Episode 52 - Despair (Un)Realized

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  Welcome to the podcast. And to an unexpected end to an arc that I–perhaps–have drawn out for too long. I haven’t directly encountered any complaints about that, and while I’m not explicitly avoiding them, I’m also not seeking them out. They may exist out there in the void, in the infinite space of the internet, but I haven’t seen them. 

And that is intentional. Perhaps not wise, but intentional. At the end of the day, I didn’t create his podcast just to create a podcast. Or even to entertain. But you know that, don’t you? Or maybe you don’t know that, but you’ve suspected it. And it’s a suspicion that I’ve fed into, dropping faint sprinkles of breadcrumbs here and there. That’s all it was, really. It was just breadcrumbs. A series of them. They caught your interest and led you down this path. 

Or they showed you the beginning of this path. You were the one who chose to walk down it. You were the one who took the lead. It might not have felt like it, I know, but you are the one directing your steps. You chose to take them. And at any time you could turn around and abandon this pursuit. But you won’t, will you? You’re in too deep. 

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Wane looked down at the vial in his hands. It still looked intact. The contents hadn’t split or turned color in the days since he had retrieved it from the queen’s hiding spot. Poison itself was not generally that delicate of a substance. Even the speciality concoctions could last a few days while the assassin surveyed the target and searched out an opportunity. The liquid the queen had mixed did not appear to be an exception, but doubt tickled Wane’s mind. If the brew were fragile, that would explain the queen’s haste, but it was not as if he himself did not stoke the fire. He stoked the fires in her. He pushed his target towards the one thing the queen cared about the most. 

It was not his fault, he would want to say, but even in the privacy of his own mind, he wondered if he meant it. On one hand, he did find the whole thing amusing. But on the other hand, the queen had seemed like the weakest link in the plan. She had her doubts about it all, and if those were left to grow, they could have brought them all down. 

Wane slipped the vial back into his pocket and retreated back into his shadows. It was not an easy thing to be a king, he supposed, and to have so much of your life hanging in the balance maintained by other people’s hands. And it was not easy to be married, he assumed, and to have so much of your happiness held in the hands of a wife who could fall out of love with you at any moment. 

It was clear who had the better life, Wane thought. And he would change none of it. 

The soft patter of the rain outside caught his attention. He turned towards the closest window and stared at it forlornly. It was a terrible storm. One of the worst the area had in some time. And it would make quite the mess. Mud would be everywhere. Servants would spend a number of hours trying to scrub it away while more was being dragged in and strewn about. Mud meant leaving tracks behind. Wane sighed. It was yet another complication.

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I’ve heard it said that humans love a good story. That expression seems less philosophy or proverb and more observation. What do we gravitate to time and time again? Why, a good story. And now it’s a multibillion dollar industry, is it not? Or several. Books, movies, television. Also podcasting, but I think the finance side of that field is more complicated. Or speaking from experience, it is. But the point still stands. We all love a good story. 

But is that what brought you here? I can’t say either way. Maybe initially that was the appeal, but only you can say why you stayed. Maybe this is why. Maybe it’s the story you couldn’t resist with all its twisting and turning. All the shadows and the mysteries that lurk within them. Maybe you couldn’t resist. But doesn’t that just shift the question. Why couldn’t you resist?

I think I’ve asked you that before. I think that’s something we’ve danced around quite a bit, but we have never settled on a real answer. You had no way of giving me an answer, I know. I think we both liked it that way. I think maybe we both need it to be that way. 

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Queen Evanora spent many nights pacing her chambers. And although she tried to spread her steps out across her quarters, she drifted towards the center of the main room, towards the rug the king had lowered himself onto in supplication. And likewise, her thoughts drifted back to his pleas. 

To any noblewoman of this court, they would have sounded reasonable. This was a building in which women had to fight losing battles for their lives, knowing nothing different. But Queen Evanora knew the alternative. She knew what it was like to be a woman who could breathe easily. It was a feeling that she missed. And though she could try to create it for herself with her spells and enchantments, those had not taken her far enough. There was only so much it could do for her doubt. 

The queen’s steps quickened when her thoughts reached that point. It was the urge to run awakening in her. She had pushed it down when the marriage contract was first negotiated, when she was sent off to this foreign land with all its inclinations to be skeptical of her, and when her carriage pulled up to the cathedral in which she would be married. She had never really wanted to be there, to be in that position. Her love for her husband had been the motivation for pushing down those thoughts and feelings, but it was weaker now. It was more fragile. The only love she had in her heart was for her daughter, and she couldn’t take her daughter from this court. She couldn’t strip her daughter of her birthright. 

But were there other things to be done, she wondered? Was there some other way to protect her? Another spell, perhaps. 

Outside, the rain was starting to let up. The worst of the storm had broken. Water dripped down, but with each drop, the clouds grew thinner, and soon enough, they would break. But once they did, the world would be as it was: cold and indifferent to those who walk the ground. 

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Not all stories are good stories, especially the ones we live through. Sometimes things just happen. Pieces can be delicately laid out and arranged in a way that may set you up to expect something, but no matter the effort we put into laying out those pieces, the board has a life of its own. And sometimes things just happen. Sometimes things fall into place that should not. And if those pieces that were never ours to wield do that, if they fall into inconvenient places, there is nothing we can do about that. The story is set. Even if it is worse for the interference. 

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King Ezin heard the whispers and retreated back into his office. He bit back the anger the rumors stoked in him. But the clench of his jaw left an ache in his face and his teeth drew blood from the flesh of his mouth. It was unsustainable, he knew. And that was just the discomfort he was inflicting upon himself, never mind the pressure and distrust that came from the queen and never mind the threat still looming overhead. It had a new marionette now, a new puppet, a new plaything for the nobles to wield. 

