Questing Sucks! Book II (63 page)

Shina’s screams turned frantic, and the Archmage laughed once more. Cah’lia fought for all she was worth, writhing uselessly while Ammecia held her in place. She knew she couldn’t break free. She knew she would not be able to save Shina or any of the others. But she had to at least struggle. That much she could do.

Duncan turned his eyes on the executioners. “By order of the Holy Magus,” he announced, “I sentence these four to death by hanging. Executioners, you may now carry out the—”

“Wait!” a voice announced. “I’ll volunteer.”

Cah’lia wasn’t sure who’d spoken, but it came from somewhere at the back of the crowd. It was difficult to locate the source of the voice with so many people clustered together, but after a moments of searching, she saw that a hand was raised, and she assumed it belonged to the speaker.

“Did…did someone just…?” Duncan’s eyes scanned the sea of people behind the barricades. “Who said that?”

“I’ll volunteer!” the voice repeated. This time, nearly a thousand heads turned to look, though Cah’lia suspected only a hundred or so were able to see the man in the purple robe who began slowly making his way through the crowd with his hand still raised. His head was covered by the hood of his robe, and he spoke with a calm, confident voice.

“Who speaks?” Duncan asked. “Who are you?”

“I’ll volunteer to oppose you,” the man in the purple robe said.

Duncan eyed him warily. Then, beckoning the man with his fingers, he said, “Well, come up on stage, then, and let the people see this valiant warrior who’s about to die a very, very painful death. I’d like to thank you for this, though. You see, your act of stupidity will help others see what happens to those who might consider attempting the same. You may even be saving lives.”

“I’ll volunteer!” the man said enthusiastically.

“Yes, yes I know. You have already said that. My hearing is just fine, thank you.”

“I’ll volunteer to oppose you,” the man said again, wading his way through the crowd, who seemed more than happy enough to get out of his way.

“So you’ve said.”

“I’ll volunteer to oppose you!”

“Yes, I’m aware. You’ve stated that several times now.”

The man took several more steps, then stopped abruptly. “I’ll volunteer!” he said. Then he resumed walking.

Duncan made a grunting noise that would have sounded childish if not for the fact that it came from someone so terrifying. “Yes, I know!”

“I’ll volunteer to oppose you.”

“Are you an idiot?” Duncan asked in a shout.

The man again stopped. “I will…I will…”

Duncan tilted his head, and the crowd became motionless. “You…will?” Duncan asked. “You will what?”

“…oppose you.”

“Stop saying that!” Duncan squeaked in an extremely high-pitched voice, one that did not sound like him at all. If anything, it sounded eerily similar to steam coming out of a teapot.

As the suicidal man in the loose-fitting purple robe strolled his way casually through the crowd, more and more people were finally catching sight of him. Once he’d reached the steps, he began ascending them up to the stage, and then he began walking directly towards Duncan. When the two stood face to face, he pulled back his hood, revealing himself.

He was an older man, and he was hideous to behold. Truly, he was grotesque. The man was missing an eye, half his nose, and a good few of his teeth. As he turned his head just enough for Cah’lia to get a better look at him, she noticed he was also missing a chunk of flesh in the back of his head as well.

Duncan narrowed his eyes at the man. “I hope your moment of defiance felt good. We’ll see now if it was worth it. I’m going to dispose of you myself. And for those of you watching, let it be known that
this
is what will happen to anyone who—”

“I must speak my last words!” the old, purple-robe-wearing man said. “It is the only way I can die.”

“You don’t get to make the decisions here,” Duncan said. Then, with a sigh, he added, “But go ahead. I’ll allow it to show the people of Magia that no matter how brave a speech you deliver, you will soon beg for mercy once the pain begins. They will see how quickly your courage turns to cowardice, and they will understand that—”

“I’ll volunteer!”

“
I know you will
!” Duncan shrieked, once more in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice. From the way he gasped, Cah’lia got the impression that his sudden rise in temper was not intentional and had slipped out of him. “Why do you keep repeating yourself?”

The man, whoever he was, had no answer for the Archmage, or at least none that he was willing to divulge. If anything, his facial expression implied he hadn’t even been paying attention to anything Duncan had just said to him. He looked blank—empty of both mind and conscience. Although, this didn’t quite surprise Cah’lia, because for someone to do what he was doing, they would have to be fairly unintelligent and empty-headed.

“I will speak my last words now,” the man said. Then, without waiting for any confirmation from Duncan, he began to speak. When he did, Cah’lia felt something strange tickling the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was a sensation she could neither ignore nor suppress. It was a feeling of something almost familiar, but in an eerie, distant sort of way.

“I have come to warn you.
All
of you,” he said, speaking to the crowd despite having his back turned to them. “A terrible evil approaches.”

The citizens of Magia began whispering to one another. A few raised their voice to ask what kind of evil or who he was and why he was doing this. But the man showed no sign that he either heard or cared about their questions. He did, however, turn to face in their direction. As he continued to speak, his words came across as rehearsed and robotic. While he spoke, he also began moving away from the Archmage and towards the edge of the stage as if to give those watching a better view of him.

“I am a seer,” he said. “I come from a line of seers who’ve been seering for a very long time. Of all the seers in the world, I am the best when it comes to seer’ery. My name,” he said, making his way ever closer to the edge of the stage, “is Seer.”

Cah’lia felt a jolt even stronger than the one Shina had earlier delivered shoot directly into her chest.

Why does this make me feel like…like I…what’s happening here?

