In Huck's Hands

Chapter 21: Fleshy Potatoe Peels

The interrogation room was sweltering...This lord Garan must believe I was not a true kin of the dunes. I had been seated in a sturdy metal chair that I now coveted more than my own freedom, its black cushioned armrests perfectly resting my drained left arm.

My energy was now sapped after the display beforehand of my potency on the Dome's glass facade--I needed to understand the limits of my curse more before attempting to strike Svetlan, there could be no blunders when we marched the sacred snow of the north.

There was no fight in me when the guards of the summit came and took me for what they said was to be for my own protection. My mind was clear on the fact that they most likely falsely assumed my role in Saxuns death, a mistaken chronology that would have pleased me if it were factual. Too bad...

It was strange. He had never shown any signs of heart crippling earlier...I wonder if dread frankly had stricken him so deeply that he had attacked his own heart by calamity. A deliciously ironic ending for a disgustingly horrible man, my happiness could not be increased any further upon his demise.

I expended some duration exploring the fine details of the cramped area, each bolted plate that was masking another rusted frame, the interlocked metallic strands that formed the table before me...And the smiling reflection of myself that did not match what I knew was on my face.

The time being king, while short, appeared to be taking a much heavier toll at this point than my resolve allowed me to mull...Banishing the counterfeit image, my heart began to pound once again.

If I didn't know any better...This feeling was almost a constant now, the question I asked while lightly cuffed to the comfortable chair was; WHY?

It started when meeting first with Aiko after my rebirth from Du'esh...Then again when coming here just as soon as the King of Svet arrived, his death allowed for the pang of my aortas to cease once again.

As if on queue to my spinning thoughts the door knob began to jiggle raggedly before fading back into the structure of the door, the entire entrance almost vanishing into the floor within an instant. "I hear you have been asking for Lord Garan...I can't imagine that you possibly know what you are inviting into your--"

The sudden pause from the intruder in my cell allowed me to bask in the absolutely lackluster arrival of the man I had been waiting for to show his scheming little hide. He was of clear Buritian descent with scars marring his entire bald head, and a smile that mirrored my own smug approach to brinkmanship. "Lord Garan...I have waited--" He bit his teeth together upon hearing me speak.

"SHUT THE FUCK UP--" Garan slammed the metal table with enough force to send a breeze through my dreadlocks, his grey eyes wild with untamed rage. I felt my veins pop from my head at the succinct dog-like discipline he was attempting on me in this small room.

"YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP--" My hands instinctively reached out though I was cuffed tightly to the same armrests that before purified my sanity with respite. "How dare you speak to me this way, I am the king of Buriti Vasca...!" My voice went vindictive as the words left my lips, the cuffs now cutting my wrists to a small trickle of precious royal blood.

"You aren't the monarch of shit--You're lucky I'm not Lord Garan! I would put a lead bullet in your fucking head and frame you for that Svet shit bag's murder." His fist slammed my skull so violently I lost consciousness for several seconds before bobbing back into existence.

My mind was more jumbled at the surprised strike than at how he had nearly dislodged my molars with one impact. "I've waited...SO--so FUCKING long to do that to you," Another jab sent my body and the chair backward, my eye welting within seconds as pain shot through my skull.