Chapter Text
Salazar and a few of his men were just leaving the room where he’d… taken care of Warnerstock’s remaining rulership, his sword still wet and running, when another one of his soldiers approached him.
“Sir!” he greeted. “We’ve found the Warner children. They were trying to sneak out through the servant’s quarters.”
“Wonderful.” Salazar pulled a cloth from his pocket and began wiping the ink from his sword. “Lock them in the dungeons for now. Make sure there’s no windows or cracks to the outside; those toons can be quite slippery.”
He paused, considering, before continuing, “Also, make sure there are at least three guards looking after them at a time. I’ll deal with them once we’ve taken full control of the country.”
“Yes, sir!” The soldier saluted before turning on his heel and making his way back to relay the orders.
From there, Salazar made his way to the balcony that overlooks the courtyard, where his and Warnerstock’s men still battled it out. He took satisfaction in how his own men were handily taking down the enemy before calling for the fighting to end. He announced Queen Angelina’s death (which was the actual thing that stopped Warnerstock’s soldiers from attacking) and called for the enemy’s immediate surrender. “Those who refuse will be executed without mercy.”
Needless to say, it didn’t take long for him to have full control of the castle.
Afterwards, he ordered his men to spread further through Warnerstock and initiate a lockdown of the whole country. Everyone is to stay within their homes until Salazar was officially declared king.
The loss over the coming days after the queen’s assassination of rebelling soldiers and civilians alike was truly unfortunate, but they made their choice and as such, they must live with it. Or, rather, die with it, as it were.
Days later, with less than twenty-four hours before his coronation and the country held tightly in his fist, Salazar finally had the chance to deal with the Warner brats, still under lock and key in the dungeons.
He was on his way down there now with a squadron of guards, including his captain. His plan was to drop them off in some orphanage somewhere, where they could live out their miserable lives in squalor.
And yes, he knew he ought to just kill them now. That would guarantee no trouble from them down the line, as the "rightful heirs" to Warnerstock's throne. He had them right where he wanted them, after all; a simple order would be all that was needed to end the Warner bloodline right here and now.
Only…
Well, it's not as if Salazar was heartless. He didn't care for children, especially not these children, but it wasn't as if he went around slaughtering minors left and right. The idea of telling his soldiers to murder the six-, four-, and two-year-old in his dungeons turned his stomach.
Besides, they're only children. What real harm could they do as they are? Perhaps when they're older, they'll try to be a thorn in his side, but then it'll just be easier on his conscience to kill them anyway.
There were three guards standing outside of the childrens’ dark, damp cell, just as he’d requested days prior. They saluted him once they noticed him and stepped out of his way.
“Open it,” he ordered, and one of them rushed to do so.
The cell door stuttered open under the soldier’s hand, creaky with disuse. Salazar took a single step inside, squinted towards the three small figures in the very back, and requested a torch.
Upon receiving the light, he angled it towards the children, huddled on the floor by the farthest wall.
The eldest clutched his younger siblings close to him, one arm wrapped around the middle sibling, who clung and buried his face into his brother, and the other holding his baby sister, all wrapped up in a dirty, magenta blanket and propped up in the elder’s lap, buried into his chest.
The children were trembling, fur frazzled and unkempt. Their faces were visibly damp, though they seemed to have been shut up in one way or another. Upon hearing the door, the girl had twisted around to look at the intruding person, eyes darting to and fro, seemingly trying to take in Salazar and every soldier behind him as if knowing where they were would protect her in some way. The younger boy’s face stayed buried in his brother’s shoulder. He curled in towards his brother, looking much like a defeated, kicked puppy would. Those were normal reactions, however. The real curiosity was the eldest.
The elder Warner child had yet to take his scared, but defiant eyes off of Salazar. His claws had even punctured through his dirtied gloves, and though his hands cradled his siblings, the claws never even brushed them. He seemed to realize Salazar was the biggest threat to himself and his siblings in the room. Even at the kid’s age, Salazar could see the untapped potential in the brat’s eyes, an intelligence just waiting to be nurtured and developed. He’d be quite the threat once he grew up.
Not that Salazar thought the boy would be able to gather any rebels by the time he grew to the age anyone would listen to him. Salazar plans on ridding Warnerstock of any remaining rebellion within the year. There wasn’t anything an untrained six-year-old ex-prince would be able to do in that time, no matter what intelligence he seemed to have or not.
He was glad the children were at least quiet. The last thing he wanted was to deal with a bunch of sniveling brats.
