ROD - Chapter 118

Chapter One-Hundred-Eighteen – Acolyte – Part Two

Beware the witch that scowls, run from the one that smiles.

-Archmagus Carl of the Order of Flame-

The dose should be kicking in soon, while we wait, I think about how I used healing skill earlier on her. Everything I did was reflexive, and somewhat inefficient. Instead of closing her throat, I should have knocked her out from the start, or paralyzed the nerves in her jaw. Maybe I’m being hard on myself, but I know that I can do better. I’d never considered healing skill to be weaponizable before. We are always taught how to help, not to hurt… I don’t know if my control of it has gotten better with all the mana training, but it felt easier to move outside the normal scope that I used to follow. Like something is different now.

Jennifer… or more accurately Karen is smiling through the witch mask. The Veritas extract must be working.

Karen’s eyes slant at Starman, “Gods I hate you, Pierre, you whiny, pampered prick. When they assigned me to you, I was so honored to be trusted with such a task. For The Ninth Circle to trust me to shadow a false prophet directly. There is no greater honor… but you were so insufferable. So…”

False prophet? Ninth Circle?

“Fuck you, stupid bitch! Go and slob some knobs and…” Starman begins, but Clayton binds his mouth with a cloth.

Karen’s smile fades into a sneer, “They know where we are, they will be coming. The Circle would not abandon me. I was about to become an Archpriestess after I delivered you. Me… me! And you!” she snarls a look at me, “Why didn’t you get charmed? Do you have some stupid fucking anticharm skill like Starman? Hmm? What was it? How did you do it? God I fucking hate you. I hate all of you worthless curs, you unworthy…” a spasm moves through her body and her eyes bulge, sweat beading on her brow.

Charmed? Is she saying she charmed us? I think back to when we were deciding whether or not to dose her. Clayton and Carl were very hesitant to do it. Even I was.

Carl’s arm shifts the barrel of his shotgun toward her, with a low growl he utters, “I knew I smelled a fucking witch.”

Karen looks at me, “You’re a freak, a stain on the legacy of the true prophets by bearing their mark. The worst of all the false ones. The one who defiled the sanctity of the Nine.”

Her eyes are frantic, fanatically so, like some kind of religious zealot.

“Are you a Marauder?” I ask.

“No… but I…” she flinches, straining against the mask, trying to whip her tongue side to side, “I serve them, they are the enlightened ones, the holy prophets, the bringers of a new age. We will walk in the light that they bring once the Earth has been cleansed of all of you. This has been promised by the Nine gods that have chosen them. Chosen all of us to serve them. We will make a new Eden of Earth once you filthy fucks are gone and made to ash.”

“Fucking hell,” Clayton says under his breath, swallowing, “Do you know the identity of any of the Marauders?”

“I… I…” she strains heavily against the witch mask, the glyphs glow brighter until she stops, “The hero, Ajax… he is a Marauder…”

A knot forms in my stomach… the guy who is past level seventy. The guy who was the crown jewel of the heroes for the WHA is a Marauder.

Shit. That’s not good.

My brow furrows, “If Ajax is a Marauder, then what happened to the sixth hero?”

“No idea… probably dead.”

“I don’t get it,” Carl says, furrowing his brow, “How did he pretend to be a hero?”

Vella strides into the room with Tina in tow, she’s wearing a pair of sweats and her hair is in a loose and wet bun. “How did who? What did I miss? Did she shit herself yet?”

“Ajax is a Marauder,” I breathe.

Vella stops in her tracks, giving me a confused look, “No he’s not, bullshit.”

Jennifer… Karen laughs, then snarls, “He is you stupid self-absorbed cunt.”

Vella shakes her head, “Couldn’t be true, she must… remember she said something about a skill to negate telling the truth, she must have something like that.”

“I don’t think so,” Carl says, pointing to the mask and manacles, “Between those we’d see her casting a skill.”

“Why didn’t we use this earlier?” I ask.

“Well, it’s not exactly humane. When you peel it off it um, it isn’t pleasant. After she bit off my finger though, fuck her,” Carl shrugs.

Tina moves to Carl’s shoulder and strokes his back.

“Do you know of any other Marauders?” I ask Karen.

“Yes… the one that the UWO captured years ago, Dagon.”

“The one that disappeared on a Respec quest?” I ask, recalling what Fisban told me.  

She laughs, “He’s already back.”

Clayton shifts, giving me a look before turning to her, “What do you mean?”

“He came back last month you fucking moron.”

“So, he’s in UWO custody?” I ask.

She laughs again, glaring at me, “You seem bright, yet you’re a moron. Always focused on the wrong details. Gods why couldn’t you have just taken the path I led you on. I set it up so perfectly, everything was laid out so well. But no…” she looks at all of us, “You’re all a bunch of fucking idiots!”

“Elaborate, bitch,” Vella says coldly.

Karen’s face twitches and she smiles, “I cursed your precious friend Fisban after she let her guard down, and I took a pipe to her legs and her body, like a fucking pinata I smashed her bones and her organs. Mangling her pretty face after she wouldn’t tell me who was the real candidate… because Ajax didn’t believe that Tran was the candidate. He pulled the records of the gate where you supposably killed a god, Tran wasn’t in that gate, neither was Barlow. So, it was between you, that bitch’s daughter and Gilroy.”  

