Silent Crown

Mary had a dream. In the dark dream, she was wading through knee-high. There was no light. Someone was singing from afar, the voice of whom was so familiar, yet so evil.

Yet, the melody seemed like her own singing.

“The king and his accomplice kidnapped the queen and jailed her in the dream…

“We have the power, yet where should we go? Oh, men, hoist the sail! Pull, thieves and beggars, we’ll live forever…”

The sing came from all around her.

Mary looked around and chased the sound in a rush, but whenever she approached it, the voice would disappear, like the mischief of evil spirits, fleeting in the darkness and luring her to chase them.

Finally, she was exhausted and fell into the water. The water smelled like good wine, fragrant and sweet, making her thirsty as if her throat was burning. The thirst urged her to drink the water to quench the draught and the longing in her.

The voice singing was just around her, like an invisible ghost. It brought her some dim light, illuminating Mary’s pale face and her trembling hands. She held some bloody water with both her hands. The scarlet water fell through the gaps between her fingers and into the stream. Everything she could see was covered by the scarlet water.

Mary stood still in astonishment. Looking at her shaking hands, she was enraged by the song that indicated ill fate. She howled, “Stop singing!” The singing stopped immediately. A girl’s giggling came from behind her, as if glad that her mischief had worked.

Mary turned back slowly and saw a big mirror standing in the blood water. In the reflection of the mirror, there was a young girl in a pure white dress. That was herself—the respectable, elegant and perfect princess.

Mary looked at her, and she looked back. Mary went forward, and so did she. Finally, they stared at each other, with only the mirror between them.

The girl in the mirror smiled. “Hi, my elder sister. Long time no see. You’ve come back to see me again?”

“Shut up!” Mary lowered her head, her shoulders shaking. She smashed the mirror, leaving the reflection in the mirror shattered. But the broken mirror, sucking the blood, reassembled. The reflection came back, and the girl in the mirror, with an elegant smile, looked at her pitifully, watching Mary smashing the mirror again and again. And the mirror came back intact again and again.

Finally, Mary lost all her strength and knelt on the ground, her hands cut by the broken glass, bleeding. The girl in the mirror stretched out through the mirror and gently caressed Mary’s face with her hand in a white laced glove. She opened her arms and held Mary against her bosom.

“Now that you’ve come back here, have a little chat with me. You locked me up in here. I am so lonely here. It is like dying.” She whispered into Mary’s ears, “Let me out from time to time, could you, sister? Let’s go and kill someone, okay? Wipe out all those dirty inferior people and make this world cleaner, and you will be happier, too.”

“Shut up…” Mary closed her eyes. “I will never let you get out of here, never.”

“You are stubborn as usual, sister.” She laughed and kissed Mary on her earlobe. “Oh, Mary, I love you so much.”

The answer was a hand clutching her throat and snuffing out her voice. Mary strangled the girl in the mirror ruthlessly, her fingers sinking into the fair skin on the neck. Mary used all her strength, and the neck cracked and finally ruptured.

The neck was snapped.

Looking at herself in the mirror and seeing the quirky smile on the girl’s face, Mary snarled and said, “But I hate you.”

The girl in the mirror chuckled. The broken neck slowly recovered, and the girl gave a weird laugh. Then, the girl raised her head and looked at Mary carefully.

“Why do you always hurt me? Sister, I’m you yourself!” She stretched out and held Mary tightly in her arms. Then she whispered into Mary’s ears, “I am the mysophobia and arrogance in your heart that you can never get rid of. I’m the disgust you feel of other people, the pain you suffered when you had your first period, and the shameful lust you had when you fell in love with a man…”

“Shut up!” Gnashing her teeth, Mary used all her strength to spit out the vicious curse, “You b*tch!”

“You are born this dirty, Mary. What you see here is what you really are. Why do you deceive yourself? Let me tell you. You hate all this, don’t you?” The girl in the mirror groped her breasts and caressed her body like a snake. And finally, lifting Mary’s chin with her hand and licking her lips gently, she muttered, “You hate those rituals where you have to behave by the rules. You hate it when you have to be kind to the people from the low class. You hate to shake those dirty hands. You hate the people when they stare at your breasts, hate those maidservants who gossip outside your room, you even hate our mother for giving you such an abominable life. You hate all these things. Mary, you hate yourself.”

She held Mary and suddenly turned around. Behind them was the huge mirror. In the mirror, there were young girls cuddling up together, rubbing their faces against each other. The two girls resembled each other, but one of them was in white, and the other in red.

“Look, Mary.” Looking at the reflection in the mirror, she smiled and said, “We resemble each other so much. We were born to be to together and should never be apart.”

Mary closed her eyes and refused to look at the mirror again.

After a long while, the sound of the gate opening was heard from afar. The blood river retreated and the way back was finally emerging. The reflection became more and more blurry, and surrounded by the bloody water, fell into silence.

“Are you leaving now?” Staring at Mary, with the kind smile on her face, she whispered into Mary’s ear at the last moment, “Look at your eyes, sister. You are so weak and pathetic with your funny hatred. Are you still dreaming of someone rescuing you from your destiny? There’s no one who can save you. You only have you and me, forever.”

