their leaders. If we cut the heads off, the—”
“The bodies will flounder. I know.” Valaine sighed, visibly dismayed.
Corbin finally returned, parts of his gold-and-silver armor blackened by the flames. He dragged a Darkling by a rope as he rode his Vision. The captive was in terrible shape, covered in bloody gashes and scrapes, but he was alive.
Behind him, the Crimson guards had caught another three faction members. There was a sense of pride beaming from this group of soldiers, and Corbin grinned. “Needless to say, there will not be any other Darkling raids in these parts.”
“The master commander let one of the Darklings loose, but he cut off his arms to send a message,” one of his soldiers added. “It’ll take months, maybe even a year or two, before they grow back. But the humiliation will never be forgotten.”
“It’s time we clean this place up,” Corbin replied.
“You’re a traitor to our cause!” one of the Darklings shouted, scowling at Corbin. “You should know that what you’re doing will kill us all!”
I frowned. “What is he talking about?”
“How the hell should I know?” Corbin grunted. “These are maniacs.”
“Kill her, before we all die!” the Darkling insisted, pointing a trembling finger at Valaine. My blood ran cold. Corbin, however, kept his cool. “Kill her, or the Scholars will come for you!”
“Take the prisoners away,” Corbin said. “Put them with the others.”
The Darkling managed to get dangerously close to one of the Crimson guards’ swords, his hands gripping the handle as he tried to pull it out of its sheath. “Kill her or I will!” he snarled.
Corbin dashed off his horse and ripped the Darkling’s head off, without so much as a breath. Seconds passed in silence as Corbin stared at the head in his hands. The body dropped to the ground, blood seeping through the grass and dry dirt. I had never seen Corbin like this before, and it did make me wonder, until I drew the connecting lines. Corbin was as dangerous as his daughter if he had no other choice. The two were more alike than either would’ve been willing to acknowledge.
“Well, that’s one Darkling we won’t get to interrogate,” Valaine said.
The other captives were speechless and horrified. Corbin tossed the head aside and nodded at them. “But these are still breathing. At least for now. Let’s leave it at that.”
“I do like how you preach self-control to me, when you lose yours so easily.” Valaine chuckled softly.
Corbin waved her away and got back on his Vision, guiding it toward the front of the caravan. “Let’s keep moving. We still have a long way to Astoria, especially if we keep bumping into these fiends.”
Our guards collected the Darklings he and his men had just brought back, then shoved them in the cage with the others. Overall, it did feel like we were making significant progress, but I still felt wrong and out of place.
I worried that feeling would linger until we found Zoltan Shatal. I wanted to avenge Nethissis’s death, but I also wanted to prevent Valaine’s. Given these objectives, this Green Road had to lead us to Zoltan, eventually.
But we were halfway through, and we had yet to pick up any intel on his whereabouts. Sure, we had Darkling prisoners, but finding Zoltan himself was still far away, a mere blip on the horizon. My only hope was that my sister was faring better with Kalon and his treacherous brother. Maybe she’d be in touch soon with a location for Zoltan.
The quicker this nightmare ended, the better.
Lumi
Sidyan and Maya were able to pick up minute traces of Seeley and other Reapers in the palace basement. Invisible to the living Aeternae soldiers charged with investigating that enormous maze of underground corridors and rooms, the three of us had spent the first ten hours of our visit to Visio combing through the entire place.
Maya had used her ghoulish nose to capture familiar scents of Reapers, but she had frequently come back to Sidyan whispering and shaking like a leaf. “She’s smelling a lot of ghouls,” Sidyan had concluded at the time, without giving me additional details.
Needless to say, I was growing increasingly frustrated, since both he and Maya seemed to know more than me, at this point. Eventually, after casting several death spells, Sidyan had finally found a spiritual trail for Seeley. Staying close to him, I’d followed as we moved through a tunnel, passing by gold guards and Rimian workers tasked with removing the rubble that had come down.
The Darklings