Civil War

"I used to be a hero," the hooded figure said as it said down beside the knight smeared entirely in blood. Wiping the blood of the monster he killed off him, he looked at its dead body slowly eroding away under the sun.

The knight groaned with pain as blood seeped through his shiny metallic armor into the ground.

"I fought and fought and fought, to save the people, to save one of them at least," the hooded figure continued. "But in the end, no one was left."

The hooded figure looked at the knight who was shivering as he was slowly losing consciousness.

"We are much similar in that way," the figure said, patting the knight's head with its slender hands. "We both lost everything that ever meant to us. Left alone at the end."

The knight sobbed as the reality of what had happened hit him with fading breaths. His parents' dead bodies whom the monster killed were disfigured and ripped apart. He could no longer tell which was his mother or which was his father. If the hooded figure hadn't killed the wretched monster, he would have been in a similar shape as his parents.

He gritted his teeth as he felt anger at the unfairness of this tragedy. He always trained hard to become an imperial knight. Day and night were always the same to him. He waved and flung his sword every day tirelessly. But when the monster came, he could do nothing but watch his parents become its food. He wanted revenge. He wanted to become stronger and get payback for all he had gone through.

"I'll kill them," he mumbled half-conscious. "I swear I'll kill all of them."

"You can't," the hooded figure said.

"W... Why?" the knight asked.

"Because you yourself won't exist to kill them." the figure said calmly standing up.

"W... What? What a... are you saying?" the knight looked up at the slender hand reaching out to him from within the pitch-black hood.

"Stories with bad endings need to be erased," the hooded figure said. "You don't know how lucky you are that you can erase yourself."

"What? Didn't you just save me? W... What are you doing now?" the knight shuddered as the hand touched his forehead.

"I wanted to talk to someone. After all, it gets very boring to live in a world without anyone else," the hooded said, and the knight faded away as if he was never there.

"A good story is one where everyone lives a happy life. Yours wasn't."

The hooded figure said so and disappeared into thin air. All that remained was the bloody mess of the parents' bodies and the monster's corpse.

Raymond looked at Lloyd holding a pen between his nose and upper lip and doing his best to keep it there. Raymond sighed and said," Impressive."

Lloyd smiled and caught the pen that fell from above there.

"Isn't it?" he chuckled.

"I was talking about myself who has still not gone batshit crazy even after witnessing such nonsense every day." (Raymond)

"That's mean!" Lloyd cried as he lay flat on his large table.

Raymond ignored his whining and continued," The seventh prince of Behmuth was murdered yesterday on his way back to the main palace from his maternal family. It was a total one-sided massacre."

"Any suspects?" Lloyd asked as he placed the pen back.

"None yet," Raymond said as he flipped through the pages in his hands.

"So it was the King," Lloyd said. "He must've been desperate to make Donovan the heir apparent after what happened with the duchy. He cleared out the only remaining contender. What about the 37th prince?"

"Whereabouts still unknown," Raymond said.

"The civil war might break out sooner than we presumed since the foolish king cleared out the only reason why the Whitlock duchy kept Donovan alive."

"Yes," Raymond said as he placed some papers on the table in front of Lloyd. "I found these while cleaning the study after Lady Fallon returned. What is this marriage arrangement in there?"

Lloyd looked at the papers and they were the official documents of Julia and little Duke Blacqua's engagement with future marriage in prospect.

Lloyd looked up at Raymond as he sighed.

"I was going to reject it at first anyway," Lloyd said, rotating his chair towards the window behind him.

"At first? What about now? Don't tell me you're going to force Lady Julia into this marriage. You know Frank and Lady Julia are sweethearts," Raymond said going in front of him.

"I wouldn't have been opposed to it if it was just that," Lloyd said as he looked at Raymond. "You can't see how that kid looks at my sister. Like he wants to devour her. It's more like a lamb raising a beast in their case."

"Frank would never hurt Lady Julia!" Raymond shouted.

"This is the last time you are taking the side of that brat in this house, Raymond Scarlet!" Lloyd yelled as he stood up. "Next time you want to do it, pack your bags and leave with that cherished 'brother' of yours. And you weren't meant to look through those papers! Julia is MY sister! I can do whatever I need to do to protect her from harm's way. Even if it means snatching her away from that brat and marrying her off to the duchy!"

Raymond stood there for a moment, quite shocked, then he looked down, adjusted his new glasses, and said," I apologize, my lord."

Raymond quietly left the room as Lloyd fell back on his chair and sighed. He couldn't get over the shocked and sad look on Raymond's face before he left. He didn't want o say any of those words but they just kept flowing out of him.

"I can't believe I told him to leave," he muttered as he slowly trudged out of his study and dragged himself on the way to the governess' room.

That room was his refuge. At least for now it really was.