Supreme Magus novel Chapter 149

"So, let me get this straight." Lith still doubted Vickas’s words.

"Among the group of traitors that is trying to sabotage the Queen’s work, there is someone that lead them by the nose while preparing this plague?"

Vickas nodded, his eyes always fixed on the army of mouths millimetres away from his bleeding flesh.

"What does this mastermind want? What’s the endgame?" A zombie lifted Vickas’ head by the chin, forcing him to look at Lith in the eyes.

"I don’t know." He squealed. The hand holding him was flabby and sticky, secreting decomposition fluids at every movement. The putrid smell would have made him puke already, but there was nothing left but bile in his stomach.

"Then how come you know so much about your friends and their masters? It seems only a convenient lie to me."

Vickas exploded into a feverish laughter. The dreadful experience he was living, being captured, tortured and allegedly infected, had already pushed him to the brink of insanity.

Lith’s naivety seemed to be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back.

"Ha! Ha! Ha! Gods, how could my liege believe that someone so stupid could find a cure? He must be an idiot too! We’re dead! We are all dead!"

Lith tried to make him snap out of his hysteria, first with threats and then with slaps, but to no avail.

"Eat his b*lls." He ordered, cancelling the spell that held the pain at bay.

"Please, no! Anything but that! I’m sorry! I really am!" Vickas stopped laughing, the agony flooding his limbs and the sight of those drooling mouths nearing his nether regions forced him to regain his senses.

"Remember, I still hold what’s left of your life. If you are so proud of being someone else’s dog, then act like one. I say bark, you bark. Otherwise my friends here will teach you how to play dead."

Vickas had served Duke Selimar for years, joining the military and climbing up its ranks only for his master’s sake. His parents had abandoned him when he was just five years old, they already had too many mouths to feed to care for a talentless, whiny kid.

It had been Selimar that had adopted him along with his sworn brothers, saving them from the starvation and the daily abuses at the orphanage. Betraying the Crown had been natural for them, they had no loyalty nor gratitude towards the ones incarnating a system that only treated them as trash.

He didn’t do it out of greed, but out of love. There was nothing he wouldn’t do for his foster father. Betraying his trust was already tearing Vickas’ soul apart, being called a dog was too much to bear.

"If only I could use magic..." He snarled, baring his teeth at Lith.

"It would change nothing." Lith gave him a slap, but this time with his true strength.

The force of that simple gesture smeared Vickas’s nose over his cheek, making him bleed profusely, and dislocated the jaw.

Vickas had never been hit with such strength, not even when fighting soldiers twice his size. His pride and defiance crumbled, realizing that the zombies were innocent lambs compared to their shepherd.

"After the plague was released, Selimar understood that without a cure, he is bound to lose. If the Crown wins, he will be executed for treason, if his faction wins, they’ll become the mastermind’s slaves.

He fears him, so he didn’t tell me anything, to not compromise their relationship." Vickas dropped the honorifics. He was a traitor now. He didn’t deserve to call him master anymore.

"The others, instead, are expendable. When Lizhark and Fernath insisted to have their men assist me, he understood they didn’t trust him anymore, so he took precautions.

He gave me enough means and information to frame them and their masters, so when necessity arose, I could expose them and destroy their credibility, giving my lieg... Selimar the time to get to safety."

- "This is good news for the Crown, but not for me. Lith thought.

The accident in Kandria revealed the hidden agenda, which in turn is causing them to infight. These morons are so desperate to put all their hopes on me, and I have yet to do anything. The only way to get them off my back is for the cure to be found, and fast."-

"One last question. How could they know what happened and react so fast? How did you bypass the array?"

"It’s actually easy." Vickas swallowed a lump of saliva. ’Last question’ meant he was about to outlive his usefulness.