Chapter 191
Amorphous Whispers
Some stories never die. Though the wretchedness of time dims and consumes them, as it does all things, they persist beyond its scope, etched in whatever little motes of infinity they could find. One such story was born on a foggy and strangely stormy day. The Kingdom of Ethernia hardly ever witnessed true storms, the kind that rupture the sky and shake the earth. But on that day, the day of silent effervescence, they did.
It rained all day long, and the sky dimmed to onyx, and even the brightest of flashes of lightning that were a prelude to the booms that shook the world weren’t enough to illuminate the descending darkness. In the weeping hollows of the night, they could hear them--the fallen.
The news spread like wildfire, scattering through all the lands as swiftly as the winds that blew. The word spoke of the devil, red-eyed and bodied in crimson, with fleshy wings of rot and decay, and of the harrowed and cankered laughter that sang the song of abject perversions. It was akin to those wooded fables used to terrify children into compliance, but it was a fable that was real. For there was a red rain soon and the red river and there were white roses blossoming scarlet... and there was the weeping of the ravens and the croaking of the crows.
Mothers whose boys never returned, wives now left with fatherless children, fields barren of boisterous laughter... and the names once carved in the stele of time now dismally expunged, all played a worldly song that the storm had begun.
There were neither lies nor truths to the whispers, for the death was humbly unkind equally--whether they perished singing heroics and fighting a devil beset on consuming the world, or they perished cowering in the red-dotted mud, eyes weepy with horrors and fears, it did not matter to the tomes. What mattered was that they now lay dead, and that there was a horror lingering. There was a pair of red eyes regarding the Kingdom in unapt delight, stretching its thin, long fingers across the sorrowful lands in anticipation.
And now, when the Kingdom reeled the longest and loudest and when it hurt the most, the people gathered--they gathered ‘neath the Palace’s grace, heads bowed toward the dome that shielded them eternally. They called out a name, one long-forgotten, but now remembered. They hoped and prayed that from the darkness he would appear again, and would save them. Save them from the cataclysm.
But the King never showed. Only the Queen, who sang the song of reprieve, offering assurances she could not deliver... for she was a mortal woman. The Kingdom was burning, and its King was hiding--that was all that they had learned. And should the Kingdom burn... it shall be burned by those who rest upon its lands, rather than some foreign, alien, evil entity.
King Wyvenul sat upon the ridged edge of a window pane overlooking the vast lands of the most beautiful city he’d ever seen. Now, that city was afire, blazing in scope beyond sorrow. Soldiers fought, themselves and their people, and cries wrote a symphony that would have melted a lesser man.
But it has been years and decades since he cared. Though the King was to love his people, he never did. He did not love them when he was a young Prince, or when he was Crowned, or when he became the King, or in any of the decades that have passed since then. If it were up to him, he would have burned the whole thing down himself and abdicated the throne.
He’d seen the heart of people, and it was ugly, detestable, and ignoble. It was worse than the devil they were condemning and fearing, worse than all the things whispers have sung about him. Shall there have ever been a mirror that would let the world gaze inwardly, all whose hearts bore a blemish of humanity would have hung themselves in shame.
Their rage, if anything, delighted him, however lightly. After all, the sight spoke more about them than him--these lands that they cultivated and supposedly loved... instead of picking up arms in anger and rage and marching in concert to face the supposed devil... they are destroying them. Burning them. Hiding their fears of complacency, blaming him, blaming the devil. There was no honor or love or humility left in them, he knew. There hasn’t been any in a long, long time.
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The Kingdom is old, older than any wisdom the people below held. It withstood storms far greater than this, and it survived. It wasn’t because of its Kings and Queens and armies. It was because of the people. The ordinary man and woman who never surrendered. Who never bent. But those people... those people are gone. Dead and buried, along with the spines made of the most resilient metals.
In their place resides a mob of flatulent, deplorable, perverse, and self-satisfying hounds. And their demands ring hollow.
