Confessional 18
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Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Nineteen
Confessional
Chapter Eighteen
The problem was that Glast Heim was huge, and Sralani didn't know where her brother would be. It was true that Kelly knew his way around, but that only helped so much.
They ran into a squad performing a routine clearing mission in the labyrinth staircase, the CO of which was a bold black-haired woman who had opted never to train past the rank of swordsman; her name was Amaryn, first lieutenant, and Kelly knew her from back when she had been only a private. She told him that the only other squad she knew of that was there at the moment was on recon in the chivalry, but that since she'd left before Tenyo's unit had, she could be worng and wouldn't know where he was. She offered to escort them to the chivalry, but Kelly declined. He and Sralani headed there on their own.
~
When the doors closed behind them, Chan pulled Ulrike around to face him, no longer twisting her arm but keeping a very strong grip on her frail wrist. She stared wide-eyed at him, waiting for what he would do or say.
"Listen very carefully," he told her, his voice surprisingly gentle, compared to its normal gruffness. "You are my EPW. Do you know what that means?" She shook her head. "Enemy Prisoner of War. It means I own your ass right now. Got that?" She nodded. "I can't hold you and fight at the same time, but be assured that if you try to fucking run, I'll hunt your fucking ass down and you will regret putting me through the trouble. Got it?" She gulped and nodded again. "If you stay with me and do the right thing, I'll keep you safe. It's my responsibility as your captor to make sure you're not hurt. Run away from me and you lose that protection." His gaze was very serious, as he looked warningly into her cloudy blue eyes. "And Glast Heim is not a safe place for a priest to be all alone."
"I understand," she said softly, turning her eyes away from that imposing dark-eyed gaze. As much as she did not want to be anybody's prisoner of war, she also knew Chan to be honourable and a man of his word. She trusted him to protect her as he'd said; she would save her escape for when they got out of this horrible fallen city.
He released her, but did not turn his back to her. "Every weapon you've got on you. Drop 'em."
She stared at him for a moment, thinking whether she should, but he added, "If you won't give 'em up voluntarily, I will search you. And I guaran-goddamn-tee you won't fuckin' like it."
The priestess uniform did not offer a great number of places to hide things, but she nonetheless managed to produce three knives and her Bible. The knives they left there on the ground, and the book, which she needed both to cast her more powerful spells and to defend herself, he let her keep. Mostly because holy magic didn't do a great deal of damage to him, being a Crusader, and she did need at least something to fend things off, just in case.
He made her travel in front, so he could keep an eye on her. She did not once leap to escape. "It is rare," she said as they walked, "To find men with morals these days."
"No kidding."
She silenced herself at the gruff reply, knowing it was directed toward her and her partner in crime.
They traveled through the castle in silence and though they would be considered enemies, she supported him in the conflicts they faced. It surprised him the first time she blessed him against a wraith, but he said nothing because he knew she did it out of respect for him. That was the type of soldier he had always tried to be. Respectable. Not like whatever tangent of soldiering Fuuji had digressed into.
Castle Glast Heim was amazingly devoid of monster activity; their battles were scarce, and never against more than one thing at a time. It was very suspicious.
Chan asked her, rather suddenly, as he faced her after kicking the body of the monster he'd just killed to ensure it was dead, "How's your friend so fucking buddy-buddy with Baphomet?"
The question caught her by surprise and it took her a moment to answer. "Bards are powerful through their music," she said, quoting what Nicholai had always told her. "The hymn book he took from the church, he used to charm the demon."
"Music soothes the savage beast, huh?"
"Yes."
"That's pretty fucked up."
She gave no reply.
As they rounded a corner, Chan was nearly run over by a fleeing figure. He was twice as large as the offender, so he only stumbled back a step, while Nicholai was stopped dead in his tracks, falling from the force of the equal and opposite reaction.
"Nicholai!" Ulrike exclaimed as Chan recovered from the surprise attack.
The bard pushed himself back to his feet, using as a support an enourmous black sword. Both his lute and bow were strapped to his back to free his hands for the sword, which stood to his chest when both stood to their respective full heights.
The sword was an angular black affair, with a hilt shaped into wings and ragged serrations along the length of the blade. It shone, even in the low light, with a sort of malicious promise.
