Realm of Monsters - Chapter 666: Trap
Chapter 666: Trap
The window exploded in a burst of golden flames as Belle grabbed one of the assailants by the arm and tumbled down. For once, the man opened his mouth, only to scream as he plummeted to his death. Belle held him tight, her body covered in flames as she landed on top of him. His body splattered with a wet crunch into the hard cobblestone of the courtyard.
Belle heaved her shoulders, her breath ragged, and pushed herself to her feet. It had been a nightmare trying to catch the little bastard. Her senses told her five different men were somehow standing in one place and at the same time, they weren’t. But an inner sense, borne from her divine war nature, told her a different story. A single man hiding in a blanket of distortion.
Only now, as he lay dead beneath her, was his body still. She needed answers. Who were these people? What were they doing here? And what was with this strange magic? It wasn’t chromatic, that was for certain. It seemed almost—
“Belle, watch out!”
A sharp pain dug into her leg. The arrow lodged clean into her thigh. Belle glanced up to see three more assassins standing at the edge of the courtyard, one of them knocking another arrow.
A powerful wind swept through and slammed the three of them into a wall. “This way!” Calantha stood in the manor’s doorway and waved Belle over.
“Perfect timing,” Belle grinned and yanked the arrow. The golden flames swirling over her body burned the poison from her flesh before it could spread, but the poison had already done its work. Her leg was already growing numb. She limped over to Calantha as quickly as she could.
Once Belle reached the doorway, she turned around and prepared to face her enemy, a maniacal smile on her face. “You cover, I’ll fire.” Blue tendrils of electricity crackling around her fingertips.
“What? No.” Calantha gave her a look.
“But we need to fight back!”
“No. Follow me, hurry.” Calantha didn’t even wait for a response and rushed inside.
Belle glanced between the assassins rising to their feet and back at Calantha’s fading back. She cursed under her breath, slammed the door closed, and hobbled her way towards the vampire.
Calantha moved fast, even for a vampire. And Belle found herself struggling to keep up. Her leg had gone stiff, but it was more than that. Her golden flames had already petered out. The lack of sunlight had made it hard to draw upon her grandfather’s flames and she could feel her inner light growing dim. A poisoned leg only made it worse. How there was a poison that could even affect her titan physiology, Belle didn’t know.
If it had been the daytime, she could have drawn power from the sun and channeled it into raw strength. But the sun had already set. The idea that these assassins knew when to strike at her weakest bothered Belle more than she’d like to contemplate.
After a solid minute of hobbling through the mansion, she found Calantha standing in front of an unassuming wall, waiting.
“Apologies, Belle. I’d lend you my arm if I could, but my hands are currently busy.” Calantha was writing red arcane sigils into the wall, her eyebrows furrowed, brown fingers moving with uncanny speed.
“Whatever you’re doing, do it fast. They’re coming.” Belle stepped in front of Calantha and channeled Blue.
“Done!” Calantha said triumphantly and slammed her hand into the wall just as the three figures came into sight at the end of the hall.
Red, brown, and grey arcane sigils flared to life all around the manor, from the walls, to the ceilings and floor. Dozens of needle-thin ropes of light latched out from the sigils and wrapped around the assassins, holding them in place.
“What the…? How did you do that?” Belle muttered, amazed.
“Remember I told you how your mother had the Order inscribe complex wards into the manor years ago? She may have had the Ebon Order passively add to them over the years, especially after you came to the city last year. She even added to them while she was here recently. The entire manor is one large complex confinement curse. Every assassin that has stepped into the premises has been trapped.”
“Usually I complain about how over-protective Mom is, but…” Belle limped over to the three assassins. “This is nice. Don’t tell her I told you that.”
“Of course, my lady.” Calantha bowed her head.
The strange distortion effect around the assassins had disappeared and Belle finally had a good look at them, though their faces were still hidden by their black cowls.
“Can they move if I take off their hoods?” Belle asked.
“No. The curse holding them is quite powerful. You can move them, stab them, punch them, they will not move. Their bodies are paralyzed, save for their ability to speak. Perfect for torturing intruders to get information out of them.”
“Is that right?”
“They killed several of my guards, we will not go easy on them,” Calantha said.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” Belle smirked.
“Then I shall get started right away.” Calantha drew a thin knife from her sleeve. “Who are you and why did you attack the Ashe manor?”
The assassins said nothing.
“They attacked at night. And whatever poison coated their arrows was potent enough to hurt me. You wouldn’t need anything like this to kill a vampire,” noted Belle.
“So they know who you are. Interesting. Do you think they have anything to do with the people who tried to kidnap you last year back at the academy dorms?”
Belle frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“This would be easier if you hadn’t torched all the kidnappers,” Calantha said dryly.
