Ancient-brown foliage and the broken branches from the sleeping forest ground flew into the mid-air as the enemies' rumbling feet dashed into the circling hwarangs—an enormous wave of monster rushing in. The platoon of hwarangs jolted their swords and ran to the attackers.

"Protect the carriage!" the hwarangdo leader shouted.

Swords started clanking and ringing with each other. Loud screams and grunts echoed through the forest canopies and bushes. An army of arrows hissing in the mid-air, stroke and impaled some hwarangs. Raspy and running, short breaths were heard and scarlet-red blood squirted to the oak-brown ground. With feet as agile a lightning and arms as slick as a sidewinder—skills which the enemies were more developed and advanced, they had outnumbered a number of hwarangs in an instant.

As the battle went on, Chil Yook and Lady Jang from the inside were struggling to get out of their carriage, both looking very helpless. With their hands chained, and their bodies tied, the two were just desperately shouting for help, while seeing the imbalance fight between the hwarangs and the blasphemous enemies. Chil Yook scanned the dead men on the ground. Most of them were hwarangs; there were only a few from the enemies'. Their torsos were slashed, blood starting to clot, internal organs peeking slightly out of their fleshes. Others were slashed or impaled in their throats, killed with both of their bloodshot eyes hanging open, as flies and ants started to feast their once moist, ball of sight.

Gritting his teeth, Chil Yook pushed himself closer to the carriage's wooden bars as he surveyed the continuous battle arena. The sight of the men fighting did not catch his attention anymore, knowing that the hwarangs would all be outnumbered in the immediate future. What caught his attention was the leader of the enemies just standing beside a tall tree, a few paces away from him, watching his men slaughter the poor hwarangs. He looked closely into the leader, and he noticed something strange.

That man. He is very familiar. I must have seen him somewhere.

The leader of the men in black turned his head into him and gazed intently. Chil Yook examined carefully the man's eyes. After a few moments, a deep gasp just escaped from his mouth as the man standing in the tree winked at him. He gulped and pulled himself back.

"What was that? You are getting pale," Lady Jang asked.

"Nothing... Lady Jang, one thing is for sure, we are both going to die in here."

"No!"

"That man over there... The one standing at the tree, I know who he is," Chil Yook whispered, pointing his lips to the leader of the men in black.

"What do you mean, you know who he is?"

"He is—"

Before Chil Yook could have finished his statement, the remaining enemies (around fifteen) walked right through their carriage and shook it. The two stumbled on carriage floor in a thump. Then, they heard a soft, rustling footstep towards them. It was the leader of the unknown men. He swaggered closely to the carriage, swinging a set of keys with his right hand.

The leader unlocked the carriage, and the other men pulled them out. They dragged and pushed them to the ground, making them kneel.

"What do you want?" Chil Yook roared.

"Who are you?" Lady Jang asked, quivering.

The leader did not respond. Instead, he signaled two of his men from the back. The men walked forward and gagged the two criminals. The two wiggled, struggling and fighting for their consciousness. Unfortunately, they were unsuccessful; the odor of the cloths lulled their noses to sleep, knocking them off.

"Take them!" the leader ordered.

~~•~~

Later that day, in a cold night at the palace, in a quite strange and different way, the King and the Prime Minister were discussing the formal announcement of Sae Joo's coronation as a baby Crown Prince. Instead of doing this in a private chamber, the Prime Minister had suggested that they start talking about it while walking down the courtyard, going to the King's pavilion.

"I honestly do not understand, why we should start talking about this here, in the courtyard," Jae Joong said.

"Well Sire, I think it could be great if we could just try talking about that matter here. Fresh air and a starry sky cool people's minds, do they not?" Jung Ho smiled.

"So you are trying to mock me now." Jae Joong paused and looked at Jung Ho. "Prime Minister, know this; I just want to do my job, nothing personal. I would not want to discuss with you this matter, frankly speaking. But I had to since you are the Prime Minister. Who knows how surprising your next ploys would be?"

Jung Ho scoffed. "Sire, if it is really nothing personal, you should never have said those things, and let us just start discussing work."

The two continued ambling down the courtyard and discussed the coronation.

"I just want it simple—just all the palace officials. A simple banquets—no music, no dances. I will just come out from my pavilion, carry my son, and present him to all of the palace people."

"We will make that happen, Sire."

In the middle of their conversation, three hwarangs screamed and called from the gate, dashing to the surprised king and prime minister. The men had small wounds on their arms, their faces filled with scratches and bruises.

