Enchantyon: Welcome Home
Epilogue

Lincoln Grimshaw

134 Electrum Lane

Aureate, The Gilded State

The night had finally started to wind down a bit for Grimshaw. The month of September had only begun recently, and the city was abuzz with the news of Gausswinder’s sudden and tumultuous return to the High Council; using the patents she filed of the stolen Dwarven schematics they were able to decipher, Evangeline Gausswinder was not only able to refill her own personal coffers, but she was also able to hire the forces necessary to overthrow and replace the leadership of her House. From there, she made it plain to the rest of the High Council that it was in their best interest to reinstate her as a member of the august body. Now in possession of the power she needed, Gausswinder began the slow work of integrating the dwarven inventions she had stolen from the elf into the daily lives of the city’s inhabitants wherever possible.

The night had been full of revelry, thanks to the newly reinstated councillor’s massive celebration party. Upon returning from the after-party, Grimshaw went straight to the attic to continue working with his captive.

The idiot imp’s name was Jimmy—or perhaps it was Johnny. It didn’t really matter—and he had been strapped to an ornate armchair made of iron with restraints so tight that he couldn’t possibly move. Grimshaw had gone to great lengths to ensure that Jimmy wouldn’t be heard, taping his mouth shut and soundproofing the room almost completely.

However, Grimshaw knew that the odds of the man actually being able to scream at all were low. This was because the imp had been made into what someone could perfectly describe as a human vegetable; strapped and bolted to the gangster’s head was a helmet of sorts with a glass dome on top. The man’s brain could be seen throbbing through the glass as metal pins stuck out of it, visibly passing small bolts of electricity between them inside the helmet. The man’s face was slack, a mixture of mucus and blood oozing from his nose, and one of his eyes was black and bruised. Needless to say, the man did not willingly end up on this chair—the machine that Grimshaw commissioned and called, The Grey Harvester.

That was the imp’s own fault, though—that was the price of stupidly giving the elf enough hints to suspect Grimshaw—and even worse, the Councillor, as being involved in the heist.

Through wires that were connected from the back of the arcane chair, it fed the information of what the imp had seen and learned in Imafenduwell Hall from his brain to a nearby printer. The printed papers of which Grimshaw was just beginning to read through.

A pair of footsteps came from behind him, and Grimshaw turned to see Detective Staff Sergeant Vayla Grimshaw entering the attic.

“Hello.” The detective greeted, looking past Grimshaw and at the imp in the machine. “How’s it coming along with him?”

“It’s going fine. I take it the after-party is finally done?”

The detective nodded. She strode up beside him and gently took from his hand the printed off papers he had been reading. “Couldn’t you have just have had him write this all down for you? I don’t want to have to clean up a big mess, Lincoln.”

“This is punishment for him stupidly hinting to the elf that I was involved in the heist at Imafenduwell Hall. And I’ll clean up the mess. I don’t want you to worry about that.”

“Alright.” The detective placed the papers down on the desk they were next to and then looked up at him with a soft look on her face. “Are you coming to bed soon, then?”

“Eventually.”

“Well, don’t stay up too late. I, for one, am heading to bed—I’m exhausted.”

“Evangeline wear you out completely, I take it?”

Vayla groaned. “Honestly, I don’t know where she gets all of that energy from. If it were up to her, we’d still be dancing right now…goodnight. If I’m not awake by the time you come down, I’ll see you in the morning. Oh, and don’t forget to feed those dogs of yours before you come.”

“Wait,” Grimshaw took off his wolf mask and handed her a sealed envelope. “When you get a chance tomorrow, I need you to hand this off to one of the others and have them send it off to His Excellency, ASAP. He’ll want to know about the girl being a likely terraformer.”

“Alright. As you wish, my love.”

And with that, Grimshaw kissed his wife goodnight, promised her he wouldn’t be long, and watched as she walked down the stairs and made her way off to their bedroom on the lower floor.

As the last dregs of valuable information were forcibly drained from his captive’s mind, Grimshaw thought hard about the road ahead; much had gone differently than he had originally planned when he had first been assigned to Aureate. The fact that the elf was now all too aware of the lengths he would go in order to achieve his goals would definitely prove troublesome in the future. However, in the end, it hardly mattered. He wouldn’t let her stop him. He had come too far to be stopped by one elf—even if that elf was the fabled Golden Bear’s favoured Grand Marshal of old.

Finally satisfied with the amount of information that he had seized, Grimshaw unplugged the life support systems of the chair, and watched as the lights of the chair and the remaining light in the restrained and stupefied man’s eyes finally went out. Then he carried out the man’s body over his back and down the stairs to begin disposing of it before heading to bed.

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The End.

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