Tallah [Book 3 Complete]

Falor sent out a low-power pulse and waited for contacts. It wasn't powerful enough to draw any attention, but should've been sufficient to find any enemies hiding in the forest, at least if those enemies had a heartbeat.

He, Quistis, and Vial were approaching the prison on the side of the main gate, from the east, and were kept hidden from sight by the dense foliage. The others, the two aelir assassins and Barlo, he'd sent around the fortress, scouting for a secondary breach.

Barlo hadn't been happy with the arrangement, but he was the only one Falor wouldn't need to worry for, given the company.

He didn't feel any hostility from Mertle Mergara and Tummy Toh'Uhm. They genuinely seemed like decent people trying to make a living away from their oppressors.

But finding two aelir assassins—No, two very good aelir assassins in the middle of nowhere, smack down in his path, was too much coincidence for someone in his position to accept. It bordered on a kind of farce only a theatre in Aztroa would dare stage.

Moreover, he didn't want them with him because he knew who was fighting inside. And that had a chance of becoming an uniquely thorny problem all its own.

That kind of power, with that kind of aftertaste lingering on the air, could only be one person and Falor would need all his wits if he were to meet her. Worrying over how she'd react to the two, even skilled as they were at lying through the eyeballs, wasn't a risk he wanted.

"Movement ahead, Commander." Vial emerged from the thicket, quiet as a cat, and whispered his warning. "It's headed towards the gate. More to the side. Same kind of things as before."

Falor grunted his acknowledgement. "You passed unseen?"

"Aye. Learned the lesson."

Falor lowered himself down on his haunches, with Vial and Quistis flanking him. He drew in the soft earth with a finger.

Remembering the maps he'd seen of Drak's Perch was not easy, but he remembered enough details to know the general lay of the fortress.

"Past the main gate there's an open air courtyard." He drew a line towards the right side, past the gate. "The walls are honeycombed but mostly hollow. There's a pretty straight passage going all the way around the keep. If we enter on this side, right behind the gates, we should emerge here." The line he drew followed the contour of the wall, all the way around the courtyard, to exit near the main keep. "Warden's Keep should be an annex to the main prison, outside. I'm hoping to find the man holed up in there. If not, I'm going into the keep proper."

"How are we getting past the gate?" Quistis asked. "It's all fine to go through, but we'll be exposed the whole time. Everyone, on either side, will see us clear as day."

He expected the question and had the answer. "We're not going in through the gate. We're going under it."

"A bit of a big task for the three of us, digging a tunnel," Quistis grumbled. "Is there a secret way?"

"Sewage."

"Sewage?!" Quistis looked at the black-walled fortress. "Here?! How? I would've expected outhouses and ditches."

"We're not savages, Quis," he said. "I've seen the plans for this place, and there's a sewage channel running beneath the walls, passing under the gate, protected by several wrought-iron grates. I aim to cut through them."

"Lovely. If whoever's inside won't see us coming in, they'll at least smell us." Quistis wrinkled her nose and raised her head, watching the nearby brush intently. A moment later, she returned her attention to where he was pointing. "I expect any prison built to house the kind of channellers this place guards would be well-warded against channelling?"

"Really, Quis, you would me." Falor met her eyes and grinned. "There's not much in the empire that I can't crack into if I set my mind to it. I'm expecting the guards inside would be more trouble than the grates, if they're not too busy with these living dead."

"All this, to confirm a suspicion." Quistis shook her head as she rose and straightened. "We could just go in and join the defence. Ask our questions once we help fight off whatever this invasion is."

Falor wasn't going to repeat himself. Quis knew well enough why he wanted things done the hard way. If Drak's Perch had been compromised even before the horde assaulting it, he wanted to see it first and decide what to do. Cinder had said the prison was empty but that couldn't be true.

He knew supplies were coming to Drak's Perch. He'd seen the requisition orders himself, especially as they often demanded mage killers or channellers, not to mention weapons, gear and supplies. Being in Valen had afforded him a unique position from where to oversee some of the empire's shopping lists, and everything marked for the prison had been reasonable. Something had to be going on inside.

Question was: what? And to add to that one, why were these creatures drawn here? He doubted they were staging an elaborate prison break, especially as the latest crop of prisoners caught by the mage killers hadn't been anything spectacular. And of the old ones, only Cinder and her sister had been the only noteworthy additions in decades.

Huh. He'd never thought on that. While the aelir grew ever more powerful, it seemed like humanity's crop of channellers had grown thin-blooded and scarce. The last group he'd received from Hoarfrost had been too weak as a group to form a coterie out of them. Falor had to sprinkle them into existing units just to make some use of them.

"So, I'm looking for what?" Vial asked as they advanced through the underbrush.

Falor drew himself out of his thoughts and sketched a circle in the air. "A round iron cover, probably half-buried. There should be several."

