Chapter 743: POV Bonded Beast

Noct pushed through the haze of debris in her way as she chased after Alex, ignoring the small stones and other bits of rubble that bounced off of her spell-enhanced defenses. She did not have the Agility that Jadis or Severina possessed, and carrying Bridget with her was no help to her flight speed even if she was mostly weightless thanks to her flame form. Despite the disadvantages, she was managing to keep up due to the way their enemy kept diving through the rapidly crumbling structure of the Opaline Palace. Those moments caused the Demon Prince to slow down, at least by a small amount, though the explosive chaos did create a barrier that made up for any reduction in her retreat from Alex. There were moments that Noct was certain that she and Bridget could have joined their demonic ally in her fight against Twisted Desire.

If only they could actually see the Demon.

“Left!” Bridget shouted out her warning.

Acting without pause for consideration, Noct dove to the side, narrowly avoiding a huge chunk of stone that had fallen from the tower above them. She corrected her flight in the next instant, circling the wide upper dome of the palace as she followed behind Alex and Twisted Desire, but was forced to dodge to the side again when another large object came hurtling out of the dust at them. Swooping low, she dove and then rose high, doing her best to keep up and not lose sight of Alex in all of the chaos.

Her only certain means of keeping track of Alex was her neon blue highlights, a sight barely visible through the increasing amount of dust and fog being put into the air. Exactly how much was from the damage being done to the palace and how much was coming from the cloud of toxins in the air was hard to say, but the illusions that were appearing and disappearing constantly around the retreating Demon Prince were no help to the visibility. Several times Noct’s wings struck the walls of the building, her vision misdirected by the illusions and causing her to run into obstacles that she could not perceive. Shadowy objects would appear and disappear, the direction of the world would abruptly invert or flip like a mirror, and strange noises and sounds would come from all around then revert to utter silence in the next moment. It was utter pandemonium. And yet, she was able to follow Alex, who for whatever reason seemed to have no issue whatsoever seeing through Desire’s illusions. How she was doing it was a mystery, but it did not seem that Desire could hide from the newly crowned Demon Lord. Alex was a hound on a rabbit’s heels, unshakeable in her pursuit. Not even the sudden and inexplicable drop in all of their attributes for a few moments could stop her.

Passing around what Noct presumed was the eastern side of the dome, a huge shadow abruptly appeared like a wall in front of her. She did not think it was anything more than another illusion, as she knew that no walls would have appeared hovering in the air to the side of the palace, but she saw Alex dodge the shadow and thus dove low to avoid it as well. That decision proved the correct one as the underside of a solid, wooden vessel passed so close above her that Noct could feel her feathers ruffling the center bow edge.

“—don’t fucking know! I think it was—”

Kerr’s easily identifiable voice carried on the wind as Noct and Bridget passed by. Had that been the Leviathan? It would make sense that the ship had come in close to the tower to provide aerial support. Noct hoped that they gave the airship more clearance, however, as it was possible that Desire could leap directly onto the Leviathan if it stayed so close. She wasn’t sure how that story would end, but she didn’t think the vessel would survive the encounter.

“Down!”

Again, Noct followed Bridget’s sharp-eyed direction. Together they dove down through a hole in the roof of one of the palace wings. This time, rather than burrowing directly through the floors underneath, Desire must have followed an abrupt change in direction and moved through the rooms and halls, breaking down doorways and walls that stood in her way. Noct used her massively improved Strength to bounce off the floor, cracking the tiles as she weathered the impact. Turning to follow after Alex and Twisted Desire, Noct half flew, half sprinted as she carried Bridget along behind her through the ruined structure.

Twice they crashed into walls that they couldn’t see thanks to the Demon Prince’s illusions, and at one point Noct was certain that she heard Aila’s voice calling out to them. However, with all of the illusionary noises filling the air, it was possible that it had been nothing but a trick. Ignoring the shout, Noct followed after the two Demons as best she could. However, it wasn’t long before she lost all sight of even Alex’s blue glow in the twisting and winding turns of the palace halls. Tracking her by the destruction she left in her wake was the only option left.

Except, Noct realized, for one possibility that she would have avoided under all other circumstances.

Coming to a stop in the wreckage of some room that may have once been servant’s quarters, Noct mentally commanded her bindings to loosen around her body. Letting her control slacken, if not slip entirely, she focused her thoughts on catching up on Alex, and by extension, Jadis, whose safety mattered to her the most above all others. She could no longer imagine continuing her life without her mate. And if keeping Jadis safe meant unleashing her control, then Noct would do just that.

