Shaken, Meliora ascends, taking a horrified gander upon her surroundings. Her dear, beloved citizens encompass her like a circlet of death, for they lay cold in their own blood. Her expression darkens with horror, for their vacant, soulless eyes infiltrate her soul and rip her apart. Sudden nausea ravages her utterly, thoroughly, completely. She simply can’t bring herself to stare at them anymore—the citizens she swore by blood to serve and protect.
But along this treacherous divide between rationality and folly, Meliora finds a foothold. These hands of hers which revolt against violence fasten so tightly as if climbing out from the darkness. She grips herself as if desperate not to let go. A blaze of hatred and ire ignites once more from within the depths of her soul, lifting her above that pit of panic and hysteria. The queen confronts the scene as if with conviction, then quickly faces her protector Daevarro.
Cleite, bastard daughter of Lord Eleius and sole survivor of the attack, remains arrested in Daevarro’s unyielding grasp. The queen gestures to Daevarro to get the captured foe to her feet. Cleite, hands bound to her back, glares spiritlessly at the queen. The queen calmly eyes the reluctant foe, this girl who appears barely in her adulthood. She is still a babe by Solasúian standards, whose lives persist for more than two human centuries. The scared look on the girl’s face, the passionless gleam in her eye—she did not see the queen as an enemy. She is frightened of Meliora and her presumed wrath, for Cleite’s anger was simply not hers.
“Let her go, Daevarro,” upon this conclusion, Meliora requests of her protector, whose face responses as if soundly rejecting her command. Meliora, noting Daevarro’s reaction, convincingly urges, “Stow your suspicions. There is no threat.”
Daevarro firmly nods and relents his grasp upon young Cleite. The fortitude of the girl crumbles in the queen’s presence. She cowers as close as possible to a ball. Her callused hands wrap around her head, clawing into the back of her scalp with her broken fingernails. She quivers thoroughly in her muddied boots, fretting the fury of the queen. But Meliora offers the girl not the spite of a recognized enemy, but the fond, warmhearted smile of a friend. Her knees willingly break from their resilient stance, dropping to the level of the fetal-positioned girl.
“It’s all right, little one,” Meliora speaks kindly, extending her hand out to Cleite’s shoulder. The gentle hand of the queen frankly startles young Cleite, who unwinds from her coiled position. With a face broad with frightened shock, Cleite finds the queen’s face, which beamed widely. Meliora then shakes her head at the girl's notion, stating, “None of this is your fault.”
It is clear by the look upon Cleite’s face that she knows not how to receive the queen’s gesture. Confounded, her mind scrambles to find an answer. Yet then does a glint of reddened light strike at the side of her eye. A droplet of blood rolls from Meliora’s hand, blood which once flowed in her father’s veins. It is surely a sight which should enrage her, yet her face glooms with melancholy. She recognizes, for the briefest of seconds during her rage, that she witnessed Meliora attempting to save Eleius’s life.
The thought births a frown, which hangs lowly upon Cleite’s face. She rummages through her mind, a stranger even to the valleys of herself. Without a compass, without a guide, she wanders aimlessly. Yet the howl of a thousand angry words inhabits her surroundings as if wildlife, burning her painfully like stings of a scorpion. The face of her father, the nobleman, Eleius Aerin Delmos, writhes with utter furor, bellowing at her with violence. She reawakens to reality as if from a nightmare, darting with her father’s eyes to the queen. Meliora wavers not, but instead extends her other hand beyond her and to the young Cleite. Cleite grimaces at her foolishness, for taking arms for the father who would never love her. She shakes off her negative feelings and firmly accepts the queen’s gesture. The two arise from the blood-drowned cobblestone, soaking in now the warmth of mutual trust.
“T-thank you, Your Majesty,” with a timid bow, young Cleite expresses innocently.
Meliora shakes her head, once more declining the girl’s trail of thought, then affirming, “There is no need for that.”
Cleite closes in on Meliora solemnly, taking a surprisingly uppity position against the queen’s dismissal.
