The Homunculus Knight

Chapter 14: Blood-soaked Answers

“Brave Iskandar marched with ten legions and a host of Auxillia to face the Razor-Thorn Host at the Garden of Singing Briars. Rage in his heart, the Hero Emperor sought vengeance for his sworn-sister Carpia, who died to the Rose Lord’s embrace. Twenty-five thousand boots and half that many spears drummed out the rhythm of war upon the rocky ground as the Free Peoples met the Sidhe Host.” - Chronicles of the Last Sidhe War. (Author Disputed)

:: A day before Mina Vrock awoke ::

Natalie was quickly becoming unfortunately familiar with many different types of pain. The life and unlife she lived ensured adversity in its most ugly forms were something Natalie knew well. Still, the sensation of having her jagging hands blown off by Isabelle’s experiments was among the worst things she’d felt. A fact Natalie was eager to remind her mentor whenever she complained about anything.

+ Will you get over that already? I’m being more careful, and besides, the sensation was muted for you. +

+ You. Blew. Off. MY HANDS! +

Isabelle rolled their shared eyes as she continued working. Three hours passed since Glynn joined them, and thankfully, no further arguments erupted between the senior Priest and Isabelle. With the plague as a shared enemy, there was enough common ground Natalie could keep them both standing on it. At first, the old Hierophant simply watched Isabelle work. Then, as he grew more comfortable, he started offering suggestions and insights. At first, Isabelle tried to ignore them as she was want to do, but to the former Countess’s surprise, the dismissed words were potentially useful. Glynn held lifetimes of experience in matters of pestilences, curses, and Aetheric phenomena. While his knowledge couldn’t match the near library of Isabelle’s mind, he’d weathered multiple plagues and offered a perspective the ever-aloof Isabelle lacked.

With everyone getting along reasonably well, there was little for Natalie to do but try and follow Isabelle’s work. Considering Natalie's paltry education, it was a difficult task, but curiosity and caution provided strong motivators. From her unusual perspective, Natalie could watch the constant flow of magic and information dancing through Isabelle’s mind. The closest metaphor Natalie could find for the experience was watching someone work a craft from over their shoulder.

Natalie witnessed the resources and techniques Isabelle brought to bear but could not understand their purpose or secrets until the result was shown. Still, a novice could learn scraps from watching a master work, and that was exactly what Natalie intended to do. Of course, Natalie could, in theory, just ask Isabelle what she was doing, but when the former Countess really started working, she didn’t respond to questions or answered with mumbled threats to anyone who’d dare distract her. So now Natalie just watched and tried to interpret what she witnessed.

Isabelle seemed reasonably certain she could dislodge Faerie pupa from Screamers, turning them into normal infected. The modified Sting byproduct would hopefully force the Faerie pupa to release its host or risk death by Bane. Glynn was still concerned and unwilling to experiment on people, but Isabelle’s confidence was heartening to Natalie. No one as intelligent and egotistical as Isabelle spoke with such certainty unless they were convinced they were right.

Texts dredged up by Glynn and Walker Jacq shed some light on the Galarwyll, the technical name for the Faerie involved with the plague. The Faeries possessed a strange arcane version of an insect lifecycle. Starting as an egg laid in the Beyond, before hatching into larva in the Aether, then finding a Spirt/Soul to host them as they grew into a pupa and eventually an adult. The bastard responsible for the plague found a way to halt the Galarwyll’s development at the pupae stage while binding their eggs to the pestilence. Natalie didn’t understand most of what Isabelle and Glynn discussed, but she was reasonably certain the plague acted like a summoning spell. Plucking a Galarwyll egg from the Beyond and depositing it within the infected.

The whole thing was confusing and disturbing to Natalie. Something not helped by Isabelle’s worrying familiarity with all the factors involved. When Natalie asked about the original project this ‘usurper’ stole notes from, Isabelle changed the subject. As more about the plague became clear to Natalie, this fact weighed heavier and heavier. There seemed no good reason to combine plagues, summoning magic, mind control, and the jagging Fae. Or at least Natalie couldn’t imagine any purpose that would outweigh the insane risks involved. So when a lull came in Isabelle’s work, Natalie decided to look for the truth.

