Fallen Ambitions

by Vann, Eric J.

Chapter 16

  Celia rode at the head of a caravan, on a horse loaned to her by the mayor of Fes. Along with Vhal and a handful of Grauda, she had wasted no time after the mayoral meeting had concluded to make their way to the location marked by the Grauda scouts.

  Just as she crested a gently sloping hill, Celia raised a hand to shield her eyes and surveyed the scene. Wervin corpses lay everywhere in varying degrees of mutilation. It would seem the Grauda scouts had done more than just keep watch, they had decided to give their new enemies a taste test—and if what she saw was any indication, they had liked it.

  “Ah, finally here,” Vhal said, as the cart he was being carried in came to a stop beside her. No matter how much they tried, no horse would let Vhal approach it, so they had settled for pulling him around like a piece of luggage instead.

  “It appears the Grauda have taken care of things,” Celia replied dryly.

  “From the clustering of corpses, that must be it.” Vhal pointed to an opening in the ground. “The beasts were able to overwhelm some, it seems,” he added, indicating two male corpses, which were being prepared by the other Grauda for transport. They always collected their dead after battles, but for what reason Celia did not know. She wondered if they buried, burned or possibly even consumed them. Shrugging inwardly, she dismounted her horse.

  “Is that their lair?” a human man asked. Duren had insisted they take at least a few of his most trusted human soldiers with them, arguing that having them around would help normalize relations with other races. Nothing brings people together faster than battle and blood, he kept saying. Celia didn’t mind. Almost all the Grauda had been deployed to guard the other villages, leaving only fifty or so, including the scouts they were meeting here. The extra manpower might be useful, even just to help with setting up camp for the night.

  “It is,” Celia replied.

  “We have more Wervin blood than we will ever need,” Vhal said, as he climbed off the cart and patted his dimensional bag. “But no reason not to gather even more.”

  “Blood?” the man asked, his voice strained. He glanced at the other men with him.

  “Yes. Now, would you be so kind as to help with this task?” Vhal began passing vials to the humans, who looked at his bag with wide eyes, no doubt wondering how all those vials had fit in there.

  Ignoring them, Celia narrowed her eyes as she noticed a carriage parked a few meters from the hole. “What is that?”

  Vhal stopped distributing the vials and made a face as he concentrated on the distant object. “It appears to be a carriage,” he said in a far too serious a tone, before breaking into a grin again.

  “Thanks,” Celia said, dryly.

  “Of course, Champion. I aim to please.”

  Celia rolled her eyes and started down the hill toward the lair. Vhal and the others followed.

  As she drew closer, Celia wrinkled her nose. The stench of death and rot hung in the air. The smell only grew worse the closer she came to the carriage. Celia pinched her nose as she examined the closest visible source: the two dead horses which had once drawn it. They both had deep wounds, but the larger of the two had a significant portion of its chest missing. A few of its ribs were exposed, and its intestines were splayed for all to see. No doubt the Grauda had something to do with that.

  With its hardwood walls reinforced with steel and lack of windows, the design of the carriage itself left no secret as to its function. The only way in was through a door situated at the back, which had a rather sturdy locking mechanism on the outside.

  A slave or prison wagon. Celia wondered where the Wervins had gotten their hands on it.

  A shuffling noise came from inside the carriage, and Celia took a step back before gesturing to Vhal. “There’s something in there,” she said before noticing something else.

  The door wasn’t locked.

  Vhal didn’t reply. Instead, it was the Grauda female leading the scouts who spoke. “Humans,” she squeaked. Her answer didn’t clarify things much—if there were humans in there, Celia wondered, why hadn’t they escaped when the door was unlocked?

  Perhaps it would be best to get one of the human soldiers to check, she thought. But they were occupied going from one Wervin corpse to the next, filling the vials Vhal had given them.

  Celia reached for the handle herself and pulled. The door swung open with a creak and she immediately recoiled, her hands reflexively covering her mouth and nose in shock. An overwhelming stench assaulted her.

