Snippet #2403744

Toran was always the last thing Alice wanted to see and when he had opened the door, she remained stoic in the beast's presence, with her bloody leather gauntlets behind her back and walked in as was instructed to them, hiding her repugnant hatred for Toran the Lap Dog of the queen with relative ease. Alice found the man equal parts pathetic and scary with both his upbringing to kill magical users and his obsession with Bandriel. After taking her distance from him, Bandriel started to speak of The Prophecy, and she mentally rolled her eyes for a brief moment before paying attention to the queen.

Alice, like Bandriel, were both previous inhabitants of Zaxon's castle, and both knew the castle prophet. While Bandriel had learned to fear the old prophet and his words that disturbed her, the witch has often regarded him as a drunk fat old man who did nothing but look at stars all day and match patterns in the sky. He was, what Alice would say, useless and though in extension thought his words were so as well, she wouldn't disobey Bandriel's orders either, unless to purposely incur her wrath.

As such, her whole afternoon in the suspended animation chamber was going to be held off for the sake of making potions for brutes. Even Bandriel knew Alice could manufacture something silent that will rid of the newborns cleanly and efficently but for the sake of making "a statement", brutes away! Honestly, what was more fearful, a queen with armies and soldiers under her control that do the work for her or the illusion that the queen was so powerful she could kill all the newborns with nary a sight, or whisper of the wind?

The queen's order was however the queen's order even though Alice would have tried to argue her point if only Toran wasn't there.

After the meeting Alice went back to the her sectioned off part of the castle and called her nurses together to work on their quota for tomorrow: 3 cauldrons of Mind Link, 2 Cauldrons of Strength, 1 cauldron of Speed, Regeneration and 2 more cauldrons of Ginihiko mixture. The Mind Link worked quite simply, it was a blue mixture one would drink that would mix with the blood and crawl up to the brain and remain there thus for about a few days where they'd be able to communicate with anyone who drank the same mixture. By simply adding a variant to the mix, the Mind Link could be sectioned off into groups of people, such as leaders, squads, and those in between, allowing instant communication to all.

The rest are self explanatory except for the Ginihiko mixture which acts like a powerful painkiller with the unfortunate side effects of rendering women who take it to be shortly rendered unable to produce breast milk for approximately two weeks. All it had required then was a moderate dosage to poison the water supply of a small town, just maybe two cups, and that was that. Let the newborns starve out and then normality. Leonid's agents seemed to be appropriate for such a discrete task.

For perhaps a moment, Alice thought about her family in Belfield, but quickly dismissed it. Alice stationed one of her more intelligent creatures, the Griffin to keep watch amongst the perimeter of the city for any hostile enemy looking forces and to only attack when aggravated to do so. He was a big, loyal steely-eyed creature that understood her commands easily. It wasn't that Alice distrusted Bandriel when she promised her family protection, while The Queen Of Evil might be just as her name beckons, she had respected Alice enough to keep her word, lest anyone incur Bandrial's wrath. It was the roaming army and soldiers that she would worry about.

After a full day of work, the exhausted Alice fell to her bed in the infirmary, and looked back up at the stone ceiling as she thought about her family. Her husband was in his 40's and still the Captain of the Guard. Cassandra was 22 and as Aliteal had told her, she's a guard herself, ever the tomboy. Lia is 20, Lucious 19 and Zack 17. Lia and Lucious still haven't come back from their adventuring yet.

"Maybe they never will." Alice thought in the darkness. "Like how I'll never come back to the mountain." That was different though. Faroldilian Witches didn't have loving families, they had petty power struggles, assassinations, and raids.
"It's just a phase," she told herself in the darkness as she drifted to sleep. In the wake of genocidal infanticide, she wanted to see her kids, even for a short while.

The morning was going to be hectic, especially since she's feeding her beasts, and forgot to do so the day before.