Chapter Text
The Lady gazes gently at the twinkling orbs, little sparklettes of new-born light that fill the inky depths below her. She is the garden keeper just as much as she is the garden-enjoyer.
She admires the beautiful, blossoming concepts on the vines of the universe and is the only being with a strong enough will to admit the blemishes, the crooked stems in history, the imperfectness evident in the petals of reality. She embraces it, and she makes changes. Nobody can replace her, and nobody would ever try.
A gentle noise rustles from behind. She closes her eyes and breaths in, inhaling the musky fragrance of moist petrichor and rotting bark.
“Young one,” she breathes out, a tiny whisper into the depths.
The movement behind her stills, and a quiet chuckle escapes the throat of the god floating behind. He’d been caught.
“They now call me Dream, you know. The dreams that men chase after, the fantasy everybody yearns for. The imaginary reality that all animals hunt after. The Dreamer… The Hunter... The Observer… I am older than most.”
“And I, older still. Macabre, Moira, Death, the End. The one who paints on the sky’s canvas, the one who keeps the circle turning. The wild queen and the fair lady, she who closes the books.” The last word left her lips as a soft, lilting chirp. The current of life rippled below her, as dark as the galaxies adorning the heavens.
Arching boughs of time and tales were pushed to the side, as the Dreamer made his way to her side. She pushed away her grievances and turned to smile at him. The moon laid itself down on its side to become the embodiment of her curved lips. Her eyes were suns, or black holes. Dizzying brightness or darkness.
The tall green figure that towered above her, yet she was not afraid. “You are still young, and will always just be young, to me.” She gently reached out through the mist that obscured the god’s face, pushing past the folds of his cloak and tapping his chin. “You have still to learn of Humility, young one.”
The Dreamer crinkled his nose and shivered under her touch. The Lady’s fingers were soft as spider silk, yet colder than those of a frozen corpse’s. An intricate charcoal veil obscured her cheeks. It was an accessory she had taken to wearing, following the death of her companion. Lush ebony locks tumbled around her shoulders, floated around her, swimming in the liquidish void they lived in. Golden threads of Birth, black threads of Death, red threads of Malice and white threads of Empathy, all woven to form the laced patterns of her robes.
“How can you act so unperturbed in my presence?” the Dreamer wondered out aloud. “I radiate an aura of dominance, one such that most turn away or are unable to stare me in the eyes.”
The goddess raised her head. He couldn’t see it, yet he could feel her pupils peering at him through her veil. Peering at him through his obscuring mist, straight into his own blank, milky orbs. He flinched.
She hummed. “A green robe, an axe that you use to maintain universal order. An imposing voice and a mist, a mask, whichever you choose to hide your own blindness and insecurities from others. The brooch on your chest is a valuable spoil, an eye from one of the first dragons, a tool that shows you all that happens in the worlds below. I see through all, little one. But I am also older than most.”
She turned and strolled gently through the void. All around them were the twinkling stars. Some sparkled blue, others yellow or just white. He leapt into the current, willing the dark voidal matter to push him forward, propelling him to the Lady. The stars bent and leapt down, forming a bridge beneath her soles.
“I need to talk to you,” the god insisted, floating alongside her.
She hummed. “There is no need to ask. I am in no hurry. Time will not die anytime soon.”
“I have noticed your absence. You are the Queen. Taking leave from your duties is not a privilege you have, not a right you own, my Lady.”
The Lady’s eyes flashed. “I have been absent from my duties? Have I not been monitoring the death wave carefully? Have I not been severing the strings of Destiny with my own dagger of starlight, just as I have been fated to do?”
The Dreamer twirled the rod of his weapon between his fingers, frowning behind the mist around his head. “I meant something else. What is to become of the duties that have fallen on you, the Queen, after Life faded away?”
Something snapped.
There was a quake that rippled across the realms, one of bitterness and cold despair. The stars felt it, and they whimpered in their shells.
The Lady stopped in her tracks, as still as Death could be.
The Dreamer continued, his boldness edging him foreward. “No new life was formed. No new developments in the worlds below us, and the realms are growing stale. Life used to balance Death. Now, it is your role to brighten the stars and then put them out.” He paused and raised his axe solemnly, pointing it at her. “You have been bottling up your grief, Madame. But so long as you exist, the duty falls on you,” he accused gently, voice flowing swiftly like a quiet little creak.
“I mean, your garden! The basis of life and death and animals and fungi, the origin of concepts and the backbone of reality… and,” he swept a skeletal arm across the landscape, “everything is slowly… dying.”
She blinks, and her eyes roam swiftly across her stellar garden. The Dreamer, the observer, despite his blindness always notices the slightest disruptions, the tiniest wilted buds on the floor. Yet one doesn’t need his perceptiveness to spot the barren trunks, the dried leaves of misery scattered on the pathways.
A sad little note, ringing through the void. Darkness falling in tiny droplets from under the veil. “I try to Fade, youngling,” she mourns, “Yet I can’t. It’s unexplainable, and I can’t join him, and that’s all on my mind at the moment.”
“Not just a moment, but for the last couple of centuries.” The faceless god reached forward, grasped onto her shaking hands, held her bone-white palms comfortingly. “You still have a purpose. You need to heal, and then you need to start carrying Life. The Universe must continue. You, of all beings, know that it will wait for no one.”
He couldn’t see her face from under the veil. The outline of her curved lips moved slightly.
He barely heard her quiet “I know.”
