࿐A STRANGER ࿐
|Centauri Central—??, 6517|
|Higher|
I ALWAYS BELIEVED that triangles were the fervid structure of this cycle of life, not the never-ending curls of circles. You either build from the bottom and all the way up or start from the highest point of ecstasy just to fall to the lowest pits of pits. Now looking back at my succumbing, I believe it was ridiculous of me to even believe that something as ludicrous as life could ever be squandered down to a 50/50 deposition of a trillion fates. I mean, two held a sort of divine allure while the number three was unfailingly regarded as a hideous stint of the contemptible.
Some beings would carve a new set of eyes on the back of their skulls just to escape their number three.
The victims of slaughter generally did not know they were to be victims until the disastrous day struck. On some occasions, an eyebrow would be lifted at the sign of an aberration, a furrow of worry for every shady figure that popped out of the blue more than what was considered normal—perhaps a sign of their doom was that despicable ache many of them felt at the surging of something horrible. For my humanity, who had finally found itself to be a victim of the most notorious of killers, these traces of death took the shape of their footprints or as it was now known, the lack of thereof.
The bloom of violence between strangers, the gory quarrels of terminal neighbours; the bodies that once belonged to children left hanging torn and mangled like ornaments across our streets and store entrances, littering what little I remembered to be the remaining crown of my family's kingdom with the stench of rotting carcasses.
Those animals...those things. I'm not foolish enough to even recognise those things as anything alive. They are not the same thing. Yes, they appeared similar by the gushing heart at their core, and yes, they paralleled some of the hungry beasts that had evolved at the time of my world's collapse. But they simply were not the same. One would kill you without a winking hesitation being refined in the black clouds of their brains as to why they did as they did, the other could take respite in watching the light drain from your eyes based on the fact that no longer could my father's principles tell them why they could not.
One simply would, the second did it because they could.
If you wanted to live, it would've been in your best interest to recognise the discrepancy. If I hadn't differentiated viruses from bacteria, I would not be bleeding half to death in an underground city passage, camping outside of the bellicose post my husband had concocted as some kind of odious homage to my father.
The irony of my father's murderer mourning his murder. I don't know whether to laugh deliriously or scream in absolute madness.
I remember the day reality stabbed the elation out of me like how any other child remembers their birthday mornings each year. Dazing just like daisies and sunflowers—except this flowery birthday of mine was not a precious gift bandaged in gold and ruby.
My gift happened to be one of the things I feared the most: My grace-cursed father.
His ruined face angled down some feet from my own, face littered with logos of vileness as he swayed left and right in the uniform I had made him a couple of days prior for our annual parade. I would never forget his face; an unpleasant pastel kind of pale, protruding veins tearing ebony into his aged skin as his glowing hand jerked at the creak of the door I had just opened.
His grace was not the same consoling force it has been when I was a child. This was something else entirely. And I knew exactly who had caused it.
I can't remember much after my father propelled his incursion in my direction. My father, the great Cameron Masoudi, had undertaken the full destruction of his power in the path of his only daughter as if he were rabid. And I was no match for the king of 13 planets. There was a reason he had been elected to rule. He was power, the exemplar of it.
I used to think streaming blood was cold. Whenever I used to hurt myself, the blood that rose from the fresh wound always carried a chill against my skin.
My father's lifeless blood, however, proved to be much different. A scalding black as it splattered across the room and onto us.
My husband looked as if he were chipped away from one of those resonant horror paintings dangling in poignant galleries owned by the most loaded of affluent as he bashed in my father's skull. Up and down. Again. And again. And again. Until it was obvious his arms were numbing at the weight of the jewelled cane sliding out of his drenched hands.
When he finally turned to me, half-drowned in what remained of my father's brain, he mumbled through his insane grin the words, "Dear, I think I finally blew your old man's mind."
Before and after all of this mayhem, I never truly told anyone that what scared me beyond any cannibalistic grace was Machir Kathos. I memorized each of the one hundred thoughts that found their way around my mind after watching my husband jovially execute my father like he was nothing. Nobody. I can't forget all the nightmares I had about him; the way his fanatical smile made his teeth appear as razors in my dreams, how his pupils devoured the blues of his eyes until only two black holes were left as manifestations of the pleasure he took in what he had done.
