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The Death of Viktor
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VIKTOR STOOD UPRIGHT. When lesser men refused to bow to their monarchs, their spines curved in the worship of other kings: the soil for their hunger, the fire for their cold, the mines for their coin, the lords for their weakness. Against hunger, against pain, Viktor stood for him and himself alone. He understood that to stand upright was to hold his pride as the backbone of his body, that the gods one had bowed to were not ends, but were simply means. That he served no master other than his own.
Even now on his one hundred and twenty-first birthday, his spine was yet to fail its purpose. Viktor understood this, in the same vein that his hundreds of vassals understood this. They amass like multi-colored rats inside his throneroom, their gowns and suits lit by chandeliers fifty feet above their height. The walls were worlds apart, yet the crowd’s words still echo into his ears.
Banners bearing Viktor’s name hung lavishly upon the pillars, whereas the ceiling was painted with the history of Amanilan Empire. At the very center was a young Viktor, sword in his hand, decapitating Prince Edward the 4th.
Viktor always liked that painting for its artistic value, but its merit fails in its interpretation. For one, he never used the sword. The sword was weak, impractical, expensive, it was only used by nobles deluded by books about knights and honor. No soldier would trust his life with a sword when an axe is much lighter and more flexible. Yet this was what gives the painting its artistic value—that contrast, that juxtaposition of elevating war as something heroic. Like a joke being funny because it fell flat on purpose.
Viktor had drowned people by shoving their faces deep under the mud, he had hung children by the gallows and sent his men into the claws of death, all for the sake of victory. There are no heroes in war. Only the scars of those who remain.
It matters not anyhow. Should time let him go back, he would do it all again.
He looked at Erin, with the greying hair. She was with him then, in the war, in the Gaian expeditions. She built the Inquisition just to keep him company, and he learned how to cook the strangest of plants just to get her attention. Even from afar, she smelled of apples and honey, and love and longing. She was two years younger than him, yet by the way she poised, image, and strut, one could barely say she was sixty.
He had loved her, at least he was sure of that. After the war had numbed him, after the grief, the fire, and the loss of his hand— she was there at the end, hugging him. Her warmth he thought he had grown immune to. And in one final attempt at living, he dug the dead rotting stump that was his chest, and there he found a last linger of love that he didn’t know he had.
But by then she already married Solomon.
Viktor leaned deeper into his throne.
When the waiters distributed the food among the tables, the crowd was surprised. There was smoked leviathan meat covered in honey, beast parts cured of sanguine illness dipped in chili, fried chimera’s eggs, and other rare monstrosities bathed in curry. The waiters were specifically entrusted to tell the guest that it was the king himself who cooked the entire set. Viktor’s trembling hands, cooking. He who once cut bodies as if they were vegetables was now cutting . . . vegetables.
Yet the entire table, in itself, was both a threat and a spectacle of dominance. These monsters being served were ended by his very hands: land titans and sea behemoths, he stabbed them and pierced through them. Eviscerated, mutilated, and now their carcasses are skinned and boiled and spiced.
These recipes were one he learned and earned in the field; a feat that no well-cushioned empire chef could hope to achieve. While their side of the table says, look at me, I am delicious, now eat. Viktor’s buffet has a simple message: Viktor is king.
Viktor took a sip at his wine, and the chatter stopped.
Everybody knew what it meant. Perhaps they expected some sort of announcement, some speech, or perhaps they weren’t sure he was gonna do it at all. The cup, the wine, the poisoned wine Viktor made and now took.
He was sure it was listed specifically on their invitations. At the King’s 121st birthday, he decides that the end of his life has come and will be hosting an event to drink a glass of poisoned wine, you are invited. . .
A vassal approaches him now, maybe a Baron, or a Lord. “My King,” he bowed. “Please forgive my rudeness, but is that—”
“—poison? Yes,” Viktor responded. “Worry not, I made it myself. It’s sweet, almost like dark chocolate, a fine last drink if I do say so myself. Not that you’d wish to have a try, no?”
The crowd chattered in response. “My King, I beg of you,” the man proceeded to reach for his pockets, to which Viktors’s guards automatically respond. Yet the man only pulled out a vial. “Please—this is an antidote,” the crowd was agitated now, they are voicing out their concerns, pleading with their king not to take it. Perhaps they didn’t take the invitation seriously, but then again, Viktor’s not one to speak in metaphors.
The man took his silence as a response and said, “I do not know what witchcraft had convinced you to do this. But if you—”
Viktor gave Erin a glance, and in a single dismissive wave from her, the guards took the man away.
In the Royal Court, Erin looked regal. Her black hair was slanted with whites, like paint, like the edges of a book. Her black armor was made of tungsten, contrasted by her white Inquisitor’s cloak. The witches called her Erin the Endless, they had seen her live and die and live and die and live again. The army called her Erin the Kingslayer after she threw the last king off the castle tower. The common men knew her as Erin the Liberator. Erin the Erudite.
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To Viktor, she was his last love. His final regret.
“We shall now proceed with King Viktor’s decision regarding the passing of the crown,” Erin stated. Her voice was stern yet peaceful, like a calm before a storm. “This is to state that the Inquisition will honor Viktor’s will for as long as we exist. We shall uphold. . . “
Erin’s terminologies and explanations started fading away from Viktor’s mind. Already he can feel his liver failing him, his lungs slowly chasing his breath. He had never been a romantic. Perhaps it was death creeping up on him. His ancient life, reliving the worst parts, playing regrets. Viktor was a great king. He was competent, just, he knows when to be kind and when to use strength, and strength he has. Yet he cannot remember the last time in his life when he lived for himself. His pride was his only selfishness, his only luxury.
