Story:Kings of Strife/Part 25

Part Twenty-Four
He didn’t think it was possible for a woman to look bored while presiding on a throne until he saw her graceful form.

Even though he suspected a throne had the power to make anyone sitting on it look somewhat refined and powerful, he knew that in this case, the throne had no power over the one who sat on it. The throne was perhaps the only part of the castle that wasn’t crudely built, because he had supervised its construction himself and made sure it was perfected in its presentation, for he knew she would sit atop it. He was proven right.

Never had he seen such a beautiful thing before in his life. Everything else in the castle was made entirely of smooth, pitch black seastone that was harvested from the Shorican coastline, but he had the highest quality stones involved solely in this creation of this artifact. The notability of the seastone was something he and his underlings had discovered by accident when one was accidentally smashed – when faced with intense pressure, the Shorican Seastone would shed all of its outer smooth coating and become a fragile yet dazzling rock of pure gold. The gold wouldn’t come off in flakes, nor could it be harvested, for once this inner layer was removed from the layers of sediment and debris that made up the rocks, it would be so weak that it wouldn’t even survive in the air for more than a few minutes.

The man had known what to do with this royal creation within seconds of seeing it, and he had his men go to work on creating it posthaste. Every golden stone that the Fifth Brine workers had nurtured went towards forging this throne, imposing and eternal, and he was more proud of its creation than anything he had personally created before.

The throne was in itself no marvel of architecture. Indeed, its frame sported jagged edges, asymmetry, and even irregular patterns that seemed to defy common interior knowledge, but when viewed as a whole, it had a breathtaking quality that led one to shy away from the throne in quiet acklowedgment that they were not worthy to even be near it. The chair was crude yet noble; defiant of its humble origins and proud of the originality it held with its job. It was entirely golden yet did not sparkle, merely shone, ever the brighter the less one looked at it. The man, whenever he entered the throne room, could not help but gaze at the throne, endlessly, hopelessly.

Vainia hated it from the moment she laid eyes on it.

She never told the man this, nor did she let it voice itself by becoming visible on her face, but she let it slip the very first moment she arrived in her domain. She had arrived in the city aboard one of the Mortisian battleships that she had commanded, but none of them had to fight in any sort of conflict. Stepping off the boat, all she saw was darkness and fire, and knew that every phase of her plan had been a success. Shortly afterwards, she saw Taoris.

The man was standing with both of his blades sheathed behind his back, as usual, and he was wearing a red cloak that was visibly padded with armor beneath it. It flowed behind him with the wind of the sea and quivered in time with the fire behind him as it died down, but his body was completely taunt and motionless. He had looked at her with intensity and expectance, but when she came to his presence, neither said a word. Taoris immediately turned and started towards the city, and Vainia simply followed. As they were instructed, the crew from the ship that Vainia commanded began to follow her, doubling as her guard, and the other three ships sat in the harbor. The only other living things in the harbor besides the tall four ships had long since been reduced to dust and a dirty smell.

Vainia was led straight to an ugly, industrial structure that was pure black and jutted straight up to the sky. The city of Shorekeep was a modestly built town in that its tallest buildings only appeared to have been built on a whim, as growths that lazily increased the area of usability without increasing surface used, but this castle was something of an entirely different caliber. It seemed to personify revolution and defiance, because it jutted from the ground unbeknownst to the rules of its fellow structures and reached its cold black fingers to the sky, as if moving to claw it down.

As she walked right behind Taoris towards a tall wall of sandbags and basic fortification structures that bordered the castle, the hundreds of battle-scarred people who milled or stood about looked at her and, after moments of thoughts, began to cry out and rush towards her. She was initially startled and her crew guard took point at the sides of them, but Taoris continued walking without even pausing. It didn’t take long after that for Vainia to realize that the people were happy to see her.

The inside of the castle was much the same, although its inhabitants seemed to be able to hold in their excitement better than Vainia did. She paid them no mind and simply followed Taoris up the crudely built spiral staircases in the back of the foyer room, walking behind him, reserving all of her judgment until he turned to see her and the two finally talked. Whilst on her journey across the Queen’s Gulf, as the stretch of water between Mortis and Shorica was dubbed, she had been thinking constantly, pondering four steps ahead, laying out her ambitions and how to go about accomplishing them. She had been dreaming and believing rather than planning. But as soon as she laid eyes on Taoris as she walked down the steps of the ship when it docked at Shorekeep, her thoughts were silenced.