Mary finally raised her eyes. Looking into her eyes, she became determined. “No. Someone will come one day. He will come and kill me and you.”

…

Ye Qingxuan woke up from a dream to find himself lying on the hospital bed. He could hear the noise from outside the door. He was all right actually, not wounded at all, but he had to go through the ordinary physical examination. Chorale musicians from the musician divisions had come to pray for him and clean him of the contamination of the abyss, though it was nothing but laughable in the view of the Religious Court of Inquisitors.

After the time-consuming examination and inquiry, Ye Qingxuan fell asleep. Yet he didn’t expect to wake up on the morning of the next day. Leaning on the bedhead, he didn’t summon the nurse or anyone else but recalled what he had seen the night before and was lost in thought.

At that moment, he only saw Lancelot draw his sword, and then the light, which was like a fantasy. After the light, everything seemed to come to an end. It was like all sounds had been muted; all the movements frozen, and all the disputes settled.

It seemed as if Lancelot stood there, not moving at all, except that he put his sword back into the sheath. Yet in the cold wind, there appeared a straight rift on the ground below his feet, then the rift extended from below his feet forward and through the whole battlefield. The body of the head of the musician division was cut into two even parts and dissolved into filth.

The scepter was broken into numerous parts.

The illusion of the hell that covered the whole Shadow of Avalon cracked and then the crack spread out. Then, the moaning and howling went silent. The whole illusion collapsed, and finally disappeared.

From beginning to the end, Ye Qingxuan had not been able to see clearly how Lancelot struck the final blow. The sword was only an ordinary blade made of iron, yet in Lancelot’s hands, it was powerful beyond imagination. Retired from the military for so many years, it was unbelievable that Lancelot could still have such terrible power in his power armor. Even Ye Qingxuan himself, if not well prepared, would have been killed by the one strike.

“How terrible,” he muttered.

“What is so terrible?” someone asked from outside the door. The man pushed the door open and entered. It was Lancelot.

Sitting in a wheelchair, Lancelot was very pale, smelling of irritating medicines. The plastic pipes connected to his internal organs were transporting medicines into his body to sustain his life. That strike had exhausted him, putting his life in grave danger.

Seeing that Ye Qingxuan was in astonishment, Lancelot smiled in a ‘it-doesn’t-matter’ way. “That was the power of the Lancelot armor, not me. When I die, the armor is yours.”

“Don’t say that.” Ye Qingxuan shook his head and said, “You will live for quite a long time. And you still have Christine.”

“I know everything about my own health.” Lancelot coughed so hard that there was blood on his lips. Wiping off the blood, he gave a self-mocking smile. “The Lancelot armor is the most powerful of all the round table armors. At the same time, it has the most stringent requirements on the owner in terms of morality and integrity. Only a saint would be accepted by it. Christine does not have the ability to handle the heavy responsibilities of the family, and she is not able to be accepted by the armor.”

“Then, I definitely won’t, either.” Ye Qingxuan didn’t want to discuss this topic anymore. So he asked, “Where is Princess Mary? Is she awake?”

“Yes. She is resting.”

The two both fell into silence.

After quite a long time, Ye Qingxuan heaved a sigh. “You have left all those matters behind to come to see me. There must be something you want to say to me?”

“Yes.” After a moment of thinking, Lancelot said, “Our king was assassinated by Maxwell. Anglo needs a new king. Princess Mary, as first in line to the throne, will be crowned in Westminster Abbey tomorrow to be the king of Anglo.”

“The first in line to the throne?” Ye Qingxuan was shocked. “What about the prince?” Though handicapped and thus not able to inherit the throne, the prince was still the next in line to the throne. The queen had been cultivating Mary as her successor to the throne, but the status of the prince had not been changed.

“He is dead.” Lancelot said indifferently, “On the same day when the king was assassinated, he was poisoned. Guess who did that?”

Ye Qingxuan understood what he meant. He fell into silence and felt a severe headache. He could think of only one suspect.

Maxwell. What the hell do you want to do, Maxwell?

Lancelot looked at him quietly. After a long while, Lancelot said, “Ye, leave Avalon.” Closing his eyes, Lancelot went on, “I’m afraid that King Arthur turned into a catastrophe. Leviathan was about to break through the second seal. This country is beyond help. You lead your people out of this country tonight. You can go anywhere you like. Just don’t come back.”

…

The shadow of Avalon.

At the top, darkness expanded. The gruesome ringing of a bell was heard. The palace began to shake with the bell ringing. The darkness, as dense as black ink, poured down from the sky onto the ground. Countless demons grew out of the darkness like wild grass in spring. The demons crawled from the darkness and the blood pool, screaming and howling, worshiping the dark sun.

The sun trembled and seemed as if it was about to fall to pieces.

The monsters in the darkness slowly opened their eyes and were about to wake up.

Under the palace, the broken body of the Dark Sovereign bathed in the rain of darkness, which contained the power of the abyss, and was revived again.

“He’s coming! Finally! The inheritor of the abyss, the holy son of darkness!” he cheered and laughed, wild with joy.

“He is the king of gods in the world!”