In the end everything collides;
My childhood spat back out the monster that you see.
He rises with the Chamber.
He wasn’t dead - not anymore. He had risen from the dead once and decided it was worth staying, even if the Chamber was no more. It was all he had ever known, and something had told him that it would one day rise again, so he had lain in wait. The years have blurred together, but something whispers in the wind and the yellow-eyed painted king is among the first to come home.
The pine trees seem as though they’re welcoming him home as he breathes in their earthy scent, and the ancient stallion breaks into an easy lope through the trees. There is no rolling heartbeat beneath his hooves but that doesn’t bother him; he had never truly cared much for the magicks that had forced his father from their home. It had earned him a crown at a young age - one he demanded from his sire, who only wished to hand it to his half-sister. He had done nothing to deserve the crown then, but his actions later in life had much made up for it. He had taken the Chamber’s potential and molded it into what it needed to become.
Eventually, he slows as another horse comes into view, and isn’t it ironic that the first drawn to the Chamber are Tatter and his great-granddaughter? There is something about the black mare that seems familiar to him as he approaches, but he doesn’t recognize her - it has been eons it seems since he last set eyes on Straia, and the generations between them indicate that they are not very similar in appearance.
He can tell she is a stranger to this land by the way she glances about as if taking it all in, and an easy smile rests on his face as he stops a respectable distance away. “Have you ever seen a land so beautiful?” he asks her, yellow eyes flashing. Tatter was never a good man by any means, but his home was his pride and joy.
He’s been floating along for so many years now - between the Afterlife and being dragged back to life - that he is ready to stay. The Chamber is his.
Tatter.
@
Iris I couldn't resist, family reunion