We weren’t total monsters, of course. I wasn't about to leave these vessels to float out on the water, empty but for rotting bodies. After ‘requisitioning’ what supplies we could find on their vessels and dividing them out amongst the flotilla, we scuttled the ships, sending their deceased crew to rest in a watery grave. It was only right that those who lived and died on the sea eventually came to rest forevermore in its embrace.

  And then Captain Bronzle became a ‘guest’ in the small infirmary of the Astray. I had no intention of chaining him up in the small brig that my ship had, strung up like a common Velancian slave. We may have just wiped out an entire Dwarven patrol fleet, but we weren’t torturers like their slaving overlords.

  He was still manacled to the bed-frame, though.

  “Not a bad job, Nate,” Renauld murmured to me, standing at my side outside the infirmary. He had just gotten done doing a preliminary examination of the Dwarven Captain, after the post-battle cleanup had been finished. Not far from us, the two guards I had assigned to the infirmary stood, straight and still, staring off into the distance and pretending they weren’t eavesdropping. “You were a bit sloppy with the stitch, so he’ll have a big old scar. But he’ll live. He’s just out cold for the moment.”

  I snorted softly. “I’m not concerned about scars. And…there was still some debate on whether he’ll live or not.” A long, slow breath left me then. “We’ll see. I just need to ask him a few questions, and then I’ll make up my mind. The other Captains left the decision up to me, as he was my prisoner.”

  “Careful, Nate,” Renauld warned me softly. “It’s one thing to kill in the middle of battle…”

  “But something else entirely, to kill a prisoner in cold blood after it,” I finished for him. “Believe me, I get it.” I grimaced, running a hand through my hair in frustration, and made a sharp motion with one hand. From it echoed out a Spell I’d been glad to learn from Grey, something that muffled sound in a short distance around you. Silence fell around Renauld and me.

  It was better for morale if the troops didn’t hear their commander expressing doubts.

  “To tell you the truth…I’m wondering if I could have handled things differently. If, perhaps, I was too ready to jump straight to wiping them all out at the first hint of battle. That was…a lot of blood to spill, just to keep our presence hidden.”

  Renauld was silent for a moment, staring out of the small, circular open window across from us in the hallway. Through it, the grey seas of the ocean crested and swelled, gently rocking the Astray as we sailed away from the bay we had fought the Dwarves in. I’d directed the flotilla away from the coasts once more in the aftermath of the battle, while we planned our next moves. Bleddyn had been happy to take the wheel for me while I was busy. “They didn’t give you much choice, Nate,” The Gnoll eventually answered, in a sober tone. “You heard them. If we didn’t leave, they were ready to wipe us out. And considering the stakes of what we’re doing…”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “But it almost feels like a…a…betrayal of…”

  What I had set out to do when I had founded the Order of the Polaris Reach. An Order that had been meant to help people, and not kill them.

  But I didn’t say. Renauld understood, and besides. He was one of my people as well, and his morale mattered too.

  Enough of this. I had things to do.

  I shook my head sharply and dispelled the soundproof barrier around the two of us. “I can handle things from here,” I said in an even tone. “You should go see if the other ships need any help.”

  No fool, Renauld understood what I was saying. He met my eyes for a moment and nodded. “Gotcha. We’ll talk later, Nate.”

  I ghosted a brief smile his way at the promise and nodded. Without another word, he turned and left, while I opened the door to the infirmary and stepped through. Inside, there was only a single occupant, lying on one of the four beds. Despite this not being a prison, I had ordered the Dwarf to be chained to one of the posts, but it was purely performative. The bed was only wood, and the manacle was simple steel. Neither of those would stop a classer on the level of Captain Bronzle for a second.

  It was to send him a message.

  And I’m sure he’d gotten it.

  Patiently, I pulled up one of the chairs in the room and dragged it loudly over to rest at the bedside of the ‘sleeping’ Dwarf. Once I had sat down and folded my hands over my lap, I fixed my eyes on Bronzle and smiled mirthlessly. “You need not pretend any longer, Captain,” I said mildly. “We both know you haven’t been asleep for the past ten minutes.”

  After all…while it was possible to train someone to perfectly mimic the effects of a deep sleep, it was a much different matter to mimic autonomic bodily systems. My blood sense was good for more than just telling when somebody was near. I could tell when a heart was beating faster.

  Giancarlo Bronzle tried to keep the charade going for several minutes more, but he must have finally realized I wasn’t bluffing when I never moved an inch from where I sat.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  He decided to act instead.

  In an admirable display of speed, the Venier Marine Captain’s eyes snapped open, and in the same instant, he lunged at me. As expected, the wood of the bed frame wasn’t able to restrain his movements, and the post he was chained to immediately shattered into a million splinters. In the split second I could see his eyes, the murder written across them was almost admirable.

  Nearly.

  I’d expected something like this.

  Which was why my Core had kept a hair trigger on the activation of Vis Maledicta Exactoris. The instant he’d moved, that spark was ignited.

  And I exploded to my full, cursed transformation state before Bronzle’s broad, Dwarven palms could clamp around my neck.

  Unfortunately for him…

  They weren’t quite large enough to wrap around my newly scaled throat. Instead, I grabbed both of his wrists with one taloned hand and clamped down on them, while my other hand reached out to gently, ever so gently, wrap around Giancarlo Bronzle’s throat.

