RP:Rescuing Rachelle

Part of the Larketian Fault Lines Arc

Summary: Pilar investigates the Case of the Stolen Corpses and discovers something much more sinister. Muzo's been experimenting on a live specimen: Rachelle! Pilar and Callum join forces to rescue her.

Muzo's Laboratory, Larket

Pilar, her time no longer monopolized by caring for the sick in Chartsend, was back in the game. The pro-witch game. She'd heard talk in the camps about witches who'd gone missing after the protests. Some had seen bodies being gathered by the guards and brought to the fort. Nothing had been said by official channels about the stolen corpses since, and Pilar thought it was high time someone did something. She landed in the forest on the back of her couatl, Emielle. Dressed in black, she dismounted and started for the city. With each step, her appearance altered. Her skin lightened, her nose shrank, her eyes turned blue and her lips red. Her hair, usually straight and black, became curly and brown. Lastly, her silver leg became flesh once more. She stopped at the edge of town and hid behind a tree, watching. Minutes passed before she saw what she wanted. Guards, two of them. Pilar placed her hand to her throat and, after taking a breath to calm her nerves, let out a strangled cry. She ran from the trees, towards the guards, eyes wide with panic and blood seeping between her fingers. Her other hand reached out for help, uselessly, and she collapsed before the guards. Her hand fell away from her throat, revealing a nasty gash. The startled guards looked first at each other, then drew their blades. One of them looked over Pilar's disguised form, the other took a few steps toward the forest. When no assailant appeared, they sheathed their blades. “So, what do we do?” one asked his partner, who shrugged. “I dunno. Take her to the fort, like the others?” “Do they still need... these?” “I just said I don't know. Might as well. Worst case we just burn her.” “Right.” The two guards lifted Pilar's lifeless body and trudged through the streets, drawing stares. Their fellows at the fort were similarly unsure of what to do, but agreed that as they hadn't been told corpses were no longer needed, another couldn't hurt. And so, Pilar was brought down to Muzo's secret lab.

Muzo sneers in frustration, his needle fangs glistening in the lamplight as he shakes his head. Eyes closed, rubbing his temples, he readies to start fresh, scrapping his schematics for the umpteenth time. His scaly hands lower to the unfinished blueprints and wad them into a useless ball, tossing them into a nearby vat of acid to be violently disintegrated. His eyes open to watch as the paper rapidly disappears in a gush of bubbling smoke. "Impossible to grasp the magnitude of their request," he grumbles, "a stone from blood! Ksssst!" The alchemist tugs the fizzing beaker of reagent a little closer so he can watch the last few bits vanish into oblivion before he picks in up and turns where he "stands," his great serpentine coils undulating beneath himself as he floats over to his operating table. There, Rachelle still lays, kept alive by the aide of thrumming, pumping occult machines and, most vitally, a vat of live giving serum. This last is administered automatically via hose, the chugging valves coughing up a spurt of the amber-colored tonic into her open chest and wetting her vital organs. Just as he is admiring the birdlike fluttering of her heart, caught like a bird in the cage of her open ribs, the door bangs above, and guards barge in, dragging a fresh bodybag. "Tsk! Tsk!" Startled, Muzo clicks his forked tongue at them in reprimand. "Barging in! Disruption. Uncalled for. Could bother to knock." Even despite the naga's scowl, the guards don't seem too terribly apologetic. "Here's another for you," they carry Pilar's enshrouded form down the stairs, clutching the bag by the seams. "You still wanted these, didn't you?" "No!" Muzo snaps back, "and shut that door!" His pupils narrow to agitated slits as they flicker up to the unguarded cellar threshold.

Callum was making his usual weekly shipment of various herbs to the Queen’s rather unsavory friend, Muzo. Thankfully, he’d yet to meet the naga and was rather grateful for it. He’d had enough naga interactions to last him the next couple of months, though he was certain he’d likely run into Reginae again, seeing as how she was not as dead as everyone thought she was--especially once things started to heat up with Jaize again. Funny thing about Pilar and that illusion, though. She likely didn’t count on him showing up a good distance behind him, coming out of the forest as he headed into town from the botanical gardens he oversaw personally. He saw everything, however, as he tends to do with most things--he was one of those shady sorts, you know--and her secret revealed. Just where the hell was she going though? He’s quick to keep up behind her, using a bit of his wind magic to blow his scent elsewhere (it hadn’t been hard to notice the fact that she was a vampire upon their last meeting), and would ever so carefully follow after the guards after Pilar’s Oscar-winning performance and being subsequently tossed into a body bag. Crate of herb-filled jars in hand, he’d get to the door to Muzo’s super top secret lab just in time as the guards were getting ready to close it, “H-hey! I’ve got a delivery to make. Don’t shut that. Can’t you see I’ve got my hands full here?” No, don’t worry about the fact that he only ever just drops it off in the gardens above and has never actually been down here. “I promise I’ll shut and lock it after I’m done.” Cal gives the guards a completely professional, unenthused look like he’s done this a million times. He has. Trust him.

