VIRGIL'S POV
"Look alive boy" I heard as a large hand clamped down on my shoulder. I suddenly remembered I was in a wine cellar underneath a mansion with about a hundred other men tightly crammed in the room.
I looked up respectfully at the man who still had his hand on my shoulder. He was a huge and brutish looking man with a large orange beard and bald head. He was known by us Silver Hearts as "Colossus" and I had nothing but admiration for this man.
He slowly sat beside me on the cold ground.
"What's the matter boy?" He asked me concerned. I bit my bottom lip trying to think of an appropriate response. The truth was, I was a nervous wreck, but I could not disappoint Colossus by letting him know my confidence had wavered even a tiny bit.
"Oh it's nothing Captain. I am just thinking about how much things are going to change if we succeed"
"When we succeed" he corrected me sharply.
"Right..." I said as my chest started to heave rapidly. Colossus shook his head and stood up quickly.
"Listen up boys!" He said loudly making everyone attentive. I also got up and now he was looking around the room and at the faces of all the men gathered.
"Today... Today is the day we make a change, a difference. I am tired, are you not?" He asked the room. He was met with confused murmurs.
"I am tired, I could hardly get any sleep last night" a man admitted.
"Not that kind of tired! I am tired of the bullshit this kingdom keeps feeding us!" Colossus said.
"YESSS!" everyone replied in unison.
"All of those filthy nobles and politicians, out there hosting banquets and stupid tea parties while we hardworking men can barely eat?!"
Everyone shouted in protest. My heart was swelling with anger, Colossus was right.
"And you know what's worse? We cannot even complain! You know why? They'll kill us! Kill, kill, kill! If you so much as breath wrongly, kill! If you dare mention their precious king, kill! Nobody should hold that much power!
They act as if they are saints but they are the worst sinners of them all! How much longer will we live in fear?!"
"NOT ANY LONGER!" I screamed in response. Colossus pointed to me and said,
"Yes Virgil! Not any longer! Today we will march into that palace with our heads held high and we will take control!"
Now booming with confidence I threw my left hand up and then placed it on my beating heart. Everyone repeated our salute and Colossus flashed me an earnest smile.
"WE ARE THE SILVER HEARTS! Suit up boys, today, we make history" Colossus said before the room erupted in cheers.
For years I had been secretly part of a rebel group called the Silver Hearts. Almost two decades ago, before I was a member, we had attempted to overthrow the monarchy but failed.
The rest of the kingdom assumed our humiliating defeat would be the end of us, but we spent all those years meticulously plotting and analysing, waiting for the perfect moment to act. Luckily for us, the perfect moment had been served to us on a silver platter.
I still had not fully grasped that Alistair was a sorcerer of some sort, I guess now that I think about it he was always an odd person. I did not believe it at first but after I saw the charred bodies of the guards he was said to have killed I could not deny that magic was responsible.
I was sad that my long time friend had been forced to flee the kingdom for his safety and that he had now become an enemy of the state. But because of what happened, chaos had ensued and the King was inches away from insanity.
The only thing he wanted was to find Alistair and kill him. You would think after what he did to those guards the King would be slightly afraid but he wasn't at all, probably because it was the lives of his soldiers that were at risk and not his. The Catholic church had embarked on numerous witch hunts around the kingdom, if even just one of Alistair's kind had survived the cleanse they assumed many more remained.
In times of panic, the kingdom was weak and so there couldn't be a more perfect timing for our coup.
My friend Jeremiah handed me my armor while already dressed in his.
"Today is the day Virgil, try not to get killed" Jeremiah joked
"No promises" I responded.
I got dressed in my armor. Cheap and incomplete, but it protected all the important parts. Being an independent army we could not afford fancy armors like the royal army had so we had to make do with what we had. We were secretly funded by a few nobles who believed in our cause.
As the finishing touch, we all put on our silver masks, our main identity as Silver Hearts.
Colossus stepped in the center of the room, although we were all masked I could tell it was him because his silver mask unlike everybody else's was spiked and had a streak of red across it.
"Before we leave boys, there is something of utmost importance we must discuss" Colossus said with a serious tone, silence fell over the room.
