Tale of Earthfury: Dragon Princess

Part One:

Casteel, the capital city of the kingdom of Velos....She stood at the window facing out over the city from her room, looking at the hustle and bustle below with a bird's eye view to all that was going on. Her lips rose in a sad smile at it all, she was this close to it all and yet worlds apart from everything she could look out upon. Princess Amber Anchorin, the daughter of the king of Velos, his only child and heir. One hand resting on the window sill, her bright hazel eyes watching down over the events below her. Nearly noon from the position of the sun, the day's market was fully underway with vendors of all sorts trading goods and selling services. She wasn't really watching it though, she was watching her thoughts play out in her mind's eye, a long collection of worries and thoughts that played through her mind all too often. She worried first about the state of current politics in the world, or at least in the world she knew, the bits and pieces of conversation she caught from her father and his advisors or the rumors from servants. The hostilities between Velos and their southern neighbor, the kingdom of Calmarr had been on the rise for the last year or so and diplomatic efforts were running thin. Her father and Calmarr's ruler shared little love for another and she knew her father was chomping at the bit for the other shoe to drop and to deal with the man.

Then there was her engagement to the prince of the kingdom of Emillies to their east, an arranged marriage that had been closer to a decade in the making. That sad smile came again, for he was at the very least youthful and handsome, and had seemed rather shy about it all as she had first traveled to meet him herself on a diplomatic trip with her father. She had a feeling he'd be a good man to her. It was some solace in liking her father's rivalry with Calmarr's king, who also had a son, but was as just a pompous pig as his father was. There might've once been the chance that she'd have been married to him, seeing as a union of two such powerful kingdoms would make the greatest sense in the jockeying of the political atmosphere they existed in. She would've rather chosen squalor over being married off to the Calmarr royal family though, and thankfully, so too did her own father.

There was a part of her that almost longed to not be a part of all this, she wondered how her own mother had always managed to stay so bright and positive, even until the end, about such a life. Despite her expertise in courtly ways and diplomacy, too much of it seemed dishonest and superficial. She often wondered what it would be like to be some wandering adventurer, traveling the roads and facing harrowing challenges for the glory, honor, and rewards it reaped. Her daydreaming now, as always, was quickly countered by her own intelligence and schooling. She looked at it in the same romantised way that a commoner looked at living like a noble, seeing all the riches and glamor and not the hardships that did come with such a life. She knew those below her worked hard for everything they had, every day, where she had want for nothing.....or was she the one with nothing?

"Milady?" a voice came from behind her, startling her from her introspection. She quickly regained her composure and spun, perhaps too quickly, her curtain of long, straight, golden hair flaring some and settling again. It's where her namesake had come from, her eyes and hair were nearly the exact same color, golden amber, and so that would be her name. It was a story her mother had always enjoyed telling her, and one she'd missed hearing.

"Yes?" she responded softly but alertly, perhaps still trying to over compensate for her moment of inattentiveness.

"Your father has summoned you." her handmaid said, giving a polite bow from the waist, and putting a practiced smile on her face. Amber smiled and nodded back to her, she did her best to treat the small army of handmaids and other staff with as much respect as she would a foreign ambassador without seeming to overly friendly with them. Much as her mother had, she knew well that it was the people below a noble that often kept them up where they were, and she never treated them in any way unfairly. It was a mantle she'd taken from her mother that she would always make the best effort to see the common people treated well, especially when she would one day be a queen and could make the effort to insure her husband would decree fair laws that would better the lives of less fortunate folk.