“The prisoners will step forward, now!”
Brittany’s heart wrenched as she choked back a scream from the awful mounting dread consuming her as she was forced one awful step at a time to approach that hideous thing of twisted nightmare fuel that her brutal captors were dragging her and her entire family across the mud-slicked courtyard still ripe with the stench of ruptured bowels and death toward.
A guillotine.
Just like the ones once used in the French Revolution.
As if her mocking tormentors had known.
Known her family’s well hidden heritage that had become something of a family joke.
Remnants of Queen Marie’s court. Distant cousins, in fact. Distant enough to evade capture, at least long enough for them to flee to the New World.
How had it come to this?
Two years ago, she had been overwhelmed with finals, trying to decide her future.
A year later and it seemed that her future had been decided for her by the strangest twist of fate.
Family gossip and only half-believed bedtime stories had turned into what had first seemed a miracle when Brittany had woken up not to find herself a classless nothing but the spiritual daughter of Royalty. Somehow with blood even purer than both her biological parents and before she knew it, she had been wearing the Crown of Boston.
Allowed to feel like a faerie tale princess for a precious handful of days before her foes had shown her just how ruthless those striving for power truly were, and just how precarious was the crown she had dared to rest upon her skull.
And now, after an incredibly harrowing year, she was being dragged to a guillotine for the pleasure of the smirking bastard who was even now smirking at her. Savoring the way that she stumbled in the muck, made clumsy with fear to the chortles and catcalls of countless thousands of jackal-faced abominations and overgrown swine.
And now she and her entire family was about to be executed for the twisted amusement of her enemy’s troops.
***
Perception Check made! You spot multiple traps, One Hyperion Core & 1 Dimentional Rift waiting for you!
“Fucking hell, Eric. They’re really going all out, this time!”
“I know. If I hadn’t dealt with Song’s card and it’s overpowered stricture, I wouldn’t have even spotted it.”
“Think it has a flaw?”
“Maybe. Or we’re going to trigger it like utter fools.”
“So, we fly over first. Think we have a chance of doing this without everyone except you dying?”
“I’m hoping so. But if we delay too long...”
“I know, Eric. If we delay more than a split-second, your sister’s crush loses her head.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
***
Lord Hencely savored the looks of stunned disbelief and crushing despair upon the faces of those that had dared to defy him. Dared to lift their heads as if they were anything other than peasant muck that didn’t even deserve to grovel at his exalted feet. His eyes twinkled with plesure when the terrified toddler was kicked to the muddy ground when he dared to race toward his panicked mother.
He rubbed his perfectly manicured hands, cuff links flashing with a warm golden glow. “Soon, the Counsel will make its decree, and all will be as it should. But first… a territory to secure. A duchy to destroy, and a fool to entice.’
He turned to glare at the shadows behind him.
Those shadows flinched into the outline of a woman, her husky voice echoing through the air. “I told you what he did. We’d be fools to—”
“Silence! Are you blind? Look at what awaits us! I don’t simply have rifled cannons that will tear through even the strongest Terran Contender! I also have snipers. Elite Bronze-Tier snipers eager for fresh game to play with!”
“I still think you’re making a mistake,” Shadow whispered, before crying out in pain when Lord Hencely revealed a silvery blue contract, shimmering with the light of her soul.
“Once more, you’re daring to speak your mind as if your analytical skills were worth anything at all.”
“Master, please!”
He sneered at her panic. “Shall I set this ablaze, then? Free you from the burdens of thinking above your station for all time?”
“NO, please! I’m begging you!”
The sneering Hencely casually flipped the scroll over the fire place, earning a despairing wail from the crumpling shadow… before he snatched it out of the air and tucked it upon his person once more.
“You wanted immortality, and I gave it to you.”
She fell to her knees. “Please, master. Please!”
His smile was cold. “No Earthly force can harm you while you embrace Shadow. I promised you that much when I tore free your soul, didn’t I?”
“Your eminence, that boy… somehow… I think he could!”