"Herr Chan," said Nicholai, sounding surprised. He backed away from the crusader a step or so, both hands on the sword's hilt though he did not truly know how to weild it. God-sword or not, Chan's skill would overpower any of his attempts.
"Bard," he replied. "Sell your soul for that one?"
"The King Baphomet is rewarding my music with this gift, Herr Chan," said Nicholai, defensively.
"Then he's not the one you're running from like a fucking sissy, right?" He folded his arms over his armour plated chest, staring the spy down.
He glared back, but not for long before he looked to Ulrike. He spoke in Schwartzwaldern, and she responded in the same. "What happened?"
"He took me captive."
"How--"
Chan interrupted before their conversation lasted too long. "None of that shit." They could be plotting to kill him for all he knew. "You will speak Midgardian around me. If I hear one fucking word of Schwartzwaldern, I'm breakin' your fuckin' arm. Only warning."
"You do not intimidate me, Herr Chan," Nicholai challenged.
Cjhan let his arms fall to his sides as he drew himself up to his full height, almost a foot and a half over Nicholai's meagre five feet. "Bullshit," he said, moving forward to tower over the spy, who backed away a step.
"Something far more frightening is chasing me now, Herr Crusader," he said, looking up at him from beneath his golden bangs. "So if you please to stand aside--"
"I have an idea. How about we all get the fuck out of here and I take you both back to King Tristam for interrogation. I like that idea."
Ulrike frowned, nervously thumbing the corner of her bible, waiting for Nicholai's reply.
He seemed suddenly to inherit a sort of bravado, and tried to act as if he were not intimidated, leaning on the hilt of the large sword as he spoke. "Certainly we could escape together Herr Chan, but you will only be taking me in if you are capturing me once we are free."
Chan gave a sort of half-smile that seemed to imply that he knew more about the situation than Nicholai did. It did as intended and made the bard think better of his original idea. "Fair enough."
Nicholai hesitated briefly, watching Chan warily before he said, "This way. Hurry." He ran past them, and Ulrike, knowing she was to walk before Chan so he could watch her, ran after him, and Chan followed.
~
Fuuji's footsteps echoed eerily through the empty halls, emphasizing how alone he really was now. Not even the undead were there to keep him company. He didn't bother to scan his surroundings or prepare himself lest he meet a surprise fate like Matthews had. He didn't care. So what if he died? It was just another grave in a sea of graves. He would just be forgotten, like all the other victims of Glast Heim. It didn't matter in the end, nobody would care. Sure, they'd hold a ceremony, a final farewell, maybe come by and lay flowers over your body occasionally, but you were gone. They would forget you.
That was why, he'd realized, Lian's perfection was needed. Especially for a soldier in Glast Heim. How could people stand to see all the things they did, lose all the people they lost, if they could not block out that pain that emotion brought? That was why Lian had been such a good soldier, because she did not have that weakness that normal people had. She did not care for people. She was not affected by deaths, as Chan and Matthews had been. And now Tenyo too had reached that state of perfection.
He stopped suddenly, realizing where he waas. At his feet lay the pool of blood in which Clayborne had died. Or rather, where Nicholai had pretended to die in his guise as the cowgirl huntress. The red puddle at his feet then, was fake. Some thick crimson mixture that immitated the real thing quite well.
He found himself wondering about NIcholai. As a spy he had to have some degree of perfection himself. It took a certain lack of compassion to blend in, make friends, seem as if you belonged, and then turn suddenly and stab those whose trust you'd worked to earn in the back. Perhaps that was a different sort of perfection. More sinister than just a lack of emotion. Something more like a reversal of feelings, the opposite of what was expected by the emotions. It intrugued him, just a bit, to think that the strange foreign man might be perfect in some small, sinister way. Perhaps they would meet again and he could ask.
~
When Nicholai stopped suddenly, they knew something was wrong. Not that they were lost, they knew that much already. He faced them suddenly, saying, "I am having a very bad feeling, ja." He held the God-sword he carried, in all its black glory, out to Chan. "Take this, Herr Chan," he said, and when the crusader had sheathed his own sword to take the legendary one, Nicholai pulled out a map of Glast Heim and unfolded it to examine it for some escape route. There was writing on the map, Tenyo's tidy handwriting, marking notes he needed for when he used it. He glanced up at their surroundings and then back at the map, arched an eyebrow at the paper questioningly, and then folded it back up, putting it away.
