The Chimera Summoner – Ch 42 – webs, hostages, and long distance calls

Ch 42 –

I hustled through the creaky halls, following the compass of Lorna’s presence. I still took many wrong turns, and faced some frustrating dead ends. But with her for reference, I was able to make steady progress.

Hera was off with Bayla somewhere else in the guts of the crawling castle looking for their communications array.  To start with.

To say I was worried about Bayla somehow betraying us was a massive understatement. Especially since recruiting her had been my genius idea.

But such was the nature of schemes. Lots of moving parts. Lots of objectives. Everything had to go right for anything to go right.

Schemes suck.

But here we are.

The lack of guards was becoming deeply suspicious, as I found the sought after tunnel going straight up. It had a single, thin ladder ascending up the hot pipe.

It wasn’t the main way. But Bayla had furnished us with a (hopefully accurate) description of the layout of the crawling castle. And this way SHOULD let me avoid immediate detection.

I might get roasted by the growing heat. But no guards was essential, so that won out as a consideration.

The heat, Bayla assured us, was a huge problem for the long term health of the machine. But it would take a good long while yet to have any serious consequences.

Accelerating that process was another of their far fetched goals, for which I would be buying time.

Soon, I was crawling, climbing, and squeezing my way through a maintenance tunnel that was meant to give engineers access to some of the infernally complicated arcane mechanisms that kept the whole place running for all these years.

I marvelled at the brutal harmony of machine and magic, metal and stone, steam and mana.

In between sweating up a storm and wondering if Hera was going to die for real this time, I was also worrying about the steadily increasing pain I was feeling from Lorna.

I could tell she was blocking me from it. Shutting me out, and isolating herself. But what trickled through was still enough to make me feel like I was going to start halicinating any minute.

Whatever they were doing to her, it was getting worse.

I crawled faster.

If Hera successfully got the communication array… And Bayla didn’t screw us and hadn’t already… and I got to Lorna and didn’t just get immediately off-ed by my childhood idol… and my Familiars were all REALLY fast about remaking their vessels… and the crawling castle we were in was not too far into Gott territory… And if Marok was alive and in fighting shape… And there were no other Ascendant level enemies that we didn’t know about… and the castle was in as poor repair as Bayla thought it might be…

We could have a real shot at getting rescued.

