AThe throne room was just like Orou had seen it last, though much emptier and less majestic than it seemed before. The huge paintings, the golden pillars and the golden throne with a golden phoenix were still intact, though apparently, this wasn’t how the room looked when Vaar had left. His mouth was slightly agape as he took in the scene before him before going to each individual pillar and inspecting it. Using his fingernails to scratch the gold paint off of the pillars, he read what was inscribed on the pillars. The language it was written in was foreign to Orou, but Vaar’s eyes burned with fury as he revealed the writing on each pillar.

The pillars looked to be ancient, made from different stone that the rest of the buildings in the city. The pillars had numerous scratch marks on them as well as large holes inside of them. As the gold paint came off, Orou could see that the pillars were half dyed red, though the base of the pillar was the deepest shade of red amongst them. Besides the red color, the pillars were also scorched black, though surprisingly, the spot that was scorched the most was more than six meters up the pillar. This was the case with each and every pillar and as Grizz stared ahead, his eyes widened as if he had realised something. Although he didn’t say anything, his hand was nearing one of his hidden short swords and he approached Orou, carefully looking around

Vaar approached the throne step by step, glaring at the phoenix who was perched on top of the golden throne. Orou couldn’t see Vaar’s hand in motion as all of the sudden, both of the phoenix’s wings were torn off of its body and were tossed on the ground. Continuing his assault on the golden phoenix, his five fingers gripped its head and twisted it. The golden phoenix screeched in pain as it animated and tried to use its wings to fly away, but instead of flying away, it only made its pain much worse. Vaar completely twisted its head and after not hearing any more screeches, he threw it on the ground next to the wings. The gold melted from the phoenix’s body and turned into blood, which was sucked into the golden floor they were standing on.

As he was doing this, the Black Knights spread through the throne room and assumed the roles of the royal guards, which stood in the same position when Orou had seen the king for the first time. With a sneer on his face, Vaar sat down on the throne and beckoned the two of them to approach closer. Looking around him, he said: “I’ll deal with the mess here later, but for now, I need to figure out what to do with the two of you. You see, while you freed me from my exile, you have also killed one of my most loyal subjects. Though his motives still unclear to me as he could have freed me years ago, his contribution to the revolution was great.”

“Without him, the city is defenseless. The great barrier is what has protected this kingdom during the direst of times, but without him, it would take several weeks of sifting through his research and reading several ancient tomes to find the way to reconstruct it. Seeing that you’re the people who killed him, I assign you the task of going into the Fallen Mountains and extracting the largest Blood Crystal you can find, though not smaller than the size of my fist.” Vaar’s voice didn’t hold any emotion when talking about the death of the shaman and with confidence and authority matching that of the previous king, he commanded both of them to carry out his task.

Grizz looked like he had something to say upon hearing the task they had been assigned, but he swallowed his words as he noticed all of the Black Knights standing in position to attack them if something went wrong. Vaar noticed Grizz’s discomfort, but he didn’t pay any attention to it. Instead, he stood up from his throne and snapped his fingers, the blackness from his skin fading as he did so. The sickly glow unraveled itself to reveal multiple black strands, which started to weave themselves together into two black faces. First was the shape of the face, then the details and then the blood-curdling expression. Both of them shuddered as the two faces opened their eyes and stared directly at them, all the while screaming and shouting in pain.

“Of course, there should be an incentive to complete the task that I’ve given you. Who knows if you decided to simply run away or not finish my task. In this case, the incentive is to live and see another day. If you aren’t here after three days, the curse will take effect and within seconds, you will find your skin shriveled, your hair turned to white and the blood in your body to be completely gone. I hope you won’t be so foolish to run away or return here empty-handed. Trust me, my wrath is much worse than what the curse could do to you.” As the king continued speaking, the faces started to approach closer and closer. Grizz’s body was trembling as he kept looking around for the source of his terror, though the only thing he could feel was encroaching doom.

The reaction from Orou’s body was less intense, but he knew that the consequences of having the curse merge with his body would be unpleasant. His instincts took over as he started to create the formation for the beam of light spell, rapidly assembling the spirits in hopes that the light could dispel the tortured faces. Orou let out a sigh of relief in his head as he reached the end of his spell, the faces about to collide with their bodies. What Orou didn’t account for was Vaar, who was looking at the ongoing scene with a smirk on his face. Drawing a single black strand out of his body, he aimed his finger towards Orou’s head and immediately, the strand, just like a flying arrow, started soaring through the air, threatening to pierce Orou’s head if he didn’t do anything.

Realising that there was no way to complete the spell before the black strand reached his body, he started to rapidly move backwards, but as the black line pierced into the ground, the face followed him at the same distance that it was before. No matter how much Orou bit at it, his attacks went through it and moments later, the screaming face merged with his body, occupying a spot in the middle of his body. Orou violently shuddered as a cold sensation spread through his body, but besides that, there was no visible effect on his body. As usual, Orou’s blood core started its work, wanting to cure Orou of what was ailing him, but this time, it had finally met its match.

When the waves collided with the shrieking face, a strange, snow white aura appeared around it, repelling the wave and chilling his body at the same time. No matter how many times the waves assaulted the face, the result was the same. For now, Orou had dejectedly accepted his fate, though he had no intention of giving up once he had escaped the palace and gotten himself far away from Vaar.

“Once you return, I’ll remove the curse and grant you a position as one of my aides, so that you might help me conquer the world, starting from the human kingdom to our west. The sooner you return, the better. Now excuse me, I have a few matters of my own to deal with.” Vaar placed his hand on his chest and the blackness completely drained from him. In his hands, he held the familiar serpentine sword, which was infused with several black strands and surrounded with the sickly glow. Plunging the serpentine sword into the ground, Vaar started muttering something to himself, but the two of them didn’t stay for long enough to find out what Vaar was doing.