If I Had Known

If I had known.

If I had known then what I know now, that night would have been very different.

Worse for that family. Better for me.

I remember it well. Everything about our last fight reminded me of that night. The night I met the man who in just over twenty years of war would kill me and destroy what I had built for three centuries.

Oh, how I remember it. Things would have been so different. So much better.

It was raining that night, but I didn’t get wet.

I was waiting at the door of the tiny house after knocking softly and politely. As I waited, I heard quick footsteps and murmurs, as if they were preparing or hiding something before opening the door. I didn’t care. How could I? There was nothing that this family could hide or show me that would surprise me.

While I waited for their goodwill and obligation to welcome me into their miserable residence, I distracted myself with the surroundings. The house was located near a sea cliff. The waves crashed against the rocky walls continuously, without stopping. Their sound was only muffled by the rain.
Everywhere I looked, except for the ocean, there were irregular fields of short grass, as if that ground were covered by a thin green carpet. Next to the house, a huge tree, whose trunk would still take years to begin to push through its walls. Its crown was even larger, umbelliform in shape, and with its monstrous size, it served as an umbrella for the house in it East side, and, at that moment, for me.
I won’t lie, it was a calm land. It brought me tranquility. That’s why I chose that place for Olesis to live. I wanted the person who helped me to live in peace. It was the most I could do for a human like him, even for what he did for me. In a government like mine, gratitude cannot be confused with kindness.

The footsteps inside the house slowed. They were both in the room just inside the door in front of me. They seemed to be preparing to let me in, as if they had a choice.
I smiled slightly. It felt good to know that my presence had caused such desperate preparation. They were afraid of me, and I liked it. I knew I wouldn’t do them any harm, but the fact that they knew I could, even without reason, and feared me for it amused me. I couldn’t ruin that.

They whispered about how they would welcome me. Poor things, if they knew how much I didn’t care. As I waited, the darkness of the night was broken by a flash of lightning that lit up the east. My peripheral vision noticed something, something that hadn’t been there the last time I’d come. I turned my head to the right, and saw it. A swing. Pretty basic, a plank hanging by two rough ropes from one of the branches of the tree. It wasn’t anything special, but it was something different, something new, something that surprised me.

I liked it.

I was about to start thinking about that swing, it would be the most exciting thing I would do in months, when the door opened, interrupting me.
“King Maliris,” Olesis, the father of the family greeted me with a fearful smile as he held the humble door. He looked up to look into my eyes, or where he thought they were. I was hooded and the lack of light outside did not allow the human to see my face.
“Hello, Olesis, my friend,” I greeted him calmly. He seemed to tremble a little at the sound of my voice. “I thought you were sleeping. I’m sorry if I woke you.”
“No need to apologize,” he said with an evasive voice and look. My apologizing to him bothered him. “We just weren’t expecting your visit today.”
“And no one else’s, I imagine,” I said, looking away into the house. Nothing out of the ordinary. “May I come in?”
“Of course, I’m sorry,” he said as if my question had awakened him from his fear. “Please, make yourself at home. The house is yours.” That much he could be sure of.
He said as he stepped out of the way, still holding the door for me to pass through.
“Excuse me,” I said, entering the house with the top of my head scraping the opening.
“I’m sorry, King Maliris,” Olesis said, starting to get slightly desperate. If I didn’t stop him, he would start begging on his knees.
“It’s okay,” I said, calming him down. “You built your house thinking of yourself and your family, there’s nothing wrong with that. Besides, I’m just a visitor. And visitors, when invited, have no right to complain about the residence that welcomed them.”
No one in that family was taller than six feet, and the doorway was almost seven feet wide. My “favorite” children had to duck to get through if they didn’t want to destroy part of the wall that their heads would pass through.
I removed my hood, freeing my pointy ears to breathe outside the stifling air. Olesis, after closing the door, quickly approached.
“Please let me keep your cloak, King Maliris,” he said, already pulling it away from my body.
“Thank you,” I thanked him, while my long, straight orange hair hung down my back.

The house was no higher than that floor. The entrance room I was in was both a living room and a kitchen. It would only take me three or four steps to go from one side to the other. Absolutely different from the palaces I lived in.

On the other side of the room, which anyone could see directly upon entering the house, was a very dark hallway. There were candles on the walls of the hallway, but they didn’t light them. They limited the light in the house to the entrance hall where I was, as if that were the limit.

I didn’t mind. A human couple didn’t want me to delve into their residence? Great.

“Please, King Maliris, sit down,” Olesis invited me respectfully and fearfully, pulling out the chair. As usual, I thanked him as I sat on the wooden chair whose creaking made Olesis pray internally that it wouldn’t break.

