Theodora and I finished off one of the nobles who had chosen to fight rather than flee into the now smoky garden grounds when I heard a smooth voice call out from the platform above, “You and you take out the two vampires! Serve the Lady with your lives.”
At that moment several of the nobles that had managed to avoid Valerie and the others found the main gate and attempted to escape into the city. I heard a series of violent explosions and a body catapulted up into the air, “I guess they found all the Wards I tossed out at the entrance. Love to see it.”
When I looked up to the platform I saw Sevrin smirking down at me with Alphonse Cardienne at his shoulder. I noted with concern that Valerie’s mother had not moved an inch. Her expression hadn’t even changed.
A pair of cultists raised staves at Theodora and we split left and right to circle around them. Nonchalantly I asked my former sire, “Hey, what’s wrong with Valerie’s mother? Is she dead?,” before casting a cautious look back at Valerie who was in the midst of several torch staff wielding cultists.
Theodora answered, “No. It’s some kind of holding spell,” before planting a solid barefoot kick into the chest of one of the cultists and then slashing the other with her ruby claws, sending him spinning backward.
Raking one of the Sisters over the man’s back as he tumbled to the ground I stomped his knee with an activation of Hobble. The little vampire woman charged the downed priest. He pleaded with a raised hand, “No, please! Mercy!,” before the merciless woman jumped onto his chest and tore his throat out with a spray of crimson.
“Is there a way to break the spell on her?”
Theodora looked up, licking her lips as she said, “The one who cast the spell has to maintain focus or the hold breaks.”
“Oh,” I said with a note of muted surprise, “neat.”
Flipping one of the Sanguine Sisters so the blade was in my hand I turned and gauged the distance. Hmmm about ten meters? I raised one leg like a baseball pitcher and heaved the blade up into the air at a pretty drastic arc. It spun through the air and seemed to hang there for a moment before falling directly toward the platform above us. Sevrin was smiling and clapping his hands as if the slaughter on display below him was a show when the spinning Sister dropped into his shoulder with a thud.
It didn’t seem to do a significant amount of damage and the man looked over with raised eyebrows as the blade vanished with the aid of its Returning rune. He seemed unimpressed as he said something to Cardienne and started to laugh.
Beside the two men the giant form of High Lady Lafontaine shifted and she turned a baleful eye on Sevrin. Cardienne was the first to notice, raising a shield to block High Lady Lafontaine's giant axe.
The force of the blow only managed to throw the young man backward, stumbling away from Sevrin.
The mad cult leader used the opportunity to run back toward the manor. The giant axe wielding woman let out a roar of anger as every guard and robed priest on the platform rushed to attack her.
Valerie and her aunt were obviously fierce combatants but the High Lady of Lothin was a truly terrifying monster of physical ability and skill. The last thing I saw before I was forced to join Theodora in fighting another of the toothed mutant horrors was two guards flying over the balustrade, both cut completely in half.
Theodora and I worked together to turn the gurgling mutant beast into a pulsating tower of bleeding ichor. When Valerie and the others managed to join us and aid in the dispatch of the monster it had devolved into an almost pitiful whining animal.
I finally put it down by driving the Sisters into its back and kicking the fleshy monstrosity to the ground.
Valerie gave me a hopeful look and was out of breath when she spoke, “My mother?”
In answer to her question a robed priest came sailing off the balcony above us and crunched to the ground.
As we started toward the platform one of the half dead cult guards, his face bloodied and face scarred by Theodora’s claws, reached up toward Valerie, “M’lady? Casit… It’s Casit. I was one of your guards when… please. Please, I was just scared.”
The younger noble looked down at the pleading man with a glare. She started when Theodora was suddenly pressing up against her side in a far too familiar way. The little vampire looked down at the injured man with a bloody grin and predatory eyes. Her voice was sickly sweet as she asked Valierie, “Can I?,” without taking her eyes off her prey.
The noblewoman stepped away and started toward the stairs without looking back a tone of cold finality in her voice, “Since when do you ask my permission.”
We all hurried on as the man’s scream followed us up to the platform.
