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The last time the royal mausoleum was opened, it was adorned with arrangements of Cornian chrysanthemums and white roses. It was per tradition to don their beauty in death, but now all that rested within the tomb was a bare stone altar and the deceased; laid to rest in eternal sleep promised. Their petals and devotion were all of a memory of long ago, one that could not be recalled from a child who was only then a small babe, so the young heir hopped from stone to stone tiled underneath, unaware of what this place meant to the living, as if playing a game. With a curious eye, they moseyed up to the empty altar and felt its smoothed surface as they ran their fingertips across the side’s length. Then a wide smile crossed their lips, and with much mirth in their heart, the young heir called out to the nothing.
“Grandfather, Grandfather!”
It was a name. The title, the honor, bubbled out of their mouth and through the hallowed tomb in small reverb, carrying hopes of summoning the man to whom that name was attached to. But to the call, no one came. All that lingered was a stagnant chill in the air. Huffing, but not hopeless, the young heir waited, and waited, and waited, and waited in a fashion where they started to sway from side to side and dart their eyes back and forth as a means to pass the time with occupied body and mind. As they were set to call out again—taking in a strong, deep breath—the silence was broken and the call was heeded, but it was not done by the one sought. Instead it was their father, crowned king of Cornia, fulfilling that place by shouting back their name a couple of times with intent to herald his child safely back to him.
His Majesty, King Alain, was a man now in a maturity versed for his stature, and yet the young man who once was just someone small hidden away on a Palevian shore was as much there in his face as was in his heart, spare perhaps a few stray strands of graying hair and wrinkles at the corners of his eyes when inspected upon too closely. Even in physical stature, he held himself strong and true despite the rough routine of raising a lively young one. But, that itself was a lesson in his learning, and was one he would study for from his memories as if they were text and tomes. It was with hopes that perhaps the one who gave him those memories would forgive any past trial he caused in his own youth.
“Come now,” King Alain said, having gotten close to kneel down level next to his child, “this isn’t a place to play. Let us find a nice field instead where we can go about more freely. I’m sure you’ll like that much better.”
“But, Father, I want to see Grandfather,” his child whined, “You talk of him so much, and we made this trip to visit him. You said so.”
“And we can talk to him when we’re all together and not out playing. You’ll be able to tell him how much you take after him with a sword, I promise. Now, go on,” King Alain said with a gentle push at his child’s back so they would shove off back outside where the air was not so stale. When they had gotten to the height of the steps out of the crypt, King Alain had risen to face true the revenant of a man waiting a little ways farther into the chamber.
Stout he stood tall and valiant, watching dutifully with vigilant eyes, at the far end as a vision stuck between notions of being either in the prime of his life or in grayed age. Unlike the kings and queens of generations ago that also rested there, his hair was once black, and if there was one sure thing to it, it was that his hair was styled to be swept back with a beard on his face to match. As a sturdy man, one thick and built up from wars waged, he was donned in armor and glory of his past, shining silver and draped in cloth of blue, and in his hold the blade His Majesty laid to rest alongside him. It was unsheathed, but idle; its point pressed to the ground and its pommel covered by both palms. Each side of the sword’s crossguard was shaped and decorated intricately to resemble the likeness of the holy unicorn. But, His Majesty could really only tell as much of the apparition because he had known the man so well in life.
As if it was a memory foreseen, an expectation from one lived before, the manes proclaimed something with a strong voice, one expected from someone of such radiant valor.
“Your Majesty, champion loved and adored across this land, have you come to reclaim what you have already once won?”
Like his child before him, King Alain ran his hand over the smoothed stone surface as he passed by the altar on his way over to meet with his memory, but given His Majesty was of full growth, his palm was able to caress the top where he had once laid the man before him to rest years ago on a bed of flowers, incense, and ornaments. As much as it was from a death he had prayed for of him, one quiet and peaceful instead of amidst brutality and bloodshed, King Alain could still see himself of back then when there was nothing left of him to budge himself from his place, lying limp and weeping against the altar knowing it would be his last time to ever feel the touch of the man he calls his father even if it was stiff and cold.
“No, Josef,” King Alain announced, “I am here for no such thing.”
