Chapter 37

The front door to the Master’s home was completely unlocked. He must have thought that having two fighting-mad orcs at the ready was all the security he needed. I winced as the metallic creak of the opening door echoed through the hallway. The sea needed to provide some more oil for those hinges. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be anybody on hand to notice.

The main entrance had been formed from a larger shipping container than any of the homes in Haven, and the colors of the corrugated metal walls changed from green, to orange, to a soothing blue as I made my way through the passageway. Fabricata lanterns cast a dim light over a random mix of trophies and art pieces, reminding me of Ozzie’s trophies.

Strange, I’ve seen those magic lanterns before. They should be putting out more light than that.

My stomach sank. Virgil always kept the Master’s toys charged, and if they weren’t charged...

Thinking through everything a devil might dream up to punish the poor boy wasn’t doing my nerves any good. I sped up to a jog, glad that the floor was littered with throw rugs to muffle my footfalls.

I reached the end of the hallways, finding a section that reminded me of an old log cabin, with a similarly sturdy door. This entrance resisted me as I tried to shove it open. I wondered if I could find another way in, before I remembered there was no time to be subtle.

“Magic Bludgeon!” Another spell I owed Yukiko; the variant of Magic Bolt traded reach for raw, concentrated power, and the door was blasted off its hinges as the blue cylinder of energy slammed into it. Thinking of the diminutive woman, I patted my pocket, giving another bit of magical energy to the Finding Device. I’d always had too much magical energy to control, so I was glad to give it something else to do.

This section of the mansion smelled strongly of must and aging wood. “This must have been one of the first add-ons,” I guessed aloud. It was larger than any of the huts I’d seen since arriving on Haven, and it was tall enough that I couldn’t see the ceiling in the dimmed light of the magical lanterns.

As I stepped over the fallen door, I cast another Merlin’s Lantern. The walls were decorated with items ranging from gold coins and salvaged weapons to well-shined silverware, as long so they glistened in the light. Luxurious, though mismatched, couches were positioned at each corner of the room facing the Master’s treasure. “Yeesh, and we call Soren the magpie.”

A harsh string of Demonic echoed down a nearby hallway. I wasn’t surprised, since I hadn’t been subtle with my break-in.

Fear gripped my heart, and a thought bubbled up through my mind. You’re insane for going into a devil’s den by yourself. This wasn’t the inner traitor I’d banished before. No, it was good old-fashioned, garden variety self-doubt. A breeze wafted off me, and the lighter decorations chimed as they twisted on their hooks and banged into each other.

That gave me an idea. I gathered my energy for a nice storm, though it was more challenging indoors. Not that my affinity was ever shy about spoiling things for me, but it was harder to intentionally build up the pressure for anything meaningful.

A gray-skinned goblin rushed into the exhibition room, holding a dagger in his four-fingered hands. He got a full blast from Stormbringer, the localized hurricane throwing him into a particularly sharp section of the wall with an audible crack. I didn’t check on him, instead running the way he’d come, since there wasn’t much else to go on.

The next room was smaller than the last, a circle of barren concrete with no features except a spiral staircase. I realized I’d found myself at the base of the watchtower the Master had turned into his home. I tackled the stairs at top speed, but by the time I hit the cool night air again, my calves ached.

“So, you’re what all of this fuss was about,” I said, finding myself facing down the wooden fabricata.

It looked even bigger up close, standing a head taller than me. I could have used its focusing dish for a bed, and the slender antenna pointing dangerously towards the sea was longer than I was tall. The entire surface was inlaid with intricate metal runes, forming stanzas that would come to life when magic ran through them. I tried to read them, but there must have been tens of thousands of the characters, and they were so tiny. Towards the rear was a metal chair near a readout and the keg-shaped fabricata batteries that powered it.

Whatever else happened, win or lose, I couldn’t let the Tractor Beam stand to menace shipping through the Spratlys anymore. I should have burnt it to a crisp, but I couldn’t help but be in awe of it. As hard as they were to read, those were definitely human runes, confirming it was the Hercules’ missing cargo. One of my fellow Corpsman had built something so large and intricate. It seemed wrong to destroy it outright, like smashing a Picasso.

However, Picassos wouldn’t obliterate any plane or ship that came to reclaim Haven. There had to be a way to disable it without completely destroying it.

“Hah!” My magically-enhanced rapier flashed orange as I chopped through the base of the antenna, sending the metal pole clattering to the roof of the tower. I chucked it over the side for good measure, and it embedded itself in the wooden roof of the Master’s treasure room.