“So these are the Warner children,” Salazar said. The middle child froze and the girl turned her head back towards her brother with a whimper. Only the eldest looked at him. “How… adorable.”
A high-pitched growl cut through the quiet of the cell. It was coming from the eldest, of course, who clutched his siblings even closer to him as his frankly-adorable growl rumbled from his throat.
Immediately the soldiers behind Salazar began unsheathing their swords, perceiving the sound correctly as a threat against their leader. Also immediately, the sound cut-off abruptly from the ex-prince’s throat.
“How cute that you think you’re at all threatening,” Salazar mused, smirking triumphantly. “If your own soldiers or even your mother,”—The two youngest whimpered and the eldest’s breath hitched at the mention—“were no match for me, why do you think you are?”
The elder ex-prince raised his chin at Salazar, meeting his own disinterested gaze with an angry, tearful glare. He bared his teeth at the older man, even as his sister burrowed into him and his brother trembled at his side. Or perhaps he did so because of his siblings’ actions. Something like, protecting the last thing he had to lose.
How noble, if naive.
Salazar tilted his head towards the guards stationed here, keeping his gaze on the children. “How were they?”
“Mostly quiet,” one responded. “If anyone came near the oldest would growl, but other than that they just stayed together like that.”
“And their meals?”
“... Limited, like you requested, sir,” he said
To weaken them, of course. Even if they’re children, they’re also toons. The eldest definitely would’ve been a pain in the butt to deal with had he been at full strength.
The guard that answered him looked as if he wanted to say something else, but didn’t quite have the courage to do so. It probably had something to do with feeding the children, meaning he’d probably given them more meals than he was supposed to, but Salazar could tell the children were still quite weak. The guard had probably just given in to them begging for more food. They were children, after all. He’d just need to be moved to a position less likely to interact with begging prisoners.
Salazar could just get rid of him, but he needed as many loyal soldiers as possible now. He’d see how the guard did in the future, if he was lenient with the rules Salazar put in place. Then, Salazar would kill him, for insolence.
“What do you want to do with them, sire?” Salazar’s captain asked, bringing him back to the present moment. Salazar glanced behind him momentarily and was about to order the kids’ immediate banishment from the castle when the eldest's glare caught his eye again. He really ought to not be worried about a six-year-old's possible revenge plans, and yet…
Hm… He took stock of the protectiveness the child showed towards his siblings. How he covered them as much as he could with his body while still standing tall. How the younger children obviously looked toward him for comfort and protection.
Salazar was not heartless enough to kill children, but he had no qualms over breaking an already-broken family.
"Separate them," he finally ordered, stepping aside so his men could enter, and the three children froze. He saw the defiance vanish from the eldest's eyes, replaced by terror. As soon as the words processed, his soldiers went to work.
Men poured into the cell. The eldest leapt to his feet, pulling his siblings with him and pushing the younger boy behind him. He tilted his baby sister away as he kicked and swiped with his free hand at the guards, shouting, “No, stop, get away from them! Stay back!”
The middle child and girl started crying in earnest, clinging to their older brother as he desperately tried to keep the men away from them.
One soldier managed to snatch the eldest’s free arm, allowing an opening for another to grab the girl. The boy gave an ear-piercing scream as she was pulled from his grasp, wailing and crying. The boy ripped his arm from the other soldier and tried to lunge at the man holding his sister, but was caught before he could get very far. He struggled and kicked and scratched as more and more hands tried grabbing at him, shouting, “Dot! Dot! Give her back, let her go! Dot!!”
The middle child stood frozen with fear and trembled in the back of the cell, watching all of this play out. With the older brother distracted and occupied, the remaining soldiers took advantage of the child’s terror to grab him.
The second he felt hands grasping him and lifting him into the air, he began struggling, scratching, and kicking like his brother, crying out, “Yakko! Yakko!”
Yakko, still unrelenting in his struggling, whipped his head back and cried, “Wakko! Give him back!”
He tried to shift his escape towards Wakko, who’d been restrained by three soldiers, but by then his body began to give out on him, having been weakened by the little food he’d consumed over the last week. Four men grasped each one of his appendages, rendering his struggles useless, even as he yanked and squirmed. Toon strength or not, all of them were starved kids. There was no real hope of them winning.
While all of this went on, Salazar turned towards his captain, who seemed mildly uncomfortable with the whole scene in front of him. Salazar paid this no mind.
