TIME August 3rd (continuing) LOCATION Deep in the donjon, then Kaleb's laboratory
BACKGROUND:
Free of their chains, armed by an ally of extremely uncertain motives, the Agents followed Deville deeper into Lord Valden’s keep – toward her own imprisonment, and toward Kaleb.
WHAT HAPPENED
Deville heard the company coming before anyone else did, hissing at the Agents to find cover.
The corridor’s only real hiding spots were a scatter of shallow alcoves along its length, each one holding a display of old pottery and small sculpture, and each one barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze into.
A group of guards nearly caught them in the corridor.
“Sorry, sugar – guess sometimes ignorance is bliss,”
Deville told the one who’d spotted them, entirely too pleased about it,
“but now you’ve seen them, I reckon they’re gonna have to silence you in a… well, permanent fashion, hehe. Heyalp, guards – uninvited guests!”
She’d given the Agents’ position away rather than help conceal them, later admitting flatly that the guards had been rude to her and she’d wanted the entertainment.
Three fewer guards to worry about either way, once the fight was done.
Deville’s own cell turned out to be something else entirely – a reinforced door freshly plated in lead, sealed with a binding circle of powdered silver that held her ‘planar form’ separate from whatever walked the halls wearing her face.
Three scabbarded swords sat inside the circle with her, muddy and worn but with blades and pommels kept immaculate – one for every additional month Kaleb had kept her bound, by her own account, and the only compensation she’d gotten for it.
Wiping away the circle’s tracing was all it took. The two halves of her merged back into a single towering, winged shape with crimson eyes before settling back into the familiar, glamorous form she preferred – a demon, not a woman, and considerably more dangerous now that Kaleb’s magic no longer held her.
She strapped all three swords on before they’d even left the room.
She kept her word on getting them moving, at least – leading them down toward Kaleb’s laboratory.
One more Dranathess soldier caught up with them on the way, and not a stranger – the same one who’d executed a native guide at the Mound without a second thought, wielding a named longsword he called Kusanagi that seemed to close his wounds a little every time he invoked it in a fight.
It didn’t save him.
Deville closed the distance, took the hit meant to keep her back, and drained the life out of him with a kiss that left him an aged, withered corpse on the floor before he ever got the blade to heal him again.
The laboratory itself was a horror show in miniature – a man manacled to the wall mid-graft, Kaleb calmly threatening him with a scalpel for not ‘concentrating’ hard enough on his own transformation.
Kaleb’s confidence didn’t survive Deville’s arrival for long.
Kaleb saw them coming and had one spell ready – protection from evil, thrown up fast enough to keep Deville herself from reaching him.
She teleported in close anyway, going for a kiss out of habit more than plan, and recoiled from the barrier with a genuinely startled shriek.
“I think I’ll decline the offering, if it’s all the same to you,”
he told her, some of his composure already returning.
It didn’t last. Deville turned her own power against the barrier itself rather than trying to go around it, and on the second attempt the protection failed outright.
“We had an agreement, Deville. Admittedly the contract has now expired. Why destroy my work? What do you want? What do you need?”
Overseer Kaleb
“Some women aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. Some women just want to watch the world burn. I’ve invited a friend to help redecorate this fine donjon – he should be here any minute, and he’ll take a special interest in you and your Project, buttercup.”
Deville
Deville made good on the threat immediately – a hulking, shrieking Vrock demon tore its way up through the stone floor of the lab, and the whole room went to chaos at once.
Karver arrived mid-fight, unarmoured, wine bottle in hand, plainly unwilling to deal with a summoned demon on top of everything else and more interested in getting Kaleb and whatever evidence he could carry out of the building before it burned.
Kaleb swept what he could into a bag – an orb crackling with captured storm energy, later confirmed as the source of the purple lightning and the trigger for the Kenbro parasite outbreak, and a jar of writhing worms matching the ones found there – and fled with Karver into the chaos, the Vrock’s rampage covering their exit as thoroughly as it covered the Agents’ own escape back up through the burning donjon.
“Now, you’re not going to do anything to make me angry, are you? You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry…”
Kortagor Karver, on his way out
In the courtyard, Lord Valden – free, for the first time in months, of whatever charm Deville had kept over him – seemed almost lucid, if badly shaken, as his retinue helped him toward safety.
EXTRAS.
OPEN THREADS
- Kaleb and Karver escaped with an orb capable of triggering the Kenbro-style parasite outbreaks – three charges still left in it by the Agents’ own count – and a live sample of the parasite itself.
- Deville is free, extremely dangerous, and no longer bound to anyone’s service.