READ WEBNOVEL Chapter 361 - Hidden Truths Revealed
“So, Caliban, how do you feel about your gambit now?”
The normally suave, cool-headed elf who was the definition of poise was currently wheezing with pain, steel bolts piercing both ankles and wrists as he lay spread-eagle upon a cold steel table along with a number of other individuals who had caught their tormentor’s ire.
The voice, of course, hadn’t emanated from the cold-eyed and utterly silent torturer wearing a blood-spattered smock who was presently tearing free the fangs of a very pregnant succubus bound in sizzling bands of silver begging for mercy nearby. Nor did it emanate from the pair of smirking goblin guards with blasters trained on the handful of them that had been rounded up and captured with the fall of Freetown and the absolute destruction of Blue Quarter, hundreds of Caliban’s employees and their families having already fled via contingency plans and emergency tunnels he had never thought would be needed but of course had become standard procedure to put in place within all their worlds. A measure embraced for a sense of completion, no more, though one that had hopefully saved numerous lives.
Yet it didn’t allay in the slightest the agony of self-recrimination and bitter fury he felt, struck anew by the horrific recollection of dozens of employees being cut down by goblin blaster fire right before his horrified eyes.
No. The voice came from one of the massive monitors bolted on the walls of the goblin bank’s inner sanctum, which, besides holding a small fortune in gold and blood contracts, also had a ready-made torture chamber for particularly recalcitrant competitors and clients.
It wasn’t the peripheral monitors which showed sights that had Caliban’s blood running cold, filling his soul with such awful despair he couldn’t even sob as entire armadas bombarded not just the twelve jewels of Arcadia, the heart of the Sylvan empire, but countless other worlds as well.
Every world that Aurelia Silver had claimed in the games of ascension that were as old as the System itself. And just as shocking, every world that had ever accepted Blue Faction’s gentle administerial touch.
“You would kill us all,” Caliban wheezed. His cheeks flushed in sudden shame at words that had slipped free of lips he had directed every ounce of his willpower to keeping tightly shut.
That was all it took for the hideously wounded goblin peering down at Caliban from the central display to stretch his mangled lips wide in a malicious grin, still covered in smouldering wounds and presently waist deep in regenerating sludge that popped bubbles filled with the screams of goblinoid soul-slaves.
“That’s right,” Greed smirked, taking a puff of his two-foot long cigar. He leaned back in the pool of bubbling slime and sighed, as if his agony wasn’t many times greater than Caliban’s own. “Your fool of a queen fell right into my master’s trap. She always was a possessive bitch, and with so many enticing prizes laid before her on this realm, so rich in spiritual energy that her bastard get couldn’t help but shape their ill-gotten territories into twisted reflections of their mother’s favorite conquests, of course she chose to directly manifest. Ha! As if that would save her pretty toys. As if that would do anything but doom her outright! The foolish bitch!”
Caliban forced a smile. “You say that now, covered in scars from a caster utterly beyond your ken that you did everything you could to take out, yet failed. After trying to wipe out the child with a single bold strike, so certain that Aurelia wasn’t there in—” Caliban’s words cut off with a groan when the torturer slammed a steel prod in his neck, eliciting muscle wrenching spasms that caused Caliban’s jerking hands and feet to tear into the steel spikes keeping him in place.
After long seconds of grunting and spasming, the steel rod was finally removed with a snort from the torturer and a smug smirk from Greed.
“You really should learn to control that mouth of yours, Cali, it’s going to get you into trouble, one of these days,” Greed said with a smirk, puffing on his cigar once more. “Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, that’s right! Aurelia over-extended. And now, with a united front of over a thousand destroyer class star ships with contributions from every race and faction that despises your kind, we’re going to kick you elven freaks completely off the map.”
Greed’s sangfroid grin turned to a furious snarl. “Were going to wipe YOUR ENTIRE RACE FREE OF THE GALAXY, FOOL! Every palace, city, nation and world that owes allegiance to your cursed kind! every man, woman, and child with elven blood in their veins! My master has declared VENDETTA against you all and upon the pyre of his ascension, you ALL shall burn!”
Caliban was shaken to his core, ears filled with desperate screams and cries from his fellow captives, his eyes filled with the horrific sight of home fleets of battleships barely gaining orbit being absolutely obliterated by dozens of hyperion cannons from entire armadas of dreadnoughts that must have been gathering in secret over not just years, but decades.
Morlekai’s soul filled with despair, thoughts of his wives and children flashing before his horrified eyes as he sensed just how deep and pervasive his enemies intrigues truly had been.
Because it hadn’t been about subjugation or economic conquest.
No.
It had been about genocide all along.
