Chapter 723: Old Friend

In a dark cell, vast and filled with living darkness that shifted like the depths of some vast, sunless ocean, alive in its own quiet way.

At the far end of the chamber, barely distinguishable from the abyss surrounding him, a solitary figure rested against the cold stone wall.

Only his eyes betrayed his presence.

Twin amber irises burned with a crimson glow, staring unblinking into the void that pressed in around him from every direction. The rest of his draconic form remained swallowed by the dark, revealed only in fragments, brief glimpses whenever molten blood shimmered faintly beneath his skin, tracing the paths of deep, ragged gashes carved across his body, each wound glowing like a vein of living fire beneath blackened, cracked scales.

Great chains stretched from the walls behind him, pulling his arms taut above his shoulders, the metal biting into flesh that had long since stopped bothering to heal properly around it.

The chamber sat drowning in heavy, suffocating silence, the shifting darkness swallowing whatever sound might otherwise have carried through it.

That silence was eventually broken by the sound of footsteps.

As if given some silent command, the darkness filling the chamber parted, sliding to the sides in a single unified motion, clearing a path through its center.

A figure draped in black layered robes walked through the space it left behind, unhurried, his steps accompanied only by the faint clinking of chain as the bound figure shifted his weight, ember eyes rising to meet abyssal black.

"Odysseus." The word came out through clenched teeth, more growl than greeting.

"Ignovar," Odysseus answered smoothly, calm as still water, a small smile disturbing the flawless symmetry of his features.

"How are you holding up, old friend?" He tilted his head slightly, studying the bloodied, chained form before him with something that resembled genuine interest. "Quite good, compared to our last meeting."

Ignovar stared up at him, his gaze a muddied thing, glinting with a stillness that held nothing but pure, undiluted hatred. He said nothing for a long moment, the silence stretching between them until it became its own kind of statement.

Then, finally, a single word.

"When?" The question came out as a throaty snarl, more predator than prisoner.

"When did I discover you weren’t loyal to me?" Odysseus asked, an amused edge threading through his tone, his lips curling ever so slightly further upward. "I have always known your nature, old friend. Better than even you yourself did."

"I am no friend of yours." Ignovar roared the words, straining hard enough against the chains that the metal groaned in protest.

"Oh, but you are." Odysseus’s voice carried something that could almost have passed for warmth, if warmth had ever belonged anywhere near a voice like his.

"Astraea was my love. Vasticus was my knight. Asher was my eyes." He paused, letting each name settle before continuing. "But you, Ignovar, among all of them, only you were ever truly my friend. The one who did the unthinkable things required to bring my goals within reach, without ever asking me to justify them to you first."

"Only you ever understood the weight of what I have carried." He let that sit for a moment before continuing, his tone shifting back toward its earlier, clinical calm.

"Now, to answer your actual question." He clasped his hands loosely behind his back, circling a half step closer. "I knew something had changed in you during the single conversation we had about Erda. When you tried, however carefully, to talk me out of my plans for her." His eyes narrowed slightly, remembering. "At the time, I assumed it was simple guilt. Over Astraea. Even a creature as hardened as you knew her far too long, and far too well, to end her life and feel nothing afterward."

"But I’ll admit, even I was caught off guard when I learned you had helped Erda free Zahra. That you allowed Layl to escape with the key to my freedom."

Darkness surged forward without warning, driving into the open wounds already carved across Ignovar’s body.

He hunched forward against the chains, a ragged, guttural sound tearing loose from his throat as his back curved under the sudden agony, the darkness working its way deeper into flesh that had no strength left to resist them.

"I wanted to torment you for eternity the moment I understood your treachery," Odysseus said, his anger fading as quickly as it had surfaced, folding back beneath the same unbothered calm he had worn since walking through the long dark passage leading into the chamber. "But I decided against it. You still held value."

He smiled, his eyes narrowing with something close to satisfaction.

"My decision was the right one. You served me well for a thousand years, old friend, and now even in your final deed, you are serving me still." Ignovar’s chained form went rigid, the words landing with more weight than the darkness still burrowing through his wounds.

"As you already know," Odysseus continued, circling another slow step around him, "I found the message you left in your son’s mind for Hidden one. Rather than erase it entirely, though, I chose to remove the trigger point, making it so that Kaelen’s never had any memory of ever knowing the names of Hidden one’s brothers."

He let that settle.

"In its place, I gave Hidden one another reason entirely to look into your son’s memories. A reason that would lead him straight to your message on his own."

Odysseus savored the confusion that spread across Ignovar’s face, didn’t rush to explain it, simply watched, patient and unhurried, letting nearly a full minute of silence stretch between them before finally continuing.

"I revealed his true nature to the skaven, and I made certain the blame for that revelation fell entirely on you." His smile widened, slow and deliberate. "Now he has every reason to grow stronger, and quickly, reason enough to reach the stage my plans actually require of him, faster than he otherwise would have bothered."

"As for why I allowed him to learn the truth from your message specifically, rather than simply erasing it entirely." He tilted his head slightly, considering his own reasoning aloud, almost conversational in tone.

"It closes the door on him learning it from anywhere else. As slim a chance as it is of him ever knowing the truth, I couldn’t risk that variance and ruin my chance at freedom once more." He crouched slightly, bringing his face level with Ignovar’s, the smile never once wavering. "You serving me one final time, that was the only way I wanted your service to me to end."

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Alex left the canyon with a new burden settled over everything else he was already carrying.

The information Ignovar had given him was, on its surface, exactly the kind of thing meant to stop him, remove his threat to the Skaven, and even other sources of unrest systematically unleashed by the True King.

That explanation would have been the comfortable one. The one that let him set the whole matter aside and return to the war waiting for him, but the possibility that it was true sat at something far from zero.

If anything, the longer he turned the details over in his mind, the more solid they became.

Lady Erda’s continued presence in the realm was the first flag he couldn’t reason away. She should have left with her husband, because there was no real reason for her to remain behind. Sure, her family was in danger, fighting a war for its existence, but a thousand years ago she was weak and could offer little help.

If anything, she was a liability to her father; she should have easily earned a ticket out of the prison that was the ancestral realm.

Odysseus’s clear, ongoing interest in Alex himself was the second flag. The gifted physique, mirrored so precisely against his own, made the idea of Alex being a candidate for his soul credible if nothing else.

Alex was also being offered help so freely, help that had directly and consistently supplemented his growth at every turn, almost like he was being pushed towards a level of strength he was needed at.

Alex knew he couldn’t simply set this new knowledge aside and continue as though he hadn’t heard it, but he also couldn’t march directly to Odysseus and ask outright, or burn a Ruler’s wish trying to force the truth out through some more direct channel, because if there was any real substance to what Ignovar had said, a path that easy would have been the very first one sealed shut.

Asking Zahra was another option, in theory, but nothing about her behavior suggested she knew any part of this. Why else would she have returned to the realm at all, if she understood that returning meant walking straight back into her own doom?

There was, of course, the possibility that she did know, that she had come back deliberately, for the sake of revenge, or to try to save her mother despite the odds.

But that explanation didn’t hold up well under its own weight. How exactly was she supposed to kill a Hegemon? Even with her broken ability to make demands of the universe itself, she remained, by any honest measure, far too weak to do Odysseus any real harm, and that would remain true even after a decade spent growing within the realm.