Wiping away the last of the tears from his face, Velderoth climbed to his feet. He was all cried out for now.
Heliseum, then? He had only the clothes and light armour on his back, his sword and the potions – courtesy of Edea – in his pocket. If that didn't scream split-decision, he didn't know what did.
Yeah, Heliseum.
Heliseum was big. No, the word 'big' didn't do the city justice. It was grand, huge, giant, enormous, gigantic, massive, gargantuan and every other word he could possibly think of that had the general same meaning.
It was a city of juxtaposition, with white stone shining brightly against the inky dark sky, with tall, sharp-looking buildings and curving bridges, with an air of heavy discipline mixed with silent grace and awe. It was beautiful in a strict, controlled and militaristic way, unlike Pantheon, a city of worship and peace turned into a refugee camp and temporary fortress.
It was like nothing he'd seen before, and yet it all felt so familiar like home.
Kyle and Tear would have loved it.
Unfortunately, the awe he felt at the sight of Heliseum mingled and mixed with the dread. He'd be facing Magnus soon and his stomach was stirring in a very nervous and sick way –
And, there wasn't a single soul within the entire city. At least, none he could see or hear.
When Heliseum had been taken over, the Nova had been driven out. That was what he'd been taught. The unsaid, though, was a large cause of his stomach's swirling. What about those that couldn't be evacuated in time?
The endless army of Specters, the self-destruction of the former Kaiser or the blade of the tyrant traitor. None of them were good choices to die by, and neither gave much wiggle room for anybody left behind.
There was a sound. A small sound, maybe something like a click of a fingernail against a smooth, heavy piece of rock. In a ghost city, even that sound was too loud and out of place.
He spun around to see two Specters staring at him with blank white eyes. His sword was out and in his hand, a force of habit.
They didn't attack – they just stared. Their semi-peaceful stance made him remember just what he was here to do. "I'm not here to fight," he said to them in what was hopefully a non-threatening manner.
"Obviously not, boy," cackled a man's throaty voice very near his ear.
Okay, so he hadn't managed to pick up the source of that sound coming up behind him.
His first instinct was to spin around and confront the source of sound. Years of training had replaced that instinct with another instant but far smarter reaction. Instead of turning his back and leaving his blind spot to face the Specters, he turned quickly in a way that had his back facing the side of the street where a convenient statue of a dragon stood. Now, Velderoth could see both enemies at the same time.
His new enemy didn't look like much – a bizarre redheaded Nova scientist-looking guy with more bald spot than actual hair in a dingy robe – but that eccentric smile creeped him out.
Velderoth raised his blade, just a bit. "Who are you?"
The scientist in the dingy robe bowed slightly – mockingly. "No need for violence," he croaked. "I am Treglow."
Something engulfed his hand with what could only be described as a rocky mouth. Both of his hands. Sword and all, all the way up to his wrists. "What the hell?"
The . . . things were alive, but not by much. They looked more like floating rocks with faces drawn on them than anything, and yet they held on like they'd suddenly become his two hands. Velderoth struggled to try and stab the thing with the sword from the inside, but it didn't budge.
"Now, now," Treglow crooned. "Like I said; no need for violence. You're a guest."
Pantheon didn't have many guests; it was hard to be welcoming to foreigners when there was a protective shield around the city twenty-four seven. Velderoth, however, was pretty sure that restricting their guest's movements and dragging them halfway across an enormous city was not how guests were treated. He voiced his opinion, adding on some creative words to try and hide his fear.
"If you keep struggling and swearing," Treglow told him, "then I'm afraid I'll have to make you an experiment of mine. We wouldn't want that, now would we?"
The redhead looked like he wanted it very much and would have loved it if Velderoth just gave him an excuse. Velderoth shut up.
"Good," he beamed, the spitting image of a psychotic doctor about to cut him up. "Welcome to Heliseum. We have a population of three – four now, including you – Nova and five battalions of Specters, as well as several squads of back-up forces."
