"I see no SMILE?!" Zarking the Mad shouted, his voice echoing across the hills as his golden carriage rolled forward slowly behind the marching army. He stood atop the carriage's golden roof platform, fists planted on his hips, glaring down at the massed ranks of the Imperial soldiers and knights marching on the road. "Where is the JOY in conquest?! Where is the LAUGHTER?!"
No one is laughing, though, as that might trigger the Mad Emperor's wrath on them. Only the rhythmic tramp of armored boots and the horses' hooves answered Zarking; everyone is trying their best to ignore the madman. Below where the emperor was standing on top of the carriage, his slave-warriors—hulking brutes clad in full plate armor and their respective warhammers—rode matching war chariots flanking the carriage. They're keeping their eyes out in the surrounding area, ready for any sign of danger, especially right now when the emperor is outside the safety of the imperial palace.
While the army was delayed for a while because Zarking was playing with his sock, they still marched after he finally returned, as he somehow remembered that he was going to war with the Duke of Karo, and Zarba's disappearance was completely forgotten from his insane mind.
"Hey, hey, why do SO MANY people laugh? That's not GOOD, RIGHT??" Zarking was rambling madly as he wildly waved around his sword in the air, even nearly slicing off the feather plume on his helmet. Below, one of the slave warriors flinched as the blade almost slipped out of the emperor's hand and flew towards him. 'Fuck, I'm going to die someday because of this madman!'
"Conquest should be FUN! Funny even! Like a festival! With fireworks! With FLAME! And… roasted pigs!" He paused, scratching his chin. "Actually... I'm hungry. Thomas! Fetch me roasted pig!"
"You already fed your roasted pig to the horses, my emperor." The other slave warrior that was definitely not Thomas replied monotonously, pointing at the large carnivore horses that were pulling Zarking's carriage, which were indeed currently chewing on the pieces of roasted pig in their mouths that Zarking had flung at them sometime earlier in a fit of insanity. The emperor's shoulders slumped dramatically after he saw that.
"Fucking idiot, can't even fly!" Zarking stomped on the golden carriage roof, denting it slightly. Below, the carnivorous horses neigh with a low voice like they agree with Zarking after they swallow the pork down their gullet in delight. Fortunately for them, Zarking is pretty stable at the moment, so they are not going to face his unreasonable retaliation of pure insanity.
Then the emperor's gaze swept across the endless columns of his soldiers marching toward Karo Province, a sea of solemn murmuring and uncertain people that was currently going to a war that they weren't sure they would come back alive from, and in the distance a goat herd could be seen watching them like the goats they are while munching on grasses with a carefree attitude.
"BORING!" Zarking roared, throwing his arms wide to the sky. "No singing? No dancing? What kind of invasion is THIS?!"
But then suddenly, as if summoned by his frustration of boredom, the air hissed. Three black-feathered crossbow bolts sailing through the air from the rocky hillside overlooking the narrow pass where the army is marching—aimed with lethal precision at Zarking's exposed throat and face.
Time seemed to slow down as the bolts closed on their target. The Emperor didn't flinch; he merely blinked, as he never noticed the bolts about to pierce his hide in the first place.
But before the crossbow bolts could find his flesh, the Blade of Ascension in Zarking's hand suddenly moved on its own. It blurred in a streak of light, its blade cutting through the air with no resistance. Sparks bloom as it batted one bolt aside, then twisted impossibly fast to deflect the second into the dirt while the third ricocheted off the flat of the blade with a sharp metallic noise, embedding itself harmlessly in the carriage's roof with a thud.
"The fuck?!" Zarking roared, not in fear or surprise but outrage. His sword still pulsed with magic light in his hand as he scanned where the bolts came from. "Who dares interrupt my BOREDOM?! ARE YOU PIGEONS?!"
On the rocky hillside three assassins in black cloaks could be seen as they quickly ran away after they failed the assassination, while a lot of the soldiers feel secretly disappointed that the mad emperor is unharmed while they stopped marching and entered an alert state, looking around them with their weapons ready while waiting for orders.
