by Ian Haywood
“But your daughter needs to be saved right now.” Zephal pointed out.
Gereziac turned to Zephal and responded in a much calmer manner than before.
“And she will be. You all have to remember that I have been crowned your King and even though I hate the thought of being treated as some kind of idol who can solve every problem, I have to think of my people first. What happened to Alana was not down to my own personal revenge – it was to make sure that the evil that threatened our people and everything we worked for was eliminated once and for all. My daughter will learn that for herself one day. She will have to learn that the people come first and it is our duty to make sure that we do what is right for them so they will return the favour to us when we need them. Just because I didn’t do what you wanted me to doesn’t mean that I am wrong. Justice was served in Alana’s execution and the people wanted their King to be present when it happened in order to display the solidarity that exists between myself and everyone who looks up to me as their leader. The death of the man you had sent to me was unfortunate – but again, I made a decision to come and save you and my daughter. If I hadn’t have come when I did, then there was a huge chance that you may not be alive right now.”
And with that, Gereziac turned to Barnabus.
“Barnabus, Zephal is totally right about you – you are one of the best men that has ever served under me and that is why I personally chose you and your men for this mission. I apologise for my outburst towards you and I am proud to have you at my side in any battle and you will always be rewarded greatly for doing so.”
Barnabus graciously accepted Gereziac’s apology and the atmosphere seemed to lighten dramatically.
Zephal broke the silence.
“And what of the loyalty that I show to you?” he directed towards Gereziac.
Gereziac turned his head to Zephal and answered.
“Your loyalty is the least that you can give to me after what I did to save your life, Zephal! You may be the best fighter this army has ever produced, but with that great power comes an uncanny knack to cause no end of trouble wherever you go – and it seems that it is always me who has to bail you out!”
Zephal huffed at what Gereziac had said.
“Given a bit more time back at Alana’s hideout, I would have worked out a way of getting out of there without your help!”
Gereziac laughed and even Barnabus gave out a wry smile at Zephal’s preposterous reply.
“But it is I who unfortunately had the misfortune of saving your life and under vampiric laws, I am now held responsible for your wellbeing for the rest of your existence.”
Barnabus took this opportunity to join in with the merriment.
“Well, I feel sorry for you Gereziac as we are all very much aware of what trouble Zephal can get up to and there has been nobody who could keep him under control.”
Both he and Gereziac laughed at Zephal’s expense, but he had a great comeback.
“I’m sure that I would stay still long enough to let your wife do whatever she wanted to me, Barnabus!”
“That may be,” Barnabus responded, “but my wife likes a proper man who could fulfil her needs, not someone who wouldn’t even last past the first hurdle!”
Gereziac laughed to himself as the men continued to trade humorous insults towards each other and even though they were funny, he felt that they should stop.
“Gentlemen, can we show a little bit of decorum please?”
The two men nodded their heads, but Barnabus just had to get one more dig in at Zephal.
“Gereziac, couldn’t you have just left Zephal at Alana’s hideout? It would have been a lot quieter on this mission!”
Gerziac turned to Barnabus and answered in a serious manner.
“Zephal may have a million faults, but you know as much as I do that we never leave one of our own in their moment of need, wherever they may be.”
Zephal suddenly spoke up.
“But doing what is morally right does not always give you the reward that it should.”
Both Gereziac and Barnabus looked across at Zephal in confusion at what he had just said.
“Look what happened with Lucius,” Zephal explained, “I saved his life and what did I get in return? I gave him the opportunity to make his life better and all he wanted to do was to take mine away.”
“But I know that you would never take mine, Zephal.” Gereziac replied.
There was an uneasy silence for a couple of seconds before Zephal’s response.
“It all depends on what you have done.”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
The journey towards the Northlands was full of dangers along the way and anyone who dared to head in that direction definitely needed to have their wits about them because they could suddenly come under attack without any warning whatsoever.
Even experienced military men like Gereziac, Zephal, Barnabus and the men with them were not exempt from such dangers and every one of them made sure that they remained close to each other.
Barnabus had felt a little uncomfortable at Zephal’s response to whether he would end Gereziac’s life and his choice of words managed to bring an abrupt end to the fun that the three men had been sharing.
But Zephal didn’t care how anyone felt – he never did and in doing so, made himself almost hermit-like at times as he preferred his own company a lot more than hanging around with people falsely pretending that he was enjoying himself.
Women were another factor that got on Zephal’s nerves.
