Chapter Fifty-Eight

Andrea Pender saw a brief flash of blackness across her vision, and her whole body tensed up as if being squeezed by an invisible hand.

“You can let go of my hand now, Andrea.”

Ambrose’s gruff, deep voice was touched with wry amusement as his one green eye lit up with humorous light.

She gave him her best scowl.

“Is that what happens when you pop off and reappear someone else? How do you stand doing that? It makes my skin crawl.” She shivered.

Ambrose shrugged his wide shoulders.

“Never really noticed. Vivienne, if you please.”

The island's spirit appeared before them as Andrea looked around. Her mouth fell open moments later.

A tree straight out of a fantasy novel grew from the center of a miniature island in the middle of a vast lake. It's bark, branches, and leaves all shimmered like multi-colored crystals, as if someone had taken all of the colors of the dawn of a new day and grew a vast tree out of it.

Andrea had never seen a tree so large, so beautifully ethereal.

“Bring me Troy's crystal,” Ambrose said to Vivienne.

Vivienne inclined her head, raising a hand. The ground itself opened up, and a crystal, much the same as the bark and leaved of the tree, rose up from the depths.

Andrea gasped, widening her eyes and holding a hand to her mouth in fascinated horror. She pointed.

“There's a fucking man in there! What the shit, Ambrose!”

He grunted at her, waving a hand at Vivienne.

“Release him, but keep the Command Protocol active.”

Vivienne twirled a finger and the crystal dissolved around the man in a pulsating cloud of rainbow light.

The man was the picture of the stereotypical southern cowboy. His long brown hair was matted with sweat, his rugged features haggard as his face was slack, brown eyes bloodshot.

He was weeping.

He sounded the ground, his body shaking, and he looked up at Ambrose, crawling towards the red-haired warrior.

Andrea stepped back. Something ugly was behind Ambrose’s eyes. It was more than just the desire to do violence, it was monstrous, filled with the rightous need to judge the man who crawled towards him.

Goosebumps crawled over Andrea's skin, she rubbed her arms, trying to rub warmth back into herself.

“Please. Please make it stop. I ca-”

Ambrose reached down, grabbed a fistful of the man's brown hair and with a vicious pull, yanked him upward.

Andrea lifted a hand.

“Ambrose!”

His green eye gleamed, and he ignored her outburst.

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“Make it stop? After what you did?”

Ambrose spat to the side.

“Never. But I will give you a chance. A slim chance to be something better than the piece of shit you are.”

Ambrose twisted the man's head to force his weeping eyes to look at Andrea’s.

“See this woman? She's your handler now. Your master. She speaks, you listen.”

Ambrose’s mouth twisted. It was an unpleasant thing.

“Like a good little dog. You serve Avalon, now.”

Troy nodded,

“Okay. Yeah. Anything. Just don't make me see it again. Make me feel it again.”

Ambrose tossed tossed the man forward, and he hit face first into the dirt at Andrea’s feet.

“What did he do?” She asked, not taking her gaze away from the broken man at her feet.

Ambrose ignored her question.

“He's a merchant. Vivienne, take them back to the town. I'll be waiting.”

Ambrose vanished a moment later, leaving Andrea with the Lady of the Lake.

“What did he do?” She asked again.

Vivienne stared at the man.

“If you wish to know, command him to tell you.”

Vivienne held up a finger, and in another flash and skin crawling tingle, Andrea was back in the town.

Jenny was running around, laughing as her father chased her, a wry light in his dark eyes.

“You can't catch me! I'm like the wind!” Jenny called to her father.

“We'll just see about that!” Darren replied, hands reaching for her.

Andrea saw Ambrose watching the exchange, his green eye haunted.

Vivienne appeared by his side, saying something Andrea could not make out. Ambrose’s jaw clenched.

Then he vanished a moment later. Troy, a heap at her feet, stirred. He got to his feet, rubbing at his eyes.

“Light hurts,” he mumbled, squinting.

Once again Andrea wondered what he had done that Ambrose had treated him so. She decided she didn't want to know.

“You're a merchant. How do we buy things? What can we buy?”

Troy blinked, before his expression grew strained, his hands clenching as his body went rigid. A second later he said, as if through clenched teeth,

“I have access to a System interface that allows me to buy and sell things. What I have access to is dependant on my level. I can sell you a range of items, if you have the System Credits.”

He winced, then sighed, his body relaxing, color returning to his face.

“I can't disobey or it hurts,” Andrea heard him say under his breath.

Andrea spread her hands,

“None of us have SC. Can't I just order you to give us what we need?”

Troy sighed, shaking his head. His gaze looked dead, the kind of eyes you see on the condemned.

“It doesn't work that way. There is no option on the interface to give things away for free. I'm sort of like a broker between you and the System. I could give you my own personal wares if I had them. But I don't.”

He paused after speaking, as if waiting for something. It didn't come, and he muttered to himself.

Before Andrea could question him further, Ambrose reappeared, and a bored looking man in shifting colored leathers was in his grip.

“We have an intruder on our hands,” Ambrose said, his voice was like a razors edge.

The man picked himself up.

“What a drag, man. I'm no intruder.”

Ambrose crossed his arms,

“Sure, that's why I found you skulking at the island's western edge.”

The man rubbed the back of his neck,

“I don't skulk. I skillfully navigate using my stealth prowess.”

“Okay, and if you don't start explaining who you are, why you're here, and who you work for, we are going to test whether or not you possess any prowess that would prevent me from lopping your head off.” Ambrose replied, producing his axe from seemingly nowhere.

The plain faced man swallowed. He held his hands up,

“Whoa man, don't be a drag, okay? I used to work for a man called Eric Delrosa.”

And that was the wrong thing for him to say.

Ghostly chains sheathed in fire blacker than the devil's heart exploded around Ambrose, lashing forward and wrapping around the man who’s face contorted, morphing into ugly agony.

Ambrose lifted his axe, his green eye held within it a storm of eldritch fury. His axe burst into abyssal fire, superheating the air around it. His cloak began to billow, as the very air warped with wrath seemingly made manifest.

And any moment, he would unleash it upon the man who was helpless to do anything about it.

The axe began to descend and Andrea, unthinking, threw herself in front of it, arms cast wide.