Chapter Text
The Venatori were going to start something, I need to get out of here, I think.
'We need. To find. A way. Out!' Spite the demon, Zara forced me to consume, corrects.
But how exactly to do it, I wonder.
“Can. Make. Us fly!”
That could work if I got us enough momentum to break through the ice. And then you make us fly so I can-
Before I can finish my thought a door opens. The mage Venatori pounds his staff on the ground. Then a soft female voice tells them,
“We don’t have to fight. We’re just here for Lucanis Dellamorte.”
They were here for me? The mage stabs the ground again with his staff. Of course they did not want anyone interfering. Now it was really time to get out of here, you better be ready Spite.
'I am.' Spite says as the female voice says, “Get ready.”
“Razikale, Dragon of Mystery,” The mage starts to chant, “Lusacan, Dragon of night.” I bend my knees and flip myself around so I can kick out of the ice. I feel Spite create wings between my shoulder blades as I spin through the air. “Hear your faithful call–” The mage continues before I land behind him and grab him.
I spin him to the right to take the glowing red dagger of one of the others. Idiot thrusts it right into his chest. I drop the mage as the dagger is drawn back out of his chest. Before the Vint with daggers can react I kick him in the gut. The kick is hard enough to send him flying onto a shard of ice. Straight through his chest. Two of the others watch as the impaled one slides down the ice shard. I sprint towards them, was Spite’s wings making me faster? As I near the two Vints I move my hands outwards and grab their shrouded faces. I keep running, snapping both of their necks. I hear their lifeless bodies hit the floor.
One more, I turn to face him as he comes at me. I duck under his small scythe shaped dagger. I move around his right side, so I can grab from behind his neck. Then I snap it with a satisfying spray of blood. I drop him and his body falls with a thud, I face the tall ice structure, I was free. 'Almost your blood!' Yes, Spite we will take care of that.
“I’m guessing your the reason we’re here.” The same female voice says.
I catch a glimpse of the long spectral purple wings on my back before Spite makes them go away. I turn to see a female dwarf and a female elf.
“Who are you? Who sent you?” I question them.
“My name’s Riya.” The elf replies, she had been the one speaking before. “House de Riva. And this is Lace Harding. I’m here to bring you home.”
“House de Riva. You’re a Crow.” A Crow taken as a child at that, as she had light golden blonde hair and pale blue eyes.
“And you’re possessed by a demon.” Riya says matter-of-factly.
“It’s complicated.”
Harding stays quiet, just watching Riya as she says,
“Caterina promised us a mage-killer if we broke you out of here”
“I can still work.”
“Good. Because I’m pretty sure more Venatori are on their way. We have to get moving.”
I look away a moment as I tell Riya and Harding,
“They have a vial of my blood.” I look back up, shifting my feet and putting my hands on my hips. “They can use it to control me. I cannot leave it in their hands. And… I had a contract when I was captured. One of my targets is here. Calivan.” I look Riya in her blue eyes. “You know what that means. Crows don’t break contracts.”
She nods slightly,
“All right, we’ll help. But in return, I want help killing some things.”
“I’ll owe you.”
“I’m sure we’ll owe each other before this is all over. Let’s go.”
As we leave Riya inquires about the first order of business, I tell her my blood first. Then we take care of Calivan. She asks where to find him. When I say in the tower there is a bridge, she explains there is not a bridge anymore and we would have to find another way.
Before we reach the short bridge in the next room three mages appear. With practiced ease Riya pulls out her dagger with her left hand. As Harding quickly draws an arrow in her bow. The three mages are already each preparing spells. The backs of my eyeballs itch.
“Good.” I say, drawing my rapier. “Mages. My specialty.”
Riya sprints to the one on the left, expertly dodging an arcane blast. As Harding fires an arrow at the one in the middle. Guess that meant I got the one on the right. I feel Spite form the purple wings again as I leap towards the mage. He almost finishes his red spell before my rapier pierces his gut. Harding’s mage lays on the ground an arrow in his eye.
Riya has just slashed her dagger across the Vints leg. He stagers back and tries to launch another fire blast at her. Before magic can leave the Vints staff, Riya has phased behind him, in a flash of purple light. My eyes tingle, softer than normal, not as irritating. Riya’s dagger slices through the man's neck and his body falls before his head. She was a mage!
She grins as she catches me and Harding watching her. She flicks blood off her dagger then re-sheaths it as she smirks,
“Is it safe to expose my magic to the Demon of Vyrantium?”
“I only go after blood mages and the Venatori. If you are neither of those, then you are safe.”
Her grin gets a little wider, almost a full smile. Harding still hasn’t said a word. But looks between me and Riya. Her pale green eyes seem worried and anxious. Riya bends down,
“Oh, would you look at that. This one dropped a key.”
