The Homunculus Knight

"Those two? Really? Very well, I'll trust your judgement, Yezhov, you've rarely led me astray. Oh… I see now, they are peculiar, a strigoi and a moroi working in such concert, but for our goals, they will serve nicely. No messages, no warnings, no cries for help must leave Harmas until it is too late. The city will die, and from its corpse I will raise up our victory." - overheard conversation between Duke Mika Gens Umbria and his spymaster Lord Yezhov Arici

Wolfgang sat quietly, trying to remember how to blink. It was such an alien thing to willingly shut his eyes, just to rub a damp membrane over them, but he still tried; afterall, it was a good distraction from his pain. Every blood vessel in his brain was filled with something more caustic than lye, and he could feel each artery and capillary as they seethed inside of him.

A cold glass was pressed against his lips, and warm blood flowed down his throat. Even broken as Wolfgang was, he still enjoyed the stolen life filling him. Like fresh spring water washing away filth, the blood cleaned his burning skull of the lye, letting more complex thoughts once again manifest. He used the first of these thoughts to finally fucking blink.

"Well, that went worse than expected."

Wincing away from the words like they were spikes being driven into his eardrums, Wolfgang swallowed the last of the blood and tried to speak. "H-h-how lo-long?"

"You've been unconscious for about two hours, but you were screaming for about fifteen minutes before then. I'm not a healer, but I think you suffered something akin to a stroke."

Scapino came into view now, and he wasn't smiling, which somehow managed to be more unsettling than learning his brain's blood supply had just imploded on itself. "But, now the more important questions. Like what, in the world's name happened in there?"

Tongue heavy, but thoughts flowing faster, Wolfgang managed to reply. "She noticed me."

A long silence filled the room as Scapino's lack of a smile turned into a deep frown. "That isn't possible."

Anger flared in the Black Fly. "Neither is creating an immortal monster or surviving being burned at the stake! But that hasn't seemed to stop Gens Silva before!"

Stepping back, Scapino turned his focus onto the lantern, which still sat on the table. After letting his fingers brush along its wire frame, he mused. "At least it seems to be functional, so we can try again."

"Try again?!" sputtered Wolfgang. "What she did to me would have killed a mortal a dozen times over. I'm not diving back into her dreams and risking her improving her methods."

"Well then, if that's the case, I assume you found what we were looking for on your first effort."

There was brittle ice in Scapino's voice, and Wolfgang realized he needed to tread lightly. "No, I did not. But neither will I find the information if I'm trepanned into idiocy."

Going over to the haunted skull, Scapino gingerly picked it up and peered into its sockets. "Fair point. So, what exactly happened inside her dream?"

As Wolfgang recounted his experience flitting between memories, Scapino started to pace back and forth, still staring into the skull's eyes. Once the Black Fly finished, his ally turned to him and asked. "Only three memories?"

Nodding, Wolfgang added. "I think she might have first noticed me in the second, but only attacked me towards the end of the third."

Scapino set down the skull and then went over to the lantern and ran a finger along its top. Holding up the single digit, he displayed the greasy residue that had once been a fly. "I have no idea what she did, but it was enough to destroy your disguise, and inflict you with a rather nasty backlash."

Staring at the smear, Wolfgang hated the symbology in how easily he'd been 'swatted' right out of Gens Silva's mind. A large part of him wanted to run, to flee back to the Voivide, and sell out the Troupe for a chance at surviving this entire mess. But spite and a hunger for knowledge wouldn't let him do more than briefly consider that option. He'd lost to Gens Silva time and time again, requiring others to rescue him from her clutches. Now that the tables were turned, he couldn't bring himself to flee, not before he'd clawed free her secrets.

"What can be done to strengthen my disguise?"

Raising an eyebrow, Scapino found his smile again. "Oh, found your courage at last?"

Ignoring this playful jab, Wolfgang pulled himself to his feet and shuffled over to join Scapino in his examination. "Could we enchant the fly, make it more subtle? Would that carry over into the dream?"

