The Fallen Kingdom

“Its memory will serve as a reminder that the tides will always reclaim even the proudest of creations.”

As the ocean breeze ruffled his ceremonial robes, King Alistair surveyed his kingdom from the parapets of Castle Wallaston. Today marked the beginning of a new era with his wedding to the beautiful Princess Isabelle and his official coronation.

The courtyard below thrummed with music, laughter, and the aromas of the feast. All of Alistair’s loyal subjects filled the castle grounds as they celebrated the future of peace he would forge alongside his queen.

As the sun descended over the waves, Alistair smiled with pride for his people and honor for his legacy.

He turned and headed back down to the feast.

Alistair took his seat beside Queen Isabelle, whose radiant smile outshone even the brightest candelabras. Her cheeks flushed as he took up her hand.

“My love,” he murmured as he drank in her beauty. “You have made me the happiest of men on this most blessed of days.”

Isabelle giggled, covering her smile with her dainty fingers. “And you, dear husband, have made me a queen among queens.”

Alistair grinned and reached for a slice of the intricately decorated wedding cake before them. He brought a slice to Isabella’s lips and let her take a bite. She mirrored the gesture and brushed away a stray crumb from his beard with a featherlight touch. For a lingering moment, they gazed into each other’s eyes while the world around them faded into a hazy dream.

“Shall we take a turn about the dance floor, my dear?” Alistair asked at last, rising from his seat and offering his arm.

But as Isabelle went to accept, the ground beneath their feet jolted. The music fell silent as platters clattered to the stone floor and guests gasped.

“What the devil?” Alistair said, dashing to the nearest window. His eyes widened a towering shape emerged over the horizon.

“Giant!” someone in the crowd shrieked.

Panic erupted as the masses scrambled.

But Alistair stood tall, feeling his blood running hot. His father warned him of the giants. Each king swore a sacred oath to defend the kingdom, no matter the cost, for someday this menace will return.

That day was upon him — upon them all.

Alistair raised his sword. His words rang out, clear as clarion bells over the panicked cries.

“My people! For too long, we have dwelt in this cradle of peace. Too long have the giants slumbered beyond our borders while we rested in complacency! But now — now the storm has reached our shores!”

His eyes blazed.

“On this day — aye, the very first of my reign — I welcome these brutes as a chance to reawaken the fire that lies dormant in ALL our hearts! Let them cast their shadows over our walls to snuff out our light! For it will only burn brighter in defiance and show our path to an even greater glory beyond this crucible!

“To your posts!” he roared. “Archers, notch your arrows! Footmen, ready your steel! We will meet this storm as an unbroken bastion of unity and honor, for we are the defenders of the one true kingdom! Let our battle cries rend the very stones!”

Courage rippled through the crowd. As one, they swept into action: citizens scrambled to find weapons, archers trained their sights on the advancing giant.

A roar echoed across the shore as the giant raised its club high, and towering waves rose at its command and surged over the castle walls.

The initial torrent swept Alistair off his feet and slammed him against the wall. All around, the screams of his subjects filled his ears as the unstoppable tide claimed more victims with every surge.

“Ali! Ali!”

Alistair’s heart seized as he felt Isabelle’s delicate form ripped from his side. “Isabelle!” he cried, battling against the water.

Her eyes were wide with terror as the wave bore her off. Alistair stretched out his arm, straining with every ounce of strength to reach her. For a fleeting moment, their fingertips brushed. Then the turbulence broke his grasp and swallowed her.

“No!”

Another crash of another swell slammed into the battlements. Archers’ arrows glanced harmlessly off the giant’s thick hide as it waded ever closer.

Through the veil of churning water, Alistair watched in horror as his stronghold crumbled. Whole towers sheared away from their foundations like leaves stripped from a tree. Gargoyles shattered against the waves, raining stonework over the overwhelmed defenders below.

Footmen charged forward with their swords and pikes raised, but the giant swatted them aside like insects and let loose a deafening bellow that staggered the ranks. In the chaos, its club caught a dozen men full in the chest, crumpling their armor like paper and flinging their broken bodies through the air.

As another crash shook the earth, a chunk of masonry broke free and sliced through the rope suspending the kingdom’s banner, leaving the once-defiant standard drooping limply from its pole like a defeated combatant.

A dread coiled in Alistair’s gut as he witnessed his kingdom’s defenses being methodically overwhelmed. What foul magic commanded this ogre? They could not survive this.

Unless…

His father’s words echoed from the past. The sacred spear, blessed by the gods of old and tipped with an emerald that pulsed with old magic. A last resort. A final desperate gambit.

Alistair fought through the raging current and clawed his way up the crumbling stairs of the last standing tower. Each wave threatened to swallow him back into their depths, but he held fast. At last, he hurled himself through the open archway of the treasure room.

There, still safely ensconced on an iron pedestal, was the Emerald Spear of Artois. Its tip glowed a delicate green while runes pulsed along the shaft. Alistair took it up and gripped it tight to his chest while a primal power coursed through his bones.

He went down on one knee.

“Oh, great spear. Hear my plea.”

All around, the tower shuddered and cracked from the giant’s assault.

“For centuries, my clan has passed you from generation to generation as both a weapon against evil and a symbol of our undying honor. I am the last heir to this noble clan.”

He rose to his feet, emerald light dancing across his face. “On this day, I take up my father’s mantle with you as my instrument! I am the unbroken chain stretching back into the mists of antiquity! My clan’s destiny rests upon my shoulders!”

The giant’s roar made the air tremble with a sickly odor as its snarling face appeared in the archway.

