The duel was bound to end up horrible, but not for Laurenta. The white stones of House Idrizi’s courtyard would be splattered with blood soon if all went well, and even then, blood was due anyways.

Laurenta leaned back in her chair, head cocked high like a peacock, but she also deceived like one too. A gentle, yet stern smile was nothing but a ruse for the brimming rage inside of her. Those who knew her could tell that the Lady of House Barladeanu was on the cusp of tearing the skin off her own face like a mask to reveal the monster beneath it. Perhaps it would only further the disdain for her family name, the supposed stake-wavers and torch-bearers executing their most loyal subjects for the slightest offenses. A vicious cycle, it was for Laurenta, and she knew she wasn’t the one to combat the generations-old mockery. Bitterness was a close friend of hers, and it just so happened that he’d bring along his own friend Hatred without asking.

A pair of noble retainers stood in the center of the courtyard, swinging their longswords in the air to prepare for this duel. Laurenta placed her trust in Luisi, while Lord Velson Idrizi, sitting on the opposite side, placed his in Adam. The two seemed evenly matched, both capable with the sword and weathered from their own battles, but Luisi stood more like an oak trunk compared to Adam’s lithe stature.

“Do you think this will end well, my lady?” one of her servants politely asked.

Laurenta’s lower lip flicked up after she gave it an anxious bite. “I know it will.”

A swift lie, it came so easily. But she once quickly learned that faux assurance was better than honest uncertainty. Raise your chin, spread your feathers, and visualize your victory in front of you. Share that vision with those that follow you, and you don’t need to police them. They’ll just police themselves. Of course, zeal is always the undoing of a dreamer, so somebody has to carry that jug of cold water that wakes the rabble up every once in a while. Laurenta knew ice-cold water like no other, so much so that her hands were freezing cold virtually all the time, and they were especially cold now.

A bell chimed, signaling the beginning of the trial. A sacred soldier donned in blue cloth raised a blue flag in one hand. He was the crusader of law for this duel, the one who officiated the judicial proceedings. The one who carried the King of Silence’s sanctity into the godless castle around them. After the flag was lowered, the crusader’s free hand then made a flurry of sharp gestures, the liturgical language of runespeak. Most likely this warrior could hear, but the deaf were honored, for they knew nothing but silence, the holiest of all states. “May His Majesty watch from above with His law in hand,” the signing said.

The duelists approached one another and pointed a flat hand to one another, then a single finger up into the air. Four potential outcomes that converge into one. Victory for Luisi, victory for Adam, a living draw, and a dead draw. It was a sign of allowing His Majesty’s will to be done in this battle, to make it truly fair. Of course, to actually do that, they’d need an ordained priest, but one was not present. The crusader would serve as witness to the fight, but they knew very little on spiritual matters to fully consecrate a judicial duel. Concern was low for this fight, given that Drae nobles usually handled their affairs personally already.

“Charges of dishonor are presented against Lord Velson of House Idrizi, as called forth by Lady Laurenta of House Barladeanu,” the crusader continued with his runespeak. “May the truth be revealed.”

The truth didn’t need revealing, Laurenta thought. Slander was the only thing she got from the entire nation. The only thing she wanted out of this was to make an example out of the old man’s pride, to defend the legacy of her family’s name. And if blood was the price to pay, then it’d be worth it. It wouldn’t be the last thing she paid in blood.

The judicial charges being signed out made Lord Velson scoff, if for but a brief moment. The man was aged, with a balding scalp and a ruffled wide nose that made him look as if he continually caught a reeking odor. He was dressed in a pristine purple robe that was freshly pressed with an iron, its gold filigree still shimmering from the limited light trickling through the overcast sky. “Are you sure you don’t want to walk away from this? It’ll be less costly for you.”

“Luisi follows me for loyalty, not for kuots.”

“I wasn’t talking about money.” He pulled a strip of meat from a plate of appetizers and devoured it. “You are mistaken in these claims, Lady Laurenta, and you will quickly learn from them,” he said, spitting small beads of fat through his half-grin chewing.

“I’ve made too many mistakes already to have made one here.”

