8 CH7:R:An Ending Embrace.

Reanna's face pales to Stolworts collapsing form onto the hard tiled floor.

'No this cannot be happening.'

Reanna remembers Stolwort as the ever-stalwart steward, who hid her candies when her parents grounded her for her stubborn and un-lady-like actions during her early teens. The memory of his face shattering onto Balic's warhammer made Reanna vomit her vegetable soup onto the dinner room's floor.

"That was just a brain teaser." Balic snarks, grinning at the expressions plastered on the families face.

Reanna's father Rembrant reacted first among his family, he drop his beef knife on to table. He then quickly took an empty plate besides him and threw the plate into Balic face. The sneer on Balic's face turns into surprise as the plate shatters itself on impact.

"Take the kids into the servants kitchen, Rihanna."

"Rem, my love! Come with us?"

"No time, just do as I say woman, just this once..."

Rembrant's right hand went down to the dinner table once more, picking up the beef knife once again.

Balic's face morphs from surprise into fury in an instance. He picks out the porcelain fragments out of his bruised face. Balic, glaring with rage at the retreating children and mother, heading towards the backdoors into the kitchen quarters.

"You should not have done that, milord." Balic sneers while placing his visor down with his left metal gauntlet. Rembrant sighs in acceptance, seeing his family leaving through the servant doors. He glares back to Balic.

"You should know this Balic already, there are no rules in bloody murder."

Balic's sneer turns into a dastardly smirk at Rembrant's choice of words.

The door closes to Reanna line of sight, hoping this would not be the last time she sees her father. The door clattered closed. Servants and kitchen assistance began to barricade the locked door with chairs and tables that were plentiful in the kitchen area. The servants and kitchen staff nervously clutch their kitchen utensils and also Chef Japar holsters up a big machete knife to his person.

Rihanna, Reanna's mother tried to calm her frayed nerves as she panted out her breath. Reanna clutching Regulus besides her as their mother thinks a way out of this predicament.

"Damn those Rhaodian swines." Her mother curses.

"We need to exit the kitchen, see if we can find some household guards to assist your father." Their mother formulates.

Reanna holding her brother beside her, they follow their mother passing the panicky kitchen staff and exiting into the hallway. Screams and clangs of swords clashing can be heard all around the household. Regulus tightly clutches his sister as they pave away around the conflict searching for a friendly face in the fray.

Two men with covered by a black handkerchief over their face spots them after they recently dismember a household guard.

"Over there!" The man who spotted them first calls out with a Rhaodian accent. Their mother turns away from their direction to quickly escape the men's line of sight. The men unfazed with their brutality of the household guard's corpse, kick it aside to chase after the retreating Recrest family.

Their mother took a gambit, opening one of the many corridors in the hallway.

"Get inside here!" she pushes her children into the small space corridor with janitorial utensils inside. Reanna shoving Regulus in first uncomfortably follows in. Their mother squishes herself onto Reanna back as she shakily closes the corridor door without a sound.

Regulus panted heavily from all the running they did throughout the hallway. Reanna still remembers Stolworts face being impaled by the warhammer spike, she shakes her head to get that memory out of her head at this point in time. Her mother breathing began to halt, as two men rush by passing their corridor door.

"Did you see where they went?"

"No fucking clue."

"Let's check these corridors, they couldn't have gone far on how that lady was dressed."

"Let's show them a good time aye."

Reanna began to panic at the idea of getting caught by these men. Their mother sighs out a deep breath.

"Reanna, take Regulus as far as you can out of this house, head to your eldest brother, at the army camps."

"Mother I-"

Reanna's mother pushes open the door, taking out a broom from the janitorial utensils, swinging it with abandon as they exit through the door. Thin air was all she managed to swing at as the two men were only 5 paces away from them with an opened corridor.

"There they are!" The man who spotted them the first, again spouted.

Reanna's mother swings at them with her broomstick while Reanna was clutching her frighten brother's hand trying to lead him away from their mother heroics.