"What is the matter with you?" Jung Ho asked.

"W-wa-wait, you are the hwarangs who are assigned to be Lady Jang and Chil Yook's escorts," Jae Joong confirmed, his eyes blinking quickly, confused.

The three hwarangs genuflected and started crying. "Please, take our lives, Sire. We have been incompetent. Please, kill us!"

"Stop crying, and tell me what happened?" Jae Joong spat out.

"We were attacked Sire by an unknown group of men in black robes. We were not able to identify them because their faces were covered. They killed our fellow hwarangs, but we had managed to escape."

"What?" Jae Joong groaned. "How about Chil Yook and Lady Jang?"

Another hwarang cut in. "Uh, Sire..."

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"What?" Jae Joong yelled.

"They were killed as well, Sire."

Jae Joong's eyes bulged in shock. Although the two had been a real pain for him, he actually did not want the two to be killed—literally. "Who could possibly do that?" he wondered. "All right. Anything else? Go to the Hwarang Infirmary and get your wounds treated," he ordered.

When the men left, Jae Joong asked Jung Ho if he knew something about the massacre although he knew that the probability of Jung Ho's confession would be close to impossible. He was partly convinced because he believed that Jung Ho was the one behind the witnesses' fabricated statements during the trial. He felt a little sense of guilt. Indeed, there were hwarangs who were killed by him. However, the thought of letting those made-up statements dictate Chil Yook's fate, leading him to his presumed demise, bothered him. At that moment, he thought that maybe he was no different from his beast brother.

"I guess the fresh air and the starry night would not help me calm down. Follow me," he ordered.

Jae Joong and Jung Ho talked alone to Jae Joong's chamber. Once again, he asked his brother.

"Do you know something about this?"

"No! For the second time, no. I have no idea why they would do that or who was behind that. Chil Yook is my most trusted servant. It broke my heart when he committed that crime, and when he was exiled."

"Do you expect me to readily believe that? I know that you are the one behind the hwarang's fabricated statements in the trial. There was no royal cook, giving birth at that time! You made this to your henchman because you are afraid that he could spill out all of your dirty tactics since he was trapped already."

"Sire, what a wild imagination! I am impressed. Let us just say that those were true. How could you be different from me then? You have let Chil Yook to be exiled, even though you believed that those statements were ridiculous. Why? Because he poses as a great threat to you, and you were thinking that if he would be gone, my wings would have been badly broken. Am I right, Sire?"

Jae Joong was just able to give Jung Ho a stiff glare since he could not think of any words for rebuttal. He was defenseless from his brother's accurate accusations.

"Do you realize now, Sire? You and I, we are just the same. We may have different perspectives and ideologies, but the strategies that we are using basically point down into one simple goal—to protect our positions at any cost," Jung Ho continued.

"I will deploy some hwarangs to investigate...with Minister Dae Wong!" Jae Joong stressed out.

"All right, Sire. Please go to the bottom of this, and make those people pay."

~~•~~

The King gathered Dae Wong, alongside with a battalion of hwarangs, outside his pavilion. He ordered them to go the site where the hwarang escorts were ambushed and killed. The three witnesses would serve as their leaders, in order to pinpoint the exact location of the massacre.

"Hwarangs! You need to hurry. I need to know the ones responsible for this," Jae Joong announced.

"Yes, Sire!" the hwarangs answered in unison.

After lighting their torches, the hwarangs saddled their horses, and they started mounting. Traveling in two lines, the sturdy horses galloped out of the palace.

The night skies were a bit helpful for their journey. The gibbous moon shone brightly on the skies, and the twinkling of the constellations was dazzling enough to be their source of light in the casket-black, spooky forests. Everyone was in a hurry, wasting no single, running moment. The loud thundering hooves of the galloping horses almost dominated the natural harmonies of the forests' sounds.

After some hours, when the dawn's lasso of light coming from the sun peeked through the skies, the battalion reached the crime scene.

"We are here," one of the hwarang witnesses, said, dismounting from the horse.

The rest of the battalion followed. They started walking down the brown, grassy, moist forest ground. There was a carriage, but no people inside. The crows were having a feast at the dead, lying bodies. Some of them were even calling for others to join them in eating those human carcasses. The putrid smell of the ground and the rotting stench of the human flesh and internal organs combined in an evil recipe, torturing Dae Wong and his battalion's poor noses. The coagulated blood patches mixed with the mossy-green colors of the grasses and the old-brown foliage.

