Devil Ash Days (Devil Ash Saga) (18 page)

“I am not going to discuss castle etiquette with you,” Goddard said.

Oh thank goodness!”
said Aura, overcome with relief.

“Then why are we still here?” Shiva asked.

“I’m going to ask that the two of you take part in a side-mission as well.”

“Certainly!” Shiva was all-too happy to agree to taking on more work. Aura looked less than thrilled, but interested nonetheless.

“As I had said, no
devil
could activate God’s Blessing.”

“Exactly,”
said Shiva. “So what is the side mission?”

“In situations like these, with such a mysterious and rare object, I find it better to err on the side of caution. As such, I’d prefer it if God’s Blessing was kept out of Ash’s hands.”

* * *

Ash bumbled around the castle looking for someone to question. Oddly enough, the castle was more
deserted than usual. He guessed it was because the Royal Guard were going stir-crazy at the news of a theft from The King, and the chamber maids and servants were probably all already being questioned. Finding no one on the floor he was on, his search led him up a flight of stairs to the next level of the castle. At last, he saw a chambermaid pass by at the end of the hall.

He called out to her, but she either did not know he was calling to her specifically or did not hear him. She turned the corner, leaving Ash behind. He swore, and sped to catch up to her. Turning the corner she disappeared around, he barely managed to catch a glimpse of her entering a door in the next hall. He jogged up to the doorway and was about to knock.
He could hear voices coming from inside the room. He stopped himself just before knocking.
Maybe overhearing a candid conversation would be better?

H
e lightly gripped the door handle and slowly pushed the door open. With it partly cracked, the boy could hear the voices more clearly. They were women’s voices. Ash peeked through the cracked door to see what they were doing inside. His heart throbbed from what he found inside.

The room was decorated like no other room he had seen in the castle yet. Pink, silky curtains covered up the brick walls. Against one side of the room, the entire wall was lined with large, decorative vanity mirrors. In the reflection of the mirrors, he could see several large armoires on the opposite side of the room, some of which were open. Various dresses of all styles could be seen hanging inside. The room must have been a changing room for the chambermaids.

Right in the middle of it all were two women. The older brunette woman wore the common rags that Ash had seen all the other chambermaids wearing; this was the woman he followed. The other girl was a gorgeous young blonde wearing a maid outfit that exposed much of her silky white skin. The two were in the middle of a discussion.

“What’s the point of having all this cute cloth
ing if we can’t even wear it?” the young blonde asked.

“You’re new here, so I’ll let
you in on our little secret,” the older brunette said. “We try
not
to look too good, so The Prince won’t choose us to mate with.”

“Why
wouldn’t
we want to mate with The Prince? He’s so handsome!”

“You’re just going to have to trust me on this one,” she said. “Prince Darko is
definitely
not mate material, even if he is royalty. There are sides to him you have yet to see, and once you do see them you will wish you hadn’t. That man lives only to fight. He shouldn’t even be called a ‘man’. He’s more of a
demon.
You’d be wise to stay as far away from him as possible.”

The blonde beauty thought on this for a moment. “I see your point,” she
said. “I guess I had better take this off then!” She slipped out of her maid outfit, dropping the clothes to the floor. Ash’s heartbeat raced at what he saw and he shut the door to allow them their privacy, but the blonde beauty’s next words made him think otherwise.

“So have you heard anything new about the break-in last night?”

Ash fought against his politeness at viewing the near-nude lady, and continued watching… For information!

“I don’t know much,” the brunette
said. “But a few of us saw the storeroom the thief supposedly broke out of.”

There it was! Useful information!

“Which storeroom?” the blonde
asked. “How come nobody ever tells
me
about these things?” She pouted, bending over a trunk and digging through the clothes for a new, raggier outfit.

Good,
Ash thought.
Dig deeper! Dig deeper! …For information, that is.

“The storeroom on this floor,” the brunette
replied. “That’s where they think the thief left the castle. Though, I don’t know why the guy would go from The King’s bedroom all the way up here.”

“Beats me.” The blonde shrugged. “Does this outfit make me look fat?” She held up a baggy, gray robe for the other woman to see.

“Yes,” the brunette said with a smile.

“Perfect!” The blonde beauty threw the robe on, covering her bodacious body. They sparked up a new conversation
about their fingernails and Ash lost interest. Deciding he had more than enough valuable information from this conversation, the boy left the land of the ladies.

I must never let Aura know about this room
, Ash thought.
Now, all I have to do is find the storeroom on this floor
. Ash returned to wandering. He walked up and down the halls once more, peeking inside every room. Most were unoccupied conference rooms, like the one they’d always met Goddard in. Some of them appeared to be bedrooms, probably for the chambermaids and servants of the castle. Finally, at the end of the hall he found a room labeled ‘storeroom.’  What luck!

He was unsure of what items devils would keep in a storeroom, but was hopeful he would find all kinds of forgotten treasures. The reality was much less interesting, however.
He entered and found it was just a small, cluttered room with hardly any space to move around. The entire room was littered with stacked boxes, old armor and weapons, some unfinished sculptures, and bookshelves full of old, dusty books.

At first glance, it would appear to have been trashed during the thief’s escape, but the more Ash looked around, the more he suspected this was just how it looked before. He picked a stack of boxes and cracked the lid off the top of one. Inside, he found papers. Another box contained some old silverware. He checked one more box with some cloth inside. He made his way over to the window, where he found a crate pushed up against the wall, offering a perfect step-up to the window. The window also appeared to have been tampered with.

