I saw them fall around me, all the walls that had stood for centuries against the seasons, and against all odds, and against all change. I saw these ancient walls turn to dust and scatter like the ashes of a long dead fire, blown in the wind that whisper of glorious days of woe. It was these walls that housed the Great King who had ruled for so many nights, but who fell to the poisons of worldly spite. The Great King had grown from but a humble lad, and from there into an apprentice of the olde ways, and from there into a mighty sorcerer. The Great King was the one who gave us the ears to hear the ancient spirits that had given Him the wisdom He came to know. The Great King was the one who gave us the voice to speak to such spirits who parted the veil of travailing pains, separating the Past from the Future, the Dead from the Living.

He had grown wise in His questioning and pondering; many a night did He gaze into utter darkness and walk away each morning with a new understanding. His thoughts went innumerable and His mind spun and wove complex patterns of strange light.

It was then He created His kingdom.

From the emptiness He drew forth mountains and forests, rivers and moonlight, crystals and fire. He drew forth walls, these newly fallen walls, from the soil of the earth, from the stones beneath the mountains; from the skye He drew them forth to build His mighty palace. The people of the land grew well and prospered. Their flocks were always fat, their children always fed. But alas, a terrible storm crept over Him ever so slowly that it masked its very presence.

The terrible storm drew up from the north as a mass of grey, burning black ripples shimmering as it slipped over His castle and over His kingdom. His heart, that had once been pure and untainted, grew weak, and his soul became sick. His eyes grew colde and grey. His skin turned pallid and waxen, His features carved as if by stone. It had taken so long, so many years; such an arduous process that none were witness until it was too late. The blackest poison had crept into His life, and from the inside out, He began to rot. His kingdom began to wither, the fields became barren, the flocks became unyielding, and the children, O the precious children! began to starve and die. In the end, they left for the ancient cathedral of towering granite that rests upon the shores of the river Styx, where the Uncrowned King cries for them who live beneath his city.

The Great King had become a tyrant, and his people were slaughtered one by one by the hands of some unseen assassin. Their lives were erased systematically, flawlessly. The heart of the Great King was hardened by this, but now He was something else, no longer was He the creature He has once been, no longer a lad, or an apprentice, or a sorcerer. He was dying. He fed upon the torments He has wrought upon His own land and His own people, and yet, His heart and His undying spirit cried like His lost children within the sewers of the cathedral that rests upon the Styx. He saw His terrible wrongs and knew them as His own doing. He had become His worst fear, a parasite, a leech living off His own suffering. Still though, as the storm raged within Him, as the last life was slowly and agonizingly stripped from Him, and as His kingdom began its own uncreation, He drew up from His crypt, crawling into the chamber room and therein to the throne.

With claws that once were hands and death that once was flesh, He rose like a corpse from an early grave above the throne He had carved from a single ebon Nightstone, shining with illustrious darkness, whereupon He had sat and ruled for many aeons as a just and simple creature. He sent it back, back into the Night, back from which it had come. There He shattered the seal He had carved upon life to give Him a crown. He denounced His own name and renounced His own claim. With His eyes leaking from His twisted form, He gazed unto the land He had once ruled. With a dagger forged of the swiftest silvers, He drew forth with a simple mission in mind. In His own suffering and guilt that He fed upon so ravenously, His spirits still held true, and in their mercy, His life was sacrificed to the land He so loved, the people He so loved, to the Night He so loved.

As the dagger met its mark and as the blood spewed forth from the gaping wound, He cried out not once, never did He utter a sound. As the last of His blood was spilt, the castle began to rest, to go back to its roots beneath the mountain and the skye. The ancient walls that had stood so long crashed to the earth like a windswept forest. I saw them fall around me. For it was I who came to Him when He was a lad, and when He became an apprentice, and when He became a sorcerer. I was there when the first stones were moved and when the first walls rose. I was there when the terrible storm drew up from the North, and when the Great King first became ill. I was there to see His kingdom die. I was there to see Him fall apart, to see Him plunge the dagger into His own heart, to see the blood sear the walls of His keep, and I was there to see the walls fall around me.

I saw them all fall like dead leaves. I saw Him turn grey and ashen. I was there on that fateful night so long ago when the Great King titled me His poet, to tell Him tales and sing Him songs. I was a poet unto Him and I watched Him grow into life, and I watched as He sickened by the storm, and as He killed Himself in the end. I was there to see the walls fall down. I remember the night so clearly He named me His poet after the things He loved most, death and dreams. I remember the blood He spilt, that He took His own life to keep Him from sinning more, to end His guilt and pain and leeching. I saw Him when the spirits burned out His eyes and kept His core true. And now, I cry, for the Great King lies dead, and I, His titled poet, proclaim my mourning in this collection of ashes that were once a glorious kingdom. May those tears help to usher His soul along the Styx.

Here I shed my tears for the dead King...