The Lady ‘Ml’Uenda knelt at the Mother’s chair while the charges were read, and the judgment passed; followed closely by the Official Writ; it was an announcement of the emissaries being sent. Her red-brown eyes flashing in satisfaction while the Lords and Ladies at The Court that night spoke before the assembled throng. Her dusky red hair contrasting nicely with her light sage skin tones, tied back in a mourner’s knot and bejeweled from head to toe in a set of crimson silken gowns, delicate layers of diaphanous fabric gracefully swaying with each movement she made, and offset by finely woven cerise sandals, just to show her desire for Justice; she was, in her totality, the epitome of a noble petitioner.
As strikingly beautiful as she had been that night, as powerful as her family had risen over the centuries, ‘Ker still had no clue as to why his beloved older brother, ‘Dne, had married the viper. While he half knelt between the feet of Shoat and ‘Lwu’Ong‘Gai, ‘Tj’Chin’Ker lifted his bleary right eye just enough to see the small white lipped smile on her creamy, sylvan toned face, as the Mother lay a comforting rose tinted hand on her most loyal daughter’s head to then stroke and caress that pretty gray-green cheek.
If Father is right, I’ll be back to wipe that smirk from your soul. I know you are
the one who let Mother know I still wore my rings. If I’m to not return, it won’t matter. You’re dead anyway…but if I do… 'Ker thought, with what he would have liked to think was a grin on his now mostly numb face, but he couldn't, in all honesty, claim to know exactly in what his stretched, swollen, and split lips might or might not have been engaged.
Without further ceremony, ‘Ker was lifted aloft by the two fools who would, with luck, be his sacrifices, and all three went through the Great Arch before the thrones to pathways not trodden by so many feet at once in some thousand years. ‘Ker could see from his vantage the giant copper crown that had been found in the great desert to the south by a scouting party many years ago. Its blue green verdigris had made the members of the assembled Court all "Ooh and ah!" in appreciation when it had finally been hauled so many miles to the north and east to be mounted above the front gates of the palace. Most of the People lived within a fifty mile radius of the palace, and could see the giant seven-tined crown above the gates from most points in the realm.
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Some viewed the huge thing with pride, knowing that this was a proper monarchs’ dwelling; some looked up every day to see the site with fear, always thinking of dread politics and its horrid mistress whose whim could see them evicted from their cave like
manses scattered about the bowl of the great crater.
As he dropped his gaze, ‘Ker once again saw the Dancer’s Pit. The withered shape of the Sibyl stood near the Pit, lighting the fire and chanting the spell that would connect it to one of the ancient fire pits in the land from which they had chosen their exile.
Two pair of hands. Both rough hands and finely manicured hands grabbed him up from the ground on which his battered body had slumped.
A flash of searing white exploded in ‘Ker’s mind.
Pain…
Movement around him, as the world turned in upon itself. Mumbling and jumbled voices popped and burbled about 'Tj'Chin'Ker.
Light. Darkness. Light. Cold like he had never felt before.
Fire and pain…
And an all consuming deafness you can only get from a noise too loud to fathom as the sound of an impossibly immense shell about the body of a turtle bigger than any such creature to have ever existed was cracked and rent asunder. Screams without sound, or even breath shattered his already weakened grip on consciousness.