The Bleeding Throne

Prologue

Luvin woke up to screams and the clash of steel on steel. His wife and son were not to be found in his room. In a panic he pushed out his chamber to find his guards engaged in a melee. Luven stumbled over the corpse of one of his own. He had been a loving father of 3 children, now he was a blood stained corpse. Luvin brushed his eyes close and willed himself to pull the man's blade from his cold hands. With sword in hand he set out into the combat to help his men. Luvin cut his way through his enemies; he did not recognize the livery of their armor, yet cut them down all the same. It was not the time to judge who he was fighting. Lost in the adrenaline of battle Luvin found himself eventually surrounded. His guard lay dead around him, the only ones remaining were his assailants. Quick to move, Luvin leaped forward and ran his sword through the man nearest to him. Taken aback, the man crumpled to the ground. Without his sword to weigh him down, King Luvin pushed forward and ran towards the main hall. One could say he seemed a mad man stumbling along in his bed robes. Luvin frequently found in his foot in a puddle of blood and fell to the ground, only to scramble back up in fear of his pursuers. However, Luvin knew the path better than them. In a few minutes he found himself through one of the palace's many false portraits. He shoved aside the portrait and quickly ducked into the tunnel behind it. Luvin pulled up the portrait behind him and stumbled his way through the dark. The damp and gravel littered floor did not affect Luvin as it would another nobleman. Luvin was an aberrant blue blood, as atypical as they came. As a younger child he had spent his time on the streets of Ivia's capital, learning from dagger's edge rather than a tutor. Many a time he had found himself in a scuffle on the streets or fleeing from a thug. Comfort was not often found on the streets of any city, let alone in the dubious parts of the capital. Luvin's parents had bore no heir through their reign, as such they had chosen to adopt an orphan to head the dynasty when he came of age. However the king and queen fell ill not a long while after and Luvin, a child of twelve at the time, was left to rule. Luvin had not been a royal his whole life, and faced many of the difficulties of any other orphan child his age, and the populace loved him for it. He reached the end of the tunnel and caught a glimmer of light through the two holes of the portrait on the wall. Luvin quietly pushed it open and slipped into the room. Luvin was buffeted by a wave of warmer air from the fiery hearth on the opposite side of the hall. He recognized that he had found his throne room. No signs of battle showed in the room, so Luvin scurried across the hall to his throne, careful, regardless of perceived danger or not. He reached for the ancestral longsword, Gavel, that was kept leaning against the throne. Then he heard a noise. Instantly Luvin scrambled to find a good hiding spot behind the throne. He heard the sound of armored and armed men marching on the marble floor.

"Where's the king gone, Robert?" Luvin recognized the voice to be of the captain of his king's guard. He considered coming out from behind his hideaway, but something in the captain's voice bothered him.

"I d-don't know. Please I'll find him."

"Robert, robert, robert," the captain said, "I hath told you, bring me his head, or I'm forced to take yours."

"M-Marvain, please, please," the man stumbled over his words, "I swear it to the gods, I will find you the man."

"If only it worked that way," I chanced a peak from the side of the chair. In the dim room he could see but only silhouettes, but he saw dozens of the assailants from before. A man was kneeling in front of another man who seemed to be taller and larger than the rest of the pack. Luvin watched as the taller man drew a sword from the scabbard on his waist, and with nothing but the sound of the blade cutting through the air, Luvin observed the knelt man's head fall off with the sound only a severed head can make. Marvain turned his attention towards the throne, and in that small moment, despite the lack of lighting in the hall, he managed to catch a glimpse of the rapidly retreating head of the king.

"If it isn't our king!"

Luvin rose from his hideaway with Gavel in his hand.

"I thought of you as a friend, Marvain, I trusted you."

"You'll die nonetheless."

"I'll take at least a few of you before I go, oathbreaker," Luvin spat out.

"Does it matter? Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure. Death, as the gods saith, is certain to all. All shall die."

"You will die a horrible death, oathbr-," Luvin was stopped in mid sentence as he felt intense warmth and pain in his back. Luvin fell to his knees in agony. The strength fled from his arms as he lost control of his body, and he dropped Gavel. He saw Marvain creep up the stairs, smiling. The man raised his armored foot and kicked at Luvin's face. Then all was black.