RP:Ding Dong the King is Dead
Part of the Larketian Fault Lines Arc
Summary: Rachelle, disguised as Queen Josleen, poisons King Macon. The King quickly succumbs to the poison, and if it weren't for the fast acting and fast thinking of Headmaster Percival, the King would be dead. For now, the King is in a coma, and it's anyone's guess if he will survive.
Meanwhile, the Queen is suspected of murder and thrown in jail as the Fort carries out an investigation.
ooc note: The King's coma and Queen's arrest is not going to be announced by the fort. It's a secret. However! The Fort has a lot of people and it is safe to assume there will be leaks. So your character can find out via the rumor mill.
Fort Freedom, Larket
Macon and the rest of the Royal Family are inside Fort Freedom today. The King and young prince, who is the size of a two year old about now, are together in The Rage Knight's office. This pairing, at this time of day, is unusual, as Guillem would normally either be with his mother or nanny, but the nanny position is still in a state of flux after an ‘incident’ secretly involving the queen, and publicly involving the king, and Josleen is secluded in the royal residence section of the fort, in hiding from a particularly aggressive Augusta Jauzon who is visiting today from her home across the city. In response to her mother in law’s grating presence, The Queen claims to have important business to attend to, and is currently receiving a massage from her assistant. The perfect lie if there ever was one. So while it might be odd for someone on the fort staff to see Josleen entering the castle, seeing her walking around would make perfect sense. Inside the king’s office Guillem sits on the monarchs desk and smashes models of catapults and battering rams, stolen from the war room, against each other and makes screeching noises while Macon pretends to look over some documents or something.
Rachelle || Had circumstances panned out differently, Rachelle and Josleen might have been the best of friends. They were two high society women with a love for the finer things, only Josleen had somehow manipulated herself into a higher station and Rachelle… after all this time, who would even claim to know her who was themselves worth knowing? She had gold, yes, but a proper title and the respect that came with it? Never. So needless to say, Rachelle was enjoying her queenly illusion as she traced a path through the halls, enjoying each guard that nodded in recognition and each humble servant bowing or curtsying. She’d keep her mind on that rather than let herself get nervous about the task at hand. Just had to feed one little poison vial to the king and then make it out before anyone could see through her disguise. It couldn’t be so difficult, right?
Macon doesn’t know it, but his mother is lurking around the waiting room just outside his office. While Rachelle might be enjoying the reverence and recognition that Josleen receives daily, she is about to be subjected to a taste of the patience trying existence of the oldest living Jauzon. “Josleen. I’ve just remembered…” (yeah, right) “You can’t keep letting the dog lick the prince. Our friend back in Veratoak, Colleen Zucca, a dog licked her granddaughter on the face. I was there when this happened. And three days later all of her toes fell off except for one. Dogs are filthy creatures. Yours especially. Also, you shouldn’t allow people to call him ridiculous nicknames like ‘Guy’. Who is ‘Guy’? It doesn’t make any sense. Are you listening dear? Have I told you to dress him in darker colors? To avoid attracting bees?” This is perhaps the greatest obstacle Rachelle will have to pass on this mission.
Rachelle freezes, smile plastered on her (really, Josleen’s) face. Who is this? Why is she talking to her? What is this nonsense about toes falling off? When Rachelle resumes motion again, it is to sidle closer to the office door and simultaneously increase the gap between herself and this… person. “Yes,” she says, and leaves it a mystery which subject she is replying to. “That is… very good advice. I will certainly take heed, thank you.” The king is through this door, right? Someone told her he was. Oh Arkhen, please let him be through this door. She doesn’t want to have to cross this woman’s path twice. (It hasn’t yet occurred to her that even if the king is here and she does the deed inside, she still might have to brave this woman on her way out.)