“There is! My father and his friends—they don’t know their fortune to have you as their queen!”
“Change can be quite difficult for some to embrace," returns the queen. "You mustn’t resent them. You must forgive them. Life does not all grow within the same window of time, neither does the hearts or minds of people.”
Cleite immediately shakes her head thoroughly, backing nervously away from the queen.
“No, you don’t understand,” she denies lucidly, drawing the collective suspicion of her company. “…My father and his friends, these are people who don’t intend on changing.”
“How do you mean?” Meliora questions.
“They want to destroy you, Your Grace. They want to destroy everything.”
Meliora’s eyebrows cull inward as her face conforms to her bemusement. There is a sincere urgency in young Cleite’s tone, truly as if she believes that they are real in their intent. It beckons further the solemnity of the queen, who has set forth upon this day and many days for the truth in the deadly rumours blighting her city. She reaches out like a blind man searching, uttering then a single breath. But then her brain records a sight devastating: the body of the young Cleite toppling backwards.
Beads of scarlet chaotically scatter into the air like a pearl necklace torn from the body where it belonged. Before Meliora’s widening eyes did the young girl fall, thundering upon the same ground as her father’s. A hysterical volley of wheezing cries ruptures from where Cleite lies, followed by the sound of panicked sputtering. Cleite gazes now into the infinite blue above; tears blurring the sight, hand clawing at the quarrel embedded in her chest. The queen’s Loyal Knights react with urgency, raising up their scuta as to cover all directions. They become like the shell of a tortoise, devotedly shielding their queen from the sight of the attacker. The head of the Daevarro hectically scours every conceivable direction, hunting for the assassin. The distant, faint gleam of steel then attracts his stare, hailing from a rooftop of a noble’s house within a mile. He captures then the sight of a cloaked figure, standing brash against the celestial background, crossbow in hand.
Daevarro gathers himself, instinctively pushing to pursue the assassin. But his legs then cease of all function, for the agonized voice of his queen reels him back like a tortuous hook upon his heart. Meliora, distraught, scrambles to reach the side of Cleite. However, Daevarro immediately jumps out in front of her, wresting her from making any movement. Meliora vigorously struggles to break free from Daevarro, demanding, “Release me! I have to help her!
Release me!
”
But Daevarro didn’t let go. No matter how much it torments her or pains him, Daevarro
cannot
let go. As is his duty as both her protector and as her dear friend, he
has
to get her to a place of sanctuary. With every cell in his body screaming at him, Daevarro bellows, “We must go, Your Grace! You’re in danger!”
“I must help her! Release me, Daevarro!” his queen yet still continues to fight back, repeating the same demands.
“I can’t do that, Your Grace. Not when your life is in danger!”
Daevarro’s words seem to reverberate in Meliora’s skull like the ringing of rationality. She is aroused from her hysteria as anguish blackens her expression. Although the weakly weeping of young Cleite tempts Meliora’s emotions, the queen is aware that, regardless of anything, that she must live. She laments her powerlessness, despite the regalia of power atop her. She willingly relents to Daevarro’s influence, allowing him to take her away. But she commits devotedly to a gaze astern, thoroughly absorbing these sights, these sounds, these feelings.
But more importantly, Meliora stares intently upon the bleeding body of Cleite. She stares and stares. She stares as the distance between them grows. She stares as if to perpetually burn her image into her brain.
Under a black-steel dome and in the safety of her protector’s grasp, Meliora manages to escape the nightmarish scene. They thoughtlessly trample over the dead to escape, leaving behind Cleite, who listlessly weeps beside the empty corpse of her father. The tip of a bolt follows after them, but its true target alludes its path. Caerus—the cloaked figure—stands angrily upon the rooftop. A furious grumble bubbles up from his gullet, completely dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Disgruntled, he stows away his crossbow and retreats, slithering back into the shadows of the court.
A
king, disinterested and aloof, presides over a heated strife of angry voices.
