Euthanasia

Chapter Eleven- Distance Between Them

Explosives. That was my new weapon of choice. I wasn't even supposed to know that hundreds of thousands of pounds of gunpowder were hidden away in the places of the palace that had long since been condemned and deemed unsafe. Placed under lock and key, this was a dangerous substance, something many other kingdoms and empires would not know of.

It was my father who began the collection of gunpowder, attempting to use it for who knows what. It was something meant to stay a secret, spoken aloud by no one. When I was too young to understand my father's cruel ways, I used the secret passages hidden within the walls. I created a way to the room, never knowing that I would ever need to find it again. I always told myself I would never use the contents of the locked room, promising that the damage it would cause would be too devastating to use, even for the tyrant ruler I was. I always thought that using the weapon would make me turn into something I could never come back from. But it was already too late for that.

So, breaking yet another promise, this time made to myself, I decided to search for the key that would open the locked seal to the rusted door, hidden deep underground and buried miles underneath the palace.

I decided that the only reason I was beginning to fall into the extreme spiral of revenge was because George was too important to lose. Getting him back was the top priority and if stamping the empire to dust was the way to do it, then it would be done. This was the only way that George was going to be able to get home safe. This was the only thing that would stop the Blade from further hurting him, the kingdom.

It had been a full moon cycle since I made it back to Aerith from the camp in which George was taken from. That mirrored the time it took for me to finally decide the emperor and his city's fate. It was a hard decision to make, especially when George wasn't there to support him, to counsel him, to comfort him. It was hard to think straight when he wasn't around and since his absence, I had begun to withdraw from the people that were meant to help me in his place.

I was beginning to sink into the position I was in before I knew him. Then the memory loss got much worse. I would wake up in the cold mornings to find out that I had killed people of the guard, or servants that had been at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and I would not be able to recall a single memory from those events. Blood stained my hands, and I couldn't begin to remember how it happened.

In the weeks I was home at Aerith palace the people began to grow fearful again and without knowing about the things I was capable of doing, the things I would never remember, I began to grow frightened of myself. Time would slip away for hours at a time, I would wake up in places I didn't recognize, places I did not remember going. I was falling apart, but this time it was worse than before. As time was slipping away from me, I began to run to catch up. As the palace grew emptier each day, I raced to put together my plan for rescuing George.

It all began with a key.

I had placed it in the brown satchel George had given me right before his capture. After finding the key in the vanity in my room, I placed it there as a reminder of the plan, a reminder just in case I forgot.

I searched through the leathery bag the second I returned to the palace. All the things within were strange. Letters written in unique languages I could not decipher littered the contents of the bag. The words belonged to some ancient dialect I couldn't name, with strange shapes and out of place lines and dots. Also, inside was a dagger, its blade the length of my forearm, and its edges curvy and sharp, made from black steel. Carved into the dagger were seemingly mythical letterings that I didn't understand, looking much like that of the letters tucked away beside it.

Then, most unexplainable out of the items, was a pearlescent crystal. The rock fit evenly in my palm, like it was meant to be placed there. As I moved my finger along its smooth surface, it would glow bright with light, showing many different unique colors. I studied the gem for a while, turning it over in my hands, until it began to grow hot to the touch. It would soon start to burn and would eventually be too painful to hold. Sometimes, if I looked at it too long, I would begin to doubt its existence. Maybe the stone wasn't real at all, it was too confusing to be something of reality. Sometimes I would begin to think that my imagination was starting to slip into my reality and that soon, I would not be able to tell the difference.