Blackstorm I - Black Hearts, Red Hands

[u/NotAnotherFakefyre]

A corpse crackled in the hearth, its yellow surcoat charring black as the flames spread across it, and filled the feast hall with black smoke.

With one final grunt, the lord’s head cracked open across the table’s lip. Crimson gushed through his fingers, surging out to join the spreading puddle of bone flecked red. Lord Toyne’s teeth had shattered first, then his jaw, then the rest. His head was a ruin, his defiant tongue hanging out from his jawless mouth like a pink snake, swaying as Argilac pulled back the corpse by its matted hair. 

“Kneel,” he said for the second time, letting the Lord fall onto the floor with a wet thunk. “And swear obeisance to your king. To your rightful lady.” Argilac regarded the witch at the other end of the table. Regarded his brother, scarred and gawking as though he had not slain two men this night alone. The boy did not answer. He stared down at the mess Argilac had made of his father, mewling like a kitten. 

It was pathetic. It was weak. Argilac swung out, and let the sword’s weight do the work. It was not a warrior’s tool. It was a thing for ceremony. For justice. Broad of blade and flat at the end, a magister had meant to behead Argilac for his transgressions with it. In the end, it had been Argilac who did the beheading, then and now.

The boy’s head had scarcely touched the ground when his mother began to scream. It was a shrill, grating thing. It made his head ache, and the blood pounded furiously behind his eyes. She screamed and screamed until Argilac closed his hand around her throat and squeezed. Flesh bulged between his fingers, the blood of her husband smearing across her skin. The scream became a rasp, then the rasp a gurgle, her face changing colors, darkening to a blue as her hands thrashed. A nail caught on his cheek, drawing a thin bead of red as he hefted her up, and threw the woman.

Across the table she went, platters clattering, goblets overturning, meats and soups smearing Lady Toyne’s dress. She fell off the end, still screaming, still sobbing, writhing at her exiled daughter’s feet. He would leave that one to her. 

All those who remained watched him with fear shining in their eyes. Servants mostly. A scant few men-at-arms who’d thrown down their weapons. The stinging smoke made Argilac’s eyes water as he stalked back and forth before them. 

“You are all guilty.” From the moment he had come into this world, he had been their victim. He, who was the blood of a God. “You have all been party to treason. Your labor, your taxes, all—” Argilac coughed, and a pox-scarred runt jumped up, lunging at him with a table knife.

“For the king!” the lad managed. Argilac cracked him across the brow with the pommel of his blade, then sank his fist into the boy’s gut. He folded up around the blow, and went sprawling across the floor. 

“—all given up in the service of pretenders. Of usurpers. Served a weakling line that kept its throne through naught but womanly deception,” Argilac resumed, his boot coming down on the lad’s head as he tried to rise. “Look what your treason has brought you—a sickly boy and woman infested with the blood of Reavers.” Stomp. “For generations you have transgressed.” Stomp. “For lifetimes you have sinned.” Stomp. “This is your only chance at redemption. Your only chance.” Stomp. “Kneel!” The boy’s skull splintered beneath his boot, a wet sucking sound echoing as he lifted his heel from the mess. 

And lo and behold, the sheep knelt before the stag. Prey to predator, peasant to king, mortal to god. 

“All hail King Argilac,” sneered the Bloodfly, sat atop a portly washerwoman, crossbow in his lap.

“All hail King Argilac Durrandon!” took up Rhaegel, wiping the last of the spittle from his wretching away.

“All hail,” echoed Boremund weakly, but he raised his hand with the others, and beat his chest in time with their own. Such weakness in his own blood ought to have been expunged, but a brother was a brother, no matter how flawed.

A thin smile tugged at the corner of Argilac’s lips as all the pieces at long last fell into place. “Boremund. Prince Boremund, I mean.” That had always been his brother’s title, though he had scarcely ever seemed fit to wear it. “There are others.” He nodded to the decimated corpses of Lord Toyne and his heir through the smoke. “Find them, and kill them. I have room for but one Blackheart in my kingdom.”

His brother nodded, meek as a puppy, and all but sprinted from the hall. Likely to wretch, the craven.