"And?" said Ulrike.
He gave a perfect charming smile and a shrug. "Lost, ja?"
Chan sighed. "I fucking hate Glast Heim," he muttered.
Nicholai laughed, but it was a very nervous sound rather than his normal musical laughter. "I am so sorry freunde," he said with an apologetic smile. "We are fucked."
"It can't be far," Chan said, glancing at the surroundings. "We'll just--"
"Herr Chan, I must warn you," Nicholai interrupted. "That sword is stolen and I am running for a reason. Baphomet is not being very happy right now."
Chan frowned. "Fuck," he muttered.
"Exactly."
Before the other two had a chance to react with anything other than sudden surprise, Nicholai had whipped his bow from his back and they heard the twang of the string and the thock sound it made when it hit its target almost before they realized he had fired an arrow. There was a thud and clatter from behind them and they turned to see what he'd shot down.
Baphomet in miniature lay behind them, a black-fletched arrow sticking out from between its white, wide-open eyes. Its back leg, shod with cloven hooves, twitched at its sudden death. The knee-high goat demon even had a replica of the king's huge scythe, which lay on the ground before it, that clattering sound when it had fallen.
Nicholai, wide-eyed, laughed again, disbelieving this time, and said something very colourful in his native tongue. "Go!" he said as he turned to run, pulling out another arrow in preparation for another sneak attack.
Baphomet was sending his children after the sword. His bloodthirsty pack of baby demons that would rip them to shreds and gnaw the flesh from their bones while they still lived if they caught them. It was best, they all decided, to forget their differences for now and concentrate on running the hell away.
An unwary Rideword saw them and decided to attack, opening the pages of its fanged mouth as it floated over to them. Nicholai stopped barely long enough to pull back his bowstring before he was running again. He passed the book-like monster almost before the arrow snapped its two covers closed and floated to the ground, trying to work its book-binding jaw open over the obstruction. It was soon trampled under dozens of cloven feet as the mob of junior Baphomets chased their prey.
Another unfortunate monster moved to attack them, an Injustice with its katars, nails driven painfully through its gangly grey limbs. This time it was Chan who ran it through with the God-sword, slowing down just enough to ensure that his blow had landed. The monster fell to its knees and was quickly overrun by its master's children. They distracted themselves by devouring it as it gave strangled unearthly cries of pain that haunted the hearts of the three fugitives.
They hit a crossroads where another hallway intersected the one they followed and they instinctively ran in seperate directions. Ulrike thought better of herself, knowing she could not effectively defend herself against most things in the castle, and slid to a stop, reversing her direction to follow Nicholai instead.
The path was a dead end, with a balcony that opened to a second floor hallway above it. A black iron ladder was propped against it, making a path to the floor above. Nicholai shouldered his bow to climb the ladder, and only when he reached the top did he realize Ulrike was behind him.
"Nicholai!" she called, and he looked back at her.
The hoarde had split up, half running after the crusader and half after the spies, and the score of demons on their heels was close behind Ulrike. He reached down to help her, but before she was more than a few rungs up the ladder, the little beasts were on her violet skirts, pulling her down. She reached up to Nicholai, her eyes pleading, trying to keep from screaming as they clawed her feet, climbed her legs, chewed bloody holes in her black stockings. There was a moment where their cloudy blue eyes locked, and she whispered, in their tongue, "Please."
And then they were high enough to grab her crimson braid, yank her head down, pull her arm away from Nicholai; they covered her legs, the entire ladder and ground below was slicked with blood. Before he even realized what he was doing, Nicholai put his hands on the bars of the ladder and pushed.
The look of betrayal on Ulrike's face as she fell backward with the iron ladder was like a knife in his heart, and he reached out to grab it and pull it back, but it was too late. He closed his eyes so he did not have to see her hit the ground and be swarmed completely and helplessly by the demons. But she screamed. Piercing, animal, bone-chilling, it carried through the air and froze the very depths of his soul. So he scrambled to his feet and ran, so he would not have to hear it.
Somewhere in the back of her bloodied mind she thought, before the world was flooded in red and went black, "I should have followed the crusader."
