“This is really getting out of hand now”
Man, I forgot how kind of off-the-rails Spectral Crown gets at the end. I think the skeletons are funny, and the puns are stupid, because that’s how I imagine animated skeletons to behave in real life. Although, if you think about it, we’re all animated skeletons that happen to be wearing meat suits. Maybe that will be my new coping mechanism; if I ever get anxious meeting new people, imagine them as a bunch of skeletons underneath all that skin. Social events will become infinitely easier with some help from the absurdist knowledge that, at the end of the day, everyone’s just one layer of muscle away from being a walking, talking Halloween decoration. I look forward to my days as a skeleton, and I don’t mean that in a depressing way.
Anyway, the reason why I can’t write a new blog post this week is because, although I’m back in Lisle to spend some time with my parents and my brother, I don’t have access to my computer since it will be, most likely, in Minneapolis. So I have the work efficiency of a small mouse trying to file papers for a human law firm. But maybe I can finally relax, for real this time? Probably not! But I might pick up a copy of Skyward Sword or whatever new hot game is out on the switch in a month or so, because Metroid Dread and Breath of the Wild 2 are still months and/or infinite time away. Or I might just try and read! Honestly, I feel like I’m going to forget how to read sooner or later if I don’t start picking up books more often. And where will I be then? Probably a hole in the ground, trying to learn to be a frog and escape this wearying world. But even then, the capitalist labor lords will still manage to find me.
Read my previous chapter here to help me escape the clutches of capitalism and/or turn me into a skeleton!
Spectral Crown, by Andy Sima: Chapter Twenty-Eight
I failed to stand up from my position on the floor, so I just crawled towards the two piles of bones in front of me. “King Titus, Queen Viorel,” I tried my best to bow while on my knees, a gesture that was harder than I expected. My entire body, starting in my chest and extending outward, was shaking violently. “It is a pleasure.”
“Oh, straighten up, boy,” the spasming skull of King Titus said from its lap. “I’m as much a king as you are.”
“Never thought we’d fall so low as that, but here we are,” Queen Viorel added.
“You… you… you aren’t dead.” I stammered.
“Excellent observation,” King Titus said.
“You get good marks for effort,” Viorel said. “Honestly, Titus, doesn’t this one seem a bit thick?”
“This is the one, Viorel. You’ve been watching. You know,” the skeleton with the spectral crown said.
“Know what?” I asked. “Watching me?”
“What, did you think it was luck that you stumbled upon our tomb?” Viorel said. “No one is that lucky.”
“You mean to say you guided me here?” I asked.
“The first time, yes. And we’ve helped you out a few times before and since. But this time, your heart was what got you here.” King Titus said. And then the two jaws of the skeletons slammed together with a grating laugh, like they were sharing some private joke.
“I don’t think I understand,” I said, finally controlling my trembling to a manageable level. I didn’t understand why I was shaking so much. I had dealt with things worse than these two. And yet, their headwear glowed so enticingly…
“I wouldn’t expect any less from a servant,” Viorel said.
“I wouldn’t, either, but I’m giving you a special role to play,” King Titus said.
“A role to play in what?” I asked.
The king’s skull grinned even wider than before, if that was possible. “In killing my children.”
I wasn’t quite prepared for that answer. “Aren’t they immortal?” I asked.
“So are we,” Titus answered. “But you don’t see us up and about.”
“I did mean to ask about that,” I said.
“I figured you would, sooner or later,” Viorel commented. There was a beat of silence.
“Well, aren’t you going to ask?” Titus said.
“Ask what?” I stammered.
“Ask why we’re skeletons, you halfwit!” Viorel cackled. “This is the one you picked, Titus?”
I tripped over my words trying to cut off Titus before he could speak again. I bowed low in apology. “Sorry, your majesties. Why are you skeletons, locked in this chamber below the castle?”
