15

Note: I lied.


I sat at the edge of an ornamented dais and gasped. No matter how long or how deeply I heaved, relief would not come. I stared into the black puddle beneath my dangling feet. Though the Palace air was mild as always, I felt so terribly cold. With numb arms, I hugged the mutilated remains of my cloak.

The King stood over me, waiting. His injuries were no less grievous, but he refused any rest. Instead, he stared into a corner of the chamber, mind elsewhere.

This room—the terminus of the Path of Pain—was a small, sheltered place, wrapped in a garment of silvered leaves. It was quiet here, no thumping of pistons or whining of sawblades, just my breath and the dripping Void.

"Again, my spawn demonstrates its aptitude," the King finally murmured, "its eminence of form. A sort now beyond my own." The King shifted beneath his robes, further concealing the wounded arm. "There was an age, not so long in reckoning, that this trial proved a mere diversion of sport—a game. But now… the many extortions of Time weigh heavily on me, it seems."

The King turned and crossed the dais. It gave way to a yawning balcony that overlooked a garden exultant with life. Giant roots spiraled toward a steepled ceiling. Cataracts of vines descended the walls.

It scourged me to do so, but I rose and followed the King.

The floor of the garden was dotted with pavilions and objects of leisure. In the shadow of a swing set rested a wide box. Though tiny from this distance, I spied within it silken dolls and shellwood nails. They seemed to have long lain undisturbed.

The King tracked my gaze. As though rifling an old tome, he began to speak. "Long was it the Lady's hope for a child, not a fleeting, thoughtless thing, but an heir, well and true. She commissioned this sanctum in anticipation of that end." He bent—wilted beneath the weight of his own horns. "Pity that it shall find no use."

Not since my birth had the King spoken to me this way, regarded me with all his intent. He seemed to bear a dreadful anticipation, seeking something—fearing something. I felt it with every thrum of his voice.

Could I alleviate that dread somehow?

"Before Palace or City, before my meager domain propounded itself a true Kingdom, I struck a pact in the Lady's rampant glades. An alliance was fashioned, a child promised. In my folly, I believed her self-made spawn, those agamic blooms, could be elevated to that role. By spell, binding, or Essence, my prescience intimated that it might be done. Yet for all the marching years, all the experimentation, I accomplished nothing. Inevitably, she entreated me in her gracious way, asking an amendment to our pact: a child born from both our beings—our union." He let out a hitching breath. "The path I walked allowed no such distraction, no complication that might unfurl into threat. I denied her, but in a manner utterly undeserved. With evasion and artifice, I coaxed her, trawling the embers of her hope until they grew cold. I could not suffer the alliance to founder, for her to quit my halls forever more."

No, no, you mustn't go. Not this way. Not now, please, not now.

"But of late, I see it in her aspect, in the languor of her roots. Her aspiration lies abandoned, subsumed within my own. Had I not so anchored myself to this destiny, this Kingdom, what life might we have conceived? It is too dim now. I can hardly previse that bygone road. But I would not have despised it, I think. An heir."

Upon that balcony, he turned to me, met my eye, and saw me—I knew. The ache returned to my chest, the same that had lodged there so many times before. With Ogrim and Isma, with Dryya and Seer. I understood it, the need there, the want of a voice. I reached out for my father's claw and took it in my own. With every fiber left to me, I sought to impart something, a hot tumble of all that I had learned, of pain and honor, of love and sacrifice, of hope and loss.

He flinched. I had grasped his withered arm. Fearing him injured, I released, but he caught my retreating claw and held it there, a fretful Maskfly in a filigreed cage. "'An idea instilled,'" he whispered. "Yes, Root, now I fathom. Perhaps it was not I that should have dared to claim prescience."

Slowly, he sank to the ground, and his saw-shredded robes draped the balcony's edge like an old banner. I knelt beside him, assuming a posture I had seen from the Greats many times before. He seemed to shrink with every passing second, his luster fading from silver to white, from white to gray.

I had done this somehow? I had harmed him? But, no. I had not siphoned his Soul or shattered his shell. Why, then, did something inside me say I was to blame?

"It is a strange vantage," he said, "the summit of a throne. A place of certitude, both real and imagined. To wield the might of a kingdom, to manifest a dream more fabulous than the grandest sorcery. Atop that peak, doubt is anathema, for to doubt is to waken. To plummet." He made a choked noise. "I am sorry. I have failed."

I am false.

The King parted his robes, displaying the slash across his chest, the decay of his arm. He flexed his claw, grunting with the pain. "The slightness of this shell, its brittle transience, never ceases to perplex. Before death and transposition, I was titan. I was Wyrm. My kindred and I delved the secret places of this world, supped upon their knowledge, attained divinity unrivaled to this very age. We professed ourselves sovereigns of fate, of entropy itself. What horrors and wonders did we wreak. Kingdoms erected and shattered on naught but whim. For eons we trifled at this game, this dominion, bending matter and mind, contriving bliss and nightmare in equal measure. It was our right, you see. None other possessed the power, the foresight."