It still felt like an act of vandalism, but even if the antenna was lost, I reasoned that the rest of the artifact was salvageable. I hoped. “Then again, the mission is already a failure, isn’t it?”

I took the stairs down more slowly; partially to rest my aching calves, but mostly because it all seemed too easy. Virgil had mentioned that the Master didn’t have many orcs left, and I’d accounted for seven of them, counting the dead Yanus. From my vantage point at the top of the watchtower, I would have never guessed anything was wrong. The whole area was completely still, the only signs of life being the orc’s funeral pyre burning in the distance. Even their pets weren’t visible.

There were two powerful wizards I’d have to contend with, though: Ozzie and this mysterious Master. Whatever Kumar claimed, there was no way that the human cult leader was communing with anything but that devil. “Ozzie might be in one of those bunkers, but a devil wouldn’t sleep anywhere but his mansion, would he? He’s got to be here somewhere.”

I ended up back in the exhibition room and wished I hadn’t checked on the goblin. He hadn’t fallen from the wall, and I seemed to recall there had been some particularly sharp-looking treasures where he was now stuck like a pinned butterfly. Demon or not, that wasn’t a good end.

There was another door on the opposite side of the chamber, so I took my chances there. I wavered outside the hallway, though, not sure what my best defensive option would be.

This time, a different voice rang through my head as I thought over my training, that of a woman with an English accent.

We issue wizards melee weapons because sometimes you’ll be caught in close quarters, but this can cause issues, too. On the one hand, you need both hands free so you can cast most spells. On the other, if you’re in melee range, there’s no guarantee you’ll have the chance to cast a spell before your throat is slit. We call this the Caster’s Paradox. Your best bet is to have the lead wizard go in with weapons drawn and let the rest of the group be ready to cast.

“Not bloody useful when I’m by myself, Ms. Edwards.” Then again, what did I expect from one of the Holy Brothers who’d infiltrated and terrorized the school? I settled on going in with my sword drawn, since my skirmishes with Virgil had shown me just how powerful even a half-grown devil could be.

I passed through another repurposed shipping container hallway, though it was a much shorter trip before I came upon another locked door set into a concrete wall. “Whatever’s back here, the Master wants to keep it to himself.” Sheathing my sword again, I put my hands into the proper position. “Magic Bludgeon!” The metal wall and door held firm, and as I repeated the spell three more times, all I managed to do was make a horrible racket in the confined space.

On the fourth casting, I noticed the door light up with brilliant, orange Demonic runes. “A fabricata door?” I ran my fingers along the metal surface, wishing I knew any of my enemy’s magical language. It seemed like they only activated when I hit them with my spell. “Is there a battery back there? Magic Bolt!” The blue sphere dashed itself against the door, the runes going orange where they collided.

I ran through the spells at my disposal. Fireball? No, if Virgil and Zack were back there and the fire got out of control, I’d save the Master the trouble of killing them. Most of the others seemed too weak, lacking the punch of Magic Bludgeon. “Celestial Arrow might be able to punch through, but then what?”

Inspecting the edges of the door, I didn’t see an opening large enough to even get my rapier’s blade through, much less get any leverage.

I took a step back, trying to get a better perspective on the situation. “I don’t have time for this,” I said to myself as panic began to set in. I wished Yukiko was there; where was a know-it-all when you needed her? Soren would have been good, too. He had a habit of pulling solutions out of his arse when things were at their worst.

Nope, cut that out. You can wish all you want, but they aren’t here. You need to think your way through this.

Tracing my fingers along the metallic door, I willed a bit of magic into it. The fabricata flashed, and my fingers went numb. “There was probably a better way of checking that it was turning my magic against me,” I muttered as I rubbed feeling back into my hand. “Alright, he must have a way to get in, and there isn’t so much as a keyhole here. There must be a spell to disable the enchantment, but you don’t even know the runic alphabet it’s written in. What now?”

Combat magic wouldn’t do any good here; any magical force was returned in kind.

What if it wasn’t strictly magic by the time it hit the door, though? Spells like Magic Bolt and Celestial Arrow built themselves out of solidified magical energy. There were other ways to shape magic, though.

I lashed out at the door with my boot-clad foot, thankful that Ozzie had saved those, too. I didn’t batter the door down, of course, but the spell stayed inert.

