Lewd King's Bucket List-Chapter 52: Child of War (3)

"Ixion, my dear."

Crushed. Defeated.

That was the look on my mother’s face as she returned from that battle. The one where she silently accepted the truth she’d ignored for so long.

Antion, her husband, was dead.

Despair’s words, and other whispers she’d heard, all pointed to that poignant truth.

If the circumstances were different. If they had told her the truth from the beginning. Maybe it would have ended differently.

Maybe she would still be alive.

Wearing a look of shame that only a few could recognize, my mother took me into a nearby tent and ordered Despair and Hope, fourteen at the time, to stand guard.

Those two were the only ones she trusted.

She’d fallen to her knees and put a hand on my pale cheek. Her eyes were hollow. The once-vibrant blue seemed a dull gray.

"You look just like your father."

She stroked my cheek with her thumb as she continued:

"The man you killed."

The words the soldiers uttered behind her back. The terrible things they said about her son, me.

Their words became the one thing that kept her going, for they pinned the blame on something else — someone else.

She now knew the soldiers talked ill of me not only because I’d withheld her from battle, but that King Antion had fallen trying to take on her ’fair’ share of responsibility.

For whatever it was worth, she didn’t strike me. She never abused me physically.

She simply looked upon my form with contempt.

To her, I became not a symbol of something to protect, but something she’d lost.

Something she’d lost by trying to be human.

Once the Catatran Queen made known she knew of her husband’s death, all feared her refusal to fight was coming. But, oddly, she stayed on the frontlines, fighting more fervently than ever.

Upon seeing the glorious queen’s resolve, the one thing recovered from King Antion was returned to her...

The crown of Catatran.

A crown she put upon me, Prince Ixion, like I was some doll of my father.

Between battles, she and I would simply sit alone in our tent.

She would place the crown upon my head, place her hand upon my cheek, and stare at me quietly. For hours on end.

Being the naive child I was, a five-year-old at that, I thought it was something all mothers do with their sons.

But that wasn’t it.

It was something much more sinister.

She was trying to recreate my father’s image through me.

I was simply a portrait to her, not a human being. That was what allowed her to move on to the next battle.

But as insanity so often does, it caught up to her in a terrible fashion.

After one particularly gruesome battle, she’d returned to basecamp covered in the blood of her comrades. She’d come rushing to me and had taken me straight to the tent.

She sat me down and placed the crown upon my head.

I thought the normal ritual was going to happen, but with a shaky voice, she said:

"Antion, my dear... It’s been so long."

She brought her hand to my cheek and began stroking with her thumb once again.

She cried out:

"Oh, how I’ve missed you! Just where have you been?!"

She laughed and fell onto her back.

"I’ve been looking for you for so long! Some crazy people are saying you died, how absurd?! How could you die?!"

She began kicking her feet. Something shiny was glinting in the corner of her eyes.

"Seriously, how dumb are they? If their weak selves can survive, how could you die?! Baha! It’s hilarious, don’t you think, darling?"

She continued laughing as she rolled around. Toiling on the tent’s floor until she ended up with her face right before mine.

With a few tears streaking down her face, she stopped and stared into my eyes.

"That’s funny, darling. Right, darling? Darling?"

Being a kid who barely saw his mother, and when I did, merely had strange staring contests with her. I was quite alarmed by this odd action. I believe all I said was...

"Mommy."

Her face twisted in all sorts of ways.

Confusion.

Horror.

Annoyance.

Then, I said the next line. The next line, which rammed the sword through her heart.

"You’re scaring me."

Three words.

That’s all it took to snap my mother back to reality.

"What am I doing...?"

She clawed at the ground and pushed herself up until she was sitting on her calves.

"Seriously, what am I even doing?"

She looked back toward the entrance of the tent.

"You are dead, my dear. You’ve been dead."

She turned her gaze back at me.

"And I. I was your killer."

She brought her hand to my cheek. Her voice was even and measured as she said:

"I decided to give birth to this heathen. I decided to carry him to term."

She gripped my cheek with her hands, threatening to rip off my face.

"Mommy, stop. You’re hurting me!"

With no expression, she tilted her head to the side.

"Am I? I’m so sorry! You’re right. There’s a painless way to do this, isn’t there?"

Her hand trailed down my thin and frail body before it stopped on my neck. Then, she lightly clenched, cutting off my breath.

"Ixion, my dear. It’s not my fault you have to die. It’s yours. The idea of you led me to kill Antion. Before I go join him, I must fix my mistake. It’s the only way he’ll forgive me."

Her lips curled up as she tightened her grip.

I tried to fight back, but my hands were much too small. My body much too weak.

"After I send you to hell, I’ll go to heaven with daddy. Doesn’t that sound fun?"

Tears streamed down her face as she laughed.

"Is this not all so funny? Seriously?! Why are you not laughing?!"

I could feel my consciousness fading.

When, all of a sudden, the pressure stopped. A spew of red shot into my eyes.

I fell to the ground. Began coughing and crying as I wiped the blood away.

When I finally managed to open my eyes again...

I saw Hope, trembling. A bloody blade in his hands. My mother’s corpse twitching on the ground below him.

His face twisted in confusion as if he didn’t know what had happened.

Despair stood a little behind.

"Hope! What have you done?!"