Drip-Fed Pt. 08

Surprisingly, her stomach didn't feel full, despite all the liquid. Potions were taken in rather quickly by the body, much of their actual volume simply dissolving as part of the magical effects. Remaining crouched, Reysha kept her eyes on her target.

She had left the dungeon yesterday and had found this hiding spot, a hole in the side of an earthen slope. It had been created by a struggling Forester Dragon passing close to the church building and being shushed away before it could do any damage, in combination with some larger animals excavated nest. A toppled over tree hid most of the cavity from view, while allowing a view of the church from the inside, albeit a distanced one.

After one last night of sleep, she had sat there still and silent, waiting for the sun to rise to the appropriate level. Then she had started gulping down the potions, as Apotho had recommended. She swiped her lips with the back of her hand and looked at the remaining concoction, a purple smudge on the back of her hand.

Licking it off, she tasted the explosion of flavour. It was absolutely vile. The herbs primarily used in the concoction were strong in their taste. What was aromatic to a normal tongue was like putting the end product of a still body of sewage water left to spoil for two weeks into her mouth by sucking it through a dirty rag.

Regardless, she swirled it around with saliva in her mouth and gulped. She could feel the effects slowly settle in. Personality ceased more and more, all but her thirst for revenge was dampened. Even the ever-shifting insanity in her mind, telling her to do things that were less than advisable, was getting quieter.

At first it was unnerving, but Reysha soon found herself just not caring about these changes. It wasn't like her identity itself was being erased. Only the parts that didn't matter right now were silenced and the one thing that mattered, vengeance, was amplified. A mind always filled by thoughts senseless and terrible came to be completely quiet.

A point was crossed and suddenly the mixture of potions unfolded their full effects. Her scalp tingled, a series of shivers spreading out from there in waves that went all the way down to her feet. They bounced off from there, crawling back up her skin leaving the tiger girl to stretch her joints and muscles to get rid of that feeling. It accelerated the blood flow, the drugs pumping quicker through her body. She suddenly felt hot, gripped the sleeves of the stolen guard's uniform, and tugged. The already loose seams, having gone through the torture of crusting over with blood and then being washed in a cold healing fountain, came undone. She dropped the leather on top of the potions.

Although her arms were naked and dry, she felt the current of the air on them as if they were drenched with water. She grabbed the edge of the tree and her hands noticed every little small bump and rise in the withering bark. A piece of it came off as she pulled herself up. The smell of rotting wood filled her nose immediately. All of her senses were at an all time high. Her eyes focused the church once more. Her vision was both narrow and completely clear.

Then, without any further delay, she started moving. A series of small, pre-planned movements, carried her from one tree to the next. She could see the silhouettes of the guards in the windows. There were so much less today than usual. If she kept a proper angle, she could stay out of sight for a while. That had its limits, however, and eventually she arrived at where the forest ended and the controlled garden around the building began.

She analysed her approach. Wordless, she thought, like an animal would. Pieces of knowledge combined into different pieces, without the need for something like articulation. The northern gate, could not be used as her route into the curved building. Less guarded just meant that it was still guarded and she couldn't make a fuss at the entrance without alarming the church at large.

There had to be another way. Apotho had told her of a few that had been present during his time. She crept away from her current hiding spot and changed position to check on them. The unsecure window on the second story had been fixed, the outline of fresh stones was clearly visible on the otherwise old building. While they may have been an entrance on the flat roof, Reysha didn't think she could get away with climbing the entire thing unseen. The outside entrance to the cellar where the kitchen supplies were kept, however, was still right where he had described it to be.

Reysha checked the windows, then the surroundings, then ran over as quickly as she could while Sneaking. The entrance was a slightly slanted trapdoor next to the wall. It was made out of two heavy wooden boards with iron handles, both linked together with a heavy chain and a lock. Luckily for her, the lock looked old. A stingy owner had refused to change it as long as it still did what it was supposed to. Even without the proper utensil, Reysha was able to open it -- by delivering a carefully aimed heel stomp at the thing.