A pause, and then she tugged her hands away from his. A gentle ‘follow me’ was murmured as she led the young god down the trail. The constellations were the bricks on which the gods trod on.
The path bifurcated. She knelt down at the floor, tiny particles of dry dust floating upward to cling onto her gown. There, curled delicately, was a rose. A simple flower. Love, the Dreamer remembered. Courage, Joy, Gratitude, Purity, Peace.
Colourful, prideful, live roses represent different concepts, can symbolize beautiful things. But not the dried, wilted, grey little blossom, bent over and weeping. His voice caught in his throat as he watched the Lady silently cup the tiny flower in her hand.
“He… this is him. All that I have left – I hadn’t even noticed it’s dying-”
A single tear fell from raven lashes, a crystalline ball that shattered over a shrivelled petal.
And then another. Maybe a few more, in succession.
And like magic, the rose straightened. It was a slight movement, and the Lady was shaking too hard to notice it, but the Dreamer, the Observer, he saw.
“My lady-” he started, uncertain.
The goddess opened her eyes, another pair of teardrops dancing off of her cheeks. They splashed onto the withered flower’s husk and soaked in. And not unlike to how a snake sheds its skin, the rose started peeling, shedding, flakes of unsaturated colourlessness fluttering down like the ashen particles of burnt paper, while splotches of gold and fiery orange slowly spread through the bud.
The rose hadn’t been restored to its previous glory, but it wasn’t dead anymore.
Her eyes widened.
The Dreamer smiled. “It seems just a little more care and patience is enough, my lady. And your rose isn’t the only thing that needs you right now.”
The goddess was still kneeling at the floor, wordlessly brushing the parchment-thin petals, where diamond tears clung like dew.
She rubbed the dark leaves between her fingers, and realized what more she had to do, all the things that still needed to be finished, and remembered how much purpose she still had.
The garden of the universe was in disrepair. But she could fix it, with enough effort, and the crack that hindered the progression of all would be filled.
“My king, my partner, we were sitting together and listening to the whispering around us, and then I placed my hand on his. And it passed through, as if through a ghost, and when I looked there was only a faint outline of his form beside me. He smiled sadly, and I tried to pull him back, but then the lines he had been reduced to erased and undid themselves, until all that was left of him were his eyes, still smiling at me, as green as the land on the worlds he had created. Then they, too, were gone.”
“And the rose was all he had left behind,” the Dreamer finished.
He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “In truth, I do not believe he is truly gone.” At this, the lady tilted her head. The Dreamer had a knack of taking interpretations down winding paths, similar to the ones on which he chases his prey.
“No,” he continued, “he simply left this story, this game, and joined another one. I believe he, or his essence, lives in every human creature on the worlds below, the tiny beings he had saved by creating a home for, a planet, a habitat, whatever you wish to call it. He is down there, in every wisp of cloud and in every music note that graces the wind. And when those worlds collapse over one another, eons from now, or after an eternity, or maybe not ever, then he will be gone.”
“And I must keep the worlds alive,” the Lady concluded. The Dreamer, the Hunter, the Interpreter, he neither confirmed nor contradicted her response. She already knew the truth.
“Alright,” she decided. She stood up and straightened her shoulders. There was something hidden in the palm of her hand, clutched in an immortal fist. After a tense moment, she revealed several tiny, golden objects, both bright and dull at the same time. The Dreamer realized they were radiating a pulsing light, glowing and dimming to the steady rhythm of the universe. Four tiny golden seeds taken from the heart of the rose’s hip, he realized.
“Seeds,” she said, and then laughed. “I will make something! A gift, for the little people on the worlds below. A tool to help them chase away pains and horrors and sorrows. Several tools. A requiem for the Beginning, the Dawn, the Genesis.”
The four stones suddenly released a burst of light so potent that the Dreamer had to shield his eye. Indeed, the rays seemed to dissolve his fog, or tear it away. For a moment he felt vulnerable, nearly mortal.
Then he heard a song, a lilting tune, a bitter-sweet melody of longing and new beginnings, of the fish in the rivers the Dawn had created, of the mountain lions, the firs, the dandelion weeds. The stones that formed the bones of the realms, the water that was the blood. The earth as the flesh. In his curiosity the Dreamer found courage to re-open his eye, and realized the initial burst of power hand ebbed.
The Lady Moira, Goddess of Passing and Acceptance, Queen of All Concepts, Guide to the Fallen Ones and one of the Eldest had never appeared as powerful as she did at the moment. The seeds rapidly sprouted, golden veins flowing outward and brightened the cold void around them. The entire celestial garden of Ideas stood still and watched the two gods. Slowly, the golden seeds were feeding every starved bird, recalling every forgotten thought and every lost story.
The Queen’s mouth moved, yet the ambient music poured from every corner of Existence. Her veil fluttered gently from a non-existent wind, her hands directed a chorus, and the Dreamer realized that the stars around them were singing along to the haunting tune. Reality was pulled, adjusted, changed, as new concepts were woven into actuality.
Words, ancient incantations laced with heavy Intent, flowed rapidly from her lips, and the Dreamer could barely follow along. But…
“…the darkness you fight is within you…” She was singing to the little humans and cats and lizards and all the other mortal critters with limited time to finish their stories before they ended.
One golden root extended upward, then coiled and bent downward, and then melted and re-solidified. It tumbled to the ground, shiny light spilling over the floor. It had grown into a bow, smooth, beautiful, polished. Intricate gilded feathers covered the grip, while carvings of roses and constellations adorned the limbs.