“Isn’t that the question I’d like to know the answer to,” Titus said. “Yes, I don’t think I understand it any better than you.” I stared at him blankly.
“What he means to say,” Viorel started, “is that our children betrayed us. Thought they would be better at ruling our kingdom than we were. Look where that got them. A load of nothing, and forced to marry an inbred prince.”
“Aren’t you immortal?” I repeated.
“That’s why they staged a coup, of sorts,” Titus continued. “We can’t die, so they’d never rule. They did the next best thing, I suppose. Cut off our heads and threw us in this dungeon, far from those still loyal to us. We may still be alive, but that doesn’t mean we can do anything about it!”
“But you have the… the crown,” I said.
“Oh, he knows about the crown,” Viorel said. Her skeletal face made her expression impossible to read.
“Very astute, sir Bergmann,” Titus said. “Do you think I would be able to use its powers in this form?”
I had no idea how to answer the question. “I suppose not.”
“You’re correct,” Titus said. “I’d explain why, but it would go in one ear and out the other.”
“It took him years of study and experimentation to figure it out,” Viorel said, gesturing to Titus with her jaw.
My face became flushed and uncomfortable. “How come Iacob or Sorina do not use the crown, then?” I asked.
“Ah, now we get to heart of things,” Titus said.
“Or should you say, the head of things,” Viorel added, and the two skulls cracked their jaws together in laughter.
“The answer to your most penetrating question,” Titus said, “is that I cursed my children before they put me here. A nifty little trick, I’d say. I’m quite proud of it, myself. Viorel and I figured that if we couldn’t rule Umbra properly, no one could.”
“Tell him what the curse was,” Viorel said.
“I cursed my children in a very special way. It is a curse that, when triggered, would destroy this very crown, and in turn the curse that binds us to it. It would destroy the source of our longevity and our power. And do you know what triggers this curse-breaking curse?”
“What?” I asked, though I suspected I already knew.
“It is triggered the moment either of my children wear my crown and ascend the throne. And how does one use the magic channeled by our initial, immortal curse?”
“Through the crown,” I said, like a student.
Titus and Viorel might have applauded if they could have moved their hands. “Very good, Saelac!” Viorel shrieked.
“So you see the genius of it?” Titus said.
“Iacob and Sorina need the crown to use their full powers. But if they wear the crown, all the Blestemat people die. Is that it?” I asked.
“Well, there’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the gist of it,” Titus said. “You see, the way curses work, they are usually-”
“Don’t bother with him, Titus,” Viorel cut him off. “He won’t understand.”
“Oh, you’re right,” Titus said. I frowned. I could have understood it if he told me, but there was no point in arguing. Working with the Uradels had taught me that much.
“I thought,” I said, “that the only way to place a curse is on one’s dying breaths.”
“You’d be correct, normally,” Titus said. “But when we cursed our children, we were dying, of a sort. Socially dying. And curses are finicky things, with enough loopholes and leeway to make them useful. I know enough to bend the rules a little; that’s how we became so powerful in the first place.”
“He knows more than enough, my Titus,” Viorel said to me. It seemed to me that with enough money and time, even the very laws of the universe could be bent to one’s will.
“Yes, I suppose I do,” Titus said. Then he cleared his throat, or at least made a sound approximating that, and spoke to me. “This is where you come in. I have watched and guided you for a while now, and I believe that with your unique talents and opportunities, you are in a position to finish what I started. Get them to ascend the throne. Trigger my curse. End my kingdom.”
“You want me to kill your entire nation?” I asked.
“You’ve wrongly flattered him, Titus,” Viorel whispered.
“Shush,” Titus shot back. “You can do it. I can see it now how you can. I can see a few ways. Most of which you would not understand. But they will come to you, in time.”
“No,” I said, standing up. “I do not wish to be a part of this.”
The skulls were silent for a moment, and then began to laugh.
“Oh, he thinks he has a choice!” Viorel said.
“How rich!” Titus responded.
