“A centrifugal force
Pushing us far away
That's our eternity
We can't escape the force
Crushing us
Gravity is our eternity”
“Are we getting philosophical?” Mary asked, slightly smiling because of my singing. The carriage got a bit on my nerves as it messed up my pronunciation a bit, but the audience was nice.
“At the end, where everything comes together, you look back on your life and see that it all leads to the end.” I said, making sure to use pauses for a more philosophical impression of what I claimed.
“Lucinda, it´s not going to end. We can still see each other afterwards.” She claimed, which was honestly a pipe dream. There was no way I would put her in danger by simply being close to her.
“I know, I know. Hey, do you know how …” I reached into my tight neckline and pulled out a rather long list. “how baron Habsburg looks?”
“Blonde, rather tall, he usually wears red clothes and a monocle … he is not part of any plan though. Why do you want to know?” She asked, already raising her eyebrow in suspicion.
“Just out of pure interest.” I claimed and smiled brightly.
“Lucinda, give me that list.” She said, frowning visibly. I knew I should have asked Mary about my targets way later, so that I wouldn’t have to tell her what kind of massacre I would commit.
“Ehh, there is nothing on this list except for a few ingredients … for cooking, you know?” Needles to say, she wasn’t buying it and snatched the list out of my hands. Naturally, I could have done anything to stop her, but I seriously didn´t want to lie to her more than necessary.
“The king, the first prince, the princess, the prime minister, minister of interior …” She stared for more than half a minute onto this piece of paper until she looked at me disappointed. “Is this a list for who do you need to murder?”
“Yes.” I stated and looked out of the window. I couldn’t bear her gaze any longer.
“Why do you want to incapacitate the whole state?” She asked. She was sharp enough to notice my goal just based on the humans I needed to kill, but couldn’t figure out any reason why, even though my reason was this close to me.
“Do you think you will get out of this mess unscathed, even if I take all the blame on me?” I asked indignantly.
“No, not really. Bu-“
“There is no but. At best you would hang on the walls. I cannot let that happen.” I stated, adamant on pulling it off. If I could ruin the whole Worchester Kingdom and leave the next incompetent king, the current second prince, no other choice but to rely on Mary, everything would sort itself out.
“No, you won´t murder all of them.” She said. My plan was good … good enough for the current situation, and yet she didn´t want to.
“Excuse me?” I said, slightly infuriated.
“I won´t let that happen. They neither deserve to die, nor do they stand in your way. There is no reason for anyone to die today, except for covering up my mistake. And I cannot bear to live with that knowledge.” She was still sticking to her nice and dandy world view, which made me shake my head in frustration.
“I will not let you die.” I said and meant it.
“Why? There is nothing to gain. As far as I am aware, you need a functioning state. The balance of powers between the humans and elves must persist, no?” She was right, but also wrong.
“Mum … you are the only thing left on this shitty world. I lost Luna, was denied the broad majority of my feelings … I cannot bear to lose you as well. And if I need to murder my way through all of humanity … well, that’s a sacrifice I´m willing to make.”
“We need to come up with something different then.” Once again, I looked out of the window, gazed towards the stars and came up with no other solution.
“You are free to do so. You have three minutes.” Bitterly, she balled her hands into fists, but didn´t reply at all. I could see how she was concentrating, but like me, she couldn’t come up with another plan that wouldn’t lead to her execution.
The carriage halted three minutes and fourteen seconds later, right in front of what Mary called a church, while in fact, it was more of a cathedral than anything else. The two towers, flanking a large entrance, were absolutely massive and towered above the surrounding noble mansions. Made out of marble, it must have been especially costly to build this thing, let alone do the ornaments. Two angels hovered above the entrance, right under a large, circular green rose window.
Some would claim it was a beautiful and historic building, while I saw it as the perfect place to murder. If I wanted to be efficient, I needed to keep track of every entrance, window and possible ways to sneakily murder someone. After all, I wasn’t just dealing with high ranking officials and nobles, but also their bodyguards.
Wearing a happy expression, I stepped out of the carriage, Mary right behind me.
“I won´t let you.” It wouldn’t change anything. I was already dead set on going through with it. Mary placed her hands on my shoulders as we strode towards the doors, guarded by two priests in white robes. The heavy iron doors opened right in front of us, revealing an already bustling mass of nobles.
My gaze darted around the room, focusing shortly on my targets until they travelled onwards. I took note of all the exits, darker corners and especially the guards on the side aisles. Naturally, I was rather sneaky while doing so and looked more like an overly exited child than anything else.
As soon as someone right next to us introduced us with a loud voice, the room quieted down a bit, but the nobles soon returned to chatting with their peers like previously.
