Ulrich Artur Lovenburg the III, the Ox, and king of the largest kingdom in the lands of Abanim, rested somberly on his throne. The chairs that lingered behind him on both wings stood as a graven reminder of how happy he once was. In his youth, he had been the golden child in his father’s eyes. He had the good fortune of marrying for love, displayed both wisdom and strength leading his father’s armies in conquest, and had sired an heir early in the consummation of his marriage. His only desire at the time was for his brother to have seen his good fortunes.
In the last two decades, it felt as if only travesty could follow him. His wife fell ill during childbirth. In her delirious state, she screamed obscenities and almost unforgivable accusations at him. He held her hand despite this as she faded from the world. In the rain of her passing, a ray of sunshine was offered to him in the form of a son. An inheritor, a companion, and an undaunted love. He named this son against tradition, as he was a gift from the gods, and their grace deserved acknowledgment. His son would be known as Hans Pasak Lovenburg, first of his name.
His father was unhappy with the naming but permitted it considering the death of the mother. The medicine men found the boy to be sickly. He feared the worst, that the world would take his love and his son. In a miraculous turn of events, the boy recovered. At his behest, his father had made bountiful offerings to The Guide, The Challenger, and to The Lover for their mercy.
The following year, a familiar face had returned home. Oswald had lost a lot of weight, and had returned to the castle wearing strange garments, and an even stranger look in his eyes.
It was in the middle of a session of court that the doors to the throne opened, and his silk-clad brother returned home. His skin had darkened under the northern sun, and his demeanor was much more peaceful than it had always been. His gaze seemed to be both present and distant, as if recalling a memory in every moment. His father called for a delay of trial and went to embrace his eldest son. Emotions ran hot, and the father and two sons exchanged many stories of adventures and ordeals.
When the emotional high of his return had faded, their father reprimanded Oswald for abandoning his people for the sake of wanderlust. There was a fiery exchange of words, and it was decreed that Oswald would inherit nothing more than what he could earn. He would be ‘exiled’ to the Western territories, where their people needed the strongest leadership. He was also stripped of the Lovenburg name, and given the house name of ‘Sänger,’ to ‘honor’ his wishes of traveling around as a musician. Bitterly, Oswald accepted these conditions over a more permanent exile.
Though disappointed to have his brother return, and then be promptly cast away, Ulrich was happy that he would at least be close to home, and able to see his new nephew. In the brief time before departing to the Waldgebiet, Oswald congratulated his younger brother on the heir, and expressed great hope that life would be peaceful for them one day.
Another year passed, and civil war erupted. Turncoat nobles of the varying counties around the kingdom had waited until Ulrich had returned east to take the mountains, and then ambushed his father on a night out. He had waited long weeks for any status report, and the distraction had cost him dearly. A Nambalan spearmen had punctured his defenses with an ambush, and the spearhead had severed his testicles. Field medicine could do little, and the shamans could only do so much. In the end, they cauterized the wound to spare the life of the future king. Word of his father’s fate arrived as he rested in a triage tent. His father had been captured, a few loyal nobles attempted to liberate him, and were put down. Their surrender had been followed by the treaty known as the “Anteil der Ladung,” which established a council of appointed men to ‘help’ in the decision making process.
Ulrich decided it was time to return home, left command of the East in capable hands, and returned with a supply caravan. He returned home to find his father gravely wounded, being treated by medicine men, and desperately clinging to life. He had waited by his father’s side for ten long days, eating only when coerced to by the servants of the castle. In ten long days, he had lost one world, and become king of another.
The nobles who had ambushed his father came forward to express their condolences, and he had nearly taken their heads off with a wood cutting ax. After substantial restraint, and calming words, a conversation could be had. As the new king, they explained the importance of understanding the nature of the treaty to him. Though reluctant, he heard them out.
As if graced by the Scholar itself, Ulrich found clarity through grief, and determined that this treaty was an incredibly wise tool to aid the people. Grief turned to anger as he realized his father’s death was that of a foolish power struggle and amounted to little more than a penis measuring contest in terms of decision making for the kingdom. Ulrich left command of the kingdom in the hands of the new noble council for a month and took the time to grieve properly.
In his grieving, he became determined to dedicate himself to his people. He left the process of raising a child in the capable hands of the tutors and scholars of the castle and focused on being the father of an entire world. He entrusted the Weisen Council in handling civil matters and justice in his stead and he resolved himself to listen more and more to the troubles of the common man. He learned much about the troubles of the farmers, of the merchants, and of the laborers. With a decisive and revolutionary decree, he ended the war on the Eastern front that had cost him future heirs. Utilizing the returning troops, King Ulrich ordered the men to secure the roads and riverways for his people, so that banditry and monstrous belligerence would not trouble their kingdom. The soldiers were happy to be home, and helping their countrymen rather than slaying strangers, and the people were placated.
