Chapter Text
The King's vision
Part 1/5
*
Spring was finally spreading its warmth over the kingdom of Alabasta. After a harsh winter, the arrival of the first swallows was celebrated throughout the country.
In the capital, Alubarna, a festival was dedicated to them. For a week, music filled the city streets, and parades delighted its inhabitants.
The one Gol D. Roger, King of Alabasta, preferred was the carnival. He loved to see his subjects dressed in all colors and genders come and burn the effigy of the Winter Giant, Oars. Of course, it was unholy. Oars was a pagan god, and this carnival festival should have been banned by the Church of the Goddess, but no King of Alabasta had ever had the heart to forbid this festival that cheered the hearts of Alubarna's inhabitants after the long winter months.
This year, Rayleigh, his oldest mate, had disguised herself as the queen of Konomi, a kingdom on the southern continent, west of the Rakeshis lands. Despite her age, Rayleigh had looked resplendent in her costume of layered transparent veils and golden chains, and half the castle had danced with her in the main courtyard.
The festival welcomed merchants from all over Grandline, some even from far beyond the Redline mountains that divided the continent into east and west.
The highlight of this year’s festival was the unexpected announcement of the victory of the royal army of Alabasta over their enemies of the south, the empire of Rakesh, with whom they had been at war for ten years. They had finally surrendered, without concession, after years of fighting relentlessly for a piece of land that Alabasta had conquered centuries before, and served as a trading post with the lands beyond the desert of the southern continent. There had been bonfires all over the capital, and even a few fires were caused by the excessive fervor of the inhabitants.
As soon as the news reached the Palace, Roger had sent Scooper Gaban, his other mate, to Flevance, where the peace agreements would be signed. Protocol would have dictated that Roger should be the one to go, but his health was too poor to make such a trip. His people were unaware that his health had deteriorated in recent years, and he hoped to live a few more years, giving his son, Ace, time to grow up and become a man. He planned to abdicate in his favor as soon as the latter reached the age of twenty-one and retire with his mates somewhere by the sea. Roger loved the sea, and Alubarna was in the heart of the country, far from any coastline.
The festivities had been over for a few days and it was time for day-to-day business.
Roger was at his desk despite the late hour.
He was carefully reading a report on elven movements in the north, beyond the land of the Osgoths. His spies reported that they had conquered the north of the continent and were marching south.
One war was barely over, and another was about to begin. But they had time on their hands. The Osgoths were formidable adversaries, and the elves were going to have a hard time subduing them. Roger knew what he was talking about, having fought as a soldier against the Orc Osgoths. His body was scarred all over, and without the power of his familiar, Divine the Dragon, he would have died at least a hundred times over.
Roger coughed loudly. Blood spurted onto the report and it took the sovereign a few minutes to recover normal breathing. His ailment, according to his doctors, was carcinia, a rare disease whose origin and cure were still being sought by the great minds of medicine. The time left to the patient, who was being devoured from the inside, depended solely on his constitution. Fortunately for Roger, his had always been exceptional, a gracious gift of his Prima Alpha second gender.
The second gender was a typical human incongruity. According to the researchers, it had to do with the familiars every human was born with. According to legend, it was a remnant of the giant blood that flowed in the veins of humans, a people who had occupied eastern Grandline before the arrival of humans. Nothing was known about them, except that they were magical people and the only ones who could give birth to a human being.
Then there were the Alphas, endowed with exceptional strength, willpower and stamina. There were the Omegas, who gained resilience, patience and the ability to adapt to any situation. And finally, there were the Betas. At first glance, they seemed like normal humans, but they were particularly hard-working and had an innate sense of things. They were the most common type, Alphas and Omegas being rarer.
And then there were Prima Alphas.
While Alphas were relatively rare in the population, Primas were almost nonexistent. There was one Alpha in every hundred children for every two Omegas. The ratio for Primas was one in ten thousand Alpha children. In other words, one child in a million would become a Prima Alpha. In other words, in an entire kingdom such as Alabasta, with a population of barely ten million...
Quite simply, Roger knew only two Prima Alphas: himself and his nephew Luffy. And Luffy was slow to present. If he hadn't had absolute confidence in Akagami Shanks, the man who had come to see him to tell him that, at the tender age of seven, Luffy had bitten his pheromone glands and that this had indeed caused a change in him, the King would have thought that his nephew would remain a Beta. No seven-year-old child, whether an Alpha in the making or not, would induce hormonal changes in an adult Omega.
Only a Prima had the ability.
In addition to this uncanny ability to bond at any age, the Prima was a born leader. All the great conquerors of human history were Prima Alphas, without exception. His nephew was destined for great things. Roger didn't know what they were, but he could already foresee a great destiny for him, especially with an Omega of General Akagami's caliber at his side. And if he wasn't mistaken, his friend and head of his personal Guard Mihawk's ward, Roronoa Zoro, was also enamored of his nephew.
