Devil Ash Days (Devil Ash Saga) (23 page)

“Just shut up and listen,” Aura said, taking a knee next to his pile of friends. “I’m deeply sorry for everything I’ve done to you guys. You were my family, through thick and thin. I never realized I was such a pain, and I know I can’t take back abandoning you. But I’ll never stop considering you all as my friends, and I promise I’ll never think I’m above you. I think our groups can help each other out, and right now, I’m asking for
your
help.”

The three men were genuinely moved. They’d never had such a serious discussion in all their years together, and it was so liberating to finally hear what they’d all been dying to hear from him. As good as they felt, they still didn’t speak up. After considering Aura’s words for a moment, Sars finally nodded in acceptance, and said “Go on.”

Smiling, Aura finally asked the question: “Do you know anyone with a crippled wing?”

“Maybe,” Sars replied. “What’s this all about?”

“King Satan’s necklace was stolen. A witness said the thief was someone with a shriveled wing. Sound like anyone you know?” Sars and his team exchanged glances.

“Yeah,” he replied. “That sounds like Apsat Glumb.” Aura’s face twisted with confusion. He’d heard stories of Apsat Glumb, and how inept he was. He didn’t strike Aura as the kind of man who could pull off a castle heist.

“That can’t be…” Aura said. He was interrupted by a call from Shiva. She motioned for him to come to her. “Wait here,” Aura said to them. He stood, and before joining Shiva, added, “I won’t let them arrest you.” He headed over to where the Royal Guards stood.

“Did you figure anything out?”
Shiva asked.

“Yeah, we have a suspect now,” Aura
said.

“Good,” Shiva replied
. “These guys,” she motioned to the Royal Guards, “want to arrest them now on charges of illegal squatting and disturbing the peace.”

“What?” Aura
asked. “No! They didn’t do anything wrong!” He promised he’d help his friends out, and if he wasn’t able to now, he knew they’d never forgive him. He turned and mouthed to Sars
“Get out now!”

The Royal Guards
shoved their way past Aura when Sars made his move. “Vadnais!” He called to his companion. The large man knew what to do. Vadnais turned and threw his strongest punch at the
wall
. The specific part of the wall that he hit was built structurally weak, on purpose, for occasions such as this one. “Go!” Sars shouted, waving his two friends through the hole ahead of him.

The Royal Guards
were practically upon them when the ceiling collapsed above, and falling through along with the debris was Ash. The pile of wood and bricks smashed into the Royal Guards, incapacitating them. Shiva remained on the other side of the room, cut off from the escaping ‘criminals’.

Not wasting a moment, Aura called to Sars, “Go!” Vadnais and Fry had already exited, but Sars lingered. There was one more thing he needed to say. He kept his voice to a whisper, hoping only Aura would hear. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know,” Aura replied. “Don’t worry, it’s all in the past now. Get going!”

“No,” Sars said, waving his warning off. “I’m sorry… I told Apsat about your secret place.”

“You did?” Aura asked, confused. He had no time to question it though, as the Royal Guards were starting to squirm free from their debris containment. Sensing the impending trouble, Sars knew his time was up.

“Later!” he called to the Royal Guards. He disappeared after the other two men through the hole in the wall, sending a large fireball back inside to throw off the Royal Guards even further. From the rooftop, Dunger looked in on all the chaos through the hole in the ceiling and decided it’d be best for him to move on
as well. Shiva coughed up a storm from all the dust in the air, and Aura yanked Ash from the pile of debris and up to his feet.

“We should probably get out of here too,” Aura said, and Ash heard
the triumph in his voice.

Chapter Nineteen: All About Apsat

It didn’t take long for the entire building to come falling down, but luckily anyone that mattered was already outside watching it collapse. Aura couldn’t help but feel nostalgic as he realized the building that had served as his home for many years was now gone forever. It’s not often one actually gets to
see
his past life crumble before his eyes. He forced back any tears that may have formed, and focused on the task at hand.

“We have our suspect,” Aura told the team. “His name is Apsat Glumb.”

“Never heard of him,” Shiva said.

“Is
he some kind of master thief?” Ash asked, setting his expectations a little high.

“Actually…” Aura hesitated to speak. His mind was still racing trying to put the pieces of this puzzle together, but he felt as though he had been given a box full of puzzle pieces from different sets. “Actually, it’s more like the exact
opposite
.”

“
…What?”
Shiva and Ash said simultaneously, cocking their heads ever so slightly. Aura still hadn’t returned to his usual jovial self. “Well, tell us what you know about him!” Shiva said.

“I’ve heard stories about the heists he’s pulled in the past,” Aura
said. “They’ve all ended in failure. What I can’t wrap my head around is how a man so well-known for his failures could manage to break into the most heavily guarded place in all of Hell?”

“Well, I’m stumped,” Ash tried to add his two cents into the conversation, but mostly he just wanted to chime in so they wouldn’t forget he was there.

“We’ll return to the castle,” Shiva said. “If he’s as bad as you say he is, there’s bound to be some files on him in the records department.”

