Children of the Rune – Winterer - Chapter 267

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 37.
Not All Children Are Angels (37)
Hispanie fumbled through his pockets searching for cigarettes, failed, and continued speaking.
“Joshua, you must have heard from Father as well—back then, the House of Arnim’s stronghold wasn’t in Keltika but in the South Sea. You’ve surely heard of Periwinkle Island.”
Joshua nodded.
“There’s a mountain in the South Sea where snow falls uniquely, and they say the most beautiful blue flowers bloom there….”
“I lived on that island when I was young too.”
“Grandfather did as well?”
Joshua’s eyes widened, but Maximian wore a languid expression, as if impatient for the treasure story to finally emerge.
“As you say, Periwinkle is beautiful. It’s the largest island in the South Sea, so there were rulers before the House of Arnim. Then Icabon appeared suddenly, seized Periwinkle, and subsequently subdued the surrounding islands. After that, the islands in that region came to be called the Icabon Archipelago. You may never have heard the name—it’s already vanished from maps.”
“Why was it erased?”
Hispanie shrugged.
“It’s no longer Anomarad Land. When the founding king Richard I and Icabon joined hands to establish present-day Anomarad, it was incorporated into the kingdom. But after relations with the royal house deteriorated and the descendants returned to the archipelago, it became virtually an independent kingdom again. In those days, the combined strength of the entire archipelago could have rivaled the kingdom itself. But that’s not what I’m getting at here…. In any case, as time passed, the population dwindled steadily until now only Periwinkle Island remains inhabited, and the other islands have been abandoned. Among those forgotten islands, there is one called Sunset Island.”
Sunset Island was said to be a small place, less than a quarter the size of Periwinkle. Yet in those days, it inspired fear in the surrounding islands. When Icabon was unifying the archipelago, various family clans from different islands were entangled in a complex web, competing for power. Among them, Sunset Island was the smallest and the most difficult to oppose.
“Sorcerers lived on Sunset Island. Whether you’d call them mages or not is somewhat unclear, but they were different from the mages of the Continent—in any case, they were extraordinarily powerful. Their strength summoned a formidable magical tempest around Sunset Island that no ship could penetrate. Dozens of vessels were lost in invasion attempts from other islands.”
Icabon, a young boy from an island without even the surname “von Arnim,” had become the ruler of Periwinkle Island by his twenties. As this rising new power, people were fascinated by how Icabon would handle Sunset Island. Already being called a genius strategist, everyone assumed he would wage a naval battle against Sunset Island.
“But he didn’t. Icabon took only a small, sturdy sailing vessel and one friend, and sailed to Sunset Island. Using his own navigation techniques, he pierced through the magical tempest and entered the island. It was revealed later that Icabon had judged the unceasing magical tempest destroyed only large combat-capable ships, and he wagered on this. Otherwise, the people of Sunset Island would never have been able to leave their island in their entire lives, wouldn’t they?”
Even Maximian, who had seemed indifferent, was now listening intently. Joshua had only heard of Duke Arnim’s achievements after he became a duke, so this tale of his youth was entirely new to him.
“Having entered Sunset Island that way, Icabon forged a powerful alliance with the island’s sorcerers through dialogue rather than force. And there, well…—he obtained precisely what young Maximian here is so desperately curious about.”
“Treasure?”
The response came swiftly.
“Yes. After it came into Icabon’s hands, it was called ‘the Ruby of the South Sea.'”
“A ruby? Merely a single jewel?”
“Merely, you say?”
Maximian deftly dodged Hispanie’s hand as it reached to strike the back of his head.
“He was the founding duke who accumulated enough wealth to establish a nation. If we’re speaking of treasures, he gathered them in abundance. For such a man to call something the most precious treasure he obtained in his entire life—a jewel glowing with the light of twilight…. Everyone spoke of it that way. The name ‘Ruby of the South Sea’ alone suggested there was something more to it than mere appearance. Yet Icabon ultimately lost that ruby.”
“He lost it?”
Joshua asked in surprise, and Hispanie nodded.
“It happened after he became Duke Arnim. Icabon treasured it so dearly that he returned to Sunset Island several times, I’m told. But in the end, he never recovered it before his death. After that, no one ever saw the ruby again.”
The dying campfire finally burned down to mere embers. Maximian stirred the ash with a stick a few times without particular regret. Joshua recognized that his friend had fallen into contemplation.
“They say the ruby still lies on Sunset Island, speaking of it like a legend. I heard this tale when I was growing up on Periwinkle Island. I thought I wanted to find it, but somehow…—more than desiring to possess the treasure, I wondered if that ruby might be extraordinarily beautiful. That’s the thought that came to me.”
