BECMI Chapter 60 – Divining the Traitors

The short and swarthy man at the table there gasped as the Amulet about his neck zipped over to my hand, and just as suddenly the Rings on his hands leapt free of his fingers and came to my palm… as did three more such Rings on the fingers of the trio whose lips were now sealed. I held up the Amulet in front of me, my gaze discerning the magical circuits within it before turning back to look at him coldly. “Interesting. I have no idea what the Ei of Hazz is that this makes you the servant of, but your passing information to the Cabal of the Arcane is treachery enough, I wager. I don’t think doubling up on it is going to save you much.” My fist closed on the Amulet. Magic sparked, crackled, and flared in my fingers, momentarily staining them red before blue-white arcane fire Burned and devoured it all, dropping it away into glittering powder that fell into the petals of an overly-large crimson-chased black rose rising right up from the floor to suck it down. When the Amulet was completely gone, the rose fell back into the floor and vanished completely. In actuality, it was all illusion. The technomagic of the Amulet bore further analysis, especially the inhuman origins and psi-signature around it, and that meant the Ei of Hazz was at the very least a technomancer! “Master Kociba, perhaps you should have someone competent take Master Druewal there elsewhere and see to the confession of his sins. You’re eager and ready to tell them everything you know, aren’t you, Master Druewal?” His mouth flapped, almost of its own accord, “Yes, yes, Lady Edge!” he agreed miserably, reading that he was likely to follow his Amulet if he did not agree. I gathered my name had been of considerable interest for the last few hours. The mention of the Cabal had hardened the faces of all the nobles in the room, especially the two Wizards. While soldiers saw to the unconscious bodyguards, two more hoisted Master Druewal up by his wrists and quickly frog-marched him out of the room. My meant he had agreed to a , and he was indeed going to tell them ALL his sins! I opened my hand, and another gold-linked Necklace fell from it, the brassy image running away from it and revealing a glittering golden device with little ripples of magic flowing through and between the rings. The barmaid gasped, her hands going to her now-unadorned throat, and all three of the trio stared at it in complete dismay. “The ides of Time swirl about this little device. Clever, planting it on your mole, the Wards on it making it look like a minor defensive item at best. But this little toy is attuned to the Enchantments upon this very Inn, and is a very complex little tool… and you, my little Wizard, are doubtless one that knows how to use it.” He wanted to deny it, but vines kept his lips tight. “First, I am going to remove your existing . Then, I am going to take your secrets.” And without further ado, the fat little oily man was jerked across the table and into my grasp, ignoring the cry of Master Kociba as my hand clasped the fellow’s head. Magic flared, waves of compulsion rippled out against the feedback of the I was using, making the nearest people gasp and clutch at their heads as they felt the compulsions to BE SILENT and THINK NOTHING and BETRAY US NOT and CONCEAL THIS that pulsed out from the fat and sweating little man. They could also feel those compulsions crack and shatter under my will and a much more impressive Dispel Check against that . Powerful as it was, it crumpled under my will, and his mind was released and opened to me. “Trypoliti Jaczman,” I said softly as his thought-locked face stared at me in horror. “Loyal servant of Iberon, agent of the Iron Graf. It is truly a pleasure to see you. I see that you have some things you urgently need to inform me of… yes, that is correct. The people you’ve murdered, the spies you’ve recruited…” He was writhing and choking, blood pouring out his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as he tried to fight the , but that didn’t work very well as I reached in and took what I wanted from him. If that rendered his brain to goo, I wasn’t much concerned about it, especially given the career he’d had. When I let go, he slumped on the table, blood pooling below and dripping to the floor, but none having gotten onto my hand. Somewhere along the way, the two women were now completely bound up in black-thorned vines, and skulls with roses in their eyes were tittering softly next to their terrified faces. “Well done, Triasta. Murdered the woman whose job you took thereafter to infiltrate this place, and you have been setting the stage and passing information to your master for months.” Her green eyes were wide with horror as the petaled skull nestled against her cheek. “And you, Miss Charie. The Iron Graf’s favorite little assassin. I’d tell you all the things your assistant here liked to dream about you, but I’m sure you suspect.” Both women jerked out of their seats and into my hands, and I didn’t look at either of them as the eroding magic on them started shredding the air around me with STAY SILENT and DON’T YOU DARE SPEAK and DON’T EVEN THINK IT, fracturing and cracking as everyone clutched at their skulls and winced. They were not even able to order me to stop before the shattered and their minds were twisting in terror underneath my uncaring eyes, eyes that weren’t even bothering to look at them as I ripped their minds open and gave them the fate they had earned. