Immediately once the whole hawk diving princess begun to manifest ice to slide her way out of sight, Arc sighed out both in relief and a sense of exasperation. Mentally telling himself this is why he had always been against having an apprentice as a mage, and why he never wanted children in the same facet. It was far too much work to try to know when and where one had to step it. While simultaneously knowing that such things meant absolutely nothing because Calia was the force of nature that had no stop button.
At least she wasn’t a splat on the ground floor and now the thundering falls were misting the plaza in such a shroud that the gleam of rainbow had been sufficiently muffled. Making everything nearby overly wet and him retracting even further to avoid another bout of being soaked.
He could feel the tether pulling as was so familiar now with the new distance, but he hadn’t expected the voice of her to pop up into his skull. Warranting a jerk of alarm and a bared of fang simple out of said startle. Looking about for a moment like she was going to manifest like a blackened wraith from the shadows; but ultimately needed a second to fathom her statement. “Yah might wanna explain and be less buoyantly cryptic, Lia.” With his newest placement, Arc settled into that of his chair. “Yah live? Or the falls live, cause yer about to make a new lake up here with the amount of water yah released like a wreckin’ crew.”
It seems he’d startled her right back, for she near jumped out of her own skin to hear his voice so close and when she darted her head around to spot him, he was nowhere in sight.
Interesting. Useful! Potentially a problem.
As Calia drew herself to her feet, warily feeling out this newly discovered talent to see if it were because of faeish gifts or the tether itself, quite a few wary stares were giving her a once over before they wandered off back to their own doings. No one came rushing out of the crushed buildings nor towards them in a panicked fury, which was more than a small relief to Calia as that meant they were likely to be empty and devoid of anything precious inside.
The water will be fine. The city was designed for it. came her equally as unhelpful reply. Already taking a few steps to wander down this most interesting underground city street as if she were a moth following a flame. Filled with willfully curious intent that couldn’t be held in check.
An examining verdant gaze took in all that it could, from the types of wares in the stalls to the very countenance of the people. The sort of things for sale weren’t the usual in terms of fruits and veg, wholesome goods, fabrics and textiles. Whenever she caught the eye of a seller, they had a sparkling gleam to them – assessing her quick as a whip as to whether or not she’d be interested in their goods. The one with a counter full of shiny gems took one look at her and sneered, beckoning instead to a woman shrouded in a dark cloak. The weapons dealer on the other hand had caught on quick to her flickering gaze, even lifting up a particularly nice piece to shine hoping that it would draw her closer to the booth.
What stood out the most… well. Everyone was just a little bit dodgy. On edge. Suspiciously trying not to look suspicious. Minding their own business and everyone else’s all at the same time.
I’ve found a city of thieves, she finally revealed, pausing in the street with a scrunch of her nose when a big spider attached to a cart went walking on by. In fact, big ass fucking spiders seemed to be the beast of burden of choice down here.
You might want to stay up there.
“Designed for it in moderation, not a massive current that comes gushing out of a broken spout.” He retorted having reclaimed his calm once more, though of course still wondering what the hell she meant by it was alive. Knowing Calia, that meant a myriad of things!
Which was apparently going to be so delayed that he was about to start verbally assaulting this tether to make her regret learning how to open it! Because she said she found a city of thieves, which by all accounts, interested him terribly.
Whisking away his frivolous little additions with a gleaming grin that twisted shortly. “Wow.” Deadpan did the comment fall, feeling the bubble of strong irritation that really he knew had no place to exist at all, “I know yer fuckin’ embarrassed to be with that of myself but to think that I’m so shameful that yah don’t even want me around in said city of thieves, wow. Just wow. I see how it is.”
Arc frowned, it was time to pull back. Less he say things that made her think she was the problem rather than knowing he had hit a limit for now. “Then enjoy yerself. I’ll be in my tower waiting yer return, napping and regathering my strength. I’m tired, and cranky, so I need to take a moment to myself.” The door fell from utterly nothing so he could whisk into it, shutting it behind and letting it fade back into obscurity. Declaring where he would be so she wouldn’t think he said piss on it, just declaring where he was going to be and leaving things as that.
Calia tilted her head back to glance up towards the sky from whence she fell, scowling at his entire barrage of words, from start to finish. What had she said now that was so offensive! Of course he would love a city of thieves, but he wasn’t going to like that it was crawling with spiders the size of small donkeys. She would have even told him so if he wasn’t shutting the mental door with a silent slam.
Fine. Fine.. They had spent so much time alone together, it was likely past due for one of them to realize they were liable to combust if it went on any further. A little dark part of her twisting that unspoken fear that it was her own fault for pushing. Been far too casual and got too comfortable in believing that they’d crossed into something good. Or worse yet, maybe she’d said soulmate one too many times when she knew he didn’t want it.
Who said things like that, anyway. Calia, as always, was too much.
In she took a deep breath, steadying that wave of unwanted anxious thoughts. The ones that she knew a little too well now tended to leave her as an open beacon to every asshole in the realm to come seeking her out. She was alright. Archimedes would get bored brooding in his tower and be far too curious to let a city of thieves go unexplored. He could find out on his own about a street full of spiders, then come hide in her pockets grumbling all sorts of curses until she led them elsewhere again.
So Calia wandered on her own, discovering that she fit in quite seamlessly in the underground of degenerates. A woman who was tall and of cold stoic features, garbed in assassin’s black and keen of eye. Here in the dark city streets she wasn’t any different from the smugglers and thieves. The shop peddlers and black market stalls. Enough so that even once or twice in her browsing tentative offers and questions had been made. Was she proficient with a blade? Did she take jobs on commission? Hunt bounties? Her simple reply confessing she was already on a hunt, she did not have time for another and it was always accepted easily without a hint of disbelief. There was always a job if she was looking for one.
For awhile she tossed bones on a corner with a couple of gamblers, winning some, losing some, and listened to the way the city moved. A city full of thieves was obviously going to have an eerie feel about it – too much suspicion and distrust for anyone to truly feel comfortable – yet something beneath it all still felt… off. Calia did not know how to explain it or could even pinpoint where she thought the problem lie. Was it because many here seemed to be in a haze? Surely not, that was explained away easily with the amount of bars, taverns and smoke shops littering the streets.
Could it just be the effect of gloom being so deep underground and far away from the sun? The cave crystals glowed in hues of sorrowful blue and little else. Unaffected by the sounds of city dwellers the way their cousins elsewhere in the mountains did. It could just be that she expected a place like this to be bawdy and full of warm life. Where chaos was a little more common, but as the saying went, there was honor amongst thieves so it would never fall into true anarchy.
Eventually she found her way into one of those taverns, taking up an easy seat at the bar. Ordering up a drink or two for sipping at her leisure. Briefly the desire for company came to mind, setting her to glancing around the place with the single thought of maybe this time. Except the confession she’d given the demon rose up to the surface, weighted, heavy. Forcing her to recognize there was a new hole there. Something deep in her had changed – what? Calia didn’t know. But tumbling around with a stranger wasn’t going to be enough. In fact. now the thought was so incredibly unappealing it sounded like more trouble than it was worth.
So she drank, and drank, and waited ever so patiently.
It wasn’t Archimedes that slid up next to her, though. The man was a scrungly looking bastard, long messy hair and a scruffy face that was almost handsome even with his array of scars. He smiled wide and leaned in when Calia made the mistake of looking his way.
“Dangerous to be walking around here with a face like that,” he announced. “The Mad Mercenary is out killing girls like you.”
“Well, here I am. He’s welcome to try,” was her rejoinder. Cool and disinterested. She and Arc had already discovered in their very brief time in the Imperial Lands that the crazy queen there had some sort of interest in her. The bitch could join the fucking mob at this point, what did it matter.
Her reply sent the man into a chortle, along with a group of his buddies sitting round a table not far away.
“Hear that, Thornwald! Let that demon bastard come on down and try it!” he yelled back at the table, rousing a bunch of whoops and cheering hollars. He turned back to her with a renewed toothy smile. “Boy, if we knew we had the one that Imperial bitch was lookin’ for, we wouldn’t have let that foul-fated faerie bastard get away with her. You got that same face, I ain’t never gonna forget it. Too damn tall though, and surely no princess.”
Calia was doing well to ignore him altogether, not caring much they were having a lark at her expense. Up until a few strange words had her blood running cold. Too different. Too familiar. Her fingers curled around her glass as she set it down gently on the bar top, turning in her seat to give the full brunt of her attention to the man. Tempered to something of mild curiosity and full of disbelief.
“Sound like a load of bullshit to me. You had the Imperial Queen’s prize and just let her get away? And I thought that girl was traveling around with a demon, not some faerie.”
The man spat on the ground, but getting her attention had been what he wanted from the start, so he was more than ready to start boasting. Puffing up while his groupies nearby gave some sounds of encouragement, and few grunted grumbles of malcontent as well.
“That’s what everyone thinks – that the Queen’s Huntsman is some demon spawn. He sure as fucking hell acts like it, but he’s worse. A foul. Fated. Fucking. Faerie.” He nearly spat again. Instead he continued on. “But aye, we had her. With her little fancy ring. Might’ve got a pretty penny on her–“
“Woulda got a hella lot more for HIM, if Billy didn’t shoot like a drunk clown! Sursha pays good money for fae fucks!” chimed in Thornwald. Apparently Billy was the one chatting at her, grunting his displeasure of being called out when he was busy hitting on a dame. Another gave Thornwald the bonk on the head he deserved.
“Did that ring look a little bit like this?” Calia asked with an amount of calm that absolutely didn’t match the storm that currently thundered in her chest. Producing her own signet ring from her pocket – or more accurately her pocket hollow with a discreetness none of them discerned.
Billy gave a few blinks at it, whistled and leaned back, giving Calia a sort of suspicious up and down look that confirmed everything she needed to know. That had not been any girl, that’d been her sister. These scoundrel, vagrant bastards had kidnapped Araminta, who had then been rescued by the Imperial Queen’s… son? Who was a faerie?
And they were up to a hell of a lot worse from the sound of it.
Calia bloomed into a smile, tucking the ring back into her pocket and painting her expression with something deeply amused.
“I am a hunter. Did you think the Mad Mercenary was the only one looking for that girl and her… faerie companion, you say? Are you lot in the business of catching faeries? Didn’t know that was a thing.”
Billy eased at the sounds of her being a hunter, finding that it made plenty of sense in the grand scheme of things and their current location. Most of the others eased as well, returning to their raucous laughter, even making a few jesting jokes about her not having a clue.
“Aye, fucking blights they are. You know where you fucking stand with demons, but faeries? Foul blooded, fate meddling twats. We round them up and sell them off to the witch Sursha down here in the Sombralands.”
A witch named Sursha here in the underground city of thieves that buys up captured faeries. Calia pinned that in the back of her mind, shifting her expression to something of surprised interest.
“Surely you haven’t captured more than one or two. They’re notoriously difficult, if not impossible to capture,” she insisted.
Billy let out a chortle. “Aye! If you don’t have enchanted iron! Chains and cages is all it takes.”
“We got a whole warehouse of them,” chimed in Thornwald, who was surely too drunk to be in this conversation with his constant piping in. He got clocked again over the head while another shot her a suspicious squinted eye look.
“She’s asking too many questions, if you ask me. A little too interested.”
Billy gave this some consideration, looking Calia up and down again and seeming to agree. “Aye. If you’re so keen on what we’re up to, maybe you and I can go have ourselves a little private time first. Maybe I’ll show you a lil foul-fuck after a good fuck, eh?”
“Not that interested,” countered Calia, who promptly turned into her seat and went back to nursing her glass. The easy dismissal had his whole group of cronies whooping and hollering again with amusement.
“Aw, come on now,” mourned Billy.
“Not interested,” reaffirmed Calia, simply. However, she did lean towards him again, painting on that perfect charming smile. “In sleeping with you, anyway. Now if you’re looking for more hunters? That I will do. …if you and your little crew over there aren’t full of shit. Show me some faeries and I’ll show you what a real hunter looks like.”
She let the offer hang there for a minute, watching as the wheels in the man’s head turned and turned. It looked like he was more interested in using it as a way to get in her pants than actual need for additional people on his crew, not that it mattered at all to Calia. After a moment though-
“Aight. But you gotta pass the test first.” Billy tilted his head towards the round table to have her follow, and once she did, he gestured for one of the others to pull something out of their pack. A round piece of iron was dropped onto the table with a loud clunk, etched with all sorts of symbols on the top in a way that was practically thrumming.
Calia knew an instant this was no longer a bluff. Not on their part. But it was going to have to be one hell of a bluff on hers.
She didn’t hesitate, for any sort of delay was going to give way to suspicions. Calia reached immediately to place her hand on the iron disc, schooling her features so carefully that not a hint of anything beyond a bland boredness slipped by. Yet it hurt. It burned and scorched and leeched into her skin in a way that was all too familiar, as it was the same toxic scalding horror she’d felt from the chains that’d been used by Fawna to bind an elder fae. The poison seeped in faster than she could’ve known, for she was still too young of a fae to realize just how dangerous enchanted iron actually was. No faerie magic could’ve been used to counter it or stop it, and only those of an elder age had skill enough to heal it.
But she wasn’t using faerie magic, was she. They were so damned focused on faeries, even demons, they weren’t looking for arcane. So it was arcane she used to glamour the pain, to hide the wound when she pulled back her hand and showed them a perfectly unharmed palm. They accepted it all easily, gladly, taking the lead to accompany her to their little warehouse.
With Calia fully intent on committing several murders.
By all means he really didn’t have any reason to get so zesty about a few words! And yet, while awareness in his head clocked that he was testy for some reason or another, it didn’t diminish that being told to basically stay away worked a charm on provoking that bile all the more. Enacting a needed retreat for now less he really start acting the part of hostile dipshit because something in his head was knocking around in a sour state.
