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Ochiden V7 - Chapter 5: Prince Sion Astal
Aug. 16th, 2020 08:09 pmChapter 5: Prince Sion Astal
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Sion opened the door to the heart of Roland.
There, in the apex of the country, stood Roland’s king, the origin of all evil.
He was also Sion’s…
“…Father,” Sion whispered.
The throne room was large and made of stone. A red velvet carpet stretched out through the center, ending in the throne. A single man stood there at the other end of the carpet. Aside from that, the room was empty.
The man was standing and staring at the ceiling instead of sitting on the throne. He gripped a black sword in his hand. He had blond hair and eyes that were the same golden color as Sion’s. He only looked about twenty-four or twenty-five instead of the age Sion’s father was supposed to be. Even so, that ought to be him. After all, the king was the only person who was allowed to stand there like he was doing.
So Sion faced the king and spoke.
“You’re my… I mean, you are my father, are you not?”
The king did not answer.
Maybe he hadn’t heard. The throne room was large, after all. It was possible that Sion’s voice hadn’t made it all the way to the other end of the room. But at the same time, it was empty other than the two of them, so it should’ve carried quite far in the absence of other sound.
“…I am coming in,” Sion said.
The king still didn’t answer. He just stared at the ceiling in a daze. But his mouth was moving as if he was muttering something that Sion was too far away to hear.
Sion moved to take a step in. But as soon as he did, Lucile appeared. He didn’t appear by Sion’s side. He appeared on the other side of the room, behind the king who held that black sword and stared up at the ceiling.
It looked as though Lucile intended to protect the king. To support him.
Lucile stared right at him. His eyes said not to come any closer. Of course they would. He warned Sion before he ever came here, after all.
If they clashed here, they’d try to steal each other’s power, and the true Hero would be decided between them. In all likelihood that’d be the king, who was still stronger. So Lucile was telling him not to make contact with the king right now. If he did, he’d be killed. So don’t enter the room. Don’t approach the king.
In addition, Lucile was currently on the king’s side. His contract binded him, and would continue to bind him to the king until Sion’s power surpassed the king’s and he was acknowledged as the Hero instead. So Lucile wasn’t Sion’s ally here. It wouldn’t be strange if Lucile attacked or killed him at any moment.
Lucile stared straight at him with clear blue eyes. “Who is it?” He asked. “You. You would intrude here even knowing that this place only belongs to the king?”
So Lucile chose to act like a stranger, did he? His tone said it all.
“……”
Sion didn’t answer him. He just lifted his foot and placed it solidly inside of the room. The instant he did, he felt something inside of himself lurch, as if the dark power rotting him from the inside had reacted to something here.
It was probably the Hero’s power. It was the feeling of the two separate reservoirs of his power calling to each other, and the source outside of Sion’s body was far stronger. Just stepping into the room was enough for him to feel that beyond a shadow of a doubt. If he let it enter him, he wouldn’t stay sane.
“……”
Sion looked up to the king - the man who should’ve been his father. He didn’t look sane in the slightest. After all, he paid no mind to Sion entering. Instead he just gripped his sword and stared at the ceiling.
Sion took another step forward.
Lucile’s eyes slowly closed. The sliver of blue between his eyelashes got thinner and thinner. Sion didn’t know what he was trying to say with that. Was he amazed? Disappointed? The only thing Sion was certain of was that Lucile didn’t feel good about what Sion was doing.
Lucile’s eyes finished closing. At the same time, the king’s gaze fell from the ceiling. He looked down to Sion. His golden eyes seemed empty, like they didn’t move of his own volition. “Who are you?” He asked with a voice that was disgustingly similar to Sion’s.
“I am your son,” Sion answered.
“My son?” The king tilted his head. “Haha. I don’t have any sons.”
Sion felt his heart stir or a brief moment as his mother’s face flashed through his mind. This man had forcibly stolen her humanity from her, forcing her to birth a child into the world. After that, he had the gall to throw her away. But despite her hardships, his mother always smiled when she looked at Sion.
