“You have some visitors, sir,” a posh, masculine voice pierced a dark, empty room. “They are here with Sensationia to speak with you on matters concerning your current…illness.”
Large heavy footsteps clanked closer to the knight that delivered the message, as if a sealed metal container was filled with broken glass and rolled down the stairs. This caused the knight to flick the torchlight to his candle, casting a golden flame over the silhouette of a large armored man with lengthy hair that cascaded all the way to the floor. His name is Cothbrenias Von Zoloto, the aforementioned king of Bastion Cothbrenias. He had been in this room for months now, secluding himself from the very king he reigns over due to his insecurity of sickness; of the many things that distress him, revealing an ailment to the people that are unascended to the king was something that irked the king the most with ire to his predicament.
“Outsiders I presume?” inquired Cothbrenias, his voice groggy but gravelly.
The knight sighed, lowering his candle as Cothbrenias bent ever so slightly to his level.
“Indubitably, sir.”
Cothbrenias stood upright, walking slowly to the widow, a large 50 feet by 100 feet passage that granted him a lovely view from where he stood over the several different buildings and smaller castle-like designs that lay throughout Bastion Cothbrenias.
“They are at the edge of the hallway, Den?” Cothbrenias clasped his hands behind his back, a slight tremor forming on his left. “If that need be your response, do send them my way.”
The knight, Den, bowed, and turned a full one-eighty down the left intersection of the hallway, only to return a few moments later with a pair of eight additional footsteps right behind him. “Here there are then, sir,” Den announced somewhat passionately.
“Leave us,” Cothbrenias ordered, tone soft but loud enough to be heard across the room. It was as if his command pierced right through Den with fear, as the latter quickly scooted past the three friends and Sensationia before closing the large golden and sterling ornamented door with a low creak behind him.
Cothbrenias turned his head sideways, his charcoal-colored eyes locking onto Sensationia’s blue ones. “What did I tell you about bringing outsiders into my kingdom?” he asked in a reprimanding tone. “They have five minutes before I execute them personally.”
Gildhart saw how long the trail of Cothbrenias’ hair was, snapping then his head towards Luxthforthian’s long hair. “He’s got like one-hundered times the length of yours, Lux.”
“I know, I can barely keep care of mine,” Luxthfortian began, shaking in sync to the king’s trembling hand. How does he keep it growing like that?” Luxthfortian inquired softly, overheard by Cothbrenias.
“It has been ages since I have shed length upon these locs so wholly representative of my ascension to kingship—for it the matter concerns you righteously, I tend not to dabble in the line of a mere haircut when I possess what is undoubtedly veneer: a full cap of hair. Many would kill for what I own, that is true, but it is a testament to the years of wisdom I have acquired from my time of conquest and capitulation. Notwithstanding its length, I used to keep it held tightly in a ponytail, but as of the past few months, I have since altered my plans for how I care for my hair.”
“That’s a whole hair routine lecture if I’ve ever heard one,” Bernadette interjected, playing footsties with Gildhart as he giggled quietly, once again, overheard by the king.
Cothbrenias cackled. “Speaks the one who lacks in that department,” he chided, turning around and slowly to slowly approach the four of them, his boots clanking against the marbled, ivory floor to his desolate and empty bedroom.
Bernadette’s mouth fell open. “Hey! I cut my own hair like this, y’know! Give me some credit where it’s due, Sir-Talls-sa-lot!”
Cothbrenias turned his back on them and continued to ogle the kingdom from the passage opening in the window. Silence hung empty throughout the room, with only everyone’s breathing being enough to not plunge the room into a void of its former glory.
“Speak,” commanded Cothbrenias. “And say something wise.”
Sensationia cleared her throat loud on purpose. “My Love, these children—”
“Children?” Cothbrenias interrupted, a small sneer escaping his lips. “Go on then.”
“These children followed my carriage in an attempt to get my attention. Fortunately no Knight of Cothbrenias got to them before I did. They want to speak with you, My Love; they wish to converse with you on the Eternal Dark and your Dark Flu you hide so terribly from all us.”
Cothbrenias sighed, rubbing his forehead with both hands. “Terribly?” he chided, lowering his hands and returning them to their clasped position behind his back. “What appropriation does that make if I just so happen to conceal my grim fate from the world?”
“It makes you a coward!” Gildhart blurted out, causing Luxthforthian to smack his back with enough force to send the former flying forward, but luckily enough he caught himself before his face met the floor on a personal level.
Sensationia let out a nervous chuckle. “Oh goodness gracious. Such a boy, amirite?”