And honestly, at this point he really didn’t fear or worry that Calia wouldn’t be fine. With the history of events, she got herself into and out of trouble pretty easily. Even with the threat of wannabe loser fallen king wanting to come after her, he didn’t really think too much more about it.
So yes, he did retreat to that of the tower. Promptly letting the familiar simplistic nature of most of it work into whatever frayed nerves were agitated and sparking like mana conduits. Entering the abode to hear somewhere at least one of the couch cushion cats so he might actually do as he expressed, that he was tired and cranky and was going to go nap. Likely eat something too since he hadn’t yet and left the meals for Calia.
This was a moment that he could take care of himself firstly without giving acts of service willingly to another first. Only tilting attention when foot found stairwell at the slinky preferred cat seemingly waiting.
The cushion cat he’d named Avia wink-wonked her gem-button eyes in a quiet sort of greeting. Somehow even more cat than cushion compared to when they’d left the tower, giving a subtle suggestion that Calia’s woven spell was continuing to evolve there within his tower simply because it’d been given the allowance to keep existing. Through his legs she wove with affection, before breaking away to bound and leap up the stairs. Stopping at the door of the overly comfortable bedroom as if it were her personal mission to tuck him off into bed.
Of course, there was another set of eyes on the demon as well. Set a little too wide apart, with it’s button pupils going in the opposite directions. The unpreferred Lord Buttons remained at a good healthy distance. …or perhaps a menacing distance depending on perspective. Standing and peering halfway around the corner in the direction of the kitchen with a thousand-mile intense stare, unblinking and unwavering. He too was becoming a little more real, which might not have helped with creepiness of his silent stalking.
Archimedes was effectively trapped between two very different, very silly cushions. At least it was peaceful.
* * *
As for Calia, peace was the last thing she wanted.
Tagging along with this drunken group of scoundrels, it was a rare moment where her real physical self gave exactly the impression she wanted. There was no need to be flirty and charming, for she’d made it clear she was far more interested in violence. The quiet, cold rage in her chest could seep out as it wished for she was who she claimed to be: a hunter, a killer. She was dismissive of their antics with a bland disapproval, intimidating with presence alone when one thought his size could make her waver.
The fact they were pure unfiltered morons certainly helped. Such idiots that even with their enchanted iron disk, Calia was starting to doubt they had any ability to hunt faeries, let alone kidnap a girl or even catch a rabbit with a broken foot.
When they arrived at the warehouse – a building made hastily of wood and not much else – she discovered with a great deal of disgust why they were successful at catching any faeries at all.
Stacked around in various cages, iron capped jars, and glass aquariums were dozens of the little things. Most all in animal shapes and forms, small, harmless. These weren’t vicious murderous creatures, they were squirrels and foxes and even a young faun. They’d even managed to catch a demon or two, wrapped in chains looking like nothing more than two very sad hounds!
They hunted the meek and helpless.
Calia knelt down next to one of the cages, coming eye to eye with a raggedy looking raccoon with ram’s horns, wearing a tiny green vest. He shivered and cowered away from the bars before he caught something in her look. Tilting his head to the side and creeping a little closer when she stuck a couple fingers through the bars. With his tiny hands, he reached out to grab her fingers and clung desperately. She didn’t have to hear a voice to know what his silent plea was.
“Believe us now?” Billy proudly declared.
“…and you just sell them to this witch? What does she do with them?” she asked coolly.
“Don’t know, don’t fucking care so long as she pays,” he laughed and so did the others.
That seemed to be her limit of caring herself. Listening to the lot of them laugh as the creatures in cages cringed and winced. Calia could still feel the burning ache in her hand from the iron’s poison, she could easily imagine how terrible it must feel to be surrounded by the bars from all angles with no way to reach one’s own magic. Feeling confined and trapped, suffering a slow agony until… what? Taken by a witch.
If it were anything like what those mages did to Archimedes under the Edelguard castle, it would be a fate worse than death.
Back then she wanted to see it all burn, to light up those underground torture chambers and scorched away every ounce of evil that’d been tainting the grounds. Didn’t simply because it wasn’t her place and she’d been trying to behave. And what had happened then! Starling Everflame got a slap on the wrist in being demoted. The tower of mages that approved of the whole ordeal were still standing. Because Archimedes was a traitor and a demon, so what did it matter.
It mattered. Then and now, and Calia was so god damned tired of doing things the right way. She rose back to her feet, pulling the silver hairpins from her messy bun as she did.
The first two kills happened so fast the lousy lot didn’t realize what had happened at first. No magic necessary, surprise was on her side and she knew the fastest way to send someone dead to the floor. After that the scuffled proved to be more lively – screaming shouts from the men as they scrambled and pulled their own weapons. Deflecting, dodging, coming at her when her back was turned. Calia didn’t reply to their taunting screams, give explanation to her actions. This was cold, swift justice and nothing more.
In the end there was only Billy left, breathing ragged and scrambling along the floor. He’d made more than one attempt to get involved, met only with Calia’s boot to his chest, or a swift kick to his knee to get him out of her way. This one she’d saved purposefully for last.
“W-who the fuck are you!” he cried.
“If you weren’t so stupid, you would already know. That girl was my sister, did you harm her?”
Angry realization fell over the man, perhaps foolhardy for it gave him the courage to sneer at her with a toothy willful grin. “She was a nice little virgin fu-“
Calia pressed her foot to his shadow and twist, the magic shot through it like an icy spear and pure horror filled his features when his whole body seized in place.
“You’re a bad liar. Are there others in this city that capture faeries?”
He couldn’t seem to find the words, eyes bulging as a few swift realizations finally dawned on him. Billy nodded with a jerking motion.
“Where do I find your witch Sursha?”
No matter how much he thrashed and wiggled, he couldn’t seem to break free of the frozen hold she had on his shadow. Billy thrashed so hard his eyes were starting to bleed before he finally blurted out the answer she wanted. All the way down the single city road, at the very end was a tall fortress of black lava stone where Sursha had claimed herself the Queen of the Sombralands. Queen of Thieves. Those that did their dark dealings down in the underground market paid their tax to her, and those that captured magical creatures were paid in gems and gold.
Once she’d learned what she needed, Calia made sure he felt every single ounce of pain he’d ever inflicted on small innocent things. Setting loose his shadow only for it to tear into tiny smokey creatures with sharp burning teeth. She stood by and watched as his own shadows ripped him apart, tiny bite by bite until his screams faded to whimpers and those whimpers tapered off into silence.
And it felt good, like a cool icy balm over the brink of her rage.
When the moment had passed Calia stepped away to claim rings of keys off the dead, opening a few of the cages herself without giving two shits about the way the iron burned in her hands. Focused far too deeply about this current mission of hers to care much about it. She passed the keys to others for them to set the rest loose, stalking to another of the bodies to snatch up a large axe before she approached the chained demon hounds.
She stared at the two of them, pointedly, fiercely.
“Hunt the ones that prey on the helpless and meek, and I will set you free. Betray me and I’ll turn you into sentient couch cushions.”
The two demons looked at each other, something unspoken going between them before they each gave a firm nod. Her claimed axe came crashing down on their chains with a mighty clang, breaking the bonds of their chains and unleashing them free back to the world. Both ignited into a hellish fire immediately and she waited to see if her choice had been folly, watching them circle around her until finally they lept off and away. Catching fired to the warehouse itself as they scrabbled out of one of the windows and into the city of thieves.
Quite a bit of the city was going to burn, so it seemed, and Calia in that moment did not care. For once, she was going to be the fucking problem before it came to her. As she left the burning warehouse, with faeries fleeing and scattering behind her, she started her way down the street. Whomever Sursha the Witch was, she wouldn’t be it for much longer.
Hopefully Archimedes was having a nice rest.
It was an easy choice when his footing came to the top of the stairs, to stoop and pick hand across the slinky belly of Avia, whilst somehow meeting the goofy two direction stare of Lord Buttons in easily the largest way that expressed how much he wasn’t a fan of the doofy cushion. Tucking Avia effortlessly into chest and doling out attentive scratches whilst he didn’t seem to mind at all her need to take him to the overly comfortable room.
Giving the door a easy push with the flat of foot, doling Avia onto the top of the plush comforter top so he might make a sweeping gesture about the room. Dulling the light. Turning it to a moody soft cyan to replicate the twilight eve as attire was discarded mostly. Shirt and shoes and socks. Gone to whatever sort of form of laundry service the grand Etherion had!
Lower portion of clothing turned to softer garments rather than anything rigid so he might turn and assess with quick consideration that the bedding itself was far too much.
Promptly shoving at least a good handful of pillows and blankets off till it was little more than one and one. Contently flopping in only then and accepting that he was going to probably mend his appetite after. Time to absorb the calm as it was and quell the emotional displacement that had been perturbed from what he could only surmise was being too open about a past he didn’t like talking about –good or bad- and his own insecurities that came from being told not to be near another person. Misunderstood or not, it was as it was.
Pulling Avia once more to plop her to belly so she might leech heat freely from the bare of runic skin and set himself to have back facing the door so he didn’t have to look at Lord Buttons likely taking to sitting there like some hobgoblin of the tower!
Avia’s silent inspection of the bed came to a abrupt end, not that the cushion creature seemed to mind. Sweet of temperament, accepting of affection, she pawed and kneaded at his bare stomach until eventually settling down as a slender purring loaf.
She certainly wasn’t worried about Lord Buttons, who as expected was already standing there still as a statue peering around the corner. Staring – if one could be considered staring if his eyes were in two different directions. Yet somehow the full brunt of that stare could be felt boring into the skin. The presence of a single lump of pudgy couch cushion somehow having the presence of a looming beast ten times it’s own size.
After a long, long, long wait. When it and it’s non-existent brain was certain Archimedes was no longer paying attention, it lumbered across the floor. The leap into bed was not a graceful affair – he missed halfway and had to scrabble the rest. Taking tentative steps across the mattress until his lordship found the safest spot to nest. Not too close to the legs where he’d be kicked into oblivion. Not near the head where he could be reached easily and grabbed. Nay, Lord Buttons became his own form of massive loaf at the demon’s lower back. Beginning his own deep, gravelly rumbling.
Both enchanted cushion creatures did exactly as they were designed to be, vibrate soft comfort until sleep was something easy to slip into.
And it was within that slumber that a certain mountain princess had all the time in the world to take out her frustrations on those who surely had it coming!
* * *
Chaos had come to the underground in the form of angry unleashed faeries and a pair of fiery hellhounds. Mind, the faeries were all of lesser powers. Tiny little things that didn’t wish to any real harm and weren’t capable of more than crafty mischief – they’d also seemed to have taken their cues from one brooding Calia who didn’t take well to anyone getting up to malice. Actions were only taken upon those who truly and wholly deserved it.
The same wasn’t quite as true for the hellhounds, though their menacing was more of a accidental collateral damages as they sniffed and snuffled and hunted through to streets seeking out their assigned quarry. Those of foul souls with blood on their hands were fair game, and if they were free to eat, eat they would! Yet every where they went, if infernal flame could catch it indeed took hold, sending market carts and entire buildings into billowing black smoke.
Calia breathed it in as she marched down the street, propelled by this new intoxicating thrill – this violent desire to make her very presence known. Her sister was alive. Somehow having fallen into the dark machinations of some evil sorceress queen on the other side of the mountains. Evil had taken root and tainted the lands in Edelguard. Here in the underground beneath what used to be a beautiful towering city, more malice was at work.
What was the point of being so powerful if she did not use it. They all tried to claim her when what they really should be doing was fear her. They should all wish Calia had never been born at all.
As told, at the very end of the long city street there was a sort of cul de sac with nothing but a large fortress-like structure made of black lavastone. As she drew near, a feeling of foreboding so strong hit her in such a way her stomach twisted in a vice. If a place could scream, cry out in pain and beg one not to come any closer, this one was doing so at a volume that finally had her recognizing where the eeriness of the entire city of thieves was coming from. The haze of wrongness, the ill air.
Calia went towards it anyway, climbing the steps upwards and passing through tall pillars to walk inside to what seemed like a grand empty courtyard. There were no guards, no servants, no wandering merchants, not even creatures in this space. The strangeness of it did make her slow her pace, passing by an fountain that wasn’t full of deep blue water, but rather something of a murky red. Onwards still she pressed, shoving open a pair of doors to gain entrance into a long hall.
Empty, devoid of pomp, decor or extravagancy. All that sat there was a single throne of black stone, with a woman equally clad in the same color. Her features so strikingly similar to Calia’s nightmares of a dark queen that for a split second she’d thought to be trapped in another one of those dreams. Until the woman smiled broadly and the illusion broke – she did in fact have a different face. Serene and beautiful. Alluring and charming.
Shaking off the hesitation, Calia stalked forward. Five steps it took before she froze – the whole of the place sounding off a clock’s chime so loud that it vibrated under her feet and lit up an array of sigils along the stone ground, up the pillars and walls to they very ceiling. Then the pain came, shrieking through her blood and bones so suddenly that she spasmed down to her knees with a hard cracking thunk. With a gasp she found that she could not move, she could barely even breathe.
The woman’s eyes went wide and her laughter rang out like a tingling bell.
“Oh! Oh you’re young…” she declared, rising elegantly from her chair to cross the room. As if that simple statement explained everything she needed to know. Her hands reached out to cup Calia’s face, clawed thumbnail dragging across her cheek to set loose a streak of blood. “Little highborn child, did you think you could just walk right in? I was ancient within this world when your court’s last blood died. What an arrogant thing you are.”
