CHAPTER 13. The Hand Delivered Scroll.
1977 Words
Layl Tooker looked at the seal on the hand-delivered scroll.
He dismissed the messenger and took a closer look.
The scroll contained a seal of the Sunite Inquisition, with a clearly marked death rune that should kill any who opened it that was not Lyal Tooker.
Before opening the scroll,
Layl spent three hours placing the most secure magical wards against spying that he could.
The ingredients used for such wards cost more than most large port cities made in a month of market days.
But his new promotion had the benefits of, what was in effect, an unlimited budget on both money and rare resource access!
The scroll itself was enchanted so only someone soul bound to Lyal Tooker’s own personal seal of the hand should be able to see the text on it.
The text itself was also written in a code that only Lyal Tooker and other ‘persons’ of his former rank at the magic defence research institute should fluently be able to read.
All these security safeguards were not foolproof.
No security system is unbreakable. But it would be, theoretically, very hard to get past these levels of security!
Lyal Tooker was ‘officially’ just another general of the Sunite Empire, who happened to be controlling three full armies with many elite units
Lyal Tooker was ‘officially’ just another general in what was left of a now devastated village.
There had been no ‘official’ local survivors!
“Officially” all the innocent civilians, including women and children, had all been slaughtered by the rival Satite Empire!
His was ‘officially’ there to carefully record and investigate the evil war crimes of the Satite Empire.
The “Official” version was a lie.
(Unfortunately, “official versions” often are!)
The reality was, that he, himself, Lyal Tooker, Little finger of the Sunite Sinister Hand, had, under the highest Sunite orders, destroyed the village himself to cover up the existence of the Sin-Eaters power.
He now carefully unrolled the scroll.
It read as follows.
*
“…
To our most beloved child Lyal Tooker, the ‘Little Finger’of our family.
From your devoted mother, The Sinister Palm.
This is a clarification of your present duties.
1)
To find the abhorrent child that is immune to magic.
(See further orders: Section 7, below)
2)
To hide the fact of the existence of the abhorrent child's power at ANY and ALL cost!
You need not destroy those who have only merely seen him, only those who know of his power and anyone that they may have told of that power.
For such knowledge of this child's powers exitance is unquestionably a heinous disease to be burnt out of the consciousness of our world.
3)
To hunt down the disgusting treasonous rebels who refused our granted noble honour of death at the hand of the Inquisition as is their righteous duty to both the Empire, The Inquisition and the Emporer himself.
4)
To grant a noble honour of death at the hand of the Inquisition as a righteous duty to both the Empire, The Inquisition and the Emporer himself, to ANY and ALL of those disgusting treasonous rebels, might have told and infected with the heinous diseased knowledge of this abhorrent child's power.
5)
To continue following down the line of ANY talk, rumour or ANY and ALL other records of this abhorrent child's powers existence, granting a noble honour of death at the hand of the Inquisition as a righteous duty to both the Empire, The Inquisition and the Emporer himself, to ANY and ALL unfortunate souls infected with such this heinous diseased knowledge.
6)
To this end, obviously, all those who MIGHT be infected with the heinous diseased knowledge must be captured rather than killed outright and then thoroughly tortured to extract ANY information of those that they Might have also infected with this heinous diseased knowledge!
7)
FURTHER ORDERS!
MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL!
ABOVE ALL ELSE!
And we can NOT stress enough how vital this is!
Even IF it means the release or allowing the escape of those infected with the heinous diseased knowledge!
Even if it means the Death of both entire hands of the Empire itself.
Even at the cost of the Emperor himself and his entire bloodline.
The abhorrent child that is immune to magic MUST NOT BE KILLED!
Captured, yes,
Harmed, if necessary, yes.
BUT HE MUST UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES BE KILLED!
Unless that child is committing suicide!
NO COST IS TOO GREAT TO KEEP THIS ABHORRENT CHILD ALIVE!
Until that is his, powers are stripped from him.
VERY IMPORTANT NOTE:
This may be more difficult than you at first realise!
Despite rumours, We know that despite an immunity to magic, conventional NON MAGICAL MEANS WILL KILL HIM!
DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN UNTIL HIS POWERS ARE STRIPPED FROM HIM!
8)
Try and strip the powers from the abhorrent child.
We know how to do this.
If he commits suicide, then the Empire is saved! Problem solved!
If he kills another sentient being, even in self-defence or the defence of others, including the killing of himself, then his all powers and immunities will be stipped from him!
9)
Once his powers are stripped from him,
THEN KILL IMMEDIATELY WITHOUT ANY HESITATION AND AT THE COST OF ANY AND ALL IN THE LINE OF FIRE!
BUT I REPEAT!
UNTIL HIS POWERS ARE STRIPPED FROM HIM, UNTIL THAT HAPPENS, HE MUST NOT DIE!
THAT IS YOUR MOST IMPORTANT, ABOVE ALL, ELSE ORDER!
DO WE MAKE OURSELVES CLEAR!
Yours with love and eternal thanks and devotion,
Your loving Mother, The Palm.
…”
*
Lyal Tooker, memorised his orders.
He then disintegrated the scroll and put the ashes in three piles.
Then using a workbench, he destroyed each pile personally!
He dissolved one pile in acid then threw that solution down the gutter.
