What Choice but Simple Duty?
Korako was there, kneeling in the entrance to the nursery. On her shoulder the white, spectral bird that haunted the streets of...His mouth swallowed around the taste of ash at even the thought of his city's false name. His hands were covered in blood, it streaked across his chest and his face in terrible splashes. Where his sword hung in his hands it dripped to the floor painfully loud amidst the silence. The Citadel had never been this quiet before. Always in some corner there was sound and life and existence.
Now the blue of it was stained red in too many places to count. Viscera and blood from not just the gods but those too who's minds had been too broken to allow to live. They who cried at the discovery of the bodies instead of cheered, they who turned on them with threats and fear and grief. In his chest Eril-Fane felt that same grief try to stir time and time again but his fury kept cutting it back each time. He couldn't afford to let a single thought stray him from his task. He raised his sword, stolen from the collection of the god king, prepared to strike the Goddess of Secrets down when she spoke, her eyes meeting his.
"The children-" She appeared to cut herself off, voice thick with her own unshed tears. "Their talents-" A man makes painful choices.
Eril-Fane's blade swung true and her head rolled into her own pleading and outstretched hands before her body slumped over. When he stepped over her body into the nursery he saw two women, nursemaids, already dead and couldn't decide if Korako had done this or not. She'd not had any blood on her hands or her clothes but that didn't mean she wasn't capable. Already several of the chil- godspawn he corrected himself lay dead in their cots. Now was the time to finish them off.
For Azareen, his beauty, what choice but simple duty? These thoughts consumed his mind but they were not enough to drown out the screams of the terrified and dying children around him. He was not the only one dirtying his hands though. They all had a past to bury in this room.
