Chapter 4: An Unholy Alliance

Chapter 4: An Unholy Alliance

A sharp, throbbing pain was the first thing to claw its way back into Caelen’s consciousness. It pulsed behind his eyes, a grim echo of the Aetheric backlash. He groaned, the sound swallowed by a ringing in his ears. The smell of burnt ozone, brimstone, and something acridly sweet—the scent of unraveled magic—clogged the air.

He pushed himself up on one elbow, his head protesting violently. The library was a scene of utter devastation. Books were blasted from their shelves, their pages scattered like dead leaves. The grand mahogany desk was splintered, the floorboards charred black where the ritual circle had been. The storm outside had passed, and weak morning light filtered through the shattered windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the ruins.

His gaze snapped to the center of the room. The homunculus was gone. Not a trace remained, its unnatural form likely atomized by the uncontrolled torrent of power he had unleashed. A small mercy.

Then he saw him.

Lord Inquisitor Valerius Thorne stood near the ruined doorway, his back to Caelen. The immaculate black and silver uniform was singed at the edges and dusted with plaster, but he stood with the same rigid stillness as before. He was not looking at Caelen. He was looking down at a body.

One of his own Inquisitorial guards lay sprawled on the floor.

Caelen’s blood ran cold. He had killed him. The backlash, his desperate act of survival, had murdered a man. The full weight of his actions crashed down on him, a despair even deeper than his fear.

But as his vision cleared, he saw something that didn’t make sense. The guard’s steel breastplate was dented and scorched, yes, but protruding from the gap between the plate and his gorget was the hilt of a simple, unadorned dagger. It was a clean, efficient, and entirely mundane wound. He hadn't been killed by the blast. He'd been murdered while he was unconscious.

Valerius turned, and his golden eyes were no longer burning with righteous fury. They were cold, flat, and held a chilling clarity. The sword of light was gone, the blessed artifact now just a simple silver blade in his hand.

"He's dead," Caelen whispered, the words tasting like poison.

"His name was Lucian," Valerius said, his voice devoid of emotion. "He served me faithfully for five years. The backlash knocked us all unconscious. I woke moments ago to the sound of footsteps. Someone else was in this room. They killed Lucian and fled when they saw I was stirring."

Caelen stared, bewildered. "Who? An agent of the underground?"

Valerius gave a short, humourless laugh that was more terrifying than his anger. "No. The blade is standard Inquisitorial issue. They were a clean-up crew. My own order sent them."

The statement hung in the ruined air, nonsensical and horrifying. Caelen slowly got to his feet, using a fallen bookshelf for support. "Why? Why would they kill one of their own?"

"They weren't trying to kill one of their own," Valerius corrected, his gaze locking onto Caelen’s. "They were sent to ensure there were no survivors of this… incident. That includes the heretic alchemist, and the Lord Inquisitor who was conveniently alone with him when it happened."

The pieces clicked into place with sickening precision. Valerius's appointment. His sudden interest in an insignificant functionary named Silas Croft. It wasn't a random test. It was a setup. Someone in the Church hierarchy wanted Valerius gone, and they had used Caelen as the bait. They had engineered a situation where Valerius would be caught in a heretical act, giving them the perfect pretext to eliminate him without question. He was meant to die here, labeled a traitor who had fallen from grace, murdered by the very alchemist he was supposed to be watching.

"They betrayed you," Caelen breathed, a sliver of dark satisfaction warring with his terror.

"They underestimated me," Valerius countered. "But the outcome remains the same. As we speak, this manor is being surrounded. The official report will state that I, Lord Inquisitor Thorne, was seduced by your heretical arts. That I murdered my own man to protect you. My name will be cursed, my family disgraced. And we will both be dragged to the pyre before midday."

He took a deliberate step towards Caelen, his expression unreadable. For a heart-stopping moment, Caelen thought Valerius would kill him now, to tie up the last loose end. Instead, the Inquisitor sheathed his sword.

"Get up, McDowell. We are leaving."

Caelen blinked. "Leaving? We? The entire city is your hunting ground! There's nowhere to go!"

"Not for us. For them," Valerius said, his voice laced with a newfound, venomous resolve. "My superiors believe they have me trapped. They are correct. My life within the Church is over. Therefore, the rules of the Church no longer apply to me." His golden eyes, stripped of their holy zeal, now held a different kind of fire—the fire of a man with nothing left to lose. "Right now, you are the only other person alive who knows I was betrayed. That makes you the single most valuable asset I have. Your life has been forfeit for years. Mine has just become forfeit today. Our goals, however distasteful, are now aligned: survival."

A reluctant, unholy alliance. The proposition was insane. To trust the man who had been his jailer, his would-be executioner. The man who represented everything he hated. But as the first shouts of Inquisitorial patrols echoed from the street outside, Caelen knew Valerius was right. They were both dead men. Their only chance was to be dead men who could run.

"The front door is not an option," Caelen said, his mind racing, shifting from prey to partner. A grim smile touched his lips for the first time in what felt like a decade. "And I doubt they'll be fooled by a servant's disguise. You may know this city's laws, Inquisitor, but I know its bones."

He strode past Valerius, the dynamic between them fracturing and reforming into something new and strange. He went to the grand, soot-stained fireplace. Years of confinement had not been entirely idle. He had explored every inch of his prison. Reaching deep into the chimney, his fingers found a specific brick. He pushed.

With a low groan of grinding stone, a section of the library's wall swung inward, revealing a dark, narrow passage slick with damp and smelling of cold earth. "My great-grandfather was a paranoid man," Caelen explained, grabbing a still-functional gas lamp from a side table. "He believed a wise man always has a back door. This tunnel leads to the old aqueduct system beneath the city."

Valerius stared into the gaping darkness, his aristocratic features set in a grim mask. This was a descent, in every sense of the word. A fall from grace, from power, from the light of his Divine Flame into the grime and filth of the world he had sought to purify.

"After you, alchemist," Valerius said, the title no longer an accusation, but a simple statement of fact.

Caelen gave a curt nod and stepped into the passage, the lamp casting flickering shadows ahead. Valerius followed, pulling the stone door shut behind them. The click of the mechanism sealing them in was deafeningly final. They were plunged into a claustrophobic dark, broken only by the single, dancing flame. The hunter and the hunted, now bound by a shared betrayal, fleeing together into the stinking, forgotten underbelly of Aethelgard. Above them, they could hear the faint, muffled sounds of their pursuers breaking down the doors to a tomb that was already empty.