"Wake up!" someone shouts as a mass of cold water lands on Tristan.
Tristan opens his eyes groggilly to see Carter standing in the background, tapping his foot impatiently, as the guilty party - the pock-scarred soldier - stands above him with a bucket. Tristan groans and tries to roll over, as if they are merely left-over figments of a bad dream and that will banish them, but finds himself incapable of doing so. He closes his eyes again, and a flurry of movement produces an almost unbearable pain on his chest.
"You listen to me, boy," the soldier growls. Tristan opens his eyes to see the man pressing one strong, firm arm on his chest, practically pressing all the air out of it. "We've been waitin' three days for you to wake up, and yer not about to go back t' sleep, or I'll kill yeh righ' 'ere!"
"N-Now don't be hasty!" Carter calls as the guard pulls out a shortish knife.
"I've been plen'y patient!"
"A-Are you aware that your speech takes a great turn for the worse when you're angry?" Tristan asks, his eyes regarding this all with wide eyes, his voice quavering.
"An' are yeh aware that the Godly Emperor wishes to see you an' has been doin' so since t'ree days ago?"
"I caught somewhat similar from your previous conversation, and I will gladly meet with him, if you would be so kind as to get off of my chest, please." Tristan would sigh, but it is difficult to do so when someone is pressing down on one's lungs.
"Quit talkin' pretty. It's aggrivatin' me!"
The soldier removes his pressing hand from Tristan's chest, and the young Weldoxian coughs and rolls to his side. His clothes are not only drenched, but also old, ripe, and clinging to him. "Of course, sir," he says, rising to his feet. "I do hope, however, that the Godly Emperor will not find my manner of clothing too offensive."
"'E said 'e wan'ed t' see yeh when yeh woke up. 'E said nothin' 'bout yeh changin' yer clothes."
Tristan stumbles to his feet and sighs, relishing the feeling of air rushing to his lungs after his experiance with near-asphixiation. "I recognize that I am in no position to be issuing orders, but do you think it at all possible to speak /without/ slurring all your words together? I realize you're simply a soldier, but one of your skill would do well to try to express himself without slipping into the vernacular."
The soldier blinks and then cuffs Tristan upside the head. "I told yeh t' stop talkin' pretty!"
"Yes, yes. Very well. Let's go meet this Godly Emperor fellow."
"I'll come along!" Carter remarks happilly.
The soldier fixes him with a cold, hard stare and swells himself up pompously.. "His Godliness simply requested the boy, not any accomplice he may or may not possess."
The soldier shoves Tristan through the doorway, follows closely behind, locks the doorway, and drags Tristan by his wrist down the hall. Tristan can not help but ask, "I'm not permitted to speak prettilly, but you are?"
His question is answered by a quick cuff upside his head and a "Shaddup! We can't keep the Godly Emperor waiting!"
Had their enterance not been preceeded by a colorful guard bowing and saying, "The Godly Emperor has been expecting you," Tristan would not have otherwise marked the throne room as anything more spectacular than a cellar. However, knowing what the room is, he is practically stricken with awe at its high, arched ceiling, probably supported, somewhere, by flying buttresses. Upon very close inspection, he realizes that there are figures in Bas relief carved among the gray, arching stones.
The soldier who had awoken him nudges Tristan in the side and clears his throat. "His Godliness will not permit any man to be at a higher level than he is upon his enterance."
Tristan sighs. "Is he a short monarch?"
The soldier simply smirks and drops to a kneel, his head lowered. A very off-key blaring of trumpets announces the arrival of someone very important, but somehow, Tristan can not accept the incoming young boy to be the Godly Emperor. So, he simply stands there.
When the child takes a seat on the high-backed chair and sneers at him, Tristan has half a mind to kneel, but something within him speaks better. They were spared for their insane bravery, what could it hurt now?
"Dare you stand before me!?" the child demands in broken Weldoxian, sinking low into his throne and scowling.
"I do, my liege," Tristan replies with a gentle tone.
"And what powers do you think allow you to do this?"
"The powers of my own two legs, your Highness. It is certainly not by the powers of my wrists that allow for this."
The child glowers. He spits out a slough of words in a foreign tongue, and the soldier beside Tristan replies in a similar flurry of words. A smallish conversation ensues, but Tristan is well aware that the boy is viewed as the master and the soldier is expected to be subserviant.
"I-If I may," Tristan tries to interject, taking a step forward, his hand outstretched to the child. He is seeking reason. He finds none.
