Chapter 4
The Crazy King
Arthur dreamt, before he was awoken abruptly. He dreamt deeply and warmly. The world around him fell away, shed like skin, and beneath an exposed memory appeared. He felt about it, felt the salty air, the brine, the wind, the salt, the water. The water. He missed it dearly. He missed to reach out into the sky and declare directions flawlessly. He missed seeing lush green land awaiting him at each turn.
In his dream, memory floated to the surface, buoyed by the silence of sleep. Around him he saw men bleeding and torn, their eyes squinting against a harsh wind. Whenever Arthur tried to look ahead at what was cursing them with shard of icy water, he could not. The memory of him held him in place firmly. More deeply even than the terror he recalled in that moment.
A harsh slab of wall came crashing down towards him, knocking him back and sending a shooting pain up his spine. He had been strong. Whatever bruise he earned had bloomed and already faded. Another blow came crashing down, this one waking him.
Arthur startled awake, feeling his neck beat with pain and the sharpness of the boot that met him. He spat out blood and started to stand. A pair of arms shot down towards his back, but rocketed away before they could grab anything. Arthur got to his feet quickly.
A boy.
Gritsy stood proudly before him, snorting. She had planted her undead hooves firmly against the boy's chest and sent him rocketing back, hitting his head against a stone. The boy was collapsed, blood oozing out of his mouth in sticky clumps. Arthur approached him. Unfocused eyes following him, visibly terrified.
"Just I wanted a lick…" he hissed. He sputtered out more of what Arthur had assumed to be blood. It seemed, now, to be a sort of leaf. It looked almost like seaweed. Arthur blamed the resemblance on his dreams and knelt before him. "Speaks to me…" the boy muttered, his chest brokenly rising and falling.
"Poor boy. He's lost his mind." Arthur leaned down to pick him up but the boy flinched away. "Do you want help?"
Gritsy seemed to snort in dissatisfaction and turned away to graze on nearby radiation, emitting strongly from several hunks of what was once forest life.
The boy trembled. "Need no help, fine."
Arthur did not want a young boy's blood on his hands. The idea of the boy dying, even if he had tried to kill him first and then loot him, worried Arthur. "I have medicine." He suggested. The boy's eyes didn't focus on anything, nor did the pupils react. Head trauma.
"No need no medicines. Just need sleep." He shut his eyes, his head bobbing.
"Hey, no. Do you have a home, boy?" Arthur had two weeks to get to the legendary Scot King, after all.
"No! Go!" He backed up, his head leaning further against the rock. His hair was falling out in clumps. What remained stood in wispy white tendrils. He seemed to be grimacing at the sight of Arthur, recoiling each time Arthur tried to come closer.
"Oh come now, I won't hurt you. I want to help you."
"I need to DIE! Need be, let be. I be seeing things so bad, so bad. I better off on other land." He jerked, his eyes slowly shutting once more. "Down where the call, sweet voice. Smooth like…" Arthur felt sick to his stomach. He couldn't carry dead weight. Maybe he could dig the boy a grave, if it came to that.
It didn't. The boy began to seep into the earth, baffling Arthur.
He only did so part way, however, turning to dust and limping into a sunken skeleton before Arthur's eyes. Quickly, wound up by the wind, the body became a scrawny form with the odd coagulated blood still visible in his depleted jaw and stomach.
The answer was clear, he felt certain.
The boy had to be a mutant, Arthur decided. Even though he looked mostly normal. His actions, his speech, and his body were not normal. He seemed to resemble the people from that awful village that had first greeted his leaving of the Enviro-Build. Something was wrong with the boy, his decay being the prime example. Arthur was certain of that. Something else had gone wrong in the world above. Something much darker than the radiation that hovered on the fringes.
. . .
The castle was crushed.
Fallen stones crowded the front and sides. The top seemed to sag with age, holding up the barest of roofs. The only entrance was a man-sized hole at the side. Arthur thought he saw a sliver of movement there. He slipped off Gritsy.
