Day 30: A Night Most Misérable

Comfort / Soothe

Call me Evy.
You may hate what I am and what I do. My job is to earn the complete trust of strangers, make them believe I am their best friend. Their loyal partner. And when they need me the most, when it suits them the least, I stab them in the back. Does that make me a parasite? Perhaps.
But the matter of the fact is, what I do saves lives.

I work for Misérable.
Do not bother to look them up, they do not exist. If they did, they would be an international underground network of spies formed by the Order of the Chief God for clandestine operations to extract intelligence from the Demon Realm.
I am 1.54 ells tall. I weigh 1.29 stones. Female. Age unknown. Nationality unknown.
I am an orc.

No, the royalties who founded and patronized our organization don’t know my role in the Order. Probably. Nobody wants to know how the sausage is made. They’re content in the ignorance. In their comforts.
In their own little world, wars are fought and won by heroic knights in shining armour charging valiantly into glorious battle.

And yes, that could very well be the case.
But those wars have to end, one way or another. And the resulting peace has to be kept. Standard channels of diplomacy aren’t available between the Order and the Makai. They do not arrange marriages. They do not exchange hostages. Envoys rarely meet. And yet the situation on the border is always tense. Anyone so much as steps on a treebranch, and war breaks out again.

That’s where Misérable comes in. And that’s where I come in.
We infiltrate their side. Become one in their ranks. Keep the intelligence flowing in, so we know exactly when they mean to deploy. And no sooner.
It’s not different from what the Demon Realm does to us, and to the same end. Of course, we have no intention to pull our punches. When things do turn sour and start to break down, the side who did it the best will be the one with a head start. And we’ll go through any length to be them.

In my case, it entailed raiding the countryside with a band of fellow orcs two months before they engaged in active mercenary work. And six months before we were deployed to the zombie infested quagmires of Volodymyri. The next seven months turned into a slag. In the eyes of the undead warlord Sviatoslav, her subordinates are like cogs in a machine. But I could work with that. Intelligence gathering became like laying a puzzle. Since each component of her enterprise was indispensable to her, figuring out what asset she had in place was as easy as asking myself ‘what’s missing.’ But it also meant getting close to Sviatoslav’s was out of the question, as rising through the ranks was virtually impossible.
I spent my entire time there in a pursuit to turn myself into an exceedingly invaluable cog.

On the thirteenth day of the eighth month at approximately 13:00, the camp found itself **** to find some way to pass the time. Just like they had to do every day for the last five weeks.
“Ugh… What’re we even doin’ here?” The orc sitting crosslegged on the half-sunken log whined. Sparks flew from her whetstone as she ran it against the length of her falchion sword.
“Gettin’ ourselves devoured by the gnats! That's what's it looks like!” The thicker orc with her short brown hair tied in a handkerchief said, swatting a bug right on the heartshaped tattoo on her shoulder as she stirred the parsnip, leek and bacon simmering in the bubbling lard.
“Keep it down, will ya?” The scar-covered leader, with short white hair, snarled in a husky voice, weighing the axe in her hand as she took aim at the scarecrow-like dummy nine paces away, “We be leagues ‘n bounds better with old lady Swatty on our side than against. One way or ‘nother, this gig’s gonna land us a fancy lil boytoy to call our own!”
She tossed the axe. It stuck less than an eighth an inch away from bullseye. She grunted and swore.

While that was going on, I worked up a sweat practicing melee combat with a young recruit. One with pigtails. It wasn’t easy, wielding the quarterstaff while wading knee deep in mud. Still, kept our feet from being waterlogged.
CLACK!
CLACK!
CLICK!

The wooden knocks rang out with each blow we exchanged that was parried.
CLACK!
CLA-LACK!

I swatted her pole away with mine. I raised its butt at her face before she could recover. She flinched. It was over.
I stabbed my staff in the mud and walked off.

“Gotta wash meself off.” I told them, without getting so much as a second glance.
I headed up and down the hill, where the one stream of relatively fresh water could be found. I knelt down, splashing my face with the cool refreshing fluid. There, I spotted a bottle rising to the surface. I snatched it open and opened it upside down. A rolled up parchment fell out. A message from Cid.

It read:

C98112 V1 T94r3….

And so on and so forth.
It was coded. I transcribed it in my head:

23 cover about to blow
fall back now

I instinctively scrunched the parchment in my hands. As long as I was in Sviatoslav’s territory, I was in grave danger. My entire corps too. My orders were to make my way to the Nilean border at the earliest possible opportunity. Lay low at the rendezvous point, until Cid came back to pick me up.
But if I did that, all those months undercover would have been for nothing.

I had to do it. One last big heist. I’d go for the throat. The critical path to where she kept the Vessel of the Fates.
After I burned the parchment and buried the ashes at the bottom of the river, I headed to Sviatoslav’s fortress. There were zombies there. They moved in predictable routes, however. Once I memorized the pattern, I merely slipped them by when they weren’t looking, and through the massive towering gates.
That was going to be a piece of cake.