Lord Velson’s eyes almost rolled for her as his attention darted back to the crusader, waiting patiently for both accuser and accused to agree on the terms made. Laurenta nodded her head without a word, her dead-white knuckles bracing on her armrests, while the patriarch of House Idrizi waved his hand. “Get it over with.”

Another chime of the bell rang out, and the warriors perked up against one another, swords pointed forward. Laurenta hoped that Adam would be as sloppy as his lord, but he was much like his very own blade, quick and sharp. Luisi matched him in all but size. If he weren’t clad in the finest clothing that money could afford, he could have been mistaken for a fiery Thessalar. His quick swings were made with their kind of mountainous fury, albeit much more tempered, honed like a surgeon’s scalpel. Adam met his broad-chested opponent’s strikes with a rigidity that betrayed his lean strength.

The clash of swords gained a rhythm: probing for weaknesses with the point of the blade, then moving in to exploit said weaknesses. The clanging of steel on steel quickly wore off its menace, especially when the fighters proved so adept that their exchanges warranted no changes. It was at this point that Lord Velson started shouting from his chair, trying to coach Adam with statements like “skewer him!” or “hit him now!”.

Oh yes, because you’re the expert on swordsmanship now, Velson. Last time I heard you were in a fight was with a gamebird, and it rightfully clawed you in the face, Laurenta mocked. However, her thoughts weren’t too far from wanting to advise Luisi on his form. Her swordplay was leagues below his, but at least hers was sharper than Lord Velson’s pork-shredding teeth. The gnashing dolt was all bark, no bite. She thought of him no better than a headless chicken, waiting to run right off a cliff, or better yet, carelessly stumble into a wolf. She was glad to be that starving beast, waiting for what was due.

A wide arc of Luisi’s sword caught Adam on the arm, and a trickle of blood ran down his sleeve, turning the white into red. The crusader raised his flag towards Laurenta’s adherent, who was already in the process of wiping his blade. Adam didn’t seem to notice the wound until the bell rang for the second bout of the duel.

“Looks like you didn’t need me after all.”

Laurenta had nearly forgotten that the thing was standing behind her still. Its human guise lurched over her chair, now looking like a tall servant girl. When she first summoned it, it took the face of her grandfather, but it quickly changed. In fact, it changed faces all the time, and yet its voice was always recognizable. Rich and gentle, like a muffled hornet’s nest. “Thankfully, otherwise you would have been eradicated,” she whispered between pursed lips.

“Well, not quite. That witless oaf only waved a flag around and rang an irritating bell. But I can’t wait to ruin his life, to play with him before he’s dead.”

“Save your drama for when this is over.”

“But darling, don’t you want some entertainment in the hunt? This is just pitiful. You’re going to win, just let a little tension brew,” it mused, chuckling to itself.

Laurenta grit her teeth. “If you think about ruining this, I will stuff you into a box and drown you in a lake.” She was never told that these things could be annoying sometimes. It blabbered on about how boring the fight was so far, but Laurenta’s rush came from whipping around Lord Velson’s vain righteousness. She harbored no ill will towards Adam, but in the eyes of the law right now, he was his very own lord personified.

The combatants clashed once again, steel cutting through the air with intense precision. A song of battle filled the air, joined by the shuffling of feet and exhales of ironclad resolve. Luisi thrusted his blade forward, but Adam was swift to counter-thrust, his sword sliding along his opponent’s flat. He stuck Luisi through the shoulder, then recoiled back to show that his blade had drawn blood. The crusader’s flag waved for Adam’s victory.

“You snake,” Laurenta seethed under her breath. She would have gutted the cursed thing with her knife if she hadn’t left it with the rest of her belongings. Her ice-cold hands clenched the arms of her chair, instinctually reaching for something to strangle through her composure.

The servant-thing held up its hands, its gentle brow furrowing as if it could be offended. “Now, Lady Laurenta, let’s not make baseless accusations. I promise you, fate has run its course.”

