Chapter 101: Guenieve DragonSlay

“Dedric De Norman would never have sacrificed his life for your shitty ass!” Admon shouted as he approached him. “You just ran away like a coward and left him to die alone… fucking coward!”

Siegfried smiled inwardly as he spat a bit of blood onto the carpet. ‘The best way to lie to an idiot is to give him a lie he can easily detect… that way his sparrow brain does the rest of the work all by itself…’ he thought with contempt. ‘Besides, no one would ever believe I was strong enough to assassinate Dedric.’

“Answer!” Admon yelled as he raised his foot.

“I-it’s…” Siegfried tried to say as he curled up.

“Just shut your mouth!” Admon gave him several violent kicks in the ribs.

“Fuck… and my foot hurts on top of that… your bones are fucking hard… I should use a hammer to break them one by one…” Admon muttered as he continued to pound on his brother’s abdomen.

Siegfried took the blows while groaning, letting his body roll on the floor to the rhythm of the impacts.

“I won’t fail to inform my father you incompetent… You want to break our relations with the nobility, is that it!?”

“N-no… my brother… I beg you…” Siegfried stammered while protecting his face.

Admon raised his foot to deliver a boot kick to his ribs. But he had just spotted a small notebook that had slipped from Siegfried’s pocket during his fall. Siegfried tried to rush to pick it up, but Admon was faster: he brutally stomped on his hand.

Admon picked up the object and began to leaf through it, his expression shifting from disgust to anger. “The hottest chicks in the Empire!? The hottest chicks of the Alchemist Clan?” he exclaimed, “What is my fiancée’s name doing on your pervert’s list!?”

Siegfried tried to open his mouth to stammer an explanation, but Admon, beside himself, sent a violent kick straight into his abdomen.

“She’s only second on your shitty list!?”

“Huh?”

During the thirty minutes that followed, Admon Dragonslay unleashed himself on his brother, insulting him with every dog name under the sun. Siegfried pushed out the necessary cries to satisfy his aggressor’s ego.

Finally, Admon sat back down behind his desk, panting, his face purple. He threw the notebook in Siegfried’s face before ordering him to get out of his sight. The second prince got up laboriously, adjusted his torn tunic and left the office with a pathetic gait.

Yet, as soon as the doors closed, Siegfried straightened his frail stature. He had no bruises on his body. On the contrary, one could hear through it the moaning voice of Admon complaining about his feet, which hurt like hell after pounding on his brother’s “soft” body.

“Beating me up like a dog over his fiancée… He must really be in love, that idiot” Siegfried thought as he put away his notebook.

Siegfried knew little about this famous fiancée from the Alchemist Clan. He had seen her from afar during a diplomatic ceremony. The rumors said she was a beauty of exception, gifted with a rare talent for creating complex potions, although her talent as a Chi User was considered null. Admon had fallen for her three years ago, during a visit to the Alchemist Clan, and the engagement had been concluded right afterward to seal a strategic alliance between the Empire and the apothecaries.

“I should do thorough research on her. It might be an ideal pressure point for the day when Admon has to taste terror.”

He headed toward the Empress’s quarters.

As soon as he crossed the threshold of the private zone, the atmosphere changed radically. The air was saturated with the heady scent of flowers. Siegfried entered the inner garden, a lush space protected from the winds by glass walls.

At the center of this floral paradise stood a graceful woman. She had long flaming red hair and emerald green eyes.

Obviously, she was dressed in an imperial robe. After taking a sip of steaming tea, she picked up her brush again and continued working on a canvas that painted the verdant landscape.

In this environment, Guenièvre Dragonslay was in her element, and in Siegfried’s opinion, her beauty seemed multiplied by ten.

The prince had always been skeptical about his mother’s commoner origins, wondering how a simple woman of the people could possess so much natural nobility. But by glancing at her canvas, a succession of formless scribbles and poorly matched colors that had no relation to the landscape, he had to accept that she had ultimately received no noble education.

“Mother…”

Upon hearing her son’s voice, Guenièvre stood up abruptly, abandoning her brush. She rushed toward him and embraced him with a stifling tenderness.

“You little rascal! I was so afraid for you in those damned Catacombs…” she said while affectionately pulling his cheek.

“Where were you afraid from? You were calmly here making scribbles on that infamous canvas…” Siegfried retorted with a crooked smile.

“Hmph! You really understand nothing about art, my son… Don’t be surprised when my works sell for thousands of gold pieces…” she replied with a pouting face.

“That must be it…” Siegfried sighed.

He sat on a chair next to her as she took her place again in front of her easel, starting once more to trace disordered lines.

“So… how did it go?” she asked without looking at him, her tone becoming more serious.

“Well, as we had planned, I took care of Dedric’s case.”

“Good…” Guenièvre murmured. “And in the end, did you cross paths with him? How was he?”

Siegfried remained thoughtful for a moment

“Indeed, Daemon was… how to say… disappointing.”

“Hmmm… That is unfortunate…” the Empress commented as she dipped her brush into a vivid blue. “But you still helped him appropriate the last evil at the bottom of the jar?”

“I was not of great help… He managed to touch it without me influencing him to do so” Siegfried specified. “But I noticed a troubling detail, mother… His thorns tattoo on the left arm did not look at all like that of ‘Conquest’… I could not identify which evil it really was.”

“Thorn… That is of no importance for the moment… Everything unfolded according to the plan”

She set down her palette, approached her son and took him into her arms again, caressing his silver hair gently.

“If Daemon does not yet have the makings of Lancelot, it is enough to give him a little nudge, isn’t it?” the Empress murmured softly.

“Yes, mother…”

“Then you know exactly what remains for you to do…” Guenièvre concluded as she returned to her canvas.