The walk back to the village was slow and painful.
Grub leaned on Luthiel's shoulder for most of the journey, his legs unsteady and his breathing shallow. Blood had dried in streaks across his arms and chest, and the bite wound on his shoulder throbbed with a deep, persistent heat. Blood no longer poured from the wound, but his shirt was stained red and his body felt heavier with every minute.
When they finally reached the village, Luthiel carefully propped him upright and stepped aside. Grub coughed, steadied himself, and looked ahead.
"Where did they take the scout?"
Luthiel grabbed his arm and pointed down a side street. "This way. Let me take you there, Mister Grub."
They made their way through the village streets, drawing concerned looks from villagers who took one glance at Grub's blood-soaked shirt and quickened their pace in the opposite direction. The duo arrived at the prison building Grub had become intimately familiar with over his multiple stays, but instead of heading to the upper floors where his cell had been, Luthiel led him down a stone staircase into a lower section of the prison.
The air grew cooler and damper as they descended. Lanterns hung at wider intervals here, leaving patches of shadow between the pools of flickering light.
They stopped outside a solid iron door. Grub studied it for a moment, then turned to Luthiel.
"Are we allowed down here?"
"Are we allowed down here?"
Luthiel tilted her head.
"I think so."
"You think so?"
"It should be fine."
That answer inspired very little confidence, but Grub sighed and gestured toward the door. Luthiel stepped forward and pressed a hand against a small panel beside the handle. A familiar glow radiated from her palm. The mechanism clicked and the heavy door swung inward.
Luthiel turned back to Grub with a satisfied smile. "See? Told you, Mister Grub. My Anima is registered."
Grub offered no comment and walked inside.
The lower level was lined with cells on both sides. Most were empty, but a handful held prisoners of various species, their faces gaunt and uninterested. Luthiel looked a little worried as they passed, but Grub's face remained expressionless as he scanned each cell for the blue-scaled messenger.
He found him in the third cell on the right.
The blue Lacert sat hunched in the corner of his cell, his aquamarine scales dull under the lantern light while his yellow eyes were bloodshot as dark circles had formed beneath them. The interrogation sessions with the Guardians had clearly taken their toll, though the Lacert remained unbroken.
The moment the lizard spotted Grub through the bars, the blood drained from his face. He scrambled backward until his spine hit the stone wall, his claws scraping against the floor.
Grub turned to the Guardian stationed nearby, a broad-shouldered creature with tusks and a bored expression.
"I'd like to question this prisoner."
The Guardian looked suspicious. His eyes moved from Grub's battered, blood-soaked appearance to the doll girl standing beside him, then back to Grub. For a long moment it seemed like he would refuse. Then he sighed and pulled a ring of keys from his belt.
"Sure, kid. But I'm watching you."
The Guardian extracted Agama from his cell with ease and led them all into a separate room down the hall. It was small and sparsely furnished, containing only a table, a few chairs, and a lantern mounted on the wall. The kind of room built for conversations nobody wanted to have.
Once Agama was properly secured in his seat, Grub and Luthiel sat opposite him. The Guardian settled into the corner with his arms folded, his tusked jaw set and his eyes held doubt that Grub would learn anything useful.
Grub looked at the blue Lacert across the table. His yellow eyes were wide, darting between Grub and Luthiel with the frantic energy of a trapped animal.
"Hey, you." Grub's voice carried a cold indifference that filled the small room like cold water filling a bowl. "What's your name?"
Agama said nothing. His mouth pressed into a thin line as he stared at them through terrified, defiant eyes.
Luthiel leaned forward with a warm smile. "Please tell us your name, sir. We won't do anything to you, I promise."
The gentleness of her voice seemed to crack the Lacert's resistance. His rigid posture loosened by a fraction, and after several seconds of silence, he spoke.
"My name is Agama." His voice was hoarse and dry. "Agama Sini."
Luthiel's golden eyes brightened. "That's a wonderful name! My name is Luthiel, and this is my friend Grub."
Agama's gaze slid toward Grub, who sat motionless with no expression on his face whatsoever. The contrast between the smiling doll girl and the blood-covered boy with dead eyes seemed to make the Lacert even more uncomfortable.
After a long pause, Agama spoke again. His yellow eyes narrowed at Grub.
"How did you betray us?" The Lacert paused for a moment before adding, "and why does she look like that? What is she? What are either of you? Why are you covered in blood?"
Luthiel looked suprised and said nothing as she rubbed her shoulders. " I c-can't…sa-"
Interrupting Luthier's stammering, Grub's eyes narrowed and his palm slammed against the table.
The sound cracked through the room like a gunshot, causing Agama to flinch so hard his chair scraped backward. Even the Guardian in the corner straightened slightly.
"Shut up." Grub's voice came cold and sharp. "I didn't betray anyone. I was imprisoned and forced to work with your people. I never chose any of it."
He leaned forward, his blackish-green eyes boring into the Lacert's yellow ones.
"And you aren't here to ask questions."
Grub's gaze hardened. "Talk out of line again and we'll have a problem."
Luthiel gently placed a hand on Grub's shoulder. His jaw loosened by a fraction but his stare never wavered.
"You don't need to know anything about me or her," Grub continued, settling back into his chair. "What you need to do is tell us when the attack on this village is planned."
Agama slumped in his seat. Whatever courage the Guardians' failed interrogations had built up in him seemed to be rapidly eroding under the weight of Grub's gaze. But he held on.
