The city was engulfed in flames, the once-beautiful buildings of the Great Market and even the palace itself were crumbling. Acrid smoke filled her lungs, but Lidea barely noticed. Swinging her sword over and over, her arms trembling due to exhaustion. One man after the other fell, some of them were strangers, others she had once known. It did not matter and she did not hesitate to cut each one of them down. Their blood coloring her steel sword into a dark maroon.
They begged her for their lives, but Lidea didn't respond and felt no remorse. She just wanted them to pay. A familiar face stepped in front of her. A face similar to her own. Alana looked older than she remembered and for just a split second she wondered what life she had lived. In contrast to the others, she did not plea with her and only stared with those same grey eyes filled with contempt.
Without hesitation and filled with childish glee, she cleaved her sister's head off her shoulders.
Out of nowhere, a figure in a white dress threw herself over the lifeless body. Lidea recognized the long brown hair that had always been carefully braided but now looked disheveled.
"If you had only died! You are just a callous bastard like your father! Never caring for what your actions will do to others!"
Lidea had stopped caring for her mother's words long ago and therefore did not stop herself from adding another body to the pile she was leaving behind herself.
"For the queen!"
A low voice rumbled over the plaza and Lidea could see Warchief effortlessly hold up Valerian and Morto. The two royals ignited at his words into a hellish red fire. His eyes were glowing orange, not dissimilar to the flames behind him.
Laughing hysterically, she watched them burn as Warchief approached her with Morto's bloody crown in his hand.
"Well, thank you, kind sir, though I wished to have heard their last words."
"Their words wouldn't have mattered to you anyway."
He placed the crown upon her head, smiling triumphantly.
"I told you, that you are a queen."
Lidea smiled as she looked over the burning city center. Now she could rule.
"Lidea what have you done!?"
His deep voice vibrated through her soul and she quickly turned to see the man who shared her grey eyes. He looked horrified as he regarded the blood bath surrounding them, and her, the cause of it.
As if his voice had broken the shield protecting her heart, a bone-shilling anguish spread through her body. She threw the sword down in repulsion as she tried to answer him while stuttering.
"Father, I ... I had to..."
The crown heated melting into her scalp as she desperately tried to remove it. All at once the corpses started to rise and look at her. Mouthing the same phrase over and over again.
"Was it all worth it, Lidea?"
Lidea woke up with a gasp, sweating and in tears. She could still feel the heat of the flames on her body as she desperately covered her ears, trying to silence the voices ringing in her mind. Her heart pounded and her chest tightened until it felt almost impossible for her to breathe. Familiar with the panic that her nightmares induced, she focused on calming down. Forcing the muscles in her chest to relax.
It took a couple of minutes, but as the memory of her nightmare subsided, her breathing returned to normal. She smiled through her tear-stained face. A bittersweet feeling filled her at seeing those familiar faces, even if it was only in her bad dreams.
YOU ARE READING
Tipping the Scale
FantasyIn a country, where magic and knowledge is limited to the elite. The underclass have finally had enough. A revolution has tipped the scale of power, and the powerless have become in charge. All that was a symbol of magic has been destroyed, its hist...