The chains rattled and Reysha pressed herself closely to the wall and waited. Once she was certain enough nobody had noticed, she moved to lift one half of the trapdoor. She didn't open it completely cramming herself through as little a gap as she could. The wood scraped against her, causing scratches on her arms and face that were just short of drawing blood. However, she succeeded in getting in. The chain was still, if loosely, wrapped around the handles and the trapdoor closed. Unless inspected closely, nobody would be able to see it had been opened.

Reysha ignored the food stored inside the room and looked instead for a way further inside. This storage room wasn't connected to the actual cellars of the church, that would have been painfully negligent architecture. For now, she had to get up to the base floor and then make her way to the segment of the building exclusive to the priesthood. There she would find her way further down.

Her heart beat in her chest. She could feel every ba-dump as if she was at the height of adrenaline. Yet, the rhythm was calm, steady, just like her breathing, calm, steady. She inhaled and noticed a scent that wasn't cheese or hanging meat. A current of air that passed by her and drafted upwards. She made her way around a corner and found yet another trapdoor, above her this time. A wooden ladder lead up to it. Without any choice, Reysha stepped onto it.

Her cat ears were standing upright, listening to everything she could. There was nothing above her, the kitchen must have been empty. The cooks inside had left to attend the festival, either as guests or as people of their profession. This was almost too easy. She pushed the trap door open and then was finally in the church proper.

What followed was a slow progression of Reysha using her superior senses to locate the patrolling guards and slowly weave through the corridors. The size of the building was an advantage to her, in this case, as decorations and corners were her two foremost advantages when hiding. Once or twice, things were in a pinch, but she managed to weasel her way out of it in one way or another.

She had expected the guards around to be relaxed, given the lack of incidents, but it seemed recent events had made them weary. Of course, Reysha wasn't in the know about Aclysia's breakout, but she noticed that people were on edge regardless. Something that eventually, slowly changed. Distant steps she had heard, slow and measured, turned into quick stomps along with half-mumbled orders. She couldn't make out the words, but very well the intents.

They knew she, or someone, was there.

She quickly moved on from the reading table she had hidden under and accelerated her movements. They were going to inspect the surroundings more carefully now, sitting around taking the cautious approach was no longer an option. Just the 'how' they knew, she didn't know about. The potions also prevented her from caring.

There was only the goal.

Aclysia was looking at the sky. Standing at the outskirts of the crowd, her gaze aimed eastwards. If Apexus was to fly to this place, he would have to come from that direction. Her own wings twitched whenever she saw something as little as a bird. If Apexus was coming, she would have to intercept him before he could bother the Cardinal and get himself into trouble.

"...in faith, we are all brothers and sisters. All petty squabbles are put aside, be it just for the day in which we honour the potential of us mortal races to ascend and take an earned spot amongst the gods..." the Remezan's speech continued on.

It was a good one, Aclysia found. Well trained, delivered by an austere man with genuine convictions in a manner that was convincing, but not preachy. However, it would have taken a fantastic speech to take the metal fairy's attention from the promise of being reunited with her beloved slime. If only he showed himself sooner.

'I don't know how much more I can take,' she thought, folding her hands in front of her chest as if she was going to let out a prayer. Knowing that she could soon meet him again put Aclysia's body on edge. Everything in her was longing for his presence. To be next to him, around him, just to see him, and touch him if possible. A pure desire for nothing but love. It put a worse strain on her than any stress of the past days.

At the very least, that stress didn't threaten to shut her down. Mehily had been friendly enough to share her mana, so Aclysia was now at her peak power, without the need of devouring any life. A luxury that she was thankful for in this difficult time.

The speech of the Cardinal wrapped up and Aclysia's heart sank when the broad man got off the podium. All that anticipation seemed to collapse in on itself like a failed soufflé, leaving a metal fairy that was too shaken to even cry. Had Gizmo been lying to her as well?

