Warning for near-death-experience and deeply descriptive choking.
The Throne of Flame: Chapter One
For the first time in awhile, there was something very wrong.
King Julien slept peacefully on most nights, nestled gently beside his two trusted citizens. Generally speaking, all was right within the world of King Julien. There were little obstacles, inconsequential in contrast to his past, during the day, but when night came he enjoyed the tranquil atmosphere unabashedly with little discontent. Only in his spare moments, when he was left to his reclusion, did the picture of perfection peel back into something less than.
He would rest upon his bouncy with his senses drawn to a stuttering mute, enjoying the harmlessness of his home. His vacation to New York, even if bordering on permanent by that point in time, paid off in that respect. He could get the full amount of sleep a king deserved with minimal interruption, most of which came in the form of something harmless.
Back in Madagascar, the sounds of the jungle would bring him to a slow lull of sleep, and he would only be startled into waking on the rare occasion that someone else entered his quarters. It was usually only Maurice, either coming to check on him or to wake him up in the morning, but in the times that it wasn't, Julien felt lucky for having been such a light sleeper. His feather-light unconsciousness was sharp tuned over the years, ears perking up if so much as one of his branches creaked in the wind. It was an internal alarm that never stopped ticking.
In New York, this was simply not the case. There wasn't a chance for it to have been. The city noise was so overwhelmingly intense that he'd been forced to adapt; on top of that, he no longer had his own room. After many initial sleepless nights, he'd eventually relented and grown accustomed to the idea of sharing, and he trusted his roommates to take care of him. After that, it became harder to wake the king. He slept like a rock, save for when his personal space was invaded.
He accepted this minor danger and lack of caution, however. He felt significantly safer when in the big apple, being that few knew his identity there, and passing off as a zoo resident made it all the easier to go unnoticed by anyone who might endanger the lemur king. Especially since he wasn't alone.
What did he have to concern himself with when Maurice was by his side? When Maurice was sworn to protect him on every occasion, and had done so in the past? Maurice would never let any harm come to his king, and that was just how Julien liked it. Nothing could go wrong.
Unfortunately, something went wrong.
A fresh sense of uninvited pressure beside him caused him to stir, the first signal that something was amiss. Weight dipped down the surface of his spongy, inflated bed, and in the distance, the ambience speakers called out as though to warn him of what was to come. He blinked delicately when consciousness began to overtake him, and he dimly registered the presence of another being.
Blinking and tensing, Julien turned, and his more fearful side tried to force him into awareness, even as the desire of sleep clawed at him. The person looming above him said nothing.
The dark night sky did nothing to aid him in identifying his sudden waker, but he assumed from the fur patterns that it must have been his most trusted advisor. Even if it was relatively disquieting to conjure up the notion that Maurice would wake him with no words and simply stare, Julien assumed there was reason behind whatever was going on. Maurice would never do something without good reason, and Julien intended to find out what it was. Muscles relaxing against the plastic, the king shifted.
"Maurice?" He croaked out, voice strained with sleep. "What is it that you are doing, being up at this hour?"
The figure moved forward, almost clinically, and the impersonal action startled Julien into the realization that it couldn't have been Maurice. Maurice wouldn't have forced him down into the inflated surface of his bouncy, unfamiliar and invading his personal space. Julien was alarmed by the analog aura of his company, as though whoever it was didn't know him, but it was nothing compared to the surprise he felt when there was a sudden pressure at his neck, engulfing it in an iron grip that was meant to kill.
They were choking him.
It was supposed to be a quiet murder, he assumed, as whoever they were wrapped their appendages around his throat and attempted to suffocate him. He didn't give them the satisfaction of a silent death, however, and began to shout out for help, limbs waving frantically. Whoever they were must have factored in his willingness to live, though, and immediately slammed down further on his trachea, causing his voice to hack unattractively.
Julien did not give up on yelling, however, trying to kick at the body on top of him. The pain only increased the louder he got, and he began to thrash violently beneath their grip, clawing at their arms. They only pushed harder.
Where was Maurice? Where was Mort, even? Couldn't they hear his screams? Why weren't they helping him?
A soft growl was heard from them as they tightened their grasp, and saliva collected at the corners of Julien's mouth as he struggled to breath. This assassin was determined, truly aiming to murder the king.
Was this how he was meant to die? Strangled by some unknown assassin in a New York zoo?
Furthermore, would his Malagasy lemurs even be aware of his death? Surely his messenger, the blue pigeon, would find out sooner or later about his passing. But even then, what would happen from then on? His absence gave way for any of his underlings to become ruler. They might not even let the tribe know of his death, continue ruling on in his name, enacting their own ideologies.
He was crying out now in wheezing, shallow gasps. The world around him spun, dizzy and dark as he lost himself in the agony of breathlessness. His lungs ached for relief as he felt his innards shudder with an uncomparable need. His undoer was unperturbed by his turmoil. It was rare when Julien felt the true, barest of animalistic needs surface, but almost always in a life or death situation. Now was one of those times.
