Chapter Twenty-Eight

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

 

“What the fuck were you thinking? Were you even thinking? Seriously, bitch, you just…what kind of shit did you use to replace your brain, because I need to find whoever produced it and rip their intestines out.” Saori was pacing back and forth around the cage, in a way that reminded me of an agitated cat, and cussing me out. She’d been doing that with great enthusiasm and remarkable creativity for the past several minutes. I didn’t think she’d repeated herself yet, and I’d heard at least four languages in the mix.

“I already said I was sorry.” I sounded less agitated and more just tired. I was also sitting down and leaning back against the cage wall. I had plenty of room for it; they’d been courteous enough to put us in the same cage, a literal freestanding cage, but it was large enough that there was no crowding.

“And I already told you it was bullshit, yes,” she retorted. “I remember. Unlike some people, I still have enough cognitive functioning that I can recall basic information for ten minutes.” The kitsune sounded…not angry, precisely, but the insults felt less like an affectation than they usually would. “Look, sneaking into the VIP section and taking the table reserved for an actual VIP, I can respect that. It’s got style. But you could have at least told me that was what we were fucking doing.”

“I already told you it wasn’t my idea,” I said. “And if you’re done blowing off steam, I can tell you why, and you’ll have plenty of new and exciting things to yell at me about.”

Saori considered for a moment, and then shrugged. “Yeah. Okay, I think I’ve got it out of my system. What’s up?”

“After you walked away,” I said, “almost literally the moment you did, ‛Dusk’ showed up out of nowhere and started talking to me. And I uh, found out who she was.” I hesitated before continuing; saying it out loud felt unsettling somehow, like it was making this be a real thing. But pretending otherwise wouldn’t help anything, so eventually I concluded by just saying, “Turns out that invitation came from Kali. Directly.”

She stopped pacing and turned to stare at me. “Kali,” she repeated.

“Yup.”

“The Hindu goddess.”

“That’s the one, yes.”

“You’re sure of that?”

I shrugged. “She confirmed it. And I…looked in her eyes, which by the way I really do not recommend doing that. It was very convincing.”

“Well fuck.” Saori hadn’t resumed moving. “Even by my standards, that’s…fuck.”

“Like I said, new and exciting things to yell about. Anyway, she led me straight to the table, probably why nobody gave me shit about being sufficiently very important to be there. I didn’t notice, too distracted by, you know, freaking out because I was talking to Kali.”

“Yeah,” she said, “that’s…fair enough. Even by my standards, that’s spooky.”

“Yep!” I sounded cheerful now, and it was mostly sincere. I felt like I’d gone so far into so many extremes of emotion in the past hour or so that I didn’t have any more room for dread, and had wrapped around into laughing at the sheer absurdity of it all. “On which note, mind if I ask a question?”

“Sure?”

“Cool. So, uh. What’s with that bit about the Shadowed Flame?”

Saori stared at me for a moment, and then sat down on the other side of the cage in much the same way I was. “I was wondering when you’d ask that,” she said, sounding about as tired as I had a few moments ago.

I shrugged. “I didn’t want to pry. And, I mean, you don’t have to answer or anything. But it’s two people now who have called you that, and they’re both pretty important people. I had to at least ask.”

“It’s fine. Or, well, it’s not, but it’s not your fault.” She sighed and shrugged. “It’s about the Order of the Shadowed Flame. They’re…the people I made my deal with a few years ago.”

“Kinda figured it was something like that,” I said quietly. “And it’s a known affiliation.”

Her lips twitched into a smile. “You don’t leave. You can stop working for them, they don’t care about that. But once you get inducted into the Order, you’re not actually leaving it alive.”

“This would be where you get the grenades I’ve seen, then.” It wasn’t a question. Didn’t take a genius to figure out that if she had an affiliation with something related to dark fire she didn’t want to tell me about, and she had terrifying incendiary devices she didn’t want to tell me about, they were probably related.

“Yeah. It’s not a model you’ll find elsewhere. The base is a white phosphorous incendiary, pretty standard. But then it’s laced with magic to make it nastier, cursed fire.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure whether that magic is why they picked the name or it’s just an affectation, and I’m not asking. But yeah, Shadowed Flame is the only group I’m familiar with that manufactures those.”

I nodded. “Alright. Sorry for prying at it like this, just…concerned.”

She shrugged. “It’s fine, really. I was mostly trying to keep you out of it for your sake, anyway. Shadowed Flame is the kind of organization where the less you know about them, the better off you are.”

“Alright. Thanks for trying, then.”

Saori looked at me oddly. “That’s it?” she said. “Not going to get all upset and shit?” She sounded uncertain, like she wasn’t confident in her metaphorical footing.

