"So, let me get this straight." Lith still doubted Vickas's words.
"Among the group of traitors that is trying to sabotage the Queen's work, there is someone that lead them by the nose while preparing this plague?"
Vickas nodded, his eyes always fixed on the army of mouths millimetres away from his bleeding flesh.
"What does this mastermind want? What's the endgame?" A zombie lifted Vickas' head by the chin, forcing him to look at Lith in the eyes.
"I don't know." He squealed. The hand holding him was flabby and sticky, secreting decomposition fluids at every movement. The putrid smell would have made him puke already, but there was nothing left but bile in his stomach.
"Then how come you know so much about your friends and their masters? It seems only a convenient lie to me."
Vickas exploded into a feverish laughter. The dreadful experience he was living, being captured, tortured and allegedly infected, had already pushed him to the brink of insanity.
Lith's naivety seemed to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
"Ha! Ha! Ha! Gods, how could my liege believe that someone so stupid could find a cure? He must be an idiot too! We're dead! We are all dead!"
Lith tried to make him snap out of his hysteria, first with threats and then with slaps, but to no avail.
"Eat his b*lls." He ordered, cancelling the spell that held the pain at bay.
"Please, no! Anything but that! I'm sorry! I really am!" Vickas stopped laughing, the agony flooding his limbs and the sight of those drooling mouths nearing his nether regions forced him to regain his senses.
"Remember, I still hold what's left of your life. If you are so proud of being someone else's dog, then act like one. I say bark, you bark. Otherwise my friends here will teach you how to play dead."
Vickas had served Duke Selimar for years, joining the military and climbing up its ranks only for his master's sake. His parents had abandoned him when he was just five years old, they already had too many mouths to feed to care for a talentless, whiny kid.
It had been Selimar that had adopted him along with his sworn brothers, saving them from the starvation and the daily abuses at the orphanage. Betraying the Crown had been natural for them, they had no loyalty nor gratitude towards the ones incarnating a system that only treated them as trash.
He didn't do it out of greed, but out of love. There was nothing he wouldn't do for his foster father. Betraying his trust was already tearing Vickas' soul apart, being called a dog was too much to bear.
"If only I could use magic…" He snarled, baring his teeth at Lith.
"It would change nothing." Lith gave him a slap, but this time with his true strength.
The force of that simple gesture smeared Vickas's nose over his cheek, making him bleed profusely, and dislocated the jaw.
Vickas had never been hit with such strength, not even when fighting soldiers twice his size. His pride and defiance crumbled, realizing that the zombies were innocent lambs compared to their shepherd.
"After the plague was released, Selimar understood that without a cure, he is bound to lose. If the Crown wins, he will be executed for treason, if his faction wins, they'll become the mastermind's slaves.
He fears him, so he didn't tell me anything, to not compromise their relationship." Vickas dropped the honorifics. He was a traitor now. He didn't deserve to call him master anymore.
"The others, instead, are expendable. When Lizhark and Fernath insisted to have their men assist me, he understood they didn't trust him anymore, so he took precautions.
He gave me enough means and information to frame them and their masters, so when necessity arose, I could expose them and destroy their credibility, giving my lieg… Selimar the time to get to safety."
- "This is good news for the Crown, but not for me. Lith thought.
The accident in Kandria revealed the hidden agenda, which in turn is causing them to infight. These morons are so desperate to put all their hopes on me, and I have yet to do anything. The only way to get them off my back is for the cure to be found, and fast."-
"One last question. How could they know what happened and react so fast? How did you bypass the array?"
"It's actually easy." Vickas swallowed a lump of saliva. 'Last question' meant he was about to outlive his usefulness.
"We were already here, so when you arrived, each of us notified to his master. Whatever you did, made the Crown move fast, and that made you a target. As for the array, Small World is not perfect as they say.
Whenever Varegrave makes a call, anyone can use his communication amulet."
Lith was shocked, but thanks to the mask, nothing transpired.
- "Maybe that's because no one uses dimensional items, and why Varegrave refused to grant me privileges. The array is just like a big switch, when it's off, anything goes." -
"And how do you know when he does it?"
"I don't. I only wait for Selimar's calls."
Lith interrogated the other two, but nothing new came up. They were just as Vickas, but with a different master. All of them were plain looking and with the rank of lieutenant.
High enough to be able to move freely though the camp, but not enough to make it hard keeping a low profile.
Lith kept his promise, giving them a swift death and turning both their bodies and clothes into dust.
- "There are traitors among the nobles, the mages, the army and even in the royal palace. Without someone reporting exactly when the King is unavailable, it would be impossible to nail the right timing to call inside the quarantine zone.
I'm in hot waters, Solus. I need a cure to be found, but it would be really nice if someone else discovers it. I'm already a magnet for troubles."
"What about those three we now know about? Will you expose them?"
"How could I possibly explain where did I get such information? And even if there was a way, it would paint an even bigger target on my back. The smartest thing to do is not overstepping my boundaries as healer.
Soon their disappearance will get noticed, and by searching their possessions Varegrave will find the evidence on his own." –
Lith sent all the corpses back to their shelves, setting them free from his necromancy spell before going to search for a surgeon. Thanks to the authority his rank as plague doctor conferred him, everything went smoothly.
No one questioned his orders, they only obeyed. Lith had preserved the corpse of the man with the split leg, untouched by darkness magic, because it was the only one he knew where to look for the parasites.
The body was moved to a safe zone, and after wearing full body scrubs made of white linen, the surgeon cut it open following Lith's instructions. Even with Life Vision, Lith wasn't able to find any traces of the parasites or the eggs he clearly remembered they had laid all around the body.
"It seems they are unable to survive without the host. Yesterday this man was a living colony, and now nothing."
"That would explain how they managed to escape detection so far." The surgeon pondered. "These parasites are almost invisible to diagnostic spells when the patient is alive, and after his death, the autopsy can't find any foreign body."
Lith took several tissue samples, sending them to the alchemist to be analysed. Before developing a proper cure, he needed to know if at the moment of their death the creatures released toxins harmful for the patient.
The answer came in quickly. As he expected, the tissues presented a foreign substance, but it was an unknow one. It was impossible to tell what effects it could have in a living body, since its concentration in the remains was barely detectable.
Collecting and using it for experimentation was impossible.
Cursing Hatorne's name and her ingenuity, Lith went to Varegrave asking for a live subject.
"Based on the information acquired today, I have a theory about the cure. It's unlikely to succeed, high-risk and potentially deadly. Yet I'd like to try it out.
Even if it fails, I can gain invaluable data from it."
"What are the odds of success?" Varegrave's hand subconsciously caressed his last will contained in the breast pocket of the uniform.
"Barely 15%." Considering the difference in talent and experience between Hatorne and himself, Lith felt it was still an optimistic estimate.
"I like these numbers. Let's do it."