Chapter 17
Eldric Solwyn, accompanied by a host of Vanguard soldiers, stepped into the dungeon. He illuminated the dark dungeon with a spell that sent lights along the entire length of the musty hallway, and then he walked down this illuminated hallway, peering into the empty cells.
Once, after the first Necromancy War, there had been an influx of prisoners, most of them supporters of Mortandagh and the Deathless.
The Doldrum Isles had been filled to capacity, and Eldric, at that point, had offered this manor’s dungeon as a secondary prison.
Before that, this dungeon was not well equipped with the fixtures of a dark underground prison.
But after the Vanguard and the Aladrian government had sent their prisoners, they had also sent the necessary craftsmen and the masons to add more cells, build stronger doors, and infuse each brick with a magic-deterrent field.
The magic that was used to create this anti-magic field was effective but intentional.
Those who were with the Vanguard or fought on the Solignity side of the battle could do their magic, but those who were prisoners or arrested could not.
These nuanced rules were crafted by Eldric himself, and largely, the magic that held this place and made it an impenetrable prison, an inescapable hell, was Eldric’s own magic.
Elara Moore had confirmed what Eldric had suspected, and her confirmation after torturing Lesya and deriving the truth from her by way of the truth serum had also affirmed that Eldric’s grandson Elias was not lying.
However, because of Elias’s defiance, they had lost Clive Bane, who was at this time one of the most valuable assets of the Vanguard.
Eldric was a man who foresaw the fractures of his plan well before the first crack would appear.
He had a little bit of an idea that there was the slight possibility that Cassian might double-cross him, and that was the reason why he had crafted such intricate contracts so as to bind Cassian’s tongue.
However, he had also committed a blunder, an oversight that was not accounted for.
There had not been such spells or contractual obligations placed upon Freya or Theo or Clive Bane.
The assumption being that they would never be in a situation which would result in their being caught by Mortandagh himself.
And now it had happened. Now Mortandagh knew about this Golgoran manor wherein the Vanguard was headquartered, and who knew what else Mortandagh knew, because Clive Bane was privy to top-secret intelligence, and Theo and Freya were basically with Elias all the time.
And yet Eldric, as he walked toward Lesya Rosefield’s cell, was also overcome by a strange tinge of grief.
He had grown fond of Cassian. In fact, he had begun to trust Cassian.
Several of their latest successes had only been possible because of Cassian.
It grieved him to know that Cassian was dead, even though he was also a double agent.
Ever since Eldric had discovered that Lesya had stolen books from his personal library, he had tried to find them everywhere, in the room that Lesya had resided in at the manor, in her bag, and he had not been able to find them.
The bag was largely empty except for a few accessories of fashion.
So he assumed that the books were now back with Mortandagh, and that was a crushing defeat, because with those same books he could propagate his doctrine all across Aladria and use those books as irrefutable proof of Aeterna and how she preceded Sol.
There was a philosophy in those books that Eldric had considered not only dangerous, but downright untrue.
No gods but Death was that philosophy. It explored how when the universe was created, Aeterna was the oldest and the only entity presiding over all matters of birth, decay, entropy, balance, and everything in between, including magic and spirituality.
However, Solwyn and Solignity religion believed that the Sol-Father, the manifestation of the sun, was a god who was as old as Aeterna.
Elias, his grandson, did not care about religion enough to ever ask him these questions, but Eldric’s own son was very much a fervent follower of Sol, and it destroyed Eldric when his son died. It destroyed him more to discover that his grandson was nothing like his father.
Eldric had been plagued by dreams of the sun god ever since he was a child, and when he learned magic at Umbrveyl, he chose dream magic as his specialization to decipher those dreams, and soon enough learned that he was from a lineage of people who had been champions and scions of the sun god.
What had interested Eldric was just how opposite every belief of the Solignity religion was to the religion of death.
