Underland

The fangs lunged at Marianne’s face to devour her alive.

Reacting quickly, the swordswoman raised her free left hand and stabbed the monstrous rat in the eye. A layer of bone grew over her thumb, as it crushed the eyeball and hit the soft flesh underneath.

Shelley’s fangs stopped within an inch of Marianne’s face as the monster let out a screeching roar. The noblewoman channeled the Blood through her arm to strengthen it, frantically keeping the monster at bay. She tried to wrench her other hand and rapier free from the monster, but his grip remained strong as steel.

Shelley frantically tried to shake Marianne off him, but she refused to give ground. Though his clawed fingers tightened around her throat and prevented her from breathing, she kept pushing her thumb deeper into the rat’s eyeball. A fountain of blood erupted onto her gloved hand, and she sensed Shelley’s skull slowly crack under her tight grip. A little longer and she would tear his head apart.

Eventually, the pain became too much for the cultist to bear, and he tossed her off him with inhuman strength. Marianne rolled on the cold hard floor as she gasped for air, but her foe lunged at her again the moment she got back to her feet.

The beast charged at the noblewoman on all fours, claws out. He pounced at her like a cat on a mouse, but Marianne dashed to the left to dodge his claws. The rat’s tail swiped at her head, forcing her to keep her distance.

He’s faster than me, Marianne thought while gritting her teeth. She still struggled to breathe correctly due to her sore throat, and worse, Bertrand still wriggled helplessly on the floor not so far from her position. But completely unskilled.

Shelley assaulted her with a whirlwind of claws and bites, screeching all the way. The left side of his face dripped with blood, making the beast look even more savage. Having learned the lesson from their last clash, Marianne kept her distance and remained on the defense. She side-stepped and backflipped, letting the beast exhaust himself while she waited for an opening.

Her time came when Shelley attempted to pounce on her again and left his flank exposed. Moving to his blinded left, Marianne stabbed him in the chest with her rapier right between the ribs. The monstrous rat’s hide felt strong as armor, but her Soulbound weapon pierced him all the same. Marianne knew next to nothing about rat biology, but she hoped to have hit a major organ.

Shelley pushed her back with his tail before covering his wound with a hand. The cultist let out a high-pitched screech, and Marianne heard a chittering symphony answer his call. A horde of bloody-red eyes looked at her from the laboratory’s shadows, and a tide of vermin rushed at her from all sides.

With few options, Marianne attempted to use the exorcism spell Bertrand taught her. Using the Blood, she expelled a part of her soul outward like a blast; the magic took the shape of a red light radiating from her, disrupting the invisible bond between Shelley and his rats.

Unfortunately, her lack of practice showed. While the light caused many of the rodents to recoil in fear, not all of them did. A few rats pursued Marianne and forced her to move towards the black pool to avoid being encircled.

“You will be the new sacrifice!” Shelley shouted, as he brought a flask from beneath his tattered rags. Recognizing the same blinding substance the cultist used to burn Bertrand, Marianne quickly grabbed her pistol with her left hand. She didn’t have many bullets left and her weapon was prone to jamming, but she banked everything on one shot.

Her aim remained true, and she blasted Shelley’s flask before he could throw it at her.

The substance inside ignited, and Marianne barely had the time to cover her face as it unleashed a flash of bright light. Shelley let out a roar of surprise, but didn’t scream as loudly as the helpless Bertrand. Marianne winced as she heard her retainer’s cries of pain, the light burning his skin to reveal the festering flesh underneath.

Though the noblewoman’s eyes struggled to adapt to the lighting, she heard some rats scampering in her direction to exploit her distraction. Marianne fired a warning shot, but one attempted to leap at her face. She backhanded it with her pistol midair, sending the beast flying into the black blood pond.

And the dark oil erupted.

Marianne held her breath as an immense mound of black slime rose from the pool; a monstrous mass of oozing darkness larger than a carriage. The rodent she had thrown into the pool screeched from atop this protoplasmic horror, the vile substance tearing its flesh apart and filling its skin like a bag.

“No, you fool!” Shelley screamed in genuine terror. His left hand was missing two fingers where Marianne shot him, with glass shards piercing his palm. “They’re not worthy! Not worthy!”

Marianne couldn’t take her eyes off the black slime. The call that almost led her to throw herself into the pond was now replaced with primal revulsion as she witnessed the black substance change the rat in its grasp. A second head grew out of the rodent’s neck, one with three mouths. New eyes opened all over its tainted fur, and they soon overwhelmed the rat’s body mass. The rodent’s screeches turned silent, as the cancerous mutations devoured him from within.

Eventually, they became too much. The poor rat’s skin burst open like a pierced balloon and exploded in a shower of blackened blood. “Bertrand!” Marianne shouted a warning as she dashed at her wounded friend. “Get away!”

Too late.