~
Chan found himself, somehow, in that underground courtyard once more. The entrance was a different one, but he saw the Valkyrie statue in the distance and knew exactly where he was. He also knew the Demon King's children were after him still, so he ran to find the exit that led into the chivalry.
He was halfway down the steps to the valley when he realized they were no longer following him. He stopped, looked back to the grand archway he'd come through.
There were ten of them, not one reaching a height above his knees. They milled about, never crossing the threshold onto the stairs. It was as if they were children debating whether to venture over a fence into a forbidden yard for a lost ball. They seemed to decide finally that this ball was not worth the trouble they would be in, and they turned away, leaving him alone.
At the bottom of the stairs, he found the mechanism that controlled the archway's thick stone doors and he gave it a sound kick, tripping the catch and making the doors slam shut. Just in case they came back with permission. He jamnmed it with a rock so it could not be opened from the other side.
He knew the way out from the chivalry, so he went to search for that exit.
It shocked him very much to find Fuuji sitting at the edge of the fountain that was along the way to the Valkyrie statue. The water in the stone basin was grey and stagnant, and the severed head of the figure in its center stared up blindly from those murky depths.
The priest looked up at him, from his seated position on the edge of the basin. "Chan," he said, the slightest intonation of astonishment in his cold voice.
"Fuuji," he replied, making no effort to hide his own surprise.
The priest leaned back, glancing off toward the angelic figure in the distance. "I assume the way you came in is impassable now."
"Yeah, pretty much."
"There are four," he said. "One for each cardinal direction. And then the secret ones like the chivalry."
"How many secret ones?"
He shrugged, folding his arms over his legs, slouching forward as he did so. "The four main ones are all impassable. Locked or broken. I checked them."
"The chivalry stairs?"
He shruged again. "Didn't look."
Chan sighed. Deciding he needed a break, he sat beside Fuuji on the fountain's edge, careful not to let his blue cape trail in the dingy water, and lit up a cigarette. The priest was silent.
It was very suddenly that the familiar oddly accented voice spoke up beside them, saying, "Today is not the best of days."
Chan's nerves were shot. He jumped. After a deep breath of the smoke to settle himself, he looked over to see Nicholai sitting at the edge of the fountain as well, a few feet from them, his legs crossed under his short huntress skirt and his instrument in his lap. "How the hell?" Chan asked.
"How very rude," Nicholai muttered, placing the fingers of his right hand on the strings at the neck of the lute. He strummed them softly with his left and the instrument whispered a low C to the open air. "A door with a stair that led to here. It is barred. I do not suggest we change that."
"Where's your buddy?" Chan asked, looking at him as if he already knew the answer.
The guilt that washed over the bard's face as he stared down at the instrument in his lap proved him right. His right hand gripped the neck of it tightly, pressing the strings flat against the fretboard as he said, "They got her, ja."
Chan knew what had hapened. That look was no ordinary survivor's guilt. The bard had done something himself that had caused his lover's death. In the end it really hadn't mattered after all, had it?
Fuuji gave Chan a look that indicated that he thought the same thing. Chan ignored it, putting out his cigarette as he stood. "I'm finding the damn staircase."
Fuuji stood as well and as he began to walk, hands in his pockets, said, "It's this way."
"Is it being the only way?" Nicholai asked, smoothing his golden bangs out of his face as he looked up.
"The only one I know."
He stood, sliding the lute's strap over his head so the instrument rested against his back with his bow. Together the three of them moved to the stairway leading up to the chivalry. As they reached it, Fuuji stopped, motioning to it broadly. They stopped as well, staring up the stairs, unable to see the top in the darkness they disappeared into. Chan shoved Nicholai forward. "Go, bard, the hell are you waiting for?"
"Me?" he exclaimed, incredulous.
"Did I stutter?"
"Why must I?" he questioned, staring up at Chan, indignant.
"You're the expendable one," he replied, as if the answer should be obvious.
"You're the expendable one," Nicholai muttered mockingly under his breath, in so perfect an immitation of Chan's voice that it surprised the crusader; he stepped forward to climb the stairs.
~
Somewhere deep within the castle, as Baphomet tended to a fresh gash over his left eye, he listened to the report from his children and he plotted.
He did not care much for the sword; swords, however magic, could be replaced. But he would have his minstrel. The woman belonged to Glast Heim, and to the Demon King Baphomet.
