☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
heavy is the head that wears the crown
The fires are out, and the bodies burned with them; the Davke have run back to the sands or hunted down and left for dead. For a breath, the silver thinks, as she stands on the battlements, staring out at the rolling dunes of golden sand stretching out endlessly towards the horizon, the devastation has passed, but it has passed through like a hurricane. The storm is gone, but now she knows that the wake will never be over. The dead will remain dead, and what was destroyed – a hundred year’s history and every tool that enabled her people to survive in a merciless desert that was ravenous for their blood – can never be brought back. She is left like the smell of smoke that still clings to the capitol. She remains. She remains, even though she has never wished more desperately to run away in all her life.
Her troubled dreams taste like blood and death, and, no matter where she looks, she is reminded of her failure, of the people she could not save, the people that deserved far better than this, hunted down and slaughtered in their own homes. Unjust. Merciless. She has never thought herself righteous, and perhaps she is not, but she aches for them. She aches for the children, for the elderly, for the innocent – for those who could not defend themselves, for those who she could not protect. Perhaps it is her soldier’s training at work, the part of her that was beaten and broken into absolute loyalty to her court’s defense. Perhaps it is something more sentimental than that, too, but, if it is, she does not want to let it in. If this has finally been enough to stir the parts of her that she has so carefully buried, she will force them back down; she cannot afford to compromise her logic, least of all now.
She blinks sunlight out of her aching eyes and turns back down the ruined stairways, descending into the cooler depths of the palace. Everywhere she looks, she seems to find shards of glass and broken wood, or dark smudges of ash. She moves through the sun-dappled hallways like clockwork, exhausted limbs propelling her mechanically from one room to the next until she arrives in the mess that was the throne room, though it seems nothing like one now – the throne is blackened, with the symbol of Solis carved out of it, and the beautiful stained glass windows lie in piles against the walls. At least, she thinks, the blood has been cleaned off the floor.
Quick on her heels is a young courier. “The…envoy from Denocte has arrived, my lady. Shall I let him in?” She glances back at him, guising her reluctance with apathy.
She had not accepted Isorath’s request for an audience lightly; in truth, she did not wish to accept it at all. However, in the interest of knowledge, she had begrudgingly agreed. Know thy enemy, she told herself, though Denocte’s intentions seemed to her rather clear based on their treatment of Terrastella and their attack against her citizen. Nevertheless, in spite of her present arrangement with Florentine and her own injury, she prefers to avoid the appearance of outright hostility – she knows that her people cannot withstand another attack, not now. As far as she is concerned, she will be perfectly polite to Reichenbach’s newest paramour – another thing that she fails to understand about the Night King, and the entire situation with Denocte and Terrastella, but interpersonal tangles have never been her interest - and then send him on his way.
She does not wish to do this, but there is work to be done.
“…yes.” She makes no attempts to guise the war that brews beneath her skin, barely tempered by restraint; she awaits the dragon statuesque, her white hair tousled free of its braids and her eyes rimmed red from sleepless nights.
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tags | @isorath
notes | <3
heavy is the head that wears the crown
The fires are out, and the bodies burned with them; the Davke have run back to the sands or hunted down and left for dead. For a breath, the silver thinks, as she stands on the battlements, staring out at the rolling dunes of golden sand stretching out endlessly towards the horizon, the devastation has passed, but it has passed through like a hurricane. The storm is gone, but now she knows that the wake will never be over. The dead will remain dead, and what was destroyed – a hundred year’s history and every tool that enabled her people to survive in a merciless desert that was ravenous for their blood – can never be brought back. She is left like the smell of smoke that still clings to the capitol. She remains. She remains, even though she has never wished more desperately to run away in all her life.
Her troubled dreams taste like blood and death, and, no matter where she looks, she is reminded of her failure, of the people she could not save, the people that deserved far better than this, hunted down and slaughtered in their own homes. Unjust. Merciless. She has never thought herself righteous, and perhaps she is not, but she aches for them. She aches for the children, for the elderly, for the innocent – for those who could not defend themselves, for those who she could not protect. Perhaps it is her soldier’s training at work, the part of her that was beaten and broken into absolute loyalty to her court’s defense. Perhaps it is something more sentimental than that, too, but, if it is, she does not want to let it in. If this has finally been enough to stir the parts of her that she has so carefully buried, she will force them back down; she cannot afford to compromise her logic, least of all now.
She blinks sunlight out of her aching eyes and turns back down the ruined stairways, descending into the cooler depths of the palace. Everywhere she looks, she seems to find shards of glass and broken wood, or dark smudges of ash. She moves through the sun-dappled hallways like clockwork, exhausted limbs propelling her mechanically from one room to the next until she arrives in the mess that was the throne room, though it seems nothing like one now – the throne is blackened, with the symbol of Solis carved out of it, and the beautiful stained glass windows lie in piles against the walls. At least, she thinks, the blood has been cleaned off the floor.
Quick on her heels is a young courier. “The…envoy from Denocte has arrived, my lady. Shall I let him in?” She glances back at him, guising her reluctance with apathy.
She had not accepted Isorath’s request for an audience lightly; in truth, she did not wish to accept it at all. However, in the interest of knowledge, she had begrudgingly agreed. Know thy enemy, she told herself, though Denocte’s intentions seemed to her rather clear based on their treatment of Terrastella and their attack against her citizen. Nevertheless, in spite of her present arrangement with Florentine and her own injury, she prefers to avoid the appearance of outright hostility – she knows that her people cannot withstand another attack, not now. As far as she is concerned, she will be perfectly polite to Reichenbach’s newest paramour – another thing that she fails to understand about the Night King, and the entire situation with Denocte and Terrastella, but interpersonal tangles have never been her interest - and then send him on his way.
She does not wish to do this, but there is work to be done.
“…yes.” She makes no attempts to guise the war that brews beneath her skin, barely tempered by restraint; she awaits the dragon statuesque, her white hair tousled free of its braids and her eyes rimmed red from sleepless nights.
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tags | @isorath
notes | <3
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
