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cheeselackstoes · 8 months ago

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[WP] In the aftermath of the war, the king had no choice but to surrender unconditionally. at the peace summit, the victors handed the king a shovel. "You started this war. You will bury those who died in it."

Voice: Second Person – butler who betrayed the king

* The king was wrong, but not truly evil

“For all my life, I held to a certainty. That war must be the singularly most malevolent act of which we are capable.

Most vile of all, the hate that slowly boils between two groups is too often orchestrated by those who already have much and want more. Never is it those who will go on to spill gallons of blood and have theirs, their brothers’, and their fathers’ soak the very same earth that their lords and ladies hope to claim. In my long life at the sides of powerful men and women, I have never identified a meaningful difference between those who go on to cut each other down. Does what side of a river you are born, or what god you follow truly matter enough to inspire the sheer scale of violence that has been visited on my home like the many other hundreds of millions afflicted with the plague of war? Of course not! We have every right to anger for those who command us to die for their greed!

I.. I now cannot help and ignore the proof put before me that I was wrong, that I was thinking about it all wrong. Hate itself is the villian. No matter from who or on whom it is exacted hate festers all that it touches. While the hate of many boiling over into warriors. who take it out upon one another with steel is awful beyond imagination. It is not nearly so awful as the hate of the many directed as an unstopping torrent onto one. It is like trying to force the endless pouring liters from a perpetual waterfall through a humble chef’s funnel. The hate of so many cannot possibly be satisfied by the finite existence of one, and by virtue of being impossible we grow insatiable and cruel.

For my crime of helping The King escape his torturous fate I have been sentenced to death. I was once heralded hero for my actions which deposed that very same King, Tepesh the Cutthroat, and so I have been given a consideration... I am allowed to speak in this rare chance which I will seize in earnest, to explain myself. I beg of you, to hear my voice one last time despite your steeled hearts and already decided minds. That is, please let my voice find purchase in compassionate ears once more before my head and by extension my voice are departed from me, forever.

My service began when I arrived in the sprawling mid-country garden manor of Vycount Julius with my bundled daughter in hand, my newlywed in tow. Vycount Julius was my father’s lord. I threw myself at the mercy of my estranged father. As a boy, I had resented the rigid training and grueling hours spent serving noble lords at my father’s side. For my laziness and errant tongue my father had cast my out and all but disowned me. I know now that this was self-preservation, and that my disruptions would have led to us both being discarded without second thought for something as minor as the grating tone of my displeased attitude on their refined ears. My father, rather than mock me as I had expected and despite his age, lifted me to my feet and sized me for the proper attire.

I spent 15 long years under Vycount Julius, a disgusting pustueous boil more than man. His boarish figure was far more tasteful than his hedonistic habits. Those long years, I refined my skills and became well-respected for my hard work and attentiveness. I awoke each day at sunrise to attend the busy-work. My hands busy and my mind meticulously planning for my lord-masters day. I would spend the entire day at his side, flitting around and anticipating each need and prided myself for often seeing it met before it was even asked of me.

My greatest fear was rarely realized, that is to be given the same instruction or correction more than once. By night, I taught my daughter and held my wife close for the meager minutes I could spare. Sleep was the lesser of my priorities. My body thinned and my hair greyed before its time, but I gave my small family comfort during hard times and for this I am most proud of all my accomplishments. No matter my fate today and my legacy hereforth, forever can I smile knowing my sacrifice made the last few sick and dying years of my wife peaceful and dignified.

The Vycount could be kind to us in his brief moments where he was as close to satiated that such a man can be. He was once called general. In reality he did little more than dress for the role each day. Even that with my significant assistance in the dressing. His part.. if you could call it that, in the Consecration Wars and his lending of the Julius family’s private armies to protect noble interests had brought him enormous wealth. With this impressive treasury he brought to life boyish dreams. Though they were the dreams of a depraved and very hungry boy. It was, of course, my duty to make his each request reality.

I had once arranged the conversion of the ballroom to a great tub. I laboriously ensured that each doorframe and window allowed no crack and sealed the generations-old hardwood beneath layers of canvas soaked in linseed and beeswax. I arranged for the import of cart-loads of sugar, eggs and cream so much so that we had plundered the three neighboring villages of their entire stock. It was all so that my lord could drown the room with english pudding and enjoy a great ‘carnival of flesh’ within. For months when I would clean custard away from another undiscovered crevice, I would shudder as though I was cleaning a hidden corner of my own mind that was haunted with the memories of those long licentious hours.

I grew adept at hiding my disgust behind the layers of professionalism, as though it were armor protecting my true inner self. Vycount Julius passed the eve of his sixty-second birthday -- from the inevitable coronary failure which had been his destiny for many years and grease-soaked meals ago. I then went into the service of his unimportant and undetermined daughter. He willed me away to his favorite child as though I were some pet without my knowledge and despite my overqualifications as a butler trained to accompany the head of a household.

What was I to do? I needed the position and so I served. Her brother was quick to encourage, and finally strongarm, a marriage with a duke in the royal Jadeite Palace which would forever onwards become my home. The daughter seemed to ignore my existence the moment after I unpacked her things into her dazzling new quarters. She had never needed the service of a dedicated butler such as me. She preferred the veritable ant colony of servants in the palace, which she could treat as faceless and nameless.

