Current day in world: July 19, 2326 TP

~Isabella~

“Get up! Get up!”

Why was a servant yelling?

Isabella was certain that today she had no lessons, no practices or any other noble lady responsibilities.

“Lousy girl, get up! Your father has returned!”

That was not a servant.

It was her mother.

The mother of her brothers and sister.

She opened her eyes and saw hovering over her bedside the lord lady of Garadan, Adosinda Ortansio. The woman was in her fifties and had given birth to seven children which consisted of six sons and a daughter, and still she looked as beautiful as she did in the paintings that depicted her thirty years ago. She had the elegant black hair and silver eyes that most Agenorian nobles had. There were signs of age in her face, but those signs only elevated her commanding presence.

“Father has returned?” Isabella said with genuine excitement.

She had been eagerly awaiting these past few weeks. She had feared greatly for her father. He had gone to slay an ancient Black Dragon which was something that she had only ever heard of in fantastical tales of ages long passed. However, she had been ecstatic in addition to the fear she felt, for she craved to hear the legendary tale that he had been a part of.

She was a priestess cleric of Calliope and had grown to love recording the tales that her father and brothers shared of their missions and adventures in duty to Agenor. Within the past year she had scribed the epic tale of how her brother Sir Sergio won the hand of his wife, Lydia. Soon she would be able to scribe the tale of how her father slew the dragon.

She stretched out her arms and gave out a great yawn, and slowly started to get up from her bed. Within seconds servants were grooming and dressing her. Adosinda watched, staring with cold eyes. She had always been very strict with her and was completely devoid of any affection for her as well. Yet she always doted on and showed such love to her brothers and sister. Isabella never thought it was unfair, those were Lady Adosinda’s trueborn children after all. Though she always thought that she could at least be a little bit nicer to her. Father was nice. He absolutely adored her. Perhaps Adosinda was cold towards her as a way to help balance out father’s exceedingly expansive affection for her. Or perhaps it was the all too obvious answer. She never liked to think too much on it, and so she focused her thoughts elsewhere.

“Mother.” Isabella had always been required to address Adosinda as mother in recognition of her as the true wife and lady lord of House Ortansio. “Have any new reports come in? Are Sergio, Bruno, Leo and Camilo fine?”

“They are all alive and three of them are in great condition. Sergio, my lovely boy, as always has come out a shining gem unhurt. Bruno and Leo have suffered from minor wounds and a few broken bones.” She paused. “Camilo has been sent to a monastery for specialized healing.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. The report was too vague. All I know right now is that he got hit by something akin to the dragon’s breath. But he is alive. And he is an Ortansio. The blessings of the gods shall heal him.”

Several minutes passed as the servants finished dressing her.

Right as they were about done someone came bursting into the room.

“ISABELLA! ISABELLA! FATHER IS HOME!” a young lady yelled as she ran up and hugged Isabella.

It was Leandra, her younger sister and the youngest of Aurelio Ortansio’s children.

She was absolutely stunning.

She wore a silver dress that looked like it had been woven out of moonlight.

Isabella embraced her sister; she was both happy to share the moment with her and happy that she now had more company than just their mother. The servants had been in the middle of tying her priestess robe and parts of the elegant set fell to the ground as Leandra had rushed in to hug her sister.

Adosinda looked completely stern and serious, but Isabella saw just for a brief moment her lips curl just by the tiniest bit to produce the faintest of smiles.

“Ladies,” Adosinda began. “Behave yourselves. Your father just returned from the most important mission of his life; it is not only best for his daughters to meet him in a dignified manner but for them to prepare dignified as well.”

Both of them looked at each other and then turned their heads towards their mother. They both grinned.

In the sudden blink of an eye, they had both grabbed sheets from Isabella’s bed and had thrown them over Lady Adosinda.

“You girls,” Adosinda said. “Honestly, what am I to do with you two?” She removed the sheets from herself and the servants quickly came to grab them and started remaking the bed. “Fine. If you want to not take this occasion with the respect required by noble ladies then be my guest. If you two, both, do not show up at the palace entrance to greet your father within the next ten minutes then I will make the cooks throw out all the ten layered honey cakes and have them serve you pickled kobold tails for dessert at the celebration feast.”