"And where does the… waste run to?" Quistis asked, making a pained face. "Far as I know, we've no rivers in this part of the continent."

That, he didn't know. He cursed himself for never becoming far more intimate with the schematics he'd have available. While his mother had never given him any information about Drak's Perch function or its internal structure, she had consulted him with regards to the prison's security following Cinder's escape.

He'd assumed, at the time, that Cinder had escaped through the very same tunnels they were about to use to break in, which is why he'd suggested the grates and the rearrangement of the waste pipeline towards the main gate. This was to make a single ingress direction and more readily defend against it.

But he'd never asked where the sewage actually went. Likely all the way to the Divide to spill into the ocean. Or to some underground lake. Why would he have given it another thought?

Vial was in his element now that Barlo wasn't with them to take charge. The ex-Cauldron scout moved with quiet grace, barely disturbing the thick vegetation, eyes always roaming the surroundings. He stopped them twice and changed the direction, his instincts much sharper even than Falor's pulses.

Falor didn't have the patience for this kind of tracking, which was just as well. That's why he had Barlo and why he'd also recruited Vial. Between the two soldiers, he expected he could traverse just about any terrain on Edana. The two could probably find him a path through the endless blizzard of the Expanse, that endless frozen wasteland beyond Aztroa's Crown.

Now, Vial was proving exactly why he'd been a good choice to lift from the Rock. Far as they could ascertain, the forest was filled with the shambling dead, not all of them clustered together.

There should have been several access points into the underground on the same line as the corners of the fortress. Six corners, six entrances to maintenance tunnels heading into the main sewer. Five of them were heavily trapped. The sixth, the one he wanted to find, wasn't. But it was supposed to be situated the closest to the wall, in a clearing that would be clearly visible from the ramparts.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

But nobody was up there now. So he instructed Vial of where to take them.

It took two bells before they reached the edge of the forest and had the clearest look yet at the black wall. To their left, in the near-distance, the masses of the dead boiled out of the forest and shuffled through the shattered gate.

They did so in utter silence. No moaning. No crying. The dead simply walked, shuffled, or crawled towards Drak's Perch, single-minded in pursuit of their mysterious interest. Falor spat as he regarded them, feeling his gorge rising.

So many people. So many innocents slaughtered and then abused like this by a creature that impersonated a holy man. It had escaped him before, but once this part of his mission was complete, he'd ensure he'd find the bastard and destroy him.

Thunder echoed inside the fortress, and the earth shook with each blast of power.

My aunt's in a foul mood. Falor suppressed a shiver at the thought of facing the aelir'rei defending Drak's Perch just then. If he could help it, they wouldn't meet. Part of it was concern over his companions, part not wanting to explain his own presence there. And still, she was more than enough to handle an army several times the size of this one, same as he was.

Vial slipped out from the covering protection of the trees, and out into the meadow-land stretching beneath the walls, following Falor's direction.

He remained with Quistis, watching for signs of the soldier. They couldn't see him, even as the ground near the walls was barren, the trees cut away, and only low grass left to grow. Still, Vial had gone invisible, though Falor could still sense him with every pulse he sent out.

"You're sure about this?" Quistis asked him. "That we're not just making fools of ourselves? Or, worse, acting like traitors when our colleagues are in danger?" She turned and stared towards the column of the shuffling dead. "This feels wrong."

He wasn't sure. This was all based on those words from Cinder, on that look she'd given him and the tone of her voice. He wanted Cinder to be wrong and Drak's Perch to be exactly what he knew it to be.

But if it wasn't, then he and his mother would need to have words. Either something had gone terribly wrong, or he was being kept in the dark. Neither prospect was any good.

"I'm sure," he lied.

By the quirk of her lips, not really pulling up into a smile, she didn't believe him.

"As you say. I really wish we would've gotten the masks."

He chuckled grimly. "I thought your report to the Enginarium called them uncomfortable pieces of shit, as efficient as a skunk's tail in warding off any stench more intense than a daisy. Now you want them?"

"So you did read my report on them." Quistis didn't smile. "Want me to list all the diseases we're about to expose ourselves to? All the kinds of flesh eating bacteria that thrive in sunless human waste?"

He did not, no but understood Quistis was naturally worried. Inaction didn't suit a healer, and that went doubly for her. Ever since he'd know Quistis Iluna, she'd been the most dedicated, most fervent priestess of Panacea. It was their pact together that he would not impose on her any action that would step on her vows, and he'd kept true to that, always dirtying his hands instead of delegating responsibility to her.

But not now. Today they'd both get dirty. It was unavoidable.

"We'll be fine," he said without really meaning it. "Once I see the cells and the reports, I'll turn my attention to the assault. Between myself and… the other Metal Mind, I daresay we'd make short work of this enemy."

"It's not the Adjunct in there?" Quis asked. "What was her name again?"