"Go drag all their ASSES here at once!!" The mad emperor screamed, pointing his sword at the hill where the bolts originated, and before his words fully faded, the two slave warriors were already moving as they jumped off their chariots, landing with almost ground-shaking thuds, and despite their large build, they actually charged uphill with terrifying speed, as if the weight of armor barely affected them. The two brutish slave warriors jumped from place to place as they scrambled over obstacles like they were enraged monkey-bear hybrids.
Meanwhile, the soldiers and knights scramble into defensive formations below, shields locking and bows nocking as the high-ranking officers shout orders while Zarking remains atop his carriage, tapping his foot impatiently.
"Slow! Slow, slow, slow!" he mutters, then cups his hands around his mouth. "I want them ALIVE! I need new jesters for my court!"
As if hearing a fate worse than death, the assassins immediately kill themselves with hidden poison capsules in their mouths, collapsing among the rocks just as one of the slave warriors' massive gauntlets closes in on them. For most of the people, being the jesters for the mad emperor is a more terrible fate than death; who knows what he's going to make you do or do to you?
And by the way, the last court jester's soul actually got sacrificed in a dubious ritual just to make Glorious the Sock always slippery inside for some reason that no one wants to know…
Anyway, the definitely-not-Thomas slave warrior sees that the assassins are dead from poison, kicks one limp body to check, and then he rolls it downhill toward the carriage under the emperor's confused eyes.
"They're Dead," he grunted, his eye scanning the surroundings for additional threats while thinking that the assassins made a wise choice to escape falling into the madman's hands.
Below, Zarking stomped his foot, cracking the carriage roof further in frustration.
"NO FAIR! Cowards!" He glared at the lifeless forms tumbling down the slope. "Can't even dance properly! Whatever, feed them to the horses!!"
÷×÷×÷
Hours later, after the failed assassination of the emperor Zarking, on the highest balcony of Bastari Castle, Duke Habanero Bubba Bastari, a badly aged man with brown skin and brown eyes wearing a yellow turban, slammed his jeweled goblet onto the stone parapet. Wine splattered like blood across the polished marble as his face flushed crimson beneath his meticulously groomed brown beard.
"FAILURES! USELESS! TRASH! WASTED OF AIR!" A string of curses flew from his mouth. Below him, the bustling courtyard froze at the sound of his outburst.
"All of these fucking assassins! Highly trained from childhood, my ass! What's this unmatched skill, a failing skill?!" He kicked a potted lemon tree nearby, sending citrus rolling across the balcony, while behind the cursing duke stood his spymaster, a gaunt man with short black hair clad in grey silk, who remained perfectly still. "They couldn't even scratch that lunatic bastard and his fucking spawn!"
"What about the Prince?!" Duke Habanero snarled, turning around to his spymaster. "Where is that insolent whelp? Reports claimed he left the capital somehow, heading to God knows where! Yet my assassins find only the Mad Emperor that marching toward my lands?!"
"Sadly, we still don't know, my Lord." The spymaster bowed his head, his voice soft and apologetic, while below the balcony, servants scurried like roaches exposed to light as the Duke resumed cursing the Zigma bloodline.
"This was supposed to be clean! Eliminate the heir, frame Zarking's madness, and rally the other willing lords under my banner while that cursed dynasty crumbles like sand! How the fuck did it change to that bastard actually declaring war on me and marching his crazy ass from the capital to Karo instead?!" Habanero wanted to tear his beard in frustration but couldn't, as that would be stupid.
"Now with the failed assassination, that fucking crazy son of a bitch is about to reach MY lands!" The Duke of Karo gripped around the goblet's stem tight. His plan is going off the rails so badly it could make the next wonder of the world.
The Duke Habanero is not afraid of losing against the imperial army, but it's going to cost him a significant amount of precious resources that he needs to hold his territories together when the inevitable empire-breaking storm comes!
