by TurtleMe
All eyes fell on the commander, and he answered with a terse nod.
“Lead the way, Gentry,” I said, walking through the reinforced doors.
The familiar musty smell of the castle dungeon brought back a series of unpleasant memories regarding my own time down here. I walked silently after Gentry, leaving the Council to watch begrudgingly as we disappeared behind the reinforced door. After passing through another guarded entry, this one leading down to the lower levels where only Uto and Rahdeas were held, Gentry led me to a barren cell barely the size of a shoe closet.
Taking a deep breath, I waited for Gentry to carefully unlock the cell.
“I will be here, just outside the door, General Arthur. I’m sure you already know, but please refrain from touching anything,” Gentry warned before opening the cell door and stepping aside.
I waited until the old man left before shifting my gaze to the cuffed dwarf kneeling before me. “Rahdeas.”
The man twitched at the sound of his name, but then a smile slowly carved itself across his pale face.
“My gratitude for your time and presence,” he dipped his head, though I couldn’t tell if it was a show of respect or mockery. “Allow me to begin.”
“Begin?” I asked, but the man kept his head lowered, his eyes hidden.
I kept my guard up, uneasy. This wasn’t the attitude I had expected from him.
“A lad of humble origins, born wrapped in rags in a sad little town,” he began, finally lifting his head. “Within, however, he was more, born from and for a life of renown.”
“And as with all heroes-to-be, the lad had the looks and the lad had the might.” Rahdeas stretched out one arm while his other hand lay over his heart. “His mother taught him the world, his father taught him to fight.”
I watched, dumbstruck, as the mad dwarf continued his epic.
Rahdeas’s voice got deeper, darker. “That is, until the day came, when the lad saw there was a larger stage to play. His blood knew well they could no longer contain the lad’s fire, which raged inside him hot as a king’s funeral pyre. So they took up their bags and wished their small town good luck,” Rahdeas let out a breath. “But woe, as all stories go, tragedy struck.”
“Rahdeas,” I said, growing annoyed with his recitation, but was silenced by a raised finger.
“But never fret, never doubt, because, as all stories go, a hero never drops out. So he grows and he grows, through heartache and death throes, never ceasing, overcoming.”
Rahdeas looked up at the dim flickering light above us. “Alas, every light needs a shadow,
every hero a foe. The brighter the light, the darker its night.”
Finally, Rahdeas met my gaze, grinning like a fool. “But I ask you this, hero-to-be.
What happens when your foe, who has crossed both time and space, is actually brighter than thee? Perhaps a fair maiden’s shining knight, is another one’s deadly blight, and the side of dark and of light, is determined only by who wins the last fight?”
An uncomfortable silence lingered as he finished his strange poem, and just when I thought things couldn’t get weirder, Rahdeas, his arms chained to the ground, reached out and grabbed my hand with his blood-crusted fingers.
His glossy, soulless eyes squinted into thin, watery crescents as he smiled up at me and nodded. “Ah, good, you’re real. I was afraid you were another illusion and that my performance had gone to waste.”
I stared down at him, unsure how to react.
He groaned in pleasure. “I’d forgotten how warm a person could be.” He gazed into the distance as he stroked my hand absently, like I was his pet housecat.
I jerked my hand from his grasp. “It seems that your time spent here has made you… unbalanced.”
“Of all of the interesting and exciting words in our language, you choose ‘unbalanced’? Not ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’ or ‘mad,’ maybe even ‘cracked’ or ‘nutty,’ but you choose ‘unbalanced’?” Rahdeas snickered.
“I don’t have time to waste on lectures about my word choice, especially from someone so unbalanced,” I stressed, narrowing my eyes.
Rahdeas shrugged. “Regardless, it is of your own free will whether you choose to ignore my words or not, poetry or prose alike.”
