Greyspill
Plains, 203
From
his vantage point on the Greyspill, Alessandro
watched the Bellatrix armies disappear over the distant
line of the hills. When the last of their banners slipped beneath the southern
hilltops, he rose from his camp seat and headed towards the narrow path down
the cliff slope. Ten paces down, he heard Martin call out to him.
He
turned, and waved up at his bodyguard. “I’m just going down to take a look.”
Martin,
huffing for breath in his chain hauberk, jogged to the edge of the path and
stopped, looking ruefully down at the jumbled rocks below him. “Your Highness,
you shouldn’t go down there. There could still be Bellatrix
about—”
Alessandro
shrugged his objection off, imagining the metal-shod bodyguard tumbling down
the sage-dotted hillside in pursuit. “I need to go down there, Martin. I have
to see this for myself.”
Martin
peered down the slope again, and put a foot down on the nearest stone. The
shale gave under his foot, sending a tiny avalanche of pebbles towards
Alessandro. Like an ungainly shorebird, Martin hopped backwards, away from the
edge. “Ah, Your Highness, please wait. I can get out of this armor in just a
moment….” Martin realized he was addressing the prince’s back; Alessandro, still
waving, was well on his way to the foot of the cliff.
It
took the prince ten more minutes to make his way to the base of the cliff. As
he walked, the reek of gunpowder grew stronger, a harsh, acrid odor that
combined the scents of burnt cinnamon and onions. At the foot of the cliff, he
entered the reddish haze left by the discharge of dozens of cannons, and the
intensity of the odor brought tears to his eyes. In ten more minutes, he
reached the edge of the battlefield, marked by the first of hundreds of casualties.
As
he picked his way through the lines of the fallen, he felt a familiar numbness.
Here, he passed a fallen horse impaled on a broken pike. There, he passed near
a man in his own livery, felled by arrows and finished off with a sword thrust
to the gut. These were familiar sights, almost comforting compared to what he
found at the heart of the battlefield. The steel balls the Crux artillerists
had used to destroy Wall had been put aside in favor of other ammunition. On Greyspill Plains, Alessandro’s cannons had fired lead
pellets, nails, and even chain. Many of the bodies of the cannons’ victims were
no longer recognizable as human; only in the worst aftermath of cavalry
charges, where men and animals’ bodies twisted together into chimerical monstrosities,
had Alessandro seen anything to match the nightmarish horror of Greyspill Plains. Sickened by the carnage and the
ever-present miasma, he stumbled back towards the cliffs and the waiting
encampments.
At
the edge of the plains of the dead, Alessandro found two women tending to a
small throng of wounded. The older of the two, grey-haired
and pinch-faced, was washing and cleaning wounds; as he watched, he saw the
younger woman give her instructions on bandaging a deep slash in one
half-conscious soldier’s bicep. The man’s arm was drenched in blood; it was a
wound that any physician could have closed in a minute, but here on the fringe
of the battlefield, it could well cost the man his arm. The elder woman gripped
the bandages tentatively, and Alessandro could tell that she had made the same
assessment of the man’s fate. Then, the younger woman shoved her aside, placing
her hands on the raw wound. “Those three men need you, Annette,” she directed
the older woman away, and then returned her attention to her patient.
The
woman’s face contorted in pain, and Alessandro saw tears form at the corners of
her eyes. Distracted by her agony, he nearly missed the faint bluish glow that
played over her hands. The woman looked around nervously, and when her eyes
touched him, he made a point of showing that his attention was elsewhere.
Satisfied, the woman removed her hand from her patient’s arm, and carefully
wrapped layers of blood-spotted bandages over his healthy, blue-streaked arm.
As
she worked, Alessandro went back to watching her. Dark-haired and slim, she
wore a peasant’s brown cotton dress over an off-white blouse,
its sleeves hacked unevenly away. The hem and bodice of the dress were stained
with red-brown blood, and by both the cut of the latter, and the woman’s air of
world-weary acceptance, Alessandro judged that this was not the first battle
she had spent with his army. He approached her to see her face more clearly. By
the softness of her features, she could be no older than nineteen.
She
chose just that moment to look up, meeting his gaze with unflinching brown
eyes. With a glance, she dismissed him as not requiring her attention, “If
you’re hurt, sir, Annette can help you,” she pointed out her companion.
