Chapter Seven #2
“And I thank you for your efforts; I really do.” Catseye smiled. He hummed a tune as he pulled a blade from his boot and plunged it into the captive’s heart.
Gasping, Helspira clamored forward. “What are you doing? I thought we needed him alive!”
“Apologies for the miscommunication,” Catseye said, horrifyingly nonchalant, as he removed the blade from the wailing captive.
“I should’ve been more specific. We needed a fresh body, an unaligned body.
Ownership of a soul transfers to the resurrector postmortem, so no amount of torture would’ve yielded results with Vessik’s undead.
It’s impossible for them to resist his commands, and even if they could, as soon as the brain rots, memories rot along with it.
Undead don’t even know where they are, let alone where Vessik’s been hiding. ”
Helspira’s gaze flitted to Ben before she arched a brow and glimpsed Catseye again.
“I know that look,” Catseye replied with an enigmatic grin. “Benjamin is a special case. Unlike this poor guy here. Soon he’ll decompose, and he’ll be as mindless as the rest of Vessik’s undead, so we best resurrect him and quickly pry loose whatever information he holds.”
“Hey”—Ben grasped Catseye’s arm—“are you sure you can pull off another spell just yet?”
Catseye positioned his fingers in preparation, smirking as he leaned his scythe against the statue. “I’m sure you and Helspira can handle the interrogation. Catch me when I fall, will you?”
“By Dionus’s mercy,” Benjamin groaned. “Don’t—”
Too late. “An’stisei tus necrouz.”
As life returned to the corpse, it drained from Catseye. He seemed fine for a second—fine until his body jolted, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he could no longer stand under his own power.
Ben caught him before he hit the ground, two bony limbs sliding under his arms.
Helspira gasped, Chthonian curses rolling off her tongue, before she could remember the Siapharian phrase for moments of shock. “Is he all right?”
“For now.” Ben grunted, readjusting Catseye’s dead weight. “Can’t speak for his health when he comes to, since I plan on kicking his ass for being a reckless idiot.”
The resurrected captive gagged and gripped his chest. “Gone gods,” he sputtered. “There’s a fucking hole in my heart. Am I bloody dead?”
“Sort of,” Ben muttered. “You get used to it.”
“Fuck me.” The captive retracted his hand to gawk at the blood and bits of tissue. “I knew that creepy necro-bastard was up to no good the moment he stepped foot in our village.”
“You mean Vessik?” Helspira asked, begrudgingly transferring her concern for Catseye onto their prisoner.
The captive shrugged. “Doe-eyed, lanky fella? Dark brown hair down to his shoulders? Pathetic excuse for a beard?”
Ben confirmed the description with a nod. “That’s Vessik.”
Helspira frowned. Given how unflattering the captive’s description was, there seemed to be no sign of veneration for Vessik at all. “I don’t understand. If you don’t admire Vessik in any way, why were you fighting under his name?”
The man spat a mouthful of blood on the ground.
“T’wasn’t on my own accord, love, I promise you that.
He and his little army came into our village, muttered some caster mumbo-jumbo and bam, an entire shit storm broke loose.
Whoever had the grit to withstand his mental manipulation either joined his forces out of fear or he killed and resurrected them. ”
“Impossible,” the banneret barked. “Spells of that power would’ve killed any caster regardless of skill.”
Helspira bit her lip, mind racing. “And from what I’ve heard, spells that threaten a person’s free will are among the hardest to execute.”
With care, Ben lowered Catseye, who seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, to the ground.
“This isn’t the first time Vessik has surprised us with his newfound abilities.
He and Sikras both failed their wizardry apprenticeships.
By all accounts, Vessik is an awful caster, but the last few times we faced him”—Ben shrugged—“we were shocked by what he could do. Sikras said it was implausible.”
“Well, I’ll be sure to tell the rest of my village how implausible this all is,” the captive muttered with a sour face. “Oh, wait. They’re either dead or meat puppets.”