Sion couldn’t let that thought show on his face. It didn’t mean anything here and now, after all.
It looked like his father had long since lost his sanity, and besides, Sion needed to ask him for help right now. He needed to make sure that this country could change. He needed to make Miller’s plan a success. He needed to help Claugh, who was in the midst of a battle with nobles’ private armies back at the military headquarters. He had to save the people of this country who had suffered under the weight of Roland’s madness for so long.
So Sion swallowed his emotions, placed a hand on his chest, and spoke. “Is that so. However, even if you do not remember, I am still your son.”
“Hmm,” the king said, a confused expression on his face. “Then what has my son come here to do? Steal the throne?”
“If I said yes, what would you do to me, Father?”
“I wonder. Maybe I’d kill you.”
“Can you kill me?”
The king smiled lopsidedly. “Can I, you ask? Can I kill you? Ha, haha, hahaha. You’re an interesting one. But you can feel it, can’t you?”
“……”
“If you’re really my son, you should be able to feel the difference in our powers. Can’t you?”
“……”
“If you’re asking to switch places with me, then I’d happily oblige. Being here is really difficult. My mind is always a blur. The power is too thick. I can’t think through it.”
“……”
“All I can think of is the pain searing through my body and the thick despair inside of it. Would you take that in my place?”
“……”
“All you need to be is a vessel strong enough to take this curse. Are you?”
“……”
“If you are, then save me. Release me from this. Take my curse—”
His father took a step forward.
In the same instant, Sion heard a voice close to his ear. A quiet, quiet voice that whispered to him. “That’s more than enough, you idiot. Run,” Lucile told him.
But it was already too late.
His father raised his sword. Countless other swords flew from it. Sion had never seen such a thing before. They were swords made of the darkness itself.
They flew at Sion far too fast for him to even think about dodging.
One pierced his throat.
“Guh!”
The next hit his chest, then his right arm, his left leg.
It didn’t hurt, and he didn’t bleed.
He was pierced by black blades that leaked their curse into him - the monstrous curse of the strange god who has inhabited Roland since antiquity—
The curse of the Fallen Dark Hero.
It was coming inside of him and combining with his own curse. The unpleasantness, pain, and hopelessness inside of him swelled up many, many times larger than it’d ever been. It coursed through the underside of his skin, the depths of his organs, and reached all the way to the endpoints of all of his nerves.
“…Guah, aah, aauuughh!!”
Sion fell to his knees, unable to stand a moment longer, and held his stomach. He felt himself heave and threw up. There was blood mixed in with his vomit, but… it wasn’t red. It shone and sparkled gold.
“……”
He didn’t have the presence of mind to wonder what it meant.
His father the king spoke. “Hoh. You’re managing. Are you really my successor as the sacrifice?”
“…Guh, guah, ahh…”
“Has the monster finally decided to free me from his power?” The king wondered.
“Uah, ahh…”
“Then hurry up and release me. Save me from this hopelessness. I’ll give you power and authority as long as I can run from this insane world. I just want to escape this place.”
Another sword pierced him, soon followed by two more.
“Augh, aaauuuughh!!” Sion screamed. It was crazy, but he truly felt like his organs would spring right out of his throat. He had to overcome it. He did everything he could to stand his ground against it.
He heard the king’s voice draw closer. “You’re still managing? You’re really still managing? Ha, hahahaha, hahahahah, it’s ending, it’s finally ending. My pain is finally coming to an end.”
Another sword stabbed through Sion. He didn’t know how many were inside of him now. All he knew was that the king’s power was still transferring to him, flowing in from each sword in his body.
He couldn’t bear it. He pressed past his limits and lost the ability to think. He stopped wishing that someone would come and save him or protect him from the pain. He rose above all of those feelings, ambiguous in form. It was only then that he felt he could control his thoughts once more.
“……”
Sion shivered at the sensation of turning into something that wasn’t himself.
Then he put all of his energy into remembering everything to keep himself from going mad.
