"Alright, I am going to untie you, but if you don’t behave, I will let the Dragonkin and his apprentice have you." The older mage instructed.

The prisoner nodded rapidly, and Wiz moved to untie him.

The mage sat still, not moving even after he was untied.

"You might as well start speaking because if we let the Duke of Wistover start making up the questions, this is not going to end well for you. He’s got a bit of a grudge against the entire Dagos nation." Amie suggested.

The mage nodded eagerly as he realized the situation that he was in. "I will tell you anything that you want. But I’m just an acolyte, I was in my second year when the war started."

"So, you were a student at the Skiple Royal Academy?" Dominic asked.

The prisoner nodded. "All of us who were studying under the Elders were drafted for the battle. Not that we knew that at first. In the start, they told us that it was all a training exercise, summoning armies of monsters to help train the Dagos Army.

That was why they were all summoned to rural areas, they told us.

But it always felt wrong. There was something that was just off about it all, and we never saw any Dagos troops at all. Instead, Elders started taking the monsters east into Cygnia.

It was all wrong, but what could we do?

Then, things started to get weird. Our Academy gear was deactivated, as if we had been expelled. A few weeks after that, we got word that some of the others had been killed in action, and that we needed to send reinforcements to Cygnia.

Just matter of fact, as if we should have known all along."

Dominic frowned. "And where did you get the fuel for the summoning rituals?"

The prisoner went quiet for a few seconds, clearly trying not to think about the answer.

"The first ones were demihumans captured by the Dagos army. Traitors, war criminals and fugitives. But then, they started sending us civilians who were clearly human, and even soldiers in Cygnia army uniforms. The last few were a travelling group who happened across our camp." He whispered.

"Is that a normal practice in Skiple?" Dominic asked.

The mage shook his head. "The prisoners, yes. The Royal Academy teaches blood magic as an elective. It’s considered a dark art, but it’s powerful, so a lot of people take it. But when they started bringing people who weren’t criminals, it was already too late for us.

Our auras are so corrupt that we could never be respectable mages again."

He pulled an amulet out of his robes, and revealed a skill core that was glowing with black energy.

If another mage saw that before he had a chance to explain himself, there was a good chance that he would be executed on sight as an evil practitioner. The level of evil that you had to commit to end up with a core that black was immense.

Even with all the people he had killed, Dominic’s trade skill core hadn’t been corrupted by his energy. Even Amie’s core was only a blood soaked red, not stained with the most irredeemable black of a truly evil being.

But on the other hand, there was power in that sort of evil. Human sacrifice led to rapid power growth, and allowed the use of magic well beyond one’s own level.

"You are right. Even if we let you go right this instant, only your own allies from the Skiple Academy would accept you. It was either a brave or an insanely stupid move to go along with that sort of plan to sacrifice innocents for summoning rituals." Dominic agreed.

The prisoner sighed. "It’s not like we had a choice. The last one who objected ended up in the ritual circle."

The adventurers nodded. That was a definite downside of being in an evil sect. You didn’t have any choice but to continue being a member. Nobody else would have you, and they would kill you if you tried to leave or expose them.

"How many others are there?" Dominic asked, continuing the interrogation.

"I don’t know. There were three hundred students who left the Academy at the start, but I heard that more of them came later after the Headmaster was killed.

But they don’t tell us junior acolytes where anyone is. I know that we’re the only ones in the area, and we’re in charge of building up this army.

But that’s all I know."

"So, all these monsters were summoned by your group?" Dominic asked.

The prisoner shook his head. "No, most of them were herded here by the ones that we summoned at the start, before things got ugly. We’ve only added a few hundred a day for the last however long we’ve been here.

The spell kind of messes with your sense of time, since you’re in a trance most of the time."

A few hundred a day for three months? That was a lot of monsters, but far from being the majority of the force. Which meant that they had found tens of thousands of monsters somewhere.

"Where were you when you started? How far did you herd the monster horde before stopping here?" Dominic demanded.

The prisoner shrugged. "It was winter in the desert of Axbridge when we started. Just starting winter. We made it all the way here after that, summoning more every day, and grabbing every monster we could find."

It was almost winter there now.

Which meant that this whole plan had been in action for at least a year. With the confusion of the prisoner, and the chance that he was omitting details, it might be two years or more that they had been building up hordes of monsters for the attack of Cygnia.

Now, they could start getting down to the details. The important part of the interrogation that would matter to the armies when they finally arrived.

"You said that you gathered all the monsters you came across. What did you collect? I need details." Dominic insisted.

The mage looked pale, then nodded his head. "Alright, I will tell you everything I know."