Chapter 25 - The Persuading.

Meanwhile, at the Ancient Temple, Lance paces in his room with a grim look on his face and his fingers curling in an uncomfortable fashion as his knuckles turn a searing white from the stress. Feeling his value in the hunter ranks slowly deplete. Knowing once he's of no use, he'll be killed.

Charles however was wallowing in his cell, the noises from the prison cells were silent and most inhabitants had accepted their fate, whatever that might be. But he had still refused to let up on his escape plan, trying to convince the prisoner next to him to help reach for the keys.

"For the sake of the gods...just help me!" He begs her as she remains hidden in the shadows, away from his outstretched hand.

"What's the point...where would we even go if we did escape? Hm?" Her gravely voice spoke in a heavy and lowered tone.

"Anywhere is better than here...we have no idea what they plan for us, we need to get out now!" He says clanging his chained wrists against the side if his cell.

"I smell fear...and something else when they're taken...it isn't right"

"Then help me and this will go a lot quicker!" He asked and asked until she lets out a defeated sigh, prowling in the shadow and keeping away from the light.

Her brown skin was laced with ash and dirt while her nails were only growing larger every day. She gazes into Charles cage with her yellow iris glowing bright into the moonlight.

Then it hits her, she looks up and sees a starry sky with a corner of the moons light bracing into the room. A crack in the cave walls above her cage that she never thought about before...the one that lights her dingy cave with the briefest pure light.

"Its been so long since I've been outside...running free...free to hunt and protect my pack..." she murmurs.

"But this place goes deep underground...if there's light shining through then there's a way out up there" she admits to him as he looks up in an alerted manner.

He starts to conjure plans in his head on how they could shimmy through the crawl space, knowing his bulky shoulders wouldn't fit.

"Maybe that'll be your exit...but i wont get out that way"

"I know, but if i stay here any longer...ill just disappear like the rest, I cant let that happen"

His brows crease along with his forehead in confusion. Before the door to the cell room swings open as Lance storms straight towards Charles cage.

"Well...guess somebody made a lasting impression, your stunt made him want to speak to you... personally!" His tone was agitated and jealous.

He squints past him outside the door he stormed though, seeing more figures move quickly through the mine of tunnels. But he was interrupted when Lance opens the door and unlocks his shackles, dragging him to his feet and leading him out of the cells. Pushing him forward with rough intentions, leading upwards towards the temples base.

After a few moments of quiet tension they arrive at the rebuilt throne room, giant doors that hummed with magical energy.

"Brace yourself, you never know when you might die around our king...try not to grovel, he hates that." Lance sneers at him, pushing a button that opens the doors, but a fuzzy membrane of a barrier stands still in its place, everything in its field was slow in motion, the fire danced in the torches with a jaded shimmer.

"Walk."

Lance shoves Charles shoulder, making him accidentally fall through the barrier, passing straight through and landing on his knees. Looking up from the ground through his matted and greased hair into the throne room. He had many dreams of a place that looked a lot like this...but he never knew it'd be here.

He closes his one eye and struggles to his feet as his cuffs shatter from his wrists, he felt the same magical energy pulsing nearby when he helped the prince, but this time it was much more powerful. Like comparing a regular ocean wave to a tsunami, making Charles back shudder in fear as he approaches the end of the draping room.

Opening his eye once more to gaze upon an empty throne, its outer case was solid gold, with horns and tusks curling to the shape of the seat, the entire size was matching the ceiling, glazed with its back to the wall with the gold spiraling up the wall like vines and rose thorn, he was awe of the beauty, and why such a thing was even down here.

Massaging his tired wrists and ripping part of his shirt to clean the excess infection around the socket, wincing as a slight tear falls down his cheek, while the other was a gruesome black mess...one that couldn't be fixed.

"ah...the human"

A cold and deep voice calls out to him, coming from a balcony that surrounded the upper level of the throne room. Standing in watch with his jagged armor clasping around the banister. his mask was truly alike a glorious stag melted in molten gold.

But the eye holes in his helmet were slits, unable to see an ounce of his real face.

"Human?...seems odd for you to say that...considering you're human yourself." Charles speaks in a blind confidence, sprouted from panic.

