Amethyst Paice

triggers: death, dead bodies, dead family, war

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The floor of the throne room was littered with bodies.

Treian picked her way through them, her gilded sandals slapping against the pale marble floor. Each step she took was a careful one, as she fitted her foot between her cousin’s neck and her uncle’s calf, and her other in the gap between her sister’s arm and waist.

When she got to her mother, she simply stopped and stared. The woman’s pale eyes were glazed, and her golden hair flowed loosely over the polished surface. There was not a single drop of blood on her clothing or a bruise on her skin, but all the same, her body had failed her. She had been unable to accept the power that the Chooser of Pl'Rack offered.

They all had. All Treian’s family but her.

She’d known this would happen at some stage. Either she would die in the process of being Chosen or everybody else would, and she would inherit a crown and a country. That was the reason why she wasn’t grief stricken as she strode through a room full of her dead family. It was something she’d prepared for all her life.

However, looking at her mother’s face, Treian felt a tinge of sadness and guilt. Most children have a special bond with the woman who birthed and raised them, and despite all her distancing, Treian hadn’t been able to eliminate that.

She leant down and let her fingers brush against her mother’s cheek once, then that was it. Letting the new power thrumming through her overtake her weak feelings, she stared down at the rest of them.

She was glad they were dead.

If they weren’t, one of them would have the throne, and they would just sit there like her father had done, gathering armies and resources but never doing anything with them. She would’ve had to wait through irrelevant celebrations and meetings that had nothing to do with war. She would’ve said the same thing to them all again and again.

“Pl'Rack is the nation of strength. Why not fight for dominance?”

Looking at her family, their limp arms and blank faces, she knew why she’d been the one to survive the Choosing. They’d all known that the Chooser, a glass needle filled with golden liquid, would test their strength. It would give them power, so much power, that if they weren’t strong enough to bear it their bodies would collapse and their minds shut down.

So, they’d trained constantly to become physically and mentally stronger, with incredible levels of self-discipline and solid muscles that showed through the flowing silk of Pl'Rackan clothes. But the truest strength, the willpower that held together mind and body to achieve something, could not be bought through training and thoughts. It was found in purpose.

Treian had a reason to succeed, a reason she was willing to dedicate her life to. She had a purpose defining each of her actions and thoughts.

She would turn Pl'Rack into the country it was meant to be. Past kings and queens had fought with armies, and others had simply gathered them. Their power had been in their brute strength, but Treian refused to underestimate the value of intelligence. She’d had enough time to think and prepare, to plant her spies in different countries and tell the most trusted commanders what she intended. She finally had put into place what her predecessors had not.

She stood in the throne room among the fallen, strength and life flooding through her veins. She could still feel the itch where the needle had entered her skin, and that needle, the Chooser, was now the apex of her golden crown.

She looked down at the white silk that flowed from her golden collar, cuffs and belt. Soon it would be a deep crimson. The colour of Pl’Rackan royalty. The colour of blood. The colour for a queen of war.

She was finally ready, and Pl'Rack had been waiting.

Marching over to the double doors, she flung them open. The guards on the other side jumped in surprise, and the top general, who’d been waiting with them, smiled coldly at the sight of her.

“You know the plan,” she told him, her voice loud and stern. It echoed around the walls of what was now her palace.

The general nodded once, expression disappearing from his face. There was no time to waste showing one's emotions. They had work to do.

“Prepare our troops. We will march on Saahrl.”

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The Author: Glo @glowingfeathers_writes