The Secret of Lord Brighton

11:13AM, The Brighton Estate
Sub-Level H: Invisum Conservavit

"Then you lied to me," Moira pointedly declared.

"You had no reason to know," Lord Brighton replied, "until now."

In the peace that followed the restraint and medical attention of the two newly christened enemies of the Order, Moira and her father had agreed to their safety and, newly aware of their nudity, had promptly left towards their separate rooms within the home. In their absence, the barrier melted away and, with it, the “ultra-real” copy of the mansion that John and Galley had damaged. The Court was once again in pristine condition; the walls remained uncollapsed, and the puddles of blood, none of which, by some miracle, denoted ****, all vanished with the barrier while the healed soldiers went to the barracks below for a mass debriefing.

Not more than fifteen minutes had passed before Lord Brighton, confronted by his daughter, had been demanded to take her to see John. Father and daughter wore suit and summer dress in a bizarre mirror of who was now in a position of authority.

Not five minutes more had passed until they had traveled down the spiral staircase leading to the dungeon. A solemn hallway flanked by holding cells, the dungeon was empty every time Moira came to see, and so she had assumed her father simply seldom kept prisoners except to transfer them to the Order’s true prison... but all that had changed when her father and Sir Krieg led her to the roughly hewn stone bricks of the end of the dungeon hall.

Sir Krieg carefully pressed two bricks simultaneously... and with that simple gesture, the wall before them blossomed into a passageway that terminated into a single landing flanked by a wide set of elevator doors and a single, emergency staircase.

There was more, then, to Moira’s home than she had known after years of exploring it. Quietly, the three of them walked into the massive elevator as it opened knowingly. Moira marveled at its walls: scarred and dented, the industrial elevator’s steel surfaces had clearly met with ferocious guests. Moira spotted the elevator panel and its five buttons, each labeled with a letter from "C" to "H." Sir Krieg pressed the last of them, and the elevator lurched into its descent.

"Until now? How could you just hide something like this from me? If John wasn’t down here, would you have bothered to tell-” The elevator had not yet fully crossed into D... and something like quickly-rising water was around Moira's thighs. She looked down in surprise, thought to call her shield to her hand from where it rested on her dress as a brooch, but the strange surface had already passed her mouth and filled the elevator. Moira blinked... and soon her senses revealed that they had re-entered that same, reality-enforcing barrier that had come to engulf her entire home. The indicator shined the "D" above; they had entered the secret floors properly. Then... they just shrunk the barrier from before?

"I only meant that you have changed, my daughter... and your eagerness to assume duties now is backed by the Lady's will that you do the same," replied the aged Lord. Now healed and renewed, his old demeanor had returned in full ****. "I will respectfully convey these duties... part of which now concern what you will do with these criminals, and part of which includes being the caretaker of that which lies below."

The elevator was fast; it dinged as to their arrival, and the glowing "H" on the small plate above the door signaled that they had reached the true bottommost level. Unless he's lying about this, too... "So... what is down here?"

"That which the Order must do... for survival, beyond faith alone."

The elevator doors opened. They had arrived at the bottommost level without Moira even noticing. Rather than being greeted by the massive stone bricks of the dungeon level Moira had become familiar with, level H was a stark facility of smooth, steel surfaces and white lights that ran along the corners of the corridors. The hallway broke off into four separate corridors, and Moira looked about in near-speechless awe. "What is this...?"

"A sort of research facility, one where our most sensitive cases or subjects are housed. Do not be fooled, however: this facility was the same as ours in England, transported here through very expensive means. As Warden, it will be your duty-"

"N-No," Moira interrupted, "I mean... why are there such... things here?" Lord Brighton's lips pressed into a grim silence as he realized his daughter's meaning. He did not see with the Warden's sight any longer; but Moira, so blessed, saw their auras: red, pulsating malice, light-warping chaos, and other malevolent presences that littered this place to run the gamut of foul, evil things. "Some of these are so clearly the enemies of the Lady, and yet..."

"As I said, my daughter... here lie things which must be studied for our survival... for mankind's survival. Blasphemous though their sins often are, we would wound ourselves into oblivion to ignore them... and so through their study, we may better repel them, chastise their creators, and eventually crush the origin of these dark plots."

