I Destroy the Empire

“YOU TRAITORS!”

The scream was a wet, choked thing, torn from the ruins of his throat. It echoed off the damp, moss-covered stones of the deepest dungeon in the capital.

A wet thwack and a spray of hot blood answered him.

A mountain of a man, a half-ogre brute with skin like green-tinged granite, sliced through his left wrist with a cleaver. The blade was crude, notched, but it got the job done. His severed hand, still clenched, skittered across the stone floor.

The brute, Brog, grunted and kicked the hand toward another of his former comrades.

A feral-looking man with matted hair and glowing amber eyes snatched it from the air. He didn't hesitate. He tore into the flesh like an animal, the crunch of bone sickening in the sudden silence.

Seraph Ignis, Knight Lieutenant of the First Knights, pride of the Sunstone Order, could only watch. His body, chained to the cold, sacrificial altar, was a landscape of ruin.

His eyes had been seared by magical light, leaving him in a world of agonizing, blurry shapes. His arms and legs were now nothing but bloody stumps.

And they still weren't done.

“Fine, enough! I don’t have all day.”

The voice was a calm, cold baritone. It cut through Seraph's agony like a surgeon's scalpel, bringing a chilling focus.

Across the interrogation room, Lord Commander Theron Valerius sat on a simple wooden chair, perfectly at ease. His ornate black and silver armor was immaculate, his silver-grey hair perfectly styled. He looked at Seraph not with hatred, but with the mild annoyance of a man whose dinner was running late.

His ice-blue eyes shifted, landing on the only other person in the room who was trembling.

"I give the task to you, Vice-Commander Solara," Theron said, his voice deceptively light. "Prove your loyalty. Take your lover’s life."

Aelia Solara, her fiery red hair a stark contrast to the dungeon's gloom, flinched as if struck.

“What is this shit?” Seraph spat, blood and snot running down his face. "Since when do we execute on private evidence?! I've followed every order! I've bled for this kingdom!"

He tried to push himself up, but he had no limbs to obey him. He collapsed back onto the stone.

"You keep asking where the Shadows are. Did I miss a debrief? Who the fuck are the Shadows?!”

No one answered. The question hung in the air, thick and meaningless.

Aelia Solara took a single, shuddering step forward. Her emerald green eyes were wide and swimming with tears she refused to let fall. Her hand, calloused and strong, gripped the hilt of her Arming Sword.

She was shaking. Holding back the tears, holding back the pain.

Her voice, when it came, was a low, shaky whisper.

“Knight Lieutenant Seraph Ignis... for conspiring with the murderers of King Gayus Valeriana, the third... You are hereby sentenced… sentenced…”

She choked on the word.

"...to Death.”

A single tear escaped, tracing a clean path through the grime on her cheek.

“Any last words.”

Seraph’s broken, agonizing sobs stopped. The sudden silence was terrifying.

When he looked up, the pain was gone, replaced by a terrifying, maniacal clarity.

“You were fucking him, weren’t you?”

Aelia’s eyes widened. The blunt question hit her harder than any blade. She visibly recoiled, her breath hitching.

"Weren't you!" Seraph roared, what was left of him vibrating with a new, unholy strength.

She didn't let it get to her. Or she tried not to. She raised her sword, her knuckles white, aiming for a swift, clean cut to his neck.

He was already dead. A corpse on an altar.

He started to laugh. A bubbling, bloody sound.

“Brog!” he screamed at the half-ogre. “You dare cut me up after I gladly fed you my rations when yours were gone? After I took a spear for your dumb hide in the Grellin Pass?”

The brute just grunted, unmoved.

“Fenris!” he shouted at the feral man, who was now licking the blood from his fingers. “You dare eat my flesh when we fought side-by-side against the Knights of Hasgord? When I dragged your wolf-pelt ass out of that silver trap?”

The werewolf just growled low in his chest.

“Nefeli!” he yelled at the silent, silver-haired woman in the corner, her draconic scales glinting in the torchlight. “Who cleaned your scales when you were stuck as a dragon for a month? Who polished your armor when you couldn't?!”

She just stared back, her pale, slitted eyes as cold and empty as her master's.

They all looked at him indifferently. It all didn’t matter.

“And you…”

The anger vanished, replaced by a smile so twisted and full of hate it was barely human.

He looked right at Aelia.

“You’re a fucking bitch. Licking her master’s boots, and apparently his dick.”

Her hand quivered. Her grip loosened.

“Didn’t you say you loved me?”

“Enough!” she shrieked, the word tearing out of her.

“IF I HAVE TO CRAWL FROM THE PITS OF HELL TO GET MY REVENGE,” he bellowed, his voice cracking, “I WILL MAKE SURE I KILL ALL- OF- YOU!”

He gritted his teeth, his entire frame shaking.

“BROG! FENRIS! NEFELI, YOU DUMB DRAGON! THERON, YOU BASTARD!”

His final words were a poisoned arrow aimed straight at the woman he once loved.

“AND YOU, AELIA… I WILL MAKE YOUR DEATH... PAINFUL!”

Silence.

The members of his cohort, his betrayers, just looked on. They had all turned their backs on him.

Aelia held her pose, sword high, her body trembling with rage and grief.

Lord Theron sighed, the sound of profound boredom. He stood up, brushing a piece of non-existent dust from his pauldron.

“Vice-Commander Solara,” he said in a flat, commanding tone. “Put the man out of his misery. Now.”

Hearing his command, Aelia’s fractured will snapped back into place. Her face hardened, the zealot replacing the lover. She steadied her grip, her eyes closing for a brief second.

She was about to swing, to finally end it.

THWIP—

Aelia’s eyes snapped open. She didn't hesitate. She threw herself backward, her speed defying belief, more akin to a Holy Knight than a simple vice-commander.

A black-fletched arrow was embedded in the stone altar, right where her neck had been.

“Intruders!” she shouted.