OMAI: The Empire of Storms

by VeganSpyro97

Chapter 9: Cruel Curiosity

The Stormguard had been trained to ignore fear. They had been trained to fight their King’s enemies with all their might and tenacity until victory had been taken or death had taken them. They had been trained to give their lives to the Empire for whatever their King needed them for. It was very simple. The King commanded, and they obeyed.

But when the command was to so much as talk with Commander Gale, even the most verteran Jotun was reluctant to obey said command.

It was hardly an unwarranted desire, as the Commander had already killed six soldiers on the flight from the empire to this forsaken north-land simply for disturbing him in the middle of his study of the bits of junk he claimed were artifacts of some long lost civilization. None of the Jotuns ever cared for those items, save for the King, and he only tolerated the obsession his Commander had at best, and showed outright annoyance for it at worst.

Even worse was that the Commander had received a new shipment of these “artifacts” just the day before his ship had departed the Empire on it’s escort mission. With so many items to look over, the Commander had spent the entire voyage sequestered in his cabin, muttering and whispering to himself as he bent over the broken weapons, shattered armour and old art pieces that were liberally scattered across the huge desk that took up a good third of the small cabin he had claimed as his own.

No one disturbed the Commander of the Hounds. No one. None save the King could escape his wrath if he decided to display it. And the King had never done much more than rough the Commander up every once in a while as punishment.

So when Private’s Pollux and Castor were called upon to retrieve the Commander from his cabin, they were hardly enthusiastic about actually doing it. The twin Jotun’s looked sideways at each other through their war masks, before Castor sighed and knocked on the door of the Commander’s cabin.

A rusted, greatly pitted sword blade suddenly burst through the wood, splitting the plank almost in two and sending a shower of wood slivers into Castor’s mask with the tinny sound of several dozen impacts echoing in his ears. It was with horror that Castor realized the tip of the blade had actually lodged itself in his mask, right between his eyes.

“I am not to be disturbed.” Came the reply once the blade had stopped shaking in place.

“Commander Gale, we have arrived in Equestria’s capital. The King has sent a messenger requesting your presence.” Pollux offered, while Castor slowly and carefully extricated his mask from the blade it was impaled upon.

The door remained closed for a few more moments, then was wrenched open by a very displeased figure in Stormguard Hound Armour, complete with two sets of vicious, retractable claw blades on each arm, firmly attached to the gauntlets Gale was wearing. Like all of the Jotuns, his armour was deep, dark, reflective coal grey, with bits of white fur used as trim under the individual pieces. The only part of Gale that was always visible was his eyes, a pale gray colour that were constantly in the shadow of their owner’s masked helmet.

“What does the King want?” Gale asked, abruptly, not even giving them time to answer before barking at them. “Speak quickly!”

“The King wishes for you to report your evaluation of the journey north, the artifacts you have examined, and he wishes to brief you on current events as they stand here in the city.” Pollux explained, his eyes drifting to Gale’s claws as he played with them, using just the tips to dig at the dirt stuck under his nails.

“Very well. You know the drill. No one goes into my cabin while I’m gone. Period.”

“Commander, if I may ask….what use is a sword as rusted as that?” Castor asked, looking to the reddish brown blade still sticking out of the door from where Gale had thrown it.

“More than you. It’s survived hundreds if not thousands of years after it’s creators died, and is still as deadly as it was then. Now unless you feel like experiencing that deadliness first hand, I suggest you get out of my way before I get irritated by the sound of your idiotic voice.” Gale snarled, marching briskly forwards. Castor and Pollux made sure that they were jumping away from the door by the time he reached it. They were quite attached to their heads, and Gale was not averse to removing heads.

Once Gale was gone, the brothers made sure to close the door without letting so much as one of their toes cross the threshold into the room on the other side.

Gale made his way out of his ship, and then disembarked into the ruined city of Canterlot with not a single glance to anyone- not even the pitiful forms of the few remaining ponies who had failed to escape the King strung up and left lying in cages.

He passed the remains of a gallows that had been smashed to pieces and burned almost beyond recognition, and then moved past the outer walls of the castle that dominated the rest of the city. It’s walls were grey and dreary from ash and soot, and the plants inside the walls were turning brown from lack of sunlight.

