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Horde Thief
Chapter 33
Capturing your targets had been easy, but you'd expected that. In the end, you've dealt with far more dangerous threats than what was to you a collection of amateur cultists, the oldest of them little more than twenty, barely an adult by the standards of this world. But as with all cultists you've ever encountered, capturing them isn't the hardest part of the matter. That dubious honour is taken by the aftermath, where you find out everything they've done in the time since they went tumbling over the edge of sanity. Though if you're not mistaken, at most of these…people jumped. There are few things that you've not seen before now, but that doesn't make them any easier.
Ser Harry has a similar expression to yours on his face as you move quickly through the room, binding the warlocks and their thralls before the tendrils of shadow holding them fade. The usually soft light of his amulet is harsh against your conjured constructs, casting his face in unforgiving lines that make the warlocks go very quiet as he passes them. You wonder it says about yours that they flinch away from you, but can't bring yourself to care. The worst, as always, is yet to come.
Once the occupants in the room are contained, you move forward, casting the still struggling thralls into dreamless slumber first though, at Ser Harry's request. Apparently the longer they stay conscious and unable to fulfil the command of their masters, the worse the psychic scarring becomes. Not for the first time, you almost curse at the crudeness of this realm's mind magics, for at least your own are less destructive to the enthralled. You know you shouldn't feel guilt for that, but it's hard when you've reduced men to puppets before and seen them recover after their release. According to Dresden, it will be counted as highly fortuitous if even one in five of those enthralled ever properly recover from the mental scarring.
What you find pushing on is…as expected. It seems that the trend of those possessed of evil magics to escalate into further depravities as you push deeper into their lairs, if you could call this place one, isn't limited to the monsters of your own world and the Fomor. There, the burn scars specked with chips of blackened bones, an impromptu incinerator for the corpses created by the experiments you find in other rooms. Many of the buildings' internal walls have been broken through, to expand the area available to the fledgling cabal, and in one of them you find a double circle of silver worked into the floor at its centre. The rings are meticulously clean, but the space inside the inner one is so soaked with blood that you think it will leave a permanent stain. You've seen enough diabolist lairs to know what was being done here, but the double ring is odd, and Harry growls a curse on seeing it.
"What is it?" You ask.
"Not just strong," he replies, lips twisting in a snarl. "Smart, too. Not many know how to build a Circle like that." He shakes his head, as if clearing it, and nods at gore-soaked circle inside the ring. "A Circle can only keep one, specific, thing in or out. They used the first to trap their sacrifice, and the second to contain what they were summoning to feed. It's good work, too," he turns away in disgust. "Damn them."
You reach up and place a hand on your friend's shoulder. "A friend once said to me, in a place very like this one, that evil seems to delight in surprising you with proof of its depravity." Waymar's words are as clear in your memory as they were the day he spoke them. "What matters is that we overcome it, regardless of how hard it tries."
Harry tenses for a moment, then nods. "I think I would like to meet your friend, one day."
"If fate is kind, I have little doubt you will." There is something beneath the words of your reply, but it's only an echo of emotion buried by a wall of will and steady belief. Your companions have never once let you down. This will not be their first failing.
"Thank you," Harry nods, and something in his voice seems to recognise what you thought was hidden in yours. He straightens, and claps you lightly on the shoulder, a mark of camaraderie that you've only slowly become used to. "Let's see to what other foulness they prepared for us, then, and then be gone.
Fire and slumber are exercised in equal measure as you search the final sections of the building. The first for those creations and records too foul to be allowed to continue, and the latter for the...thrall is a poor word for those bound to serve for another's comforts, no matter how twisted they might be. Harry has no way to tell if they'll ever recover their sanity, but for them, it's apparently even less likely than the more disposable 'muscle' you'd captured breaking into the place.
"They've been far more deeply damaged," he explains, in a level tone that does nothing to hide the emotion roiling beneath it. "Twisted into little more than toys for this so-called cabal, and knowing it all the while, somewhere deep inside. There are…different types of slavery, and what's been taken from these poor souls was far more intimate." It is that statement that drives you to ask a question you've been hesitant to ever since you agreed to uphold the White Council's Laws for the course of this work. Your own magics aren't perfect, they can't wipe away mental wounds without even a scar like they can physical trauma. But what you can do is far more than Harry and the wizards of the Council seem capable of.