"Perhaps, but I was thinking first we just start with a smaller bug, one less easy to notice."

"I'd prefer a more tangible form of protection than that. Do you suppose I could ward myself, so even if she destroys the fly, the backlash isn't severe?"

"We'd go through a lot of insects brute-forcing it that way, but it is an idea."

After wiping off the dead fly on one of the room's curtains, Scapino shifted the conversation's course. "For now, I think you should return to your other avenue of research. I need to consult with some experts on memory and fae magic before we continue."

"Other members of the Troupe?" Wolfgang asked cautiously. If he really did end up fleeing back to the Voivode, he'd need every bit of bartering power necessary.

Scapino laughed. "Oh no, I wouldn't dare pester any of them at this stage. I made some preparations for this endeavor and have a few skilled magi kept close to my bosom."

That surprised Wolfgang. "Here in the city? Is that where you got the blood for-"

He trailed off as Scapino undid the buttons of his shirt, baring his chest. The pale, ashy flesh beneath started to collapse in on itself, sucking inward like a sinkhole, creating a widening wound that exposed not dead flesh but a tunnel. The tunnel stretched deeper into Scapino than mundane physics should allow, and its walls of shifting ash slowly turned in a grey gravity-defying vortex.

As the hole widened to be the diameter of Scapino's chest, Wolfgang could see what lay at the end of the tunnel. It was a cell, a cramped, soot-stained cell with two hollow-eyed occupants staring out at him from where they'd been half-immured in layers of ash. Both prisoners were old men, with grey beards and the shrunken look of someone starved. They barely reacted to the portal in their prison, and there seemed little left in them of the people they'd once been.

The tunnel slowly slid shut, and Scapino rebuttoned his shirt, wearing a smarmy grin the entire time. "I needed a refresher on the magics involved with the lantern, and those two had all the knowledge I could need. It'll take me a night or two to sort through everything I've wrung from them, but once it's done, we should know what to do next."

Still staring at his ally's chest, Wolfgang nodded jerkily. "I… I will get back to work on the new plague."

"I think I saw some of her memories," whispered Natalie as she sat up and rubbed at her eyes, trying to dislodge the strange flashes of alien recollection that had momentarily overwhelmed her.

Kneeling down on the sand beside her, Cole asked a series of frantic questions. "What? How? Why? Which memories?"

"Her siring as a vampire for one. Elisabet the Impatient? That's her original name?"

Cole looked like he'd been punched in the gut. "She… hated it, and tried to erase every record of it and her mortal life."

Taking this as confirmation her visions hadn't been some new manner of curse-born hallucination, Natalie continued describing them. How she'd seen not just Isabelle's first death, but also one of her crueler experiments, and even a later discussion with a scarless Cole.

"I remember that talk, we were debating the purpose of power and how it relates to others," muttered the Homunculus, an expression half between wistful and worried crossing his features.

Staring out at the pitch-black river before them, Natalie ran her mind over these foreign memories, trying to explore every element and aspect, fearing they might fade like a dream if not properly catalogued. As she did this, something stuck out to her, a splinter in the woodgrain, a crack in the stone, a fly in the ointment. In her visions, there had been an odd whining sound, a faint buzz at the edge of hearing that waxed and waned. Her earlier life amidst kitchens and countertops had long trained Natalie to notice such sounds, and even from the surreal perspective of another's memory, she recognized the droning of a bluebottle bug; and apparently so had Isabelle, as she'd swatted the fly towards the end of the last memory, ending both the bug and recollection in a flash.

An unlife spent immersed in cosmic portents and the symbolic minutia of psychic magic had taught Natalie to never dismiss such a sign out of hand, so she carefully asked. "Isabelle's castle, did it have a bug problem? Flies, gnats, anything like that?"

Cole looked at her strangely, then slowly shook his head. "It was the opposite, or at least in a manner. She kept a large population of rats, bats, and cats in and around Thoas for spying and experimentation; they kept the vermin population in check, even each other's if it came to that."