I shrugged. “I mean. You’re the one who knows what they’re like. If you think they’re bad enough news that knowing they exist is a step in the wrong direction, I trust your judgment on it. I’m a little sad you felt like you couldn’t tell me what was going on. But I get it.”

Saori was still just looking at me. At first there was a sort of wariness in her eyes, and then that shifted through confusion into something I couldn’t name, which was there for a couple of seconds before she resumed her ordinary grin.

“Given that you’re apparently on Kali’s radar, I guess the entanglement in profound hazards is a mutual thing anyway.”

I laughed. “Yeah. On which note, I apologize in advance for whatever bizarre circumstance in my life inevitably ends up being linked to Shadowed Flame despite any efforts you make to the contrary.”

She snorted. “You, uh. Actually kinda did that already. You remember how you had that oracular shit a few months ago?”

“Not likely to forget anytime soon.”

“One of the things you started talking about was a black moon,” she said. “And the Order of the Blackened Moon is…another branch of the same organization. Probably a worse one than Shadowed Flame, overall.”

I sighed. “Of course it is. They’re big on corny-villain names, huh?”

She just stared at me. “These are the people who thought giving me a house in fucking Fox Chapel was a great joke.”

I paused, then laughed. “Okay, yeah, fair point. So, now you’ve gotten the yelling-at-me-being-an-idiot out of your system for the moment and we’ve done the spooky revelations part, think it’s time for immediate practical stuff? I’d rather not still be here when they finish their party and have attention to spare for us.”

“I’m not opposed, but not totally sure what you plan to do about it.” The kitsune gestured vaguely at our surroundings.

I had to admit she had a point. We were in a freestanding cage, large enough to pace comfortably in, but with the bars too tight for me to squeeze between them. Even if I could, the spaces between them weren’t really any better; almost the first thing I’d done was check that, and found the entire cage to be surrounded by a kinetic barrier. I couldn’t get my hand an inch past the bars without hitting an invisible wall that felt like concrete. I couldn’t see much further than that, either; this cage was lit, but only dimly, and the rest of the dungeon was totally dark.

It was hard to tell, but the faint echoes made the room sound cavernous, and I got the impression I didn’t want to see what all was in that darkness. I didn’t even like the implications of Nephele having a literal dungeon, much less one this huge.

“I don’t think they have an alarm on this,” I said after a moment. “I can’t feel one, at least. Just the barrier itself.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Saori didn’t question it; we’d established that while my education was lacking, the exceptional sensitivity to energy flows and magical structures could make up for a lot. If I could only feel one spell, it probably meant there was only one there.

“So if we get out of the cage, we should have a few minutes before they notice.” I frowned. “I have no clue what their security is like, though.”

“You also suck at being sneaky,” Saori told me. “So you might want to factor that in on this planning.”

“True,” I admitted. “You don’t, though. And I’m pretty sure you could squeeze through the bars in fur.”

“I already do not like where this is going, tell me more.”

I grinned. “If I crack the barrier, think you can look around some without anyone noticing?”

Saori looked insulted. “Do pandas need to stop slut shaming before they celibacize their way to extinction?”

“Thanks, I hadn’t had quite enough disturbing mental images yet today.”

“Anytime. So, can you crack said barrier?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. I’m game to find out, though. And then I think if you manage to get the door open I can get out and we can leave before people remember they’re pissed at us.”

She grinned. “Sounds like fun. I might take a while, though. Have to figure out where we are relative to the Way so we can get there with as little of you pretending to sneak around as possible.”

I sighed, then paused as something something occurred to me. “I take it you can’t just open a portal yourself?”

“Nah. She’s got the…fabric, for lack of a better word, pulled pretty tight. Not sure if that’s always the case here or Nephele has those veils strengthened for this event specifically, but I’m not getting through them.”

About what I’d figured. It seemed like an obvious thing for any kind of prison over here, but I wasn’t sure how things worked enough to be sure.

“Well, I’ll try not to disembowel myself while you’re gone,” I told her, and she laughed, the golden-fire flickering I felt in it stronger than usual. I was feeling extremely raw after the overwhelming experience that was the party itself, everything hitting a little harder than it should be. I was kind of surprised that I’d been able to maintain any degree of perceptual filtering through that, though, so I wasn’t complaining.

“Thank you kindly. I’ll try to find a path with light enough security that you don’t alert someone, so we can keep this a courteous jailbreak rather than a bloody one.” Saori paused. “Also a knife in case that doesn’t work. And maybe a set of picks. I have a lot of things to find, is what I’m getting at here.”