At his look of confusion Treglow's smile grew wider. "It's a wonderful city, don't you think?"
Magnus was deep in thought when Velderoth was escorted (correction: dragged) into the citadel. It was a beautiful building, carved and stacked out of the same white polished stone the city was created out of, but it was dark, and all the artistic depictions of the tyrant weren't exactly things that cleansed his mind and refreshed his eyes. They were good art, yes, even a person like him who didn't particularly care for art could see and marvel at their incredible life-like qualities, but the model was the thing he had an issue with. One Magnus in this world was far too many. Hundreds of copies of the original model did not change Grandis for the better, not by a long shot.
When he was 'escorted' closer to the tyrant by the weird stone-life things still firmly gripping his hands, he saw that the dark-haired Nova was doing exactly that: modelling. A floating frame with a piece of beige leather stretched in between was painting on a canvas with a glowing extension of some sort of psychic energy and a brush.
Ah, that explained the hundreds of art pieces depicting the narcissistic tyrant around here.
"Lord Magnus," Treglow said, bowing. The rocks finally spat his hands out and Velderoth rubbed his sore wrists. One of them still had his sword inside of it and he wasn't sure how he was going to get his weapon back before his head was chopped off.
The tyrant simply sat there on a stool and the floating ring with the stretched leather and feathers simply continued painting.
Velderoth looked at Treglow to see if the redhead was insulted at being ignored – by a floating object with psychic hands, no less – but the brainy-looking man had simply taken out a notebook and begun to scribble in it fiercely, the light of a maniac in his bespectacled eyes.
Okay then.
He had two options. One was to remain silent and wait until they got to him. It could take hours, possibly days, depending on the length of time it would take to finish the portrait or end Magnus's patience. There was a possibility that he would be killed for not getting to the point and loitering around like a freeloader.
The other choice was to speak out loud and dare to be noticed. Of course, he could be killed for insolence – for speaking out against turn.
In the hypothetical worlds he'd practiced in, both options had led to his death. Deaths.
But in his last try, one of the two options had taken him to being the tyrant's personal secretary, in charge of all the paperwork that came in and went out of Heliseum.
Velderoth took a deep breath. "Lord Magnus," he said, and bowed just as Treglow had done.
The tyrant didn't look at him. He didn't move even his eyes while posing in a thoughtful way.
So he hadn't done anything particularly offensive enough to warrant a torture or execution. Velderoth continued on, slightly encouraged. "I'm here because I want to join you," he said, simple and to the point. "I want to be strong. Like you," he added hastily because a little flattery could go a long way with a narcissist. "I need to be strong. Stronger than Kaiser."
That was pretty much the basics of it all. What else could he say?
Not much. It wasn't a speech that would land him a career in politics, that was for sure, but there was little else he could add without confusing or contradicting himself later. He needed to stick to the basic storyline.
"Strong?" the voice was so quiet Velderoth wasn't sure if he'd actually heard it. "You need to be strong?"
His guide standing behind him shuffled very quickly away from him. Velderoth should have been smart and done just as Treglow did. But the redhead had already ducked behind a sculpture of Magnus and before his brain could actually kick in, the tyrant who had been posing almost harmlessly but seconds ago was already standing in front of him, sword at his throat.
He froze. This was the scenes from his practice sessions come to life. Come to reality, where death actually meant death and not waking up on a stone alter, Edea waiting with a form of liquid for him to drink.
Death meant not going back after all this was over to redeem himself.
A flicker of fear must have gone through his face, because Magnus laughed. "Scared?"
Velderoth clenched his teeth. Yes. He needed to go back and make it up to everyone and death was going to get in the way of that. And, okay, the unknown realms of death scared him no matter what those religious freaks said about the wonderful afterlife of heroes.
He was scared of death, of pain, of being tortured and caught as a spy and of leaving Tear and Kaiser to forever wonder about what had happened to him. Or worse, forget him entirely.
