LXIX.

LXIX.

He wandered down halls that he had explored enthusiastically as a child, but now found to be devoid of the life and the intrigue it had held for him back then. The tapestries and banners were faded and untended to, left alone to fade in lustre, like a microcosm of the city itself.

It was quite obvious that he was to blame for this state of affairs. He knew how he was perceived and how people talked about him when they thought he did not hear them. It was common knowledge that none of his scheming fathers great techniques of altering public perception had rubbed off on him, but the people around him were mistaken. Even the oh-so-wise Old Advisor did not think much of him. But Patrych was a changed man. It had taken hideous death and unholy resurrection to unearth the talents instilled in him by his father, and those lessons had seen him slay his dear father and claim the city and its lands for himself.

No one else seemed to sense the voices that Patrych heard nor the sights that he saw. He had seen how those bright and evil horns grew from the Knights of the Eight Saint and he had known they were vile and needed to be exorcised from his realm. Of course, he had no way of knowing that it would devolve into so massive a conflict as what it had turned into. Already hundreds of his soldiers had died in skirmishes with the vile vice-indulging holy warriors.

Patrych knew what few had yet to learn: Purity was a Vice. It was an inevitability that the Eight Saint would fall and become part of the pantheon of Sinners. Only one look at the magic the Saints adherents performed and the ways their bodies were shaped by the powerful Vice they let themselves be overtaken by, and it was clear that they were evil.

Those of his most promising Royal Guardsmen squads that had ventured deep into the Principality had begun to find mass graves and signs of genocide on a scale that made Patrych quite speechless.

Sure, the Kingdom of Heimdale had joined on the Principalitys side when suspicions of Helmsgarten utilising demons was brought to life. Patrych would defeat the Archduke and show the proof of what he had done to all those who believed Helmsgarten was the villain in this. His father, old beloved King Ubrik, had aided the Principality, of that there could be no doubt, and it was just one of many reasons why he needed to die.

If the Old Advisor had not been the only person capable of Scrying within his retinue, then he too would have been sacrificed upon the altar of change that Patrych would create for his nation and its people. Hopefully he would soon find a replacement, for he was tiring of the codgers reticence and heavy-handed ways of dealing with everything. Just recently him and the Royals under his command had condemned several villages and towns to utter decimation, all to wipe out a single nefarious Daemon It was clear that things had to change.

The whispers told him so.

Four Royal Guardsmen stood guard by the entrance at the foot of the staircase.

Your Majesty? one of them asked, noticing him.

The other three immediately saluted him and squared up their shoulders, putting on a fake charade of being productive and vigilant, despite Patrych having just seen them laze about.Visit no(v)eLb(i)n.com for the best novel reading experience

What are you doing here?

Am I not allowed to speak to my ancestors? Patrych replied sharply, not even bothering to look the Guardsman in the eyes. He was one of the newer ones so he had yet to learn his place, but Patrych had expected better of his three comrades.

I, erm, no of course you are, Your Majesty.

One of the whispers suddenly made him aware that there was something amiss.

Why are there four of you standing guard here?

He felt pain flood his eyes, as though a thousand hair-thin needles had been hammered into them both at the same moment, and, as he tried to observe the figure through a bloodstained vision, it felt as though his entire body was set on fire, glops of melted skin and fat dripping off him, producing a cacophony of splish and splash in his ears.

Though he could barely see and pain-induced delirium was taking over, he noticed when the figure moved its mouth up to his flayed ear and whispered:

Worship me.

Adulate me.

Praise my name.

Admire my brutality.

Behold as I flay.

As I butcher.

As I destroy.

All that you hold dear.

O, dear Patrych.

What fun we will have.

A few hours later, he experienced his worst nightmare, as the Entity that had corrupted Tress and his Guardsmen used his body like a puppet, all while he only got to watch through his broken eyes and heard the pleading cries, the screams of children, and the sounds of excruciating death.

And still, in the background of the orchestra of nightmares, he could hear the sound of his skin and fat melting off his body.

Splish.

Splash.