She picks up the key that fell out of the decapitated Venatori’s pocket. As Riya moves to the door, Harding finally speaks asking,
“This is a big place. Where would they keep vials of blood?”
We follow Riya up the stairs to the door as I reply,
“Calivan keeps it under guard. Blood is the only thing that can bind a demon. If they lose it…”
“Then it’s chaos.” Riya finishes as she unlocks the door.
She pushes both big doors open at once, they stay open as she asks realizing what this room was for,
“Wait… were they torturing demons? How? Why?”
I explain,
“They didn’t all start out as demons. Zara made sure they ended up that way.”
“Zara?” Riya asks, as she walks past a Grey Warden corpse.
“Zara Renata. There might be a higher-ranking Venatori somewhere, but I don’t know of one. This place is all her.”
Riya moves on to solve how to get past the red crystals blocking the way we needed to go. She solves it fast, seeing the right crystals to hit. She uses her magic again this time in a beam of fire. Like before my eyes tingle, the sensation was not as unpleasant as it normally is. Usually fire magic made my eyes itch to the point of burning.
Riya gets done breaking all of the red crystals with her magic, lastly breaking the one on the doorway we need to go through. Right away we have to fight through more Venatori. Riya sprints at a Vint with her dagger in her left hand, as I move towards the mage. I have to weave around his magic. Out of the corner of my vision I catch Riya swirl in her purple magic to appear behind her target's back. She impales him and slashes up his back, at the same time I slash the mage's legs. As he drops his staff Riya phases through purple to help Harding with her Vint. I finish off the mage, piercing him in the heart. Before I can go to help Harding and Riya, she ends the last two quickly.
A fireball hits one’s chest sending him staggering back burning. Then she flings her dagger at the other charged with fire magic. She also controls it with her magic I realize as she catches it when it flies back to her hand. She spins through her purple magic to wedge her dagger through the neck of the one still staggering. 'You are staring!' Spite says, I turn my eyes away as the tingling leaves them.
We continue to make our way through the Ossuary until we reach a large chasm. Harding exclaims,
“Great. Now what?”
'I can help.' Spite tells me.
“What are you–” 'Use Fade. Help! Get us across.' “fine. He says he can get us across.”
“Who is ‘he?’” Riya questions.
“The demon. He says there’s something here. Something he can grab hold of in the Fade. It’s close.”
The only thing I feel as Spite draws a brick floor from the Fade is my eyes itch. Different like a vibrating buzz. Riya remarks questioning,
“The demon… pulled all of that from the Fade?”
“I’m as surprised as you.”
“Do you think we–” Harding starts to ask but,
Riya immediately jumps onto the brick flooring from the Fade. She doesn’t go plummeting to her doom. She sprints across it and jumps to the other side. She laughs, with a hand on her hip. Looking back to me and Harding she says,
“Well it works. What are you two waiting for?”
I gesture for Harding to go first. She looks hesitantly at the Fade flooring as Spite tells me, 'Must hurry. Won't last long.' I tell Harding to get across, nervously she does and then I follow. The moment we are both across the bricks disappear back into the Fade.
We travel on through the prison, taking out Venatori and Zara's failed creations as they come. Riya fights like a well trained assassin with her dagger, a precise dance of steel meeting flesh. But when she uses her fire magic she is more chaotic. Using a summoned orb of molten fire, flinging it at her targets sporadically. Intricately dancing through her swirling purple magic around Vints and abominations.
Every spell of her magic leaves the backs of my eyes tingling softly.
“So, Calivan.” Riya inquires, as we walk through an area Vints and abominations have killed each other. “You said he’s the one in charge?”
“No. He’s a lackey. He runs this place for a powerful Magister. He was my target a year ago. Now we both want him dead.”
“‘We’ meaning…?”
“Demons don’t forgive.”
We finally reach where my vial of blood is stored, but more red barriers locked with crystals block the way. Riya gets right to looking all around to blast all of the red crystals. Each time her firebeam of magic affects the backs of my eyeballs. Yet for such chaotic magic the sensation is still more subtle than I am used to. Harding helps point out a few crystals, and Spite has to pull more bricks from the fade to help us reach a crystal. When we finally gain access to where my blood is stored I approach it.
It’s at the back of the room in a fancier vial than the rest. And the only one floating above the table with others on it. Harding says as we enter,
“When you said, ‘a vial’ of blood, I thought it would be small.”
“There. That’s the one. It has to be.”
I walk up to the table the fancy one floats over and try to touch it. But it’s like an invisible barrier blocks me. I pull out one of my smaller daggers to smash it, but the same thing happens. I could not touch or harm my own vial of blood. I groan in frustration before Riya softly says,
“Here, allow me. Stand back, I’m going to fireball it.”