“What are you—oh,” Bridget asked, then silenced herself as she watched with wide, burning eyes. “Yeah, okay, that makes sense.”

“Stay close,” Noct growled around her enlarged fangs.

“Right…”

Grunting at the hesitant reply, Noct loomed over the currently shorter orc and pressed some of the chains she had taken from her bindings forcefully into her hands.

“Can’t bite fire.”

“Right! Yeah, no, wasn’t worried about that at all.”

Breathing deeply, Noct’s nose wrinkled at the smells in the air. Death and decay were dominant. As was blood. The blood of Demons. The blood of other, more appetizing sources… She shook that thought away. Alex needed her. Jadis needed her. Desire needed to die. Blood would flow and she would get her taste. But first, she had to find Alex.

Catching the scent, Noct bolted forward and through one of the broken openings in the hall. Bridget flew behind her, dragged by the chain she held in one hand. Some part of Noct recognized how beastly she must have appeared, like a winged dog on a leash, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about appearances at that moment. Alex was her focus, not only because she was a friend who was in need of help, but because she was her only link to possibly finding Jadis, who she had failed to find ever since picking Bridget up and carrying her into the Opaline Palace.

The trail led Noct through ruined halls, a twisting circle that soon changed floors, leading them down and down further still. The bodies of Demons lay strewn along the path, ripped apart for having the misfortune of getting in the way of a battle between two lords of power. Some still lived and, upon seeing Noct and Bridget, threw themselves at them with mindless viciousness, completely disregarding their own lives.

Noct and Bridget cut them down, their own power great enough that such foes barely rated as obstacles to their forward progression. But they were, in a sense, potentially useful.

Noct checked her status sheet and notifications, quickly confirming that she had not gained a new level since the last one she had earned a few hours ago.

Two levels. Just two levels, and she would have a tertiary class. Noct knew that unlocking a new class could boost her power by a significant degree, even with just a single level. She also knew that taking class choices in the middle of a battle was a dangerous and potentially stupid thing to do. Her father would have boxed her ears for even considering the option. But under the circumstances, Noct thought that her father would forgive her haste. That forgiveness would have to wait until after she gained just a little more experience, as without it, Noct would not be gaining those two final levels, and the matter would be a moot point.

Reaching a space that had been torn apart by Alex’s and Desire’s passing, Noct realized that they were going through a passage that she and Bridget had traversed before. A great hole had been burrowed through ceiling and floor, creating a tunnel that let in the light of the sky far above all the way down to a dark basement below. Taking a few deep breaths, Noct tried to tell if the two Demons had gone up or down the hole, or if they had gone elsewhere. Unfortunately, the scent of both was too strong and too recent; she could not immediately tell which way to fly in pursuit.

“Hey, I think I see someone down there.”

Bridget’s warm hand on her shoulder triggered a growl in Noct that she quickly suppressed. Bridget was her ally. Her friend. She was Jadis’ lover, which made her important to Noct as well. Growling like a rabid wolf at just a touch was unacceptable.

“Where?”

Noct couldn’t see well in the dark. She had better sight than some, but she was no elf, and neither Seraphim nor Valbjorn were known for nighttime vision.

“There, off to the side. Is that Lucia?”

A surge of heat rolled through Noct and suddenly she could see as though a bright blue torch was lighting up the world in front of her. The spell Bridget had cast upon her made it easy to see in the pitch dark of the basement below them, and soon enough Noct spotted the figure moving slowly down a hallway, armored boots just starting to move past their line of sight.

Spreading her wings wide, Noct dove over the ledge, gliding down to the lowest level to come to a silent landing just behind the figure making their way down the unlit hallway.

“Lucia!”

“Bridget,” the implacable Paladin turned to face them both. “…Noct.”

The therion appeared to be heavily injured and was clearly on her guard. Possibly she suspected that they were both illusions, which was only prudent. She did not have her sword, and she was holding her left arm at an odd angle. Her right knee also appeared to be bent to the side, the armor deforming around the injury in a way that would make it impossible to heal properly without removing the damaged metal.

“How did you get in here?” Bridget asked, no less on her guard.

“There was a fight. We were pursuing Twisted Desire when we encountered Roul. I was separated from the others.”

“No idea where they are?”

