Minos PoV [https://i.imgur.com/xGkoFOt.jpeg]
Minos had imagined his death a dozen times. Once, during the Siege of Zephyrus, riding on the back of his palfrey, donned in chain mail, spear on hand. He imagined himself giving his life for the city he grew up in, for the people he loved and the kingdom he fought for. It was a glorious death, and his name would forever live in the annals of history.
And then there was the day he met Cassana, when he was about to plummet from the roof of a manor, the jaws of a feral werewolf bearing down on his neck. It wasn’t as glorious as dying in warfare, but at least he was still fighting. Certainly not for the people he loved, nor for the city he called home, but it was still for something: in the name of his greatest dream, to find the Sword of the Godslayer.
And now, Minos saw himself dying again. He looked at Cassana and then to where she was looking. It was the thing that attacked them earlier, back for another round, totally disregarding the half-a-dozen guards trying to arrest them. It formed again under Robb’s feet until it grew and stretched and suddenly, he found himself jumping to try and push the boy away.
There was no thought. It wasn’t calculated. It was pure impulse, setting aside his own safety, risking his own life, for a boy he met a week ago. Just as soon as he touched him, his vision went dark. This is it, he told himself. He then wondered whether the gods would welcome him across the beyond.
And then he opened his eyes to reality.
He looked around to find walls spinning around him. His vision was blurry, and his stomach felt upset, like he just swallowed a glass full of nails. He recognized this sensation from before. He had undergone this only once in his life, and finding how awful it made his body feel, he swore he would never do it again. It was teleportation magic.
Finally, his vision cleared, and he looked to his side to find Robb. The poor boy had been retching on the floor, his whole body shaking. He tried to grab and soothe him but found that his arms were still bound to his back.
“Where are we?” he groaned.
He looked up and saw a man sitting on a throne. Standing beside him were two children, a girl and a boy, while behind was a woman. They were dressed in affluent clothes, all bearing a blank expression on their faces. He took a step back and realized it was merely a large family portrait hanging on a wall.
“Behind you,” he heard a voice.
He turned around expecting the same person from the portrait, but it wasn’t. It was a different person. A way too different person.
The fey-folk had a word: fravashi. It referred to beings from another realm, terrifying entities with large horns and skin covered in ember. It is said that they haunt people in their sleep, hounding their dreams, rendering them unable to wake up. In Common tongue, the term roughly translates to devil or demon.
What stood waiting for him was exactly that.
“Don’t be scared,” the person uttered. His voice had a slightly higher pitch than a man’s voice, but it reverberated across the room like a hammer ringing on an anvil.
As soon as he regained his balance, Minos stood up and faced the man. Demons do not wander the earth in flesh. This man might have horns like the fravashis of legends, but his skin wasn’t covered in embers. It had a light, purplish hue, closer to a drow skin; and his eyes were piercing red, like a viper staring straight at you. But Minos was certain that this person talking to him was nothing more than a mere mortal.
“What is this place?” Minos asked again. He looked around him and he appeared to be in some kind of foyer. Aside from the family portrait, a dozen more paintings adorned the laminated walls. Iron sconces provided light across the spacious room and potted plants decorated its corners in symmetrical fashion.
“No place of your concern. And you? Wanna tell me who you are?”
He thought about saying who he really was but quickly reconsidered. There’s no way… “My name is Minos, I’m from Zephyrus.” The man didn’t show any reaction to his answer. He felt relieved.
The young boy let out a pained yelp as soon as he finished vomiting. Minos knelt beside him to try and soothe him.
“What was that?” Robb asked, out of breath.
“Magic. Teleportation,” Minos answered. “Are you alright?”
The boy nodded. “We were teleported? To where?” He finally looked up and saw the man standing in front of them. “A demon!” he gasped at the sight of the horned figure.
The man stepped up towards Robb and reached for his head. The young boy tried to push his hand away, but he was overpowered. His long, black nails clasped the boy’s jaws, pulling his head up.
“Are you right about this one?” the man asked. Seemingly, to no one.
“Yes.” Another voice crept up. Minos and Robb looked around but no one else was there in the room with them, yet it sounded like someone else spoke right beside them. “I tracked him down, but they were going to leave the city, so I took action.” The voice continued.
Minos stared at the horned-man holding Robb, and then looked below him, to his dark shadow that stained the floor. He realized that the shadow had a different shape than the man. It was the thing that attacked them on the docks.
