Gwendolen's uncle had barely finished his request when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye and as she turned her head, a shatter of something against the floor. Reflexavly she took a defensive stance, her hand going to her hip to draw her blade as chaos erupted around her. But she could grasp nothing but air for she did not bare arms at court unless serving as general to her king. She could see only shattered earthenwear on the floor over a spatter of what must have been the contents of the cut. Her eyes shot up but she saw nothing. She frowned. Odd thing for assassin to carry with him. And strange place for a scout to have come. No spy would be so foolish as to take a morning meal into such a precarious place.

Her eyes shot to her father, already men she knew well dressed in the heavy armor of the king's guard were whisking him away. With a growl in the back of her throat she turned from the rushing crowds and retreated out the door she came. She lifted her skirts and ran through the halls, already panic of house staff and the militant precision of house guard coming into play. She reached her room in record time, flinging open the doors to take up her sword and her mother's amber cloak pin. She had yet to enter a battle without it and she would not start now, when it seemed things were most dire.

She strapped her sword to her side and was again running across the castle as fast as her nimble legs could carry her. Only it was not shelter she sought. She would not let her father face this cowardly enemy on his own. But when she finally reached the throne room, she found it besieged by... by her own people? For a brief moment she thought the enemy might have stolen palace guard uniforms but it was shattered as she began to recognize faces among the throngs. Her heart broke but instead of spilling tears like a shattered vase, she felt anger like a cracked mountain spilling lava. White hot rage filled her like nothing she had felt before. Before she even rightly knew what she was doing, she had her sword drawn and was cutting down any that fought against those men protecting the doors of the throne room. But it was quickly apparent that they were badly outnumbered and Gwen quickly called her men back for a retreat into the throne room to barricade the door.

“Treason!” She shouted viciously into the echoing chamber, “The blood of our own guard stains my hands and I will have the head of the man who forced my hand in this!” she seethed. She could see nothing but red and would have been surprised that the saying was so literal if it were not for the fact that the rage left no room for anything else. And then she suddenly realized she was seeing red because there was blood in her eyes. It was only as she began to try to calm herself so that she might think logically of their survival that she had even begun to notice the horrible burn the red liquid caused in her eyes.

“Treason? It is not possible.” Her father said, wide eyed as he approached his rather feral looking daughter.

“We have no time for this.” She cut her father's heart broken confusion off quickly. “The door will only hold so long. We must get everyone to safety before that.” Her father was already nodding and opened his mouth to speak when there was the all to familiar sound of blade being sheathed in flesh and Gwen was staring uncomprehendingly at the several inches of blade her suddenly muted father had protruding from his belly. There was a long beat of utter shock. No one seemed able to move a muscle. Not even Gwendolen could manage to do anything to stare.

This was not real.

This was not happening.

This was a dream.

And then her father made a choking sound as the blade was pulled from him and the man fell to his knees. Gwen did not realize that horrible, god forsaken sound had come from her own throat as she watched him fall. She raced to her father's side, the rest of the world irrelevant and unnoticed. She reached her father just as he began to slowly fall forward and caught him. She pressed her shaking had firm to his rapidly bleeding belly and met his confused, pained gaze with wide eyed fear even as she tried to sooth him with lies that all would be well. She was so oblivious to the world that she did not even realize that her uncle was speaking as he wiped his blade cling on a neat square of white cloth.

“I have waited [i]years[/i] to do that, [i]little brother[/i].” he hissed.

Roland still had enough of his own guard with him that he did not fear the shaken men that were still loyal to the king. They had just watched their king's death blow, Roland had no doubt they would put up an emotional fight but neither did he doubt that it would be a short one. And he was right. The guard were dead in minutes and that left only the huddled masses of horror stricken courtiers who were weeping and wailing and begging for mercy like the cowards they were.

Even the death cries of her loyal men fell on selfishly deaf ears as she watched the life wink out of her father's eyes, his last breath leaving him in a dull hiss as the natural weight of his chest and the lax diaphragm let the air seep back out of him. She felt numb. She felt like she were watching some play at a distance. Her face was expressionless as a few precious tears leaked from her eyes. This time, she did hear her uncle's words.

“Gwen, know that you will die like the rest of these common cowards for you are not worthy enough to even die by my blade,” and with that, he spat on her and walked away, opening the door for his men so that he could leave before the bloody slaughter started.

She wiped away the spit with a hand that went from shaking like a leaf to eerily calm as guardsmen filtered in; taking no hurry with it as she was the only armed person left in the room. Gently, she moved her father from her lap to the marble floor, gently kissing his brow and closing his eyes before she stood tall before the traitors. She drew her sword and with none of the ceremony she normally used to honor battle and all those who would fall in it on both sides, she took to hacking. She set aside the great swelling tsunami of grief and loss and sorrow that threatened to wash her away and plunged head first into the slow and steady and burning flows of her rage. All the while, as she hacked and slashed at them, taking limps and lives with each swipe of her blade, she hissed at them.

“[i]Traitors[/i].”

“You dare abandon your post?”

“You dare turn against your king?”

“Liars.”

“Filth.”

“You are not worthy to even taste my blade.”

And on and on as she lost herself in the madness of loss and rage. Their disloyalty had cost her her father. She would not let them live. But their numbers were growing as they began to realize she was still a threat and called for help. She barely recognized that already most of her father's court was dead. She had wondered why the floor was so slippery and realized it was because most of it was already covered in blood. Sense was finally starting to kick in. She had to get out. She had to escape. She had to summon the aid of her kingdom's allies and she could not very well do that if she were dead!

It was hard to tear herself away from the battle but she was already tiering and the numbers were less and less in her favor. Even she could not deny she faced death if she continued. And so, she fought with a burst of sudden careless viciousness that was enough to throw them off before she made a break for a servant's entrance to the throne room. The halls the servants used were often narrower and would put her unarmored form at an advantage of her armored guardsmen. She was fast through the halls, darting and weaving until she realized she had put some distance between herself and her captors when she reached the kitchens. She nearly kept going but spotted a girl with a cut throat on the floor. The girl was well dead, no doubt. But... but even if she made it out of the palace, they would chase her with everything they had. Unless they thought she was already dead.

She had never been so grateful for the simplicity of servant's clothes as she cut herself out of her own and dawned the maid's. She barely dressed the girl before she heaved the girl's body into the massive hearth of the kitchen. She did not think they would look too closely at the body with it so badly burned; nor at her sudden suicide. It was not at all uncommon for royals to take their own lives rather than give an enemy the satisfaction of taking it for themselves.

Then she was running again, though trying to be much stealthier this time around as she wanted no one to suspect she might not be dead until she could summon up an army of her own—a loyal one. It felt like an eternity before she was in the dungeons trying to remember exactly where the escape was supposed to be in this place. She had been shown it briefly as a child but everything looked so different when you were barely three feet tall. It didn't help matters that she was exhausted and only now realizing just how many cuts and gashes she had from her carelessness in taking on the entire treasonous lot of palace guards. Oh gods, if she had come all this way just to die in the dungeons like a coward fool, she would kick every god she could find right in the balls.