Dragon (S)Layers Ch. 36

Volume 4: Dereliction of Duty

Chapter XII: Dereliction of Duty

Some minutes later Sarah peeked out from around her coat, emboldened by the barking dog's sudden quietness and the fact that her left leg had gone numb from being stuffed in the workbench's cubby. Hardly dignified, but she'd have gone unnoticed, surely. Once she was sure there was no one around she stood painfully, bracing her hand against the workbench and renewing her search for a tool suitable for cutting into the flooring.

After a moment she gave up and strode over to the hole she'd made, crouching down she eyed the huge mastiff who was still attending the door, prancing left and right in anticipation someone would dare break in. All it would take was a moment to rot the wood enough to get what she was after, but for the dog any excuse would be more than enough to send it off the deep end.

She bit her lower lip looking between the hole and the dog, then the little trim saw. There was a time for ingenuity and then there was a time to be quick- like ripping off a scab. Gods was-

Movement stirred in her peripheral vision. She pitched to the side grabbing for her flintlock by instinct but the moment she saw more of the figure she understood the futility. Standing there in the inky gloom was her Cherub. The perfect, porcelain visage of a deity's servant was dressed in an odd three piece suit, mirror polished shoes and black gloves staring at her with white, pupil-less eyes as cold as the master they both served. Sarah exhaled a sigh of relief and irritation.

Then horror as she realized what was going to happen.

In the space of an instant Sarah imagined the dog turning on them upon sensing the new presence and- more importantly- the magic she carried with her. He'd turn to defend his master's property and probably attack whomever he saw, and since only Sarah could see her Cherub, she was the most likely target.

What happened wasn't much different than what she imagined. Chac turned, teeth bared and his ire focused immediately upon where the Cherub was standing. Sarah shuffled back away from the dog as it started to plod toward it. For her part in it, the creature actually raised her brows and edged away calmly. To Sarah the sound of her shoes click clacking against the floorboards was actually kind of reassuring; it was the only time she'd ever seen the 'woman' uneasy about something.

Not one to waste an opportunity, the redheaded half-elf eased towards her stash. She eyed the Cherub who seemed rather intently focused on the Mawik bred killing machine striding towards her, sniffing the air and trying to pinpoint the 'threat.'

What little Sarah knew about the Mawik plains, and by extension their people, said that even the land itself seemed to reject the gods- everything had evolved some form of sensitivity to magic and an innate distrust of magic. Even the legendary sunless steel they produced could supposedly damage and even kill divine creatures. It seemed the tales she heard weren't that far off. . .

"What are you doing?" The Cherub asked rather indignantly as she backed up. She made a vapid shooing motion at the dog who followed her hand's arc with his muzzle. The fear she was showing made Sarah wonder if the dog could actually hurt her- and by extension Sarah- or if she was just uneasy. "Go away."

There was no sense in waiting around to find out, Sarah decided as the mastiff closed in on his prey. She slid her fingers into the hole and opened the channels in her body to let her 'gift' flow through. In seconds the floorboards began to dry and turn to a dull ashen grey that flaked off under the pressure of her palm. Moments after that the sub flooring gave way to a similar fate. Tendrils of rot crept out from around the hole like the roots of a tree, chewing through the wood easily and already starting to creature new fractures. Once Sarah was sure she had plenty of room to free her treasure she closed herself off and shook feeling back into her hand.

The Cherub was circling back towards her at a slight angle that would ensure Chac passed by Sarah as they moved. Sarah gave the creature a dirty look as she reached into the hole and dug at the dirt as quickly as she could. Only a few feet away the dog stopped, sniffed the air and settled his gaze on Sarah.

"Co- come now, don't give me that look." She sputtered a little, digging into the dirt all the faster now with both hands. "Don't do anything I'm going to regret. . ." The hard dirt scraped her sensitive flesh like gravel as she worked it faster. For every step he made towards her she only found an inch of purchase in the soil. There was no way she'd get what she needed fast enough. . . "A little help would be appreciated!"