Suddenly, the child's wrathful energy turns on him. "What god gave you your blade, wretch!?" he demands with youthful rage, his pale eyes blazing.
"My father gave me the sword which I used to fight back your horde, if that is what you are asking." Tristan is amazed that his tone is level and calm. Any day before now, before his family was ferreted away to safety, he would have been livid. Today, surprisingly, he is remarkably calm.
"Where is its twin?"
Tristan almost hesitates, for Reni has it, and he does not want Reni to fall to harm, but he knows that if he does, he will be suspected of lying. Instead, he pretends to have misheard the child's broken stammerings and strugglings through his own native language. "I'm sorry," he lies. "Could you repeat yourself? I fear, my liege, that I have misheard you."
The boy trembles with rage, his golden hair falling from the shadows in which his throne is seated. "You. Did. Not. Mis. Hear. Me!" he bellows. Then, in a remarkably clear flurry of words he asks, "Your father's sword had a double, one that was made to allow for complete power. I wish to know where it is. You will tell me!"
"What is your ultimatum?" Tristan asks, holding out just a bit longer to see how far this child will go with his threats.
"You will tell me or I will kill your commander." A brightly colored guard drags Carter by the wrist and throws him at the steps leading up to the Godly Emperor's throne.
"Go ahead. He has caused great strife and misery in my life. Indeed, he has been the cause of death for far too many of my fellow citizens. I beg you to kill him." All his words are true, yet oddly, Tristan feels compelled to save Carter.
"Well then, in that case, tell me where the sword is, or I'll let him live with you!"
Tristan sighs. "You'll win neither way. As intollerable as his actions may be, I've no desire to see Carter dead. Indeed, even living with him will be no great displeasure."
The Godly Emperor almost leaps forth from his throne and does something violent. Almost. Tristan can see him sitting there, trembling, trying to keep in control. "Tell me where the sword is, or I will kill you."
"Killing me will achieve nothing. Then all who know its location will be dead except for its possessor."
A half-snarl, more like an aggrivated purr, escapes the boy's throat. "Well then, you shall be my slave. And if you do not obey my commands, you shall be beaten."
Tristan fixes the boy with a level, unconcerned look. "And what powers do you possess, good my lord, that you can issue such orders to one such as I?"
"I am the chosen one of the deity Glar'oth. He, the mighty earth-shaker, has chosen me to represent him here on the surface of his realm."
"Glar'oth means nothing to me. Your gods can not control any men. What you have going on here is sheer slavery, throughout your kingdom."
"It is an EMPIRE!"
"Whatever. Listen, your Highness, you need to relax. You are going to overload your body and kill yourself if you do not realize that all this rage is for naught. I will not tell you where my uncle's blade is, because I honestly do not know for certain of its location. Furthermore, it is not mine to give to you. I have given it to another, and thusly, it is hers, not mine. Also, no matter how you threaten me, there is a downside. I will, no matter how often you threaten and rage and rant, find some way to alleviate the stress of your ultimatums. You can not win. Not against a son of Weldox."
The child finally leaps from his throne, scurries down the flight of stairs to the ground floor, and stands before Tristan. He reaches up and slaps him, causing the elder boy's head to snap to the side. "If there is no winning against you, then I can at least force you into stalemate. You will be conditioned to bondage to me, and to begin your reinitiation to the human race, you will spend the next week without food or water in the tower observatory. What do you say to that, slave?"
"I am not a human. I am a Weldoxian. There is naught you will ever be able to do to condition me to be human. I am a son of my motherland, and you will not be able to bleed, beat, or berate that out of me."
The child, evidently irked by Tristan's calm reply, turns on his heel and marches back to his throne, tossing his hair out of his pale eyes as he does so. "Take him away," he spits, and then he orders for dancing girls.
The first three days of sitting in the tower and watching the proceedings below had been absolutely total torture. Tristan found himself pacing the small, roundish room - furnished only with the barest of necessities: a chamber pot, a slab of wood, and a blanket among very few, very broken other things - in a half-starved state of delirium.
He nearly drove himself crazy there. He could only pace and stretch so far before he'd run into something. The walls were confining and dirty, the view was abominable, and the entirety of the room was over-all depressing.
The fourth day, Tristan found himself ignoring the hunger that had been gnawing a pit in his stomach and not at all wanting to pace. He knew, if he wanted to survive the next three days, he had to conserve his energies. He took to perching himself so that he could see out the tiny window without expending too much energy.
