The Dead King

Marin remembered when he first met Loid. It was not exactly on his terms, seeing how Rocko and Phil brought him to the innkeeper initially. It was especially unfavorable terms as both the guys knew Marin’s secret about being dead, and coming back to life.

Marin was forced to resolve these issues with Loid as Rocko and Phil were freaking out. He took a gamble showing his face to Loid, and revealing the secret.

It could have gone wrong. Loid could have attacked, called the guard, and stir up a panic. He did not do that, however. Loid remained calm and rational, and took a chance on Marin.

The king was forever grateful. In seeing Loid’s personality and wisdom, he decided the innkeeper was trustworthy and worth confiding in.

The mayor of Heroca, Helva, had been nothing but supportive of Marin this entire time. That may have come at the cost of saving the town, but the fact mattered not to him. She was wise, intelligent, and a natural leader.

She also had valuable knowledge of how the government worked, and being able to file proper work on any civil matter.

Loid and Helva had become Marin’s two most trusted subordinates.

This late evening, Marin was going to reveal that to both of them, and give them an early tour of areas of the castle that the rest of the citizens would never see.

The three of them stood in a circle in the grand foyer as the last of the villagers cleared out.

“Helva and Loid, I want to thank you for all the support you’ve given me so far. I would not have all these citizens of Nocturne now had it not been for you. Your out going supporting for me has been vital,” Marin started.

“I fully trust both of you, and for that I have a few special things I want to reveal,” he added.

Helva was flattered, and looked down. She adjusted the glasses on her wrinkled face. Loid smiled.

“Follow me,” Marin commanded as he walked down the left corridor.

The two followed him, and when they were clear of the foyer, Marin started up again.

“Loid, I want to reveal the secret about me to Helva. It will be in her best interest if she knew.”

Helva’s eyes widened. Her head snapped over to Loid, who remained calm.

“That is your choice, my King.” Loid turned to her. “It’s going to be alright, Helva.”

Marin took both of them down multiple turns of hallways for several minutes. Both of them had now lost the way back to the front.

Marin knew exactly where he was, of course. He took them far back to the end of the castle, where a familiar potion room was.

Helva Yoren’s heart raced as her nerves climbed. She had absolutely no idea what she was in for. Would Marin reveal himself to be fake? Not the real king? Was this all a ruse? Or is it some diabolical secret?

The way Loid told her that it would be alright ended up worrying her more than if he hadn’t said that. Furthermore, what did Loid have to do with all this? Had he known Marin before he showed up? Was this all an act?

All these thoughts and more plagued her mind. Finally, though, Marin reached the room.

“Step in here,” he commanded. The room was dark, the stone brick walls arched toward the ceiling. It was very ominous.

Helva and Loid looked around the room. The desks had broken beakers on them. Notes scattered the tables, all covered in complex math. Test tubes and bowls of various sizes lined the floors. In the center of the room was broken glass.

Marin pointed to it.

“This is where it happened, Loid. This is where I woke up.”

Loid was straight faced.

Helva’s head jutted around at both of them. “What are you two talking about?” She demanded.

“Helva, I am not an heir... to the first King of Nocturne,” Marin explained.

“What?”

“I AM the King of Nocturne. The first and only.”

Helva took a step back. She looked at Loid who remained silent, and kept his hands together.

“What is this?” Helva asked, starting to lose her nerve. A bit of fear was shown on her face, despite trying to hide it.

“Why are we in a laboratory? What did you do?” She added.

“Helva, I spent half of my life researching immortality. I believed it was achievable,” Marin started.

She looked down at the broken glass. She looked back over at the furniture in the room. Her heart raced so much she was afraid they would hear it. Despite that, she tried as much as she could to remain stalwart.

“W-what were your results?” She asked, accidentally stuttering.

“...Not exactly what I had in mind. The potion… half worked. That would be an easy way of putting it. I believed I had worked out all the math correctly, but it must have been flawed.

The potion killed me. Killed me in this exact spot. I laid here untouched seemingly… for over 200 years.”

