It hadn’t taken the bay roan tobiano long to get caught up on all the juicy gossip, not once she’d finally made her way back to Beqanna. She’d learned long ago all the best places to pick up on current events, and it seemed she’d picked an interesting time to return. Tensions had come to a boil, resulting in the ever predictable war followed by the equally predictable diminishment of the issues. From what she’d heard, things were just about over, and the kingdoms would all return home, lick their wounds, and peace would reign for a few years at least. That always seemed to be the way of it, or at least that was more or less what had happened during the last war she’d borne witness to. And ironically, they’d both taken place in the Chamber.
Today the mare’s changeable eyes are a light honey brown as she wanders her way into the Gates. It’s not a kingdom she’d visited often in her youth – other than her brother Rharian, Alecto’d had little interest in the other Light kingdom. It had been a latecomer to their network of alliances, and little of interest had occurred in the kingdom during most of her life. But from what she’d heard upon her return, the Gates had been the place to be these last few years. Well, maybe not to live – it had certainly not been boring, but from what the ex-princess had heard, most of the Gates’ residents had been killed, leaving the kingdom empty. More interesting still, it seems they hadn’t even turned up for their little war in the Chamber.
This more than anything else intrigued her. Alecto’d been raised to rule – her whole family had been – and they’d all been taught early on about the importance of leadership. The fact that the Gates’ king not only hadn’t shown up to the war, but had left the fighting to his allies in his place, struck the bay roan tobiano mare as a very strange choice indeed. She wondered if perhaps this King Mast she’d heard about was simply too cowardly to go to war himself, or if he’d decided his kingdom couldn’t afford any more deaths without falling into ruin. Though from what she’d heard, the kingdom had deathly silent of late. And what she was seeing around her wasn’t telling a different story. Alecto had wandered right up to the kingdom’s borders, the etiquette of entering foreign kingdoms drilled into her since birth, but she saw few signs of life. She did however see signs of destruction – fire had clearly ravished part of the kingdom, and though it had been put out, its touch had not been erased.
Heaven’s Gates was clearly a kingdom in decline if you asked Alecto.
Alecto
|