Large dark sharps skittered into Calia’s vision from the corners of her eyes. Shiny, spindled legs of obsidian black attached to big bulbus bodies. Two giggling voices to one side of her as hardened feet TICK TICK TICK TOCK TOCKED on the stone. A third to the other side of her coming into clearer vision as a drow – no, a dryder woman stepped up behind the one tightly gripping Calia’s face.
“She smells of the demon that killed our brother,” she snarled.
“So that is who you are…” marveled this dark queen, tilting Calia’s chin this was and that in a tut-tutting motion as if she was a child to be admonished. “The man cannot seem to learn his place within our ranks, can he. Summon him and I will allow you to live.”
The demand made Calia shudder but try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get a single inch of her body to respond. If the spell on this place was meant for faeries, should she not be able to get around it with the arcane or infernal! Yet it seemed this woman was no mere witch, she was a powerful demon in her own right. One who seemed to not just know Archimedes, but was old enough to know her own blood. With three vengeful dryder sisters on top of it.
…she’d walked herself into this mess, she could get herself out of it. Arc had done enough.
“He’s napping, s-sorry,” she breathed out with her best of cheeky smiles.
There was no more sweet charm or human in the woman’s features. The shroud of her own glamour began to fade away as eight long obsidian legs grew outwards from her back. The entire empty court shifted as if the very space around them had changed, not unlike stepping across the veil into a faerie court, only this was the illusion of her grand fortress vanishing to show the reality of what was there at the end of the city of thieves.
Twisted black and oozing red from smoking porous hollows, a great tree stood in the near distance. Spider webbing all around it, strings criss crossed in every direction. It’s branches desperately reaching up, but being bound and tied with dozens, if not hundreds of cocooned lumps.
In a horrified instant Calia realized why it screamed for her to stay away. This faerie tree was being fed the blood of it’s own tortured children, and in turn had become a source for the very demon who now was it’s keeper.
“Do not mistake my mercy for worth, faerie child. Summon him.“
Calia felt the rise of bile and nausea in her throat, but summoning Arc she would not do. Not for this demon queen, not for anyone. He was hers to keep safe and safe was where he was going to stay!
“Can’t. Go fuck yourself.”
“Then at the roots of thyne own tree you will die,” came the Queen’s answer in a weary sigh. Releasing Calia’s face and stepping away. For the smallest of seconds she thought the spell had also been released from her, only to gasp a pained shriek when one of the creepy dryder women sank fangs down into her shoulder. Everything grew real loosey-goosey fuzzy-wuzzy then.
Unconscious she went into her own blissful nap.
It might have originally been a sort of excuse that he had been tired –not the cranky part, that was legit- but it would appear that once he had been suitably stationed in the less floofy outrageous bedding, sleep was something necessary. No doubt from the whole throw down in the caverns prior… or whenever the hell it was since day and night really had no merit in the tunnels. Add on the whole flicking, flocking magic play him and Calia had activated earlier than that and whatever else, a essential rest had been beckoning.
Surely not about to really fight it when there was a steady rumbling of falsified cat –turned eventually into cats- even he as a demon was surely no valiant hero to stave it off. Nor was he really making an effort to do so!
Allowing the whole of his being to slip into the realm of slumber. Thankfully devoid of any wanting subconscious thoughts or emotions that would attack at the most inappropriate time. Leaving a mind to be so submerged in the pitch that if there were dreams, they weren’t going to make enough of a presence within to cause him additional woe or worry.
Save there was always something that would work to ensure that such rest wasn’t about to be as comfortable and easy as one might had wanted. The whole waking on his own accord would have been the cherry on top of the cake, certainly. Rather than the short burst of a burning jab that came as a brightened alert that the tether was in trouble. Or rather, the person on the opposite end was in some sort of potential peril that it cried within that of his own being.
Short. Sharp and piercing to force him well upright that even a finger in the ear that was worried he’d somehow managed to rupture the vital drum within, had the demon startled back into unwanted reality. Unclear of the time that had been given him to rest, idly rubbing hand at the phantom pain that had been within one’s own skull; gave flipped around to quietly attempt to determine what the hell was going on.
True problem?
False alarm caused by a short burst of thrill that seemed on the border of panic? There was no clear answer and that alone was enough to earn a slew of elven curses that might have made a sailor blush! Scratching claws through that of crown, woven around the base of horned starting points and glancing down to the bedding that had been purposefully strewn by that of his own hand. Eventually accepting that the only way he was going to determine if Calia was just up to something that needed to be at least assessed, or if there was something else was actually looking.
So much for napping and eating properly.
Any moment could have been the one to give a sharp warning through the tether when it concern Calia’s questionable decision making. Willfully touching enchanted iron. Several swift murders. Making a bargain with lesser demons. Going after someone without knowing whom she was coming up against. A dyder’s toxic venom. If Calia had known the tether had a mind and will of it’s own, pinging him the same way it had to her when he’d lost himself to his own monstrous form she’d have been furious. If only out of a petty spite because she’d told him he may not want to come down there, and in a fucked up way she hadn’t known just how right she actually was.
Yet Calia was not conscious enough to regret her choices, give second thoughts, or even try to mute the tether. Someone else had taken control through means that were both old ancient magic and insidious.
Sursha the Witch, Queen to the City of Thieves, was no witch nor queen. Her true name – Sur’sha Rak’ne – had been whispered in the dark for well over a millennia, as once upon a dark time she held the title of a Demon Lord.
But as things shifted and times change, much like the way old faerie courts had fallen, Sur’sha Rak’ne lost her power and title within the demon realms for reasons that truly did not matter in the grand scheme of things. For she remained eternal even in the mortal world and a demon need only to be clever and patient. On the mortal planes she’d become a dark goddess, patron to those of black magics and lofty ambitions. Found power in sticking her claws into the natural world and leeching the very magic from it.
Faeries were so deliciously good for that.
This was not the first faerie tree within the mountains she had drained of life and magic. The ruined city above was not the first she’d slowly destroyed from it’s very roots. Allowing her beautiful obsidian spidery children to take over it’s dead bones to breed in mass numbers.
The young faerie with old court blood certainly wasn’t the first that Sur’sha Rak’ne had bound to the tainted tree within a cocoon of silk, to slowly melt away into the bark and wood. Her power becoming Sursha’s to claim and by proxy… the compelling little problem that was Archimedes.
Fate had a funny way of planting opportunities into one’s hands.
Sur’sha Rak’ne took to her throne, a long wide smile blossoming across her infernally beautiful face. Her patience could last centuries. All she need do was wait for her prize to arrive.
As begrudgingly as he made his way back out from the tower’s safety, nothing really could have prepared him for the step down into that of the discovered city of thieves. Sure, there had been that niggling in his skull from the tether that spoke of problems, but the whole place being pretty much overrun by that of chaos and menace in a way that didn’t seem very good for business, while –he was absolutely just generalizing here- having Calia’s signature all over it; did seem pretty problematic.
Having opted not to have his demonic appearance on display, sleuthing himself into an appearance that was more suited for a human broker that had just come from who knows where with enough dirt and grim and black protective attire; the smell of the hellhounds in particular was the thing that stood out the most.
The smell of sulphur and pitch and that fragrant acrid touch on the whisping edges that made him both recall vividly the hells themselves while equally having the same sort of imperious disdain for having to ever be forced back there at some point.
This place had been run over by havoc certainly and it seemed to have a nice little trail that lead down a particular way that already had begun to pull at the parts of his mind that spoke in the demonic caress of familiar itching. Another demon was nearby, someone stronger than him –which in itself was a whole other problem, though that would have been more of a case when he was lacking that of his memories. The whole unlocking of his arcane abilities meant he wasn’t exactly the same as he had been and wasn’t as prone to the means of bowing to some vizier or whatever have you of a upper class demon. But it did mean that whatever the hell Calia had gotten into, was bad.
At this point, was he even surprised that Calia had done anything? Not really.
Similar to him in his younger years, she had incredibly shitty control over her intrusive thoughts and even more impulsive behaviours. She was only in her wee twenties, basically a babe and boy he knew well enough that when she set her mule brain to something, there was no way in hell anything was going to deter her. Which in this case, he could only assume that something had properly pissed her off that she put her blinders on, bent her head down and made like a bull with their horns ready to stab everyone, anyone and everything. No matter who was in the path, throwing aside logic and just charging.
It was the ebbing abyssal power conduit of sensation that had him stepping cautiously with attention fully alert. Prepared to jump or leap out of the way. Blink if he had too to avoid anything that might be lying in wait.
The city street had become a mess and it was clear by the confusion of the denizens that most had no fucking idea of what had actually kicked it off. While shockingly, there were a few elder rogues sitting down on a corner smoking their pipes and watching the anarchy unfold, for in their experience this wasn’t the first time the underground city had erupted into anarchy, nor would it be the last. Better yet, they were passing bets back and forth on how it would all shake down. A new guild in charge of the city? Some douchebag making a power play? Sometimes it was as simple as a tavern brawl going just a little too far.
In this case there were some very angry little faeling creatures that’d been given full permission to go gremlin mode. One skittering to the top of a building nearby as Arc past, raising it’s little raccoon paws to the sky and cackling a squeaky HEEHEEHEEHEEHEEE! as a stall in the square got completely ransacked.
The pure chaotic silliness of it all would’ve been nothing more than good fun, had that omnipresent aura of a demon’s influence not been permeating every stone, every corner. Through the very roots that wrapped beneath the underground street and above their heads, where they curled around the glowing crystals in their gloomy blue hues.
Naturally with Arc noticing the presence of the hellhounds, they as well were keen to pick on a new demon presence within the city when they were in the middle of their hunt for things most foul. Trotting into the street to block his path, the pair at first seemed to be Borzoi mountain wolfhounds with their obscenely long eerie faces. If it weren’t for the curl of horns from their skulls, the spikes along the spines and the way the fur flickered and moved like infernal flame.
They both looked at each other, communicating some silent thought, before looking back towards Arc. Lowering their heads in a way where it wasn’t quite clear if they meant to attack or not–
Until both shot off, veering past Archimedes to land on top of a large wandering spider. Snapping and ripping at legs to flail it apart. Where the obsidian things had previously been perfectly docile to be used as beasts of burden in pulling wagons and carts, they’d now turned on the people in the city. Feeding off the chaos in their own way.
More and more of those spiders were crawling up out of holes, some far bigger than others. The majority of which coming up from behind, seeming to make sure there would be no efforts of going backward out of the city. Worse yet, they were watching. Staring. With thousands of beady little eyes.
It was probably a half decent sign that some of them were still decidedly hanging around to watch what came next, because if it were truly devastating, he was certain people would choose their own skin than to watch the world burn. Though it wasn’t a boon either, something to keep note of while attention made its prickling rise when his motion forward was temporarily halted due to the horned beasts of sulphur and abyssal stink.
Their faces stretched and looking as though for a moment they might be stupid enough to challenge themselves against himself. Surely knowing in some animalistic part of their brain that they wouldn’t fare too terribly well against one of his higher station. Granted, one could be opportunistic, seeking to try their hand for the risk. Something that he was being mindful of even as there was a short sort of length of their standoff that resulted in the two hounds leaping around to tackle themselves into the bloated form of a spider.
Warranting certainly more than a glance at the shortened state of the crawling bug that was certainly not something you’d see wandering around every day. He’d take Lord Buttons over that as a pet, frowning a little but turning quickly back to leave the hounds to their chosen supply of interest at this time.
Save it wouldn’t be terribly too much to see how the city of thieves might as well have been deemed the city of spiders for the way they were amounting to appear more and more. Not in fleeing efforts to escape that carnage but to observe. Leaving that niggling sensation that warmed against the nape of his neck and in the back of his head about the other older demonic presence that eventually left him sighing.
If he knew anything about demon lords, they all tended to have a genre about themselves. Like they were some off brand fashionista’s that absolutely had to have some of visual calling card so they wouldn’t ever be forgotten. Such things only made him reflect temporarily on a few demonic lords he had crossed path’s with and of course that of Xalthnos. A dreadful recollection seeing as that particularly lord had shoved him into his beetle form before he met Calia.
Evidently this city of thieves was in fact as he formerly thought, the city of spiders. Particularly demonic ones, warranting a heavy sigh and a sort of frown that was a little more serious than he liked to be. Prompting him to take to sauntering in a sort of slow defiant way that came with years of practice and a well earned chip on that of shoulder to deepen his passage along the way that seemed to be the end of the said road. “Ah. Of course. Another would-be tyrant with a talent for theatrics and absolutely nothin’ else. All that’s left now is a flamin’ throne of skulls and a few mortals strangled by their souls, and yah’ll be perfectly forgettable.”
Like a curtain beckoned by his very voice, the great fortress of black lavastone unfurled corpses on ropes, swinging and dangling all along it’s entire front. Bodies of every shape and being in flayed and tortured horror, with mouths agape and gore streaming down their limp limbs. A row of firelight torches rose up along the stairs, complete with those flaming skulls all led the way for him to rise and make his approach into the fortress proper. Illusions with a taunting sense of humor.
When he came into that first garden courtyard, empty of everything save for more pillars and a large found filled with a murky red liquid, he was greeted with giggles and snarls. More specifically, two giggling ladies and one of a hissing sort – their forms yet unseen, but the TICKTICK TOCK. TICKTICKTICKTICK TOCK TOCK. of something scuffling along in the stone from somewhere in the shadows belied their physical form.
“Is this what killed our dear brother? He is so… small.” exclaimed one with disappointment.
“Oh, but would he not make beautiful babies?” objected a second.
“Look at him, he thinks he’s strong and clever,” hissed the third. “Barely older than the faerie girl.”
“We want babies, not brains. Go climb a nest and let us have him, then.” snapped the first.
