Chapter Four, Triumph

Ides of Summertide, Sunhilte 15th, 17 AD, Crestfall

The sun beat down on Crestfall with belligerent splendor. The firmament, bathed in golden shroud, beamed an ethereal halo about the occasion to match the mood of many citizens. Some clamored up on aqueducts and theater balconies to glimpse the celebratory procession. Yet brighter minds among them felt the burn of that radiance and feared; wished the heat & shine were not so oppressive. Somehow the untamable shouts of the crowd harmonized in their song of revelry for this day of their lord’s return. All summoned to the streets for this, Drakkon’s Triumph. The Living Lord led the ceremonial march, in glistening regalia, perched upon his equally majestic stallion. The gates of his Dominion welcomed him as master, through to the core of the capitol. Unanimous applause of the crowd greets him. Most gleamed with eyes hungry for the sight of their savior not seen for what felt a year.

The men who followed Drakkon peered back into the blurring confronts of the crowd as their cavalcade pushed through the streets. Some combed the crowd for the familiar sight of their families, their wives & friends. Only to find their kin absent, perhaps sickly, or their wives all too fond of other men beside them. But save for the wary and the war torn among them, the greatest portion of the Drakoni force met the entrance with glee, happy to be home after quelling the rebellion after much sacrifice. The warm enthusiasm of the populace showered them with a veil of peace & of purpose, as though the darkness could finally be put behind them.

Thralls & tributes of the trampled Protectorate -rebranded by the victors as parasites to the people - were dragged behind high seated horses for the amusement of the capitol’s anxious masse. Rocks, rotten greens & spoilt milk were tossed at the defeated foes, humiliated, and trodden upon before those they sought to overthrow. Wan flames of defeat flickered in these prisoners’ aimless stares. A float in the center depicted the defeat & fate of these vermin, the thieves of Helcrest. Theirs a show of fyre: piled on stakes oiled with those of the ever-burning braziers & Albrecht’s alchemical additions, with pitch lit torment as offering to the throngs. With concaved meteorite cage below to catch the remains of those traitorous lines. Leaving trail of mortal cinder behind their parade, mixed with the litter of flowers & glitter.

Far above the clouds of loud exclamation & celebration, Corinna & Baron stood together in the distance. Hidden behind the pillars of the temple they shared their secret disdain for the whole affair. Rather than feel rejuvenated by the rumbling drums & the lilting elation of the mob below, the pair were mutually aligned in how every thundering beat ramped up anxiety’s pace. Baleful chants of doubt drowned the cheerful cries with a pale fear. From their high-rise position, they need not fear unwarranted ears prying into intimate conversation. Corinna, having dismissed her immediate servants & petitioners, saw how many of their attendants were washed up in the awe of the Triumph. The temple behind them had been locked by the priests in preparation for their lord’s return and the pomp of the rituals about mystified the air evermore. So, for a while, their ears had each another.

Corinna caught sight of her husband leading their parade over the hill to the Temple’s steps. Gleaning his countenance, adorned in ornate white armor lined with radiant gold to further exude his ‘Light’, a paralytic shiver of fear shot through her veins and seized her breath. She felt abruptly woozy. Her pit crumbling under the weight of the world. Her soul gutted by this guilt of harboring such apprehension against the man she once loved so ardently.

Tilting her head, peeking through the raven locks that veiled her eyes as if in shroud of mourning, she saw Baron offering her all the sparks of his soul in his gaze. He leaned to whisper, softly brushing away the hair about her with the subtle caress of a lover and the support of a friend. “Do not despair. This ‘new day’ need not arrive bearing only darkness so long as we tame the flame of our faith. We’ve still hope we might part the clouds of thunder. And there is yet joy in the world.”

Corinna’s stare stayed distant, tired. The futility of the whole scenario froze her demeanor. “Things will not be the same. I loathe that I must play the happy spouse and declare Triumph with my ‘husband’. I know there was no great glory of which the minstrels will sing on his march. Only floods of innocent blood rained over countless villages. All they want is to be free to themselves, just as we once fought for, yet they are demonized. It will only be harder to awake in the morn, beside him. That I must put on the mask of wicked pretense. Ah! It feels as though the foundations of the world are collapsing around us.”