The man continued to speak, still inching his way to the edge of the stage. “Since I am a seer,” he explained, “I know what is going to happen in the future before it even happens. And I have come to warn you that the greatest God of them all has risen from his eternal slumber. And he is angry. For this God, he is not like any others. He is a—”

Cah’lia blinked in confusion as the man did not stop moving forward once he reached the edge of the stage. He instead walked over it, and his body flipped upside down as he began to fall. Yet even as he nosedived upside-down through the air, he continued to speak.

“…that has come here to…”

Even landing directly on his face did not deter him from his speech. His words muffled and incoherent, he continued on with whatever it was he was saying. “
Mzzzmmphh, mmzzpmph
…
mmzzpmph.
”

“What…was that?” Cah’lia heard Duncan whisper.

“I don’t know, Lord Duncan,” the High-Mage nearest to him whispered back.

“A lunatic is what that is,” Ammecia said. “Did he die?”

“I don’t know.”

Before anyone could go and check on the man, there were murmurs from the crowd. Something had started a commotion, because much like before, dozens of people were hurrying to get out of the way of something.

Cah’lia inclined her chin and stood on her tiptoes. It seemed that yet another robed man was making his way through the sea of people. This one wore a green robe, but his features…they were almost identical to the last man’s. No, no. They
were
identical to the last man who’d fallen off the stage.

“I am also a seer,” he said, gliding through the crowd and making for the stage. “And I’m an even better seer than that last seer was at seering.”

“What the hell is going on?” Ammecia whispered as she watched him ascend the steps and come up on the stage. She released Cah’lia from her grip, as did the other man holding her, and Cah’lia took a few hesitant steps away from both of them. She doubted either of them were even aware they’d let her go.

As the man in the green robe approached, Cah’lia got a good look at him. She then confirmed, much to her confusion, that aside from the coloring of his robe, this man truly
was
identical in every single conceivable way to the one who’d dived off the stage. He also seemed intent on resuming where the last man had left off.

Once he’d climbed up the steps, he spun around and made his way to the edge of the stage, and all without saying a word to Archmage Duncan or to anyone else. But unlike his friend, however, he stopped just short of walking off and falling on his face.

Now, standing before his “audience” and seemingly intent on delivering some kind of speech, he opened his mouth as if to begin—and then Cah’lia, along with the High-Mages and nearly all of those watching from behind the barricades, shouted out in surprise as his mouth continued to open, becoming wider and wider, until it had risen both above his nose and had dropped below his neck. It was as though he were something out of a nightmare.

Little by little, the man’s face split apart, opening wider and wider. And then his head fell off. It just…it just fell off. Without any apparent cause or explanation, his entire head broke off from his neck and then fell off the stage. Then
he
fell off the stage, bending forward and taking the same plunge that the last guy took. His body even landed on top of his purple-robe-wearing friend’s.

This caused Magia’s citizens to loudly question one another, the same few words repeating throughout the crowd, asking if anyone understood what had happened, if the man was dead, and if so, what had killed him.

During this, Cah’lia thought she heard a female voice call her name from somewhere at the very back of the crowd. She snapped her head in its direction, her heart now drumming so fast in her chest that it became a struggle to breathe.

What did she just hear? Who’d said that? Was she imagining it? She must have been. She must have been hearing things. It was her nerves and her fear…it had to have been. Even still, she scanned every face she could until she was sure that it was, in fact, her imagination playing tricks on her mind.

“Someone better have some answers for me,” Duncan whispered. “What in the name of Raurum is going on here?”

“I don’t know, Lord Duncan,” Ammecia said. She had moved away from Cah’lia so that she now stood beside the Archmage. “But…Gods, I think there’s another one of those maniacs coming towards us now.”

“Are they part of some kind of cult?” Duncan asked her. “Who are they?”

“I don’t know.”

From within the crowd emerged a man in a yellow robe, and to both his left and right side were two more men; the one on his left wore a blue robe, and the one on the right wore another purple robe in the same shade that the first of the strange men had been wearing. And like the previous two, these three all shared the same face, the same scars, and the same missing eye, teeth, and half a nose.

“We three are the best seers in Magia,” they all said at exactly the same time while they climbed the steps leading up to the stage. “The last two seers were actually not the best. But this time you will hear our prophecy correctly, for there is a great evil coming and you need to know why you must fear it.”

“Who are you?” Duncan asked. “
What
are you?”

Once more, they ignored him, and all three walked to the edge of the stage, standing side by side. Together, and in the same robotic but harmonious voice, the three of them resumed their speech. “There will come a time, people of Magia, a time very soon when the—
stop fucking
bugging me
!” the three of them screamed abruptly and in unison, much to the confusion of the people watching in the crowd; many sent quick, questioning looks to those standing nearest to them.

“I said stop!” all three robed men shouted together. “I cannot concentrate while you annoy me. So? I don’t care if you ‘promise to be good’. You aren’t coming with us. And if I discover that either of you have left David’s side, I’m throwing you off the—gah! Curse you, Nero, you distracted me and now I have to start all over. Minion! Do not let these go out. What do you mean it’s too late? Fool! You think I care if you’re ‘trying your best?’ W-what! How
dare
you ask me to apologize? I shall put you in a fucking zoo if you don’t—huh? What do you want, Bennet? Wait, really? I can? Ahh, so I just have to say those four words and then eventually they’ll—”

The citizens of Magia screamed as all three of their heads exploded on stage. There wasn’t even any blood. It was as though a balloon had been popped. All three of the men in the variously colored robes fell forward, off the stage, and their bodies landed on top of the other two men who had…wait, where were they?

Where’d those other two go
? Cah’lia wondered.
They’re…gone.

Either they’d gotten up and walked away, or they’d simply vanished, because only the three who’d just been standing on the stage were now clumped together on the ground in front of it. Mysteriously, there was absolutely no trace of blood despite the grotesque way in which they had died.