The King's Remorse

TRIGGER WARNING: I’m not entirely sure how much of a warning this needs, but I thought I’d mark it anyway since I'd always rather be safe than sorry: there’s the equivalent of a zombie in this chapter— a character who is undead and brought back from the dead, but in a body that has been decomposing for a long time and reflects that (drawing above reflects the character in life). The character herself also is not entirely happy to have been brought back to life, and her mental state reflects that. Very brief discussion of false accusations of abuse against a child (one sentence level of brief, but I thought I’d mark it)

Chapter 4

Freedom Was Dead

I roll away and manage to get to my feet, scrambling away.

I wonder if I’ve hit my head at first, but since the malachite medallion isn’t sending silver light across my body, I reconsider.

In front of me is an enormous creature bigger than Brook with huge rainbow feathered wings, a brown lion’s mane, an elephant’s head and forelegs, green-skinned hind legs with taloned toes, and a blue tail ending with two yellow spikes and a large pink tuft of fur. Orange skin stretches across the creature’s ribcage with a purple strip underneath. However, what catches my attention are all of the injuries and missing pieces of flesh. A massive tear rips through the creature’s left shoulder down to the bone, and maggots crawl through muscle and sinew. Skin pulls back around one of the tusks to reveal sections of skull and rotten flesh. Large pieces of the creature’s skin hangs loose around bone, as if there’s nothing underneath, and I feel that may be the case.

One of the creature’s wings snaps open in a rapid, uncontrolled movement, shaking for several seconds before finally stilling and folding up again.

“Who are you?” Ky asks.

“What did you do?” the creature asks, staring above us.

I don’t think they heard us, and their question doesn’t seem directed at us.

“Hey! We were talking to you,” Phoenix snarls.

“You shouldn’t have done that. I never asked you to. I didn’t tell you to. I forgave you sixty years ago,” they whisper, voice pitching up into something desperate. “Why?”

I frown. It sounds so familiar, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Wyatt steps out from Myles’s side, pushing their hair over their shoulder as they approach me.

“Are you alright?” Wyatt murmurs.

I shove them away as the creature’s tail comes arcing around, stiff and heavy.

“What the fuck?” Phoenix spits, flames crackling on his body. “Who are you, and what is going on?”

Trunk curling up, a look of bitterness crosses the creature’s gaze. They trumpet as their wings flare out in jerky, uneven movements. A few feathers fall out, along with a chunk of flesh riddled with maggots. I grimace at the sight of the crawling critters, then wonder what must be going on for the creature to have ended up in this situation, and I can tell that Wyatt is wondering the same thing.

I look again, fingers drumming at my thigh.

Phoenix rounds in front of the creature to keep them from getting away. Head spasming to the side as their black eyes turn toward him, they frown.

“Please,” they say, speaking to us for the first time.

“Who are you?” Phoenix demands.

“Where did Arcane go?”

“Who are you?” Phoenix repeats.

They don’t know that Arcane is dead?

How could they not? They should know. Arcane shed the Midnight Tear. Unless…

My gaze returns to the injury on their shoulder, and several pieces fall into place.

“You’re Freedom,” I say, and I know it’s true.

She turns around. One of her forelegs slips out from beneath her, but she catches herself.

“I am. Where is Arcane? I need to speak to him.”

“Arcane is dead,” Ky says, moving to stand beside me.

Myles runs his fingers across the gouge Freedom had carved into the tree with her tusks, eyeing it closely.

“I’m sorry, I cannot control this body very well. I was dead for sixty years. I never asked to be brought back to life. Freedom was dead, and a part of me wants to say that it should have stayed that way. I’m sorry, whoever you are with the blond hair. I did not mean to try to hurt you.”

Phoenix’s expression darkens until he looks far more like a lethal predator than he usually does. The hair on the back of my neck stands on end, and I start to scratch my fingernails against my forearm. Phoenix stalks forward.

“You have a daughter,” he growls. “You gonna leave her?”

Freedom gasps, and her wings spasm, shaking. Her hind legs give out, and she crumples to the ground with a sharp cry. Fallen branches crack beneath her weight. It takes her several minutes of struggling, in which Wyatt and Myles and I try to help her stand, but Freedom’s sheer size makes it very difficult to assist. She is much bigger than Brook.

“Astra!” Freedom breathes when she gets her limbs back under her again.

“Yeah, Astra,” Phoenix shoots back flatly. “You gonna leave her?”