“No, things will not be the same. Of that we can be certain. Yet still why should we be arrested by fear before real revolution, lurching over with cursed anxiousness when we are so near to letting crumble the last foundation of our woes? We do not have to wallow in the bleak mire and accept defeat in the wake of this foul tide. Not if we sculpt new meaning of this abyss, forwardly. You have the power to change things for the better if you take that risk, pour temperance into the dragon’s ear. But alas, I have wasted and deserted all other light. Corinna, you are the light behind every star in the sky. I know your fire will warm the lonely night.”

“Wasted thine?” she chuckled dryly, “I am far worse a villain than thee, Baron. I could have stretched out a hand and stopped this madness – or at least bloody tried – but instead I dared not my Lord’s ear for fear of the cobwebs tangled by his mother. Instead of wielding even rhetoric for our realm, I hid in its most pristine corners. All while the rest of the land withered beneath the shadow I helped cast. If I am as the sun to thee, thou should flee from me soon. Lest risk being burned in my embrace! For I scorch to ruin all that is important! Tis these wings of fire that damn me flightless!”

Again, came that shiver coursing the length of her. But Baron did not hesitate, in seeing his friend & lover so overwhelmed, to offer his embrace with bold enthusiasm. “Listen, Cor, that is a risk I will gladly take. Let it be just fate to burn inside that fire of yours! But it need not be. Please do not hate yourself! Let me be your mirror to see the good in yourself and what of it is left in the world still to fight for. Trust me, we will see better days’ worth fighting for come to us if we step towards them first.”

“Thank you…” though her heart felt his words string a warm chord within and found the desire to lay her head upon his chest and melt away from it all she kept her poise stoic, as to remain vigilant before any straying eyes. “Your presence in my life is a profound wonder. Though it is hard to stray from sleep and retain hope, I will awake grateful for simply knowing you and being loved so truly. Ah, it saddens me to think we will have fewer opportunities to see one another with Drakkon back.”

“Absence doth make the heart grow fonder, when yearning reaches across the yawning distance.” He winked at her slyly before leaning in with a lower tone. “There is something I would like to speak with you about in secret. If you are free to venture to the garden district, come evening and the celebration’s dying. Find excuse for then. That is if you’ll hear me out?”

“Hmm, I am intrigued. As always, you enigmatic wordsmith of the ages, you.” She returned his wink, happy for the reprieve of small charm. A smile such a luxury. “Let us hold our special dalliance with less eyes about. ‘Tis enticing enough to hold me over till after this business is done. Although a wee hint as to what you wish to show me would be welcome nonetheless.”

“Ah, but with a mind as sharp as yours, one meagre trace and you’ll discover the whole secret. Let the mystery keep you entertained for now, my dear. More than this charade below.”

In the background Drakkon’s speech at the foot of the temple roused the crowd to roar. As accompaniment the unburnt thralls were made to dance in eunuch farce and emasculating circus. The ‘impure pitch of false Protectorate deeds’ cast as ashes of the centerfold prisoners into meteorite mesh under their platforms. When his heroic rhetoric wrapped up and the proper praise assented, the sun they all orbited in him stepped forth in glory. Withdrawing his notorious blade, he showed the bloody edge used to relieve the disgraced head of rebellion before wiping it clean. Purification through the dark work of execution.

How many has he put to the question or torch in his triumphant march? How much more blood has he had to clean from his sword? That bastard sword which seems to eat of soul’s crimson absorbed by its obsidian shade. Evil comes home to roost with me. Corinna huffed a blue sigh, disheartened. She turned her sights far from this shrine to madness. Baron clasped her shoulder for but a moment before withdrawing from her company. “I must away my dear – good friend - but I shall hold you to your promise. Let us meet on more intimate terms.”

