Elephant Pond 19 [END]:

The thousandth and the last (2)

The clash was like a thunderclap. A collision of red and grey-tinted winds that radiated the air with pore raising magic and had enough force that it obliterated the deck between the tribesmen. They strained against each other till it resolved equally in a flash of light and recoil that sent both flying in opposing directions.

Typhon dug his spear into the deck to slow his momentum, till he stopped a few paces ahead of Morgan and Tory while Vigram slammed a massive hand into the deck, killing his speed all at once.

“Gale Fang: A hundred cuts,” said as he swung Tide Reaver. Each swing sent slashes of wind as long as the spear flying through the air and slicing through the deck. Vigram ignited another blood charge on his axe and then it crystalized into a dark red casing before he swatted the slashes away like they were nothing.

“That’s good but I think you can do better. Let yourself loose. Swing that spear like you mean it. I guarantee you won’t win this battle if you don’t. And I’ll show you what Slayers can really do if you promise you can survive it.”

“You’ll regret those words.” Typhon said. He sent another wind slash, this one large enough that it carved a trench down the center of the Black Dagger’s deck as it left Tide Reaver’s blue spear head.

“What did I just say about doing better?” Vigram asked rhetorically. The same crimson light of a blood charge coated his entire body but significantly denser, almost like it had become liquid. Then with a single bound he leaped off the deck and punched a hole through the wind slash as he flew towards Typhon.

There was barely a second for Typhon to register his attack had failed, before the Slayer was moments away from him ramming into him. Leveling his spear, he blasted gusts of wind at Vigram to push him away. It was just enough to slow him but not to stop him from crashing into Typhon with enough force to push him back.

Splinters dug in to Typhon’s heels as he was pushed through the deck, wind and muscles straining against Vigram’s strength and momentum. With considerable effort he managed to stop a few paces in front of his children, the blood from his feet marking just how far he had been forced back. There he made one last push, just enough to get Vigram off of him and sliding away.

“What was that?” Typhon huffed as he fell onto his knees.

“It’s my Slayer ability, the plasma mantle, a shield made from lethality to make big old targets like me unstoppable while I go in for the kill,” Vigram said as he manifested another.

“I don’t like it.” He said staggering onto his feet. “Gale Fang: Wind Roar.”

Condensed air enveloped Typhon before firing at Vigram in a tight cylinder. Vigram streaked through the air like a crimson bullet, pushing against it till his initial leap wasn’t enough and he landed. He dug his feet into the deck and from there he marched through the steam of air step by step, his plasma mantle not only blocking the wind but disrupting it with its own magic as well.

Till the Slayer’s shroud finally expired and the wind sent him hurtling backwards. Typhon had won the battle of endurance. But now Vigram was flying backward, on course to collide with the railings or the front of the Burning Lady, either of them unlikely to kill him and just as sure to incur the guilt of the damage. So Typhon pointed Tide Reaver behind him and released another blast of wind. He flew after the Harcovian, maintaining the wind behind him till he had caught up and was flying across the deck, inches away from Vigram and Typhon brandished his spear. Vigram raised his axe to block the blow but Typhon wasn’t aiming for him. Morgan’s father stabbed Tide Reaver into the deck, rooting himself before he released an updraft like he did to Gellend.

The torrent blasted Vigram upward, slower than Typhon would have liked to avoid harming the Harcovian. Meanwhile his long black hair whipped upwards with the blood from his feet, as Typhon clung to the deck down to the moment Vigram was closer to the pregnant grey clouds above than the ships below. Then he dislodged the spear.

Soaring up after Vigram through the same torrent, Typhon yelled: “Gale Fang: Heavenly Sever!” prompting the Wind Armament’s condensed shape to elongate past the spear’s head to make a long wind blade. And when he was floating below the Harcovian, Vigram summoned another Plasma Mantle as Typhon swung.

Slashing into the Slayer’s shroud, Typhon parted the skies behind him. The wind divorced the clouds, into a valley of blue longer and wider than any Morgan had seen on the earth. Yet Vigram remained unharmed, still clad in red, grinning down devilishly at Typhon.

Morgan couldn’t help but shudder and then again as he watched his father plummet back down to the ship with the Harcovian a ways above him. Typhon shot air below himself to cushion his fall then did so for the Harcovian as well. Both of them landed with soft thuds, completely unharmed.

“How nice of you to cushion my fall, the knees aren’t what they used to be,” Vigram chuckled.

“I need you unharmed before I can kill you, that’s all,” Typhon grumbled.

