Dumb Undergournd Organizations

Eliot

Klaus Crucible’s figure blinked into a speck, the onlookers’ eyes all squinted as they followed his flight. After he was no longer visible, they spent some time collecting their thoughts, listlessly looking at the sky.

“Wha-” said one of the guards, quickly being cut off by another guard.

“The last time you said that, an orc army showed up.” The guard clamped his mouth shut.

“Alright, everyone, cheer up!” roused Cel. “We should be celebrating! The town is saved!” The guards were easily influenced by Cel’s jovial attitude and took off running to give the all clear and propose a town celebration, leaving Cel and Eliot alone to stare at the crater left behind by the explosion. Eliot’s mouth opened but no words came out before he closed it. How were they supposed to carry a normal conversation after that?.

Eliot tried once more before finally choking out,“Unfortunately... I won’t be a part of the celebrations.”

Cel frowned and asked, “Why not?” His eyes were blankly over looking the horizon, not reacting like the rest of his body.

“I didn’t leave on the best terms, I should get back to fix things,” answered Eliot. Cel silently stared at the ravaged earth for a few more moments, unable to process anything else. Cel tore his eyes away and turned and hugged Eliot, Eliot hugged back, happy to share human contact.

Eliot unburied his head from Cel’s shoulder and said in a flat tone,“I’ll visit again soon.” Cel slowly pulled away and nodded that he knew he would. Cel gave a half salute half wave as Eliot made a portal and threw himself on the other side. Eliot tumbled out of breath and exhausted on the other side.

For the first time in his life, Eliot didn’t know how to feel. Eliot always knew how he felt about things, his opinions firm and stable in his heart. Now, Eliot lay on the dusty, cold, and grimy stone roof of a random building with the sun casting rays of blinding light. Eliot stayed that way until sense returned to him, and after lots of contention, assertion won in the end; Eliot classified the feeling as being overwhelmed. A giant grin spread across his face, he was amazed by the display put on by Klaus Crucible and recognized that he had a longer road than first thought to reach his goal. Eliot sat up and took the new feeling in stride, not succumbing to the weighing on his chest. Eliot smiled to himself once more as he thought about when he first made a trip of that distance with his portals, this time he didn’t even have the urge to throw up, that’s progress, maybe he was farther down that road, after all. Eliot leaped to his feet only after the sun dropped below the imposing wall that contained the Metropolis. Eliot looked himself over, he was filthy. After casting the cleanse spell, he jumped off the roof and landed in a side street he had never been in. Eliot walked the bleak streets, alleys, and pathways with some apprehension. He had no idea where he was or even the sector of the Metropolis he was in. After an unknown amount of time passed with Eliot being directionally challenged, he used the portal spell to get to the top of a tall building. Eliot surveyed his surroundings from the high vantage point, behind him was the wall of the city, giant in comparison to the twelve foot tall building. The wall stood proud and sturdy, made of metal that stayed perpetually white, probably filled to the brim with engravements and stocked with mana batteries. On the outside of the wall, the Crucible Empire's flag flapped valinantly in the wind at every guard tower.. Hundreds of guardsman patrolled from the top of the wall day and night. Eliot turned to the direction of the rest of the city; no wonder he didn’t know where he was, Eliot had never been this close to the wall before, and he wasn’t able to make out any familiar landmarks or buildings, he wasn’t even able to see The Arcane Academy of Everveil that jutted out over its surrounds and he could always usually locate from the roof of a building. Eliot cursed his failure to prepare, he left his map of the Metropolis in his room. The landscape streached across Eliot's vision, upkept buildings, large towers, and houses all jammed together in the compact manner of a largly populated area. Eliot sighed before he started his trek towards the heart of the Metropolis. A portal appeared a couple roof-tops in front of him, Eliot was half way through it, but stopped himself when hushed whispers drifted into his ears.

