{"id":1953,"date":"2020-04-13T00:15:12","date_gmt":"2020-04-13T04:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1953"},"modified":"2020-04-01T12:29:15","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T16:29:15","slug":"a-to-z-challenge-2020-k-is-for-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/?p=1953","title":{"rendered":"A to Z Challenge 2020: K is for King"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of B is for Birthday<\/a>. It was followed by F is for Follow<\/a> and H is for Hunted<\/a>, You may want to read them first if you haven\u2019t already.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Before the guard could act, Barry held out the message and said, \u201cI bring a message for the king. It is very important, lives may depend on it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The guard paused for a moment, then asked, \u201cWhose lives?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTo tell you the truth, I don\u2019t know. I was told the king wanted this information.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The guard grasped the message but didn\u2019t open it. \u201cAnd who might I ask, gave you this so-called message?\u201d the guard queried.<\/span><\/p>\n

Barry didn\u2019t know how to proceed. So he rambled on with the truth as unbelievable as it sounded. \u201cA fox, that was hurt, who said he got it from a hedgehog who said it was about a magician named Hyde that the king needed to know about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On hearing the name Hyde, there was a change in the facial expression of the guard. He was no longer confident in his stance; there was a touch of worry and concern as he lowered his weapon, made a complete about-face and ordered Barry to follow.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Barry was led into the palace. He was led through an immense door laden with gold.\u00a0 He walked through halls with portraits of ancient rulers and sculptures of knights and warriors past; passed large banquet rooms and smaller storage holdings and ended up at the royal reception room itself.\u00a0 The walls were 20 feet high shrouded in red velvet drapes. Other than that there was little furniture except for the royal thrones centered on the far wall. The King sat upon one throne and the other was empty.<\/span><\/p>\n

The guard explained to the king what Barry had said and handed the message to him. The king glared at Barry with a penetrating eye, then opened and read the message. The king demanded that Barry repeat his story. This time, Barry told the king all that had happened to him since he came home that day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The king listened intently. When Barry was done, the king stood up and spoke.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the fox said was true. No one enters Selat unless they are needed. And indeed you are needed. The hedgehog that gave the fox the message was a spy of mine. His task was to find the magician. If the hedgehog had been found out, he likely would have been killed which is why he enlisted the aid of the fox and the fox of you to deliver this message.\u00a0 The message reveals the location of Hyde\u2019s captives.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Barry questioned, \u201cWhy is its location so important and what do I have to do with it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The king answered, \u201cFor years we knew of Hyde\u2019s activities of enslaving people and others, but since these people meant nothing to us, we didn\u2019t feel it was necessary to find them. The queen, however, a more compassionate person, was very interested in not only finding them but saving them from whatever Hyde\u2019s nefarious intentions were. I humored the queen and made a small effort to find out information, but none was forthcoming. That all changed when the queen disappeared. This, I was sure the work of Hyde and sent out spies, both animal and human, to find his location. Lucky for us one of them found you.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The king continued, \u201cSince the magician knows everyone from Selat, it would be hard to get to him undetected. However, you are not known, therefore it seems that fate has determined that I choose you to be the savior of the queen and those that have been enslaved by Hyde and put an end to his plans. Good luck!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Barry had no time to protest. He was given the message, which included a map to Hyde\u2019s location, a knife to protect himself, and a flashlight. He was quickly escorted out of the palace and back into the area where he had been found by the guard. The escort also wished him luck and then left Barry alone to ponder what to do next.<\/span><\/p>\n

to be continued in <\/span><\/i>M is for Mistake<\/i><\/b><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a continuation of B is for Birthday. It was followed by F is for Follow and H is for Hunted, You may want to read them first if you haven\u2019t already.\u00a0 Before the guard could act, Barry held … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,4,7],"tags":[70,67],"class_list":["post-1953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-to-z-blog-challenge-2020","category-original-stories","category-story-writing","tag-a-to-z-blog-challenge","tag-harvey-heilbrun"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1953"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1974,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1953\/revisions\/1974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hdhstory.net\/Storyblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}