My Best Friend is an Eldritch Horror - Chapter 275 (Patreon)

Henry sank into Damien, wrapping around him like a second skin as he Warp Stepped, appearing at the base of the mountain. Sylph blurred after him, only slightly slower than his teleportation speed as they shot across campus and arrived at the Iron Cauldron in less than thirty seconds.

His senses confirmed Whisp’s presence within the building, and Damien was through the door before it even fully registered. He waiter didn’t even notice his arrival before he was at the door.

A jagged tentacle whipped out, slamming the door open with enough force to crack the wood. The waiter cried out, spinning toward them. His face paled at the sight of Damien. One of the eyes on Henry’s wings snapped open before he could say anything.

The man’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he crumpled. Sylph blurred inside, catching the man and lowering him to the ground before blurring over to stand beside Damien.

Whisp lowered her glass of wine. Even more bottles littered the table. Her eyes narrowed and she rose from the table, swaying slightly. The dean’s cheeks were rosy from the alcohol. “What’s going on? Is the school under attack?”

“Where’s Loretta’s Room? Loretta Herder. She’s under threat from the Gray house,” Damien said. His voice came out deeper than normal, cut with a threatening, whispery undertone that overlayed over his words, almost akin to the myriad of tones that accompanied Herald’s speech.

“The Grays? Why in the Seven Planes would they attack Blackmist?” Whisp asked. She closed her eyes and energy washed over the room, prickling across Damien’s skin. A few moments later, Whisp’s eyes snapped open. All traces of her drunken stupor were gone. “Follow me.”

Whisp launched out the door, blowing past stunned waiters. Purple energy crackled around her hands as gauntlets formed around her hands. Henry extended his wings and launched Damien into the air as Sylph flew into the sky above them.

Sylph kept pace with them, bounding off rippling disks of air that formed beneath her feet with every step.

“How are you involved with this?” Whisp asked as they shot toward one of the mountains. “Are the Grays going rogue?”

“They’re after Loretta because of Nolan,” Damien replied, slightly surprised that the alcoholic dean actually remembered Nolan’s name, much less where Loretta lived. As they flew toward the mountain, a faint haze rose up around it, obscuring the rooms.

Whisp snapped her metal-clad fingers and it vanished. They alighted on a plateau before several cave entrances and Whisp strode into the centermost one. Bloodstains covered the floor and walls. Furniture was strewn across the ground, and one of the two beds in the room was split in two.

Damien’s senses passed over the room, brushing across a presence behind the bathroom wall. His eyes narrowed and he went to call out, but Whisp was faster. She was also more ruthless – the woman didn’t even check who it was.

She flicked her fingers and a ripple of compressed purple light shot across the room. It passed through the stone. There was a loud crash as a mirror shattered and a main snarled in pain.

Whisp jerked her hand back, ripping a portion of the stone away to reveal the bathroom. She’d pinned a man to the wall above the sink. Blood poured down his back from where the mirror had cut into him, and bands of purple light constricted around his arms and legs.

“The Grays have gotten awful cocky if they think they can attacks Blackmist students while I’m still on duty,” Whisp snarled.

“Damn. Never thought the drunk lady actually gave a shit,” Henry observed in Damien’s mind. “Do you sense Loretta?”

No. I’m looking.

“This is none of your business,” the man spat. “The Grays are well within their rights. All proper recompense fees will be paid for her death. Back off, Dean Whisp. This isn’t a fight Blackmist can afford to take. It’s just one student, anyway.”

“Recompense fees?” Whisp asked, her hair lifting into the air as power crackled between the fingers of her gauntlets. “Do you think the lives of my students can be so easily bought?”

“They were easy enough to take,” the man said with a sharp bark of laughter. “And you can’t kill me, Whisp. You’re a Dean, even if just an acting one, and you’re beholden to following the Queen’s orders. Killing an agent of the Gray house would be directly disobeying her ordinance of avoiding in-kingdom fighting. You’d be executed.”

“Trust me, I can be very creative,” Whisp snarled. “Even if I can’t kill you, I can certainly cut you apart until you tell me where the girl is.”

“There’s nothing you can cut off that the healers can’t put on. Give it up, Whisp. Nobody will fault you for losing track of one worthless commoner girl. The Queen might even thank you.”

Whisp’s hands trembled with fury. Then she turned around, letting the man slip down the wall. He smirked, brushing himself off as he rose to his feet. “Good choice.”