Though Marianne managed to avoid getting soaked by the black rain, a droplet hit Bertrand as he recovered from his wounds. The vampire’s skin had started to regenerate from exposure to the bright alchemical light, but the black slime touched his festering shoulder. The infection immediately spread through him like a wildfire, blackening his dusted flesh.

“Bertrand!” Ignoring all caution, Marianne rushed to her retainer’s side, sheathed her rapier, and prepared to put a hand on him. Maybe a healing spell could help him—

“Back off!” her retainer snarled before her palm could touch his shoulder. His mouth had transformed into a maw of sharp fangs, and a layer of translucent skin covered his eyes.

Marianne flinched and took a step back, right as the black slime returned to inside its pool. A booming sound echoed across the cavern, and its walls shook. Shelley’s rats scampered off in fear, perhaps because their natural cowardice overwhelmed his control. The monstrous cultist bandaged his wounded hand and face with his rags, while glancing at the ceiling with religious awe.

The confused Marianne ignored him. Instead, she watched powerlessly as Bertrand’s body started to change. His hair fell off from his skin as it turned translucent, making his bones and organs visible. His claws grew as long as blades, his muscles melted away into a gaunt and elongated figure, and his human ears turned into those of a twisted bat.

“Bertrand, let me help you,” Marianne insisted.

“Back off, milady...” The vampire crawled away, refusing physical contact. He grabbed his clothes as if he could cut the infection out of his body, but only tore them apart. “I can’t… it’s inside me...”

“You can fight it off,” she encouraged her friend. “You’re strong. You can—”

A terrible noise boomed from the ceiling above.

Marianne had never heard a sound like this. It was deep and yet high-pitched, an eldritch cacophony not of this world, a maddening song that rippled through reality itself. Marianne instinctively dropped her pistol and covered her ears, but the noise traveled inside her head.

Thousands of voices screamed at once within her skull, their screeches traveling through her nerves and blood. Marianne thought her head might explode as she looked up at the screaming ceiling.

The symbol above her had started glowing. The stone wound that fed the pool no longer spat blood, but smoke. A magenta shroud of eldritch energies floated out of the carved rune, as ephemeral as a ghost. The simmering mass coalesced into the shape of a swirling eye, its design so hypnotic that Marianne couldn’t look away from it.

“A sign!” The rat cultist yapped with rapturous joy, so loud that his voice cut through the noise. “The master of masters heard Shelley’s prayers!”

The eldritch noise died down, but the stone symbol kept glowing with a bright red light. The cavern trembled, a quake rippling from it and shaking the tunnels to their foundations. The ceiling cracked and a boulder fell just left of Marianne and Bertrand.

It’s going to collapse, the noblewoman realized in horror.

The cultist didn’t share her fear. In fact, he looked almost giddy.

“Yes, yes, the good Shelley doesn’t need this place!” he muttered to himself, as he grabbed another flask from beneath his rags. “The grail is alive! Alive!”

Reacting quickly, Marianne grabbed her pistol off the floor and attempted to shoot the rat cultist’s head off. However, Shelley dodged the bullet with a leap, before throwing his flask at his own laboratory. Instead of unleashing a bright flash, this potion instead erupted into a burst of green flames. They quickly spread across the lab, while Shelley himself escaped into the darkness. Marianne shot the cultist twice, but wasn’t sure if she managed to hit him.

The cultist had set his own lab on fire, leaving his pursuers to die.

“Come, Bertrand!” The noblewoman ordered. “We need to get out!”

“Can’t… control…” Her friend shook as if suffering from the cold. Translucent wings grew out of his arms, his body shape twisting into a monstrous hybrid between a man and a bat. “It’s calling me, Milady… everywhere… inside me… inside you...”

Inside her? But she hadn’t been touched by the black oil, she was certain of it. “Bertrand, you must fight it,” Marianne tried to encourage her friend. “You’re strong. You can—”

“I can’t!” He snarled at her, his voice twisting into a beastly roar midway. “Go!”

“I’m not abandoning you here—”

Marianne’s retainer snapped his jaws at her like a savage animal, nearly tearing off her arm. She barely managed to avoid the attack by taking a step back, her heart skipping a beat in surprise. Her transformed retainer grabbed his head with his clawed hands as if suffering from a headache, his words transforming into a beastly hiss.

Even in spite of his warnings, Marianne prepared to cast a healing spell on her retainer… only to remember the eldritch cloud above her head. She barely had the time to raise her eyes to see it fall towards her.

Marianne dashed away towards the lab to escape it, but the alien entity followed her. She shot the eldritch cloud with her pistol, hoping the bullets would disperse it. Instead, the projectiles harmlessly went through the fumes and the cloud continued its pursuit.

Marianne sent one last glance at Bertrand as she ran away. Her retainer had fully transformed and flew in the opposite direction as her, towards the clones of Sarah Dumont. He had reverted into a savage beast, hungry for blood; any blood.

“I’m sorry…” Marianne apologized to Bertrand. After one last regretful look, she fled in Shelley’s direction, knowing the cultist would have an escape route ready.

