~ 38 ~

Doing What We Must and Neglecting All That Makes a Life

[Back to the present: whenever that may be.]

Zinnine wiped his face, dismounted his horse, and fell to the ground, collapsing onto his knees. He remained prone. Astria leaned forward... but couldn't move her feet.

The king inhaled heavily through his mouth, pushing against the ground, coming to stand.

"Life feels like a dream when you're older," Zinnine said upon shuffling next to his horse, setting a hand on its flank. "Things cease to feel real. You're always so tired. It always feels like you will wake up soon. But not everyone who comes to reach this age sees it the same."

He shambled across the horse's side, who neighed, rubbing its head against his, walking with the king's step. Zinnine looked over at his daughter. "I was never much of a father to you. You always seemed to be the one I most put at a distance. I just left you to your own devices. I trusted your care into the hands of others."

Zinnine struggled a step closer to his daughter, and she quickly swept a foot back.

"You were fond of your uncle. He... he was a good man. Skilled and talented, empathetic and empowering. There was a natural charm to him." Zinnine shook his head, still shambling down the hill between us and the village's gates. "He had the makings of a king in him. Someone both good and special. It should have been him to return from the Mainland. I have failed in even being his living shadow."

Astria's mouth opened, but she did not speak.

"You know how he died," the king finally asked, "do you not?"

Astria nodded, and finally found words. "It was during your Mainland conquest of the West. You were trying to clear and claim land so the rest of our kind could leave this island to venture into something bigger." She cleared her throat, stepping forward upon connecting on something common between them. "The two of you were captured by the enemy. You never said who they were. Most of the men you rode with that day died—killed by each other, some killed by uncle and you."

The old man stopped walking as the memory locked him into place. It gripped him in pain, and he fell against his horse. Holding its saddle tightly he looked up to the sky, to the twinkling stars that all did not seem real. "Your uncle killed a few that day. We were pitted against each other in a stadium. Two who refused to fight—died together."

Zinnine exhaled. "It seemed like we were all to die, fighting or not, by their hands. But when death makes you a coward, one will abandon the virtues they've built their life upon. Fighting shamelessly to kill your brother in arms—only to be mocked for it and killed after that."

His head shook. "They wanted to reduce our people and show the world what our kind was like beneath the skin. I was such a coward that fought to live. Even on the battlefield, death seemed like a distant prospect. The power generated in our bloodline aided with that fact. The only man I ever feared on the field was your uncle."

Zinnine looked back to his daughter, but he did not move this time. "He killed only those who were fine with death or had less to live for than himself. He fought them honestly, fairly, and bravely. He respected them to their dying breaths and helped them pass over. He did not fight to live, but to ensure these same people did not come to our homes, here, once we were through."

Zinnine fell, sitting collapsed on the ground. His elbows rested on his legs, and his hands claimed his face. "Then it came to a battle against him and me, and only the victor would be allowed to leave. The victor who would go home to speak of all the fathers, husbands, and brothers he murdered—and the threat that loomed on the horizon. Such wicked, wicked creatures.”

He curled his legs against his chest. "But the last match was between the two of us. The strongest would live, and the weakest would die. I was not yet ready to accept fate at that moment."

"So you killed him," Astria answered. "Used whatever unnatural strength you had to make sure you lived."

Zinnine weakly waved a hand. "No such thing, my dear Astria. I was no match for my brother, even though I had been the one blessed with the magic imbued in our family's bloodline." Then his hand slapped against the ground. "I never bested your uncle. Not when it came to battle or a way with words. Not when it came to attention and approval, which he easily earned from our father, who wished for him to be the next king."

His horse lowered its head, offering its neck as a railing, which Zinnine took with a hand. He rose with the horse's rise. "Even in my inferiority, I never despised him, for he always treated me so sweetly. No matter who you were, what kind of person you were, even our enemy respected him at the time."

Astria stepped closer to her father, tentatively reaching out a hand. "I-I... d-don't get it, then. How did you... why did you..."