  “Well, well,” Vhal mused, as he watched from a few steps away.

  Ignoring the lich, Celia steeled herself before taking a deep breath and looking inside.

  A pair of naked human women were huddled in the far corner. Their bodies and faces were covered in bruises and scratches, and they were caked in dirt and what looked to be feces.

  One of them was older, probably around Celia’s age, while the other was—well, only a child, Celia now saw. Eight years old, maybe a little more. The woman reacted to Celia’s presence by pressing the young girl closer to her, fearfully muttering some incoherent words. The child did not move or say anything at all. She just stared blankly down at her hands.

  Following her gaze, Celia grimaced.

  The girl was holding a severed hand. It was gray and rotten, the skin already beginning to turn black in some places. The cut was clean, but from the size of the limb, Celia reasoned it had belonged to a child.

  “It’s alright,” Celia said softly, “I’m not going to hurt you.” Slowly, she climbed into the carriage, trying not to think about the hardened clumps she was brushing past with her legs, or what they might be. If she had to guess, she would say that these two humans were related, due to their similar facial features, fair skin and brown hair. She had no idea what could possibly have happened here—but from the blood-soaked wooden boards, it had been violent.

  “The Wervins are dead,” she said, hoping that fact would bring them comfort. “If you tell us which village you are from, we can take you back home.”

  The woman stared at her with light brown eyes. Celia could practically see the struggle taking place within her. The woman wanted to believe and trust her, but was too afraid.

  “Where are you from?” Celia asked, hoping some conversation would calm her.

  The woman’s eyes teared up and she gulped audibly. “You’re a demon…” she mumbled. There was no accusation or malice in her tone, it was simply a statement of fact.

  “I am. I’m here to get rid of the Wervins, and help you girls get back to your families, safely,” Celia replied. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  The woman studied Celia for a moment, then glanced down at the girl. Her arms tightening protectively, almost maternally, around the girl’s body.

  “They attacked our farm and killed our parents when they tried to fight back. It happened so fast… We tried to hide under the straw, but they found us and threw us in here.” The woman brushed her hand across the young girl’s dirty hair. “We didn’t know where they were taking us, but we could hear them… hear them eating and growling. One night, they came in and grabbed our youngest sister, Lily…” Here, her eyes drifted to the severed hand. “She… she reached out to us for help and they…” Tears fell as she began to tremble. “She was just a piece of meat to them! We were just meat to them…”

  The younger girl gripped the severed hand tighter, as her sister rested her forehead atop her head.

  “All we could hear was their screeching and laughter, her cries for help and screams of pain,” the woman said, her voice losing all strength. “I couldn’t move. I was supposed to protect her, be there for her—for both of them. But it was not me who reached for her hand when she needed it.” Her voice broke as she struggled to get the words out.

  Celia remained quiet as she listened to this harrowing tale. That she could keep her emotions in check through it all proved just how much she had changed since turning into an Elder Succubus. While a growing outrage was building as she hear
d about horror inflicted on these girls, she was still able to keep herself under control. In a way, being able to stay calm and objective was a positive thing, but it also struck Celia as cold. Was she cold? The idea of this growing indifference to the pain and suffering of others worried her, to say the least.

  “Sometime later they came back to take Dinah,” the girl continued, bringing Celia out of her reverie. There was more? What other ordeal had these poor girls gone through? “There were so many, I knew I couldn’t do anything… but I still tried to fight them off. Then there was a sound from outside, and the Wervins left us in a hurry… sounds coming from all around us.” She shuddered. “We heard the door unlock, but I wouldn’t dare risk going out there. You are the first to enter since then.”

  Celia thought about this. There really was only one possibility: the Grauda scouts must have decided to intervene when they saw the Wervins attack the girls.

  The younger girl, who Celia assumed was Dinah, had not shown any reaction since Celia had laid eyes on her. Now, however, tears began to pool in her eyes, as she continued to stare blankly at the severed hand. Her sister pulled her closer, as if to use her body like a protective shell against the outer world.

