Chapter 265: Foolish Slaughter and a Breakout

"What business do you have here boy?" A harsh, rough and wholly unpleasant voice echoed from the haughty face of one of the more than twenty guards arrayed before the pungent door.

"I was sent to deliver a message for the great Minister." I answered, frowning beneath my wide sun hat, as I ever so slightly bowed to them.

It was such an unfamiliar action, I was beginning to feel an increasingly burning ache in my back with every repeated action.

"You? A gardener of the Outer Court?" He asked, eyeing me with open suspicion, as a tone of mockery entered his voice.

This irked me.

"Indeed my lord. It was from the princess, who went to inspect our work in the Eastern Gardens." I tried to mix lie with truth, hoping that it would prove more effective.

"The princess?" They asked, all of them looking to one in particular among them, who eyed me wearily.

"And what does the princess wish to tell the Left minister?" He said. "Tell us, and we will make sure to deliver her highness’ words to the great Minister."

"H-Her highness was quiet stern that her words were only for the minister’s ears?" I lightly replied, still acting meek; even throwing a fake stutter at the start of my words, as I eyed all twenty of the men, who were now bristling like agitated porcupines.

"The minister was given a tonic not too long ago. So he will not be able to hear them any way. So I say again, you may tell us, and we will give it to him in due time." He repeated, his tone growing ever colder, while his muscles visibly constricted, as his stance ever so slightly shifted to a half-ready position.

"But my lord, it’s urgent!" I cried out, feeling unfamiliar with my own voice as it came out of my own mouth at such a pitch.

"The Minister is ill!" A second man barked then, taking great strides towards me. "Or did you not hear us boy?"

"Do you need us to help with that?" The first man, now completely abandoning all masks of civility, as he drew a thin dagger from his hip, and then threatingly twirling it in his nimble fingers. "After all, what are the use of ears that can’t even fulfil their only purpose?"

A long, derisive laugh ripped through all twenty of the men.

"Will you now?" I asked before I could stop it. Arrogance dripping from my words, in the same way the mourning dew glides along the bare stone at dawn.

The old tyrant in my mind had stirred awake with a hiss of noxious rage that flared euphorically in my mind, like a warm current through frigid earth. While reckless, mad, bloody and impossibly sweet whispers of visceral outcomes appeared in my mind.

I was growing extremely fed up with the casual way these scum dared to be in my presence. To how their eyes did not shy away from me. To how their hearts did not gallop past a beat or two at my every glance.

I was not accustomed to facing people without fear. Without their palms clammy, and their eyes swimming in their skulls in every direction, unable to hold my gaze for too long. As though their mere staring would cause unknowing offense, inviting worse horrors than the most depraved corners of their mind could ever conjure.

"What did you say?!" A third man screamed then in such a way, that it showed his experience in using it.

"Calm yourself my love." The returned voice of my Eve echoed in my ears then, though it was far less convincing, when her own was dipped in such cold and proud murderous intent, her voice almost sounded like razors racing across a frozen lake.

"Is it done?" I asked in an infinitely quiet whisper.

"Yes." She replied.

"I asked!" The man shouted again, taking another step so that we were nearly nose to nose. "What. Did. You. Say?"

"Nothing. My lord." I replied, taking another brief bow. Though it seemed my eyes had grown a will of their own at that moment, as they refused the indignity of lowering with the rest of me, keeping hold over the stare at the man before me.

And I saw it then. Trepidation. The coward had flinched. Grown less confident the longer he beheld my eyes, and their passage to the one who still demanded the extermination of their entire civilization. Root, stem and all.

I felt the blinding fury still writhe within me, but cold reason was still greater, as I turned to take my leave. Knowing better than this.

"Boy. Wait!" The first man to stand before me called out then. "Captain! This boy’s quite the looker!" He said, bending ever so slightly to get a better look at my face below my wide hat.

"Is he now?" The man addressed as captain, who was the second man to join the first, asked intrigued, as he joined the other near me.

"Tell me boy, do you have a sister?" The first man asked slyly, with a rotten smirk.

"Or better yet, a mother?" Another from behind me burst out laughing, as the rest joined him, with the exception of one, who’s ashen face went unnoticed by the others.

Neither I, nor Eve spoke after that. Rage so vast poets would never be able to describe, engulfed us.

"Have you confirmed the old man’s condition?" I asked, no longer bothering with the now confused men.

"Have you gone mad boy? Who’re you talking to?" The captain asked, still smiling smugly.

"...I have." She said, her tone knowing what was about to come to pass, and she could hardly leave the note of approval from her voice. "He’s alive and well. Though injured, with several broken bones."

"Good." I nodded, as I turned back around.

"I will make sure none know of this any time soon." She assured me, as I felt my muscles erupt with long awaited actions.

The so called captain and the grimy man who asked if I had a sister were the first fools to suffer my wrath.

My thumb dug deep into the captain’s eye socket, as I yanked it to the side, tearing bone, muscle and brain matter in one fluid motion, while the perverted bastard near him had to content himself with my fist closing around his intestines, before I pulled out, dragging them out. Spilling to the floor, like a line of knotted rope unfurling on the ground.

The others were so shocked they didn’t even react, until three others were lying mangled and twitching along with the last two, while their viscera dripped languidly from my curled fingers.

The first to open his mouth, found himself unable to release a single sound through the wave of crimson liquid gushing from his open throat.

Five others had been ripped apart by the time, Eve silently quieted another four who were bout to scream more in incoherent terror than in the intent of alerting their fellows.

"Please...Please..." Not a full thirty seconds had passed when the original twenty who had stood proud and gloating, when they had already been reduced to the last trembling man. The same man who gazed into my eyes. The same man who was too terror struck to laugh with the others.

His head slipped past his neck in a wet flop, as Eve’s blades passed by his neck.

"They were surprisingly weak for what you would assume were members of the warrior elite of the eastern empire." Eve remarked.

"Unless they weren’t members of that elite group of warriors." I noted.

"Men brought in by the rebels to pad out their numbers?" She asked, though it didn’t sound like she needed my answer to make up her mind.

So I simply asked in return, walking forward to push open the door. "Did their attitudes match that of any true imperial guard you’ve ever seen?"

"In such times of disorder and strife, I wouldn’t be surprised if most impossible things came to pass." She uttered.

"Who are you?" The vigilance of the old warrior splayed on the bed, his wounds unhealed and near festering asked us with a ferocity that was clearly taxing his body more than it could.

"Friends minister." I simply said, as I came to his side, and helped him to his feet.

He grunted in pain, swallowing whatever it was he wanted to say.

"He won’t be able to keep up." My Eve quickly assessed.

"He will." I said, slinging his arm around my shoulders, carrying most of his weight. "To Point Four."

"No. There are people close enough to be a threat. Go to Five." She quickly informed me, as I once more took to swiftly traversing through the ancient Palace. Ducking into random rooms whenever Eve’s shadows informed her of a coming patrol, until we finally reached Point Five. The kitchen quarters. More specifically the docking area, where innumerable carriages arrived daily, ladened with goods for the imperial chefs to turn into feasts.