The Rift in the Domain- The Auranos Stories Book 2

Chapter 38 - Many Eras Ago...

So what happened next? I can hear your wonder. What would we do after Cavern came back from his adventure? It was a feeling I grappled with many a night when he was gone. I stood alone on my balcony, staring out over what we had built together. Peace, expansion, commerce, well-being... I was proud. But what would come next? Always that same question. We wouldn't just sit around and twiddle our thumbs. We'd united Sceptervale and Courier, but then what?

Relako and I were no different from Cavern- I want to make this clear. We were only prolonging the inevitable as we waited in Courier for his return. He took Kit's Den. Oh, yes, he took Kit's Den in a week without hesitation, securing another region for our expansion. Eight of his men died in the attack, and a few dozen were injured. I held him responsible, but only for a moment. We agreed that, as Cavern did not possess the men at the time of their demise, their lives were not his burden. It was easier that way.

So we had Kit's Den. It was united with Sceptervale and Courier and even Star- trade blossomed between the four towns, bringing added prosperity and significant military protection to the region. Our reputations grew beyond our reach, as stories of our power spread across the land. And it occurred to me, one dreary night in my new office in Kit's Den as I watched rain pounding on the windowpane, that the farther our reputations slipped out of our reach, the more of a threat we would appear to other forces. Our names were common now. We'd brought together some of the most powerful towns in the mountain region in under a year.

I wondered how my family felt about it, wondered if they had heard at all. But I pushed the thought away. They would be proud. They would want me to press on.

And so we did.

We claimed the rest of the mountains in the following year, uniting them under a common title- the Domain. It would be a name that would last eras, a legacy older than the folktales told within it. A foreboding name, like a dark, heavy wall. A name that reminded its inhabitants who was protecting them.

In another year or two, the Domain was sprawling across the continent- from the deserts to the frozen tundra, from the ocean to the mountaintops, the old city of Lagoki to the burgeoning towns of the far north. All of the Auranian continent was under our control. The Domain ruled over everything.

Am I going too fast? Just a few paragraphs ago we were three children with the loyalty of a few cities. But it's fitting, I suppose- I felt as if I blinked and suddenly the world was in my palm. When had we conquered the north, exactly, and since when did we create the laws? How did it happen that we controlled trade into and out of the ports in the Snarl, decided school curriculums, defined history? When did we become monarchs- when had we started leading, again?

I don't doubt that my two friends felt the same way, but none of us brought it up. We were honing our powers, and could each kill fifty or so men on a good day.

Kill... well, yes, I suppose more than a few people died during our campaigns. But how many died for the construction of your country, for what you believe in? Resistance groups dug their heels in and died needless deaths. Those men and women died trying to keep us from protecting their descendants and creating a better future. We had more than than repaid those lives in full, with peace and prosperity across the land.

But that was just the beginning.

Oh, yes, it was just the beginning.