From two opposite ends of the courtyard they appeared, stepping slowly into the light. Long, thing, shiny legs of obsidian black with torsos to match. The feminine bend of waist and gentle curves being wonderfully alluring, though the faces were less of elegant beauty and more monstrous with empty glass red eyes that took up a huge portion of their heads. Not to mention being a great deal more massive than that of their alleged brother, they towered beyond ten feet tall.
“Would you like to come into our nest, demon? You’ll have so much more fun with us.”
Elder demons and fae certainly had that one thing in common. They really did like to be so thespian. And if anyone needed a sort of example of it, this moment would have proven just perfect for it. As the whole scenery that begun to reveal itself was absolutely the sort of garish hellscape that made even his own blood tingle in a way that was perfectly inhuman. The difference was, that part had been melded back with the elven portions, making him something else. He wasn’t entirely sure what the hell that was –and it was likely half of his own issues- but this moment with a look at the whole stupid flaming skulls, he gave the most lamented bored sigh he possibly ever could.
There had to be some sort of handbook out there. One hundred and one ways to style your domain to be A class demon lord. Or something just as cliché.
Whatever sort of classes one had to attend to meet this level of absurd standard, he was no sooner greeted with the sound of hissing giggles.
Feminine, save the whole tick-tocking of too many spindly legs was enough to foretell that he wasn’t about to be terribly that interested in whatever sort of female mass was upon the big ass butt of a spider. Why drows or demons thought this dryder form was so elegant, was beyond him.
As his false appearance had slinked away at some point so he might be in his familiar horned state, hands went to rest upon that of either side of hip. Rocking shoulders till a satisifying crack ran along that of back and he had to stop his eyes from rolling into the back of his skull with the first voice declaring that he’d been the one that killed the brother dryder.
Great, so that one that had been eyeballing Calia as the mother of ten thousand babies, had finally decided to exact a sort of revenge… Months later. And she sounded so disappointed that he wasn’t some massive lumbering fool though he wasn’t terribly that petite either! But suppose to one that had too many legs and was the size of a small building would think anything otherwise would be tiny.
An ear lifted, nose scrunched at the mention of making beautiful babies. There was no way any sort of egg sac filled with babies from spider creatures would be beautiful! He didn’t even think elf or human babies were cute, they all looked like red angry spoiled potatoes!
Boy they were a group of hens. Squabbling and suggesting some sort of nonsense about knowing anything or wanting him to do anything related that created abomination spawns. Leaving him to looked impressively bored whilst finally the grouping of satan’s shit out chimera wannabe’s made their way into the… garden? He wasn’t sure he’d call it that.
“Yeah,” He began to scratched at the bottom of his chin, eyes half-lidded, like he was indulging a noise rather than a conversation. “I’m really not interested in whatever yer callin’ fun these days, kitten. This whole place?” He glanced around, slow and unimpressed, before lazily gesturing toward the swaying corpse. “It’s very… enthusiastic. Real villain energy. But that there tells me yah ain’t the somethin’ that wants real attention.”
His gaze finally settled on them—quiet, precise, unkind. “What do yah want, and where’s the faerie girl?” A faint smile touched his mouth, thin as a blade. “I’m bein’ polite. Don’t mistake that for mercy.”
“The faerie girl is dead,” tutted the first voice.
“Thrice dead, truly,” giggled the second.
“No need to worry about your leash anymore, handsome demon. We are here for you now.”
“Yes! In our nest you will be treated like a king. You’ll know no better pleasure.”
With every disturbing phrase as the pair ticktickticked into the open courtyard, the illusion of the grand wicked fortress began to fade away. The torches went out, taking away the orangey red glow. Pillars shifted from solid black stone to woven, wispy white. Curtains of webbed string covered the canopies above, fell down in beautiful white tapestries of sticky drapes.
Thankfully the swinging decaying bodies had vanished along with it, but now the space was quite clearly seen for the maze of a nest that it truly was. Everything being the same white upon white upon white, pillowy softness that almost beckoned for a touch if one somehow forgot that it was a spider’s trap.
The two dryder sisters were quick to capture their new treat. Each shooting webbing to lasso and claim the demon! To wrap him up in a nice neat little package!
Was it possible for him to be both amused and bored to tears at the same time? For their means of suggesting that Calia had met her final demise, it was… also cliché. Doubly so when there was still that niggling presence within his being that spoke the tether was still very much there. He knew contracts –used them himself and understood that they broke in such a way when death came that it was hard not to know. And well, just because these overgrown insects were trying to suggest such things only told him a few things.
They were minions.
They weren’t likely to be real demons.
And whomever was their liege, said liege didn’t care to let them know too much. The simple things were, the better.
Of course they were nattering about how he would be treated like a king –if they knew anything about him, that was absolutely never on his bingo card. Literally, physically or sexually, all of it sounded like so much work. And secondly, he wasn’t about to at all assume that they wouldn’t want to just use him for babies then feed him to them! By the nine hells, how stupid did they really think he was?
Answer was, probably very.
Case and point as the world around them began to take on less of a villain lair of some sort of evil be done catalogue; they were advancing!
Two were absolutely having no trouble showing just how he was going to be added to the silk webs for them to nibble on and that, was absolutely not something he was about to be interested in. Immediately clicking his tongue the moment the webs grappled upon him. Sticky filaments attaching to coat and skin alike. “That’s… annoyin’,” he murmured, more disappointed than alarmed. They did what dryders did, used their nasty buttsilk! In that case, it didn’t prompt him to struggle or trash. Knowing such actions only helped with the whole getting tangled up in the sticky stuff.
Rather, Arc simply inhaled, slow and measured, and the air around him changed.
Abyssal heat kindled first—hellfire without spectacle, a deep ember glow crawling beneath his skin rather than bursting outward. It pressed, dense and heavy, like the promise of a furnace rather than the flame itself. At the same time, arcane cold bled in around it, a razor-edged chill that crystallized the space just beyond his reach, snapping the air sharp and brittle.
The magic met at his hands.
Where the hellfire touched the webs, they didn’t burn so much as recoil, fibers shriveling and blackening as if they suddenly understood what they’d dared to cling to! Then the cold followed—flash-freezing the weakened strands, locking them in place for a heartbeat before they shattered with a dry, delicate crack, falling away from him in a sound like breaking glass. Arc rolled his shoulders once as the last of the webbing slid off and disintegrated against the stone floor, smoke and frost curling together at his feet. The temperature snapped back toward normal just as quickly, the magic reined in with practiced ease. No grand explosion or outrageous display, just a control that had practiced both in hellfires and arcane gifts.
He straightened, brushing imaginary dust from his sleeve, eyes lifting at last—cool, unimpressed, faintly laughing “See,” he said mildly, “That was me bein’ considerate.” A thin smile tugged at his mouth, all promise and restraint. “Yah really don’t want to see what it looks like when I stop. Now, either fine out how I made yer brother into a pancake, or just get this fuckin’ bullshit over with and take me to whatever puffed up thrown up hairball is the boss around here.”
“Why can’t they ever just submit,” wailed the larger of the two sisters.
There was no spectacle or flare in the way he slipped right out of their silken strands – offered them not even the joy of a struggle to make up for his rude refusal of their generous offer! Didn’t even scream and wail and flail even a little for a predator’s thrill.
The pair shared a glance between each other, glassy red eyes flashing an easy agreement. They wanted a handsome demon to seed their brood of babies, his air of calm and demand to see dear mother did not phase them in the slightest.
Silken threads abandoned, both moved in to attack more physically – using their massive size and numerous legs like fast jutting knives. Ichor of poison seeping from the barbs at the edges, with the smaller of the two making her attempts to leap on top the demon to pin him to the floor. While her larger sister was doing all in her power to get close enough for a delicious, venomous bite!
It would have just been a hell of a lot easier if they didn’t just decide that his refusal to be pulled into their webs –literally- and understood that honestly, if they just did what he wanted, he wouldn’t actually bother with killing them. They could crawl deeper into the caverns and have their myriad of spider babies to their hearts content. And yet, the larger one complained that he was part of the problem. Because he too –like others- didn’t seek to think their plan was one of good fortune.
Leaving him to huff. Unsurprised, growing more annoyed by far. “Calia?” He dared to push into the tether for something, anything while it was clear that the freaks of the week were now keen on either stampeding him to death or… well he wasn’t sure what the hell this was.
All there was though was the registered understanding that they were a problem and he was to react. So one moved –not deliberately fast but rather decided it all. The awareness sharpened into something almost serene. After all, he had just told Calia not that long ago that when he fought, he absolutely tended to let the more demonic hack and slash nature take over. It was wild, wicked and sought wrath with no real grace about it. And right now he really didn’t need to be taking on new injuries or getting poisoned again because these ladies didn’t understand no was enough of a sentence.
It meant relying on old, dusty elven discipline. Where he slipped between the legs of their massive side –they did say he was small, it was a benefit in this case. For he could tell they weren’t happy with his lack of acceptance and in turn, they likely were just prone to using their mass to their advantage.
He turned, tall frame flowing with impossible smoothness and flicked two fingers outward. Lightning whispering into existence, rising along skin with a fine electric pressure that crackled just beneath that of skin before the air screamed. Pair like wine with a good cheese, the lance of arcane lightning snapped through the space. Surgical, precise, threading itself to strike at whomever was closest to bolt through joints and nerve-lines. Locking them in a moment of violent spasms, the smell of sharp ozone tang cutting through the air as the charge ground itself with a final, brittle snap. Yet, he personally did not slow.
Abyssal darkness followed him like a second shadow, bleeding outwards in a quiet defiance that expressed I am neither elf, nor demon, nor man. I am magic.
It pooled low, clinging to the floors and walls, swallowing edges till where it touched all certainty failed! Distance distorted, stomping legs so fast were bound to fail as he stepped through it without resistance. Form briefly dissolving into its embracing silhouette before re-merging entirely elsewhere. Allowing him to strike once more. Making sure to avoid the barbs of limbs as palm connected and the spell detonated within its target! Heat and frost bursting open like a daisy in mid winter, tearing muscle apart!
The blur across his periphery had him immediately vaulting without looking, lightning snapping from heel to stone below, giving him height. To twist mid-air, coat flaring, and brought his hand down in a clean arc to strike once more. Once more the abyssal void carved from where he beckoned, to devour the quickness of those who thought they were so impervious and to sever limbs till bodies would have to tumble.
For himself would land lightly, boots touching down with barely a sound. Lightning still charged, dancing across knuckles while the darkness itself appeared to temporarily recede back into him. Like an obedient hound to be restraint for now, leaving only irritation to be plain in his features. “I hate repeatin’ shit, let alone conversations.” He spoke calmly, authoritarian and unmoved nor afraid. Violets lifted, cool and unafraid but merely sharpened by his years of knowing exactly what the hell he was capable of. “Stay down.” Was the only final suggestion where the air hummed around him freely. “Now… either answer my former question or see just how quickly I make yah all into worm food.” The demonic archmage stared, “Where is the one yah follow.”
No reply came from the other side of the tether. With a newly discovered skill, one would think Calia would happily be using it and abusing it – welcoming a chance to gently pester him in a new way! Yet no quiet faeish voice graced the back of his mind. There wasn’t even that tentative touch to acknowledge that she’d felt something at all.
The tether simply existed and nothing more.
For all the commentary that had come from these two dryder sisters about his handsome looks and not caring if he were smart or not, it became very clear in those quick slashing moments that they themselves had no wisdom within. Caring so much more about their own whims and desires, their want to capture a nice shiny new breeding male to play with to recognize some pray shouldn’t be chased!
There were legs that hit the floor long before wailing, screeching bodies did. Scorching electric heat practically cooking meat inside the chitinous skins. Ice and voidfull magic rendering muscle into torn chunks into both sisters were sprawled out in the courtyard cursing, hissing, and screeching in their pain.
Neither intended to be helpful at all, the demon bastard! They only wanted a good series of fucks!
Finally, in the wake of this brutal set down, that third sister finally stepped out of the shadows. A smile so broad across her features made no attempt to hide that she knew exactly what the results of her sisters antics would be. Her disappointment with the pair – or was it that he hadn’t finished the job and killed them outright? – flickered in her gaze only for a brief second before she beckoned him to follow her with a tilt of her head.
This one had her own agendas, and was clearly not as stupid as her sisters. Her thoughts were kept to herself.
Weaving the way through the curtains of webbed white, she took him deeper into the nest, where the webbing grew thicker and thicker. Eventually it opened up giving way to the scene of a massive black tree with branches reaching far and wide, covered in all manner of different cocooned bundles like unopened flower blossoms. Wisps of silk swaying gently in an unfelt breeze.
At it’s foot sat this former Demon Lord, dreamy, beautiful, smiling sweet. Sitting in her lavastone throne as relaxed as a sunning cat.
“Yes? Is there something you need?”
There they were, two at least. In a pile of their own agony and limbs and a strong means of irritation bubbling all the more within his chest that but of course anytime him and Calia separated for a little bit, trouble was always lurking. Granted, he wasn’t terribly sure how much was because of her own actions and how much wasn’t. It likely was a bit of both, if he wanted to be wise about it all.
Knowing Calia and the former bit of faeling’s that were running amock in the underground city behind him, it did have her fingerprints all over it. But there was clearly more to the tale and right now, the two dryder girls that were so intent on both using him for their own fun and now awash in their own agony, were of no use.
Leaving the third one that had been keen to comment a little but otherwise unharmed. Earning a glowering gaze that was clear that if she tried absolutely anything –even if she went to scratch her giant ass- he’d nuke her into next week. If she was lucky.
Currently at least it appeared the remaining one had enough smarts to just comply with what he was demanding. The ick of a demon was present, stronger than he had encountered for a while and worth being wise about. Didn’t mean he wouldn’t fight but it just meant he was going to be aware that he was probably at a pretty deep disadvantage. At least as a demon.
