Drip-Fed - Requiem 25

“Apexus  is alive, just show yourself, we won’t harm you!” the blonde Priestess  shouted, as she passed by Reysha’s hiding place. Having forced herself  into a narrow space between two bookshelves and a chair, like a cat into  a glass bowl, the Rogue was watching the feet of Mehily enter her field  of view on one side and soon exit the other.

If  anybody had crawled over the floor, they would have spotted Reysha  quite easily. Adventurers of a higher calibre and guards used to more  skilled invaders than the infrequent overzealous thief would have known  not to take the common idea off ‘nobody could fit in there’ and just run  with it.

Reysha  remained still for a long while, the ears atop her head slowly turning,  listening to all steps in the numerous hallways around her. When it  sounded like her opportunity had arisen, she carefully manoeuvred  herself out of her crammed state.

“Aclysia told us you would be here, please!” it echoed in the distance.

The  lies that Mehily were spouting entered her ears but were immediately  rejected by her mind. Obviously, it was just a series of lies to bait  her out. Like something that convenient was true. If Reysha had been her  usual self, she would have at least stopped to wonder how else the  Priestess could know that she was there. The mixture of magical  concoctions pumping through her veins made these things simple,  streamlined.

Mehily  was an enemy. She had wronged Reysha in the past. That she now decided  to present lies to catch the tiger girl was just another low point.  Because Mehily was the enemy, everything she said had to be wrong. If  the opportunity arose to kill her without endangering the mission,  Reysha would take it. Sombrely and without any crazy glee.

Just  like the emotions were streamlined, the pain from snapping her joints  back into their proper positions was nothing. The magic that allowed her  this control flared for one moment, then there were sounds more felt  than heard and a moment of pain. Finally, she resumed movement.

She  was already down in the tunnels underneath the priesthood area. Patrols  here were less frequent. Normal guards weren’t allowed to descend here  and even this situation didn’t lift that restriction. Only the Cardinal  would have the authority to allow people to enter the inner sanctum of  the temple and he wasn’t around to give any such order.

It  made her job somewhat easier. As did the esoteric, rather than  practical design of this place. In the windowless, magical illumination  of the temple’s underground system, there were many shadows to hide in  and many corridors to take if the original one was blocked by a Paladin  or higher-ranking Priest.

That  nobody knew what she was after or where she was didn’t help. The guards  had spread themselves through the entire building, trying to at least  spot her. If they could narrow it down to one certain area, they would  have been able to surround her slowly. As it was, their net was full of  giant holes and she slipped through unseen again and again until she  could simply walk in the middle of the corridor.

Reysha  was now so deep in the temple that nobody dared to enter. Her silent  thoughts were still tensed, waiting for anything, as she pried open a  lock. It was old, luxurious and hadn’t been exchanged in a long time.  The kind that had a key that was quite heavy and large, but also  incredibly simplistic. The mechanism inside was more of a strength test  than of lockpicking.

Behind  was a completely dark room. It was impressive in its featurelessness.  Just grey stone in a large rectangle, a flight of stairs at the far  back. The last hall before her target, if Apotho’s directions were to be  trusted.

She  stepped through the doorframe and barely managed to rip her arm up to  block a strike directed at her head. The blunt object cracked the bone  in her arm on impact, but the pain was only registered, not really felt.  Reysha reacted immediately, grabbing the baton of the ambusher with her  other hand before it could be pulled back for another strike.

Evmeria  clicked her tongue. The Inquisitor had followed a deduction, this  innermost was where the Cardinal would go first following his return  from the festival. As unlikely as it was that the assassin would know of  this, the blind woman decided that she alone could wait here and make  sure no trap was prepared.

“By  Jersoja, you have tread on enough sacred ground today,” the Inquisitor  spat out as the two of them engaged in a raw power struggle. That she  didn’t receive an answer was odd, but the glassy focus in Reysha’s eyes  told her quickly enough that she wasn’t dealing with the crazed woman  she had experienced before. “Surrender. Your angelic friend has pleaded  for your life, so I won’t take it.”

Reysha  didn’t flinch at the suggestion or the implications. Words flowed  around her mind as she twisted sideways and let go. The metal baton they  wrestled for suddenly went down, missing the tiger girl by a narrow  margin. Although Evmeria stopped the motion before it brought her off  balance, she was now too close to avoid the consequent knee to the  stomach. Only after letting out a pained grunt, did she manage to put  some distance between herself and the Rogue.

Reysha  closed the door, so carefully that it didn’t even whisper. She would  rather deal with fighting the Inquisitor with her divine blindsight in  the near absolute dark than the potential of someone seeing them, as  slim as the chance was. Evmeria had deactivated the lights in this room  to better hide her ambush, now it would serve in her battle.

What  little light there was, came from whatever was down those stairs,  flowing out in magical tendrils of a bright green past the outline of  another door. It was an orientation point in this otherwise pitch-black  environment.

