Princess Kristie jammed Quaver straight down into the pressure plate, releasing the spring by shearing through it and depowering the razors that wanted to sweep through the corridor behind a fleeing king.

  Two stabs into the stone to either side split the chains there, and the taut weights attached to the razors fell and rendered the traps useless.

  She stepped out into a room, and was immediately nearly overwhelmed by memories.

  Here?! He dared put his little escape route HERE?

  She could smell the mildew, the sweat, the urine, the fear, the blood that had seeped into the stone. She knew that crack on the ceiling, and that broken edge to the instrument tray.

  She knew the tools on the rack.

  She looked at the table where her previous incarnation had died, and her rage spiked to apocalyptic levels.

  The room wasn’t that big, but the utter wrath ripping along the Marklink stopped everyone in place.

  Nobody except Briggs or Ryin was going to take another step forwards in the face of her absolute fury.

  Her Fuzzy didn’t move forward, content to let her do whatever she was going to do. Ryin just waited with all that focus and serenity she managed to keep up, regardless of whatever Kris was feeling at the moment.

  Kris put away Quaver silently, reached up to her Masspack, and pulled out the Sword of Bellenesse.

  It was a finely-made knightly Sword, made more for dueling than for war, with rather more ornamentation than would be found on a Sword for the battlefield. Still, it was famous within the family, and it had claimed the life of the Roulean Emperor, several of his champions, and many enemies of the Bellini family for years uncounted.

  Her face was an absolute mask, but the killing intent coming out of her eyes was enough to liquefy the legs of anyone who met them. She held out the rather fancy Sword that represented the authority and power of the Bellenesse family, and said, “Umbral.”

  Umbral, the mortal-slaying Enhancement, so-called because it ignored all armor before its edge. If you didn’t have Energized Armor, the finest adamantine Armor in the world might as well be gossamer.

  “Main-gauche Quaver, you need the Sound Bubble,” was all Ryin said as she laid her hand on the ancient Weapon and Infused the Enhancement. Shadows stole across the length of the fine steel… except for right on the tip, where deep crimson stained the magic with an ancient wrong on the honor and purity of the Sword.

  Kris knew exactly what wrong that was.

  She emitted just the smallest hiss, Quaver rang a gentle, contained Ding! Ting! sadly, and then Kris was suddenly out of the room, moving really fast, both Blades in her hands.

  ------

  The Mick squeezed past everyone else to enter the room behind me, looking after her. “Is she even going to need the rest o’ us?” he asked, dead calm.

  “Who knows. Let’s go find out,” was all I said.

  That brought a dark gleam to his eye, and he preceded me out of the room as the Markspace built up the map of the Dungeon we were in.

  King Varicci’s torture chambers. This, this was the chamber where he’d carved out Eleonora’s heart to send to her father, an event which had eventually driven the Duke to an early grave of his own… and perhaps delivered a potent Curse to him that had helped that deed along, too.

  There were no sounds coming from ahead of us, because someone was moving around ahead of us with a Sound Bubble, cutting off all the shouts and alarms and screams that should have been ringing the grim stones around us that had heard many, many such cries… only not such things coming from the ones who had normally elicited those screams from all the opponents and victims of Varicci’s regime.

  We started passing corpses, none of them intact, although the only indication for those that weren’t torturers was the immense amounts of blood leaking through perfectly intact knightly armor.

  No more than a passing plunging point or a single slash through the throat of men already dead marked Quaver’s passage, but the torturers and mages down here had been dismembered savagely by the edge of the Blade. Their expressions were shock and pain, frozen only long enough for the vivus to begin eating at them.

  Nobody and nothing would be bringing them back, if they had even found some way to get Deathstone protection once more… something I wouldn’t be at all surprised they had, likely embracing the shell of protection of Bael’Zharon’s Patron. It was a being that encouraged mutual slaughter and sacrifice for its entertainment, as had been described to me.

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  It probably didn’t work that well against the Eaters who could consume ectoplasm, or they never would have lost the city.

  Or maybe they didn’t have it at all. Certainly the men here were looking more the Mick’s true age than anything else, and were scarred and weathered, not something you worry about when you get a new body after unfortunate mishaps.

  Unhurried, the Mick led us steadily up and through the Dungeon, treading past the dead knights, mages, and torturers who were scattered in pieces around and before us.

  Briggs was the furthest one behind us, as he’d bashed open the cells down there at the bottom and torn the manacles off each and every soul down in the Dungeons. They were almost all Viamontians, withered and stinking with sores and disease from their time down here, and largely incapable of fighting, or even coming out with us.

  That was fine, he and three of the Roaches helped them onto their Disks, and brought them after us smoothly as we rose towards the top.

  -------

  I knew Kris was already outside, and already tearing a silent and lethal swathe through the Castle before we made it outside. The two sentries on guard at the door had both had their throats opened with prejudice, the crimson pools burning with mistflame as I stepped past them, above the blood and unconcerned.

