Realm of Wings

A\n: I'm writing as fast as I can! Enjoy! 🧚‍♀️

Kallan, still in his room:

Fuck! I don’t know what my parents were hiding but this is not good! Whatever reason could there be for them to kill Trixie’s friend? What is there to find out about Jade that is so secretive to kill over? What has happened in our past?

Trixie was crying her heart out for losing her friend, so I took her in my arms and laid her down in my bed as she was in no condition to be alone in her own room right now. She’s my best friend and I wasn’t going to let her go now.

I had awoken Neil and explained to him what had happened and told him that I needed some time to sleep and comfort Trixie. Of course, I had also explained for her to be a lesbian, so that there wouldn’t be any awkward situation playing inside his English mind.

He had looked rather frightened about the murder but quickly shook it off and took over my position at the window.

Once Trixie had fallen asleep in my arms, I had tried to figure out any sort of explanation for what the hell was going on. I even considered wanting to leave the palace, right after Jade would burst out of her bubble, but we couldn’t know how long she was going to be inside of it. So, in the meantime, we had to search for ourselves, to get the information about her, or at least something about my great-grandparents.

“Master Kallan! Wake up!” Neil shook my shoulders as he managed to get my attention.

The sun had risen but was still hanging low above the horizon, so only a few hours had passed since I had fallen asleep. I grunted while I sat myself up against the headboard of my bed before I asked Neil what was going on.

“They have tripled the guards around the bubble because Jade has been releasing steady pulses.” He explained and I had gotten up as fast as I could.

I opened the window and stepped onto the small balcony to see what he was talking about. But as he had said, every now and then a ripple flowed over the golden sides and when it happened, Jade’s body arched up from the ground as well.

After summoning my wings, I jumped down from the balcony and landed right next to all the guards. They didn’t question my presence but were looking towards the door where I noticed my father standing now.

He had squinted his eyes and I nearly wanted to accuse him of killing Trixie’s friend right there on the spot, but if Jade was about to get out of the bubble now, it wouldn’t have been the right time. I needed to address this case with political care, carefully mapping out my steps to find the information that we needed and for Jade to be in a safe environment.

“Son, there has been an accident. You may want to find Trixie and tell her that a friend of hers died.” My father suddenly said and all political care just flew out of the window…

“An accident?! I wanted to find out more about Jade, about her heritage and powers! But as soon as we ask for someone to search about it, he had gotten killed! So please explain, father, what it is that I’m not supposed to know?” I said with a full-on rage-face, which made him look surprised for a moment about me already knowing about what happened in the courtyard, but then became angry at me again as I had just accused him of murder.

“Boy! I didn’t order for him to be killed! Someone else did that!” He replied, towering over me with his dominance now, but I wasn’t intimidated by it. In fact, it made me even more determined to find out what it is that truly happened.

“I can’t believe this! I haven’t been home for a year and this is what I came back to? Another moment of not wanting to tell the truth?!” I yelled right back at him. “You want me to follow in your footsteps, to become King in your place one day! How am I supposed to do that, if I don’t know everything about our lands, about our family bloodline, about the fucking rift, and now about Jade!?” I continued and where I had expected my father to have exploded, he took a step back and sighed deeply.

Of course, he couldn’t have been happy that his eldest son was yelling at him, accusing him of lying and killing, but there was something else in his eyes that was overruling the anger inside. It wasn’t pride or weakness…

He turned his head down and a little sideways, closing his eyes and took a deep breath.

It was ‘shame’ that I saw!

“Son, let’s get back inside, there is something I have to tell you.” He said in a calm tone.

I looked back for a moment, to see that Jade was still encased in the golden bubble, safely breathing and serenely lying on the ground. Then, I steadied my breathing, let the anger subside and looked up towards the balcony of my room. Neil nodded that he was doing fine and I gently smiled and went after my father.

We went to his study and I dropped myself on the black leather couch that stood in the middle of the room. It was still early in the morning but even so, he had poured us a set of glasses with green nectar from the flowers of the Veridian trees. It was somewhat the same compared to strong alcoholic beverages from Earth, but this didn’t leave the hangover in the morning, which was much better and because of this even more rare to find.

“Your mother and I never wanted to speak of our past, my past actually, because we are embarrassed by it.” He started when he came to sit opposite of me, on one of the black leather chairs that stood here as well.

“You know that I’m old and that it’s strange for you to only be this young. I mean, I could’ve had children as soon as I had gained my powers, but I didn’t want to bring any offspring into a world of lies. It wasn’t until your mother appeared that my life turned around into something much brighter, that I decided to want to have children. She had always said that the next generation would have another chance of correcting the wrongs of our past.” He said while sipping on his Veridian drink.

I took a sip too, letting the substance tingle down my throat forcing away any hunger that I might have for breakfast. But what he said worried me a lot. A world of lies? What is he talking about? What did my family do that was so wrong that my parents were embarrassed about?

