🐉 🐉 🐉
A white mist hung over the area.
“It wasn’t particularly beautiful, but I suppose there was no real need to make their deaths appealing.”
The flows of water were frozen, still crossed where they exploded. It was still, streams of biting, frozen water burst out like the spines of a curled-up hedgehog.
Inside the huge mass of water were the knights’ corpses…smashed by the water, torn apart, pierced, both their armor and their limbs torn to pieces and trapped inside.
The blood they shed mixed with the water as it froze, creating a pattern of red stripes.
As they were the guards of the dracovitae, you could assume they were quite powerful themselves. They could take one or two shots from a spell without dying, but even people as powerful as them were squashed like ants below foot.
Julian lost interest in the dead encased within the ice.
Having seen the might of the attack, he turned on his heel. “All right. Let’s go back to Martgarz. I can’t stand how much this tiny country reeks of poverty. I fear it may rub off on me.”
“Urgh, ah, aaaaah…” Monica covered her tear-stained face, trembling as she sank to the floor and soiled herself. She was reeling from the terror and shock of having killed people with her own hands.
“Stand,” ordered Julian, and she couldn’t resist. She stood.
That was the power of the magic item around her neck, a Collar of Slavery. This evil item had powerful manipulative abilities that forced the wearer to obey all commands given by the master. While Monica did have a high compatibility with the dracovitae, she was otherwise a powerless, little girl. She couldn’t fight against the collar’s spell.
There were several other nobles at tonight’s banquet who could wield the dracovitae, other than Monica. If targeting Monica had been too difficult this time, Julian would have several other candidates to choose from. It was practically a wish come true for him that the court brought together so many. He had only targeted Monica before with the giant golem (which was blocked by Lushera) because she was a convenient target he’d set his sights on in advance. But, now that his strategy had changed to procuring his dracovitae user at the banquet, there was no absolute need to use Monica.
And yet he targeted her again, and that was because he determined that would have a higher chance of succeeding, since he could do that while the other attack occurred. The other reason was that she was a weak target, one who would have no possible chance of fighting against the Collar of Slavery.
Monica also had one other use that went beyond having her wield the dracovitae, which would be good for the future.
The sound of several people approaching broke the silence of the altar now that the water was all frozen.
“The dracovitae?!”
“Hmph, have they caught up with us?” said Julian, as the royal knights who finally heard the noise down here pushed into the altar room. The guards in the altar room hadn’t guessed what Julian was up to and got there before him, they were just at their normal stations. Julian was one step ahead of the royal guard.
“K-Kill them! Take back the dracovitae!” shouted the commander.
“You’re in my way. Monica, destroy everything. Blow them away along with the palace,” ordered Julian.
“No!” Monica pointed the staff at the knights as they ran to attack. “Aah, aaaaaaaah!”
The ground shuddered from an impact as if something was awakening, and the knights stumbled.
Cracks ran through the stone of the floor. Those cracks turned to fissures, and from those fissures burst water, like a fountain, several fountains. The floor buckled, growing from below, and then it burst.
“Gaaaah!”
That explosion of water swept everything away. The knights’ screams were swallowed up on the other side of the falling rubble.
Moonlight streamed in.
Julian and the golem carrying Monica were encased in a protective wall of foamy water, repelling the hail of shattered wood and stone and pushing them upward to the surface from the collapsing underground altar.
The explosion cut into the castle’s buildings, and the three of them passed through the gaping hole up into the night sky.
“What the?!” someone shouted from the ground.
Julian looked on with contempt, seeing two people of bright crimson. “Hm, I thought you went back north… Did you turn back? How are you? I, for one, am doing incredibly well.”
“A collar…?” Lushera looked at Monica who the golem held around the waist, then glared at Julian with an expression of burning rage. “A Collar of Slavery?! You’d use something like that to steal the dracovitae?! Do you have any idea what you’re doing?! You’re going to ruin the world!”
“Then stop me. Or you could try to return the favor on Martgarz.”
“What?!”
Laughter bubbled from the pit of Julian’s stomach as he watched her desperately howling. Even someone as powerful as her was so foolish.
“You can’t,” he said. “Weak, weak, weak! You have no intelligence, no resolve! Fools like you build only a tepid world! Some rule idly, some subjugate ignorantly! How pathetic! Those without the resolve to change the world will accomplish nothing! You’ll do nothing but blame others for your failings…”
The moon shone.
The half-destroyed castle, the fleeing nobles, the soldiers looking up from the castle walls, the knights, gathered to fight but unable to do anything, the draconic mother and daughter.
“Leave no trace behind as you die!” he shouted. “Monica!”
“L-Lushera, run!” Monica cried.
Overflowing water enveloped it all, crushing it.