“I have to say, it’s been fun watching you do it. Trouncing around the line between harm and murder I mean. It takes skill to fight as you have; everything or nothing at all. That being said, if I play around anymore, you might actually win. So I’ll be giving everything now.”

“Tory, Morgan, this is it.” Typhon said looking back at his family or rather what remained of it. “This is the end.”

“Why are you talking like you’re going to lose?” Morgan asked anxiously.

“I’ve told you this countless times before Morgan. There’s no such thing as winning in situations like these, not for me. Not for us. I’ll either win the battle and lose my power or perish and join your mother. Regardless of the result, this is the end.”

Tory sprang up from beside her deceased mother and ran towards her father. Morgan jumped up and grabbed hold of her.

“Please don’t die. You can't leave me too” she whimpered from her brother’s arms.

“Tory, I’ve loved you from the moment I held you in my arms. And now…I won’t be able see the child that I left become a woman or the weapons and armor you’ll make, but I know you’ll be wonderful at both. I left for a long time to find answers and for that I’m truly sorry. I know this is my thousandth apology to the two of you, and is worth very little because of that. But I mean it as much as I did the first time. Morgan, there’s so many things I need to tell you and lessons to instill. There’s only one thing I have time to tell you: from this moment onward you are a man and I’ll need you take your sister home for me.”

Morgan’s father looked away from the Harcovian, one more time, at him and added: “And make sure that you make it home with her.”

Tide Reaver glowed as Typhon swung his spear upward. A looming tidal wave rose from the waters around them, as tall and overbearing as the one he’d made the day their family had been taken, hauling all three pirate ships up its blue face. Morgan hooked the hand holding his mother around one of the railings, allowing him to hold onto his sister with the other hand as the ship tilted, prow up.

“Maya, I won’t be seeing you in paradise, if you return home to get there. Watch over them for me.”

Vigram called on another plasma mantle, the largest of them yet. Typhon hooked his feet in the holes the battle had made as he watched the slayer’s feet push him off of the deck as he leaped. And the second that both of Vigram’s feet were off of the deck, Typhon allowed the wave to fall away.

The lost footing didn’t stop Vigram; the momentum from his leap was more than enough for him to plow right through them. But now he couldn’t dodge as one final gust of wind left Tide Reaver as the Wind Armament faded away. Typhon’s right arm began shaking violently and the spear almost fell out of his hand. So he placed it on his other shoulder and gripped it closer to its head with his left hand, like he was preparing to throw a javelin.

“Tide Reaver: Wind Dragon’s Tantrum!”

The supreme spear had been dispelling gusts in every battle prior to this one but now it was drawing in massive amounts of air from around them, pulling everything towards Typhon. Morgan watched in amazement as a swirling storm wrapped around the spear. The wind had gotten strong enough that it felt like it was pulling air right from their lungs.

Looking over his father’s left shoulder, as the ship tipped forward, Morgan saw what he saw. Vigram was right in front of them, veiled in his plasma mantle like a red sun that Morgan was terrified might be impenetrable. Behind him, halfway up the wave’s slope was Fiore. Her massacre on the Burning Lady had been cut short by Typhon’s wave but the moment they landed, it would continue. And behind her D was barely holding Dagon at bay on Daiah’s Locker at the base of the wave. All of them were perfectly in line with the storm on Typhon’s shoulder. If any of them lost their battles the possibility that their opponents would stop the sea smiths was high. Especially given that after this, Tide Reaver would be no more. Yet there was no resistance in his shoulders as the motion began, no conflict. He would wipe them all away for their sake: allies and all.

“Goodbye, you blasted sea god,” he whispered and threw Tide Reaver at the Slayer’s chest.

The storm around the spear grew as it knifed through the air towards the Slayer. He took it head on, he had no choice but Morgan doubted he would have decided otherwise.

Storm and Slayer raged against each other in midair. The red shroud pushed against Tide Reaver like a flickering liquid flame. However the storm hadn’t stopped expanding even while it spun against Vigram’s plasma mantle and it continued to do so as pierced it and rifled through the Harcovian’s body to the ships behind him.

Those that were too slow to jump ship were shredded into nothing with the upper half of the ship. In the condition D was in he would never make it off the boat in time. And there was no way he could defend against the storm, yet the spongy giant peels were closing around the ship. Dagon was still there with him, trying to hack his way out of D’s peels to leave the ship. The druid raised a hand, and waved at them like he was hailing a friend as tears welled up in his eyes and Typhon’s storm swallowed them.

