Cass had, at the knight’s request, at least let him attempt negotiation- but there was something far more satisfying about having her hand at her enemy’s throats. The guards reacted late, and a slight squeeze had the mages calling out.

“Stop! Don’t come near!” The cool voice was now tinged with panic instead of anger, to Cass’s amusement.

“Smart man,” Cass said with a laugh. “That will make things easier I think. My apologies for the late introduction, but I am the Hand of Lord Sarius Hall- you can call me Cass, but what should I call you?”

The hoods had fallen and revealed the cool voiced man to be a brown haired man in his late twenties and a man in his forties with black hair speckled grey.

“I am Aurius and this is Bassil,” the younger man- Aurius- spoke, but Cass noted he had not revealed a family name or House. “And I suppose you feel clever with this treachery?”

“There is not much reason for pride when tricking fools- fools who should know better than to try using magic in this situation!” Cass noticed Aurius’s attempt to form magic and she briefly cast her magic claws to draw a thin line of blood across his throat. “Order them to butcher the manticores and then disarm, and we can discuss whether or not I am going to let you leave and in how many pieces you are in if and when you do.”

“And if I decide not to?”

Cass did not bother to reply with words and just ripped out Bassil’s throat while maintaining eye contact with Aurius. The men shouted and drew their swords, but the mage was screaming now.

“Stop! Stop!” Aurius’s eyes were wide as he twitched beneath Cass’s hand. “Do as she says!”

“See, I knew you were a smart man.” Cass laughed as she went from a crouch to practically sitting on his chest and wiped her bloody hand on his shirt. “You had me worried for a bit there when you asked a really stupid question, but I suppose I should make an allowance for your surprise.”

“You have no idea what you have done, do you?” The mage asked through gritted teeth as the manticores were killed. “Or what kind of mess you have stepped into.”

“Oh no, I know everything. It is not my fault you were foolish enough to think you weren’t seen through.” Cass said blithely, “honestly though, this was way easier than what they told me. I really expected you two to be more of a challenge.”

The man blinked in stunned surprise, and then his eyes narrowed.

“You lie, you never would have killed Lord Bassil if you knew who he represented. I admit your savagery was shocking and unexpected, even for the lower classes, but there was a reason he was calm even then.”

“Didn’t do him a lot of good, did it?” Cass laughed, “Sure, sure- I was lying, but that only matters if we leave witnesses.”

When the manticores had been butchered, the men had surrendered and threw their weapons away as they were ordered by Aurius. However, Rammusson and his forces followed the orders Cass had given them before and killed the unarmed men without mercy.

“Here is how this is going to go down,” Cass said conversationally as she patted the man on the cheek with mock affection. “You are going to tell me everything you know and explain why I should spare you. If you make a good case, you will accompany to Imperial Center where I will lodge a formal complaint against your family before agents of the Imperial Court about your attacks in this territory and failure to identify yourself. Your friend there will be a… Tragic… Accident that resulted from your failure to identify yourself.”

“On the other hand,” she gripped his chin and made sure he saw her eyes as she spoke. “If you don’t convince me, you get to meet up with your friend in the afterlife and if you refuse to talk you and I will become much better acquainted with each other. And I assure you, you do not want that.”

“It is done, my Lady.” Rammusson had a grim look on his face as he approached, a far cry from the expression he had when this whole expedition had started.

“Wonderful,” Cass replied, and then ordered him to have a section watch over Aurius. “I want steel on his neck at all times. If he so much as twitches wrong, end him.”

It was, Cass reflected, a shame that she had no magesbane. As unpleasant as the effects were she would be able to feel far more safe with a mage prisoner if she had some and her own personal distaste was not enough for her to ignore the convenience. Dragging him back to Tyine would likely be a difficult and dangerous experience.

“So Aurius,” Cass got up and dusted herself off, throwing away the ratty shawl she had worn to hide her collar. “Perhaps a more detailed introduction is in order- for your friend too, since he can’t talk anymore.”

“You’re a slave!?” Aurius snarled in disgust when he saw the collar, “And you dare speak to me this way?”

“Maybe not so smart…” Cass grumbled to herself and kicked the man in the face, knocking the man who had just sat up back flat on the ground.

“It doesn’t really matter who I am,” Cass said calmly, despite her sudden burst of violence. “What matters is that I can and will kill you- painfully- unless you can give me a good reason not to. And, before you get any not-so-clever ideas again, please know that I would rather enjoy torturing you to death. Your face is handsome in annoying way and I think it would look better with some blood and pain.”

