45. Believe – The Bravery

The rot in Atlantis went far deeper than Dartz had ever realised. He'd thought himself king of a utopia – an empire of light and happiness – but the truth was anything but. His kingdom was rife with sin, and its rampant spread was his fault. He'd been blinded by his own beliefs in the goodness of his people, arrogant in his conviction that nothing could touch them, and now he was paying the price.

He couldn't even sense the darkness polluting his own family. His beloved Cyrena, the light of his life next to the daughter they'd made together, had died because he couldn't sense the decay setting into her heart. Fate had seen fit to punish him by giving him the task of slaying the monster she'd become, and as he plunged the blade home Dartz could think only of her eyes the night after their wedding, when she'd been full of love and hope for the future. As his new queen, she'd had such plans for making Atlantis great. The happiness of their people had been her primary concern, and together they had worked to eradicate poverty, sickness and corruption from their land.

But now he knew that Cyrena's actions hid a deeper kind of corruption, and that knowledge made him distrustful of everything else he'd ever held sacred. If Cyrena, the light of his life, could be filled with such darkness, then what about their daughter, or his own father, the old king, or anyone around him?

Dartz stepped away from the monster's body, dagger trembling by his side. It was an ornamental thing he only used for formal occasions, but the blade was still wickedly sharp – enough to punch through scales into the flesh beneath. Cyrena's blood was black and thick, like tar. It stank like a body left rotting in the heat for a week, even though it was actually still warm with only body-heat.

It was his fault for not noticing and doing something to stop the darkness in her from spreading like a cancer. It was his fault for not noticing what was really going on in his kingdom. He was king; people relied on him to do what was best for them.

So it was his responsibility to clean up this mess. He would rip the darkness out of Atlantis's heart. No more would blades be only ornamental.

"I swear," he whispered over his wife's corpse, "I will not let this threat live."

Dartz was declaring war on the darkness threatening his world, and he would exorcise it even if he had to kill everyone to do it.