Deviant Mage Pt. 01

"What the- who are you, and what the fuck are you doing?!" screamed a male voice. The shit-dripping deviant glanced at the source of that voice. A servant boy. Weren't they all supposed to be attending the ceremony?

"Making a mess" she said sweetly. "I'm just about done now."

"What... what the fuck... you- you!" the servant boy was speechless with rage, and rushed at her. But there were a bunch of tables between the two of them, so she was able to keep away from him easily enough. The filthy girl gathered a wad of shit and threw it at the servant's head, not expecting to hit a moving target, but she got lucky. It hit with a delightful 'splat' that spattered shit on his clean uniform. The boy paused, panting for breath, so aghast that he had frozen up completely.

"There's no way Dovian's not gonna find out about this" she told the bescumbered servant boy, barely feeling winded herself. "Her ceremony's gonna be making its way here in like... five minutes. Just imagine them all walking in on this." She gestured dramatically, and then idly ran the backs of her fingers down a white tablecloth, leaving four brown streaks. Then she sauntered out the same side entrance she had come in from, and the boy gave chase, screaming what she presumed was bloody murder.

The shit-witch firmed up the muck covering her body with a command, so she stopped leaving a trail of dripping shit. And she hid well away from the filthy trail of footprints she had left coming in, which the furious servant boy followed, no doubt thinking himself clever for following her trail when she so clearly couldn't possibly not leave one, and likely to feel pretty stupid when he realized that the footprints were facing the wrong way.

The shit-witch wanted to watch the chaos that would result from her actions, but she had some sense left. It was time to leave. Still keeping the crap that covered her body from dripping (a lot of it was old, and was reluctant to follow her command, so bits of it did plop to the floor from time to time), she snuck her way up a set of stairs and out a side-door that led from the keep to the duskward wall.

She peered out the door down onto the courtyard. The ceremony was still going, with the guardsmen and Lanomen still doing drill in which they kept using their spears and swords to salute their guests, and one of the Lanomen dropped his spear. Everyone pretended not to notice.

She could see the shit-spattered servant boy from earlier frantically whispering to people, trying desperately to figure out some way to disrupt the ceremony without getting in trouble. He would likely soon learn that there was no way except to incur Dovian's wrath. And servant-boy there did not have that much of a spine.

The shit-witch reached into her clothes once more to coat her hands in delightful brown goop. She darted out onto the wall, looked the twenty feet or so down to the rocks, shrugged, and hopped over the parapet. She told the shit covering her hands and feet to become extremely sticky, and she started to climb her way down.

And then she was reminded of how aged shit didn't stay nearly as strong or sticky as fresh stuff. The parapets protruded forward from the wall by about a foot (for the machicolations), and she came to this conclusion as she attempted to negotiate this protrusion. Hanging from one hand, the shit 'glue' failed, and she fell. She flailed desperately with her hands to re-adhere herself, managed to touch the wall with her outstretched hand, and this made her slam down painfully against the wall. Nearly by reflex, upon hitting, she commanded all the other shit covering her to join in at adhesion, and so she stuck fast.

She breathed a deep stinking sigh of relief before she continued clambering down, now much more cautiously. She'd felt properly badass for all of five seconds as she'd vaulted over the castle wall, and she reached the foot of the wall feeling like a clumsy fool. Oh well. That still could have gone way worse, she'd take it. There was an amusing her-shaped shit-smear about fifteen feet up the wall, and she attempted to break it up (and the other signs of her descent) with her coprokinesis. She didn't have much time.

She heard the beginnings of shouting. She recognized Dovian's scream; apparently servant-boy had actually summoned the nerve to disrupt the ceremony directly, and Dovian could not bear a disruption in her perfectly planned day, especially by someone who was spattered with excrement. Boy, was she in for a surprise.

She ran across the flat semicircle surrounding Castle Lan, not caring about being seen, and once more the chaos she'd unleashed meant that no one was looking her way. She reached the rocks and crags and hid among them, and picked her way back towards where she'd hidden her bag an endless day ago, and found it easily. Once she'd recovered her knapsack, she peered over the rocks to confirm no one was chasing her, caught her breath, and then hurried off at a somewhat less frantic pace than before, in the direction of the duskward mountains.

