The King Trials 2: Beyond.

The Storm Voyager in all of its glory, perched at the brink of Yellowcliff.

The mainmast and foremast are rigged with square sails and the mizzenmast fitted with a fore-and-aft triangular lateen sail. The topsails are hung above the courses on the mainmast and foremast. With a majestic background that spans infinitely, a bed of clouds just beyond the cliffs that expands from horizon to horizon, sunlight emblazing everything in sight with a fiery glow.

But at the far end, straining one’s eye, a smudge of black can be seen, like a stria that marks a looming boundary. For darkness is always near.

The moment we board the Storm Voyager, a familiar sailor comes by to retrieve my belongs, probably to take them to my chambers, and another comes to relieve Primus Kelan of his. Promptly a streak of blue rushes at me; I stumble a step back as a pair of gaunt arms wrap around my stomach. I respond appropriately and hold Mackie close to me. My elation balloons, but the constant reminder of Kelan’s dark, lasting truth punctures it mid-growth.

“Macks, unhand the Hera,” Schwick reproaches, nervously musing his hair.

I sink to a squat. Now Mackie is a head and a half taller than me. “You have grown,” I say with quiet admiration. My eyes follow the tangle of brown curls peeking out his little blue hat, dressed in warm clothing with a vest worn over his long-sleeved garment.

Though it has been almost an entire cycle, it feels as if a whole lifetime has passed since I have seen him, a different time, a different Aurora.

“En ya look different,” he remarks. His gaze falls with my tresses. “I mean ye hair, it’s as black as night.”

I force a smile. “And your tongue is still as sharp as a blade.”

My finger pokes his nose, and he giggles angelically, offering me a slither of solace.

I rise and I smile softly at Schwick.

“Good to see ya in piece.” His neck reddening. “Though I thought the next time I was to hear about ya, was you being named High Queen and all.”

No, my dear Schwick, you see what has happened is that the whole King Trials is an illusion, a charade that the Emikrol Empire created as a diversion, a wickedly astute strategy to inspire further anarchy in our realm, all so they can remedy something they thought ill.

“Hera Aurora,” Captain Devwar announces. I have missed that foghorn voice of his, as loud as bottled thunder. He strides towards us with an assertive gait, arms folded behind him, his long coat billowing. “You can only imagine my surprise when I was making plans to set sail for the Prime, just to receive urgent word from a candidate meant to be occupied by the King Trials.”

“I know and I thank you for your compliance, I would have not called upon you if it was not urgent.”

“I gathered by your vague mention of a threat to the realm’s security.”

He gives me a yellowy smile before he turns and heads for the peak of the balcony at the upper deck, gripping the railing, he roars his orders to the aircrew and all below are quick to react, scampering in a focused frenzy to ready themselves at their stations.

He returns to us and flicks a semi-crude look at Kelan. “You brought an Avangard soldier with you?”

“Primus,” Kelan corrects icily. “And if you do not mind, I would prefer if we did not loiter. We need to embark now.”

Devwar responds to him with a scathing, full once over before turning his gaze to me. “We can discuss this more in my map room.” He spins around. “Schwick, follow.”

Together we make the brief walk to the berthing, an enclosed space protruding from the level of the ship’s deck. The inside is surprisingly neat and warm, with a succession of paned windows on the hemispherical part of the room with a cushioned bench parked against it. The room is occupied by another, the Second Officer. He is such a reserved being, reticent in regards to any form of social interaction, I often forget his existence. Devwar values his skills for being an expert navigator and his value of being painstakingly loyal.

He stands behind a huge rectangular table with the same length of a map unfurled upon it. From what I can tell, it is a rare, geographical map of grids, scale and accuracy with all the realms known to us: coastlines and rivers, oblique mountains, towns and territories and other foreign dominions. The colourful symbology represents various landmark features.

So too are the sparseness: the empty spaces and places yet to be discovered.

Schwick closes the door behind him, posting himself before it, and that is when Primus Kelan reveals the reality of the matter, expounding on the dire scope of danger that is hurtling towards Urium in an escapable speed.

I watch the Second Officer’s face change from inherent staidness to a calm chaos.