“No, I can’t, but how can I go back? It’s been so long.”

“Yeah, it’s been ninety years. You can go back now, but the question is: You gonna?”

I can tell Phoenix is looking for a very specific answer. That part isn’t hard to tell, but I wish I knew why.

“Is she doing ok with Brook?”

“She is,” I say, “but I don’t think she’d mind meeting you.”

“You don’t?” Freedom tilts her head to the side. “I want her to grow up happy. I-I want her to have everything.”

Phoenix snorts. “She’d have everything if she had you, too.”

Freedom draws her ears back, curling her trunk around one of her tusks. Her tail jerks, but it looks uncontrolled. “What if she doesn’t want to see me? Astra doesn’t remember me.”

Ky smiles. “I think Astra would be very happy to meet you.”

Freedom shudders, limbs locking up as her gaze turns distant. She’s looking at me, yet looking through me at the same time. I pause, waiting. Wyatt frowns, taking a step closer. They hold up a finger when Ky perks up, and he waits. Freedom shakes and twitches, trunk and wings pulsing in repetitive movements. Eventually, though, she slows, and I find myself breathing again.

“What can we do, Freedom?” they ask when she stirs again.

“Where is Astra?” Freedom seems to ignore Wyatt’s question.

“She’s in the Sea,” I reply, toeing at a branch under my feet. It breaks, bark crumbling off.

“Is Brook with her?”

“Brook hasn’t left,” Phoenix says. “From my understanding, Brook has been with Astra for the last ninety years.”

Freedom smiles as her body twitches. “She kept her promise.”

“That she would keep Astra safe in the Field?” Phoenix asks.

“Yes. After the King ruled that Jabez and I were abusing Astra, we made Brook promise to keep Astra safe and keep her away from the King since neither of us were strong enough to go up against the full force of the King. Both of us were strong, but not that strong. She’s still with Astra though?”

I nod. “They’re both in the Sea. Brook said that she couldn’t create another portal like the Field.”

“I’m assuming Jabez is with them?”

“Yes,” I confirm.

“Is he still with the King?” Freedom’s voice is low, flat.

I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

Freedom exhales. “Good. I knew he had to leave, but I couldn’t convince him myself. I could tell him who the King was all I wanted, but he had to be ready to hear it all. No matter how much I wanted, he wasn’t ready yet. I’m very glad he’s no longer with the King.”

I smile, and it’s genuine. “Me, too.”

The relaxed nature of Freedom’s expression turns rocky, and she stirs as she stands up a little straighter. Her feathers ruffle as she raises them above her back, flaring them and revealing the network of rotten flesh and gaping injuries riddled with dirt and grime and maggots. When she takes a rattling inhale, one of her ribs pops out of place. Lines of yellow light curl around her limbs and feet, staying close beside Freedom.

I can tell immediately that it's magic, but I cannot tell what it does, and anxiety clenches in my gut and crawls on my skin. I pick at my nails as I try to stay calm. I draw closer to Myles and Wyatt when I sense the change in atmosphere. Phoenix pads closer to his brother, lips curling into a snarl as he lowers his head and raises his hackles.

“Who are you?” Freedom demands, “and how do you know so much about me?”

“I’m the Dove,” I say quickly, reaching into my shirt to pull out my necklace. “Here, look. I have the malachite medallion. My sister, Alex, is the Wolf and has the pewter pendant.”

“Where is Alex?”

“We don’t know. She went missing after Arcane shed the Midnight Tear.”

“Who are the rest of you?” Freedom asks, voice as sharp as the daggers and swords used by the Guard and Soldiers. Yellow tendrils of light swirl around her feet, a soft yellow but sharp and intimidating. These move with such intention that it’s as if they’re moving on their own accord.

“I’m Myles and this is my friend, Wyatt. We live in the Sea,” Myles says. “We don’t have any magical powers or anything like that, but Wyatt acts as a doctor and they help as much as they can, and I do what I’m able to. Don’t worry about the staff; it looks like a weapon, but I just use it to help me get around. I injured my knee a few years back and it didn’t heal right. If I’d known about Wyatt back then, though, I think it probably would’ve. They help me now though.”

“I’m Ky. I know a lot about the Midnight Wolves. That’s how I knew about you and how you died and how you knew Arcane. Grey knew your name because we tracked him down. I can create illusions and one of mine is a, for lack of a better word, real illusion that temporarily puts me in the place between life and death. Only Arcane could bring me back, but he refused to heal anyone after he accidentally killed you.”

