pre-planned violence

Research


	Soft beams of light shone through the stained-glass windows of the little library where the party had set up camp.  Kyria and Luanea pored over stacks of books, while Verashon, tunnel fighter that he was, studied the dwarves’ few maps of the northern tunnels.  Doshellas studied the recent history of the giants, looking for clues to their objectives in the records of their rampage over the previous few months.  Suivi was out and about in town, shopping for what they would need on the road north.


	Kyria yawned as she finished selecting a few tomes from the pile.  “At least they’re in Common,” she said.

	Verashon, the only Dwarvish-reader in the group, nodded distractedly.  “Mmm.  Find anything useful?”

	“Maybe.”  Kyria hefted her books and walked back to the little table the group had commandeered.  “You?”

	“Indeed.”  Verashon grabbed a map scroll and carried it down the row to where the others were already sitting.

	The library was one of the few well-decorated buildings any of them had seen in the city thus far.  Murals covered the walls, depicting scenes of the dwarves and humans of the city triumphing over the foes that had come for them over the years, from giants to goblins, from orcs to bandits.  The columns held small magic torches in decorative circles that looked like the edges of chandeliers, and carpets covered the floor, rather than being absent, as they seemed to be in every other building they had seen.  A huge fire roared in one corner behind a series of glass panes and panels, presumably to keep the air dry and free of mildew.

	The room was cramped in the extreme, with barely any room between tables and only eight-foot ceilings at most.  Luanea, at least, was privately glad for the absence of Axio, whose wingspan would have made things even more uncomfortable.

	The quartet sat in silence, reading and interpreting, until Kyria set her books down.  “Okay… okay, I think I have something,” she said.  “It says here, in ‘Histories of the Jotunn and Ettins,’ that some of the outcast tribes of giants had oral histories of places that no living member of their tribes had ever visited.”

	The others looked over as she read.  “That’s no big deal, but the book also says that they described the presence of a ‘hub’ or ‘conjoining,’ several times, that the official history of the Ostoria Empire didn’t contain,” she said.  Ostoria, they knew, was the last true empire of giants, before their religious civil wars, dwarf raids, and dragon conflicts had torn it to shreds.

	“So… I take it that its presence isn’t known?  Or location, at least?” Luanea prompted.

	“Naturally.”  Kyria yawned again.  “It does say one thing, though: it was the last place where the old Ostorians abandoned their Earthquake Bombs.  Or something.  The translations of the oral traditions aren’t pinpoint-precise.”

	“Earthquake Bombs?  Goodness, I’m glad those were left behind,” Luanea said.

	A discreet scuffle at the door drew their attention.  A pair of elderly human women walked in, and stopped dead at the sight of the occupant of the nearest chair to the door.

	Luanea felt their scrutiny with a tiny nugget of frustration in her heart.  She was the very image of an Eilistraeean priestess: elegant, graceful, beautiful, poised… and drow, which negated the other four in the eyes of most.  After a moment’s awkward silence, one of the two women muttered something, and both walked back out.  Luanea sighed and returned her eyes to her book.  She was used to it.  It still hurt a little, but she was used to it.  Ironically, people never seemed to notice Verashon.


	Cavria stifled a yawn as she walked out through the outer gate of the city.  She took a slow look around, taking in her surroundings.  It was bleak.  Piles of sooty slag, heaps of trash, jumbles of random stone debris, and a few crumbled buildings were all she could see.  Some few miles east she could see a farm of some sort, and what looked like a mine entrance to the north of it, but this was a desolate place, and she could see nothing else.

	“Inviting,” she said drily.

	“Then stay inside the walls,” a gate guard said.

	Cavria looked over her shoulder at him.  “I’ve been thrown out.”

	The guard cocked his head.  He was tall, for a human, but Cavria’s horns made her taller.  “What?  What for?”

	“Having the wrong ancestry,” Cavria said.  She flicked a horn with her finger.  “Apparently, that matters around here.”

	The guard looked incredibly uncomfortable, but said nothing else.  Cavria took out her travel pack, then hesitated.  “Actually… hang on,” she said.  She turned on her heel and walked back into the city.  The guard stared at her armored back, uncomprehending.


	Axio awoke from his troubled sleep with a gasp.  He recoiled instinctively as Cavria took a long step back.  “Whoa, whoa, Axio, it’s me,” she said.  “I just came back to get the coach.”

	The Aasimar ran both hands over his face.  At least he was dressed for sleep this time, having stripped down to uniform breeches before climbing back into bed.  “I… what?  Where are you going?”