“Above,” Lucia indicated the hole. “I believe Roul was either slain or driven away. They were going to come down and get me, but Alex and Twisted Desire passed through again and the others gave chase.”

“Alright, well, we’re trying to track down Alex and Twisted Desire, too,” Bridget nodded along to the Paladin’s explanation. “C’mon, we’ll carry you out of here and get you to Eir or Jocelyn for healing.”

“No.”

Noct’s sharp word cut off whatever response Lucia was about to give.

“Why not?” Bridget turned back to look at her with offense in her tone. “We can’t just leave Lucia here. She’s injured and not even armed!”

“Jadis.”

Noct pointed, her clawed finger rising above both of the other women’s heads. Down the dark hall, under the thick blanket of festering death and demonic filth, she had caught the scent of Jadis.

Alex and Twisted Desire both still filled the air with their unique odors, and there was a strong, almost overwhelming smell of corruption coming from that direction, but it was the first sure sign of Jadis Noct had found since entering the palace. The fact that Jadis had not been following Alex or Twisted Desire in their fight, yet had also not exited the palace to regroup with the others, did not stand as a good sign. Noct would not leave the trail, not when she had finally found a hint as to where Jadis might be.

“Here,” Bridget said, pulling a potion vial from her bag as Noct pushed past the two. “This should keep you going for now.”

Noct continued down the hall as the other two followed behind. Bridget stayed right behind her, flail at the ready, while Lucia limped along further back. Since she had lost her greatsword and had nothing but an arming dagger on her belt to rely on, it was best that she stayed out of the way. Noct kept her catch pole to the fore, ready for whatever might come out of the hall that stretched past where the stone bricks should have ended and the sodden earth began.

Turning a hard angle, the hall lost all semblance of being made by workman, instead taking on the appearance of a tunnel carved by a mix of magic and beasts. The myrmidons possessed by Demons came to mind, though Noct saw no further sign of the ant-like creatures. Instead, the smell of decay rose to the point of making Noct gag; she was only able to keep her gorge down by taking quick breaths of air burnt clean by Bridget’s fire, and by focusing on the scent of Jadis, which only grew stronger the deeper they went.

Finally, reaching another sharp angle in the wide tunnel, Noct saw strange shadows play across the wall as a flickering, unnatural light shone beyond the corner’s edge. A terrible noise, one of pain and suffering and utter despair, murmured like a brook in the background, but the sharp noise of steel banging against steel stood out to the fore. As did the guttural growl of the pale beauty that Noct loved so dearly.

 Rounding the corner with Bridget at her side, Noct was met with a sight that she could not have imagined in even her worst nightmares.

A cavernous space had been carved deep underground, with rough stone columns holding up the dark ceiling far above. There were other arched entrances to the space, though the number and position of them was obscured by the flickering light and deep shadows. All across the wide, flat floor were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of bodies. Men, women, children; all human so far as Alex could tell, and most of them dead. Some dead for a long, long time. But not all. Some still moved weakly, groaning out their suffering with bone-thin hands reaching out from the ground like stalks of dying wheat. Some murmured prayers. Others only wept.

In the center of the sea of death and anguish rose a round platform, deliberately carved and sharply cut. Bronze or some similar metal had been used to build empty hexagons, which themselves had been constructed like one of the impenetrable domes around the center stone, pillar, except it was a full sphere instead of just a half. Metal gantries and walkways bridged the expanse between the stone platform and the many sides, creating a network of connections that followed no recognizable pattern. A tall, hexagonal stone obelisk towered over the central raised altar, upon which five figures had been pinned, though Noct could only see four from her angle. She knew that those four were not dead, for they writhed in the agony of ones who suffered unknowable pain as a continual stream of arcane power roiled across the stone, rising up through the air and into a tunnel that disappeared into the ceiling above the giant sphere. Noct had no inkling as to the purpose, but she understood the meaning of the pillar well enough. It was the same as the ones that powered the impenetrable domes. And it was pure evil.

As nightmarish as the lurid desecration of souls was, the obelisk and the trapped humans were not what truly captured Noct’s attention. How could they, when just beyond them, to the far right side of the empty sphere, was all three of Jadis, trapped within some mechanism of arcane chains.