“I’m Phoenix. Ky’s my brother. I’m here because Grey’s trying to find his sister and he refuses to kill. I have no qualms about taking life when it’s justified. The cream puff needs to die, and if finding Alex means I get closer to killing him, then you can sure as hell be certain we’re finding Alex. I do not care where she is. We’re finding her.”

Freedom stares at us for quite a while, silent as she works over what we said. I can see her thinking. She reaches up with her trunk and breaks a branch off a tree, snapping it before thwacking it against her wrists, then chewing on it. The yellow tendrils coil around her legs, and some dissipate but not all.

“If I am to believe you all, then where is Arcane?” Freedom asks.

“He’s dead,” I reply. “He shed the Midnight Tear and blinked.”

“Dead?”

“You didn’t know?” Myles tilts his head to the side.

“I’ve been dead for sixty years.”

“How did you come back from Lucius?” Phoenix demands, lips curling. “The King did that to Jabez, and it took murdering a human, fusing a human soul with the animal body, and a fuck-ton of power from the Amethyst Throne, from my understanding.”

“Lucius returned me to my body. My being has no connection to the Amethyst Throne. I did not come from the power of the Amethyst Throne”

Phoenix pins his ears. “They did what? What did Lucius do to you?”

“They returned me to my body. Lucius said Arcane made a deal with them, but I didn’t believe them. Arcane wouldn’t be that stupid, so I figured that something else must have happened. So surely Arcane isn’t actually dead?”

Ky shakes his head. “No, Arcane is dead. He just shed the Midnight Tear. He just blinked. He’s very recently dead. How long have you been alive again?”

Freedom sighs. “Not very long. He’s actually dead?”

“Yes, he did blink,” Ky confirms.

“The idiot,” Freedom mutters. A few of the wisps of yellow split and curl into whorls that spiral in sharp irritation.

“Arcane made a deal with Lucius?” Phoenix snaps, snorting. He bares his teeth and squints his eyes in a look, not of rage, but one that mirrors something far closer to disbelief.

“Lucius let someone go free from their claim?”

Freedom nods. “Yes, and they never should’ve done it. I was dead. I was dead for sixty years, and I can only imagine the effects this will have.”

Myles stands up, reaching out a hand with something pleading in their expression. “You’re Freedom,” he says. “You’re Freedom, and you’re alive. You’ve proven that you cannot die.”

Freedom tilts her head, seeming to get lost in a moment. “I can die. Arcane showed that when he killed me, even though he never meant to. But you are correct, Myles, in that no one can take away that people of all sorts will always exist. There’s freedom to life. There’s freedom to simply existing and enjoying the air you’re breathing and the meal you’re eating and the friends you’re laughing with or the moment you’re spending with only yourself or a pet and the book you’re reading. Not even the King can take away the freedom and wonder and magic of your existence, the existence of your friends, the existence of every single being on this island, no matter how much he might like to. Nothing changes that, whether I am alive or dead.”

Phoenix snarls, snapping the moment and breaking it. “Lucius made a fucking deal? They made a deal for a life? They were willing to bring someone back to life?”

Freedom flinches away from Myles, then nods. “Yes. It was not my choice. I never asked for them to do that, but they did. Arcane said it was his life for Freedom’s, but only when the new Midnight Wolf was ready. I suppose it makes sense that he could only call upon this deal after he blinked and shed the Midnight Tear; the deal wasn’t valid until he could die.”

“What was the exact deal?” Wyatt asks, then adds on: “If you know, that is, of course.”

Freedom flicks her tail as one of her wings jerks and spasms, leaving her grimacing and scrunching her face.

“A-Arcane didn’t mean to take my life, and Lucius knew that,” Freedom says. “It also wasn’t my time to die, sixty years ago. I wasn’t supposed to die then.”

Phoenix snaps his head up at Freedom’s words, and he fixes her with an intense stare, ears pricked and tail straight back, the tip flicking back and forth.

“Lucius offered to bring me back to life in exchange for Arcane’s life. His life for mine. One of us had to be dead, so as not to disrupt the balance of life and death any more than it already had been. Arcane was ready sixty years ago, but Lucius refused, saying that he had to wait until now. They said that Arcane would know because ‘The world will be ablaze.’ And only then could Arcane blink.”