In front of me was the sturdy wooden table that unbalancedly served as their centerpiece and dining area. Empty and slightly dusty, but I didn’t care, I would be lying if I said I expected anything else.

“Sorry about the mess, King Maliris, we weren’t expecting…” he was saying until I interrupted him.

“It’s no problem,” I said, then placed the large basket I was carrying on the table. Olesis was surprised, a reaction that pleased me.

The basket was full of food and drinks of various colors and of the highest quality and prices in Dranate. Just one of the bottles there was worth more than some houses like the one they lived in, but it wasn’t like they could trade it with anyone within my government anyway.

Just the sight of the nutritional ecstasy of that masterpiece produced by my Beltif descendants left Olesis stunned.

“King,” he mumbled absently, as if he saw a rainbow shining that night over that table.

“Please keep it?” I asked him, making him come out of his trance. “It’s a gift from me to you. I won’t give you a single bite or sip of that food.”

His fear diminished a little, giving way to shame.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking away and back at me quickly. “But if I don’t offer you what your highness brought, I don’t believe I’ll have anything worthy to offer you.”

Nothing I hadn’t expected.

“Just drink or eat what you normally consume,” I said calmly. “You don’t need to serve me anything, I just came to talk. But first, please put this away.”

Olesis hugged the basket, or at least tried to. It was so big that his hands didn’t meet on the other side. Besides, he couldn’t even lift it, only managing to pull it across the table to the edge.

“Honey, wait,” someone from the dark hallway said, finally deciding to appear. “I’ll help you.”
After closing a bedroom door, Serna, Olesis’ wife came out of the shadows. Together, they managed to lift my gift and place it on a kitchen counter. A couple who truly helped each other living in a small isolated house. It felt good to have control over something like that.
After putting the gift away, they both had their backs to me. I didn’t rush them, but it was obvious that she was unhappy with my presence. I was already used to that from women.
“Serna,” I called her respectfully. “How are you?”
She sighed, still with her back turned. It seemed like she needed to take a deep breath to even look at me.
“King Maliris,” he greeted me, bowing halfway until his face was staring straight at the stone floor of the house. I must say, she was less afraid of me than her husband. No, she hated me more.
“Ah, yes, drink,” Olesis said, looking for the best thing he had in that hut. Meanwhile, Serna was getting glasses.
Even though I had already said I wouldn’t drink anything, they had to leave the offer open.
They both sat at the table. Olesis stood next to me, while his wife sat at the opposite head of the table.
“So,” he said as he filled a glass. “To what we drink tonight, your majesty?”
I crossed my legs, placing my hands on them, assuming a position of complete attention.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been here.”
Fortunately for us. She certainly thought so.

“Can you tell me how much years, Olesis?” I asked. When was the last time I visited you?”

“I believe 8 years, Your Majesty,” he replied. I couldn’t tell if that was true or not. I can’t say that visiting Olesis’s house was a significant event in my years of life. Little did I know that I would remember that night forever. A missed opportunity that would make me give up trying to sleep on some future nights.
“8 years,” I said, believing him. “So tell me, what have you been up to during that time? I’m all ears.”