Where Tide Reaver touched the water at the base of the storm the water swirled into a whirlpool that just continued deeper into the ocean as it swallowed everything within reach. Their half-destroyed ship lurched and creaked as the storm’s winds increased in speed and their descent slowed ever so slightly. White walls of vapor came after, enveloping the ship as the storm matured in seconds, pulling them into its eye.

The feeling of falling returned sharper than ever, in the calm of the eye. Each of their stomachs had risen up into the chests as they gained speed, loose wood and debris from Typhon’s battle flying off. The wave that Morgan’s father had made hadn’t been very tall at all. So they weren’t very high above sea level now, but inside of the storm, they may as well have been above the clouds. The whirlpool had grown into a maelstrom that swirled all the way into the sea until blackness stared back up at them.

Still, there was warm air flowing through the hair and the undeniable beauty of the storm. For all the destruction and lives Typhon had taken, the repose at the centre of it was hard to vilify. From the cloud tops tinted yellow by the sun, to the maelstrom that pierced directly into the lightless belly of the sea, Typhon’s storm bridged the heavens and the depths.

Till the moment shattered under the weight of Typhon’s oath. A pale blue aura, the color of Avitide, materialized around Typhon and began curling off of body, like dye dissolving into a stream. At the moment the last of it had left him, Morgan knew that Tide Reaver had already crumbled at the bottom of the ocean and his father was now an ordinary man.

The calm of the eye was pierced by screeching winds as gargantuan flowing walls of vapor gradually dissipated. Below them the water curling along the sides of the maelstrom had gradually calmed with the storm, so by the time they were moments before landing, the last of it had already subsided into turbulent waves.

The Black Dagger plunged into the ocean. Sea water sloshed onto the deck but the boat righted itself without issues as Morgan saw his father grab at his own face with both hands, fresh tears streaking down his cheeks and pooling in his palms. Morgan had never seen it before, but there was no doubt that this was the Khantani Bane; the beginnings of perpetual guilt. Tory pried herself from Morgan’s arms to get to their father and he allowed her.

In the meantime Morgan stood up and surveyed the situation. There were still living men and women swimming towards the boat among a sea of body. It made sense; those that hadn’t been hit directly had only needed to survive the two minutes it had taken for the Khantani Bane to take effect. But if Morgan took control of the ship and left now they would be stranded. They were in the open ocean between the Southern dull Kingdoms and the Blot, days away from landmasses in either direction. Survival would be unlikely.

Typhon’s sobbing pitched into desperate wails and apologies.

“Tory…” Morgan called, but he didn’t know what he should say.

For most of his life he had known it as divine punishment but now it was just a cruel joke plagued with irony. His father would grow used to the guilt, enough to function normally, but why should his father suffer any guilt at all for killing the people that had imprisoned them for weeks? Even more distressing was the fact that it sound like it hurt him more than the loss of his wife.

A cracking sound echoed up from around them. It was the sound of a weapon hacking into wood.

“Tory! Get over here!” he shouted. The cracking increased in succession as it neared the top and Morgan’s eyes stretched wide in flagrant disbelief as he watched Vigram climb over the railing back on board the ship. After a few futile attempts to drag her father along, Tory finally returned to her brother.

The Slayer’s axe fell out of his left hand, clattering onto the deck as doubled over, chest heaving. His armor was fully intact on his left side but on the right; his arm and most of his shoulder were gone, accompanied with some of his side, flesh and bone exposed to the air. His plasma mantle had saved him from an immediate death, but not much more than that.

Vigram looked back at the wreckage of both Bora and Ransom’s ships floating up to the water’s surface and the few that had jumped overboard before, thrashing in the waters and laughed. It was a deep, hysterical laugh that caused more blood to leak from his wounds, like all of the destruction was the most entertaining thing he could ever see. But when he turned to look at the perpetrator, and victor of their battle, his feral elation dwindled into surprise. “What’s wrong with him?”

He walked towards Typhon.

Fall, Morgan pleaded to himself. No man should be alive, let alone walking in his condition.

Yet the Harcovian got to their father regardless. Typhon was face down sobbing into the floor boards, until Vigram gripped the sea smith by the shoulder and raised him to a seated position.

“Please! Don’t do this, I’ll give you anything!” Morgan yelled.

