Story of Kings

Chapter 6

Their walk back was silent. Once they got back underground, Evelyn silently conjured a light in her palm and led the way back. Undoubtedly, she could sense his mood and had decided on silence, Kane for his part didn't offer anything either. His mind was a fury, entrenched in all the ways he wanted to rip those archangels apart. Once they reached the room, they had chained him up, however, Kane forced his thoughts away from violence and towards calculation. He had found a rebel group and missing Cas only added to his needs for them.

The base of operations was simple, and surprisingly clean. Passing the room he had awoken in, the sewer system branched away taking the foul odor with it. The tunnels were still damp and dark, lanterns every now and again marking certain rooms and intersections, but it lacked the odor and grime. Evelyn extinguished her lights and snagged a lantern early, no doubt she avoided showing any power to her comrades even if she was holding a human form.

Down the first hallway from the room he had been chained down in seemed to be storage. Kane wasn't given time to rifle through the various rooms but peering in offered him a sight of stacked crates, most of them with removed lids and scattered, haphazard placement. Further down they came to an intersection, Kane could hear the sound of wood clashing together and tumbling bodies down the passage to the left, a sparring room he presumed, but they kept going straight.

It didn't take long for them to come into a large, well-light and open room with tables scattered around. There was a long counter on one end of the room with some scattered eating utensils and a few groggy faces seated around with a passageway leading out on the other side of the room.

"Going to have to have you take a seat for a while," Evelyn said as she came to a stop. "I'll go get the other leaders; we'll have to talk about what to do next."

Kane only nodded and took a seat, watched as Evelyn made her way out through the other exit. He couldn't help a smirk as he watched her go, they had placed him as far away from their living quarters as possible when they brought him in. Run down as their base may have seemed, Evelyn and the other leaders were smart. His mood was quickly drawn back down though, he was missing Cas. She was gone. No, she had been taken.

She wasn't dead, he could feel it. She couldn't be.

But she could be hurt.

As time passed, Kane was vaguely aware of others around him, filtering in and out with the sound of distant chatter through the opposite passageway. At one point a young boy came in scanning the room and once he spotted Kane, came over and wordlessly set down a steaming mug with a timid smile before retreating. Kane looked down on it skeptically for a moment before deciding it was safe and taking a sip of the black liquid. Eventually Evelyn came back in with a group of others, though oddly enough they branched off to the side of the room to talk in hurried, hushed voices, only throwing brief glances his way. Did they really forsake privacy just to get a look at him? By the way she argued with the others Kane could tell she wasn't supposed to have brought him in like this and by the way everyone else steered clear of him and his table in the corner they were scared of what he might do.

Able to blitz an Archangel, resists poisons, clever, and quick on your feet. You'd be one hell of an ally. That was what she had said to him when trying to get him to agree to join the underground. Or one hell of an enemy, was what she had left unsaid, yet it was clear that it was on the minds of everyone in the room, on the tongues of those who argued with Evelyn. He could hear them, their whispered echoes layering into the conversation they were having.

He is too dangerous! Unpredictable! Grief like that can drive a man to disastrous acts, his knowledge of our organization now threatens us all! A younger military man, by the sense of him. Looking up, Kane took in the sight of him. He was a well sculpted young man with strong features, and less weary than some of the others in the room. He had dusty brown hair that was cut short and a strong jaw. His broad shoulders did much to fill out his simple, grey shirt, unlaced at the front to reveal his muscled chest. Matching with his shirt he wore grey pants with military style boots, how he managed to get ahold of them was a guess. Was he an enforcer?