“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.”
Archon did not like to hear the word no, and as far as he was concerned I’m afraid that won’t be possible was just the word no all spread out.
“Make it possible,” he growled.
“She has been imprisoned for crimes against the king and the state. After your departure, she became ever more aggressive in her attempts to stir up rebellions. She was arrested a week ago along with fifteen other members of her group of rabble. She was sentenced to death along with the rest of them.”
“You don’t touch what’s mine,” Archon growled, his expression thoroughly fearsome. “You certainly do not attempt to destroy it.”
“You had left, my liege, and you said you had no interest in returning. She didn’t particularly seem to be yours. She didn’t seem to be anyone’s, for that matter.”
“That did not give you the right to take my human.”
“Your human? The one you used and abandoned? The one who found herself begging for the mercy of strangers who would not give it? I took her, and I killed her because killing her was the only merciful thing to do.”
And that was when Archon slew him.
It was not a considered act, nor a particularly dramatic one. The king simply took his weapon and fired it twice in quick succession, sending two bolts of hypercharged electric probes into the flesh of Naxus.
The general was dead before he knew what had happened to him, experiencing first an overloading of his neurons and then complete combustion of his physical form. In an instant, what had once been a general was now nothing more than a pile of faintly steaming ashes.
Archon looked around the war room, very much depressed by the action he had been forced to take, and the reason for it. The human was dead and gone, and now he was forced to face a kind of loss and loneliness he had not imagined himself capable of experiencing.
“You’ve killed the general, haven’t you.” Brimsley did not sound upset, simply a little tired and resigned. He had been out in the hall, inspecting the tapestries and trying not to overtly overhear anything.
“He needed killing. He killed my woman.”
“I was not aware you had a woman, sire?”
“Her name is Iris, and he killed her.”
“Ah the human you were rutting with,” Brimsley said. “The other servants have informed me that there are humans imprisoned in the dungeon. Perhaps we should free them as an act of goodwill.”
Archon waved an uninterested hand. “Fine.”
“Sire, I know you are disappointed at the loss of your favorite, but there are many thousands more humans who could no doubt fulfil your desire for a disrespectful mate who dislikes you.”
“Brimsley…” Archon snarled the name with all the meaningless threat he could muster.
“Archon, you owe the girl a debt of kindness. Show mercy to those in the dungeons and perhaps you will find yourself rewarded.”
Archon very much doubted that. Being king was far less rewarding than he had imagined. He was ready to take the blasted crown and throw it into a spatial anomaly.
Chapter 18
“Did you hear?” Thalia was back from being tortured with news. She was a brawny young woman who never seemed to mind being pulled from the cell and taken off to be hurt for the amusement of those who incarcerated her. Iris admired her fortitude, and wondered how she might become as strong herself. Since her capture, she had felt spectacularly weak. Discarded by a king, captured by a rogue general, used and degraded and finally imprisoned, she was not sure that life could get any worse - or any better, for that matter. It seemed to her that existence had become something of a slow and tedious torture whether it took place in the dungeons or not.
In Naxus’ dungeons, every prisoner was tortured for several hours a week. Sometimes the torture was so terrible they would not survive it, other times it was simply menial labor. It all depended on the torturer and his mood.
Iris had been down in the depths of the royal palace dungeons for an indeterminate period of time. There were no day or night cycles down here, there was only the volume and duration of screaming, moaning, and general misery from her fellow prisoners.
A surprising number of women had been incarcerated by Naxus. There were at least two dozen in the cell Iris shared. There were men too, of course, but they were kept separately so that no comfort might be found in the sexes lying together.
“Did I hear what?”
Thalia smiled and wrapped her damaged arm with a dirty scrap of fabric. “I heard that king is back - and General Naxus is dead.”
“What king?” It was a stupid question, but dungeon imprisonment wasn’t conducive to having the quickest mental reaction time. The dungeons were lit with greasy torches, so the entire place smelled like barbecue the entire time but without almost any food to eat. Sometimes a prisoner would snuff out a torch and they would take turns sucking on the grease soaked wrappings which were the richest source of calories in the awful place.