Pherenike: Episode 4
Chapter 2. Sisyphus
“Deucalion Paethusa Pelagon.”
The first thing to pierce her senses was sound. The king’s words from deep within Pherenike’s distant memory sliced across a vast silence.
“In life, he was merely a disloyal son of Epikides; in death, he shall remain the eternal traitor to the Kingdom of Eudocia and the royal house of Pelagon. The shame and disgrace of Paethusa.”
It was as though she were trapped inside an old nightmare.
Like a newborn beast unable to open its eyes, a white haze veiled Pherenike’s vision.
‘Another damned dream.’
That day four years ago. Late autumn of the year 892 Heliodora.
Deucalion at nineteen, who had appeared in countless nights and innumerable dreams. The moment she had thought she would lose him forever.
“The successor Deucalion conspired with the birds of the Kingdom of Argo. Solely to usurp the king’s throne and commit the impiety of murdering his own sire who begot him.”
No matter how much strength she exerted, a bizarre sense of paralysis dominated her limbs, unable to move even a fingertip of her own accord. Yet the distinct sound was even more alien.
Pherenike suddenly realized this was not a dream.
“He has dishonored the noble wolf ancestors of House Pelagon, and thereby forfeited the right to become master of Paethusa land.”
Wind passing between doors. The silence of countless people holding their breath.
The voice of the king she cursed.
The chill clinging to her skin awakened her to life. Yet her final memory of having slit her own belly to offer herself as a sacrifice was no delusion like a dream.
As if it had happened mere seconds ago, the moment she had gazed down at Deucalion’s dead face rose vividly before her blinded eyes.
Deucalion’s blood that had moistened the tip of her tongue. That devastating ecstasy.
If only she could drag him back to this world before he circled the River Styx seven times, if that were truly possible, then even the pain of having her belly split open was a glad price to Pherenike. And in the end, nothing had been able to disturb her consciousness.
Pherenike had clearly and ‘successfully’ taken her own life. She had become a being who could never again dream even a single dream.
Therefore, even if all this were merely a vain dream, it was something that should not have been granted to her.
If this were truly reality, all the more so.
“I am merely a failed father. Therefore, I humbly submit all disposition to the will of the Assembly.”
The king, who had disregarded the Senate, declared that he would humbly follow the Assembly’s decree that suited his own taste. As his words suggested, it was very humble, yet nothing more than a cowardly shirking of responsibility.
The king had merely carried out that base deed with composure. Like the two sides of a coin, to someone it was justice.
“I, Epikides Alkandre Pelagon, swear by the messenger of the goddess and the ash tree, that I shall strip Deucalion of all his noble birthright, reclaim the sovereignty of Paethusa land in the royal house’s name, and banish him forever from the honorable lineage of House Pelagon.”
Over the silence where all held their breath, waves of joy and anger surged forth.
“And let him breathe his last in the Agora as a nameless orphan, neither the son of the King of Eudocia, nor the lord of Paethusa land.”
At that moment, Pherenike opened her eyes.
“Execute Deucalion.”
Her strange pupils, bearing an opaque black light as if not of a human, slowly began to roam the world within her vision.
The sick king on the throne.
First Prince Actor standing beside him.
Priests. Senators of the Senate. Many young men of the Assembly. Priestesses and priests of the shrine. The queen and her ladies-in-waiting.
Far away, Queen Axiothea collapsed.
The shouts of those wishing for the death of the queen’s only son, the screams of those denouncing the king who killed his son, and the piercing shrieks of the ladies-in-waiting shook the Anthea Assembly hall.
Chairs toppled. At the same moment, the men of House Thasos, led by the queen’s elder brother, drew their swords.
The great jar at the center of the Assembly toppled, and the ceramic shards inside poured out with a clamorous noise. Each shard still bore the mark by which its bearer had weighed Deucalion’s crime.
The king’s bodyguards blocked the way before him, and the Assembly became complete chaos. Those trying to flee the Assembly building and those pushing in from outside collided.
Pherenike, who had been standing at a distance, was also swept along by the crowd. Until a man’s hand that had suddenly reached through seized her shoulder firmly.
“Sybylle. You must leave this place now. Do not worry needlessly, and compose yourself.”
“…….”
“His Highness will protect himself, as he always has.”
It was the voice of Dexicos, who had protected her in the Palliuron Mountains.
A faint light suddenly entered upon the lingering darkness over Pherenike’s pupils.
Soon, her purple pupils resembling lavender flowers transparently embraced the light of the world and completely drove out the shadow of death. Her stiffened fingertips finally moved.