I was at risk of losing everything, of losing the life I had built for my daughter who was so excited to be living with me in the palace she did not appear to notice our cramped quarters or dire straits. I did not give up. I applied everything of myself. Organizing the staff of my liege lady and working in the shadows when she made it clear she did not enjoy my presence. Once calling me an unwanted stalker as I tried to attend her side as I had her father. I took to making myself integral and improving her already opulently idyllic lifestyle. I also arranged for her climbing of the social ladder. Contrived by my hand were the opportunities for her to socialize with nobles above her station and rub elbows with those I rightly predicted would become her lifelong friends. Throughout she was very cruel to me when she noticed my interference. Name calling and insulting anything that she could discern about me from her limited sightings of me. She knew her accomplishments were not her own and so despised the thought of others discovering my contribution. I worked harder to stay unnoticed. I became something like her gaurdian angel though I was made to feel more like a bothersome poltergeist. While over 10 years she slowly forgot my name, I had apparently been noticed by another.

One especially cold November’s day I was in a sleep deprived state. I felt as though I was walking underwater and seeing through warping fog as attended my chores careful to stay on the far sides of doors from my lady in a carefully rehearsed dance. For weeks I had been fighting to keep liege lady in the favor of her husband duke. I had been up the previous night hiding her most blatant habit of infidelity and arranging a romantic evening to fan the dying matrimonial spark. Against the door with eyes closed I counted her paces to ensure she was far enough into her closet to not notice my skirting into the room. My hands filled with her favorite tea and biscuits served with the daily letters. I then heard my name called from down the hall. A guard captain summoned me and demanded I follow behind immediately.

So tired I was unable to recall the walk itself I felt as though I suddenly awoke in the throne room, before the king in his famous Verdant Hall. Tall shining-white pillars etched with gold and jade striping held the staggeringly distant ceiling and scattered the light of colored windows making a kaleidoscope of marble floor beneath my feet. Behind the king slumped on his bright green throne in a comfortable posture was a wall for which the Verdant Hall and the Jadeite Palace was named. The exterior wall carved entirely of the mineral of the same name, a precious stone as hard diamonds and nearly as expensive. An immense green sculpting on an irregular pentagon with a shape like a church steeple so thick that only the outline of rising sun itself forced light to pass through areas carved thin. Therein were etched the visages of all the kings who preceded Tepesh. Painstakingly carved by talented craftsmen which took generations by necessity to impress marks into such stubborn stone. A symbol of wealth and absolute command so colossal it could be seen for miles and appeared as a crown jewel of the castle itself.

Tepesh spoke to me in an even but demanding tone requesting my service to him, effective immediately. To be honest, I so was awed and in my sleepless state I internally probed the possibility that this was all a dream. That I had been noticed and that he spoke my name which I thought discarded by the nobility. His posture was proud in a way I had never seen before, like he was somehow taller and grander than all others I had seen. He was bedecked in layers of robes and finery. His lofted and remarkable crown was modeled for his castle, a jadeite slab above his brow matching the shape of the wall behind him. To answer his offer, I played as though I was loyal to my lady and could not accept, but within hoped desperately that he would insist. He did.

My lady did not seem to much care that I was departing, in fact ending the conversation with me with a flat-handed wave as though she was a giant broom brushing me out of the room. It didn’t matter, I was thrilled. Finally, I would be serving someone who wasn’t like the Julius family someone truly royal in every sense of the word, not self-absorbed or cruel.

I soon learned I was mistaken. As king, he was not above cruelty or self-absorption, his responsibility was simply such a scale that he did not need to make true blunders -- even inaction incurred destruction. I stayed with King Tepesh for 8 years, the shortest of my employments. I watched him make the mistakes that would lead to my home being changed forever. His disregard pushed away allies, insulted enemies and shirked duties fell to others unable to fulfill them. He would choose too often to take days of leisure, abandoning our kingdom of its leadership in dire times of need.

With great difficulty I endorsed greater responsibility from him, but he would do all he could to shrug it off. He vacationed and drank with his cousin in Vitello while The Retching killed 1 in 12 and hired tutors and spent days learning new forms of ballroom dancing to impress guest while a great fire raged for almost a week displacing thousands. He had so often approved the first military strategy proposed that his war council always would begin with the tactic they desired most. So many died in the name of his personal enjoyment.

He let his nation backslide into weakness, blaming me all the while. This is when I discovered why I had been sought out by him. He didn’t want a butler but someone capable of reigning in the king who himself reigned over all. I wish that it were possible for me to have done so. He was always insisting I needed to do more, clear the path for him so that all he needed to do was walk it. He blamed me for allowing his vacations and indulgences, but I was powerless against his word as king and my skills alone insignificant against a king’s schedule in defaulting on a deficit from years of sloth. I would tell the king that he should attend a responsibility, that all was taken care of and he need merely make the motions. He would roar his displeasure, tell me that I could not order the king about and then later piteously whine in my direction that his butler failed to keep him on track of his duties.

