The Last Emperor

Then we must go find the sky!

The last emperor reached manhood and was crowned the day earthquakes shook the kingdom. Within the hour, the sky went out. 

Where has my sky gone? asked the new emperor. Where is the sky hiding?

His wizards used the old wyrm bones under the palace to scry an answer. The sky is gone for seven years. 

Where is it gone? he asked.

It is gone south. It will come back but until then there will only be night.

Then we must go find the sky! said the last emperor. He was wise beyond his years, for other kingdoms fell, but he set his kingdom to work building a great ship to take them to the south. 

The ship took one whole year to make. During that year a third of his subjects died without the sun to warm them. He comforted the survivors like his own children.

Then they all got on the boat and looked for the south. Without a sky, they could not see where they were going and they traveled lost for a whole year through a labyrinth of waves. In that time, another third of his people died. Those who remained began to despair.

One day his people woke up and saw the sky in the distance. They were so excited and the ship sped so fast that it broke apart. All the people clung to its parts as rafts and found land, which they called “Mevelhaz”. They were so happy to find the sky and the land that they celebrated for three whole days. 

At the end, they realized they could not find the emperor. They looked all across the land. Had he drowned? Had he not made it? 

Then the sky took pity on them, for he had been a good emperor. The sky illuminated the ocean. There was their emperor, at the bottom, a servant to the king under the water. To find their way out of the labyrinth of water, the emperor had to make a sacrifice for his people. He will serve the king under the water for seventy times seven years. Then he will return to his sons and daughters, who remember him every morning when the sky comes back to them.