Coronation Day

Dreams have edges.

To ordinary folk, a dream is a bubble, inverted, inscrutable, impossible to hold.

To those who know, the far edge of that bubble is a thin, iridescent film.

And when your soul passes through it, out of the murky dream that cradles you like amniotic fluid...

...beyond those countless little bubbles waits something chaotic and mad: the boundless long dream of the Ancient Ones.

...

Damp. The air here seems damp forever, and it seeps into your dream carrying a faint briny tang.

You force your eyes open. Two rows of columns rise like the teeth of some colossal beast, a vaulted ceiling dense with fine carvings, a long flight of stone steps descending away, a vast, solemn temple.

The view wraps around you in nearly every direction at once, and the strangeness of it leaves your senses reeling, though that is hardly your most urgent problem.

A sudden clack, the grind of hinges forced to turn, and the temple's heavy doors ease open a crack.

A few pint-sized children poke their heads in, then slip furtively inside.

The older boy shakes Tulu quietly; the younger one is so sleepy he's drifted off somewhere else entirely.

Noah claps a hand over Tulu's mouth.

Little feet patter across the floor, and the children are soon at the foot of the high altar. They crowd into a ring and peer in through the gleaming glass case.

Small young faces, warped a little by the glass, fill your view on every side. You see yourself reflected in their curious eyes, and you can even hear two of them breathing fast with excitement.

Through your eyes, human emotion and desire are as plain as paint on a palette, colors churning and shifting inside every mind.

Red, green, purple, yellow, excitement, nerves, hunger, delight... But in Tulu there is only gray, steady and cold.

Tulu keeps her eyes half-closed, appearing disinterested. Amid your hopeless calls, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a pair of indifferent amber eyes.

Those eyes look out through a body that seems asleep, out past the heavy walls of reality, and meet yours in silence somewhere inside a dream.

No one hears your eager reply. The children sit around you, straining to meditate, to feel something, and wait a long while. Nothing happens.

The children exchange nervous glances, then nod to one another, as if for courage.

Noah swallows too. He wipes his hands carefully on his shirt, then reaches out and slowly lifts the glass case off the Crown.

As the Crown comes into the open air, a strange energy really does seem to seep from its shimmering surface.

Every child holds their breath, watching Noah lift the case clear away. Then, one by one, as if steeling themselves, they stretch out their hands, closer and closer to the Crown.

Just as their fingers are about to brush the Crown, just as you are putting together your opening line as a wish-granting genie, a stern roar rolls in from the temple doors like thunder. Noah's hand jerks so hard he nearly flings the glass case across the room.

Everyone freezes. Noah claps the glass case back into place, grabs Tulu by the arm, and shoots the others a frantic look.

The children bolt every which way, like ants on a hot skillet. Tulu is hauled a couple of steps forward before he looks back at the High Priest striding toward them.

As if he'd known all along how this would end, Tulu puts up no fight when the High Priest hoists him up by the collar, and Noah, of course, gets caught right along with him.

The children haven't gotten more than a few steps away. Hearing their names, they hang their heads and shuffle reluctantly back.

The High Priest scoffs, looking over the row of little criminals drawn up in front of him.

Noah, who had quietly put himself between Tulu and the priest, clenches his fists and steps forward.

The High Priest looks at the ever-reasonable boy and, to their surprise, does not scold him.

The old man who had served the god all his life shakes his head, his face grave.

For a moment the High Priest's ever-stern face softens, not with affection, but with a trace of pity.

In the silence of the temple the children say nothing for a long while, and the sternness slowly returns to the High Priest's face.

The children let out a long groan, then shut their mouths under the High Priest's stare and hang their heads, resigned to it.

Among all the eyes turned toward you, bitter, fearful, yearning, worshipful, only Tulu never once looks your way.

The High Priest looks long and hard at Tulu, who had shown no reaction from beginning to end, and then leaves without a word.

In the instant the two pass each other, you hear the thoughts of the future king.

...

Soon you sit high upon the offering altar, looking down the stone steps at the children sprawled and kneeling over their cushions in every crooked posture imaginable, copying out prayers.

Murmured recitation echoes through the temple, broken now and then by the rustle of a turning page, and now and then by a weary sigh.

Beside Noah's long-suffering face sits a stack of paper taller than anyone else's, and one look at the thin sheaf in front of Tulu explains why, Noah had thumped his chest and taken them off Tulu's hands himself.

Having lost that argument, Tulu says nothing, digs a few pieces of nut brittle out of his robes, and presses them coolly into Noah's hand.

Cheeks bulging, eyes brimming with tears, Noah shakes Tulu by the hand.

