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The drumming eased his motionless mind. It had been a handful of full moons since he had been able to sit by the fire without hearing her voice.
Over night, he had never felt such desolation. The campsite roared with life and the drums, dancers, and laughter filled the air. Blood and tears had all been washed away by the rains. The scent of sweat and sweet mead permeated the dense humid night's air.
Not so foreign faces peered at each other flashing dramatic expressions as they recanted their war stories with anxious glee. The final battle had come and gone. The traveling caravan from the southern kingdom had found their way to Tanglewood in hopes of finding truth behind rumors of the kingdoms maddening crown.
Sutra leaned against the tree and stared deeply into the dancing flames surrounded by revelers. Propping his weary head against thick tree bark he rolled his eyes towards the heavens and could make out the glowing moon masked behind dormant storm clouds.
He could see her again.
The battle was fierce. The Court of Hearts found the back entrance into the royal grounds and caught the Alicians of guard for a few moments. The royal forces managed to capture the main court yard where the King of Hearts and the March Hare remained.
They were soon joined by loyalists who eagerly stood guard. Sutra dug at the foot of a rose bush and produced a earthy package wrapped in rotting sackcloth. Pulling an ancient tome containing translated texts, a fistful of glimmering jewels and two vials of jabberwocky blood; his mind raced as he recognized these to be critical pieces of the final puzzle.
The shadow caught him off guard as it draped over the rose bush. Peering up he caught a glimpse of the Griffin. Ancient and wise, it had returned to the royal woods, sensing the crowns presence.
The battle waned into the deep afternoon. The Alicians had been preparing while the Court of Hearts marched back to their rightful birthplace. Sutra was aware that the queen had been taken to a magical stronghold, and was as protected as was Alice; entrenched in a magical sphere only certain keys could unlock.
The dark monarch held a handful of those very keys.
The stone gollum stood just inside the entrance of the Queens lair. His wrath struck deep gashes into the Alician offensive. They had indeed been preparing well. Wave after wave they kept pushing.
The Court of Hearts had grown weak over the past months as the march dwindled their numbers and strength. Without a Champion or Prince, the demeanor in the camps had begun to drop. Morale among the men and women had once been confident. Now, stories of a ghost for a champion and a fleeing madman of a prince had begun to torment the once proud king of hearts.
They had caught glimpses of their once favored crown. Growing pale, sinking cheeks, and a nigh absent voice plagued the king. War had taken its toll on him. He had stopped eating and sleeping. He laughed less and nary spoke his mind. Some said he was dying. Other's thought he had been damned by the gods themselves.
Small skirmishes raged on as the Court of Hearts fought with tremendous courage against the ocean of enemies. Something or someone had come to aid Alice in her plight against this realm.
He had waited long enough, he had to know the progress. With every passing moment, less and less of his messengers managed to return. Captured or killed, he had lost his eyes and ears throughout the woods and had decided to venture into the depths of his bartered lands.
He approached the entrance where the Queen had once generaled her faithful forces. The pile of rocks lay scattered at the broken opening. The gollumn had been defeated. The Court of Hearts had fallen. The Queen, defeated; had surely returned to her extra planar dimension to await a time for a safe return to her beloved kingdom.
The kingdom had been lost.
Sutra stood at the empty temple, ransacked and razed; he slumped over with abysmal grief. The crushing clay pots behind him went unheeded.
Slowly standing and turning on his right heel he faced his last foe.
The Dread Knight drug a bloodied chain with hooks laden with bits of flesh and organs. Sutra could only wonder how many of those remains belonged to his loyal companions.
The black fires blazed darkly deep within the empty sockets of the dark knight. He had seen him before. He had been seen at the front of Alices forces. She had grown strong to have managed such a feat.
To summon a dark lord as ancient as this one required quite some clout with the darkness. She was darker than he could have ever imagined.
Had flesh covered the skull, surely a grimace would have formed. Victory was his.