"Mother! Noo! Please don't leave us! Mother!" Regulus sputters out with balling tears glimmering around his eyes. Reanna tries to pull her distraught brother away from the ongoing scene of her Mother battering away with her broomsticks towards the flabbergasted men.

A man annoyed with their mother's broom slapping his person ignored the oncoming blow and thrust his half sword into her mother's abdomen. Their mother collapse at the mortal blow. Regulus still eyes balling froze at their mother's downfall. Reanna reaction was all to the same to her brother's reaction, the shock of their mother being impaled in front of them will never leave their minds.

Jayce hurling himself behind the two men, swung his rapier slitting the neck of one of their assailants as their backs. After his precise movements, he is in a duelist stance, he hops forward thrusting into the other man's leather chest. The man with his sword in their mother abdomen try to pull it out before he would get impaled by Jayce's rapier point. Too late, the man shook on his final death throw and collapsed onto the ground, with a pierced heart.

Reanna took back her senses with a ferocity she held deep within. She took her balling brother roughly towards Jayce kneeling form near her mother's death place. Her mother coughs out blood as her life bleeds out of her, both Reanna and Regulus collapse kneeling on the bloody paved tiles of the hallway. Her mother glances their way, holding her pain with a bloody smile.

"Look after your brother, Re..my love..."

"I will, mother...I will"

"Mother please don't go." Regulus sputters out, tears slamming on their mother's paling face.

"Oh Reggie, my love, my darling…"

Reanna's mother eyes began to fade out in glimmer as she lovingly gazes at her sobbing youngest son. Jayce searching onwards with an aftershock expression of killing a man for the first time, he huddles beside them, places his hand on Reanna's shoulder.

"We have to head out of here, Lady Reanna." Jayce advise with a shellshock expression.

"Give us a damn moment." Reanna furiously ignores Jayce advice, as her brother clutches the hand of their deceased mother. She glances down her mother deceased form and held out a scream of it all. 'I will not forgive them...ever…'

Balic barges into the hallway with two similar garb men at his back, Balic spots them, finally found his quarry. Jayce and Reanna both turn to their commotion, their face both pale.

Jayce glances back at Reanna with Resolve.

"Take your brother out to the back courtyard Reanna, I am sorry that I did not come sooner." He said to her with a sense of lost hope between them. 'This is the first time he called me by my name without me prompting…'

Jayce firmly standing tall as he could, flicks his rapier guard to his lips then flicks it out to the side as he usually does during the start of their sparring.

"I am Jayce Recraft, Household Retainer to the Recrest...And you will not get past me. fiends."

Jayce declares as he marches towards Balic and the two men beside him.

Reanna looking at Jayce back hears a shuddering cry from Regulus, making her look back at her balling brother. 'I need to my brother and me out of here, but Jayce.'

The yearning to stay help Jayce conflicts with her rational, Reanna begins to focus her resolve, she have a brother to protect. She pulls up her brother as she stood, holding her squirming brother tightly as she drags and prods him to get moving out of the hallway.

Reanna's brother Regulus squirms and shook in trying to escape his sister grasping resolve. Clangs and clings can be heard behind as they exit the hallway into the inner courtyard with a back exit from the estate.

Passing the exotic garden art, and the blooming night flowers Reanna pulls Regulus onwards to the rusty courtyard back-gated entrance, a shadowy clad hunch man is beside the gate, the man sights them an began elderly limping towards their direction.

The two men who were following Balic suddenly appear behind them at a jog. Reanna pushes Regulus onwards towards the elderly form, so they can exit through the back gate.

"Run, the estate is under assault," Reanna warns the old man as they hurdled pass him. The hunch clad man ignores her frantic warning heads towards the two sprinting men.

The two sprinting men halted to the presences of an elderly forming waddling towards them.

"Hey old man, get away if you do not want a sword in your guts." One the men sneered at the hunched figure.

"Ahem, I am sorry? But where am I?"

"Are you daft old man?"

"Oh right, the Recrest estate."

The hunched and cloaked figure tumbles and pivots, throwing a hurling dagger towards one of the men out of his cloak.