flameskewer

Devout, despite the atrocities she’d demanded of her son and his men. A part of her, blanketed in gold and concealed behind righteousness, raged in her blood as fiery savagery.

      The Hornsent wept, begged for mercy, and pleaded for families to be spared, they trod through burnt and bloodied ground with no reprieve nor sanctum. As they suffered, churches like this one rose, foundations built out of their vile corpses.

      It pleased her, indeed. 

      “Yes,” she answered, “thine effort and conviction, ensures the Lands Between remain untouched by wretched hornsent.”

      Marika thought of what he’d said previously.

         “ Ah… Some,” he admitted, adding, in his eagerness to please her, “but we are rendered no less effective.

         “ Messmer, thy glorious son, remaineth a beacon of resolution, of course! ”

           His dream presence wavered as he struggled to recall more of the actualities of the realm of shadow. It solidified as he surrendered thinking on his own and instead sought the authoritative word of God Herself…

Versailles is 10 years old today! It first aired 16th November 2015!

" Hmm. Who knows, maybe, I was sent to your aid... I suppose coincidences are few?" She hums, recalling being lost in path that day. Old familiar signs were torn by war or vanished over time. By a mere intuition she had somehow made the correct choices - at least finding her way to an allied knight. She could not deny or verify, if it was meant to be. Even if she had barely spared a thought for the goddess prior to this.

" Anyway, once the war is over." Not if. " Does sir Queelign have dreams to chase? A home awaiting your return...?"

           His lips almost part as he weighs confessing the desperate prayer that was in his mind at his moment of darkness before awakening to their meeting– but loathe is he to admit that level of despair he knew then, to ever confess defeat.

           Those thoughts fade as she speaks of after the Crusade. Grace-touched eyes widen, and he again wonders if she suffers memory loss… He recalls fellows once speaking of after the war, centuries ago when few had lost faith.

           No one speaks like that anymore.

           She already offers further questions before he can adjust to every surprising twist of her conversation, even the nimbleness required to follow along thus far prepares him not for the final hand-shielded query–            Significant someone? A rock ambushes his path and he stumbles and has to pull his eyes away from her to catch himself, “Ah!”

           Did she mean to imply what he thought? He pauses and stares to try to read her face before marching onward, careful to look where he steps lest he make a further fool of himself. 

         “ We who swore ourselves to Messmer in times past are banished from our homes,” he mumbles. “And all who be veiled in Crusaderly lands came knowing not if we may survive to ever again see the Erdtree. 

         “‘Twould be great unkindness to leave anyone expecting a return so unlikely,” he states, as if that were the only reason, before adding more clearly: “No one waits for Sir Queelign in those lands of light. ”

           Reasonable as his answer should be, he feels heat in his cheeks for the admission. 

The sudden quirk of her brow, however, betrayed a kind of dull and tacit understanding.

“Ah, yes…”

The corners of her mouth twitched at the mention of her other projects, vastly overshadowed by the prospects of their new course. “It's just as well. I was going to begin my day with a different sketch, but our first draft comes to mind now…”

Out of the mists and bared before the sun’s brilliance. A fledgeling thought that should someday take flight. If only she nurtured it well enough, and imbued it with dreams of great devastation. She thought then of a fire that could never be quenched. A weapon that would scorch the earth for days. For longer, perhaps.

Forever…

           Though he already had others stationed outside her door, curiosity took the better of him. the knight cleared a seat for himself and lounged, taking in the room some moments before observing only her in silence. This could be a grand point in history after all, with only he and her to bear witness.

Detail of St. George in Armour Being Kissed By Una (1914)