Noah straightens up grandly, wrenches his already aching neck, and yelps through gritted teeth.

...

As the scratching of pens grows duller, you watch Tulu's head start to nod lower and lower, his eyes drifting shut, ink dripping from his pen and blooming into a wide black stain on the page.

Tulu manages to crack his eyes open a little, then drops his pen altogether and settles in for a proper nap.

Noah looks thoroughly glum. Bored out of his mind too, apparently, he rambles on and on.

Tulu tilts his head to glance at Noah, and then, for once, those eyes turn to you.

While Noah grumbles on, you meet those amber eyes, and an urge you can't name wells up inside you.

It is a fierce craving: to call that small child to your side at once, to close your hand around that star-bright soul and make the two of you one.

As if he had felt the thought, Tulu's brow furrows, and a complicated look comes into his eyes, the look of someone who understands everything.

You see the reflection in Tulu's eyes, and what those cool, drowsy pupils hold is not a golden crown.

It is a knotted, writhing phantom of limbs, its deep green tentacles unfurling as though beckoning him.

Splash...

You stand on the high altar above the shore.

Foam breaks again and again against the jagged rocks. Thick, unbroken clouds run down to meet the gray tide at the horizon, sealing off the borders of this nation.

Behind you rises a noise louder than the surf, a sea of people, endless, beyond counting.

You follow that familiar pull, and soon find Tulu below the altar, standing among a group of children.

The high priest, robed in splendor, walks slowly to the center of the altar, scepter in hand.

Below him, countless faces flushed with excitement slowly fall quiet, until nothing is left but the glitter of eyes in the torchlight.

All eyes turn to you, and you look down on it all in silence.

The children straighten their backs and bear the scrutiny of an entire nation.

Once again you see emotions in every color, churning and shifting inside those small heads.

Every voice thunders as one, and beneath thousands upon thousands of prayers, even the ground shakes.

The high priest walks the ring of torches, tracing intricate inscriptions and sigils with his scepter. As each one flares to life, you feel this metal shell stir awake, piece by piece.

Your soul seems to swell with heat, drifting slowly upward until your sight rises to the height of a giant, looking down on land and sea like the master of this world.

Everyone on the ground is no bigger than an ant, and the roar that had shaken the air moments ago is nothing but faint noise. It is all so tedious.

...

Something is drawing closer, and it pulls your attention away. You turn back toward the gray-blue sea.

At the same moment Tulu, whose eyes had been half-closed, lifts his head and looks out at the water with you.

Lightning cracks down. Black clouds, wind, and driving rain arrive all at once, as if summoned, and the sky turns against them.

The sudden downpour drowns the torches on the altar. The awed, solemn prayer of tens of thousands falters as if struck, and confused whispers begin to spread through the crowd.

The wind tears at the High Priest's heavy ceremonial robes, snapping the cloth. His face never moves, but a shadow of worry creeps into those old, wrinkled eyes.

Before he can bring the crowd back to order, the ragged prayers collapse altogether, and screams of terror break out among the people.

A shadow like a mountain rises from the far edge of the horizon, swelling larger by the second, as if to smother the last of the daylight.

A droning howl out of the deep past grinds down on fragile human souls, and waves rise like walls to swallow the land.

Nothing can stand against it. If a monster like that had a name, it could only be one thing, Cataclysm.

In the space of a breath, the rising tide tears great stretches of land from the coast, and humanity's seawalls give way like paper.

That aged, commanding roar rings out again, and the High Priest and the guards move at once, driving the dazed crowd into motion.

The terrified people scatter like sheep, aimless, only to pack together in the chaos and trample one another toward a faster death.

The High Priest shouts order after order at the guards until his voice tears, as though he alone could rein in a runaway carriage racing for the abyss.

The altar stands on high ground, so the water is no immediate threat to you, but before something that vast, ruin will only arrive a little later.

They can run as far as they like, but where is there any ground that is truly safe?

The children have been praying, devout and unwavering, from the moment the disaster began.

Every brow is knotted tight as they strain the small tendrils of their Spiritual Energy toward the Crown, like hands thrust up in desperation, begging their god for mercy, for rescue.

And yet it is simply...

To your eyes, those frail souls give everything they have and produce no more than a firefly's glimmer, barely visible. However desperately you want to answer them, this shell of a crown never so much as stirs.

Everyone turns to the child who had made the decision. The most level-headed boy among them looks quietly at his companions, then takes the first step up the stairs.

The Crown on the platform glints with a cold light, like an indifferent eye. Our Lord gives no consent, and no refusal.