Alistair stared into its bloodshot eyes. “I am the heir to legacy!”

The giant bellowed again, sticky spittle spewing from its rotting mouth. It reared its massive club back.

“I am the last bastion!” Alistair raised the Emerald Spear skyward with both hands. “Holy spear, strike true!”

As the giant’s sword began its fatal arc downward, Alistair drew upon every fiber of his soul and let the spear loose in a blazing emerald streak.

It soared across the chaos, through the dust of mortar, and buried itself deep into the giant’s hand. An earth-shaking cry shook the heavens as blinding emerald light erupted from the wound and engulfed the giant.

It clutched at its pierced hand as emerald flames licked up both arms. Its roars of agony made the air tremble as the magical fire ravaged its flesh.

It staggered.

The emerald blaze intensified, along with the stench of searing skin. The light became blinding as it consumed the giant whole. Its flesh sloughed off in smoldering piles as the magic incinerated it down to a black skeleton wreathed in green flame.

With a last wail of anguish, the flaming colossus collapsed into a pile of charred bones. A haze of ash billowed outwards, briefly eclipsing the sun before being whisked away on the ocean wind.

For a single moment, the ocean stilled. Alistair breathed a sigh.

The tower, its foundations weakened, began to groan and list. Fissures ran along its stonework as it slowly surrendered to the inevitable.

Alistair had no time to react when the stone beneath his feet dropped. He tumbled through the air full of pulverized masonry.

The tower came apart in an apocalyptic concussion. Immense blocks came crashing down, smashing through levels like a titan’s fist. Support arches crumpled, floors pancaked, and the inner chambers imploded in on themselves.

The crushing tempest of stones, timbers, and water filled Alistair’s world.

As reality fragmented and the darkness closed in, a last vision burned through it all in his fading mind’s eye: Isabelle’s radiant smile, her beauty undiminished even through the veil of his mortal coil’s ending.

With his spark forever extinguished, King Alistair’s essence drifted away into the void, severed from his world, his kingdom, and his love he had fought so hard to defend.

---

“Mommeeeeee!”

Kaylee’s scream shattered the tranquility of the bright summer day.

Kicking up sand, she scrambled back from the water-logged ruins of her sandcastle. Clutched in one tiny fist was a stick she had been brandishing as a club moments before. She clamped her other hand over the opposite, feeling a trickle of blood seep between her fingers.

“Kay? Kaylee, what’s wrong?” Emily dropped her book and sprinted down to the water with her hand at her throat. Her daughter stood with shock and pain filling her eyes. Sobs wracked her small body as she held up her bloody hand to her mother.

Emily fell to her knees in front of Kaylee. “Oh, my — Oh, my god, let me see, honey!” She gently turned the child’s hand to reveal a deep gash in the pinky finger. Jutting out of the wound was a shard of green-tinted glass covered with blood-soaked sand.

“Kevin! Get over here now!” Emily’s head whipped around.

A few yards away, Kevin sat slumped in a beach chair with a beer in hand. He winced and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Huh? Wha’s goin’ on?”

“Your daughter cut herself on a piece of broken glass, that’s what! I told you this beach was filthy!”

Kevin rolled his eyes and took another swig. “Keep your bikini on and your voice down,” he groaned, taking another swig. “She’s probably just being dramatic.”

“Dramatic?! There’s dirty glass sticking out of her finger, you idiot! She’ll probably need another tetanus shot!” She scooped up Kaylee, trying to soothe the wails. “Kevin, I swear, if you weren’t halfway to drunk already…”

“Hey, it’s not filthy. I like this beach… I can drink on this one.” He shrugged, lifting his beer defiantly before draining the last drops.

“Unbelievable.” Emily shook her head and marched back toward the parking lot. The little girl’s head whipped around at the remains of her sandcastle.

“Ali! Ali!” She pointed her bloodied finger back at the crumbled remains where her beloved king figurine lay half-buried.

“Forget it, sweetie. We’ll get you another one.”

Kaylee’s wails continued with an earnest that earned the two more than a few irritated looks from nearby beachgoers. Emily shot them a withering glare.

By the time Kevin caught up, swaying slightly and holding back a few belches, Emily had already buckled Kaylee into her car seat and was opening a travel first aid kit. She tweezed out the glass shard and bandaged the pinky as the little girl whimpered.

She turned to Kevin. “Alright, fun in the sun’s over. Get in loser, we’re going home.” She slammed the car door and climbed behind the wheel, leaving Kevin to collect the last of their supplies.

As their station wagon pulled away, the sandcastle, bit by bit, whittled away into the flow of the tide.

There, lying half-submerged and forgotten, was Kaylee’s king figurine. The little plastic toy lolled in the wet sand. No longer a regal ruler, now just a discarded piece of cheap dollar store merchandise.

As the surging tides rushed in, they did not batter the fallen king’s form, but gently lifted it up reverentially, tensed into an ephemeral hill, and elevated the toy monarch one final time.

For a few moments, the king rode aloft on the liquid dais as the wave slowly carried him out to sea. It was as if the ocean itself recognized this fallen sovereign’s noble pedigree and delivered him away to a more fitting eternal rest.

As the sun slipped beneath the horizon, all that remained was a shallow depression in the sand — a lonely, unmarked grave for a fallen kingdom.

The beachgoers had long departed, but if they returned, no evidence would remain that a great kingdom had ever existed.

Its memory will serve as a reminder that the tides will always reclaim even the proudest of creations.

For now, the virgin sands will wait for the next kingdom to rise, reign briefly, and then surrender to the immutable patterns of birth and destruction.