There had been a reason the demonic race hadn’t been thrilled about him as an archmage and he intended to live that now. To be a keen reminder that they had tricked him into their fold because of whatever the hell it was they feared and now, he was returned to that world of arcane by the help and interference of both a Elven Queen and the faerie child they had captured currently. Where he was still pushing thoughts into the tether, even if it was silent. Hopefully something pushed through.
The whole change in the world as it became a vast nest of webbing wasn’t entirely shocking. Gross, absolutely. And it wasn’t entirely clear to him if the webs were from the one leading him with her sisters or something else. Enough that he was mindful about it till the throne was revealed with the remaining issue in some sort of fleshy exterior was laying there. As if she were just simply waiting for her waiter to return with her low fat water!
Eyes rose gradually to the demented ruined fae tree behind. Housing all sorts of cocooned bits that were likely alive and dead various things. Being fed to the tree that was well, lucky if it simply rotted away. A part of him guessed it wasn’t the case and Arc reserved his huffing annoyance for another day.
Simply setting a warning glance at the remaining sister that she had better not interfere because of what she seen so far, was hardly the start of all his tricks and spells. “The faerie girl. She’s mine. Simple as that, I want her back. Nicely or I’ll just fuckin’ take her. I’m only askin’ once.”
Sur’sha Rak’ne was a demon confident in her throne of power, both figurative and literally as she adjusted in her seat, crossing her long nimble legs and regarding him with a cool, calm tilt of her head. With a subtle gesture of her fingers, the last sister skuttle off somewhere not too far away. Dismissed in a way, as she was no longer necessary. …if those dryder sisters were even acting on orders at all rather than personal interest.
“A fledging demon does not get to come into my realm and make demands. Especially when his little… toy? pet? thrashes my city and has the gumption to come attempt an assassination of myself. By every right, she has been punished. That is the end of her.”
She let that sit for a moment, not that it needed it. Her point was clear without having to elaborate it with grand dramatics – the faerie girl attacked first and met the consequences.
“Now you are free – or at least as free as you can be until that bond fades. What you should be doing is thanking me for doing you a service. Or are you not the one that has railed against every entity that’s attempted to bind you? Have you decided you enjoy the chains?”
Brows narrowed somewhat at the whole fledging demon. Oh so she was infantilizing him because by all comparison he was young. But he wasn’t so stupid that he didn’t know the name of the game, and it was exactly why he didn’t lash verbally out immediately at her calling Calia both a toy or a pet. Because that sort of reaction would warrant the exact sort of behaviour she was commenting on vaguely. “Like yer the first demon of any caliber that has had someone come and mess up their lair.” He decided to suggest instead, “I doubt yah be really that insulted. Probably a little amused that she, for as young as she is, was able to do so much. It’s a quality most fae want, and fail to have. At least on the grand scale of thin’s.”
He wasn’t dealing with a fae. He wasn’t dealing with a maddened human, he was dealing with a demon. Higher than him but he couldn’t say she was actually a demon lord. There was something missing in that but he couldn’t be a hundred percent sure it was real or not.
Still he crossed his arms and gave a sort of bored look back to her. “Thankin’ yah? When has a demon ever thanked another demon, that ain’t how we roll.” By no means was he doing that, “And as much as yah may think yah had it figured out, there weren’t any chains. Sure the tether is there and is still there, but it was not a leash. If it was, that faerie girl would have surely used it as freely as she wanted. Why waste her effort on ravin’ this little shit hole when she could have used mine instead?” Lending her a longer look, “And if yah know who the fuck I am, yah have to know that I am a terrible little demon to have around at all. Young as I am. So really, I ain’t threatenin’, it’s just promisin’. I’ve made larger demon lords regret even havin’ me near simply because I am very much a pest.”
Eyes rested upon her then slowly up to the tree, idly stroking fingers down the length of jaw. “Is it worth the risk? Yah might be stronger than me but well… I do love bein’ fuckin’ annoyin’.”
It certainly was not the first time someone had come into her lair making a mess or making threats, immediately prompting an amused truthful smile in response. Leaning on an arm so casually, that an onlooking might’ve mistaken her demeanor for one of an old friend, warmly having a conversation.
Her expressions gave away little else than that patient calm – quite the contradictory behavior compared to many other demons who tended to act so thirsty in their desires that they truly did fall into the cliche of villainy. Sur’sha Rak’ne listened to his words, tilting her head in consideration as those deep ruby red eyes of hers slowly took in his own measure. Calculating, examining, drawing conclusions that she did not reveal.
“Then we are at an impasse,” she mused out loud. “Your wild faerie thing came after me and I while the ambitions of youth are always oh so entertaining, she is a threat. One that is now effectively silenced and I have no good reason to let her loose. It’d be a great inconvenience to me to free a murderous little faerie.”
The dark queen gave a dismissive shrug of her shoulders, folding her hands neatly over her lap.
“Honestly, I find it curious you would bother at all for a faerie that isn’t even whole. What is she even worth to dare come make an enemy of me.”
It would be too cliché, too on the nose for him to just start sprouting all sorts of magic. To shift or twist into the shape that was best for stomping and huffing. Right now, as this demoness was leaning forward, she was oozing and showing her age. Well beyond most he knew of, close to others perhaps. But she was in fact an elder. Revealed by the fact that she was talking to him –though his age clearly was used here as a sort of notch to deem him inferior- but they weren’t clashing horns and teeth.
And yet something piqued in his thoughts because she called Calia a threat. Well deserved because she was and she made a stupid choice to come stomping in here like she was as she often said, the biggest threat around.
Calia wasn’t. At least not yet, she still had time to mature and turn into one. Which caused him a bit of a moment to think about it.
It was there when she folded her hands over her lap that Arc flashed his best and truthful grin. All easy and smooth before chuckling a little bit. “Please, who the fuck is really whole in this damn world. Sure she might be missin’ a piece of her but that ain’t like she’s broken. That girl, yah seen is quite capable of doin’ well,” Arc gestured around as if to say, this is what happens when she wasn’t whole. “And seems to be so valuable that others want her like she’s golden candy. Problem is, she is mine. As stated and I’m just a real soddin’ prick that when somethin’ is mine, I don’t let go.”
He helped himself then up the way to come and stand just before her throne. Before her properly, before side stepping to consider that of her lavastone throne. Touching it gradually as he begun to make his slow canter about, “Yer not one of the demon lords anymore. At least from what sort of powerful ebb that falls from yah, I can tell that much. In turn, that also means yah likely don’t have a lot of loyalty to anyone but yerself. Commendable. Similar in tastes then we are,” Arc paused just at her left backside, picking something nonexistent off to flick away.
“Somethin’ be tellin’ me, yah ain’t too loyal either to the sort of calamity that is bein’ stirred up within the Imperial Lands either. All the blood and gore. The tricks and deceit too… and not part of the little wannabe warlock that took that of the faerie’s heart.” As he moved to the right side, Arc helped himself to sit on the throne arm. Draping over it, “Yer a single powerful demoness, that I can tell. I respect that. But honestly, if yer in the sort of straits that I be thinkin’, then well… wouldn’t one problematic faelin’ be so much more fun released out into the world. There are other dark faes that want her and well,” His eyes looked to that of the tree, “A elder dark fae would be quite the treat for such a tree, would it not?”
Arc rotated his gaze back to her, “What is one faelin’ worth to yah, my lady that dark fae wouldn’t be worth more. She’s young, but oh so deadly. And well, I am sure we could make some sort of arrangement that would benefit yer realm while I get back my feisty little warrioress. She has much on her plate and many more that would benefit from her fall. Yah could benefit from her success, surely.”
There was a moment he lingered, “Granted she ain’t guna be thrilled yah poisoned the tree but I can see it’s well past saving. So why not make it worth more. Kill two birds as it was. Release her and perhaps those who are still living so she will be inclined to give yah the heads of those of tainted flesh to keep yer den of thieves alive and thrivin’. With some twists. The fae like deals just as much as we do, my lady.”
His assessment of her being well seasoned and not just another flailing demon throwing their power around had been right on the mark. Shown through every bit of patient amusement she had with his very careful playing of the demon politics game. Fully investing her entire attention on him without even a single ounce of hesitation or concern about him.
Giving that accepting approving nod when he reiterated that the girl was his – what a demon coveted as theirs could be a many varied thing, the fierceness of that possessiveness was something one needed to be wary of.
Ruby eyes following him as he made his peacock show of circling around her throne. Giving a wry smile when he sussed out that she was no longer of the title Demon Lord, and with that smile showed that it wasn’t something she was concerned about either. Especially laughing when he pointed out she was of a solitary, self reliant nature. The proof was around them with the absence of fawning subjects and mindless minions. Beyond the three dryder sisters – whom she clearly did not seem too concerned about – this was not a demon who needed a following to fawn over her.
“It could be said the Sorceress Heirra has inadvertently ruined what was once mine,” she affirmed. Whether that meant her worshippers, her realm, or her title that was unclear. Sursha was still listening, however, plenty invested in seeing what this young demon thought he could cook up. Pull out of his ass to clean up the mess his wildling fae ward had created.
“Hmn, what a neat and tidy little package you have provided…” she mused, running the knuckles of her fingers along her jaw and truly, honestly giving those thoughts a fair consideration. “Not a terrible offer at all to trade a far more seasoned power. …except, if she is as sought after as you say, why let her loose on the promise of a trade, when I can simply hold her and let those thirsty little dark fae come to me as you have?”
Sursha rolled her shoulders and with it took in a deep serene breath. Behind her red glimmering veins appeared winding and curling their way along the bark of the tree, up the branches and even within the very cocoons wrapped in white. The same glow mirroring in her own veins as she pulled in the magic that’d been steeping there for centuries, leeched out the blood of dead fae, through the tree, and into her. The gentlest of touching lightly caressed the tether, testing it, plucking it.
A sly smile spreading across her features.
“And we both know your bright and shiny star is not going to allow me to do as I do. If this tether is not a leash as you claim, she will refuse such a deal. She will attempt to return this tree to her kin and she will die at my hands regardless.”
There was a purpose to this, for the runes all within this cavernous nest of hers took that red glow as well, thrumming a soft bell sound in answer. If something was a threat to her, the wards would answer. Proving that if at any point he’d decided to attack her, they’d have activated in an instant.
“A valiant effort for one born of the old blood. Your plot may have merit, but it is not enough.”
It was effortless the way he chuckled at the whole statement that Heirra had been potentially a problem that this demoness had dealt with at some point. Shrugging in a way that suggested she wasn’t the first to say as such and he was not looking for semantics. Nor was he trying to offer more than what he could actually give. Offering more than what he had was for lesser sorts who thought they were so brilliant.
Sure, he had intelligence but that worked in the way that he understood that his leverage was very little. Which she seemed amused by –good it meant at least he still had her ear- but of course it was not nearly enough. Unsurprising, frustrating too. Expressed as he sighed and shifted that of weight to slide off the throne arm. Only so he might drop and put elbows to it instead. Dipping himself lower as not to seem like he was looming over her. Knees upon earth and cradling chin into hands.
Listening acutely even as she question why wouldn’t she just let the dark fae come after Calia, here. Making a show of how the glistering red veins were attached to her, seeping in and feeding.
A show of power, a show that he was in her web. Quite literally.
But he waited. Being polite to listen to all she had to say and humming to express that he knew she was right about Calia. She wouldn’t just let this be. Even if the tree was already long screwed, she would rather try to torch the place now rather than thinking wisely about how one gains strength and comes back when it is least expected. That was her brashness that made her act recklessly rather than being thoughtful and learning more about what sort of problem was sitting here.
For effect, he looked about that of the nest. Assessing it, showing he was acknowledging his loosing odds currently. Gradually turning back so he could look up at the vermillion stare. “Do yah really want dark fae comin’ here? Where yah have made yer nest? All for one girl that they lust after? Yer the one with the wisdom well over my years to know that fae in general are frustratin’ when they think they have it over yah. Dark fae are ones who think worse than that. Act like they can do so much and constantly leak in like a festerin’ plague. Yah leave my fae here with yah as bait, yer guna have an infestation that will not only ruin the whole city that yah worked on to bend to yer whim, but where they come; others do.” His brows lifted to her, “Yah’ll have the wannabe warlock. His followers, Heirra herself perhaps. And whatever token’s of real demon lords that are equal or greater than yer own strength, my lady. I know yer strong, I’ve already acknowledge that and haven’t tried any stupid moves. But to face a two or three other demon lords for one girl… is that the risk yah wanna take?”
He asked, earnestly. Honestly to show he was genuinely curious if that was worth it. She knew better than most that demons didn’t mind stepping into another’s lair, especially when there was promise. And in turn he looked to her tree. “That alone, would feed another demon lord. Yah be givin’ it right over to them. A premade offerin’ of blood and gore and promise that they could very well just hand over to Heirra herself. If that is where their alliances are currently, it’s a problem. The girl with me, at least means we aren’t bringin’ the fire to yer feet like some whelpin’ babies that need mother to fix the problem.”
Then he sighed, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “But if that’s what yah be wantin’, I can’t content with that. However,” Arc tilted his chin up to her once more, “Yah can either make us an ally in some way, or yah let me walk away with this suggestion of a dwindlin’ leash and I let Xalthnos or Holic know that there is a place here with fresh ample untempered supply of blood. Yah can kill me of course, but we both know I’ll just go down to the hells where I can freely natter all day long.”