As the boy climbs, one child after another falls in silently behind him. Their footsteps on the stone are light as feathers, and utterly lost beneath the wailing of the crowd and the roar of the waves.

At the very back of the children, Tulu's face goes suddenly blank. The Crown's reflection fills his eyes, his pupils dilating, unseeing.

Soon that golden reflection twists into a churning vortex, and Tulu goes rigid, sinking into some nightmare, reduced to a detached onlooker.

His friend's worry cannot call his soul back. He stands fixed where he is, like a weathered statue.

The boy who had been first onto the platform now stands beside you. He looks back at each of his companions' grave faces in turn, then nods solemnly.

As the boy reaches for the Crown with steady hands, Tulu's eyes shift, just slightly.

As if thrashing against a nightmare, his lips tremble and work, forcing a barely audible mumble out of his throat.

With the utmost reverence, the boy on the dais lifts the crown and sets it gently on his own head.

He has his voice back at last. It is already too late.

The moment the crown comes to rest squarely upon its new bearer, something almost blank passes over the boy's young, solemn face.

Every child holds their breath, waiting for the oracle that would deliver them all.

But what tears out of the boy's parted lips in the next instant is a mass of enormous, writhing dark-green tentacles, and scalding blood and flesh that bursts like a firework and spatters across every face.

Clang...

The crown slips from what was left of his body and rolls to a stop at the children's feet.

Like an omen. Like a curse.

...

Every child who takes up this mission, who carries a nation's hope onto the road to kingship, knows from the start that it might end in death.

They have made their choice the moment they followed the first forerunner up the steps toward the crown.

Yet when they see a friend they had lived beside day and night rot into slime right in front of them, every one of the children freezes.

Fear, a deathly fear, hangs in the air around the crown.

The tentacles thrash on, then, robbed of their host, melt into a pool of green jelly, and the strengthening rain washes it out across the altar.

Splash.

A small shoe steps forward, over the still-warm scraps, and a hand lifts the crown back out of the filth.

The girl stops at the sound of her name, then looks back and gives her friends a trembling smile.

Clang...

Fate shows her no more mercy than the others, but this time the crown is in another pair of hands almost at once.

Far off, the shadows, the black clouds, the tsunami still roar, and endless darkness lies over the whole kingdom.

In all that gloom, only this one small altar keeps bursting with vivid color.

One after another the living fall, and others step up to take their places, until all that remains before your eyes is a thick smear of red and green.

Your cries are a ghost shut out from the world of the living. No one hears them.

The children press forward, one falling and the next taking his place. In that moment, every one of them, unchosen as they are, shoulders the duty that comes with the crown.

They are all New Kings yet to be chosen, and so they will guard this nation until the moment fate brings down its hammer.

Noah, who had fallen behind with Tulu at the foot of the steps, stares wide-eyed. Disbelief, pain, fear... and then, out of all those deep, dark colors, a single point of light spreads until it fills his mind.

Noah glances back at Tulu, who is still dazed, gives his shoulder a light pat, then turns and walks toward the others.

...

Talent, they call it. Sometimes it is closer to a curse no one gets to refuse.

Dreams that play themselves out in the waking world again and again, prophecies he can neither stop nor change, visions beyond description, whispers twisted and mad...

He has carried all of it since the day he was born. The so-called gift of the gods has never asked whether he wanted it.

The power the ritual has awakened churns restlessly inside you. The purpose written into you wakes all at once, and something divine begins to seep out.

Mortals, dull of insight, are no more than dumb cattle. Only that one soul, bright as a star, keeps drawing you in, as if a thing called destiny had strung a solid thread between you.

In an instant Tulu is dragged back into the mad dream, given no say in it, into a dimension attuned to yours.

He sees a magnificent city destroyed like fragile building blocks, floodwaters spreading, and all living beings with eyes that cannot close swallowed into the vortex of the deep sea.

He watches the children he has lived beside day and night turn one by one into monsters and running pus, their souls shredded by the knowledge bleeding out of a god's dream.

Noah, who had been horsing around with him only yesterday, weeps thick tears of blood and rasps out his name before he comes apart in pieces.

The crown he had never once dared look at directly still hangs above it all, watching without pity, as if mocking him for every time he had turned away.

Rage breaks across Tulu's face, and he glares at you like a beast run down into a dead-end alley.

Then Tulu feels a hand pat him. He reaches out, dazed, and something like the light hem of a robe seems to slip past his fingertips. His fingers curl shut and catch nothing at all.

Something surfaces in Tulu's face then, a struggle, like a boy jolted awake, heavy with a fierce and terrible resolve.

