Rituals, Regrets, and Really Dumb People

Chapter 6: Obligatory Bigger Baddie, Part 1

I don't think it was a good thing to be trapped in a room with a bunch of greenhorn warrior-monks, a kid, and a succubus who may or may not have seen the world as sunshine and rainbows. Especially since I lost my blood magic. Lilly did handle herself well in Sanctuary, though, and Dimitri is here, so maybe we'd be okay.

Let's see what Typhous has on his side. A view outside the door says that he has at least a good chunk of my cultists working for him. Only five or so of the cultists could fit inside the room to face us, so we had that on our side. He also had the undead, which were often slow and stupid, they usually work best when they can outnumber the other forces and can cause discord. They outnumbered us, but they were in the main back of his unit. Typhous really was a stooge to not put them in the front.

What about the higher ups? Well, Meredith can't fight, so that knocks her out as a threat. Typhous is a strong mage, but lazy and rather incompetent overall despite his potency. There was another man near Typhous, though, one that didn't wear the robes of my cultists nor the advanced stages of decay of undeath. This man was a mystery to me.

He didn't look the part of warrior. He was thin, though not so much so that he would have been blown over by the wind. No, he was somewhat wiry, what I could make of him. Light blond hair, almost white, hung from his head, heavy in its length. Couldn't have been no more than his mid-twenties, meaning he was probably another reprobate like me and Typhous. Most of himself was hidden behind baggy clothing, though, making him hard to discern. He may have been another magician, which made him a wildcard.

"Where'd ya get the undead, Typhous?" I asked as I pointed at him, hand wagging. "They a bunch of your exes?"

Typhous shifted on his newly amassed weight, his robes draping his corpulent figure. His skin was even more pallid now, his eyes damn near black. I knew what this was; he'd filled himself up on poisons, he looked like he was ready to pop from corpse gas. I don't know, rightly, if he was undead now, but I should take it that he's done something very fucked up to become what he is now.

"From Sanctuary," he remarked, his voice straining from the duress his body was under. I wanted to say it sounded like gravel grinding together, but that'd be too cool for Typhous. He sounded like a dork—I really need to work on my insults. "They're fresh."

"Fool!" I shouted at him. "You overstep your bounds. You had no right to go attack Sanctuary."

"Funny coming from you, hypocrite. It does not matter, though, Sanguine," he told me in that slow roll of creepiness that one should expect from a man who has tampered with the darker side of things. He just never had the knack to look cool doing it like I did. "Their flesh is the vehicle for my ascension. I will do what you've failed to do."

"I'll see you in Hel before I allow you to do that, Typhous."

"Typhous," said the man with the long blond hair. "We have no time for this." This one sounded gentle, placated and calm. His word carried some sort of accent, something foreign to me even in his calm, deliberate tone. It was a mix of Ruthenian and Pars, ancient languages further west of Germania. "End him and take the Seal. We should be on our way."

"Blow it out your ass," I told the blond man. "This is between me and Typhous. And my—ugh—ex-wife. Why'd you have to get involved?"

Meredith wore a black dress now with sequins and a bone-shaped crown for her dark hair. She tried to pull off the whole evil enchantress look—and to be fair she looked good doing it, but she was not on my side so I would have to rag on it. If just for posterity's sake.

"Typhous here," she said as she slowly patted Typhous's arm in disgust, "is going to rule the world, and I will be his queen."

Terrific. "You break our vows for this!?"