Striped Moonlight

  They approached at night, using heavy cloud cover and the moonless sky above to close on the city of Saxmoor.

  In the time that she'd had on the two day, circuitous flight from the Priory, Marci had made many changes to how things were done in the Dreadfort. For one thing, she had recruited fifty more demons, even the absolute nutters. They wouldn't be deployed to the city—she had no doubt that it would be a bloodbath— but she wasn't prepared to risk leaving her Shard so poorly defended for a second time.

  The Kobolds had been hard at work, as they always were, repairing canons and improving the defences within the fortress itself. Marcie, for her part, had spent hours rewarding the various portcullises and defences that hadn't seen maintenance in years—part of the reason that the heroes had managed to so quickly break one of them.

  Learning from her past mistakes had assigned Rafferty to try and drill some kind of discipline into them, although it was difficult to tell if there was any kind of improvement over such a short period of time.

  And of course, she had created her undead legion: well, fifty something heavy armed and armoured skeletal warriors bound to her will. It wasn't as many as she'd have liked, and they were slow, and required regur direction, but they were horrifically strong, and once Marcie had gotten the hang of getting them to fight in formation rather than individually, something that Saoirse was very surprised that she was able to do, Marci was reasonably confident that they would be able to do their job and hold choke points very effectively.

  That wasn't the force she had initially envisaged, a fast, flexible, and powerful force that she could storm the fortress with by itself, but under Saoirse's tutege she had learnt that she was going to have to get a lot better at necromancy before she could hope to create something like the elite commando squad she had first dreamt of.

  Which meant that she was going to have to use them in combination with demons in her assault. Something she had been hoping to avoid, but as the clock ticked down in her head towards 'time of likely execution,' she realised she had no choice.

  She chose the most disciplined demons she could. Saoirse and her team were the nucleus of the team that would accompany her into the prison, under strict instructions not to kill unless there was absolutely no other choice. They found this confusing, but Rafferty, who was very chuffed by his expanded 'command' had screamed at the demons who had expressed confusion and annoyance, and threatened to do terrible things to them if they 'defied the wishes of the Dark Mistress.'

  Marcy wasn't particurly happy that her demon army was run in rge part on fear; but then again, she wasn't particurly happy to have a demon army.

  The other important group would be the demons who would hold the extraction point. This was important since although she and many of her demons could fly, her undead army could not. They needed to be lowered down via the crane into the prison's central courtyard, and then extracted the same way once they were done. She had considered trying to set up a teleport array, since she had more than enough money to just buy all the components she needed, but after thinking about it more she realised that getting it tuned in time wouldn't have been possible.

  A project for future assaults, perhaps.

  Wait, no. There (hopefully) would be no more assaults on towns.

  Marci put a pin in the idea.

  But before she could do any of that, she needed to figure out what area of the prison her friends were in, something she didn't trust any of her demons to do stealthily enough, and felt that outside of dire circumstances it was probably best practice to not make puppetting her minions routine. That meant she had to go, flitting out into the night and descending through the thick clouds towards the town beneath.

  It was the witching hour, and most of the city was dark, with only a few of the main boulevards lit up by mana mps, and a handful of buildings twinkling beneath her. Thankfully, one of them was the fortress that y retively close to the prison, and which she could use to orient herself.

  Her wing's buzzing, usually barely audible, seemed worryingly loud in the still night air as she approached the prison from directly above, her keen eyes picking out the handful of guards walking along the battlements of the walls that surrounded the prison, and were separated from the prisoners by a thick moat. As she approached the glow of the nterns, cast a spell, and her outline flickered and then all but vanished. It wasn't True Invisibility, which was a Rank Six spell and was unbelievably complicated, but 'Shimmer,' a rank three, was an acceptable substitute, especially at night, and especially against terrible human eyesight.

  She began with the inner courtyard, a rge open gravelled space featuring a set of thankfully empty gallows. She wasn't sure if all of the dungeon cells had barred windows on them, but she sure hoped they did, otherwise the whole 'rescue' pn would become a lot more difficult.

  She began with the topmost level, flitting from cell to cell to cell and peering inside at the inhabitants, relying on her keen vision to make out the inhabitants. Some of the cells appeared empty, but many of them were filled with withered and wretched looking men and women from various species, almost all filthy and pale in a way that made it seem like they hadn't stood in the sun for a long, long time.

  Marci felt her stomach turn. It wasn't that she was in favour of letting murders and rapists and the like be free to keep on murdering and raping, but surely, even if all these people had done that, there had to be a better way to keep society safe without… this.

  She moved on, flitting almost the entire way around the courtyard before she came to a window and spied a familiar elvish figure curled up in a bed, shivering beneath a thin bnket, hands bound in glowing runic manacles—the kind used on spellcasters to silence them.

  "Anke," hissed Marci. "Anke."

  The elf stirred slightly and looked up, blinking woozily. Out from under the bnket, Marci could see that she had bruises on her face and neck, and that the haughty, superior look she usually wore wasn't present at all?

  "Hello?" said the elvish woman.

