Maekan wollis
They've been standing for past an hour or so, gawking and scrutinizing the king.
King Kamron was still not done with his pleasures, occasionally he would look back at them and smile even if for a few seconds.
"Momentary pleasure for a king," he said in his reed-thin voice. "Occupied with wars and bored in books, need a quick release of tension."
"For about an hour, we've been standing here, my lord," jorath deliberately spat. "Pleasures are meant to be done in privacy... Not out here in... Throne room."
"Geldry, a favour?", Kamron asked his right hand man, geldry. "Seize the one with tongue and fetch me his armour."
"That's impossible! You insult me and my armour. It's not meant for filthy scums like you. It's an honour meant for knights like me."
"Honour? You... Have no honour," Kamron said, wearing his armour and pushing the seventh girl that was on the throne. All of the girls, who were in throne, started waking up. Kamron dismissed them with a wave of his hand. "Tell me, did you really slew a dragon?"
Maekan said nothing, he was observing the conversation from side. He thought even if he did interrupt it would be for worse. Nothing good will come out it, maekan knew Kamron very well.
Jorath faltered, "I- nonsense. Yes i did."
"Agreed. It is nonsense that you slew a dragon. Blood giant, yes ... You can fight that, but a dragon, i highly doubt it."
"How... Do you know all of that?", jorath asked, confused and agitated. "I mean about blood giant... How—"
"Tombs blessings. It allows me to read minds, by reading minds, I can see everyone's past," Kamron finally wore his armour, green shaded armour with loose linen and a sword at his throne, which he grabbed by the hilt.
"Nooo..." Jorath was in shock as soon as he saw the hilt. Intricate carvings around its length and... Frost dragon neatly carved in its hilt. "You are the one who slew it."
"Taking glory for other's work, a tradition upheld by every single prince and king of sumaka. I slew it and you got oath of aegis from your father." Kamron shrugged. "You took my glory, now I shall have your."
He gestured geldry, who now nodded and in a heartbeat was on jorath, grabbing him by his neck, he slammed him down on the tiles below. Geldry nodded towards a giant, who ran causing the ground to rumble. The giant immediately grabbed large chains that covers his forearms and swung it towards jorath.
"Ah!", he was in pain. Shouting and pleading for help. Help from maekan who just stood there like a statue.
"Maekan! Say something... Ah!", the giant kept on lashing, trying to break the armour.
"It can't be broken, Kamron! Its on my skin," jorath said, between his shouts and wailing, it was hard to discern his words but not for king Kamron, apparently. He was nodding and raised a hand. The giant stopped, chains rattling.
"I know it. Just wanted to see... If that tongue still holds up after a..." He laughed. "Geldry take him in the room and skin his skin until... Oath of aegis comes out. Take his sword in the meantime."
"Noo! Please... I beg of you! I will do as you say, please king Kamron... Maekaaan! Say something!"
Maekan smiled. "Not my concern."
"Do what you want with him, king Kamron. I was tired of him anyway."
Geldry, a boy not more than seventeen snakes old, punched jorath. Continuously until jorath fainted. Then he dragged him in one of the inner rooms, where his torture was to be held.
King Kamron laughed, looking at maekan. "Your betrayals are still ever shocking for others."
"He was a dog anyway," maekan said, waving his hand up and down. "None of my concern."
"Tsk tsk tsk... Dogs are loyal companions, it's worth to keep them around. Don't you dare insult a dog. Jorath is worse. Hogging
My glory, trying to claim my feat. A dog like geldry wouldn't do that. Not at all."
"You need to feed them, bones or meat, anything they want, time to time, one should feed them lest they should come and bite you behind your back. Look at geldry, he would bark for me, bite for me even mourn for me but he won't do one thing even if I tell him to do, you know what it is maekan? Care to venture a Guess?"
"I... Don't know my lord."
"Betray! He won't betray me. He won't bite me behind my back like you did! You ran away. I looked up to you, as a friend, as a comrade... As my... Family. That meant something."
Maekan bowed. "I am... Your to—"
"You know I can read your mind. Why then? Why bother to lie? Do you even remember what you did to me?"
"Of course i re—"
"No you don't! You... Want to forget it don't you?" A tear slowly ran down his cheeks. "If I can read minds and see into the past, tombs power also allows me to show the past."
Kamron strode forward and grabbed his shoulders, maekan's eyes showed white, his mind whirled and he was in a different world. Twelve years ago.
Story of maekan wollis and king Kamron
They had been sent away in the same autumn.
Two small, sickly princes from minor courts, Maekan of the ash-walled north, and Kamron of the river principality, delivered like offerings to the High Court of King Dumrion, the great sovereign who ruled the Emperor Road. There, among the sons of conquerors and warlords, boys were forged into men of iron.
Maekan and Kamron were not iron.
They arrived thin from fevers, shoulders narrow, wrists like reeds. Their accents marked them as provincial; their clothing, though noble, lacked the jeweled arrogance of imperial bloodlines. On the training grounds, they lagged behind. In the sparring rings, they fell first. In the dormitories, laughter followed them like flies.
The stronger princes called them half-princes. Paper heirs. Orphan kings.
Once, after Maekan fainted during shield drills, someone hung a wooden spoon around his neck and declared him 'Kitchen Queen.' The dormitory roared. Maekan wept silently into his pillow that night. Kamron did not laugh.
He sat beside Maekan on the cold stone floor, saying nothing at first. Then, quietly:
"Next time they try that, I'll break his teeth."
Maekan stared. No one had ever spoken for him before. That was how it began.