To our hardships, King Tepesh resolved to solve them with violence and took to warring with neighboring fiefs to plunger all their worth. To make up for his weakness he ordered the march of thousands of doomed souls to pave his new path with their own bodies. Decidedly the only path he now saw to live up to his predecessors’ glory. As our numbers of fighting men dwindled in endless battles, a rippling movement started to refuse the call to arms and turn their backs on the King. Soon the ripple was a wave of tidal proportion, and refusal became violent opposition. This is when King Tepesh earned his title as Cutthroat, slaying his own civilians for rebelling. Now wave was tsunami in the form of true, organized resistance.

I watched him order the wholesale death of our people by the score from his padded throne as his predecessors looked on from the gleaming jadeite wall with carved smiles. I grew to hate that jadeite wall and all it represented, the kings before him were all the same and the wealth hoarded in that monument made to be eternal could itself be means to resolve our kingdoms troubles. Tepesh had chosen death of great magnitude instead.

Wars with foreign nations continued despite the outrage, only increasing the need for soldiers, soldiers to kill our own who spoke out. It wasn’t long before the capital city was filled at night with deafening booms of explosions and steel on steel. Rebels appearing for only for short bursts of extreme violence against those loyal to the nobility before fading into the sea of the general populace each day. Nowhere was safe in such pandemonium, and I feared for my daughter.

My daughter, now a woman, was becoming very active in the capital city resistance. You all know her as Elzabeth the Kingbreaker, and I look upon her now prouder than she will ever know, even as she stares me down and passes my final judgement. You see, she had grown up in the palace watching what I do and became better at it than I ever was. She contrived opportunities to meet the right people and organized so many resistance movements effortlessly. Though, I knew none of this at the time.

One day, she came to me with a plan. If I could place several satchels of Dragon’s Marrow on the floors above and below the throne room, where the guards were only stationed 8 hours a day I could end the bloodshed in a single night. In so doing when timed correctly the explosive power of so much Dragon Marrow would blow the support away from the great jadeite monument to the many kings and bring it crashing to earth. It was explained to me that it was dense and hard enough crumble stone. That it was carefully planned to fall like a drawbridge - smashing the outer Palace walls and allowing the rebels direct access with little more than ladders. They argued that this could save our nation and stop the slaughterous hell in a single night.

I took the lumpy rucksack filled with the Dragon’s Marrow as my daughter forced it into my hands, but I remained unconvinced. Elzabeth told me that her and her people would be waiting just outside the palace, that we could do the plan whenever I was ready and able, but I wasn’t sure I ever would be. I had my doubts that such a maneuver was even possible, and its success would mean a bloody coup to top off an even bloodier decade. My own actions would kill those I had sworn to serve. I thought it best to wait the whole situation out, persevere through difficult times by remaining steadfast and immovable.

It wasn’t even a week before Elzabeth and her gang of rebels were noticed so close to the palace. They were dragged to the Verdant Hall to be made examples. Nobels of all stripes gathered to see these heroes of the resistance be killed, like ritual sacrifices made to pagan gods who demanded blood to preserve their superiority.

With the excitement and clamor of the recently nervous royals there was a lax in security, all guards protecting the main palace portals and throne room in great number leaving me to move freely. I placed the Dragon Marrow along the floor as I was once instructed. Lit the long curling fuse of the higher floor and ran knowing I had only 5 minutes to place and light the next satchels below. As I descended the stairs and rounded the corner to the quarters below, I was so fixed on my task I failed to notice the others there with me.

Two guards had been sharing a bottle of something expensive between them, deciding to steal a moment themselves amid the royal’s distraction. They must have been stupefied to the point of completely soundless still to see the loyal butler of the king press explosive charges up into the ceiling and unspool fuse towards the next location. Perhaps I was just too fixed on my task to notice anything else at all. I froze when I spotted them. Less than a minute left now.

Excuses began pouring from my mouth, but it was clear they knew them as lies. One grabbed my shoulder and smashed a gauntleted fist across my face. Still holding me upright to deliver further blows as a slumped with black distortion crowding the corners of my eyes and threatening to drown my vision. Out of options, the truth ran from my mouth before I could hold it back. I said what I was doing could stop our hardship, put a stop to our Cutthroat King. I implored them as brothers in trade, servants to the king, and that they surely hated him as much as I and all those beyond the palace. Another blow came, this time to my stomach summoning great strands bloody spit that ran from my mouth. As I tried to focus my sight onto my own hands that held me from the blood-stained marble beneath, a blur of movement happened there. A shape collapsed into my narrow perspect. A mans face with a dot, a slit stamped upon his forehead oozing blood which slid down his eyes and cheeks like tears.

A strong hand lifted me to my feet, in my punch-drunk state I thought it was my now-dead father ready to size me for my uniform once more but this time for the dark green robes, beret, and red arm band of a rebel. I managed to lift my head and see the second guard wipe blood from his blade and sheath it away. I understood now that he had agreed with what I was doing enough to kill his friend and drinking partner. He searched my pockets and found the remaining satchels and tinderbox, asked me what to do again and again but response was beyond me in that moment. He shook me until I was alert. I did my best with simple words barely slurred and drunken gestures to relay the precise position and to do it as fast as he could. That we may already be too late for this tactical demolition to act as was planned. Satchel placed, he lit the fuse higher on its length than planned, hoping to compensate for the lost time. He was strong enough to throw me to his shoulder and carry me quickly from the room like a bag of sugar destined to become the floor pudding in a festival of flesh.

