Birthright: Chapter Two
Chapter Two
King Bael sat impatiently at his throne. The decedent of the great Fox King's had little patience to be kept waiting. He had even less patience when he himself summoned someone.
Under his family's dangerous paw the kingdom of Valestra had thrived and become the envy of neighboring nations. Wealth and prosperity were blooming continually at the expense of the lesser classes.
With being a King came the position of having no one above you. Which meant the communal hierarchy was a brilliant idea as far as he was concerned.
The first great fox king gained his position with a paw slick in blood. Few would dare to speak hearsay against the king and his bloodline.
During the Blood Eyes Incident when the first Bael King fought against the democracy of the land and himself killed five of the top rules members in a single night. Everywhere everyone learned not to oppose the position King Valden Bael took from each life he ended.
With more bloodshed than historians would document the kingdom of Valestra was formed, mortared in blood and bone.
Valden established a sect of mystics and hunters and sent them deep into Fable Woods, a place of nightmarish creatures and the birthplace of every known fable, and too many unknown ones.
Out of the fifty sent in two seasons later five returned with a box.
With the items in the box Valden set his mystics to the task of creating a way for him to control fate.
No one knew for sure how long it took Valden's mystics to succeed but they did. Ensuring that the Bael bloodline would rule past time itself.
King Bael sat strumming his claws harshly into the arm of the worn throne. Breaking the silence of his breathing the door to the throne room slid open as two guards moved aside.
Bresle and Mardel, two of Bael's closest guards, both exact opposites covered in blood red fox fur.
Bresle wore a tight sleeveless plate over his chest making his eyes seem even more like hardened metal. At his hip hung a two sort daggers named Fang and Claws. Both anointed in large pools of violence.
Mardel stood more relaxed than his counterpart. His neck and upper chest held thin leather coverings that ran down around his right arm up to his wrist. The leather was covered along the backside in short metal studs. His figure was that of a slim and toned streamlined fox whose nervously cunning eyes never stopped moving. Little else on him was covered and what was had only indecently little leather strapping over them.
Both turned to the door with apprehensive looks as a single figure covered in a black soft leather hooded cape whispered into the room and stopped before the throne.
King Bael himself stopped his impatient clawing and sat up in his throne giving the figure his full attention.
A soft metal clasp unclipped as the cloak pooled around the lone female's feet. She turned her gaze up to the King, something few ever did, and lowered herself to her knees.
The soft dark gray leather pulled snuggly over her curves made no sound as she knelt. The light of the throne room did little other than highlight her singularity of attention.
Staring down into the soft lines of her deliciously feminine face did nothing to distract from her eyes. Two shifting pools of black and red that reflected endless possibility of nightmares that withered even the great fox Kings nerves.
The eyes of a seer never made anyone comfortable. The first King's mystics had made a tool for the King with the treasure from Fable Woods. They gave a bloodline the gift of seeing fate.
Into the bloodline each female born would see things yet to come. This made them both useful to the King and dangerous.
From then on each Bael sent hunters to find suitable mates to continue the bloodline. All the mates required were simply strength in combat and blind obedience.
His voice cracked only once and took on a sound of authority and menace, "Rise Three and know why I call you here."
Three kept her eyes on the king as she stood the world around her blurring. The throne room flickered as if spinning too fast to stay in focus. Three watched the images shift, the pools in her eyes shifting with them slowly.
It took only a blink of her eyes to answer the King, but she had watched events unfold in countless possibilities. Watched as prophecy unfolded for the seer showing the path of events.
"You call me here because someone has spoken against you again."
He sat back slightly her eyes causing his nerves to shudder. Her words were soft, almost spoken like a lover would to excite her mate. The combination caused tightness in ones chest.
He paused looking down at her his words slow and careful, "of course I did."
She cut him off quickly her voice silken and smooth.
"But that's not what you want to hear. What you want to hear is that the one who speaks out against you is a woman living near the old village."
He paused watching her speak as her body moved slightly back and forth. The motion a snake makes as it holds its preys attention before the kill.
"That she speaks against your rule and spreads her words to other. More are listening to her each day. In several years when she is mated her son will grow into a man and fight against you. He will bring many with him. He is strong and handsome."
Her next words ran off her tongue like juice on a sweet fruit.
"A powerfully thick mate throbs like the quiet of the rolling hills."