He recalled his mother’s smile as she died.
He recalled his friends’ faces as they bet their hopes on him and the expression on their dead bodies after his choice led them to ruin.
He recalled Kiefer’s tears as she betrayed her friends.
He recalled the face that’d given up on everything as it was forced into jail…
“……”
Ryner’s face.
“…Sh, shit,” Sion gasped.
He did everything he could to preserve his sense of self. He overcame the painful sensation so similar to organs rupturing and raised his shivering head.
His father was standing right in front of him, looking down to Sion. It almost seemed like he wanted to get close enough to reach his hand out to him. But his eyes were empty. They were not the eyes of someone who was himself.
“S-switch places with me!” The king said as he stared with those sinking eyes. “Take this pain in my place! I don’t know who you are, but I need you to save me!”
To go so far to depend on others despite being the king of their country. He took responsibility of everyone in Roland when he took the throne. Yet here he was, king after all this time, despite having failed his responsibilities since the beginning.
“D-don’t touch me!” Sion yelled and slapped the king’s face with all his might.
The king’s face reflected anguish for a brief moment, then he fall back.
Sion grasped the pin that held the king’s cloak in place. It was emblazoned with Roland’s coat of arms, two snakes circling a lance.
Sion ripped it off and used all of his power to overcome the despair and stand. “Yeah. If you hate it so much, then I’ll do it instead!” He yelled. “I-I’m not strong enough yet, but… Someday, someday I’ll force you off of your throne! I will force you, the trash who couldn’t protect this country, the people, our family, my mother, off of your throne! Hell, you couldn’t even protect yourself! So wait here! Wait for me to force you out of this place!”
Despite his yelling, Sion stepped back. He had to, if he wanted to maintain his front against the Hero’s power.
The king didn’t say or do anything to stop him. He just watched him with his empty eyes, as if disappointed.
Sion stepped back away from his gaze, letting his back hit the door.
The king didn’t give chase. He didn’t do anything. He just watched, sad, suffering.
Sion glared at him. “I…”
The king suddenly opened his mouth. “Won’t you save me? My son.”
Sion grimaced.
“……”
Then he left without another word.
The air was much easier to breathe outside of there. The curse hadn’t weakened and the pain was still crawling throughout his body, but the heavy insanity of that room at least didn’t follow him out.
“Gahahh…”
Sion let out a huge sigh to get it out of his body, in hopes of calming the urge to vomit.
Then he breathed in and out to take his mind off of the pain. He began to calm down. Then he turned back to the now closed door.
“That was… my father…?”
He thought of the insane king of this country that he’d just met and compared it to the image he’d had of his father as a child. His father had done nothing but cause his mother pain and ridicule her, and when he got tired of her, he just threw her aside. That was the cruel image that Sion had always had of that man.
“But he’s less…”
Nasty, somehow.
Lucile appeared in front of him and looked down at Sion, who was still crouched on the floor. “I see you’ve come back alive.”
Sion looked up to meet his gaze. “Ha, did you want to come stand by my side? Isn’t my father supposed to be your master here?”
Lucile smiled. “He’s already gone mad, so spending time with him isn’t all that interesting.”
“So being with me is interesting?”
“Haha, I wonder. Did you manage to accomplish anything after braving such a massive risk?” Lucile asked.
Sion looked down to the engraved pin in his hand. It glittered gold, and was obviously quite an expensive little trinket. He held it up for Lucile to see. “I got this.”
“Is there any reason for you to have that?”
“Maybe,” Sion said. He forced himself up and patted the dirt that’d gotten all over his clothes while he was writhing on the floor off. But he couldn’t do anything about the blood and vomit. It’d already made red stains on his clothes.
“Hmm. So your blood is still red,” Lucile said.
“Huh? It looked gold when it came out.”
“The Hero still hasn’t decided to choose you. He likes your father.”
“Hmmm. So you’re saying that if I’m chosen, my blood’ll turn gold.”
Lucile smiled. “Flashy, isn’t it?”
