Dei sat alongside Charity in a small sparsely furnished room somewhere high up in the Golden Palace. As little as there was in the room, some servants had brought two additional mismatching chairs shortly after Dei and her priestess had been escorted here after the meeting. The arcanists weren't waiting for them as they exited the great throne room, but some random guard had been tasked with bringing them up the several flights of stairs until he ushered them into the small office.
Matthew was brought in next as Dei caught him ending a rather amicable conversation with the guard that had come with him. The man looked far too at ease with the whole situation, evidently already having some sort of idea that Dei had succeeded with her plan to woo over the Golden Kingdom.
John was the last one to be shoved into the room. His short black hair was plastered to his face and his clothes practically dripped onto the stone floor when he whirled around on the closing door. He tried and failed to open the latch on the solid entrance before slapping his hands on the closed door repeatedly.
“I take it you found the bath-house you were looking for?” Matthew called out from his seat.
“Those bastards practically pulled me out of the water!”
“At least they let you get dressed.” Charity added.
“Oh Yeah? They threw my clothes at me while I was still soaking wet!”
Dei ignored John's tirade as she withdrew within her mind to look over a small orange coal that Fei had been spending the last half hour analyzing.
‘He seems to still be in there somewhere, I think. It feels like him at least but he's not waking up.”
The little green dancing motes continued twirling through the air playing with one another while Dei and Fei looked down upon their old friend of a sort. It was evident that he was still there in some capacity, but his fire had dimmed to the point that he now barely emitted any light at all other than a dull glow. A cursory glance through her tethers earlier had shown Dei that they hadn't lost any of the risen skeletons under their command due to the loss of Xei, but it was still somewhat strange to see the ember so diminished like this.
‘Maybe this will kick his ego back into normal proportions.’ Fei chuckled to herself, but Dei could hear the stress in her voice. To be fair, Dei wasn't feeling too good about the situation either. This was perhaps the first time that any of the embers were shown the limits of their own immortality, and while Xei wasn't necessarily gone per say, it was still immensely concerning to the other two.
—
Major Connely's heavy metal armor layered every inch of her body, causing every movement the woman made to echo like a titan walking down the halls. She had trained incessantly to be able to wear this armor effectively, aided in no small part by the small opal gemstone that glowed under her massive chestplate. Regardless, small beads of sweat were rolling down her forehead by the time she had made it back up to her fourth story office on the east side of the palace.
She waited at the door for a good minute or two, half to collect her thoughts before she talked with the people inside, and half to catch her breath after taking the stairs two at a time. When she finally opened the door, everyone within turned to face her immediately.
The thin soldier and the priestess sat close to each other near the back of the room, while an elderly man looked up from a half closed book on his lap. The one set of eyes she was actually interested in though were the matching blue and purple embers that sat in the sunken visage of a skull.
Connely met the skeleton's gaze as confidently as she could and crossed the room to take a seat behind her desk.
“Hello everyone. My name is Major Connely and I've been assigned as the liaison between yourselves and the Monarch to ensure that our, combined efforts,” She bit out those last words like she was choosing her words carefully, “end up meeting the Golden King's end goals. I believe that it’s in all our best interests to make the best of our partnership, for the benefit of everyone involved.”
“That sounds like a lot of political nothing, doesn't it?” Matthew said.
Connely eyed the man before continuing on slowly. “There's no point in politics here, I'll be frank with you. The fact that you killed one of my colleagues up in Camp Miller makes it very hard for me to trust you in the slightest.” She paused. “However, the 2-29th detachment has been assigned to support your assassination of the Princedom shard-bearer.”
“Assassinate the prince of whispers?” John asked.
“Yes, the whispering fool is your target.” Connely turned to face Dei before continuing. “And if you fail, both of us will be left to die in the rolling hills of the princedom.”
Dei nodded as John shot concerned looks at the rest of the group who all had a certain steel set in their eyes.
“What's the plan?” Dei wrote.
“We'll contract a smuggling boat to take you along with a small team of my soldiers north of the border behind enemy lines. You kill the shard-bearer, the Princedom is plunged into chaos, and the rest of the Golden Kingdom army along the border invade before the federation can regain control.”
“Wow, what a thorough, well thought out plan.” Matthew replied.
“Yes, well those are only the high points of the plan considering I don't exactly know what you all can do just yet.” Connely swept out her gaze across the group in front of her. “Makes it a bit hard to really give you any details other than the fact I can get you there and set you loose.”
“So, what do we get in return from the Kingdom?” Dei wrote.
“Protection.” Connely responded. “I've got ten arcanists in addition to myself, as well as another twenty heavy infantry that should fit on the boat. Not to mention the fact we have several sub units scattered across the northern border that I can call on in emergencies. As well as the fact I can set up a supply line for however long this takes. Unless of course you think you can do better?”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Matthew nodded approvingly as Dei started writing a response.
“Sounds fine with me.”
John spoke up from the back of the room, “Sure, we're just gonna take a group of thirty soldiers into one of the most powerful nations in the known world, and what? Kill a freaking god?”
“No. You will kill the god. My soldiers will merely protect you until you either succeed or fail.” Connely replied while looking solely at Dei like she had been the one to ask the question.
“But of course.” Dei wrote in response.
John slumped back into his seat, obviously not getting the answer he had been hoping for.
Dei kept writing, “In return, you won't interrupt any particular methods or plans I use to accomplish our joint goals.”
Connely narrowed her eyes as she replied, “But of course.”
The door opened as two guards brought in a prisoner that Dei didn't recognize. Charity stood up to point at the man and nearly screamed with the venom in her voice.