The demon smiled sweetly, “All I want is my faelin’ with her livin’ faelin’s freed. For that price, I think it’s fair, is it not, my lady?” Violets rested upon her open and sincere. “One girl and a few other faelin’ surely aren’t worth losin’ it all.” Lips formed tighter, “Make a deal worth it for the faerie girl. Somethin’ she won’t refuse, and yah’ll be sure to profit from it all. Surely one of yer calibre has had more dealin’s with humans and sorts that yah can make somethin’ so inticin’ that she wouldn’t want to try her hand again at angerin’ yah.”
But of course he knew it had to have something more to it. “If yah can’t and she seeks vengeance… then yah can have my heart to chew on for yer tree. An archmage demon… that’s hard to pass up. Being one of a kind and all.” Was it wise to leverage himself, probably not. But he needed Calia to have something that she wouldn’t want to throw into the fire so willingly. And if she did, well… then he’d only have himself to blame for believing in her.
The young demon had decided to drop to his knee, so thoughtful in expression that it tickled the dark queen down to her dark little heart. Wondering just where he was going to steer his attempts next – seduction? Pointless. Begging? Nay, the man had a pride in him. He most certainly wasn’t done letting those inner wheels turn.
His reputation had proceeded him, which truly was the only reason why she entertained this conversation at all. Archimedes was a great power in the making, a novelty, something far more of worth than a faerie who hadn’t yet grown her wings.
In turn, as he made his case to point out all the trouble keeping the girl would bring, Sursha leaned towards him. Resting her own elbow on the armrest and planting pointed chin in her hand. Giving a noncommittal shrug to his claim that dark fae would come in such a frequency that it would be a plague rather than fuel for her glorious twisted tree. A dismissive feh about the warlock that’d managed to steal the fae’s heart wanted the shell of her, and whatever ilk he’d gain from her stolen power. A straight up laugh about Heirra herself coming forward – as if that paltry cow ever did anything with her own hands.
It wasn’t until the mention of other demon lords that she stilled, narrowing her eyes to ruby slits. This appeared to be information she was unaware of – that the girl may have gained attention from the highest echelon of the demon realms.
That was enough for him to snap on like a hungry dog, to threaten to blabber his mouth the realms that Sur’sha Rak’ne had a grand prize in her possession. He’d stumbled into the one thing that would genuinely piss her off and create problems. For her own ambitions could not succeed if every single damnable lord of the infernal wanted to come knocking on her doors for an unfriendly visit.
For the threat alone she almost sent him to the hells. Let him talk. It would not be the first time she had changed her plans.
Yet– clever as he was, he finally offered something worth sinking her teeth into. For the demon did not know truly just how valuable he actually was.
“Tricky, tricky…” she purred with a growing smile. “You will risk your heart for one who is destined to burn? That she will choose you over her own kind, her own kin, her own righteous madness?”
Sur’sha Rak’ne curled one hand into a fist until her nails dug deep into the skin and broke free thick beads of blood. Still there leaning close with her chin in her other hand, she offered that bloody palm.
“Truly, I am fascinated to see how it plays out. If your faerie makes a deal with me, I shall allow you both to go free. No strings, no lingering deals. By all means you will have earned it. However… if she refuses or makes a deal and attempts to betray it – your heart is mine. You’ll both feed my tree.”
Ah so she wasn’t keen on other demon lords coming into her realm. He had a pretty good idea that it would’ve been a problem but her subtle change was enough to express it was something she didn’t want. Maybe not because she couldn’t handle it but, it was never truly just one demon lord, now was it?
One became two, two became six and so forth. Especially if the ones before died, it only suggested that there was something truly worth all that death.
It was a card he would pull if it had to be. But it would be a very back pocket sort of plan. One that could only be exacted if this demoness didn’t bite on the next.
Honestly, he didn’t know he had any worth outside of being a sodding former pain in the ass for the demonic race. Beyond that, if he failed to get Calia out, then it really didn’t matter, now did it?
There was stuff to unpack about all that, but not now.
Not when this one seemed to brighten on his final remark. Pleased to have something offered and in turn suggesting that he was foolish for it. Of course he could boast that she would choose him like some sort of heroic declaration. Nor could he just say he was jesting either.
Instead he just smiled, head tilting a bit shyly. “Well that be some of the interest and fun, will she or not.” And he had to truly hope it did, especially as this demoness spoke whilst making her own hand bleed.
Till he looked at it gleaming and arched his brow. “Calia’s choice must be made in absolute autonomy.” Arc stated, his tone shifting to one that likely fit his former skills as an advisor.
“No internal or external influence of any kind may act upon her—magical, psychological, emotional, metaphysical, spiritual, temporal, instinctual, coercive, suggestive, subconscious, or otherwise.” This wasn’t his first deal after all. Nor his first act in a mission of declaration.
“No livin’ bein’, dead bein’, construct, spirit, god, demon, dryder, supernatural, concept, memory, compulsion, geas, curse, blessing, fate, prophecy, illusion, enchantment, bond, instinct, echo, or residual effect may shape, guide, pressure, alter, delay, restrict, or inform her decision in any manner. Her choice must arise solely from her own independent judgment, unaltered will, and personal reasonin’, exactly as they exist in the moment the choice is made.”
Arc stared at her making it clear he wasn’t about to let his fall on some failed wording. “If any force, action, presence, influence, or interference—regardless of origin, intent, scale, or awareness—affects her decision in any way that is not wholly and exclusively her own, then the choice is rendered null. In that event, Calia is immediately and unconditionally released from all obligations, bindin’s, claims, and consequences, and I am released alongside her, without exception.”
Only then he offered his hand to her, “All this has also gotta be told to her so she can make the deal fairly. Otherwise what’s then fun in it all if she can’t get the choice indiscriminately to prove yer wisdom.”
To the declaration that the girl’s choice must be made in absolute autonomy Sursha merely shrugged her shoulders, agreeing with a mumbled naturally. Though it came it quick succession that he had many, many caveats on exactly what that meant. She held up a finger, then two, then three, four five, and he kept going. Her eyes going wide with every addition until it felt he had indeed truly listed every single potential point of contention under the sun until Sur’sha Rak’ne was erupting into joyous laughter.
A young demon he might be, but oh what a clever young demon. He even seemed to account for her potential of taunting the girl in later years to incite her violence – thus the single moment of choice was the only one that mattered.
It almost sounded a little too much in his favor until he insisted that all of this, the deal in full must be explained to the girl. The truth out there in the open.
Did he not recognize how that could backfire upon him?
Did it matter, anymore? Sur’sha Rak’ne was entertained either way.
“So it be,” she agreed, taking his hand. Her blood enveloping his to lash dark red streaks of the contract’s binding across the back of his hand and along the wrist in a pattern of webs. Complex in, well, he’d made it complex hadn’t he! While simple in scope all at the same time.
A faerie girl’s agreement to make a deal, nothing more, nothing less.
On releasing his hand, Sursha rose in a graceful sweep, her throne of black lavastone melting away back to ground whence it came. A few short steps brought her to the foot of the tree. There was no ceremony in how she placed her hand against he oozing trunk, just a shot of red glimmering vein traveling upwards until it curled around a single branch and one of the cocoon lumps ripped open with a violent tear. Releasing the unconscious faerie to fall, covered in a heap of murky reddish goop.
“You may have the mercy of speaking with her first. To have a fair chance, after all.”
By all means in the grand scheme of it all, he was young compared to most demons. Barely grown into his nose and yet as an elven man, he had been at his adulthood for a good chunk of years. Both melding into a some sort of arrangement that while he certainly wasn’t about to leave any sort of slip of lip or wording declare that Calia was about to become this demoness newest lunch menu permanently, it was also to slightly showcase that he was hardly as stupid as likely some rumours suggested. Wild, untamed and reckless most times, absolutely. But he was not without some wits that declared he knew how to make a contract as ironclad as possible. Avoiding any slips of loopholes that could be exploited with just the right slip.
Calia’s life was truly on the line and it needed him to be as detailed as possible. Somewhere in his head almost scoffing cause he was certain that if Calia heard him speak as he had been, she would have pointed out that he was some sort of nonsense advisor that did know a thing or two.
All that mattered even through the giggles, she didn’t pause. Their hands were tied together and the means of blood literally signed the pact to declare that if Calia didn’t move to try to make a deal with the demoness, he and her would both be fucked. He knew somewhere that Calia really wouldn’t have given a shit about herself –it was something they shared in a messed up way- but for all her means of telling him in her own way and verbally that he wasn’t the one to be sold as such, he had to bank silently that she was about to do just that. To see this what it was and understand that if she made the deal, it would be the thing that broke them both free.
It was an intense gamble. One that had it literally all on the line. While leaving it to the demoness now to really believe and use what knowledge and sights she had witnessed of Calia to believe that she was so narrow minded that she wouldn’t be able to give up the chance to just flip the biggest middle finger possible.
His hand was enveloped in that of a very on the nose detailing of a bloody web. Binding and lashing in place that it declared in a very obvious silent announcement that there was no escape now. One that Arc took a moment to consider it all from wrist to palm, whilst the demoness who he had not asked a name for as of yet, went to her feet. Urging him to his own as there was thankfully no thunder and lightning with a menacing cackle as she made the effort to release Calia from whatever cocoon she had been in.
Certainly not without a bit of telling flair for when the lump opened, she came out in a goop of red that was something he guess was a slow devouring enzyme. His head tipped to the demoness as she spoke about giving him the mercy to speak with Calia first and he, for all his candour, offered her a deep sincere bow. “Yah be very gracious, mistress.” Meaning every word because well, just because he made this gamble, didn’t mean that if he insulted her that they wouldn’t be murdered in an entirely different way.
With due care and mindful steps to help himself over to the goopy mass that was Calia, there was no hesitation to stoop and pull her messy self into his form. Adjusting to kneel and keep one leg up so she could be propped up against it, using coat sleeve to wipe away as much of the bloody mess from face and ears, “Time to wakey, petal. We’ve got some business to attend too that yah have started and requires a proper finish too. Yah stormed into the wrong place but right now, yah gotta make the deal with the demoness to save my hide.” Wording it just in the way that it did make it sound like he really was only concerned about himself. It would have been easy to push into the tether a sort of trust or telling of what needed to happen, but he did include in his contract that no bond could be used either.
So he was truly banking on Calia!
This might’ve been the first time in Calia’s entire life that she was glad to wake up.
The place she’d been was not the bliss of a black empty void of nothing – that’s how she always imagine death would be. Peaceful nothing where she finally wouldn’t feel anything at all. A cold, wonderful, eternal nothing.
There was always a chance that she’d die and go straight to the realm of demons. Arc said that wasn’t how it worked, yet for eons mortals were certain if your soul was bleak and tainted enough, you’d find yourself sent to the depths to be tortured for all of your sins. Demons had always been meant to torment and punish the evil of the world. Calia never thought she was evil, but she sure wasn’t good either, was she!
Yet somehow she had been somewhere far, far worse than a demon’s realm. Sulfurous black smoke would’ve been a welcomed atmosphere to the horrified bright burning red she’d floated in. Every limb, every sense paralyzed as it ate at her, not in great tearing chunks but through the teeny tiniest sharp burning pricks. The natural healing of just being fae doing it’s best to counter such wounds, only for them to continue. Over and over and over. Devoured for a millennia until there was nothing left of her but a husk.
And she could hear them all, feel them all. Other faeries being devoured and screaming in agony right along with her.
A full body shudder and a gasp was how she returned to the waking world, reaching out and grasping into his shirt with the sort of force and intent that had it bee anybody else – had it not been Archimedes – she would’ve reached right through their chest to grasp onto heart or bone. Fir green eyes that should have felt warm were icy when her gaze flickered over him, purely wild. Feral.
The mix of enchanted iron poisoning and dryder venom surging through her blood was the only thing keeping her stumbling groggily in motion. Lucky for them both, as her stare went upwards to see that tainted tree of torment still standing, having now first hand experience of just how agonizing a fate it truly was, swift murder was the only thing she had in mind! Already attempting to untangle herself from Archimedes in stilted movements.
Oddly, or perhaps it was to be expected, those runes and wards that made up the protections of Sursha’s lair were suspiciously inactive. The demon queen had laid herself open to potential attack… at least from the faerie girl herself. The demoness herself standing a few paces away with her hands clasped together and a telling smile.
“Easy.” Reaching over to tighten his own grasp over the one that had snatched onto his shirt like it was either a lifeline, or about to strangle her; the wild look she possessed was hardly surprising. He didn’t have to guess what sort of start Calia had been in before she was put into such a state, but he did need her to be able to listen even a little.
Lightly squeezing that of palm, pressing thumb into that of the soft padding of her own to massage softly. Keeping a level calm about himself in hopes that it might radiate off enough that she would replicate it. Following the way those green globes were moving and naturally moving to the tree that was well past saving. At least for now.
And of course Calia wasn’t one even in an addled state to ignore that presence that was the demoness. Lolling head over to consider her and naturally the being’s web they were in, offered a grin. “Love, listen to me.” Softening the edges of voice as best he could but doing well not to remove the crisp need for attention, less Calia start believing he wasn’t who he was or something. “Yah’ve got some work to do. For yer heavy hand and the intention of tacklin’ somethin’ that was far larger than either of us.” He wasn’t about to downplay that. He knew this demoness was stronger than them, maybe not together but they weren’t cohesive enough right now to be a dangerous team.
Plus the agreement was in play, he couldn’t do much without risking everything else. This was now a game of hopes and wits. “Everythin’ is in play, and yer guna have to listen carefully to what the demoness asks for. A deal needs to be made with her. By yer choice. Either yah make a deal with her, or well, we both get devoured.” He made a rotation of hand so she might have a chance to see the details upon hand and wrist the demoness had graciously given. “Yah gotta make the choice Calia, and understand that the risks are either safety or death. This is yer chance of course to ensure that well, my very presence is someone else’s to manage.” Wording it in such a way that he wasn’t trying to sway Calia openly but clear that it was in fact a moment that she very well could ensure that he was out of her hair. But that she would also be rendered back to the tree and there would be nothing he could do about it.
