Legacies of Blood

“What are we waiting for?” Kitch muttered from the other side of the booth. A curtain of beads hung between them and the taproom with the main stage. A few minstrels and a bard played sultry music to keep patrons of the brothel in the mood.

Elaina sipped her drink nervously, trying to ignore the topless women walking around serving drinks beyond the beaded curtain. The spirits drawn to the place weren’t making it any easier. “Blending in until we hear word about Royce.”

“I don’t think we have to be here to accomplish that, do we?” The kyrsahn asked, not touching her drink in the slightest.

“I think we do,” Elaina argued calmly. “If those spirits are following me like we think they are, then perhaps they have been for a while. I don’t want to risk Royce recognizing them before we can get the drop on her.”

“Ahh, I see now,” Kitch responded. “Here, they are much more difficult to pick out from the rest. Very clever.”

The kyrsahn finally picked up the drink that had been served to her when they’d first been seated, but before it managed to find her mouth, she paused again. “Aren’t you worried about Lenuta? What if she decides to seek her out the way we did? We won’t be able to protect her.”

Elaina shook her head, downing the contents of her glass before setting it back on the table. “Do you remember the low wall surrounding her property?”

Kitch nodded, glancing at the empty glass as Elaina tapped its rim with one finger. “Yes, it was very charming.”

“It’s for protection,” Elaina explained, running her finger along the rim. Kitch gave her a skeptical look. “It doesn’t look like much, but it’s made of limestone. Spirits can’t affect it or cross it any more than fae can with cold iron. Vishanti with spirit pacts lose a great deal---if not all---of their power if they try.”

The swordmage dipped her finger into the interior of the empty glass and wiggled it around. “But a vishanti on the inside, who has built her power inside the ring, has access to any pacts she’s managed to coax spirits into.”

Holding her hand over the top of the glass, Elaina placed her palm down on the top. “It becomes a sort of spiritual fortress for some vishanti---sanctums for others. But knowing Lenuta, she probably set it up as a way to protect anyone on the outside from possible mishaps with the laboratory on the inside.”

“So if Royce were to go there, she would risk doing so at a severe disadvantage,” Kitch surmised with a satisfied nod. She threw back the contents of her small glass and set it down on the table, regarding it thoughtfully. “Where did you learn this?”

“Royce, actually,” Elaina answered a little sadly. “We would stay up late talking a lot, especially when I was recovering. She would keep me company and she would tell me about her people, the way they do magic, and what they’ve been through over the years. I held onto every word that fell from her lips, but I still didn’t see what she was going to do.”

“For this, you cannot blame yourself,” Kitch scolded her, wagging her finger a few times. “Do not fault yourself for believing the love was real. It was by her design. We do not blame people who are victims of others. We blame the ones who victimize, yes?”

“I suppose,” Elaina muttered, tipping the glass onto its side and idly rolling it back and forth. “I still feel stupid for having been so smitten by her.”

“Such is love,” Kitch remarked, spreading her hands. “We are all fools when we fall in love.”

The redhead couldn’t help but laugh a little at Kitch’s response. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing the kyrsahn in such a carefree state, but it was refreshing nonetheless. “I suppose that might be true.”

The beads parted, and Divari, the lavender-skinned tiefling that Elaina had convinced to help them, leaned into their booth. “One of my friends just spotted her at a place a few doors down---blonde vishanti with red eyes, right?”

“That’s right,” Elaina confirmed, jumping to her feet and stepping out of the booth. Other booths looked much more exciting than theirs had been, with patrons in various stages of coitus with women of the establishment they’d paid for. Kitch stepped out of the booth after her, adjusting the large sword on her back that had made getting into it so difficult in the first place.

Divari led them through the taproom, which more resembled the taproom of any standard tavern or bar. Patrons sat at their tables with drinks, either gazing at the bare-breasted beauties with trays of drinks moving around the dimly lit room or the nearly nude women performing contortionist feats on one of a few metal poles.

“It’s a place called The Slit,” the tiefling explained. “A few doors down on the right.”

“Subtle name,” Elaina smirked, reaching into her coin purse and producing a few gold coins to hand to the woman.

