The Duke’s throne room had recovered in the weeks since the attack on the party.
Arkk wasn’t sure if he was surprised or not. Even with all the death and destruction ravaging the Duchy as a result of the war, the Duke still found the time, resources, and manpower to remove all evidence of the attack. The floor gleamed with fresh polish. The tiles and brickwork which had been destroyed in the explosions had either been repaired or replaced. Even the chandeliers were back up, though the glowstones were perhaps not quite as bright as they had been.
If the meeting taking place had looked anything like the party Arkk had attended, he would have been tempted to take several steps back and let Agnete sweep her flames through the entire hall.
Instead, it looked as if he had intruded upon a war council. A massive table had been set out, filling much of the floor space of the throne room. People lined its sides. Though many chairs had fallen and the people had backed away upon Arkk’s entrance, they hadn’t yet fled from the room. At least, most of them hadn’t.
Some, the more militaristic of the gathering, had even drawn weapons, though they hadn’t advanced into the inferno.
Arkk could think of several reasons why the council would be held here instead of at the garrison. Aside from the Duke’s vanity, much like the Abbey’s churches the manor could not be scried upon, its walls were reinforced to the point where even servants couldn’t eat through them, and it did serve as the heart of the Duchy.
Much as he might wish to lop off the head of the Duchy, it wasn’t a wise idea at the moment. Not in the middle of a war. He had to grit his teeth and bear with it. In the future… Well, they knew they could get inside. Perhaps the inquisitors would come up with countermeasures for Agnete. Perhaps not. That was something to worry about in the future.
For now, they stopped advancing into the room, leaving a short space between them and the table. Arkk motioned to his side.
Agnete did not obey immediately. From speaking with the former purifier, he well knew that flames affected her. In the company of the inquisitors, she had exceedingly little control and frequently lashed out at Vrox and anyone else nearby. Especially when they tried to dampen her flames. Since employing her—contracting her to the [HEART]—that side effect of her abilities hadn’t affected her quite so much. Arkk wasn’t sure if it was a mechanic of the betrayal mechanism that wouldn’t let anyone attack him without first breaking that link or if it was that the [HEART] stemmed from the same source as her powers. The [PANTHEON].
Closing her eyes, Agnete drew in a deep breath. With it, she took in much of the ambient heat.
Which Arkk appreciated. He was sweating buckets and not just because they were barging their way into the Duke’s manor.
“Duke Woldair,” Arkk called out the moment he felt he would be able to speak without choking on the heat. “Release the captive in your dungeons and I’ll leave peacefully.”
The Duke, back at the far end of the room near his throne, shrugged off a pair of guards who were trying to escort him away. “I remember you,” he said, pointing a finger. “The so-called rising star of the mercenary companies. Company… Mirror… something.”
“Take us to the dungeons.”
“Oh, you want to see the dungeons, do you? Guards!”
There weren’t many guards in the room. The main entrance to the throne room was still blocked off by flames. A few reinforcements had been slowly funneling into the room from side doors. A few of the braver guards advanced.
Agnete snapped her fingers. The dimming flames erupted and orange fire billowed out from her like waves of the ocean crashing against Cliff’s shores. Guards went tumbling back, scurrying away. A few dropped their weapons in the path of the flames. The metal turned to slag even as Agnete clasped her hand into a fist, pulling back the fire.
Arkk’s ears picked up the start of an incantation. “Electro Deus,” he said before even spotting the caster. A lazy flick of his wrist sent one of the war council into convulsions. He barely put any power into it. Today’s objective was not to kill the leaders of the war.
Lightning still crackling between his fingertips, he pointed at the Duke—who wisely shied away behind one of his bodyguards.
“One of my employees was here as an honored guest. And now you’ve thrown them into your dungeons. Release them. I won’t ask again,” Arkk said, projecting as much authority as possible into his voice.