“We’ll see about that.” Lies were too close to home for Laurenta, but she knew the thing couldn’t lie to her. It promised so to her, and if such a promise was broken, it was certain to be punished as she would dictate. She was certain the agreement was still in effect, given that the thing had at least killed Lord Anil, one of the many named during the terms of their agreement. Velson would be one to savor before his death, and this duel would be the shovel of dung to forever tarnish his name.

She peered over, and saw that Velson was equally tense, his shoulders hunched up as he leaned forward in his seat. The Idrizi patriarch continued his lip-flapping that he would have called advice. Laurenta was happy to be on the other side of the courtyard, or otherwise she feared that she would catch a scent of his nausea-inducing breath.

After a few greetings with their swords, the duelists came to a crashing bind before Luisi pushed Adam’s sword down, pivoted the point of his blade up to his throat, and stepped forward. The slender edge gave its target a simple nick on his jaw, but if Luisi lacked his finesse, he would have skewered Adam straight through the windpipe, a second head on Laurenta’s platter.

Part of her wanted her bloody plate to fill up, like she was a living winepress, thirsty to drink up the flowing red. After all, Adam was Velson, according to the eyes of the law. But only a gentle drop of blood came from his face. It looked nearly like a shaving mishap, one that’d certainly heal faster than the wound on his arm. The crusader waved his flag up for Luisi, and the combatants stepped away from one another, sheathing their swords and shaking hands. At least they still held mutual respect for each other, even after the potential chance that they would have been another tombstone.

Velson jumped to his feet, his eyes ablaze with fury. “You cur, you should have listened to me! No wonder your family name is forgotten, with disgraceful swordsmanship like that!”

“Better to be forgotten than hated”, Laurenta mused. She saw Adam continue with the visible appreciation for Luisi’s sparing stroke. He didn’t seem to hear his lord’s drivel despite how loud he was shouting. Laurenta pondered over how he could handle the beratement, the shameful words he was fed. She knew that he had fought in many battles, too many for her to name a single one, so he was probably used to babbling idiots and ear-bleeding orders. Used to the roaring, the squealing, and the weeping. However much disgrace Laurenta felt, she reckoned that Adam was witness to the most rotten filth the world could stir with its wretched cauldron. She might have felt queasy with just its reek, but men of war bathed in it, even drank it like slop on the front lines.

“Do not fret, Lady Laurenta. There is always a time to finally taste that slop,” the servant-thing proclaimed. “And once it touches your lips, there will be so much more that you will be able to stomach. And you will be all the better for it.”

She stood to her feet, looking at the servant-thing, and it cocked its head to the side. “Say the word and I will gladly dispose of him.” A few other servants that surrounded Laurenta were confused as she stared at it. “My lady, are you alright?”

“I am fine, thank you.” She nearly stumbled her way out of her chair before making her way into the center of the courtyard. Luisi broke away from his enthralling conversation with Adam and addressed Laurenta with the bow of his head. “My lady, I hope this pleased you.”

“It has. You fought valiantly, and so did you, Adam of House Tolaj.”

Adam gave her a full bow, despite trails of blood still running down his sleeve and jaw. His gaze was resolute, a deep acknowledgement of her presence. Perhaps it was to avoid the pain of his injuries, or the turbulent noise around him. “It was all in the name of justice, my lady, and it has been delivered into your hands.”

“I am grateful for your participation, and your trust in Luisi. Anyways, we will be departing soon. Tell Lord Velson that his catering was a delight, and seeing my reparations will be more than pleasing.”

“Of course, it will be done.”

The Barladeanu bedchamber was still and quiet, and Laurenta lay on her bed, her hair freed from the royal captivity it was restrained in for the past couple of days.

It was an uncountable number of days since there was warmth at her bedside. She couldn’t recall the nobleman’s name, but frankly, she didn’t want to remember it. He was one shove away from plummeting to his death, and after she learned his real nature, the choice to keep her hands to herself faltered day by day. The valley’s vultures quickly made a feast out of him, and after a couple of nights, he was nothing but bones picked clean.

