The Eye and the Order were born from the same ashes – the fall of the Sanctum of Prostasia. However, opposing doctrines dictated their actions. The Eye sought to watch and guard the world at large, keeping the arcane world in check under one watchful gaze. The Order, by contrast, blended in with the aim to lead and guide. They believed humanity could not be trusted with its own progression and would fall into war, segregation, and unrest if left unattended.

  The divide ran deep: one side wanted to keep peace; the other to create it. Where one aimed to end wars, the other predicted conflicts and struck pre-emptively. Where one allowed space for personal expression, the other condemned those who walked a different path.

  And nowhere was this divide more evident than in their stance on Cults. To the Eye, the Cults were unpredictable and dangerous, yes, but never an existential threat. Yet to the Order, Cults were abominations abhorred for being wild, corrupt, and ideologically offensive. The only reason a war had not been declared was because the Eye stood in their way.

  But since their near-decade-long war against Ambris Ferrer, the Eye had not been so kind. Sanctions, travel restrictions, and heavy surveillance then shackled the Cults. Still, a few learned, adapted, and survived by playing the game well. One of these was ‘The Ravens’ – a Cult of arcane, Ki charged masters of interrogation, psychological warfare, and complete obedience to the Eye’s demands. They were loyal, sharp, and disturbingly efficient. Many called them ideal servants, while some saw them as mere pawns of the Seear. And in the dead of night, two of their finest had made their way to the Atramentum.

  5th of August 2006 – an hour past midnight, a messenger sent by the Seear woke up Zaatsu Master Hugo Baylis giving him the message that the interrogations were already underway and that the leaders of the Eye were waiting for him in the prison. Hugo rushed and found Hedish sitting at the prison entrance.

  “You’re late, kid,” the Mystic said with a smile, getting up. “We waited for you for an hour before starting.”

  “I didn’t know you guys were already going to go through with this,” Hugo said, with a sheepish smile. “Did he give anything up?”

  “Not much. They’ve been at it for two hours now and he has just given them a name.”

  “What name?”

  “Derek.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A tongue-man.”

  “A tongue man… I think I know what that means.”

  Tongue-men were buyers and sellers of information in the underground circuits of the arcane world. And information was one of the most expensive commodities.

  Hedish nodded and said, “They started questioning him around two hours ago and within the first 45 minutes he gave them this name. He says he doesn’t know much, but if we needed information about the underworld, he thinks we should contact him.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  The Mystic took a deep breath. “Was out for fresh air,” he said. “Shall we go in?”

  Hugo nodded but waited for Hedish to lead the way. The senior man smiled and in they went. They made their way through the reception area down to the Core and then continued downwards. Crossing the Crucible and the Vestibule and five different check posts, they finally arrived at the deepest level of the Atramentum – the Erebus Sanctum. This was a maximum security sector reserved only for threats deemed apocalyptic and irredeemable, or, in the case of the White Bolt, arcane anomalies beyond classification.

  Cells were unmarked and the hallways drenched in darkness. Even the air felt thicker down here, like the walls were built to hold more than just bodies. With a lantern in hand, a guard led them through. There was light in front of a corner cell visible from afar. As they approached, Hugo saw a man and a woman standing leaned against the door with their arms crossed and eyes closed. There was a lantern sitting in front of them. As the masters walked closer, they pushed themselves off the door and welcomed with half bows.

  “At ease, you two,” said Hedish. He then relieved the guard dismissing him back upstairs. “Carlisle, Layla,” he said, “I want you to meet Master Baylis of the Zeta Squad. He is the one who captured the bounty hunter.”

  Taken aback by their peculiar appearance, Hugo stared in silence. Carlisle had donned only a pair of knee length cargo shorts, with two knives popping out of the pockets, while Layla was wearing a pair of harem pants and a tiny tube top. They stood with a permanent slouch, a loose and unbothered posture. Though thin, their bodies were all sinew and taut muscle – no fat, no waste, just stripped-down strength.

  As they once again half bowed, the Zaatsu reciprocated and said, “Pleasure.”

  To top it all off, the duo was bald as well and had thick lines of ink running from their necks to their temples. Their arms were also laced with tattoos.

  “How do you do,” Carlisle said, extending a handshake.

  Hugo shook his hand. “I apologise for being a little late.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Master Baylis.”

  He talked in a peculiarly stale manner, monotone and with an expressionless face and half open eyes.

  “Anything?” Hedish asked, looking at the interrogators who shook their heads in negation.