Just as the King had placated the child that was his kingdom, he witnessed his son rise from infantile ignorance to an almost worse state. In the following years, things seemed innocent enough. Lecturers and martial instructors came to him with stories of his son exhibiting poor behaviors during tutelage, acting defiantly, and lying about actions taken before their very eyes. These things all seemed like harmless childish behavior, and the king asked the teachers to be more diligent.
The first dead cat found on the castle grounds should have been enough warning. His bärchen had been nine summers old by that point and the King reluctantly ordered the incident to be overlooked. Blame was cast upon some flying beast in the wild having dropped its prey by accident. When four more animals of varying breeds, including the puppy brought along to entertain the daughter of a visiting nobleman, he ordered advisors to keep a sharp watch on the young prince, and to intervene with impunity.
Grisly behaviors were quelled for a time, and the King refocused on the people. It was after the prince’s development into manhood that things descended rapidly. Servants began coming forward and pleading for something to be done. Genuinely scarring tales of rape, torture, and death fell before the throne. Though he would do no harm to his bärchen, the King acted. He offered his son an alternative: he had been using a private room at the back of the prison. The King offered to allow his behavior, but only to interrogate prisoners of the war. His son seemed placated; the servants seemed grateful. All seemed to return to relative peace.
This would prove to be a temporary solution to a rather dire, and constant problem. The young prince went through ‘interrogation’ victims as merchants go through common wares. As their number began to dwindle, the young prince’s appetite continued to grow.
As he reached his fifteenth year, his old ways made a gradual return. They were nowhere near as problematic as in the past, but servants were cautious not to be found alone, or too far from one another in some wings of the castle. The King’s heart grew heavy with guilt as he realized the suffering done by his willingness to avert his eyes. These people lost everything, their land, their clans, and their rights. Now they sat helplessly as his son did as he pleased, fearful of losing everything they had left. These were the people who had tended to his needs and kept him aloft in his darkest hours. The thought that his progeny would blight these people in such ways was sickening. Enough was enough.
On his son’s sixteenth birthday, Hans tried to return to some of his old antics. This time the King intervened. Just as he was attempting to drag off a young servant girl, the King charged through the celebrating crowd, and struck the boy with the back of his open hand. Stunned, Hans stared in aghast horror at his father. The King then dragged the boy back to his room and forced him to listen. The lecture lasted hours, and several threats were made about this behavior continuing, and what would come if he were caught again. Hans had no means of slipping through this unscathed, and Ulrich knew that his son understood. The remainder of the festivities were cancelled, and King Ulrich opened the royal coffers to repay all of the servants who suffered by his son’s hand enough to allow merriment to return to his people’s hearts.
Months passed with some signs of improvement, and then the new whispers came. First they were from a few advisors who worked closely with his son when he did pay attention to his royal duties. Claims of treachery, of treason, and of murder reached his ears, but they simply made no sense.
They were delusions, clearly his son was still bitter about the severity of the reprimand, and he would hopefully move on. Then the whispers expanded to some lesser lords who had access to a few armed guards, and some voting power in the Weisen council. They came forward in the dead of night begging to be forgiven for even hearing his son out, and the King forgave them. He ordered them to play along and see if the Prince was truly serious about this sordid affair.
It was during the Summer solstice festivities that the final straw was drawn. The King’s own brother approached him and asked if he was aware that his own son intended to assassinate him. The King fumbled for words and explained how his son was bitter about suffering punishment. The two had to walk away from the ceremony to have a rather heated discussion about how stupid it was to turn a blind eye to an assassination threat. As it was long ago, another fiery exchange of words was held. This time however, fires were quelled with the flow of water, and the brothers shared both their pain and anger together in the warmth of a long needed hug.
After they let loose the pain of decades, Oswald reminded his brother that he did indeed owe him his life, and he offered to wriggle into his nephew’s ear to protect him. Though he was reluctant, the King agreed with his brother. He explained how he couldn’t bring himself to do harm to his last kindling of light in the world, even if it wasn’t rational to permit it. Oswald agreed not to hurt the boy, but he would become his most zealous supporter. He wanted to fulfill his childhood debt and be a good brother after years of being rendered incapable of doing so. They shared another familial embrace in the moonlit corridors of the castle, and the plan was set into action.
