fleets: Thanks once again for your support! It's very much appreciated, especially during these busy times :) Also, I'm working on a deviation with Condor and the dogs so you can see what they look like.

Chapter 11: The Devil

The Devil:

Ohhh intriguing. The obstacle takes the form of The Devil. Cunning evil. And how interesting! Someone will abuse their authority in a terrible way.

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It was a few hours of complete and utter boredom for Vaati before anything remotely of interest happened. He'd sat patiently to see what they were planning to do to him for an hour, and then he'd gotten impatiently bored of the soldiers and the occasional dog things to walk back and forth in front of his tent. He had been able to spend a few minutes occupying himself by staring at the map hanging on the wall. There was a red circle in the middle of the ocean that was next to Guam, and he figured that was where they were now. But, there was only so much time he could spend looking at a map before he fell back to painful, painful boredom.

It would have been better if someone had talked to him. Din, he would have preferred it if someone had tried prisoner abuse on him so he could surprise them with sorcery and laugh in their faces.

He figured there had been strict orders not to talk to the captives. Having nothing to do other than sit and stare blankly ahead, Vaati had even opted to take a nap. When he'd woken up, everything had been left the same as before and he'd returned to the world of boredom.

Becoming impatient and unable to tolerate sitting still for so long, Vaati had been just about to make his bold escape when a person walked into his tent and asked the guards by the entrance to leave. Vaati quickly redid the shackles he had undone and pretended he had been sitting obediently on the ground.

"So what am I wanted for this time? I'm pretty sure nothing is ever going to beat the one where people wanted to get me for attempting world domination," Vaati sneered, leaning back defiantly. He was in for a shock when he got a better look at the… thing… that had walked into his tent.

It was the closest thing he had seen to a monster in this age – metal, skull-helmed Cyclops with black tendrils streaming behind its head. The only thing that gave it a sense of humanity was the suit it was wearing, but the contrast accentuated the monstrosity instead of alleviate it. Vaati almost lost his composure like Dugal, but he was used to monsters. Instead, he stubbornly tried to hide the fact that he had been startled.

The Cyclops closed the tent behind it and spoke in a flat, robotic voice. "You are only slightly less cheeky than the last time we met, Mr. Engst." There was a pause, and then, "that was supposed to be sarcasm, but it's a little difficult to project that with this voice."

That threw Vaati for another loop. "We've… met before?"

"Briefly."

It was then that Vaati's attention moved away from the thing's head to the suit. It was a black suit accented with a bright blue tie. It couldn't have been… could it?

"You may not remember me much, so let me introduce myself again. I am Condor, former member of Talon Three."

Vaati said nothing for a while. He vaguely recalled Dugal calling his driver "Condor" two years ago during the Avilux incident. The man had sported forgettable features of an average white American person. Now his face was anything but forgettable and certainly not average. When he finally decided to say something, all he could manage was, "Holy Farore… what happened to your face?"

Condor shrugged, and gave a small chuckle that came out as raspy static more than anything. "I get that a lot." The man refused to explain, dropping the topic. He knelt in front of Vaati and brought his single eye closer to the mage's face. "I will get straight to the point. There is something Mr. Dugal has that is potentially dangerous for a mere civilian to have and use like a toy. Do you know anything about it?"

It was a surprise after surprise after surprise for Vaati. First a monster Cyclops thing comes to talk to him, then he finds out it's actually Condor, and now he's being told that Dugal has something powerful. Of course he'd suspected Dugal to have a few tricks, but if he'd known that the sneak had something like that then…

Then I would have taken it for myself!

Vaati tried to keep his face from revealing too much emotion. He played it cool. "Can you describe it to me? I may have seen it before."

"Unfortunately we cannot. We only suspect that he has something of an extraordinary nature because I believe he has been to one of the strongholds of zerons, or in layman's terms 'magical artifacts.'" Condor paused. Then, he let out an impatient sigh and started again. "Perhaps it will be easier if I asked you about the floating Palace?"

Vaati stiffened. Of course he had anticipated the fact that one day, people were going to find his Palace of Winds, but deep down he never expected it to happen. Actually scratch that, deep down he'd expected it to happen – he just always wanted to ignore it and turn a blind eye.

And now the government, probably one of the worst organizations to become interested in his home.

Condor continued to stare with his unblinking red eye. If there was anything Condor was really, really, good at now it was to stare someone down. He couldn't help it – the man couldn't blink.

Vaati remembered the long wait he had suffered before Condor had shown up. He narrowed his eyes, and stared straight back. "What did Dugal tell you?"

Another thing Condor was great at, now that he lacked facial muscles, was showing any revealing emotion at all. "The Palace exists. You know about it."

