Chapter 29: DD2 Chapter 023 – Father

It took a pot of black tea warming over the fireplace to get Sister Hortensia to calm down enough to give any useful details. The woman had been ancient when Arilla was young, and the warrior couldn’t help but wonder how aware the venerable old nun was when her dire warnings about Tamlin’s wellbeing went off on odd tangential rants about holiness and virtue. It didn’t help that the woman clearly despised Typh who impatiently demanded details regarding the whereabouts of her new apprentice, completely missing the obvious fact that the nun needed to be carefully handled lest she lose her train of thought.  

“It was a few days ago now. Tamlin went out playing by himself as he often does. The boy is always alone, he refuses to even try to fit in with the others… And he’s always so dirty. I swear that boy must roll around in the muck to ge—”

“Sister please, you were saying that he went missing a few days ago?” Arilla interjected, trying to steer the conversation back to relevance. 

“I did? Yes, I did. I reported it to Father Mihalis, but he just dismissed Tamlin as another runaway—not worth calling the guard over. I would be inclined to believe him. Tamlin is the type to latch on to someone else, a weak boy with poor moral fibre destined for sin. He reminded me of that child you used to hang around with when you were little, Joriah, or something like it, a foul child who was always chasing girls. Mark my words Arilla, you stay away from that boy lest he get you with child and drag you down with him,” Sister Hortensia warned seriously.

“Jory died, Sister. He caught a bad fever almost a decade ago now.”

“Right, so he did. I remember,” she said, sounding momentarily unsure of herself. “Where was I?”

“Tamlin went missing a few days ago,” Arilla prompted, ignoring the sick feeling in her stomach that she felt whenever she was forced to witness the extent of Hortensia’s mental decline. There was no cure for senility, and on her bad days the nun was as much a ward of the orphanage as any of the children who resided inside.

“Yes, Father Mihalis said he ran away with the slum children, but Tamlin isn't the type to make friends with boys his age. Besides, he kept pestering us about well…”

“Me,” Typh offered, earning herself a sour look from the old nun.

“Yes, he was quite taken with the harlot,” the nun continued, talking past Typh who she barely even glanced at with narrowed eyes. “He wouldn’t keep quiet about it, although I do not know what she offered the young man to get him so smitten with her. I suspect it was highly inappropriate…”

“What did you mean when you said ‘another runaway’? How many are we talking about?” Typh asked warily.

“Arilla, immodest women like her should stay far away from children,” the nun whispered conspiratorially rather than answer or even acknowledge the dragon’s question. 

“Sister, please, focus,” Arilla insisted.

“Well…” Sister Hortensia trailed off. The old nun looked distinctly uncomfortable, her wrinkled hands wrung the starched fabric at the end of her habit’s sleeves for a long moment while she bit her bottom lip. Despite her obvious age, Sister Hortensia managed to look almost childish, like someone with a secret they didn’t want to confess.

“The church has been doing good work with the people cleared from the slums. They needed places to stay, jobs, and we’ve been helping. We really have, but we knew from the start that not everyone would want to stay, it’s not the church’s fault if they run off into the night.”

“How many, Crone?” Typh repeated with greater urgency. Arilla wanted to ignore it, but she too could feel the tension rising in the room.

“There... have been disappearances...” Sister Hortensia, admitted sheepishly. 

“How many?”

“Not many, I think. It’s hard to say. With the slum clearance it has been a chaotic few weeks. So many children have passed through the orphanage just to stay in a warm bed for a night or two while other arrangements could be made,” she began. “It’s not our fault if some of the children prefer a life on the streets. It’s what they’re used to. If you think those from The Village are uncouth, they’re nothing compared to how rude those who’ve lived their entire lives outside of Rhelea’s walls are.”

Typh looked at Arilla, and despite all that had changed between them she understood what the dragon was thinking immediately. The familiar words coming to the front of her mind, “unclassed and mages, the younger the better.”

“Shit.”

