Arthur 4 : The return of the prince

Chapter 19

The response of the Countess Éliani had shaken the entire village minimoy. Even the eyes of Selenia and her family (apart from those of her father) deviated from surprise. Here they are facing the ghosts of the parents of the being who had plunged the seven kingdoms into chaos and terror, and who seemed tormented at the idea of having to pay for the crimes of their son.

Several voices in the audience were beginning to be heard, by the way. Voices shouting the fault of the parents for having spawned a being as bad as M the Evil. Fingers rose to point at the sad ghosts, as if to bring their accusations and lament towards them.

But Eldarion could not accept such a court-like climate. He turned his head to the King who immediately understood what Eldarion was asking him.

"I CLAME SILENCE IN THIS VILLAGE!" shouted King Sifrat in the hope of silencing the voices of the minimoys who wanted to make themselves judges of the situation.

A few seconds later, as the silence returned to the central square of the village, a spectral sob was heard. When Sifrat turned his head toward the direction of this sob, he saw the spirit of the Countess Éliani crying in the ethereal arms of Count Verdamus. He also cried, but unlike his partner, he expressed his grief in silence, trying in vain to comfort his beloved.

"Your people are right, Your Majesty. It is all our fault. Our son failed in his duties and we were unable to bring him to reason. We are condemned to bear the brunt of his misdeeds and crimes," adds the unfortunate Countess.

"Is that the reason you can’t find peace in the afterlife? Do your son’s crimes haunt you both?" asked Selenia, who walked a few steps to face them.

"Yes, your Highness. Since my death following my childbirth and that of my dear Verdamus because of his sorrow, we had been able to rest beside the goddess of the forest for some time until the day we consented to link our spirits to this spiritual pearl thanks to the nyrilorns. We were told that Maltazard had become the great champion of the first kingdom at the time." told Éliani before letting her husband continue their story:

"No one had lied to us, Maltazard had become a great fighter, and we were proud to have been able to participate in his ascension and the making of his magic sword. We told him and showed him that he was our prodigy son and that we loved him enormously.

However, the more time passed, the more we realized that something was wrong: our son seemed naturally to have an arrogant, pretentious and whimsical temperament and did not seem to tolerate being contradicted. We thought that being an orphan didn’t help him.

We had tried to instill in him more noble virtues and values through our spiritual pearl, but nothing was doing. Over the years, he listened to us less and less, obsessed as he was with his crusades and conquests."

Count Verdamus paused and sighed sadly before resuming his account.

"Then came the fateful day, the moment when Maltazard had crossed the limit of reasonable to engage in a total and unreasonable war. We had seen everything. The party he had organized for his last victory, the debauchery in which he had sunk, and especially the kiss that damned him forever. The kiss that that poisonous Tarantule gave him. She took advantage of our son’s weakness of mind to pretend to be a seductive minimoy and make him her puppet! "

When the name of Tarantule was announced, Eldarion gritted his teeth.

"Yes, she used her puppet to raise an army that even my people were not able to repel. With his help, she destroyed Batilga, slaughtered countless nyrilorns before disappearing and letting M the Evil ransack the other kingdoms." declared Eldarion with contempt, his defeat in the face of this poisonous woman seemed to be always present in him and it seemed that he hated her with all his being. However, he recovered very quickly when the spirits resumed the speech.