Unfortunately, the thing seemed to like his guise the most. He had narrow, yet kind eyes, like a soldier from war happy to see his love once again. But more importantly, his hands were hard and smooth at the same time. She feared that if she scratched away at the skin, she’d find a thick block of marble underneath it. But they were warm too, fresh out of a fire. She hoped that things would become a play, a dance between two hearts intertwined, one that was filled with bruises and another that could handle those bruises. But, like everything else in her life, Laurenta was met with a masquerade, this one hiding greed, every lower nobleman’s dream. All the more the reason to hate the thing’s attachment to such a face.

The chill night was full of drifting shadows swallowing the moonlight, and the mountains around the castle shivered in the dark. A gentle draft rolled its way into Laurenta’s room, tickling her silky skin. She was not in the mood for the weather’s playful antics, so she shut the windows and wriggled her way back into her bedsheets. Her eyes grew heavy, and sleep soon swept her up in its arms.

Her mind was hazy, reliving the duel through a dreamy smokescreen. She relived the crossing of swords and accusations, the gratifying anger that Velson oozed in his defeat, the drops of blood splattering onto the courtyard’s stones. She wanted to savor it, since it’d be the last memory of the Idrizi pig.

As she relished in the mental display, the fog thickened, obscuring her sight. She marched towards the last crimson puddles staining the floor, but she was met with nothing but a void.

“You look quite ready.”

Laurenta was met with the thing again, wearing the nobleman’s face. “What do you want? I told you to do your job.”

“Well, I thought I’d let you add a personal touch this time.” It offered her a thick axe with a roughly shaped handle. It screamed commoner’s tool with its weathered complexion and shoddy edge. As the weight settled into her cold hands, it seemed like it was asking to cleave something, anything.

“What do you mean?”

“Come and see.” The noble-thing then pointed into the darkness, and lying on the ground was Velson Idrizi stripped and bound like swine for slaughter. “It was only fair to give you the honors.”

Laurenta looked at the axe in her hand and then to Velson. Her grip tightened, making her knuckles bulge. Velson met her eyes and his fat cheeks were wet with tears, his eyes petrified as if he witnessed an atrocity of the highest magnitude before his eyes. “P-puh-please… let me go. Your reparations, they-they’re on their way, I promise I promise I promise.”

Laurenta choked down a laugh, but let her lips curl into a smile. “Well, can you do one last thing for me?”

“Anything!”

She knelt down and clawed his face, his cheeks squished like wet clay. She wasn’t going to hold anything back now that the thing delivered the fat fool into her hands. “Squeal.”

“Whuh-what?”

“You can understand my words. Squeal for me.”

“I-what? No!”

“I. Said. Squeal!”

The naked lord of House Idrizi mimicked a pig through all of the weeping and the shuddering and the confusion. It was as if the swine was burdened by crippling guilt and was far from ready to wallow in the slimy muck it deserved.

Laurenta could only smell putrid blight and dung. Her father, her mother, her aunt, all of their bodies sprawled out in the town square. The pigs were already feasting on the contents of their skulls when she was finally allowed to see her family again.

“Ha-have you had your fun now, Laurenta?”

“Fun… you think this is fun? Everything is a game to you, everything has been. It’s always been ‘who to trick’ or ‘who to scam’ or ‘who to ruin’, with nothing but your whims to guide you. It would never matter who you picked, Idrizi would always reign as magistrate. And you decided to not just play into a long history of slander, oh no, you took it one step further, and the people believed you. They believed your lies!”

Velson’s tune changed from pleading to accusatory. “They were evil.”

“They were my family! Quite a little fable for you and your little conspiracy to tell, that my family torched our servants and gave birth to demons, when such claims were driven aside long ago as fairy tales, stories that were made just to hate others. That’s all you had to say about us! And what did Barladeanu do to you? Nothing!”

“You… are no noblewoman. No scion of class.”

“Class means nothing when you’re shoveling dung on others. You got your hands filthy, so it’s only fair that I do so for mine. I take no pride in this, but justice is never pretty.”

“You lowly whore, you’ll-”

The axe swung high and bit into the side of his head like a lump of wet wood. A loud crack joined with Laurenta’s frenzied scream as blood and chunks of brain spilled from his ear and onto the ground. Velson’s fat body rolled over like a burlap sack of butchered meat left to rot in a slaughterhouse.

