The crowd screamed in unison. Pandemonium erupted from all sides. Aides backed from Jjon, shielding their faces with their hands. Soldiers stumbled backward, seeing their lord's body crumple into Jjon's arms. The courtyard was beside itself, horror and outrage exploded, and the wall of soldiers was suddenly engulfed in a torrent of panicked civilians.
Jjon stood bewildered in front of the castle doors. For a brief moment, he was alone with the body of the fallen King. Dead, Jjon was sure. The knife had pierced through layers of muscle and bone, driven directly up into his brain. His shaking fingers loosened on the knife. The King dropped to the stones at his feet, his blood lathered over Jjon's hands in thick streams. He stared at them, the shock sinking in in a great wave. He had done it. He had actually killed the King. In front of the whole city, no less. But how?
He looked over to where he was stood. The stones on the floor beside Rikal were cracked downwards in a deep bowl of rock, as if some immense force had crushed them under heel. Had he done that? Loud under his shock, the realisation of his act of regicide, was that one pervasive question. How?
The soldiers took a beat too long to remember their role. Jjon snapped to action before they did, reaching to the closest of the guards to pull their sword free and shove them backwards. Stood above the crowd, where no one but the King had held audience in hundreds of years, Jjon brandished the blade before him.
"Stay back!" He yelled. The guards were already closing in around him, cutting off his escapes.
"Step back you bastards, I'll kill all of you I swear!" Jjon's voice shook. The bravado was hard to muster.
But they didn't comply, stepping up toward him incredibly carefully, each one wielding a shimmering blade pointed in his direction. Behind them, the crowd had pushed forwards, hoping to witness the death of the murderer in their midst.
Jjon felt a small, tearful smile creep to his lips. He had done it. The King was dead. Sure enough another would take his place, but for this brief moment they were free. That was the only consolation to him in this moment as the soldiers took their final step upwards.
The crowd was bellowing for his head, not a single one grateful to him for his actions. The soldiers, even the familiar faces among them, looked at him with hatred and confusion. But most of all with fear.
They don't understand what I've done, Jjon though. But one day they will. He hoped that in the future, long after this day, they would be grateful for what he had done here today.
His eyes fell on the solider first to come within striking distance. Rikal. Jjon's heart rate spiked as his teeth clamped closed in a vicious growl. If this was to be his last stand, if it was final day and he could take one more person with him to the tomb, it would be Rikal.
Raising his blade high, he let out a bellowing roar of fury. Years of anger, the remnant burns of suffered injustices flowed through his voice at Rikal. His blade arced across, aiming squarely for Rikal's throat.
Jjon's fingers tingled. The sword handle in his grip instantly felt white hot, like it was fusing to his skin, yet he felt no pain from it.
He saw, as if in slow motion, the arc of his blade slicing wide through the air. From its tip shone a radiant, blinding light that sliced through the night. Infinitely long, it seemed, a thin beam of pure sunlight drew a line through the air in front of him in the path of his blade.
And he saw the destruction that followed its path. On the far right of the courtyard, the beam sliced clean through the stone, and across the crowd infront of him. Jjon watched as, in one rapid motion, he cut down every single person before him. Through stone and wood, skin and bone, soldier and citizen.
In unison, they dropped. The courtyard fell instantly silent.
Jjon's eyes grew wide as the light of the blade flickered out just as rapidly as it had appeared. The sword clattered to the ground at his side, fingers shaking violently.
"W-wh…" He stammered. "What in the hells?"
His eyes fell on the bodies, tears rising and running down his cheeks in heavy streams. Jjon's knees fell out from under him.
At the side of the courtyard, a stone archway crumbled to the cobbles, a clean cut right through its supports.
"What have I done?" Jjon whispered, closing his eyes tightly. Unable to bring himself to open them again.
The dais under him shuddered.
"I didn't mean to… this wasn't what I…" Jjon plead, but there was no one to hear it.
The dias shook again, more violently this time. Jjon's eyes cracked open. It felt more like an earthquake than the crumbling of stone.
The sight before him stopped his flow of tears, his mouth dropping wide. Frozen in place, a consistent rumble under him mimicking that of an active volcano about to erupt.
From each body below him, a stream of bluish-green vapour was rising like an inverse waterfall. He followed it up with a tilt of his head, watching it climb and climb until it was far above the city. It seemed to hit a ceiling far above, and like smoke it began to mass in a great pool, licking down the sides of an invisible dome at covered Wren-Egar.
The ground gave a mighty jolt, and Jjon was thrown from his knees into the air, landing with a heavy crash on cobbles that were now bouncing and trembling under his back, each one seeming to wish to escape from its architectural confines.
Staring up at the sky, wide eyed, he saw the vapour gather and gather, the swirl above dropping lower until it finally became an all-encompassing cloud that engulfed the whole city.
Then Wren-Egar tipped. At a violent angle, the city was now sideways. Falling. Jjon was sliding down the stones on his back, flying over the bodies and bouncing painfully of wood, stone and steel.
Spinning out of control, Jjon witnessed the very sky above shift. From a dark, cloudy night to a star riddled aurora, light purple shimmering and shifting across the sky in every direction.
He spun faster and faster, the city falling around him. Jjon collided with the side of a stone tower with an agonising crunch. He'd managed to fall from the castle doors all the way down the main street. Dazed, he peered over the side of the tower. His heart rate tripled. Through the front gate he saw ground rapidly rushing towards the front of the city. Wren-Egar, as far as he could make out, was tumbling straight down into a mass of ice.
Jjon didn't have time to panic. By the time he had seen it, it was upon him.
Wren-Egar crashed at terminal velocity into a gigantic frozen lake, falling like a meteorite and slamming with explosive force into the ice.
The tower Jjon was leaning against shattered under him instantly, sending him flying downwards towards the gate. He hit ice, sliding full speed away from the crashing city, rubble raining down around him. He tried to slow himself, fingers clawing against the ice. A huge slab that previously belonged to the city wall soared over him, colliding with the ground ahead of him. Jjon kicked out, trying to change the direction of his momentum. He failed, hurtling into the stone. His head clipped the side of the rock. Dizziness turned to pain. Sliding across the ice, everything went black.