“Damien, I am assigning you a quest,” Whisp said, ignoring the man and turning her back on them. She walked to the edge of the room. “Loretta appears to have gone missing during the school year. Find her. As the Dean, I’m afraid I’m far too occupied to search for her. You’ll have to do it yourself. Make sure not to leave any scraps lying around, or I’m billing you for campus cleanup services.”

The Gray agent burst into laughter. “Oh, that’s cute. Trying to skirt the Queen’s orders by–”

A sharpened tendril punched into the man’s chest and slammed him into the wall, cutting him off. Ether gathered around the man’s hand, forming into a shimmering gray blade. He cut the tendril, dropping back to the ground and laughing.

“Good hit, kid. But I’m a real Mage, not a student. You’re out of your–”

His arm fell to the ground, the magical blade clattering against the ground before fading away. Blood sprayed from the wound and Sylph’s scythe retracted, blood dripping from it.

Damien didn’t wait so they could cut the man off a third time. Henry’s wings extended, and one of the eyes snapped open. The mage’s words cut off in his throat and his eyes widened until they were nearly all white.

Gray covered the world and Damien reached out, pressing his palm to the man’s forehead even as Henry’s magic eroded his sanity. Shattered runes sprung to the forefront of Damien’s mind, and he called upon the Void.

“Consume.”

Scenes flashed through Damien’s mind as his Void-empowered mental energy dug through the mage’s head, ripping memories out of it. In an instant, Damien knew where the man’s companions – Riley and Wren, according to his memories – had taken Loretta.

Damien never bothered learning the man’s name. His Ether carved through his mind, ripping every semblance of mortal life apart and leaving behind a broken husk. He flicked his fingers, opening a black portal beneath what remained of the mage. He tumbled into the Void and Sylph kicked the man’s severed arm into the darkness before Damien let it snap back shut, bringing the world back into color.

“They didn’t want to kill her on campus. They were hoping to avoid dealing with Whisp,” Damien said, already flying out of the Cave, Sylph at his side. “They’re going through the forest and into the countryside.”

That was all that needed to be said. They cut through the sky, Blackmist’s campus blurring beneath them. Damien interspaced Warp Steps with the flaps of Henry’s wings, giving them the speed to match Sylph.

They quickly left Blackmist’s borders and passed over the forest. As they flew, his senses scoured across the grassy hills beneath.

“To the east, in the valley,” Sylph said, abruptly changing directions and making a beeline for the ground.

Damien followed after her, his senses picking up the presence of three people an instant after Sylph pointed out their location. He shot over the edge of the sloping hills. Two men stood beside a bound figure on the ground. They both wore dark clothing, but one had several bloody bandages on his arms and legs.

He Warp Stepped, appearing directly behind them. Henry rose from his back, his razor-sharp claws flashing through the air through one of the men. Damien wasn’t sure which of them it was – he’d already forgotten which was which.

The man split apart, toppling to the ground in dozens of pieces. His partner’s eyes widened in horror, and he spun toward Damien, Ether billowing from his fingertips as a bolt of lightning started to form.

His hands split from his wrists, falling to the ground as Sylph arrived before him, the two scythes extending from her back already swinging. The man’s head followed his hands to the ground and instant later and he pitched forward, blood pouring from his body.

Damien cast a modified Devour beneath each of the men, dropping their remains into the Void. On the ground, Loretta groaned. She was hastily bound in thin, braided metal rope. Sylph knelt beside her, forming a blade on one of her fingertips and cutting the bindings apart.

Henry retracted his wings, slipping back into Damien’s shadow as Sylph helped Loretta sit upright. The girl was covered in injuries, many of which looked deep enough to be fatal.

“We killed all of them,” Sylph said, pulling a waterskin from a pouch and holding it to the other girl’s lips. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”

The wounds covering Loretta’s body slowly faded. They didn’t completely seal over, but the worst of the damage repaired itself.

“Seven Planes, I’ve never been happier to see you,” Loretta said after draining the waterskin. She let out a mixture between a relieved sob and a laugh. “Gods, how did you find me?”

“I asked them politely,” Damien replied. “Nolan sent us a warning that you were in trouble. What happened? Was anyone else injured?”

“It was just me,” Loretta said. “I was alone in the room when I got attacked. There were three of them.”

She glanced around, her face pale. “There was a third! We need to be careful, he might be –”

“Already dead,” Damien said, shaking his head. “They’re all gone.”