Whereas Aeterna and the religion of Aeternum saw death as just a door that could be used to come in and go out as one willed, the Solignites believed that death was sacred and only happened once, and any form of magic that contradicted this belief was profane, and anyone who practiced such magic was an enemy of the state, an enemy of the Solignity religion, and an enemy of life in this universe.
Such were the beliefs of Eldric, and those beliefs were passed down to him from the books of his forefathers, and the sermons of the priests who screamed from the pulpits of the temples and churches of Aladria: praise to the sun, praise to Sol.
And it was for this very reason the first Necromancy War happened, because followers of the old blood and the old religion decried all of these statements as lies.
They cast aspersions on the character of Sol and said untrue things about him.
Such blasphemy was rightly punished with death, disgrace, and imprisonment.
The one thing that Eldric Solwyn knew in his heart of hearts was that he was fighting the good fight, because how else was one able to explain the Sunflame Spear and how it had killed Mortandagh?
There was celestial magic in that spear, magic that came from the sun itself.
Nothing, no amount of reading, no amount of discussions and debates and pondering upon the philosophies of old, could sway Eldric’s mind about his religious beliefs, his political stances, and the actions that he had been a part of in the first Necromancy War.
Everything from the burning of every village to the burning of the temples and libraries was justified in his eyes, because all of those were lies spread by Aeterna, the Goddess of Death.
He stood outside the prison cell wherein the Death Shepherd of Aeterna was held, and it rebolstered his faith. If Aeterna was really the goddess who held sway over everything, if there were indeed no gods but Death, then why hadn’t Death come to the aid of her only prophet?
Eldric opened the door and saw Lesya lying there in a heap of her own filth, covered in slashes, blood and dirt caked upon her skin, her form skeletal, her eyes sunken, her cheeks gaunt.
He was most pleased to see that he had broken her completely, and yet there was worry in his mind, crawling around like a spider.
What if Mortandagh was coming to the manor with all of his reinforcements?
He couldn’t stay here any longer. In fact, after this, he was going to transfer all the resources and the manpower and administration of the Vanguard from this manor back to Umbrveyl.
For that was now the only safe stronghold in a country that was being increasingly swayed by the Grath Nomad.
The manor was being evacuated as he stood here.
His job was to take Lesya and his grandson to the Doldrum Isles north of Aladria.
There, the Doldrum Court would decide their fate, whether it would be a lifelong sentencing or an imminent death sentence.
Given the sway that Eldric had over the Doldrum Court, he knew that he would only need to nod once, and the decision would be made unanimously.
“Take her and keep her bound. I don’t want any magic coming from her hands. Better yet,” he said, and then took one of the guards’ staffs and slammed it against Lesya’s head, knocking her unconscious. “There,” he said. “All better.”
“Answer me honestly,” he continued, looking at the Vanguard soldiers. “Does this look like the prophet of death to you?”
“She just looks like a demented old bitch, Headmaster,” one of the Vanguard soldiers said.
“Exactly my point. Today she dies, and then tomorrow I will set my sight upon the Grath Nomad and put an end to this political matter once and for all. Aladria has bigger problems to deal with than some fucking necromancer.”
This statement was more for his own benefit than for anybody else’s, because his own confidence was faltering.
There were so many things to do, and so many fronts upon which to fight, and he was stretched thin.
In truth, he knew that the war would take everything from him, and that those who would stand once the dust would settle would not be victors, but survivors, for there was never any victory in war.
Only bloodshed, destruction. An endless death.
Death was all that prevailed in the end.
His mind started to stray toward the statement No gods but Death, but he shook his head clear of that. He couldn’t afford to think like that, and yet that was proof of how deeply this lie had propagated, that it was affecting even him.
Once Lesya was escorted out of the dungeon, Eldric turned his attention to the next chamber and opened the door. Inside, his grandson sat smug, angry, well-fed, well-nourished, and waiting.
“How long are you gonna keep this charade up for?” he asked his grandfather. “You know I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Eldric was tempted to pity his grandson, and yet, if it hadn’t been for his grandson, things wouldn’t have been set in motion that had now expedited the war.