+ Could you show me more of the memory at the Hillock? +

Isabelle paused and frowned. + Why? +

+ Curiosity and concern. I want to know what happened, and what was within the Faerie Circle. +

Tapping her fingers rhythmically on the table, Isabelle made her decision. + If it means you stop distracting me with your questions and complaints. Then fine, I will acquiesce. +

A strange sense of vertigo washed over Natalie, and she sank deeper into Isabelle’s mind. The senses Natalie shared with her mentor became distant and muted as she floated down into the memory and the answers it hopefully held.

Natalie was back atop the hillock in South Atredia, and much had changed since her last dive into Isabelle’s memories. Stumps and brush were cleared away, scalping the hillock down to its stony soil. The faerie ring at the mound’s peak was covered in iron: forge slag, old horseshoes, rusty nails, broken pots, and every other bit of ferric refuse the nearby village could provide. Surrounding the buried ring was another circle made of enchanted chains anchored into the ground by ritual knives, much like the one Isabelle used to test the circle in the previous vision.

At each point where a knife kept the chains steady, a line of iron filings slithered out across the hilltop in a strange runic pattern. Even to Natalie’s uninformed mind, the purpose of the chains and iron powder was obvious; this was an incredibly powerful ward assembled to keep whatever slept in the hillock trapped.

Glancing behind her, Natalie realized the mound's slopes had also changed. Squads of undead soldiers waited with unnatural stillness for orders to be given. Eternal Soldiers in their solid plate, supported by lumbering Flesh Golems and strange Shadows slithering along rocky ground. At least a hundred undead waited with weapons and armor for whatever threat their mistress anticipated.

Standing maybe half a dozen meters from Natalie was the mistress in question. Isabelle was bedecked in a full panoply of war; finely wrought scale mail covered her body, and a high-crested helm sat upon her head. In one hand, she held a large hooked dagger carved from monstrous ivory; in the other was a magister’s staff of pure white wood capped by a fell sigil cast in bloody rose gold. Eyes blazing with focus, Isabelle whispered arcane words under her breath, and the top of her staff glowed with witch-light.

The Countess was not alone; an honor guard of nightmares surrounded her. On her right was a Flesh Golem stitched together from Ogres and Trolls. Armored plates were bolted to its flesh, and it held a huge great axe in one hand, a castle door-sized shield in the other. To Isabelle’s left was a gaunt woman with empty eye sockets and long tangled hair, whose body and clothes seemed perpetually damp. A cloud of fog that was certainly not natural swirled around Isabelle’s feet, and a squad of ten armed and armored corpses with bronze death masks stood at attention behind the Vampire.

While she’d never let her mentor know, Natalie had to admit Isabelle really was impressive at the zenith of her power. Even through a memory’s inherent murkiness, Natalie could feel the Aether droning with dark power. A legion of corpses and their dread mistress imprinting their nature and purpose upon reality by presence alone.

The creak of poorly made wheels and the clatter of bones caught Natalie’s attention, and she watched as a strange collection of Rattlers shuffled up the hill. The animated skeletons pushed and pulled a wheelbarrow up the hillock’s slope. The Rattlers were chipped and scored by time and unlife, missing parts of skulls, or lacking digits. Still, they completed their task and got the wheelbarrow up next to the buried faerie ring. Unloading shovels from the cart, the Rattlers stepped onto the pile of scrap iron and started digging.

Confused, Natalie watched as the skeletons started undoing the earliest defenses Isabelle erected, emptying shovelfuls of scrap iron into the wheelbarrow without disturbing the enchanted chains. When the Rattlers finished excavating the circle, they started digging into the rocky ground. Then as if an undead work crew shoveling dirt, surrounded by a Vampire’s army, wasn’t unsettling enough, a haunting voice started to sing.