“It’s… magnificent,” he murmured, dragging long fingers carefully across the wax-white bowstring.
“…the darkness you fight is within you…” She was singing to all the young fish who spent their lives cowering in the seas, hiding in the coral, too afraid to leave, too scared of being hunted. She was telling them to go and live, and in a way, she was sending herself the same message.
A second seed hovered, and expanded. The gilded fibres wove around themselves, so bright that they seemed to burn in the heat. It curled, and the seed had grown an aegis, a shield, a protective object of pale rose wood and roots that had smoothened out to swirl around the edges like tiny golden curls, clutching tightly. It would protect whoever owned it.
“You need a hunter, and a dancer,” he suggested. He lifted his own fingers and glanced at the lady questioningly. She nodded and gave him permission to continue.
He waved, and his mist curled around the remaining two seeds. Roots braided and thickened, then melted like metal and formed tapered, honed edges. He used his own knowledge of weapons to forge an axe with a long handle, and a sword with a long blade. The Lady sang carvings of flowers and stars into the metal.
She pinched some dirt from the floor. The dirt sparkled brightly. Not dirt, but stardust.
And the seeds? They were the beginnings of a new star, a new concept, new souls.
And so the weapons had souls.
And the song ended.
And the Lady loved them, and the Dreamer revered them, but they knew there would be people in the realms below who would love and revere them even more, and who would give the weapons a purpose, and use them to drive away the chaotic forces.
And so the weapons, star-forged, seed-wrought, were gifted to the worlds.
There was a man.
A man who sat alone, who spent restless nights beneath the stars, thinking to himself. Many nights he bore a leaden heart that weighed itself heavily in his chest, wondering how he was going to rescue his children, his little daughter and his infant son, from the barbarians who had kidnapped them, who had stolen them away.
And then a god appeared before him, one terrifying, tall figure who cloaked himself in the greens of the ferns and moss. A tall god with a cloud around his face, hiding his eyes. The god’s voice thundered like lightning from a storm.
The god wasn’t there to harm him. Instead, the man was given a gift. Several gifts.
A sword. An axe. A shield and a bow.
And when he touched them, spirits appeared. Powerful spirits, intelligent apparitions. They guided him, gave him advice. They taught him how to get his children back.
He became a hunter. He became a leader. He became a dancer, and eventually he became a father once more.
With his daughter and son safely in his embrace, the strange spirits smiled and told him to rule the realms. To become High King over all life.
A daunting prospect. Prior to receiving the weapons, he didn’t even know that other worlds existed. But the man journeyed from one realm to the next. He threw stone and drew blood. He planted flowers and fed hungry owl chicks on crumbs of his bread.
There were some magicians, scattered around the world. They helped him build large structures, arches of obsidian that they swore would stand for many millennia to come. With their enchantments, the man made portals.
These portals enabled travel across worlds.
He became the first man to visit a different realm.
With his weapons, he conquered the land. He broke apart arguments. He made himself king above all.
Some muttered bitterly. Most were glad to see an end to all the conflict, an opportunity for the birth of peace.
The eight conquered realms, eight different worlds, eight different biomes, all finally linked together.
But there was a ninth, a theorized dimension, deduced by elven sorcerers to be the final world. All the patterns in the magical flow found in the air and in the grass pointed to that end. But when a squadron of spell-casters lost their last breaths trying to create the final portal, the king gave up. He was tired, and at peace… and his children were calling him home.
At the end of the day, the man was a strong ruler. He stood at the gates of his palace, and everybody cheered for him, called him their saviour.
The four spirits of the weapons were given names: Technoblade, Dream, Ranboo, and Philza.
Endearing words that the man had chosen for his weapons. They had become his friends.
Up high, treading on a pathway of stars, a goddess smiled.
When the High King died, his weapons were passed down to his son and daughter. The children had oftentimes frolicked with the spirits in their youth, and were raised excellently, each with deep personalities as beautiful and as mysterious as the depths of the ocean. They became a fair High King and a fair High Queen, ruling alongside one another. They shared the throne between themselves and were filled with a bright passion to keep a blanket of warm peace over all realms.
The Queen was beautiful, with eyes that shone like orange embers, and white hair that tumbled like a powerful waterfall down her shoulders. She was cunning, and wielded Technoblade the sword and Philza the bow. She was intelligent, and was highly revered due to her contribution in establishing a sturdy government, appointing smaller monarchs to govern the separate realms. She was loved and venerated.
The King was kind. He cared much for his people, dealing harshly with those who threatened to harm others. Some believed he was too cruel. Some told stories of him walking down the cobbled paths to orphanages, and singing soft ballads to the children who would always crowd around him and listen, tiny mouths wobbling in delight.
In battle he would hold Ranboo the shield on his left arm, commanding the battlefield with Dream the axe in his right hand. He was formidable, yet his gaze towards his people was always sincere. He loved them, and they him.
Eventually, the High King married a fine lady from one of the western realms. They had two sons.
The High Queen fell in love with a young diplomat she met on one of her missions. They also had two little princes.
The four boys grew up together, occasionally stealing blunt weapons from the armoury and sparing with one another. They were very close, and treated each other like brothers.
The time came when the King and Queen retired. Four golden circlets were placed on the four young kings’ brows.
Not long after the inauguration of the four princes, their predecessors died. The waxen seals on the wills were broken, pieces of paper that assigned each young king to a magical heirloom. The eldest prince was to be given his father’s axe. The next prince was presented a special shield. The third young king received a sword from his mother. The youngest fired thin arrows from a golden bow.
