Your name is Alania Bryton and you are an empress-to-be. The royal bloodline has never bothered with requiring a leading male to build and maintain a kingdom. Whether or not you secure a husband before your twentieth birthday is as irrelevant as whether or not you own a certified purebred pet of any sorts before then. The only thing that is relevant or important before then is your training. Your abilities. Your willingness to rule.

And you are so ready and willing to rule.

The first thing you are going to do is throw the most extravagant gathering the kingdom has ever been blessed enough to witness. This is the highlight of your excitement and readiness to rule. The grandeur of the lavish life as the one and only supreme leader of a vast land stretching over miles and miles of the vicinity. Thoughts of having anything you wanted at the whim of your command overwhelm you. You are giddy with the absolute exhilarating anticipation of the moment the crown sits upon your manicured and spoiled head.

“Ruling,” your mother reminds you, “is a more delicate and difficult art than you have ever taken part of.”

You want to shrug her away as she runs her fingers through your curled, blonde hair. You don’t care about the art. The proclaimed “difficulty” of being a leader. One thing you are not going to subject yourself to doing is making difficult choices that will weigh on your conscious. No, that’s not something you’re going to suffer. One of the next things you are going to do, as a supreme leader, is appoint a specific and trusted person, through careful and strategic thought, to handle all of the politics and diplomacies. And you. You will just relish in your heightened luxuries.

“I know, mother,” you answer her with a polite and dainty smile. “I will not let you down.”

“So comes forth the dragon tamer,” she whispers to you, straightening up in her seat.

Ah, yes. The dragon tamer. What could she possibly have to tell you this time? You remember her. You remember being young, less than eleven years old. You and she played games in the courtyard. This was before her talent was known. Before she was subjected to more responsibilities than you ever wanted to possess in your lifetime. You know that she remembers you, too, even though she was abruptly whisked away and was never more in your presence for a few years after. Your violet eyes study her, burning into her. She doesn’t look up, because nobody dares look up in the presence of the empress or empress-to-be. For some reason, her subordination tugs at your heart. Before, she was such a lively soul. A confident one. You know that her fiercity has not run out. You know that she is as rebellious without the presence of royalty as ever.

You know it.

Your name is Delphinia Lupinus, but you rarely hear your own name. You are almost always referred to by your title: the Dragon Tamer. The title is, of course, based on a misconception. The misconception that dragons could be tamed. You don't tame them, you commune with them. You build trust with them and you are careful never to misuse that trust. Yes, you are a very protective Tamer.

That is not all you are. You are a herbalist on the side, and a good one too, although picky with the plants you choose to dry and process. You run an apothecary partially to bear the burden of having been taken early from your childhood to be trained in the art of dragon taming. And you've requested the audience of the Heiress, as well as your former friend, because you bear news.

Guards accompany you to her and her mother's chamber. You are careful to keep your eyes on the floor ahead of you, and quick to draw the top portion of your hood over your eyes as well as kneel and bow before the royals. The slightest trace of a bitter grimace taints your expression, and you take care not to show it because you are terrified to show dissent. Your father showed dissent. He was killed by knights when he'd tried to stop the horse-drawn wagon you'd been tossed into at nine years old to go to the castle for your new "career training". Thinking about it makes you ill, so you swallow the bitterness.

For now.

"Your gracious Majesties," you address the floor. "The dragons have communed with me. I am told that to the west, there is a rebellion rising. It grows, and it threatens your Empire."

The news of any type of a rebellion at any given time should be expected, you think. However, your mother tenses beside you. Your brows draw close together as you give her a questioning look, and she returned your look with an expression of unsaturated fear. You look below her top expression and can sense that she is uneasy, but for what reason, you don't know. It wasn't like there hadn't been covens formed to bring down the kingdom before.

Your mother squares her shoulders and looks down to the tamer. Her voice has a boom that, although feminine, could strike fear even into your heart, should you be afraid of your mother, which you are not. Nor do you think you will ever be. A crooked smile tugs at your lips as you think of one of your other plans as empress-to-be: dispose of your mother.

