CHAPTER 17

I could have done more to save them, Zegarto…Talvish. Just like my special assignment…I blew that up too. Couldn’t even...

Johnny slowly began to stir awake, distancing from his thoughts, dreams and nightmares alike. The last thing he recalled was pain. Utter pain like nothing he had experienced before. The sensation of blood gurgling through a slit throat was one he never wanted to relive again and one he wonders how he could have survived.

Right now, he couldn’t feel any pain at all. Nothing felt broken and he was able to breathe easily. Johnny steadily opened his eyes and found himself in the same familiar cell, except this time, he wasn’t alone.

A giant metallic dragon— or what could only be a dragon— sat by the cell door. Its body shone a clean metallic silver and its eyes were a glowering red that made Johnny squirm up in his bed.

“Oh, good you are awake. I didn’t want to disturb you but it seems Qin did.” A feminine voice spoke.

Johnny turned to see a demi-human panther girl sitting in the chair beside the bed. Her skin color was an olive tone, matted out by midnight blue hair that frizzled around her back.

“How do you feel?”

“Pretty good.” Johnny answered, surprise staining his voice as he checked himself. He felt like he’d been reset with no consequences, not even a scar where his throat was slit.

“Give me a moment.” She said as she started fiddling with the communication bracelet on her arm. “The champion is awake.” She spoke into it.

There was a slight pause as another voice responded. “I already know. Qin informed me from her summon. I’ll be over in a few with the others. We are still getting information from the prisoner. It will be good to get what had occurred from Johnny’s point of view anyway.”

The panther girl ended the call now looking at Johnny with interest. The way she looked at him made him uneasy. Especially with her right eye; unlike her left eye that was yellow and cat-like her right eye was made of some cybernetic implant that didn’t seem to move but could follow anything with precision.

“What’s your name?” Johnny cleared his throat, deciding to break away some of the unease he felt with small talk.

The panther girl got up, a smirk on her lips as she swayed silently across the room. Not a sound came from her and going by her outfit, Johnny wouldn’t put it past her to be some sort of assassin; she wore a reddish-brown leather outfit with plenty of pockets, leaving much of her skin exposed but strategically covered where it counted. Metal boots reached her knees, and matching gloves hid her claws. A belt around her waist held two short swords sheathed at her sides.

“My name? I am Warden Lisa, but for you, Radiant Champion, it's just Lisa.”

She halted her aimless stroll at the foot of Johnny’s bed and eyed him curiously. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be any corruption on you from what I can see so far. I’ll have Julia look at you internally.”

She returned to her seat and together with the dragon glowering at him, Lisa and Johnny sat in relative silence until she spoke up again, “Well, that was faster than I expected.” she said turning towards the cell door.

“What do you mean?” Johnny asked, just as a queue of footsteps could be heard coming down their way.

Lisa smirked and pointed at her triangular ears, “Nothing really, I just have very good hearing.”

Three newcomers walked into the cell, the grate rumbling away in their wake. The smallest of the bunch walked in first, an alabaster skinned colored elf. She wasted no time kneeling in front of Johnny.

“Champion Johnny. Forgive me, I failed my duty to protect you as a Warden.” She spoke, bowing her head. Her long platinum-blond hair framed her face, tangled in a diamond-studded gold and white terria. Clad in ornate white and gold armor, she looked almost like a paladin. The armor protected her upper body, forearms, and legs, leaving her midsection and thighs mostly exposed beneath matching gauntlets, boots, and shorts with a front-hanging loincloth.

Johnny could tell she was a serious fighter from her arsenal: a gold and white staff tipped with a lotus flower, a radiant bow slung across her back, and twin short swords at her hips like Lisa’s.

“You know this isn’t your fault, Julia. How were we supposed to know that the settlement had an informant? Besides, even if he did die, you know I could always revive him.” One of the others spoke behind her.

A tall, imposing demoness with ivory ram horns stood with arms crossed, her arrow-tipped tail twitching at her side. Everything about her screamed danger, and Johnny instinctively wanted to run. Her shark-like smile and blood-red eyes unsettled him, her presence at the alliance camp making no sense. Her caramel skin darkened to deep red down her body, and her reddish-brown hair framed a black metal circlet set with onyx and rubies.

She wore a black, red, and gold two-piece armor set that left her chiseled midsection exposed. Muscular arms were protected by elbow-length gauntlets, and her powerful legs were covered in dark burgundy pants. Towering nearly as tall as Orion—taller in her metal high-heeled boots capped with skulls and ruby-eyed horns—she radiated menace. But her most terrifying feature was the golden wings lined with bloodstained blades of every kind. Johnny gulped just looking at her.

“At least we were able to save him before those cultists finished him off. Margaret still somehow managed to outpace me, grabbing him as he fell.” Another figure spoke, locking eyes with Johnny through sharp ruby-red eyes. She was a tall, red-scaled dragon demi-human with ivory horns jutting from her blood-red pixie cut. Like the demoness, she wore a jeweled circlet, this one adorned with amethysts and sapphires in matching purple and blue tones.

