"Wow... so you're telling me I just cried like a little baby so that you could just search in here?" Nikolai said as he entered after Allan into the tree house.
The tree house was no different than it was before, terribly constructed, and filled with many memories. "This is where we spent most of our time with mom and Fable, so before we leave I just wanted to sit in here for a little." Allan said as he sat in his normal spot, and glanced over at where Fable used to sit.
Nikolai's eyes began to water a little bit, but before Allan could tell, he quickly turned away. "Oh my gosh..." he said as if he couldn't believe he was going to cry again.
Allan rolled his eyes. "He's so sensitive..." He said under his breath. Incidentally, when he rolled his eyes, the quickest flare of light struck him from underneath a plank of wood. At first he didn't think anything of it, and continued to look elsewhere, but then the flare struck his eyesight again.
"Allan, I just want to tell ya. You're like a brother to me," Nikolai who was in his feelings still started to talk random gibberish. "Well you are my brother, but what I'm trying to say is...I feel very close to you..." He said as he walked around the room with closed eyes.
"Yea very good, but uhm can you move?" Allan said as he kept looking over from one side of Nikolai's body to the other. Trying to catch ahold of that flare again. He wasn't really paying attention to him though, and kept talking about things he would usually consider very embarrassing.
"All those times I was so mean to you guys, I just wi-"
"Move!" Allan said as he kicked Nikolai's butt out of the way.
"What the heck, what was that for you retard?!" Yelled Nikolai.
Allan pointed at the flare of light emitting from underneath the piece of wood. With Nikolai out of the way, he was finally able to get the right view. "Look, there's a beam of light coming from under there."
"Oh... that's odd..." Nikolai said before walking over to it. "It has to be coming from something..."
"What do you think it is? The sunlight can't shine from there right?" Allan asked.
Nikolai paused and looked in front him for a second. He usually done this whenever someone would say something that he deemed to be just the stupidest thing ever. "Well obviously idiot." He said as if he were annoyed.
"I'm just asking, I-di-ot. One second you're nice and the next-"
"It's just a rock.." Nikolai said as he turned around and showed Allan the silver stone that he had picked up. "It's hard to believe this is what was making that light."
"Let me see it." Allan said as he grabbed it from him, and started to examine it very closely. He then tossed it in the air, and threw it as hard as he could against the wall.
"The heck!?" Nikolai yelled as he jumped back. "What's wrong with you, that scared the bejeebers out of me!"
"I don't know, it's a rock so I threw it, I don't know." Said Allan as he shrugged his shoulders.
The stone rolled where the boys could no longer see it, and sat still while they argued, but after just a moment, it had begun to shiver. At first the shivers were so light that it seemed as though it wasn't moving at all, but then every second that passed increased its intensity. Before long, it started to emit a buzzing sound of vibration.
"You don't just throw a rock!" Nikolai Said as he became quite, and began to listen to his surroundings. "what in the world is that noise?!"
"Uh uh," Allan mumbled as he looked around. "There look, it's the rock! It's shining again"
Nikolai quickly picked up the rock that was hiding under a bunch of leafs. "What the heck is this thing?" He asked.
The stone suddenly stopped humming, which Allan thought couldn't possibly be good. "Uh Nikolai, maybe you should throw it..."
Nikolai turned to look at Allan. "Why?" He asked.
A sudden burst of bright light exploded from the rock, and the boys disappeared. Leaving the rock to fall to the floor, and roll somewhere else to hide. The light then reappeared in the middle of a field of enormous tree trunks, and so did the boys. They were teleported exactly the way they were, but fell to the ground due to the sudden change of environment.
And down they rolled, through the deep forest trees, across sleeping mushrooms, and past the woodland spirits that dwelled in them. They yelled and screamed on their way down, until they hit the flat forest ground.
"Wow!" Nikolai shouted as he jumped to his feet.
"What in the world that was crazy!" Allan yelled.
Nikolai fell back onto a huge mushroom, and then onto the ground. He then crawled over to Allan, and grabbed him up. "Are you ok, are you ok?!"
"Yea I'm fine, what about you?" Allan asked in a similar manner of panic.
"I'm not hurt, I don't think.." He answered as he checked all over his torso.
"This is so crazy, it's just like the stories mom use to tell us, exactly like it!" Allan said excitedly as he stood up. "This is probably where she and Fable are, don't you think?!"
Nikolai glanced around a bit. "That makes sense...but why here?"
