Dragons, Dungeons, & Dust

The Legends of Aëkæsha

-Rosæ-

Before

Deep within the galaxy of Aëkæsha lies a legend. A legend of braided stone and knitted wood. Where kings and queens shuddered and emperors and empresses reigned in fury.

In the dead of night when soldiers run and babies cry, lies a girl sleeping but alive. Whispers of the dead float through her wind, encasing her tiny flesh body in darkness. All she knows is to cry out in fright, scream in the face of the world's darkest terrors.

Only legends spoke of such a creature, born of hatred, bred through vengence and wrath. A son of a god, the son of a demon of smoke and ashes. He is only a whisper on the winds he rides, up to copper and limestone turrets. To the upper floors of the castle of Katar.

The creature ripped the curtains to shreds, peeling the remains of tattered morning blue and ash lilac silks, and letting them slip to the ground. Its claws itched, burned, yearned for the cries of the youngling that lay onto steps away.

Baby Rosæ breathed short and shallow breaths, bundled in a fit of silk and linen sheets, twisted and tied around her. The creature slid closer, tasting the air delicately. With a smile, it curled a claw against the Princess' face, her blood pearling against the fresh cut in her cheek.

She screamed.

Tearing air and cloth into ribbons.

Tentacles of darkness wraped their way around her lower limbs, cackling in the dim light. By the time her parents came running it was too late. The creature of darkness reared snarled, sinking its claws into the peak of her spine. A cry split from her lips, cracking against her throat, red and raw.

Sharp as bone, soft as flesh.

A storm rose above the limestone spires, the tower shaking as the creature roared its pleasure into the opening night, claws curling around the bones of her spine.

Rosæ's father ran into the room, horror crawling over his face at the sight of his little girl, wrapped in darkness, screaming into the darkness. Her tiny fat arms flayed left and right, attempting to bat the creature of darkness away from her. But it just laughed.

Her mother screamed, her eyes glazed in horror. Before Rosæ's father could stop her, her mother ran forward ripping the creature from her child's body. Rage sparked in the creature's scream, in an instant it had pitched baby Rosæ's mother from the opened window, out into the darkness.

Her shriek echoed down the length of the castle tower, until her body came to rest against the the turqiouse stones of the palace garden. Blood ebbing onto the stones and turning the garden into a midnight sea.

Rosæ's father fell to the floor amidst his daughter's wails, his breathing sharp, hitched in his body. The shock did not leave him for seven luneyears, until his Princess Rosæ was nearing eight luneyears of age. Until the day when the inky darkness spread through the remainder of her spine. Dark vines, wrapping around her spinal cord, trapping her to her bed. The day when he gave up on his Princess, when the pain of seeing her was a constant reminder to the loss of the love of his life.

And that night he asked a handmaid to deliver her to the outskirts of the village, left for another family or left to be found by the hyenas that roamed the scorched land outside Katar. That night the castle went silent as the staff was executed where they stood, to be replaced come morning. For the castle to be wiped clean of the former queen and princess. It took one luneyear until the king had remarried, and another for the king to announce the queen had bore him twin sons.

It didn't take long for the King of Alur to forget about his only daughter, the Fallen Princess Rosæ.