“You’re misunderstanding here. I don’t want to be that flashy,” Sion said.
“Ahaha.” Lucile laughed, but it wasn’t a laughing matter.
The pain running through Sion’s body now was difficult to manage. To think that it could get worse to the point where it even changed the color of his blood. “I wonder if I’ll be able to take it,” Sion said. He couldn’t help but feel anxious about it.
Lucile shrugged. “If you can’t and end up going mad, then I’ll be back to square one of boredom. Serving someone who’s lost it is in itself rather painful. So I’d like it if you did what you could to avoid going losing your sense of self.”
With that, Lucile’s form became transparent, then vanished. Once he was gone, Sion looked back down to the gold in his hands.
“…Now, how much mileage can I get out of this thing?” Sion wondered.
He left the hall leading to the throne room, and after being checked over by countless guards, made it outside where Calne was waiting for him, staring up at the sky with a bored expression on his face and whistling. He swayed to the side once, twice, three times, then noticed that Sion was there and turned around to see him.
Calne’s perpetual baby face had the same flippant smile as always. “Oh, wow, you got out alive!” He said, just like Lucile had not too long ago. Then he looked down at the mix of blood and vomit on Sion’s clothes. “Did you and your dad have a BDSM scene in there, since you finally got to meet in person without anyone else around?”
Sion ignored his idiotic question, walked past Calne, and got into the carriage that was waiting for them.
Calne shrugged and got in with him. “Let’s go. We’re headed to Count Newbull, right?”
Since Sion had succeeded in meeting with the king, yes - their goal was to bring that information back to members of the nobility who weren’t aligned with any particular faction, which was why they were going to visit Count Newbull. If they can convince Newbull to sympathize with them, there was a possibility that other unaligned nobles would choose to join their cause as well.
They’d use the nobles that Miller managed to gather up as their first line of defense and the ones that Sion gathered up as their second line. So they needed Newbull’s power…
“…But even that won’t be enough.” That was why he had to do as much as he could to help things along. He gripped the crest in his hand.
“What’s that?” Calne asked.
“I stole it from my father. I’ll tell them that he gave it to me as proof that I will be the one to inherit his throne.”
Calne’s eyes widened. “Did he really say that?”
“Nope.”
“Then are you sure you can go around telling people that?”
Sion nodded. “It’s probably fine. At the very least, the king won’t refute my claim. At least…”
The king didn’t have that level of reasoning left anymore, after all… Not from what Sion had seen. So Sion could probably say whatever he wanted and flash this crest however much he wanted without consequence.
“…At least, as long as I do everything in my power to.” Sion sunk into the carriage’s seat. His body was still shaking from the exertion of that match with the king. Not only that, but sitting here now was making him tired…
“You must be tired,” Calne said.
“Do I look tired?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it was my first time seeing my father face to face, after all…”
“I never knew my parents, so I don’t know what that’s like,” Calne said.
Sion met Calne’s eyes.“Is that so.”
After that, Sion closed his eyes. As soon as he did, he felt the curse swirling inside of his body try to suck his consciousness into darkness. He had to put all his effort into fighting it so that his mind went on to dream instead.
“Ahh, sorry to say this while you’re trying to sleep, but we’ve got enemies,” Calne said.
Apparently he wasn’t allowed to sleep yet.
Sion opened his eyes to a battlefield unfolding. Two men in military uniforms were trying to get into the carriage, but Calne had stuck knives through their necks.
Those two weren’t the only enemies here. Several voices outside began to speak at the same time.
“I wish for thunder—”
Hearing the start of Lightning Flash all around them, Calne glanced at Sion. “Let’s get out there!” Calne said as he grabbed Sion by the collar and pulled him out of the free side of the carriage.
Sion watched five bolts of Lightning Flash destroy the other side of the carriage as Calne shoved him out. The impact threw Sion to the ground rolling. Once he managed to stand himself up, he surveyed his surroundings.
There were seven enemy soldiers, all of whom wore the Roland military uniform.
“Kill them!” One yelled.