They both let out cries of concern and quickly composed themselves.

Adosinda smiled with a playful look to her eyes and left the room.

It was moments like this that Isabella truly cherished. Had she pulled a trick like this on Adosinda by herself, she would not have heard the end of it. But with Leandra there, Adosinda’s fury could only amass to playful punishments such as taking away their beloved honey cakes for a meal. Though she was not too sure about pickled kobold tails. Did the cooks even make stuff like that? And who in her right mind would eat such a thing? She shuddered at the thought of eating them. But that was enough thinking about strange dishes she would never try. She only had ten minutes now to finish getting dressed and go all the way down to the palace entrance.

“Hurry, get this robe on me!” Isabella said.

Her attendants quickly got back to helping her and in less than a minute she was fully dressed in her Calliope priestess robe. The robe was silver and beautiful like Leandra’s dress, and on the lower part of the skirt of the robe there was a beautiful purple and blue hydrangea.

“You look so lovely,” Leandra said.

“You do as well, sister,” Isabella replied.

They left her room together.

They ran through the grand and spacious halls of their home, the city palace of Garadan. Almost every corner they turned servants were here or there, cleaning this and that, moving sheets and linens, delivering messages and fetching all types of things.

As they continued to rush through the halls her thoughts went back to Camilo. Her dear younger brother. She was not much older than him, they were separated in age by less than a year, but she was still older than him, and that made her his elder sister. The sister that he needed to watch out for him, the one to protect and comfort him. She was supposed to be the one to guide the way for her younger siblings to show them what it meant to be an Ortansio.

She was very excited to see father and her other brothers, but Camilo needed her.

After she had her reunion with father, she would go straight to the monastery holding Camilo and stay by his side until his wounds healed.

She had failed him once before as an elder sister.

She would not fail him again.

That day two years ago.

She would never forget that day.

They had both been fifteen years old at the time, though her sixteenth birthday had been close approaching. Out of all her brothers, none of them had dared risk the process to undergo the holy ritual of becoming a Bellatorex. It was quite understandable honestly.

Only Crownborn could become Bellatorexes. Very few actually attempted the ritual and even fewer came out ascended to that holy form. The dragon host’s blood quite often would reject the bodies it was attempting to translate into Bellatorexes. The process when successful could be very painful. Isabella could only fathom how much more horrible it would be if it was a failure.

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Even for pure Crownborn there were substantial risks.

For an impure Crownborn like her brother, those risks were much more magnified.

Camilo had decided to risk the ritual. She knew he had always been compared to his older brothers and father, that he had always been in their shadows. Father had always made it clear that it should be a choice made willingly to take on the holy calling. He wanted his children to become Bellatorexes, he had told them so many times of how proud and honored he would be if one of his children became one.

Their family had made the trip at Camilo’s request to travel to the mountain range where Mount Thaleia was rooted. In one of those mountains, Mount Pelion, a sister of Mount Thaleia, a great Silver Dragon had made her home. She was the same Silver Dragon that had given blood to Duke Belus and her father.

When she had entered the dragon’s lair it had been the most magnificent and mystical place she had ever been to in her entire life. The dragon, Asimizoi could make and shape clouds and they hovered all around and in her lair. The great halls were lined with crystals of all kinds of wonderful and beautiful shapes. Sculptures of ice and silver stood proud depicting the dragon and her kin, but also of humans and Dwarves who she had befriended.

She remembered that first moment, being led by Asimizoi’s Silver Kobold servants to her throne and laying eyes upon the dragon for the first time. There was something powerful stirring in the air. Asimizoi was very large, but it seemed that to Isabella at the time, she had felt like she had been getting smaller and smaller the closer she got. She knew Asimizoi was good spirited and kind, but just being in her presence sent a primordial fear that ran through her. When Asimizoi had spoken, she had said soothing and comforting words in response to help dull this powerful, terrifying pressure that she naturally emanated.

Asimizoi had looked upon Camilo and spoke with him, and had found him to be worthy to give of her blood. She made him make a Crown Oath the same as father, that he would be a beacon of light, an exemplar of justice and to comfort a weeping world. To Isabella, this type of Crown Oath had been especially strange because it was intentionally vague and open ended, Asimizoi herself had said that it was for both her father and brother to interpret what the oath meant.

