Uthenda didn’t care about the chaos erupting in the chamber she’d strutted out of. She’d won … that was all there was to it. She held up her hand and pointed at the door at the far end of the hall of prison cells.
“Leave us. She’s not going anywhere. Not while I have this.” The casual confidence she had in such a little dissonator rod was rather impressive.
The ten Summit guards adorned in silver plate and green‑trimmed enchanted armor looked at her like she’d lost her mind, then glanced at the woman kneeling on fresh straw within the spell‑reinforced jail cell. Isenwrath stared back at them with pure indifference. That scared the piss out of them worse than if she’d been crying or struggling. They too had heard the rumors about her and weren’t keen on testing their luck.
Captain Harold cleared his throat and saluted with crisp formality. “Yes, Tower Master.”
Uthenda didn’t even look at him as the guards retreated and locked the door behind them. She studied her prisoner instead. Lady Isenwrath, bound behind her back in a metal runic anti‑magic harness, mouth sealed behind a matching muzzle, neck adorned with a control‑rune collar chained to her waist and further shackled to her legs. Spell runes painted across her scalp disrupted any magic she might muster.
Yet Isenwrath stared at Uthenda with not one shred of emotion.
“Cassandra, you’re such a fool. All you had to do was come with me and play nice at the Tower and you could’ve avoided all of this.” Uthenda waved the dissonator vaguely toward the upper floors where the world was probably being shattered as she spoke.
“I truly don’t hate you. I just hated what you represented. But that’s okay. Once Richard and Paulina get here, they’ll take charge of your care, wipe your mind with my help, and then I’ll turn you into a very doting wife with not one iota of free will. You’ll be loved and cherished… if a bit dull‑witted and boring, but that’s not my problem as long as you’re locked down and can’t harm anyone else.”
Nothing. Still no emotion. Just that stare — that flat, unblinking stare that seemed to bore into Uthenda’s soul. It was fucking unnerving.
“STOP STARING AT ME!”
Isenwrath didn’t flinch. She didn’t change her expression. As neutral as ever when her beastial instincts were about to pounce. Instead, she took a slow breath, then exhaled softly.
“I could’ve been your friend,” she said, voice calm and echoing oddly, “and perhaps I could’ve given you something to ease that enormous pain you carry.”
Uthenda jumped … literally hopped sideways … dropped the dissonator without thinking, conjured a ball of fire in one hand and a ball of lightning in the other. Her voice trembled. “What spoke to me?”
Standing three feet from her was the black armor glaring with bright red eyes, holding a massive warhammer mallet that glowed sickly green.
“What are you?” Uthenda whispered, truly terrified for the first time in her life.
“I’m Isenwrath,” the armor said low. “Cassandra is dead and gone. I’m what was forged from her sad life that rose from her ashes.”
Uthenda blasted the abomination with everything she had. Fire and lightning collided in a deafening explosion that reverberated through her own Mage Armor. The blast carved a crater into the wall, ceiling, and mangled the spell‑reinforced bars of the adjacent cell.
When the smoke cleared, the black knight stood exactly where it’d been as if she’d just merely sneezed on it.
The armor raised a hand to casually brush ceiling debris from its shoulder without breaking eye contact.
“Uthenda,” Isenwrath’s voice said from within, “my armor cheats. And so do I.”
Uthenda tried to cast a concussive blast to shove the thing a mile away, but the armor moved faster than her spell. One moment her hand was rising … the next, the armor was inches from her face, glowing red eyes locked onto her terrified ones.
“Tag,” Isenwrath said low. “You’re it.”
Pain bloomed in Uthenda’s chest. She looked down and saw the horror… a huge white crystal stabbed into her beating heart, slowly being pushed deeper by a black gauntleted hand.
“What did you do?” Uthenda gasped, blood bubbling up her throat as she staggered backward, bracing herself against the wall.
“I didn’t want to do this,” Isenwrath said without much inflection. “You did this to yourself. All you had to do was be kind to me. That was it. But it’s too late for kindness from either of us.”