"I want to know," she begins, taking strategic pauses that you know are simply for dramatic effect, "whether this information was conjured by their own external sight, or internal."

Now, you think you understand why you are uneasy. If it was viewed with physical eyes that there was a rebellion rising up, it would not be much of a situation. As stated, these things happen fairly commonly. However, should the dragons have felt the presence of a rebellion with their inward sight, as it is suggested, it would be more dire, taking into consideration that they felt the matter urgent enough to alert the empress and heiress.

"There have been both external and internal accounts," you answer grimly, keeping your eyes on the cold stone floor beneath you and staying knelt, not moving a muscle, shrouded in your dark green and black robes. You are really only telling the Empress and her Heiress this information because the consequences of not passing this along could very likely be not only fatal but also agonizing. You force yourself to continue your report.

"My scouts witnessed first-hand on their monthly flight the first and second villages burning. The enforcing knights were all killed, and both the governors burned at stakes. It was before that, that my Seer became agitated. He could feel the rage and the bloodlust in his own heart, and he told me with great fervor that..."

Your heart starts to beat faster. You know that saying this could lead to you being killed, being the bearer of bad news and all. You say it anyway, and you cannot help the ice that creeps into your voice.

"...The Empire will fall," you finish. You remain firmly rooted.

There's an eerie hush between the three of you as the tamer utters the last words the Empire will fall. You study your mother's face closely, but her expression has turned to stone, completely indecipherable. How unfair is the only thing you can think. That your Empire should be prophesied to fall just before your proclaimed ruling. You cross your arms over your chest and sink in your seat, waiting for your mother to speak. To fix this. If you are to be the empress, you absolutely demand this be fixed before your coronation. There is no way, in the furthest, deepest pit of hell, that you will let your empire fall before you even get a chance to seize it.

"I see," your mother finally speaks, startling you slightly. You sit up straighter and listen with bated breath. "I can only wonder why I was not informed of this before now, should you have known."

Her own violet eyes are piercing into the female before you, and even you can feel its intensity. Its burn. You wonder if your mother could sense a half-truth or falsehood in the tamer's words. That maybe, perhaps, she had known long before now about the conjuring.

Your chest tightens with fear as the Empress wonders out loud, stonily, why she was not informed earlier. This, you think, could be the end for you. But your face remains unchanged through her Majesty's comment and through the stare that you can feel on you, and your voice remains steady.

"I first knew of it two days ago. I attempted to go straight to thine chamber, your Gracious Majesty, but the knights guarding your abode stopped me. I was, apparently, to schedule a formal audience with you. Although I was able to bypass the majority of the waitlist, despite the urgency of my message, more...important meetings preceded this. Today was the soonest I could arrange for my presence."

Again, you watch your mother's face. It's as expressionless as ever as she listens to the tamer's explanation, and you lean back in your chair as you await the outcome. You had your suspicions that this would result in the tamer's death, and for some reason, it made your heart clench more at that thought than the thought of having your own mother murdered. Perhaps it was the fact that your friend -- you mean, the tamer, was always so innocent and lively. More so than your mother, a stone-cold, murderous wretch.

"Look up, Delphinia," your mother orders, and you're surprised that she remembers the tamer's name. Even you, who played with her many days of the year in the garden, could not recall it until now.

You obey the command––she is the Empress, after all––and look up, your hood falling back and revealing some of your bouncy, thick, wild red hair, but you remain in your kneeling position. As scared as you are, your gaze is steady. You meet her piercing eyes without blinking. Her will is strong, but so too is your own, and your will has been hiding for a long, long time. You will not accept any fate she tries to force on you as punishment. You will resist until your dying breath should she cross you.

But she has not crossed you yet, and so you make no moves. You wait patiently, with a glance at the (beautiful!) Heiress. But it's a very fleeting glance.

You see when Delphinia glances at you, and you smile softly, briefly. Your mother's gaze is intense on her, as if she's thinking about what to say. What to do. And then she turns to you, startling you again.