Eliot crouched down and Cel came to his mind. He did his best to copy Cel’s movements when he stole bread and silently walked to the edge of the building facing the wall. In actuality, Eliot had been watching Cel steal bread for ages before he worked up the courage to confront him, benefiting him with perfect recall when it came to Cel’s stance. There was a small space sandwiched between the building and the wall of the Metropolis, in the alley was a gathering of thirteen people. The lighting was poor, the ground filthy with grime. Eliot calmed his beating heart, afraid his breathing alone would alert them to his position. From what Eliot was able to make out in the dim lighting, twelve of the thirteen were wearing cloaks with the emblem of the Serpentine BrotherHood, the only one that broke the pattern was dressed as a noble with dirty blond hair that looked almost black due to the lighting and dark blue eyes; the noble didn’t have a pure noble’s appearance, Henry and Beelzebub coming to mind, but he was a noble nonetheless. From what Eliot could gather at first glance, the noble was excoriating the group of assassins.

“What do you mean they lived? I paid for four teams of your people to kill that one insufferable mongrel and you failed? How can you call yourselves the best underground organization!” insulted the noble. The agrivated noble was around Eliot’s age, in fact he looked slightly familiar, but Eliot couldn’t quite place him. The people from the Serpentine BrotherHood tensed when the noble insulted them, having to hold themselves back from attacking the spoiled brat.

Instead, the assassin standing closest to the noble said, “Some extraneous circumstances caused the mission to fail, not our incompetence.”

“Well? Spit it out,” spat the agitated noble.

“It seems Eliot Relius is marked by Beelzebub. She won’t allow anyone to kill him before she does,” explained the assassin with helplessness present in his voice. The young noble was shaken at the mention of the name Beelzebub, then they started laughing.

“Oh, that is perfect!” rejoiced the noble. “If Eliot is marked by the Beelzebub, there is no way they will live for long.”

The noble was still cackling when the assassin asked, “Are you still unsatisfied with our services?”

“No,” struggled the noble through the laughing, “you will be paid in three days’ time. The Medici family will give a charitable donation to your perfectly legal establishment.”

The assassins from the Serpentine BrotherHood all stood from leaning on the wall or crouching low to the ground and the one in charge announced, “then our business is done here.” before performing an arcane art and disappearing from sight. Eliot, however, was able to see them for some reason. He watched as shadows were coaxed to cover the assassins and they leasureley started walking away, while the noble was none the wiser.

Eliot recalled a line in the preface of the grimoire that Cel had gifted him, “My hope for this grimoire is the enlightenment of the reader. It is my ultimate goal that the reader is left with a deeper understanding of shadows than anyone in history, excluding me, of course, I am writing this, so I hope the reader has as much understanding as I.” The tone of the writing is surprisingly energetic and easily derailed, as if the writer wrote it in a way that would portray his every thought, no matter how trivial it seemed. Eliot quietly praised the hermit who had written the grimoire, he was only ten pages in and he already experienced a deeper understanding of shadows. Of course, the sluggish pace was directly attributed to Eliot’s practice of the process he had learned in the academy of reading a grimoire, meditating for hours after every page to fully understand and retain the knowledge the author wants to impart on the reader.

Eliot was left at a crossroads, who does he follow? The noble or the assassins? The noble might be easier to question, but if they are slightly familiar, they’re most likely in the academy and a mage should never be underestimated, proper mages always have trump cards for bad situations, not to mention a noble that hails from a family of mages. furthermore, he would have to make sure he didn’t do anything that would let the noble kill him the legal way, or cover his face and ensure that the noble is none the wiser to who attacked them. The assassins, on the other hand, are a part of an underground organization that boasts being the strongest underground organization in the Metropolis, they are no doubt trained to deal with people wanting information. After some deliberation, Eliot settled on the assassins, he had a bigger personal bone to pick with them than the noble he had never properly met, the fact that the noble paid for his assassination not nearly high enough on his scale. He wanted to prove himself after he was left powerless from their last attack. Eliot also went over the amount of information each party harbored, the assassins would know the answers to most of his questions, the noble would most likely know less and his status would cause all sorts of trouble. As Eliot prepared to make his move, he remembered a spell that recorded everything he saw and told himself that he would learn it the next chance he got. Now, Eliot had to think of a way to get the information out of them without dying himself, or alerting the higher ups in the Serpentine BrotherHood. An idea popped into Eliot’s brain and he decided to try it.