"It doesn't matter why it was here, they probably got teleported like we did and are trying to find their way back!" Allan said as he ran through some trees, and looked around. By the foot of the tree he stopped by he noticed a small shoe under some forest bed. "Look Nikolai!"
"That shoe...it's Fables!" Nikolai said excitedly. "They were definitely here, we have to get dad, and the knights, and-"
Nikolai didn't even try to stop talking, he was forced to by his own scared to bits body. Allan was also quite for he had already been looking at what was standing in front of them. His overly naive face had become pale, and Nikolai was simply dumbstruck.
"Mom?" He said.
That was something Allan dared not to say. He had seen this before, right before Fable was taken away, and he just knew this was not his mom. It was a tall woman, skinny, and disfigured. The boys could see every shape of her bones as she stood there, twitching, staring past them as if they weren't even there. Her hair was sparse, and red. The same as their mother's.
"M..om..." Nikolai said again.
The woman quickly looked at them with her no-lid eyes. "You are not my child!" She screamed.
A single tear rolled from Nikolai's eyes before everything in his sight turned black. All his senses faded like an extreme nausea, and he fainted.
By the sheer thought of Fable being as scared of this thing as they were, Allan was able to hold onto his consciousness, but not for long. He continued on screaming until his head was banged against the side of the tree he was next to. Only then did he start to pass out, but in between that time of being awake and not, he was able to feel himself being placed in what seemed to be a potato sack.
Even in this situation, the darkness that enveloped his mind was quite soothing. To him it felt as though he had just fallen asleep after staying up way past his bed time, and after sleeping for only half an hour, he was woken up by his father. Except in this reality, he was woken up by his so called mother.
She didn't tell him to wake up for school, she actually wasn't even talking to him, she was talking to herself. On and on she kept saying. "I deserve this..."
This awoke Allan, but it wasn't enough for him to gain his consciousness back. Not until he heard a shocking sound that only he and Nikolai would recognize.
Earlier that year, before any of this craziness was going on, and things were still normal, Fable got hurt. It was nothing extremely serious, but it was enough for the little boy to lay down on the ground and groan. His older brothers would tell him to get up and walk it off, and so he did. This very occurrence was why Allan and Nikolai instantly gained consciousness at the sound of that very same groaning. It could only be coming from one person.
But when they sat up and looked at each other, they didn't say a word. They didn't have to, because they were sure they were both on the same page, and that page was clearly telling them to be silent.
The moan came again, pulling their attention up front. Upon seeing the gruesome image in front of him, Allan wanted to scream. He wanted to scream so bad, but he knew that would be a fatal mistake and so he covered his mouth with both hands, and let his tears run over them. Nikolai was in a similar predicament, but to stop himself from screaming at the top of his lungs, he simply dug his nails into his very own flesh. This left his palms to bleed out onto his knees.
A single candle carried the burden of keeping the shed alit, therefor the entirety of the place was dark, but sickly enough, it was placed right above what was once a beautiful young boy. Before their eyes was a lump of meat that could hardly be called a body anymore. Each toe, and each finger was gone. Every ankle and wrist was tied down to the four corners of the thick wooden table.
To say the body was bloody would have been outright injustice, for there was no longer any skin to speak of. The only thing that remained the same was the face, just slightly. The nose, ears, and eyes were still in place, but that's what made it even worst. It seemed as though she purposely left that intact as some kind of sick joke. It would've been better if the body was simply unrecognizable, but the way it was now made the boys remember every good memory of their brother Fable, and then the diabolical ending of his life. Which drove them insane.
The body moaned again, enticing the boys to maniacally pull back and forth on the bars that kept them apart. It was nothing short of a miracle that this boy was still alive, or in this case, an unfair punishment.
"Tsk tsk tsk, not yet not yet," The mother said as she crept over to Fable. "You have to be alive for this part.." She then held a knife to his heart.
Nikolai and Allan could not think of anything at this point. They cried out in agony as they watched the silhouette of that hideous being alive here and there.
"Stop it stop it stop it, you're hurting him!" Allan yelled.
"Don't touch him!" Nikolai roared at the top of his lungs.
It was just for a moment, but upon hearing their voices fable got enough strength to speak two words. "It's ok." He said before their mother took the final slice, and pulled his heart from his chest.
Allan instantly fainted, as Nikolai fell to the ground pulling out his own hair, hyperventilating and foaming, before abruptly ceasing to move. Then he too - fainted.
