The crunch of broken wood and charred bone beneath his armored boots accentuated every step that High Lord Ravas Velitarii took.
Death did not bother him overmuch, if at all. Nor did the remnants those deaths left behind. As the leader of the Blackscale Knights, the most active of all the Draconic Orders and the direct enforcers of the Emperor himself, if he balked at such things he would be unworthy of the position he held. Instead, as always, the damage that his dragon, Agrathor, had inflicted inspired a sort of awe in him. Awe at the power of his own companion, awe at the power bestowed upon himself by the Emperor and his pet Sorcerer, Amos. And finally, awe at the majesty and purity of fire itself.
Nothing served better to purify the rot he often found himself tasked with destroying.
Like here, within Lakevale itself. He had been expecting some sad attempt by Valen, the brother of their now former captive Hera, to free his sister, thus providing them the opportunity to swiftly bring an end to this farce of a chase. Instead, a great sickness in the roots of the city had been revealed through a grand act of rebellion. An act that had been swiftly burnt to ash by Agrathor.
The dragon patriarch in question now slumbered on the other side of city hall, the rumbles of his snores felt through the ground.
"Complex situations most often call for the simplest of answers," Ravas whispered to himself, echoing a sentiment instilled in him by his own predecessor.
"My Lord," a voice called, and Ravas turned to face the speaker, one of his Elites. Commander Rowan was one of only two survivors from the group he had expected to reign in any attempts at an aerial escape. Instead, they had failed spectacularly. "The Galar siblings have disappeared beyond the far edge of the Westlake. We sent several search parties to scour the areas beyond but so far we've had no luck," Rowan continued, kneeling before his master as he reached him. The High Lord considered his Commander for several long, silent moments, debating his best course of action. Rowan himself was shaking so hard his armor practically rattled.
Although they had uncovered the sickness of revolt in Lakevale, ultimately he could not call this loss an even exchange. After all, the rebellion of commoners, no matter how skilled some of their participants might be, was a pale, faltering thing without something more. Something like hope. Or a figure to rally behind. For that, indeed, was what the Galar siblings were quickly on their way to becoming. Hope. They put a face to a cause that had, until now, remained as an annoying but insignificant thorn in the Emperor's side. Even with the death or apprehension of so many of the Lakevale rebels, for that burgeoning hope to escape him left Ravas feeling... displeased.
He touched upon something inside of himself, the hidden reservoir of roiling darkness granted to him by his Oath, as his hand gripped the instrument of said darkness. A book, hung by chain to his right hip. He granted the power inside a small release, a tiny pinprick through which some of it might escape, and then he urged it on with a simple thought.
Crush.
Rowan's screams began immediately. His armor, all save his helm still donned, suddenly began to roil and squeeze, crumpling under the weight of the High Lord's Oath. In some places, the armor simply shrunk and rumpled, turning muscle and bone to mush. In others, the metal spiked inwards, puncturing the man's body and causing a veritable river of blood to begin flowing out from beneath the sections of the failure's armor.
More and more the armor shook, crunched, deformed and shrunk, until the former Commander's screams grew to a rasp and stopped. Then, with a final surge of power, the entire suit of plate suddenly squeezed in all at once and there was a sharp crack. The corpse's head lolled at an unnatural angle as it fell to the ground, now just another body among the many already littering the devastated city center.
"Commander Anya," Ravas said, his voice calm and even as if he had not just inflicted horror upon the still cooling body that had been Rowan. The other figure who had approached as he dealt with the man oozed terror, so much so that he could almost taste it. Sighing, the High Lord turned just to the side where the woman waited at attention. The last of the four he had trusted. He gazed upon her even as she did her best to keep her eyes from drifting to the devastated form of the man that had been her compatriot. As she managed to keep her body from shaking as irritably as Rowan's had been, he found he admired that steel in her spine.
"You live where he died today. Remember that." Ravas continued.
"Yes, my Lord!" she declared, falling into a nearly perfect bow which also had the added benefit of hiding the abject relief on her face, though not as well as she likely thought.
"Now, with me. We still have a few... rats... to expunge," the High Lord finally said, allowing the woman to rise from the bow before turning and making his way back to the grand scaffold that Lakevale's governor had hastily erected for the day's events. Despite the damage that fire had inflicted for almost as far as the eye could see, this structure remained mostly undamaged. Of course, that had been purposeful on the part of Ravas. He had intended to erase the Galars and their wyverns himself, after all, had they not been able to escape, and that deserved a suitably prominent place in which to occur. Any still fighting or running within view of the square would have seen the might of the Empire on full display as he easily dispatched the lot of them.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Instead, as he climbed the steps back to the scaffold's platform, he laid his eyes upon a contingent made up of some few surviving city guards and, more numerously, the Blackscale Knights. They surrounded two bound and gagged individuals who had fought furiously for Valen's chance to free his sister and the smaller wyvern, prior to their escape. Both had been forced to kneel at the center of the platform, where they awaited Ravas's judgement.