The armor leaned closer.
“Take care of yourself. I hope your infamy is long, painful, and memorable… Dungeon Mistress Cassandra of Calamity.”
Uthenda wiped blood from her mouth, coughed once, then felt for the gaping hole in her sternum again but it wasn’t there. Her skin was smooth. Whole. Healed. As if Isenwrath had placed something inside her instead of killing her.
Something like an arcana stone.
A master arcana stone.
“WHAT DID YOU DO?!” Uthenda screamed right when her body began to shimmer with alien power that rushed into her mind like a million firestorms. The glow rippled across her skin in jagged pulses, as if something inside her was trying to claw its way out.
Isenwrath’s armor backed away slowly, watching her with the stillness of a predator waiting for its prey to collapse.
Uthenda raised her hands again, ready to unleash another tempest blast but when she blinked, she wasn’t there anymore. No flash, no sound, no spell. Just absence. As if the world had quietly moved her from one square to another far away with no fanfare. The game had only just begun, but Isenwrath was determined to jump to the back row and do something about the queen.
The armor turned toward Isenwrath still kneeling in the cell. They both had watched Uthenda vanish from everyone’s misery. She was gone now … a tragic story and a cautionary tale for anyone who thought cruelty was strength.
The armor stepped to the cell and gripped the bars. Metal shrieked as welds snapped and runes cracked… the reinforced steel bending like wet clay in its hands. Isenwrath grew out extra arms that tore through the fabric of her dress, emerging with a sound like ripping parchment. With them, she pulled the muzzle from her face, breaking the spell‑runes with a sharp crack and a hiss of dissipating magic. She licked the bitter rune‑paint from her skin, then used her additional arms to rip apart the manacles and chains binding her. A few more rips of her clothing and she was bare once again. Ready for war as only a Chimeramancer could be.
When she stepped through the opening, she moved back into within her armor like someone returning to a childhood home … her second skin, her sanctuary, her friend’s greatest gift. She hefted Superion onto her shoulder and whispered, “I’m coming, Amikejiret. I promise.”
“You can’t save her.”
Isenwrath spun, hammer raised and ready. A beautiful ethereal woman stepped out of an impossible moonbeam at the far end of the jail cell range. She looked carved from starlight. She had soft elven features, a shimmering dress, a thin frame wrapped in celestial grace. Her hair flowed like strands of moonlight, her eyes pale silver and utterly empty, reflecting nothing, revealing nothing. Her gown moved like liquid moonbeams, untouched by the stale air of the prison.
“I’m not going to allow you to save her,” the woman said, her voice gentle and cold enough to frost stone.
“Who are you?” Isenwrath asked, her voice low, almost a growl.
“Such a naïve child,” the woman murmured. “To not know your betters. I am this world’s eyes in the dark.”
Isenwrath tilted her head. “The Laiken flower Goddess of the moons?”
The Goddess’s smile shifted in a way that was soft, pitying, and utterly devoid of warmth. “I love that story. It has just enough truth to keep it alive.”
Isenwrath tightened her grip on Superion. “You’re real?”
“Of course I’m real.” The Goddess stepped closer, and the air bent around her as though reality itself bowed. “And I’ve been watching you for a very long time but especially ever since you crossed my skies with your angry, hateful red hunger. That was when I really paid attention.”
Isenwrath’s pulse quickened. “Why?”
“Because you’re dangerous,” the Goddess said simply. “To everything and everyone. Especially in my world.”
She dared to circle Isenwrath slowly, studying her like a specimen on a divine table. “You carry that awful hunger inside you that alerted me the moment it was seeded into you. You’re a cosmic wound. A void that even some gods try to hide their fear of. You’re not bound to any heaven. You’re not subject to any divine law. You are… outside. A true outsider. You shouldn’t even exist and yet… you still stain my world.”
“I didn’t ask for this,” Isenwrath whispered.
“No,” the Goddess agreed. “But you are it nonetheless.”
