The Exorcist Doctor

Chapter 125 - Under Steel Rule // Under Quiet Chains

Gael and Maeve scowled down in perfect, uncanny tandem.

The cavern sprawled beneath them in a vast, blistering brilliance. It was brighter than any Bharncair mine had the right to be, lit by hanging lantern arrays that threw long, skeletal shadows across the walls. The rocks were veined with molten-looking streaks of metal ore—lots of brass-gold, lots of pewter-grey, and lots of deep, almost bruised red—and in the far distance, molten slurry dripped down from a higher shaft like glowing tears. Minecart rails crossed every which way over the cavern floor, branching like arteries. Ore carts rumbled between lines of patrolling Steelborn guards. Chains clinked overhead from some underground wind.

And yet none of that held their attention.

Not compared to the bodies.

Men and women were chained to the support pillars, one thick collar per person anchored with iron spikes. All of the prisoners were pale—pale in that grey, sun-starved, life-drained way Myrmur Hosts became when their parasites fed too much. Ragged clothes hung from weakened limbs. Some shook from fever. Some slumped against the rocks with dead, hollow stares, but the worst trait they all shared—the trait that made Maeve’s breath stutter—were the fleshy umbilical cords jutting from their bodies.

Gael had known this for a while, but Myrmur umbilical cords could come in all shapes and sizes. Some were thin, but others were fat, pulsing, veined, and worming. There typically wasn’t any relation between an umbilical cord’s appearance and the strength of the Myrmur, but here, in mine E77, all of the umbilical cords jutting from the prisoners’ backs, ribs, shoulders, and collarbones were pale and dry.

And at the ends of those cords, of course, were Myrmurs. Not disguised as husbands or children or dogs. Not mimicking voices, faces, or memories. Not whispering illusions or even attempting to deceive their Hosts into thinking they were anything but parasites.

These Myrmurs had abandoned all deception entirely. They took on their natural forms: towering bugs, mostly beetles, with rippled chitin carapaces, twitching antennae, and round, empty black eyes. Gael was no entomologist, but he at least recognized the giant stag beetles with two horns and the longhorn beetles with… well, long antennae instead of long horns.

Without a doubt, though, all of them were digging, working, and carving metal ores from the cavern with their hooked limbs while the Steelborn guards watched.

The macabre workforce made Maeve’s face twist.

“What are they doing down there?” she whispered. “Are they… are the Myrmurs being…”

“The stabilizers,” he muttered.

“What?”

“The stabilizers,” he repeated. “They’re broad-spectrum remedies that can only weaken the symptoms, but they’re good enough to essentially control the Myrmurs.”

His eyes narrowed.

“… So the Steelborn have figured out how to make the Myrmurs mine for them,” he murmured. “I mean, one big Myrmur can work as efficiently as twenty good men, so I see why they’re doing it, but now the question is, how did they even come up with the stabilizers?”

It was, of course, a question Maeve had no way of answering. He was mostly talking to himself. His first thought was that the Steelborn simply had skilled physicians and doctors under their employ, and that these stabilizers had been long in development until recently. His second thought was worse. His third thought was unprintable.

But before he could choose which to voice, a shout erupted from below.

“Hey! Up there! You two!”

Gael stiffened. Maeve jerked back. Two Steelborn guards near the center of the cavern were pointing directly up at them, rifles lifting.

The Myrmurs heard the shouting, and for Myrmurs—whose instincts were wired to violence, hunger, and parasitic survival—conflict was opportunity.

Half a dozen giant beetles snapped their horns and mandibles toward the guards. Umbilical cords went taut. Their Hosts jerked in pain, gasping, but the Myrmurs surged forward anyway, dragging the chained bodies a step closer as they lunged at their slavers.

Chaos unfolded instantly.

Guards below fired. Rifles cracked. Ore carts were flipped over and sent flying into the walls. One of the beetles flung a boulder the size of a wagon wheel at a guard, while another reared and slammed its armored head into a guard, sending him flying ten meters across the cavern.

Gael didn’t wait for any of it to make sense and seized Maeve by the wrist.

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“Time to go.”

He yanked her away from the railing and back into the tunnel, but she twisted, trying to pull back.

“Wait!” she shouted. “Those people down there! We have to help!”

“Not now!” He snapped back. “We have an unknown number of Steelborn, an unknown number of Myrmurs, an unknown layout of the mines, and we’re standing inside their basement! You wanna die? Because that’s how we die!”

“But—”

“We get out, we regroup, and we come back when we’re not outnumbered fifty to two. That’s the only way we can save anyone tonight.” He dragged her around the bend, glancing over his shoulder. “And frankly, if I were you, I’d be more worried about those guards than the Myrmur Hosts. The Steelborn evidently want to keep the Hosts alive, so even if the guards can quell the chaos, they won’t kill any of the Hosts.”

Maeve’s jaw tightened behind her mask. She clearly hated it, but she saw reason, logic, and nodded.