One day, Cass mused, she would have to spend some time unraveling her personality a bit. It was not like she seeked out people to torture- not to torture for tortures sake, anyway- but she did deeply enjoy it. Absolute power over someone was intoxicating. For now though, she would have him placed under guard while she took stock of the situation.

Cass entered the cave and found that it split not far in. The passage to the right had an incredibly disgusting musky smell and was probably the manticore's den. Cass sent a section of soldiers to investigate that side, reflecting that it was nice to be in charge as she entered the more clean and better smelling tunnel.

It was a bit surprising that the mage called Aurius had live here given his attitude. There was almost no furniture, two chairs and cot and a single desk. The non-mages had bedrolls and small sacks for their personal effects, and there wasn't much else.

“With a personality like that he had to either really want to be here for some reason or someone forced him…” Cass muttered to herself and headed to the desk, which seemed like the best place to start.

On the desk was a metal collar, and when she extended her mana into it she discovered it was a half finished enchanted object. It was similar- very similar- to a slave collar, but there were differences. Unfortunately, Cass was unable to really understand the difference. Not many mages made a study of slave collars, though Lord Hall was one of those few. Cass's attempt to remove the collars on the dead manticores had failed horribly- the mere attempt had broken the collars beyond repair or analysis, despite her intention- which meant this might be the only remaining collar.

Cass took the collar to show to her master later, but more immediately useful was the sheaf of paper and small journal that was also on the table. The papers seemed to be letters, but they were written in cipher. At least, Cass presumed they were. Otherwise they were just sets of unintelligible gibberish and she did not feel that was likely.

The journal was not, unfortunately, a personal one. Instead it was notes on the control method for the manticores. In particular, it was clear that the two mages here were attempting to reverse engineer the method- which meant they had not developed it. Cass flipped through it, noting that the method for producing the collars had been given to them from an unnamed third group.

So what were they trying to reverse engineer? It was a liquid of some kind that was fed to the manticore’s as juveniles. Without it, the collars placed on their tails could only restrain the beast and not compel them to action- a distinction that seemed quite strange to Cassandra.

While slave collars did have an effect subconscious actions- if ordered to raise their hand, a person with a collar will often begin moving before they consider the order- this was an easy impulse to ignore. The main way the collar enforced control was through pain upon disobedience, and the way these notes made it sound, the beasts could and would ignore all orders besides “stop” before they were fed this liquid. It was also quite interesting that it required two collars to control the beasts- Cass never would have thought to put more than one on anything.

Cass was still flipping through the journal as she walked back outside to her new, and heavily guarded, charge.

“It is an interesting read, that is for sure.” Cass’s affectation was as much to annoy the hapless Aurius. “It certainly gives us a lot to talk about. I could ask about this mystery liquid you mention, for details about the modifications made to the collars- or even about who you are and who sent you here- but I think I am most interested in why you are here.”

The “why” might be mixed in to the “who” in the answer, but at its core she wanted to know the reason they had all been here. Ignoring for a moment the efforts to understand how the manticores were controlled, these mages had been sent here by someone else to do something. They were not out here for a vacation, after all.

“Do you have anything to say about this, Aurius?” Cass asked, snapping the journal shut.

“Why should I tell you anything?” The man said, his tone unintentionally humorous because Cass’s last kick seemed to have broken his nose. Blood was running down his face and off his chin as he continued with his distorted voice, “there isn’t a whole lot in it for me, after all.”

This was, Cass guessed, an invitation to offer him freedom in exchange for his information. Cass, on the other hand, had different ideas.

“Or- and this is just a thought- you could tell the violently crazy girl what she wants to know before she does something violently crazy. Again.” Cass tapped the journal against her chin thoughtfully, “At the very least, an intelligent move would be to explain why I should entertain a discussion or trade of any kind instead of brutally torturing you and sifting the information from your screams.”

“I am the son of Duke Hassanor!” Aurius spat, though he may have done that just to get rid of the blood in his mouth. The words though had certainly given pause to the soldiers around him.

“Well now, that certainly is interesting.” Cass whistled, surprised that such a high ranked mage would be here. “And, sadly for you, not something that matters to me.”

Both Aurius, and the soldiers guarding him, looked at Cass in stunned disbelief when she said that. In a way, it was understandable. Even in an empire as gigantic as Haj, there were only eight Dukes- Duke Hassanor being the southernmost Duke and the only one without territory bordering Tyine.