After stabbing a lazy guard in the throat for not paying attention as he approached the front gate, Gale made his way through the palace corridors to the throne room, where the King was waiting, angrily staring at the door. There was a motionless grey figure next to him, and several cages filled with a small menagerie of creatures that were all in various states of health from poor to still leaking blood from some recently inflicted injury.

“Commander.” The King growled, as Gale approached his monarch, the leader of the Hounds immediately dropping to one knee in subservience. “Is the Citadel intact?”

“Ready for service, my liege.” Gale answered, instantly. “It shall be ready to destroy the city in a heartbeat.”

“No. I have no need to destroy this city. It is a useful staging post, both centralized and fortified, now that I am aware of the various entrances and exits it possesses. I want you to take these prisoners to the citadel and interrogate them. They are the retinue and guards of one of Equestria’s four Alicorn Princess’s. They may know where she is, or at least know what she might do.”

“As you command, my King.”

“And Gale. One of them is an Architect.”

Gale looked up sharply. His eyes immediately found the still figure standing beside the King and locked onto it like a creature dying of thirst stares at a bottle of water. “He is quite a large specimen.”

“He is one of the Princess’s guards. Study him and interrogate him as you will. You will be interested to know that several of my men reported seeing him using some kind of magic.”

“At once, your majesty!” Gale gave his salute as quickly as his limbs and armour would allow, then started to leave to find his troops to arrange transport of the prisoners.

“Commander Tempest has commited treason and helped one of the Princess’s escape execution.” King Gaul added, stopping Gale in his tracks. The King walked across the rubble covered floor, moving across the room to stare at one of the windows that lined the throne room walls, one displaying six mares using some manner of magic on a seventh, much larger mare. “Once you have exhausted these guards knowledge of their Princess, you will begin hunting your former comrade down, along with the Princess and her cohort. They are a well documented force that most frequently works together, so where you find one, you will undoubtedly find the others.” He came to a more recent addition, one of three the four Alicorns, a Changeling and the same mares from before stood about a caged creature with magic streaming up out of their horns, a second, very much dead changeling lying on the ground beneath them. The Changeling standing with the others looked very familiar to Gaul, as did the Pegasus emerging from the very top of the magic stream. His eyes flicked back and forth between the two bronze coloured creatures, noting the similarities between the two as he talked. “Make sure you don’t underestimate these creatures, Gale. That was my mistake when we first arrived.”

Gale nodded, and then left as he had been instructed, organizing the retrieval and movement of the prisoners in a matter of hours.

**************************************

Gale once again shut himself in his rooms, but the statue of the Architect now took up his attention entirely, rather than the scattered artifacts around him. He examined it’s armour, battle-worn and ill-fitted, as well as it’s weapon, pony made and nowhere near as durable as some of the weapons Gale had found among the artifacts the Architects of old had left behind.

The distracting cries of pain and anger from the prisoners being tortured for information faded into the background for Gale, as he poured over every detail of the frozen being before him. His expression of defiance, his strong stance and his towering size….Gale was enamoured by the creature before him. He had studied the Architect’s history for so long that having one here, frozen or not, was simply astounding to him.

The King had instructed him to study the Architect before he was released from his imprisonment, and the commander was very much content, if not enthusiastic to obey that command. He spent hours pouring over every detail the statue could reveal, and when the King came to release the Architect, Gale was almost sad that he couldn’t spend more time scrutinizing him as he was at the moment of his imprisonment. Almost. His excitement at being able to study the living being, armour, weapons and underclothes removed, trumped his previous sadness and got him as close to giddy as he ever could.

His two guards, Castor and Pollux, as he learned from them from their muted conversations outside his door, were not at all happy to have been assigned to him.

The feeling was completely mutual.

Still, he had required their assistance to relieve the Architect of his personal belongings, and to strap him to a table so that he could not simply escape, so he had decided to at least tolerate their presence. Well, for now at least. Time would tell if they would prove as annoying and useless as most Jotun guards.

The markings the Architect bore fascinated the Hound Commander, and he made note of their appearance while he waited for the Architect to wake up, having also taken time to study his purple and gold armour, his heavy Bardiche, and his large physique in more detail while he was not stone.

It was everything he’d wanted for a very long time.

