Despite it being overcast, the light bothered him a bit. He squinted his eyes as he stared at all the bright snow around him. It was thick, and only getting thicker with the current snowfall.
Marin understood that Nocturne Castle was nestled in the mountains, but they weren’t snowy mountains. Snow did fall during the winter, but this was ridiculous. It was almost impossible to walk. It would be exhausting trying to do any traveling through this, but Marin found out that becoming exhausted was not much of an experience for him anymore. He didn’t have to catch his breath. He didn’t sweat as his heartbeat raced to keep up. He knew for a fact that wearing this tight mask around his face would make it hard for anyone to breathe, but this presented no problem for him anymore.
He was finding out that his legs either moved or they didn’t. There was no feeling in them. Same with his arms, or anything else. His nerves were completely inactive, and because of this, he didn’t feel cold either.
Marin did not feel anything anymore. He just existed, and it was hard for him to accept this at first. As he traveled away from the castle he knew, he turned back to look at it. It was in great condition surprisingly. He hadn’t seen it covered with so much snow before though.
He studied his surroundings a bit. He knew this area. He knew what used to be here. There were farms. Crops grew alongside townhouses. None of that was left. Planks of wood stuck out of the deep snow in some areas, leaving the only clue of what was once there. Everything had been destroyed outside of the castle. If anything was left, it was entombed under the snow now.
The crops provided food for the kingdom denizens. Servants had lived in outer homes from the castle, farming for the kingdom. It was all gone. Marin tried to put it out of his mind.
What a terrible fate. I’m not sure if everyone fled, if they were killed, no idea. I can only pray that they’re alright, where ever they are.
He continued on. He followed a familiar trail down the mountain. Well, he believed there was still a trail under the snow. At this point he could only follow a rough outline of the terrain around him. It was impossible to see anything other than snow and rock from the mountains. He knew that the closest town was over ten miles down the mountain. It would take some time to get there.
What he really wanted to see more than anything else was another person. At this point, he was debating if he was the only person still alive, anywhere. What if he got down to the town, and it was completely destroyed as well? What if there was not a soul in sight there either? It was frightening to King Marin to think that he might be the last person on earth. What an awful existence to be in.
Has it been years? Decades? Even… possibly centuries? At this point that is possible as well. If I’ve been dead long enough for the weather patterns to change this much… Hell, I could’ve been out for a thousand years, who’s to say? Nocturne could easily survive a thousand years, if it wasn’t tampered with too much…
He kept walking down the mountain. His legs pushed snow out of the way as he descended.
Then suddenly, he froze. There in the distance, were two figures. Two figures. Two people! Marin gasped, even though that had no effect.
He waved. He jumped a bit. He tried shouting, but remembered that took air in his lungs to do.
Oh no.
He couldn’t talk. How in the world would he communicate? The figures were getting closer. They now took notice of him. They crouched a bit and spread out. They were suspicious. Marin braced himself, and reacted the same. There was a chance that these could not be friendly people.
Finally, a voice.
“Oi! Who goes there?” One of them yelled out.
Marin raised his hands a bit.
“I said who goes there?!” He said a bit more fiercely.
Marin responded by waving his hands side to side. He couldn’t believe it. People. Words. Never had he been so relieved. This wasn’t a dream. This was real life. He was in a shared existence. He was still on earth in the mortal realm.
“You better answer him real quick, or this will get ugly for you!” The second stranger cried out.
Marin did everything he could to take air in. It was not happening. He raised his hands higher to show that despite not talking, he had no hostile plans.
“Are you even able to talk?” The first one asked.
“What kind of question is that?” The second one said right back. “If he couldn’t, how could he answer you?”
The two strangers approached him closely now. One had a knife and a beard, the other had a pickaxe in hand, ready to swing. Marin gasped harder. It was almost as if his lungs were sealed.
“Look at this freak,” the bearded knife man said.
“What’s with that mask? You try robbin’ that castle up over there?” The pickaxe man asked.
Marin gasped even harder for air. He was doing everything he could to try and say a word.
“You better not have tried getting into that vault, we have dibs on that!” Pickaxe man declared.
The bearded man quickly punched his arm. “Why would you tell him about that?! Are you an idiot?!”
Air instantly rushed into Marin’s lungs. The seal was broken. He doubled over and coughed hard.
“Oi, what’s wrong with him?”
King Sullivan Marin stood straight back up, and said in a raspy voice, “Are you the thieves who tried breaking into MY vault?”
The bearded man laughed. “Your vault?! Who died and made you king of that castle?”
“Funny you should ask,” Marin said with great difficulty. He held out his arms, and ice quickly formed around both the robber’s legs. They were completely immobile.
