Chapter 6: Interrogation at Dusk
The western forest swallowed them whole. Under the gnarled oak canopies, the light fractured into jagged green shards that did little to dispel the gloom. The air was thick, damp, and alive with the scent of rotting leaves and something sharper—ozone and old magic. Kaelen’s boots sank silently into the moss, each step a concession to the soft, hungry earth. The obsidian ring was a constant, low-grade thrum at the base of his cock, a persistent reminder of his borrowed purpose.
Nivix led the way, her movements quick and sure over the uneven ground. She kept glancing back at him, her orange eyes gleaming with open possessiveness. Sprix, the fire mage, floated a few feet off the path, her nose buried in a small leather-bound book even as she navigated the twisting branches. A pale, plum-sized crystal orb hovered near her shoulder, casting a soft, reading glow. Flixi marched solidly behind Kaelen, her chainmail clinking a steady rhythm, her shield strapped to her back. Her husband Nelin was a silent shadow above them, his small shirtless form darting between the high branches with preternatural grace, his black-on-black eyes scanning the terrain.
They’d been walking for an hour when Flixi broke the quiet. “So, hero,” she said, her voice loud in the hushed wood. “Let’s have it. Why’d you do it? All the songs say you were the purest of the pure. ‘Kaelen the Unbending,’ they called you. Now you’re here, wearing our queen’s collar and following an imp through the muck. Makes no sense.”
Kaelen kept his eyes on the path ahead. The question wasn’t hostile, just blunt. He’d expected it sooner. “The songs leave out the verses about what ‘purity’ costs.” he said, his voice low.
“Yeah?” Nivix chimed in, dropping back to walk beside him. She peered up at his profile. “Cost you what, exactly? A fancy title? A pat on the head from a doddering king?”
“A village called Oakhaven, for one.” Kaelen said. The name felt like ash in his mouth. “It was on the royal supply route. King Gilroy declared it was hoarding grain. He sent Kirk to make an example.” He paused, the memory a cold stone in his gut. “Kirk didn’t just confiscate the grain. He burned the storehouses. With the people locked inside. Women, children. He called it ‘purging disloyalty.’ I arrived three days later. My men and I buried what was left of the corpses in a maked mass grave.”
The forest seemed to grow quieter. Only the soft thump of Sprix’s book closing broke the silence.
“I confronted the King.” Kaelen continued, the words coming easier now, drawn out by the path’s monotony. “I showed him the evidence, the testimony of the few who hid. He looked at me from his gilded throne and said, ‘Kirk gets results. You should learn from him. Examples prevent further... misunderstandings.’”
Flixi spat onto the moss. “Bastard.”
“So you just… switched sides?” Nivix pressed, her curiosity sharp. “Because of one burnt village? You know we have burned villages too. Probably not with people locked in their homes but war is a bitch.”
“It wasn’t just one and you expect it from your enemy. Not the people who swear oaths to protect you!” Kaelen’s jaw tightened. “It was the pattern. The ‘Bandit Lord’ in the southern marshes who was just a farmer defending his polluted water from the King’s mining guild. The ‘heretic cult’ in the capital that was petitioning for cleaner plague-quarters. Every time I raised my sword for the crown, I later found I was standing on the necks of the people I swore to protect. I was the unbending tool of a rotting hand.”
Sprix drifted lower, her orb dimming. She cleared her throat, a soft, nervous sound. “The… the report on Oakhaven...” she said, almost whispering. “I read it. In a captured intelligence packet from the human quartermaster’s office. It was filed under ‘Logistical Consolidation.’” She looked at Kaelen, her orange eyes wide behind her spectacles. “It listed the estimated tonnage of grain confiscated and noted the ‘successful pacification of local sentiments.’ They could have at least buried the people they 'pacified'.”
Everyone stopped walking. Nelin landed soundlessly on a low branch, peering down.
Sprix fidgeted with her robe’s sleeve. “I read a lot of their documents. The order for the locks on the storehouse doors was requisitioned two weeks prior. Signed by Kirk.” She blinked rapidly. “I didn’t say anything. Who cares if some humans kill their own? Still... it always bothered me.”
The admission hung in the damp air, a tiny, devastating truth. Kaelen looked at the small, purple-skinned mage, seeing not a demon, but a scholar who had stumbled upon a horror filed between grain taxes and saddle repairs.
“See?” Flixi said, slapping her thigh. “Even your own paperwork rats you out! You were serving a monster who makes spreadsheets on genocide.”
“And that's what makes your... our queen different. I've seen her brutally, first hand. It's honest. It's efficient. But most of all, it's honorable.” kaelen admits.