"Be a good girl, find some radiation to chew on. Or sniff…" Arthur rubbed her nose. She nudged him fearfully. "I'll be alright. It's unlikely anything there can kill me." He smiled. She seemed almost pacified, stepping back hesitantly.
Arthur checked his rucksack for his things and patted his gun comfortingly. He checked for ammo. He had enough for a few more rounds. Again he longed for a weapon he didn't have to worry about reloading. Arthur approached the entrance and started to squeeze himself in. His feet found stable ground, but only for a brief moment. Hands grasped him, tugging him. A chill shot up his leg.
Arthur tumbled into the fading darkness, lighted by flickering candles. The hands that grasped him belonged to a pair of women. They stared at him wide-eyed, unspeaking. The soft gold light danced across their pale eyes.
"I didn't mean to intrude, I didn't think anyone lived here, really." Arthur began, but his hands were captured again and he was tugged away, his heels dragging against the stones. The ground of the castle, the long hallway, stretched behind him. The light from where he had come shone down. His feet had found the top of a wardrobe, its belly exposed and items slipping out. The rags were nothing but frayed threads.
Around him were skeletons. Piles and piles of them. Their dusty grins turned at him in mock greeting. Arthur squirmed, but the women's grasps were tight. They turned back to glance at him briefly. Their ornate, massive dresses dragged against the ground about him.
They dropped him in an open room. Around him the other hallways were separated by leaning pillars. The marble ground had an old, rotted rug covering it and curling up at the edges. A broken chandelier lay cast off in one of the piles of what seemed to be riches.
Riches like at the bottom of the sea. Old gold and tarnished metals surrounded him. Gems and dresses and cloths and, well, riches. Ahead it was too dark to see, a shadow fell across some of the piles. Arthur stood up, dumbfounded at what he was seeing. Grim wasn't joking. There really was something to be found here. Maybe her brother had been scared by the women? They seemed to want to help.
Arthur debated grabbing something and running. Grim never specified, exactly, what she wanted. Anything would do. Maybe the crown, with all its shattered gems, would be perfect.
And yet, the situation seemed uncanny. Nothing like this could simply lie there, ready for the taking. The hall seemed desperately familiar as well.
"Hello?" he called out. "I don't mean to rob you, but I just may!"
"Rob all you want."
The voice came from behind him. Arthur turned around, seeing no one.
"My riches are only worthless materials."
Now the voice was from ahead. Or the sides? All around him. Engrossing him.
"Aye, I have all I need."
"Can you show yourself, it's difficult to talk to someone who I can't see." Arthur called out vainly.
"But you," the voice ignored him, "you are flesh and blood and a pounding heart. You can FEEL. You can BREATHE."
A foul gust of air rushed past Arthur. He reached for his gun, still looking about frantically.
"What a pity. What a bloody pity."
The broken roof overhead seemed to tremble. The bits where clear sky poked out seemed to vibrate as well. It gave Arthur a headache to look at.
"I can fix that."
Something came sweeping down at him, massive and very sharp. Arthur ran to the side, crashing into a pile of clothing. It coughed a swirling plume of dust at him. The impact of what had fallen on him — the great length of a sword — shuddered the entire building. Arthur noticed groups of women in the doorways, watching him. Their eyes focused blankly, their hands covering their mouths. The sword trembled. Arthur looked for the hilt.
A hand, more skeleton than flesh, grasped it. Bits of skin flaked off.
It trembled as it raised the sword again. Where it had fallen was a sharp crevice.
"Did the other mortal come to tell you of this place?" the voice continued to boom. The sword rose, glinting in the pale sun. The people in the hallways shimmered and moved, like liquid. Like they weren't really there.
"No, well, yes, but also not exactly." Arthur said to the hand. The sword glinted.
"Vermin."