Moira continued to look around... and only after the shock of the presence of evil wore away did she realize that shining, ever-familiar beacon of an aura: John Newman. "This is where you want to keep John?!"

"Without the barrier, we would struggle to keep him at all, if I understand his powers correctly."

Moira took a step into the hall, her wide eyes still taking in the various auras all about her and the first hall they passed. Ten cell doors alternated down the hall in a manner not unlike the barracks, except an eleventh, double-doored cell waited at the end. "Are the other levels like this one?"

"Above here lie the execution chamber and our innermost vault," Lord Brighton lectured, causing Moira to grimace, "and above that are the three layers of interrogation and holding chambers for our more heinous enemies, divorced from the others to avoid further corruption. Beyond that, just below the dungeon level, is the security center that manages the safehouses and patrols across North America."

Moira shook her head. "Execution chamber... for prisoners?"

Lord Brighton raised an eyebrow at his daughter. "You are the Warden... you know that some must warrant ****."

"I thought it to be the exception, once they were already secured in our dungeon." Moira had spent years sleeping over some chamber of ****, then; the thought wasn't comforting, no matter the dire role she was meant to play. John’s accusation grew more believable with every hour of the day. "Then how do you decide which may live or die?"

"As justice requires... with the exception of your clemency, of course. As you willed it, the Hound and Rogue are here already... secured with special accomodations for their particularly worrisome gifts. Both remain ****, stable... and unharmed."

"Who... who of the Order is kept here?" Moira whispered, peering through the walls.

"... of the Order? No one."

It was one of the last she could notice through all the pillars of evil... but this unfamiliar aura glittered like gold, and at first Moira thought it to be a knight with the Lady’s faith... yet not the Lady's blessing. She knew it to be like those of Cornelius or Lorelei, but she knew those two too well to confuse this for them. “One of the prisoners... worships the Lady, earnestly so.”

Lord Brighton’s pause was not long, but to his daughter it seemed a suspicious century of disquieted quiet. “An odd exception, yes, but the purpose of that specimen remains.”

Moira knew John would be out for at least a few hours, and Galley as well. More, curiosity took her... as did something she detected in her father’s speech. "Take me to her."

Lord Brighton's eyebrows raised in surprise. He glanced at Sir Krieg who, knowing full well what awaited, averted his own eyes. "I... did not mention its gender."

"The Lady did... in your voice." Moira looked up to her father with an inquisitive raise of her brow. "Why... don't you want me to meet her?"

Lord Brighton swallowed a lump in his throat.

Meanwhile, just a hundred feet away...

"Yes... yes... oh Lady, oh Heavenly y-y-y-eeeessss," moaned the tiny, English voice in wobbly, high-pitched spurts.

The wide, golden showerhead continued to bathe the fidgeting creature laying in the porcelain bathtub below. The water poured down the drain more viscous than it had arrived; below the tub, the strange fluids were filtered, cleansed, and recycled, but that did not cause any hesitation in the eager young thing twitching and slipping about in her tub and shoving webbed fingers eagerly into her tiny quim.

"Heavenly spirits, angels above... Goooood yes, just like that, just-!"

She seldom dared it, because every inch of her gray-blue flesh was now coated in that thick layer of what she perspired during these heated moments, but she was too heated now to not risk an embarrassing injury. Her father had taken away the handheld showerhead once it was learned how she was using it, but that wonderful sensation was too welcome to not dare an improvisation. Slightly thin, long legs suddenly sprouted up from the tub and, with an inhuman flexibility, planted themselves on the opposing sides of the tub. Her greased toes threatened to slip, but the weight put vertically upon them kept them secure. The young woman lifted her torso up, letting the melted gold tattooed in wide lines into her dark flesh shimmer in the light of her quaint room. The sharp lines, disjointed circles, and streaks running from up her thighs to a whole network of written and overwritten sigils over her crotch and stomach suggested an accidental art deco styling of the sacred, experimental runes burned painlessly into her flesh. They warmed now to the warning signs of sexual pleasure; they offered a biting pain to try and ward the girl away, but her eager fingers would not have it. She rested on her slippery shoulders, clutching her long arms against the sides of the tub with all her might, and began to squeal as the hot water blasted right into her sopping, virgin pocket.

It was no handheld showerhead, but it would do.

Finding comfort in that no one patrolled her hall outside, she shamelessly shrieked her pleasure. "YeeeeEEEEAAAEAAOOOAOO-!"