Covering his nose, Dae Wong started roaming around. He paused on a man in black's dead body. He crouched, picked a stick on the side, and raised the cover from the man's face.

"Who is this?" he uttered softly. He stood, seeing other hwarangs doing what he did. "Do you know who they are?" Dae Wong asked, raising his voice.

"No, Minister. We do not know these people," a hwarang answered.

"Me too, My Lord. These people are unfamiliar," another one butted in.

One of the hwarang witnesses crouched and examined one of the dead hwarangs. He stole a glance from his colleague (another witness) who was nodding his head slowly. "Uh... uh, Minister, I have noticed something," he said.

Dae Wong turned into him and asked, "What is it?"

"Uh, I would just like to confirm. Could you please check other dead hwarang's right hand? I have noticed that this hwarang's ring is missing."

Dae Wong's eyebrows scrunched, thinking about what the man said. He ordered his men to inspect other dead hwarang's fingers. To their horror, the hwarangs discovered that all of their dead colleague's rings were missing.

"My Lord, the rings are missing! It could be that their real motives were to rob them," one of the hwarangs suggested.

"Rob them? Are you saying that the people who did these are bandits?" Dae Wong asked.

"Yes, I think so, My Lord. Rumors have it that there are a lot of bandits lurking in this area, waiting for their victims," another hwarang witness said.

"Something does not fit this puzzle. Their skills are one thing, but their weapons are another. Look at this." One of Dae Wong's hwarang pulled one of the arrows, which were impaled, at one of the dead hwarangs. "This is a high-class arrow, used mainly during wars. This type of arrow is made only in Seorabeol, in a sword house owned by one of our hwarangdo's family. If they are really bandits, hiding from the lights of the civilization, how could they manage to go to Seorabeol just for arrows? When in fact, they could just use their plain, improvised arrows and maybe put some poison extracts on it," the hwarang pointed out.

"Uh, maybe, they really want the best of weapons," one of the hwarang witnesses defended, his eyes darting sideways to his fellow witnesses.

"No. There is nothing extraordinary with this arrow, apart from its materials. In terms of range and functionality, it has no significant difference. I do not know the essence of using an arrow from Seorabeol if they are miles away from here," the hwarang defended.

"Stop your argument!" Dae Wong commanded. He realized the point of his hwarang, bitting his lips and analyzing the situation. He knew that there was something peculiar, with the ambush. It seemed like; the crime was highly organized, with an incredible timing and pitching. He also did not believe that the entourage was just unlucky passersby, robbed by mere bandits. That moment, he knew who might be behind everything, but there was still one problem: a concrete proof.

"Everyone! Let us give these hwarangs a decent burial. Prepare everything!" Dae Wong commanded.

~~•~~

There was pitch-black darkness.

Coincidentally, there was also an unbearable stench of the fermenting Silla cabbages lurking in the mid-air. Chil Yook, who was lying down on the hay floor—still his hands cuffed, and torso tied, woke up from a deep sleep. He grunted, trying to seek for help, but he could not utter a sound, and there were no other people inside. Squinting, he slowly noticed a familiar place—thatched ceiling, tables and walls with traces of termite infestations, faint yellow lamps hanging on the corners, and the sets of big jars with loincloth on top. He confirmed that it was the Prime Minister's illegal prison cell, where Lady Jang was previously imprisoned.

Remembering Lady Jang, he noticed that she was nowhere to be found. He started to think that maybe she was imprisoned again, underground, or worse, she could be dead.

There was a faint rustle by the wooden door. Seeing a silhouette of a man coming in, he closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep. He heard the footsteps coming closer to him. Then, he heard a soft, familiar voice.

"Chil Yook, wake up."

Recognizing the voice, he slowly opened his eyes. It was the Prime Minister, looking down at him. His face was flat, eyebrows arched. Chil Yook swallowed. He tried to sit up, but the chains and the rope made it hard for him. The Prime Minister offered his hand, and he helped him.

"My Lord, please, tell me what is going on," Chil Yook pleaded; his voice was terribly hoarse.

"Lady Min!" the Prime Minister called.

The elderly matron walked inside. Chil Yook saw her cradling a silk cloth, with a form of a baby inside. As Lady Min walked closer, he noticed a written embroidery at the foot end of the cloth. His breath hitched, as it held up to his throat in a gasp.

The writings said: Sae Yoo.

__________