Azazel…
As Marcus’s first match came to a close, the prince of Hell felt nervous. It was the first time he had witnessed such raw emotion and anger coming from him.
What everyone else in this world might see as just a normal outburst of murderous anger, Azazel saw as something far more supernatural and ethereal.
Marcus had exhibited the most minimal amount of spiritual energy to fend off The Sword of Rain, but after the battle ended, that man spoke something to him.
Unknown as those words were to Azazel, whatever they were must have triggered something horrible for Marcus to react in such a way.
With Cole Mohr being a few moments away from death at his hands, Azazel could feel the essence of Wrath leaking out of him.
King Razel, who was seated next to him, seemed to be pondering the sudden outburst with a conflicted expression on his face.
The king then spoke, “If memory serves me correctly King Arobynn, violence before and after a match would be considered a violation of the rules of this contest, would it not?”
The ambassador of the SUK then added, “I must concur. Unnecessary aggression before and after a match would merit a disqualification. Although, since this contest is hosted by your kingdom, their rules are governed by you and you alone. I must implore you not to show too much leniency to him simply because he is one of your own personal champions.”
Queen Hylla and King Rohen remained silent as they both seemed indifferent to the situation, but the Orc King seemed to protest the idea of disqualification.
“You would have him removed from this tournament for stopping some fool from running his mouth? How absurd. I can tell just by watching that this Marcus fellow was barely exerting any of his strength at all. If you are to punish him in any regard, wait until this tournament reaches its climax and deliver it then. I wish to see the limits of what he is capable of,” he said with a toothy grin, full of excitement and anticipation.
“Enough. How presumptuous of you to attempt to dictate how I should pass judgment in my own kingdom. While I agree that he should face some form of discipline, it will not be at the request of rulers from foreign lands. If you speak any forth of this, then I shall have you removed from this seating that I have provided for you and you will be forced to sit with the common people,” Arobynn snapped at them with a distasteful tone.
King Razel laughed heartily as he stood up from his seat and looked directly at King Arobynn as he said, “Perish the thought. I will remove myself from this seating of my own free will, if only to escape such dreadful company.”
Arobynn and the other rulers save for the Orc King were visibly shocked to hear such words from him.
King Razel then raised his chin, as if to look down on King Arobynn as he continued, “You speak of your own people, calling them commoners, as if they had as much value to you as the dirt underneath your fingernails. I only took this seating because it was offered to me and because it has a good view. However, these seats are suffocating. I think I would find better company sitting among my own subjects.”
King Arobynn looked at King Razel with shock and disbelief at his bravado.
Azazel too was confused by King Razel’s sudden declaration, as noble as it might be.
“If that is what you wish, then by all means leave.”
Then, as if following his example, The Orc King stood up and said, “I think I will do the same! If not to share drinks and congratulate with my son and daughter for progressing to the next match. The wine that you serve us here is in good quality and vintage, yet it lacks the right fire and bite to it that I thirst for.”
The Orc King’s words did not seem out of character as he seemed to prefer the scenery of a bar among his kin to that of finery. It was of little surprise.
King Razel’s behavior though was strange. As the king left the rulers’ seating and passed through the door that would lead him into hall, Azazel followed close by.
“I must ask why you to explain to me the reason for your questions and behavior King Razel,” Azazel asked him.
King Razel stayed quiet until they were away from those who might try to listen in.
“I brought up Marcus’s cause for disqualification to test the certainty of his continued participation. Based on the man’s behavior, I would assume that Arobynn also does not want to see him removed until he is certain of what Marcus is capable of.”
Azazel’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “Are you suspicious of foul play at work?”
King Razel nodded and said, “I am. Of course, our close associate Ruvick can be put into question, but I think he is of the same mind as us and Arobynn. He too, likely wants to test Marcus’s limits, but I only wonder for what reason…”
He went silent as he pondered something for a moment but then continued, “However, there are some aspects of this contest that I am also wary of. For example, that man Julian Romano. You provided me with information on him earlier, yet his records only date as far back as ten years, yet his true age is likely more than double that. I have some questions about that.”
“I have reason to believe that he is from the same world that Marcus and myself originally hail from.”
