The Etra Anthology

154th of Gnielm, 174 CE

Sunfathom Gate, Athal

Grigor would never be king. That much, he knew. He was young, too young to be feeling the weight of the world as he did. He figured that it would only be more so if he were to sit the throne, and so despite its grand allure he was glad that he had older siblings to take that place.

“What you’re doing is atrocious!” Sophia spat across the deck of the sailing ship. She was never afraid to speak her mind, not even to their mother. Radu, her twin, kept his quiet but stepped up next to her in show of support.

“These are measures of austerity.” Imelda sat up from her chaise longue. “These taxes, they are for the good of the realm! And I won’t hear any other word about it, not from any insolent uppity daughters of mine, so mark me.”

“The good of the realm?” Radu inserted himself into the argument. “You call the people of Kesserine starving while we yacht around the planes the good of the realm?”

“You put a shadow on the house of Ranavar.” Sophia quipped in quickly, her poise never faltering as her focus was wedged intently on her mother. “You make me ashamed to share that name.”

The whole of the ship passed quickly into shadow as it pierced through the aetherline. All around, wards sparked to life to create a shell against that magical fog.

To Grigor’s young mind, there was no more terrifying thought than that fog bearing down on them all. It was the ocean, sunken down all around them, held at bay by forces he did not understand. He ran to his mother, tugging at her skirts as she got up.

“Not now, boy.” She batted him away, sending him cowering towards the railing of the deck.

“Don’t talk to him like that.” Radu defended his brother, drawing focus back on himself and his sister. “You’ve got no right.”

“I’ve got whatever right I’d care for,” The argument continued, “I am the queen, you miserable wretch. I have known the world a fair century over you. You may think you have seen, think yourselves grown now, think you know the way of the world, the way of some perverse justice, but you’re nothing more than a short sighted softhearted little brat, just as you were when you were a babe.”

Covering his ears, Grigor’s heart quailed as he found himself unable to stop from looking out over the siding. There in the depths of the aether the fog shifted at the approach of a behemoth, a dreadnought. Its shape was obscured, as was all else in the dark of that haze, but clear as anything Grigor knew it was there.

“Mama!” He cried, feeling a fear more potent than any he had ever experienced.

“I said not now!” She dismissed him with barely a look.

Grigor stood up off his haunches and ran, ran as fast as he could. He looked back over his shoulder, and just as he did he saw the opening of a single, massive eye. It was gray on gray on the backdrop of the aether, barely recognizable, but again it was undeniably present. It was seeing. It was seeking.

As it opened there was a sudden sucking sensation, as all the wards across the deck of the ship simultaneously failed.

The aether leapt in, reaching with tendrils of deep madness to batter the royal family Ranavar. There were screams, and the groaning of the ship as licks of wood and metal disintegrated.

Grigor’s vision was clouded, as was all else, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he needed to be shielded from whatever that eye saw. He stumbled through the rapidly condensing landscape, feeling less and less sure with every step of what was left and what was right and what was him and what was the world, until suddenly he could see the outline of his mother.

That view anchored him to hope, some shred of hope. He ran to her, ran an impossible distance. He felt his legs give out, and then cease to be, and so he crawled, and the crawling was just enough to bring him into sight of another. He felt Sophia’s hands on his back, hoisting him up. She was clung onto Radu, and together they hugged their younger brother to them with all of their might.

In the distance, no closer than she was before, Imelda was sucked out into the fog. She ceased to be in that moment. Her acrid touch would never be felt again.

The behemoth was gone. Maybe it had never been there in the first place. In that silvery indetermination, Grigor was sure of his siblings, and nothing else.