The Goddess stopped only a foot away, her expression shifting from pity to triumphant. “You’re not going to reach that upstart thing that you call a friend. You’ve interfered with my simple plan to kill her off, and I can’t be subtle anymore. I cannot allow the Demon Queen to rise and reclaim her heaven. That’s going to be my domain, not hers.”
Isenwrath’s breath caught. “You’d let her starve… let her heaven die? She didn’t do anything to you, did she?”
“She existed. She tapped into my world subtly at first, then with those dungeons after she got sick. I’m a goddess, we don’t share and her sin of existing and using my world for its souls was all the motivation I needed to help her into oblivion. So, I made one little move in the in-betweens to target her heaven, then encouraged her realm’s decay ever since,” the Goddess said lightly, proudly. “A rival removed without lifting a finger otherwise. A threat eliminated by neglect. Elegant, isn’t it? It almost worked to get rid of you too… until that soul from beyond ruined it. I truly didn’t see that coming which pissed me off.”
Isenwrath’s stomach twisted. The way she spoke … it was as if she’d shaped Isenwrath’s lost childhood. Which was probably the truth as to why the Goddess wanted her to die as well. Isenwrath was also a threat. A true deity killing threat.
“And now you come to save her,” the Goddess continued with a sharper voice. “You come to restore her. You come to undo the quiet work I’ve done for centuries.”
The Goddess’s voice dropped to a harsh whisper. “I won’t allow that.”
Isenwrath’s fists tightened around Superion, getting ready to pound that uppity goddess into a moon-beamy puddle.
The Goddess smiled again… young, arrogant, unaware of her own flaw. “You see, child… I’ve already shifted the corrupted armies to where they’ll do the most damage to your strategies. I’ve already bent Reality… my Reality… MY world. I’ve placed every piece where it must be. Your Maddock will face nine armies before he’s ready. Your Tobias will be trapped. Your Henry will be overwhelmed. And you…”
She touched Isenwrath’s armored cheek. A mistake.
“…you will be alone. Unless you choose to save Maddock. Then you’ll lose the one chance you have to save the Demon Queen. If you choose her, I will make sure Maddock’s body is ground into my world’s dirt to nourish me.”
Isenwrath’s eyes burned with unshed tears, yet she held back to let the Goddess keep monologuing.
“You can’t stop me,” the Goddess continued. “You can’t reach the valley in time. You can’t save her. And when she dies, I’ll pull all those soul remnants out of you properly. You’ll become small. Manageable. Harmless. Unless you join me right now. I’ll give you my blessing, and even your loving Maddock will worship you for doing this. I’m offering you a way out, Cassandra Carlisle. Take my hand.”
She held it out slowly.
Isenwrath looked down at the trembling fingers. “You’re afraid of me,” she whispered.
The Goddess froze … just for a heartbeat. Yet another mistake.
Isenwrath lifted her chin, eyes glowing brighter. “You’re afraid of what I am. You’re afraid of what I could become. You’re afraid that if the Demon Queen is saved, I will have HER blessing. I wonder what her blessing would give me?”
The Goddess’s eyes flashed with anger. “You’re an abomination,” she hissed. “A cosmic accident. You’re the mistake, bitch!”
Isenwrath smiled … small, dangerous, too bad the Goddess didn’t see it. But that arrogant deity did see Isenwrath’s glowing red eyes glare even brighter. “You talk too much and worse, you touched… Amikejiret.”
The Goddess realized her errors too late when she held her hand to her chest as if it’d been burned.
The moonbeam behind her crackled loudly when it shifted from soft white to smoky grey threaded with black filaments. The air rippled. The walls groaned. A second presence stirred.
A familiar one.
A terrifying one.
The Demon Queen’s voice whispered through the shifting space behind the quaking Goddess. “You should not have touched my friend who WEARS my blessing. I know now who sent that parasitic thing into my heaven and WHEN I’m saved, you and I will have a much different conversation about who’s the upstart, Laiken.”
The Goddess stepped back, trembling noticeably. Gods and goddesses weren’t supposed to know fear, yet this moon goddess shook like a kid who was about to get her ass handed to her by her mother for disobeying curfew.