These four kings ruled together harmoniously for several years.
Peace didn’t last forever.
There was dissent in the kingdom. Most of the population welcomed the peace, brought by the royal family’s reign. However, there were those who muttered darkly under their breaths, reminding everybody that there is always a silence before an explosion, calm before a storm. Something was bound to happen.
The Redlands was a distant realm with much sand, little water, wind, and cacti. Living between two stone peaks that reached for the skies with rocky claws was an evil man.
He had heard stories. Tales passed on by the loose tongues of several townsfolk. The youngest king fires darts of light from his bow, they whisper.
The people are fools. They thought the kings were sorcerers, capable of achieving acts of wonder, using their power to bring peace to the realms.
The evil man knew better.
If the kings were sorcerers, that wouldn’t explain an infected wound the second brother had contracted several years ago. Had they been sorcerers, it would have been a simple matter just to eradicate the bacteria, to cleanse the cut and to close the skin smoothly.
And the evil man knew how the second king had walked with a limp and was burdened with a leg wrapped in silk for a month.
They were no sorcerers.
It was something else, and he had realized their source of power to be their weapons. The golden axe that glinted sharply in the sunlight, green wool dangling from its sturdy handle, deep emerald sparkling at the cross-section. The currant-dyed shield, bordered with an outline of the yellow metal, crystal ruby shining in the moonlight. The slim golden sword with the garnet resting near the pommel, whose orange-tinted blade was rumoured to absorb the blood of all the enemies slain. The simple bow with the carved feathers of gold, the flaxen thread from which arrows pirouetted.
These objects were above being imperial. They were, undeniably, divine.
He desired them.
He needed the power they could bestow on mortals.
He was a priest, after all. A servant of the gods. Someone who dedicated his life to bowing at a cold statue’s feet, grovelling and praising and sweeping the aisles between the benches in his humble little chapel in the dusty Redlands.
He deserved something.
The weapons.
The gold.
The raw power.
He was thirsty.
There was something else he suspected. If the weapons radiated pure magic, they needed to have a powerful origin.
And one night, while tearing his way through ancient incantations scrawled over withering yellowed papyrus, he happened to gaze at the rich, deep darkness of the sky. The stars glinted, nearly throbbing with light, holding the same glimmering sheen that encased the tools desired so desperately for by the priest.
The stars.
The priest stopped in his thoughts, clutching tightly onto his fraying quill. He nearly toppled his depleting ink pot in his haste, as he swivelled around and caught a glimpse of the statue seated on the dais.
An image of the god of Justice, carved to the likeness of the descriptions from those who claimed to have met him, towered up. Long, sweeping robes. Thin, bony fingers and a long axe clutched between his hands. Face obscured, filled with nothing but cloudy blankness, hidden by loose hanging cloth or a blank mask with holes for eyes, or even a cloud around his head.
It was common belief that the gods were made of stars. The gods were clearly magical.
And sorcerers, when they performed their spells, had eyes that glowed like the stars at night.
The stars were magical, powerful, potent.
The priest inhaled, licked his lips hungrily.
The weapons radiated pure magic, he was sure. So they must have been star-forged.
Star-forged.
The appeal of possessing a star, to hold raw star-matter in his shaking palms, to hold the gold in his hands and raise them above his body, crown shining on his brow..!
A gust of wind blew in through an open window. Red sand fluttered inside, falling on the stone floor, bouncing around, spreading through the entire chapel. His laborious sweeping sessions from the previous night had been for naught.
The priest angrily walked over and slammed the window closed, locking the opening with a latch he’d failed to secure earlier.
The priest was soon given an opportunity, much sooner than one could have ever expected.
It came in the form of the third king, traveling alone through the Redlands, with a confidence in his abilities to protect himself that towered like the cliffs around his church, reaching higher and higher, growing with increasing steepness. Confidence, much too high than is safe.
Confidence is a volatile thing.
The prince was armed with nothing but Technoblade.
The priest rubbed his hands together. He dusted the aisles once more, shook the dirt from the hems of his robes.
As stated earlier, this was an opportunity.
Dante was tired.
His back ached.
He wanted to rest. He was starting to regret taking on the journey alone.
The constant poking, nagging presence at back of his mind was Techno, his steady, spectral companion, shouting at him to keep going, telling stories of how Dante’s grandfather never quit in the face of hardship, or how his mother kept fighting through unfathomable odds, yet somehow always escaped with her life.
He laughed, half-amused. “Blade, old pal, do me a favour then and walk for me?”
Techno snorted. His ghostly outline rippled in the desert heat, and if Dante saw a mirage there would’ve been no difference. “Learn by experiencing it, little king. Besides, you wouldn’t have enough energy in your body to hold me for a minute.”
Dante kept staring at the spirit. He stared through the spirit.
He stared through the lofty spectre and at the small white building hidden behind, crouched beneath a high, craggy cliff, nestled at the bottom like a little bird. The wind swept by and tossed up another wave of orange dust into the atmosphere, and the white building was still there.
“Am I hallucinating?” he wondered.
The ghost swivelled his head. “Unless bodiless sentience like myself can hallucinate, you’re not,” came the snarky reply.
Dante tapped on the pommel of his sword. “You have a body.”
“It ain’t got eyes.”
A frustrated sigh was silenced as Dante’s tongue found itself trapped in its own dry throat. “…I’m going to make it to that house.”
