Serenity Of Calamity

Chapter 2 - (POV: Jaeger)

I saw her run. I didn't know why she did, but I knew I couldn't stop her. Yet the castle that seemed to be full of life now seemed...void-like. Like an art gallery with no art or like a circus with no performers. It seemed like the sun with no light. The feeling couldn't be put into words, it ran much deeper than that.

And it scared me.

I had felt this way before, when mother died. I was a child that had seen none of life but seven lazy summers. And I witnessed her-

"Sire?"

"Aye?" I asked turning to see Madelyn, a servant whom I had pronounced a noble.

"Do you need to rest?" She asked.

I smiled and ran my thumbs beneath my eyes, the memory always beat my efforts to conceal the pain.

"No Lady Madelyn, I would appreciate if you would send Damien here," I was tired of maintaining my facade of a kind king.

She nodded and spun, her tight robe emphasizing her curves that bounced deliciously. I turned away. To my pleasure it surprised her as I heard her pause.

"Something the matter Lady Madelyn?"

"No sire," she grunted and walked away.

In honesty I felt the monster stirring in me that I had spent years to chain. There were times I couldn't chain it down completely.

This was such a time.

Damien walked in and I stopped him midway. Reaching in my cloak I drew two golds and his eyes grew wide. I tossed it at him and he nodded his understanding. I looked around me, portraits and portraits of me and my line, gold in the shape of jars, bowls and curved objects holding flowers. I looked at the chair, full of plush cushion softer than a bebe's skin.

I roared and kicked a table and the jars fell. I picked up the chair and threw it at the portraits. My roars worldless yet full of meaning. I tore at my cloak, threw my crown.

"All... This... Wealth," I tore the expensive silk shirt I wore.

"All... This... Luxury," I wept now, "Yet peace... "

I fell to my knees, "Yet peace escapes me, my soul restless beyond measure. I have everything yet nothing,"

I knew who listened in the shadows, I knew what she would say, "You are running away from yourself Jaeger."

I heard a giggle and I looked up. Watching the dead woman walk towards me, a whisper of a memory. Her feet didn't touch the floor yet they did. She was naked save for a cloth that wrapped her. Was it a cloth or just a fadeness, I did not know. Her hair was dark yet it glowed white. Her image a piercing vividness yet I struggled to see her, my vision passing through.

"Jaeger, you are-", she started.

"Running from myself, " I finished.

Her smile grew, amusement lacing her eyes and she disappeared. Like a mist dissolving in to the air. I hated her.

Hated her because she was right.

...

"Mother are you happy? " I stood in the royal tomb-like chamber where mother was buried. Her grave laced with jewels and fresh flowers. The flowers resting upon her grave never withered. She was a beautiful woman, as kind and as selfless as an angel. Her passing created a void in me so vast it sucked away many emotions from me.

And there the monster was born.

"The dead haunt me, mother, " I whispered kneeling and placing my hand on her grave, the earth beneath my fingers warm.