The Once King

by Rachel Aaron

  Decision made, he glanced at Fangs in the Grass and flicked his ears toward the Once King. The warrior understood at once and nodded firmly. Fangs knew the odds, too, and he hadn’t come here to back down. However this turned out, they were in it together.

  “We understand,” James said, turning back to the Once King. “And we accept. Even if it means our deaths, being in your confidence would be the highest honor.”

  “It is I who am honored,” the Once King said, cracking a smile for the first time. “Follow me. A throne room is no place for casual speech.”

  Sliding his sword into the loop of his belt, the Once King descended from the dais. As the winged elf walked down the polished stone steps, James realized for the first time just how big he was. The Lord of the Undead was even taller than Gregory, at least ten feet from his armored boots to the arch of his ash-gray wings. That made sense seeing as he was a five-skull raid boss, but now that he was standing in front of them, the idea that James hadn’t noticed the size difference before this moment felt ridiculous. Looking at the throne again, though, he could see why he’d made such a stupid mistake. The king hadn’t looked huge when they’d first come in because everything in the room was scaled to match him.

  Given the level of detail on his giant throne, James wondered if the Once King hadn’t been this size even before the game. There was no polite way to ask, though, so James kept his mouth shut and followed the king around the throne, jogging to keep up with the elf’s enormous steps as the king led them to the back of the room. Stopping in front of what appeared to be a solid stone wall, the king waved his hand, and a door emerged from the rock.

  As it swung open, new light poured out, illuminating the king not in the blue-white cold of the ghostfire but with the warm, golden glow of actual fire from a hearth. After so much cold and dark, James could feel the welcoming heat all the way from here. It felt like paradise, but he was still in the presence of a king, so James forced himself not to run toward it. He compromised by stepping to the side instead, peeking around the enormous king to see a cozy stone room so stuffed with books, antiques, and curios there was almost no place to stand.

  “This is my private study,” the Once King said, removing the sword from his belt and leaning it against the wall beside the door. “Let us disarm so we may all be at ease.”

  Since the raid boss didn’t need a sword to kill them, and James and Ar’Bati couldn’t have killed him even if they’d been armed to the teeth, that seemed a bit ridiculous. But the Once King was clearly trying to be polite, and his insistence on formality gave James an idea. As he and Ar’Bati removed their weapons, James made a great show of fussing with his Eclipsed Steel Staff, knocking it over several times. During one of these bungles, he stealthily removed the dagger Ar’Bati had found earlier from his belt and shoved the narrow blade into the hinge of the hidden door. When it was in position, he set his staff on the ground as if he’d simply given up and turned back to the king.

  “Sorry,” he said, holding up his clawed hands. “Still not really used to having paws yet.”

  The Once King waved a hand in dismissal. “Your current condition was my doing. Think nothing of it.”

  “Thank you,” James said as the door swung closed behind them. He didn’t dare look, but his ears were listening closely, and he didn’t hear the click of a latch. Satisfied he’d bought himself the best edge he could, James hurried to take a seat on the long sofa set off to the side of the large stone fireplace. The Once King was already seated in front of the blaze, his enormous body looking far more at ease here in the low-backed chair, which left plenty of room for his wings, than he had on his throne.

  “James of Claw Born,” he said, gesturing to his left. “Pour us wine so that we may speak as civilized beings.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” James said, hopping up from the seat he’d just taken to hurry over to the place the Once King had just indicated, which turned out to be a giant sideboard cabinet filled with normal-sized bottles of wine that looked surprisingly not ancient and were stamped with the mark of Bastion.

  That made sense, James supposed. Where else was the Once King supposed to get his booze? It wasn’t as if you could raise grapes in the Deadlands. But strange as it was to pour a drink for the enemy of all life, seeing the wine gave James more hope than ever. For all his talk of suffering and death, the elf still clearly enjoyed at least some of the fruits of living.

