My heart cries, my soul screams!
A damned soul, who will redeem?
A god, lofty and out of sight
Surely he knows nothing of my plight

Myungsoo spent the whole day talking with his sister, sharing how he secretly stole the papyrus scrolls that recorded the detailed history of the Adamah along with the meticulously written theology of Nesher, their god. He shared how, over the course of the years, he personally wrote down his own experiences that dealt with their father, king Avlot, their mother; thoughts on Oscuridaon, as to how he most likely was the one who killed their father; and pain felt when he saw his friends die and exiled to distant lands while he was forced into Oscuridaon's household without much of a choice. Lastly, he told her to keep secret everything so that the two could live their lives in peace.

Myungeun steadfastly renounced said request because she hated such a notion. Part of her hated her brother for even considering silence. She begged Myungsoo to relent and help her somehow convince the Adamah slaves to rise up and take back their rightful land, but he was quick to hush her. "But Nesher!" she protested, yet he held his ground, "That god is dead. And if he is alive, than he is too concerned with glorious things, not lowly slaves!"

And he told time and time again how he, for decades, cried out to their god but was answered by nothing. Both siblings had their disagreements, but as evening descended, they said goodnight and tried to sleep, but they couldn't, considering the wretched feelings of argument. Myungeun tossed and her bed and tore apart her feather pillow while Myungsoo polished his sword and cursed Nesher under his breath.

Now morning, the two dressed in proper, formal attire. Myungeun clothed herself in decorative robes that accentuated her slim, feminine figure, and placed her golden circlet above her brow, the symbol of a priestess. Myungsoo strapped on his leather harness over his bare chest and fitted on tightly his leather belt on his waist, over his furry trunks.

Staring into the eye sockets of his skull casque, he grimmaced. When he wore it, he no longer was the sweet man he wanted his sister to recognize him as. No, he was lord over death who bathed his broadsword in the blood of those who rose against Oscuridaon's regime. Yet, it was also a reminder of the tyrant's promise, that he would be staring at his sister's death if he so much as considered outward rebellion, although he already had the moment he stole the scrolls he now hid in his golden chest.

Today they would meet with the despot and adoptive father, Oscuridaon, for a breakfast meal.

Within the crimson citadel, inside an elaborately decorated chamber with colorful tapestries hanging on the wall, a large gilded window whose borders were encrusted with precious jewels that brilliantly gleamed in the sunlight, and sitting on a golden throne with his chin resting on his knuckle and free hand rhythmically tapping on his armrest awaited Oscuridaon. He was clad in his white armor, sunlight gloriously rippling across the plates of it and the silver mail, the chilling green lights he had for eyes piercing through his grille that obscured the rest of his face. He was never seen outside his armor, no one dared ask why.

In the next moment, the large steel doors that led to the chamber opened in. Myungeun stepped in first, followed by Myungsoo who clenched his teeth under his helm. He seethed with wrath every time he met his adoptive father. Memories of him tearing him apart from everything that he loved would never stop haunting him.

Turning his head just enough to catch glimpse of his sister's hair that bounced with every step assuaged his anger. It reminded him of the reason for holding back on fulfilling his murderous aspirations. However, he noticed an uneasiness in her eyes, spotted through his peripheral vision. Her lips seemed to tremble and he noticed a bead of sweat stream down her forehead, her ears slightly reddening. She, too, was wroth with anger that burned like hellfire toward the king of the faeries. It shouldn't have been a surprise, since she now knew the hideous truth about him.

Letting his hand touch hers as he stepped ahead of her, their eyes met- even though his skull helm hid most of his face. It was a word spoken without having to say anything, I'm here, don't worry. Myungeun slowly nodded, telling him, I won't do anything stupid. At their proper place on the dining table, the two bowed their heads before taking their seats.

 "My children!" Oscuridaon said with his hands raised up in celebration. "I've missed the two of you for so long!"

Myungsoo took off his helm and looked at Myungeun. She was always the one to greet the king with a beaming smile, but her face was sullen. She was far too busy suppressing the voice of anger and sorrow. Her arms were stretched, tense, and her fingernails were digging into her soft knees. Myungsoo threw a look at her. She opened her small mouth, but no words came out.

 "What's wrong my, dear?" Oscuridaon inquired with a voice full of curiosity.

 "She! She has been feeling ill, father!" Myungsoo quickly replied.

 "Is that why she cut her hair? The length of it bothered her?"

 "I! I! No," she stammered. 

Oscuridaon sat up from his slouching position. "What do you mean? Your plump skin, too," he motioned his hand at Myungsoo, "that your brother is fond of, it is gone. What is the reason?"

 "I have been feeling sick for around a month."

 "Well, why didn't you tell the court? And have you been performing the service for our god, Bolar?"

