The Sneak King

Sir Auren kept a vigilant watch over the monitors before him, just as his brothers and his sisters-in-arms did with theirs. The pale gray light that washed them in the mostly featureless security office seldom changed as various figures moved about the Brighton Estate. Their every move was traced by the cameras, each equipped with witch-eye glass that pierced glamours and showed movement in the air with a faint, glowing outline, barring most forms of invisible infiltration. The Order knew its enemies well.

Sir Heckman, a female Knight nearing her forties, had not so much grumbled or spoken a word as she watched the Warden of the Spear, the most unexpected visitor, brutally **** another. She tapped away at her console to send the appropriate alarms and messages, but it would be distracting to the others in the room to bring it up. Disruption of their watch could cost lives, after all; gossip and impressions would have to wait until their shift was complete.

Similarly, Sir Auren didn't bother to murmur when Hospitaler Redd, alone with the Warlock for far longer than Sir Auren felt comfortable, finally emerged from the cell. He exhaled slowly with relief. Confessor Lazarus remained away, though Sir Auren couldn't fathom why, but at least he could breathe easy knowing nothing bizarre had occurred. Sir Auren raised an eyebrow as he watched Redd approach the door to her left. Lord Brighton gave me orders to disregard their activity in that level in regards to the Warlock... but he made no mention of the Hound. Sir Auren tried to think back to his orders. Did Lord Brighton mean to encompass all of their traitors and heretics? The young man considered reporting the strange change in orders... but then, he would not dare bother Lord Brighton with such a minor issue. Jotting it down in his surveillance notes, Sir Auren archived the event without further notice.

"Turning left," Redd whispered. Underneath her billowing robes, a shape moved. She felt limbs twisting and moving against her bare skin, nearly drawing a moan from her as she felt fingers innocently brush her skin. She turned left with his movements; the camera's view would never see the odd lump in her clothing. With a press, the door to Galley Gallow's cell dilated away as six petals of a rose. Redd stepped in and quickly tapped the security panel on the inside, registered only to Order staff, to have the rose door close anew.

"Hospitaler Redd?" Hospitaler Diana Carey. Younger than Redd but already more talented, Diana was an actual medical doctor as well as a mystic healer, discovered by the Order when she unconsciously treated cancer patients too well for normal medicine to explain. This was an innocent folly on her part, and the hospital was safe once again with her quitting to instead work for the Order.

That was how Redd had always seen it before. She was healing cancer patients... they were happy with their miracles and... sure, that just leads to more questions, more magic in the public, more dangerous risks of expansion of magic, but... but this fucking... Order... everything they touch is-! Redd's anger couldn't be hidden; she all but snarled unconsciously at the Order, startling Carey.

But more suspicious than her expression was the massive, torso-sized lump that bulged against her robes. Carey looked at it, dumbfounded... until the lump leaped out of the folds to reveal a full-sized, bare-assed man flying across the room wearing nothing but silvered bracers. Carey could barely inhale to scream before the Warlock rapidly surprise-attacked her.

Your serpent's bite deals 296 subdual damage to Hospitaler.
CRIT! Your quickcasted serpent's bite deals 888 subdual damage to Hospitaler!

Hospitaler defeated!
+1,419XP
+money and loot auto-collect failed

John looped his arms around the woman's body as his own flipped around her, unbound by gravity as he was. He willed his bracers to stop their effect and landed on his feet to catch her properly. Jesus, these things will take some getting used to...

Magical item: Lightweight Hardening Bracers of Meditation. These bracers weigh less than a feather apiece and provide a number of bonuses: a +10 physical damage resist bonus, +10/minute mana regeneration and, on mental command, can change the user's weight to be 0-300% of normal.

Redd's layout of the security cameras gave John few options. The vow keeper, the mana-sucking machine, and a quasi-BDSM table narrowed it down to a few weapons and mana boosters with Craft, including these bracers. He couldn't turn himself invisible or else make himself look like Redd. The last option was the oddest item on the list of possibilities: to make himself weightless and hide under the robes while avoiding the camera's perspective. The hodge-podge mess was the likely side-effect of all the mana the machine had extracted, giving John a number of ideas of what to do if he got out of this alive.

With the sole enemy neutralized, John gave Redd a quick glance, refreshed his neutralization of her blessing, and set the **** doctor down before standing to appraise the situation. Anger filled him anew.

The room had been as barren as his, though the steel surfaces were paneled. The middle was dominated by a hospital bed, a medical cart, and all manner of tubes leading in and out of Galley Gallows. Her large body was outlined by the sheets that, despite being soaked in sweat, had been changed recently. The feverish woman's chest heaved as she breathed into the oxygen mask, and her black hair was a matted mess against the pillow. John's eyes struggled to leave the bandaged stump where her right arm terminated only inches from the shoulder. Those bandages, at least, seemed fresh. Stranger still was that other sense he now had: whether it was the "Dream" or something related to his new ability, he could distinctly feel the emptiness of the space Galley occupied. More than nothing being there, John felt as if she would be dangerous to touch, like an infinite vacuum restrained to the outline of a fallen warrior.

John pushed away this notion. This was Galley Gallows... and she was on his side, or at the very least was no longer on Lord Brighton's.

