CHAPTER 5: TRUE COLORS OF THE KING

The woman with hazel-colored eyes raised her hands, showing that she was neither hostile to any of them. "My name is Lilia, I'm the daughter of the man who rules this city. King Fritz the 5th." 

Karin eyed her face and lowered her sword. "What's the king's daughter doing here? Shouldn't you be with your father at the royal palace?" 

Lilia looked at her feet she bit her lip. "My father is ill, I sent that request to the guild because I assumed that you guys could help." 

"Your father is sick?" 

Lilia nodded as she raised her head to look at Karin and Yu. "Yes, my father fell ill a month ago, and ever since, that man who's impersonating my father has held the city in a grip. He's intent on alienating us from the rest of Toru, the people are starving and every night we are afraid of demons attacking us." 

Karin looked at Yu. Their assumption about the king was right, although as much as it pained them to admit, this was not something they could handle without reinforcement and since the city was alienated from the rest of the kingdom, that meant they had no means of communicating with Kuro. 

They were stranded. 

Their best bet was to jump ship and run, but however, Kuro's words lingered in their minds failure is not an option. 

Karin bitterly chuckled, this situation she was in was exactly like the situation she and Amaterasu were in twenty years ago but this was different, back then they were cornered after helping the kingdom to the west of Toru in the war and almost facing death, they pulled the impossible, defied every logic and somehow lived but they paid a hefty toll. 

She sacrificed something dear to her to have a fighting chance. 

"So Yu? What do we do? We are isolated from everyone." 

Yu closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He got to his feet, his sword tightly held in his hand. "We fight. For the people, a person impersonating the king is classified as treason. We should carry out it that way." 

"Just as hot-headed as her…" Karin chuckled as she looked at the princess. "Fine then, we shall do as you ask but in return, we wish to meet the king before dark. The actual king." 

Lilian nodded, she told them to follow her and they did. She led them through the destroyed parts of Xin and into an underground chamber. Before long, they were at the worn-down door and Lilia knocked on the door, an exhausted voice gave them permission to enter and she opened the door for Yu and Karin to enter behind him. 

"Father, I've brought them here." She said softly as she took the stool and sat beside her father. 

Yu looked at King Fritz and King Fritz looked at him. Their eyes locked and Yu's eyes turned golden. He fell to his knees and clutched his head, writhing in pain on the floor. 

"This is a surprise… to think we'd meet here!" 

Yu opened his eyes and found himself in an area that was night, the moon was crimson as if it was bleeding, and around him was water. In the color of blood itself, in his front was a stack of human skulls and a throne. Sitting on the throne was a man with short orange hair, multi-ringed eyes, and tattoos all over his body. He wore a white kimono. 

"Who are you?" Yu asked as he straightened his posture. 

The man chuckled, his chuckle sending tremors through the landscape, the skulls laughed hauntingly alongside him. 

"I am half of you." 

"I don't understand what do you mean half of me?" 

"Stupid kid, I'm the part of you that's being suppressed, a part of you that makes you a bane to the Monasteries and the light, the half part that controls your fate. In short, I am you." 

"Why have I never met you?" 

"It's simple, till now you had no connection with a curse from a demon from the seven rings. But you meeting the king who is cursed with the same curse, established a link between you and me. Now then, here's my parting gift" The man weaved his hand and Yu felt an unimaginable pain flood his eyes, he let out a blood-curling scream clinging onto his eyes with his hands. Smoke emerging in between his fingers. 

"Good Grief, make use of my gift boy." He said as he expelled an aura of malice that shot Yu out of the landscape and into the real world. 

Yu opened his eyes, and the world around him lost color. It was black and white, he started to panic until he saw Karin's face. Unlike his surroundings, Karin's face had color.

"Are you okay? You started thrashing out of nowhere and what happened to your eyes?" Karin asked noticing the multiple rings around his pupils.

Yu placed a hand over his left eye and got up. "It's nothing." He looked at the king sitting on the bed. His vision penetrated through the king and he found himself staring at a pitch-dark hand around the King's heart. His lips thinned and he looked at Lilia. 

"Your father is not sick. He's cursed." 

Three consecutive gasps filled the room. The king was cursed? Lilia refused to believe that her father could be cursed. In her mind what could curse her father so bad that even their famed medic practicing medicine on all fronts fail to identify? 

The king gasped because he thought that getting cursed was impossible, when he was appointed as the king of the city of Xin by the queen of Toru. He received sacred ornaments that were enchanted to ward away spirits and other malevolent beings and yet he got cursed but by what? 

Karin gasped because it made sense. Demons with shifting abilities belonged to the seven rings but she thought the seven rings were supposed to be a myth. In her life, she had only heard about the seven rings of hell, where the 7 luminaries reigned Supreme, each governing their ring and each ring filled with strong demons. 

"How's it possible that my father got cursed? Our doctor said it was a sickness." Lilia broke the silence. 

Yu glanced at her, then glanced at her father. "I'm not sure how, but I can see the curse. It's slowly wrapping around his heart crushing it day by day. I'm uncertain as to why your doctor couldn't see it. But If my hunch is that the fake king did this." 

Karin placed her hand on her chin. "If that king is the one who did this, then it's safe to assume if we kill him, we will be freeing King Fritz from the curse, but if we fail…" 

"Yeah I know, that's why we have to kill him no matter what." Yu nodded in agreement. 

The longer they stood there, the higher the chances of the enemy setting a trap for them. They had to act immediately, he turned around and left the hidden rooms. He made his way to the surface and jumped on the wall, his eyes scanned the area around him in its entirety. With their improved vision, he could see the demons lurking in the shadows, each one had small flares of nether which were dwarfed by the overwhelming one at the heart of the city, stretching across the city and reaching the walls on either side. The fourth extension was shorter than the rest and it pointed south, which meant whatever that thing that Karin destroyed was, it was connected to that source. 

Karin landed beside him. "So what are we going to do now?" 

"in all honesty, I'm not certain about what we should do… I see things with my eyes that I have never seen before." 

Karin turned her head to look at Yu. "Things like what?" 

Yu pointed at the palace at the center of the city. "There's a large gathering of negative energy there, it's spreading to the four walls of the city but the one heading south seems shorter than the others. Maybe that thing you destroyed, is tied to that" 

"So there are more of those things huh?" 

"Yeah, and I think we need to destroy them if we ever hope to have a chance of winning against that fake Fritz. I know that he's from the seven rings of hell so that won't be an easy task. But I am confident I can kill it." 

"The thing is, we are outnumbered this city is infested with demons. If we hope to have a winning chance, we need to make it to the palace." 

Yu nodded and jumped onto the next roof, Karin by his side and they jumped from rooftop to rooftop closing the distance between the south and the royal palace. They jumped over the walls and landed in the Courtyard only to get swarmed by demons. 

"This is the furthest you guys can go. Your tale ends here." The impersonating king appeared on the staircase overlooking the courtyard, his bearded face covered in dark scales and his eyes beaming brightly. 

Yu looked at the source of all the negative energy and placed his hand on his sword. 

"This is your grave, demon."