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Stab into his left lung.
The man cried out, fell dead. Easy. But there were many. Many, so many, running around, vermin, scuttling in the shadows. Following her. Hoping to loot. She had opened it; the doors they couldn’t. Vultures. Pathetic, cunning. Not cunning enough. So annoying.
Unimportant. For now.
Morgau threw away the bloody sword she had taken off the wall.
The men could be useful later, when she would want to test her new weapon. But for now, all she was finding was boring. Not much use for a sword when she could just take an AK-47 from one of the corpses. Corpses – the few men who had attacked her.
The rest was waiting, skulking.
Morgau threw another look around the old armoury. Dust in the air flickered by the light of the torches and the wooden stands creaked here and there.
It felt more like a museum – at least Morgau assumed the Lux Veritatis couldn’t really have been using swords and halberds in the twentieth century. Despite the medieval feel of the deserted fortress, the outer parts held signs of modern security systems. It was only deeper inside that electricity gave way to torches and biometric locks were exchanged for spikes springing from the floor.
Both were as useless against her as they were insurmountable for the sneaky, pillaging opportunists.
The weapon, she wanted the weapon. This was a third place already, a third place she had visited. Intel was scarce and unreliable.
Karel had promised he would let her search however long she needed but only a fool would believe anything the Nephilim promised. She had to find the weapon before his whims changed.
Morgau walked into another room. Still the armoury, but this one held mostly long-range weapons.
She heard the rattle from far away. Took her time. Reached for a crossbow. Some arrows. Primitive. Durable.
Rustle. Door opening. Slowly. Carefully? Not enough.
Turn.
One arrow.
Shot.
Direct hit. Forehead. He fell.
Pathetic.
Morgau replaced the crossbow carefully.
Even if she didn’t find the weapon here, she would exterminate the trespassers. Painfully, so painfully, they had dared come here, they had no right.
Did she?
Her father would have said yes. Any (other) Lux Veritatis would say no.
If there were any still left. Not in this fortress. No, but they had to have left something behind.
Impatient, Morgau broke into a sprint, hurrying through the hallways, jumping over a circular saw rushing at her across the floor, smashing a skeleton’s skull with the handle of her dagger before it could react, sliding beneath a shower of metal darts and turning a massive falling piece of rock into rubble with her telekinesis-powered kick.
Some energy spent, she slid to a stop in another larger room.
Four exits.
No visible traps.
No movement.
It was a meeting hall of sorts. There was a large table with maps still strewn over its polished, dusty surface. The corpses were hardly smelling anymore, they must have been there a while. More dried than rotten by now.
What had killed them had passed across the traps, or perhaps had found another way. She could believe that about Eckhardt or Karel.
Weapons in their hands were boring. Guns, some Baetyls strewn around… another sword?
Morgau went to it in tentative hopes, tearing it from the dead grip.
Nothing.
It felt normal.
Disappointment rushed through her. Then burning. Anger. Another man. Fool. Perfect.
She snarled.
Jump back. Turn mid-air. Stab between ribs. So simple. The death, the weapon.
Morgau let the sword lodged in his torso as he fell dead.
She turned, glared at the sword’s previous owner. The white beard showed the high age the man had reached. He lay near a chair. More richly carved than others. Had he been the leader? What was behind him? A large wooden trunk. She went to it. She had to search. There were more rattles outside. She had to search. Stupid men. She had to search.
She opened the trunk after she’d fed it some of her psychic energy. Promising.
Inside – books. Good at other times, not now. Not now. And the men were close, so annoying, flies buzzing around her face, and books, books, a scroll, books, a short metal staff -
Shudder.
An electrical wave, goose bumps and a tickling blanket of power surrounding her body.
She looked down at the staff she was holding. Exhilarating. Dangerous.
She had touched the Chirugai. She had almost died. The scars still told the story. This… similar… different…
The buzzing of flies was so close and bothering all her senses.
She stood up, turned, and a third fly just entered the door.
She threw.
The staff glowed.
Extended.
A blade on each end.
Stabbed.
All three flies stood pierced through like on a skewer.
It called for her. Morgau extended her hand.
It flew back.
Name.
A name, she needed a name.
The scroll.
She called it with her other hand, unrolled it, quickly, quickly, scanned the contents, where, where? There? Where?
“Culcrys.”
The weapon trembled.
Not weapon. Culcrys.
More vermin crawled in. It was time. It was their time. To die. All of them.
Culcrys. She had found it. She had known it would be powerful. She was still surprised by what it could do. All vermin exterminated. The testing had been short, but thoroughly successful.