Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

“Welcome back Arthur, I would like to thank you for arriving on such short notice. But I believe you would like to see the results of your hard work and perhaps even take part in what is about to come.” Captain Tasius brought the half awake Arthur towards the underground dungeon and towards the interrogation rooms. He was led to a strange room with a piece of glass separating the actual interrogation room where a well dressed human man was sitting down at a table with two guardsmen standing by the only door to the room.

“I am not trying to be rude Captain, but you gave me nothing for three whole days and suddenly dragged me into a room with only a glass window keeping us from a dangerous criminal even if there are guards.” Arthur managed to convey his annoyance with the current situation. It was around nine o’clock in the morning on the eighth of Moonstone and Arthur didn’t really sleep all that well the night before, in fact he hadn't been sleeping well at all for a few days now. Henry, who he spoke to about it, recommended he drink drowsiness potions to help since he was an alchemist. He hadn't tried it yet, but he was considering it.

“It isn’t quite as simple as that Arthur, this glass here is an incredible dwarven invention that will revolutionize interrogations. It is known in the common Eevin tongue as a one way glass. It uses the way a normal mirror works with silver reflections and reduces it to around half of the normal effectiveness, then when we illuminate the inside of a room and keep one side dark like this one here we can see through it while the person on the other side cannot.”

Arthur paused and looked into the room directly at the man sitting on the chair, he waved his hand and made all sorts of gestures towards the man and he didn't react at all. “This ‘one way glass’ is a purely dwarven invention and has no magical properties at all?” Arthur had a hard time believing that such a thing wasn’t magical at all, he would understand if it was some sort of magical breakthrough in alteration or illusion magic. But this seemed too good to be true and he was naturally skeptical about the Captain’s claims.

“Absolutely, I don’t know the entire way this wonderful creation works but it was a fraction of the price it would have cost to have a mage create something with a similar function using magic instead.” Captain Tasius had a smug smile on his face that further annoyed the tired Arthur. “Anyways we are getting off topic, I didn’t bring you here for the glass. I brought you here for the interrogation, which should be beginning right about…”

Captain Tasius didn’t get the chance to finish as the door to the interrogation opened up to show a high elven woman in a uniform not unlike those of the detectives carrying a bottle in her hand, a bottle that Arthur recognized. It was a bottle of the burnt endings poison that the Captain had him make several days ago.

Arthur watched with a bit of anticipation and worry as the elven woman forced the man's head back and mouth open while the two guardsmen kept him on the chair. After a few seconds the woman stepped back and placed the now empty bottle on the metal table while followed by the two guardsmen, likely to protect her.

The man held his hand over his mouth like he was about to puke the poison he was just given, when that feeling subsided he removed his hand and began shouting at the guardsmen and the woman. “You fuckers! Do you have the slightest clue who I am?!”

He then moved onto a rant about how he would “make you pay for that!” and all sorts of other profanities with several directed towards the high elven woman with racial motivations behind them. But suddenly after a minute of ranting he clutched his stomach like he wasn’t feeling well, but he wasn’t ‘just feeling unwell’ as he then fell to the ground while having trouble breathing and speaking.

The two guardsmen stepped next to the man and picked him up before dropping him on the metal chair he was sitting at before without any consideration of his well-being. The elven woman on the other hand turned to look at the one way glass and gave a gesture that involved her raising her index and middle finger.

Captain Tasius then reached down to a small spherical object similar to the communication orb and said “Go ahead, make him our offer.” The woman smiled as she heard his distorted voice through a similar orb in the room by the one way glass and reached into her right jacket pocket and pulled out a second bottle, this Arthur also recognized, it was the antidote to the burnt endings poison. She walked over to the man until he was about two meters from him and held out the antidote towards him.

“Do you see this bottle here? This contains the antidote to the poison we just made you drink. The poison causes a large amount of pain directed towards the nerves of those who drink it, the nerves being what actually allows pain to happen in creatures. If you want this pain to end far sooner than the poison will run its course then I suggest that you tell us what we want to hear.” The woman crossed her arms as she spoke, not unlike a parent who was disappointed at her young child for doing something he wasn’t supposed to.

Arthur on the other hand was a little disguised by what he saw, though he also shouldn’t have been all that surprised by it given what the recipe said. The part that really bothered him was in how much pain the man was, while he did at one point slightly enjoy killing bandits he didn’t make them suffer excessively and was mostly enjoying scaring them out of their wits. This elven woman and even the Captain who he could see out from the corner of his eye were both enjoying hurting this man, perhaps there was a reason for it, but it still rubbed Arthur the wrong way.

Predictably the man was now quite happy to tell the woman everything that she wanted to hear and was given the bottle of the burnt endings antidote, by this time the man was uncomfortably scratching at his arms and wincing in pain every so often. What he said mostly covered locations of hideouts for himself and his allies that they would hide out in after committing certain crimes or to hide their illegal gains.

The man also mentioned he worked for someone by the name of Ben Feig, a foreigner that used to live in the Yolan empire and since moved to the Rathen kingdom after fighting over inheritance. He had since moved on to stealing from somewhat wealthy merchants through their warehouses after bribing their guards, if they didn’t budge then they would be killed.

