Short Story – The Acension (unoriginal idea)

It was everything he’d wanted. He’d been through so many battles, and lost so many friends and loved ones. It was finally over.

As he ascended the spiral staircase of the tower he’d worked so hard to get to..a pillar of ice, in the middle of a deserted, barren wasteland, where not a sound could be heard but the icy waves crashing against the base of the tower, he finally began to wonder.

Here he was in the most god-forsaken place on the planet, completely alone. All of his companions had either died or abandoned him, and for what? All he was ever trying to do was restore his kingdom back to it’s former glory. "They just can’t see the truth…They’ll never see the truth.." The voices whispered.

He’d forgotten, he wasn’t alone. Those maddening, unrelenting shimmers and echoes in his head that never stopped. Not even in his dreams. Were they even dreams? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually slept. He guessed he was grateful – The only noise other than the voices in this place was the soft crackling of ice falling to the ground below as he broke it with his steps.  It didn’t matter. Nothing else  mattered anymore.

He finally reached the top, where four curved pillars of ice surrounded a smaller staircase, that led up to a massive ice formation. The pillars, he knew well were what kept this flimsy tower standing in the rough sea below. He’d known from the beginning, in fact that they had a sort of magical property to them. He could feel it. And it was coming from the ice..

It was why he was here. In the center of the icy husk, suspended in time itself was a helmet..an ancient, forsaken piece of armor that carried the weight of ten million worlds upon it. But it didn’t matter. He drew his icy blade and with a final roar, struck the ice formation right at it’s base, splitting it entirely. The tower shook as the huge chunks fell downwards into the sea below, and the helmet slid down the staircase and landed at his feet. He slowly picked it up, staring at it in awe.

It was what he’d been fighting for this entire time. It was the fix-all solution. He’d finally make all of those fools see that he was right all along! He would save his people from a terrible plague, and then they’d see..first his kingdom, and then the world..

The helmet’s runic centerpiece hummed softly as he grasped it tighter in his hands, closing his eyes, and slipping it on…The whispers silenced almost immediately, and for the first time in years, he was able to think clearly. He opened his eyes to the slab of ice that the helmet was sitting on, now husk-free, and realized, that it seemed almost..kingly, in it’s style. It was a throne. And he would certainly use it as a fitting place to look over his domain.

At the roof of the world, on an icy throne, in a kingdom of waste, sat a man driven mad by anguish, greed, and sorrow. It was the death of him as a man, but the birth of something new..and he would rule over it as it’s lord and master..forever.