So you know how Betty wouldn’t get out of the monster thing because she said it would reset the crown back to Simon being ice king.
However, when the demon king spits the crown it’s taken by Gunther who makes the wish to be ice king.
And when the previous user of the crown still alive, the crown doesn’t affect other users. That means when Betty die/absorbed the crown reset itself to the wish crown.
Which makes me wonder, when Simon got the crown, what did he wish for?
After centuries of not really having even my mind to wander in, I remember the day that set this whole mess in action, and I can pinpoint the second that everything went wrong for me. I won’t pretend I don’t have regrets. There are details which I would prefer to have been different. Even so, I don’t think I would ever undo most of what I did, if I could. I would always purchase the crown, and I would always put it on. For her… for them.
The Swedish dock smelled of the ocean, and the busy crowd smelled of rum, with a distinct tang of seamen who hadn’t bathed in days. I stood atop the stairs which led down, scanning the dock for my target, seeing dozens of ships of all shapes. Some were clearly designed for space travel, judging by the double-locking airtight cases hanging above them, but some people were evidently still traditionalists, evident from the bulky, old-fashioned cargo ships being stocked with supplies to carry them across the vast ocean.
As my eyes glanced over the last ship, a rather spectacular space-yacht, I found my destination; a bar called The Ernest Eye. I subconsciously held my breath as I dipped down the stairs and into the crowd of seafarers and dockhands. I filled my pockets with my hands in order to deter any others who might think to put their own hands in them, and through much bumping and mumbled apologies, I somehow made it through the door of the shady-looking tavern with all my valuables accounted for.
When I closed the door, the castrophany of the dock behind it disappeared so completely that I had to open the door again to make sure the dock was still there. I closed the door a second time and surveyed the bar. There was not a soul in sight, and even the barkeep was not in position. I didn’t marvel over this long, as sitting behind the bar was exactly what I came for: The Crown of the King.
I approached the bar nervously, half-looking for some kind of entry bell to alert the bartender of my presence, half-hoping that the place was abandoned. My eyes remained locked on the crown.
“How can I help you sir?” I felt my heart hit the roof of my mouth and lurched backwards in pain and surprise. Standing behind the bar, in a position which only a second earlier had been empty, was a handsome blond bartender with glasses similar to my own, if more of a squashed oval shape than a circular one.
“Oh, you surprised me! I… actually, I am looking for a certain something. Specifically,” I pointed at the crown, “that.”
“Ah, yes, it’s a beautiful old thing, isn’t it? Genuine rubies, you know? And solid gold. What did you want with it?”
“Well, excuse me for asking, but… I am an antiquarian, and I would like to add it to my collection. Would you be willing to part with it?”
“Anti-aquarian? What are you doing at a dock if you don’t like water? Anyhow, the crown ain’t mine. It belongs to one of the dock-hands. He leaves it here so that people can see it. He doesn’t want it sitting in a dusty cabinet in his house all day, y’know? You should ask him.”
“How can I find him, then?”
“I’m right here.” My heart lurched to my throat again as the gravelly voice pierced the silence behind me. I turned and saw a hooded man in a dark corner of the bar, just left of the door. He was nursing a drink, so he’d clearly been there longer than I had. How had I missed him? “The owner of that crown holds a lot of responsibility. I can’t just give it to anyone.”
The man was dirty, and there was a strange air about him. His accent was certainly not local, but this was an international port, and many of the dock-hands seemed to have a foreign air around them. The hand that nursed the mug was large, and looked almost blue in the dim light above the table, somehow. He sounded older than I had ever heard someone sound.
“I understand. I’ll be very careful with it, sir. Just name your price, and I’d love to buy it.” The man looked me up and down before locking his eyes on mine.
His face was definitely blue; the colour of someone who had spent years beneath water, drowned and dead, but he didn’t look any less alive for it. But what alarmed me the most was his eyes. They were white, almost as if his iris and pupil had been rolled back in his skull, but on closer observation, the iris was still there, a perfect circle of uninterrupted blue so pale it blended in with the white at first glance. My first conclusion was that the man must be blind, but I had an eerie feeling that not only could he see me, but he was looking right into me.
“I’ll give it to you. You don’t know what you’re getting into, though. Your reckless responsibility reminds me of me when I was younger.”
“Oh, thank you, sir. How much do you want for it?”
“Take it. I have no need for money.” The man waved his hand in the bartender’s direction, and with a nod, he removed the crown from behind its glass case, wearing gloves, I assume so that he didn’t smudge its polish, and placed it on the bar. The bartender pulled a heavy-looking metal box from under the bar, into which he placed the crown and locked it securely before handing over the box and its key.
“I wouldn’t open that in public, sir, there are a lot of thieves about, and we wouldn’t want the crown to fall into irresponsible hands.” I was confused about the responsibility that the two kept insisting upon, but I decided that it was probably just local superstition, and took the box gratefully. I thanked the two profusely, and offered again to pay for the thing, but the old man insisted that he was more happy to have it off his own, and into somebody else’s responsible hands than anything else. I thanked them both one last time for their cooperation, and snuck the bartender a fifty to pay for the old man’s drinks for a while before taking the crown and departing the bar.