“Hold on yol’ frockers,” Schwick blurts from the rear. When the attention flits to him, he visibly recoils. “What you speak of is not just an invasion, it’ll mean war, one rivalling the scale of Pavelia.”

Scant of breath, my breathing becomes audible to even me, it’s like there’s not enough air in the room.

Devwar nods dazedly. “Even if we succeed in delivering the warning, even if the Avangard Legion makes it in time, this treason.… Urium will not survive a war, lands devastated by the scourge, torn between the Pantheon and the Empire, a war which will force allies of the other domains in Urium to rally on either the side of Emikrol or the High King.”

“You see our dilemma,” Kelan says, sparing me a maddening amount of frequent looks. “But if the Legion is summoned in time, it can alleviate the devastation. Our only concern is arriving at the Pantheon as soon as possible. The rest we have no control over.”

The draw of his stare is powerful, and a moment later, my gaze thoughtlessly creeps back to him.

“This makes little sense,” Devwar says, hunching over to press his knuckles on the edge of the table. “The Emikrol Empire has been loyal since the New Regime, the rise of the monarchy. You mean to say that was all a facade for them to amass in strength and reclaim what they believe belongs to them. The Crown?”

“Now you are catching on,” Kelan says with biting ridicule.

They quickly exchange heated looks, the barest fission of disdain between them.

My mind hopelessly muddled, swirling in a choppy, messy pool of mayhem.

“Captain,” the Second Officer says for the first time, his tenor cold with frosty formality. “A word.”

Devwar looks to him reluctantly, before peeling away from the table to huddle in a corner with him, speaking in furtive tones. I bid a brief farewell, excusing my abrupt absence, spelt by a wave of light-headedness. I move to exit and Schick eagerly volunteers to escort me.

The moment we emerge outside, I catch a glimpse of blue before it disappears behind the corner.

“Hera, are you alright?” He asks. A nipping draft passes by, I pull tightly at my coat. “Ya look a little… whitewashed.”

Still disoriented, I push out a laugh that sounds contrived and worriedly feverish.

“I have seen better says,” I admit nebulously. “This entire ordeal is just wildly distressing.”

“An understatement of the ages.”

The comment draws out a small laugh with pinches of earnestness.

You have no idea, Schwick. No idea.

As we walk, I can feel his gaze in my periphery, probing for my attention.

“Mackie was right bout one thing. Ye hair is…different,” he says, and quickly adds, “a good different. Macks would accuse me of having a thing for raven-haired beauties.”

I pause to look at him. His eyes bulge from its sockets, embarrassment inflames his face with scarlet.

“Oh—I ain’t calling—you—a beauty.” He squeezes his eyes close for a slit second, mentally scolding himself. “Not that you ain’t a beauty, Hera. I was only sayin… that—uh—I should shut me mouth now,” he says, his lips folding inwards, his cheeks dusted by a deepening blush.

Before I can have the chance to reassure him, heavy footsteps thud on the floor, mounting. I look behind me. Primus Kelan spots me and he stalks towards us briskly, his shadow knifing the wall.

“You, boy, attend to your official duties,” he says with his innate, authoritative voice that makes you want to submit to any of his commands. “I will take it from here and accompany the Hera.”

Schwick’s gaze bounces between him and I cautiously before addressing him. “Certainly, Primus. But if it be well with ya.” His gaze glides to me. “I would like to hear it from the Hera.”

I stare at him for a while. After a long moment, I nod firmly.

Schwick bows his head obediently and walks down the same path from which we came.

I turn brusquely and walk forward as if he is not there.

“Aurora.” I brush away the twinge in my chest. “When the Dophan was struck by his ‘ailment’ the High King sent for the best healer in all of Urium, a shaman who relocated his practices to a grove in close proximity to the castle. I think you should—”

“I am not your concern.” The cruel chill in my voice even stuns me.

“Aurora, please,” he says lowly, as if he doesn’t want anyone to hear him beg. “Please, we should. We need to talk.”

“There is nothing left to say between you and I,” I enunciate my words with every drip of despise. Accelerating my pace. “What is done can never be undone.”

