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4. Basil - The Workshop
🕑 Added 2025-05-10 22:02:14 +0000 UTC
Chapter 4
The Workshop
I didn’t have to wait long to find out what happened to the gifted girl from Burlon. By the next day, she had joined me in the cavernous ballroom along with three others. The five of us hardly made a dent in the grand space, but I found their presence preferable to being alone with the lich and the visions of cards that assailed me, extracted from her mind and force-fed into mine.
I only got to see my fellows in the brief reprieves Felstrife allowed me, but in those moments of clarity I tried to observe as much as I could, even though my head was already fit to bursting. The girl had a wide face, sprinkled with freckles, and short curly hair. I wasn’t entirely sure who she was until Felstrife sent a number of summoned Zombies and other morbid creatures to collect every potted flower and plant in the Palace.
By the time I made it through another gambit of images, spittle dribbling from my lips, the curly haired girl was crouched over a spray of daisies in a fluted vase, looking at them uncertainly. One at a time, Felstrife had the girl return each to seed, a feat she accomplished by holding her hands up, a soft yellow aura bleeding from her fingertips. The girl was sweating rivers by the time she finished the first, as if she’d had to physically crush the plant back into the tiny form. When she completed all ten, she curled up on the floor, shaking, and I had no doubt that the pain she was experiencing matched the incessant pounding in my head.
My other three conscripted companions were a female guard in battle-beaten armor, an elderly man who could only shuffle about with the aid of a cane, and a young man who I knew: Bessamun of House Jasker.
For each of these, Felstrife had a device to aid in their elevation, all three pulled from that same shadowy space she had retrieved my helmet from. I had thought the contraption I wore unique, but it soon became obvious that the lich was also a master artificer – that, or she collected such things as avidly as she did abilities. How many items must she have, I wondered, to match our abilities so precisely?
The guard was forced to do laps around the room, a bronze collar fixed to her neck violently shaking her whenever she stopped for too long, which she cursed at colorfully time and time again. The elderly man was given a fine chair from the ballroom to sit on and a section of silver rope to knot. Each time he succeeded, the metallic cord would slink apart, leaving him to do it over with his gnarled hands lest summoned Skeletons poke him with their rusty blades.
I had only guesses as to what their soul abilities might be, but Bessamun’s trick of bringing a book colorfully to life was something I had observed firsthand, and not just at the Rising Stars Tournament. Since the theme of Felstrife’s Artifacts was to force us to continually exert ourselves, it wasn’t entirely surprising to me when Felstrife pulled a sheet of parchment and a golden pen from her shadow space, laying them on the polished wood. Even so, I was not prepared for the pen to race across the page of its own volition, creating some sort of story and thus triggering Bessamun’s soul card. A young boy of blue light sprung up over the page, some six inches tall, and began quietly reciting the text. The page turned out to be equally enchanted, the words vanishing from it as soon as they were spoken, letting the pen whip back up to the top of the sheet right after scribbling the last word at the bottom. The paired Artifacts never tired, so Bessamun’s summoned figure didn’t stop speaking until the noble eventually collapsed – which we all did, sooner or later.
During the times we were both conscious, I would have asked him how he had been captured and how the other nobles were fairing, but he was placed on the other side of the room from me and seemed uninterested in speaking himself, a hollow cast to his eyes, which led me to believe that he had seen the worst had happen before he had been brought here.
We spent at least two days like this, more likely three; it was hard to tell since the ballroom had no windows and we weren’t permitted to leave, even to relieve ourselves – a task I was only able to manage because of the dark and festering state I was in. All the while, from whenever the sun rose to whenever it set, Felstrife flitted between us like a mother hen, waiting to see which of us would be the first to crack.
“So this is where you’ve holed up,” a voice I recognized said at some point during these blurred days. I blinked, trying to remove the cards that currently cluttered my vision, but it wasn’t until Felstrife lowered the companion ring from her head that the images started to drift away. Even with my sight partially obscured, I quickly spotted none other than Hull’s mother strolling into the ballroom. She wore a well-fitted dress and her high horns adorned her head like a crown, turning with her as she surveyed the space. Her features sharpened hungrily, eyes dancing among us. “And what sorts of delicacies are you keeping to yourself?”
“That is none of your concern, Yveda,” Felstrife hissed. The lich tilted forward as she skimmed across the floor toward the demon, giving herself a menacing air.
Hull’s mother showed no signs of being intimidated or agreeing with what Felstrife had said. Of course, the demon could make just as much use of us since her own ability let her rip out others’ soul cards and take their form. During the Apotheosis, I had seen her shift from a lanky-haired man who possessed Stealth to a small boy who had redirected an absurd amount of power onto our king, killing him. And when it was done, she had smiled with her true face the same way she was revelling now.
“Getting a good workout, Basil?” she inquired, emerald flecked eyes catching mine, and my hand instinctively went to my chest. With Felstrife I got to keep my soul, for the time being at least. I had seen my brother Gale after Hull’s mother had somehow pried his soul card from him, pale and drawn, almost like the walking dead himself.