“You guys actually keep records?” Ash
asked, surprised.

“Of course we do!” Shiva said. Her wings sprouted from her back, signaling it was time to leave.

At this point, Aura took notice of how beat up Ash looked. Dunger had really given him a pounding, and Aura even began to feel sorry for him. “Um,” Aura stammered, “do you need me to carry you?”

At first, Ash didn’t understand Aura’s question. Slowly, it dawned on him the poor state he was in, and how he must appear. Funny, because he didn’t
feel
as bad as he looked. Even if he did hurt too much to fly, the only way he was letting someone carry him home was if he were unconscious. Or
dead
.

“It’s cool,” Ash said
. “I can fly.”

Ash huffed, puffed, and wheezed his way back to the castle. It wasn’t a difficult, or even particularly long flight. Just that morning, Ash had made the trip fine. But something about six grown men beating the snot out of you was enough to make travel difficult for anyone, and Ash’s every muscle ached with each flap of his wings. Still, it felt great to get off his feet and take to the air. Aura, the silent sentinel that he was, flew behind Ash in order to catch him in case he lost power and took a dive from a hundred stories up.

Towards the end of the journey, Ash may as well have just been walking, because his feet were almost dragging across the rooftops. Luckily, they were near the castle gates when his elevation dropped to mere inches from the ground, and he was able to pass it off as a slow landing. He didn’t quite fool either one of his teammates. Once grounded, they headed inside the castle.

Shiva led the group through the castle halls, turning at a doorway near the cafeteria (the smell of fresh food beckoned Ash to come eat, but for the time being he had to resist) and down a couple flights of stairs. Ash began to recognize the area they were heading. The team arrived back down in the barracks of the Royal Guard. Ash had hoped they wouldn’t have to come back here and face Commander Stryd again. It directly conflicted with his ‘avoid Commander Stryd at all costs’ strategy (similar to his ‘avoid the Prince at all costs’ strategy, but with one key difference). Shiva approached a soldier sitting near the entrance, on guard duty at the entrance to the guard’s barracks. Ash wondered if such a post was even necessary.

“Where are the prisoners information files stored?” Shiva
asked, booming with authority.

“Oh, Lady Shiva!” The young recruit snapped to attention, frightened. “The prisoner’s files? They’re kept in the storeroom down the hall…” the soldier answered hesitantly. “But only certain members of the Royal Guard have permission to access them!” he added, obviously spooked and uncertain of what he should do in this situation.

“Are you denying
me
access?” Shiva questioned him, with a tone of superiority she loved to use.

“Oh, uh,” the soldier stuttered,
“of course not! Members of the Royal Family can access them freely if they so chose!” he answered. He had no idea if that was true, and he desperately wished to call out for his Captain, but under the fierce pressure of Lady Shiva staring him down he had little courage to do anything but allow her whatever she wanted.

“Good boy,” she replied with a smirk of satisfaction. “Now
sit
,” she commanded, walking away. The young soldier did as she commanded, although truthfully he would have sat anyway. Ash and Aura gave the soldier a look that only men would understand, the verbal equivalent of which would be something along the lines of
yeah man, we know. We know.

They left the barracks and traveled down the hall again, ending at a side-door labeled “Filing.” Not at all what Ash would expect in Hell, but by now he was slowly learning that he should just stop expecting
anything
because nine out of ten times, he was wrong. Shiva pushed the door open, revealing a rather small but tidy room full of cabinet-like storage units. The team went to the cabinets labeled “A”. There were three of them in total.  “Take a cabinet, and start looking,” Shiva told them.

They each stepped up to a cabin
et of their own and started digging through them. Not long after, Aura arrived on something of particular interest to Ash. “Hey Ash,” he said. “They have a file on you!” He pulled out a slim folder labeled ‘Ash Kaplan – human’. Aura opened it up, revealing nothing inside. The folder was empty. “Oh, but there’s nothing in it.” He sounded disappointed.

“Weird,” Ash said. “Well, I haven’t been here long. I guess I need to start working on my reputation!” It was only a joke, but of course Shiva took it
too serious.

“You don’t want these guys to have files on you.”

At that moment, it was Ash that made a great find in his cabinet. “Oh, like Aura here?” the boy replied, pulling a folder with Aura’s name on it.

Aura’s eyes lit up as if he had just received a Christma
s present. “Oh! Oh!” he shouted, “Gimme!” He snatched it from Ash’s hands and pried it open, but again, the file contained nothing.

“Nothing again! I guess Goddard must still be writing our files,” Aura
said. Then an idea popped into his head. “I wonder if Shiva has a rap-sheet of her own!” Ash took the hint and turned towards the ‘S’ cabinet. Reaching inside, he pulled out a folder.

“Yep,” he
said. “Here it is! Shiva Satan.”

“
What?
” Shiva said, surprised. “Give it to me!”

Instead of handing it over, Ash tossed it to Aura. When Shiva turned and lunged at him, he tossed it back over her head
to Ash. The boys laughed at Shiva’s persistence, which ended when she finally wrestled the file from Ash’s hands. She was relieved to see the file was not actually hers, but steamed that the boys were playing a joke on her.

