Prison Break

  The Shardfort cut through the clouds like a dark bde, even to her fairy eyes barely visible from where she was, hovering just next to where it would pass. As it descended, she heard a few faint cries and shouts of arm, likely from the handful of non-human denizens of Saxmoor whose night-vision wasn't absolutely terrible. That was OK; she had expected that, and it hopefully wouldn't alert anyone until it was too te.

  The Dreadfort continued to descend, down and down and down until it the battlements passed by where she was greeted by Rafferty, Saoirse, Maeve, and Finnley, the original squad of demons she had recruited, along with Ms. Mulligan and the crew that would hold the courtyard. And behind them, arranged in squadrons of twenty, were the eight groups of undead soldiers, standing in neat rows, unmoving, silent, and more than a little terrifying.

  'I have located the four prisoners we are here to liberate,' Marci said, speaking into the minds of the demons, and pushing through a mental image of each, along with the area of the prison that they were in.

  The demons grimaced and swayed as the foreign thought was forced upon them, but Marci wasn't willing to chance one of them getting confused and attacking her friends. Well, friends and Anke.

  'And allow me to be clear, we are aiming to subdue and capture any guards, rather than kill,' she continued. 'I do not want a bloodbath. Understand?'

  One of the demons, a succubus raised her hand. "Um, your Dark Eminence, I'm confused," she whispered. "You… don't want us to kill the dog Surfacers-"

  'No!' growled Marci in her mind. 'I have been explicit about this. You are off the squadron. Go and report to Ms. Vos for a defensive assignment.'

  The Succubus flinched and grumbled darkly, slinking off into the dread fortress.

  'Anyone else feel like second-guessing my commands? No? Good!" said Marci as the Dreadfort came to a halt, some twenty-five meters above the top of the prison's roof. 'Then deploy, as we discussed.'

  The demons who could took to the air, fpping around the crane as those who couldn't boarded the ptform, grabbing onto the railings spaced throughout it and making room for the first two of the squadrons of undead soldiers to stomp onto it.

  Below, Marci could hear the shouts of arm increasing, some of them close by. More lights began to flicker on around the town. It wouldn't be long now, she knew.

  "Cranes aways!" shouted one of the kobolds operating the rge steel contraption, and with a shudder and a jerk the machine raised the ptform a few meters before swinging out over the edge of the Dreadfort and then beginning to lower towards the prison's courtyard beneath as demons with wings swarmed around it.

  It made contact with the gravel floor of the space with a loud crunch, and Marci winced as shouts began to echo from around the prison, some guards, some likely prisoners. Stealth was over.

  "Secure the courtyard!" she shouted. "Rafferty, your group with me!"

  The demons formed up, those who could fly following after Marci as she approached one of the four rge, banded oak double doors that led into the north wing of the prison. It was warded, like everything else, and held for a surprising amount of time, long enough that the crane had just delivered its second load of undead soldiers, who at a thought from Marci moved to aid the other demons who were barring the other doorways.

  But then the oak and steel buckled under Marci's repeated bsts of magic, and they were in.

  "Find the Mistress' agents!" roared Rafferty as he strode across the shattered remains of the oak and into a rge, rectangur room overlooked by balconies that were lit up, and where several terrified guards were shouting and running about and fumbling for muskets. At the far end were a set of stone stairs, leading upward to the third floor where Marci's friends were being kept.

  Marci conjured a barrier, as did Saoirse, and Raffety raised his great shield and advanced through the crack of musket fire, other demons following him.

  Marci dropped her shield and flitted behind Saoirse, using the demonesses' barrier to unch a series of concussive bsts that knocked the guards flying, and making space for the winged demons to leap into the air and nd on the balcony.

  A few of the guards tried to stay and fight, but most fled into adjoining chambers. Those brave few were quickly knocked down, quite brutally, and with injuries, but not mortally wounded. It seemed that demons could restrain their bloodlust, which was good, and although Marci didn't actually want the guards dead, after seeing the bruises on Of and Anke, she wasn't that bothered by some of their tormentors getting roughed up a little.

