Saithorthepyro
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Skall Part 2
🕑 Added 2025-01-08 12:00:08 +0000 UTC“Troll!” someone screamed from down below, followed by a cacophony as Alice ran towards the stairs, hand going inside her coat for a club. The floor underneath her shuddered as something ripped through the wall below, roaring.
The window next to the stairs shattered, glass spraying inside as a Watchman leaped inside, revolver in their hands. She veered away, making for a door only for two more windows to shatter, another two Watch bursting inside.
They moved to block off her escape, clubs of their own at the ready, one of them sneering as he stared down at her.
“We got a little one-”
She swung forward, swinging the club. People always underestimate the small ones. Maybe that’s why they kept on getting shocked by dwarves being able to throw punches that could knock out humans.
Alice had gone toe to toe with dwarves who’d wandered into the Quarter, looking for anything not nailed down and that the empire wouldn’t care about. She’d won more often than not.
Solid oak swung upwards, ramming into the guard’s nose. He screamed, hands going up for it while one of his buddies closed in.
Alice’s tail wrapped around her ankle, and with a yank, the watchwoman went crashing to the floor. One advantage of it being that large, it was strong.
Alice grabbed the edges of the watchman’s breastplate, swinging him to cover her from the gun of the third, then bit into his face.
He screamed as teeth sliced through flesh, cut into bone, and she could taste the blood and the flesh. The bite went deep, and she could feel an optical nerve cut as she bit down.
He fell to the ground, screaming, hands pressed to his face as she spat his eye down on him.
The watchman fired, and agony shoved its finger into her shoulder. She rushed forward, yelling, club swinging as he desperately pulled the hammer back. Pain sprouted in her arm again, and she dropped the hammer, but her jaws latched onto his throat.
Teeth bloody and lips crimson, she ripped the flesh off, tearing a chunk out. She spat it out while he collapsed. Alright, where was the last-
Something smashed into the back of her head, and she fell down, hitting the wood of the floor with a painful thud.
Alice tried to get up, only for the Watch officer’s knee to go into her back, forcing her back down to the floorboards. Hands wrapped around her neck, squeezing and she tried to move only for the second knee to come down.
Alice growled, tried to struggle, reach back with her hands, but she couldn’t reach, and her desperation grew as the strangling continued. The watch officer shifted, and her knee was on the back of Alice’s head.
Alice tried to scream for the others downstairs, but no words came out. Nothing came out as she tried to fill her lungs that were burning.
The pressure on her neck only grew.
Malvia Harrow came up the stairs.
Malvia’s expression was furious as black flames coated her hands, the only expression besides the careful neutrality Alice had seen yet. She sprinted across the room towards the two of them, Alice’s view fading as the hands around her neck tightened.
All she could see was the angry snarling face of Malvia lunging at the watchwoman.
Malvia shoved a pair of burning fingers into the watchwoman’s eyes. The woman’s scream made Alice wince, the grip on her neck loosening. The loosened grip let air back in her lungs, and Alice breathed in, the breath coming out as a series of choking coughs. Each breath hurt, but she could breathe again even as above the Watchwoman screamed, Malvia’s finger up to the second knuckle in her eyes. Alice turned over, moving as fast as she could, clothes tearing on the broken-apart flooring as she got away.
She made it five feet away and spun to see Malvia over the Watchwoman who had slumped to the ground, smoke pouring out of now-empty eye sockets. The skin all across her face was charred, chunks flaking off to reveal the bone underneath as her face disintegrated. Malvia looked down dispassionately, flicking gore and chunks of eyeball off of her fingers.
“Are you alright?” she asked coldly, idly kicking the flaking flesh of the watchwoman with her hoof. Ashes filled the air, swirling about as they fell off the bare skull.
It took a second for Alice to recompose herself. “Course I’m fine! You didn’t have to step in. I bloody had her.”
The corner of Malvia’s lips twitched. “Certainly. The true sign of a victory is when your opponent has them on your back with their hands around your throat. I applaud your strategy.”
Alice scowled. “I’m sorry. Who’s the one who killed two of them before you even bothered to show up? Big talk from someone hiding behind devil magic.”
“I’m not doubting your abilities,” Malvia said. “But also, you did lie. You’re bleeding from your shoulder. Hold still.”
“What are doing?” Alice said, looking on in bemusement as Malvia took her jacket off.
