Weight Scales [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AP1GczOsiMpMZLddyJd3WtmYiJPAlhK7i-Dqzj-n6TLn7L2Nr1kW9zsQWk1xWUvB8U-uTcjaPmFsVFk8ermcLWajt4x6t1-1ELOPSp3DWUq-e32kLkSH70mYot_x848LC_f6MAC_qHjRYe2oP98xwF8kZiUf=w639-h958-s-no-gm?authuser=0]
Everin wasn’t sure how much time had passed while he had been unconscious and was surprised by the fact that he was even still alive to regain his senses in the first place. He assumed it hadn’t been terribly long, considering he was being moved somewhere, slung over a shoulder like a sack of tunions. He tried not to tense at all and alert his captor that he was awake while he tried to glance around and get a better understanding of his surroundings and situation.
What he saw was beyond what he had vaguely pictured from what King’s Dream had originally speculated the enemy to be like. Much like the cages of creatures on the second floor they had explored, there were rows of stacked cells in this large room too but instead of animals it was filled with people. Dozens of them by the looks of it. Some wore Chains of Silence and he assumed those ones were the Casters that had gone missing. However, all of them were wearing drab gray tunics and shorts.
He could see the metal cuffs around his own wrists and feel the suppressive effects of the Silencer around his neck. How they got one powerful enough for an Emerald Caster in this remote city was a testament unto itself that they weren’t dealing with amateurs. This group was well prepared, well funded, and apparently very experienced.
He mentally cursed his poor luck and terrible litany of mistakes he had made leading to this point; the first being his arrogance. He had been too confident about not only his Caste but his ability to sense danger with his aura along with his newfound importance and power as an Avatar.
The rebellious voxen in him had once again moved too fast. Wasn’t cautious enough. Wasn’t patient enough. He was just as rash as the kits he had endangered, thinking he was invincible. Paul should have been a warning to him that even with incredible power, there’s always someone stronger or smarter. That even if you win, the cost might be greater than you’d want to live with.
Everin was fairly certain he wouldn’t have to worry about living with regret, though. The Maniac’s followers were not known for letting their prey survive. While he might have told Phoenix before that Wayfarers brought change, the Maniac brought chaos. The blackouts being the work of the Mad God made almost too much sense in hindsight.
“Cleric Starlark?!” a voice called out, and to his detriment, it was enough of a distraction for the person carrying him to pause and look at the caged man who had spoken. “What happened to him? Did you drench him in paint?”
“Shut it, Malik,” the raspy voice of his captor replied, turning to kick the cage holding the man —who Everin now recognized as Rayk Malik, the son of the merchant who ran Mother’s Cupboard. He had spoken with the boy only a handful of times when visiting the shop and AOA. The Crystal Caster had been presumed dead during one of the blackout incidents, and seeing him here alive was something the Avatar hadn’t thought possible.
It also made him wonder what exactly followers of the Maniac had planned for all of them. They normally didn’t have the capacity for long-term planning like that, he had thought. Why would they keep captives when mayhem was normally the goal?
Perhaps that’s where the Trickster came into play. Proper traps took a modicum of forethought, and something on this scale would require plenty of it. For something influenced by pure chaos to be this ordered, a suitable god to balance it was the only thing that made sense to him.
No matter the reason, however, that was actually better news for him as that might give him a chance to escape rather than simply getting slaughtered. Perhaps he could make a run for it as soon as he was set down? Even if the Silencer was cutting off his abilities, it didn’t cut off his Attributes. Those were simply a part of his physical being now, and being Emerald meant he was still very fast.
It wouldn’t make much of a difference, however, if his captor was also Emerald and wasn’t silenced. It might invite more trouble, and it was obvious now that this place was well fortified. If he hadn’t been able to overpower his way out of that trapped room, why would he be able to escape when nobody else had been able to for decades?
He had been a fool.
As he heard a door open, followed by the creak of metal scrapping against the stone floor, he realized it was already too late. There would be no escape for him.
