Her Heart, His obsession

6. The Commanders (part 1)

Dante's POV

After dinner i told Athena to go to bed and assured her i will wake her up at dawn to pack her bags. she needed to get her strength for the journey tomorrow. Teleporting could weaken the strongest of warlocks. I couldn't afford that with her.

I sat at her dining table and spread some of her leaves she used for conjuring around her dining room and sat back in one of the sofas. I always used my stones but the leaves will do for now that i wasn't in my castle. I then closed my eyes and summoned my top 10 commanders. It felt good to be strong again.

10 cloaked figures appeared. As their shocked eyes fell on me, they instantly knelt on the floor on one knee and hung their heads. I was glad they remembered to show respect after my three month absence. I never took kindly to disrespect and disobedience. even eye contact sometimes meant as a challenge depending on what mood i was in. slowly I stood up and started circling my Commanders; Xavier, Sean, Edward, Edwin, Alexander, Nathan, Benjamin , Lucia, Tanya and Flora. As I was walking around them I could sense Edwin shaking. He was Edward's younger brother who had only joined us 3 months ago so I did not expect him to be very confident in my presence. Xavier had the strongest stance. he was my second in command after all. Sean also seemed quite confident. As my third in command, he was taught well by Xavier I guess. I looked admiringly at my magnificent trackers Lucia, Tanya and Flora. they were cousins and their blood ties helped strengthen them in missions. they never failed to bring me the traitors who were on the run or any warlock i felt like adding to my collection. Benjamin and Nathan had done well to receive prisoners the girls brought us. I loved their dedication to making the lives of traitors in my underground dungeons a living hell. They were feared in all Arkansas as the ruthless punishers. They supervised my guards and oversaw punishment. So they were on my good side. And the magic science experts, Edwin and Edward as humans may call the geeks. They were the investigators who oversaw knowledge extractions from stones and helped Alexander "the head trainer" of the guards. Alexander was most peculiar of my commanders. The fact that he was related to Alexandra from that damn "healer coven" I couldn't get my hands on didn't help his case. I used to interrogate him regularly about the whereabouts of his sister but he was clueless about her location. I may catch him one day lying to me but for now I trusted him. After all he was both the best trainer of the fighters and also a skilled healer.

Now it was time to put them out of their misery. I could see how they were strongly affected by my presence as i could also hear the heart beats of all 10 of them fastening. They must have known I wasn't gonna let anything go. I was going to seek revenge but not on my commanders. any one who even assisted my captors in the smallest way was going to pay and I could feel loyalty blood pumping in their veins so they were immune from my wrath.

Time to start my meeting. So I sat down on the sofa again and went into commanding mode "you may raise your heads and stand up" I don't have time for too much formalities tonight. Lets jump to the point."

I waved my hands and created an image of a map of our current territories on the wall. My men were looking at the map intently as I was explaining; "as you can see this is the current map" I waved my hand again and a second map appeared with numbers on different territories.

I continued explaining; "you may be thinking what the numbers are. Well they show the order we are attacking and our number one destination is the Northern Territory and Quebec".

I saw Alexander coming forward kneeling on the floor. He wanted permission to speak. He hardly ever spoke. "Alexander, permission to interrupt me is granted. It better be good reason".

Alexander swallowed but held his ground and spoke with his calculated voice "master, forgive us but in your absence we attacked Quebec and all the residents involved in your capture are now dead."