[The Black City]
“So this is a right mess.”
Tanya nodded in agreement as she stood across from Falbium, arms behind her back in standard parade rest. The Satan's office was in a state of disarray that was unusual even by his standards, desk cluttered with papers piled high and the Satan himself seeming more exhausted than ever before. Tanya suspected the man had missed several naps today already.
“Three Houses attacked within minutes of each other, several injuries and the death of the firstborn daughter of House Valac,” Tanya listed. “I assume Lord Vapula is not pleased.”
“No, he is not. His heir lost a bride and his house lost a rather important alliance.” Falbium sighed. “It's a shame too. I hear they were rather smitten with each other.”
The death of Valerie Valac was as tragic as it was frustrating. Apparently the heiress was prone to late night strolls through her family's rather prodigious gardens. She had been accompanied by no less than six guards, but had abandoned them in favor of some momentary peace and quiet.
She was no less than twenty feet away, hidden by nothing but shrubs and flowers, when she was killed, dismembered, and scattered about her own lawn. Allegedly, nobody had heard a thing.
Several more heads rolled that night.
“We must get to the bottom of this.”
“The other families are up in arms,” Falbium agreed, rubbing his temples. “Particularly at the military. Several of them have already sent formal complaints claiming we failed to protect them.”
His tone mirrored her own thoughts perfectly.
“Classic nobility,” she sighed, and Falbium's eyes flicked to hers. “They declaim the military as bloated and unnecessary, padding their own household guards instead, yet the moment blood is spilled, they demand to know where our forces were.”
Falbium let out a long breath, sagging into his seat. “That's politics.”
Tanya bit back the retort that sat on her tongue. In her past life, she'd sat through countless board meetings where incompetents deflected blame for their own failures onto subordinates who had warned them repeatedly. She'd prefer not to dwell on them here
“Be that as it may,” Tanya said, “I may have a lead on our issue.”
Falbium nodded, as if he already suspected “Your little prisoner. Have you managed to interrogate her?”
“She's proved surprisingly compliant, actually,” Tanya said. “Though I suspect compliance is less a virtue of hers and more a byproduct of the fact that she has nothing to lose. Her allies were not comrades in arms so much as convenient jailers.”
Falbium raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“The group holds leverage over her. Friends of hers, being held against their will,” Tanya elaborated. “We've managed to come to an arrangement. In return for our aid, she offered to disclose the location of their base of operations.”
“Do you trust her?”
“Not at all,” Tanya answered without hesitation. “But I trust that she'll be cooperative since she has something to gain. She strikes me as a sensible person.”
Falbium drummed his fingers against the wood of his desk. “You've proven to be a fairly good judge of character. What do you suggest we do to follow up on this lead?”
His question was probing, and Tanya straightened minutely as she was thrust back into the Empire, placed before generals and officers with opportunity on the horizon as long as she said the right words at the right time.
“We should send a small reconnaissance force,” Tanya said. “One or two people at most will be enough to confirm the location and assess the enemy's strength without risking detection. If Liltotto's information proves accurate, we'll have a handle on their numbers, their defenses, and their layout before we commit to anything substantial.”
She paused, wetting her lips. “Once reconnaissance is complete, the military launches a focused operation to neutralize the threat and contain it. One noble has already died and that is an issue. Two could lead to a panic and a possible crisis. We need to deal with this quickly.”
Falbium studied her for a long moment, then he leaned back in his chair, the wood creaking in protest. “And who did you have in mind?”
“I myself am rather equipped for such a task.”
Falbium's expression shifted in surprise, though he didn't immediately reject the notion. “You were attacked not three days ago,” he said. “Your father would have my head.”
“With all due respect, sir, my father does not dictate military operations. You know my strengths as well as I do, just as you know that none of our personnel are capable of achieving such a thing barring someone from your peerage, but they have other responsibilities.”
A beat of silence passed as Falbium considered her words. Slowly, he nodded.
“You make a fair point,” Falbium conceded. “Very well, I'll leave it up to you. But I'll have someone on standby. Preferably several someones.”
“I won't let you down.”
Internally, Tanya was crowing. This was the perfect opportunity to prove herself in the eyes of the nobility. If she could deal with this situation in a tidy manner, then her claim to the seat of Asmodeus would be even more secure.
She would not fail
“You're pretty ballsy, you know that?”
Floating high in a blackened sky, Tanya slowly turned to regard her companion with one brow raised. “How so?”