Cothbrenias turned to face Gildhart. “A boy who stands up to a person such as I has no place in this room but rather, to be downstairs below with my knights.” And with that, Cothbrenias snapped his fingers, echoing and truncating its reverberation through the desolate room and beneath the slit in the door to the room to a point that three knights came in.
“Take the insolent—train him,” Cothbrenias says without turning his head to face any of them. “Suffice to say he will not impede upon my sanctuary with his holier-than-thou commentary after years of service to my Knights of Cothbrenias; if he so happens to cross my path on a personal level again, it would be of best relations to eschew from Lèse-majesté.”
He continues after a bloody glob of spit escapes followed by a cough. “Take the girl—leave her at the cathedral. In ten years from today, I will order about fifty children from her before death takes its toll,” he stopped and clenched his right hand, smacking the window to the point where it created just the smallest shatter mark. “Wait—”
“Wait?” inquired a knight, his hand seizing Bernadette’s arm.
“Just the portly boy—ignore the girl and the blond one.”
With that, Gildhart, without hesitation or time to argue, was dragged out of the room by the combined force of five fully armored Knights of Cothbrenias.
Sensation, with an appalled expression, stepped forward towards her husband, but this only caused him to lash out and smack her so hard that she slid across the floor a few feet away from him.
“Do not ever bring outsiders in my kingdom again, or else I snap their spines on the spot, guaranteeing their paralysis circumvents them from trying to move during the guillotine!”
“You’re a beast! These are merely children! Bloody children, I tell you!” Sensationia shouted, rubbing her arm as it began to bruise and swell with ulcers. “I beseech you, My Love! Spare these youths for me, or else I will not greet the world with the same kind of exterior!”
Cothbrenias bent down to her level, staring into her eyes and grinning ever so slightly as his head shot upward to face Luxthforthian and Bernadette.
“Well spoken…Your Highness,” Cothbrenias had a nasty expression as he walked closer to the two friends, hands unclasped and crossed at his chest. His hair dragged past his legs onto the floor, and he slowly took it all like one would slowly reverse the motion of rolling ducktape, gathering all his hair into the length for a ponytail.
“To the ballroom,” he ordered, opening the door for the two of them as they walk out into the stretch of hallways, the carpet a wine red with indigo diamond designs. “You stay,” he turned his back on Sensationia as he closed and locked the door behind them.
“Poor girl,” Bernadette muttered, but immediately dropped the attitude upon seeing the nervousness in Luxthforthian’s expression.
Cothbrenias was a towering figure draped in midnight, his jet-black hair tied into a floor-length ponytail that swept behind him like a shadow given form. One long strand fell across his face, hiding one charcoal eye and sharpening the cold glare of the other. His pale features were carved in stern symmetry, and the crimson-lined uniform he wore only deepened the aura of command that clung to him. Even sickened, he carried himself with a rigid, kingly poise—hands clasped behind his back, chest upright, every step heavy with the weight of someone used to being obeyed without question.
“Sir?” Luxthforthian broke the silence as the three of them walked.
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“If it is about Your Highness, it is of matters that do not concern me.”
“No sir, it is about my friend,” Luxthforthian began, twirling his locs nervously.
“Inquire.”
“What will happen to him?”
Cothbrenias stopped, looking down at Luxthforthian. “Our allies are our greatest adversaries. Turning our friends into our enemies is what teaches us to be accountable for our actions so entirely vindictive of our own contributions to a world teeming with the hardships of trial and error.”
“Is there a thesaurus anywhere close or something? I have no clue what you just said,” Bernadette commented, rubbing her elbow as she walked ahead of them.
Luxforthian giggled. “I got everything you said…My Lord?”
“Call me Cothbrenias, my child.”
“Okay…Cothbrenias, what is going to happen to my friend Gildhart. Is he going to die?”
Cothbrenias cackled. “Killing your friend would be a waste of resources that I can surmise my knights do not possess as of this time thanks to my…lovely wife dismantling their weapons department behind my back. It is rather funny what our closest ones do without our knowledge.”
Suddenly knights grab Bernadette, but she screams and throws a fit, saying: “Let go of me! You hairy slobs! Let go of me!”
“Take her to the ballroom on the third floor. In the meantime, I will converse with the blond one…” he sees a few knights at his side. “Alone.”
Bernadette’s demeanor changed, letting the knights escort her away. “The ballroom! Sure, take me there!”
Luxthforthian glanced up at Cothbrenias’ gaze as he watched the latter stare as the knights took Bernadette down another hallway before she too was gone like Gildhart. Now Luxthforthian was all by himself at the mercy of Cothbrenias, the one and only most important person in the world—for it was an honor to be in his presence through-and through.