The rainbow voxen was unceremoniously thrown into a cage, and he reacted by trying to tackle his assailant. Everin heard a dark laugh when he slammed into the bars of the door as it was shut in his face, “Nice try, Avatar, but you’re goin’ nowhere. You and yer lil friends here are goin’ to get cleaned up then weighed and measured by the boss.”
“Measured for what?”
A dark face under a crimson hood grinned down at him, “Whether you’ll be sold off to the DOD or become dinner for the Scarlet Banquet.”
Everin stared after the Blood cultist as the man left while laughing and thought sardonically to himself, Great, cannibals. This just keeps getting better and better.
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Lukas Lumeris was conflicted as he glanced through the small window into the preparation room they normally brought new prey into. On the one hand, they had managed to keep the Scarlet Banquet’s operations here in Tulimeir a secret from the overbearing noble faction and pesky Alliance of Adventurers. On the other hand, he knew others would come looking for such prominent people.
Both the newly awakened Saint of the Celestial Pantheon and the Avatar of Scholar and Rebel were people he never wanted to come within a kilometer of, let alone be currently holding captive in the heavily enchanted building they worked out of. They had managed to remain hidden by not getting especially greedy with their targets.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
A pair of low Caste Adventurers going missing from a monster attack during a blood moon didn’t draw attention like these two would. Not to mention the Shiny Heir of House Wayland, the oldest daughter of their Ambassador, Teras’ pet researcher, and the last remnants of the symphonic Dewsong clan.
He rubbed at his temples. Trouble was what these people were.
It’s not like he could just let them go, though. He had to get rid of them, preferably sooner than later, but their shipment for the Disciples of the Destroyer had been put on hold until after the blood moon.
Keeping these people subdued for that long might not be difficult with the Silencers and magically reinforced cages that the DOD had helped them procure as part of their mutual trade agreement, but keeping people from sniffing around would be impossible.
Lukas gave a heavy sigh, and his strongest underling, Vas, asked, “Can we eat the gemite at least? It’s been so long since the last one we got to divulge in. Look how much use we got out of the scraps, too. Those enchantments worked flawlessly.”
“I need to contact High Priest Puera first, I think. I know he’d likely be interested in the two god-touched for his research. Lady Vanderill also mentioned in her last missive that she was seeking a gemite for their grand ritual coming up soon so I should probably send her this one as part of our annual tribute. Messages are just difficult to get over there currently, and waiting a fortnight for this blood moon to end isn’t appealing to me at the moment.”
“We can’t wait that long to eat and replenish our Boons either, you know,” Vas replied, glancing through the window as well. “Can I at least play with those twins a bit? That blasted Healer’s fat bird thing took a bite out of my arm when I went to drug her, you know?”
“It’s a Seagull, Vas, not a bird,” he corrected.
“It got wings.”
Lukas gave another sigh, “The sisters will likely be fine for us to keep, so I don’t care what you do with them, just don’t spoil dinner.”
Vas gave a wicked grin that turned even his stomach, and he ate people for power. He wasn’t as… enthusiastic about it as his underling was, however. It was simply a means to an end.
Lukas looked at their prisoners again as he weighed their options and measured each individual’s potential value.
The lesser voxen would make a fine snack for them, along with the researcher, cinderen boy, and more minor Wayland noble.
The gemite would be a gift to their own High Priestess currently based in Serenydi, which would cover their payments there for at least the year. The branch of the Scarlet Banquet there was the seat of their power and, in return for tribute, would assist them with certain things normally outside their own power, such as the higher Emerald level enchantments keeping them hidden from prying auras.
The only reason he and Vas were Emerald Caste currently was due to the massive influx of Monster Seeds that had flooded the markets in the wake of both the blood moon and war. Trading Bits for power was definitely worth it, especially now when it proved to be what saved them from discovery.