“Shit,” Sion muttered and ran.
Calne jumped out of the ruined carriage. Despite his left hanging limp and soaked with blood, he was fast. He slung a knife into one of the opposing soldiers’ necks with his right arm.
“Ignore his guard!” The shortest of the enemy soldiers said. “Your objective is Prince Sion Astal! He who kills or captures him alive will receive a cash reward that’ll easily pay for the rest of your life!”
They all turned their energy towards Sion.
Time to call for his real guard. “Lucile.”
Lucile didn’t appear. But he did speak in a whisper close to Sion’s ear. “I won’t save you. If you can’t even do this yourself, then it’s hopeless for you.”
“……”
“Show me that you can turn the impossible into possible. If you can’t, you’ll never capture the people’s hearts. The hearts taken in by the Hero will decide this, so… You will need to capture more of their hearts than the current king… You must overwhelmingly capture their hearts. A miracle should occur if you do.”
“……”
“If everyone in this country cheers for you, then a miracle, a legend… Can you create something like that?”
“……”
“You’re the Hero Prince who excelled in the war with Estabul. Can you use that title to elevate yourself to king? I will watch happily from the spectator’s seat.”
When he stopped speaking, it was like he was gone entirely. Sion had no idea if anyone else had heard him or not.
In any case, Lucile wasn’t going to help. So…
“I’ll take a horse and escape,” Sion decided. “Calne, you too—”
“I’ll stay here and kill these guys,” Calne said.
“But you can’t do it alone…”
“You’ll just get in the way,” Calne said as he killed another soldier. “Go do what you need to do, and I’ll be here, doing what I need to do… We just have to do what we’re most suited to.”
Calne moved his attention to the shortest soldier present who had addressed the rest like their leader a minute ago. But the leader was strong and easily dodged Calne’s attack. Then he ordered his subordinates to kill Calne.
Calne looked like he was at a clear disadvantage, seeing as he’d lost use of one of his arms. He’d end up dead at this rate.
“……”
But Sion didn’t move to help him. Calne was right, after all. He’d only get in the way. He still wasn’t strong enough to save anyone.
“I… I’ll go where I need to be,” Sion said. He used both arms to draw a magic circle, which he pointed at the harness tying the horses to the carriage. “I wish for thunder - Lightning Flash!”
A ball of light gathered in the center of his magic circle, then shot out as a bolt of thunder. It struck and burnt the harness off, freeing the horse. He rode it away.
He saw flashes of lightning, sparks, and fire out of the corner of his eye. Calne must have started getting serious. But he didn’t look back. He focused all his power on steering the horse towards the nobles’ quarter. He didn’t know what he had to do there. All he knew was that Lucile was right - they’d need a miracle to win. So could he make a miracle happen?
If he didn’t make a miracle, then…
“…All of my allies will end up dead,” Sion said, a faint smile on his face.
It was always like that. Even the battlefield that he’d fought with Ryner on… no, ever since he was a child.
Everyone always ended up dying with tears in their eyes.
That was how he ended up hating his siblings and the nobility. That was why he couldn’t stand this rotten country.
“This war will end it all,” Sion declared. “I’ll change this country.”
He already sold his soul to the devil to do it. He was prepared for his humanity being stripped away. He’d decided to move forward no matter what, so that Ryner, Kiefer, and everyone else didn’t have to cry anymore. He’d do it to make a world where his mother wouldn’t have taken her life. One where the weight of this rotten country wouldn’t crush its people.
“I…”
Another set of assassins appeared down the road. There were over a dozen of them - more than there had been last time.
“I’ll…”
He thought of Lucile’s words once more. He’d need a miracle.
Sion smiled. “I’ve just got to do it. If all I need is a miracle, I’ll make miracles rain from the sky. I’ll grasp everyone’s hearts, and…”
Someone’s spell hit his horse, and Sion fell off. But he caught himself and broke out in a run instead, veering off into alleyways to escape his pursuers.
“I’ll become king of this here country and change the world!” Sion screamed.
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