As the keep came into Art's vision, she could not help but notice how lacking in activity the stronghold was. Even landing in the courtyard, there were minimal staff and servants about, with only one fresh-faced guard greeting her entrance with an excited salute from seeing the hover-sail for the first time.

But the joy on their face quickly melted when the knight pointed to them. ‟You! Where's the queen?”

‟Huh? Oh. I think she's in the throne room, Lae Pendragon.” Likely sensing the sudden tension in the air, the guard tightened their grip on their weapon. ‟Did something happen?”

Art commanded, ‟Tell all the guards, soldiers, and knights you can find to head to the throne room, immediately! There's an assassination attempt on the queen.”

The guard saluted quickly. ‟Yes! Knight-commander!”

Art did not wait around and ran straight as can be through the maze of the keep for the throne room. When she passed 2 patrolling guards, they greeted her.

‟With me, now!” Art shouted.

She did not even turn back to see if they followed. But as she proceeded through the keep and she called on more and more combatant passer-bys, the sound of leather shuffling and metal armour clanking behind her grew, along with the shouts for servants and scribes to ‟Make way!”

By the time she reached the throne room, a total of 4 guards, 1 soldier, and 2 knights-in were now with her. Aside from the guards and 1 knight though, the other 2 were not equipped outside of having their swords at hand.

‟Alright, you two!” She pointed to the 2 unarmoured units. ‟Stand guard out here and make sure no one leaves. The rest of you, with me. Protect the queen at all cost!”

She summoned her weapon and without ado, violently kicked opened the doors to the throne room with a loud smash that splintered the air. Even the thickness of the doors could not hold back her monstrous strength.

Her immediate vision inside were of the two throne guards that were lying unconscious on either side further away from the door and the four lizardkins that stood over them. Her rag-tag group of soldiers immediately spilled in and engaged the lizardkins, the later who drew out spears and targes for battle.

Standing at the foot of the throne about 50 meters in was the violet cloaked Taliesin, who stood with a sword in hand before the queen at her throne.

As steel clashed against steel behind her, Art yelled, ‟Taliesin!”

‟Wait, Artria-!”

Before the councilman could finish his sentence, the knight-commander had closed the gap between them and her sword cleaved at the coun, only for a lance to shoot down from above and punching itself into the ground between them, causing her blade to contact the aprut weapon. Her sword hit the heavy lance, which was angled in a way that deflected her blow upwards and over Taliesin who fell over in shock. But at the same time, the blow sent the lance flying off to the side.

Seconds later, like a vulture, Lands Lord dropped down between them. ‟Lae Art! Calm yourssself!” His hands were held out in a plea to stop the fight, his tail quickly pushing Taliesin aside of the battle.

‟You! You're alive?” Art was genuinely shocked to see the lizardkin, but that quickly turned to anger. ‟I gave you a chance to prove the good of your species, and this is how you repay it?”

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‟Lands!” Taliesin shouted.

The councilman tossed the reptile his weapon just in time as Art swung back. The snake blocked the strike but the force of her brute strength was still enough to take him of his feet and threw him half a dozen steps back, though not enough to take him off balance as he landed squarely back on the ground.

She did not slow down, following the strike with an overhead that he desperately parried aside, the weight of her weapon slicing into the ground and breaking the marble floor into fissures. Using the leftover momentum, Art pushed her arms down onto her embedded sword and leveraged the weapon to jump high off the ground. In the air, she spun her body with her core muscles straining, twisting and pulling the sword along into a secondary spinning slash from the same direction above.

Even though Lands Lord managed to raise his weapon in time to block again, the surprise of being attacked from the same direction once more - with such a heavy weapon no less - finally knocked him off his feet and send the lizard's sprawled back first onto the ground.

Art raised her sword to finish the fight.

Taliesin screamed, ‟THE QUEEN'S A SERIAL KILLER!”

The room screeched to a halt. Even Art, fuelled by her rage, suddenly found herself unable to commit her attack further, and her blade slammed hesitatingly into the ground next to Lands Lord.

She turned to Taliesin, dishevelled silver locks shackled her eyes of rage. ‟You're going to have to control your tongue yap carefully, councilman, or I cannot guarantee you'll be able to keep it.”

Taliesin looked her in the eyes, enraptured with fear but not escaping. ‟I saw her. She lured people into her hideout to torture and kill them. The horror I found in those places were unspeakable. The flaying of skins torn from bodies like threads from clothes.”

‟Lies!” Art growled. ‟And a blatant one at that! Why would she even do that?”

‟I don't know,” the councilman grieved. ‟But she's a monster that must be stopped.”

‟You're wrong, Coun Taliesin.” The two turned to the voice and saw Gwen rising from her throne.

Next to her and manifesting in licks of flames was a cannon, the tinge of which was a similar to that of Art's own sword. An Ex Machina. The barrel ended with the opened mouth of what looked to be a maned-leopard. Its body was the creature's itself, while the legs had curled into wheels amd the tail curved behind like a fuse.

But before anyone else could react, the cannon fired a meteorite of flame that tore cleanly through Taliesin's right shoulder. Before he could even register the attack or have the time to drop his weapon to the floor, the cannonball already chained into an explosion behind them, flinging Taliesin forward onto the ground as dust quickly followed from their back and covering the room in a cloud.

By the time the smoke screen cleared, the rear of the room had changed. The doorway was buried under a pile of rubble as the floor above collapsed down into it, a main pillar having been destroyed. The lizardkins, guards, soldiers, and knights, were either splattered, dead, or dying. Those maimed moaned painfully for aid.

The queen's face remained ever calm. ‟I'm not a monster. I'm a god.”

Lands Lord got up to his feet with a roar and charged in with his lance. With a snap of her finger, the cannon turned into its metallic leopard form, the mane retracting to form an armoured neck, and the fused tail dislodging into a whip that Gwen took into her hand. The creature of weapons then leapt at Lands Lord with a inhumane screech, slamming the weight of mystical metal into the charging lizardkin warrior and tussling him to a corner.

Art, however, could not focus. Not only were her ears ringing from the blast, but her heart pounded from confusion.

‟What?” she blurted out to her friend.

‟Oh, Art. Loyal Art.” Gwen stepped down from the throne's raised height. ‟You were never good with faces.”

The knight blinked in disbelief. ‟I knew you for hundreds of years, before you were even queen.”

‟Yes, you did.”

‟And all that time? Lies?”

‟Of course.”

Her broken heart beat into anger. ‟Why?”

‟Because I needed power. And you are full of power.”

Anger flipped into a frenzy and Art swung her sword at her liege.