But the axe wasn’t finished, and neither was Laurenta. Chop and chop and chop and chop, over and over in a haze of nothing but red. More blood coated her hands, flecks of it painting her hair and bathrobe as if the Ruinous One flicked its very own brush at her. It was warm, still bubbling fresh from the veins and trickling down between the stone’s cracks below it. She could hear the heat leave the dozens of bloody trenches she cleaved into the corpse, like the hiss of a damp burning log. When the thirst was sated, she left the axehead burrowed into its bulging stomach and stepped back from her handiwork.

Her heart was racing, and yet her hands were still frozen over. She wondered if feeling its innards would bring her warmth, but she had to look away. Her stomach was ironclad, and yet the sight nearly made her vomit. She stood still, trying to pacify her own shaking hands. Lady Laurenta of House Barladeanu, a butcher in the darkness, making art out of nobleman’s viscera and gore that demons would admire.

“Now you’ve had a taste,” the noble-thing said, its hands caressing Laurenta’s shoulders. They seemed larger and firmer than before, perhaps in its ploy to assert itself over her. But say anything about Laurenta, she was no one to issue orders to. She wouldn’t let this thing intimidate her, no matter how big or strong or scary it tried to appear. It leaned down to her ear and whispered, “Another off the list.”

“Only four more left,” she muttered as she turned back to look at the lump of flesh. It was then that she could finally take in her rage-blinded sculpting without a churning stomach. All of its color drained with the blood, leaving the skin pale and chaffed. Laurenta’s joints were still tense, from her shoulders to her knees. She could feel her head pounding, the faint scent of present blood and future rot wafting into her lungs and flowing through her veins. The odor was losing its power, or Laurenta was simply growing nose blind to it. At first she wanted to run and puke into the nearest chamberpot, and now she wanted to maybe even prod into one of the axe wounds.

Then, the murderous high left her as soon as it hit her. Her handiwork turned from artistic display of skull-splitting justice to regal meat and bones in an instant, and the nausea returned. All Laurenta had eaten that day spewed out of her mouth in a single spray, one last noxious baptism for the cadaver at her feet. It felt like all of her insides were sucked right out of her body through her throat, and it forced her down onto her knees.

“It’s a little strong of a sight, I know. But you’re already learning,” 

“I don’t need to learn anything from you,” Laurenta snapped as she wiped vomit from her tingling lips. She stood back to her feet and turned back towards the howling darkness surrounding her. “I’m done here.”

“Goodbye then.”

Laurenta was immediately shoved with the noble-thing’s hefty hands, stumbling on nothing and tumbling into nothing. She felt wind enveloping her, her stomach rolling and rolling, her head spinning. She was falling in a void, she couldn’t tell up from down from left from right.

In an instant, she jerked her head up from the comfort of her pillows as beams of light prodded her eyelids. A yawning breeze kicked the velvet drapes of her bedchamber, with a fragrance of evergreen spring rolling into her room. She checked her hands, then her face and hair, and no blood was found on her person, nor in the silky folds of her bed.

“Good morning, milady,” a servant girl warbled as she arrived with a plate of food and coffee.

Laurenta cooled the steaming cup with her breath and took a sip, silent and devoid of expression. “Did you sleep well last night, milady? You look a little distraught,” the girl asked again through a faltering smile.

“I did, thank you. Just a few dreams here and there.”

“Well, some good news to cheer you up this morning, Lord Velson’s reparations have finally arrived. But some bad news with it as well. We’ve received word that he passed away in his sleep just a few days ago.”

“A shame.”

The servant let out a solemn exhale. “Um, would you like to see the delivery before it goes into the vaults?”

A smile crawled onto Laurenta’s lips. Despite the activity from the night before, an exhilarating rush ran up her spine. Perhaps from the coffee, perhaps from the reparations. Perhaps from a job well done on the noble-thing’s part. Laurenta slipped out of bed, coffee in hand and a bounce in her step. “Yes, I absolutely would."