"Jeal!" Sadoul repeated, eyes blazing. "The last time I saw you, you had my sword embedded in your chest!" He struggled against the Danek soldiers restraining him. "How in Vay's name are you still alive? I killed you!"
"Hmph." Jeal smirked, brushing back some of his long hair. "Perhaps I'm not as stupid as you took me for. Any ruler of any Danek tribe knows to have contingency plans and to always watch for signs of betrayal. You never landed that blow on me. You merely struck a powerful illusion I left in my place." Jeal laughed briefly. "As if I would actually leave myself sitting in harm's way as Prince Sandor and his friends came charging through the castle. Any Danek ruler would also know not to leave himself vulnerable to his would-be slayers by facing them alone by choice. That was a rule you had forgotten Sadoul; both when you tried to kill me, and when you yourself were killed. Your ego led you to believe you were invincible. And that will be the end of you."
Jeal inclined his head towards the soldiers. "Good work, men. Take these troublemakers down to the dungeon. And restrain them so they can't use any of their magic. If they can't move their limbs they can't cast spells."
Sadoul glowered as the soldiers approached the three wizards with several lengths of chain, contemplating what it would be like to tear that smug grin straight off of Jeal's face.
Seeing that all was as he wished, Jeal turned to leave. He paused a moment to clap his captain on the shoulder. "Good work, Torene. I'll see you in my study in four hours for your debriefing."
Ghaleon, Kazyr, and Sadoul found themselves unceremoniously dumped deep into the labyrinthian dungeons below the squat, overbearing form of Danek Castle. The Danek guards searched each of them, and for a moment they worried Ghaleon when they opened Kazyr's belt pouch. But much to his relief, they didn't appear to find anything and left the white-haired mage with his possessions. However they confiscated Ghaleon's sword on the way to the castle, and Sadoul was fairly useless now that they trussed him up better than they would a wild boar.
"Such an insult will not be tolerated!" the blond mage had sputtered.
Of course, the soldiers didn't listen to him, and the red-haired captain had ordered for Sadoul to be gagged during the journey since he obviously wasn't going to be agreeable.
And now the three sat in a dank, dark dungeon that had an odd greenish glow emitting from the the skeleton-like floor structure.
"It's as if the spinal cords and rib cages of some sort of animal were used to line the floors," Kazyr commented. "And if that isn't morbid-looking, I don't know what is!"
"It could be worse." Ghaleon sighed and turned to look around him. "At least you still have your magic pouch. I almost thought they would find out how to use it and then they'd take it from you."
Kazyr grinned, despite the situation. "Well, no one can remove anything from my pouch if they aren't attuned to its magic. They can't even see what's inside of it. If Torene was among the guards searching us, she might have detected the enchantment around it, but thankfully she wasn't."
The white-haired mage sniffed the musty air cautiously. An idea occurred to him, and the wolf's head amulet warmed against his chest for a moment. But Kazyr dismissed the thought. The idea would no doubt allow them to escape, but there might be another way, one that would work without him having to reveal one of his most treasured magicks.
"All in all though, I wish the Danek had better taste in decor," Kazyr grumbled, kicking at one of the "ribs" that made up the floor. "These bony floor parts are enough to make my blood freeze."
"Hey! It ain't all that bad!" Sadoul replied testily. He glowered at Kazyr. Even though the guards had removed the gag from his mouth, Sadoul's mood only darkened since his imprisonment. "I was the one who remodeled this castle to make it look the way it does now so just shuddup!"
Kazyr blinked, and then turned away to stare at the cracks in the wall that suddenly seemed a lot more interesting.
"And so the serpent feeds upon its tail," came Jeal's voice.
The Danek Emperor slipped into view like a shadow who's light source had suddenly shifted.
"Keep your thoughts to yourself!" Sadoul snapped.
Jeal eyed the lengths of chain wrapped around Sadoul. "How pathetic! After the Star Dragon couldn't take care of even two of you, I thought catching the three of you would have been more of a challenge."
He smiled as he caught the hints of recognition on Ghaleon and Kazyr's faces. And while Sadoul didn't appear to know what was going on, at least he remained quiet. Jeal enjoyed having a captivated audience.
"What do you know about the Star Dragon?" asked Ghaleon. "Sadoul told me that the people of this world have forgotten all knowledge of their origins."
"Oh, people always forget," Jeal replied with a casual wave of the hand. "It is the fault that lies in every mortal. But people are equally adept at learning, and I've put a good deal of effort into that." Jeal's words came hard and laced with venom. "As for the Star Dragon, I know he failed in his task. The fool even destroyed the transportation crystal within his own tower. That's why the Maker sent me to capture you instead of him."
"The Maker!" Ghaleon echoed.
"Yes, the Maker. He has informed me of the wake of destruction the three of you will leave behind should you be allowed to roam free. And in order to protect my country, I've agreed to assist him in your capture. I expect word from the Maker tomorrow, and then you'll know what is to be done with you."
"What does the Maker want with us?" asked Kazyr, scraping his chains against the ground as he readjusted the position of his legs. "We're just searching for a giant beam of light that shot my ship from the sky. Sadoul said that you Danek might have been the cause of it and we were investigating that possibility. We have no intention of destroying anything!"
"Really?" Jeal smirked and removed a small glass orb from his belt pouch. "Look at what the Maker has shown me and tell me that you are not a danger to my land."
The sphere glowed, and an image projected itself into the empty air between Jeal and the cell bars. A rolling fortress of steel crossed a darkened landscape, tearing up the ground as it passed. An armored figure stood near the top, ordering his goddess to shoot the floating city from the sky. The scene shifted, and Ghaleon stood with his helmet in his hands, gasping his final threat in defiance of death before the group of heroes who had defeated him. And then Ghaleon changed, his body melding itself into a form that better personified the evil he had become.