After the blood had been given, they had made their way to the Kingdom of the Dwarves of Mount Thaleia. It was there that they had needed to go, for the Dwarves had one of the rare consecrated, Bellatorex rite chambers that was needed to perform the ritual.

The ritual had seemed to be going well, but Isabella had known, she had felt that perhaps Camilo was not yet ready to take on such a task and burden, yet she had never spoken up.

Camilo drank the sanctified blood and the process began.

He had started to glow silver, but within seconds the silver glow had fluctuated between black and red.

He had fallen to the ground groaning and breathing heavily. His veins had been straining and he had started to sweat profusely. His entire body had started to convulse and he had started yelling out cries of immense pain. His skin had started to crack all over and blood had seeped out of the cracks. It felt like it had lasted ages.

Isabella had stood there that day terrified.

Her fear had petrified her, she had wanted to move, to go help comfort and possibly heal him with the priestess powers she had been learning.

After it had seemed that much time had passed, he had lain there motionless.

Isabella, had just stared at him, with dark thoughts looming inside her, that her younger brother had just died there in grueling pain before her eyes.

The Dwarves who had been waiting outside the chamber, bless their beards, had rushed in once they realized something had gone terribly wrong. They had administered to him their best medicines and potions.

He had survived.

But he had failed to become a Bellatorex.

That day had haunted Isabella ever since and she still blamed herself for not being strong enough to speak up or to help him when he had needed her.

Out of all Lord Aurelio Ortansio’s children, Isabella was the one that he most desired to become a Bellatorex for she was his only pure Crownborn child.

As much as she loved her father, she would not do it. The experience with Camilo haunted her. Over the past two years she had had nightmares of that dreadful day; the scene playing out over and over again. She did everything she could to shut it out, but it clung to her like a nasty stain that would not wash out.

Isabella and her sister finally reached the entrance of the palace.

The great massive doors were already open.

There stood her father, mother and Prince Carlos along with an entourage of various other high-ranking knights and nobles. Standing next to her father were some strange faces she knew did not belong to people that lived in Garadan, but they looked familiar. Within seconds she realized who one of them was. The large, older man who was probably in his sixties, adorned in way too much jewelry was definitely Duke Wingurich, the ruler of Athanaric Province.

She ran up to her father with Leandra and they both in perfectly timed unison embraced him.

“My dear, lovely girls,” her father said. “Your father has missed you so much. It’s so good to see my beloved, sweet flowers.”

“It’s so good to see you father,” Isabella said. “We missed you a lot as well.”

“We sure did,” Leandra agreed. “We were so, so worried about you. But we knew you could do it.”

“Now these are some fine, lovely ladies you have here, Lord Aurelio.” Duke Wingurich had approached closer to them. “They are a nice set of priceless gems.”

What was Duke Wingurich doing here? Father really did not like him, Isabella always heard father complaining about him. He often would call Duke Wingurich a greedy snake, a necessary one that the kingdom needed, but still a greedy snake in the end. She thought he looked more like a greedy hippo; he was much too round to be a snake.

She saw two other figures standing really close to Duke Wingurich. One of them was a finely dressed lady that looked like she was around a similar age to herself, perhaps a year or two older. The other was an exotically dressed man with a very peculiar mask. She knew who he was. No one could forget someone this odd looking. She had met him around a month or two before Mavrodaxius attacked Thessabel City. She had been attending the royal court with her father at the capital city of Agenor.

“Oh, where are my manners?” Duke Wingurich said. “We have met before, but it is proper that I introduce myself. Duke Thorismund Wingurich at your service.” He gave a proper and dignified bow which was surprisingly elegant despite his size and girth.

“Amalia, the Flame Spire,” said the lady by Duke Wingurich. “At your service.”

“Grand High Master Jester Fidivos,” the masked man said. “At your service.”

Both Amalia and Fidivos bowed.

“Lady Leandra Ortansio,” Leandra said while giving a short bow of her head.

