CHAPTER 12

Once again Stuart made his way to Mr.Groveschka.

«Are noble and decent rulers with pure hearts more vulnerable to attacks from rivals? Does corrupt win just because they are able to utilize more things to their advantage?»

«Are rulers, by necessity must be cold-hearted and cruel.»

« A king must keep the appearance of being good yet he does not need to actually be good. What a ruler actually needs is to be adaptive. He must solidify his own safety by and through the usage of good or evil decisions and attitudes. A successful king is protected by his own people feverishly. He must be attentive observant and brave.»

Grotto started thinking right away. ``I hope that guy won't fuck it up again`` The lich wished.

Weeks pass, time to gather in the court of the king once again came. All the men came with proposals. Most of the proposals were a few pretty words and then an explanation for why their department needs more resources.

Seeing that, the king imagined his court to be animals doing what their nature commands. King now understood he can`t trust the creativity of most people. He learned that it takes a special person to come up with something positively different.

« My dear friends,

This assignment I gave to you last week was a ... was a ... total bust to be honest. Everything you gave proposed an increase in the spendings of your respective ministries. It is the opposite of what I was aiming for.

However, that doesn`t mean I am losing favour towards you guys. You men have always done a great job doing it the way it has always been done.

Gentlemen, you need to understand, we are competing with our rival kingdoms. We can`t be caught slipping up.

When and if we are weak, our men would have their heads cut off and put onto a pike, their wives, daughters and mothers would become playthings. I am not standing here playing games. I am not playing pretend king. I am trying to do my job.

The only person who gave me a halfway decent proposal is my teacher Grotto. I am now going to go ahead and implement his proposal.

You will have smaller subsections of your respective ministries try out new things that might work. If and when the new thing turns out to be an improvement a letter will be sent to other parts of your ministries, enticing them to try the new thing out.»

Some of the ministers were very annoyed. These particular men were donning the position they are in in the kingdom because they were addicted to the power and respect the position commands. Grotto's proposal was reducing the power the position had. It was switching from their absolute control to a system largely operated by a trial and error logic. Eventually, they would become figureheads whose only job is to report to the king about ministries they are assigned to.

Minister 1:

« This fucking brat is going to ruin everything. His dad knew what`s up. Why did he have to be so uppity?»

Minister 2:

«It`s fucking Grotto I tell you. That fucking snob is filling the king's head with ideas.»

Minister 1:

« We have to deal with Grotto quickly. King should come to his senses soon enough after that. If not, We need to prepare a bastard to replace him. Luckily the previous king was a bountiful man hehe.»

Minister 2:

«Ehehe.»

In the days of yore, the previous king would spot a piece of booty, rub his bearded chin, and end up sweaty at the end of the whole ordeal. Nothing under the sky would be able to stop this man with his sweating forehead and his shit-eating grin.

As a result, the previous king had a third of a dozen bastards living across the country.

They tried to rope in the ministers that they taught would be on board. One of them wasn`t. Not because he was a very loyal man. It was because the minister in question was the minister of the treasury. He was agreeing to the policies of keeping ministries from bloating.

The treasury minister went to the king with this information asap.

A bribed maid replaced Mr.grovescka`s morning wine with a spiked one. The poison was a rather simple one because the poison peddlers were heavily monitored by the orders of two kings prior.

Grotto took a sip.

«Oh, bloody hell! This has oleander in it.»

Grotto was immune to most basic poisons due to the time he spent studying their effects. He would ingest a small amount and recover time and time again until he is immune to the effects of the toxicity.

He was pissed. He decided to write a sternly worded letter to the wine company.

The king's mother also got the wind of this scheme by the courtesy of a certain flying skeleton.

The king's mother, the old queen had an entirely different reaction to unfolding events. He hired assassins to take out 9 illegitimate children of the previous king. She got babies strangled in their crib, children riddled with arrows.

The current king got ordered conspirators to be round up. As they were awaiting trial the king got the horrible news. That his mother has killed all his half brothers.

The king got his mother arrested for murder. The emotional roller coaster was too much for the boy. He gave into the cruel apathy that was swelling within him.

He decided to do the Saddam thing.

He summoned all his ministers and generals to the trials. He gave all the innocent ministers swords. They had the guilty ministers in front of them. The king had his mother in front of him. The prisoners, his mother included, were locked in pillories.

«On My Mark!» The king roared.

The king slowly pushed his sword into his mother's mouth. Screams, gargles, silence. All the ministers did the same to their respective prisoners.

The boy-king was a boy no more.

« Gentlemen!

This execution was a thing that has to be done in the name of justice. But make no mistake, it was an inhumane thing also. No sane man would have his soul unbroken after having to do this. It was self-defence, it was justice yes. But what drove them to do this is our failures and the failures they racked up on top of that.

I killed my mother in a roundabout way by not realizing the depths of her concerns. You killed them by not realizing them, not stopping them.»

The pool of blood created by the dying prisoners reached the king's feet.

« We will shamelessly survive and make this kingdom flourish as if we never did this. We shall found our kingdom on such hypocrisy.

I, the king, declare myself guilty of roundabout murder, I also absolve myself from any punishment. And ministers, I declare you guilty of roundabout murder also. I absolve you from the punishment that would stem from this charge as long as I live.

that`s my decree.»

``Their fates, guilt and lives now bound to my own.`` The king taught himself.

This scene was later illustrated by a famous painter named Jose Petrelli. The illustration called the scabbard queen depicted the king half-naked with his toned muscles unnaturally bent to depict the turmoil he is in. In this depiction, everyone was looking away from what they were doing except for the king. The king was staring right into his mother's eyes with his neck crooked in a way that suggests the king was in the shape of a human being yet he was not. The final touch, Kings face contorted with anguish, put him back into the map as a human being. From what Petrelli have read from history books and the memoirs of Grotto, this was the image the famous illustrator imagined.

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