A set of footsteps caused him to turn away from the wreckage, casting a glance at a silhouetted figure that appeared. She wore a familiar gown, dotted in golden lilies, and, just like him, had a disinterested look on her face.
“Did you expect him to make waves like this?” she asked as she sat by his side.
“Not before I met him,” he replied.
“... he is different,” she said. “Far more different than at the start.”
“Almost feels pointless,” he said. “Everything we have prepared for him. Has he utilized even one tenth of it?”
“No,” she shook her head. “He only grabbed a few Generals, from what I hear. He hasn’t contracted the Dead, or the Cult. If anything, he has antagonized everyone and everything. Reminds me a little bit of you from when you were young.”
“The world broke him,” he said. “It makes sense.”
“... this won’t do, however,” she said after a brief silence.
“It is fine. I do not think he has become this. Not truly.”
“He is angry,” she said. “Deep down, his heart... it rots. But the time has numbed him. The sights have become the same, and even the angriest soul will calm in the unflinching, familiar sea. I fear... I fear the worst, when he comes.”
“As do I,” he said. “We can only hope...”
“What shall we do until he undoes this?” she asked as the atmosphere relaxed. “Shall I have the cooks prepare our favorite feast?”
“I have already eaten,” he said. “Should we take a stroll up the mountain? I haven’t been there in a while.”
“Certainly,” she smiled gingerly and stood up, offering her hand.
The two left the massive palace, unseen by the eyes seeking them, and headed up the nearby mountain in the rear. It was a solitary walk, bereft of life, animal or otherwise, though solemn and somber in appearance, with willows flanking the dirt road.
At the top, there was a round clearing, elongated and artificial-seeming, crowned in spear-like edges that seemed like claws upholding the ground. The centerpiece, however, was a tree at the very center--it was some ten feet tall, mostly brown and in seeming decay, with only a few branches appearing to have blood-red leaves growing.
Beneath, at the root of the tree, leaning against it, was a body of a woman. She appeared young, her skin porcelain white, dressed in nude. The two stopped some six feet away and fell to their knees, their eyes glazed in worship.
The woman was the most beautiful creature either had ever seen, as though perfectly sculpted by the hands of gods to answer all the desires, of men and women alike. She had hair golden, strands whitened like snow in streaks that seemed to cascade with the eons.
Across her chest, lined in silver, there was a symbol--a crescent shape cut through with a fan of fingers from below, reaching out toward a shining star just above her collarbone. The star seemed to shine, even in broad daylight, akin to the guiding grace of the infinity, inviting and warm.
And behind her, descending along the roots of the tree from the top of her back, was a pair of wings, golden and feathered, larger than life and death.
Suddenly, the wings fluttered, ever so slightly, and two smiled in delight as the woman’s closed eyes parted, revealing a pair of unmistakable dignity. There was no one, particular color dyeing the eyes--it was as though all the colors known and unknown, beyond and above the cosmos, were sown into her, a blend of infinity, of life and death, of all that ever was and ever is and ever will be.
The two beheld the gaze with horror and awe in equal measure, their heads faltering and falling to the ground. Beneath that gaze they felt infinitely small, unimportant, like imps of the forgotten fables, burned in the ashes of dichotomy.
The woman didn’t speak, instead reaching out with her right arm. The slender fingers wove the lines of fate, the tapestry of life and death, and it seemed as though with each movement the fabric of reality faltered, barely hanging onto the threads that kept it together. It was as though the world was rejecting her, for it was unfit to behold her.
Warmth surged within the two like the tidal waves of hope, their minds divined with clarity unparalleled. Their faith, once again, was rekindled, and their choice reaffirmed. For she consorted them--a being beyond all, unfit to be beheld by the mere mortal gaze. The guardian, the lineage, the life and fire of everything they had ever known and learned.
They felt held by the hands that understood, accepted by the arms that have grasped everything... and still cared. They melted in that embrace, in that light, in that warmth, all along wondering how they got to be so blessed. Soon, they knew, they would join her, be accepted by her as whole, and voyage onward as a part of her to the worlds beyond. Soon... soon... soon...