Chapter 7 (Part I): Blood Spilled, Chains Broken

They sealed the beast in those mines for a reason, you damned fool! What were you thinking?! Oh, you scholars are all alike – you start digging at even a whiff of discovery, without ever considering the warnings left by history!

-          Sheriff Gerald in bard Cehrian’s cult horror classic “The Kerwyn Creature”

Kaira didn’t have to move far down the tunnels. The first antechamber inside the mine was lit by some oil lamps, and it revealed a gruesome sight. Heavy old mine carts were encrusted with what looked like dried blood, and in the spaces where the miners likely took breaks at one point, there were now a dozen stacked cages that reminded Kaira of kennels. Young women languished in the pens, pale, malnourished, and covered in filth. Among them, Kaira immediately recognized Regina, despite her red hair being matted and dirty.

“Regina?” Kaira said, “Geena?” she used Jon’s pet name for her, “Can you hear me?”

The woman stirred and looked up weakly, “Kaira?” She had good reason to be confused, but dehydration and abuse had probably done her no favors. Kaira thought it was odd that the women all looked so dried out, considering that they seemed to have plenty of water, but it certainly wasn't the time to dwell on such things.

“Regina, Jon found you. He’s in town creating a distraction, and I’m getting you out of here. All of you.” Kaira broke the lock on the cage with one of her long knives, and pulled the woman out. It was like hauling dead weight though, “Come on Regina, I need you to work with me here. I can’t carry you out.” It quickly became clear that Regina’s torpor wasn’t a matter of a broken spirit; she was exsanguinated.

“What has Lionel been doing to you all?” Kaira asked as she looked into Regina’s sunken eyes.

“Not Lionel…” Regina said, “It wasn’t him…” 


Kaira helped the last of the women out of their cages as Regina explained, “I can hear better than anyone else they’ve kept down here. I can hear what goes on upstairs. Lionel used to be in the sex trade, but he got connected to someone else, ‘the hemomancer’, whatever that is.”

“Someone who studies the manipulation of blood,” Kaira said, “Azraea knows a little. She doesn’t like to talk about it.”

“Well, that fits,” Regina nodded as she tried to build the strength to stand, “Part of the connection was getting himself a bride just as nasty as him. I guess most of the Kerwyns just take women and use them, but this ‘Lady Gabriella’ is like Lionel’s soul mate. She’s every bit as bad as him. Worse maybe; I think maybe she goes in for cannibalism.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Some of the blood they take, it gets preserved and sent on to their hemomancer friend, but I’m pretty sure Gabriella’s been drinking the rest.”

“Drinking blood is a common enough thing,” Kaira said calmly, “but human blood is… well, that’s definitely unusual. Any idea where she’s from?”

“Nowhere exotic,” Regina said, “No accent at all. I’d be certain she’s Caelian.”

“Can you fight?”

“I can’t even transform anymore,” Regina said, “I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” Kaira helped one of the other women sit comfortably and then put a hand on Regina’s shoulder, “It will be okay. You won’t need to fight. I’ll take care of it. I’ll clear the guards out, and then we’ll get you out of here. One by one if need be.”

Kaira ran back up to the entrance of the mine. The guards had already taken to wondering where their comrade was at, and were pounding on the door, figuring he might have gone into the mine for some alone time with the prisoners. At least two men would be on the other side of the door, alert and angry.  Kaira picked up a rusted pick axe, and with a couple of swings cracked the wood around the hinges and around the lock.

Kaira didn’t have Thrakaduhl’s body mass, but she had muscle nonetheless, and with a twist she launched a kick straight into the door. It cracked out of its frame and fell forward onto the men on the other side. One of the men tried to scramble out as she ran across the fallen door, but she sank the pickaxe into the back of his shoulder as he fled, yanked him back to her, and pulled his bow and arrows off his back before tossing him aside. The man up on the balcony was screaming like mad; he’d already roused the men in the barracks and sent them down to the road to respond to havoc unfolding down at the race track, but was now calling for them to come back and deal with Kaira. She took a breath, drew the bow, aimed, exhaled, and sank an arrow into the mercenary’s lower right lung.

The men headed into town split up – about half continued down the hill, but about half came running back up, drawing their own bows. Kaira ran towards the big house and fired a few quickly aimed shots that maimed two of the men running to intercept her. She dived through an open side window as several arrows sank into the wooden frame. Drawing her knives, she darted into the living room and slashed the throat of the first man to come through the front door, then retreated into the hallway as the others pursued her. She vaulted over a counter in the kitchen, grabbed a knife block, and threw the contents as rapidly as possible, as if she were playing a timed game of darts. One man fell down dead, two more were maimed badly enough to quit the fight. She completed the circle around the interior of the house, but found herself surrounded on the large stair case. Three men stood with bows drawn; tensed and ready for the slightest move. That they hadn’t fired yet suggested that they were less confident in their aim than Kaira was. Each of them seemed to be wondering if missing the elf would be a death sentence.

When Kaira heard soft footsteps on the stairs behind her, she thought she was done for, but the reflection in a mirror below revealed a small boy, frightened and confused. Unfortunately, one of the guards was so keyed up that he simply reacted to the movement and loosed an arrow straight at the kid.

Kaira didn’t know who the kid was, who he was related to, or what sort of monster he might become, but she reacted without considering any of that. She reached out and caught the arrow. It skewered the palm of her hand, but stopped just short of the screaming, terrified child.

The man who’d fired just stopped slack jawed, “Oh my god, oh my god, I almost killed a kid, I almost killed a kid…”

“Get a grip Clancy,” one of the men said, “You ain’t never killed a kid? Crimony, this is why we shouldn’t take highway guards. They don’t have the grit to do this job.” The second man finally fired despite the bawling child behind his target, but Kaira had already snatched up a decorative silver tray and knocked his bow sideways as he let the arrow go. With a spin down the steps she caved in his larynx with the edge of the platter, and with a final backhand she stabbed the third man through the throat with the arrow still lodged between her tarsals. She snapped the shaft with a grunt, and let the arrow slide free as the man fell.

The former highway guardsman ignored her, and just rushed past her to the kid, apparently concerned that he had somehow actually killed the child and that her last second interception had simply been in his imagination.

Kaira’s finger twitched on her sheathed knife, thinking of the torments endured by the women below, but she kept it sheathed. The man evidently had some measure of a conscience, and maybe if she held off on killing bad guys like him, some sort of natural selection based on morality would eventually take effect. She picked up a new bow and a handful of arrows, and calmly walked out.