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Nineteen
Confessional
Chapter Eighteen
The problem was that Glast Heim was huge, and Sralani didn't know where her brother would be. It was true that Kelly knew his way around, but that only helped so much.
They ran into a squad performing a routine clearing mission in the labyrinth staircase, the CO of which was a bold black-haired woman who had opted never to train past the rank of swordsman; her name was Amaryn, first lieutenant, and Kelly knew her from back when she had been only a private. She told him that the only other squad she knew of that was there at the moment was on recon in the chivalry, but that since she'd left before Tenyo's unit had, she could be worng and wouldn't know where he was. She offered to escort them to the chivalry, but Kelly declined. He and Sralani headed there on their own.
~
When the doors closed behind them, Chan pulled Ulrike around to face him, no longer twisting her arm but keeping a very strong grip on her frail wrist. She stared wide-eyed at him, waiting for what he would do or say.
"Listen very carefully," he told her, his voice surprisingly gentle, compared to its normal gruffness. "You are my EPW. Do you know what that means?" She shook her head. "Enemy Prisoner of War. It means I own your ass right now. Got that?" She nodded. "I can't hold you and fight at the same time, but be assured that if you try to fucking run, I'll hunt your fucking ass down and you will regret putting me through the trouble. Got it?" She gulped and nodded again. "If you stay with me and do the right thing, I'll keep you safe. It's my responsibility as your captor to make sure you're not hurt. Run away from me and you lose that protection." His gaze was very serious, as he looked warningly into her cloudy blue eyes. "And Glast Heim is not a safe place for a priest to be all alone."
"I understand," she said softly, turning her eyes away from that imposing dark-eyed gaze. As much as she did not want to be anybody's prisoner of war, she also knew Chan to be honourable and a man of his word. She trusted him to protect her as he'd said; she would save her escape for when they got out of this horrible fallen city.
He released her, but did not turn his back to her. "Every weapon you've got on you. Drop 'em."
She stared at him for a moment, thinking whether she should, but he added, "If you won't give 'em up voluntarily, I will search you. And I guaran-goddamn-tee you won't fuckin' like it."
The priestess uniform did not offer a great number of places to hide things, but she nonetheless managed to produce three knives and her Bible. The knives they left there on the ground, and the book, which she needed both to cast her more powerful spells and to defend herself, he let her keep. Mostly because holy magic didn't do a great deal of damage to him, being a Crusader, and she did need at least something to fend things off, just in case.
He made her travel in front, so he could keep an eye on her. She did not once leap to escape. "It is rare," she said as they walked, "To find men with morals these days."
"No kidding."
She silenced herself at the gruff reply, knowing it was directed toward her and her partner in crime.
They traveled through the castle in silence and though they would be considered enemies, she supported him in the conflicts they faced. It surprised him the first time she blessed him against a wraith, but he said nothing because he knew she did it out of respect for him. That was the type of soldier he had always tried to be. Respectable. Not like whatever tangent of soldiering Fuuji had digressed into.
Castle Glast Heim was amazingly devoid of monster activity; their battles were scarce, and never against more than one thing at a time. It was very suspicious.
Chan asked her, rather suddenly, as he faced her after kicking the body of the monster he'd just killed to ensure it was dead, "How's your friend so fucking buddy-buddy with Baphomet?"
The question caught her by surprise and it took her a moment to answer. "Bards are powerful through their music," she said, quoting what Nicholai had always told her. "The hymn book he took from the church, he used to charm the demon."
"Music soothes the savage beast, huh?"
"Yes."
"That's pretty fucked up."
She gave no reply.
As they rounded a corner, Chan was nearly run over by a fleeing figure. He was twice as large as the offender, so he only stumbled back a step, while Nicholai was stopped dead in his tracks, falling from the force of the equal and opposite reaction.
"Nicholai!" Ulrike exclaimed as Chan recovered from the surprise attack.
The bard pushed himself back to his feet, using as a support an enourmous black sword. Both his lute and bow were strapped to his back to free his hands for the sword, which stood to his chest when both stood to their respective full heights.
The sword was an angular black affair, with a hilt shaped into wings and ragged serrations along the length of the blade. It shone, even in the low light, with a sort of malicious promise.