My heart tremors, something rising past the rage… worry. The bitch’s daughter, she means Cortez.

“I made it look like a debuff so that you would draw the conclusion that Vella did it… that stupid bitch didn’t show up though, instead she wanted to pretend to be a board member like a little princess,” Karen seethes, “Always fucking up my plans, stupid bitch.”

“I always knew there was a cunt lurking behind that pretty face,” Vella says shaking her head.

“You didn’t know shit, I played you like a violin. You were the easiest to fool, narcissists always are,” Karen smiles, the mask on her face glows brightly for a moment and she winces, “Fucking bullshit mask…”

“What happened next?” Clayton asks.

“Well, we had to adjust my plans after Vella didn’t show up, and then that whiny bitch Olivers showed up and nearly ruined everything,” Karen says grinding her teeth.

“He’s not part of your order?” I ask, somewhat surprised.

“No… he’s just a petty asshole.”

“You said the other Marauder, Dagon is back, why isn’t he in custody?” Clayton asks.

“Do I need to spell it out?” Karen says, then winces, “Apparently I have to answer… fuck this… we own the UWO.”

Silence falls over the room at her proclamation.

“Why else would we attack the WHA and the WSA?” she says, looking over at me, “You’re all fucked… they’re…” she winces, eyes bulging, “They’re coming, there was a tracker on the SUV. They know we’re here, Ajax is going to rip your spine from your bodies.”

So the WSA has been attacked… this is worse than I thought.

Carl chuffs some smoke in a chuckle, Tina gives him a wry eye about him smoking, but he answers Karen’s remark, “Oh? And where do you think here is?”

She blinks at him then says a rough estimate. He chuckles and shakes his head.

“They wouldn’t have found us anyway,” Clayton says, tossing a device on the ground at Karen’s feet, it’s cracked like someone stomped on it, “Crushed it as we approached the boundary line, just in case Carl forgot to put up his wards.”

Carl looks at him almost offended, “As if.”

“You did forget that one time,” Tina says with a shrug.

“That was one time,” Carl huffs, giving her some side eye, “Fucking Fae portal ruptured on the Ley Line, I had to take the wards down to seal it.”

“Yeah, but after you kicked them out, you did forget to do more than half the protective wards, we had pixies in the garden for weeks,” Tina says, moving to grab his pipe from his mouth, he shifts it to the other side and squints at her.

Karen groans, her eyes widening and a vein in her forehead throbbing, then suddenly it fades and her face shifts to a different expression. Starman is laughing through his gag trying to say something.

“Smell that,” Vella says with a smirk, “Smells like Karma.”

“Fuck you,” Karen seethes, trying to fight her bindings, “Fuck you, this place and…”

“Enough,” I say, crouching to be eye level with her, my eyes are like daggers as I ask, “You said they thought it could be Cortez or Gilroy. What does that mean exactly?”

She smiles a deep and wicked smile, “They probably already have them now that I’m missing. If they don’t they will soon enough.”

My pulse threads, “Who has them?”

“Dagon I’d guess. Ajax doesn’t get directly involved in anything… they want him above reproach… they want the lambs to worship him…” she sneers, “He’s going to enjoy killing you though. Ajax likes me, he’ll come for me… that much is certain.”

“Why does he like you?” Clayton asks.

“I’m…” she tries to bite her tongue but can’t, “I’m his little sister.”

Vella raises an eyebrow and looks at me, “If she’s not lying, then I don’t want to be here when he shows up, we should leave.”

“Relax, he’ll never find this place,” Carl says.

“How can you be so sure?” Vella asks warily.

“We’re not in England anymore, that gate you went through is a waystone that connects to Ireland. Never find us here.”

“And if he walks through it?”

“Well, I obviously recalibrated it, he’ll find himself in a forest in Germany,” Carl says cooly.

“Didn’t you also say the waystones were acting up?” Clayton asks.

Carl puffs some smoke, “Not mine, mine were reenchanted by my friend Deborah. I’d trust it with my life.”

Tina looks at him, “Lot of trust in a friend I’ve never met.”

“Where will they take them?” I ask Karen.

“I don’t know.”

My teeth grind and my head is spinning. They’re going to use Cortez to lure us out, and it will work, because I’m not leaving her in their hands. This is the second time that she’s been used to get me to go somewhere. I can’t even use my interface to check on her. I need to leave the warded area. Thoughts jumble in my head as I try to formulate a plan.

“Get what you can from her,” I say, standing.

“Where are you going?” Clayton asks with a worried expression.

“You know where.”

“Godslayer, don’t rush in without a plan.”

“I’m not just going to sit here, you should know me better than that.”

Clayton frowns and nods, “Carl, show him your war chest,” turning to Karen, “I’ll interrogate the bitch.”

“Why?” Carl asks.

Clayton whispers to Carl for a few moments. Carl looks at me and nods, “Come on, boyo.”