The sounds of the locals' murmurs faded away as Aiko drove us from that grisly scene, the race of my own heart echoing louder than any voice could scream to my hungover eardrums. Though Dennis' treacherously brief reign was over, I felt no sense of accomplishment--only a gnawing resolve to unite all peoples of sandy Buriti Vasca, no matter the cost.

As we navigated the abandoned freeway cutting through the desert, my eyes traced the undulating dunes stretching infinitely toward the red-streaked horizon. This harsh, unforgiving land held nightmares beyond the human conflicts raging across it. Massive, ungulate Andrewsarchus stalkers crept in the plunging wastes, that terrified me to my core...

My own uncle died to their huge gaping maw during an ambush of insurgents, the aftermath of his almost entirely devoured corpse was enough to ignite my mind to the many mythic creatures said to roam to sacred dunes of Buriti...But not enough to believe in the rampant mysticism that plagued all peoples of the continent of Izmar. Thousands of fabled encounters with ancient spirits and fictitious creatures combined into only a nagging sense of unease.

This feeling was not enough to deter me from my scheme, unlike my pretentious, squeamish father who deemed the native tribes and rebels "contaminated"-- Fit only for bloodletting, slavery, or sacrifice should they dare trespass too near a Vascan noble's fiefdom for fear of our Vascan god; Dhira's wrath. I intended to extend an olive branch instead.

Even if that meant undertaking their traditional truce ritual of relinquishing my personal dagger while surrounded by Aygu's strongest warriors to the man directly. It was a tremendously risky undertaking, one that Father would have balked at as an abject weakness showing from the first moments of my rule.

But I could no longer watch idly as our great nation tore itself apart over ancient hatreds and injustices. The time had come to shed the prejudices and intolerance of the past. No matter the perils, I would be the one to unite all peoples under a new era of parity and progress for anyone who called upon my name.

My ruminations were swiftly interrupted as Aiko's gruff voice broke the tense silence. "You gambled back there that the locals wouldn't pick you apart too Huck...Where have you been?" I was sitting in the passenger seat this time around as Aiko made her way down the only freeway leading toward the Mauve Palace; The present capital of Buriti Vasca after losing the previous to bad land deals with the north.

The roadway was devoid of any human life as lithe gazelles grazed beautifully on the river bank running perpendicular to the main highway of Buriti Vasca, a wonderful sight for my already tired eyes. "What, Koi nah--I had been bumming around Nak, for the last week this muddy southern sector has been very...Accommodating."

She appeared to be contemplating something deeper than the moment as her light brown freckled face remained stony yet pristine; fig-colored eyes on the barren road. I don't know what her problem was--She was my sister's keeper, not mine.

Well, I guess she was mine now that they all lay in Dhira's inferno... Culture dictated that both the Vascan king and his female kin be followed by a lone bodyguard that was meant to only answer to him and the family he deemed worthy of the Shadow Sentry's titanium-like loyalty. This duty now fell on her to be by me despite her own convictions.

"Can you listen really quickly?" Her voice was rough as always as Aiko slowed down from the high velocity we had maintained since the incident with Dennis. I've never been one to dwell on the past but since this morning--The dawn ambiance had kept forcing my mind's eye to the shattered mural that is my past. I found her question comical, as if unfamiliar with my own issue with retained attention that disallowed me any peace of mind.

Aiko knew better than to try too hard at the effort, I had spent an unhealthy amount of time with her leeching the ShadowGaurd training as a royal sentry. Every summer when she and Kash would come back from Svetlo-Vascan boarding school...Terrorizing the onyx marble walls of the gaudy Mauve Palace with their talk of stratagem and use on my pudgy body for endless games of torment and mockery.

Kash was a fierce debater while Aiko always solved everything with the swift physicality of someone twice her size, which had tapered to a confident 6'4 by the time we were eighteen--And filling out stoicly into the woman she was today...

When my sister had fallen asleep in her vapidly jeweled royal bed. We had spent nights attempting to find ways away from Buriti and all its follies...Cutting our small arms and legs on screws jutting from vents--Spying on my Father and uncle for hours as they planned their next ill-fated assault on our own people. My adolescent mind could barely contain itself, not even hearing the talk of impending hellfire and the mass anarchy of the native people.

I could only remember Aiko's brown eyes almost seemed to glimmer in the moonlight brighter than any star in the vast desert night sky...Now we were just two adults who seemed to not care about anything but the paths we had set or been set on. I considered her my friend though it was a messy subject to put any hold on.

"Sure, you basically have me hostage--I am but a humble servant." I let my eyes wander over the route again as the clay dirt was whipping small vortexes against empty mud-brick houses. We entered the outskirts of the capital quicker than I had anticipated. The drive felt so empty, all things considered, yet peaceful in the wake of the slaughter of the elite.

"Huck...I'm going to leave if you aren't taking this seriously--I've never left Buriti my whole life, I've rarely even been alone since I was assigned to your wonderful late sister," She pulled off the main highway abruptly, I felt her eyes finally breaking slightly from the normal thousand-yard stare she claimed for the last few years.