Rachelle has given up, it’s been that long. Why even try? Her magic isn’t of any type that’s useful here. And that cursed life-giving concoction keeps her alive, yes, but hardly well enough to finish a fight -- she knows that much from an experience. She got the scalpel, once. Muzo got careless. Got a little too friendly, maybe. Rachelle gripped the knife, her instrument of would-be escape, and waited for the right moment. And it came, or seemed to, and she brandished it at him... and was too weak to follow-through. Too weak, her muscles weary and worn from this torture. Too weak, her will not strong enough when it mattered to end another life. He wrestled the scalpel easily from her, was a little more careful with his tools from that point forward. And Rachelle lost any reckoning of time soon after. Why bother? She will never be free of this place, free of the naga, never. She lays on the table and does nothing, says nothing except as commanded. Little does she know how close her freedom comes now.

It was a good thing Pilar had been stuffed into a body bag, because her eyes snapped open at the sound of Muzo's voice. No... No, it couldn't be. It couldn't be! The smell of death was strong in this room, despite the many other chemicals within. The guards had placed the body bag on the pile with the others, and were getting ready to close the door when Callum showed up. Neither of them recognized him, but they bought his act hook line and sinker, and let him through. Pilar, still lying motionless in the bag, heard his voice and thought it sounded familiar, but couldn't place it. Pilar made to move, to escape the sack, and inadvertently rolled to the floor. She grunted at the impact, then sighed. Welp, sneak time was over. She rolled over, gripped the bag, and ripped a hole in it. She was still in disguise as the fought with she fabric to free herself. She managed to get to her feet and kicked the bag away, then took in her surroundings. The other body bags were behind her, so she didn't see them at first. What she did see was Rachelle. Her eyes widened, then twisted in anger, and she turned on the naga. “Muzo!” she yelled. Her disguise melted away, her eyes narrowed at the naga she once trusted. “Qué carajo?!”

Muzo double takes at the sound of ripping fabric, and he looks over in time to see Pilar's rather terrifying appearance. A gasp sticks in his throat. Realizing his mistake too late, the naga must now pay for his inadequate preparation; Muzo had taken inadequate precautions against the undead. "Guards. Guards!" If one could see the naga's own heart, they would note the runaway pace as his shock culminates. Glass shatters as he skirts blindly backward and knocks into an equipment case. Meanwhile, Callum's deception falls on dubious ears, yes, but in light of current distractions, they don't have time to exercise much judgement. Rushing down to the scene, they hurry toward Pilar with authoritative cries, urging her to hold still and give herself up. Only as an afterthought does one call up to Callum, commanding he stay put and not cross the open doorway.

Callum manages to take a quick peek down below before the excite starts, his ocean-blue line of sight settling on Rachelle. What the actual frak. Were he Brand, there’d certainly be a longer string of swear words here, but alas, he is not. There would also likely be a bit of fire used on Muzo too, buuuuut, that doesn’t happen here either. He is not Brand. Or Lionel. Cal is Cal and Cal is not a fighter. Cal is Catalian though and Cal is not one to just not help someone. That someone being Rachelle. Okay, and maybe Pilar--even though she was kind of rude last time they ran into each other (even after he gave her free herbs! Sheesh). The Royal Botanist doesn’t do a damn thing that the guards tell him to do, throws that crate aside, and heads down to assist the vampiress. “Don’t be a frakking hero, damn it!” Who the heck is this woman and what happened to the seemingly nervous Pilar he’d met back in Sage? Okay, but, Cal’s going to be a hero though, using the opportunity Pilar unknowingly gave him to get to Rachelle’s side. A wall of electricity is summoned up, trying to pin Muzo in place against the equipment case, as he grabbed Rachelle ever so carefully before shouting to Pilar, “Don’t worry about him! Get the guards and let’s go!” Hopefully, Pilar would stop whatever comes Cal’s way because he was much less of a fighter than she and could literally do nothing with Rachelle in his arms.

