The Lord of the Mutants, part 3

"Ulber?" I ask. Ulber Roger?

"Do not call me that way!" The man's voice approached the scream. "Address me as 'Sir'."

"Do you know this idiot?" Frei asked.

Elysia nodded. Ulber Roger was a philosophy friend of Elysia's owner before the catgirl had murdered her mistress and escaped from her. He had been a quiet young man, very studious and could always be found in libraries according to his mistress. He had probably never exchanged more than a dozen words with her in the two years he had been friends with her mistress. He also remembered that Roger had vanished. There was a bit of a scandal… something to do with some missing library books, and he also remembered that some Inquisitors had shown interest.

"Stop!" Roger yelled at him in his thin, irritating voice. "You are my prisoners and you will do as I command for the remainder of your wretched lives."

“Will we do as you bid us for the rest of our worthless lives?” Elysia looked at Roger with a stunned expression. “You have been reading too many melodramatic works. No one talks like that in real life."

“Shut up, slave! Stop. You were always too smart for it to be healthy, you know? Now let's see who's the smart one here!... I think so!"

“Come on, Ulber, a joke is a joke. Let us get out of here quickly, before your master comes.”

"My teacher?" Roger looked puzzled.

“The Warlock who owns this tower.

“You are an idiot, Elysia! The witch is me."

Elysia looked at him in disbelief. "You?"

"If I! I have plumbed the mysteries of the Dark Gods and discovered the source of all magical power. I have researched the secrets of Life and Death, and soon I will have complete dominion over the Kingdom of Lothal.”

“I find that a bit hard to believe,” Elysia admitted truthfully, since the Roger she had known in her days of servitude was a nonentity all the other students ignored. Who would have guessed the depths of megalomania that lurked inside that head?

“Think what you want, slave, with your fine little accent and your high-class slave manners. I have mastered the secret of Life itself, I control the alchemical secrets of the mana stone, and I understand the innermost secrets of the art of transmutation!”

Out of the corner of her eye, Elysia saw Frey's muscles begin to swell; the dark hero struggled against the chains that bound him. His face was flushed, his body hair stood on end, and his body was contorted, arched in order to brace his feet against the wall. She didn't know what Frey hoped to achieve with that, since anyone could see that those chains were impossible to break with the strength of a man.

“Have you been using the mana stone?”

“That explains a lot of things.” the cat girl thought. She didn't know much about the manastone, but what she did know was quite unsettling to her. It was the pure essence of magic, the final and ultimate source of all flesh alterations, and a single iota of it was enough to drive a normal man insane. From the tone she was using, it seemed like Roger had consumed an entire barrel.

"Re crazy!"

"That's what they told me in the Empire, in that university they have!" Saliva dripped from Roger's mouth, and Elysia saw that his eyes glowed an eerie green, as if there were will-o'-the-wisps behind the pupils. Vampire fangs protruded from her gums. “But I proved them wrong. I found his banned books, wrapped up and hidden in a vault. They said they were not meant for the eyes of mortal man, but I have read them and they have done me no harm!”

"Yes, I see it." the catgirl muttered wryly.

“You think you're very smart, don't you? You are just like your owner and everyone else, everyone who laughed at me when I said I was going to be the mage who would surpass Archmage Gregori's power. We'll see how smart you behave when I've transformed you like I transformed Oleg here!”

With fatherly pride, she patted the monster's shoulder, and it smiled like a dog whose master had just scratched its belly.

Elysia found the scene slightly unsettling. Behind them, Frey was almost hunched over, leaning his back against the wall, his arms stretched out to the fullest. The dark hero's face was blue, and his features were contorted in a grimace of anger and fury. Elysia had a feeling that soon something would have to give; Either the chains would break, or Frey's blood vessel would burst. "The latter could be a blessing." Elysia thought, because she didn't see how Frey was going to defeat the monster without the sword and armor. The Dark Hero was strong, but this creature made him look like a skinny kid.

Roger raised an arm, brandishing a staff, and Elysia saw that at the tip was a sphere of blue manastone held in a lead socket. She couldn't help but notice that the hand holding the staff was scaly, its nails resembling the claws of a wild beast.

“It has taken me years to perfect the transmutation spell, years,” Roger hissed. “You have no idea how many experiments I did. Hundreds! I worked as a laborer, but at last I have the secret. Very soon you will meet him too.” The witcher laughed again. "Although, alas, it won't do you any good because you won't be smart enough to talk, though you'll be good company for Oleg."

