Nyzara / Vertdae 16 / y’996 – Dawntide
The rich aroma of roasted meat, fresh bread, and exotic fruits wafted across the royal chamber, intermingling with the subtle clink of silver on porcelain as nobles and officials dined under the high vaulted ceilings. Blue and white checked banners bearing the sigil of Aurelior fluttered gently in the breeze slipping through the stained-glass windows.38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEV8g0KtYXL
Trembling as if it were his last moment on earth, an elderly man in thick ceremonial robes stood before his king. His voice cracked but was heavy with conviction as he pleaded, “My liege… because of the influx of faithful over these last two cycles, the Church of Lorea can no longer accommodate enough seats to house all its believers. That is why we submitted a request for the royal development loan—to expand our facilities rather than demolish and rebuild from scratch.”
King Girell Aldus, a younger man with a square jaw, a strong build, and short brown hair, sat lazily atop a gold-trimmed throne beside his silent queen. His golden crown glinted in the morning sun, but it sat slightly askew—as though worn out of obligation, not pride. A goblet of spiced red wine lingered in his hand as he took a long, tired sip.
“How many loans am I expected to grant to the churches this year alone?” he asked, voice calm but cold. “First it was Faeron, then Cronus, then Nyxia, and now Lorea. Tell me—how many goldmarks do the gods require before they’re finally satisfied?”
The old cleric’s brow furrowed. “My liege, with respect, your late father was a devout man. It was his wish that the holy institutions of the realm always have a place of prominence—both for the spirit of the people and the unity of the kingdom.”
The king’s goblet slammed down on the armrest of his throne with a dull clack. His voice rose with the authority of lineage and frustration. “I am not my father.”
The entire dining chamber grew still. Nobles stopped mid-bite, servants paused with trays in hand. No one looked up. The weight of Girell’s words fell like an executioner’s axe.
“My father would have bled the coffers dry for gilded altars and marble gods that never answer when spoken to. But I rule this kingdom now, and I will not bankrupt its treasury over benches and steeples. If your congregation overflows, tell them to worship outside or donate their own coin. And if you can’t make do with what the crown already granted, then perhaps the Church of Lorea would be better suited elsewhere—perhaps in a land that still mistakes faith for power.”
Defeated, the elderly man bowed deeply. “Yes… your highness.” He shuffled away, his cane tapping against the polished marble floor as he returned to his seat at the long noble’s table that lined the throne hall.
One of the queen’s attendants subtly leaned over and whispered something in her ear. The queen said nothing. Her gaze lingered on the retreating cleric with unreadable eyes.
King Girell took another sip of wine and sighed, slouching ever so slightly. “If that concludes our morning business, I bid you all a pleasant Dawntide. Enjoy your meals and let no more religious appeals darken my throne today—”
A soldier by the double doors interrupted with a loud stomp and a voice that echoed like a bell tolling doom: “My liege, the last on today’s docket… is Adrienne Dravarynth.”
He stomped once again, the butt of his spear striking the marble with a crisp crack that echoed off the high-vaulted ceiling. The doors of the royal chamber creaked open slowly, revealing a tall, pale woman with cascading white hair like snowfall caught in the moons’ light. Her steps were deliberate, slow and fluid—each one measured like a dance or ritual. A cloak of deep crimson and shadow trailed behind her, as if whispering secrets across the polished floor. Her black tunic was laced in crimson and her staff, long and metallic with an arcane-cut jewel embedded at its head, tapped gently beside her like a pendulum counting down to calamity.
She made her way down the center aisle, flanked on either side by long banquet tables filled with silent nobility. Their chatter had died down to murmurs and then to stunned, breathless silence as she halted at the base of the marble dais.
With a calm, commanding voice she declared, "King Girard Aldus of Aurelior, I come to affirm the pact once sworn between your crown and the sovereign land of Enos. I demand the purge of Emperor Xandyr of the Valmosian Empire, and I invoke my claim to restore Enos as the rightful capital of Lesméra as the unifier of kingdoms."
The king, seated high upon his ornate throne beside the silver-veiled queen, nearly choked on his wine. Laughter burst from him like a cork from a bottle. "A bold performance! Truly, who coached you? My father was King Girard Aldus. I am King Girell Aldus. The Kingdom of Enos is naught but ash and tombstones. Fell over a decade past. Tell me, who put you up to this charade? My sister, perhaps?"
The woman tilted her head ever so slightly, as if confused by a fogged memory. "Forgive me, King Aldus. My thoughts are still..." she hesitated, her eyes narrowing as though catching threads of time in her periphery, "...hazy."
Girell waved a dismissive hand as a servant stepped forward to refill his goblet. "That’s quite alright, my lady. We all suffer from delusions now and again—especially after too much of the temple’s incense or an alchemist’s concoction. Still, claiming to be royalty of a long-dead kingdom is not a jest I take lightly."
Exhaling through her nose, the woman lifted her chin with renewed clarity. Her voice turned razor-sharp. "Allow me to introduce myself properly. I am Adrienne Dravarynth, last crowned Queen of Enos."