A triumphant grin split my face. “I’ve got your number, hellspawn. Killer Frost.” The spell was a variant of Icicle Spear, but instead of forming a projectile, I poured the extreme chill against the magical door. The hallway’s humid air coalesced in my hands as I poured on the magical energy. By the time I was done, the parched air scratched at my throat, and I shivered despite my woolen uniform.

“N-n-not so smart, are y-y-you? You can’t t-tell a normal cold snap from a magical one!” The barrier, and the walls around it, were coated in a sheet of ice that the Spratlys would never have seen before, and already, the door steamed as the super-chilled ice melted away.

My first kick cracked the newly brittle door down the middle, and the second bashed it off its now-fragile hinges. I charged in, sword at the ready.

I was a bit let down by what greeted me on the other side. I had expected a lab, a workshop, or maybe even a dungeon, but it seemed like I had stumbled upon the Master’s sleeping quarters. This section was made of bits of shipping containers like the hallway, though the walls were a patchwork of different colors. They seemed to be welded together, which screamed magic to me, since I hadn’t seen any technology that complex on the island.

The room itself had the finest furniture I had seen in ages, and everything seemed to match. “Of course you’d save the best for yourself.” Ozzie seemed to take after his boss, since the walls were covered in paintings, posters, and trophies that seemed like a step above the common room. The weak moonlight streamed in through a skylight at one corner of the room, which bore enough gold and silver jewelry to buy a small house in some places. “All of that wealth and you just want to spend your time looking at it. You really are a packrat, aren’t you?”

I didn’t want to hang around a devil’s bedroom any longer than I had to. There was another door at the far end of the bedchamber, which I found to be unlocked.

The Master’s quarters opened up into the largest room so far. This was what I’d hoped for. I’d seen enough wizards’ workshops to recognize one, even if the runes were foreign to me. The beginnings of a half-dozen fabricata were strewn on workbenches. Some looked benign, while others looked like smaller versions of the Tractor Beam I’d just disabled. “I really need to put a stop to this before he figures out how to mass produce them.”

The walls weren’t lined in shiny decorations; this seemed to be where the Master focused on something besides his curios. Instead, there were a few fabricata-etched boxes that looked suspiciously like coffins. Another section of wall was dedicated to an enormous wood and metal device that looked like a pipe organ mixed with a supercomputer from an old sci-fi movie.

My heart pounded as I scanned the room. There was no sign of the devil himself, and this was the end of the line. No Master, no Ozzie, no exit. They weren’t in Haven, and they weren’t in the other encampment. Where were they, then? It wasn’t like they could simply vanish, could they?

My mouth gaped at what I spotted at the far end of the room. “Zack! Virgil!” Everything else in the lab faded into the background as I darted towards them.

Both lay on flat, stone examination tables, their arms and legs strapped down. It seemed excessive; neither one was awake, and Zack didn’t respond at all when I jostled him. Each wore a metal fabricata helmet with faintly glowing runes. Reaching out to remove it from Zack’s head turned out to be a mistake, as I received a nasty shock for my effort.

My fingers went numb again as the prone Zack spasmed from the sudden shock. “Zack!” He had a pulse, though it was faint. “Thank God.”

I wished I hadn’t come so close; both were nearly naked, exposing fresh wounds that looked like they had come from some sort of whip or lash. Soren had scars that looked just like them, from the time the devils had caught him in England. It seemed that devils simply loved whipping people.

Virgil hadn’t mentioned any other devils on the island, and I doubted that he had charged whatever kept him asleep. “That tells me the Master was here.”

A quick examination told me that Virgil was in rough shape, but his wounds were mostly closed. It seemed like being a devil had some benefits. Zack had been left to suffer, though. I found bandages nearby and set to work binding his wounds. “When I get back, I’m seeing if there are any spells I can use to heal mundanes.”

I didn’t really have time to tend to Zack, but darn it all, he wasn’t going to suffer on my account again. “Never leaving you behind again,” I said, my desperation obvious even to my own ears.

I was so focused on his wounds that I let out an ear-piercing shriek when a hand suddenly touched my shoulder. I spun about, Stormbringer already unleashing a gust of wind from my hand. The stranger flew back, slamming into the concrete floor with an audible thud.

I drew my sword, rushing in to finish the job. I didn’t know who he was, but my only friends on the island were tied to a set of tables behind me!

Just before I thrust the tip of the sword down into his chest, a familiar flash of red hair brought me up short. My sword dropped from my nerveless hands, its clattering echoing in the otherwise silent room.

“Yeesh, that’s how you greet me after all this time?” said Albert as he sat up.