Chapter 25.2: Prisoner Relocation

Christoff Veritas sat alone, eyes closed, in his short, asuran cell. His single stool beside him, he rested cross-legged on the floor, a posture that seemed more appropriate as he whispered halfhearted requests to the Unseen Ones. His predecessors had adopted them as their deities over two centuries prior, somewhere in this very region of the world, so he reasoned it was as good a place as any to try reaching out to them. He had never been a man of prayer, per se, but being stuck alone in that asuran cell for the last seventeen days was a good motivator. If there was any way the Unseen Ones could free him from his present predicament, he would pursue it, especially with so little else to fill his time—or take his mind of his own, growing stench.

There was a tinny cough beyond the hum of the energy barrier. Veritas refused to open his eyes. Annoying his asura captors was one of the few delights he’d found in this subterranean hellhole, and as long as neither they nor his unseen lords saw fit to free him, he planned to milk that delight for everything it was worth.

“Ahem,” the asura tried again. There was no mistaking that voice or the pitchy growl that edged around it. “Veritas,” Kikka demanded, “cut the metaphysical garbage and open your eyes.”

“Well, Kikka,” Veritas sighed, opening his eyes tiredly, “to what do I owe the honor?”

With one of those glowing tablets in one hand and a roll of parchment in her other, the little dictator glared at him from across the barrier, with a guard standing to either side and  just a step behind her. “Don’t you ‘honor’ me, bookah,” she snapped.

“Another pleasant day in the life of an asura overlord, I see,” Christoff said with a sneer. “Why, I haven’t had the privilege of your company in what seems like— minutes. I'd nearly forgotten what suffering felt like.”

“Just give me time,” Kikka growled. “I'll remind you.” She nodded toward the stone terminal beside the cell, and one of her lackeys stepped forward to power down the barrier. The other moved toward Veritas with a weapon already drawn.

The sheet of rippling energy dissipated, appearing to retract into the projectors at either side, as it had every time Veritas had been removed from his cell. The guard before him came through, demonstrating the same slight flop most asura had in their steps. He galumphed around Christoff and jabbed him sharply in the back with the rifle-like weapon.

The man glared, not at the guard, but at his master. “Truly, Kikka, does the constant display of power never get old?”

“No,” she sneered. “It doesn't.”

Shaking his head and gritting his teeth, Christoff rose obediently. “Very well. Let's get this over with. But I expect a mint and a glass of Eldvin wine on my bedstand when I return.”

“Shut up, bookah,” Kikka demanded. “I'm not here for your infernal lip.” She gestured once more at the guards and waved them forward as she turned and started a course away from the cell. Shackling Christoff and prodding him in line between them, they escorted the man away, just behind their chief.

“Don't hear me wrong,” Christoff sighed. “I do enjoy our chats, Kikka, but why exactly are you here this time?”

She said nothing. She didn't even look back at him over her shoulder.

Though he knew he needed these breaks in the monotony of increasing hours by himself, encounters with Kikka had also become less flavorful. Yes, he could still get under her skin, but the little hag seemed preoccupied with an increasing number of things that made Christoff less of an interest. In the short term, it made his game more of a challenge, but in the long term, he imagined it would provide him with new opportunities that her previous focus had denied him.

He waited for a response, but still none came. “Wonderful,” Christoff huffed. “The one time I would actually like you to speak.”

Her steps seemed to lighten at the remark, but she carried on in continued silence. The man shook his head and with effort let it go.

They crossed the detention room, and once more Christoff Veritas found himself hunched forward as they entered a too-short corridor leading up toward the surface. He took a more focused look at the weapons in the guards’ hands. Shaped like rifles, they must have fired some manner of magic or energy or something. The lengths to which these creatures went to reinvent everything was baffling to him. He could drive a rapier through one of their hearts or put a pistol round between their eyes and be done with it in no more time, with no less effectiveness, and requiring far less inventive difficulty than it took to fire one of their magical guns.

He shook his head, staying careful not to hit the ceiling of the hall, and he carried on.

After a few minutes following the twists and bends of the corridor, their path rose sharply, angling toward an open-air hallway that ran between the buildings of the complex. The two guards ushered him out into a narrow shaft of sunlight peeking down through the towering walls of the complex, and Veritas shivered as the surface air hit him. Underground the atmosphere was no drier than it was up here, but it had been comparatively cool. Up here that same moisture became a blanket of pressure that almost instantly wrapped him in a thin, sticky layer of sweat.