I step back, my eyes buzz warmly as Riya summons her fire orb, and then blasts it at the vial. On impact the glass shatters and my blood once inside the vial steams as it sprays to the ground. Riya approaches the table and picks up a note. She scowls as she reads it, then she hands it to me. I read it,
Calivan,
You know as well as I do how demanding Zara can be.
Nothing less than perfection is ever acceptable. Of
course she’s not going to accept that the Crow is a
failure of her method. Just kill him. Perhaps the
demon will manifest when he dies.
–Felicia Erimond
I crumple up the note and toss it into the pool of my blood from the vial.
“It’s finally gone.” I say relieved.
“So now we take care of your target right?” Riya asks.
“Sí, now we find Calivan.”
Riya nods, and walks past me out of the room. Before Harding follows Riya, she gives me a hard stare. To the right we find a lift, once we are all on Riya flips the handle, sending us upwards. We rise in a moment of silence before Harding says
“Riya…”
“It’s us against gods Harding.” Riya sounds almost annoyed.
“I am right here you know.” I interject.
“It’s fine.” Riya speaks quicker. “We can talk about something else. What’s Caterina like?”
Did she just meet Caterina before taking the contract to find me? Most likely as she asked what the First Talon was like. The year had blurred and it was hard to remember anything before.
“After so long in this pit… I barely remember.” As I finish the lift stops with a jolt.
I follow Riya as she steps out of the lift. I immediately pick out Calivan standing between two curved stairways. His back faces us as we approach him. He turns when we get closer to the dais he is standing on.
“Ugh,” He groans. “This was entirely unnecessary. Zara and her little jests. ‘He’s already the Demon of Vyrantium! Won’t this be ironic?’ Hilarious. And look at the mess you’ve made of my facility. She always leaves me to clean up.”
Why was it always the pompous self-absorbed mages that talked way too much?
“So this is Calivan.” Riya says snarkily.
“He is.” I say turning my head to look at her.
She turns to me and the odd swirling light makes her blue eyes and blonde hair stand out. I continue speaking,
“The target I was sent for a year ago. A Crow never abandons a contract.” Why did I say that again? Riya would know that, she was a Crow too.
All the same she turns as I do to face Calivan again. He grabs his staff preparing to fight as he taunts,
“What did they offer you in exchange for my life, Crow? Was it worth it?” He taunts.
I Ignore him as I sprint towards him, Riya is already hurling her fireballs at him. But he has up a magic shield and they bounce off. Even just Calivan’s shield is a harsher itch to my eyeballs. Riya’s wild fire magic was almost unnoticeable compared to his. I notice one of Harding's arrows miss, then realize it didn’t. Calivan has created magic forms of himself. Harding's arrow had missed him but hit one of his duplicates.
Riya spins in a flurry of purple magic to slash at one of the extra Calivans. I move to try and get behind Calivan, he notices and tries to shoot his red magic at her. A crystalline ball hits Riya in the chest, sending her spiraling backwards. She tumbles to the ground, I catch a small contained wince. Before she can get up Calivan launches another at her, it nails her thigh. She tries not to groan. In the next instant as I take out the last Calivan duplicate, Riya swirls away in her purple magic. She is suddenly behind Calivan attempting to slice his back. But he lunges at me in a magic sprint, Riya slashes at the air. I barely dodge out of the way.
Calivan keeps duplicating himself as the three of us try to take him down. Mierda, I mutter to myself when he summons a pride demon. It takes me, Riya, and Harding attacking the demon all at once to bring it down. Calivan reappears and looks at me, before he can do anything Riya shouts,
“Hey! You ugly lackey, daft brained toady!”
Calivan turns to face Riya. She stands with her left leg out, dagger poised defensively, and her fire orb levitates above her right hand. Her blue eyes look at me and she winks,
“Yeah you! You want a Crow? Come at me!”
To my surprise he falls for her taunt. I use her distraction to sink my rapier right through his heart. He sags to the ground as I pull back my rapier.
“The Crows send their regards.” I tell Calivan’s corpse.
I catch Riya grin for a moment as she walks up, magic orb and dagger put away. She stands right next to Spite’s purple version of myself. Riya looks right at me though and says,
“So we got your target.”
“Yes. The jobs done.”
Spite inhales and comments,
'Smells like blood. Ashes. Not done. Not Yet.'
I look at him and then realize Riya is just staring at me. She raises her eyebrow as she asks sarcastically,
“So we can leave, right?” I look back to Spite. “Lucanis? Right?”
'Careful. They know. We’re not right.' He looks at Riya at the last word, but she remains unflinching.
“You can not see him.” I say to Riya. “I wondered.”
She raises her eyebrow again,
"We clearly have things to discuss. Somewhere else.”
“Agreed. I think it is time I got some air.”