Grace of a Wolf - Chapter 236

Chapter 236: Lyre: Halved
LYRE

Finding survivors has become a bit of a rare event.

Bodies, though… we do find a lot of those.

Stepping back, my eyes rove over Thom’s pallid face. His cheeks have a light flush in them now, though his overall skin tone seems to have become several shades paler—as if he’s severely anemic.

Days of chronic arcana deprivation will do that to a person.

He returns my attention with glazed eyes, his pupils blown and lips still parted. He’s always a little too excited for a kiss transfer, which is why I’d prefer something simpler, like hand-holding.

But this time, his magic needs were a little too high, his reserves almost running into the negative. He’s a little too foolishly devoted, willingly working himself to the brink of death just to obey my commands.

A puppy, but a dangerous one in his own way, requiring more hands-on care than I generally prefer to give.

Thom leans forward, still dazed and yearning for more, despite the kiss being a mere press of our lips.

I sigh and shove my palm against his face, pushing him back gently. “How do you feel?”

His hands spasm at my sides, before reluctantly pulling them from my waist. “Not… not full yet.”

“I’m pretty sure you are.”

His shoulders droop.

Poor puppy. He always wants more than he can handle, desperate for even a glance in his direction. It’s enough to make this old lady feel guilty.

There are more sigils than normal here. Intricate, overlapping patterns; he’d run out of power halfway through disabling them. Hence the kissing. Hence his wide eyes and trembling hands.

“Get back to work, Thom.”

His dazed eyes brighten, as he always does when I use his name. He’s so innocent it’s off-putting, and I wish for a moment Aaron was here. His irreverent stares and dirty jokes help create a buffer to the young wizard’s devotion, but alas, he’s upstairs dealing with the massive amount of survivors we’ve acquired from this place.

“Yes, ma’am.”

As he works, I pull my phone from my pocket, swiping my thumb across the display with a frown. The Divinity App is still showing its emergency maintenance screen, oddly ominous after a few glitched plausibility warnings I’ve been receiving.

The App doesn’t tend to require much maintenance, which is worrying.

Owen’s having the same problems, including a few glitchy warnings of his own. We’ve been interfering too much in this region, even when utilizing Thom to do all the dirty work.

The cosmic bureaucracy doesn’t appreciate our meddling; Balance has us on their radar.

Too bad. Stopping isn’t an option.

Though coming under further magic restriction wouldn’t be ideal…

I’ve already received my second restriction, only hours after the first lifted.

I flex my fingers, remembering the sensation of my power being halved after the first warning. Like having a limb fall asleep, but throughout my entire being. It makes me want to burn something to the ground just to prove I still can.

The App’s current glitched state presents an opportunity. Anything I do now might fly under the radar. If we continue at this snail’s pace—no offense to poor puppy Thom, who’s working himself to exhaustion—there’s even less chance of finding these poor souls alive…

Morality is such an inconvenience. Having it, I mean.

It would be easier to walk away and decide that this isn’t my problem. I’ve spent centuries perfecting the art of not giving a shit. But here I am, underground in a sanguimancer’s dream hole, worried about strangers and furious I can’t simply unleash my full power to save them.

I could clear this entire labyrinth with a thought, but I could lose my power again if I trigger another restriction. Or worse, a purge protocol.

Damn it.

Mocking other deities for playing possum to these damn restrictions is more like me; now, I’m in the same damn boat, playing this game to the letter.

The cycle of doom-and-gloom thoughts comes to a crashing halt when I feel the last sigil shatter under Thom’s painstaking efforts.

“After you,” he says, servile as always.

The boy’s looking at me with such a fawning smile, despite the sweat beading his brow and the faint shake in his fingers. He’s pushed himself far past his limits over the past few days.

He deserves a little praise.

I pat his shoulder as I pass by. “Good job.”

The wizard beams as he trots behind me, those two measly words apparently injecting him with an absurd amount of energy. But whatever positivity he’s holding onto disappears as soon as we step into the room beyond.

My eyes go dark immediately. The display on my phone cracks beneath my grip, fractures racing across the screen.

It doesn’t even require a pulse of arcana to see what we’ve found.

None of these people survived.

Bodies line the walls—dozens of them, practically mummified, stacked in layers. It’s far more than in the other rooms we’ve cleared. They’re desiccated husks with hollow eye sockets and mouths frozen in silent screams, ranging in ages from infant to adult.

It’s a grotesque tableau of horror, even after everything we’ve seen. Somehow, this decayed, preserved evidence of torture is worse.

Perhaps it’s the number.

The only saving grace to this place is knowing there was no way to save them, even if I’d blasted my way through this entire labyrinth the first day I arrived. They were dead before I even entered this territory.

I expected as much, but it’s still upsetting.

Thom retches behind me. He always does.

The room is larger than the others we’ve explored, with what looks like a coffin positioned in the center of the floor—empty, of course, though the absence seems more ominous than if we’d found a body inside.

But I’ve already taken care of its owner.

“Master…” Thom’s taken to calling me that since I began teaching him.

I glance up with a frown. “What is it?”

He’s staring at the coffin, his trembling more pronounced now. Forget being a puppy; now he resembles a terrified quail. “Doesn’t it feel strange…?”

There are sigils, different from the defensive wards I’ve had him dismantling. These are elegant and ruthless, written in blood around the coffin; he’s never seen them before, but should be able to feel the death and rot within.

“This is the center room. It’s different from the rest. This is where Isabeau would recuperate.”

Over the past few days, Thom and the others have absorbed a crash course in sanguimancers and their history with wolf packs. Information they need to fight back, though every drip of knowledge came with a corresponding warning in the App.

I glance down at my hands, fisting and releasing my fingers a few times. Halving my power seems a little extreme for that bit of information, but at least it was only half.

Thom stands by the coffin, circling it slowly as he inspects the wards. His earlier flush has already drained away. His use of arcana is becoming more inefficient by the hour; you can only push a mortal body so far.

He needs rest.

I smile faintly. “It’s good news,” I say, forcing a light-hearted tone. The poor thing’s on the edge of a breakdown. “Now that we’ve found the control, it’ll make things easier for us.”

“How?”

I flex my fingers again, already calculating what punishment will come my way this time. There’s no way it will settle with a simple loss of power. The system gets creative when you repeatedly disobey.

“Just wait and see.”