Rachelle is near delirious, and imagining unfamiliar voices has become something of a familiar state. It isn’t until Cal lays his hands upon her that she begins to realize they are, for once, coming from outside of her head. Or are they…? This man, he’s got the kind of look she would imagine of her knight in shining armor; even after all she’s been through, she hasn’t entirely abandoned her fairy tales. But if this is a fairy tale, then she is dreaming. A happy dream, for once, but a dream nonetheless. And yet it hurts, and a dream shouldn’t. The hose with the life-giving serum tears from her chest, and she cries out, and everything is glistening red. Her chest still lies open and her heart is beating, thumping, pounding ever faster. Is that really… her heart? Callum has freed her wrists from the restraints, now. The first thing she does with her new freedom is prod a finger into the cavity. She hears herself hiss from the sudden pain, and everything snaps into sharp focus: Cal, Muzo, Pilar, the guards, her open chest, the serum, the operating table, everything. This is real. It’s real. Perhaps her father sent someone to her rescue after all? But now is not the time to dwell on it. She is weak, but strong enough to grab onto the man’s arm, to lean on him for support.

Pilar looked to the guards, eyes narrowed. “Give myself up? I've done nothing wrong. You all, however,” Pilar glanced to the body bags, then back to the guards, “have been very bad.” She lunged forward, hands crackling with electrical energy, and placed her palms on their breastplates. The electricity surged through their bodies, stunning them. They collapsed to the ground and she rounded on Muzo, trapped against the wall. She wanted nothing more than to give him a tongue-lashing, but there was no time. She dashed to Rachelle's side and looked over the open chest wound, eyes following the tube that was dribbling the healing liquid. Would dumping that concoction into the wound seal it up? Or was it merely sustaining her? She looked around, finding Muzo's tools, and pulled the cart closer. She looked to Rachelle. “You're going to be okay. Be still,” she said. She removed the forceps keeping the wound open, allowing the flesh to close enough for her to finish the job. Pilar threaded a needle and went to work. Magic jumped from her hands to Rachelle's body, numbing the pain. It took several minutes for Pilar to finish sewing Rachelle up, and by the time she finished, the guards started coming to. “Take her and go, I'll cover you,” Pilar said. She summoned a wall of fire between them and the guards, a mere illusion. Real enough to the touch, however, so long as the guards believed in it. And believe in it they did.

Muzo is given a hearty dose of confusion to match his sense of alarm. Things are happening very suddenly. The guards are dropping like flies. Rachelle, his only live subject, is being scooped up and away. Callum's wall of electricity crackles before him, and he hesitates, flicking his tongue against the air and noting the peculiar reek of ozone. "Stop. Guards. Guards!" Trying to contain his panic, Muzo shouts while looking around himself for something that might aide himself in his plight. A noisy "crack" splits the air, and he stiffens in equal parts involuntary spasm and pain reflex. His tail had brushed the crackling barrier. "Demand that you cease immediately," he babbles unconvincingly, distractedly as his eyes continue to search for an out, "remove yourselves at once from... from..." A tiny voice, some inkling of self preservation, prevents him now from calling it "MY laboratory", leaving him to mutter uselessly. Unbeknownst to Pilar, she could heal Rachelle's wounds instantly by taking the jar of tonic and dumping it into the poor witch's chest, returning the abused subject to health and strength and all. Muzo's scaly fingers, in the meanwhile, have wrapped around a small blue vial, and this he throws hard against the ground near his feet. It shatters with a booming roar and single blast of wind and stinging rain: bottled thundercloud. With any luck, the blast would be sufficiently disruptive, allowing him at least an instant to escape his lattice-arc prison.

Unfortunately for Cal, his concern is more on getting Rachelle the hell out of there then he was about whether or not Muzo got out. Muzo wouldn’t have even really needed to go through the effort of this vial-throwing because Cal’s fence fades rather quickly, his focus is not at all on his magic. He allows Pilar enough time to tend to Rachelle’s wounds, the fence he’d conjured disappearing as he headed towards the exit. The bottled thundercloud takes him off guard because what the actual frak and he’s turning to yell at Pilar, “God damn it, woman. Let’s go!” There’d be several lingering moments before he’s headed back up top with the enchantress in tow.