He scurried away into the corridors. His great haste surprised Corinna, confused as to why he fled so suddenly. But as soon as her curiosity arose it was satiated, to a degree, by the creeping of Mordaunt nearing their pillars. Something about the man’s aura stung at her. More than ever that vile retching in her stomach came with a mere glance at his long, battle-bent nose and flaky mane. Even his aesthetic seemed always at war with itself.

“Ah, good cousin, my Impress! How succinctly circumstances twine about our steps. Come now, will you help me usher in the last act of our Triumph? Come forth if you will and assist me in offering the scepter to our Lord, your Imperator husband.”

Reluctantly the woman, with vulpine address about her, guided her steps tostand beside him before the gaping crowd below. A foul clot formed within her throat, arresting her breath with trepidation upon nearing Drakkon. This man, who once enchanted her with a dream of changing things for the better, appeared to her as abomination of himself, emanating seething self-importance. Concentrating on the flow of air through her lungs, Corinna attended to the stakes. Kept her poise balanced as Mordaunt offered her the regal scepter which she granted then to her majestic liege. As he ascended the last stair, he raised a hand to her with scepter in the other. “My love. Know that those countless nights of endless longing so distant from your beauteous orbit hath not spurned nor wilted my faithfulness to you, but rather let it blossom. Please, dispense with the formalities and embrace me.”

The Empress obeyed her Emperor. Bearing the arduous task of concealing inner enmity beneath the guise of a reunited lover. If only you knew how the fire wanes in me. How it’s naught but ash. How you’d burn me for the slight of being unable to love you, so married to Death… She let the tears flow, embracing the catharsis, pretending those drops were as overjoyed rain. With one thin smile her grief appeared to him as the rapturous delight.

Their congregation proceeded into the temple’s main hall where the final rites of the Triumph were to be held. But as the doors creaked open no welcome of priestly chants nor litany of adoring praise came. Only sepulchral silence. A putrid stench filled the hall, charred remnants of ceremonial incense left to mask the scent of tragedy. The daylight peering through the dome shined upon an abysmal sight. There on the altar lay several Drakoni priests stripped of their robes and rid of their lives. Alongside them, the breathless likenesses of nobles who’d gone to pray the last spot before Temple’s closing on eve of Triumph, arrayed in emblems of evil.

Their wan, lifeless forms had been desecrated and lay draped with torn flesh. The sanctum’s spiritual head, Vicar Bastione: strung up with the help of his own intestines, with the rest all splattered along the wall. Gore seethed between the once splendid white banners now, scrawled with red. Bearing the murderous phrases “death to false gods!” & “grant us what is ours!” written in the victims’ blood. Just below this heinous desecration was yet another corpse, or rather two, for a would be mother was crumpled there, shorn of her premature child – which itself was a twisted travesty of a child’s form unborn and unliving – torn from the fetid (unready) womb. These, the ‘sows ov Imperium’. Beside them, the Lady Portia and her sons, Caedus & Callow, were strewn under crimson declaration: ‘suckling Hel’sons ov Empire’

This chapel, now a depraved altar of Nightmare. An appalling silence choked the air within for a vast gulf of time. Some of the men began the thankless & gruesome task of cleaning up the scene of the atrocity and tearing down the signs & macabre symbols left by the culprits. Eventually the deafening silence was shattered with the retching & heaving of Corinna. Who then scampered away and hid in the cloister, nauseated by this unthinkable horror. After attempting to attend to her, Drakkon sent his love away under escort. Then turned to Mordaunt, who was rooted by rage.

Issuing his command, the lord only just managed to suppress the sickness of wrath churning in his gut. “Mordaunt, I know you had no great love of your wife, but they defile at once your House and the honor of our Dominion. Thus, they shall be avenged! Have the men see everyone back to their homes and issue martial order with iron reserve. Then we will purge them.”

“Strike the toll, ye servants. Search for survivors, witnesses. No one else is to enter or leave this temple without my express permission.” And thus, they toiled in disbelief, attempting to repair this once sacred ground and keep their disgust from leaving them to abject abandon. This, their hour of hope, subverted and corrupted by a murderous plot. The once gleeful crowd, gathered to partake in this holy day, were herded back to their homes like sheep by the cracking of Mordaunt’s whip. Confusion and vehement despair lashed the populace.

