Loyalty- A first draft
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Loyalty
King Tibbott gazed longingly at the shining goblet of wine before him. He noticed the light from the candles dancing across the glistening burgundy surface; so fragile and fleeting, almost vanishing with every tremble. He could still taste it on his lips; rich, warm and opulent, lingering on his tongue with an unwelcome almond finish. With great effort he searched the crowd for her: the only one who could help him now. He finally settled on her tall, stocky frame across the room and as their eyes met they were both sure of one thing. It was too late. The ball room was filled with his loyal subjects dancing, drinking and eating in celebration, remaining blissfully ignorant of the terrible exchange between their King and his Captain. They were too jubilant, too involved in the banquet to sense anything was wrong with their beloved King. His rasping, guttural cry pierced the festive atmosphere, slicing through the atmosphere like a hot knife through butter, burning a hole thought the hearts of his devoted servants.
Ursa was discussing the safety protocols for tomorrows parade with her deputy when a chill spread from her heart, enveloping her whole body. It grew into a biting, icy cold that stopped her breath in her throat and made her words catch in her chest, pooling in her lungs and drowning her in dread. Her eyes shot to her King, desperate for comfort, begging to be wrong, praying for a mistake but as usual, her gut instinct was infallible. As King Tibbott let out his last cry and tumbled from his throne, down the stone steps and landed in an awkward, almost inhuman heap on the ground, Ursa’s heart tumbled with it and shattered into a thousand shards, beyond repair.
“Call for the Apothecary. Guard the exits. Protect the Queen. Make sure the children can’t see.” Ursa barked the orders at her deputy as she sprang into a gallop towards King Tibbott. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, filling her head with the pounding, rushing white noise that blurred out the screams and bustling around her. As she fell to the ground at her saviour’s feet, she threw her arms around him and desperately breathed in his scent; old books and peppermint. Forcing herself to keep still, willing his chest to rise. Did it? Was he breathing? Did she imagine it? An age passed with him silent in her arms, it was decades in her mind as she waiting for a sign of life. Any sign.
“I have seen this once before, Captain” The Apothecary, Willem Oakleaf stood suddenly by her side, a strange vial of liquid in his hand. His thin and bony frame was hidden under a robe far too large for him, his back arching in a permanent hunch that humbled him. When had he arrived? How long had she been there waiting for him?
“Tell me, does he live? I beg of you, tell me he but sleeps or tell me I sleep and this is a cruel nightmare visited upon me.” The words spilled out, abrupt and choked from her already grieving soul. Deep within, Oakleaf knew if he was right about the diagnosis, although the King was alive he had almost no chance of survival. Tibbott’s last days would be filled with agonising pain and unspeakable torment, praying for death every prolonged second of his hell on earth. The only saving grace for his Queen, Ursa and his subjects was that to the outside world he would appear to be sleeping, and slip into the afterlife peacefully. Oakleaf crouched beside the fallen King and tentatively stretched his hand towards him, afraid of Ursa’s reaction, aware of her less than trusting nature. Carefully, he pulled the cork from the small tube and gently let two drops of a thick silvery liquid fall onto the King’s hand where it sat for a moment in a tiny lump as if it were not a liquid at all. Ursa stared at it with burning eyes constantly filling and emptying with hope and despair, waiting for something to happen, anything that might mean there was a chance. Slowly, the little metallic bump began to change colour, watched eagerly by Oakleaf it went from Silver to a bright scarlet, then to a deep unforgiving black. He sighed deeply, his fears confirmed.
“Yes, he lives Ursa but for one day only. It pains me to tell you, King Tibbott has been poisoned, wilfully by some malicious coward. I have seen this poison’s effects but once before and the cost of its dark spell is so great that the caster must give part of their soul and the life of a willing sacrifice to create it.”
“A poison? Oh who could have a heart so black, so void of love to hurt our peaceful King? Who is this yellow-bellied scoundrel? I will have his vile guts in the palm of my hand, I swear it! But a poison you say? Then there must be an antidote! Surely, with your potions and powders you can wake our sweet lord from the wretched grasp of this spell?” Ursa’s voice cracked and betrayed her deep desperation.
