"We have to investigate—carefully. This place is too suspicious." Julius looked over the edge into the black abyss below. Artoria didn't respond, only shrinking her shoulders, but when she began to walk away, she melted into the darkness, nothing more than a whispering string.
Julius cast an illusion of his own—muttering a personal spell—so he would remain undetected by the foolish Nobel swine who oinked and trotted by in foolish revelry and oblivion. He swerved into the cobblestone side alley and nearly threw up. These nobles dined in the main banquet hall on their decorations.
Their extended stomachs hanging out of what little clothing kept it on strained. The smell—awful, fetid, nausea-inducing—assaulted Julius' nostrils and made Julius choke. It smelled of disparity in the world—nobles getting theirs while these overstuffed carcasses got nailed into their hell.
He turned through the side streets of the noble quarter, cursing the mansions—mansions?—that though they had the money, no one took the time to wash the outsides with grime caked on all of it haphazardly; it didn't matter.
He knew they had money, but it didn't matter because only the gaudy innards showed. Besides, money made them all fat and stupid, with flabby bodies just like the flab excessive when it comes to greed and power.
He jutted into the streets, past alleys filled with hungry lamentations, past the quieter alleys answered by the more pathetic whimpering of children. The nobles had no idea what went on in these side alleys—they were laughing too hard at gluttonous opportunities—but this is where people struggled ten times more.
There was a raised platform next to a disgusting fountain, the lip dripping with murky, algae-filled, sagging waters and the scent of decay—that's all it was—like the world was dying. Yet, the audience didn't mind the filth.
They were transfixed, and the atmosphere buzzed with that current one feels when lightning is about to strike.
"YES! The Lord shall conquer the DDevil'sservants! NO evil shall prevail!" he shouted, holding his Bible over his head, set ablaze by the axis of the sun at high noon.
People screamed and shouted back in response, whipping their arms like mid-storm lunatics, clapping as if it was the only way they'd live to see another minute.
But this was not faith. It was an unholy lust—an unholy bastardization of what belief could do, turned into weaponry.
Where faith could have acquiesced in the new battle of the Great War when an otherwise sensitive human psyche could no longer take the realities of life, it gave comfort to the dead and a false sense of outward hope within the depths of despair.
But now, it was a noose for the ignorant, a type of weaponry that allowed the simple-minded to skew their hatred as God-given virtue to slay the innocent and unsuspecting enemies. It was demoralizing, a plague that would spread and taint all in its midst.
"The demons and devils are the scum of this earth!" So a priest cried out to the skies, his voice crackling from the pitch of desperation and his determined efforts to incite such passion within the crowds.
"On Our God!" he howled, like a sledgehammer on an anvil, "We give our lives for Our God to make a clean sweep of this earth of those who wish to be wicked! We shall be the assassins of those with dDevil'sblood!" Nobles surged and pressed into the screaming crowd, eager for the new King. And then, after a measured moment, a heavy door began to move; it sounded from within like creaking across rusted hinges. The guards emerged from the darkness. Above and beyond all sounds, chains rattled.
Clank. Clank. Clank.
Julius's heart raced in his ears. Julius turned stock-still. Twenty of them entered the.
They were multicultural, mutilated, and they were beaten, and some were still dripping blood, and a few were utterly naked—clothes were irrelevant for such an aesthetic; they were in pathetic forms, and with such fearful, frantic faces, the intent was clear. They had piercing eyes. "How's your stay been so far?" A voice like string cheese came from right beside Julius. Julius spun and jumped in the air, spotting a small-framed man wearing a grin—not a grin, but a wicked grin.
The distinction between the wicked grin and what Julius saw before his eyes made his stomach churn in the most vomit-inducing way. There was an odor of desperation in the air—a conditioned, nauseating smell—as if desperation had something to offer.
"You don't like it?' The thin man said in such an eager pitch that he wasn't even looking at the prisoners.
He looked at the next set of chained souls coming onto the bidding floor, faces contorted in pain and delight. The guard pulled the chain of the first prisoner by his neck, nearly strangling the prisoner, and dragged him to the stage.
The priest clasps his hands in triumphant applause as the crowd assemblesᅳas, as if a masterfully crafted show of good and evil mixed, overlapped, and blended into one.
"I warmly welcome you to the kingdom! The King desires to meet you, his respected guest!"
Julius knew the man was embellishing his intentions with malice, that he was greeting Julius to a kingdom that wasn't what it seemed. But of all things, Julius heard 'kingdom. ' When he heard 'kingdom,' it made him feel all tingly inside.
The devil did not control this kingdomᅳor some outside forceᅳbut a kingdom of corruption and sin from within.
This kingdom where good and evil were such subtly distinguishable parts that they all fused to become one gigantic enterprise of evil and brazen stupidity.
It all made sense to him about the kingdom. "I'm going to have to pass." But the thin man's grin stretched beyond what any man should stretch it. He was darkness personifiedᅳfrom the outside, for from the inside emanated the fog of malevolence. It got thick.
The atmosphere changed. "But you don't understand. You don't say no to the King." It was almost a nice-sounding tone, an obnoxious reply. No one escapes the kingdom. Not those who oppose its decree." But it didn't matter. The increasingly raging mob grew angrier and angrier at the performance, the shackles, the accusation, the pointing finger of accusation, and the dissenter condemned to hush in the din and the subjugation.
The priest continued to howl like a puppeteer and his puppets. "See that? Loyalty is rewarded in the kingdom, and traitors get what's coming to them!" He almost reveled in the carnage.
He looked at the prisoners and back at Julius as though he could sense the chaos raging in Julius's heart. "We will always find you. The King finds all who want to be lost. And he sees you."