  Likewise, this room was a treasure trove. In addition to a lost library’s worth of ancient texts, the Once King’s shelves were lined with all manner of interesting objects. There were petrified corals from the deep ocean and uncut gems as big as James’s head. Carved bones and wooden figures had been arranged in neat rows, and large decorative clay bowls held heaps of coins and glass beads. The ancient king even had player toys and vanity items from the game, tons of them. Clearly, the Once King was an elf of intellect and curiosity.

  James could work with that.

  “Here you are, Your Majesty,” he said, trying not to sound too happy as he handed the Once King his glass.

  The elf took it with a nod, watching as James poured for himself and his brother. When they were all served, James returned to his seat, hopping a little to get up onto the couch that was clearly built for much bigger people. The size made him wonder if the Once King sat in here with Sanguilar and his other raid bosses. Or maybe the Once King just liked to take naps? He didn’t see a bed or a wardrobe, but the room still felt intimate and secret, reminding James of when he used to sneak into his parents’ bedroom.

  “So…” James said when he was settled at last. “Now that we’re less formal, how would you prefer we address you? Should we just call you king?”

  He used the old elven word Assets had taught him. But while the Once King had already acknowledge that as his true name, saying it in this context felt wrong, like wearing a tux to the pool. Without it, though, James was at a loss. He wanted to take full advantage of the Once King’s offered intimacy, but there was simply no casual way to address a man whose name was “King.” His discomfort earned him an amused smirk from the Once King, who’d clearly guessed his dilemma.

  “King is what I am,” the timeless elf said with an elegant shrug. “But long ago, when I still had friends and confidants, they called me ‘Ar’Kan.’”

  Ar’Bati jerked at that. “You speak the old tongue of the Savanna?” At James’s quizzical look, he explained, “Ar’Kan means ‘The Head of all Clans.’”

  “The Head Warrior speaks correctly,” Ar’Kan replied, his voice pleased. “The old tongue of the Savanna is a dialect of the Unbounded Language, albeit a very distant one.”

  Fangs in the Grass puffed out his chest, his tail swishing with jubatus pride. For his part, James didn’t see how “Head of All Clans” was any less formal than “King,” but that was what the Once King wanted, so that was what he used.

  “All right, Ar’Kan,” James said, working his tongue around the new word. “Why did you declare war on life?”

  “I didn’t,” Ar’Kan replied calmly, taking a sip of his wine. “You are quoting my detractors’ propaganda. I declared that I would bring all the souls in my charge to the peace of oblivion.”

  “Okay…” James said slowly. “I’m afraid I don’t really understand the difference.”

  “I’d think it should be obvious,” the elf said, giving James a frustrated look. “I have no quarrel with life. The trees and plants and animals, even the schtumples and the Birds, they are none of my concern, for I am not their king. My responsibility is to my people. I alone have the knowledge and power to save them from their horrible fate. Death is but the tool I use to do so.”

  “How can you say that when your ‘salvation’ is the greatest single source of suffering?” James demanded, barely avoiding shaking a finger at the primordial king. “You call it a horrible fate, but people’s lives would be enormously better if they didn’t have to contend with your undead armies! If you really want to sa
ve people, why don’t you run around slaying evil and empowering good instead? Aren’t you firstborn of the Sun itself? Why not follow its—”

  “Do not speak of the Sun to me!” the Once King snarled, making James’s ears go flat. “You know nothing of it!”

  “Then tell me,” James pleaded. “Help me understand. Everything I’ve ever heard about the Sun says it’s a good and merciful god. Now you say that’s wrong. Do you see my dilemma?”

  “I do,” Ar’Kan sighed, reaching up to pinch the bridge of his elegant nose. “But perpetual ignorance is part of mortality’s curse. Allow me to illuminate you.”

  Setting down his wine, James leaned forward eagerly. It felt foolish to listen to the enemy of life’s opinion on the god of life, but Gray Fang’s trick with the lore rugs had taught him just how little he knew of this world’s actual history. Now he had a primary source in the form of an immortal king with a long memory. James was sure any of his history professors would have given up a kidney for a chance like this, and while he was certain there was bound to be a lot of bias to the Once King’s version of events, it was still priceless information he could get nowhere else.

