Rodrigo was in total blackness, sweltering in the enclosed space of the pit. He’d long since given up trying to free himself of the replaced shackles. As Misery said, the more force you exerted, the worse off they left you, like a Chinese finger trap. Unfortunately, while relaxing was the best choice, it didn’t allow you to slip out of them.
In the time since he’d regained consciousness, Rodrigo’s thoughts had drifted from an all-consuming desire to flay the king alive, to all the ways Carlito’s death might have been prevented. If he had never met Heinrik at the Spiral, he wouldn’t have even been on Misery’s radar. If he had been less distracted by Leila, he might have noticed something off about Carlito sooner. If Adena had been candid from the get-go, instead of constantly trying to manipulate him, they could have come up with a strategy together. If, if, if.
Jezebeth’s shrill laugh boomed through his head for the millionth time, and Rodrigo savagely slammed the back of his skull against the wall to silence her. Once, twice, and then the shackles worked their magic, guzzling his blood down at such a breakneck pace, it was dizzying. He was beginning to suspect she hadn’t died with Carlito at all, but had moved on to possess him. It might explain why Resent hadn’t made a peep all this time.
Rodrigo still wasn’t sure what to think about all the revelations Misery had dropped on him. From Resent being his brother, to the earth as he knew it just being some window into the past of this one’s present. The knowledge didn’t make the people there or their suffering any less real, but it did leave him feeling something very near hopelessness. He’d thought the situation was black and white. The clearest demonstration of evil the world had seen since the Nazis. However, if the invading demons were time travelers, determined to take the world out of incompetent hands before its inevitable ruin, was there even a point in fighting against them? The future could be changed, but the past was set in stone. Wasn’t it?
As the overhead lid shifted, letting in a faint bit of light through the grate, Rodrigo squinted, his adrenaline spiking. He was expecting Misery, but all he saw were two diavoliks in blood-red plate armor and helms with short golden horns sticking out of the sides. Each one had a broadsword sheathed at their left hip and were the ones pulling the lid back. Floating between them was an imp swathed in black robes with a hood shrouding its face. In its small hands was an urn, similar to the one that had ruined Rodrigo’s life, and he understood immediately. This was the necromancer, here to transform him into Misery’s willing slave, and part him from Resent.
As the lever creaked again, and the grate above Rodrigo’s head parted once more, he closed his eyes, and took a series of deep breaths. Leathery wings flapped down toward him, and the warmth seemed to seep from the pit the closer the necromancer came. Then, as loudly as his hoarse voice would allow, he began chanting four simple words, as if to imprint them on his soul. “Protect Raquel, avenge Carlito! Protect Raquel, avenge Carlito! Protect Raquel…”
#
Resent awoke to pained, high-pitched screaming in his own language. He refused to move an inch, not even opening his eyelids until he got his bearings. He was lying on a padded bench, inside a carriage being drawn at high-speed by four furiously galloping hounds. A sign of wealth, considering the standard was two. Hovering across from him, he could sense an imp, the source of the wailing. The torturer was concealing their presence, presumably with a fade periapt. Only then did it occur to him that this was the first time he sensed life energy since taking refuge in the boy’s body.
“Make no mistake, little one, if this is a ruse, what you have endured thus far will seem pleasant in retrospect,” a silvery voice said. A voice as familiar to Resent’s ears as Misery’s.
Resent’s eyes snapped open, and he was staring up at an unexpectedly shabby wooden ceiling. It was the everyday carriage used by commoners, which the prince had seldom seen the interior of, unless traveling in secrecy. As he glanced down at himself, he inhaled sharply. He was dressed in ebony-and-gold royal attire, his frame much longer, and his skin fairer than the boy’s was. If not for the reduced muscle mass, he might have believed he was back in his original body.
“Look, look!” the imp cried with joy. “I did as you commanded! Now, please, my lord...have mercy.”
Resent turned his head. With the loss of Heinrik, Ose, the demon he now trusted most was lounged across from him, his spotted tail strangling a battered imp garbed in bloodstained necromancer robes. As he remembered, the High Lord of Erodis wore no armor over his red fur, instead dressing in lightweight, loose-fitting clothing, a habit many once misread as arrogance. In reality, he was the only demon Resent had ever met that he would never want to face in hand-to-claw combat.
