Esharah sat at the table trying to figure out what words would lead to Captains Wulfred Frostclaw and Breton Bretonus deciding not to slaughter them all. About two hundred soldiers waited outside the gates, twenty more joining the captains inside. All fully armed - that was one of the conditions of negotiation, alongside the healers being allowed in to treat the wounded on both sides. Per the negotiation terms, the prisoners got to keep their weapons as well, leading to a tense standoff but neither side dominating the other. At least, not yet. A half dozen wardens and thirty guards were dead, alongside twenty prisoners. The majority of the guards had either been either in town carousing or else in the barracks, crowding the privies in their sickness during the entire battle.

  Yvris was catatonic, bound in cursed manacles. Erdrak, the same. It still astonished Esharah that the ogre captain was alive, but apparently even with bound vis his skull was thick enough to take a Stoneshield’s club.

  That only left the negotiations to resolve the situation. Esharah, Aven, and Etrani on the prisoners’ side; Wulfred and Breton on the soldiers’ side. The Legion Captains sat side by side at one side of the large dining table, opposite Esharah and the rest.

  “Tea and biscuits, dears?” Tanya entered with her cart lade with food, all smiles.

  Breton eyed the minari with a distrustful look, “Ma’am, I think we’ve all had our fill of your ‘treats’ this festival.”

  “I hope you enjoyed yours,” Tanya gave the captain a wink. “Did you and Sasha get a chance to find some alone time?”

  Breton coughed and turned away, sun-tanned face still showing a blush as Esharah caught embarrassment and a faint image of a strapping village blacksmith before she withdrew from that particular invasion of privacy.

  “Tea would be lovely,” Aven said, taking a cup.

  “We’re not here for lunch,” Wulfred said brusquely. “You’re criminals who overthrew a lawfully appointed executor of the empire.”

  “By the precedent of the 8th legion-” Etrani began.

  Wulfred interrupted, “You’re not soldiers stopping a commanding officer who went mad with his power. You’re prisoners.”

  “I am a publicar of the Empire,” Etrani’s voice rose an octave before settling down again as annoyance flashed across her soul at the interruption, “appointed by Governor Iraias to report Hellfrost’s mismanagement. Upon finding the source of that mismanagement, I was unlawfully imprisoned subjected to humiliation and torture at Yvris’ hands, and forced to falsify my report.”

  Esharah noted with amusement that the last offense to her integrity weighted alongside the other violations in her mind. The amusement soured when she remembered what the publicar had actually gone through.

  “You were aware of the situation in Hellfrost,” Esharah’s voice took on a cutting edge as she stared down the veteran vis soldiers. “I know that you were aware. You did nothing but privately complain. You could have stopped Yvris yourself, yet you did not.”

  “You could have lodged a formal complaint to Governor Iraias,” Etrani added.

  Esharah lacked the confidence that the publicar held in the empire’s justice, but she nodded in agreement.

  “You could have challenged the torture, the death, the theft, the lies of Yvris’ rule at any time. You. Did. Nothing.” Esharah paused to take a deep breath before speaking again, aiming at a sore point in both of the captain’s emotions, “You follow the Ideals of Courage and Justice. While Yvris perverted justice, you did nothing. That-” Esharah leaned in and gave both of the officers a mental nudge to drive her disgust home, “is what cowards would do.”

  Esharah felt Wulfred’s anger rising, but Bretonus was the one to speak, “Yvris was appointed by the governor’s authority. Imperial authority. We are soldiers of the empire. But you claim that Yvris was acting against the governor’s will?”

  “Yes,” Etrani said firmly. “When the governor hears my true report, he will not let Yvris’ crimes go unpunished.”

  “Then it sounds,” Breton leaned back and waved Wulfred to back off, “like we need to let the governor adjudicate this matter.”

  Esharah felt the relief in Breton’s mind. A soul knowing its own failures and desperately hoping for some escape from the weight of responsibility for those failures. There was guilt there too, the knowledge that Esharah’s pointed accusations were all correct and that he shared blame for the horrifying state that Hellfrost had fallen into. Guilt, apparently, wasn’t as strong as desire to avoid responsibility.

  Wulfred’s emotions were more difficult to read. He was a stubborn, hard man.

