NOVEL NEXT Chapter 133 - Coven
Plumes of smoke appeared across the room as if somewhere deep in the walls an unseen fire raged beyond Valens's sight. Trickles of it fluttered gently and concentrated on the four corners of the room, rising and dancing, embers sparkling inside of them, casting long shadows down the ground.
The others reeled back at the sight while Valens furrowed his brows at the change over the Resonance. Something was odd. Strange frequencies bloomed straight into the peaceful rhythm and pushed it, scattering right away like rocks thrown into the still surface of a lake. The resulting waves were now forming into new beings. Live beings of different quality.
He caught a hand in the madness of it, stretching painfully slow from the left corner, painted nails looking rich in color. They ended in a soft pair of hands, skin almost too smooth that it bordered on the unnatural. A woman's hands, no doubt, but the rest… a billowing robe of black hampered with Valens's sound vision.
"Don't fall for the soft skin," Nomad whispered from the side, back stooped slightly as if he was preparing for a lunge, but his legs lacked that sort of tightness to make the attempt seem genuine. More like a cautious stance, Valens supposed, against the possibility of things going wrong. "These are old women troubled with centuries-long of suppression."
"What is happening?" Selin searched the plumes of smoke with wide eyes, rubbing aggressively at her right hand. Itching, perhaps, by the looks of it. Her skin reddened as if disturbed. "I-I…"
"What is the plan?" Celme muttered, fingers balled into fists. "Do we just go in? Make sure they stay in the smoke?"
"Just wait," Nomad shook his head. "They're too strong for you and me to take on."
"What about Valens?" Celme asked, frowning.
"That's a different story," Nomad said, giving Valens an odd look. "It'll depend on the company we'll be entertaining shortly."
It took perhaps the better part of a minute for the smoke to be cleared. Wisps of it found the nicks and crannies across the room to clear out, leaving four figures clad in dark robes behind them. Of those four, none looked older than twenty years of age. Their skin gleamed. Their eyes looked painfully bright. Hair rich like a lion's mane, well-tended and looking baby soft.
What's with those pointy hats? Is that a tradition?
They were large, those pointy hats were. Looking like they were fashioned from leather by the creases over them. It certainly fitted the general character of their robes. The wands clasped in their hands, though, were different, adorned with thorns and odd sigils.
"A celebration!" came a raspy voice, tinged with exhilaration so deep that Valens felt the woman's joy even if her face betrayed the emotion. Her eyes were different, one a deep blue, the other veiled with ink-like purple spots. Unlike the others, her dark hair sat inside the top of the hat, refusing to spill out as if it was an indecency she didn't want to stain her character with.
She's the boss, then?
"Little sister," the others announced, giggling softly as they gestured with their wands toward the shocked Selin who, for some strange reason, stood in the same place, some distance away from Valens and the rest of the group.
"I couldn't begin to describe the emotions I felt when I first heard of your soul resonating with the Coven's Sigil. How many years has it been, Maerwyn? For how long have we waited, Ysela? Caldreth, do you remember the time when you spoke of a grave future in which the Sisters of the Cinder Sigil diminished slowly, and died an unpurposeful, meaningless death, becoming mere dots in the long history of Vaelmir?"
"Our prayers have been answered, Covenmother," the three sisters spoke in precise unison, bright eyes fixated at Selin's face as if she represented something deeply of value to them. "A new sister in flesh. One that has experienced a lifetime of darkness and hatred."
"Such is the fate," the Covenmother nodded, taking a step forward and stretching a gentle hand to Selin. She didn't flinch. She stood there, allowed the odd woman to touch her cheek. "My dear child. How long have you suffered alone in the darkness? What tragedies befell upon you to be presented with a choice like this? Has it been too hard on you, dear? Too painful in your solitude to bear the weight of it all?"
"I…" Selin swallowed. "I haven't been alone."
"Ah!" the Covenmother paused and looked around her. It seemed it was only after Selin made a point of it that she realized there were other people in the room. Her expression changed into a clear display of doubt as she eyed each one of them, lingering a touch longer on Nomad's false skin. "I can smell the filth you so dearly wished to mask underneath that false skin, creature. You can't hide from my eyes with what little ability you possess."
"Never cared much for a stranger's gaze," Nomad said simply. "But you're wrong if you think I'm hiding from the likes of you, witch."
"I can't sense the presence of your Lords here," the Covenmother said, scowling slightly at him. "Your flock… is not here, either. Have you been cast off?" She shook her head. "You're an abomination too volatile to have been released to the outside world as a punishment. If that were the case, they would've crushed your stone into a thousand pieces to make sure the world is left untainted by your presence. A fugitive, then. How charming."
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"Not charmed myself," Nomad shrugged.
"Oh, I suppose I used too many words for a brain so desperately small like yours," Covenmother chuckled. "But do not worry, for I'm not here to cleanse the filth of a worm that lacks a meaningful existence."
[Cindermother – Lvl ???]
Valens watched the exchange as he tried to glimpse upon the woman's existence. Her frequencies were different than anything he had seen before. Delicate, in a way, that fit her outside appearance, but more complex than the Weeping Horror who was, by all means, a True Terror in its prime. This didn't mean that the woman was more than a Terror, though. She was just… different.
I can't quite put a name on it. She feels airy. Distant. Like only a part of her is here, yet I can't feel anything related to Void. How did they arrive here?
