Werill's Serenade
Episode 3
The Pantheon was closer to Pandemonium than anything else. Under the gaze of huge statues that represented long forgotten figures, the Council members were yelling, pointing fingers and for some of them, biting. From afar, they looked like barking dogs. Werill smirked.
"The elite of all magic users, eh?"
"Shut up," sighed Amelia.
The spellblade stepped forward, and shouted.
"Council! Prisonner Werill demands audience!"
There was an instant of silence as all eyes turned to them, broken by a geomancer with flowing red hair.
"A prisonner demands audience? On what rights?" they said, rising an eyebrow with an inquisitive look on their face.
"On rights of the False Hydra that I've helped grow inside the City."
"THE FUCKING WHAT?!"
Immediately, the Pantheon exploded once more. Shouting resumed, and only cease when, with a smirk, Werill snapped his fingers. Three heads closed their mouths shut, and appeared. They were gigantic, dwarfing the statues of the Pantheon. All were bald things of grey skin, bloated almost to the point of rupture. Veins of black blood ran under across them, down long neck that looked like withering logs. One of them, the central one, was covered with bulbous eyes that looked around in a frantic fashion. They were smiling with rotting teeth that were much too large for their faces, and out of their mouths dripped a yellowish saliva that conglomerated on the ground, forming foul smelling puddle. The mages recoiled in horrified disgust. How long had the Pantheon housed this rotting filth..?
"Hello," the heads whispered in unisson, somehow loud enough for all to hear it.
The geomancer turned a strange colour.
"It talks..." they whispered, much to Werill's delight.
"It does! A steady diet of well fed memetovores will do that to a hydra. Anyways! I wanted to negociate. Let's be quick. My friend here has been hungry for a while."
Another mage stood up. He had a long white beard and steel grey eyes, and his voice, though shaking, echoed like a far away storm.
"What do you want, Werill?"
"Little old me? We'll talk about that later," he chuckled. "Right now, it's about what the Hydra wants. It has access to the Portal Room, but... Well, it would like access to more worlds."
Amelia's eyes flared with fury, and in an instant, a glowing sword of golden light was against the man's throat. She did not get time to speak, however. In an instant, one of the heads was in front of her, so close that she could feel its warm breath. It simply whispered :
"No."
Amelia staggered, and took a step back.
"What the..?"
"Did I mention that it likes me?" Werill chuckled again. "Anyways. You all have two days to decide. After that... It will eat what it finds. Goodbye."
The man jumped on top of the head as it lowered itself, and before Amelia could do anything, it had left the hall. There was a moment of silence, before the spellblade turned to the Council.
"Cowards!" she shouted. "Any of you could have burned that thing, or zapped it, or... I don't know, make it brain dead! Why didn't you?!"
The grey eyed mage was the first to answer.
"No, we can't. A False Hydra doesn't need a mind to function. They are things of the Void. As such, their hunger is enough to move them. One this size can shrug off most physical damage, and we do not know where the other heads, or its heart are. For now, we need... Diplomacy."
"Di-" Amelia clenched her teeth, and nodded. "...very well."
"You are dismissed, spellblade."
Amelia turned to leave, and she felt herself sinking into dread and rage. On the great bridge that connected the Pantheon to the rest of the Towers, she took a deep breath, and looked up. The City had stars, once. Before it had any tower, before mages even gazed upon it, before this patch of sky was ripped from the heavens, it was gleaming with threads silver light. Now, the invisible eyes of the Hydra patrolled the sky. She clenched her teeth. As a spellblade working for the Council, she had been in danger, and she had been powerless. But never before had she been both at the same time. And never before could the the threat be a danger to Sophia.
She rushed towards her girlfriends tower. She had to keep her safe, because the Council would not. She had to get her out of here.