“So that poem you just recited—”
“I thought a heart-to-heart conversation would be a bit boring. And though I’m not very well versed in the art of poetry, I had to do something to pass the time down here,” Rahdeas replied seriously, but the moment of clarity lasted only a second. He leered at me, his eyes twinkling. “Or… you know, this might just be the rambling of a man ‘unbalanced.’”
A sigh escaped me and I shook my head.
“Be honest, though. My rhyming may have been a bit elementary but it was catchy, was it not?” he grinned, wrinkles lining his ghastly skin.
My annoyance and frustration boiled over. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of your situation, Rahdeas. You’re going to be here for a long time, and it’s going to be unpleasant. How much you cooperate, such as revealing anything that might be of help to the Council—to Dicathen—will ultimately decide how unpleasant. Now is not the time to worry whether your rhymes are catchy or not.”
“I know precisely what sort of position I’m in and I’ve told you exactly what I wanted to,” Rahdeas said, no longer looking at me. The dwarf was attempting to lay back and rest his head in his hands but was struggling with the chains. After several tedious moments, he settled into an uncomfortable contortion. “Again, what you gain from it is none of my concern.”
I gnashed my teeth in frustration and waited in silence, hoping that he might change his mind. In the end, the traitor shooed me away with a wave of his hand as he began humming the rhythm of his poem.
Scoffing, I called for Gentry and had him lock Rahdeas’s cell.
As I turned to leave, fuming over the traitor’s attitude, my gaze landed on the other cell—this one even smaller than Rahdeas’s. Despite the mana-inhibiting qualities of the material the cell was made of, an ominous aura constantly seeped out of it, like rot from a corpse.
For a moment, I was tempted to open the cell.
In a short amount of time, I had grown and broken through to a stage that rivaled any mage in Dicathen. The fear that I had felt when facing Uto, even with the help of Sylvie, left a deep impression on me that I wanted to get rid of. I thought that confronting the retainer again might cleanse me of the doubt our battle had left on my spirit.
There’s nothing to gain, Arthur, I scolded myself, shaking my head. He’s bound, broken—a weak shadow of the creature that nearly killed you.
I left the dungeon, glad to be rid of the smell and the sound of Rahdeas’s humming, though bits and pieces of his poem still echoed in my head.
The members of the Council were still waiting for me by the dungeon entrance. Six sets of eyes bored into me, waiting for me to say something—anything.
I gestured to the withered, hook-nosed interrogator behind me. “Gentry’s interrogation tactics seem to have made Rahdeas lose a bit of his mind. He brought me all the way down here in the dead of night just to recite a poem to me.”
“Poem?” Blaine said incredulously.
Everyone knew Rahdeas as a mild-mannered, intelligent dwarf who always strived for a collaborative effort. The news of his madness was met with surprised, concerned looks from the Council.
“What… was the poem about?” Virion asked hesitantly.
“To be honest, I can’t quite say. As I said, he was a bit… off. Something about his poem did bother me, though” I replied. “With the Council’s blessing, I will try to find out more about the poem before providing any definite answers.”
“Though our tactics for extracting the truth from men such as Rahdeas have proven quite effective, it does sometimes have a lingering effect on their sanity,” Gentry said with a cough. “My apologies for the false alarm. I sincerely thought he would be confessing something important.”
“Seeing as nothing substantial has been revealed yet, how about we discuss this more in our next meeting?” Alduin suggested.
“I second this,” Buhnd grunted. “We can choose whether to decipher his ramblings once we’ve had some sleep.”
“If Rahdeas’s state-of-mind is as you suggested, his words are likely empty of meaning,” Priscilla said, already turning to leave.
After our impromptu gathering had ended, I made my way back to my room where, despite my body begging for rest, I sat wide awake, the strange poem echoing in my mind. Despite my irritability with the traitor, I wanted to believe his words still held some merit.
Dimming the light artifact on the desk to its lowest setting, I began jotting down the parts of the poem that I remembered, going verse by verse, using the rhymes and structure to guide me when my memory failed. Once complete, I read through what I’d written. Whether it was because of my exhausted state or because I had been so confused by Rahdeas’s behavior, I wasn’t confident with my recollection.
