The room was quiet, dark, chilling. The walls were all stark black and featured no decorations. A long wooden table sat in the centre of the room, with 13 seats. Six seats lined the sides, and one seat was at the head of the table. All of the chairs were wooden and painted jet black.

I sat near the head of the table, next to Amy, who of course sat at the head. Her cold black eyes stare out at the rest of us. The boy who sat next to me, Charlie, was only 19 years old and he was trembling all over. His brown eyes were afraid and alert, and he was refusing to look Amy in the eye.

‘Ahh,’ she said in a sweet voice, ‘isn’t today so wonderful?’

Nobody answered. As one of Amy’s most trusted accomplices, many people who sat at the table expected me to respond, but I knew better.

‘Hm? Is nobody going to answer?’ She rubbed her hand along my arm. ‘Not even you, Robert?’

A shiver ran down my spine. ‘Ma’am, after the failed attempt to attack the City last night, I must say this day cannot be called ‘wonderful’.’

Amy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Now, now, why could nobody else give me that answer. Charlie? I hear you didn’t kill a single one of their soldiers, and you dare call yourself one of us.’

Amy’s hand lashed out, and her wand glowed faintly for less than half a second. A deep gash appeared on Charlie’s left cheek, and blood immediately began to run down his face. He knew better than to even wince. I could see the determination in his eyes to not move, to not speak.

‘As for the rest of you, I hear only six of their soldiers were killed, and five of them were killed by Robert. Correct?’

Everyone around the table nodded solemnly.

‘My Lady,’ Patrick piped up from the far end of the table, ‘excuse my lack of manners, but Steven himself was there on the field, and he is an experienced fighter.’

‘Steven?!’ Amy shrieked, yet she was not panicked, more so angry. ‘You know that he is an easy target! He can take on one of you, but if you work together, even a single pair of you numskulls, you can kill him!’

‘He is our first target,’ I said sternly. ‘We kill him and then the boy.’

‘If I hear that one of you has tried and failed to kill the boy, I will not be pleased,’ Amy whispered. My eyes widened and my jaw tightened. Her voice was almost as chilling as it was that on that night ten years ago.

I remembered her whispering to Catherine, taunting her, telling her that her son would not survive, even after she had been killed. I remembered her doing the same to Edward, calling him useless as he swung his fists at her.

‘But, My Lady, the boy is enhanced,’ Patrick said. ‘I think it would be best if you were the one to kill him, seeing as he wron-’

‘Are you suggesting that I do the dangerous work?’ Amy’s voice was now slightly louder. ‘Are you suggesting that I should be the one to risk my life? Are you suggesting that your life has value over mine?’

‘Not at all, Ma’am!’ Patrick was now panicked. He clasped his hands together. ‘I would never do such a thing as to disrespect yo-’

His voice fell silent. I heard the faint trickle of blood. His seat now glistened with a dark liquid. The table was somehow darker where he was sitting now. His eyes widened briefly before the colour left him. His face paled and his body slumped forward. There was a wound in his chest the size of my head, and it went through to his back. The wound was so large I could have easily stuck my arm through his front and waved at myself from behind him.

Amy’s wand was steaming. I couldn’t help but wonder how different things would be if she had have used that spell on the boy that night. Most likely nothing would have changed. That night, she had chosen to use the Killing Curse, the most powerful spell ever created. A simple Bomb Charm wouldn’t have worked if that didn’t.

Patrick’s limp body crumpled in a heap on the floor, yet the people sitting next to him did not even flinch. Charlie’s face was horrifyingly pale, and he stared determinedly at the wall in front of him.

I had known Patrick since our days at school, yet now was not the time to reminisce about the past. Two other men dressed purely in black came into the room, and between them, they shouldered Patrick’s body and carried him from the room.

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‘My Lady,’ Charlie spoke, barely more than a whisper, ‘I have some information that I think will be of use.’

‘Speak then, boy!’ Amy barked, her eyes wild with rage.

‘The boy now attends Hercules School for Mutany, which is close to The Tower. School times are 8:30 to 15:10.’

‘Are you sure?’ Amy asked, leaning forward slightly, intrigued.

‘Certain, ma’am,’ Charlie replied, just barely turning his head to the left so that it didn’t look as though he were completely ignoring her.

Amy’s eyes lit up. She leapt from her chair and ran behind Charlie. She ruffled his hair ferociously, shrieking at the top of my lungs. ‘Hercules School for Mutany! I know where that one is! That’s the one that Steven went to!’

I silently sighed a sigh of relief. At least the danger of her killing another one of us was out of the way, for now. I just hoped Charlie wasn’t lying to get on her good side. Looking around at my comrades’ faces, they knew, too. Knew what Amy was going to do to that school. I knew it had to be done.