“Poor child! Poor, poor boy!”
“He will learn soon!”
I felt my ears getting red as the two skulls continued to mock me. “I have no interest in intervening in matters that are not my own. I will not participate in your self-destruction. Besides, my duty is to my family and my king, and you are neither. I must protect them,” I said.
“Don’t you understand, though?” Titus said. “The only way to protect your family is to destroy my children!”
“Can you imagine if they were to get out of Umbra, with their full power?” Viorel asked.
“Don’t think for a moment that my daughter will listen to Iacob’s spineless requests,” Titus said.
“She gets that from me, I might add,” Viorel said.
“Indeed she does, my dear,” Titus continued. “But see here, Saelac, you will help us, whether you see it now or not. You already have been, without even realizing it.”
“Wouldn’t you rather take your power back?” I asked.
“Oh, I would give anything to be proper king again,” Titus said. “But that would be impossible now. We have reached the condition that our original curse intended and can no longer go back. We have wasted away to nothing but tormented skeletons. We want now to die, escape our cursed state, and take our backstabbing children with us. But you, Saelac, child, you can carry us out of here.”
“Anyway, we don’t have any body to go back to,” Viorel said, and used her jawbone to gesture to the broken-down corpses that held the two skulls. Titus and Viorel laughed again.
“I am content to let you and the rest of the Blestemat family rot here,” I said. “I will not condone this wanton destruction of life.”
“Oh, look, he thinks he has the moral high ground,” Viorel said.
“Quite fascinating what the human mind can believe,” Titus said. “Lock them up in a dungeon for a few centuries or put them in love with someone and everyone loses their senses!” My face grew flushed again.
“I’m not in love,” I said.
“See this, boy,” Titus said. “If you don’t act now, it won’t matter, because you will act anyway. And if you somehow manage to evade action at all, know that your world may be the worse off for it. Or maybe not. Who’s to say? My children currently have no talisman to control their curse powers with. But if they marry into another curse, say, hmm, maybe with a cursed prince from a little valley to the west, they would have a new talisman to channel a new set of powers. Powers that they may be able to use to escape my trap. And do you know what would happen if Sorina or Iacob ascended to the proper Blestemat throne, with the power of a second curse in their arsenal?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I will not kill anyone.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” Viorel said. “Simply give them the tools to kill themselves and they’ll do it.”
“I will not,” I said. “I wish to be no one’s pawn. That will not be my fate.”
“There is no fate besides what I will,” Titus said. “And what I will is your assistance in this matter.”
“This is a petty battle, a feud of blood, that is in no domain of mine. I will take my family and take my leave, thank you very much,” I said. These two skeletons, despite their apparent power, seemed unable to do anything to me.
“Suit yourself,” Viorel said.
“Yes, suit yourself,” Titus agreed. “See it that way if you wish. You’ll come around. I guarantee it.”
“No, I will not,” I said. “And that is that.” I turned to leave, steam venting from my ears. I was tired of being condescended to, tired of being used as a puppet. And I would not bring myself to do anything that would put my mother in harm’s way.
I began to remove bricks from the wall that lead into the tunnels again, occasionally glancing over my shoulder at the crystal-covered skulls. They chattered and laughed aimlessly.
“You’ll figure it out,” Viorel said.
“Indeed,” Titus said. And there was other meaningless nonsense that they spoke along the same line as that, but I did my best to shut it out.
“Perhaps we can get that bastard Franz to do it,” I heard Viorel say. “Or the Englishman, Simon.”
“No,” Titus said. “Saelac will do it. Won’t you, Saelac?”
“No,” I said, and stepped through the hole in the wall I had made for myself. As I bricked the wall back up, sealing the two skeletons inside, they continued to laugh raucously.
If you ever found two animate skeletons in the dungeon of a haunted castle while trying to escape from a were-bird, what would you say to them? Let me know in the comments below, and don’t forget to liek and scrubscribe!
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