King Ezin felt the flame of his fury grow within him. He had done so much to protect his family and their place delicately perched on the kingdom’s throne. It was a demanding game. It was an unforgiving game. But it was not the sort of game that a single player worked at alone and without interference. He had underestimated the interference he would encounter. 

The king pulled himself away from his desk and towards the window. Overhead, the clouds had come apart. And through the small cracks in the canopy, the moon peeked through. It was hardly a sliver in the sky that night, but King Ezin could make do. 

Carefully, he reached for the dagger at his waist and slipped it out of the sheath. It was supposed to be ceremonial, little more than an ornament that reminded the viewer of the power the owner held. The edge wasn’t meant to be sharp. There was no servant assigned to its maintenance. But King Ezin had not needed one. In fact, it was likely better that he didn’t rely on one. It meant he had a secret. Only he knew of the hours he had spent over a wet stone, carefully dragging the knife over its surface. There was power in this secret, in this capability that no one else knew about. It meant no one could suspect him. If something should come up, of course, but he suspected that it may.

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We do not get to write the stories that we live. They are written for us. They are written without considering us or our audiences. They are what they are.

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Vernin smirked softly to himself as he walked through the palace hallways. As a duke, his face was his pass and permission through court spaces. Although he cared little for the trapping and finery of the title, Vernin had to admit that this was a perk he rather enjoyed. Freedom of movement was not something to take lightly. After all, it was not something he had always been able to enjoy. 

Enjoyment aside, it also meant he could more easily carry out his plans. The first step was already done. The young princess was already so taken with him. The poor thing was clearly desperate for some sort of attention or acknowledgment that the information she held in her small mind could be purchased at a discount. Or a relative discount. It had cost him his mother’s necklace, but this was royalty. And the secrets of the royal family would never be too cheap. They would, however, be worth the sum paid for them.

In his hand, Vernin clutched the small pouch that contained the next installment of his payment. It was less than what had come before. Within that pouch were a few hairclips: small and trivial things that many lesser lords purchased for their daughters. The metal was fine, but there were no jewels in it. The young princess already had many jewels and more complex hair pieces. But these were the sorts of trinkets she would see in the hair of other girls her own age t. Hers were better, but a child’s envy cannot make good comparisons. 

She would be happy to have them, happy to match the other children for once. And all Vernin had to do was slip them in her riding bag. From what the stable hands told him, it would be hanging by the mare the young princess always rode. It would be easy to find. It would be left out for him. He just had to leave the palace and creep out into the stables. 

Vernin nodded to a guard as he approached the door. “I would like to check on my horse,” Vernin whispered. “From what I understand, tonight’s rain has let up.”

The guard hesitated. “Yes, Your Grace, but the night is dark, My Lord. It is no place for a nobleman.”

Vernin scoffed. He was not a nobleman in anything but technicality. A king could not change the flesh or heart of a man, after all. But there was no need to get into technicalities. 

“Step aside, sir,” Vernin insisted. 

And the guard had no choice but to obey. 

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We tend to look for stories. That’s how deep this need goes. And we often look for them in the worst places. That is to say, the worst moments of our lives or someone else’s lives. Because if we find the story then we can find meaning. And maybe if we find meaning, the sting won’t be so bad. Maybe the hurt won’t hurt. 

Or that’s what we like to tell ourselves. But when has that ever worked? 

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Vernin stepped into the night air and paused. The smell was heavenly. He had always been the sort to enjoy the aftermath of a swift rainstorm. But that wasn’t why he stopped. 

He blinked his eyes several times, but his vision did not come into focus. The guard had said the night was dark, and he was right. However, the eyes normally adjusted to that sort of challenge. Vernin’s had not. He had emerged into a world that was not just devoid of life but also detail. The ground below him was covered in a dark mud, obscuring the path and the ground that normally surrounded it. The buildings around him–the castle, its guard stations, and the stable itself–were blurry silhouettes. 

His breath caught, and his balance wavered as he tried to remember what it looked like on a better day. But the image did not come to him clearly. 

Vernin took a few hesitant steps forward. He kept his stride short and his pace slow. There was no need to be ambitious. In fact, the line between ambition and carelessness hardly existed that night. It was yet another line that was washed away by the rain. 

With each step, Vernin was carefully feeling for the stone he knew was underneath the mud. In the not-so-distant space ahead of him, he heard the faint snore of a horse. Briefly, he found himself wondering if horses were meant to snore or if something was wrong with the beast. And with his mind so distracted, he lost control of his step. His foot landed not on the path but just off of it, on ground that was not secure. As he started to lift his other foot, the small patch of ground that was holding up gave way. It pulled his foot forward and his body towards the ground. 

His head then did what his foot had not: it found the stone pavement carefully laid out on the ground. It bounced at first, but even still, from that impact, his skull was cracked. And the dark mud beneath came alive with a tint of red that gradually grew with each passing hour, long after the man breathed his last. 

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The Haunted Void didn’t get a good story. I’m sure you were hoping I would say that. I’m sure you were hoping for that small ounce of directness when so much of what I have said is vague. He died, murdered, I said. Or that was what the messages on Symbolic Myst had said. That was the version we all ran with. That was the version we ‘liked.’ But that doesn’t make it the truth, does it? It might have a grain of truth in it, but the creation changed when we breathed life into it. We added dimensions to it. We made it almost unrecognizable. 

The Haunted Void didn’t get a good story. He died in an unremarkable way amidst a, for lack of the better word, remarkable story. 

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Aishi Online is a production of Miscellany Media Studios. It is written, produced, performed, and edited by MJ Bailey with music from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. If you like the show, please leave a review, tell a friend, or donate to the show’s Ko-Fi account.