Equally intimidating, she matched the demoness in height and presence. Her pale skin showed only on her face and chest, while the rest of her was covered in tough, scaly hide. Spiked limbs and a clawed tail gleamed under the cell’s light. She wore a single armored piece in amethyst, sapphire, and ruby hues, protecting the scaled parts of her body.

“Yes, you are right, Margaret and Qin, but I don't want to lose anyone under my command. Not if I can help it.” The elf, Julia said, standing back up. Now looking at Johnny with her emerald colored eyes, she cleared her throat. “I’m just going to check your internals for any aftereffects. You were out for a few days. I’m glad for the three of us. Margaret, Qin, and I were able to completely repair the damage done to you.”

Julia leaned over to Johnny and placed a hand on his forehead. She began chanting in words he struggled to understand and a warm light came aglow under her palm. It was short lived, ending as quickly as it stated.

“Well, there seems to be nothing left from what the cultists did to you. I still take it easy. We mentioned your name to Talvish…he said he’d rather talk to you, Johnny. So, if you wouldn’t mind following us.”

Johnny did as he was told gingerly sliding out of the bed. He didn’t feel weak at all when his feet touched the floor. He followed the others to an interrogation room where Talvish was locked up.

“I told you I won’t talk to you unless Johnny is here! He knows what happened to me. How am I going to continue with my life? Cultists murdered my son and now my wife…the Devouring darkness has taken everything from me!”

Talvish was in a very poor state, rocking back and forth and pacing aimlessly around his interrogation cell with tears and blood alike dripping down his cheek. He’d likely injured himself severally.

“We have company for you Talvish.” Julia announced.

Talvish’s jaw hung open the moment he set eyes on Johnny, “Please don’t kill me!” He pleaded.

Johnny hadn’t even thought about it and sure, he was a quite angry at the man for setting them up, even more so for what he did to his son Zegarto. But his time fighting Convars during their invasion of earth had taught him all about betrayal brought on by the despair of men who only sought to save their loved ones. He didn’t have the same issues but knew too many good men who were executed or killed because of it.

“Relax, I’m not here to kill you. Besides if I wanted that. I could have done that in the fight to begin with.” Johnny grunted, crossing his arms. “You think cultists killed your son, Zegarto?”

Talvish stopped cowering a little but still had his back up to one end of the wall.

“They did,” He muttered, trying to recall anything.

“Seems you don’t remember everything or maybe you do and don’t want to accept it.” Johnny sighed, wondering how he was going to break the news.

“Well, I’ve got bad news for you Talvish. When you swallowed that crystal you turned into an abomination, you went wild, insane even and in that insanity you ripped your son apart, limb from limb. You killed your son Talvish, not the cultists.”

“No, you are lying. I couldn’t have killed my own son…” He trailed off collapsing to the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Now recalling some bits of memory of his son screaming for him to stop.

“Consider yourself lucky you weren’t killed as well, the Radiant One that helped me purify your soul and bring you back to your senses. I only wish Zegarto was so fortunate.” Johnny said.

Julia nodded along, a smile etched across her face as she stared at Johnny with pride and no small measure of hope, “Taking on a bi-pedal rift eater is no easy feat. Especially pacifying his soul no less, the Radiant Champion’s power is truly great.”

Talivsh on the other hand began to break down completely.

“What have I done? All I wanted to do was keep them safe. They promised me they would protect them, but now I lost my own son to my own hand from my own greed.” Talvish turned to Johnny looking at him with remorse. “I’ll tell you everything. They took what I held dearly and now they must pay…”

Talvish rambled on, revealing all he knew of the Devouring Darkness’s Chosen, a man only known as the Manipulator. He revealed the location of a secret portal used by informants, and a dozen other hidden truths he’d been carrying. By the time he finished, he looked drained, worn thin by the weight of it all. Johnny could see the man genuinely wanted to change, but grief had aged him— like losing his son had taken years off his life.

“Well, that is a lot to take in.” Julia said, turning to her subordinates, “Qin, Lisa, I have a new assignment for you two. From what Talvish has told us I'd like you two to go do some scouting with the reports he has given us, but first I’d like you to escort Talvish and his wife to the world’s headquarters so they are in a safer spot. It is better to pretend the two have gone missing somehow.

“Understood.” They both said, opening the cell to take Talivsh away.

“I’ll go get his wife. I’ll make up a story about what had happened.” Lisa spoke running off in another direction.

Talvish looked up at Johnny as he was hauled away, “Thank you for saving me, for showing me the light that is good in this world. I’ll do everything I can to make up for what I have done.”

With that Johnny was escorted back to his own private cell with Julia and Margaret. “We will be watching over you Johnny from now on. Margaret here will help you train with your new powers. She is an expert with weapons training. In the morning we will teach you what you need to know and see what skills you have.”

Margaret grinned, pulling a sword from her wings and turning it into a two-handed war hammer spinning it like a baton before turning it back into a sword and putting it back.

Julia just shook her head with Margaret snickering.