The eyeless woman standing near Isabelle opened blue lips and let a beautiful aria flow forth. The song was in old Imperial, and Natalie only knew enough to catch bits about ‘souls’ and ‘chains.’ Whatever the song's meaning, it was clearly magical; the wind shifted and started to add its own low groaning voice as the surrounding shadows danced. Natalie watched as humanoid shadows slithered up the hillock and into the air. Spots darker than night floated around the hilltop, forming great rings of interlinked darkness in the sky. It reminded Natalie of the ritual involving the Seraph, only grotesquely reversed and magnified.

As worn shovels hit solid rock and the Rattlers stopped their work, Isabelle lifted up her staff, and the green witch-light floating about it grew brighter and brighter. Squinting her eyes, Natalie watched the Rattlers form a circle within the chain, clutching each other's skeletal hands as their eyes glowed with green fire. Natalie then understood why such shoddy bones were called for this task; Isabelle wasn’t the type to waste good material.

A blinding flash of green energy erupted across the bald hilltop and shot into the sky like some inverted lightning strike. Strangely, there was no sound to the light, no thunder or rumble. Natalie felt that made the whole thing just that much more unsettling. As the light faded, Natalie gazed upon the faerie ring and what Isabelle did to it. The Rattlers were gone, as was all the stone and soil within the circle of chains. A deep well was dug into the rock, carved into being instantly and terribly by Isabelle’s magecraft.

As if to answer Natalie’s silent wish for thunder in the wake of lightning, the Hillock started to shake. Deep pulsing tremors vibrated the entire mound like drums in the deep. The clatter of steel and bones warred with the rumbling depths as Isabelle’s army readied itself for war. The hulking Flesh Golem, acting as Isabelle’s bodyguard, stepped forward, marshaling its slab shield for whatever came next. Damp darkness started to drip off the blind woman and float up into the spinning circles of shadow. The ten undead soldiers unsheathed swords shining like polished bones, and their bronze death masks warped into snarling visages.

Isabelle stood still, her staff and dagger raised as a nimbus of green-tinged shadow swirled around her. She and her army were waiting for something, and as the earthen drumbeat grew faster and faster, Natalie guessed they wouldn’t be waiting for long.

Natalie’s prediction was right. Just as the rumbling grew fast enough, there was no break between pulses, it suddenly stopped. In the drumbeat’s place was an unnatural musical note, perfectly pitched and unwavering; the sound held for perhaps ten seconds. Isabelle bared her fangs and aimed her staff at the chain circle, which started to glow faintly.

Before the Countess could work whatever magic she planned, a strange shape started to press out of the well. Ruddy red and twitching, a road-sign-sized growth swelled out of the hole. Its cap unfolded as it passed the aperture, giving it a bulbous flared head. Anywhere else, Natalie might have laughed at how grotesquely phallic the shape was, but in context, the resemblance to genitalia was fundamentally unnerving. The similarity thankfully diminished as the scarlet head spread out, revealing itself to be a fungal cap. Now the width of an adult tree and growing every second, the mushroom resembled a bright red toadstool.

From where Natalie stood, she could look up into the faerie toadstool’s underside and see its gills changing. Instead of the wicked blades of its smaller cousins, this mushroom’s gills formed into long, slitted mouths brimming with hundreds of sharp teeth. To her incredulity, Natalie watched as the mouths, every one of them, opened up and started speaking.

“Kindred? Yee are kindred? Why do ya poison me? Ta cursed metal burns; it burns me roots and me heart. What do ya ken, kindred? Do ya seek to slay yer kin or ta bind me for a boon?”

All of the gill mouths spoke in harmony, a choir of musical voices accented by some archaic tongue. Isabelle stared up at the Faerie creature and said. “I am no kindred of you, Sidhe! I come to free my land of your taint and shackle you to my will!”

