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It was not one large event that alerted the Kingdom to what had happened. It was merely several, small events. The morning had dawned with an unseasonable chill, frost riming the windows and doors. The birds, the insects, even the creeping mice- all had fled, or stayed huddled in darkened corners, refusing to make a single sound. The children, perhaps more sensitive to the subtle wrongness of the morning, were subdued and silent, hungering for nothing and wanting only sleep. The urchins on the street had vanished, along with the other animals. Even the grand arts of the occult were muted somehow, as if something else had dampened their fire. In fits and pieces, the populace trickled towards the palace, not yet frightened. The horror came when they passed the outer gates, and found every door, every window, every mousehole, even every crack that permitted the passage of the tiniest spiders- all were locked, closed off by arts that no magi outside the palace could break. An Hour's personal attention had become fixed upon the palace, and nothing would enter or exit until it alone decided that would be so.
After days of silence and icy doors that would succumb neither to breaking nor lockpicking, the locks shattered on their own. Slowly, carefully, the first of the crowd entered the palace, prepared for anything. ''Almost'' anything, for what they saw in the halls was a charnel house that seemed sprung from the dreams of a madman. The servants, the nobles, the magi of the court- all adults that had lived and worked in the palace that evening had been hunted down, their eyes and tongues removed, their bellies and the arteries of their legs slashed open, and the corpses pinioned to the walls by the bones of their fingers. All the mirrors had been shattered, the reflective blades of weapons blackened and matted, even the perfect surfaces of statues and ornamentations had been scratched and twisted to refuse reflection. (Meatgrinder activities here). In (Quoth the great throne roomGod-from-Moist: King Squidward seems to be such a threat that he'd probably be best dispatched in a more climactic fashion, perhaps by archie himself. Otherwise, his followers, ministers, and the face necromancers working for him would probably all be fair game for the brunt of a Hours wrath. Perhaps after learning he was slain, the King had been nailed idiots of his court tried to raise him from the Dead AGAIN, prompting anaconda to step in? And/or he used some sort of foul Tail sorcery to prevent the Hours from directly touching him or his throne with his own teethheresies, and when he died it was suddenly Open Season?). Along the wall behind the throne, a bloody message was writ: Don't do it again.
(Any Hours that want to claim or disavow this event, speak thy piece here). Perhaps it might have been the Ferryman itself, reminding mankind that no mortal or immortal could cheat it of its rightful property... And yet, the Ferryman has never been one to resort to violence. Debtors are Taken, and then they are Gone. The solitary Hour of Stealth itself might have turned its blade against the false King, although its devotees knew nothing of this until it happened. Yet again, certain faceless and nameless spies whisper of the "second palace" in their strange passphrases, where an "empty assassin" and the "third hill" bear more importance than merely codewords.
