The Throne of Flame: Chapter Eighteen
In the distance, flames smoldered.
Red stretched across the grass, coating everything in it's vile crimson hue, drenching the dying blades with an array of organs and blood shed. Across the stretch of trees, spiraling upwards into the smoky sky, charred skulls swung menacingly from vines. Embers and ash flitted down from the heavens, as though the Sky Gods wept with fire.
Fragments of corpses decorated the ground, pieces too small or too insignificant for the predator fossa to have bothered with. An umbilical cord, still attached to the torso of an unborn infant, floated in the pond. Apathetic were many of the elder lemurs, staring down indifferently at the deceased. Bodies piled up in corners, those who'd died after the fossa had left; horror permanently etched onto their dead faces, eyes and mouths outstretched in the purest fear and agony.
The sky dipped into a hideous maroon when the young lemur prince finally inched his way down from the treetop to examine the damage. His fellow schoolmates had been smiling and frolicking, full of life, only hours before. He would never witness them again. His body ached from how hard he'd trembled and shook during the seemingly endless hours of screaming from down below. His body had locked up but continued to jerk and twist and shudder, to the point at which he almost was bordering upon a seizure.
His uncle bit into a fruit with an obscenely loud noise, leaning against a tree. His eyes were cold, penetrating as he gazed around critically. After swallowing thickly, he tossed what was left onto the grass where it's juices mixed with the blood. The prince stared up at him, tears welling up in his eyes. If anyone would know what to do, what to say, how to alleviate his grief and pain, it would have to be the king.
"How could this have happened?" He croaked out, speaking for the first time since this mess had begun. "How could we have… Have let this-...?
"What are you going on about? His uncle looked at him in confusion for a moment, before recognition flashed through his visage. "Oh, you mean this mess. Well, we'll get the Indri to clean it up again. Least they can do."
"No!" The prince practically shrieked, hysterical as he stepped forward, his legs wobbling before he collapsed onto his knees altogether. His paws were yanking at his ears as he stared, wide eyed against the splatters of blood before him. "The deaths! The fire! All of it! Why? Why didn't we do anything? Why?! Why are we allowed to live, and not them?! Why?!"
His uncle came forth and yanked him upwards by the shoulders. His glare was so immeasurably dark and sinister that it silenced the prince completely.
"I don't think you understand who we are," he hissed out, quiet so that only the prince could hear. "We are the blessed ones, given to this world from the Sky Gods. We deserve to live, and if that means that the rest are sacrificed, then that is all that matters. These things happen. Be glad that they didn't happen to you."
He threw the prince back onto the ground with a sneer of disgust.
"Don't let me hear you talking like that again, do you understand me? Weakness is how Queen Felana was usurped. I won't have you being our weak link." The king's last sentiment was brutal, but with that, he walked away.
The prince stayed on the ground, staring in terror at where his uncle had been. His advisor approached, cautiously, from the side. He was about to lay a hand on the prince's shoulder, but stopped short.
"Your majesty…" He whispered out, voice strained as he wished to console his prince.
The prince stood. When he turned, his visage had darkened into something full of hatred and anguish. For a moment, he was silent, before his voice slipped from gritted teeth. "I will never let this happen."
His advisor stepped forth, before he bowed. "Your majesty, I will always be here to serve and protect you."
The prince focused his sullen gaze on the lemur before him. "I don't need that. A flame can not be hurt by more fire." he responded cryptically. "But I will not let this world burn - not even if it means that I become extinguished."
The advisor looked to his prince, and he saw a king.
By the time that Kowalski, Skipper and Julien had waded through the trees and made their way to the beach, Rico and Maurice were crowding around Private with panic. They spoke in frantic tones - or rather, Maurice spoke and Rico babbled incoherently. Private himself lay on the dunes, twitching and staring blankly at the sky. Pushing aside his fretting teammates, Skipper brought himself to the front immediately with a soft curse. It didn't look good, and he wasn't sure what to do. A venomous snake was significantly different than a venomous spider.
"Did you see what kind of spider it was?" He turned to his men, grappling at making any sense of the situations as he struggled not to lose control. "Or where it bit him?"
Rico and Kowalski shook their heads, aghast, to which Skipper only cursed again. Beneath them, Private wheezed pathetically, which in turn caused Skipper to pull at his feathers in horrified frustration. There must have been something they could do! He cursed Madagascar for it's lack of health care. As if on cue, however, Maurice seemed to have the answer.