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“Granted,” Ose said, and with a flex of his powerful tail, severed the imp’s head from his body before the immense relief could even leave his features. Spurting blood, the imp dropped to the carriage floor in two pieces, where a half-broken urn was rolling around. Seeing it, a memory tugged at Resent. He had briefly stirred some time earlier, as his soul was extracted from the half-breed. The boy had been muttering something on cracked lips, so quietly it was inaudible. His eyes were squeezed shut, trying and failing to contain the tears streaking down his filthy face, as Resent writhed against the necromancer’s control, to no avail.
“Where is the boy?” Resent blurted, sitting up, and instantly wishing that hadn’t been his first question. No demon partook in random acts of kindness, and unlike Heinrik, despite their centuries of history, the high lord was far too ambitious to be counted on for loyalty alone. To show...concern for his former host was a sign of weakness this predator would exploit.
Ose’s long whiskers twitched with barely suppressed amusement. “I suppose still in the castle’s dungeon. I never laid eyes on him myself. I ambushed the necromancer and his guards in the courtyard, taking the nearest carriage, and paying the hounds handsomely for their discretion. Why? Should I have rescued him as well?”
And there it was. Dammit! There was little more the prince hated than indebtedness. “How did you even know what had transpired?” Resent demanded, changing the subject.
“I see your Blight told you nothing.”
“What?”
“Shortly after the Eckhart girl was assigned to follow Heinrik to the human world, she contacted me through my Blight. In the interest of dethroning Misery, together, they were to protect you until you recovered enough of your strength to defeat him, remedying the widespread belief that he managed to kill you in single combat.”
Resent had several problems with what Ose said, but one word seized his attention. “Widespread? How foolish has the populace grown in my absence? Hundreds of battles in the arena, often against far greater numbers. Not one loss. Yet they think me killed by a sword-wielding general?”
“Heinrik attempted to assert the truth, but the crux of the matter is that they wanted to believe it.” Ose’s gray eyes were cold and penetrating, gauging Resent’s mood. “To be blunt, the army has largely tired of the aristocracy, and those like you, born into power. Say what you will of Misery, but even having Strife’s favor, he did work his way up through the ranks, in a way unseen for millennia. Many a soldier can remember fighting alongside him in his youth, and having him serve as an inspiration to them. And now, he has acted on a long-held wish and temptation for many by permitting them to raid our forbidden past. For those soldiers, no better ruler exists.”
Resent held back his torrent of obscenities. Unlike in human society, Hell’s soldiers made up most of the population. Slaves did most of the labor, and trades were reserved primarily for the weak and withered. But were Misery’s reign not in question, Ose never would have involved himself.
Ose lazily combed his clawed fingers through the unruly hair on his pate, free of the rosettes that covered his pelt. “Naturally, the council wants him eliminated. His triumph has had far-reaching consequences throughout all the great cities. Mutiny has become commonplace as every semi-skilled soldier tries to replicate Misery’s success. Why aspire to be a general when you could be a lord, or even a high lord?”
And yet, with Dreadmus already having the largest army, the high lords wouldn’t dare an outright assault on Misery, and risk large portions of their own soldiers deserting, or worse, changing allegiance. Resent had to give the usurper credit. For one so unqualified, he had the overbearing council in check, and a chance to become a true autocrat. Honestly, Resent was tempted to let them annihilate each other as he amassed power and influence in Erodis. Southwest of the capital, it hid in the center of a labyrinthine jungle, in which unwelcome visitors tended to die. The city was filled with some of Hell’s fiercest warriors, bestial in appearance, yet fairly intelligent, like Ose. More importantly, he felt weaker in this new body than in the half-breed’s, and that needed to be rectified immediately.
But as Resent was strategizing, something nagged at him. Something there were a number of rational explanations for, from the guaranteed to be occurring espionage to a far less likely stroke of fortune. “Ose? How could you be certain Misery would not be at the castle to witness, or hear of your actions?”
“Simple,” Ose said, turning to Resent from the window he had been gazing out of, as the cobbled streets of Dreadmus blurred by. “I gave him what any ruler would be helpless to resist. A traitor to be made an example of.”