Chapter 186 - The Castle in the Sea VII

Riding the currents and crashing through the waves, Claire found herself enjoying a strange sense of liberation. Steering was the limit of her influence. The waterways decided her direction and it was impossible to reduce her speed beyond an unreasonable minimum, but it felt more like a controlled fall than a plummet to her death. Further adding to her confidence was the abnormal state of her body. It felt like she was brimming with energy, a sensation that only grew stronger as she got further into the depths.

Though she certainly relished in the experience, her mind remained focused on the task at hand. She continued to look and listen for any traces of her prey, but there was little to be immediately discovered. Catgirl detector refused to reveal the shadow mage’s location until just a few minutes before the jetstream finally petered out.

The longmoose was deposited in a large basin, an underground cavern lit only by the magical lamps hanging from its ceiling. The entrance she took was only one of the many ocean currents leading in and out of the cavern. The paths reminded her vaguely of the foxholes that Sylvia had used to get around Mirewood Meadow, albeit without the inviting mystique.

Further contributing to the dark ambiance was the half-destroyed building that sat within the underwater grotto. Made entirely of stone, it almost reminded her of a castle in a fishbowl scaled up to a liveable size. Like Vel’khagan’s main attraction, the fortress was once made up of pure white rocks, but the years had not been as kind to it as they had the country’s final bastion. Its stone walls were filthy and unclean, stained over time with all manner of dirt and debris. There were visible scars where it had been struck by swords, spells, and ballistae alike. It was dreary and desolate, even with the cavern’s lights reflecting upon it. The tens, if not hundreds of thousands of fish swimming in and out of its windows further evidenced its dilapidation, and so too did the seaweed that grew from between the cracks of its stones.

She knew that the blood mage was inside. Her skill’s tracking functionality pointed straight to one of the eerily lit rooms and even revealed that she was leaning against the wall, likely waiting for one person or another.

It was difficult to pick out exactly how many there were within the fortress’ walls. Those that swam had their sounds obscured by the fish, but she heard at least a few dozen sets of feet pacing around the old building. Breaking in sounded like a chore. Her sneaking skill had certainly returned, but its level was still stuck in the single digits and asking Sylvia for a bubble was out of the question with so many options still available.

Selected from the list was one of the few that she had been unable to test. Investing exactly one thousand points of mana, she called upon the only spirit guardian yet to see the light of day. Headhydra’s advent was accompanied by a strange urge. Just as Shouldersnake fed her its bloodthirst, and Shoulderhorse its gluttony, the newest addition bestowed upon the halfbreed the desire to lay claim to the land, to stake a domain as her own and lay waste to the pests that had dared to intrude upon it. And looking at the abomination she summoned revealed that it was feeling much the same way.

Headhydra bore a powerful resemblance to the creature whose death had accompanied its creation, only with a third the headcount and a body slightly too big to fit in the palm of her hand. Each head was slightly different from the others, both in appearance and personality. The middle head, marked by a tiny horn, had supreme confidence, while the hornless one on the left was wilted and depressed. The final two-horned head was curious, constantly looking around and scanning its surroundings. But whatever the case, none of them talked to her. Unlike Shouldersnake and Shoulderhorse, the hydra had always chosen silence, even when she was off by herself.

Abiding by its orders, the spirit guardian snuck along the ocean floor and approached the castle. Staying as inconspicuous as possible, it hopped from one extruded stone to another and silently made its way to its final position. From its place right outside the hemomancer’s window, it pressed its three heads together and prepared to launch an all-out attack.

In life, Headhydra was a fearsome beast, capable of breathing a rotting plague that assigned death to all it touched. Its physical specifications had been just as impressive; its horns were near unbreakable, and its body was fast and strong. All powerful properties, to say the least. But none of them truly defined the monster or made up its core.

What lay at the very center of the lizard's being was the essence of an individual that stood against Xekkur's call, not through undeath, but continued life. And it was precisely from that principle that its newest incarnation’s abilities were derived.