"We need to go by foot from here so we don't receive a stray air raid,"

I noticed she wiped a single tear from her melancholic face, catching myself from reaching out and wiping it...Too soon for something so intimate again.

I'd never seen Aiko cry. She had been there when her younger siblings were dismembered and used as bargaining chips to her father...The head-Late head general of Vasca Myus Ewabatta. The situation itself paled this one in my seldom-taken opinion--Even if it was my family this time it still haunted me...The way she would flinch at the sound of anything, her sunken eyes. It broke many of the Mauve Palace much more than Aiko.

I remembered my father's leathery face nearly cracking to pieces in the hot sun at the sight of her visage. We had just gotten anywhere with the rebels with Aiko's father's help after my uncle's combat death to the beasts...Two weeks of village raids resulted in a major blow to the structure of the revolutionaries at the time.

Obviously, our parents saw this as a power move but only stood to exacerbate all parties involved. On one particularly dusty afternoon, they had abducted her whole family and began torturing them mercilessly for hours on end...The only thing that had saved her was the fact my father had been particularly fond of Aiko, much to Kash's mother's disgust--Scrambling to pay the ransom before any wound came her way.

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Aiko had come to garner so much of my father's rancid 'favor' that she 'miraculously' escaped her second forced betrothal with my now-dead older cousin and after myself. Though Aiko and Dennis had been betrothed each had stalled on any plans in the 2 years they had been engaged from what reached my ousted ear. I had wondered if it was due to my sister's final years of academy or Dennis being...odd to say the least.

She turned to me as we waited for the rumbling M-10 tank steering toward us with a loud roll of its many banded wheels. "You know Kash was supposed to turn 20 in 2 weeks?" Her words were conveyed almost in the same low fashion as the cadence of the machine of war, sorrow still creeping to the front of her Buriti-Vasco dialect.

We stopped briefly as soldiers began aiding me and Aiko. They seemed more tense than the standard royal guards, to say the least. There had been many talks of Dennis taking power and now he was nowhere to be found, deported drunkard in his stead. I envied them, they did not have to fling out the mandates...Only carry them out.

"I thought my sister's birthday was in the fall..." Fond memories of my charming younger sister came rushing to me as I began placing a bulletproof vest on briskly. Kasiha Vasca is the brightest pupil our shoddy Capital State College can offer: That is all my father and mother would say before hauling her off to more boarding schools behind the eyes of the public. Like she wasn't wasting away in a state-run propaganda base of northern Svetlan design.

I had never been formally familiarized with any particular scholarly pursuit myself, Vasca pureblood in name but my father did not want me in reality. His fervent applause for my sister and Dennis still tingled in my ears. The remembrances as fast as they came, proceeded.

Aiko now had a regime of soldiers lined up as she flawlessly led a speech I had disassociated from, apparently. I was standing on the corner of a desolate city street as they lined the asphalt with their boots, my mind snapping back to actuality.

Each man a scarred mural of our fatherland's history and current rampant rebel predicament. Hot beams of solar rays baked my brown skin as Aiko's voice boomed from my left side. "Huckleberry Vasca is the last remaining royal in all of Buriti Vasca...The insurgents have taken the life of Grand Regent Dennis, we stand at the precipice of disaster as our nation's adversaries stripe our borders-Cackling filthy hyenas...Ready to attempt to use this instant of frailty as their chance to load their rapacious potbellies." Her face was stone-like but her words dripped with acrid nature.

Hushed voices came without mouths among the men standing resolutely, devouring every last word that left her full lips. Aiko's loud voice silenced the line once it rang out once again. "You are to protect our new King while he meets with Grandpa Aygu. You will cease any fire unless told otherwise by me or the king himself." The small Square formation of soldiers clicked in unison now as they took places to cover-fire positions and stage the tense meeting.

Aiko gestured in a simple Buritian salute, Fist presented then dropped firmly to one's side. She then began to speak to me without looking away from the procession of soldiers. "I do not know how long we have Huck until they arrive...I really want to speak with you alone." She motioned to a small alley being used as a makeshift base of operations.

The brick wall had blown out of a sewing kit factory making it difficult to traverse quickly, yet we made excellent pace. The aged building did not withstand anything above 6 feet when the bombs pummeled. I stepped over some militarized sandbags as the side opening gave way to a partially barricaded room.

We stood in an office with a small amount of light peering through from a skylight with audible sounds of soldiers preparing for a confrontation outside the brick walls. "Well, Koi what...I doubt you keep asking me to talk to keep just tindering your resignation--I am ignoring anything of the sort,"

I sat down in a rickety leather chair that instantly gave way under my weight. The shards of wood splintered my right ass cheek like I had been attacking a porcupine den for sustenance. I controlled my tongue knowing that a true Vascan king never shows his imperfection, only staring at my second in command in silence.

Aiko's face remained unchanged as she granted me our cultural respect of ignoring my foolery. "You need to choose how we will move forward once you give a pardon to these insurgents-- You know that I do see your idea but you only have handled the issue of reuniting our mutinous military with your presence. We still are now forced with my backing down as head general to an old madman who employs child soldiers." Aiko finally flinched as the words left her lips.