“There is a carriage prepared and waiting to drop these three in an orphanage,” he explained. “Get two others ready as well. Each carriage is to take one child and leave them in separate orphanages across the country. Make sure none of them know where the other two are.”
“Yes, sir,” the captain said, a little subdued.
“Also—” Salazar turned back to the fighting, which had ended. He took in Yakko, the eldest and heir to the throne, who snarled and snapped his teeth and yanked his body every which way, looking every bit the animal his toon family was designed after. “Tell them to leave Yakko in the closest orphanage possible. I wish to keep an eye on him.”
“Yes, sir,” his captain responded, nodding. He looked to his men, who were only a little scraped up from the childrens’ struggles, and called for them to follow him.
Salazar watched as the Warner siblings were carried from the cell in order of age. Dot still wailed and cried for her brothers, but the man holding her kept her swaddled tightly in her blanket, rendering any squirming null. Wakko whimpered like a pathetic puppy, tears dripping down his face as he occasionally mumbled for his siblings or mother. Yakko was the only one with any real fight left, though his despair seemed to catch up with him. Tears streamed down his face even as he growled and snarled, demanding to be let go and for his siblings to be returned to him.
As they were turning out of the cell, Yakko somehow managed to slip his hand from the soldier's holding it. He snatched one of the bars of the cell tightly, momentarily halting the little groups departure, and made eye contact with Salazar.
"Wait," he begged, tears still streaming down his face. Salazar held up a hand to halt the soldiers from pulling the boy away. "Please let us stay together. We're—We're all we have. I'm begging you."
What a picture; Warnerstock's heir begging its rival's ruler for mercy. He'd laugh if it weren't so pitiful.
"Hm..." Salazar brought his hand up to his chin as he slowly walked toward the restrained boy. "Well, when you put it like that..." It was almost funny, in a sad way, watching the child's face light up, seeing a hopeful smile spread across it. Salazar smirked, leaning down to get into the child's face. "Ah... no. No, I don't think so."
Yakko's expression shifted to disbelief and horror so quickly it nearly startled a laugh from Salazar. The child's mouth hung open a little, speechless, as Salazar smirked down at him.
Should he be taking such entertainment from tricking this child? Probably not. However, it wasn't his fault the ex-prince was so gullible. Really—what was he expecting? A change of heart all because he wore some pleading eyes? Tried to play at Salazar's heartstrings?
This wasn't some children's fairy tale. The child needed to face reality.
Salazar stood up straight and looked to one of the men holding the boy, who hadn't yet moved his his frozen, disbelieving position. "Go on then, take him away."
"Yes, sir!"
The moment he was moved again, Yakko started up his struggling again, snapping and attempting to scratch at everyone around him, screaming for the men and Salazar to let him go, to let them all go. It, of course, fell on deaf ears, his weak squirming nothing against the strength of four men.
Salazar let out a soft breath, relaxing, as his men disappeared around the corner. He could still hear Yakko's protests, and Dot's wailing from further down, echoing down the hall. That was a bigger ordeal than necessary.
Really. Did those brats truly think they stood a chance?
Salazar rolled his eyes at the thought of three child toons, with barely a decade of life between all three, defeating a squadron of fully trained grown men. Hilarious, really.
He left the cell and made his way back upstairs, towards the throne room. His throne room. He felt a surge of pride for himself and his home country as his steps echoed through the empty room.
He’d finally defeated and taken control of the country that’d been such a thorn in Tictockia’s side for all these years. If his ancestors could see him now…
He walked to the balcony that overlooked the courtyard, seeing three large, sturdy carriages lined up and ready to depart. What quick workers, these Warnerstockians.
He was just in time to see his men start to load the children up. As far as he could hear, Dot had stopped crying and Yakko had stopped his petulant demands. They’d at least quieted down. Actually, it looked like the boy had stopped struggling as much, too.
Salazar squinted, trying to see better, and almost laughed at the sight. It seemed they’d chained the boy! And was that… it was.
Salazar wondered how their beloved parents would feel, watching their eldest son and heir to the throne be carried from their own castle, shackled and muzzled, off to some no-name orphanage, never to set foot in his home again. Probably horrified. How delightful.
With a triumphant smirk, Salazar strode away from the balcony as the carriages took off for the main road. He called for a servant and ordered them to tell the captain that the number of soldiers in each of the towns the Warner siblings were dropped in needed to be increased, especially that of Yakko Warner, to make sure the brats never saw each other again.
Something told him that those three children would be a force to be reckoned with if left together.