LXXXVI
The disorganisation amplified in the palace.
The corridors were generously sized but the confinement rendered any basic manoeuvres useless.
The Ankaid army was better prepared in that regard; they'd trained for this scenario before.
Waves of fresh Drykas soldiers— conscripted civilians who had fallen behind in their march and had only just caught up— were enough to keep the pressure.
And, because Fabian had spread his soldiers thinly around the country's borders, things were seeming to proceed quickly.
James couldn't help but wonder what Fabian thought he'd achieve by dissenting the Senate.
James had followed them through the palace but, at some point, something began to feel horrifically wrong. He kept scrutinising his surroundings, looking over his shoulder, but he couldn't put his finger on what bad omen had warned him, and he'd proceeded until it became impossible to ignore.
He hadn't seen Alex for a long time— nor Thomas, for that matter.
Something was wrong.
James searched for them and eventually found himself standing in a dark cavernous place, shouts of men perverting as they echoed back and forth, wobbling.
No longer human, it sounded animalistic.
Despite his blindness, those creatures began to threaten in the corner of his vision.
James was frozen. His heart was pounding.
He didn't feel quite like himself.
Something attacked him, a knife flashing white like teeth as it swiped in front of his face. He scrambled with the black and confusing amalgam of limbs, defeating it without grace or ease, his chest heaving and stuttering.
He wasn't scared of death— so what was it making him like this? What was he fearing? His mind raced and swirled nauseously, unable to pinpoint a coherent justification.
It was too dark and he couldn't see. Maybe that was what was confusing him.
Another shriek. In his panicked state, James retreated to a torchère and pushed it over, the flames catching and dragging along a thick curtain, the blaze chasing away the shadows as it lit up, providing light.
In the middle of a high-ceilinged hall, a large staircase displayed Drykas soldiers as they went up and down. The very few Ankaid men that were present had been suppressed already. Hearing cries for help, James turned down the nearest corridor, chasing the sound. The screams were female.
Maidservants were begging for their lives, knees dirtied with blood where they knelt.
The whole floor was pooled wet and dark, dead bodies in damaged lumps, shoved to either side by annoyed feet.
The metallic stench bittered by smoke roasting like meat as the fire spread behind his back, eating corpses.
One of the maids threw herself in front, demanding the others run.
A sickening thud as a Drykas soldier smashed his sword down like a hammer, lacerating her front, her eyes widened with shock.
Her scream sounded so familiar. It was like when the maids had helped him escape as a child. One had sacrificed herself.
Bile rose in James' throat, his eyes disbelieving.
It was the same.
It was all the same.
He hadn't imagined it. This palace... it had been rebuilt exactly as it used to have looked.
It was the same stone with the same tiles and the same layout.
The servants' uniforms, they were the same, as were their fear.
The scene James saw before him, the murder and destruction, was that night, unchanged.
Like a deer, the fatal compulsion to run and escape was so absolutely encompassing that it overwhelmed him. His knees were fixed and weak, unable to propel him to safety.
One of the maids ran for it, not plagued by the same stillness, tripping on a body and barging into James, her horrified features struck by the realisation she'd failed to escape.
They slowly lifted up to James' face, empty and soulless, before one of the Drykas knights grabbed her by the scruff and pulled her away.
His body resubmitting to his command, James tried to string it all together. The most important question: despite having the power to do whatever he wanted, why had Fabian built it this way?
James could see it; the stone in Arkingham was special, it retained memories.
Parts of the walls were darker and redder than others.
The rock reacted to the fire fifteen years ago and became permanently imprinted.
Fabian had held on to as much of the old palace as he'd been able to, some parts even dented and crumbling, despite the perfectionist he'd been.
The tile that James stood on was cracked down the middle, so desperately polished to remove this flaw.
He didn't understand.
Believing to know where he was, he walked off in a particular direction, tracing the steps of his boy-self, his walk slow and corse-like compared to his boy-self's excitable fox gallops. The servants' laughter at his antics trembled into cries and wailing as he passed them.
He reached a section of the wall masked in intricate wooden panelling and froze. Such a small thing that surely would've burnt to dust before.
His surroundings blurring and quieting, James gawked at the carvings of animals: lions, tigers, elephants.
He placed a nervous trembling hand to it, delicately, like it would break, splaying his fingers into the grooves that he couldn't feel.
His view of it now was different. He was tall, he'd grown up and the original had already been destroyed.