She felt it probably stemmed from Taoris’ own intentions. He didn’t show it, but she felt that him marching her through the streets and parading her through the obsidian castle was an act of his own pride, as if he was incredibly proud of what he had done in the city as well as for the fact that was entrenched in servitude to her, and he wanted to show off both to the Shoricans as well as to her. Even if this were true, Vainia knew it to be simple human pride and figured that she would allow it to continue. It was neither harming her nor impeding her ambitions, so she allowed it to live.

But when they finally reached the throne room, as endlessly black as every other part of the castle except for the gold throne in the back of it, she froze and her face flashed with disgust.

Never had she seen such an ugly thing before in her life.

Still, she sat atop the throne, and looked over the makeshift room with determination in her eyes like never before. A rush of energy passed through her in that moment, as she looked around and felt the throne beneath her hands. It was the first time she had ever sat atop a royal seat that was hers, one that actually held power. The seat she had back in Mortis was always useless and cold. She had known from her earliest days that the chair held no strength in it, both because of her status as a princess and of the general irrelevancy that Mortis had. But now things were different, and they were different because of her own status.

Now she was a queen.

Even the crudeness of the black throne couldn’t dampen this excitement. She looked straight forward, her eyes glazed over with the memories of all the times she sat on her father’s throne at night and dreamed of her future with hopeful intentions. She saw her school-age self, forgoing interactions and tutor sessions to sneak in the library and read all of the books they held in there. She saw her dissatisfied adolescent self, pacing through the royal library, shocked that she had exhausted every one of the novels held inside. She heard herself mumbling, as she did so often, to herself at night, repeating and memorizing all of her larger-than-life plans. Everything that had come before was just a foundation, a blueprint; now she had started to set the bricks of her foundation and actually started to build her own world. Her future was now.

“My Lady?”

Taoris’ probing statement drew her attention back to the real world, and she looked at him with a startled look for a second. She remembered after a second that he was probably expecting her to speak on what the two of them were to do next. She cleared her throat.

“Right then. I await your report.”

“Of course. As you predicted, the siege of the city went without a hitch. The people are absolutely enamored with you, as you may have noticed, and after relentlessly furthering your ideals throughout the city, they were effortlessly pushed towards violent revolution, just as you visualized. With their vengeful ideals, it only took a few hours of rioting to crush the bulk of the federal forces. Shorica’s resistance has been crushed, their navy no longer exists, and all of it has been done in your name.” At the conclusion of his report, Taoris rushed to his knees and looked down to the ground.

“Very well then.” She paused and looked off into the darkness of the room in thought. She didn’t even taken otice of the compliments he gave to her. She spoke again after a moment. “Well, Taoris, I must say… You’ve done an absolutely splendid job. Truly.” She looked at him with a sly, knowing look, and the tall man avoided her gaze as a slight blush ran through his face. She was probably the only living person who could draw such a response from him. Now it was Taoris’ turn to clear his throat.

“Nonsense. I did what I did because of your influence, my Lady. May I ask what you have planned next…?”

“Yes, I think I do. Now that we have effectively taken hold of Shorica, it will take a few days for the news to spread throughout the world. When it does, my name will be spat upon and it won’t take long for some Shorican-allied nation to attempt to take Shorekeep back. We will take this time to regroup in the city and gather any followers that will be willing to join my cause. At our current state, a further offense would be futile, but we are strong enough to defend Shorekeep, for the moment. Rather than making any rash moves, the most loyal of my forces here will diffuse throughout the nation and spread the propaganda that you have devised; it won’t take long for the rest of the nation to buckle to my influence.” She looked to the still-kneeling Taoris. “All of this will be overseen by you, my Knight.”

The bulky man’s head tilted slightly and he looked up to her with concern. “Are you… going somewhere?”

“Yes,” she curtly replied. With a loud clap onto the ground, she stepped off from her throne and began to purposefully walk towards the exit of the throne room. “I have… a certain contingency plan that I must take care of, back in Zeta. Now that I think about it, I must go and take care of it before my name and face spreads and normal travel becomes impossible. It won’t take more than a day or two to implement. I trust you will hold my territory down in my absence?” She stopped and turned her head to look at Taoris with a fierce expression. He took this as an opportunity to prove further his own loyalty, and stood up with a bow.

“Yes. Of course, my Queen.”

Vainia turned around with satisfied eyes and her pause continued for but a moment before she started walking through the palace once again. She would never tire of being called that.

...End of Part Twenty-Five.

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