gesturing to the pair of guards flanking the door. "How much information are you even trusted to know?"
Felix's frown deepened. He didn't like where this was going. Hadn't expected such a turnabout so quickly. He'd spent much time making his decision. What came next was his choice, and the consequences were also his alone to bear. He couldn't afford doubt in these final hours.
The faint sounds of shouting drew his attention, echoing from the small window that looked out from the interrogation room onto the Prison's main shaft. Something had drawn the attention of the sentries on watch, something that had them most disturbed.
"What the devil?" Felix whispered.
"Oy, what is it?" One of the other guards asked, trying to shoulder him aside to see through the tiny portal.
It was up on the guard level, something was wrong. He squinted and in the dimness his eyes were drawn to a dull glow spreading across the surface of the great iron gates of the Prison. He stopped squinting, his eyes growing wide as he realized that the glowing was becoming more intense, brightening from a dull red to cherry, and then an orange-yellow.
A fire mage? Someone was burning through! Impossible, a square would be needed to get flames that hot outside of a furnace, and to heat that quantity of iron so quickly. Horror as he realized what this had to mean. The worst was coming to fruition. They'd been discovered!
No! There was no time to panic. They had contingencies for this. For being found by the patrols looking for the Princess. Or perhaps some of their sentries had been captured and interrogated and swiftly broken. Well, that was why knowledge was so tightly controlled lest they reveal too much about the conspiracy's real strength.
Alarms were rung, shouts were called down to the lower floors, the guards nearest the gates drawing wands and readying for whatever was about to come. There were a half dozen standing ready on the top level, and twice that many hurrying up from the lower floors at the sound of the alarm. Surrounding the gate in a loose half circle, wands ready, barriers already erected in advance for shelter. The fire and wind mages were at the forefront, more Earth Mages taking shelter further back, ready to use their magic to sway the battle here in their domain. There couldn't possibly be anything on the other side of that gate that they couldn't handle. The terrain favored them, their enemies all coming through one chokepoint.
How wrong he was to think that.
The glow grew brighter, and brighter still, the gate groaning on its hinges as it swelled inwards and began to sag. And then… it did not melt downwards in the way he had expected. Instead, it ruptured catastrophically.
Felix gasped, cringing away as shouts turned to screams and were suddenly silenced. A point of pure white light spread at the center of the orange glow of the metal, iron turning from orange, to brilliant yellow, and then erupting in a white geyser of liquid metal. The light at the core of the inferno was so bright that Felix had to shield his dark-adjusted eyes, feeling the heat prickling the hairs of his face. The ground trembled, the air roared like a banshee, and nothing in the molten wave's path even slowed it down.
A pair of guards taking shelter behind the barricade directly in front of the gate simply ceased to exist, the liquefied metal striking like water, but so very much heavier that it simply tore away the earthen barricade like a clump of dry earth. Flesh ignited and then was burned to char in an instant before being washed out over the lip of the shaft with all the rest of the debris, crashing into the far wall in an explosion of sparks and fire, cascading down into the water below where it erupted into steam with a high pitched shrieking -hiss-.
Before he could hear again properly, before he could even see again, blinking the spots from his eyes. Felix was shaken, it was the other masked man, barking orders at him as more shouts and screams echoed out in the shaft.
"Attack! We're under attack!"
"Man the gates! To your positions!"
More alarm bells, lasting for only a moment, and then cut devastatingly short. They didn't have the men to waste on alarms. They'd didn't need them anyways. The sounds of battle would already have alerted everyone.
"You, hey! Are you listening?!"
He barely heard it, eyes wandering to the ruin visible through his thin slice of outside. Like a peephole into a charnel house. That iron gate fit to turn aside a siege battery and sneer at a cannon broadside simply wasn't there anymore. A few pieces still hung from their hinges, glowing bright cherry red, but for the most part, where the gate had been, now there was only a hole, and beyond it, spilled nightmares.