“Arilla! Don’t curse like that!” Hortensia chastised, and for a moment the warrior very nearly struck the senile old nun for complaining about her language when she was sitting on something this big. The warrior breathed out and the urge passed. It wasn’t Sister Hortensia’s fault; she had literally broken into Arilla’s home in her urgency to tell someone.

“The guard doesn’t know?” the warrior asked.

“No,” the nun said, looking downcast. “With the unrest that all the new construction is causing, the guard is too busy even if they did care, and officially, at least according to Father Mihalis, the church hasn’t lost anyone.”

“And unofficially?” Typh asked.

“One in ten.”

“What?!”

“I’ve asked the other Sisters, and about one in ten children from the slums that have passed through the church’s hands can’t be accounted for,” Hortensia confessed. 

“That's… potentially hundreds of them,” Arilla said, the scale of the horror of what was being explained finally dawning on her.

“Yes, it is,” Hortensia admitted. “Although I’m sure the children have just run away like Father Mihalis said they have. He’s a priest you see, he can be trusted with children.”

Typh and Arilla looked at one another for a long time without saying a word. 

“You’re going to need your sword,” the dragon eventually said. 

Rhelea’s temple to the Ascended was one of the oldest structures in Rhelea. It had never been grand; the town’s early history as a mining settlement had not left much in the way of spare coin for that. But as the town's fortunes had swelled under the Merchant Council’s rule, so too had the grounds where the Gods were honoured. The initial temple had long since been converted into a dining hall where Arilla had spent countless hours doling out food to the needy. Additional structures had cropped up around that hall to include a small clinic and a new temple much more impressive in its features, with a large gate of burnished bronze to signify the entrance into Rhelea’s only official holy space.

The doors were supposed to be open at all times, and yet they were not. 

No matter how much noise they made banging against them, no-one emerged from within to answer and let them in. Staring at the gate, Arilla found herself drawn to the elegant artistry on display, a sweeping vista of humans, armed and armoured as they did battle against a myriad of monstrous threats. The figures rose up larger than life as they literally ascended the ranks across the broad canvas of the metal doors. It was a beautiful sight, something which had inspired more than just a little awe in Arilla when she was a child, which was why she was hesitating now, when she had every reason to rip them down.

“What are you waiting for?” Typh asked, the woman who was also so much more looking at her quizzically. The dragon that she sometimes allowed herself to forget about shone through in that moment as the noble she had become looked at her holy place with nothing but contempt for a door that had proven alarmingly resistant to the more subtle magics in Typh’s possession.

“Nothing. It’s just—” she sighed. “You wouldn’t understand...” 

Arilla stepped forwards and pulled up her status one last time.

*Congratulations, you have reached level 50. You must now rank up your Dragon Guard class before you can absorb any more experience.

Dragon Guard - You have sworn your sword into the service of a true dragon who has recognised you as their protector. As a result, for as long as you honour your oaths, you will be empowered with a fraction of their draconic might.

+3 Str, +1 Dex, +3 Vit, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Warrior] tagged.

Will become…

Dragon Rider - You have soared above the clouds on the back of a true dragon who has recognised you as their rider. As a result, for as long as you honour your oaths, you will be empowered with a fraction of their draconic might.

+3 Str, +2 Dex, +4 Vit, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Knight] tagged.

Remorseful Guardian - You uphold the tenets of your faith to atone for your guilty conscience. As a result, for as long as you follow the church’s hierarchy you will be empowered with the strength of the faithful.

+3 Str, +1 Dex, +4 Vit, +1 Will, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Templar] tagged.

Noble Slayer - You have overcome the odds and slain those who should have been above you. As a result, this class strengthens your ability to face challenges above your level.

+4 Str, +2 Dex, +3 Vit, +1 Cha, +3 Free Stats at each interval, [Warrior] tagged.

A class to tie herself even closer to Typh and the crimes she knew the dragon wouldn’t hesitate to commit. One to allow herself to even better wallow in her guilt for all the people she had killed and would trade her dragon master for an organisation that might very well kidnap children in the process. And lastly, a class that offered her a slim chance at her own personal power—a parting gift from Gaius Traylan.