Liltotto hung loosely in the middle of the air, standing on a platform of condensed holy energy that flickered and undulated underneath her shoes, her own version of flight, apparently. Dressed in the same attire that she'd been captured in, she was barely visible apart from her golden hair and pale features. Those same features tilted as the girl nodded to the landscape below.
“You're flying high in the middle of enemy territory, for one.”
Tanya shifted, the heat from her wings washing over her back and warming her in the cold night as she followed Liltotto's gesture.
Hundreds of feet below, a wretched city stretched out across the wasteland. Black stone spires stretched toward the sky like gothic cathedrals intent on reaching to their god, and a thick black smog hung in the air, choking the lungs like smoke and leaving a bitter taste in the back of Tanya's throat that paired horribly with the slimy tingle left on her skin by whatever magic was keeping this place hidden in plain sight.
“If one intends to wage any sort of warfare outside of an impromptu bar fight, proper reconnaissance is required. I prefer not to go stumbling blindly into a fight.”
“Usually you have other people do that for you.”
“Unfortunately, I don't have the luxury of having access to personnel competent or powerful enough to penetrate a magic barrier capable of hiding an entire city in plain sight,” Tanya said dryly. “Much less any that could do it undetected.”
“Incompetence. Gotcha.”
Unfortunately, she wasn't wrong. As hard as Tanya had been working to reform the military, there were still a few key areas they were lacking in. She had focused on reworking things on the bureaucratic level in the beginning, as an army was only as strong as the logistics working behind the scenes. Suffice it to say, one tended not to concern themselves over their ability to infiltrate their enemy when their proverbial backyard was so overgrown with weeds that they couldn't see past their nose.
Though, to be fair, how could she have expected that their enemy would set up shop right outside the door? Lord Berith was going to be quite unhappy when he discovered exactly what was causing a ruckus in his backyard.
I can already hear his moaning. This is going to be such a headache. Tanya sighed, flying a bit higher as a cloud of smog passed through the place where she had been floating. Her wings crackled loudly, but they did not glow in the darkness. Her prodigious skill with her own flames lent themselves well to shifting them away from the visible spectrum, effectively making them invisible. It took quite a considerable level of concentration to maintain, but so long as she wasn't in active combat, it was more than manageable.
As Tanya surveyed what may very well be a future battlefield, a sudden shudder passed through her as a malignant presence brushed against her senses, far greater than the ambient darkness lingering in the air around them. Tanya turned, her eyes alighting upon a jagged tower reaching up from the center of the city. She gestured to it. “What resides in there?”
“The guy who put this whole thing together,” Liltotto responded, stepping closer to Tanya to get a better view past the smog. “I've never met him face to face, but he knows everything that goes on around here, somehow. He feels creepy, doesn't he?”
“Like an oil slick on the tongue,” Tanya agreed, her face scrunching in distaste. “It’s the same feeling I had when passing through the barrier. He's rather powerful. Who is he?”
“No clue. He doesn't hang around and I don't go looking for him. Usually we have to deal with his asshole generals.” Liltotto's fists clenched and unclenched. “Can we get down there now? You're not going to get anything from just staring and I didn't come back here just to hang around.”
“Yes, your friends.” Tanya began descending, followed closely by Liltotto. “I don't suppose they'd have anything more substantial to offer in ways of information?”
“Gigi might. I doubt the others know anything at this point,” Liltotto answered, earning a strange look from Tanya which she responded to with a shrug. “You'll see.”
With that mysterious proclamation, the two of them delved into the Black City.
The oily presence got insufferably stronger as they touched down on blackened cobble roads. Tanya took a quick glance around, noting the deepened shadows and the complete lack of life as far as the eye could see. It felt lifeless in a way few things did. The cold grasp of death itself lingered here like a bad smell.
“Don't step in the deeper shadows,” Liltotto advised as she began down the street. “He'll be able to sense you if you do, and then he'll send something to deal with it. Trust me, you don't want that.”
“Should we not worry about being otherwise seen?”
“There aren't enough people around for that. At least not any who care. We'll feel the ones who do before we see them.”
Interesting, and possibly useful. Tanya filed the information away for later as they moved through the city. Narrow streets and tall buildings stretched as far as the eye could see, well crafted but poorly maintained and stained black by whatever power had brought this place into existence. Dead wind whistled across stone, driving home the silence that seemed wrapped around this place like a veil. For all of its size and impressive structure, the Black City was empty.
Tanya's brow furrowed as they passed a fountain, cracked and empty of water. What was the purpose of having such a large space if one didn't have any intent to fill it? That, combined with the power staining every brick and loose board in this place, told Tanya one thing. The Black City was nothing more than a monument to a massive ego—the hollow facade of opulence, or a desperate attempt to grab back something lost.
