Chapter 15 #2
“I can’t read with you staring at me like that.”
He smirked. “Like what, love? Like you’re the most extraordinary being to ever exist? Like you’re my entire world?”
Thunder clapped outside and lightning streaked, brightening the gray atmosphere for a flash.
“When did you get so mushy?” Thane shoved the papers back on the desk and shut the drawer loudly. “We’re not going to find anything useful in here. It’s not like he’d have the location just sitting in his office for anyone to find.”
Footsteps outside the door made them all freeze. Hel maneuvered Valeen to the desk and pushed her into the seat. Let’s play with him a little first, he said in her mind. Thane and I will be hiding over there.
She smiled and propped her muddy boots up on his desk and took out her dagger.
The door creaked open, and Rogue stepped inside, paused for a moment to inspect her with curiosity, then closed it behind him.
Like many gods he was attractive with a sharp jaw and straight nose.
His short cinnamon-brown hair was combed with a perfect curl on his forehead and a tailored coffee-colored suit.
“Who are you?” His lip curled with distaste at her boots dripping mud all over his paperwork. “Did Seffner send me an early beautiful but ruggish birthday present?”
With the tip of her dagger, she dug a piece of dirt out from underneath her nail, then lifted her chin. “You would like that I’m sure, but why don’t you look a little harder.”
He scrutinized her face and stepped to the front of his desk, opposite of her. “I know you.”
“You do.”
“Who are you?”
“It would ruin our little game if I just told you. I’ll give you a hint—we met once, the day I died a very, very long time ago.”
Recognition flashed and he moved back a step. “Valeen,” he said in surprise.
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know the portal was back open again.”
His head snapped in both directions. “You came alone?”
She jammed her dagger into the wooden desk and stood but didn’t speak.
“I’m not going to hurt you as long as you’re not here to kill me,” he said, raising his hands in surrender. “I don’t want to fight.”
“It’s funny you think you could hurt me. But I didn’t come to fight. I came for something else.”
A slow smile started at one side of his mouth.
“You are as lovely as ever, Valeen. It’s surreal seeing you here after all this time and with the ways off Runevale being shut for so long.
To behold you, someone powerful enough to do that.
..” He tsked his tongue. “There is something about primordials that just scratches an itch; rare and coveted. It’s one of the reasons I voted against your…
punishment.” His eyes flicked over her once again.
“I like the white in your hair. It fits you, moon goddess.”
Valeen plastered on a fake smile and was about to reply but Hel materialized in the chair with a civar in hand. The sweet smoke rolled out of the burning tip and curled around him. “She is lovely, and she knows it. Compliments don’t do much.”
“Hel.” He sounded even more surprised than when he realized who she was.
“Let’s skip the niceties and the part where you bore us with details about how you’ve been the last two thousand years after you sentenced us to die over and over.”
Once he got over his initial shock, he took two small steps toward the door. “What do you want?”
“My fucking immortality.”
Thane sauntered out from behind a bookshelf and Rogue whipped around to face him.
He was pale now. “War. Maker have mercy; all of you are here. I always liked you, War.” He turned to Hel, “You too. You never pretend to be something you’re not.
That’s a rare trait among the gods.” The corner of his mouth curled but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I will remind you again that I voted against that punishment. It wasn’t just nor did it fit the crime, so there is no reason to fight. I’m on your side.”
“You can’t talk your way out of this,” Hel said, then put the civar to his lips. “Where is our immortality?”
“If I told you, I’d be going against the other members of the council, which I cannot do. I can, however, call a meeting with them which you will be invited to under parley. I think it’s been long enough that tensions are down, and we can all have a civil discussion.”
“Tensions are down?” Hel rose out of the chair and kicked it so hard it crashed into the shelf behind him.
Half the books clattered and spilled to the floor.
Dust billowed up making her nose itch. “They’re higher than they’ve ever fucking been.
You sent a demon prince to Adalon to assassinate my wife .
Letting one of them out goes against your own fucking rules.
None of you deserve to be in your position. ”
“And you just killed my mother,” Thane growled.
He balked and his back hit against the window’s ledge. Rain streaked down the glass, and he grimaced. “ I told Pricilla she was insane for letting one of the princes loose. And if your elf mother is dead, it wasn’t on purpose.”
“If Pricilla sent the demon and the flowers, then you did.” Valeen jerked her dagger free from the desk. “You are as responsible for what she does as she is. All matters must be agreed upon with a majority vote.”
Rogue put his hands up in surrender then nervously ran one of them through his wavy hair. “I have been calling for a stop to this for a thousand years. Neither of those instances received a vote from me.”
“If you truly think what they’re doing is wrong, then tell us where our immortality is hidden,” Thane growled. “If you believed what you’re saying, then you would help us.”
“I can’t. I’d lose my position and possibly my freedom.”
Hel flicked his civar at Rogue and it hit him on the tip of the nose. “If you wish to do this the hard way, so be it.”
“Wait!” He gulped and tugged on the bottom of his suit coat to straighten it out.
He raised his chin and cleared his throat as if trying to regain some confidence.
Rogue didn’t have any particular power that would be useful in a fight.
What he had was an amazing ability to recall facts especially pertaining to law and order.
The only reason he wasn’t head of the council was because they didn’t think he was ruthless enough.
“It is against the law for any single god or goddess to possess the immortal weapons, as was decreed during the peace treaty between the Primevarr and Drivaar in section 108. Soulender and the Sword of Truth, if found, are to be safeguarded by the council in the decreed vaults. We are chosen from the gods of all territories to be the rule makers and enforcers, to ensure justice for all on Runevale. I’ll arrange an exchange. ”
“Do you practice that speech in the mirror in the mornings?” Hel jested.