It was hardly a real choice.

She made the change, accepted it, and felt the strength flow through her. Her connection to the dragon that hid beneath Typh’s all too pleasant facade stretched until it snapped as she felt Creation deepen all around her.

Name: Arilla Foundling

Species: Human

Age: 18

HP 1280/1280

SP 1280/1280

MP 800/800

Strength 50

Dexterity 20

Vitality 50

Intelligence 2

Willpower 2

Charisma 20

Class: Noble Slayer - Level 50

Dragon’s Blade - Level 40

Dragon’s Compact - Level 39

Dragon’s Mettle - Level 38

Dragon’s Resilience - Level 41

Unassigned Skill x1

It was like losing a limb. The power that surged through her veins barely took the edge off of the profound sense of loss that occurred the moment she stepped away from the chain of classes that were binding her ever tighter to Typh. She staggered, very nearly falling to her knees in front of the bronze door of the temple. Suddenly so much was just absent, the soothing sense of perpetual warmth that emanated from the dragon to her side was gone, the certainty of her affections and her quiet longing for Arilla’s touch just vanished.

For the first time in months she was alone again.

“Are you done?” Typh asked, and there were so many ways to interpret that question Arilla didn’t even know where to start.

She looked at the dragon she had thought she loved for a time, and saw the quiet sadness behind her eyes. The resigned look of sorrow had only grown on Typh’s beautiful face now that Arilla had finally rejected the class offered by their connection as well as rejecting her as a lover. It was past time really, like so many things that were over, their relationship had limped on for far longer than it should have. In many ways it was still so very hard to accept. Arilla’s desire to be with her was tempered only by her profound disgust for Typh’s actions. 

She ate people. 

It was something that should have eroded all possibility of romance between them, but strangely enough it took seeing it firsthand to drive that final nail in the coffin. She so desperately wanted to cast all of her doubts and worries aside to just be with her, but her conscience couldn’t allow it. Some things were just wrong, and watching the look of delight in Typh’s eyes as she feasted on the blood of a man who was just doing his job was too much for Arilla to look past.

Then again, if the nun who had largely raised her was right, then everything pointed to Father Mihalis being involved with stealing children and possibly worse. A heinous crime she found eerily plausible despite how little they had to go on. If Creation was so messed up, that even a priest couldn’t be trusted to look after children, then why shouldn’t she let herself be happy?

“Nearly, I still need to choose a skill,” Arilla said, offering a weak smile. “But let’s talk about this later.”

“Right, Tamlin first.”

Ah, there it was, more cold water on the heat of their relationship. Typh didn’t care, or at least, not with the same urgency that a human would. Children were in danger, potentially hundreds of them, and Typh’s priority was in saving the one she had made a promise to. It wasn’t that she was evil, but her apathy in the face of human suffering was a constant unpleasant reminder of what she truly was.

Arilla didn’t have time to dwell, she opened the next system prompt.

*You have one unassigned class skill.

Choose once from the listed abilities below…

Slayer’s Reach - This skill allows you to extend the reach of your weapon based attacks by 1 inch per skill level.

Slayer’s Sight - You may add this skill’s level to your effective willpower score for all purposes related to directly challenging stealth-based skills and illusion-based magic.

Slayer’s Steps - You may add this skill’s level to your effective dexterity score for all forms of movement over solid and semi-solid ground.

As she had predicted, a skill had appeared to cover each of her major weaknesses. Her relatively slow speed, her inability to perceive her foes and her extremely limited reach. Arilla needed all three of them, [Dragon’s Blade] could conceivably rank up into something resembling [Slayer’s Reach] and [Dragon’s Compact] already increased her dexterity score much in the same way that [Slayer’s Steps] did. Of the three [Slayer’s Sight] was the least likely to be covered by a pre-existing skill. She knew it would be a pain to level up, but it didn’t stop her from taking it.

