A simplistic fairy tale (or is it?) regarding a knight and his search for the woman who can save his country.
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ooc thread::
Prologue:
Havershall paced back and forth, back and forth, across the littered floor. It was a small room in a drafty tower so it took a great deal of turns to get any real pacing done. Still, he gave it his all, muttering into his beard at each turn and in between. His toes squeaked against the worn floorboards, leather to oiled wood, speaking out an addendum to his agitation here or there.
Against the wall stood a granite block which could or could not have originally had the face of a man carved on it. If it were a man, it was lumpish and difficult to discern. What could have been eyes were closed and a nose was nothing more than a button of rock. There appeared to be no mouth at all, the chin was nonexistent, but it did, if not a face, have a definite body. And like most rock, the body was not moving.
The rock sat within a recess of the room’s wall. It was tied in place, or rather, hemmed in by a lattice of leather thongs tied off to bent nails all about the recess, holding it there and keeping it from falling out. Nothing adorned the hollow it took up. The stone sat silent and watched nothing through closed eyes. It had been there for a long time. Almost as long as Havershall had had his room in this, the king’s tower, really.
Havershall glared at it, as if that might have made it do something other than sit there. His glare could not last, however, for he was forced to turn once again, as he hit the end of the room’s inner sanctum and had to spin on heel to go away from the stone figure. Then again, it was not but two steps before he was allowed to turn and glare upon it once more.
" - not even caring, was it?" Havershall continued grumbling. "As if it were nothing. You, of course, wouldn’t say a word now, would you? Dumb beast. It was not your problem after all. It’s not as if we’d gone out of our way to make such things not happen. But it was nigh on twenty five years ago, Scarun. Twenty five years!"
He paused and rubbed his chin.
"It was twenty five years. I think you’ve slept longer than that, haven’t you? No reason for any of you all to think of it. To even care. Bloody regencies and their bloody rules. This king or that, what does it matter, really? Except to you all. I’d hoped everyone slept. Why in hells couldn’t you have slept past my time, hmm?"
He spat on the ground beside the stone, wary of getting any spittle on it. The stone did not react and Havershall pointed a weary, grey finger at it. "You… piece of… earth!" He croaked. "Why must you make such a mess of things?"
But then, of course - the mess had truly been made. There wasn’t anything anyone could do about that. The fall out had to be dealt with at this point.
He couldn’t be blamed really for the manner in which it had come about. There hadn’t been any asking for his input. Before he’d known it, the Rules had changed and the words had too. Of course, that hadn’t been much good for the kingdom. The king, poor boy, had scrambled about, scrounging for his best knights, his not so best knights, and his least of the least knights.
Last Haversham had heard was that a great deal of riders and walkers and using-cane’ers had left in their scrapped tin armor in search of this thrice damned "Dove."
The upshot of the whole deal; the complete disregard of the Fates, the turning about of the Prophecy, as well as the meddling of Scarun’s folk (damned stupid creatures) - was simply that the king’s reign, the country, the crown, and the very peace which the kingdom depended upon, would be no more come the next Spring.
"Balderdash.." Haversham growled as he circle-paced the small room. He paused once more, glared balefully at the small statue, then spit once again on the wooden planking before taking up his incessant pacing once more.
In the kingdom’s capital city of Gyrii, however, there was a decided lack of concern. A year. So much could happen in a year. If anyone was worried, it was the present king. But kings could be replaced as well - trade and travel continued relatively unconcerned.
The king of Gyrii, upon Haversham’s direction, had sent out parties in all directions of the compass to find this woman. It wouldn’t have really bothered him either, that she had to be retrieved, that he had to marry her to save his crown, that she may or may not be happy about these facts - except no one seemed to know where she might have been found. This accounted for the myriad points of the compass.
Not realizing how drastically things would change over the course of the next year, how close this land was to come to entire destruction, how the balance of powers in the world were tipping - the kingdom went blissfully along.
No one took note of the solitary knight on his stolid muck colored mount (some called it liver chestnut) as he left the city heading in the direction of the Dragon Peaks and the oracle who lived there.
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