The main message I got from this poem was about a hero, but there was something more to it than that.
If I examined his words under the assumption that Rahdeas wasn’t out of his mind—not exactly a safe assumption—he explicitly said that the poem was what he wanted to tell me. It seemed likely that this “hero” had something to do with me, so I assumed I was the “lad” described in his words.
How did Rahdeas know details of my childhood, though? It wasn’t just the fact that I had a rather modest upbringing in Ashber, but the poem also said that the lad wished the town luck before a tragedy struck.
It probably wasn’t too hard for Rahdeas to have done a background check on me using his resources while he was still part of the Council, but even then, this whole thing just didn’t sit well.
One verse was particularly unnerving, though I wasn’t entirely sure I was remembering it correctly. Had he said “from a life of renown” or “for a life of renown?” I swear he said both, but how would that make sense unless… I shook my head, losing my train of thought.
Frustrated at Rahdeas for the needlessly cryptic message and at myself for dismissing his poem for the jabbering of a madman, I moved on.
The latter half of the poem was a bit more ambiguous as it began to sound more and more like the sort of overused prophecy foretold in nearly every hero story I’d read throughout both my lives.
Lines like, “the brighter the light, the darker its night” most likely had something to do with my foe being more powerful the stronger I became. As if I choose my enemies by their strength relative to my own.
Then there was the line about one person’s “knight” being another’s “blight.” Again, I had to assume the mad dwarf was referencing me, but to whom had I been a “blight,” unless he meant the Vritra and the Alacryans? Yet that was no secret and hardly bore mentioning, much less being so cryptic about it.
I thought over the poem for another half hour before I gave up, deciding to visit the dwarf in the morning and ask him to repeat his words.
Hopefully he is up for an encore.
I was still skeptical about whether the poem even meant anything, but I was powerfully curious.
Sliding into bed, I tried to empty my mind of the mad poem and my many questions related to it. As I drifted off to sleep, half-formed lines continued drifting through my head, followed by nonsensical rhyming words that fought to fit themselves into their proper places.
204
Enemy Territory
CIRCE MILVIEW
“How much longer?” Fane demanded, his voice a hissing whisper. From the corner of my eye, I could see his head constantly swiveling left and right. I knew his eyes were darting from tree to tree, looking for any signs of an approaching enemy. It had been the same each time, and the long days within the cursed elven forest had only made him more agitated.
I held up two fingers, turning my focus back to the tree in front of me. The crest on my back flared and I pushed Fane’s anxious needling to the back of my mind as I fought to keep my powers under control. Mana coursed through my arms and into the tree itself, slowly forming into a beacon that would light the Alacryan army’s way through the mists.
“My veiling barrier isn’t going to last much longer, Circe, not when I’m covering such a wide range,” Cole said through gritted teeth, louder than he should have. Concerned, I glanced back at the Shield; his long brown hair was stuck to his face with sweat.
I felt more than saw it when the three-point array stabilized within the tree. I waited a moment to make sure it was entirely concealed, then let out a sigh of relief. “Done.”
Without a word, Maeve grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. I felt Cole’s barrier disperse as he and Fane followed us away from the freshly imprinted array. It wasn’t a good idea to hang around the source of so much magic, despite our precautions against detection by the Dicathian forces. We’d already stumbled across the remains of another group that hadn’t been cautious enough…
Despite the urgency of our task, our pace was frustratingly slow. By using my crest, I could extend my senses out to about thirty yards. Without the crest, we would have been entirely unable to navigate within the forest; I was the only one who could see more than a few feet into the thick fog that oozed between the trees, unmoved by any magic we had yet discovered. It made for slow going, though.
“Do you see anyone, Circe?” Fane asked for the fifth time, his sharp features contorted into an angry glare.
“I said I’ll tell you if I see anything out of the ordinary,” I snapped, shooting him a warning glare.