A few irritably refused to be escorted to their homes at spear point without any answers being given for why. This curious need to know, the need for security and assurance bristled over to a fledgling riot. A whole sect of their massive number turned to frustration, as Triumph turned Terror. But their cries and resistance were met with cold steel & the ice of the soul commanding it. Suppressed soon by Mordaunt’s boot crashing down upon their throats. After the maddening strife had been put to rest and everyone wrangled up, two dozen more lay dead, either crushed by their peers in panicked stampede or butchered by the men sworn to serve Imperium. All of this to the ever-accompanying symphony of the tolling bell resounding its funeral chime.

Woe

The following evening, Crestfall Garden Court

Mordaunt strode in solitude, his footsteps guided by the moonlight. Her stream burned clear this night, branding ideas of silver in his mind. He walked the lonely abandon of the great gardens which formed the labyrinth of this, once sacred yet rarely remembered, district of the city. Allowed this evening alone, given pass of ‘mourning’ for his slain kin, the weary man was better able to collect his thoughts and breathe in a strange sense of hope. His boots brought him to the makeshift grave and altar to her…

“My Selene…” he uttered his daughter’s name as if to beckon her deceased spirit forth from the nether. In this hidden alcove he knelt, grasped the soil about this gravesite he’d given her. Holding the earth in his hand as he once held her tender face. “You were everything and now I am nothing. My heart is buried here with you. But a dream lives on. I walk with your spirit beside mine own. Or is it a phantom of a dream? Is it hollow to seek a better world, when without you there won’t be anything to fill the emptiness?”

He’d carried her ashes here, where her living flesh should have been, with him in opulent safety. “Nay, for I know you would wish a better man of me and a better world for all. That pure heart, too precious for this plane, is why I will honour that promise for you.”

This solemn litany and focused prayer evoked drops of silvery sheen. Gazing up in a trance of tears and cathartic release of pain through the dampening of his cheeks, his ice blue eyes met with those of the moon. Her rays assumed her form, Selene’s face made out in the orb. With the ignition of incense and pouring of his wine goblet Mordaunt offered up communion with the dead. Breath of the spirits fill the wind’s sighs through the shapely trees & shrubs abound.

Here in this hanging garden haven the once lost warrior raptured himself away from the hysteria which consumed the souls trapped within the walls of the capitol. A stern, spear-brandished, silence lay outside. Crestfall, martialed against itself; its citizens arrested in the cells of their homes. But here, near the seat of his brief yet brutal Stewardship, the champion crossed an inner threshold of renewed determination. A hope, almost Divinely inspired, burned alongside the coals of sorrow & loss. A transformation was at hand within him. He could hear it spoken by the leaves and gusts carried up to the luminous crown.

Hands floating with his thought, the lone steward’s fingers fawned over the newfound emblem adorning his neck. Such black radiance of power emanated from the lifeless trinket. With this meteorite necklace, Mordaunt had been thus proclaimed as the rightful hand of their Living Lord; practically equal in stature to Drakkon’s beloved ‘goddess’ and bowing only to his Imperial Highness. To him such honorifics had so long been but fleeting baubles. Treasures to weigh men down, stuffing them with pomp rather than shaping their spirits through will & steel. Yet these titles launched him to the forefront of fulfilling his plan of vengeance against false gods. Signets to rally against the corrupted, who turned blind eye to the suffering of those like his Selene.

Thusly, he’d been given near complete authority to steer the investigation and amass greater force. Little did the elite know from their gilded hiding holes and blindingly gilt mirrors that their warden enacted this punitive atrocity. He knew that to carve history needed more than willingness to wield the sword and more oft demanded the tools of cloak & dagger. His elevated status gave access to all the archives and insights which pierced beyond the veil of political showmanship, that so often festered in this city & the larger realm. With this he had legal permission to stalk (and frame) his enemies’ movements; have them quietly tracked and trapped, as an imagined culprit. The man rose from a thrall of Vizarri to Thane of the Drakoni. And now climbed to more treacherous heights, approaching his imminent rebirth as a demigod or a slayer of one. Altitudes which could result in mortal plunge, should his step falter.

