Chương 112: Chapter 98.5 - An Absence

++The reactions to my supposed disappearance actually surprised even me, at times. And not all in convenient ways. ++ - From the writings of Isabel Vornholt, 'The Great Lich'. 1, 891 A. E. Agrian felt like his boots were filled with lead instead of feet, and though every step was a physical trial, that was no more than the least of his worries. Isabel was gone.

He'd headed back to the warehouse she'd presumably tried to rescue Nesariyah from, but by the time he got there Garamon's soldiers were already rifling through it. Agrian asked around. Then he'd demanded, and when he'd been told they had no sign of Isabel he got… antsy. Apparently, he'd punched someone. The actual punching happened about the same time as the realisation that he'd done it, which was an odd feeling. On his end Agrian just saw a man falling, his own fist suddenly held out and wet.

After that he was seized and forced away from the scene. If there was one good thing about being a Baron's son, it was that court martials tended to slide off him like water from a duck's back. Like so many things in life, it was a bit hard to appreciate this at the moment. His fucking sister was still gone. Agrian trudged through the city in a daze, neither knowing nor caring where the rest of his team had gotten to.

He didn't notice when he reached his barracks, nor did he notice that he'd entered those instead of his own quarters. Why was that? Right. If he headed to his own quarters, he'd be alone. That meant nothing to distract him except the thought of what his parents would say if they found out his little sister was gone under his watch. Under a mission he'd let her split off to do alone.

He hadn't gotten a room as nice as Isabel's, and Agrian didn't think much of it as his anger took over and he threw a wild punch at one of the walls. Quite by coincidence he picked a wooden one, not a slab of stonework, so his fist only lost the skin on its knuckles and throbbed with pain rather than crumpling like a can under a carriage wheel. The pain tried to get his attention, mewling like a neglected pet, but Agrian was in no mood for it.

He was in no mood for anything except the red mist creeping over his eyes. He roared, snarled, kicked out at a footstool and sent it soaring across the room to bounce off a far wall. He overturned a table and stomped down on its protruding leg, snapping the wood like a toothpick. It was hard to tell what he was doing after a while, his limbs just moved and his throat just twisted and before Agrian knew what was happening the door opened wide and he felt people enter.

The only reason he even paused to address them was that some deep, animal part of him hoped he'd be facing down rebels. Anything to have an excuse for more violence.

"What?!" Agrian hissed. His words tasted hot and oily, like he was drinking the blood of some rupturing steam engine. Then the words were strangled to nothing in the back of his throat as he looked up and saw the Demigod Nu'chista standing before him. Fear came to smooth out anger almost instantaneously.

"Forgive me, your Divinity," he hurriedly squeaked.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know it was you." He dropped to his knees hard enough to hurt them, and didn't dare look up. If the Demigod decided to turn his brain matter into a wall decoration with one swipe, Agrian didn't want to see it coming. He was left flinching for a while before the Demigod finally graced him with an answer. To Agrian's luck, though, the answer was made out of words, rather than a very large fist crashing into his head with the force of a tungsten cube dropped from low orbit.

"Do not ever speak to me like that again," he warned. Some ridiculous part of Agrian urged him to tell the Demigod to fuck off. Saner heads prevailed.

"I won't, I promise." First I'm throwing a tantrum, and now here I am bowing and scraping the moment something that fights back more than my table shows up. How much more like father can I be? Oh right, he could fail his sister. Yet another box checked on that account. Maybe he should start drinking more while he was at it.

"Good. I will ignore this, then, and never speak of it again. Partly because of your contributions to this occupation so far, and partly out of respect for your loss. Rise." Agrian didn't need telling twice, actually it would've been hard to find anything able to stop him from obeying the damned Demigod right now. He shot up faster than if there'd been dynamite beneath his ass. This story has been stolen from Royal Road.

If you read it on Amazon, please report it"Give me your account of what happened today," the Demigod told him.

"Spare no details. I need to know everything, no matter how insignificant it may seem, if I'm to work out where your sister is and return her to Garamon." Agrian felt like a giant fist was closing over his lungs, and he struggled to speak for a few moments. He struggled to speak, because he knew that the truth would get them in trouble. Deliberately conspiring to carry out their own, major mission was one thing, if that mission succeeded, but this one had ended in Isabel's capture.

