Iscladon Breaking (Book One in the Cerios Chronicles)

Chapter 9-Alpha

Chapter 9

Alpha

As Apolus and Slikver came back up on deck, they found the entire enemy crew tied up, Slikver also noticed that their ship, a large, three masted sailing vessel that could probably hold most of the crew of The Suns, was pulled up alongside them.

Markus stopped his interrogation of Sainya when he saw Slikver.

"You okay now?" Markus asked warily.

Slikver nodded, "Perfectly," he looked around at the rest of the enemy crew, "give me an hour with one of them, not Sainya, there's no point with her."

He caught a glimpse of her eyes rolling, and he grinned to himself, though his face remained perfectly blank, Markus looked at him carefully, but eventually shrugged, "They were probably after you, so do what you need to."

Slikver grabbed one of the crewmen, a creature with a rather long muzzle and teeth that protruded all along it, his skin had periodic scales over it, but was mostly plain flesh. He gestured to Karys to help him, which made Markus give him an odd look, as Karys was not the first person to be picked for interrogating.

Slikver knew Karys would be of little help with the actual talking, but he had a few other ideas, just because he wasn't on a rampage anymore didn't mean he couldn't mess with them. He wouldn't actually hurt him, of course, but he wouldn't let him know that. He recalled a few lessons of Salek's, including one about the effect simple words could have on perceptions of reality.

Slikver had Karys continue down to one of the more private rooms of the ships, while he moved over quickly to ask Apolus for a favor. The last thing the enemy crewman saw before going below deck was Apolus' slightly evil grin.

****V****

He had to admit, he was slightly frightened, first this boy practically rips apart his captain, showing strength and skill he had rarely seen, then he has him taken down to a room with only a single lantern behind him, casting most of the room in gloom. The Alshalh had said nothing to him, but he knew the boy was coming to interrogate him, and after the viciousness displayed in his fight, he shuddered to think how he would convince him.

Soon the boy had arrived, and he spent a few moments simply sitting in a chair across from him, giving him a stare he didn't really like. For almost five minutes, they sat there in silence.

The boy sighed, then moved out of his sight, he soon felt the boy coming up behind him, and a thick piece of cloth was placed over his eyes, then tied behind his head, slightly farther down to compensate for the slope of his muzzle. He heard the boy stepping around in front of him, then the overly loud scrape of the chair being pulled closer to him. The rope that had been bound around his muzzle to stop his snapping was removed, though the hands were pulled away fast.

"What's your name?" The boy asked, his voice flat.

He remained silent.

"There's no harm in telling me, I just feel this will be awkward if the only thing I have to call you is 'scaly-man'."

He growled at that, feeling somewhat insulted, "Rorshak." He grunted out.

"Well then, Rorshak, my name is Slikver, and my friend the rock man is Karys." The boy actually sounded rather good-humored, and Rorshak suspected that, under other circumstances, the two of them would get along quite well, "Now, care to tell us why you wanted us all captured?"

That was fairly direct, "No."

"Perhaps I should reword that, how much is that secret worth to you?"