This was it.
Their first true battle.
Not training with Sonic.
Not simulations with safeties and reset buttons.
Not ambushes stacked so carefully in their favor that victory was almost polite.
This was real.
"Well then…" Boomer muttered under his breath as he eased the throne room doors apart just enough for them to slip through. His fingers were white-knuckled around his rifle. "…here we go then."
The doors groaned softly—ancient metal protesting movement it hadn't expected tonight—and the throne room breathed out at them.
The smell hit first.
Scorched ozone. Burnt circuitry. Hot stone and molten metal. Beneath it all, something darker and heavier—recent Anarchy Beryl residue, thick enough that Sally felt it coat the inside of her lungs when she inhaled. Her vision swam for half a heartbeat as her body reacted on instinct, muscles tightening, pulse spiking.
This place was *wrong*.
The throne room had always been vast, ceremonial, almost theatrical in its symmetry. Now it looked like a cathedral after a lightning strike. The floor was fractured in spiderweb patterns radiating out from the dais. Sections of wall plating had melted and resolidified into jagged sculptures. Energy conduits pulsed along the walls like exposed veins, glowing an unhealthy violet-red.
And at the center of it all—
"Surprise, darlings!"
Buns moved first.
She didn't hesitate. Didn't freeze. Didn't stare.
Her voice cut through the oppressive stillness like a thrown blade, and she *was already moving*—not toward the figures near the throne, not toward Amadeus, but straight for the infrastructure. Twin blades flared to life with a violet sheen as she leapt, feet barely touching the ground before she rebounded off a pillar and drove both weapons into a control node embedded in the wall.
The reaction was instant.
Conduits ruptured. Sparks screamed. Machinery wailed like dying animals as power feedback ripped through the castle's nervous system.
And only then did everyone else in the room truly *see* who was there.
Queen Alicia Acorn stood near the throne, posture rigid, hands clenched at her sides. Her crown sat slightly askew, fur singed at the edges. She looked exhausted and broken.
Prince Elijah Alexis Acorn was a step behind her, eyes wide, jaw tight, trying very hard not to show giddiness while standing far too close to danger.
Mary D'Coolette stood near the side of the dais.
And Amadeus Prower—
He emerged from the shadowed archway leading from the medical wing, limping slightly, muttering under his breath as though the universe itself had personally inconvenienced him. His fur was matted, one arm bound in hasty wrappings darkened with old blood. Whatever treatment he'd received had been rushed and incomplete.
For the briefest fraction of a second—
Nobody moved.
No one spoke.
The entire throne room balanced on the edge of a held breath.
Then chaos exploded.
Amadeus's head snapped up. His eyes locked onto the four figures in the doorway—Boomer with his rifle half-raised, Patch frozen mid-step, Sally already shifting into a defensive stance, and Buns tearing Castle Acorn's control systems apart with gleeful precision.
"You—" Amadeus snarled, fury boiling through exhaustion. His voice cracked, raw and hoarse. "You little fucking *TRAITORS*!"
He didn't wait for explanation.
Didn't even wait for orders.
He yanked his sword free in a single violent motion and lunged, swinging in a wide, reckless arc that tore through the air with a shriek of displaced energy. He didn't aim. He didn't care *who* he hit.
He just wanted thier blood scattered across the walls.
"Scatter!" Sally shouted.
Boomer dove sideways, rifle clattering as the blade's energy wake tore past where his head had been a moment earlier. Patch stumbled backward, ears flattened, barely avoiding the edge of the strike as it carved a molten gash into the stone floor.
Buns didn't even look back.
She twisted mid-leap, flipped, and landed on another conduit, driving a blade into it with surgical precision. "Careful, Foxy," she called over her shoulder. "You're going to ruin the décor."
The room erupted into overlapping motion.
Security drones detached from the ceiling, systems screaming as damaged nodes fed them corrupted commands. Automated turrets unfolded from wall recesses, firing indiscriminately as control logic collapsed. Energy discharges cracked across the throne room like lightning in a sealed space.
Queen Alicia grabbed Prince Elijah by the shoulder and hauled him behind the throne, shielding him as debris rained down. "Stay down," she ordered, voice anything but steel hard because of the chaos and anarchy. "Do not move unless we're about to die."
Mary hadn't moved.
She stood perfectly still, eyes locked on one figure near the doorway.
Antoine.
He was a little bit taller than she remembered.
Lean, ever so slightly scarred, armor scuffed and mismatched from field repairs. His ears twitched constantly, scanning for threats, hands clenched and unclenched like he wasn't sure whether to fight or run.
Her son.
The one she hadn't seen in over two months.
Time seemed to slow around her.
The noise faded into a dull roar as memories collided with reality—Antoine as a newborn coyote pup, clinging to her leg. Patch choosing the rebellion over the castle.
Over *her* and her husband.