Weeks ago, upon receiving word of Drakkon’s victory and the Triumph to be held, Mordaunt used his authority as Steward (& sworn responsibility to protect the city on all fronts) to access & tamper with reports of goods & cargo passing through. Notes on diseased locales proved as fruitful as the fools still trying to peddle their sick goods. The plague which spread throughout the Southwest regions for many seasons had grown to a serious concern. A plight to all but those who could afford to flee and hide behind their noble fortresses. Being charged with keeping contamination from their mass market in the capitol, he decided a different course. Knowingly allowed (or rather seized the wares of a) plagued caravan of Southern traders. They brought only the finest grains and expensive wines, affordable only to that lot who would normally lock themselves away from their people’s plight, hiding up in lofty bastions. But now he prepared a fitting feast for the most loathsome of tables. To serve their distended glut.

Thus, the die had been cast and his treason gained momentum. Though it was early. Yet there was still to be a festival held, though its meaning was no longer of joy but of mourning and woe. Only the elite could attend. With the masses below being resigned to house arrest beneath his lawful ironclad boot. And so, with one gambling roll, Mordaunt planned to place all his adversaries in checkmate. All those he loathed would soon dine upon blighted cuisine. Taste the slow corrosion of their gullets, guts, and minds once the boils and noxious poisons rooted in these oblivious hosts, who thought themselves invincible before the plagues & tumult which culled the less privileged.

Once their finely dressed corpses rot it would be Mordaunt, the ‘Savior’, who would inherit their empty pedestals and powers. Yet to gain the torch, he knew not whether to illumine all the world with the frail truth of their former lords or assert his own unchallenged ‘Light’. Mordaunt was not without sorrow or regret for those who had to fall. In his deepening heart he mourned the loss of those few who resisted his clever coup. Not Portia or Caeudus and Callow, but the fallen champions and faithful priests put to the sword for their futile honor. Dead for that final defense of their dignity as warriors and servants of their Imperium. Sacrificed their lifeblood to reject his offer. Could they not hear the fervor of truth in my voice as I offered them my hand? Could they not feel the passion of my aim? Were they so deaf to the call of rebirth, blind to the light, which is ours alone, that they rejected opportunity to appraise the spear instead?

In his secret truth though it was his own lackeys Mordaunt loathed more than his mortal enemies. For these mercenaries & murderers who committed the deeds firsthand were seduced only by riches. Even among those recruited of his foremost Drakes, they’d no purpose beyond bloodshed; the belligerent brains above their brow, bereft of all but war. And mayhap some selfish gain denied to them by Drakkon’s hierarchy. All too many of these men who joined the secret pact of treason and his Manticore regiment did not share his vision and saw only the gleam of gold to be won at the edge of their blades. Yet although these brutes were mere pawns, they served a higher purpose in the vast scheme of the game. For with their silver slashes in the dark they’d culled his adversaries of the court and would bring him to the reins of legions that would rival imperial hosts. He had waited too long to assert his Will. But grew tired of being led by pretenders and ‘demigods’. Never again to let them drain him of his spirit, for the bell of Retribution tolled through his skull.

But something external hummed a course to turn his symphonious thoughts. His footsteps cease to fold to the sound. Faintly from nearby grove in this shifting maze, came the strumming of a lute and a soft, feminine voice. Curious, Mordaunt shifted towards the song. On the terrace below, upon bed of many bushels that decorated the court his pale eyes were beset upon by an unexpected sight. In that glade Baron sat with his lyre in hand chanting a beauteous love ballad, sharing lines of it with Corinna. She sang repose, laying sprawled across his legs. The only thing draping their moonlit bodies being a thin blanket covering them. It seemed they also sought the secrecy of this scarcely guarded garden.

