Yulia
As soon as Sarah managed to force herself into a certain degree of coherence, I recognized that my wife was in a certain level of danger. To make sure Sarah didn't get into any trouble while I was busy resolving that, I picked her up in my arms and began running back to the house. I used my wings to shield Ashley, but Sarah was just going to have to deal. As soon as I returned, I unceremoniously dropped Sarah on the couch and then gently set Ashley down beside her.
"Ashley, I am going to need you to stay here, okay? Please do not follow me."
I immediately proceeded through the gym and the not-so-secret entrance that I had surmised existed since we had had this place built. However, not even 10 feet in, I was stymied by a powerful looking blast door seemingly forged entirely of adamant. My first thought was to force them open by pulling the two parts of the door away from each other, as there was no way the motor and drive mechanism were as strong as the door itself. However, I soon discovered that they were cut so well and so intelligently that there was nowhere for me to insert my fingers or even my fingernails between them to gain the leverage for that operation.
So, instead, I began beating on the door. Now, if I were someone else, this would be the peak of stupidity, but instead it was merely an average level of dumb. The first hit did not seem to do much other than shake the entire building on its foundations a little. The second hit, which used somewhat more precision, began to show results, with the metal making sounds that indicated that it was not doing well.
After the third hit, Sarah had caught up to me, and out of breath she pointed out a button clearly labeled in my native tongue. Well, sort of. I would rib Moira about that grammar later. Anyways, now that I knew what to look for, the buttons that were basically labeled "system arming" and "release security" were actually quite obvious. Sheepishly, I used force until I felt a click on the latter. The doors began shuddering open, but caught on the bits I had bent slightly with my earlier violence. There was still an opening wide enough for me to squeeze through, and on the other side were what appeared to be 4 disciples of a demonic or evil sect.
I temporarily ignored them as I bent over and clambered over the remnants of the door. It would have been really handy for Sarah to point out those buttons a little earlier, or hell, for Moira to not be so oddly secretive about shit for once in her life. I could have saved a lot of time and effort had she told me about this security door and how it is operated.
I felt myself bombarded with qi techniques as I continued carefully extricating myself from the door, and I was slightly annoyed when I felt some of them lightly singe my hair. As I drew myself up to my full height, their attacks naturally began landing lower, until they were all basically aimed at my breasts and abdomen. However, the blue leather bodysuit I was wearing was actually a special kind of enchanted armor which would resist fires below 3000 degrees celsius and qi attacks below the qi tide stage. It was also specially fitted around my wings. Naturally, it had been a gift from the Weapon, and they had made it themselves.
I looked down at the 4 cultivators in front of me, and quickly picked one to hopefully be the leader of this quartet. The other three became modern art adorning the far wall before the last one could even blink.
Hilariously, despite their obvious fear, the last one tried to threaten me. "Ha! What are you supposed to do? There are 4 of us and only one of you, and the other three are having some fun playing with your little friend down there." Unfortunately for him, since he had been standing to the far left of all his little friends, the action of looking back over his shoulder to indicate where I should go to find my wife also alerted him to the fact that he was alone now, actually.
"Interesting. How and why did you come here?" I asked in an icy tone of voice. My mandarin wasn't great, and his dialect was kind of weird, but we were more than able to make ourselves understood to one another.
"We had left an artifact here a couple of centuries ago to absorb blood qi from all the
bloodshed taking place here, and we were fully planning to retrieve it. Imagine our surprise when it wasn't where we had buried it, and someone had built a structure here in the interim. If you give us the artifact, we will leave you alone and not cause any further suffering to your friend. Otherwise, we will keep coming here until we have successfully retrieved it." His threats rang hollow to me, because unless he was especially weak amongst his peers, I could easily destroy his whole sect.
I casually picked him up by the throat and proceeded further down the stairs. I noted that most of the risers had been cut to exactly fit my natural stride, but a small section off to the far right was cut instead to a much smaller one.
When I got to the bottom, I found two sets of doors, one which was labeled "armory" and one labeled "information systems". This time they were also labeled in English. I had a good feeling I knew exactly where my wife was based solely on these labels, but some strange curiosity gripped me and I walked into the door opposite the armory. On the other side was a computer bank using technology that was quite obviously advanced for this time period, and seemingly doing her own thing was the Weapon's personal AI, Angel, dancing as a hologram on top of the keyboard while data scrolled up the screen on the other side of her at an incredibly rapid pace.
I cleared my throat and she immediately paused her actions and turned to look at me. "Oh! Madame Yulia! I didn't see you approach. Can I help you with anything?"