“WHAT?”

Helva almost smiled in disbelief. She looked over to Loid for help, but all Loid gave her was a validating nod.

“And my body… well, my body believed I was dead. It… began… ah… breaking down. Breaking down over the course of two centuries.”

Marin took a pause to gauge Helva’s reaction so far. She was not losing it yet, but was certainly disturbed.

“It might have broken down… decayed… even more, had it not been so cold in these mountains. I was almost preserved. Not as preserved… as I would’ve liked… Hence the mask.”

Marin rubbed his glove covered hand to the black mask on his face. He then looked at his gloves.

“And these gloves…” Marin stared at the soft black leather his gloves were made of.

He stayed silent for a while. Helva was doing everything she could to compose her self.

Marin was also doing the same, but was failing.

He stumbled backwards a bit, and leaned against the brick wall.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.

Loid instantly ran to him and grabbed him. Marin slumped to the ground, his royal clothing rubbing the stone bricks all the way down.

“I was so selfish,” he stated in a cracked voice. He wanted to cry, but tears would never run from his dry eyes ever again.

“Sullivan, it’s okay!” Loid tried.

“I ignored my kingdom in pursuit of immortality. I’m the reason the kingdom fell. I got what I deserved. Everyone must die, and I was so pretentious to think I could avoid it.”

Helva stood there in more shock than she had ever felt in her life.

Loid stood above King Marin with a hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort him. He too was in such a state of shock, but was numbing his mind from thinking about it all.

“Now I’m a monster. An actual, walking, talking, zombie of a man. I am the walking result of my own selfish ambition.”

Marin remained silent after that. He sat on the floor against the wall, staring off into the distance. Loid stood by him. Helva stood across. She had no idea what to think.

“Maybe you did wrong, Sullivan,” Loid started. “Maybe you were selfish and lost your kingdom over it. But you need to learn from it. Pick yourself up and keep going. You can be a better king now. You’re alive again… well… No, you ARE alive again, despite how your body looks.”

Loid reached his hand out to Marin. The king raised his head to look at it.

“You’ve been given a second chance, somehow, to redeem yourself. And you’ve already done a great first step, you saved my village. You saved my wife. I think you’re a good man, Sullivan. You just got caught up in the wrong thing and it consumed you.”

Marin stared for a few seconds, then finally took Loid’s hand, and got up from the ground. Marin’s bones creaked as they straightened back out.

“Thank you, thank you Loid,” he said as he composed himself. He straightened his robes back out, adjusted his necklace, and his hood.

“As long as I am still alive, I want to be the best King I can be now. Maybe it will make me feel better about my past.”

“That’s all you can hope for,” Loid responded.

“I’m sorry for that display,” Marin added.

Marin finally turned back to Helva. She stood motionless.

“Under this mask, Helva, under these clothes, is a rotting corpse. I am willing to show it to you, if you wish.”

Helva blinked hard. It explained the raspy voice. It explained the yellowed eyes. She took time to think of what to do. They stood there for almost a minute in silence.

She turned to Loid. “Have you… seen…?”

“Yes,” Loid affirmed, in a focused look. The glare in his eyes told her that he was telling the truth.

She looked back at Marin.

“I… okay.” Helva put her fingers along both arms of her glasses, adjusting them. “I do not need to see your face. I… I’m going to believe you, Marin. You do not need to reveal yourself to me. I do not need to see it. I… believe you,” she trailed off.

Marin slowly approached her, and held is hand out.

She shook it, almost in a robotic manner.

“You and Loid are the only two people who know… besides Phil and Rocko.”

“Phil and Rocko?!” She exclaimed.

Marin told the entire story to Helva about how he woke up, came down the mountain, ran into Phil and Rocko, and then met Loid.

“And don’t worry, they will never say a word about it either. They are convinced I will find out, and I will freeze them,” Marin mentioned.

“So you really are… You are the true king.” Helva had millions of questions, and could not even begin to think of them all. “Then you should know what really happened!”

