Read Novel Full Chapter 2025: Everyone Has A Role
Chapter 2025: Everyone Has A Role
"Master," the souls chanted in unison, though their voices lowered.
The two prisoners watched him approach from the wall. Felicity’s purple hair was artfully tangled around her face, and dirt marked one cheek above her intact travel clothes.
Feng had refused even that much decoration. She sat beside her best friend with both wrists chained overhead, staring at Quinlan with exhausted contempt.
"Enjoying yourselves?" he asked.
"I have been chained to this wall while she rehearsed the same scream over and over," Feng replied.
"It wasn’t the same," Felicity corrected.
"You changed a word."
"Those were incomplete attempts!"
Quinlan’s helmet hid the grin spreading across his face.
Of course he knew the people fighting outside. He’d opened the damned gate himself.
The old swordsman was Alexios Valorian, with Lyra, Abudha, Raika, Orianna, Myrasyn, Sylvaris, Ria, Shallan, Liora, Cedric, Selene, Elisabeth, and Blackjack playing his fellow survivors.
They’d made excellent shipwreck survivors, considering their ship had never existed.
Their group was too varied to pass easily as a merchant business or a mercenary company. Fellow passengers needed only one thing in common: they’d all wanted to reach Sarthal.
All it had taken was one greenskin contract, partly fabricated, or rather, ’expedited’ in importance using the greenskin population of Iskaris.
Della and her friends had seen the pirate heads, crossed the battlefield, and followed the trail into a real greenskin den. They would go back to Sarthal ready to swear that Black had met the whole entourage of people by chance.
Felicity drew a shaky breath.
"A-a man...?" Her eyes widened at the black-armored stranger in front of her. She whispered with grave importance, "Please... Please save us!"
Feng turned toward her very slowly.
"They’re not close yet, dumbass."
"I’m preparing!" Felicity whispered fiercely. "Gotta get into the role, you know!"
The girl faced Quinlan again. Tears gathered with frightening speed, and the performance became so convincing that he understood Feng’s complaint.
"Pleaseeeee!" she wailed. "The monsters took us! We thought nobody would ever find us!"
"Felicity," Feng muttered.
"What?"
"Save some of it for your father."
The young queen sniffed and nodded with grave professionalism. "O-okay..."
One of the Elite Souls at the passage turned her helmet toward the distant scrape of boots.
"Master. They approach."
"Good work," Quinlan told his soldiers. "Return."
At his call, the Elite Souls straightened and dissolved into streams of blue fire. The light rushed past Quinlan from every side, pouring into [Soul Reaper] until the cavern belonged to his burning saber and the small flame he summoned over his other palm.
Feng’s chains rattled as she settled back against the wall.
"I hate this plan."
"Why?" Quinlan smiled.
"Okay, I only hate you."
"There we go. Much more believable."
"We could’ve just not been useless kids kidnapped by pirates and then taken to the rape caves, you know?"
"You’re not useless kids, Feng. You’re innocent young maidens made to manipulate the heartstrings of every adult. Maybe they’ll ask fewer questions thanks to you two." He reached down to pat her lush black hair.
The oriental young lass shook her head with extreme ferocity, knocking his hand away.
"Fuck you!"
"Listen... Every good tale needs some drama and suspense, Feng Jiai." Quinlan shook his head. "We’re all just doing our parts here. If our roles were reversed, no one would care. ’Oh, who’s this giant handsome dude chained to a goblin rape cave? Since when are the little green fuckers gay?’ It just doesn’t hit the same, does it?"
"Then take some of the grown-up bitches, not us! Have you no shame? Aren’t you like, my guardian or something?"
"Hey now, don’t put me in such a bad light. Felicity volunteered. And then so did you."
Felicity leaned toward her friend as far as her chains allowed, her eyes bright.
"Why are you so grumpy, Jiai? This is so much fun!! The gang is finally back together, after more than a week of boring paperwork!"
"I’m chained to a fucking wall while I have to listen to this arrogant bastard yap on and on and you scream in my ears."
"So am I!" Felicity giggled, apparently delighted that they had this in common. Then, realizing the ambiguity in her response, she added, "I mean, chained to a wall, that is."
It was the young queen’s turn to shake her head disappointedly at the oriental alien girl. "Though you should probably not curse. Your value as an innocent young maiden is plummeting as we speak.
"I mean, I’m happy to carry the performance as its main lead - which I would’ve naturally been no matter what you do, by the way - but shouldn’t my sidekick at least not be coarser than the evil pirates who kidnapped us?"
"Ugh... I hate all of you..."