“Good luck.”
He continued walking.
A hundred arm-spans… just fifty more…
Twenty… eight arm-spans…
He collapsed on the dusty marble.
Everything was hazy…
Life was a haze, a whisper, a passing breath that sometimes found itself knocked out of a body. Life was vibrant red and dull yellows, and the steady flame of light always at the border of Dante’s vision, too vague to be consciously noticed.
Life was the cold, sweet, yet slightly bitter fluid that was welcomed through his lips, that made its way down and coiled by his heart.
Life was the warmth, the inane heat, the pressing cold and the numbness of not feeling one’s fingers.
Life was sensations. Sensations represented life.
Or, at the very least, they represented that particular section of the young king’s life, the last pure thoughts Dante had before he was lead to slaughter all he had loved.
Something tapped on his forehead. Dante opened his eyes sluggishly, looking at his surroundings but not seeing… or realizing…
Everything was blurred. There was white, and there was red, and then there was intense heat.
He shook his head and focused on the warmth at his right. Dancing colours of yellow and orange, embers pushed to the side with a stick.
He held his hand up to his sweaty neck, trying to sooth the pain throbbing behind his eardrums. His vision focused briefly before fading back down.
Just the pounding in his head…
There was something in front of him, he noticed. A white figure.
The priest hastily poured more mead down the feverish king’s throat.
He watched gleefully as the young man’s head lolled over to the side, dangling, eyes slowly opening.
The whites showed.
The priest held his breath. He leaned in closer, mouth nearly pressing against the king’s ear and gently whispered a harmless question.
“How are you right now?”
The king mumbled something, and then spoke slowly back. “It’s very hot here.”
The priest smiled. In the man’s sluggish state, it would be a simple task to turn him against his own family.
“You are the third child…”
“They mocked you for being unimportant...”
“But you are important to me...”
“They revel in their power, they cherish their luxuries and keep them from others. Others like you…”
“I can make you a true king...”
“…I need those weapons.”
Unbeknownst to both priest and restless king, there was a god watching them. The god of Justice, who delivered peace through the falling blow of his axe.
He saw through the eyes of his statue in that humble statue.
He cursed the priest. He promised him an early demise.
Justice never procrastinates. Justice isn’t supposed to be served cold. Justice will come whenever it is needed.
Someone was rapping on the castle doors, the booming echo running through the halls like the bass of a large drum.
Rain poured.
The butler hurried down the empty hallways, footsteps echoing through the silent corridors as he trotted to the front door.
Raising his short arms above his head, he reached up and pushed at the latch that held the large oak entrance shut.
They should have chosen someone taller, he mused. Not that I’m small. The latch is simply ridiculously high.
The anxious tapping intensified.
The butler hollered out. “Hold your feathers!”
Finally, the door creaked open, sagging from the weight, without the support of the iron latch to help hold it up.
The butler opened the door a crack and peered through it with a single eye.
He nearly threw the wood back, nearly tossed the latch to the side, iron nearly barring him from the frightening thing that greeted him.
Rain poured out. The leafy trees fluttered, blossoms drowning in the downpour. The lamps flickered, little flames inside protected by a casing of glass. Water threatened to seep through the little cracks betwixt the metal to suffocate the dancing sparks.
A dark figure stood out in the heavy drizzle, clutching a black cloak around their lithe form. Before the butler could shout out, the person shook off his hood. The butler sighed in relief.
“Welcome home, my lord.”
King Dante stared at him. Were the king’s eyes always so red and tired? “Good evening, where are my brothers?” the returning king inquired.
“In the dining room, sire. Would you prefer to clean up before joining them?”
“Just some dry robes in my chambers would be fine, thank you.” The butler scurried away.
King Dante languidly made his way to his room. A spectre suddenly took shape in front of him, blocking his way.
He swept the angry golden spirit to the side.
Technoblade flew in front of him once again, long pink braid swishing like the tail of a furious tiger. “You are a fool, Dante!” he snarled. “All I ever taught you, all those lessons in protecting your thoughts, all the years spent making your mind your own-!”
Dante kept walking down the carpeted hallway. The spirit tried to block him, to slow him down, to stop him from going forward. Dante pushed easily past the spectre’s resistance.
He felt a little spike enter his mind, which he simply flicked away. “You can’t control me, Technoblade.”
“That priest is a menace! He will to destroy beauty; he seeks the highest possible power achievable by mortals! He’s using you!”
“The only ones who have been using me are the other kings. But I’ll be free soon.”
The ghost stared at him, disbelief, betrayal, anger clear on his face. “This isn’t how it was supposed to end,” he whispered.
Dante clenched his fist around the fiery golden sword belted to his side. “There is only one way this will end. This is justice. And if you don’t agree with me then leave, Technoblade.” The king swept the sword through the betrayed spirit’s torso, causing the apparition to burst into vapour and dissolve, like a forgotten memory in a burnt book.
Dante continued along, unhindered.
He found his dried robes hanging near the entrance to his chambers. He quickly donned them, wiped the ash and mud off of his circlet, and left for the dining room.
He found the three of his brothers sitting at different sides of a square table, pure white linen draped over the wood, plates of sliced lamb, pepper grinds, honeyed peas and glasses of red grape wine.
Dante sat down at his side of the table, where an empty plate decorated his bare side. His fellow kings, his cousins who became his brothers, they all watched as he joined them.
The eldest, the noble Tolkien, raised an anticipating eyebrow.