Now, Vaati wasn't sure if he should take that as something Dugal had spilled, or if Condor was just messing with him and had that information to begin with. Before he could make up his mind on how to proceed, something very weird happened. The best way he could describe what happened was that it felt like being pulled into a bucket of jello. The colors swirled, and he thought he felt someone tug his arm. The thing that bothered him the most about the whole experience was that he lost track of the sense of time, and it brought back memories of the timeless existence he had lived while being sealed within the Four Sword.

Ugh, what awful memories.

Then, the sensation ended abruptly like a splash of cold water and he dropped onto a pile of leaves. "Oof!" He shielded his face with his hands from a few leaves that whipped across his face.

"Wait a second…" Vaati brought his hands up to his face in surprise. They were no longer in shackles. What had happened to them, and where was he? He was clearly no longer inside the tent with Condor.

"I know you may be disoriented, Mr. Engst, but I need you to hurry to the temple with me."

Standing over him, Dugal was fixing his tie like nothing had gone wrong. He checked his prosthetic arm, moved it around a few times to make sure it was okay, and then glanced at Vaati impatiently.

This was probably the last surprise Vaati could take in a row. He finally lost his cool and pointed at Dugal, flabbergasted. "You just… you just used magic!" he accused.

"Magic? I know no such thing," Dugal replied smoothly.

"You have…" Vaati began, standing up. Then, he stopped himself. This wasn't the time to pry, even though he was sure Dugal had just used whatever it was the government wanted to let the two of them escape. The man had a tendency to clam up, or even become nasty and bitter if someone tried to figure out his secrets. Vaati didn't care if Dugal became a pain – the prick already was – but Vaati wasn't stupid. Their lack of teamwork had allowed them to get caught in the first place, and he was curious they were finally going to be able to see the temple. He could just find out whatever it was Dugal had later – it shouldn't be that hard to confiscate from him. The wind mage started again. "Right, so where is it?"

Dugal huffed, and motioned Vaati to follow. Vaati resisted the urge to summon a light in the darkness, and carefully trailed after the man to avoid stumbling. He almost ran into Dugal when the man stopped abruptly. "Here."

Vaati didn't say anything, questions running through his mind. Looking back over his shoulder, they didn't seem to be anywhere close to the beach where the government soldiers were camped. Just how had they ended up where they were now? Is he able to teleport, or is there something else?

And for the love of Nayru why did we stop in front of a large rock?

"Wow, that's an impressive temple," Vaati quipped sarcastically, motioning at the rock that was surrounded by the tropical brush.

Dugal snorted. "Just watch."

He brought his prosthetic arm closer to the stone. On closer look, Vaati admitted its perfectly smooth face did resemble a door – he recalled how cleverly hidden some of the temples could be. He also noticed a figure eight pattern engraved on the rock. It had been difficult to see in the darkness, but he recognized it when Dugal traced it with his mechanical fingers to make sure it was there. There was a faint clicking sound as the man fiddled around with his mechanical arm, but Vaati couldn't tell what he was up to since his back was to him. In a few seconds, the figure eight pattern glowed a faint yellow and an entrance appeared in the rock as the rock face vanished into a stairwell.

Vaati was about to take a step towards the stairs when something caught the corner of his eye. Dugal caught it, too, and they both swung around to face the scattered red lights that were closing in on them at a frightening speed. The darkness of the forest appeared to move with the flickering red lights like an ominous black wave. A savage growl of dogs on a trail accompanied the wave.

"They're fast!" Vaati violently grabbed Dugal's wrist and warped them as far down the staircase as he safely could. The entrance of the temple closed automatically as soon as the two were inside, and they were left with the angry howling and whimpering of the Shadow Hounds clawing at the sealed door. In utter darkness, Vaati could see nothing. "Well I hope you knew exactly what you were doing when you got us into this mess."

Somewhere next to him, there was a slight cough. "Actually I was thinking you could do what I hired you to do and find a way through this temple." There was an embarrassed pause following a crash, indicating the Talon leader had taken an uncharacteristic stumble down the stairs. "Starting now, Mr. Engst," Dugal added irritably shortly after.

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A few dozen red dots surrounded the hidden entrance that Dugal and Vaati had disappeared into. They Shadow Hounds easily melded into the darkness, and only their mechanical red eyes were clearly visible. One red dot cut through the group of red dots gathered around the stone and made its way towards the front. Condor's silhouette lifted itself out of the shadows in the ground and solidified.

He placed a hand on the faint hourglass mark engraved on the rock and gave a gentle pat on the hounds that were gathered around him. He'd left the rest of the soldiers by the beach, as they would only work to hinder him and the hounds. They were creatures of shadow now – they were the only masters where there was no light. They didn't need soldiers clumsily trying to follow them through the forest.

