The Ghost's Crusade

XII: Tiernan (cont.)

Again the crazed man's 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. How can you not have recognized those mutilated markings on her neck?”

“And what exactly are your findings?” Tiernan asked, intercepting Akkali's attempt to lunge and spear the man with her fist 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 want 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 limit. 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 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 beneath Drystan's hateful glare. “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—it's 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 has him!"

Basilides hurled Drystan back with an unexpected amount of strength, turning around and lobbing a scarlet disk of flame at the Inferi which he deflected with the tails of his coat. A cursory glance made him realized that the Inferi's coat was hexed somehow as it was only smoking and not completely ablaze, but Basilides 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 scrambled away on two legs and a hand. “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 the Empire!”