Isenwrath’s knuckles cracked, drawing the Goddess’s gaze back to her. She shrieked when Isenwrath’s visor split open to reveal the hungering maw within. This time, the shearing of air being sucked away was the loudest sound in the jail hall.
One shimmer in the air and the Goddess was gone.
Isenwrath closed her mouth and stared at the defiled moonbeam.
“Isen. This is your chance. Please come to me,” Amikejiret said urgently.
“But the armies? My Maddock is in trouble. I need to… I need to help them all.”
“Yes. But you’ve stayed on the path. Trust in our path. Trust in them. Please, free me of the parasite and I swear that twit will leave you and yours alone.”
“You promise?”
“I can do no less for my friend. Please. Trust me.”
Isenwrath took a breath, held it for ten, then exhaled. A flash of brilliant blue light erupted beneath her feet and she was gone.
The path to doing the right thing was always the hardest path to tread.
— The highest peak of the Dathendrake Mountains above the Hagensdamp Forest, just beyond a hastily gathering battle for the sake of the world —
When Isenwrath appeared this time upon the peak where she first met Amikejiret, she wasn’t full of uncertainty or curiosity. This time, she held the fear in her heart close and her righteous purpose with an iron grip. She needed to go from here to the rip in her world’s reality, but she also needed to see what her Sweetheart was facing. Her vision enhanced without much conscious thought in order for her to see the valley in front of the devastated forest filling with soldiers from three realms – Maciendes, Everthane, and Ezzerbenania. They were in tight formations, marching cohesively… ordered, precise, ready. A true combined military force.
Clarion calls were sounding down in the valley. Bright barrier magics were being cast at the opposite end of the valley while the last of the supply trains moved between all of the soldiers, mages, and arcane artillery into the forest to gain whatever protection could be had. She even smirked proudly when she spied Maximillian Maciendes himself leading all of the most powerful Tower Mages from Everthane and Maciendes plus all of those Dark Elven Battle-Magi into the air to land on spell wrought magical force platforms to give the Angellicine army hell in the skies.
Isenwrath then moved her farseeing vision into the plains themselves to see nine armies marching on the ground and one flying through the air. She shook her head at the differences. That Goddess had made another rash mistake. Those armies had been moved to the plains without any warning. Thus, they were barely in any tactical formations at all. They had no supply lines, no artillery, no plan, no backup. The edges of these armies were bristling against the others, small skirmishes breaking out here and there, the military commanders barely able to stop all out war from breaking out before they reached their intended targets.
That meant there was hope in Isenwrath’s heart because she saw absolute order being kept by Maddock and his secondary generals along with Everthane’s and Ezzerbenania’s as opposed to the barely contained chaos of the other nine realms. Not even Thyeriand and the Kharvoss Dominion, two of the most military geared realms were holding it together enough to impress even a first-year cadet.
Isenwrath set the head of Superion on the ground in front of her then placed her hands on its pommel. She knew what she could do to help Maddock. Something that would really fuck with this whole situation something awful.
“Summon the Nine Bosses of Shinenoor.”
Behind her in the quiet of a snow-covered mountain peak, eleven huge brightly blue glowing arcana discs flared to life. Up from each one rose a boss of Shinenoor. The Ringleader Kaelthorn the Red Jackal. The Clockwork Warden, Axiom‑Unit Seraphron. Grondar the Ogre King. Sslithrix, the Serpent Monstrosity. Vaelcrix the Bone Harvester, Warden of the Ossuary Depths. Morvath the Hollow Herald, Choirmaster of the Silencers. Vyrastra the Black Dragon Matriarch and her consort Khorvax. Archmagus Xyrel Mortis, Lich of the Shattered Veil. The Oculus Vharuun, Devourer of Reflections. Tharog Willowbane, the Woodland Giant. Finally, Sir Malganneth the Trapmaster, Black Knight of Shinenoor stepped forward to tower behind Isenwrath.