Ding.

The door of her cell slid open with a mechanical "whoosh," and a far less orderly noise escaped the orgasming teenage prisoner as she realized she was caught. That noise was followed swiftly by her body crashing back into the tub.

Moira blinked at the single, human-like leg of almost bluish flesh poking out of the tub... and then to the scrambling thing that quickly escaped her porcelain prison. "I wasn't doing anything!" lied the scrambling girl. "I wasn't doing- I was showering. I was cleaning my private area and- and I wasn't doing anything besides that, honest! It's pretty obvious, s-s-since I had soap and water and the water was really nice but- but! It was just to clean my no-no... and obviously not to... um..." Her scrambling speech and movement slowed as she met the blinking, bewildered gaze of Moira. "I... please tell Father I was good, yeah?"

Moira had been taking in the small chamber while the girl babbled: from the door at its corner, the prison cell was a quaint studio by any measure. It's far-left corner was dominated mostly by what looked to be a bed-sized, and bed-tall, water tank; the still-running classical bathtub and shower waited in the far-right corner; and to Moira's direct right was what looked to be something of an artist's studio, with oil-based paints, a half-finished canvas, and a small bookshelf to complete the only apparent forms of entertainment in this holding cell. Aside, of course, from... Moira eyed the girl in full, her cheeks reddening slightly at the whole affair.

The girl was about her age, though Moira would never have guessed at the age of something so clearly inhuman: the girl's blue-gray flesh glistened as if more than merely wet, suggesting a smoothness closer to a dolphin or whale than a human. The only interruptions to this flesh were what looked like golden bindings etched into her skin: a busy knot of circles and lines around her pelvis seemed the center of the tendrils that stretched across her body, down or up her limbs, around her perky A-cups, and up to encircle her neck five times. Slits along her ribcage suggested gills, but only because of what were clearly soft, trailing fins that now hung from the backs of her forearms. Webbing was apparent on her hands, even if they were human-shaped, and her hairless body was interrupted only by the crop of bright red hair--barely a shade brighter than Moira's--that flowed down to her shoulders. She blinked with slightly larger-than-human eyes of black, with the slightest hints of dark gray irises somewhere beneath their inky surfaces. Lanky and tall as she seemed in dimensions, she was a full foot shorter than Moira and looked to weigh less than a hundred pounds.

Moira had many questions about this bizarre, masturbating houseguest, but the first was her reply to the girl's earnest request. "Your... father?"

"Ooo, another American! You work for Daddy, right? Everyone does!" she happily chirped in that sing-song English accent. Without a second glance, she took a few steps towards what had seemed a barren wall… and the panel slid away to reveal a towel rack. Looking around a second time, Moira noted at least eight such panels all along the walls of the cell, differently shaped and situated, to suggest additional amenities beyond the bare trappings of the room.

"Daddy," Moira repeated. She had yet to do more than lean her head into the cell; leaning back, she eyed her suddenly very shy, very quiet Lord as he stood quite clear of the doorway. "Who could she be... referring to?" Sir Krieg remained silent... but a naked guilt was painted on the man's face. Moira's eyebrow perked up. "You?"

"N-No, my Warden," Sir Krieg hastily replied.

"Krieg? Is that you Krieg?!” The girl eagerly called as she rapidly toweled her lithe body. “Oh it's been days! Come play with me!" Moira shot the fishy nudist a glare that caused her massive, eager black eyes to narrow sadly. "O-Once I get dressed like a proper Lady, of course." Without another word, she walked towards the water tank. Kneeling down, she pulled on a handle below the glass to reveal a wide, clothes-packed drawer.

"Will you not answer me..." Lord Brighton continued to remain silently frozen there, ever the stalwart secret-keeper before his- "... William?"

Cars crashing. Buildings exploding. A tornado roaring. Such were the sounds associated with his daughter daring to call him by his first name. "Excuse me? You are my daughter, and you shall not address-"

The bizarre, quasi-mermaid perked up as she clipped her training bra to a close. "Daddy?!"

William Brighton nearly bit his tongue.

"Daddy," Moira repeated, her eyes glinting with a hint of fury.