When Tanya voiced this notion to Liltotto, the girl only nodded. “Apparently wanting a massive city all to yourself is a common factor between egomaniacs. The worst part is the food.”
They walked on in silence for a time, the only sound the echo of their footsteps against the dead stone. Tanya kept her senses sharp, her magic roiling under her skin and ready to fight or flee at the first sign of trouble, but true to Liltotto's word, they encountered nothing. No patrols, no sentries; just empty streets and empty buildings stretching on into the gloom.
It was vaguely nauseating in a way Tanya couldn't exactly place.
As they turned a corner into a large courtyard, Liltotto stopped in her tracks, prompting Tanya to do the same. Ahead of them, a group of figures trudged through the yard in loose formation, hauling massive blocks of black stone between them. The blocks were easily several tons each, yet the figures bearing that weight didn't complain or grunt with effort, plodding along like beasts of burden rather than living, thinking people.
As they grew closer, Tanya saw why.
Grey-skinned and dead-eyed, the death that surrounded this place seeped through them just the same. They seemed to be animated by some force other than conscious thought. Muscle and sinew moved beneath ashen skin, but there was nothing behind those eyes.
Tanya tracked the group as they passed, watching one of them stumble under the weight of its burden before righting itself with a jerky, unnatural motion. Its jaw worked soundlessly, as if trying to speak but having forgotten how.
Ah. Necromancy. She clicked her tongue as she realized what she was looking at. Devil society had more or less banned the practice, but other pantheons had embraced it wholesale. Tanya could see the appeal of having a workforce dedicated completely to their masters' will, but playing with souls in such a way rarely went well in the long term.
“LILIL!”
A blur of black and white darted from the shadows and Tanya turned, flames bursting to life upon her fingers as Liltotto was tackled to the ground and set upon by a ravenous beast intent on...
What in the world?
Tanya's flames sputtered and died as her mind processed what she was looking at. Liltotto was laying spread eagle on the ground as if struck down on the spot. She was being straddled by another girl dressed in all white who seemed intent on merging their faces together by way of rubbing her own against Liltotto's. Liltotto, for her part, seemed only slightly exasperated by what was going on.
“Hello, Gigi.”
The so-named Gigi pulled back from Liltotto, wide blue eyes filled with unshed tears and a wide smile. “I'm glad you're back! What took so long? I thought you were dead and I missed my chance to bring you back.”
“That'd be a relief. Get off me.” Liltotto pushed the other girl off of her, and Gigi's arms pinwheeled dramatically before she fell on her back. Liltotto stood up, dusting herself off. “We got our asses kicked and I got locked up. Where's my pouch?”
Gigi pouted but recovered quickly, reaching underneath her trenchcoat and tossing a yellow, heart-shaped bag to Liltotto. “Here you go!”
“Thanks. I haven't eaten since yesterday.” Liltotto popped it open and pulled out a rather large jawbreaker, tossing it into her mouth and biting down with a loud crunch. “Thank God. I was about to waste away.”
Tanya ignored the spike of pain in the back of her head, looking at Gigi who stared back at her as if she'd just noticed her for the first time. “One of your friends, I assume?”
Liltotto nodded, crunching down on yet another piece of candy. “Mmh. This is Giselle. She's weird but cool. Gigi, this is the one who kicked our ass.”
“Huh?” Giselle leaned close, eyeing Tanya from only a foot away. She tilted her head from side to side, as if she couldn't understand what she was looking at. “You guys got beat by a little girl Devil? How'd that happen?”
“She's stronger than she looks.” Liltotto finally closed the pouch and stowed it away. She looked around, examining the zombies and frowning. “Where are the others?”
Giselle stiffened, then drooped. “They took them.”
“What.”
Giselle broke into a sweat at the flat word and waved her hands frantically. “It's not my fault! They said you were gone for too long and they needed more assurances so they took them to the tower!” She drooped again, looking depressed. “We need to get them back. I miss my Bambi so much~”
“Gross.” Liltotto said, but she had a worried frown on her face. She gazed at the tower in the distance for a long moment, thinking.
In the meantime, Tanya turned to Giselle who had gone back to staring at her. Tanya didn't really care for the darkly interested look on her face, and broke the silence. “Why were you the only one left here?”
Giselle blinked, then grinned. “They can't get rid of me unless they want to lug all these rocks around themselves. My zombies are the ones doing all the heavy lifting around here. No way any of those lazy generals would do it.”
“Gigi's the only reason we're even hostages. If she wasn't useful, they would have killed us a long time ago.” Liltotto said, and Giselle held her hands to her cheeks, feigning a blush that did not appear.