“I’m ready,” Arilla said, not feeling it in the slightest.

“Good. We’ve wasted enough time. Open it up, Warrior.” 

She ignored what could have been a barb, Typh somehow knowing that she had been offered a Knight class and had decided to decline it, choosing independence over her. With that weighing on her mind, Arilla stepped forwards to the gate. Her zweihander was already in her hands, and the weight of it was somewhat more manageable with her most recent rank-up. She was bronze now, and she still felt like she had hardly earned it. 

She felt [Dragon’s Blade] thrum in her chest—different now, like it was waiting to change to match her new class— she pushed stamina through the suddenly unfamiliar skill, and with two almost lazy swipes of her sword, she had sliced through the hinges on either side of the large bronze gates. 

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If the priests wouldn’t answer the door to her, then she’d have to make her own door inside.

“It’s a gloomy place, isn’t it?” Typh commented, as they walked inside, her head fixed straight ahead as she no doubt relied on that perception skill of hers to see.

“It’s usually a lot livelier than this. Sconces cast light pretty well, plus there’s always music and singing during prayer,” Arilla replied, feeling herself instinctively drawn to defend her church.

“I see... And the blood?” the dragon asked.

“There’s blood? I can’t see any.”

“I can smell it. Not a lot, but more than can be explained from a minor accident, not to mention all that sweat,” Typh said, sounding almost bored. “It’s this way,” she added, leading Arilla towards the back of the main hall and towards the doors leading to the undercroft.

“This isn’t right, someone should have come out to meet us by now.”

“Maybe you scared them off with your big sword. Slicing through doors has a way of quickly removing non-combatants from a building.”

“You speak like you have experience with that.”

“It has been an interesting autumn,” Typh quipped. 

“It has?” she asked, realising for the first time that she really didn’t know what the dragon had gotten up to during their long months apart. 

Typh didn’t answer, deciding not to enlighten her, a sign Arilla had come to learn as an indicator that she didn’t want to talk about it. The dragon often chose silence over an outright lie. A part of her wanted to question Typh, to nail down whatever earth-shattering revelations she was hiding, but Arilla had to focus. Something was wrong with the church, something truly sickening if they were somehow responsible for the missing children.

“It’s here,” Typh said, pointing with an arm at some of the stonework in the steps leading down into the dark.

“I can’t see it.”

“Humans….” the dragon grumbled, tutting at Arilla’s inability to sense blood in the same way that a predator like her could.

She felt a warmth suddenly envelop her eyes—in many ways she found it to be existentially itchy—her two skills [Dragon’s Resilience] and [Slayer’s Sight] were practically asking her for permission to fight against it. After a moment of thought she allowed her latest skill to test itself against the familiar sensation of Typh’s knowing full-well that a level 1 skill stood no chance of putting a dent in whatever had just been cast on her. [Dragon’s Resilience] however, was harder to force back down, to let the spell wash over her as Creation deepened before her eyes. 

Several new colours that she didn’t have the vocabulary to begin to describe, let alone name, appeared before her as everything was suddenly just more. It was a heady experience, one that left her with a mild headache and the ability to easily see the splatters of blood that Typh was pointing at. An overlapping trail of intermittent fine sprays and more frequent loose drips that led down into the undercroft.

*Congratulations, Slayer’s Sight has reached level 2.*

Arilla frowned at the notification for breaking her concentration. While the quantity was small, it was a pattern of blood spatter that she was all too familiar with. Her hand moving to touch her lips out of sympathy for the unknown child who had been struck here.

“I’m sure there’s a good explanation for this,” she said, not believing a word.

“Really? Any idea what kind of circumstances would make it appropriate to march a small horde of children into the undercroft and then strike them when they don't want to go?”

“You can’t know all that.”

“I can. I can smell the fear. It’s still fresh,” the dragon explained, and if Arilla wasn’t mistaken she thought she saw Typh lick her lips moments after she smelt the air.

