“His pulse is… yes, it’s very weak… hurry, call the priest… I fear this is the…”

Zephyrin stared fixedly, unseeingly at the sky-blue canopy of his king-sized bed. He no longer had the strength to focus his vision—hardly had the strength remaining to keep his eyes open, in fact. He simply lay on his pillow, drenched in sweat, breathing harshly as unseen hands applied and reapplied a damp cloth to his burning brow. From time to time shadowy figures would pass in and out of his sight and murky voices sounded in his ears, as if an underwater ballroom dance were somehow taking place by his bedside.

Zephyrin had ceased trying to decipher the conversations of the voices long ago. He had heard the doctor’s increasingly pessimistic prognoses as his condition worsened, and concluded that the final collapse of the ill health he had suffered all his life was now imminent. He had determined this coolly, dispassionately, like an independent general observing two opposing armies in pitched combat through his spyglass. Clearly his body was losing the contest, but Zephyrin felt above it all. This detachment he had developed since a very early age, since his symptoms first arose shortly after his arrival here in the Crystalline Palace; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to cope with the abortive outings, the days spent on end in bed, the dashed expectations.

He closed his eyes, wearied by the golden-red glow of the mana crystals lighting his room, faint though it was. Behind the door to his sick-room there were other presences too, he knew. He couldn’t hear the assorted crowd of Elysian nobles, but he felt he understood the contents of their murmurs just as well as if they had tramped into his room, cupped their hands, and shouted it right into his very ears. There could only be one thing on their lips, and that was:

“The Gryphon’s dying.”

Zephyrin reopened his eyes briefly, then closed them again as the swimming of his vision sickened him.

The Gryphon. Yes, that’s how men know him today—and how he’ll be known as in the years or decades to come, until the legacy of his father, the ‘Bloody Griffin’, succeeds in obliterating even the tragic romanticism of his unrealized potential. His lips twisted into a painful smile as he drifted off into blissful insensibility…

“Water,” Zephyrin rasped. He was dimly conscious of a flurry of activity around him, then a damp cloth was gently laid on his lips. He sucked greedily, desperate for a relief that would not come, for an end to the raging fever that held his life like tongs around a log in a roaring hearth. Ever it poked at and prodded him, and if on occasion it left him, that was only to reinsert him into the flames with a vengeance after a mercilessly short delay, taken only to ascertain which part of him was of yet untouched by the flames and needed burning; and that pleasant occupation it would only cease once he had been fully consumed.

Zephyrin felt a female hand squeeze his own. He could tell who it was without looking—Aunt Eulalie, her wizened hand cool, impossibly cool to the touch. How hot was his own, he wondered—and then without warning a sudden chill seized his body; seized and shook him from head to toe like a malevolent stranger surging out of the dark, intent on wringing the life out of him. Only, it wasn’t a stranger. Far from it. How many days, weeks, months, had Zephyrin spent in bed, throttled by the caprices of his mysterious malady? Well, at any rate, it was all coming to an end now…

Zephyrin heard an insistent buzzing in his ears. He tried to ignore it at first, but it continued. Exerting himself mightily, he strained what little remained of his attention to capture the sounds.

“Dear, the priest… can you sit…?”

For the first time in weeks, Zephyrin was tempted to laugh. Sit? His body was powerless, his consciousness hanging on by a thread; did the priest’s prayers and the last rites truly depend on his posture? He tried to raise his arms for those attending his bedside to take, but failed even at that. In the end, Aunt Eulalie and an invisible nurse carefully lifted up his emaciated, feather-light frame—hardly with any difficulty, he thought with more than a hint of self-mockery—then adjusted his pillow and propped him up against it. In his new position Zephyrin didn’t have to crane his neck to look at the room’s occupants, which allowed him to take in his final sights with more facility.

He saw the priest approach him, prayer tome in hand. Zephyrin breathed laboriously as the chaplain recited the prayers and blessing. Then came the time for his last profession. He slowly repeated the first articles of the Kosmæic Creed, the priest making allowances for his racking cough. Eventually, the concluding articles were reached:

“Thou who hast walked beneath the sun and moon, and been guided by their light thy whole life long, wishest thou to see the Light which shall never fail?”

“I… do,” his voice rattled.

“Renouncest thou the invitation of the darkness in this thy final hour?”

“I… renounce it.”

“Entrustest thou thy soul to the merciful and tender embrace of the Goddess Selena, and Fengar, Her most amiable consort?”

“I… do.”

“Then be at peace, faithful soul, and return to the divine source whence thou camest.” The priest raised his hands and from them emanated a gentle light and warmth which embraced Zephyrin. Too feeble to grant him relief, still he was consoled by the rite, if only because Aunt Eulalie would see him die as prepared as he could ever be.

Now the priest withdrew from the folds of his black and golden fringed garment, a small, jewel-encrusted pyx.