“Alas dear Captain, nothing I possess can cure King Tibbott of this terrible curse, in fact there is nothing in the kingdom that can help him. The only hope, if it does exist, lies far from here, in the ink of the legendary monstrous squid of the Onyx Lake. Ursa, listen to me, the squid is but a legend, nobody has seen it in centuries and if it is real you may not survive it. Is this slim chance truly worth risking your life?” Oakleaf pleaded with Ursa, begging with his eyes for her to realise the futility of the quest and concede to stay in Brackhill and protect the Queen and Princes. He looked again to the King, watching for a hint of the pain he knew was bubbling under the surface, full of pity for Tibbott, trapped inside his own body like a prison. When he looked up again to speak to Ursa, she was gone, already at the far end of the hall heading for the exit near the stables. Oakleaf sighed deeply, fearing what might happen to Ursa on her journey and resigning himself to maintaining protection spells for the heirs.
Ursa was determined, she was a falcon on the hunt, immune to distractions she marched towards the stables with the intention of leaving immediately. As her breath fogged up in the icy air, she briefly felt thankful that she had thought to put on her riding armour for the ball (because it was the most impressive of her collection). As she rounded the corner into the vast stable filled with the most beautiful breeds of horses from in and beyond the kingdom, she could not stop to admire their grace as she usually would. She focused on a broad black stallion: standing a staggering twenty hands tall, Hextor was the pride of the King’s guard, always found at the front of parades and usually ridden slowly by Ursa herself. He had never seen a battle thanks to King Tibbott’s peaceful reign, but there was no doubt that he would excel in war as he did in everything. He was the colour of the sky in the deepest night; a blackness that was almost reflective, men looked at this horse and saw some aspect of themselves staring back at them. Swift as an arrow, Ursa gripped Hextor’s reigns and leapt onto his back, pulling his ties loose from the post, though they would not have held him if he did not wish to be still. Performing one short check to make sure her sword, a corked bottle for the ink, and a bag of feed were still strapped to Hextor’s saddle, Ursa dug in her heels and away they sped.
As Ursa expertly rode Hextor along the frost bitten, stony paths of Brackhill she tried to figure out who could possibly be responsible for this callous attempt at regicide. Surely it could not be anyone from the kingdom, or even anyone who dwelled in the neighbouring hamlets and villages. King Tibbott’s generous and peaceful reign had left no one hungry or cold. Nobody feared for their lives or their possessions; there had not been a crime in Brackhill for nigh on twenty years! Ursa knew Tibbott’s kind heart on a very personal level, it was down to him that she had learned all the skills that made her the strong woman she was. When Ursa was a small child of three or four, her village was ransacked by travelling rebels hell bent on random destruction. Her mother, father and brother were in their home while Ursa was playing in the long grass meadow behind the cottage. The rebels burst in through the front door and took everything of value (which was not much at all, just a silver plate gifted to Ursa’s mother on the birth of her first child and the simple wedding bands on her parents’ fingers) and as a final disgrace, they barred the doors and set the thatch alight. Luckily, they had not spotted Ursa hidden among the meadow flowers, curled tightly into a ball and sobbing. King Tibbott found her the next day as he tried to assure the villagers that though he was a new ruler, he would take care of this problem and make sure it never happened again. He became like a father to Ursa, teaching her how to catch rabbits, and how to cook them. The laws of the land forbade the king from adopting a child, and so to keep Ursa close and make sure she would succeed in life, he placed her into the care of the King’s guard where she thirsted for knowledge, and rose in the ranks to her highest position of captain.