A smile stretched Roger's lips. He couldn't wait to see the confrontation between the young Roronoa and his general. The young Omega had fangs as long as those of an Alpha. Mihawk had made no mistake in choosing this kid from the streets of Yuba as his apprentice. It was going to be very strange for Shanks to find himself up against an Omega as combative as himself.
And Roger knew what he was talking about. He had three Omegas. Rouge was Omega's paragon and the mother of his only son. Beautiful, graceful, kind and patient, she had worked wonders with the small group she had joined one day after meeting her King.
Silver Rayleigh was a warrior. All she had of an Omega was the scent and the heats. For the rest, Roger had seen few Alphas fight as fiercely as her.
They had met at the Military Academy. She'd already falsified her papers to get in, since she wasn't from the Kingdom of Alabasta, but from the Duchy of Sphinx, where women weren't accepted into the army, but when she'd made her presentation and turned out to be an Omega, she'd hidden it and taken potions to guarantee her place.
As for Gaban...
He was a little ball of pure ferocity.
He and Rayleigh had met him at the battle of Elmar Pass during the war against the Osgoths. The first wave of Alabasta's royal army had been decimated by the Orcs, and when reinforcements finally arrived, they found this sixteen-year-old shepherd fighting side by side with Mihawk and three other army survivors. They'd held the pass on their own, those five bastards.
Roger shook his head, remembering the first time he'd met Gaban's gaze. It was the gaze of a ferocious beast, ready to do anything to defend its territory.
He'd fallen in love with both of them the minute he met them.
He hoped his nephew wouldn't make the same mistake he had.
Sordid stories about Primas Alphas were legion, especially those in which they slaughtered their mates because they lost their sanity during their rut.
When he met Rayleigh at the age of nine, he knew something was wrong. He had felt this urgent need to bite her. He had told his mother and she had explained. And no matter how hard she'd tried to make him understand that stories about Primas were children's tales, he'd still been terrified to learn that he was probably a Prima. This was confirmed when he met Gaban. The same urge to bite him had been born in his chest. And it was this mountain shepherd who had once cornered him when he was in heat. He wanted his Alpha and had refused all his excuses one by one, ignoring his fears. Rayleigh had found them, Roger had asked for her help in calming the young Omega, but she had taken Gaban's side.
Face to face with the two fiery Omegas, Roger had given in to their advances. And praise the Goddess, he thanked her every day for having given in that day. So when the sweet Rouge came into their lives, it was a moment of pure joy, not anguish as it had been for the other two.
Of course, his nephew would have to wait until he had at least two Omegas with him to give free rein to his nature, because with just one, he might well kill him from exhaustion, but he wasn't the monster rumors would have him believe.
Perhaps he needed to talk to Luffy. If so, he was so terrified of being a Prima Alpha that he unconsciously prevented himself from making his presentation.
Damn! Why hadn't he thought of it before?
Luffy's determination and willpower were beyond his own! He could very well block his own nature just because he feared for his Omega's life.
A long shiver ran up his spine and his eyes suddenly burned.
Fire.
The town was on fire and the inhabitants were screaming.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon, while the acrid smoke from fires all over the city obscured the young spring sky.
Arrows split the air and the crackle of spells crackled in the morning air.
"If you want to save your people, surrender!"
The words rumbled loudly, too loudly.
No…
Roger closed his eyes, and the flames continued to dance behind his closed eyelids.
Fear, real fear, gripped his limbs.
He didn't want to.
He refused.
Not yet.
The last time he'd had such a vision, Rouge had died.
Roger was watching his city burn, and he knew it would happen soon.
How soon?
When?
Why?
"In the morning, surrender or your city will burn."
The castle walls appeared. Hanging from the battlements were the lifeless bodies of Rayleigh, Ace and Luffy, while he himself stood beneath them, bloody sword in hand, half-dead, bowing under the blows of the elves, Mihawk's lifeless body at his feet.
How was this even possible?
His spy service was one of the best on the continent! His little brother would never have let such an attack pass!
And yet…
Yet he knew it was the future he saw unfolding before his tired eyes.
"When?" he asked.
"At dawn, Roger," Divine's voice rang out. "They're already here, I can feel their alien magic at work."
The vision vanished.
Roger stood up abruptly. He had to get Rayleigh, Ace, Luffy and Mihawk out of town before dawn. Him? He didn't matter, he was dying anyway.
With quick strides, he reached his bedroom, where Rayleigh was already asleep.
There she laid, sprawled out on the bed. She was a long way from the fierce-eyed little girl with the devastating smile he'd met as a child. Her blond hair was streaked with white and her face dotted with wrinkles.
Ah…
Forty years he'd had by her side.
And it was all coming to an end today.
He approached the bed. Once at her side, he knelt down and caressed her face with his fingertips.
Shit, his eyes were misting with tears and the contours of her face were blurring. No, please, he wanted to see it one more time, engrave it in his memory.
"Roger? What's going on?" Rayleigh's soft voice echoed in the silent room.