The Tattooed Woman Pt. 55

THE TATTOOED WOMAN - Chapter 55

The Tattooed Woman Volume 3 - Chapter 55: Queen Takes Knight.

The dark elf was thoroughly displeased; incensed even. Shalidar could see it clear as day. The woman had an iron grip upon her temper, and her face was, as always, all but devoid of emotion, save for that sly and knowing look she often favoured. But Shalidar could see it clearly in the slightest twitch of her fingertips, the peevish gleam in her eyes, how a single lock of her hair had come astray. Indeed, the very slightest touch of perspiration upon her brow virtually shouted her irritation to any with eyes to see. In truth, she could smell the increased heat in the woman's blood and hear how her heart thumped its alluring drumbeat in her chest...

When would these pointy-eared pixies learn? Concealing secrets from a Dragon was never easy and seldom ended well. Mind you, she idly mused, such a surfeit of raw, pent-up emotion stewing away within so contained a creature as this one often added significant ambience to their flavour, like sauce for the goose...

She shook her head, dismissing the whimsical thought.

For her part, Fiamma Vor studied the woman before her. She had been reticent to meet the creature in her chambers, for it gave away far too much advantage to her mind. But refusing the invite would not only be a sign of weakness, but one that would likely be taken as insult. And to offer such a petty slight to so prideful a creature as Shalidar was to court a perilous response.

Besides, it would also be rather poor manners.

So, bolstering her wards, and wearing her strongest talisman of protection, she had entered the Dragon's den... and there she drank tea.

She had no illusion that even such magical defences as she could muster would do overmuch good, not with her in such proximity as this. But they might thwart an attack long enough to at least strike back. The creature could literally reach across the table and tear her to pieces in the blink of an eye. But she would not go quietly. So, she sat, nursing her cup, and watched.

As always, Shalidar's appearance was both immaculate and stunning. Golden hair, a flawless complexion, ruby lips, high cheekbones, a regal brow, and eyes as brilliant as sapphires. She wore a form-fitting gown of green silk that seemed to shimmer like scales, and despite its high collar and modest neckline still somehow drew the eye to her curves in an enticing, almost hypnotic fashion. She was perfect . And the witch had to remember that the appearance, like so much else about her, was all but glamour and shapeshifting.

For while Lady Shalidar gave the impression of being entirely urbane, with a cunning wit the dark elf could not help but relish, she was also ancient, and deadlier than most plagues.

And while she sat there, cup in hand, the Dragon did likewise, sitting demurely across the table and watching her in turn, waiting with the infinite predatory patience of her kind.

The magister had made a show at least, of maintaining civility, even vexed as she was, and she sipped her tea, made by Shalidar's own hand, with composed deliberation. Until eventually, after a long, thoroughly pregnant, silence, she set her cup down with a sigh and presented her arguments.

"I do not have the temperament for such instruction. I dislike children at the best of times and have no tolerance for their puerile tantrums and dim-witted capers. Indeed, I generally find them entirely tiresome and best avoided."

The Dragon sipped her own tea, and stared back, blue eyes shining as her lips curled in a wicked smile, "In that, Cassie may surprise you. But nevertheless, I feel this task far better shaped for your hands, than mine."

"But why do you not teach the girl yourself? She obviously holds you in some esteem, and you are an accomplished sorceress are you not?"

"I am."

The woman flustered, "Then why in the name of the Fates do you need me? Do it yourself."

With something of a mischievous sigh, Shalidar shook her head, "I do not have the necessary skills for such a task."

"Why in Hell not?! Are you now saying my magical prowess surpasses yours? I'd take it as a compliment, if I didn't know you better."

The Dragon leaned closer, golden eyes gleaming, her voice now soft, and oh so menacing, "You don't know me at all, little elf."

Fiamma snorted, "I'm not afraid of you, Dragon."

With a laugh, Shalidar rose gracefully, setting aside her cup as she produced a flasconem and two small goblets from a small casket set upon a nearby table. The bottle was clearly archaic, sheathed almost entirely in long tarnished silver and engraved with a serpentine pattern, strangely evocative, of fire and fang.

Still chuckling, she unstoppered the thing and poured two small measures, proffering one to her guest, "That is why I like you so, Night Elf. You are so gloriously unwise. Truly, it's very entertaining."