Macon’s mother blinks at how easily she has gotten Josleen to agree that Gigi is disgusting, and is stunned enough to only reply with a reflected “Thank -you-,” before Rachelle reaches the door. Augusta seems to be racking her mind to find one more piece of ‘advice’ to give the Queen of Larket before she disappears into her husband’s office, but the old woman simply can’t think of one fast enough and Fakleen is soon out of her sight and in the sight of Macon and Guillem, the latter of which opens his arms up wide and skyward while exclaiming “Mama!” and flinging a tiny battering ram up over his head, that lands on the floor somewhere for Macon to step on and curse about later, likely sending a pulse of Rage Aura through the fort when that happens. The Fury Knight heard his mother outside the office and even got a peek at her when Rachelle opened the door, so he stands and moves to get an open bottle of whiskey and two glasses, just in case Josleen’s massage wasn’t enough to get her through that latest ambush from Mama Jauzon. He nods his head towards a glass, in the universal mime for ‘do you want one?’ and it becomes clear that he’s going to have one whether she is going to join him or not.
Rachelle || Guillem earns a sideways glance as Rachelle enters the room. She hadn’t counted on a child being here, and he complicates things. In response to the call of “mama” she tousles the child’s hair, for what else is she to do? And to the silent question of drink, she nods emphatically and makes it seem like she’s afraid the woman outside might hear her if she speaks -- but really, she’s terrified saying too much might give up the ruse. “Allow me, dear,” is all she says, and she moves forward to take the bottle from him.
Macon and Guillem both seem a little skeptical of Josleen’s greeting of her beloved son, but The Rage Knight passes it off as her still being shook from the repeated Augusta encounters and that look she gives him confirms that suspicion. Guy simply huffs and starts mashing more models together, imploring that “Mama! Look!” followed by another high pitched screeching sound that no catapult has ever made in the history of the universe. When the imposter moves to go prepare the drinks, Macon follows her the rest of the way, coming up close behind her and grabbing her butt, as he normally does with his wife. “Did she tell you about the kid who’s toes fell off?” He asks, mockingly, knowing that his mother wouldn’t be able to resist that one. It has everything, a first hand account, dismemberment, Colleen Zucca! Everything!
Rachelle || “Yes, love,” Rachelle says to the child, almost automatically. She’s babysat enough young cousins to have dispassionate observation of a child’s antics down pat. And then -- the godsforsaken King of Larket has just grabbed Rachelle’s butt. The. King. Of. Larket. Rachelle might imitate her ‘son’s’ screeching right now, if she didn’t happen to have a -very- compelling reason not to. It turns out that fear of being caught is a powerful motivator, and so she whirls around, doing her best to convert her offended expression into something about Macon’s mother. “Could you be a dear and hand our child off to her? She can make sure our child’s toes don’t fall off herself, if she cares so much.” The child won’t have to witness his father’s murder, and it will get the man out of the room for the few seconds she’ll need to taint his drink. “And,” she adds, giving the king her best sultry look, “I think we are in need of some alone time.” Don’t panic, Rachelle, he’s a man and he’s your ‘husband.’ He knows better than to question his wife wanting him, even if the words aren’t quite right… right?
Macon’s wife could be wearing a Kelovath mask, well, maybe not that, but anything else strange, and he wouldn’t question her trying to get him alone. So the little idiosyncrasies in how she speaks to their son and him don’t throw him off enough to do as he’s told. The most damning evidence, perhaps he’ll notice after the fact when he’s replaying this in his head in hell or wherever abandoners of Vakmatharas end up, is that Josleen is ok handing Guillem off to known bad influence; Grandma Jauzon. “Are you takin’ tha’ with you?” He asks the young child about the little catapult in his hand. To which the prince replies, “Of course!” and gets lifted up off the desk and carried out of the office while being treated to ‘monkey face’ by The King of Larket, what a life. The Rage Knight exits his office with puffed out cheeks and wide slate eyes, and hands off his son, after a little bit of convincing and bribery, for Augusta and Guillem respectively, to the grandmother. The old woman shares one more urgent piece of child raising advice with her son before he is allowed to return to his wife’s impostor. He keeps the advice to himself, it isn’t that funny or ridiculous to be worth mentioning.