Then the Harcovian knelt down in front of him, and craned his neck so that they were to eye. “You were good.” Vigram said, ignoring Morgan’s pleading. “You were far too good for some sheltered craftsman,” he shook his head. Morgan was lost for words. What kind of mad man, looked at the person who fatally wounded them, their would-be killer and commended them? Morgan wanted to attribute it to the shock of his fatal wound, but from the moment they’d met him Vigram was already this kind of mad.

Stared at Typhon intently, waiting for his usual snide remark. But Typhon offered nothing but vague apologies to the world. Vigram leaned in closer and searched his eyes for any recognition of what he’d said and when he saw none, he shook him by the shoulder.

“You were born into the wrong tribe and shackled to the wrong god,” Vigram sighed. “…We could have been brothers. We should have been. Regardless, both of us already at the end of our lives,” the slayer said solemnly before standing up and looked down at Typhon as he cried.

“My instructors never told me much about your people growing up. I was never told anything about your culture, your god or anything really, aside from your wasted potential for war. But I hope your people will sing songs of you, like we would.” He wrapped his remaining fist around Typhon’s neck and lifted him up. Even then Typhon didn’t resist. He just sobbed, lost in a stupor of regret and self-loathing, mumbling apologies as his legs came to dangle over the deck.

Vigram gave Morgan’s father one last pitying look before he began squeezing down.

Morgan’s heart hammered in his chest. His leg fidgeted. He wanted to get up, to do something. He needed to, but he knew he couldn’t. And his father’s last wish was that he wouldn’t. So he balled his fists and squeezed them so tightly that his unkempt nails dug into his palms and drew blood. “Stop!” he screamed at the stop of his lungs.

“Quiet boy!” Vigram shouted back as his grip continued to tighten, prompting short gasps from Typhon.

But Morgan couldn’t bare it, so when Morgan spoke again he didn’t shout. He poured every ounce of malice his brain could concoct into his next words, and spoke them so slowly and intently that even Vigram believed them. “I’ll kill you.”

A scowl formed on the Harcovian’s face and he trembled as fresh blood dribbled from his nose down to his chin. “What did you just say? You want to disrespect your father’s wishes a few minutes after he’s sacrificed everything for you?!”

Behind Vigram, Morgan faintly heard wet boots and water hitting the deck but his eyes were locked on the Slayer’s.

“Put him down, right now, or I swear I will kill you.”

He dropped Typhon and stalked towards Morgan, swaying unsteadily. Whatever strength his blood frenzy had extended his life with was waning.

“Step back from the young one, Vigram,” Dagon said from behind him. “We need him alive. All of this will be for nothing if you kill him.”

“You would disrespect your father’s wishes seconds after he paid that price for you?!” Vigram spat.

Dagon cocked his gun and edged closer to the Slayer from behind, still wary. “You have three seconds, leech. Step back right now or else I’ll shorten what little time you have left.”

“Just to see you suffer, I would,” Morgan stated.

“You unworthy little-,” snarled Vigram. He leaped one more time. His remaining hand curled into a fist and the *pop* of gun fire rang out.

Vigram’s jaw smacked against the black floor boards before his body followed. The mountain of a man lay perfectly still. His grey eyes stared up at and through Morgan as the hole between his eyes sizzled.

Stepping over the fresh body, Dagon came closer to them while tears of relief flowed down Morgan’s cheeks as he cradled his father in his arms. The old pirate looked at Maya’s body laid out on the deck, at the destroyed floor boards, the gaping cuts that exposed the lower decks and at Morgan holding his dazed father.

The sea smiths had lost. Typhon had lost his powers and as result, his place in Khantani. And Morgan and Tory had lost their mother. They had gambled everything for their freedom and four sea smiths were now two and they were no better off because of it. The only thing they could do now is see just exactly how bad their buyer would be.

Dagon relaxed his face, letting the creases in his forehead subside with a sigh. “Well, there’s no use in worrying over what’s already done. As the Gully Saints say: we can only fix what can be fixed, and rid ourselves of what can’t,” he said and cocked his pistol, pointed it at Typhon and shot him in the head.

The cleanup was much closer to scavenging. The surviving pirates spent half a day in the water. Roughly twenty men scoured the wreckage and sea floor below for food and supplies and for the injured healthy enough to be saved and rum for those that weren’t.

When the last of the pirates finally boarded the Black Dagger and they’d repaired as much of it as they could, they left the siblings cuffed to the railing for the full three days and nights that it took to cross the final span of ocean. For three days they were left exposed; to burn in the sun, to be soaked in the rain and to endure jeering and beatings, which Dagon unenthusiastically denounced all but the most serious of them.