“I like to think of it as more to the point than some of these other places,” Divari countered, glancing down at the coins in Elaina’s hand. After a moment of hesitation, she pushed them back toward the redhead. “I didn’t do this to get paid. You said you wanted to keep any of the girls here from getting hurt, and I believe you. It’s important to me that someone just give a shit from time to time.”

“I know,” Elaina responded, taking the woman’s hand and placing the coins firmly in them. “This is part of me giving a shit.”

“You took a risk,” Kitch explained further, nodding toward the coins. “It’s worth a lot to us that you did.”

“Thank you,” Divari whispered, rubbing the coins together between her fingers where they suddenly vanished. It was an interesting trick, Elaina had to admit. “If you come back this way, I’ll give you a couple nights on the house, beautiful.”

Elaina blushed a little and stepped out the front door into the narrow alleyway with Kitch close behind her. “If we move quickly, we should be able to catch her in the middle of constructing the circle.”

Her footsteps slowed when she felt the tingle again at the base of her skull. Her head whipped around in a few directions, searching for the source of what had to be a threat, yet found nothing---again. The alley was much more crowded than it had been before now that the sun had mostly gone down along the horizon. This was when the district did most of its business, and business appeared to be good. Was it possible that Royce had already spotted her and was observing her from somewhere nearby? With the crowd, it was impossible to tell.

The feeling came and went just as it had before, forcing Elaina to shake it off as quickly as she could to rejoin Kitch. Every minute counted when it came to catching up with the witch.

“She’s upstairs in suite two,” an attractive woman at the door muttered as the pair stepped inside. “Get her out of here, please.”

The taproom of the Slit was much smaller than it was at the other establishment, mostly because people weren’t there to drink at the bar. There were a few stools, with only one of them occupied by a client who looked like he was still making up his mind about how he wanted to spend the evening. Behind the counter, the bartender waited patiently and impassively, his expression stern behind his handlebar mustache. He gave Elaina a solemn nod as she and Kitch passed, glancing in the direction of the stairs at the end of the hall.

The rooms along the hallway were all private, with small signs on them to indicate where one was occupied. Each sign had a code on it for the girls working the establishment, possibly to let them know who was in session and what they were doing, but Elaina couldn’t know for sure. They passed a smoky sitting room where a fire in a hearth blazed and several women waiting for clients lounged around. A few glanced in Elaina and Kitch’s direction, but none made a move to approach them.

The upper floor was laid out in a similar way with its rooms, though there was one set aside for larger group activities that wasn’t yet occupied. The suites were more spaced apart, intended for more extended stays than the quick sessions the lower floor offered. Sounds of vigorous desperation rose from one of the doors they passed as they reached suite two, which itself was relatively quiet.

“This?” Kitch whispered toward the door as she drew her weapon. Elaina drew her sword as well and nodded. With a few hand signals, the kyrsahn indicated that Elaina was to go left when they entered while Kitch would take the right. When she returned a nod of understanding, Kitch counted down from three before kicking the door open with surprising power.

Inside, Royce looked up from a circle she had just finished drawing on the floor around the bed. A woman was tied to the bed in what could have easily been mistaken as some sort of sex game. The woman’s mouth was completely covered, preventing her from crying out, but her eyes were wide with a mix of surprise and confusion.

The witch froze as Kitch approached her, placing the tip of Steelwhisker only a half-inch from her throat. “Don’t move, McKenna!”

Royce slowly raised her hands, the athame she’d been using to carve the circle in the floor hanging loosely in one hand. Her eyes darted between Kitch and Elaina, unsure of her next move.

“It’s time to give back everything you took,” Elaina said, keeping her sword level with Royce as well despite being a few steps away from her. After a moment of hesitation, she decided to cut the woman on the bed loose.

“What in the hells is going on?” the whore asked, pulling the gag off hastily.

“That is what I would like to know,” Kitch murmured gruffly at Royce. “Explain yourself.”

Elaina took hold of the whore’s arm gently and guided her away. The gathering of spirits in the room was mostly lust-related, but the swordmage remembered that there was a unique mix that Royce had sought out in the lair before. The presence of torment and pain was nearly non-existent, even with how much of the building’s construction had been repurposed masonry from the destroyed wall of South Gate. “She was going to torture her...”