Nivix nodded, her voice losing its playful edge. “She doesn’t lie about what she is. She’s a demon. She conquers. She takes. But she doesn’t set fire to her own people and call it accounting.” She poked a clawed finger into his arm.
"That's why I choose her." Kaelen said, the ghost of Oakhaven's smoke still in his voice. "Action is the only truth that matters. I chose a side that doesn't hide its brutality behind parchment and seals."
He met Nivix’s gaze directly. The collar felt heavier in that moment, not as a shackle, but as an anchor. "Our queen owns what she is. I can serve that. I can’t serve a lie anymore. The truth is, my king tolerates my existence because he knows that the prophecy is his only hope. We pushed this far, spreading ourselves thin, to get me to her throne and fulfill the prophecy. Now that I have failed... it's only a matter of time before a blade finds it's way into my back. And the order to put it there will have the king's seal on it."
Sprix's eyes widened in sudden understanding. "And if you had killed her, he'd sign the same order... You'd be just as hunted. "
Kaelen sighed heavily. "Either way, I've outgrown my usefulness to him. I ask inconvenient questions. I'm a loose end."
A soft rustle came from above. Nelin dropped from his branch, landing without a sound beside his wife. He leaned in, his lips almost brushing Flixi’s long, pointed ear. His whisper was a thread of sound, taut and urgent. Flixi’s red eyes narrowed, then widened slightly in understanding. She nodded once at her husband, who melted back into the canopy above. “Good question.” Flixi said, her voice cutting through the forest’s damp hush. “So you saw the rot. You jumped ship. I get the moral crisis, hero. But that’s not the whole story, is it?” She adjusted the grip on her shield strap, her gaze analytical. “Nelin pointed out that the prophecy is rock solid. Every bard from here to your capital can sing it by heart. ‘The Unbending Blade would defeate the Demon Queen, crush her throne and cleans the kingdom of corruption.’ That is you, right?”
Kaelen’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. “Flowery words set to a lute.” he said, his tone flat.
“Don’t give me that. All the other prophecies came to pass. Those words shaped a kingdom. They put a sword in your hand and an army at your back. You were supposed to be the perfect weapon, aimed right at her heart.” She gestured vaguely eastward, toward the fort and its queen. “So what happened in that throne room? The songs say you'll fight for a day and a night, defeating our queen. My mother used to scare me into bed at night, claiming that you, the human hero, would slay me if I didn't go to sleep... Next thing I know, I'm meeting my childhood nightmare, in the flesh, and he's... a dog on a leash. Did she beat you? Enchant you?” A crude, hopeful grin split her face. “Seduce you?”
Kaelen kept walking as his mind replayed the events of that night. He recalled exhaustion, the crumbling walls, the way Lilith’s final, desperate srike had been a thing of tragic beauty rather than evil, and her look of disbelief when her weapon shattered. “The prophecies where accurate.” he said, each word measured. “I was an actor who forgot he was reading lines. In the silence, after her weapon broke… I finally heard my own thoughts. They weren’t about destiny vanquishing evil.”
Nivix snorted. “They were about her legs, weren’t they?”
“Partly...” he admitted, which drew a surprised chuckle from Sprix. “But mostly, they were about her eyes. There was no lie in them. No pretended righteousness. Just will, and loss, and a fury that matched my own. I defeated her, just as the bards said I would and her life was mine to take. But I realized there would be no justice in claiming it. What I truly desired wasn't to take her life, but to be a part of it. This is the only way I could see that happening. So here I am. A dog on a leash.”
Flixi shook her head, red hair bouncing. “You’re a strange bird, hero. You trade one master for another because the new one’s prettier and doesn’t pretend to be nice.”
“I didn’t trade a master,” Kaelen corrected, a rare heat in his voice. “I chose a cause. One that doesn’t ask me to call murder ‘tax collection.’” The collar felt warm against his skin, a constant, tactile reminder of that choice.
Sprix floated closer, her book forgotten, clutched to her chest. “The prophecy… it was so specific. The ‘Unbending Blade shall break upon the Midnight Throne, and from its shards, a new dawn.’ The bards loved that line.” She tilted her head. “What if you did break? Just not the way they meant?”
Her question lingered in the damp air, unanswered. Nivix’s fingers tightened on the simple leather lead attached to Kaelen’s collar. She had been thrumming with a giddy, possessive power since leaving the fort—the legendary terror of humankind, her personal attack dog. Now, she listened to the quiet conviction in his voice, saw the unflinching way he acknowledged the queen’s brutality as honesty. This wasn’t a broken prisoner or a beguiled fool. He was a man who had made a calculus, who had chosen this leash with clear eyes. The leather in her hand suddenly felt less like a toy and more like a responsibility, a physical token of a trust she hadn’t fully appreciated. She didn’t yank it. She just held it, her earlier smirk fading into thoughtful silence.