"I will get straight to the point. I cannot stress enough how important loyalty is among us Silver Hearts. So if anyone here plans on pulling any shit today that might jeopardize our plan, out with it!"
The silence felt more deafening after he said that.
"Or... If you have already pulled some shit, maybe you revealed our plans to our enemies or anyone for that matter, confess now and I might be merciful. Because believe me, I will find out, and you will not even live long enough to regret your actions"
Colossus looked around the room hopefully for anyone to come forward but nobody did. I could not blame him for being so cautious, the reason why we failed in the past was because a spy had been among us and revealed our plans to the kingdom.
Nobody said anything for over a minute, so Colossus added "Alright then, this is also your last chance to leave. You must understand that all our lives are at risk today so you might as well do the honorable thing and back out now if you're too afraid of dying"
I could feel the anxiety growing in the room. After a couple of seconds, a man spoke up.
"I, I think I will leave"
Colossus sighed disappointedly.
"I'm sorry. It's just, well my wife and sons, I am afraid of leaving them"
"Well you should have thought about that before you agreed to fight with us. Leave" Colossus said as he waved his hand dismissively.
The man bowed his head in shame as he took off his armor and started to leave.
"I'm sorry boys" he said as he finally left.
I scoffed with annoyance. How could anyone claim to love their kingdom if they were not willing to die for it? I felt Colossus's disappointment. Numbers were already not on our side, so with anyone that left it put us at a disadvantage.
"Now that that's out of the way..." Colossus was saying before he suddenly slashed his left hand with a knife, collective gasps were heard. With his hand still bleeding, he raised it up and then placed it against his heart.
"You must all now prove your loyalty" Colossus said as he walked up to me, holding the knife. I bravely set out my hand and he gave me a confident nod before slashing my hand with the knife. I winced slightly from the pain but I repeated the salute with dedication. I gave Jeremiah who was next to me a nod and he also set out his hand.
It took a while for Colossus to cover every man in the room, but he finally did and it was time for us to set out on our mission.
MATIAS' POV
"I NEED, MY DAUGHTER, NOW!!" A furious Lord Greenwood screamed with his face already red and covered in sweat.
I sighed and rolled my eyes, this man had taken two hours of my morning ordering me to complete an impossible task.
Pascal and I had received an urgent letter that morning from Lord Greenwood commanding us to hurry down to his manor. I was tempted to ignore him because I already knew what he wanted and I had been telling him the answer to his request for days but he did not relent. But the letter mentioned he was going to pay us simply for the consultation and of course I couldn't say no to that.
Now we were in this man's study and had been repeating the same thing to each other for two hours.
"FIND MY DAUGHTER, BEFORE I DO SOMETHING DRASTIC!"
"That will not be necessary my Lord!" Pascal said trying to calm the man down.
I was a little sympathetic, not knowing where your daughter was and whether or not she was safe must have been hell. But I should have been out dealing with cases that mattered and not dealing with one man's mental breakdown.
Bizarrely, Lord Greenwood started to cry and Pascal held his hand with concern. Pascal and I noticed that he had started to hyperventilate and was losing color in his face. Greenwood suddenly lost his balance and Pascal quickly caught him and set him down on the floor gently.
He placed his head in his palms and started to weep like a baby. I peeked out the door and called a maid I saw passing by. An elderly woman with skin like mine entered the room,
"What was your name again?" I asked her,
"Yesenia my good Sir"
"Alright Yesenia, I'm going to need you to get your Master here some water and maybe some tea as well"
She nodded as she dashed out the door, Pascal was still consoling Greenwood on the ground. Yesenia returned with both water and tea on a tray that she quickly set on the table.
"Please help him Sirs! He has refused to eat for days and will not sleep" Yesenia pleaded with us.
"Please, I'm begging you, find me my daughter. If it's money you want I'll give you money, I'll empty my fucking safe" Greenwood said in a very faint voice. I needed to explain to him once again so I took a seat close to him.
"Greenwood I have tried my best over and over again to explain to you why my hands are tied. Penelope killed a man, not just any man a royal guard. Do you have any idea how serious a crime your daughter committed?"