The point of the sword came falling on Arthur, screeching against the air. Arthur rolled out, rushing away. A second later the tip pierced through the cloth, sending out more dust and the sound of cracking stone. Arthur had spoken and it had found him. Maybe not it, the voice was a him. The deeply masculine voice, both luxurious and terrible.
Arthur walked as quietly as he could towards the edge, where another hallway opened up between withering pillars. Leaning against a soiled tapestry was a bard who played soundlessly on a harp. His head was bent down, his fingers plucking blank strings. Arthur spared him a glance. The bard lifted his head, his clear emerald eyes gazing directly at Arthur. Where there should have been a mouth was a strip of cloth.
The voice, the eyes. Pieces of a story unravelling.
Arthur rushed back into the room of treasures, looking towards the darkness before him. He thought he could make out specks of light. The sword, as tall as the walls themselves, still stood staked into the ground.
"Are you the King of Scots, sir?" Arthur called up.
The eyes.
"Aye. I am."
The sword trembled and lifted.
The eyes were so familiar. And the voice…
"You must have been a magnificent king in your youth, your highness!"
"Not magnificent, mortal. Beyond! I had been the king of all kings. In my time I had ruled the seas waved at the batting of my eyes, the clouds shifted with my breath, the seasons came with my mood. The world belonged to me."
The sword hovered in the air, its hilt unseen behind the darkness before him. The darkness had to be impossible. Where stairs and a banister should have risen was only impenetrable inkiness. The light overhead should have cut to it, but it didn't. And it was growing, sucking up light as it fanned out, closer to Arthur.
"In your time you must have conquered all your enemies, then."
"No."
Keep talking, Arthur willed, approaching the darkness with his gun's safety off. The person seemed so distant and yet so close. He itched at his memory, trying to crack it open.
"I had one enemy. A great enemy."
The darkness slipped about him, and Arthur could see a dim shape before him, crouched under what seemed to be a kingly cloak. Two blind eyes bobbed above him staring out. They were a pale green.
"The man must have been god himself to confront someone like you."
"No, but the bastard came close. The sun never set on him. He grew and grew and I did not. I fell before him. We warred."
Arthur aimed his gun at the eye.
The green, green eye.
"We were brothers."
Arthur stopped.
"Brothers?"
"Aye. He ruled below me and yet all around me. I lost myself to him."
The eyes shifted towards him, following his voice. They blazed with rage.
"BUT I WAS KING."
A skeletal hand came crashing down, sending Arthur flying into the wall. His back hit it, hard, knocking his breath out. Loose stones began falling upon his head. He felt blood dribble out of the corners of his mouth.
"You were never king, you fool." He hissed.
The hand's painful dryness enveloped Arthur, lifting him up like a toy. In the darkness, high up, he could make out a face. The sharp lines, the smattering of freckles, a youthful flicker like a reflection in a pond. But then it was gone and only the blind eyes stared out.
"What do you know, mortal. Sturdy as you are… This was before your time. Before our end was your pitiful beginning."
"How'd you lose your eyes?" Arthur asked, squirming in the giant grasp.
"They killed me. The sprayed acid in my eyes. The took my face and my vision. They took who I was."
"And so now you rot in the past. Brother."
"I … Brother? What are you?" The hand dropped him. Arthur crashed to the ground, his shoulder painfully impacting and popping out of place. The rest of his body was softened by the robe that spread around him, "Most of the mortals died when my blade first befell them. You are no mortal."
The darkness seemed to fade.
"I am a fool of a king." The voice became smaller.
Arthur tried to push his shoulder back in, painfully contorting it. This had been easier before, he recalled.
The last fight they had had.
"You think I'd forget you?" Arthur somewhat lied. "We seem to carry the same strain of madness. I'm fighting you after all. Come down to your proper size." Arthur huffed. "Face me."
"No! Why would I stoop to your level? You never stooped to mine."
"Because I didn't have to," Arthur pleaded. He could never win this fight. A bullet to the eye would have only annoyed him. He was dead and yet so much more powerful than Arthur himself. "Because we were the same. Back when you were more human." He could remember it. He could, he had to, he knew! But it came in such tiny fragments, awakened only by his surroundings, that he focused on terms vague enough to get the King to say what he needed him to.
