Chapter 14: Interrogation

Fen woke to a flash of cold and a loud splash. An impulsive gasp sent him coughing and choking on the water that had been thrown in his face.

The first thing Fen noticed was that he was tied to a chair in a small room with sunlight shining through the gaps in the slats of the walls. Directly in front of him was a man in the gray robes of the cult, wielding a now empty bucket and a grim expression on his face.

Behind Fen, the door opened, flooding the room with sunlight for a brief moment before the door closed again. “I believe I warned you to cease your meddling.” The voice was dissonant in the intimidating atmosphere. It was the high pitched voice of a large man.

“Well, you clearly don’t know me well enough to assume that would have worked.” Fen said.

The man snorted and coughed out a laugh that almost made Fen laugh with its absurdity. “We’ve learned a lot about you in the last couple days, so I won’t be underestimating you again.” He came around to where Fen could see him and placed a chair that protested loudly as he sat down. “What did you do with the sword?”

“I don’t know.” Fen said, deciding that honesty might suit him well in this situation.

“So we have to do this the hard way?” The cultist asked.

“Is this not already the hard way?” Fen tried to gesture, but he couldn’t do much more than wag his chin around.

“You narrowly avoided experiencing the hard way when you decided to attack our warehouse.” It was the first thing the large cultist said that intimidated Fen.

“I already told you I don’t know.” Fen answered. “I saw the sword I assume you’re asking about when I was down there, but I actually don’t know what happened to it.”

The cultist shook his head, frowning. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“I assume you won’t believe me no matter what I say.” Fen kind of shrugged. “I wouldn’t believe me in the circumstances either, but I am being honest.”

“Tell me everything then. Let me decide if I believe you.”

“I went down in the hill. There’s a small complex down there, and I found the key to the storm door in a pile of dust in the other large room. The sword glowed so brightly that I couldn’t tell what it was for a while, but obviously I tried to grab it as soon as I saw what it was. BOOM! Then the lights went out.

“Then I went back up out of the ruin and met your guys.” Fen said.

The man shook his head, sending his long jowls swinging. “You still lie. Surely you bonded the sword, and you’ll undoubtedly be ready to tell me all about that in a few hours.”

“I don’t even know what that means.” Fen cringed a little at the pleading he heard in his voice, but the large cultist paid him no heed. Light flashed briefly before the door closed behind the man.

The bucket wielding man had replaced his grim scowl with a full on smile, and energy began to crackle between his fingers.

It was about to be a very long day.

The cultist dropped his bucket and pressed his hand to Fen’s chest. An arc of pain shot through every inch of Fen’s body, blasting finally out the bottom of his feet.

The loud ringing in Fen’s ears took a minute to fade, and his vision stopped fuzzing at the same time. Letting him hear his own frantic breathing just in time to see the cultist stepping forward for another blast.

Fen quickly lost track of time to the haze of pain.

A concerning tingling began in Fen’s fingers, growing with each burst of magical electricity. It gave Fen something to focus on other than the pain, and he buried himself under the numb feeling.

Submerged in cold numbness Fen felt something strange. It was very similar to what he had felt when he went to grab the sword, a sort of reaching, something within calling out to him.

Fen smiled as he reached back. He understood in that moment what the large cultist had meant when he said Fen had bonded the sword.

A thunderous boom echoed through the tiny shack, and the whole place was suddenly bathed in light. Fen could see every detail of the terror on the face of the cultist as he stood from his chair, the ropes falling away, singed and burning on one end.

In his hand was the sword made from crackling energy that had answered Fen’s call for help.

The cultist fell with a hiss and a gurgle and Fen turned and kicked down the door. He was in the center of a ramshackle camp that was bustling with cultists running towards the half disintegrated shack to see what the boom had been.

Many of them fled upon seeing Fen with his glowing sword, but many more kept charging with their weapons ready.

Fen plunged himself into the fight, reveling in the power of his newfound weapon. It was almost weightless in his hand, giving him a speed that he had never seen before in all his years of fighting.

Cultists fell left and right before Fen’s blade of thunder.

A crack of thunder sounded off to his left and Fen reacted before his mind could even process it. The fat cultist had hurled a bolt of lightning at Fen.

Fen caught it with his sword, the blade drinking in the power greedily. It began to hum in Fen’s hand as he resumed his slaughter. The fear among the cultists was palpable, and many of them began to turn and flee.

In minutes the entire camp was empty of cultists. A half dozen men lay dead at Fen’s feet, and the rest had fled.

Fen dropped his sword and it flashed away in an instant, though he could still feel it calling out to him in the back of his mind.

Fen did a cursory inspection of the camp, hoping to find the gear that had been stolen from him, but he found nothing of interest.

After turning his back on the camp Fen found a tall hill and scrambled to the top. The Crown mountains to the west provided a sufficient landmark for him to find his way, and he struck his way back towards Unger.

Fen had won a great victory against The Chosen Storm, but he still had no idea what they were planning, just that he had dumbly stumbled right into the middle of those plans.