Eleven
New Age Kings
◊◊◊
One week later.
'So then, I told them I was already in love with your mother. The look on their faces, priceless,' Yaş said, kissing the bundled tips of his fingers.
Su sighed as they moved through the halls of a palace determined only by its size. Not only were the walls absent of any color besides tints of gray and brown, they contained cracks every foot apart. The halls were dimly lit by simple torches fastened between slits formed by the wall's deterioration.
Never having seen any better, Su didn't mind. Yaş, however, had seen palaces the likes few had ever seen before. That being said, he preferred this one, for this place belonged to them.
'You should be a bit more like me,' Yaş said.
'Hmm,' Su replied, rubbing his eyes.
'It's nice being a stud, don't listen to those wimpy writers from Earth, there really isn't any downside.'
'Just go to bed, old man.'
'I will. Oh, Su.'
'Hmm.'
'If I catch you training in the middle of night again, I'll break your arms.'
'O-okay…'
To their right lay the other pair, Cek and Unk side by side in the same bed, looking at the ceiling with their eyes open, giving no hint of being asleep.
'Still sleeping in the same bed as his father, pathetic,' Su said under his breath, however not silent enough.
Smack! - The wide palm of his guardian father made on his left cheek. The look on Su's stern face transformed into one more fitting of a child. His hand moved to his struck side as he faced his stepfather.
'You have something to think about this night, get in your room,' he said.
With care in each step, Su marched towards his room, in the corner of his eye noticing the two had turned their heads to him. Su kept facing forwards, partly in anger, but mostly embarrassment, disappearing into his room, seemingly slamming the door, but stopping its motion before it closed, carefully locking it.
Yaş turned towards Cek and Unk, who were staring at him in silence.
'Goodnight,' Yaş said, getting no reaction back.
Doubting if his action was the right one, Yaş closed his bedroom door behind him, staring into the dark abyss of his windowless room. Walking towards a drawer with nothing but his memory to guide him, he pulls the first one open, getting greeted by an orange glow shining bright on his melancholic face. He grabs a glass sphere unveiling the origin of illumination, revealing a flame captured in its center, shaped in the letter S.
He balances the sphere on top of the drawer, fastening its position with four wooden beams of roughly three inches. Turning his back to the fire, Yaş moves towards his humble bed.
He reaches for the blanket on top of it, and swiftly pulls it off- 'Hisss!' he hears as Cuma launches his fangs towards his face, his mouth gaping wide as the flame gives his black throat an orange hue. 'Vengeance will be mine!' he thinks, only an inch away from his prey's skin.
Effortlessly, Yaş moves his head to the side, dodging Cuma's attempt at revenge. Startled by his opponent's reflexes, the snake now soars directly towards the sphere, only for his flight to be interrupted by a pull on his tail, his orange eyes greeting the flame through the clear glass. Given up, Cuma dangles helplessly, almost crying as he thinks about another way to get back at Yaş.
'Don't make too much noise, I already woke the weirdo pair up once.'
'Oh, my bad,' Cuma said.
'Uhh…' Yaş said, hearing Cuma speak a sentence.
'Huh?' Cuma said, surprised to hear not only Yaş but also himself. 'Oh… oh! Yes!' Cuma shouted, 'I can speak! I-I can hear! Yes, yes, yes!'
Yaş grabs Cuma by the throat, almost crushing it with his firm grip, 'what did I just-'
Suddenly, a different source of light appeared from Yaş' left. A chill went through both their spines. In a smooth and slow manner, Yaş turned towards the door. Having Cuma's head still in his hand, he made him face the door as well in unnecessarily dramatic fashion. Their eyes met with Cek's.
No one spoke a word for the next ten seconds. Eventually Yaş felt prompted to act, and so stretched his left arm, presenting Cuma to Cek.
'What, hey, stop it,' Cuma murmured, squirming his tail.
Cek accepted his offer, grabbing Cuma and turning away. His eyes cried out desperately for Yaş to save him, but as Cuma watched his friend standing beside the light, he only heard him whisper; 'rest in peace,' as Cek closed the door.
The muffled screams of terror echoed through the palace halls, making even the flames on the torches tremble. An eerie jingle of chains ends the middle-eastern year's only night, with a new sun nearing from the south.
◊◊◊
When the sunshine hit the small village up north, a man lying in a mound of sand woke from his week-long slumber in quite a startled state.
Pushing himself up, the heaps of sand fall off his back. As he tries to breathe, his body emits thick clouds of brown gas before he can suck up the fresh air's Yu.
'Kairi!' Yuzdo shouts with his head still looking down.
'What!?' he hears from far away.
He carefully stands up, his knees shaking, trying to carry his bodyweight. His hand still holds the amulet firmly, aiding him in recalling what had passed. He tries to look around, but his unadjusted eyes fail him at first.
'Kairi!' he says again, putting the amulet in his pocket.
'I'm on my way!' Kairi responds.
Before he arrives, Yuzdo sees clearly again, but of what he sees, he remembers little. He stands in the middle of a town, with everywhere around him magnificent mansions, each more unique than the other, all made of sand, decorated with engraved works of art. The designs remembered him of years ago, when the west-born azure Demon first stepped foot in the lands of Kormoro's Central. The good of those polarizing times made a side of him wish he could return.