"Humans did this to us!" the hands gestured around, their crooked fingers extending out into the sunlight, spots of red blistering where the light touched. One loosely held the sword. "And you want to be one of them. That was your fault you bastard of a brother. You and the rest."
The sword clattered to the floor. It rumbled the earth. Arthur looked about, seeing the people appear. All with their mouths covered, now peeling it off, revealing lipless, mouthless faces.
"Why'd you do this to the memory of you?" Arthur asked. "People want to remember you as a tyrant? That can't be right."
"A tyrant…"
"They cover their lips so you won't attack in rage. They live in silence. And once you had so much sound and glee."
"And then I died."
"Yes. I know this. You didn't die to become this."
"The glee was worth nothing."
Steps sounded forth. A man appeared before him. The eyes that were up ahead vanished. Arthur unsteadily came closer.
The man stared blindly ahead, his face mutilated and scarred. The rest of his body was worn to a ghostly pallor, bones sticking out where the flesh had become too frail. The kingly attire had been shed, leaving the war uniform. The last one he ever wore. His faded red hair seemed to glow like fire in the light.
"Why did you come, England?"
"I didn't really know you were here, to be honest. I came to rob you."
Scotland scoffed.
"Unsurprising."
His face turned vaguely towards him.
His hand reached blindly out, brushing his shoulder. He winced. "I did this to you."
"I'll live."
"I know. When you're dead all you can think is one thought sometimes. It's so easy to get in this rhythm, this dance of anger. This dance of oldness."
Around him the ghosts of people long past shuddered in and out of view.
"This is your grave."
"Our grave." He held his hands out. "At times I can still smell the ocean air. Don't you miss that?"
He did.
"You could join me. I can forgive you. We could all be reunited. I can gather our other brothers, bring them together. Then we can be like the old old days. Celebrate merriment with feasts and plays and maids and song!"
"I…" It had never occurred to Arthur that he could go back. He stared around the castle.
Of all the memories he had lost, the memory of family had been the hardest to lose. It clung thickly to his mind. Reminding him of honour in battles. Of ancient days.
"I can't." Arthur said.
The memory that he couldn't shake off at all was of his friends. And who he must find.
"Not yet. The world isn't dead yet."
"It will be soon."
"I know. Then I will come."
"Suit yourself." Scotland ebbed away until Arthur could no longer see him. "You may take the sword so long as you swear you will bring it back." His voice echoed out from somewhere.
Arthur grasped the fallen blade. It had become more human sized now, and felt luxurious in his hands. He glanced at his reflection in it, seeing the grey in his hair and the fatigue on his face.
But also the resilience.
It would be too easy to give up, to rot away while the rest of the world whittled to nothing. But there were others out there. There had to be. The world was to vast.
And that meant he needed the information Emma Grim had. He glanced about the gold, now more tarnished and faded than before. Dust covered it like a blanket. It was now a ruin.
"I'm still robbing you." Arthur said. "But not the sword. I take this as an oath." Arthur raised his brother's sword up. "We're not done here."
"Very well. Don't bring it back and I'll curse you."
"With what?"
But there was no response. The sounds dwindled to the shuffling of feet and the strum of a harp. The sting of quiet seemed to burn after the booming of rage. Arthur looked towards the now lightened banister and saw a torn tapestry, an several legs at the bottom still visible, four pairs to be exact. Two of them seemed to have more colour than the others.
Arthur had not yet won here, he thought, as he picked up a necklace that was still in decent shape. He brushed off its dust and set it in his bag. He looked for a scabbard and found one with emeralds still glittering, albeit chipped, along its side. Arthur stuck it at his side and slid the sword in. He caught his reflection on a dusted mirror and brushed it off. Cracks littered the sides. And maybe he saw just a few less grey hairs.