“Now my child, please follow me will you,” instructed Cothbrenias, arms clasped behind his back as he led Luxthforthian down the end of the hallway, turning the corner to just walk down another hallway. There were a lot of hallways in Bastion Cothbrenias’ largest castle; about 5000 hallways between the 1000 floors.
Cothbrenias stopped, turned around, and stood before Luxthforthian. He sighed, and then said: “From the moment I saw you, I recognized where it was I have seen those eyes before. It was at the height of my last conquest: a woman begged on her knees to prevent I, Cothbrenias Von Zoloto, from slaining her. To beg for permission to live makes someone such as myself the judge, jury and executioner; it is a responsibility that I have learned to manage over my reign. However, I spared her out of spite not out humanity; she then reached for a blade and attempted to slay me instead. Your mother was quite the fighter—you have not shown me that side yet.”
“Wait a minute, what?” Luxthforthian’s lips tremored.
Cothbrenias continued. “Your eyes belonged to your mother; she had a rare condition that gave her indigo eyes because she fell into a pit of unknown aromas, changing her genetics and giving her those signature eyes you possess right this very instance. I had married her before Sensationa, not due to her looks but because she reminded me of my own mother. I loved my mother more than anybody could love their best goat on a farm lacking in prosperity. If it was agriculture that was to praise, she gave me all of it—savoring the best for the time of your creation; for you are my lineage and, therefore, have the lineage right to rule upon my death.”
Luxthfortian’s flustered expression shifted into a pensive one, making processing the situation a difficult task in and of itself. Luxthforthian raised his voice skeptically and asked, “If you are my father as you claim, then why did I end up as a poor village boy?”
“Cothbrenias does not show his children to the public out of protection’s sake,” an approaching man dressed in a sharp crimson, golden suit and an indigo turtleneck spoke solemnly. “To do that would be to risk your capture, allowing the enemy to use you as live bait.”
“Indeed,” Cothbrenias muttered, glancing at the man. “You arrived earlier than expected, Pronzo.”
The sharply dressed man, Pronzo extended his hand out to Luxthforthian, who gave him a perplexed expression. “You are supposed to shake it, sir,” Pronzo grinned, taking the latter’s palm in his and moving in an up and down motion. “It is called a handshake, a formality of introduction if you may be specific enough to refer to it as such…perhaps even a greeting.”
“Enough with your theatrics, Mr. Copori,” Cothbrenias said in an admonishing tone.
“Sorry!” Pronzo rejoiced, skipping around Luxthfortian, swaying long black hair cascading behind his back. “I just have not seen royalty’s youth in years!”
“Provide your statement’s following addition,” Cothbrenias instigated. “Of what appropriation are you to notice my child if he were absent from my presence as of this time?”
Pronzo stopped, analyzed Luxthfortian’s irises, and then flicked his gaze towards Cothbrenias’. “You two have different eyes, so it would be safe to assume that the mother is the one that he got those colored irises from, which proves why she is largely absent.”
Cothbrenias clenched his fists at his side. “Largely absent?” he inquired. “She is dead!”
Pronzo rubbed the back of his neck, laughing nervously as he reproached, “Well who is to blame for that…earliest departure, Your Highness? Seems rather fitting to pin the blame on me.”
“Blame is not worth pinning on a jester like you, Mr. Copri.”
Luxthfortian coughed, causing the two men to glare at him.
“Death is not an option that the public should be condemned to,” Pronzo suggested, voice tight. “Perhaps it would be better if left with the boy—the secret that could destroy your reputation so badly it causes the very people you reign over to rise against you with insurrection.”
Cothbrenias inhaled slowly, staring at Pronzo while he did so. There was something in the way in which he did so that caused Luxthfortian to move towards the wall as he noticed Cothbrenias slowly inch towards Pronzo.
“Hey,” Pronzo backed up instinctively. “We do not have to go there.”
Cothbrenias gave off a detached expression, unsheathing his fifteen-feet sword. The thing was casted in a gold exterior, yet on the inside, the sharpest obsidian was forged from the hottest volcano in the world, Dante Dondovento, and was sharpened into its tip to the its length from the greatest craftsman known to Cothbrenias, the person he named the volcano after of the same aforementioned name. The handle was engraved with charcoal-colored skulls encrusted with blood-red ruby crystals in the eyes and nose slits, giving it a gothic overlook. Finally, the blade itself, albeit golden and accused of its guild, radiated a certain incandescence of white phosphorus mixed with a tealish glimmer.