Annette
lifted her head from where she sat by a soldier with a half-splinted ankle, saw
Alessandro, and gasped before prostrating herself in the mud. Sounding
half-strangled, she blurted, “Your Highness.”
The
younger woman’s eyes widened, and she hesitated for a
heartbeat before sinking into the dirt beside her patient. Her curtsey
confirmed his earlier assessment. Even spattered with blood, the curve of her
neck and the swell of her sunburned bosom awoke in him the familiar stirring of
desire. A quickening heartbeat later, something else welled up within him, far
more satisfying than lust. An idea.
“You may rise,” he gestured to the women.
“You, what’s your name?”
The
younger girl lifted her head three inches, but refused to rise from the
curtsey. “Delphine Courtenay,
Your Highness.”
No
matter how he handled this, he knew he was going to frighten her. He chose to
be direct. “Where did you learn the arts of the physician?” Delphine
blanched at the question, fearfully dipping her head back down. He could see
her shaking; spotted with gore as she was, he wondered
if she hoped he would mistake her for a corpse and forget his question. Gently,
he added, “I'm not asking to endanger you. Just tell me.”
Wilting,
she whispered, “My mother taught me.” He knew the simple statement for the
damning confession it was: her reticence showed that her mother had not
belonged to either the Church or the Physician’s Guild. Delphine
Courtenay was a renegade physician. If either Guild
or Church learned of her, she would be branded a heretic and killed.
“Well,
Delphine,” he said, coaxing her with the art Clarissa
Sone had taught him so long ago, “the Church has excommunicated me, so I won’t
be telling any of them. It looks like it hurts you to use your talents. Why?”
“I’m
only half-trained,” she admitted. “My mother didn’t finish training me before
she went away. I've been on my own since.” Her voice was small and tight, and
Alessandro saw the shadows of fading bruises on her shoulders. Knowing what to
look for, he saw the same marks on her arms, and the fading trace of a
blackened left eye. A cold anger filled him, and he fought against it, knowing
it would serve no purpose here.
Alessandro
bent down next to the terrified girl, and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Cynically, he reflected that Clarissa’s lessons were finally being put to good
use; in his kindest voice, he said, “Delphine, you
have a rare gift, and every man here that you have saved will attest to its
value. But your gift shouldn’t hurt you. I have a friend named Lucien d’Aramis. Perhaps you've heard of him? He has connections
with the Physician’s Guild. After you finish here, come to the command tent and
ask for me. I’ll introduce you to Lucien, and we’ll send you to complete your
training.” While he spoke, he watched her exhausted, alluring face: fear,
shame, hope, and disbelief flickered across it like flame swept by wind. In the
back of his mind, he heard Clarissa tell him of this moment, when he could take
her in his arms, kiss her boldly, and steal her heart away forever. With a
shake of his head, he smiled at her instead. “Once you’re trained, you can come
back to me. I’ll need people like you when this kingdom is mine.”
Then
he rose, and nodded a farewell to the soldiers and the other woman. He heard Delphine murmur disbelieving thanks, and reassured her as well as he could with another grin as he walked away.
He stopped once to glance over his shoulder and see Annette touching Delphine’s shoulder. He could imagine the older woman's
words, knowing full well what Annette would tell the girl he really wanted.
Bemused by the thought, he looked out over the battlefield, to where the ravens
already fed amidst the newly dead. As he walked, he wondered how many Delphines saved would balance the weight of the fields of
the slain.
He
pushed the thought aside as he saw Romana waiting for
him at the top of the cliff. As long as Delphine came
to his camp, he would do well by her, and it would be a beginning.
The
Adriana Komaru entered her brother's sickroom,
three anxious steps behind her mother. In her right hand she held two Cosmos
cards, light and faintly warm to the touch as she gripped them in fingers moist
with nervous perspiration.
"We might have another way to help you," Kimiko spoke, her voice strained with concern, the words
tumbling out before she could contain them.
In a chair beside the dying prince's bed, Delphine Courtenay rose
unsteadily from her doze. Her blood-spotted physician's robe had fallen open in
her sleep, revealing the tight-laced leather vest and suede pants she wore as
part of her other duty, bodyguard to her second generation of Komaru
sovereigns. Between her rumpled, dirty attire and the severe braid that bound
back her graying hair from her age-lined face, she looked more like a bandit
queen than the guardian of Komaru's youngest prince. Not for the first time,
Adriana felt a surge of affection for her.
"Don't wake him," Delphine
sighed reflexively, only half awake herself.