Not liking this answer, even though she'd expected it, Natalie cursed. "Jagged edges. Then I think we've got a very big problem."

Slowly standing up and looking towards Harmas, she said. "I think Wolfgang or someone else is doing something to her mind, to her memories."

Silence stretched between them for a moment before Cole got up and stepped towards the river's very edge. He knelt down and put a hand into the water, and a sheet of ice quickly spread out from his touch. As fog billowed off the paladin, the sheet of frozen water grew wider and thicker, snapping and bending any reeds unlucky enough to get in its way.

"What are you doing?" Natalie asked, a note of concern in her voice.

"Seeing if I can make a raft that will take us to Harmas."

"Deborah said the spirit would sink it even something made out of enchanted ice."

Pausing, to prod his makeshift iceberg, Cole then looked back at her. "Which would be dangerous for people who need to breathe."

"Like you!" hissed Natalie.

"You know I come back quickly after drowning. I could freeze myself to the raft, reinforce it while I was alive, and you could steer while I was dead."

Natalie considered this; it was an utterly mad scheme, and yet, images of Isabelle and Yara danced through her head, each whispering of some grisly fate they might suffer. "How can I help?"

Cole stepped back from the riverbank. "Find a stretch without reeds, they're making this difficult."

Two wolves materialized at her side and started padding down opposite stretches of beach. "What all will we need?"

"Unfortunately, not my armor, I can't afford to get us trapped at the river's bottom. My axe and my pack will have to make do."

Natalie turned back towards the barge. "I'll grab them, Lupus will let you know if they find a good spot."

Moving quickly and quietly, the Alukah leapt up onto the beached ship and slipped inside. Going over her mental checklist, she headed for the room she was sharing with Cole. Thankfully, vampires could travel light, so she wouldn't need to bring much, just-

A door opened nearby, and a faint glow illuminated the hallway. Flinching from the prickling light, Natalie spun, hackles raised, to see a sleepy Deborah looking at her. "What happened?"

For a moment, the pair stared at each other until Natalie decided lying would just be a waste of breath. "Isabelle's in danger, we can't wait any longer, Cole and I are going to Harmas."

"Isabelle, not Yara?"

Disliking the slight hint of accusation in the angelbloods tone, Natalie snapped. "Both of them! Cole thought we might have some time to rescue Yara and Kit; that they could survive long enough for us to find a safe way into the city. But now that someone is damaging Isabelle's mind, we can't wait!"

Deborah's gilded eyes widened. "Her mind?"

Hating every second wasted, Natalie briefly explained her vision and then said. "Now, can you understand why we need to jagging hurry!"

To her immense consternation, the Seraphilim didn't respond with the appropriate dynamism and instead gently asked. "Will you come sit with me?"

"Did you hear anything I just said?"

"Yes, and I think I can help shed light on this, and maybe even help you. So please, come inside."

Frustration growing by the second, Natalie glanced down the passage towards her room. Could she just ignore Deborah and keep moving? Clearly sensing her hesitation, the living saint asked "How are the memories reaching you?"

"I have a psychic link with-"

"You have a link with Yara, but that's been trammeled by Harma's wards. So, let me ask again, how could Isabelle Gens Silva's memories be reaching you, if you can't even get a single sentence through to Yara?"

That got Natalie to hesitate, but not for long. "She's skilled, and the link between us is potent."

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

"Skilled enough to break through defenses that have kept a city's worth of people trapped, but not send a more useful message?"

Disliking how much sense Deborah was making, Natalie snapped. "Then what caused those visions?"

Eyes unfocusing slightly, the Seraphilim stared off into the space that Natalie occupied. "Either someone is trying to lure you into an ambush inside the city, using memories extracted from Gens Silva and implanted into you via a highly complex psychic attack. Or, more likely, this is the product of something… else."

The faint itching Natalie always experienced while around Deborah suddenly increased, and she bit back a yelp as she stepped away from the angelblood. "What are you doing?"