"Herr Chan," said Nicholai, sounding surprised. He backed away from the crusader a step or so, both hands on the sword's hilt though he did not truly know how to weild it. God-sword or not, Chan's skill would overpower any of his attempts.
"Bard," he replied. "Sell your soul for that one?"
"The King Baphomet is rewarding my music with this gift, Herr Chan," said Nicholai, defensively.
"Then he's not the one you're running from like a fucking sissy, right?" He folded his arms over his armour plated chest, staring the spy down.
He glared back, but not for long before he looked to Ulrike. He spoke in Schwartzwaldern, and she responded in the same. "What happened?"
"He took me captive."
"How--"
Chan interrupted before their conversation lasted too long. "None of that shit." They could be plotting to kill him for all he knew. "You will speak Midgardian around me. If I hear one fucking word of Schwartzwaldern, I'm breakin' your fuckin' arm. Only warning."
"You do not intimidate me, Herr Chan," Nicholai challenged.
Cjhan let his arms fall to his sides as he drew himself up to his full height, almost a foot and a half over Nicholai's meagre five feet. "Bullshit," he said, moving forward to tower over the spy, who backed away a step.
"Something far more frightening is chasing me now, Herr Crusader," he said, looking up at him from beneath his golden bangs. "So if you please to stand aside--"
"I have an idea. How about we all get the fuck out of here and I take you both back to King Tristam for interrogation. I like that idea."
Ulrike frowned, nervously thumbing the corner of her bible, waiting for Nicholai's reply.
He seemed suddenly to inherit a sort of bravado, and tried to act as if he were not intimidated, leaning on the hilt of the large sword as he spoke. "Certainly we could escape together Herr Chan, but you will only be taking me in if you are capturing me once we are free."
Chan gave a sort of half-smile that seemed to imply that he knew more about the situation than Nicholai did. It did as intended and made the bard think better of his original idea. "Fair enough."
Nicholai hesitated briefly, watching Chan warily before he said, "This way. Hurry." He ran past them, and Ulrike, knowing she was to walk before Chan so he could watch her, ran after him, and Chan followed.
~
Fuuji's footsteps echoed eerily through the empty halls, emphasizing how alone he really was now. Not even the undead were there to keep him company. He didn't bother to scan his surroundings or prepare himself lest he meet a surprise fate like Matthews had. He didn't care. So what if he died? It was just another grave in a sea of graves. He would just be forgotten, like all the other victims of Glast Heim. It didn't matter in the end, nobody would care. Sure, they'd hold a ceremony, a final farewell, maybe come by and lay flowers over your body occasionally, but you were gone. They would forget you.
That was why, he'd realized, Lian's perfection was needed. Especially for a soldier in Glast Heim. How could people stand to see all the things they did, lose all the people they lost, if they could not block out that pain that emotion brought? That was why Lian had been such a good soldier, because she did not have that weakness that normal people had. She did not care for people. She was not affected by deaths, as Chan and Matthews had been. And now Tenyo too had reached that state of perfection.
He stopped suddenly, realizing where he waas. At his feet lay the pool of blood in which Clayborne had died. Or rather, where Nicholai had pretended to die in his guise as the cowgirl huntress. The red puddle at his feet then, was fake. Some thick crimson mixture that immitated the real thing quite well.
He found himself wondering about NIcholai. As a spy he had to have some degree of perfection himself. It took a certain lack of compassion to blend in, make friends, seem as if you belonged, and then turn suddenly and stab those whose trust you'd worked to earn in the back. Perhaps that was a different sort of perfection. More sinister than just a lack of emotion. Something more like a reversal of feelings, the opposite of what was expected by the emotions. It intrugued him, just a bit, to think that the strange foreign man might be perfect in some small, sinister way. Perhaps they would meet again and he could ask.
~
When Nicholai stopped suddenly, they knew something was wrong. Not that they were lost, they knew that much already. He faced them suddenly, saying, "I am having a very bad feeling, ja." He held the God-sword he carried, in all its black glory, out to Chan. "Take this, Herr Chan," he said, and when the crusader had sheathed his own sword to take the legendary one, Nicholai pulled out a map of Glast Heim and unfolded it to examine it for some escape route. There was writing on the map, Tenyo's tidy handwriting, marking notes he needed for when he used it. He glanced up at their surroundings and then back at the map, arched an eyebrow at the paper questioningly, and then folded it back up, putting it away.
