Descendants of Gibbous
Chapter 32: The Rogue lord’s quarters

Chapter 32: The Rogue lord’s quarters

Purple flames erupted from nowhere, filling a stone podium engraved in the strangest of signs with its light and heat.

The moment the rock felt the aura emitting from the flames, it immediately glowed a bright red. The light spread throughout the podium’s engraved signs—into the extending trenches that branched out and touched every one of the ten pillars surrounding it. The moment the stone pillars were hit by the light, they creaked in protest, the marks on them lighting up at once.

Amidst all the chaos, the purple flames disappeared, and in their stead was now a wizard dressed in a black suit and coat.

His hair was ruffled, eyes puffy from lack of proper sleep and he stank of rotten disposed food from sleeping in a dumpster for an entire three weeks—a rather peculiar sight to witness him like this for he was a clean freak—but he couldn’t care less tonight.

He had important news to deliver.

"Well, here goes nothing," Kaos mumbled to himself, taking his first step toward the entrance he was facing.

It was a giant cave.

Its entrance was made of stone that looked like a human skeleton with a spider’s pinchers. Next to each pincher were fully transformed shifters in their dragon forms. To the right was a crimson dragon, a fire-breather no doubt, and to the left was a white dragon. Kaos couldn’t tell if he controlled air or water, but he might as well have been both from the way his white scales almost looked blue.

Not in the least afraid they might harm him, the wizard walked towards the skeleton’s mouth, but before he could enter, the white dragon sniffed twice and raised its large palm. A large claw that could bore into Kaos’s skull and kill him in an instant pointed at his small face and he stilled.

"How dare you walk into the Lord’s quarters smelling like shit," the dragon roared, his wide blue eyes glued on the wizard.

"Let’s eat him," the Crimson dragon replied, baring her jaw at Koas.

She immediately rose from the ground where she was resting, flapping her majestic wings as a wave of wild wind howled past Kaos’s face. But he remained rooted on the spot.

He was powerful once again thanks to the feast he just had and knew he could take care of the duo without too much effort. They were, after all, nothing more than mere A-rank dragons. He could feel the crimson dragon’s aura as she let it go wild to threaten him, oblivious to his position in the Rogue lord’s quarters, or his rank.

Or she might as well have been playing dump just to find an excuse to fight with him.

"No, Savanna. We were told not to fight with anyone who comes here tonight unless they started it first," the white dragon answered, shifting into his human form.

A rather young man he was. One look at him and Kaos could tell he was from the Draconic region in the East. As for the female, her fiery spirit reminded Kaos of the foul-mouthed dragons in the West.

"A trusted servant who doesn’t even prepare his body when meeting lord Thanatos? Ha! I still vote for eating him," the female roared, lowering her face towards the small wizard before her and snapping her jaws as if showing him how she’d devoured him.

However, the young man wasn’t following her ridiculous request. Instead, he twisted his arm behind him, bent his upper torso, and stretched his legs a meter apart.

"Please stand over there so I can wash away the stink," he pointed his head at the bloody mark facing the entrance.

Kaos glanced at the crimson dragon who looked like she had finally noticed he was a rank above her after he let out a bit of his aura. She had moved her head away from his face and was back to lying below the pinchers, closing her eyes.

Then the wizard stood where the white-haired young man had asked him to and watched as the dragon twisted his arm and torso in a hexing motion, magically pulling the water behind him and making it coil around him like a pipe. He then clapped his palms together, leaving a small hole between them, and immediately after he did that, the water started entering the rear of his hands, shooting at Kaos in a manner akin to that of a fountain.

’Ah, so he’s a water dragon.’

Kaos groaned in approval as the warm water hit him, but he could smell something else in it that reminded him of delicate flowers.

"It’s pure rose water, sir," the dragon notified him, withdrawing his arms.

The water splashed on the ground, leaving Kaos soaked, his clothes dripping off the sweet-scented liquid, but not for long. The young dragon flicked his hands behind him once again, making the rose water on the ground withdraw back to the little pool his dragon form had been hiding next to him. Then he raised his hands, fingers crisscrossed as he ever so slowly bent them.

Little by little, Kaos could feel his clothes becoming lighter. The wetness was being sucked away by the water-manipulating dragon, and by the time he was done, Kaos was both clean and smelling fresher than he had when he arrived.

"You can go in now," the young man announced and Kaos nodded at him, smiling.

But before he left, he glanced warningly at the crimson dragon who hadn’t shifted into her human form. She was grinning menacingly.

"You were being seasoned," she mocked.

"Savanna!"

"Leave her. I don’t fight with weaklings," Kaos barked, before finally strutting into the Rogue lord’s quarters.

It was dark inside. The cave’s roof stood aloft high above him, spiders filing its cracks with their webs and young. A giant bat the size of an adult dog was resting somewhere above, sleeping, but Kaos paid no attention to it. He moved deeper into the cave until he reached a rock that confirmed the den’s end.

However, the wizard kept walking, bursting forth into the rock wall and entering it with ease as if it were a membrane.

