Myrl had learned years ago to exhale as he “Walked Through Shadows” with his mentor, and now that lesson was being relearned the hard way.

Myrl had been told that the crew working on cleaning up the palace’s lower corridors and pathways so that a comprehensive estimate of the repairs needed could be performed had run into a slight snag. The lower hallway where he had confronted and killed the insane wizard some had begun to call the Beast Maker, and Moonkiller, was set to finally be cleared, and stout men with barrows and buckets and brooms and mops had slowly made their way to that isolated hallway.

While the remains of the beasts, and their victims had been seen to months prior, the damages to the palace that the monsters and their creator had done were only slowly being righted by cleaners and craftsmen. Shifting and removing debris, and accessing damages before getting masons and carpenters in to do those repairs had taken, and was still taking, time.

Some of this damage had been more structural than aesthetic, and had required more than some members of the cleaning staff putting in some extra hours every day, though they had been doing that as well. The palace had been a mess, and only coming back to itself slowly.

But now, after almost two months, the place in the bowels of his home where he had almost given up his life to save his people, the workers had made their purposeful way to remove all of the broken stone and tile, and to see to how much work would be needed to make this corridor not only safe to use once again, but also to remove the scars created by both the madman and his monsters.

And in the middle of all of this, after the times and stone had been shifted. Once broken spear shafts, bent and broken swords, several support beams, and many bits of tattered cloth had been removed, did the workers come across something they couldn’t move.

It was, lying on that broken stone floor, a small knife. Steel of the curved single edge looked red, though they couldn’t say if that was due to rust or some trick of the torchlight. With a finely crafted, if very plain and unornamented black handle.

Some of those men who found the knife thought it was a simple belt knife. Some said it was a currying knife that one the guards might have carried to tend to their horse. A few said it looked like a fine palm knife, which just goes to show you that some people will say anything for the chance to stay in a conversation.

One of the Royal Palace Guards had come over to the small crowd of workers to see what the topic of interest was, when the fine, if odd, little knife was pointed out to the woman she recognised it almost instantly.

“That’s the king’s belt knife.” She said, simply. “It’s not a very kingly belt knife, but our King wears it every day.”

She paused then. “Or, he did wear it every day. He probably wants it back. I’ve heard a rumor from some of the guards who came south with him from Jibiril Keep that he made it himself. Apparently he learned smithcraft. Some of the guards say that he never thought to regain the throne from his uncle, and thought he would need to earn his way in the world.”

Several of the men on the work detail nodded at that, many of them smiled, imagining nothing so wonderful as a member of the royalty being so level headed and right thinking a man as to learn what they all considered a REAL trade. One man remarked, “Huh. A king who knows how to do a day’s work…”

The guardswoman smiled at that, and replied, “Yes. He also regularly rode out of Jibiril on scouting missions, I was told, the same as any other soldier would have and did duty shifts with the rest of the garrison guards. His tutor, Lord Ashe,” and here several people shuddered at the mention of the King’s wizard’s name. “He expected the Prince to take his duties seriously, and that man doesn’t let anyone shirk their duty. Ever.” Nodding heads all around as the work crew all thought about the gray skinned man who had taken up the task of raising their king after his parents had been killed.

Then, with a smile, she bent and reached for the little black handled knife.

And stayed in that bent position for a full minute before they all heard her grunt. She resettled her stance, and tried again. And again.

With a sigh, she stood, and looked to the foreman. He had the good graces to look embarrassed.

“Oh, ah… yes, sergeant. We’ve all tried, and none of us could move it either. Govi there even tried one of the prybars.” To her left, a sturdy worker looked sheepish, a blush creeping onto his face.

The broad shouldered older man held up a bent bar of steel that may have once been an effective lever. “It doesn’t look like it’s wedged into anything, nor can we see any kind of mortar or pitch holding it down to the stone.” He took off his cap then, and dropped his gaze apologetically. “On my life, I don’t know what’s keeping it in place here.”

And then the sergeant did what sergeants have done for generations when some aspect of royalty has had a hand in making their lives awkward. They kicked the matter up the chain of command to let someone who makes more coins in a month than her to let them deal with it.

And so it was that on the very next morning Myrl, on his newest pair of crutches, awkwardly followed Ashe as the taller man made for a deep shadow in the corner of the king’s study. As Ashe stopped, he made a gesture, exactly the kind of gesture that he kept telling his young pupil was completely unnecessary, and the shadow in the corner of the room darkened, and began leaking a deep, icy cold into the room.

Looking past his mentor to the yawning abyss that awaited, Myrl asked, “Are you sure I’m needed for this? I’m almost certain there are hundreds of other things that need the King’s attention this morning…”

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Just as Myrl’s hobbling form came within reach, Ashe’s hand found his king’s forearm, and the two men were swallowed by an errant ebony fold in the universe’s metaphorical skirts.

With a stuttering stumble and a clattering of leather and pitch tipped walking aids, Myrl awkwardly shuffled out from the shadows in the lower level corridor that usually lead to either the kitchens or the stables, depending upon which direction in which one’s steps took them.

He saw once again the ruined stone hallway where he had faced a wizard suffering asologee, that dreaded condition caused by a Talent reaching far beyond their abilities that could cause, were one lucky, death. The man had a great store of Talent and obvious training when the night of terror had begun, assaulting the walls and roofs of the various parts of the palace with spellwork meant to cause as much fear as it caused damage to the structures of the building itself. And it had. Many of the palace’s guests had been terrorized, and many of those same guests had suffered from falling debris as the spells worked to tear down the palace. As the evening drew on, and the demands of casting all of the spells to create chaos coupled with the strain of working the ancient lunar Artifact, the mage’s mind had broken.