He narrowed his eyes, discontent, but didn’t say anything else.
After about an hour of practically crawling through the fog-laden forest, I signaled for everyone to stop. “We need to place another array.”
Everyone got into position: Maeve hopped up into a nearby tree, ready to defend us if necessary; Cole stayed beside me and enveloped the area in a veil to help mask the mana fluctuations while I worked; Fane circled the perimeter, watchful for approaching enemies.
After everyone was in place, I began setting up the first part of the three-point array. As a mid-tier Sentry, it wasn’t difficult setting it up. The tricky part was making sure it was undetectable until I finally activated it. If there was any mana leakage at all, the elves lurking around the forest would sense it, and if even one of the arrays I had made were discovered, the whole plan would be ruined.
As if in answer to my thoughts, a bush rustled to my left. I twitched, and the mana flowing from my fingertips and seeping through the bark was disrupted. Fane was there in the space of a breath. He turned to me, a dead rodent in his hand. He smirked as he tossed the crushed corpse back into the undergrowth.
As expected of a veteran emblem holder, I thought. The Striker’s attitude was foul, but he was good at his job. Since that involved keeping me alive to finish plotting the course through the forest, I knew I shouldn’t hold his lesser traits against him. Still, if an elven arrow found his throat, I wouldn’t shed any tears.
Turning my focus back on the old tree, I pushed out instilled mana until it buried itself deep into the core of the tree. After it was in place, I had to cover the tracks and mana fluctuations at the site of the wound. The mana imprint left by my spell had to be manually obscured with surgical precision so that no one could sense that magic was used in the area. This step required my attention be entirely concentrated. I couldn’t afford to spread my senses around us, even if it increased the risk that an elf could sneak up on us.
My dry, strained eyes grew heavy, my legs and back ached, and the fog seemed to be seeping through my ears and into my mind—but I finished it.
“Done,” I mouthed at my teammates before moving onto the next point.
Kneeling down on the ground a few feet away from the tree, I repeated the process. Covering the magic’s imprint was slightly easier in the soil, and when it was done, I moved on to the last part—a secon
d tree creating a triangular shape with the first two points.
Once the three-point array was complete, we got moving again.
Maeve stuck to me like a shadow, practically touching me as we walked. Cole followed a few feet behind, ready to conjure a magical barrier at the first sign of danger. Fane brought up the rear. A team specialized for this mission, I thought dourly. It was exceedingly difficult to be both the newest addition to the team and the linchpin of the Alacryan army’s efforts.
A combat team would normally train together for years before they went into the field, but this group’s Sentry had been killed in training only a few weeks ago. Having been recently granted my emblem, I was sent in as a replacement. Fane’s outright hostility was only slightly more irritating than Maeve treating me like a child, or the puerile crush Cole seemed to be harboring toward me.
It was a source of comfort to know that we weren’t the only team.
Maybe one of the other teams have already succeeded in securing a route, I hoped, knowing how unlikely that was. Out of all the teams, I knew that we were the most likely to succeed; my newly acquired emblem gave us a distinct advantage.
Maeve’s arm shot out, pressing against my chest and forcing me to stop. Her amber eyes locked onto me as she pointed down. Nearly invisible beneath the fog was a shallow ditch full of wooden spikes.
“The spikes weren’t sharpened, they were twisted into this shape,” Maeve said in a whisper.
“Plant magic.” After the initial assault on the elven forest, many survivors had reported strangling vines, choking spoors, and even trees that pulled up their roots and walked. It was amazing and horrifying to think that our enemies controlled such power.
“I thought you said this way was safe,” Fane grumbled as he glared down into the pit.
“We’ll have to stop somewhere safe for me to scout another route.” I avoided looking at my companions. I didn’t want to see the anger, the pity, or the boundless acceptance I would find in Fane’s, Maeve’s, or Cole’s eyes. We couldn’t march an army through land harboring such traps. We’d have to find a safer path.
