Chapitre 102: - Whispers and Wonders: The Musician
The fires died down as fast as they were burning, Cain's magic making quick work of the brush and smoke that covered the air, while Lia stood with her sword drawn over the male attacker, his hands bound behind his back.
The woman, who had her eyes intent on her master, watched the tip of Lia's blade with careful precision. She was cautious and careful. But above all, she was calm.
Whatever the man had told her, whatever silent order had been given, Lia found it hard to get any answers from the both of them.
"Tell me again, who are you?"
The man stayed silent against Lia's impending question, the tip of her sword digging even deeper into the thin skin of his neck.
"I need answers, and if you won't give me any, willingly…"
She glanced over at Cain who was now lending against a small rock that had survived his attack, which was covered in ash.
"...I can have him deal with you."
At the sound of her words, Cain snapped his finger, a small flame flickering on the tip of his fingers.
The woman, seeing this, struggled in her binds, clearly recognizing how dangerous it would be for the man to be interrogated by him. Though, despite her struggle, the binds Cain had used were strong, stronger than her anyways, keeping her contained in place.
The man still said nothing, looking up at Lia with a fierceness in his eyes as if daring her to kill him, darning her to continue. She wouldn't. She needed to know why it was so bad for his blood to spill the ground, and why this man thought so highly of himself to believe in his arrogance that she wouldn't kill him.
It baffled her in more ways than one.
"I will ask you one last time."
She said, pulling back on the man's hood to reveal a dark and brown set of hair.
"Who are you? Why were you in that cave? What connection do you have with Voln Dorrow?"
The man, for the first time in nearly twenty minutes of interrogation and questions, spoke with a disgust in his tone, as if the very mention of Voln was repulsing him.
"So you're one of the Hunters they sent out. Useless -"
Lia didn't bother to hear what insult he would have told her, simply tossing him forward onto the ground where he lay face first with a mouthful of dirt. Detaching herself from master and servant, looking to Cain with an annoyed look.
"Alright. Your turn. I can't get anything out of him."
Cain smiled before pushing off the rock, heading towards the pair with a glint in his eyes.
When he stood above them, the woman became stiff as stone, fear setting in as she knew what could happen to her master if Cain got impatient.
Opening the palm of his hand, he gestured for the sword out of Lia's hand, which she rightfully gave him, holding the man in an upright position. However, despite what Lia would have imagined Cain doing against the man, using some mind trick, brute force, or something along those lines, he instead approached the woman , who sat upright, bound and stiff as a door nail.
"You're going about this the wrong way Lia. The man won't speak because he doesn't care about his own life."
Lia's eyes passed between the summons and the blade, watching Cain with a curious gaze.
"Then what does he care about?"
It was at this moment, as Cain drew the blade close to the woman's neck, that the man caught sight of what he was doing, and began violently struggling.
"You see? The man cares little about his own life, probably seeing his position as something unavoidable. But her…now she's a different tale."
Placing a calm hand on top of the woman, she flinched as if he had just raised a hand to hit her, which Lia didn't see as odd.
'He did say he was something called a 'King summons.' A summons who has the ability to control others. Perhaps she recognizes him?'
Cain watched the blade shimmer in the pale sunlight, hidden behind clouds of rolling thunder and heavy rain that seemed to threaten to fall at any given moment.
"The best way to get answers from someone isn't to threaten them. After all, what can you do against them? They have the information you want, so what good will it do if you kill them?"
Speaking like a true torturer, Lia was somewhat taken aback by Cain's harsh words, but also by how easily he said them, as if he was teaching her a lesson in the art of interrogation. A skill she found hard to doubt she would need.
"You have to threaten the things they love, something they don't want to live with knowing they caused it. It's the first rule of interrogation. The best and most plausible course of action when asking questions…"
He grabbed a fist full of hair from the woman, drawing her head back swiftly while keeping the blade close to her neck, a very delicate spot that would spill blood with just a small prick.