  The squadron of undead trooped in behind them, crossing through the long, narrow space and then moving up the staircase, spears lowering and shields raising as a group of guards appeared at the top.

  These guards, mostly men, but one woman, appeared to have a greater sense of preservation than the others, and immediately turned to run, screaming about 'undead legions!' Marci smirked. This was all going rather well-

  The universe hated Marci.

  She had come to accept this long before she had unwittingly become the Dark Lady of the Dreadfort. She could not have nice things, and things could not go smoothly, which was why the minute she thought that things were actually going smoothly she heard the loud boom of cannon-fire, and a moment ter Jonda's mind cmoured for her attention.

  'M'dy, the Saxmoor fortress has spotted us! They are firing at the Dreadfort!'

  Marci cursed as there was another boom and she felt a shot connect, striking the battlements that contained the crane. A thought and an order and the kobolds stopped operating the crane, and the Dreadfort began to turn and swivel to present another one of its four sides towards the city's fortress. The fortress would take some damage, but it wouldn't be crippling, and could be repaired. This was OK, this was fine-

  'Mistress, gryphon riders incoming!' said Jonda, pushing forward a mental image of dozens of gryphons taking off from within the fortress.

  Marci swore. Did everyone have gryphons now? She'd thought they were rare! They probably wouldn't be as powerful as the heroes who had nearly stormed the fortress, and she had a lot more demons and better defences, but the dream of a quick, surgical extraction was slipping through her fingers. She couldn't afford to lose her battlements to the attackers.

  'Return fire! The fortress only, aim for their canons!' she sent. 'Defenders, prepare for attackers! Defend the battery crews!'

  Booms from the Dreadfort's batteries echoed through the city, fshes from their great muzzles lighting up as they responded, smashing into the fortress and damaging the warded stone wherever they struck, even as her troops continued to advance into the prison, securing rooms as they went.

  Behind them, the courtyard was more or less quiet, and part of her was tempted to redeploy her demons there. But, no, she'd been caught out before by not defending weak points. There were over fifty demons up in the Dreadfort, another fifteen wasn't going to make a difference, and she couldn't afford to get cut off.

  Undead continued to pour into the prison, and Marci flew above them, rejoining Rafferty and the other demons as they reached the third floor. The door to the right-hand cells where her friends were held for almost a minute: it's warding fresh enough to give her difficulty dispelling, and her reluctance to employ highly destructive spells in close quarters limiting what she could do. She might have resigned herself to hurting some guards, likely killing many who nded on the Dreadfort, but she had no intention of hurting innocent prisoners.

  The gryphon riders nded on the fortress, both the area with the crane, and the side facing towards the fortress. The attackers, however, were less coordinated than the team of adventurer's had been, and were clearly not prepared to face a throng of vicious demons.

  Marci winced as several of them were killed outright in the first few moments of touching down, one of them taking a musket-bst to the chest that knocked him out of his saddle and sent him hurtling down to crunch onto the prison-roof below, another sent flying over the edge by the swing of a huge mace.

  Further down, she could feel some of her undead engaging some guards who had rallied and were trying to break through their bristling shield wall. But while the guards were much smarter than the simple necromantic constructs, the skeletons had heavy armour, didn't feel fear, and were defending a chokepoint. They were eerily silent as musket shots pinged off their shields and armour, and when one of the guards tried to close on them with halberd, they were forced back by the mass of spears that shot forward in unison.

  Prisoners shouted in arm as Marci and the others barrelled into the cell block, Marci streaming forward and reaching Of's cell. The Kattdjur man's ears were pressed back against his skull, and he shied away as Marci reached the gate and began trying to dispel the locking mechanism on it.

  "Saoirse, get that door there," she said, pointing the succubus towards Anke's cell. "Rafferty, that one and that one, see if you can't rip bars off."