“Thank you for that song, Baron! ‘Twas as honey & ambrosia!” the pale, stunning woman whispered in the bard’s ear. Kissing him gently on the cheeks, her glow brushed against him. “Much needed mirth tonight when there would be none to have. Will you humor my yearning spirit for another tune? Gods know, I could use a little elation these days – not to say that your company isn’t, mm, ‘entertaining’ enough to bring me to elation.” Her gray-green eyes glinted seductively in the beaming light showering upon her from the firmament.

“Alas my heart is weary of song, my dear. These days my deepest wish is to keep you elated; to cast away the woes of the world and adjoin affection in purest form. Yet we do not have long, before you must relief your maidens from covering you. & I must confess that I did not ask you here merely to bask in the sweetness among the sour. In sooth I must away before the morn, given all that transpired. There is too much at risk for me to stay here, and I am a distraction.”

“I hath plenty of time. Even if it shames us to hide away so, our lord is too busy readying purges & attending interrogations to give thought to me. He sent me away to tower with a herd of handmaidens & sentinels who fortunately favor my need a mourning period; a solitary garden venture for myself. If he spares a second for me, he’ll think me at shrine. And if he does get lonely, inquire of my caretakers after me, they can cover me a while longer. Is that why you stall your music, for my behalf? Or is the poet tiring of his music, or maybe his muse?”

“Never my muse in you. That shall not fade even if my body soon does. Nay tis another matter, sadly as drenched in politic as any these grim days. I love you as I love songs, yet I tire of how little they effect the other ears that hear them. Rarely do they win enough minds or change any hearts. I hath played with pen and sword before, yet now I am unsure of which is stronger to wield. & my voice should not be heard long in this city, lest it overstay already thinning welcome.”

“What do you mean? Are you saying you are to flee and leave me alone to deal with whatever chaos has and will be wrought upon us? How can you be so selfish?!” Corinna pouted; her brilliant orbs twisted with hurt & lover’s ache. “Why would you do this to me? Why leave me with but a whispered word this hour before you slip away into the dark for no clear purpose?!”

“My dear,” Baron propped his lute against the nearest tree-stump-stalk, leaned in to carefully hold Corinna’s chin. Drew it near to his lips, “you are the most gorgeous soul I e’re laid eyes upon. My spirit will forever be drawn to thee. But ‘tis a far more dire matter of consequence that I must depart so suddenly.” The bard nearly wept, pressing ear to her heart, that the beating of her bosom enfolded him with the courage to confess. “’Rinna, I love you – know this always! Yet there is another love, another muse that compels me: That of justice & Freedom. Hear now, with ears for me alone, that I hath been working with the People’s Protectorate. Some would say I ‘conspire’ & prop myself as an adversary to your husband and emperor.”

Silence fell upon their shrine, save for whistle of leaves blown by summer’s last winds and the cries from nameless & forgotten stone busts. Corinna’s glance beamed in the moonlight, piercing at Baron with a questioning arrow. She lifted herself from his touch, drawing back in surprise. “Did you-were you- involved with what happened? How can you be so cruel as to tell me of your departure so late then stab at me with so sudden a revelation? We shared everything with one another, yet you kept this from me? Only to confess it at dire hour before leaving me in midst of horror?!” Though her voice was but a whisper it carried her confusion. A tune echoed by the sorrowful melody strumming garden hedges and flower-wreath stalactites about them.

“Do you trust me?” Baron asked, returning her gaze, and offering his hand once more. “You know my soul more than any other, perhaps even more than my own self. You know I could ne’er commit so vile an act! Nay, this smells of foul odor from some dastardly purpose that could ne’er adjoin to my truth. That butchery was the work of some blood-fevered beast. Whether a stray from our brotherhood in the Protectorate whose hunger for justice took him down too feral a path or a serpent still lurking in the grass of these courtyards-”

“I trust you. As much as I can when you leave so much from me. Enough to know you are no brute. But if they are behind the chapel massacre- “