“What fortune,” Veritas groaned. “A visit to the facility’s steam room.” One of the asura jabbed him in the thigh with his weapon, and Christoff grunted.

They wound farther along between the chambers of the complex, passing doorway after doorway that offered minor glimpses into rooms filled with magitech equipment of all odd shapes and sizes, surrounded by cliques of asura scrambling about between them. He'd gotten so used to the handful of asura who attended to him, he'd nearly forgotten just how large Kikka's group really was.

As they approached the road that ran through the center of the complex, two figures stood exchanging words in the open space. At first he didn't know why, but both looked especially familiar to Christoff, even at a distance. He squinted, looking closer.

Another stride and he realized the one was Kikka’s cold lieutenant, Comakk. Yes, it made sense that he’d recognize one of the only two he had a name for.

The identity of the other asura, though, continued to elude him. Small and wiry, even by asura standards, that one wore a draping cloak that hid most of him but his thin ears and glowing yellow eyes. Comakk was giving him lengthy and emphatic instructions on something, to which the other repeatedly nodded in such a way that telegraphed a smug confidence, something not uncommon around here.

The familiar stranger caught sight of the small group moving down the corridor and met Christoff’s gaze. He too looked thoughtful for a moment, before a snap of recognition came. He shot a shark-toothed, dirty smile, and Christoff’s eyes went wide. The recognition hit him too. This was the tracker he’d caught on the heels of that sylvari and his jade.

“You! Hey you!” he called, quickly receiving another jab to the thigh from his guard. “Stop there. What are you—”

“Silence!” the guard on his left growled, ramming the butt of his rifle into Christoff’s gut.

The man doubled over, his words failing as he gasped to regain his breath. The yellow-eyed asura grinned all the more, nodding to Comakk before turning and parting ways. He shot one more toothy smile and a wave at Christoff before stepping past the edge of a building and out of sight.

“What’s he— doing here?” Veritas rasped, staring at Kikka’s back, still gulping air back into his lungs. “The sneakthief, what’s— what’s he doing here?”

Kikka paused her steps, glaring over her shoulder. “None of your Alchemy-seeking business.”

She looked forward and continued on, drawing Comakk into the procession as they passed him. The five of them crossed the central road between the wings of the complex, and Veritas watched the thief diminish down the road toward the southeastern exit of the facility.

“Well?” Kikka’s demanding tone drew Christoff’s attention back to the asura around him.

Comakk nodded. “He understands the details of the assignment.”

“All the details?” she asked. Kikka wasn’t large by any race’s standards, but Veritas had to admit that she had a gift for being imposing.

“Only those you instructed, Mistress.”

“Excelsior.” For a moment Kikka seemed satisfied, even pleased. As quickly as it had come, though, it disappeared. “Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked, glaring again at Comakk, who walked beside her. “If you aren’t there waiting, none of this works. Get your sorry skull to the waypoint at Vandal’s Claim and beat him there.”

“Mistress,” Comakk began calmly, “I assure you I can—”

“Go!” she screeched. “Now!” Reeling a step, Comakk nodded, accepting her instruction and turning to head away north, the opposite direction the thief had gone.

All of this was curious: the exchange, whatever scheme was in play, and perhaps more than anything, how this little dictator commanded so much authority over everyone around her. If even the three other asura who’d been here with her (Comakk and the two guards) had decided it, she could have been overpowered and ended right here and now, and Christoff was almost certain no one in this place would have lost a moment’s sleep over it. Her leadership, or rather everyone else's acceptance of it still made no sense to him. What did she have on everyone here?

His thoughts were stalled as the guards began moving again, prodding him along behind Kikka, who was already halfway across the road, nearer and nearer to another shadowy corridor between the angular, stone buildings on the opposite side. On snappy strides, she led the way into the space between buildings, into a doorway on their right, and straight into yet another tunnel down into the earth below the facility. Curiously, though, this one was more than tall enough for him, easily more than twice his height in all dimensions, and probably four times that of any asura. It gave him pause. What did they move up and down this corridor that it had to be so large?

