Chapter 399

It was a surprise when the two left them 'relatively' alone, though the possibility of undetectable guards kept the Black Scripture captives sharp and on their toes. Conversation was muted, though it was only when the meals were laid out on the various beds, every belly rumbled in such perfect unison that it mimicked the distant thunder of gathering storm clouds.

Still, they hesitated.

"Fuck it." One Man Army said at last, "It's not going to bite us and they made a point, if they wanted to kill us, they could have done it already. Why capture us just to poison us, right?" He said and went toward the bowl laid out on the bed where he'd been placed as if it were 'assigned' to him. He snatched up a steaming hunk of bread, thrust it into the stew, then shoved it into his mouth under the watchful eyes of his comrades. 'Take that, you worthless bitch.' He thought toward his vanished sister. Where Clementine had gone was a mystery, all he knew was that they stopped looking for her years ago. 'Which means she's probably dead.' He thought, though how, that was another question. Even so he couldn't help the spiteful thought and the open display of his own loyalty to his comrades.

Loyalty had never been so delicious. "It's good!" He announced and took another bite. The chains of the bound up scripture rattled as they dove for the food all at once.

Tenghe covered his sigh of relief with a sigh of contentment at the satisfying meal. The fear he felt of poisoned food had his heart racing so fast that it still hadn't slowed down. 'The way some poisons kill… that's no way to die.' He thought as he reflected on some of the more sadistic acts of the third seat, a Surshana worshiper with a penchant for necromancy that the team, including Raymond, kept quiet about out of both practicality and loyalty alike.

He stuffed his mouth more eagerly than most of the others, the flavors were hauntingly familiar, almost human dishes, but not quite. 'Are these dishes the sort of things that demihumans eat? I wonder which kind.' A good meal had a way of settling the heart down, though his eyes, ears, and nose were more alert than ever with the possibility that they were being guarded even at that very moment.

"So do you think we're really being watched?" The Divine Chain asked.

The Divine Chant was quick to answer as she swallowed the contents of a silver cup, a large quantity of red juice from a fruit she didn't recognize, the flavor burst on her tongue and delighted her senses, and having savored it, some of her anxiety melted away. 'Why treat us like this if they're going to kill us anyway?' She asked herself that more than once while eating, and now, looking at the empty tray with an eye of some regret, she came to a few conclusions. "I think so. There are at least a dozen ways to watch the interior of a room by magic, so why lie about someone being here? Why go that far? They've already shown that they can stop us in our tracks and," she yanked the chains which hung limp between her wrists so that they were straight and taut, "that they can hobble us." She looked around the room, searching the empty spaces, "Don't mind us, guards, we can't really help but talk about you. No hard feelings, alright?" One of the beds moved back and forth, slightly banging the wall.

"I think that was their way of saying, 'It's fine.'" Alain said and leaned against the wall.

"What makes you say that?" Cedran asked with a grunt and glared at the bed that had just moved.

"If it weren't fine, there'd probably be pain involved. I'm guessing." Alain retorted, "So… I guess… we have to figure out who goes where. There's no way out of here right now. Even if we had our weapons… Cenna is not likely to just let us leave."

A grim rumble went up from the collective Scripture. "A wedding… he wants us at a wedding… of all the half mad, no, fully mad things I've ever heard… and to a demihuman, a dragonid no less." The Sixth Seat rubbed his face like he was trying to wake himself up, being slighter built than the others, he had to look up to most of them, but what he lacked in height he made up for in skill and raw stubbornness. "I just can't believe the Captain would really betray us all, this has to be some kind of a plot. A demihuman conspiracy… and what were they talking about with the fate of our nation or however they said it…?"

Alain looked down at the stone floor, 'We're trapped here… even if what the Captain said is true, that doesn't make our circumstances better. What if we can't escape, what then?' Time Turbulence tried to think like the cardinals. 'Raymond is in charge of all the scriptures, he won't leave us to languish here…' He gasped, the cool air of the midland between the Theocracy and the Holy Kingdom filled his lungs. His sudden outburst had everyone's attention on him.

"Raymond sent us out here. He won't leave us to die, even if we were regular soldiers, I'll bet he'd sit down with a monster to save our lives, that's the kind of man he is. He'll mount a rescue with the other scriptures, and if those get captured…?" Alain couldn't finish the sentence, he simply couldn't. The very idea was too horrific to say out loud.

But he, and the rest of them all thought it. 'The Scriptures are humanity's enforcers, we take down monsters nobody else can, when we can't do that and monsters appear, they'll try the army… but if the army is busy with monsters, what's controlling the slaves… by the Six…'

Suddenly the Slane Theocracy, a place they'd believed was indomitable and rested on a bedrock foundation, was more like a sandcastle by the sea, and the tide was slowly coming in.