  “It’s alright. It’s over now. You’re safe,” Celia said soothingly, watching this pitiful scene. Her resolve to cleanse the land of the Wervin menace burned hotter than ever before. “Come out—we will give you some clothes, a cart and horses. You should make for Fes. Look for a man named Issac there and tell him I sent you, he will take care of you.” Celia paused. “We will give you an escort too, just to make sure you stay safe on the way.”

  The older sister looked between Celia and Dinah, then shook her head. “She won’t move… not matter what I say or do.”

  The carriage lurched as Vhal stepped into it. The older sister gasped, her lips trembling as Vhal’s ethereal blue eyes lit the otherwise dim space. The lich grinned and bowed from the waist—an awkward gesture, given that he couldn’t stand straight in the low-ceilinged carriage.

  “Greetings, I am Vhal’nuel,” he said formally, before kneeling in front of Dinah.

  Celia watched, not knowing what he was planning. Interestingly, the young girl did not even appear to notice his presence—it was only her older sister who had grown stiff as a board. If there was one positive of having a lich around, Celia reflected ruefully, it was that it made her, a demon, look far less intimidating.

  “Child,” Vhal said as he lowered himself down to her level. “Do you know what I am?”

  Dinah didn’t look away from the hand, but her head shook ever so slightly.

  “I am a lich, the greatest of the undead, and the one who leads the dead to their final rest,” Vhal said.

  Celia held back her remarks at his obvious lies, curious despite herself. It wasn’t like Vhal to behave this way.

  Vhal leaned closer and the older sister drew back, but Dinah did not seem to care. Instead, she finally looked up. Her gaze was distant, and yet she connected with Vhal.

  “Lily?” she muttered.

  Vhal nodded. “Yes… Yes, Lily is her name. She wants to rest, but she is too worried… Too worried about you.”

  “Me?” Dinah said, her eyes falling to the severed hand again.

  “Yes, child, you. She cannot rest until she knows you are safe. Safe and away from this place.” Vhal reached out and wrapped his fingers around the severed wrist of the hand. “What she doesn’t understand, however, is that unless you also let her go, then there will be no rest.”

  A tear dropped from Dinah’s eye as Vhal tugged gently on the wrist. On the third tug, she let go.

  “Very good…” Vhal murmured as he stepped back. He waved his hand, and pitch-black mana seeped from his fingers.

  Celia did not even attempt to study what he was weaving; she was too enraptured by the idea of Vhal attempting to calm a child. The appearance of an apparition in the vague form of a little girl, however, startled her.

  It was a specter. Celia had seen Vhal conjure such things before, along with the other undead they had used to attack the forces of Whiteridge during their siege of the Grauda home.

  The specter hovered in place, its dark blue outline glowing faintly.

  “Lily!” Dinah yelled as she broke from her sister’s grasp to reach for her. Celia lunged forward and caught her just before they made contact. The girl struggled against Celia’s grip until her sister once again took her into her arms. Celia glared daggers at Vhal. While she understood what he was trying to do here, this was too reckless. Touching the specter would have killed the little girl.

  Vhal didn’t react to her look. Instead, he placed his hand on the head of the specter. “Will you be a good girl and listen to your older sister?” he asked. Even as a lich, touching the specter must have been painful or at the very least uncomfortable, but he did not show it.

  Dinah stopped struggling as she watched the specter. “Is she tired?” she asked.

  Vhal paused, and Celia smiled at the child’s interpretation of rest.

  Vhal nodded. “Yes, she is very tired, and I can keep her safe as she rests. But she won’t listen to me unless you are safe first,” he said, sadly. “You must focus on yourself and your older sister. You must stay strong for her so she can be safe as well.”

  Dinah didn’t move, her tears continuing to fall down her checks. Just as Celia decided the whole thing had been a failure, she nodded. “I—I can be strong…” she mumbled, before turning to hug her older sister, a flood of emotion pouring out of her as she did.

