The King's private study was attached to his chambers by a large arched doorway. Within he had placed all his papers, letters, seals, and not a few weapons of various types. The walls were covered in maps of the nation, ancient and modern. The stray paper and parchment sat away from its peers, and old texts were stacked unceremoniously in corners and on chairs rather than their proper places on the shelves. There, in a large wooden chair with burgundy upholstery, with a Lion emblazoned in silver stitching upon the back, sat the King poring over an old text when Mareth approached.

  "What consumes you, my King?" Mareth said, his voice the rattling of worn bones.

  "Do not toy with me, Seer." The king sighed, keeping his back to the old man as he continued to pour over the text in front of him, "It is your task or revelations, whatever you wish to name it that consumes me."

  "So, you have been thinking of it. Here I thought you were an idler, that it all had truly fallen on deaf ears."

  "Mareth, you have been in this castle for fourteen generations of my family. You have trained us, raised us, guided, and infuriated us all at once. My father never knew who or what you were, and he didn't seem to care. All he knew was that your counsel kept us strong, and your guidance seemed to align with the good of the Kingdom. That was enough for him..."

  "Aye, it was, Theon. What troubles you? Have you learned not to trust your old teacher?"

  "It was enough for all my forebearers apparently..." The king slammed the book shut, leaned back and swung his chair to face Mareth, the spine of the text read The Annals of the Kings: Volume III. "In all the Annals we have here collected, only three of my kin ever wrote about questions concerning you. Concerning your heritage, your race, your make, your motives, and your goals. After Theon I, his son called into question your guidance. He thought you a dangerous entity, possibly lying in wait to use this kingdom for some dire purpose. Yet he followed your instructions, and an entire race of men were wiped from the face of the earth. He committed genocide at your behest."

  "And that genocide purchased a lasting peace."

  "Sure, the Kingdom was whole, but at what cost? The Kriegan people were astoundingly strong, and had a history of great art, science, and culture. Now they are mere ghosts upon the continent, and our military stronghold is built on the bones of their civilization."

  "They would never have bent the knee."

  "How could you possibly know that? Mareth, I once asked you in my youth who you were. You claimed to be in service to Elohei Shir. That much I was able to salvage from the wreckage of my memories. You have knowledge of gods and their aspects, and you are, by all accounts, immortal. What am I to think? Why has no son of my fathers, for nearly 400 years, even bothered to question you or your origins."

  "There was another who did, My King." Mareth's voice was soft, almost sad in its tones.

  "Yes. I remember. I remember all too well."

  "What troubles you truly, my King? My origins are not that which I may freely discuss."

  "You trouble me, Mareth. I have been dreaming of our lessons, of my ascension, of days long since laid to rest. Do you remember when..."

  #

  Mareth led the young Prince Theon IV to the Crypts behind the castle. Statues of former kings lined the walk on the right, their queens on the left. As he looked upon the faces of his ancestors, he felt dwarfed. Though he was taller than his father, almost as tall as Theon I, he was told, Theo felt insignificant, the youngest of three, yet he was to be king. His sister had passed in youth, taken by fever, and his brother was born without the song, an exceptional rarity for those within the line, but becoming more common in the last few generations. That left him, little Theo with the hard truth; he would be King.

  "You must attune the Peacebringer" Mareth had said.

  "Where is my father?"

  "He is not well, but come, it must be done."

  Theo followed through the castle hallways, out into this memorial to the line of Kings, down the road that led a thousand years into the past. He worried, his thoughts roaming, his heart pounding in his chest. He was a man, twenty-two winters, nigh his twenty-third, but he was afraid. He felt like he was being led to the gallows.

  "Sage. What shall I face in the Keening?" Theo asked, his voice betraying his fear.

  "Truth, my dear boy. You will face Truth as hard as Adamant. Please follow, we are almost there."

