Evil has returned to the world. This there is no denying.
Three sisters, practical magic casters far from the great sorcerers of old, have set out with the completely realistic and attainable expectation of saving the known Realm. Fate sees them sum...
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Roslin
Darkhaven was beginning to make Roslin feel very small, she decided, as the middlemost sister returned to the three witches' shared chambers.
She thought this as she passed tapestries depicting histories she knew nothing of, banners of houses whose names she did not know. Of the three Lords, only Lord Novak had offered any indication of who he was—Lord Novak of Heartwood.
This title meant nothing to Roslin, who had never so much as heard of Heartwood.
Despite their very distinct defining qualities, Roslin didn't know enough (or anything, more like) about these lands to piece together the pasts of the Lords.
All she could do was guess. The context clues were there, at least. The red banners, the most prolific, were emblazoned with a sigil that depicted a rose encircled by a crown of runes that she could not read. This, she concluded through deductive reasoning, was the standard of Aleksander's family...whoever they might be. That was still a mystery—and a well-kept mystery at that. No clues were given, no indications offered at a surface level. Some of the portraits resembled him enough, and the castle itself seemed to be his, but she had little to go on other than speculation.
In one of the halls she spied a green banner with the standard of a black snake wrapped around a blade. The pommel of the blade was an open, unblinking eye. Though she'd yet to work out the symbolism of the eye (if there was any at all; perhaps it was stylistic and nothing else), this seemed to point toward the green-and-black-clad Lord Lucien.
As for Lord Novak, though, she'd seen nothing. Perhaps his representation was in a different wing, or his private quarters, or another floor, or...Roslin could only guess. Maybe he, too, was a guest the same as she.
Which only made her wonder more.
Lords, the three of them. But what kind of castle had three Lords? Was Aleksander not the High Lord? A castle only had one High Lord and no more—yes? Were the other two simply guests? Brothers?
No, not brothers. Even Roslin could tell that. Distant cousins seemed too far of a reach, much less brothers.
Little makes sense here, she thought somewhat crossly as she followed the winding staircase back up to their room. I don't much like that.
Further and further back she traced the nonsensicalness. The deeper North-and-West they'd travelled, the less she'd recognised. She knew little of the geography—she couldn't name the mountain passes shadowed in the distance, nor the rivers whose bridges they crossed, nor the towns that peppered the forested hills through which they'd trekked. The landscape itself was foreign to her and nothing like the low-lying, brown and yellow rural wasteland of sparsely wooded piedmont she'd called home all those years ago in Prinella.