Elbana and Vogel had found witnesses in the city to verify that the man may have been suffering from dementia. The mad mage may have been suffering from a low level asologee long before the events of that fateful night.

Wielding an ancient, magical Artifact dedicated to one of the Moon Gods of Thach that had allowed him to create rabid flesh golems from amongst Myrl’s people, and to some extent control the poor flailing souls as they wrought destruction across the city and in the palace. But, and here Ashe had needed to speculate, as the creatures created more of their kind, the strain upon the mage controlling them increased, and possibly even drew upon the wielder’s own Talent to change the victims into more monstrosities, and thus pushing him into a greater state of advanced asologee.

The condition was every Talents’ nightmare, and Myrl shuddered at the thought as his mind circled around it once again.

“Sire…?” Ashe asked, a look of concern on the man’s long, gray-skinned face.

Myrl shook off the morbid thoughts and smiled at his mentor, “Nothing, my Lord Ashe. Just rabbits hopping across my grave.” He said, enjoying the look of irritation on Ashe’s face at the King’s use of such a silly metaphor. Myrl often thought Ashe needed to smile more, but knew some people, like Ashe, just weren’t made for it.

Stepping fully into the cavernous space, Myrl schooled his features into neutrality as best he could manage, and hoped he didn’t just look as ill as he felt. And with the emotions that surged about Myrl, as read to him by the family Artifact that he had inherited. A ring that read the emotional state of those around him.

The ring also allowed him to access a few other Artifacts that were all related to his Kingship, and the protection of His People.

Guards snapped to attention.

(Mild anxiety pulsed up his arm through the ring from the guards.)

Members of the craft guilds, and their paid laborers bowed as they noted the king and the gray skinned man chiefly noted, mostly by those of a politic bent, as the king’s Major Domo. Some referred to Lord Ashe as the Chief Minister of the kingdom, others as “the king’s dark shadow.”

But, that just went to show how the average person felt the need to inject drama into their everyday lives.

(Most of these people throbbed and vibrated with levels of suppressed anxiety and some with outright fear.)

Glancing about, he couldn’t quite discern where the knife night lay on the floor, as had been reported to him earlier. With a sigh, Myrl hobbled along to the place that looked like the most attention had been paid, yet the least work had been done.

It wasn’t the ruin of the place that he noticed first, as much as the lingering hints on the air of the blood and viscera that had been thrown about in this dark corridor. Even with the efforts of the palace staff, followed by the crews who had been hired as subcontractors by the masons and carpenters, there was still just that hint in every breath Myrl took that still contained the miasma of madcap biology, filth, and death that would forever highlight and taint Myrl’s memories of that night. The king worked to hide his uncontrolled wince as he inhaled yet another breath of offal feted air. The wrapped nub that was the end of his right leg sent a spike of remembered pain up his remaining leg bones and into his hip as it dangled below him.

There was a darkness of emotion in the hallway he couldn’t place, though when he concentrated, his ring sent shivers of both mirth and hatred up his arm in asynchronous rhythms that made his joint start to hurt.

He glanced around, trying to spot the person suffering such a bizarre flux of emotions, but could see nothing of the like on anyone's face nor in their body language.

He could almost hear the howling wheezing laughter of the gangling, decaying scarecrow of a man who had brought his madness to Myrl’s world. Another quick glance, but still nothing.

He could feel Ashe standing beside him, a steadying presence, though he remained oddly unreadable by the Ring Artifact Myrl wore. Sometimes that made Myrl curious, others it was a blessing.

Several men and women in various capacities of repair and organization converged about the two men as Myrl stared down at the broken stones of the floor where his knife lay. He could hear their voices, but their words may as well have been birdsong in the far distance.

He just stood as well as his crutches would allow, and looked down at the little ebony handled knife.

He pushed his left crutch at Ashe, knowing the man would have it well in hand without needed to look, Myrl lowered himself down on his remaining leg, and used the remaining crutch to balance as best he could until he was in an approximation of a crouch over the shining little tool he had made.

It looked larger now, and Myrl wondered if he remembered its size wrong, or if the light was playing a cruel trick on the crippled man. He reached for the knife, and felt the smooth, oiled, dark wooden handle as his fingertips made contact.

Darkness blacker and deeper than anything Myrl had ever experienced took hold of him as a howling yowl of screeching hatred ripped through the air about his head, threatening to burst his ears in its fury.

With a start, he stood in a world suddenly awash with charnel house stench and gibbering cries of pain and misery overlapped with, and mostly hiding light, lilting laughter. Beneath it all, a woman sobbed. She pleaded with him to stop. To let her go. To please, please, please just accept it and let her go.

Lord Ashe took the crutch from his charge, and intercepted the concerned questions of the leaders of the work crews and the craft guilds who came to assure the king that they knew nothing about the odd circumstances around which his knife had become glued to the floor.

He was reassuring the doughty man wearing a mason’s apron and holding a chisel that, no, indeed, the king did not hold any of them responsible for this prank, when Myrl reached out to grab the little knife, and after a moment’s resistance, the knife was in his hand.

And then they all screamed.