At my words, Miranda turned pale and she trembled uncontrollably.
"Torture."
"I guess you could put it that way, but…this is just rich. You are aware of the suffering you cause to others by experimenting on them, yet when it's done to you, its torture? You're afraid now, huh? Is that despair that you're feeling right now? Rage? Helplessness? Have you ever considered that these are the same emotions that your victims felt when you experimented on them? When you turn them into those things?"
I pointed at the fallen abomination.
"No, that's…that's…!"
Miranda began laughing hysterically.
"Are you seriously comparing their lives against mine? Mine?! I'm the greatest mage in Havan! Killing or destroying me will be a great loss to humanity! My research! My contributions to the development of magic! How can these mere peasants, these worthless villagers compare to me? What can they do?! Can they facilitate the progress of magical development? Even a million of their worthless lives aren't equal to one of mine! They should be honored that I chose to sacrifice them!"
"You really can't be saved," Stella snarled, utterly disgusted. She stabbed Miranda, causing the latter to scream.
"You'll regret this!" Miranda shrieked, writhing under Stella's blade. Then she laughed madly. "But you don't intend to kill me anyway! Then I'll promise you this! I'll definitely escape, and then I'll have my revenge! I'll make sure you suffer hellish torture before you die! I swear!"
I chuckled, an ominous sound that caused Miranda to freeze. Shaking my head, I grinned.
"Seems like you're misunderstanding something. I'm not going to kill you…yet. But that doesn't mean I don't intend to kill you at all."
"What…?" The color drained from her face. "What…do you mean?"
"I won't kill you, not until I've conducted all sorts of twisted experiments on you – the same kind of experiments you performed on the innocent villagers. You love grafting all sorts of weird appendages on humans, right? Then you should enjoy getting them grafted on you…I mean, it's only fair that I help you find a replacement for your amputated limbs. Only when you're a hideous monster, transformed right from the cellular level, when you've completely lost your humanity but still retain your consciousness to be fully aware of what you've become…then you have my permission to die."
Miranda shuddered, tears streaking down her face. She started shaking her head and howling wildly, trying to break free of the chains, but to no avail.
"No! You can't do this! You can't…!"
"Ho…? Why? Why is it that you can do this to others, but others can't do it to you?" I shook my head and smirked.
Inwardly, I scoffed. I wasn't content to merely kill her after I turned her into a monster. I had a fate far worse than death awaiting her, but that was something I would look forward to seeing her find out on her own later.
For now, I contented myself with seeing her struggle. Raising my leg, I stomped on Miranda's head, knocking her out.
"Let's check on the others, Stella," I told my knight. She nodded, and the both of us immediately rushed back to the surgical chamber, dragging Miranda's unconscious body with uss.
The carnage was long over.
Chris and the other mages were all resting on the ground, exhausted after what seemed like a fierce battle. Only Lindley was still standing around, seemingly unaffected by the exertions of combat. He was flipping through the research data that he had pilfered from Miranda's shelves. From his rictus grin, I could tell that he had found what he wanted.
Peering out of the door, I saw a heap of copses, most of them blackened, charred or in pieces.
"Are you guys all right?" I asked, turning back to the four mages.
"Yeah," Chris wheezed. "Just…tired."
"There were so many of them," Wilson added, leaning against Rose. She lay her head against his shoulder and glanced at Lindley.
"Honestly, if it wasn't for your necromancer friend, we wouldn't have been able to stem the onslaught of chimeras."
"That doesn't mean we approve of his methods, though," Lance said darkly. Chris nodded in agreement.
"Now, now." I raised both of my hands up to placate them. Seeing that the surgical chamber was bereft of intact bodies – most of them headless corpses or those quartered into pieces too small to be transformed into the undead, I felt sorrow. Bowing my head, I thanked the four mages. "I'm sorry to leave such a grisly task to you guys."
"Not at all." Chris clenched his fists angrily. "If there's anyone who is to be blamed for this, it's that bitch."
"Speaking of which, the fact that the both of you are here and she's lying on the ground like this, I assume you've defeated the chairwoman?" Wilson turned to us, hope in his eyes. He studied Miranda for a few moments and scoffed. "Wow, you were really brutal. You cut off her arm and legs."
I nodded and shrugged. "She didn't give me much of a choice. You guys should know more than anyone else how dangerous she is."
"She's still alive?" Rose asked. She looked horrified, swallowing when she saw Miranda's butchered state.
"Yeah. But I don't intend to leave her like this for long. She must pay for her crimes."
"Agreed." Lance sighed and prodded Miranda's body with a toe. "But how? Do we bring her back to Royales? With all this evidence, even the royal family wouldn't be able to dismiss the charges against her. They will surely punish her, right?"
"She deserves a death sentence. Nothing less." Wilson's words were harsh as he glared at her.
"But…given what we've heard…about the corruption, and the other members of the Hero party, how do we know they won't just…let her go?" Chris sounded bitter. "She's still a member of the strongest Hero party. I heard the royal family turned a blind eye to the atrocities that the great warrior Bradley committed. And there are rumors that the lord Hero and the Supreme Priestess were executing people over the most trivial of reasons. A few months ago, there was an influx of refugees escaping from the capital bearing horror stories about their reign."
"If the lord Hero and Supreme Priestess hadn't fallen ill when they did, I don't know if the royal family would have stepped in to stop them." Rose hung her head.