Over the last few months, leading into winter, messengers and ravens came from the West, updates on his son’s inevitable plan to attempt on his life cemented the fact that this was not a delusion, nor was it some wrathful act, but a genuine act of treason.
The King realized the irony of it all. He had a reputation for being a great leader in both domestic and military conquests but neglecting his paternal responsibilities in irrational avoidance would now cost him his son. He turned to the harder drinks that night, and nearly destroyed his training hall in the drunken fury that came with it. He was a broken man, masquerading as king of the strongest kingdom to have ever existed. It haunted him like the wraiths of his losses.
However, the masquerade could not end, and the King wore his best façade, even as he faced his son once more. He sent his brother away to inform his men that there needed to be a group that would fall and take the blame for today, and it would be his son’s personal bodyguards. His brother was clearly not in favor of this plan but understood it’s necessity. No one plans to kill a king alone, and there would be substantial political turmoil after the arrest was made.
For the sake of the men in his son’s guard, he even opted for a final window of mercy: He offered his son to live with his uncle for a while. He secretly knew the boy would be held accountable, and hopefully restrained by the harsh survivalists of the Waldgebiet. He was ecstatic when his son agreed, but then they hugged. The King felt the dagger resting in his clothes. He knew his son was saying anything that he could to get what he wanted. He had been doing so for twelve of the seventeen years he had been alive.
So, the king went through with his plan. He had his brother’s men kill those poor unaware men who were simply following orders, as to maintain a King’s presence. He struck his own son down, which pained his heart greatly. Then he spared the boy a day, so that at least he could dull the pain that lingered in his chest before watching him meet his bitter end. He had no better choice.
It was the following morning, while hungover and tear-stained in his chamber, that the news reached him: His son had either been taken prisoner or escaped with the captive from the northern desert.
The details remained unclear, but the facts were clear as day: a mercenary company was arrested with private familial documentation. They claimed the Prince paid them for a job they refused to disclose information about. The war memorial in the impoverished district was burned the night his son was arrested, and a merchant was strangled to death and dumped along the river in the dead of night.
Almost the entirety of the city flocked to the castle for direction and answers, and the last four days were a political nightmare. Ulrich lied and said with certainty that his son had been abducted to placate the nobles. Subsequently, he ordered all of the guards split between damage control for the fire that ravaged the southern residential district and pulling double duty in the bazaar to keep the merchants happy and the coin in town flowing.
He was finally alone after dismissing the last of the nobles requesting a date of trial for the mercenaries, and he was exhausted. Genuinely, and inalienably fatigued. This world had been a cruel joke, and an endless cesspool that dragged his mind further into darkness.
He wanted it all to end. The bloodshed of war and the unnecessary death. The suffering of his people. All of his people. Even those who had been enslaved and indentured. He wanted to rest, and the intrusive thought that perhaps letting his little monster of a son end his life crossed his mind. What a terrible thought.
He sat upon his lonely throne, a grim lord to a grim world, and wondered how he could even begin to atone for his mounting sins. He called for an end to the war after his son was chained and dragged off, and the people cheered for that. Ravens were sent the same day, and the warriors of the front lines should be returning home within the span of two weeks. The King thought of all the families reunited by his will, perhaps of the loves rekindled. Though he could no longer wield the warmth of such love, offering it’s opportunity to his people brought a somber smile to his face. It was a good start, but it didn’t even change the suffering in the capital itself, only dulled it, as the king did with his drinking.
He rose and wandered down to the wall that bore their trophies of conquest. All of these arms and armaments once belonged to men like him, who vowed to lead their people. Blades, bludgeons, shields, and protective wear, all of it collected from those leaders, all of them felled by the iron hand of the Ersta. If things had been even vaguely different, it would be a different people’s leader gazing upon the wall, perhaps even upon the crown that sat on his head now. He wondered if those men would even consider honoring his people, as he considered honoring theirs. It was unlikely, but the thought gave him a wisp of hope that he direly needed.
It was as he marveled at these collected trinkets that the first anguished cries and horrified screams reached his ears. The King rushed to the steps of the main entryway watch tower, so that he could locate the source of such distressing calls. The spectacle before him would linger in his mind until his dying moments.
In the distance, the residential district had been rekindled, and the fires were widespread. The King could see people sprinting away from what at first glance looked like other people, but as he witnessed the horrors unfold, he discerned their true nature: the undead were rampant in his streets. Not draugr, the clever tomb guards, but mindless, craving undead. They ravaged their victims with carnal abandon as they reached them, and a torrent of people were sprinting to reach the safety of the castle’s stone walls. Had a necromancer decided to lay siege to his people?
