Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 16Arc 7: : Devils

I walked back out into the antechamber where we’d entered the Inquisition complex, but there was no sign of the doctor. I called her name, and when I didn’t get a response I started to explore. Though she’d seemed certain the hidden sanctum wouldn’t be guarded, I felt skeptical. Why wouldn’t they post some kind of sentry, in case Lias tried to return?

I didn’t trust it, so I moved quietly and was watchful. However, my mind also churned with too much information. Even as I kept trying to keep track of all the extraplanar lore and supernal history different beings kept trying to cram into my brain, I was also thinking about this place, about what had been happening here and what Lias was up to.

I kept thinking about what I’d been ordered to do, and if I could do it. Not just whether I could make myself — I’d long since resolved that meeting Lias again wouldn’t be a happy reunion — but whether I would be capable. He’d become very powerful.

And I thought about the spirits inside the mirror, about what Lias might have been using them for and what they’d said to Delphine.

They’d called her Sister Vera. A nun name. And that last voice… I’d recognized it. I could almost remember from where. The knowledge floated through the fog of my memories, elusive but just there, in reach.

I focused on trying to find her. The clinking steps of my armored boots echoed through the empty halls. The complex turned out to be massive, corridor linking into corridor, stairs rising or descending into other levels. There were large rooms, small rooms, moldering storehouses, signs of some old sewage system that made me guess the old inquisitors had spent prolonged periods down here in the dark.

It must have taken years to build all of it. Decades, even.

There were very large rats, and cockroaches big as my fist. They left me be and I gave them the same courtesy. No living priorguard though. I was wary of them, knowing the Priory maintained a presence in the so-called “Underbarracks.”

The Knights Penitent were based here. They’d been made here. Lias had made them. Him, and Delphine. And Oraise, and once again I considered that I should have killed that jackal when I had the chance.

I saw light in an open doorway and approached it cautiously, my axe held low and ready. It was some kind of workshop. There were benches, hooks on the ceilings to hold something no longer present, something like an oven in one corner.

No… a furnace. There were weapons on the walls, fragments of armor on the tables. Most of it was black iron. There was an abundance of chains, hooks, other deranged looking implements, like I’d walked into some nightmarish union of smithy and dungeon.

Delphine stood next to one of those benches. She’d placed her lantern down on its surface and stared at an upturned breastplate. I realized as I drew closer, my gorge rising at the sight, that it had spikes on the inside.

She glanced at me, then quickly averted her eyes. “You must think I’m pathetic.”

I shook my head. “Demons are good at getting under your skin. It’s what they do.”

“The Priory hired me because I pretend to be an expert on demons. I even impressed the famous Lias Hexer!” She laughed and leaned on the work table. “I wonder if he left that thing there to trip me up, in case the Presider had me on the hunt.”

“He’s not that malicious,” I said firmly. “He’ll just kill you before he tries to make you hate yourself. He’s a soldier, just like me. He just wages his battles a bit more cleverly, is all.”

Delphine narrowed her eyes. “That’s the impression I got of him, too. It’s funny. I’ve never liked soldiers much. You all tend to look the same to me; anonymous figures in steel who spend their lives killing. So much easier to kill a problem rather than try to understand it.”

“Not always,” I said. “Fighting can be hard. Terrifying, but sometimes it’s necessary.”

“I’m not naive,” Delphine said in a harsh voice, then took a deep breath in an effort to calm herself. “I know the world isn’t all black and white, good and evil. I know that very well. If we didn’t have knights, then there would be dragons burning our villages down. But… it’s hard to feel good about having wolves protecting you, when you know they’ll take their tithe in blood soon as they’re hungry. How often have the Houses killed for sport? For conquest?”

I shrugged. “You’re not wrong. World’s a grim place.”

Delphine glanced at me, opened her mouth to say something, then paused. She hesitated for a long minute. I said nothing, waiting. We needed to give Vicar time with the mirror, anyway.

“You see it, don’t you?” The doctor’s voice was surprisingly calm. “What this place is?”

“I see it well enough,” I said quietly, my eyes on a helmet through which holes for steel screws had been cut. The screws lay right next to it, waiting to be inserted.