After distributing unrestrained punches to each of their shoulders, she returned to her search of the file cabinet. “I found Apsat’s file,” she
said, pulling the folder labeled ‘Apsat Glumb’ out of the cabinet and opening it. They gathered around close, hoping that this time there’d be something inside. ‘Something inside’ would have been an understatement. The file was so large at first they had thought Shiva mistakenly grabbed more than one. It seemed more like a light novel than a police record. On the first page was a hand-drawn picture of who they assumed was Apsat. ‘Puny’, ‘not at all intimidating’, and ‘unattractive’ were the most common thoughts among the group. They followed along with her as she flipped through the pages, reading selective passages aloud.

The majority of what they found were foiled robberies. The sheer amount of attempted burglaries was surprising, given how bad he was at crime. The most intriguing (and funny) parts were the descriptions of how they caught him. In one account, he apparently ‘tripped over a passing cart’ and was caught. In another, they had trapped him inside a building and found him stuffed into a barrel, thinking he was well-hidden. She flipped to the last page and found an unexpected surprise.

“It says right here that Apsat was arrested just yesterday morning!” Shiva exclaimed.

“The morning of the break-in!” Ash commented.

“That would explain how he got inside the castle,” Aura said. “What was he brought in for?”

“Caught looting during the flame-rainer attack,” Shiva read.

“Figures,” Aura mumbled. “Probably couldn’t resist all that stuff left unguarded.”

“There’s more.
According to this, he’s sitting in Prison Cell 18 right now!” The three stared at each other for a brief moment, then all together dashed out of the room. The boys followed Shiva to the holding cell area. A lone guard sat, looking bored until they came in.

“Lady Shiva!” He jumped up from his stool to greet her. “What brings you in here?”

“We’re here to speak to a criminal in Cell 18,” she said.

“Cell 18?” the soldier asked. “Certainly, I’ll take you right to him!”

The soldier led the way down the straight hall lined with prison cells. There were even some other people inside a few of them. Ash attempted to locate the cell that he had woken up in, but they were all too similar looking for him to figure it out. Finally, they approached the cell with a large number 18 above it.

“The guy you’re looking for should be right in here,” the guard
said.

Inside, a lone man sat with his back to the corner and his head down. The sound of the guard opening the door was enough to startle him awake. He looked up, but not before Shiva entered the cell and grabbed him by his shoulders.

“Okay, how’d you do it!” she shouted.

“Uh, Shiva…” Aura started to speak, but Shiva wasn’t paying attention. It wasn’t her fault, as it was
pretty dark inside the cell. Perhaps she couldn’t see the man’s face as clearly. She carried on, shaking and questioning him.

“Speak up! How did you make off with God’s Blessing!?”

“Shiva, that’s not Apsat,” Aura told her. Shiva (who was quite surprised) looked intently into the face of the man (who was also quite surprised). Even through the darkness of the cell, she could plainly see that this man was at least moderately attractive. She released her grip on the poor man, who obviously wasn’t Apsat.

“Apsat Glumb?” the soldier spoke up. “Oh yeah, he never made it here.”

“What are you talking about?” Shiva asked. “According to the official documents, he should be sitting here right now!” She handed the files she brought with to the jailer.

“Ah yes,” he said, taking the papers and looking them over. “I suppose I should probably update these, huh?” he asked, chuckling to himself.
The man grabbed the last page and crumpled it up. “There we go,” he said with a smile. “It’s been updated!”

“Explain!” Shiva ordered.

“Apsat was brought in early yesterday morning. We had him right here.”

“So how did he get out of his cell?”

“It’s kind of a mystery, actually...”

“
You’d better tell me everything you know, mister!”

“I’m afraid I don’t know
much. You see, when he was brought in, an emergency meeting was called for all the castle staff and guards. Only one guard remained to watch after the prisoner.”

“Fine then, let us speak to that guard immediately,” Shiva
said.

“Unfortunately, that man is dead.”

“You mean Apsat killed the guard and got away?”

“That’s what we presumed to have happened, yes.”

“Why wasn’t I informed of this?”

“Commander Stryd keeps all matters of the Royal Guar
d confidential.”

“Do you not see what has happened here?” Shiva
lost her temper. The guard only stared at her blankly.

“We believe Apsat is the one responsible for the theft we’re investigating! And now
we know that not only was he in the castle at the same time as the theft, but apparently unattended! Shouldn’t it be obvious to anyone investigating this?”

“Yes, it all does seem fairly obvious,” the guard
said. “But we’ve already been ordered to keep an eye out for Apsat. There’s not much else we can do.” 

“That will be all,
then,” Shiva said, dismissing him. Her anger was clearly visible to Ash and Aura, although for the moment she was trying to hide it. They left the holding cell area and traveled the halls, proceeding upstairs. Once inside the empty stairwell, Shiva punched the stone wall in frustration, surprising the boys. They remained quiet until she spoke.