Chapter 8
"Would it have hurt them to give me directions?" Venthra groused as she stumbled through the forest, crashing through it as she chose haste over stealth.
Thank heavens Bran had told her the night before where they were going, and she had taken the time to study several maps of the region. Given where they had been, she knew how to head to the closest city, at least directionally.
As she continued to crash through the forest, she paused as someone shouted, "Who's there?"
Venthra stopped, scowling, and pivoted forty-five degrees before heading in their direction. "Just someone heading back," she called, only to break through several leaves almost as large as her, as she came face to face with a group of people that looked far more urban than she had expected.
There was a woman with her hair pulled back into an absurdly long ponytail, wearing a white blouse and jeans that didn’t belong in the forest. Meanwhile, there were three men with her: one who puffed himself up like he was big, a skinny guy who held a spear like he wasn't sure he could lift it, and finally, a man with a burn mark across his face and missing a few fingers, though he shrank back like he was afraid to be seen.
He now felt like the most dangerous, mostly because Venthra got the sense that if it came down to it, he would be the type to fight tooth and nail, unlike the others who would probably run at the drop of a dime.
"Oh, you don't look familiar," the woman said. Apparently, she was the leader, as she stepped forward and held a hand out.
Venthra shoved hers forward as they clasped and shook; it felt awkward not to grab the woman's forearm.
"Well, we are going to finish up some hunting for the day and head back. You're welcome to stick with us." The woman tilted her head and flashed a brilliant smile at Venthra, who smiled back.
"Yeah, why don't you step over there, so we don't get any blood on your clothes?" Venthra suggested.
The woman frowned, but in that moment, the man who had been trying to puff himself up came at Venthra with a sword that she easily batted aside with her leather bracer, only for the palm of her hand to crash up into his jaw, shattering his teeth and lifting him well into the air.
Venthra took the sword, ripped it out of his hand as she spun around, and hurled it end over end into the man with the spear.
Scarface came in last, poison dripping off his hands as he stopped short and flung it toward her.
Venthra pulled a large blanket from her spatial ring, using it to blind Scarface for a second before she darted around it, a bow in her hands as she nocked an arrow and fired the tip right between his eyes as he fell back.
“Don’t need no fucking archery lessons,” Venthra grumbled under her breath.
She spun around. Macho Man was crying on the ground, Scarface was dead, and the skinny spearman was still staring at the sword in his chest, where he was pinned to a tree.
The woman had fallen back on her rear and was trying to scramble away before Venthra turned, lowering the tip of the arrow resting on her bow and pointing it at her.
"You will hold still for just a moment."
"It was their idea," the woman said.
Venthra smiled. "You all reek of bloodlust. Honestly, I'm just surprised your clothes were so clean."
"Please, it's not her fault," Macho Man gurgled out through his broken teeth. Teeth injuries hurt like a bitch. "You were just so low-level."
Abusers were the worst, and they never took responsibility for their actions. Venthra rolled her eyes, twisted, and fired the arrow into Macho Man to end his whimpering. The sound was grating on her ears.
"You're lucky that I want to minimize the blood." Venthra stepped forward, creating a small bead of poison and shoving it in the woman's mouth before holding it closed.
The woman fought and struggled not to swallow, but it only took moments for the poison to seep into her gums. She began to shake, her eyes opening wide before she went as stiff as a board, her eyes rolling up into her head.
Venthra dropped her to the ground. "Well, at least I kept your clothes marginally clean." She bent down and began to unbutton the blouse and wiggle the woman's body out of those pants. They should fit, and rule one of fitting in was to wear the right clothes.
The skinny man with the spear was still alive, his big, wide eyes watching Venthra.
"What are you?" he asked as blood dribbled out of the corner of his mouth and down his chin.
Venthra pulled back her hair, borrowing the woman's tie to keep her own messy red hair out of her face.
"I'm just a woman with a job," she said simply, "and right now, I need to understand more about your city. I don't suppose you could tell me anything useful?" she said, smiling and leaning forward. She wasn't going to make any promises, because she had no intention of keeping them.
"Will you l-let me l-live?" he stuttered, his lips already beginning to turn blue.
Venthra clicked her tongue and gave a sad shake of her head. "It's already too late. The choice is yours. I can make your death quick, or you could be here for hours, and who knows what hungry predator might come in that time to make it so much worse."
