A shooting star was sighted, streaking somewhere to the southwest, searing the summer night-sky with its day-like glare. Its landing shook the entire realm, and flocks of birds swarmed confusedly in the darkness and the smoke wafting between the trees.
Guessing that her nation might have offended the gods in some way or another, Queen Haruki ordered a massive ceremony to take place at the clearing front of her palace, facing southwest-wards towards the shooting star's direction. There, the people wailed as they lined up to offer their sacrifices, while hundreds of dancers scampered around the array of wooden torches until sunrise.
An old man, clad in simple gray wool robes, was sighted from the towers guarding the western frontiers of the kingdom. So far, he was the only person within those few years who dared walk up these lonely dirt roads amid the trees, for they were abandoned over the Queen's orders to slay anyone sighted there, monster, animal (which they can eat), or mortal alike. Already the monsters had tried to make themselves look human, pretending to be refugees or defectors to escape their disgusting feuds.
Several guards noticed him, calmly walking towards the gate.
"Turn back at once, old man!" one of them cried. "If you move one more step further, I will consider shooting your eyes at once."
"The Queen does not want to see any strange man within her realm," another continued. "Even with good intentions, every outsider now might be a devourer waiting to crawl into the pen."
"Then I demand to see your Queen!" the elder bit back. "I have something she and others in your realm need to use to fend off worse devourers and destroyers."
"The Queen does not entertain any further tricks or devices, for all of them have failed. Turn back at once, or we will shoot!" The guards readied their bows at the irritated elder, who stood defiantly.
"Go ahead!" he cried.
Two or three arrows flew from their flimsy bows. The elder raised his hand, and the one arrow that almost struck him suddenly disintegrated into ash. The guards hurried to the other side to blow horns and alert the nearby camps.
"This is no man," muttered one of them, as he followed his companion down the winding stairs. "He is a wizard before our gates, seeking to endanger the life of our Queen!" he cried, before slipping and tumbling down the staircase, crashing through the door and before that suspicious stranger.
By the time his friend reached the foundations that guard had already ran toward a barracks, where he returned with around thirty men armed with spears after that friend opened the gate for them. They pointed their spears at the elder, but he remained still and stiff, both in face and body.
"Move, and I will stick the tip of my spear up your throat," barked one of the newer sentries, "and cut off your head as a trophy for Her Majesty," The elder did so. As that same guard was about to stab him, the elder quickly grasped the spear, causing it to melt into dripping hot iron, so quickly that it scalded and fused with the guard's tormented hands. The other guards rushed to stab him with their spears, but he quickly took out a bronze disk from his bag, and raised it towards their faces. It shone with a exceeding light that melted the tips of their weapons and fried their eyes. They writhed, clasping their agonised faces and screaming with pain.
"If you wish to see again, bring me to your leader," the elder warned, as he walked past them.
"We ... will," begged one of the guards. "You ... better not kill us, like any monster would!"
The elder took out his mirror again, and shot its light at the guards. Their pain ceased, their faces fixed without a scorch or a burn, and they could see again.
---o---
(Spy from the Kingdom of Samunakare, the Old Invader, or merely a monster in disguise?)
He and his escort of fifteen guards went for three days deep into the Queen's country, past surprised villagers and several checkpoints, at which they departed back to their stations on horseback when they approached the capital. It was a settlement of stilted wooden houses, arranged neatly by grid-like dirt roads, surrounding a massive mosaic, where its hundreds of sellers went about in their business before the enormous palace.
Within the capital only three men, clad in silver armor dangling with tags, accompanied him up the vast porch into the palace hall. There sat the sullen Queen in her flowing blood-red robes, accompanied by her sons to her immediate left, and her two daughters to her right, all in a row against a wall strewn with tapestries. Near her to the other sides of the wall sat her officials and top warriors, who were to oversee and secure the affairs of her realm.
The three guards next to the elder knelt down before the Queen. "Rise," she murmured. "Who is this stranger who has afflicted our folk in the west, on the road to Samunakare?"
"He has a gift for you, Your Majesty," one of the guards replied, "and he said that it will protect you and your kingdom from the monsters and enemies around you."
"I do not trust the gifts of any stranger," she said. "Many have brought into my realm either treachery, ticks, or death. But as for him I shall ask him, by myself."
"How shall I address you?" she enquired.
"You may call me 'The Blacksmith'."
"Now, tell me, Smith, are you a monster, or a wizard as my folk referred you for?"
"I am neither, but I am not human," he replied.
"Then, what are you, monster-man?"
"I am to look human, for I am not of your folk. Neither am I of the monsters of your realm, but of their enemy."
"What enemy, and would they attack us as well?"
"I was sent by the Council of Stars to prepare this gift for you." He presented the bronze disk: it was round, ringed with stars of four or eight rays dancing around a hub crowned with flames. "This is not an ordinary mirror, my lady," he added, "but a weapon that I had crafted to protect you and your realm."
The queen and her officials chortled. "A magical mirror?" she muttered to herself, before continuing to him: "Several men once promised to protect the realm with strange objects of theirs, but most of them failed to return. Since I executed the only survivor for failing to defeat his enemies with his trivial toy, I disallow any strange object from being brought into the realm."
By her request, a guard carried a pole, lined with several bloodied, rotten heads staked through it, and showed it to him. "His head is the topmost," she gestured, "joined with every newcomer to the realm."
The old man remained unperturbed by such a horrific decision. As he looked down from the topmost head to the more fresher and recent ones, he noticed that they were less grotesque and more human. On the wall behind the guard are more poles; some filled with heads from virile men, others lined with women's heads, and still more with those of youths, children, and elders. Most of these heads resembled so much like the people around him, hardly bearing any traits of a monster.
"Such foreign people, however normal they seem, are but monsters and ghouls responsible for calamities wrought upon my own folk. I shall have no choice but to consider you as one of them." The queen then uttered towards two guards standing next to her: "Grab hold of him, and cut off his head!" They did so as ordered, but before they can slice his head off, the old man exploded into a being of blinding light. The two guards next to him rapidly ignited into ashes.
The queen's daughter wailed and clung towards her mother's red silken sleeves. Her brothers and all the surviving guards formed a wall around their ruler, should the radiant being ever harm her or them. Everyone else hid and backed away from the old man, fleeing out of the hall.
"Who are you, terror," the queen yelped, "and would you come here to slaughter my whole realm for your accursed Council of Sky Ghouls?!"
"I am a Star myself," the elder replied. "Listen to me, and I swear by the Council that you all will be safe from any further harm." He bowed his head. "And I sincerely apologise for what happened to these two guards who had to kill me: that is how I protect myself."
No comments:
Post a Comment