“What shall we do with the prisoner, m’lord?”
The question was innocuous enough, and one I heard many times before. Hundreds.
Why was it so different this time, though? Why, when I looked into the eyes of the man standing before me did I feel something strange?
I waved my hand and commanded he be remanded into the prisons below, as had happened so often before. My servants obeyed me without question, knowing their duty, and I stood, glad for the day to be done.
It had been a long one, in a string of difficult days since receiving word of the uprising to the east. It was a small part of my realm, and one I normally did not care to pay attention to, but being so close to the border, the people there were a more rambunctious lot than the rest of my demesne and, with the lesser harvest this year, they were taking it upon themselves to be heard. Rattling sabers and banging against their shields.
It happened before, of course. What righteous ruler hasn’t had such during their reign? This was no different than the one the peasants in Telembre had done some ten years before, and, like then, I expected sending in a contingent of my loyal troops would do much to assuage the riotous nature of the lesser classes.
As soon as they had food in their bellies, they would quieten, but that, unfortunately, was not in large supply.
If they kept it up, removing some of them from the fields by way of the sword would go far to helping not only return the people to peace through the show of strength, but would be a few less mouths to feed, as well.
Dealing with the situation, though, had taken a large portion of my time in the last week, and I would rather keep myself with other diversions than being concerned about whether a group of the peasantry had enough to go on. Starvation through the winter might, in the end, force them to work harder the next year, and that was not a bad goal for them to attain.
The stream of those same peasants coming through my court, dragged before me, sometimes kicking and biting, was tiresome, but I knew I had to deal with it as firmly as I had power to do. Rebellions are, by their nature, a cancer, growing out of control swiftly when not dealt with at their first signs, and the problems on the eastern part of my realm were not an isolated case. The north, too, would be impacted by the shortages, and would soon join their brethren in the rabble.
That must not be.
As I stood to make my way to my inner chambers, the prisoner being carted away to the cells below managed to turn himself around and stare at me.
Normally, I would pay no attention, but perhaps the wear of dealing with this rabble had become overwhelming. Perhaps it was because I had not eaten since a few hours before and my stomach grumbled at the thought of the repast my servants had awaiting me in the dining room.
Whatever it was, I hesitated as I stepped down from the dais and the throne ensconced upon it, the wood and gold glinting in the torchlight surrounding the chamber.
“Curse you, demon king!” he shouted at me, his voice raspy from, perhaps, lack of water and food. Maybe it was his age. He seemed quite frail for one involved in a rebellion, but one never knew what people were capable of.
One of the guards slapped him across the face with his armored hand and the man reeled backward, spitting out blood and one of his remaining teeth as he moaned. I squinted as the words he spoke entered my ears, the echoes of his cry resounding through my throne room.
“I bring a curse upon you and your house, demon!”
I laughed at the words, the audacity of this little man thinking that he could say such a thing. Did he not know his life was in the palm of my hand?
I had not intended to punish him too severely, his age mitigating his crimes with my mercy. A few nights in the dungeon would have done him good.
“Quarter him,” I said, glancing at the guard restraining the man, a sadness in my heart over the necessary step this elder was forcing me to do. Such things could not be brooked, no matter the age or infirmity.
“Yes, m’lord,” the guard replied, as he pulled the man away from the chamber and into the long hall outside.
I could not help feeling a little shaken by the encounter, surprised at the vehemence with which the man spoke and the gall of it all. Never had someone spoken to me that way, and talk such as that was dangerous.
It is the lot in a ruler’s life to not be favored by all of his servants, I knew that. But such things were not spoken openly, certainly not while facing judgment.
I shook my head, upset that I would have to bring the old man to an end.
I dined well that night, though my stomach troubled me when I went to my sanctum for rest. Such a long day, so many faces over the past days trailing before my throne, young and old alike. And yes, even some women I had to command be taken to the prison below.