“Nonsense!” He roared, eyes flashing. “Only I can hurt you. Only I can redeem you!” His voice turned cold. “You have your orders, now carry them out.”
“Yes, my liege,” Living shadow whispered before the faintest ripples faded to nothing and darkness was merely the absence of light once more.
The cold-eyed man smiled, rubbing his hands with glee before pulling out and admiring a fresh glowing scroll.
“Soon, Eric Silver, you and all your delicious potency shall be mine to savor. One bloody sip at a time.”
He then sheathed a blade radiating shockingly potent death magic, and spent long moments admiring a round shield radiating the essence of Durability before strapping it onto his forearm, patting the pommel of his blade before heading out of his pavilion.
“And now to make the trap as enticing as possible.”
***
The air rang with screams, desperate pleas, and laughter. Hencely left his compound with a jaunty spring to his step. Brittany’s sister paled horror at seeing him approach them, her panicked shrieks tearing at a sobbing Brittany’s heart.
“Silence, wretch!’ Snarled the cold-eyed soldier dragging Amy to the cutting block. “Or you’ll be the first to lose her head!”
“Please, you don’t have to do this! We surrendered all our treasures, just like you demanded! You’ve already defeated us!” Brittany’s mother sobbed.
Mocking guffaws and laughter burned Brittany’s ears. She no longer bothered holding back her own tears as her sisters screams and her mother’s desperate pleading tore at her soul.
And then Lord Hencely was right in front of her, radiating such deadly power. Power he had put to such hideous effect, for some reason choosing only this day to finally act, slipping past all his men, before striking with shocking and utterly inhuman speed and ferocity, utterly shattering what had been a year-long stalemate that Brittany had thought… had dared to hope… might actually assure their survival.
Only to have that desperate hope torn away like the fool’s dream it was.
The smirking bastard whose perverted glee and twisted nature couldn’t be hidden, no matter how fine the silk and lace covering his frame, no matter how brightly gold glittered from ears and nose and cuff links and fingers with their blackened nails all sharpened to vicious points.
And his teeth, flashing from features radiating the plump excesses of the Rococo era were black and foul as his twisted soul. A mark of his own gluttonous and corrupted nature.
The mark of a Contender.
Somehow, she just knew it to be true.
Not that it did her a damned lick of good, just seconds away from being decapitated..
But not before being mocked by the mastermind behind their downfall.
“How does it feel to know that you, only a single night from achieving clemency as the Counsel sues for peace, whereby your title would have been made permanent, are now about to lose it all?” He flashed a smile wicked and filled with hate, even as his eyes glittered with false sympathy, his breath the charnel house of the damned.
“You’re about to die, you stupid brainless bitch. You and your entire family.”
She whimpered in pointless terror, delighting her tormentor to no end.
Hencely tilted his head in macabre curiosity as her sister’s desperate screams continued to ring through the plaza before their palace, to the delight of countless thousands of enemy troops.
“Would you like to know what’s going to happen once your heads have been cleaved from the spurting stumps of your necks?”
She gasped at the vile words of the obvious sadist before her. To taunt and torment her, even now, in her final awful moments.
A fiend, in every sense of the word.
He grabbed her neck and twisted her tear-stained face to observe the awful wicker basket that would soon carry a grizzly collection of heads, only to find a prize inside that was far more horrific than even she could have imagined.
Her mind recoiled at the sheer unmitigated horror of it all, an unexpected Arcane Engineering subclass to her primary that her MIT candidacy had somehow opened up for her leading her down the most horrific of mental mazes… and somehow she knew.
And by the cold laughter echoing in her ear, the bastard Hencely knew she knew as well.
“That’s right. Arcane jelly infused with the essence of multiple spirit peaches. The infusion is crude, brutal, and will assure that you will live far longer than the fifteen seconds of agony that most decapitated heads are submitted to.” His lips curled in a hideous smile. “Your torment will last for hours. And I can tell by the horrified look in your half blinded eyes that you understand why.”
