7094 - TRAILS & TRIBULATIONS

Chapter one

A King-dom Lost

♦

Crown sat in his world. The prison that was all he’d knew for the last twelve years and dreamed. Crown hated dreams they did not bring him any sweet whispers of the Da or sweet memories from his childhood. Dreams brought him nothing but nightmares and the anguished whispers of those who were sharing his fate. The walls and the very earth he trod on, dirt and straw, under his worthless mattress screamed it to him at night.

The nightmares were always the same and the pain was always acute, but this night Crown felt especially raw and intolerable of the memories that rose to swallow his heart in anguish. Bitter hate was the only balm to his soul. Crown tossed on his mattress, the collar that they had fitted upon him, as if he were a dog was black as coal and tight on his neck. Crown swallowed sobs as he tossed, fretting behind his mental barriers, as the nightmare began in earnest for yet another night. Slashing.

Warm blood on the throne. Chaos and terror. Gunfire, that tears through scale and bone like cheap bone. Bodies falling all around, familiar bodies, familiar faces. Hands roughly push him away trying to protect, trying to shield. Those hands fall like all the rest. Flee! Long beautiful halls that blur past as his lungs fill to bursting with the efforts of futile escape and finally the dream got to the really bad part. Here Crown whispered names of people the, dear to him, people forever taken form the world. In the dark corner of his small room he dreamed of his family’s final moments.

Dad! He watched his father. Tall, crown adorned and powerful as only the king of the Xilonians could and should be, stood calmly as the doors of the palace collapsed in to the room...

He watched his dad, sword drawn and scales a fire, march forward to meet the invading solders. Crown subconsciously felt the cool trickle of tears and didn’t even try to stop them. Many nights had ended in tears for him. It would be futile, he knew, to try and make this one end any different.

Mom! He screamed in his mind as he watched for the hundredth time the fall of his king and adored father to blast and sword.

Oblim! Crown squeezed his already firmly shut eyes tighter, as if to free himself from the image of his cousin being felled in cold blood. He was jerked from his seat and thrust behind a line of strong scaly bodyguards.

“Retrieve the king!” A valiant call to action stirred in the hearts of the palace guards and they surged forward anew, but even to Crown inexperienced and terrified eyes he knew that they had lost.

The Soldiers and guards fell and none were left, all were silenced, effectively and coldly by their merciless invaders Crown watched through tired eyes as his family scatted through the tall golden halls screams deforming into distorted howls that rang like distorted laughter to his sensitive ears. Many fell, none were spared, he closed his eyes in the nightmare, and sobbed in reality, as he watched an invader grab a small Xilonian infant, screaming its fear to the world from its small bed and deftly severed its small head from its solders. A maiden, Xilonian, blue scaled and young, seeking escape, was tackled and split open as Crown and his mother rounded the corner.

The horror began to blend together, the noises ran in a stream force feeding themselves into his mind and soul till his body shook uncontrollably in the useless bed. His stomach heaved with a ghost of the nausea he had felt that night. His palms felt slick with the blood he had slipped in, but in reality was only sweat.

Lilly! Warren! Qui! Daren!

Names poured from his mouth in the darkness as Crown once again relived the systematic and gruesome destruction of his entire family. The entire royal line. Crown struggled through the chaos wrapped in his mother arms. They ran him and her through the palace corridors as the sounds of carnage began to abate and his small heart tried to steel itself.

Crown panted as he sat huddled in his mothers strong slim arms. He could see her. The only sweet part of the dream. Her scales were bright blue and glistened like flame or the mesmerizing glow of the mythical will-o-wisps. He looked up at her face, kind and beautiful, and watched the tears black as ink run down her delicately scaled face. He knew they were tears of sorrow and anger, tears that he himself had also been crying.

Crown tried to beat back the fear, he wanted to stand talk and unflinching for his mother, but he could barely keep his bowels from releasing all over himself. He was a brave pup....but he had just watched his entire family die and he knew that he and his mother were next. It started with the calls. Deep gruff voices echoed down the halls and corridors, in the air and from the vents that dented the walls and roofs. “Clear! Clear! Just finished up here! Sweep that room!.”

In the haze of pain and fear Crown realized that the invaders were going from room to room, patio to patio, chamber to chamber, checking to make sure that they had completed their grisly work.

“They are wiping us out of the world as if we are nothing but an annoying infestation of rats. Vermin.” Crown thought trying to still his deep breathing as if softer breaths would keep his hiding place hidden just a little longer.

Tears of fear, dribbled black and warm down on his head, mostly they were tears of frustration shed by his mother. There was no fear in her steady gaze as she stared fixedly at the bared door that would only hold the invader at bay for a precious few moments. As the voices got closer and closer Crown couldn’t stop tremblingly. Even before this fearsome invasion Crown had had good reason to fell fear in his heart of the nameless invaders.

Crown had listened to the adults talking back before the tragedy, he had heard the whispers, and in a small concerned part of his mind, not the part concerned with bugs and play, but in the princely part he had know, but ignored the tense feeling in the air.

For a long time Crown knew it was only a blessing of the Great Da that the Xilonians remained unseen and unnoticed in the conflict that was tearing the galaxy apart. A conflict that no one could escape and a conflict that had just come cruelly and explosively to the Xilonians world. After watching his nightmare every night for twelve years and the carnage in his memories, a seed of hate mingled with fear, sat heavily in Crowns soul. The same seed fat with twelve years of capture, and full with more fear then hate, sat heavy on his heart as the dream began to end.

