Chapter 20: Chapter TWENTY

Zerkan was leading the whole troop one floor down. Ethan followed them, his face closed, with Mia clinging nervously to his arm. The spirit of the Vila was particularly tormented, but he let nothing show. There was no need to be two to panic, especially since he suspected very well the content of the message. It was a declaration of murderous intent towards him and his soul mate, there was no doubt. Impervia had staged everything to make them understand that she would never leave them alone as long as she was alive.

And to tell me that she knows we’re with the Resistance... Provided she doesn’t know where Callis is. Maybe we could be safe here after all...

“I don’t really want to see the corpse,” Mia whispered, tightening her grip around the Vila’s arm.

“You don’t have to, the message is for me anyway.”

She nodded, her body turned towards him, in approval of what he was saying, thus missing the pointed look Adam had given Ethan upon hearing their conversation. He knew very well what his brother was thinking at that moment. She was going to be confronted with visions of horrors sooner or later with this war, there was no point in protecting her, but he couldn’t bring himself to force her. He himself would have liked to have had a few more carefree days before this whole situation fell on him.

After taking a flight of stairs, the group found themselves once again in a long, cold, and damp corridor that crossed the entire cliff. This time, the doors were all closed, sealed against prying eyes. The floor was devoted to magical, scientific, and technological research for military use. Ethan suspected that some of these doors were bewitched to allow only authorized military individuals through.

After a few minutes of walking, they finally arrived at their destination through a metal door that opened into a large cluttered room. There was a desk in the back and numerous tables scattered around the room, as well as multiple shelves overflowing with scrolls and books. Each piece of furniture was cluttered with dozens of pieces of paper, utensils, and gadgets of all kinds. The whole thing formed a huge mess and it was to wonder how the person who worked there could find anything in this disorderly chaos.

The room was relatively dark, so Ethan didn’t immediately notice the silhouette of the man slumped in an office chair. His upper body rested on the furniture, his arms concealing his bald head. He was obviously enjoying a little nap, totally carefree. Even the sound of the metal door hadn’t roused him from his sleep.

“Igor, stand up!” Ellana ordered, giving him a quick pat on the back of the head.

The wizard engineer awoke with a start, his confused gaze falling on the person who had disturbed his peaceful sleep. He sighed before getting up, without saying a word, and grabbed a long, thin cape that was resting on his chair to slip it behind his back. The fabric was black with brown and gold embroidery and looked more like a ceremonial dress than a garment intended to protect him from the cold. Especially since it wasn’t really cold here, even though they were at the heart of a cliff.

The man named Igor led them two doors down into what was a morgue with tables big enough to hold corpses in the center of the room. Ethan wasn’t wrong about the general temperature in the town of Callis, but it wasn’t applicable here. The Vila felt Mia shiver against his arm. It was extremely cool in the room so the bodies wouldn’t rot.

“I’ll stay at the entrance,” Mia announced, breaking away from her mate after Zerkan closed the door behind them.

There were five bodies in the center of the room, all wrapped in body bags. Their magic fabric allowed the container to keep the corpse at a negative temperature. They also made it possible to conceal the bodies so that they were not in plain sight, thus preventing the blonde from falling on a vision that she did not wish to print in her memory when entering the room. With this in mind, her gaze fell on the door to fix it, showing her back to the stiffs to be sure not to see anything.

The wizard engineer walked to the furthest body and opened the bag to reveal Wang’s head. Ethan didn’t flinch as he approached, but the beads of sweat beading his forehead didn’t lie: he was clearly uncomfortable. Wang had her eyes open and her pupils lifeless, and her cold body had lost all color, making her look sickly. There was not a single drop of blood in her veins, but her skin and clothes were profusely stained with her vital red. Her mouth was wide open, much wider than was possible, due to her broken jaw. There was dried blood around her gums and mucous membranes, probably from the severed hand of the Sentinel who had tried to remove the small box he could see deep in her throat.

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“What if it’s not for me? I don’t really want to lose my hand...”

“We have very competent healers in Callis, they will certainly be able to reattach it to you,” explained the wizard seriously and politely.

“Very funny,” replied the Vila sarcastically.

“I am not joking.”

Ethan snuck a glance at his mate who had ended up looking away from the door and staring at him. She couldn’t see the corpse from where she was, anyway. Even less so with Adam, Irina and Ellana also surrounding the body. Zerkan and Finnegan had taken a step back since they had nothing more to add. Everything rested on Ethan now.

“It’ll be fine,” encouraged Adam, who was growing impatient to discover the message.

The young Vila inhaled for a long time before approaching Wang’s head. An exhalation later, his slender fingers slipped timidly between the stiff’s teeth. His hand was shaking with nervousness, steadying it was next to impossible. The fear of feeling the corpse’s jaw snap shut on his member almost erased the disgust of what he was doing. It wasn’t every day you were asked to stick your hand in the mouth of an inert body.

When his fingernails cleared the stiff’s teeth, Ethan quickened his movements when he saw that the trap hadn’t triggered. Now that he knew he was in no danger, he wanted to remove the box as soon as possible so that his disgusting mission was over. In a second, his hand closed around the velvet contours of the object. With a jerk, he tugged the box out of Wang’s mouth.

“Open it,” urged Ellana approaching.

The box firmly in place in his right hand, he used his left to open it apprehensively. They weren’t safe from a new trap yet, after all. However, nothing was triggered when the object revealed its contents. Relieved, the Vila grabbed the tiny piece of parchment-wrapped paper and unrolled it to read aloud.

“You should have stayed hidden,” he read evenly before chuckling. “The ingenuity behind it shouldn’t surprise me, we’re talking about my mother, after all. This is not a message intended for me. This is a warning for the Resistance.”

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