“I was part of this.” She gestured at the macabre armory. “I helped decipher coded manuals left by the old Inquisition. Some of it was guesswork, innovation. There’s so much study about how emotion and sensation influence auratic energies.”

She turned to face me. “We tortured them. The Knights Penitent, I mean. Oraise insisted they were volunteers, that they knew what they’d signed up for, but I know he exaggerated. It’s so easy to get lost in the work, to turn a blind eye to what you’re really doing. Who would volunteer for this?”

I considered it a moment. “I think… I think that if my life had gone a different way, if I’d spent enough time alone and… sinking, for lack of a better word, I might have been one of them. I might have let the inquisitors drill this armor onto me.”

My powers were also a sort of torture. The agony of cleansing fire gave me strength, but I wouldn’t pretend like I still considered it truly holy, not after what I’d learned from Fen Harus about the magic’s nature. It was a tool, a mechanism that operated on instinct, not the guiding wisdom I’d once believed it to be.

Delphine shook her head. “I don’t understand it. I can’t. And it didn’t work, anyway. The Penitents became stronger than normal men, more resistant to injury and fatigue, but we couldn’t awaken any Art in them. Even when we tried to imbue techniques cultivated by the priorguard, it never took. Their souls were too unsteady. Without Chamael, they’d be little better than mindless killers.”

I didn’t like this room. The echoes of pain were like a stinking miasma in the air, rank as the scent of crusted blood. “Let’s get back,” I said and turned to the door. “Vicar’s waiting for us, and this place isn’t safe to wander around.”

I’d gone several steps before the doctor spoke. “Hewer.”

I paused, feeling my heart skip a beat. “What?”

“Your name.” Delphine was facing my back, I knew, standing her ground. “I heard Vicar say it earlier.”

Had he? I hadn’t caught it, too focused on what lay in front of me. The bastard. No way it’d been an accident.

“And?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could manage.

“I know you. I wasn’t sure before, with the glamour pulled over your face and your eyes dimmed, but I know who you are.”

I heard her robes rustle as she shuffled forward a step. “Alken Hewer.” She hesitated before adding, “You’re the Headsman. I’ve heard your name many times of late.”

I inhaled deeply. Delphine wasn’t done, though.

“You were a Knight of the Alder Table.” Her voice had hardened, not with the awe or superstitious fear I’d come to expect from people but with anger. “I’d know the glint of those golden eyes anywhere.”

“And what do you know of Alder Knights?” I asked in a very soft voice, almost a whisper.

“Much. I was in Seydis.”

That made me turn. The suddenness of the movement made Delphine jump, and she backed away from me. Her hand was in a fold of her physiker robes, as though clutching a hidden weapon. She’s afraid of me, I realized.

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“You were in the Golden Country?” I asked.

“Not just the country.” Her eyes narrowed, and that almost omnipresent crease between her eyebrows deepened. “I was in Elfhome the day it burned, the day the whole world went mad. You don’t recognize me, do you? I suppose you wouldn’t.”

There was bitterness in those final words. I blinked and studied her, and…

Nothing. I didn’t know this woman. Far as I could tell, I’d met her the first time the previous night when Vicar had knocked on her door.

“I don’t remember you,” I said. “It was a large city.”

“True enough.” The anger hadn’t faded from her voice. “It has been twelve years, and I imagine you were distracted.”

I realized what this must be about. “I was not part of the Table’s treachery. If I was, do you think I’d still be serving the Houses? At the Emperor’s right hand? I’m certain you’ve heard of that, too, Miss Roch.”

Many people still blamed the Alder Table for everything, even though they’d been but one group in a legion of traitors. Most who learned who I was, and what, had varying reactions, none of which tended to the positive. Centuries of piety and trust, broken by that terrible day.

“I know the stories,” she spat. “They say that Markham Forger bound you with the power of angels. They say you’re a devil, a revenant, undead and worse.”

I realized she’d started pacing, putting one of the tables between us. “Do you think I’m a devil?” I asked, keeping track of her with my eyes but holding my ground.

“I think devils can wear fair faces,” Delphine said. “I’ve seen golden eyes in my nightmares as often as red ones.”