None of them made a sound. In that eerie silence when even the wind held its breath, Isenwrath slowly pointed to the incoming armies. “I wish for you eleven to make the lives of those who oppose me hell.”
Sir Malganneth raised his own warhammer mallet high and shouted a clarion call that echoed all down the mountain and past the valley. “WISH GRANTED!”
The bosses of Shinenoor didn’t have to walk down a mountain to get there. They had other tricks to impress someone with. Archmagus Xyrel Mortis lifted a skeletal hand and tore open a swirling green portal that would deposit them between Maddock’s forces and the incoming ones. His raspy, gleeful laugh was the next battlecry as the eleven Shinenoor nightmares stepped into the fray. To say no one was prepared for this… yes, that’s the understatement of the century.
Isenwrath turned after the Ringleader patted her shoulder companiable then was gone. She spouted her own dragon wings, then lifted up and over the edge to swoop into the Demon Queen’s corrupted side of the mountain. The snow disappeared in an instant to be replaced with bare rock and decaying everything. Life itself and anything like water that could coax it into being had long ago been sucked away into the rip, a symptom of the Demon Queen’s desperation.
The moment Isenwrath cleared the mountain slope on the other side, she was beset by an increasing wind.
“NO! YOU WON’T SAVE HER!” The Goddess shouted down at her from nowhere and everywhere, her terrifyingly loud echoing voice booming for miles around.
The wind slowed Isenwrath, but didn’t stop her. She started teleporting herself forward. But each time she did, she got blasted back almost half the distance she tried to set. Yet, she kept going.
“NO!” The Goddess yelled again, her voice cracking like the lightning that struck Isenwrath from the clear sky above.
The jolt didn’t do as much damage as the skewing of gravity did. Isenwrath was forced from the sky into an enormous crater where her body landed, crushing deeply into the ground.
“Yes. I. Will,” Isenwrath said firmly when she crawled out of the crater, not able to stand, but still able to move forward even under the crushing unnatural gravity.
“NO!” came that awful rebuke which was followed by a third of a mountain crumbling in the distance that snaked all of those thousands of tons of rock right over Isenwrath.
Buried and unable to move even with her enormous amount of strength, Isenwrath waited until the quiet returned. She took one moment. Just a moment to think this time. She didn’t listen to her instincts. Instead, she thought like Maddock would. She needed a tactic or two in order to reach her goal, not blindly keep going. She smiled when she realized that she was thinking like a super predator again. She was thinking like an Arch Druid or a Battlemaster or just a Juggernaut brute. But that had been used against her once before and had humbled her. So, she thanked an unknowing teacher and thought small… and many. She was a Chimeramancer. Who said she couldn’t figure out an Urban Druid’s tricks?
Even buried deep under large portion of a mountain, there were ways forward. Billions of ways forward. Every crevasse and nook was space. And if she were a swarm of small earth elementals, then the Goddess had just laid a major highway to her goal. Another major mistake.
Isenwrath’s armor shifted from black to brown. The metal became stone. Her eyes stopped glowing red, shifting over to pale green. Then her whole body moved in every direction, then moved faster towards where the whole elemental swarm sensed the largest tremors were coming from. The rip in this world’s reality vibrated erratically miles ahead of Isenwrath’s swarm of earth elementals and she moved all of herself faster and faster towards it.
“NO! NO! NO! STOP!”
The ground crushed tighter. Didn’t matter. Earth was fluid to Isenwrath now. Bolts of energy coursed through the ground. Didn’t matter. The damage was spread out too much to truly hurt. Time stop spells were cast down into the ground, but earth practically ignored time already, and so did its earthen elementals who glided through those disruptions with relatively little effort.
On and on, Isenwrath made her way. Over and over again, the Goddess screamed down in frustration at being helpless to stop her with every god-level power that devastated everything but Isenwrath.
When the vibrations were at their most horrendous, that’s when Isenwrath burst up from the earth, reformed into her black knight armor to land right in front of that awful tear in her reality. It was absolutely the most mind-bending sight. As if she was looking at a masterwork painting that’d been torn away to reveal another, nightmarish sketch painting underneath. Flaps of her reality even moved in the breeze.
