Marchosias didn't wait for Zac to dismount the headless horse. He simply turned on his heel, his cape of tattered grey fur swirling, and strode out of the stables.
"Bune!" he barked over his shoulder, his voice echoing off the stone walls. "Assemble those fucking animals who destroyed my office. I want a full war council in ten minutes."
Bune, who was currently trying to herd the warg back into its pen while simultaneously directing spectral stable hands to clean up the blood, looked up in panic. "Ten minutes? Captain, that's hardly enough time to-"
Marchosias stopped. He didn't turn around. He just inhaled deeply and let out a howl. It wasn't the summon-the-pack howl from the courtyard. This was a short, sharp, auditory slap in the face. "NOW!"
Bune yelped. "Right! Yes! Immediately!" Both heads began shouting orders at once, necromantic energy flaring as he summoned messenger spirits to hunt down the lieutenants.
Zac scrambled off the dead bicorn, his boots slipping in the gore, and jogged to catch up with the Captain's long, purposeful strides. As they passed a corridor, a pack of imps hurried by in the other direction, arguing loudly.
"I'm telling you, 'waffles' are a type of shield!"
"No, you idiot, it's a torture device!"
Zac ignored them, falling into step beside Marchosias. "Uh, Captain? Sir? What exactly is happening? Why the lockdown?"
Marchosias stopped abruptly, turning to look down at Zac. For a moment, the hunger in his amber eyes was undisguised, a raw, predatory intensity that made Zac's breath hitch. Then the mask of command slid back into place.
"You," the wolf growled, his voice low and dangerous. "You cost me three Bicorns."
Zac stumbled, nearly tripping over his own robes. "What? Wait, what does that mean? I didn't do anything! They just... exploded. Or died. That wasn't me!"
Marchosias didn't answer. He turned and continued his march toward the main hall. As they entered the cavernous foyer, he stopped again, his ears swiveling forward. He lifted his muzzle, sniffing the air, his nostrils flaring.
"Andras," he rumbled, his voice echoing in the vast, empty space. "Stop hiding, you shadowy fuck."
For a moment, there was only silence. Then, a shadow by the base of the grand staircase seemed to detach itself from the wall. Andras stepped into the light, leaning casually against the banister, cleaning his talons with the tip of a dagger. A smirk played on his beak.
"Oh, Captain," the owlman drawled, his golden eyes twinkling. "I wasn't hiding. Just... relaxing in the shade. Enjoying the ambiance."
Marchosias growled, a sound like grinding stones. He didn't look at Andras. Instead, he gestured sharply to the seemingly empty space of floor directly in front of the stairs.
Andras blinked, feigning innocence. "What?"
Marchosias stared straight at the owl, his gaze unblinking. Without breaking eye contact, he unhooked his heavy, black-iron helmet from his belt and tossed it underhand.
The helmet sailed through the air in a lazy arc. It landed on the exact spot Marchosias had indicated with a heavy clang.
Snap.
A tripwire, invisible to the naked eye, parted. High above, there was a groan of stressed metal.
The massive, crystal chandelier that dominated the foyer, a monstrosity of twisted iron and screaming souls, detached from the ceiling.
It fell.
It smashed into the floor with the force of a meteor, obliterating the helmet and sending a tidal wave of crystal shrapnel and twisted metal exploding outward. The sound was deafening, a cacophony of breaking glass and released souls shrieking as they dissipated.
Zac stood frozen as shards of crystal flew past him, glittering like deadly confetti. One particularly large piece whizzed by his ear, taking a lock of hair with it. He blinked.
'Huh,' he thought, watching the dust settle. 'Probably should have covered my face. Stupid fear resist.'
Bune, who had just entered the hall behind them, let out a synchronized roar of outrage.
"THE CHANDELIER!" both heads screamed. "THAT WAS ORIGINAL ARCHITECTURE! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW LONG IT TAKES TO TUNE THE SCREAMS ON THOSE SOULS?!"
Andras looked at the pile of wreckage where, moments ago, anyone walking up the stairs would have been standing. He whistled low. "Well. That was... structurally unsound."
Marchosias ignored the butler's wailing. He looked at Andras with cold satisfaction. "War room. Now. Before I decide to test the structural integrity of your neck."
Andras chuckled, a low, smoky sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once. He stepped backward, melting into the shadow of the staircase. "See you there, Cap."
Zac watched, fascinated, as the owl's large, yellow eyes blinked once in the darkness, glowing like twin moons, and then simply… vanished. There was no sound of movement, no rustle of feathers. Just presence, then absence.
Marchosias growled low in his throat and resumed his walk, stepping around the twisted wreckage of the chandelier as if it were a minor inconvenience, like a puddle on the sidewalk. Zac looked from the shattered crystal to the empty shadow, then back to the retreating wolf, before scampering to catch up.
Behind them, Bune was having a meltdown of epic proportions. "Shade team six! Get the spectral brooms! Imp squad four, find the soul-shards before they dissipate! If I find one piece of crystal in the carpet, I am feeding you to the furnace!" The butler was frantically multitasking, summoning spirits with one hand and gesturing wildly with the other as he hurried to follow his master.
"So," Zac said, falling into step beside the Captain and carefully stepping over a jagged piece of iron. "Does that happen often? The whole… Looney Tunes trap attempting to crush us thing?"
"Andras is an instigator," Marchosias said flatly, his gaze fixed forward. "He sows discord. It is his nature. He tests the defenses. He tests patience. He tests… everything."
Zac raised an eyebrow. 'Instigator,' he thought. 'That's a polite way of saying attempted murderer.' Dropping a thousand-pound pile of screaming crystal and iron onto someone wasn't exactly starting a fight; it was ending a bloodline.
He sighed, his mind drifting back to the owlman's smirk and the way he melted into the dark. 'Still hot though,' he admitted to himself with a shameful lack of self-preservation. 'Maybe someday I'll get caught in one of his snares. Just hanging upside down while he instigates me all over…'
He adjusted his robes, giving a silent prayer of thanks to whatever dark god of fashion had designed them. Loose, flowy, non-restrictive. Perfect for hiding the sudden, inconvenient biological reactions to his near-death experiences.