He shook from head to toe. "We work for Marco," he said quickly. "There are a lot of groups from the city. You should stay away from Marco, though; he's not good. The nuns, they will take almost anyone in and will take good care of you."
Venthra smiled and pulled out a dagger. "Thanks for the advice." She thrust in for a quick, clean kill and closed the man's eyes as he slumped against the sword. His body began to dissolve, reclaimed by the system moments later.
Venthra turned around to check. The others had been reclaimed as well. She picked up a few of the weapons to see if they were worth anything, then decided that she'd just keep them for the moment. Perhaps Bran and his people could use them for some sort of recycling scrap.
Venthra was surprised to find that only the woman had a spatial ring. Apparently, these people were not rolling in resources.
***
I lay in the center of the palace while Merlin disappeared to update our group on the latest. Nyx lounged on one side of me while Almeria took up the other, and I examined the inscriptions that were stored in the heart of Eve's palace to protect the sect as a whole.
I hummed as I got my mind wrapped around them.
They were either fairly minor or broken.
Three defensive formations had been made and were unfortunately no longer viable.
I could repair them, but the time to do that would have been better served making something stronger.
As for the minor ones, if someone knew where the sect was, they would be completely and utterly useless.
So, as a whole, I determined her inscriptions needed to be reworked.
The question that came up next was, how much effort should I put into them? While we were building an alliance with her, it was always going to be tenuous at best.
Eve was the kind of person who would take benefits without necessarily feeling the need to repay them, at least not in private.
The far more likely scenario was that she would take these benefits, and we'd have a mildly amicable relationship where we could trade and visit, but should things go badly, it was unlikely that Eve would come to our rescue.
And if there was enough at stake, she potentially could even become an enemy.
Yet despite all of that, she was still giving me the opportunity to set up her protections.
Given the quality of work that was here at present, I doubted she had an expert on hand to check my work.
I was unsure if she simply didn't care or if she knew something I did not that gave her the confidence to let me alter her defenses on my own.
Then there was also the possibility that, because these were already largely broken, she was asking based on the fact that anything was better than what she had now.
Working through my options gave me a headache from the moral knots I had to untangle.
"Thoughts?" Almeria asked.
"I have a tenuous alliance at best. While I am interested in helping, it's a matter of how much I should help." I was probably going to put a back door in, though, not that it needed to be said aloud when the plants all around us were Eve’s eyes and ears.
Almeria nodded. "Rather than starting there, why not start with your constraints? You have, let's say, four hours to work on these before we need to rest so that we're fully ready for tomorrow."
"So what's the best I can do in four hours?" I asked myself more than Almeria.
"Sounds good to me. You've already said she doesn't have much." Nyx was watching me as a person far more than what I was doing. A faint, dreamy smile was plastered on her face as she watched me work.
I pecked her on the cheek, but she grabbed my shoulder before I could pull away, pulling me back down for a full kiss as her tongue snaked into mine and intertwined for a long moment before she pulled back.
"Well, you're always fantastic to watch when you work," she said.
I noticed out of the corner of my eye Almeria watching the kiss with immense curiosity.
"Yes, your inscriptions are fantastic, Bran." Almeria sat up straight, having been lost for a moment and not realizing that I had turned and caught her staring.
"Well then, I suppose I'm going to get to work," I said. "Of course, you're welcome to watch.”
“Inscriptions are always very interesting," the Atlantean princess said. "There is an artistry in the science."
"I wasn't aware there were so many people practicing inscriptions where you lived," I said as I got to work, pulling out several vials of my blood rather than opening a fountain in my arms while Eve was undoubtedly watching.
"Oh, yes," Almeria said. "Deep under the sea, so much of our systems only function on inscriptions. It's not an exaggeration to say that life under the sea only works with the system's magic."
"Hmm." I hummed as I got to work, scrawling inscriptions in my blood across the floor.
There had been a layer of stone that I had to remove to get to the inscriptions, revealing a subfloor that was mostly a large slab of stone anchored in the corners, keeping this palace atop the otherwise moist soil.
It was a good place to put inscriptions, and I decided that it made most sense to reuse that stone.
I created a large ring around some of the existing ruined inscriptions.
If Eve needed to power this one, she could use whatever means she had used for the others.
I simply needed to wrap mine around theirs.
I knew that too much interaction between the various scripts would muddy it and potentially ruin them, but I knew what I was doing.
"If you ever have the time, I'd love to see some of your people's inscription materials," I mumbled absently to Almeria as I continued my work.