Explosions trembled and cracked the stone around us mere moments after we had crossed the threshold of thick stone staircase. A grinding and shuddering noise unlike anything reverberated and a deafening slam punctuated like a crescendo, shaking my chest and setting my teeth on edge. The immense sound of rumbling and squealing carried for much longer than I imagined possible. In one delirious moment I forgot the explosive charges and worried some unimaginable giant beast was laying siege. The sound was alien, and it felt as though it literally filled my ears as liquid more than noise and once inside it shook my skull and threatened to turn my greymatter to jelly. I now attribute this sound the grind squeals and collapsing stones of the Jadeite slab as it collapsed away from the palace, crumbled its protectorate walls and slide into the resting place in which it remains below me today.

Fighting broke out soon after, my savior guard ran to fight alongside rebels, and I am told he died in the aftermath. When I had finally laboriously forced myself back up the stairs to Verdant Hall it could no longer claim such a name. The far wall was open air, bordered with fine cracks like old cobweb hiding the polished finish of the stone and marble. Beneath the many chipped and shattered pillars: bodies littered the floor. I could see a sizeable remnants of jadeite along the floor and many broken off pieces where the slab had pivoted like an unfolding bridge allowing the flood of killers to cross within. Few royals remained alive, among them King Tepesh the Cutthroat at the end of my daughter’s knife.

I saw now that not only rebels had stormed the throne room, peasants and merchants stood in a crowded half-circle. They clutched cleavers and knives, metal fire pokers and shovels. The tools of daily life now brought to bare on their oppressors. I saw with some horror that many of these instruments were bloodied. The people of the city stood in great number, overflowing onto the jadeite slab and crying out in exaltation or chanting songs. More could be seen pouring from their homes and scrambling towards the revelry now that it was clear the day was won. Children were joining the crowd and mothers carrying babies as the last of the resisting guards and nobles were dispatched.

In that moment I swelled with the joy and relief of freedom for my daughter. Also for the freedom of myself in such a way that I had not experienced since my youth. I tried to join in the rebels’ triumphant roar, but my lungs retreated from the intake of breath like weary injured soldiers all their own. My joy was tempered by the dead nobility sprawled like abandoned toys upon the floor. Emotion blurring my eyes with tears walked weakly towards my daughter. Each step taking me past men and women in glorious finery and colorful silks all stained with dark circles of red and posed unnaturally. Their bodies like vibrant birds that had been broken and bloodied from a crash to earth. I remembered each in turn as I looked them over. I saw my old mistress Lady Julius collapsed in the arms of a man who had tried to shield her, not her husband duke but the latest of the adulterers. Some of these nobility had shown me kindness, but I forced myself out of these my sad contemplations. Breaking the daydream with by summoning countless memories to protect my sanity of their selfishness and ire.

As I drew near my daughter she spared me a glance and smile before focusing her attentions on the kneeling king. His eyes were glassy and his face in shadow from his head tilted towards the floor. I, who knew him well, swore I detected the same trace of relief I would see when he, in the evenings would hide away in his chambers from the day’s responsibility. He looked tired in a way I had never seen him, and for a man not yet 40 he appeared to me then as so time worn that crumbling to dust would be a mercy. As my daughter tensed, Tepesh’s eyes snapped shut and as he did I swore he leant towards the dagger held on his throat.

Hate still filled me for this man who I had watched flounder and fail before resorting to the cruelty to resolve the problems his leadership could not. But, for a fleeting moment I saw him as the man who had once been a boy. A boy who, from birth, was told he was to rule over everything but never seemed find within himself the capacity. Who fled again and again to the sickeningly sweet pleasure of indulgence as a means to forget the guilt of his failure. A vicious cycle that tore him apart to the degree that he found a promising butler to all but beg for structure. The man was powerless to the command of his vice, and all others he had beseeched for help were powerless to the command of their self-indulgent king. All in the brief moment where his flesh stretched to its limit before being split by steel I imagined the infinite possibilities in which I could have done something differently and maybe stopped the future that was the nightmare of our current circumstance.

I was to blame as well. Was I not the same as him? When I failed in my prescribed duty of righting the king’s course I too was forced to violence. The same violence which resulted in the destruction that now lay around, in some unnamed humble guard who had been forced to kill his friend and then die himself. In the death of those I swore to serve. It didn’t matter that they were at times repulsive, a pang of guilt so devastating coursed through me so harsh I felt my intestine clench, invert, and try to climb through my open mouth to stop my breathing. Running to the open ledge beyond and throwing myself down would have been preferable to letting even one more die as a result of my actions.

“Stop..”, I had whispered the word before I even knew what I was doing. “Let him pay for his crimes some other way.”

Stunned stares were all that met me. Wide eyes of my daughter burned my throat raw with the betrayal I saw in them. My mind raced, I needed a good reason, an excellent reason, for the words that had been born from nothing more than my own selfish guilt. I stared out towards the city for a moment to break contact with Elzabeth’s gaze. My view was that of the sky bordered by crumbling white stone like the baby chicks first sight of the world through broken eggshell. There, I saw the hints of green stone, I saw the ruin of the once monumental symbol of the king. A symbol which sparked within me a desperate idea.