The reminiscing Yuzdo snapped back to reality by a shadow casting over him. His arms folded, with an arrogant smile and the sun behind his head, the former ruler of Central, dressed in a lighter cloth garment, says; 'how do you like it, comrade?'
'Why am I alive!?' Yuzdo says, looking up to Kairi.
'Such a philosophical question, hmm,' he responds, putting his hand on his chin.
'Shut your filthy mouth! I'm sick of your shit! You're strong, we all get it, but that doesn't mean you can go around and murder whoever you want, claim what's not yours, act as if we are all nothing! Why did you kill them and why am I not dead!?'
Kairi scratches the back of his head and jumps down to meet Yuzdo on eye-level.
'I was right to put you to sleep, and you're right about some things you think about me, as for the rest, follow me and I'll show you.'
Ignoring his offer, a frustrated Yuzdo walks past Kairi.
'Where are you going?' Kairi asks.
'None of your business.'
'They're alive, you know, all but Cuma.'
Yuzdo stops, feeling the weight on his shoulders drop, fastening his feet to the floor.
'What have you done to them? Where are they?'
'This way,' Kairi says with an inviting gesture.
While they walk through the village, Yuzdo looks around, taking in the undeniably beautiful state it has transformed in. From your everyday settlement, it became a place which made those who laid their eyes on it feel grateful they may witness it.
All the houses doubled in size, with in the farthest distance of the village, a single building standing significantly taller than the others.
Each house was given its own name. Believing Kairi had just made them up, Yuzdo thought little of it, until he saw his own.
'Why is my name on that house?' Yuzdo asks.
'You'll understand soon, just keep walking.'
Suddenly, Kairi stops. 'What's wrong?' Yuzdo asks. Kairi squints his eyes for a moment, putting his hand on his chin, supporting it by holding the arm's elbow. 'I wanted to ask you something… but I can't remember what. Oh well, I'm sure I'll remember it later.'
A few feet down, a surge of shivers traveled through Yuzdo's body, seeing two houses, side by side, with on the front two names that left their mark in bold within the history of Central Alem. Yaş on one, Cek on the other.
'From recent to old, the houses represent my former comrades. Well, only some of them,' Kairi says.
'Very thematic.'
'You never seemed to want to mingle much with us, so you probably don't recognize those lesser known, it's a shame, really. On the bright side, if you did, we probably wouldn't be here right now,' Kairi says with a smile.
'Kairi.'
'Yeah-yeah, they're in the last house, you're so impatient.'
When they arrived at the mansion named Kairi, Yuzdo had little to speculate about the situation. The only thing the whole bottom floor had were rows and columns of sarcophagi, bodies covered, faces shown, eyes closed.
'They're weak, so healing will take a bit longer.'
'What are you going to do with them?' Yuzdo said, calmer than one might think. The fact they really weren't dead yet was enough to know the situation was far from terrible.
'I want to make them my people. In order to do that, I have to show them I'm not who I used to be, but I can only do that if they let me.'
'So to prove you're not the tyrant you used to be, you're forcing them to listen to why they should follow you?'
'They wouldn't give me a chance otherwise!' Kairi shouted.
'You're scared they wouldn't, so you did things the Conqueror's way.'
'You've seen what I used to do, can you honestly compare?' Kairi says, looking in Yuzdo's eyes.
His words hold truth. For a split second, Yuzdo remembered villages like these, opposing the man before him, were prone to vanish rather quickly back in the day.
'What if they decline your offer? You're not asking for little, many people died to make you leave, some I even cared about.'
'If the majority wants me to lead, I'll lead, those who decline, I'll allow to walk,' Kairi says.
'Wow, what an honor, being allowed to live by the great Kairi,' Yuzdo mocks.
'I don't blame you for doubting me. Hearing stories is one thing, seeing it first hand is another. Of all the people in here, you're the person hardest to convince, and simultaneous the one I want on my side the most.'
'Only because I'm a knight amongst those you see as peasants,' Yuzdo says.
'No, it's because I know you lied.'
Yuzdo's brows rise, 'about what?'
'About your reason to fight me. I had a lot of time to think this past week. You tracked me down and came to this region to kill me. You want what I have. I know you do. I can sense it, but I sense something darker. I am the Conqueror, Yuzdo, I am very aware of that. The thing is, you should know that too.'
Yuzdo's eyes lit up as his mind commences to think.
'You shouldn't even be able to dream about defeating me, ever, yet you still came thinking you'd have a chance. Isn't that odd?'
The more Kairi said, the clearer Yuzdo's thoughts became.
'Why did I come here?' he thinks, 'what was I thinking?'
Masked by his inner self as an attempt to restore personal worth, deep from within him, the answer emerged out of the abyss where grim desires lurk.
'You sought death without even realizing, didn't you?'
Kairi's words smote with a force fitting him. A silence fell, but only in terms of sound, for within Yuzdo, a torrent of torment rained loud.
'For what it's worth,' Kairi says, 'I want to help, but my hands are kind of full at the moment. That's why I want you to stay and wait. Dark clouds above the soldier are shared by the platoon.'