As his attention darted from one horror to another, he noticed the Weisen building in the noble district was alight, and it was the only building in the area to be burning. Was this the work of his son? The thought dumbfounded the king. It wasn’t possible. They specifically withheld the knowledge of the arcane arts, and the option of even considering the arcane from the prince. There was not a single wise man in the kingdom who would have dared tried to instruct the boy on even the foundational principles. Even then, the shamanic power that the Ersta called upon was nothing that could vex the dead to rise from their long slumber. This was insanity.
Thinking quickly, the King collected the ladder that the servants would use to dust the collection and acquired two of the relics: a dark metal tower shield in the shape of a sharp teardrop, and a rough-hewn mace with a gnarled brass head shaped like a knotted wooden club. They weighed heavy in his hands, but he liked the weight. It was a reminder that he needed to be strong, and to resist all burdens, as was his duty in the role of lord. He retreated to the royal armory, calling out for the guards and servants of the keep to rally upon him, to arm themselves, and to brace for refugees from the city.
With help from the servants, he adorned his war plate, emblazoned with the family banner of golden sun rays encroaching on a red banner, with a white circle in the center. For his war plate in particular, he requested an ox head be added into the center of the white circle. When he was properly armored, he delivered an improvised speech on glory and honor, and with his men emboldened by his presence the King led his private vanguard to aid the guards stationed on the walls.
There was no war, no battle, or conflict that could have prepared the King or his men for this day. They collected every man, woman, and child they could within the walls of the keep. Archers manned the parapets, and hailed death upon their targets. The vanguard managed to get the main gate sealed with minimal forward casualties, and the citizenry hoarded into the main keep. Every able man was sent to the armory to fetch spears, bows, or blades, and ordered to return and prepare for total war. It was then that the archer’s called for the King. He ascended the nearest stairwell to bear witness to what the archers called him to, and his heart sank when his eyes met his sons.
Hovering over hundreds of undead, Hans offered a smug smirk, and he willed the last of the hail of arrows out of his path, and into the horizon behind him. Before the siege, he willed his stolen garments into an outfit he deemed befitting his ascent, a magnificent white and gold set of noble regalia, with red trim, and a billowing cloak of the finest materials he could remember. He allowed his right arm to remain seen, blackened with eldritch influence, and levitated with the low sun of dusk silhouetting his view of the castle. It would be his castle, as soon as his father lay dead, and the Conqueror’s Crown rested upon his brow.
Hans called out, enhancing his voice with an incorporeal echo, “Each man to get between me and my place on the throne will die a more gruesome death than the last. Who among you is willing to stand in my way?”
There was nervous murmuring among the people. This was magic, something often lost to legend and children’s stories, and very unlike the shamanic practices of those who worshiped The Hunter. This was bizarre, oppressive, and overwhelming. No one stood willing to oppose this local nightmare before this, and not now that he was emboldened by dark forces. No one but the King, who called back to his son.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“It wasn’t enough for you, to break my heart, to betray my trust, and then to attempt to kill me. You had to slaughter the innocent, and torment those who offered you no opposition? You, my son, are no better than the beasts beyond the walls, and it is high time I put you down.”
A dark smile crossed Hans’ face, and he willed his father’s head to crush itself in front of all of these people. He reveled in the thought of hearing the cacophony of anguished cries and panicked screaming. But they never came, and his father remained unharmed. Something was strange here. He willed it again, and the thrum of energy in his arm resonated in its now familiar way. He could feel the energy divert from its course, and down. Down and right towards the shield that rested in his hand. How peculiar, that the old relic had some kind of magical property. Though this was a minor setback, Hans was confident in facing his father now. He had powers from beyond the stars, some old trinket would not stop him from seeing his place on the throne.
Hans decided on a less direct path and conjured a ball of flame in his palm. The King commanded the men on the wall to retreat, and Hans hurled his conjured fire directly at his father while he spoke. The King raised his shield, and the flames dissipated around it. Two unlucky men on the wall were immolated immediately and fell from the wall screaming. The King remained untouched. Hans could tell by the look in his father’s eyes that he now understood the power of his shield too, and that annoyed him.