She shook this hazy memory from her head as she took in her surroundings. She was sure she should be nearing the Onyx lake soon. She scanned the frosty ground for any landmarks to spark a memory of a previous journey to the lake: she found nothing but the glittering spread of ice, making each blade of glass sparkle like a shining dagger. Annoyed at herself and determined she rode on, praying for a sign to show her the way to the lake. Almost as a cruel twist of fate, Ursa was about to receive the sign she was looking for, but not in the way she had imagined it. Barely thirty feet ahead of Ursa and Hextor, there was an enormous crash, as the very ground shattered into millions of glassy ice fragments, launched high into the air with an almighty racket. Ursa instinctively shielded her face from the blast, and as she regained enough composure to look for what had made such a destructive noise, Hextor reared back onto his hind legs and whinnied more fearfully than even he knew he could. There, climbing high from the jagged hole in the ground were several thick and slimy tentacles, each one at least twice as tall as Ursa and covered in disgusting round suckers, oozing a foul smelling purple liquid. In a panic, Ursa had a sudden realisation, and her eyes darted around her, not really sure what she was hoping to find. What she found was that she had been travelling over the Onyx lake for some time now, having never visited it this far into the dark of winter, she had not seen it frozen over till this day. Leaping down from Hextor’s back, she prayed his fear would not sway his courage and as she slid her sword from its resting place on his saddle she let out a mighty roar, raised her sword high in the air and charged towards the monsters flailing limbs. She plunged her blade deep into one of the swirling tendrils, and the beast let out an unearthly screech from its snapping beak, but this was not enough to best him. With one strong whack, he slammed Ursa to the icy battle floor, breaking her right arm sharply. The pain burned through her flesh, white hot and searing, but she still had one arm remaining, and as the squid wrapped its slimy arms around Ursa, lifting her from the ice and towards its terrible, gaping maw Ursa knew she had one last chance to save King Tibbott. She swung her weaker arm round and prayed her aim was true. The blade stuck fast in the giant, rolling eye of the squid, causing a shriek so loud she was sure the sound alone could have wakened Tibbott from his deathbed. Ursa was flung once again to the ground, hard and fast she landed on her back and was sure that she would never again get up. The squid leaned back and defensively squirted Ursa with its thick, pungent black ink, and Ursa was ready for it. She held out the glass bottle in her usable arm, having abandoned the sword along with any hopes of survival. As fast as she could muster, she pushed the cork into the bottle with her thumb and threw the bottle towards Hextor. He knew what to do immediately, gently picking up the bottle in his teeth and setting off in a gallop towards the castle. Ursa grinned as her powerful steed disappeared from view. She had won, she had saved King Tibbott, but she would not live to find out who had hurt him, nor to see him regain his health. Unaware of her resignation to defeat, the squid tightly gripped her leg and slowly slid her towards the deep black hole in the ice. He dragged her with him as he descended into the depths to return to his slumber. The beast was strong, and far older than Ursa. The life of Kings meant little to him, but it meant more than life itself to her.
Loyalty
King Tibbott gazed longingly at the shining goblet of wine before him. He noticed the light from the candles dancing across the glistening burgundy surface; so fragile and fleeting, almost vanishing with every tremble. He could still taste it on his lips; rich, warm and opulent, lingering on his tongue with an unwelcome almond finish. With great effort he searched the crowd for her: the only one who could help him now. He finally settled on her tall, stocky frame across the room and as their eyes met they were both sure of one thing. It was too late. The ball room was filled with his loyal subjects dancing, drinking and eating in celebration, remaining blissfully ignorant of the terrible exchange between their King and his Captain. They were too jubilant, too involved in the banquet to sense anything was wrong with their beloved King. His rasping, guttural cry pierced the festive atmosphere, slicing through the atmosphere like a hot knife through butter, burning a hole thought the hearts of his devoted servants.
Ursa was discussing the safety protocols for tomorrows parade with her deputy when a chill spread from her heart, enveloping her whole body. It grew into a biting, icy cold that stopped her breath in her throat and made her words catch in her chest, pooling in her lungs and drowning her in dread. Her eyes shot to her King, desperate for comfort, begging to be wrong, praying for a mistake but as usual, her gut instinct was infallible. As King Tibbott let out his last cry and tumbled from his throne, down the stone steps and landed in an awkward, almost inhuman heap on the ground, Ursa’s heart tumbled with it and shattered into a thousand shards, beyond repair.
“Call for the Apothecary. Guard the exits. Protect the Queen. Make sure the children can’t see.” Ursa barked the orders at her deputy as she sprang into a gallop towards King Tibbott. She could hear her heart beating in her ears, filling her head with the pounding, rushing white noise that blurred out the screams and bustling around her. As she fell to the ground at her saviour’s feet, she threw her arms around him and desperately breathed in his scent; old books and peppermint. Forcing herself to keep still, willing his chest to rise. Did it? Was he breathing? Did she imagine it? An age passed with him silent in her arms, it was decades in her mind as she waiting for a sign of life. Any sign.