A weird humming, warbling note escaped the Faerie, and its gills flapped, showing countless glittering fangs. As the noise died, Natalie realized what it was; the Faerie was laughing at Isabelle.

“Sidhe? I am no Sidhe! I dinna walk high halls of ta Starsong Court! I dinna share bread and salt with lairds and ladies. Nay, I be no maester of names and colors. Well… except for one color. Tah finest of all, and why I call me self kindred to ye.”

The hillock started to shake again, and the Faerie’s voice grew louder. “RED! GLORIOUS RED! The color o’life and o’death! Found in its truest shade within veins of Straight-walkers! You who prowl tah night, but only in one path, you are my kin! Childer of tah Queen and er brood-o-nine!”

Isabelle pointed her staff at the Faerie Mushroom and said. “If you are not Sidhe, then you must be a Redcap. Why does one of the blood-soaked sons of Queen Hag nest in my lands?”

The Redcap warbled with that strange laughter and said. “Cause you and yours are kindred to me! When the Iron Lord and his Divine Whore shattered the Razor-Thorn Host, I fled to these lands. For in tah death-throws of my laird, I felt tis land’s destined path. In another epoch, a kingdom of red death woulda rise from the Iron Lord’s slag. And I was right! Lookapon this land! It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds!”

Trying to decipher the garbled words of the Faerie, Natalie was reasonably certain this creature was implying it faced Iskandar the Hero and Mira the Martyr during the Last Sidhe War. As that harrowing thought sunk in, it reminded Natalie of the Demon beneath Vindabon; Also, a survivor of an ancient conflict, sleeping away the ages until something disturbed its healing rest. That commonality frightened Natalie. How many more sleeping monsters waited to be awoken by those foolish or unlucky enough to stumble upon them?

Isabelle seemed unbothered in facing a horror dredged up from the Book of Miracles. “Your kind has no place in this world any longer. Submit to my will or learn what ‘mere scraps’ reforged in blood and iron can do to you Side-walker!”

The hill’s vibrations became softer but more frequent; the ground beneath the war party hummed slightly with eldritch power. “No no no! Tis no need for this! Take me to yer Lord-o-lords and leta me pledge me self to his name. Any who shed such blood can earn my leal service for an age-and-a-day!”

Green fire glowed brightly at the end of Isabelle’s staff, and she said. “That may be true, but it matters little. I don’t negotiate with specimens.”

Isabelle flicked her dagger, and the enchanted chain lashed out. Detaching from the soil, the chains uncoiled and struck the Faerie mushroom. Three dozen ritual knives cut into the Redcap’s stem as the iron links pulled taught. The chain snaked around the pierced Faerie, constricting its stalk like a snake with prey. The Redcap’s mouths squealed in pain, a noise like a horn playing as it was crushed. The ground shifted and roiled, serpentine tendrils similar to roots and nerves pulled free from the rocky soil lashing out at Isabelle and her honor guard.

Isabelle spat arcane words and cut the air with her dagger, its ivory tip glowing a sickly red as reality split open. From the gash in space came a tide of monochromatic fire, licking out at the Redcap with black and white flames. The top of Isabelle’s staff sputtered as seven balls of green fire detached from it and shot forward, whizzing around the battlefield, scorching fist-sized holes in anything they touched.

The ten masked Undead encircled their Countess, each of their swords glowing with sickly white light as they hacked away at any root tendril that got close. Stepping forward, the armored Flesh Golem slammed the flat of its war axe into its shield, igniting a series of baleful eye-shaped runes upon both. The blind woman leaped into the air, catching herself on a curtain of shadows, her song reaching a faster tempo as animated darkness joined the chains in wrapping up the Redcap.

Natalie watched as the battle grew with every passing second. Tendrils exploded from the hillock’s slopes, bringing the conflict to Isabelle’s army as she battled the Faerie’s main body. The Redcap’s gills spat forth razor-sharp spores that danced through the air, catching in any exposed flesh like balls of animated fish hooks. Tendrils grew into reaping blades and fanged maws, seeking gaps in armor or simply crushing unlucky Rattlers. Knee-high toadstools with spinning fangs erupted out of the soil and skittered along the hillock. Balls of pearlescent light boiled off the Redcap’s bell and shot through the air, dueling Isabelle’s green spheres.