"Alright then, young ladies." Quinlan grinned beneath the helm and raised both arms. "Let’s hear the performance."
Felicity pressed her lips together to smother a giggle.
Quinlan held his hands poised before his captive orchestra, then dipped his right wrist. On cue, her entire face crumpled.
"HELP!" Felicity screamed. "PLEASE HELP US!!"
His left hand invited Feng to join her. The girl glanced at her enthusiastic friend, then back at him, visibly embarrassed to be taking part in this nonsense.
"Help... Somebody..."
Quinlan raised his palm higher, coaxing more volume out of her. From the shackles above Feng’s head, both middle fingers rose to greet him.
"HELP US, EVERYONE! THE MAN IN BLACK LOOKS SCARIER THAN THE MONSTERS!!"
"Well... That works, I guess. Though I might just have to provide you with some fatherly guidance later."
"Spank me and I’ll bite your fingers off!" she hissed under her breath.
"No one spoke about spanking, miss." Keeping time with his left hand, Quinlan swept his right toward the dead greenskins strewn around the entrance.
His wind blades tore through the corpses, widening the neat wounds his soldiers had left and throwing the bodies against the passage wall. The impacts boomed beneath Felicity’s renewed shrieks.
"PLEASE! HELP US! WE DON’T WANT TO DIE!!"
Quinlan lifted both hands for the crescendo, and fire poured from his palms across the fallen guards. A curl of his fingers sent a thread of wind through the blaze to pluck a key ring from one belt and drop it beside Feng’s feet.
"SOMEBODY HELP!" Feng cried, her face bright red, her middle fingers firmly aimed at her guardian.
Felicity answered with a sob that would have broken any decent man’s heart. Quinlan encouraged her with a pleased little flourish, feeding his fire until the greenskins blackened beneath it. His soldiers’ handiwork disappeared into the charred ruin he was making of their bodies.
He kept the flames low against the corpses, leaving the girls and the path to their chains clear while their cries echoed through the cavern.
Footsteps struck the main passage.
At Quinlan’s final downward sweep, both girls wailed together. Feng hastily curled her middle fingers back into her fists.
Their screams brought Alexios around the bend with his golden sword raised. Della and Brena crowded the passage behind him, with Tavi squeezing between their shoulders before the rest of the company could arrive.
Quinlan turned toward them from the cell.
"They’re alive. I got here just in time."
"FATHER!" Felicity sobbed.
The former king stopped.
The fury left Alexios’s face when he saw his daughter chained to the wall, and the performance fell away as real love for his child carried him across the cell.
"Felicity."
Quinlan swept a hand toward the chains holding Felicity’s wrists. "[Wind Blade]."
His spell severed both chains, and Tavi caught the queen as her arms fell free. Della snatched the key ring from beside Feng’s feet to open her shackles.
Felicity threw herself into her father’s armor.
Alexios gathered her against him with both arms. His eyes closed over the top of her tangled hair, and for several breaths he held his daughter while Della watched with tears filling her own eyes.
Feng was still watching Quinlan when Della knelt beside her and gently drew the girl into a hug.
"I know he looks scary, sweetheart, but he’s the one who saved you."
Safe in the adventurer’s arms, Feng sent Quinlan a deeply suspicious look. He spread his hands. "I’ll leave the rest to you three. They seem to be in shock. Best if I stay away."
"Okay, leave it to us, Lord Black..." After giving Feng a reassuring squeeze, Della eased back to check the girl’s wrists.
"They didn’t hurt you?" Brena asked Feng.
"No." Feng rubbed one wrist. "They brought us in a short while ago and kept us in here."
"They knew!" Felicity lifted her tear-streaked face from Alexios’s breastplate. "They took one look at me and realized my beauty! They said I was far too precious to throw in with the ordinary captives. Their chief would’ve wanted me for himself! But he wasn’t back yet!"
Feng stared at her.
Alexios opened his eyes and looked over his daughter’s head at Quinlan, his stare long, flat, and profoundly wry.
Even captivity had become an opportunity for Felicity to brag.
"I’m... I’m glad you’re okay," Alexios said.
Felicity nodded quickly. "I told Feng I would protect us both!"
"They said that about my beauty, not yours, though..." Feng muttered, hugging herself as if she’d just lived through true horror. "They said I was too exotic to waste..."
"I heard otherwise!"
Alexios closed his eyes again.
Beside him, Della pressed both hands over her mouth as worry broke into relieved tears.
"I’m so glad... So, so glad..."
"Yeah... We were just in time..." Tavi exhaled.
Brena couldn’t even speak, such was the relief she felt that these two young maidens, so full of life, came out of this terrible situation unscathed.