“There could still be an explanation,” Arilla tried, reluctant to accept that the church was as rotten as every other institution in Terythia.

“Could, sure, but it probably isn’t a very nice one.”

“God’s help us…” she trailed off. “Do you think this is Erebus?”

“Maybe... There’s only one way to find out,” Typh stated.

“I’m not sure what I prefer, that the old dragon has his claws in the church, or something else does.”

“Who says they can’t be in it for themselves. Are you ready?”

“I think so.” 

“Good, then lead on,” Typh said, stepping to the side as Arilla’s booted foot kicked open the door leading to the undercroft. The wood ripped away from the iron hinges and flew before it slammed into a far wall on the other side of the entranceway.

The undercroft was a dark and dusty place, where the corpses of the faithful were entombed in individual alcoves, warded with magecraft to preserve them and prevent their desecration from any would-be necromancers. After her experiences in Doomhold, it really didn’t seem like enough and to Arilla, the faithful would likely be best served by being cremated, or dissolved through an appropriately gruesome spell. It dawned on her then that her public persona would definitely qualify her as a member of the devout, and if her luck had been any less forthcoming then she could very well have ended up in any one of the vacant alcoves she passed. 

The tracks were evident for her to see, Typh’s spell enabling her to see in the dark just as well as the noble could. Her steps were swift and sure as she plodded along in the few pieces of intact plate armour that she still possessed, silently hoping that she wouldn’t need them. Her newly ranked-up class however was in a different state of mind as it contentedly stirred at the prospect of another fight. 

She looked at the overlapping trail of footprints, almost all of them small enough to belong to a child. The traces of blood were all so vivid in her spell-enhanced vision, and she desperately wracked her brain for any justification for marching so many children past all of these corpses. She sighed. Why couldn’t she have something nice and uncomplicated in her life? Next thing she knew her sword teacher would turn out to be a vampire, and then her house would burn down.

Despite the size of Rhelea, the undercroft wasn’t that large, and it didn’t take them all that much time to traverse it in its entirety, the two of them coming to a large pit in the ground leading further down. 

“That looks ominous,” Typh commented.

“Where do you think it goes?” Arilla asked.

“Down.” Typh didn’t need to say anything more than that. They both knew how old Rhelea was and how deep the catacombs beneath it ran. A labyrinth of tunnels and turns, filled with nothing either of them particularly wanted to encounter. 

“Well, whatever, can you still cast your spell through all that?”

“Of course, but there’s a reason I’ve held off until now. It will be noisy,” the dragon offered “Magically speaking, I mean.”

“Do it.”

“Of course.”

Typh closed her eyes, and several of the colours in her new sight that had been lazing around swirled and pulsed. It was an intricate dance of light that morphed into a series of interwoven shapes far faster than Arilla could comprehend, and it occurred to her that with all of her inherited memories and draconic perspectives that maybe Typh took some of her magical prowess for granted. 

And then nothing happened.

The swirling lines of power faltered, ending the stochastic dance prematurely without a climax, and Typh opened her eyes, a frown on her face indicating that something was amiss.

“One moment. Something is blocking me,” she said and tried again.

This time she seared thick black lines into the earthen floors that spidered out from where she was standing. A circle of runes that expanded back along the ground and creeped up the walls of the undercroft where stone was burned black. Typh closed her eyes again, her brow furrowed in concentration as this time the intensity of the lines that danced across Arilla’s vision almost blinded her before faltering again, just as anticlimactically as before.

*Congratulations, Slayer’s Sight has reached level 3.*

*Congratulations, Slayer’s Sight has reached level 4.*

“Did it work?” Arilla asked, anticipating the answer.

“No, and before you ask, that was not supposed to happen. Humans aren't supposed to know how to block this array,” Typh grumbled, seeming concerned for something other than Tamlin’s well-being for the first time since the Orca.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing good. I’m going to brute force it, if you see any scintillating colours crack the air, cut my head off.”

