Chapter 27: The Poison

Aren would scream by each time a rusty nail would pierce his skin, he could not stay conscious of the agonizing pain he feels on his thighs, his breath was ragged and the place was absolutely horrifying. It was a room full of tools that would bring great pain to a man. A room with the intention to torture and nothing more.

Each time a sharp object was inflicted to him, he would yelp and scream on top of his lungs, letting out every painful noises aloud. Terrified, way too afraid of the blade to pierce his skin once again.

Once he could not utter a word, or when is unable to answer the second Prince's questions, he was hit or stabbed by many small things that made his flesh's blood trickle down and flood on the floor.

"What do you know about this book Aren?" Asked impatiently of Morfran on the side.

Aren whimpers and groans, when the Elite Knight's leader, his friend Abercon grip his finger's nail, threatening him that he will pull it out if he doesn't speak.

"I dont know!! Your Highness i have no knowledge about that!!!" Poor Aren's eyes were already bloody red from crying, and the rustling of chains on his feet still haven't stopped clanging, trying his very best to escape the chains that was bound to him even at each time he moves, the great pain on his thighs would refract back to his system.

Morfran gritted his teeth and glared at the seated bloody body in front of him, he points, "It is told here, at the book that was found on your room, that i have an older brother... Named Jian Mordecai."

Aren's body could not stop trembling from the pain it felt, all five of his right hand's fingernails were all already ripped out of his flesh, the bloody nails resting at the bronze plate beside the torture chair.

Aren gasped an amount of air and tried to make out his words, "M-Mordecai? I've never heard of a t-third ack!!— P-prince.." Aren sobbed and would sometimes pant, or stop on his words.

His body was starting to decline to function from his wound's stinging pain.

Morfran swung his arm and slammed the book on Aren's cheeks, leaving a bright red mark on the skin after the loud collision of the slap. Morfran's face turned red from anger, shouting; "He is not the third! He is the first Prince! 'Jian Li' was not even a part of the royal family in the first place! Tell me what you know you traitor!"

Morfran would grab his hair or kick Aren's bruised abdomen, trying to force him to speak. But even if Aren wanted to, he could not. Not after all the beatings and pains.

"Mordecai you say?" A voice of a man entering the room was heard. Their eyes flickered to the black figure coming inside the hidden room.

When the orange torch clearly lighted his face, a tall, black clothed gentleman was walking towards them in leisure, saying; "I was trying to find where you are for so long Morfran, never knew you'd be this cunning to do an interrogation inside the palace." The Royal Advisor, Deverus, let out a dry chuckle to his favorite royal child, and then stared at Aren's white clothes that now had turned bloody red.

Morfran nodded to the man's arrival while Abercon quietly bowed. Aren's ear's twitched at the familiar voice he was hearing in echoes, and when he decided to raise his vision, he felt like he was going insane.

He thought; 'he is the King's most trusted person. Why is Lord Deverus here?'

"Do you know about Jian Mordecai?" Asked Morfran to the snickering man wearing the black diadem.

Deverus went to Morfran's side and blew a smoke on his long golden pipe. "To talk about that child was forbidden." Said Deverus. "For years the King kept the issue confidential. Hidden and kept like your brother never existed."

"My brother?" Repeated Morfran.

"Yes. Mordecai, your elder brother. I still remember the look on his face when he was being dragged by your father." Deverus' breath hitched and shook his head, as if shivering at the sight of it that made Morfran even more curious; "What?"

"Even if this was supposed to be kept confidentially, I'll reveal it for you." Said Deverus.

"Jian Mordecai eh? He was a very amazing child. A promising boy indeed. He was bright and blessed with a superior mind, advanced than any of the scholars. He was a quiet boy, and a complicated case, or maybe so i thought. You see, whenever a royal child is born, naturally, the security would be extremely tight. Never had the attendants ever seen the boy, only your father, the Queen, and me, your father's closest friend, had ever seen his face."

"See, let's start from the beginning shall we? humm.. the Kingdom was overjoyed with the news of the first royal child being born. The city rejoiced and threw innumerable feasts with the revelation that the Queen was pregnant with her firstborn; the King, of course, was pleased as well."

"The rulers were adored by the people in the same way that the people were adored by the elites. The newborn Prince, showered with love grew fastly day by day, and each year, an unending number of banquets were held to commemorate his birth. As I watched over the growing Prince, he grew just like Hongwu, with the same black eyes and black hair, their feature was identical as if they were just the same person living in the same time periods."

"Mordecai, as i was told of his name, was adored and loved. He was the eyecandy and the favorite, the small and brilliant Prince loved his people unconditionally that his eyes would flare in crescents whenever he could help his people in the most modest ways even though he was inside the palace, concealed and hidden."

