Beauty X Beast ~ Twenty-Two!

“A masterpiece, you say?” Sneezy rubbed his chin as Danielle explained the requirements for her skill increase. “Too bad you didn't get that before you made my new form, eh? Ehh? Now the real question is, was it a masterpiece with a lowercase, or an uppercase ‘M’?”

“Uppercase,” Danielle replied with a touch of frustration in her voice, though she kept a smile on her lips to show her guard—and friend—that she appreciated his attempt at levity. “That means it has to be at a level that the system itself recognizes as a Master-level creation, right? As if I were already operating at level nine with the skill?”

“It's a surprisingly common requirement.” Sneezy pulled out a book and handed it over. “I believe this was already recommended to you? A Treatise on Skills. By the way, this is your official notification that you've been given approval to take books out of the library. Yay, you!” 

Dozens of tiny balls of fire launched from all over his body, dissipating into oily smoke after existing for only a heartbeat each. Danielle flinched away at first, then looked on, mesmerized by the impressive display of control. “You've been practicing!”

“I'm not allowed in the library anymore, so I needed to do something to fill the time,” Sneezy let her know with a sheepish grin. “On that note, do you want to bet how long it’ll take before Doc isn't allowed in the library?”

Tilting her hand back and forth, Danielle shook her head. “I can't give a realistic answer for that. The plan isn't to coat him in razor blades. To be fair, I don't know what the final design will be. I've been working on the schematic, but… a spider is pretty far out of what I've worked on in the past. I'm having trouble finding ways to balance the front and back… the harpoon isn’t helping.”

“It'll be fine, it's not like he's been waiting on this for long-”

The lights in the house shifted red, and the alarm bell began ringing. Danielle went ridgid with concern, looking around cautiously to see if the Beast was dangling in a corner and waiting to see her reaction to the noise. Ever so softly, she muttered, “I think he learned his lesson last time, but… sometimes you can never know for sure.”

Sneezy stiffened then reached out and grabbed her hand. “I just got alerted as to what's going on. The soldiers stationed outside the walls to prevent your potential escape are under attack from an unknown group. It's… it's not looking good for them.”

“Wait, someone launched an attack against Verdelune? Not looking good?” The reversal of the expected situation threw Danielle for a loop, but the blood drained from her face as her thoughts digested the information. “No! Nearly half of those are recruits from my town. They have practically no training, no armor-!”

Ignoring Sneezy’s shouts, she pushed into the hallway and started running toward the door, only to find it bodily blocked by the Beast. “Get out of the way; I'm going out there to help them!”

“Although this pains me a great deal, I cannot allow you to leave the manor.” The Beast spoke in a measured tone, not budging an inch from where he blocked the exit. 

“It’ll be a bloodbath!” Danielle's shouts fell on deaf ears, the Beast simply watching her. “They need help!”

“Tell me, guest of Comte LeKrout… how will you turn the tide of the battle in favor of your countrymen? Will this foe break against your mana-imbued plate armor? Fall before your immense training with weapons?” The Beast stared her down, still refusing to move. “Or, more realistically, would you simply join the casualties?”

“I need to-”

“No. You do not.” The Beast shook its head gravely. “If you were to be harmed, the Comte would be summoned to the high court of Verdelune to give a reckoning for what occurred. I can tell you this… by doing so, he would be forced to create an untiring, unfeeling, uncaring army for the kingdom once more. It would break him.”

“Then you send out your soldiers to save them!” Danielle shouted at the Beast, eyes darting back and forth as she searched for an exit which never manifested. “They don't deserve to die for no reason!”

“Soldiers almost never deserve their fates,” the Beast told her gently, though his voice was laced with steel—much like his body. “They are pulled into someone else's war to fight a battle they did not choose, to die on land they have no knowledge of. If I let you go out there, so much more death would follow.” 

The lights in the hall dimmed suddenly, and an image captured by reflected mirrors was splayed across the white hall above the new paintings. Standing in a shoddy formation, dozens of men fought with a desperation born of hopelessness. The defending forces had their backs pressed against the seamless, looming wall surrounding LeKrout’s manor. 

Danielle's hands were pressed to her mouth as tears streamed from her eyes, watching the soundless, senseless fight. The greenhorns—many of whom she recognized from growing up in the same town—wore dented, rusty helmets, at best. They wielded shields and swords against their attackers to little avail as arrows dropped from the sky, punching through flesh and bone with near-equal efficiency. 