"Why would I help someone who's forgotten their basic duty? You were supposed to give that boy a reason to believe in-"

"Do be realistic!" Sarah already had her lie spun up, plausible and perfectly executed in her mind. "You see what I'm dealing with here, don't you?" The dog stopped, looked between the Cherub and Sarah, confused by the presences. "Maybe you missed that part of my memory when you co-opted me, but Mawik animals despise magic in all its forms!"

The Cherub took a half step back. Sarah smiled inwardly. Unless she was killed by the dog, she'd live another day. . . As she dug feverishly into the soil her fingers scraped the top of a familiar glass container. She almost exclaimed but before she could even celebrate internally the dog lunged at her.

With all the grace of a cat tumbling downhill in a barrel the cleric rolled on to her back and brought her pistol up width-wise so the wood caught in his mouth. She barred her feet against his shoulders and shoved both hands against the pistol. The powerful creature barked furiously around the weapon baring down on her, snapping, shoving off against the rotting wood to attack his prey.

Sarah did the only thing she could do; she whimpered and whined like a bitch and shoved the flat of her gun into the maw of that powerful beast to keep it from finding her throat. She knew better than to look to her Cherub for help but she still tried- unsurprisingly the creature was trying to keep distance from the whole affair.

Divine servant indeed.

Chac shoved down on her so hard her elbows slammed into the ground and she almost lost hold of the pistol. He yanked back against the weapon and thrashed his head back and forth, ripping it from her hands and sending it sailing across the room. Sarah watched in horror as the weapon clattered to the ground but she had no time to let it sink in before the dog was aiming for her throat.

The half-elf pitched her weight to the side by reflex, tiling her head down to protect the vitals as she grabbed his muzzle with both hands. Teeth. Powerful jaws. She could kill him. . .

Sarah kicked her foot under her flank. Pushed up only to have him shove her back down with his fore paw. How could she have been so stupid? She hadn't survived slavery and twenty years on the run for this, had she? She wanted to live.

She deserved to live.

"Kill it!" The Cherub shouted.

"Ngh!" Sarah whimpered. She pushed up again only to be slammed back down. The dog thrashed again breaking out of Sarah's feeble grip. He dived for her face.

It was a strange notion, but three decades of rolling around in one bed or another flashed through her mind in an instant and an idea formed between the time it took her to get her leg wrapped around his back and her hands under his throat. She pushed off the leverage she had and used her other leg to pull the dogs' towards his body sending him slightly off balance. Fear punched into her throat when he lashed out at her trying to find something to bite but her adrenaline surged with every passing second she became more aware of herself in relation to him and she wrestled against his leverage.

Her hand wrapped around his throat and pushing his head back, she pushed his weight to the side with her thighs. They turned and fought more until she had him facing away from her and her weight pinning him down against the floor. Panting heavily and trembling like a leaf she looked to her Cherub and, through sweat stung eyes, she eyed her. "You. . . .are quite bothersome."

For her part in it, the Cherub crossed her arms over her well tailored suit and just stared at her as the dog thrashed in Sarah's arms. Eventually she deemed her cleric worthy of a vague shrug and a small 'hmph.'

Sarah tightened her grip on the dog trying for a reassuring coo that came out far more pained than she meant it to. "Normally, I'd love nothing more than to spend quality time wrapped around you, but I really do need to be going." To her Cherub, she said: "Be so kind as to fetch my-"

"That's not how this works, Sarah."

"Oh! Well then allow me to let our friend here go and we can pontificate endlessly on division of labor!" Sarah grunted when the dog thrashed again.

The Cherub, unfazed, stared at her indifferently. "You don't keep your end of our bargain- you don't serve your god. Why should that god now grant you-"

"Come off it," Sarah cut her off. "I've had quite enough to deal with in the past few days that my patience is quite sincerely at its limit!"

"You were supposed to show that boy the power of the Engineer, you were supposed to display a miracle for him. . . You were supposed to bring him into prayer."

"If you've not been paying attention, there is a dog here!" She push back when he tried to free himself again. "A Mawik one at that!"

"That is not my problem."

"My death will be! Or have you forgotten?"

The Cherub stiffened a little. Sarah wasn't supposed to know about that little nuance in their Pact. "I will be remade. You won't."

