Chapter 34 My Own Little World.

  Isaac tapped his foot impatiently as over half of the caravan was lined up behind two of the guards. The two guards who Isaac was certain had been traitors were the ones standing in front of the lines. Both of them were forced to stand under the annoyed and impatient gaze of the man who could literally strangle them to death with their own shadows. While Isaac was waiting to take them one or two at a time like he was going to read their fortune, Lenna had ordered everyone to stay exactly where they were and gone around ripping people out of their seats before she questioned them under the full weight of her aura. Not a single person lied about even the most embarrassing detail as she rampaged her way through the caravan.

  Once everyone was lined up, Isaac walked up to the guard who hadn’t tried to run. He placed a hand on his shoulder and then cloaked them both in shadows so it was just the two of them. The guard’s eyes went wide as he couldn’t help but look around as everyone started to murmur and his cohort looked like he was about to try to run again. “They can’t hear us.” Isaac informed him. “No sounds, smells, or even touch can be felt from one side of the shadows to the other. He explained and put his finger under the next person in line’s nose. The woman in question was instantly sent into a coughing fit as she tried to breathe in through her nose but couldn’t. The guard, cloaked alongside Isaac, swallowed hard.

  “I-Is this how you see the world?” The guard wondered.

  Isaac nodded slowly. “If it wasn’t for Lenna, Edward, Izen, and Sera, two of whom almost died today, I probably wouldn’t leave the shadows for days or weeks at a time.” Isaac confided in the guard. “So, tell me, why did you aid our enemy? The enemy that almost got Lenna and Edward killed.”

  The guard gulped hard. “I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t leak any information, I swear. I just looked the other way whenever Trevor made a report.” He told Isaac with what looked to be his most convincing face in his most convincing tone. Isaac wasn’t quite sure if the guard was lying or not, but that was why he was going to question the other guard in private as well.

  “We’ve got an hour, explain everything, one little detail at a time.” Isaac ordered the guard and listened as he did just that. The guard was being blackmailed by the other guard into going along with selling out their country and friends. The guard Isaac was talking to had stolen contraband on more than one occasion to help make money on the side. There were plenty of guards who had done it in the past but most of them had been rooted out within the last year. Trevor, the guard’s cohort, had caught him and blackmailed him with that information ever since. Usually it was just quiet complacency with other minor thefts of confiscated property or maybe a shake down here and there, but they had been careful enough that no one important had caught wind of their misdeeds.

  Everything changed when Trevor had been approached by a drow spy when he was relieving himself while escorting a caravan. The spy had given him a handful of platinum coins and promised not only more platinum coins but also transport to anywhere in the world that he wanted to go if he could help orchestrate the capture of a few big fish. Originally the target was supposed to be Thrice, the adventuring party formed from the only three competent members of the Crimson Coins, but they had been stuck with the Innerworld Inquisition. The large group of mid tier adventurers would have actually been safe, as the drow did not want to waste their spy on a handful of gold rank adventurers with a stray platinum here or there. They wanted either of the most promising adventuring parties, Thrice or the Flame Raven, or someone really important like The Blade Master or The Glinting Blade. At least, that was as much as the guard Isaac was interrogating knew.

  “Once we leave the shadows, go sit down against the wall.” Isaac told the guard with a gesture towards an open space of wall only a few strides from where they were still standing.

  “Am I going to live?” The guard practically begged Isaac to say yes.

  “It depends on what your cohort says.” Isaac told him honestly. “For now, just know that I don’t feel like killing you.” He finished and then dispersed their shadow-cloak.

  The guard gulped and walked over to where Isaac had gestured and sat down. Isaac then moved over to the runner and pulled him into his shadow-cloak as well. “If you are gonna kill me, just do it. None of this scare tactics bullshit, Darkness. I fucked up and there is no way out of this, we both know I’m screwed.” Trevor told Isaac plainly.

  “Oh but the world is not black and white, I of all people know that.” Isaac told him with a positively wicked grin. “You see, I have you for as long as I want you, so you are going to tell me everything about who contacted you, how you talked back and forth, and all about any and every other traitor in Safeharbor.”

  “I’d sooner kill myself than sell out everyone else.” Trevor told him. “I know you don’t like torture and I’m gonna get court marshaled and hung for treason anyway.”

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  Isaac sighed and poked Trevor’s shoulder, hard. Death flames continued on his finger’s trajectory and passed through Trevor’s armor and everything else that tried to keep Isaac’s black flames from his skin. A finger wide hole was rotted away in only a matter of seconds and Trevor collapsed to the ground writhing in pain and howling a scream that only Isaac could hear. When Trevor stopped for air, Isaac leaned in. “No one can hear, no one can save you, it is just you, and me, in my own little world. So how about you just start talking.”

  Trevor sucked in a ragged breath through his teeth. “Fine.” He grunted out. “What do you want to know first? And give me a healing potion, it’s hard to think, through all this pain.”

  “Just start at the beginning, and no. Not unless you give me something worth more than what your partner over there gave me, plus five hundred gold for the healing potion I have on me.” Isaac told him.

