The Caverns of Kronos

The Revolution - Part 4

     “Traitors! Traitors! Ungrateful dogs!”

     Lord Basil stormed furiously as he strode down the mansion’s main ground floor corridor. Around him, servants and junior family members quaked in fear and fled out of his sight.

     “After all I’ve done for them! All the sacrifices I’ve made for them! The whole city’s turned against me! Every single last one of them! Guards! Guards! I’ll have them put to death! I’ll have the whole damned city put to death! Where in the name of Hell are my guards?”

     “They’re gone,” replied Silus Vart, appearing from another corridor. “Fled into the caverns to join the renegades. They heard that the mob was dragging people out of their beds and murdering them and decided not to wait for the same thing to happen to them.”

     “They abandoned me?” cried the Nobleman in disbelief. “All of them? I don’t believe it, you’re lying to me! They’re supposed to protect me! Why are you lying?”

     “I’m not lying,” replied the advisor. “There's only a handful of people left in the mansion. Most of the maids and servants have joined the mob and most of the family are hiding in their rooms, afraid to come out.”

     “Liar!” screamed the Nobleman in insane rage and terror. “Liar!”

     He drew a dagger and struck him down before the advisor even had a chance to show surprise and his corpse fell to the floor with a heavy thump. “Teach you to lie to me! Drusus! Drusus! Where are you?”

     He ran madly from room to room, finding the occasional family member cowering in terror under a bed or in a wardrobe, but there was no sign of his son. “Drusus! Not you too! Please don’t say you’ve abandoned me as well!” He came upon his mother in the main banqueting hall, busily arranging flowers in a vase and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Mother! Have you seen Drusus?”

     “He’s in the creche,” replied Lady Emilia, smiling in contentment. “Nurse just finished feeding him. She tells me he’s just cut his first tooth! Gods but it’s making her sore!” She laughed happily, lost in her own little world.

     “He’s twelve years old!” screamed Lord Basil in helpless frustration and ran frantically back out into the corridor. “Drusus! Drusus!”

     “Yes father?” replied the boy, emerging from the library and staring at him in concern.

     “Drusus!” gasped the Nobleman, running over to him and embracing him. “I thought you’d left me as well, like everybody else.”

     “Never,” replied the boy. “I’d never leave you. What are we going to do?”

     “They’ve all turned against me,” said Lord Basil, putting an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “The whole city. But I’ll teach them. I’ll show them what it means to betray a Konnen. Come with me.”

     He led the way to the other end of the mansion, to the treasure rooms, normally guarded at all times by soldiers who wouldn’t let anyone within a dozen yards of them. Now, though, the corridor was empty and the Nobleman gave another cry of fury as he unlocked the first door with a key he took from a pocket.

     A Tharian would have been struck speechless by the contents of the room, enough wealth to buy a crown or ransom a king, but the two Konnens gave it scarcely a glance as Lord Basil went straight over to the pair of boxes lying in the corner, next to a group of golden statuettes.

     “The magic weapons!” gasped Drusus as his father opened one of the boxes.

     “Correct,” replied the Nobleman as he carefully lifted out a giant ram’s horn, two feet across and making two complete spirals. A Tharian who saw it would have been awestruck by the sight of it, and by the size of the ram it must have come from. It had been polished to an ivory finish, decorated with bands of silver and gold on which runes and sigils had been inscribed, and it had a mouthpiece in the small end. Even an ordinary ram’s horn that size would have produced a note that would have burst a man’s eardrums when blown. The Gods alone knew what this one would do.