I probably should have checked to see if I could still cast earlier. Glad to see it’s working fine, though.
“Hey, what gives? How’d you do that!” Pickaxe man said, struggling to move his legs.
“He’s an elemental! An ice one!” The bearded man declared.
“Oh hell no! I didn’t sign up for this!” The other started swinging his pickaxe down at his feet, trying to break the ice. Marin responded by curling his fingers some, the ice forming up higher above their knees.
“Wait wait wait wait! Don’t freeze us in place! Please!” The bearded man cried out. The other man dropped his pickaxe in response and they both held their hands up.
“I will not freeze you anymore if you answer my questions,” Marin stated, coughing a bit. He struggled to talk. Every phrase he said required a breath before hand, and it was quite difficult to pull air into his lungs.
“I want to know who you are and what you’re doing.”
“I’m Rocko,” the bearded man said. “This is Phil”, he continued, pointing at his friend who once had the pickaxe. “We’re uh… Just enjoying a walk through the snow.”
Marin smiled a bit under his mask, but they were unable to see that. “A casual walk, eh? A walk out to the castle behind me?”
“Oh… yeah! That castle… It’s… very pretty. A nice castle! I love seein’ it. Do you know much about it?” Rocko nervously stammered his words. His buddy Phil was completely frozen in fear.
“You mentioned something about a vault…” Marin reminded them.
“Uh, yeah a vault. Well, we might’ve… come across a vault. Well, I’m not even sure if it’s a vault. If we’re bein’ honest it could’ve been-”
The ice rose higher, up to their waist.
“Okay okay! It’s a vault! Yeah!”
“And who else knows about this vault?” Marin asked.
“No one! I swear it!” Rocko pleaded back. The ice rose up to their stomachs now.
“I’m not convinced.” Marin was staring at Rocko, but then he looked over at Phil. Phil had done anything but look at Marin the whole time ever since the ice rose up his legs.
“Your friend over here, he’s not very talkative,” Marin stated. He walked up in front of Rocko’s friend. Phil had his eyes pointed as far right as they could go. “Phil, who else knows about the vault?”
No response. The ice rose up to their necks.
“NO ONE! NO ONE ELSE KNOWS!” Phil finally bellowed out. “I told Rocko! I says ay man we shouldn’t be in this castle. Could be haunted or something! Nothing good could come from it! And we gets down to a room. Some empty lookin’ room! And I says look at this dumb torch on the wall and I tried pullin’ it off! And then the wall started turnin’! I says ya see Rocko! This place is haunted! And you know Rocko, he’s always pushing his luck an’ he goes down the new stairs. An’ I gotta look out for my buddy and I go with em. And then we see that big vault door! I told him! I told him I said leave it alone Rocko it ain’t none of our business!”
“Yeah he said that! He said it ain’t none of my business”, Rocko added. “Phil always being a good friend, keeping me outta trouble! We left that vault alone, I swear! We are good people! PLEASE DON’T FREEZE US TO DEATH!”
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Marin’s eyes darted at one, then the other, then back, deep in thought.
They had both their eyes nearly closed, looking at the ground, sobbing a bit.
Marin opened his hands entirely, and ice around the two hooligans shattered away. They both fell backwards on the snowy ground in front of him.
“Alright Phil and Rocko… Maybe, just maybe… I believe you. But what you’re going to do for me now is take me back to where you came from. Where do you two live?”
“H-Heroca Town, just at the bottom of this mountain,” Rocko said, trying to regain some dignity.
Heroca Town… Marin did not recall that being the name of the town he knew beforehand. Some things must have really changed for him.
Rocko and Phil got off the ground and dusted some snow off of them. Phil was still scared senseless of King Marin, and Rocko was the only one trying to act as brave as he could.
“Let’s get moving then,” Marin declared after the two composed themselves. Right before they started walking, Marin pointed down at the pickaxe. “Are you going to take your pickaxe, Phil?”
“Oh, that ain’t mine,” Phil quickly said in a rush. “Just found that on the way here!”
Marin knew it to be a lie, he knew that these two thieves were liars entirely. He knew that almost everything they had told them could’ve been lies, but the one thing he did believe is that they were indeed the only ones that knew about the vault. Thieves would never tell other people about a potential score if they could keep it all to themselves. Since they had lost any potential of getting it however, Marin needed a little assurance.
“By the way,” Marin mentioned. He put his hands on each of their shoulders. “If you ever tell anyone about that vault, I will find out, and I will freeze you to death. Understand?”
They both nodded their heads rapidly.