  Mareth led him to the very end of the row where stood the statue of King Theon I, The Lion of the West, Firstborn among the Gods. The statue stood in splendor. The carving depicted his ancestor in battle armour, one shoulder was the whole head of a lion carved in the stone. The breastplate bore intricate arcane marks around its edges but was otherwise blank, functional yet beautiful. Both hands rose heavenward lifting a blade of stone, the Peacebringer's poor replica, first of the Adamant blades forged for the King's hand alone.

  Six realms hewn from the living world by men,

  Six races distinct in their mortal ken

  Six peoples alive with vain hopes and dreams

  Six nations destroying each other with schemes

  One nation above the rest made holy

  Given a gift many call a folly

  The Song given unto Theon the First,

  A gift of the Builders, some call a curse,

  Imbued him with power rivaling gods,

  Embittered six kingdoms, set them at odds.

  Yet, peace was the aim of Theon's great heart,

  So he sang, imbued with passion his art,

  And fired true the creator's arrow

  Crafting a blade, enemies to harrow,

  By its power and his also combined,

  The wretched dross of the world was refined.

  Not in his hand, but the hand of his son

  all six nations of men were brought to One.

  Soon all battle, all vain bloodshed would cease,

  Ever since True Kings wield Bringer of Peace.

  "I know all of this, Mareth. I know the Histories." Theo said, agitated at a perceived insult.

  "No, my young Prince, you do not. But you will." As Mareth spoke he reached out, touched the statue and muttered something in a language that Theo had never heard. At his touch the statue's base began to creak and groan. It shifted back the full length of a man and revealed a staircase that drove itself into the heart of the earth beneath the graveyard.

  "Come" was all that Mareth said, and so the King-to-be followed into the darkness.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The corridor was lined with dead braziers, their fires flashing into burning blue against the stone walls of the crypt as Mareth strode past. There was an eerie calm, as if the very stone held its breath, and at any moment there might be a great inhalation and life would return in dreadful force. It wasn't the dead he feared, but rather, that the past was not dead at all.

  "How right you are, young prince. It is never dead, never truly. Death is a trickster, after all, a formless shade taking shape as he is wont to do, doing his grim duty, though once not so grim at all," Mareth spoke. His voice ricocheted off the walls and turned on itself spawning quieter children that played their way to stilted silence.

  "Can you not do that, Mareth" the man, whose voice whispered like a frightened young one, said. "Why must you read people so?"

  "Apologies," was all he said, and they pressed on down the path.

  The walls were smooth stone to the ceiling which was half again as tall as an average man. There appeared no indents or culverts to house bodies along the walls, only slight join marks between larger fifty-pace sections. The corridor was broad, three arm spans at least. The two walked for five full sections before approaching a massive metal door which had ten bars lengthwise with three larger vertical bars overlapping to create multiple cross patterns.

  "Is that, what I think it is?" Theon's jaw gaped dumbly looking at the colossal gate.

  "Aye, it is..."

  "But..." Theon could barely believe what he was seeing. "But how? No one could do such shaping, no mortal anyway."

  "No mortal did. The Death Gate was created by an Aspect, a timeless of immense power. It is, in a sense, the barrier between worlds. But only in a sense."

  "But it's solid Adamantine!"

  "Aye, for anything less would not keep them locked inside..."

  "Who, or what, requires such a gate?"

  "Your forbearers of course. Who else?"

  And with the slightest touch of Mareth's hand the bars seemed to veer and twist out of sight, as if being melted, and were then pulled into the face of the door, leaving only a smooth surface with a single vertical join where it might be opened.

  The door opened in utter silence to reveal a deep darkness within. The door itself seemed subsumed by the palpable blackness. Mareth set his hand into the darkness. It disappeared in the void before them, and appeared to push. As he did so his arm and upper body began to move through the wall of darkness, and he stepped forward saying, "Come, Would-be King. The time of your keening has arrived." And then he was gone.