His father.
Amadeus roared again, charging straight toward Patch this time, sword raised high.
Mary moved.
She didn't think.
Didn't plan.
She acted.
"NO!"
Her voice cut through the chaos with raw, visceral force.
She stepped forward and *threw herself* between Amadeus and Patch.
Steel met steel.
Her blade—smaller, ceremonial, not meant for frontline combat—caught Amadeus's strike at an angle that screamed protest. The impact drove her back several steps, boots skidding across fractured stone, arms trembling violently under the force.
Amadeus stared at her like he'd been slapped.
"D'Coolette," he hissed. "Get out of the way."
She didn't.
Her grip tightened until her knuckles burned.
"You're not touching my son."
Patch froze.
"Mom…?" His voice cracked on the word.
Something in Mary broke—and reformed—in that instant.
She glanced back at him, just once, eyes shining with unshed tears and something fiercer beneath them. "Run," she said softly. "If I fail… you *run*."
Then she turned fully toward Amadeus.
He laughed.
A bitter, incredulous sound. "You'd betray *everything*—your king, your oath, your country—for him? This traito"
Mary raised her blade again, stance imperfect but resolute. "I already did. The moment I let you and Maximillian turn this place into a slaughterhouse and told myself it was for the greater good."
Sally seized the opening.
She lunged in from the side, striking low, forcing Amadeus to pivot defensively. Boomer recovered his rifle and opened fire—not at Amadeus directly, but at the remaining control nodes Buns hadn't reached yet.
Patch moved.
The shock wore off, replaced by something sharp and focused.
He drew his weapons and joined the fight.
The throne room dissolved into layered chaos—blades flashing, energy detonations shuddering through the walls, systems failing one by one as Castle Acorn began to *eat itself alive*.
Mary fought like someone with nothing left to lose.
Her movements weren't elegant, but they were desperate and relentless. Every strike was fueled by years of regret and love compressed into a single, burning purpose. She blocked when she could, struck when she had to, and positioned herself instinctively between Patch and danger every time Amadeus tried to break through.
"Stay back Antoine!" she shouted without looking. "I won't have you die here!"
Patch snarled. "I didn't come back to *watch* you die!"
They fought together anyway.
Mother and son, back-to-back, a clumsy but fiercely protective rhythm forming between them. Sally coordinated strikes with Patch, covering blind spots, forcing Amadeus to split his attention further and further.
Buns cackled as another conduit exploded. "Oh, this place is *not* passing inspection after tonight!"
Boomer ducked behind fallen masonry, reloading. "Sally! The castle's losing stabilization—if we don't finish this fast, it's coming down on all of us!"
Sally grimaced. "Then we end it *now*!"
Amadeus staggered.
For the first time, truly staggered.
Not from a single blow—but from accumulation. Exhaustion dragged at him. His injuries slowed him. The Beryl-corrupted systems he relied on screamed and failed around him, denying him support he'd taken for granted.
Mary met his gaze, blade still raised.
"This ends today Prower," she said quietly. "One way or another."
The castle shuddered violently.
Somewhere above them, the fight shaking the sky raged on.
And inside the throne room of Castle Acorn, loyalty burned, betrayal bled, and a mother finally chose her son—no matter what the cost might soon be.
Prince Elijah Alexis Acorn could only smile at all of this.
The chaos.
The anarchy.
The slow, grinding collapse of everything his father had obsessed over, bled for, justified atrocities in the name of.
Castle Acorn was dying.
And to Elijah, it was *beautiful*.
Not beautiful in the soft, storybook way the historians liked to pretend kingship was. Not beautiful like banners and ceremonies and speeches about unity. No—this was honest beauty. Raw. Violent. Truth laid bare in cracking stone and screaming machinery.
This was what rot looked like when it finally broke the surface.
He leaned casually against the throne's shattered armrest, fingers drumming lightly against the gilded stone, utterly unconcerned with the collapsing conduits or the screams echoing through the halls. Sparks rained down like warped fireworks, briefly illuminating his face—calm, amused, eyes shining with something sharp and cold.
Below him, the throne room was a battlefield.
Mary D'Coolette fought like a woman possessed, her blade shaking with strain but never lowering. Patch stayed close to her now, movements tight and defensive, watching her back as much as she watched his. Sally barked orders through the chaos, coordinating Boomer's suppressing fire and Buns' systematic dismantling of the castle's remaining systems.
And Amadeus Prower—
Elijah's smile widened.
Amadeus was starting to look so *small* right about now.
Not physically of course—he was still dangerous, still armed, still lashing out with fury—but diminished. Cornered. No longer the sharp, calculating architect of control he'd once been. He was now just another man standing in the wreckage of his own decisions, shouting at a world that had finally stopped listening.
