I

Syanthia, 54th year of the Imperial Calendar

-

Blood spilled on that beautiful red and golden weaved thread painting my wall. It was a defilement of everything I knew.

The slaughter of my people, fresh in my mind. Wide eyes glazed over, bodies frozen stiff in last desperation. Their hands bloodied, reaching, hoping, hanging on the decapitated doors.

I was in my castle, the inner most chamber, the cries outside of the walls startled me, I clung to the silk of my mother's dress.

I did not know it then but my father died at that instant. A poison arrow ripped through his armour, tearing through his flesh in the soft of his stomach. His skin was shredded as the arrow pierced his back.

Death took several minutes to arrive at his side, those seconds were millennia. Pain spread through his entire body.

It felt as though he was dissolving, every bit of consciousness was being sucked into the wound, his mind filled with the whys and hows and denial.

Dying a failure was the hardest thing he did in his wealthy life. Seeing the disappointment in his little princess' eyes was a punishment he gave himself.

He clattered onto the pavement, broken inside his metal suit. He was gone before he hit the bloody cobblestones.

~

I was told of my fathers' death when a soldier broke onto the room we had barricaded ourselves in, my mother and I.

The war was lost. We were done.

That soldier, stricken with the madness of being a sole survivor, in his eyes we were the filth.

We were the Royals who could not protect anyone, failures. I was sad because of this, as if it was my loss. I did not know at the time, I was never a Ruler to begin with.

My mother was terrified, threatened and alone, all the walls she built had collapsed like sand. Strange fears filled her all at once, she exploded with quivering.

She let go of my hand and turned to face me slowly, her eyes were confused, scared.....unnerving.

" What are we--What am I- wh-why are we here" she turned to face the frozen shells of maids that hung around the room like shadows, with a regality that no longer exists.

My own mother had abandoned me to her subconscious.

From that day this deadly world of winners and losers became my life, kill or be killed, such a simple message, one that the universe screamed into my ears as my mother's head hugged the floor. That dazed look on her severed face, the blood escaping through stone cracks, everything that made up my mother disappeared in an instant.

I looked at the blood, and wanted to scream and collect all I had left of my mother before it escaped into the ground, leaving me forever.

In that instant, the corpse was so precious.... They didn't even give me that, it was burned, everything I had was burned.

I was at his mercy, that of the man who took everything. You don't know how it feels to have the floor that was once so sturdy melt like snow.

The soldiers dragged my wretched self back to the king, that cocky old man looked at me with eyes that viewed me as a rag.

"Even her body is useless to us, it is of that dirty blood. Throw this rag, where all the others go."

Where do the other rags go? To burn.

So I was taken, I couldn't struggle, I couldn't move. Blown about the sky on the winds of change. The soldiers tossed me in the pile of rags that smelt of urine. They set fire the the pile, and me along with them, I wrapped the dirty cloth around me and cradling myself to in the fire's glare. As they walked away, not even a glance back at the child who was burning, their cloaks fluttered and disappeared. I heard their slow footsteps to disappear from the field. My flesh seared, I wanted to scream and cry and vomit all at the same time, but I didn't move. I shut my eyes, trying to block out the crackling that caressed my ears, sitting with a saint's concentration, praying for the nest I had had seconds previous return.