Deborah's eyes started to glow, gaining a proper luminescence that hurt to look at. "I don't know much about mind magic, it's never been an interest or talent of me and mine. But I do know about souls, and something strange is going on with yours."

A chill went down Natalie's spine, and she whispered. "Let me go get Cole."

Natalie sat on a hard wooden bench and tried her best not to splinter the worn planks with her spasming grip. "H-How much longer?"

The golden light of a solar angel flowed over and through her, its awful sunburn sensation penetrating Natalie's skin, reaching every iota of her being. She could feel her internal organs, sense them with uncanny accuracy as they prickled and cooked beneath hallowed light. While certainly not the most painful things she'd ever experienced, being bathed like this in her bane was a uniquely uncomfortable experience.

"Almost done," muttered Deborah, her hands out before her, auric power flowing from them and into Natalie.

Looking past the Seraphilim, Natalie met Cole's gaze. His eyes glowed silver, and he wore a worried expression, making her wonder what exactly he was seeing as Deborah worked. Such thoughts were quickly pushed aside when a collage of sensations smacked against her mind. At the forefront was the sticky but grossly satisfying sensation of peeling off sunburned skin, but beneath that was the taste of cool lips, the prick of a sharp fang, and the white-hot pain of a bad cut.

Wincing, the Alukah pulled back as the Seraphilim stopped her ministrations. As the golden light faded, Deborah murmured. "It's even stranger than I thought."

Scratching absently at herself, trying to speed along the phantom itch's fading, Natalie asked. "What's wrong with my soul?"

"Well, many things, but some are to be expected, some not," replied Deborah, her voice quiet and drifty. "Your curse is ever active, and I can see Priestess Mina's stitching from when she healed you. But, what has me concerned is this… cyst."

Cole and Natalie exchanged looks; neither liked the sound of that, but they let Deborah continue. "At first, I thought the anomaly was just a badly healing piece of your soul. But on closer inspection, it seems you have a fragment of another being's soul stuck in your spiritual wounds. It's kind of like an arrowhead left inside an injury long enough for the body to heal around it."

Clutching at her chest, Natalie tried to fit all the pieces together. "Part of Isabelle's soul is still attached to me. That's how I saw her memories?"

Deborah pursed her lips, expression solidifying into pensive uncertainty. "It's the only answer that fits, but that doesn't make this any less bizarre. See, your soul should be reacting to this intrusion as violently as a living body would to an actual arrowhead. But that's not the case; in fact, your soul seems comfortable sharing itself with this intrusion. The growth has become so enmeshed in your soul-stuff, I doubt I'd have spotted it if I hadn't been actively searching for an anomaly."

"Is this a side-effect of the Alukah curse?" asked Cole.

Before the Seraphilim could respond, Natalie let out a weary sigh and answered. "No, this is a side-effect of one of Isabelle's aborted schemes."

Shutting her eyes to block out the looks of shock on both Cole and Deborah's faces, Natalie elaborated. "Isabelle, for a time, had been planning to… steal my body."

'What?" Cole's voice, heavy with outrage, crashed down like an avalanche.

"She'd been building upon our psychic link, doing something to both our souls so she could, I guess, possess me?" Looking up to see the horrified fury on Cole's face, Natalie quickly added. "After getting to know me, she abandoned this plan, but Isabelle being Isabelle, she didn't dismantle what was already built."

A growl escaped the Homunculus, and he ran tense fingers through his short white hair. Natalie could see the warring emotions in his eyes, the fury, confusion, guilt, and betrayal all swirling behind those sky blue orbs. There was a reason Natalie hadn't shared any of this with him until now.

Deborah cleared her throat and hesitantly said. "That is… concerning, yet… enlightening. But even if this explains the why and the who, it leaves us some big questions about the how. Souls don't work like what you're describing; you can't graft them together like tree limbs, or at least you can't expect anything sane or stable from the result."

Having recovered himself slightly, Cole rasped. "I must disagree, especially when it comes to Isabelle. She's more than proven herself capable of doing impossible things when it comes to souls."

