"C" awoke before "Beast". His entire head felt numb.
Temporarily in control of their body, "C" used this opportunity to look around himself.
He was back in his new individual cell.
He could just remember a flash as the fist aimed at his head. He didn't remember the impact, but it was strong enought to knock even him out. Maybe the hit wasn't only physical.
He had had plenty of opportunities to hear about magic as he was born a few month ago, but he never had a real opportunity to learn about it. It wasn't like if he could ask his jailors for a book. Actually he couldn't even talk at all as his vocal cords weren't developed enought.
He raised one of his hand and touched his face. To his surprised, his nose was gone. It didn't seems to hinder his breathing throught the nose and his smell was still extremely sharp, but he was missing the bump on the middle of his face where the punch landed.
He got closer to the mirror and looked at himself. He now looked like Voldemort, with bigger white eyes, and a way bigger mouth full of razor sharp teeth. His bony was now like a severly malnourished 13 years old. His skin still white/pale gray and hairless. But if he compared himself with his fellow abominations, he was amongst the most humans looking one.
He couldn't understood why his healing factor hadn't healed his nose properly. It did work with the shoulder.
He stopped looking at himself and his focus shifted to the mirror. He knew it was probably tintless, to look at them from safety.
Even if he didn't know much about this world, if they had magic that could summon people from another dimension, he didn't doubt that tintless mirrors shouldn't be too hard to create.
No matter how good his eyesight was getting, one way mirror physically blocked light and he coudn't see light that never reached his eyes. He had now way to be sure of what was behind it.
On the other side of the mirror. One scientist was baffled.
"I swear. Every time we put a corpse in "16"'s cell, he rushed on it as soon as he woke up."
They didn't expect the abomination to not even acknowledge the presence of his meal in his cell.
"Could Sir Bert's punch have injured him this much ? Maybe he can't smell it ?"
While the mages looked for an plausible hypothesis, Nicolas was looking at the abomination and it's behaviour.
He looked to Oma who stood at his right and who validated his thought.
""16" always move on four limbs. Why is he standing straight now ?"
The mages were reduced to silence.
"Brain damage ?" weakly suggered one of them.
"Unlikely. Maybe he associated Sir Bert strenght with his behaviour and it is trying to copy him." Suggered another.
"No" Interrupted Oma. "Look at his face. He used to be clentched, now he look calm. It's like it is controlling it's facial expressions."Meanwhile behind the mirror, "Beast" awoke took back control and he fell back on his hands.
Seeing this, Nicolas gave his own hypothesis.
"Schizophrenia ..."
Somewhere in Avres, a major city inside of the Buer Duchy, a man entered a room on the last floor of a lavish mansion.
He carefully closed a door behind himself and bowed to a man who was searching a desk.
The investigator was named Ern Nartes, he was a member of the Imperial Bureau.
Directly under the Emperor's control, the Imperial Bureau was a secret police and intelligence agency. It had played a large part in the stability of the Empire in the last few centuries by eliminating most of the threat before they got out of hands.
But a few decades ago, the Imperial Bureau managed to catch the leader of the "Church of Hell" and while the evil cult seemed to slowly fade away, a new Pope arose. Instead of dying down, the Cult slowly grew stronger. By increasing it's level of secrecy, and sacrificing a few importants assets, they managed to fool the Imperial Bureau.
Last winter, the cult came back out by organising a massive ritual. The report that came indicated that the ritual had ultimately failed and compared the event to the last struggles of a dying organisation.
Ern was a part of the few higher up of the Imperial Bureau who didn't believe it. If they had been fooled once, they could be fooled twice.
Ern had personally led a team of expert to study the remnants of the ritual. They were heavily damaged and had aged badly as the mana stored in the inscriptions had started to dissipate.
While own experts had, at first, validated the result of the primary examination, everything had changed after another team of the Bureau had managed to get their hand of a member of the Cult who had participated to the ritual.
To save his life the man had claimed he had information on the ritual and he was willing to tell them anything.
Ern was the closest agent and he moved straight toward Avres to interrogate the prisonner himself.
The day before he arrived, the governor's mansion was attacked.
While the city's men-at-arms had isolated the mansion, his team and him were searching the mansion. Ern was personnally looking through the governor's office, but he couldn't find anything until he was interrupted by his subordinate.
"Sir, we have found a safe in the basement."
He immediatly followed his subordinate. The entire mansion had already been searched by the assassins and he wouldn't find anything here.
They ran down a couple of stairs and after pushing a reinforced door, they descended to the basements.
His remaining subordinate had assembled near a destroyed wall at the back of the room. Behind the ruined wall was a massive safe locked by mechanisms and magic circles. A couple mages were looking throught some of the inscription near the key hole. A key was already inserted in the hole but no one dared to touch it.
"The wall was already broken down but had been covered by a spell. The intruders must have failed to open it."
"Then why did they cover it with a spell then ?"
"There's a time lock, Sir." explained one of the mages. "It prevent the safe to open until midnight where it can only be opened for a couple minutes. They must have missed the time frame..."
"... which mean they will come back tonight." completed Ern.
One of the mages nodded his head.
