Caidoz

Chapter 17

    Scorpio knew things could either go well or quite downright horrible. With Leo, there was no small version for bad. Most definitely no room for error.
   He turned a sharp left and tried to reassure himself. He had something better than the princess. Leo would love what he had instead managed to accomplish. However, there was that nagging slight chance he was wrong. That Leo was going to skin him alive for his failure. A burning flame erupted in his shoulder and he angrily swore under his breath in horrible pain.

   He had accidentally had slowly moved closer and closer to the walls in his thought process until finally, he had crashed into it in a hard collision, chipping a large portion off the turning curb. With an irritated sigh, he brushed off the grains of sand that had fallen onto his night-black uniform with slender tanned fingers.

   Scorpio was inside Leo's sand fortress in the desert preparing to report the events of mission Get Me My Wife. Or mission GMMW for short. The men had taken a few days to travel back to home base, especially with their enraged prisoner which struggled with no restraints of mercy. Their supplies had sustained their hunger and thirst, but when he had reawakened from his Caidozian Coma, Scorpio had rapidly decreased the provisions. Luckily, his Caidozian hunger had been already accounted with extra supplies, and, other than that, the men returned without any true problems. Of course, other than the fact that the mission was a complete failure.

   A wall with small marked edges stood in his way at the end of the hall, crafted out of tiny sand grains. There was a passageway that moved straight by this door, and men walking past in red colors that blinded the unacquainted eye. Scorpio took a inhaling deep breath. He had known Leo for a long time. Ever since private military boarding school when they were children.

   In those times and still today, Leo had demanded dominance from all.
   Placing his palms on the door, the grainy surface shuddered with the sound of shaking sand. It then collapsed straight down into the floor in a cascade of dust, allowing passage into a large room that was then visible. This was their silent way of entering.

   All doors were programmed with their DNA to collapse open for them. Lower ranks could only open so many doors, but intruders would fall through the floor the moment their DNA touched the door to a ready empty cell in the dungeons bellow. Cold, dirty, and lonely, the prisons had been designed by Leo for a boring, horrible experience.

   Scorpio crept in, his black boots stealthily taking each step forward without a sound upon on the echoing granite floors. The smell of desert heat hit him hard, making breathing difficult and almost forcing him to gag. The room had not sand walls, but ones of oak, decorated with large swords and axes. Massive cider wood stairs leading to a giant window that showed the distant lights of the castle of Caidoz. A cherry wood desk, the smooth surface scattered by important documents and papers, was placed beside this window with a golden-formed chair containing a red cushion seat. This was placed to the left, beside the desk instead of behind. Scorpio had always supposed this was to face the entering person in intimidating manner. If this was what Leo was trying to accomplish, he was easily succeeding.

   A large shadowy figure stood by it in the shadows of the room, his back turned towards the dark window.
   Scorpio was about to open his mouth to start with small chatter.
  "Where is Cancer?" The shadowy figure spoke in a powerful, commanding voice which had a gripping tone of invisible might.
   Scorpio felt his body automatically freeze. This voice had always haunted him in his nightmares. This voice jolted him awake in a cold sweat of horror. "My lordship, our mission went differently than originally planned-"
"You failed me?"
"No, I could never fail you-"
"Then, answer me. Where is Princess Cancer?" The voice asked.
   Scorpio hesitated, unsheathing one of his many knifes with a small noise. He turned it around in his left hand, which was equal to his right in dexterity, trying to stall for time to think a plan.