  There was only a startling silence around us, and I even tilted an ear.

  “The Aurochs stopped attacking the city,” I judged, and the Mick turned his head, listened, and nodded as Kris’ students filed quickly out behind us.

  We all waited for Briggs and the half-dozen torture victims to make it up to us. We could smell them before we could see them, and I cleaned them all up with a vigorous head-to-toe Cleaning Cantrip that got rid of the stench and sources of it, and then Prestidigitation supplied them with simple clean clothes.

  They were still emaciated and not in good shape, but they were suddenly clean, groomed, and looked halfway human.

  “The Audience Chamber is this way,” the Mick pointed out, “though a lot about this place has changed,” he admitted. “Lots more walls inside here, for one,” he added, and threw a thumb at the ceiling. “Also, I think they added one or two more floors above us.”

  “Aye, the ceilings were forty feet up or more, plenty of room to expand there,” Oswald’s man Adso nodded, walking up there with him. “There should be a servant’s entry to the main audience chamber right up here, then.”

  Along with a couple dead guards on the way, neither of whom looked like they’d had time to react to anything.

  “If you would allow me.” Briggs was actually keeping track of where Kristie was, and everyone parted to allow the massive Ancient to stride past, with Gross and Kopf swinging in behind him. Vanguards meant to take the point, as it were.

  We saw flashes of spells going off on the walls, but there was still no sound. That was because the doors to the audience chamber were open, there was definitely magic being hurled inside, but not a lick of sound was coming out.

  There was a pitched melee going on inside, at least twenty Viamontian knights trying to get to Princess Kristie, all while a young man was shrieking at them to avenge his father. Stepping forward, the edge of the Sound Bubble passed, and the screams and shouts of the desperate soldiers inside was audible, as was the implacable ding! ting! of the Blades dancing in the hands of the woman they were trying to corral, and who was killing them for it.

  A Ruby Knife was hurled out like a meteor, and drove into the side of the young man’s ear. His imprecations to his troops stopped abruptly as pure reflex caught his balance, and then the light went out of his eyes.

  A younger Viamontian woman in bright red robes in the back of the chamber shrieked. The knights trying to hack at the blur of motion and light in their midst looked over, distracted, and three more joined over a dozen already sprawled and bleeding out through the chamber, including at least four Hands.

  The girl started to Cast something, and an arrow each drove into her right eye and heart, slamming her back against the wall behind her and stopping that cold. The Strathelars coolly shifted to new targets.

  The war mages trying to land spells saw the new arrivals just about the same time as they were tackled off their feet, by far the best way of stopping any spellcasting. Gauntlets in mouth, right arm pinned, legs scissoring for a pin, and much, much greater strength made sure they couldn’t get away from up to three hundred pounds of man and armor.

  Briggs just strode forward and swept out Endure at a tall Viamontian Hand in bright coppery orange pyreal alloy armor. The Hammer proceeded to pound that breastplate in with a terrifying crack of impact. The hapless man went soaring away from the hit, clearing the throne at the end of the room and smashing into the wall behind it. He fell down next to a balding, white-haired Viamontian in the robes of an advisor, who was Burning mistily in seven different pieces there.

  Arrows hissed out, the last of the mages was on the ground, while the Knights of the Lost Light flanked the desperate Viamontians, who were unable to take their eyes away as another fellow in the bronze armor of a Tribune lost his head to a flicker of light and shadow in motion.

  Crunch! Another knight had his head and helm hammered down into his chest as he was driven irresistibly to the ground.

  Thirty seconds more was all it took, and then the five surviving knights threw down their blades and cried for quarter.

  I turned my eyes to that throne, where a startled corpse was still seated. It was split from the top, down through the Viamontian’s skull, throat, and into his chest. His armor had been riven with his bone and flesh, not stopping the strike which had landed on him.

  A bright red lump was sitting on his lap.

  “Magos,” a hiss that held absolutely no mercy in it carried through the air as the company moved to surround the five knights and the blood-spattered woman with the jet-black length Sword of Bellenesse in her hand, the crimson now gone from its tip, just glared at them for daring to test her restraint.

  “Crimson or Ruby all. Innocent blood on all their hands,” I reported calmly. All five knights looked down at their empty gauntlets, and tensed as they saw the red ichor now dripping from their hands!

  She was just a blur, a Greater Whirlwind attack of Light and Lightning and adamantine and Umbral darkness swallowing all five of the men. They tried to shout and deny the words, but it was far too late for that.

  Their bodies were not intact inside their armor as their heads rolled free, and she was on the other side of them and striding away.

  “Are there any other members of the Corcosi bloodline alive and in range?” she asked me directly.

  I glided across the floor and a bunch of dead knights and mages toward the man on the throne. His brown hair was going white with age and his face was drawn with stress and the trials of his life, but you could see the paranoia and suspicion in the lines around his eyes.

  Well, he’d been right, in the end.

  ============================

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