Crimson Kingdom

Chapter Nineteen

And so the memories take her

Flashes of blood screams and chains....so many chains. A look down to her wrists confirms it all.

Chains flicker her breathing becomes heavy. She whips to her right and there she stands.

Silli the one who betrayed her. Tears run down her cheeks. She too begins to flicker, those tears shifting to a mocking smile the same smile she wore the day they met.

To the right stand the Sari, and the world flashes in and out. She is losing control. One grabs her hand pulling her arm out of its socket. Whips flash through her mind, blood and screams drone out the faint sound of her name. She hears it ever so faintly, Ryla, Ryla, Asteria

Maybe in another word they were crying out for her, in another life, a life where she could have him a world where they could have found each other without pain. That thought snaps her back just as he cradles her head, she had not met him in that reality, she had yet to have light, she did not meet him until she had been honed into a weapon.

"Ara?"

"I'm here"

"I killed her" that's what she had been suppressing, but she had killed so many for this kingdom that she hated. It mattered, somehow it mattered that she had died by her hand. Nova's cousin, Silli.

All of Nova's lineage was built upon a foundation of sin

Citali, Nova and Maren are the only redemption. All of them were poisoned by one self righteous deed and yet from all that sin from all that evil from all the blood, flowers of pure beauty were born, this world's redemption laid within the hands of an abandoned child, three from poisoned root and an abandoned Princess.

Whatever force that controlled this world is ordaining the future, no it could not be fate, because fate stole this girl's future, destroying the heroic legacy of the Sari. It had to be something stronger and more important. As these vessels stand together, all pieces of the puzzle began long ago, fate began to tremble, the world shook at that point, everything began to shake, a battle of power.

Citali slowly rises from his place on the ground and begins to look for his queen, he was a general, he was a commander. Duke of Elysian was not a position he took lightly.

"Majesty what is our next move" with a wicked grin she looked towards her land and that raging wickedness turned to grief

"I must find Aegis, he is key to this war, A general like yourself with experience if we are to succeed we must rally Odessa and Elysian"

"What do you plan to do?" he breathes it out barely a whisper with eyes wide and bright

'Tell them about me" sow the seeds of her legend

Walking forward she gazes upon the people she claims as hers, there would be no going back from this

"I am going to rally the spirits" flashing a grin a Ikari, spirit of anger, she had figured it out

There were no gods in this realm

"It took you long enough"

"Citali rally my people, tell whatever stories you need to, but let them know, if they don't already, let them know that I live"

Some would not know because they would refuse the truth, the fact that there was hope, that Asteria Eliza Odessa lives and she plans to reclaim that glorious kingdom of peace

Hope, Salvation, Mercy, Freedom

She would rebuild and with glowing eyes she flares those beautiful wings, and a new legacy is born.

"Gera" a scream echoes and fast as lightning he stands behind the storyteller.

"What?"

"She has returned the people felt it, shes back after all these years of silence, shes back, shes back-" grabbing his garment he jerks the storyteller to meet his eyes

"Who" he growls

"Asteria Eliza Odessa" dropping the man onto the ground Gera runs a hand through his short locks.

"I thought she was dead"

"I don't know how or why or what she plans to do but she is alive and the people are crying and sobbing and you should see it really go look outside they are crying and celebrating in the streets"

"Enough, leave" the boy got on his nerves

"Asteria is alive, huh" he had only seen the tiny princess once, he saw her the minute her eyes opened but then everything else that happened that night was a blur.

He was alive after everything he had witnessed after the hell of that kingdom he would never return to, he would never fight for another kingdom he would only fight to live. He had earned this new name and no boy with a writer's soul would change that..

Story Teller is the only name he will give them, but that is all he does. He spins story after story of her the young one who saved him on an old battlefield in an impossible war.

The battle he was talking about had to have been the Odessian Disaster, the war Ryla returned with the leaders head in hand. A neighboring country had pushed too hard on our boundaries. It was known to the soldiers as the impossible war because it was simply that, we should not have won but a young recently knighted girl turned the tides.

There are no eye witnesses that witnessed what she did how she did it. All that remained was a blood soaked girl and a head.

She was a fierce girl even when she was young.

It was then when he knew they had it all wrong, it wasn't darkness that was bad it was the light, the light that burns the light that destroys for she was brilliant in her darkness and salvation through it.

Stalking towards the rusted door of the palace something struck his chest and he fell to his knees his scream echoed throughout the Halls of this empty place.

Pulling his shirt down he sees a brand, still smoking. Someone was coming for him. And the brand was odessian in nature but elven all the same, the odessian crest wrapped within an elven wing.

"Bloody hell" he hisses

"My queen has marked you, Aegis of Odessa" he grabs that boy by the neck and slams him into the ground and red did not seep out of his wounds, no not the blood of the mortal

Blue

Blue blood leaked from his veins.

A vile curse meets the dawning of the sun.

"How do you know that name?" his voice seething with rage and those once clouded eyes briefly clear for one true moment of clarity

And he knew then, he knew exactly what he was

All Knowing

All Seeing

"An oracle" his voice as quiet as the mountains he had fled

Destined to walk the world beside the immortal-forever

They have never stopped being hunted-trapped. It makes sense as to why he will not leave this queen alone,instead of trapping him, she demanded one thing of him. Run-to get away- to live the life he had been given of his own accord.

Something no one would have done, not even him.

"Did she know? Who you are, what you are?"

"It doesn't matter, it only matters that she let me live"

But it does.

"What if he comes for you, what if Alastor comes to claim you for his kingdom"

"I will end my life by my own hand" the only way an oracle may die

"Why not find a kingdom in the south? A paid position and sell your services, you would never know another moment of grief or pain or hardship?"

"I live for one purpose and that is to find Asteria Eliza queen of Elysian Doessia heir and Nova's student"