No expert on magical warfare but also no longer a stranger to fights, Natalie could tell who was winning. The Redcap’s fungal flesh burned and rotted with every second as Isabelle’s magic and monsters tore into it. Enchanted chains squeezed tighter and tighter as the Faerie’s defenses faltered; the Redcap unable to halt the unholy wrath assembled against it. As the armored Flesh Golem swung up with its huge axe, splitting one of the Redcap’s mouths open, Natalie couldn’t help but marvel at what she was watching; a fight between two different breeds of her childhood nightmares.

The sound of tearing tissue and sizzling flesh signaled the battle’s end. Like some Giant’s garrote, the enchanted chains finished cutting through the Redcap’s stalk, sending its burnt and broken bulk crashing down. The gill mouths wailed, their harmony finally breaking in defeat. Isabelle and her masked bodyguards stepped toward the top of the collapsed mushroom. The Countess snapped her fingers and summoned the enchanted chain to float about her like a cursed halo. At the peak of the Faerie’s cap, Isabelle waited as her guards cut into the blood-red meat of the mushroom.

A shape exploded out of the incision and slammed into one of the masked corpses. Long, ugly claws tore apart the Undead soldier in the time it took Isabelle to unleash her chain. Snaking out, it coiled around the new threat, drawing forth a melodic scream that went on impossibly long.

As bits of damp fungus flesh dripped away from the newcomer, Natalie tried to understand what she was looking at. At first, she thought it to be a disfigured knight in rusted plate. But upon seeing how the uneven, mismatched lumps covering it started to burn on touching the chain, Natalie better understood the creature; it was the Redcap's true form.

Humanoid but horrifically hunched over, the Redcap was either composed of or covered by thick sheaths of fungus, giving its flesh a lumpy, mottled color and texture. Long scythe-like claws extended from its hands while a huge swollen growth protruded from its upper back and head, covering everything from its shoulder blades to brow in a red fleshly sack. Part tumor, part cyst, part mushroom cap, the squishy red growth seemed to be the monster’s namesake. Yet among all these disturbing features, what unnerved Natalie the most was its face. Unlike the rest of its body, the Redcap’s face was unearthly beautiful. With sharp, handsome features, the Redcap looked like some roguish bravo out to steal hearts. Which, as Natalie thought about it, was probably what the Faerie was, except perhaps a tad more literal.

Wrapped in chains, wriggling in the air, the Redcap sang its final pleas. “Mercy! Mercy!”

Isabelle ignored the monster’s whimpered cries and advanced towards its bound form. Raising up her bone dagger, she drove the blade into the Redcap’s heart. Slowly but steadily, the ivory blade sunk past fungal plates, eliciting a shrieking musical cry from Isabelle’s victim. The Countess sang a spell as she skewered the Redcap, the ruby hilt of her dagger glowing as she did the fell work.

Natalie couldn’t tear her eyes away from the gruesome sight as the Redcap started to wither away. Its body shrunk and contorted like a waterskin being sucked dry, draining away into the dagger. The Redcaps’s cries increased in pitch but lost volume as its essence was slurped up by the bone blade. Soon, all that remained was a sizzling pile of rotten fungus and Isabelle holding up her ritual knife. The large ruby capping the dagger’s hilt glowed shockingly bright, and rivulets of blood dripped from the weapon’s tip, fading into nothingness before they hit the ground.

Turning away from the shriveled remnant of the Redcap, Isabelle examined her ritual knife and said. “Pity, I was hoping it would be a true Sidhe. No matter, a Powrie will still be useful.”

Carefully reversing her grip on the dagger, Isabelle stared at the shining ruby with unnerving focus. “The binding is stronger than I hoped! That manuscript on Djinn bottling was perfect; thank you for retrieving it, Pavlos.”