Shafts of fiery-blue light filters through a set of towering windows along the eastern walls of this place. Vividly, they bleed over the fallow-skinned visage of a man in the most paramount of all seats. Stern of expression, the king Raphael Divus Barn leans over an opulent table with an impatient finger. It taps frustratedly against the smoothened mahogany, seeming to count the seconds of time he has wasted. Another second, then another second; it simply emboldens his vexation over the situation as a whole. He breathes deeply as if to restrain himself, gathering in the familiar mustiness in this place. A room of significance, where adamas crystalizes the walls and violet banners depicting a dragon with the wings of a bird hang to remind him of his victory—a victory claimed in his bygone youth, a victory claimed in an act of regicide. Yet their sight and glory they bring are not things Raphael actively seeks, for laurels must not be rested upon. Instead, his gaze hones precisely ahead of him. His eyes shoot straight down the middle of this rectangular table. Directly adjacent to his seat, on the other side of the table, is the only seat of importance…and it resides empty.
The sight of the unoccupied chair toils Raphael to his very marrow yet courses through him like a ravaging fever. He then exhales even deeper than before, focusing his rattled mind instead on the irrelevant discussion occurring before him. The flurry of loud, ireful sounds unclouds, bestowing the king clarity to their conversation. Several talking heads in rapid fire, discharging words sharp and barbed. Eleven other chairs are seated at the table: five to his left, five to his right, and one straight across from him. Although some chairs lay barren, most are occupied, held by the politically influential, the morally astute, and the nobly affluent.
These souls build Raphael’s council, the illustrious Ruler’s Council. They are as combatants, gladiators who wield their opinions and arguments like armament. They enter this political arena and passionately, viciously eviscerate each other, all to impress their king. This is the fate of all who sit upon the Ruler’s Council, for this small assembly of individual directly embodies the state of the Imperial Kingdom of Governanti and its society. Merciless, cannibalistic; the table afore them is washed in lost dignity and respect like blood upon the arena sands day-by-day.
“Come now, Lord Nemeth… That is completely absurd,” a plummy voice contests, hailing from a nobleman to the king’s far left. These are the first words Raphael pays mind to, the words of Lord Aidan Anguis of House Cayrel, clan of the silver-tongued. Lord Aidan’s face falls sternly yet struggles to conceal a contemptuous grin. “This phantom you speak of is yarn spun by wet nurses to frighten little ones.”
There is a shift in the room’s tone as all eyes dart to the king’s right. There they find him, the bastard of perhaps the most infamous lord in recent memory, sitting calmly in his burning seat. With folded hands against his face, Lord Achernar Nemeth faces Lord Cayrel straightly as if with honesty.
“Would you deny the possibility then, Lord Cayrel?” asks then the smooth, even-tempered tone of Achernar.
“Of course. What you propose is a witch hunt, nothing more.”
“It is not,” Achernar adamantly maintains, shaking his head.
“Have you evidence to present to this council in support of your claim then, Lord Nemeth?” an inquiry then escapes the throat of Lord Decimus Ishvara, whose voice is as rough and aged as his visage.
Seated just across from Achernar, Lord Ishvara shoots him a stare as cold as the blue of his eyes. His coiled spine arches up, straightening as if invested in the conversation. Indeed, Achernar becomes a force of gravity to the budding curiosity of his fellow council members. Some raise their eyebrows, some clinch their chins, but each of them prepares to call Achernar into question. With the patience of a hunter, many of them seek his elaboration with eager preparation. But Achernar is a stag with foresight, well-versed in their games and tactics. He breathes in and releases all his bottled anxiety, facing his fellow council members with confidence.
“I do not possess any physical evidence, no,” Achernar explains, invoking the ridicule of his fellow council members. “There has been an escalating slew of whispers of all manner of foul plots and schemes against the crown upon the streets. They call for—”
“Cease your words,” Lord Ishvara’s stone-like tone pierces through Achernar’s words. Decimus’s passionless gaze takes on Achernar like winter to water, freezing his voice utterly. The brow of the elderly nobleman furrows with wrath, staring down upon Achernar as though higher than he. “You would dare insult this council and Our Empyrean by presenting us rumours and conjecture?”