“Let him live as a symbol to his failure! Tepesh’s single death does not satisfy the thousands that died. Force him to live a life of humiliation! Let the people see his fall for themselves as you walk him down the streets.”

“Not bad.” Replied my daughter after a long time. standing straighter her knife leaving the throat of the Cutthroat himself. “But I am sure we all agree that is not nearly enough.”

She punctuated her sentence by kicking him to the floor, the crown bouncing away and then rolling into a pool of some poor rebel’s blood. Tepesh’s expression barely changed throughout, to where he now lay on his side. His grande velvet and purple robe fell slowly and enveloped him leaving only his face revealed like a baby in a swaddle.

The crowd of citizens erupted with outcries. Each voice carrying a demand for punishment of The King. Many familiar punishments that they or those they knew had experienced under Tepesh, public humiliation or disfiguration. Some so depraved they made me queasy. The rebels had to push the crowd back at threat of sword as they surged forward to take action into their own hands. My daughter silenced everyone with a command that carried. She walked to the crowd and intently gazed at those gathered. Walking up and down the line. I thought this intimidation but she was searching amid the crowd. Finally she found it. She reached into the crowd and wrenched a old rusted spade out of a displeased peasants hand.

“Our throne room..” my daughter said with an invitational gesture implying that it now belonged to all gathered. “.. is a mess! I mean look around at all this filth staining the floor.” With accusation she pointed at the dead nobility and swiped a finger through the blood of a fallen young man no older than 20. This was met with laughter more profound than any jester’s routine I had seen.

“We have need of someone to clean it! Do it we not?!” Agreement was given in the forms of cheerful whoops and nodding heads.

“Who will clean this mess? Us? Who have toiled all our lives?!” Displeasure flowed through the crowd in grumbles that ebbed away and down into the city below. Some were relaying the message my daughter spoke and in turns the crowd anticipated what was next and grew in excitement. They were already beginning to yell in the affirmative before my daughter spoke next, patiently waiting between each of her statements.

“Or, should the man responsible do it!?” She practically screamed it over the clamor of the raving mob.

“That greedy wretch, responsible for all this death and destruction! Not just this but the thousands of us who died! All of us who had to fight for him! All of us, forced to stand against him!” Each statement was punctuated with a roar of agreement so loud it rivaled the earlier explosion.

“.. And!” She began, looking back towards me. The rusty shovel raised above her head now. “To the singular one responsible for all of us who still live today, forced to live on our knees and cater to this hemorroid of a man.. King Tepesh most notable coward, infinite and endless liar, an hourly promise breaker and king of no good quality. Yes ol’ cutthroat is bloody but as a king he’s plain shitty! Let’s make him do something for change!” A cry replied, ringing out louder than ever. “Let’s make him clean up his own mess!”

Clearly, much of this last point was for my benefit. My daughter had been raised seeing her father serve cruel masters without compliant. To her, I was the one who had lived my life on my knees and now, my master would be forced to clean up his own mess for the first time in his life.

The shovel was forced into The King’s hand, and he was raised to his feet. Pushed away, he took a few reeling steps nearly tripping on his robe. The crowd roared with laughter. With some rough ‘encouragement’ Tepesh took to his task. Emotionlessly he dragged the body of the same young man my daughter had used as an of filth example in her speech to the open air through the broken away opening. He brought the first body, of Prince Luca, his first son to the edge. With some effort, he rolled the body onto the monument-made-ramp of priceless Jadeite. The crowd parted, making a path for him to travel. He continued down dragging with with both hands holding an ankle each and the shovel precariously balanced.

After grueling minutes he reached the bottom. He rolled shattered stones away to reveal earth and dug a shallow grave. He was small to me down below but I could see his body heave with sobs while the crowd laughed and threw stones. He lost his balance a few times, fell more than once unaccustomed to the chore of moving earth. His long robes soaked in blood now held clumps of earth. In a shallow grave he just barely hid all signs of his son. His face was the last to be covered in slow, steady shovelfuls of wet soil. He knelt to pray before his sons poorly crafted grave, only to be kicked over and punched. They yelled and pointed back up the fallen green slab. Over the remaining sunlight, he would complete and restart the task of burying his family and dear friends. Each individual took more than hour. The task of opening enough earth to bury a body surprised me in its length and ardor.

Such was the beginning of the spectacle of the King. As night fell, the crowd of people slowly filtered away. The white floor of the throne room was now painted with a bloody tree, where bodies had left their mark before being sent down the long path below. Staining the faces of kings carved on precious stone meant to be an eternal symbol of the royal family. More than a few bodies rolled down the slab. Bouncing and making great splotched stains wherever they ricocheted on their tumbling path. My daughter and I stayed all the while. My daughter organizing her forces to utilize the palace and set up their headquarters, and me standing near the ledge fixedly watching the King’s morbid funeral procession.

He never looked at me. He never looked at anyone. His face was down to the earth, down to his task. As the sun rose he collapsed for the first time. A rebel kicked him a few times before he slowly rose to continue. Eventually, as the air filled with the smell of cooking breakfasts as people empty their stores to celebrate their first days of freedom, The King collapsed and could not be woken. He was allowed to sleep for a few hours there, exactly where he fell on the dirt amid stones he was trying to roll away.