***********************************

Crimson had not been expecting to wake up again after taking that odd, gassy orb thing right on the chest. In fact, as the stone had closed over his head, he’d been a little preoccupied with trying to rapidly learn telepathy so that he could say goodbye to his friends before his untimely demise could shut him up for good.

That being said, the first gasp of air he was able to take into his lungs was bliss, the slightly musty quality of said air not at all hindering his enjoyment of it.

What did hinder his enjoyment of his newfound consciousness was when he realized he wasn’t alone, was strapped to a table, and was very close to being buck naked for anyone who came into the room to see.

Of those three concerns, his present company took precedent, so Crimson focused on trying to see the individual better. The lighting had been set up deliberately so that he was right beneath a bright cone of light while the rest of the room was rather shadowed, odd lumps and shapes dotting what little of the available surfaces he could see from his bound position. The figure was obscured in the shadows, but Crimson was able to make out the armour of the smaller storm creatures he had fought in Canterlot. Those things had been giggling as they ripped open the ponies he had come to care about, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood to listen to that giggling again, not bound up and unable to resist.

“If you’re going to kill me, just get on with it.” Crimson sighed.

The figure did laugh, but it wasn’t the mad babbling of the others. “If I wanted to do that, I wouldn’t have bothered waiting for you to wake up.”

Crimson looked at the figure with narrowed eyes, not entirely sure what to make of this. Were they all just pretending to be mad then, or were some of them actually mad? Or was this one a unique case of sanity?

“No, friend. I want to talk. About you. About your little pony friends. About the Princesses.”

Crimson stayed silent. He wasn’t going to just give information like that away.

“Don’t worry, I’ll find out one way or another.” The figure turned around, hands dancing over a table before picking up something long and sharp. Then he turned around, brandishing the knife.

“You’re going to tell me everything.” The blade came forward, hovering at first over his heart, then tracing Crimson’s veins up to his shoulder, then down his left forearm, and to his hand, the blade nicking one of his knuckles. “You’re an Architect. How did you learn magic?”
“Eat shi-AH!!” The blade sliced a cut open on Crimson’s hand, along the inside edge of his index finger and letting blood trickle down the boards he was hanging from.

“Now, now. Let’s not be rude. I’ll ask again. How did you learn magic?”

“Well, I went down to the local library- Agh!! Fuck!!” Gale jabbed the blade through the back of Crimson’s hand until it hit wood on the other side, making Crimson try to clench his fist on reflex. That only made it hurt more. Then the blade came out and he yelped again. “STOP DOING THAT!”

“Then stop testing my patience.” Gale growled in reply. “Be nice, and play along. Tell me what I want to know, and you get to keep your fingers. Otherwise, I’m gonna start cutting them off.”

“Cut anything off of me and there won’t be anything anyone can do to save you from Twilight when she finds out!” Crimson hissed.

“And if I cut off anything from her other guards? Would she do the same for them, I wonder?”

“What does it matter to you? You’re gonna torture them anyway, you sick fre-.” Crimson growled and strained against his restraints with bared teeth. Then the knife slammed into his left palm and nailed his hand to the wood behind it for a second time.

“I told you to be nice. Now look at what you made me do.” Gale tutted. “I’ve gone and put a hole in my favourite torturing table. For shame, Architect, for shame.”

“Fuck you!”

“Considering the amount of pain you’re in, I’ll be generous a second time and let that slide.” Gale hummed, letting go of the knife and turning to the table again, picking up something long and glowing at the end. “After all, there’s a lot more to come, and so many more questions to ask. And remember, every single one you don’t answer, or talk back, and I carve you up just a little bit more.”

“You’ll regret every cut and every slice.” Crimson warned, scrunching his eyes as he tried to focus on keeping the pain at bay.

“Perhaps one day. But for now, I get to have my fun.” Gale grinned beneath his mask, then lifted up the glowing metal poker and pressed it against Crimson’s ribs with a horrid sizzling and popping sound.

Crimson screamed and arched his back, trying to twist away, anything to get away from his demented jailor.

He would not succeed.