“But Blue Faction was never aligned with the Winter Queen!” Caliban sobbed, knowing his words were futile, yet still... seeing his home planet lighting up with plasma fire, a sight he couldn’t look away from with his eyelids cut off, all he could do was plead or scream.
“LIES!” A snarling Greed spat his contempt from the bubbling green vat he presently gloated from. “You have ALWAYS been aligned to the Winter Queen! She made your faction, fool!”
Greed’s lips curled in a sneer as the elf blanched before the accusation.
“Oh yes, Caliban. We know that dirty little secret. In fact, we know ALL Blue Corps secrets! You think Arlen Ort was our only leverage within your ‘pristine vaunted halls of economic security and prosperity for all?’ Ha! So many of your administrators are enslaved to sweetest vice, just like Aurelia’s latest little queenlet. You think it’s pure chance that our puppets got that bitch hooked on Oxys the minute she was free of her mother’s annoying oversight? Fool! We’ve had this gamed out for decades before Earth had ever ascended! It’s only thanks to her damned brother that her face isn’t on the cover of a dozen films of the far tastier sort. All because that little shit had to kill her handler at a damned movie premier!”
Greed shook his head and sighed. “I knew we should have had that brat taken out before Earth had ever ascended.” He shrugged. “Oh well. Can’t do anything about that now, can we? Oh, wait, we CAN! And we ARE! We’re wiping out you Sylvan bastards for all time! Every world to swear its allegiance to Aurelia! Every world to accept Blue Corp administration when they could have had our own!” His eyes were hot with bitter flame as he jabbed his cigar at the screen. “And you’d damn well better believe we’ve arranged protests and insurrections in EVERY world where you assholes hold even the tiniest bit of influence!”
Greed’s smile turned malevolent. “Oh yes, Caliban. We’ve made sure that absolutely EVERYONE knows that if they manage to wipe out your faction entirely, your entire portfolio of wealth on that world will revert to your killer’s pockets and by dawn’s first light, it will have ALWAYS been that way! No guilt, no regret, and absolutely no repercussions as reality itself erases you ALL out of existence to EVERYONE’S profit save your own! All reality needs is a TINY push, and you little shits will have never been!”
Caliban’s eyes widened with horror. “You actually have ****** in play!”
Greed smirked. “Yes, we do. Silver ones, too. So this night can stretch out for MONTHS, so long as our vessel can keep awake, and he will, no matter if his brain is mush when it’s all said and done. And how sad it is that you can’t even say the words outright, since you aren’t a player. Just a tool and a fool!”
Greed cackled like a madman, regardless of the blood and pus spurting from freshly ripped burns. “Why, with the first light of dawn, you won’t even remember this conversation! Isn’t that wonderful? Even better, by then you’ll already be dead! Even better, as far as galactic history is concerned, YOU ALL WILL HAVE NEVER BEEN!”
The air filled with Greed’s cackles and the desperate screams of captives tormented beyond all endurance, the air ripe with the stench of blood, voided bowels, and animal terror.
And Caliban, for the first time in over a century, finally allowed himself to sob in despair.
“Margot. Emil, Louise, Amelie. I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”
His mind shivered with a feminine snort. “So willing to give up the game already, little prince?”
Caliban’s eyes widened, feeling a pressure in his mind he had thought forever gone. “Aurelia Silver?”
“Call me grandmother, foolish boy. For you are of my line, more generations back than I care to state.”
Caliban froze, mind reeling with far more than agony and despair.
His eyes then locked helplessly on the sight of Gaia III’s beautiful lush green continents becoming seas of fire.
“Please... help us!” He sobbed. “Save us!”
His words were so raw, so desperate, that even the torturer turned to glare his way before going back to Alice’s teeth that regrew so fast that they demanded his attention.
His constant, absolute attention as the tall Moorish lord dressed in top hat and frock coat in a nearby cage smiled calmly from between the steel bars, several figures huddled behind him, safely cloaked by Grim’s shadow.
Greed sneered down at Caliban’s sobs. “Ah... so now is when Caliban’s unflappable persona finally cracks.” He smirked, taking a delighted puff. “You know, tears that big and sweet? It almost makes the pain that mongrel BRAT put me through worth it. Almost.” He glared down at his torturer. “YOU! SLAVE! Collect his tears!”
Yet the torturer was far too obsessed with pulling Alice’s teeth, seeming to tremble whenever Alice gave a despair cry of pain, even if he could never quite get the pliers where they needed to be.
