Chapter Four- Kill the Beasts
The Capital- Imperial Palace Gardens
She was pacing the open, breezy corridors, passing by the small, pretty blue flowers she was so fond of. The color matched her hair's and she appreciated the venom in their roots for being useful for torture- rubbing them in open wounds is akin to salting it.
She came out here often to reflect and calm herself. She rarely entered states of mourning or denial, but this was one of those times. She had been informed by a messenger from her army that her Three Beasts had been killed in action.
"Impossible!" she had shouted out loud, reading the official death report from the Imperial physician Dr. Stylish. She couldn't believe it. Her strongest, most loyal friends and soldiers had been killed by the Night Raid.
She was more determined than ever to crush them. They had taken her closest companions from her and she would not rest until Najenda, her old peer, and her subordinates had to be mopped up from the floors and walls of the Imperial torture chambers.
Esdeath smiled with sinister intent, her eyes telling a different story, narrowed with rage and focus. She buried her feelings of loss and crushing sadness in her characteristically cold and bitter exterior, betraying no hint of weakness or remorse at having not personally overseen the mission.
Luckily, her Beasts had been able to claim the life of one of the stronger Night Raid traitors, a former soldier, the Hundred Man-Slayer Bulat. She could at least find a true comfort in that thought.
The Capital- Imperial Military Graveyard
The three were buried in standard servicemen graves right beside each other, not distinguishable from the others by anything but the different letters carved into each one.
'They deserve better than this.' Esdeath thought to herself as the High Imperial Priest lowered their caskets into the ground and gave them a final prayer for a peaceful ascension to the afterlife.
Esdeath scoffed internally. 'Peace? My Beasts would have none of that. Their souls will go screaming into the night, never resting until their enemies have been burned from the face of the Earth like a blemish.'
The funeral was attended by several high lords and important military officials and politicians, all of whom besides Esdeath were mandated to attend. Not that she wasn't, but she was truly there out of respect. She detected an approach from her peripheral vision, and turned to face the boy Emperor, the fat and self-satisfied Prime Minister Honest, and a younger tan-skinned man with a lean, muscular build, a somewhat handsome face, and lilac hair, with an X-shaped marking across his face. Not a scar, but skin paler than the rest. Like a birthmark. She was curious as to who this was but he had an air of familiarity about him.
"Ah, General Esdeath! So good to see you again, but under such shameful circumstances." The young boy greeted her cordially.
"Thank you, your grace. It is truly unfortunate, but this is the way of the world. They were not strong enough and therefore perished." She knew it to be true to her ideology, but it still stung to admit to herself.
"Err, I might interrupt Esdeath, but I do believe it's been some time since you've met my son Syura." The Prime Minister interjected politely, gesturing to the young man to his right.
Syura grinned, full of himself, which immediately put a damper on Esdeath's perception.
"It has been a while, General." He said, "I see you've—grown since I last saw you a few years ago." Syura said distracted by Esdeath's filled-out physique.
Esdeath noticed his snide comment and looked unamused as usual.
"I see you've grown older but remain just a boy, young Syura, from what I remember of your vague impact." She grinned at seeing his upset expression at this insult, and the Prime Minister grimaced as well.
"My son is my heir, and of the most robust character." He put his arm around his son.
"Uh, well, I see you two have some history, but I actually came to introduce you at this trying time to see if you would consider Syura a potential suitor." The naïve and unaware boy smiled.
Syura briefly hung his jaw agape and eyes widened in shock and disapproval, looking at his father as if to say 'Why didn't you tell me before? You can't be serious.' The Prime Minister was equally confused, and Esdeath's eyes too widened in surprise and she was not exactly enthused.
She spoke first, being the assertive woman she was: "I appreciate the kind gesture, Emperor, despite the poor timing at a funeral," she could see he realized his mistake.
"Oh, General, I'm so sorry, I should've realized you'd not be in the mood to think about a possible husband at a funeral for your fallen comrades-"
Esdeath cut him off, the only woman probably to do this to the Emperor openly and get away with it. "It has nothing to do with the timing, really." She calmly explained, as if explaining something as trivial as basic grammar, "But I frankly do not think the Minister's son fits my strict list of qualities."