This would have been so much easier if they could have just burrowed into the lowest points of the manor. Not knowing what might be on the other side, Arkk hadn’t been willing to risk it. Having seen the explosive entrance they made into the ballroom, he felt entirely justified with that decision. While he could have guaranteed that they wouldn’t have blown up Ilya’s cell, he didn’t know how many other cells were filled or… potentially worse, where the wine cellar was. Flames and alcohol didn’t mix well.
Looking around, Arkk wondered how much of the manor would survive this little incursion. There wasn’t much smoke as a result of the flames burning magic more than wood or anything else. Nonetheless, he could see cracks forming in the brickwork from the heat. Some areas, mostly the floor underneath Agnete’s bare feet, had turned molten.
If they cooperated fast enough, there would still be time to get a caster to sweep through the place with a water spell. The longer they waited…
The longer they waited, the more likely reinforcements would arrive from the garrison.
Arkk had no desire to fight through an army today.
“Vezta,” he started, only for one of the war council to shout at the Duke.
“Levi! That is a purifier. Your men can’t stand against her,” he said. An older man with thin glasses and a fine suit. Not a military man. He had shoulder-length ‘page boy’ hair that curled lightly at the ends, though his hair had clearly seen better days in his youth. A merchant? Some other advisor. He stepped away from the line of advisors, hand gripping the hem of his suit. “I’ll take them. If they extinguish their fires.”
The Duke leveled a thunderous glare at the man, which was really all Arkk needed to trust him. Slowly, he lowered his arm. With a nod of his head to Agnete, she closed her eyes. This time, she drew in a great breath of air, as if filling her lungs beyond their normal capacity.
The flames around her shrank to embers. They didn’t completely vanish. A tapestry hanging from one wall still burned and the molten footprints trailing into the room didn’t go anywhere. The heat lingered as well. Still, the situation at least looked better.
However, when Agnete opened her eyes, they were glowing almost as much as Arkk’s did. The same was true for the scars along her face and arms. She had somehow managed enough control to keep her uniform from completely burning away, even though her boots had not survived.
The Duke’s fingers clenched into tight fists. “I’ll have your head for this, Joyce.”
“Better my head than everyone’s,” the newly dubbed Joyce said, straightening his back. “The people cannot afford to lose our council at this stage.”
“You—”
“If you wish to keep your head, Duke Woldair,” Arkk said, “you won’t interfere.” Turning to the older man, he said, “Lead us.”
The man took a breath and stepped further away from the rest of the war council. He motioned with a hand to one of the doors on the side wall.
Arkk looked to Agnete. For a moment, he thought of having her stay behind and keep an eye on the council. If they tried anything, she would be ready to handle it. But then he decided against it. If she were with them, they could blast through the dungeon and into the tunnel, removing any need to trek back through the manor.
It was also safer to not split up.
The door brought them to a hallway. Not the servant’s corridor that Arkk had gotten himself lost in the last time he was at the manor, just a regular hallway. They moved in silence. Nobody else came across them. Presumably, any guard would have rushed to the throne room while any servant would have run in the opposite direction.
Joyce stopped at an unassuming door and grasped the handle. “This leads to the dungeons and the menagerie,” he said with a small note of distaste in his tone.
Arkk wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or not, so he just nodded his head.
The handle rattled under his grip but the door didn’t open. Joyce swore under his breath. “One of the guards will have a key—”
“Doesn’t matter,” Arkk said, taking a few steps backward. “Agnete.”
The former purifier stepped forward and planted a hand on the metal around the handle. The brass first blackened and then began to glow red. It steadily brightened until it started dripping. Slamming her shoulder into the door, it swung open.
“Neat trick,” Joyce said with a scowl.
“I’m just full of them.” Arkk stepped into the opening. Average-quality glowstones adorned the ceiling, lighting the way down a spiraling flight of stairs. It was a tight spiral with a ceiling lower than would be comfortable for anyone too tall. “What is the menagerie?”
“Servant quarters for the non-human staff.”