I coughed. “Uh, actually. On that note.” I reached up under my blouse, which was loose enough for that to be easy. Saori watched with a mixture of curiosity, confusion, and lust. I really wasn’t sure what she was expecting to happen.

But apparently, from her expression, it was not for me to produce a small fabric bag and toss it to her. It landed on the floor with a muffled clink; even in here, the floor was made of clouds, and it didn’t produce a very sharp sound.

“You’re kidding. You brought lockpicks?”

I shrugged. “There’s no iron in them. Aluminum alloy.”

“Which is clever,” she admitted, “but not really what I meant.”

“I figured that if anyone searched me, which they clearly didn’t do a good job of that, and found them, I could spin some bullshit story about wanting the option of conductive chopsticks. Which would be true, incidentally,” I added. “I’ve done that, and it feels really interesting. At least to me, probably less fun for wimps who can get electrocuted. I haven’t used those for it, but the set of actual chopsticks I have is steel, so I could say I’m trying to be respectful to the Sidhe and come out looking pretty okay without telling any actual lies.”

Saori was just staring at me. “You know,” she said after a moment, with a kind of respect in her voice I wasn’t used to, “you’re garbage at lying, but apparently pretty good at insane, twisty doublethink. I’m impressed.”

I grinned. “Thanks. Knife you’re on your own, though. I didn’t bring one, figured I already have that covered. And on that note, I have to say, I’m really curious how this will go, because I have no idea how this works. You probably want to be ready to go just in case, ’cause if it does work, it might not stay open for long, hell if I know.”

Saori changed and wriggled her way over to the edge of the cage while I called Thorn. As I’d expected, being in a completely different world where the veils were too strong for portals didn’t even slow it down, and when I reached out I found it waiting for my hand.

I held it for a moment, reluctant to draw it. I hadn’t gotten any less spooked by this sword when I learned that even what had seemed like a relatively harmless quality was actually some kind of kill switch that I just happened to meet the criteria to be dodging. And I had no doubt Gwydion was telling the truth about that being what the euphoria was, either. Even ignoring the fact that he couldn’t lie and wasn’t likely to be mistaken, it just…made sense somehow. I’d felt that sudden surge of bloodthirsty glee a few times now. I had no difficulty seeing how it could spiral out of control, and felt nowhere near as confident as Gwydion had sounded about my ability to resist that.

But I needed to break a piece of magic. And I in no way had the kind of skill required to do that elegantly, so it was going to have be a brute force approach. A glance showed Saori was already in fur sitting next to the bars of the cage with a pouch of picks in her mouth looking impatient, so I might as well get it over with. I took a deep breath, and then undid the restraining strap and pulled Thorn out of its sheath. The world went still for a moment, and the overpowering feeling of blood and flowers and claws running along my spine hit hard enough to stagger me.

This was the first time I’d drawn the sword when I wasn’t already running pretty high on adrenaline. I’d killed Audgrim, killed some girl when she jumped me with a sword, and fled from a destructive fire; I hadn’t exactly been calm for any of those.

Now that I was, it felt…much stranger. I didn’t have any reason to be feeling giddy, bloodthirsty laughter bubbling up from inside me. And yet there it was, pushing the fear mostly out of the way to make room. I was grinning, and barely managed to restrain a giggle as I turned towards the cage. Experimentally, I tried to poke Thorn out between the bars.

It felt…strange. There was resistance there, more than when Thorn cut through steel. It felt different than when I had touched the barrier with my hand, though. That had been like rapping my knuckles on a wall, the same rigid kinetic stop. This was more like pushing two magnets together against their natural alignment.

Confirmation that Alice had been right, and this thing could cut through magic, too. I nodded to myself and drew the sword back. Absently, I saw that there was fur on my hand now, and the sparks of emerald-green lightning dancing through it were also running down the length of the sword.

I slashed at the barrier, a quick overhand slice with the inner curve of the sword. I wasn’t swinging full force, but it was plenty strong by human standards, and that feeling of intangible resistance wasn’t up to stopping me. Thorn ripped right through it, and cut through the bars too for good measure.

The moment I had my balance back, Saori was darting forward, and apparently this trick worked, because she wormed her way right through the barrier. It was sort of surreal to watch, because I hadn’t actually shattered the barrier, just cut a hole in it. So she was basically squirming over an invisible wall in the air, through that slit in the spell’s structure.