"And?" said Ulrike.
He gave a perfect charming smile and a shrug. "Lost, ja?"
Chan sighed. "I fucking hate Glast Heim," he muttered.
Nicholai laughed, but it was a very nervous sound rather than his normal musical laughter. "I am so sorry freunde," he said with an apologetic smile. "We are fucked."
"It can't be far," Chan said, glancing at the surroundings. "We'll just--"
"Herr Chan, I must warn you," Nicholai interrupted. "That sword is stolen and I am running for a reason. Baphomet is not being very happy right now."
Chan frowned. "Fuck," he muttered.
"Exactly."
Before the other two had a chance to react with anything other than sudden surprise, Nicholai had whipped his bow from his back and they heard the twang of the string and the thock sound it made when it hit its target almost before they realized he had fired an arrow. There was a thud and clatter from behind them and they turned to see what he'd shot down.
Baphomet in miniature lay behind them, a black-fletched arrow sticking out from between its white, wide-open eyes. Its back leg, shod with cloven hooves, twitched at its sudden death. The knee-high goat demon even had a replica of the king's huge scythe, which lay on the ground before it, that clattering sound when it had fallen.
Nicholai, wide-eyed, laughed again, disbelieving this time, and said something very colourful in his native tongue. "Go!" he said as he turned to run, pulling out another arrow in preparation for another sneak attack.
Baphomet was sending his children after the sword. His bloodthirsty pack of baby demons that would rip them to shreds and gnaw the flesh from their bones while they still lived if they caught them. It was best, they all decided, to forget their differences for now and concentrate on running the hell away.
An unwary Rideword saw them and decided to attack, opening the pages of its fanged mouth as it floated over to them. Nicholai stopped barely long enough to pull back his bowstring before he was running again. He passed the book-like monster almost before the arrow snapped its two covers closed and floated to the ground, trying to work its book-binding jaw open over the obstruction. It was soon trampled under dozens of cloven feet as the mob of junior Baphomets chased their prey.
Another unfortunate monster moved to attack them, an Injustice with its katars, nails driven painfully through its gangly grey limbs. This time it was Chan who ran it through with the God-sword, slowing down just enough to ensure that his blow had landed. The monster fell to its knees and was quickly overrun by its master's children. They distracted themselves by devouring it as it gave strangled unearthly cries of pain that haunted the hearts of the three fugitives.
They hit a crossroads where another hallway intersected the one they followed and they instinctively ran in seperate directions. Ulrike thought better of herself, knowing she could not effectively defend herself against most things in the castle, and slid to a stop, reversing her direction to follow Nicholai instead.
The path was a dead end, with a balcony that opened to a second floor hallway above it. A black iron ladder was propped against it, making a path to the floor above. Nicholai shouldered his bow to climb the ladder, and only when he reached the top did he realize Ulrike was behind him.
"Nicholai!" she called, and he looked back at her.
The hoarde had split up, half running after the crusader and half after the spies, and the score of demons on their heels was close behind Ulrike. He reached down to help her, but before she was more than a few rungs up the ladder, the little beasts were on her violet skirts, pulling her down. She reached up to Nicholai, her eyes pleading, trying to keep from screaming as they clawed her feet, climbed her legs, chewed bloody holes in her black stockings. There was a moment where their cloudy blue eyes locked, and she whispered, in their tongue, "Please."
And then they were high enough to grab her crimson braid, yank her head down, pull her arm away from Nicholai; they covered her legs, the entire ladder and ground below was slicked with blood. Before he even realized what he was doing, Nicholai put his hands on the bars of the ladder and pushed.
The look of betrayal on Ulrike's face as she fell backward with the iron ladder was like a knife in his heart, and he reached out to grab it and pull it back, but it was too late. He closed his eyes so he did not have to see her hit the ground and be swarmed completely and helplessly by the demons. But she screamed. Piercing, animal, bone-chilling, it carried through the air and froze the very depths of his soul. So he scrambled to his feet and ran, so he would not have to hear it.
Somewhere in the back of her bloodied mind she thought, before the world was flooded in red and went black, "I should have followed the crusader."
