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“What was your life like before the freezing, Shæzha?”
Shæzha inclined her mouth-less face towards her charge with a slight amount of interest mixed with surprise.
“The time before you is not of any importance, Your Highness. It is the past, as it should be.”
The young woman tilted her head with a look on her face. It was a type of face only a painfully kind person would show to someone they were, with all true sincere intentions, concerned about, and Shæzha would not have the princess making such a face.
“But it is, Shæzha. Your story is just as important to me as my own.”
She righted herself, unfurling her tail from beneath her slim girth and saying as kindly as she – a warrior, a fighter, the solider of a lifetime – could, “Your Highness, your kindness is appreciated and it is greatly admired I assure you, but there are just some things that truly do not matter in the long run.”
She was quiet for a moment. Shæzha was sure she was convinced when she said, “Gunergear told me you had a fiancé.”
Shæzha cursed the four-legged creature. She had briefly forgotten the creature was from the same time era as she; he had heard of her engagement, of course. There was no getting around it now.
“I did, Your Highness. It no longer matters.”
“You think of him a lot, do you not?”
Shæzha sighed. Why must the princess be so stubborn, she had to ask herself. Despite herself though, she nodded.
“Everyday, Your Highness.”
She paused. After what Shæzha assumed was deep thought, she asked, “How could you not despise me for tearing you away from that? Gunergear also said you were the highest ranking female of your kind, you were about to be married, and then my family comes along and asks something of you that we knew you could never refuse! You were going to be happy! I doomed you to this life; how could you not be angry with me? With the Royal family?”
She stopped, tears leaking from her eyes, when Shæzha lifted a single webbed paw.
“Your Highness,” Shæzha began, “there is something you must understand about my kind.” She lowered the paw, but continued. “We are a warrior race, a race the prides itself on combat skills and military honor. What your family asked of me – and of my kind in turn – was the largest honor you could have given me. You did not doom me to anything.”
Tender, be nice, Shæzha, Shæzha told herself. Her soft words seemed to be working, as the girl was calming down.
“B-But… your fiancé!”
“He understood. He, also being a ranking officer, knew that such a high honor could not be turned down just so I could be wed. Your Highness, do not cry.”
The girl’s tears started up again. The water rushed from her eyes and fell softly down her face in silence.
“How can none of you absolutely despise me?”
Shæzha stepped in again. “Because there is nothing to hate. We agreed to defend you because we wanted to be your guards. Princess, please understand we all understood the risks we were taking when we agreed to be frozen. We knew we would leave everything behind, but we do not mind. To defend you is the greatest honor ever given to me; do not let anything or anyone tell you otherwise.”
“But, but, Gunergear…?”
“He raised your mother The Queen on his own, he has more reason than all of us to want to reminisce of the life he had, but even he made the choice to be frozen. He has dedicated his life to the royal family beyond all else, whether it was saving and raising The Queen, or being frozen for a thousand years to protect the last remaining hierarchy, he made his choice. Even the other two made the choice to protect you. We do not hate you; Your Highness, we cannot hate you. We have made it our duty to protect you, and for everything I am worth, I will see it to my dying day that you live longer than I.”
-
Because of warnings given to the royal family by their most loyal diviner, the royal family decided to freeze their youngest daughter. Her fate was not with Death, but to the far future that the diviner saw: a land where the last remaining royals were slaughter and chaos and doom filled the landscape. To take back peace, she was to wed her descendant of hundreds of generations - her nephew of sorts. As she was deemed to never have children in the time era she was born in, she was sent to have them there.
When the princess awoke a thousand years later, she was surrounded by four bodyguards.
Shæzha, one of the greatest warriors of her time, and Gunergear, the wisest and strongest centaur of his wearing age, had agreed to be frozen with her. But there were two others of mysterious origins, stating they were created and thus born later; two hundred years after she had been frozen.
This is the story of their journey to the new capital, and to the epicenter of darkness that had engulfed this once peaceful land.
Steampunk and medieval-esque.
 Ukeire · Thu Dec 06, 2012 @ 08:37am · 0 Comments |
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