The mountain slopes that confined Hethaltie's Plateau were steeper than the mountains that bordered the rest of Lanovale, and trees only barely survived on their slopes, and the only ones that encroached on the plateau were stunted and sickly things. She knew that was just because the soil of the Hethaltie's Plateau was really poor, but it still gave a vague impression to the filthy girl that something of the supposedly holy plateau was repellent to the woods. Like it was cursed rather than blessed.

As she made her way towards that sickly forest, she passed a vast boulder that was very different from the other crags. It was a smooth elongated egg-shape, fifteen feet tall, sticking nearly straight-up, and its stone that was a faintly translucent blue-gray. It was called Godstone, there were a bunch of stones like it scattered around the plateau, hinting at what lurked further up.

That leg of her hasty hike finished, obscured by a sickly tree, the shit-covered girl looked back at her former home, which looked so small in the distance, yet loomed menacingly from atop its cliff. It was a home she didn't want. Hadn't ever really wanted, despite how grateful she was supposed to be to have had it. Her body had stopped dripping a while ago, and the muck was starting to dry. The shit covering her face felt tight and crackly, but the filth within her clothes still felt sticky.

She had abandoned a life of so-called luxury. For this. For the ability to be as filthy as she was now, and for no one to be able to make her stop, was a joy to her beyond anything that her miserably posh life had ever given her. Having finally done what she had always dreamed of doing, she found that she regretted nothing, except perhaps that she hadn't done it sooner.

She turned her back on that cold clifftop fortress full of backstabbing arrogant assholes, and headed into the sickly woods. The fun of escaping Castle Lan was over, and now she had to prepare to live the rest of her life as a filthy exile. To anyone else, the prospect of that might have sounded like misery, but to the nameless witch it sounded like the beginning of an exciting, fantastically disgusting adventure.

Epilogue:

Dovian stood at the main door to the dining hall. Her face was bloodless, her left eyelid twitched, and she was utterly silent. One could have almost mistaken the silence for calm, as she took in the sight of the once immaculate chamber's befouled state.

The display looked like pure chaos at first, but there had been thought put into parts of this revolting display; many of the stinking brown streaks were pointing towards Dovian's chair, drawing the eye to it and the obscene words scrawled in feces upon it, leaving no doubt at all as to who had done this. And Dovian stood there frozen, at a loss for words, and without the faintest idea what to do besides gape. Her mind was blank except with utter, livid, murderous rage. And she couldn't even take her fury out on anyone!

Lyran has just wiped her ass with this family's fragile reputation, came an intrusive thought in Dovian's head, and a giggle rose unbidden from her chest. A giggle that sounded utterly deranged. There was nothing funny about this! Any who might find it amusing were the sorts who were tickled by the lowest possible scatological humour! Why was she laughing?!

The servants, behind Dovian, were backing up. Probably out of fear. That was wise. The only thing that prevented Dovian from lashing out at the nearest expendable person was the fact that a casual murder would ruin their family's sullied reputation even further.

She slapped herself, hard, across the face. The pain sobered her slightly. She turned to the servants. "Assemble tables in the entrance hall for our guests. They shall not be using the dining hall tonight. You will be quick about it." She turned to her brother, Osreval Lanovin, master huntsman of the Lanovins. "Find out where she went. She must have left a trail. I don't care if our guests notice the activity. They cannot see this... this... display!- go unanswered!"

Osreval nodded, and hurried off. Dovian was about to turn to the captain of her guardsmen, when she noticed someone lurking behind the crowd of wary servants. Someone who was travel-stained, but whose clothes were very well made.

"Duke Kesilbary!" she said with a start, the very moment it sunk in that he was here, and he had probably seen her little display of insane laughter just now. "You- I-"

"I would appreciate it if you let me see what is behind that door" he said smoothly.

"It is something too obscene for your senses to witness, my Lord!"

"Do you think me too soft to endure the sight and smell of something vile? If so, I must say, it is exceedingly odd that you might think that, considering that I have just willingly traveled here. Show me what is behind those doors, Dovian Lanovin."

"Or you'll what?" Dovian hissed. And everyone around them froze. "What is beyond those doors does not concern you."