“Wait—” 

Typh raised her hands up to her mouth and then past it, taking two deep bites out of her wrists and swallowing the flesh without hesitation. It immediately set Arilla’s stomach on edge as the woman she couldn’t help but want licked her lips clean while blood poured out of her open wounds and onto the floor. Rather than pooling in a puddle, the crimson fluid followed the path of the ash burnt into the stone before it. Spiralling outwards and up the walls as Typh replicated her arcane pattern only this time in blood.

When the mana came it was heavy, like a weight smothering her as even to her mundane senses Arilla felt a torrent of mana pour out from Typh. Her vision went bright and then failed, and she felt herself become a little light headed, her class waking up fully as it sucked in the ambient mana as Creation shook and the runes painted in blood glowed blindingly gold. 

*Congratulations, Slayer’s Sight has reached level 5. You must rank up this skill to progress it further.*

“Typh,” Arilla urged, feeling nauseous as she dismissed the notification.

“Typh!”

“TYPH!”

She felt something crack, and then it stopped, the mana dispersing while Creation stood still.

“Sorry about that,” the dragon said with an intensity in her eyes that honestly scared her more than whatever it was they might find in the catacombs.

“Did it work?”

“Yes, but they’ll know we are coming. Worse, any mages above us worth a damn will know precisely where we are and where we are going.”

“Shit. Over how big of an area?”

“All of Rhelea and maybe another ten or so miles?”

“We’d better hurry then.”

“This way,” Typh announced, leading from the front. Her aura hardened into armoured scales in front of Arilla’s eyes as the mage-turned-noble took off at speed. The dragon leveraged her high dexterity score and her magical spells to sprint through the darkness leaving Arilla to desperately run after her, a feat that was surprisingly easy with her newly ranked up class.

Together they sprinted through the dark in a silence punctuated only by their boots crunching the ground and Arilla’s heavy breaths. The two of them often had to turn on a dime as they traversed countless tunnels and climbed ever deeper into the earth. A part of her mind flashed back to the last time they had moved so desperately underground, but despite the similarities on the surface it was so very different. Typh wasn't pretending to be anything now, Arilla wasn’t some helpless little lamb, and they were running towards danger rather than away from it. 

Arilla saw so much on her descent that she didn’t know what to make of. If she had the time to stop and linger she could have done so for days. The sights and scenes of ruined cities and forgotten architecture painted a vivid picture of a different time, one wholly unlike what she had expected from the memories Typh had once shared with her. It was dark, beautiful and as terrifying as it was endless. She knew instinctively that she did not want to get lost down here.

Eventually they came to a large door, obviously ancient in its construction, although it was scrawled in recent runes still wet with paint, or at least she hoped it was paint. As Arilla came to a stop, Typh sped up and shoulder checked the door, a wave of mana escaping from her, and the door was ripped from its hinges opening up the way forwards.

[Knight ???]

They were too high-levelled for Arilla to see their level which put them somewhere between level one-hundred-and-one, and nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine. But Arilla, a purveyor of tales and stories, instantly recognised the insignia on their polished steel breastplate. It was the armour of a member of the Queen’s Alchemic Guard, which put them in the steel range. 

Higher levelled than Typh.

“Go,” she said.

“He’s higher level than you.”

“She, and I’ve got this,” the dragon said confidently, but Arilla knew Typh, and she liked to think that she could recognise an outright lie by now. “The children are that way.” she added, pointing an arm towards a hallway on the far side of the hall. “Get them out of here, especially Tamlin, and I’ll see you topside.”

“Typh...”

“Relax, I’m a dragon. I’ve got this,” she lied, flashing Arilla her perfect smile before she strode forwards to meet the so far silent knight who merely drew their weapon in response.

Arilla wanted to stay, to fight, maybe even die with her, but this was way out of her league. With tears springing in her eyes, she turned and ran, the Knight not even turning to face her as the dragon and the human clashed in the center of the room. The shockwave from their first exchange knocked Arilla to her knees as she fled.

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