Beside her, Hideo coughed once. In the broken hiss
that had once been his voice, he murmured, "I was already awake."
Kimiko,
anguished by his weakness, said, "We might have found the key. Before she…" she swallowed, and began again, "Nadeshiko Komaru found a reference to a key in the shape of
a Cosmos card. We think one of these two cards might be it. We're going to take
you to a
Adriana could find no words as she approached
Hideo's bedside. She could barely bring herself to look upon him, for fear she
would start crying and never be able to stop. Silently, she placed the two
cards in his hands.
Kimiko
said, "Keep them safe until we get you to the
Hideo held one of the cards before his face. He asked,
"What is the name of this one?" His rasping whisper halted his
mother's words.
"We don't know," Kimiko
confessed. "We never knew it existed before—"
"No," said Hideo, struggling to sit up,
"nevermind. I think I know." A cough tore
through him, and as he spat blood upon his dark-stained sheets, Delphine reached out to steady him, to beg him to stop
hurting himself, to rest, to save his energy—
"It is," he breathed between spasms.
Komaru
Mourn,
230, Sixty Seconds
Only Delphine Courtenay sees the first change.
His eyes were honey-gold, his mother's, his father's.
Now they are as bright as forged gold, wrenched
from the earth to find a haven within his eyes.
"Ah," says Hideo, as the card drops from
his fingertips towards the red-flecked sheets of the bed. As though they were
one, the three women move towards him, their fear binding them together.
He closes his eyes and clenches his fist.
Something inside him laughs with delight. If only
they knew, he thinks, they would not fear so.
He decides to show them.
Everyone sees the second change.
Color is many things to humanity. Artists speak of
warmth and coolness, colors that soothe and colors that inflame. Physicians
speak of color as shorthand for heritage. Geomancers speak of color as the key
to mysteries of the earth and of the sky, concealing a secret language of
meaning. Few are the souls who cannot look to the brightness of the blue vault
of day and not feel warmed, to the vastness of the black vault of night and not
feel awed, to the uncounted palette of splendor that comes between without
understanding, at least the slightest bit, the miracle that is existence.
To the three women who stand around him, it is a
bubble of color, swirling and swelling about him, every hue of the rainbow, every sight of a sunset, every memory of a flower in a time
of happiness or loss.
To the inhabitants of the city, it is a flash, and
a shimmering, a bewildering play of brightness that washes away the cares of
the moment and leaves every man, woman, and child stumbling forth to squint up
at the sky.
To the inhabitants of the country, it is a
brightening, a lightening of worry that comes in an instant and is chased,
minutes or hours or even days later, by a realization of how the world has once
again changed.
To the inhabitants of the world, it is a fire of a
thousand thousand colors that sweeps in a dozen
heartbeats across the sky, illuminating it, day or night, so that the stars
shine more brightly, the white moon more purely, the black moon more starkly,
and the blazing sun as boldly as any day of Mournish
spring.
And with a gesture and a wish, the haze that fouls Mourn's sky is gone.
The
"Are you okay?" Delphine
stammered.
"What just happened?" Kimiko
demanded.
"What did you do?" Adriana cried.
Nameless colors forming his cloak and sword, Hideo slipped
out of the bed. "I'm fine." He laughed. "I'm better than I have
ever been. I understand now. I understand everything," he laughed again, a
mad skeletal boy grinning with delight, his smile looking as though it might
split his face in two.
"Thank you," he said, embracing Delphine and kissing her forehead. She flushed with
embarrassment, but her words failed as the warmth of his trailing aura swept
across her like a butterfly's wings.
"Thank you," he said, embracing Kimiko and kissing her cheek. She opened her mouth and
closed it again, delighted, confused, annoyed, and searching for an explanation
in the heart of a rainbow.
"Thank you," he said, embracing Adriana
and kissing her lips. She turned red as a beet, her knees wobbling with the desire
she felt in his lips, with the strength she felt as they met her own, with the
dizzy spray of colors that swirled suddenly in her mind and in her stomach.
"Now, I have to hurry, before he gets away,"
he said, his spectral wings carrying him across and out of the room in two
impossible steps, leaving the three women gaping in his absence, in the
euphoric confusion of chromatic brilliance he left in his wake.
Adriana felt stunned. Beside her, Delphine's mouth hung open. Her mother's voice cut sharply
through her bewilderment: "What are you waiting for? We need to follow
him." Instinct compelled her to obey.