He chuckled, shook his head. "But ever and always, force was the vehicle of our rule. It is no great challenge: subjugation. It was not, for us. The bugs of the earth, the furtive, desultory masses, were mere implements by our deduction, tools to be utilized and discarded. Like hated Light, we seized their unshielded minds, devoured their Essence, bound their bodies to our will, and with them constructed monuments to vanity. We believed this game one of perpetuity. We were immortal, until the very moment we proved otherwise. By war, by sickness, by mere ennui, the end claimed us like any other. Divested of their strings, our puppets toppled, first to chaos, and then to dust. What legacy did we tender beyond the rot of our own flesh?"

His clenched claw went slack. It crackled—oozed that peculiar blood. "Yet, as I lay spent at the border of a far-flung land, the future came to me once again, an incandescence, a promise. I rose from the pit of death, transformed, emboldened with epiphany." He held himself, arms intertwined, pressing in as though struggling not to fall apart. "Before me clarioned an opportunity, to amend my conceits, to found a kingdom unlike any before, one not of puppets and tools, but of disciples and allies, those that shared in my vision, not by domination, but by inspiration. I would not trove power as in the past but sow it. Thus, I became Beacon! Onto the land I spilled Soul and Essence, splayed my veins, bled potential into the shells and minds of those that too believed perfection might yet be achieved in this mortal world." His breath grew erratic. He stared into space, electric, delirious. "To my side, I summoned the meek and mighty alike, founded the Pale Court, championed chivalry, tamed the wilds, won allegiances, dredged prosperity from the barren stones. Even the moths, beings of Light's own craft, flocked to me. One and all, these hopeful creatures pledged themselves to Hallownest, to what it could become."

He paused, waited, as though I might dispute him, might dismantle the last source of his strength. But I only watched. It was not my station to voice dissent.

"Soon into my tenure of this form, I perceived the imminence of its demise. As retribution for my improvidence, Time saw fit to grant me but a moment, a single chance. I cowered from this knowledge. To have lived innumerable ages, to have pierced the veil of death only to persist for but a heartbeat more, it seemed a vicious farce. Upon his own transposition, the Blackwyrm, my kin, came to a similar revelation. But while I resumed my game of crowns, he cast all propriety aside, descended into barbarism and impulse, perversion and indulgence. He formed a court of his own, appointed himself King of Fools. All this, I deemed mad railing against the second end… But am I any less mad? Has my quest any more meaning?"

The King placed a claw to his head. "It is the want of any mortal thing to find faith in permanence, chimerical though it may be. With every creation, we strive against eternity, believing that if we forge with enough resolve, flood our works with enough ambition—our very life's blood—then they shall remain when we do not. As it is with the Lady and her long-sought heir, so too is it for I and this kingdom." The claw pressed down, and the King's shell shrieked. "Do you not see?! If I could have vanquished Light, erased the final obstacle, then Hallownest would have been free! Delivered from kings and gods, equipped with strength enough to seek whatever destiny it saw fit!"

He lowered his arm, held it close, as though abashed by the outburst. "And to what depths did I plunge in that pursuit. For my unwillingness to yoke the bugs of this land, I consigned my offspring to that fate instead. Shells hollowed, minds destroyed. Forever, it seems, I am enslaver. I am Wyrm."

For arrogance, for love, or for need of a slave, I know not…

"And behold," the King said, gesturing at himself, "now I sit a bleeding pretender, stricken with a wound—a hemorrhage of Essence—that I can no longer stanch. What little Time granted me, I have already squandered."

He trembled, and I braced him, worried he might fall from the balcony. At my touch, he stilled. "Long ago, as I wended the tangle of my prescience, I spied a path most abhorrent. Like a great canyon, it stretched ahead, foreboding only misery, a collapse absolute. To this very moment, I shunned it as mere phobia, as the end I sought above all to avert. But perhaps it alone was truth, and the uncounted others blithe fantasy."

With my aid, the King stood. "Beyond that canyon lies fortune, sanctuary, ease—a world not unlike perfection. But it is not for Hallownest. My beloved land shall be the rot from which this new one blossoms. And it is… fitting, I suppose, that my wish be made subservient to another. Is that not the fate I demanded of my Lady? Of my children?"

Though it seemed an agony, he inched to the very edge of the balcony and transmuted his cloak into wings. There was so little substance to them now, mere imprints. "To see this future brought about would demand much—everything. A second curse would need be lain upon your brow: to fail, to suffer, so that another may one day succeed you." He extended his good claw. "From mind springs choice, and it falls to you. Adjudge what shall come to be. No right have I to reprove you now. Is there strength enough in you to bear this weight? Is it even preferable to doom?"

Come along… The path before us has far from ended.

I accepted his claw. Without hesitation.

"Very well," he said. "There shall be much to do. However, the garden is before us. Perhaps a stroll, first. I foresee it shall do us good."

My wings took shape, and I guided my father into the verdure.


Note: We're close now, so maddeningly close. I'll see this done before the year's end. I must.