Calia was already playing it off in her head exactly what she was about to do. Her entire body tense, ready to attack the second even the smallest flicker of the right moment presented itself. How she would reach into her hollow and draw out that demon slaying sword, be gone in a blink and plunge it right into that demon woman’s heart. Seconds. It would only take seconds.
His words weren’t registering in the wake of her fury, at least not at first. That demoness standing there as he spoke with such a smug, patient smile across her features that it made something in Calia’s stomach churn. Not until he gestured with his hand and should could see the bright red etchings of webbing making up a contract that the world became slightly more in focused.
…and more crushingly overwhelming.
Planting her hand against his chest she pushed him back, half cringing, half horrified as she rolled, crawled, and eventually stumbled to her feet to gain a few paces of distance. It wasn’t him, not his fault – Calia was going to combust. That was the only thought to describe it, she was so certain that everything in her was about to ignite and obliterate everything around her simply from the pure angry frustration. Calia did not know if she had any restraint left in her and by simply being there he was going to become collateral damages whether she meant to or not.
This was clearly what the demoness was banking on. Watching with untamped amusement as the faerie girl struggled against her very nature. To act on feelings alone, to not have any sense of control whatsoever. Perhaps she might have been an intelligent and thoughtful thing if she were in her best of health with time to get her thoughts in order. Yet, this was where Sursha knew she had the upper hand, for this girl had to make her choices fast at a diminished capacity. Finding full entertainment in seeing those range of emotions shoot across the young woman’s face as she sought to look back at her bound counterpart, attempting to draw out understanding of the stakes.
“Allow me to state it plainly,” purred out the demonness. “I am an elder being, little girl. Your counterpart has made a deal that amuses me and terms are simple. You make a contract with me, you will not make further attempts to kill me and I shall let not just you and your counterpart go without bindings, but the living souls I keep as well. Refuse me and I take you both. Live and let live, it is as simple as that.”
“…he is what you wanted in the first place. You won’t let him go. You’ve already won.” murmured Calia, if only buying herself the time to try and will more control over her own body. Pushing past those sensations of feeling as if she were still being eaten alive, trying to ignore the horrified echoing screams of tormented faeries that she could still hear even when she was not wrapped up tight in a deep agonizing sleep.
What had she done. He shouldn’t have came down here at all. At least if it had only been her, she could’ve accepted the fate of her own fucked up stupid choices. Arc could have lived without her! Now he’d gone and done something equally as foolish, and how could he not realized he only made it worse! Gave this demon bitch exactly what she wanted. This deal for their freedom didn’t make sense.
Sursha appeared to be well aware of this, giving that shrug of her shoulders and that continued calm smile that boiled Calia’s blood.
“That is the frustrating truth of it, isn’t it. To keep him I must also keep you. I’d like to continue my work without the apparent hoards of dark fae and demons alike that seem to be interested in you. However, I am not keen on allowing you to live and having a murderous vengeful faerie being a nuisance. I fear I will have no peace either way, so why not flip the coin of chance and play a little game.”
“I can kill you, unmake you,” hissed Calia so sincerely that there was no shadow of a doubt that it was truth.
That calm smile of the demoness shifted to smugness once again, glancing Calia in her poised state up and down. Slowly raising her hand to wriggle her fingers and display the contract she’d made with Archimedes. “Unmake me and you unmake him as well. Clever little demon he is in how well he worded the contract. Every word one could think of, every single potential condition… for your sake. Return me to the hells and he comes with me. Unmake my very soul, and he shall meet the same fate. My life is his life, until the conditions of the contract are met.”
The look Calia shot Arc was scathing at best, heartbreaking at worse because this wasn’t a choice to be made. The only option to here was perfectly clear, plain as day. This demoness was everything and more that Calia couldn’t stand, couldn’t abide by and to make any sort of deal to let her go free to continue the evil she was doing? She would never do it to save herself. This entire cavern would fucking burn.
But for Arc…? He had burned enough.
“…fine.” she whispered, so quietly it was almost not to be heard. Sur’sha Rak’ne even tilted her head giving a questioning hmm? until Calia snarled under her breath, “Fine. I will make a deal.”
One might expected Sursha to look surprised, considering she was betting on Calia not making a deal at all. Instead she practically fed on the angst of the entire decision made – it could have been her goal all along with how she approached, scratching a long line of blood into her palm and offered it to the girl. Getting to watch someone more powerful than comprehension having to bow their own principals in a futile defeat. Knocking someone young and willful down a few pegs was a delicious thing all in itself.
Calia grasped her hand and held tight. A flash of something defiant in her stare and a crackling in the air that almost warned of a potential attack waiting there in the wind. “The contract you made with Arc, if I agree.” She stated firmly.
Sursha smiled bright. “I shall set the living free, as well as yourself and your bound demon. In return, you will not attack me. You will not attempt to kill me. You will no longer ever be a threat to me. We will never be a threat to each other. Until the end of days.”
A long lingering silence followed, hesitation, waiting… Calia’s gaze flickering to Arc before rising upwards towards the tree itself. Finally she nodded, eyes turning back to the dark demon queen. “I accept.”
Without flare, without ceremony just as the deal had been made with Archimedes, the demoness’ blood wrapped itself around Calia’s hand and her wrist to make the webbing pattern. Though with the scope of this agreement something burned bright not just within Sursha’s mark but in the ones that then gave an icy scorched onto the back of Sursha’s own hand.
As promised the cocoons all over the tree began to rip and tear, dozens upon dozens of unconscious mangled faeries in terrible shape but very much alive came tumbling down to the ground below.
Yet Calia held the hand tight.
“The tree itself is also a living thing under your control.”
That brought the demoness eyes to widened surprise. “So it is,” she murmured with amusement.
The deal had already been struck and contract made, there was no choice in the matter anymore. Sur’sha Rak’ne took in a deep breath to retract her power, those glimmering red veins shrinking, slinking, drawing away from the tree itself. Through the roots and the very ground until they’d all returned to the source where they blazed within the dark queen’s own blood.
Still Calia hadn’t released her hand.
“…and it is by it’s very nature, connected at the roots to all others of it’s kind. It is one tree, the world tree.” Calia pointed out.
At that final statement, Sursha pulled her hand away with a jerk, shock, surprise… nothing quite strong enough to describe her bewilderment before that musical bell like laughter filled the entire cavern. Delight, joy,… truthfully nothing had ever stunned her quite so perfectly. Glancing first at the brand of Calia’s contract that had fully formed over her hand – like the swirls of frost patterns on a frozen lake – before looking up to beam her glorious smile at Archimedes.
“Oh, I see it now…!” she exclaimed with a fascinated sort of awe. “There it is, that precious thing they all crave… Oh, the two of you are going to be such a great deal of fun.”
For once, this was the perfect moment for him to be a silent observer. For him to be too eager might have suggested he had plans in waiting. That he was trying to manipulate the scene. But to be too lackluster may have just given Calia some sort of thought in that bungled mush of brain that he was already giving up.
No, not even remotely. He just had to let it all come down to Calia and hope that somewhere in that all, her actual wits were going to pull through. She might call herself stupid but he knew she was anything but. She was exactly what her bloodline was, fae. They were notoriously unpredictable and that alone he was kinda hoping for too!
So when Calia pushed away from him –a part of him did of course feel that more than he should have. A sort of weight that moved into that state that naturally she would have found what happened to be entirely his own stupid fault. But he snuffed that deep down to keep to himself and simply brushed his pants off as best he could from her goopy stuff.
Leaving her right now to do exact as he expressed. For Calia to react without any influence. From him, from the demoness.
If it all came down to Calia being unable to control herself because her anger was passionate and her fury was sharper than his own claws, then that was the result of it all. He could not, would not stop it. As the whole contract had been worded out so heavily to ensure Calia wouldn’t be swayed this way or that. Regardless of whom it was, she had to decide in the end. Her choices, where always going to be hers.
So while the demoness looked perfectly and utterly amused, Arc simply stuck his hands down into his pockets. Looking a little bored –feeling it a bit too- but listening because the elder creature of silk and dangerous webbing was quick to declare that they were in fact an elder being. That she wasn’t cut from the same cloth as other demons Calia had thus far faced and that he in turn, managed to entertain the spider queen herself well enough that they made a contract. As stated, they were required to tell Calia everything, and the whole rebuttal of the demoness having wanted him in the first place, that got an arched brow from him.
Looking at the elder demon in a way that probably spoke loudly of why? Even going so far to look over himself as if there was something of value dangling off his neck because as long as he existed, there was very little actually useful about him. Save for the massive well of magic but that was already anted up.
It seemed like there had been a discussion well before he had come which was curious but not valuable right now. Having to settle and just listen while Calia was in fact managing not to lunge outright at the other’s neck. Not that such thoughts weren’t playing loudly on her face.
The back and forth came. Calia threatening. The demoness countering.
It was that countering that he was banking on. Knowing at least in some capacity that Calia had in fact put a lot of fucking effort into keeping him above the soil. Keeping him from being unmade because she could have just left him in a few scenarios if she were truly ready to just be done with it all. That gamble was it all. Hoping that she was going to use that same stubborn desire to ensure that it wasn’t all in vain and it would save so much. So when the room went still and the deal came to the head that he had put his coin on.
Well, he managed not to smirk about it. Just a glance to the demoness as they begun their own deal. And it was there, truly there, that he was hoping Calia’s fiery determination not to be bested or to be belittled, would make itself known. Her own smarts, her own talents and her own ability to prove that real tricky deals were in fact made by fae. Not by demons.
It took a great deal in him not to be a theatrical dick. Keeping his hands in pockets while Calia declared that she would agree to the deal that they had stuck and had the demoness repeat outloud what the end result would be.
Set the living free. Them and in turn Calia would not attack her again. Nor attempt to kill and vice versa. They’d be pretty much null and void to another. Didn’t mean that Calia couldn’t arrange with her own skills that another take up the hunt for this demoness and vice versa as well. So one had to be wise about that.
They were truly a test of wills as the new accord was struck. And it seemed for a moment as the tree released those who were not quite dead, free; Calia was about to prove just how good she was about reading between the lines. Leaving him to at least look surprised when the dangerous faeling girl refused to let go and pointed out that the tree itself was also a living thing. But it went deeper, literally. That its roots were to others and it was probably there that Arc couldn’t at all resist the wicked fanged grin that burst across visage.
Partly because of the demoness shock, partly because Calia wasn’t a fool.
Throwing that grin at the one who looked please to have been well, played a little bit. Encouraging him of course, “We’ll that all depends on who thinks any of this is fun, but it will be very… explosive.” Attention tilted to Calia, studying her with both a bit of worry and a sense of pride. But it didn’t remain because well, he had to consider the moment now. They had to deal with all the other faeling’s and Calia clearly needed to recuperate from whatever was running wild within her.
“Remember me, Calia, champion of the hopelessly lost. I am Sur’sha Rak’ne and we are now bound allies. Whether you wish it or not.” Sursha’s laughter followed her, even as her physical form started to ash away and catch the stale air. As if it needed her form to even exist, the webs that draped every nook and cranny of the mountain cul de sac too began to ash away with her. Leaving nothing left but the giant faerie tree whose blackened bark had now taken on that ashen grey and the fallen forms of fae creatures who were all confusedly starting to stir.
Calia stood there quietly by pure stubborn willpower alone. Something hollow having formed in the pit of her stomach. …was this not what she wanted? She’d come tearing through the city of thieves with intent to stop something most horrible – and technically she’d failed spectacularly at first. Failed so badly that Archimedes had to risk his own stupid life to give her the chance to fix it. And she did, she fixed it. …didn’t she?
She didn’t deserve to crumble to her knees and cry. This had been a monumental mess of her own making. Good and bad, too many things all at once. Too many feelings. And all she craved was to reach for that safe place, but she couldn’t because she’d fucking done this and she needed to stand on her own damn feet and accept the consequences!
Which from outward appearances for those who could not hear her inner thoughts, just saw someone standing there looking ready to commit murder if anything even dared to take a step towards her. It could’ve been true with the way she frowned and finally just closed her eyes because looking just added to the overwhelm.
Somehow now afraid to even make the smallest of actions for the gods only knew how she could fuck that up as well!
“For now.” Was all he could privately think as apparently her name was Sur’sha –it was not ringing a bell- but it would be in his mind for any quick recollection. They’d only been in this predicament for the time being and while it might not be one of weighty wealth, it could very well be useful. That alone was something he could stew on to develop some ideas and perhaps in the roundabout way, they might figure out a way for Calia to end her unlikely awkward alliance. It was going to take some depth in which was not required right now.
Only for the space was being returned to a generally ashen appearance to where his own stare rose up to consider the tree that had been a twisted macabre version of itself and properly frowned at it.
He didn’t really care for Gaia any longer, but the fae tree was still part of the network. Sickly as it was, it would need serious tending too. So much that those of the faeling sorts around currently had much to owe to Calia and perhaps it was in that very thought too that they ought to realize that. The girl may have unintentionally added to that fabled court the absent magpie had been nattering about.
Rather than getting lost into his own thoughts and schemes, attention veered. Shortening its focus to the girl that was practically appearing like a violent tremor of nerves and fury and well, whatever else was held up inside, prompting him to step up. Already well expecting the sort of verbal assault if not a few swinging punches because well, as much as he was proud of her for being quick to make the deal work more in her favour, this was Calia.
No amount of worry he had for her was going to dull her more emotional violent outbursts. But she needed to climb off that crafted tension so she might at least allow her body to try to work through the poison and he had to determine how bad it was. Likely to craft an elixir of some sort or already had one tucked away in his hollow somewhere.