 "He's not our god!" She gasped and met her brother's eyes with a frantic expression.

Oscuridaon pounded his hand on the golden table. "What?!"

 Myungsoo cut in with a desperate voice, "She is confused, sire! A slave surely beguiled her while I was away!" 

Myungeun abruptly stood up, causing her chair to crash on the floor behind her. "Yes it was a slave! It was my own brother who told me through-"

 "Quiet!" Myungsoo shouted at her.

 His sister banged on the table, her face hot with fury. "I won't be quiet!"

 At this, the guards outside the door barged in with the sound of thunder as they all filled the room.

 "You stupid sentries! Go away! This is a private gathering between me and my children! Now leave before you babling buffoons meet my wrath!" Oscuridaon aimed at the guards.

 They all bowed. "Yes, lord! Forgive us, oh benevolent king!" the tallest of them, chief sentry, said with a trembling voice.

Oscuridaon dismissed them with a wavering gesture and then motioned with the same hand for the siblings to sit. "Explain, my sweet daughter."

"I'm not your daughter!" she snapped with a swaying of her head so furious that her circlet slipped off her silky hair and onto the marble tiles.

Myungsoo ran to her and struck her with his open palm. She gasped and fell to the cold floor, glaring at him with eyes of disbelief. In all her life she only knew him as caring, full of love and warmth, a gentle soul whose hazel eyes bespoke of healing peace. Yet now, his eyes were a fiery window to a hell she never imagined existed.

Her breath was stolen and her cheek throbbed with a hurt whilst her heart pained with a sense she could not fully identify: betrayal. She tried to get up but was paralysed, her legs had become like thin reeds, unable to support her weight. , still agape, and her eyes now wet with tears, she whimpered. 

 "Apologize!" Myungsoo commanded with a cold authority he never thought he would direct at his sister.

His hand tingled with the sensation of pain it had just dealt. Striking her hurt him more than it hurt her. Although Myungsoo had killed many without even the smallest grain of remorse or hesitation, his consciousness had now begun to suffocate him. He was drowning in an abyss. His head ached with an unbearable pain as an intense heat overcame him before his blood ran cold. He stood with a contrite heart, admitting that he had done the correct thing. Had she continued speaking, she would have surely met her end.

He struck her out of love, because he loved her too much to see her die. 

 "Forgive her, father!" he continued, his eyes glimpsing at Myungeun and then finally settling on the tyrant.

The despot did not answer, but rather got up and retrieved the golden circlet that had fallen off Myungeun's head. Kneeling to meet her, he gently accommodated the crown on her head and spoke with an almost hushed voice, "Of course you are my daughter." Standing up he continued, "You both are my children.You," he said pointing at Myungsoo, "help your sister up! And I ought to personally cut your hand for striking her lovely face!"

 Myungsoo nodded, doing his best to suppress his anger. He had it in him, in that precise moment of time to draw his sword and kill the tyrant, separating his head from off his shoulders as his gilded edge gleamed with a crimson hue, but his brain halted him. His heart shackled him with heavy iron fetters, the like of which his mighty strength would never burst apart: the tender sight of his sister, vulnerable and pitiful, bound his fury and tossed it into the deep dungeon of his inner being. 

Myungsoo knelt to pick his sister up by the armpits, as a loving parent raises their babe. "Forgive me, my great sin," he silently whispered into her ear. No response.

 Myungeun was visibly distraught, not knowing what to say or even think. She was like a stone, stolidly looking at the golden table that lay in front of her. She was a glass vessel, able to be seen straight through without any impediment, at least for Myungsoo. He sighed as he sat straight across from her, his throat feeling the symptoms of a worry, a knot forming in it. He worried his sister might hate him, because by the glazed look on her precious eyes he could tell her heart was rent in two by his sudden demonstration of discipline, his slap.

Oscuridaon shattered the ice with a ruthlessness as he spoke. "Daughter! What is this nonsense you meant when you denied me?"

 "I-I," she stammered. Her eyes, shining from welled up tears, met with Myungsoo's. Her small hands balled up into tightly knitted fists. A resolve sprang up in her like a geyser violently bursting whatever ground may have once sealed its orifice. She shook her head, clearing her mind of all doubts. "You're not our father. Our father is the one you murdered, Avlot! Our people are the Adamah and our god is Nesher!"

 Oscuridaon placed his chin on his palm, seemingly amused by her words. Myungsoo, meanwhile, a fear seized him. He questioned whether this would be the last he saw of his sister before the two were executed. At least they would die together.

 "You read from the scrolls your brother stole some years ago?" The king sat back, folding his plated arms behind his head and lazily crossing his leg over the other. "I'm not surprised and it's about time you found out, but considering your dumbness, I'm not at all shaken by the years needed to realize the truth. To be honest, I'm glad you did because I no longer have to maintain a facade. I actually hate you two- especially Myungsoo- although for a moment of brevity I might've considered you actual children of mine."