The trio caught up to Hideo in the stairs to the
dungeon, led by the trail of color he left hanging in
the air behind him. "Are you sure you're better?" Kimiko
demanded as he stood before a locked door, its stout oaken width slowly
dissolving into a pool of radiance.
Hideo chortled, "I really am! I love you,
mother!" He stuck his hand into the door, plunging it three inches into
the wood before pulling it out again. "This is taking too long," he
said, anxiously drumming his foot as he continued to stare intently at the
door.
"Are we ever going to get an explanation,
then?" Adriana snapped, guiltily pleased that her sharp tone hid her
earlier shock. She watched Hideo stick his hand into the door again and pull it
out with dismay. With a disgusted sigh, she grabbed the dungeon keys off her
belt, and reached to push him aside.
His emotions hit her with nearly physical force.
She could feel him reveling in his newfound power, his sudden health. She knew
in an instant that he was hunting, that he was overwhelmed with a passionate
need to strike back for his years of pain. She knew, exactly and without doubt,
just how intensely his feelings for her burned within him. Somehow, she
unlocked the door before her knees crumpled beneath her and she fell to the
ground, gasping.
With a joyous yell, Hideo swept Adriana to her
feet, kissed her three times, and passed her limp body to Delphine.
"I love you, Adry!" he cried, before
bounding through the dungeon door with the enthusiasm of a puppy.
"Are you okay, Your Highness?" Delphine asked, holding Adriana up.
She nodded, barely able to feel her body move, her
face burning brightly enough to light a room. "We have to catch him. He's
going to kill the Jitani."
Hideo pushes through the last door just as Dmitri jams the keys into his cell's lock, his arm twisted
at an unnatural angle to reach through the thin open space in the door. One of
his guards lies near the door, his neck broken and his eyes bulging in his
lifeless face; Hideo sees he is missing his sword. The second has fallen some
distance away, and Hideo can smell the trickle of blood that dribbles from the
tongue he bit half off while being strangled. Smoothly, the arm twists the key
in the lock and retracts as the door swings open. The stench of corrosion is
thick about Dmitri as the twisted bones of his arm
knit themselves back together. The Jitani
has the composure to smile as Hideo glides into the room.
"So, the Shepherd has awoken at last, has
he?" Dmitri says casually, his hand resting on
the hilt of his sword. "Congratulations. We wondered if—"
The stink is too much for him. It is like every
terrible thing he can imagine. It is the sickness that bound him for years and
nearly slew him. It is the pain of his sister being taken from him. It is an
injury to the universe. He raises his hand and turns his sword into a spear of
color, driving it through Dmitri's heart.
Transfixed by an arc of color, Dmitri
spreads his hands as the three women enter the room. For an instant, Hideo
feels the filth gather around him, responding to his call. Hideo sees his eyes
flicker to the women, sees his smile widen, feels the
noxious rush as he gathers his power. Hideo can feel him start to act, to hurt
them, to hurt her—
Dmitri
turns to flame. His skin sears, his eyes pop, his muscle burns, and his bones
turn to ash.
A single black plaque falls with a clatter to the
stone floor. It is all that remains of Jitani Dmitri.
"Well," Hideo says as he turns to the
three horrified women. "I feel much better." Then he falls,
completely exhausted and unconscious, to the floor.
The three women hurry to his side.
Beside them, the black plaque sits, upon it a
character and a name: Unbinder.
Komaru,
230-235
An organic castle is born on 4 Waning
of Month 4 of the 230th year of Paraceln's
Age. It is raised amidst the southern edge of the
It is named Memory, and it opens once a year on 2 Waxing of Month 9.
An organic castle is born on 1 Waning
of Month 5 of the 230th year of Paraceln's
Age. It is raised in the low foothills west of Ishiki,
overlooking the River Aoi as it winds its way down to
the Royal Capital. It bursts from the ground and branches instantly, a bounding
triskelion of growth spreading away from its center.
It does not rise, but rather spreads, a low-slung silver cloud forming small
chambers interconnected by arching walkways exposed to the outside air. When at
last it reaches the edge of its growth, it does at last thrust three broad
walls into the air, spearhead triangular projections soaring above it like the
points of a great crown.