The sorceress sniffed at the strange brew and raised a brow, "What's this?"

"One of my kin made it," she gave a wistful sigh and smiled her shark's smile at the memory, "oh, a long time ago. He was well taken with the mortal practices of brewing ale and wine, and so he made the effort to surpass them. Eventually, after some centuries of effort, he concocted a singular infusion and thereafter gifted me this flask when he was trying to woo me. I was dallying with another at the time, so I rebuffed him rather more vigorously than perhaps I should have. But that did not make the cordial taste any less sweet."

She gestured, "Try it, though be cautious, it is a potent mix, and there is not another vintage of its kind in all the world."

Eyeing the golden liqueur suspiciously, the magus hesitated, "What has this to do with the girl?"

Shalidar shrugged, "Nothing, but I am done with tea for today, and if I am to listen to your petty protestations much longer, then I fancy a headier libation may be required."

"Oh, very droll." Rolling her eyes, Fiamma took a tiny sip.

The reaction was as instantaneous as it was striking. With a sudden gasping cry, her eyes went wide, and she threw her head back in a violent spasm. With an ecstatic hiss of euphoria, her whole body arched uncontrollably, going utterly rigid for a long, endless moment, before crumpling back into the chair in a trembling, twitching, quivering heap.

The Dragon grinned, "Good, eh?"

Still shaking, the trembling woman hunted desperately for breath, her face now flushed and sheened with sweat, her tightly bound hair reduced to a demented cascade of silver. It took a while, but eventually she managed to gather enough wits to speak.

"W-what the fuck was that?!"

Shalidar shrugged as she sipped from her own chalice, entirely unperturbed, "No idea," she sniffed, "he boasted it to be better than sex, but I'm not convinced. It did look like you seemed to enjoy it though."

The woman groaned as she tried, and failed, to sit up in her seat, "I-I haven't felt like that since... since I was," she swallowed, "younger..."

Slitted, reptilian eyes glittered for an instant, "Hmm, they do advise you best be careful when you accept gifts from a Dragon. And especially careful if you think you know them."

Sitting herself primly once again, the golden-haired woman placed the bottle on the table and looked across at the disheveled spellcaster, "So, where were we? Ah yes, you were making some despairing comment about my magical aptitude. Well, though I am loathe to admit to such a failing, in all honesty, there may be some truth in what you say."

Seeing the look Fiamma gave her, she blew out an irritated breath, "I am a Dragon, as perhaps you would be wise to remember in future. My idea of casting a spell is to pour as much fury as needed into it until whatever it is I'm trying to kill has been reduced to ash and utterly destroyed, along with, I should imagine, a sizeable portion of the terrain surrounding it. My magic comes from fire and passion, and the power of my blood. Is this what you would have me teach her?"

The bedraggled dark elf stared, "Gods no! If we do that and it transpires that she does, in fact, have even a touch of the power of the Dark Goddess, she could accidentally blast this whole house from its very foundations. She needs to learn control."

The Dragon nodded in agreement, "Well, that's most assuredly not me then, is it, dearie."

Lifting the bottle, she gestured to the magi, "Another dram?"

...

The Necromancer staggered on, each breath a rasping torture, each step harder than the last, while his lifeblood, more purloined than his own, seeped between his fingers, staining his robes, and leaving a gruesome trail in his wake that a blind man could follow.

And the dark elves were anything but blind.

He had led his forces downward, deeper into the labyrinthian maze of the great Necropolis, confident of his own puissance, and of both the powers and sheer number of minions he had to hand.

That confidence had waned somewhat as he found himself halted on the broad stairwell, his forces arrayed and shuffling hungrily behind him, while he peered down into that blackness below. Darkness held no fear for him. He lived in gloom and twilight, it was both his chosen medium and a comfort, and his stolen eyes were keen enough to pierce any shadow. But there was something about the umbral murk he saw waiting at the bottom of those stairs, and as he stood there, he felt a cold shiver trickling down his spine.

There was something down there. He could feel it.

One by one, the scouts he had sent forth had fallen silent. Even the imps he had conjured had gone invisibly down those stairs, only to vanish abruptly from his senses. It was more than troubling. Muttering a spell, he pushed his magic forward. The darkness receded a little before his conjuration in a fashion not dissimilar to a mist being stirred by a breeze, but then, like the oncoming tide it had slowly, inexorably, trickled back.

