An old man sat in a warm leather lounge chair next to a fireplace, his legs propped up on an ottoman. The full brown beard he wore was dyed, and his ponytail would’ve been blown away by a vengeful enough wind. He read a leather-bound book, its cover illustrating a closed eye. Tracing his finger over a sentence, the left side of his face curled in intrigue, the other half numbed to frozen lifelessness. The book’s violet eye fluttered open. It looked bored.

Ever since King Andre’s second stroke, his strength withered with every week. He closed the machina, Soothsayer, leaving it to rest facing upward, and pondered resting chin on knuckle.

When our new head chef Craig Wilson was a teenager, he murdered his village’s local cats for entertainment. If he goes a week without butchering livestock, uncontrollable psychotic urges manifest. You’d never expect such darkness from a charade of virtue so convincing.

Soothsayer’s voice crept into his headspace. Nothing is ever what it seems, but you can find the truth. Will you trust that man to not poison your dishes?

“Of course not. He’ll disappear like every other,” he mumbled to himself.

Andre looked to the darker corner of his regal study. “Ashley.”

An average woman with shoulder-length black hair and a lavender maid’s uniform stood to attention. That unassuming uniform hid hardened muscles though, and her eyes possessed a veteran’s cold edge. She walked forward, bowing to King Andre. “Yes, Your Highness?”

“Craig Wilson is no good after all. You know what to do.”

“Of course.”

“You’re the only one I can count on. I hate to burden you with carrying me around everywhere, but I would like to visit my collection.”

“Affirmative. I will now bring your wheelchair.”

“Thank you.”

Ashley moved the ruler’s dead legs from the ottoman with care, transferring him to the wheelchair. After setting him in, she extended the bottom to support his legs, and then tucked a comfy blanket to cover them. Every movement the caretaker made showcased utmost efficiency and precision. She rolled him out from the study into the massive corridors of Castle Hemmer.

Andre observed the fruits of his great, great grandfather’s labor as Ashley pushed him over bloodred carpets accented by gold. The dark gothic architecture would’ve disturbed the bravest of souls if it weren’t for the chapel-like rainbow-stained glass windows. They morphed sunlight, shining colorful rays upon the rows of empty suits of armor and abstract paintings. One of the strangest and largest art pieces depicted a sky painted crimson. Seven crescent moons glared down like eyes of the dead gods. Hooks hung from the heavens. Ever-reaching hooks that hung headless, limbless corpses of giants by their backs.

The title branded into the wooden frame read, “The Red Room.”

They turned left into another branching hall and moved on, passing an alone teen sweeping. Her shoulder-length brunette hair was curly, and she wore a maid’s outfit. Upon spotting King Andre, she stiffened up and fell into attention with such a jolt that her broom fell from her hand. It swung into a vase which tipped and shattered across the floor. She darted her existentially panicked attention between her mistake and her ruler’s uncaring reaction.

Andre tilted his head to the right in contemplation.

Throughout Mae’s life, she’s always been clumsy. It’s caused disaster and failure for her over and over. I’d go as far as to say that it was fate for her to knock this vase over. But even though nothing is going on in her head, Mae is pure of heart. She will never betray me.

Ashely glared at the junior maid. She walked over to her, rearing her open hand. Mae flinched but accepted the slap to her cheek. Immediately after, she bowed rigidly to King Andre and Ashely. “Your Highness, I’m sorry!”

Andre shrugged. “Blunders come with being human, and you’ve endured a befitting punishment. I accept your apology. Carry on with your duties, Miss Mae.”

Mae knelt to one knee, looking straight to the ground. “Thank you, Sire!”

The two moved onwards toward the great chamber holding Andre’s collection. Staring out through another towering stained-glass window that showed off High Monestate, he hesitantly asked Ashley a question. “Will… you end up betraying me too?”

Her expression barely nudged from stoicism. “Forgive my crassness, My Lord, but if you fear my treason so much, then why not use your machina on me? If I told you the truth again, would it settle your nerves? Would you trust my words?”

Andre gazed down at Soothsayer which lay in his lap returning harsh eye contact. She’s right, you know.

The left half of the king’s face twisted. “I fear the answer I’ll receive.”

Ashley sighed. “It seems we've went around the circle again then. Right back to the beginning. Shall we repeat this conversation same time next week?”

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Andre pondered before letting out a dry laugh. “Perhaps.”

She frowned. “It frustrates me.” Silence stuck between the two until she backpedaled. “Your Highness, I overstepped. Please forgive my error.”

“Don’t worry. This is why I value you. You’ll tell anybody what’s on your mind. Even your nation’s ruler. I’ll trust your words after all.”

She looked away out the stained glass window as they passed two plate-armored royal guards standing statue-like on watch. Green light shone in her eyes. “I see.”

Ashely unlocked great steel double doors using the black iron key hanging from her neck. It creaked open to reveal a vast chamber keen to echo. The secluded museum-like place had a rounded far up ceiling painstakingly painted to recall The War for Lovecraft. It illustrated hordes of foreign invaders tearing The Westwinds to ash and bone. The Zaibans came from the far East with their unrivaled swarms of cavalry and The Elephant Guard. Faceless pirates, mercenary bands, and no names scattered about causing havoc. The blooming empire of Monestate used the conflict as an opportunity to test the wits of its New Age engineers.