Once within range, the spirit guardian gripped two of its necks and ripped them straight out of its sockets. It leaked a few drops of ectoplasm at first, but the wounds were quick to close. What started as one body became three, then nine, then twenty seven. Each was fully restored, an exact clone of the original with its parts in all the right places. Not even their mana was split. All eighty-one phantoms had the 1000 points of mana imbued within the original.

It took only a few seconds for the two-hundred and forty-three instances to get in position, to sequester themselves into the stone, before acting on the boss’ orders and blowing themselves to bits. The swarming vectors completely obliterated the room, shredding the wall and tearing the mage’s limbs to pieces. They reformed soon after, leaving only her clothing completely destroyed.

She was not the only one to reform. Headhydra did the same. Each of its tiny pieces squirmed to a central location, merging to become a beast with hundreds of times its previous mass. Its remaining properties were largely unchanged. It still had only a thousand mana, and its abilities were scaled up only in size. Its new form factor was effectively a bluff, a trick to convince her foes that it would be more powerful than it really was.

While the three-headed lizard drew the attention of those that occupied the underwater fortress, Claire and Sylvia snuck around back and entered the building through one of its many open windows.

“Woah… this place must’ve been fancy.” Speaking in a whisper that only a deformed moose could hear, Sylvia looked around the run-down castle with her breath taken away.

Claire nodded as she looked over the decor. The stone pillars were covered with algae, the carpets had been eaten away by the sea, leaving the chipped marble flooring half exposed. The remaining curtains were moldy, the ruined chairs were stripped down to their rickety wooden frames, and the gold that lined the hallways had dulled.

“They had to have money. Lots of it,” agreed the reptilian moose.

The manor’s paintings, however, were undamaged. Encased in glass frames, they alone had been spared from the marks of time. The minimal sun exposure left them perfectly preserved; most were in an even better condition than they would have been had they remained above the surface. Lining nearly every hall, half the works were deserving of every bit of praise. They were beautifully constructed with delicate brush strokes, scenes that reflected various familiar locations from all around the Vel’khanese capital. The other half were more amateurish, ranging from simple scribbles made of crayons to more advanced pieces with traces of genius splashed in their watered down colours.

The gallery belonged to a single individual, tracking their progress as they grew from an aspiring painter to a master of their craft, and Claire had a sneaking suspicion that the portrait on the wall, hanging right above the stairs, was one that he had drawn of himself. He almost looked like a lyrkrian male, but his legs were without the telltale fins and his tail was akin to that of a fish. Combined with his overtly green colouration, his traits suggested that he was a kelpie, one of Kal’syr’s sworn enemies.

“How long do you think this place has been down here?” asked Sylvia.

“It’s hard to say,” said Claire, with a frown. “There’s a lot of damage, but the architectural style isn’t too different from what we see on the surface.”

“Oh yeah! I guess it isn’t.” The fox floated up to one of the stone pillars and inspected it. “I wonder how it got like this anyway.”

“I don’t know,” said Claire. “But she does.”

With a flick of the tail, she grabbed one of the shadows lurking near a nearby pillar and wrenched it into the air. The person hiding inside of it stepped out, completely unbothered by the violent treatment. It was the same mage that she had tracked, fully recovered, and dressed in a fresh set of clothes.

“Would you not agree that it is rather inappropriate to follow a lady home?” She pulled a fan out from her robe and hid her face, but her smug smile was clear as the haughty laugh that accompanied it.

“You were the one stalking us in broad daylight,” said Claire. At first, the lyrkress had been tempted to reply in kind, to put on her straps and talk down to the red-eyed woman, as a duchess-to-be should, but soon set the idea aside. “We were just returning the favour.”

“Perhaps, but it was not inappropriate nor without reason.” A force of armed guards made primarily of kelpfins and seahorses sprang out from their surroundings, flooding out from closed doors to fill the empty gallery. “It so happens that we have some business to discuss.” Her men formed two lines, one in front equipped with shields and spears, and another to the rear, armed with wands and staves. Their weapons were held at the ready, primed to fire.

Claire was the first to make a move. Rolling her eyes, she grabbed the nearest melee fighter with a pair of vectors and tore his head straight off his body.