  “If I may,” Danys Akra stepped forward. In the village during the attack, she’d avoided the chaos unscathed, only arriving with the reserve companies. “I believe that they are right. Yvris and Erdrak’s leadership was untenable. I...did my duty and was punished for it, repeatedly. I-”

  “I don’t want to hear about duty from a woman who was supposed to be on guard duty the night a revolt happened,” Wulfred said.

  Akra fell silent, shame coloring her mind as it did her cheeks.

  “Now, hold on,” Breton spoke up. “That was the minari’s treats doing their work. We all were-”

  “I wasn’t,” Wulfred’s glare turned to him. “And if I’m the only one who didn’t need to be dragged off their lover to do their godsdamned duty, then I’m not trusting anyone’s judgement here but my own.”

  His gaze turned to Aven, “You, voidtouched. You charged the voidspawn. You healed the ones corrupted. You protected the people of Hellfrost. Now, you’re leading a revolt. Why?”

  Aven set his tea aside, smacking his lips slightly and meeting the canin captain’s gaze. “I fought the voidspawn because they were monsters. Destroyers, bringing only death, destruction, suffering. I fought Yvris and Erdrak for the exact same reason.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  The captain grunted, “So you’re the one who decides who the monsters are?”

  Aven grinned, and the black veins in his face visibly writhed, “One monster recognizes another.”

  Gods above, a sane man would be horrified at being transformed into a creature of the void. Aven reveled in it. Even with the threat of imminent death still hanging over them, Esharah couldn’t feel any sign of nervousness in the voidtouched’s emotions. Maybe facing death for two weeks in the void warped one’s perspective.

  “Why shouldn’t we put you down too, then?” Frostclaw looked perfectly ready to carry out the implied threat.

  “I’m a friendly monster.”

  It didn’t seem to be a joke, but Frostclaw snorted with a laugh anyway, relaxing slightly. Not actively considering lunging forward and spearing Aven anymore. Only passively considering it.

  “Repairing the damage that Yvris has done will be difficult,” Etrani said. “But some matters can be taken care of swiftly. The back-pay for the reserve companies and the pensions for retired veterans remain in the vaults. Those funds can be distributed immediately.”

  The captains both froze in surprise, and they glanced at each other before Breton spoke, “The funds are here?”

  “Yes,” Etrani’s lips pressed together in disgust. “The funds arrived as intended. Yvris simply kept them for himself, though a portion were sent out to an unknown destination. I’ve no idea the purpose, but the reserves in the vaults are sufficient to repay your soldiers a great part of what they are owed. They remainder, we can make up over the next few months”

  “That would...go a long way to smoothing over the situation,” Breton leaned forward, no longer distancing himself from the situation but drawing back in.

  Could it be called bribery if it was simply what they were all owed? Esharah settled on calling it restitution for her own comfort.

  * * *

  The negotiations lasted for a while longer before the details settled, but that was the point things shifted from confrontation to planning for the future. With the immediate danger passed, Aven let himself relax. As it turned out, when Tanya wasn’t forced to serve voidspawn meat mixed into meals, her cooking was heavenly.

  Etrani and the captains resolved the core of the plans. The prisoners would remain in Hellfrost, effectively still imprisoned but now at least without chains. The reserve legionaries would send for Governor Iraias to make a formal judgement. Yvris’ mismanagement and tyranny would be brought to light, and he’d be tried as the laws dictated. With any justice in the world, the former warden of Hellfrost would end his life on a noose. Hopefully, Erdrak would join him.

  The captains departed soon after to open the vault and take what Yvris had withheld. Aven took a moment to admire the sheer breadth of Yvris’ misdeeds. Not only was he cruel, sadistic, self-righteous, hypocritical, blasphemous, and egomaniacal to an inspiring degree, he was also a thief on a scale of thousands of aurams. What wasn’t sent off to gods-knew-where, he’d hoarded like a dragon.

  Perhaps if only Yvris had the good sense to limit his vice to one arena, his rule might have only met the normal imperial standards of wickedness. As it was, everyone surviving in Hellfrost could find common ground in hating the dezar.

  At present, nothing was trying to kill Aven, which was almost an alien feeling after the way the last days had gone. Or weeks, apparently. The time in the voidpit still felt as if it had passed in a matter of hours to Aven, albeit hours longer than some years. Now, Aven could walk round the keep without chains, without anyone shoving him along. At the moment, however, all he wanted to do was eat real, hot food. Apparently, even a body created in the crucible of a voidpit still needed to eat, and drink, and piss. And, of course, the keep was in utter chaos. It would have to be Aven’s chaos now, until the governor decided on their status.