"Yes, actually. Angel, did the Weapon, ahem, did Moira happen to bring you a strange artifact from the armory for you to examine?" I asked politely, even though I had never really liked her. I might like her a bit more if her chosen avatar wasn't a severely underdressed Seraphim, with 7 sets of wings and eyes on each flight feather, as well as a very cute face. I knew damned well that she would also be pursuing my wife if she had a corporeal form.
"Yes, as a matter of fact, there was this strange scarlet colored urn which is absolutely brimming with an energy that doesn't match any magical signature I have previously encountered. I believed it to be closely related to the vampires, since it seems to be an energy similar to that found in very powerful blood. Do you have any working theories, Madame Yulia?" She asked this charmingly and seemingly respectfully. It made it so hard to hate her when she was so nice.
I set down the demonic cultivator in my hand, which was turning an interesting shade of blue, and let him cough and sputter for a few moments before telling him, "Talk."
It occurred to me that Angel had made absolutely no remark about me holding a person by the throat and slowly suffocating them, almost as if she couldn't be bothered to care about his existence when there was science to be done.
He recognized that as long as he was allowed to talk, he would be allowed to breathe, so talk he did, and whenever he would veer too far off topic then he would be brought back either by myself or a pointed question from Angel. Soon, she had learned all she needed from him about the artifact, and I knew she was dying to discuss this with Moira.
Finally, she asked him one final, seemingly innocent question. "Where is the young mistress right now?" Helpfully, she projected a surprisingly accurate hologram of Moira directly beside her.
Demonic cultivators have very underdeveloped senses of self preservation, or they would not be demonic cultivators. They were also quite insane. This one, however, truly takes the cake, as he immediately laughed in Angel's face. "She is likely currently being used as a chew toy by 3 of my friends. If she is lucky, she is dead right now."
Immediately, Angel's hologram turned a sort of blood red, and her face twisted into a terrifying caricature of itself with rage. The eyes on her wings began to blink in an ominous pattern. Before this poor bastard could react, cables shot from the floor and pierced his wrists while more shot from the ceiling and pierced his ankles.
I chuckled. "He is all yours, Angel." He would soon learn, as I already had, that this entire room was a weapon given to Angel by the Weapon. His death would not be swift, and there wouldn't be much left of him once he finally did die. The only reason I didn't know about it is I had never guessed that she would have the entire room moved to this house.
I refused to believe that that man was right, as I knew that even now Moira was not fully helpless. It's just, right now she doesn't have a lot of power to back her up.
I quickly left that room and entered the armory. There, I could see the aftermath of a pitched battle. There were no fewer than 6 desiccated corpses of demonic cultivators, as well as one with a large hole through their chest right where their heart should be. The walls and floor were covered in small slash marks and scorch marks. Kneeling and shivering by one of the corpses was Moira herself, who had somehow been stripped to her panties and boots. She showed no reaction as I walked in front of her, and I could see quite clearly a pattern of bruising around her throat that indicated that she had been held tightly and strangled. Furthermore, there was bruising and healed cuts around her chest, shoulders, abdomen, and thighs. I couldn't get a good look at the rest of her without picking her up, but I assumed there would be further injuries on her lower extremities. My vision was consumed with red for a moment when I recognized that her lips were lightly bleeding even now.
The corpse in front of her, as well as one that was strangely off to the side, both looked like they had fallen victim to a vampire royal's Hand of Blood, which would open old wounds in reverse sequence in order to drain the victim's vitality. I could sense residual holy and demonic qi from the hole in that one individual's chest. The source of the demonic qi confused me until I found a sword that had somehow crumbled into thousands of tiny shards of steel with remnants of demonic qi within each one. Obviously, the technique Moira had used had been incompatible with this blade.
There were a surprising amount of corpses in here that looked like they had been drained the old fashioned way. This explained why Moira looked to be in such good health, circumstances not being considered.
There was also a varied collection of weapons in this room, and I also recognized several firearms and other modern weapons. Most of them remained undisturbed.
Returning to Moira, I could sense that the qi within her had almost been completely extracted by some unknown force, and she would likely remain in this fugue state for the rest of the night, though she would probably recover enough for me to get her to take her meds and slip into bed.
Behind her, I noticed a portal which had not been in this house when I had left, or I would have noticed the spatial disturbance of its opening. I took off the jacket I was wearing over my body suit and draped it over Moira's diminutive form. Not only did it cover everything, it practically caused her to disappear within.
Right as I was about to further investigate the portal, another demonic cultivator stepped through. I quickly grabbed him by the throat and both of us returned to wherever these assholes were coming from.