“I do not. Everything you told me about the fall of the kingdom must’ve happened after my passing. I can not verify nor deny the legends that you spoke to me. Before I drank the potion, the kingdom was at peace, to my knowledge.”

Marin turned back to the shards sitting in the middle of the room, that belong to the original potion he drank.

“What baffles me, is the fact that I died and woke up in the same exact spot. I have no idea why I wasn’t moved to a grave, to a tomb. Literally anywhere else. I suppose I could’ve been moved, then put back, but why?” Marin pondered.

Loid and Helva both racked their brains as well.

“It makes me think that something terrible did happen when I died. So terrible that they left me there. I couldn’t imagine what,” the King added.

Loid tried giving some possible explanations, but all of them seemed far from likely. Helva hovered over the notes as they discussed more possibilities. She could not make out the math on any of them.

After some time, they left the room and stood in the hallway.

“I want this room walled off. I want the contents in the room to remain untouched and left in the state they’re in. Can you see to it that it gets completed, Loid?” Marin asked.

“I think we can get some stonemasons to make short work of that,” Loid stated. “That’s going to require some funds, though.”

“Ah, yes. That was another thing I wanted to talk to you both about. Are you both up for a little more walking?”

The vault was nestled deeply in Nocturne’s basements. Getting down there took a bit of leg work. During the journey down to the unassuming room, Helva and Loid asked Marin more questions.

They walked across tattered red carpets that lined most of the hallways. Every time they took a spiral staircase down to a lower floor, it got colder. The stone brick walls remained mostly unchanged, but as they got further down, cracks and wear became more apparent.

Marin noticed Helva running her hands along the cracks.

“Yeah, the stone walls this far down are carrying the weight of the entire castle. Their aging is more defined down here,” Marin explained.

“I’m no architect, but will the castle be okay? Will this lead to long term damage?” Helva asked with concern.

“Every brick that Nocturne is made of was carved from the stone of Niyeton. It was built to outlast time itself. If anything the dings and cracks just bring character and experience to the stone. I’m sure it will be okay.”

As they continued to walk, Marin started doubting what he said.

“Besides, we can get builders to swap out stone bricks once every few hundred years if need be,” he added.

“You might be around for that,” Loid tried.

“I actually don’t think I want to be,” he responded.

Finally, the three of them turned into an unsuspecting room. It contained an old bookshelf, some barrels and chests for storage, and a fair amount of cobwebs. On either walls were a torch holder.

“Very unsuspecting, right?” Marin asked.

Loid took a moment to look around, trying to find something out of the ordinary.

“Quite so,” he finally admitted when he gave up.

“But not quite,” Marin said as he walked to a corner, and yanked on a torch holder. The bookshelf slid open, revealing a new set of stairs that went deeper than the castle would have allowed.

Helva marveled over the contraption. “I’ve only ever read about these, its incredible seeing a secret door bookshelf in real life, and having real purpose.”

They stepped down the hidden staircase.

“I hope we’ll be able to get back out of here safely,” Helva added, starting to feel claustrophobic being this far down.

At the bottom of the staircase, the three were greeted to the solid metal vault door.

Loid had stars in his eyes. “No way. It can’t be…” he said.

“It is. It’s a vault. And its full,” Marin stated.

“This remained down here, untouched the entire time?” Helva asked.

“Almost untouched. There are two troublesome individuals who accidentally found out about it on their own.” Marin replied.

“Really? Who?” Helva inquired.

Marin didn’t respond.

It took her a moment to realize he didn’t respond, because the answer was apparent.

“No…”

Marin nodded his head.

“Phil and Rocko…?!” She demanded.

“That’s right. Somehow accidentally pulled on the holder bolted on the wall. It swung open, and they were down here. They were coming back up the mountain with a pickaxe, ready to break it open, when I met them.”

“Unbelievable,” Helva stated.

Loid shook his head, but seemed less surprised. “Those two idiots,” he finally said.

Marin turned their direction back to the vault door.

