When the knights in the room saw Martina, they froze. She was crazy today. This was the most unhinged she’d been in the ten years since she got engaged to Sykes. The officers had confronted a number of crises like this one before, but she was so clearly deranged right now that you could hear their knees knocking together in terror.
“What were the guys in the fortress doing?” one of the officers muttered.
Martina smirked. “I was in a hurry to take off, but everyone tried to stop me, so...I used my bare fists to persuade about twenty of them. After that, they were all too happy to let me go. But it took time to convince them, and that delayed my arrival.”
The conference room was silent. Because of the way she looked right now, no one was fool enough to doubt her.
While the knights held their breath, Lord Abigail raised his hand for everyone to stop.
“Martina,” he said, “I know you’re concerned about the rumors about Sykes, but you have sworn to serve the knights. Leaving your post to come see him causes problems.”
Martina glared at the knight commander, tears in her eyes, and shrieked, “I know that, but now’s not the time! Maybe a dried-up old man like you won’t understand, but Sykes is cheating on me! I can’t afford to waste time defending the country!”
“Please, put the country first!” Lord Abigail begged.
“No! I became a knight to protect Sykes! When I swore my oath, I said ‘my beloved Sykes’ instead of ‘His Majesty the king’! This sword is for defending my future with Sykes! I don’t give a damn about some old fart I’ve never even talked to!”
“That’s the worst thing a knight can say!”
Ignoring all the dumbfounded old men, Martina approached Sykes.
“Sykes...what is this all about? Tell me, would you?”
“U-Um, er, uh...”
As Sykes continued to stammer, one of the captains silently signaled the others. The knights all moved as one and charged at Martina from behind.
Drawing her sword faster than the eye could see, Martina swung once to each side of her. In seconds, eight knights were lying on the ground, groaning in pain. She’d sent them flying. They were uninjured, but they were grasping their chests and thrashing around.
The officers gulped, unconsciously taking a step back.
“She swung at that speed, yet she still managed to strike them in the chest with the flat of her blade?!” one of the captains said in awe.
The men had approached her from behind, yet she’d struck multiple people simultaneously without so much as looking. It was almost miraculous.
“Oh, she’s only this impressive when Sykes is involved.”
“No wonder they call her the Loving Berserker!”
Martina was a promising youth, but her abilities only put her among the top five knight trainees. She should have been below Sykes, who could have competed for the top spot, but whenever there was a woman around Sykes, Martina would go on these inhuman rampages.
“I thought a brief stint on the frontier would cool her head.”
“Has distance made it worse? Before this, she wouldn’t have abandoned her duties to come back...”
The knights whispered among one another, glancing at Sykes. He could feel them silently pressuring him to “just marry her already.”
Sykes, paler than he’d ever been, ranted, “D-Don’t be ridiculous! You all act like this’s got nothing to do with you. Before you go pushing this off on me, you try marrying her yourselves!”
That was when it happened.
The knights’ faces all seemed to be saying, “Oops,” and Sykes realized that he’d just said something he really shouldn’t have. He turned around hesitantly, but before Martina even entered his line of sight, he could already see the whirling, wrathful aura surrounding her. He froze, too frightened to turn his head any further.
Unlike the flaming anger that threatened to scorch him, an ice-cold whisper entered his ear. “Hey, Sykes, what is it you don’t like about me? If you have something to say, why not say it to my face? We’re close, aren’t we? I want you to be honest with me...”
Sykes resolved himself and slowly addressed his pleading fiancée. “Martina, listen—”
“No! I don’t want to hear it!”
“But I haven’t even said anything yet?!”
Before Sykes could say anything else, he took a kick in the butt. He pitched forward, fell to the floor, and rolled onto his back. He tried to crawl away, but Martina stood towering over him, her sword pointed down at him.
“I heard a strange rumor, you know? Lately, you’ve been obsessed with this little sow called Margaret. So, Sykes, let’s get married. You wouldn’t marry into a family that raises pigs, would you?”
When he saw Martina’s eyes, even a dunce like him could tell that he was in serious, serious trouble. The rumors had driven her absolutely insane.
Smiling politely in an attempt to avoid agitating her, Sykes played along and said, “O-Of course not, Martina! I—”
“Don’t you lie to me! I’ve been hearing all over how you’re obsessed with some bitch in heat called Margaret!”