The grandfather speaking thus was somehow different from usual. It was the gaze of one chasing distant beauty, as if remembering dreams from before the age of ten. Perhaps Grandfather had left home precisely to find that jewel?
Joshua, moved by the old man’s eyes, spoke.
“It must be extraordinarily beautiful. Like the twilight in the palm of one’s hand, like a red pebble beneath water.”
“Why don’t you just write poetry?”
Though Maximian’s response to Joshua’s words was gruff, his eyes betrayed otherwise. Joshua picked up the stick Maximian had dropped and stirred the ash once more. From the gray powder, embers swirled upward into the black sky.
It was a night when embers became stars.
Act 2. Barefoot
1. Sister
Don’t dance—don’t dance so beautifully, Ive.
Even as you fall like a flower, I do not wish to remember you.
With your pale feet, from the marble floor to the garden of fallen leaves,
from the roof of the bell tower at last to the sky,
do not dance, Ive.
do not smile at me, Ive.
Keltika held centuries of history within it. Even after nations changed, dynasties toppled, and countless people rushed forth crying out new ideologies before vanishing into the past, it remained unchanged.
There were places more storied than the Capital itself. It was a grand square where the king’s magistrates once carried out executions, and on days without executions, issued proclamations. When the Republic, which had endured like a patient gasping its final breath for years, finally collapsed, thirteen hundred soldiers in uniforms decreed by the new king filled that vast expanse. While people carrying baskets of bread and eggs paused in their steps and watched in bewilderment, some grand ceremony was conducted, and afterward they dispersed, offering the fervent applause that had become their habit.
It was not until the following day that word spread of a king’s return to Keltika. From an ornately decorated platform where the king’s face remained hidden, the royal procession scattered flowers and coins. Weary laborers gathered them and returned home, where they told their families that the profile stamped upon the coins belonged to their new sovereign.
Those who examined the coins closely spread word at the communal well that “the new king is young and handsome,” and children soon learned old songs about “our majesty” from the elders, singing them as they roamed the alleys.
It mattered not that the lyrics were mixed with the deeds of other kings. Thus, the new king, not yet a month into his reign, became one who defeated the Lemme Kingdom three times over, married the red-haired beauty Princess Violita, and joined hands with the ruler of the South Sea to conquer the western seas (though these were three different kings entirely).
That the greatest kingdom on the Continent had been overturned by rebellion to become a Republic, and that a new conqueror ten years later had swept away the Republic and proclaimed himself king, were hardly trivial matters. Yet somehow, few wished to accept such upheaval as reality. If anything was fashionable in those days, it was the pretense of an ordinary life, as though nothing had occurred at all.
For dozens of days thereafter, the Grand Square offered spectacles daily. The people of Keltika soon fell into the habit of visiting once each day. Mysterious appointments, holidays under various pretexts, commemorations, festivals, and executions rotated in succession.
In truth, executions were most frequent, yet even these served as compelling spectacles. Many of the condemned were citizens whose names and faces were well known. They were high officials of the Republic and the nobles who had collaborated with them. Those who had once ruled above them, those who had appeared clever and impressive, now dragged forth in prison garb, trembling with fear—such a sight could not help but be a spectacle in every sense.
When there was nothing else, they held circuses at the very least. The sight of acrobats in colorful garments performing tricks upon the Grand Square, where blood from yesterday had dried in dark stains, was a profoundly strange spectacle if one thought deeply upon it.
And so people preferred not to think deeply. They merely wished to believe they were living unremarkably.
The frenzied executions subsided after about a month. With dozens dying every three days, the supply of condemned prisoners had begun to dwindle. Yet because many still lingered in the square even on days without events, it seemed the spectacles needed to continue a while longer.
On a day when, for the sake of entertainment, they had brought republicans from some countryside village to be executed, white bell-shaped snowbell flowers lay scattered across the Grand Square as twilight descended. A violent rain had poured from the previous night through morning. That year, the seasons had flowed in a peculiar rhythm. Thus the flowers that had lingered even into midsummer were thoroughly washed away by that rain.
Five carriages came to a halt before the Grand Square. From three of them descended men and women dressed in respectable traveling clothes. They were nobles who had fled to distant lands and, hearing rumors, had returned to the Capital.
“Oh my, it’s all finished.”
Children of Rune – Winterer
Author: Jeon Min-hee
Publisher: 14 Month Books
The rights to this book belong to the author and 14 Month Books.
To reuse all or part of the contents of this book, written consent from both parties is required.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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