Deborah accepted this with a slow nod. "Yes, I guess, her work on this topic speaks for himself. But that doesn't change the fact that much of this makes little sense. Why these memories, and why now, after so long? "

"Something is being done to her, something that's affecting her soul," answered Natalie, words heavy with worry.

The Seraphilim nodded. "I can understand the need to get into Harmas as soon as possible, but your plan is flawed. Even if by a likely literal miracle, you two manage to wash up in the city, you'll be isolated and at risk of being captured. We need to work together, and do this smart, even if it takes a little bit more time."

Cole clearly didn't like this. "Have you ever had your mind turned against you, Sera Deborah? Do you know what that's like? Can you imagine someone you love suffering so?"

"No, but I have lost people I've loved because of righteous foolishness," she replied, meeting his glare with beatific calmness.

"Okay, but do we even have anything else remotely like a plan to get inside the city?" added Natalie. "With the spirit's manifestation withered, I thought we were blind as a-"

An idea came to her then, one mildly less insane than Cole's but probably infinitely more terrifying for her in particular. "I know how to get into the Harmas, or at least find out what's happening inside of it."

Meeting Cole's gaze, Natalie said. "You remember the scout griffin, Argentari showed us after the Louon fire?"

Leaning back in surprise, the paladin responded. "Yes, the last of his messengers out of the city, the one the carrion bats nearly tore apart. Are you thinking you can-"

"Control them? I hope so." Interjected Natalie. "And I remember that story you told me about the feral strigoi and how he abducted people with his swarm."

Deborah looked back and forth between them, eyebrows heading steadily for her hairline. "What are you planning?"

"Nothing wise" bitterly replied Natalie, as memories of the last time she tried to soar over a city's walls linked themselves to her chain of thought.

Natalie stared up into the pale face of the barn owl sitting high in the crooked birch tree's branches. The bird returned her gaze, its eyes pools of polished onyx that reflected what little light could be found in the pre-dawn hours. Carefully, the Alukah let her mind dive into those pools, sinking through them and into the simple but strangely familiar mind behind them.

The owl's world was its senses and little else. It observed the world with a clarity that bordered on uncanny, even for a vampire. The hunt was what defined the bird, especially since it had no chicks or a mate to worry about. It was a predator of the purest form, and something about its unbothered simplicity almost made Natalie jealous. She doubted this bird, or any of its kind had given themselves a migraine worrying about the monster they were becoming.

Prodding gently on the owl's mind, Natalie coaxed it to flutter down from the tall branches and land on her outstretched arm. Wincing slightly as its rather sharp talons pressed against her skin, the Alukah sifted through the owl's memories, finding what she was looking for.

* An easy winter, so many rats and mice filling the empty land. *

* Wide flights in search of a mate, no success, and some danger. *

*Bats circle the human hive on the river, driving away any rivals from their hunting grounds. *

* Learning to avoid the false-mountain near the island's south-west edge. No need to get close, plenty of prey elsewhere. *

Craning her neck one way and then the other, watching as the owl mimicked her, Natalie whispered. "I'm sorry, I know you're not going to like this."

Then she pressed a thought into the owl's mind, an inescapable notion that a prospective mate was somewhere close to the false-mountain, and that the owl should investigate. With a flap of silent wings, the bird took to the pre-dawn sky and soared off and away on the fool's errand a superior predator had foisted upon it.

Straightening her posture, Natalie pushed aside her guilt and followed after the owl, reaching the nearby riverbank and watching the bird soar towards Harmas. Isabelle and Yara were worth a random animal's life.

Shutting her eyes, the Alukah peered through the owl's remarkable senses as it soared over the dark waters, heading for the dead city. She could hear and see so much, it bordered the line between overwhelming and enchanting. The rustle of reeds on shore screamed a constant overlapping pattern, while the thin moonlight painted everything with a dash of silver. But just as she was learning to enjoy the beauty of the owl's flight, its terribly sensitive ears picked out dangerous sounds. Leather wings and echoing shrieks beyond mortal hearing. In the distance, a cloud of tiny monsters was swirling about one of Harmas's towers. With dawn so close, the great cauldron of bats was returning to their nest, one cohort at a time.