Her eyes were on my face. No… my scars. Her lips turned even further downward. “I can’t believe I didn’t guess your identity as soon as I saw those scars. Then I saw your eyes, and the axe, and that red cloak… it’s all right there, just like in the rumors. And yet, when I look past all that you’ve barely aged a day…”

I was impatient to have this conversation done with. “So what are you going to do about it? Kill me?” I opened my arms wide, keeping my voice calm while inside I churned with frustration. I’d grown very tired of having this dance every time someone realized who I was. “Did the Headsman take someone you love, doctor? Did I deliver a Doom to your father, your brother? I’ve killed many people.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Vicar told me you’re a mercenary, and I gather you’re some kind of occultist. Are you a Recusant, then? Do you want to get revenge on me?” freewebnøvel.coɱ

“Recusant?” To my surprise, she laughed. It was a harsh, short sound. “That’s how you see the world, isn’t it? Loyalists and rebels, Ardents and Recusants, angels and devils. What a joke.”

“Get to your point,” I said in a low voice. Would she blackmail me? Attack me? Use some kind of spell like back at her house? I would be ready this time.

Delphine was shaking her head, her lips pressed tight, nostrils flaring, eyes wide and furious. She was working herself up to something.

“You—”

A pulse of warning went through me. I reacted on pure reflex, spinning my body around, but not towards Delphine. Towards the door. It lay empty and silent, but my instincts were screaming of danger.

“What is it?” Delphine asked in confusion, taken aback by my sudden change in demeanor. She’d almost tripped over herself when I’d turned, jostling the table, probably having thought I was attacking her.

“Something’s wrong,” I said in a hard voice. “There’s something here with us.”

“The Penitents?” She asked.

It didn’t feel like them. No, I recognized the sensation pounding through the open doorway. It was like a surge of cold and a bad stink at once. It made my skin crawl and my ears ring.

I could feel a great heart deep underground beating, as though the earth’s pulse stuttered in fear.

Something wicked had come. Something not of this world.

It began with the sound of footsteps. Heavy boots on stone echoing down the hallway. Delphine froze when she heard it, catching her breath. The sound grew louder as whoever it was approached.

Clack. Clack. Clack. They moved at a steady clip, unhurried. I reached into the shadows and summoned my axe. It appeared in a wash of muddy darkness and phantasmal water, which scattered into miasma as the weapon emerged. My gauntleted hand tightened on it, each segment of metal over my fingers clicking audibly with the motion.

Clack. Clack. Almost right outside the door. Not boots, I realized. It sounded more like cloven hooves, an enormous beast plodding steadily forward. The shadow growing on the wall outside looked huge, hunched, a twisted thing.

The shadow engulfed the sliver of light produced by Delphine’s lantern. Here it paused, then took one deliberate step forward into the doorway.

He was a man. Tall, broad-shouldered, with wavy hair grown past his shoulders. His clothes were fine but travel worn, a fur-mantled cloak draped over his shoulders to give him a vulture-like aspect. Cuffed boots covered his lower legs almost up to the knee, and leather gloves encased his hands. His hair was dark brown with streaks of gray, his face weathered but handsome, his eyes the color of charcoal.

The man stared at me, then he glanced at Delphine. He held a calm expression, and dipped into a shallow, formal bow before speaking in a musical voice deep as an organ key.

“Well met, Ser Knight, good lady.” He rose to his full, impressive height. “Pardon my intrusion, but I required a word of the two of you. My name is Melmoth.”

I nodded at him, not quite returning the bow. “Well met.”

Delphine didn’t share my calm. “He’s a—”

“I know.” I could see it in his eyes, that glint of hellfire, smell the sulfur in the air. He wasn’t even bothering to hide his nature, even as he stood there politely smiling. The shadow on the wall behind him looked like nothing human, a hunched, heavy shape with horns and back-bent legs.

Crowfriar.

“I must admit,” Melmoth said in a breathy voice, “this is quite a rare honor. To meet the Headsman of Seydis himself in the flesh is one thing, but at the same time to have an opportunity for converse with the lauded Delphine of Roch!”

He gave Delphine a deeper bow. “I have read your work, lady. The Alchemy of Faith and A Brief Chronicle of the Folk Traditions of Urn. I am quite fond of the first one, I must confess.”