Log Entry 6771

You have slain a level 204 Kelpfin Warrior.

This feat has earned you the following bonuses:

- 1 point of wisdom

While the speaker was taken aback, the soldiers leapt into action immediately. First to attack were the mages. Their magic already prepared, they loosed a barrage and pelted her with spells to no effect. Shoulderhorse took Headhydra’s place on the field, opened its mouth wide, and consumed every spell that came its way—a feature she had always eyed, but never toyed with. The incident in Borrok Peak had left her wary of the self-harm it could inflict, but her ascension had deepend her mana pool. A wave of simple spells was a mere drop in the bucket.

The mages panicked, returning to their posts only as they noticed the blood mage’s glare. A second barrage filled with more powerful spells followed right after the first, but Claire didn’t absorb them. Her experiment was already complete; it was time to get to work.

Her eyes darting around the room, she grabbed over half the projectiles and redirected them, ramming them into the backs of the mages’ allies. Those that could not be manipulated were evaded, parried, or outright ignored. Her imaginary pony was left on the sidelines, to watch and salivate over all the things it could have eaten.

With the warriors forced to watch their backs, Claire dove straight into the fray with Farenlight’s horns in her hands. She killed six before the chain of command was almost restored. A gruff-looking seahorse raised his voice and demanded order, but she appeared in front of him and stabbed him through the throat before he could detail any specifics.

Everything but his armour screamed that he was one of the higher ups. He had a loud voice, a stand-out of a beard, and looked every bit the part of a veteran. But he was boring and insignificant, just like all the others. He had not the resolve to strike at her while he fell, clutching his throat and wheezing as she slammed a hoof into his face and detonated his head.

The execution gave the others pause. Their attacks lost vigour as they shifted to a focus on defense. They held their shields in front of them and wrapped their bodies in barriers, but all their preparations were paltry before her vectors. Five at a time, they were torn in half, turning the water from a deep blue to a muddied red. The first to turn tail were the first she targeted, and the rest were not any slower to fall. The blood they spilled gathered by the blood mage’s side and formed a throne. Manipulated and forced to serve, even in death.

“Who is it that holds your reins?”

It was only when she was left alone that the hemomancer asked the question. Twoscore men lay dead at her feet, but she continued to sit idly without a hint of concern. Their ends had only turned the hungry look in her eyes into something of a sparkle, and at some point, she had acquired a staff made of a powerful wood.

Claire narrowed her eyes, briefly, before lowering her weapons and tucking them back inside her cloak. “No one.”

“Then allow me.” There was no animosity in her voice, only magnanimous acceptance. “Operate under my rule, and you shall be given everythi—”

“Oh, oh! I know what’s gonna happen next!” Sylvia, who had vanished when the battle broke out, appeared out of thin air and waved her front paws around. “She’s gonna ask you to join her and then you’re gonna say no, and then there’s gonna be an epic final battle where you kill her by a hair’s breadth!”

There was a brief moment of silence, with Claire and the blood mage both looking at the hat before exchanging glances.

“May I have her?” asked the witch.

“No.” Claire magically pulled the foxbowl towards her and clamped her arms around it. “Mine.”

“Hmmm…” The witch tapped a finger against her sceptre. “Fox.”

“Mhm?” Sylvia lifted her head and cocked it.

“To answer your earlier question, this castle was sunk fifty years ago, right before the Vampire Queen took the throne. It belonged to my mother in law, an—”

A magical lip pinch stopped her mid sentence. “Stop wasting our time and tell us why you led us here. And why you tested me with your prisoners.”

Glancing at the corpses revealed a series of magical restraints. Each man possessed a magical rune branded directly atop his tongue, and they were not the only dead giveaways. None had addressed the witch with respect, and many even regarded her with fear of contempt, running from her and not Claire, regardless of the cause of their death.

“Allow me.”

Though the woman’s eyes lit up again, she was not the one to answer the lyrkress’ question. Swimming into the building, and taking her side was the old admiral whose summon they had been awaiting.