Part I – The King is dead! Long live the King!
11 March 2020
Austarche III – Undead King
The King Austarche III remembered his death distinctly. He was betrayed because of being a wise and kind but too trustful monarch. His habit of believing the words of the courtiers until they demonstrated the opposite by their actions was cut off by their betrayal. Staying close to the King, the courtiers watched the poison turning him steadily from the monarch into anordinary mortal man, desperately clinging to his life.
Austarche really longed to live. The poison did not kill him instantly. In complete silence the nobilities watched his hunched figure shuffling along the refectory, belching bloody traces. Pulling together the remnants of his power the King reached the ancient candelabra, clung to it and wheezed out,“Why?”. He really didn’t understand the reasons of the ongoing.
“To cut long story short, you are too kind and clever, Your Majesty,” uttered the high priest, old man, one of those who always dwell at a king’s court.
“Take a look,” sighed the court’s wise man, showing with his hand at the courtiers standing around the King. “Everybody is getting on and being bored. Every next day completely repeats the previous one. There are no intrigues, no fears – nothing but the feeling of the life being hollow. We have stopped evolving because of no threat around. Therefore, we have decided to create an intrigue and kill you, Your Majesty. Nothing personal, we really love you very much. For everybody standing here it is just the question of our existence as species.”
The old man kept speaking something but Austarche was not listening to him any longer– to take in the reality had got difficult for him. The dark heaviness got on his eyes and slowly the consciousness sank into something chaotical.
“If I have died then why is it so cold? And besides why can I think? If I think then am I alive? Or I am dead but I have got into the spirit’s world? In any case I should try to open my eyes –“
Austarche was steadily coming on. He started feeling himself standing in the same manner as he had been standing at the last moment that he remembered. He was clinging to the ancient candelabra and even feeling unnatural cold from the burning candles. This question was worrying him the most: why everything as well as he himself was so cold.
“Any way, having opened my eye, I will get more answers,” thought Austarche and slowly, trying to keep calm, he started to discover the world being new for him. Keeping even quiet tempo he nearly at once closed the eyes. Because he had expected to see anything but a weird being’s corpse having the signs of the former times’ obesity and lying on the stone plate in center of an ancient tomb.
The King harked to his feelings. Nothing! No fear, no surprise, no disgust. There was only hollowness and eternal cold of contemplation.
“Now I will breathe out, open my eyes and the obsession must disappear,” he hardly finished his genius, to his mind, thought when he discovered that he could not breathe. There was left only remembrance about being able to breathe in former times as well as to feel something.
Again Austarche was opening his eyes more ruthlessly in the way being done in an unfamiliar world by the being which understood the complete absence of any fears and feelings inside it but feeling of cold. He kept on standing in silence above the cold corpse in dark tomb lighted by the candles in the candelabra.
“Maybe I should examine what kind of being it is.” The King leaned above the corpse splotching the face of the latter with the wax drops.
“Who are you and why am I here?” The speculations of the sovereign were suddenly interrupted by unexpected movements of the late – the latter by unclear reason opened it’s eyes slowly, stared for several seconds at Austarhe, screwed up it’s eyes as if trying to forget what it had just seen, and finally raised the eyelids and started observing the King’s face.
“I am sorry indeed but why are you dropping on me from your candles and, dammit, who are you indeed?” in soft, mellow baritone the corpse, slightly woken, started to ask questions.
“Then it is alive, isn’t it?” Aristarchus sank into thought. However that could not be noticed from aside. What used to be the healthy face of mature King was not able to expose any emotions but cold at that time.
“So, Po-Pso, pull yourself together! Let’s restore the chronology in the way recommended by doctor Penecsy in such cases,” went on the late shaking the air by the monolog. “I remember my having pretty lucky market day in Artaks and further intention to visit somebody – well, here is the hole in my memory – and to cut down the way I moved across the Chaos’s zone which looked like a forest in that day and where a strange bear injured my belly.Then, running away, I winked to find myself lying nude on the stone plate and some strange pervert dressed in old clothes with huge candelabra in hands is leaning above me and staring at me with an eye chilling my heart.”
“I am not a pervert, I am a king Austarche III, titled with goodness and intellect, who created peace in Aedran.”
“Aedran? I have never heard of such kingdom. Your world may be one of the latest Chaos’s discoveries by our scientists which has not been published yet openly,” the corpse sank into thought.
In contrast to Austarhe that fatty could afford to grimace and expose his emotions. “I might as well go on my business and you keep being a King as much as you like. I can offer you a business card of a good doctor, just in case. There are plenty enough of cranks in Incilentium, dammit. And stop dropping with wax on me, I am not whoever might be, I am a human-man-drone of the 3rd rank.”
