Apostles of Doom

He frowned. “I still have difficulty in believing he is not there. The place is rather famous for its prisoners. I have to think that this Talarius fellow would be there. It’s not like his captor would just go hole up in a random cave for weeks on end.” He shook his head and grinned. “That would make it nearly impossible to find him; we would have to scour every foot of the Abyss.”

“So what are our other options?” Captain Cranshall asked.

“I am wondering — no offense, Temerlain — whether at such extreme range the demons there are able to shield Talarius from your searches. If we got closer, would you be able to pierce any deceptions they might be employing?” Samwell asked.

Temerlain blinked and rubbed his chin. “You bring up a very good possibility.” He seemed to think for a minute. “With our weakened state, however, to be confident of even detecting a distortion or deceptive spell, let alone Talarius, we would need to get quite close; within a few leagues.”

“Hmm,” Dante said, turning towards the captain. “Do you suppose we go to a higher alert, battle stations even, get closer and keep a close eye out for demons pouring out of the volcano to attack us? And have the priests do their scanning?”

Cranshall raised an eyebrow. “We could; we would have to leave a number of our shields down during their scans, so as not to interfere with them.”

“But we could bring them up quickly if demons came rushing out?” Wings Arms Master Heron asked.

“Certainly. And even without our primary shields up, a few demons aren’t going to be able to do too much damage,” Captain Cranshall said.

“Excellent,” Dante said rubbing his hands. “After all, how many demons could there be in that volcano?” He beamed at the others, looking for agreement.

“Probably no more than five or six thousand at this point,” Samwell said. His statement was greeted with complete silence as everyone stared at him in shock.

“Five or six thousand demons?” Barabus asked. “In that volcano?”

Samwell shrugged. “Well, we are about 300 leagues out from it right now, and while your magnification is, I am sure, good”—he gestured to the volcano on the view screen—“that volcano is very large. Thousands of years ago, I am told, there were over twenty thousand demons living there.”

“Twenty thousand demons?” Barabus leaned against the wall in shock. Temerlain put his hands to his head, pushing back his hair as he tried to grasp this.

“That’s more than were in Freehold,” Heron said softly.

“Truly,” Dante said in amazement. “But did you not say that the majority of demons were imps, sprites, shadows and such?”

“Indeed,” Heron said, and Barabus nodded in agreement.

“Hmm,” Samwell said as if he found that odd.

“What do you mean by that?” Cranshall asked the knight.

“Nothing. Just curious.” Samwell shrugged.

Heron shook his head. “So we go very carefully and keep our fingers on the buttons for the wards.”

“Definitely,” Cranshall said, not sounding completely convinced.

Nysegard, Krallnomton: Noon

Tom leaned back on his chair. Fortunately, since the Isle of Doom did have a D’Orc population, they had appropriately sized chairs that could also accommodate wings. While a little small for Tom, it was doable. They were taking a break between villages taking their oaths for a small lunch celebration. While it was nice to not have to travel to various cities and being in Krallnomton at the base of the volcano, he had to maintain some concentration on keeping the rain from falling on the ceremony. Activating the volcano had pretty much turned the town into Seattle. He also felt slightly bad about not visiting all of the cities to inspect them as a commander should.

Tom sighed. He was going to be doing this for some time yet, and it was starting to weigh on him. This was just so much responsibility. Yes, he’d had this argument with himself many times before, with D’Orcs and with demons, but being here and seeing humans and orcs, mortals, look on him with so much hope? It was daunting. Who was he, a sixteen — no, strike that, seventeen-year-old kid, to have people swearing loyalty to him?

Sure there were tons of stories about young heirs taking the throne of the kingdom at his age or younger; however, those were established kingdoms. He was taking over and reviving a dead empire. It seemed this would take a bit more hubris than simply inheriting a functional kingdom. To add to that, his subjects, by and large, were bloodthirsty, war-starved orcs, demons and super-orc demons, and such groups were infamously difficult to control in all the fantasy books.