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Sir Billiam III stood, gloved hands neatly crossed behind his back as his approval brushed the scene in front of him. His carefully grown vines swarmed around the body that he no longer cared to look at, sweeping his prim cloak in the direction of the only entrance and exit to the room, pausing only in his path to shift the painting long enough to pass through into the main mansion and not holding the frame long enough for the butler to leave from where he followed at his heel.
“We make a pretty good team, you and I.” He paused to adjust his words as he watched the butler struggle through the archway. “I did all the hard work, of course, but you made a fine ornament today. We still need to work on the...speaking, however.”
The following silence was tasteful. As it should be.
On his brief journey to his office, he passed the bodies of his late guests; it was a pity they had to be involved, but to feed the Egg there were no boundaries too high to progress further. As ordered, the butler would clean up and deliver the extra nourishment later that evening.
Adjusting his cufflinks, he stared at the masses of paperwork and extensive planning before he resolved to sit, clearing his desk of all but one sheet. It read an inclusive list of nobles, workers, and a minority of peasants—starter, dinner and desert, only the best for the Egg he’d raised for the past year or so. It was a shame that only one peasant had been present that evening, he’s used to more of the lower class snooping around so that he didn’t have to personally invite them instead.
It’d been quite sudden, the events that led up to obtaining the swarm of crimson that drew the majority of his attention day to day. Assumably, its past associate had mistreated it, not fed it enough, so that it came into his own possession; he, however, lived in symbiont with the creature. It wants not for food or to threaten his own life as he does not in return, instead attending to all its needs as if it were his own.
In the time that the Egg had lived under his residence, it’d doubled in size—his pride and joy as its caretaker—and it made for an excellent pet of sorts. He allowed it free reign over the house, of course; all the rooms are accessible should it want and occasionally he catches drift of a rogue vine slung across a sink or shedded bark not yet disposed of by the butler.
He’d even had the pleasure of the branching mental bond he’d long become accustomed to, feeding him information and knowledge far beyond that of anything he’d known before.
All attention snapped toward the door as the butler stumbled in from where a vine had loosely coiled around his leg. Sir Billiam III noted the titter in his mind that was not of his own inner voice. The butler stood halted and upright as Sir Billiam III regarded him with a keen eye.
“You may speak. Minimally.” A curt nod followed his words but not anything low or respectful.
He watched as the butler took a moment to consider his words as not to vex his master; good, he’d learnt then—he is always replaceable, after all.
“The bodies are gone, sir.”
Pointless information. He could already tell by the pulses of satisfaction running distinctly through the bond, those of satiated feeding and fullness, of growth and content. The butler had done his job, however, he could give him that.
“You have done well. Clean the manor and prepare a space for our next guests.”
The lack of backtalk pleased him and he returned to the sheet of names, weighing out his options, his most recent adversary dead within the evening’s batch. The Egg came as both a gift and an advantage—as he worked with it, he eliminated opposition, his own status heralding him innocent from any happenings.
Copious amounts of blood was a downside of course, and sometimes the terrible stench left behind irked him, but those were material problems; with the Egg, the potential for dominating society became immeasurable. He’d already experienced the Egg’s affinity for manipulation—tendrils of whispers, honeyed offerings, and words of conviction that could change the mind of any obstinate person.
Or, if it became necessary, they could maintain a dictatorship. Either or worked fine for him. His Egg receives all the sustenance it desires and he comes into more power.
And for the downside? The butler can clean the blood. He is trained for it, after all.