The other Infernal rolled her eyes. “You’re bleeding now. I’m not wasting time trying to pry metal off one of the dead Watch members. Sleeve from my tunic should hold till the infirmary. Hold still?”
The other Infernal tried to pull on her jacket and Alice snarled, whipping around.
Malvia stared blankly back, unintimidated. “It’s either this or you can bleed every step of the way back. Honestly, afraid of baring a little skin?”
Alice shrugged, then shucked her jacket herself, pulling her sleeve up her wounded arm, ignoring the pain as fabric dragged across her skin.
She could feel the other Infernal’s fingers probing, and she felt pain flash across her shoulder blade.
“How many times did you get shot?”
“Copper plugged me twice. Terrible shot.”
“Hrrm. Well, the good news is there is an exit wound for both bullets,” Malvia said, and Alice could feel a fresh spike of pain that made her wince. “Don’t move. Going to wrap this tight, you’ll get looked at when we get back and hopefully sewn up.”
Alice was about to respond when the Watchwoman’s skull moved.
The watchwoman’s skull broke, little claws tearing bone apart as it broke free of its corpse-prison. It landed on the ground, tiny claws at the ends of far too many limbs to count balancing it. Alice couldn’t tell if it was bone or just skin stretched on top of bone, limbs extending every which way from a central body that looked like a spider hiding in an even smaller skull.
The thing skittered through the open window, launching itself on membrane-like wings into the night.
Mouth dry, Alice looked at the watchwoman’s corpse, waiting for more to come out. “The fuck was that?”
“Someone else’s problem,” Malvia replied. “Come on. It sounds like the fighting had died down, so best to ascertain if we’ll be aiding in clean-up or trying to get back to the Quarter by ourselves before the night is over.”
Alice followed, one eye still on the headless body when she heard something, a light whisper on the wind that made her freeze.
Bah. Take the corpse, eat it, you spineless coward of an apprentice.
“Did you hear a voice just then?” Alice asked, looking around for the source of the whispers.
Malvia froze and turned. Her expression was still that same bored look, but something lurked underneath it in her eyes, something that made Alice’s next word stop on her tongue.
“A voice,” the Diabolist said flatly. “Curious. What did it say?”
Alice met the gaze unflinchingly. Had to really, diabolist or not, she couldn’t afford to fear any of them. Nothing that could show.
“Food. It suggested eating the watchwoman, which honestly given how low food is-“
“Cannibalism is never an option,” Malvia interrupted. “It’s a sign of a weak mind when the Nover is there and usually overflowing with fish.”
“Fish that are likely to burn your mouth when you bite into them,” Alice replied acidly. “Besides, it’s not like its cannibalism. We’re different!”
“Not enough to count,” Malvia said. “I shall never partake, and that’s been established long since you came here. We’ll talk later about the voice, though. That is important.”
Alice froze, considering the other Infernal. Crap, was she about to become ingredients in some kind of diabolic spell? Shit, and she’d been changing her mind about this stuck-up foreigner after she’s saved her life.
“I will not use you as fuel for some spell,” Malvia said.
Alice blinked. Had she just read Alice’s-
“I can’t read minds either,” Malvia said irritably. “Everyone assumes when they hear the imp, it means you’re going in some kind of pot. You are not. You have a talent that Versalicci finds useful, so no, I will not shank you. Now, we need to check downstairs.”
There had been little noise from down there.
***
Maria’s body lay at the bottom of the stairs, head crushed like a grape, blood and brains still leaking from where it had split. Next to her lay the culprit, the Troll Watchman, the entire front half of his body charred and still smoldering.
Alice spared a glance for Malvia, whose face had gone stony once more.
“Stay close,” Malvia warned. “I can deal with others like I dealt with the troll, but my aim isn’t very precise.”
Alice spared another glance at the charred troll. His skin was peeling back, exposing flesh charred and eaten away, blackened bone exposed.
Yeah, very close.
The next room had three more corpses. The bookish trainee, blood leaking out of half a dozen holes in his chest, two Watch officers with precise holes stabbed right into their eyes.
Voices now, familiar ones, coming from the cellar. Malvia held her hand up for Alice to stop.
“Golvar?”
He was alive. Him, Morder, Malachti, and Mitlau. And one other.
***
They’d made it to the little building they’d entered the underground with. Alice’s shoulder had protested every step of the way, as had the one they’d brought with them. Now the red-haired Watchman grunted as the gag was finally taken out of his mouth.