“Well, we didn’t expect you back so soon. That doesn’t mean you are not welcome. I shall call for a dish to be prepared for you immediately.” As the eldest motioned for a servant to deliver the order to the cook, Dante looked at his other siblings. The youngest king, gazing happily at him, was smiling at his return. His second-eldest brother kept his face impassive, yet bright eyes crinkling in greeting.
Traitors.
His eldest brother tapped him on his shoulder, making him jump. He looked at Dante with concern, taking in his pallor, bloodshot eyes and twitching fingers. “Are you alright?” he asked, frowning.
Dante didn’t meet his eyes. “I had an – enjoyable – trip. I shall tell you about it over breakfast.”
His meal was soon served, and he began eating. His two other brothers talked to him, telling about plans, politics, small issues – he didn’t really listen.
The hair on the nape of his neck stood upright, pulling, itching throughout the meal.
His eldest brother didn’t stop watching him.
A door opened silently in the night. A cloaked figure crept out into the carpeted hallway. Rows of portraits all seemed to watch him, gazes frozen on the blood-tinted blade he carried in his hands.
He slithered down the corridor to the chamber left of his. He silently twisted the doorknob. There the youngest king lay, resting peacefully, golden hair glowing in the moonlight that seeped in. On the tableside was a gilded bow, intricate patterns of feathers gleaming on the handle.
He raised his own weapon. There was a quick slash that arched through the air, entering its target unblemished, leaving with an arc of gore following through the air. Silence, just quiet, as crimson peonies blossomed on the white sheets.
He took the bow. It was his spoil.
Then he exited the chamber, closing the door quietly behind him.
He moved back up the hallway, footsteps making no noise as they sunk into the red fluff on the floor.
Right of his own chambers, he was moving on to the next room.
Again he twisted the knob. There was a tiny creaking noise. The door hadn’t been properly maintained.
No matter though, as the second-eldest king lay still and silent in his sheets. Again the orange blade was pulled out, fresh red flowing across the gold. No deep thrusts, only shallow, fatal cuts. The second-eldest king would remain still and silent.
He took the shield with the shining magenta crystal for himself, nobody present to challenge him. Searching around the room, he found a tightly-woven sack of burlap. He laid the bow and the shield inside, slinging the bag over his shoulders.
Once again, he strode out of the room. He closed the door behind him.
One left. He needed the axe.
The blood-lusty king slinked to his eldest brother’s room, listening at the door for any sign of movement. There was nothing.
Smiling to himself, Dante twisted the handle. The wood moved like silk, and then he was in.
Curtains were drawn open. Wind whistled through the slightly-open windows, lace fluttering in the moonlight. He shivered in the cold breeze and focused his attention on the unconscious king before him.
He laid the other weapons by the entrance and lined up with his brother’s neck, preparing to slit the king’s throat open, preparing him to reach the same fate as the others.
He raised the sword and brought it down. The moonlight flashed on the red ruby of his weapon’s pommel, the blade cutting air as it whistled on its fatal dash to taste blood-
A loud, shocking clang echoed through the room as gold met gold. Dante’s bones were jarred, his muscles shivering at the stare thrust at him through Tolkien’s hating, olive eyes.
A golden axe, handle woven with green, emerald shining, the eldest king’s eyes alight with livid hatred, fury, and pain-
Dante gasped in surprise. The eldest king threw off his covers, under which he had hidden the axe.
“I knew there was something wrong with you,” the eldest whispered, horrified, betrayed, “but THIS - how could you?”
Dante narrowed his eyes. “And I knew you were a spying snake. Always watching, always ready, you hold poison in your words. I thank myself for not falling for your lies.”
Tolkien spat angrily. The axe Dream was held strong, locking the sword in the curved blade. They stood near one another, facing each other. Seemingly at an impasse, but in fact waiting for one to initiate the deadly dance.
“And our brothers?” the man cried. “You are a coward, a traitor. You murdered them in their sleep. Both of them, they were innocent men-”
“No more innocent than you are,” Dante snarled, and he drew back his sword, thrusting it forward-
And so the duel began.
The thick golden handle blocked it, intercepting the sharp blade. The eldest brother then advanced, slashing the axe, strong blows falling.
Pommel was brought down on wrist, which was in turn responded to by an elbow to the neck, responded to with a tilt of a blade that chased bare flesh away.
They danced around each other, weapons curving in the moonlight, darting, falling, slashing. The lace curtains were torn to shreds, as easily as a child with a stick tears open a spider’s tapestry.
The axe was an offensive weapon. The sword, more defensive.
Dante was slowly pushed against the wall. His eldest brother let out his fury, blows raining hard like a torrent.
The third king could feel his strength evaporating from the constant onslaught… and then the axe hooked itself around his sword. The eldest pulled, and the sword went flying, clattering loudly on the floor. A final blow from the axe, and Dante fell to the ground, clutching his forearm in pain.
The gash tore through his skin, through the flesh, reaching the bone. White-hot pain nearly forced a wail through his lips, but the traitor bit his tongue and felt blood slither through his teeth.
The eldest king bent down and picked up Technoblade, cradling the weapon gently in his arms. He mourned the deaths of his siblings, and the loss of the fine king his third brother had once been. The brother that died when a monster was born.
“You will be exiled,” he exclaimed loudly. Dante lay crouched behind him, lungs pumping laboriously in an attempt to contain the pain from his wound.
“You shall be brought to the edges of the known world. For treason and murder, I banish you to the border. Once you enter that portal, you shall never return.”