In his younger days, he did have a string of relationships and each one ended in disaster, but the last one that he had ended so badly that he never wanted another woman in his life ever again.
So babysitting a mortal woman for Gereziac was not his most favourite thing to do, but as it was the daughter of his best friend and future Queen of his kind, then he had no other option but to accept the mission.
Sometimes he came across women who openly showed that they were interested in him, but he always chose to never get involved as he could do without the drama in his life.
And drama was exactly what he got when he stepped into the mortal world and found Naomi for the first time.
If that wasn’t bad enough, his nemesis had been chosen by Alana to track her down as well.
And as Zephal kept his distance emotionally from Naomi, Lucius was doing the complete opposite and had managed to turn her against him, even though she had no idea what was going on and who was her ally and who was her enemy.
She was stupid enough to take in Lucius’s lies and she paid for it massively, but something changed in Zephal since he came back to life on the beach.
His head has been constantly filled with nothing but Naomi since that day.
Zephal hated her from the moment they first met and it was obvious that Naomi felt the same way towards him.
But when he did manage to free her from Alana’s hideout, being around her woke emotions inside him that had been bottled up for many years.
Whether he wanted to or not, he had fallen for Naomi.
And that was the reason why he was so eager for the mission to find her to start as soon as possible because he wanted to see Naomi once again.
They may have started completely on the wrong foot when they first met, but right now there is virtually nothing that Zephal wouldn’t do for Naomi.
But he had to be careful how he reacted not to give it away, because he also had to remember that the woman he had fallen for was in fact his best friend’s daughter.
And that may cause no end of problems between him and Gereziac if Naomi did ever feel the same way.
Zephal has had no end of battles with himself as he tried to think logically and try to drop the feelings that he had towards Naomi as she was a princess and he was a General in the army that served her.
His best friend may be the King, but even Zephal still knew his place.
His heart and his head would just have to fight with each other for the res
t of his life.
And that was why his response to Gereziac’s question sounded so harsh.
He truly didn’t know what life was going to throw at him and he and Gereziac may fall out over his feelings for Naomi one day, but if Gereziac did anything to harm him then Zephal would have no other choice but to retaliate.
But right now all he was concerned about was getting Naomi to safety and adore her from afar – but not until he got his revenge on whoever these Disciples of Draig were, especially anyone who had harmed Naomi in any way.
One thing was for sure, he would most certainly be leaving with Naomi and wherever they had hidden her would be completely awash with the blood of his enemies.
But they still had to locate where she was being held and that was not going to be easy as the rocky terrain of the north is the perfect place for anyone to hide out without being spotted easily.
And if you were to travel as far as you possibly could north, you would come across the home of Mortus and the Black Knights who were Gereziac’s longest and most hated enemies and throughout the years, there have always been battles between the two sides at some point.
There is no other race to be found anywhere in the immortal world that is more evil than Mortus and his army and they would stop at nothing to remind anyone who got on the wrong side of them just how evil they really are.
Demons really do exist and Mortus is a prime example of that and it takes all the might of Gereziac and his men to hold Mortus and his Black Knights from defeating them in battle.
Then Hell would really open up as Mortus would claim Gereziac’s throne for himself.
And Mortus has held the greatest grudge of all against Gereziac himself for many years.
That’s because in the last battle the two sides had, one of the casualties was Mortus’s brother Draig who died at the hands of Gereziac himself.
Alana and Lucius have been the thorn in Gereziac’s side for a few years now, but there is no doubt that the lack of threat from Mortus was only because he was pre-occupied in planning a new wave of attacks at any moment.
If Mortus was involved in some way with the sudden disappearance of Naomi, then this mission would take on a completely different persona.
But one thing that existed within Gereziac’s army was the comradeship between all of the Generals who had been chosen to command the men.
Before any General set off on a mission, the others would be notified and if there was no sign of their return after the timescale appointed, then reinforcements would be sent out immediately to rescue their fellow soldiers.
This used to infuriate Gereziac as his men would suddenly disappear without warning to go to the aid of their missing friends – only to find that no harm had come to any of them and they all had to return to the barracks red-faced to face Gereziac’s wrath.
Zephal was right to believe that you never know what the future holds for you.
Everyone making their way towards the Northlands didn’t have a clue what would be waiting for them when they finally managed to locate Naomi.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
The standoff between myself, Mortus and Tanya seemed to last forever and I instinctively knew that Mortus would be the one who would make the first move, so I prepared myself for it.
