The silence that followed was almost more damning than the statement itself. Sir Niklaus Niemend, oldest member of the king’s guard stood straight backed across from his new king. He had spoken truthfully and would not back down now. Nor would he break eye contact. A man could not afford to look weak when dealing with a predator, and if the horned behemoth across from him was anything, it was certainly a predator.
“You!”, King Char the Bloodfather hissed through clenched teeth. His perfect, pearlescent white teeth shone through his blackened lips. They were a dam struggling to hold back the venom and vitriol building on the other side. A smile specifically crafted to hide the danger lurking beneath. The anger brewing in his ruby red eyes burned with the intensity of a primordial flame, “You dare?”
The demon had asked for Niklaus’s opinion, and Niklaus, always a gambling man, had taken a chance. He was hoping that Char knew better than to punish men for honesty.
“Of course I dare. You want to be the greatest ruler these people have ever had do you not? Beloved and feared in equal measure?” Niklaus waited for Char to nod before continuing. He barely received a shrug from the large demon, but pushed forward anyway, “Then it is important to know where your power comes from. It’s not their love, nor their fear. It’s the number of sick and hungry. You bear the burden of keeping them healthy and well fed. Fail that duty, and it does not matter how loved you are, how feared you are, those people will rebel. Your crown is forged from bone and burden and hunger and pain.”
“You think I fear a rebellion from those huddled, squabbling masses? I will crush them just as I crushed your meager armies!” Char spat to the side while puffing out his bare chest. His red skin caught the light from the fires burning around him and reflected it back, giving the nearly empty throne room around him an even more sinister glow. “Just as I crushed you and your pathetic band of kings guard.” He raised his hellish sword up to Niklaus’s neck. The twisted, triangular blade was longer than a man was tall, barbed and wicked, designed not just to kill but to cause suffering in those it left alive.
Niklaus ignored the blade and the smug look on Char’s face and faught off the urge to hold his wounded side. He knew it was bleeding badly, but barely felt the wound anymore. That was a bad sign. But then again, so was the blade at his throat. So he swallowed his fear and took another gamble. “True, but then you will just be the king of a pile of corpses. A rather large pile of corpses I’ll admit, but a rather sad kingdom indeed. And a terrible start to an empire if you ask me.”
It was that last morsel that finally gave the infernal conqueror pause. He lowered his sword and turned abruptly towards the throne, striding across the room where he picked up the charred corpse of King Ferdinand IV with a single meaty hand. He discarded the old ruler like trash into the wind, tossing him across the room with ease. He sat upon his new throne and turned back to Niklaus, a newfound hunger glinting within his eyes.
It was quite possibly the hardest thing Niklaus had ever done to force his face to show nothing, to remain a mask of indifference, to not twist with the insurmountable disgust swelling within him. He avoided looking at the old king or the other corpses around him. Instead, he locked eyes with the tyrant before him and continued to stand tall. He had no hope of defeating Char in battle, but maybe he could still save his people. One wounded, dying man against an otherworldly threat. Not great odds, admittedly.
“An empire? Go on.” The Bloodfather spoke with all the authority of hammer striking anvil, he left no room for questioning. This was a creature accustomed to being obeyed.
“You are, quite possibly, the greatest conquerer our people have ever faced. You didn’t just lay seige to our city, you destoyed our walls. You broke the Unbreakable City of Kas.” Niklaus was betting that Char was as vain as he was formidable, and took the budding smile on his face as the sign of a hand well played. “But can you build a better one in its place? Are you and yours more than just destoyers?”
“We,” the demon spoke after a period of contemplation, “rarely are.”
“I thought as much,” Niklaus continued. “You have an opportunity here to turn our great city into the center of your great empire. Rule the people here the right way and they’ll follow you. We are a proud people, probably too proud, and if you try to squash us into submission we’ll resist. Leave some of the old power in place though, a familiar face as your right hand man perhaps, and the people won’t feel as downtrodden. If you leave us the room to grow along side you, then you’ll have more than just a foothold in our realm. You’ll have the birthplace of The Bloodfather’s Empire. Our Unbreakable City and your Unbreakable Army.”
“My Unbreakable City,” Char said matter-of-factly. His voice somehow a mix of honey and gravel. His face a mask.
“Of course, Your Majesty, I misspoke,” Niklaus said the words as if they didn’t break his heart to speak aloud.
“You play a dangerous game,” the tyrant spoke with a sly grin upon his face, as if he finally understood the man in front of him, “You’d really gamble their lives to save your own?”
“What can I say, maybe the two of us aren’t so different.”
Char paused for what felt like an eternity to Niklaus, “Perhaps not.”
Another pause.
Another eternity.
Finally, the demon king spoke, “Fine. I will let you live, but you will help me rule this city. You will help me build an empire. If not, I will lay waste to this city and all the others. And I will make you watch while I drive your kind to extinction before ending you myself.”
And there it was, the last gamble Niklaus thought he’d ever take had paid off. He’d given his people a chance. Char the Bloodfather had it backwards, because of course he did. The idea of self sacrifice was so alien to him, it had never occurred to him that Niklaus was actually betting his life, his _soul, _to save his people.
The surrounding world may suffer, but his people would thrive, and that was a win in his books.
“I accept.”
Most souls are grey.
Most people float. They drift or they crawl or they claw their way through every day. The weight of this life can get so heavy. It takes its toll after a while, and the effect is visible. Not just in the downturned gazes, half-hearted salutations, or smiles that never reach where they used to when we were younger. It’s not just found in the indifference.
