Galen - The Untold Tales of Frelanna Forest

Chap 10: Tragedy of Frelanna Kingdom

“Frelanna… Kingdom…”

Galen slowly read the script written on the stone. A headache came to him as if something trying to break his head from the inside. The pain urged Galen lowered himself down, he kneeled in front of the monument and screamed in agony as the feeling was becoming worse and worse.

He was afraid at this rate, he would die.

“Galen!” Liana panicked when hearing the voice of Galen from afar and rushed to him.

But it was too late, Galen completely collapsed. His consciousness had been shut down in a split second and everything left behind was just darkness.

***

Galen suddenly opened his eyes. The first thing that caught his vision was an unfamiliar scenery, but it was so chaotic…

…an entire of huge capital was going to be destroyed by the dragons and the dark forest spirits;

…the scream of people running away for their life from being devoured by those brutal creatures;

The buildings were being destroyed and their fragments were scattered everywhere. On the sky, it turned into a red color as if it was the day of the apocalypse.

Galen was located at the top highest of the Palace of that capital, with an unfamiliar man hugging him tightly. He was trying to protect him from another person in the giant armor who was approaching both of them. Galen couldn’t see his face since he was equipped with a helmet. Galen then felt something not good would be going to happen since he could see the trace of blood on that armored man’s sword.

“No other choice…”

Galen heard the whisper of the man hugging him. He didn’t understand what he meant, until the man put Galen down on the cracked stone floor and stood confronting that armored person. He showed his sword forward, his voice was so strong like a roaring lion echoed to the mysterious armored person.

“It seemed you aren’t like your coward ancestor, braver than I thought.” The armored person spoke. Suddenly, Galen opened his eyes widely and was stunned. That voice was so familiar to him!

“You can take down Frelanna Kingdom since this is the punishment for my ancestor’s sin, but not my son. He is innocent and should not be involved in this.” The man protecting Galen said. Something wrong popped out from his mind. He hadn’t met that man before, but as his son… it meant King Anderton wasn’t his true father? “If you want him, you are gonna kill me first.”

“As you wish.”

“HAHHH!!!”

Galen wanted to stop them both, but his body couldn’t move. At this moment he just understood that he was just a spectator of the fragment of memory, so he couldn’t intervene in the history…

Instead, he could sense the inner feeling of that child’s point of view. The fear was suppressing his heart. His body trembled, as he heard the scream of two men crashing their swords to each other. They were having intense combat and tried to take each other’s life.

Slash! Galen was shocked. By an eventual swing of the sword, also marked the end of the duel. His father had been standing, immobilized…

…until his neck had been cut away and his head fell on the ground.

“Father!! Ahh!!!”

Galen could hear himself yelling. That brutal scene was beyond his past version’s endurance that even Galen of the present had to close his eyes and turn his face away.

Being affected by the broken heart of his other self, Galen grabbed his head, while mumbling in anger and regret: Why… why couldn’t he remember anything about this?!

But the next scene shocked Galen more. When his father was killed, that armored person approached him closer and closer with the sword. His past self was scared that couldn’t stand up to run away. He thought that he was going to finish his life as well. However, that murderer spoke to him while taking out his helmet…

…it was King Anderton, his current father.

“Poor little one, witness this such tragedy at the beginning of his life…

…but as the last wish of your father, I’ll leave you alive. From now on, you are mine.”

King Anderton rose his hand forward and kidnapped Galen away from Frelanna Kingdom.

After that scene, Galen couldn’t see anything anymore.

***

“Galen!! What happened to you? Galen!!”

Galen woke up in a panic. He realized that he had returned to the present. He forced himself to sit up, grabbed his head with the doubt covering his mind. Was that scene earlier the truth?

He looked at the remained ruined capital once again to confirm… But sadly, there was no doubt anymore. He just couldn’t believe that his father – King Anderton had been lying to him from the start. Frelanna was his true homeland. King Anderton was the one who not only destroyed his kingdom, he also killed his true father and kidnapped him to Tredia Kingdom until today.

“DAMN IT!!”

Galen clenched his fist, punched on the ground. The depression caused by the true history had shocked him so badly that he wouldn’t drop his tear anymore. Instead, his sanity slowly disappeared and got blank away. To him, King Anderton had no different than a demon who stole away the happiness that he supposedly should have had.

The hatred accelerated deep from his heart.

He had to revenge… He had to kill that old man, urged him to pay back for what we had done…

Liana and Frank got shivered when they were seeing the purple ominous miasma from the environment slowly surrounding around Galen’s body. His emerald eyes were slowly transforming into creepy irises with blood dropped from his eyeballs. His mouth widely laughed like a spooky maniac while mumbling ‘kill, kill’. Around Galen, the environment changed as well. The dry grass had been composed and turned into ashes vanished without leaving any trace. It was because his negative aura energy had slowly destroyed them.