Eliot copied the Arcane Art that the assassins used earlier and was thrilled when it actually worked. Eliot watched in amazement when the shadows complied to his will easier than any of the assassins and veiled him from ocular detection. Luckily, the assassins were not cautious and walked slowly, having complete confidence in their Arcane Art. Eliot observed them as they walked down the long, narrow alley to some location unknown to him and his smile grew wider as his hypothesis was confirmed. The assassins were unable to see each other, they often bumped against each other and talked to the air when addressing the person next to them. Eliot, still copying Cel’s movements, silently traipsed behind the slowest of the assassins and grabbed him from behind, stifling the assassin’s yelp with his hands. Eliot did his best to subdue the struggling man until the rest of the assassins walked far enough to not notice the pale blue light that the portal spell emitted. Eliot stepped through the portal with the assassin and tied them up in his room at the academy. He repeated this until only one assassin was left. He watched this one make their way to whatever location they were supposed to go to. Unfortunately, the Serpentine BrotherHood was careful, the assassin passed a random person on the street and whispered something in their ear. The woman didn’t react, she started walking down the street and the assassin released his Arcane Art after taking off his cloak and blended with the crowds of people milling about. Eliot tried following the woman, but she entered a popular tavern and came out attached to the arm of a burly man. Eliot followed them, hoping it would lead somewhere, but stopped when the pair entered an inn to have a good time. Eliot didn’t become disheartened, he returned to his room and smiled as he saw the assassins still tied up, not free of their restraints. Even if they did get out of their bondage, they were trapped in the room, the door only opens if one of the students that occupy the room uses their mana, and Eliot had cast a portal covering the window that deposited them back in the room. It did use up some mana, but his mana pool had grown enough that he could keep a portal of that size open for nearly a whole day. From this, Eliot also found that the mana cost for the portal didn’t increase no matter his distance in relation to the portal.

“Alright, let’s get to the questioning,” Eliot whispered to himself in preparation.

“You really are a peculiar one, Eliot,” remarked a voice from behind Eliot that made him jump out of his skin. Eliot readied a shadow spike, he hasn't quite mastered the spell, so he was unable to instantly cast it off reflex, but he was close and his best time was only ten seconds. Eliot sighed in relief and canceled the casting of the shadow spike when he saw it was just Henry.

“I won’t judge, however, the next time you need to relieve some stress, please do it in an inn,” said Henry.

“What?” asked a clueless Eliot while Henry was cracking up.

“He was teasing you for your weird sexual practices” translated Penelope, who was also there.

“Oh,” realized Eliot. “What? No, these are assassins in the Serpentine BrotherHood.” Henry was practically in tears, the mark of a bad comic, they always think their jokes are the most hilarious thing they’ve heard.

“Yes, we are well aware,” breathed Henry as he wiped away his tears. “Now I believe you owe us some explanation and thank yous. The assassins had non-dissolvable poison in their mouths that would kill them shortly after they bit it. Fortunately, Penelope here cleansed them.” Eliot thanked Penelope profusely, relieved that he had good friends that he could rely on, even in situations like these.

“As for disappearing for two days, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. You went out of your way to help me, and I was ungrateful. My anger got the best of me. I learned that I have an animus for attack spells and a deficiency in almost every weapon, but that isn’t an excuse, I promise I’ll make it up to you,” apologized Eliot. “I spent the days in my hometown, the Town of Flora, on the southern border of the Crucible Empire.” Henry and Penelope had small smiles.

“It’s ok, I forgive you,” started Henry.