His boy-self had seen a completely different image.
With a held breath, James hesitated before inching his hand forward, pushing at the copy. The panel gave in, the secret door opening— a silly thing that their father had installed. Fabian had rebuilt even this.
Transfixed by its existence, James did not grab a lamp.
He entered the lightless space, closing the secret door behind him, and surrendering himself to the black.
He felt the walls, memory drifting him forward, even though the space felt tighter and more suffocating than it used to. His foot hit something.
The first step.
The steep spiral staircase took him upward; thirty-two steps his boy-self had counted once. Such memories, facts, and mundane details had been long forgotten before like it'd been unimportant scrap. Now, of all times, he'd recalled it.
Eris hadn't spitefully pulled away like he'd thought. She was letting him know again, returning everything precious that she had once taken. James' chest was sore and swollen as parts of his soul came back to him, old, festering emotions without an outlet. Like her, it was a painful gift.
Thirty-two. James reached the top after thirty-two. Fabian had remembered as well.
James knew exactly where this dark path led, what waited for him at the end. He followed it, reaching the door at the other end. He felt for the handle and squeezed.
What was there now? Fabian had seemed so desperate to copy every detail he could as if he'd tried to undo as much as he'd been able. To James, this was horrifying.
He feared confirming the implication— a truth he would only obtain by proceeding. More than that, he feared not knowing which outcome he wanted to see. It took a moment but he pulled, surprised it was unlocked.
His stomach sank as he ventured through. Fabian's childhood bedroom was laid out before him.
Such a gut-wrenching sight, James almost fell to his knees, a shock of cold-aching misery sinking within him, a reaction he couldn't control. Why? Why did it have to be like this?
James didn't know what to do.
Unlike the chaos and war in the rest of the palace, this place was quiet and serene, the violence cities away— not in this safe and sacred place. The calmness was nauseating in its dishonest attempts to coax him into feeling disarmed.
But even though James mostly wasn't fooled, a part of him was. His heart slowed and his tension slackened enough that his minor injuries began to hurt.
He began to wander forwards, compelled against his will, until he stood at the foot of Fabian's bed.
The small trinkets on the bedside table were without dust. With the freshly laid linen and plump pillows, James could fall forward and sink into it, like he'd done many times before.
Perhaps if he did so and opened his eyes he'd wake up from the nightmare, Fabian shaking his shoulder to rouse him from his nap with an amused smirk.
"Go sleep in your own bed," he'd say.
James would groan and bury his face into the covers. "This is my bed now," he'd reply. After all, even though they'd been made the same, Fabian's had always been more comfortable than his, a claim he'd never been able to prove, despite his stubborn assertions to anyone who would listen.
Nowhere had been safer; for the knowledge that the only danger in a room was his older brother had been a comfortable thought.
James bit down on his lower lip, splitting it.
"Why?"
Why had Fabian done that? Why had he killed them? It didn't make sense.
Something smashed and James jolted, snapping into rigid tension in fright, his hand instinctively on Eris.
A man, just as petrified as him, eyes wide and body stiff, was by the door to the connecting room, a vase smashed into pieces on the ground. A soldier. He was shielded in heavy layers of armour, without a helmet, something gold in its place.
"Who are you?" the man's deep baritone was tight and panicked.
Even though it was an enemy soldier, James remained still, his feet stuck to the floor. The stranger was the same, unmoving and staring. Neither of them attempted to attack the other. Once James realised why, his world ended.
"Fable?"
James had remembered it wrong.
Fabian's hair was pale, but it was almost brown, not gold like his crown.
Fabian's long braid had been cut and now his loose locks were no longer than the shoulders it weighed on.
His face was a mirror image of his own. Even his expression, the shock and anguish that captured him, the whole world collapsing around him as his blood ran cold— it was the same.
Fabian screamed as he retreated, back against the wall, a terrified shout.
In the connecting room, the door was pounded against. "Your Majesty?" muffled voices called. "Your Majesty, are you okay in there?"
"No!"
"Fable," James said again.
"You shouldn't be here!" Fabian wailed, eyes wild and angry. "You should be dead!"
"Your Majesty, open the door!"
James said nothing for a moment, unable to process the scene. It wasn't until Fabian sprinted into the next room that James reacted, chasing after him. He couldn't let Fabian open that door.
His brother hadn't been able to fumble open the lock by the time James rounded the corner and got close. He scrambled away.
