Beating (Book 1: Acts of the Hearth)

Chapter 3

An effortless passage into the throne room was never an option, but Travis still hoped on the possibility. The man responsible for majority of his suffering stood before him and rage filled the young man’s eyes.

     “General Avery, move aside and let me by. I am here to see my uncle, not to further entertain your obsession with me!” Travis demands in all confidence.

     “And here I thought you were here to see me. Especially after I killed your pretty little friend.” Avery brags cruelly.

     Travis looks away and bites down on his bottom lip to fight back the tears. “They were my friends! Friends scarred by actions you ordered them to do to me during my years in your hell!” the young man roars back.

     “It was one very special girl with a lot of issues. Now you are calling those issues friends? All that genetic evil must have driven you insane.” the General taunts.

     Travis climbs the remaining stairs that divides him from the General, looks at his left hand and stares briefly at the burnt tips of his fingers.

     “You can do this! You’ve got this!” he chants to himself as the General raises his own hand. Down comes the armor plated hand of General Avery; landing squarely against Travis’s face.

     Travis moves his head in the direction of the swing and alleviates some of the damage. With all the speed he can muster, the young prince draws back his right arm, using the momentum from the attack on his face and throws a straight punch into the General’s abdomen.

     The General tries to block the punch with his forearm; a pointless effort as the punch dents the armor and cracks the bones in his forearm with ease. Avery lets out a moan of pain that morph into loud sobbing. “You—agh! You evil little speck!” the General whines.

     Travis does not let up as he delivers a second straight from his left; sending the sobbing man flying into and through the heavy doors behind him. The drawbar that sealed the two large doors breaks upon impact.

     The knights cease their skirmish with the bounty hunters upon seeing the heavy doors fall into the throne room. One of the knights monologs about Travis. “That boy…he really is the evil spawn of the Zae!”

     The bounty hunters refuse to back down after the group of knights chose to outnumber them without hesitation. A knight drops his saber to the floor.

     “Are you as evil as the nightmare prince you sponsor, to strike a man unarmed?” a knight aggressively states. The bounty hunters pull back their aggressions and watch as the knights flee.

     The young woman finally turns around and looks upon the devastation herself. Hinges of the doors were bent and askew. The General, who could be seen from below the flight of stairs; laid on the floor with his arm bent in distortion.

     The heavy doors were slightly planted into the floor in a manner that seemed more unnatural than she had imagined. Whatever the “Zae” were, was something that held powers beyond her understanding.

Ascending to the Point of Choice…

 

     The Throne Room is a long yet wide room with eight pillars that lined the way to the throne. To the left in-between the third and fourth pillars lies a door that serves as the King’s Master Bedroom.

     A den that was once the luxurious resting place of the King and late Queen. Travis had not known his mother, as she had passed soon after his birth.