‘Are you... uh... I mean, did your servant do that to you?’
‘Yeah,’ said Garovel. ‘He kept me prisoner for two years.’
‘Geez...’
‘Looking back on it now, two years wasn’t very long at all. Only two out of thousands already lived. But it was one of the worst things I’ve ever experienced. Being trapped makes all the difference in the world, especially when you don’t know if you’ll ever make it out again.’
‘Agh, man... But, uh.... how DID you get out? Did the guy screw up?’
‘Partially. I tricked him. Another problem with imprisoning your reaper is that, guess what? They can still talk to you. In fact, unless you’re keeping other people around their prison, you are the ONLY person they can talk to. So naturally, I began by just constantly talking shit to him. Trying to drive him to the breaking point so he’d do something stupid, right? That didn’t work so well. Whenever I annoyed him enough, he’d just wound me to the point where I’d fall unconscious for a few days. Should’ve known that was a bad plan. He was a thug. Any problem he could solve with violence, he would. So instead, I very slowly convinced him to do one of the dumbest things I could think of. Reverse psychology. Being purposely vague. That sort of thing.’
‘What’d you have him do?’
‘I waltzed him into the territory of a famous member of Abolish. He thought there’d be treasure. There wasn’t.’
Hector had to stifle a laugh. ‘Wow, Garovel. I guess he deserved it, but holy shit...’
‘That Abolisher went on to become even more famous afterwards. His name was Suresh, and he was considered Dozer’s equal for a while.’
‘Whoa...’
‘Suresh is dead now, but his successor is still alive. Gohvis. Ever heard the name?’
‘No...’
‘The Monster of the East? The Black Scourge? Those are both him, too.’
Hector thought back. ‘Actually... yeah, I’ve heard of the Black Scourge. When I was little. I thought it was like... a plague or something.’
‘Nope. It’s a guy.’
‘Fuck...’
‘Yeah. He’s arguably even more famous than Dozer, his boss. Or so I hear. I’ve never met either of them personally, in case that wasn’t obvious. Maybe everyone is wrong about them, and they’re secretly super nice dudes.’
‘Right... Hmm. Dozer has a country named after him, but why is Gohvis so famous?’
‘Regicide. Genocide. And punching a hole into a volcano that then erupted and wiped out an entire Vanguardian stronghold.’
‘...What.’
A dark serial novel. Set in a modern fantasy world called Eleg. Mature language. Updates every night at midnight PST by ~400 words.
‘...What.’
ReplyDeleteThat was my first thought too.
By anything chances....will Hector almost do something almost similar to like Gohvis...on a purely accident with a scale close enough?
ReplyDeleteholy dude that is ridiculous
ReplyDelete"around their person" - around their prison, maybe? Technically the way you did it makes sense, but it sounds a little odd.
ReplyDeleteY'know, I want to say something like "any half-decent destruction user coulda done that" but you know what, it just doesn't have the same flair as literally punching open a volcano.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that was supposed to be prison. Thanks for the check. Adjusted now.
ReplyDeletenot really.
ReplyDeletefrom what i gather, the destruction prism has a limited volume, so to make a hole through a volcano, it would have to be very thing, which wouldn't make it erupt.
for a destruction user that is not extremely powerful, makeing a large hole in anything thick is a very time consuming process.
also if you can make a hole big enough in one go, you can probably just destroy the stronghold with a wave of your hand...
I know you can't seem to help writing interesting characters, but for the love of god, are you trying to make me want to root for abolish? There is a servant punching volcanoes!!!
ReplyDeleteThat's the big plot twist. This whole time, Hector has been stuck in a waking dream and only thinks he's protecting people, when in reality, he's the villain and Abolish is trying to stop him.
ReplyDeleteNNNNNoooooo son don't do it
ReplyDeleteWas Gohvis Suresh's successor as Dozer's right-hand man, or as the same reaper's next servant?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like the former, but I'm not sure.
Will be brought up again eventually, I'm sure. I'll offer you a tiny spoiler here, though, so stop reading now if you'd rather find out everything through the story.
ReplyDeleteSuresh and Dozer were considered equals, like Garovel said. Suresh wasn't Dozer's right-hand. Rather, the "successor" bit refers to Suresh having a personal hand in raising Gohvis up to power.
Mine was more along the libes of '... Dear God.'
ReplyDeleteThat'll do Frost, that'll do...
ReplyDeleteThis Gohvis dude sounds like a fucking monster.... i like it i can't wait till he actually shows up in the story, well if he ever does, but i feel like it will be a while till that happens.
ReplyDeleteThat last line from Garovel... from now on, that's how I respond when I'm asked why I don't like someone.
ReplyDelete