In principle, I could probably cut a large enough gap to fit through myself. The sword was cutting through the bars of the cage, after all. But that seemed like a bad idea, for a whole lot of reasons. I wasn’t sure how easy this was to detect, to start with, and it seemed plausible that a smaller slice would be subtler. And Saori was better off alone, really, for this part; having me along while scouting would probably go…poorly. There was also a smaller but nonzero consideration for keeping the damage as minimal as possible, because if I offended Nephele enough for her to actually care once we were gone, I was going to be fucked. Even more fucked than I already was, and considering this situation had started because Kali had arranged for me to give a public insult to someone important enough to be a very important person here, that was saying things.

Besides. It was fascinating. I could…not exactly see the damage to the barrier, but I could feel it. The kinetic barrier itself had the same mist-and-rainbows as the rest of the world around us, and hadn’t been easy to parse as a result. But once it was damaged, I could feel how the cut was interfering with its functioning, and it was surreal as hell. It felt like there was a sort of caesura, a partial break in a pattern, a subtle and complex pattern which I could only clearly perceive because the break drew my attention.

It got even trippier once it started changing. It took a moment for me to be sure, but with my attention focused like this, it was hard to miss the ways that those structures were shifting. I could feel power being pulled in from the rest of the spell, like it was pulling in more energy and weaving it through the gaps. It was rapidly starting to repair itself, like a dynamic network pulling resources in from other structures to seal the gap Thorn had cut through it.

That was what reminded me that I was still holding the sword, and I went to sheathe it. That was when I got my…I’d lost count of how many nasty surprises I’d had today, but this was the next one on the pile. I couldn’t do it.

I had never actually tried to sheathe Thorn before, I realized. When I first got it, the spirit associated with the guardian tree that had been holding Thorn up to that point had been the one to do it. I’d left it out of the sheath both of the times I’d drawn it since then, having accurately guessed that the sheath would be as indestructible and impossible to lose as the sword itself.

Now, as I tried to sheathe it, I felt a sort of resistance that was hard to explain. It was like the bloodlust I could feel radiating from it, the scent of blood and flowers and dark flames along my spine, sharpened in response. The sword wanted to be used, it wanted to cut and pierce, and it wanted it badly.

A little experimentation confirmed as much. I could let go of the sword easily enough. It felt disappointed when I dropped it to the floor, but I could do it. But when I tried to actually return it to its sheath my fingers just would not let go of the hilt, like they were paralyzed in a way I didn’t understand. It didn’t stop me from doing anything else, but as soon as I tried that, my hand just stopped working.

I had to actually, physically peel my fingers away from the hilt with my other hand, and even that took a serious effort of will. My hands were trembling by the time I finally managed to let go, and the feeling of longing and eager, enthusiastic craving for violence sharpened, and I let out a soft but audible moan. My fingers shook badly enough as I tried to put the restraining strap back into place that it took several tries to operate a simple snap closure.

The moment I fastened the strap, the whole mess of feelings faded, all at once. There was still a sort of disappointment far enough to the back of my head it was down into my spine, but that was all. No overpowering aura of dangerous, intoxicating power. No giddy bloodlust and eagerness. No difficulty in handling the sword.

I felt a little ill. I wasn’t sure how much of that to attribute to what causes; there were plenty to pick from. I set the sword down, and then retreated to the opposite corner of the cage and watched it like it was a viper.

It probably didn’t take anywhere as near as long as it felt for Saori to get back. Fifteen minutes, tops. But fifteen minutes can feel like a lifetime under the right conditions. As it turned out, sitting alone in a cage in a world I didn’t understand, unable to see the cavernous room around me, with nothing for company except a deeply unsettling sword, while waiting for someone to get back from scouting an escape route? Pretty fucking good for that kind of time dilation. It felt like a very long wait.

But eventually she did return. I didn’t notice at first; she was very good at sneaking around, after all, that was kinda the whole point. I had no warning, barely noticed her before she was back in skin in front of the cell door. She was grinning in a way that said I wasn’t going to like learning why. On the bright side, she was also naked, so at least I got a pleasant show while she worked.

“So I’ve got good news, bad news, and fun news,” she said, shaking my picks out of their bag and starting on the lock. “The good news is, I’ve got a relatively good idea of where we are relative to where we’re going. The bad news is, it’s going to be a bit of a hike. We’re something like six floors up, and she didn’t exactly go for short ceilings.”

I nodded, somewhat glum but not surprised. I hadn’t noticed us going up any stairs, but that didn’t mean much. Geometry could get really wonky on the Otherside, from the stories I’d heard over the years.

“Okay,” I said after a moment. “I’ll bite. What’s the fun news?”

Saori grinned at me with too many teeth and popped the cage door open. “The fun news,” she said, “is that I get to pay you back for getting us into this mess sooner than expected. I’ve got a way out, and you’re going to hate it.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter