Chapter 49

The blonde haired woman pressed the needle under the captive’s fingernail, pushing it up and parting the nail from his finger. She watched with fascination as the shadow of the needle moved beneath the keratin, then she winced as the man’s muffled screaming reached a higher pitch, apparently she had scraped bone.

“Is that enough? I don’t particularly want to keep doing this. It’s such a chore.”

She eyeballed the Halfling to her side who was crouching and inspecting the chair the man was manacled to, preventing him from moving an inch. The heavy wooden chair, more a throne, was carved with an occult jagged scripture, the lettering faintly glowing orange-red as though burning from the inside.

The Halfling flicked her eyes up to the blonde.

“No Bella. The gem needs to be darker.”

On the captives head was a steel circlet, embedded in the front of the circlet was a red ruby, or rather, what had been a red ruby. The ruby was slowly darkening, going from a ruby red to a blood red to a deep dark red closer to black.

Bella let out a sigh. “Why can’t anyone else do this? This really isn’t my thing.”

“Because it’s your turn. Plus everyone else is still obliterated from all the mana cut opiates they were messing around with late last night. If you can wake any of them up and get them to do this for you feel free.”

“What about you?”

The Halfling grinned showing off her gold tooth. “I already did it a lot. Like a lot a lot. But Bane wants all his girls to get familiar with doing this, it’s kinda his thing. You’ll end up enjoying it though, it’s like a game to see who can get the most out of the subject.”

She scowled. “Fine. Let’s get this over with. What’s the next step?”

“The needle in his neck, see if you can’t get it in a little further, be careful, but make it as painful for him as possible.”

Bella reached out and her fingers touched upon the fat steel needle inserted in the man’s neck, more a knitting needle than a sewing needle it was so large. The man tried to shake his head but the steel clamps held him still, his eyes wide and terrified, his nose flaring as sweat rolled down his heated skin.

She glanced at him and rolled her eyes. “Oh don’t give me that look. If you wanted to avoid this fate you shouldn’t have tried to cheat the Ranker. You only have yourself to blame.”

Returning her attention she gripped the needle and began to slowly push it into his neck. The man screamed around his gag. The motion of his scream caused him to move slightly and that in turn caused the needle inside his neck to tear his flesh. He screamed some more.

“Yeah, this is good, the ruby is going fast now. You might have a knack for this you know.”

Bella tweaked the needle causing the man to jerk and twitch in agony.

“You really think so? I know Bane likes it when he gets a good ruby! Gosh, I could show him this myself!” said Bella, sparkly eyed.

The Halfling gave her a flat look and muttered under her breath. “I do feel sorry for the village robbed of its idiot sometimes.”

“Huh?”

“ ... Nothing.”

Bella focused back on the man and stuck out her tongue from the corner of her mouth, concentrating hard as she wiggled the needle deeper and deeper into his flesh.

“Girls,” came a harsh voice.

She yelped in surprise and her hand jerked, the needle went somewhere it wasn’t supposed to and blood began pouring from around the man’s gag.

“Oh fuck! Oh shit!”

“What have you done! godsdamn it! We could have gotten it so much darker before he popped his clogs!” cried the Halfling.

The person with the harsh voice stepped into the room, a severe looking female Elf wearing close fitting all blacks. A close lidded third eye was centered in her forehead suggesting that she was not quite all Elf.

“Congratulations on killing your first. A little premature but not bad for a newcomer judging by that ruby.”

Bella turned to the Elf. “It’s still good?”

“You show some promise, perhaps you will be able to help Bane with other more important occult issues.”

Bella gasped and looked almost giddy at the suggestion.

The Halfling scowled. “Naw, she’s a ways off from that.”

The Elf sniffed, looking down her nose at the Halfling distastefully. “Perhaps. In any case that Is not why I am here.”

“Oh?” said Bella as the man in the chair let out a grizzly death rattle and expired. She carefully ignored that.

“Something triggered the proximity enchantment.”

The Halfling stood up on the arm of the chair and plucked the now vanta black ruby from the circlet. She pocketed it and jumped down, heading toward the door the Elf stood in as Bella followed.

“And that matters why? It’s probably just a bear again, they’ve been getting lively as of late, it is the middle of summer after all.”

“It matters because Bane isn’t here and there’s an aggressive Orc clan in the area.”

“And?”

“Let me boil it down for you: being successfully raided by Orcs would be very bad and Bane would be very very angry and likely take it out on us. Do you want to anger Bane?”

The Halfling froze up for a second and hunched her shoulders. “No. Okay fine, I still think it’s a bear though.”

The Halfling and Elf left the torture chamber and passed into the main lobby of the mansion, a huge room full of cushioned furniture. Two skinny cat-eared Humans were lazing on a couch, one with her hand down the other’s pants. The one below squirmed under her ministrations. The Halfling and the Elf paid them no attention.

“Well, even if something is close to the mansion it’s no big deal.”

The Halfling stepped over to one of the drinks cabinets and began pouring herself a drink. She had to reach up awkwardly to do so.

“Why is it no big deal?” said Bella.

“Because they won’t be able to get through the front gate.”

The horrendous screech of iron being torn apart suddenly ripped through the air emanating from outside.

The two girls on the couch who had been all over each other flinched and pulled apart, staring wide eyed in the direction the sound had come from.

The Halfling paused and slowly turned toward the front door. “Was that... ?”

“Uhm, I think that was the front gate,” said Bella, her voice increasingly nervous. The Halfling and the Human gave each other wary looks.

“You don’t think it really is the Orc clan?”

The Elf frowned. “You really need to start listening to me. If it is anything it’s going to be that.”

“But there’s just no way, they’d never be brazen enough to attack the Ranker’s mansion like this.”

“Yes, they would, you don’t know Orcs, they’d see us as a fun challenge to be conquered.”

“Well they picked a pretty time for it with Bane being away. Fuck.”

“It’s ... manageable. In the end we can deal with Orcs, we have a lot of magic between us, and we only need to keep them off until the others can be woken.”

BOOM.

The large double front doors shuddered as though they had been hit by a massive battering ram. Thin streamers of dust rolled from the ceiling shaken loose by the impact. A large floating transparent azure rune flickered to life over the door along with a transparent field, the mansion’s main barrier designed to prevent entry. A low heavy rumbling snarl came from behind the door that seemed to vibrate the very air, the dust suspended in the air rippled as the sound passed by.

“Uhhh, what the hell was that?” said the Halfling.

“A really angry Orc?”

“What Orc makes a sound like that?? I was right, it has to be a bear.”

“I know of no surface bear capable of breaking through a solid iron gate. It will be a leveler of some kind, most likely an Orc, albeit a very angry one.”

The Elf began kicking over tables and pushing them toward the door, creating obstacles.

“Wha- why are you doing that? The barrier isn’t going to break.”

“They may have a shaman if it is Orcs, in which case the enchantment may be partially unravelled. Prepare yourselves.”

The women readied, the two cat-eared Humans pulling out longswords while the Halfling cracked her knuckles. Bella pulled out a knife and held it nervously in both hands.

“If it’s not a shaman it’s fine, the barrier will hold, it is rated for physical attacks.”

BOOM.

The door bulged inward as a room shuddering force hit it, the glowing barrier over the door flickered and strained under the impact. One of the girls nearly lost her balance as the whole building quaked. Anything loose on any of the table tops was knocked off or sent rolling. The magical lights that lit the room flickered and began to die as the barrier drew in mana from the entire mansion to maintain itself.

“An Orc shaman brute forcing it with kinetic spells m-maybe?”

“What the hell kind of shaman can do that?!”

The Elf was starting to look a little less confident in the barrier.

BOOM-CRASH!

The wood of the door started to disintegrate as it bulged inward, only being held together by the straining barrier. As shards of wood fell away a massive shadow became visible behind the gaps.

“That’s no Orc, what the fuck is that!?”

“M-monster! It’s a Monster!” cried out one of the cat eared girls.

A muzzle full of large terrifying teeth pushed through one of the gaps in the door, its nose pressing up against the barrier, its yellow eyes faintly luminous as it stared at the group. Then it began to push forward, forcing its way through with sheer impossible brute strength. The barrier stretched around its head even as a massive clawed paw pushed through another part of the door and began bulging out the barrier there too.

“It’s j-just a monster, it can’t break it, it’s impossible!” wailed Bella.

“You really believe that!?”

The transparent field flickered and strained and flashed under the insane pressure, stretching in a way it was not meant to be stretched until with a thunder clap the barrier broke.

The group screamed as the huge nightmarish thing broke into the room, nothing at all between them and its violent savagery. They unleashed everything they had. The room exploded with popping flaring magic, lances of ice and violet fire and spinning discs of darkness and neon lightning, a veritable broadside barrage of magic.

The lobby was filled with thick smoke and the acrid stench of burning wood by the end of it. The group peered through the opaque haze as it gradually dissipated, the dark room dimly lit by the wreaths of magic around the cat-eared girl’s longswords. There was nothing left of the monster, only one of the damaged doors ... one of the damaged doors standing where the monster had been.

“Oh fuck.”

The wolf thing launched the door it had used as a shield forward and it hit the three eyed Elf full on, knocking her off her feet.

The claws on the monster’s feet tore up the floorboards as it exploded forward in the door’s wake, charging straight toward the nearest leveler, one of the cat eared humans. Her face was a picture of terror as the black furred monster landed on her, smashing her to the ground. Its jaws came down on her entire head and ripped it from her torso in a fountain of gore sending copious amounts of blood spraying over the furniture.