Before he could even question him or do anything, he suddenly heard panicked voices coming through the halls, the way from which he and his people came from, he was gripped by terror, 'it cannot be, she is safe, I sent her away myself!'.
But he felt it, deep inside of him, that sinister look in Kalan's eyes, the smirk on his mouth, that was the look of someone who knew he had just taken something very precious from another.
And both of them knew who that was for Derman.
Two men holding blood stained swords. One of the guardsmen and the other one of his own people, his name was lybon.
They reached him and immediately went on their knees, there was blood on their armor, and lybon's left arm was bloody from a huge gash that showed the white bone from the inside, both looked as if they had just come back from an actual real battlefield.
"y…your highness" the guardsman sputtered, and was cut short by lybon, who quickly said, "we were attacked, my prince, we tried our best but there was just too many, and there were strengthened ones among them…" he trailed off as he noticed the look on Derman's face.
Pure, uncontrollable rage, with an intensity that he had never felt in his life.
His flesh was on fire, he could almost see the steam coming off his arms from the heat, with no further though, he turned back toward the one responsible for it and felt the urge to push the heat out from his body, something told him that if he did not, he would kill himself holding it in.
With a roar he smashed his fist on Kalan face so hard that he could feel the skull cracking, almost as if making sizzling noises like a pot boiling. Kalan's body smashed directly into the wall behind and dropped down to the ground, but Derman was no longer there, he was pulling the guardsman with him, shouting for him to tell him where she was.
The guard, terrified, and seeing what happened to the prince, complied and led Derman to the festivities hall, where three women were scrambling over a bloodied woman on the ground with water and sheets, trying to stop the blood. Releasing a hoarse screame he went to the woman side, it was Sura, with an arrow imbedded deep inside her right side above her breasts that one of the three was gently trying to remove.
He turned toward the women, two of them were palace servants, "Can you save her?" he asked, addressing the third one, an aged woman with a wrinkled face, she was a wise-woman, "I'll give you anything you want if you save her"
She looked at his eyes, and then traced down towards his hand, toward the hand that he struck Kalan with, and she asked, "What is she to you?"
He quickly answered, without any hesitation, "She is my mother" he said, cradling Sura in his lap, and then added "can she be saved?"
She looked down at Sura in his lap and said with simpathy in her tone, "Am sorry, I did all I could to stop the blood, but unless the arrow is removed, she can't be healed, and the arrow is stuck in the bone, it's clear to me that she won't survive"
Tears streamed from his eyes.
Angar stood, horrified along with the others at the sight right in front of them, prince Kalan's skull was bashed in, smoke rising from it and releasing a smell almost like of roasted meat.
This was not possible, how can a man's fist be able to do that? Especially considering the fact that the prince is not a strengthened one, and even they cannot incinerate a man's face with a punch, all they had was super strength, they were not mages…
Moreover, the way prince Derman's skin turned red from the heat, these were dangerous questions, with even more dangerous answers.
He turned to the ones gathered around, looking at the prince's body, most of them already emptied their stomachs, and looked to be fighting with the urge to empty it again, most of them were sheltered young nobles, The prince's entourage, they never saw a man's body maimed this way.
In the abandoned buildings where he grew up, this was a daily occurrence, and he would have found himself laboring in the mines, with his sister having a much more terrible fate there, if not for the prince's timely rescue.
He owed him his life, and most importantly, the thing for which he loved the man the most was for saving his sister Malinda's life. She was his only remaining family.
Forming the words in his mind and taking advantage of their shock, he spoke, "prince Kalan is dead, I am sure intelligent men such as yourselves know what to do next, prince Derman is a reasonable man, he will do right by you if you support him"
They kept looking at him and then down at the dead body, they were unhinged, 'good' he thought, to be honest, he himself had a hard time keeping a hard face and a cool stomach at the moment, even though he saw plenty of dead men before, he had never actually smelled them as if they were being roasted.
Opening his mouth again to make sure that they will support the prince, he was stopped by a gut-curling scream coming from down the hall, the way the prince went he though, panic creeping up on him, he turned toward where the scream came from, but before he could go to the prince, he heard gasping from behind him, this time from the young nobles.
Their murmuring drowning his own panicked thoughts, he kept looking at the prince's corpse. It was melting, melting as if a volcano was erupting from inside of it.
In seconds, nothing was left of the corpse; all that remained of it was a bloodstain on the carpet, and the smell of burned meat.