  "Yes, Dark Mistress!" rumbled the hulking, red-skinned demon, stomping past her.

  "Marci," said Of.

  "Just hold on, I'll have you out in a second," said Marci.

  "Marci!" hissed Of, his pink eyes tracking the demon as it stomped past. "These- these are demons-"

  "Yes, and they're under my control," said Marci, not looking at him. "Bound to obey- it's a Shardfort thing. Just- just not now, OK?"

  The lock clicked, and Marci pulled open the door and hurled her arms around Of's neck.

  "Oh Marci, what have you done?" he said, even as he returned the embrace.

  She was about to respond when the sound of a Gillian-like scream reached her ears. Oh, right, she hadn't told the dwarf what was happening.

  "Rex, Gillian! It's me!" said Marci, buzzing off down the corridor to where Rafferty was simultaneously trying to pull the door off, and shield himself from where the battered and bruised Gillian was trying to hit him with a wooden tray that must have been left over from a meal.

  "M-Marci?" he said, confusion and disgust registering in his eyes. "What? Your eyes- you-"

  "I exploded, and they're red, I know," said Marci. "Look, I can expin ter—we need to get out of here, OK?"

  "I ain't going anywhere with a demon!" he screamed, hitting the pit fiend.

  "Dark Mistress, are you sure this is your agent?" said Rafferty, who although he could not understand the Altisch, Marci didn't think, was able to pick up on the general tenor. "He seems to not like me."

  "Yes!" said Marci. "Leave this to me. Go- go and secure our retreat."

  The pit fiend looked sceptical, but did move to obey as Marci began to work on the dwarf's lock.

  "What- what happened to yeh?" he said, backing away. "Your- your eyes-"

  "An accident!" said Marci, gncing at Of. "Tell him, I need to focus on this lock."

  "She… says that the blood on her hand, from the cut… it bound her to the Shardfort," said Of uneasily, coming to stand next to Marci.

  "And the demons?" he said. "Don't tell me you're going along with this, Of!?"

  "She says they're under her control, and… well, she did just order that pit fiend off," he said. "Look, Gillian, we're- we're going to hang if we stay here. You know that."

  "I'll have no truck with demons!" shouted Gillian.

  "I didn't say it was good, but what choice do we have?" said Of.

  Gillian set his jaw and looked away. A moment ter, Marci broke the lock's warding, and it opened with a click, and moved onto Tissa's.

  "Friend Marci!" said the Arana woman, who had stuck her head through the bars and been listening in. "We are both pleased and concerned to see you!""

  "You too, Tissa," said Marci. "Give me a second…"

  "We find it extremely arming that you are a Shardkeeper," continued Tissa. "But we are grateful that you have returned for us. We did not wish to be executed!"

  Having gotten used to the warding principles whoever had enchanted the prison's locks had used, the third was easier than the first two, and the door swung open a few seconds after Saoirse finally managed to break Anke's lock.

  "Alright," said Marci, another cannon-bst ringing out overhead. "Let's go-"

  "Dread Lady!" came a voice from across the hall. Marci turned her head to see a miserable looking gnome woman at the bars, dirty and bloody and bruised and painfully thing. "Please, free me! I didn't kill no noble! I don't want to die! I'll- I'll serve!"

  Marci winced as she felt the Shard take the woman's consent and run with it, hooking her into self and making her part of Marci's growing web of psychic bonds. It wasn't like the kobolds, and Jonda's—this bond was conditional, like the ones she had with the demons. In the case of the infernal contracts, there were various cuses regarding pay, and had ways for the demons to get out of them with notice. These offers, however, were simple—open ended service in exchange for freedom.

  "Me too, Dark one!" shouted another prisoner. "I'll serve too, just get us out!"

  "I'll serve, great Shardkeeper! Just save me!"

  "And me! I didn't do anything! I shouldn't be in here!"

