“One hundred,” the narrator said. “One hundred innocents were needed to create the demonic grimoire that the Spirit of Darkness Darkness told King Faussius about. And so, everyone in Pali was slaughtered so that no witnesses were left, not even the children were spared. Each page of the Rank Four demonic grimoire was made of the skin of one of the victims, and contained some of the foulest language dictated by the Darkness scribbled onto each leaf of the grimoire in their blood. King Faussius and his soldiers told the rest of his kingdom that it was bandits who had ransacked Pali, and in so doing, they washed their hands clean.”

“Then, with the wicked deed done, King Faussius prepared to meet the Ruler of the Astral Winds. He, not fearing any man alive, agreed to meet with the king all alone, so long as the king did the same.”

The scene shifted again, to show King Faussius sitting at a table, a white flag flying above his head.

Another actor walked in dressed very funnily - though I could only assume this was the Ruler of the Astral Winds. He wore a long flowing blue cape over what looked like scarlet armor (hard to tell if it was meant to be armor or something else given it was a prop).

“King Faussius III,” he said, slightly inclining his head.

“How overjoyed I am to greet the Ruler of the Astral Winds,” King Faussius said. “I trust your journey here was pleasant.”

“Yes, yes,” the Ruler of the Astral Winds answered. “My journey was pleasant enough. Now may I ask why it is that you wished to meet me in person? I do believe that my envoy made my wishes clear. Is this simply so that you may swear your loyalty to me in person?”

“You are as perceptive as you are strong,” King Faussius said. “When I heard of your grace and magnificence, I wished to see it with my own eyes. And for that reason, I hope you will forgive this vassal of yours for being selfish.”

“No, no,” the Ruler of the Astral Winds said, waving away the king’s complaints. “I do understand - and it is the duty on behalf of a liege lord to see to the needs of their vassals.”

“But that is not all,” the king answered. “I wished to show you a magnificent spectacle you can gaze upon from this location. A true wonder of nature’s magic you can spot from here.”

“Oh? You mean something like the double inverted rainbows of the western desert? Or the floating crystals of the Pathaj Forest?”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“Something similar, yes,” the king said. “Merely cast your sight over there.”

As the Ruler of the Astral Winds turned his head, and dropped his guard, the king attacked.

The way they showed this was with a bright flash of light, and the Ruler of the Astral Winds fell to the ground.

“You knave!” he screamed as he fell to the ground.

“The two of them fought, but with the Ruler of the Astral Winds wounded badly, he was unable to prevail,” the narrator said.

The actor playing the Ruler of the Astral Winds lay down motionless.

“I have done it! The great tyrant is dead!” King Faussius proclaimed to the audience.

“After his death,” the narrator said. “The Empire ruled over by the Ruler of the Astral Winds attempted to rally against King Faussius for the death of their leader, though they feared him and none were ready to strike first. Soon, the Raswatian Empire he had built devolved into a multitude of fractious states, and King Faussius was even able to assimilate some of the lands around his own kingdom in the following confusion. By now, he had adopted a new title for himself-”

“The Blood-Emperor,” I whispered to myself as the narrator said it. That was the name under which I had heard of him.

“Yet, things did not look up for the Blood-Emperor,” the narrator continued. The scene shifted to show the man sitting upon a chair. “Over time, he was haunted by what he had been forced to do to the residents of Pali. When he slept, he could hear their screams and wails asking for mercy. He had granted them no quarter, and this weighed down on his conscience. He had not been a wicked ruler before his actions, and as he tried his best to deal with the aftermath of assassinating the Ruler of the Astral Winds, strange incidents began occurring.”

One scene showed him overseeing the distribution of grain to refugees, only for him to ask one of his attendants why a child in the back was not coming forward.

“Who, Your Majesty?” an attendant asked.

“That boy over there,” the Blood-Emperor said, pointing.

“Pardon me, but there is no one there,” the attendant replied.

The Blood-Emperor frowned, and walked to the corner where he saw the boy. “Is everyone around me suddenly blind? How could you not see-”

I really don’t know what kind of spell they used for this next effect, but it was the best ‘special effect’ I’d seen up till this point. The actor, the boy, vanished, and in his place there was a puddle of scarlet liquid.

“No! No! No!” the Blood-Emperor screamed.

And so it continued.

In another scene, as he was holding court, he would see a woman holding an infant behind his courtiers, who no one other than him seemed to be able to see. The king watched them cautiously, until they approached him.

“What do you want?” he asked them, fear in his voice.

“Why did you kill us? Why did you kill us? Why did you kill us?…” the woman repeated. No one else could hear her, but her words greatly troubled the king.

Even when he slept, he could see shadows of his victims in the corners. He would hear them whisper to him at night from the shadows.

Eventually, he stopped eating properly and started losing weight, becoming ill despite the attempts of his healers.

“And finally, he could live with his deeds no longer, and ended his life by his own hand,” the narrator said. This next set was a single staircase that led to a noose at the top, and as King Faussius took his first steps up the stairs, the curtain closed.