“Come!” the commanding voice demanded from the other side of the door.
With a deep breath, Guard Sergeant Alexander Kolosi, stood and straightened his uniform. Or what was left of it, anyways. Blood still stained his leg, and he was liberally covered in dust, dirt, and shards of stone and wood. He’d wanted to clean up and change into a fresh uniform before presenting his report, but when the Commander called, you jumped. As he headed to the door, the Commander’s attache held up a small sign with the words “good luck” written on it. Alex barely held back his snort. The man was too scared to even whisper the words, not that he was feeling any braver.
Before he had any more time to dwell on the disaster his day had become, he opened the door and stepped through. He let the door close behind him as he snapped himself to attention and tried to drive his fist through his heart in salute. “Sergeant Kolosi reporting as ordered, Commander!” Dust rose from the tattered remnants of his uniform, but rigid training, and the Commander’s gaze, the second scariest thing he had faced that day, kept him from coughing. Not that he could see the Commander, as his eyes were locked on the wall directly over the seated man’s desk, and he didn’t dare to acknowledge that he even had peripheral vision. As the silence grew, and the Commander kept him pinned in position with his possible gaze, a thought skittered about inside his head. Maybe the Commander is scarier than that bear afterall.
Commander Levus watched quietly as his Sergeant struggled to control himself. He was always interested in seeing how strong his subordinates were, physically and mentally. Levus didn’t torture them, but he was always testing them. This situation was a little outside of what he anticipated his guardsmen dealing with on a daily basis, so he was particularly interested in this instance. Kolosi had been reported to be a fine Sergeant, expected to receive promotion in due time. Hopefully this incident wouldn’t break him.
“At ease, Sergeant.” Kolosi relaxed only marginally, spreading his legs slightly and gripping his hands behind his back that was still straight as a sword. “I’ve reviewed everything until the child transformed, as well as the preliminary report. Are there any updates needed for that section?”
“I am expecting some of my men back from their interviews at the orphanage shortly with more information on Guardsmen Harold and his interaction with the runaway children. As to the children themselves, they have been apprehended in good health. One of the orphanage supervisors should be with them now so we can get them interviewed.”
“Why did you wait for someone from the orphanage before interviewing them?”
“Sir, with the suspicion the children had towards Guardsman Harold transferred to us by proxy, I decided it would be best if they had someone they knew and trusted doing the questioning. With their leader still unconscious, someone from the orphanage was the next best option on such short notice.”
“Hmm. Excellent choice. Good work. Now, about the combat situation. Your preliminary report said the recorders broke when the boy shifted. Can you clarify what caused this?”
Kolosi had been expecting a question such as this, and had his reply ready. “One of the members of my squad used to be in investigations, and believes he knows what happened. When the boy, identified as Adam, no surname, shifted into his bear form the remnants of the spiritual power of the transformation was channeled through his roar. The amount of energy was staggering and cracked many of the more sensitive enchantments and engravings on the recording devices. The pressure from his later attack completed the destruction.”
“Yes, I could see that. We use higher tiered devices for encounters involving beings of high strength. We’ll have to see about spreading some of those around for all squads in the future to prevent a loss of signal in situations such as this. And the attack?”
“Adam seemed quite determined to keep Harold as far from the other children as possible. When he transformed, he focused solely on the orphanage guard, which turned out lucky for the rest of us. Harold attacked first, and when the bear counter attacked, all it did was back hand him.” Kolosi paused and looked down briefly. “Sir, I’ve heard that some of the strongest people can vaporize someone with a single attack, but I’d never seen it before. How a newly Awakened Apprentice, as I can only assume he Awoke during the confrontation, can deal out the same amount of destruction I have no idea. The force of the strike tore through the orphanage guard, the wall and ceiling, as well as the next dozen or so houses on its way through. We’ve been searching through the houses searching for survivors or slain since then. As of yet, we’ve found no dead.”
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“And the Apprentice, Adam you said, what of him?”
“It seems as though whatever the skill that he used was, it has quite the severe backlash. He was near death, and his recovery is far slower than expected. As of yet he has not regained consciousness. The healers expect him to be asleep for at least a week.”
“And his Class?”
“Unidentified at the moment. The Inspector says the Class is related to children. It has child rearing and guardian aspects to it, along with a lot of other things that are, as of yet, undefined.”
“Undefined you say? So is it a new variation on an established class, or something completely new?” Commander Levus mumbled the last bit quietly.
Sergeants are trained to be skilled at ignoring rhetorical questions, so Kolosi ignored the Commander’s statement.
There was silence for a short time as the Commander thought over his options. In the end, the possibility of the child, or Apprentice as he was now, proving valuable to the Queen of Night overwrote all other issues. “Sergeant, I’ll send a couple of squads to relieve your men and continue the rescue operation. As for you and your men, they are to return immediately and then you are all to detail everything you can remember about the boy and the strength of his Class and transformation. He may prove valuable to the Queen of Night, and that supersedes all else. I will have your reports sent to the priests. When you are finished, get yourselves cleaned up. You have two days leave to get your uniforms repaired, and recuperate from the ordeal. Understood?”
“Yes, Sir! Thank you, Sir!”
“Dismissed.”
The two exchanged salutes, and Sergeant Kolosi left.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The reports were collected and consolidated, along with Commander Levus’s recommendation, before being duplicated. The originals were placed in storage, and the copies were sent to the Temple of the Queen of the Night, Governance Section. There it was dropped on the desk of the Priest Governor’s Aide, Simon LeCroixe.
Simon perused the report, seeing it was mostly as expected. There were a few discrepancies from what he had been told, but they would just make his actions more valuable. He pulled some more sheets from his desk and began revising the report into what was necessary.
LeCroixe didn’t think of himself as a traitor. Instead he considered himself to be employed by a number of different monetary sources. Each determined how hard he worked for them, and which order he placated their needs in, by the amount they paid him. The Priest Governor was usually third on the list. With a smirk he added his changed report to the original report before sending it to Archives. Afterall, he didn’t think his main employer paid him well enough for perfection either, so how could his second employer ever have a chance to receive a nonexistent papertrail. He took his doctored report in to see his titular boss.
The Priest Governor’s title was no mistake. He was a Priest first, and a Governor second. As such he was quite easy to manipulate. A true Governor looks at everything through the lenses of politics and power. But a Priest sees everything through the lens of his faith. Understand how a particular faith would dictate someone to react in a particular situation, and you can predict what they would do. If you can manipulate one situation into appearing as another, one you know the outcome of, then you can control the solutions. This particular act is what Simon LeCroixe was paid to do by his top two employers.
When the changed report landed on the Priest Governor’s desk, Simon already knew what his orders would be. It was as though he had drafted them himself. It was no surprise when sometime later he was ordered to sell the offending child by the name of Adam into slavery to pay off the cost of the damages to the city as well as the funerary rites for one Guardsman Harold.
The changed report made no mention of Adam’s possible worth to the Queen of Night. It also never mentioned that Harold was the bastard offspring of one of the most powerful nobles of the city. With this one act, Simon would earn a bonus from both his first and second employers. Harold’s father was second.