The silence that followed was funereal. A noble dropped his fork. The man playing cello in the far corner froze mid-stroke, the final note of his song trembling in the air before fading into stillness.
Adrienne turned to him abruptly with a wide, almost unhinged smile. "Oh, don’t stop playing. It was a lovely melody."
King Girell rose slightly, his smile gone. His hand tightened on the arm of his throne. "The Queen of Enos is dead. Executed. Burned. Erased. So again, I ask—and answer carefully this time—who sent you to make this mockery of our history?"
Adrienne’s crimson eyes gleamed. "Your father, King Girard, pledged fealty to Enos before Xandyr’s corruption swept across the continent. Your throne was spared by his pact with my bloodline. His betrayal in the aftermath is what doomed us all."
Girell slammed his goblet to the floor, wine splattering across the white marble. "My father is dead! I owe nothing to ghosts, nor to a crumbled dynasty rotting beneath ash, and bone! You dare invoke loyalty to a myth? I remember the Queen of Enos as a child—you are not her. I will not trade my crown for the chains of the past. I will swear no allegiance to a kingdom of dust and miasma!"
The gemstone at Adrienne’s staff pulsed once. Then again. Faster.
She stepped forward. "Then you are a coward and a traitor to your blood. Enos has risen from underneath the bone and ash, and your betrayal will not go unpunished. I will see that golden mockery atop your head melted down into shackles."
The king laughed with a snarl, waving his hand. "Guards. Remove her. Now."
But as the soldiers stepped forward, Adrienne raised her staff and slammed its base against the stone.
A blinding light erupted from the jewel, saturating the chamber in a pulse of divine brilliance that flickered like lightning. For a heartbeat, everything was still—then came the screams.
Behind each guard stationed along the walls now loomed a rotting specter. Where once stood men in polished armor, now towered death incarnate—undead abominations clad in the tattered remnants of their uniforms, flesh half-sloughed and eyes aglow with a sickly yellow fire. Each living guard stood frozen, impaled by a rusted blade driven straight through their armor and out the other side, the steel blackened with decay.
With mechanical precision, the undead wrenched their swords free, letting their victims crumple lifeless to the ground. In unison, the creatures turned toward the nobles, their movements unnervingly synchronized—silent, watchful, awaiting Adrienne’s next command.
The chamber doors slammed shut with an arcane boom as invisible wards sealed the exits. The stench of sulfur and rot flooded the hall like a creeping plague. Plates shattered. Chairs toppled. Nobles shrieked and scrambled in blind panic, trampling one another in their desperation to escape—only to find there was nowhere left to run.
King Girell’s eyes were wide. "Gods preserve us..."
The clattering of weapons and armor crashing to the marble floor echoed across the grand chamber, a sick symphony of death. King Girell Aldus and his queen recoiled in their thrones, trembling in silent terror as the final screams of their slain guards faded into a dreadful stillness.
Adrienne descended the dais, her boots clicking softly against the polished stone. With a flick of her staff, she murmured, "Xilef, as you please."
From thin air, a pair of gloved hands materialized above the queen’s head. One seized a fistful of her gilded hair, yanking her backward in a savage arc. The other plunged a slender, glimmering dagger into the hollow of her throat and dragged it downward, splitting flesh and silk with surgical cruelty. Blood sprayed like a fountain as the queen gargled a final, strangled breath. Her limp body was unceremoniously thrown forward, landing in a heap before a horrified court.
Without pause, a nearby undead soldier raised a rust-eaten warhammer and brought it down upon the queen’s skull, splattering viscera across the nobles seated closest. Screams tore through the chamber—but Adrienne was swift. She struck the floor again with her staff, and from its glowing gem erupted tongues of flame, serpent-like and swift. Each strand slithered through the air toward the mouths of those who cried out, igniting their throats with infernal heat. They combusted in place, reduced to little more than smoldering piles of ash and bone.
Silence returned like a velvet shroud.
King Girell sat frozen; his knuckles white against the arms of his throne. The body of his queen lay twitching in death spasms at his feet, her blood pooling in his boots.
Adrienne turned her gaze toward the cellist in the corner, who had frozen in abject horror. "I said play," she commanded.
The man immediately resumed playing, but what emerged from the cello was nothing like the tune he’d played moments before. It was something wholly new—haunting, mesmerizing, achingly beautiful. A piece no one had heard before. Not even himself. His fingers moved with impossible grace, dancing along the strings in ways he had dreamed of but never achieved, no matter how many years he’d practiced, begged, or wept over this very instrument. Only now, under the threat of certain death, did his lifelong potential finally bloom.
The king’s bladder released in a quiet stream as he sat paralyzed by fear. Adrienne sauntered up the steps of the throne and collapsed lazily into the queen’s vacant seat.
"Now now," she said, casually brushing blood off her sleeve. "Let’s not ruin such a lovely Vertdae Dawntide over a little pageantry. Please," she gestured toward the tables, "keep eating."
Aldus tried to speak but faltered. His lips moved, but no words came.
