Tales of the Pearly Kingdom (Pearly Tales Vol. 2)

193. Prologue Part 2?

Tales of the Pearly Kingdom continued...

Prologue.

Hold on. Why is there a Prologue? We are in the middle of the story.

Hey, no deviating from the source material!

That's right, careful with what you say, you never know what is going to be recorded where.

Fine. Fine.

Prologue. (That's not a real prologue)

*

Darkness.

She had never known such darkness.

Achilles was chained inside a cell with no windows and a collar that suppressed her strength and magic.

The cold stones never seemed to warm no matter how long her broken shell rested against them. A week had passed but she didn't care about anything. Her only family was dead and gone, and there had been nothing she could have done to stop it. She didn't even have the strength to stop it from happening right before her eyes.

Whoever that Yullian guy was, his plan had worked out perfectly and he had bested Cal and managed to take control of the city.

The final betrayal of the Sylvan knight Fauna, resulted in the beheading of Achilles's mother, and Cal's lover, Selene Thetis before the throne. Fauna was the close confidant of Shayley and supposed apprentice of Cal and had aided Yullian in his usurping the throne.

Achilles could still hear Yullian's mocking laughter in her ears while he stood over her mother's corpse laying in both Cal's blood and her own.

In one last act of defiance, Cal manipulated his blood to pull the corpse into it as if it were sinking into the ocean. To prevent it from being defiled further, which she admitted she was grateful for, but in the end that was the last she'd seen of her mother.

Since they were caught up in a coup, she wasn't even allowed to have a proper funeral. The only consolation she received was a visit from a strange ethereal woman who called herself Alfie. She showed up in her cell without opening the door and presented Achilles with her mother's engagement ring with a cryptic exchange.

Hold on to this.

So she did. She clung onto it.

Her mother's last memento.

While slipping in and out of grief-ridden consciousness she was rudely interrupted by a ruckus shaking her entire cell as if a giant had begun jumping outside.

Footsteps clattered back and forth in the prison hallway outside her door.

"She's here, in this one!" a familiar masculine voice called down the hallway from outside her door.

There was some magic from the other side of the door and she heard it unlock. When she looked up at the metal banded wooden door to see it slowly open. All the while everything continued shaking.

"Onee-Chan!" A little person with a green mop of hair rushed in to embrace Achilles.

"O-Ophelia?" Achilles coughed when she was suddenly assailed by the young girl.

"Hey Big sis, we got to go!" Said a dark elf boy by the door.

"Seamus?" Achilles stood up. "What are your both doing here?"