The old man chuckled with a show of degrading teeth. "Ha! Tough askin' your father why he was the one to live, ain't it?" His chuckles died down. "Don't worry. I'd rather be dead and your uncle, much alive. I think the world would have preferred it too."

"Y-You... shouldn't be saying things like that," Astria couldn't help but say.

"I know. Much good those sentiments end up doing after the fact." The old man had missed the point, or maybe he refused to mention it. "But like I said, your uncle was a good man. He loved you. I loved all of my kids. Never had any of his own. Much less a woman to care for him in the way he deserved. He was always keen on those things happening later in life—once our kingdom was in a better state for all of us."

The king finally shambled before his daughter, now only a step away, his hunch making him shorter. Astria looked confused in looking down at the once great man. That she was the tall, powerful one. That she was here of her own independence, out of choice.

His will was no longer forced on her. She was free to choose her own reactions to things. Maybe that's what made the moment stronger. The fact that she could say and do whatever she wanted, not confined to a set position.

"When it came time for us to do battle, your uncle and I fought, and he easily won ground," the old man continued the story. "But then he let up. His blocks became weaker. His attacks were slower. It appeared as exhaustion to any watching eye—but it wasn't. He was letting me win. Right to the moment that, once I had thrust my sword, he had twisted his heart into my incoming blade. The fight was over then."

Zinnine looked at the ground. "Oh, how it was over. He didn't speak. Just lay in my lap with a smile. I'd asked him why he'd done such a thing. But he kept smiling. And it stayed on him even after he sank into death."

The king lifted his head and looked to his princess, the roles they were, but not the people they existed as underneath it. "Word reached that I had defeated him. I was to be escorted outward, either for freedom or execution. Rage built inside of me. Enough for me to rip apart my guards—even though I would be dead for sure."

The king lifted his hand next, and the red glow continued around it, pulsating. The princess—looking at her hand—raised it the same, alighting it in a golden glow. Both held up opposite hands, lighting the space between and around them.

"After fighting my way through, I came upon a cavern, and within it, the enemy had captured and housed a Red Dragon. Like you probably experienced, its essence called to me, and I took it into me. I'd seen it in passing, and the transferring of power blew away the guards. Lava replaced my blood, and the next time I blinked, I was standing over a hill, seeing a smoky landscape, with patches burned and caved-in."

Both of them lowered their hands.

"I returned to our camp and continued the conquest in rage, preferring to be a beast instead of a man. There was nothing I could do about your uncle. No thinking or feeling could change anything. But channelling the rage from that, rage at both the enemy and myself, into a power that would win us the war—that seemed like the only right thing to do."

"So it takes over you? This power?" Astria ceased the magic from her hand.

"It only amplifies and channels whatever you have," her father answered simply. "Once I was done with the war, I was still as filled with rage as I was before. It was self-generating energy, your uncle's death. In our sweep of the land, we had claimed it for ourselves. But I was forced to face myself then."

Astria looked down at herself, seeing beyond her own body as though it were her in the story.

"Our men had lost a leader and wound up with me instead; a man would fight like a beast to win—so it goes with my murder of your uncle. They no longer had someone to look up to or feel connected to—only one who cleared the path ahead. Many couldn't keep with my pace; the ones seeking a better life on the Mainland... only ended up dying there."

"That's the reason you came back?" Astria asked. "But I thought the story was that you were defeated. That we came back to this island out of weakness."

"Do not confuse safety with weakness," her father answered. "We'd gone to that land to find a better place for us, and when the people you did it for are now no more, what is the purpose of staying there? Even if we had brought everyone over, what good would it do to live in constant fear of attack? How would daily life suffer if you knew today could be your last? The first half of our bloodline died for noble causes. The second half, our half, wanted to live."

Zinnine didn't look away this time. "Staying there meant constant fighting and death. That I would become more of a beast than I would be a man. So even in victory, we retreated. Beaten, shameful men who disgraced those back home. My father, king at the time, showed dismay that I was the one to return home. He welcomed me back but more easily than others would have liked."

Then Zinnine offered his hand—not all the way, but enough for the princess if she so chose to take it.

"Which is why I chose to disown you in front of all."