SPLASH!
When Rudolf opened his eyes, it was as though he had two pairs of them. His head felt impossibly heavy, his neck strained uhe weight, and there was a disturbing pressure oher side of his skull. Then it hit him—he had two heads, fused to his torso.
“AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAHH! AAHH! AAAAAAAH!!”
“Remarkable, isn’t it? I cut off one head, and two grow back,” came a familiar voice. The man lounged in a chair, watg calmly as Rudolf struggled against the s holding him to the wall.
Rudolf's eyes widened, aried to speak—only to realize that he didn’t know which mouth to use. “Aa… aa! Aaah!”
“What did you… you dare…”
“…you do to me?!”
It was as if his mind had been cleaved in two, each half battling for trol. The cacophony of his thoughts poured out through both mouths, each head betraying a different piece of his fractured sciousness. “Stop! This is hell—kill me! Make it stop! Kill! Kill me! Spare me!”
Each mouth spoke its own nightmare, the twisted reality that now governed his existewo voices, two streams of desperate pleas, entwining into something far mrotesque than the sum of their parts.
“I haven’t even begun,” the tyrant replied, almost amused.
Suddenly, one of Rudolf’s heads began to cough up blood, and the screams began again—louder, med, more pitiful.
“What do you want from me…? Stop this…”
The other head could only choke out, in a broken whisper, “… kill me.”
“Oh, I will kill you,” the tyrant said. “I will kill you if you give me what I want.”
“Anything! Please! Just let me… let me… let me…”
“Tell me everything you know about the Alliahe Seven Heavens, and the Overlords,” Burn said. “Everything.”
***
CLASH!!!
In the dimly lit outskirts of the capital, a symphony of g metal echoed through the narrow alleyainting a se of chaos ripe for a spectacle.
Two masked figures, draped in bck, wove through the shadows like whispers, their movements a dance of desperation and finesse.
They were not just running; they were maneuvering through a grim game of cat and mouse, blissfully unaware that they rehearsed their moving eulogy with every fleeting sed.
Behind them, a legion of guards—also bd sp menag masks—pursued with relentless fervor. The air was thick with tension, a delicious irony in their synized thuds as they crashed against cobblestones in futile attempts to close in.
The first masked fugitive leaped gracefully over a stack of discarded crates, nding with the fidence of someone who had rehearsed this escape iheater of their mind.
The sed, however, tripped over the crates. With a ghat screamed, "Really?! Now?” and a gnce back that said, “Sorry!” they were off again, leaving a trail of uional edy amid their dire straits.
As the guards closed in, swlistening ominously uhe flickering light of a solitary ntern, a sinister gleam danced in their cold, calg eyes. Heavy boots echoed on the cobblestone, an uling rhythm promising iable closure.
deep bck leather, the guards were a daunting assembly, each figure a dark silhouette against the night. At their sides, wickedly curved bdes caught the faint glow, wielded by hands that relished the thought of embr the alleyways with tales of failure.
The two fugitives, hearts rag, exged fleeting gheir smiles uheir masks of bravadically out of pce. They sprihoughts rag with the hope of escape, only to be met with the chilling realization that they had been encircled.
Shadows slipped from the rooftops, figures poised like vultures, throwing bdes glinting in the dim light, ready to rain down like merciless judgment. No way out.
The alley shrank, walls closing in as figures emerged from the darkness, shades darker than the night itself. Bck cloaks billowed ominously, blending seamlessly into the shadows, while the metallic hiss of steel whispered promises of misfortune.
“Tan, I think we should kill them all after all,” one of the fugitives said.
“Did y it?” the other one asked.
“Always,” she said as she threw oion bottle at him.
As the potion glimmered ominously in the moonlight, the pursuers watched with a mix of fusion and disbelief. One pursuer wondered what those potions were, squinting through the darkness as if expeg a superhero transformation.
In that moment, the fugitives dowhe potion like it was a shot of overpriced whiskey, their grins mismatched to the gravity of the situation. A deafening silence fell, anticipating what would happen after.
“Huh? Nothing?”
The pursuers exged baffled gnces.
“Get them!”
At their leader's and, they took off, charging forward and ering their targets in a narrow alley. But before they could even catch their breath, the duo pulled a move straight out of a fever dream. Like a pair of agile cats, they bounded off the smooth walls, vaulting toward the roof.
“Stop them! Attack!”
And if that wasn’t annoying enough, their movements were perfectly synized, like a duet of acrobatic show-offs, shoving and hauling each other upward. The rooftop assaints began hurling bdes and daggers, but it was as if the ons had developed stage fright and couldn’t hit a thing.
“What is this? They’re too fast!”
As the pair asded, it became obvious that something strange was happening. Their eyes… were those hearts? Pink, heart-shaped eyes?
The potion they’d chugged earlier…
They op opposite rooftops—one drawing a rapier and the other wielding a bow with zero arrows in sight. The Force art masters had clearly arrived in full, fshy form.
But then, their dramatient was rudely interrupted. The leader of the pursuers leapt up in a single, unnervingly powerful bound, joining them on the roof and leaving the pair momentarily impressed.
“Oh, great. He’s strong,” said the man with the bow.
“Think he’s as strong as Gahad?” the woman with the rapier asked, her tone dripping with skepticism.
The ma out a dry chuckle. “What, Gahad? The walking nightmare? Are you plimenting this random guy?”
The woman rolled her eyes. “Well, then we ’t lose. Imagine disgrag the Round Table.”
“Absolutely. But he’s probably as strong as Morien.”
“Det parison.”
The leader's gaze flicked betweewo, taking in the heart-shaped eyes. “Hmm… pis after downing some random potion. You’re…”
“Oh, look at that. We’ve been reized again, Tan,” the woman drawled.
“It’s the price of using nature moves on an infiltration gig,” Tan replied, sighing theatrically. “Which means…”
“We gotta kill you all.”
And thus, the eleventh and twelfth members of the Round Table found themselves o anhly cssified, absolutely absurd battlefield.
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To all the amazing readers who took the time to rate this book a glorious 5 stars, thank you for boosting my ego to dangerous heights! Your encing reviews made the blood, sweat, aential crises that went into writing this pletely worth it (well, almost).
A huge thanks for the thoughtful suggestions and all the love you’ve poured into this little world—don’t think I’m ign the structive criticism, though; I’ve taken notes... in perma ink.
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Here’s to all of you who believe in this book and its characters as much as I do. You’re the reason this journey is so special—and slightly less terrifying. Cheers!