The three started walking down the mountain. They followed the foot steps Rocko and Phil first made going up the mountain. It was silent for a bit, but Rocko finally broke the silence.
“So who are you?” Rocko boldly asked.
Marin didn’t answer right away. He took some time to think of an answer.
“Call me Marin,” he finally said. “I used to live in that castle you two have been looting from.”
“You lived there? I find that hard to believe. Not a soul in there except that one corpse we saw in that-” Rocko stopped. He froze in place, eyes wide open. “No… it can’t be!”
Phil finally looked up at Marin and his eyes widened too. “It is…” He confirmed. The two started backing away from the blue robed man they had known to be lying dead on that floor when they first started taking from the castle.
“You know me, huh?” Marin said.
“I known you to be DEAD!” Rocko exclaimed.
“Alright, calm down,” Marin responded. “Let’s not lose our composure.”
Rocko and Phil stood defensively, quivering in their boots. “He’s a dead man! A dead man walking!” Phil shouted out.
“I’m not going to hurt you! Calm down! I understand this is hard for you to take in, but I’m alive now.”
Phil bolted in the opposite direction, but a quickly frozen foot caused him to trip and fall over. He started sobbing in the snow.
“This is what we get Rocko. This is our fault. This is how we die,” Phil cried out. Rocko responded by still staring in horror at Marin.
“H-how is it possible?” Rocko managed.
“I’m not sure myself. I created a potion… that didn’t work correctly.”
“It seems to be working now!” Rocko said in shock.
“No you don’t understand, I… Phil, get off the ground!” The ice around his foot was gone, and Phil slowly got back up. “I don’t want to get into the details right now, but just understand I mean no harm. I just need you to take me back to the village you came from. I will not harm anyone there.”
The three kept walking, and this time Rocko dared not to ask another question. The two were horrified by this man… This thing, if you could call him that.
They continued down the mountain until Marin could finally see houses. He almost couldn’t believe it. Structures that weren’t destroyed. Smoke rose from some of the snow covered roofs.
“That’s it, Heroca Town,” Rocko nervously stated.
“Very good. You two have been quite helpful so far,” Marin declared.
Neither of them answered him. They all walked down into town. When they hit the main road, it had been shoveled so that it was much easier to walk. Marin took in the sights of the houses around him. It reminded him of his kingdom – the houses around his castle before they had been destroyed. He still was not sure how long he had been dead, but he was itching to find out.
He thought to ask someone a little more intelligible about details of the current world. Marin gathered that his two new friends here knew little more than which direction was up and down.
“Do you know anyone important here? Someone I could talk with to find out more information?”
Rocko pulled his beard in thought. “I mean, you could talk to the innkeeper. He’s an older gent, he knows a bit. Been through a war. I know him pretty well.”
Marin turned his gaze to Phil. He nodded in agreement.
“Very well, take me.”
The three walked up in front of one of the largest houses in the village. Rocko stepped up and grabbed the door for the dead man. He entered.
When Marin was inside, he expected to feel the warmth of the inn, but was quickly reminded that he no longer felt things like that. He shook that thought off, and studied the tavern portion of the inn. Not a single person was here besides them.
Then he heard movement from a doorway behind the bar. An older man came out. He had silver hair slicked back, and a tidy kept silver goatee.
“Welcome, welcome to the-” He looked up and saw who it was.
“Oh, Rocko. Phil. What are you two doing here? Who’s your friend?”
“He’s not much of our friend,” Phil muttered.
The innkeeper’s eyes narrowed at Marin. He was quite suspicious of the black mask over his face.
Marin stared into the innkeeper’s eyes. Experience. Wisdom. The innkeeper’s silver pupils told Marin much of what he needed to know. The innkeeper was rightfully suspicious of him. Marin knew he was considered a threat at the moment, and had to quickly clear the air.
“Hello good sir! I mean you no harm. I was hoping you’d answer a few questions for me. I’m a bit out of touch,” Marin tried.
“...What can I help you with?” The innkeeper said cautiously. Marin slowly approached the counter. He kept his hands out in the clear.
“I’ve… been away from society for a while. Might I ask, what year is it?”
The innkeeper certainly hadn’t seen anyone like this before, and with a question like that, he wondered if this was some sort of ruse.
“854.” The silver haired man replied. He took his chances answering him.
“8-854, did you say? Surely you jest,” Marin said, trying to hide his concern.
“No joking here, sir. Anyone else would not find that to be unusual.” The innkeeper was really having a hard time pegging who this stranger was, and what game he was playing at. The stranger’s voice was quite raspy, it almost sounded like he was trying to hide his real voice. What really bothered him the most though, was the black mask over his face.