Fire rained down upon The Westwinds from merciless siege machines unimaginable a century ago. The last nation predominantly beast in Ailmor became no more, and the human led conquerors who saw its peoples as less didn’t hesitate to cull whoever remained. What did these Westerners do to deserve such an ending? Nothing. One day, Lovecraft, a great machina known as The Itblade, was unearthed on their soil.

What came next was Convergence, and with Convergence, consequence. Who would come out on top? Who would claim the great machina?

No one would. It broke. The blade broke. Residual spiritual energy remained clouding it, but no one could harness or repair the pieces. They existed now as a simple reminder of a dismal past.

As Andre rolled up to the centered pedestal displaying Lovecraft’s rusting fragments, he eyed his other possessions. Rare animals preserved by taxidermy, most of them albino, extinct, or both lined up in display. An elk with three heads stood dead and frozen, staring at him with every black lifeless eye. A golden horned beetle native to Zaibah sat not too far away. Relics and sentimental keepsakes from battles like captured enemy flags and the custom armor of dead commanders scattered about in glass cases too. Andre’s gaze hung especially long on a lone, crude crown of blending ivory, gold, and bronze. It belonged to the dead kingdom’s final tribal ruler; King Isaac III.

Andre observed the shattered silver shards of Lovecraft. The blade snapped into innumerable fragments while the hilt lay missing one of its halves. Centered below its guard, the closed eye of a great machina lulled into eternal sleep rested. The king rested his palm up against its glass display encasement. “You still haven’t lost your luster, my god. I can’t go a night without toiling over what could have been.”

He awaited a response that would never come. Ashley cleared her throat as her ruler sighed and rambled on. “I chose the best with Soothsayer to secure you. Not an ounce of weakness existed in their souls, yet we failed. You shattered. My father, dead. A Kingdom's slaughter all for nothing. We were convinced Convergence would be the answer, but I realize now that only fools blindly put faith in the powers of others. Power must be claimed yourself.” Andre scoffed, motioning to his caretaker to roll him away. “Sleep forever, Dead god. I won’t be visiting you again.”

Before reaching the towering double doors to exit, Ashely pulled the wheelchair to a stop. Andre’s head knocked into its rest. The suddenness of it and her frozen glare at the door surprised him. “What’s wrong? What is it?”

“I hear something. You don’t?”

Andre focused. He did. A violent havoc intertwined with grunting and growling went on just behind the doors, right out in their halls. Ashely left him there and crept up to the steel surface. “Stay right there. I will check,” she ordered. He nodded in response.

She creaked open the door just enough to see a grey-skinned humanoid thing ripping a royal guard’s arm from his chest. Standing at seven feet tall, numerous slash and puncture scars lined its back. With a fountain of blood and a wail, the dismembered man fainted. As the second guard fought for his life, deflecting erratic claws and snapping bites from the beast with his shield, a crowd of five men covered by white cloaks akin to phantoms sprinted down the hall with spears and steel restraints.

A jester in purple and green tights and a face painted gold led them with a syringe in hand. Ashely looked back at her ruler with a grave face. “One of Mercutio’s Homunculi escaped from the underworks.”

Andre turned cold and tried his best to wheel himself over with his working arm. He stared at the monstrosity through the opening. “That’s no true Homunculus. It’s ugly and imperfect. A monster.. Nothing like the results found at the original site of experiments. Nothing like Jericho the Wyrm.”

“Stay away from the door, Your Highness. It’s angering.”

The king shook his head with sharp eyes as a jarring howl rang out. “We’re still so far from replicating The Apparatus. I don’t have enough life left in me to wait for that clown's results, and not enough room to house his horde of failed freaks.”

The men in white impaled long steel spears into the homunculus’s limbs, pinning it to the ground. Mercutio knelt next to the gurgling creature, tapping the tip of his syringe. Stabbing it in the throat, he whispered. “Shhhh. Rest, my child. Rest.”

Andre bade Ashely to bring him forth, so she hesitantly obeyed. From his wheelchair, he spoke up to Mercutio who motioned for his men to drag the homunculus back down into the shadows of Castle Hemmer. “How dare you lose control of that atrocious beast. I’ve grown tired of your failures, Doctor. You take my patience for granted.”

Mercutio showed a dumb, easygoing grin. He spoke with a warm tone. “Atrocious? All of my creations are beautiful, Your Highness. Art is subjective though.” In the next moment, the jester's expression chilled to a killer's calculated coldness. His voice lowered so much that another person may as well have been speaking. “But you should understand that mimicking a masterpiece takes time, right? I’m close. On the fringe. Give me one more week. No, a few days.”

Andre and Ashley stared at him as he exploded in a burst of anger, waving off both of them. “You go play bingo and write your will, and you go paint your nails and talk about boys with the other maids!”

Ashely stepped forward, clenching her fist. “You watch your tone with your king!”

Mercutio laughed as he walked off, not even looking back. “Maybe you should let him stand up for himself! Get it!? Because he can’t!?”

Andre sighed. “I got the joke. You didn’t have to explain it.”

He advised Ashley. “Leave him be. He’s the only one able to understand what went through the heads of whoever created The Apparatus.”

“Why is that?” Ashley responded.

“It takes a fool.”

END OF PART ONE

NEXT PART - A TALE OF MONSTERS WITHIN