"Spare me!" Sarah grumbled as she briefly considered using an actual blessing to disable her would be killer. It had been decades since she'd done anything like it and the notion felt absurd, almost blasphemous to even consider- irony in motion. "Now please be so kind as to-"

"No."

Sarah chuffed and in her most heavily accented sphinx said, "You're a bitch, you know that?"

A dry smile was all she earned in response.

"Fine, I'll let him go," Sarah lied. The Cherub wouldn't know it was a lie but if she was so damn proud she could guess at Sarah's buff.

At first the Cherub didn't react but when Sarah started to draw back her weight from the dog she backed up a step and actually started to turn away as if she'd be able to run right through the wall. Maybe it had something to do with how they interacted with the real world- Sarah noted it, secured the dog once more and waited until the Cherub was a few feet distant before she reached for the hole in the floor again.

She worked her weight back using every muscle in her body to bend back enough to claw deeper into the dirt until she found her jar again. Fighting the dog every inch of the way, Sarah pulled the stopper on the container and grabbed the rolled up documents inside, stuffing them into her coat pocket she looked to where the Cherub was- against the workbench watching both of them.

There was no way she'd be able to let the dog go and get out in time to avoid being hurt. But that didn't mean she couldn't distract him, did it? Sarah puzzled it over briefly and smiled when an idea hit her. She fished in her coat pocket for one of her gold coins and held it to the dog's snout. He gnashed at the smell, growling and Sarah opened herself up to the hot kiss of entropy directed through her fingers into it- the coin warped slightly and even she became aware of the surge in magical energy within it. When the dog was well and truly about to rip himself from under her she threw it right towards the Cherub and rolled off him, curling into a protective ball under her coat.

He tore off barking loudly. Nails clattering against the boards. In a second he cleared half the distance. He wasn't going to hurt Sarah.

Sarah sprung from her cowering and scampered for the door, not looking back. She was out the door before the dog had even gotten to the work bench.

Once outside Sarah heaved a sigh, drinking in the evening air and slumping against the wall. Her pistol was still inside, but she couldn't go back for it now, there would be no point. The Cherub? Well. . .

"That was uncalled for," a voice said to her right. Sarah startled. Her Cherub was standing there looking none too pleased.

Sarah turned away. She was in no mood.

Five steps later the Cherub touched her shoulder sending a thrill of icy emptiness through Sarah's entire being- a soulless vacuum of unfathomable emptiness rolled out before her and atrophied any sense of self, any hope or relief she might have held. Sarah was numbed to the core causing her to stagger and stop. She looked to her Cherub, eyes narrowed.

"I am not done with you."

From somewhere distant Sarah muttered, "I am not His property."

"But you are. We have a Pact. You failed Him yet again. . ." She edged closer, nose to nose. Her lifeless eyes betrayed nothing. "You had a chance to do something powerful. . . I give you these powers to do His bidding."

"I showed the boy a better way!" Sarah could feel her natural spirit winding through her, rising. Pride and irritation that someone would dare challenge her work fueled new levels of both. "I taught him a better method, what is best for an inventor if not the refinement of one's craft?"

The Cherub's right eye twitched a little. Just like Sarah's did when she was stressed. "I decide when you have failed. I decide the standards. You refute them, again and again. . ."

"The dog-"

"Has nothing to do with it!" She snapped. Sarah buckled under a sudden wave of steely rage that slammed into her like a hammer, she threw her hands up to protect herself but there was nothing to be done. In the brief flicker of her returned awareness, she understood that there was no sense in lying.

It was like before when Sarah and her Cherub shared the same mental state, she was an open book to the divine creature and so long as she concentrated on holding that link, Sarah would be the secondary mind in the mix. She mentally tried to withdraw as Isira had taught her to do but the creature held that link tight. Searching. Raking through her mind while she had full access. She was looking for something.

"There!" Someone shouted.

The Cherub ripped the link away and in an instant she was gone leaving Sarah dazed and utterly drained as if she'd been Compelled to work for days without rest. Groggily Sarah looked around to see a pair of men approaching her on either side; they looked like common farmers but for their distinctive- and dangerous- walk.