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. If a couple hidden magical daggers were pulled off both of them by the vines and slid into Buck’s fingers, thence to be slipped back to Guy and stowed away, nobody noticed. Both women shuddered and stopped struggling entirely, their blood joining that of their compatriot on the ground… except the black roses there were eagerly drinking it all up, leaving the floor nice and pristine. I held up the control Amulet thoughtfully. It was crude but workable, something that could only have been made by one of those Wizards who originally laid the Enchantments on this place. His serendipitous feat of creating a hole in time had been capitalized upon properly, even though he’d not had the nerve of trying out his control of the Portal himself, which was amazingly wise given the utter foolishness of what he’d done. “You’ve had several disappearances over the past few months of guests who somehow got out without using the door. Your murderous barmaid here used this device to send them through the Portal and into the far future, using the future Inn itself as a prison for the king. “As you surmised, he was into the basement by Jaczman, hurled into the Portal, and in all likelihood subdued on the far side. I have the combination to the time period set, and we will retrieve him now.” I spun around, pointing. “To the Portal!” “Wait, Lady Edge!” Master Kociba blurted up, rising to his feet, everyone tensing as I absolutely ignored him. “We, we need to plan-!” I halted, stopping the company, but did not turn back around. “My people and I have cleared this Inn over one hundred times, slaughtering over one thousand enemy combatants monstrous, humanoid, or undead multiple times in our journey back to this time. We don’t need to plan a damn thing, Master Kociba. The dozen or so men who took your king don’t know what is coming for them. He will be secured and we will be back with him shortly!” “But, but-!” he protested, but I simply resumed course, and my company followed me, faces grim, set, and absolutely wholly confident that they could do this. Because we damn well could. --- The soldiers downstairs had no choice but to get out of the way. It was the middle of the day, and the Portal was still there. It was rather surreal to see it. But that didn’t matter. This little toy in my hand had, if not perfect control, incremental control of the Portal. It couldn’t take anyone precisely anywhere, but it could take them to certain guaranteed points, even if they didn’t know precisely WHEN those points in time were. Like the one I was setting this to now. The Portal shimmered, solidified, and locked itself in a manner none of us had ever seen before. “You’ve all seen the portrait of the man we’re going to rescue. It was hanging in the very taproom for all those centuries. It’s time to give these people a surprise they are not expecting. “Let us bring a king his freedom, and his captors the death they have earned!” “FREEDOM AND DEATH!” everyone roared obligingly. “Form up! I promised you freedom or death, and I will not let you die!” Buck’s hand was on my belt, and I strode forward into the suddenly very stable and calm Portal. ---- The journey was swift, remarkably so, no vagaries around us, the path straight and true ahead. I walked out of the far end, and stared at the four startled hobgoblins there jumping to their feet. “Hey, what are you-” the biggest one started to say as the went up. Then Spear point took him in the face, my hand was buried to the wrist in the throat of the hobgoblin next to him, Buck’s Blade was tickling the liver of the third, and Guy’s Rapier flashed across the throat of the fourth. “Guy, your team takes the wall door.” I pointed as the others rapidly came streaming out of the Portal. The Federyn rake blinked, then grinned as he hurried over to the wall. He pushed, and the wall section there opened itself out into the greater room of the Inn we’d used in our downtime. “Keep it quiet, take your team up to the highest point. “Squad one, with me up the stairs. Squad two, take the ramp and ready to hit the walls on the right! Squad Three, the second floor south! Squad four, second floor east! Get into position, you’ve got one minute!” Stifling grim laughter, the men poured out through the two exits to the room that were pushed open, ramps leading up and outside, keeping the noise of armor and men hidden from the rest of the place. It was indeed all set up just like their downtime playing, only all the walls were closed and intact, and those already here had absolutely no idea that there was so much extra room about and around them! --- “Now.” Magevoice allowed me to be heard through even the , which were dropped in a roar of battlecries as six different teams hit the Inn from all directions. The guards there had no chance, nor did their boss. Any who tried to fight were cut down where they stood. The mage in charge was literally buried under an avalanche of bodies and clobbered into unconsciousness. The only serious fight was the fact that the mage in charge actually had two displacer beasts as pets. The cat-like creatures were not, however, prepared to deal with a wall of Spears herding them back, Sir Horn making the executive decision to dispose of them. They and their displaced images were coolly hedged in, their lashing serrated tentacles tolerated just long enough for the first glowing Spear to find them, and then thirty seconds later they were impaled multiple times, stuck, and the spearmen rode them down until they stopped moving. “We have the king!” came the shout from up top. “Two dead displacer beasts!” Sir Horn called down. “Three minotaurs in the stable!” Prince Ukker proclaimed, the bellows from that direction particularly loud. “All rooms are cleared! Starting the loot sweep!” ============ The great ‘final threat’ in Arneson’s old Blackmoor campaign was the Egg of Coot, a sniveling insane thing possibly born of the Outer Gods, which commanded an army of psychically-enslaved servants and spies, seeking to dominate everything and everyone. It was mean, petty, childish, spiteful, and arrogant, among its better qualities, and not anything remotely human. I am calling it the Ei of Hazz because Ei is german for Egg, it gets nicely mixed up with eye, and the only Cooter I know was from Dukes of Hazzard, and Hazzard to Hazz ties in very nicely with the origins of the Egg. So Ei of Hazz it is.