Chapter 13: Nest of Evil

Chapter 13: Nest of Evil

Even as a crumbling ruin, Castle Verney looked foreboding.

The fortress dark walls hadnt aged well. Marianne scarcely saw a roof without a hole, or a battlement without a breach in its stone. The Knights fires had consumed most of the wooden parts of the architecture, leaving only ashes and black stone. Most towers had collapsed, and the few that still stood looked like broken fingers.

The absence of vines or mushrooms also disturbed Marianne. The castle had been abandoned for nearly two decades, and yet nature hadnt taken it over.

A place so evil even plants wont enter it, Marianne thought as she looked at the archway entrance. A defaced stone gargoyle loomed over the rusted iron doors and the darkness beyond them.

I smell rats inside the walls, Bertrand said, eyes red as blood and fangs out. Ever since the rat attack, Mariannes retainer had chosen to stay in his true form. This is their nest.

I dont sense any magical defenses, Marianne said as she raised a lantern she had managed to salvage from the carriage. Its faint light illuminated the archway and showed a dark corridor leading inside the castle. Makes sense. The Knights patrols would have noticed.

I could go in alone and scout ahead, Bertrand suggested. We are entering the enemys territory, and they know of our arrival.

We are more vulnerable while separated, and our foe can target us from afar. Bertrand taught her the basics of his exorcism spell on the way to the castle, but lack of practice made it unreliable. Marianne was confident in her abilities, but she was no spellcasting genius. We must force the sorcerers hand.

Wielding her lantern with one hand and keeping the other on her sheathed rapiers pommel, Marianne stepped inside the keep. Bertrand made no sound as he followed her, but she sensed his sharp gaze on her back.

After a short walk through a dusty corridor, the duo reached the castles crumbling great hall. Most of the ceiling had collapsed, and the Knights had defaced the bas-reliefs decorating its walls. The room smelled of dust, and a thin layer of ashes covered the ground. Nobody had visited this place in years.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

Marianne relied as much on her psychic sight as her physical one. She often sensed the presence of rats hiding in the walls and the ceiling, lurking at the edge of her magical senses. The rodents scampered off whenever she moved in their direction, but she knew that they followed her. The sorcerer controlling them had learned their lesson, and refused to offer a direct battle.

A cursory search through the ruins proved fruitless. The stables were a desert of dust and rot; the towers stairways were for the most part broken and led nowhere; the library had no books, though Bertrand found a pile of ashes where the Knights gave them to the pyre.

Lord Verney probably slept here, Marianne thought as she examined the dusty remains of an opulent bedchamber. Rats and vermin had devoured the beds mattress, while the cushions had rotted. The remains of a small lab occupied a stone chamber to the bedrooms left, with broken alembics and a shattered workbench covering the floor. Did he murder his victims here, I wonder?

The more she and Bertrand explored the keep, the more Marianne found the places silence oppressive. Even old tunnels felt more alive than this open tomb.

They found the first corpse in the castles bathrooms. Bertrand smelled something at the bottom of a pool of murky water, and fished out human bones. They found a larger collection of charred skeletons piled up in a dining hall, their legs shattered and their skulls split open by swords.

They were sanctified after death, Marianne said as she examined the remains with her lantern. To make sure no ghost would rise from the ashes.

Lord Penhew hadnt lied. The inquisition had been very thorough in extinguishing the cult.

Is Milady looking for something? Bertrand asked, as he watched Marianne skim through the charred skeletons.

Lord Penhew said he burnt Aleksander Verney at the stake, she replied. I wonder if his corpse is among these.

All men look the same in death, Bertrand pointed out. Milady might as well look for a needle in a haystack.

Maybe his remains smell the same as Valdemar. Or a Qlippoth, Marianne thought.

Lord Och mentioned an abnormal quantity of Orgone in Valdemars blood, a telltale sign of summoned creatures. After visiting that village and the strange creatures inhabiting it, Marianne had immediately noticed the connection.