“There are only a handful of people who know about this, Kallan, and I would appreciate it if you keep being discrete about what I’m about to tell you.” He said while looking down into his glass while swirling the green liquid around.

“Of course.” I replied without hesitation, eager to learn more about this.

“Your great-grandmother didn’t acquire her title as Queen in the most righteous way. In fact, she stole it from her own sister, the true Queen of that era.” He said and my jaw dropped.

“I was still young when your great-grandmother died, so I don’t remember much of her. But what I do remember is that my mother always vowed to never become like her, as brutal as her. I’ve heard stories of Queen Velorial that will make the hairs on the back of your body stand up in fear, for all the things that she has done.” He continued and took another sip of his drink.

I just waited for him to continue the story, as I knew these couldn’t have been the only things that he wanted to tell me, even though it was already devastating to hear that my father, and thus me as well, isn’t the rightful heir of the throne of E’ne Belanore.

“Velorial had always been jealous about her sister’s throne and the way that she ruled Kyalthemar with dignity and pride. And where Velorial was always arrogant, angry and full of mischief and ill-thinking, Queen Ayanna was always kind, full of love and understanding. I know this because my mother, in her early days, had read books about Queen Ayanna and the wonderful things that she had done. But as soon as Velorial found out that her daughter had read those stories, poisoning her mind with stupid things, such as love and kindness, as she would have said, she had ordered the citizens of E’ne Belanore to destroy every evidence of their former Queen. Henceforth the reason why there isn’t much to find out about her.”

“There’s nothing to find.” I cut in and my father nodded.

But while I was listening to this absurd story, and also the details of how Queen Velorial had taken her throne, there was something about the way my father was talking. His choice of words didn’t sit well with me.

“Wait, but did you just say that Queen Ayanna ruled Kyalthemar? You must mean just E’ne Belanore, right? The capital city on this side of Kyalthemar.” I asked him and he sighed.

“You heard that, huh?” My father replied with a small smile. He emptied his glass of Veridian and stood up from the couch. “Follow me.” He said and walked over towards the old mural painting that was on one of the walls that weren’t covered with bookshelves.

The old painting showed an image of my father riding a flying Pegasus, butt-naked, raising a sword while his blackened skin bounced off arrows that came towards him. I always found that this picture was an arrogant display of strength, and I never understood why my father wanted to have a painting of himself in his study, for him to gloat on whenever he felt the urge to. So, I turned my face away, not wanting to be reminded of the sexual innuendos there were depicted with his naked body.

“Look at it.” He said.

“No.” I instantly replied and he chuckled.

“You don’t want to, do you?” He asked the most obvious question of all of eternity. “That’s why I made it this way.” He chuckled now.

“You painted it?” I asked him in disbelief, looking up at his face and definitely not towards the painting.

“No, I covered it with something so obnoxious that no one would want to see that I had used magic on the wall.” He said at which I instantly snapped my head towards the wall now. I didn’t want to look at my father’s naked body but something about it was luring me in. Not that I suddenly turned gay and had massive daddy issues at this moment, but still, it was somehow forcing me to focus on his… you know…

“Just focus on it and you’ll see.” He said with another chuckle and I growled displeasingly.

I focused on his massive, painted cock, that was dangling between his legs, until the painting suddenly started to wrinkle and swirl in the centre, slowly being sucked in in the middle and leaving a completely different painting to show behind it.

It took me a few moments to realise what I saw but when the picture cleared out it was confusing me a lot. The complete wall was showing a map of all the regions of Kyalthemar, flourishing in green hills, wild flowing rivers, luscious forests and more. There even were some pictures of creatures that I haven’t seen in decades already! But how could this be? This isn’t the truth, it never has been this way! Our lands weren’t as green as it was shown there. Once you left the main city and go beyond the fountain’s reach, our lands were barren and desolate!

Right next to where E’ne Belanore was pictured, together with the purple image of a streaming fountain, that was connected to some city of which the name I have never heard of, there should have been the rift! It has been there for as long as I can remember and for as long as my father has told me! So why isn’t it shown on the map? And where is the Aether side?

In a moment of madness I had dropped my mind-block and my father sighed upon hearing my confusion.

“This is a picture from how the lands looked like before the rift was created. A few weeks after Queen Velorial had stolen the throne from her sister, Queen Ayanna’s husband, King Oren, had returned to Kyalthemar to put a curse on the lands. He vowed to the whole of Kyalthemar that only the true heir would be able to take down the wall of energy and that only people who are true to this rightful heir can cross the boundaries that now split our world apart.”

“What? But how would that be possible? Why isn’t the rift down then?” I asked?

“It isn’t possible son, Queen Ayanna was pregnant at the time when she got dethroned, but Queen Velorial let her demon-minotaur eat his prized target. There simply is no heir left.”