With this information in mind, Ash left the storeroom to find Shiva and Aura and share with them what he’d found. After twenty minutes of searching the castle for them, he found the two on the ground floor talking to one of the door guards, who had very little to say on the matter. Aura had a troubled look on his face. Ash shrugged it off, thinking that it was from the lecture he’d just received.

Ash
interrupted their interrogation and informed his team of what he’d found. He stretched the details on his ‘conversation’ with the chambermaids, and how he’d found the storeroom with the suspicious window. Shiva immediately barked orders at him to take her there. Once they arrived at the room, the two newcomers observed the same scene Ash had just minutes ago.

“Check out the window,” Ash told them.

“The bars are broken,” Aura said. Only the two bars on the far left and right sides remained, which would allow anyone of smallish stature to pass through the broken-out window.

“So how did the thief get inside the castle, and why make the trek from the King’s bedroom all the way up here just to escape?” Ash asked.

“I think its safe to say that he did not come in through the front gate, cause it would have been blocked by the Royal Guards. That’s most likely also why he didn’t go out that way,” said Shiva.

“What if somebody let him in?” Ash
said. Then he was hit with a brilliant idea. “What if it was an inside job!”

“What does that mean?” Shiva asked, unfamiliar with the term.

“What if the thief is someone who works inside the castle!”

“Like a Royal Guard or a chambermaid?” Aura asked.

“Exactly!” Ash said. This job was almost starting to feel like a game! Aura nodded his head in agreement, but the skeptical look on Shiva’s face suggested she was less enthusiastic.

“I doubt anyone would be stupid enough to risk treason against the Royal Family,”
she said. Ash was about to raise an argument, but Shiva quickly added, “Though it does seem like the most sensible option.”

“I vote that we go question all the chambermaids now,” Aura suggested with a hint of lecherous mischief to his voice. Shiv
a didn’t bother with a response.

“We’ll talk to Commander Stryd,” she said. “He’s sure to know something.”

Commander Stryd was the second-least liked devil on Ash’s list so far, right after The Prince. Besides the demons, these two were the only ones Ash actually felt threatened by. Sure, Goddard and even Shiva had both done their fair share of threatening him, but it was The Prince and Stryd that genuinely scared him.

Shiva led the group downstairs towards the basement. Ash remembered being down there before, when he first awoke in Hell. He had promised himself that he would never end up in the holding cells down there, a promise that he intended to keep. Thankfully, that's not where they were heading this time. Shiva took him and Aura to the barracks where the off-duty Royal Guard members were sitting around relaxing, eating, and chatting amongst themselves. As soon as Shiva entered the room everyone stood up at attention.

“Where is Commander Stryd?” Shiva asked the room.

The Second in Command stepped forward. He was a tall, thin man with a tall, thin mustache, wearing the red version of spiky armor. He introduced himself immediately.

“Captain P
ace of the Northern Division,” he said.

“I know who you are Pace, get on with it,” said Shiva.

“The Commander is out doing his routine sweep of the kingdom, Lady Shiva,” he explained. “If you’d like to take a seat, we are expecting his return very soon.”

“Very well then, we will sit,” Shiva said, motioning to Ash and Aura to grab a seat. The guards in the room continued to stand, having not yet heard a command.

“Your men may carry on, Captain,” Shiva said.

“At ease, men,” Pace
said. The guards sat back down and continued their business, but their chat was considerably quieter now.

Glancing around the room, Ash took notice of the various men that made up the Royal Guard. The majority of them were teenagers, around the same age as
him. From the way they spoke to each other, they didn’t seem to be very educated. From the snippets of conversation that Ash caught, they had terrible accents and small vocabularies. They were all unkempt and dirty. To contrast, a small handful of the soldiers present seemed to be a great deal older than the rest of them, and much quieter.

“Well this is fun,” Aura said, bored with the room full of men. “Not even any eye candy in here.”

“I’m glad you haven’t lumped me into that category,” Shiva said.

“
Are you?”
Aura asked.

“If he doesn’t come back in thirty minutes, I think we should leave,” Ash
said. “No point in wasting time.”

“We’ll wait for Stryd as long as it takes,”
said Shiva. “Trust me. He’s our best bet right now for any information.”

They sat silently for a few minutes, watching the Royal Guard members eat and chat. Aura
became bored quickly and decided to strike up an important conversation he’d been holding back.

“Does our team have a name?” he asked, catching their attention. When Shiva just gave him a skeptical look, he continued. “It doesn’t, does it? I think we should call ourselves ‘Aura and the Death Touchers’.”

“But we’re not all death touchers,” Ash said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Aura
replied. “The name alone would strike fear into people’s hearts.”

“That’s stupid,” Shiva said.

“Well then, Miss
Royal Family
, what would you call us?”

“If we’re giving ourselves a name, we should be called ‘The Royal Outsiders’. Royal, because of the authority we possess, and outsiders because we exist outside of the Royal Guard system.”

“Aha!” Aura said. “So you
have
been thinking up names for us too!”

“I…” Shiva
stuttered. “As the group’s leader, it’s my duty to give us our name.”

“How about the ‘Royal Outsider Assassination Squad’?” Ash
said. “That sounds cooler.”

“Add ‘Team’ to the end,” Aura
said. “That would make our acronym ROAST!”

“A bit redundant, but still cool!” Ash
said.