She desperately wanted to hold back her whimper, but failed to.
And the sharp burst of agony when he tore off her left pinky made silence impossible.
“I want to hear you say it!” He snarled.
“You have a Hyperion Core!”
He did. And as her tiara was still on her head, no doubt to make her slaughter all the more memorable, she was still in tune with her nation. Her people.
And the four invisible Bronze-Tier arcanists somehow stabilizing the vile contraption before her.
“You’re not doing this just for political theater… you’re using our deaths to create a bomb!” She sobbed, daring to capitalize on the singular mistake her foe had made this night, in an evening that had otherwise gone precisely as the monster had predicted it would, just hours ago from the clearing before the battlements, when Brittany had been so foolish as to actually think she still had a chance.
Back when she should have fled for all she was worth.
No matter how futile such an act would have been, in the end.
Hencely’s grin widened. “That’s right, you worthless slag. With one final masterful stroke, your pathetic life will at least serve your masters in death. And how fitting it will be when the very love you thought to hide becomes the tool we use to end the Sylvan Alliance, once and for all!”
This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Heart pounding, Brittany forced herself to meet the gaze of the monster who could kill her in the blink of an eye.
Would kill her… and lock her skull in screaming torment. For endless hours. Until the worst outcome imaginable that could occur did occur.
“You’re going to use our souls to anchor that core!” She chocked back a scream at the mad glee she saw in her tormentor’s eyes.
Because he clearly didn’t care how loud she spoke. The orcs and gnolls might have cheered, had a terrified Brittany not already known that she and her tormentor were secured by a powerful silencing ward. A ward so like the one she and Elonia had once shared. A ward that was utterly impervious to arcane arts.
And that was all.
She wanted to do nothing more than curse and scream and spit in this monster’s face… but that would assure her end like nothing else. And as much as it horrified her, as much as her heart clenched with sublime terror, she NEEDED to say it aloud.
“Our souls will be locked to our still living skulls, trapped in torment, thanks to that life-giving peach nectar saturating that vile thing. You’re using twisted cultivation arts and a hyperion core to make the ultimate bomb before presenting it to Elonia Silver. Mocking her with the most horrific of gifts. Capitalizing on the sight of our heads, locked in torment, covered in burns, to horrify her one final time before triggering her death once the Hyperion Core explodes. Your plan isn’t simply to grab a pair of thrones, it’s to take out all of Arcadia. You fucking Monster! You won’t away with this!”
The air roared with the deranged man’s laughter. “Oh, you understand precisely! How glorious! But you see, I think we will get away with this. Scot-free, as the expression goes, when all the evidence of hackneyed bomb construction points firmly to your lover’s court! Who, after all, owns a priceless grove of these very spirit peaches that should NEVER have been put into the care of inferior races! Whose clan is implicated in NUMEROUS tragic deaths involving those horrific cores!”
He squeezed her cheeks, revealing his blackened teeth once more with his sneer. “Rest assured that we will have ALL the evidence we need to reveal the true culprits of the vilest of crimes responsible for so many millions of honorable lives lost, explaining how that foul bitch took out so many far more worthy players. And that will be all the justification we’ll need to enact a royally decreed purge against the entire Sylvan Faction!”
He cackled like the madman he was. “That’s right! Those fools who DARED to strike at the Augustus clan will be forced to pay the ultimate price for taking the lives of personages far more noble than they, far more worthy than they, when they are little more than FILTH!”
Only then did he freeze, nostrils flaring as his pulsating tongue dared to savor a single drop of Brittany’s sparkling blood.
Hencely’s growing chortle turned to flaring nostrils and furious wrath. “You would dare!?”
“What are you talking about? You’re the psychopathic monster arranging for the purging of an entire race!—” She collapsed with his brutal backhand, choking back a gurgling scream with her shattered jaw.