"You're destroying everything!" Amadeus roared, parrying Mary's blade and barely deflecting Patch's follow-up strike. His voice cracked—not with fear, but with disbelief. "Do you have any idea what this kingdom stood for?!"
Patch snarled. "Oppression. Secrets. Bodies buried under 'necessity.'"
Mary didn't hesitate. "It stood for *you*, Amadeus. And people just like you. And that was the problem."
Sally drove a kick into Amadeus' side, sending him staggering back toward the dais. "Now it doesn't get to stand at all anymore."
The castle shuddered again—harder this time.
Chunks of ceiling collapsed, smashing into the marble floor with thunderous force. One pillar cracked clean through, toppling in a cascade of stone that forced everyone to scatter.
Elijah stepped lightly out of the way, barely glancing at the debris as it crashed where he'd been standing seconds before. His composure never faltered.
Queen Alicia noticed.
She'd been watching him from behind the throne, eyes narrowed, instincts screaming that something was *wrong*. Not just wrong with the battle—wrong with her son.
"Elijah," she called sharply. "Get back. Now."
He didn't move.
Instead, he laughed.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't hysterical.
It was quiet, controlled, almost… fond.
"Oh, Mother," he said, finally turning to face her. "You still think this is about survival."
Her blood ran cold.
"What are you talking about?"
Elijah gestured broadly at the throne room—the burning conduits, the clashing figures, the collapsing symbols of royal authority. "This is about *truth*. About rot being exposed to air. About watching something that should've died decades ago finally stop pretending it was alive."
He met her gaze, utterly unafraid. "Why would I leave? This is the most honest moment this castle has ever seen."
Oh, his poor, poor, poor mother.
She had always been such a perfect extension of his father's will.
Not loud like him. Not cruel in obvious ways. No shouting fits, no theatrical punishments. Just quiet agreement. Gentle smiles. Soft hands that ushered suffering out of sight and called it *necessary*. The kind of obedience that wore silk and smelled like flowers, the kind that never had to get its claws dirty to still be complicit.
Elijah almost felt sorry for what he was about to do to her.
Almost.
The word curled beneath his ribs like a living thing—parasite or symbiote, he didn't care which—tightening every time he drew breath. *Almost* was the last indulgence he allowed himself. The final mercy. The final lie.
Because mercy was how this all started.
He watched his mother's eyes widen as she truly looked at him—really looked—for the first time in years. Not as her son. Not as the prince she'd paraded beside her through marble halls and carefully curated tragedies. But as what he had become when the castle walls ended and the world stopped pretending.
The violet pulse of failing systems washed over her face, stuttering through the room in irregular beats. Each flicker illuminated a new fracture in her composure: the tightening of her jaw, the way her claws flexed once in unconscious defense, the sharp inhale she failed to hide.
Too late.
Elijah stepped back just beyond her reach, the movement smooth, practiced, almost gentle. He'd learned that distance mattered. Distance was control.
His grin was thin and precise, like a blade turned slowly between ribs.
"You should've listened to **Wally Naugus**, Mother," he said softly, as if offering advice instead of a verdict. His thumb brushed the hilt of the dagger at his belt with familiar intimacy. "Father's crown was never meant to last."
Her breath caught—not sharply, not dramatically, but with the awful, fragile sound of a truth finally landing where denial had lived for decades.
The dagger was ceremonial silver, its surface etched with old glyphs meant to symbolize continuity, legacy, divine right. Lies, carved into metal and blessed by tradition. But the blade had been… altered. Where steel met grip, something dark clung and shimmered faintly in the broken light. Not blood exactly. Not anymore. Resinous. Alive in the wrong way. Beryl residue bound with echidna bloodwork—old techniques, forbidden ones, the kind you only learned when the world stopped pretending rules applied to everyone equally.
Fresh enough to weep.
Alicia—*Queen* Alicia, Mother of the Crown, Keeper of the Realm—staggered back half a step.
"Elijah…" Her voice trembled, and that alone felt like a small victory. "Put that down."
He tilted his head, studying her with open curiosity, like a scholar examining a long-disputed text. "Why?"
"Because—because you don't understand what you're doing."
That almost made him laugh.
"I understand it perfectly," he replied. "That's the problem."
Around them, the throne room continued to die.
Sparks rained from ruptured conduits. The walls groaned under stresses they'd never been designed to bear. Somewhere deeper in the castle, something structural finally gave way, the sound reverberating like a giant exhaling its last breath. Alarms screamed and then choked into static as power grids failed one by one.
A kingdom unraveling in real time.
Elijah breathed it in.
He had imagined this moment more times than he could count—sometimes with rage, sometimes with cold detachment, sometimes with a strange, aching sadness he never let surface for long. He'd rehearsed the words. The expressions. The angles of light and shadow. He had learned, on Sunken Demon Island, that ritual mattered. That meaning could be carved into moments the same way glyphs were carved into steel.
