Heretical Fishing

Book 2: Chapter 68: Invaluable Data

The warm light of magical fire lit the way as Ellis strode with purpose down the church’s hallway.

His attention had been divided over the past couple of days, but now that the trade route was set into motion and Roger had ascended, there was only one more task to take care of before he could devote himself entirely to processing the spiritual beast. He took a deep breath, enjoying the smell that wafted up from the tray in his hands.

“Everything okay, Ellis?” Keith asked from beside him.

“It will be as soon as we get this business over with.”

Keith nodded.

“Agreed. Here’s to hoping this actually works...”

“It will.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Hmm. A gut feeling.”

Keith’s footsteps halted, and Ellis turned back. Keith pursed his lips, looking back at him as if he were a scroll he couldn’t quite decipher.

“Are you well, Keith?”

“Am I well? Did I just hear you say that you, former head archivist in the royal library, know something because of a… gut feeling?”

“Yes. Why is that odd?”

“Because you don’t have any proof, Ellis. No backing articles, journals, or first-hand recordings... yet you’re sure.”

Ellis raised an eyebrow at his own behavior.

“Hmm. That is quite remarkable, isn’t it?”

“Quite remarkable? It’s downright astounding, Ellis. You’ve never committed to anything without having a literary foundation supporting it.”

“Perhaps it’s because...” Ellis shook his head and raised a hand. “No. We can theorize on that later. As soon as we deliver this food to your cousin, I am focusing my attention on the spirit beast’s carcass.”

Ellis turned and kept striding, so Keith ran to catch up.

“Have you put any thought into what you’re going to do with it? The lizard, I mean.”

“It will depend on what properties it presents, if any.”

“Hello?” a voice called from the open doorway ahead of them.

Keith sighed as they entered the room. “None of your business, Trent. What are you doing?”

The prince was leaning against the bars, making his already toe-like face even more squished.

“What am I doing? No one brought me my dessert!”

“Well, great news, then!” Keith pointed at the tray in Ellis’s hands. “We’ve brought you food.”

Trent frowned at it. “What is that?”

“Deep fried meat. Try it—it’s delicious.”

“... but I want dessert...”

“Tell you what. If you eat all of this second dinner, I’ll give you extra dessert. What do you say?”

Greed entered the prince’s eyes, and he happily scooped up one of the golden chunks of fish. He raised it to his mouth, but paused.

“This isn’t lizard, is it?”

“Why on Kallis would we give you lizard to eat, Trent?”

He pouted.

“I’m not stupid, Keith. I heard you two talking about a lizard. I won’t go eating dumb animals for your amusement.”

Keith took a steadying breath.

“It is not lizard. It’s meat, and it’s delicious. Just try it.”

Trent, still frowning as if they were trying to trick him—which, to be fair, they were—bit down into the fish. His face immediately transformed. He’d not so much as swallowed when he raised the rest to his mouth, but then he caught sight of the flesh.

“White meat...?” He froze, and Keith could practically his sparse brain cells bouncing off one another. Trent retched. “It is lizard! Oh, Keith, you deceitful, hateful cousin.”

“It’s not lizard, Trent.”

The prince squinted at him.

“Swear on your parents.”

“I swear on my parents’ lives that it isn’t lizard.”

“In that case...” He threw it into his mouth and chewed happily, letting out an mmm that trailed off abruptly as his gaze went distant.

Ellis’s heart hammered in his chest.

Has it truly worked? Is the quest to awaken the foolish prince finally complete?

Trent’s eyes came back to the present, and he swallowed his mouthful, looking completely perplexed.

“Why did that thing ask my name?”

Ellis’s excitement drained away as he and Keith shared a glance. In their excitement, they’d forgotten to remind him not to enter one by himself. Trent being Trent, though, had likely forgotten that detail mentioned so many times before.

“What name did you enter, cousin?” Keith asked, taking an involuntary step forward.

Trent gave his cousin a look like he was the moron. “Trent. Duh.” The prince shook his head. “That’s my name.”

***

Though Augustus Reginald Gormona was half aware he was dreaming, he couldn’t wake himself; the nightmare trapped him. He ran from parapet to parapet atop the capital’s walls. No matter where he went, they were besieged by creatures of the night. They had shadowy, intangible forms, and the more he focused on them, the more they seemed to slip away, evading his observation.

Some of them had climbed the walls. Limbs writhed over the parapet and claws dug into stone, silent yet terrible. They circled him. Reached for him. Grasped him.

“Augustus!”

He tried to fight them off, but his body was robbed of strength.

“Augustus!” someone called again.

He had no time for whoever called. He was surrounded, the world growing smaller with each creature reaching for him.

“Augustus!”

Thumping like thunder joined the sound of his name, and all at once, the illusion was shattered. Augustus Reginald Gormona sat bolt upright, taking a deep breath as he scrambled away. When his back came to his ornate headboard, its carved wooden surface was cool in the winter air.

“Augustus!” his wife said again, her voice urgent. “Someone is at the door!”

Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump.

With his body still panicked, Augustus Reginald Gormona climbed out of bed. Addled as he was, he didn’t step into his lush slippers. When his stumbling feet left the royal rug that the servants put under their bed for the winter months, the castle’s stone floors were freezing. He focused on the sensation, willing his racing heart to calm.

“I’m coming!” he yelled before the awakener could knock again. He grasped the door and pulled it open, revealing a man just as panicked. “Luke? What is the meaning of this?”

Augustus had intended for the question to come out as a demand, but the dread he felt made it sound weak to his own ears.