A powerful warrior wearing heavy armor threw himself into the fray against the conscripts, his sword barely visible as it blurred from person to person, each swing leaving behind only falling bodies. In another pocket of resistance, a magic user of some kind stepped forward, lifting his hands and releasing a glow of light that washed out Danielle's view for a moment. 

When the reflected light on the wall showed the moving picture once more, the entire platoon of defenders had fallen to the ground, steam rising from their bodies. Oddly enough, they didn't appear burned or charred, simply… heated. 

“Enough,” the Beast called out, and the lights in the hallway immediately returned to their normal brightness. Danielle stared at the patch on the wall where the carnage had been shown, her mind trying to understand why the white stone of the wall was blackened. “Spellcasters who use radiance are few and far between. Even watching them use their powers from a distance can be enough to permanently damage fleshy sensory organs. It is good you were not watching this from the walls directly. You would have gone blind.”

“Nothing…” Danielle slowly sucked in a breath, turning to look at the Beast with hollow eyes. “Nothing about that was good. You could have done something. You could’ve saved lives. Why-”

*Rat-a-tatta!*

The sound of hundreds of pistons slamming forward and back at the same time echoed into the hallway, and the Beast tilted its head slightly as it looked toward the source of the noise. “If it brings you any consolation, half of the attacking forces were just eradicated as they attempted to breach the wall. They failed. The defenses stand strong.” 

“Is this what we’ve been working toward while I've been here?” Danielle voiced the thought gnawing at her heart. “I wanted to make wonders of machinery, create life from dead components, maybe find a way to create some joy. Am I instead empowering a merciless killer who won’t bend—not even a little—to save others?”

Choosing to remain very still, the Beast spoke more gently than usual, as though to a wounded, trapped animal. “It is necessary to ensure the safety and survival of the lord of the house. It is true, dozens of people just died absolutely pointlessly. It is not something we asked for, something we perpetrated or endorsed. We could not intervene for fear of a far worse outcome.” 

“Worse than that?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I just don't know what to say.” 

“I tire of this!” The Beast snarled at her with immense agitation. “You invade my master's house, laying the actions of others at his feet and attempting to put the blame squarely on us? It seems history repeats itself, Enchantress.”

“Let me leave.”

“Gladly-” The Beast recoiled as no fewer than half a dozen guards stepped forward to plead with Danielle in his place. Letting out a deeply frustrated sound, he amended his words, “but not before you understand what you are truly asking for. Come with me.” 

“Where?”

The machine paused momentarily before finally speaking in a hushed tone. “To witness the Comte’s greatest shame.”

The Beast began floating through the hallway, though he went out of his way to stay low to the ground—all so he could still stomp on the stone floors to show his frustration. He led her directly to the stairwell leading to the subterranean workshop, not once looking behind himself to see if she was following. It seemed he’d gotten to know her very well over the last few weeks. 

Certainly well enough to understand that her curiosity would eventually force her to join him. 

When they arrived in the cavernous room, Danielle was surprised to find that the motion-capture platform was already in its fully active mode, the crystal spires extended and glowing brightly. The Beast stomped to the edge, its hands expanding in a cascade of tools. It began pressing on the crystal in a rapid pattern, hundreds of points poked in the span of only a few seconds. For a moment, they glowed a brilliant blue… then faded into a deep, sickly green.

A new voice, one she only recognized due to its cadence and careful way of speaking, sounded out from the center of the platform.

“My name is Comte Kota LeKrout, and no matter what my kingdom of Verdelune tells me, or their citizens…”

“…I am a war criminal.” 

The lights shifted slightly, and a familiar figure appeared: a metal knight, but somehow made of light and standing in the exact center of the platform. The Comte’s voice continued, steadily speaking as though he were reading from a prepared document. “I was recruited at nineteen years old, the youngest graduate of the Royal Academy to have passed all of the courses deemed necessary to become a system-recognized Artificer.”

A young man appeared in place of the metal soldier, standing in regal clothes with a wide smile on his face.

“Upon going to a Class Shrine, I was awarded the vaunted class of Artificer, a goal I’d worked toward since the moment I showed aptitude for machinery on my tenth birthday.” 

The image of the young man shifted slightly, the highborne clothes replaced with a stylish military uniform. “I had barely returned home to celebrate with my family, House LeKrout, where my father held the lowest rank of nobility—Baron—when I was given orders to report to the capital city to begin working on the war effort on behalf of Verdelune. Like a fool, I was proud of the opportunity and raced forth to prove myself.”

“And prove myself, I did.”