The King's Gamma (#Wattys2024)

Forty Four

"How?" Asked one of the men, eyeing the spot where the bullet had failed to penetrate.

"Like this." I smiled as my skin scaled over. I took a scale, and ripped it free, feeling blood gush down my forehead. "My scales are stronger than any metal you will find. Therefore, your weapons can't hurt me."

The gush of blood slowly stopped, the wound healing at a rate considered as abnormal by them.

"Well, for the most part. It's still just a cheap copy. This body is not nearly as strong or resilient as my own true body."

I twisted away from them, moving towards the greater gate.

"Where are you going?"

"To decapitate your spies, of course. You agreed to this when you signed the agreements on entering these lands. When I get back, you had better have them in cuffs." I looked to Marcellus before moving away faster than they could follow.

It took me less time to track down each spy and drag them along with me than it took them to cuff everyone responsible and drag them to the main hall.

I stepped into the great hall, my full armour bathed in red, blood dripping from my hands and the stench of death hanging onto me in a way that could unsettle any who smelled it.

I walked up to my own seat, next to Marcellus close to Sebia and Lavin Zkaldkin, and sat down. The blood stained into the material of the chair, earning a look of disgust from Lavin.

"Is there a reason why you are staining a perfectly beautiful chair? What is that? Blood?"

"Yes. It's blood."

"Who did you kill this time?" he asked.

"I told you." I said as a space opened in front of me, heads falling from the space and onto the floor in front of the detained royals from the visiting nations. "I decapitated their spies. This was all stated in the forms they signed and agreed to."

The hall was silent, eyes trained on the bloody heads in the middle of the floor.

"Oh... Did you want their bodies as well?" I asked, pretending that 'realization' had hit me. A new space opened, and headless corpses fell out.

"You... Y-you killed them...?" Prince Dusk's father seemed extremely shocked.

He looked at the bodies, then back to me, then to the bodies again. And then he smiled.

"We accept the marriage proposal." He seemed strangely excited, and curiosity got the better of me.

I peeked into his mind, slightly amused. The man was extremely excited, for his other sons had worthless women and his own daughters seemed equally worthless to him. The idea of a daughter-in-law able to stand her own ground excited him.

"Of course, on the condition that the bride to be spars with me."

This, of course, surprised Prince Dusk. His father had never challenged any of his brother's wives. But the fact that even though she had killed the men they had hidden did not deter his father.

"That's fine by me."

The Prince's eyes widened further, so did the eyes of his retainers and generals that had accompanied him. This was out of the norm.

"Shall we proceed to the training grounds?" I asked, walking towards my now future father-in-law who towered over me, eyeing him with a smirk.

"Lead the way, little horns."

We were reluctantly followed, the day's events seeming to exhaust those around us. 

Standing opposite one another we gained the interest of the soldiers who had been training previously. I watched as he chose a weapon, a heavy axe, and set it aside, before starting to remove his heavy armour. Nodding, knowing his request, I started removing my own helmet first, before moving to remove the leather armour from my chest. The shirt beneath was short and skin tight, showing little of the actual muscle beneath the skin. I removed the armoured gear over my pants as well, leaving the pants alone. I slipped my boots off, standing barefoot on the raised floor.