It is named Dedication, and it opens once a year on
7 Waning of Month 2.
On the west coast of Komaru, atop a bluff
overlooking a lonely stretch of rocky shoreline, the ruins of Castle
Its name was the Castle of the Sea, and in the
winter of 231, the Mer rise in a great wave to carry
its ashes back to the place of its founders' birth.
In the years that follow the clearing of the sky,
Komaru is not at peace.
In the north, the Yuasa wage a lengthy conflict
with the elusive Naga invaders. Battles are fought
not with armies and massed troops, but with arrows and ambushes, scouts and
subterfuge. In the northwest, the Naga slowly grind
down the
After the first year of conflict, the Yuasa receive
unexpected reinforcements from the
The Yuasa-Church alliance remains stable until the
matter of Kedakai's previous existence as the
Code-sworn Julien Bellatrix
is once more brought before the Royal Council, this time by Christoph
Bellatrix, a member of Julien's own family. This time, allegations that Julien Bellatrix has broken his
oath are backed enthusiastically by Morika Yuasa, and
the question of whether or not the man now known as Kedakai
must be punished for oath-breaking is not easily set aside. In his campaign
against Kedakai, Morika
finds allies in the Sone family and, ironically, the Minamet, both eager to
weaken the Church. By the time the sordid drama concludes, Morika
Yuasa, not the first Yuasa to decide upon an alternate interpretation of Church
structure, has declared that he believes Thierry Smith is the leader of the
true Church. In response, Kedakai wastes no time in
declaring that Morika is a heretic. In a heartbeat,
the Church armies in the northeast begin hunting Morika
as well as Naga, and Laurent and Victor Yuasa clash
again as each works to turn the diplomatic disaster to his own benefit.
In the east, the last of the colonists in the
In the wake of the fall of the Eastern Church, only
two last remnants of Komaru extend across the desert: the Royal Garrison in
Sirocco, and the Dawning Star in Spear. To the Dawning Star, the Minamet
deliver an unequivocal message: find a new home.
In the south, the great army raised by Seraphine Komaru and her allies pushes back the Jitani invaders practically before they reach the
battlefield. In the wake of her victory, Seraphine
becomes a force to be reckoned with in the Royal Capital: for a year, she seems
to be everywhere at once, doing everything. She has raised a castle, led armies
in the north and the south, borne twins, entranced her husband, and still found
time to attend every party, play, and invitation sent to her. Lingering rumors
about her sanity vanish in the face of the force of her personality: by 232,
many Komaru joke that she must have found the twin she was separated from at birth, and that together they are fulfilling her myriad
obligations. When, at last, pregnant with a second set of twins, she retires to
her country estate for a year to rest and recover, no one in the capital
begrudges her a much-deserved holiday.
The heroes' welcome that Athel
and Theo Bellatrix receive in the wake of their
victory against the Jitani incursion is no less
spectacular, although neither embraces their accolades with as much energy as Seraphine Komaru. Maria Komaru, no longer able to hide her
own pregnancy, shrieks with joy as she embraces her husband Athel,
turning him a shade of red deep enough to match his family's colors. And if
Theo Bellatrix, at 24 already the veteran of more
broken engagements than he cares to count, seems surprised by the attention he
receives, and at first dismayed to hear of his engagement to Princess Mirabelle Komaru's second daughter Sakiko,
his abundant joy is unmistakable when the two are married on Her Excellency Sakiko Komaru's twenty-first birthday, three short months
after her sister Himiko's marriage to Kuro Minamet.
After the Bellatrix and
the Sone drive back their foes, many eyes turn to the Jitani
who now occupy the
In the heart of Komaru, Hideo Sone's
miraculous recovery is the talk of the court for a season. He convalesces
unwillingly for two months, his devastated body rebuilding itself slowly while
he impatiently insists that he feels fine, that he's strong enough to move
around without help, and that it's always been possible to count his ribs when
he has his shirt off. For her part, the Crown Princess is jubilant, the pain of
the last few years of pain wiped away in a day. Her former Royal Tutor Jet
Touraine, her mother Kimiko Sone,
and her cousin Kiseki Komaru are exalted before the
court: it is said that Komaru Kiseki's retirement to
her country estate in the fall of 230 is the result of her need to escape the
continuous stream of prominent engagements the Crown Princess seeks to arrange
for her. For Jet Touraine's part, more than one wag
is heard to remark that the grieving widower may soon be putting aside his
black in favor of a princely crown. The rumor leads to many chuckles, and more
than one duel.