Rachelle || When Macon returns, Fakeleen is perched on the edge of the desk, sipping from one glass and holding the other out to him, her eyebrows a-waggling. She’s parted the layers of her dress such that a hint of leg is showing, just to -really- sell the ruse. She hopes the poison is fast-acting enough that she won’t have to go much further, but in the time he has gone she has steeled herself to the possibility. “And what shall we drink to, my king?”
Macon stalks forward wearing a smirk instead of the usual scowl that the public should be more used to. ‘My king’ is another of those red flags that he misses in his lust, but hindsight is twenty-twenty, give the Rage Knight a break, he’s about to be killed. He takes the glass from his supposed wife and holds it out while thinking briefly. There’s really only one thing that is always on his mind these days, and that is the curse on the children of Larket, specifically his own son. So it would come as no surprise to the real Josleen that he toasts to someone Rachelle is quite familiar with, “T’Muzo… and a swift cure for our son.” With that, he tosses the whiskey back in a single gulp and slams the glass down on the desk to Fakeleen’s right and leans in, one hand on the top of the desk, the other on her. He coughs, perhaps the poison is acting fast enough to save Rachelle from further molestation from the Larketian King, and shakes his head, which is feeling fuzzy already. His hand slips on the desk and he slumps over onto the impostor’s shoulder with his full weight, unable to form full words, just weak growls and grunts, “Gwuh. Grrreeg. Grrruuh…” He’ll be out momentarily.
Rachelle || “To Muzo,” echoes Rachelle, and she knocks back her own drink. (The royal liquor is bound to be good stuff, and not something to miss out on.) But the last drops fly askew as Macon clings to her, as she finds herself holding his weight. At last, Macon’s death is a looming reality, and no longer a construct of revenge confined to her head (and the heads of a few Larketian rebels). And maybe that’s why she lets him cling so. Or perhaps she’s possessed by a sudden empathy. Perhaps this is the first person she’s killed, and she finds the heaviness of his body on hers too real, with an accompanying psychic weight not yet realized. But all she says to suggest it, as she looks into the fading light of his eyes, is, “I’m sorry.”
Macon perhaps sees something in Rachelle’s disguised eyes that convinces him that this is not his wife holding onto him. Maybe it is the apology itself, or the combination of all these things that he has dismissed as signs of a frazzled queen, but whatever it is, it causes him to look at the woman before him in a way he has never looked at the true Josleen, even when they considered each other enemies. His whole body shakes with fury and he looks like a wild beast, hopelessly cornered, with his teeth bared in a grizzly expression. The inherited maddening aura of The Rage Stone spills out of him in a way that almost makes it feel like the entire fort is quaking in anger along with him. “-You-” He growls the one word out with all his might, which isn’t much, and clutches feebly at her with intent to kill, but only enough strength to inconvenience slightly. He doesn’t know who he is looking at, but he knows he hates them, and that they have killed him. Then the light fades from his eyes and he is out cold, slumping onto her again, and sliding off unceremoniously if she will let him...
Rachelle shakes too, but not with fury. The fort in its wrath feels far too large, like she’s a pea swallowed up by a giant. And yet, the room feels too small. She’s a mouse swallowed whole, gasping for breath while a snake’s muscles push around her, crushing her, endlessly shoving her down, down, and into the dank abyss of its stomach.
She’s hardly aware of what she does in the aftermath of the dead King. She’s hardly aware that she retches, spilling bile right onto his corpse. She wants to flee from the room, flee from the fort, flee back to Kelay and pretend that none of this has happened, but her hands are pulling the dead king up, hauling him into his chair, posing him and pushing his eyes closed like he’s only taking a nap. It’s ridiculous, and some part of Rachelle’s mind realizes this as she steps back to stare at her handiwork. Her vomit stains the shoulder of his shirt like a baby’s spit-up -- the child was far too old for that, wasn’t he? -- and with a handkerchief she blots the mess clean. She doesn’t know why she’s doing any of it, but pulling back a second time and observing the man unsoiled and at rest does serve to make her feel ever so slightly better.
