Well, hey there! Been a hot minute since I've posted here, but here I am, back again. As much as I am keenly aware of how
quiet
this venue is, I am here...for nostalgia? I dunno. But nonetheless, here I is! What I've got is a sequel to a previous story of mine, namely
Fall From Grace,
which follows the main character Raphael and his fun escapades. Except now, instead of dodging the arrows of dead-eye archers, he's dodging the daggers of shady politicians! How exciting! ...Okay, okay, so Raphael
does
have some unfinished business that will require him to be thrown back into war, hence the premise of this story!
Dunno if I'll need it, but... Here's a reserved slot!
And no, we're not doing those OC DONUT STEEL biographies. I don't want to write a character, leave something important out of the story that was mentioned in the bio, and embarrass myself later.
U
topia choked on the charcoal fumes of a raging inferno once again.
Governanti’s complex, sprawling body was scorching-hot, sweltered by the warmth of ravenous flames, cramped spaces, and swelling tempers. A small squadron of knights clad in ornate, blackened steel acted as a barricade across this long, straight street; the aorta of the city. They lifted their massive tower shields in unison, high and low, bracing themselves for the repeated onslaught of a furious mob. Anyone and everyone, from all ages and all walks of life, assembled here, even the rich and the poor found cohesion. Their wrath fed each other’s wrath ad Infinium, until there was nothing left but mindless animals drunk on pure furor. They crashed and battered the defending knights like an angry sea, its every droplet the flesh and blood of all souls who made it.
Mad with determination to reach the shore behind the seemingly impregnable barrier, those at the forefront of this violent crowd threw everything they could at the knights: limbs, rocks, even bodies if it meant getting a single droplet past the steel wall. But the courageous knights endured their kind’s worst without flinch or failure, proving their loyalty to he whose voice gave their command. However, as they were confronted eye-to-eye with those in this riot, some of the knights questioned themselves and their own motives. Ruthless, demeaning insults were hurled from the filthy mouths of the mob like stones from a slingshot, attempting to strike at the resolve of this impassable goliath.
“Traitors, all of you!” venomously sneers one of the countless rioters. “How could you let him do that to our Hero King!?”
With tears of sorrowful ire blinding his glowing eyes, the rioter collected and lobbed a stone from the nearby ruins of an old home, one of the untold number of scars which this city had recently come to be afflicted with. The rock bounced off one of the knights’ great helm without effect, falling to the dilapidated cobblestone beneath his sabatons. Though the stone did not physically daunt the knight, in his mind and heart, it was like a mace had bludgeoned him. The horror of thousands of faces screaming at him, cursing his very existence, was devastating indeed, but it was not what truly swayed his conviction to the blood-pledge he had once so proudly sworn.
Behind him, within the near distance, was a monstrous fire. Its searing fangs fed upon it as much as the will of the knights before it; a massive, burning assortment of all things imaginable. Several statues speared out from the growing pile, all of which depicted the same man—a man with long, partially braided hair, a thick beard, and a stern, uncompromising expression. Draping, elegant banners of pristine blue were quickly enveloped by the searing blaze, its heraldry of a lion with the wings of a bird burned away within the blink of an eye. Further numbers of these black-armoured knights continued to supply the fire with kindling, destroying any and all things which bore the name and visage of the Hero King. Even things remotely associated with him were tossed into the gluttonous inferno.
As the knights in black continued to add piece-after-piece into the fire, one of them found himself frozen in place. His hand started to unexpectedly tremble, having clutched a wooden children’s toy of the Hero King. The knight’s glowing teal blue eyes sought after the crudely drawn-on face upon the toy, and then his eyes turned to the top of the toy’s head. Upon his head was his crown and its four very prominent prongs, its paint having begun to fade. As he examined the toy, the deafening outcry of the nearby riot pierced through his helmet and into his ear, drawing his attention. He witnessed their actions with wistful eyes, languishing in the deep anguish and the resentful furrow of their faces. Every piece they threw into the fire only escalated their hysteria, emboldening the efforts of every soul in that raging sea.
The knight shifted his focus from the rioters and the toy with the crown, locating the one who bore the crown now. King Raphael Divus Barn: an unswayable youth with black hair—a cardinal trait for members of the prestigious and imperial Barn bloodline. However, what was unordinary was the disfigurement upon his throat, a fresh, ghastly scar from one ear to the other. A wound which would surely prove lethal to the common man, and a common man wouldn’t be blamed if he believed the new king governed even Death. The eyes of the trembling knight found only his king’s back, for he had turned himself away from the blaze. His eyes were closed as if at peace, yet there was an unusual rigidness to his expression. His face dripped from a sweat birthed not of heat, his lips were partially drawn into his mouth as if trying to hold something back, and his breathing was subtly labored and shuddering.
The fire breathed like a living being; a carnivore which fed on the identity of this city. Though the black-steel knights, the pinnacles of loyalty, were resistant, they were not invincible. The armour was a disguise, a façade; a tortured heart hid within. But Solasúians were creatures of loyalty and honor, and their blood-pledges were the most sacred displays of such concepts. Amidst the chaos of the thrashing, raging sea of bodies, one of these intrepid knights…shattered. Fraught with turmoil, the knight’s confliction overcame him. His loyalty became a body surfacing in the angry sea; broken, defeated, lifeless. His lungs breathed in the boiling water, drinking up their wrath.