The Prime Minister interjected, taking offense that any woman would reject his son. "General, with all due respect, for you to insult my family to my face and imply you are too good for my son is preposterous! Syura has many women jumping at the chance to be his."
"Well then, he really shouldn't have a problem finding a match, then." She silenced the Minister, knowing he was powerful, but would never dare cross her.
"It's okay, father." Syura said calmly, "I don't think it would have been good for me, either."
Esdeath had internally noted his reputation for strength and that he was a fine-looking man of around the same age, but again his smile left little to be desired. His smile registered as either fake or arrogant depending on the minute, and sometimes was downright menacing and deranged if he was in the right mood. Definitely not something to remind her of anything but her contempt for most people. Syura was also far too pig-headed for her, and while she usually would see this as a challenge to be dominated, these qualities just wound up making Syura not worth the trouble of rearing in.
In turn, Syura was not blind. He could see Esdeath was a very attractive young woman, but again, her icy persona completely overshadowed any animal instinct toward her. He knew Esdeath was ruthless and domineering, and was, by some margin, even stronger than him. In his view, people were his to toy with, not the other way around. 'If I'm going to spend time with a woman,' he thought to himself, 'I don't intend to spend half of it kissing her feet and being beat by her.'
He softened it when he actually spoke: "I certainly don't intend to be kept on a leash, figuratively or literally, by the Empire's ice queen. And I don't think she'd have it any other way." Syura sauntered off, having got the final word in, confident in his wit.
Ironically, the two had many similar qualities, not just limited to their bluntness or intentions to subjugate those weaker than them, but it was those exact qualities that made them incompatible. Esdeath wore a frown at being insulted to her face but kept it in for the sake of not causing too much turmoil at the funeral of her friends. She could save the violence for later.
"Uh, I apologize, General. That did not go as I had hoped." The boy hung his head, hoping he had not angered his strongest ally.
"Not at all, your grace. The fault is his own." Esdeath responded calmly.
"My Syura is—a very proud young man. I apologize for his indiscretion." The Prime Minister bowed his head to Esdeath and sulked away, realizing he may have probed her too much for one encounter.
Esdeath said nothing to him as he passed.
Esdeath noticed Great General Budo's cutting glare from across the funeral, mandated to be there no doubt. He had always hated traitors to the Empire, even good men like Liver, and disagreed with Esdeath being allowed to save Liver from punishment for disobeying orders, giving him an even more prestigious line of work as a special forces assassin.
Esdeath approached him to talk, but he avoided her, slipping away to somewhere else. They did not have much in common besides for their rank. He fought for the Empire due to familial pride and undying loyalty to the ideals of the old Empire. She fought because it serviced her appetite for warfare.
Esdeath shifted topics in her mind. She had been thinking that to truly avenge the deaths of her compatriots, she would need more strong Imperial Arms users such as they were, and decided to send word to her army to recruit more for a special elite unit to be commanded by her personally. She had heard word that an Imperial Arms, once thought to be lost to time, had resurfaced on the coast in a small town, as well as the Imperial Arms of flight being used by a school teacher in a recently raided village, and so decided to seek out those users in addition to the known users in service to the Empire already.
The Coast- Manta Bay Village
Wave was on the forested path. He had found the Danger Beast he and Genji had hunted had been mostly devoured by other creatures by the time he had been able to return that day, and there was not enough meat to feed everyone in the village as they had planned. Genji was still in critical care from his injuries the previous night, but was now conscious enough to speak. Wave came into the village, hanging his head, dragging what was left of the beast into the village to the fire pit to roast it.
The look on the village elders said it all- some of them knew they would starve, giving up their shares of the meat to the young ones so they could grow strong. The bandits had taken or destroyed everything- the crops and grains, their food in cabinets; nothing was spared. Wave had killed the main organizers but some had still slipped away into the plains. Even if they were killed by Danger Beasts or Imperial soldiers scouting the area, which was very likely, the goods they stole were still lost- the beasts would have ruined them and the soldiers would just take them off the bodies of the bandits, assuming whatever village they belonged to would've been wiped out already. They would have, if not for Wave.