When we reached the platform we found the ostentatiously dressed High Lady knelt down with one hand atop the handle of her giant axe. There were eviscerated and dead cultists everywhere. She was kneeling in front of an onyx statue of a young Haithan man dressed in finery and looking over the grounds with an air of superiority. It was a statue of my avatar. The statue was cast from some kind of black metal and stood with regal bearing looking out over the now burning garden.
There was no apparent sign of Sevrin or Cardienne on the platform.
Valerie rushed over to the giant woman and put a hand on her shoulder. The High Lady looked up as if she had just realized we had arrived. She blinked at the sight of her daughter and managed a tired smile. She stood to her full two meters ten in height to embrace Valerie in a hug.
Getting Protag’s attention I nodded toward the entrance to the manor, “That’s where our quest went.”
The little skeleton nodded and I glanced at the Foix twins, “Want to cause some carnage?”
Celeste smirked and Mattieu, despite seeming to be distracted by the scene in the garden, spoke in a flat unemotional tone, “I must admit an eagerness to continue our experiments.”
Theodora was suddenly next to me, beaming up with her pristine unbloodied face, her single eye sparkling with mirth, “You certainly know how to show a girl a good time..”
When I winked in return she seemed genuinely surprised. Turning, I strode toward the doors to the manor saying, “Valerie, stay with your mom. Mystal may show up in the guise of a cultist, please don’t kill her.”
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The High Lady spoke up in her booming voice, “You, are you the Remnant my daughter spoke of us joining forces with?”
Turning toward her in mid stride I offered a stiff bow, “One and the same. My name is Florin.”
She looked at me and then the statue beside me, her expression growing stoney, “You are not of our society but as the last true High Lady of Lothin, I sentence Alphonse Cardienne, Gabriel Sevrin and the entire Immolated Order to death.”
Smirking at her I walked backward toward the doors, “Good to have it in writing. It’s a pleasure High Lady Lafontaine, your daughter’s a peach.”
Valerie’s cheeks darkened and her mother looked confused as I spoke to my allies, “Give me ten seconds and come through the door,” before bursting into a cloud of mist.
I flowed through the doors behind me to a vaulted entry hall of black marble. The walls were adorned with intricate dark woodwork and paintings in triangular frames.There were ten cultist guards arrayed around the massive staircases toward the second floor. Several of them tensed as they saw the red mist flowing around one of the doors.
One of the priests on the stairwell stuttered, “Vam… Vampire…”
Before they could truly react I solidified next to another of the priests and activated Surging Blood and Crimson Dance, a massive chunk of my Blood Cloak floating into motes of light as the Sanguine Sisters slashed into the confused woman’s spine. Bounding away from her I slashed another guard who was moving in slow motion to try and deflect the strike. Effortlessly, I jumped from the left stairwell to the right and slashed the cultist who had tried to warn his allies on the chest.
Time sped up, blood fountaining out into the room and gravitating toward me as I rushed to the next target. When my Essence pool ticked high enough I activated Dance of the Rose Hurricane and the Essence around me started to tear into the guards as they rushed to try and take me down.
None of them were ready when my deadly comrades kicked open the manor doors. One of Celeste’s ghost hands grabbed a priest by the neck from the back and pulled so hard that they flew through the doors and collided with the statue of my avatar on the balcony. The hall was filled with the sound of ravens croaking cries as Mattieu’s birds flew in and started to tear into the confused cultists.
A blast of fire destroyed several of the birds, sending them up in motes of blue light. I paid the last priest back for his attack by kicking him into the wall and pinning him to it with one of the Sisters. Protag entered, cackling and tossed ice grenades onto the top of the stairs in an underhand toss.
In a blink Theodora was amidst the foes around me tearing them apart with claws made of razor sharp blood. Before long we had most of them dispatched. I couldn’t suppress a laugh as a cultist guard ran around the corner on the second floor and hit Protag’s ice. He tumbled down the stairs in a cacophony of pained whines and clanging metal.
As he struggled to stand grunting and spouting spittle laden curses in the name of his goddess we all devolved into laughter. Even Mattieu managed to snicker, although his side eye made me think he just wanted to be involved.
Theodora leveled a graceful ballet-like kick into his chest and threw the man back down. She planted her bare foot on his breastplate and it crumpled as she looked into his eyes. The man shook violently for a second before looking up at her with adoration and saying, “Goddess...”