I left to sleep and to see a doctor. Knowing the king I had betrayed would be awoken to continue. I dared not leave my room for weeks, claiming my injuries need more time but I simply found myself incapable of facing the world. I could not be clapped on my back and congratulated for my actions. My daughter visited me often, regaled me with stories on the differences ‘we’ had made together. Families reunited, the hungry fed and the sick receiving treatment. She had organized a republic from rebels nearly so quickly as she had banded the rebels together before.

I left my room for the first time to the sights and sounds of revelry that had gone on for the entirety of my isolation. Sounds that had been muffled through dusty curtains and the bright colors of waving flags as had shone on my floor through narrows shafts of light cast between slits of closed curtains. A security detail of my daughter’s loyalist accompanied me as I walked through what had once been isolated palace courtyard and now appeared to me as festival that had ran for weeks on end.

The beautiful hidden courtyard, with winding stream, intricate gazebos and long branched willows was still beautiful and now filled with life. A stark contrast to the stale gatherings of nobles I had attended to their previously. Stalls sold food and drink. Drunken revelers walked with arms thrown across backs in embraces that were equally brotherly and to support their stumbling steps. A group of children cut off my path, coated in the humble grim of common folk. My stride cut short I protected the top of my drink as its contents heaved and threatened to spill. A true smile of joy crossed my lips, born of emotion and not to mask my inner despair. They ran towards crowded stalls where many played games. Some laughing with heads thrown back without care.

My smile dropped when my eyes focused on the games therein. One was a game to raise a heavy green drawbridge and knock away an arrangement of bricks. Just as the Jadeite Monolith had done weeks before. In another, fair goers paid to excavate a mound of soft soil. Buried within were dolls, some with rings on stuffed arms or necklaces wrapped around torso. Most were clearly fake trinkets, but the game promised there to be real treasures lying within. Many more games lay beyond, all with creative use of the same common theme.

At the back of that game stalls a man sold rotten vegetables and even stones in simple baskets. A long line was there, and shortly after each purchase the buyer would walk off towards the palace. I didn’t understand why then, people were paying good money for rotten goods and common stones. I followed a mother and daughter. Mother with basket overfilling with moldly potatoes in one hand and bouncing daughter excitedly singing in another.

I followed them through what was once the servant portcullis. A few others, most with baskets walked ahead of and behind us. A few workers pointed the way to a spiral staircase in the now empty storehouse wing. As we climbed, dust and rubble coated the higher stairs, which could not have been from the recent destruction.

As we approached the top an opening was there that was new to me. Carved out roughly from the stone. It opened to simple ramparts newly constructed on scaffolding. Only the side facing the front of the palace had wood paneling as covers. This was an area that had once been roof to the Verdant Hall. Now it was torn away causing more of the hall to be open to the sky. A uniformed woman stopped the woman and child for a moment, spied the basket and let them pass. She stopped me as well beginning to say there was a fee for admission, then saw my guards, paused and recognized me after a moment. She let me know that I was free to enter whenever I pleased.

Still beguiled, I nodded and tried to make no indication of my rising concern. My stomach churned, anticipating something very wrong up ahead. I stepped out from the aperture into the open air. This rampart ran along the far wall of the royal hall. Ahead, a walkway ran atop a few of the pillars. Following the path with my eyes, switchback stairs ran down to what had once been outer walls to the palace. Now it was partially repaired from where it had been crushed by the jadeite monument that still lied there. A new section ran around its tip and acted to seal the walls’ opening. To my surprise, the switchback stair acted to further seal off the jadeite slab and a wall with yet another walkway had been erected on the far side to close it in entirely. If it were to protect the huge piece of jade from thieves that was incongruent with dozens of people I saw dotting the walkway.

I thought to myself that perhaps what I stood on was a new skywalk. The view of the city was beautiful, and people could come see the fallen monument for themselves. I breathed a bit easier at the thought. In so doing a putrid smell reached me and it reminded me of the baskets of rotted veg and stones that did not align with my idea of what was happening here before me. I continued my even pace as all my internal deduction struggled to make sense of what I refused to understand. Preoccupied I turned the first corner bringing into focus what had smelled so terrible and what I had been walking far above moments ago.

Bodies upon bodies laid piled down below on what was once the throne room but now was more like an enclosure. Eyes shriveled with time and skin turned ruddy green with rot and exposure. Obvious human forms sheltered beath them the uncountable bodies who were evidenced only by the limbs which stuck out at every angle like thorns. They wore only rags if anything at all, but even stripped of the armor and uniforms I recognized a majority to be soldiers. Mostly young men, the few exceptions must have been civilian casualties.

The realization that had been forming in my mind crystalized all at once and it felt as though another explosion equal to that which had blown away the jade I now walked alongside had gone off between my temples. This was no peaceful skywalk to see where a glorious revolution had taken place, this was pit like the ones I had seen at other fairgrounds holding exotic animals. The towering walls of stone and recently built scaffolding were a cage, and the roof had been peeled back further so that the creature within could not hide.

