An Imperfectly-Perfect King

"Brother, brother!" Around age five, a young blonde boy with green eyes waltzed into a beautiful room designed to perfection for a king of imperfections.

A six-foot, one-hundred-and-sixty-pound king was seated on an ordinary chair, facing the window outside his castle. He stood to turn his chair over to meet his little brother. As some of his enemies would describe him, his face resembled a monster.

His face was deformed.

Due to his skin falling off and wrinkling, his blonde hair started falling out from the hairline a tiny bit. An empty left eye socket and a mouth with beautiful lips were starting to deform from the corner. A hole in his left cheek always revealed his back set of teeth. His left hand fell off in battle without a sword swung through to cut it, had terrified many, and his voice was more profound than the ocean. He had multiple terminal unknown diseases.

"What is it, little brother?" His deep voice, filled with experience and sorrow, spoke gently—a clam-headed man who fought battles with thoughts filled with peace afterward looked into his brother's beautiful eyes.

"I made you something to cover your head with!" He showed the king a cloth head covering.

"Ohh, come here, John. Sit on my lap." He gestured for his brother to come over.

"Mmm." The child smiled, rushing up the stairs to his side. "Here, Arthur, take it." He handed King—Arthur the cloth. He stared into it before placing it on his small desk. Behind him was the actual throne, a chair elevated above the ground by stairs at twenty feet.

The room was eighty-five by eighty-five square feet and measured a hundred feet tall from the base of the floor to the ceiling.

Arthur turned the seat back toward the window again, waiting for the little one.

"Thanks, buddy. Here, let me help you up."

He tried but couldn't lift his brother onto his lap. The unknown disease had already decompressed him.

"Is okay, I can... do it!" John sat on his lap.

"John, this world that Father and Mother left is the world I built in their names, and soon, you will inherit it." He spoke truthful words that the young prince had yet to comprehend.

"When Mom and Dad died, they left me a gem, you. I realized I had to step up, and my journey, subsequently at the age of twenty, began. A total of five years is what I will leave in your name as my legacy." Arthur took a deep breath, seemingly running short on breaths with every sentence.

"My days, in the name of the lord, are numbered to do anything impactful to change the course of world peace. Our neighboring countries are preparing for my death to invade our land. Our faith in god hasn't yielded, nor is our will infested." His head fell back on the headrest.

"Arthy! You're overworking yourself." His brother jolted off his lap, running down the stairs. He managed to open the massive doors to look for the king's caretakers. After some time, John returned to the room with two men and a woman caretaker.

"My lord." One of the men lifted the king's head. As the other raised his body off the chair, the faraway maiden prepared his bed below them.

As the two caretakers laid the king into his bed, John rushed to his side and covered himself with the sheets.

"I'll sleep with you, big bro." He hugged his brother tightly, in fact, a little too tight.

"Hmm, that's fine." Arthur couldn't smile, really, but John felt his joy.

"Any day could be my day, but as long as you are to inherit my kingdom, I can rest assured that peace will come to our world. Whether you belong to the Lugic, Nofim, or Helu religion." Arthur returned his brother's hug with his right arm.

"Big Bro, was our Lugic God honest?"

"I couldn't tell you, but those who felt his impact marked his days here on earth with many stories that line up down the line of generations from all across his joineries." John was fast asleep, even before Arthur could address the actual story.

Summoning enough strength through his weak body, Arthur faced his brother. With no lips to kiss, he kissed his brother on the forehead, making John smile in his sleep.

To John, his brother was all he had. But then, his entire family was slaughtered by the neighboring leader's head assassins during a gathering for terms of the treaty.

War was amidst that treaty gathering, where Arthur had led a victorious army of three thousand men against an army of twenty thousand strong Nofims.

His father left him with the king's throne and his mother a newborn child who had committed no wrongs in the hell of the world he had to endure.

Many describe King Arthur as ruthless, a scar-faced demon who eats away at armies more enormous than the one he leads for fun. But, whether the gods existed, a monster with a kind heart to many walked the earth's surface, and barely one other man could hold his sword to him.

The King of Nofims, Lusi the Devastator, has had three victorious battles out of fifteen against the young King Arthur. Lusi has been spared multiple times in many of their duels because Arthur kept his promise of pursuing peace with Lusi.