“Mum, if you would be so kind.” She still had her hands on my shoulders and tried to restrict me from moving away from her. She apparently didn´t think about releasing me at all, but rather took my hand and dragged me towards my primary target.
The king was clad in a white robe as well, just like the priests, but the hem of his attire was ornamented with golden stripes. He directly spotted us as we walked towards him and nodded towards Mary and me, a wine glass in hand.
“You two have organized quite the show.” He commented, probably towards me even though I did absolutely nothing this time.
“You flatter me, your majesty.” Mary said. “If you would be so kind to accompany my child for a little while, I need to organize the first few speeches over there.” She pointed towards the altar, which would be eventually used as a lectern. While she left me with the king for the time being, I had no chance of actually starting my massacre like this. I still needed to find out more about the layout of this cathedral, which I certainly couldn’t do if the king talked to me.
She strode away towards the bishop near the altar who currently talked towards another noble. Sadly, I had trouble seeing anything else because of my height, which also added to the difficulty.
“You seem rather absent today.” The kind said after several seconds of silence. While the first nobles and officials were already seated on the benches, we still stood in the middle of everything. None dared to complain though as we blocked the others from getting to their seats.
“That may be because of my nervousness.” I told him and looked up towards the beautiful nave, fitted with a mural of angels slaying evil creatures. The irony …
“Don’t worry, I have faith your little show will blow us away.”
“Definitely.” I laughed loudly and walked towards the first row with him. “I´m sure you will enjoy it the most.” I said, smiling angel like towards him.
“Great. I heard you are holding a speech as well?”
“So it seems.”
“I cannot wait what you have to say. Your mother seems to hurry quite a bit though … well then, we´ll better get seated before she gets angry.”
“That is probably a wise decision.” I said and strolled to the right bench and seated myself at the very edge of it. Frustrated that Mary would do everything to stop me, I looked around once again, checked where all the guards stood and most importantly, where all the mages were. For now, nobody was seated right next to me, which gave me room to think.
Maybe I could hide when the speeches were all over, discard of all the guards upstairs and then use the resulting panic to take out my targets one by one.
Or I could use the following after party … there were so many chances, Mary couldn’t stop me from using all of them. Convincing the king to give me some more time was another matter though, but I was sure I could do something with the right words.
Mary seemed quite relived as she saw me on the first bench, far away from the king who sat on the other side of the cathedral. She didn´t fool around with the bishop though and finished their talk rather quickly.
“You know you cannot stop me forever.” I hissed out angrily as she sat down beside me.
“I will still try.”
“Why did you allow this event to happen in the first place then? You knew I was going to do something.”
“You never said …” She looked behind her, towards a fat woman who seemed really interested in her hairs all of a sudden and whispered into my ear. “You never said you were going to do something that bad. I thought you would trick everyone here or so.”
“I would hav-“ I whispered, but was soon interrupted by the king who had the first word.
“Ladies and gentlemen, today we have gathered here not for a matter regarding us, but because of our duty to the citizens of our kingdom. As you all know, a great catastrophe has befallen the eastern side of our great city. Thus far, the White family have done exceptionally well in handling this crisis, but even they have their limits … “ This was so … booooooring. I never listened to any speech for more than a few minutes and I can proudly claim I didn´t do so on this day either. The king talked and talked, about their shitty duty, about how he cared about his citizens, even though he only took the stability of the kingdom into consideration. Hypocrisy apparently stood on the curriculum vitae on any king though. During the whole speech, Mary took my hand, which would have been nice usually, but felt rather restrictive this time.
Only as the king finished his speech and Mary stood up to take his place, did she finally let go of me.
“Thank you for your kind words, your majesty. We truly are in a crisis never seen before. As we are still struggling to recuperate our losses in the east …”
I nearly fell asleep this time as well. As much as I loved Mary, her speech was still boring. There was just nothing interesting happening at all, until a door nearby opened. A nun stepped into the main room, completely clad in a white robe which reflected the light nicely. For a few seconds, I discarded her completely and rather returned my complete attention back to the guards, until I noticed how she strode towards the only empty place in this room.
Furthermore, she was completely unnoticed by anyone else. At first, I assumed she was simply ignored, but that quickly changed. Mary didn´t even turn towards her once and no other head in my row even moved an inch away from Mary´s direction. It was as if she was simply invisible for everyone except me.
I stared at her as she sat down right beside me and smiled brightly towards me.
“Long time no see.” She said in a crystal clear voice I remembered quite well. I looked behind me towards the fat woman one last time and noticed how she paid no heed to me as well.
“Do you know how much I hate you?”