“Lady Isabella,” Isabella said while also giving a short bow, she purposely omitted using Ortansio while mother was in close proximity even though she had been made a legitimate child of father.

“While I would love to enjoy the company of everyone here, I think only one will do for now. I am very tired and require rest. I shall have time to converse and celebrate later with everyone,” father said. He took mother’s arm and started to walk away from everyone. He was limping though, and then Isabella noticed that her father was using a cane; something was wrong with his left leg.

“Father!” she cried. “Wait, what happened to your leg?” She ran up to him and immediately started to perform her clerical healing magic. Though she was primarily a priestess cleric of Calliope, the doctrine of the Prime Pantheon generally allowed for polytheistic devotion, she was also an acolyte of Athena and Apollo.

Her divine healing spell was cast upon him specifically targeting his leg. A faint divine light glowed in the area she was concentrating on. It faded slowly as the spell ended. As with the casting of most spells she felt it straining her a little bit as she was casting it.

“That does make it feel a little better,” father admitted. “I’m thankful that you are such a dutiful daughter, but it is of no use. My personal clerics and healers in addition to my own innate Bellatorex healing powers were not enough to fully heal my leg. It will need time.”

Isabella looked at the leg she had tried to heal with a look of both sadness and disappointment. Was this her punishment? That when she actually decided to take action her healing would not work effectively. Then she remembered. She needed to go see Camilo.

“Father, which monastery is Camilo at?” she asked.

He gave her a surprisingly sorrowful look. “He is at the Apollo monastery. Same as my leg though, all our best clerics and healers have done everything they can for him. He needs time to heal. He will be given constant attention and administered the best medicines and holy healing spells that are within my domain and power. Do not worry yourself over him. We have some of the best healers in the kingdom, he will be fine.”

Without saying another word, she bolted toward the Apollo monastery. She quickly found a palace carriage and gave the driver directions to get as fast as he could to the monastery.

It was not very far from the palace, but the ride felt long to her. Each minute felt like an hour that dragged on and refused to end.

The carriage finally arrived at the monastery.

Because she was the city lord’s daughter and technically a member of the monastery, she did not have much trouble getting in and through to the more restricted areas. Stepping into the place had already started to calm her a little. It was sanctified by holy prayers and rituals daily which made it an especially powerful place for healing. The beautiful stained-glass windows depicted Apollo and were fitted in ways all around the monastery that at all times of the day while the suns shined, the monastery was bathed in a heavenly, golden light.

One of her fellow acolytes guided her to her brother.

He was lying on a white and golden bed with light translucent curtains circling it.

She opened the curtains and found him wrapped almost completely in golden bandages with Elven script written on them.

“Those are our Chrysaphian holy healing wraps,” the acolyte said. “They are some of the most coveted healing wares in the entire world for their effectiveness is nearly unrivaled. They are an invention of the Chrysaphian Elves and they are the only ones that can craft it. Lord Ortansio paid a great price for these, a great price indeed; but for his son the price is of no concern to him.”

Camilo’s eyes were closed.

He was breathing slowly.

From what she could see of his skin, it looked like it had melted and had deformed.

“Dear brother,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” She began to cry as she hovered over his bed. “First the Bellatorex ritual and now this. I should have helped you the first time.”

Isabella began to use every single healing spell she knew.

The acolyte like father began to tell her that it was of no use, that they had already done everything she was attempting.

She did it anyways.

She used up every bit of magical, holy power that she could channel and cast the spells.

After half an hour had passed, she had completely exhausted all the magic she could perform for the day in addition to physically exhausting herself in the process.

The acolyte moved by her passion, had joined in despite her initial objections.

Isabella was on the brink of collapsing.

She leaned on the bedside and held her brother’s hand.

Looking at his face she saw his eyes starting to open by just a little.

“Isa…bell…a,” he muttered, it sounded like it was painful for him to say just one word.

“Yes?” she replied with strong passionate emotion in her voice.

He said nothing else and his eyes began to close again.

She stared intently at his face hoping.

Minutes passed.

She found solace in two things. Her healing was enough to give him the energy to say something, even if it was just one word. And he was still breathing.

Then feeling all of her exhaustion finally reaching its limit, she collapsed and passed out.