Filthy creatures, desperate, perhaps, but ones ungrateful for what I had done for them throughout the many years of my reign. I treated them well, and they dared to rebel.
It saddened me, and angered me at the same time.
Had Father ever gone through this? In my time of knowing him, I could not remember there being such trouble within the borders of our realm, but I was so young, then. Perhaps there had been, and it was not made known to me, sheltered as I was within my rooms filled with tutors and learning the ways of rule.
I could not shake the feeling, as I lay my head upon the pillow for sleep, that a darkness had fallen across my land, and I could not see any way to avert its flow.
I awoke to a chamber dimmed of light by the faltering of the fire and wondered why someone had not come to stoke it while I slept. I sat up, my robe falling slightly off of the bed as I sat up and looked around.
A strange sound came to my ears, then, a crackle not unlike a fire, but not coming from the stone and brick that waited nearby to have more fuel added to it. That space was silent, ashes and coals the only things remaining.
No, wait, it was not a crackle.
I furrowed my brows as the sound continued, realizing it was more of a scraping sound, but interrupted at intervals, and seemed to be coming from the hallway outside of my door.
It was unlike anything I had heard before, a scrambling rattle of a kind, and I stood up, my bare feet slapping against the cold stone of the floor as I crossed the room and placed my ear upon the door.
Yes, there it was again, distant, perhaps, but definitely coming from somewhere beyond the thick oak of the door. Tap-tap tap-tap-tap.
I went to the other side of the room and pulled aside the heavy curtains against the window. The thick panes of glass were always difficult to see through in the best of circumstances, but with the light of day far gone and the moon above barely giving a glow, it was difficult for me to discern much of anything outside.
My chambers were a flight above the ground, enjoying a view of the courtyard. I liked to sit with the window swung wide during the summer months, watching as the people below me milled about during their duties. Efficient activity pleased me, and it was an interesting diversion for a while, especially when I had much on my mind.
All I could see now was a fire in the center of the courtyard, large and tall.
I pushed the window open, the cold wind blowing across it instantly sucking away any heat remaining in the room and trembled as a chill ran through me.
It was a bonfire, one barely controlled, and I could see figures in front of it milling around, seeming at random. I took them for guards at first, but within a few moments I realized they were not actually doing random movements, but had a purposeful lope, and I could see nothing of the metal my soldiers always bore.
I squinted, trying to make out as much of the detail as I could in the bright light of the fire breaking the darkness, but the figures moving around it were difficult to pick out unless they went in front of the flames, and by then the shadows were too deep along them to be able to make out more than the lines of their bodies.
Was it the executions? That could be it. I usually did not pay attention to when they occurred, preferring to move on with the business that needed to be handled, but since there were so many of them to get through, Iben, the prison master, may have decided to start them early, going through the night.
I nodded. That made sense. They were probably just getting things ready for the many prisoners who faced their final hours today, working through the night to set it all up.
I smiled at their efficiency. I would have to commend Iben for his forthright thinking.
As I swung the window closed, something else caught my attention and I flung it wide once more, leaning out of it a little to try to get a second look.
There was metal, the firelight glinting from the armor of a soldier, but he was not standing with a prisoner or helping with the preparations. He was laying down on the paving stones nearby the fire.
As I renewed my attention, I noticed another not far away from that one, also laying down, but his body was not flat. Instead, it was twisted at a strange angle, contorted in a way that seemed unnatural.
A gasp escaped my lips as I spotted a few more, each of which were laying, and none of them moved no matter how many moments had passed.
The figures around the fire still jilted and .. danced. Yes. That was it. They were dancing, jerking themselves around the flames to an unheard music, soundless except for the crackling of the great pile of wood before them.
A dread entered my guts, trembling in a way I had never felt before as fear rose inside of me. Who were those people? What happened to my guards? Questions stormed through me as I brought my body back inside and closed the window, careful to be as silent as I could.
I went to the door then, the nervousness at what I had spotted outside playing havoc with the dinner that weighed heavily in my belly, bile and undigested food threatening to come up. I put my ear once more to the door and listened, but could hear nothing now.