Quickly thereafter, he became intoxicated, possessed, tearing asunder the formation of his family-in-arms. He suddenly drew the unsullied steel from his hip, unloading a strike upon his neighboring comrade. His flanged mace grotesquely bludgeoned in his comrade’s face, cracking his skull open like an egg. The knights at his side stared with broadened eyes, lost in shock for a moment as their lost comrade’s body toppled over. Sheer, unadulterated frenzy then unfolded, for the immortal knights were left porous as a stone. Bodies fell on top of bodies, frantically squeezing through any inch they could get. Only the strongest wills made it to shore, for the weak were caught in the merciless undertow. Though their tortoise formation had been broken, the remaining knights acted correspondingly. Without panic, they adapted to the situation seamlessly, pushing back against the tide with a heavy hand.
The trembling knight quickly composed himself, tossing aside all thought.
“Protect Our Empyrean!” he urgently commanded, rallying together his fellow comrades in the defense of their king.
They began to mount their defenses but weren’t quick enough to get into formation. Single bricks of the mighty wall were left to challenge the oncoming tidal wave on their own, and the pushback was crippling. They were attacked with all sorts of weaponry, rocks, blades, torches, even their own two hands. They had little choice but to use force, lest the rioters reach their king—the target of their collective indignation—and do with him as they pleased.
As his knights struggled to fend off the violent rioters by non-lethal means, King Raphael stood in static silence, for all the air had escaped his lungs. His widened eyes surveying the chaos which enveloped him, the clashing of steel upon flesh, like it were a foreign landscape. He knew not what to make of it, distraught and bemused by the severity of their reaction. His knights were quickly losing their ground. Outnumbered and swamped, this small island of safety around him was steadily tightening. There was no choice. He had dealt with their kind all his life. They were never going to allow him to burn these monuments of bigotry, just like they were never going to accept him as their king. They were ready to kill his knights if it meant getting to him. King Raphael stepped forward dauntlessly, his eyes pierced ahead of him with purpose and clarity-of-thought. Singing beautifully from its opulent scabbard was the sword he drew, the king’s hallowed regalia Arbandor.
“…Give them no quarter,” King Raphael ordained without pause.
“M-My Empyrean!” exhaustively shuddered one of the knights, abhorred by his king’s order.
“They’ve made their choice. They don’t intend on giving up their ways!”
One of the bricks had broken in half, toppled over by a slew of rioters. Like a herd of mad bull, they charged at King Raphael, the harbinger of their disquiet and grief. No stranger to open combat, the king met them with forced willingness. Their inexperience proved their downfall as Raphael indiscriminately struck them down, even if they were unarmed. His merciless act invoked a powerful sense of fear, for some of the deranged rioters had come to behold their future drawing nearer. From their throats ruptured a blood-chilling shrill, horrified by the sight of the fresh crimson which seeped from the edge of King Raphael’s royal blade of adamas. They abandoned their efforts, panickily scrambling away with their lives. However, the efforts of those who remained were doubled, one of them finding a way past the hulking steel of a haggard ornate knight. Wielding a sword in hand, the civilian took a wild swing at the king.
King Raphael met the foolhardy blow with an expert deflection, creating an open window to attack. He seized it without falter, effortlessly plunging his sword squarely into the breast of his attacker. The leg of Raphael then propelled into his attacker’s torso, Arbandor tearing out from his flesh. The king kept his focus onward, forgetting the man he sentenced to die as he wheezed sickeningly from the blood now pooling in his chest cavity. The knights, albeit rather reluctantly, heeded their king’s command, answering violence with violence. And soon after, the bodies of the slain began to fill the street. Their blood collected and channeled through the cracked, ravaged cobblestone, reaching the feet of the riotous onlookers of the massacre. There were no words, no outrage, for their voices were as paralyzed as their bodies.
King Raphael, in the eerie silence, then turned to his knights. The air was heavy with regret and remorse, their guts wrenched, for they now wore the blood of those that they swore to protect. However, they could not linger so long on their contrition, for there was still a duty to fulfill. And so, the knights pulled themselves together, acknowledging the king’s life was now out of immediate danger. But they found themselves confronted, not by a loud voice or an angry blade, but by a single man. The broken knight, who had opened the hole in the knight’s formation, held a broad stance before the mountain they were picking from. His arms were held outwards to his sides as if to block access, his glower expression targeting solely the king he pledged by blood to serve. He opposed Raphael and his regime, not with open hostility, but with a single final stand. His king returned with a hardened gaze of his own; stern and unmovable.
“…Ossian?” one of the knights at King Raphael’s side uttered in disbelief. “Do you truly intend to betray your blood-pledge?”
“I am the only one who has not!” Ossian, the broken knight, adamantly declared with a crack in his voice, holding back his tears. “Look around you. Look at the innocents who now lie cold at your feet! This is the liberation that your king so proudly boasts of! We are the Loyal Knights, who are sworn to protect and serve the people with our lives—with our lives! To bleed for Raphael is to betray your pledge. You bleed not for liberation or Utopia. You bleed for oppression. You bleed for a tyrant!”
“No matter how you twist it, Ossian, you’ve broken your oath. You stand in opposition of Our Empyrean and his word.”
“Then give the order, Raphael! I fear not death; only the death of sovereignty,” Ossian boldly trumpeted, for these may be his very last words in this world.