"Things were going just as fine, the three elite blood was living happily inside the castle. Hongwu, Dana, and Mordecai. It was all yellows and joys until that news reached the palace."

"Until the expected endemic broke out."

"Expected?" Asked Morfran.

Deverus nodded and continued his story, "Surely, being an advisor would mean that i can come in and out of the palace. I've met the Prince once or thrice. And on one of those meetings, he had said to me of his vision. A future he saw from his dream, a warning of the heavens. He told me that there will be a disease will break out inside the Jian kingdom, and the people will experience death, and the land would grow infertile, the population would decline and the palace will be overthrown."

"That the kingdom would not exist, and will be buried, under the water."

"But he told me, that a boy with an eye of the color of the oceans would be the one who will save the people from peril."

"And this boy, was the mysterious child, 'Jian Li'."

"When the vision finally happened, the peace of the kingdom was immediately broken as soon as the disease exploded in each towns of the Jian Kingdom. It quickly spread to each corners of the land, and no one was able to counter or defend themselves from the plague besides the nobles and of course, the royalties living safe inside their isolated palace. Away with a huge barricading walls."

"From this tragedy, it caused instant deaths and unattended bodies. The biggest river, as source of water were also contaminated with poison from the dead infected animals, ending up being worthless as a source of water and food."

"The poisoned waters went and circulated around the Kingdom, and the once known 'sea blessed land' was no more. The majority of fishes and oceanic creatures have died and the remaining clean water was not enough for the evacuees to share. The commoners outside wanted to be safe, to be fed, and to have a warm place to shelter on. They wanted to be inside the palace, to be far away from the disease."

"But as anyone would've done so, the King drove away their rallying company and made them set a base camp just near the palace instead, not wanting to endanger his family's health."

"Young Mordecai was growing impatient day by day, and the disease went on already for two months and there still have been no food to distribute for his people, he worries they will also die by hunger. Meanwhile the nobles reside safe inside the castle, feeding on high quality meat, and not even butting one eye to the suffering people outside. Mordecai hated how unequal a status could be."

"The letters of distressed call for help that the King sent to other kingdoms was never given a reply. At first they thought that the messengers from Jian was not being allowed to pass on the neighboring kingdom's borders, but when the messengers came back to Jian to report, they claim to have successfully submitted them. The King realized it wasn't the borderline issue, but their unwillingness to cooperate and help. Each kingdom stayed silent to the Jian Kingdom's plea for relief, that it was as if they were waiting on the largest Kingdom's downfall."

"The King was devastated and angered. His people were throwing fits day by day, in outrage of being fed with untasty porridges. Unhappy with the unequalized portions of side dishes provided. The panic inside his heart to face this crisis was increasing, not knowing what to do at those times where their food stocks are running out and the winter is coming closer."

"Hongwu in verge of breaking his head was saved by his thirteen year old son. The boy confessed the whole vision to his father, that a blue eyed boy would save the kingdom from falling apart."

"Next thing I knew was Hongwu dragging his own son deep in the woods. The face his son was making made me very uneasy, and so i followed Hongwu and Mordecai after. But I was too late to even stop what was happening. The King had gone mad and had his son strapped to be bound on a boulder and stabbed Mordecai's heart with a jade dagger."

Morfran's heart sunk, his eyes burned black in shock and he was shaking hardly, "What.. my father did?.."

"He kept muttering 'It has to be done. It has to be done.' As he picked up the baby from a basket just beside the boulder and lifted it to his grasp with his bloody hands, smiling to the blue eyed infant. It was a scene i couldn't ever forget."

"With the arrival of the mysterious boy, a storm flooded the kingdom, as if cleaning the lands from its pests. After a week of the strong and unending rain and high flood, the rivers were renewed with its waters; so luscious, fresh and sweet that every kinds of fishes in the oceans were drawn to it and inhabited the new waters. The trees dead branches were replaced with new ones and the leaves grew back so vividly greener than before and they bore hundreds of very sweet fruits on each tree. When the townsfolk went back to their respective homes, the left dead bodies of their families were not found anymore; Just saying that 'it was carried away by the god's rain.' The resources was back with larger catches and 'miraculous' waters, saying that it was because of the souls of the dead remnants of Jian Kingdom that they blessed the land and made it richer. The earth grew large and fat crops, and any seed planted on the black and healthy soil would grow tall and flourish."

"The Jian Kingdom harvested the most above all kingdoms and was blessed by the gods with endless riches and golds. The Jian Kingdom still stood on top of all of the other Kingdoms, having them sell the Jian resources in a doubled price."

"Undeniably, the genesis of Jian Li was a blessing, he was born a savior to the people, provided with a palace as his home, and warm, luxurious clothes for his skin; effortlessly surviving the world by just existing before the King. Dana, the Queen shut herself in her quarters for weeks and the palace was in utter confusion with the disappearance of the first Prince."