"Leah. And it's not her. Her power is different from this one, sharper, tightly controlled. It's why mother likes her so much."

Trees rustled and they drew farther back from the edge. Nothing emerged. Falor risked a stronger pulse and got no answer aside from a few small, terrified heartbeats. The one that had been following them around was not in range this time. Vial remained somewhere out in the grass.

More time passed in silence as they waited, Quistis swapping her weight from foot to foot. She hadn't complained in some time about her boots, but she did owe Mertle a new pair.

It took them by surprise when the scout emerged from the forest behind them and gently tapped Falor on the elbow. Quistis jumped with a startled squeak.

Vial had a finger to his lips and beckoned they follow. He lead them away from that position and farther towards the other side of the fortress's wall.

"More wanderers," Vial explained as they got out of sight of the gate. "They shuffle about or lie on the ground, as if dead. There's quite a few around the wall."

"Found the entrance?" Falor asked.

"Aye. Couldn't open it. Rusted locks."

"Show me."

The actual position for the manhole cover was farther away from the wall and somewhat nestled in one of the wall's outside folds. Anyone watching from the walls would have sight of it from at least three different spots.

A thick metal cap lay half-buried, barely seen among the grass, marked by a narrow patch of dead vegetation. The lock that held it shut was rusted through, looking like it had never been opened since set. Which was likely true.

It took him no effort at all to melt through the mechanism, rip it off and cast it aside. Really, a good swing of his hammer would've done the job just as easily, but that made noise. It took all three of them to wrench open the cover and drag it up enough for each of them to squeeze through. Falor had to unceremoniously use his maul as a crowbar, just to wrench open the blasted thing.

The cover let out a squeal of anguished hinges and they all froze above it, looking up at the walls, out at the forest, and away towards the edge of the wall. No one appeared to check the noise.

A puff of gut-turning stench wafted up the moment the lid properly cracked open and hit them all like an angry mare with a vendetta. Falor's eye watered and Quistis drew the hem of her shirt over her face. Yes, that door would lead into the sewage drain. The smell was proof enough that they were headed in the right direction and the maps had been accurate.

Quistis produced a sprite as they descended a narrow, rusted iron ladder. First Falor went down. Then Quistis. Finally Vial, pulling the lid back shut. The sprite pried open the dark and revealed, at the bottom, a narrow tunnel only wide enough for them to pass sideways, with a gentle slope heading downward. The smell was heavier down there, somehow even worse, human waste mixed in with putrefied offal.

"If I cast a spell in here, I expect we'll all go up in flames," Falor whispered. Nobody laughed.

Quistis extracted three vials of aerum from her pouch and handed one to each of them. They drank in silence.

"This should last us until we're out of here," she said. "I don't smell any methane, but that's normally odourless. Best make sure you don't blow us up, yes?"

The tunnel snaked its way beneath the walls for a time, until it finally went towards a central, much wider tunnel. Water splashed as they made their way down the incline. Above ground, something was thump-thump-thumping on the ground, dislodging thin wisps of dust from the stone ceiling.

A waterway waited for them at the end into which several other narrow tunnels lead. This was several metres across and, by the look of the dark water, Falor expected it to also be several deep.

To the right of their egress were the very grates Falor had suggested and later designed. Black metal bars barred access towards the fortress basement, welded together in a matrix of diagonal lines that interlocked to obstruct sight of anything beyond.

"Mother listened to my suggestions," Falor said as he rapped his knuckled on the first of the black gates. "This are exactly based on my sketches."

"I don't suppose you'd considered how exactly to go through them," Quis grumbled.

Falor smirked and raised a finger. A single blue-white spark flitted across the tip of it.

Quistis blanched in the surgical light of the sprite. Disciple kept Vial from diving back into the tunnel.

"Calm yourselves," Falor said. "There are vents. You can't feel the drafts?"

His spark became a short beam of energy, burning like a sharp blue flame above his finger.

"It's not only Pyromancers that know how to deal with flames," he said and pressed his finger to the first gate. The flame punched straight through and he began cutting.

"For context, we are now dismantling a prison's defence and penetrating into one of the empire's most heavily guarded secrets. Is that about it?" Vial asked this time. "When the Empress will want to hang me, can I just say I was following orders?"

Falor let out a low chuckle. "Afraid not. You're a soldier with a conscience. Fall to the orders defence and Mother may do worse than hang you."

"Lads?" Quistis's voice was a note too high and shrill. "Something's in here with us."

Something splashed in the water the very moment after and Quistis backed into Falor's back. He stumbled and spun, facing the darkness headed away from there. Ripples lapped at the rock edges of the waterway.

Red eyes shone beneath the black surface of the water. First a pair. Then two. Then the water filled with reflected sprite light, too many eyes to count. Gaunt, tall figures emerged from the other side tunnels, and maws of needle teeth grinned in their direction.