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Wings
The Culmination

The Culmination

Thomas was overwhelmed.

Millions of little ants were running up and down his body. If he were to feel every single sensation, he would become a man above men, a new kind of being to bring salvation onto the unsalvable. The ex-king had been there, with him. Had he asked Thomas a serious question? No, he asked about the weather.

“I dislike rain,” Thomas had answered even though it was sunny. “I mean, in general.”

All the heat Thomas possessed had rushed into his face, stimulating the ants to move disorientedly. They had been there for quite some time; weeks, he thought.

“I see,” the ex-king had replied, seriously disinterested in the Flamer and his weather preferences. “Is she inside?”

“Who?”

“My daughter.”

The rainstorm must have been in Brandon’s eyes; Thomas couldn’t have seen it elsewhere.

“Y-Yes, inside. By herself. I mean, with the queen. The ex-queen. You know… Your Majesty,” his tone grew grimmer as he went on. Thomas had wrecked his answer into as many pieces as his confidence.

The ex-king had nodded and strolled inside the prison with his hands in his pockets. There was no way to tell if he had been hiding their weakness or demonstrating the power he still thought he possessed.

The Dove cried inside the prison. Thomas stood next to the door and put his ear to it. There was some smashing and yelling and then silence, the unnatural kind that makes you feel too alone. It was that episode with Brandon that made Thomas loiter before the prison door for so long. Once he heard a second cry and attributed it to his new queen, he decided it was high time he did something about it. Luckily for Diane, his timing was splendid. Had he hesitated more, she would have had to skip yet another funeral. Thomas’s face almost lit up the hallway the Hunster family occupied. It was all that dirt and cobwebs that prevented him from turning it homely. Had he been given the chance, he would have surely found a way to make that unpleasant family reunion somewhat bearable. The queen was about to die. There had to be something that could be done to change it.

The ex-king did not like peasants. He liked those who pushed their dirty noses into his family affairs even less; so, he everything but appreciated Thomas’s intervention. It made him even angrier when the Flamer suggested taking Diane’s place in the execution, but his throat was too crushed to protest in coherent sentences.

“Thomas,” Diane said as she pulled Thomas away from her father and nearer the entrance.

“You were going to kill your father?!” Thomas tried to whisper, but his voice was especially rebellious that day. It could have also been the fingerprints on Brandon’s neck that cast the spell. He was holding onto Diane’s upper arms, squeezing them too much.

“Of course not,” Diane answered. She turned around and saw her parents having a pleasant chat. One was facing a death sentence, the other was almost strangled by his daughter. “And, please, get a grip. You’re not making any sense.”

“Well, it makes more sense than what you are doing,” he replied and got exactly the reaction he was expecting: silence and distrust. “Think, Diane. This is not some test or a game. This is your life. There are no second chances here.”

She was conflicted; it was her pride and upbringing against common sense. But then again, nothing made sense anymore. Death and life lived together in harmony, completely interchangeable; she could almost blur the line or erase it completely. Where she was born and grew up was as good as a graveyard, she the Grim reaper. All the souls she had collected were sinners, none more than was required to be called living. Why was she, then, given the power to put them to rest? To put Him to rest. And where was that power now? Somewhere in the woods, she thought, hidden deep inside some ancient creation. It could have been Clara Heal that put it there, it could have been Him. Nothing made sense anymore. The world could have stopped counting seconds, she wouldn’t have noticed. She could swear she heard the monster with diamond jaws tell her to run towards infinity. A tread of golden hair and a vow waited there wrapped in crystal transparency. A palace of stone, blood, and crushed promises housed her Demon. He was her true God, merciless and forgiving. He would show her the one she dreamt of erasing. Was that why her mother turned her back to truth? Was that path truly so soothing? She had heard it was a place where stars were plucked from trees and eaten like strawberries, where they drank the cores of mist-wrapped planets and bathed in the Milky Way. Would she ever join them, the heroes of ancient times and unforgettable tales? Did she need such times and tales? Then again, nothing made sense anymore, she least of all. Who was she now, if not the Queen of Crystalia?

“If you do it now,” she told Tomas, with futuristic clouds in her eyes, “I will pardon you.”

The air was so anxious that it carried uncertainty into the blood vessels of the ancient friends.

“Yes,” Thomas answered in a heartbeat, hypnotized by the sudden summer breeze that entered through the cracks in the windows and made the prison holy.

Diane smiled horrendously. “Too bad I don’t have a weapon.” Her heart was plucked out of eternity and planted into the world of smoke and vermin. “I guess we’ll be serving royalty for dinner!” she said loudly enough for her parents to be aware. “If the mice don’t gobble her up beforehand. I guess we’ll have to serve a decent appetizer as well. How does a king sound?”

Brandon sighed and did not answer; he didn’t allow himself to be easily provoked. But Diane was only a blink away from shattering on the prison floor again.

“Didn’t you hear me?!” Diane plead. “I will kill you unless you stop this nonsense.” Thomas was holding her back, squeezing her arms.

“There is no nonsense to stop,” Brandon answered, healed enough to be understood. He was leaning against his wife’s prison cell. “I am bringing justice, just like I always have. They staged a perfect murder; there is no other suspect. Lila testified against her. What kind of king would I be if I let such an offence slide just because she’s my wife?”

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“And what kind of father if you killed your daughter’s mother?” Emotion was getting the best of Diane. She was, once again, forgetting the duty on her head. It was never about her.

”I am a king,” Brandon answered, sturdy and unmoved, seemingly. “And you are the queen. Be careful of what you say.”

“You are a king no more. That is why I am the queen. I could decide it was you, not her.”

