Chapter Fifty-Eight

  The downside to being a Godkin was that everybody slowed you down. The upside to being a Godkin was that when you were alone and had no dead weight, you were as fast as you needed to be. A journey of weeks could be reduced to days, a journey of days, reduced to hours. He raced over the ground so fast that when he jumped, he all but flew. Cenna even undertook the rare action of reusing his speed enhancing martial arts one right after the other, and moved so quickly that by the time he had to stop and rest, he was halfway home.

  Though he’d seen the ‘dead man walking’ and had questions about his survival, it confirmed in his own mind at least… ‘They weren’t bluffing, he had to have gotten them a message, he really did survive. Damn you, Dominic, damn you straight to the demon gods…’

  Such was the urgency of his message in the usually casual mind of Cenna Tachoni, that rather than run the rest of the way after having rested enough to start again, he stopped at the Forlorn Fort, a mighty stone fortress near the border of the Draconic Kingdom, it was meant to be the first line of defense in the event of a beastman invasion. It had ballistae, catapults, and scorpions every few feet along the walls, in addition to space for archers. The outer and inner wall also had platforms for mangonels and a sophisticated pulley system to bring fresh ammunition up to either level.

  Additionally, the field around it was ranged with magical traps and had enough supplies to hold out in a two year siege. Each of its five walls and supporting towers held soldiers, wells, and the facilities to repair or replacement damaged or lost equipment.

  It also held people that nobody in the Slane Theocracy gave a shit about. The soldiers there were convicts, criminals, heretics and scum, the most expendable of expendables, who chose that rather than a fight on the front line against the elves, or a long drab prison sentence in a dungeon cell.

  Only a small crack core of professionals lived there full time to train incoming rabble, expand their positions, and ensure that the newcomers were drilled in how to handle a siege. It had the advantage of putting only the least valuable people at risk, but had the downside of training criminals in combat so that if they were able to leave one day, they left better prepared for criminal work than when they began their sentence.

  Cenna’s appearance was something of an anomaly, his uniform notwithstanding, as far as their eyes were concerned, first he wasn’t there, then he was.

  “I need to see the head caster, and I do not have time to argue.” Cenna’s thousand yard stare into the very heart of the platemail armored soldier was enough even without the shock of his appearance and the status conveyed by his uniform, and within minutes he was slowed to a crawl while the soldier walked him at a normal person’s pace throughout the winding and twisting turns of the mighty fortress.

  Eventually however, he found himself confronted with a caster who had one dozen too many meals, a sweaty, fat face riddled with the pockmarks of healed diseases of the venereal sort, and a less than well maintained office… if ‘less than well maintained’ meant an office with scrolls thrown everywhere and various dusty books open and scattered about.

  He grunted and shuffled over to the doorway when it opened saying, “I’m not asleep, I was just resting my eyes and-” When he realized Cenna was not an officer of the fort, he stopped dead, his expression warred between arrogance and groveling, as if he wasn’t sure which he should do.

  But Cenna gave him no time to decide. “Message scroll. Now.” He gave the order, and the force in Cenna’s voice left no room for debate in the mind of the overstuffed caster, who rapidly rushed around, picking up scrolls and tossing them aside.

  “Yes, of course, ah, yes yes, naturally, sorry about the mess, I just, I don’t know how it got like this… must have been one of those blasted soldiers playing a prank or something ahhhh… “Here!” He squeaked and picked up a scroll which he handed immediately to Cenna.

  The Black Scripture Captain snatched it away, broke the seal, and when the spell activated, he reached out to Raymond.

  It took quite some time to explain it all… but when he did?

  It took Raymond time to calm down.

  “That thundering moron! That idiot! That colossal level of stupidity is borderline treasonous! No! We’ll need to create a special statute creating a death penalty for certain levels of stupidity! What was he thinking?!”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  He couldn’t hear Raymond’s heavy breathing, but Cenna had absolutely no doubt it was there anyway.

  He was sure of it, because Raymond said nothing, not even to ask questions.