Trepidation was admirable but I did not have time for her doubts. Her deep brown eyes were now transfixed on mine like she meant to gleam at what she assumed were very little thoughts I had given to the matter at hand. "You think too small--I didn't have you commit treason for nothing Aiko. With Dennis out of the way and lifeless...You stand to benefit greatly as a minister of defense and internal affairs...not to mention a free woman again." I stood up after saying the whole monologue I had been saving since the car ride.

"You don't seriously think the Daughter of the highest-ranking Military official can really act as a petty minister while you parade a pirate as our chief general." She folded her arms the same way she normally did when she didn't believe a speck of what I said. Why is she fighting me so hard? We had spent so many years fighting a syndicate turned freedom fighting group. The amount of foreign aid they received nearly outweighed our own, at least from a military standpoint, we had no time for appearances.

"I do not plan on going to war immediately, once this civil issue has ended we can focus on rebuilding and reeducating the masses." I knew this was a good idea yet her laughter rang out to my chagrin. "You're very naive, we do not have the manpower to educate the children, they are not tools Huck. Every generation since the Svetlan retraction of the annexation has felt the cold grip of poverty, ignorance, and violence that infests nearly all walks of life here in Buriti Vasca."

Aiko sat down at the desk in front of me looking down at her rifle. She fiddled with the marvel of Vascan tech anxiously, keeping native clay from jamming the weapon. I interrupted her racing thoughts with a quick interjection. "And you are too willing to say our people cannot do anything but eat ourselves from our own growing pangs...I do not agree that the retraction of our oppressors should be lauded as our savior from our own people..."

I found myself now sitting next to her on the dark mahogany desk, its curves allowed an ease of conversation that made me lean into the spirit of my words. "You can act as the hidden hand rooting out the garden for snakes. I act as the face placating Cartel Aygu so they feel like they're standing..." Aiko's eyes flashed with a burning look that matched my intensity--Shockwaves of repressed emotions welled up as I looked deeply into her eyes...I missed her more than I feared this confrontation.

"You are a drunk idiot Huckleberry Vasca....But this plan is one I can agree has some merit, Huck--All these years you've chosen to stay in the shadow of your family still makes me uneasy." She adjusted loose curls frayed from her braided hairstyle that framed her light brown features well with its frizzed nature. I smiled as the thought of being king had always crossed my mind but not in its former state.

"I didn't have a purpose until now...The people only love me for my rejection of my family, my family only loved me for my rejection of the people, and no one has ever taken me seriously due to everyone else's accolades." I half-lied and half-overshared. I usually spent my time drinking at any run-down building they passed for a bar in the lower wards of Nak. Running small laps in my own race to no real end near the southern borders of Buriti...

Aiko and I had a very complicated history, to say the least. I had briefly been betrothed to her until one racey night at a Svetlan delegation party...I was deemed unfit for the crown and forced marriage in the eyes of my jealous originator. I had always been happy for my own freedom but saddened that Aiko had no agency. No one has asked either of us about our opinions on the matter but that was life in Buriti-Vasco aristocracy.

We had never once articulated the sentiments of our short engagement 3 summers ago, even at the time it was something that made both of us feel like cogs in an apparatus. Ever turning pieces of a machine with no purpose but to ignite fuel, my sister had told me that night had been the worst the family had ever seen me. Aiko hadn't truly spoken to me since then either...A sense of guilt briefly made me swallow before I almost whispered my next sentence. "When you shot Dennis...how did you feel?"

The smile sparkle in her eyes briskly faded to a black shark-like gaze piercing through my mind's sanctum, though, I did not fear Aiko like the grizzled soldiers she ordered around in a dogma-laced tune; I respected her deeply. She was my future commander, my second in command, and my only living life-line to my past now...While also so much more, before the prying eyes and my mentally infirm hubris ruined everything.

"I felt like you were the better of two indecencies-- I take no pride in laying Dennis to rest. Even if he was a showy moron with a god complex, He was sweet to me and we had spent the last summer with talks of redistributing the wealth of your family." Somehow the same woman that sprayed her finances cantaloupe-shaped brain onto the dirt was now lost in another moment...Into separate instance of life, a time devoid of the constant bloodshed of our homeland.

"Aiko I'm not wicked, even if Kasiha was the true monarch--Her death will be the mark of another dark age for our people. I just want to be some fucking torch that leads us to the end of the tunnel." The gravel in my voice began from how much we had been speaking in the short span.

"You realize what I meant when I said I made my choice?" Aiko spoke softly, even though we were less than a foot apart the distance between us felt like an increasing expanse as each moment passed.

A partition existed but it did not matter to me anymore. "Aiko, If I can't make up for the sins of my family...You should easily be able to do to me like you did to Dennis." I felt her hand shaking me from the stupid gaze I had placed on her face, I finally realized how much I truly loved this horrid country.

"Im by your side Huck, if you abuse your power I'll just break all your bones to show you the true lesson: without structure, there is no system..."