But he didn’t physically attack – instead he called out for his guards to come to him immediately and after a few moments, more than a dozen men burst through the door.
“Restrain the girl!” he called out to them and they all rushed towards me.
I was completely surrounded and couldn’t fight all of the men off, but I made sure that it would be incredibly difficult for them to successfully restrain me.
They had managed to lift me off the ground and carried me out of the room and into another room opposite kicking and screaming with Mortus and Tanya closely following behind.
This room was nowhere near as big as the other one that I had just come from and I was forced against a stone wall while chains were tightly attached to my feet and hands.
I tried to pull myself from the wall, but the chains did their job and I soon realized that they were much stronger than the ropes that I had burst through so easily earlier.
And Tanya was going to make sure that I knew that fact.
“Now, let’s see what you can do, Naomi?” she taunted, “Now it’s time for payback!”
She went to hit out at me, but Mortus stopped her in her tracks by grabbing her around the waist and lifted her to the side as if she weighed nothing.
But Tanya didn’t calm down at all and I could do nothing to move away as she spat directly towards me.
“You disgusting bitch! Is that the best you can do?” I shouted.
Tanya attempted to grab out at me, but once again Mortus stopped her in her tracks which only made her even angrier.
“Let go of me Mortus so I can finish this whore off once and for all!”
I laughed at the fact that Tanya had the audacity to call me a whore and I reminded her of what she had got up to when we were sharing a flat together.
“Did you just call me a whore? You must have shagged virtually every man in the neighbor-hood when we lived together! I didn’t know who was in your bed from one day to the next.”
Mortus wasn’t impressed by what he heard and he instantly turned to Tanya.
“Is what she says true?” he asked her.
Tanya of course denied it, but she couldn’t fool Mortus one bit.
Once again, I had managed to get Mortus and Tanya to argue and if I couldn’t do anything to them physically, then I was able to do damage mentally.
So, I stirred the pot even more.
“It seems that she wasn’t exactly loyal to you when you were out of sight, Mortus! If she lied to you about her long line of lovers, then she is more than capable of lying about other matters too.”
Mortus unbelievably was falling for my plan and his anger towards Tanya was becoming more and more evident.
“It seems that our prisoner has more sense than I gave her credit for!” he snapped at Tanya, “I know you well enough Tanya and there is no way whatsoever that you wouldn’t have some kind of carnal desires in all of the time that you were away from here!”
Tanya began to cry as she pleaded with Mortus to listen to her side of the story.
“I swear to you Mortus none of them meant anything to me. I needed their souls so I could survive in the mortal world and do what you expected from me.”
Mortus was unmoved and dismissed what he had just heard.
“I did not expect you to sleep with any man! You are mine and what I expect from you is true loyalty! But I am not shocked to discover that you are nothing more than a slut because you are a Sumarian woman and the only thing that they are good for is lying on their backs!”
“But I have helped to make the Disciples of Draig great once more!” Tanya replied.
Mortus grabbed her wrist and twisted it until a snapping noise echoed throughout the small room and Tanya’s sudden grimace of agony indicated that her wrist must have broken.
“That is a reminder of who really does possess the power – you would never have been successful if it wasn’t for me backing you with the strength of my Black Knights. Without me, you are nothing!”
Tanya was in too much pain to retaliate and I could see blood start to pour out from her wrist with no visible sign of stopping.
I knew the moment that Tanya dropped to her knees, she was in serious trouble and I caught sight of a bone poking out through the flesh which would account for such a flow of blood.
Try as she could to stop the blood from pouring out of her, Tanya’s facial expression changed to one of shock and she began to slowly lose consciousness as the red liquid that kept her alive disappeared from within her.
But soon her pain would be over.
Death had now claimed her for his own and Mortus just looked on without any indication of guilt for what he had just done to the woman that had loved him.
But I felt nothing towards Tanya either and I was just as guilty for her death as Mortus because I had pushed him to do what he did by instigating the argument.
I wanted to kill her earlier and now I had managed to end her life -even by being restrained.
But it was blatantly clear that Mortus was not going to leave it at that and he turned his attention towards me.
“The only reason why I don’t kill you right now is because I want to see you suffer as you rot away in these chains with no food or water until your body can not take any more and you will welcome death as an escape from the agony that awaits you – even then, I will make sure that when that time comes, you will have an incredibly slow and painful death.”