“…for your callous acts born from your sudden greed, I take the sword Technoblade.”
The eldest king bent down to pick up the sack containing Ranboo and Philza. With a heavy heart, he reached for the doorknob, preparing to call the guards, the jury, and the gravediggers. He had some of his kin he needed to say farewell to.
A movement behind the king brought him back to his surroundings, albeit a bit too late to warn him of the spike that pierced the skin between his shoulders
He suddenly froze. A cold tear trickled from the edge of his eye.
He dropped his own axe, hands moving jerkily, fingers scrambling to grasp at his chest.
He fell to the ground, dead, a stone blade impaled into his back.
Blood stained the crimson carpets a deeper hue, painting a portrait of betrayal and grief, telling a story of what once was, what could have been, what, in another universe and in another reality, probably is.
The third king, now the only one remaining, slowly pulled himself up, grasping onto a nearby tapestry for stability.
He staggered over to the weapons, touching each one of them with giddy reverence.
He looked up, out of his brother’s windows, staring at the moon.
You should have seen his eyes. Golden, red, black. White moon dust reflected in those empty mirrors.
Bloodlust, reflected and echoed and reverberated and magnified.
There was no room in his heart for anything else.
The priest sat at the quiet chapel. It was raining outside. Water seeped through the sandy floor, trickling into the small bits of rock, disappearing and reappearing elsewhere, perhaps hundreds of armspans below. He chewed at his dinner of stale bread, grimacing at the dryness that no amount of water could hide without creating a soggy mush.
Lightning flashed outside. Suddenly, he heard someone tap rapidly at his door.
He crept out and unlocked the entrance, widening the vertical crack only enough to see his visitor.
He sighed in relief upon seeing King Dante’s dark wavy hair from under his black hood. The priest’s eyes darted immediately toward the sack the king carried on his back, bulging slightly at odd angles, several points visible.
The priest’s mouth curled, heartbeat jabbing at his ribs as the scent of victory and the tantalizing aroma of power was thrust beneath his watering tongue. “You have proven your competence, young king. Give me the weapons; they represent your freedom. You no longer have to listen to traitorous, corrupt royalty anymore. You’re free.”
King Dante stared at him, red eyes glowing unfocusedly. “I’m free,” he repeated, uncertainly.
“Give me the weapons,” the priest demanded. His eyes were wide, pupils blown open from the knowledge of how close his goals were. He was so, insanely confident. So mad with desire for possession.
And, as many have said before, confidence is a volatile thing.
The king stepped forward, a bitter grimace painted over his once-handsome features. “I’m not free,” he muttered. He raised his sword.
The priest glared at him, slight fear starting to slip into his expression. “Of course you are, free to rule the realms with me.”
The king shook his head, canine teeth glinting like iron daggers. “I need to rule alone.”
Lightning cackled outside, laughing, bending over the dark heavens, flashing exhilaratingly.
It wasn’t hard to kill the priest. The lowly man was quickly reduced to a squabbling, terrified, meek thing.
Just one quick blow.
Crouched on a star, far above in the celestial night, the Hunter grimaced. Justice always comes.
King Dante returned to his home realm. Eyes shining with scarlet and frozen amber, he said nothing as he took his place on his throne, alone in the royal hall.
The three other thrones were destroyed. Burnt to charcoal, ashes tossed into a lake, good riddance.
…Emperor Dante, ruler of the 9 realms, conqueror of all…
(Tyrant.)
The spirits of the gilded weapons hid from him. He never saw them again. But he knew enough, he knew how to use the special powers they granted him. In his massacres, his axe fell strongly on the enemy, battering their hardened oak shields into timber with a single swipe. The bow fired ray after golden ray, raining endless missiles on those who opposed him. The shield gave him stealth. He rarely used it, but it did teleport him away from danger, that one time when his own servants turned against him in the night.
His own sword, Technoblade, did nothing. It was the only weapon that required a steadfast bond of trust to function not as a simple sword, but a divine vessel. The useless thing was locked away, and with it went the fond memories of a friend that is no more.
The Emperor, as he was now called, thrived in his new power. To control, to know that anything he wanted could be created, he could make and end wars at his will, he could raze the crops to the ground and bring about monstrous fires to ravage the lands if he wished. The ultimate freedom.
The portals established by his grandfather were a hindrance. People shouldn’t be allowed to travel freely. Enlisting the help of a frightened sorcerer, the Emperor attempted to change the magic; to cut the flow and modify it so that nobody could use them.
They did fail. The magic was too strong, too sturdy. But they accomplished something.
The portals were no longer permanently activated. Now, it would take someone several hours to extract the shimmering purple hue from the dark rock. Enough time for him to be notified whenever someone travels between realms.
Some people tried. They were caught, beheaded publicly as an example to warn those even considering rebelling against his rule.
The golden weapons can’t make one immortal.
Peasants crept out of their rickety wooden shelters to gaze at the falling orange sun. It has been a long time since they last appreciated one.
Some were still scared. News was slow to spread.
The emperor, after decades of terror, died at seventy-two years of age when his heart suddenly ceased to beat. Perhaps it was the guilt, finally breaking into him after seventy-two years.
Eventually, the little girls darted out from beneath the clutches their jittery mothers to dart out and pluck the fresh little blossoms of gypsophila from green shrubbery.
Lilting voices awoke the music from silent graves, songs once forgotten now leaped from the scratchy voices of those who had stayed silent for so long.
They could start to heal.