“See, I don’t really believe that the son of a Duke would be living with beasts in a hidden forest cave.” Cass shook her head with a sigh, “So I have to ask if you can prove that?”

“The Archives-” Aurius began before he was cut off by Cass.

“Are in Tyine.” She talked sharply and over him, “and I will need something better than your word to spend the effort to bring you there and have you tested.”

This time Cass was met by nothing but silence and a glare, and so she continued on.

“And so we come back to my first question- implied question, anyway- which was, why are you here?”

Aurius returned her question with one of his own, that being to ask what assurance he had that she wouldn’t kill him when she got what she wanted.

“What happened to that smart man who panicked when he saw how far I was willing to go?” Cass sighed, looking to Rammusson who very obviously wanted no part in this now. Probably since the mage had claimed to be a Duke’s son, which Cass actually believed despite what she had said to him. “What part of my ripping out a man’s throat made me seem reasonable? Or my orders to have your surrendered men slaughtered, or maybe I didn’t kick you hard enough? I can fix that last one, at least.”

She had been effectively ranting to her subordinates, so her last comment did not quite register for the people listening before she moved and her foot met Aurius face again. He hit the ground again and Cass walked up and put her foot on his face and lightly ground his cheek into the ground.

“Let me explain Aurius,” Cass pushed him into the dirt a little harder. “I am not really worried about your claim for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious is that anyone can claim something like that, and unless you can prove it, I am not about to believe it. But second, if you were telling the truth, I would have to wonder… If daddy cares about you all that much, what the hell are you doing out here?”

A Duke’s son, an official one anyway, would have plenty of resources. If Aurius is the son of Duke Hassanor, Cass highly doubted he had his father’s favor or he would not be living in a cave.

“Third, for that matter, if you are Duke Hassanor’s son and he does care about you, so what? You noticed my collar, right?” Cass stretched her neck and tapped her collar with a finger. “I can be compelled to tell the truth and the truth is that Baron Rence requested my help to stop the magical beasts attacking his territory. The truth is we hunted those magical beasts down and found them controlled by masked soldiers and hooded mages who had led that attack and confronted us with violence when we announced ourselves as the representatives of the Barony’s Lord and offered a peaceful resolution. The truth is you cannot prove who you are without unreasonable demands.”

She shifted to using her heel as she continued to grind him down, pure amusement coursing through her. There was something that was even nicer about doing this with the possibility he was the Duke’s son. Cass found it far more satisfying than she would have tormenting a peasant, perhaps far more than she should have. It reminded her of how she felt in Beergmutar, though she did have the comfort of knowing there was a limit to how far her Master would let her leash go. But right now…

“So the truth is, right now, that you are at my mercy and I do not have a lot of that.” It was a pity that when the soldiers had bound the mage they had tied his hands behind his back. Cass would have broken one of Aurius fingers if she could reach them. Which is it was why she felt pity for Aurius when she moved her foot to his shoulder and increased the pressure until it broke.

She smiled as he screamed out in pain and said, “So let us start again, shall we? Why are you here?”

“Shit, Shit!” Aurius swore and twisted under Cass’s foot, which was still pinning him to the ground my his broken shoulder. “I’ll tell you, you crazy bitch! You will regret this!”

“None of that sounded like an answer to me, my dear Aurius.” Cass sighed and stomped down a little lower on his arm, breaking another bone and listening to him scream again. “As an aside, not really related to anything, I have always wondered why people threaten to break every bone in someone’s body. Why not break every bone in a body, multiple times? I imagine you can get at least two per, maybe more on some the larger ones.”

“We were here because the Rebellion needed us here,” the man’s voice was hoarse, but it was clear. “Does that answer your question you madwoman?”

“It does, but now I’m not feeling you are quite respectful enough for your position.” Another broken bone, and another scream. “It took a long time to get here, and I don’t think I want to go through that again, so how about you and I become better acquainted first?”

Cass had the soldiers drag Aurius back into the cave and ordered him tied to a chair. Cass, meanwhile, was creating a makeshift gag out of one of the sheets. She apologised to Aurius as she stuffed in his mouth.

“Sorry about this, it’s just that I don’t want to have to pull every answer out of you and it will get really loud in here if I don’t shut you up first.” Cass said as he tried to speak through it. “So I might go a bit further than I need to, but better safe than sorry, right?”

Cass’s smile was joyful and cruel and terrible. It was unfortunate for Aurius that she was still working through her issues regarding those feelings.