The fifth day, his hunger returned. He feared his body would begin to eat itself, but all that happened was slight light-headedness. He took to laying there in half-lethargy for the remainder of the fifth and sixth days. On the seventh day, he tried to surrender himself to the ultimate sleep, but it was not to be. The guard came at midnight, and he was dragged down countless flights of stairs to meet again with the Godly Emperor, or whatever reasonable facsimile thereof the child pretended to be.
The Godly Emperor stands imperally before Tristan, his hands on his hips and his foot tapping, much the same way Carter had appeared a week prior when he finally awoke. "Now, then, slave, you will do as I say, do I make myself clear?"
Tristan fixes the boy with his half-dead eyes. "Clear as the opaque mass that you are, noble master," he replies. He tilts his head to the side, but he forgets his exhaustion; his head lolls a bit front, and he must strain his neck to raise it again. "You've no power over me, Majesty." He practically spits the word that denotes the boy's authority. He glares out from under his sunken lids and fills his words with venom. "If I die, your priceless sword will never be found. If I live as you deem, I will kill myself. Do I make myself clear?"
The Godly Emperor struts up to him and slaps him. "How dare you try to control me!?" he demands. "You've no power here, and you will never have power! You wretch! You don't seem to understand -"
Empowered by his lack of sleep and want of food, Tristan takes a bold, but quavering, step forward, his face dark with anger. "No you don't understand! You can not even begin to try to sway one of a stout heart if he has leverage over you! No matter who you think gave you power, you can not hold it without the consent of the people, and I will be forsaken before I allow you to control me! You can control a person's food, water, air, space, and clothing, but you can never control his heart!"
The Godly Emperor slaps him again, and again Tristan's head jerks to the side. The pale child smirks and turns. "That's where you're wrong, slave. You see, so long as you're alive, you can be broken."
"It is more dangerous to use a broken tool than a well-kept and consenting one," Tristan replies somberly. "Broken tools turn around and destroy their users."
"But broken animals do not. And that is all you are, slave. An animal. Tools are idiots who wiel power, like your friend, Carter. In the week of your confinement, he has proven instrumental to describing how your people set up your empire."
"Ours was never an empire. It was just a city. And you destroyed it, you god-fearing, conceited, egotistical bas-"
"Now, now, slave. Watch your tongue. If you use it too often, it may be cut out of your mouth."
Tristan can take no more. Surprisingly, his rage lends him strength. He lunges at the boy's back, but two strong-armed soldiers grab him by the elbows. He stumbles, and ultimately lands on the floor, for the soldiers had dropped him intentionally.
The Godly Emperor wheels around again and drops to a squat before Tristan. "You're pathetic, slave. You're useless, and I plan on disposing of you once I have the proper intellegence from you concerning my sword."
"It's not yours, nor will it ever be yours. You can search and search and search, but you won't find it, and if you do, you won't be able to get it. Its keeper is not stupid," Tristan mumbles.
"Oh?"
"Don't pretend to think I'll speak more than that. I won't. Go ask your tool, Carter. He's more useful than simply a broken animal such as I."
The Godly Emperor sits there and shakes his head. "I can be your worst enemy or your best friend."
"Or my biggest road block. You've kept me from death too many times. Kill me and have it over with. I tire of this existance. I want to rest."
"For one who believes naught of the gods, you speak confidently of death."
"My father feared it naught, nor my mother, nor my uncle. I will not be daunted. Now go away. Let me sleep and rest my tired bones."
Suddnely, the Godly Emperor stands and kicks Tristan in the side. "He bores me. Take him away."
The pock-scarred guard throws Tristan into the cell-like room in which he had originally awakened. Carter is sitting there in the corner. "Why didn't you give in? Why does your foolish pride have to stand in your way? Just tell him where his forsaken blade is, and we will be free!"
"Or dead," Tristan retorts, crawling over to a nice corner full of relatively fresh straw. "Once he has no need for us, he will kill us all."
"You're a fool, Tristan. Your father was a fool, your mother was a fool, your uncle was a fool, and all your other ancestors were fools."
"Shove it, Carter. I'm in no mood to dally in your idiotic nonsensical threats and speculations."
"They are not merely speculations! The Godly Emperor himself confirmed this!"
"Okay, so maybe he won't kill us, but someone will. They'll hunt us all down like animals, for that's all he sees us as. We're simply pieces of a game for him. No matter how hard we try, he will never let any of us free."
Background by AAA Backgrounds.