"They disappeared behind this?" Condor asked the hounds even though he knew they couldn't answer him. They continued to bark at the rock and paw at it with their oversized claws. He looked at it for some time longer, and then he pressed a button located on the edge of his metallic face. There was a small sizzle of static, and a voice answered on the other end. It was a flat, cynical voice that held a sliver of amusement.

"Hello?"

"This is Condor. The targets have escaped, and as suspected they are capable of sorcery."

"Oh, that's wonderful they escaped!"

Condor hesitated. "Er… wonderful?"

The voice laughed. "Oh no no, I mean, it's not wonderful you have to chase them down again. What I mean is that we now know that they can do sorcery as predicted, and it's wonderful when I'm right."

"They've disappeared behind a stone with an engraving of an hourglass. I suspect it's some sort of temple like the floating Palace."

"I see. Well, there may be something I want in there. Let them find it, and corner them when they do."

"Yes sir."

"And have you attached the interference device somewhere on Vaati?"

"The Engst boy? Yes sir. It was attached on the back of his belt while he was unconscious."

"Perfect! Now they won't be able to go to anywhere but Guam, where we'll be waiting for him and Mr. Dugal." The voice paused to talk to someone else, laughed drunkenly for a few seconds, and then returned to Condor. "Right, so go and find out what they're doing. Good luck."

Condor was about to hang up but the voice hurriedly stopped him.

"Oh, and before you go just one thing."

"Yes sir?"

"Let them think they're winning this chase. There's nothing more priceless than taking away someone's sense of victory." The voice whispered, "Am I right?"

"… Yes, Mr. Secretary."

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"Thyme, do you know what my hobby is?"

"I can name a few. Being impossible. Lying. Making weird things that shoot water and gasoline."

"Those aren't hobbies. That's just a part of what I am."

"Whatever."

"My hobby is figuring out the things people are hiding. I want to know every one of everyone's secrets. Except maybe intimate information – there's such a thing as knowing too much."

"Sooo you're basically a creeper."

"And then I can blackmail them to do my bidding!"

"Sometimes I wonder why no one has ever tried to kill you."

"What makes you think no one's ever tried?"

"All right, I give up. You win."

"Sometimes it's easy to find secrets. Sometimes you just have to corner them, and see what they do once they think they're out of options."

"Are you talking about torture?"

"No need to back away from me like that, Thyme! Do I look like someone who would torture someone?"

"I don't know…"

"Pfft, I would never stoop to that level."

"I feel that the stubborn ones would clam up even more if you corner them."

"And that's why you have to corner them, but at the same time let them think they're smarter than you. That's basically what the government is doing, to corner Talon Three. You'll see. The government is going to win."

fleets: Sorry, it's one of my shorter chapters but I had to cut it off here. I introduce yet another character this chapter, a 'Mr. Secretary.' If you know your honorifics you'll know that it's a title. :P But yeesh I have so many characters running around in this story it's getting hard to keep track of them all.
Still don't really know what happened to Condor. Don't worry, I'll get to that. Just not now.
Thistle and Thyme are back again! It's been a while since we last heard from them. I know Thistle's convo sometimes sound like pointless nonsense, but he's been dropping subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle hints every time he appears.
But like Condor it'll only make sense later. Hehe sorry guys! :P

Midna Hytwilian: Haha thanks!

Purplegc: Thistle's not going to appear for a few more chapters, but it's soooo close! I can't wait until he's in this story for real instead of just hiding behind dialogue with Thyme. I read about it a year ago, so it's fairly recent. You should also check out the robot drones they're trying to develop to fight for us instead of sending infantry to the frontlines. :O It's getting crazy out there.

Lord Lithos Maitreya: Ack, sorry! Thanks, I'll see this to the end, don't worry :) ('specially since I have a really fun ending in mind that I really, really want to write).

Reily96: He went through something, but what, and whyyyy? I'm not telling. XD At least not for 1-2 chappies. And I made Dugal lose his composure once again. He's losing his touch lawlz.

Sapphiet: Hawkeye was the name of the university newspaper, which he was the editor of. It wasn't actually his nickname until Dugal just stuck that label on him ;)

henslight: Hmm, I think you might be thinking of Harrier (the guy who wouldn't die). Condor didn't really show up other than as Dugal's car driver. And yeah, all those guys are getting what they deserved but at the end of the day they're only human. Everyone makes mistakes, and in this case it was a serious one.

SubZeroChimera: Orrrr those two finally get their shit together and have something work for a change :P

msfcatlover: Yeah I think he'd appreciate the badass title. Though the badass title is still hard to keep since he's still following someone's orders. Condor's a follower type of guy hahaha.

Kate: They got out of it pretty easily this time, actually. Well, for now XD. And hurrah new account! :D