The King barked an order for everyone to retreat to the castle, and for archer’s to shoot his son out of the sky as he descended the stairs as well. Hans ordered the horde below him to tear down the gate, and he felt the beginnings of a nosebleed as the power echoed through the masses. He knew he was overexerting himself. In an attempt to find respite, he descended to the walkway of the castle walls as his army attempted to pry through the thick oak of the gate. As the archers retreated, they occasionally stopped to fire an arrow at Hans, who now rested in the cover of the fortified wall. He gradually made his way to the stairwell while deflecting the occasional lucky arrows, and he could feel the pinging sensation of a headache dulling. He needed some more reprieve before returning to the battle, and his horde had not made progress on the gate.
As the last of the soldiers made their way towards the castle itself, the King returned his attention to his son, raised his shield, and braced for combat. Hans calmly descended the stairs on foot, refreshed himself, and breathed calmly, as the tome at the tower instructed him to do if he found his magic failing him. When he reached the floor exit, his father was waiting for him in a battle ready stance. He offered his father a smile, and then willed the bar holding the gate to lift and fall out of place.
The torrential wave of death swarmed into the courtyard garden and fanned out along the castle grounds, seeking the doors and windows to the castle proper. Hans watched as windows on the castle opened to reveal archers, who changed their attention from him to the swarming mass attempting to breach the walls. The King remained unmoved, but Hans saw fear in his eyes.
He walked through the parting horde and approached his father, so he could see to his death, like he hoped to do from the very start.
“Accept death, or surrender to the new King of the Ersta.”
The King didn’t reply and maintained his ready stance. Their duel began with a torrent of flame. Hans lashed a conflagration from his arm, and it was cast aside by the dark barrier his father wielded. The King charged forward; mace poised to strike the side of Hans’ head. Hans willed himself elsewhere, and teleported behind his father, who turned about to face him once more.
Hans could feel the drain of such transportation, and knew he needed to reserve it for emergencies. The initial pain from transporting himself and the first two corpses nearly killed him and raising the dead in the cemetery almost rendered him unconscious. He would need to keep a tactical balance between defensive movement and offensive power if he didn’t want to kill himself. The King charged swiftly once more, and Hans conjured tendrils of starless night to grasp him. The King was fleet of foot, and seasoned in the arts of warfare, and he dodged these creeping tendrils handily. Hans began to exert his will to change position again when he felt the sickening thud of the gnarled mace connect with the left side of his ribcage.
He displaced himself slightly farther this time, but he could feel that the blow had broken some ribs. The pain seared deep within him, and he willed it to go away. The thrum of power resonated within him, and he could feel the bones reassemble themselves. The pain was excruciating, but the results were satisfactory. His head began to hurt, and the headache returned. This battle needed to end quickly.
As Hans reached these conclusions, the King descended upon him again. His reputation for charging like a mad ox held some truths, and Hans was learning the lesson of his father’s reputation in the worst conceivable way. The crunch of his left thigh bone shattering to the knotted mace head filled the air before his cries followed them. He crumbled onto his side in the dirt, and the King kicked him squarely in the face.
His vision blurred, and the world became a swirling mass of pain as he became aware of how many teeth had been split by the iron foot guard. The King forced him to roll onto his back with another firm kick to the stomach, taking the wind from his lungs. Hans raised his right arm to shield himself from the blow coming straight down upon his head, and eldritch tendrils enveloped the weapon. The king fumbled back and let go just in time for his own arm to not join it. As the tentacles uncoiled, the mace was nowhere to be seen.
Undaunted, and furious, the King raised his shield aloft, supporting the top of the shield with his now free hand, and leapt skyward to drive the edge of the shield down upon his son. The King’s few steps back had given Hans enough time to get one more blink to safety, and he willed himself into the sheltering hideaway of a nearby bush.
His father called out to him, calling him a coward, a bastard, and a monster, as Hans recovered his breath through the massive amount of pain he was enduring. Once he caught up with his breathing, he willed the wounds to unmake themselves. Inch by agonizing inch, bone reassembled, tooth rejoined, and Hans was made whole again. Using the bushes to his advantage, Hans rested a moment, crept around his father’s flank, and unleashed a torrent of flame. His father narrowly noticed the gout of fire hurling in his direction and averted the shield to protect him. Arcane fire incinerated the flower beds and shrubs that lined the walkways, and left the King unmarked, if not a little sweaty from the heat.
The King repositioned and charged once more, ready to strike down his son with the shield itself. Hans reached to the heavens, and called lightning itself down upon his father, and the arc crashed down upon the shield. This stopped the King’s charge and left a charred mark on the earth around him but opened a window of opportunity. With this window of time, Hans willed the earth on the path leading to him to warp into a liquid that maintained its original appearance. His nose began to bleed heavily, for warping the solid natural world in such a way was more taxing than he expected. When his father resumed his charge, fell into the earth, and became enveloped in thick mud up to his midsection, it was worthwhile. Hans undid the spell, and the ground was resealed around his father.