For the next few hours, only Olesis’s voice would be heard in that house, along with the sound of rain and thunder that was yet to come. Speaking of Olesis, let me tell you a little about this human and my relationship with him. He was as ordinary as any other man I had ever seen, nothing special about him. Brown hair that reached his shoulders. A friendly, genuinely kind face. His clothes were ordinary peasant rags with no color or flashy power whatsoever. Being an ordinary human, he had a life that would be greatly envied by any other of his race in my territory. The reason for this is very simple: he saved my life. Years ago, my troops and I returned from the Gorpuren Archipelago on ships full of Gilasi slaves. Olesis was one of them, destined for a life of servitude, pain, and torment in my Dranate. But my fleet ended up shipwrecked, and I was left unconscious in the water. No matter how strong and powerful you are, if you are unconscious, the world kills you easily, and in the ocean, it would be even easier.
But I didn’t die. I was dragged to the beach by Olesis, one of the slaves that my troop and I had captured. Why did he do it? Well, it wasn’t because he was kind or a pure soul, that’s for sure. Olesis, despite being human, was smart at that moment. He was on the southern coast of the continent, he couldn’t swim back to the archipelago and there were no more ships for him to sail. If he let me die, he would be just another human alone on the Dranate. A human who would be found and enslaved immediately. And that day, he made the wisest decision of his short and mediocre life: he saved me. With me dead, he was doomed, but by saving me, he would have a chance. I didn’t have a reputation for mercy and I had certainly never spoken to him before, but he decided to take a gamble. And he won. As a way of repaying him for his actions, I gave him this small place to live, freely. By my order, none of my descendants or troops were allowed to enter that place without me, and they could not harm that human. In fact, they could do so; it was an isolated and unsafe place. But if it happened, someone would be punished, and I would punish anyone suspected until I found the person responsible.
And that was how Olesis got this small piece of heaven in my gigantic and oppressive kingdom. Was Olesis a good person? No, certainly not. He was just a person. One who saw the chance to have a better life and took it. Did he feel bad about having a minimally decent life because of a tyrant? Probably, but he knew he did not want to have a life like the rest of the humans in my Dranate.
I think that was why I was so kind to him and gifted him with this land. He knew what he wanted at that moment, and, despite being selfish, he made the decision to save me in exchange for the possibility of me repaying him. He could have not only let me die, he could have killed me with his own hands, after all I was unconscious. But that would have given him and all the slaves who would celebrate my death, even if they were still chained, and Olesis would be one of them eventually, only a momentary satisfaction. Instead, he chose to sacrifice not only his will, but that of all the slaves, leaving me alive so that he could be rewarded. I won’t lie, the moment I woke up on that beach after being saved by him, I understood his intention perfectly, and I admired him for it.
As the hours passed, his fear of me disappeared as the drink went on. I don’t think it was because of the drunkenness, even drunk people thought about what they would say next to my name. No, the drink only reminded him that if I wanted to hurt him, I would have done it a long time ago. I visited him a few times over the years since I allowed him to live there, and I always drank alone as we started to talk. There came a point where he treated me like a true friend, a normal person, at that moment I can say that it was because he was drunk.

Serna, his wife, was quite different. She never drank, she preferred to stay focused whenever I visited them. She had dark hair, and was very beautiful for her race and living conditions. Her clothes were as rags and common as her husband’s. That night she spent most of the hours at the end of the table opposite ours. Arms and legs crossed with her head slightly lowered and eyes almost closed, concentrating her attention on listening. She was always attentive to every word that came out of Olesis’s mouth when I visited them, especially when he was drunk, it could be dangerous, and she knew it. But I didn’t know that that night she was focused on listening to something other than her husband, as she had on other occasions, years ago.
Her story is simpler. Unlike Olesis, she was a slave for years on the continent in my kingdom. Very hardened and rough due to the mistreatment. I simply decided one day that Olesis should have a partner. So I had the most beautiful human slaves we had in the region selected and asked him to choose one to be his wife. Did he choose her just because of her beauty? I probably didn’t care about the human criteria for partners, I just wanted to give him a gift. But, despite being forced to live together, they really did come to love each other, that much I was sure of, because I know very well what it is not to be loved by your spouse.

The fact that she had once been a slave to my Dranate made her hate me, a lot. Every time she made a huge effort not to insult or attack me. Seeing her holding back and holding back her hatred while her husband and I talked like friends was a secondary amusement during my visits. Furthermore, a factor that increased her hatred for me was the fact that she was a wife, and I had several. She imagined what it must be like to be my wife and have to live with me, which made her unable to even look me in the eye for very long. Now, what was I doing, king of almost a quarter of the continent, one of the most powerful sovereigns in the world, visiting a shack where a couple of miserable human slaves lived, by my will? That’s what happens with three hundred years of forced and hypocritical flattery. It makes you search for crumbs of honesty and frankness. I heard and felt more truth in Olesis’s words and in Serna’s silent hatred that night than in any action or deed of any of my descendants in years. Their hatred for me, their fear of me, their discomfort with my presence. All of it was sincere, and that encouraged me. With my descendants, whenever they opened their mouths, exactly the words I imagined came out. Always compliments, fake smiles, an insatiable search for approval and satisfaction with my most mundane forms of appreciation. These two humans didn’t. They expected nothing from me. They wanted nothing from me. They despised me. And I truly felt something in that contempt, something I couldn’t feel with the most convincing display of false love from my wives or affection from my descendants. But I can’t blame them, I made them this way, and it made them achieve much in my name. I don’t regret anything. But after 300 years, I needed to feel something genuine from someone, even if it was from an inferior race.
Olesis and I laughed, he really knew how to tell the most common and pathetic human survival activities in a hilarious way. The rain had already ended, and it was late.
Serna, his wife, was quite different. She never drank, she preferred to stay focused whenever I visited them. She had dark hair, and was very beautiful for her race and living conditions. Her clothes were as rags and common as her husband’s. That night she spent most of the hours at the end of the table opposite ours. Arms and legs crossed with her head slightly lowered and eyes almost closed, concentrating her attention on listening. She was always attentive to every word that came out of Olesis’s mouth when I visited them, especially when he was drunk, it could be dangerous, and she knew it. But I didn’t know that that night she was focused on listening to something other than her husband, as she had on other occasions, years ago.
Her story is simpler. Unlike Olesis, she was a slave for years on the continent in my kingdom. Very hardened and rough due to the mistreatment. I simply decided one day that Olesis should have a partner. So I had the most beautiful human slaves we had in the region selected and asked him to choose one to be his wife. Did he choose her just because of her beauty? I probably didn’t care about the human criteria for partners, I just wanted to give him a gift. But, despite being forced to live together, they really did come to love each other, that much I was sure of, because I know very well what it is not to be loved by your spouse.