Past the illusion of his friends throwing themselves at the crown, clawing for it, he lifts his head and stares straight at the diadem glittering endlessly above.

It comes out as a roar. Tulu takes a step forward, then breaks into a desperate run.

One step, then another. He pushes through that dream full of death and stumbles up the stone stairs.

His foot comes down on the last step, and a torrent of spirit rips the god-given dream open. Reality returns to his eyes at last.

Amid the wreckage of all that courage, Noah is lifting the crown from the ground, and it glints at him with a cold light.

Noah's eyes cloud over in an instant. Two lines of bloody tears run down his face. It is all falling into place exactly as he had seen it in the dream.

Then a hand closes hard around the thorn-covered crown and, without a tremor, draws it free of Noah's grip, inch by inch.

Tulu is breathing hard, his palm laid open by the crown. Beads of dark red blood drip onto the gemstone at its center, like an eye shedding tears.

By now the tsunami has swallowed the coastal lands, leaving only the high altar adrift above the sea like a lone island. In the waves, close enough to touch, the monster of destruction has come.

The young king, who in all your memories has never once been shaken, raises the crown for the first time. Before the towering waves, he lifts his head and crowns himself.

Noah sinks to the ground, too weak to stand. He stares blankly at the crown sitting firm on Tulu's head, the hand he had raised to stop him still hanging in the air.

Tulu looks back at the friend who, even now, wants to take the danger for him, and gives him a reassuring smile.

Amid the roar of the great beast, he faces the wind and the rain and stretches out his hand.

His hair and the hem of his robe whip wildly in the wind. His blood has soaked into the crown, and above his head it blazes brighter and brighter.

As if the god had answered at last, a vast, indistinct shape rises behind him and blots out the sky.

The monster's enormous head plunges down at the tiny human beneath it, then snaps back as if seared by that light, howling in agony.

A star flares across the sky in blinding brilliance, and all at once the black clouds break apart, the waves draw back, and the wind and rain fall still.

Boundless majesty pours out of that small body. In those amber eyes lies the weight of ages, and an indifference that looks down on all creation.

Writhing dark-green tentacles, heavy with the power of the abyss, climb out from Tulu's sides and spread as though moved by a will of their own, shaping themselves into a vast lapis throne beneath their king.

The monstrous beast lets out a bitter whine, like a creature under an order it cannot disobey, and gives ground, one step back.

That mountain-like spine gradually sinks beneath the water and finally, with the receding tide, returns to the deep sea.

Daylight breaks through the clouds and falls once more across the land of Lemuria.

The crowd that the sea has been chasing down slows and stops. Drowned buildings and fields rise back into the light, and every frightened, bewildered face lights up with the wild joy of the spared.

The High Priest, who has said nothing, consenting in silence, from the moment the children walked toward the crown, now bends low before Tulu at the summit of the altar: the bow of a priest to his king.

Then he turns, raises his scepter with trembling hands, and delivers his verdict in the most solemn voice he has.

Praise erupts from the crowd like a rising tide. They bow to their future king, and the most devout among them kneel and kiss the ground, weeping for joy.

Noah, frozen off to one side, finally comes back to himself and throws his arms around Tulu, nearly knocking him flat.

Noah weeps openly, and his tears rinse away the two trails of blood, leaving a grimy smear on Tulu.

Then, as if he'd suddenly remembered himself, Noah lets go and takes an awkward, sheepish step back. His shoulders curl forward, he seems torn over whether to bow.

Tulu's hand comes up against Noah's shoulder. The tangled look on his face, which had held little joy, finally eases into a faint smile.

Noah stares dumbly at that smile, then snorts out a laugh of his own and scrubs at his wet face with his sleeve.

Just like on so many days before, Noah throws a long arm around Tulu's shoulders and thumps his chest, full of grand promises.

Tulu rolls his eyes at him again. The surviving children crowd in around them, one after another, clinging together like young animals that had lived through a storm.

You and Tulu look at the faces around you, weeping, thrilled, radiant, and even the High Priest wears a smile of wonder and relief. The miracle has come, the disaster has passed, an heir to the throne is born. It seems like such a beautiful ending.

Yet in the instant the god's shadowy form descends, you have already heard that fated oracle.

Tulu's thoughts come through the crown into your mind just then, folding perfectly over your own.

In the god's ageless dream, a few breaths are already a mortal's whole life.

...

As the "person" closest to him, you are with Tulu through the childhood that followed his naming as heir, through the coronation that brought a whole nation to its knees, and through one deep slumber after another.

Most of the children from those days go back to ordinary lives; a few follow the High Priest into the priesthood.