  “I’m glad you’re alright, Cenna, but you might as well come back now, even if you could defeat that one, we’d strike a harsher blow leaving them to deal with that idiot.” Raymond finally said, then went on, “The children you sent my way have arrived, the whore also made it back safely, she’s taken over along with your servants. I will arrange for adoptions from some good families in the meantime, and the usual residency and reward for your new mistress after the usual time, assuming she has the capacity.”

  “Don’t be crude, Raymond. She’s hardly a mistress, just a gutsy whore I returned a favor to. I’ll return soon, and… good luck explaining this to the others.” Cenna replied, he breathed heavily as he felt his burdens lift from his shoulders and become somebody else’s problem.

  “Don’t remind me, their excitement will no doubt be tempered by realizing what he’s going to cost our annual budget…I knew one of us should have gone instead.” Raymond’s response was already gone from Cenna’s head as irrelevant.

  “I’ll see you soon, Raymond, and thank you for looking after those… I don’t know… strays? I don’t know what word to use, doesn’t matter, I’ll be back in a few days, I might as well enjoy the rest of the trip now.” Cenna didn’t wait for Raymond’s authorization to do that, he simply cut the link, and then just walked away.

  Dominic had no idea how long he’d been asleep for, hours, days, for all he knew they’d had him in stasis for a lifetime. His last memory vaguely came back when he heard the rattling noise in the darkness. ‘The demon, right… he didn’t kill me… I don’t think…’ Dominic patted his body down, confirming that he was in fact ‘intact’. Then sat up, his body scraping across rough, damp stone. ‘My clothes…?’ He wasn’t exactly naked but he wasn’t dressed either. A simple prisoner’s smock, rough cloth, like one might use for carrying potatoes, was all he wore. His shoes and jewelry and all his other garments were gone. The addition, other than the smock, were the manacles on his hands and feet.

  He began to shout, bellow, rage, stamping his feet and howling, “Let me out! Let me out of here! You have no right to keep me like this! I am a Cardinal of the Slane Theocracy!”

  Dominic yanked and snapped at his chains, he used every martial art he knew, he pulled them taut, scraped them against the wall, but all he got for his trouble was sweat and sore muscles.

  The dull ache continued while he tried to gain a sense of where he was. In the end, after hours of pacing around and searching, even peering through the bars of an orichalcum door toward a distant light, all he could say for sure was… ‘I am definitely in a palace dungeon. My cell is probably even made specifically for people like me… I wish I could remember what the ransom was…’

  His thoughts were set aside when he heard feet skittering across the floor, not a rat, but bare human feet, too fast and without the accompanying rattle of chains, however what could be their hurry? He rushed to the door, grabbed the bars, and peered through them only for a young man’s face to appear a moment later.

  “You are Cardinal Dominic, are you not?” The young man whispered, his eyes bulged when Dominic nodded. “There is no time to explain, I am Yu Sebius, a priest here. I heard a Cardinal was imprisoned last night… that you stood against a Demon… this is true?”

  “Yes. Though it didn’t end well for me.” Dominic said far calmer than he truly felt, the hint of praise the young priest offered mollified the Cardinal’s anger, and the priest rose to his tiptoes.

  “Listen to me, I was a magic caster before I was a priest, I can find a way to get you out of here, but it will do no good if we cannot slay the Demon Lord, you said there is a way to combat the monster?” The priest darted his eyes left and right at distant noises that were more likely drips of water into tiny puddles cut into the stone than any actual human source.

  “Yes. A way to destroy it completely, but I need to be free to retrieve it. How soon can you get me out of here?!” Dominic demanded, his nostrils flared and eyes bulged, and the young priest thrust his hand up toward the window. “Tomorrow is too soon, but I can volunteer again shortly and will come ready to set you free. Just tell me where to take you, and you can get what you need, and we can slay the Demons and defeat the Devil King!”

  “I look forward to it!” Dominic hissed, then went to sit against the wall, ending their very brief but hope inspiring talk, and putting a smile on Dominic’s face that he had to strive exceptionally hard to hide.