The office was disturbingly empty for a public building, especially one on such a large scale. It was like the entire place had been abandoned. Sir Leeroy was not particularly chuffed about that of course, big buildings should be full of people. Anything else was just creepy. But even with their unstealthy entry (Alba made an excellent lock-pick so long as you didn’t mind picking bits of the lock, and the door that held it from nearby scenery afterwards. But was definitely way faster than hooks and rakes, and right now time was of the essence.)

Usually though when you bust down a door on a public office you can expect at least one guard on the inside, but here? Nothing.

Mibbet drew Choppy and started to search, so far she’d been fighting with a sheathed weapon, but in these circumstances it was a fairly safe bet anything that lunged from these shadows deserved an improvised craniotomy session with DR. Choppy (who had no medical credentials of course but was excellent at removing bits of a skull.)

Mibbet had to admit the creepy shadows and whispering voices that seemed to fill the place were a tad worrying, she was pretty sure that disembodied whispering voices were not a normal feature in such places, and the moving shadows were definitely not regulation. The occasional flickering movement in the corner of her eye was hardly reassuring either. In a frogs brain it was a fairly certain thing that nothing good lurked in your peripherals.

Were buildings supposed to warp like that? Mibbet hadn’t noticed it anywhere so far, and was pretty sure that Rosalind would have mentioned if such a thing was standard in human architecture.

Sir Leeroy swearing was definitely verification of her suspicions. “Expect demons,” he muttered. “There’s some kind of ritual going on here, and whatever it is it’s big. Like multiple sacrifices big.” Sure enough there was a disembodied laugh from upstairs that indicated either a demon or somebody really desperately in need of a lozenge.

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Back at the city things were getting hairy, and no I don’t just mean the residents. Rascal was doing her fair share of removal of things from edges, but even if they weren’t tired yet they were starting to get bored. Which as you know is far more likely to invoke a nap in a feline than fatigue. So far the occasional amusing squeal as an invader was batted from the battlements, often hitting two or three of their buddies on the way down had provided plenty of entertainment, but it wouldn’t last forever, and flame was a limited resource so the hotfoot dance wasn’t entertaining any more.

Mawri was making a good account of herself, sending down stones that were somewhat effective at dislodging the enemy, and making the walls slick with cooking grease was definitely making getting the ladders set up challenging. But right now they had some kind of infiltrator causing havoc within the walls in the weirdest ways. I mean what kind of weirdo during an invasion blows up a chicken coop? A few guards were in pursuit of that particular infiltrator, but so far had had absolutely zero luck. On the positive side their accomplice had been captured after attempting to open the main gates, which would have worked out far more effective if the canine response to potential problems was not burying them.

Errol of course now he had fallen back had formed a rather effective tag team with Elvira, her pushing off any ladders she spotted using Spikey, and him keeping any enemies who got to close to her off by beating them with a bone. The guards from below had convinced a few of the inmates that the system was evil (surprisingly harder than you’d think, humans rather like the illusion of power and will pull all kinds of mental gymnastics in order to justify believing it.) The ones who had been convinced were helping a little with containment, but for now all they could do was to hang in there and hope that the curse could be broken.

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The further into the mayors office they got the worse a feeling they had, this array seemed to take up almost half of the building, the scale of sacrifice it would require to execute whatever the hell it was would be truly monstrous. This was more than just the system, the system was merely a justification for the atrocity that was planned here. Mibbet readied Choppy and headed into the mayors office itself. The walls and floor were littered with candles, in a massively complex arrangement, and basking in the power it was emitting stood a man with pink robes.

“Ah Princess, good of you to join us,” the voice sneered. It had to be some kind of aristocrat, only an aristocrat could cram that much contempt into a straightforward greeting (OK maybe a substitute teacher too, but there was context to these things.)

“OK I’m here, now identify yourself.” Mibbet replied with a growl, as she stepped up and hit a barrier.

“I think not your majesty” they shot back, “you see once this array goes live you won’t survive long enough for it to matter. You’ve lost Princess.”

“That’s an awful lot of sacrifices you’ll need for something like this, I don’t think you’ve got the power to pull it off. Demons don’t like being short changed.”

“Short changed? Did you miss the massive battlefield outside? I’m pretty sure an entire cities worth of death should cover it, and one way or another those dogs will die.”

“Really?” Mibbet replied, “and if they survive?”

“Survive?” Came the sneering reply. “You really think that having killed humans they will be allowed to live? One way or the other they will be put down, ah and it seems it is time.”

Across the battlefield outside the earth shook, as the array reached out. Searching for the fallen, and within it lit up, as Mibbet and the others braced themselves for what was to come.