“Aurora—”

He seizes my arm to halt me. I spin around to lash out with my free arm with a fist to his face and he blocks it effortlessly. I launch into an attack and we trade a fury of emotionally fuelled blows, my tresses unravelling with every zealous movement, I scrabble for my daggers, but he deftly thwarts any chance of an advantage, ramming me into the wall—my breath catches—he grabs my wrists, restraining them to the surface.

“Listen to me,” he says through clenched teeth. He observes me with silent intensity. His lips pressed into a tight line; his jaw unyielding.

My chest heaves, I hang my head and my hair falls like inky curtains.

“Do you think that I do not know that my actions can never be undone?” His words are spoken in quiet fierceness. “I do not seek absolution, I know my… incomprehensible deeds have changed the history of your linage severely. I know. But you must believe that I never meant to…. That was another being, and that it is not who I am anymore.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?” I force myself to look at him, anywhere but his eyes, my gaze darting rapidly around his face to blur his features. I hate him. Despite his horrendous doings, I feel him, his strength, his fire, the enduring alchemy between us, scorching and melding like an iron forge. That sorcery of what binds us, lures, beckons, and burns.

Every sense just drives my hate towards him to a point of no return.

“You are the reason that I am the last pureblood.” My skin raw at the tautening grip on my wrists. “You.” I chuckle without smiling. “What do you think the Avangard will do to you once they discover that their precious Primus belongs to the Ulris? They will not merely burn you to a stake. No. They will crave for your death to be long and excruciating, for they will loathe you as much as I.”

“You do not mean your words,” he says, his hard angled face lit with tightly controlled fervour. “You are… upset—”

“Upset?” Spittle flies from my mouth. An appalling anger consumes, virulent as the malignancy. “I am livid, and there is nothing you can say or do to change that, just as the lives you have taken. You cannot bring them back.”

He tears off my wrists only to pound them back on the surface; beside my head, and I fight to obscure a wince.

“You do not mean those words!” he repeats brokenly, a plead echoing. His eyes are a bitter storm, raging with hurt and abysmal guilt. “I would die a thousand deaths to make up for what I have done.” The usual mettle in his voice deteriorating. “But as you say, I cannot rewrite the former, only author the future which is why I devoted myself in doing the right in my life that I had failed to do in the past, every good I have done was hinged on the evil I did. I would do anything to prove that to you.”

I incline my head and my hair slinks back, staring at him stonily.

“The only thing that protects you from my retribution,” I say with lethal calm, “from avenging my slain kin is this wretched soul-tether, without it, you would have been the first kill of mine that I do not regret.”

My mere words sever his hold, and his hands rasp like how a serpent coils.

I wrench myself from him, and I blaze furiously to my cabin. Once I do I enter, allowing the door to slam behind me as I slog my way to the foot of the bed, every limb stiff and hefty. I grip the slender metal frame and when I free it from my clutch; the bar is dented by newly-made finger grooves.

I straighten to glance at the ready-made bed. I rotate and walk to the lounger in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, and I collapse on it. With there is rest, there is peace; one that I’m likely to not find again. But I can settle for the sweet ignorance of unconsciousness.

A bone-shaking rumble of thunder jerks me from my sleep. For a long time, I listen to the rain drubbing the exterior. Suddenly a flaming pain scorches my forearms, my face crumbles at the sheer agony as I slide off the lounger, hitting the floor. Desperately I rip off the coat, hastily removing the linen wraps from my bandaged forearm, and when I finish, it exposes what I dread.

My protruding veins run black, a sickly web of inky darkness, pulsing inside like a heartbeat, as if it’s alive within me.

“Well, that doesn’t look too good.”

Clutching my forearm, I cradle it to my chest as Rimnick materialises out of the shadowy recesses of the cabin, floating towards me with his face stretched into a savage leer.

The pain flares intermittingly. “Leave me be.”

“But it was you who summoned me?”

“Summoned us all.” I bristle at the sound of his voice, my expression rigid with angst recognition. “Do you not find yourself hypocritical that you blame the poor Primus when you yourself are tainted, you too are stained by blood.”