 Myungsoo gritted his teeth, seething with a rage so hellish that no ocean could put it out even with all its water. "You will kill us now?"

 The king wagged his head. "No. Of course not. I have to make the two of you suffer. You two will go on living your pitiful lives as usual. Just don't start with this Nesher jabbering. Please don't. I always thought the idea of a supreme god was stupid. Why should there only be one god? A pantheon, a host of deities is truth. You expect me to believe a single entity can create the sun, moon, and the stars? What idiocy," he said as he waved his hand dismissively, "perhaps he can create a stupid race of people like you, but the Sanritem? Oh, no, of course not. We pride ourselves in our splendid pointed ears, our mastery over the magic inherent in our blood, our appreciation of nature, etcetera, etcetera."

The doors opened with a creaking noise and the table before the three was filled with a bounty of food, no meat present. The king signaled his servants to leave and commanded his children to eat. Myungeun pushed her plate away and locked eyes with her sibling. 

 "Eat," he reluctantly told her. Though the act of feasting on victuals supplied by the odious king stripped away his pride, he cared for his sister too much. He wanted her to eat, keeping in mind her fasting of forty days. "Eat, my sister."

 Myungeun nodded, baffled by her brother's submissiveness. At first, she hesitated, her pride the perpetrator, but she quickly dismissed it when the throes of an intense hunger laid its clutches on her. The fresh bread, flaky and glazed in sugars had it's sweet and tasty scent fill her nostrils. She tore a piece off the bread and began chewing on it. All of a sudden, what once made water and eyes swell with joy now became an atrocious blend of misery and bitterness.

All she tasted was a bitter flavor mingled with a hint of salt; all she tasted were tears, the tears of her people that screamed for freedom, the tears of her father mourning in his grave, the tears of a god hiding behind the clouds, and her own tears. She spat out the food. Her eyes bloodshot with the droplets of sorrow streaming down her cheeks like narrow brooks, she cried, "No! I won't eat."

 Myungsoo, a fervent heat flushing his cheeks and the beating of his heart pulsating like a haunting knell, aimed a look of astonishment at his sister. His mouth was slack; surely such an act warranted the death of his sister.

 "Sit," Oscuridaon said with a tone of indifference. He wasn't eating, no one had ever seen him eat or drink. In fact, whether demon or angel, whatever hid behind his visor that radiated light like a brilliant star when the sun shone its rays on it, no one knew; he is the overcoming conqueror and savior of his fellow faeries, and that's all that mattered to the Sanritem. He motioned for Myungeun to take her place once again, but she nodded no. "Fine then! Do as you wish! Whether you starve or not, it's not my problem. But! You will perform your priestly duty. Today, at evening, like always!"

 Myungeun, no longer able to withstand the outpour of emotions that crashed like violent waves foaming with fury, stormed out the room and headed home. Myungsoo got up with an abrupt start but the king halted him, "You! Come here!" Myungsoo clenched his fists in rage but relented. He turned and walked over to the king with trudging steps.

 "Kneel and kiss my feet like the slave you are, you idle idiot!"

Myungsoo casted a look of disgust and raw hatred at the king but he capitulated and kissed the feet of Oscuridaon as his eyes lost its shine, as he lost his dignity. 

 "Good! Son!" Oscuridaon waited for Myungsoo to perhaps give him an expression of self-loathing or hatred, but he was disappointed to see him aim a blank, stoic look at him. "Well, I'll let the dog have her way, but! If for some reason she arouses a sense of suspicion in me, of rebelling against my rule, then! I'll just have to have slit and her body be as food to the Vulturemen that live outside in the desert wastelands."

 Myungsoo, his nostrils fumed with a hot breath of anger. "Aye, sire!" He rose to his feet and began his way out the door, only to be stopped once more by his adoptive father.

 "Also, please don't let the wretch spread her message, about your pitiful god. I'll have her supple skin flailed and serve as my new cape!"

 Myungsoo clenched his fists, his nails piercing through his flesh so that blood seeped out his rugged, calloused palms. "Yes, father!"

 "Away with you, then! You foolish failure!"

With a vision of Myungeun coiled up in a piteous ball marked by deep sorrows and despondency, Myungsoo rushed his way out through splendidly ornate halls decorated with shining jewels and the lustrous glory of gold and pearls, festoons of spring flowers elegantly hanging on the sapphire walls. Stepping out into the light of a brighter than usual morning prompted him to shield his eyes. As his vision readjusted, his feet, his heart, ordered him to march in direction of his home.