“This is an excellent course of events, wouldn’t you say so Arthur?” Captain Tasius said with an unconcerned smile on his face. The fact that they had literally tortured a man for this information didn’t appear to affect his emotions, almost like this wasn’t the first time.

“That depends on what you define as excellent. Torturing a man for information doesn’t exactly fit my definition of excellence.” Arthur avoided eye contact as he raised his voice just enough to indicate that he wasn’t really happy with what he just saw.

Captain Tasius took notice of this and looked at Arthur with a bit of surprise. “I would have assumed you would be fine with this given your history. You did hunt down several groups of bandits a while back and brought back prisoners who were later executed or kept in what is essentially an exp storage. This isn’t really that much different than that, the only real difference is that this piece of muck is getting what he deserves before his sentencing.”

“When I hunted bandits down I didn’t leave them to suffer, I did my best to kill them as quickly as possible, both for my own well being and to keep them from suffering. This on the other hand is excessive, I just hope the information you receive from this was worth doing such a horrible thing to a man.” Arthur turned to walk away but was stopped by the hand of Captain Tasius before he could even touch the door.

“Arthur, please wait for a moment. This wasn’t the only reason why I brought you here. I also wanted to ask for your help in some of our offensive operations, like on one of the locations that we just learned of now. Ben Feig has been a pain in the side of the city guard for quite some time now, and now we have a location where we might even find him or at least destroy one of his hideouts.”

Arthur stopped and thought for a moment, it wasn't a bad idea to take part. But he definitely would need to set some ground rules for how things would unfold with prisoners and how they may be interrogated. “Fine, but I am setting some rules regarding how prisoners will be treated once we have them.”

“That is fine with me Arthur, what exactly did you have in mind.” Captain Tasius had a calm collected look on his face, but underneath he was a little annoyed by Arthur’s demands. Though he expected it would be worthwhile to have him come along just in case something happens, mages that are willing to constantly work with non mages in capturing criminals were quite rare, one that can cast actual tiered spells and brew potions was even more so.

“To start I would prefer if you would avoid using the burnt endings poison unless it is absolutely necessary. It should only even be considered a last resort when we have tried all other options.” Captain Tasius nodded along as Arthur spoke and explained what he wanted.

“I would also prefer if some of those other poisons were used as a last resort or in the event of emergencies, the recipe for the blind leaf poison didn’t even say how long the blindness would last for. I think everyone involved would sleep a lot better if they didn’t blind someone when they didn’t need to.”

The Captain didn’t say anything for a moment as he was thinking about Arthur’s requests. ‘Not bad recommendations, even if Arthur wasn’t here I probably would need to eventually enact some of these for the mental well being of my men. Even if I was willing to ignore that Arthur’s magical skills far surpass any advantage that potions and poisons would bring.’

“Alright, I agree to your terms. However you don’t need to worry about the blind leaf poisons duration, it will at best last for a few days, and that is only due to some of the better alchemists personally employed by the crown itself.”

“Very well, when exactly did you intend to enact this attack upon this Ben Feig and his associates?” Arthur stepped away from the door and relaxed, Captain Tasius inwardly smiled at this. ‘He might still have value to this city, hopefully he will still be alright with brewing more of those poisons as they can be very effective when used on the correct target.’

“Come to my office around this time tomorrow, I will inform you of the current preparations and when we are expecting to be prepared. If we are very lucky it will be within a few days time.” Arthur didn’t stick around for much longer and exited through the door behind him leaving the Captain behind in the room with a view of the interrogation room.

By this time the elven woman and the two guardsmen had already left and locked the room from the outside leaving the man alone inside breathing heavily from the poison that was burning his nerves. Clearly the pain was still there slightly, and Tasius felt a small sense of justice within his chest. The man before him was an accomplice to one of the worst criminals within the kingdom since the purge, the gods only know all of the crimes they committed together.

Tasius used his personal communication orb that he received for his promotion and called one of his subordinates. “”Good morning sir, do you need something?”

“Prisoner in interrogation room A-1, I want him placed in the collection section of the dungeon for later use.” If the voice on the other side of the call had any personal thoughts about this order she didn’t say anything or give away that she felt it.

“Of course sir, it will be done as soon as possible. Is there anything else that you require of me sir?”

“No, that will be all Lucilia.”

*********

With lots of time left in the day Arthur had several chores that he needed to take care of throughout the city. The first was more ingredients for his alchemy, while he was well off currently he would prefer if he could keep a steady income.

Thankfully the streets were mostly cleared from large amounts of snow leaving only a handful of snow banks that Arthur needed to walk through to reach one of the stores that sold ingredients in bulk. He purchased five silver coins worth of the ingredients he needed, which hopefully would be enough to keep both himself and Gaelin stocked for two or so weeks. With the snow the prices of everything but especially anything plant related went up considerably, the common folk that were smart enough had already bought all the food they would need for the winter a while back. Those like Arthur who needed to buy ingredients for potions needed to buy every so often as the stores didn’t keep that much stock all at once.

The next thing he needed to do was speak with the glassmakers he was buying from about a few larger bottles instead of the normal sized ones. Since he was using less of them it was only normal to buy something that could store a whole pound of the spark powder for convenience, efficiency, and lower cost overall.