“The Protectorate aim is not so evil, nor messy. And I can longer waste away as thrall to tyranny when war is waged against all common folk.” He spoke passion, honesty, though it brought harm to his heart. “This Drakonian reign we forged from the mold of fallen Vizzari and our belligerent little tribes, was to be one for all peoples. Ours cause was to see everyone’s lives bettered, enriched by wealth & enlightenment to share without the fetters of belittling traditions or courts bedecked with withered faces that hold no glint of compassion nor care in their eyes for the sons & daughters who shall inherit what remains of all they plucked & plundered away in greed. Yet ours has become something worse than the lords and warring chieftains. We united people only in shackles bound with deepening bonds of His tyranny. I can longer keep up this ruse, aiding my brothers & compatriots from afar by feeble subterfuges. I must leave to throw my lot in with this final bout of resistance, lest more ruination befall more lives until only death and servitude await those left in a hopeless world bent by a broken man’s vain masquerade.”

“So, you joined a band of brigands to bring the fight to the Lord?” Corinna scoffed, ashamed of his rashness but more so her own ineptitude in daring to defy Drakkon. She shackled herself to his side, by the throne, yet achieved no victory over his heart when his ear is lent so near to her. “Could you do not more for the small folk and your friends at court? Would not flying from here be heeded as traitorous trait of affiliation with that crime?”

“How long have we to play at the intrigue of courtship under nose of the court? What might our Lord do if we are discovered?” Baron lifted his lids to scourge the emerald labyrinth for obscured spectators, as if asking such a thing might hex it into being. “In any case that is why I must flee, though do not see me as a craven cur. I will not shirk from the fact that I hath blood upon mine hands but ‘tis not the blood of those priests nor any people of this city – people I fought & strive for, whose prosperity & suffering alike I feel as mine own!” The bard’s fingers unconsciously danced along the strings of his lute as he thought aloud. He dared return tune to the surrounding shade. This idle act helped calm the tempest within, but still his sorrow rang along the minor tones he switched to, emanating the somber vibration filling the night sky.

“Our hearts our one,” Corinna lulled him as the branches above sang for woe, “our cause is the same. Let me aid you, Baron. You are strong – stronger than Drakkon in your core which warms me with courage – but you cannot do this alone. ‘twould be as aimless a protest as casting yourself from a cliff. We all drift in this dark sea, please do not let me drown in the center of this maelstrom!” She tugged on his shoulder threads, wrapped plea about him. “Either take me with you and free me of my shackles to a man I can longer bare to see, let alone stand beside – his visage so stained by blood– or give purpose to my torment and allow me to offer another hand.”

A last chord struck; Baron’s idle song ceased. The sad sound rang long then hollowed out as the breeze picked up, mirroring his long, contemplative sigh. “Hear me fully. This path I walk is jagged, narrow & winding, with an all to treacherous a fall. Should even our passion for one another be discovered this very bliss we have given one another would be our undoing. Let alone involving yourself in intrigue and affairs of a militia bent on the annihilation of the man you share your crown with. It is because I love you so truly that I cannot ask you to abandon your post to flee with me and become a ‘traitorous’ fugitive and leave your blooming Grove only to enter into almost certainly doomed waters… Helwinds upon our earth, did you hear what Drakkon did after reclaiming Helcrest? Seen how he razed the village of poor Vilas, and brought the lines that ‘birthed traitors’ as kindling for his parade?”

Corinna dammed up her tear ducts as much as she could, attempting to suppress the grief and fear she was awash with facing this reality. She kept her voice calm, but distant as she humored his question. “He wrote to me following his ‘triumph’ and said he enacted harsh ‘deserved retribution’. But I did not deign to ask for I did not want to be more haunted by gruesome details.” Am I so weak in my footing that I cannot stand to look at the ramifications of our reign, the horrors my husband hath wrought on those we swore to help prosper and let bloom? Is the light something to fear when it burns like flame back into me? -scorching the soul with the reflection of truth, of my idle vanity?