  "Up here, by the window," whispered Marci, releasing her Shimmer spell, and phasing back into view.

  Anke stared up at her for several long moments, as if not quite able to believe or process what she was seeing?

  "Marci?" she said slowly, gncing back to the corridor beyond her cells bars before standing up and shuffling up to the window. "Is that… how? I saw- we all saw you die…"

  "I accidentally bonded to the Shard," said Marci, gesturing to her eyes. "Listen, I'm here to get you out. Where are the others?"

  "You- you're a Shardkeeper!?" hissed Anke, taking a step back.

  "Involuntarily!" said Marci.

  "Monster!" spat Anke, raising a finger at her. "Monster!"

  "For fucks sake, you insufferable woman, I'm here to rescue you!" replied Marci, her eyes gncing up to where an orange glow had appeared in the corridor behind Anke's cell. "Just tell me where the others are!"

  "You'll get nothing from me, you servant of Darkness!" spat Anke.

  Marci mimed strangling the elf. "For once in your life, fucking think!" said Marci. "They're going to kill you!"

  Anke smirked. "Not if I turn in a Shardkeeper."

  Marci smacked her forehead. Of course, the greedy, selfish, stupid, shortsighted elf's first instinct was to fuck not only herself, but Marci over too. Of course, reasoning wouldn't work with her, reasoning never worked with her. Anke understood two things: material inducement and threats.

  "Alright Anke, how about this then," said Marci, baring her teeth and pointing upward. "I have a fucking Shardfort at my command, hovering directly above this prison, and regardless of what you do right now I am going to attack within the next half an hour. So, you have a choice: either you tell me where the others are, or you cop a silence and a sleep spell right here, right now, and you wake up to find the others gone and your incredibly stupid self still destined for the gallows. Because I'll do it; I'll leave you here. So, which is it going to be, you simpering twit? Death or freedom?"

  Ankes eyes darted back to the corridor behind her, where the glow from the mplight was slowly growing stronger, and in the distance Marci could hear the stomp of the warden's boots as they slowly approached. The elf licked her lips, and Marci could almost see the greedily little cogs in her mind turning.

  "Of is two cells down, on the opposite side. I don't know about the others," she said.

  "There, was that so hard?" said Marci.

  "You'd better free me," growled Anke.

  Marci rolled her eyes and cast another Shimmer, phasing almost entirely out of view again and flitting up and over the prison, finding the cell opposite Anke's and then moving two windows to the left. The glow from the ntern continued to build, and she drew back, making sure to keep out of sight as she peered around the corner, watching as the watchman passed, revealing the handsome kattdjur man she had come for.

  He was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Like Anke, he was covered in bruises, his lip was split, and one of his eyes was swollen. Marci felt her hands ball into fists at the sight. The guards who had done that better hope she didn't get her hands on them.

  "Of," she hissed as the glow faded, returning the cell to darkness. "Of!"

  The kattdjur man stirred, gncing down as she released her Shimmer spell. A flurry of complex emotions pyed over his face: disbelief, confusion, and most pleasingly of all, joy.

  "Marci?" he said, rushing over to the bars and reaching through, his hand brushing her cheek. "Is that- how? I- I saw you die!"

  "I accidentally bonded with the Shardfort," said Marci. "I think… I think it might have been the blood on my hand, from that cut."

  "That- but- what!?"

  "I don't have time to expin," she replied. "Listen, I'm getting you and the others out of here. I've already found the twit, where are Tissa and Gillian."

  "Getting us… getting us out?" He said. "But…"

  He trailed off, and his eyes widened as he gnced up.

  "You- you brought it here!?" he said. "Marci, you can't! You can't attack a city!"

  "I'm not attacking a city, I'm attacking a prison," said Marci. "And don't worry, I've taken precautions. I'm only using demons that won't go axe crazy on everyone-"

  "Demons!?" hissed Of. "You're consorting with demons!? Marci, what the actual fuck!?"

  "I didn't have any other choice!" protested Marci. "I needed to get you out! And- and we can argue about this ter, OK? After I get you out. Where are the others."

  Of regarded her warily for several long moments, before he jerked his head to her left. "Cells next to mine, we're all close together."

  Marci sighed in relief; she had been hoping that that was the case. It would have made it a lot more difficult if they'd all been split up.

  "Alright, get ready then," said Marci as she willed the Dreadfort to descend, and notified her lieutenants that the attack was about to begin. "I'm going to have to come in via the courtyard- these walls are too heavily warded to bust down without injuring you."

  "Marci, this is insane!" he said, hand grabbing her sleeve. "This- don't do this Marci-"

  "I won't let them kill you," she replied, reaching through the bars and cupping his face. "I just won't. Not for my mistakes. Don't worry Of, this nightmare will all be over soon."

  "Marci, I'm grateful, but… but please Marci, don't do this."

  She stared into his eyes for several long moments, burning red into bright pink, before shaking her head.

  "I won't let you die here," she said.

  Then she flew up and off into the night, gncing back see the troubled face of Of staring up at her retreating form.