No one spoke. The only sounds were the crush of moss underfoot, the distant drip of moisture from leaves, and the soft, rhythmic clink of Flixi’s chainmail. The forest path wound deeper, the oak branches knitting a tighter canopy that stole the afternoon light. Sprix tucked her book away, her orb dimming to a faint ember. Flixi’s loud bravado evaporated, replaced by a watchful vigilance. Nelin became a ghost above them, an occasional rustle in the high branches. Kaelen walked in silence, his eyes sharp and mind clear. The confession had shifted something, neutering the casual interrogation and hardening the group’s focus. An hour passed this way, a long stretch of shared, purposeful quiet where the only communication was a lifted hand from Nelin or a sharp glance from Flixi.
The path finally began to slope downward, the air growing cooler. A new scent undercut the rot: woodsmoke, but old and stale, laced with a greasy, foul undertone. Nelin dropped down, his bare feet making no sound. He pointed through a final screen of thick, thorny brush toward a shallow valley below. His black eyes were wide.
They crept forward, parting the brush with care. The village of Elmhollow lay in ruins. It was small, maybe a dozen huts circling a central well. Three were fully collapsed, their thatch roofs caved in. Others bore the blackened scars of torch work around their doors and windows. No movement stirred in the overgrown common. No laundry hung. No chickens scratched. The only signs of recent life were deep, muddy ruts from wagon wheels leading back toward the human lines, and the dark, buzzing shapes blanketing a heap near the well.
She gave a disgusted scoff. “They didn’t even bury them. It's just like Oakhaven.” Flixi whispered, the words a harsh scrape. Her knuckles were white on her sword hilt.
The heap was refuse. Broken furniture, a shattered loom, and among it, the unmistakable forms of two imps, their wings torn and bodies left for carrion. Nivix’s stomach turned. This wasn’t battle. This was spite.
“Report, Nelin.” Flixi said, her voice stripped of all its earlier levity. It was pure communication.
Flixi's husband melted away, a blur of motion skirting the tree line. He was back in moments. “Less than days old...” he murmured, his whisper barely audible. “The tracks lead west-southwest, following the old trapper’s trail. Heavily loaded wagon. Maybe eight men on foot. Their prints are… sloppy. Drunk, maybe.”
“Looters and cowards!” Flixi spat. “They hit a defenseless place, took what they could, and desecrated the dead. Hard to tell if they are deserters or Kimg's men.”
Kaelen stared at the broken village, his face a stone mask. He’d seen this before, a hundred times, but usually on the other side—arriving too late to a scene his own kingdom’s 'defenderd' had created. The rage was a cold, familiar pool in his gut. This was the true face of the righteousness he’d served. “The trapper’s trail follows the river for a league.” he said, his voice low and flat. “It bottlenecks at a rocky ford. They’ll be slowed there if the recent rains have the water high.”
Nivix looked from the ruined village to Kaelen, then down to the leash in her hand. The weight of it was different now. It wasn’t about her boon, or her thrill. It was a tool for this. She yanked the leash, not hard, but enough to make the collar press against his throat. He didn’t resist, his eyes meeting hers.
“You know their tactics.” she stated. “You know how they think. So tell me, attack dog. How would you run them down?”
He nodded. “They’re burdened, overconfident, and likely hungover. They are either deserters or pretending to be. Either way, there won't be much discipline in their ranks. They’ll have a rear guard, but it’ll be sloppy. Nelin finds their exact position. Sprix and Flixi create a diversion at the ford, something loud and chaotic to bunch them up.” He looked at Nivix, his gaze direct. "You and I come from the high ground on the opposite bank. We cut through the center while they’re confused. Don’t let them form a line. They’ll break and run."
A fierce grin spread across Nivix’s face. It wasn’t playful anymore. It was all teeth. “You hear that, team?” she said, glancing at the others. “We’re following the hound’s nose. No quarter, no prisoners. Tonight they draw their last breath! Let’s go.”
She turned to lead the way, following Nelin’s silent path along the ridge. As they moved, Flixi fell into step beside Kaelen, her voice a low mutter. “You gave those orders pretty easy for a guy on a leash.” She wasn’t accusing him. She was assessing.
“The leash isn’t on my mind.” Kaelen answered, his eyes tracking the terrain ahead. “Oakhaven is.” He gripped the chain connecting his wrists. “Besides,” he added, the ghost of something bleak in his tone. “I’ve had a some practice hunting deserters.”