“There are seven number dials here. Each one needs to be spun to their correct value for the vault door to open. Now I know what you’re thinking. I’m taking a big risk allowing not one, but two more people to know about the vault.

That’s where I have a plan. It will take both of you to open the door. Because I am assigning both of you halves of the code. You both will need to be down here together to withdraw any gold. You both hold each other accountable.

Should one of you decide to betray me, as unlikely as that would be, it would take the second person to also open the vault.”

Helva and Loid nodded in understanding.

“You will not reveal the numbers to each other. That would be an act of treason to me. Whoever enters their numbers first, will cover them up with hand, and look away to allow the other to enter theirs. At that point, the door can be opened. Upon shutting it, the numbers all reset to zero.

I know it seems a bit primitive, but its the only plan I can come up with. It actually reduces the chances that I get exploited, seeing as it would require both of you to decide that path.”

“That’s actually quite clever,” Loid admitted.

“Loid, here are the four numbers for you.” Marin dialed the first four numbers in. Helva was looking away. Loid stared at it for almost twenty seconds before saying “got it.”

It was Helva’s turn. He dialed in and showed her the three final numbers, while covering the first four. She nodded after some time.

“Do not write these numbers down anywhere. Keep them only in your head. If at some point the numbers slip your mind, see me, and I will refresh you. Understand?”

They both nodded.

Marin then shifted his body, grabbed the handle, and yanked the door open.

“Handle’s a bit sticky, it will need a bit of manhandling to get it open,” he briefly mentioned as the thick metal door slowly swung open.

They all stepped back to make room for the vault hatch to clear the entrance, then gazed inside.

Loid grabbed his chest to stop himself from having a heart attack.

Helva nearly lost her glasses.

This couldn’t be real.

“Oh… my… God.”

“Its all real. Solid gold, legal tender coins,” the King informed them.

“Its… not even copper or silver. It’s all gold.” Loid stated.

“Look at the gems and statues in the corners,” Helva exclaimed.

“Yeah, I threw some of that in there too.” Marin responded.

Helva inched in some. “Can I… Can I walk in here?” She asked.

“I don’t see why not.”

The three walked inside. Loid and Helva marveled over it all. Marin stood closer to the entrance, occasionally eyeing the door to watch that it wouldn’t swing shut on them.

Loid never thought in his lifetime he would see such a fortune. Thoughts raced in his mind on how Marin could have possibly ever amassed such a wealth.

The vault room itself was walled entirely with metal. It stretched back over one hundred feet, all entirely lined with gold. The floor could not be seen besides the very entrance, from the amount of coin.

The lowest height seemed to be knee high, while the corners nearly reached the ceiling with gold coins and other precious items.

Loid shoved his hand into the coins, and moved it back and forth as if it was in water, just to confirm his own sight. He lifted a pile to his eyes, and verified that they were indeed real. Correct emblems and writing on both sides verified that it all was indeed minted by the government.

“So much… so much gold coins. How…?” Helva struggled to ask.

“Years of earning, done by myself and other talented individuals. All who are likely dead at this point,” Marin answered.

“You remember who they were?” Loid asked with interest. Anyone who was able to contribute even a tenth of this was worthy to be known in Loid’s mind.

“No, I don’t. And I’m hoping that one day I will remember.”

Marin grabbed a large brown bag, and began shoving coins into it.

“This will allow us to get our feet off the ground. We can always grab more when this bag runs out.”

Helva and Loid watched him fill the bag. Loid approached him and helped place gold in.

“You were telling the truth. I had fears about the small chance that this fortune you claimed was not guaranteed,” Helva turned to look at it all again. “But I can see that it was no ruse.”

“No ruse at all,” the rich King said back as he tied the bag shut. “Let’s head out.”

Marin handed the rather heavy bag of gold to Loid, while he turned to shut the vault door. It was slow to shut due to the weight and thickness, and when it did, it created a loud clack. The numbers all flipped back to zero across the door.

The three of them headed up the stairs, and began to make the journey back to the front of the castle.