The cloud followed the noblewoman even as she ran between cloning vats and workbenches, but Marianne channeled the Blood through her legs. Her speed increased twofold, and she soon left the eldritch fumes in her dust. The cloud persisted until a large stone fell from the ceiling, shattering a glass container and spraying the ground with fluids. A warm, half-formed clone of Sarah Dumont rolled on the ground, and the eldritch entity stopped pursuing Marianne to feast on this easier prey.

It seemed the pistol’s bullet did hit Shelley on his way out, as the noblewoman noticed a trail of blood on the ground. It was faint, only a few droplets, but clear enough. Marianne fled into the heart of the lab as it burnt behind her, following the trail towards a small tunnel dug into the crumbling wall; she and Bertrand probably missed it on their way in, as it was so small that a human needed to lower their back to move inside.

Marianne bent as she rushed inside, leaving the collapsing, burning lab behind her. She heard a boulder block the way behind her, and felt dust falling on her head as the tunnel trembled. I need to get out, Marianne thought as she frantically crawled through the tunnel. The whole place was collapsing on her.

Never before had Marianne felt so stressed. Each time the walls shook, she worried about being buried alive. The air grew thick and dusty, making her cough. All the way, she prayed that Bertrand found a way out; so long as he lived, even as a monster, he could be cured.

Marianne had no idea how long she crawled through the tunnel, as she lost herself between twists and turns. Did it go to the center of the world, or to a darker horror than the one she left?

I won’t die here, Marianne told herself. The Soulstone necklace around her neck seemed to pulsate against her skin, waiting for her soul to pass on to better catch it. But in this place, nobody would find it. Her spirit would remain trapped beneath Verney Castle, forgotten until the end of days.

Marianne prayed to the Light for deliverance. The tremors weakened the deeper she went, though they were followed by a loud and terrible noise. The noblewoman pressed on nonetheless. She refused to perish here, buried and forgotten. She had too much to do.

She didn’t die.

At long last, Marianne heard the sound of crashing waves and reached an exit. Her boots hit a thin layer of water, as she emerged from the tunnel into a small cove roughly one kilometer away from the Verneys’ castle.

Speaking of the fortress, the quake had caused it to crumble. A good part of the cliff supporting the keep had collapsed into the Lightless Ocean, leaving only a pile of rocks rising from the waters. Smoke rose from the ruins, though Marianne couldn’t tell if the fumes belonged to Shelley’s flames or the eldritch creature he had released upon the world.

Maybe Bertrand was buried under these rocks, or he managed to fly away to safety. Marianne needed to inform the Knights. To uncover the rubble, to bring biomancers to cure him. She refused to let her retainer and old companion perish as a monster.

The noblewoman walked along the cove, following droplets of blood along the sand with her pistol in one hand and her rapier in the other. She couldn’t see far in the dark, but she wouldn’t relent. She would find that abominable cultist, and end his life here and now.

The trail continued for a while, before abruptly stopping. Marianne looked around with her psychic sight, trying to detect the presence of magic. She expected Shelley to get the drop on her, but no ambush materialized.

A horrible doubt formed in Marianne’s mind, and her gaze turned towards the Lightless Ocean. She squinted and focused, until she distinguished a small shape on the water far away from her.

A boat.

Marianne let out a cry of frustration as she opened fire on the escaping vessel. She fired two more shots before her pistol ran out of projectiles.

It was all for naught. As the boat vanished from her sight, Marianne lowered her weapon in silent rage.

Shelley had gotten away.

Not for long, Marianne thought as she glanced at her left thumb and the rat blood soaking her glove. With these fluids, the Knights’ spellcasters could locate Shelley almost anywhere. Wounded as he was, the mutant cultist wouldn’t get far and the authorities would hunt him relentlessly.

But though Marianne had managed to send a messenger bat to the nearest guard station, it might be days before reinforcements arrived and Shelley would get a headstart. It wasn’t hard to figure out where he went.

‘The spawn is alive,’ Marianne remembered the cultist’s words. Considering who he had been trying to clone, it didn’t take long for the noblewoman to connect the dots. He’s going after Valdemar.

If Shelley was foolish enough to get near Lord Och’s protegée, the lich would slay him easily enough. But why would he? Why was Valdemar so important to the cult? Marianne thought of the black blood in the cave, about the force lurking inside the phantom hamlet of Vernburg.

Shelley was a dangerous foe, but only the maddened thrall of something far worse. A dark force was at work in the region, and Marianne had barely scratched the surface of its activities.

Inside me, Bertrand’s words resonated in her mind, inside you.

Marianne needed to get to the bottom of this. Not only for herself, but for her retainer. Shelley knew the nature of the substance that transformed the vampire into a monster; perhaps he knew how to cure it.

“I’m going to hunt you,” Marianne swore as she looked at the Lightless Ocean, her fingers clenching on her weapons. “Like a dog.”