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“Behold, the new king of your kingdom united!” Hythlodaeus bellowed out his final words, using the remainder of his magic to present his son’s face on the rock. His son did it. Despite the hardships of this world, the discrimination, the injustices, the inequalities, his boy did it. His boy made a world where an Elda could win the hearts of the people. It could make him cry, seeing his boy achieve more in a few short months than he did in his entire reign as king.
However, Euchronia is a thing of the past now. He had wished for death these long years and finally received it. His magic persisted a tad longer than his mortal form, but it too has perished. Euchronia was no longer his to observe or his to rule. He will go where all the dead go.
What Hythlodaeus wasn’t expecting was the emptiness. He stood alone in a blank white void. The departure from Euchronia left him lighter than before. He didn’t have the anxieties of the people on his shoulders. He no longer had the weight of the crown, figuratively and literally. The only crown he wore were his horns around his head. His kingly black robes were the only color in a place like this. It was quiet, solitude, respite, any such adjective would do. Yet, could he truly be at peace after everything he’d done?
“You’ve finally come.”
A mysterious voice rang out from behind him. Turning around, he was greeted with a sight he never thought to see again. There she was, an Eldan woman dressed purely in white. Her white hair and eyes would have been washed out if not for her tan skin. And for a splash of color, the brilliant red headband adorned her head.
Hythlodaeus knelt before her, head hung low. “My queen,” he greeted.
She laughed. Oh, how he had longed to hear her laugh again. “I am no longer a queen. My rule in the Eldan sanctum is no more.”
“Regardless of your status, you will always and forever be my queen.”
Her laughter faded, face falling as she looked at him closely. “You look different.” She walked closer to him, absorbing every detail. “Your eyes are tired. You hang your head low with shame. Your body is worn, exhausted from long years of torment. Is it really you, Hythlodaeus?”
Is he? Is he Hythlodaeus? He is the man history will forever know him as: an incompetent ruler unable to fix any of his kingdom’s problems by thrusting it onto the next ruler. But that’s not how she met him. She met a different man. Knew a different man. Loved a different man.
“I am not the man you fell in love with all those years ago. I am not the man who opened the mage academy to learn about our world and the magic within it. I have forgotten how to dream, how to pursue a world with hope. I let my kingdom rot, paralyzed in my inability to make any difference to this world.” He took in a deep breath, still unable to look up and meet her gaze. “I am not the man you knew before. I am unworthy of your love.”
“That’s not something for you to decide, dear.” Her footsteps stopped short of where his eyes bore into the ground. He could feel her presence standing close to him. “Tell me, how did you forget how to dream?”
Hythlodaeus’ breathing became shaky and rapid as he recollected his mistakes. “I tried everything I could to change this kingdom and bring about acceptance of all. But the people were so slow, so hesitant to even grasp such a concept. It didn’t help that what I learned from the tribes of this land went against the Sanctist Church’s teachings, turning me into their enemy.
“Then the day came where I found your village had been attacked. I’d no idea the church could rally soldiers to slay innocents like that. I had come as soon as I could, only to find you and your people decimated. And for what? Prejudices that go against their beliefs? Your people never even preached it, it was I who wrote of it in my novel, not you!”
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying and failing not to see the images burned into his memory. “Our son had survived, and all I could dream of was keeping him safe and alive. And even then, I couldn’t even save him. Our son. What good of a king was I? I couldn’t protect my kingdom, I couldn’t protect my son, and I couldn’t protect the woman I love. I was king, but no one in the kingdom was more powerless than I to have let that happen.
“And so I devoted the rest of my life to my death. The only good I could do for this land was allow someone else to rule it. Someone with the power to bring the change I could not. The future of the kingdom no longer mattered. It would either become a better place, or it would rot under a ruler as bad as I.”
Tears streamed down Hythlodaeus’ face, soaking into his beard and staining his cheeks. The last of his words were hiccupped out. Even in death, he was a pathetic king, whimpering on his knees. Sobs continued to wrack his body in a never ending wave of guilt and shame. “Would you fall in love with me again, knowing all I’ve done?”
“Hythlodaeus.” Her voice was the calm to his storm. He opened his eyes and lifted his head forward, still unable to meet her gaze. She stood before him with his novel in hand, extended for him to take it from her.
“You know the power in which I wield. If you wish it, I can send you to your Utopia. You would no longer bear the troubles of your time as king, and live in the world you dreamed of creating.”
He lifted his arm to grab it, but paused. This world was his utopia. One where there was one tribe, no poverty, no anguish. Everyone had what they wanted and could do what they wished. They all operated to live in a world that was better for all. And yet… his son rejected it.
Hythlodaeus’ world was a fantasy. An idealization of the old world he had heard about in the Eldan Sanctum and from the Mustari legends. A world without tribes causing grief surely would be better than their own, yet it had collapsed all the same. They found other things to dispute about, made other weapons to destroy each other with. His son wishes to do something far grander than he could and make his own fantasy reality. There was idealism, certainly, but rather than the dissolution of differences, he wished for those to flourish.
As much as it pained him to do so, he could not accept this gift from the woman he loved. “My utopia. It was a book we wrote together in our search for a brighter future for all of Euchronia. Yet during my time as More, I was able to observe our son’s journey through this land. He deemed that my ideal world wasn’t actually a Utopia at all. You could imagine the shock he confessed as such.”
Hythlodaeus lowered his arm and head once more. “I don’t know what a true Utopia is anymore. I can’t accept the findings I had from my dreams as a youth. It would be turning away from the reality our son is working so hard to build.”
The Eldan Queen knelt in front of Hythlodaeus, taking both his hands in hers. “You were never one to be satisfied with a single conclusion. You always thought about what could have been overlooked, or a missing piece you hadn’t considered. That’s why you built the mage academy in the first place. If everyone had access to what you had learned, then surely a collective group of minds could discover more than one alone.
“And in that brief time I let you take on that role once again, you used your knowledge to help guide our son along his journey. You pushed him to grow, and you were eager to impart your knowledge onto him. You shared each discovery as you came across it, eager to have another companion there to learn alongside you. When you fought at the end, it was out of love, and regret that you couldn’t protect him the first time. But you let him leave after seeing how strong our son really is.”
She brought her hand to his cheek, lifting his face to meet hers. “Look at me, Hythlodaeus.” As much as he feared looking in her eyes, Hythlodaeus forced his eyes to look upon his queen. She had the softest smile, and that crinkle of mirth in her eyes. Her gaze was soft, a gaze reserved for the private, tender moments between them.
“I will fall in love with you, over and over again, as long as you continue to be the man I knew. It was lost along the way, swallowed by the pressure of the throne and the grief of our losses. But I knew the man I fell in love with was still in there. He just needed a reminder that there is hope in this world.”
The queen stood up, looking over the voided landscape they were in. “Our time in Euchronia is at an end. We left it to our son, and we must trust in his dream for that world.” She extended a hand to Hythlodaeus once more. “In the meantime, we have all the time in the world. We can read the adventures and stories of this world, since we are no longer its authors. Instead, why don’t we write our own adventure, and make our own Utopia?”
Hythlodaeus stared at her in disbelief. “Even after everything I’ve done, you’ll really still have me?”
“Of course,” she replied, joy seeping out of her smile. “As long as you still want me.”
More rose up from his place on the ground to meet her hand. The man with passion for learning was reborn once again by the hands of his love. First it was to save their son, but now they can live for themselves.
“Then let us write our next chapter, together.”