He screamed, loud and shrill, for help but maybe also his leg being broken in two places.
“You scum! You’re going to swing! The rest of my unit will have tracked those tunnels you took by now and you’ll-”
“Nah, you ain’t here officially, are you?” Golvar sneered, pressing down on the broken leg and earning another scream from the Watchman. “Not when it’s only six of you. Got a little too ambitious, maybe struck a private deal to get yourself some live Black Flame captives to give your bosses and not have some superior steal the credit? Should have brought more than that, copper.”
Golvar put even more weight on the broken leg and the scream rose in volume, echoing inside the house.
“If you keep doing that, someone is going to notice,” Malvia noted drily.
“Oh shut yer gob,” Golvar snapped. “Firstly, boss to you little Miss fire-hands. Second, the day someone’s reaction to screaming in the Infernal Quarter is trying to get the Watch or worse, actually trying to help the poor sucker, I’ll cut off my horns and go sign up with that pack of pond scum myself. Third, I ain’t even leaning too hard on him.”
“True as that might be, boss, the professor has a point,” Malachti said with an exaggerated yawn. “Sure, no one is gonna risk their necks to help someone. Now to potentially scavenge from the aftermath of a fight and get maybe some good boots, a knife, a-”
“Alright, alright,” Golvar said. “They’d come in, see me, and realize they should be elsewhere, but are right, this ain’t for nothing but satisfaction. Morder, Mitlau, grab the copper. And don’t be gentle. As long as he ain’t dead, it’ll be fine. Gag him, throw a cloak on him so no one realizes we got a copper. Time to head all the way back.”
***
Once again, Alice found herself in the pit. They’d come here, Malvia taking the Watchman down a different corridor while she found herself put here along with the other three, placed right in the middle. Soon after, a noise had keened through the halls, loud and ragged as the Watchman screamed.
The screaming hadn’t stopped since then.
Alice didn’t have the courage to ask what they were doing in there while more members of the gang arrived, most of them peering down to where they all waited in the middle of the sand-filled pit. She could hear their curious murmurs as they talked, and with each minute, more came to take a gander.
The fact there was seating up there, and no one who came failed to take a seat, wasn’t filling her with confidence.
“You’ll see the boss sooner than you think,” Golvar told her. “Soon as the interrogation is done.”
Her eyes flickered over to the corridor where the screaming came from. “Are they…torturing him? Seems to be taking a while.”
Golvar snorted. “Torture ain’t an effective tool for dragging answers out of people. Besides, this close, we’d hear him babbling if that was the case. Little copper didn’t seem to have that much iron in his spine. Nah, they’re dragging the answers outta his bones.”
That sounded like magic, and from what she’d seen Malvia do to the Watchwoman, she could guess which kind.
“I was just saying, if they need a hand,” she offered with a sweet smile.
Golvar chuckled. “You’d be more of a hindrance than a help. Three different diabolists in the same place are already too crowded, then you add in the boss, and you step between any of them you might find yourself ash. Nah, just stay out here.”
There were several entrances to the pits and metal gates. The screaming stopped, and eventually, they brought out the Watchman.
Half his face was bloody and raw, skin peeled back in spots surrounding a black abyss that had replaced one of his cheeks. It seemed to sink into him to an impossible depth, something glinting at the bottom.
The rest of him was even more a wreck, skin hanging loosely off in the places where it was still attached. Skall watched, trying to keep the churning in her stomach calm and disgust off her face. How was he even still alive?
“How do you even manage that?” She whispered to Golvar. The elder Black Flame member seemed in a good enough mood to answer questions.
“Why do you want to know?” He whispered back.
“I know some people I wouldn’t mind getting a similar treatment,” she said, and his grin grew wider.
“Aw, that’s adorable. Got some old enemies you want to get the diabolic equivalent of peeling like a potato? I don’t know, and if you know well enough, you won’t bother anyone about it. Who are diabolists are is need to know, although I’m guessing you know at least once.”
Alice nodded. “Bit of a strange duck?”
Golvar scoffed. “Putting it mildly. Don’t let her fancy words or stuck-up attitude throw you off. She’s as much a street rat as you are. If it wasn’t for her being devil-touched, she’d be little more than a pickpocket.”
Alice cocked her head. Perhaps, but that fire when she’d charged the watchwoman had been…well, something to think about.
Giovanni Versalicci walked down the rows of seats.