	“Outside the wall.  I figure I can sleep in that, instead of just sleeping on the dirt,” Cavria said.  “I can have a few of the stable boys haul it out there with me, it’s no big deal.”

	Axio felt a flash of genuine anger in his heart, again, at her predicament.  “Hell of it,” he snapped.  He rose from the bed and grabbed a clean pair of socks from the bag beside his bed.  “I’ll come help.”

	Cavria looked at his condition.  He looked a mess, after only a few hours.  His sheets were bunched up in a ball by the foot of the bed, as was the blanket, from the thrashing of his feet.  His face was bleary and red, and unless she was mistaken, the slight dents in the wall beside the bed came from his wings, slapping against them with too much force.  “You look quite ill, my friend,” she said hesitantly.  “Please, don’t exert yourself.”  She stepped forward and delicately took his hand as he reached for his boots.  “I’m worried about you.”

	Her soft words pierced the bubble of indignation around Axio’s heart.  He looked up at her sharply, missing the faint hiss of noise from the corner of the room.  “You… yes.  Thank you.  But you’re a concern of mine, too, my friend, what with your undeserved exile, and I need to be up and about anyway.”

	He stood and stretched his glorious wings, and the whole room filled with beautiful golden light.  It threw shadows from Cavria, from the beds, from the bags, and from the table, and Cavria shivered in subtle pleasure as the light spilled across her soul; flesh couldn’t block it.  Dimly, she wondered if the others felt it too.

	“No more,” Axio said firmly.  He finished tying his boots on and brushed past Cavria.  She shook herself from the buzz and turned to follow.  “I can still help you move a cart.”

	The door slammed shut behind them.  For several seconds, nothing happened.  Then, with a gasp of pain, a woman collapsed from invisibility in the corner of the room.  Lithe but packed with compact muscle, beautiful but with cruelty written onto every line of her face, and nude save for a leather choker, it was impossible to mistake her for anything but Cavria.

	Clutch, the seventeenth of the forty High Succubae Prototypes Asmodeus had crafted in his laboratory, rose to her feet, shaking in pain.  The sensation of the Aasimar’s holy light spilling across her empty, soulless heart had left her in agony.  It had nearly broken her illusionary disguise as the dark elf slut, too, not that Axiopistos had been stable enough to notice.

	This was too risky, she told herself.  As much as she was enjoying sliding into his dreams, twisting them, making them more fun, she was going too fast.  She had taken him from clean to wrathful in only a few days of nightmares.  Her Queen had commanded her to slow, to take things easier.

	But that bitch traitor…

	Clutch’s hands tightened until the bones creaked in her fists.  That BITCH TRAITOR!  She nearly snarled aloud at the thought of the dirty runaway, the one who called herself Cavria like she was some kind of saint!  She tossed her mid-chest-length black hair over her shoulder and forced herself calm.  The traitor was sleeping outside the walls, then, and doing so in the wagon.  That made things more challenging for her.  She had been able to disguise herself as her sister more than once when needed, and the fact that she was completely identical to her in appearance at first had made the Aasimar fail to notice her presence with his Divine Sense.  That wouldn’t last, though.  If he ever used his power when she and the traitor weren’t in a physical line with Axiopistos, he would notice her.  And, of course, if the traitor ever used her powers instead…

	Clutch scoffed and stood up straight, taking stock of the room.  Axiopistos’s possessions were here, and that gaggle of thugs that he had following him around weren’t.  She wouldn’t get many chances at this.

	She knelt beside his belongings and started pawing through them.  Here, some coin.  A knife, wrapped in oilskin.  A bit of paper.  Clothes, lots of them.  A book or two…

	Ah, there.  She withdrew three small glass bottles and examined them.  “Holy water,” she hissed.  “I knew it.”  She lifted them and closed the bag again, then looked around.

	She spotted the chamber pot in the corner, empty and unused, and discreetly emptied all three bottles into it, then resealed them with a wick of heat from her fingertips.  She set them back in the bag and looked out the window… there.  The traitor, Axiopistos, and a few local boys, shoving the cart towards the gate.  The sunlight gleamed off Axio’s bare chest, drawing every woman’s eye for as far as it could be seen.

	Clutch liked it, actually.  It was the reason she volunteered for the mission.  She wanted to feel that big, angelic body on top of hers.  She wanted that handsome penis inside her, and his gleaming, brilliant, divine soul roiling and screaming in her womb, ready for eternal torture.  She shivered from head to foot, and she felt her body ready for his sex… but shook it off.  Not yet.  Not until he was corrupted fully.  Not until he was so locked into his course to Hell, that there would be no chance at all of his soul breaking free of his damnation once he had lain with her.