25. Boulder
1520 Words
Maddie and I sit on the couch with the black box. I show her the outfits and how they work. She picks out 1 like mine but makes the hair and jewelry different. Then everyone comes back in. Emberlynna follows them in with a bunch of papers. Then a couple of men I don't know come in. Everyone sits down except Emberlynna. Alden picks me up off the couch and puts me on his lap in his seat at the conference table. I smile and he kisses my head. Kane moved over now, there's a different man at the head of the table at his end.
"Sign here, here, here, here, Initial here, here, here, Sign here, here, and here. Now you sign everywhere he did. Beside all of his signatures."
I take 3 minutes and sign a bunch of papers beside Alden's name. "What was that about?"
"You have removed your brother from all royal lists. He is no longer considered a royal. He will now be a commoner with a dragon. He has no command anywhere."
"What did he do this time?"
"This was actually my fault. I didn't realize you needed to sign to have him removed from the royalty list. But he had a guard follower in the castle. That guard took an order from Fane and stopped the order for the king's guard. He ordered them to the dungeons instead. Fane was down there and tried to attack them. However, he met Kane instead. We do not believe he'll be trying that anymore."
Kane smirks. "His legs are still here if you wanted to verify it was him."
My eyebrows shoot up.
Victor laughs. "He's in for a bad night. We won't hear from him for a while."
I snuggle into Alden. I don't like the thought of him fighting my brother.
The man at the end of the table picks up the paper Kane was writing on. "Where are the Former King and Queen Sarris buried?"
I shake my head.
Jenny stands up. "My dad might know. Where the hell did he go?" She walks out.
Victor shakes his head. "None of us know."
He rubs his eyes. "Where did Fane rule from?"
Clark searches his notes. "Slyborn I believe. We had to get the servants out of there."
The man turns toward the brain, "Bring 10,000 more brains down from their ship. Send them to Slyborn. Map the entire place, inside and out. Find every room. Search every room. Do the same thing here."
The brain turns and faces me.
I nod.
"Also, bring the records from Slyborn here."
Alkawn drags a guard through and throws him straight out the window. "f*****g IDIOT." Then he sits back down in his spot at the table.
The man at the end of the table looks at him. "I'm Dracul. Do you know where the former King and Queen Sarris are laid to rest?"
"I believe it was outside Slyborn village. There is a stone there that is marked for them. I was unable to attend the services, and it was done very quickly."
"Once the brains get done at Slyborn, we will be going there and checking for magic dead spots. I also want to check the marking stone area."
Jenny comes back. "I was searching for you, daddy. Do you know where the former king and queen were buried?"
"We already did that angel."
"Oh ok. The history books all say they are in a cemetery outside Slyborn village. But Fane made the history books say whatever he wanted. Hard to know what's real or not."
"Alert: vault found."
Victor smirks. "We cleared it."
"Alert: vault found."
"We didn't clear that 1."
Kane chuckles. "I'll show you how to use these. Put the map in the middle of the floor. Show brains in green. Show people in purple. Vaults in blue." A whole castle shows up in red lasers. It's right in the middle of the floor. We all go over and watch it get built. "They are mapping it, so it's still growing. But you can see the castle and how many are in it."
"I could make them go invisible, and we could map out anything."
"Exactly."
"Alert: Vault found."
"Damn."
"Show guards in green. Do any of the guards not belong to Alden?"
"No sir."
"There's nobody else in there, Dracul."
"Alright, let's go over."
Omar goes to the door and does something. Then we're in Slyborn castle.
It hasn't been cleaned in months, but that's it. Dust on a bunch of immaculate royal stuff. Fane had large paintings of himself at the entrance. None of anyone else though.
It's eerie. The whole place is like a shrine to him. There's a statue of him even.
We go down to the dungeon, and it's old, dark, and damp.
"There are no prisoners here. But the vaults are down here."
Jenny makes anything that has been touched by magic glow. There's not much of it down here. Most cells have nothing glowing. We get through the first 2 vaults and they are empty. The last vault is full of gold though. Omar makes a door and the boys send it to Alden's office. We take a different route on the way out and search under the other side of the castle. Then someone yells. "HERE."
My world spins. I grab onto Alden. He leads me and a whole wall is glowing.
Omar looks at Alden. "She shouldn't."
Alden lifts me up and I wrap around him. He carries me to the cemetery by the village. The whole cemetery is overgrown. Some stones remain. They are flat to the earth and about 2 inches thick. Names are carved into them. Most can't be read anymore. I stumble around and fight with the overgrown weeds. I trip on a stick every now and then, but I do ok. I read as many as I can. I don't see anything about my parents. Alden follows me, never saying a word.
I get to the very back and I spot a rock. It's not a stone. It's a small boulder sitting by itself under a tree. It's all the way out of the cemetery in an overgrown field. I walk up to it and fall to my knees sobbing. I put my hand on it and trace the letters. I shake my head. "Please no."
Alden gets on his knees behind me and wraps his arms around me. "I'm so sorry baby."
I cry for a long time. Then I clean off the rock. I brush all the dirt off with my hand and clear the surrounding weeds. I clean for so long, everyone who came is standing around watching me cry and clean.
An old man comes up to us. "This is my land."
Dracul nods. "Are they buried here?"
"No. This boulder was dumped here about 20 or 30 years ago. It's an empty field. It's not hurting me any. It came from over... I'll walk you over."
We follow this man to the far side of the village. There, outside the village, we find a statue of my brother. It stands about 10 feet tall. He has a sword and the crown on. He's standing on a concrete circle area with 4 benches around it. Everything is white. There's a little concrete fence. It goes around the circle area. It seems to be about 15 feet across.
"It was in the middle?"
"That I don't remember, miss. I remember it was here though. Somewhere in this area, I noticed them building something here. They took out a beautiful little garden to do it. The boulder was somewhere. There was a little path to it. Then flowers were everywhere. My wife loved to smell the flowers here. She didn't know who Kennian and Lily were, but she would always leave little things. Then 1 day, they were building something else here and the boulder showed up behind the cemetery." Then he chuckles. "Everyone would always leave herbs or foods when they would visit the Sarris's. That tied rosemary at the statue's feet. I have no doubt that was left for Kennian and Lily."
Omar smiles. "Thank you sir."
I try to smile. "Can I have the boulder?"
"Of course you can. You folks have a good day."
As soon as he's gone, Omar walks in a circle. "I have no magic here."
"Some spots on our planet are like that. Everyone, back up."
"Why baby?"
"That statue is coming down."
They look up at the statue, then move. I walk straight away from it with my palm facing up. I keep trying to make an orb. About 30 feet away, I finally get it.
Omar nods. "That might work."
I grow my orb big. I'm not chancing it not working.
"OK. Everyone back up further. She meant it."
I get it as big as I can. It's starting to shake, and I can feel the wind moving around us. I aim for the center of the statue and throw as hard as I can.
- Writer