“And this one?” the horned-man looked at Minos.
The young nobleman glanced at the shadow who appeared to have shrugged its shoulders. “I couldn’t get rid of him. He was protecting the kid.”
“Hmm...” The horned-man dropped Robb and stood up. “Prepare the boy like the others, I’ll take care of this one.”
“Where are you taking him?” shouted Minos.
The shadow severed itself from the horned-man’s real shadow and lurched towards Robb’s feet. Black claws wrapped around the boy’s legs, and quickly dragged him across the floor.
“Minos!! Help me!” the boy screamed. The young nobleman tried to intervene, but the horned-man’s palm wrapped around his face, his sharp nails tearing over his flesh, pushing him down to his knees.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Where are you taking him?!” he repeated. Minos tried to imagine his death again, but he couldn’t. He tried to picture an image, but nothing came up. Not this time, he told himself, so he screamed with all he got. “Wait! You can’t kill me.”
“And why is that?” asked the horned-man.
Minos scrambled for an answer, he can’t die, not like this, “The people who were with me… they saw everything. Even your shadow minion out there…”
The horned-man loosened his grip over Minos’ face. He got his attention.
“Ask him, go ahead. We weren’t alone when he took us.” Then something struck him, The Guild ring!
“Look, look, inside my pocket, check it,” Minos motioned for the side pocket of his trousers. “Come on, my hands are tied, just…”
The horned-man hesitantly reached for Minos’ pocket and pulled a ring from it. He looked at the mundane jewel, as the young nobleman watched for his reaction after seeing the symbol on its head.
“We work for The Guild, see? We’re just protecting the boy; we were paid to smuggle him out of the city. We already got our downpayment, we don’t need to make this complicated. I can forget about this, I can tell my crew to shut up, and then we’ll tell our client we finished the job, no fuss. They won’t know anything until it’s too late.
“But if you kill me now, if my crew doesn’t hear from me, then they will find me, and I’m telling you, my crew, they’re good at finding people. They will know what you did and they’re gonna bring this whole operation down. You don’t want that; your boss doesn't want that.” The horned-man was unable to hide the concerned look on his face, especially after hearing the word ‘boss’.
“I’ll kill them all. Have them come, and we’ll kill them all,” the horned-man proclaimed, only with less conviction.
“Really? The Guild? The government can’t stop them, you think you can? We look after each other, they’re not gonna leave one table unturned until they find out what happened to me. Until they find out who was stupid enough to cross them.”
“So, we would keep you alive, pay you, and you would keep The Guild at bay?” The horned-man gripped the signet ring tightly, thinking, deciding.
“This is Soliton, money is king.” Minos raised his chin up, reasserting his confidence. “Look, you don’t have to make this decision now, what’s the rush? In fact, just let your boss decide. He can figure this all out. Or she, I’m a crook, but I’m not sexist. Come on… just wait for him, or her, and then you do your thing.”
“Get up,” ordered the horned-up, and Minos quickly obliged.
----------------------------------------
The horned-man escorted Minos to a dungeon. Its walls were damp and slimy while its floors covered in grime, but most of all, Minos couldn’t believe that the smell was worse than the sewers. The blinding darkness engulfed every corner of his cell, and all he could see were his own pair of hands. I’d kill for Rei’s potion right now.
As soon as his jailor left him, the air was suddenly filled with a deafening silence that numbed his senses. The last thing he heard was the horned-man’s fading footsteps and a metal thud on the exit door. He didn’t even bother to untie his hands.
Panic crawled from Minos’ stomach, but they kept them at bay. He waited for his eyes to adapt to the lack of light before he started moving around. First, he must remove his shackles. He walked around, carefully perusing the floor with his feet. He came across what he figured were rock debris, an empty pail, and a piece of bone. He needed something sharp.
He reached what seemed to be the far end of the room and stumbled upon something. He stooped down to reach for it, feeling its texture and he was sure it was a piece of clothing. He pressed his fingers down and found a body underneath. He moved his hand around to examine it when he felt it heave. It’s moving! But before he could even react, the body rose up, a voice screamed, and he felt a sharp metal on his neck.
“What do you want?” the person shrieked.
“That, actually.” Minos motioned for the small shiv that the person was holding against his neck.