Is Valdemar even human? Marianne thought grimly. Blood scans should have identified his true nature if he were a shapeshifter.

Bertrand chuckled. Milady, that is not how scents work. These bones smell the same.

What about the smell of rats? Cant you follow them to their nest?

This castle is their nest. They are everywhere.

Then try to locate the stench you noticed in the village and around Valdemar, Marianne ordered. It might lead us to our culprit.

The noblewoman sensed the rats growing agitated at the periphery of her psychic sight. I need to find the animancer before he deciphers my notes and goes after Valdemar, Marianne thought with determination. She refused to endanger a guest of Lord Och, even if indirectly. Valdemars family legacy had hurt him more than enough already.

Bertrand sniffed the air, inhaling ash and dust. It took him minutes and a lot of backtracking, but he eventually found a lead in the bathroom. I sense a stench coming from below, he said while staring at the murky pool. It is faint. Almost unnoticeable. I dont think a hunting hound would notice, unless it knew exactly what to look for.

The stench travels through the plumbing? Marianne asked as she examined the pool. The water had festered, but the bathrooms remained connected to whatever well they drew the liquid from. An underground cistern, perhaps?

Or a hidden cavern, Bertrand suggested.

Marianne hardened her free hand with a layer of bone, and punched through the wall closest to the pool. She heard a rat screech as she smashed her way through the stone, her fingers closing on the rodent. Marianne squeezed the animal to death as it attempted to bite her, before tossing its corpse in the pool.

The hole she made revealed a complex array of bronze pipes going through the wall. I think we found how the rats travel through the keep, she muttered out loud. The pipes went down and down underneath the castle.

Marianne grabbed a stone pebble and tossed it into the hole. She didnt hear it hit the bottom, though Bertrands sensitive ears proved more effective. It echoed, he warned his mistress after a few minutes. The pipes lead to a larger cavern underneath.

Marianne and her retainer took down the wall one brick at a time, revealing a narrow shaft barely large enough to accommodate one person through. They could use the pipes as improvised ropes to climb it down.

Marianne silently scanned her surroundings, ready to strike at the first sign of danger. Her psychic sight sensed lifeforms in the room, but whenever she looked in their direction, she only found herself facing a deformed clone.

Bertrand pointed at his nose and then to an area of the lab shrouded in darkness. Though the lab was chaotic and haphazard with little organization to speak off, this part of the cavern lacked any form of equipment. A wide space more than twenty meters in diameter had been left untouched.

This part of the cavern was entirely unremarkable, save for a strange, circular pool at its center. An unknown substance bubbled in it, a vile tar as black as the purest darkness.

The sight of it filled Marianne with a mix of thirst and revulsion. She felt the primal call to drink this vile oil, to let it flow inside her. It would make her better. She would never grow old, and her skills would never rust. Her senses would be sharper than any beast, her skin as smooth and strong as steel. No one would match her strength, and no one would try to force her to wed again.

Marianne would be free.

Or she would die.

Marianne knew, on a primal level, that taking this oil might kill her. Her survival instinct screamed at her to run away, to avoid the temptation. It was the medium for something powerful, too strong to be contained. She would burn from the inside, a moth consumed by flames.

Life or death.

Marianne felt like a woman dying of thirst being offered a cup of poison as these two instincts pulled her in different directions. Her psychic sight went wild, as it struggled to grasp this substances true nature. It felt alive, incomprehensible yet familiar. Something that called to her flesh and soul, telling her to join this divine union.

The call was insidious, and by the time Marianne realized what was happening, she had already walked three steps towards the pool. No, she thought, using all her willpower to look away. She canceled her arcane sight, briefly blinding herself to magic, closing her eyes to the vile promise of that that thing.

Bertrand fared no better. Her vampire retainer gazed at the pool with horrified fascination, licking his fangs while his body trembled with tension. Though he hadnt walked forward, he struggled to hang on to his weapons pommel. His eyes were redder than ever, like a man possessed.