The choice between these two evils was no choice at all.
“Do not distract him,” Felstrife hissed again, interposing herself between us.
“My, my,” Hull’s mother commented as she sauntered to the side, “so protective.”
“They are mine,” the lich ground out, voice dangerously low.
“Don’t you think that’s rather unreasonable?” Hull’s mother countered, eyes continuing to rove over the five of us, completely ignoring the Zombies and Skeletons scattered about. “We are sharing the shards of the king's card, after all. Surely that means other such spoils should be divided up as well.”
“And will you be sharing that?” Felstrife asked, hooking a finger toward the demon.
I was unsure what the lich was referring to, but Hull’s mother shifted in such a way to accentuate her hip and what was strapped to the side of it. “This?” she asked coyly.
At the sight of the metal cube, my breath caught, like my rib cage was crushing down upon it. The King’s Vault key. With all that had happened, I had completely forgotten about its existence. But seeing it now, the possibilities it represented came flooding back to me, so much so that I took a step toward the Mythics.
Before, I had just hoped to retrieve Esmi’s body so that I could see her again and keep her corpse from the gruesome fate of becoming part of the undead army. But now getting it from the necromancers was a necessity, as well as getting her card from the vampires – something I had only hoped to do after I killed them. And then there was the key Hull’s mother had. My revenge be damned, how would I get the ke –
I felt the shockwave rip through the room, pushing against my soul as well as my flesh. I turned in the direction of the unexpected force to see the freckled girl gasping, palm pressed to her chest. Unlike me, she had been continuing to work during the demon’s visit, and also unlike me, she had just managed to elevate.
Felstrife gave a slow wheeze, and I could tell without a doubt that it was a sound of delight. The lich drifted back into the room, toward the girl and the potted garden that formed a half circle around her.
“Let me take a peek, won’t you?” Hull’s mother said, angling that way as well.
Felstrife whipped around. “Leave now, or I shall –”
An audible snap cut the lich off, and from where I stood in the middle of the room, I saw the girl slump to the floor. In a flutter of moldy fabric, Felstrife was beside the girl in an instant, lifting the limp body in bony hands. The girl’s head lolled to the side in a way that was most unnatural. Where once I would have been sickened, now I only felt a deep, cold emptiness.
Felstrife howled in her half-dead voice, a sound of hissing agony that I would have never expected from her – even Yveda looked at the lich with widened eyes. “You have deprived this world of a beautiful possibility,” Felstrife whispered. She released the body and then drifted upward until her frayed dress hovered some five to six feet off of the ground. Her eye sockets roamed the room, like she could see beyond the walls that enclosed us. “I shall find you, interloper. And when I do, I shall rip the bones from your body before I allow you to die.”
From my periphery, I watched Hull’s mother languidly make the rest of her way over to the dead girl. “I take it you don’t need this one anymore?” Her casual cruelty sickened me as she crouched down, digging her hand in the girl’s mouth. That had been a person a moment ago, someone full of hopes and wishes, and now she was being treated like a sack with a prize at the bottom.
The demon removed her hand, strangely empty, and she looked up at the lich with calculating eyes. “There is no card.”
“Imposible,” Felstrife rasped, drifting down to check herself.
That’s when I saw it: a flash of gold trailing out of the room. Following it as best I could, I caught the outline of a card before it disappeared, and above that, a mask of clouds that similarly slipped away, like the air was deep water that could be vanished within.
I gasped but then quickly jerked my eyes to the side, not wanting to reveal what I had just seen. Twins be praised, when I dared to look at them, neither Felstrife nor Hull’s mother acted as if they had heard me, which left me alone with my racing thoughts. Azure is in the Palace. What’s more, Azure was willing to kill to keep the secrets they protected.
My heart thudded in my chest. No longer could I simply plot and plan in relative safety. Should I elevate now, I was as good as dead.
Comments
Ryan Prendergast
YOOOOOOO my card got featured!!
Furious Scribe
Thank you! Should be around the same length as the previous two.
Furious Scribe
Thanks! It will be Tuesdays and Saturdays again.
Lazy Monster
Interesting that Basil’s story is happening at a different time since he’s been doing this for a few days and Hull is still on the day the city fell. Also glad to know the resurrection relic hasn’t been forgotten. I’m kinda wondering what the lich is hoping the mind trap ability will turn into. Filling the wiki-brain is good and all but the power would fundamentally still be the same. My guess is maybe something like just knowing the cards in a summoner’s deck.
iridium248
Well, Basil is screwed now
Chirag
The book is back let's go! What's the new posting schedule gonna be like?
Jakob
Glad it's back! Do we have an estimate of how long this book will be?
Razor2811
I don't know if we ever got an exact role description, but he was the one who recruited Basil at the party. He is some kind of Spy Master of the kingdom.
Knyko
Who is Azure again