“I do too,” chimed in Penelope.

“So, how do you propose we get information out of our guests?” continued Henry.

“Actually.” Eliot produced the grimoire. “I have just the spell in mind.” Eliot flipped to the back of the grimoire, where there was a spell index with all of the shadow related spell the hermit learned and created that was kept separate from the main text.

“Is that a grimoire?!” exclaimed Henry and Penelope in unison.

“hm?..Oh, yeah, a close friend gifted it to me,” waved Eliot off handedly, focused on finding the spell out of the hundreds, the hermit who wrote the grimoire was a very respectable mage.

“Why are we even surprised?” asked Henry, “A prodigy is bounds to have talented friends, as well.”

“Aha!” announced Eliot. “I found it.” The spell was under the utility section and was named Hell’s Torture. The rune was the longest rune he had seen since the cleanse spell, with a total of forty symbols.

“The spell may not be perfect, but I think I should be able to cast it, I have an affinity for utility spells,” Eliot explained to no one in particular.

“Cool, we’ll sit back and watch,” said Penelope as she belly flopped onto Eliot’s bed, treating it as if it were her own bed. Eliot spent forty minutes mastering the spell. Penelope and Henry were flipping through text books and the assassins looked board out of their minds, they were expecting torture, but after seeing the inexpreienced and fool hardy kids, they let their guard down, a big mistake.

“I got it!” celebrated Eliot as he did a jig, Henry and Penelope stopped what they were doing and excitedly crowded around.

“Alright, who wants to give information first?” Eliot asked the gagged assassins. Eliot walked up to the closest and explained what he knew of the spell, “The spell is called Hell’s Torture, it’s a mental attack. The description says that it’s useful for getting people to do what you want, as well as information, and it works better the guiltier the person you cast it on is. But it’s completely ineffective on unguilty people with a clear conscience, it also mentions that everyone has guilt, so that won’t be a problem.”

“Give it a try,” motivated Penelope. Eliot nodded and formed the rune of forty symbols instantly, casting it on the assassin. Eliot’s shadow moved from under him, leaving him shadowless, and fused with the assassin’s shadow. The assassin didn’t react immediately, they looked around in confusion as if he was transported to another area. The assassin whispered some things and Eliot exchanged glances with Henry and Penelope, was it working? The assassin chose then to start screaming bloody murder, and spasmed.

“Ah! AAAAAH!AHH! STOP! STOP! PLEASE! I’M SORRY!! I’M SORRY! AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!” were the blood curdling screams of the assassin, thrashing so much that he broke free from his subduement, but he didn’t attempt an escape, he just curled up on the floor, squeezing his head. Eliot froze in shock, watching for a few moments the bone chilling display.

Eliot uncast the spell as fast as he could unfreeze, making his shadow return to him, and leaving the assassin crying in the fetal position, whispering, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… forgive me…” Penelope turned a ghastly white, and Henry looked shaken up, Eliot was also shocked.

“I guess… that guy was extra guilty,” Eliot tried to provide an explanation.

“Y-yeah,” agreed Henry.

Penelope looked like she wanted to throw up and said, “I-Im going to go p-pray, c-carry on without me.” as she walked out of the room.

“Penelope is too good for her own good,” thought Eliot, not affected by the broken man, just shocked by the severity of the reaction. “Wait....” Eliot stopped himself in his head, “Am I the monster here?.... Nah.” Eliot looked to Henry and gave a reassuring nod. “So, who wants to go next?” asked Eliot as he circled the bound assassins, “Should I do duck duck goose?”

“Wait! We’ll talk, just don’t do what you did to Dave,” surrendered an assassin, speaking for them all.

“Talk” snarled Eliot in as menacing a voice as he could muster.

“About what? Carrot cakes?” remarked one of the assassins, who got jabbed by an elbow right after he said it.

“Tell me about the Serpentine BrotherHood,” mused Eliot. “Everything about it.”