  “So, all we know is there’s a guy named Derek who can give us something,” Hugo commented looking down. He then looked at them and asked, “Can you just briefly explain what has been going on with him in there, if it’s not too much trouble?”

  “We have been using magic, weapons and enchanted accessories,” Layla replied. She too talked in a similar fashion and spoke slowly, enunciating every syllable almost separately. “By this time, he should have given us something, but he is unlike anyone we have ever encountered before.”

  “How so?”

  “An immunity to pain.”

  “What?” Hugo smiled. “That’s impossible.”

  The duo did not reply. “Tell him what you told us,” Hedish said.

  “Masters,” Carlisle said. “The man is resisting every magic we have used which included potions and mixtures to exaggerate every little pinch and every little insertion and he remains unmoved while although we have tried spells to break through directly, but his mental palace appears to be empty with no memories or information kept inside and yet he has created a maze of extra-spatial rooms and corridors for just such a situation where a person may try to extract from him a piece of information he may or may not have.”

  Wide eyed, the Zaatsu stared at him for a few moments before asking, “Don’t you people have a spell to just simply read someone’s mind?”

  “Simple spells, master, are for simple situations and as such are simple and powerless, and they are so common that defending against them is not so hard, for they are so common that a ton of methods exist to repel them.”

  After waiting for a few moments, Layla said, “He is a man not displaying a human spirituality and his aura, perplexing at best, is unreadable.”

  “Hey Hugo!” Hedish said with a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You had your sister chat with him. She is a spotter, right?”

  “She is, sir,” he nodded. “But she gave pretty similar reads.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He seems to be emotionless, without feelings. She says he wears a different fa?ade for every situation. He’s one person in front of us, another in front of her, and another for someone else. It’s tough to put a handle on his base.”

  Silence befell the quartet for nearly the next two minutes before Hugo smiled looking. “Master Warren used to sit me inside busy marketplaces in different cities,” he said then looked up. “He would ask me to read people just from their physical appearance. Not Ki patterns or anything… just body language and facial features and expressions. Then he would ask me to predict where they were going, what they were looking for, what they were thinking, their mood, and their general demeanour.” Looking at Hedish, he added, “I could see no indicative natural features. No go-to expressions, no consistent speech patterns, nothing. His voice doesn’t change much, and he barely shows any emotions. It’s insane.”

  “There can be one explanation,” Layla said and crossed her arms. “He may have gone through severe torture.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that he may well have been very badly tortured, an out of body torture experience…”

  “Like a mental torture?”

  “No, master. There are rumoured torture methods where the victim’s soul is trapped and his body is subjected to pain beyond human endurance, beyond tolerable, and he may have since used those levels of pain stored in his muscle memory, stimulated them mentally, and raised his pain threshold to a level where it can no longer be upstaged by any method physically applicable.”

  “Say what?” Hedish whispered slowly, looking at Hugo wide eyed.

  Hugo too crossed his arms and said, “I’ve heard of these methods from Himalayan Cultists. They force the soul to remain trapped within the body and its individual parts. Then, they undergo experimentations on their subjects – experimentations that would otherwise kill them many times over.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  “Yes,” Layla said as both the Ravens nodded. “Further supporting my suspicion is his faded white hair and the complete absence of melanocytes in the follicles which are evidence that may point to Marie Antoinette Syndrome, the sudden whitening of hair following extreme psychological or physical trauma.”

  Hedish asked, “Following extreme torture, huh?”

  “Yes. A French Queen named Marie was captured and severely tortured and her hair turned white.”

  “I thought that was hypothetical.”

  “Our ancestors kept journals and wrote diaries, religiously…”

  Hugo looked at Hedish who chuckled with a raised eyebrow. Looking back at Layla he asked, “Alright. Let’s believe all of what you are saying. He is unbreakable. There is no way of cracking him. Then why did he give you that name?”

  “We only provide information while its analysis is not our job, masters.”

  The Zaatsu looked at the Mystic and waited. “He might want us to go on a wild goose chase,” Hedish said.

  “Nah. He’s not that simple. That man’s cooking something.”

  “Well, we can’t know for sure until we break him.”

  “The fact that he has nothing to lose has been bugging me from the start,” Hugo said then took a deep breath. “Although this seems beyond anything I could have predicted, but he always seemed a hard nut to crack.”

  “And we need to make inroads fast,” Hedish said as he scratched his eyes.

  “Yes… time is of the essence.”