The vampiress smirked and looked at me, “See? Someone has respect.”
Giving her a flat look I smirked and said, “Ask him.”
She let out a needless sigh and looked down at her new pawn, “Where did Sevrin go, baby?”
Despite the continuing collapse of his armor he seemed totally absorbed in her eyes as he said, “Basement tunnel into the sewers. We collapsed it so that you couldn’t follow. I’m sorry my lady.”
Growling, I cursed.
Theodora asked, “Where are they headed?”
He nodded, “To the Descent. They’ll escape you and return to the Lady with the Brand and they will raise an army of…”
Sighing, I shook my head. There was an audible crunch and gurgle as Theodora crushed the man’s chest and kicked him the rest of the way down the stairs.
Looking down at the tiny vampire woman I asked, “The Descent is in that building next to the prison I presume?”
“That’s why I chose you,” she reached up and pinched my cheek, “so smart!”
A group of people in the livery of servants emerged at the stairs looking down at us with obvious terror. They all fell to their knees and bowed their heads to the floor.
Glancing at Celeste, I asked sotta voce, “Um, why are they doing that?”
Celeste was having one of her force hands shove a corpse in her path up against the wall as she said, “When you capture a noble house you can take their servants as your own or execute them.”
The High Lady stepped into the doorway alongside Valerie and said, “All of the servants are lesser nobles who the Immolated Order forced into servitude at the point of a sword. They took all their wealth to fund their wars further down the Spiral.”
At that I blinked and after several beats of thought called out, “Evelyn Kasila?”
There was a lengthy silence and then a middle aged Haithan woman with lilac skin and a sour expression stood and stuttered, “Ye… yes?”
Pumping my fist, I produced the letter and the bag of gold from my inventory. Holding it up and schooling my expression to a somber one I walked up to the woman and extended the letter to her, “I’m very sorry. I found this letter with your brother in Braithe. He…,” I sighed and nodded to her, “the letter he left me made it seem like he was pretty regretful.”
Her lip trembled as she took the bag and the letter. She ran her fingers over the worn paper for a long moment and then offered me a nod before saying, “Thank you, my lord.”
She reached into a pocket of her maid’s dress and pulled out a small golden brooch with the symbol of a four eyed panther-like Spiral Stalker on it in crimson. She pressed it into my hand and bowed to me again, “Our house is little but ruin now. This is all I can offer as a reward for what you’ve done. Thank you.”
Lydia provided a couple of updates:
“Quest Completed
Have you seen my sister Evelyn?
XP Reward: 200
Reward: Seal of House Rasila
You found Evelyn Rasila and returned her family’s riches and the letter left by her brother to her.
Seal of House Rasila
Motto: Strength and Cunning
Type: Neck
Minimum Requirement: Level 35
Rarity: Rare
Tier: E
Vitality +32, Spirit +19, Charm +10”
Nodding to her I smiled, “Thank you. Stay safe.”
Before turning away I looked over the gathered servants and sighed before saying, “There is no need to serve me. The Lady Lafontaine,” I gestured at the giant woman and her daughter in the doorway and continued, “will be your leader from here on out.”
“Follow her orders and survive all this to the best of your abilities. I have a feeling that after tonight Lothin is going to need a strong leader.”
After a moment’s reflection I added, “And that is definitely not me.”
Turning I strode past Theodora, who was giving me a cold look, and made my way toward the entrance. Valerie and her mother made way for me to walk past and I asked, “Is Mystal here?”
At that moment I saw a small hand appear over the High Lady’s shoulder as someone jumped calling out in a familiar voice, “It’s me!”
The giant woman stepped aside to reveal Mystal in her Valerie-like form. The High Lady looked down at her and shook her head, “I am struggling to understand how this creature looks so much like my daughter.”
Mystal had indeed reverted to her lightly armored and braided ‘Valerie’ form. She was now carrying a large sword on her back and was spattered with blood in places. She beamed at me and put her fists on her hips as she stood proud, “Mal, you’ll be proud! I ate like… twenty people at the wall!”
Giving the High Lady a concerned look I hurried past her and swept Mystal into a half hug muttering, “Aw, you kid. You are such a joker.”