Heroes would have considered the latter more fearful. He wasn't a hero, and the former absolutely terrified him.
But there was no going back.
Magnus leaned in. Velderoth could smell his cologne for some reason, sharp and distinct, as he froze at the yellow eyes coming closer to his face. "You should be."
Well, at least he'd reacted properly right before his death. He didn't have his sword, but surely a quick finger or a thumb to the eye could leave the tyrant's sight damaged or blind and give everyone fighting him back home a slight edge in the future –
Magnus removed the sword point from his neck. Velderoth nearly fell over in shock, still vibrating with the coiled-up readiness to spring himself at the tyrant's cruel golden eyes. "Strength, hmm?"
"Uhh . . . ." what the hell was this?
A chance.
He straightened up. Traitor or not, Magnus was a man who liked control and command. Who would be better trained as an obedient subservient than a former knight of the Nova? "Yes sir."
"Huh," Magnus sat back in his seat and resumed a similar posture to before. "Good choice."
Good choice?
"If you're going to betray your people and your city, do it for a worthy cause," Magnus elaborated. "Not something stupid like eternal youth and beauty or avenging your dead wife. Power – now that's a worthy cause."
Velderoth didn't have a wife, dead or otherwise, and he wasn't too interested in eternal beauty, but he nodded. "Yes sir."
The tyrant turned to him with half-closed eyes. "Of course, that should be the end of your record. If you ever betray me, you'll wish that you were dead."
The words were sing-song and Magnus grinned slightly while saying them. It was even more terrifying than when the sword had been at his throat.
He didn't have to pretend fear when he answered. "Of course," he echoed with his suddenly raspy voice.
"Dismissed, then."
"And this is your new room," Treglow swept the area with his hands. "The Third Guardian of Heliseum's very own sitting room."
Velderoth looked at it with a numb mind. It was dusty, he noticed distractedly. And empty.
Hard to sit in an empty room.
"You'll find the office behind the right door, the bedroom behind the left and the bathroom facilities connected to your sleeping quarters," Treglow continued cheerfully. "There's still stuff left over from the previous guardian, but you'll get time to renovate everything to your heart's content."
This room was around the size of the Heliseum Reclamation Base. Bigger, even.
And it was all his.
Dusty, empty, cold stone . . . .
Fancy, like everything in Heliseum. Elegant, he supposed. Grand. Fine. Awesome.
So why wasn't he feeling the joy?
"You'll start your strengthening process tomorrow," Treglow smiled brightly. He looked genuinely happy about everything. Like he was on drugs. "Have a good night."
Velderoth stood in the entry point until the door closed behind him, and then he reached up to pinch his cheek until it stung and throbbed painfully. It still felt like a dream.
The main chamber of the guardian was dusty and in no means suitable for sleep. The bedroom didn't look much better, but it was smaller and a bed with neutral-toned sheets was there. A few shakes got rid of most of the dust from the blankets and pillows, and he left the window open to let the disturbed traces of abandoned years out.
The bed creaked and groaned at the weight it was unused to supporting for a long time, but it held. It was actually a lot more comfortable than the cots they had in Pantheon. Luxuries left behind in haste, maybe? Hard to carry beds when you were fleeing for your life.
He glared at the ceiling.
Oh, screw it all, this wasn't working.
He knew what the cause of that niggling, gut-tightening feeling was. It was him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
This had been all too easy. Like a fairy tale.
It would be one weird story, something to rival a creation of Tear's when she was bored. How would it go?
Once upon a time, there were two boys who were friends. One of the boys began to feel frustrated because his friend became better than him. He left home and went to join his people's worst enemy and traitor because by turning traitor to his people he could potentially gain more power than his friend. The traitor accepted him without question after hearing a few words describing his reason for abandoning his people. Happy ending.
Simple enough, sure, but it just wasn't realistic. Was this all an elaborate set-up by Magnus and co. to trick him into relaxing? Would he be taken in the night again, only this time to be tortured and interrogated?
Why was it this easy?