As the metal fairy stayed focused, Remezan stepped onto solid ground. 'Where is Evmeria?' he thought. The Inquisitor missing was noteworthy, given her constant presence around him, especially during events such as this. Given her zealotry, she attended speeches like this without fail. Either to comment on their lack of iconography or to praise him for an argument of faith well delivered.

Wherever she was, he would find out soon. For now, he had done his due as Cardinal. It was time to return to the church and relax in the security of the seal staying strong. His steps carried him back up the path he came. People shouted his name, applauded, even as the crowd slowly dissipated and went back to the festival proper. With every step he took, he grew more relieved.

Just as Aclysia grew more hopeless. Her eyes darted between the sky and the Cardinal. She was taking a risk now, standing amongst fewer and fewer people, but she could not forego the possibility yet. Maybe he was crawling onto the plaza after all? It wouldn't have been a less stealthy entrance, a massive slime with wings was impossible to overlook.

In that assumption, she and the Cardinal were both wrong, operating on old information.

"Sorry... excuse me..." Remezan turned his head to see a tall person approaching him. He was wearing a dirty, brown robe that was clearly too small for him. A massive hunchback was straining that fact further, pulling the edge of the robe up to the knees and the sleeves close to the elbow. It revealed his hands and feet to without hair or nails.

His face was mostly hidden. A hood was pulled over his head and bandages wrapped around what was there otherwise. What peeked out was a pair of catlike, blue eyes and a pair of lips and the underlying teeth, sharp and complete in their whiteness. The bump of the nose was completely covered. He was a man of brown complexion. Not overly dark, but like a man that had worked in the fields for the entire summer.

'What a poor soul,' Remezan thought, thinking him to be some sort of torture victim from some distant tragedy. It could have been, that he was a natural humanoid, created by a god with a very odd idea of beauty. Perhaps he was a crossbreed of two races, that was also a possibility. In the vast expenses of the Omniverse, very few things about humanoids were written in stone. They had whites in their eyes, they had at least two legs and feet and they walked upright. That and the arrangement and shape of their reproductive organs was about the same. Aside from that, things varied massively.

Still, this man exuded a very odd aura. The Cardinal couldn't quite place it, but it was unlike a normal man and felt distantly tragic and torn. Different natures seemed to clash inside the man, forcefully harmonized. Clearly, he was torn by something and in need of guidance. Which made Remezan feel twice as bad about having to tell him off.

"I have no time for you," he told the man as he marched on. "Feel free to follow me to the church, we can talk there, once I am ready."

"Been... told you can give me thing... is tradition if I approach you after speech," the man spoke in a slightly incoherent matter, but moved much more fluidly than his hunched form would indicate. "Sorry, worded that poorly."

Remezan ignored him and kept walking on. The man tried to come out of the little crowd that remained, but the Cardinal's guards stepped in between and blocked his path. From the sidelines, keeping her head lowered, Aclysia watched this entire thing. That man seemed familiar somehow but she could barely hear what was said.

"Listen, please..." the man tried to avoid a confrontation with the guards, stepping left and right, always getting blocked. The armoured bodies also blocked Aclysia's sight, but she was almost certain now. "Need your attention. Gizmo said..."

That caused the Cardinal to stop in his tracks. He knew that name, knew what connection implied. He turned and the guards parted. Not wanting to take any risks of any of this reaching anymore ears than necessary, Remezan grabbed the man and dragged him out of the thinned-out crowd. "Who are you?" the basic assumption was obvious, but the Cardinal needed to ask, since there was no translucent skin to be seen.

"Apexus," he answered, somewhat afraid now. The slime blinked a few times, trying to calm the Cardinal. Not that he knew anything about the religious man, he just felt strong and his hand around Apexus' arm was like an iron claw. "I want to see..." it was at this point that Apexus looked at the crowd behind the Cardinal and saw a woman fly at the two of them. "Aclysia."

Before Remezan could ask any more questions, a mindlessly happy angel interrupted his interrogation.

"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.