False kings and jealous gods

Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

It's time to let go, time to carry on with the show

Don't mourn what is gone, greet the dawn

n' I will be standing by your side

together we'll face the turning tide

(Poets of the fall - Dawn)

Morpho shrugged with cold; the wind subsided a little, but it still felt so uneasy amidst of an empty square, where the emperor had just died so absurdly.

- We should be celebrating now, - he noticed. - And this day should mark the history as the day of Maalakh liberation from a long rhatians' slavery. But we hardly can stop the mechanism of planet's destruction...

- Is the planet dying? - Janik asked. - Then let's conduct the ritual right now!

- Wait, - Sybil stopped him demandingly. - Before we start doing anything serious, I have to know everything, - and she looked at Morpho.

- What do you want to know? - he asked. - I have always known that I am an heir of the high priests of an ancient cult of our planet, since it was called Al-Maak and it had a twin-planet that died so long ago. For my whole life I've known that the day would come when I'd have to conduct a ritual for an heir of Nhali the goddess. But I didn't know who it would be.

- I knew, - Yakko said softly.

- Yes, you've found that girl and, as a true defender, hid her, - Morpho went on. - But I knew that sooner or later the secret would be revealed. Moreover, the sword was thought to be lost forever and we were supposed to conduct the simpler ritual, without stabbing the goddess' heart with it.

- Wait, - Sybil interrupted. - I have remembered something, but my memories come back step by step, that is why I still don't see what's the difference between these rituals.

- The true ritual demanded the high priest after the coronation to pierce the goddess' heart with her magic sword, - Morpho explained. - But the sword was lost and we were going to perform the coronation only, hoping it would be enough.

- You mean, this simper ritual had never been conducted before? - the girl asked. Yakko and Morpho shook their heads at the same time. - Then why did you think it would work out? - Sybil asked.

- We just hoped, - Morpho repeated. - But now in my story I have to come twenty years back and tell you what was happening when together with my parents I was living at the royal palace. Yeah, don't be so amazed, my father was a king's servant and we lived at the court. So, this was the day before rhatians's attack... Remember like it was yesterday. Something huge fell down the royal palace and crushed it as a candy wrapper. We were lucky not to die and I, a twelve years old curious boy, went to search for something that had fallen right from the sky. It was a spaceship - for the first time I had seen it so close.

- Aurinko, - Sybil smiled, squeezing her lover's hand.

- Yes, I found there a fair-haired baby, who was scared and cried loud, - Morpho confirmed, looking with the same smile at Eoll, who felt very embarrassed by such an attention. - All the rest were dead for some reasons. So, Aurinko came into my life. And he turned out to be connected to us as well. He was destined to come here. But I didn't know it back then. When the next day rhatians attacked and killed all the adult people, one man took Aurinko and me. Thanks Nhali, we were not parted. But before the aliens could suspect something, I made the baby a tattoo of a true born Maalakhish and it was special, an emblem of the royal house.

- So it was you! - Sybil cried in surprise. - But for what purpose? Because of it I was absolutely sure that Eoll was an heir prince!

- And I didn't even know I had this tattoo before Sybil told me, - touching the place near his ear where this meaningful sign was situated, the guy confessed.