The creaking of my chair was interrupted by a thunderclap without rain. The loudest of the night. The fragile windows of the house shook so as not to break. But after the sound that came from the sky, another even louder one came from inside the house.

Mom!

It came from the dark hallway of the house, but precisely from the room where Serna had gone hours ago to join us. At that moment I looked at her. She finally opened those dark eyes wide. Her concern was evident, and her nervousness even more so.

“It seems that the family has a member that I have not yet been introduced to,” I said, excited about what was to come. “Boy or girl?” I asked her.

“What?” she answered me with a question. Luckily I was in a good mood after that night.

“Your Majesty, please, we did not mean to offend you…” Olesis justified, trying to draw my focus to him, protecting his family, an attitude worthy of a man, husband and father. I decided at that moment that he would have to go far that night for me to kill him.
“Olesis,” I said, without taking my eyes off Serna. “I asked your wife. Will she answer me… Boy or girl?” It was the second time I had asked the same question. Many have died because they were not given that right.
She looked at me, a rare moment. That was how dedicated she was to protecting that child, a true mother.
“Your Majesty,” she needed a pause to swallow her pride and anger and be able to talk to me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I had been friendly and openly pleasant, until that moment. I looked at her seriously, without blinking, with my eyes fixed on her. All I had to do was want her to, and her mediocre life would end there, but I would not make her feel pain. It would be quick, this was the third gift I would give her that night. The first was the basket, and the second was that she was still alive after not answering me for the second time.
“Answer me before the answer changes to ‘dead'”
She knew she was already at a limit she couldn’t cross. Until she sighed, lowering her head, embarrassed as she answered.
“Boy.”
I smiled slightly, finally the atmosphere was pleasant again.
“I want to meet him,” I said, cheerfully, but not showing my strong curiosity. “Bring the boy.”
She didn’t obey me immediately, she stood there, hesitating.
“I will bring him to you, King Maliris,” Olesis said, taking short steps towards the hallway.
“I didn’t send you, Olesis,” I said, stopping him at once. “I ordered your human and apparently deaf wife. I will order you just one more time, and if you value what you have, you will obey me. Bring. The. Boy.”
I gave her rare seconds of tolerance to obey, and she used every one of them. One more and that family wouldn’t have the pleasure of tasting the gift I brought. She walked to the door with her head down.

Of course I could just walk over there, but they needed to be reminded. Reminded of who was in control. In control of Dranate, the regions and that house.