  Theon stared long at the inky portal before him. There was nothing of the hubris of his youth to stand against this. Everything about its make and cast appeared otherworldly. From that country no traveler returns, and yet he was bidden to enter the very bowels of the abyss. There rose in him a dragon of desire, spreading its wings in preparation of flight from this place. It meant to draw him to anywhere but here, into the light of the sun above, the freedom of irresponsibility, the sloughing off of all command and requirement.

  "No." Theon's voice rang hollow in that deathly tomb, but still he repeated it. "No. I will not flee. I will not run to some soft place of comfort and there waste away in disuse in a so-called life worse than death. I will rise to the occasion and make my enemy defeat me rather than defeat myself." With these words, the dragon rising in him settled, its vain desires shackled to an iron will. "What will be, will be. Nothing more and nothing less." And with that the king-to-be shoved his way through the wall of darkness.

  Theon could see his breath in the space beyond. He stood upon what seemed like a vast abyss. Strewn across the night flooring were what looked like stars at great distances. By all accounts he stood on nothing at all, merely hovering in a colossal cosmos. The light here was suffused with energy, and he felt himself stronger than he'd ever been, but at the same time hollow, as if the whole of his meagre existence, in comparison to this massive expanse was as less than nothing, a negative impact upon an otherwise beautiful and positive universe.

  Hovering there, suspended in what fashion he knew not, were thirteen great tombs. Each was the size of two men in length and a man's height in width. Theon strode amongst them, his eyes drawn to the effigies carved into the face of the stone. Each was made of marble inlaid with platinum, the contrast of white and silver casting starlight in dancing escapade off their perfectly crafted forms. Six sarcophagi sat on his left and another six on his right, while one, one stood larger in the center, it's effigy not carved into the face, but rather seated upon a giant throne which sat atop it.

  The throne was of excellent craftsmanship, its lion statues and stairs an exact copy to the throne in his own castle, though made of obsidian. Upon it, the effigy of Jonah II, sat, seemingly entranced, cradling a bastard sword crafted of Adamantine, the sword itself, not some copy as of the Peacebringer in the hand of Theon I's statue at the entrance to the crypt.

  Mareth was nowhere to be seen, his very existence extinguished in this place that seemed beyond time and space. As theon walked forward, drawn toward the centermost coffin, he felt as though the journey would last forever. Each step stretched to infinity, stars swirling around him, constellations rising, falling, and rising anew in rapid succession. As he continued on, the twelve regular crypts were shunted away from him as if by some explosion in all directions, and the world turned in upon itself, leaving him in a whirling of dying stars before, all at once, he arrived at the base of the Obsidian Throne, unarmed, unarmoured, and alone. Above and below him were constellations he did not recognize, and he felt the wrathful gaze of alien stars and he trembled.

  The laughter that broke out then in that distant world was steeped in a malice of ancient, inhuman form. It vibrated the Obsidian Throne and resounded through the hollow ken of all existence, before it was consumed in a deep breath preceding words, "Another would-be king, I see. How very, thoughtful, of Mareth to bring me fresh meat." Here there was a sound of violent, nasal, inhalation, and Theon saw the effigy atop the throne move, its head tossed back to sniff the air around it.

  "You smell so... vibrant! Ruby? Mmm, I have not tasted of a Ruby Soul. There has not been another since me. I wonder what its..." he smacked his lips punctuated by closing his eyes and licking his upper gums, "quality will be." The effigy stood, skeletal, his skin the colour of alabaster, and his eyes were pools of sable night, with no light at all. In those eyes was the epicenter of nothingness, a deep chasm of lost emotion. All his hair, what was left, was wispy, and white. A barely visible beard clung like stubborn spiderwebs to his chin. As he stood, he lifted the large blade which he had been cradling and, with a simple flick of his wrist, tossed it onto his shoulder so that the flat of the blade rested on the bony blade of his shoulder.