“You! You bastard!”
John and Matthew looked around as the two guards pushed the man down to his knees in the center of the room. Between all the chairs and people in the small office there was hardly any room left to shuffle around, but still the man thrashed about as the men held him tight by the shoulders.
Charity was breathing heavily in the back of the room, face awash with rage as she just stood there looking at the back of the prisoner.
“This man,” Connely began, “Is the reason it took me so long to catch up with you all after you met the Monarch. His name is Ozwald, and he's been following your group for the last couple of weeks for some reason. I take it you're not friends?” She looked at Charity.
Charity rushed at his back, but John stood up to catch her by the waist and held her back. He spoke into her ear as she struggled against him, reaching out for the man in front of her like she wanted to tear him apart.
“Get off me! He deserves worse, John! You didn't see what he did!”
John held tight to the woman as she thrashed in his arms, and Dei saw his mouth moving quietly in a stream of soothing words as he ducked his head away from Charity's arms.
“It's okay Cher, it's okay, he'll get what's coming to him. Just let them talk to him first.”
Dei looked at the man in front of her, bruises forming under his eyes and a cut on his lip as several fingers held limply from his hands like they had been broken. It was fairly evident he had been tortured, but Dei couldn't find it in herself to care about that considering the way that Charity felt about the man.
Connely spoke from behind the desk, “I thought you might like this, as a gift. Especially after he told us about his plans to either tail you or kill you for the Princedom, I figured this might do some good in cementing where your loyalties lay.”
The words hung in the air as Charity continued to struggle against John in the back of the room. Ozwald’s eyes had dropped to stare at the ground, no longer even trying to resist the guards that held him in place as his arms were stretched into uncomfortable looking positions.
Dei stood, aware that her actions here would set the tone for many things to come, and she stepped up to the front of the desk between Connely and Ozwald.
“Serve me.” She lowered the board until it was firmly in the view of Ozwald's down turned gaze. After a moment of thought, the man spit out bloody flecks onto the board in answer.
Charity had calmed down enough at the back of the room to breath out hard short breaths as she spoke out. “He doesn't deserve to serve you,Herald. He doesn't even deserve to die.”
Dei considered this for a moment before she turned around to face Connely and write something out. “You agreed not to stop me as we work together?”
The Major nodded slightly, eyes nearly at eye-level with the small girl across the table despite sitting down. A small shiver ran down Connely's back as the skull-faced girl in front of her cracked a glowing smile in response, and turned back around to face her prisoner.
She set the slate board back on the hook on her belt, then slowly took off her thick gloves to reveal tiny sharp white hands to the open air. The man simply slumped in place waiting for something to happen until he felt cold fingers press into the sides of his head as the girl slowly lifted his gaze to meet hers.
Twin eyes of unnatural fire looked down on Ozwald as he tried to resist the impossibly strong pressure the girl was forcing down on his neck. From the corners of his eyes he saw thin white thumbs extending out from the rest of her hands and he started to beg.
“N-no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do this.” the fingers crept across his face without even the hint of hesitation.
“No! Please no! I have a family!”
Dei's thumbs settled slowly over his eyelids as the man started pulling at the guards’ solid grip on his shoulders. The guards looked away, out the window with mouths set into stern lines while they held the man in place.
Connely’s gauntlets let out audible squeals of metal on metal as she clenched her hands in anticipation, and Charity looked at the scene unfolding before her with red eyes.
The man started screaming now, as pressure mounted on his closed eyelids and his worst fear was coming to life. He screamed as the pressure turned into a confusing pain that tried to shut his brain off, the weight on his eyeballs only increasing by the smallest amount each second.
Looking down, Dei watched the man's eyeballs spread out under her fingers as she pushed herself deeper and deeper into the man’s head until suddenly she felt one of the balls pop.
“AHHHHHHHH!” John's mouth hung open in a wretched scream that echoed around the small room, filling every inch of the space with his torture. A second later, Dei felt the second ball pop around her finger, blood splattering onto her robes and the floor like she had just popped the largest zit in existence.
Ozwald's voice failed him then, mouth hanging open in his perpetual scream but nothing came out. Dei's finger's continued deeper. Deep enough until she felt the light pressure that she thought might be the back wall of his eyes before she stopped.
By the time she withdrew her fingers the man slumped in place, lost to the world as he settled into the easy oblivion of unconsciousness. A nod from Connely had the guards dragging off the limp body, snaking it through the chair legs on the way to the door and leaving a bloody trail on the floor as they retreated from the room.
Connely's fists felt like they were stuck into the tiny balls she had been clenching beneath the desk, while Charity openly weeped in the back of the room. John was comforting the priestess with his arms around her back as she buried her face into his shoulder when he saw Dei turn around to face the desk.
A single boney hand dripping in blood extended over the table towards the Major, palm upturned as an offer of agreement. The Major sat there thinking, uncertain whether this was indeed the correct path to take, but her loyalty to the crown settled on her shoulders like a well worn shawl and she unballed her hands.
A single massive armored hand reached out to take the bloody appendage that had been offered in a handshake. Her own gauntlet engulfed the childlike hand that she grasped across the table, but the massive woman had to will her body not to shake as she trusted in her King's choice.
This girl. No. This monster across the table from her had all the will, drive, and power to change the world, she was sure. Connely just hoped she would be on the winning side whenever it happened as blood dripped out from their joined hands onto the table below.
Matthew looked on at the moment with a smile on his face and blood spray on his hands from where the prisoner had been kneeling next to his chair.