"Ah," Adrienne said, savoring his misery. "There’s the mewling, piss-soaked princeling I remember. Seems my mind wasn’t as fogged as I feared."
She crossed one leg over the other, letting her fingers dance along the arm of the throne as she leaned in.
"As much as I would delight in watching this place burn and your limbs fed to the divine beasts of Lesméra, I’m offering mercy. Not to you, mind—gods, no—but to your people. For the loyalty that once thrived between Aurelior and Enos. So I will give you a chance to reconsider your loyalties."
Still trembling, Aldus managed, "I will… never swear fealty… to an undead… monster like you."
Adrienne pulled back in mock offense. "Felix," she called, her voice sharp.
From the shadows behind the throne, a figure emerged. Clad in a weathered brown cloak, the man moved with eerie silence until he stood at Aldus’s side.
"Don’t kill him," Adrienne mused aloud, watching the king. "But… do something unpleasant."
Felix raised a cloaked arm. Aldus flinched. There was a flash, then the thunderous report of a gunshot.
A geyser of blood exploded from the king’s lap.
Another shot rang out, tearing Felix’s sleeve apart to reveal a small, finely crafted double-barreled flintlock pistol.
A stunned hush fell as the king shrieked in agony. Where once his manhood had rested, there was now only a blood-slick hole through the throne’s cushion and onto the floor beneath.
"Fuck!" Adrienne exclaimed, half-laughing, half-startled. "I didn’t think you were going to do that!"
"You said something unpleasant," Felix replied coolly.
Still recovering from surprise, Adrienne chuckled, "I don’t know… I thought you’d break a finger or something. Torture’s not really my thing. Gods, what a mess."
Writhing in pain and leaking blood, Aldus muttered between breaths, “I swear… on my crown… I will not… only swear my fealty, but… I will bend the knee to the crown of Enos.”
Placing her hand over his, Adrienne looked down at him, pity flashing briefly in her eyes. “Sweetie,” she said, mockingly gentle, “it’s too late for that now. Felix already shot your cock off. I’m going to need you to select a new king right here and now.”
Tears streaked his face. “Why are you doing this?”
Her expression shifted as if something deep and broken stirred inside her. “You aided the filth that plagued this land. You enabled the murder of my people—my husband, my son, both of my daughters. You enslaved half the population south of the Emberspyre Mountains and labeled them monsters.”
“That wasn’t… me,” Aldus gasped. “That was my father…”
Adrienne paused. Her brow furrowed. “Fuck.”
She slapped her forehead. “Sorry, I guess I was wrong. Turns out my mind is still a bit hazy.”
Sliding back into the throne, she sighed. “Well, you had your chance to repent for your father’s sins. You chose rejection. So—” She flicked her wrist.
A dark void opened beneath the throne, swallowing Aldus and the chair whole in a blink. The floor sealed behind him like water turning to stone.
“I’ll let Magnus deal with him.”
The cello’s haunting tune drifted on.
Her gaze swept across the stunned hall, landing on the elderly man from earlier. “You! The one who wanted the loan. Step forward.”
The man rose shakily, hobbling forward. “Yes, my queen.”
Blushing faintly, Adrienne waved him off. “Oh please. I’m not your queen. But you’ll need to find one—because you are now King of Aurelior.”
He froze. “I… I’m just an old man. I certainly cannot—”
“Xilef!”
A second cloaked figure stepped forward from behind her, only a single braid slipping from beneath her hood. “Yes, your grace?”
“Bring me a soul crystal.”
Xilef nodded, walking over to the queen’s mangled corpse. She knelt, pulled the gem from the hilt of the dagger still lodged in the former queen’s neck, and brought it to Adrienne.
“Thank you, my love,” Adrienne whispered.
Xilef bowed and returned to her place.
Adrienne approached the elderly man, gently taking his hand. She slashed his palm and pressed the gem into the wound, closing his fingers around it.
A flash of pale, colorless light surged into his body. He collapsed to his knees, groaning.
Moments later, the transformation was complete. He stood taller, straighter. His tremble was gone. His aches and weariness vanished. Though still white-haired and balding, he felt young again—rested, whole. His vision sharpened. His hearing cleared. For the first time in decades, his body pulsed with vigor.
Tears welled in his eyes as the man let his cane clatter to the floor. “Thank you, my grace,” he whispered, voice trembling with awe.
As he stood there, marveling at his restored vitality, a rift tore open just above him with a sharp electric hum. Unlike the swirling voids of pure shadow conjured by most mages, this rift crackled with black and neon green light, its edges jagged like cracked glass. Symbols flickered within the seams like broken code, and pixelated sparks drifted into the air as if the fabric of reality itself had been hacked.
From within, the crown once worn by Aldus dropped through the glowing tear, spinning once before landing with a soft metallic chime beside the old man’s foot.
At the far end of the chamber, Adrienne paused at the entrance.
“Build your church,” she said, her voice low but resonant.
Then, colder—almost as a promise:
“But you worship a new god now.”38Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡu7AFu2cl00