He watched her leaning forward in his throne his claws tightening on the throne. Each of her words letting her inch one step closer to the King.
"That two days from now she will be traveling alone to the markets along the north road. That if she were to go missing there none would find her."
She lifted herself onto her toes slightly putting her mouth next to his ear. His clenched paws the only thing keeping him from falling forward out of his throne.
"You should kill her then."
Bael snapped his body backwards harder than dignified for a King, his crown sounding off the metal decorations on the throne and let out a hissed breath. He had not felt it happen, or seen her move but she was right up against his side, and he was leaning forward in his seat no more than a paws distance away, killing distance to anyone.
She smiled sweetly and backed away from the throne turning to kneel back in the pool of her cloak.
It took several minutes for Bael's heart to slow and minutes past that to regain his speech. Seers were the tools of the King that gave him complete control over everything.
Control over the seers was something different. Each was raised from birth under isolation contact only with other seers. Each taught obedience to the King above all else.
They were kept from names and simply given numbers. Another way the King helped to strip their will of independence.
At puberty a seer's power blooms and immediately the king places them in isolation. From there only a few spared death and trained in assassination, their gift making them killers without equal.
Control came carefully as the gift of a seer made them unpredictable and immune to prophecy and fate.
For every fox King he keeps the most obedient five seers alive at all times. The rest were killed at puberty. If after puberty they show more promise, or a stronger gift the King would put the least useful of the five current seers to death.
King Bael cleared his voice one last time, "That is what I wanted to hear. Return to your room."
Three turned on her feet and picked up the cloak before standing and pulling it over her swallowing her curved form in darkness. A constant isolation when she wasn't needed.
She turned and walked out of the throne room as silent as a grave the hood hanging over her muzzle her sight leading her back to her nightmare.
#
Three sat quietly on the simple bed cleaning a small round pin about the size of a dagger. It was polished brightly and came to a sharp round point.
Each seer had one identical to the rest. Three was given one after the first time she had killed with her own claws. They called them Fate Spikes. If ever a seer used one to kill it was the Spike that severed all fates linked to the life.
She sat quietly looking back into her mind at the vision she had in the presence of the King.
A path, one possibility in a sea of them, showed the woman getting killed and the guards raiding her home burning everything down.
The vision the King wanted to make real, a reality already in motion.
What happened then was something that hadn't been seen. An event overlapped the vision of the woman being killed. Something not seen since the first seer put the Bael bloodline in power.
Prophecy had just changed itself.
Three sat remembering the images that overlapped her vision. In the vision she saw a hare sitting with an old book unable to open it.
A light burned from inside him as he sat in a sea of darkness alone. Sounds echoed in the darkness. The things from places long forgotten snapped their teeth as they hungered for the Hare's bright soul.
Something was suppose to happen moments ago that swallowed the hare into the darkness into a nightmare Three had never thought possible, a nightmare darker than her own.
Fate caused an event to slip and shift. A path of bright light cut through the darkness falling over the book. Light reflected into the darkness cutting paths in all directions causing for the first time, shadows in the vision. Shadows that created darkness too void of life to see, uncertainty in prophesies.
Three shuddered feeling an emotion for the first time she could remember, a feeling other than submissive uselessness.
Three sat wondering about the Hare. Wondering for the first time about anything at all. Her vision had shown her something for a reason and the Hare seemed to be at the center of it.
Closing her eyes Three turned her sight inward. The room sank in her mind spinning at a nauseating pace. Her minds eye filtered out the unlikely and let fate fill in the rest. She saw years of service to the King.
Three saw events around her turning darker. She saw the king taking over more and more land. Saw him loosing need for her and the seers and felt the knife slitting her throat.
A startled gasp echoed in her empty room as she saw herself standing on the edge of a hill during a warm summer day. A smile on her face as she was standing in the open staring at the blue sky.
She sat holding the image in her mind. Was she happy there?
Three opened her eyes letting the image fade slowly. Her breathing had grown heavier as her stomach knotted. Never had she seen the possibility of escape.
Three had looked many times and never saw a line of fate to free her. By their nature seers were never really in fate simply part of it. Their gift rarely worked on another seer because of that fact.
Fate changed something for the Hare and something in turn had just changed in her life.
Three sat quietly knowing that fate had just joined the two in something she couldn't see.