"Continue getting dressed, young lady!" Lord Brighton suddenly called out in a snobby, London accent so lacking in his station and trained, American pomp that Moira was nearly thrown off her feet. "You'll be in a terrible state if you're not fully dressed by the time I walk into that room!"

"Yes, sir," mockingly replied the creature as she continued to dig through her dresses for one she liked.

Moira glanced between her shamed father and the young lady she now assumed the worst about. "What's your name... um... little girl?"

"Excuse me," the prisoner scoffed, "but I’m a fully-grown adult! I'm turning nineteen in just sixteen weeks!" A pause as she gave strong contemplation to a cream-colored skirt... followed by its condemnation to the bottom of the drawer. "And my name is Deanna, spelled with a D-E like the de-e-ep ocean- yes!" Finding a pink top and sky-blue skirt she liked, the girl quickly assembled her outfit.

Moira spoke from the side of her mouth without turning. "Explain this, Father... and know the Lady is watching."

Lord Brighton dropped back into his practiced, controlled voice, but only for a whispered, "I would let Sir Krieg explain this... as he was there." Without being prompted, William finally stepped towards Moira. No matter her poise and confidence now, she still found herself reflexively stepping aside to let him pass. Cursing to herself for letting him enter the room, her eyes narrowed onto Sir Krieg. "What a lovely dress, Deanna," William greeted again in that old voice, "how has my little one been?"

Moira stood silently by the door along with Sir Krieg as they listened in.

The girl's black eyes brightened like stars. "Father! I missed you!" The girl gave her keeper a wet hug, though Lord Brighton didn't seem to mind. "I'm doing great, and it's been lots and lots of days, and I have a new piece to show you, and I finished the books you gave me about the adventures of the first Brighton Warden! Oh Daddy," she continued to eagerly describe, "she sounded absolutely marvelous! W-When I grow up big and strong, I can be a Warden one day, too, right?" She scooped her cheeks in her hands as she squeezed her eyes shut. "I-I'm sorry, by the Lady, how can I say something so- oooh!"

"Haha, that's... that's very sweet, but why don't you show me your new artwork?"

"Of course!" Happily, the girl took a bounding leap towards her artistry corner, leaving her out of Moira's sight.

The Warden glared up at Sir Krieg, waiting for answers. The latter faltered and bowed his head. "It's... Well," he started as he pressed the console by the door, "it requires a bit of privacy." The door slid to a close, and Moira immediately became alarmed as her father was left alone with... whatever he had somehow trained to call him paternal nicknames. Sir Krieg sighed with relief now that the soundproofed door was closed.

"What do you think you're doing-"

"I killed her mother.”

Fourteen years earlier...

“Spare... my... daughter...”

Krieg’s eyes snapped wide. Daughter?! That's... no, that can't be. The abomination she harbors is her own spawn?!

Suddenly, Krieg felt his Lord's presence. He turned to watch Lord Brighton through the shattered doorway of the apartment... no worse for wear, and no longer accompanied by the four mages he had dragged into his barrier.

The Warden-Lord seemed unphased by whatever battle he had just endured. The radiance of war glittered on him: the Lady’s rose glowed over his forehead; a broken crown of golden glass shivered over his brow; and the crown glittered, golden like the dawn, with a radiant halo that emanated from behind the Warden-Lord’s head. His sword remained pointed at the only inner door of the apartment, a bedroom door no doubt, as he pushed it open. Krieg caught sight of it: the abomination...

She was four, maybe five years old. Despite a light-gray skin hue, she had puffy, rosy cheeks that grew redder as eyes of pitch fell on Krieg... and the corpse of her mother that he let slip to the floor. Her hair was bright orange, like her mother’s. Her skin was a slimy, pale shade, and her black eyes widened as she inhaled to scream. Perhaps some form of merfolk-human hybrid? But Krieg could see only a child left wide-eyed as she caught sight of her mother’s slumped form on the ground, the mother Krieg had just cut down. The tiny girl screamed. Lord Brighton’s cloak censored the sight as he approached the monster.

Krieg thought to question so naked an innocence... but that Krieg fell away, piece by internal, humane piece, until only a proper, loyal soldier of the Order remained.

“Mommy! Help!” finally cried a child’s panicking voice. A human child. An innocent child, Krieg truly believed.

The voice was pure, and the murderous intent of the Lord of the Order was blasphemous near such an innocent.