"My sweet girl would never be capable of murder. That devil corrupted her" Greenwood said gritting his teeth in anger.
"It's unfortunate and I cannot imagine what you are going through. But she is now an enemy to the kingdom and worst of all she ran away with that magic boy, she is way out of my jurisdiction now"
"You cannot let them hurt her. What will the kingdom do to her if they find her?"
"I have no way of telling that"
"Come on, you have some power don't you? Just put in a word or two alright? I beg you"
I mentally sighed, I knew there was no way he was going to let it go.
"Alright, I'll see what I can do. Try to get something to eat" I said as I got up from my seat and left with Pascal.
If there was one thing about me it would be that I have always been a rational thinker. I believed there was a sensible explanation for everything that happened, I did not blame anything I could not explain on some higher power. But after seeing those sparks of lightning explode from Alistair's palms, I hate to admit it but it turned my life upside down.
It made me question everything about myself and how I saw the world. It made me question my own sanity, but everyone saw what happened that day so I definitely was not going mad.
I did not know of any weapon that could produce lightning and it wasn't some trick because men were killed that day. That was actual lightning coming from a man's hand and nobody could deny it. The question that boggled me was, if magic existed, then what else did?
I had heard a tale of the king ordering the execution of a magic filled family while I still served in the army. I thought nothing of it back then, just the usual urban legend, but obviously now it did not seem so far fetched.
But thanks to that pretty bastard this already shitty kingdom was a hellhole now. Savage preaching of the end of days around every corner, people being lynched simply based on suspicion and of course organized executions by the church.
I had not gotten a good night's sleep since all of it started. Pascal and I had made countless arrests and prevented tons of innocent people from being killed. Of course sometimes we were not fast enough, but overall we had the responsibility of maintaining law and order.
As Pascal and I moved through the colorless streets in our carriage, we soon noticed some commotion ahead so we stopped to check it out.
From a distance we could see a helpless girl cornered by a mob of people with weapons, Pascal and I shared a glance as we both reached for our guns, things could get ugly fast.
"BACK TO HELL!" The mob started to chant loudly at the girl.
"I AM INNOCENT!" The girl pleaded.
The mob started to close in on her and so this was our cue to step in.
"Alright stop it right there!" I said loudly as I started to walk quickly towards the crowd. They all turned to look at me.
"No can do! If we the people don't protect ourselves from these monsters then who will?!" A mature woman from the mob shouted back while holding a garden rake.
"It is our job to deal with that so please stop!" Pascal tried to reason with them. The woman looked like she seemed to be considering Pascal's words and then suddenly she rammed the end of her rake into the girls head making her fall to the ground. The mob took this as their command to attack and all quickly started to rain down their weapons on the girl.
I jumped into action, swiftly moving towards the mob with my gun, but then three gunshots rang loudly in the air making me stop in my tracks and cover my ears and also making the mob disperse.
I looked back and saw a furious looking Pascal with his gun still in the air, his chest heaved. Without saying a word to me, he hurried to meet the injured girl on the ground and helped her up.
We both comforted the crying girl who was now bleeding from her head. I noticed that she had short black hair and blue eyes, I know it was ridiculous that I was even considering she might be like Alistair but her eyes lacked that flicker of magic that his had.
She was just one of the many people who had been targeted recently because of the physical similarities she shared with Alistair, she was lucky to still be alive.
As Pascal and I were about to head into our carriage to take the wounded girl to a hospital, a royal messenger arrived and handed me a letter addressed to me by the king. The king had requested my presence at his palace.
VIRGIL'S POV
We had been barreling through a tunnel for hours now, a tunnel we had spent several months digging. It was our only possible entrance into the palace without being detected and we were now nearly at the end of it.
Sweat leaked from my forehead in buckets. Everything we had been planning and preparing for for years was finally here, I couldn't afford to fuck things up.
Colossus marched forward, beaming with an infectious confidence, we had all slipped our masks off because of the heat of the tunnel so I could see the determination on his face. To him, this was a war already won and I hoped he was right.