Myles hums and nods. “That makes sense. The Sea was set on fire by the King’s Dragon. So the world was, in a very real sense, ablaze.”

Freedom inclines her head. “Then Lucius was right, unsurprisingly.”

“What are you doing here?” Ky asks, changing the subject. “Arcane and Lucius brought you back through the deal they made, so what do you plan on doing?”

“I don’t know,” Freedom says. “I woke up, and I was alive on the side of Ragdon Volcano with no memory of the last sixty years. I’m here now, alive, and I suppose I must make the most of it.”

“The better question,” Phoenix butts in, and I wince, hoping that he won’t ruin this for us and start a fight, “is how you managed to be brought back. Lucius takes lives. They don’t give them back.”

“I never asked to be brought back,” Freedom bites out, wings rising as her voice sharpens and her black gaze hardens into something dark and pointy. The type of thing lurking in the depths of a nightmare that haunt the tendrils chasing into lingering waking moments.

“I know, so how the fuck did you end up here alive again?”

“Phoenix—,” Ky starts.

“No, shut it, Ky,” Phoenix shoots back, “there’s something going on here. How come she gets to come back, but no one else does? Why did Lucius agree to bring her back, but no one else?”

Ky draws his ears back. “I don’t know. They work in mysterious ways. We can’t understand.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I know, but it’s all I can say. Lucius’s power is beyond what any of us can understand.”

“That’s not fair. It’s not fair,” Phoenix spits, and he suddenly sounds like a child.

Ky runs his cheek over his brother’s cheek, and the two lean into each other, closing their eyes. Phoenix relaxes slightly, exhaling and flames dying down a little. He noses into his brother’s fluffy fur and the red bandana.

“It isn't fair,” Ky echoes into Phoenix’s shoulder.

Phoenix rumbles into his brother and flexes his toes.

I look away when the exchange reminds me of Alex, and I find myself wondering where she is more than before.

Where are you? Where did you go? Do you know that we’re looking for you? Do you know Freedom? Do you know that Lucius brought her back to life? Does Freedom know anything?

“Did Lucius tell you anything?” Wyatt asks Freedom.

“Only that Arcane truly did make a mistake. He didn’t mean to kill me, and I wasn’t supposed to die that day.”

“I thought that you could only die on the day Lucius knew you to die?” I say.

Freedom appears to shrug. “I did, too, but it seems not. Arcane still killed me.”

Lucius just got far more complicated, although they never fully made sense to me. I supposed they never really would, and how could they? They have infinitely more power than I could ever hope to have. They’re an entity who only appears when someone dies, and they guide everyone to some unknown afterlife.

But perhaps…

If you could bring back Freedom… could you find Alex, Lucius? I can’t let myself think that you have brought my sister to death, but if you have the power to bring someone back from the dead, Lucius, could you bring my sister back to me, wherever she is? Could you help me find her? You know more than I know. You have power beyond any of us. You can help. I know you can. Please, Lucius.

I close my eyes, bowing my head toward the ground with a sigh. I’ve never been one to pray. I always knew Erebus and Lucius existed; everyone has always known. Less of a proven fact and more of an act of faith, we all collectively believed, with a few stories of the two showing up together or apart for one being or another.

If you can hear me, Lucius, can you please help me find Alex?

I dig my toes into the soil and scuff at the dirt. They won’t listen; Lucius won’t listen. They bring dead souls to death. They won’t help me find my missing sister. Alex is somewhere here on Ragdon, and it’s up to me and my friends to find her.

We will, because Alex cannot be dead. She can’t be.

She can’t be, I repeat to myself, unable to even think of the alternative.

Phoenix snarls and spits, the rumble in his chest pitching into a low roar as he stalks toward Freedom, demanding that she tell him what she’s doing here and that she tell him why Lucius made the deal when they never brought anyone back before.

“I’ve told you everything I know,” Freedom says. “I-I… I don’t know why Lucius made the decision to make the deal with Arcane, but they said that they would bring me back in exchange for Arcane’s life. You said Arcane is dead, and Lucius brought me back to life.”

“Did Lucius tell you why they haven’t brought anyone else back from the dead?” Phoenix snaps.

Freedom shakes her head, and Phoenix growls.

Flames burst from his body with his anger, yellow tendrils leap from Freedom’s body, and the cautious balance we had found between us shatters in an instant as the two of them react to the other’s magic.