Luke’s lips formed a line. “The screen, my king. Another name...”

“Another...?”

It was exactly what the king had feared, but before he could fully cognize the ramifications, Luke opened his mouth again. It moved inaudibly for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, the dignitary found his words.

“Your...” He swallowed. “Your son, my king...”

“Explain yourself, Luke.” Fury and confusion burned in the king’s chest. “Now.”

“Another name appeared on the screen. It was...” He looked past Augustus toward the queen. “It was Trent.”

“What?” his wife asked, but from the tone of her voice, she already knew.

“They have our son,” Augustus answered in a whisper.

The queen ran from the bed, dashing toward the dresser where she kept her jewelry. She plucked a locket from among her necklaces and cracked it open with shaking fingers. She let out a noise halfway between relief and despair as she fell to the floor, her shift bunching around her legs.

“The light remains lit. He’s alive...”

“Some fates are worse than death,” Augustus said, his body going numb.

His wife’s answering whimper echoed his thoughts, and her eyes went vacant as she stared into space.

“My baby boy... he’s not strong enough...”

Augustus clenched his jaw so tight he thought his teeth might shatter. His wife was right; the foolish boy was ill-equipped for being a captive of war.

***

Trent Reginald Gormona, first in line to the throne and authority on all things sweet, was having a rather pleasant evening.

He lounged among a throne of plush pillows as he ate his second dessert for the evening. Two dinners and two desserts? Now that was Trent’s kind of night. Even better, since he had entered his name into that weird blue thing, the delicious sweets he ate no longer bothered him. Each time he’d eaten some of the purple jam or drank sugarcane juice previously, an odd pressure had pulsed in his brain for a short time, as if trying to break down a physical wall. It had been the same when he ate that deliciously savory meat earlier. Rather than struggling against the wall, though, the white flesh covered in golden crumbs had shattered right through.

Trent cocked his head to the side. Perhaps it was the meat that had fixed his problem, not entering his name. Realizing he was thinking, he chuckled at himself. What good was thinking when he had delicious things to eat? He dipped the croissant into his heaped pile of jam and placed it on his tongue. The sweet flavor warmed his entire body, and he could almost feel its energy coursing through his veins. He paused, waiting for the energy to press against that wall, but then he remembered the wall was no more.

Trent grinned, dipped his pastry, and took another bite.

“How do you feel?” his traitorous cousin asked, making the blessed jam covering his tongue turn sour.

Trent leveled his best hate-filled scowl at him as he chewed.

“I’d feel better if you brought me more jam.”

Keith nodded.

“As I thought. I can take it from here, Ellis. You can go get started on your project if you like.”

“Are you sure?” the other man... what was he again? A librarian? Trent shook his head; it didn’t matter.

“I’m sure. I’ll take notes if my cousin here does anything of note, but I don’t foresee that happening.” Keith sighed. “Not like he’s going anywhere.”

“You don’t know that,” Trent countered through another mouthful of pastry. “I might flex and bust out of this prison the moment you lower your guard.”

If Trent hadn’t been so engrossed by the lingering flavor of jam and the sense of smugness he got from insulting his captors, he may have noticed the drips of information making their way into his cerebrum. Being Trent, he didn’t, of course. He simply puffed his chest out and looked down his nose at the two men outside his jail cell.

***

Ellis couldn’t help but shake his head at the moronic prince.

He had finally ascended, but the poor boy was so thick that he didn’t even realize it yet. Ellis recalled the physical and cognitive changes that had occurred almost immediately following his own awakening. The urge to enlighten him was hard to ignore, but doing so could negatively impact the data. Trent’s mental faculties—or lack thereof, he supposed—presented a unique opportunity.

Based on all their testimonials, the animals that had ascended from eating Fischer’s food all experienced the same thing: a steady stream of information flowing into them. Though humans also experienced improvement, it was insignificant in comparison. Given these statements were all true, what would happen when a man thicker than Fischer’s desserts awakened? The data was invaluable, so Ellis once more dismissed the urge to tell him.

“All right, Keith. I leave the imbecile to you.”

Trent snorted, an ugly noise considering how much croissant and jam he had stuffed into his mouth. He gave them a smug smile as he finished the mouthful.

“Your insults are so ludicrous as to be amusing. Don’t waste your breath attempting to bring this one low—you merely lower yourself in the attempt.”

Ellis had started walking away, but froze mid-step, slowly looking back toward the prince.

Keith was staring with the same amount of incredulity.

“What did you just say, Trent?”

He raised an eyebrow at them.

“What? Are my sentences too verbose for cretins like you to comprehend? Doth my vocal vibrations leave you flummoxed?” He shook his head, laughing. “I daresay you two are the imbeciles, not I.”

Ellis’s hand twitched, reaching for his notepad of its own accord.

“What?” Trent continued. “Nothing to say? Are you so inarticulate that you’ve forgotten your words? You are a stain upon your houses. A blight upon the learned. A plague—”

“Trent,” Keith interrupted, leaning so far forward that he was almost at the metal bars of his cousin’s confinement. “Think about the words you’re using.”

Trent rolled his eyes. “Don’t bother with your trickery, cousin. I know they are contextually correct. It is you who lacks the intellectual dexterity to—”

“Trent! Think about the words you’re using. Do they sound like things you’d normally say? Sentences you’d normally put together?”

Trent cocked his head, squinting at them. His face morphed as the realization struck him.

“Poseidon’s salt-crusted beard...” Trent said in a whisper, his eyes like saucers. “I sound like a nerd...”