“You’re using Blood Magic! I can TASTE the foulness on you! The council declared that SUCH IS FORBIDDEN!” The monster roared, eyes bulging as if only then did he finally understood the significance of what had just happened. “You DARE to play me for a fool, bitch? You’re in open communication with your whore of a lover!”
The monster’s lips curled with hate as he pounded his fist into her side, stunning her with pain as he snarled into her eyes, so eager to convey his contempt for the horrified woman on the other side.
“You’re dead, Elonia Silver! Doomed to fall! You and your entire clan! And there’s nothing you can do about it! No one who can save you! Your death, and the utter destruction of the Sylvan tribe, has been foreordained!”
Then, before Brittany could even blink, he struck her in the ribs a second time with such ferocity that she crumpled in a ball, her interface flaring with organ ruptures, shattered bones, and critical injuries.
“Put her head on the block. Our target shall arrive shortly.”
Brittany wanted to protest, to scream defiance… she wanted simply to breathe as her heart pounded desperately, lungs spasming so badly she couldn’t even wheeze as her crumpled cheek was slammed against rough-hewn wood, the sharp scent of fresh cut maple one she knew she’d never forget as the cold-eyed mercenary acting as her executioner slammed down a second wood slat trapping her head as the air rang with her mother’s shrieks, her little brother’s wails, and her sister’s screams.
And even in that awful moment of absolute dismay, she was forced to catch sight of her tormentor one final time as he cricked her neck, jerking it against splintered wood. It’s own torment, and the least of what she’d soon suffer.
Then she saw Hencely’s too knowing smile.
The monster chortled and spat in her face. “Did you hear me, bitch? It’s ALL going according to PLAN!”
He had the gall to wink. “Blood magic? Really? You didn’t see the BLOOD PENTAGRAM you’re kneeling upon, even now?”
He chortled with mad laughter and a horrified Brittany realized that even her final desperate dying gesture to warn her friend, she had ended up playing right into her foe’s hands. For even that desperate final gambit that had been accounted for by a Contender so many steps ahead that she and her family had been doomed from the very start.
“That’s right. You’re finally getting it, bitch! I could have claimed Boston at any time. AT ANY TIME! But why settle for a single city when I can claim AN ENTIRE KINGDOM?”
And that was when she realized that her connection to Elonia had already been severed.
Because...
The air filled with her foe’s laughter.
“Because you’re pathetic and predictable, bitch. And because of course I will master any art forbidden to filth such as you!”
“Extinguere.”
A single word, washing over them all.
Sending shivers down her spine that somehow froze the horror and the despairing screams Brittany felt welling up in her throat as Hencely jerked up with a snarl, fists clenched.
“Nazen!”
“It is nothing. Prepare the ritual.”
Brittany whimpered at the words said so coldly by the owner of the voice that now she couldn’t see at all from where she kneeled, knees screaming with discomfort that was absolutely nothing compared to the terror rekindling within her soul.
“It’s ready.”
“Good. The girl?”
“In position.”
The air filled with quiet laughter. “Excellent. Finally, we will put an end to this realm of freaks and abominations. Has the message been sent?”
Hencely nodded. “Sent right to her lover’s ear. I could taste it.”
“Excellent. No reason to delay, then. Their deaths will drive Elonia Silver to rashness. Her brothers will be compelled to serve their queen.”
Hencely’s eyes flashed with desperate hunger. “You know my price.”
“And you may have him. We’re claiming Ashland, the peach grove, and the Towers of Yor, however.”
“Of course!” A chortling Hencely spun around, mocking a panicked Brittany with a final bow. “And with that, I bid you farewell. But don’t feel too sad. You’ll be reunited with your entire family in no time at all!”
He flashed her a final smile, blackened teeth revealed one final time as she felt the tension in the guillotine abruptly ease, wood vibrating, choking back what would be her final—
The air cracked with a thrum as she was jerked forward, System messages flaring with fresh injury notifications as her face slammed into muddy filth.
