Melite had a wide smile on her face until she saw Fedlimid frantically scratching his scalp in despair. The man muttered in his short beard, loud enough for her to hear. "We're doomed! He's going to make us his playthings! He's no pretty face, he's just shackled our ankles and now he'll drag us in hell!"
The sick smile of the omnimancer extended to his eyes in a disturbingly curved way. "Me-prince isn't going home empty-handed? A nice surprise I must say!"
Lily still bore her stoic face, but Loke crept to her feet and embraced them out of relief, ruining his outfit that stained the high-mountain's landscape in the process. A hair-raising sensation pulled his attention a little higher. Crouching next to his face, Arthur understood the thin family bond between them, one he would take his time crushing.
Their eyes met. Time's flow stopped.
The air thickened and the mental distress the man fell into a year ago brought back the morbid fear that woke him up at night. The sight itself stiffened every of the orc's muscles. He had a sample of the cave's nauseous scent that crept its way up his nose for an instant, a mix of rotten carcasses and sulfur.
Six words were enough for the man to forget his bladder. It was a deep voice, one he had heard already more than once in his life. The air vibrated to the sole authority carried in the words, they entered his mind and bounced against the internal wall of his skull like a universal truth.
"I will come back for you."
His irises shrunk to two tiny dots, unable to capture the light of the stars, only the engulfing blue remained.
It stripped him of his courage, it deprived his world of colors once more.
Two blue circles he wasn't able to stop staring at and behind, stood a flickering shadow, a monster wearing human skin that was swept away by a lightning bolt over their head.
It all stopped as soon as it appeared, seemingly affecting no one else. Loke gasped in distress, he added shame to the pile of insults that already stuck to Lily's image with their first year of the fake couple.
The omnimancer proved how solid were his shoulders by lifting both of them back on their feet, he then lifted one hand and suggested the barbarians at least, hold the sides of her leather skirt.
The wind blew the smallest pebbles at their feet while a massive chunk of dirt detached from the ground. The distance between their eyes and the ground grew exponentially until they reached the place just above the clouds.
There was not a shred of vertigo in the boy's mind, only doubt about himself. Down their feet, he looked at the steel forest brimming with hundreds of red flowers, the flashlights. The outside world was parading under his feet in all its mightiness, yet it was amiss.
There was not a shred of remorse nor torment for his dreadful acts. Nothing to corrupt the feeling of freedom he could reach flying high in the sky, one of the first things he planned to learn with his new gift.
'Jaya and the others... They were barely a step to help me reach my goal.'
To his thought, he spat mid-air, giving Fedlimid a refreshment. He then brushed off invisible dust off his shoulders to get rid of the despicable sensation that soon, he would become a new version of his father.
'I have one year before reaching the fateful age of twenty. I can inherit the throne if I prove myself worthy, there's no reason to lose time not improving.'
Looking in awe at Bion's spells, he observed tiny grains of sand coiling around his hands and ankles, however, he could distinguish a purplish mess around the man's face as well.
'Those two will grow loyal for sure, there's no need for them to know about the rest...' He thought about the recruits.
There was no trace of malnutrition on his body and the borrowed warrior clothes he wore fitted him in most points. He could clearly remember his worst dream and the incommensurable misery afflicted, but he was outside, doing wonders with just a glare and his will, there was no reason to regret even a pact with the devil.
As it was odd and no darkness spell appeared to him, he reached for the man's head with an unreserved gesture. He wanted to see how much he could do, and how much more effort he needed to take over the kingdom. His restless curiosity made the travelers' hearts sink for a second.
On the platform under their feet spread cracks that discouraged the barbarians.
Bion shouted furiously, his tone was amidst pain and execration. "Who the fuck doesn't have basic survival instincts?" But it all faded once he saw the reason for his sudden loss of focus. The next words he directed toward the blue blood were coated in sugar. "Me-prince! Avoid doing that, please. We can't risk another accident... We'll soon have a welcome party."
Afar, Arthur saw a chaotic dome compromised of hundreds of asymmetrical structures. Stars, entangled shapes, and fractal architectures floating all over the colossal city. Tash was sealed under a blinding wall of fantastic shapes that soon crowded his view. He closed his eyes before the impact, but it never came.
On the contrary, nothing happened, not even batting an eye, the omnimancer landed the flying platform in the middle of the royal garden, next to a shadowy figure, one darker than the omnipresent night itself.
Recognising Seisyll, the second twin, Arthur's eyes caught the purple mess again. 'Telepathy? The two can't be serious!' He thought, solving the haunting mystery behind the secrecy of the twin omnimancers.
His thoughts connected as he pictured an uncanny way to use dark magic. Lancelot's ghost walked between the two, shaking his head with insistence. 'Why? Why can no book describe the beauty of the dancing magicules? Why is Tash's sky a giant lid? Why aren't you interacting with the new world I can see, Lancelot?'
He approached the silent whisperers, the two shiny purple heads that paid their respects once more.
"I want to talk with Lancelot. Bring him back from the dead at once."
The purple glow intensified for an instant, the twins exchanged a worried glare.
"Me-prince, Lancelot's soul is long gone." Said Bion, dusting off the dirt off his white-feathered robe.
"Wrecked by his treason." Added Seisyll.
"We can't call him back if he's gone to oblivion already." Bion nodded, tilting his head in apology.
