Tsuki ✔️COMPLETE

Chapter 2: The Disaster

Zincalo-Minami Ocean

Year 1332 月水 (Gessui Calendar)

Twenty two years ago, no one in Kusanagi city would have believed a foreigner or a slave could have taken the throne of Migiue, let alone a man who was both.

"I was born free, and I will die free." he had said over and over, no matter the punishment.

No one had believed him, or any other person who dared say the same. There was even a rumour that the red haired gladiator could not die so long as he wore chains, like a vengeful ghost bound to the world until it saw justice.

The graffiti that littered the monstrous walls around the city borders read "I too favour Red" in crimson letters. Some were two stories high and painted with rushed strokes in the dead of night. Of course, it was not written in Proper, the language of the learned. It was written in any language but that. The ruling class had stared at the strange markings while the streets buzzed with interest.

These days, that writing was faded with time, just like the man who put his life on the line to free a hundred thousand suffering people from the whims of a minority. Some stories said a million people answered the call. He did not know the number, he never pretended he did.

His rust coloured hair was almost totally white now, barrel chest sinking with age. His hands were weathered from carrying a plough in his youth, a sword in his prime, and later his two children when the rebellion ended. The Red Man still sat on the throne he had won, but he was tired. He had been tired for twenty two years.

Rubi knew the story as if she had been there herself. Her father, the bloodsport slave who usurped a tyrannical king with an army of fellow slaves behind him. Of course, this had been before she was born. Her brother had been an infant during the rebellion.

Rubi was the first child to be born into the new royal family. She carried his red hair and green eyes, his double from her first breath. Her skin, as well as her brother's, was the perfect midpoint between her father's dark umber complexion and her mother's cool sienna. A new era should have begun, but these days Rubi wondered if she would ever go back home.

Her brother had left their home suddenly and a mere year later the claustrophobia of the city walls, the standards set for her, and the gilded rooms of the palace became too much. People talked about her, not to her. The world seemed to move her like a checker piece while she stood still. Her father could not be caged, who could expect her to be too?

Four years ago she had left the city, travelled by caravan disguised as a man to the far west coast and boarded a boat for new possibilities. Now she had an unlikely family formed around her, living together on her own ship bought with palace gold, aptly named The Disaster. Only half of her missed the familiarity of home. The burning heat, the river dotted with boats, the birds in the reeds. The other half itched to experience anywhere else the world had to offer.

"We should make port before we run out." said Mimi, breaking Rubi's trance. She held a cup of tea and a small dish with an array of pressed capsules. Rubi wrinkled her nose at the steam rising from the cup, already able to smell it. It was not a rancid smell, just a bitter one.

She was so fed up with the taste of ginger.

The tea was a temporary remedy for the nausea the medicines gave her, but an upset stomach was far preferable to the pain and its gang of companion ailments. She must have taken thousands of tablets by now, with varying success. This combination was doing well although she did have to take six different things three times a day, more than ever before. She was so sick of being sick.