The orb flashed. And the image blurred to now show Kazyr, using his fire magic against a silver-haired young woman who looked at him with love even as she saw her death coming towards her. The scene changed again. Kazyr removed the four orbs from their towers, allowing the resurrection of an ancient evil to begin. The white-haired mage faced off against another group of heroes who in turn defeated him. But even afterwards, Kazyr's body immolated itself in flame, and the wizard lived again.
The orb flashed. Sadoul singlehandedly defeated a rebellion and entrapped the souls of the participants in the walls of Danek Castle, leaving them to forever gaze upon the misery they could not stop. The image blurred and Sadoul murmured words of deceit in a castle's throne room before throwing his sword and impaling Jeal at the end of its blade. And then Sadoul was standing before the Danek people, crowning himself emperor and forcing the people to continue a war they no longer wanted.
"Now tell me the three of you are not a danger," Jeal repeated. "You have seen your own pasts and know them to be true. And what is there to prevent you from repeating what you have done before? Surely you don't expect me to simply take your word for it."
"You can't," Sadoul said simply.
Jeal nodded. "It is difficult for a man to change his ways. While it is possible, I don't think I can expect such a radical shift in any of you."
"But I was under a spell when I committed all those atrocities!" Kazyr protested, trying to stand despite the awkward chains holding him down.
"I suppose you expect me to believe that." Jeal shrugged. "And let me guess, you were still under this spell when you decided to resurrect the greatest evil our land has seen in a thousand years. Then you decided to follow this great evil around and snap out of your spell when you finally landed in the dungeon. If you mean well, then why did you resurrect Sadoul?"
Kazyr began to speak, but realized that he still didn't know why he resurrected Sadoul. And he doubted that the Danek Emperor would accept the reason that it just felt right at the time as a legitimate explanation.
"I'm certain you don't just pick any bloated corpse in the ocean to bring back to life," Jeal added. He took Kazyr's silence as confirmation of his guilt. "Whatever purpose the three of you are hiding, it will be brought out into the open. It will be left in the Maker's hands."
Jeal turned to leave.
"You shouldn't leave things in the Maker's hands," Ghaleon said quietly. "After all, you don't know what he will do with them."
Ghaleon didn't even have time to cover his ears from Jeal's sputtering retorts when they arced towards him.
The Danek Emperor stormed down the vacant hallways of his castle. After his initial outburst at Ghaleon, he had forced himself to calm down and take a more rational approach to the situation. Several snide remarks were thrown back and forth between him and his prisoners, but at least it served to give him information on their personalities. It was a pity he couldn't see them in a more natural situation so that he could better understand them. But it was also said that a person's true feelings come out when under more telling situations.
He would have his revenge. Whether the Maker would allow him to simply execute Sadoul (and cremate his body afterwards) or have something else in store for him, Jeal was certain that Sadoul's fate would not be pleasant.
Three powerful wizards under one roof. Jeal shook his head. Such magical strength had not been assembled in one place since the Five Magicians of Vay stopped the rampant armor from destroying their world a thousand years ago. And Jeal had the unsettling feeling that each of those imprisoned mages surpassed the power of the ones of old.
One of his patrolling soldiers saluted Jeal as he went by, but the emperor hardly paid him any notice.
Able men were scarce in Danek now. The nation had been all but crushed after they lost the war. With Sadoul gone, the command structure of the nation collapsed. There was no one left to take control. Only a few battered soldiers, women and children, and the scrapped remains of the Danek mecha were left.
Danek was about to revert to the barbaric state it was before Sadoul gave them the alien technology. And the Four Kingdoms planned on indenturing the nation to make up for the crimes it had committed. Without anyone to lead them, the Danek people would have had no choice but to agree to their demands.
However, before that could happen, Jeal managed to return to his country. The journey had been difficult, since the Danek lost all their territory on the mainland. Even after he arrived, he was careful to remain hidden until the moment when he could best inspire his people.
Jeal smiled, remembering the shock on the king of Lorath's face as a fleet of blood dragons appears in the skies, all of them arcing in a giant formation from Danek Castle. The prince-turned-king recalled fighting those dragons during his battle against through the castle to find Sadoul. But the dragons were disorganized without the human leader they were used to seeing, and they fought out of rage and frustration at those who invaded what they considered their territory. Sadoul could not command them. No full-blooded Danek could. And the newly crowned King Sandor of Lorath watched as dozens of those blood red dragons landed around him, with Jeal riding on the back of the largest one.
Although Jeal could not save Danek entirely from repaying the Four Kingdoms, his impressive arrival (and his equally impressive escort which left less room for argument) prevented Danek from selling itself into slavery. The nation had a leader they could recognize and acknowledge now. And under Jeal's guidance, the nation could be back on the rise in two or three years. Jeal had no delusions over what might be accomplished in that time, but he was determined that Sadoul's gift of technology would not be wasted. It was the only economic advantage that Danek had left. And every single microbe of technical knowledge must not be lost.
And of course, there were the awful petty lords and barons under Jeal that fancied seizing control while the nation struggled to merely stay on its feet. Without much of a standing army, it was quite likely that control could be stolen from him through military force, if not for the dragons. And Jeal did not worry much about assassins. He knew many of their tricks himself, and with his guards, the dragons, and his own magic watching over him, he very much doubted that anything would get through.
Except, he corrected himself, perhaps those three mages down in the dungeon.