  “You have heard of the Age of Skies,” the Once King began, waiting for James to nod even though it wasn’t a question. When he did, the king continued.

  “Until recently, the four gods moved freely through the Boundless Sky,” Ar’Kan said, his voice taking on a wistful, nostalgic tone. “Water formed the clouds, Wind made the weather, the Sun’s heat made life, and the Moon’s pull made planets. Working together, the four of them filled the vast emptiness with sustenance, giving birth to countless new universes. Your home is one such, though it was created a very long time ago. You see, the four gods never stopped moving, and the worlds they left behind quickly became cold and dark, losing their magic. Some eventually ceased to exist entirely when the power of the gods left them completely.

  “But where the gods were, there was creation. Wind and Water were free flowing, fickle and unbiddable, but the Sun and the Moon were different. They were locked together in an endless dance, circling but never touching, and together, they made wonders. I was the first, created by the Sun the same time as Zthr was made by the Moon. Happy with their creations, the gods made more. From the Sun came the Celestial Elves and from the Moon the Birds. When the Moon’s position eclipsed the Sun, the Birds would rise up from its dark surface to hunt us, and we hunted them in return. During the day, we would fly outward to explore the never-ending marvels created by the four gods. It was beautiful.”

  He stopped there, his voice too choked with emotion to go on. James waited silently until, at last, the king continued.

  “I tell you this because to understand our problem, you must first understand our essence,” he said, staring with such intensity that James flinched back. “The Sun created us to fly and discover, to be its joy and wonder as we explored everything it had made. This was our purpose, our reason for living, and live we did. We were immortal—the unaging, undying children of the Sky. Staying in one place for too long is very painful for Celestial Elves, which is why we never settled down on any of the planets the gods made. No matter how beautiful they were, we who were born to fly and move could never live placid on the ground. So we followed the wandering gods endlessly through the Boundless Sky. We hunted and were hunted by the Birds, and we were happy.”

  Pain flitted across the king’s gray-tinged face as he looked up at the walls that surrounded them now, and James winced. After the loving way he’d spoken of exploring the Sky, James couldn’t imagine how he stood being stuck inside this fortress. It was a wonder he hadn’t gone mad. Then again, considering that he was out to destroy every person on the planet, maybe he had.

  “This glory was our existence for a long, long time,” Ar’Kan went on, his voice strained, as if he were forcing himself to continue. “How long, even I can’t say. There was no need for time in the Boundless, Infinite Sky. But then, one day, it ended.”

  “How?” James asked.

  The Once King’s face grew furious. “The Sun,” he hissed, hands clutched so hard around his glass James was amazed it didn’t shatter. “Suddenly, without warning or provocation, the Sun attacked and burned the Moon. I can still remember it so clearly, as if it happened yesterday. I was leading my people back from the hunt at dusk when half of the silver god erupted in sunfire. Consumed, burning, the Moon cried out in pain. The Water and the Wind rushed to save it, as did my people and the Birds. Save for the Sun itself, the entirety of the heavens came together to fight what would later be called the Conflagration. For time untold, we fought and pushed and died until, at last, the fire was put out.” His eyes flicked to the ghostfire torch that hung on the study’s wall. “Mostly.”

  “But you won,” James said, leaning forward. “You saved the Moon.”

  “We did,” Ar’Kan said bitterly. “But the cost was great. Even burned to a cinder, the Moon’s nature is that of form, cycles, and returning. When the battle was finally over, the Water and the Wind tried to return to the Sky only to discover they could not. They had stayed too long on the Moon’s surface and been trapped by its nature. We all had. Even with our wings, we could no longer fly above the high atmosphere, for without the Wind and the Water, the Boundless Sky had no air or sustenance. The Sun still flew, but either in shame or continued cruelty, it had retreated so far from the Moon that the air above it was icy and dark.”