Allowing himself a moment to revel in victory, Hans willed his clothes back into pristine condition, and then spent a few minutes breathing and recovering while his father struggled futilely within the ground. The undead horde was making substantial headway on shattering the windows and breaching into the castle. Screams and rallying cries could be heard across the halls, and Hans approached his father, refreshed, and ready.
“Finally…,” Hans wheezed, having reached his father. He reached down and pulled the Conqueror’s Crown from his father’s head and rested it upon his own.
The father spat at his son, and shouted, “Hurry up and kill me you little monster. It’s what you want, isn’t it? Kill your own father, and become bastard king? Come on then.”
Hans laughed, a rather genuine laugh, he noted his laugh was much like his fathers, and his uncles, but laughed along anyway.
“You’ll die as you lived. Weak, slowly, and pathetically. A courtyard decoration.” He laughed out loud and willed his horde to return to him. Slowly but certainly, they obeyed. Uncertain shouting and cheers came from within the halls of the castle, unaware of the exchange of powers taking place just outside.
Hans commanded two of the undead to pull his father’s shield arm from the earth, and throw the relic into the well, and they obliged him. The undead servants were not careful with their duties and tore the armor from his father’s arm with the shield, drawing blood and leaving a few pressure cuts along his forearm. This did leave his father’s unarmored arm freed from the earth, but it was of no consequence, for he would remain trapped so long as Hans wished him to be. Then, another dark smile crossed his mind. Maybe freedom would be more… interesting. He knelt in front of his father to face him at eye level, and said “Actually, I’ll do for you what you’ve done for me. Technically you offered me a fighting chance by leaving me in that cell. So, I’ll let you fight too. Good luck, father.”
Hans walked forward through the horde towards the throne room doors, and when he was safely out of the way, he allowed his unarmed father to escape the dirt. When he was free from the mud, the horde descended upon him. His furious battle cry swiftly changed into anguished screams and death throes that filled Hans with a sense of pride. He was king now, whether anyone liked it or not. His only disappointment was how filthy the castle had become, but he intended to correct that with time.
The throne room doors opened as he willed them to, and the cowering masses stood poised and ready to fight for their last breaths. Hans laughed, informing them that they were free to return to their homes. He would restore them as he deemed necessary, and as King, he would see to the restoration of the important parts of town with the morning sun.
Uncertain mumblings filled the crowd of nobles, common men, and Sau, but Hans assured them once more that they could leave. At least, most of them could leave. He commanded the nobles to take their seats to the side of the throne, for there were some orders of business that needed to be addressed immediately. The commoners and Sau fled swiftly, seeing an opportunity to escape unharmed and properly armed in case Hans changed his mind.
As the nobles tentatively went to their usual seating in the throne room, Hans walked the steps to his new throne. He sat upon the throne of the king and breathed a heavy sigh of relief, reclined his head, and closed his eyes for a moment. Then he addressed the nobles. Specifically the nobles that remained, and among them the ones who had betrayed him.
He offered them a choice: Prove their loyalty by killing each other in duels for his amusement or face the horde in the courtyard as his father did. Several nobles agreed, but a few didn’t answer fast enough for Hans’ liking. He ordered them to march into the courtyard or face evisceration at his hand. After a long pause, and the first man that was agonizingly pulled apart by each unique connective piece of his body, the remaining six faced death with the horde. Their screams filled the halls as the remaining traitors fought with weapons dropped during the siege. Numbers substantially thinned, the remaining few nobles returned to their seats, deemed worthy of the court of King Hans.
After the bloodbath, the last of the lesser nobles were dismissed. When the last living soul besides Hans had left the keep, he began the process of restoring the castle in his image. After raising the dead who were intact enough to serve, immolating the corpses that weren’t, and willing the shattered windows and doors back into their original pristine nature, Hans found his castle to be in satisfactory condition. He took a long reprieve, and then ordered his horde of undead into a marching formation, to take count of how many remained. In total, there was just short of three hundred corpses.
Over the course of an hour, Hans saw his vision for his new army come to fruition: he willed a set of plate armor, an iron mace, and a kite shield bearing the family banner upon each of his undead thralls. Despite the time resting between conjurations, he found himself suffering splitting headache. Discouraged for any more use of magic for the day, Hans returned to his old personal chambers, locked the door, disrobed, and lay down. Tomorrow was going to be a big day, his first official day as King of the Ersta.