Brandon smiled. “You could. But what kind of leader would that make you? Who would follow you?”

That was the first time Diane felt that the Ravens and Thomas Hammer were not enough, the first time she understood her father to an extent. It took her hands to grasp his neck for his words to feel human-like. That was her first time admitting defeat.

“In the end,” she said, “I guess there really is nothing I can do.”

“There isn’t,” her father confirmed with heart so heavy he feared he would break into his wife’s cell.

Maria was silent the whole time, staring into the empty cell opposite her. For a moment, a very brief moment, she heard a pang of a horrible wish: that her daughter might occupy it, and that they might spend their remaining days together. No sorrow that mattered would remain; she didn’t care about anyone else. It seemed cruel that her husband would break her daughter’s house of cards so. She still had a lifetime ahead of her to dream, get lost, and regret those wishful apparitions. What Maria had forgotten in time, though, was that Diane was once the most powerful person to scare the world’s kings and queens. Whether a portion of it was locked up somewhere or not did not matter; she was still the one who massacred legions without batting an eye. She was never young enough to dream; the little naivety she had in her must have been born from someone else’s wish.

“Diane,” she started, to the surprise of everyone present, “there is nothing that you cannot do if only you set your mind to it. I am reaping what I saw, and rightfully so. I do not wish to be saved, especially not by you. Whether I have betrayed you to save you or not shouldn’t matter to you. I did something horrible, and I expect you to punish me for it. I would never forgive you if you didn’t.”

What a wonderful place it was for a queen to close her eyes! So humid and electrifying, with spirits to applaud after it is over! They would hold a candle for her; would the king’s council?

“Why?” Diane asked, calmly.

“Because you, as a queen, must never let your emotions get the best of you. I hate that I gave birth to a queen, but that is my problem. The best the two of us can give you as your parents is the strength to rule this kingdom. That means that you must, always, do what is necessary without causing yourself pain. And right now, that means executing me.”

Diane felt he knees give in, so she discreetly leaned onto Thomas Hammer. He noticed it, so he, not as discreetly, put the hand he had dropped back on her shoulder.

“I see,” Diane replied calmly. “I have heard this exact thing a thousand times before.”

“Diane,” Maria tried to interrupt but was unsuccessful.

“Let me talk. If you want to die, die. I won’t stop you. Just don’t give me that righteous talk. You only did what was easy. We could have fought together. Instead, you chose to turn my life into a lie and then expect me to feel guilty for it. I don’t feel guilty. I will never feel guilty.” A few tears divided Diane’s face into three unsymmetrical parts. “I will kill you in a week. And I will never feel sorry for it. Because it was your choice.”

She then turned around and left in complete silence. No one tried to stop her, only Thomas Hammer followed along. Once they were outside, Diane held onto the Flamer once again, the sudden weight of her words and actions pulling her underneath the concrete.

“Why did you say that if you don’t mean it?” Thomas asked, holding onto his queen, never understanding her more.

He would have done the same, he knew. If it meant his mother would have an easier passing, he would have sacrificed every piece of his peace. Still, he let her talk, even when the sky became dark, and people stopped passing by. When the moon crept out, she stopped, and said it was time to go. Brandon was still inside. Diane stopped half-way to the carriage. She said she saw someone in the empty street. When Thomas said there was no one, she said she knew.

“Sometimes,” she said,” I feel that there is something seriously off with me. Not the way I act, that was learnt, but how I feel. How I can never feel the way I act.”

“That is because it should be the other way around,” Thomas replied, feeling slightly awkward with how obvious his answer was and how little help he could give.

“But I can’t do that. So, the best solution is the feel the way I act. But now I have to kill my mother, you know. And I can’t make myself feel like it.”

A problem that arose in Diane’s head had a very simple solution in Thomas’s. He knew his inability to sympathize stemmed from his never having to wear a crown or bear responsibility for anyone other than himself. Still, he tried to give her as much support as his simplicity allowed. Some of that support included helping her into her carriage and sitting next to her, so she could lean on his shoulder while they rode.

“I will do it for you,” Thomas told Diane with a grim expression she had never before seen on his face.

“Why? It has nothing to do with you.”

“I don’t know. I just want to.”

“Kill her?”

“No, help you. I kind of know what it’s like to realize you’ve been living a lie.”

She was silent. The scenery continued changing from houses to forests and hills. The carriage was warm, so she took off her cloak and laid it on the bench opposite her, so it looked eerie, like a person.

“I want to say I don’t need your help. But I do. But I don’t want you to do it. Not because I want to do it. But because I don’t want you to do it.”

Diane fell asleep shortly after their conversation ceased. She didn’t dream, so waking up felt unnatural, like she hadn’t slept at all. There was that same fatigue and headache and itching of her tongue. Her feet were ice cold even though it was extremely warm in the carriage. Thomas was sleeping as well, so deeply Diane could imagine he was never waking up. With the corpse of fur lying opposite her, she herself felt very much dead. This very image, in various forms, had been playing inside her head ever since she was, as a child, told she had to kill someone. Someone she didn’t know. Someone whose name she didn’t understand because it was fake. An impostor, just like her. But what if she decided against it? What then?

“Thomas,” she whispered and nudged him with her elbow, ”I think you should wake up.”

“Thomas, wake up,” she repeated almost instantly. “Hey!”

Then she felt suffocated. It was too warm in the carriage. Sweat was dripping down her back and forehead. She wiped it off forcefully and tried to breathe slowly. Then the carriage started spinning, and she hit the door to her left with all her might and jumped outside. She could see Thomas’s head sticking out through the door. He yelled something and the carriage stopped. She remembered little of that day, except the smell of dirt and the cold grass on her legs.