Chapter Twenty

The whole room was suddenly very quiet, nobody even dared to breathe. Everybody was frozen as they stared at the headless body of their newly crowned monarch which was still standing, still unaware that it had met its end but I didn't give a damn about the reaction of the people in the room. What I did care about was the fact that my hands, both the one that was still attached to me and the one I had cut off to kill the little prick in front of me, were both still encased in the shackle type magical artifact and I didn't have a clue as to how I was going to get free. Sure I could just cut off both my hands and regrow them later but that would take a little more than a day. That would mean that I had to walk around without hands for a whole day which would be really inconvenient so I decided to do something different, I turned around to look at the dumbstruck people behind me and made a simple announcement,

"It looks like your king is no more which means that you will need a new king. Whoever steps forward first and removes these shackles gets to be the new king. Hurry up and make a decision, I don't have all day."

The shocked people around me just continued to stare in disbelief, nobody was willing to step forward which would mean getting closer to me but surprisingly a small woman walked forward without a trace of hesitance. By the time anybody realized what was going on, she had rummaged through the headless body's clothes and retrieved a round plate of metal that was the same color as the shackles covering my hands. She manipulated the plate somehow, making the shackles turn liquid and flow through the air like metallic streams before entering into the plate in the woman's hands.

I picked up my amputated hand from where it was laying after it had been freed from the strange shackles and carefully looked at the small woman in front of me as I reattached my hand.

The first thing I noticed was that she was very small. She was thin and willowy like all the other dark elves but she was also very short, her height not even reaching my chest. Her ebony skin didn't seem as dark as the other dark elves and it had a slight glow that the other elves lacked. Her pointed ears were even more pronounced , the slender tips nearly reaching the top of head. Her features were very delicate and pleasing to the eye, she had a small delicate mouth , a small delicate nose but she had large eyes framed by thick lashes. Her right eye was blood red just like the other dark elves but the left one was actually bright green making her appear a little strange. Overall she looked like a doll, not a doll for a child to play with but something a master craftsman would make and would end up in the display case of some rich collector's collection. She looked very cute but from I knew better, from the way she had acted decisively and the way she didn't flinch when she was searching the corpse, I knew that she wasn't the delicate flower she was pretended to be.

Once my hand was properly reattached, I picked up the crown from where it had fallen a few steps away near the feet of the large and heavily armored men that were supposed to protect the king but had failed miserably. None of them even drew their weapons as I leisurely bent down to retrieve the crown right in front of them. I then forcefully removed the heart of darkness jewel out of the crown and handed the crown over to the small woman who had removed my shackles while keeping the jem.

"There you go. You are now the new queen of Svatalfheim, congratulations."

The woman stared up at me unblinkingly with her large mismatched eyes then she spoke in a melodic voice that sounded like wind chimes, "It is not that simple great warrior. Most of the people in this room have a claim to the throne, once you are gone they will question the legitimacy of my rule and this crown will be meaningless."

"You don't have to worry about that unlike that scum over there , my word actually means something."

I then unsheathed my sword and started to kill everyone in the room. Some tried to escape, some tried to fight back but there weren't any truly strong warriors that could delay me let alone stop me and it didn't even take long before there was nothing in the room besides me and the strange little dark elf woman who had a small sweet smile on her face as she looked at the dead and dismembered bodies of her siblings.