It is a lonely and far and dark place, the world about her, that has the soft drip, drip, dripping and dampness only humidity can provide. Everything smells of salt and the sea. Sighing of waves far away, outside a door, somewhere further within the recesses of this underground network of caves serving as Terrastella's Dungeon that go on unending, reach curled ears slowly, softly. In the darkness she opens eyes of holly and sage, eyes so young and so wise and so old that even the old oaks strains to find their secrets when she gazes upon them. No, cut that, gazed. Dalmatia has been here for three years, two months, thirteen days and nineteen hours. Every agonizing second at first went too slow. She kept track of them all. Then, they went too fast. Swirling around as Charybdis, always hungering after her next breath, her next moment alive. Time devoured it all.
But time did not take away her crime, nor her memory,
It could never make her forget.
Anger and betrayal simmer under the surface, crawling as termites in her skin, pulling her away from the light. Now, as another evening is coming to a close, Dalmatia listens to the gentle dripping in her cell. Stalactites are leering teeth, an open mouth, waiting to swallow her like the rest of the accused in this darkness. Oh, but the light of Terrastella, the once-vicarious does not give in, does not waver under Caligo's darkness. She has been a part of it too long to let it take her now.
Another day will come to pass, and she will continue to rot, she is sure. Truths far less important and potent have been hidden for lesser crimes. Whatever the monarchy chooses now, she only knows this: she is loyal to the Halcyon, and she is loyal to Vespera. Goddess help whatever soul crosses her path once she finds her way out again.
Beware: I am fearless, and therefore, powerful.
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