“Drakkon’s victory at the ‘Second Siege of Helcrest’, which ‘decimated the crest of Serpent Knighthood, that seat of Ole Vizzari’, came by barbaric tactic: he marched hearths & steads, those suspected of housing or feeding Protectorate forces, by tip of spear; made them into meat shields & corpse-ladders by which to scale the walls of the Hold. Imperial propaganda is already asked of me: to maintain the ‘glory of the storm’ and how this unwilling vanguard was ‘but the knavish brood of villains & criminals condemned who served fitting penance,’ and ‘by this Aegis of blood did the Drakoni bless the palace of pandemonium with fire of Imperium’. But I hear these who were marched at the head to buffer your husband’s bulk were but any one’s old nan or odd cousin or harmless neighbor. & for conspiring against him- “

Corinna curved away from her lover’s sickening warning, this tale of her master’s atrocity; one among the manifold scrawl of his sins. Yet Baron tilted her ear back to his tongue. Fumed his meaning and the compassion coursing under the mast of this augury of ashen past. “You must hear this, my moonlight! Know the danger which can befall those who betray our Drakkon! The horrors arriving if he even sniffs a suspicion of sedition, even from you!”

“We need not stress the details of his darkness, Baron, I know. But why rush to meet their fate?”

“I am of the Protectorate. And it is true my Illuminaries also serve as recruitment centers for our renewed revolution. I was even supposed to aide that druid when he came to the winter court with the boy. ‘Twas a final test, for I shaved off violence as solution then, to see if I could defend sanity and mercy. Alas, he chose cruelty. But they took it too far by endangering you. And I stayed my hand then from all. My faith in wavers. ‘Tis a struggle not to succumb to doubts of our means of managing against our Lord. I cannot be so close when my fate spells only danger.”

“Baron… I would rather die with spirit still beating in me before the last than wilt away as a husk beneath the shade of – what becomes of a man I once believed in. Please let us share this chance for a while, without lashing it to the accursed stress beyond. Stay for a while longer in this city? Be my safety from the reeking horrors! Do not ride out and affirm yourself a rebel in their eyes so soon! Humor me?”

Some spellbinding gravity between them, perhaps the fervency of her appeal, brought their lips together. A kiss drenched by falling tears with which he sealed her speech and sobs. After enfolding acceptance of each other’s touch an elongated quietude fell. Yet it felt false.

Mordaunt pressed too much against the ruinous and untended statue, jerking it. The gravel groan caused the pair beneath to jolt. The man in the darkness waited, kneeling further behind the edge for cover and muffling his breath. Although he could no longer make out the lovers past the hedge foliage & statue gate, he heard Corinna’s worry ripple up. “It feels as though there is an evil eye cast upon us. I suffer shivers unlike any winter chill could instill.”

“Aye. There is something ill begotten amongst this place. I pray that wicked glare be not the eyes of heaven damning our dreams to misery. Alas, let us part for now. But I will stay here a little longer. It may be less suspicious if we return to our posts separately. Will you be safe on your own for the trek back, dear starlight?”

Corinna shifted her hand into her gown as she slipped it back on, revealing a whetted dagger unsheathed from its secret pouch. “Your concern flatters me. But in this it is not needed. I’ll be perfectly fine, o ‘defender ov downtrodden peoples et maidens’.” Corinna continued, with some sarcasm & hurt dripping unto her tongue. She kissed him again, with a bite to her lips in rough blend of worry & warmth. “But listen to me fully, Baron. Promise me not to flee this night on so sparse a parting to so lonely a road. The feast hath been moved to coming Friday. Given the mourning period & curfew, and with so public a venue I implore you to make an appearance. Brush away any suspicion that you may be complicit in the act that has this whole city – nay, the larger realm – on the brink of murderous panic. Please my love?”

After their parting embrace Mordaunt shifted back to his feet. He eyed the lovers walk away, waiting above them while musing to himself. Here I had been so frantic to find a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb on the altar of my sacrilege. Ah, but the spindling of circumstance weaves such intricate web. Baron’s sins are as bare before the heavens as my burdens. So let him take his fall for my ascension! Let this blight I usher reel in purity and reveal my purpose for it!