‘I  can play this on time,’ Evmeria thought, carefully walking backwards.  The distance between herself and the only other life she could feel in  this space increased. ‘All I require is to assure is that she doesn’t  get to surprise the Cardinal. If he comes in here and sees her, there is  no way she can overwhelm his holiness.’

It  was her best interest to avoid confrontation, just evade and use the  cover of the darkness to her advantage. Reysha also realized this.  Eventually, she would run out of time. Every second counted, every  little delay that prevented the Cardinal from returning, running there  himself and stopping her with his superior power.

Reysha  also knew that she had a way to force the conflict and sprinted towards  the light source. Although Evmeria was unaware that the Rogue’s true  goal lay down there, at least until she was left ignored, there was no  way the Inquisitor could let the thief enter the one room in the church  she herself had no access too.

Hearing  the sound of moving leather, Reysha turned in her path and threw  herself to the ground moments before a bolt of pale, blue light  illuminated the hall. The magical attack missed her, she rolled herself  off, caught herself on her broken arm. If the potions hadn’t made her  ignore the pain at this point, adrenaline would have done just fine.  Evmeria started running, wanting to relocate to get another easy shot at  the tiger girl.

If  it hadn’t been for Reysha’s keen ears, sharpened by her biology, the  Noir condition, and the potions, this may have been a good idea. As it  was, every running step was like a scream of “HERE I AM, COME GET ME!”  in an open field. Once more, the tiger girl sprinted, now towards the  last roadblock between herself and the goal.

Evmeria  realized her mistake, took a fighting stance, and swung the baton with  both hands. The dull weapon hit Reysha’s torso on the left side, broke  two ribs. It was an attack the tiger girl had willingly taken. The  worshippers of Jersoja may have been arrogant and strict, but they  didn’t lie. The baton was not a weapon designed to kill and Reysha used  that to her advantage.

The  rod of the weapon was soon stuck under her armpit, her left hand  grabbing the hilt. If Evmeria wanted to pull out, she had to give up the  weapon. Until then, Reysha was all too happy to use the natural  advantage she had. The claws of her right hand extended and drew flash  blood, as she wildly swung and achieved some sort of hit.

Bleeding  from shallow cuts on her forehead, the black-haired zealot tried to  yank the weapon free, but found much more resistance the she had  anticipated. Taking one hand off the baton, she conjured a second  Palelight Bolt. It grazed Reysha’s right shoulder. While her spells were  less effective against someone who wasn’t a target of an Inquisition,  it should still have hurt. All the tiger girl reacted with was another  slash.

This  time Evmeria felt the claws rip open her throat. Just shallow cuts,  nothing life-threatening, but enough to make her stumble back. ‘I’ve  made a mistake,’ she realized, not just referencing the fact that she  had just lost her melee weapon to the tiger girl. ‘Had I known she would  be under an influence that makes her immune to pain…’ Evmeria scolded  herself, when she got out of this, she would spend a number of days in  isolated prayer and disciplining.

Although  her situation was bad now, she still had the advantage of time. She  just had to keep dodging, best towards the exit. As much as she hated  it, she would have to call for help. The only alternative now was to let  the Rogue have her way and that was the worse of the two sins.

She  saw the movement of the tiger girl. Her entire body was visible clear  as day, an outline of her features illuminated by her divine spark. As  naked and pure as every being was on creation. Too late did she realize  what the motion itself meant, only able to see her, not the things she  was holding in all their details.

That  she tossed the weapon she had just gotten herself hit Evmeria  unprepared. The baton flew into her shoulder. A painful, but not damning  hit in itself, it made her groan ever so slightly. That was all Reysha  needed to fly right after the weapon, tackle the Inquisitor and wrestle  her to the ground. Through sheer luck, Evmeria managed to throw out  another magical attack before the tiger girl’s fangs could sink into her  throat. The smell of ice filled her nose, then the taste of blood her  mouth as fist crashed into her head.

Even  her sight was shaken by the impact. Trying to throw another attack at  Reysha, Evmeria raised her hand. The Bolt went flying, but it was so  clearly telegraphed that the redhead simply bent her upper body out of  the way, then delivered another punch to the Inquisitors face. The next  instinctual counterattacked was derived a tad smarter, trying to aim at  Reysha’s lower torso, but the Regressian just took the Bolt and  continued punching.

The  Inquisitor didn’t get a chance for another attack. The raw savagery of  the punches left her dizzy. She could feel her face swelled, how  Reysha’s knuckles turned bloody, and how the life was slowly ripped out  of her. It wasn’t a quick death, it certainly wasn’t painless and it  left her more than enough time to feel the weight of her failure.

The  emotionless Rogue rose from a corpse that was hardly identifiable, were  it not for the charred looking leather. She paid the state of her own  body no mind, not the numerous broken bones, nor the frostbite and burns  she had suffered. All she did was turn and walk towards her goal.