Chapter 2 || The Storm

Night came and went and before the sun had the chance to rise, Damian woke from his slumber and proceeded to follow his daily routine. After taking care of his hygiene, he began to walk down the hall to check on Lord and Lady Windsor. As he walked, he felt that something was off. The castle was quiet, although it was early in the morning he would always see or hear a few servants hard at work cleaning, cooking, and running errands. As he turned the corner, he noticed that the door had been left open, and from where he stood, he could see that nobody was in the room. Nonetheless, Damian walked closer and peered inside, nothing was out of the ordinary, but he found it suspicious that the bed wasn't made. In fact, it looked messy enough to appear as if they had been snatched from out their sheets.

Slightly disturbed, he closed the door and walked around the castle to the hall where Lawson resided, only to find his door open and room empty. From the door, Damian could see ashes on Lawson's desk.

"Did he destroy the book?" Damian asked himself. If he had destroyed the book, why did everything feel so odd? Damian began to panic and started running frantically throughout the castle, trying to find any sign of his masters. He burst through the door to the courtyard and shouted for them with all the sound he could muster.

"LAWSON! LORD AND LADY WINDSOR! IS ANYONE HERE?" Damian's cries received no answer and before he could let out another shout, he saw something that snatched his voice straight from his throat.

A few of the other servants were huddled around something on the ground in the center of the courtyard. Damian slowly made his way closer to the huddle only to stop dead in his tracks once he realized that the "thing" on the ground was another servant. Damian squinted to identify the servant from a distance as Fergus, the servant who worked directly under Lady Windsor the same way that Damian worked under Lawson. He had been beaten and brutalized to the point where he was almost unrecognizable

"What happened here?" Damian asked, keeping his distance. He figured that the servants may have witnessed what happened and he was desperate for information. However, information was not what he received.

The group of servants slowly turned their heads to look at Damian, their eyes all had a strange greenish yellow tint to them.

"It must be nice..." One of the servants, Gerald, said as he began to approach Damian. "You get to run around a playhouse with little lord Lawson all day while WE slave away earning them their fortune."

With every few words Gerald took another step closer to Damian and soon, a few of the other servants joined him and marched toward Damian slowly.

"Why should you and Fergus get special treatment while we do all the real work and receive the bare minimum!" Gerald's voice grew louder as he spoke. It became clear to Damian that something was wrong, very wrong. He shot a glance towards the courtyard door only to see that it was blocked by another servant, who returned his gaze with a menacing grin.

Damian continued to back away slowly as he desperately scanned his surroundings for anything he could use to defend himself when his eyes finally landed on the spot in the wall where Lawson had crashed yesterday. The sword he was using was still there on the ground.

Without a second thought Damian ran to the sword. As if moths to a flame, the servants chased after him. Damian picked up the sword and put his back against the wall, making sure that everyone was within his line of sight. He held the sword firmly with both hands and assumed a defensive stance.

The servants stopped their pursuit, careful to stay out of the sword's range.

"You can't stop all of us Damian! I doubt you've even swung a blade like that." Gerald said with a smirk. Every time he talked the greenish yellow in his eyes would pulsate slightly, as if it were growing or getting life from the words the man spoke. "They may trust you, but you're still just a servant. They would never allow you to learn something as dangerous as swordplay or magic! Hell, I'm surprised they even let you read!"

As much as it hurt to admit, Gerald was right. Although he was favored by the Windsor family, he was still just a servant at the end of the day, and no amount of "trust" would ever change that. He had watched Lawson wield the weapon countless times, but he had never been allowed to touch it himself.

Damian grit his teeth, unable to find the audacity to deny what he had heard. Instead, he focused on his mission, his purpose. If he was going to be a servant, he would be a damn good one.

"Where are they?" Damian shouted, trying to look as if he had any level of confidence with a sword. The words carried almost no force to Gerald and the other servants and instead of answering him, they smiled and laughed in his face.

"You're worried about them at a time like this?" Gerald said as he roared with laughter. "How dumb of a dog can you be, your owner left you in the jaws of the enemy yet it's HIS safety you're worried about?" Gerald keeled over with laughter and a few of the other servants did the same, the color in their eyes started to grow stronger and stronger, as if it were consuming them.

Gerald wiped a tear of joy from his eye as he spoke. "I wish I could have the privilege of worrying about someone else, but I guess someone like you would never understand. You were born and raised as a lap dog and being a lap dog is all you know. If only your precious mast-"

Gerald's words were interrupted by Damian slashing at his head, leaving a massive cut that ran through his mouth from left to right.

Gerald screamed in agony as he held his hands to his mouth in an effort to stop the bleeding. He slowly collapsed to the floor due to the sheer pain and shock and the other servants looked on in terror.

While the servants were distracted, Damian ran to the courtyard door which led outside the castle's walls. The servant who was previously blocking the door witnessed what happened to Gerald and figured that it'd be best to step aside.

As he ran Damian got a good look at the servant's eyes and noticed that the greenish yellow was much fainter than what he had seen in Gerald.

Damian attempted to charge through the castle door only to realize that it was much more robust than it appeared at first glance. Damian rubbed his aching shoulder for a moment before accepting the fact that he'd have to open the door the normal way, which was a huge blow to his morale and momentum. However, nothing would deal a greater blow than what he saw on the outside.

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The sun was just barely beginning to rise on the Windsor domain, and yet Damian could see everything just as clearly as he would if it were midday. The streets were scorched, and the sky was black. As Damian looked across at what was once a nice and quiet village, he saw nothing except ruin and chaos. Houses were on fire, people were lying dead in the street, and a mysterious green barrier had been put up around the town square.

Damian quickly ran down into the town and the closer he got, the more he saw just how horrible everything truly was. Bodies were scattered across the street. Everywhere he looked he saw something more grotesque and disturbing than what he saw before. Men who had brutalized each other, women being attacked by other women while trying to protect their babies, entire families ripping each other apart as if their very lives depended on it.

As Damian made his way toward the town square, he saw a few people who seemed to be unaffected by whatever it was that caused this, yet with no other option, he was forced to press on without being able to offer them help.

"My duty is to the Windsor family." Damian thought. "As long as I can protect them and ensure their safety, I haven't failed."

Damian raced through the streets just as quickly as thoughts raced through his mind.

"Who did this? WHAT did this?" Damian thought to himself. He had seen magic used before, and of course he had read about its capabilities, but something like this still seemed impossible. Damian couldn't have been more wrong.

The world looks different when you see it through a lens, and for someone who had spent nearly their entire life confined within castle walls, that lens was painfully small.

As the town square came into sight, Damian saw what the people had been fighting against so desperately. He looked on in horror as he watched Lord Windsor fight against the vile beast with all the strength he could muster. He saw the cause, the origin of all this suffering and destruction, he saw a creature so foreign to him, it caused him to freeze dead in his tracks.

He

Saw

Lawson...

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