Jeremiah stepped forward with the explosives. I could already see the end of the tunnel a couple of feet from me so soon we would need to set off the bombs to make an entrance for us. All we waited for was Colossus's orders but then suddenly Jeremiah threw the bombs forward and covered his ears, I instinctively covered mine too before the bomb blast sent us flying a few feet back.
My eyes opened again to dust and rubble surrounding me. Most of our men were on the ground from the blast, but I could see the light from the other end of the tunnel. Jeremiah stumbled as he got up, he held the walls of the outsides of the tunnel as he looked back.
"WE HAVE NO TIME TO WASTE!" He said with eyes burning with courage as he slipped his mask back on.
MATIAS' POV
I was not prepared for the scene I was met with when I entered the throne room of the palace. Four men and women kneeled in front of the king with their hands bound, next to them was the dead body of a man with his head a few feet away, his neck still freshly leaking with blood. Andrei Stefan stood by the king's throne clearly pleased by the sight.
The king menacingly paraded the terrified people with his blood stained sword in his hand, his dead eyes had a hint of insanity behind them. I hurried forward trying to make sense of what was happening but I was quickly forced back by two guards with spears.
"Your grace..." I said as I took a bow. "You called for me. Um... Is there a problem?" I asked calmly, clearly there was a problem.
A woman in the middle turned around and started to beg me.
"PLEASE! STOP HIM! I AM NOT ONE OF THEM I SWEAR, I HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING WRON-"
"SILENCE!" The king said before he brought down his sword on the center of her head. She let out one last groan as blood seeped into her blue eyes and she fell to the ground motionless.
I felt sick to my stomach, it was just as I expected, the king was murdering people based on suspicion. I looked away briefly as he collapsed into his throne exhausted.
Blood stained his hands and thinned white hair, who knew what other horrors he had perpetrated earlier? There were no limits for him, no laws could bind him for he was King Roderic, he was the law.
He was mumbling under his breath in a crazed manner,
"THEY SHOULD BE GONE!" He suddenly screamed out. He got up and turned to me,
"WHY ARE THEY STILL HERE?! I GOT RID OF THEM!" He said as he angrily slashed the chest of one of the men kneeling.
"Clearly someone is not doing his job" Stephan chipped in.
"Why are you not doing something about this?! My men tell me you have not made any arrests so far, is that true?"
My chest tightened,"Yes Your Grace, I have not made any arrests. But-"
"WHY?!"
"Because we truly have no way of knowing"
"They all look the same"
"With all due respect Your Grace, I am sure in this very palace there and about a hundred people with black hair and blue eyes"
My statement made him stop to look around the room, guards and servants matching my description all started to move nervously, I chuckled.
"Are you insulting the king's intelligence?" Stephan asked.
"Of course not. What I am trying to say is, so many people look the same Your Grace, so how can we truly tell which one of them are these..monsters and not?"
"My guards brought these men and women in because they were doing odd things at odd times"
"And that is where I come in. You need not worry yourself about this, as soon as I find any more of them I assure you they will be brought in. We cannot bare the risk of innocent people being punished"
"I also cannot bare the risk of finding out who is innocent and who is not. These demons are like a virus, ignore them for one second and they begin to grow" the King said.
"Like cockroaches" Stephan added, flashing me a taunting smile.
"Which is why we must deal with them immediately, no matter what it take-" the King was saying before an explosion rocked the palace slightly.
My instincts kicked in as I dropped to the ground and slid under a table, several guards rushed out of the room to investigate the blast. The king remained standing with a blank expression, sword still in hand while Stephan was quaking with fear. Panic had filled the room, scared murmurs from the guards and screams from servants.
My mind was still racing with possibilities of what might have caused the explosion. King Rodrick's face suddenly twisted with anger,
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE NOW?!" he asked before he stabbed the heart of one of his prisoners. My eyes darted to the corner of the room and I saw a few guards slip on silver masks, I immediately knew what was happening.
"PROTECT THE KING!" I screamed at the top of my lungs to the guards that still remained. The guards looked around confused before some of them were stabbed by the men in the masks.
"PROTECT ME TOO!" Stephan screamed. I slid out from under the table and immediately pulled out my gun, shooting down a masked man.