Among the purple miasma, the remaining image of deformed souls grabbed him. They looked like the ghost and tried to haunt him. There were more and more of them gathering around him, that they became visible in front of Liana and Frank. This is not good! They thought, at this rate, Galen would lose his sanity and humanity!

“GALEN!!!!” Liana rushed forward. Her hands split the miasma away and… Chat! She gave him a slap right on his face that blanked his mind. He looked at both Liana and Frank, without saying anything. He just stared at them, as if his soul had been stolen away by the ghosts.

“Hey, can you hear me??” Among the miasma, Frank grabbed Galen and shook his body to wake him up “Hey, wake up! What just happened with you?!”

“Galen, this is not the one that I have always known about you…” Liana said in sadness.

Galen didn’t answer the call of theirs. However, there was good news, the ghosts of Frelanna’s dead civilians panicked by something invisible attacking them and they dismissed, stopped surrounding and did not haunt him anymore. The air in the environment had been easier to breathe and fresher when the miasma disappeared.

At this moment, from an immobilized body, Galen’s fingertips convulsed. His irises slowly returned back to their initial state, transformed back from black to emerald color and began moving. They sparkled like water surfaces and looked at Liana’s eyes, which were very close to his face.

“Fra… Frank, Liana…”

How weird… Galen stared at Liana and Frank. He spoke their name with confusion, as if he didn’t remember what happened to him earlier.

“Damn Galen, you earlier really scared me to death!” Bang! Frank knocked his head after realizing Galen had turned back to normal.

“Aye… I’m so glad…” Liana hugged Galen. Her voice was trembling, Galen felt bad when he noticed her sniffing sound. Perhaps he scared her as well.

***

“So what just happened to you, Galen? You fell into a coma just after touching that stone and began going crazy.”

Liana, Galen and Frank decided to let him rest under a huge dead tree due to the drought. They were curious what Galen saw just after going to that ruined monument.

Galen didn’t hide his story as well, so he told Liana and Frank everything that happened right after he touched on that stone. It was actually a fragment of the ruined main gate, of a fallen kingdom in the past: Frelanna Kingdom, which was also Galen’s true homeland.

He did mention the detail King Anderton killed his father. He was going to think about the revenge but…

“During that moment, I didn’t notice much how my surrounding was going.” Galen said “They were sharing their feeling, their heart to me. And they told me to revenge for them as the true prince of Frelanna… I saw the people who were killed and died after that apocalypse. Their emotion was so sad that even urged a person like me crying and blindly agreed to accomplish their deepest wish.”

Liana and Frank ‘oh’ in surprise. So the ghosts they saw earlier which were haunting Galen were the fallen civilians of Frelanna Kingdom.

Galen then continued.

“I was depressed and cornered. I have to revenge for my fallen civilians, but I don’t want to hurt anyone. That’s why I caged myself and just want to isolate myself from the world and be alone. Until…”

Talking at this, Galen stopped and was hesitating. He scratched his hair in confusion and avoided Liana’s sight.

“Hehe~” Frank smirked and whispered beside Galen’s ears “Don’t tell me, your girlfriend’s voice had awakened you back to the reality?”

“It’s NOT like that!!”

Galen reacted immediately while blushing. He grabbed Frank who kept teasing him. He regretted not learn a magic spell that could shut Frank’s sly mouth when he was still at Tredia Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Liana looked at both of them and giggled.

“Aye, it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to tell me, Galen.”

“Liana, I swear, don’t listen to Frank.” Galen clapped his hands with each other and begged her “It was true that your voice reached my heart and I have been awakened thanks to you. But I see you as my best friend, my teammate.”

“Aye~ I know, I know. You don’t have to be so serious like this, Galen.” Liana said with a smile “However, you have to trade me something for saving your life, right?”

It was true, Galen thought. But currently, besides money, he didn’t have anything to appreciate Liana. What shall he do..?

“It’s simple.” Liana said “You can do it now.”

“Sure, I’ll do anything as you wish.”

“Then, kiss my cheek, please.”

…

Eh?

Ehhh?!

In his 15 years of life, Galen hasn’t ever communicated with anyone since King Anderton prohibited him to talk with anyone. That was why he totally lacked experience to spoil the girls so he awkwardly didn’t know how to respond. Seeing Liana patiently waiting for him while showing her face close to him, Galen felt a little nervous. Maybe… maybe a cheek kiss would be alright, right? He thought.

Thinking that, Galen closed his eyes, slowly put his lips on her cheek.

When their distance was so close that almost touch each other, suddenly, they heard a weird sound. It was from Frank. He was smirking while watching them like seeing a romance show.

“Huh? Don’t mind me, you two.” Frank was confused why Galen and Liana stopped “Okay okay, if you two want privacy, I’ll get out…”

“JUST GET OUT ALREADY! YOU ANNOYING FAERIN!!!”

Seeing Galen throwing Frank away to the sky, Liana couldn’t help herself and laughed non-stop.

Their adventure at this Frelanna island was still ongoing…