“Yes…and there is something about that fact that bothers me. At the start of the contest, when all the champions were presented before the audience, Marcus struck Julian. It seems obvious that they have personal ties to each other, but to add onto that, I think that Cole Mohr is cut from the same cloth. I think he too is from the same world and has ties to Marcus.”
“Would you like me to investigate the issue?”
“Please do. I get the feeling that there is far more to this man and the other champions than meet the eye.”
“Very well. I shall begin my investigation as soon as possible, though I must ask; why did you make such a scene when Arobynn spoke of removing you from the Rulers’ seating for speaking out?”
King Razel’s expression seemed almost embarrassed as he looked away and said, “To be honest, I don’t have the utmost respect for him. His company is insufferable, but to add to that, as carefully crafted as his seats were, they are horribly uncomfortable to sit in. I just wanted an excuse to leave and not come back.”
But then, King Razel’s expression became serious again.
“Now back to the previous topic, I am also concerned about how Marcus’s actions will reflect on Forrosa. If he wants to remain as a dignitary and retain our support, then he will need to be calm of mind and save his anger for the fights themselves. Make sure that message finds its way to him.”
“Of course.”
Marcus…
Rather than head back home or go to the brotherhood hall for a drink, he found a local pub and asked for the strongest drink they had.
The bartender looked at him for a moment, sizing him up and shrugged.
“Whatever you say sir,” he muttered as he pulled out a stone bottle and glass as he poured him a very small amount, not even enough to fill a shot glass.
“This is called Dragon Piss. The taste is terrible but its alcohol content is high enough that it can conquer even the heaviest of drinkers. This stuff isn’t cheap, but I’ll give you a small taste test to see if you’re up to it.”
Marcus picked up the glass, looked at the dark liquid inside and swirled it to see its color better in the light. He did this as he pondered how he would handle the circumstances that he had landed himself in.
After a little while of thinking, he figured that he was too stressed out to put any more thought into it. He wanted to relax and not think about the mess he just made.
He took a drink of the liquor that was poured for him, and even though it went down like acid in his throat, it was undoubtedly strong enough to knock him out if he decided to finish the whole bottle.
“How much is the bottle itself?”
“Three silvers.”
His eyes widened at the outrageous price. If he converted that to the US Dollar, that would be seven hundred and fifty dollars.
“Fine, whatever. I’ll take the whole bottle,” he said as he left three silver coins on the counter and grabbed the bottle as he poured another glass.
The bartender’s eyebrows lifted as he seemed hesitant to grab the silver coins given to him.
“Just so you know, the heaviest drinkers black out after about three glasses of that liquor. Be sure to drink that in moderation,” he said as he reluctantly scooped up the money.
“I hope so. I paid good money for high quality booze, so it better knock me when I finish the bottle, otherwise I’ll be disappointed,” he said as he took another drink.
After about seven rounds of Dragon Piss, he was crashed out with his head resting on the counter of the bar in a horribly uncomfortable position as he someone shook his shoulders to wake him up.
“Hmm...what’s going on?” he asked groggily as the bartender’s face, as blurry as it was, came close to his face and whispered to him.
“There’s someone here who wants to speak with you,” he said as he pointed to a small group who had walked into the bar.
He tried to turn around to get a look at them but his vision was still so heavily impaired that he couldn’t tell who was walking towards him.
“Whatever…I don’t want to talk to these guys,” he said as he picked up his bottle of Dragon Piss and drank straight from the source, not even bothering to pour a glass.
As he drank, he watched them walk closer and the details on their faces started to become clearer despite his attempt to drink himself black out drunk again.
Four people approached him, all of which seemed to be from different walks of life. One was a red skinned Orc woman with tattoos and scars all over her arms and a two horns that looked as if they were sanded down Hellboy style. She had a hammer on her back that looked like an oversized meat tenderizer. Her clothes were rather lightweight and revealing, torn up jeans, leather boots, and a dirty white tank top. The skin on her arms looked so rough and calloused that it looked like a blade could either bounce off of it or get stuck in there trying to cut through it. Her hair was red and choppy.
Another was a Dark Elf woman with an ax on her back and a pair of iron rods at her waist. She wore silver colored armor around her arms, chest, and legs with blue cloth underneath. Her long brown hair was set in a pony tail.
