The pain in his ankle and lower leg was becoming more than Myrl could reasonably hide from the others in his party. He had stopped worrying about the blood leaking from his bandages being seen by the soldiers hours ago. Sergeant Ruaraidh and Corporal Macom walked to either side of Myrl as they made their way through the expansive palace, moving room to hall to room, and engaging in what the Sergeant had called a “Rat Hunt.”

Even Arne had stopped asking after the young king’s wellbeing. The older priest did keep close to Myrl throughout their battles with the beasts scattered throughout the palace, though. It was reassuring to the younger man. Despite his age, Arne looked like he was mildly concerned as he walked to a busy lunch, not at all harried and fatigued after hours of battle with hidious creatures.

...maybe he just has faith... maybe I lack faith... in myself if in nothing else...

As they had encountered their fifth pair of monsters thrashing about in a corridor, the sunlight that had poured forth from the priest’s speartip had driven away the darker shadows, making the creatures flinch and pause long enough to be pinned by concentrated efforts and solid spear work by the Guards; but even that quick and decisive victory couldn’t remove Myrl’s uncertainty, doubts, and fears.

He was missing his mentor. Having dispatched more than ten of the vicious shambling things had given his guards a great sense of pride and accomplishment. They fairly shone with optimism as the night wore on, and more creatures fell under their spears, swords, and Myrl’s own glowing scepter.

But, Myrl was fatigued. It was more difficult to walk now, and he had a horrible suspicion that no matter how many of the things he put down, the mage, wherever they were, would just destroy more of his people to make more.

As they had taken a break not long past, Myrl had sipped water while thinking of the population of the palace, and how long it might take to change all of them into these twisted, ravenous beasts. And then what the population of the city was, how many people lived in Ghlow? And how long might that blood soaked conversion may take, he wondered.

And the Kingdom.

It made Myrl shiver. His thoughts were turning dark and spiraling to even darker places yet. Slipping on a smile he didn't feel as he motioned Corporal Aiyopha forward to ready the next door to open as their party moved forward, Myrl tried to concentrate on the task at hand, rather than the fruits of their possible failure.

His guard at this point had lost three members. Attrition would doom his efforts more than fatigue at this point, and he would have to turn back to the slowly expanding lines of the advancing palace guard in which Master Elbana had been put in charge. She had not been happy with her orders, and Myrl knew he would hear all about it.

If I survive.

Once she and her deployment of mounted infantry had breached the broken doors of the palace, she had coordinated a response to the invading creatures as best mortal weapons could muster. In the brief meeting he had had with her, Elbana had made Myrl aware that Vogel had been injured when they had discovered a nest of the things during Vogel’s search of the city late in the afternoon.

They had also lost soldiers before they had been able to put the things down. More than they should have, was Myrl's less than charitable thought, but according to Elbana they had recovered what appeared to be a kidnapped woman who was gravely wounded and had been subjected to starvation. She was now being seen to by the Leeches, though Elbana didn’t feel they would be able to save the woman. She had initially hoped the woman might be able to name her captors. But by the serious look in his martial instructor’s eyes, it didn’t look good for her, whoever this woman may be.

Most of the first floor of the central palace and western half of the palace were now secure. myrl’s Master of Horse and Sword had even organized a small crew to start looking for survivors in the ruins that had been made of the rooms near the Great Hall, and the Eastern Tower. Myrl had yet to see the damage to the tower himself, but had heard when the thing had fallen.

At the moment he couldn’t remember what was stored in the East Tower, but his mind was getting hazy the longer this night rolled into “this morning.

Now, as Myrl and his party cleared areas of the palace, Elbana and her assigned forces slowly followed behind, setting up safe areas and directing rescue efforts for staff and those guests who had been trapped.

...I am so tired...

She had told him about detailing troops, city, palace, and Royal Army all, to step up their efforts at patrolling the city. Keeping the citizens safe was more important than whatever had been in the East Tower. He hadn’t quite absorbed all of what she had been trying to tell him.

…I hope Ashe is doing well. We’re still finding those things, so I don’t think he has taken down the wizard yet… and the last I saw of Donk, he had been headed back to the kitchens to get more food and drink for the soldiers, the medical staff, and Our wounded guests… He thought, before ending with a whispered prayer to the Goddess of the Sun, “Rhoona Rise soon and see all my people safe.”

Arne must have heard his whisper, as the older man approached the king and made the Sign of the Sun in blessing with a free hand.

Myrl took a steadying breath, and motioned for Corporal Aiyopha to open this latest door. She nodded back at Myrl, and shoved the door open. Without missing a beat, the tall woman then spun to the left, clearing the way for three of her surviving cohorts to step past her into the next chamber.

The silence that met Myrl’s ears as he waited was odd, and had a hollow quality that he would not expect from opening a door into another room.

But his guards didn’t raise a cry of any kind. That told him this room was clear, and that those first soldiers were now investigating to make absolutely certain. Arne, Myrl, and the remaining soldiers of the Royal GUard joined the first three men.

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And stopped in stunned silence. The roof was missing from this room. And the room and hall on the floor above was notable in their absence as well. The three guards who had preceded Myrl into the room had fanned out, and now looked back to their young king, their eyes all very wide.

“Sire.” Arne said, stepping up to Myrl. “Do you notice..?”

“That the ceiling is gone? Or that the rooms above this one are gone as well?”

“Sire, if I may…” Arne stepped further into the room. He gestured to the floor. A spattering of blood and half of a broken chair on a rumpled rug decorated the space. “Your majesty, there is almost no debris in this room. There is blood on the floor, but otherwise it is …clean. The roof was not broken in, but broken out. The mage Lord Ashe is seeking has been through here.”

