123: Captain Flavna
“Ghah!” Steve gasped as he fell on all fours against the hard, cold floor. He was no longer in the forest, but he was still naked. The spell successfully moved him away from danger. Steve was in a large, but poorly illuminated room. The only light came through several narrow windows in the thick exterior wall.
The last thing Steve recalled was the deformed half-naked whore charging at him, casting another spell on him. A few seconds later, the light engulfed him. But the teleporting spell was not his. And even if Steve did possess the magic abilities to master such a spell, he would not have been able to do anything under the debilitating effects of the spell that was cast on him by the deformed whore.
Steve looked up and saw his savior—sitting at a long but simple wooden table, enjoying her dinner. Even with the standard armor and shoulder pads that all Purple Capes wore, her small figure and narrow shoulders were obvious. Her black hair was done in a ponytail that reached just to her nape, except for the three thick bangs of black hair that fell across her thin face, nearly reaching the tip of her nose. With plenty of eyeliner, dark eyeshadow, and black lipstick the girl looked like some rebellious teenager. And yet, this skinny nineteen-year-old had the mark of a captain.
The captain had a large plate in front of her. And on that plate was unmistakeably a well-cooked, humanoid lower leg, that the captain was eating without utensils.
“C-captain Flavna!” Steve kneeled, keeping his head low.
“You had twelve people to bring me a couple of foxkin,” the girl spoke. “How did you end up needing saving?”
“S-she was more powerful than we anticipated,” Steve tried to explain his failure. “She killed three of my men in an instant!”
“My men, not yours,” captain Flavna corrected Steve. “But you lost eight of my men, not three. Who killed the other five?”
“We ran into a… A strange group,” Steve murmured and looked away.
“Is that right? ‘A strange group’?” Flavna asked as she looked at Steve with utter disgust.
Flavna dropped the leg that she ate and disappeared from Steve’s sight. The next moment she reappeared in front of Steve – as if she had teleported – and front kicked Steve across his face, sending him flying up. She then threw a spinning kick into Steve’s stomach that popped like a gunshot and sent Steve flying back against the wall, smashing into the stone with a greater force than with which he incapacitated Tabitha and Olivia in his fight.
Steve fell face-down, naked on the cold floor, with a giant bruise on his back. His entire body trembled as he tried to raise his body even a couple of inches off the floor, but he started coughing up blood before he could even raise his head to look at Flavna.
“You lost eight men!” Flavna screamed. “You failed your mission! You brought shame to the uniform you wore! And you can’t even do a proper report!?”
“You shouldn’t scream like that,” a man spoke up from the other side of the room. He stood between the windows, obscured by the created shadows. Much taller than captain Flavna, he was not currently wearing his standard-issue armor. He was clearly muscular, but not over-buff muscle-bound like Steve. Rather, he looked strong and agile. With spiky dark blue hair that flowed back, except for a couple of short strands that fell across his dark blue eyes. Like Flavna, he also had a captain’s mark on his chest. Gamesh, the only man of equal ranking to Flavna among Belmot’s entire forces. He was utterly calm and composed, with his arms crossed, and simply added, “It makes your face wrinkly. And it also makes it seem like you’re not in control.”
“C-control?” Flavna asked and brushed away her three long bangs that fell across her eyes. “This little piece of shit was two seconds away from being on his knees, naked, face in the mud, ass to the sky, getting rammed like a common whore! He let some random group of nobodies and a fucking fox make an utter fool of him! Of us!”
Flavna swung her thin leg again across Steve’s jaw, sending blood and several teeth flying through the air.
“All our reputation that I’ve built over the years! All our power!” Flavna shouted at Steve, unable to control her rage as she stomped on Steve’s head and pressed it against the stone floor. “It’s bad enough that you’re a disgrace! You made the Purple Capes look like a joke!”
“They were weaklings anyway,” the blue-haired captain shrugged.
“Not you too!” Flavna shouted, seemingly exasperated as she took her leg off Steve’s head. She then took a few steps toward Gamesh and said, “Our power comes from our reputation. Our reputation depends on the strength, effectiveness, and ruthlessness of my soldiers. The King is getting increasingly difficult to predict. The murder princess just added another charred body to my list of things to take care of! Meanwhile, Belmot is even more useless than usual!”
“Lord,” Gamesh mumbled as he visibly shook his head and looked to the side, reminding Flavna of the skipped honorific.
“He hasn’t been deserving of that title for over half a decade,” Flavna said with disdain. “But if the other nobles start getting ideas…”
“Aren’t you angry just because he didn’t bring the fox girl for you to cook?” Gamesh asked.
“I deserve something for all I’m dealing with!” Flavna shouted in frustration at Gamesh, but then looked away and took deep breaths to calm down. She then walked over to Steve and with a swift kick to his kidney flipped him over.
Flavna then stepped on Steve’s chest, leaned against her knee, grinding her heel into his chest, making his ribs creak, and said, “Start from the beginning. Don’t leave any details out.”
“Or do,” Gamesh said and revealed a menacing grin. “I’ve been looking for new test subjects.”