Alice had seen him before, the thick-horned green-skinned Infernal. Never understood what the big deal was and never listened to him.
It felt different when nearly four hundred people went silent when he entered.
He walked over to a podium set in the walls of the fighting pit, the crowd of Infernals who’d gathered parting in front of him.
“Ms. Dason, could you please fetch me our records of the city laws?” Versalicci asked, and a short-horned Infernal rushed away. Seconds ticked by, seconds where the only sound was the Watch officer moaning in pain down there in the pit with them.
Half a minute later, she returned, another minute as Versalicci leafed through the book. Alice thought about something, but her mouth was suddenly dry. As if breaking the silence would be death, to add any sound but the rustling of pages and whimpering already there.
“It is not illegal under the laws of the city to move through the underground unless it is through specific tunnels that are important to Imperial Military operation,” Versalicci said, leafing through the thick book, the rest of the room silent enough you could hear the rustle of pages when he stopped talking. “Nor is it illegal to enter a house that is unoccupied as long as you do not need to break anything to enter, steal anything inside, or do so with provable malicious intent towards its owners. In short, Corporal Kershaw, your little effort tonight was for a grand total of the crime of my people being Infernals outside of the Quarter.”
The pageantry she could understand, trying to show off for his followers, a show with a victim everyone here would hate to show his power on, but the laws? Why?
“Of course, that law is in place for a good reason. Trainee, can you tell me the reason?”
Alice stiffened, not expecting to be called on to talk, let alone answer a question in front of four hundred others.
“Her Most Profane Majesty isn’t it?” she said. “To stop that from happening again?”
Hissed displeasure from four hundred throats, and she scowled, ready to snarl defiance, when Versalicci held up his hand, cutting it off.
“Like any of you thought different when you came here? With a few exceptions. No, not you Malachti, do not look so smug. No trainee, if you are to progress in this organization, I would suggest not listening to priests or city officials for those reasons. No, we are stuck here because they need someone to hate. Someone to fear. Someone to blame for all their ill luck and misfortune. Someone who they can shoot and club and not feel any guilt for. Isn’t that right, Corporal Kershaw?”
The watchman continued to groan, which Versalicci took as a response.
“Of course, you didn’t act on your own, Sergeant. You had help, did you not? From someone who prized something beyond his own race, didn’t you?”
The only sound was the whimpering now. No one so much as moved, waiting.
“It’s your mess, Morder,” Versalicci said as the pitiful thing that Watchman had become moaned. “At least have the common courtesy to clean this part up yourself.”
Every head turned to the suddenly named traitor, whose face cycled through a variety of expressions. Terror, fear, anger, and sorrow, all appeared, then disappeared again before it settled on resignment.
Morder moved towards the watchman, pulling a long straight knife from his belt. He knelt down, muttered a few words Alice couldn’t hear, then slit his throat.
“Mitlau, kill him.”
Morder whipped around, but in those precious moments, the giant at Alice’s side sprang into action, moving across the sand without a sound beyond the thud of a hoof into the sand.
Morder snarled as he spun, then lunged forward, knife in hand.
Mitlau waited till it was inches from his throat before moving. It should be impossible, someone that large moving that fast as he ducked, the blade going over his head.
Morder spar a curse out, and tried to pull back his blow. Too late. Mitlau’s hand hammered into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs. Morder’s knife fell as Mitlau’s other hand rammed underneath his chin, driving him back.
Morder flailed and fell onto his back while Mitlau grabbed the knife. Morder scrambled back to his feet just in time to avoid the first blow. Then the second, the third, the fourth, but each blow drove him further back, and there was only so far he could go. His back hit the wall, and Alice forced herself to not react as Mitlau stabbed at him.
Morder’s hand moves to grab Mitlau’s wrist only for the knife to stab right through his palm. Morder screamed but still twisted out of the way of Mitlau’s fist.
Boards shuddered as that sledgehammer hit them, and Morder got his hand off the knife in time to move further away. Those meaty fists might be more deadly than the knife, Alice thought. A blow to the head from them might end the fight faster than the blade.
“Fucking shoot me!” Morder screamed up at Versalicci, who didn’t so much as twitch. “Just shoot me, you sadistic little shi-”
He was interrupted by a wide swing with the knife, and lunged forward, jaw opening to bite Mitlau’s wrist, slice into flesh and -
Mitlau’s fist rammed into Morder’s face, and teeth flew as Morder rocked back. Alice could see at least one knife-like canine land on the ground. Morder tried to backpedal, tears in his eyes, blood streaming from his mouth, Mitlau pressing closer-
The knife swung down, cutting deep into Morder’s thigh, slicing right where it met the hip. It sank deep, and Alice knew this fight, already decided, was finally confirmed.