"Julien, we have to go get Masikura!" Maurice cried out.
"Yes, she shall know exactly what to be doing." Julien nodded to affirm this. Though he seemed rather stoic about the whole thing, Skipper could see the fear beneath his mask.
The brown lemur grabbed onto the king's paw and began to lead him away. Just before they disappeared into the jungle, Julien cast one last look back at the group of penguins. He looked as though he'd been about to say something, but before he could, he was shrouded in the darkness of the looming trees. The two lemurs were gone from sight.
Skipper wasn't entirely sure what to think of that, but he had bigger fish to fry. Too concerned over Private, he disregarded Julien as he collapsed onto his knees. He would not let Private go down! Not his sweetest, most innocent, harmless brother. Private had never done another soul wrong in his whole life, and he certainly did not deserve to die!
"Damn it Private, I know you, and I know that deep down, you're a fighter! And you're gonna fight this venom, no matter what it takes!" He exclaimed, fierce in words but meek in expression. The possibility of tears lurked behind his eyelids, but he blinked it away. If he was strong, Private would be too.
Private immediately sat up, completely fine, and sent him an expression of elation. "Gee, thanks Skipper! But they're gone now, so we can stop pretending."
Skipper stared at him blankly.
"Excellent work, sir! I think you really sold it. You looked like you were about to cry, that always gets 'em." Kowalski administered the compliment with a beam.
It took him an extra moment to process what the implications of the situation were. "...Private's not dying?"
Kowalski and Rico exchanged a worried expression, before the scientist replied. "Oh… Skipper, you didn't think he'd really been bitten, did you? We were just acting out the plan... Remember?"
Plan? They'd been involved in some sort of plan, without his knowledge?
"What plan?" Skipper demanded, anger rising as he got back to his feet. "What in Sam Hill are you talking about?"
Rico failed to cover Private's ears in time, earning a soft gasp from the smallest member of their team. Kowalski didn't seem to notice as his expression wavered further, and suddenly, the tension between Skipper and his men grew. The three stepped away from their leader, evidently intimidated by his furious display. This was not good.
"The… Plan to get rid of Julien…" Kowalski's voice was low, uneven and worried.
Skipper's heart sank, and he knew his face showed it. "You… What? You were in on that?"
"You weren't?" Private questioned, mortified. "But… But Maurice said you were the one who authorized the plan in the first place!"
"The only thing I authorized was the mission to protect Julien!" Skipper snapped, livid. "I wouldn't agree to getting rid of Julien… And Maurice was in on this too? Shitaki mushrooms!"
That time, Rico did manage to cover Private's ears, but he still gasped, this time if only for effect. The realization of miscommunication was unraveling before them, and the results were unkind. Regret was burning through all of them, a foul rotten emotion. Skipper couldn't believe his men had been attempting to murder Julien! Betrayal didn't even begin to cover what he felt at that moment.
Kowalski paid Rico and Private no heed, instead focusing solely on his leader. "More than in on it, Skipper. He put the whole plan together… This whole thing was his idea, as far as I'm concerned."
Skipper pressed a flipper to his forehead as he attempted to comprehend what this meant. So Maurice was the assassin… In extension, it meant that all of the times that Maurice had so strived to protect Julien had been a clever, well thought out act? It explained why he so frequently failed to protect him, but it was still immensely staggering. To think that wise, loving Maurice would have been out for blood, and Julien's no less! He'd been so adamant on Julien's safety. Begging Skipper to make an international trip for the safety of his king. Panicking every time Julien had been near death. That speech, in the submarine… Holding Julien while he practically cried into his arms. All of it had been fake? How had he managed to fool them all so flawlessly?
Aside from the shock it caused, finding this out only brought up countless questions, though. For one, why did he take his time with it? It could have been done quickly, and he couldn't imagine Maurice wanting to draw it out longer than he needed to (but then, he was learning all sorts of new things about the lemurs as of late). Why bring him all the way to Madagascar - 7000 miles away from their space in New York - under the pretense of saving his life? Why gain the help of Kowalski, Rico, and Private, but not Skipper himself? Why go so far out of the way when he could have done the deed at the zoo?