"Why couldn't you just leave me alone?" he cried.
The question angered James, an unexpected dagger in his chest. "It was you that had bothered me!" And thousands had suffered for it.
"Because I had to make sure! You were going to kill me!"
The guards grew frenzied, slamming their bodies at the door, trying to break through it. Fabian's sob-like pants wobbled as they watched each other. James stared, searching for his brother in those hateful, fearful eyes, at a loss.
What had James hoped for by coming here?
It was clear just from looking around and recalling Marigold's pleas; Fabian had been living in James' grave for fifteen years, haunted by the same ghost that had clung to both of them. He'd tried his best to undo all the damage but it had been too late, the bed made.
Fabian's actions were a contradictory mess. James couldn't begin to pinpoint which parts had been sincere. The Fabian that stood before him was both the same but a stranger, feelings and motivations so clear to James but also so incoherent and confused.
Despite all this, neither of them thought to attack the other at that moment.
They stood in the lounge that separated their childhood bedrooms, mimicking the original as much as possible.
A portrait hung on the wall, once grand, it was the only thing original in there.
The bottom half had been burnt away and charred, with Fabian completely absent from the image.
All that remained was their parent's poised, slight smiles and a little part of Prince Julian; his body was gone but a portion of his head remained with one red eye creased in contentment.
Why had Fabian done this? James did not know. And, the realisation slowly dawned on him that no matter what Fabian could say, James would never receive a satisfying explanation. He would never know.
"Why?" he asked, not above a whisper. His one last attempt, he pleaded with Fabian— the last request he would ever ask his older brother, their last chance to understand each other.
Fabian's breath hitched, confusion warping his face, it crumpled into something pained, tears trailing down his cheeks. James' eyes were dry.
"I didn't mean it," Fabian claimed, voice breaking. "I didn't understand what they wanted me to do..."
The response had been just as unstirring as James had dreaded. The numbness he felt wasn't from Eris. It wasn't apathy. It was defeat. Because, despite everything, Fabian hadn't 'meant' to do it. Once again, it wasn't his fault. Poor, innocent, Fable had been a tragic victim.
"And after?"
Fabian's rage snapped right back into place, so familiar, like it used to. James wanted to laugh bitterly. He'd discovered one thing about his brother, at last: his anger was a shield to himself.
Fabian did not have a reason. And he could not cope with that.
"I hate you!" Fabian screamed, drawing his sword. "I've always hated you! It's always you!"
James had nothing to say to Fabian's outburst. It wasn't to be reasoned with.
Despite the vitriol, Fabian still didn't step forward to attack him. And, neither did James. Neither dared.
They'd once been two boys. No longer.
"I see," James quietly said. "I didn't hate you, though. No matter what you did, not once did I despise you. Even now." James had grown with much resentment in his heart but it had never directed itself Fabian's way.
In another world, James would've happily given up his rights as successor and Fabian, with all his faults, would've flaunted his status over James' head at every opportunity. James would've pretended to be irritated but, truthfully, he wouldn't have cared. He never had.
Suddenly, the banging stopped, and James flinched as shouting erupted from beyond the door. The metallic clash of swords and armour clanged. Fabian inched away, hearing it, towards the second connecting chamber to this lounge— the one that had used to be James'.
Even though James could've unlocked the door for the Drykas soldiers, he didn't. They smashed against the wood, over and over, until they finally broke through. Fabian remained by the closed entrance to James' old chamber, terror-stricken at the sight of blue-marked men flooding through.
"We found him!" the Drykas men yelled. "King Fabian is here!"
In the chaos, no one seemed to question why and how James was there.
However, one unexpected reaction did stun him.
Alex had thrown off his helmet, it chimed against the floor.
He'd been the very first person inside. Blood was smeared down one side of his neck, mixing with sweat.
His eyes squinted in agony at the sight of James, a horror tormenting him akin to crushing defeat. But, he was okay.
James tried, but was unable, to muster a comforting smile.
Alex's face fell into his hands.
"It's King Fabian!" the other Drykas soldiers celebrated. No matter whether James won or lost, Fabian would be dead either way. He was outnumbered. It was their victory.
James took another long look at his older brother, the man slashing his sword in the air, warding people off like a cornered animal.
"Get away from me!"
Just as James thought, so pathetically, he still saw his brother deep in those feral eyes.
One of the biggest misfortunes of his life: he still loved his brother.