Tyranny of Steel

The sun rose in Granada, the young King of Austria lay sprawled out on his bed naked next to his newest bride. On his nightstand was a golden chalice with the slightest residue of fortified wine dried and sticking to its gilded center.

After returning to Granada, with the former King of Portugal in tow, Berengar had celebrated the night with the many soldiers who had taken part in the combat operations. He spent the remainder of the night making love to his wife.

However, now he groaned as he slowly reached consciousness, his head was pounding, and he felt as if he were neither living nor dead. His deep sapphire eyes stared at the ceiling, though he could only see its well-carved surface with his left. As he struggled to regain control over his thoughts, a single phrase escaped his lips.

”Fuck my life. ”

Having said this, a series of memories from his past life flooded his brain, causing further agony to his already poor state. He could immediately remember that he had spent several years of his past life waking up to an alarm clock saying a similar sentence as his first words every morning.

It took well over thirty minutes for him to rise to a standing position, and the moment he did so, he felt wobbly. At this moment, Yasmin awoke; she was in a similar state, and rather than say good morning to her husband, she immediately rushed to the window and vomited the liquid contained in her stomach.

Berengar, ever the gentlemen chose to ignore this fact and merely decided to slowly but surely get dressed in proper attire before descending the staircase. Upon reaching the bottom level of the Palace, he immediately found a passed-out Hasan lying defenselessly on one of his grand sofas.

The moment Berengar saw this, he groaned before kicking the man in the leg, immediately waking him up in a startle. It took several moments for Hasan to notice that the person who had woken him from his drunken stupor was none other than his friend and ally Berengar von Kufstein. Berengar did not hesitate and instead began to speak to Hasan with a grave tone.