A man of around forty stepped up to claim the throne. When pestered with questions he identified himself as Descartes, the only son of the beloved Tolkien. After years spent secretly organizing failed rebellions, he finally could claim his birth right to the crown.
As High King, his first decree was for the weapons to be destroyed. Power is a poison that tastes sweet at first lick, a toxin few can withstand, a lethally irresistible gin.
Several knights went on a long quest to melt the weapons in the shallow lava pools of the realm Alpeth, only to learn that the weapons were impervious to any physical damage.
After much contemplation and ample pestering from the golden spirits, King Descartes decided to release the golden tools, to give them away. He waited three decades until he was certain, absolutely confident that history had become legend, and few would remember the story of the magical axe, bow, shield, and sword that had razed the realms.
He selected four noble houses to give the weapons to, telling them that he was being merely displaying good will. Each house took the weapons, cherished them, treated them like heirlooms. After the inevitable death of the High King, all knowledge of the spirits lying dormant inside was lost.
And perhaps that was for the greater good.
The axe was passed down generations, exchanged from the hands of a man to his son, who learned to fight with it, grew up, and then gave it to his son, and the cycle continued for centuries, for eons. Somehow over time, a nobleman married the Queen, and the axe ended up in the armoury of the imperial family. And the spirit Dream never showed himself.
The bow had a different fate. The bloodline of the nobles to whom King Descartes had given the bow to all those years ago eventually withered away. When the last members of that family were murdered by a disastrous explosion of a barrel of gunpowder, the bow was buried in the rubble. It was abandoned to withstand rain and scurrying raccoons in those charred ruins for many years, while the vines and roots and dandelion weeds flourished and scuttled over the fallen bricks. A young hunter, a member of the noble house of Soot, discovered the weapon while peering around the mossy bricks for a lurking rabbit. He took it home, polished it, and the bow belonged to the house of Soot ever since. And the spirit Philza thought himself lost to the world.
The sword was doomed to witness tragedy after tragedy. Techno saw betrayal and heartbreak. He saw when an angry cousin thrice removed used him to tear long gashes in the painted canvas of his father’s portrait, before going on a rampage to fuel an inevitable bloodbath. As he felt his body sink into another helpless corpse, Techno felt himself wishing he were a simple butcher’s knife, doomed to chop through cattle before being smelted down once he wears thin. But he is not a lowly cleaver; he is a cursed sword, and wherever he goes, carnage tends to follow him. He felt a sliver of relief when his last master, a careless buffoon, managed to lose him during a diplomatic scuffle in the capitol realm of Rothica. He lay, buried in the crimson-tainted rubble, sighing in relief and odium. He wished to himself, lamenting over the past, regretfully soaking up his desiderium of a world where King Descartes had succeeded in melting him with magma all those years ago. And the spirit Technoblade accepted his lonely fate.
The shield experienced dull years, watching the ages flutter away, like little puffs of breath stolen by a snowy wind. Someone would come of age, and the shield would be taken out of a crystal display box and pressed into their jewelled arms, and then whoever held him would smile and spin him around a couple times before storing it back into his showcase. Ranboo hated the humdrum of the entire ordeal, a process where the repetition started to pound itself into his mind, over and over and over again. Then some young girl threw a fit after being married off. She broke him out of his pristine vitrine and made off into the snowy night, clutching the gilded redwood to her chest, strawberry gem glinting like a rosy eye. The young maiden dashed over the icy surface of a frozen lake, moving as the crow flies. Suddenly, the shivering ice groaned and the lake swallowed the poor girl whole; apricity had softened the blunt edges of bitter cold, thus thinning the surface of the lake where the young lady had often skated in winters prior. She shrieked in terror as the frosty water embraced her, and the current swept her down. ‘I’m so cold…’ were the last words Ranboo heard her utter, before his wooden frame made its steady, fluttering path to the muddied lake floor. He laid there for centuries, and sometimes in summertime he would catch a glimpse of sunlight peeping under the rippling surface, right before the ice swallowed him once more. The spirit Ranboo had never seen the night’s twinkling freckles ever since.
Dream loathes the constant years; the thin, icy blanket déjà vu that always comes before a repeat of history. Always the same family. His wielder; his wielder’s son, the son’s son. The wheel kept turning.
Ranboo is lonely. He misses his brethren, the other pieces of a bright soul. He mourned the destructive tendency of humans, and reminisced of the time when that one man, the First, held them in his arms. There was nothing else for the desolate phantom to do but sit and wait for Lady Fortune to remember him. In the meanwhile, his rosewood dulled and the deep magenta of his jewel slowly lost its light. He misses the stars.
Technoblade sits and waits. Hilt barely showing above ground’s surface, he doesn’t expect it when a clean-shaven shopkeeper with grimy robes stumbles over him. The spirit missed studying human faces. He wanted to hear people speak, to watch them love and hate and fight and laugh… He screamed loudly with immeasurable rage when the shopkeeper laid him on a dingy velvet cushion at the bottom of an emptied wine barrel inside a damp basement. Locked away again, either to never feel light on his skin or to become a lowly display piece, stopped from demonstrating his true purpose. Nobody heard his screams. The shopkeeper had likely forgotten about him.
Philza shivered in his gleaming golden garments. Every minute, every week, every century; he wonders if it is the gods’ will for him and his brethren to withstand this dreary fate. Maybe they had always been destined to remain hidden forever. If not, he wonders when his next true master will set hand on his gilded grip to claim him.