In his mind he saw his mother bend down. She came eye level with Crown, her eyes black as coal and irises blue as her scales were large and clear so that they seemed to burn. Tears dried and her back strait Crown couldn’t help but gain power from his mothers solidity. He stopped sobbing and stood up sensing that his mother had something to say to him.

A warm delicate hand reached out and wiped his tear stained face and staining her whit palm black. Crown tried to lean his head and for a moment he could almost feel the ghostly touch in reality. His hand twitched as a Silvans paw does in deep sleep when they chase some prey only they could see.

“My Tifta,” the Queen said to him as she had said a hundred times before on a hundred different nights. Nonetheless Crown smiled as he always did when he herd his mothers pet name for him. “My Prince, have no fear. The great Da has spoken to me. Your time here is not yet come.” The barred door protecting them jarred accompanied by a grunt that floated through the vents to the hiding room.

“This rooms locked. Blow it!”

Crown tried to turn to the door, but his mother would not let him. She snared his chin, and stared him in the eyes. She captured his young mind in a matter of seconds, dropping all mental barriers and shredding his feeble ones, she linked minds with Crown. He gasped, but held her eye. Not because he wanted to but because his mother was making him. When she spoke she spoke in his mind and the Crown in reality instantly calmed.

“This is not the end. You are a prince, this is your land, live. Live for your people. Grow strong my Crown, my Tifta. My someday king.”

There was a large shuffle of feet and movement outside of the doors. It crawled through the vents and told of mighty numbers. Crown tried to break the connection with his mother, but his mind was too young, too weak, to vulnerable. She had him completely within her thrall. Crown began to move forward to his mother. She turned him and placed him in a corner. She turned her body outwards shielding him from what was coming.

“Goodbye.” She thought sweetly into his mind. She retreated, reapplying his feeble barriers, before Crown could reply and that’s when the door and most of the room exploded. Crown awoke in agony, of the heart and body. He was trapped under his slain mother and a section of the golden roof. The invaders charged the room. Their voices roaring and panting.

Crown couldn’t move, but he was so groggy from pain that he cried out in panic. The invaders surrounded him. They watched him struggle, and laugh deep in their throats and with their eyes. Remembering their merciless, Crown refuses to beg or cry, he stared daggers at them and even hisses at one of the invaders who gets to close

“Watch him. Watch him, he’s disoriented.” mumbled one of them as if a small pup truly posed any danger to the large beings.

Crown was so angry and frightened that he did not realize that his mother was still alive till she groaned. A shiver ran down Crowns spine in reality as he looks at her and sees her injuries. She is dying. One of the invaders reaches down and with only one of its arms it lifts and tosses the large piece of ceding across the room. Crowns only thought is for his mother. He struggles to his knees gently displacing her and glares at the surrounding invaders ready to fight till the end, but they do not approach they seem just as stunned as Crown.

“Ow wow, she’s still kicking!? Sweet Jin! Resilient aren’t they? ” One of the invaders laughed looking on with unsympathetic eyes.

“Finish her and the pup quickly. We have little time to waste and the Primal will be here soon, he wants this place burning by Dawn. Xilonia is ours!” said another bigger invader turning away. He was a lot bigger than the rest and his speech, seemed more smooth and dignified, but Crown only noticed these things in the back of his mind. The child in him was dead and dying down beside his mother and inside of him he felt no hope or sadness. All he could feel was a numb hatred. A futile fury.

Suddenly two large invaders drew their blades and strode forward confidently. Crown attacked, not because he thought he would succeed, but for his mother he couldn’t suffer these vile creatures to hurt her again. He slammed into one of the invaders and beat at him with all the strength inside that he could find, but it was no use and he knew it.

The invader merely grabbed his small weak wrist and flung him across the room. Crown bounced painfully off a slab of gold wall, pain like no other followed by the sound of breaking bone made him scream out in the real world on his bed.

Crown laid in a pitiful heap, arm dangling, watching in mind fogging pain as the invader who had tossed him like trash lifted his mangled and dying mother off the ground by her tiny neck. It placed its cold metal to her back. To her heart. Gasping in pain Crown could do nothing more but try to Thrall his mother. Normally this would have been impossible for a youth, but his mother was weak. Her barriers were demolished, crumbling with her life.

Ill follow you and father soon....

the prince thought solemnly. He knew that these beings that could destroy life so fully and mercilessly wouldn’t spare him.

A feather light touch of though came to him “My someday King. The Great Da spoke to me. You must live. Live...for Xilonia.” Just as the blade slammed home.

Crown jerked in his bed far away from the past as the dream continued. Crown did not watch as the light fled from his mother’s eyes, but he would never forget the sound of the blade as it slid through her body. Helplessness swallowed him. Crown didn’t want to move, didn’t want to be, he waited for the invaders to finish him.

Yet for the spite in him and the rage that festered in his souk, he had to move. Crown saw in his mind the blood spattering the golden halls, and the terror his family had endured that night. He watched as his father fell in noble battle. He saw his mother’s tears and defiant sadness and Crown suddenly knew that had to move, fight, and survive.

Run.