  Vhal removed his hand from the specter and shook it as if to warm his fingers while the apparition dissolved back into nothing. As both Vhal and Celia turned to leave, the older sister called out to them.

  “Wait!” she said, holding her crying sister against her chest. “Thank you…”

  Celia half-turned and gave her a smile. “You’re welcome. And rest assured, we will get rid of these monsters,” she said before stepping out of the carriage, Vhal close behind.

  Celia waited until they were a little distance away before speaking. “So?” she asked. “What was that all about?”

  “Do you disapprove?” Vhal replied, his gaze fixed on the hole ahead of them, which presumably led to the Wervins’ lair.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. But it isn’t like you to go through all that trouble for a little girl.”

  Vhal chuckled quietly before falling silent. Celia watched him as he glanced back at the carriage.

  “I had a younger sister. She was but a child when I was separated from my home and assigned to work the Facility. Somehow, this reminded me of her,” he said slowly, his eyes losing some of their brightness.

  “You had siblings? How is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

  Vhal shook his head again, his grin returning in full force. “Two sisters. And you never asked.”

  “Like that ever stopped you before.”

  Vhal chuckled. “My eldest sister was the High Commander of the Caelian Empire. She led the imperial armies and was responsible for keeping the Empire safe from its enemies.” Vhal leaned on his staff, looking thoughtful. “I didn’t see her much. She only came home during special occasions, or when father called her.”

  Celia blinked. It was honestly uncomfortable hearing Vhal speak about his family. Though her relationship with him had thawed as time passed, she had never really allowed herself to think of him a person. A real person with a past—a family. He was always just that awful lich she didn’t entirely trust.

  Hearing that his elder sister had been the High Commander was a surprise. How much influence had Vhal’s family had for them to hold such a high position within the faction? While she wasn’t a scholar or historian, she was relatively well-read when it came to the Caelian Empire, and yet she had never heard mention of his family name. The Novuals, as far as she could tell, had been no one.

  “The youngest was different, though,” Vhal continued. “She shared in my thirst and love fo
r knowledge. I dare think she would have surpassed me, if given the opportunity.”

  “Do you know what happened to them?” Celia asked, her curiosity piqued. History was the sort of thing she loved to hear about, and Vhal had actually lived through it.

  Vhal shook his head. “As the second born of a noble family, my destiny was already decided. I would serve the Emperor wherever he saw fit. I never saw them again after I left.” He ran his fingers through his beard. “It matters not now. Shall we proceed?”

  Celia hesitated. Vhal was frustratingly closed at times, and this was a rare opportunity to ask him more. But he was right. They needed to finish the job.

  She looked around, assessing the situation. They had less than a division’s worth of Grauda, including the scouts and forty-four humans with them. Hardly an army. She wasn’t worried, though. Her and Vhal’s weaving abilities would even the odds if the Wervins turned out to be more troublesome than expected.

  “Lord Vhal,” a human soldier said from behind them, shrinking back as they both turned their attention to him.

  “Yes?” the lich asked, his enjoyment of the terror the man was feeling showing on his face.

  “Th—the vials have been filled as you requested,” the young man stuttered, his words stumbling over each other.

  “Very good,” Vhal replied. “We will be heading down there to clear their lair. Prep—”

  “Actually,” Celia interrupted. “You and the other humans will stay here on the surface.”

  The soldier blinked, a wave of relief passing over him before he caught himself. “But, Lady Celia… we came here to fight alongside the Fallen,” he said, weakly.

  Celia smiled and placed a hand on the man’s shoulder. “We are likely to find people down there, people who will have gone through much suffering and hardship. They will need a place to rest and heal. You will stay here and guard the entrance while setting up a camp to help those we might find.” She then noticed the carriage door open slightly and the elder sister peek out. “You will also choose two of your number to escort those two back to Fes.”

  The solider glanced over his shoulder at the carriage and nodded. “Of course. As you command, Lady Celia.”