Cohort, an odd word, but the best Natalie had to describe the eerily organized movements of the bats. Sections of the swarm moved as distinct units, adopting what had to be patrol patterns that soared above the city walls, while waiting their turn to land in the tower-turned-hive. There was an intelligence at work here, one beyond the cultivated instincts of carrion bats. This complicated things, Natalie needed to lure one of these cohorts near enough that she might influence them, but avoid the attention of whoever or whatever was orchestrating the bats.

Pressed on through its fear by Natalie's psychic touch, the owl approached one of the smaller cohorts from above. There was only one way the Alukah could think of to get the bat's focus, but not their master's, and it wouldn't be pretty. The owl shot downwards, becoming a taloned blur that struck the edge of the swarm, killing two of the carrion bats instantly. As the owl spun and swooped, its kills still clutched in razor claws, the rest of the cohort shrieked their outrage and started the pursuit. Warped by years of selective breeding and arcane mutations, the carrion bats reacted to the deaths of their kin not like startled prey but challenged predators.

Fingers drumming a nervous pattern on her thigh, Natalie watched through both her senses and the owl's as the bats tried to close in around it. The bird was faster, even with its kills, but numbers counted for a lot, and the carrion bats were literally bred for this kind of thing. Still, the owl had one big advantage: it didn't need to escape the swarm, merely lead them towards Natalie. So the barn owl flew onward, eventually dropping its prey and replacing them with other bats that dared get too close.

"Come on, come on," she muttered as the bird sank lower in the sky, its immaculate plumage becoming more and more ruffled by the snapping jaws of so many bats nipping and biting at anything they could. But they were close now, just a little farther, and she-

THERE!

A beady glimmer of moonlight reflected off a bat's eye, and Natalie pounced on this barest of eye contact to punch right into the flying rodent's mind. She nearly screamed at what awaited her. The bat's mind was a thing of utter chaos, its instincts were at war with each other, and its self-perception made no sense. This was an unnatural being, a creature, twisted on a fundamental level by magic, but it was still a creature of the night. Natalie's will clamped down on the carrion bat, and it paused its pursuit of the owl, letting out a confused chirp as it did. All around, the other bats reacted to the sound, hesitating in their hunt as one of their own became someone else's.

New information bombarded Natalie, as her bat's cry was answered with a hundred responses. The carrion bats possessed something like a language; no, code was probably the better word for it. Baked into their shrieks, clicks, chirps, and other vocalizations beyond human hearing was a constant stream of messages that helped unite and guide the swarm. But now that one of them was acting strangely, not responding as it should, the bats had a new priority over the owl; one Natalie uncovered thanks to the rising fear her latest possession felt. Deviation meant sickness, subversion, or mutation; the outlier bat needed to be culled.

Reacting quickly, Natalie used her mind palace to sort through the bat's code, looking for what she assumed would be the most important pattern in their proto-language. Sure enough, etched into the brains of these flying rodents was one series of clicks that overwrote all others; the one that meant their master was sending orders. Smiling despite herself, Natalie gave the command through her possessed bat, and the ramping aggression in the swarm turned to meek acceptance. She was really getting a knack for finding and exploiting the blind spots of her lesser cousins.

"Follow," the Alukah said with both her mouth and the bat's. Soon, a hundred of the creatures were steadily flapping towards her place by the riverbank, leaving the shocked owl to fly away, two dead carrion bats in its claws as payment for services rendered. Letting out a breath of relief, Natalie looked back towards where she'd left Cole and said. "I've got them."

He'd been standing a ways back, not wanting his 'unique' effect on animals to hamper this experiment. Clad fully in his armor, halberd on one shoulder, the paladin stared in the general direction of Natalie's stolen swarm. "At the very least, we can use them as scouts, or clear the air for us to fly in on hippogryphs."

