THREE DARK QUEENS
are born in a glen
SWEET LITTLE TRIPLETS
will never be friends
THREE DARK WITCHES
all fair to be seen
TWO TO DEVOUR
one to be queen
On the island of Fennbirn every generation three triplets are born, all equal heirs to the throne...
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"Why on earth did I say I'd come with you?" Morrigan grumbles as she follows Nalani up the trail to the Breccia Domain.
Thanks to the endurance of their mares they made it to Innisfuil Valley quickly, perhaps no one had even noticed they had disappeared yet. Nalani briefly wonders what they suspect. Rowan will be furious she didn't tell him where she was going, so will Hestia and Vivianne.
Nalani wonders if any rumours will come of their disappearance. Perhaps they'll even paint Nalani and Morrigan as lovers. The thought makes the Fire Queen snort in amusement, she's sure they'd annoy each other to death if they ever courted.
"Hush," Nalani instructs, not stopping to check if Morrigan is still following her as they both climb up the trail leading to something. Or someone.
"I thought you wanted to see my aunt," Morrigan says, cursing as she nearly trips over a stray tree root entwined with roots and dirt on the forest ground. She knows Innisfuil Valley is sacred but she hates it here. Something clings to it like a blanket of mist, something that wishes to keep itself concealed. There's nothing Morrigan hates more than an enemy she cannot throw a dagger into, one that she cannot see.
"I do," Nalani says as she sees the beginning of the black chasm stretching out before her, "but I needed to come here first, something has drawn me here, perhaps my own unanswered questions from those dead queens who told me their prophecies or perhaps my queensblood has simply drawn here because of the hundreds below that share it," she finishes staring down the perpetual pit of darkness that now lies a few feet in front of her.
The Breccia Domain. Where generations of fallen queens lie, their corpses never to be seen or heard from again. Their queensblood as potent as hers, except there's has now been stolen from their body and claimed for a different purpose, permeating into the ground, feeding the sleeping Goddess below.
Their bones smothered in all the dirt, their skulls silently crying out for a proper burial, a remembrance but no one will ever speak their names again or even remember who they were. The are simply the fallen, perhaps their archaic bones have even been picked clean by any animals that live down there. But Nalani suspects that nothing, not even a worm, is alive down there in that hole. It is a chasm of death.
That never ending ravine of black that speaks in a foreign tongue, the tortured murmurings of the deceased and tales of the past, present and future with no one to hear it but the wind who will do nothing but howl in response, in faint sympathy.
But today Nalani hears them. Not physically but somewhere somehow she feels connected to this place, to those that lie below. She feels their outrage and indignation. And if Nalani doesn't slay her sisters she will join them, their hands reaching out for her body, ready to claim their soul as there's and listen to her all her grievances. And that terrifies her more than words can say.
For once Nalani is tentative as she takes her next few steps before stopping right before the void is about to engulf her. It almost beckons to her. Daring her to take another step and fall into the darkness below. But she does not. And takes extra care to make sure her heels are firmly engrained upon the soil.