“I have seen this once before, Captain” The Apothecary, Willem Oakleaf stood suddenly by her side, a strange vial of liquid in his hand. His thin and bony frame was hidden under a robe far too large for him, his back arching in a permanent hunch that humbled him. When had he arrived? How long had she been there waiting for him?
“Tell me, does he live? I beg of you, tell me he but sleeps or tell me I sleep and this is a cruel nightmare visited upon me.” The words spilled out, abrupt and choked from her already grieving soul. Deep within, Oakleaf knew if he was right about the diagnosis, although the King was alive he had almost no chance of survival. Tibbott’s last days would be filled with agonising pain and unspeakable torment, praying for death every prolonged second of his hell on earth. The only saving grace for his Queen, Ursa and his subjects was that to the outside world he would appear to be sleeping, and slip into the afterlife peacefully. Oakleaf crouched beside the fallen King and tentatively stretched his hand towards him, afraid of Ursa’s reaction, aware of her less than trusting nature. Carefully, he pulled the cork from the small tube and gently let two drops of a thick silvery liquid fall onto the King’s hand where it sat for a moment in a tiny lump as if it were not a liquid at all. Ursa stared at it with burning eyes constantly filling and emptying with hope and despair, waiting for something to happen, anything that might mean there was a chance. Slowly, the little metallic bump began to change colour, watched eagerly by Oakleaf it went from Silver to a bright scarlet, then to a deep unforgiving black. He sighed deeply, his fears confirmed.
“Yes, he lives Ursa but for one day only. It pains me to tell you, King Tibbott has been poisoned, wilfully by some malicious coward. I have seen this poison’s effects but once before and the cost of its dark spell is so great that the caster must give part of their soul and the life of a willing sacrifice to create it.”
“A poison? Oh who could have a heart so black, so void of love to hurt our peaceful King? Who is this yellow-bellied scoundrel? I will have his vile guts in the palm of my hand, I swear it! But a poison you say? Then there must be an antidote! Surely, with your potions and powders you can wake our sweet lord from the wretched grasp of this spell?” Ursa’s voice cracked and betrayed her deep desperation.
“Alas dear Captain, nothing I possess can cure King Tibbott of this terrible curse, in fact there is nothing in the kingdom that can help him. The only hope, if it does exist, lies far from here, in the ink of the legendary monstrous squid of the Onyx Lake. Ursa, listen to me, the squid is but a legend, nobody has seen it in centuries and if it is real you may not survive it. Is this slim chance truly worth risking your life?” Oakleaf pleaded with Ursa, begging with his eyes for her to realise the futility of the quest and concede to stay in Brackhill and protect the Queen and Princes. He looked again to the King, watching for a hint of the pain he knew was bubbling under the surface, full of pity for Tibbott, trapped inside his own body like a prison. When he looked up again to speak to Ursa, she was gone, already at the far end of the hall heading for the exit near the stables. Oakleaf sighed deeply, fearing what might happen to Ursa on her journey and resigning himself to maintaining protection spells for the heirs.
Ursa was determined, she was a falcon on the hunt, immune to distractions she marched towards the stables with the intention of leaving immediately. As her breath fogged up in the icy air, she briefly felt thankful that she had thought to put on her riding armour for the ball (because it was the most impressive of her collection). As she rounded the corner into the vast stable filled with the most beautiful breeds of horses from in and beyond the kingdom, she could not stop to admire their grace as she usually would. She focused on a broad black stallion: standing a staggering twenty hands tall, Hextor was the pride of the King’s guard, always found at the front of parades and usually ridden slowly by Ursa herself. He had never seen a battle thanks to King Tibbott’s peaceful reign, but there was no doubt that he would excel in war as he did in everything. He was the colour of the sky in the deepest night; a blackness that was almost reflective, men looked at this horse and saw some aspect of themselves staring back at them. Swift as an arrow, Ursa gripped Hextor’s reigns and leapt onto his back, pulling his ties loose from the post, though they would not have held him if he did not wish to be still. Performing one short check to make sure her sword, a corked bottle for the ink, and a bag of feed were still strapped to Hextor’s saddle, Ursa dug in her heels and away they sped.