"...is to threaten that of which they love."
The man's thrashing continued, and from his mouth Lia could hear the muffled sounds of begging.
"No…don't."
"You see?"
Cain took the blade away from her neck, pointing to the man with a mocking gaze.
"Tell me what she wants to know, and your lover will live."
The man stopped thrashing, and Lia could - for once - hardly comprehend the words she had just heard.
"Lover?"
Lia asked Cain, but he was too focused on the man, who, though his face mask, let out a meek reply.
"How…how did you-"
"How I know doesn't concern you. What should concern you is the fact that I will kill this woman if you don't give me the answers I want."
Turning to Lia, he began explaining to her the details that she would have otherwise never thought of.
"It isn't uncommon to find men or women who fall in love with their summons. Though several religions and churches representing different gods defy this law of love. They're extremists. They don't believe it should be allowed, and thus it becomes rare for such cases to exist."
He held the tip of the blade closer to the woman's neck, before he used his other hand to rip off the face mask that was disguising her.
Lia, being at the forefront of seeing this woman's face, gasped at the sight of beauty that lay before her. Pale skin that seemed to glow in the pale evening sun, white hair that matched the freshly fallen snow of winter, and red cherry lips that looked beautiful in contrast to her skin.
She looked like a goddess, but Lia mind warded off any charm she would have had over her, snapping her mind out of the trance.
"Especially when she's an ice witch."
Ice witches. They belonged to the class 9 category of summons: Wizardry. These mostly included sorcerers, witches, warlocks, and even the occasional wizard themselves.
The man snapped out of his shock at Cain knowing his secret, and began to thrash around, twice as violent as before, causing Lia to struggle in keeping him contained.
"Let go of her you bastard!"
"I would but, you see, then you would just recall her back."
A sinister smile formed on his face, a feeling of fear setting in on the man, casting his thrashing to subside.
"But you can't, can you?"
The man made a small glace to his left torso, the area above his heart, before turning swiftly back to Cain with a setting of fearsome look in his eyes.
"That's right. You can't. Because I won't allow it. Yo see, my unique ability to control certain people, just happens to stretch to your little lover here."
Cain gestured to the woman, who looked as though she was about to cry, as if she was going to die, leaving the man she loved behind.
"Oh don't worry. I won't kill her. But she will be in a whole lot of pain if you don't start to answer our questions. And I doubt there's much you can do to stop us."
The man was silent for a moment, looking to his lover the ice witch with sad eyes, before deeply sighing.
"Alright. What do you want from me?"
"Wonderful."
Cain took the blade away from the witches neck, gesturing slightly with his fingers, causing the mask on the man's face to fall off, revealing a handsome looking man in his early twenties, just shy of Lia's age, who had barely passed the age of twenty, and was now twenty two.
"First off, I'd like to know. Why were you in that cave?"
Though Cain, as Lia would guess, already knew what the reason was, he asked for her sake nonetheless.
The man hesitated, giving a glance to the ice witch one last time, before beginning his long and detailed reason for being there.
"I…I was living there for some time. Just a hideaway, since I had a reason to hide."
"Understandable, but that doesn't give me anything."
He scoffed, looking down at the ground, avoiding Cain's eyes.
"You wanted answers. Don't blame me if they weren't what you're looking for."
Cian was silent for a moment, and Lia could almost swear she saw a hint of pride or respect in his eyes.
"Fine. I won't object nor judge the answers you give me. But by the end of this, you'll tell me more than I need to."
"I doubt that."
Cain released the ice witch, kneeling down before the man, his crimson eyes glowing in a reddish haze.
"Second question. Who are you, and why were you running from her?"
The man looked back at Lia, before returning his gaze to Cain.
"I used to live in the cave. What would you do if you saw three Hunters in the cave you were hiding out in. You'd run, be scared, hide away in the forest. I'm dumb, but not dumb enough to stick around and ask questions."