Still, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."

Turning to a trollwife, he gestured curtly towards the shadows, "Something lurks down there. Destroy it."

The cadaverous eyes of the monstrous creature flicked to him for a moment and then went back to regarding the bottom of the stairs. With a hiss, she flicked her fingers towards one of the bedraggled slaves her sisters had dragged behind them in chains.

Instantly it was jerked forward, like a dog on a lead, straight into the arms of the waiting trollwife.

Seizing the poor wretch roughly, she lifted him up with one gnarled hand, effortlessly holding him aloft despite his squirming. Her lips curled in a vile smile as dribbles of urine trickled down his leggings as he gibbered and drooled in terror, twisting uselessly in her iron grip.

With something that sounded like a wet cackle, she reached up with her other hand and then, with a brutal wrench, she tore his arm from its socket.

The man gave a high-pitched shriek as blood pulsed from the terrible wound, but the troll paid no mind to his agony, instead tossing the writhing figure carelessly aside.

Ghouls surged forward like jackals, teeth snapped, claws tore, and the screaming stopped.

Using the severed arm as a brush, the monster painted a pattern of gruesome sigils in a circle upon the flagstones before stepping back and glancing at the feeding pack, "Bring me the head."

There was a wet tearing sound, and a slouching misshapen ghoul hopped forward, passing the sodden orb into her hands. The man's skin had been torn, one eye was missing, and tufts of his hair had been ripped from his scalp, but his last rictus scream of pain and horror was still visible on the remnants of his face.

Still grinning, the troll set the severed head down in the centre of the circle she had painted and, in the vile tongue of her kind, she uttered words of power.

There came a horrid gurgling moan as the dead man's jaw worked and his remaining eye bulged wide. Then, slowly at first, then in ever greater volume, a green mist vomited forth from his torn mouth. The leprous fog sizzled as it touched the floor and walls, coiling and thickening, it hung in the air like an acidic fume.

Murmuring her chant, the troll gestured, and, at her direction, the mist began to move.

Like some creeping, lurking, thing, it slithered down the stairs, greasily flowing over the stone like a venomous oil. It covered the walls, and, reaching the bottom, it began to spread, leeching into the shadows as it did.

From the darkness, there came the sounds of cries, strangely muffled by the gloom. There was a sensation, albeit unobserved, of hurried movements and frantic activity. The noises continued for a while, growing ever fainter, until eventually all was silent.

Then, with something of a soft sigh, not unlike the last breath of a dying man, the darkness began to recede.

The Necromancer smiled his evil smile, as the murk dissipated and tilted his head to the troll, now lathered in sweat and gasping from her exertions, "Well done, hag."

Exhausted, the creature took a long quaff from her drinking skin before breathlessly nodding her acknowledgement. Gripping the gruesome bone fetishes and talismans hanging from around her neck, she supped on their stored power, drawing on her reserves to renew herself.

Satisfied, the Necromancer made a curt gesture that sent firbolg skirmishers loping forward to spy the way, while he himself, surrounded by his acolytes and bodyguard, advanced more warily to the bottom of the stairs. Draugr and ghouls followed, the latter meeping and gibbering as they came, spreading out like a leprous stain.

The main hallway and arterial passages, with their arched ceilings and dusty alcoves, stretched off into shadow, and he gave pause as he peered about, "I have no great love of excess illumination, but let us see what a little light may reveal."

Murmuring an enchantment, he rapped the heel of his staff upon the flagstones, causing the report to echo about the labyrinth.

At the sound, witchlamps, set in rusted sconces that had been fixed at intervals along the halls, flared into life one after the other, as his spell reached them.

With a nod of satisfaction, he watched the spreading glow begin its work of dispelling the last of the gloom, and took a pace forward.

Around him, he could see a myriad of corpses, all crumpled and fallen, lying behind pillars, and in doorways and alcoves, as though readying themselves for ambush, and he grinned, "So much for them. Not so dangerous a threat as I feared, it seems."

The cadavers were thoroughly blackened and burned, seared, no doubt, by the caustic fumes released by the troll's incantation. Some were so badly scorched they were all but unrecognizable, nothing now but scraps of bone and meat, dressed in charred rags.

He pointed, "Find what remains of their leader. I will summon their shade and torment it until they give up all of their secrets in answer to my questions."