“If your other friends are in that tower,” Tanya said slowly, “then I assume they're being held as leverage to ensure your continued cooperation.”
Giselle nodded rapidly, her antenna-like hair strands bouncing. “Yep! They said if I didn't do what they wanted, they'd hurt the others. And if I'm not around to fix them…”
Her expression curdled into something dark for just a moment, a flash of genuine malice passing through her eyes. “That'd be bad.”
“Then it would be best not to attempt a rescue now,” Tanya said. She ignored the look Giselle shot her, turning instead to survey the tower that loomed over the city like a crooked finger. “We don't have the manpower for any real assault and as it stands, they aren't in danger of being harmed as long as you're here. It will have to wait.”
Giselle's expression fell. “But… But Bambi~”
“She's already dead, Gigi. She's not going anywhere anytime soon.”
Tanya blinked at the casual admission, but chose not to comment. She'd already gathered that these friends were likely not alive in any real sense of the term. Judging from the necromancer's general demeanor towards the subject, she was simply possessive of whatever bonds she had managed to form before their death.
Liltotto's flat delivery hung in the air between them. Giselle's lower lip trembled. “You're not actually going to leave them here, are you?”
“No, dumbass. We're getting them out.” Liltotto sighed. “Just not tonight.”
Giselle wilted further, her shoulders sagging pitifully, but she didn't argue. Liltotto was clearly the decision-maker here, despite Giselle being the one with the more immediately dangerous ability.
“We need to discuss logistics,” Tanya said, pulling the conversation back on track. She turned to Giselle, who perked up at the attention. “You said your zombies are doing the heavy lifting here. How many are under your control?”
“Um, about sixty right now, give or take. Some of them fall apart after a while if I don't keep them maintained.” She giggled, touching a finger to her lip. “It's kind of a hassle, actually. These guys had weak bodies to begin with.”
“So your presence here is expected on a regular basis?”
“Mmh! Every day.”
“Then you stay,” Tanya said. Liltotto stiffened, turning towards Tanya with narrowed eyes, so Tanya explained. “If she vanishes, they'll notice immediately and your friends suffer the consequences. We can't get them all out right now so it's best not to cause a ruckus so soon.”
Liltotto clearly wasn't happy about that, but she didn't raise an issue. Thankful, Tanya turned back to Giselle. “In the meantime, is there anything you can tell me about the goings on here? Patrol schedules, general manpower?”
Giselle tilted her head. “Hmm... Maybe?”
“Quickly then, we don't have all day.”
Giselle pouted, but relented. The Black City held only the barest essentials when it came to an actual garrison. Giselle's zombies made up the majority of their labor force, with no civilians to speak of within the confines of the city itself. There were soldiers, just like the ones that Tanya killed only a few nights ago, but their numbers were few and far between.
The soldiers they did have were organized into rotating shifts, though Giselle couldn't say exactly how many there were total. She guessed somewhere between thirty and fifty, though she admitted she'd never cared enough to count. What she did know was that they answered to a handful of generals who in turn answered to the presence in the tower, and that none of them were particularly friendly.
Tanya frowned, turning the numbers over in her mind. For a base of this size, it was a laughably small number of forces. You didn't construct a monument of this scale and then leave it staffed like a convenience store.
“Those numbers don't make sense,” Tanya said, more to herself than to either of the girls. “A garrison of thirty to fifty is barely enough to maintain order in a place this size, let alone defend it. Even with Giselle's zombies acting as a labor force, that's nowhere near enough personnel to sustain any kind of prolonged operation. Especially not one that brazenly strikes out at an enemy who would never have known they existed otherwise.”
“So?”
“So either our enemy is catastrophically overconfident, or this isn't their main force.” Tanya turned to face the tower as the thought nagged at her. “Perhaps they were simply here to set up a forward operating base meant to spearhead something larger.”
Liltotto tilted her head. “You think there's more of them somewhere else?”
“I haven't heard anything about that,” Giselle agreed.
Tanya ignored them both, biting the end of her thumb as she muttered to herself, “But that raises a different question. If this is a vanguard for a larger force, why strike now? We had no clue they existed and likely wouldn't have for several weeks, yet they blew their cover in an attempt to kill a handful of nobles.”
It didn't make any sense. Were they dealing with some half-cocked force who had more balls than brains? Tanya could generously call it a probing strike, but to go completely silent in the aftermath did nothing but draw attention and allow their enemies to shore up their defenses or follow the trail back to its source, just as Tanya had done.