Kamron was frail but he was beautiful.
Even bruised and mud-streaked, he had clear eyes, fine cheekbones, and hair that caught torchlight like gold. Servants noticed him. Tutors softened toward him. Even bullies sometimes paused, as if unsure whether to mock or admire.
Maekan had none of that mercy.
His features were blunt and uneven: his skin pitted from childhood illness. His hair grew in stubborn patches. When he spoke, people looked past him, toward Kamron, as though Maekan were only an echo.
Kamron never seemed to see it. He spoke to Maekan as if he were the only person in the room. Shared bread with him. Took punishments beside him. When Maekan was shoved, Kamron shoved back.
To Maekan, that loyalty became water.
But also poison.
Because he knew, even at twelve, that if Kamron had never been forced into friendship by proximity and weakness, he would never have chosen Maekan.
Something changed in Kamron during their third winter.
Perhaps it was rage. Perhaps shame. Perhaps the memory of being held down while older princes carved insults into his training shield. Whatever the cause, Kamron began rising before dawn.
He trained when others slept.
He ran until he vomited.
He lifted stones until his hands bled.
At first, Maekan laughed it off.
"You'll break yourself," he said, curled under blankets. "We're not built for it."
"We can be," Kamron replied.
He asked Maekan to join him. Once. Twice. Ten times. Maekan always refused.
Too cold. Too early. Too hard. Too pointless.
Laziness, yes...but also fear. Because if he tried and failed, then weakness would be truth, not circumstance. Easier to remain the frail prince than become the failed one.
Months passed.
Kamron's shoulders broadened. His blows gained weight. The bullies who once mocked him now nodded in respect. Tutors praised him. Other princes invited him to dine.
And always, Kamron returned to Maekan:
"Come with us."
"You belong there."
"You're my brother."
Maekan heard only one word: pity.
Jealousy does not arrive like thunder.
It seeps.
Maekan watched Kamron laugh with stronger boys. Saw hands clap his back. Heard girls whisper his name during festivals. Watched him become everything Maekan was not... and could never be.
The friendship did not break in a moment. It thinned. Stretched. Frayed.
Until one evening Kamron, flushed from training, said: "You don't have to stay small, Maek. You choose this."
Choose. That word burned deeper than any insult ever had.
One day, Maekan found the necromancer in the lower quarter beyond the palace walls, where failed kings and bone-readers traded secrets beneath the aqueduct.
He had gone seeking curses out of spite, nothing more. Something petty. Something reversible.
But the necromancer spoke of faces.
"I can unmake beauty," she said. "I can strip a man of what the world loves in him. No blade. No blood. Only rot of the flesh's favor."
Maekan laughed at first.
Then he thought of Kamron standing among new friends, sunlit, strong, radiant.
He thought of himself, unseen.
The necromancer required a name.
Maekan did not give it.
Not that night.
Not the next.
Not for weeks.
He told himself he would never. That he was not so small. Yet envy is patient. And humiliation has a long memory.
On a night of rain and torchsmoke, shaking, sick with dread and desire, Maekan returned.
He whispered one name.
Kamron.
It was said Kamron's transformation began with a fever. Then lesions. Then swelling. His features warped, skin tightening and sagging, eyes sinking into shadowed hollows. The court recoiled. Friends withdrew. Admirers vanished.
Beauty abandoned him as swiftly as it had crowned him.
No one knew why.
No one suspected Maekan.
Maekan watched from a distance, heart pounding with a horror he had not foreseen. He had imagined justice, balance, equality of suffering.
He had not imagined Kamron alone again.
Like before. Like him.
The necromancer who had done it went to Kamron in secret.
She confessed.
Or perhaps he already knew; some wounds need no explanation.
But instead of killing her, Kamron bound her to him. Not by chains but by guilt. She became his seer, his shadow, his witness. She taught him forbidden rites, bone-speech, the languages of graves.
From ruin, Kamron carved power. They began to call him Tomb-Marked. Then Tomb-Bearer. Then Lord of the Quiet.
And slowly, impossibly...his beauty returned.
Not the soft radiance of youth, but something harsher, carved from death's threshold. A face remade by will and grave-magic. Terrible. Compelling. Alive with the cold authority of one who had died in all but flesh.
Years later, Maekan heard rumors on the Emperor Road:Kamron lives. Kamron is restored. Kamron commands tomb-power.
Kamron walks with a necromancer-seer who never leaves his side.
The news struck like a blade of ice.
Because Maekan knew the seer.
Knew what she had done.
Knew what he had done.
Maekan had no interest in talking with either of them but for kreydan, he... Wanted kreydan to be free... So kreydan could give Maekan what he promised. Beauty... The one thing he has chased his entire life.
Maekan came back to his senses. Tears in his eyes. Was it guilt? Maekan wondered.
Or was it pain of jealousy again that... Kamron had everything he wanted.
Whatever it was... Maekan knew one thing, that Kamron still loved him like his brother and maekan could use that as a leverage.
World of sumaka through eyes of king Kamron —
After my father died, I became a king, a king of giants. My father was a giant but my mother was a human, her blood dominated in shaping me. After my father died , his last wish was that his remains and his sword should be seen from mountains.
So, we fulfilled that wish. The corpse that one sees from above is my father's. Everyone in snake road mourns him. He was a emperor, now snake road is in rebellion ever since.
I have travelled all of the five continents, have seen countless things, have killed countless things but my best kill still remains the frost dragon. Made a sword from his tail, a gods gift to me. God of ice: vinestal.