“PLEASE! DON’T! I’M BEGGING YOU! DON’T DO IT! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!”
Isenwrath turned to see the Goddess again. This time the ethereal woman stood as tall as a thunder giant. She had her hands clasped together, fingers interlocked, pleading in her face.
“Why?” Isenwrath asked simply. “What do you fear so much from her?”
The Goddess turned her gaze away looking as if she would weep. “I can’t go back to being a barely remembered myth. I just can’t. I can’t go back to being afraid of my own world.”
“And the Gentleman? Why don’t you let him help you?”
The Goddess turned her hardened eyes back at Isenwrath where they flared white nova hot. “BECAUSE YOU ATE HIM!”
“Oh.” She said small as the memories of the Trapmaster now made sense. However much Isenwrath felt bad for both the Trapmaster and the Goddess, she didn’t regret what she’d had to do to survive. But, at least she could do one small thing that would help just a little with her guilt and the Goddess’s anger and loss.
“Then take this and remember him well,” Isenwrath said calmly before her maw opened and she spat an object towards the Goddess’s face.
The Goddess caught the object right when Isenwrath jumped through the rip in reality and out of the Goddess’s power to reach anymore.
Standing there in front of the rip, the Goddess watched Isenwrath run through the barren red hellscape for a few strides, then launch into the air to fly fast towards the largest blackened glass spire in the distance under dead purple skies. Her shoulders drooped and slowly she looked into her hand. What she held made her knees buckle and tears to escape her eyes.
It was a small crown made from the Laiken flowers that had been named for her. It was also her marriage ring with her gentle man. His gift to her from so long before he’d been trapped within the Demon Queen’s dungeon and out of the Goddess’s power to save. It was so awful because it occurred after a stupid argument and her stubbornness to admit she was both wrong and insufferably intractable. As she gazed at it in her palm, the flowers glowed a little brighter then opened in her hand. Within it, the vision of her gentle man’s face appeared, smiled, then winked at her. “I’m still here. I still love you,” his voice echoed out from the ring of remembrance.
The Goddess closed her eyes, started to sob, then shimmered away. She didn’t dare let anyone see her break down. Not even you.
— Nivorath. The capital city known as Icefall Citadel. A frozen northern realm where frost mages, giant slayers, and winter priests maintain a harsh but noble society. Nivorath is a vast northern realm inhabited by Beast‑kin… humanoids with the physical traits, instincts, and cultural lineages of powerful animals. Their society is built on strength, honor, and the balance between the wild and the civilized. Within the fortress of Icefall, Daniella sits wondering if this place would ever feel like home again — or if it ever was home to begin with. —
“Hello Daniella. It’s time for your evening meal.”
Daniella turned from her new book about the history between Nivorath and the human kingdoms. She smiled at the Hinterwhite male who entered her suite — Gharfield, Queen Phera’s father. He was a wonderfully gentle, genuinely kind person. Phera’s mother, Gretleby, sat near the fire, knitting and rocking in her chair. She smiled too as Gharfield wheeled in not just Daniella’s dinner, but their own.
Daniella placed her bookmark carefully and set the leatherbound tome aside. She stood and greeted the older Felinar warmly. “Thank you, Gharfield. It smells delicious.”
He beamed at her. None of them acknowledged the ten guards who entered with him, performed their routine inspection, then quietly left. Daniella had long stopped trying to convince them she didn’t need constant monitoring. Instead, she focused on helping Gretleby set up her portable table so Gharfield could place her meal down properly.
“Thank you, my dear,” Gretleby said, rubbing Daniella’s ears affectionately. She was a good person too … one of the few Daniella didn’t mind being gentle with.
The guards, however, were another matter. Ever since Phera had left for the King’s Summit, Daniella had been testing her limits. They weren’t as tight as Phera would want, but Daniella still needed either more time or a lucky break before figuring out how to get the fuck out of this citadel. This wasn’t her home. These weren’t her parents. Phera wasn’t her big sister. Daniella was being patient. Being kind. Being a good little pawn. And they were relaxing which was a very dangerous thing to do around a true Thirstenblack noble who held grudges until the grave.