Martina straddled Sykes, grabbed him by the collar, and swung her other fist.
“Do. You. Have. Any. Idea. How. Much. I. Thought. About. You. While. I. Was. Away?!”
A wet thud punctuated every word.
“You’re. The. Only. One. For. Me! Don’t. Look. At. Other. Girls!”
Her pauses were getting shorter and shorter. The crowd, who could do nothing but watch, started to worry that Sykes might already have been dead.
“Only. Look. At. Me! Don’t. Make. Me. Hit. You. Like. This!”
As Martina went on and on, the crowd became less worried about whether Sykes was alive and more worried about whether his head was going to stay attached to his body.
“Do you understand?! This. May. Hurt. You. But. It. Hurts. My. Heart. Even. More!”
Martina gazed up to the ceiling and wailed in despair.
Hearing the sorrow in her screams, the crowd all thought, It’s definitely hurting Sykes more. On this, they were all in agreement.
With the same warped smile still on her face, Martina began feeling around her waist for the dagger hanging there.
“Hey, Sykes... The reason you keep betraying me is because there are other women in the world, right? I know I can’t kill every woman out there, so let’s go to heaven, where it’ll be just the two of us, okay? Hee hee, we’ll be together forever!”
While the knights argued about who should step in—no one wanted to be the first—Martina found her dagger.
“Stop! Don’t fight over me!”
Another woman’s voice resounded throughout the room. Every head swiveled to look at Margaret as she entered along with Elliott and his cronies.
The knights went even paler than before. She’s the last person we need here! they thought. She would just be extra fuel for the water heater that boiled for Sykes alone!
When Lord Abigail saw Margaret, he shouted, “Run, Miss Poisson! Martina’s in berserker mode! We can’t stop her!”
Margaret cocked her head. “Come again?!”
Rising from Sykes’s motionless form, Martina slowly stood up.
“Oh, I see. So you’re the one-woman zoo. A sow, a bitch, and a vixen, all in one.”
“One woman...what?! Who are you, lady?!”
As Margaret bravely talked back to Martina, the prince’s cronies trembled. This woman was clearly not normal; she was obviously insane. Rachel, for reference, was sane but not normal.
Martina’s eyes looked crazed. She picked up the sword that she’d cast aside earlier and smiled a crooked smile.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Sykes’s fiancée, Martina Evans.”
Margaret bowed her head, not sure what to make of this. “Uh... Charmed, I’m sure?”
Martina took a step forward. “Sykes has had to go through hell because of your feminine wiles...”
No, you’re the one who put him through hell, thought the knights, but they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Martina didn’t care what they thought. Her focus was entirely on Margaret.
With a broken smile, Martina declared, “I’ll have your head!”
“Look out, Margaret!”
Sensing what was coming, Elliott tackled Margaret to the ground. Martina’s sword narrowly passed over their heads. The dull point of her blade ripped out several strands of hair from Margaret’s pigtails, which had fallen slower than the rest of her.
“Ow, that hurts!” Margaret cried.
“Tch! I missed!”
Margaret grasped the situation just as Martina readied her sword to strike again. The color faded from Margaret’s face as she realized that Martina’s blade had almost cleaved her in two.
“D-Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s dangerous to swing those around?!” Margaret yelled.
“Of course. I’m swinging it to kill you.” Martina adjusted her grip on the sword. “There’s too many she-dogs out in the world, making eyes at Sykes. He and I are going to Heaven, where we’ll live alone together in bliss.”
“Huh? Uh, yeah?”
“So, to make sure you don’t follow us to the same Heaven, you filthy mongrel, I’m going to mince you up and scatter you in the pigsty.”
“Uh... Wait! Me?! Why?! Hold on?!”
“I won’t wait!”
Martina slowly closed in. Margaret slowly backed away.
“We can talk this over!” Margaret pleaded.
“No, we can’t!” Martina bellowed.
Margaret realized that Martina was totally nuts, and she turned and darted off like a hare.
Martina gave chase, but because she wasn’t watching her feet, she ended up tripping as she stepped on Elliott’s head.
“Bwah?!” Elliott yelped.
“Damn it!” Martina scrambled to her feet and gave the man who’d gotten in her way an extra kick.
“Gweh!”
In this ten-second delay, Margaret had gotten a fair distance away.
“You won’t escape!” Martina called. She wound back with her sword arm and began chasing after the redheaded girl with all her might.