She choked back a terrified scream, bracing herself for a flood of horrific burning pain, as if every inch of her body was on fire while she simultaneously choked endlessly to death… gasping and sobbing into the mud before it struck her dazed mind that she had, in fact gasped.
Her hands were still bound.
She was still trapped in the guillotine neck lock, the wood smearing her face into the mud, all vision cut off, and she had to fight just to gasp, twisting herself to ease some of the weight off her neck… but somehow… she was alive?
The guillotine had shattered?
Only then did she truly register the roaring cacophony she thought had just been her doomed brain preparing herself for the end but was, in fact, the entire collection of hostile forces gathered to witness her family’s execution.
And they did not sound happy, she vaguely noted as the air rang with the sharp thrum off odd explosions once more.
“He’s here. He’s here, right now! Where?” Roared the one known as Nazen.
“Bring the brats over here! We’ll cut off their heads the old fashioned way!” Hencely commanded as wood shattered and a dazed Brittany now found herself slumped over amongst a pile of wood splinters.
Her entire body was throbbing as she wheezed painfully for breath.
But she was alive. Her neck ached terribly but she was free of that horrid guillotine and her head was still attached to her body and she was so dazed and terrified she could only stare as the band of mercenaries covered in exotic alloyed armor with the cold-eyed countenances of seasoned killers stopped dragging her family toward the now shattered guillotine she slumped against. And they were glaring at her family as coldly as a butcher would pigs before slaughter as they unsheathed wickedly long knives giving off an eerie hum.
Her sister Rachel’s eyes widened. She screamed like a terrified animal, not even using words as she fought off the monster who was now yanking her straight for a clean slice of her throat before the air cracked once more and the man blinked once, eyes lifting to take in the spurting crater that had just become the top of his forehead before he collapsed in a boneless heap.
Rachel stumbled back, her wild, terrified eyes locking with Brittany’s own as the remaining mercenaries holding the rest of her family hostage traded looks before another man’s face exploded.
“Enemy fire!” Roared one.
“Use the hostages for—” The man holding Brittany’s wild-eyed father stumbled when his left leg exploded, twirling around and somehow on top of Brittany’s father, and she was terrified he’d crush her poor dad when the mercenary’s head erupted like the jar full of kimchi she had once knocked over in the fridge.
“Quarter, quarter!” Screamed the asshole holding her baby brother, knife to his throat. “Back off or I’ll kill him, I swear I—MERCY!”
The rough-shaven mercenary screamed with a blond haired youth that Brittany instantly recognized appeared out of absolutely nowhere. Features as airbrushed and perfect as the final shoot for a magazine cover that he and Elonia had once modeled for.
Even in that split second of horrified wonder, Brittany wasn’t sure if she was seeing things in her terror, yet his features were absolutely angelic as he clasped the wrist of the mercenary about to gut her brother.
Before casually ripping the man’s arm off with the same effortless twist as she might flip a sauce-stained piece of spaghetti at her sister.
The mercenary shrieked as Eric carefully claimed Brittany’s howling brother before striking the screaming merc with a casual backhand. A blow that didn’t elicit any grunt or groan or pleas for mercy from the mercenary, because his head had exploded in a brilliant flash of crimson mist like he had been hit by a high powered artillery round, the body itself cartwheeling through the air, spraying the stunned assortment of gnolls and orcs with blood and gore as the body crashed amongst the artillerests, cannons, and snipers who hadn’t done a damned thing.
Because her savior had been moving so damned fast, a dazed Brittany realized, understanding that it was only her connection to this land, STILL her land, that allowed her to follow what could only be Eric Silver’s movements as if she were a spectator, even if her mind alone could follow.
He was, in fact, moving so fast that her baby brother, with no class at all, should have been jellified by the G-forces generated.
Yet nothing of the sort happened.
“Here, Bunz. Bring him up to the ship with the others?”
“You got it, boss!”
Brittany’s eyes widened, realizing that her entire family was now surrounded by mercenaries radiating fearsome potency through eyes of darkness and brilliant motes of flickering green flame.