As Pilar is hurriedly sewing Rachelle up, the enchantress’ temper is beginning to boil over anew. Muzo -- a torturer, as far as she is concerned -- is still here, and her would-be rescuers are more concerned with Rachelle’s own welfare than with him. With revenge. With justice. Well, Rachelle will happily take care of that matter on her own, should the opportunity strike. And sure enough, just as Pilar is finishing up, the snake slithers free and ever closer. Maybe it’s an effect of the tonic, but she feels as if she is soaring as she breaks free of her rescuers’ grip to leap upon the acid vat. With all the strength she has left to her, she heaves it onto its side, splashing the acid out and into Muzo’s direction. “I told you someone would come for me,” seethes Rachelle, “I warned you.” || A hero needs her moment of triumph over the villain, so say the fairy tales, but she won’t get to watch the results of that moment for long. The darkness creeps in at the edges of her vision. She is still weak. “The tonic, she breathes,” pointing to the hose and the serum that had been pumping into her, leaning on Callum once again. “Bring it, if you can.” That’s as much thank you as her rescuers will get at this time, though she will no doubt have proper time to be grateful once they are elsewhere.

Pilar yelped as the vial broke open, unleashing a tiny thundercloud. She backed toward the stairs, only to see Rachelle dart past her. “Wait!” Pilar could only watch as the vat fell over, acid sloshing out and onto Muzo. She gasped in horror. On the one hand, she could hardly blame Rachelle. On the other, she hated seeing people seriously hurt. At the reminder of the tonic, Pilar grabbed an empty vial and dunked it into the solution. She corked the filled bottle and ran to Rachelle and Callum. She stopped and looked at Muzo, then shoved the vial into Callum's hands. “Go. I'll catch up.” She then grabbed an empty dish and filled it with the serum, going to Muzo's side. Meanwhile, the two dizzy guards were still trapped behind a wall of flame, and couldn't make out anything. Holding the illusion was draining Pilar, but she still had the strength to tend Muzo and escape.

Muzo wastes no time! Freed from his impromptu cage, he ducks low and rushes forward, swiftly uncoiling in a bolt of scales toward his precious subject and her would-be rescuers. Desperate times call for desperate measures, and by the cold look in his eyes, one can guess that he is ready to resort to violence, now, to keep his mission intact. Muzo's haste would be his dowfall. Just as his fangs are bearing, just as his heart stills in his chest, just as he swallows his inhibitions and promises himself that he will strike, retribution strikes him. At first, it's nothing more than a wet splatter, just a splash and a pit-a-pat of runoff striking the floor. Muzo has only time to gasp and recoil in horror, forgetting Callum, Rachelle, and Pilar altogether. Already, beneath the wet sheen of the splash that covers half his face and dribbles down his neck, a horrible foaming has begun as hissing lines of vapor begin rising off the fizzing burn. By the time the cry of horrific anguis has risen in his throat, his scales are peeling up, his eye a frosty sphere of sizzling pockmarks. In blind pain he rears up on his tail, striking his head on the lab's vaulted stone ceiling with a sickening smack, and he flops backward, enormous tail thrashing behind him. Pilar's approach is met with a blind sweep, a sudden frenzied thrash of Muzo's serpentine body with enough force to send the vamp flying into the wall should it connect. All in all, the din coming up from the laboratory has been frightful amid blasts, shouts, and wails. Above, a passing patrol of guards have taken notice, and they rush to the laboratory entrance, halberds at the ready in their hands, a look of serious inquiry on their rugged faces. "Hold it right there. Intruders! Halt!" The pair greet Callum and Rachelle, the bladed tips of their polearms swinging down, obviously meant to deter their escape. "Gods beyond," one of them mutters aghast, spotting the illusory fire and the trapped soldiers at the bottom of the stairwell.

Callum had made his way up the stairs, with Rachelle in hand, only to be stopped by more guards. “Frakking hell.” Monarchs and their frakking guards. Seriously? Why do you have so many?! Can’t this be easy for once? “Look, there’s some sort of monster behind us! It’s attacking people left and right! I don’t know how the hell it got in the fort, but it attacked my assistant and I need to take her to a healer. Now!” Cal’s rolling bluff checks left and right tonight it seemed, “As Larket’s Royal Botanist, I order you to stand aside.” With a faux air of authority, he’d press on through the guards, with the hopes that he’d succeed and that they both wouldn’t be slaughtered with halberds. Plzno. Were he to escape, he’d head to the armory instead of the exit. The storm mage stomped on the door, “Guards! Guards! There’s an intruder in royal gardens!” Better him to call them then Muzo. Also, sorry, Pilar. Best get your vampire butt out of there. Whatever guards were down there would bust through and head towards the gardens, leaving Callum and Rachelle to “take shelter” below. Not quite, though. A friend of a friend of a friend (none of them were actually friends, you see--Cal’s just hella shady) had told him of an exit created by fermin down below the fort.

