198th of Gnielm, 98 EA
Castle Umbreanu, Athal
Imelda would be better off walking out into the aether than she would be standing for the indignities of the paysan. That much, she knew. More than anything, it burned her that she had been kept out of the inner circle. As though the loss of two-thirds of the kingdom was some paltry affair, or else something she could not be trusted to handle.
She had known for some time that there was something afoot, the way that council chambers had suddenly become blocked to her, but she wrote it off as punishment on the part of her parents for her last outburst in court. That had been a particularly delectable bit of drama, accusing that duke of adultery, but it hardly warranted this.
So she stormed across the scepteresque towers of her family’s ancestral castle, the castle she would one day inherit, and she burst into the bureau of the monarch in all fits of rage.
“Don’t!” She shouted to fill the space, even before she could really tell what point the dealings had progressed to.
The scene she walked into was a tired one, one that Imryll had been playing out in small part for much of their long reign. Emissaries from the Athalial Explorer’s League flanked them, three in total. They were in negotiation, had been for many hours, and it was clear from posture alone that they knew they held the upper hand. They were as vultures, or else wolves prepared to lap out the marrow of a bone.
“Daughter,” Imryll had a resigned tiredness to them, “You know not of what goes on here.”
“Hells below knows I do!” Imelda cursed just to see her parent wince.
The three representatives looked to each other with a faint amusement.
Imryll turned to them, and with an infuriating politeness asked, “Would you excuse me a moment with my daughter. Please, avail yourselves of some vittles, I’ll have a meal brought up.”
The League members nodded, smirked, stood, and exited. Imryll and Imelda were left alone.
“How could you?” Imelda laced as much accusation as she could into the question.
“How could I what?” Imryll sighed, setting the crown from their head onto the desk. “I still don’t know what it is you think I’m doing?”
“You’re going to give the kingdom away!” Imelda launched so quickly into her tirade that she found she was in need of breath, but she kept at it without, “I know the whole of it, I know that they’ve come to steal it from us. What, they think that they’re fit to rule? Just because they can open a portal or two? What a load of poppycock. They’re here to take everything that is our family’s by right, and make it theirs. Has it already happened? Have you already made the decree, or signed the paper, or whatever it is that’s going to happen? Have- have-”
She began to panic, to feel her anger slipping past itself in her mind. And then, her vision was forced to tunnel and all she could perceive was a singular, simple line.
When she came to, she was faced with Imryll’s holy symbol. She felt herself calmed, though in the deep recesses of her mind she was unsettled for having been compelled into such a state. She tried to speak, but her tongue felt all gummy.
“Breathe, daughter.” Imryll put a hand on her shoulder. “Nothing has happened yet, but things are more complicated than you are making them out to be. Are you ready to hear?”
Imelda’s rage had simmered down to the stewing sort of sulk that had become her neutral state of being. “Yes. I will listen.”
“Good. That is a prudent quality in a queen-to-be.” Imryll smoothed back his hair. “The League is not here to take any land, but the state of affairs in planes beyond Kesserine is not well. Incidences of resistance to the authority of the crown are growing in number, in frequency, and in severity. There have been growing sentiments towards republicanism amongst the populace, and each day that goes on under our rule there brings them closer to flat out revolt.”
“Any you refuse to act on this treason directly?” Imelda spat, “You’d put us in debt to the Athalial League rather than trusting our vassals?”
Imryll began to look agitated themself. “In what manner should I direct these allies of ours, in your view? March them down the streets of their own towns, have them slaughter their neighbors?”
Imelda did not back down. “It would be their honorbound duty, if it were ordered of them by their monarch.”
“You’d bring the people to war against themselves?” Imryll blanched.
“When I become queen, if the integrity of the kingdom was at stake, then yes, I would do what was necessary to ensure the kingdom stayed together.” Imelda straightened herself up. “Our land is our power, there is no means by which we could afford to lose any of it.”
“If that is the case, daughter,” Imryll took the tone of one who had become hallow, “Then I will sit the throne until my dying day, that you might be kept from that power for as long as possible. I only hope that in the intervening years you will come to see the way of peace.”
It was true that the kingdom was not lost on that day, nor was it lost all at once, but it was lost. Plane-wide parcels of land were ceded to the Athalial League who, with little interest in practical governance, left the people’s fates to themselves.
Imryll kept their promise, holding their role as monarch for as many breaths as they could take. By the time that Imelda ascended and was crowned, her heart had been poisoned by the spite of many long years under the belief that a certain future had been taken away from her.
The Etra Anthology 