"Want an undead pet?" Seisyll asked, the tip of his finger drew in the dirt as he started to chant. Arthur saw a bird-like skull emerging from the ground, it was about the size of the man's fist. Then vertebra materialized out of thin air, a few feathers, lambs of charred skin, and more bones.
The thing cawed and moved its limbs one after the other before taking off the ground and vanishing into the messy geometrical labyrinth.
It was his first time witnessing necromancy arts, and it looked like nothing he was ready for.
Arthur's knees failed to support him. His face twisted in anger as he looked at the ghost of his dead mentor. "You!"
He scratched the back of his head, where a perfect scar was, devoid of hair.
"You liar!" He screamed in rage. "Liar!" He repeated, smashing his head with the nearest rock.
He saw the ghost smirk, its friendly facade crumble, he saw the ghost walk away like a free man. This was no Lancelot Solarfield. It was a mere defect of the boy's broken brain, yet a distorted maniacal laugh bearing his mentor's voice echoed over his shouts.
The fact there were no dark magicules to its appearance and two omnimancers incapable of pinpointing its location implied he had been alone all along.
There was no time to mock the prince's jumpy mood, the ground shook, the air trembled and the flowers in the garden lost their petals in a blooming tornado.
The brand-new walls of the palace crackled and the dirt platform crumbled. The surge of energy lasted only a few seconds before Arthur fainted, coughing the saliva that went into the wrong tube in his sudden tantrum.
He woke up strapped, on a table he wished to never see again. Despite not seeing it, he could feel the perfect metal slate cooling his back down to his calves. The ghost was here, smiling at him and urging him to not let a word out.
"Hush, lost child, the best part is about to start." The thing said.
It was confident as if it had taken all of Arthur's courage to fuel a pride no other could observe.
'I needed someone to trust while I was lying to myself.' He thought, shaking his head to peek at the flickering shadows nearby.
Bion, Seisyll, and Uther were arguing. "He's too young! The success chances are slim! Me-king, I beg thee, this is no good idea!" Said the white omnimancer, peeking at his brother who had consumed some of his energy as well.
"He's unstable, not going to work." Nodded Seisyll.
Arthur fought against his restraints, but in vain, his breath accelerated as he anticipated another round of torture from the three men of science.
He saw the white slate, the imperfect dragon scale that was stripped of its silvery embrace. He saw millions of magicules orbiting around it, flowing like a rampaging river, ready to pulverize anything. He knew it was nothing else than invisible energy, like the ghost.
At first, his thoughts ignoring his defective brain seemed impossible. From the beginning of his journey of mourn until now, he wanted to look at the ghost and have a conversation. Now that he felt betrayed by it, it was much different. The paradoxical oddity was the ability of the thing to grasp meanings, to appear before his surge from sleep. It was much more alive than him for the past year.
He could see the ghost's face twisting with a vicious smile as the three continued.
The king's eyes brimmed with anger in response to their refusal. He spat each of his words. "He's ready, and it'll work. He's become the key to create a new world. He is... My key."
Uther approached the table and crushed his son under the weight of the shield, he asked. "Have you met the big lizard, Arthur?"
The boy's thoughts were so fast it made his head spin. 'B-Bast? No! The fabled dragon?' He then connected the dots one after the other.
'The hourglass? The treasure? Success?'
Gasp! His eyes locked mid-air, impossible for the scientists to understand what he was staring at so intensely.
The ghost had two black and gold slits instead of the usual lifeless brown eyes. He was right, it was an untold creature. The fake Lancelot caressed the surface of the scale with a pleasuring, creepy face.
The boy doubled his efforts to escape, but the twins joined hands and his body became numb.
"Now, give me the treasure, son. I've waited long enough, not a single year can I delay my redemption further." Uther whispered under a whirl of light and dark magicules. He pulled both sides of his clothes and tore apart his cloak, revealing a pulsating abomination on his solar plexus.
A magical flow passed through the shield before striking father and son alike.
The three closed their mouth, only their strained breath and the boy's shouts could be heard.
"He manipulated you to lay his hand on it, Arthur..." Lancelot's voice resounded, its melody was turning into a growl. "He toyed with your life and crippled your mageroot so he could steal your body."
The ghost kept gesturing around the scale, passing through the moving scalpels and focused surgeons alike. "He sculpted you to be his absolute failure, his finest defect. And for the hundredth time, he'll consume his son's body to steal his youth and everything he gifted 'himself' until now."
A torturous, violent pain invaded Arthur's body, Uther's mageroot started to melt down his torso and crept its way to his empty slot.
Bion saw his brother kneeling but continued the operation nonetheless. The king's energy was fading as he declared the second and final phase had to commence.
"What he, this mighty king, doesn't know still..." The ghost stopped and caressed the king's pale face. "Is that I manipulated him to fetch me in this damned tomb. And now, now Arthur! Now that he's about to get his hand on my eyes, it is time to crush every shred of hope left in this room at once."
The ghost effigy fused with the boy, only leaving behind the peculiar shape of a pupil in the middle of a cyan ocean.
Arthur's right hand rose in the air, despite its supposed sedative state. Another tremor shook the palace as a fissure split the room in two from under the table to the ceiling. The underground laboratory was far from seeing the light, but a strident shrill pierced the many layers of stone above their head.
In a split second, during which Bion blinked, Uther's was vertically cut in half by Smite's blade, his body was succinctly shattered to the contact of the handle. The pressure and speed of the flying weapon made the king's body burst into a red firework, spreading his remains up to the ceiling.