A flush of shame for not noticing the obvious hit his cheeks as Myrl looked around the room, wide eyed, hoping to catch any other details he may have missed. It was then that he noticed the blood on the floor led through the broken door on the far side of the room, out into the blackness of the hallway beyond.

The tall sergeant spoke up, stepping forward. “This corridor leads to the second floor, to the Night Staff’s quarters. MOst of them should have just been rolling out of bed as this whole fracas kicked off. I doubt there are any staff there now, sire. We’re near the Leech Hall, though. There are probably people there. And many of the worst wounded were taken straight there after they were assessed in the East Ballroom.”

“East Ballroom?’ Myrl asked.

Ruaraidh looked confused for a moment, and said with caution, “Yes, sire. The room where your wound was dressed.” He glanced down at the bloodied equestrian boot sticking out of the king’s equally bloodied pant leg. “Where we had originally set off from, your majesty.”

Myrl raised an eyebrow, curious. “...ballroom? You’re sure?”

Arne then spoke up. “Yes, My King. What did you think it was?”

“It’s not the ‘East Great Hall?’ Huh. Interesting.”

Corporal Macom spoke up from where he was crouched near the far door. “My grandfather called it that. ‘East Great Hall.’ So do some of the older captains in the Guard. I always assumed they just didn’t have balls in my granda’s day.”

Myrl let out a peel of the loudest laughter that any of those present had ever heard from their king.

“If they didn’t, I don’t know that your grandad would have become your grandad.” Arne threw out, before he too began bellowing with laughter.

All of the other guards began to laugh and snicker along with the king and the priest, before Macom colored a deep red, and let out a “OH! But...! I NO! HA! HAHAHAH!!!” and the most undignified snort any of them had ever heard the young man make.

That snort set off the entire crew in fits of laughter again for some time, several members beginning to cry with the release of the tension they had all been carrying.

Once a sense of decorum had reasserted itself, eyes were wiped clear, and several noses blown to satisfaction, they moved off down the darkened hall with the light of Arne’s spear lighting their way.

Another two hours further away from midnight and nodding toward the oncoming dawn saw Myrl and his entourage trudging slowly along the descending hall that led to the back entrance to the kitchens, and the Guards’ Barracks. They had lost Corporal Kobna to an ambush by a smaller beast.

Myrl’s ring didn’t register the emotions of the creatures. Maybe he was too tired to notice the buzzing and throbbing notices the Artifact sent up his arm. Or maybe the creatures were shielded from the ring’s view. Myrl thought it more likely the things just weren;t as mad as the Guards around him, whose emotions had been assaulting the king all night long.

Everything. Every scrap of emotion they had ran from his ring, up his forearm and to his head where the immovable crown sat on his brow. To Myrl, the cursed thing felt like it weighed more than a carthorse at this point in the night, and the headache he had was torturous.

Arne speculated the smaller ones, the ones closer to their original human size, were the newest creations. Myrl didn’t take any comfort from that, as he helped to lay out the corpse of the dark skinned, young Guardsman.

As he put the man’s helmet on his chest, a sign of respect that said to one and all that this Guard had walked their last post.

At the Leech Hall they encountered a well sealed door with several gouges cut from the wood of the door as well as the stone around the locked portal. Outside the door had been the remains of one of the Leech Hall’s apprentices.

The torn shreds of his apprentice robes remained, but the standard red boots the medical apprentices all wore were missing. A ragged pair of sailor’s deck boots had been placed with great care next to the ravaged remains. Myrl had stared at the shoes for a time before moving off to follow the retreating signs of carnage.

Later they came across the mangled and minced bodies of two beasts. The bits and orts of scattered flesh still jerked and spasmed on the floor where they lay amongst the shattered bones to which they had so recently been attached.

Arne using his spear, and a heavily limping Myrl used the scepter to stop even those last bits of life that animated the far flung gobbets and scraps.

“Sire.” Arne had approached while they had been walking down the hall. “Please. We should turn back, and leave a fresh set of guards to attend to this endless hunt. It’s almost dawn, and Mistress Caora said the beast will sleep once the Sun is up. Master Elbana can see to the final scouring of these halls."

Myrl looked at the older man. It took his exhausted mind a few moments to process what the man had said to him. Looking into the priest’s face, Myrl was struck by how old the man looked. He wondered if Arne had known his father as a contemporary. Had the king of that yesteryear known the helpful holyman before he had ascended to be the head of his Order?

“Arne.” Myrl began.

Before he could say another word, Arne disappeared from where he had been standing. Myrl started in surprise, hearing a clatter to his left, he saw a tangle of Guards and the Priest of the Sun Goddess fall into a tangled mass of confusion and pain, arms and armor making a horrendous clatter of bangs and clangs strides down the corridor from which they had just come.

Loud cackling came from his right, further down the hall they had been traveling along. The hideous laughter bounced and echoed off the stonework of the castle corridor.

The scent of rot and filth rolled forward toward Myrl as he stood in the darkened hall, his lightly glowing scepter raised from his shoulder. His arms tightening as he readied himself for an assault.

Slowly, a cadaverously thin, tall form of nightmares sauntered toward the young king from out of the darkness, clothed in bloodsoaked and torn clothing, wearing one stolen red boot, the other foot filthy and naked slapped against the polished and gleaming stones of the hall. The curled salt and pepper hair on the thing's head was greasy and unwashed. And his right shoulder slumped awkwardly as he moved. Myrl noticed a long, curving gleam of shining metal in his right hand, the honed edge of the curved dagger glinted in the diffuse light.

As he stepped into the flickering pool of light shed by the nearest sconce, Myrl saw that the madman's right eye was deflated in its socket, and the gaping wound was bleeding freely.

He opened his mouth, and ear splitting laughter rent the air of the palace.