And a year or so after watching my father's body weld to the metal of our castle gates and Machir's men hanging the bodies of my people helplessly across the now deserted streets like customised dolls, I chose to run. From him. From my father. From myself and everything. That petrified little girl inside of me did what she did best and fled as if her father had risen from the cursed once more to tear the bones from her flesh.
Though, this time it was my husband who chased after me with my father's men playing into his hands, not Cameron Masoudi. I failed to catch my oxygen as they cried out into the woods for me as if they were damning the Gods who reclined in the highest of heavens to ready for a battle.
“Princess!” They would call.
They were scared of him.
“Princess!” They would wail.
Almost just as much as I was.
The bullets that obliterated the tree lines beside me as I sprinted were not flashy enough when it came to contending with the furious screams of my husband's soldiers.
“Kill her!” Their commander would clamour. “Do not lose her!”
I listened in silence as their boots grated the caramelised leaves into the ground, not once acknowledging their screams for me as I hugged my mouth against the silk sleeve of my dress, hiding my body inside one of the collapsed trees. Once the voices became hazy enough with distance, I made sure to not look back as I split into my great sprint.
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I told you, I’m not alone, a voice pulled against the winds dashing past my ears. Machir Kathos. A voice that had terrorized me. Even if a millennium passes, I will still find a way to my right. My rule, my crown. And I don't care for obstacles.
It had been the fastest I had ever run, yet I was the only one who was there to witness it. Escaping from one blighted fantasy into another very unarmed, extremely tired and ready to die.
That sundown, my father's once devoted planet kneeled on its open wounds as a new Emporer took rise.
࿐COMPANY ࿐
|Sevgi—A CENTURY LATER|
|East Florence Palace|
"Out of the question," rang a man's voice. "She's too emotional and that boy will do nothing to help her with that."
"Corentin is my student," a man reasoned, arms folded as he took in the distress of his friend. Was the idea of his daughter taking his throne that terrible? He watched the other man, maroon skin glinting with the reflection of their planet’s surrounding golds. "And Harpy is your daughter, Malcolm, raised by Jinae who taught the girl that even the plants have feelings. You seriously doubt her?"
"I don't doubt Harpy's ability to become a strong leader, Reilat, I doubt her ability to maintain her reason in favour of proving herself to people not worthy of such proof."
A scoff left the pale-skinned male. "Not worthy? And who would that be? Your people?"
"No."
"Then who?"
"Her friends."
Reilat grinned as he spoke, "You mean the little princesses and princes? They're nuisances, sure. Unruly, definitely. But royals, regardless. Good ones? Doubtful. But, Malcolm," he dragged, smiling. "With Calignes’s politics, she has no one else. They're glued to one. What are you going to do? Tell her to stop talking to them. Isolate her?"
Malcolm didn't answer. And Reilat's ever-stone smile had dropped. "You can't be serious."
"It's not isolation. She'll find new friends, new influences. Make herself more like her brother."
"More like her brother?" uttered Reilat in a scoff, irked with the words as he turned towards the skyline, viewing the city sitting at the feet of the grandest of Sevgi castles. “She’ll hate you.”
"She won't."
“She will.”
“She will not .”
"She already does,” reasserted a woman’s voice, sturdy against the steady currents. The two men turned towards her, eyes silent with a sentiment that only sunk the dagger of her words deeper into the heart of her husband. She already does.
That’s…no, that’s not right. Harpy didn’t hate him.
“Jinae—“started Reilat, only to be cut off by his friend.
“How could you say that?” Spoke Malcolm, voice hard with an offended broke. “I am her father.”
“Have you ever stopped to think about her away from her duties, Malcolm? And I’m not just talking about Harpy, but Zero too.”
“Yes, I have and—“
“No, you haven’t,” Jinae’s voice was strained with boiling hurt. “Do you know she won’t even let me touch her anymore?” Harpy. “She doesn’t smile at me, when she looks at me…it’s like she’s being burdened, like she’s being stopped by a stranger wanting to take up her time.” Reilat took a glance at Malcolm.
The man had tutored Harpy once at the request of his young student Corentin. She was a driven girl, with expressive eyes that seemed to read into the crevices of everything, even all you wished to hide. She reminded him of Pecu Yung. No surprise, the man was her personal teacher after all. But they were eerily similar, almost as if she were his daughter. He never had that feeling when he saw her brother, Zero. The boy was a carbon copy of Malcolm. But what he had noticed which was particularly interesting about the young princess, was her interest in her father’s ability, rebirth. The ability to transfer the consciousness and life of anything. Her interest in grace seemed to only ever grow. She would ask him to make a show of his own, give her a view of his flames.
