Outside the castle, in the cold wind, The Duke watched his stock being looted clean, the muscles in his fat face twitching.
In the end, he caved.
Faced with Ryan's black card, which he had no idea how to actually cash in, The Duke wisely chose to extend Ryan a line of credit.
He understood perfectly well: if he dared say no, the man in front of him would make him understand that if you can't swipe the card, you swipe the man.
Ethan stood there slightly stunned, watching The Duke unload crate after crate of military hardware from that four-dimensional-pocket of a carriage in a steady stream.
"Ryan... isn't this, I mean, a little excessive?"
Ethan looked down at the heavy M1911 pistol in his hand, the rows of magazines on his belt, the automatic rifle slung across his back, and the bite wound on his left arm, which Ryan had sprayed with some kind of serum and was now just a faint red mark.
The most ridiculous part of all: there was a dark green RPG rocket launcher resting on his shoulder, with two spare warheads tucked into the back of his belt.
Ryan was carrying an identical RPG of his own, an easy smile on his lips. "Excessive? Ethan, you've got to understand. In a place like this, truth isn't just within the range of your weapon, it's inside the caliber. Your wife Mia might be locked up somewhere in there suffering. As her husband, don't you want to give her a little surprise?"
"I... I guess that's true." Ethan, a solid, honest engineer at heart, found his logic being rapidly reshaped by Ryan's. To save Mia, never mind an RPG, he'd drive a tank in there if he had to.
"Well then, I wish both honored guests a 'pleasant journey.' I shall remain here, awaiting your triumphant return." The Duke clambered down from the carriage with effort and gave Ryan an ingratiating doff of his hat.
He watched their backs until the two of them had set foot on Castle Dimitrescu's ancient stone steps. Only then did the merchant's smile slowly drain from his face, and in those perpetually squinted eyes, a deep shock and gravity flickered.
Miranda, this time... what kind of monster have you gone and provoked?
The Duke muttered to himself, climbed back into his carriage, cracked the whip, and the massive vehicle vanished silently into the fog as if melting into it.
Creak.
Castle Dimitrescu's heavy oak doors were kicked open by Ryan.
The grand hall of the castle, ancient yet steeped in luxury, opened up before them.
The décor was exquisite. A huge crystal chandelier, crimson carpets, oil paintings along the walls, every detail breathing aristocratic excess.
The air didn't carry the stale odor it should have. Instead, it was laced with a strange, coppery scent, like perfume mixed with an old corpse.
Bzzzzz...
A piercing noise rolled through the hall, like the wings of tens of thousands of flies beating in unison.
Ethan's instincts flared. These flies were absurdly large, and the paths they traced through the air seemed too patterned, too choreographed.
He tightened his grip on the launcher.
"Oh my, my. Look who we have here. Two little lost outsider mice."
A tall silhouette descended slowly from the hall's staircase.
She wore her signature white vintage gown, a wide black hat, and at nearly three meters, the light cast an enormously imposing shadow from her form. Alcina Dimitrescu, the one everyone knew as Lady Dimitrescu.
Beside her, accompanied by the droning buzz of wings, three dense swarms of black insects twisted and coalesced in the light.
A few seconds later, three stunning, provocatively dressed young women in revealing black gowns emerged, each holding a bloodstained sickle. Bela, Cassandra, and Daniela, perfectly reassembled into human form by Miranda's blessing of the Mold.
"Mother, look at their blood. I bet it's delicious..." Daniela licked her lips hungrily, the madness in her eyes on open display.
"How rude of me. Gentlemen, this is Castle Dimitrescu, and I am the lady of the house." Lady Dimitrescu looked down at them from on high, only pausing briefly when she noticed the metal pipes the two were shouldering. "Well... it seems my daughters rather fancy you."
"Excuse me..."
"Excuse me, have you seen my wife, Mia? Someone may have taken her here. If you could tell me anything, I... we would be very grateful." Strange as the scene was, Ethan still asked politely.
He even gave a slight bow. If you ignored the fact that he was shouldering a rocket launcher, he really was quite polite.
Alcina recovered from her brief moment of surprise and forced herself back into composure, letting out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Mia? Heh heh heh... that woman."
She threw Ethan a taunting glance, her voice carrying the cruelty of a predator toying with prey. "Of course I know where she is. But... you'll be reunited with her very soon, in my wine cellar, in a rather intimate fashion. Before that, though, we'll have to see just how much blood you can bleed."
"Hah!"
At their mother's command, the three daughters let out a shrill shriek, countless black flies swirling around them.
The bloodied sickles in their hands gleamed cold under the light as they lunged toward Ethan and Ryan.
In a scene so gory and terrifying it would have broken any ordinary person on the spot.
At this hair-trigger moment.
Ryan let out a sigh and took a step forward.
He made a small adjustment to the angle of the RPG on his shoulder, the dark, yawning launch tube aimed squarely at the three "fly-daughters" on the staircase who were just about to take flight, and then tilted it up a little more, settling the sights on Lady Dimitrescu's enormous frame.
"Sorry to interrupt, ladies, lovely as you are. And you, the rather... sizable madame."
Ryan spoke in the casual tone of someone deciding what to get for dinner. "Could I trouble you all to shuffle off to the side a bit and let us through?"
As he spoke, he politely flicked the metal warhead of the launcher with a fingertip, producing a clear little ping.
The three daughters froze mid-motion, staring at the man like he was a complete idiot.
The smile vanished from Lady Dimitrescu's face, replaced by the pure fury of a higher being offended by something beneath her.
In all her long years, no one had ever spoken to her in a tone that casual, let alone that mocking. She didn't care in the slightest what those two "metal pipes" in their hands were. To her, human firearms couldn't so much as scratch her skin.
"Insolence! You ignorant little cockroach!"
Alcina roared, thrusting out her right hand, and from her fingertips five bone claws, each nearly half a meter long, shot out in a flash of icy light.
"I'm going to rip your tongue out and grind you into mincemeat!" Her massive body pitched forward with terrifying force, ready to pounce straight down from the staircase.
Ethan, face blank, took one step forward, pressed his left eye to the launcher's sights, and locked the crosshair dead on that enormous white figure lunging midair.
No warning. No hesitation.
He pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
A deafening explosion ripped through the grand hall. A massive fireball bloomed above the staircase, and the terrifying kinetic force and metal jet of the high-explosive warhead plastered itself squarely across Lady Dimitrescu's face without mercy.
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