"The King stated that the Prince had caught the disease and unfortunately had passed away peacefully in isolation. But suspicions would rise eventually. Even if one wants to discuss the passing of the Prince, the King made it prohibited to talk what happened to the Prince because it will make the Queen sad. And so time by time, as people were so busy building back their ravaged houses and destroyed towns, they had forgotten the disappearance issue about their very 'adored' Prince, and blindly celebrated when another Crown Prince came to the picture, and this Crown Prince were said to be bore by Queen Dana which was named, Jian Li."

"Dana, after a year of learning the truth of what truly happened to his son had her heart broken, she was enraged and came to the King. That day after she came inside the King's quarters, she was found dead on her chair."

"This all happened after she gave birth to you, Morfran, her newly born child. She immediately left the world just weeks after giving birth to you. And so, the bloodline of royals ends there with the news that the Queen also passed with a heart disease, a heartbroken mother with the loss of her son."

When the man, Deverus finished telling the history, the second Prince stayed quiet on the corner, his eyes glaring down at the floor.

Morfran could not believe that his dear and highly idolized father would do an inhumane and heartless act just like that, at the point of killing his own son. How could he? Why would he do that? Was the deed even necessary to save the people?

'Why did father need to kill brother Mordecai just for Jian Li? Why?' Morfran asked himself.

'Was Jian Li also the reason why mother was killed? Did my father also killed the Queen?' he asked again, bit by bit hating the image of Jian Li inside his head.

'Just for Jian Li?' His eye twitched and a glint of violet wrath sparkled inside his black eyes.

'Why should everything be for you?' He closed his hand to a fist.

'Why did i lose my everything, just for you?' Morfran gritted his teeth.

'Why was everything yours?'

'Where did everything go wrong?'

"Morfran." A voice beside him called out and patted his back. Deverus looks at him intently and points at Aren with his smoking pipe. "That servant is innocent. He was not present at the palace by the time the first Prince was born nor killed. He was hired eight years after the child, 'Jian Li' came." Said Deverus.

"Came?" Morfran shifted his eyes to the tall man beside him.

Deverus nodded and spoke. "The King adopted him, and made it look like he was the Queen's hidden son. He came from the Jian Kingdom's miraculous falls, that falls where i saw your.. your father murder Mordecai, his son."

Then he laughs. "The miracle waters to be called. As ironic as that could be, he was there, delivered to the King himself, floating by the polluted waters, near the body of your dead older brother."

Morfran looked at Deverus, "Where is my brother?.... Where did the King took my brother's dead body?.."

"I don't know Morfran, i didn't see everything that happened that moment." The man shook his head, making his black diadem shine a bit.

While the four of them gathered inside the metal and rusty smelling room, Deverus rummaged inside his clothes, and brought out an oak colored book."This," He handed it it Morfran which he received. "I found this diary inside the Crown Prince's quarters just now." He said to Morfran, triggering his name sensitivity.

Aren groaned and looked up, trying to face his well respected senior in anger. "Why... why were you inside the Crown Prince's quarters?!" He mumbled weakly, while the other man raised his brow and grinned to Aren.

"Oh, i was to congratulate him on the day of his coronation of course, but then I saw he was not present inside his room. So, in my wonder, i found something more interesting instead.." He snatched the diary from Morfran's hold and scanned the the pages.

"This is a very old diary." He spoke, "and its first entry was dating back to nine years ago when he was just ten. And in this old diary, i noticed his frequency of opening a diary page. It was a diary entry from the mysterious child's thirteenth birthday with a foreign note left on the page." Deverus pulled a wrinkled note with unfamiliar characters written on it, Morfran, Abercon and Aren locked their eyes on the piece of paper in Deverus' hold.

"And what I read from this entry is that he broke.... major.. a very major rule that could disqualify him from the throne." With this words, awakened Morfran's spirit. "What did you say?" Morfran grabbed the diary.

"Like, stepping outside the palace." Said Deverus fastly.

"What?" Morfran looked up to Deverus' face. "He escaped the palace six years ago in his thirteenth birthday, with a thief." He continued, while Aren suddenly looked up. Morfran dumbfounded.

"That! that's not true! The Crown Prince clearly told me that it was just a fragment of his imagination! That he was just dreaming!" Aren shouted to them, trying to break free from the chains again.

'He knows something.' Thought the three men to Aren.

The poor servant shouted again to both Morfran and Abercon. "He was just thirteen! And he was under the influence of a poison!"

He chuckled lowly. "Morfran, I think we can still make use of him." Said Deverus lowly.

"Just so i thought, sir." Replied the second Prince.

"We can use him to finally rid of Jian Li."