“Why don’t you remove that mask and we can talk more?” The innkeeper tried.
Marin rested his hands on the counter opposite of the innkeeper. “I’m afraid that’s not something I can do, my face is not in much of a viewing state.”
“That’s because he’s a DEAD MAN, LOID!” Phil bellowed out from behind. Rocko quickly grabbed him to get him to shut up.
Loid the innkeeper moved his head to the side of Marin to look at the two of them. Rocko had a look of dread. The innkeeper looked back at Marin.
“Dead?” Loid asked.
“It’s a long story, I-” Just as Marin started, a customer walked in the building. Loid’s lips tightened in thought.
“Sherry!” Loid yelled to the doorway behind him. “Can you take care of a customer? I have something I need to deal with.” The innkeeper turned back to them.
“You three, in here,” Loid instructed as he pointed to a room. They all walked in and he followed. The room was a bedroom, one of a few that the inn was made up of. When all four of them were inside, Loid shut the door behind him, and instructed them all to have a seat on the several chairs in the room.
As there were only 3 chairs in the room, the innkeeper took the bed.
“Now, we are going to figure out what exactly is going on. You can’t take the mask off? Fine. But you will tell me about yourself.”
“My name is Sullivan Marin. I am… was... the King of Nocturne Castle.”
Loid instantly leaned back. He stared in half disbelief, half disgust.
“The king?!” Phil yelled.
“Not another word out of you two!” Loid snapped back. He refocused on Marin. This truly must have been a joke. He would think this to be all a hoax, but there were a few things that kept Loid half interested. He noticed the old royal robes that Marin was wearing. He stared down that the decorated seal he had on his finger. He studied the golden cross necklace. This stranger looked far too… important for this to be some huge set up. He knew Rocko and Phil to be hooligans of sorts, but he also knew they were not capable of setting up something this sophisticated.
“...The Nocturne Kingdom was destroyed over 200 years ago,” Loid started. “What happened to its king is not known.”
“How was it destroyed?” Marin asked, trying not to sound too desperate.
“Many believe it to be self sabotaged. I know not the details of exactly what happened. But after it was taken over, the kingdom was ransacked and burned, and left abandoned. The only thing left of it is the very castle, ten miles up the mountain.”
“Why was the castle not destroyed?”
“I would think because it would’ve taken too much effort. But no one goes up there, they say the king haunts the castle to this day… But you’re telling me… You’re the king. Is that correct?”
Marin’s fingers drummed on the table beside him. “That is correct.”
Loid let out a disappointing sigh. That was not an answer he wanted to hear. He did not believe him.
Marin knew that too. “I know it’s hard to believe.”
“Have you… any evidence to back this claim?” Loid tried.
Marin looked down at his family seal ring. He figured the innkeeper wouldn’t recognize it. That was no good.
Loid saw him look down at the ring. “I don’t know the seal on that ring, but what I do know is that it is quite old. Where did you get it?” Loid asked.
“I had it made for me about 30… wait, what year did you say it was?” Marin responded.
“854.”
Marin shook a bit in shock, still trying to stomach that number. “Well then,” he managed. “I had this ring made some 260 years ago.”
It was silent for a bit. This wasn’t getting anywhere. Marin had no solid proof to his claims. Perhaps he could take him back to the castle and find a portrait to match his face with. That was ridiculous. Perhaps-
“Ask him to take the mask off Loid!” Phil belted out.
“I said silence!” Loid yelled back. Marin noticed that Loid was really struggling mentally. He watched him look down a bit. This was quite a dilemma he was in.
“What’s this business about you being dead? If you are somehow telling the truth, you would not be telling me you had the ring made over 200 years ago. You would indeed be dead.”
“That would be the case, if the king had not tried making an immortality potion in 622.” Marin uttered.
Loid’s eyes widened. “What are you saying?”
Marin threw his hood back. Phil gasped.
He then grabbed the black mask on the front his face.
“Please, don’t freak out too much.” That was all he said, before he pulled the mask off over his face.
Phil fainted. Rocko looked away in horror, eyes squinted shut, teeth gritting. Loid had such a shocked look on his face, that anyone who saw him would think he saw a ghost. He placed his hand over his mouth. Partially to hide the shock, and partially to stop from throwing up.
Marin, seeing their reactions, knew it was as bad as he thought it looked. As soon as he had taken it off, he was putting it back on.
“I apologize for that,” Marin said. “But perhaps now you will take me more seriously.” The mask was now fit snug on him once again.
“Alright King Marin,” Loid said, still trying to keep his composure from the horror he witnessed. “What can I do for you?”