Unless…

~~~~~~~~~~

I cranked the circular trapdoor open with a louder creak than I wanted and cautiously poked the top of my head out and scanned.

The rush of hot air from my service tunnel blew my hair upwards. Even that movement in the air felt good, even though it was still hot as fuck. Better than the stagnant air of the tunnel.

Shockingly, I was where I had been promised I would be.

Far below me, in the center of a huge internal cathedral of the crawling castle was Lorna. She was suspended in a glowing spiderweb of pale thread. The pallid bone needle was just visible, impaled in her chest.

Robed figures surrounded her in a wide ring, each working on a wide ritual circle they were inscribing on the stone floor. Carmine stood before Lorna, speaking to her, and holding a strand of the pale web. I couldn’t make out what they were saying. But each time Carmine tugged on the thread, I felt a nauseating wave of soul-deep pain through my bond.

I couldn’t imagine what it was like for her, if it was this bad through our incredibly muted connection.

My heart lurched, seeing her in peril and obvious pain. But I made myself move. I couldn’t help her by sitting there and feeling bad. I had to act.

I was at the top of what I was realizing must have once been the throne room, to judge by the layout.

Metal catwalks crisscrossed the ceiling, which was only a few feet above me.

Excellent. More crawling would be necessary. Just what my bruised knees were hoping for.

This is NOT what I liked bruising my knees for. But trying times require sacrifice.

I crawled up out of the service tunnel onto the catwalk, blessing the relatively frigid air that greeted me outside the service tunnel.

Evidently the spreading heat had not made it here yet. Or it had been SUPER cold before.

The room I was crawling around the top of was roughly circular and cavernous. Rows of ornate benches ringed most of it, holding still more people. The black armbands and soldier attire marked them as the assholes who had invaded Bayloft.

Fury flared in my chest.

But if the scheme worked, I might have some sweet vengeance. In the meantime…

I crawled slowly, careful not to make a sound, or a sudden movement that could attract an alert eye.

Luckily, the ritual was taking up everyone’s attention.

Peering around the ceiling, I could just make out the lever I needed.

I hastened my pace fractionally. The agony of maintaining silence and obscurity made my eyes itch.

Below, the circle was almost complete. The robed people were connecting their sections in red. I felt the ambient magic in the room shift as the circle thrummed to life. Intricate lines glowed in red, black, and white.

Each of the nine robed people stood in the middle of their own tiny connected circles and chanted.

I had seen Lorna do ritual magic up close. But it was like the difference between watching someone skilled play a ditty on a pocket whistle and hearing an orchestra tune up to play a symphony.

Ritual magic was not as quick or portable as Class Skills. It often required specific materials, time to set up, and sometimes even costly reagents to fuel. But in exchange, it was infinitely more flexible. Theoretically, almost anything could be done with ritual magic, if you had the time, power, and resources to figure out how.

I did not want to see what these fuckers had cooked up for Lorna.

I risked scrambling a little faster. I was so close to the lever. If I could reach it, I could open the great windows and let the perpetual blizzard of the far north into the throne room. The temperature drop would trigger the internal heating mechanism to ramp up to emergency levels. Combined with the already overheating section near the great engine… We could cause an internal catastrophe that would require immediate attention. In the chaos, I hoped I would be able to free Lorna somehow. Then….

“Why don’t you join us, Eir.” Carmine’s voice echoed through the room.

I froze. The lever was almost in reach.

I felt a sharp prickle in my side. Nothing serious.

I looked, and a pale thread was running into my torso. It ran straight through the bottom of my ribcage and out the other side.

An almighty tug and I was flying downward like a fish on a line.

Instead of splattering across the stones below, I found myself swinging painfully by a loop of pale thread before Carmine, like a macabre chandelier.

“Sup.” I grunted.

“You came.” Lorna said miserably.

“As expected.” Carmine said, walking around inspecting the ritual circle critically.

Now that I was closer, I could see that rather than being tied up or stuck to the web of threads she was suspended in, each thread ran straight through her.

“Princess rescue, at your service, ma’am.” I huffed.

It was pretty difficult to breathe, hanging from my ribcage by a string.

“Why don’t you tell her how we knew she’d come, Lorna?” Carmine called.

I gave the thread running through me an exploratory tug. It was bizarre. It felt like the finest, most delicate silk. Yet I couldn't snap it, and touching it too much made me feel ill.

Lorna watched me, mournfully. Tears streamed down her noble features.

“Lorna?” Prompted Carmine again, a dangerous edge creeping into her voice.

“Because of my curse.” Lorna said.

Barely more than a whisper.

I flinched.

One of the things we hadn't had a chance to talk about yet. One of the things we would've spoken about the very next day, had our arrival back to Bayloft not gone so horribly wrong.

It tasted bitter.

“And what is that curse, dear?” Carmine pressed, mercilessly.

Lorna’s eyes were full of regret, and apology. “Death for the ones I love.”

“And why is that?” Carmine demanded.

“I am bound to an unwinnable war.” Lorna said.

She spoke as if only to me. Tender. Soft. Full of a deeper, older regret than I could fully wrap my head around.

“A war against?” Carmine asked.

“The first war.” Lorna said. “The great war. The war against the Strangers.”

“And how many of your summoners have died in this war you call unwinnable?” Carmine asked.

“You don't have to answer that, Lorna.” I snarled. “I don't care if–”

“All of them.” Lorna said.

She shook her glorious head, looking at me with shame.

“All of them.” Carmine repeated. “And your plan was to entangle Eir in this same war. Eir, whom you claim to love.”

“I fear I love her very much indeed.” Lorna answered. Her sky blue eyes locked on me.

“I love you too, princess.” I growled out. “Don't let this fucker get in your–”

“Tell me, Spectre.” Carmine commanded, flicking her fingers.

The pale threads that pierced Lorna taughtened, pulling her in all directions, stretching her and lifting her into the center of the ritual circle.

Her screaming was dreadful. It was the weariness in it. The resigned tone. She was so tired.

They'd been at this a long time.

I felt a kind of sickening malice that tasted like fire and went down like poison. It roiled in my guts, noxious and unruly.

Murder.

I registered it with momentary revulsion before it drowned me.

I wanted Carmine dead. And I wanted to be the one that killed her.

“Tell me why you would condemn so many to a hopeless war, knowing it would mean their deaths and not yours?” Carmine asked.

Lorna locked eyes on me, looking desperate for me to understand, voice ragged and husky. “I took a vow. Long ago. Never to rest, until that war was won. I have wished a thousand thousand times–”

“I am glad that you are here, Eir. We can’t afford to wait. Bayloft should find us sooner than later. And you would certainly never have taken my word for it, retrospectively. Your Familiar is a death sentence.” Carmine said, striding back to my side, beyond the glowing lines of the circle. “I am going to free you of her. And free the world from the same death sentence at the same time. The whole thing has a pleasant symmetry to it. Eternity’s eyes at work.”