"I am the furthest thing away from your petty, meaningless species...for I have the power to seek, destroy, and revive..." he mutters, jumping from the great high and landing on the marble flooring with a ground shaking thus, crumbs of building fall from the ceiling.

"Yet you stand there with your gall...its amazing how you still believe you can accomplish anything beyond what you are...what you were meant to be..."

"I was meant to be who I pleased...you don't have to right to judge me! Kidnapping humans?!" he yells back in response, but the king barely had to move to even make the ex soldier back away from his, right into the seat of the throne.

"Yes...and what exactly did you want to be...the right hand to the queen? to take the spoils of being commander over your rightful brothers?"

Charles could feel the old him creeping up from behind, Trying to force his mind from looking weak while suppressing his fear from magic users to the side...but the trauma slips out in tiny slithers, the bodies of the people he used to protect used in guttural warfare...only to be used as giant food in the awakening.

"Oh...it was to rule over it all wasn't it? to let them kill each other and you'd set up in their place...like a filthy coward"

"Why are you doing this?! TELL ME!"

The king grabs his leg and throws him across the throne room, rolling along the carpet with no major injuries, but he still struggled to get up. The King sits in his now empty throne, staring into the soul of his prisoner, not an ounce of remorse or care in his eye.

"Because Charles...you cant stray from the path that's been set...we can only follow it"

He pauses, raising his hand while a faint blue hue spreads from his fingers outwards, as two soldiers drag in the werewolf from before that feasted of the elf in the cells. its snarling feral behavior on full display, cutting and biting at the soldiers carrying it, but their eyes were faded over like they weren't even awake.

They chain the wolf to the floor in the center, just behind Charles and in full view of the King's eyes, its growls and whines of pain in its shackles only made it angrier, Charles looking at the King with a stern brow.

"What twisted games are you planning?" he spits as the king scoffs, lifting his hand and casting a circle big enough for the two to fight in, encasing them in an arena.

"I haven't witnessed a good hunting in awhile...i wonder if you're still up to the task"

And with that, he snaps his fingers and the feral werewolf pounces on Charles without warning, causing him to scramble for dear life, his head inches away from the burnt out circle encasing them. The King smiles and scoffs under his helmet.

"Just a tip, don't go past that circle...it'll burn hotter than !" He lifts his arms triumphantly to him, but Charles was once a revered second in command. He knew how to fend off the beast.

With a confident kick, he shoves the werewolf off him and to the other side of the burnt out arena. A yelp of pain coming from its chattering snout. Its leg just past the outline in the ground, the leg pulled inside quickly but the beast could no longer walk on it.

Its thin stature was wobbly enough due to its starvation, but the added pain of the spell cripples the beast to its knees, no longer able to fight...its whines echoed widely throughout the throne room.

The king wasn't amused and sighs disappointed.

"I was expecting more of a fight from such a creature...end it, Accrington." He orders him to finish it, put the poor beast out of its misery.

But even now as Charles stares deeply into the wolves eyes, even though he was feral, he could see the man beneath it and the pain that comes with. Caged in his mind to a murderous side he was likely born with.

Charles squints and backs away from it.

"It isn't my place...or my right to take its life...neither is it yours" he mutters, making the kings head tilt in curiosity.

"I'm sure...but the point of humans is to take...give in to your nature and take this beast's life before I do it myself!" He yells, his deep and demanding voice shook Charles with its thunderous effort.

"No!"

"What?"

"I said no...my entire life I tried serving and protecting people that made me important...not once did I save anyone that didn't benefit me!"

The king listens to him closely, his armored hands clenching around the arm rests of his throne.

"Far too long...and for what?! It went tits up the moment I strayed from that life...the moment I landed here! So if you think that im going to sit there and ta-"

His sentence was cut short in the middle of his inspiring monologue.

The king raises his hand to prevent him from continuing and stands abruptly, the clanking of his heavy armor shifts when he moves an inch forward.

"Touching...but i dont hold the same sympathies"

And without hesitation, he draws forth a sword, its blade splitting into a chain. Slashing downwards and striking the wolf where it knelt, missing Charles by a hair.

He falls to the side, gazing upon the remains of the creature, split in multiple pieces with the urami digging in and out of its back like barbed wire meshed with flash and blood.

