Wesley casually scratched his temple before huffing and nodding to the brute.
In one almighty move, Sen Dorval lifted the bleeding king as he whimpered, heaving him over his shoulder and turning around to face the throne.
Isec shouted out in horror. “Wait, don’t-”
Dorval threw Tobius down over the pinnacle of the throne’s spearhead backboard, piercing straight through the old man’s back and out through his stomach.
Tobius gasped his last, agonising breath as the stone spear tip atop the throne cleaved through his midsection, practically splitting the old man in two. Organs and glistening viscera were forced out from his abdomen as his body slid down the pinnacle of the spearhead with gravity.
Blood bucketed out of the king’s abdomen, flowing slickly down the backrest of the throne in distinct rivers and pooling on the very seat he had been resting on only moments before.
Tobius came to a final rest having been ripped nearly in two, still impaled on the tip. His head flopped back as his heart ceased beating. The bronze crown slipped and fell with a crash to the floor beneath him.
Isec was petrified by panic and shock, unable to move a single part of his body. He tried running but his legs were stone. He tried to shout but his throat remained shut.
Wesley smirked as he watched his father’s life slip away before him, eventually letting out a small chuckle of relief. He clapped his hands together, looking at Sen Dorval gleefully.
“Well done, Dorval. That was glorious. Simply glorious,” Wesley commended.
His tone was the opposite of how a son should sound after seeing his father die so brutally. Yet Wesley was no ordinary son. Isec had always known this.
But he never could have imagined Wesley going so far as to kill Tobius.
What the fuck is happening? Isec could not take in a strong enough breath of air.
Wesley Seynard bent down to pick up the bronze crown that had fallen from Tobius’s head. It was sitting in a rapidly growing pool of blood, but Wesley did not seem to care one bit.
He placed the dripping crown atop his brown locks with an eager smile before nodding appreciatively to Sen Dorval. The gesture was beyond macabre.
Then, the two maniacs before Isec turned to face him, the only other person with them in the throne room. Isec felt panic welling up in his stomach, but he knew that running meant certain death.
What was going to happen to him?
He quickly tried remembering where his weapon was against his side, where the nearest exit was, and where he could go if he did indeed need to run.
“Now, what to do with you,” Wesley queried, a thick drop of his father’s thick blood slopping down his cheek.
Isec wanted to beg for his life. He felt the urge to fall to his knees, to claim he had seen nothing, that he would say nothing.
Yet, the captain of the city watch stood tall and true as he always did, maintaining eye contact and anxiously waiting to hear what Wesley had to say before he decided how to react.
Wesley tapped his chin, looking at Batir judgingly.
“Batir, get the guard and advisors in here at once. The king… the king has had a terrible accident.”
Isec gulped. “An… an accident?”
Wesley nodded. “King Tobius climbed atop his throne in a drunken stupor, proclaiming his power to us, before slipping and impaling himself upon the backboard. A horrific tragedy, if I do say so myself.”
Isec felt sweat running down his face as he tried to make sense of what was happening.
“You don’t actually expect people to believe such nonsense, do you?”
“We have witnesses! Myself, Prince Wesley. The king’s own bodyguard, and the captain of the city watch! Can’t get more reliable testimony than that, can we?”
Wesley looked to Sen Dorval, still hovering by his side like a lumbering beast. The soldier tilted his head only once, acknowledging Wesley’s comments without uttering a word.
“The king was prone to drinking too much, we all knew that,” Wesley added.
“But my prince, you can’t-”
“Uh, uh, uh. ‘My king’,” Wesley corrected.
Isec wiped the sweat from his forehead, considering each and every variable in his current predicament.
The prince. A king killer. Moon Mother, protect me.
As if he had read his mind, Wesley shook his head. “You have no options here, Batir. You will do as I command, or Dorval will cut you down as well.”
The brute lumbered forward with clenched fists and huffing deeply from underneath his helmet in anticipation for another murder to commit.
Isec held an open hand out, signalling for him to stop where he was. His head was pounding, his heart was racing, his chest was aching.
Isec was out of choices.
“I will do as you command,” Isec muttered. He could not believe what he was saying.
Wesley grinned. “Wonderful.”
Isec did not want to die. That was all he knew. He would serve no good by dying in the throne room.
As Wesley ordered Isec to bring in his guard and the king’s advisors to the throne room, Isec’s world stirred into a blur. He felt as though his free will had suddenly been snatched away. A mirror had been held up to Isec and he had failed Tobius, the kingdom, and himself in the moment when he was needed the most.
Oren Harrin and Hart Moralis entered the throne room before the guards even arrived after hearing Isec’s calls for help. The royal advisors shared expressions of horror and audible gasps upon seeing the king’s motionless, slumped body impaled upon the throne.
“Get him down! Quickly, before he is seen in this state!” Oren Harrin barked, shuffling forward towards the throne with pointed fingers.
Harrin appeared to be more worried about the king’s reputation than the king’s death.
Hart Moralis floated in, dressed