Greed’s glare grew hard and cold as Aurelia’s soothing words trembled through Caliban’s battered soul. “My poor dear Cali. Seven generations removed from my dear little Eliot, determined to tread his own path. Not that of power... but of trade. So determined to go his own way, and what an impressive name he made for himself in the end, no? But alas, all good things MUST come to an end. Poor Elie’s idealism turning to ash, much like the trade worlds that had come so close to achieving system-wide stability. Yet so fragile that all it takes is a single artifact-enhanced coup for it all to come crashing down.”
Caliban sobbed as the pitiless armada continued to drop plasma bombs over the entirety of his world, turning one lush green continent after another into burning wastelands where no life would grow countless years, if ever again, should sufficient bombs be dropped so as to cook the atmosphere away entirely.
“Please, grandmother, help us!” Caliban sobbed allowed, his voice little more than a cracked whisper, earning a cackle from greed.
“You think we don’t know who you are, Caliban? Secret heir of your pathetic excuse for a faction? Sorry, fool! But your grandparents are dead... as is every other royal scion in your faction!” Greed chortled with laughter before Caliban’s despairing wail. “That’s right, fool. We know the ins and outs of your entire faction! And if the asinine lemurs that make up my faction are too stupid, petty, and poorly disciplined to emulate it, why that just means we wipe YOUR faction off the map so my spawn has no competition at all! Fair as fair can be!”
Greed chortled as Caliban’s eyes filled with bitter tears he could no longer control.
“Swear fealty to me.”
The words froze Caliban’s sobs, as if a bucket of ice water had just been splashed over his head.
“What?”
“Swear fealty to me, Caliban Caerulus! The same fealty your many times grandfather swore to me, endless eons ago, before I released him of his oath, and allowed him to plant the seeds of mercantile greatness upon fertile soil. Greatness I have allowed to bloom unchecked. Until now, in the final hour. For it is time for us to savor the most magnificent harvest of all.”
“Your Grace, I have no power to...”
“You have ALL the power, foolish boy! You are the now the eldest living heir of your entire doomed faction! Can you not FEEL that truth thrumming through your doomed soul?”
And much to Caliban’s horror, he COULD feel it. The sudden upswelling of power, majesty, and might, that was a single choice away from claiming in full.
A choice that made him cry bitter tears, because he knew it was no choice at all, with a pain collar bound so tightly to his throat. And had a certain torturer not been so obsessed with the soft moans of his succubus captive as he struggled to pull out her delicate teeth that grew back at an alarming rate... Caliban would even now be writhing in endless screams of torment, he was sure.
He was desperate to hold back, desperate for the miracle he had hoped for, the reserve fleet his brother had sworn would be ready in time for the Blitzkrieg assault they had known would one day come... yet clearly, no clever feats of engineering genius and mercantile acumen were coming to save the day.
Clearly, his brother had just been blowing smoke up his ass, knowing that there were FAR more profitable ways for them to invest their money than in the foolish expense of a full armada when countless centuries of contractual alliances would always be there to keep them safe.
Until the night their enemies pulled out an artifact that, somehow, allowed them to abrogate all treaties ever made. Able to twist reality itself so that the contracts assuring retroactive penalties that would shatter countless Silver cores would NEVER HAVE EVEN BEEN... if Blue was wiped out in time.
And as much as he hated the situation he now faced... the armada fleet a smirking Greed had clearly directed to slowly obliterate Blue Faction’s crown jewel, would soon turn the entire globe into a fireball, troposphere obliterated, the once beautiful jewel green nations nothing but fire and ash, and it no longer MATTERED that the greatest trade consortium had fallen utterly and that the remnants of his faction would NEVER enjoy the prestige they once had. He needed to ACT NOW for the millions calling out for mercy AT THAT VERY INSTANT!
Greed, however, was giving Caliban a hard, cold look, his lips creeping in a ruthless smile. “Ooh, I knew there was something I liked about you, boy! It will be so GOOD to post your screams for the entire GALAXY to see, right before we cut off your—”
“I, Caliban Caerulus, swear faction fealty to the Winter Queen!”
The desperate words that could never be taken back seemed to echo endlessly through the torture chamber as Greed blanched in surprise, before his smirk turned to a furious scowl, as the torturer slowly turned around, dazed milky eyes fixated upon Caliban once more, as the homunculus it had so delighted in tormenting melted to the freshly butchered orc carcass it had been all along.
“No.” Greed’s voice took on a ready, disbelieving whisper as the ground began to tremble so violently that the torturer stumbled, for all that Caliban cried out when the shuddering spikes tore at his flesh.
