Alarming_Orchid

Alarming_Orchid t1_jea6k77 wrote

“Once upon a time, there was a young warrior. He was born into wealth and nobility, and he was meant to be one of the king's counsel, but all the young warrior wanted to do was fight. So he pleaded his father and mother to let him go to war. And even though they loved their son, they allowed him freedom.

And battle after battle, war after war, he proved himself to be the greatest warrior the kingdom had ever seen. After many years of service, he rose from a young knight to be a great general who commanded the entire Kingdom's army. But eventually, he wanted to retire. He had grown tired of the fighting, and more importantly, he found a woman, his true love, who he made his wife.

But the king wanted him to prove himself one last time. The king said, "Destroy our enemy, the Northern Empire, and you shall have earned your rest." The warrior agreed. He took only fifty of his best, his most loyal comrades, and disappeared into the land. And as six years pass by, the warrior returned home, his fifty comrades with him. He had taken the emperor's head, and murdered hundreds, and displaced thousands of innocent souls as what was once the Empire was plunged into chaos in his wake. Yet he thought he could live with all of it if only he could return to his family, and his love.

He could not. As the warrior returned home, he was taken prisoner by the king to be executed. His comrades were slaughtered, and only seven escaped. His family, who he begged to let him go to war, was murdered, and his wife, who he left behind alone to go to war, was executed. The next morning, he was taken to be beheaded, in front of the people of the kingdom. None were as silent as those who witnessed the warrior that day, and the only sounds heard were the executioner sharpening his axe, and the traitor king with his royal guards, still fearing the warrior even as he was in chains. "What king would I be," said he, "if I let a usurper by my side?" The king then told the people that the warrior wanted the Northern Empire for his own, and set his sights on the Kingdom, and therefore must be slain. He spun tales of how the warrior killed his own soldiers, and how his family plotted against the king.

The sunlight of dawn gazed upon his visage for all to see. He wore the years of battle as countless scars upon his body. The memory of his loved ones took shape as tears, as he knew what killed them was his passion for warfare. His eyes, once burned brightly with the strength of his youth, now belonged to a broken man who lost everything.

The king looked at his executioner. The executioner looked at the warrior. He braced his axe, and with one swung, broke the warrior’s chains. The king rose up, first in anger, then fear, as the warrior took the executioner’s sword. He cowered behind his royal guards, and they drew their weapons, but to the king’s horror, they cut his arm, impaled his knees, and forced him to the ground. The warrior, standing above the king as he wept and begged, drove the sword into his throat, and stained the castle’s steps with his blood as he laid choking and bleeding. As the king whimpered his last breath, all the people of the kingdom looked upon the warrior. All those he fought and bled for. “He lied to you all,” said the warrior, “about everything.” “We know,” one of the guards spoke. “All of us know.” “The throne is for you,” said a child mong the crowd. The king was dead, and the kingdom was left without a ruler. All of it could be his.

Those were the last words ever written about that day. The warrior never took the mantle of a king, and once again disappeared into the lands, and nothing else was written about him. Some say he took his own life as the loss of his loved ones were too hard to bear. Others say his late wife had left behind a child, and lived far away from civilization. The royal guards, who were later known to be the seven escaped soldiers the king failed to kill, forged an age of peace that lasted to this day. And the events of that fateful morning were forever since known as the Quiet Revolution.”

—Chronicles of the Eternal Empire, Prologue

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