Morgan had shielded his little sister from most of it with his own back, so when they neared Korenth’s harbor, he required the most ‘dressing up’. They took the clothes he had worn since they’d left Khantani and washed him; scrubbing away dirt, rubbing lotions on his burned chest, various bruises and the imprints that the manacles had left on his wrists.

By the end Morgan was wearing brown pants and a cream white cotton shirt a size too big. The shirt was riddled with blotches of brown that made Morgan suspect that its original owner was no longer with them. Tory was given a woman’s blouse poorly stitched to fit her nor could they find shoes small enough. It was like the pirates had forgotten the sea smiths were meant to be sold up to when they had seen the Korenth’s shore and castles in the distance.

“You shouldn’t have shot the mother.” Dagon said as they waited in one of the warehouses at the harbor. Morgan didn’t know where they were or even what color the outside of the warehouse was painted. The pirates had had hidden the sea smiths in a privately hired carriage that had been generously tipped upon arrival and covered their heads with sacks before they left it.

“I was aiming for their son. Besides, I didn’t think I had a choice. Typhon was going to win. And if he did, all four of them would have sailed away never to be seen again. So I gave the slayer a helping hand.”

“And now the mother and the father are dead.”

“Better them than us.”

Four armor clad men entered the room from another door to their right, opposing the one that they had entered from, escorting a young woman wearing a floral green silk dress. She had a silver circlet over her scrutinizing hazel eyes, golden brown hair combed into a tight bun and decorated with a jade hairclip above her right ear.

It was her, the woman who had started all of this.

For weeks he had dreaded this moment, loathed it and anticipated it with terror. Up to four days ago, he would have given almost anything to not be where he was now, until he had. Now, neither her presence nor the end of their freedom beckoned any grief. Over the last three days he’d spent all of it. He couldn’t fathom the fear he was supposed to be inclined to feel, that he was sure he should have. So he didn’t.

“There really are only two of them left,” the woman frowned as she looked at Morgan and Tory, “When I received the letter you sent, I assumed it was your attempt at some ploy to steal them for yourselves, or a bad joke at best. What happened?”

“We ran into a bit of trouble.” answered Dagon, “Their father led a rebellion with help from one of the Plain-walkers we picked up earlier. We fought, people died, and those that survived are here now.”

“You told me there would be no issues once you captured them alive. So why did barely a third of you return on a single ship? I’ll need quite a bit more details on how the men I spent several large fortunes on were almost annihilated by a sea smith, a Plain-walker and some common criminals!”

“Fiore is assisting our men with trading the remaining prisoners in for the bounties, as we speak. Other than that; Vigram, Gellend and most of our men are all dead.”

“It’s not as simple as he’s putting it,” added Ransom. “We couldn’t have possibly known that the sea smith would find a way to get his weapon again and especially not that he would be strong enough to kill a slayer and half of our men.”

“So you were just unlucky, done in by the odds? Perhaps both of you are just incompetent!” she jeered. Ransom practically snarled at her but she didn’t even warrant it with a response. “The agreed price for two sea smiths will be delivered to your ship. However, I won’t be giving you any compensation for your own failures.”

Ransom glowered at her, but nothing more, as the pirates got up and left without another word from either of them. It was an oddly submissive response from the seemingly fearless men. It reminded Morgan of the authority Dagon himself had lorded over Bora and Ransom when he claimed the Murk Blade for his own. His word had been final then just as hers was now.

“Dagon!” Morgan called before the door closed behind the pirates. Dagon didn’t answer but Morgan hadn’t heard the door shut behind them either.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be here or how long it will take to get to you. A year, three or half my lifetime, it won’t matter. I swear I'll surpass my and find you in whatever hole you've crawled back into. And when I do you’ll be free to call on a thousand Slayers but it won’t matter. I will slaughter you all. You, and the cowardly rat next to you.”

The door thud closed and the shuffling of boots followed.

“Cold words from a sea smith,” the woman commented. “Take them in through the long way and cuff them to be safe. I’ll rejoin you at the castle,” she motioned at two of her guards as she left, “And be particularly careful with the older one.”

A guard approached each of them and clasped white stone bands around their wrists that fused together where they touched. The others proceeded to escort the royal back through the door they came, and the pair that remained with them stuffed black sacks over their heads and pulled them up to a stand. From there they walked for several minutes through cold and wet spaces and up and down countless flights of stairs, all in complete silence.

A castle and her vast riches confirmed she was a royal just like the pirate Midge had said. But her identity was still a mystery.