"I doubt I can hide you both in my robes," Redd muttered, "and there's no way I could carry this one around, not as she is. What do you intend?"

John looked over Galley... and tried to focus on his Restore spell even as he whispered, "I'm going to see if being a Paragon is worth a damn here."

"A what?" Redd didn't ask again as John ignored her, save for his constant glances. As long as he looked at her with the Eye of the King once every six seconds, he could keep the blessing off of her.

Redd had, thankfully, done very little to earn the kind of guilt that Krieg had experienced... but John still had to console her as she cried. She had done nothing but heal the wounded, yet she had seen Order interrogations. Some were cleaner than others. All required her aid. She had also healed innocent children and men and women hurt by magic, had helped them return to good, innocent lives, and had enjoyed her work as a healer on the field... good, moral uses of her magic, one and all. But her idle support of the torturing of one youth had clearly left a mark on her; her silence even as a Confessor tried to **** John wracked her with a need to make it up to the young man. They had spent nearly half an hour in that room, and almost half that time was spent trying to stabilize the Hospitaler's mind as she came to terms with her career. John had tried Restore in the hope that it would remove the blessing, but it failed. John told Redd everything he knew about the blessing... and what he suspected to be the only cure for the same, the same cure he refused to exercise.

Neither wanted him to try. To Redd, it was one set of shackles for another; John agreed, and the two never spoke of it again.

He gave her his Eye's attention while simultaneously moving his hands and focusing on the Restore spell. He wasn't trying to revive the dead... nor was he trying to undo some kind of curse, as far as he could tell. He just wanted to heal Galley... to stop her fevers at least and, Gaia willing, give her back her arm. He wanted to tell Galley this, to hear her dismissive sigh even with her missing arm, to hear her calm approach to whatever they could do to get out of here together... but she remained comatose, maimed, and visibly shivering.

The power of the Restore began to peak again as it did with Ju, only he was not pressured to rush the spell here. Redd watched with rapt attention as his hands glowed blue, then indigo, then navy, and back through a flickering cycle of blue radiances, as he meditated over the wounded Hound. Redd was trained to sense magic; she knew in her bones that there was no such sorcery afoot, yet it danced as a growing aura around the teenager's hands. Half a minute of this passed... and the colors ceased their shifting. John looked down at his hands as he continued to try and focus it more, but the healing effect would go no further. You failed to help Kim all the way... and you couldn't get rid of the blessing from Redd... John felt foolish talking to a spell, but his desperation had brought him here. Don't fail me here... I don't care if she's Soulless or whatever, just... fucking...!

"Heal!" he hissed as he placed his hands, every drop of mana he had, and all the focus he could muster upon Galley's forehead.

You cast Restore on [NULL], but [NULL] is an invali-we4ruwut8g9hfg#$fjsd. Overwritten. Your Restore healed [NULL] for 14,367 damage, healing [PRONOUN] to full! Your Restore regenerated [POSSESSIVE PRONOUN] arm! Your Restore healed [POSSESSIVE PRONOUN] Breaker Arm installation damage! Your Restore healed [NULL]'s various toxic chemical addictions and systemic damage! You've cured [NULL]'s sleep poison status!

The message could barely be read as a blinding blue light overtook the room. The three needles situated across Galley's body were suddenly spat out from perfectly closed flesh. The bandages in the gruesome stump exploded as stitches were blasted out at bullet speeds before the horrific, but thankfully brief, growth of a human arm from a bloody stump took place in rapid stages: bones, then veins, then meat, then layer after layer of skin in rapidly overlapping patterns until the arm had returned... utterly cleansed of all tattoos. The light faded... and a fully alert Galley suddenly snapped her eyes open as she felt fingers pressed against her scalp. She spun in place, her brand new right arm anchoring her as she swiveled a kick against John's skull.

-98HP

She blinked in surprise as the enemy didn't budge... and then realized who she had kicked. John looked back with a giant, shit-eating grin... and Galley now realized that she had been in a hospital bed, naked, and was presently flashing John her half-spread twat as she remained in that pose. Quietly, she withdrew her leg and worked to get off the hospital bed, grabbing the sheets in a daze to get some kind of decency... until she looked down to her right. Her arm... it was not missing. The tattoo was missing. The two facts wrestled in her mind as the traumatic memory of her defeat hinted at its own existence... but her mind just as quickly sealed it away. She had punched Lord Brighton... and only blackness remained of what had happened afterwards.

But Galley was not one to sweat the details of the past. "What... Where are we?"

John spotted Redd's face suddenly growing cold and neutralized her blessing anew. She was ever a moment away from lapsing back into the loyal Hospitaler, after all. John did his best to meet Galley's eyes as he spoke, "We're in the bottommost level of the Brighton mansion, in some kind of super dungeon full of monsters... and we're the latest additions. And now we're getting the fuck out of here."

Galley gave John a long, steady glare... and offered the smallest of smiles. "Good grief... I'm going to need a bit more than that... and some clothes."

John flashed her a grin. “It’s good to have you back.” He was earnest, too earnest for what appeared to be their rather dire circumstances... but somehow, he put Galley at ease all the same.

More, Galley couldn't remember the last time someone was happy to see her a second time. She cleared her throat as she struggled to reply.