"Yes it's ok... I deserve this... I deserve them, I deserve power like this right?" Solaris moaned as she took the blood trickling heart across the room. She gently placed it within the middle of a carved out ritual circle, and slit her own wrist on top of it.
A whistling sound of strong winds marked the coming of such, and the candle was blown out. Solaris grunted, and looked around in a panic. She scurried across the room, and whispered a chant, setting the candle alit once more, but she was too nervous for some reason, and dropped it on the floor.
The fire roared with the taste of blood in its mouth, and engulfed a large part of the ground. "Damn it all!" She said as rushed through the fire to get to the ritual circle. "I'll do it quick, very quick. Then me and Earie will have our power, we'll be free!"
As if instantly smothered by something, the spreading fire of the house blew out with nothing left to show of it, but a deep dark smoke. Then a wind blew so great that roof of the shed flew off into various pieces. "No not yet!" Solaris screamed as the wind quickly took apart the cabin.
In a silent, but dramatic end, the wind stopped, and from the remaining smoke a man step out. "You'll have no such thing!" Sulaiman said in a stern voice.
Solaris screeched, and reached for her blood stained knife, but the king was too fast. In a time span that was too short to make any sense, he had unsheathed his sword and held it at her neck. His swing held such immense power that the cabin was sliced in two from the side of which he had unsheathed his sword. "One wrong move and your head is next."
Her breathing was very hard, but somehow she still managed to chuckle a bit. "Sulaiman, you look well." She said. "Do you like what I've done with our son?"
The sound of a sharp whip entered the air only a moment after Sulaiman slapped the teeth out of Solaris's mouth. What took place even before this was an indescribable amount of thoughts that went through his head. Not thoughts, but nightmares. How does one feel when their son dies, or when they find out their wife betrayed them. What about when they find out their wife was the one that killed their son? Only he knows. "You'll pay for what you've done! "He yelled.
"I'll pay for nothing my love!" Solaris said before mockingly laughing.
Through out this entire encounter Sulaiman had no idea this woman before him was his missing wife. Upon hearing her say my love, he instantly came to realize it was her. All the puzzle pieces connected, the eyes, the hair, even the voice to a certain extent sounded exactly like her. "No..." He mumbled as he stumbled backwards and glanced at Fables corpse. "No, no no... this can't be.."
"Yes yes...yes!" She screamed. "But it can be, and it is!"
"You've sacrifice our son? For what... for what?! You had everything!" He screamed.
Solaris spit blood at his feet and said. "But I never had more power than you, but now...now I do!"
"I loved you, you know that?"
"And I hate you."Solaris mocked.
As everything started to come down on him at once he began to tremble. The woman he loved more than anything else turned out to be someone completely different, and to further his sorrow followed his youngest child's death. If it wasn't for Allan's random cough, he wouldn't have gained his strength back. The cough saved him, and everyone else, because when he heard it, he was reminded of the two that were still alive, he remembered his purpose. "You'll pay..." He said lowly.
In the moment he had let his guard down, Solaris picked up her broom that was lying about, and scurried away as fast as she could. "I've done it, I've done it!" She laughed as she made her escape.
Sulaiman raised his sword to the sky, and held it there for a moment. In that time, a fierce wind never before seen attached itself to the blade, reaching as high as the clouds. "You'll pay!" He violently screamed as he swung his sword down on her.
The distance that she managed to put between them before the swing didn't change a single thing. When Sulaiman struck his sword down, it left an imprint on the earth from the ritual circle, all the way one hundred meters down through Solaris's body. Slicing her, and her broom in half.
According to history, this was the end of Queen Solaris, and her son Fable. They would forever go down as martyrs, and King sulaiman the eleventh, would be know as The king who married a witch.
In order to maintain the memory of Fable being a healthy young boy, his body was wrapped head to toe. Till this day no one that investigated the scene was able to find his heart. Although at his funeral, everyone's hearts were with him.
Asiya was the ignorant out of the Rose family. She was spared from the visual torture her brothers had to go threw. While she cried when visiting her little brothers grave, she would often wonder why her older brothers never shed not one tear. Little did she know, they cried every night with no tears left for the morning.
"I'm sorry I was being mean before." Asiya said as she placed her precious leaf on Fable's tomb. "You can keep it forever Fable."
At the time, no one knew this would be the event that started it all. The event that set ablaze a fire within two young boys that would never go out. The fire that would warm the world, and save it from any coldness that ever dared to surface. This is the start of it all. This is the tale of Allan Rose and the essence of fire.