“How did you find us?” growled the man, his rag-like brown hair flopping from side to side as he tossed his head from shoulder to shoulder without reason. “We didn't leave any trails.” He fell silent for a moment, then shouted rather furiously, “Shut up! We left nothing for them to find!”
“I am Inquisitor Captain Tiernan Brennan of the Mid-Oribian Scouting Regiment,” he said, watching the man's face carefully. “By the authority of the Holy Inquisition, you will tell me your name and the city in which you last resided.”
The man barred a set of yellowing teeth at him. “Captain, is it. Impertinent cuss.” He straightened up as much as Drystan would allow. “I am Oratio Nicholas Calotheus Basilides—the Fourth. Go check my patents to find out where I was born, you oversized whelp. My research here is for the good of the Empire!” His head cocked to the side before he screamed, “Damn it you nag, shut up and let me deal with this bastard! I know where I left that leg—I'll put it on when I'm through with him!”
He turned to search the man's papers for his patents and found Akkali behind him with the scroll in-hand. “Hurry and ask why so I can begin burning shit down.”
Basilides' next words were choked out like someone was strangling him. “Y-y-you! Silver markings, brown hair!” He stomped his feet and squealed angrily, “Did he send you here? That son of a bitch, he's going to steal my research and present it to her as his own!” His head flopped to the opposite side. “For the last time, shut the hell up! I've business to attend and I don't need your lip, woman!”
Ignoring the man's rantings but making a mental note of what he was saying, he unrolled the leather-bound scroll and frowned at what he saw. The patents were for a woman named Anna Domnus Cyril, someone he knew for a fact was very much dead. Three years prior she had been convicted for practicing Unholy magic, beheaded, and burned in Warsfenn, a port city two week's ride to the south and east along the coast of the Maelmar Sea. Tiernan had written up the final reports on the trial and sent her ashes off to be stored in the Reliquary himself.
Then another thought occurred to him. “Who's the woman nagging you?”
Basilides let out an irritated groan. “Same bitch that's been nagging me since I got here—Anna.” Again his head flopped to the opposite shoulder. “What, you think I can't handle these fools just because the one behind me's got an extra passenger? I'm more worried about Galenfyr's guard dog coming all this way to fetch our findings for her master.”
“And what exactly are your findings?” he asked, intercepting Akkali's attempt to lunge at the man by stepping directly in front of her. “The truth, if you please.”
“You really have no clue, do you,” sneered Basilides, drooling slightly as his head flopped to his opposing shoulder. “All those fools down in Harenholl licking the Empress' boots, trying to expand south when all the real trouble is up here. Everything that matters is up here!” His voice reached an insane, almost squealing pitch again. “Shut up! Yes I will! You think I've been at this for five years to leave you lurking in my damn head? I'll get the damn leg and finish properly! Now shut up about it you nosy bitch!”
Apparently Drystan had had enough of the man's rantings because he hauled him forward and slammed his head down on a stack of books upon the table, causing the candelabra to hop into the air and fall sideways. Tiernan lunged forward and snatched it up before it could set any of the myriad of papers aflame.
“Cease your prattling and utter the truth as the man asked of you,” hissed the Inferi, grinding Basilides' cheek into a well-maintained copy of a physician's anatomy book. “We are weary of your ravings and our indulgence of your murderous, degenerate and filthy existence has reached its end. You will answer his questions rightly or I shall burn the truth from you like the face of the sun.”
Sparing himself a moment to be surprised Tiernan noticed that Drystan's face had changed slightly. His normally deep sea-colored eyes were steadily becoming a pale, almost ice-like blue as his pupils shrunk dramatically and were rendered nothing more than barely-visible pinpricks set in the center of his irises. With his attention directed at the back of Basilides' head he doubted his friend noticed his shocked face; Akkali, however, picked up on it immediately. Suddenly he found himself on the receiving end of a silvery-green death stare which related to him in one glance the myriad of ways in which she was going to disassemble him were he to ask any questions about what was going on with the Inferi right then.
His line of thought was interrupted with Basilides' dramatic whimper of surrender. “She's coming! She's coming and nobody paid us any mind in the Empire when we showed them exactly what's happening right now! Do you know what she'll do to us? You have any idea?” He struggled against the Inferi's grip and jerked his head towards Akkali. “You know! I've seen that look—she has that look! The mad hate we bred into them!” He started to weep in earnest as he babbled on. “For once they wake! For once they wake! For once they wake there'll be no stopping them! Death will come from the setting sun! The death of our Empire, of our race! She already took him!"
Basilides threw Drystan back with an unexpected amount of strength, turning around and hurling a scarlet disk of flame at the Inferi which he deflected with the tails of his coat. He turned on Tiernan next, summoning an even larger ball of fire from between both hands and slinging it towards him like a discus. Akkali slammed into his side with her shoulder and sent them both falling to the stone as the fireball passed harmlessly overhead.
“I don't care if you don't believe me!” screeched Basilides as he ran. “I'm going to stop her—we're going to stop her! We're not going to let the Empire fall! We'll have an army by the time she moves south! An army to match her horde! Just go away and leave us alone, Inquisitor! Just let us save our Empire!”
The witch tore across the cavern to the body pile, ripping a pale-fleshed right leg out of the stack before summoning yet another sphere of flame and hurling it up at the ceiling. Tiernan cursed beneath his breath, knowing what was about to happen, then whispered a quick repentance as he grabbed Akkali by the arm and hauled her beneath the long table where he ducked. Drystan slid beneath cover beside them just as the first detonation knocked loose a rain of stalactites from above.
YOU ARE READING
The Great Pandemonium: Nobilitas Obligat
Fantasy“Care to find out why you're a fatherless son of a bitch?” That was the question posed to Drystan the night before he was to again swear his undying loyalty to the Church of Junan and join the ranks of the Inquisition, tasked with investigating, hun...