"There is too much magic interferences near the safe to take what's inside and teleport back to the capital, even with an Imperial Door Key. So we need to open it, get at least a few hundreds meters away from the mansion, before we can teleport back to headquarters."
An Imperial Door Key was a locket shaped like a golden coin marqued with the imperial mark. It was used to teleport someone to the Imperial Door, a heavily guarded place in the Imperial Palace. To activate it, you simply needed to inject mana into it but such a devise was hard to create and the supply was limited, inside the Imperial Bureau, only the most trusted agents had one. Ern had one.
His subordinate started getting ready for a fight to the death. If the ennemy had missed the time frame yesterday, they would came back at midnight and strike again.
Ern knew that what they all wanted was probably inside the safe.
They were strong enought to kill everyone in the governor's house so the fight would have been tought enough. But Ern knew that in their places, he would have brought reinforcements just in case.
They would have to rush outside and as far as possible of the disturbtion field before they could teleport.
Ern looked around and his eyes fell on Tomas, his right hand man.
A few minutes later, one of the scouts Ern had sent outside came down rushing.
"Sir, they are here."
At the same time, the magic circle colors shifted from red to green. The mage next to it simply turned the key that was already inserted in the key hole and the heavy door opened. Inside of it were piles of documents.
They only knew that what the assassins wanted was probably inside one of them, but they didn't have time to search so they just took everything and got ready to rush out.
There was only one way to the basement and they knew their ennemies would most likely expect them here, so one of the mages threw a spell he had prepared toward the ceilings. As soon as it exploded and opened another way out, they rushed in a tight formation.
As they had predicted, most of the ennemy forces were near the entrances but various sentries that were standing around immediatly raised the alarm and started harassing them to slow them down.
Ern was standing in the center of the formation and most of the ennemies attacks, includings throwing knives, arrows and spells, were thrown his way. He had taken out a pair of twin sword and he used them to easily deflect the incoming assaults.
Now going thought the mansion gardens, ennemy assassin's started to encircle them, but the agents didn't have time to examine the situation and so they kept rushing foward as fast as they could.
They hadn't reach half way throught the garden and Ern had already lost 3 men. Still he felt reassured and for a moment he thought that he had overestimated the danger.
As soon as he thought that, a volley of throwing knives landed on the formation, coming from the right. 2 others agents fell down dead and a few others were injured. Of his 20 men, he now only had 15 left. Evaulating the situation, Ern discovered at least twice as many hostiles.
One of the mage on his side threw a series of spells to their left : a couple of offensives ones and a few simpler one to annoy the pursuer, like 'smoke screen' and and 'swamp', who reduce the ground to mud to slow down the ennemies.
Ern focused his attention to the right, the now weaker side of the formation.
The man who threw the knives was a giant man in black robes. He was around 2.3 meter tall, but Ern doubted that the man could be part of the giant race as his body was too thin. The assassin's body was covered in bandages under his black robes. On his face was a white mask who hidded his features.
His body shape was unusual in their profession, such a special appearance would make him stand out.
'Probably their leader...' thought Ern.
The man was apparently getting ready to attack them. Their assaults used to came by waves, but now that they were getting closer to the outer perimeters, the assassins had to go all out.
The giant raised his hands, and black circles were formed in the airs.
"Black magic !" screamed one of the mages.
Instead of sending spells their ways, the man directed the mana toward himself. His body started glowing under the bandages.
He then instantly went on the offensive.
Dashing toward the formation, he dodged a few spells and knives before taking out a massive flanged mace and striking toward his ennemies.
The weapons was clearly 2 handed, but, enhanced by mana, the giant easily swung it around himself with one hand.
He first aimed at the Imperial's agents legs. They easily jumped above, but with his other hand he threw a volley of knives.
Two other agents couldn't dodge mid air and were killed.
Identifying the threat, Ern broke the formation and attacked the giant.
After a few strike, one of Ern sword broke. He was astounded, until now, he had seen the giant use black magic, assassin's techniques and he also seemed to adept in a melee fights. Ern sent his men a quick signal and they stopped running.
They turned around and counter-attacked the assassin's at full strenght. Only one of them kept running : Tomas, Ern's right hand man.
He had given him the documents and the Imperial Door Key. It broke the regulation put in place by the Empire, but Ern knew it was best if he used himself as a diversion.
Ern broke the fight with the giant while his men pinned him down and he rushed toward the 2 assassin's following Tomas. He threw his broken sword toward the back of the closest one and with a swing, he cut the arms of the other one before finishing him with a stab in the stomach.
Except for himself, the others sacrificed agents didn't stand for long.
Tomas finaly got out of the distortion field and he immediatly used the Imperial Door Key. While his body and the documents were sucessfully sent to the capital, he was dead.
As soon as he activated the locket, the giant threw a black stake toward the agent. The stake flew at an incredible speed and lodged himself in the back of Tomas head during the brief teleportation window.
Ern was still relieved to see the documents sucessfully teleported away.
Standing on the remains of the Imperial Bureau's agents, Ael, the Pope's loyal hound looked at his hands.
The other cult's assassins didn't dare get close to him.
They had finished the remaining agents including the tought Ern, but they knew they had failed, an heavy punishment was awaiting them.