“Daniella, please. Come sit and eat,” Gharfield said, amused. He waved toward her tray already set at her favorite blue chair.
She nodded. “Thank you.”
The food had improved since Phera took over, but Daniella would never admit aloud that neither Phera nor Ursanthandel deserved the throne. They had killed for it instead of earning it through tradition. They thought sitting on that big comfy chair proved they belonged there. Daniella knew better. Her Momma and Papa had taught her early that the throne was only yours if the entire kingdom wanted you there … if you passed the rites flawlessly and proved you could be trusted with everyone’s lives.
No one had trusted Ursanthandel in the past.
No one trusted Phera currently either.
Not because she wasn’t full‑blooded Thirstenblack but because she hadn’t proven anything.
Thankfully, Daniella trusted Phera’s parents because they had stood up for her when it counted.
After a few bites of excellently spiced rare red meat, Daniella stood, wiped her mouth, and trotted to the small table across the room. She rummaged through bottles until she found the one she wanted, took two pills, then returned to Gretleby.
“Gramma Gretleby, you almost forgot these. Cleric Healer’s orders.”
The old Felinar smiled warmly. “Thank you so much. I plumb forgot.”
She glanced at Gharfield, who had settled at Daniella’s writing desk, eating and scribbling notes for his memoir. “Gharfield, you need to stop thinking about that memoir so dang much! Daniella remembered my pills. Again.”
Gharfield nearly choked on his food, then smiled ruefully. “I know, but I need to get all this exciting stuff down. No one else has my perspective of the tyrant’s demise. And no one will have the insider’s knowledge of how our daughter will help our kingdom rise again. With little Danielia’s help, of course. Isn’t that right, Dani?”
Daniella smiled and wagged a finger. “No, no. Grampa Gharfield isn’t getting his way this time. You don’t multitask. And who said I’d help Phera take on this whole place? I surely didn’t. Maybe you ought to write about how Phera helps me take on this kingdom instead. Much more exciting.”
Gharfield laughed loudly. Gretleby laughed softly. Neither of them believed her, probably because she’d said it with a smile. Isenwrath wouldn’t have laughed. She would have gotten deadly serious. Daniella missed that. Missed her matron more than she’d ever expected.
The soft white robe she wore didn’t feel right without Isenwrath wearing a matching one nearby. Helping Gretleby with her clothing and hair wasn’t the same as helping her matron. Isenwrath made chores easy — joyful, even. Gretleby wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the same.
After dinner, Daniella helped Gharfield gather dishes. Three knocks sounded at the door. Governess Ribbleton entered. The short Governess was a rabbinfolk woman Daniella wouldn’t trust even if she could bribe her with all the wealth in Shinenoor.
“Greetings, everyone. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“What is it, Ribbleton?” Daniella asked sharply.
“We have a situation. I need to lead you to safety. Please follow me.”
The three looked at each other, then at Ribbleton — who stood with twenty soldiers behind her. No choice.
Gharfield helped Gretleby stand. She wobbled, but it was a good day. One of the Ursol guards scooped her up gently unexpectantly because urgency was the priority at the moment.
“Whooo…” Gretleby said, startled but settling into the huge black‑furred arms. “Thank you, kind guard. I’m guessing this is an actual emergency?”
The Ursol guard nodded. “It is, ma’am. It’ll get handled. We’ll bring you back without trouble after it’s all done.”
Gharfield patted his wife’s arm, then held Daniella’s shoulders. Ribbleton turned sharply, robes swishing, ears pointed forward as she marched out. Gharfield and Daniella followed, Gretleby’s transport close behind. The guards drew their short swords.
Daniella didn’t know what was happening, but she knew one thing. Whatever was coming was probably her opportunity. And that was all she needed to hold close to her heart.
Source: r/HFY · by /u/Feyfyre1