It’s visible on a deeper level, the melancholy is contagious, like a wound left untreated it festers and spreads and seeps the color from our very souls. Not from everyone of course, some people still fight, some surge, some twinkle with the color of a life well lived. Some try.
But you, you were a beacon.
You smiled with a ruby red light that blazed into the void, illuminating the world around you. You lived with an emerald green, cultivating others to shine as well. You spoke in a shade of purple so majestic I finally understood why it was a color reserved for royalty. You danced with a blue so deep and true, the sky and ocean should take note of the colors they could create. You loved with a cacophony of color, an explosion of hue, a soul that shone with more light than I had ever seen before.
And you chose to shine that light on me?
How could I be so lucky?
Was this a blessing? A curse? A punishment perhaps? Or.. or was this a responsibility? Thinking was so very difficult while standing on watch. The fighting has finally come to an end. I stand watch and my body returns to the forest around me. An exhalation of breath, and then a stillness overtakes my body that is so absolute it is as if Time itself has lost sight of me within the woods.
That is the cycle. We watch, we wake, we inhale, we fight for however long we are needed, then we exhale. A single breath spent on a war. Then we watch again.
The countless years drift by and I forget. I forget who I was. I forget the sweet relief there was in something as simple as breathing.
With great effort, I think.
Two hundred fifty years have passed since my last true inhalation of air, since wind and oxygen and relief graced my lips. The fighting lasted a very long time this cycle. Longer even since I was last granted the right to exhale.
I stand watch. We stand watch while our people hide and survive and live.
Another hundred years pass without incident while I ponder my last breath. We are not even the first line of defense. The trees around us bear that burden. A forest so immense and dense even the light of the sun does not filter to the ground. But are we not the trees as well? My legs are rooted in place, my arms spread wide in defense of a place I love. I stand tall and proud, keeping watch with eyes unblinking and focused ahead. Is that not the same?
With great effort, I remember.
We were told there would be a cost. My brothers and I. Our humanity to become immortal. It seemed simple at the time. I don’t think any of us truly understood what it would mean to pay that price; or how immortality itself would weight on us. Except maybe Sylas. He was so young and yet always so wise.
Centuries ago my people waged wars among each other. Warfare was an artform we excelled at. Yet, the war had grown too violent and the bloodshed so endless that we decided the conflict was no longer worth the price. My people sought peace for what felt like the first time in our existence. We sought older gods and magic older still to achive that peace. We had hoped to step away from the war.
Instead we had to step away from the world entirely.
I barely remember the ritual itself. The memory and trauma of the experience has been stripped from my mind by the years. Time, it appears, can erode more than just the world around us. I do, however, remember all the many years since. Especially, those first incursions.
We were killed. Deliberately. Our souls and bodies offered up to Gaia herself and the forest around us. We served up our mortality with the last of our hope. Our offering was accepted.
And in acceptance we were changed.
The transformation was not pleasant. Our blood coagulated, thickened, and slowed. It changed into something more akin to tree sap than blood. It was infused with raw power. The power of the world around us flowed directly into us. The strength of our people infused our very essence.
Our limbs elongated painfully, our bones twisted and thickened and shifted, reforming like iron between hammer and anvil. Our skin calcified, hardening into a wood so strong and ancient that even cold iron could not harm us. We became a force of nature herself. Significantly stronger, and significantly less human than we initially expected.
When our enemies came searching for us they were not prepared.
My brothers and I were chosen because of our prowess in battle. I remember a tournament. A great contest to help determine champions. I may be biased, but I believe my people chose correctly. Even before the transformation, the seven of us fought like men possessed. We were more skilled in blade and bow than any mortal had the right to be. Now, though, now we were something else entirely.
Unfailing, unflinching, and undying.
Faster. Stronger. Better.
We swept through the men that came for our home like they were crops to be reaped and sown. Their blades broke upon our skin, and their bodies broke beneath our blades. We could step between the trees themselves, miles traversed in seconds, and battles engaged and won before the enemy even knew we were there. Because of course we were there. We were everywhere. We were the trees.
If, somehow, we were cut down, the trees themselves would regrow our bodies. Immortality provided a better defense than any shield could offer. Seven brothers stood against an army and the army broke first. In the end seven brothers still stood.
When they came again, they were broken again. And again. And again. Centuries would pass punctuated only with brutality and death. Until finally, our enemies relented. They offered peace and let us rest. For a time at least.
The decades passed by, and when they came again, because of course they did, only six brothers rose to meet them. Erik, our most thoughtful brother, had lost the will to fight. Time, it appears, can erode more than we expected
Six of us were still more than enough. Though not entirely. War had finally claimed one of us. We had grown overconfident and immortality had sown the seeds of hubris. Centuries of peace had let it fester. Peter, the most rash of us all had overextended, hoping to strike at our enemies as the fled the fortress that was our forest. Alone, outside of the safety of the trees’ embrace for the first time, he fell to blade and flame like any man.
The trees could not regrow what they could not touch.
I can sense that Peter’s death has taken a toll on my brothers. We were connected in a way that defied reason. Interlinked, reborn, reforged and cultivated together. How many trees did it take before they were no longer defined as trees but as a forest? It’s interesting how many things can become singular. I do not expect my brothers to wake the next time we are needed.
I will.
It was more than a sense of duty. It was in my very nature to protect those I loved, and now more than ever I could not go against my nature. Not when my brothers now counted themselves among the ones who needed my protection.
I will stand watch. I will wake, I will fill my lungs with air, and I will fight.
One brother will have to be enough.