  Theon IV, Prince of Poets, stood paralyzed. The movements, and this man's intonation were mesmeric. The alien landscape, the all too familiar, yet twisted throne served to stun the young man into sickened silence.

  "You are not armed, young one?" The words were as a cackle in the effigy's throat, "did he not prepare you for the keening?"

  Silence grew around the would-be King.

  "Ah, he did not tell you anything at all. You've been sent as a sacrifice to the old gods, son of my sons, to the Soulrent King. After all, I can't be killed, and Peacebringer still treats me as a master."

  Theon's voice broke out, his hesitation shattered by realization, "King Jonah II, Eighth in the Line of Song Lords, betrayed of your Knights Adamant, and killed by assassins of your house. All lies, it seems."

  Manic laughter erupted from Jonah's form, shaking the unseen firmament of the void landscape in which they stood. He laughed long and deep, as if laughter was all that ever was. In the gaping maw of his laughter, Theon's blood turned molten, burning a core of rage through his heart. He leapt upon the steps of the throne to engage the ancient king of the land, closing the distance between them in a flash that caught Jonah well off guard. Theon punched Jonah's left wrist where it gripped the bastard sword and sent the blade flying off into the mirrored spectacle of starlit spectres, and he closed with the ancient one in hand-to-hand combat.

  The cry of surprise from Jonah seemed out of place, the void of his eyes punctuated with wrathful stars, as he drove his bony knee upward into Theon's ribcage, cracking ribs with the force. Bearing the pain, Theon dropped to a knee, and grabbed the old king behind both legs and drove his shoulder forward, sending Jonah back in a violent crash against the obsidian steps. Despite their difference in size, Jonah's strength was baffling, so far above that of any so thin, but the Prince had lived for just a moment like this.

  The whole of his perception was bent upon his training. He moved to sit on top of Jonah, using his weight and violence of action to rain heavy, thudding blows on the now seemingly defenseless man beneath him. With each strike, the back of Jonah's head battered away bits of obsidian in chunks from the steps, sending blackened shards hurtling into the starry nightmare around them. And then his laughing began again, this time maddened in its derision. Each blow from Theon was more brutal than the last, but the laughing would not cease, its lunatic expostulation driving Theon to greater heights of rage

  Between peals of laughter and bloody blows were the half-enunciated words, "Ruby Soul! Ruby soul! I wonder how it tastes."

  Another blow shattered a step, and Jonah's head began to be forced into the space underneath, the neck contorting at an impossible angle with each new strike, but the words wouldn't stop.

  "DELICIOUS." At the final cry, Jonah took advantage of timing between blows that came in perfect metronomic, tempo to dodge out of the way and drive his head forward past Theon's swinging arms, to pull him into an embrace which he culminated with a savage bite to the right side of Theon's neck. The Prince howled like a predator caught in a trap, the pain searing his conscious mind with vivid clarity in opposition to his mindless rage. A weapon! What I wouldn't give for a weapon.

  The voice that then spoke inside his head was almost childlike, its intonations and utterance of an ethereal, yet desperately cheery quality, And what would you use a weapon for?

  To end this wretched creature.

  To murder you mean?

  To bring about a rest.

  For you alone?

  Nay, for us both. To bring this hell to peace.

  As you wish.

  The creature continued to hold on, his tongue lapping up the Prince's blood, trying to suck him dry, reveling in his pain, but Theon could no longer feel it. Instead, he noticed another sensation, the firm grip of a hilt in his right hand, its slight center bulge and indexing perfect in his hand. He wrenched backward and stood, ripping the ancient king's fangs from his throat and sending blood in a dreadful spray as he raised the Sword high above his head, turned it upside down, gripped it with both hands and drove it downward into Jonah's chest right where his heart ought to be.

  The explosion of light sent Theon rocketing backward at impossible speed, though he kept his grip on the Peacebringer as he went, the child's voice resonating in his head, A temporary peace, but I find you worthy, friend.