Lord Brighton looked down upon the child... that innocent, redheaded child. So much like his own...

“Mommy!”

I have to stop him. But Krieg’s thoughts were tiny, marginalized, and finally packaged away.

Lord Brighton put his hand on his blade. His eyes burned. This world... was cruel, and unfair, and he was called to put it to order. His duty demanded this. The task before him was grim... but necessary. But why... why one who looks so much like Moira... like her mother...

A movement in the darkness.

A sound like the wind cracking. Silence.

The little girl peed... and fainted dead away into the crook of Lord Brighton's arm as he kneeled to catch her. Behind her in the darkness of the bedroom, the shadow assassin fell cleanly into two cauterized halves. Lord Brighton quietly and awkwardly sheathed his blade and, in his arms, scooped up the young, **** monster.

He turned to Krieg with the living burden in his arms... and Krieg's conscience was wiped clean as he realized his Lord's mercy. Quickly on its heels, however, was worry. "My Lord... what shall we do with it?"

"She..." Lord Brighton looked down upon the creature. He had not spared her out of utility or reason; it was the father's guilt that burdened his heart, not the ambition of a scientist or wisdom of a Warden-Lord. But he had already shown weakness; now, he could only do as close to the Lady's will as he could emulate. Whatever happened, he would not let this child die for her parent's sin. Indeed, unlike his own daughter... this one could still live something akin to a normal life. This one would not become the Warden... this one did not need to live in humility and suffering... to be married off... to die a horrible warrior's **** on a nameless battlefield... or a token mention of her passing on an uncelebrated widower's bed.

Lord Brighton was a terrific, if merciless, Warden-Lord for most of his tenure… but the burden of fatherhood had become heavier with each passing moment as he watched his daughter tutored at too young an age to commit war. These thoughts had consumed him as Moira had learned to speak, to argue, to fight for what she wanted... and showed, even before the manifestation of the Rose, that unyielding will that would make a fine warrior... and rob him of a beloved daughter, one day. Just as we have robbed a heretic of hers, this day. The burden of a parent was suddenly physical, and in Lord Brighton's arms... as a strange stranger's child, a blasphemous work, no less.

"My Lord?" Sir Krieg whispered.

"... She will be held in our special cells... and raised as..." Lord Brighton moved a stray, red lock of hair from her face. "... Yes... we will wipe this horrid night from her mind, and... raise her as our own." He had spoken too loosely.

"M-My Lord? To what end-"

"To research the way of our enemy!" Lord Brighton snapped, shocking his knight. His voice grew softer as he continued, "We shall learn of what they did to this child... and work to reverse whatever they engineered in her. I can sense their dark works knotted inside her body, waiting... and knowing their intentions, likely waiting for her to bear future generations of wrongness. We shall deny them... and through her, learn to deny them forevermore."

Sir Krieg slowly took in the wisdom of the Warden-Lord. Truly wise... insightful and farseeing! Yes... with this, our enemy will be destroyed in full!

Lord Brighton nodded solemnly at the innocent burden in his arms, and in her…

... saw a daughter the Lady would not take.

Present day...

"... and your father, knowing we would need to research that cult's ways, kept her here. But that cult has been extinguished, their ways have been fully suppressed in her, and we certainly have exhausted our knowledge of her strange breed."

Moira slowly nodded, struck silent by the knight's version of that night, until she took the pause to ask, "Then... why do we keep her?"

Sir Krieg blinked at Moira. "Well... she has already served us so well, and she is innocent and faithful... s-sure, she has her… moral failings, but that is merely the residual drive those fiends had implanted in her, the mere echo of what we contained. She… doesn’t need to be killed.”

Moira raised an eyebrow at the knight. There was no guilt evident in him. But if what John said was true… is this a hint of it, what lurks below?

“Besides: Lord Brighton suspects she may yet be of use, one day, loyal as she is. As such, he has stayed her mandatory sentence of disposal... well, indefinitely."

Moira looked at the steel door... and struggled to identify the wrongness of this affair. No... he's not... abusing her, then. It's more that... he's being the father to her- ... that he never was with Moira, and here, out of sight, where he could do so without being judged by the rest of the Order that he commanded. The Lady’s insight was sometimes cruelly blunt; Moira felt herself **** on the revelation until she managed to control herself anew. "Let us leave him, then."

"M-My Warden?"