This was his ritual.
"You always told me," he continued, circling her slowly, boots crunching softly over broken marble, "that ruling meant sacrifice. That leadership required hard choices. Do you remember that?"
She swallowed. "I—yes. Of course."
"You told me sometimes people had to suffer so the whole could survive." His voice remained calm, almost conversational. "That the crown couldn't be sentimental."
Her eyes flicked to the dagger again. "Elijah, please."
There it was.
Not *my son*. Not *I love you*. Not even *I'm sorry*.
Just *please*.
He stopped in front of her.
"Why didn't that rule ever apply to you?" he asked.
She froze.
"For Father, sacrifice was always someone else's blood," Elijah went on, tone sharpening by degrees. "For you, it was always someone else's silence. You sacrificed *truth* every day you woke up beside him and chose not to see."
"That's not fair," she whispered.
"No," he agreed quietly. "It's accurate."
Her composure finally cracked.
"I was trying to protect you!" Alicia snapped, the words tumbling out as years of carefully contained fear spilled free. "You think I didn't see what he was becoming? You think I didn't know what this kingdom was built on? I stayed because leaving would have destroyed everything!"
Elijah's eyes darkened. "Everything *for whom*?"
She hesitated.
And that hesitation was answer enough.
"For him," Elijah said. "For the crown. For the illusion."
He leaned closer, lowering his voice. "Not for me."
The silence between them stretched, heavy and suffocating.
Somewhere beyond the throne room, weapons fire echoed faintly—Patch, Sally, Buns, Boomer fighting their way through the castle's last lines of resistance. The rebellion had teeth now. Momentum. The kind that couldn't be negotiated away with speeches or threats.
Elijah felt it in his bones.
This was the point of no return.
"You were always so… quiet," Alicia said suddenly, desperation creeping into her tone. "Even as a child. You watched everything. I thought—" Her voice broke. "I thought that meant you understood."
"I did," Elijah said softly. "I understood that you chose comfort over courage."
The dagger slid free of its sheath with a whisper that cut through the noise of the dying castle.
Alicia flinched.
"Don't," she pleaded, finally reaching for him, claws trembling. "Elijah, I am your mother."
He looked down at her hand on his sleeve.
Slowly, deliberately, he removed it.
"You stopped being my mother the day you decided silence was love."
His grip on the dagger tightened.
But he didn't strike.
Not yet.
Because this wasn't about haste. Or rage. Or spectacle.
This was about *closure*.
"You see," Elijah continued, pacing again, forcing her to turn to keep him in sight, "my master taught me something you never did. Power doesn't come from crowns or bloodlines. It comes from understanding how things *break*."
He gestured at the collapsing throne room. "Empires rot from the inside. Always. And when they fall, they don't need conquering. They need a push."
"You're not my son anymore," Alicia whispered, tears finally slipping free.
That… hurt more than he expected.
Not because it was true.
But because it was cowardly.
Elijah sighed. "You don't get to disown the consequences of your choices."
He raised the dagger—not toward her heart, but toward the throne behind her.
The blade struck stone.
Glyphs flared.
The throne screamed.
Ancient enchantments—wards layered over generations—failed all at once as the modified blade disrupted their foundations. Cracks raced through the throne's base like lightning, the symbol of royal authority fracturing with a sound that echoed through the entire castle.
Alicia cried out, stumbling back as the throne split, its back collapsing inward, crown insignia shattering into useless debris.
Elijah turned to face her again.
"Look," he said. "This is what your legacy looks like."
She sank to her knees.
The woman who had once ruled beside a king, who had hosted diplomats and generals, who had signed orders that erased lives with elegant pen strokes, now looked impossibly small amid the ruins.
"I tried to keep the peace," she sobbed.
Elijah crouched in front of her, bringing them eye to eye.
"There was never peace," he said gently. "Only quiet suffering."
He stood.
The dagger rose again.
This time, there was no ritual left to perform. No symbols to destroy. No illusions to shatter.
Only consequence.
Alicia looked up at him, tears streaking her face, fear naked and unguarded. "If you do this," she whispered, "there will be nothing left of you."
Elijah considered that.
Then he smiled—sadly, almost fondly.
"There hasn't been for a long time."
The castle lurched violently, throwing them both off balance as another section collapsed. Dust filled the air. The world shook.
And in that moment—amid falling stone and screaming alarms and the distant thunder of a godlike battle tearing the sky apart—Elijah made his choice.
Not as a prince.
Not as a son.
But as the final product of a kingdom that had devoured its own future.
And whatever happened next—whatever blood or ash or silence followed—it would be honest.
At last.
And so he threw the knife.
He made sure it was at the second he could tell everyone's eyes were on him in sheer shock and away from each other.
Even his little sister Sally seemed surprised.
Although it was possible she didn't even know she had an older brother.
So there's that...