Board Thread:Roleplaying/@comment-25828117-20190916205409/@comment-5543592-20190924200304

Elinhir
The ceiling of the hall of the Assembly was domed, cavernous, decorated with chandeliers and murals. The architecture had been constructed by mages and bordered on impossible--arches and columns interlaced with one another to support the severe dome, bracketing structures that were spaced apart by sloping skylights, the panes of glass framed by wrought iron.

At the room’s center, Kismet sat high up on an overturned lectern, and wiped the blood from his sword off on the dead speaker’s robes. Shining in through the windows, the bright sunlight cast an almost halo around him.

“Growing up, Silas would take me to the Grand Council in Morrowind.” He dropped down lithely, to the bottom of the dias. The floor of the Hall of the Assembly was one large slab of marble, cut in a circle. In the center of the that was a dias, upon which there had been a lecture for use by whoever’s turn it was to speak.

“They had a similar idea to you people of how government should work. Equal voices, no one heard more than anyone else.”

The seating of the Hall’s gallery rose in every direction from the center dias, where the nobles of Elinhir would gather to speak. Massacring bodies could be seen lying limply atop desk, slumped in seating. A severed arm clung to a barricaded door in a death grip.

“Isn’t it kind of funny, then, that they’ve got legal murders?”

Kismet stepped in the long streak of blood the king was leaving behind. He turned his toe in it, drawing a face.

“Or that they get all hot and bothered over slaves?”

The king had made it to the stairs up to the gallery seating.

“Ironic, I guess. Got to build freedom atop something. That includes the bodies of everyone standing in your way.”

The blood was stark red against the pristine whiteness of the marble. Kismet’s boots squeaked as he paced across it, leaving bloody shoe prints behind, as he followed after the king. King Jerom Ancetre’s royal regalia was in tatters from a number of slash wounds, and he was missing a foot from the ankle down. The king’s dark beard was matted with blood, his severe face pale from blood loss. He had look very distinguished about ten minutes ago, until Kismet had took the knife to him. It was hard to look impressive when you were missing a foot.

“Where are you going?” Kismet snickered, looking down at the crawling king.

He looked up from Jerom, tracing a path with his eyes to a corpse at the bottom of the gallery stairs. A young man who was missing his right hand and most of his throat.

“Oh, your son.” Kismet slapped his forehead. “Duh.”

He walked ahead of the king to crouch over the corpse, grabbing a fistful of the boy’s dark hair, the same shade as King Jerom’s. He lifted the head off the floor, dead features sagging, limp jaw falling open, tongue lolling out. “Yeah, he’s not doing so well.”

Kismet sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “His bowels have gone too. Yikes.” He let out a quick, simpering laugh. “You know, in all the stories when the maiden bends down to plant one last kiss on the dead hero’s lips, they don’t ever mention how it’s like sucking on spoiled meat or that he reeks with shit and urine.”

He let the corpse’s head drop back to the marble, forehead clunking against the floor.

“Trying to do the whole hold-his-body-and-moan ‘my boy’ thing, were you?” Kismet tsked. “So cliche.”

Jerom tried to lean up against the barrier that separated the gallery from the floor. He got halfway before Kismet planted a foot on his chest and shoved him onto his back. The King fell slowly, groaning in discomfort and pain.

“You haven’t asked who hired me.” Kismet said. “I’m allowed to tell on this one, given I’ve got a ‘no survivors’ rule. You should ask.”

Jerom’s breathing was labored, but he summoned his strength. He was a strong man, not a warrior by any measure, but sturdy of build. When he spoke his voice was firm, the voice of a commander, but wavering, the pain getting to him, “I d-erk… don’t care. I won’t give you… the satisfaction.”

“I get my satisfaction from this alone.” Kismet gestured to the expanse of the Hall, what had one been pristinely white was now splattered with blood, limbs, and corpses. “I’m not a complex person. The opposite, in fact.”

Jerom remained impassive, too exhausted to have a reaction to anything Kismet was saying. A person could only experience so much terror and punishment before it became rote. People are more adaptable than they’re often given credit, Kismet knew. “Finish it already. Listening to you talk… is torture enough. Oblivion… would be an improvement.”

Kismet smiled. “Your words, not mine.”

He sunk his longsword through the king’s chest between the four and five rib, then leaned on it. Jerom shook once and was still. His eyes rolled upwards in their sockets, like loose marbles, staring blankly at the ceiling.

“Well, this was fun.” Kismet said, pulling his longsword from Jerom’s chest and sheathing them both.

He took a circumspect view of the hall, dead bodies strewn throughout, lying over top barriers. A loose length of entrails had spilled down a flight of stairs. There was a human nose on the floor, the eye was drawn to it, as if it had been purposefully placed. Kismet admired his work but… it was missing something.

He grabbed the dead king by his remaining foot and dragged the corpse to the overturned lectern. He took the quill pen from where it had fallen and dipped it into the king’s wound. Then, in big loping letters, scrawled into surface of the lectern:

There is no other king but me.

There. Let them figure ‘’that’’ out.