Another came for me from my right, aiming his sword down on my head. I pocket my gun and punch the man hard on the side of his elbow, breaking the bone. As he screams in agony and drops his sword, I flip him over my head and shoot him in the head the second he reaches the ground.
I look around and see that chaos has ensued in the throne room. The masked men were even more than I thought and the king's guards tried hard to defend their king from the attackers.
The king stood frozen as guards formed a shield around him and Stephan.
"To the bunker!" I said and they were quickly moved by the guards, I followed behind them to ensure none of the attackers followed us.
VIRGIL'S POV
The explosion had gone off a little earlier than Colossus had preferred, but we had no choice but to continue on. The sound of the blast would have signaled our men on the inside to take control of the throne room.
We moved out of the tunnel swiftly with our weapons ready, the second we stepped into the quadrangle my heart stopped.
Tons of palace guards were already waiting for us with their weapons pointed. The bomb had just gone off mere seconds ago, how could they have already assembled this fast?
I could feel an unspoken anxiety growing between our men, the guards were almost double our numbers.
"SURRENDER NOW!" a guard ordered. I looked to Colossus for courage but I could not see behind his mask. He suddenly let out a powerful scream and charged forward with his two swords, I didn't think twice before following after him.
For the next couple of minutes, all I heard were metal clangs and screams. I could not count how many men had fallen by my sword, but I could tell too many of our men had been killed.
I had not seen Colossus in quite a while and I feared the worst. I lost focus for that split second and was too late to avoid the sword coming at me from behind. As I turned around I saw my life flash before my eyes. The sword connected with my silver mask before Colossus came to my rescue and kicked the guard's waist before slashing him twice at the neck.
The hit from the sword had cracked my mask and slammed into my head slightly. The sudden pain made me groan and my vision started to blur. Colossus quickly grabbed me and yelled to my face,
"GET IT TOGETHER! WE MUST MOVE FORWARD!" He said before taking off in the direction of the already open palace doors, I followed after him with a few men leaving the rest of our men to fend for themselves in the quadrangle.
As we entered the palace we took down all the guards we could as we climbed up the stairs, all the while hoping and praying that we would hear our inside men blow their horn signifying their control of the throne room. With each floor we cleared it seemed even more possible, but our numbers had reduced alarmingly.
We finally reached the fifth floor, just two floors away from the throne room, but as we looked closely it became clear that we had been outnumbered. The palace guards had tightly assembled themselves on the fifth floor and were twice our numbers.
For the first time Colossus looked genuinely worried, I felt my heart sink.
"We will be taking just enough of you alive, you'll make a great example" a guard said with a sinister smile.
It seemed our fate was sealed, yet Colossus was smiling. "Boys! If we go down today, we go down fighting! It was a pleasure fighting alongside you all" he said before he bravely attacked again.
My emotions were swirling. If even Colossus of all people had accepted that we might lose then we were all as good as dead. Yet I felt proud knowing that I could die in what I deemed an honorable death. With tears in my eyes I charged forward and fought with everything I had left.
Jeremiah's scream caught my attention. I searched for him in the midst of all the chaos and found him bloodied and in the grasp of two guards. My instincts kicked in before I could even think, as I jumped forward to save Jeremiah I instantly felt a sword slice into my side.
I collapsed to the ground in pain, I could feel blood oozing out of my new wound. The world started to spin but then Colossus' voice cut through.
"VIRGIL!" he screamed. I was still face first on the ground but then I forced myself to look ahead and I saw Colossus running towards me. He took down every guard that was in his way but just when he had just nearly reached me, he was tackled from all sides and forced to the ground.
"No" I muttered weakly as I forced myself to stand up.
"GET OUT! RETREAT! TELL THE OTHERS!" he said as he tried his best to fight off the guards.
"I can't leave you captain!"
"THAT'S AN ORDER! WE'VE LOST THIS ONE BOY!"
How could he be asking me to abandon him? Even in what seemed to be his final moments he was still selfless. He had given an order and I had to follow it. I blinked back the tears as I took off running in the opposite direction, for the rest of my life I would regret not saying some final words to him before running away.
I felt like a coward as I descended down the stairs and screamed "Retreat" to my comrades. We all scattered like roaches in different directions, some of us still being picked off as we escaped. No horn had been heard, we had failed to take the throne room too.