Rachelle has little cartoon hearts bubbling up above her head right now. Callum, her savior…! She should probably ask his name or something but now is not really the best time to be flirting, nor is it really ideal to try charming someone you’ve just bled all over. She takes the man’s lead, though, hobbling as they attempt to make their way past the guards, flashing them her best ‘helpless, innocent damsel in distress’ look. It helps that she is actually innocent here, pretty close to helpless, and definitely in distress. Hopefully these aren’t the same guards that accosted her in the market some weeks past. “My things,” she would whisper to the storm mage, should Callum’s bluff succeed and they make it past the guards without further mishap, “I sense they must be close. I could be of more use if we retrieved them…”

Muzo's tail struck true, throwing Pilar into the wall. The dish fell from her hand, clattering on the ground and spilling the precious healing serum. Dizzy, she couldn't concentrate and her illusory fire faded away. The guards rushed her, surrounding her and pointing their various sharp weapons at her. She watched Callum and Rachelle disappear out the door (hopefully) before turning her gaze to Muzo. He needed help. "Get up. We're taking you in," a guard declared. Slowly, Pilar got to her feet, hands up in surrender. The second the guard moved to retrieve his handcuffs however, she acted. Touching the wall behind her, she seemed to meld with the stone until she was gone. The guards gasped. Had she phased through the wall? Become one with it?! No, in actuality it was just another illusion. Pilar was merely invisible. Carefully, hugging the wall, she slipped out of the ring of guards. She then bolted for the vat of healing serum. She didn't have the time to properly tend to him, so she instead picked up the whole thing and chucked it in his direction. It collided with the startled guards and hopefully some of it would splash onto Muzo. She didn't wait around to see. She ran up the steps and into the gardens, where more guards were coming. Still invisible, she looked around for Callum and Rachelle. They were nowhere to be seen. Pilar was quickly running out of steam, and couldn't afford to search for them. She ran past the guards and into the fort. She recognized the corridor, barely, and then turned and ran for the exit.

While Muzo writhes blindly, his cries of agony exchoing through the undeground lair, the guards are busy dealing with Pilar's vanishing act. Had she truly disappeared. The crash of a thrown jar is the hint they needed. Eyes narrow in contempt and comprehension. "Mage! Invisible mage!" They call up to the others topside, corraborating Callum's story of imminent danger below. While Rachelle and her shady savior make quick tracks from the ghastly scene, while guards make blind swipes cautious charges against their unseen intruder, the hubbub of alarm begins to spread like fire through the Palace. By the time Callum and Rachelle reach the Armory, by the time Pilar reaches the exit, a whole column of guards is rushing past to secure the royal family and their dark secrets.

It worked? It worked! Cal would perhaps be more excited if things hadn’t gone so very badly so quickly. “Then find it!” he hissed at Rachelle once they made it into the armory. Was this really the time to care about stuff? He could buy her more stuff for frak’s sake, even if he didn’t really know her--it was better than just standing around looking for whatever the hell her ‘stuff’ was. “We really don’t have time for this.” As Rachelle would go to look for her things, Callum--who is completely oblivious to any of those little hearts bubbling up around Rachelle’s head--would tend to the giant chest that’s sitting right in front of the hole made by the fermin (somehow, one of the guards thought that this would be enough because no one but them go into the armory--haha, joke’s on you suckers). The rather lean-built Catalian struggled a bit; he could neither push nor pull it nor even open the damned thing up. “What the frak is even in this thing?!” Well, there wasn’t any time to dwell on that either, so Cal got rather pissed off at the inanimate object and summoned up a geyser of water, the forceful surge shooting forth from his palm like a Blastoise using hydro pump. It pushes the chest out of the way to reveal their means of escape, Cal motioning to the enchantress, “Come on, time’s up. You can hide at my house until things blow over. It’s not far from here.”

Pop, pop, pop, went the little heart bubbles. Oh, they’d be back later, probably, but right now Rachelle was distracted with trying to find her possessions. Or rather, she was trying to get them to find her -- now that they were alone with little risk of the guards seeing, she could hold her hand aloft and chant her parasol back to her hand. From there, it was a simple enough matter: she simply needed to walk in the direction her parasol had come from and search for a bright, floral-patterned bag amongst the gear and weapons. “It’s too valuable to leave behind,” she’d huff over her shoulder as Cal called out… but luckily, it wouldn’t take too much longer and she’d be reunited with her prized possessions, parasol, purse and all.