Closing In

The men of Lucan’s retinue were not particularly thrilled to discover that they were not going to be making camp somewhere in easy walking distance of a feast hall, but to their credit they complained while following Gil instead of trying to stand around and argue. Lucan had ordered them to follow Gil’s lead so long as he didn’t demand they break their oaths, and there was nothing dishonorable about rushing to the aid of an ally. Breuse himself, a big man with a scarred face and a leering eye, was the only one who bothered to say anything directly to Gil instead of just grumbling.

“We aren’t going to be much use in a fight if we’re all run ragged.” He complained, “The hell do you think you’re doing?”

“We’re just scouting, and it’s not like you have to go full tilt with Nimue assisting us.” Gil said with a shrug. “At worst we might make a surgical strike. I mostly want to know what the hell our enemy is capable of. He’s got someone who looks like they’re in Camelot, for example, and that’s pretty worrying to be honest.”

Breuse snorted, unimpressed. He looked off into the distance, where he would have been able to see the T4 to the south if they hadn’t been on the fairy path. Anyone in any of the three retinues could be seen by anyone in the other two, as long as they weren’t actively hiding, disguised, or on another plane.

“One person?” He asked. “That’s not much. It’s not like Arthur stripped the garrison completely.”

“Yeah, but…” Gil sighed. “Look, we don’t know what exactly that person is capable of. There is a meaningful chance they are doing some fairly horrible things to everyone we left behind. If I had the ability to do so, I’d be going back to check on them immediately.”

Breuse shrugged, entirely unbothered. He didn’t have a standard of comparison. He’d never met a man capable of destroying cities, let alone planets. It really wasn’t worth elaborating.

“I think you might understand better when we meet the guy.” Gil said, rolling his eyes. “There’s eleven of them worthy of note, maybe a few more if they are actively hiding, and I will be genuinely shocked if we manage to take them down with all you fellows at my back.”

Breuse snorted. He knew of heroes, men who could fight ten others at once without breaking a sweat. Even those fellows needed to dedicate their full attention to creatures like Echidna, and supposedly Balin was among the best of them. Poor bastard had no idea.

••••••••••

Rose invited Hellawes to join her on Bayard, noting that she was at best an indifferent rider. She and Nimue were a bit stiff and formal initially, so Rose dropped the Lady of the Lake for the moment. Nimue was far too busy glowering at Balin in any event, and she’d technically already been recruited. Recruiting Hellawes would be terribly complicated since she was Lucan’s property, but she had been somewhat evasive about exactly what spells she had available. A bit of intimacy may help with that.

“In truth I’ve only been in Gilbert’s service for a short time.” Rose said, “He and your lord Lucan are of a like nature, and similar enough temperament.”

“Oh?” Hellawes said, a sardonic bite in her voice. “What were you doing?”

“Hmm?”

“What were you doing when your ‘lord’ came upon you?” Hellawes asked.

Given Gil’s predilections, Rose needed a moment to wrench her mind from the gutter.

“I was dead.” Rose answered. “Gil found me as an unquiet spirit, and offered me new life. When I proved useful to him, he rewarded me. First with power, then his hand.”

“You are lucky indeed.” Hellawes said. “I suppose many of the damned would be amenable to such a pact, but I was not offered such equitable terms. I am bound to Lucan’s will, you see. He offered me the grave or his service, and I’ve seen enough of the dead to have no desire to join them.”

“Oh? In that case I must ask, what were you doing?” Rose said. “I do not get the impression that Lucan bursts in upon fair maidens without purpose.”

“Then you are mistaken.” Hellawes said. “He is quite happy to meddle in things he has no stake in. I may dabble in the dark arts, but I have done little of note with it. A lover of mine had his hand struck off by sir Gawain and I sought to make Lancelot mine to replace him through charm and grace. No more, and no less. This brought me to Lucan’s attention, and for whatever reason my intentions so aggrieved him that he forced me into his service at the tip of his blade. He has forbidden me from engaging with the darkest arts or calling up the dead from the pit. I may only consult with spirits who are already unquiet. He also extracted an oath that I would never seek to preserve a corpse for my own… intimate use.”

Rose was quite glad she was not looking at Hellawes at that last statement. She kept her voice light.

“Was that a concern?”

“Well, I certainly could. Properly preserved, the freshly dead are all but indistinguishable from the living.” Hellawes said, “Why would I, however? I’m certain Lancelot will accept my affections any day now. One can not possibly pine for a queen forever when one such as I makes themselves available. That would be madness. A deep injustice.”

Her voice grew darker, brooding, as she spoke. Rose could easily imagine the seeds of madness taking root in soil such as that, but she seemed reasonable enough. No worse than Menja, at least.

“Perhaps you could enter into my lord’s service, if Sir Lucan chafes at you.” She said, gently placing one hand upon the sheer fabric covering Hellawes’s knee. “I understand they can make trades among themselves, should all involved consent. Gil is far more eager to reward good behavior than to punish imagined sins.”

It was a rather soft description of Gil’s methods, but it wasn’t entirely false. Rose was fairly sure Nessa was actually quite happy, and that seemed important to Gil even for those he had recruited punitively.