The four of them approached, penned her in so she had nowhere to run. It took a moment to click and when it did she just about cried. These were men she knew by reputation. These were men you did not want visiting you. . .

She had hired them decades ago to help her get out of the city should something go wrong, but now they had something else in mind.

She knew them; these were the kinds of men that made people disappear for good.

#

The moment the black bag was ripped from Sarah's head she put on her most charming smile and met the gaze of her captor as if she had no reason to fear anything he might do to her. He was tall and lanky, worn rough by a lifetime of choices he shouldn't have had to make about people's very lives and, Sarah imagined, no shortage of hearing the pleas of victims of his reprehensible actions.

Sarah had known men like this- few and far between though they were, they had at one time or another held some kind of principles. Unlike the man that had purchased her so many years ago, these were arguably reasonable people by comparison. She bought herself some good will by making it plainly evident she had no intention of running.

It worked. A little. The guards holding her arms loosened their grip a touch.

"You keep strange company." The lanky man said in a defeated, accusatory tone. "The day people come looking for you at my door is the day I begin to wonder what kind of people I am dealing with. . . .the last time this happened half the village went missing. Poof! One night and everyone's gone! Finding the right people is always the challenge, you see?" He reached for her and slowly lifted her glasses. "Yes, like you- you need these to see, we all need clarity." He set them down on his desk.

"Quite-"

"I'm not finished!"

"By all means."

In two long strides her rounded his desk and eased himself into his chair. "Where was I- ah! Clarity! Clarity is important, very important when life is on the line, no? It works both ways, even! You become more clear when people go looking for answers, so in order to stay from being clarified, what must we do?"

Sarah opened her mouth.

"We must keep people from asking questions!"

"Naturally!" The half-elf smiled wryly. "I was never one for asking questions, myself, except insofar that I am quite curious why you think I am worthy of your rather magnanimous splendor? Forsooth, I've kept to my end of our arrangement, even when business has taken me away from being able to call upon the services I've paid for." She gave him an empty smile. "I seem to remember paying quite well for them, in fact."

He eased back a little, taking in Sarah's voluptuous curves for several seconds before he finally raised a finger. Then, slowly he tapped his cheekbone. Once. Twice. When he saw fit he spoke again, "girls like you are rare, very rare. . . .if not for the elf ears I'd swear you were some kind of Free State Agent looking to expose me!"

"But-"

"Your friends! Who are they, hm?"

Sarah blinked, "Well now-"

"Keep in mind!" He clapped once. The sound was deafening. "I don't like to ask questions! Only receive answers, yes?"

It took a moment to run through all the people he could be meaning when he meant 'friends' and for a moment Sarah wondered if he meant Tessarie and Keiter. "The boy that's dealing with the mayor's daughter? I fear I know very little of him except that he is a paladin- lamentable, really- he's an Alaecon follower from what I understand!" When he remained silent, she continued. "He's doing as his god dictates, good man; he's trying to ease whatever the family is going through!"

"Alaecon. . ." Her captor looked Sarah over dubiously. "Somehow I doubt your god's Dream will spare you here-"

"Don't be ridiculous! I am an Engineer, I leave the dreaming to people who're more in line with such basic thinking! But, should he have been the one to ruffle your spirits so much, I imagine he was doing what his god bids- and put to a finer point, either the mayor's daughter knew about whatever it is you do or someone let on."

He drew in a long breath, stood and broke the distance between them. His voice was glacial. "I. Do not. Have. Leaks."

"Then you'll need to be more specific! The boy is his own guidepost, I picked him up in Sorash to get out of the city with my head in tact, I know as much about him as you do and-"

"Two women." He said sharply.

"I always did say that the best things in life usually begin with at least two women-"

He slapped her hard enough to leave a mark. "Focus, you little nymph. Where are they?"

Sarah tried her best not to let the sting keep her from smiling. "I quite sincerely have no idea what you're talking about-" He raised his hand again. "That's not to say I can't find out! Maybe if you could tell me a little about them I might be able to fill in the gaps!"

Without a word he looked to the men holding her. They shared a brief glance and one of them cleared his throat. "He said they had black hair, one had brown hair and looked tan. One was wearing clothes, the other in black leathers that held light."