Upon His Majesty’s approach, Josef had rotated the sacred blade so that it now rested in a saluting position: a hand gripped firmly underneath its crossguard while the other’s forearm rested across at length so his shield guarded the hilt in full. But, he was no longer in life, and so King Alain went to gently separate his salute, but there was nothing there to take hold, and yet he followed through with its motions. Unwavering, he looked into the depths of eyes borne from something bygone and said: “We’ve come here to offer our prayers to my father… to you, Josef. That’s all.”
On some nights King Alain still laid awake tossing and turning in his attempted sleep wondering without answer if it was selfish or injust of him to have given the orders to bury a king back then, not a knight, dare not a retainer either. Except, this display must have been the answer he sought amidst a mind sunken deep at ocean’s depths for surely it could not be so if Josef was anything short of someone fit to lie beside him—and his mother and their forebears before her—in history. For it the corners of his eye began to swell and leak from their crevices as he looked on unashamed because no one else had taught him as well in the ways that it was alright for a man to be honest with himself and cry, and cry tears of love and loss. They were but the same as ones he had weeped years ago in worry for his friends who had shoved off with him back to Cornia and ones that followed from horrors wrought by Zenoira’s grasp, forcing each man to pick up armaments for their peace, and tucked even deeper were also the ones he had cried at Josef’s side back when he had fallen into the rose bush, covering himself in thorns, in the royal sanctuary while at play and when a storm’s might would rush through in the dead of night like an enemy charge.
Like back then too, he was there to sooth and calm, but now in phantom touch. A peck with his lips to His Majesty’s forehead and a thumb the king could not see well to wipe at his eyes, and amidst those condolences something plain and modest rang clear in his ears: a humble name, not a title or stature, no peerage denoted alongside his person.
But Josef’s voice did not stop there.
“I never bore the merit to raise a child such as you… And yet, in any time and under any name, you would have done nothing less than fill me with pride and joy.”
Even as the one allowed to order him off to wars he would gladly wage in His Majesty’s name or to toss his armor aside and take rest, King Alain held no power over honored memory despite a death amongst royalty. Such a limit cursed him with wanting nothing more than to hold his father’s shirt, cloth out bare, crushed between his fingers and pressed flush to his face, the warmth from blood and breath drying his wet anguish. All it could ever be again was iron and imitation, something of the past, and so King Alain could no longer keep his mourning tidy and tame.
Let him slumber deep and still, King Alain thought as the only gracious end for them both, so back to rest he ordered of Josef, for it was not yet time for him to call upon his steel and raise his blade in His Majesty’s name. Except each attempt was met with that field of Palevian flowers circuiting a lakeside church, ever growing in its expanse. Like in that memory adorned as precious petals, Josef kept to His Majesty’s side until the king had nothing else to give and his eye dried in a body low and limp on top of the stone floor almost as if he was toppling over himself.
Then rushing down the stairway from hiding as fast as was allowed of them, the young heir who never fully left called out, exclaiming, “Father, Father! What’s wrong?”
They tumbled down to nestle themself deep against their father’s side, however when they poked their head out from the embrace, the heir’s eyes were met with an unexplainable curiosity: unmistakably their father had just been conversing with someone, but there was not a soul seen in the tomb, not one beyond that of the living at least. Surely there must have been someone, the heir wanted to believe, unless the truth of their father’s words were only ever meant to be grandiose bedtime stories.
Stirring, His Majesty had adorned his child by pushing their hair back with strokes and pets from the palm of his hand and a kiss against their temple, his heart praying that they would remember it long after they had grown full themself and adorned the altar here on his own behalf. Hushed and close, King Alain spoke to his child.
“Have I ever told you that when your grandfather passed, every nation of Fevrith wept? Even the earth below our feet is said to have felt sorrow that day. All because everything you know could not have happened without him.”
The story of the Holy Knight of Fevrith was not a truth needed to be told from the valiant warriors or humble men who met charge at his side in times of trouble and war, but it was one best told by whom the knight himself raised banner and marched on for, so upon those words the heir sat patiently, ready to listen once again to his tale; this time within the final hall of the monarchs, the very place he was laid to rest.