Reindellin

Chapter 2

            Dusty gloves clutched in one hand, his brow in the other, King Nathion had just left Kenessa to the care of Graeda in the hall. His weighty steps lead him through a dark corridor to the elevator shafts that would take him high into the palace trunk. Waiting for the lift to arrive to take him to the eastern branch, he had a moment of silence to ponder his day thus far.

Admittedly only to himself, he had tried to avoid such thoughts all afternoon. Nathion forced the uncertainty of the day out of his mind with images of his earlier ride on horseback to his daughters’ favorite knoll where he knew she’d be. It came to be no surprise to him the Kenessa had disappeared the morning of her birthday, the eve of her wedding. How could he be when he put such responsibility on her young shoulders?

Nathion gave Kenessa credit in his mind. To have the wisdom to seek solitude in a special place such as that, even for the briefest moment. He wished he had taken the same interlude, but as King of Eldoria he could not afford the distraction. Besides, he could not bring himself to accept the same peace the knoll offered Kenessa. The only thing that knoll peaked in Nathion was the pain of remembrance of the way things used to be…but no longer were. There in the empty walkway in somber retrospect, King Nathion recalled the moment of eternity he once experienced there long ago.

            It was that very embankment, between the same two trees that he had first met his late wife, Kreseliana. Many years earlier, before Reindellin was formed and he was yet a prince not much older than Kenessa was now, Nathion was traveling back to Sedoal from an extended hunting expedition.

His troop had just decided to make camp for their final night when he heard what sounded like struggling through the trees. Leaving behind his guards who had not noticed the rustling, he crept into the bushes and ascended the side of the hill. Surely, he had a head start pursuing the largest catch of the outing. He hoped to perhaps encounter a fattened boar, or if he was particularly lucky, a matured stag. Nearing the crest of the hill he scanned his surrounding for any hint of what was ahead. Looking back, he ensured none of his competitors caught the same trail. Crouched behind a cluster of thistles at the crown of the knoll, he spotted her.

            Kreseliana was beautiful; her hair long and twisted as the rivers that would one day stretch across his lands, dark and thick like Elderonar’s bark. Nathion watched her for a moment as she spoke a variation of words foreign to him. Curiosity was drawing him.  

“Asthen! Ughh….Anthen…”, Kreseliana stilled herself with a concentrated wrinkle of frustration between her narrow eyebrows. She couldn’t quite remember how the spell was pronounced and she was certain she left out a vital contraction. Pinching her lips together she then tightly curled her fingers into a fist that she placed against her temple. With a single puff, she readied her hands in front of her, and shook her shoulders to ease the tension.

“Alright.” She sighed. Kreseliana shifted her weight back and forth, “Anthen Venulé!”

A green glow erupted from her feminine fingers about as quickly as the smile that crinkled her pointed chin. She excitedly watched as the green glow grew into a cloud of vapor before it stretched thin and chased after a low hanging branch in the tree next to her. The green aura bathed the branch and trickled its way down a vine that had been swinging in the breeze.

Nathion watched, completely enthralled, and possibly as satisfied as Kreseliana was that she seemingly achieved the spell. Just as she expected, the glow hung there for a moment. The vine no longer swung in the breeze but was rather frozen totally stiff. To the prince’s astonishment, it had begun to vibrate slightly as it seemed to absorb the green magic until there was no more surrounding it. The light vanished along with any movement it had created.