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The first week as king had been rather delightful. Despite waking up to his withered arm being restored to its former condition, and his access to magic being stripped, he found that he could still assert his will over his conjured undead, and set about having them guard the keep, since he could not afford to lose them in the fighting fields just yet.
There was substantial dissatisfaction among the people that their newly self-appointed king could not in fact restore their homes or unburn the city as he claimed he could, but the threat of death still loomed as the undead vanguard stood beside him. The castle Sau reluctantly returned to the keep under fear of death, and the people began the process of rebuilding the damage that Hans’ raid caused.
The worst of it was at the end of the week when the soldiers returned home from the front lines. Hans ordered the men to return to the war, but the generals negotiated at least two weeks for their men to be with their families. Hans accepted these terms. Angry soldiers caused uprisings, as the generals pointed out, and this time he didn’t have eldritch powers to rely on for defending against a volley of arrows. There were a few violent outbursts among the common men when they learned their homes and families had either been burned or consumed, but they were quelled swiftly with a series of ‘arrests.’
The best part of the week had been making sacrifices to his new patron, and she was well satiated. He started the first day as king by performing the ritual to conjure her presence in his old playroom and began the sacrifices with the party of mercenaries that crossed him after finding them in the containment cells. A lovely stroke of luck, to resolve two problems with a single act, and the series of arrests led to a fair bounty of souls to offer away. The primal screams of fear left echoing bliss in Hans’ heart as they echoed across the stone walls of the prison. The undead troops were very convenient for detaining and transporting detainees as he willed them to be moved, and over the course of the week he found issuing commands to more than a handful of undead at a time had become easier. Things were coming together rather well in his favor, and the castle sat as a monument to his accomplishments in his eyes.
The second week under his authority was when things started getting rocky. On the first day of the week, there had only been four prisoners left in the cells, and Mahin Bwyar’oug let the price of failure be understood to Hans as she undid all of his restorative spells in unison. With shattered ribs, fractured thigh, split teeth, and majorly concussed mind, he writhed and moaned in her presence until she felt his suffering had been sufficient. He had his undead drag three of the Sau from the servants quarters into the sacrificial chambers, and that opened the door to a world of novel issues. All the Sau who served in the castle escaped on the night of the second day, fleeing back to the ruins of their old district, or setting out into the wilds in hopes for anything else. Their pilgrimage occurred to Hans when he sat down for his morning meal, and there was no one in the castle beside his undead. This was unacceptable, but hunting down, detaining, and returning every escaped slave was far too complex of an order for the undead. Hans needed living hunters, and that required negotiations with the nobles.
After issuing a summons to the court via raven, the reluctant crowd of nobles returned to the castle, this time with their own personal guards. In total, there were fewer guards than there were undead, but the number of loyal warriors willing to defend these lesser men was still daunting. Days passed as fruitless negotiations were made back and forth over the treatment of the nobles, of the Sau, and of the positions of power that the nobles had within the kingdom.
Inevitably, Hans yielded to the demand of allowing the nobles the power of voting rights on actions taken by the crown, but over the course of the days of debate, Hans had begun having his undead abduct survivors living in the ruins of the Sau’s district for late night sacrifice for his patron. Though he was cutting his sacrifices remarkably close to losing everything, Hans remained undaunted, and began a series of preemptive arrests under the guise of ‘acts of treason.’ This did not settle well with the people, and more violent outbursts occurred during his ‘collection hours.’ Conveniently, this in turn was made for actual reasons for arrests, but at a hefty cost.
An attempt on his life was made, manifested as an arrow that sailed dangerously close to his throat, and Hans made sure to have some fun with the arrested man before making his offering. He made sure to command his undead from the safety of the castle walls from that point onward, but making his own meals was becoming taxing. He could find no one he could trust in the kingdom anymore, so it was a small sacrifice to make up for the power he now wielded. Still, Hans made sure to have four undead guard his door, and to double check the locks before he slept each night.
The third week of his rule heralded disaster. The beginning started off fine, with the exception of finding that most if not all of the citizens had begun flocking and fleeing the capital to find refuge elsewhere, as well as a few nobles who decided to supply and sneak off with them. Those who remained were a vast number of soldiers, most of which were of the returning masses, and a handful of nobles who won their duels, joined by their personal guards. There were other stragglers, and Hans started making them disappear for the sake of sacrificial rites.