“Oh, right. I think I overheard them saying they felt someone powerful coming and had one stay back to deal with it.” Loretta slumped back, relief washing over her face. “Planes. I thought I was going to die.”

“You didn’t,” Sylph said helpfully. “That’s always a good thing.”

Loretta let out a snort of hysterical laughter. “Guess so. Planes, you two are strong. How did you kill two fully grown mages? And they were Gray – wait. Nolan!”

“What about him?” Damien asked. “He’s at the Gray estate according to the letter he sent to warn us that you were in danger, but he only seemed to suspect there might be trouble, not that you’d be a minute away from getting killed.”

Loretta’s face paled. “Nolan told me he was going to visit the Gray estate because they’d found out we were dating. That was a few days ago. Is he okay?”

“No idea,” Damien replied honestly. “But his letter made it sound like you were the only one in danger. I don’t think his own parents are going to kill him or anything.”

Loretta gritted her teeth. “They tried to kill me. Planes, what kind of psychopath tries to kill their son’s girlfriend because she isn’t a noble? So much for ‘the worst someone can say is no’. They’re insane.”

“Explains a lot about how Nolan acted when we first met him,” Sylph muttered. “Still, three assassins for one person. They really wanted to get rid of you.”

“Four,” Loretta replied, a flash of defiance lighting behind her eyes. “I killed one of them. I don’t know what they did with the body. One of them must have somehow cleaned it up if you didn’t see it.”

“You put up a good fight,” Damien said. “You should be proud of your performance. Fighting four fully trained mages and managing to kill one – that’s not something most Year Twos could do.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Loretta wrapped her arms around her chest and shuddered. Then her eyes narrowed, and she set her jaw. “Nolan is probably stuck at the Gray’s house.”

“Might be better to be more concerned about yourself,” Damien said. “He’ll be fine, but they could send more assassins after you. I mean, that does seem a little excessive and I’m sure they’ve got better things to do than constantly hound you now that their first trio has failed, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

“They don’t know I survived yet,” Loretta said, pushing herself upright. She tottered for a moment and Sylph reached out to stabilize her, but the girl caught her own balance. “And who knows what they’ll do if they find out that Nolan warned us that I would be attacked.”

“Before you do anything, you need to get properly healed,” Sylph said. “I didn’t have enough water to fully repair all your wounds. And if you’re thinking about attacking the Grays to get Nolan out – it won’t work. You’re too weak.”

Damien winced at the casual way Sylph put it, but she wasn’t wrong. Granted, Loretta had done pretty well for herself against three assassins making a surprise attack – but that wasn’t the same as storming the largest Noble house in the kingdom.

“I’m not an idiot,” Loretta replied, wobbling slightly on her feet. Sylph steadied her. “But… I can’t just do nothing. Will Whisp or Delph help us?”

“I don’t think they can,” Damien said. “Whisp was with us when we found the assassin in your room. I think the Queen has orders that prohibit any of the powerful political figures like nobles or deans from fighting directly.”

“Then I’ve got to do it. I’ll find a way to sneak him out or something,” Loretta said. “I have to.”

“I never said we’re leaving him.” Damien’s shadow twitched angrily. “Nolan is a friend, and I don’t take kindly to anyone attacking people while we’ve got the threat of the Corruption breathing down our necks. We’re better off without them. We just need you somewhere safe so. If Sylph and I go off to get Nolan and you get killed by another assassin, this is all for nothing.”

“You mean you can help Nolan?” Loretta asked, her eyes widening. “Please, if you can do anything, do it as soon as possible.”

“We just need to get you to safety first,” Sylph said. “Damien is right. Nolan isn’t going to thank us if we rush over to him and we get back to find you dead.”

“Would you be sitting around if Damien was in the same situation?”

Sylph’s eyes went cold. “I would start killing.”

“Then you know what I want to do,” Loretta spat.

“The best thing you can do is remain safe, then,” Damien said. “Sylph and I are strong enough to challenge the Grays – at least for long enough to re-kidnap Nolan. We just need to get you somewhere where the Grays can’t get you first.”

“Okay,” Loretta said, swallowing. “If that’s what’ll help, then I’ll do it.”

“Where?” Sylph asked. “They already got into Blackmist once, and they’ve got fully fledged Mages. We can’t underestimate them.”

“I think I have an idea,” Damien replied, his voice turning frigid as hues of gray washed over the world. “It’s a little cold, though.”