A drow slid silently forward, almost ghost-like in her stealth. She crouched to examine a pair of corpses hidden in the lee of a pillar. After a moment she made a faint sound, "'That's queer."

His eyes flicked to her, "What is?"

She gestured at the cadavers, "The mutilation makes assessment difficult, but I do not believe these to be dark elves and orcs," she looked round thoughtfully at the other bodies, "methinks they may be the remains of our scouts and the rearguard left to ward this level."

With a grunt, the Necromancer was about to curse the creature for being the bearer of such unwelcome news, but then halted, as some little peculiarity prickled his senses. He glanced about, assessing the forces arrayed about him for a moment, before looking back at the sly thing, "Where the Hells are the rest of your wicked kind? I may have need of their skills later, when we breach the surface and make our attack."

The drow, a furtive and insidious wretch, like all her kin, flashed him a typically duplicitous smile as she answered, "They have their own errands and mischief to attend to. Doubtless, they will emerge again soon enough," her scarlet eyes glittered as they reflected the flames from the witchlamps, "rest assured, my lord, in the meantime I am more than sufficient for your needs."

With that, she slipped back into what little shadow remained, and vanished.

Stepping forward he hissed, "You had best be certain of..."

The crunching underfoot brought him up short, and he glanced down at his feet.

The flagstones were covered in a thin carpet of crystals that glittered somewhat ominously in the lamplight, not entirely unlike a layer of frost sparkling in the dawn after a chill night.

He moved, feeling yet more of the peculiar shards grinding underfoot, "No, not frost, more like tiny fragments of broken glass."

A trollwife lumbered to his side, squatting down on long gangly limbs to carefully touch the peculiar residue with just the tip of one her talons. There came the slightest sizzling sound, a wisp of smoke and a waft of burning, as the caustic dust blackened the claw. Gingerly she sniffed at it, before shaking the smoldering soot from her hand with a wet, disgruntled sound, "'Tis the remains of my spell. Some fel power has countered the invocation."

At her words, the other trolls lurking behind her stirred uneasily, and the Necromancer turned his head to glare when one of his acolytes whispered, "If her conjuration was thwarted so, why then did the darkness recede?"

Warily, he looked about, and his disquiet only grew as he saw how the crystalline detritus reached only a short distance into the passageways and halls extending before him. Beyond that, it went no further.

The trollwife sniffed the air cannily, and, hissing to attract his attention, she pointed a long, gnarled finger deeper into the catacomb, her voice a sibilant growl, "There."

Gesturing to his entourage, he moved in the direction she had indicated.

A little distance further into the labyrinth they came upon a hub of sorts, a large chamber with a high vaulted ceiling that looked to serve, like the centre of a web, as a nexus for several of the connecting passageways. The walls of this moldering, dust-filled, auditorium were lined by sarcophagi, all broken and smashed by his earlier vandalism. The hall was but dimly lit by witchlamps, for it was large, and several of the sconces had failed over the years. That and the shadows of the broken tombstones that were cast by such uncertain light had an off-putting habit of shifting and flickering disturbingly. His bodyguard spread out, warily taking post to ward him.

But it was the demon that took his attention. Or what was left of it.

The thing had been impaled by a spear, driven so hard through its chest that it had plunged deep into a stone pillar. Suspended, it hung there, like a ghastly moth in some madman's collection. The creature was unkillable, immortal upon this plane, and, once summoned, only the most powerful of magi could even banish such an infernal entity back from whence it came.

It was also quite dead.

Approaching, he was transfixed by the tableaux. It had been reduced to a pallid shadow, clearly drained of all life, stolen or otherwise, and was now nothing more than an empty husk. The expression frozen in death upon its face, was one of disbelief, surprise, and abject horror.

He had never heard of such a thing.

The spear had a shaft of blackest wood and even from here he could feel the chill radiating from it. It thrummed with dreadful power, lethal and enticing. Almost unconsciously, he reached out to touch the thing before coming to his senses and snatching his hand back.

Peering down the surrounding passageways, his fist tightened around the shaft of the bone staff he carried. Save for the shuffling of his undead, and the furtive movement of the firbolg, all was quiet, all was still. Yet, he shivered involuntarily, as if some cold and wicked thing had traced a finger lightly down his spine.

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