“You may spend this gold for services for the castle at your own discretion. Harrel will be our accountant, and keep track of gold spent. He does not need to know where or how we are getting these funds.

Naturally, no one will know where we get these funds. When this runs out, you may both get more. Do not be frugal, either. Only the best for the castle, keep that in mind.”

“So this gold is going to restore every aspect of the castle?” Loid asked, while shifting the weighty bag in his arms.

“Yes. The castle cleaned, new furniture bought, old furniture restored. New decorations, tools, items, everything we need ordered. All the amenities the castle should have. You will be in charge of overseeing it all, Loid. I will make a list of details.

Helva, you will begin filing all the paper work. The gold will cover any fees.”

By the time they got back to the grand foyer, it was getting late. The three conversed for a while longer, discussing their plans.

Helva left the two after having all her questions answered, and retired to her temporary, unkempt room.

Marin turned to Loid, who been standing there with the leather bag of gold on the ground.

“Loid, you told me earlier how you had visions of what the castle could have looked like in it’s hay day. I want you to make those visions a reality. Order everything you need.”

“This is… wow, Sullivan. I never thought I’d have such a huge responsibility as restoring an entire castle in my life.”

“When you explained to me how the rooms could have looked, I knew I’d have no doubts about putting you to the task. I know you’ll do a great job, don’t worry about it.”

After a while Loid grabbed the bag of gold and took off for his room with Sherry. He bid Marin goodnight.

Marin stood alone in the grand foyer for sometime. He had the entire night ahead of him. He looked up to the rafters holding up the ceiling. Tattered banners barely clung to the wood support beams above.

Time to start taking notes.

Marin headed up to his personal quarters at the top floor of the castle. Not a single breath escaped his body as he climbed several flights. The final level of the castle was the least damaged. Anyone who had traveled this far up was more interested in stealing rather than destroying.

That hadn’t stopped someone or something from ripping the door off its hinges.

Marin’s room was linked to a hallway that lead to his personal office and library. Indeed, his entire chambers were several rooms. In the office, he started organizing what was left of his papers, and read through most of them. Small details about his day to day life from before made themselves apparent once again.

He read through his personal notes that were written in ancient. An account from his old life was starting to form. He filed all the scattered papers in drawers. The old books that dotted his bookshelf were pushed together into one spot. He wiped dust off of them.

Various other office supplies were scavenged and placed. He took note of what was left.

Clipboard in hand, and a barely functional writing utensil, Marin started to jot down notes about the castle.

He spent the entire night going room to room, hall to hall, leaving notes about what needed to be done. He found great satisfaction in doing this, it brought peace to his non-beating heart that the castle was coming back to life, years of neglect would be erased.

With Nocturne being restored, he felt that he too was being restored. He drew many ties from the castle to himself.

Loid entered his assigned room. While he had been gone, Sherry had cleaned it as much as she could. Cobwebs were absent from the corners. Furniture had been dusted and placed neatly. She had placed a few burning lamps against the walls. The floors had been swept, debris cleared out.

“Its looking nice in here, Sher.” Loid pointed out.

“I just couldn’t stand how disgusting it was in here, ugh.” Sherry waved her hands as if the uncleanliness of the castle lingered on them.

“I have so much cleaning to do!” She added, nearly contemplating to move to someone else’s room to clean that as well. She couldn’t stand filth.

“Tomorrow, dear. Tomorrow. Get some sleep and you can clean to your heart’s desire tomorrow.”

Loid laid into his bed mat. Sherry looked over at the bag of gold coins he sat besides him.

“What’s in there?” She asked.

“Oh, just some supplies. Very helpful stuff, I can tell you that. I’ve been ordered by the King to hold onto it and not tamper with it, so let’s leave it alone.”

Her eyes narrowed, but she understood. She laid into her bed mat as well.

“There better be a proper BED in there, because this piece of cloth on the ground is not going to be good for my back!” She complained.

“One more night or two, Sherry. And I can guarantee you, you will have the most plush bed you’ll ever lay in.”

“Alright, Loid. You better be right.”