Her heart clenched.
Instantly understanding.
These weren’t men.
They were revenants. The living dead.
And they had just claimed her entire family!
“Heading up on the Bunbun express!” The talking rabbit who was also undead… or was she alive? Brittany couldn’t quite tell and knew she was just distracting herself from the shocking sight of her entire family now flying toward…
She blinked, momentarily speechless as she caught sight of the flying galleons lazily circling the palace.
Galleons sporting hundreds of cannons.
Ships of the line? In the air?
Then she swallowed a lump in her throat, daring to feel a flare of hope. Because the undead revenants surrounding her family weren’t praying upon them.
They were protecting them, as Hencely and the one known as Nazim roared their fury below.
“He’s here! He’s taking our captives!”
Hencely laughed as Nazim shouted orders.
“Yes! Exactly where we want him! Fire at will, fools! Fire at will, and bring the traitor to his knees!”
Hencely’s lips curled in a feral grin as the pentagram that Brittany was still touching abruptly came alive.
She crumpled with an agonized wheeze as all the strength left her limbs.
“Eric Silver, I presume?” Hencely sneered as a dazed Brittany, well versed in arcana and Blood Magic with her primary Witch class… because of course she was… could sense no less than a dozen traps and curses tainted with foul magic and sacrifice flaring to brilliant life inside the pentagram.
Far more powerful than they had any right to be.
She choked back a scream as her body refused to let her own life force be drained.
Yet she knew damned well that if she weren’t the queen of this land… she’d already be dead.
The vision of heady fantasy and forbidden dreams cocked a bemused brow at the orchestrator of this horrific farce off a trial.
“Could be that’s me,” Eric said with a wide, shit-eating grin. “And you would be the asshole in charge of this farce?”
Hencely’s smile twisted in a feral snarl, revealing the blackened teeth of a blackened soul. “Oh yes, I am. And you, Eric Silver, will now be forced to pay for ALL your crimes against my clan!”
Eric had the gall to smirk.
Even with countless scores of artillery now being pointed his way in a field rapidly clearing of nonessentials… even with Brittany sensing no less than a dozen Bronze tier snipers painting a bead on him…
Even with shadowy death preparing to strike.
Brittany was desperate to warn her hero. Desperate to speak!
Yet she could barely move, so hyper-fast was the rate at which those two monsters spoke, at which they existed, that Brittany could do little more than watch, even as she desperately reclaimed her strength, her sovereignty, desperate to break this horrific crimson ward with her own carefully honed arts.
“Your clan, is it? So, who exactly are you, then?”
His opponent’s eyes flared. “Lord Hencely. Hencely Augustus! The earth-born son who will avenge his father. The mastermind who led you into the trap that will spell your doom!” The monster snarled, unsheathing a blade that turned the afternoon sun pitch dark and cold, so vile were the magics tied to that sword.
“The Contender that led you into a trap for which you have no counter for, fool!”
And that was when Brittany sensed it.
A hideous card of twisted fate in the center of the crimson web that was the pentagram that made its curses inevitable. Uncounterable. The only reason why Brittany wasn’t already dead was because she wasn’t the target. Even if she had still been doomed, the instant her foot had touched the crimson lines of the pentagram.
Her eyes widened in panic. Her entire family had been dragged into this death trap. A trap now sprung, to claim any soul that dared to touch—Her eyes lit up with relief. That was right. Here entire family was safely on the flying ships! But if her hero perished… they were all still dead.
“Run. Run! That’s no ordinary pentagram! A card of twisted fate is in play! This entire area is trapped!” Brittany wanted to scream, but settled instead to think it. To think it as loudly as she could.
Much to her surprise, the strikingly handsome boy actually turned his head and winked one beautiful blue eye.
With a corona of living flame.
Instead of fleeing, Eric laughed. “So, you’re a Contender then? Awesome. I don’t suppose you’ve bothered putting any points into Spiritual Energy?”