I woke up in a coughing fit. I opened my eyes, but there was nothing but black. My legs shuddered, but wouldn’t collapse. The two individuals dragging me by my bound arms didn’t let me.
I groaned. A year and a half undercover, and I blew it all on some reckless stunt. Stupid.
“In ya go!” The metallic echo of a voice shouted, before shoving me inside.

They removed the blindfold, and I found myself in what appeared to be the cozy common room of a manor, with a fireplace and a bookshelf for light reading. On the small table next to the sofa was a living candle, and a crystal bowl with various Demon Realm fruit. Soothing music played from somewhere in the background. The reclining armchair looked particularly comfy. And who should sit there, if not a sleek looking eerily pale woman in lolita goth dress, her silver blond hair fashioned in twin braids. A large golden goblet rested in her clawed hands.
“Sviatoslav…” Said I.
“Please,” She coaxed, with an eerie smile that showed off her fangs, “Call me Yvonne.”
“Well, this is a nice tango I’ve gotten myself into.” I said and chortled, “This doesn’t look like any interrogation room I’ve ever seen.”
She took a brief sip from her goblet while strutting around the room, “Is that so? I have come to realise in my long years, that the comfort of any one man may well be the **** of another.”

“Oy! Whatchit!” A familiar voice behind me yelled before I could give an answer, and then snorted.
I backed into the room and turned around. Teemy was there. One of the feral orcs I had joined up with. She was followed by the rest of the band being tossed in. It made sense. If I was suspect, then so were they.
“Evy!” Ranny the white-haired leader shouted, “What’s going on?”
I had no intention of answering, and fortunately I didn’t need to. Sviatoslav rose to her feet.
“Ladies. Please, relax.” She ushered them inside, taking sips in the long pauses between her words, “All will be explained in due time. Do have a seat.”
“Listen here, you old hag!” One of the feral orcs snarled, stepping up to her space, “We’ve dunn nothin’ but follow yer orders to the tee! This is the way yer gonna treat us?”
“Yeah!” Ranny marched up to her too, drawing her knife and pointing at her throat, “Got a problem with us? Then dunn go handlin’ us like a bunch o’ turnips! Just tell it straight to our…”

“Sit down!” Sviatoslav ordered, pointing two fingers dramatically at the gang, then towards the sofa. Her voice had changed with those words, into a booming commmand, as if it was the laws of reality itself that spoke with its commanding inexorable presence.
“I insist.” She finished in her normal voice, smiling.
Immediately they strutted towards the couch and fell to the cushions without a peep, their unblinking eyes slavishly aimed forward. As if in a trance. Sviatoslav followed them there, keeping her two fingers aimed at them.

“Answer truthfully. Are you with the Order? Are you with Misérable?” She commanded in the same booming voice.
“No.”
“Never.”
“Nuh.”
One of them shook her head.

“I see.” Sviatoslav took another sip, “Thank you, ladies. You have been most helpful.”
She then turned to me. It was my turn to get the fingers.
“Sit down!” I tried to look away, but it was as if some irresistible **** pulled my neck and held my eyelids open. I looked into her fingers. It was as if I was looking in her eyes. Her golden nearly phantasmal eyes that drew me into an abyss. It felt as if I was drowning.
“Are you working for Misérable?”

I felt my breath shudder. My mind warped, and suddenly I felt an excruciating terror at the prospect of doing anything but to answer truthfully. As if I was an infant, alone at the feet of a towering monstrosity. Still, the idea of betraying the man I respect and adore, the man I love, scrunched my body up into an indescribable illness. Doing that was repulsive to my very core.
“You will tell me everything you know.” She commanded.

Somehow I was compelled to believe that described reality, just as much as the sky is blue and the moon is round. And yet, it tormented me inside. I was bewildered. How could something that cruel and outrageous possibly be true?
“You NEED to tell me everything you know!”

I felt my mind open. She read me like a book. Drew my will out. Twisting it around her finger. I felt the doors to my mind open. And there he was.
Cid.
He trusted me.
He needed me.

I clenched my fist. It felt like reality itself turned upside down. Be that as it may, she would never ever get to him. The doors to my mind shut. She was closed off.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I answered, “Misérable? What’s that?”
“Ah.” She looked surprised, flicking a strand of her silver hair away from her face, “I see. Very good. And… I see that you are still standing.”
I looked behind myself. There was the armchair.
I lowered myself into the seat.

“In fact,” She continued, “I already know about your connection to Misérable, Evy. If that is your real name. I know that Cid recruited you. Or rather, he manhandled you. Turned the table when you and your original gang attempted to kidnap him as your toy. As an orc, you have a dual nature most fascinating. Soft and hard. Strong and weak. You wish to dominate those weaker than you for your own hedonistic pleasure, yet you also desire to be servile to someone who has proven himself strong. The psychopaths at Misérable realized this long ago, and are exploiting this in order to assimilate spies into their ranks, who are able to withstand the demonic energy in the atmosphere of the Demon Realm. Let’s be real here. A mamono working for the Order of the Chief God… That is an abomination. They will never accept you, or recognize what you have done. You are just an asset to them. You are an asset to your dear Adrian.”
“You do not know him the way I do,” I spat, “If my entire life expire in service of being an asset to him… then I will die a happy woman.”