Natalie nodded, watching as the bats formed into a vortex of leather wings, hovering overhead. "Yes, but let's try my experiment first."

Cole looked hesitant. "I…I don't know if this is a good idea. The strigoi I dealt with had bred his bats to carry large loads, and they struggled with me without any armor."

"Of course, this isn't a good idea, and neither was yours about the raft. But at least this one doesn't rely on you drowning over and over."

"Fair point," he muttered, clearly still uncomfortable with the notion of being carried into the city by a swarm of mutant bats.

Squinting up at her swarm, seeing how they flew so close together, Natalie mused. "Maybe we could run a rope between them, and-"

"Who the fuck are you?"

The question punched into Natalie's mind like a physical blow, and she grabbed the sides of her head.

"What's wrong?" barked Cole as he came closer, weapon at the ready.

Up above them, the bats had changed their pattern of flight; they now hung in a single, uncanny mass. Hundreds of beady eyes stared down at the couple, as new code passed among the flying rodents. The swarm's original owner had noticed Natalie's robbery and reclaimed their property.

As one, the bats dove for Natalie, shrieking with a bloodlust not native to their kind. Acting quickly, Cole stepped between her and the swarm, hoarfrost already billowing off of him. The bats veered off at the sight, and more words slammed against Natalie's mind.

"Holy ice? And a vampire? Well shit, this just got interesting."

A great pressure started growing across Natalie's mind; something was trying to get past her defenses. Calling up all she'd learned from Isabelle and Pryia, she layered her mind in armor and sealed off its different sections. But the mere fact that she was defending meant she was at a disadvantage; she needed to turn the tide, to counter-attack. Which was much easier said than done, considering she had no clue regarding the who, what, and where of the carrion bat's master.

The attack was coming from a hundred separate angles, each a psychic bolt launched at her fortified mind, in a deluge of distributed will. Looking up at the swarm, biting back a hiss of fury, Natalie knew they were her foe's weapon, each tiny rodent mind a bow ready to loose more and more arrows. Lashing out with her own power, Natalie struck several of the winged rats with seizures, sending them plummeting into the water below. But the bombardment barely let up; her foe was working through the entire swarm and showed no sign of exhaustion.

Managing to gesture up at the bats, Natalie spoke. "K-kill them!"

Cole needed no further instruction, and he swung his halberd up, sending a wave of arctic chill into the air. More bats fell, but not nearly enough, especially considering what was on the horizon. The rest of the swarm was roused and heading in their direction. As these reinforcements drew closer, the cohort above Natalie, changed tactics and dove at Cole with suicidal speed. Missiles of fur and fragile bone struck the paladin, some scratching and clawing, others simply turning their speed into a weapon, and splattering against him.

Cursing wildly, the Cole swung at the bats, lashes of ice tearing through the swarm, but barely slowing their assault on him. "Jagging rats!"

A sense of dread started to fill Natalie as the full scope of her failed gamble was becoming clear. With more bats joining the offense, the volleys of psychic attacks were only getting worse. She tried reaching through some of the bats to counter-attack, but whatever psychic link the enemy used to manipulate the swarm was beyond her skill. The damned thing wasn't a bridge or chain, like what Natalie constructed, but a jagging eel that slithered between bats constantly, leaving new instructions in its wake. Every attempt ot seize or snap the link failed as it simply slipped into another mind, before Natalie could get a good grip on it.

As the shadow of leather wings blotted out the moon's reflection upon the river, the Alukah realized she needed a new plan, and the only one she could think of was risky beyond words. The smell of Cole's blood hit her nose then, and she saw he was clutching at his face, ichor pouring down from one of his eye sockets. That settled it; she needed to keep gambling if they had any chance of coming through this intact.

"COLE!" she shouted, catching his attention, and revealing his right eye was missing, having been torn apart by one of the bats. The paladin's remaining eye widened as Natalie shouted her only warning. "Be ready to stop me if this goes wrong!"

Then, she retreated behind the walls of her mind, into a garden of red lilies and white yews.