Evidently the royal family's reluctance to sanction or punish the members of the strongest Hero party despite their tyranny had caused the population to lose faith in them.
"She's too dangerous to be left alive," Lance agreed. He got to his feet. "I say we kill her now."
"Oh, I plan to kill her eventually," I assured them. "But before then, there's a few things I wish to obtain from her before I take her life."
Chris and the others looked at me suspiciously, and I hastily raised my hands.
"No, not research data. It has more to do with the information regarding the other members of the strongest Hero party."
"Oh."
They looked relieved. Wow, they really hated her research. So did I, but I couldn't tell them that I planned to perform the same horrible surgeries she did on her. As much as they sympathized with me on my goal to take revenge, they probably would be horrified if I did the same thing. They weren't as edgy, sadistic and petty as me.
It was only natural. They weren't the ones who suffered at her hands. At the hands of the strongest Hero party. They would never understand my burning, obsessive need for vengeance.
"Do you guys want to check out the armory and see what she was trying to do there? What sort of stuff she was trying to create?"
"Hmm, don't mind if I do." Chris sat up. I offered him a hand and he took it, allowing me to pull him to his feet. I proceeded to help Lance, though Wilson and Rose supported each other and thus didn't need my assistance.
"I want to have a good look too," Lindley said, his eyes shining. I nodded and held up a length of Chains of Void.
"Yeah, you can examine this if you want later. It nullifies magic."
While I thought it would come in useful and planned to bring it along, I wasn't very fond of it. As long as I carried the damned thing on my person, I wouldn't be able to use any of my magic. Not my ice magic, not blood magic…not shadow magic.
As useful as the Chains of Void were, they were also quite troublesome. Especially for a mage like me who often relied on my magic spells, not being able to cast them would be extremely convenient. I thought of giving them to Stella, but that would mean she wouldn't be able to cast her blood magic as well.
Damn…as good as a trump card that the Chains of Void could be, they seriously had one hell of a stupid limitation. A doubled edged sword, as they called it.
No wonder Miranda wasn't wielding them from the start, instead using mechanisms to throw them at the target (namely, me). She would have crippled herself by sealing her own magic if she personally wielded them. Of course, the irony was that I had now sealed her magic with those particular Chains of Void, so that was a moot point. Still, I relished the fact that Miranda never expected to have her own weapon turned against her.
Heaving up her chained body, I strapped her tightly onto one of the gurneys that had been freed up after its former occupant came back to un-life as a zombie thanks to Lindley's spell. Then I nodded to the others and we all proceeded into the armory.
"Gods…what the fuck is that?!" Chris recoiled when he saw the dead abomination.
"One of Miranda's experimental subjects," Stella replied calmly, but I could see the revulsion in her eyes. "She called it Subject 702."
"Apparently the fucking bitch fused a few villagers together to create a single large organism," I explained with a scowl.
"Fascinating," Lindley commented, drawing the usual glares. He held up both hands. "But completely inefficient, impractical and pointless. Just look at the deformed physiology. Such a creature wouldn't survive for long outside of lab conditions."
"Doesn't make it any less dangerous," Stella muttered darkly. Chris and the others glanced at her and I swiftly explained.
"Stella took that monster down on her own. I was busily fighting Miranda."
"You slew this creature on your own?!" Chris's jaw dropped. "Amazing! You're amazing!"
"Impressive," Wilson agreed with a nod.
"I always knew that Miss Stella was strong, but this is just incredible!" Rose covered her mouth in shock. "I would never be able to pull it off…"
"You would if you trained hard enough," Stella replied.
"Chris, if you could…" I requested. He nodded and cremated the remains of the abomination. While he did so, the rest of the group pawed through the fallen weapons and equipment.
"Apart from this, there is nothing interesting about the other weapons and equipment," Lindley remarked, disappointment audible in his usually monotonous voice. He picked up a red, white and blue shield with a star in the center and examined it before dropping it onto the ground. He then lifted a large gauntlet, which was conspicuously missing five sets of gems that would normally be inset in the knuckles. After studying it for a few seconds, he shook his head and discarded it. "They are all very ordinary."
"Most of this is standard," Lance explained, rummaging through the mess. He tried to carry a hammer, but it was too heavy for him. Electricity danced around the weapon and his hands, but otherwise the hammer remained rooted to the floor. Guess he wasn't worthy. "The Chains of Void are probably the only one actually forged by the chairwoman."
"No, that's not right," Wilson said with a frown. "Didn't she engrave experimental runes on a spear too?"
"That's right, she did." Rose glanced at the empty rack that was next to where the chains previously hung from the ceiling. She raised an eyebrow, perplexed. "Where's that spear?"
"Damn it!"
All of us almost jumped when Chris suddenly swore loudly. When we turned to him, he was looking slightly panicked, hammering his fist against the wall.
"What is it?" Wilson asked.
"Mikhail!" Chris growled, punching the wall again. "I completely forgotten about Mikhail!"
"Didn't he…escape earlier?" Lance asked, scratching his head.
"Exactly!" Chris stormed. "And ever since he ran away, has any of you seen him?"
"…or the missing spear…" Rose couldn't help but trail off.
"I will get what remains of my undead to search this place," Lindley offered enthusiastically. I suspected it was more because he wanted to study the spear that was mentioned by Chris and the others than any altruistic reason.
"Please do that," I instructed him. I suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. Especially if we didn't find Mikhail or the spear soon. "I'll be relying on you then, Lindley."