Arkk pressed his lips together, thinking back to the entertainment at the Duke’s party. Most hadn’t looked all that happy to be there. Were they paid? Arkk remembered Ilya’s initial observations of the Duke’s manor just after they first came to Cliff. A harpy had tried to escape the grounds and had been magically stopped. He doubted they were treated all that well.
Would they want to leave? Seek employment elsewhere?
Arkk couldn’t deny that, after seeing the Underworld, having a harpy on his payroll sounded great. Someone who could fly overhead, scouting both for more of those Protector creatures as well as any additional settlements in the area. Or just any landmark in general. He hadn’t quite realized how much he had come to rely upon scrying until he couldn’t do it anymore.
“Are the staff in their quarters at the moment?”
Joyce looked back over his shoulder with a frown, looking Arkk up and down. “I’m not quite sure what information you’re fishing for but you requested an escort to the dungeons. I am here to prevent needless death, not assist you.”
“And yet, if you return to the Duke, it doesn’t seem like you’ll be keeping your head.”
“As I said to him, better one than all given the war.” He stretched his back, cracking his neck. “I’m an old man. Fought in the last war. Spent the intervening years as a knight errant. In light of a few prominent deaths, the Great Marshall reached out to me to see if I had any insight. Unfortunately, Evestani have drastically changed their tactics and strategies. I’m the least useful member of that council.”
“So you lay down your life for the rest of them. Taking the risk for others in my hands but inevitability in the Duke’s.”
“Unless I misjudged you at the party, I didn’t think you would kill me.”
“We met at the party?” Arkk asked, frowning in thought. “I’m sorry, I met a hundred people that night and then the attack kind of blotted the rest of the night from my mind.”
He chuckled. “Hawkwood introduced us. Thank you for saving his life.”
“Hawkwood is a friend and mentor.”
“Mhm… Though perhaps I did misjudge you. Attacking the center of the Duchy like this? Even if the Duke spares me, I’ll be forced through a hundred droll meetings on you in addition to Evestani.”
“I personally believe the Duke is a blight on the Duchy. Moreso now. One of my companions was injured in the attack on the party and I left her here for medical care. Imagine my disappointment when I found out she had been thrown into the dungeon.”
Joyce hummed again, sounding a little more thoughtful this time. He didn’t say anything else before they reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Left door, dungeons. Right door, menagerie.”
Arkk frowned. “Is it just a coincidence that they’re located next to each other?”
Joyce just shrugged. “I brought you here. Good luck,” he said, turning back to the stairs.
“I can get you out of here,” Arkk said. “You can either come with me or go back to your errant wanderings. You don’t have to submit yourself to Woldair’s mercies.”
The man just shook his head and continued ascending the stairs. He did pause after a few steps, turning back. “I imagine you won’t have very long alone. The Duke is surely gathering up the entire guard contingent and all the spellcasters he can scrape together.”
“Thanks for the warning.” Even if it wasn’t strictly necessary. Arkk had already guessed that this reprieve was only temporary.
Joyce disappeared up the spiral, leaving Arkk with Agnete and Vezta.
“Agnete. Open the doors. Vezta, go see if anyone is home in the… menagerie. Make a soft sell to anyone present. Push a little harder on harpies or anyone else capable of flight.”
“Understood, Master,” Vezta said with a bow as Agnete started melting the locks.
“Don’t take too long. I want us gone in… ten minutes. We’ll go through the dungeon floor and meet up with the tunnel that way. I’ve already got the lesser servant in position—it’s close, somewhere underneath the menagerie floor.”
Agnete shoved open the door to the dungeon with her shoulder just as she had done with the stairwell door. She turned to the other door only for Vezta to form a maw of razor teeth at the end of her arm. The door gave her a brief pause but turned to splinters under the rotating teeth.
“Reinforced stone. Regular doors,” Vezta said with a shrug before stepping inside.
Letting her carry out her task, Arkk stepped into the dungeon with Agnete at his back. He almost expected a guard of some sort. instead, he just found a long, poorly lit corridor with several heavy doors on either side. A small window of bars on each door let him peek inside.