Until the king pulls on the hilt harshly, making the urami coil back into a great-sword, mashing up the body and like nothing but bloody pulp of hair and bones. Charles' eyes was still and laid on the king with a shocked gaze.

"Now that's been dealt with, we'll proceed with why i brought you here..."

"I thought you brought me here to watch me die?!"

"Oh this?" He pokes at the dead body with his great-sword, disrespectfully moving parts of it with little interest.

"This was just entertainment, I figured leaving you in a filthy cell was a waste of your talents...how would you like your own place here? Among my ranks?" The King edges the question along with the tip of his great-sword in Charles' direction.

"What?!" He didn't know how to respond, if he denied he'd likely be killed, or dropped in that disgusting prison.

However if he accepts, he could be falling into old habits...betraying his promises and giving in to fear. Conflicted he hangs his head to the floor.

"Why...why did you bring me here...why are you doing this all?" He huffs, feeling the ache in his socket grow larger.

"Hmph...did you think that being apart of the spymaster guild would just fade away, that just because you fled to Caspia and worked your way up?" The King circles his kneeling form, speaking down to him.

Charles felt his heart sink to the floor, how did he know?

"Y-you...how?"

"I have a few spies of my own, and all the scouting they've done has really opened up the possibility of you being here..."

Charles starts hyperventilating at the thought of the guild resurfacing in his memories, what they did to him to train him.

He spent many years in Caspia trying to forge a new meaning, and a new life. And for a short while he though he'd be in the clear, until now...

"Join me...and I promise you'll be heavily rewarded for your service...you have my word, that is...if you take my brilliant offer" he says with a low and menacing tone.

Charles was deep in thought, but also shaking from the fear...or was it anticipation this time?

"What do you expect of me?..."

"I want you to be the spymaster of my alliance...to be in full charge of all my spies and scouts, and you will use your knowledge to help lead the cleansing at my side"

His ears pricked at the word "cleansing" and immediately looks up to face him.

"What is that?"

"The cleansing will be the greatest thing to ever happen to this realm, and I will be the one to bring it forth...all the monsters, the humans who've grown soft and weak...all of them will be obliterated"

"Why do this? You'd be killing millions, maybe more!?"

"Yes, and a million more wouldn't even be enough...I am powerful, but even I have my limit...which is why I need something bigger, much bigger"

Closing his eye and standing tall with all his might, Charles steps in-front of the King while his attention was elsewhere.

"Will I get full access to the temple?"

The King looks him up and down for a moment.

"Why ask such a question?"

"Its just like you said, we must follow our path...we cant stray" he mutters, pleasing the King with his words.

"...Fine, you can roam the temple, but you are not allowed back to the dungeon..." The King stretches his gauntlet out.

"Then I accept" Charles relents, taking the kings hand and shaking it. Charles couldn't see, but the King was smirking devilishly under his golden stag helm.

"Finally, I was one more hour away from flaying you and feeding your skin to the prisoners" he jovially murmurs.

Unsure whether he'd made the right choice, he goes along with what he wanted, to prevent being skewered on the end of his urami great-sword.

"Come, I'll have Lance show you to your quarters...after I get my advisor to look at that ghastly wound"

Regardless of whether he'd made the right choice, he made sure he'd enjoy watching Lance squirm from having to accommodate him.

Perhaps there's a sliver-lining he thought...

They move to the back room where multiple glass vials sat on the walls and fumes permeated through the thick air surrounding the lab they'd entered.

"Where are we?"

"This is where my advisor Grenn works, hes a skilled alchemist and even dabbles in techno-magic"

Charles was overwhelmed by all the various equipment.

"Ah! And what new soul have you brought me sire? A new pet or a new weapon?" The whiny voice came from an over hand where a short scientist sat watching the two diligently.

"Neither Grenn, see to it that his eye is properly tended...Lance will be here shortly to direct him to his room"

And with that the king leaves them, Grenn stands, hobbled over with a small hump in his back, protruding slightly as he takes off his welding goggles.

Jumping down and landing without so much as a penny drop. Taking various equipment and shoving them in the direction of his eye socket.

"Dont worry, this'll be all over very soon..."

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