He used a wind smell the blow away the second pile, in every direction as once, for miles.
The last pile he mixed with melted butter, put on some bread and ate!
Again, as previously mentioned, No security system is unbreakable. But it would be, theoretically, very hard to get past those levels of security!
Once the messager had been dismissed from hand-delivering the Sinister Hands message to The Little Finger of the Sinister Hand Layl Tooker, He spent the next three days doing other duties,
On one of those days, the messager just peeled potatoes for the kitchens.
The other two, the messenger spent doing a long list of other mundane little chores.
On the fourth day, the messenger slipped out of the camp.
Once out of sight he turned in to an owl.
After flying for half a night he landed on the body of a Sunite soldier that was half-eaten and still being gnawed by a fox.
The fox looked up impassively at the owl and then continued eating the soldier's corpse.
The corpse was dressed in the livery of a Sunite inquisitional messenger.
In life, he had been an elite messenger with a vast array of survival and combat skills.
But those who had killed him had found him very easy to kill!
After a short while, a raven also landed and joined in the feast.
Then the Fox, the Raven and the Owl all turned back into their human forms.
Layl Tooker had been a little finger of the imperial sinister hand for just over two weeks.
Layl Tooker had almost unlimited resources allocated to him.
For a third time, I remind you that no security system is unbreakable.
It was very hard to get past those levels of security to read the scroll, but not impossible!
These three agents had three times more resources between them than Layl Tooker.
They had each been doing their jobs for considerably longer than Layl Tookers mere two weeks at doing his job.
When an enemy your Empire rushes at a forced march, three entire armies headed by one of the cardinals of their inquisition to a seemingly random village location. Then destroys one of their own villages for no obvious tactical reason.
You would be a very silly rival Empire not to be burningly curious!
The Satite Empire had indeed become burningly curious!
The Satite had sent three of their top agents to investigate.
The actions of the Sunite empire had been so unusual that they had not just sent any operatives. These three agents were the Satite equivalent of the Sunite’s Sinister hand.
It had taken a week to break, read and reseal the scroll but they had managed to achieve it.
There had been little or no debate about whether or not to deliver the message.
Not delivering it might have revealed their presence.
The Raven, now a small slender yet curvaceous wood elf woman, spoke first.
“It is pretty obvious what we must do…”
The very large muscle-bound red-headed woodsman who was once the Fox leaned on his tree felling axe and replied.
“They do not want the child killed, so to screw up whatever they want, we must hunt down and kill this, so-called, abhorrent child,”
The plain-looking, middle-aged man, dressed in grey traders robes who had until very recently been an owl, asked.
“Should we not try and find out why they want him kept alive first?”
The Raven wood elf woman tilted her head, in reply,
“We are deep behind enemy lines, with an agent on the sinister hand less than half a nights flight way, in control of three armies with allot of elite units!”
“What makes you think we have the luxury of time and research?”
“You know normally I would agree with you, but under these conditions? Under these restraints and pressures, with no way of contacting home for further orders? I feel that Fox might be correct this time.”
“They want the child kept alive so badly then the obvious thing to do was to simply kill that child, to ruin whatever plans they have.”
Fox, still in human woodsman form chimed in
“Whatever those plans are. They will not be good for our Satite Empire!”
“Let us just find and kill him… and get back home safely.”
The Grey Trader, Once an Owl, the man who had handed the message to Lyal Tooker in disguise as a Sunite messager. Now nodded in agreement.
“I concede.”
“The longer we are this far behind enemy lines with this many forces around us, the more likely we are to get captured.”
“We will just find and kill this, ‘abhorrent child’, and get The Wipe home!”
In the either beyond the void.
In the chaos hell dimension The Lord Of All Evil Chaos, Screamed I fury!
“NO! NO! NO!”
It was watching the Raven, Fox and Owl speaking!
It now had to quickly attempt to reach and talk to his links in the Satite Empire!
It had to try and get the exact same type of orders as were given to Layal, to these three stupid mortals.
The chances of those new orders reaching this heroic level killing team before they found and killed the Sin Eater was next to nil!
Even “if” the Satite’s could find their own ‘heroic team’, who had ‘gone dark’ behind enemy lines, a message would never get there in time!
It would then take at least a month, if not longer to get the message with the new “Do Not Kill” orders to them!
Evil Choas was so close to winning the bet!
But now it looked like that it would all be snatched away from ‘it’!
‘It’ Was quickly running out of options!
It was almost impossible to get through and see the area clearly because the Sin Eater was on that mortal plain of that planet. This affected the spiritual reception and ability to communicate any evil earthly vessels and minions in that entire galaxy.
As the Sin-Eaters power grew it would make it progressively more difficult to hold on to all the souls of that galaxy.
But that paled in comparison to what would happen it that “Thing” was released through being killed on the mortal plane!
Evil Chaos would lose control of the souls for over a quarter of that entire universe!
Evil Chaos needed the Sin-Eater to purposely take a sentient life, even his own, to take away his divinely derived abilities.
It could be in self-defence, in the defence of others, or suicide, it mattered not!
Once Rat Stars the Sin-Eater had purposely taken a sentient life, then that “thing|” would become just another mortal!
Just another mortal with an especially sweet rare soul to enjoy devouring!
No other soul wine could ever taste as sweet!
- Writer
