Systems In Chaos: Dissention

Chapter 18

‘It would have been much easier if Kurr was to help from time to time or at least give me command over his forces. But no, he is too proud and arrogant to allow me to have any sort of an easy time.’ He had thought that same thing many times before. Short of assassinating Kurr there wasn’t much he could do about getting more forces to use. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that the idea had sounded tempting more than a dozen times in the past, and continued to do so. Perhaps he would have the pleasure of killing Kurr one day, but first he had to take complete control of Kalorin. He was planning to attack the city soon, but this was something he had to do first. If possible he would like to give time for Kurr’s inside agent to disable the inner city’s defences rather than committing the bulk of his forces to a suicide ‘steamroll’ strategy. By trying to simply overwhelm them with the pure numbers advantage many would certainly die. However, if it did come to that, he didn’t have any issues with sending thousands to their deaths. Though, he would like to keep as many as he could alive for future Hadi uses, and it would weaken his position among The Ten anyway.

Inquisitor Jore shook his head to clear his thoughts. Now wasn’t the time to be caught amongst a cloud of ideas and ‘buts & ifs’, not when his prey was almost upon him. It was time to spring the trap. He gave the signal and his men jumped out from their hidden positions, taking the enemy completely unawares and surrounding them so that they could not escape. The way he saw it, they had two options: fight or die. Either choice was fine with him. He could use a bit of exercise and fun, though it would be no skin off his nose if they decided to just lay down and die.

*****

Just as the rest of his group, Teran was wide eyed and surprised, to say the least, when a small force of Hadi and Imperials came out of nowhere and had them surrounded, with no escape left open to them. He was sure that his companions were just as stumped as he was. He was certain that there had been no one around for miles. He couldn’t sense any of them, not one. The others must have had the same shocking thought swimming through their heads, because none of them had been aware that there was a trap, or people for that matter, anywhere close to them. Teran was just as shocked and confused as he was afraid. How could he not be when all around him, everywhere he looked, there was an imperial or the black mask of a marauder or a lined mask of a sorcerer. Although, as surprised as he was, he knew that deep down he had been aware of the impending threat. He had sensed it. It was that feeling that he was getting in his gut. That bad, twisted, knotting feeling in his stomach that made him feel as if he was going to retch up everything he’d had to eat.

“Hah, this is what you get for kicking me down. I could have warned you. I tried to warn you. But you ignored me. Now, let’s see how this plays out,” the shadowy voice whispered to him, as if it was standing right next him with its lips in his ear. “Fool.” Teran ignored it though, he didn’t have time to pay it any mind.

Teran could hear the soft shaky whimpers of Gaia and Klair as the two girls feared what was in store for them if they happened to get recaptured. What was going to happen to them once they were brought back to Dalen? If he was angry with them, which he surely was, he would most definitely use some of those horrific new ‘toys’ that had just arrived for his pleasure. They would be thrown into that small cell room and shackled to the bed again, or maybe they wouldn’t even have the benefits of even having a bed this time, or, worse again, they might be the new tenants of the run down, rusted, outhouse of a torture chamber. Stay chained up in there, with all the different pullies, stretchers, blades and other tools of Dalen’s ‘trade’ to look at all day, just so that they might imagine how they would feel when he used them against Gaia, or Klair herself. The feeling of having their limbs slowly pulled from their sockets, with their muscles trying to fight against the stretchers and pullies with all their might only to fail and be rewarded with a loud crack and a jab of pain that would cause their throats to bleed with their screams of agony.