1.1 Insertion

I am not a monster just rational.

My hands gripped my blade, as I brought it bare against the neck of the man kneeling in front of me. The razor edges of my blade drew blood as they passed by caressing his skin.

"Spare me, spare my kin," He begged, shamelessly, yet I knew he meant nothing of it.

So I pressed the blade deeper, and his skin parted only then did I ask, "Why should I spare you? Your tribe that has dared step foot in my land, fought my men, made them bleed. Tell me, what is there for me? Tell me, barbarian king?"

Tell me, hero, tell me my doom, why should I spare you?

"I will work for it, you have seen my prowess, you have seen my axe—" His head rolled on the mud, a ball of black hair covering his battle-scared face. Even his lips were moving as it fell.

I moved my head to the procession that had gathered all around me, men of Dracina's Third Army, my army. "Kill all the prisoners, exterminate the tribe, I want their heads hanging at each crossroad. Let all other tribes know their future if decide to invade Dracian."

"My lord," Galin, a bear of a man, my second in command, spoke up from the crowd, his head hung low as he bowed to me.

"Speak."

"What about the women?" A nobleman is expected to spare the women and the children. I am expected to spare the women and the children. Let them go, so they may nurse their hate and come back seeing revenge.

It is the way of God, after all, to forgive and forget, yet common sense dictates that you do not kill a man so openly and let his family and friends live. And I am not a religious man.

So, with a smile, I answered, "What women and children?"

He looked surprised and then he laughed, the outriders by his side, his cutthroats who rode horses laughed as well, "As you will my lord." He said that but he didn't move to command my men, brawn and brain, hard to come by.

My men are to only be led by him in my absence, otherwise never.

So, I turned to the men, tired, wounded, grieving friends, they were all conscripts, farmers who were just as good as any behind a shield wall or a bow but hardly much else, still, I slimed at them, "You have all worked hard today, your families are safe, you have done your duty to god and your lords." It got me many smiles, and many sighs of relief.

"Now go and claim your spoils."

It was like a party had broken, the army around me disintegrated, some went to pick the fields, and some went to the prison camps as for the rest? It hardly matters where they went. This war was over. For now.

Still, there were two hundred or so around me, the most important part of my army, my heavy cavalry riders, my knights. I held the eyes of one of the centurions, "How many dead?"

"Ten injured, none dead," Good, I smiled brightly at him, and words flowed out of my lips, "Then today we celebrate!"

He nodded but they didn't leave, they were my knights, orphans raised from birth and drilled with loyalty, and they waited for me. Just other knights would for their lord.

We were on a hill, it gave a clear vista of the surroundings, and so my eyes went all the way around, one last time I eyed the fields where the spearmen, the conscripts had held the line, where my Knights had swooped in from the flanks, where we had butchered thousands of migrating barbarians as they fled back to their camps, less an army and more a frightened mob.

In this field which rang of horse hooves mere hours ago, now only crows and ravens screeched their symphony, where stood thousands of men, only lay corpses to be burned tomorrow.

"Let's go."

The knights followed me to camp, where we set our weapons aside and trusted our lives to the night watch. And as I lay in a bed that lured to me sleep, I couldn't help but smile.

Today was over.

My goal was achieved.

A victory that was already to be, a victory my previous self would have won regardless though not without difficulty was now a slaughter.

A defeat that would have proved the Barbarian King, Lucious' metal both in strategy and with his weapon was now a slaughter to be remembered.

The strongest of the barbarians had been brought low today. And in a year...my smile deepened.

And I had killed him, killed Lucious, the lead of a fairy tale of a story. A story where a long lost son returns home as a slave unknowing of his true roots and then ousts the evil affair child.

A story I had thoroughly destroyed today. Crushed.

But I am no fool, I know what is to come, what must be done.

Lucious was not just a story of a righteous hero who strived to do good for his people. His story along with nine others is about saving the world.

"Guess I will have to pick up the slack for that."

As f*cking if.