“Section 108 also states the weapons are not to be used again unless there is a unanimous decision among every council member. Now, since you used and killed with Soulender, Valeen, you broke the law, but I can argue you’ve served enough time as a mortal.
I can guarantee they won’t get my vote to use Soulender against you. I’ll arrange an exchange.”
“You’ll arrange an ambush.” Valeen shook her head. Did he think they were fools? As if they hadn’t dealt with these people long enough to know they couldn’t be trusted. “No.”
“If you give us the weapons we’ll give you your immortality. It’s simple. You can’t expect something for nothing, Valeen.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Thane’s nod to Hel, and he interjected, “Your daughter, Amelia,” Hel began.
“I bet your wife and the council don’t know about her.
The half- breed ogre. I don’t know if there’s ever been a half-ogre half-god.
According to section 234 of the Decree of Eligible and Ineligible Breeding for Gods and Goddesses, she is an abomination.
You’re not the only one who knows the laws, Rogue. ”
Rogue’s eyes widened and his spine erected. “I have no such child.”
“Oh, they definitely don’t know about her.” Thane looked at Hel with a smirk.
“I don’t imagine I’d admit to sticking my cock in a hideous, stupid ogre let alone impregnating one either.
The child must be grotesque. And the council would have you removed and have her destroyed.
Reproducing with one of the forbidden creatures is illegal, god of justice.
But that was the draw for you, wasn’t it? The forbidden.”
Valeen got a visual from that description that she never wanted in her mind. Yuck.
Rogue tugged at his collar. “You have no proof. This is a salacious accusation.”
“Or was it the size of her? Nine foot tall, moss instead of pubic hair, the strength of ten men? Maybe you liked to be dominated by a swamp beast.”
“Shut up.”
Valeen’s nails bit into her palms as she watched Rogue begin to crumble. This would either end in a fight or a revelation.
“You’re a submissive, I see,” Hel said. “And poor Amelia has gone her whole life not being claimed by her father. I think it’s time, don’t you?”
Rogue bared his teeth. “I cannot do that!”
“Pity, I’ll just have to tell her and the Dunekor ogre clan. I’m assuming you compelled the mother to forget, she doesn’t know you’re the father either. Pricilla will find a note with information to lead to the child, along with the others on the council.”
“Hel, please .”
“I love the groveling stage.” Hel’s cruel eyes darkened. “It’s also the part where we make a deal.”
“I can’t tell you where your immortality is.”
With a flick of his fingers, a circular swirling pool the size of a dinner plate opened above his palm. “Oh, she has red hair. That was unexpected.”
The scrying pool revealed a green-skinned ogre with dark red hair, stooping down with a bucket in her hands at the edge of a river.
Her face was pretty, goddess like, and she was slighter, smaller framed than a typical ogre.
By her size and youthful yet mature features, she must be in her upper teen years.
What looked like a burlap sack wrapped around her body for a dress.
“Nobody could look at her and think she was fully ogre,” Thane said.
“And she looks oddly like you even being green,” Hel added. “Those same brown eyes.”
Rogue stared, as if mesmerized by the image.
“Maybe I’ll snap my fingers, and a very deadly snake will appear.
We can all watch as she suffers and let’s face it, she isn’t immortal, so she’ll die.
It’s not a good way to go. The slow suffocation isn’t pretty.
The gasping for breath, it’s even bothersome to me.
I wonder, would she call out for her mother? ”
“Don’t!” Rogue cried, reaching forward.
“Where?” Hel snarled.
“I don’t know. There was a time they were hidden in a vault, but Pricilla moved them.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“I don’t know, Hel, I swear it. But I can find out.”
He snapped his fingers and Hel’s red serpent appeared on the rocks at the shore of the river beside Amelia. Valeen gulped. Hel, she silently pleaded.
Stay out of it, Valeen.
He would kill the girl. Murdering innocents went against everything in her, but this was war. And war made monsters of many.
She is a child, Valeen said in Hel’s mind.
“I won’t ask again, Rogue,” Hel growled. She is an ogre and a bargaining tool, he silently argued back.
The snake slithered silently over the rocks, inching closer and closer to the girl.
“I will find them! I will find them and send you the location. Just don’t hurt her!”
The snake reared back to bite the unsuspecting ogre and Hel snapped his fingers again, and his serpent vanished.
“You have three days. If I don’t have a location by then, everyone in Runevale finds out about Amelia and then three days after that, she’s dead.
” He clamped his palm closed and the image of the ogre in the woods vanished.
And just so he didn’t forget about this meeting, Valeen would leave him with a reminder. With Soulender in her palm, blade tip pressed to his throat, she gripped his dark hair.
“Wait, wait, don’t kill me. I’ll find out!”
She gritted her teeth and gently dragged the blade across his throat, lightly piercing his flesh, until blood ran down like a stream of red but wouldn’t kill him. With Soulender, the scar would never go away.
“Remember this moment, Rogue. Do you know what it’s like to die over and over?
Do you know what it’s like to be kept from those you love for thousands of years, forced to start over with no memory of them?
This will not end peacefully. This will only end in war,” Valeen said.
“We could have ended you and your daughter today, but showed mercy that you never showed us. You say you didn’t vote for what was done to us, but you didn’t stand in the way either. ”
Hel held up three fingers. “Three days, Rogue.”
“We want what is rightfully ours,” Thane said. He pulled a burning torch from the wall, walked over to the scrolls and let the flames lick at the paper. Thick gray smoke rolled up the shelves into the high rafters.
“What are you doing?” Rogue howled. “That’s my life’s work!”
With the paper as fuel, the wooden shelves quickly caught flame. The shadows darkened in Thane’s face as the fire burned brightly behind him. “Your life’s work for my mother’s life.”
Hel grabbed them both as the heat sweltered and they were pulled into darkness.