“They are not simply rumours and conjecture, Lord Ishvara,” Achernar insists as if solid upon the ground of truth—the hill he’d surely die on. “They are the prelude of something much greater, something much darker. There is a different air in Governanti!”
“'Different air,'
you say,” quotes then Lord Cayrel, barely withholding his laughter. “Perhaps it is merely the stink of the neighborhood dogs that embodies your
'different air.'
”
“Oh, control your eagerness, Lord Cayrel. You’re embarrassing yourself more so than Lord Nemeth is,” condemns another from the right of the king.
The noble, honeyed tone hails from an older Solasúian female, whose features bear similarities to the queen. She is Lady Metis Mairwen Mundus, eldest sister of the queen herself. She sits as to represent the interests of her house, as all members of the Ruler’s Council did. Yet she sits so pristine as if above all of them, these nobles upon the highest of echelons. Lord Cayrel then turns within a moment in Lady Mundus’s direction, displaying still that prominent, disdainful smile.
“Well, if the words of commoners are to be accepted by the council now, perhaps we should give that rumour of Empyrean Balor’s bastard child a second look,” mockingly suggests Lord Cayrel.
“Now you’re just making a fool of yourself,” Lady Mundus admits without pause.
“Tell me I’m mistaken then, Lady Mundus. Should we—”
As Lord Cayrel proceeds in response, the air springs with sudden sound. Opulent, polish wood splits open, the swinging of a door as it now stands ajar. There, stepping into the coliseum, is Lord Caerus Alcain of House Kórakas. He disguised his former actions upon this day well, wrapped ordinarily in the ornate, voluminous woolen cloth of his toga. The wood shudders with the door’s closure as then Caerus formally presents himself to the council whole.
“Ah, Lord Kórakas, you made it,” observes Lord Cayrel, leaning back comfortably in his chair.
Lord Kórakas, eye-to-scornful-eye with King Raphael, then places a left palm—faithfully branded with a scar of loyalty—flat against the right of his chest. His neck then breaks, lowering as if to demonstrate respect to his king.
“Please forgive my lateness, My Empyrean,” pleads the tongue of Lord Kórakas. “There was some unexpected business which warranted my attention; an accident in training among my boys, you see.”
The face of Achernar expands with concern, knowing well the two boys he speaks of. Granted a moment of freedom, his eyes break from the council and seek out Caerus.
“…What happened? Are they well?” utters Achernar in a single, fluid breath.
“Settle yourself, Lord Nemeth. It was minor,” Lord Kórakas alleviates the swelling pressure of Achernar’s worries. Yet a fatherly smirk promotes the aging creases upon Caerus’s face, beaming with twisted pride. “It would seem that Tyrillus is simply becoming too much for Cainrus to handle.”
“Be seated, Lord Kórakas,” directs then a deep, booming tone, an undeniable command from the crown.
The weight of King Raphael’s amethyst stare falls solely upon Lord Kórakas’s shoulders, compelling him to hurry to his seat. Lord Kórakas finds his seat calm and casual, seated at the right side of Lord Ishvara.
“Thank you, My Empyrean,” Lord Kórakas graciously expresses his gratitude with a formal bow of his head.
“I will waste not a second more upon this frivolous talk of shadows,” then demands King Raphael to the council whole, unexpectedly jarring the composed Achernar. “Shift the discussion to something real and true.”
“Might I suggest discussing your campaign upon Alverra, My Empyrean?” Lord Caerus Kórakas offers, trickling with the eagerness of a famished hound.
Lord Kórakas’s proposal, despite inspiring a few nods, suits Lord Ishvara like waterlogged clothing. The well-aged nobleman thrusts a harsh, gelid glare square into the warrior-nobleman Lord Kórakas, seemingly intent on adding to the plethora of scars upon his face.
“…Typical Kórakas, always first to speak of war,” Lord Ishvara reviles.