  Marci swore as she felt bonds multiply as more and more of the prisoners, who seemed to have figured out that Marci wasn't there to kill people, but instead break them out, filtered through the cell-block. She was surprised by the sheer number of people willing to throw in with what they saw as demons just as a chance for life.

  Marci knew she should just go, leave them behind. She had no idea if these people were in fact innocent. She could certainly believe that some of them were, but surely not all.

  Still… they were all clearly being beaten, starved, even if they were guilty of some crime, did that warrant such horrible treatment? Execution?

  And, part of her mind said, you'll be able to tell who is guilty, and who isn't. And if they're really bad, you can just send them to some other jail…

  "Please, m'dy, spare us!"

  "Fuck," said Marci, her attention flitting back up to the fight on the battlements, where the humans seemed to be reinforced by another wave of gryphon-mounted soldiers, and then to the cannon crews that were still exchanging fire with the fortress. "Fuck."

  She needed to go. She needed to leave…

  Marci darted across the hallway to the cell opposite Tissa's.

  "Saoirse, start breaking locks!" she said. "And Anke, assuming you even know how to de-ward locks, why don't you make yourself useful?"

  *** The lock clicked open, and Marci fluttered back as the link to the woman in front of her solidified. "Down the hall, then the stairs, the demons will direct you."

  "R-right," croaked a grey-bearded, elderly man, who was so pale that he looked like he had been in the jail a very, very long time.

  The man shuffled out of his cell, and after a moment Marcie waved Finnley, the four-armed wrath demon over.

  "Please, help this man to the Dreadfort," she said.

  "He is… one of your agents?" said the wrath demon, confused.

  "He is now," said Marci.

  The wrath demon, and the prisoner, both seemed confused and disturbed, but the blue-furred hellspawn held out two arms to steady the man and began helping him move off down the corridor.

  "You know that not all of these people are innocent?" said Of, who had managed to locate his gear in the 'evidence' chest in the guard house, and now was looking, if not well, then at least not longer quite so battered thanks to a healing potion or two.

  "I know, but I'll be able to sort that out," said Marci. "I can't leave them here, not after they pledged themselves to me. I have a… responsibility."

  Above, on the Shardfort, the attackers had been repulsed, and enough gryphons had been shot out of the air that they'd stopped trying to send reinforcements. The fortress at the centre of the city was still shooting at them, and her kobold teams were still shooting back, shaking the air with great booms that shattered masonry and had already blown the top off one of the towers in an effort to destroy the enemy cannons.

  "And you'll let them go?" he said. "The one's who aren't axe-crazy?"

  Marci turned to him, a hurt look on her face. "Of course," she said. "Of, I'm- I'm still me."

  He sighed and shook his head, and Marci focused back on the very st cell in the block — an elvish girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen summers old. She gave Marci a deep bow, before rushing off at her direction.

  Around three quarters of the prisoners had pledged themselves, the remaining quarter, however, were either too scared, or clearly hated demons more than they wanted freedom, and gred at her as she passed back down the long hallway and to the guard-post at the top of the stairs. Beneath her the guards had given up trying to make it past her unmoving skeletal forces, a few had taken wounds, but as far as she could tell no one in the prison itself had died. Up on the battlements of the Dreadfort, however it was a different story, and she didn't want to think too hard about the fortress.

  Still, it could have all gone a lot worse, and as the st load of skeletal soldiers marched onto the ptform and began to be hoisted upwards, Marci let out a sigh of relief and directed the Dreadfort to rise back into the cloud cover.

  She'd done it. She'd rescued her friends. Now… now she could focus on trying to disentangle her soul. Hopefully, without having to get into anymore stupid battles or raid anymore Priories or commit anymore crimes. Not that the tter probably mattered anymore, for all she'd done, she'd probably earn more death-sentences than any fairy in history if it ever went to court.

  And her mother had said she'd never amount to anything.