Soon he was inside yet another dimension, with a pale light that shone brighter than the moon filling every nook and corner of the space. Countless bats were flying in it, the same size as the one had seen hanging from the cave.

Amongst the flying bats were floating buildings bigger than the ones at the complex. The edifices rotated around the space at the same speeds the bats were flying, creating a scenery only those with advanced eyesight could keep up with. It was all confusing and yet, in that distorted unnatural way the buildings swerved around, everything was orderly.

The bats managed to dodge every building headed their way even though they didn’t move systematically, and the buildings never crashed into each other. The ground was clean of any debris or dead bats, a rather funny sight considering the chaos happening in the skies.

But that was the least of Kaos’s concerns.

He was finally in the Rogue lord’s presence. All he had to do now was...

"You’re here."

The wizard flinched. Upon hearing his master’s voice he prostrated himself to the ground, a cold sweat running down his face.

"Yes, my lord," he replied, his voice echoing in the ever-expanding domain.

Just then, an aura so suffocating Kaos choked out blood descended upon him, and the buildings floating in mid-air froze. Even the bats stopped flying about pointlessly and disappeared from the scenery in an instant.

Then in a fashion akin to a jigsaw puzzle, the buildings began clashing into each other, forming one large castle Kaos was accustomed to seeing by now.

WHOOSH!

One of them almost grazed Kaos’s face, but he didn’t flinch when it flashed past him and headed toward the others before...

BAM!

The last piece fell into place.

"Come in, Kaos," the loud icy voice called out once again, its tone powerful enough to make him flinch once again.

But he forced himself to move either way. Making the Rogue lord wait was a despicable crime, one that prompted death.

A door opened the moment Kaos stood and he walked into it, through a passage that was lit with yellow lanterns—past rooms with pillars identical to the ones surrounding the portal point outside, glowing a fiery red light—into the main chambers, a dome-shaped room with a golden chandelier dangling from the roof, the fires lit on it bright enough to cast a warm yellow glow on the walls.

Surrounding the dome’s walls were arches whose fronts were covered by veils. There were eleven to be exact, five on each side of the room with one large one in the middle of them all—the one the wizard was facing.

In the middle of the room, bowing with their heads kissing the floor were five rogues whose backs Kaos thought were familiar. Blood surrounded them, forming a small stream that cascaded from where they were bowed, to the entrance where he was standing, a clear indication of the massacre going on in the room before he arrived.

The wizard’s hands began quivering non-stop, and he couldn’t stop himself from bowing too once he reached the middle of the room. Then he glanced at the prostrated rogues and his heart thudded in his chest, making him choke on blood once again.

It was his comrades, the ones who, like him, had been assigned to find the gem.

"Did you bring the gem of Memento Mori?" Came the voice from behind the larger arch.

A deadly silence fell in the room, a silence that was immediately filled with the ragged breathing of those bowing before the lord. Kaos was about to reply when one of the men to his far left beat him to it.

"The heroes were stronger my lord. They came in numbers, and before I knew it, they had killed the men you gave me and took the ge—arghh!"

He didn’t finish speaking before an ice shard was sent in his direction, piercing his heart.

Then it carried him in the air towards the lord before...

CRUNCH!

The bowing rogues visibly flinched.

They knew exactly what was happening without needing to be told.

As for the crunching, it continued, and paired with the screams coming from the Gibbit who was being devoured, the noise was rather hellish to Kaos’s ears. A barbaric sensation he only liked to hear when it was done by the humans.

Neither he nor his comrades dared to say a word. They couldn’t. They had failed in accomplishing the mission they had been given, a mistake worth receiving the death penalty no matter how gruesome it might be.

"Next. Do you have the gem?" The voice called out again before another rogue was sent flying outside the castle after he gave half-baked reasons for his failure.

For the next few minutes, Kaos watched as his comrades died one by one, each being devoured alive whilst their screams filled the hall. He couldn’t stop quivering, but he somehow knew that he would be spared. After all, unlike the others, he hadn’t failed for nothing. He had great entail about the gem, something he was sure would make his lord delighted.

Finally, he was the only rogue left bowing before the Rogue lord on the podium.

"Kaos, my right-hand man," the icy voice finally addressed him.

A warm sensation masked the wizard’s chest. He raised his head in time to hear a degrading cackle come from the arch to the Rogue lord’s right. But he ignored it.

"Y-yes my lord?"

"I trust that, unlike the rest of them, you would have the gem at least, right?"

Kaos froze, the cold sweat on his face seemingly turning to ice on his body. Literally. He could feel the room getting colder by the second.

’My lord wouldn’t attack me of all Rogues would he?’

"I...I lost it, my lord."

It didn’t take long before the sweat solidified on his body and an ice shard disk was whistling in the air, aiming for his neck.

"But I have news you might want to hear before you take my life!" The wizard yelled faster than he’d ever done in his life, and the disk stopped in an instant, already on his neck.

The veil covering the middle arch opened slowly, to reveal the rogue lord himself, his presence domineering enough to make Kaos evade his glare and bow.

"Make sure this news that you carry is worth sparing your life, or I’ll feed you to the bats."