a king walks among us
Something dark was borne of the sands that night. It was big and black and stood too slow for liking. It was a king.
Not unloved.
Some may say there is a death for every birth. This may be true, but not always, for that night there was a second birth, somewhere far but within reach: the birth of something big and white that ran in moments but was still too slow for liking. It was a bull.
Not unloved.
The fates of the white bull and black king sound to be intertwined, as are their origins, but they know not of each other, and so, such fabled drama has yet to occur. Rest assured, however, that when the time comes, they will feel it in their bones.
x
The little king was born on the sands of Solterra, with scorpions for playmates and the dark for a home. His mother was a noblewoman, married by heavy with a child she knew to be a bastard. The maids would tell her husband the birth went poorly, and that the child was dead. His true father was a warrior from a foreign land, far but within reach, a proud Iberian with rage wound tight beneath his muscles. That rage would never be for his son, nor his lover, but it would be taught to the boy, a tool the colt would hide away for the day he had something to truly be angry about.
The boy was given a wet-nurse and a cellar for a home. Never seen. Never heard, not by any but the nurse and his father. His sire taught him to read in two languages - that of both his birthplace and his ancestral home. He became proficient in both. In private, the king wrote stories and thoughts and what might generously be called poetry. These were the loves of his mother, and so, they were never silenced.
As El Rey grew, his sire began training him to fight. They sparred often, and vigorously, but never as viciously as his sire hoped. He brought urchins, and criminals, and those who would fight a child and keep their mouths shut for a bit of coin. El Rey learned to fight viciously. He loved his father far too much to make it hurt, but these strangers were subjects on which he could test his sire’s teachings.
Some of them died.
El Rey never knew.
Only suspected.
But what would death look like to a boy raised in a cellar?
He could not say.
El Rey’s wet-nurse became his nursemaid, loved him like a mother and offered him the warmth his father could not. El Rey’s father loved his son intensely, but he worked through the day, and on coming home he worked to make his son strong. Stronger. The best.
“Real battles won’t be like this, little king,” but the little king had no comparison for what he knew. His father knew this, so he brought El Rey to some real battles.
Rey began fighting in the Solterran underground, winning largely under threat of death, his horns made for goring the brave and unwise in equal parts. He knew death, then, but no one ever told him it was a bad thing. His father praised him for it. His nursemaid gave him special snacks. He maintained a childish naivety, knowing nothing beyond the cellar and the fight rings and the space between. But he also knew his mother’s name, and perhaps that was too much.
They found the cellar. The came for El Rey. A Sevetta, they said. They’d gotten El Rey’s father alone, at work, and now they wanted Rey. They killed his nursemaid, he thinks, but perhaps They had other uses for her (which he could not imagine himself). He could only gore his way out, and there was too much blood in his eyes and screaming in his ears for Rey to know who lived and who died. He had to live. That was the only rule he’d ever been given. That, and don’t leave the cellar alone.
One rule must be broken so the other can stand.
He left the cellar alone.
And he lived.
El Rey ran and ran until the world looked different and then he kept running until it looked like somewhere to collapse. He found himself in Denocte and, not long after, entered its ranks as a soldier. For now, he works, and watches, and hopes for a purpose.
Novus saw El Rey come bidden to Raum's side as his torturer and Executioner, willing weapon in a dictator's hand, and responsible for taking an axe to Caine's wings. He also found love in Juniper, perhaps the only understanding soul he has met who did not also seek to use him. His cousin, El Toro, pursues him endlessly. And in autumn of 505, Lucinda turned him into a kelpie.