A/N: I actually wrote this for King's birthday, but I posted it only on my tumblr because I'm lazy. Anyway, here it is. I still don't understand why I wrote something like this for his birthday, it's just angst and King suffering.

This is settled a few days before King meets Gilthunder and then goes to the Capital of the Dead.

All he can do

Everything burns around him, the fire enveloping the trunks and the fronds and the wood creaking and snapping, an unbearable sound that deafens and confounds him. He looks around breathing heavily, his heart pounding, and he feels a tightness in his chest when he suddenly recognizes the place. It's the Fairy King's Forest, his home, his domain.

And it's burning to the ground.

King wants to move, to stop the flames, he wants to run and find his people and his sister and save them from this nightmare. But he can't do anything, his body is frozen, and when he tries to scream he realizes that his voice is gone. He swallows and looks around, fear and horror increasing in his chest, looking for something that could help him break free from this spell – because it has to be a spell, a powerful spell that imprisons him and prevents him from saving his home.

At that moment he sees her. Elaine's body is laying on the ground, almost unrecognizable because of the burns – her skin is black and red, her hairs are gone, and he can see the white of her bones; her eyes are open and staring at him, blaming him and judging him even after her death. He stops breathing, feeling as the air is stuck in his throat. All he wants is running to her, to help her and heal her – she can't be dead, she can't, he refuses to believe that.

But his legs don't move. He can't do anything but look at her, while the fire consumes her body, incinerating it. Tears fill his eyes and although he doesn't want to look he can't take his eyes off of her. He has to stares until his sister disappears in the flame, not more than a pile of black bones.

And when he can finally look away, his eyes meet Helbram's. He is standing a few feet from him, his hand on his chest, blood spilling through his fingers. His eyes are wide and full of tears, and when he tries to speak red drops of blood drips from his lips. "Why?" He croaks, and King can't answer, his heart beating so fast that he can almost hear it, like the sound of a drum in his ears.

"Why?" Helbram repeats, before falling on his knees and then on the ground, his eyes closing. King wants to scream, to run next to him and say that he is sorry – he didn't want to do that, but it was the only way, the only way to stop him, the only way to fulfill the promise he made to him.

But his legs are still frozen and again he is forced to watch while the flames consume his best friend's body, until there is nothing left, until the whole Forest has burned and there is nothing left, just the skeletal, black shapes of the burnt trees.

That's when he wakes up with a gasp, his hand lifted as to command Chastiefol to do something, anything to stop the fire. But when he looks around, he is not in the Forest and the flames have disappeared, replaced by the white walls of the room where he slept in the last few nights, waiting for Gilthunder to meet him.

It was a dream. Of course, it was a dream. He wasn't in the Forest when it had been destroyed. He wasn't there to help his friend and Elaine, to protect the Sacred Tree and the animals who lived under his fronds. He lost them all.

King closes his eyes, trying to hold back the tears, grabbing the pillow form of his Chastiefol and hiding his face in it.

He just wanted to protect them. His sister, his best friend, his people, his home. But he failed, he failed Helbram ahead of all and then all the others who had faith in him. Why did the Sacred Tree choose him? He is the worst king ever, and a weak, unworthy man.

He let the ones he had to protect being killed and burned, and there is nothing he can do to change that.

The only thing he can do is revenge.

Rage burns in his chest and he grits his teeth when he thinks about Ban, his comrades, a man he trusted and that betrayed him in the worst way he could. Now he is free, probably laughing and drinking like he deserves that, deceiving Diane and the Captain, and King can't bear that – the thought of that monster sitting next to his friend and Diane, his dear Diane, touching them with his hands dripping with blood, the blood of his sister, the blood of his people.

King will stop him, no matter the cost. This won't make his people come back, he knows that. But he can only hope that, if they are watching him, they will be happy to watch the man who killed them to die by his hand.

And maybe in this way King will be able to make amends for his sins, at least in part.