And he saw their greatest betrayal of all: the purple Core, whose existence they’d kept from him even as he looked each of them in the eye and asked if they’d anything else to tell him.
Those little—
The tower’s chimes struck the hour, breaking his furious reverie, and Varnell forced his gaze once more to the mirror. A shiver snaked from the back of his neck to the base of his spine when he saw a pair of violet eyes staring coldly back at him.
“Hello there, little warlock.”
The umbral face in the mirror smirked as Varnell instinctively shot a terrified glance at the doorway behind him. Of course nobody was there to eavesdrop – the wards he’d placed around this entire floor would take care of that, as would the numerous bolts and padlocks on the elderwood main door – but still. If just one person heard the word warlock… if just one of them learned his secret…
“Master. Greetings.” Varnell bowed his head to the mirror. When he straightened, he caught another shadowy glimpse of his reflection, obscured as it was by his patron’s visage, and once more habitually covered his ears with his hair.
Scorn radiated from the looking glass.
“I see shame still smolders within your heart,” said the voice coldly. “Interesting; your former elven clan shunned your very existence from the day of your conception, yet still you persist in aping their ancestral rituals with your own clumsy attempts at trophy-mark scarification.” There was a dangerous pause. "Is that a new one I see?"
What?
Oh. Oh, damn. He’d covered the tattoo-in-progress with his sleeve, but watery blood and ink had begun to soak through the grass-green fabric. Ice trickled through his veins as he fought to maintain his composure – and conceal his guilt.
"Curious," the entity murmured. Its voice was glacial, riming the very air with deadly threat. "I was sure I ordered you to report to me any time you so much as located a new Core – and for you not to take any action without first consulting me."
From the adjoining room, he heard Limpit gulp.
Oh, damn. Think, think!
He forced a tight smile and waved a hand at his leaking forearm and ruined sleeve. "This? No, no, not a new one. No new Cores. No new tattoos. Just touching up the older ones, is all. Limpit was—”
“I could not possibly care less about the extracurricular activities of either you or your absurd familiar. However, you might consider making more prudent use of your spare time. When last we communicated, your servant had failed to return from the investigation of a promising new tunnel network. However, her expendable yet unexpectedly resilient traveling companions reported sighting a new God Core – or so you informed me.”
A bead of sweat trickled down the back of Varnell’s neck as he cursed himself yet again for his over-eagerness in reporting to his patron. The pressure had been on him to locate more Cores, and he was desperate to send word of any kind of progress. But when he took the time to properly read the adventurers’ debriefing notes, it was obvious he’d made a grievous error. The Core they’d found was obviously Grimrock: Varnell’s secret ally – and his patron’s thrall.
The entity was still awaiting his response. Varnell wiped his sweaty palms on his robes and tried not to hyperventilate.
“My lord, there was no Core.”
There was a dangerously heavy pause. Then: “No? But you seemed quite certain of their conviction at the time.”
“Conviction is no substitute for actuality. I’m afraid they were mistaken.”
“I thought experience had taught you how I feel about mistakes.”
The threat in the voice seemed to coalesce into something physical, a fist-like pressure around Varnell’s heart.
“Remember that I can cause you agony beyond reckoning with the merest twitch of my finger. Remember, too, that you owe me – for your life, and for the vengeance I enabled you to enact when first you found me. And remember that any more failures on your part will result in the forcible removal of your free will.”
A horrible sensation of being pulled by invisible strings like a puppet. His limbs twitched involuntarily, then a moment later released him. “Consider yourself fortunate you remain my servant, and not my thrall. For now.”
The amulet against his chest seared, and the invisible fist tightened. He gasped for breath.
“My lord!” he gasped. “I have only ever served you—”
“Then serve me now!” snarled the voice. “I do not ask for miracles. Yet here you are, another member of my flock too incompetent to fulfill my commands.”
“Master, I—"
“I tire of this conversation. One of my oldest thralls appears to have slipped my grasp. When I find him – and I will find him – his punishment will be an example. I trust his disappearance is unrelated to your mistake. If it emerges that any of my servants had a hand in his release, those found guilty will suffer the full extent of my displeasure. And when I am once again whole—”
The voice cut off abruptly, as though the entity had said something he hadn’t intended to. Something – a long-held suspicion in the back of Varnell’s mind – clicked, but he would have to follow the thought up later.
“When next we speak,” his patron was saying now, “I expect to hear that you and your incompetent underlings have managed to locate at least one new Core.”
‘When next we speak.’ And when will that be, I wonder? Their meetings had always been entirely at his patron’s whim. Days, weeks, even months could pass between them without pattern, leaving Varnell in a state of nervous tension at nearly every hour of the day and night, anticipating the telltale burning against his chest that heralded the coming of his so-called master.
As if that wasn’t pressure enough, his patron’s
