“Get off of me!” Dennis released another fit of awkwardly cracked responses, just as my left fist slammed into his ribs and then pinned him with my other elbow. I hated him so much, my older cousin was a loud and useless elitist with no sense of fun. I dropped my advantage to slip back into a guarded stance that Aiko had just taught me recently, letting the cold ebony tiles of the Mauve Palace allow my feet to glide back in an almost charicatature-like fashion of a native Buritian warrior.
“Give me back the—Hey!” My demand was cut short by the little SandSkimmer running for his life down toward the western wing with unprecedented pace…Most likely to tell my father of my doings, or worse, Kash’s mother. I couldn’t allow him to tarnish my entire last week of obligatory pleasantries and forced manner trainings by Haige just because of his lack of appreciation for slap-cheek comedy like I do.
The blinding glass murals of my Father and Grandfather that stained the inner halls of the upper balconies stared disapprovingly of me in my pursuit down the stairs and into the slightly crowded lobby of the Vascan court.
I did not expect there to be as many people as there were, but for some reason, the entire room was filled with members of the Old World empire of Vascaria. Many of the aging men had deep scarring that made them look imposing to most, I saw this as a show of their lack of real combat after learning of their pampered means of whipping themselves with blades; A facade of brave men literally only skin deep.
”Ah, if it isn’t my favorite nephew…What has you in such a hurry?” I had caught the attention of my Uncle, Tariq’Vascaria, to my dismay. His fevered red eyes gracing my own with a profound lack of humanity that shook me to my core. “I wish to offer my condolences for the Queens death…And your ‘Aunt’ Bala.”
His smile crept upward making the corners of his slim eyes crease to razors, the eyebrowless man refused to break eye contact. ”Your favorite? I am your only nephew, I’m just looking for Dennis.” Trying to dismiss him was a feat of its own without the glare of so many members of both Vascan and Vascarian officials in the highest tiers of power left after the fall of the Vascarian empire years ago.
The only true distinction between the sister cultures was how they dressed. My own Vascan people wore much lighter and eccentric markations of our desert conquest of Buriti, the Old World Vascarians were much more entrenched in their ways of that came from the flooded plains of their motherland; Opting to dress in water-wicking garbs that claimed many green and blue hues lacking much reason without any watery pond scum to blend with. “You are not my only—Nevermind, do you not know what today is?”
I took a moment to pick at the small scab that had formed under my elbow after a sparring session with Aiko. “It must be something,” My eyes clicked to each of the other 9 members of the Old Guard that surrounded my uncle Tariq. “Interesting, if you came all this way…” The room went silent, the bearded men seeming to all huff and grunt in their own ways at my response.
“It is the Evening of Searing, your father is to be tested by Dhira for his right to rule! Has he not been teaching you correctly of the Lord’s burning light?” I may have been dull and already fighting my growing need for liquor rather than conversation, but I knew my uncle was attempting to use me as a tool to foment more disloyalty in his brother in law.
I did not care what today was, I did not care if they had flown thousands of miles to mock us as they coveted our throne. I cared about getting my vengeance on Dennis for absconding with my morning fig-tart, it vexed me so deeply that it had forced me to begin to sweat. “Yes, of course! I will be attending shortly,” My body performed a mock bow, though I wanted to punch the man’s ballsack and run. “We all should be more like Dhira.”
”NONE ARE LIKE DHIRA!” I nearly jumped at how loud Tariq’s voice became, the octaves deepening as they bounced off the high ceilings of the Mauve Palace’s gold-lined courtroom. “You still know nothing of god…How will you rule with justice and measure, you—“ I pretended to flinch while escaping quickly behind the hanging carpet that hid a servant tunnel.
I could hear the sounds of the stuffy group of ancient men trying to either yell curses at me or attempting to follow me due to my disrespect. The boney and sharp nailed hand of my uncle came closer than any other but still was not enough to stop my blitz toward the crumbling wastes of the servants long abandoned tunnel’s most prime spot for hiding.
My head scraped a few jutting rock formations but my descent into the lower dungeons was pretty undeterred as always after the scandal of my grandfather and his secret children with many of the native Buritian servants, now they were my means of travel. Aiko and I had spent many summers mapping the sprawling inner walls of the palace, Dennis was privy to our knowledge but due to constraints relating to his size was not able to make his way much farther than a few feet into it’s black maw.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
I was myself pushing the depths of what I knew in order to not have to participate in whatever was planned for later, I knew the Searing this year would be particularly boring; My father had undisputedly killed every champion the Old Guard brought forward, with each year proving more and ever-more lackluster due to the dogma that made them pair him with someone of similar age…His 89th birthday last year was an entirely brutal display of what happens to those without the blessings of our southern neighbor of Doiga’s longevity treatments at such an age.
I brooded over the mauling my brain had soaked into itself for several moments in the cold damp around me, my ears picking up the faint hum of the generators that kept the Palace lit and defended from the outside world. Just beyond the sounds of firing pistons there was the sound of speech, not normal, garbled and muffled. It made little sense due to the myself being the only one with a means to not become another starved skeleton inside the walls of my home.
