Once upon a time, in a castle nestled high in the hills, a man sat at his son’s bedside. He held his ailing son’s hand with a grip too fierce for the boy’s pale skin and fragile bones. They had fought as long as they could; there had been physicians, medicines, bloodletting, so-called witches and soothsayers brought in from faraway lands. But the illness could not be given a name. It could not be cured. The prophecies spoke of the only truth the man had known since the day his son had turned seven years of age, just two short months after his wife, the boy’s mother, had passed. And now, as the man stared solemnly out the open window of his poor son’s bedroom, he had nothing left to lose as the sky cried upon their little family.

The Prince of Vaerithea was dying.

And the King had nothing but legends and poems, old tales and myths of a long-forgotten song.

With one last kiss to his son’s thin knuckles, he departed the room and called upon his most trusted guards and knights. They were all brave men, resilient and faithful. The King knew he would be asking too much. He knew the legend spoke of a perilous path and dangers so terrible they could not carry names.

But this was his son.

“I ask of you all, my five courageous men, to find the lost Song of Salvation.”

The King spoke softly, eying his knights carefully. Their faces became shadowed and saddened, worry creasing their young brows and the sight made the King ill. He was the King known for good, for grace. He was the King known for bringing a land out of ruin and into redemption.

He was not this King, this King that inspired doubt and fear.

To see these men pity him? It broke his heart.

“But sir,” one man said, “it is only legend.”

“The Song of Salvation has been lost for centuries. Mortal men have only heard the tales,” said another.

“Then you shall have the tales to guide you,” said the King. “I cannot – I cannot lose my son. It will break me. If he dies, then I, too, will die. My heart will beat, my lungs will breathe, but my soul will die with him. I will be a shell of a man. Of a King. I – I will be nothing.”

The King brought a hand to his face where tears began to stain his cheeks. It was sorrow, sorrow without hope that made him cry in that moment.

But it was his sorrow that inspired his men.

“I will make this journey,” the youngest of the five men said. “And I do it for you, sir. And for the Prince. Even if I travel alone.”

The young man’s deep breath caused his chest to swell with pride. The King thanked him with the sorrow still in his eyes and one of the other men said:

“I will journey with him.”

“And I,” said a third.

After a long moment of trepid silence, the remaining two men held their heads high and stepped toward their King.

“We will all make the journey. We will all find the Song. We will all save our Prince.”

“And we save our King in return.”

And so the men journeyed, the five of them so valiant, carrying swords that gleamed with magic in the blade under the moonlit sky. For three months they traveled, shivering in the night with only myth and hope to guide their steps. It was not an easy task. The fearless knights trudged through the Moor of No More Miracles and further west, beyond the dry grasslands known as the Empty Heart of the Hero. One man lost his life when he fell into a deep chasm shadowed by the Death of the Weary and another fell ill for a week after drinking from a stream that trickled down from the Mountain of Brine.

One day, the sun shone bright on the side of a tall ledge. It seemed more like a stepping stone for a giant, but the rock face was patterned in one area, dotted with seven diamonds in the shape of a daisy flower.

With seven of their eight thumbs, they pressed the center of each diamond daisy.

A doorway appeared.

The men expected light, some sort of brilliance, some sort of beautiful song to trickle into their ears. But there was only silence. Upon entering the doorway, they found the ground littered with dried and deadened daisy petals. They tread carefully as they walked further inside. The daisy petals seemed to accumulate the deeper they explored. Eventually, piles and piles of the dried petals filled the long corridor that never seemed to end until the men nearly had to swim through them.

Until they came to a pedestal made entirely from diamonds and rose vines which made no sense at all.

But there was no song. There was no lark. There was no magic harp or a jar filled with the voice of a Siren.

There was only a boy. A boy with dark curls and reddened lips despite his tomb. He looked to be sleeping rather than dead and the men fell silent when they looked upon his smooth cheeks.

He looked like a child god.

The boy jolted upright, gasped air and sound and shock and life.

His gaze darted around his cavern and when the boy’s eyes fell upon the four men at the side of his pedestal, one of the men asked:

“Are you the Song of Salvation?”

The boy tilted his head in confusion or curiosity, the men could not decide which, and he reached a hand toward them. When the knights stepped back into the sea of daisies, the boy withdrew his hand and scooped a single, dead petal into his palm.

He smiled at the thing and inhaled, blowing his warm breath onto the petal and when he did so, the petal was no longer dry.

It swelled and colored, once again a full, living flower.

He looked back to the men.

“My name is Blaine.”

By the pricking of thy thumb upon a daisy chain
The ever long Song of Salvation shall sing once again
When hope and God hath no light to give
The Song is last
The final to live
Weather west or east or northern lands
Where Weary cracks do swallow man
Less than many yet more than one
It takes to seek
The last of love
A Song of old but forever tragic in youth
Does bring a soul from death to truth
Be wary, children, for great torment is assured
In those perils beyond the western Moor
For the Song of Salvation has but one note to final sing
Upon a bed of stars
Safe beneath an Angel wing

- The Song of Salvation, the last remaining written tale of the Song of old, etched upon a scroll. Found in the ancient Vaerithean library.