I raise my chin to look up at the echelon of Solaris. It agonises me more than any poisoned pain that Solaris’s ghoul looks unlike the others, ethereal, eerie and malevolent. He appears as how he was in face and form but lacks that natural warmth.

He sinks to his haunches. “You too are guilty.”

“What I did, I had to.” My resolve quavers. “What I did, was the result of a lack of self-control, yes, but it was never intentional. Unlike him, I never planned to kill an entire ancestry, and you cannot compare what I did to his unparalleled treacheries.”

“Little or many, lives are as fragile as they are sacred,” he says with a nerve-wracking smile. “Blood spilled is blood spilled. And you spilled mine.” His smile fades into a tragically forlorn expression. “Would you not deem my shed blood a treachery?”

My stare slips, shame anchors my gaze to the floor.

“Imagine the many that she will fell with the power of the Sagetai,” Dario sneers with a deceivingly blameless, boyish face, his loam-grey eyes set on me. He casually leans his shoulder against the opposite wall. “I am almost grateful that I am dead so I will not have to witness such horror.”

I scramble up to a standing, bursting through the Solar’s echelon and it disperses like twilight mist, solidifying the moment I breeze past him, and I scurry out the cabin like I’m being chased. But I am and I will always be pursued by what I have done, trailing a phalanx of ghosts wherever I go.

I flinch at the clap of thunder.

Leaving the door ajar, I stumble out and trudge through the corridors drunkenly.

“What?” Snappish and strident. Kelan.

At the corner of the wall, I flatten myself against it.

“Is it true?” Small and innocent. Mackie.

Impulsively, I slant to peer over. Kelan and Mackie stand with their backs to me, beside each other, beneath the overhang, their frames silhouetted, all I can see is their dark outlines, beyond the rain is mixed with sleet, the slap of rain on the deck bellowing. Dusk illuminates the sky with blood orange, a crescent moon hangs low on the horizon, thin and red as a cannibal’s smile.

“What is?”

“Momma would beat my hide if she caught me listening on ya, listening to ya and the Captain talk about war.”

Mackie looks up at Kelan’s colossal stature that renders him a speck in comparison.

“History tends to repeat itself. It is the inclination of people’s nature; seeing the evil in each other, the cycle of claiming power which means taking it from the lifeless hand of another.”

“What good is power if people die?” Mackie stares up the steely-eyed giant. “Battle took my brother; he was whole before he became a soldier.”

This piques his interests as Kelan drops him a glance. “Your brother served?”

“Ye—I mean yes, Primus. He was a Vanguard soldier before his leg got all twisted.” He looks down, twiddling his fingers. “Other than Schwick, he’s the bravest sap I know, good in a fight too, always solved a problem with his fists. One day I wish to be brave as the both of them.”

“Bravery is not the excellence of skill but the quality of will.”

Kelan turns to face him. In a flash, he unsheathes his sword with a shrill, Mackie baulks in confusion. He drops to one knee so they are both eye to eye, Kelan rotates the blade to lay it laterally on his large hands.

“I have learnt that the truest of bravery is to do what is right, no matter the consequences. You cannot have courage without fear.” He flips the blade in a fanfare before offering him his sword with the pommel to his stomach, the blade elongating towards himself. “Take it.”

Slowly, Mackie latches his slim fingers around the thick grip before Kelan releases, and the blade instantly drops to the floor with a heavy clink.

Kelan shifts closer, outstretching his arm to point to his lanky arms. “Your strength does not come from your body.” Then he rests two fingers on his forehead. “It comes from there. Your willpower sharpens your mind as a whetstone sharpens a blade. You are what you believe. Now lift it.”

Mackie’s face contorts with exertion as the blade gradually lifts from the wooden floorboard to stab its tip to the ceiling of the overhang.

And even in this dimness, I can see a fulsome smile spread on Kelan’s face, so bright it penetrates the surrounding gloom, banishing it like a lit torch in a dark place. He then nods at Mackie proudly as if he is his father, pushing his hand up at his elbow to encourage Mackie to raise the blade even higher.

“And I believe there is strength in you.” He stamps his fingers on his chest. “Small you are, but you have a strong heart. You will go far in this life, little Mackie.”