"What, why?" Lana asked in surprise, the girl was in montage, she had just calmed down and somewhere in the back of her mind she hoped that Ramun would stand up for her.
"He told me that I can do whatever I want with you," Bondrewd made a small pause, watching the girl's reaction. The panic attack hit with renewed vigour, "why these two, I'm just unlucky, unfair, unfair." Shouted Lana to herself, feeling the cold breath of impending death.
"So what are we going to do with you?" Asked Bondrewd, he was interested in watching the reaction of his victim, he himself had long ago decided everything, and since she distracted him from the important things, let her at least a little fun to him.
"Well... forgive and let go." Lana said very quietly, as if she was making sure no one heard her.
"What? So you almost killed me with your axes, and now you want to let me go, because if I'd lost, you wouldn't have been so lenient." Dick pressed on Lana like a boa constrictor on a rabbit; he was frankly annoyed at the ridiculous situation, and the fact that the fight was over so soon only made it worse; the heated bandit had a lot of energy left, which he did not know where to put.
"Dick, stop," said Bondrewd and turned to Lana, a slight chill running down the girl's skin. Lana was no ordinary person, she was the champion of her god, and she was exposed to far greater palettes of the world than mere mortals.
She could see them poorly, but even with her talent it was obvious that she was facing a true monster from the lower circles of the underworld.
"I offer you this, even if you are weak, but in any case stronger than ordinary people, the essence of my offer: you swear allegiance to me and do my bidding, I keep you alive, what do you say to that." Lana nodded furiously, not doubting for a second, this arrangement was not the worst, at least she would keep her life, and at best she would regain her master's favour.
Bondrewd, in her opinion, was clearly the kind of person who was followed by trouble, so there would be a chance to take the initiative.
"Hey, nobody wants to ask me, I'm the injured party, in case you haven't noticed."
"Dick, what do you want?" Dick as a warrior and squire had a lot of advantages, but they came only with a mountain of disadvantages, one of which was a total and absolute inability to shut up in time.
"Compensation, of course." The battle vigour did not let go of the bald man, and he forgot who was standing in front of him and continued to act offended.
"Bitch, he's so fucking annoying," Bondrewd thought to himself.
"So why don't you kill him?" The voice of the system appeared as suddenly as always.
"It's none of your business why you showed up in the first place, get lost." "I just need a second chatterbox to make me happy."
"I'm just wondering if you're afraid to admit that you're attracted to this guy," the voice said, implying that he meant it as a tease, which was emphasised by his deliberately mocking tone.
"Who in their right mind would get rid of such a valuable asset, even though he sometimes annoys me, but from a practical point of view he is a good option: strong enough, experienced, and most importantly faithful."
"Is it just me, or are you making excuses for me?" continued to pester Bondrewd the system assistant.
"Who needs you, get out of my sight." If the Lord of Dawn could have hit his system assistant he would have done it long ago, as a hardened pragmatist and a "man" always in control of the situation he did not like having a strange intelligent entity in his head. "Or, where does it dwell there?"
"Okay, okay."
Meanwhile, very close by...
Bondrewd had been standing motionless and staring at the same point for five minutes, Lana was very much disturbed by this process, Dick in his turn just stood there looking at the clouds with boredom.
"Uncle, is Lord all right?" Lana overcame her fear and asked the question. Dick shifted his gaze to Lana. "She could have asked something easier, well, and that mnya her answer that I have no idea what cockroaches roam in the thoughts of my suzerain, no." The man pondered for a moment and hastened to give his answer.
"Don't pay attention, he has such a habit of thinking, or falling asleep on the move, I'm not aware of it myself..." seeing the scepticism in the girl's eyes Dick continued.
"Don't worry, he'll wake up soon." Soon came quite quickly, and the trio, having collected the horses, they were well trained and did not hurry to leave the rider to his fate. Dick pretty soon found them grazing in the nearest meadow.
"Good ones, I guess the Guardsmen will have to compensate them after all."
The trio set off on their original route, the estate at Brown Cliffs was half a day's ride away.
...
They got there without incident this time, much to Bondrewd's surprise. The manor itself was in the shadow of a large brown mountain, and was at first sight quite tolerable, but in comparison with the houses of the capital it did not stand up to any criticism.
"Dick, do you know why this place has no owner?"
"Only rumour has it that the former owner ran up debts and invested the money in some murky scheme and went bust. And when the time came to pay the bills, he died suddenly, I heard the creditors almost killed each other for this piece of land. Only none of them stayed."
"Hmm... why?" Bondrewd's face contorted into a slight smile, and the man became interested.
"They say it's haunted, they've done everything they can, they've summoned mages, witch hunters, priests and necromancers, all to no avail, so they started selling it to each other for a penny, and eventually it ended up in the possession of the royal family."
"Very interesting," "maybe we'll stay here longer." The trio was already approaching the gate, where a strange looking man was waiting for them. No there was nothing super special about his appearance, except this. "Interesting eyes," everyone present thought synchronously. One of the man's eyes was a standard beige colour, but the other was a bright yellow iris with a vertical black pupil.
"Greetings Lord, welcome."
"Man, it's none of my business, but can you tell me if you all have snake eyes, or was it just your mother who liked snakes?" Asked Dick, the bald man was calm, he gradually began to feel the advantages of his position.
"You're joking," sighed the watchman sullenly, "It's just that our former lord, before he died, went completely out of his mind, and blamed us for all his misfortunes, saying we were so ungrateful and intrigue him at every turn.
"And this beast cursed us, thank the gods, our lord was not only an idiot, but also a shitty sorcerer, nothing worked out for him, and this. - the man pointed to his yellow eye." A small reminder of his baseness, a good half of the village's population has it.
Bondrewd nodded silently, he was curious, he had read quite a lot about the general structure of this world. And curses were among them, in short, a sorcerer with the help of a special ritual can slightly get into the existing reality and change it.
But there was one problem, if not to count super expensive ingredients for at least some chance of success, the main problem of curses was their instability, most mages and sorcerers did not understand how to formulate its text, and even if they managed to accurately pick up the text of the curse. No one could guarantee that it would work as intended.
"All in all: expensive and unreliable." Bondrewd thought and accompanied by his subordinates proceeded to the manor. It took most of the rest of the day to look round. There were not many people in the manor, a watchman, a butler, a couple of maids and a steward. Bondrewd had time to talk to all of them, and each of them had about the same thing to say.
There was something devilish going on in the manor, especially at night: strange lights, doors and windows opening of their own accord, flying objects, and many other things.
Bondrewd sent Dick and Lana to the village for reconnaissance, and decided to talk to the manager again. In the end there was nothing new, but at least they discussed the workings. Nearly three hundred people lived on the land around them, and even better, there were two mines with brown coal and good iron. At the end of the conversation the Lord of Dawn decided to ask again about the oddities in the mansion, they had already had a good bit of time to get their collar on.
"What else can you tell me?" Imitating drunken talk, asked Bondrewd. The manager was barely conscious, and Bondrewd glanced round the table piled with empty bottles. "Well, maybe a little too much."
"My advice to you, lord, from the bottom of my heart," and then his face became as serious as possible." Get out of here, nothing will come out of this place anyway, a lot of people have tried, but none of them succeeded. You'll only waste your time.
"Hm, really," Bondrewd replied with even more interest and looked out of the window, the sun was already setting over the horizon.
"Soon the fun will begin."