Bad Omens

Amusement visible on Kalan's face, he reached him, and pulled his hard-steel sword free from its scabbard and pointed it towards Derman's chest, addressing him but obviously trying to encourage his supporters, "for the crime of regicide and by my authority as the new king, you are under arrest, murderer!"

Ignoring him, Derman listened to the sound of footsteps coming from behind him, he knew that his supporters were coming to his side, he needed to stall for time. Addressing Kalan's supporters, he screamed at them, "GO SEE TO THE KING! NOW!"

He was surprised to see that they actually scrambled to go inside to check on the king, so they do not know, he thought. Then who helped Kalan in killing the king?

Turning towards his brother, he calmed himself "you do realize that this could mean civil war now don't you?" he said.

"Not if I kill you first" Kalan answered, "if I kill you right now I would be the hero who killed the king's murderer" he raised his sword extending it to Derman"s neck.

Trying his best to ignore the edge of the sword touching his neck, he kept looking into Kalan's eyes, "do not play the idiot, you know you can't do that, not without a trial by all the ten great families sitting as judges, now tell me…why did you do it? This only made it harder for both of us and complicated everything"

Gritting his teeth, Kalan sheathed his sword, looking behind Derman to the now arriving guards and Derman's personal soldiers, looking very dangerous.

"Let us end this Kalan, now, I know about your dealings with the empire, what would your followers say if they saw all that imperial gold that you have hidden inside your coffers?" Kalan's eyes bulged and his hand went straight to his sword, before he could make even one more move, three guards were on him immediately, unarming him and glaring, while the prince's own guards, whom were torn between choosing to protect him and dying, or choosing to stand down and continue living. Living easily won, and they backed down.

Derma suppressed a sigh of relief from escaping his mouth, having a fight between strengthened ones inside the palace would have been the worst.

"I am the king now! I command you all to arrest this man!" Kalan screeched.

To the side, the one-time supporters of Kalan stood at the doors, confused on what to do, from the inside a tall dangerous looking man walked out, the strongest among Derman's strengthened ones. Bless you Angar, with his hands he was dragging a man, red skinned and wry looking, an empire man, everyone gathered gasped and reached for their swords, but Derman stilled them with a hand, and waited for the man to bring the assassin forward, Angar was following them from behind.

It was a gamble, when he entered the chambers and noticed the trapdoor opened, he thought that whomever did the job could have been long gone. However, the king's blood was still steaming when he entered, which meant that the assassin was still near.

Few people knew that there were secret passageways throughout the whole palace, forgotten and abandoned, until Derman discovered them when he was little by accident, he then spent a very long time with Angar mapping them and making proper use of them for information gathering.

He then had most of the entrances guarded by making use of their network of civilian spies; he made sure that some of his spies were put in place to watch over other things while not realizing that they were watching the entrances.

People cannot betray what they do not know, either way, a dead body will mark the assassin's entrance point to the passageways.

Angar and Derman's most trusted used these passageways to come and go unseen, and Angar, along with two of the strongest of his guards were to be on the watch there throughout the dinner, listening on the proceedings, just to make sure nothing that was unexpected happened.

Nevertheless, even with then on guard, it happened anyway.

Reaching him, the guard, whose name was Hannam, pushed the assassin down on the ground and spoke "your highness, as you ordered, I followed the shadow that you saw escaping the chambers, and I captured this man"

"thank you" he answered, it was a flimsy story that the man clearly thought of on the spot t make an excuse for the reason why he was there, no one saw Derman entering the chambers alone, as there were no guards outside the doors.

However, whomever thought more about it will realize that it was not logical, fortunately everyone was too occupied, looking at the assassin's skin and knowing that war was inevitable.

The empire would be waiting for a declaration of war now.

Raising his leg to the side, Derman whipped it around towards the man's stomach with all his strength, the force of the kick threw the man hard against the wall.

Even though he could not cultivate his body beyond human limits like the strengthened ones, he was still relatively strong, compared to normal people at least.

Dripping blood from his mouth the assassin clutched his side and smiled, "for the empire" he said loudly for all to hear, and then chomped down on something inside his mouth. Immediately he fell forward on his face, his back not rising in breath anymore.

Weird Derman thought, so he was not a strengthened one? He was confused, why would the empire send a normal human as an assassin, and if he was a normal human, then how could he have went unseen by his men on the watch?

Kalam's supporters turned toward him "you killed him!" one said "we could have interrogated him!" the other said.

Calmly Derman turned to them, and spoke softly, "it has been 5 years since the Acklan treaty, before it, we were at war with the empire for two years, and throughout all those years, no spy that the kingdom caught ever lived to tell us anything, this one is no different. Whatever it was that killed him was already inside his mouth, he did not use it until he showed himself to us and proclaimed to be the empire's knife"

That silenced them, they knew it to be true. Derman looked at his brother, confused and unbelieving, but he was used, maybe they promised him the crown, but now the kingdom was at war with them.

Derman suppressed the urge to just go and strangle the stupid little bastard, but he stopped himself, killing him would only do damage now, the king was dead, and his plans were already in motion to suppress all Kalan's supporters.

Kalan whispered, "It isn't possible! They never told me anything about a war!"

Derman approached Kalan and whispered in a quiet voice so that only he can hear. "Whatever happened today, we are still blood, and I will not have you blood on my hands"

Kalan looked at him intently, then with a smirk he said, "You promise?"

something is wrong Derman thought, something is very, very wrong.

Those were not the eyes of a man who had just lost everything.