  The duo, hence, looked at Layla who smiled. “A human body can only take so much, masters,” Carlisle said. “We are not taking a break actually he is until the Game begins again in ten minutes.”

  The two masters walked away to the gallery at the edge of the hallway. Hugo leaned against the railing.

  “Careful there,” Hedish said.

  The Zaatsu looked back. “How low does this trench go?” he asked, staring into the darkness extending downward indefinitely.

  “Back when I worked here as a guard in my early 20s, we used to throw into that trench. Couldn’t ever hear a voice back...”

  Looking back ahead, Hugo asked, “So, where is Master Mujin?”

  “Went out for dinner. Should have been back by now…”

  “He was talking about some irregularities with the Cults this morning.”

  “Hmm, two of them dropped off the radar.”

  “Disappeared?”

  “Running away, disappeared, or destroyed… anybody’s guess.”

  “What do you guys think? The Parliament, I mean…”

  “Fiona is looking into it.”

  “So, the disappearances were in Asia.”

  “One was in Asia.”

  “Oh… ok.”

  “Yup. The other one was a neighbouring one to the Ravens, don’t remember their name though. Used to operate in Finland, exclusively. Very removed and very limited.”

  “Ah, Diyanis.”

  “Yes! Diyanis… the traders of lies.”

  “How serious is the situation?”

  “Like I said, anybody’s guess at the moment. But it is all very odd. The timing of all of it, Vincent, the Cults acting up, the remnants, it’s all mounting up.”

  “Yeah. Just 9 months ago we were dealing with the South Americans.”

  “I still can’t believe we escaped that without war.”

  Hugo giggled. “Yeah,” he said, scratching his head.

  Silence prevailed, thereafter. The Ravens, who had also moved away from the cell and were sitting on the floor, stood up. But before they could go back inside to continue the questioning Hugo stopped them.

  “Hold on a moment,” he said, rushing towards them.

  “What’s the matter?” Hedish asked.

  “I wanna give it a try.”

  “Master, rest assured, we will break through,” Layla said.

  Carlisle added, “It has just been two hours.”

  “I am not doubting you people,” Hugo stressed. “But I think I might have a way to get through to him.”

  Hedish quickly asked, “What way?”

  “Bargain.”

  “With what?” Layla questioned. “By the looks of it, that man has nothing to lose and nothing to gain and…”

  “I know, I know,” Hugo quickly said with arms extended, interrupting her. “He has nothing to lose or gain. He is like a proud animal, powerful and majestic. Like a lion. But the thing with a lion is, it hates being in a cage.”

  Hedish interrupted, “You’re surely not suggesting…”

  “Yes, I am, Master. I will give him a chance to go back out into the wild again. When I gave him that chance the other day, he never hesitated to take it.”

  “Not how we heard it. We heard you had to beat him to take him along.”

  “He’s the guy with nothing to lose. These guys have just confirmed that. He doesn’t fear death, he has no weak spots, no relationships to exploit, and he seems to want nothing either. When I ‘beat him up’, he could’ve just said no. Think about it. He could have at least tried to resist. But no. He tagged along. And not only that… he actually helped us in our mission.”

  “And where do you intend to take him now?”

  “To look for the informant, Derek. He is so skilled he thinks he will always win, so, let him think he’s won. Fuel his ego but remain in control.”

  “A man with that much potential and that track record does not seem to be someone you should trust, Hugo.”

  “I’m not trusting him, master. I am just trying to do what’s necessary here.”

  After pausing for a few moments Hedish asked, “And you wish to do this bargaining yourself?”

  “Yes,” Hugo replied with a nod before adding, “Alone.”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “I want to talk to him alone… but not right now.”

  “Then when?”

  “In the morning.”

  “Then let these people have him for the night.”

  “No. I want him to think that he has won, and we have given up. Send someone in to heal him.”

  “One of your people is in there,” Carlisle said. “A Magicist was assisting us in keeping his body in shape.”

  “Great. Let his wounds heal for the night, but don’t rid him of them completely.”

  Graduates of the Civenna Medical Facilities of the City of Ayn were Magicists specialising in healing magic. No matter the severity of a wound, these Magicists were able to heal it in a very short time. Channelling their Ki into the patient’s body they simply helped fasten the body’s natural healing process while numbing the pain. They could fix broken bones within hours and heal gaping wounds just as fast.

  Leaving the bounty hunter chained to the wall inside the pitch-dark room, all parties dispersed.

