02-21-2023, 09:33 AM
What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark?
Rezza has been restless lately, her mind reeling, trying to figure out how to fix this - all of this. “This” wasn’t just one thing, and there was no word for it except perhaps travesty. The existence of Baltia and Stratos in Beqanna was a travesty, and yet the word tasted wrong in her mouth because it also felt like a gift. A snapshot of what life could be like, a taste of something she had never known - peace. There had been a glimmer of it, before Stratos’ arrival here, a moment in time where Rezza wasn’t planning for war and looking over her shoulder for attacks. A moment, however fleeting, where she felt free. Traitor, hisses her own voice in her head, and oh how right it is. She was a traitor, thinking of herself instead of her kingdom and her Queen. That was what she was born and raised to do, but lately, it was not what she had done.
The chorus of traitor grows louder in her own mind as she paces on land. She has gotten far too used to spending time on land, and it only fuels her own guilt and self-doubt. Tsilutsuli and Helice’s voice join the choir, and she knows they are right. Her feet keep moving, but her mind swims. Should she is resign from her position? But how can she even fathom such a thing with Tsilutsuli sick and Helice so busy?
It isn’t until the landscape around her changes suddenly that Rezza snaps out of her own pitying thoughts. She knows where she is now, but it is certainly not where she was a moment ago. The banks of the water that covered so much of Beqanna stare back at her, accusing. Though she hadn’t chosen to bring Baltia here, she felt responsible for it anyway. She felt responsible for taking their peace, something far too precious to take from anyone.
But there’s more. In war, she has learned, there is always more. There are two shadows on the bank, a sight Rezza has seen all her life. They are not merely shadows, but bodies, she knows, and her feet carry her forward as the sprites illuminate the bodies enough for her to see (though she needs less light than her land dwelling counterparts). She can’t say what she was expecting to find, but what she does find is certainly not what she expected. Both bodies are ones she knows well, and ones she never expected to find dead in Beqanna. Timais, one of her enemies in a long line of enemies. Her heart does not break at the sight, for it has long since become accustomed to seeing her enemies dead, but she wonders how. How and who and why?
It is the other body that brings her to her knees, the all too familiar body of her Queen lying crumbled and dead on the land. The questions swirl through her mind - how did Tsilutsuli come to be on land? Did she choose to leave her hiding place? Did someone find her? And who could have possibly found her? Only a few even knew where to look, and very few could easily go searching the depths of the ocean for the Baltian Queen. Was there a turncoat in their ranks? Was it magic? The questions swirl and swirl, and she can make no sense of them because in the midst of all those questions the grief rages through, cutting past reason and sense and all the mental skills Rezza prides herself on.
Grief brings her to her knees, because it is not just her Queen at her feet but her friend. A century of friendship stares back at her with lifeless eyes, and in this moment she sees her husband and her brother and her parents and so many lost to a senseless war. Tears well in the corner of her eyes and she cannot blink them away. They traces paths down her scaled cheeks unchecked, as if they have been bottled up far too long and cannot help but overflow now. Even as the sprites move, swirling nearby, encouraging her forward, Rezza allows herself a moment to grieve. It is not a luxury she has been granted often in life, though even today, it is a luxury that will be cut short.
She hears the sprites chirping encouragingly. Her one goal has been to right all the wrongs Baltia and Stratos had wrought on Beqanna. She could not bring back the dead, and she could not undo what has been done, but she could help change the future. Rezza stands, blinking the tears from her eyes, and walks into the portal with her head high.
REZZA