He saw them, saw them move in the space between eye blinks, dark cowled figures in plague masks, vanishing and reappearing in puffs of black smoke. The only sign of motion, their left hands filled with a fistful of swirling runes, gesturing in the direction of their travel, and then making a fist as if dragging the world towards them.
Spells were hurled in their direction, only for them to vanish and appear again, behind their attackers, spinning around and taking the conspirators from behind. More dropped down from above, landing on the reinforcements emerging from a side gallery, strangling the life from the mages caught utterly unawares as still other crawled up from the watery depths below.
And then there were the others, horrifying in their own way. Where the dark apparitions could not be hit, these others could not be stopped. Spell fire filled the gap where the gate had stood, a hail of magic projectiles so dense that flesh would have been pulverized, shredded, burned to dust and scattered to the winds in a heartbeat, only for that same storm of elemental fury to be thrown back all at once, for only an instant, but still enough for the others to arrive.
Glinting armor bearing the Crest of Tristain, the Mage Knights of the Royal Guard led the charge, sword-wands at the ready to cast or hack at need, and doing both within moments of entering the fray.
Behind them were still more shapes, wearing heavy, dull red armor that turned aside spells like rain water as they moved to support one flank. A mage officer, a member of the Cavalry who had joined their cause, roared as he took a magic enhanced swing at the leader of the red warriors. Their blades never touched, the heavy two handed sword in the red Fae's hands passing through the sword-wand like mist, allowing the weapon to deflect off of heavy armor as the impossible blade reasserted its solid form, taking the mage's arm off at the shoulder.
Swifter forms overtook the vanguard, jumping down from on high to the lower levels, glinting metal claws digging into the walls to slow their fall. They were led by a slight figure, child-like, adorned from head to toe in golden armor perfectly fitted to a small, lithe form. Green robed Fae Mages and Mage Knights chanted spells that erupted into discharges of wind.
And then, at the tip of the spear like formation, outpacing even the wind-accelerated Mage Knights, three beings led the charge. Two of black, one of white, piercing the guard's ranks and slaughtering everything in their path. They did not blink like the apparitions, but simply moved so impossibly swiftly that the distinction was academic.
The one of white, wings raked back, silvered sword thrusting in a barrage of strikes that overwhelmed the defenses of one of the guards. A wind mage took aim at the vaguely feminine shape only to be fallen upon by a black waif, wielding twin swords as though they were extensions of her own arms, slashing again and again, battering through wind shields and then shattering the sword-wand in hand before drawing vibrant red blood.
On the opposite flank, the second black clad figure had been joined by a quartet of doppelgangers storming through the defenders who had made it up from the lower galleries, driving them back even as one of their numbers was torn asunder by a blade of wind, dissolving into a cloud of dark smoke.
When one mage leveled his wand on the impossible creatures, he froze stiff and fell, a spray of blood spurting from his temple as a swift, black tipped arrow burst entirely through and sank its way into the stone of the far wall.
This was impossible! They had been handpicked. They had military officers among their numbers, and trained Albionian special forces! To be overwhelmed by the might of the Capital's forces was to be expected. But they had always been meant to hold on for a time, long enough to… to…
The masked man shaking Felix, cuffed him across the cheek to get his attention. "Listen damn it! We need to take the Princess and…"
The grip on his collar went loose, hands falling to his side, the other mage fell to his knees and then to the floor as the Princess stood behind his body, the most malevolent expression on her face. And suddenly, sickeningly, Felix saw the other fallen mage in the corner and realized the meaning of the small cloud of spinning runes in the Princess' hand.
"You're…"
"Not the Princess?" The false Henrietta grinned evilly. "I knew that already, darling. I'll give the water mages my regards for shaping this form for me. Now…" A hand clamped down like a vice on his shoulder, impossibly strong for someone so small and frail. The amusement vanished from her eyes. "I do believe I heard someone mention the Lady of the Sylphs?"