Chapter Text
Princess Adaine Abernant had always been a strange girl, even before the incident. Even as a child, the world held its breath around her.
Perhaps it had good reason to.
Our story begins in the land of Fallinel, home to the kingdom Yuthuarhiel. More specifically, our story begins in Fortryllese Castle, home to King Angwyn and Queen Arianwen Abernant. Far below us, the castle courtyard bustles with life and excitement, and a great crowd has already begun to gather, the people of the kingdom rallied from their homes with the anticipation of a great announcement. But our story does not begin with them, no. It begins with a girl in a lofty tower, so far from the people below.
Princess Adaine Abernant, the Elven Oracle, sits quite still in a cavernous room at the top of her tower. It is very quiet here, so far removed from the rest of the castle. The ceilings are vaulted into high heaven and the floor is made of beautiful polished marble, such that every movement echoes like a drum. Though she is an elf, and has no need for sleep, a grand bed adorned with beautiful silk sheets sits proudly against a wall. Its mere presence boasts of the kingdom's grandeur and generosity.
The princess’s room is quite bare, or perhaps it is so large that it merely looks bare. How can a child of only 20 years be expected to fill a vast room with a lifetime of items? The only items that lie here in abundance, it seems, are the books.
Tremendous bookcases line the walls, filled with colorful tomes. The shelves are free of dust, and the spines of most of the books are creased beyond recognition. Even now, in the early morning hours, the princess sits in the windowsill, paging through a book.
If you saw the girl in any other context, you may not assume that she is of royal blood at all. Princess Adaine is a small, slender girl, with dark brown skin and long, curly blonde hair. She wears a plain light-blue smock dress and simple white gloves. The dress is made of cotton, and no royal jewels adorn her head or arms. Her posture is not poised, but rather slumped against the window panes. If not for the grandeur of the room, one would assume she is a simple village girl with the good fortune to have learned to read.
The princess’s room may seem normal upon first glance, but if you stayed a moment longer to study it, you might begin to pick up on certain peculiarities. For one, if you tried to open the immense window the princess leans upon, you would come across a magical barrier, prohibiting access to the balcony beyond. If you turned around to survey the walls, you would begin to notice the lack of paintings hung upon them, and the absence of mirrors in the room. You would, however, notice one small mirror, a hand-held one, laid face down on a pedestal in the very center of the room. But perhaps the most troubling thing you would notice is Adaine’s door, or more, what holds it shut. If you approached the handles of the double door, you would notice the very faint outline of a shimmering blue padlock holding the handles closed, so faint it is almost translucent. And if you were very keen, you would know that a magic such as this needs no physical indication that it exists, and to place a padlock on the inside of a door with the intention to keep someone inside that very room is nonsensical, for how would outsiders use a key to enter? And perhaps it would occur to you that this magic is meant to be seen by its prisoner. A reminder.
But we will leave this room for now, as we are free to do. We will move merely one floor lower.
Beneath the cavernous bedroom of Princess Adaine we will find two more rooms, adjoined by a small hallway: a bedchamber and a chapel. Let us look into the bedchamber.
In the bedchamber stands one Figueroth Faeth, better known as Knight Faeth of the Order of Stars, the knight protector of the young princess. Fig’s room is not nearly as grand as the room above, but it is quite agreeable for a knight. The room is spacious, with a four-post double bed, a small sofa, several windows, and all necessary amenities. Fig's bed is perfectly made, for just as in the princess's room, a bed is an unnecessary commodity here. Fig can be found before a standing mirror, strapping on the leather breastplate she wears at all times. She reaches up to her braids and pulls them away from her face to secure them, revealing a beautiful silver circlet sporting a deep garnet red gem in the center of her forehead. She then tugs on two metal gauntlets, covering her calloused hands completely.
Fig’s room is a scene of ordered chaos. Her bedsheets are made, but several pillows have migrated to the ground. Her floors are swept and mopped, but clean and dirty clothes alike sit strewn before her dresser. She has few shelves, but the ones she does have are stuffed full of pictures and objects from her childhood in the castle. Next to her bed sits a photo of her ragtag family: her mother, Sandra Lynn, whom she is not quite the spitting image of, her other mother, Sklonda, who she is definitely not the spitting image of, and her brother, Riz, Sklonda’s son from her previous marriage. Her husband had been lost in the Great War. Sandra Lynn and Sklonda were married sometime after Fig was born, and, though the beginning was confusing and messy, they couldn’t be a happier family.
Fig looks in the mirror, running her fingers over the circlet around her head, the one article of clothing she sports that seems not purely practical. She lifts it off her head briefly, to readjust it, and just for a moment her even brown skin seems tinged with red, a shadow of horns appearing on her head, and it almost seems like a tail is swishing behind her. But she sets the circlet firmly into place, and an elf stands before us once more.
If you look closely at the bed, you may notice slight wrinkles in the covers, pillows slightly askew. Perhaps it is not as perfectly made as one might think.
Come, we must leave Figueroth for now. Let us journey across the hall to her neighbor, the High Priestess Caea, the Chosen of Galicaea. But, I suspect you may know her by a different name, as one Kristen Applebees.
Kristen’s bedchamber is much more formidable, and all in all, much smaller, than Fig’s. She stays in a converted chapel, an old prayer chamber. The floors are a rough stone, and a few rows of pews still divide the room, the promise of their removal long forgotten. There is no bed here— there is simply no room for one. The only natural light that filters in streams through a stained glass window in the shape of a crescent moon, creating a spotlight on the dais where Kristen currently kneels.
The High Priestess kneels in front of an altar, gloved hands clasping prayer beads made of moonstone. Her prayer is wordless, but her lips trace words in a rhythm not unlike a song. The appointed High Priest of Fallinel is expected to be modest and chaste above all else, and takes a vow of abstinence when they move into the position. Even in solitude, Priestess Caea dresses modestly, wearing a flowing white dress flecked with pale gold which totally envelops her, the muted colors contrasting with the fiery red hair that trails down her shoulders. Her sleeves drape over her arms and billow out, grazing the floor, and she wears a short, lacy gold veil, which obscures her eyes and nose. Above her head, emerging from her veil, circles a halo crown. It is a beautiful thin gold, simple and unadorned. If we move just a bit closer, we can see the mark of Galicaea’s Chosen on her neck, a crescent moon shape just below her ear.
Kristen’s eyes flit open in her silent room. It feels as though no noise has been uttered in here for centuries. There are no photos on the walls, nor anywhere else in the room. The only decorum on the walls are old stone carvings, depicting scenes from Galicaea's life. As Kristen turns her head, her veil catches on her ear, and she winces. She puts a hand up to detangle her veil, clutching at her pointed elven ear and winces, faint scar lines just visible, racing across the surface of her upper ear.
This room is cold, and the air is stale. There is nothing more to see here; we should go.
Our story begins in this tower, on the day of a great and terrible announcement. I regret to inform you that I can go no further into this story. It is your choice to carry on, if you will, but here is where I must stay, at the beginning. Our time was so brief, and for that, I am sorry. However, I feel I must warn you now, before you go any further:
This is a very unhappy story, and I fear it may have a very unhappy ending.