I pulled it open and an odor wafted into my nose; a strange combination of smoke and metal. The hallway was not well-lit at the best of times, but the torches that lined it were lit and crackling, a soft haze in the air between myself and the end, where the stairs leading down to the ground floor waited.
I crept slowly through that hall, my feet padding silently on the stone below me, with my hand on the wall for support.
A coughing sound came to me, then, coming from somewhere ahead of me, and I hesitated in my steps as I tried to recognize what it was. There was a weirdness to it, like someone unable to catch their breath.
The haze cleared a little as I paced, and the glint of metal a few steps down the stairwell forced me to pause, a gasp fluttering from my mouth as the bile came up the rest of the way.
I vomited on the floor, turning my head but not my eyes, unable to stop staring at the grotesquerie in front of me.
He was unrecognizable, but was obviously one of my soldiers, the patches of his armor hanging loosely from what was left of his flesh. It had been torn asunder, ripped apart by a force I could not fathom, shredding through the metal as if it were the skin beneath, which was also rendered aside.
Gobbets of the man’s flesh were flung on the ground around him as rivulets of blood flooded for feet around what was left of him, his eyes staring into nothing as even now were glazing over. Steam rose from his opened chest, his heat mixing with the chill of the air around. The stench was horrid, gagging me with copper and shite from intestines that were quavering with the remaining paces of his heart and lungs.
Even with all of the damage, he still lived, though how, I could not fathom. Breaths ragged and shallow, barely clinging to the life that once flourished inside of this man, as the last gasps of him faded in front of me.
What had done this to him? What could have done this amount of damage, able to pry open his armor seeming without effort? Had the soldier been able to fight back? If so, there was no blood of whatever had attacked him that I could see, only his own spread all around.
I moved past the soldier, carefully stepping beyond his body to the next stair without slipping, a wrenching gaze on my face as the still-warm blood squelched between my toes. When I neared the bottom, I picked up the sword laying there, flung away from the guard by the force that brought him to an end.
I hefted it in my hand, feeling the cold hilt within my seating palm and swung it a couple of times to accustom to the weight of it. It had been a long number of years since I held a saber, but I was well-trained in their use, as all Kings must be.
The horror within me scaled to a level I had never imagined before as the tableau opened in front of me. The bottom stair, its wood and stone frame cracked and bent, sent a small splinter into my bare foot but I paid it little care, my mind locked on the scene of so many bodies torn to shreds locking me in a moment of insanity.
They were everywhere, both peasant and guard, and the robe of my High Chamberlain was among the closest to me. He was more “together” than the rest, but the head separated from his body laying a foot away from where his neck once held it spoke of his survival, the scream still embedded into his face.
A dozen bodies, maybe more, all laying in ways no human should, broken and rendered asunder as blood dripped, literally, from the ceiling to the floor below.
I screamed, then, I think, though I cannot be sure. I could not come to terms with it, the scene shattering what I had left in me to hold on to as my body quaked. It was not merely fear, though. There was something primal to it, a depth untouched in all of my years not only ruling but in the world to begin with.
I whirled as a new sound joined the dripping of fluids and chemicals, waste and gore. A hallway, one leading to the outside, had its doors opened there, the cold seeping in, draining away what was left of the heat in my once awe-inspiring throne room.
Standing in the hall was a thin figure, an emaciated old man covered in blood, himself, taking a step forward. A terrible laugh came from the depths of his throat and I recognized him as the man I had given the order to execute by quartering.
Another step forward and he raised his hand toward me, pointing to the center of my chest.
“Do you like your realm, demon king?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper but cutting across the charnel room like a knife. “You’ll rule it forever, you know.”
I said nothing, could say nothing, really, but raised my sword defensively, aiming it for his face.
Had this old man done all of this? Had he, somehow, the power to create such horrific chaos? How? None of this made sense to me, the terror locking my legs into numbness now.
