Beauty and The Beasley

Chapter 37

The blade came down in a flash of silver and gave Anita a nasty cut across her cheek.

"Ugh! You imbecile!" She cried and moved backwards.

Joseph unsheathed his sword just in time to parry the Prince's next strike. The king's sword felt heavy against the statue's blade but Frances managed.

The two royals parried and thrust and did all sorts of sword related terms as they moved across the room and up the opposite steps on the East Wing. Anita, on the other hand, glared menacingly at Bree. She flicked her wrist and Bree levitated into the air.

"Oh no, you don't!" Melinda spat in rage and quickly grabbed Bree's leg. The green wisp of smoke might've looked weightless but it began to play tug-of-war with Melinda, constantly pulling aggressively at Bree while her mother struggled to pull her back.

"The party's just begun!" Anita smirked. All around the castle, guards began to troop out in their disheveled armor. Some looked like they had been sleeping, others looked like they didn't understand why they were being called out. Frances recognized these guards to be King Adam's. He wondered where they had been and why they were showing themselves now.

In the opposite direction, the huge double doors burst open and King Joseph's troops poured in. They wore green armor that looked like it had been crayoned by a kindergartener yet brandished extremely dangerous swords and spears.

Joseph grinned from ear to ear like a maniac when he saw them meanwhile France's heart did a triple back flip. Soldiers kept pouring in like sand from an hourglass until Adam's guards were outnumbered ten to one.

"Kill them all! Including the royals!" Anita yelled.

The fight began with a loud war cry from the enemy ranks.

Frances risked a glance across the room where Melinda still surprisingly kept her footing and prevented Anita from yanking Bree across the battlefield above pointy spears and bloodthirsty men. His father had carefully stashed his mother at a corner and also joined in the clash.

This little distraction gave Joseph an opening and he knocked Frances from the top of the East Wing stairs to the ground. The King grinned wickedly and flipped his sword like a samurai. Obviously his age hadn't affected his sword skills at all meanwhile Frances had gotten rusty after taking a break from swordfighting for so long.

"I told my daughter to take pity on you." Joseph said. "I told her you could be different from the rest of them but now i see, you're all the same."

Frances glanced up at his face, holding onto his broken rib. As the king jumped down the stairs and walked toward him, he began to notice the mirage around Joseph. Behind his eyes were a number of other eyes like a series of overlapping translucent pictures. He realized King Joseph wasn't just one person the same way his daughter was.

In the King's body lived an ancestry of men...almost like his bloodline. Frances gasped and moved backwards. Looking at the King was normally jarring enough as he was twice the size of a regular man but realizing a couple of ghosts lived inside him took the first place prize for weird.

"You see, don't you?" Joseph asked, taking slow calculated steps toward Frances like a predator cherishing its few moments of victory before it ripped its prey apart.

"All my descendants who were never given a chance to rule are going to sit with me...." He pointed his sword directly at France's jugular, "..on your father's throne, which will never be yours. Same way i was denied my rights. You will be outcast, young prince. Your family will suffer what i went through."

Joseph twisted his sword and one fluid swerve was enough to split Frances's throat but another blade countered the strike.

Frances only had enough time to register the chills that ran up his spine as King Adam glared at Joseph before an episode of Clash of Kings began.