“The Serpentine BrotherHood is an underground organization that was made six years ago. There are three people at the top of its hierarchy. No one knows who they really are, but they go by the names Death’s Kiss, Death’s Grasp, and Death’s Son. Under the top three, there are nine advisors that take orders directly from those three. The rest of the members are put into teams of twelve with a captain who takes orders from the nine advisors.

“We primarily make money from demi human slave trade, gambling dens, and brothels. The three on top each control one of those, Kiss has slave trade, Grasp has brothels, and Son has gambling dens. I don’t know much about about the movement of the higher ups, but we spend most of the time as normal people, the captain discreetly tells each of us a meeting place the day before we do a mission. We get there and the captain tells us what the mission is, after we complete the mission we go invisible, the captain goes somewhere I don’t know and we have to go to a meeting place to check in before going back to our normal lives,” spilled the assassin.

“Does that mean your captain knows that you are all missing?” asked Eliot.

“Yeah, they’re probably already planning to kill you and your whole family,” growled the same unfriendly assassin as last time. Eliot meandered to him and kicked his face, giving him a broken and bloody nose.

“What if you got there late?” asked Henry from the side.

“If we don’t arrive on time, they ditch the meeting place and investigate where we are immediately,” answered the helpful assassin.

Henry had a worried look as he asked Eliot, “Did you leave any clues pointing to you?”

“None.” Eliot shook his head. “No one knows anymore pertinent information?” Eliot asked the assassins. The assassins all shook their heads, all but the unhelpful and snide one that stuck his tongue out. Eliot glared daggers and asked one more question, “Who was the one who hired you to kill me?”

“We were hired to kill you by Mark Medici. He paid for four teams, absolute overkill, was what we all thought. Whatever you did, Mark Medici despises you, white hair,” laughed the helpful assassin. Eliot heard a heavy sigh exit Henry’s mouth and cast him a curious glance.

Henry took another deep breath before informing of his relation, “Mark Medici is the poster child of a stuck up noble. He has some idotic belief that he is better than everyone else because he has the title of noble, he looks down on the lower social classes. Mark Medici’s father, the Venerable Kazik, was as noble as they come, and I spent much of my childhood with Mark. His petty and entitled actions sicken me, his repulsive infatuation with my sister irks me the most. I will strip him of his title the second I become king.”

Eliot took in the information while stroking his chin, “So Henry has a sister complex?” he joked in his head. He knew perfectly well that it was normal for fathers and older brothers to be extra protective when it came to relationships, Eliot would definitely tease him later for it, though.

Henry flashed his pearly whites and followed up with, “However, we should look to the light. This way, we have the opportunity to expose him and his sinister dealings much sooner.” Eliot nodded in agreement while spouting some nonsense of cleansing the world of criminals.

“Now that we have all the answers we want, what do we do with them,” Eliot changed the subject by reminding Henry of the matter at hand. Henry shared his cluelessness.

“You kill us, preferably painlessly,” chimed in the helpful assassin.

Eliot shrugged, but Henry immediately snapped, “We absolutely will not kill you, we will not stoop to your level.”

“You would be doing us a favor, trust me, the captain knows who we are, he would kill us and our families, but first they would torture us to figure out if we gave any information and to who.”

“What about leaving the metropolis?” proposed Eliot.

“The only legal way to leave the city is through one of the four gates, it would be way too easy to find us escaping. And The Serpentine BrotherHood is the strongest underground organization in the Metropolis, getting out illegally would be impossible, the only way is to kill us,” refused the assassin.

“I refuse to kill you,” Henry stood adamantly.

“What about you, white hair? You seem like you got the guts, and you kidnapped us in the first place, so you should take responsibility.” Eliot put his hand to his chin in thought.

“You can’t be seriously considering killing them,” said Henry, angry for the first time since they met, Eliot left himself a mental note to be a little more righteous than usual around Henry.