She opened the door and the little brown-haired creature came out. He immediately grabbed his mother’s legs.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you told me to be quiet, but that sound scared me.”
“It’s okay, honey,” she comforted him. “There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”
She brought him slowly. The child was scratching his left eye, with his right eye almost falling asleep. He was so limp that a simple flick would make him fall to wake him up.
He stopped in front of me. His brown shirt was loose, not his size, covering him almost completely, almost to his ankles. In the light I could better see his beautiful hair, brown and long, down to his shoulders.
He finished scratching his eye, eliminating part of the hypnosis of sleep. I was already looking down to face his parents, but he was looking even lower. He looked up, into my eyes.
“You’re tall” was the first thing that bastard had ever said to me. It made me smile. Not as a compliment, that answer had surprised me. Up until then, he had been doing well, but his parents didn’t agree. They thought the boy’s observation had irritated me.
“Son” Olesis came. “This is the ruler of Dranate. Champion of the god Karlix. King of the Drani. Maliris”
I looked straight at Olesis. My name last? I didn’t like that.
“Maliris?” the boy asked. He said my name first, not my titles. He corrected his own father. I liked that.
With a smile. I returned my focus to him, . “Nice to meet you, Maliris”
My smile faded for a few seconds. Not out of disgust, but out of surprise, a good surprise. My smile returned even bigger. “What’s your name, young man?”
In a single, simple word, he said. “Otes”
Oh, that name. That damned, disgusting name. If I had known that night. If I had known who I had just met… There would have been no more smiles in that house.
“Are you friends with my father and mother?” he asked me, genuinely curious.
“Yes, that’s right,” I said, not pleasing them, especially Serna.
He made a gesture with his small hand, calling me softly, to come closer to him. I crouched down, leaving our faces face to face. That damned face. It would have been so easy.
“Can I be your friend too?” he asked in an honest and gentle voice.
My expression changed, I was defenseless, as if I had been attacked suddenly and by surprise. And he continued to stare at me with a tiny smile, as if preparing himself for the answer.
“Of course you can,” I replied. Genuine smiles grew on our faces at the same time. I held him with both hands and lifted him along with my body, placing him on my shoulder.
“Wow,” he said excitedly. “It’s so tall here.”
“Do you like it?” I asked, sincerely wanting to hear him answer. His parents couldn’t believe how casually we were talking.
“Of course,” he answered happily, stretching his hand to see if he could reach the ceiling. “Will I be that tall one day, King Maliris?”
“Let’s not exaggerate, kid,” I said, bringing him back to reality. “And just call me Maliris, okay?”
“Of course. If that’s how my friend wants to be called.”
That made me happy, I won’t lie. That child was pure honesty, everything he said, he said without being influenced by ambition, hatred, fear or malice. He was honest.

“And my friends get presents,” I said, carrying him still on my shoulder to the basket on the counter. His eyes lit up, with pure excitement. How I wished I had plucked them right there.

“Is this for eating?” he asked, as he had never seen food of such quality before.

“Of course. Pick any one to try.” His eyes scanned the basket as if searching for something in a trunk.

“This one,” he said, picking out a fruit of a curious color. “I like the orange color. It’s like your hair, Maliris,” he said, laughing as he held the food. How I wished I could annihilate that laughter.

“You really have good taste,” he flashed a toothy smile at my compliment. It was late, but that damned child made me stay a little longer. Otes entertained me more in minutes than Olesis and Serna did in hours, or my families in years. We had a fun conversation at the table. If it were up to that wretch, we would have stayed there until he fell asleep.
“Maliris,” he called me. “Why don’t you want me to call you ‘king’? Or ‘champion of the god I don’t remember his name’? What are those names for?”

I leaned over the table and slowly brought my face closer to his to answer. “Absolutely nothing.”

He was confused, waiting for an explanation. “Not gods or kings. Only man. Only man can change his own life. Do you understand, Otes?”

“I… understand,” he said, looking to the side and unsure.

“Your father understands that well,” I said, looking at Olesis. Keeping me alive even though I was who I was so he could have a better life made him look away, embarrassed, but far from regretful.

“Really?” Otes asked, excited. He admired his father. “Dad, what does Maliris mean? Tell me.”

Olesis didn’t speak, and I wouldn’t force him. It was something Otes would only understand in the future, but he hadn’t taken it seriously in our last fight. A coward unworthy of his fame. Hero. What a joke.

“I think we’re done for today, Otes,” I said, standing up.

“What?” he complained. “No, Maliris. Stay, I’m not even sleepy yet.”

Serna took the opportunity. She took her miserable son’s arm and they went down the hall, toward the bedroom. “You heard, Otes. That’s it for today.”

“Will we see each other again, Maliris?” he asked as his legs were forced to keep up with his mother.

“I’m sure we will.” I never wanted to be more wrong.

I grabbed my coat and headed to the front door, where Olesis held it for me to leave. “Thank you for the gift, King Maliris.”

“No need to thank me, Olesis. It’s just my duty as a visitor.” I said politely, before steering the conversation to what really mattered to me at the moment. “You have a great son.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” he said, even bowing.

“You know, Olesis,” I invited him to listen. “After three centuries of making children and watching families multiply, do you know what I discovered?”

He nodded in denial.
“The more you have something, the less it’s worth,” I said, thinking about each of the worthless carriers of my blood. “Take good care of him. He’s a good boy.”
I left, walking away.

If I had known.

If I had known what I know now, this night would have been very different.

If I had known, I would have burned down that house with the whole family in it. Even preventing the ashes of their bodies from existing in this world. But the house and the tree were all I could destroy, because when I remembered his name, he was already my enemy. The enemy that would destroy me and everything I had built.

If I had known.

Tagged Maliris, Olesis, Otes, Serna

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