“We would need to know a few things, however,” Rose said, “We need to know what you can do. What magics have you mastered, what doors you can open. Impress me enough to impress him, and you might find your way abroad. There are certainly compensations…”

Rose looked over her shoulder and smiled, trying once more to impart lust upon her target. It was substantially more effective than on anyone else she had encountered in Camelot. This was, after all, a world where virtue served as a kind of antimagic. Courage, fortitude, wisdom, love? All could turn aside a spell.

To a woman defined more by desperate obsession and longing, a dose of lust recently calibrated for iron walls of spiritual purity far outstripped anything Rose had even attempted before this point. That single smoldering look was enough for Hellawes to impulsively lean forward and lock lips with Rose in spite of herself.

Bayard, as well trained a horse as there ever was, thankfully didn’t need any oversight to follow the train of men. Dame Hellawes’s lips were full and hungry, and it took a few moments for Rose to successfully peel her off, even after she remembered that she technically should. It was only the rather crude whooping from the surrounding men that brought the two women back to themselves.

“Enchantment?” Hellawes asked, eyes unfocused.

Rose winced internally. She’d generally tried, ever since acquiring the ability, to keep it modest. Just because she could drive someone wild with lust didn’t mean they’d stay that way for long, or that they’d explain it away automatically. She’d need to salvage this. Instead of letting the distress show, she gave Hellawes a playful little smirk.

“When it feels that good, do you even care?”

As it turns out, Hellawes didn’t care. Such passion, even if fleeting and counterfeit, was a sensation fit to drive such a woman as Dame Hellawes mad. A woman like her, in the fullest bloom of her power and madness, would do quite literally anything to possess one who could inflame such feelings within her breast. This version, plucked from her path half a decade before such malformed desires fully formed, instead was simply eager to share the properties of the talismans in her pockets.

Rose listened, nodding and asking questions as best she could, and was already thinking of ways to use the necromantress’s tools for mischief.

••••••••••

When the team arrived at the castle of King Anguish, it was legitimately at the last second or at least the final hour. The good news was that they had time to rush to the gates and warn them the men that an attack was incoming, but not with enough time to do anything particularly fancy with that information. Just enough to get Balin onto the wall and Lucan’s conscripts hidden in the treeline alongside Gil and Rose, where they’d be invisible so long as they took no action. The plan was to embed Balin in with the city’s defenders, where he could most easily stand between lady Iseult and the enemy and theoretically do the most good, or at least gather the most information.

Gil finally saw how Kusai was getting around, watching him approach though a pair of cheap binoculars pinched from Brockton. His transport was on theme for the setting, but only by the very broadest of technicalities. The vessel that zoomed towards the castle resembled a classical sailing ship with all the sails replaced by giant propellors. Gil was almost certain that was not how the local physics worked, but generally company backed vehicles got a pass.

The strange air ship landed gracefully, much like the helicopter it vaguely resembled, and dropped down a gangplank. The first person off the side of the ship was a massive man of vaguely East Asian extraction. His mass did not appear to be the kind one could acquire from Body Tune Up, or even the slabs of unglamorous muscle gained from years of practical effort. It was the thick, jiggling mass of a man who was simply fat to an extreme degree. His face, too, had a rough quality that looked fairly unhealthy from a distance. The name Shuuzou Kusai (T5) floated above his head in glowing orange flames.

Three T3 women with long red hair rushed down the ramp to form a loose triangular formation ahead of him, hurrying into place. They were fairly different other than their broadly matching hair color. Jessica Rabbit, the one front and center, was dressed in a sparkling red cocktail dress. To the wings, a woman named Fiona sported a long red braid and a green dress with a vaguely medieval aesthetic, and a woman named Kim Possiblw was dressed in a comparatively practical tight black shirt and pants.

The redheads weren’t visibly armed, but they were unmistakably an honor guard of sorts. Behind Kusai a tall T6 blonde named Rosa Farrell followed him demurely. Gil locked onto the T6; 50 credits worth of raw power bound up in one blonde woman in white. A spellcaster from the look of her.

As the massive man swaggered up to the castle gates, he left behind only two high tier retinue members, a T5 named Jaheira and a woman named Opal Beifong who was still inside, to guard the ship. Gil noticed with a sigh that a handful of lower tier girls were visible through the hull, easily enough to bring Kusai at least slightly over budget, including one by the name of Isolde (T2). Kusai was definitely gathering the local ladies to form a harem. Or contribute to one, given the fact that every single name Gil could see had a distinctly feminine cast to it. Not quite as practical as Gil’s local recruitment, but there was a real chance those women would be a threat of some kind now.

The man’s substantial girth and unfortunate complexion told Gil much more than one might expect. He almost immediately relaxed, just a touch, at the sight of him. The complete unknown collapsed into a recognizable archetype, and with it a handful of predictions of varying reliability and accuracy. Enough for a baseline, and not an exceptionally high one relative to the resources he had at his disposal.

“Thank the moon.” Gil said, “it’s a fat bastard build. This could have been a lot worse. Alright lads, here’s the plan.”

••••••••••

So… what IS the plan?

https://strawpoll.com/2ayLQvoKqn4