On her way out, she clings to that shred of something less than awful and presses it between palms like a prayer. She’s praying all the way out the keep and beyond the bounds of Larket, but she does not tell a soul what she has done.
Upstairs in the Royal Residence, the oblivious Queen lies half asleep beneath the massaging hands of her most trusted handmaiden. She dreams of her husband and son engaged in father-son moments like playing rugby, riding horses, or simply curling up in bed with her. She remains blissfully unaware of the assault inflicted upon her King, that is until she feels the rage aura rock the fort as explosively as a siege. Josleen's eyes snap open and she shoves Floria aside as she races towards the door, pulls her silken robe off a hook and slips it on as she bursts into the hall. "My Queen!" Floria shouts. "Find Roald! Call Percival!"
Thankfully Headmaster Percival is already in the fort on mage business, and he's already aware that something has gone terribly wrong. The battle mages bicker amongst themselves (one turns another's head into a fish), and Percival is only spared thanks to his superior anti-magic charms, which he can feel fending off the rage that threatens to take him too. He, too, races in search of the King as upstairs Josleen runs past three quarreling guards who largely ignore her demands that they go "To the King! You idiots!" Her own rage infection boosts the King's signal and further maddens the guards who simply cannot snap out of it. She narrowly avoids a stray crossbolt meant for another guard when she rounds the staircase banister and flees downstairs.
Suddenly, she feels the rage aura snuff out in a way she's never felt before. Terror constricts in her heart and coils around her throat. Panicked, she runs to Macon's office to find Percival already bent over the King and casting a spell. "Percival!!" Josleen hisses as she grabs a paperweight off the desk and aims to bash the back of the headmaster's head. Percival takes a glancing blow to the shoulder as he evades. "Your Majesty! I am trying to save him!" Wendell soon follows Josleen and demands to know what has happened. "The King has been poisoned!" Percival shrieks in disbelief then turns back to Macon to try a second spell, incase the first didn't take.
The guard who stood sentry in the hall points a finger at Josleen. "The Queen was the only one present in the room when..." The guard, Wendell, and now a second and third guard, and even Roald (who has just arrived) all look shiftily about themselves, silently communicating about the suspicious rage they all felt yet again. What is that? Why does it keep happening? It all started when Josleen was first captured, didn't it? This has been much discussed in the past year. Those in-the-know have all-but-unanimously agreed that Josleen is the source of the rage, because it all started (from their view) that day they brought her back from Cenril when a rage took over the caravan of carriages and almost set her free.
Josleen glares at the guard who fingered her. "How dare you lie! I was not!" Floria pants as she joins the crowded office. "Floria, tell them." Floria backs up the Queen's alibi, but her testimony has little power of persuasion given how close she is to Josleen. She -would- lie for Josleen, of that everyone is certain. But Roald is not quite convinced Josleen would turn on the King. He's a true believer in their love, even if the majority of the guards remain suspicious of this Frostmawian implant. He says, "I believe the Queen. We must consider the possibility that--" Wendell, who is shaking for his love of Macon rivals even Josleen's, interrupts, "WE HAVE A PROCESS! Those credibly suspected of violent crimes are to be held as the Fort carries out an investigation. "What!" Josleen snaps. "But I am the Queen!"
Despite Floria and Roald siding with Josleen, and Percival playing both sides diplomatically, and despite a lengthy quarrel of words and the persuasive skills of the bard Queen, Josleen is eventually arrested against her will, separated from her son, and kept in the dungeon instead of her room because, as Wendell argues, it would be easier for the Dragon Queen of Frostmaw to break Josleen out of her bedchamber than the dungeon. Floria does everything she can to spruce up the dungeon cell She brings in luxuries, and tries to remove the smell of soiled bodies, feces, and decay, but in the end can only mask the smell the way flowers mask the stench of a rotting corpse at a funeral.
In the sickbay, the King lies in a coma, barely clinging to life thanks to Percival's quick thinking.