Cothbrenias extended the blade out, causing the tip to reach Pronzo as he backed up and making the former hit the latter’s nose—for it essentially a boop and not a kill.
A small trickle of blood drizzled out of the tip of Pronzo’s nose as Cothbrenias retracted his mighty blade, sheathing it back into its hold behind his back as he shimmied it into a certain way that allowed him to perform the action without bending down.
“The sword—you have to name it,” Luxthfortian said in awe, hands trembling as he tried to form coherent thought. “Something grandiose I tell you, father—I mean, sir.”
Cothbrenias shooed Pronzo off with a wave, dismissing the latter back to the ballroom down a few flights of stairs a few floors beneath them.
“Hexarexachrona,” Cothbrenias responded. “She is the mightiest sword named after the mightiest mother you could have ever asked for, my child. I bequeath it unto you, passionately.”
“You decidedly came to the conclusion to pass it down to me?”
“Here,” Cothbrenias responded, unwrapping its satchel from his back and extending one arm out to hand it to Luxthforthian. “I insist you take it before my arms tire out and I drop twenty-two years of forgery in a moment—not all of what we value has to become a moment.”
Luxthforthian expected the blade to drop as he took it from Cothbrenias’ grasp, but it was like he was picking up air itself, and he watched as its length shrunk from its fifteen feet to five feet, matching Luxthfortian’s height.
Cothbrenias analyzed Luxthforthian’s perplexity. “The blade has a special enchantment to fit the comfort of its wielder. For your strength, it is as airless as the autumn breeze; the condition upon your height is what depresses its size to your length, which is why it is no longer as grand and colossal as it was when I held it.”
“That has to be the greatest thing ever, a sword that bends to my will.”
“Not only that,” Cothbrenias said, crossing his arms. “It is your rightful density to use Hexarexachrona for the betterment of not only Bastion Cothbrenias but also for the betterment of the world.”
Cothbrenias bent down to Luxthforthian’s level, placing a gloved hand on his shoulder with an amiable but rough smile.
“My son. It is this blade that was forged from the very blood of Hexarexachrona, the true love of my life—your mother. She spoke too little of all the great things I did for my people due to the weight of my evil actions. But you do not have to leave room for malice in your heart like I did; no, instead you can take what is vile that you may encounter and turn it into something good. Take all the good in your essence and empower Hexarexachrona with it; let her become enchanted with the rightfulness to the heir that you possess, and create meaning in the meaningless struggle that is life. For as long as I live, I may never get over the death of the name whose label is attached to that heirloom of kingsmanship; no, instead I shall die in vain knowing all that I have done has never been able to bring her back. But do not let my grief and regret stop you from the discovery of greatness. Bring the sun back while you carry the sun above your head, and bring the moon down where it belongs—in the darkness of the macrocosm of ascendency; it is your density, your future…your fate. None shall hold Hexarexachrona the way that you do because to wield her to possess the blood that enchants her specification. Her mystification alone can shatter the Eternal Dark, cure the Dark Flu of many others, and bring the sky shine back to remind it that you were always brighter than it.”
With that, Luxthforthain tied the satchel that contained Hexarexachrona around his back, and then turned down what he believed was the exit hallway. He turned to face Cothbrenias, offering a benign smile.
“I have a question,” Luxthforthian said, securing the satchel’s latches firmly around his chest. “What about the girl you took away, my friend Bernadette?”
Cothbrenias, in a orotund voice said, “She will go with you on your quest to Castle Honestria so that you do not have to endure the ruins of its environment in solitude.”
With that, Cothbrenias snapped his fingers, causing knights to approach Luxthfortian and grab at his arms softly.
“You are the last light left in a world with the dark, my child,” Cothbrenias said, voice flat. “Bring the sun back, and if I just so happen to never cross your path again, just know this: I love you with all of the remains of my heart for the Eternal Light and the Eternal Dark’s embrace.”
Luxthforthian was escorted away by knights down the opposite side of the hallway, a plummy chatter making Cothbrenias’ footsteps back to his room completely indistinguishable as he vanished out of sight.
“Where are we going?” Luxthforthain asked, holding onto the satchel’s buckles around his chest tightly. “Is it where my friends are?”
A knight spoke up in a high social class-like manner and said, “Indeed, Your Royal Highness.”
Luxthfortian’s eyebrows shot upright at the label, marching down a foot more flight of stairs with about twenty Knights of Cothbrenias at his company; there were five in front of him, five to his left and right, and five behind him.