~
Chan found himself, somehow, in that underground courtyard once more. The entrance was a different one, but he saw the Valkyrie statue in the distance and knew exactly where he was. He also knew the Demon King's children were after him still, so he ran to find the exit that led into the chivalry.
He was halfway down the steps to the valley when he realized they were no longer following him. He stopped, looked back to the grand archway he'd come through.
There were ten of them, not one reaching a height above his knees. They milled about, never crossing the threshold onto the stairs. It was as if they were children debating whether to venture over a fence into a forbidden yard for a lost ball. They seemed to decide finally that this ball was not worth the trouble they would be in, and they turned away, leaving him alone.
At the bottom of the stairs, he found the mechanism that controlled the archway's thick stone doors and he gave it a sound kick, tripping the catch and making the doors slam shut. Just in case they came back with permission. He jamnmed it with a rock so it could not be opened from the other side.
He knew the way out from the chivalry, so he went to search for that exit.
It shocked him very much to find Fuuji sitting at the edge of the fountain that was along the way to the Valkyrie statue. The water in the stone basin was grey and stagnant, and the severed head of the figure in its center stared up blindly from those murky depths.
The priest looked up at him, from his seated position on the edge of the basin. "Chan," he said, the slightest intonation of astonishment in his cold voice.
"Fuuji," he replied, making no effort to hide his own surprise.
The priest leaned back, glancing off toward the angelic figure in the distance. "I assume the way you came in is impassable now."
"Yeah, pretty much."
"There are four," he said. "One for each cardinal direction. And then the secret ones like the chivalry."
"How many secret ones?"
He shrugged, folding his arms over his legs, slouching forward as he did so. "The four main ones are all impassable. Locked or broken. I checked them."
"The chivalry stairs?"
He shruged again. "Didn't look."
Chan sighed. Deciding he needed a break, he sat beside Fuuji on the fountain's edge, careful not to let his blue cape trail in the dingy water, and lit up a cigarette. The priest was silent.
It was very suddenly that the familiar oddly accented voice spoke up beside them, saying, "Today is not the best of days."
Chan's nerves were shot. He jumped. After a deep breath of the smoke to settle himself, he looked over to see Nicholai sitting at the edge of the fountain as well, a few feet from them, his legs crossed under his short huntress skirt and his instrument in his lap. "How the hell?" Chan asked.
"How very rude," Nicholai muttered, placing the fingers of his right hand on the strings at the neck of the lute. He strummed them softly with his left and the instrument whispered a low C to the open air. "A door with a stair that led to here. It is barred. I do not suggest we change that."
"Where's your buddy?" Chan asked, looking at him as if he already knew the answer.
The guilt that washed over the bard's face as he stared down at the instrument in his lap proved him right. His right hand gripped the neck of it tightly, pressing the strings flat against the fretboard as he said, "They got her, ja."
Chan knew what had hapened. That look was no ordinary survivor's guilt. The bard had done something himself that had caused his lover's death. In the end it really hadn't mattered after all, had it?
Fuuji gave Chan a look that indicated that he thought the same thing. Chan ignored it, putting out his cigarette as he stood. "I'm finding the damn staircase."
Fuuji stood as well and as he began to walk, hands in his pockets, said, "It's this way."
"Is it being the only way?" Nicholai asked, smoothing his golden bangs out of his face as he looked up.
"The only one I know."
He stood, sliding the lute's strap over his head so the instrument rested against his back with his bow. Together the three of them moved to the stairway leading up to the chivalry. As they reached it, Fuuji stopped, motioning to it broadly. They stopped as well, staring up the stairs, unable to see the top in the darkness they disappeared into. Chan shoved Nicholai forward. "Go, bard, the hell are you waiting for?"
"Me?" he exclaimed, incredulous.
"Did I stutter?"
"Why must I?" he questioned, staring up at Chan, indignant.
"You're the expendable one," he replied, as if the answer should be obvious.
"You're the expendable one," Nicholai muttered mockingly under his breath, in so perfect an immitation of Chan's voice that it surprised the crusader; he stepped forward to climb the stairs.
~
Somewhere deep within the castle, as Baphomet tended to a fresh gash over his left eye, he listened to the report from his children and he plotted.
He did not care much for the sword; swords, however magic, could be replaced. But he would have his minstrel. The woman belonged to Glast Heim, and to the Demon King Baphomet.