“W-what?!” the woman exclaimed furiously at Royce. “You cunt! I should slit your throat!”

“You didn’t leave me much of a choice, Elaina,” the witch said with an annoyed shrug of her shoulder. “This is far from my first choice.”

“It shouldn’t be a choice at all!” Elaina argued. “None of this needed to be this way.”

“Where are the things you stole?” Kitch pressed angrily, the tip of her weapon biting gently into the soft, pale skin of Royce’s throat. The witch winced but didn’t offer an answer.

“Her pack is over here!” the whore said, opening a wardrobe and dragging Royce’s pack out from inside. “She shoved it in here after she tied me down.”

“Don’t do this,” Royce muttered, but Elaina couldn’t tell if it was a warning or a plea.

“Quiet,” Kitch ordered. “You’re in no position to---.”

“*Farmik.*” Royce’s eyes locked with Kitch’s, and for a moment, the spirits of lust in the room seemed to swell with anticipation. Kitch’s gaze faltered, gazing longingly at the witch’s plunging neckline. She moved her sword to one side in order to get a better look at the woman, licking her lips softly as the power of the hex took hold of her.

“Kitch!” Elaina shouted loudly in the vain hope that the sudden volume might startle her out of the hex’s grasp. It didn’t.

With a flick of her wrist, Royce loosed a hex from the metal claws on one hand she referred to as the Witch Hand. “*Framantat!”*

The purple blast of energy struck Elaina in the center of the chest, sending a wave of agonizing pain through her body that sent her to the floor in convulsions. The woman with the pack screamed, but the sound felt strangely distant to the swordmage as she writhed around on the wood floor, kicking and thrashing while her back threatened to snap backward. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream as her eyes stared fearfully at a blank spot on the far wall.

“I’ve had about enough of this game of ours,” Royce said, getting to her feet. Next to her, Kitch seemed unable to take her eyes off of the witch, practically falling over herself just for a chance to be near her. “I gave you a chance to leave me be and part ways on something of a satisfying note. But you had to fuck things up and then follow me.”

Royce flipped the athame around in her hand, now holding it more like an assassin’s dagger. She glanced at the kyrsahn before her gaze settled on the whore across the room. “As for you...”

“N-no!” the woman begged, falling to her knees as the witch approached her with the blade. “Please! I don’t have anything to do with any of this! I won’t say anything to anyone, I promise!”

Whatever Royce had to say in response was lost as Elaina’s foot lashed out and took the witch’s leg out from under her. The hex’s duration had already expired, and rather than curl up in a ball until she’d had a chance to catch her breath, the swordmage had decided to jump right back into the fray.

The witch fell backward, her skull thudding off of the wood floor, dazing her briefly. It was enough for her hold on Kitch to be broken and for the unarmed, naked woman to bolt from the room lest she not receive another chance.

“Don’t let her cast another spell!” Kitch gasped as though she had been holding her breath for the duration of Royce’s hex. The witch jumped to her feet in a surprisingly athletic kip-up, meeting Elaina on equal footing.

Elaina fumbled with her sword in one hand, her muscles struggling to maintain their grip after the convulsions of pain she’d just suffered. Royce threw the Witch Hand forward, repeating the hex from before, but swordmage’s free hand was just as quick.

“*Ruiag!*” Elaina cried, the bracer around her arm gleaming with the passage of the spell as a tall, translucent, blue shield formed in front of her for the briefest moment. The hex collided with the repulsor spell, reflecting off of it violently and sending the purple streak of magic into the nearest wall. Royce herself was thrown clear off her feet from the interaction of magic and hurled backward through the air and over Kitch.

Royce hit the floor heavily but was again quick to recover, lashing out with her athame at Kitch as the kyrsahn closed the distance between them. Despite Kitch’s superior reach, she was disoriented enough from the enchantment hex that the witch was able to get inside her reach and carve a deep groove out of the warrior’s armor. As a mystic weapon, the magical blade of the athame was capable of cutting into materials its mundane counterpart would never be able to.

Kitch slammed her shoulder into Royce, nearly bowling her over in the process, but the witch was quick to shift her weight and dig the claws of the Witch Hand into the back of the kyrsahn’s skull to keep her balance. Kitch let out a cry of pain just as Elaina came charging across the room to tackle Royce off of her.