  When the Ravens left the Atramentum, Hedish and Hugo finally made their way out as well.

  “Obadiah wants you at the academy,” the Mystic said as they exited.

  Hugo looked over. “Why?” he asked. “Anything special he needs?”

  “No, no. It’s just that you as a hostel warden seems like a waste. We all share that worry. And then we see your disciples out in the field and honestly, the Eye could use more of those enthusiastic ones.”

  “Oh, come on…” he looked back ahead. “He’s the highest ranked Zaatsu, the most powerful guy in the world right now. And I think he’s doing fine at the academies.”

  “Hmm, but he doesn’t really have the experience you have, son. He has never worked with the likes of Warren or Marion or Mustaqeem directly. Plus, your time at the outposts has groomed you in a way that is different. You read kids better than most of us.”

  Blinking incoherently, Hugo looked at Hedish once more. “Oh… well… I guess you could send Kenji to the hostel then,” he said. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I was stationed there by Master Mujin for a reason.”

  “Hmm,” Hedish looked at him, “the battle royale…”

  The duo laughed.

  Hugo shook his head and said, “If you really need me up there then send Kenji here.”

  “Well, we’ll see.”

  After a moment’s pause, the Zaatsu smiled and said, “Tell Obadiah he’ll have to spar with me once if he really wants me there.”

  Giggling, Hedish replied, “He’ll run away…”

  The two laughed some more and stopped at the Seear’s Hall’s entrance. “I’ll brief Renekom about what happened,” Hedish said. “You can go home now, son. But do consider it.”

  With a deep breath, Hugo said, “Sure. I mean, at least let this mission be over, then I’ll shift back if you guys want it so bad.”

  “Well look at this mission even… and the many before. Your own team is made up of your disciples. And look at them go. They have already become such important assets for us.”

  The Zaatsu smiled and dropped his head.

  “Even Ella. She has been taken under her wing by Fiona. She’s been training her for three years now, but all Ella talks about is her time with you. You always leave a mark on your students.”

  He looked up. “Oh, that must upset her,” Hugo said with a bright smile.

  Hedish smiled too. “What is with you and Fiona?” he asked.

  “Well, she’s a competitive colleague and a fierce one at that. And once my students went up against hers and well… she has been trying to one up me since…”

  As the duo laughed some more, Hedish placed a hand on Hugo’s shoulder. “Well, son,” he said. “Keep up the good work with the squad. But in your spare time, be at the academy if you can… I’m not forcing you! Just saying it would be better. Alright, Hugo?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  Thereafter, Hugo left and Hedish made his way to Renekom’s office inside the Hall. He explained to his friend all that had unfolded at the Atramentum.

  “What about Hugo?” Renekom asked.

  “Doesn’t seem suspicious at all,” Hedish replied with a shake of the head. “He was a bit embarrassed when I suggested that we were waiting for him, and he seemed not bothered about the condition of the bounty hunter either.”

  “He is Warren’s direct disciple. One of only three people who ever got a chance to train with him at that level, that boy is his heir.”

  “Relax. Warren’s people died with him.”

  “We don’t know when or if he even died, Hedish! We never recovered a body!”

  “I knew him a bit longer than you, old friend. He was never a man to stay in the shadows letting someone else take charge.”

  “Whenever I see him fight, I see Warren in him, just like today when he sparred with Vincent.”

  “One, Warren’s dead. Two, even if he is the old freak’s heir, he cannot face the might of the entire Eye and hope to win. Plus, the boy has shown nothing but respect for the Eye and its ways. He has been your go-to person for three years now. Zeta Squad has been running for almost two years, Renekom. Don’t get sceptical now. I refuted giving him the rank, but back then you trusted him, and in return he gave you nothing short of the best.”

  “But how much does he know, Hedish?”

  “I can only guess, my friend, but by the looks of it, he does not seem like trouble at all.”

  “In any case, keep tabs on him. You have grown quite fond of him and have forgotten to notice the vast array and range of his skills and areas of expertise.”

  “He remained on Cult duty at the outposts for seven years. What else do you expect?”

  “That is exactly how Warren became Warren!”

  Hedish laughed. “You’re paranoid!” he said. “He is not Warren Ford! Relax! And if it makes you feel any better, I’ve told him to get back to the academy after this mission. That way, we’ll be able to keep a close eye on him. I’ll even ask the Parliament to keep tabs. Savvy?”

  Renekom nodded. Thereafter, they went their separate ways.