“No, I have a better idea,” said Eliot. “What sounds better, a life working for my friend, or death?” Eliot asked the assassins.

“Death!” shouted the unhelpful assassin as he struggled against his restraints.

Followed by, “What type of work?” from the helpful assassin that seemed to talk for the rest.

“Well, I’m not sure, technically you would be his slaves, but I doubt he would treat you bad, he would probably treat you like workers,” Eliot knew exactly how Cel would treat them.

The assassin shared some looks before saying,“Give us some time to decide.” Eliot nodded in understanding and stepped back.

Henry whispered into Eliot’s ear, “What guarantees will be in place that they won’t revolt, or harm your friend?” Eliot assured that it was no problem and explained the spell he planned to use, as well as saying that he would make sure that they would drop dead the second one of them disobeyed or tried to harm anyone without Cel’s order. The assassins made a decision.

“We’ll do it, everyone but Dorol, he wants death,” said the helpful assassin gesturing to the unhelpful assassin.

“Alright,” nodded Eliot, afterwards a portal appeared under Dorol and the assassin having a mental break down, they fell in before it disappeared. “Don’t worry I didn’t kill him,” Eliot assured Henry, “I dropped him two hundred meters oustide of the Metropolis.” Henry sighed and mumbled something about dumb underground organizations. Eliot rifled through the spell index until he found the spell he mentioned to Henry. It was only sixteen symbols long, so it took him twelve minutes to master it. The spell was named Shadow Contract. According to the hermit who wrote the grimoire, a person’s shadow is connected to their soul. This spell exploits that connection to form an iron clad contract. The stipulation and consequences for breaking the agreement can be anything, the only problem is that both parties have to agree with the contract. Fortunately, that shouldn’t be a problem in this case. Eliot cast the spell with the caveat he told henry earlier and asked the assassins if they agreed. When the assassins all acquiesced to the agreement, a piece from each of their shadows split from the main body and merged with Eliot’s shadow.

“Great! Now all we need to do is take a little trip, I’ll be back soon, Henry,” chirped Eliot cheerfully as he released the assassins from their bounds and made a portal under them. Henry shouted for Eliot to wait.

Eliot stopped himself from stepping through and said, “Please make it quick, it takes a lot of mana to keep this open.”

“We should have a duel when you get back.” Henry had a familiar gleam in his eye.

“Sure,” agreed Eliot before jumping through and uncasting the portal. When he fell on the other side, he threw up three separate times, doing his best to keep himself mostly clean, and the group of former assassins had to awkwardly wait for him to finish. After than fun time, Eliot lead the previous assassins to the orphanage and knocked on the door.

Mabel opened the door and squealed in excitement, “Uncle Eliot! You’re back already!” while hugging him.

Eliot hugged her back before ruffling her hair and saying, “Go get Cel, I have a gift for him”.

“OK!” she said and ran to get Cel. The group behind Eliot exchanged confused glances, this was not at all what they were expecting. Cel showed up at the door, being pulled by Mabel in a rather adorable manner.

“Why are you not celebrating with the town? It was your idea in the first place,” Eliot asked Cel.

Cel shrugged, “I’m still not that social, I’d rather celebrate with my family, why are you back so soon?”

“I have a gift, do you want it?” queried Eliot, a shark like smile on his face.

Cel had seen this before and knew Eliot was up to something, but he still hesitantly said, “Yes?”. After Cel agreed to take the shadow slaves, a piece of Eliot’s shadow separated and joined Cel’s.

“Congratulations!” celebrated Eliot as he gestured to the group behind him, “You now own nine shadow slaves.” Afterwards, Eliot quickly escaped via portal.

“What?” tumbled from Cel’s lips, completely confused. “What!?” he asked again.

The group of shadow slaves all kneeled down and said, “We are happy to serve you, master!” in unison, some flair Eliot threw in order to further irk Cel.

“Eliot!” shouted Cel, thoroughly irritated. “Damn you, I don’t want your problems!”