Swinging awkwardly, the fatty managed to turn over and fell down from the cold plate on the equally cold stones of the tomb.Having messed about for a while he managed to sit up, leaning against the same plate.
“But where are my clothes? Are you sure not to be a pervert? Have you touched disgustingly my body?” there were heard the former late’s indignations from below. “What has happened to my belly, what are these – my guts?”.
“Shut up!” Austarhe interrupted in calm voice the corpse’s hysteria. “I don’t understand as well as you what is going on here. Just one hour ago I was the most powerful inhabitant of Aedran but now I do have to stand and listen to moaning of some fat outcast with nude ass and torn belly. Now it’s my turn to ask questions. Who are you and where am I staying?”
“Mooooo –,” the late seemed to be trying to answer but some force didn’t let him do that.
“Well, why did you start mooing? Speak up, I order!” Austarche hung his head and looked in the corpse lifeless glassy eyes.
“My name was Po-Pso and I used to be a human-man-drone of the 3rd rank. The dead King is staying in Insilentium,” in dull voice answered the corpse as if singing an old mantra. “If to be accurate he is on the cemetery in the ancestral tomb of the swarm Pso, ten sights far away to the south-west from the sixth landmark of Aedran.”
“Why did you call me Dead King?’
“Because you are my King. And you are dead.”
“And you?”
“I am dead too.”
“Then why do you talk?’
“All corpse raised by the dead King by his drops of being,” Pso raised his arm and pointed with his finger to the candelabra,“ can speak.”
“How do you know all you have just told me, Po-Pso?”
“I know everything that is learnt by us, understood and not understood. We don’t know unknown but we can find out. The borders of unknowable are restricted for us by infinite borders of the Inselentium.”
“When you tell “we”, who do you mean?” the ongoing picture started slowly brightening for Austarhe.
“We – they are Dead King and all corpse raised by his drops of being,” Po-Pso pointed to the candelabra again. “The Verge of the Staunch can raise any dead tissue in the Inselentium and provide it with particle of recognition of the Dead King for self-existence.”
“Enough. I have no more questions. Rather, I have but now I don’t feel like asking because I am not ready to get answer. I’d better comprehend everything I have heard,” Austarche paused and stepped aside, rather understand his state then think over the received information.Something inside him seemed to start deadly decaying, not withstanding the stream of knowledge.
“Gosh! Ahhhh! At last I feel easier! How cold it was!” the fatty returned to his emotions. “So, I happened to have died, did I? That bear is likely to have torn me! The doctor Peneksy was right, one must not give way to habits in Inselentium, the bear would have bitten me, and everything can get real to the south-east from the sixth land mark of Aedran.”
“Po-Pso why are you likely to be so double-faced ?“ asked Austarche. “Now you keep going off into hysterics but just presently answered the questions pretty vacantly.”
“When you ordered me to keep silence I could not disobey. In general I was not allowed to do anything but Your orders. Sever cold froze my body and mind. When you ordered me to answer I answered. When your attention was distracted from me I came back to my former state,” Po-Pso, supporting his gut with his hand, stood up slowly and turned around. “It’s really the tomb of Pso swarm, I recognize this hole in the ceiling, there was not found time to block it, also we get more light.”
“In any case,” suggested Po-Pso, sitting down on the plate. “I had died, you got me up and now I am not a human but a corpse with unripped belly and you are my King.”
“The King of what? Of this tomb? Of this cemetery?” Austarche looked around. “Who are my partials? Is this one talkative living corpse with the guts out?”
“One should not look into the zombie’s belly!” answered Po-Pso proudly. “But nevertheless you have touched the sensitive subject. To my mind, you should understand your abilities, work out the strategy, learn the market, forecast the dynamics of sales.”
“What are you talking about?” Austarche interrupted him, viewing emotionlessly patterns on the tomb’s wall.
Po-Pso glanced at the King in bewilderment, then inspiration dawned upon him.
“I apologize. I have been a merchant my whole life, selling bread. I had a network of bakeries in different regions of Aedran. Past memory influences on our today. Take a look, I have even been buried with a loaf,” Po-Pso pointed to a loaf of bread lying on his grave plate. It’s position witnessed that the former baker had been buried with this bun in his hand.
“You suggest to apprehend my abilities, don’t you?” Austarche came up to Po-Pso and looked at the bread. “Right now I will have a try.” The king put up the candelabra and bending it slightly dropped wax on the culinary product baked in the stoves of Aedran.
“Loaf, get up to serve!”
