The Setback

The Priest

Ancient Ritual Ground, Lesser Thicket Forest

WODELL

He had to join them via the astral plane.

Which he did.

When he arrived, he saw the others were not happy.

They couldn’t possibly know it was he who killed one of their own.

“You are most lucky you’re not actually you,” his least favorite spat the moment the priest took astral form.

They knew.

“Beware, my brother,” the priest warned.

“Beware?” the man asked, throwing both of his arms wide in fury. “Beware of you setting a Firenz asp on me? Do you think we were foolish enough not to have consumed the antidote every morn since we heard how Rupert expired?”

Less clever brothers should have been chosen.

“The news is everywhere,” another of the men joined in. “We must cease. We shouldn’t even be here. If anyone deduced what we’ve deduced,” he indicted the two men at his side with a hand, “investigators from four realms will be set upon us and the Go’Doan won’t keep their noses out of it. With but a few tomes reviewed, at the very least, this sacred site will be breached. You know that best of all, being a bloody Go’Doan yourself.”

“You can’t possibly imagine my brothers in the Go’Doan haven’t been poring over those tomes already and yet, we have not been discovered,” the priest noted.

“That was before the Beast roared in conjunction with three people in two different realms losing their lives in the same but uncommon way,” the second man returned.

“No one will put it together,” the priest assured.

“The night of the mightiest quake where a roar could be heard across Triton, a life was taken at the king’s palace in Firenze, and within hours, a member of Airen’s landed gentry dies the same way, an unusual way, especially considering a Firenz asp, a creature that doesn’t leave the sand, was the result of all the slayings,” his least favorite summed things up snidely. “You don’t think anyone will put that together?”

“Why did you kill the woman at the palace?” the third man asked.

The priest couldn’t tell them he’d made a mistake. He’d meant to kill the betrothed of Prince True. He’d meant to put an end to the prophecy before it began.

Learning that he’d failed, after he’d seen to the death of his Rupert and Rupert’s slut, was equally bad news that sorry day some weeks before. A day that should have been joyous.

“It was not me,” he lied.