As Ursa expertly rode Hextor along the frost bitten, stony paths of Brackhill she tried to figure out who could possibly be responsible for this callous attempt at regicide. Surely it could not be anyone from the kingdom, or even anyone who dwelled in the neighbouring hamlets and villages. King Tibbott’s generous and peaceful reign had left no one hungry or cold. Nobody feared for their lives or their possessions; there had not been a crime in Brackhill for nigh on twenty years! Ursa knew Tibbott’s kind heart on a very personal level, it was down to him that she had learned all the skills that made her the strong woman she was. When Ursa was a small child of three or four, her village was ransacked by travelling rebels hell bent on random destruction. Her mother, father and brother were in their home while Ursa was playing in the long grass meadow behind the cottage. The rebels burst in through the front door and took everything of value (which was not much at all, just a silver plate gifted to Ursa’s mother on the birth of her first child and the simple wedding bands on her parents’ fingers) and as a final disgrace, they barred the doors and set the thatch alight. Luckily, they had not spotted Ursa hidden among the meadow flowers, curled tightly into a ball and sobbing. King Tibbott found her the next day as he tried to assure the villagers that though he was a new ruler, he would take care of this problem and make sure it never happened again. He became like a father to Ursa, teaching her how to catch rabbits, and how to cook them. The laws of the land forbade the king from adopting a child, and so to keep Ursa close and make sure she would succeed in life, he placed her into the care of the King’s guard where she thirsted for knowledge, and rose in the ranks to her highest position of captain.
She shook this hazy memory from her head as she took in her surroundings. She was sure she should be nearing the Onyx lake soon. She scanned the frosty ground for any landmarks to spark a memory of a previous journey to the lake: she found nothing but the glittering spread of ice, making each blade of glass sparkle like a shining dagger. Annoyed at herself and determined she rode on, praying for a sign to show her the way to the lake. Almost as a cruel twist of fate, Ursa was about to receive the sign she was looking for, but not in the way she had imagined it. Barely thirty feet ahead of Ursa and Hextor, there was an enormous crash, as the very ground shattered into millions of glassy ice fragments, launched high into the air with an almighty racket. Ursa instinctively shielded her face from the blast, and as she regained enough composure to look for what had made such a destructive noise, Hextor reared back onto his hind legs and whinnied more fearfully than even he knew he could. There, climbing high from the jagged hole in the ground were several thick and slimy tentacles, each one at least twice as tall as Ursa and covered in disgusting round suckers, oozing a foul smelling purple liquid. In a panic, Ursa had a sudden realisation, and her eyes darted around her, not really sure what she was hoping to find. What she found was that she had been travelling over the Onyx lake for some time now, having never visited it this far into the dark of winter, she had not seen it frozen over till this day. Leaping down from Hextor’s back, she prayed his fear would not sway his courage and as she slid her sword from its resting place on his saddle she let out a mighty roar, raised her sword high in the air and charged towards the monsters flailing limbs. She plunged her blade deep into one of the swirling tendrils, and the beast let out an unearthly screech from its snapping beak, but this was not enough to best him. With one strong whack, he slammed Ursa to the icy battle floor, breaking her right arm sharply. The pain burned through her flesh, white hot and searing, but she still had one arm remaining, and as the squid wrapped its slimy arms around Ursa, lifting her from the ice and towards its terrible, gaping maw Ursa knew she had one last chance to save King Tibbott. She swung her weaker arm round and prayed her aim was true. The blade stuck fast in the giant, rolling eye of the squid, causing a shriek so loud she was sure the sound alone could have wakened Tibbott from his deathbed. Ursa was flung once again to the ground, hard and fast she landed on her back and was sure that she would never again get up. The squid leaned back and defensively squirted Ursa with its thick, pungent black ink, and Ursa was ready for it. She held out the glass bottle in her usable arm, having abandoned the sword along with any hopes of survival. As fast as she could muster, she pushed the cork into the bottle with her thumb and threw the bottle towards Hextor. He knew what to do immediately, gently picking up the bottle in his teeth and setting off in a gallop towards the castle. Ursa grinned as her powerful steed disappeared from view. She had won, she had saved King Tibbott, but she would not live to find out who had hurt him, nor to see him regain his health. Unaware of her resignation to defeat, the squid tightly gripped her leg and slowly slid her towards the deep black hole in the ice. He dragged her with him as he descended into the depths to return to his slumber. The beast was strong, and far older than Ursa. The life of Kings meant little to him, but it meant more than life itself to her.
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