In horror, I watched a stumbling figure making the challenging journey up the jadeite which acted like a drawbridge to his throneroom. A section ran down the stone like a trickling stream of tears. Repeated footfalls on a strict path had polished those footholds clean. The general path to a lesser extent polished by the bodies dragged across like a mop. One reason I had worked up the courage to face the world that day, that I thought this grim task would be done long ago was proven false. I had guessed some new cruelty was being exacted but somehow the same course of action seemed worse than all I had imagined. Noble bodies must have ran out ages ago, but there King Tepesh remained.

His long robes tattered just above the ground. On this hot day he still wore layers of finery that was now dirty and tattered to the point they were unrecognizable. The mink-fur pauldrons of his surcoat which I had steamed to gleaming white each morning not long ago had turned copper-brown and its ornate pattern was lost beneath layers of grim. The many layers I had once painstakingly adorned him within was so soaked in filth that it clung to him like a matted dog. He wore his crown once again now. It appeared to be held in place with straps around his chin and crusted blood along its rim suggested that its interior had been made sharp somehow to deliver inescapable pain. The only thing that gleamed was in his hand. A new shovel to bury the countless dead that were once his responsibility in slaying and now his responsibility to put to rest. It’s handle was the royal scepter and it head was a portion of Jadeite carved to a spade’s head.

I shuddered at the thought they would bring him bodies of fallen warriors all the way from the front line, just to prolong his hell on earth. He must have already buried the nobles and the fallen rebels of civil conflicts. I was helpless to stop my inner computation. Hundreds of dead, I estimated more than 2000 so far. 26 days I had not left my room since the coop. More than 90 corpses per day had the king dragged from the same place before his throne all requests were made of him, brought down the slab and buried beneath it. Space must have run out ages ago. I did not want to walk towards what must now be a mass grave of heartbreaking dimensions, but behind me other onlookers marched forward and so I moved in turn. They excited pointed and laughed at Tepesh’s revolting form, eagerly walking faster.

A short while later, I had failed to notice mother and daughter had paused ahead of me. Those behind me had stopped too. Everyone with baskets now placed them down where they would not be blown away from the gusts at this height. Hands became full with produce and rubble. Most waited patiently. Some tried to surge forward so their opportunity would be sooner. A few lobbed their makeshift projectiles far too soon and missed widely. Streaks of tomato appearing on the floor around the King and stones skipping away in unpredictable bounces.

The first one landed true only after the King was in the Hall proper. A zucchini hit his chest. Rotten core exploding. My stomach turned to see the King who had once dined exclusively on the works of great chefs pick up a half and devour it with both hands pressing it into his lips. Shovel discarded for a moment. It was apparently the signal the people around me had been waiting for. Like the volleys of archers, the same that had stilled many of hearts that lay in a festering pile nearby, rotten goods and stones arched through the air, and hung for a moment before torrenting down onto the crouched King.

He seemed barely phased by the blows to his body, wincing only when a stone struck his crown with a resounding ring digging the torturers design into his scalp. A smack of flesh could be heard to my left as 2 men high-fived and one was congratulated for his sharp aim. I stared at the king as he gathered up some of what had just been thrown and gnaw at what had not been completely splattered on impact or was moldy beyond recognition. On his face was the same expression I had seen 26 days before. Completely placid acceptance, slack facial muscles made him look dull and without thought.

A whip crack marked the end of the King’s lunch. A rebel had come in to deliver it across Tepesh’s back. Shovel back in hand, the stumbling gait resumed towards the pile of the dead. Some of the people who had just excitedly thrown their expensively acquired trash exchanged remarks and moved on, but me and the mother with her daughter stayed there, leaning on the railing some feet apart. One of my guards was still laughing about the blow to the king’s crown and slapped the man responsible on the back as he passed. The young daughter looked so much like my own child at that age. Down to how her fists clenched to little balls, the thumbs buried against the palm. The same as Elzabeth had done whenever she was angry.

The younging had saved a few potatoes in her basket. During the earlier volley the mother had thrown, missed, thrown again and struck the king on his cheek, and was satisfied to leave the rest to her daughter. The small girl who must have been no older than 6 had missed throw after throw. Now she waited for her quarry to draw closer. As he approached the godforsaken pile she threw and undershot. Her mother coached her to aim higher and throw harder. A diligent student, the next potato just barely overshot the king and was a little to his right. Frustrated the girl gripped her last potato and shouted,

“Hey! You! Old and Gross! Stand still so I can hit you.” Her high-pitch cut through the wind but the king shambled forward. “Hey!”, she repeated, “Hey! My dad listened to you, and it got him dead! So now you just have to listen to me!”

This time, King Tepesh 17th of his line and first of his name stopped his approach towards the pile. He turned towards us and actually moved closer. The girl seemed shocked her tactic had worked and didn’t throw until he was almost directly beneath and had fallen to his knees. He lifted his head and raised his arms wide to accept the blow. The potato collided with his forehead and became a mush that ran down his face. He wiped his face and moved to return to his work, pausing his motion to stand only for a moment when our eyes met. As he grabbed a body and began to drag it towards the opening and the slab which led below, a voice, much quieter this time spoke up.

“Do you think that gross man has touched daddy yet?” Her mother wiped her eyes of tears and didn’t speak.

