The king and queen watched Sonder as she dispatched and destroyed what they called theirs.
It was almost indifferent
What was the throne room but a room? And what did the other man-eaters matter to them?
Barely anything.
So long as they themselves were safe, it wouldn't matter that much.
If things got pushed too hard, they would even abandon one another.
The two of them, and their son; aimless, uncertain what he should have done himself, moved toward a door at the back of the throne room.
They weren't running but walking instead, like they wanted to get away from a mild inconvenience.
The others kept coming.
Sonder let them.
It seemed there was a split among the man-eaters. Half wanted to fight Sonder, and half wanted to flee from her.
She felt the constant and enormous power of the six shards in the staff. Each one adding its own particular pull to the rest. It should have been difficult to hold and difficult to think through them.
But it seemed that what Sonder wanted and what they wanted aligned in the moment.
Destruction, domination.
Constant, powerful waves of distortion came from the staff, slowly destroying everything around it.
A large man-eater came at Sonder from the left, and his focus was on the staff itself.
She let him close his hand around it.
The fragments lit at the contact, all six, and he released it with a sound that was more shock than pain, pulling his hand back and looking at it with stunned disbelief.
She kicked him in the face, smashing it in, and he flew back.
There was no reason for Sonder to hurry the destruction, but the throne room couldn't hold out much longer.
She decided to finish it.
She planted the staff into the cracked floor and let everything she had run through it.
The fracture lines she had started ran the rest of the way up in an instant, and the section of ceiling it had been holding came down in a cascade, not toward her but away from her; the collapse was directed like water down a slope.
The man-eaters beneath it moved or did not.
She wasn't watching.
The walls began to bow outward.
The ones still fighting her stopped.
They didn't want to be buried here.
Sonder looked up, and from the center of it, she pushed, and the roof opened.
It was torn, stone separating from stone, the gap widening as the support beneath failed.
Cold night air and the shine of the moon and stars flowed through the ruined throne room.
She rose through it, being lifted up into the sky by the staff, not by her own power.
It demanded more. The shards pulled at her, wanting more, wanting everything, and for the moment she let them have what they wanted.
From above, the castle looked so insignificant.
The courtyards, the thick walls, the gatehouse she had walked through, and the banner. The hole she had made in the throne room steamed faintly with dust.
The tallest things were the watchtowers, so she started with them.
They looked like the part that had taken the most effort of the whole construct, and they came down with the least effort on her part.
She pulled at the foundations of the nearest one, and it fell in a slow, catastrophic unraveling.
The others she destroyed more directly.
A single directed force from the staff, and the upper halves separated from the lower and fell sideways.
Below her, things were moving in the courtyard. Shapes running, some on the ground, some taking to the air.
A few of the winged ones rose toward her, and she let them come close enough to see her face, and then she dropped them back to the ground without ceremony.