‘Deucalion.’
As if her mind had suddenly gone blank, she tried swallowing his name.
Though it was but a single call, Deucalion’s heartbeat answered, filling Pherenike’s mind like a great drum resounding in an empty cave.
‘It is different from then.’
He was alive. Deucalion was, now, truly alive.
Pherenike shook off Dexicos’s arm, wandered a few steps through the people, and stepped up onto a fallen chair.
Her narrowly opened eyes anxiously searched for Deucalion’s silver hair. The crowd, trying to move away from the swords, tangled every which way, and the edges of the Assembly hall were chaotic.
Within that, Deucalion had already found Pherenike first and was looking at her.
His olive-colored eyes, which had been flickering with hatred and murderous intent toward the king, his father, regained a strangely peaceful light the moment they met hers.
‘Go, Pherenike. Nothing will happen.’
His lips moved soundlessly toward her. His mouth, which had twisted as if mocking the world, briefly held a playful smile.
Pherenike could not even smile back. Just looking at him and swallowing his name felt as though her throat were melting away.
The lovers’ parting glance was brief.
Deucalion’s gaze briefly shifted toward Dexicos standing beside her as if giving a warning, then soon turned fiercely elsewhere. In the end, Pherenike had her arm caught by Dexicos’s hand and descended from the chair like a child.
Everything was just as she remembered. All of it was repeating like a play. Even so, Pherenike kept watching him.
With joy. With sorrow. With rapture and pain.
Desperate, tenacious eyes followed him, as though if she did not take him in thus with her eyes, Deucalion would soon melt away and vanish.
Standing tall in the center of the Anthea Assembly, guarding the judged sinner’s place as if it were a throne, Deucalion truly seemed to have lost none of his majesty.
He was composed, as if the king had not pronounced his death moments before, and dignified, as though he could stand up and leave this place at any moment.
The sneer that had lingered at his lips since he heard his charges in the Assembly and laughed at them only grew deeper.
Deucalion was ‘observing’ the noisy spectacle as though all these people were actors performing a comedy. Nowhere on him could be seen a wound from his father’s betrayal.
In truth, he himself must have found all this quite familiar.
It was merely on a scale he had never before experienced; the king had long wished for his death in one way or another. Not even Deucalion was unaware of his father’s age-old hatred.
But Pherenike knew him well. Deucalion, who had whispered to her that everything would be all right, changed from this very day. Because in this moment, he completely let go of his father.
When the king tried to kill his son before all the world, as though he was no longer worth the effort of hiding.
When he had willingly trampled Deucalion’s honor like filth to do so.
Even though he had secretly survived dozens of brushes with death by his father’s hand, Deucalion cast away every last shred of hope and longing for his blood relation that he had meagerly preserved, only on this day.
He laid down forever the very notion of parent and child. As though crossing a river that could never be recrossed.
Thus, the moment he survived and left the land of Eudocia, he resolved to make real the disgrace and false accusations his father had heaped upon him.
A patricide who tried to strike down his father. The second successor of Eudocia who, blinded by the throne, joined hands with the Kingdom of Argo. Anything at all.
At this time, Deucalion survived without dying. Though everyone believed he would ultimately die, he ultimately survived.
And as though gaining a scrap of mercy at the edge of a cliff, he escaped only death and was exiled beyond the kingdom.
Ironically, it was the price of admitting a ‘crime deserving death’ of his own accord.
Of course, Deucalion could have done otherwise. He could have refused to admit the crime of treason until the end, maintained the prince’s noble honor, and begun a war of attrition that did not fear death, including the Senate controlled by House Thasos.
And Deucalion actually did so. He did not yield to any torture.
That is, until the king, grown weary of waiting, took his mother and Pherenike as hostages.
The threat to take Pherenike, who had broken off her engagement to the eldest prince, as his queen was even more effective.
Because with merely a single sentence, Axiothea’s life and death and Pherenike’s freedom both hung in the balance.
Later, the king showed him Pherenike, her mouth gagged, for the ‘last’ time and spoke thus.
‘All evidence is clear, yet there is one way to absolve your crime. Today, I shall have your mother, who has a son innocent of crime, answer for your crime in your stead and cast her out, and tomorrow I shall seat the woman you love in a position befitting her noble status and have her come to your father’s bed.’
‘….’
‘Then the crime of plotting treason shall become solely your mother’s, and you shall become merely a son with a foolish mother. One who was unfortunately involved.’
‘….’
‘How do you think it would feel to call your beloved “mother” with that tongue of yours?’