Making my way still further than I knew, the words became clearer, a the tail end of conversation amid complete darkness. “Do you love me Bakal? I have waited for you…Please I—“ The voice stopped, or what I tried to pinpoint that was a voice ceased. My mind tried to wrap around the nature of the person speaking but all I could discern that it was a female with either the deepest baritone I had ever witnessed and or a relic of some horrific smoke inhalation incident. “Closer my love, I can almost,”
The ebony that engulfed me didn’t allow me to see where the woman was speaking to, I began to become anxious at the lack of response that reacted to her from around us. Each passing second felt as if my heart rumbled through the silence, stillness only broken by the sounds of my own breath being held.
“BEGONE!” If I had air left inside my body, it left instantly, the disconnected sound that came off like thunder instead of dialect sent me flailing as it went off near my ear. Panic surged through my body as 2 pairs of hands gripped my limbs without any regard for my status as prince or human standards of confinement, I was forced to my knees without any warning as my nose was ground into the sharp stone floor.
“Interloper! Putrid flesh, what dares you to pierce the veil?!” I wished I knew what was happening, to know who these people were gripping me so tightly I could feel my veins constricting the flow of blood to my hands and feet, my skull was yanked violently to view nothing but a deep void before me. Nothing was there, my salty tears bitterly wet my tongue to more than rock and blood.
Just as quickly as the moment began, I was dropped back to the rough tunnel floor. I huddled into a quivering ball of hysterical fear. Nothing was there. My heart beat as each of my senses tried to grasp at what had happened. One moment I was running, the next, nearly pissing myself at wind in the demons of my own making?
Nothing was there. “Huck?” Aiko’s hand thrust past my break in sanity and the darkness around me, still making me leap with its surprising entry to my sudden horrific reality that may or may not be for fact anymore.
“A-Aiko, is-is it really you?” My bleeding lower lip made it difficult to speak, the words coming out as jumbled as my thoughts. I could feel Aiko’s hand on my shoulder but still couldn’t see her shape, making it very difficult to trust my surroundings as I forced myself to cease crying in front of Aiko.
“It’s okay, don’t cry…Did you get hurt?” Her sweet words made me feel more certain that she was not a figment of my imagination like earlier, my eyes adjusting enough to make out the white of her eyes and the red of her boarding school’s uniform. It didn’t occur to me that she would be home for the Searing as a religious excuse to be back. I missed her deeply.
”I’m okay, I must have hit my head coming in here.” Trying to skip past the more than muddled details of what just happened, I pushed my cranium into a small nudge of our foreheads that would have knotted a much tougher skull than Aiko’s own tough skeleton.
She responded with a hard swat of the back of my head before musing at my pitiful plight with her rough fingers. “You are not okay, have you been seeing a psychologist? Your uncle the second I arrived told me to go and find you after—“ She found the scarred over tissue just above my right eye, stopping only for a microsecond to thumb over the hard skin that still itched.
Aiko remembered how she had slashed my face with a dagger 2 years ago, Aiko did not however even apologize once for the symbol of my loss; Internally I thanked her for it…It set met further in the Vascan mask that was pushed on me, many remarking on how it made my face much more severe in nature.
”I do not care for the Searing this year, I am happy to see you though. How are your studies of slimy Svet traditions up north?” Ignoring the pain, I stood with her help, breaking the barrier of touch one last time to steady myself on the frigid walls of the tunnel. Aiko did not respond but I heard the puzzling sound of her metal plated boots retreating deeper into the inner wall passages of what must have been the lower dungeon at this point.
I began to try to keep pace with her, grunting at the effort, my phantom assault still panting the limbs it struck. “It smells awful in here…Every year less and less people don’t even try to pretend to clean it!” My chest met with a solid back while listening to her words. Aiko seemed to have stopped dead in her tracks.
”What?” A cold slap over my slack jaw prepared me for the tumble to the ground I found myself in, face ringing as we fell into another bout of silence. Aiko’s long curly brown hair began to fall over my mal-adjusted eyes before I could see what fresh hell was awaiting my already terrified psyche. Feeling the pound of Aiko’s heart on mine I took a short glance while creeping my neck to listen with full intent to scrounge the tunnels of even a roach of its sound waves.
”My love, My obsession, My downfall…You have made me wait for so long, why must you fight me?! Why must we hide behind such simple trappings? Do you not love me?” The disconnected feminine voice picked up with wails of deep sorrow that reminded me of a widowed mother, the absolute pain in her baritone speech was enough to make Aiko release her grip of my mouth and roll to my left side.
We both sat with hushed breath as the specter spoke again with the same unanswering being hiding just beyond my grainy sight. “Vascaria is no more…Dhira weeps at the pedestal between worlds! I have brought you the end of his reign with deep floods to snuff his cursed pox!” I turned to Aiko, noticing that she was much more enthralled by this display of vexation than myself.
What was this? These unattended voices speak of such certainty that they caused the fall of the Vascan empire’s sister culture’s prized capital, it made little sense when the history book I was taught by Haige told of Vecine being lost in conflict with heretical factions of followers of Dhira; Nothing of flooded temples that were meant to house sacred fire to the God of wrath.
“I DO NOT CARE! You meddle in minor affairs I DO NOT care about! Why must you follow me?! Every awakening, I have yet to escape you!” The harsh shards of voiced vitriol sent shivers down my spine. The male figure projected enough weight in his words to blow the chalky dust deep into my nasal cavities. “As for your ‘Revenge’, it is not complete. You still lack any true substance…A dying gasp of something unfit for power, irredeemable vestige of Ne’Yeun, find it within yourself to rid me of you!”
End part 1!