However, Amy and I had conflicting ideas on how this should go. Amy believed in just killing the boy out of the blue, sweeping in whilst the City is in chaos, killing the old geezer, and then the City would be ours. Contrarily, I thought that the best way to win would be to kill the old man first, and then whilst the boy is emotionally destroyed, we kill him while he is at his lowest.

We rarely argued about this, though. Well, it depends on what one would call an ‘argument’. It was mostly her throwing spells at me whilst I was either dodging or trying to deflect the spells without harming her. Acting against her, in any way, was death, and Patrick had proved that.

‘It’s settled, then!’ Amy shrieked, seemingly overcome with joy. ‘We’ll blow up the school tomorrow, as soon as possible! In the morning!’

‘Ma’am,’ I spoke calmly, ‘with all due respect, with how late it is now, I do not suspect that we will be able to prepare such an attack within such a short amount of time.’

Amy’s eyes flickered toward me for less than a second. ‘You will manage, Robert, I know you can.’

She spoke in that scarily silky tone again, and I began to feel slightly flushed.

‘Yes, My Lady,’ I said stiffly, my whole body becoming strangely tense. ‘I’ll do it. As soon as possible.’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow.’

Amy smiled. I tried to look at the table. ‘Meeting over. You are all dismissed, except for you, Robert.’

My throat closed. The people around the table stood up and Dis-Apparated. Amy limped behind me and rubbed my shoulders. I took a deep breath.

‘Shhhh.’

My jaw tightened. My whole body stiffened.

Amy was whispering now, and it heightened my senses. ‘You know you can do it.’

With every sentence, she leaned closer to my right ear.

‘You know you want to do it. You know they deserve it. For what they did to poor old me. You know you want revenge. You know you’re going to send them to the deepest pits of Tartarus.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘Oh, hush,’ she said, now right next to my ear. I could feel her warm breath against my face, and my breathing quickened. ‘You can call me Amy. You can go now, Robert.’

She slowly straightened her back and stroked her hands off of my shoulders, and I heard the familiar crack, signalling her departure from the room. I let out a shaky breath. My mind was swirling with emotions. Adrenaline spread throughout my body like wildfire, fighting against fear for total control of my consciousness. Something else was there too, a strange, warm feeling that felt wrong to experience.

I rose from the table, tucking my chair in behind me. Barely moving my finger, I turned off the numerous lights on the walls and the chandelier that sat above the centre of the table. I pitied those that could not use magic and had to take extra time from their days to complete the most simple of tasks.

I felt dazed, on top of everything else. The world around me seemed fuzzy, and the next thing I knew I was locking the door to my own personal office on the third floor of the huge mansion. The door was wooden and painted jet black, and a desk and chair sporting the same colour sat on the other side of the room, parallel to the mentioned door. A single bed with drapes was on the right side of the room. The blanket colour matched the walls, light green of sorts.

I was too tired to notice the other things around the room. I pressed my back to the door and ran my hands through my hair. I closed my eyes tightly and slid down the door, thudding against the hardwood floor.

‘Why?’ I murmured. ‘Why have I done this to myself?’

I remembered a conversation I had had with my mother when I was about eight. The harsh winter winds rattled our window frames, this had been a few months before we decided to move from Norway to the United Kingdom. What mother had always called ‘The Great Move of 1990’.

She gripped my shoulders tightly. Her green eyes were frantic yet warm, as they often were. The light above kept flickering, and Rex our German Shepherd was anxiously pacing in a circle around me and mother.

‘Robert, promise me one thing,’ my mother said, and for the first time, I noticed that she seemed scared. ‘Promise me that you’ll never hurt a living soul in your life. That you’ll pick the right path.’

‘Moth-’

‘Promise me, Robert!’

‘I-I promise!’ I said, my voice wobbling.

Rex bumped into me, yet my mother’s hands held me steady.

That was the day that father died. He was on a flight home from Sweden, and, at the time, we assumed the harsh winds had blown the plane out of the sky. However, I came to learn when I was roughly 16 that his plane had been attacked. By RoCitian Forces.

As a child, I was oblivious to the fact that my father’s ‘work meetings’ were a work of Pro-Mutany. I assumed he was meeting with other businessmen, but Robert Hansen I spent some of his time away taking the lives of foreign innocents.

Even though he kept his identity well hidden, he was a wanted criminal in at least three different countries. In Switzerland, he killed a group of five friends eating together. In Greece, he opened fire on a huge crowd, killing at least 54 people, and injuring dozens more.

‘Mother,’ I whispered to nobody but myself. ‘If you’re listening, I’m sorry. I made a promise to you that I can’t keep. Please, forgive me, Mother.’

I furiously held back a tear.

‘I love you, Mother.’