  He stilled, eyeing me with sudden fear and an intensified loathing. “Monster,” Bronzle spat at me.

  “Somewhat,” I said in that same mild tone, only altered by the new vocal cords of my transformed state. Bronzle shivered to hear it. “Now. I believe we both understand the situation you’re in, Captain. You could not hope to defeat me even at your full strength, even when I was going easy on you. As you can plainly see,” I smiled slightly, exposing the barest hint of my rows of fangs. “Your only hope of continued survival is your full and complete cooperation.”

  That was a lie. I’d already decided on Bronzle’s fate, and it didn’t include his summary execution after interrogation.

  Instead, I was going to knock the man back out and feed him a potion that Grey had taught me. It was something that my mentor had only done so after a dire warning that he would be quite cross if I abused it. The potential for abuse with the concoction was very high, and so I’d understood the subtext of what he’d said.

  There were…a lot of things you could do with Alchemy, if you only had the mind to conceive of it. The discipline essentially functioned as a way to carefully construct Spells in a physical, liquid state that could be stored for usage later. And considering just how broad the applications of Magic were…

  Was it any wonder that Mind Magic effects were something you could bottle as well?

  I may be absolutely terrible at the discipline, but I could still brew similar effects through Aetherial Melding.

  What Grey had taught me was a potion to erase the memories of who ingested it of the last whole day. Twenty-four hours, just vanished into thin air. The person who drank it would be incredibly confused when they woke up, having lost an entire day. That was far more potent than normal memory-erasing potions that had been well known to me back in the Nocturne Division. Those only really worked on an hour’s worth of memories at best.

  Bronzle was going to be the recipient of Grey’s potion, and once it had worked its magic, I had several paths I could take on what to do with the Dwarf.

  It all depended on what he told me. I’d settle on one afterward.

  However, now I had to get him to actually talk. But I’d had a thought about that, and I think it was about to pay off. Ultimately, I think Giancarlo Bronzle…was a bit of a self-serving person. The way he had reacted to the sight of the disguised Azarus all those months ago had helped me construct a mental profile of him.

  It told me that with just a hint of pressure…

  He’d squeal.

  And judging by the fear I could see in his brown eyes at the monstrosity that was my transformation, that would be soon.

  I widened my grin, exposing more of my extremely sharp teeth. “Now. Let’s you and I have a chat, shall we?”

  ……………………….

  Several hours later, I was done with Bronzle. Very definitely, at that, as I’d chosen to force-feed him a powerful sleep potion before following it up with the memory erasure one. Really, the more accurate term would be coma potion. The Dwarf would not be waking up until we reached beyond the Barren Forest in some days’ time, and fully entered into the territory of Velancia. Plenty of time for the memory alteration to take place

  Because I was now more determined than ever to reach Dwarven lands, after what he had told me. Once there, I fully intended to use the ‘good’ Captain as a catspaw of sorts.

  For as wretched as I now found the Dwarf, he was going to serve one last service to the world.

  Right now, though, I still had to process everything I’d learned from him. I just…I was having a hard time doing so, and I needed to get my thoughts in order before I convened with the other Captains and the officers, so I could inform them of my findings. Currently, I was brooding in my quarters.

  I was man enough to admit it, too. I was fully on Brooding with a capital ‘B’, sitting at my desk and staring out my small window with a large frown on my face. I had taken a bottle of liquor out of my parchment-strewn desk and was seriously considering cracking the wax seal on it.

  That was, until I felt a pair of cool, silvery arms slide around my neck from behind. Moments later, an equally cool chin came to rest on my left shoulder, and I felt literally golden hair brush against my cheek. A breath blew against my ear, and a soft, playful voice echoed inside it.

  “Now…what are you pouting about?” Sylvia teased me gently.

  I sighed, but a smile crossed my lips almost involuntarily. I reached up and grasped one of her hands, clasped over my chest, almost involuntarily seeking reassurance from her. “Nothing good, I can say that.”

  My lover hummed and bodily turned both me and my chair around to face her. She was more than strong enough to do so. Hell, she was about a dozen levels above me these days. “What’s happened now?” She said, placing her hands on her slim hips and frowning at me in concern.

  Despite myself, I smiled in a faint, teasing way up at the Mythril Sculpted woman, the daughter my mentor had crafted with his own two hands.

  Literally.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, Miss First Mate of the White Gull?”

  “Nathan…” Sylvia said in a slight warning tone, narrowing her gemstone blue eyes.

  “Alright, alright,” I said, raising my hands in surrender. “You can have a preview. You were going to learn during the meeting anyway. It’s…about what I learned from the Captain I captured.”

  Sylvia sat down on the edge of my bed, here in my not-so-luxuriously sized Captain's quarters. There was barely more than a few feet between the bed and my desk. “Go on.”

  I immediately sobered up. Not even Sylvia’s presence could distract me for long from what I’d learned from Bronzle. “Things are…worse than we thought they could be, up in the Principality. Far worse. I found out why Bronzle reacted so strongly to the idea of us entering the Barren Forest.” I paused for a moment, still astonished by the sheer insanity of what I’d been told. I shook my head.

  “It’s because the Principality has entered into a formal alliance with the Elves.”