The glowing tip of the staff moved closer to Elysia's face, and she could see strange lights within it. The surface seemed to shimmer and swirl, like oil on water. She felt the terrible power of mutation surging from her, radiating from the manastone like heat from burning coals.

"I guess begging for mercy won't do any good," Elysia commented nonchalantly, and she was proud that she had managed to keep her tone calm. Roger shook his head.

"It's too late for that. Soon you'll be an even bigger stupid goofball than you are now."

“In that case, I have to tell you something.”

Frey's muscles bulged as he made one last superhuman effort and lunged forward like a swimmer diving headfirst off a cliff.

“What is it, slave?” Roger moved closer to Elysia's mouth.

"I never liked you either, madman!"

She gave the impression that Roger was going to hit the catgirl with his staff, but instead he just smiled and bared her bestial fangs.

"Very soon, every time you look in the mirror, you will understand the true meaning of the word insanity."

Roger began to chant a litany in a strange, liquid-sounding language. It was not elvish but something even older and considerably more sinister in tone. Elysia had heard it before, on other occasions when she and Frey had interfered in the rites that the followers of the dark forces were performing. Well, it seemed that this time the forces of Darkness would have the last laugh. She and the dark hero would soon join their ranks, even if it was against her will.

With each word Roger intoned, the manastone grew brighter, and his bluish glow pushed back the darkness of the cell, bathing everything in its horrifying light. Tendrils of ectoplasm emerged from the stone, appearing at first like luminous mist, but then condensing into something more solid. Around them, there was an aura of something disgusting and sick. When Roger waved his staff, the ectoplasmic outgrowths billowed behind it like the tail of a comet. He shook it with sweeping gestures that swept the air, as if with each undulation the evil object increased his power.

The litany then seemed like a mad scream, and drops of sweat beaded on the sorcerer's forehead and trickled down his glasses. Oleg, the mutated monster, howled in unison with his mistress, his booming bass voice providing a gruesome counterpoint to the spell. Elysia felt the fur on her tail stand on end as she ceased the litany and an eerie blanket of silence fell over her dungeon.

For a moment, everything was still. Elysia could barely see, dazzled by the staff's light. She could hear the beating of her own heart and Roger's ragged breathing, which she gasped after finishing her invocation. There was an odd crack and the sound of metal scraping against stone, and he opened his eyes in time to see one of Frey's chains come loose from the wall and fly away, and then the dark hero fell with a curse. and ended up swinging over the flagstones of the floor.

Roger turned at the sound, and the monster opened its mouth and let out a tremendous bellow.

Elysia groaned. She had hoped that Frey would be able to run towards the sword. With sword in hand, she Elysia would have supported the dark hero against any monster. However, Frey was still hanging from one of the chains, and all he could do was swing as the monster tore him to pieces. Roger seemed to realize this at the same time as Elysia.

"Attack!" he yelled at the monster.

Oleg lunged forward, and Frey lashed out at him with the loose chain, the heavy links hurtling into the mutant's huge eyes. Oleg howled in pain as the chain slammed into his face, then staggered back and slammed into Roger. There was a click as Frey used the moment of respite to release the other chain from the wall, and Roger's face turned white. He jumped up to rush toward the stairs, and the last thing Elysia saw of him was his disappearing back.

“There will be a reckoning!” declared Frey in his stony voice, then guttural with anger.

The monster lunged for the dark hero, reaching out a hand as big as a ham. Frey swung the chain back and forth, and the metal slammed into the creature's hand, causing it to recoil once more. Frey's eyes squinted to gauge the distance between him and his greatsword, and Elysia could almost read his mind. The distance was excessive. If she turned around and she ran for the weapon, the monster's longer strides would allow her to catch up.

He might be able to back away from her, but as always, the catgirl underestimated the strength of Frey's thirst for combat, and instead of backing away, he ran towards his enemy while swinging the chain in such an arc. fast that made it blurry. The chain slammed into Oleg's chest, and a moment later he landed a second blow to the face with the other chain.

This time, Oleg expected the pain, and instead of backing away, he continued toward Frey and lifted him off the ground in a bear hug.

Elysia winced as she watched the giant mutant's arms tighten, whose contracted biceps seemed to be the size of beer barrels. A spray of red blood rained down on Frey, and Oleg howled in pain, throwing Frey across the room with his massive arms. Frey crashed into the wall and fell to the ground with a clatter of chains; he staggered to his feet a few seconds later.