Sutra clenched his fist and grit his teeth. He could feel his impending fate and solemnly accepted his failure to defend the kingdom from the encroaching darkness.
The dark knight lifted the point of his scythe like polearm taking aim at the defeated king's chest. Sutra squinted defiantly, his spirit cried for action.
Gripping his daggers shaft, the dark king would not go down without a fight. He didn't realize how weak he had grown. His reactions had become dulled by the carnage he had seen for almost half a harvest's time.
The blade slammed into the heaving chest, spilling sanguine lifeblood as it pierced the flesh. Sutra reeled back as the dark hair flicked at his face, stinging his eyes. With horrified realization he focused on the body that had instantly appeared between him and the Dread Knights blade.
Alice.
With a roar of sated laughter, the dark knight ripped the blade loose, tearing a hole over her left breast. Like a fallen tree, she slammed into the earth next to her enemy, eyes and mouth agape, as if staring into eternity. Flames roared from his body and instantly died.
"My time is now..." spoke a deep guttural voice, emanating from the still figure. A strong wind nearly knocked Sutra to the ground, the dread knight disintegrated into a thousand specks of dust. His laughter trailed off into an echo.
Sutra stood mesmerized. Her cough snapped him back into this reality. Cautiously kneeling by her side, his heart pounded with rekindled misery. Pulling her into his arms he peered down at the dying witch.
"Why? What possessed you..." the confused monarch demanded.
"Do you even..." her blood stained lips trembled as she coughed, speckling her chin with glistening red droplets. "...know why I came..." the dark haired girl weakly asked.
"You could have let him finish it once....once and for all!?" His eyes traced her pale face. Had she been a simple girl, he would have taken notice. "You could have had it all...."
A weak smile formed on her lips. "He was not one of mine. I was one of his. A pact...he promised to let me...." Her lungs had begun to fill to capacity with blood. Soon she would drown to death.
"He promised...to let me see you...one...last...time...." Tears began to well , blinding her already unperceiving eyes.
"I came back...for you..." She smiled.
Sutra sat speechless. He remembered now.
---------Flashback------------
He knelled at the fresh graves of his fallen brothers and sisters of the guild. The kingdom had come to quash the small resistance that the Barony of Finder's Keep had taken to under the tyrant Chaos.
The Guild decided that by disposing of the madman, it could help help liberate the few who were loyal to the kingdom.
The Kingdom's war machine wiped out the resistance without prejudice. Leaving piles of the dead for the morning pyres, Sutra spent the countless hours under cover of night; dragging off the broken bodies of the guild.
He knelled at the makeshift headstones as her voice echoed into the night. She offered him a deal. She would call to their respective gods to bring them back if he would give her his darkness and light.
Sutra had destroyed him once, he knew he could to it again.
He had not seen Santos since that fateful night.
Until that night, the two forces that compromised the confused man had been one. In a past lifetime, Sutra had only known life as Sutra.
And there, hidden in his faded memories, lay the beautiful face of his life's love. Alicia.
---------------Flashforward----------------
He understood know. She had found him again. Like a beacon, his purity; absent of pious indignation, called to her through the umbra.
She had come to find him, only to lose him again.
Sutra's mind snapped at the realization that the one he had yearned for was slipping away forever.
"Alicia! No! No me dejes! Por favor no me dejes!" Sutra supplicated in his native tongue, knowing she would understand him.
"Please, please, PLEASE! Don't go...." Sutra pressed his trembling hand against her sordid wound.
"My dearest Sutra....mi querido....te amo..." She smiled as her spirit began to slip.
"I....love...yo....." he could feel her spirit slip away.
Staring down in disbelief, he held his beloved foe in his trembling arms.
The pooling blood began to reflect the late afternoon sun.
It was at this moment, when he could feel everything falling away. All had been lost.
It was at this very moment, that the King of Heart's heart, broke.
S
[con't]
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The general who advances without seeking fame and retreats without fearing disgrace, whose only thought is to protect his country and do service for his sovereign, is the jewel of his kingdom. -Sun Wu
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