The call of the realm came from Dia's mouth, and then darkness engulfed the world around the two, the tent, the scent of corpses, burnt wood and stone and dead dwarfs and people were shut down.
All that remained was the table, the statue and two people looking at each other, "My realm. Dark and silent, isn't truly breathtaking." Dia lifted her feet from the table, and set herself straight on the chair, like they were still in the tent from the lightning but weren't there was no feeling of human life.
"..." Mercy tapped his feet on the darkness below and it bounced back. He looked straight at the warlord after that, not sure how to react.
"Are you too a master of illusionary techniques yourself, my lady? To make the soldier free from my spells in such a short time, I believe you are a powerful illusion master yourself." Mercy tried to control the flow of conversation.
"Well, I am the greatest counter to illusions. A warlord is capable of multiple techniques and spells, one of my abilities is to destroy illusions spells. A very useless ability because of the few master illusion users, but today I have you on the other side." Dia smiled at him.
"Telling your abilities so openly. Don't you think it will be a bad practice in battle? I would rather avoid that."
"Don't try to play games with me, I didn't have a mother to teach me much courtesy, but I tell you things do not unplanned, they call me 'The wisdom' for a reason, Mercy Unsborn."
She leaned closer to Mercy, her eyes matching the colours with his, so close that Mercy could see her chest and neck through the laces, but it wasn't his body that interested him, it was the very thing on her neck.
"You're pregnant." He called it out loud when he saw the necklace on her neck hang out. The small print of a woman with long hair, holding a child, emitting some golden light. "Oh!" Dia turned back and put her necklace into her clothes.
"I can see why she was stressed and tired." Mercy thought to himself, seeing a warlord so sick and tired he wondered what his mother must have gone through.
"Well, it looks like the cat is out of the box. I was on leave, staying easy without keeping this entire place in my care for like 5 days and suddenly this incident happens and it ruins all my plans."
Mercy knew about her ability, some sort of clairvoyance to look into people's heads. If only till the entire capital, it must be extremely taxing to keep all abilities active for a long while.
"My brain is under constant healing due to using my illusion magic too much. She can't even stop it." He realised. Her brain wasn't normal, maybe she was the wisdom without her powers.
" I think you should rest, my lady. Giving birth and everything is a hard task. Just like you said, maybe you should take a break and let me go through for a while. I swear I have no bad intentions."
Dia smiled. "That. We will see just now. I will ask them some questions, and answer them. You are allowed to lie, but if the scale shifts towards my side 3 times, you will die. Is that understood?" She locked her hands together and sat her chin on it.
"Yes, understood." Mercy was ready.
"Then, let's start. Your first question, "How did you identify that the corpses you were bringing were specially belonging to the Uro?"
"Scars on their bodies, every Uro prisoner was a scar melted on their neck, the symbol of breaking stone." Mercy pointed towards the skin, near the nape. According to Mercy, the people near a refugee camp near the city had told him that, "Lying on the first answer, ought to leave a bad impact." The scale instead turned towards Dia's side.
"What is happening? This scale should reset when I kill myself and return to life. It worked the first time. Does it function in different sorts of things differently?" Mercy had doubts about the device, who it belonged to and how it judged people.
"Second question-"
"My lady, this-"
Shhh…
Dia tamely got her finger near her lip, "Don't argue with me or question the statute of justice. Be obedient, and answer, I gave you 3 lies for a reason, don't waste them."
"She gave me three lies? Can she manipulate that?"
"Second question, Why say to the guards at the gate that you were here to enjoy the feast? Where are you here for that?"
"You can say that… umm… More exact wording might be, I am looking for a lady in this feast. I heard a lot of them were arriving at the feast, and you know, one can find a woman of his dreams at a feast. I heard Lord Mathers found his wife in a feast of his crowning." The devices turned in Mercy's favour this time.
"I think you should've lied about this part. That Mathers story was in the papers not a while ago, too many men and women came to this place. I saw things I didn't want to see." Dia commented, shaking her head lightly thinking of what she saw.
"About the third question, are you looking for a specific type of woman?"
"Yes." The statue didn't shift in Mercy's favour, it turned towards Dia. "I am not surprised, multiple predators roam around the field when there are too many types of prey roaming together." Mercy found that wording a little wrong.
There was only one lie to go, he did not know if some power would kill him, or will Dia do the act. "In any case, I have to kill her, she knows my face too well." Mercy would have done it, but the thing in her belly had changed the situation.
"Fourth question, Are you a son of the warlord?"
"Yes." The scale leapt down on Mercy's side. Dia and Mercy smiled at each other, "Interesting, business from you Mercy Unsborn."
"Fifth question, Was your father from Uro or The Dynasty? Highborn or lowborn? And most importantly, is he a bastard son or a legitimate son? Answer each question separately."
"From Uro, and I think we were highborn by today's standards, but I don't know him very well." The statue shifted in his favour.
"A bastard son." The event repeated.
"Sixth question, Did your mother die during your birth?" She smiled and asked. She had Mercy trapped, where she wanted.
"I think she did die during my birth from the pain and all, but fortune was on my side and she lived through my childhood." Mercy eyed the statue once more, and the weights began to lift themselves up.
"That's the third time." The lie did not pass, the weight shifted towards Dia's side, and his fate was nearly sealed. He began to collect energy in his hands.
"Seventh Question, Are you a single child or have siblings? Also, do you have kids, nieces or nephews?"
"..." Mercy looked at Dia once again, then he understood her technique, to give another chance. Answer the next questions by truth, and your life will be spared.
"I am a single kid, not married at the moment. I wouldn't have come here to cuckold my wife, not a man like that." The weights shifted in his favour. Dia made a silly expression showing her tongue and winking her eyes.
"I have an adopted niece whose mother and father are somewhere I don't know, maybe killed by outlaws. She doesn't have any memories of her parents or past either way." The weights shifted once again.
"I see, the niece needs an aunt. Where is your niece staying?"
"In the Dynasty." The weights shifted towards Dia once again, cooperation wasn't an option, and the questions were getting more personal and weird for each one coming.
" Instead of questioning my intentions deeply, she is asking about my history. What does she wish to achieve?" His minds found it difficult to answer.
"Yes, I think it is time we end this. The little thing in my belly is causing him too much annoyance…You pass the test, you will be working for me from today."
"What about killing me on three lies?"
"Well, you see. I haven't explained it yet, but my realm allows non-aura-containing objects to be inverted in surprising ways. I was constantly shifting my positions on the side of the table, and since the statue is perfectly symmetric, you never knew that I could do that."
"You were tricking me to get more honest answers from me? Why not torture me or use your powers?"
"I am not a sadistic leech, I might look like evil. I only wear this dress because my mother also did so, same for the necklace."
"Considering your words, the necklace did not help, the way she wanted."
"Yes. You can walk away, bring your niece and come to my house. You have 10 days in total. Now, walk away."
"In this darkness… I don't think I have a way to go back to your realm…"
"Walk back the way you came from, everything in his world is at its very place. Light is just not falling on them, walk back and go enjoy your day, perhaps use your spells to help me maintain security. I am not on a break." Saying this, Dia passed Mercy a bag of gold coins.
Mercy caught it and walked back the exact way he came, touched the air and the rough cloth of the tent was still there, and there was a sense of confusion in his head. He moved his hands through the cloth and found the tent's exit without looking back and moved away."
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