On the third day of the week, Hans issued the arrest of a soldier’s son to reach a perfect total of seven sacrifices when hell broke loose. Other soldiers flooded the streets armed, armored, and angry, toppling the undead guards and running them through the crevasses in their armor. Though the arrest was made successfully, around twenty of the undead guards did not make it back, and their equipment had been taken by the soldiers. The sacrifices themselves went well, but Hans realized that the larder was running low on food. He could maybe feed himself for three more days before the kitchen needed a full resupply, but merchants had not made their way into the capital in the last week.
On the fourth day of the third week, the worst happened. On the northern horizon came war bugles and drums. The armies of Duke Gunther von Bär arrived from the Sandmeer. He and his army of thousands of men approached the main gate, demanding Hans’ immediate surrender, or imminent death for treason against the crown, and the assassination of his father. When Hans declined, a hail of arrows came from the tree line surrounding the path up to the castle wall. Though he survived the storm of thorns, a few arrows made a solid impact, penetrating his left bicep, his left shoulder, and his right thigh. The pain was comparable to his duel against his father, but this time no amount of willpower would cure his ailments. Hans made a hasty retreat back to the castle as the first strike of the battering ram met the sealed gate doors.
Frantic, and without answers, Hans ordered his horde to the gate to slay anything that entered the castle grounds. The horde shambled to obey, and Hans desperately fumbled through his options. He could run, but Mahin would seek him out for his offerings, and if he failed to provide them, she would unwind all of his actions, leaving him to writhe and die in the woods. Hopefully, that was all she would do. Alternatively, he could seek her out for powers once again, perhaps find a way to sweeten the deal and preserve his rule. The likelihood of her accepting such a bargain seemed unlikely though.
As his frantic thoughts raced in his mind, he heard the tell-tale crack of the gate being felled, and the rallying call of soldiers storming the castle. Hans chose the path of cowardice, to die in the woods alone. He saw what his patron could do to people, their shriveled corpses littering the prison cells. He recalled Quinn and the Arcanist’s corpses in the tower, how distant that memory seemed to be now as he sprinted for the escape tunnel in the prison that started off this grand escapade. He collected a bow, a quiver of arrows, and a sword from the armory, removed the arrows from his flesh, bandaged his wounds after dousing them with the vodka his father used to drink, and limped into the wilds after concealing his path out to freedom, and private death.
Nightfall descended upon the wandering king, and Hans made camp while bracing for the inevitable end that awaited him in the silence of this forest glade. Surely enough, Mahin Bwyar’oug made her presence known, and coiled around the camp.
“Plaything… my offerings… have you forgotten your pact?”
“No, Mahin, I have not,” Hans said impatiently, “My castle has been overthrown, I had to retreat to be spared a public hanging, and now you’re going to see to my death. Get it over with, I have nothing to offer you.”
“Mmm… plaything… a foolish decision… but my emerald sister was right… patience makes prey… oh so sour…”
As the viscous visage that Hans accustomed himself to retreated into the obscurity of the shadows, he began to feel the lingering injuries return, and accepted that he would bleed out here among the trees. Through the blinding pain of having several of his bones re-break for the third time in unison, Hans considered the actions that led him to this point.
For the first time in his life, he could not blame the weakness of others for the failings of the kingdom, or the mediocre quality of action. It was no one but his own fault this time. There was no one living to share the actions with which he had taken. He opted to sacrifice his people to covet power in a desperate plea to not starve to death in the woods. He isolated himself among an army of corpses to shelter himself from the wrath of those who his actions harmed. Now he was bleeding to death in a forest because he didn’t have the balls to face death with any integrity. Not like his father, who faced unwinnable odds against him.
He thought back on the last few actions his father had taken during the siege and realized that he was not that weak of a man, and that confused Hans. In his dying moments, he began to feel it, genuine regret. Regret that he let his anger get the best of him, anger about having been forced into so many situations where he could not control or calculate his next move, and a deep sense of regret for being the reason that his ancestral line defied prophecy.
As he felt the presence of encroaching death, his eyes averted and shifted views, almost instinctively. He was no longer amongst the dark grove in the forest by the fireside, but back standing in the tower that he escaped not but three weeks ago. He could feel the hollow ache of bones unbroken, and the headache of an illusory concussion. Fear and regret mingled with the unmatched fury of betrayal, but it was far too late. The bone spears connected to his flesh, and he could feel the ethereal peeling of his essence from his body. There was no comparable pain to understand this sensation, and as his soul separated from his corporeal form, it was enveloped into the gelatinous mass before him. His senses remained, and in the freezing presence of endless night, he saw it. The endless cosmic void, with what appeared to be a blinding sun swirling on the edges of a circular void. The Prophet was correct, if not misguided, for his bloodline ended at the edge of an event horizon.