When the sacks were finally taken off of the siblings’ heads, they were standing at the top of a set of white marble steps laced with golden veins. Standing in front of them was their buyer; arms folded and just as visibly displeased as before, a pair of stone double doors behind her.

The doors were fashioned out of a rather unremarkable grey stone, but inlaid with the gems Morgan knew were typically precious to dull men like sapphires and emerald and an assortment of other. Some of which that were rare even among the tribesmen of the Knife Isles. They were jewels that most would only see on a handful of occasions in their lives if at all and here it was decorating a door.

She gave each of them another look over and then scoffed derisively. The woman’s escorting guards pushed the doors open with notable effort and she led them into a banquet hall.

Dull men and women sat around long tables with swollen bellies straining against finely embroidered clothing, talking and laughing with full mouths as they gorged themselves on spreads of meats, fruit, pies and heaps of other foods unfamiliar to Morgan. Over their heads chandeliers adorned with translucent jewels shaped into droplets with colorful glazes along their edges; like dew drops catching the light of an ever shifting rainbow. The walls had paintings of ships braving dark seas, sprawling vistas and other of exotic locations, including those that could only have been inspired by isles or painted to capture their likeness.

In spite of them all of the opulence, it was the older man sitting at the farthest end of the largest table, that had caught Morgan’s eye. He wore a plain iron crown on his head of long pale-blonde hair that rested on his lap, and white stubble on a face that had likely seen at least four decades come and go. His smile revealed teeth lightly stained red, a probable symptom of a fondness for the spirits spilling from his goblet as boisterous and unbridled laughter shook his body.

Morgan was sure. He was the King, the Heathen of Stone and exactly the man that the rumors had made him out to be. He didn’t have the vexed expression and hostility his daughter sported perpetually. Instead he had a laid back nature that Morgan could envision yielding the horrors that had been rumored to occur within their kingdom, through lax leadership alone. Standing beside him but significantly more composed and infinitely more uninterested with the feast was a large man in golden armor holding a black scabbard half his size and staring at them as they entered.

For an uncomfortable moment Morgan wondered if they had thrown a feast to celebrate their capture but the way in which they gradually turned to stare at him and his sister, with confusion and intrigue, told otherwise.

“Good evening Father, and other esteemed royals of our realm,” the woman greeted with a slight bow. “I have them,” she said gesturing behind herself. “I have captured sea smiths.”

The King’s laughter caught in his throat as his looked at his daughter and took a few seconds to comprehend what she’d said. Then his brown eyes came to rest on them. “That’s them? They are sea smiths?”

“Yes, your majesty. I had pirates and Harcovians take them directly from Khantani’s waters,” she said while passively pulling on a loose thread on her sleeve.

“And getting them was what you spent all of that money on?” he inquired.

She bit her lip and nodded.

“Well, it’s a pleasure to finally meet sea smiths!” he laughed and others applauded. “Get those cuffs off of them and introduce us properly,”

“My apologies, father.” Gwen said meekly and undid their stone bindings herself. “I am Gwen the Mantle of Korenth. I am the King’s first advisor and the Korenth’s highest diplomat and treasurer. The gentleman on my father’s left is the Scepter; the sovereign sword and leader of our armies. And his majesty,” she said pointing to the blonde man, “is King Luvia, the crown of Korenth.”

The man Gwen had referred to as the Scepter nodded his head while King Luvia offered a small smile as he stared, captivated by their presence.

“And they are Morgan and Tory.”

“Look at them. They are…just...children. ” the King said. He had a raspy voice and slurred one or two words but his tone conveyed a level of empathy that was more prominent than either. “Where are their parents? Do they know they’re here?”

“We caught them as well….but they resisted just past the Blot, so they had to be killed.”

“A travesty!” he bellowed. King Luvia sat forward and spoke directly to Tory and Morgan, the first person in the room to actually acknowledge that they were actually there. “You’re just two orphaned children, plucked like fish from the little pond you called home and hauled around by ruthless pirates.” He rose from his seat and walked towards them, diamond bracelets clinking against the pearls on his wrists as he opened his arms to them like an estranged parent demanding remission.

“What has happened to you is truly a tragedy. I can see the toll it has taken on you, the havoc that your experiences have wrought on your young hearts. Nevertheless…..I can’t exactly turn away a present from my daughter,” he laughed.

Morgan took a step closer, prompting the Scepter to edge forward as well, then Morgan met King Luvia's gaze and said: “If you value your life, you should reconsider that.”

Elephant Pond

END