“Your people certainly do like it underground,” Christoff observed with a groan, masking his observations. “I’d like to thank you for letting me see the sun before burying me in another dank cavern. Your hospitality knows no bounds.”

“Shut it, bookah,” Kikka snapped. Not even looking back at him, she continued leading them deeper into the network of halls.

When they finally exited the winding labyrinth, they came out into a stonework room similar to the cell block Christoff had been relegated to. Just as in that one, there were a couple of chambers recessed into the walls with those energy barriers sealing them off from the rest of the space. These were smaller than his own cell, certainly not large enough to contain all his men, but otherwise identical.

Christoff scanned the room, grimacing uncomfortably. That pair of cells aside, this room was nothing like the chamber he’d been calling home of late. Here translucent cylinders lined the three walls that didn’t have cells built into them. There were at least a dozen of them, big enough to hold a norn; capped in steel at top and bottom; and wrapped in a thick, green glass that, at his current distance, obscured whatever was inside. By some instinct, however, Veritas focused on one of them, staring intently as they strode through the room. Something inside moved, shimmering and bending behind the obscuring glass. Christoff concentrated harder, seeing the interior come more into focus with each step.

Suddenly, a serpentine face slammed itself against the glass, and Christoff leapt back.

“Keep walking!” the right guard hissed, jabbing him forward past the cylinder. Veritas obeyed, collecting himself as he continued on, but he still stared back at the thing in the tube. Teeth and claws now slid up and down the glass, and he could hear moans emanating from inside. The thing cried, though nothing appeared from this vantage to be wrong with it, whatever it was.

Kikka sniggered, looking back at him. “Afraid of a little skelk, Veritas?”

It was a skelk, he realized. The pale-yellow head and sides said it wasn't a Krytan variety, but it was a skelk. Whining, it collapsed to the floor of the cylinder, clutching itself.

Christoff’s gaze moved to the next canister as he passed. An asura stood beside this one with a pad, looking in and taking notes. Christoff looked in as well. It took him a moment, but he recognized the writhing form as actually being several different creatures contained together. They were smaller than the skelk, the size of dogs, hairless and red, and they— they were missing limbs, limbs that still littered the bottom of the container. Some had swaths of flesh still dangling from them as they pressed and ripped at each other. Those creatures weren't naturally red; that was their blood. Christoff scowled in disgust, snapping a glance at Kikka, who didn't miss a step as they passed the carnage.

“Murellow cubs,” she said plainly. “Strangely less susceptible to your magic than adult specimens, but when they finally do break, it's far more stark of a degradation.”

Christoff squinted hard at the rest of the containers in his immediate vicinity. Most he couldn't see into, but in the ones he could, he found everything from sparkflies to fern hounds. Some were healthy, undoubtedly awaiting their fates. Others were already suffering those fates.

Toward the end of the series, he found a pair of skritt, contained together and seemingly unconscious. And in the cylinder beside them, there was a lone charr, standing in his underclothes and furiously roaring as he pounded at the thick glass. At that, Christoff smirked. He was glad to see the asura had found a worthwhile use for those warmongering monsters.

“What is this?” Veritas finally asked, turning his attention once more to Kikka.

She kept walking, now nearing the sealed security door at the opposite end of the chamber. “I would have thought you'd recognize a charr, human. This one wandered too close to our operation on his ‘scouting’ for the Vigil.”

“No,” Christoff contended, “I know what a charr is. What is this?” He gestured bound hands in a circle around them. “This menagerie of horrors.”

Kikka shook her head. “Test subjects,” she said. There was a defensive edge creeping into her voice. “These are test subjects. This is science. Progress. Would you like to disagree?”

Veritas was accustomed to leveraging anyone and anything for his objectives, but this felt like some type of shrine to the tortured and deformed. Still, he eyed his manacled hands and thought carefully about his next words. Really, he thought about his whole situation. There was still much to gain in this arrangement, more than he could pass up, but until their deal was complete, he was likely only half a step from being in one of those cylinders himself. The increasing threat he'd felt was now clearer, and he couldn't decide if that was better or worse.

One of the nearby asura did something at his console, and the stonework security doors in front of them hissed and slid open diagonally. They all stepped through, and Christoff thought it wise to change the subject. “Where are my people?” he asked.

“Interesting you should ask now,” Kikka replied. She nodded to their right, where another pair of armed guards stood beside another human.