The prisoner pulled his arm and squirmed back at his corner. “You can’t have it,” he said in his groveling voice.
Minos couldn’t discern most of his features, but he could see that he was a middle-aged man, with a wild, unkempt beard, and a number of scars on his face. The prisoner was eyeing him with fear.
“Alright, I’m not gonna take it. But can you please, just...” he turned around and showed the prisoner the rope binding his arms. “Please?”
The prisoner simply stared at Minos. The young nobleman sat down with his legs crossed, unmindful of the filthy floor. He let out a sigh and waited.
Minos had never been in prison before, but he knew how it felt to be isolated and alone for days. He knew that he needed to be patient, and it wasn’t like he could instantly escape once his hands were untied anyway. So, he simply sat down with the man and kept quiet.
The situation, however, provided him with a perfect opportunity to think.
The first question he needed answered was where they were. Judging from the look of the room they were teleported in; he would guess that they were in a mansion. A rich person’s mansion. The family portrait he saw looked dated, but it didn’t come cheap. It had the same quality as those found in palaces and cathedrals. And while he didn’t recognize the rest of the paintings, he was sure that they were all expensive.
The city of Soliton may have the word ‘free’ in its name, but it was still beholden to a hierarchical, classist society. The upper class is made up of the Guild owners. They control every aspect of each of their guilds, from finance to logistics, and they even control the prices of their goods and services.
The middle class made up the bulk of the Soliton’s population. They are the laborers and the smiths, the masons, and the dockworkers. The bankers, the craftsmen, and the artists. They are the tiny wheels that make the guilds run. But like the spokes on a wheel, if one breaks, you can replace it with another.
And finally, there are the lower class. The homeless old men and women who are no longer capable of doing labor. The orphaned urchins who rely on government stipends and the beggars who depend on charity.
The main reason Minos had such a disdain for Soliton was their over reliance on its Guilds. Its leader, the burgrave, is ultimately powerless, merely a puppet for the Guild owners to control. The ordinary citizens are nothing more than just tools for the rich oligarchs to become richer.
At least in his home country at Zephyrus, King Domitius had sole responsibility over his people. He can make decisions and influence policies with maximum efficiency. The kingdom and its people are united under a single banner, and the masses were not carved up like cake for the rich people to partake.
Nevertheless, Minos was sure whoever owned this house he was being kept in was a Guild leader. And seeing how his earlier gambit with the horned-man worked, he can discount the Thieves Guild from the suspect list. Last he knew, there were twenty-seven guilds in the city-state. There was no way he was going to narrow that down with all the limited information he had right now.
The next question would be, why. Why were they captured? Of course, he knew why somebody would kidnap him, but he already proved that they were not after him, seeing that they had no idea who he was. Clearly, they were after Robb. But why? There was only one answer that floated in his mind: Robb’s magic.
Ever since the dawn of history, mankind has been unkind to those few of them who can wield magic. Mages had been exploited, abused, and enslaved in any way humanity could. On the flip side, there were also those who despised people with magical abilities and who shunned, ostracized, and eradicated them any way society could.
According to the history, the Ledrithan empire was created to put a stop to the atrocities the magical folk were made to suffer. It was a place where mages can be who they are, without fear of being judged. It was all sunshine and rainbows, until of course, the tyrant god Eon destroyed the Ledrithan empire, scattering mages across the continent.
Over time, the number of mages declined, but ever since, the reconstruction of the Tower Academy along with the continent-wide campaign of tolerance towards magical folk had led to a resurgence in the mage population. Parents should no longer worry if their child happened to be a mage, yet there were still pockets of human society that insisted on keeping their backward thinking. One of those places was Soliton.
So, Robb’s kidnapping could be either of two reasons: someone wanted to use him for his magical abilities, or someone wanted to hurt him for his magical abilities. Either case, he must act quickly to find a way, not just to free himself, but the boy as well.
As he sat there thinking, he felt something pressed against his hands. He glanced to the side and saw the prisoner reaching for his binds and cutting them with his shiv. With a careful motion, Minos managed to set himself free, and man went back to his corner, still eyeing him intently.
“Thank you,” the young nobleman said. “I’m Minos.” He reached out his hand, trying for a handshake.
The prisoner stared at him again. His feral demeanor waned away, and what was left was a sad, poor fellow, forgotten by the world. “My name is Rik.”