He entered his home, still in a depressed state after the last day's losses, slowly dragging his feet as he walked. His mother, solemnly sitting in the kitchen- with broken windows from the raid and some charred cabinets- was reading a new letter with a fresh seal from the Imperial Capital. Her constitution got progressively more chipper as she read it. As Wave was about to enter his room he heard her shout his name.
He rushed out, expecting the worst, "What is it?!" he shouted frantically, shaking with fearful anticipation.
"Wave- this is a letter from the Capital. It says here you are being summoned to join an elite military squad of Imperial Arms users! It says there is a lot of gold and silver in it to compensate you, but that you are expected to board the next ship and head there immediately. It even has the signature of a high-ranking general!" she showed him the letter, displaying as a signature a strange symbol, a sort of personal insignia, like a stylized Y with a few extra markings, and the name "ESDEATH."
He immediately recognized her as a feared and widely respected Imperial general, and his mouth formed a huge smile as he realized this could be the solution to his problem.
The Capital- Imperial Military Graveyard
Later that evening, Esdeath returned to the graves, to personally say goodbye to her loyal Three. The cemetery was usually closed at this hour but open to a high-ranking official such as herself. The warm orange and reddish glow of the setting sun illuminated the well-kept grounds beautifully.
She laid three bouquets of roses from the Imperial Palace's florist on the grave sites. She reflected on how, despite the fact that they were dead because they were weaker than she thought, she would miss them regardless and work to avenge their deaths until she herself took her last breath.
As she laid the bouquets out upon each grave, she remembered how she'd found each member. She remembered hearing of a lord's young son and his horrific penchant for violence- dismembering, molesting, and violating servants and their corpses and collecting the faces from still-living victims, petrified with fear. "The World's Worst Sadist" they called him. She smiled at the name and went to greet him and prove how much worse she was. She showed him how you could include medicine not to sedate the person but ensure they would not pass out from shock halfway through, and how to salt and irritate the bleeding wounds as he cut to ensure maximum pain (fresh sea salt was most effective, she'd found). He was in awe of her precision and delicacy with the blade and swore fealty to her that very day, promising to one day live up to and maybe even surpass her sadistic streak. Nyau was her young protégé in the art of torture.
She also remembered hearing of the strongest man in the Empire's harvest regions. How he could swing an axe so swiftly and forcefully he could completely whack through half a tree. Esdeath went to show him how with the right technique, brute force wasn't even necessary and how she could slice through the base of a tree with her rapier as though it were a melon. Daidara was in awe of her, and also bent the knee to her, realizing he was bested by her in strength, but desired to one day even surpass her under her tutelage. She smiled at the thought, thinking of how she'd never allow herself to be bested by a subordinate, but admired his efforts anyway.
Finally, Liver. He was her favorite, though she never let on. He was the only one who did not only join her in awe of her skills for torture or brute strength or even her expertly crafted strategies, but for who she was, the side of her she rarely let out. He never tried to equal or surpass her even, only being content with serving her to the best of his abilities. He often would smile at her with a faint warm glow, so much so Esdeath never had the heart, despite her blunt nature, to tell him he was the worst cook she'd ever met, just because he enjoyed it so much. When she saw him, weak and pathetic in the dungeon, just waiting to die and totally broken, and she told him to look up at her, and she saw his eyes light up as she reached her hand out and smiled with genuine compassion and asked him to join her ranks, she knew he probably was in love with her, and that's why he stayed so loyal, despite his hatred for those she sometimes served and his initial distaste for her sadism, which he grew to be used to and even indulge in from time to time.
But he could never be with her.
He did not have the pure innocent smile she desired, being too old and jaded by war and the corruption he witnessed firsthand, and was also twice her age, meaning she could never truly outrank him in every facet. But she did smile knowing he may have found peace, and could not wait to see him again if there was a life beyond the current.
She left the gravesite, pondering her new group of subordinates and how'd they fare in comparison. 'They probably won't hold a candle to my Beasts, but I hear they are a smattering of eccentrics, so this should be a fun experiment.' She chuckled to herself as she left behind her past, burying her losses deep inside, never to be spoken of again.