They sprinted through the tunnels, ducking under beams and dodging sprinting patrols rushing toward the cavern for reinforcement. Heat pulsed behind them in waves, carrying shouts and Myrmur roars in tangled echoes.

When the mouth of E77 came back into view, the two Steelborn guards they’d knocked out earlier were on their knees, groaning and holding their heads, helmets tilted at pathetic angles.

The nearest guard squinted blearily. “Who—”

Gael didn’t let the guard finish. One swift punch dropped the man again. Maeve mirrored him, planting her fist into the other guard’s jaw with a clean, sharp crack that knocked the man flat.

“Noisy bastards,” Gael muttered.

And without giving the guards behind them a second glance, the two of them vaulted out of the mine and into the night.

Gael crashed through Arnell’s ceiling hatch like a drunk gargoyle falling out of a chimney. Maeve landed beside him with far more grace—relatively speaking—with her umbrella opened to slow her descent. Nevertheless, their abrupt return jolted Arnell off the creaky chair he’d been lounging on while rubbing his stitched stomach.

“You… you guys couldn’t have used the front door?”

“Couldn’t find it. Your forge’s in the middle of fucking nowhere.” Gael straightened, dusting soot off his sleeves. “Also, you’re right.”

Arnell blinked, mouth half-open as he crawled back onto his chair in the center of the forge. “About…”

“The Steelborn are using Myrmur Hosts as miners,” Gael continued, both him and Maeve throwing themselves on chairs beside Arnell.

“They were chained to pillars, and the Myrmurs inside them were forced out in their natural forms,” Maeve said. “Most likely, the Myrmurs realize they can’t possibly deceive anyone or fight back against the Steelborn in their weakened state, so they’re reluctantly helping the Steelborn mine in order to stay alive.”

Arnell swallowed hard. “So it’s true, then. The stabilizers were developed so they could control Myrmurs.”

“Oh yes,” Gael said. “Quite the entrepreneurial endeavor for a terrible work culture… and an aesthetic that’s frankly appalling.” He braced his hands on the back of his chair and leaned in. “But how did they do it, Arnell? It’s one thing to create a stabilizer capable of weakening the symptoms of a bioarcanic parasitization, but it’s another thing to skip three more steps ahead and figure out how to control Myrmurs. Someone must’ve taught the Steelborn something… or someone must’ve given them something. What do you know?”

The man flinched a little under the intensity of the question. “I… I don’t know the details. Really. Word on the street is just what I told you: the Steelborn are helping the local Exorcists clean up the Myrmur Hosts on the streets, and in return for reducing the Exorcists’ workload, they turn a blind eye to the Steelborn using Myrmur Hosts as slaves in the mine.” He rubbed his stomach, still wincing as he grazed his stitches. “That’s all I know. Honest.”

Gael grimaced. “That’s useless,” he said flatly. “I need names. Locations. Living arrangements. The Steelborn can’t be keeping all their Myrmur Hosts inside the mines. There were ten Hosts in E77 alone, so there have to be more, and at least one of them is bound to be an artificially created Myrmur Host with a bomb inside them. I need at least one of them to interrogate, so where are all of them being kept?”

“... Are you going to break into a Steelborn base?”

“Yep.” Gael tilted his head. “But we’re the ones busting the door down, so what do you care, eh?”

Arnell hesitated—visibly—ike a man weighing whether telling about a notorious gang or disappointing a Raven would kill him faster. His fingers twitched toward his stitched stomach, then toward his chair, then nowhere at all, caught in some nervous loop of regret.

But finally, after a long exhale that sagged his whole ribcage, he nodded.

“A… alright,” he muttered. “Fine.”

He pushed himself up and ducked beneath the main workbench. From the cluttered darkness underneath, he dragged out a rough, grease-stained roll of paper. When he unfurled it across the workbench, the map let out a brittle crackle, its crooked lines and smudged ink looking more like a confession than cartography.

While Gael and Maeve leaned forward, Arnell pointed to a blotched, uneven square on Ironwych’s western edge.

“According to a friend of a friend of a friend,” Arnell said, “about thirty percent of the Myrmur Hosts they control are being kept somewhere around here, inside an abandoned factory. A big one. Used to refine brass alloys decades ago.” His finger trembled as he tapped the building. “The other seventy percent? I don’t know. Nobody knows. They just… disappear. This factory is the only real place anyone’s heard any rumors about.”

Gael leaned over the map, humming thoughtfully.

“Good enough,” he said. Then he reached into his coat and tossed out the two flowers he’d picked on the way to mine E77, sliding them across the workbench.

Arnell stared at them. “What—”

“You good with a chisel?”

“... Yes? I mean, of course, but… why?”

“There’s equipment I want you to upgrade for me.” Gael took off his hungry flower glove and grinned at Maeve at the same time. “And while you do that, I think it’s time we go exorcising again. We could use the points.”