III

On the evening of King Malcent’s death 20 years ago, it was fitting that the moon glimmered with a dark red hue. It shone through the bars of the decayed dungeon Rooh found himself bound in, completely stripped naked in a display of antagonism. With his hair matted in caked blood he could not even whet the temptation of moving his hair from his eyes being bound to rusty chains. Then again, he did not really care. He did not care for much at all. 

Torturous yells from adjacent cells that leaked through the stone walls passed right through him. He sat cross legged and within a small pool of his own blood. The moonlight shone against his tanned skin and made the black ink etchings inscribed in his skin radiate eerily. It was probably the most vacuous his brain had been in many years. He sat patiently like a student with his hands in his lap. Chains bit into his wrists that had most likely not seen the light of day. A jingling of keys broke his tryst with silence. 

A porcine man in head-to-toe armour that was disheveled and blemished beyond recognition walked in front of him. He looked down at Rooh and snickered, “Methinks on behalf of the king,” A trickling stream of piss splashed against the prisoner. “A desert rat like you deserves nothing less. Long live Hallowand.” Rooh was frozen like a statue and did not even bat an eye. This pissant of a guard, Roland, deserved no reaction from him. Rooh would not relinquish a single ounce of power to him. Roland observed for what seemed like an eternity before giving an ultimately exasperated sigh and waddled out of his cell. Keys jingled once more before the guard left with joyous whistles that contrasted sickeningly with the seemingly eternal screams that went on in the dungeon. Rooh’s lower lip twitched for a moment. 

He was going to kill that bastard. 

Looking down at the coagulated puddle of mixed bodily fluids, a sudden memory of a chant materialized in his mind. Sun comes up. You come up. Sun comes down. You stay up. The chant grew louder as it repeated in his head. The sound of pickaxes hitting in a jettisoned sense of rhythm complimented the chant which now accrued many voices that rang out clear. The image of pickaxes glinting in overwhelming sunlight as they chipped away at bleached stones brought him back to his past. His young hands were calloused as he dropped his own pickaxe. Blood ran down from his feeble digits as they mingled together with a puddle of sweat. 

“Quite a position you’ve put yourself into, this time...” 

The soft voice shattered his brief voyage into his past. The pale figure in the furthermost corner of the cell. Once again. The amethyst speckled eyes. It had been a few days now since she appeared to him since her absence. She would appear in the shadows mostly. Every time, it pulled him out of his nothingness and filled him with a tinge of hope. But also, pain. The kind that would wither a rose if put too close. Nika had no difficulties melting him. 

Long ago she told him that if he would get too close, a fragment of her soul would live on inside of him. Even after she had passed. Oddly enough, she only told him once. Rooh believed that maybe she was reluctant herself in passing down something that would prevent him from natural healing. Such was the nature of the magic that coursed through her blood. Affecting and dancing on the stream of whoever’s lives she touched. She called it corrosive. Rooh called it a blessing. Her last intimate touch would carry on the residual of her energy that she poured into the universe. A touch that he recalled like it happened a mere moment ago. A kiss born of fear for the unknown with an amorous blend of trust and passionate wonder. How could he forget? He was, after all, an envoy of her love. He was her cartographer. Physically, mentally, spiritually. 

Rooh had yet to respond to the phantasm. Maybe it was him feeling like he was going through the throes of insanity. Or maybe it was the lexical confirmation of his coming to terms with the fact that she was not in this world anymore. Yet, it felt surreal. Her presence was like a thin veil covering someone’s eyes. Eyes that shone through yet were not fully actualized. You could feel it, nonetheless. A gaze that pulled you in, but you were standing in a mist. Like you were in the middle of an augury. 

Footsteps rang rhythmically in his vicinity. The heavy shifting and clanking had to be Roland. Nika had disappeared as expected of an apparition with beauty that was as fleeting as it was real. There was another guard with Roland as they conversed. Rooh caught only a fragment of their conversation. “...And then I plowed the wench, in front of her father!” 

He was going to kill that bastard. 

Roland unlocked the door once again with the teeth grinding sound of the keys. His partner was the sheer opposite. Younger, almost emaciated. The nerves were palpable as he approached Rooh with Roland right beside him. Roland broke the silence and said calmly, “Your request to meet with His Highness has been denied.” He grinned greedily even before he was able to finish his words. His partner smiled nervously. Rooh glared up and finally made eye contact with Roland. He spoke in controlled rage, “He owes me an audience.”  

Roland burst out laughing. He exclaimed, “A desert rat like yourself has no jurisdiction. I am surprised you can even speak our language. Your tongue butchers it. Speak ill of Your Highness again and I will cut off your balls. If you even have any. I am instructed to do as I wish with you.” He drew his short sword and held it at his side to compliment his bravado.  