Not all benefit from the Crown Princess's new
vitality. In the Royal Council, Adriana's previous exhaustion is replaced by a
fierce surety. She wields every weapon at her disposal as she staves off the
reforms she feels Komaru cannot handle. She shows no qualms against using
force: Ruby Touraine fights three duels for her in the Royal Council Hall in
the space of a month. Even her own advisors are not safe from her newfound
energy. A dozen ministers appointed by her mother are sent back to their
estates with polite thanks for the services they have rendered, and half a
dozen others are pressured to prove the value of the services they offer the Crown.
Princess Mirabelle Komaru mirrors the Crown
Princess's energy throughout: like an executioner, she stalks the halls of the
Royal Capital seeking out corruption and inefficiency, until at last even the
Veiled Guard are said to flee from her.
Of all of the targets of the princesses' efforts,
the Prince Consort Presumptive comes under the most pressure. Courtiers whisper
of his involvement in Hideo Sone's sickness, of his
illegitimate child, of his affairs. Some even say that the Crown Princess is
preparing to send her champion to have him killed. For three days, Dante is not
seen at all, and many suspect the Crown Princess of falling back on her
grandfather's methods to eliminate her foe. Then, to the shock of all the
court, the Crown Princess and the Prince Consort Presumptive appear together
before the Royal Council, smiling and healthy.
"Many years ago, my uncle Faust Yuasa, whose
title I now bear, arranged for me to become Prince Consort Presumptive,"
Dante states in a firm voice, commanding the attention of the Royal Council in
a voice so like his uncle's. "It was never a choice I made, and as the
years have passed, I have realized in my heart that though the Crown Princess
is a woman I respect and admire, she is not the woman I am destined to marry.
Thus, I relinquish my position as Prince Consort Presumptive."
The Crown Princess raises her voice, "The
Crown wishes to announce the engagement of Her Grace Alessa
Komaru, Marquess of Valekaze,
to the most deserving Duke Dante Yuasa of Alban. Though We
are saddened to be set aside in favor of a younger woman, We are certain that both
of Their Graces will find great happiness in their marriage, and We commend His
Grace Dante for his efforts on the Crown's behalf during his years of service
as Prince Consort Presumptive. For the newly engaged, let there be a great
cheer!" And at her command, in joy and bewilderment, the Royal Council
Hall fills with noise that drowns out anything else she has to say.
Many of the court wonder at the politics behind the
decision, but the consequences begin with Dante Yuasa's sudden engagement to
Lucien Skye Komaru's fourth daughter, and though the wedding comes five years
later, it is never imperiled by politics. For her part, Adriana Komaru makes it
publicly clear that she holds no ill will towards His Grace, and in fact
arranges for Ruby Touraine to be present to defend him against a duel issued by
a furious young
In the wake of the engagement's end, the court
watches the Crown Princess with a keen eye. For all of her grief at his
illness, Adriana's response to her brother's health is troubling to many: far
from embracing him joyously, she greets him cautiously and with obvious
reserve. For his part, Hideo does not seem to notice,
and the capital's gossips whisper ceaselessly as they search for explanations
for the strange dance the two enact before the court, even as they wonder if
the Crown Princess will soon find herself with a fiancé to replace the one she
escaped.
Five years pass.
Though Seraphine Komaru
raises Castle Dedication, she soon grants it to Adriana Komaru. Adriana rewards
Seraphine with favor and thanks, but rather than
sharing her gift, she declares it off limits to the
Royal
Court
until such time as she
feels it is appropriately defended. She commands Tohru
Komaru and Shiro Minamet to design and build a
defensive wall around the castle to protect it from those who would seek to
threaten it. For four years, the finest Minamet engineers work with the Royal
Guard to raise a great wall about the castle, until at last Dedication lies
within a star of slanting red stone, as impregnable as Komaran science allows.
Then, and only then, Adriana Komaru grants it to
her mother to continue the work that had been done at the Castle of the Sea.
"And," she says, crossing her arms before her, the Royal Sword across
her thighs, "We will be the first to use it. It is time for the Crown
Princess to seek an attunement."
It is the 235th year since Paraceln's Dream. Five years have passed, five long years
of war, of births, of deaths. They mark the end of the old era, when magic hid
and the world beyond Komaru was forgotten. Now, the time of innocence is but a
memory, and the dedication of every soul that knows what the future holds will
be tempered upon the fire of history reborn.
In Komaru, the Consort has awoken.