“I’m aware,” Belle rolled her golden eyes.
“In any case, if they are the same group, then they failed once and now are trying again. This time with more—” Calantha glanced at the quiver hanging from their hip. “Assurances.”
“Man, it really didn’t work out for you lot, did it?” Belle said.
The assassins kept their mouths shut.
“I don’t expect you to speak, not yet. Even with a bit of torture from my cousin, you won’t say too much, I wager,” Belle tapped a finger to her lips. “But that’s why we have purple mages. They’ll extract whatever secrets you’re hiding. This,” she pointed to Calantha as the woman slowly stabbed one of the strangers’ hands, “Is only the beginning.”
One of three opened their mouths and muttered something so quiet, not even Belle quite caught it. “What was that?” she asked.
But then the other two quickly began to mutter something as well. Belle scowled, they were speaking in a language she did not understand. “Can they cast any magic?”
“Impossible, the curse disrupts their bodies’ mana flow.” Calantha shook her head.
The three assassins’ collars suddenly lit up with green sigils and a harsh pop pealed from the metal.
“No!” Belle pulled one of the hoods off.
The veins around the man’s neck had gone blue and foam bubbled around the edge of his mouth. His eyes had already glazed over.
“Shit!” Belle yanked off the others’ hoods, but they were dead as well.
“I, uh, I didn’t expect that,” Calantha admitted.
“I thought you said they couldn’t cast any spells!”
“It was not a spell, but a simple command to activate their enchanted collars. But even then, the curse should have stopped the collars from activating.” Calantha frowned. “Whatever these collars are, they were made with magic far more powerful than any mortal is capable of.”
Belle sighed. “Now what?”
“We should look for any assassins still trapped in the manor. Stop them from speaking until we have a purple mage rummage through their minds.”
“Why do I get the feeling they all have the same collar?”
~~~
What was left of the ruined homes in the Common District’s street was now only ash as it burned in azure flames. The neighborhood had been leveled by Holo and One’s skirmish. Neither side had managed to get the upper hand.
Black tendrils wrapped in eerie green light jutted out from the ground and slithered through the air, searching for their prey. Holo Flickered away, only for the tendrils to move with uncanny speed. They passed through rubble without the slightest disturbance, ethereal yet deadly to the touch.
With a swing of her arms, Holo slashed Lyrae’s blade through the tendrils, severing them from their source of power. The severed tendrils slowed and fell as if sinking into water.
“Is that all you’ve got!?” Holo taunted.
“Never.” One smirked and raised his arms. Two dozen more tendrils rose out from beneath him and shot out in a volley.
Holo broke into a malicious smile. “Fuck you too, then.” She waited until the tendrils were upon her, then Flickered in front of One, scythe in mid-swing. He dodged by a hair’s breadth, and leaped back with a cat’s grace.
But just as he landed, the ground sank underneath his feet and tried to swallow him whole. He scowled and threw his hands out, a blast of energy echoing off his palms and freeing him.
“Two on one? This seems hardly fair,” One clicked his tongue.
Holo glanced at the newcomer and saw Atlas entering the fray, his arms charged with green mana. She Flickered next to him and looked him over. “Good to see you on your feet, son.”
Atlas gave her a nod, but kept his eyes on the enemy. “We need to deal with this and get back home to Unalla.”
“Unalla?” Holo froze. “What do you mean?”
“He means I sent a few friends to visit your mansion,” One said.
“You fucking bastard!” Holo roared.
One flicked his wrist and the tendrils pulled back to wrap around his shoulders like a cloak. “Really? You still wish to fight? And here I thought you’d rush to save your precious baby. Which will it be? Fight me or save the offspring?”
Atlas narrowed his eyes. “You’re running away.”
“Oh, we’ll be seeing each other again, I’m certain,” One replied.
“…I am going to kill you if it’s the last thing I do,” Holo growled. “Atlas, hand.”
Atlas took her hand and she channeled Orange. The two Flickered in a burst of ash and motes of cinder.
One sighed and turned to leave. He needed to leave this damn city and get to the rendezvous point. Two would be waiting there to hear news of the mission. At the very least, One had distracted the two most powerful titans in the city. The others should be easy pickings. The others would have found more success than he had.
One knew trying to trap Holo in an arcane prison made from a simple dirt pit was a bad idea. Sure, it would be easy to sneak into the city and build it, but there were too many variables that could go wrong, even if he was guarding the pit. But Two had been insistent on her prison’s design. If Four had helped create a more permanent place for the prison, made from far more durable materials than perhaps…
No, it didn’t matter anymore. They needed a new plan. One took a last glance at the city and Ebon Tower looming behind him, born from Mortem designs. “Disgusting.”