"Where was Prince Zarba last seen?!" He turned to face his spymaster with bloodshot eyes. The spymaster remained statue-still as he reported what he knows to his master. "Our agents lost his trail after he went inside the imperial palace, my lord. He hasn't been seen coming out, and no one has ever seen him again since that day..."
"Whatever, just send more people to find him!" The Duke roared while wondering where the hell the crown prince is.
"I can't have that madman's spawn lurking while I..." Habanero trailed off, his crimson face paling slightly as realization struck. "The empire border! Send all of your men! If Prince Zarba is not an idiot, he'll definitely try to flee the empire!"
It's finally clear to the Duke that the prince has decided to abandon his homeland. Well, considering the overall situation of the empire, he couldn't blame him...
"But I can't just leave him alone…!" The Duke was gritting his teeth, as someday the prince might come back and try to reconquer his homeland; it's unwise to not take care of all the seeds of trouble.
"Hire anyone you can and put the bounty on the prince's head as well!" He ordered his spymaster, who was bowing his head in acknowledgment.
÷×÷×÷
Not far away, concealed behind thick velvet drapes framing the balcony entrance, a beautiful brown-skinned young woman with long brown hair and blue eyes, Lady Hoe—Lady Seraphina Bubba Bastari, pressed a hand to her mouth. She can hear all of her father's furious words behind the curtains, but with how loud he is, she is sure that anyone in the castle could hear it at this point!
Assassination, bounty, Prince Zarba flees the empire. Each word tightened the knot in her stomach. She'd only come to ask her father for money to buy a new dress, but now...
She still remembered Prince Zarba fondly. Not as the Crown Prince, but as the boy who'd quietly handed her his silk handkerchief when the mad emperor had humiliated her and her father publicly at the imperial yearly ball years ago with that accursed name. That bad name… it still sticks to her like a stigma and haunts her to this day.
While courtiers and others snickered and ridiculed them behind their backs and sometimes even said that accursed name "Hoemon" out loud to them after the Mad Emperor's cruel jest about her "ugly" features—Zarba hadn't laughed or joined in. He'd merely met her eyes, offered the handkerchief for her tears, and walked away without a word. No apology, no pity. Just... silence, sympathy, and kindness.
That moment had rooted itself in Seraphina's soul like a stubborn weed, thriving silently all this time amidst her father's ambition and the court's cruelty. She'd collected every scrap of news about him: his elusiveness, his rumored helplessness about his father's madness and disdain for the corrupt ministers, and the way he seemed to not be doing anything vile like other nobles of the empire she heard rumors about.
She would weave elaborate fantasies where she would find him by coincidence, and they would talk about many things, and then he would finally see her true self, Seraphina, not the Hoemon that her father's rivals and others liked to mock.
Now, hearing her father plot his death, that secret obsession over the man who was nice to her one time instantly ignited into cold, protective fury.
"I must warn him...!" Seraphina declared, her hands clutching her dress while her mind worked as the fat hamster inside her head began running on the wheel with desperation.
The heavy velvet curtain muffled her father's continued ranting as she slipped away, her white feather slippers making little sounds across polished stone floors. She moved with practiced grace, ignoring servants and guards to her bedroom.
"I must use his hair…!" Seraphina whispered after entering her room as a plan took form in her mind thanks to the hamster, who was already dead tired...
Years ago, she had bribed a palace maid to retrieve strands from Zarba's comb—a foolish, "romantic" token hidden within a locked jewelry box. Now, it can finally be used for a "legitimate" purpose!
Her fingers trembled as Seraphina unlocked the box, retrieving the dark strands of Zarba hair in a velvet cloth. She feels reluctant to part with it, but Zarba's safety is more important than his hair!
"Let's go find Helga…" She muttered with determination; as the destination was already set, she would visit her witch friend in the city so she could help her with finding Prince Zarba's whereabout.