The Saint and the Avatar were the biggest questions he currently didn’t have answers for. Handing them off to the Destroyer’s zealots was likely the smartest and safest bet for him to make.
“Clean them up and put the Saint and Avatar in gray, the gemite in white, the rest in red,” he ordered the cinderen beside him, “Hopefully, we can keep them hidden long enough to send them over to the city of luxury.”
As he turned to leave, Vas spoke up, “Hey, boss?”
“What?”
“How much do you think them Radiant tails is worth?”
Lukas felt a grin creep across his face at the suggestion, “On second thought, give the Avatar the green tunic.”
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Uriel slowly awoke with a throbbing headache. Memories were slow to return, and when he fully took in his new location, more memories than he wished to have came flooding back in a torrent.
A metal cage. A cold stone room. The Silencer around his throat and wrists. The crimson cloak his enemy wore.
Fear gripped his heart and threatened to strangle him as it beat wildly in his terror.
Not again. Please, not again.
What made it even worse than the first time he remembered himself in this kind of situation was that instead of his parents and sister in the cell with him —hungry and not knowing what would become of them— was the fact that his partner and best friend were in their own cages further down the row from him and he had a swarm of morbid ideas of what was in store. His family was already dead, and the thought of his newly found one meeting that same end had his mind spiraling.
Would he have to become a Shield again to protect his Pillars? Would these people even let him? Were they planning to put all of the others through the same kind of torture he had been through before? More likely, they would be thrown into the Rings for entertainment and forced to kill each other. He was already resolved to let the others win.
“Breathe, Uriel,” a familiar voice said from the cage across the aisle from him. Everin was watching him carefully.
“I—” he gasped, realizing then that the Avatar was correct in his breathing becoming irregular and threatening to make him pass out again. He took a few gulps of the stagnant air and managed to say, “I can’t do this again… I’m never strong enough to save them.”
“Just breathe for now,” Everin calmly instructed, “We don’t know what they’re planning. There were others in the room beyond this one. People in cages and gray tunics. I don’t know the details of your time in captivity,” he added, “The reports I found were vague and heavily redacted.”
“Gray tunics?” Uriel asked, latching onto the familiar mental picture. He had been forced to wear a gray tunic for the first few months of his time with the Destroyer’s cult. “They put us in those too. Mine got changed to red when I became a Caster and was forced to start fighting.”
“Were they also servants of the Maniac?”
“What?”
“This is the Scarlet Banquet we’re dealing with,” Everin explained slowly, “Blood cultists of the Maniac, the god of chaos and madness. I don’t know who you dealt with before; it only revealed ‘cultists’ in the unredacted parts.”
Uriel breathed a bit easier at that. Perhaps it wouldn’t end the same way this time, “No, I was trained by the DOD.”
Everin grimaced at him, “They mentioned we might get sold off to them, but I don’t know what that acronym stands for. I’m more knowledgeable about aristocratic factions across Pyrin than followers of the Voidsworn.”
“They’re the Disciples of Destroyer,” he said with an involuntary shiver. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his earrings. He would handle all of this better without his fear making his mind a tangled mess.
“Well,” Everin began, leaning his head back to stare at the ceiling in thought as he said, “At least that’s more survivable than being eaten.”
“Many died there,” he retorted as he clipped the golden cuffs back on his ear, wishing they had fixed the broken one before coming here, “It might be better to get eaten than be forced to kill your own family.”
The Avatar frowned, looking towards him again, and asked, “Any tips for avoiding that?”
Uriel almost sighed at the relief of the numbing magic taking effect as he placed the last earring on. He looked at the door as apathy overtook him and said simply, “If that’s what they want to happen, then there is no avoiding it. If you fight back or disobey, then you’ll just be killing more of us.”
Everin grumbled, “That is the complete opposite of rebellion.”
“I’m sure even you can understand, Avatar of Rebel,” Uriel stated blandly as he refocused on the rainbow voxen, “People usually die when they ignore the Rule of Caste.”