Fallen Stars

Chapter 6

KLAIRE

Eight Years Ago

The afternoon sun shone through the bars of the only window of the room. The dirty dungeon-like ambience of the place was something I couldn't care about even though the floor was dusty and grimy, and the stone brick walls were halfway on looking abandoned. I was sitting at the living tables of the wide room of our castle playing with an abacus standing in front of me. There is something about the Azerians' innovations that entices me. Apart from the fact that our nation, Vergont can only do slow wooden ships, catapults, and torture racks.

The room was filthy as the maids of our palace had forgotten to clean this very room. The old library where bookshelves housing old leather-covered books had little insects residing in them. Webs scattered on the ceiling waiting for any flying insects to get caught in it to become food for the spiders. Clatters left unchecked were sitting on top of tables with dust on their surface while I sat on one of the tables as I played with the standalone huge abacus in front of me, moving the pebbles back and forth the wood it was attached to.

Mother then approached me, humming serenely a familiar tune of a song. "Fill the bowls with water, fill the bowls with mud, fill the bowls with blood, and a new era will prosper."

We were in Vergont, my home. It was the other region beside Regartha, northeast of it. Being a two-year ride from Meiroh, Vergont is an empire that stood strongest trying to compete with the Regarthian kingdoms for territory and colonial expansion. We, the Velsneare family, one of the noblest bloods were allowed to know such things and the education to know those details.

I was 16. It was my birthday, The 13th of September 1528. I was in our very big home. The Velsneare Castle stands on one of the mountains that overlook the city. A genuine smile was etched across my face. An innocent smile of pure joy. I wasn't one to know everything.

"Klaire, come with me. I wanno' show you something" she said grinning while she offered her hand I stood up following her but didn't hold her arm.

Mother was taking me to her chambers and her office and for the first time in the long time I've waited I was finally allowed to see it. It was Mother's birthday gift for me because all this time she always prohibited me from going inside that very room in about a hundred this place had. I once took a peek at it when I was a kid and I saw something that made me always want to get there. It was like a black statue. Yet, Mother was one to not let me as a kid.

I was looking forward to it. When we walk down the unlit and uncleaned stone spiral stair tower we head to her chambers wondering what I will find inside.

"Mother, for the last time, I would ask. I wonder what's in the centre of your room?" curiously, I asked while I was behind her and her arms crossed, but her expression was calm. She held a candle which lit her face while she looked at me.

"Wait until you see, my love." She replied, staring at me, smiling while we were walking downstairs but by the looks it, of her smile, I could tell there was something wrong.

The sun was finally settling down seen through the windows of the upper section of the spiral staircase. Though like the setting of the sun bringing darkness, it also becomes darker, and with our descent comes this ominous feeling of something terrible.

We finally arrived at the door. The door just looked plain, rusty, specifically. Mom opened it with a black key on her hand and as she creaked open the door. I saw...