People would be looking to pin blame somewhere, and if that blame could fall on another Vornholt, therefore disarming the wider family's right to be indignant and demand recompense, then that would be all too convenient for the people of this force. All of this was clear to Agrian, he didn't even really need to think before simply knowing it. And the conclusion, that he had to lie, was the most natural thing in the world. His course of action should have been simple. But this was a Demigod he was talking to.

This was a servant of the Gods. Agrian existed to serve them, to do what was right and maintain the kingdom of the heavens, and he couldn't think of anything farther from right than deliberately misleading one, let alone for purely self-serving reasons. His tongue started twisting around and almost choked itself. Then his thoughts hardened, and his voice rang out.

"I discovered my sister was gone shortly after she left," Agrian finally said.

"And I knew where she was headed because…well, she's my sister. She'd told me her servant was missing, captured, and I…know how Isabel thinks. We grew up together." Gods, he wished he wasn't exaggerating his knowledge here. And he wished he wasn't lying to the literal divine too. Fortunately Nu'chista did not appear to have some righteous ability to differentiate truth from deception. Or if he did, he didn't act on it by reducing the number of limbs attached to Agrian's body.

"Go on," the Demigod told him. His voice rumbled out like a crumbling cliff. Agrian went on.

"I should've gotten more help, I know," Agrian hissed.

"I…I was scared, urgent I guess. I wasn't really thinking I…I just wanted her back quickly, and I didn't want her to be punished for going off. I thought I could handle this without bothering the rest of the army."

"You thought to obfuscate crucial information from the army, so as to avoid causing issues for your own family," the Demigod accused.

"Do not dress this up or pretend to have had more selfless reasons than you did." Agrian winced and looked away.

"Yes, your Divinity. You're right of course." He'd been hoping for this. Agrian figured if he feigned shame and made a few excuses about what he hadn't done, Nu'chista would be that much more likely to jump on them and not think about whether his confession was actually true in the first place. Apparently he fell into the same broad archetype of leader as Baron Vornholt himself. What that implied for the quality of Garamon's Demigods, Agrian did not know and rather deliberately chose not to consider.

On the other hand, leaders of his father's calibre weren't exactly hard to fool.

"... I didn't want my sister to die," Agrian said at last.

"So I just ran around gathering up a few associates and headed out myself to save her. I know now that we didn't even attack the right place." Agrian would have to run around after this conversation and make sure Varnel, Korig and Bagran all understood the story and knew to stick with it, assuming they weren't being drilled already. If they were, and had already let slip that Isabel herself recruited them… Holy shit, Agrian should've thought about that already. He'd be proven to have lied to a Demigod then.

Three accounts against just his one? There'd be no doubt, and he was present with Isabel when recruiting them, so the others would confirm he knew about her involvement and cooperated with her knowingly. Was he about to die?

"... You did show initiative," the Demigod said at last.

"And you did not actually cause the disaster here, indeed your tying up the enemy in combat may be the only thing that allowed our forces to come as close to rescuing your sister as they did, not that closeness will do much for her. We've sent forces to sweep the area she disappeared from, for whatever that is worth. Out of your relatively brave behaviour, and out of respect for your loss, I will not be punishing you. This isn't a reward, so wipe the smile off your face. Don't do anything like this again."

Agrian barely even registered the assurance. All he heard was evidence he'd been believed, that he wouldn't feel the absolute ruin of being known as the man who lied to a Demigod. No matter what Nu'chista ordered, he just couldn't wipe the stupid, relieved grin away.

"Of course your Divinity," he gasped.

"Thank you!" The Demigod eyed him for a moment longer; perhaps suspecting something was wrong, or perhaps merely wanting to make Agrian feel uncertain and worried for that little bit more. Then he turned for the door.

"I'll expect a more comprehensive report later, but you seem… tired now." Agrian couldn't see himself, the only nearby mirror had unfortunately exploded through rather mysterious means, but he was happy to take the Demigod at his word. If he looked half as bad as he felt, he probably resembled a man who'd spent the last year alternating between not eating for weeks on end and having his balls rotated for the periods in-between.

Once Nu'chista was gone, though, he came to envy that hypothetical man, because surely torture like that couldn't sting half as badly as the knowledge of how badly he'd failed Isabel. The danger of his interrogation was distant and forgotten in mere moments. And the worst of it was that Agrian wasn't even struggling the most with guilt, or regret, or any of the normal emotions a man should've been overcome with right about now. The strongest thought in his head wasn't any of that.

It was the fact that without Isabel here, he had genuinely no idea what to do next.