“Enough, Royce!” Elaina cried, slamming the woman into the nearby wall as she applied pressure to the witch’s wrist with her thumb. With enough, she’d no longer be capable of holding the blade in that hand.

Sure enough, Royce dropped the blade. Instead of clattering to the floor at their feet, it vanished from view, reappearing in Royce’s clawed hand. Before she could drive it down into Elaina, the swordmage batted it aside with the crossguard of her sword. The redhead caught an elbow to the face in its place the moment she was distracted. She staggered back only a step, but there was enough room for Royce to slip away from her and toward the nearest window.

Kitch stepped in her way, bringing her massive weapon around at neck level and narrowly missing the witch, who short-shifted through to the other side of the strike. The kyrsahn seemed to expect this, immediately bringing the weapon around to a position she correctly predicted Royce would move to. The witch hissed a hex into her athame through the Witch Claw, catching Steelwhisker along the blade with the much smaller weapon now that it was bolstered with magic.

As disproportionately in favor of Kitch as the clinch appeared to be, Royce managed to hold her own with the magical athame, holding it firmly in place with both hands. The pair shuffled around the room quickly as their legs kicked out in frequent attempts to sweep the feet out from the other. From Elaina’s perspective, she could see the witch subtly maneuvering the struggle closer to the window. The swordmage had no doubt that she would attempt her escape once she was close.

Instead, Elaina decided it was time to put her newly acquired magical knowledge to work. It was somehow as easy as taking any other mundane step forward, albeit with the destination inexplicably being a spot on the floor behind Royce. It felt so natural that even orienting herself to her new position in the room wasn’t difficult. With her new vantage on the woman, she slammed the pommel of her sword into the back of her head, staggering her where she’d meant to stun her.

“H-how?” Royce muttered, stumbling away from the both of them as she held the back of her head with one hand. She’d been so sure of her positioning in the room that Elaina being behind her made no sense whatsoever. Yet, there she’d been. Now, with the blow to her head, she was too disoriented to get a hex out.

Kitch advanced, positioning her weapon to run the witch through, prepared to pin her to the wall in the process. Elaina nearstepped once more to intercept the attack, knocking the kyrsahn’s blade down into the floor with surprising speed.

“Kitch!” She shouted fearfully. “What in the hells are you doing!? You can’t just kill her!”

“If I don’t, she will kill us the first chance she gets,” Kitch countered, disentangling her weapon from Elaina’s and pushing her to the side. “She’ll only escape with nothing to properly bind her with. Perhaps she will do it while we sleep and cut our throats then, hm?”

“This isn’t the way,” Elaina argued, reaching out and taking a firm hold of the kyrsahn’s arm to keep her from advancing on the witch. “She needs to stand before the landgraf and answer for what she’s done.”

“What would you suggest?” Kitch asked impatiently. Every second they wasted arguing over their next course of action brought Royce closer to regaining her senses.

Elaina glanced around the room frantically, her eyes settling on the discarded gag on the floor. “I know it’s not perfect, but binding and gagging her would limit her options considerably. Then we drag her straight to Lenuta’s and see if she has some spare limestone we can borrow. That could help us bind her powers completely.”

Kitch’s hostility abated considerably upon hearing Elaina’s plan. Royce, on the other hand, let out an angry scream before lashing out with the Witch Claw. Before she could get the first syllable of magic out of her mouth, Kitch swiftly brought her gauntlet into the witch’s solar plexus, taking the wind out of her sails in an instant. “Quickly, then.”

Elaina watched as Royce slipped down to the floor, dropping the athame and curling up into a ball. She hugged herself around the abdomen and struggled to catch her breath. A pang of sorrow and regret filled Elaina’s chest as she regarded the blonde with whom she’d been so intimate. She wanted to speak with her---to try and understand why she was doing what she was. Why had it gone so far? How could she not come to her for help instead of resorting to such extreme measures? Unfortunately, leaving her free enough just to speak was too much of a risk.

Turning away from Royce, Elaina collected the gag and the remains of the rope that had been used to tie the woman to the bed earlier. Perhaps after she had her securely bound with limestone, she’d be able to seek the answers from the witch she so desperately needed.