Cain shook his head, unsatisfied with the answer.
"You haven't answered my question. Who are you? I could guess why you ran, that's obvious. But I think there's another reason you left."
The man gave Cain a thoughtful gaze, one that made Lia question if the two were about to throw hands against one another.
Finally, Cain subsided, raising his hands in a shrug as if it didn't matter to him.
"That's fine. Now, tell me how you know Voln Dorrow."
"Aren't you asking a little too many questions?"
"How many I ask boy, does not matter to you. I could keep you here for years asking you every detail of your life, and you won't say another damn thing about it."
Cain's voice was calm, but unsettling, causing even Lia to shutter, as she could only imagine how the man treated this information.
"...."
"Won't speak? Tell me now, how you know Voln Dorrow, otherwise your lover might prove more of a pin cushion than you think."
"...I don't know them."
"Now that's a blatant lie and we both know it. You even said enough to my friend here that tells me you do know the Dorrows. You said they hired her, or was that just an assumption?"
"The latter."
"Seems like a pretty far-fetched assumption to me. Too much to be a coincidence."
The man shrugged, losing interest in the discussion, finding more interest in the woods themselves.
"A coincidence still though."
"Are you sure?"
"...the Dorrows are the masters of this land. It's hard not to know them when you've been hiding out in one of their caves."
"A nice couple, don't you think? A wonderful wife, a loving husband? Wonder how they met?"
The man stiffed and Lia could see the anger set in his eyes.
"...don't call them that."
The woman caught Lia's glance as she could see the ice witches eyes filled with worry, as if she knew something she didn't
"What? Husband and wife? But that's what they are. A loving couple who are just looking for their son. I wonder how heart broken the mother must be, how sad the father -"
"He's not the father!"
"Why do you say that? Mr. Dorrow seems like a wonderful husband, and a very loving father. Though the age gap between them is a little strange, they do love each other."
Cain got closer to the man's ear, whispering a set of words Lia could only barely understand.
"Don't they…?"
The man remained silent for a moment, eyes trained on watching the ground and the dirt beneath them, leaving Lia alone to her thoughts.
'Age gap? What gap? They look the same age to me?'
Cain answered, his voice rattling in her head.
'There are many elixirs that make someone look younger. I suspect the local church must have had their pockets full from their coins.'
The man shifted, looking between Cain and the ground, before eventually speaking words Lia never thought he would say.
"Voln didn't run away."
Lia couldn't help but speak, stepping away from the man in shock that she had found some lead to the missing boy.
"What?"
"Voln isn't just a child. He's a grown man, or at least a young adult. So think about it? Why is his mother, who remarried, so close to a man in his late twenties."
"So your telling me the age difference between the two was what made him run away?"
He shook his head, the words on the tip of his tongue but he refused to say them.
"Voln ran away for another reason. Reasons I can't be the one to say."
"Why?"
He looked to Lia with an unsettling, and she finally realized that his words were no lie.
They were truth.
"Because you won't believe me if it comes from my mouth."
She glanced between the ice witch, Cain - who remained silent watching her actions - and the man, her mind racing.
"Take this, and bring it to Winslow. It will get you the audience you need."
The man dropped a small wooden bracelet, the beads knocking against one another in unison, as they fell to the floor.
When Lia reached to pick it up, she realized the beads themselves were adorned in small runic signs, different symbols and different images of animals and plants.
"That was Voln's. Once you know what I know, if you're still determined to bring me in, then I'll come willingly."
Lia was almost afraid to ask, all this seeming like a rush of new information, new jobs, new things, pieces to the puzzle she didn't want to know.
Things she shouldn't know.
But she couldn't stop herself from asking.
"Why would I want to bring you in?"
The man looked at her with pitiful eyes, his mouth moving before the words ever entered her mind.
"Because my parents hired you to do so."
État de l’alimentation hebdomadaire
-- Classement
Power Stone 
-- Power
stone