Furthermore, why would he want to kill Julien in the first place? He couldn't possibly want the throne for himself. Maurice was more of a follower than he was a leader, and it showed in everything he did. He could not complete a task without someone to command it, could not decide what to do on his own. Dependent on dependence.
That aside, Maurice had never expressed true malice towards Julien in the past. Frustration, yes, but never legitimate anger or even neglect. In fact, Skipper would have ventured to say that Maurice loved Julien. They'd been each other's counterparts for years before Skipper had met either of them, had stayed with each other through thick and thin. So then, why orchestrate an elaborate scheme to off his king? Why put so much effort into murdering someone he held dear?
The pieces didn't add up. There was clearly something he was missing from the full picture. He wracked his brain, only to come up short, and he found himself growing only more agitated at the lack of information, the miscommunication, and the danger of it all. If only he could find out more about all of this - but he sensed that his boys wouldn't be answer the important questions, despite apparently having been in on the plan all along. He felt a headache coming on.
Never before had he been at such odds with his own boys. And to think that Maurice had not only managed to create issues between them but, had also deceived them and wanted to murder Julien… It drove Skipper to such fury that he honestly didn't know what to do with himself for the moment. How could Maurice betray them so vehemently, so unapologetically? Had he ever known Maurice? His scientist poked a hole in his concentrated thoughts.
"You didn't know a thing about this?" Kowalski was distraught, looking for any glimmer of redemption.
Enraged, Skipper held himself back from slapping Kowalski across the face. He knew that if he did, he would most likely break his officer's beak. Instead, he settled for shouting, which garnered a collective flinch from his team. "Of course not! Why would I want to kill King Julien? Why would Maurice want to kill King Julien?!"
Kowalski stared at him blankly for a moment, before his gaze slid over to Rico and Private, then back. "Skipper… Julien is a communist."
"A commie? No, he's…" But his objections stopped there.
Skipper's expression crumbled into horror as he realized that it was basically true. How could he have not seen it before? Julien had wanted an equal distribution of resources for pete's sake. His demands had focused largely on moving the lower class up and pushing the upper class down so that they achieved an equilibrium. It was so blatant, now that it was in words, that for a moment it took Skipper's heart to catch up. Julien was a communist.
And it made perfect sense, too. Julien had been exposed to the horrors of discrimination and oppression towards the lower class at a young age, and no less in a violent manner. It was natural for him to feel passionate towards them. Skipper didn't know how to feel about that. He'd never felt compassionate towards anything, really, save for the innocent and helpless civilian on occasion.
But it was the same thing, the mere difference was that Julien cared on a grander scale and actually aided the lower class in life altering manners, as opposed to Skipper's by-chance aid. In that way, he supposed, Julien was a bigger hero to the civilians than he. In truth, communism itself wasn't so bad, but for the execution of such - could it truly work? History said otherwise, but then, in historical happenings the communist communities had been led by the corrupt and power hungry. If anyone could manage it, he supposed, it would probably have to be someone just as caring as Julien.
He shook his head. His thoughts had ran through his mind within a matter of seconds, but he still felt as though he'd gotten lost in them.
Glaring at his men, he snarled. "I don't think that's the reason Maurice wanted to kill him. And even if it was… It doesn't matter. What does matter is the fact that you tried to kill him without even directly speaking to me, your commanding officer, first. You just took Maurice's word!"
They all looked down, openly ashamed of their pressumptious failures. Private seemed the most heartbroken, as tears welled in his eyes.
"Golly… We're sorry, Skipper. I mean… I thought that this was what you wanted. I didn't really want to hurt Julien, but I thought…" His words broke off with a sniffle.
Kowalski placed a flipper on Private's shoulder and picked up where he left off. "We thought that it was what you wanted. We were only trying to follow orders. And… We couldn't bring it up, because you were always around Julien, so..."
"You were wrong." He hissed out.
Kowalski visibly flinched at that, but he took it in stride, nodding. "So… What are you going to do?"
His glare didn't soften, but it did transition into mortification when he realized that he needed to take action asap. Julien had left with Maurice into the jungle. The two of them, alone. He spun around suddenly, eyes trained on the trees, and he gasped in horror. Maurice must have known that Skipper would have found out about his plan by then; he could have already killed Julien while Skipper was soaking up the information.
"I'm going after him!" He barked out to his men, and with that said, he was off to save the king.