Noct’s pale beast stood near the edge of the cavern, one body forced halfway to the ground, completely entrapped within strange chains that shone like quicksilver. A second of her forms was next to the first, one arm free while the rest of her was just as immobilized as the first body. The third of Jadis’ bodies was only chained from the waist down, her upper body free entirely. She had her large demon-bone maul at hand and was using it to break the chains that held herself and her other bodies in place. However, for each chain she shattered, more rose up from the ground to counter her progress. Except, even in the short few seconds Noct paused to assess, she could tell that the battle between bondage and Jadis was turning in the Nephilim’s favor. She was breaking free. Which was, perhaps, the reason why the strange creature that stood before Jadis looked like it was about to retreat.

It was… a Demon? Perhaps. More likely a man in a strange suit of armor, though there was not one hint of any opening, no sign of a buckle or belt. No obvious means of removing the armor, or any opening in the exterior at all. Whatever the thing was, the outside was made of metal, with an intricate pattern of glowing marks covering its steel gray form. The body was squat, wide, and exceptionally thick, while the head was perfectly round and far too large, like an orb balanced on top of headless shoulders. It carried some kind of half-moon shaped metallic device in its left hand, upon which were a myriad of glowing crystals set in a dizzying pattern. Noct could see the creature touch those crystals, causing more of the chains to appear and bind Jadis. However, the metal figure was continually moving back, slowly retreating away from the furious giant.

“Valtar save us,” Bridget said under her breath as she took in the sight next to Noct. “We’ve got to get over there and help Jadis!”

“Yes,” Noct agreed.

Bridget did not wait for her but instead sprinted directly towards Jadis and the strange metal figure, her flames carrying her over the sea of bodies that filled the cavern. Noct hefted her catch pole but did not immediately follow. Instead, she turned to the limping figure behind and, with a swift and strong movement, pinned it to the wall.

“What are you—!”

There was no scent of Lucia. Jadis she could smell. The dead and dying all around her, she could smell, too. But Lucia, whose blood was spilled and stained her white armor red? Not one whiff. Noct had not scented the therion since they had left the hole where they had found her. This, whoever it was, could not be Lucia.

With a sharp twist, Noct shoved the figure to the ground. The ring of her catch pole was around its neck, so it would be no effort at all to snap its spine. However, she waited, pausing just long enough for the illusion that had been wrapped around the frightened man whose piss she could smell to fade away.

“Wait! Please, wait! I’m a prisoner here, too! I’m an enchanter! I’ve been forced to work here for months! I was just trying to escape to safety! I didn’t know if you would hurt me, so I used an illusion! Please, I—”

He was lying. This man was dressed opulently, like a noble, with an excess of jewelry. He was also heavy with indolence, round and well fed. Not a prisoner. A cultist? Likely. Not a fighter, though. He had missed multiple opportunities to attack her and Bridget when they had their guards down. He also knew their names, and the names of the others. A higher-ranking cultist, then. Someone important. Someone with knowledge, possibly even actually an enchanter, going by the number of accessories he kept on himself. Though, if any of those rings or that round amulet were enchanted, they had to be out of power considering his wounded state and lack of defense. If he was a cultist enchanter, he could be the enchanter, the one responsible for the impenetrable domes.

Which meant he should be killed. Immediately.

Except, he was also a coward. Rather than fanatically seeking death, he was pleading for his life. That meant that he could be questioned. He could provide a great deal of information that would be of use to them in their fight against Samleos. He could give Sabina the secrets behind his soul-siphoning obelisks, and perhaps through that knowledge a means of more easily destroying them. But not if he was dead.

“—I beg you, please, show me mercy and take me away from here! I only wish to—Ah!”

Noct slammed her foot down on the unbroken knee of the cultist, making certain to disable his legs completely. Just to be sure, she then broke both of his elbows as well, snapping the bones with such ease that it was patently clear that the man had no Fortitude at all. Leaning down to put her teeth near his sniveling, snot-slicked face, Noct growled out her single order.

“Stay.”

“Yes, yes,” he sobbed, the blubber of his second chin rolling with his rapid nods. “I’ll stay! I won’t move! Please, don’t hurt me anymore…!”

The beast inside her demanded she tear the whimpering slug apart, to taste his blood on her lips, to rend his flesh to pieces. He deserved it. He was a cultist.

Noct did not trust that beast within her, not wholly. She did not want to let it run too far, unleashed as it was. So, with one final shove, she pushed the crying human against the corner of the wall, turned, and flew towards Jadis. Her pale beauty needed her, and Noct would do anything for her love for her.

Even become a beast.