He needed to live. He would not let himself die, not at the whim of someone who he didn't even know.
His mind shut down on every other process but the need to breathe, and he was scratching desperately at their arms with his claws, shrieking and wheezing and struggling beneath their objective grip. Drool was pooling down his cheeks now, bile squeezed from his closing throat. He dug his nails into the flesh of his captor and drew down, inviting blood to bead at the surface of their skin. They hissed out above him, blurry. His teeth clacked together as he released a very undignified yelp, his entire body jerked and writhed.
Julien had known that someone would attempt to kill him soon, with the way he'd been ruling his country. On top of his discreet rulings, he'd been doing it from afar (like a coward, he admit with no shame).
Certainly, there had been that red lemur from the Hoboken zoo - Clemson - in the more recent past who had tried to dispose of Julien. It only served as a reminder that he was in perpetual danger - but neither attempt had been so unapologetically brutal in execution, nor did there seem to be any genuine political intention behind it. Clemson had no open interest in changing the policies Julien had pushed into place. Only the desire to be king, cloddish and immature as that was. Clemson was probably Julien's most pathetic, unmemorable enemy. The only reason he'd even come to mind was because he'd been most recent.
Whoever this assassin was, they were willing to kill Julien face to face, even if in the dead of night. Julien was surprised, and almost impressed by their willingness to cut right to the point. He had no time to dwell on his mild, sardonic admiration, however, being that he was on the verge of actual demise. And the truth of that came to him in harsh, sinking consciousness. He was really going to die this time. The lemur king was about to die.
The nagging inevitability of death was drowning him, holding him back as he was plunged beneath the proverbial surface of cold water. The sensation rushed over him in unrelenting waves, as he tried, in what seemed fruitless at this point, to fight.
"Die already," the voice of his tormenter hissed, and Julien was too far gone to identify them by voice.
The closest thing to a response Julien could emit was a despairing retch, and his whole body was shuddering then. The torrents of the cold, ocean-like sensation washing over him suddenly turned warm, boiling even. Julien registered that this must be what it felt like to die. He felt so faint, so light headed, even as his body screamed for air.
For a moment, he resigned to this fate. He had lived up to ten years, and that was longer than most lemur kings. It was longer than he was supposed to live. He should have been grateful to have survived his role as king for so long. But then came the flashing mental reminder that he would be replaced, expendable as fly-dropping royalty was. And that didn't sit well with him.
A surge of new energy pumped within him, adrenaline giving him the power to shift backwards, curl his legs, and then launch a powerful kick at his assassin. They were off-put by the sudden maneuver, but far too persistent to stop, not when Julien's lungs trembled in asphyxiation. They slammed down on his throat as though to force him into submission once more. It worked, if only momentarily, because following his acceptance of the situation was a once more rekindled desire to fight. The only difference this time around was that he physically was incapable of fighting back.
He had lost too much oxygen. He was dying.
Tears were running down the side of his face, mixing with the drool and sweat. His mouth hung open in a last-ditch effort to suck in some semblance of air, but of course, this was impossible with how tightly the assassin wrung his neck.
He hadn't realized quite how delicate life was prior to that moment (maybe he had, in the darkest of nights, but had suppressed such an epiphany). Ten years could be erased in one moment, and perhaps that moment was happening right now for King Julien. All that he'd done in his life, useless, worthless, pointless. Gone without a hint of remorse in the dead of night. Would he be remembered? Would he be forgotten, like so many of the past kings?
His vision was spotting with white by that point, reminding him of the Madagascar sun, of his mother's embrace before her own untimely demise, of his father's bright eyes before he followed in the footsteps of his queen. Death was the destiny of all mortals, but it seemed to clench down harder on the royal lemurs.
The spots of bright light were collecting together in his sight, seemingly attempting to take up the whole of his vision. He was sobbing silently now, body wracking with violent tremors as his life faded. He would be gone within seconds, he knew. This was it for him, he was going to die, without so much as a goodbye to the few he cared about. He would never get to speak to Maurice again, or Mort, or even Skipper. He was going to die without getting one last word in about the society he ruled.
Suddenly, the light changed, got brighter, and Julien assumed this meant death. It was too much, like the whole weight of the sun, pushing into his eyelids and burning them up. He lost all feeling in his body, and was flooded with relief. At least the agonizing part was over. He heard someone yelling, distantly as his consciousness faded. The light engulfed King Julien's entire body, and one last breath escaped his throat.
Then, there was nothing.
This story (which already completely written) is 30 chapters in all. I will update every other week. Before you truly begin, let me warn you - there are a lot of near-death-experiences, detailed depictions of gore/death, a lot of sexual themes (though nothing graphic, I assure you), and a LOT of political talk. Keep in mind that the characters' opinions present within this literature do not necessarily reflect my own. There are characters not only from Penguins of Madagascar (both films and cartoon series), but also from All Hail King Julien. Everyone is basically introduced like a new character though, so you don't particularly need to be familiar with them to read this.
Also, I cranked this mofo out in two weeks and three days. The whole thing, all 60k words. So there's that