Only a few yards away from Oscuridaon's palace, however, and he was arrested by the sight of a plentiful number of guards. Their eyes were cast down and the weapon-holding hands of quite a few of them were visibly twitching with nervousness, if not fear. Hushed voices, small mutterings, Myungsoo heard escape the ones in the middle of the throng of heavily armored warriors.

 "What is this congregation of warriors?" he asked with an authoritative voice. A drop of sweat ran down his brow as his inner thoughts urged him to see his sister. Yet, suspicion and cynicism flooded his brains after seeing such numbers of armored troops. "What is it?!" he demanded.

A giant, over 7 feet in height finally stepped out from the middle of them. He was of dusky skin with a erted grin hanging on his face. In his right hand were cuffs of iron, varnished by the ruddy colors of rust and accentuated by the crusted over blood of whatever poor soul wore them last. In his left, a whip made from the vines of trees that grew in the untamed jungles that sprouted away from civilized people, home to nightmarish figures that lurked in the shadows casted by primordial trees and the inhuman sounds of demonic cackling that inspired stories and rumors of horror unseen. The vine, more of a whip than natural tendril, was filled with prickling needles that would never break nor dull at its end.

The giant cracked the vine so that it's castigating end narrowly missed the brown tips of Myungsoo's boots. He had one eye staring at him with a twisted glee; the other eye, forcibly shut and blinded, a conspicuous scourge reaching from the end of his chin to the tip of his brow.

 "Your father demands proper disciplinary action!" the dusty man bellowed. "Says you stole historical records. That one of you deserves punishment for treating our king with a demeanor of scorn and dishonor."

 Myungsoo spat at the ground. "Does he now?"

 "Yes, now submit! Or else your sister will meet a fate worst than you!"

Myungsoo snarled at the man, murderous fantasies filling his mind with images of Oscuridaon meeting a bloody death. He stretched forward his hands and tamed the fury that roared like a wild lion inside. "Let's get this over with, then!"

 The giant cuffed his hands and chuckled with a jovial sound. "Your savage sword did this to me," he told Myungsoo, pointing at the scar on his eye, as the group made their way to the city square, the place where all slaves are flogged and humiliated.

 "Is that so? I don't remember?"

 "You fiend!" The giant cracked the vine at Myungsoo's back.

 Myungsoo staggered, but turned back to look at his aggressor with a vicious stare. "I will murder you!"

The giant laughed! "Sure and your sister, I will deflower her!"

 Myungsoo snapped, his sheer force causing the two armored figures that led him along to stumble and fall. "You mention her once more and not even these cuffs reinforced by faerie magic will be enough to restrain the lust of my fists from bashing open your skull!"

 "Yes, you do that and your precious love will wilt when the king hears of your rebellion!"

 Myungsoo growled at the man but the tender voice of his sister rang in his head, pacifying his rage. Deep inside he knew the unleashing of his wrath was the equivalent of hanging his beloved sister on the gallows. He sighed and let himself be secured onto a weathered, bloodied iron shaft that emerged from the middle of the paved ground of the plaza. An assembly of local townsfolk and Sanritem visiting their loved ones from their home dimension gathered round the square to observe the spectacle that would take place. Myungsoo was feared even in the originating dimension of the Sanritem (Kershe) as infamous and renown for being a savage general that would kill without sliver of conscience. Now, here the general was stripped of his mystical aura that commanded reverence and awe.

His trappings had been removed. His leather harness, golden bracer and broadsword were put off to the side, resting in the hands of a Sanritem soldier that worked directly under Myungsoo, his name, Hoya. The soldier had whispered into Myungsoo's ear, "I have dowsed the bit I am placing in your mouth with the sap of the magical Poheas tree. It will lesten the pain some, my general."

Myungsoo nodded and whispered back, "Have you a loved one? If so I will remember your house when I bring down a bloody rain on your people."

"A sister," Hoya answered as he stepped back.

Myungsoo held a subtle smile as the image of Myungeun popped in his head. As soon as the punishment was dealt he would run off to her and embrace her like there was no tomorrow. The feeling of pleasant warmth was violated when the giant cracked the green whip on Myungsoo's back. He grunted, the magical sap wasn't enough to suppress the sting of needles flaying his skin. The women around lusted at his beauty and the men laughed with endless mirth. Myungsoo cursed them all as he was whipped again and again.

 "You like that? I have more in store for you, evil fiend!"

 Myungsoo smiled arrogantly and spat out the bit. "Your woman, I know her! An ugly mass of fat and hysteria! She lusts to lie on my bed, but I'd rather be feasted on by Vulturemen than spend a session of folly with her!" he said with a voice that shook with every crack of the whip.

 The dusky man, furious, whipped continuously at Myungsoo's back. "I will violate your sister!"

 Myungsoo seethed with a vehement rage. "I swear to you that one coming day I will sever your loins and your shouts of pain will ring as psaltery in my ears!"