The King Trials 2: Beyond.

~It Is Your Choice~

The following days speed by at breakneck speeds but still slow and agonising in its excruciating arduousness. It takes many days, much transference of modes of transport, barge, boat, and airship. Even now we have finally arrived on Urium soil, beyond the border.

Yet, the true journey is still to begin.

What makes the voyage back to our homelands more painful is the additional physical exertion. A strain that my body refuses to endure, identical symptoms I faced before we encountered the Are, before I met Zoar. I question if I will ever see him again. If I will ever return to the Sagetai Sanctuary, it does not feel like something I should do. But something that I must.

We have just left Ben-Nun, our entire convoy is travelling on horseback through the Fanghills. The valley of desiccated hills, a land of thorn and thistles, its grass withered. We all amble through the bone-dry ravine sprinkled with bare bushes with skeletal limbs. Nothing green or blooming for miles ahead, it is as vast as the sunless sky, louring with a shroud of foreboding storm clouds. Threatening rain.

Primus Kelan brings the convoy to a standstill. A brief recess. Everyone eagerly dismounts, even the horses plop down on the ground, slanted towards one side. I collapse, resting my whole backside against the flank of my thoroughbred, closing my eyes.

Frequent whining of the horses skims passed my ears, light conversations wafting around, the cool air, moist and dank, loaded with the sweet smell of rain yet to fall. My head is wrapped with the black scarf that only conceals my hair. I lift my hand to clutch the gemstone.

Oh, how I ache for his presence, not a moment goes by when my mind doesn't torment me with a vision of his smile. The anguish my chest bears, burdened by the heft of my heart, forced to carry its dead weight every day and every night.

I must learn about the Sagetai's power. If I cannot get rid of it, I must learn to control it so that there will never be another to suffer Solaris's fate, not by my hand. Vince's proverb comes to mind like the wandering wind: Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them. And I remember, I always have because I know who Solaris was to me; hushing the lies, the guilt, and manipulation.

I remember. I know.

He was a good soul, a better friend, and would have made an even greater king.

Alas, he will then rule above.

I wonder wherever he is. Can he see me? There are so many things I wished I could have told him, but death tore us apart. But not forever, I will see him again, but for now, there are things I must do, promises that must be upheld. Before Solaris breathed his last, he instructed me; he told me what he believed in even when the cords of the grave had wrung his neck. He still believed.

He believed in me.

I peel my eyes open, white light washes over me before it gives way to my sight. Beneath its considerable shadow, my eyes drift up the torso of a hill right in front of me until the peak. A tree stands at the apex, stripped of life, it's gnarly arms brittle and wilting in its perpetual dolour.

I push myself up to my feet, rubbing my bandaged hand. I inhale a deep breath and start the climb, shifting my weight heavily with each stomp directed up. It doesn't take long until the steepish incline plateaus into a short, table-top peak.

I peer over my shoulder at the resting convoy, their distant frames like lanky figures. Scant of breath, I pause to survey the scenery from a bird's-eye view. The hills tumble on for as far as my sight will permit, everything dry and dismal. At the brink of my eyesight, a chain of dusty-brown mountains fringes the rim of the terrain. A collection of fowls flies on the noontide thermals, flapping their wings calmly, gliding through the air with enviable serenity.