**********************************

“That Architect gave you what you wanted, I trust?” Gaul asked, as Gale entered his office several hours later. Great conqueror or not, armies and their supply lines needed organization, and that meant paperwork, orders both written and spoken, and a personal touch to many matters, all of which confined the King to his study whenever other important matters left him the time to do so. He often ate in that room as well, reading over reports as he ripped his meal apart with his teeth and quenched his thirst with hard ales and other drinks, most of them stolen from southern countries he had raided. He was sitting in a small, out of the way, sparsely decorated and unimportant room off in a corner of the castle he now knew well, having viewed the official rooms of the Princess’s to be “garish and hideously bright”. He much preferred this darker, more secluded room to those travesties.

“He did, your majesty.” Gale’s response was expected, though the manic grin that Gaul could see in his servant’s eyes was perhaps just a tad too enthusiastic for his liking. “He informed me that he was taught by the ponies how to harness his magic.”

“And?”

Gale blinked, caught off guard by the request for more. “Sire?”

“Are you merely pretending to be dense, you cur?” Gaul snarled from behind his desk. “I told you to extract information on the newest Princess and her cohorts. Thanks to the Sun and Moon Princesses, written records of their exploits are difficult to come by and harder to access. Are you telling me you neglected to extract the most important information from the prisoner?”

“I would not dismiss the information about Architects as trivial, your maje-”

The staff that had been propped up behind the desk was pointed at Gale and discharging a bolt of lightning before the leader of the Hounds could blink, sending him smashing into the wall of Gaul’s chosen room in Canterlot Castle.

Gaul let up after a few moments, letting Gale wheeze out his apology from his fetal position on the floor. “I-I am sorry, my King! I-I did get some information from him, but he is tougher than I expected. All I got was names.”

“What names? Tell me, and I might be able to salvage your failure.”

So Gale told him every name that Crimson’s pain had torn from him, and he listed each and every one with that mad look slowly returning to his eyes as the pain receded. The King wrote down each and every name, and once Gale was finished, and had returned to his little hobbies, the King started to search. He and a small group of Jotun historians who had ridden up from the Empire in the security of the Citadel searched for those names, compiling details from any source they could find, obscure or not.

Gaul was no fool. In order to defeat an enemy, you had to understand them. And he would defeat them. He would relish the challenge.

*******************************

Crimson regained consciousness sometime in the early morning of…..he wasn’t sure how long it had been since Gale had started to torture him, but it had certainly felt like hours, if not days of time.

But for now, it seemed, the torturer was content to let him rest and heal from his wounds a little before starting again. Crimson didn’t remember much of it. He was thankful for that. He wasn’t sure he wanted to remember what he had been through.

But his cellmates were definitely not helping keep his spirits up. They had been tortured too, if the wounds were indicative of their role in this place, which Crimson was willing to bet they were.

He had tried talking to them, once he had recovered enough to drink some water and sit up straight….straight-ish. Some of the burns were making sitting upright too painful to try for now. His cellmates were quiet, mumbling their disinterest in talking, planning escape, or suicide, anything. They seemed vacant eyed and incoherent from their own pain, which left Crimson alone in the dark with no one to talk to.

His mind drifted to Twilight and their friends. He hoped they were alright, that he had managed to give them enough time to escape, otherwise there wasn’t much point in trying so hard to protect them.

Still, the questions that Gale had been asking suggested that perhaps they had gotten out, since the Jotuns weren’t celebrating, and were asking for information about them.

Sitting in that dark cell, Crimson found himself thinking of sitting out at night to stargaze with the girls, or running with the Friendship Guard during training. He thought of Aurora and Misty Dawn, the closest thing to a mother and Sister he had outside of home, and of True Shot, the closest he’d had to a father figure since his own father had been killed by a Sand-Worm. He thought of hanging out with Static, lazing around on their asses and talking about whatever came to mind. He thought of Twilight getting excited over a new discovery, or talking rapidly about things he had no clue about, then looking at him like he’d dribbled on his shirt when he failed to understand what she’d just said. Crimson found himself wanting to hear her voice again. To hear the Princess talk, to know she was okay.

The worst part was not knowing if she was okay.

Author's Note:

He's back! He's alive! He's getting tortured! ......wait...what was that last part?

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

9896396

9897089

[Starlight Nova]

How many stories will be in this series?

[VeganSpyro97]

10121904
At the moment, I'm planning on a quadrilogy, since this is technically book 3.

[VeganSpyro97]

10121903
....You honestly don't know what that's from?

Allow me to enlighten you.....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6S7Vc79DoE4 --------> This link is now dead.....