"I already know something is wrong, Decountess Lanovin. If you do not show me what it is, I suppose I'll have to investigate what went on myself. And perhaps I might draw a conclusion from incomplete information and my own fallible reasoning." He smiled at Dovian.

Dovian's right eyelid started to twitch again. She threw the doors open and stepped aside to reveal the shit-spattered dining hall, beautifully lit by the light shining in through the newly cleaned windows, revealing every detail. The Wandering Duke stepped through, finger to his chin. He looked intrigued. "A child of yours did this, I see."

"That's just what this saboteur wants you to think, my Lord" Dovian said coldly. "I believe this to have been an attempt by the Iokos house to embarrass our family before you. I suspect there is an agent within these walls!"

"An Iokos agent wearing a dress, who chose this as their means to embarrass you" the Wandering Duke gestured to the imprints left on hanging tapestries of a clearly female figure. "And you, with not one but two of your offspring oddly missing from the ceremony, including your middle daughter Lyran. How curious."

Dovian started to giggle again, and she didn't even know why. It was like embarrassment and rage had boiled over to such an extent that she either had to laugh or murder someone, and laughter was somehow the more socially acceptable than slaughter. The Wandering Duke Kessilbary regarded her with his head askew, expression mildly concerned. Pitying, possibly.

Dovian tried to calm herself. Tried to take deep breaths. But her laugh fought through every attempt to contain it. And, with her honored guest regarding this lunatic display, a critical point was reached.

She reached to a part of her being that she had not touched in some time, and her lunatic mirth was washed away by icy calm. Then she punched the stone wall next to her as hard as she could. There was a dull 'crack' with the impact of her fist, and the skin on her knuckles split. Only a little, though. The 'crack' sound had come from the stone block being hit so hard that a chunk of it had broken off.

Dovian breathed a long, deep breath, looked at the single drop of blood dripping from her now split middle knuckle, and daintily daubed at it with a handkerchief. Her rage was gone, and in its place was an icily tranquil yearning to destroy. She glanced at the Wandering Duke, whose expression was completely blank. From the way he stood, and the way he was looking half-focusedly at Dovian's torso, he was clearly prepared for her to attack him. Yet he hadn't called his guards. Curious.

"It was your daughter Lyran who did this?" the duke asked mildly.

"Yes." Dovian said distantly.

"The Lyran who you repeatedly made mention of in our correspondence, despite her irrelevance and my disinterest? That Lyran?" The duke was still standing in a deliberately relaxed way and wasn't taking his eyes off Dovian. "You're not nearly as subtle as you think you are, Dovian. You were plotting something with her. I'm guessing this wasn't part of it." He smirked. Dovian's dark tranquility did not compel her to anything regrettable- a testament to her skill. She let it fade before it did.

"You jump at shadows, Duke Kessilbary. I merely had hopes for the girl that have today been dashed." The tranquil desire to see the world crumble around her was now gone. Dovian took another deep breath, which was tainted with the smell of excrement. The disgusting, worthless degenerate girl had been wallowing in the cesspool, a low not even an animal would sink to! "Now, let us leave this place. I expect your men are weary from their journey- let me show you all your quarters, which I assure you have not been sullied."

Sirgil took that particular moment to barge through the crowd, looking harassed, and like he was about to complain to Dovian about something. Then he saw Dovian's expression, and the cracked wall behind her. He closed his eyes, muttered what looked like a short prayer, and then came closer to her. "The servants think they've found Umtieone" he whispered in her ear. "But...he's trapped in his own chambers. The lock has been ruined, and they can't open the door with anything short of axes."

Dovian's eyelid began to twitch again, but she calmly pressed on her cheek until the twitch went away. Umtieon's rooms were right opposite the quarters she had assigned for their guests to have. It was also specifically designed to be as difficult to batter down as possible.

"Have a guard descend by rope and go in through the window, and have them unpin the hinges from the inside" she said softly, after a moment's thought. None of those rooms had barred windows. Sirgil nodded and hurried off, looking relieved that Dovian hadn't lost her temper on him.

Dovian's rage kept smoldering behind her eyes. And every time she thought she'd banished the inner demon, another problem would emerge that tried her patience further.

Like how they didn't actually have enough staff to both send anything resembling a proper hunting party out after Lyran and deal with placating their guests, so only her brother Osreval (and his hunting dogs) could be sent. Osreval was a fine tracker, but he was but one man.