Morder collapsed to the ground, grasping at his thigh as it gushed blood.
“End it! End it, you fucking paw-”
Mitlau’s fist slammed into Morder’s face again, then again, then twice more before he went back to the knife. Morder’s head hit the sand, not a noise coming from him. His jaw hung at a strange angle, and Mitlau furthered it with another cut.
Each cut came slower than the last, flesh continued to be sliced as Morder bled out onto the sand, a splatter of red on the pure white. He whimpered, broken jaw trying to form a plea, and instead, all that came out was a high-pitched whistle that grew higher as Mitlau sliced into his calf.
Everyone remained silent as Mitlau continued his butchery, slowly cutting his way through skin, muscle, and tendons. No one uttered a word, not as Versalicci stared down from above. Even as the whimpering stopped and the struggling faded, the white sand turned more red than white now.
Alice stood, staring at what must surely be a corpse by now. The blood had reached her cheap boots by now, staining the bottoms, but she would not be the first to move or tear her gaze away. There was that sense, that it would be a weakness to be the first to look away or move.
“Enough Mitlau.”
Mitlau paused mid-cut, knife half done slicing through the sole of Morder’s foot.
“I think Morder has learned his lesson,” Versalicci said, gesturing down to Morder’s corpse. “Now, he will provide us with some last use in repayment for his betrayal of the people, but no one needs to see that. The Watch sees us as nothing but carrion, bottom-feeders, below everyone else in this empire, traitorous little curs. Morder proved them right today, by selling his people out for whatever they offered him. Perhaps gold. Perhaps a life as some example of one of the few good Infernals, the ones who know their place under the heels of everyone else. Of course, they would still think of him as carrion, so that is what he’ll be treated as. Food, although for things much deadlier than blackbirds. Ms. Skall?”
She jerked as her name was mentioned and face now turned to her, but she glanced up to stare Versalicci in the face, glowering and defiant.
She had nothing to fear. Best to present a good face that made sure she wouldn’t have anything to fear.
“My friends call me Alice,” she said, forcing words past that reluctant knot forming in her throat. “That slippery little bugger who told me father I needed to live in the Quarter called me Ms. Skall. You’re neither.”
Shit. As soon as Alice finished, she worried she’d pushed that too far, but Versalicci chuckled good-humoredly.
“No need for hostility, miss,” he said. “I just wanted to congratulate you. Only survivor and according to what I was told, two Watch deaths on your hand. Teeth bloody. Good show. We have things to discuss, but first, come out of the pit. You do not want to be in there when our allies eat.”
A rope ladder was descending, Golvar, Mitlau, and Malachti already heading towards it, the last pausing only to spit on Morder’s corpse. To her shock, it twitched in response.
Ignoring that as best she could, she moved towards the ladder, heart pounding. She could hear gears moving, and part of the pit all moving as she got her boots on the rungs, scrambling up the ladder.
Behind her, a gate into the pit opened, and something came down that corridor.
It hissed, floating above the sand, three heads dotting its back, one of them bristling with teeth that bit into the first corpse, the other two blathering in a language that Alice couldn’t understand and made her ears hurt.
“Great Basand, how good it is to grave us with your presence this evening, us your lowly children,” Versalicci said, and her mind tuned out the rest.
It was a devil. They had a devil they’d summoned into the material plane?
Insane. They were all insane. She watched as it devoured Morder’s still twitching body as Versalicci spoke about injustices committed by the Watch and those who aided them. But they would mean food, pay, and maybe a chance out of the quarter. Lunatics and monsters.
Hells knew, the Quarter was surrounded by plenty of those, just waiting to come in and end as many as possible. Maybe they needed some of their own, she just needed to not become their prey.
Alice would just have to be more insane than the rest of them. That’s fine. She knew how to do that.
Comments
Neil Stevens
Yeah, originally the Skall ones were going to be a two part prologue but I decided to just make them some bonus chapters
Tjolbin
Tftc, did not expect multiple chapters in a day Who are diabolists are is need to know, although I’m guessing you know at least once.” Who the diabolists are* At least one*
Frog
That was insane holy shit☠️