In a burst of supernatural energy and speed, Rooh snapped his cuffs and sprang from the floor to Roland and grabbed his sword with his bare hand. The momentum and force of his movement tore open nearly healed wounds on his body. He wrenched the blade from Roland easily and spun it in the air to catch it by the hilt. With the momentum of the catch, he gritted his teeth in effort and sliced through Roland’s neck like a scythe cutting through a fresh harvest of flesh. Blood exploded and splashed onto Rooh’s visage and body. His eyes remained open even with the hot and violent stream hitting them. The metal clank of the helmet hitting the floor evaporated the squeal of blade rending through flesh and bone. Heaving with sustained anger, he looked slowly at the other guard. The guard was terrified as evident to his petrified state. His mouth stammered and his eyes were saucers. It was then that he believed demons existed as it appeared that Rooh was newly baptized in blood, comingling with his own wounds and Roland’s. 

The bloodstained being grabbed the guard by the neck through the fabric seam in his armour. He pulled him to the head imprinted with a shocked expression. Rooh growled, “Where is your king?” The guard had difficulties engaging the question as he started leaking out tears. Rooh pressed the guard’s face against the decapitated one. This time he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Don’t talk and this is your fate.” The broken mess of a man finally blubbered, “T-t-throne room...two floors above. O-on your right.” Rooh thanked him by slamming a hammer shaped fist against the back of his head, knocking him out cold. 

Squelching footsteps made the way up cold dungeon steps. Two floors. On his right. A giant two-way door laden with cedarwood and gold embroidery. Aristocrat bullshit. Normally there would be more security but from what he could gather from the cacophony beyond the door there was a celebration of some kind going on. He placed two red hands on the door and tucked his head down, closing his eyes and sighing deeply. He opened them and turned back to see Nika’s moonlight figure reaching out to him with tears crystallizing in her enchanting eyes. He cracked a slight smile knowing it would be his last and finally broke his silence between them.  

You can’t help me anymore. 

He turned and faced the door. Harvesting his strength, he pushed it open hard enough that the hinges contorted. Horrified screams and faces assaulted him as he paced onwards into a throne room disgustingly bright and saturated with gold. Paid for by the suffering of the masses. By conflict that need not have been had. Every step he took was deliberately slow and as if he wanted everyone to feel the gravity that he mastered underneath him. He stained the pristine room with dripping crimson with every step. An otherworldly predator. He locked eyes with King Malcent and kept moving forward. It was probably the first time he had been this unnerved and that pleased Rooh greatly.  

The Royal Guard situated next to the king stormed forward after a brief pause of confusion. They were walking gemstones. Armour that lacked practicality and felt gaudier than anything in that room. Except, perhaps, the crown itself. They marched until they were in proximity of Rooh. Before they could unleash their swords, the king yelled, “STOP.” He rose from his throne. An extension of the entire castle itself. Wizened and shriveled with age, he stumbled for a painfully long time towards the Royal Guard in the eerie silence of hundreds of people. He mumbled, “Make way.” A passage was immediately created in between the armoured bodies as he finally reached Rooh.  

He gazed at the blood covered monstrosity before him. Dark hair made even darker by the red wetness. Minutely dripping off the muscled crevices all the way down to his exposed member. The king had no choice but to materialize goosebumps of fear seeing such a raw, primordial sight of a warped disposition. Rooh broke the silence and asked simply, “I want to hear it from you. It was you, wasn’t it?” He started to shake in anticipation of the answer. He already knew. He just needed the affirmation for a reason he did not even understand himself. 

King Malcent cleared his throat. He matched the gaze of his once protégé and calmly replied, “When she brought you in, I did not think much of you. A barbarian from a savage desert land. A young man from Aasia. But when she said you were,” He sighed deeply. “One of the Shashin. I had to have you. I changed. I treated you like a son. She did not know what was best. For you or for my land.” 

Rooh’s vision blurred as he felt his brain warp in seething anger. A sudden scorching, burning pain engulfed his entire body. He stumbled to a knee as blue electricity coursed through him. Out of his peripheral vision, to his side a sorcerer evoked lightning from his fingertips and kept him immobile. King Malcent clicked his tongue in wonder. He muttered, “Even now, most men would be vaporized by Hafldor’s magic. You are an anomaly and cursed. It is my responsibility now to set you free.” He slowly took a sword from the closest of his guards. Rooh struggled but with his previous wounds he could not gather enough strength to break free from the chain of destructive and elemental magic. 

When the lightning stopped, the king silently slipped his sword straight into Rooh’s chest. Pain contorted his body as his life essence slipped out from the wound. He coughed blood violently as his eyes rolled back into his head and all sound escaped from his senses. As he blacked out the last picture engrained in his brain was the first time he saw Nika’s smile. Something extremely violent shifted inside him. Black waves with bioluminescence. With sheer and unfettered willpower, he managed to bring himself back from the depths. His vision came back to the king’s widened eyes of disbelief. The screams echoed in the room once again as he rose from his knee and stood up. He felt possessed by the purest of boiling emotion. He was blasted once again by electricity from the king’s personal sorcerer. He was unphased.  

His hand shot out and grabbed King Malcent’s throat and the torrent of magic stopped. Not this time. This is something you will not escape. He spoke through his eyes to the king and snapped his neck with one hellish squeeze that carried all his weight. The sound and feeling of his spine collapsing was an affirmation that he could let go. Before the Royal Guard was able to react, Rooh’s eyes rolled back into his head as he collapsed. The sword pulled out with a sickening squelch and he was left with the image of his own arterial spray sloshing the king. 

Everything after that was black.