“He is no boy!” roared Rhoshamandes. “And he’s going to tell me what he knows, and he’s going to give me something to take to them so that they will have to recognize me and what they’ve done to me! He’s going to talk or I will chop him to pieces!”

The creature stopped in his tracks. It was as if his own words had given him an idea. Oh, brilliant! Derek held his breath. Had the monster taken those words from Derek’s own thoughts? Chop him to pieces, it had been the very thing Derek dreamed of doing to these monsters. Rhoshamandes turned and marched out of the dungeon chamber leaving the others puzzled.

Allesandra took this moment to plead with Derek. “Derek, poor Derek, give him the intelligence he demands,” she said earnestly. Her demeanor was almost regal. “Why do you hold out? To what purpose? All he asks is for your knowledge so that he might take it to the Prince, bargain with the Prince for a place at the table!” She stood over Derek reproving him as if he were a child. “This Garekyn. You know him. We all saw your reaction to this news. You know the man in the picture. Now he is loose and a threat to our kind. And you can explain to us what he is, and what you are. What do you have to gain by keeping this back?”

Rhoshamandes had returned and in his hands he held a large ax with a long thick wooden handle.

Derek was terrified. It was the kind of ax Derek had seen in hotels and other public buildings, usually residing in a glass case against a wall, an ax to be used in case of fire, an ax that could chop through plaster and wood with its mighty head and its cunning sharp edge.

“Yea gods, you can’t be serious!” said Arion. “Rhosh, put the thing away, I beg you.” He was the smallest of the evil tribe, and looked so wholly human as he stood there, in his simple leather coat and jeans. “Rhosh, I cannot be a party to such cruelty!”

“And who are you to question Rhoshamandes?” asked the cold unmoving Roland. “And to think I sheltered you, gave you comfort.”

“Don’t fight with one another,” said Allesandra. She turned to Derek again.

“Derek, give us the simple answers to the obvious questions. If you have listened to Benjamin’s broadcasts, you know we are many, and you know what power we have. Now confide in us, and give us all that you know so that we might present it to the Prince.”

“Stay out of this,” said the king of demons to all of them, as he held his treasured ax.