Epilogue: Enhanced Interrogation

Esther Silverspark walked a slow circle around her captive, staring at the figure she'd tied to a chair. The Knight was tall and lean and fit, the way most Atlanteans were. It only stood to reason, considering they all had divine blood running through their veins. The perfection of his physique was only marred by the dozens of burns and cuts and bruises covering his flesh. Oh, she hadn't been torturing him or anything. It just took incredible punishment to break their damn Orichalcum armor.

Back in Atlantis, five millennia ago, these suits of Orichalcum armor had already been nearly unbreakable. But just because the armor was unbreakable didn't mean that the wearer was. There had been a few ways to defeat someone even with this impenetrable armor. The wearer could be cooked within their armor, they could be suffocated and they could be hurt through blunt impacts rattling the squishy person inside the armor.

These days, however, their suits of armor had life support systems, cooling systems and shock-absorbers built in, making their wearers all but immune to even the few things that used to work against them.

But Esther had a way to break through their armor: She had weapons made of Erebos Crystal, the unstoppable force to their immovable object. Even so, peeling one of these Knights out of their armor was still terribly messy business. The fact that the man only had wounds and bruises rather than missing chunks of flesh spoke to the durability and frightening regeneration of the Lloigor, the Atlantean people.

Right now Esther had him bound to a chair, his arms locked out behind his back with orichalcum handcuffs. He was naked safe for his boxer briefs and a bag over his head. She had no idea if the Knights had ways to contact their liege and she had no interest in giving away her position, thus the bag and the dark basement they were in. After all, the man this Knight worked for had already destroyed the world, summoning an army of beings from beyond the universe to raze it to the ground. He wouldn't have any qualms about killing her.

So long as that man yet breathed, any effort humanity made to conquer the world back could be erased as soon as he took notice.

Esther knew she had to be the one to stop him. The mortals weren't capable of it and, from what she'd seen, the idiot angels and demons hadn't even figured out yet that it had been the Prince of Atlantis who had destroyed the world. In their arrogance they had probably thought they'd wiped all the Lloigor out centuries ago but Esther and the man in the chair were living proof that they hadn't.

She twirled a strand of her shoulder-length hair around a finger, a nervous tick she couldn't shake. Any other person would have found the coloration of her hair intriguing but Esther had lived her entire life with it so it barely even registered that it held all the colors of the dawn, starting with a deep, vibrant purple at the roots and then gradually fading towards red and orange and finally to a soft pink where it touched her shoulders. Her eyes, tinged a deep purple, were locked onto the man for a moment longer before she grabbed a bucket of cold water and splashed him with it.

To his credit, even with this rude awakening the first thing he did was struggle against his bonds and, when that failed to help, he tried to rock the chair over. Except Esther had already used a touch of earth magic to anchor the chair onto the ground and it would take more than the struggles of a man with little leverage to move it, supernaturally strong though he may be.

“Where am I?” he demanded, his voice muffled through the cloth bag.

“It doesn't matter,” Esther said, her voice holding a soft French Canadian accent.

“You...” he said. She had expected him to growl at her but he just sounded resigned. “So this is it, then? You'll ask your questions, torture me if you don't like the answers and then you'll kill me?”

“You know I'm not stupid enough to leave one of the Zodiac Knights alive,” she said. “I would rather not resort to torture if I can help it but...”

“But you don't have any qualms about it,” he finished.

“Your boss did destroy the world,” she reminded him. “I think in this case the ends justify the means. So, what will it be?”

“Ask your damn questions and then make it quick”, he said.

Esther nodded and tore the bag off the man's head. As he squinted against the sudden light in his eyes she said: “Let's start off simple. Your liege gave seven individuals the power to summon and control Outsiders. I already know that much so don't even try to deny it.”

He just regarded her.

“I want their names and where they're located,” she said when he didn't speak.

He told her. He knew surprisingly little but she could tell he wasn't lying. It wasn't much to go on but it was enough, especially when he finished with: “And the final one is a secretive asshole named Caulder who uses North America as his personal laboratory. I have no idea where he's actually located but I know that he has some major projects in Buffalo, New York.”

Thrice-damned cultists, Esther thought. Hunting down the Knight had brought her to Quebec, which put her roughly six hundred miles away from Buffalo. It would be one hell of a trip, that was for sure.

“Good enough,” she said. “Then last question: Where is Prince Dexter?”

The Knight chuckled wryly. “You should know. There's only one place he would be. Back where it all began.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “Atlantis is a pile of rubble under the sea.”

She really didn't want to have to torture any answers out of him but, as he'd said, she would if she had to. It would be another stain on her soul but she knew she couldn't stop now. She'd seen too many die horrible deaths, had already killed so many cultists and monsters on her way here. Torturing the Knight would weigh on her soul but it wasn't as if Lloigor were welcome in Heaven anyway. Or Hell, for that matter. One of their race had tried to destroy the entire universe in his pursuit of power, after all. None of the White King's afterlives would have her. It was the Elysian Fields or the Pits of Tartarus for her.

“I'm telling you the truth,” the Knight said, pulling her out of her thoughts. “Don't ask me how they managed it but I know that the palace was rebuilt by our previous Master. They built a giant dome to keep the water out and then put the palace back together.”

“So what?” Esther asked. “He's hiding at the bottom of the ocean while you guys are doing his dirty work?”

He chuckled. “Hardly. They managed to bring it back up to the surface. Think of it as a floating naval base and you're not far off.”

“I don't believe you,” she said. “People would have noticed.”

“How would they have?” he asked. “What reason would they have to check if an island suddenly appeared halfway between Brazil and Liberia?”

She filed that information away in her mind before she said: “Alright then, just one last question. Why are you doing this?”

“It's the Prince's destiny to destroy the world,” the Knight said.

“That's not what I mean,” she said. She knew about their stupid prophecy. “Why are you helping him? All twelve of you could have stopped him, even if he had his attack dog with him.”

“He is my master,” the Knight said as if that was the only thing that mattered.

“Duty?”, she demanded. “All of this, out of a sense of duty?”

He shrugged as best he could with his arms tied. “This world is done for no matter what I do.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why?”

“The High Priest has returned.”

The End Of Book Two

ChrisLensman

I did say some of that stuff from the glossary would end up relevant, didn't I?

Well then, end of book time. It's been a while. First of all I wish to thank my patrons for their fervent support. I especially want to thank my Advanced Patrons, White Rabbit and AnarchyBellic, as well as my newest Advanced Patron, jared ference! Thank you so, so much for your support. Of course, I can't forget to mention my other patrons, such as nahmate, Theredscare77, White Neko Knight and all the others. I am so very grateful.

But of course I can't forget to thank You. Yes, You right there. Very end of Book 2 and you've stuck around all the way until here so I have to assume you enjoyed it at least a little bit. And that's so very exciting to me!

Don't worry, we'll start with Volume 3 without delay next week. And because it was so fun, we're having another poll. I'm curious if Book 2 changed anyone's minds.