Silence reigned as the giant of a man approached, the only sound once again the cadence of his plated boots upon the ground as Commander Anya silently took her place amongst those assembled from their order.
Ravas came to a stop some mere feet from the two.
One was a man who appeared middle-aged, yet who had wielded a massive greatsword with a skill and agility that very few would ever be able to match. He seemed the calmer, more resigned of the two, meeting the High Lord's gaze unflinching. The second individual, a shaven-headed woman who still strained against her bindings, glared at him defiantly. She tried to surge to her feet, even with her legs and ankles bound, only to be met by the pommel of a sword as one of the High Lord's knights stepped forward and cracked her across the forehead.
She tumbled sideways, hitting the wood hard, but despite the blood and strike that would have knocked a lesser warrior unconscious, the woman still forced herself back into her initial position and resumed glaring hatefully at him.
"So. Here we are. You both have committed crimes against the Empire and its divinely appointed ruler, His Imperial Majesty Regnus Tamorius Nocht. Your sentence, by all the laws of the Empire and by the rights granted me as representative of His Imperial Majesty, is death, to be carried out this moment," Ravas began, looking between the two for a moment before continuing. "Do either of you have anything to say for yourselves? Perhaps you might give me a reason to reconsider your sentencing? Should you provide intelligence paramount to the apprehension of either your fellow rebels or the escaped Galar siblings, life internment in the Endless Depths is still possible," he finished, speaking with all the formality and nobility instilled in him by tutelage and by cane alike.
He gestured with one hand, and two of his men stepped forward to remove the coverings over their mouths.
"You disgusting, black-hearted, Fade-kissed bastard! You can kiss my ass-" the woman immediately began yelling, only for the same knight that uncovered her mouth to quickly undo his work. Ravas simply sighed and shook his head, before focusing on the older man. He met the High Lord's eyes with a serene calm that almost surprised him, and he knew immediately he would get nothing from him, either. Still, he thought calm, rational behavior deserved reward in the face of imminent death, so he waited patiently for the man to speak if he chose to.
"I'm not afraid of death, Velitarii. If I go, I go to be with my family. Maybe not us, and maybe not soon, but one day you, and everyone like you, all the way to the Emperor himself, will pay for all that you and your many predecessors have done. Truth be told, I pity you. I pity a life led that could mold you into... this. I am sorry," the man finally said, after nearly a minute of utter silence. Ravas cocked his head to the side in surprise.
"You... feel sorry? For me?" The High Lord asked, confused. Then, as if a dam burst, a thundering noise echoed across the empty square, a sound that almost none had ever heard. Ravas was laughing.
Everyone assembled stared in the face of the High Lord's mirth, frozen to inaction by such a bizarre occurrence. It took a moment, but when he had finally gotten his laughter under control and managed to catch his breath, he smiled at the man.
"I don't think I've been so amused in nearly fifteen years! You? Pity me? Hah!" the High Lord replied, shaking his head in disbelief before he continued. "That has earned you my respect, if nothing else. Very well then."
Ravas nodded one more time to his knights, and the man's mouth was covered again. Rolling his shoulder by habit, he reached to the hip opposite his Oath's totem and drew his jagged edged sword in a single, fluid motion, the sound of it singing through the air. He came to a stop before the woman, who, until the end, continued fighting her bindings, trying to get at him as if it would do anything but hasten her death. He did not waste time. He swung his sword, and it halted halfway through her skull. He ripped the jagged edge free, spraying the ground and her companion with blood and bits of gore.
Then he strode over to stand before the other prisoner, looking down at him with an actual hint of regret this time.
"Alas," Ravas sighed. His sword sang through the air once again, this time finding his target's neck cleanly. A sign of respect. His head fell free, rolling to a stop in a growing pool of fresh blood. Channeling his Oath for a fraction of a second, he drew on enough power to make his blade vibrate at such a high rate it produced a ringing sound. The blood and bits of human attached to it fell away, leaving only a clean sword behind which was quickly sheathed at his side.
"What should be done with their bodies, my Lord?" Commander Anya asked, stepping forward now as the highest ranking member of the Blackscale Knights currently present other than their leader. Ravas considered for a moment, before turning to the woman.
"Impale them on spikes and leave them at the center of the square. A reminder to the people of Lakevale of what it means to turn against their Emperor. And prepare a third spike. There is yet one more that will be joining them," he finally replied.
"My Lord?" Anya inquired, obviously confused. He smiled.
"Governor Beltros allowed this insidious rebellion to grow like a rot within his domain. It is akin to inciting it himself, and he will be met with the same punishment as any who might turn the citizens of the Empire against their rightful rulers," Ravas said, turning out to look upon the city before he continued.
"Death."