  Trevor was more or less forthcoming. Though his story differed from Derb’s, the other traitor guard, by quite a bit when it came to the other guard in question. Trevor never mentioned anything about blackmail and had even tried to say that Derb was the one who had been approached by a drow spy first. In all, it went about as well as Isaac had expected it would. Once he was finished. Trevor once again asked for a healing potion.

  “No. You lied to me.” Isaac told him and kicked him in the chest. Trevor was tossed out of Isaac’s shadow-cloak into the nearby wall with enough force that his armor’s clang echoed through the tunnel. Isaac wasn’t boosted at all so Trevor received a few extra bruises but nothing else. Isaac released his own shadow-cloak and looked at the ground in front of him. “Who’s next?”

  The rest of Isaac’s interrogations went even better than the first two. No one else was a traitor, at least not as far as he could tell, and a few people even looked like they were about to faint or relieve themselves just from him getting within arm’s reach. On one hand, two out of thirty wasn’t that bad, but on the other, it was far far too much. Once Isaac and Lenna were finished going through the caravan, Isaac drug Trevor and Derb up to the front of the caravan. Derb came willingly but Trevor had been drug by his shadow along the ground the entire way.

  Isaac, Lenna, and Edward all stood around the pair of traitors and looked down on them with disgust and disappointment in equal measure. Trevor and Derb weren’t even worth being mad at, they were just too pathetic for selling out their own caravan to the drow. Isaac was pretty sure that Derb’s account was more accurate but regardless of the truth of their treacherous behavior, both of them would need to be dealt with by Izen personally.

  “I’m afraid that I will need you to bring them back with you.” Edward told Isaac and Lenna while Shamesh and Alexander finished up their careful deconstruction of the magical trap that blocked the entrance to the cavern up ahead. “Alexander could possibly take one of them with me, but that would just delay him further and I need to see an actual healer.”

  Isaac nodded. “I figured. Give me some rope, they can walk behind the lead wagon the entire way back.” Isaac told Edward and held out his hand to receive the necessary rope.

  Trevor and Derb both paled. “The entire way back?” Derb couldn’t help but ask. “I was entirely forthcoming.” He reminded Isaac.

  “If you get tired, just relax and let the wagon drag you for a while.” Isaac told him flatly as Edward handed him the rope. Isaac passed the rope onto Derb. “Tie up your friend, and remember that if he escapes, I am blaming you and will do so in my report to Izen when we get back.”

  Derb looked like he would have rather been in the middle of a tornado of sharks instead of where he was in that exact moment. “Un-understood.” Derb stammered and turned towards Trevor.

  “Really?!” Trevor demanded. “After everything? This is how you treat me?”

  “What do you mean after everything?!” Derb shot back. “After you blackmailed me into becoming a traitor and getting on Darkness’s bad side?! Are you freaking nuts?!”

  “Both of you, shut up.” Lenna ordered them. “Just do what you’re told.”

  Derb nodded. “Yes, m’lady.” He grumbled but did as he was told. Trevor looked extremely betrayed the entire time Derb was tying him up but thankfully didn’t cause even more of a scene. Probably because Derb was specifically trying not to make Trevor’s injured shoulder any worse.

  A few minutes later, Alexander and Shamesh returned from disassembling the runic trap. “That was a rather interesting ward. I would love to pick whoever made it’s brain for a little while.” Alexander commented as soon as they returned.

  “If it was the ranger I killed, well, Jala might be able to bring enough of him back for you to ask him for a lecture on magical trap making.” Isaac told him. “But I think you are out of luck.”

  Alexander nodded. “I figured but it is still incredible to see things like this out in the wild. The trigger conditions were so precise that it is no wonder that we did not set off the trap early.”

  “Oh?” Isaac wondered.

  Alexander nodded excitedly. “A horse needed to pass over it going in the specific direction. Two horses specifically. Once both horses had passed over it, it would start its own internal countdown for fifteen seconds, in order to give the wagon enough time to get on top of it before it would go off.”

  “What spell was it?” Isaac questioned. He was kind of curious to know how screwed they would have been if they had not seen the trap at all.

  “Thunder Burst, the fifth level version to be exact.” Alexander explained. “It would have easily had enough force to toss a wagon back onto the horses behind or in front of it. I don’t think it would have applied enough force to one of us to kill us but a concussion would be the most likely outcome.”

  “It’s a good thing that we caught it then.” Isaac commented.

  “Agreed.” Lenna added.

  Alexander nodded. “Well, with that out of the way, I am going to take our Guild Master back to Safeharbor for medical treatment. Good luck and safe travels with the rest of your journey and I look forward to seeing your three upon your return. Be careful and remember that the beacon has been used up. I have another one in my tower but I forgot it in my rush to get here.” Alexander explained.

  “We will.” Isaac confirmed. “See you later.”

  “Bye.” Lenna said with a nod. Shamesh just bowed to Edward and Alexander.

  “Head my call, magic and space, take us to this imagined place.” Alexander chanted and vanished along with Edward. That left Isaac, Lenna, and Shamesh with another pair of criminals. This time though, Isaac had no delusions of being able to use the pair of trouble makers. Trevor and Derb were going to hang, well, Derb might get away with forty years of hard labor, but Trevor was going to swing like a lantern in a windstorm by the time Izen was finished with him. That man was as good as dead.