Only Noah chooses, without a moment's hesitation, to serve as Tulu's attendant, keeping quiet watch outside the new king's chambers.

Every time Tulu wakes from one of those long slumbers, the first thing he sees is Noah hurrying to his side, bursting with news, rattling on about everything amusing that had happened.

In those fleeting moments of wakefulness, Tulu listens to the small changes in the nation and in Noah. A few years' time is enough for a youth to grow into an adult.

...

...

...

...

His brief, unpredictable spells of waking are never long enough for Tulu to take part in anything himself. All he can do is listen quietly to everything he had missed.

Whenever Noah steps aside to make room for the priests who come hurrying at the news, Tulu watches him go with a loneliness that is hard to miss.

As if in answer to your comfort, Tulu's thoughts reach you, and catch you completely off guard.

In the priest's reverent eyes you catch a reflection: Tulu's face, unchanged by Slumber that takes him more and more often.

The price of kingship has begun coming due the moment the crown touched his head.

...

...

...

Of the countless dreams laden with secrets and prophecies, the ones Tulu hates most are the ones that foretell a death.

Yet when the vision of Noah's death rises up in the dream, you, seeing it alongside Tulu, find his face utterly calm.

The next moment Tulu tears the dream apart. He rolls out of bed, waves off the attendant who had taken over for the long-ailing Noah, and pushes open the doors to leave his chambers alone.

His steps come quicker and quicker, until at last he is running flat out toward Noah's house, without a shred of royal dignity left.

By the time he reaches the door, faint weeping already seeping through it, the little house is ringed with Noah's family.

The crowd parts at once to let Tulu through. Breathing hard, he stands in the doorway, and through that narrow frame, wide enough for one man, he sees a sudden light kindle in Noah's clouded eyes.

Noah's pale lips work, trying to shape a word, and then stop, fixed forever in that instant, stiffening into something like an unfinished smile.

The child's wail rings out like a death knell struck without warning, announcing that some end beyond undoing has come.

Noah's wife pulls the boy away from his father's arm, which he will not stop shaking, and cannot keep a sob from slipping through the hand she presses to her mouth.

Amid all the weeping and sighing, Tulu studies his friend's face without expression, a face long since grown into manhood, then worn hollow by illness.

Noah's wife, her face streaked with tears, seems to remember something all at once. She wipes her eyes in a hurry and fetches a small box, pressing it into Tulu's hands with a choked sob.

Tulu lifts the lid. Inside lie a few Amaranth pastries, exactly like the ones from their childhood.

"I knew you'd come."

Then, over the startled cries of the adults and their hurried attempts to stop her, a small flowered handkerchief appears in front of Tulu.

Noah's little daughter, too young to understand any of it, holds the crumpled handkerchief up as high as she can, straining to reach him.

Tulu takes it blankly and touches his own cheek without thinking. His hand comes away wet, and something like surprise crosses his face.

At some point, he has begun to weep.

Tulu opens his mouth, but before he can speak, a set of measured footsteps comes up behind him.

Tulu gives Noah's wife a nod, and the grief is gone from his face as quickly as it had come, replaced by the composure a God King is meant to wear.

He looks back one last time at his friend's peaceful face, then turns and walks out with steady steps, following the priest and the guards who wait at the door.

He has imagined this moment countless times. And now, at last, he has lost his final friend.

...

Every attendant has been dismissed. Only one lonely set of footsteps echoes through the empty palace.

Tulu makes his way step by step toward the long stone stairway, the God King's mantle trailing behind him like a loyal shadow.

His slight frame is lost beneath the heavy regalia as he sits down, almost curled into himself, upon the enormous blue stone throne.

In the silence, Tulu's fingers trace the glittering jewels of the crown, and he begins to murmur as if speaking to you.

His fingers tap lightly at the rim of the crown, as if comforting an old friend.

Tulu lets out a sudden snort of laughter and flicks one of the crown's jewels, without a trace of reverence.

A tentacle traces lightly over the crown, and its polished metal gives back Tulu's calm face.

He looks at you the way a prisoner looks at the shackles he will wear forever.

Tulu stares a long while into the distant void, and a faint smile crosses his face.

In that dreamlike vision, the faces of his childhood friends fade one by one before his eyes. Noah smiles, waves to him one last time, then turns at last to follow the others.

The heavy crown is solemnly lowered onto that small head. From this day on, upon the throne, he has only the crown for silent company.

His cold, weary eyes drift shut, and once more he sinks into the deepest dream in the world.

In that long dream, the young king will see it clearly: an unstoppable wave bearing down on the land he had sacrificed everything for.

He would clearly see Lemuria sinking into the deep sea, with no survivors.