The only way to get into Umtieone's quarters was by smashing his expensive glass window, and her son was found tied to his bed, his face bearing a deep gash that would undoubtedly leave an ugly scar, and the Lanovin's heirloom sword, the Butcher's Blade, was broken in half and its two halves stuck in the chamber pot, the lower half crusted with the residue of blood. Umtieone claimed Lyran had gotten the drop on him and had won by fighting dirty. And yet nevertheless, he had lost a fight against Lyran. The large man who trained for at least an hour almost every day had lost a fight against a young woman who had, so far as Dovian knew, never even been in a fight in her life! And she couldn't even say she was surprised to hear that!

And then she heard that that one of her nephews had abruptly collapsed, vomiting, and this time it seemed that his poisoning was genuine! Not long afterwards, she found out that another one of her nephews' quarters had been broken into and ransacked! Had Lyran had something to do with those, or were these more absurd schemes playing out despite her orders!?

About three hours later, after a succession of minor to moderate disasters grated across Dovian's nerves like a particularly slow torture device, Osreval returned. He'd lost Lyran!

Dovian demanded to know how someone who was literally covered in a stinking crust of human waste could possibly evade the noses of their trained hunting dogs. And Osreval, himself seething with rage, told Dovian about how Lyran had drugged his dogs. Particularly about how his favourite dog had been straight-up poisoned by whatever she'd used, and was dead. He'd had to rush down to Lanovul to get his assistant huntsman, but that man's dogs hadn't been trained to track people! Without them and with all the delays, he'd lost her trail. All he knew was that she'd gone deep into the duskward forest.

Dovian's right eyelid started to twitch again, and wouldn't stop. Lyran had gotten away from her, and there was nothing more Dovian could do to catch her! Somehow, that shit-loving degenerate had beaten her!!

Dovian would see her wretched, disgusting failure of a daughter (who'd won?!) begging to be impaled on a stake for this!!!

Though there were still a half-dozen small to medium-sized fires scattered around the castle that needed putting out or tending to, she shoved her responsibilities off to Sirgil (even though the man was one of the most inept in this stupid castle, and she was sure this fiasco was partially his fault!!) and went down to the dungeon without telling anyone where she was going. Down there was where the Professor was chained up.

When she'd found that bottle of a substance she was unfamiliar with (but bearing a label she was familiar with) dangling from her doorknob, Dovian had known that someone was playing her, but she couldn't ignore it either, and had followed the strange nose-numbing smell to the Professor's nearby quarters, where she'd found the door hinges greased, the laboratory floor covered in broken glass, the desk drawers crudely ripped open, and the old man lying in bed, muttering to himself.

Once the Professor had sobered up (terror having sped the process up considerably) he had claimed that an intruder had sabotaged his laboratory, and insisted that he had smelled the remnants of that intruder's particularly potent unwashed stink. As he had clearly been trying to deflect blame, Dovian had ignored him. Now, she was all but certain that it had been some scheme on her former daughter's part to expose the man's use of unholy intoxicants, and that Dovian was doing exactly what Lyran wanted by punishing him. Part of Dovian wanted to offer the man mercy because of that, but only part. The rest of Dovian wanted to see someone who disgusted her, and whose death was largely inconsequential, dead. She wanted to hear that person scream. And look who was chained up on her wall, fitting both those criteria!?

He died about an hour later, and he had screamed many a long, beautiful scream. Dovian was spattered with his blood, but she was wearing a leather apron and mask. She felt much better now. She had to dispose of a body without their guests noticing, but oh well, it wasn't like she hadn't dealt with that particular problem before. She started to hack the body apart.

As the old man's scattered body parts cooled, and blood dripped from various implements, Dovian looked at the scattered pieces of meat that had once been their hired academician. They could get another, this one had been a disappointment even before she'd learned of his vile habit. She'd left his face largely untouched, in the hopes that his final anguished expression would be preserved upon his dead features. That happened sometimes, but not with the Professor- his face had gone slack the moment his soul left it. It was an expression Dovian felt was far more appropriate for his face than that dismissively arrogant expression he had generally had while alive. As Dovian looked him in the dead eyes, she started to laugh.