“You? You’re the lost heir? I don’t believe it. I REFUSE to believe it!” Greed roared, eyes flashing with cold fury. “Arlen’s the only scion of your clan to leave Gaia III in a generation. We made sure of it!” His scowl turned to a cold chuckle. “Not that it matters, since you are now utterly in our power, and the removal of your head and Arlen’s ascension is just a single command away!” Greed turned to glare at the torturer. “SLAVE! Remove His—”
Greed’s words cut off in sudden static as one screen after another showcasing the destruction of an entire faction began to twist and warp, as if spacetime was bending before an incursion that defied reality itself.
But that didn’t stop the pair of goblin assassins now approaching Caliban with blasters at the ready, lips stretched wide in gleeful exhilaration even as Caliban closed his eyes and fiercely prayed with all his might that his ancient dam could somehow pull off a miracle.
“He? The Blue Faction heir is him? Wonderful!” Whispered the closer of the pair of guards. “We’ll get so much honor if we’re the ones to kill him, not the damned torturer!”
The second nodded in excited agreement before the entire chamber filled with red flashing lights and a blaring alarm as a fresh row of monitors came to life.
“We’re under attack!” The closest guard screamed, jabbing his finger at the screen now displaying a Freetown that was remarkably intact, save for the sacked, smoking ruin of Blue Quarter which made sense, since that had been the Goblins goal all around. Only now, an awed Caliban realized that wasn’t entirely true, catching sight of oddly burning flames that made his gut clench in the background of a single figure weaving about so fast that even his long-suppressed talents had trouble making it out.
He could only see the results, as dozens of heavily armed orcs, a handful of ogres, and a good score of mid-level White-tier mercenaries fell to a blade that blazed like the sun. For all that every warrior struck instantly froze solid before the two cleaved halves crashed to the ground.
Within a handful of seconds, half the three score sentinels had been transformed to shattered chunks of ice. A heartbeat after that the remainder fled, and only then did the figure slow enough for Caliban to make out the wild fiery blue eyes and brilliant silver-gold hair that complimented features now so strikingly perfect that there could be no doubt who’s child this was.
Yet the power of his glowing frame was so great that even Caliban was stunned by the sight of Eric glaring at the bank wall... then shattering it with a single blow.
“Fire Fist!”
He heard the distant echo from the bank chambers above as the pair of alarmed assassins exchanged meaningful looks as the sound of screams and shattered glass filled the chamber upstairs.
Moving as one, the pair of goblins positioned themselves to either side of Caliban’s bound form, even as the torturer, now glowing with a potency that was absolutely chilling, charged out of the chamber, his rod mace crackling with crushing intent Caliban could so easily sense.
Before the roar cut off as abruptly as it began and a frozen head of the startled-looking torturer came tumbling down the stairs like a bowling ball, a second before the cold steps thrumming down the stairs revealed a Contender radiating both shocking potency and the face of someone Caliban had never expected to see again in his life
Eric Silver flashed Caliban the smile of a wild-eyed killer.
The smile of a friend.
Caliban swallowed, desperate to warn Eric, but the pair of assassins cloaked in shadow had already flowed away from him and right behind their prey.
“Eric, look out—”
His tearing, lidless eyes couldn’t look away from the flash, awed and horrified as he was by the sight of Eric turning around to glare with such utter contempt for the pair of screeching goblins who had just blasted him point blank with their T-2 Blasters, right in the base of his neck.
Or that’s where they had been aiming, yet Eric had moved so fast that he was now behind them.
Caliban braced himself for the sonic boom that never came. Only a single flash as Eric’s blade cleaved right through both desperately backpedaling goblins, their raised limbs, chests, indeed their entire bodies were instantly frozen to blocks of ice even as a beam of impossibly dense fire cleaved through their frozen forms.
And the look in young Eric Silver’s eyes as they widened in sudden revelation was both awe inspiring and horrifying, the blade in his hands abruptly growing in length, depth, and in the warp and weft of reality all around it, somehow grander and stranger than anything belonging to the fragile mortal realm they called their own had any right to be.
“Mother. I understand!” Eric said with awed tears streaming down his cheeks. “The territories we cleared, so many to fall before Ice Fire... now I see.” He turned around, gazing at the crackling figure of Ice behind Eric that was now pinning Caliban’s breathless gaze as Aurelia Silver herself solidified into being.
And much to his wonderment and horror, he saw that the Winter Queen was covered not just in eternal swirling snows, but crackling flame that seemed to kiss oblivion itself.
“Mother, I finally understand!” Eric uttered once more, his voice filled with reverential awe as he gazed at the blue fires of his sword with reverential awe even as the air filled with the Winter Queen’s laughter. A laughter that didn’t fade but grew and grew in power, potency, and reverberations as the entire chamber was filled with howling storms of frigid doom, Aurelia’s eyes now glowing like the sun.