  Eating a meal in peace was difficult, however, because people kept coming in with questions that Aven had no idea how to answer. So he improvised.

  What to do with the wounded? Clear the barracks and treat prisoners and guards in the beds. The garrison wasn’t even close to full (Hellfrost as a fortress was clearly originally built to house a force an order of magnitude larger than the current guards), and there was plenty of space for all the wounded.

  The remaining wardens, Yvris, and Erdrak? Into the cells, Zav level.

  Where to house all the prisoners now? None wanted to return to their cells. For now, they packed the common areas such as the chapel with bedrolls.

  What about the corpses? Leave them for the legionaries to take out and bury. They’d hold a proper funeral for Ko’jan and the other fallen prisoners later.

  To Aven’s horror, people were listening to him. What he said, they did. Most without question. Not just Ouron, or Wally and the others of Ko’jan’s circle. Not even just prisoners. The guards and reserve legionaries were doing the tasks as well. He and Esharah could give commands, and people were following them. Aven didn’t have the heart to inform everyone that they were following a man just as blind as they were.

  Aven, Esharah, and Etrani pulled together a council of those healthy enough to figure things out. Shockingly, that included Logash, the zhagra already on his feet again even after the beating he’d taken against Erdrak. The massive ogre groaned as he sat down, and Tanya fussed over the injuries with healing poultices, but he was awake and alert.

  Akra had taken leadership of the guards as one of the few surviving sergreants. Janaya was both unconscious and not particularly suited towards peaceful negotiation, so Aven gratefully let the healers take her to the infirmary forming in the barracks. Ouron rounded out the cobbled council with a perspective both prisoners and guards could appreciate.

  When Erdrak woke up, they brought in the ogre captain to question. The ogre had little to say except impotent threats and equally impotent curses. Etrani tried questioning him about Yvris’ missing funds, but Erdrak was either too belligerent or ignorant to give a useful answer.

  “So you really know nothing at all about what Yvris was doing?” Aven said.

  “I keep the prisoners in line, and I kill voidspawn,” Erdrak’s glare hadn’t changed. The moment he wasn’t more powerful than those around him, the ogre became nothing more than a pouty child. It was glorious. Even more hilarious how much angrier the bound ogre got when Aven laughed at his petulant face.

  “Everything he did was just out of petty dominance,” Etrani shook her head, still going over her ledgers as if they would magically change and the missing money would conjure in front of them. “No more than a common bully.”

  “And you’re so much better!” Erdrak snarled and raged, forcing Ouron to hold him down once again. “You’re nothing! I’m a vis! Third circle! I’m stronger than any of you!”

  “I was referring to Yvris,” Etrani spared him only the faintest glance, “but the fact you noticed the description applies to you as well speaks volumes.”

  Erdrak finally stopped struggling and settled down into the same sullen silence. From violent tantrum to sullen one was all the ogre seemed to know. The shouts would start again soon, Aven was sure. Just as soon as the ogre’s mind could come up with new insults.

  Sure enough, it started again a moment later. All of them learned several new, colorful claimed facts about their mothers, horses, and bodily functions.

  “You’re all going to die as traitors!” Erdrak said after the latest round of expletives. “Every single one of you! You’ll-” Erdrak stopped.

  The skull necklace around his throat glowed, the eyes turning red.

  Silence, and then the ogre’s threats devolved into chuckles.

  “What’s that?” Ouran stood, eyeing the orc warily.

  An impact sounded outside, loud and strong enough to send rumbles through the entire keep. Shouting. Panic. Aven raised his voidclaws. The others raised what weapons they had. Save for Esharah, who looked absolutely petrified.

  “Oh...oh no,” the dezar stepped back, body shaking.

  The door slammed open with a force that shattered one hinge.

  Another dezar stepped through, with a face similar to Esharah’s except harder. Stronger. Horns spiraling higher above her head. Towering above everyone in the room save Logash. Black skeletal wings curled in on themselves as she walked through the door. Clad in black armor, with a skull necklace identical to Erdrak’s around her throat, eyes of that skull growing crimson to match.

  The name came to Aven’s memory as Logash uttered it, “Vestra vis Nightblood.”

  The vis of the Fourth Circle glared at them with cold eyes and stepped into the room.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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