He always obliged, enjoying the way she and Corentin seemed in awe of his grace.
Pecu…would you choose her to have your grace? Would Malcolm ever allow that?
No, the man would sigh to himself, watching Harpy smile and burst into laughter he had never heard from her as she spoke with her educator, Pecu Yung, laughter he doubted anyone else’s presence could replicate, he would never. The question was…would Pecu care for Malcolm’s allowance?
No. He would not.
Along with grace was the girl’s deep attraction to history, the war won by her grandfather.
‘How had he done it?’
‘What happened to the Queen after they won?’
‘Did they really marry straight away?’
‘How did she feel?’
‘How did the 13 nations react?’
‘Did the king execute Machir Kathos?’
All questions that had flooded from the lips of students, all childishly curious. But she had been the one to ask a question never important enough or thought of enough by her peers.
‘Why didn't anyone try and help him? Fix him if he was sick?’
He had brushed off her question with a generic reply, side-tracking and changing the class topic before any of the other children caught on. But he made sure to keep his eye on her from then on, trying to sweep away his distrust for the little girl because as sincere as it may have been, as sweetly as she may have smiled up at him, as genuinely as she may have voice herself, her words seemed to spike plunging terror in him, entrenched worry.
Why didn't anyone try and help him? The man couldn't help but chuckle it back to himself after the joint lesson had disbanded, questions racking through his contaminated thoughts. Weeks would pass and she would ask the same question but in different fonts, catching him by surprise each time she tried to coax out an answer which differed from his usual ‘that’s a question for a different time’. Fix him if he was sick?
Oh, Harpy.
Help and fix a genocidal dictator who tried to take over the system, kill her grandmother and massacre billions, including her own people.
Oh, Harpy.
Her question would plague him and he did all he could think to do and regurgitated the scene back to her father, unfocused as all that clouded his mind was the image of the princess. Help…him.
And not even a day had passed before she was pulled from her joint classes, forced to drop her history course and was forced to take lessons with only her personal tutor, Pecu Yung. Reilat Chrisland heard Malcolm had even tried separating the pair, pushing to have her classes with a different man, Hugo Vree. A man whom Reilat would not even entrust a pet worm with. He heard whispers of Vree’s warlike ways, his apathy for the fragility of children. His cruelty and madness. What were you thinking Malcolm? Would you really be willing to put her through all of that? But Jinae had refused the attempt and had Harpy put back into private lessons with Yung, much to Malcolm’s dismay. But Reilat never saw Harpy in his lessons again, meaning Malcolm’s cut-off had been a success for the majority.
Reilat let free a silenced grumble. Should he really be here to witness this? He felt like he was intruding. No, this was purely guilt. A part of him felt culpable, as if his actions were a stimulus for Malcolm’s unforgiving and unwavering stringency against his only daughter.
“But it’s a compliment compared to the way she looks at the two of you.” That caught the teacher’s attention, his gaze finding Jinae, taking in the ocean of clear blue trailing downwards. “You and her brother. When she looks at the two of you, I can see nothing but disgust.”
“I-”
“And broken children, Malcolm, will always seek love and relatability. She might not want our love, or might not find a connection in her older brother, but I know my daughter. I know Harpy. And she’s resilient when it comes to the things she desires. And I don't doubt that she will find something, someone to replace your role in her life.”
Malcolm’s brows were furrowed, trembling as he eyed his wife. “What are you insinuating, Jinae?”
The woman’s gaze drifted towards Reilat for a brief moment, halting with something before she snapped back to her husband's drilling watch.
Jinae, muttered Reilat wordlessly and in his mind, don't tell me you mean…
“Her hate is stronger than your love, Malcolm. If you continue as you are now, I know she will dedicate her life to repaying you.”
I told you.
A whisper, swirling and dragging from the tomb lay hundreds upon thousands of miles away from the Sevgi castle, far and surpassing as something buzzed against the vacant stones in the forsaken lands of Orcus, untouched and dead. The lettering, sentences forming scriptures which remained unreadable as they slithered against the walls, cracking and dusting with age.
I told you, something spoke to someone too distant as it grasped at the unattainable air from its containment, prying but still waiting. I'm not alone.
My rule, my crown.