As for the third person, it was a man who looked like a scholar from the southern union of kingdoms. With grey robes detailed with ravens and holding an unusual staff with multiple spinning disks around a white orb. He was pale but had a beard and black hair.
They all stood around a familiar man who was leading the group to him.
Marcus squinted his eyes and then laughed as he remembered who he was, “Cole! Didn’t know you were looking for me.”
He then looked at the bottle of Dragon Piss in his hands and then looked back at Cole as he held the bottle in front of him and asked, “Want some?”
Cole looked at him with a disgusted and disappointed expression on his face.
The Dark Elf woman looked at Cole with disbelief and said, “This can’t seriously be the same person we saw in the arena, is he? He’s acting like a completely different person now.”
“Who the hell are these losers?” Marcus asked him with a frown.
The Orc woman tightened her hands into fists in anger at his words but did nothing.
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I still want some answers from you, so sober up,” Cole said.
Marcus snorted as he said, “I offered to tell you everything you needed to know in the arena if you had just asked, but you blew me off. Why don’t you take your pals and fuck off.”
He then tried to take another drink but the Dark Elf snatched it out of his hands and smashed it on the floor. He watched in shock as the bottle shattered into a hundred pieces.
“No! You’re going to sober up now and you are going to start talking!” she shouted, her face twisted in anger.
He simply looked up at her with a bored expression on his face as he waved his hand and the bottle fixed itself as it returned to his hand, along with all the alcohol intact.
“I don’t talk about dead parents while I’m drunk. Maybe come back later,” he said as he tried to keep drinking.
The Dark Elf then walked forward and smacked Marcus in the face much to the horror on Cole’s face.
With the stinging pain on his left cheek, he slowly turned his head to look back at her. Her face, as well as that of the Orc woman was full of so much anger that he figured that they would pounce on him at any moment.
The scholar with the grey robes looked more frustrated rather than angry as he tried to calm them both down.
“Now Lyrra, Rosanne, I don’t think its a good idea to attack this guy, especially not while he’s intoxicated,” he pleaded with them.
“Shut up Felkin,” they both said in unison as Cole shook his head.
Losing his patience with them, Marcus burned the alcohol in his system, instantly sobering up, and rose from his stool.
He looked at the Dark Elf woman, apparently named Rosanne, and said in a neutral tone, “I don’t know who you are and frankly I don’t care. If you strike me again, you’ll have to ask one of your friends here to carry your arms for you after I finish ripping them off and beating you half to death with them.”
Rosanne went pale and her ears that pointed upwards flipped down to show that his threat terrified her.
He didn’t mean any of what he said as he wasn’t a barbarian, but he figured that he would scare her a bit to keep her from smacking him again.
Maybe he shouldn’t have been so harsh…
Everyone in the bar that was close enough to hear what he had said all stopped what they were doing to stare at them. They were all speechless by what he had said.
Ah shit…
Marcus snapped his fingers to remove the memory of what he had said from everyone in the bar save for the four in front of him. They blinked as they realized that they were staring and went back to what they were doing.
Hearing that, Cole stepped in front of her right away and said, “Whoa, stop. I’m not here to fight. I learned that lesson just fine. Lets just...talk.”
Marcus looked at the friends he had brought with him and then looked back at Cole as he said, “Fine. Lets go find a table.”
When they were all seated, a long silence dragged on as Cole seemed hesitant to ask any questions.
Eventually it started to agitate Marcus as he continued to wait.
But just as the man was about to open his mouth to speak, the man in the gray robes, Felkin, blurted out a question, “Did you really defeat Malthael by yourself?”
Rosanne and Lyrra looked at him as if he were an idiot for asking.
Deciding to humor him, Marcus answered him honestly as he said, “I fought his dragon form by myself, but as for his new human form that was given to him when he was brought back, Artemis and Selene fought him. Why do you ask?”
“Well, given how powerful the records describe the Archdragon to be in ages past, I just find it doubtful that a person who appeared out of no where to suddenly take him down. I can’t help but be doubtful.”
“So you want evidence, is that it?” he asked with a smirk.
Felkin nodded.
“Alright then,” he said as he snapped his fingers and a small version of Malthael the size of a Boston Terrier appeared on the table, “This is Malthael.”
Everyone seated at the table save for Cole jumped out of their seats in fear and backed away.
