Servants entered two by two, bringing with them the sealed jars. Each of them had a paper on in with the number seven written.
The crowd was in awe. The party became exiting.
"Hear me out! In those we've sealed animals. One contains a bird, for health! The second contains a turtle, for safety! And the last one contains a cobra, for power! We pondered on the question, it was too hard to make an elephant enter."
The assistant gave them a few second to laugh before continuing.
"This activity was concocted by Foreseer herself. You know how good she is at sorcery already."
'Liar! I did not plan this!' She thought.
"Our new member of the court has to chose one jar and show us his skills with the animal he'll find. Are you ready little one?"
Keith nodded, though with the noise around him he was completely disoriented. Apparently the assistant did not warn anyone that he was blind and he was treated as a valid person. While the kid was hesitating, his clothes changed temperature, he knew the monster had visited the three pots, he hoped to get away with an easy animal. But the shadow spoke.
'I figured things out kid, we must pick the snake's jar.' It was the complete opposite of his objective. Yet he couldn't dispute the monster's directives because last time he tried, he had claws sinking into his upper body.
The king was on his throne, eating from well filled plates next to his lion shaped elbow rests.He was impatient to see the outcome of the show.
'We pick the middle one.' Said Mister Show while the boy walked at a slow pace, intensifying the suspense for his public. 'Three.... Two... one step... Stop! It's sealed, point in out, maybe someone will cut it open, most of the guards around have a tulwar around their belt.'
He was right. One guard with a feathery turban came to slash the top of the jar. The tissue sealing it was still tense and did not allow the guard to take a peek inside.
The nobles were so exited they missed few details concerning the main guest. His nails had yet to regrow moreover the skin where they once were was pitch black. The skin on his hands was irregular but the robe he wore had long sleeve, hiding most of the scar tissue.
He felt the top of the vase before plunging his whole arms inside with no hesitation. People held their breath for a few seconds.
His wide sleeve did not follow his arm inside, he was now unprotected. Show was right, and Keith wasn't fast. A brown cobra, cornered in his small prison attacked the intruder, giving all of his venom as a welcome gift. The kid flinched.
He felt the thing crawling inside his veins, his heart beating along its propagation. He shown signs of pain and his arm with the snake still hanging on it.
All of them gasped in astonishment.
"The snake it is! He'll be a strong bewitcher!"
'I'll handle the poison, you break the snake's neck!' Show said while Keith breathed heavily. The pain did not increase anymore but it became omnipresent.
'Repeat after me.'
At first he wasn't sure where the neck finished and the tail begun. Having snake anatomy issues, the kid caught its head and forced its jaw open.
"Power."
He did a strict twist just under the skull.
Clack! Silence fell upon the hall as he threw the animal back in the vase
"Safety."
He breathed all the width of his lungs and with a slightly vibrating voice, said.
"Health."
'Perfect! They're all open-mouthed kid! Even the king, what an act! Are you feeling dizzy, how are your lungs?' Asked Show while a thundering applauding sealed Keith's orientation sense.
'It hurts but it's bearable. Can you explain me what happened? I feel a bit too much disoriented.'
'Sure, there are three cobras. This was a murder attempt and not a challenge with three different outcomes. Why do you think there's no one rushing to you with a remedy? This king is giving out his best flat face right now.'
The assistant spoke once more.
"Witness! Behold the strength of our newcomer! He proved to excel in the three domains with only a third of the given elements!"
'That's impossible! Did he fell into a snake pit during his stay in the crib?' Chandragupta thought while sinking his nails in his armrest. 'I'm still fine as long as no one opens the two remaining ones.' He leaned forward, gesturing the closest of his servants to listen. Then he whispered.
"I want an increased security tonight. You know how too much invitees can make me anxious."
"Yes my king."
Meanwhile in Keith's outfit, Mister Show was bubbling of rage. 'They tried to get rid of us this soon! I can't believe the king is dumb enough to believe we won't move a finger for this attempt. Kid! You know it means our bluff kind of worked? He fears us.'
While Keith was escorted back to his room, he was painting. Concealing his breath with his mask, he did his best to not alert the guards.
Once in the guest room, Mister Show acted. Hearing Keith's breathing distress and the irregular beating of his heart, dark tendrils appeared.They entered the blackened tissue and pulled it so he could breathe. Pumped the main organ so he could live.
The snake's poison was digging his way into Keith's metabolism and it coagulated his blood.
'I thought I ate all of it. It seems some seeped through the muscles. Go on the bed. I'll go when you'll start looking fine again.' Show said while the kid asked.
"Go where?"
'Send a message.' He heard while his consciousness faded away on the comfortable bedsheets. Waves of pain filled his body for one more hour before he could feel his bitten arm anew.
Show vanished into thin air the second he felt confident. Passing through the floor like a ghost, he scanned the palace in every corners.
Until he found it, the black line. The one left by his messenger, Moore. The lining was thin. It looked fragile yet Show could touch it with no shyness and even pull it. He followed the given path until he arrived to a well looking house.
Two guards stood in front of it, something unusual for such a clean looking house. But nothing abnormal for a slaughterhouse.
Barely lifting dust on his path, Show passed through the walls to find out how big the house actually was. About twenty meters large and long, but more fascinating, the size of the well in the middle of it.
The upper floor consisted of a tool storage and dismantling workshop. The night made the whole chamber dark, but it was just second to the cheerful amount of dried blood painting the walls and the ceiling.
The hole in the middle of the room was rectangular, the bricks with which it was built were smooth and the depth they reached was unknown. Well, at least for a human.
Show could see, about thirty meters under, few lumps of meat. He went along the bricks to see what was under, how come a royal pauper's grave could be so short on space. His curiosity did not disappoint him.
Deep below, a colossal enlargement had been built at the bottom of the well. What he saw from under earlier was the top of a pile, a mountain of charred corpses.
'Wonderful.' He thought. Pulling on his black line, he found out he had to go deep under the new layer. He had to swam among the dead.
The line separated into seven part. The monster spent time looking for Moore's head.
It took him a few minutes to find an open-mouthed moustached head. Though a little dry and thinner than last time he saw it, he engulfed it into his mouth and went back to the palace.
Few of the invitees were still drinking their cup while most were discussing. Thankfully Chandragupta was already in his bed, he was a fast asleep. Eight persons stood in the hall in front of his room. Three were on the royal balcony and had to keep an eye open until morning.
It was not an obstacle for Show who could seep through matter with his ethereal-like body.
Show tampered with Moore's neck until it was wet again. He drew a circle around the royal bed and finished his artwork by skewering the head on the bedhead pike. Holding it with his many hands, the later did not even vibrate.
The human skull being hard to break, he preferred using the eye's orifice to ease the piercing. Leaving a leaking orb suspended above its owner.
'That's how you observe someone, you sow.' He thought, thinking about how bad skilled was Foreseer.
He then rejoined Keith for the rest of the night.
Before sunrise, the smell of the corpse woke up the king.