"I have nothing further to tell you." His voice trembled but the words were firm. "Once my people come, they will burn this village to the ground. Even if the army is split, it won't matter. I will be free in no time."
Luthiel frowned and opened her mouth. "Sir, please cooperate. We just want to find a peac—"
"Do you really think that's true?"
Grub cut across her without raising his voice. He rose slowly from his chair and brought his face closer to Agama's. The blue Lacert stared at the pale complexion before him, at the shadows gathering beneath those dark green pupils, at the dried blood covering the boy like war paint. As he stared at the boy the lizard couldn't escape the feeling that the room had gotten smaller.
"Do you actually think you're going to win?"
He stepped closer.
"Do you honestly believe your people are going to burn this village down?" A smile crept onto Grub's face that held no kindness at all. "Your soldiers are facing Morrigan. The Great Sage Equal to Heaven. You think a Lacert scouting force is going to beat that?"
He let out a laugh, but it was a quiet, ugly sound.
"Every soldier you send here is going to die. And when the Colonel finds out that the intelligence that split his army was fabricated? Every death will trace back to you." Grub leaned in until his forehead nearly touched Agama's. "Their blood will be on your claws, Agama. All because you carried a message without questioning it."
"Mister Grub..."
Luthiel looked at Grub with worry creeping across her golden features. This was a side of him she hadn't seen directed at a person before. The cold calculation, the deliberate cruelty of each word and the absolute absence of empathy on his face. It was all so unfamiliar to her.
Agama pressed himself back in his chair as far as his restraints allowed.
"If that's true, then telling you anything only leads to more of my people dying." His voice cracked but his logic held. "Why would I cooperate when cooperation means helping you kill them?"
Grub leaned back. His eyes shifted, calculating, measuring his words the way a carpenter measures wood before cutting.
"Mister Grub?" Luthiel whispered beside him.
Grub sighed and shook his head slowly. Then he looked at Agama with a different expression. The cruelty faded and something darker replaced it.
"You don't know what I can do, do you?"
He raised one hand and black residue crawled across his fingers and palm, coating his skin in a thin layer of darkness that seemed to drink the lantern light around it. The Nihil from the Ungul Bear pulsed faintly, in a cold and heavy rhythm
Agama stared at the blackened hand with widening eyes.
"I can give you a fate worse than death."
The words hung in the air between them. Agama swallowed hard but forced his jaw to remain set.
"Such bluffs won't make me fold," he managed, though his voice shook. "Those in the white vestments tried the same tactics. They even tried torture." He met Grub's eyes with desperate bravery. "I won't break."
Grub studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled.
"You're strong, aren't you? I respect that, honestly."
The smile widened.
"But here's the thing, Agama. I can't lie to you." He tapped the side of his head with his clean hand. "It's a part of my Maladroit. Physically impossible for me to say something untrue."
This was a complete fabrication. Grub didn't fully understand his Maladroit, but he was absolutely certain that an inability to lie was not among its effects. His actual Maladroit seemingly had several possible meanings or restrcitons, one of them prevented him from telling people about itself, that was the one Grub understood the most, and was also an entirely different restriction from not being able to lie.
But his face showed none of that uncertainty. His blackish-green eyes were steady and his breathing was calm. The expression he held carried the tired resignation of someone stating an inconvenient fact about themselves rather than spinning a deception.
Agama searched his face for any sign of a bluff, yet found nothing.
"So when I say I can give you something worse than death," Grub continued quietly, "I need you to understand that I'm telling you the truth. Because I literally have no choice but to. I didn't quite lie about posting their army, but I only poisoned a little so it had no effect. Morrigan attacking your settlement? Well she is going to, just not when I said would. You see? I can't lie. Only spin the truth."
These were all dastardly lies, but Agama had no reason to doubt his words.
The blue Lacert's yellow eyes darted to Luthiel, searching for a contradiction, a flinch, anything. Unfortunately, Lu's golden eyes looked back at him with genuine sympathy, which only made the situation more terrifying.
Grub held up his blackened hand once more. "Would you like to see what I mean?"
Then he reached for the warmth in his chest. The green shimmer of Anima flickered to life around his knuckles and layered itself over the Nihil already coating his skin, then the two energies merged.
As soon as they did, the air in the room changed instantly. The temperature dropped while lantern on the wall flickered and dimmed. A crushing feeling settled over the space like an invisible weight pressing down on everyone inside, thick, suffocating and deeply, fundamentally wrong.
The Guardian in the corner went rigid. His tusked jaw clenched while his hands gripped his own arms as if bracing against a wind that wasn't there.
In the seat next to Grub, Luthiel's golden eyes widened. She had felt this before, at the arena, but being this close to it in a confined space was something else entirely. Her hands trembled in her lap in distress.
Agama Sini's composure shattered.
The blue Lacert's yellow eyes went impossibly wide. His scales rippled with involuntary tremors and claws scraped against the table as his body tried to push itself through the back of his chair. Every primal instinct in his reptilian brain was screaming a single word at maximum volume.
Run.
Grub held the combination for three seconds. Then he let it fade.
Agama sat frozen in his seat, his chest heaving, his scales drained of their vivid aquamarine. He looked like he had just stared into the bottom of the ocean where light never reached.
Grub folded his hands on the table calmly.
"So. About that attack. When should we expect your friends?"