Helspira gave the man’s arm a reassuring squeeze. “We’re here to stop Vessik before he does any more damage. Can you tell us where he is?”
“I don’t remember anything after he took over my thoughts,” the captive admitted.
“All I could hear afterward was his voice telling me how peaceful death would be, that life was the only thing worth fearing and how death was the release from that fear. He said the kindest thing I could do was take as many people as I could with me to the grave. He had either turned or killed half the village of Stow’s Peak by the time he got to me.
Whether he’s still there is anyone’s guess. ”
“Stow’s Peak.” Rowan grunted. “That’s the smallest village in Nyllmas. A pinprick on a map. And it’s not far.”
“Simple place to take over, great place to lay low,” Ben offered. “Next to no imports or exports. He could easily hide there without notice.”
In the two years she had served in the Red Sentinel, Helspira had neither heard of Stow’s Peak nor had visited it. She sent the banneret an inquiring look. “Has the R.S. ever looked into—”
“No.” Rowan swiped his nose and rounded his shoulders. “There’s never been any indication that Vessik is holed up in Stow’s Peak. How do we know this bastard isn’t lying?”
Helspira rested her hands on her hips. “With respect, sir, if it’s all we have to go on, shouldn’t we at least try?”
From the ground, Catseye grunted, propping himself onto his elbows, as his head lolled loosely between his shoulders.
“Did we get the information?” he asked, words slurring.
“We’ve only one or two days before this guy decomposes.
Five days tops before putrefaction sets in and he really starts to smell. ”
Ben gave Catseye’s shoulder an affectionate pat. “Lay back down before I make you lay back down.”
Catseye obliged, a puff of dust kicking up from where he collapsed, but his garbled speech still flowed from his lips like a thick syrup.
“Is he gonna be our sherpa? Lead us to Vessik? Pack some essential oils, Benjamin. Sandalwood is a personal favorite, but I also carry lavender and patchouli should anyone need to borrow some.”
“We’re set, pal. Just rest.” Ben’s skull twisted between Helspira and the banneret. “That’s it, then? We’re leading a company to Stow’s Peak?”
Banneret Rowan scoffed and stormed away, but not before uttering in an authoritative tone, “I’ll discuss the finer details with the queen. We leave at dawn.”
Fixating on the banneret as he ascended the stairs helped distract Helspira’s scattered thoughts, but when he disappeared through the castle doors, she was left only with the chilling order he had given.
Her gaze shifted to Ben, who loomed over Catseye like a worried mother hen, and it only made her knees weaker.
Under the guise of inspecting the fallen necromancer, she knelt, but if she were being honest, it was merely a convenient excuse to take the pressure off her shaking legs.
It didn’t help when Catseye looked at her and managed a weak grin. “I see that look of dismay. Don’t worry. If we stand upwind of him, the smell won’t be so bad.”
Helspira attempted a smile. Catseye seemed entirely unaffected, emotionally at least, for someone who just killed a man and ripped his soul back from Enos two minutes ago.
Perhaps, for as detached as he already was, losing Ben wouldn’t break him entirely.
He’d recover. People lost loved ones all the time.
But Ben wasn’t just Catseye’s companion. Not anymore.
He was one of the precious few people who had offered her an olive branch—one of the only people who treated her like a person and not a demon. A man who offered her an alliance, a friendship, from one abomination to another.
Which was more important? The kingdom that had taken her in or the first person to have made that kingdom feel like a home?
Helspira’s head spun, and she pressed her fingers into her temples.
It wasn’t just her life on the line but her mum’s and da’s as well.
Dire circumstances in Chthonia had already stolen so much from her mum.
If Helspira wanted to protect the precious mental clarity her mother managed to keep, it was imperative that she never enter that wasteland again.
And the banneret wasn’t the type to spout threats that he didn’t intend to follow through on.
He would exile them to Chthonia at the drop of a hat.
Two years out of that nightmare of a landscape, and for the first time since leaving, she felt just as trapped as she had when the magma lakes and the monsters of her childhood had surrounded her.