Crystallized mana, the essence of the Goddess, would pass through and be assimilated by his pain-wracked body for the umpteenth time… for all the good it had done it. Zephyrin had hoped to be healed, once. He had even had water imported from Gaulyria’s healings pools. Then he tried to master his failing body with brute force. Both methods had proved equally fruitless. He was a believer in the Creed nonetheless, but even at this late hour, as his undoing drew nigh, he would not pretend to understand the Goddess’s reasons for creating and making him spring from a long line of kings and warriors, only to wrack his frail body with incapacitating disease. Falling in battle for a glorious cause, certainly; that he would have understood.

But this…? All of his study of his father’s battles; all of his feverish reading of ancient battles, tactics, military heroes… all of it for nothing, and now he would die, having only ever lifted his sword during the course of training exercises and drills—those few his body had permitted him to participate in. Zephyrin vaguely remembered a catechetical lesson from his childhood, to the effect that all in the next life will be made clear. He was certainly curious to find out in the next world what the meaning of his miserable life had been…

The priest withdrew from the silver and gold-gilt pyx a sapphire-colored mana crystal—the last Zephyrin would ever receive. He was too weak to join his palms together in the traditional gesture of acknowledgment. He merely inclined his head instead. As the priest approached, Zephyrin parted his lips weakly, swallowing as the crystal was placed on his tongue…

“It’s the end,” a noble remarked to his companion. He spoke more loudly now than before; at this point, it was a certainty that the ‘Golden Gryphon’ would not hear his words. He was beyond hearing anyone, now. A woman buried her face in her handkerchief, her shoulders convulsing. Several nobles stood awkwardly beside her, conflicted by their smoldering resentment for the Tyrant, fed daily by the reminder of his existence his son’s presence had represented, and their subdued awe at the extinction of Gaulyria’s royal bloodline, the eldest and most illustrious on the continent.

The Gryphon’s death signified the end of an era. Of an era that had vanished as quickly as it had appeared, like a shooting star lighting up, then being consumed by the all-encompassing darkness of night. It had shone, true, but for such short duration that it almost seemed a dream to those great notables, many of whom had grown up in fear of the Gaulyrian madman, and now in their maturity found themselves able to look down from the lofty vantage point of vindicated authority over the deathbed of his son… it turned out legends, the unvoiced thought was shared, were not so immortal as they were made out to be.

The doorknob turned. Someone let out a breathy sound, between a gasp and a sigh. The doctor stepped through the door and quietly closed it behind him.

“It’s over.”

Inside the room, the chaplain consoled Princess Eulalie, sister of Queen Euphemia of Elysia, herself the consort of Travus I, king and ruler of Elysia and the Gaulyrian protectorate. The queen was absent from the royal place; her son’s condition had worsened before she could be summoned from the hot springs of Paz, and so the office of bedside nurse and now, chief mourner, had fallen to her sister. Princess Eulalie gazed on the young man’s peaceful face as the priest said, “Be sure that he died an uncommonly good death for one so young; near the end he resigned himself admirably. I could tell, even when he was unconscious. His features were changed; it was as if he was transfigured after he…”

A handful of Elysian nobility trickled into the room to pay their last respects to the son of the man who had once singlehandedly brought their proud nation to its knees. Some came out of curiosity; others were genuinely moved. All came to see the beginning, and end, of the legend of the Gaulyrian upstart who made the monarchs of Orbe his viceroys, and their kingdoms jewels in his imperial crown. The room’s unreal, haunting atmosphere was memorialized for future generations by an evocative line taken from the posthumously published writings of Duke Augustus of Hoffa, who wrote to a correspondent that, “It was the boy’s deathbed but for the name of his father, whose shadow hung so largely overhead that in beholding the body, one was seized rather by the impression of seeing a stillbirth.”

Thus, in the year 1049 in the Restored Calender, on the fifteenth of August, at the age of twenty-two, the Emperor of Orbe passed away. His reign had lasted seven days, six hours, and fourteen minutes, in the interim between his father’s capitulation and the imposition of the victorious Alliance’s peace agreement, which stipulated that this renunciation must likewise include his descendants in perpetuo. The late Emperor had lived as a political prisoner for seventeen years, three months, and eight days. He was interred no later than three days after his demise; in attendance were his relations and a few friends, as well as secret sympathizers for the Gaulyrian cause; Elysia’s king did not attend, nor did the other monarchs send any envoys of consequence.

In after years, the continent would enjoy an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity. Over time the countries ravaged by Narcissin, the Tyrant, the Bloody Griffin, recovered from years of unrelenting warfare; wounds were healed, countries reformed ties, and the cult of the Kosmæic Church propagated and flourished. Centuries passed, and the memory of Zephyrin, descendant of kings, crown prince of Gaulyria and inheritor to the Iron Throne, faded into obscurity and was ultimately forgotten…

But, before that… the Golden Gryphon spread his wings.