The shifting fog at Isabelle’s feet transformed in response to her words, materializing into a humanoid form. Short and wiry, the Wraith was clad in archaic robes and wore an odd pair of spectacles barely hanging from its hooked nose. Natalie knew of Pavlos, the Manei Ghost sworn to Isabelle, but she’d never seen the man Cole considered his first friend. The Wraith bowed to Isabelle in a strange flickering motion before saying. “Of course, Mistress.”

Isabelle sheathed the dagger and the Redcap now sealed within it. It took the Vampire two tries, her fingers locked around the hilt in a twitchy death grip. Natalie looked at Isabelle’s other hand and saw what she expected. The digits clutching the staff were spasming slightly, and the attached wrist was shakey with taught energy. Exhaustion among Vampires looked very different from the living; their muscles started to lock up in a palsy-esque version of rigor mortis. Facing the Redcap hadn’t been easy for Isabelle; her powers were drained massively, and she struggled to keep her body functioning.

Gesturing with her staff, Isabelle called for the armored Flesh Golem. “Golgoth, aid me.”

Golgoth stuck its axe into the ground and knelt beside Isabelle, helping her onto its steel-covered shoulder. Standing back up to its full height, the Flesh Golem, acted as Isabelle’s palanquin.

Staring up at his liege, Pavlos the Wraith asked. “If I may be so bold, mistress, I must ask. Is studying abominations like the Powrie or ‘Redcap’ a wise endeavor?”

Stroking the ivory dagger at her side, Isabelle said. “Like all things, there is risk and reward to balance. In your lifetime, I’d say you were correct to be so concerned. But in this epoch, the Fae are merely scattered remnants to be culled or crushed. They cannot enter our world unbidden, and relics from before the Final Gates, like this creature, can be dealt with.”

The Manei Wrath seemed unconvinced but did not voice any more objections, instead moving on to more practical matters. “Now that you are victorious, what is next?”

Glancing around at her army, Isabelle said. “I must return home to rest and continue research. Prepare the army to march and have a work crew clean up this mess. I’ll need to draft an order of quarantine once back at the citadel.”

Pavlos bowed. “Of course, I take it the village is to be relocated?”

Isabelle nodded absently as she leaned against the hulking Flesh Golem’s skull. Natalie knew her mentor well enough to tell the old Vampire was already thinking of other matters. Her spectral Majordomo dissolved into fog, leaving to carry out her will as the Flesh Golem started to lumber down the hillock.

Floating to Isabelle, Natalie frowned as she watched her mentor’s labyrinthian mind start working. This was the largest downside to viewing memories this way: Natalie wasn’t privy to Isabelle’s thoughts. The old Vampire provided an informative stage play of her recollections but not her internal workings. Staring into Isabelle’s unfocused eyes, Natalie had a sudden notion: could she enter the memory of a memory?

Reaching out through the eye contact, Natalie felt a link form, and she quickly slithered through it, slipping deeper into Isabelle’s mind. Vertigo washed over Natalie as she dived into Isabelle, settling inside her mind as passenger and observer. The sensation was remarkably similar to when Natalie let Isabelle possess her. Something about that parallel felt worrisome, but any such concerns were pushed aside by the deluge of information assaulting Natalie.

Exhausted as her body and magic might be, Isabelle’s mind was still working at breakneck speeds. Natalie was buffeted by three separate streams of thought that intersected, diverged, pooled in memories, or boiled with emotions. Finding her metaphysical footing after a few seconds of tumbling through a mad genius’s musings, Natalie started to piece together Isabelle’s thoughts.

