This couldn’t have been Montgomery, right?
The cart rattled violently as it hit another bump, jolting Stick’s sore body against the unforgiving wooden frame. He winced as his shoulder struck the corner of the wagon. His arms, shackled, made it impossible to brace himself, and his muscles ached from days of trying. Two days of this. Two days of travel across the Kingdom of Carnifex, and Stick still couldn’t stop the same thought from invading his mind: This couldn’t have been Montgomery, right?
Stick shifted uncomfortably, his back aching as the cart jolted once more on the uneven road. His hands slipped, and he fell against the broad, sleeping form of the Prized Possession, the large man who had been their silent guard for the last two days. Stick quickly pushed himself back, cursing inwardly. He didn’t want to wake him—he didn’t want to be anywhere near him. The Prized Possession slept through it all, as he had the entire journey, oblivious to the bumps, the cold, and Stick’s growing frustration. How the man could manage to move freely with those enormous weights clamped around his wrists all day long was beyond Stick. Maybe it was easier for a man who had nothing left to lose, nothing left to fear. But then again, PP always did his duty. Always loyal to his Carnifex masters, even in sleep.
At night, PP became a different creature: ever-vigilant, eyes cold and piercing, not letting them out of his sight for even a moment. PP and Becket insisted it was to protect them from predators in the dense Whispering Woods or goblins in the open plains of the Goblin King’s Steppes, but Stick knew better. While it was true that their overnight stays offered plenty of opportunity for them to get ambushed by mobs, it rarely happened at night and the few times they were attacked during the day, the few Dire Wolves and Goblin Grunts never even reached close to the LVL of the Knight of House Blitz. PP wasn’t just protecting them; he was ensuring their captivity. The man hadn’t allowed them to even relieve themselves without supervision. Stick scoffed under his breath. Sir Shadis Moore, bristled at the constant surveillance, though the knight kept his protests quiet. Stick could feel his frustration simmering beneath the surface. But in those rare moments of conversation, Sir Shadis’s words gnawed at him.
“He came to Lord Jacoby the evening before he disappeared and told us about you being an Adventurer,” Shadis had said. “Face it, Recruit. He traded your secret for a cushier life on the farms just so the Baron could watch you suffer.”
The words had stuck with Stick ever since he asked Shadis if he saw the farmer with the short-cropped hair. It didn’t make sense. Montgomery wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. They had worried about him for so long, wondering if he had made it, if he had escaped the chaos that had befallen them. He must have known that. Stick had clung to the hope that Montgomery would send word, that he was safe somewhere. But if what Shadis had told him was true—if Montgomery had really gone to Lord Jacoby before disappearing—then Stick had been betrayed in the worst way. His friend had sold him out, all for the comfort of working fields instead of running or fighting for their lives. He had trouble believing it, although truthfully speaking, he feared that Shadis was right. What if it is true?
Stick’s stomach twisted. They’d been through too much for this. He couldn’t accept it, but that fear—that gnawing, horrible fear—lingered. What if Montgomery had simply walked away from everything, and left the Lords to their fates?A peaceful life tilling the soil while they suffered the consequences? While Cadmun beared the weight of the uprising himself? While Stick had to fend for himself against the other slaves? Stick clenched his fists, feeling the sharp bite of his shackles against his skin. While Michael died in the dirt?
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A loud bump jolted the cart again, and Stick winced as his sore body hit the wooden frame once more. He stole a glance at the slumbering Prized Possession. Even he, the brute, had shown some level of loyalty that one moment he defied Reacher. Even he, the Baron’s weapon, hadn’t just up and abandoned them. But Montgomery? The idea made Stick feel sick. He had mourned his loss for months, only now to realize he had been mourning a lie. As if I don’t already have enough to worry about on this cursed journey into the unknown.
The thought of their escape flickered in his mind, a brief moment of hope turned bitter. Their plan to help the young Lords Blitz escape had worked, but not without cost. Shadis told Stick how he had hidden the twins in the woods, circled back to the Estate, and led George Stamos, the Baron’s strongest underling, back to the scene to buy them time. By the time the Carnifex knights figured it out, a fortunate snowfall had covered the twins’ tracks. Their whereabouts just like their grandfather’s and sister’s whereabouts were unknown. Have they made it to safety? Do they have enough food and clothes? Will they survive the winter?
Nobody knew. As their highest ranked knight, Shadis was taken to the capital with them for questioning and the slaves’ second-in-command, Sir Cadmun Frost, was sent to the Slaughterhouse for a month as a punishment. As for the others back at the manor? The slaves, the workers? Stick didn’t know if they would face retribution. Or worse.
And during all of this Montgomery was farming crops somewhere, as if none of it mattered. There were so many unanswered questions, and the betrayal of the man he had once called friend was the final dagger in his back. Stick’s world was shattered. The two nights they spend on the wagon were sleepless. Montgomery. Shadis. The Lords. His life felt like a patchwork of fragmented, broken trust. Everything he had known, everything he had believed in, was slipping away, unraveling in the face of betrayal and uncertainty. His mind was chaos. A storm of flashing pictures of violence, booming sounds of death, a whirlwind of insults and curses that he would throw at Montgomery raged through his head. If he ever had the chance to see him again, all hell would break lose. Yeah, if…
His uncertain future loomed ahead like a shadow, dark and threatening. Stick stared at the endless stretch of road ahead, the Whispering Woods long behind them. They’d soon enter the heart of Carnifex, the capital Nova Civitas, where whatever awaited them would be far worse than what they’d left behind. He still hadn’t seen the Baron, hadn’t even glimpsed the High Council members in the carriage ahead. Only once had he seen the Jester, a masked figure in a bizarre mix of colors and gold, when they arrived at the northeast end of the Goblin King’s Steppes. The sight that greeted them was strange: a thicket of enormous trees, so dense it formed an impenetrable wall. It stretched for miles like the palisades back at the Baron’s manor, a natural border that seemed impossible to cross. And yet, when the Jester approached, he lifted a hand, revealing a ring that glowed with golden light. The trees obeyed, parting before him as though bowing to a higher command. Stick could barely comprehend what he was seeing. Even nature itself bents to the will of Carnifex.
image [https://i.imgur.com/kuFY9k1.jpeg]
They passed through the wall of trees and found a road waiting for them on the other side, hidden from the world beyond. Stick’s chest tightened. Whatever awaited him on the other side of this journey, it was darker than anything he had imagined.