“A centrifugal force
Pushing us far away
That's our eternity
We can't escape the force
Crushing us
Gravity is our eternity”
“Are we getting philosophical?” Mary asked, slightly smiling because of my singing. The carriage got a bit on my nerves as it messed up my pronunciation a bit, but the audience was nice.
“At the end, where everything comes together, you look back on your life and see that it all leads to the end.” I said, making sure to use pauses for a more philosophical impression of what I claimed.
“Lucinda, it´s not going to end. We can still see each other afterwards.” She claimed, which was honestly a pipe dream. There was no way I would put her in danger by simply being close to her.
“I know, I know. Hey, do you know how …” I reached into my tight neckline and pulled out a rather long list. “how baron Habsburg looks?”
“Blonde, rather tall, he usually wears red clothes and a monocle … he is not part of any plan though. Why do you want to know?” She asked, already raising her eyebrow in suspicion.
“Just out of pure interest.” I claimed and smiled brightly.
“Lucinda, give me that list.” She said, frowning visibly. I knew I should have asked Mary about my targets way later, so that I wouldn’t have to tell her what kind of massacre I would commit.
“Ehh, there is nothing on this list except for a few ingredients … for cooking, you know?” Needles to say, she wasn’t buying it and snatched the list out of my hands. Naturally, I could have done anything to stop her, but I seriously didn´t want to lie to her more than necessary.
“The king, the first prince, the princess, the prime minister, minister of interior …” She stared for more than half a minute onto this piece of paper until she looked at me disappointed. “Is this a list for who do you need to murder?”
“Yes.” I stated and looked out of the window. I couldn’t bear her gaze any longer.
“Why do you want to incapacitate the whole state?” She asked. She was sharp enough to notice my goal just based on the humans I needed to kill, but couldn’t figure out any reason why, even though my reason was this close to me.
“Do you think you will get out of this mess unscathed, even if I take all the blame on me?” I asked indignantly.
“No, not really. Bu-“
“There is no but. At best you would hang on the walls. I cannot let that happen.” I stated, adamant on pulling it off. If I could ruin the whole Worchester Kingdom and leave the next incompetent king, the current second prince, no other choice but to rely on Mary, everything would sort itself out.
“No, you won´t murder all of them.” She said. My plan was good … good enough for the current situation, and yet she didn´t want to.
“Excuse me?” I said, slightly infuriated.
“I won´t let that happen. They neither deserve to die, nor do they stand in your way. There is no reason for anyone to die today, except for covering up my mistake. And I cannot bear to live with that knowledge.” She was still sticking to her nice and dandy world view, which made me shake my head in frustration.
“I will not let you die.” I said and meant it.
“Why? There is nothing to gain. As far as I am aware, you need a functioning state. The balance of powers between the humans and elves must persist, no?” She was right, but also wrong.
“Mum … you are the only thing left on this shitty world. I lost Luna, was denied the broad majority of my feelings … I cannot bear to lose you as well. And if I need to murder my way through all of humanity … well, that’s a sacrifice I´m willing to make.”
“We need to come up with something different then.” Once again, I looked out of the window, gazed towards the stars and came up with no other solution.
“You are free to do so. You have three minutes.” Bitterly, she balled her hands into fists, but didn´t reply at all. I could see how she was concentrating, but like me, she couldn’t come up with another plan that wouldn’t lead to her execution.
The carriage halted three minutes and fourteen seconds later, right in front of what Mary called a church, while in fact, it was more of a cathedral than anything else. The two towers, flanking a large entrance, were absolutely massive and towered above the surrounding noble mansions. Made out of marble, it must have been especially costly to build this thing, let alone do the ornaments. Two angels hovered above the entrance, right under a large, circular green rose window.
Some would claim it was a beautiful and historic building, while I saw it as the perfect place to murder. If I wanted to be efficient, I needed to keep track of every entrance, window and possible ways to sneakily murder someone. After all, I wasn’t just dealing with high ranking officials and nobles, but also their bodyguards.
Wearing a happy expression, I stepped out of the carriage, Mary right behind me.
“I won´t let you.” It wouldn’t change anything. I was already dead set on going through with it. Mary placed her hands on my shoulders as we strode towards the doors, guarded by two priests in white robes. The heavy iron doors opened right in front of us, revealing an already bustling mass of nobles.
My gaze darted around the room, focusing shortly on my targets until they travelled onwards. I took note of all the exits, darker corners and especially the guards on the side aisles. Naturally, I was rather sneaky while doing so and looked more like an overly exited child than anything else.
As soon as someone right next to us introduced us with a loud voice, the room quieted down a bit, but the nobles soon returned to chatting with their peers like previously.