~
I first opened the box when I was on the plane on the way home. Since I hadn’t had to pay for the crown, I was able to fly in relative privacy and comfort, and there were only 5 other passengers on the plane. I put on my gloves, and closely examined every inch of the crown. It was identical to the one I had read about in the Enchiridion a week hence. There were five rubies total, with one tall hexagonal gem at the front, and four supplementary diamond-shaped ones spaced evenly around the rest of the crown. The smooth golden surface came to a point above each gem, and despite looking sharper than the sharpest blade, these points couldn’t even penetrate the piece of paper that I tried to move over it. I put the crown away and transferred my notes of the day’s events into my log before falling asleep in my seat.
During my slumber, I dreamed a terrible dream. There was fire coming from the sky, and the ground was billowing clouds of colourful smoke, like the clouds left from atom bombs. The world covered in strange and mythical beasts filled my night, amidst barren landscapes and floating spirit-like creatures. I woke with a start as the plane landed. I anxiously glanced at the seat beside me, but the box was still safely in its place, the key still secure in my pocket.
I exited the plane, still shaken by the concerning dream I had had, but it quickly left my head, forgotten, when I saw my beloved. Before even archaeology, this red-haired beauty, with her glasses which magnified her gorgeous hazel eyes, and her smile which seemed more contagious than pox, was the first and most true love I had ever known. The world fell away in comparison to her, and she became all I could see. And this pinnacle of perfection had agreed to wed me in a few short weeks.
I put the crown and my luggage on the ground to embrace her, and we kissed each other gently on the lips before heading to our taxi. On the way, we discussed my business trip, how it was a shame that she couldn’t come with me because of her experiments, and how much we had missed each other. She asked about the metal box, but I decided to wait until we got home to show her.
“Oh, Simon, that must have cost a fortune.”
“On the contrary, princess, I was given it for free. When the previous owner heard how I was to marry the most beautiful lady in the world, he insisted that since it was once the crown of a king, if I were about to marry a beautiful princess, then I should take the crown, since I would need it.”
“Ahaha, Simon. You flatter me too much! You’re so embarrassing!” she turned away, blushing, her eyes keeping contact with mine. Seeing that she was in the right mood, I caught on, and placed the crown on my head.
“I love you, my queen,” I whispered in her ear, and as we leaned in to kiss each other, I blacked out.
I came to and found dozens of slimy, ghost-like creatures of odd shapes clambering all over my body. I struggled and fought them off of me, but they came down from my head. I felt above me, and the creatures were pouring out of the gems. I tore the crown from my head as a spirit-slug dropped down my nose.
The spirits disappeared as soon as the crown parted with my head, and the world seemed to brighten. I saw Betty, and the world began to fall away. Then it came crashing back in as I caught the look on Betty’s face. The contempt I saw in her, the streaks of tears down her cheeks, and the suitcase by her side were all things I wish I never had to see. They were like daggers right through my heart. What had I done while I was blacked out? I had to make it right.
“Betty…”
“Simon. I’m leaving. Do you hear me? I never want to see you again. Do. Not. Find. Me. If I see your face again… I might just kill you,” she threatened, and with a resounding slam of finality, the door closed on our relationship. I never saw her again after that, and I never figured out what I had done. I was never able to make it right.
I collapsed as a person. For three days, I sat, staring at the crown. It reminded me of an archived tale I’d once read about a ring connected to its master, that had a mind of its own, and drove its wearers mad. It was odd, since the Enchiridion had called it the crown that would save the world, but I felt such evil coming from it. After the three days, I decided that I needed to stop moping, and examine the Enchiridion for clues about what I might have done during my blackout.
From my bookmark of the pages describing the crown’s appearance, I found a piece of text titled The King’s Crown, whichextended over several pages, and decided to read that, since it seemed to tell of the same crown’s history. The book told of The First King, Gilgamesh, who had saved and united the world with the powers stored in his crown, but who had gone quite mad when his love died. In his efforts to save his love, he trapped all the souls of humanity, past and future, in five separate worldlets within his crown. The spirits could travel freely from the stones, but were tethered such that only the owner of the crown could see them.
I don’t know when, but while I was reading, my eyes started seeing the spirits again. The spirits were complacent now. They didn’t leave me, and they were kind to me. They told me that I would be able to save the world with ice and snow, and that Betty would surely come back. I don’t think I really understood what they meant by all that until several months later, when the catastrophe happened.
From space one Sunday morning, a beam came through the clouds larger than anything ever seen before. Without warning, the beam blasted through the planet’s atmosphere, disintegrating almost a half of the planet with it, and shot out the other side. In the blink of an eye, four billion people were killed. The hole left in the atmosphere allowed harmful UV rays through to the planet completely unfiltered.
Society collapsed as humanity became afraid. Resources all became precious, and alliances were formed around them. Then, it became bad. Once populaces started running out of resources, they turned violent. Military weapons and bombs were seized, and turned upon each other. Instead of helping each other in the chaos, more chaos was created, and the population was thinned even more. That’s all I remember of the war, since after that, telecommunications were shut down by nuclear interference.
The whole time, the spirits whispered. Put on the crown they said. Save the world they pleaded. It wasn’t until the nuclear explosions had stopped, and I was on my deathbed from the radiation that I succumbed. I put the crown on, and I blacked out again as the spirits took over, to save the world.