The rest of what happened was a blur. I had managed to escape the palace alive and Jeremiah was still nowhere to be seen. I must have passed out at some point from my injuries because I woke up confused in an alley.
I realized I had been woken up by the sound of hundreds of peasants marching through the streets. Curious, I got up quickly but pain shot through my body instantly, I had completely forgotten my injuries. The bleeding had stopped thankfully but I was still in a lot of pain.
I decided to investigate what was happening in the streets for that many people to be marching through it. I discarded my armor to avoid suspicion and slowly followed the crowd.
"TREASONIST!" I heard someone from the crowd shout making me jump in fear. But I soon realized the shout wasn't directed at me. As I pushed through the crowd I finally understood what was happening.
To my horror, Colossus was naked and being dragged by a rope tied to a chariot of horses, he wailed as his skin scraped against the hard floor and peeled with every movement.
All of the air in my lungs had abandoned me, my commander was being dragged to his death and I did not know anything I could do to stop it.
Bystanders threw pebbles and anything they could get their hands on at him as he was dragged forward. With tears in my eyes I continued to walk with the crowd until we came to a stop at the town square. There three other chariots waited while the king and his men were seated under a tent.
Our defeat had never been more glaringly clear. The king sat there, crown on his head, still alive and unharmed. We assumed that the kingdom would be weak because it was in a state of panic but perhaps we had been wrong. Perhaps because of the panic, the kingdom had doubled down on its defense.
He got up, sword in hand and pointed to Colossus who was bloodied on the ground.
"THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO RISE AGAINST OUR GREAT KINGDOM!" The king yelled. A familiar silhouette stepped out from the tent, my heart jumped to my throat.
Now cleaned up and dressed in expensive fabric, Jeremiah stood beside the king, an uncanny resemblance now clear as day as they stood side to side. It felt like a bomb had gone off in my head, Jeremiah was not who I thought he was for the months we had worked together and I just knew that somehow he was the reason for our loss.
"With great help from my nephew, we were able to stop these traitors before any real harm was done"
Jeremiah had a proud smile on his face as his uncle spoke.
"Your Grace, you need not thank me for anything. Let us be swift and put this traitor to death"
As Jeremiah spoke, horsemen started to bind Colossus' limbs with chains and the chains to the chariots. My tears poured even more as I knew the gruesome end he would soon meet.
"We have not arrested all the traitors but we are working on it as we speak. Anyone who might have any information please let the authorities know" Jeremiah said.
For a split second Colossus's eyes locked with mine. I felt ice creep into my blood as well as guilt and sorrow, most importantly fear. What if someone noticed me and realized I was one of his men? Me being injured was not helping matters, so I slowly backed away into the crowd until I reached a corner where I still had an alright view of everything, his gaze finally seemed to have left mine.
"NOW!" The King finally gave his orders and the four horses started running in opposite directions. Gut wrenching screams from Colossus filled everyone's ears as his bones were being pulled apart. He was a mighty man so I knew it would take quite a while to pull apart a man like him, so that meant his suffering would be immense.
My tears flowed endlessly, I had never felt that hopeless in my entire life, there was nothing I could do to save the man I looked up to the most in the world and it became even more clear after every loud pop of his bones. I never knew a person could produce such horrible and pain filled sounds. I wanted it to stop, I wanted to tear my eyes away from it but I just could not.
Tendons and muscles had finally started to rip, squirting blood all around, Colossus had begun to choke on his own blood. In one swift motion both his hands and one of his legs were ripped off from the rest of his body. Blood shot into the air in different directions, even staining some spectators.
There was finally a bone chilling silence as what was an exciting spectacle to most had come to an end. Colossus's chest still heaved weakly but that all stopped when the King brought down his heavy sword on his neck, instantly decapitating him.
The King picked up his head and showed it to everyone watching.
"The deed is done" he said.
I ran away without looking back once, completely swept over with sorrow. Every shred of hope and courage I had for a better kingdom had been quashed. Now I knew truly, that anyone who rose against the kingdom would fall and anyone whoever questioned its might would meet a painful end.
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