seymoure | "Heart of the Crown" Chapter 104

Chapter 104

Impossible

Cela had transported them as far as any of her spells had the power to complete.

As they landed on the deck of the Poisoned Slug, they all tried to speak at once.

“We’ve got to go back,” Slip said as he cradled the child.

“Give me a few more of those magic arrows and we could fight any army,” said Hawk.

“I would join you,” the Count said. “It is a matter of honor.”

“What is going on?” asked Robez.

“What can I do to help?” Smiga inquired.

Sabre, the Black Corsair, ran out on deck. “The beauteous Cela and her friends have returned.”

Before another word could be said, everyone on the ship’s deck, including the Pirate, were gone.

They had returned to the hillside from which Cela had moved them.

The men took up fighting stances, but Cela gasped.

“Oh no!” she said.

She saw the bloody lump of flesh that had once been the man she knew as Sandor.

Behind his body was a man made entirely of shiny black stone. The man raised both of his hands over his head.

Sandor levitated in the air.

He was immediately cocooned in a pocket of green light.

Hawk had an arrow notched, knowing he would hit the man between his stone eyes as soon as he knew what was going on.

Slip turned and put his body between the enemy and the baby.

Robez was gesturing a powerful spell to take him home.

The rest waited to understand what was about to happen.

“I need some advisors. I plan to change my country into what it should have been before I lost my belief in the worthiness of humanity,” the voice came into all their heads.

“I have done great wrong, and I need help to find my way back,” he continued.

The Count thought, “I understand what you are feeling. I have only recently seen the power that doing what is right carries. I have made the commitment to myself to be one who does that.”

“I,” came Smiga’s thoughts, “have always found resistance among my people to just such ideas. It has been hard, but I have retained my wish to live such a life.”

“If the two of you will join me, we can make this land something closer to what it should be,” The Onyx Man said aloud.

Before anyone could answer the ball of light came to rest on the grass.

A second later the light winked out, and there, unhurt and awake, stood Sandor.

“The rest of you can return to whatever journey brought you here,” the stone ruler said. “I will help you get to where you are going.”

Cela looked around and saw that Robez was already gone. She knew she would see him again, and it would have to be then that all things could be settled.

The group who had come so far gathered.

“I must return to my crew . . .” Sabre said, but before he could finish the statement, he vanished.

“And now, the rest, good-bye and thank you,” said The Onyx Man, who suddenly seemed to be losing his stone edifice and appeared just a bit more human.

With that the countryside was gone.