Feet shuffled along the earth, approaching effortlessly and in turn merely opening hands to grapple to either one of her shoulders. Squeezing tight but gently, “Well, yah can add that one to the books. Feisty fae princess bests some ancient spider queen from the depths of hell. A first I would surmise. Ain’t sure where it’s guna fit neatly in the trilogy of books that clearly guna have to be written for yer exploits, Lia.”
Rings of heliotrope flickered along her, lightly nudging her inwards at first. Ultimately tugging so she could plant herself into his chest, “Yah did good, love.”
Calia winced at the first touch – of course every part of her hurt, yet somehow the gentle firmness was not what she expected. Unsure even what she did think was to happen. That he’d somehow have the same kind of horror about her that Renus did when she was such a wild thing? That he’d lecture her for acting on self righteous impulses the same as Starling he said?
Archimedes never did any of those things, though maybe that was why the gentleness of his hands and the approval in his voice dug the knife in her stomach a little deeper. She didn’t deserve it. As always she’d gone from having a jaunty little stroll through a lively city and it’d taken minutes, mere minutes for her to become a problem. This time without even having someone else to blame for starting it.
There was no calm with her, no peace.
She also apparently had no willpower whatsoever.
Without even bending her knees she tilted forward, wrapping her hands around herself cause she still couldn’t bring herself to grasp at him, but still buried her face there into his chest with a shudder.
By now those faeries who’d not yet been sold away to the witch of the city, had found their way to the city’s edge where a tree set free from illusion and blight – not dead, still stubbornly clinging to life – was now itself whispering it’s unheard song. Even those demon hounds had followed, one chewing what was absolutely a dryder’s leg like it was a lambchop came and dropped it nearby like an offering. Both having let their fiery fur taper off to only looking like smokey long-faced dogs now that they were no longer hunting.
My sister is alive.
Seeming not to be able to use vocal words now, the brush of her thoughts against the tether came so much easier. Not the statement explained anything on how she’d started any of this mess. Just another vague added bit of confusion to top the pile with.
When her head at least plunked into him even if her arms seemed to be dead set to fold around herself, he wasn’t terribly that worried about it. Some storms in one’s head had to whirl around a bit before they could be snuffled or let them peter out themselves. So for now, when she was using him more of a support, clawed fingers rose to sink themselves into dark crown. Uncaring about its state, just sort of scraping tips over to soothe and scritch while making a careful attempt at untangling the muddy mass that had been slathered in goop too.
Eyes veering enough to see the collecting of oddities that were fae and the smouldering hounds that seemed to have found one of the dryder sister’s legs. “Yah don’t even know where that’s been,” Arc chastised like that was the biggest concern, but he wasn’t shooing at the mass.
It was the jingle of a voice in the tether that caused him a low hum. Restarting the bend of claws to blend slowly, “Well, that’s good news. Seems the feistiness runs in yer families blood. A good quality to have when yer facin’ off with troubles ancient and fuckin’ annoyin’.” When his grasp met the nape of neck, Arc bent a little to let lips brush near temple. “I think yah need a rest, love. A wash proper first if yer guna accept that. We can sort the rest in a few but yah’ve been through hell and I can manage the rest for a time. If yah can trust that.”
Was it good that her sister was alive on the other side of the mountains being hunted by an insane queen? On her own too for there was no mentioned of her brother at all! Only a man, a huntsman who was the very queen’s own son. How was that supposed to be a good thing? She’d killed those nasty rogues that bragged about snatching her and helpless faeries, made sure the one they sold those faeries to at least wasn’t ever going to be able to use a tree against it’s own kin ever again.
That didn’t help her sister directly though. Yet the mere thought of going to find her filled Calia with such a dread. The chaos and messes she left in her wake were only growing larger and larger and now she herself was starting those fires. Because why? She thought better than everyone else?
“You’ve already done plenty. It’s my mess to clean,” she finally muttered out loud. Shifting enough now to at least dare to peek at the bewildered reawakened and a whole slew of faerie things now very expectantly staring in her direction. As if she were supposed to do something, say something… be something!
The world suddenly grew real nauseating then, all swirly-whirly loosey goosey. Her hand came up to cover her mouth and she was burrowing her face once again. It was bury herself in him or fall into the void – and she just had to trust he meant it when he said she could reach for him.
Take me away. Anywhere far far far away.
It was pretty immediate the way she was muttering at him and suggesting that he’d done plenty. That right now was her mess to clean even if he didn’t think that was remotely true. And while her tone and choice of wording stung, he was also equally pretty accustomed to it. The whole you’ve done plenty wasn’t exactly something he hadn’t ever heard in short supply!
For now, he was going to have to accept that and put the bitter thoughts aside because right now, there was a lot to do and evidently with all the slow gathering and collecting souls that were either freed before becoming snacks for a tree, or after having been freed while needing a serious case of cleansing in various ways; Calia was burying into him.
Pressing words once more into the tether.
“Gather all the fae here,” Arc spoke to the hounds, “Nicely. No nippin’ or snappin.” The warning was clear, they had better all be whole or said hounds were guna be launched into orbit! Whilst manifesting the doorway that allowed him to pull Calia into grasp properly so at least the anywhere was somewhere comfortable. Back to the Etherion, though purposefully having made the step in to be that of the chamber where she could at least wash. Making sure he wasn’t carrying her about too long but steadied hands to that of shoulders once more. Pulling her back, “Yah need to rest. Wash in the tub, take yer time. Let me just deal with the other matters right now while yah take yer time with whatever yah need.”
He offered a softer chuckle. “I won’t fuck thin’s up more than I usually do. So don’t stress, if possible. Yah can have a hollarin’ fit at me after if thin’s aren’t up to snuff but that will wait till then. When yah have had time. I ain’t guna stay at the moment just cause I want yah to wash up in hot water. Take the time needed to think or not think. Whatever yah feel is best, but just call if yah need me or want me to just piss off.”
A squeeze. A soft patting and he stepped back, “Sure the cats will find yah quickly enough.”
Hellhounds loved a good herding, though they did prefer to do it with snapping and snarling, maybe even swallowing a soul or two. Thankfully this pair had more than their fill of ill-intent people and legs of dryders in their stomach – those two injured sister were suspiciously absent, it could be they’d found themselves as dessert!
Calia let herself be taken away from the mess she knew was hers to manage, because she was a coward more than she was dangerous. A foolish young baby is what that demon thought of it and how woefully it was true! But worse because Calia didn’t have any excuses.
“You’re being too nice to me.” I don’t deserve it, put you in a bad position. “I told you you wouldn’t like it down there.” I just didn’t think you’d like the spiders, I didn’t mean for anything to happen. “I just… need a minute, you don’t have to do anything else.” I made them to take look after you, I was trying to look after all of them and I can’t eve do that–
Her movements were automatic as she broke away from him, saying her usual vague statements out loud with barely any awareness at all that the thoughts behind them were pushing through at the same time. Something desperate that needed him to understand was in control, even while she full body rolled herself into the tub without even bothering to get her clothes off. The enchantments of the place could do the rest – though she did suspiciously sink herself down far enough to have her whole torso and head to be slowly buried in water for a good drowning.
She wouldn’t drown herself at least, as tired and guilty and confused as she was, they both knew she wouldn’t do that.
Holy hell in a hand basket, the multi-source voice of herself coming verbally and through that of the tether was certainly not something he could have expected. And he doubted that she realized that it was happening at all, considering she was literally saying one thing and then mentally it was coming through as likely the more honest truth.
Her attempting to be strong while the inner parts of her were scared, vulnerable and hurt.
Add on how she just rolled herself into the tub with clothing and all, Arc did watch a moment to actually ensure she wasn’t about to just turn herself into seafoam.
It would have been pretty easy to tell her to stop.
To remind her that they were supposed to work together.
That she had a bad habit of not wanting to rely on him when he wasn’t as fucking useless as he might seem.
None of that came. Rather, he thought and turned back to the tub.
Perching hands upon the lip, then kneeling down. Shifting arms to cross over another, so chin could fold and his features were plain. Earnest, worried, hurt in its own way. “What do yah need me to do, Calia?” Asking her outright what she needed. Anything at all rather than shooting barbed words or snapping cruelly because things had been quite wild.
Right now, she simply had to just tell him what she needed. Nothing else.
Calia didn’t know what it was about him sinking down to the tub and folding his arms over the edge that drew her immediate attention. Or why him simply asking what she needed suddenly silenced her tumultuous thoughts longer enough for her to just look at him. Head to toe examine every single detail of his features, seeking out… what? His disappointment? His fear?
“I don’t know,” she admitted. This is the stupidest time to think about kissing. “Kill me?” she did finally answer, trying her best to paint that cheeky smile on. I’m sorry, you hate it when I say that.
That cheeky smile fell away and her voice went silent, watching him with a soft frown until she finally pushed her way up the side of the tub by way of her feet. Giving a squeeeek from the goop against the porcelain until she was high enough to tilt her head against the lip.
He was always looking after her in the wake of every mess, and she never had anything to say about it. Sometimes she said thank you, yet that never really felt enough when he was always there. Forced to read her mind or guess, or just hope whatever he did was the right thing. Dealing with all of it, when Calia herself never knew what she wanted, or needed. She stumbled through everything and he’d pick her up off the ground and figure it out for her.
He asked and this time she needed to have an answer.
“…there’s enchanted iron left in that city. I shouldn’t have left it behind like I did. Make it disappear? And I will take a bath and try not to die. Then we will figure the rest out? One thing at a time?”
I don’t know was a better answer than the blurting thoughts that were bleeding into the tether –it was a good thing he had a pretty damn good poker face, cause what the hell was she thinking there!- but ultimately huffed when she gave him that kill me statement with a cheeky little painted grin. Thankfully another ebb of thought slipped through to broadcast silently that she did know he was not a fan of that. If he wasn’t who he was now, it could have been easy enough for him to give into.
Save, that wasn’t the case. And wasn’t going to be again.
Claws tapped in a rhythmic clips whilst she made her way back up from the waters as not to replicate her best imitation of a seal trying to stealth amongst the surface. Frowning was a little more suitable even if it was evident that she was searching for something that might not even be required.
Where the room was seemingly holding its breath in turn, till she spoke. Mentioning enchanted iron still in the thieves city and she just wanted him to make it disappear. “Easy enough.” Honestly, he wouldn’t mind investigating this enchanted iron a little closer to see what could be done about it. And if there was a possibility to create a sort of reagent from its mass that acted as a counter spell.
A few pats to the tub and he was gathering himself upright once more. “Hmm, one thin’ atta time. The disaster is avoided currently and well, I best see how many thieves still be hangin’ about. Whilst tryin’ to stop yer bound to be plenty of ravin’ faelin’s that want to join yer court that yah likely have bloomed unintentionally.” As feet were suitably beneath his frame, Arc paused only at the door. “I’ll work on somethin’ to try and alleviate the roots of the tree so it might at least start healing. Yah burstin’ open the old water valves likely was a blessin’ in disguise. Yah rest, I’ll handle the masses and assure there ain’t a lick of tainted iron around. And any other potential nasties.”
There was a tip to his chin to indicate that he trusted she would at least take the time she needed in whatever way she required. And he would at least hopefully keep things organized enough that she would have it all being less of a burden for the time being.
Calia nodded, keeping voice silent both vocal and in thought until he finally left the room with the door sealed gently behind.
“…I have feelings, feelings, feelings,” she whispered to the empty room, mimicking the nonsense that fae magpie had loved to say. What feelings were a little harder to decipher, beyond the matter that they were so intensely needy that she’d almost asked him to stay there with her. Tempted even now to tug him back through the tether and… hells be damned, why’d it have to be kissing coming to mind! Maybe in the best getting lost with some random stranger she’d picked up in a tavern was just the trick, but she could not do so with Archimedes! For all that he’d done it could not be Archimedes!
Because he’d saved her life once again. Stepped himself into the line of fire where he did not need to be. Had left even now to handle things that she ought to be doing herself.
Calia was not about to use him to sooth her feelings like some sort of well muscled, finely attractive balm. Even if she knew that all it ever really took was allowing him to hold her for awhile to send all of her fears and ill will away. If just holding her was enough to make everything okay then doing a little-
No. No more of that.
She sent that bathwater to boiling some sense into within an instant. Throwing every thought out of her head that she could to focus on what she promised – trying not to die. Away her clothes melted with magic, soon to apply sweetly smelling soap to scrub every singing horrible glop of that demon’s vile goop off herself. There were no blisters left on her hand but she could see the iron that’d seeped into her skin through the veins going up past her wrist. With inspection, there were nasty little teeth marks on her shoulder where one of those dryder sisters had used their venom on her. This didn’t come with marks but it still oozed something nasty.
Was she going to be alright? It was hard for her to even tell. In the moment she felt physically like she’d been breathing acid. That cocoon of terrors had been meant to let her live as long as possible to leech from. Maybe it allowed only enough healing so long as she stayed weak and immobile.
She nearly passed out in the tub just thinking about it again.
When she was suitably clean to the point of nearly scraping an entire layer of skin of, she’d dressed in one of those silly gowns she liked wearing in his tower. Wavering on her feet off towards the comfy bedroom, where as he promised those two cushions of cats were fast to join her as she crawled up into the massive fluffy bed.
As she nestled down and her thoughts went loose, the not so vague decision was made with quiet certainty. It must be love. For the feelings she had in realizing he’d made a deal to try and save her were the same intense, horrified feelings she’d had in discovering her sister still alive and was in danger. Something fierce, something loyal. He was as dear to her as her family, and she knew without a doubt she loved her family.
He was going to like that about as much as being called her soulmate and she fell asleep deciding it was best to keep it to herself.