  The king paused to take a shaky gulp of his wine. “Any one of these factors we might have been able to overcome, but we could not survive them all. In our desperation to save the Moon, we had become trapped by it, unable to leave its orbit lest we perish in the cold, dead emptiness the Boundless Sky had become.”

  It took all of James’s composure not to jump up and yell “ah ha!” at that, because he’d suddenly realized that he had heard this story before. What the Once King was telling him now in plain language were the same events described obliquely in the Origins Poem. Lines he’d once dismissed as some developer’s overwrought dramatics like “the Celestial Elves were born to wander” and “All were trapped” now made actual sense. He also finally understood why the Once King seemed so hopeless.

  “I think I get it,” he said with new empathy. “The Celestial Elves were an entire race born to fly and discover, and now you couldn’t.”

  “You can never understand,” the Once King said, though not cruelly. He was merely stating a fact, and James supposed it was a true one. He wasn’t immortal or celestial. He wasn’t even an elf. He was human—well, jubatus—which meant he had no instinct to roam like the Once King’s people. If they couldn’t even stand to set foot on a planet, how had they dealt with this?

  “Many of my people went mad from being confined,” Ar’Kan said, answering the question he hadn’t asked. “Others destroyed themselves attempting to cross the void. They knew it would happen, but they could not bring themselves to stand on the prison of the ground for one more second. I tried my best to hold us together, to lead as I always had, but I had nothing to give them. My people needed a new frontier to explore like your kind needs air or food, but all that remained accessible to us was the Moon itself.”

  “Surely the Moon was welcoming?” James asked tentatively. “You saved it, after all.”

  “We did,” the king said. “And it tried, in its way. But the Moon was the domain of the Birds, and it was not our god. In all the ages we’d flown with it through the Sky, we’d never once touched its shadowed surface. As well we shouldn’t, seeing what had happened to the Water and Wind, never mind the wrath of the Birds. Now, though, we were trapped in its pull. Forever.”

  James looked down at his glass. The king’s grief had filled the room like smoke, making it hard to breathe. But while that sounded like the end of the story, James knew it wasn’t. “What did you do?”

  “The only thing I could,” Ar’Kan said. “I was their ruler. I had to save them, but I was facing an unwinnable situation. So I turne
d to the only one left with the power to help us. I got on my knees and beseeched the Sun for salvation.” He bared his teeth. “I wish it had never answered my prayers.”

  “Why?” Curiosity made the word slip from James’s mouth before he could stop it. If the Once King minded the interruption, though, his flawless face didn’t show it.

  “Because it betrayed me,” the ancient elf whispered, clenching his fist so tight he did break the glass this time, sending dark wine flowing like blood down the plates of his cursed armor. “I begged it for mercy, and the Sun replied, ‘Come to me.’ I’d seen what it had done to the Moon with my own eyes, but like a fool, I trusted it still. I gathered up my people and sang the Sun’s praises to them once more. I made promise after promise, trusting the Sun to keep them. I told everyone that salvation was waiting for us and sent my people flying toward our creator in the Sky, but then…”

  He trailed off, leaving James and Ar’Bati sitting tensely. “But then?” James prompted when the silence had stretched too long.

  The king’s voice came back in a broken hitch. “It burned off their wings,” he said, his own ash-gray wings pulling in tight around his body. “They fell from the Sky like broken toys, their backs bearing only blackened stumps. I alone was spared, for I alone had stayed behind. I wanted to go last, to be sure that all my people would be saved.”

  The final word was spoken with such bitterness James winced, but this still didn’t make any sense. “Why did the Sun do that?”

  “I don’t know,” the Once King whispered, clutching the arms of his chair as his sadness turned into rage. “But I should have. After what it did to the Moon, to its own divine partner, I should have known it would betray us, but I was a fool! I sent my people into the embrace of a monster who mauled and deformed and destroyed what they held most dear! A quiet death in the cold void would have been kinder, but I took that from them. In my blindness and stupid trust, I doomed my people to a fate worse than death!”