116th of Nemulum, 7 RI
Castle Umbreanu, Athal
Llywelyn Ranavar would be the first king of the new reality. That much he knew. It could be read in his eyes and in his gait, in that way he moved through the chaos after catastrophe. He was considerate, and precise. He wore stateliness like a cloak.
To his backdrop he heard the calls of the undulating masses, their distresses and their disarray. Their anxiety over this newfound isolation, this aetherbound existence, it was palpable. They were too fresh from the incomprehensible madness of the void, and many of their leaders had died even before whatever shattered reality they now lived amongst could take hold. They were a disoriented people, most of all, and so it fell to Llywelyn’s charge to soothe them.
He stood, waiting then in that antechamber so high in its ceilings that one worried that they might fall up into them, letting their distant murmurings wash over him.
“Are you quite sure of this?” His dear love Miacyne fretted through whispers at his side. “It’s not too late.”
“I am sure, darling.” He had been in love with his paramour long enough to know just how much reassurance was necessary. “All will be well, after this. We will trade peace for prosperity, with these people. As is right.”
“As is right.” Miacyne nodded, the repetition a seeming comfort to him as it so often was with matters such as these. He clasped his hands underneath the billowing sleeves of his gown, and though it gave a look of composure those hands of his were still being wrung under cover of the cloth.
Llywelyn kissed him then, a resolute sort of kiss, and pulled away to begin his stride forwards.
The grand doors of his castle craned open at his approach, bathing him in the light of the noonday sun and the pouring roar of those masses he had worked so very hard to assemble on that bracingly chilled day.
His family, high elven in blood, were in procession behind him for all to see. He held his shoulders back and glided across the causeway. In that moment Llywelyn was tailored to authority in every stitch of his clothing and every meaningful nod of his head.
Still, as he approached the dais, raised above them, a doubt flickered in the deep recesses of his mind. Theirs were many, and his were few. They were unruly, and yet he was making it his commission to rule them.
They assessed him at every step, these would be subjects. They scoured him for any sign of incapacity, any flinch of malignancy.
Then, he was there. He had walked out into the very center of them, and resting on a pillowed plinth was a crown of ivory and gold and plush red velvet. He pressed his fingers into the sides of that crown, and lifted it. He felt the air suck out of the place as he did, all eyes settling on him as he raised it above his head. He let it linger there, like a halo behind him, for a moment longer than was necessary. And then, he lowered it onto his head and was crowned.
The crowd in that moment was deafening, and yet when he raised his hand once more they fell to silence as if by magic.
“This day,” Llywelyn’s conviction projected out through the square, “Will be marked in history as the day our people were saved.”
The enrapture held, no matter the fact that Llywelyn’s family were not of these people.
“No longer will the echoes of the Evenfall dictate our misery.” He called to them in inspiration, “No longer will sibling fight sibling, nor neighbor be stranger. Let us come together, as one nation, as the Kingdom of Ranavar, to secure our place into the future of this new world.”
He paused a moment, and the cheers that went up in the absence of his voice told him that he had their hearts.
“I vow,” He continued, “on the honor of my noble family and on my position as king of this land old and new, to do what is right in all things, to ensure stability in this realm.”
With that decree Llywelyn walked off, cheers still roiling at his back, to reenter the privacy of the castle.
It was only Miacyne, then, who was there to read the slyness that shed from him.
The Etra Anthology 