What am I missing?
The question gnawed at her, but the answers refused to come. She needed to deliberate somewhere safe, which meant it was time to go. She wasn't likely to get anything else out of this trip anyway.
“It's time to go,” Tanya said, turning away from the tower. “We've gathered what we can. Lingering any longer is an unnecessary risk.”
Giselle's face fell. “But you just got here!”
“It'll be fine, Gigi.” Liltotto agreed, and her voice was softer than Tanya had heard it be since they'd met. “I'll be back. Just keep doing what you're doing and don't do anything stupid.”
Giselle pouted, then relented. “You better hurry. I get bored without my girls around.”
“I know.” Liltotto reached up and squeezed Giselle's shoulder. “Try not to get caught.”
She then leaned up and planted a kiss on Giselle’s cheek. And Giselle responded with a grin and a mock salute. “Yes ma'am!”
Tanya watched the exchange and then jerked her head to the side as Liltotto stepped away. “We leave the way we came. Just as careful.”
“Right behind you.” Liltotto fell into step beside her, casting one last glance over her shoulder at Giselle, who waved enthusiastically until they turned the corner and disappeared from view.
They kept to the same path and quickly reached the city's outskirts. Once there, they lifted into the air, rising into the sky towards the hole Liltotto had carved into the barrier.
They were perhaps halfway there when a presence suddenly crashed into Tanya's mind, stalling her in the middle of the air as she clutched her head.
“So…” a rumbling voice spoke into the back of her mind. “A little bird finds her way into my city. You were bold to come here, Devil, but now you are known to me. Despair, for soon you will meet your end. You, and all of your wretched kind.”
An oily presence crawled along Tanya's skin, and she knew at once that this was the same being that resided in the tower. She shrugged off the pain, turning to look back down into the city below. Behind her, Liltotto turned to her in confusion. “What? What's going on?”
“I'm being monologued at,” Tanya replied. “Who are you?”
The voice in her head pulsed with dark amusement.
“You will know of my might soon enough—when my shadow falls across the remnants of your house and race and your pitiful souls scream in anguish.”
“Isn't this a familiar feeling?” Tanya muttered, struck with an awful feeling of déjà vu. “Since you seem so determined to announce yourself, I assume you're the one in charge of this operation?”
“In charge?” The voice rippled with dark amusement. “I am this place. I am the shadow that birthed it, the stone that built it, the breath that lingers in its halls. You stand in the reliquary of my power, and you do not even realize it.”
“Is that so?” Tanya stared down at the city with a blank expression, her earlier concerns fading rapidly. In its place, a new feeling crawled up her chest: mirth. And she laughed.
It started quiet but quickly built into a full-blown fit that left her bent over at the waist and damn near clutching her stomach as Liltotto stared at her like she lost her mind.
The voice was similarly shocked. “You find your demise amusing?”
“Oh, extraordinarily.” Tanya wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, her shoulders still shaking. “You have no idea how much.”
This was what she'd been worried about? A generational talent in barrier magic. A mastermind playing the long game. She was dealing with a buffoon who, upon discovering an intruder in his stronghold, decided the appropriate response was to mentally broadcast his awareness of said intrusion so he could gloat about it.
In just a few sentences, he had given up so much. Every word out of his nonexistent mouth was a free piece of intelligence handed to her on a silver platter, and for what? The satisfaction of hearing himself speak?
It's like Dacia all over again. This fool is playing the wrong game.
Forget a vanguard. Thirty to fifty soldiers and a handful of generals was all there was because that was all he had. She was right when she said this entire city was a monument to an ego, but she had no idea how much.
“It seems this trip was more informative than I could have ever hoped,” she couldn't help but say, relishing the presence's confusion and anger. “Thank you for that little tidbit. I'll be sure to make exceptional use of it at my earliest convenience.”
“You dare!?”
“Now as much as I'd like to listen to you prattle on and reveal even more about yourself, I really must be going.”
The presence surged against her mind like a furious tidal wave but Tanya merely planted her mental heels and summoned her will. It clawed at her consciousness, trying to get in and root itself.
“You will not leave. I will hold you here and flay your very mind from your flesh. You shall—”
“Out.”
Tanya's magic wrapped around her own mind like a furnace door slamming shut, searing the grasping tendrils which recoiled in pain and surprise. They tore themselves away from her mind, and for a single, horrible moment, the whole world seemed to bleed black before it came back into sharp focus
“Let's go,” Tanya ordered Liltotto who didn't need to be told twice. She shot toward the gap in the barrier like a bullet and Tanya was right behind her, wings burning hot and bright.