Dragons and Princes - [COMPLETE]

25. Marquis

Marquis sat by Faeana, holding her frail hand in his. He had never left her side when she’d awakened or slept. For days, he’d feared the worst. Morgana had returned injured and had snarled at him and tried to force him away, ignoring when he drew his sword and had tried to hurt her again. Her wing dusted him aside and her tail brushed away the frey cats, but she did not draw blood. Rather, she curled up about Faeana like a great living shield, offering him a place with her. When it became clear that Morgana had no intention of harming her, he took his place by his wounded queen.

The Den had been obliterated, and in the destruction, the Freyja had fled. So many of Faeana’s people had been slaughtered by the dragons the Ajatar had brought, and the cries of the injured and the grieving rang out. There were Freyja among them who turned breken and had to be slain.

The Fenrir had fought the Freyja for so long that they knew the vicious side of the Freyja, but at the sight of such a proud people being slaughtered so efficiently, Marquis’s people were horrified. Even before he could give an order, the Fenrir had surrounded the remainder of the fleeing people within the Giant’s Forest, and though the Freyja had panicked, believing the Fenrir had come to wipe out those who had survived and escaped, it soon became very clear that was not the case. The Fenrir fought off the dragons that chased the Freyja down to kill them, and even the wild wolves came to aid the Freyja and their war cats.

The blue dragon returned, but Morgana slew the great beast and climbed atop his crowned head and roared her triumph, and the dragons and the Ajatar turned back and fled when from the shadows of the Lora sprang red-eyed ghosts whose gazes caught the dragons and slew them without ever an arrow or a sword being lifted. When the Ajatar fled, the red-eyed ghosts vanished just as they had come, and Marquis knew deep within that they had been Scultone.

The wolves and the Fenrir moved among the Freyja and began attending to the wounded, and a great wail rose up as the Freyja reserve shattered. A song of sorrow crept through the land, killing everything green, killing the trees and the wildlife and sickening the healthy among the Freyja. Only when Faeana began to rise, did her people begin to stir again, but their grief had taken its toll, and sorrow had darkened them and brought to them a quickness to anger and take up the sword. The fighting began in small groups, but it began to spread. Morgana intervened, flying overhead with a roar as the Keisere and the Queen of the Eye went among them.

Marquis held her hand, his arm around her as she went with him, hardly strong enough to keep her head high as they walked among the Fenrir and the Freyja. She stopped when she could no longer bear the pain she felt all around her, and her frey cat Fae roared when Freyja and Fenrir began to make their excuses. Closing her eyes, Faeana lifted her Freyja calm and cast it away, and the Freyja shuddered as a whole, kneeling. Even the Fenrir were driven down by such pain, clutching at their hearts in shock. "This is what we are, for sorrow sings within us," she whispered, her breath halting as she reached for the living tree beside her and it withered and died. "Sorrow that kills the living with every breath, sorrow that delivers hate and vengeance until more are dead." The Queen of the Eye willed the tree to wake again, to live, to feel peace, and it woke, leaves sprouting from the skeleton of its limbs, and flowers blooming among its new crown of green. "It is what we have become, but not what we used to be. The song within us was once innocent, and everything lived in harmony. We weren’t warriors, we were of the forest. Our innocense was the reason the Scultone gave up everything and vanished, it was to keep the Ajatar from destroying us."

Her heart twisting with grief, she drew back over her heart the shield that kept the Fenrir and the Freyja from sensing so openly her mourning. "I choose not sorrow. I will not kill with my grief. Our loss is irreparable, but I will not live another day drowning in the past. Neither will I pick up another sword to war, to avenge. What I choose, is to go my way, with the Keisere and the Fenrir, to walk in peace and begin to build life anew. Those of you who are too proud to loosen the binding upon your emotion, there are too few of us left to cause strife with the Fenrir who have come to our aid. Lay down your shields. Lay down your weapons. Disarm your sorrow. I will not have a war start between us again. We have nothing left to fight for but the extinction of our race."