"Tell Kanénas his father wasn't lost in the battle of Greenhorn. He is alive."
It was a long shot; for them to assume that Caleb would want to see Julian again. That Caleb would send out and sort of reinforcement after one man, but Aldarn was desperate. In the three and a half years of Caleb's 'being', Aldarn knew that there had only been one single person, that Caleb would waste soldiers on. And call him a coward, but Aldarn didn't want to venture into the mines himself.. But there was Will now, and Caleb seemed to have learned that with Will, went the girls. And he'd saved Drake.. And Caleb was reaching more and more urgently for normalcy, so it would make sense if he'd told Will he had a father.. And it was a dirty trick, but if Will heard Caleb's 'father' was alive, Aldarn might just have a chance to see his Aketon again.
It was with this in mind, that Aldarn walked through the markets; there was far more activity, since the rising of a sun, but Aldarn knew it wasn't as good a sign as they were hoping for, and besides; he'd always wanted to show Caleb a sun.. But they had one on Earth and apparently to Caleb the first sunset was amazing, but in his last visits, it was almost taken for granted - Caleb was getting used to Earth, and Aldarn wondered if after everything, the boy might finish things with Phobos and disappear forever: he seemed much happier with Will, and Aldarn knew too well that Caleb had previously planned to off-himself when all of this was over. But either way, Aldarn would be left alone; no one would stand up for him against Drake, and Aldarn would no longer be the Rebel Leader's second. "Have any of you seen a very annoying passling?"
And there was Blunk; that final ray of proof that Caleb was a changed man, because Caleb had always been the quietly aggressive; slit their throat and don't bother to ask any questions, because he probably knew the answer anyway. But the passling followed Caleb like a bad smell (literally); the passling was like a pet, and Aldarn knew it had started just to piss Will off - because the passling could scent-track a portal, and what Will didn't know would only serve to make her angry when she found out, but the passling was still here. Alive. Breathing. And basically free as a bird, whereas Caleb had always been ridiculously strict when it came to spies and outside workers. "And what this? ...Box full of.. HOLDERS FOR GLASS EYEBALLS!"
Aldarn watched as the small crowd grimaced, and people moved on from the mystical Earth stock; the passling didn't ever seem to pick up anything useful. When the crowd had dispersed enough, Aldarn approached with a queasy stomach. Dirty tricks had never been his strong point, "Blunk! You need to find Caleb and tell him something important.. His father is alive. He's prisoner in the underwater mines.. A-along with my father.."
"Captain Blunk.. Father in underwear mines!"
Aldarn frowned at Blunk as the passling laughed at his own silly words, and Aldarn couldn't help but wonder how this of all the spies, was the one that got to live.. "No, no, no! Under-WATER mines."
"Water.. Good." Aldarn watched the passling scuttle away, and wondered what he might've done..
...
"..Thought Jeek ought tell Phobos.." Prince Phobos snarled at the polluting stench of the beastly creature, who pressed it's entire body against the marble floor in a deep bow, and yet the insufferable roach couldn't even afford to use his proper title.
"So Passling, you don't know the name of the man the metal-smith recognized?" Prince Phobos grinned when the passling jumped a little from his loud voice echoing around the empty room; little knowing of how the Prince's lungs burned at the taste the air had taken since the supposed Jeek's arrival.
"All names lost in mines.." Prince Phobos couldn't withhold a flickering smile at the creature; it was smarter than it's speech-pattern had suggested. "Prisoner broke tool on purpose."
"He risked a lifetime of imprisonment, to only leave temporarily.." Cedric's voice was low; not timid, but respectful, as he looked up at the Prince. "He's warning someone."
Without a word, Prince Phobos nodded and dipped his hand into the scything sand that he threw over the stone to create images of each individual miner. "There! There!"
Prince Phobos opened his eyes and smirked at a thin, paling man, whom looked about as lively as the bodies which were left to rot in the murmur room until his souls ate their very flesh, because they couldn't feed from his energy alone now; no, Elyon ought be proud, since she'd arrived and the link had been weakened, Phobos needed to feed his captive plants. But this man, he was very much alive inside that feeble corpse of hair and skin. And he would have to be something, if he was worth risking a life for. "I know him, he was meant to have perished in the battle of greenhorn! He was in high kudos with the last rebel leader!"
"A little respect Cedric," Prince Phobos grinned, knowing that high kudos with one rebel leader, would probably mean the same for another. "This man is about to become very useful to us."
He didn't have the power to open a portal, but Prince Phobos grinned. Princess Elyon was about to prove her use; if she could light a sun, she could certainly open a measly portal.. To tempt the beast. And quite possibly a butterfly.
