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The darkness stares like death’s dilated pupils, encroaching on the keep. A sudden scar of lightning tears the night’s sutures, before being overrun in darkness once again.
Nothing can hold this darkness at bay.
Inside, the king relights a torch, the measly flame sputtering and quaking in fear of the ominous blackness.
ScraaAANG! A sound rings out from far beneath the king’s study. Glancing at the window, a bead of sweat drops off his brow onto the parchment that he hunches over. His quill, having nervously stalled at the noise, continues its frantic dancing.
These pages are his only chance at survival.
The king takes a rattling breath, coughing the tightness from his throat. Perhaps if I can finish this confession… perhaps they will pass me over.
No…
There are lines that even a king can’t cross without consequences.
The king scribbles a few more cramped lines, the scratch of his quill echoing in whispers, the drawbridge’s shrieking chains below. If he could lower the bridge the noise would stop.
But he cannot allow him to enter…
How is it that only one year ago the king was surrounded by the glow of friends and loved ones, celebrating his daughter’s twentieth birthday?
Do not think of her!
The king throws the inkwell at the hard stone wall. Its innocent crystal shattering between the will of a king and the strength of the soot-darkened stone, the black ink drips down like heart’s blood.
“Nothing but a filthy blacksmith!” he shouts at the air. The wind howls more fierce. The king slings his royal cloak over his shoulders, in the renewed cold. He warms his hands near the still-sputtering torch, knowing that the cold isn’t coming from the storm… It’s coming from him.
He hobbles to the corner, and he lowers his aching joints into a chair, closing his eyes.
That blacksmith had brought the princess a birthday gift that day: a skillfully wrought hand mirror, with delicate steel scrollwork surrounding the reflective circle.
If that had only been all…
The wind’s howling startles the king from his reverie. He pulls his cloak tighter around himself, trying to fight the memories, and climbs slowly from the chair. They have been harder to fight in recent days.
Maybe the storm can distract him. The king moves to the window.
He throws open the curtains, icy water oozing between his fingers, and looks out into the tempest through the broken, rib-like slats of the shutters. The chains scrape all the louder below, without the curtains to deaden their screams.
ScraaAANG!
A flash of lightning bathes the opposing shore of the river in sudden light. The king gasps, his lungs freezing mid-breath, as he stares through the returning darkness. Another flash reveals the king’s greatest fear: a dark figure standing on the bank, indifferent to the torrents of rain.
The king moans, throwing the curtains closed once again. Blubbering to himself, near madness, he returns to his writing table. His face wet from the rain and his tears
“I’m so- sorry, my dear. Your mother wished so much for you.” The king tries to write but the ink, like blood, has coagulated. He closes his bleary eyes and the memories flood in, thrust upon him by some external force.
Days after the princess’ birthday, the blacksmith had brought the king his own gift.
It was an axe, the steel buffed and polished to shine like silver. The king’s awe reflected back at him in the blade.
“What a weapon!” The king exclaimed, hefting the axe and feeling the fire-hardened oak’s strength in his hand. “This is a prize truly fit for a king! I could knight you for this service.”
A squeal of excitement caused the king to turn and see his daughter skipping across the floor to reach him.
“Oh, father, I am just so happy!” Confusion was replaced by horror on the king’s face as he looked between his precious daughter and the hastily cleaned blacksmith; “And now that he is a knight… he has come to ask for my hand in marriage.”
“No!” The king shouted. Shaking in rage. “This blacksmith will never have you!” The king grabbed his daughter’s pleading arm and pulled her toward the door.
“Please father! Listen!” She wailed, trying to free her arm from her father’s iron grip. “I love him!”
“Aheli!” the young blacksmith shouted, reaching out for her free arm.
“YOU. WILL. NOT. TAKE. HER!” The king turned and swung the axe with all the might of his hundred battles. Aheli’s terrified face reflected in the blade as it ripped through the air.
With the scraaAANG of steel against bone, the axe clove the blacksmith’s arm above the elbow, the severed arm fell to the ground.
“Guards! Put this man to death!” He bellowed while the blacksmith clutched his bleeding appendage. He cried out in agony, his bodily pain eclipsed by the ultimate loss of his beloved.
The princess screamed in horror. The king only lifted her over his shoulder in response. He stalked away, dropping the axe on the floor.
“Use that.” And he turned to leave.
“I will come for you, King! Neither Heaven nor Hell will deny me!”
The king looked back, spit and strode out, his sobbing daughter in tow.
He had killed his daughter’s, only love! Aheli had wasted away quickly after that; grief’s shrieking madness was traded for bereavement’s empty staring, and finally, death’s deep silence.
Grief took his daughter like his rage had taken her beloved.
That’s when the king began seeing the ghostly shadow drifting the halls by night. No one but he could see it- see her- or feel her cold, misty tears fall on his cheeks as he slept.
Maybe the king could have believed that his guilt was causing these apparitions. But that did not explain the dark, hooded figure standing outside his window every morning.
It only had one arm.
Thus, the king had fled to this distant keep alone, to await the day when the echoes of his own unquenchable rage, would return for vengeance.
How fitting that it should be on her birthday.
“She deserved better than a blacksmith!” He shouts as tears stream down his face “She was a princess! The daughter of a king!” The wind howls back with hollow violence. No forgiveness, in its roaring cacophony, and none in his own heart. Then the king hears the scraping of steel against stone…
Inside the keep.
ScrrrrraaaAANG
“He’s found me!” The king cries, running to the door. He throws it open, shouting to the guards as he rushes past. “He’s here! Protect me!” The dozen guards fall in behind him, looking a mixture of confusion and nervousness.
The king begins stumbling up the spiraling tower as fast as his aged frame can take him, uttering a silent prayer for his soul.
The sound of steel grinding along the stone wall of the winding staircase below causes the king to yelp and trip. The soldiers hear it too. This is no figment.
The scratching continues slowly, yet inescapably up each flight of stairs as the terrified tyrant and his guards speed ever upward.
“Go, fight it off! Hurry! Your king commands it!” The guards, despite their terror, turn and plant their steel-shod feet. The king continues climbing, his heart running faster than he can count.
Sudden shouts echo up the stairwell, accompanied by the brutal beats of bodies slamming into stone and the shriek of steel on steel.
“We’re sorry your majesty!” A final thud and the dull clang of a dropped sword are followed by utter silence. The king pales and rounds the final corner, exiting onto the lookout tower.
Perhaps the beast’s bloodthirst has been quenched… perhaps I am safe. He thinks to himself.
The storm hesitates, the rain quiet in the distance while the king huddles in the furthest corner from the door, his cloak slowly fluttering in the wind.
But if the wind is moving my cloak… why can’t I feel it!?! The King stands, wheeling around to find his quarry, with no weapon but the dried quill still clutched between his fingers.
“I. WILL. NOT. DIE. A COWARD!” Exclaims the king. Then he touches his hand to his mouth; shouting only gave away his position.
He slowly turns toward the door and-
BOOM! The tip of a blade slams through the grate. The king shouts and stumbles back towards the wall, the wet floor slipping beneath his feet.
BOOM! The weapon’s head clears the door revealing what the king already knows.
The head of an ornate axe.
The king turns to run but his cloak catches on the rough stone and trips him. He falls.
He falls past turrets, past windows, and past the scraping steel chains of the lifted drawbridge into the black, cold, raging river below.
Days later, when the king’s generals sought out the hidden keep, they found the keep empty except for a cloak, a sword, and the king’s last will and testimony pleading for forgiveness.
Up the stairs, at the top of the tower, stuck in the door was an axe. The most beautiful ever crafted.
With an arm bone as a handle.