Delphine’s reply was bemused, despite the tension in her voice. “I wrote that first one under a pen name.”

Melmoth shrugged. “I recognized your voice. You have a poet’s soul, for a scholar.”

He seemed to notice the axe in my hand as though for the first time then, and chuckled. “Ah, is this the part where you threaten me? Demand to know what I’m doing here? Utter some amusing malediction against evil?”

“You’re very cocky,” I noted. “Meeting me hasn’t gone too well for other members of your order. Have you managed to replace your councilor, yet?”

During much of the time I’d known him, Vicar had walked around with a Zosite, one of the true devils, literally riding invisibly on his shoulders. I’d sent the dark angel back to Hell after defeating its champion in a duel.

Melmoth tilted his chin up. “We have not forgotten that. Nor have we forgotten that you got poor Ostanes killed. There is a debt owed for that, Alken Hewer. Those devoured by demons are not reclaimed by our masters. That is your debt in our eyes.”

I made a come hither gesture with my offhand. “Come collect it, then. Once I’ve thrashed you, you can answer some other questions for me.”

The crowfriar scoffed. “I’m afraid I have no interest in brawling with you, Ser Knight. I am on a schedule. Once our errant leader is taken into custody and you are subdued, we will have questions for both of you. It would spare you much pain if you’d simply tell me where the wizard is?”

It was my turn to scoff. “Do you think I’d be here if I knew that?”

Keep him talking, I thought. These chatty types always let something slip, and I needed to know what the opposition knew, what they planned. Vicar might be in trouble, but he wasn’t defenseless. He would have to see to himself for a few more minutes.

“We suspected the good doctor was cooperating with the Magi,” Melmoth drawled. “We also suspected he would send her here to collect the materials we forced him to abandon during his flight from this place, which is the only reason we let her walk free. So disappointing to be proven correct.”

“So this entire thing was a trap,” Delphine said, maintaining the same conversational tone as me. Her calm impressed me, in the circumstances.

Melmoth nodded and gave a small clap of his gloved hands. “Indeed! And now that you’ve proven your traitorous intentions, doctor, the Presider will not be able to gainsay our retribution. We did not think Vicar would be so foolish as to come crawling back, but he always was arrogant.”

He tilted his head and looked at me. “But you… Lias Hexer betrayed you. Why would you…”

The man paused, his mouth hanging open as he seemed to realize something, then his lips split back from iron teeth. “Ah! So that’s how it is. She doesn’t know, does she?” He nodded to Delphine. “So who gave the order, hm? The mortal warlord or the winged cowards on their high mountain?”

I stopped bothering to feign good humor. “You can’t beat me, Sulfur Monk. This posturing isn’t a good look.”

He held up his hands, a placating gesture. “Of course, you’re right. I can’t beat you. But he can.”

Melmoth took a single, theatrical step out of the way of the door. The enormous shadow, however — the one I’d taken to be his — did not move. It stood there, a hulking shape, and in a moment of horror I realized it wasn’t a shadow at all.

It had simply registered as such to my senses, because it was something that did not belong in the world of mortals.

And it wasn’t Melmoth that I’d sensed before.

A single cloven hoof stomped forward as the creature bent to move into the room. It was huge, eight feet tall, with curling ram horns eaten through with rot. Its gray flesh was covered in weeping wounds, most of them the product of abstract sigils inscribed into its flesh. Those hurt to look at, like staring into the sun, and they burned dimly like cooling embers on dry ground. Maggots crawled in open wounds and in the socket of one missing eye. The other eye was huge, bloated, the pupil collapsed so it looked filled with liquid blood.

The beast-thing hunched down on apish arms. Bloated with cancerous muscle and fat, it filled the room with a cesspit reek. There were huge nails hammered into its arms, and it wore manacles on its wrists with hooked chains dragging from them. A collar, like a yoke on a field animal, dug into its bulging neck. It wore no clothes, and also like a work beast it had been gelded.

Melmoth said something in a harsh, guttural language that made the insides of my ears itch like from infection. Then, almost as though for my benefit, he spoke in Urnic common.

“Break him.”

And with those two simple words, the hellspawn let out a bellowing roar and charged.

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