"There's a spell I know," you say, as you carry the slumbering forms back through the halls of horrors to the entrance, "that might be able to help these people. And the other thralls." Part of you wonders what might happen if you cast it on one of the warlocks, but after what you've seen, they aren't worth that. You gave no forgiveness to those who had sought to tip Tyrosh into the hands of daemons, after all. Why would this be any different? "It helps the scars of mental trauma heal. From what you've told me, these people," you nod down at the young woman you're carrying, unmoving in the hold of bespelled slumber. "Will be lucky if even one of them ever finds their way back to sanity. This could at least give a few more a chance."
Ser Harry is silent for a long moment, your steps hushed in the emptiness of the crude labs. When he speaks, it's with care. "This spell, do you know how it works?" That you do, the result of what was at first instinctual knowledge refined by the full sweep of draconic memory that came with your ascension, and sharpened by more directed study. This spell, you know well.
"It acts upon the mind, but does not invade it, as I understand it. It wipes away the worst of psychic scars, from torture or insanity." You explain, remembering the time spent to understand the limitations of the magic. "It washes away fear or despair inflicted by magic, and is often the first step for one so harmed towards recovery and, eventually, peace." You forbear to mention for the moment that you had used it on Naomi, to soften the memories of her time in captivity to the Fomor. "I cannot imagine it could harm these people, Ser. And if there is but a chance that we could help them, surely it is our duty to take it. Justice does not see only to the punishment of the guilt. Or at least, it should not."
Again, the long silence, as you head back for the rest of the thralls. "You are confident in this?" You only nod, firmly. "I would have to see it used, I think." Is the final judgement, one you cannot bring yourself to dispute.
"Here, then," you say, crouching down beside one of the remaining slaves, and gathering the strength of wishcraft to your hands. Harry winces, then his eyes flicker and he almost goes crosseyed before nodding once, gaze fixed on the barely dressed thrall.
You fix the memory of the spell in your mind, trusting in wishcraft to make it real, but before releasing it gently touch the dark-haired woman on her shoulder to dismiss the spell of slumber. She gasps and looks up at you, already shaking again. No words come from her mouth, only a low whine of animal pain, and pale green eyes flick back and forth between you as if you were predators, having found wounded prey. You speak quickly.
"Lady, you are hurt," she twitches at the sound of your voice, but you know something of those wounded like she is, and pitch your words in steadying tones. "I would heal you, if you would permit it?" This to the White Council, but you would help her nonetheless if she was unable to agree, once your word to the Council no longer held. But she surprises you and Ser Harry both.
"Pain…the pain," her words are agonised, "it would stop? Please, make it stop. Please. Stop. The pain, hurts, hurts," she trails off into nonsense, but it's enough for you. The magic comes together in your right hand, and you touch the fingers of it to her forehead.
"Stars and stones," Harry breathes, as the spell washes across her mind, and her shaking slows, then stops. With another word, you ease her back into the fugue of spellborn slumber, but there's no condemnation in Harry's oath, only wonder.
"Your permission, Warden?" You ask, and he peers at you oddly for a second before blinking quickly.
"Permission?" He repeats slowly, the word slow and almost dazed.
"Yes," you nod towards the others still to be carried from the chambers of the warlocks you'd captured. "To give the rest the same chance I've given her," a gesture indicates the woman slumped against the wall.
"Oh, yes," Harry nods, but his dark eyes are intensely curious. "Please, do."
The warlocks are all swiftly tried, found guilty, and executed without ceremony by a silver blade. You watch them die, some silent, some cursing the names of those who brought them justice. You do not pity them, but you do curse the circumstance that lost them to a world they could have bettered, instead. In those bound to their service, however, a minor miracle is observed in the fullness of time, as all make slow progress towards recovery. Torturous sometimes, yes. But it is recovery and that is something worthy of satisfaction. Two dozen lives saved, where all others would abandon them.
That, you choose to believe, is the true face of justice.