“H-h-how is this p-p-possible,” Rosanne stammered.
“After I killed him, I cut out his heart and cooked it to see how it would taste and whether or not it would give me wisdom. I ended up eating his soul along with it and now he is a part of me. I hope that is proof enough for you,” he answered as he snapped his fingers and Malthael disappeared once again.
Do not summon me for such frivolous things again Malthael complained in his mind.
Cole sighed and said, “Calm down and sit.”
He then started fiddling with his fingers before he finally asked, “Marcus, why did you kill my parents.”
“I was hired to do so by Stefan Romano,” he answered.
Cole gritted his teeth but forced himself to calm down as he continued, “So…you were hired to kill them? Was it really just business to you?”
“It was business for Romano.”
“Elaborate.”
“The crime families of New York, like the Castellanos and the Romano families, they have enforcers to remove potential opposition and maintain their hold on where they do their business. Your mother and father were being given money by the Russian mob to keep their mansion and pay off their debts in exchange for providing them with somewhere they could start up operations in New York. I killed them and was supposed to burn the place down,” he said bluntly and Cole squeezed his hands into fists.
“I...I don’t believe you. I refuse to believe it. Why would my parents be involved with that shit?”
“Because even if they sold the mansion, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in paying off their debts. The Russian Mob gave them an opportunity to pay it off another way, but I doubt it would have ended very well for them regardless of what I did to them.”
Cole slammed his fist against the table and cracked the wood in anger.
Marcus then looked away in shame as he said, “That being said, their deaths didn’t matter much in the end.”
Cole then looked up at him with a murderous stare as he asked, “What did you say?”
He looked back at him as he said, “Don’t make me repeat myself. You heard what I said. In the end, their deaths didn’t matter one way or the other.”
Cole gritted his teeth as he forced the words out, “How….how can you say that? What does that even mean?”
“I’m saying that because the man who told me to kill your parents, Stefan Romano…? I killed him.”
His anger turned to confusion and his eyes darted around looking at the table as he tried to figure things out.
“B-but…why did you turn on the man who had ordered you to kill my parents? What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.”
“It wasn’t just Stefan Romano either. I didn’t stop with him. I went after the Castellanos, the Chinese, the Russians, I went after everyone, and I killed them all.”
“Why?”
“Because the man who ordered me to kill your parents, killed my mother,” Marcus said to him, looking him in the eyes with a dead serious expression.
Felkin, Rosanne, and Lyrra all turned to look at Cole as he stared at Marcus in shock.
“Its a bit of fucked up irony isn’t it? The same man who ordered for your parents to be killed ended up being the same man who killed mine. The sad thing is that I didn’t find out about it until I was already working for him for ten years. The man found me when I was eight years old after my mother died giving birth to my sister and decided to give us a little ‘generosity’” Marcus said as he let out a humorless laugh.
Cole’s mind looked to be running a mile a minute as he was thinking and then he asked, “Wait, you mean...your appearance in this world was only known a month ago but you disappeared in 2021. Have you really not been hiding in Erebus this entire time.”
“Nope. Compared to you and a few others, I just barely got here.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty two, why?”
Cole’s face fell as he said, “Jesus Christ…you’re just a kid. You’re a murderer sure, but you were raised as a child soldier for that man?”
Marcus didn’t like hearing the pity in Cole’s voice.
He didn’t want pity.
“If that’s how you want to look at it, then fine,” Marcus said as he folded his arms.
Cole slowly stood up from his chair and said, “Come on…, we’re leaving.”
“What?! But what about your parents? Don’t you want justice or revenge for what he did to them?”
“No…there’s no point to it anymore. Whatever justice or revenge I might have wanted before...its meaningless now. Although, even if I still wanted it, its already been carried out for me. There’s nothing left here for me,” he said as his voice making him sound drained of emotion.
As he walked away, Lyrra and Felkin looked at Marcus with anger in their eyes.
The Orc women then said, “He might have abandoned the idea of taking revenge against you but I haven’t. You deserve so much worse for what you did to him, and I’ll see to that in the contest.”
“Good luck with that,” he replied.
She continued to glare at him as Felkin ushered her away. Rosanne kept close to Cole as they escorted him out.
After they had left, Marcus looked at his bottle of alcohol and sighed.
I do deserve worse.