The first door on the left held a small fairy. The waifish demihuman sat on the floor of her cell, arms hugging her bent knees. A dark elf sat in the cell on the right, an eyepatch hiding one eye. He looked like he had seen his fair share of fights. Another dark elf sat in the next cell on the left. The next on the right was empty.
Arkk scowled as he passed more doors, peeking into each. Why were there so many held here? Criminals should be held at the garrison. The average thief or even murderer wouldn’t be here. Arkk doubted assassins would be either. Most likely, these were people who had simply offended the Duke.
“Open all the doors,” Arkk said, nodding to Agnete. “All the occupied ones, anyway.”
“Can’t say I expected anything else,” Agnete said with a faint smile touching her black lips.
Some part of this likely resonated with the former purifier. She hadn’t been held in a literal prison but with that ice marble held over her head every moment of her life, she might as well have been. If some of these people were violent murderers held here for some reason… well, he would deal with that later. It might be somewhat hypocritical to turn anyone away with how many criminals he was sheltering.
As Agnete started popping open cells, Arkk moved down the corridor, peeking into each and every cell. He knew exactly where Ilya was thanks to the employee link but he still wanted to check.
Sure enough, by the time he reached Ilya’s cell toward the end of the dungeon corridor, he had only passed a single human. Everyone else was either a demihuman or beastman.
Even though he had already confirmed through the employee link that Ilya was fine, Arkk couldn’t help the relief he felt upon seeing her sitting in her cell, resting on a pile of moldy straw in the opposite corner from the bucket. She had her eyes closed but a few quick knocks on the door had her on her feet in an instant.
She glared at the barred window in the door for just a moment. Her eyes widened. “Arkk?”
“You sound so surprised. Didn’t think I would come for you?”
“I only pulled on the link an hour ago.” She leaned close to the door. “How did you convince the Duke to release me so fast?” Pausing as a frown touched her lips, Ilya’s tone took on a note of admonishment. “Your eyes are glowing.”
“Yeah. Turns out a few sets of glowing eyes can be pretty convincing. Stand back,” he said, even as he moved out of the way.
Agnete stepped forward and placed her hand against the door’s handle. Not having cooled down between each door let her heat the metal nearly instantly. As soon as it was soft enough, she shoved her shoulder into it, popping the door open.
Ilya gave Arkk a raised eyebrow as she moved back to the now-open door.
“What?”
“I take it convincing the Duke involved a lot of fire.”
“A bit,” Arkk said, pulling Ilya into a tight hug. One she didn’t pull away from. “I’m sorry I left you here for so long. The war has been… hectic.”
“Not just the war,” she said, hands on his back. “I saw it. The sky.”
Arkk broke the hug first, pulling back. “Sky?”
“The… that wasn’t you?”
Arkk gave a confused shake of his head. Before Ilya could say anything, he held up a finger. “You’re going to have to hold that thought. My job convincing the Duke might not have been as thorough as I would have liked. We need to get out of here before they start dumping poison down the stairwell. Or however they plan to deal with us.”
“Wait! My mother.”
Arkk clenched his teeth into a tight grimace. “We don’t really have time to run around the manor—”
“She’s not in the manor,” Ilya said, stepping out into the hall. She looked one way and then the other. “Oh. You’re freeing everyone.”
“Is that bad?”
“No, it’s…”
She trailed off, looking to the door Agnete had just popped open.
Alya stepped through, wearing a fine dress that had clearly seen better days. The tall elf still managed to affect an ethereal grace that Ilya hadn’t quite managed. Her silver eyes trailed after Agnete.
The purifier ignored her, moving on to the last few doors.
Alya’s head turned toward Arkk. Those silver eyes landed on him and widened. Likely at the bright red glow in his eyes. She sucked in a breath that was more of a hiss than a regular breath. “You…” Alya stepped forward, tall and imposing but lacking any real means to threaten him. She still reached out a hand that turned into a shaking, clenched fist.
“What have you done, Arkk?”