As his thoughts trail back, Erin was explaining the details of the new government the two of them came up with. Ten years of work secretly writing laws, bills, systems, pulling strings. So when she spoke of Amanila as a Republic, they already had the groundwork and beyond set up. Amanila, a kingdom where the King changes every decade and the people will have the right to vote for whom they wished to serve.
“As you are aware, I have no descendants, no sons nor bastards. That is on purpose. I have killed my brothers and my father's brothers. I am the last of my blood. Yet what I really intend to say, is I care not for the factions you formed,” Viktor continued from Erin’s monologue. His voice was old, raspy, yet deep, like a cave bellowing in the middle of midnight. “The moment I have usurped the throne, I have no intentions of keeping this monarchy alive.”
The vassals let out an audible shock. Conversations sprang randomly, their murmurs echoing beyond the windows, where bystanders and info-merchants were quick to collect. Within three minutes the inner wall was filled with rumors.
At Viktor’s signal, Erin simply radiated her cold stare and the crowd was quickly silenced. There was an absolute authority present within Viktor and Erin. Beyond their positions as King and Head Inquisitor, beyond their backgrounds as Conqueror and Kingslayer, they together won the biggest human war in millenniums before and after.
Despite Erin’s warnings, a leader of one of the biggest factions inside Viktor’s court started to stir politics. “Your grace, please forgive my impertinence, but we—”
“I do not think I need to remind anyone about The War of the Five Kings?” Erin interrupted. “A depraved king stuck in his decadence met his end by my very blade. And then, a self-righteous prince who thinks being poor is a moral question, died at the hands of the common man. And alas, the military fascist princess, the last to face the gallows before we banned the death penalty.” She listed three of the Five Kings who waged the war. The fourth was The Common Man, who led the masses into a revolution against the castle while the royal family was having their petty squabbles. As if that wasn’t enough, he deserted the country along with thirty-thousand workforce, crippling Amanila’s economy for at least half a decade.
And the Fifth of the Five Kings, of course, was Viktor.
“Who usurped their power?” Erin’s voice echoed in the entire room. Everybody knew the answer to that. Viktor the Conqueror. Viktor the Mighty. Viktor the Valhamoth. “And you wish to continue these vermin’s traditions?”
Viktor’s vassals exchanged nervous glances. To them, this story was already history. But to Viktor and Erin, it was an entire decade of their life. Almost none of the comrades who fought with them were still alive today; half of them died in the Royal Court’s inner politics, half of them were failed by their old bones. This was a court who knew war as words in paper, mere sentences in books. But Erin's reminder grounded them. When the crowd fell completely silent, Erin gave Viktor a look. “It seems no one has any objections, your grace.”
Viktor nodded back.
“As everyone is aware I am nearing my death,” he said, “Not because of age, nor health, but merely of thought. I can feel my head dissipating, disappearing. I have reached a point wherein thinking itself has a cost, a mental tax, two less hours of sleep. Already, all your politics escapes me. This court becomes beneath me. You lot are beneath me. Your little problems, your little lives. You may accuse me of arrogance, but I would dare say that this is. . . depersonalization. A gap in our vision of reality.”
He took a little pause and tried to find what he wanted to say next, and he could not find it. “And what is a wise king if not for his words?” he said, improvising, alluding to his current predicament. “And what is a sword’s worth, if it cuts aimlessly without the principle of its wielder?”
Viktor took another sip of his wine, the crowd shivered as if feeling his pain. The throneroom was a castle tall, cold winds blows from the corridors. And yet everyone sweats.
Even Erin was noticeably uncomfortable. “I am no longer fit to rule, dear vassals,” he said. “And as such, I trust that you will vote for someone competent enough that no other Viktor will exist.”
Viktor drank and drank and drank.
“Your grace, please, if you take the antidote now—”
“I am at the edge of my life, young Jason,” he interrupted again, recognizing the man. “I refuse to be claimed by the physical sickness, and I refuse to be reduced into a vegetable sitting on a golden chair. This is a kingdom, not a hospice. I am a man before I am a king, and what makes a man, Jason, can you tell me?”
Jason looked at him in disbelief. Viktor can tell. He could tell that Jason was prepared to grab the antidote and shove it down his King’s throat, but he wasn’t prepared to be lectured. The last thing on Jason’s mind was questioning what makes a man.
“What separates an animal from a man?" Viktor continued, swirling his wine. "The animal submits to its nature. The lions submit to their innate violence. The rats are seduced by their hunger. Moths to a flame.”
He had started coughing blood now, and his vassals were pulling out their handkerchiefs to offer him. He ignored them.
“And a man?” he paused, eyeing them intently. Their worried faces in pampered clothing, their clean little linens. He was waiting for someone to finish the sentence for him. He was waiting for someone who understood what he’d been saying for years.
He was to find that there were none.
“A man chooses,” he leaned forward from his throne. “No nature nor fate shall take that away from him. Not another man. And not even himself.”
And with that he drank the rest of his wine. “I will have the death of my own choosing. I will suffer in the suffering I made.”
For the last time in his life, Viktor stood upright.
“Thank you, everyone.”
The moment he spoke his final words, the crowd rushed and stirred into a stampede. There are people who burst out crying, most ran towards him with vials or herbs in hand. There are those who respected Viktor's decision and tried to stop the ongoing mess. Some cleared from the way, while there were those who sneered or smiled underneath. Erin simply watched the crowd, no one can tell whether the water on her cheek was sweat or tears.
None of them mattered to Viktor now.
And the moment his body fell to the floor, he woke up as a goblin.
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