“Do you think he’s sleeping all scrunched up with the others? I hate that daddy will have to sleep like that forever.” The mother patted her child’s head, which still pointed towards the king and opened her mouth a few times but either struggled to find the words to speak or her throat was too rough with pain to obey.

“Do you think we can still stop it from happening to daddy mommy? Maybe they’d let me go down and look? Then we can take him back home like he should be.”

More questions flowed, a perverse reflection of the same endless curiosity my daughter had displayed at that age. I did not stay to hear them. I pushed my way back along the walkway the way I had came rather than baring to walk its whole length. Upset voices clamored before being shut by mean looks from my guards. I walked as brisk as I could, feeling in my heart like I was running but never abandoning my measured even strides. Never fully showing my emotion, the same way I had always done.

From that day I tried many things. I tried to forget, what was happening in the palace, my part in it, everything. I tried to weather the storm, wait until the King’s punishment changed or he died from the cruel task. I drowned myself with pleasures but it merely reminded of how Tepesh had done the very same to escape his own responsibility. Resolution steeled my heart and a certainly filled me that something must be done and no one could do it but I.

I won’t reveal who helped me, but know that others among you felt the same as I. That this punishment did more harm than good. Other nations hate and fear marked us as barbarians. Our people grow more cruel and mean. The same wealth horded by our oppressors in symbols like scepter, crown and monument are now symbols to our hate when they could be used to give to our needy who still exist despite all that has happened. Our valiant dead do not receive the proper respect and lie in an unmarked pit like discarded trash!

On an especially cold November’s night I went to the throne room and entered through the main doors. I had dressed in my butlers coattails and white gloves. Another held the door as I entered with a silver tray and cloche. On the throne, the king lay slumped and sleeping, the place that had become his de facto bed. He was but a crowned silhouette on the throne, the moon hanging directly behind him in the sky. For a moment I could convince myself that his punishment had never happened. That he was the same king. At least until my eyes adjusted to the dark. His beard was long now and untidy, only strips of his once glorious robes still hung on his shoulders. His skin was a tapestry of sunburn and bruises. One eye so swollen I was sure it wouldn’t open. I walked around the pile of dead and did my best not to gag. Those on the bottom had liquified marking a oozing puddle around which I had step carefully. Tepesh has been unable to reach them before more dead were piled atop over the long months that he had been set to this impossible task.

I approached the throne and clicked my heels together in an attentive pose.

“Good morning my liege”, I began, “I have brought you something to celebrate.”

His one good eye opened slowly. He sat up as though in slow motion and bade no reply. I cleared my throat and spoke again.

“It is a good day today My King. I have been able to clear your schedule and free you from all burdens of your position.”

When still no reply came. I walked closer, growing desperate, I spoke more plainly.

“I have come to free you, Tepesh. As you once asked me, I have cleared your path, and you need do nothing else but walk it.”

All I received was the same blankness I had seen from him in all the long time since his colossal fall from grace.

“I suppose you must be hungry, perhaps thirsty as well. Too much so to even speak and rejoice. Fear not, all is well. I brought you something, your favorites. It will give you all the strength you need.”

I brought the tray and revealed roast beef and fine mead. The King finally spoke then,

“Do you bring me freedom, or is this poison in fine dress?”

For a long time I considered my response in silence and replied,

“It is both.. my liege.”

He then gave me what might have been a smile beneath his gnarled appearance. He took my offering and placed it down reverently on his lap. Picked up the folded handkerchier and placed it atop the arm of his filthy throne. He ate with a gentle desperation, moving quickly and enjoying each bite but his etiquette was carefully measured and that of a king.

As he finished he wiped his face, leaving black dirty streaks upon his kerchief. He moved the dish aside and drank deep the final slash remaining from his steady sips to wash down occasional bites. I watched trying not to let my sobs become audible to let the hungry man enjoy his meal. The man that had once been a child beset with a responsibility he had not the aptitude to fulfill. He sat with his hands folded and his eyes still gazing at empty space on the floor below him.

His back now carried a hunch, his body twisted from endless days of labor. I could see now that I was at his side his skin was spotted from the sun and raw. His eyes were still most haunting. Gazing at nothing, a spot on the floor. Far from me, far from the sky. I had only seen him raise his head that one time to that little girl after I opened the door to his torturers and my daughter. I was unable to look away from the dreadly wraith of the king I had once know.

I waited for him to die, for signs of the poisons effects. He seemed to do the same. He spasmed suddenly and gripped his stomach. Leaning forward he knocked the goblet from the arm of his throne. As I knelt to grab it up I heard above me:

“Pass along that I am sorry.” His voice was like the creaking and snapping of dry wood, the words almost unrecognizable. I looked up and breathed in a half-gasp as I saw that he now looked deep into my eyes. I saw tears stream down along well-carved passages on an otherwise filthy visage.

“My legacy, it is pain. It sears in my gut now, as is only right, after many day of exquisite pain I failed to keep count of long ago. Just tell them all that I was sorry, that I didn’t want what I wrought either. I didn’t have the greatness that was needed of me. I choose to indulge my weakness. I ignored the cost. I fought with those.. I was meant to rule. I couldn’t live up.. to what.. I.. … was meant..”

That morning was when I was found, covered in filth. Dropping down my final spades of soil, hiding the sad corpse of the once cut-throat king."

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