"And here," the Covenmother continued, waving a disinterested hand toward Celme. "A lousy presence that's more sound than flesh. Scarred deeply, I can tell, but those wounds were not for others to tend. You'll have to figure a way out yourself, little one. By sticking to the…"
Her voice lost the confident dismissal in its tone as she gazed into Valens's eyes, lips closing confusingly down and eyes widening with what Valens supposed was recognition. Her lingering propelled the other women of her court to move out of their respectable plumes of smoke, each one gliding across the floor with fluid grace, eyes boring down at Valens with scrutiny.
A yelp broke the stillness of their approach. It came from the left-most one, her golden braids fluttering slightly as she paused. The others wavered away at her caution, drawing back to the protection of their smoky cages, leaving only the Covenmother out in the open.
She watched Valens as if she were laying her eyes on a deeply troubling question, one that she didn't have the answers for. Something resembling a momentary ease flashed behind her eyes when she scowled at him, Valens guessing the woman sneaked a glance at his level.
"We have found ourselves in august company, my dear ones," she said, her gaze snapping back to the others as if she wanted to ensure they receded back to safety. "An old myth here, clad in human flesh, bereft of the foregone wounds and scars of a time long past."
Valens felt a nudge from Nomad as he kept eye contact with the woman. He ignored it. There was something intricately mesmerizing about those eyes that he just couldn't tear his gaze from.
"A nostalgic reminder, perhaps?" the Covenmother said, then her face fell and she shook her head. "Not looking likely. It's all too real, I'm afraid, to approach this matter as a simple illusory trick performed by our enemies. Vile as they are, even they wouldn't dare impersonate a Surgemaster and prepare a trap by presenting us with a new sister."
Another nudge. Valens found his chest rising with anger as he turned, too ready to shout back at Nomad for him to stay still. What he found was a grim-looking face, with a grim-looking gaze in his eyes.
"Be ready," Nomad said simply. "And don't use your flames."
Valens frowned deeply at the unsettling words, but the mesmerizing voice of the Covenmother demanded his attention shortly, which he found hard to resist.
"I will ask you one thing, Surgemaster," the Covenmother said, her eyes narrowing down. "Have you come here carrying the weight of your forefathers? To settle the old debts and ensure they were paid, and paid dearly on the account of years that have gone by in your absence?"
"I have no recollection of the debts you speak of," Valens offered, finding his voice steady against the beating of his heart. "Nor do I have any recollection of your face, or court, to conjure much of an opinion."
"Ignorant in his bliss, I see," the Covenmother said. Her face told Valens that she didn't expect the answer. Then again, he didn't know much about what sort of expectation boiled in that head of hers tucked under a great hat of pointy quality.
Then she made a gesture of her hands, the plumes of smoke coiling around the other women mustering at blinding speed, stretching forth toward Selin and wrapping around her like a snake stretched rather thin.
"I shall take her to the Coven then, seeing you have no obligations to entertain here against us," the Covenmother said, chest rising slightly in a show of relief. She reached out and held the hem of her hat, bowing in half-hearted formality toward Valens. "I bid you farewell, Old Blood. May we never see your face ever again."
It all happened too quickly for him to react. He was meaning to tell her to stop, or at least give Selin a chance to choose, but the coiling tendrils of smoke swallowed her whole before the words could spill out of his mouth. Other sisters of the Coven chuckled merrily as their own plumes rose shortly, with the Covenmother waiting for hers in diligent silence.
Then Valens was reaching, the Resonance crashing into a cascading rhythm of chaotic song that propelled him toward the slithering limbs of smoke. A Hexsurge spilled generously from his fingers and into the tight outer shell formed by the fog, blasting through them as easily as cutting through stalks of withered grass.
In an instant, Selin's face was revealed in its shocked clarity, while the smoke wafted off of her body like a host of clouds too scared of an approaching storm. The other plumes got the brunt of it soon, the young women hidden inside each of them screaming in terror as their own spell crooked in ways they surely hadn't expected.
"I'm afraid not," Valens said, holding out a hand at the Covenmother who seemed to be in a state of helplessness. She was strong, Valens knew, but for some reason the smoke in these chambers was easily swept from her hold and into Valens's control. If he wanted, he could guide it just as well as he did the flames of his Inferno.
Was it because of Belgrave? Why do I feel a connection between me and this strange spell?
Then came the flames, rising in height, all-encompassing, stretching out from the tails of the Covenmother and blasting across the room with surprising fervor. Valens's own flames might as well have been tiny candles against this ever-growing maw of blazing monstrosity. It flowed from everywhere, or at least from every crevice Valens could see.
Though the center of them remained as the Covenmother. Spiteful in her rage, she whipped a furious hand out to him and sent her flames crashing into their little group.
"Shit," Nomad grunted by the side, stumbling back to the hard door of the chambers, finding scant space to maneuver around the approaching monster of flames. "What did you do?"
Valens couldn't tell him that he was more curious than he to find an answer to that question. He felt a hand push him back by the side, Celme apparently thinking he would stand there to be taken by the flames.
Odd, that, Valens thought. It was the case since the same connection he felt a moment ago presented itself right in this masterful spellcraft as well. But this time, there was an intricately wrong sensation that came with it. Because he felt with crushing certainty that the flames unleashed by this woman belonged to him, and him only.