He stared at the sword and laughed, a chuttering almost like a cough, and I recognized it as what I heard in the hallway.
“It’s not me,” he said, his eyes on the sword. “It’s all on you, demon king.”
From the edges of the room, the shadows playing in the torchlight seemed to burst away, hazy smoky bodies made of nothing but vapor pouring out of the darkness into the light. The torchlight did nothing to dissipate them, however, as they swirled around the outer wall, and a keening scream emitted from the center of them, a thousand voices as one in a devastatingly loud discordant shout.
I screamed with them, my voice joining their own as they came down, descending in an instant on top of me. They slashed at me, vapor claws forming into solidity for only a moment, long enough to cut into my flesh and start the flow of blood.
I heard the man laugh again as they went for him, too, and he raised his arms and got on his elderly knees, in a gesture I took as almost supplicating. The beasts, whatever they were, the shadows of nightmare horrors that crept into children’s rooms at night, tore into us both, but they did much more to him than to me.
The claws tore into me and teeth that should not be real bit my neck, my sides, slicing through the robe to get at the skin below. My screaming intensified as I opened my mouth and that, too, became a target for them.
I tasted blood as it poured down my throat from my tongue and wrenched my mouth closed once more, falling to my own hands and knees for a moment only before I covered my head and put myself into a ball, trying to protect my stomach and chest from these things.
“Live on, demon king!” I heard the old man shout, more vigor in his voice than I had heard from him before. “Cursed, crumbling king!”
The last of his words became a keening wail as the shadow things tore into him until he went silent as they rended him apart, a horrifying parody of the quartering I had commanded he endure only hours before.
The shadows swept away from him, and from me, as well, as they went back up into the air and spun, darkening the room until only the glow of their eyes could be seen, thousands and thousands of eyes flashing and flaring.
They all stopped, then, and I gasped as their bodies, tall, thin, fat, ugly, all different kinds apparated into view, each distinct from each other.
All of the eyes stared at me, my bloodied robes barely hanging together as they soaked the fluid from not only my own veins, but from those around me. I whimpered, and begged them to leave me alone, to let me be freed of this torture.
They crept forward and, as they did, my eyes widened as I recognized some of them. There was a woman I had seen in my court not long before, committed to the axe for stealing bread. That one was a man executed for murdering one of my soldiers as he ran from them.
One by one, they stepped forward, my mind flashing on the memories of when I had seen them come before me, begging for mercy, themselves, and each I sent to their paupers graves.
Mercy. I gave them none when they were before me, and now that I was before them, they had none to spare.
They pounced again, crashing into me as the world around me shattered. One by one they entered into my body through my chest and, as they did, I could feel their rage, their horror, the torturous moments they felt, themselves, in those moments before they were doomed. I became them for that moment, that singular frame of time as they pulsed inside of me, until it was replaced by the next.
My back was on the ground by the time all had come into me, tears shedding from eyes that could no longer see the world as I once had.
No longer was I the ruler of my kingdom, set in place by the properties of birth and blood.
Now, I was the ruler over the decimation I had wrought.
My kingdom fell to the nations around us, taken a piece at a time as they realized the king was no longer there, no longer in his throne room as it was.
No. Now I rule this small space, my once glorious throne and castle around me crumbling away inch by inch. I have been here for many years now, hundreds. Maybe more. I no longer know.
No one comes before my throne, seeking supplication. I am no longer a man, but a shell, left to rot forever in this place of my undoing, and the grounds around me no longer grow anything more than dust as the unholiness of it keeps me trapped.
Every day, those shadows play in my mind, doing their dance as they had done around the bonfire, forcing me to relive every moment of horror they endured in their lives and deaths as if it were my own, and, in reality, that’s what it is now.
My kingdom has crumbled around me, and I am left to gaze around the shattered remains of the greatness that once was, forever locked in a hell of my own creation.
There will never be mercy for me, and I know there is none I deserve.