Bertrand, Marianne whispered. Although her retainer had told her to remain silent, she saw he was losing the fight. Bertrand, look away. Bertrand

A black droplet fell into the pool from above.

Marianne instinctively looked up and raised her lantern at the ceiling.

An enormous symbol glowed faintly in the stone above, so faintly she could barely see it. Two curves joined within a cube, slashed by a vile organic rift. The lines making up this symbol closed and opened without rhyme or reason, festering with the black oil like a bloody wound on the worlds skin.

It was blood.

That black oil was the blood of something greater than any human, something that called to all living beings the same way a flame tempted moths to their doom. This was the divine nectar the grail was meant to contain; the primordial fluid that would grant either immortality or oblivion.

Marianne couldnt look away from this bleeding eye of stone, and barely noticed the black-furred shape crawling on the ceil right above

The swordswoman suddenly snapped back to reality. Bertrand! she shouted a warning far too late, as the rat dropped a shining flask on them. Her retainer didnt move an inch, unable to look away from the black pool.

Without another alternative, Marianne tackled her vampire retainer. The blow broke Bertrands trance and the vampire transformed into a cloud of mist right as the flask hit the ground. The substance inside erupted in a bright flash of light.

Marianne instinctively covered her head with her arm, saving her eyes from blindness. The white light was strong enough to illuminate the cavern, but it did more than that. Bertrand screamed in pain, his cloudy body reforming into a humanoid shape and collapsing on the floor.

Bertrand! Marianne tried to rescue her friend, but though she avoided the worst of the flash, the sudden bright light had weakened her vision. She could barely distinguish the vampires shape near the pool.

Something landed to Mariannes left with a loud thump before she could reach him.

Only years of training allowed the noblewoman to dodge the dagger aiming for her throat, and she still dropped her lantern in the motion. The container shattered against the ground, its flames erupting between Marianne and her attacker. She immediately used magic to heal her eyes.

Her foe didnt let her recover from her shock and leaped over the broken lantern with lethal speed. Marianne quickly dashed forward with her rapier and surprised the creature, their blades clashing. And she gazed into the bloodshot red eyes of her foe, the noblewoman remembered one of the Qlippoths words at the hamlet with perfect clarity. What Baron Aleksander Verney had said about the strange, hideous rat that followed him everywhere.

Its not a rat at all.

The monster before her was neither man nor rodent, but a gruesome intermediary step between the two. Rags and a layer of black fur covered the beast, except for its clawed hands, dirty face, and elongated tail. Its face had curved ears and long sharp fangs which snapped at her with bestial fury. His two daggers were crossed, barely stopping Mariannes rapier from impaling him through the throat.

The Knights had mistaken this thing for a mutant rodent, instead of the infant form of something far, far more dangerous. Something intelligent, and deadly.

Youre a cultist, Marianne realized. Bertrand wriggled on the ground at the edge of her vision, with burns all over his skin. The last Follower of the Grail.

Master Aleksander is dead, the monster rasped with an all-too-human voice, before pushing Marianne back with inhuman strength. But good Shelley never wavered in his devotion!

Marianne attempted to gut the monster and finish him off here and there, but his tail lunged at her head from the side like a whip. She lowered her back to dodge, and the beast immediately attempted to stab her from another angle.

The swordswoman disarmed one of her foe's hands with a well-placed parry and dodged the other dagger. Moving with astonishing speed, the man-rat used his newly freed hand to grab her by the throat.

Marianne tried to stab the beast in the heart while gasping for air, but the rat dropped his other dagger and grabbed her wrist. Her rapier managed to cut his chest and draw blood anyway, but not deep enough to pierce the heart.

And now, the man-rat said while lifting Marianne above the ground with one hand and pushing her sword away with the other. Shelley will feast!

His fangs lunged at Mariannes face, sharp and hungry.