“Mum, if you would be so kind.” She still had her hands on my shoulders and tried to restrict me from moving away from her. She apparently didn´t think about releasing me at all, but rather took my hand and dragged me towards my primary target.
The king was clad in a white robe as well, just like the priests, but the hem of his attire was ornamented with golden stripes. He directly spotted us as we walked towards him and nodded towards Mary and me, a wine glass in hand.
“You two have organized quite the show.” He commented, probably towards me even though I did absolutely nothing this time.
“You flatter me, your majesty.” Mary said. “If you would be so kind to accompany my child for a little while, I need to organize the first few speeches over there.” She pointed towards the altar, which would be eventually used as a lectern. While she left me with the king for the time being, I had no chance of actually starting my massacre like this. I still needed to find out more about the layout of this cathedral, which I certainly couldn’t do if the king talked to me.
She strode away towards the bishop near the altar who currently talked towards another noble. Sadly, I had trouble seeing anything else because of my height, which also added to the difficulty.
“You seem rather absent today.” The kind said after several seconds of silence. While the first nobles and officials were already seated on the benches, we still stood in the middle of everything. None dared to complain though as we blocked the others from getting to their seats.
“That may be because of my nervousness.” I told him and looked up towards the beautiful nave, fitted with a mural of angels slaying evil creatures. The irony …
“Don’t worry, I have faith your little show will blow us away.”
“Definitely.” I laughed loudly and walked towards the first row with him. “I´m sure you will enjoy it the most.” I said, smiling angel like towards him.
“Great. I heard you are holding a speech as well?”
“So it seems.”
“I cannot wait what you have to say. Your mother seems to hurry quite a bit though … well then, we´ll better get seated before she gets angry.”
“That is probably a wise decision.” I said and strolled to the right bench and seated myself at the very edge of it. Frustrated that Mary would do everything to stop me, I looked around once again, checked where all the guards stood and most importantly, where all the mages were. For now, nobody was seated right next to me, which gave me room to think.
Maybe I could hide when the speeches were all over, discard of all the guards upstairs and then use the resulting panic to take out my targets one by one.
Or I could use the following after party … there were so many chances, Mary couldn’t stop me from using all of them. Convincing the king to give me some more time was another matter though, but I was sure I could do something with the right words.
Mary seemed quite relived as she saw me on the first bench, far away from the king who sat on the other side of the cathedral. She didn´t fool around with the bishop though and finished their talk rather quickly.
“You know you cannot stop me forever.” I hissed out angrily as she sat down beside me.
“I will still try.”
“Why did you allow this event to happen in the first place then? You knew I was going to do something.”
“You never said …” She looked behind her, towards a fat woman who seemed really interested in her hairs all of a sudden and whispered into my ear. “You never said you were going to do something that bad. I thought you would trick everyone here or so.”
“I would hav-“ I whispered, but was soon interrupted by the king who had the first word.
“Ladies and gentlemen, today we have gathered here not for a matter regarding us, but because of our duty to the citizens of our kingdom. As you all know, a great catastrophe has befallen the eastern side of our great city. Thus far, the White family have done exceptionally well in handling this crisis, but even they have their limits … “ This was so … booooooring. I never listened to any speech for more than a few minutes and I can proudly claim I didn´t do so on this day either. The king talked and talked, about their shitty duty, about how he cared about his citizens, even though he only took the stability of the kingdom into consideration. Hypocrisy apparently stood on the curriculum vitae on any king though. During the whole speech, Mary took my hand, which would have been nice usually, but felt rather restrictive this time.
Only as the king finished his speech and Mary stood up to take his place, did she finally let go of me.
“Thank you for your kind words, your majesty. We truly are in a crisis never seen before. As we are still struggling to recuperate our losses in the east …”
I nearly fell asleep this time as well. As much as I loved Mary, her speech was still boring. There was just nothing interesting happening at all, until a door nearby opened. A nun stepped into the main room, completely clad in a white robe which reflected the light nicely. For a few seconds, I discarded her completely and rather returned my complete attention back to the guards, until I noticed how she strode towards the only empty place in this room.
Furthermore, she was completely unnoticed by anyone else. At first, I assumed she was simply ignored, but that quickly changed. Mary didn´t even turn towards her once and no other head in my row even moved an inch away from Mary´s direction. It was as if she was simply invisible for everyone except me.
I stared at her as she sat down right beside me and smiled brightly towards me.
“Long time no see.” She said in a crystal clear voice I remembered quite well. I looked behind me towards the fat woman one last time and noticed how she paid no heed to me as well.
“Do you know how much I hate you?”