It was difficult work, but Natalie started understanding Isabelle’s interest in the Redcap. Like all Faeries, it could influence emotions, inspiring fear, anger, lust, or similar in unshielded minds. Reasonably powerful but cruel in temperament, the Redcap used this ability to terrorize its prey, feeding off their heightened emotions as they died. Natalie couldn’t fully understand the details of how and why the Faerie fed like this, but it was enough to know it did. Apparently, normal Redcaps were little more than soldiers and enforcers, at least according to the legends and records Isabelle read. Petty thugs more interested in hunting, killing, and soaking up their victim’s blood. The one Isabelle captured was clearly something of an outlier, being smart enough to hide beneath an olive grove, feeding on the plantlife until it grew strong enough to make its presence known.

A slight headache grew in Natalie’s skull as she picked through information and context she wasn’t fully equipped for. She’d stumble upon alien words and terms just to have their definitions dragged up by her focusing on them. The whole endeavor was worse than following Isabelle’s stream of thought in real-time. Without Isabelle’s actual consciousness as a safety line, Natalie was stuck bouncing between thoughts and concepts faster than she could manage. Schemes, plans, and theories boiled up inside Isabelle as she mused on the possible uses for her newest specimen. Natalie had a front-row seat as ideas congealed from information and inspiration.

It was strange, seeing the seeds of thought sewn and nurtured when Natalie knew exactly what fruit they’d bear. Isabelle was interested in the Redcap's abilities, how it could alter emotions, parasitize lifeforms, and even spawn offshoots of itself. The labyrinthian mechanisms of the Countess's mind were churning towards a conclusion, one Natalie finished piecing together.

Watching Isabelle’s stream of thought, Natalie felt a horrible spark of insight kindle a pile of evidence into a fire of understanding. Isabelle thought of the Screaming Plague as a crude mockery of her work. Pieces of her research turned into a brutally effective tool of war, which wasn’t their original purpose. A purpose the elder Vampire avoided sharing but spoke volumes about with her silence. Of course, Isabelle was not the type of creature to unleash dreadful diseases or mind-ruining pestilences on a whim. In fact, such purely destructive purposes didn’t match Isabelle’s personality. She was pragmatic, controlling, egotistical, and violently self-assured in the value of her work. No, Isabelle wouldn’t use the Redcap and any research derived from it to make a simple weapon. The Countess Gen Silva would, of course, make something so much worse.

“Emotional control, Hells… infectious emotional control,” whispered Natalie, putting words to the idea stirring in Isabelle’s mind. Working at it from both directions, the Redcap and the Screaming Plague, this was the most logical conclusion. The Redcap and the Galarwyll were both faeries; both could influence emotions; both could connect to other organisms, be it olive trees or a contagion. The Galarwylls inside the pestilence turned their victims into rage-filled monsters. Perhaps another Faerie and another pestilence could have different effects? Natalie could imagine a flu spreading across the continent, dulling the hearts and minds of whoever was infected. Winnowing away anger, compassion, bravery, and anything else a Vampire might find objectionable in their livestock.

Gritting her teeth, ignoring how her fangs stung, Natalie pulled herself out of the memory within a memory and kept going. Standing beside the red stream of her mindscape, Natalie debated a course of action. Her instinct was to explode out into the waking world full of righteous rage, seize back control of her body, and attack Isabelle with what she’d learned. But some mixture of growing maturity and pragmatism offered up a different strategy. Instead of revealing her hand, Natalie could keep this information and the technique she’d discovered hidden. The ability to extract more from Isabelle’s memory than the old Vampire intended could be worth its weight in gold.

Staring at the flowing stream, Natalie felt a twinge of guilt and hypocrisy as she considered this course of action. Thinking about the moment she’d shared with Isabelle and Cole on this very bank, Natalie wondered if, instead of fiery rage, or cold scheming, she might find a middle path. Sighing as her anger faded into hollow embers, Natalie decided she’d keep what she learned to herself and not go poking around Isabelle’s memory unless absolutely necessary. Cole seemed unwilling to delve into the secrets of his creation, and perhaps Isabelle’s reluctance to share details was wise. Shutting her eyes, Natalie started pulling herself out of mindscape, curious to see what progress Isabelle made while she was gone.