Regicide, Part 2
Kate was unnerved by the discussion and incident with Victoria inside the closet. She felt like she was being watched by a slavering wolf whenever Victoria looked over at her, despite her appearance. She did notice that no matter how mad Victoria got, she seemed to return to normal within seconds, almost unnervingly so. She suddenly turned and grabbed Kate, staring at her menacingly.
"I could kill you and eat you, and nobody would ever know." Victoria said, glaring at Kate. "She died in the attack, they would say."
"What's gotten into you? You've been getting more and more unhinged the longer we've been in here." Kate demanded, actually quite scared of Victoria by this point, but not showing it.
"I'm not sure, really." Victoria admitted, her expression changing in an instant. "It's almost like-wait. Do you hear that?"
Victoria let go of Kate, and looked around, straining to hear something.
"What is it?" Kate asked.
"Music." Victoria said. "Come on, this way."
Victoria simply started dragging Kate by the wrist, paying no mind to her protests or shotgun blasts as they worked their way through the palace. She seemed completely preoccupied with the source of the music she claimed she heard, and was ignoring everything else. At one point they came across a terrified palace guard, and Victoria simply punched a hole straight through his chest and carried on, not even bothering to drink his blood.
Kate was still concerned, but this single minded obsession was better than the increasingly threatening displays she was showing off earlier. She was definitely intrigued by Victoria, as she was almost ethereally beautiful, in the same way an elf was. The capacity for violence and inherent mental instability made her far different from most elves that Kate knew, though.
"Here." Victoria said, stopping at a set of closed doors. She opened them, and was surprised to see a wall of transparent ice.
"What's this?" Kate asked. Then she spotted 3 figures inside. There was no mistaking who the one in the black dress was, as she had met her personally many years ago. "Is that Lady Vordea?"
"Three Gods." Victoria said breathlessly. "Do you hear the song from his violin now, Kate?"
Kate closed her eye and listened. A haunting melody could be heard, once she concentrated. "I know this song..."
"No, you don't. Nobody does. You think you do." Victoria said, her hands on the ice wall. "This is the song of the universe."
"What makes you so sure?"
"I don't know." Victoria admitted.
"Take a brief respite from the pain of your heart." A man's voice said, seeming to come from next to them. "This I command."
Victoria slumped to the ground, and watched the two women in the ballroom dance, her hands on the ice. Kate for her part bowed her head, and said a prayer for all of the friends she had to say good-bye to far too soon. Victoria watched as at one point Eigengrau locked eyes with her and winked, before looking away again. Victoria felt a sudden calmness drench her mind and for a brief moment she felt happy, before it too faded.
"Catherine." Victoria said, her voice calm and without the twinge of madness it usually had. "My insanity will consume me in time. I don't know how the Boss did this for over a hundred years, or how the Baron did it for thousands."
"The Baron?" Kate asked, but Victoria ignored her and kept talking.
"Lady Eigengrau showed me the briefest of visions. You're going to outlive me. Do not weep for me, I won't deserve it. Just, remember me for the human I was, and not the monster I became." Victoria continued, slowly getting to her feet. "Let's go find the Duchess and finish this plot of hers."
---
Elsewhere in the palace, Rebecca was in a state of pure rage, and was simply screaming with white hot anger as she killed guards by the dozens, the gore covering the walls as the vines and plants reacted to Rebecca's rage state, and began to aggressively lash out at anybody unfortunate enough to be near them. The King wasn't in the throne room and that just made Rebecca even madder, so much so that she destroyed his throne in a fit of rage.
As she stalked the halls of the palace, now mostly filled with rubble, dead bodies, and overgrowing plants, the inability to find the King forced her to calm down and think. Where would she hide from an intruder in her manor? Well, she wouldn't hide, but that wasn't the point. She realized after a few seconds of thinking, and set off for the King's bedroom.
Arriving at the bedroom, she found Victoria and Kate already there ahead of her, looting the corpse of a dead noblewoman.
"Vicky what are you doing?" Kate asked as Victoria started to remove the dead woman's clothing.
"I'm taking all this shit." Victoria said as she removed the shirt. "You know how expensive this kind of clothing is?"
"...she got any jewellery?" Kate asked after a pause.
"Oh, gold teeth!" Victoria said, grinning as she held up the woman's head and popped open her mouth.
"Ladies. We still have a King to assassinate." Rebecca said, clapping her hands. "Even though my anger got the best of me and everyone is quite dead, we still can't dawdle. Kate I must express my surprise that you're still clothed."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Kate asked, raising her shotgun and pointing it at Rebecca.
"Frankly I had expected Victoria to rape you in a closet." Rebecca said, sneering at both of them.
Victoria and Kate glanced at each other, wondering if they should tell Rebecca about what happened earlier.
"You think so little of everyone, don't you?" Kate asked.
"Kate. The second person I ever murdered was a maid who tried to force herself on me while I was 15. The third was a man who 'befriended' me, and thought he could overpower me once we were alone. People of all sorts have constantly tried to rape me my entire life. I've gotten a feel for the sort of person who'll do it."
"Yeah, like yourself." Victoria said with a snort.
"Drop it." Rebecca said quite icily.
"Or what? Face it, you still need me." Victoria said as she pulled the gold teeth out of woman's corpse, tossing them to Kate.
"There's children hiding in the castle." Rebecca said, forming a plan to distract Victoria, and make sure she's not present when she kills the King. "Do you want to know where they are?"
"Do I?" Victoria asked, her face flushing immediately as she stopped what she was doing to stare at Rebecca.
"Tell you what. You drop the subject permanently, and in exchange I tell you where they are." Rebecca said, smiling evilly.
"Can I take them home?" Victoria said, licking her lips.
"Oh, no." Rebecca said, her grin growing larger. "No survivors, do you understand?"
"Completely." Victoria said, who was breathing heavily by this point.
"Good. There's 2 in the kitchens, and 3 more hiding in a closet in the north barracks. Now run along." Rebecca said, shooing away Victoria.
Victoria was naked before she reached the end of the hall, and her laughter slowly faded away as she ran to find her prey. Kate looked at Rebecca with a look of disgust, but Rebecca shrugged her shoulders in response.
"The right monster for the job. Would you have shot a child, Catherine?" Rebecca asked.
"Two questions, Becky." Kate asked as she reloaded her shotgun. "One, how did you know where they were, and two, why do they have to die?"
"They're the children of nobility who support the King of Whitemire." Rebecca said, as she pointed at the bedroom door. "And I am a divine creation mage, do you understand what that means? I can sense the living, if I put in the effort."
Kate simply nodded, and then kicked the door open. Inside, the King was waiting, sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room. Seeing Rebecca and Kate enter, he simply nodded and smiled.
"Took you long enough, Duchess." He said, his gray eyes staring at Rebecca from his wrinkled face. "Been waiting for this for eighty years."
"For what? All your men and servants to be slaughtered?" Rebecca asked, walking up to the King. "Catherine show some decorum, we're assassinating a King." Rebecca continued, noticing Kate getting ready to pull the trigger on her shotgun.