"What do you think should be done, Alania?"

Your eyes widen slightly, because it's not what you expect. You don't expect to be given any sliver of power over things such as these until after your coronation, and yet, here you are.

"You mean...done to her?" you specify.

"Yes."

You look down at the tamer. Your eyes set into the same expressionless your mother bears. Then, the words that come out of your mouth sound almost foreign to your own ears. "I think she should be rewarded," you say, even knowing this is not going to be favorable with your mother. "For all she's done, how quickly she's gotten the news to us, considering the circumstances."

You do not waver. You are already plotting your escape from the filthy, dark dungeons, and possibly your revenge as well, when the Empress looks to her daughter to ask what should be done to you. It surprises you, and it looks like it surprises her as well. But you do not get your hopes up, because it was a long time that you and the Heiress played together as equals. She has probably changed. Her training for the role she will one day serve as Empress has almost certainly hardened her heart and made her cruel.

So you remain tense and wait for her response.

You...should be rewarded? The only sign you give of your shock is that your pupils contract into pinholes. No, no, no. You can't get your hopes up. No matter how kind the Heiress is, she cannot save you from the wrath of the Empress.

You don't look at your mother, for you can feel her questioning gaze upon you. If you're honest with yourself, you don't know why you've given mercy to the tamer when empire laws would suggest otherwise. You know it has something to do with the connection you had with her in the past, but you can't shake the feeling that her time for serving you has only just begun. There's a part of you that hopes, by giving her life when death was surely staring her in the face, she will devote utter loyalty to you.

Yet, your mother questions, "And why is that?"

"Did I not just explain?" you say, though there's a snap in your voice that wasn't meant to be there. You finally meet your mother's eyes, but she doesn't recoil or look affected by your minor outburst. The ever-inscrutable face of the empress stares back at you, and you recall how you hardly know her as your mother so much as a trainer or distant role model. There is no emotional investment. You can't wait to be rid of her. "I'm taking the throne soon," you continue, voice stern. "You have let me make this decision, and I have said my reason. It is a perfectly valid reason, at that. Don't you think she probably worried enough when your goons were keeping her from delivering vital information to you?"

At the mention of the guards, your mother's face falls into something yet still indecipherable, but close to irritation. Disgust. She looks away from you and waves a hand. "Very well," she says, looking back down at the tamer. "You will be guided to a room and await your honor. Remind yourself that you are in the home of the royal family and are still technically under our servitude for the rest of your life, no matter what asinine orders my daughter has given this hour. Regardless of the agreed price you are to be paid, you are not to take it to your advantage as to flee from the land. Rest assured that if you wind up missing, you will be tracked and hunted like an animal, caught, and killed in any way my adversaries see fit."

The empress puts a finger to her lips and you watch her closely. After a moment, she gestures to one of many figures clad in plate armor and dual sheathed swords. "Her quarters," she says, "will be on the top floor. Third room to the right. Lock and guard."

Nodding, the figure approaches the tamer and takes her by the arm. It appears like it would be painful, but you suppose the Knights know better than to harm someone of such importance as to be spared by the empress or heiress. You watch as the figure guides Delphinia out of the room.

"Don't get emotionally attached again," your mother says. The only thing you can do is stare at her in shock.

Your face is stone. It's unmoving slate, and it is hiding a storm in your head. You avert your gaze, once again, so that your eyes are on the floor where they should be. But you are listening. You're curious. What made the Heiress want to save your life? Surely half-forgotten games of tag and the likes could not factor in. Were these two really mother and daughter? How could one be so cruel and the other so merciful?

You are being addressed again. The Empress gives you instructions and a warning, which is hard not to scoff at, because yes, the Empire could hunt you down and kill you, but if the growing rebellion caught wind of the fact that the Tamer had fled, they would seek her too. She would be an asset. She could wipe out this castle if she could convince the dragons that it was not a welcoming home for them. But your expression does not change.

You stand up, slowly, and one of the knights takes you by the arm. You hate it, hate it, but you're too smart to resist. Because if you step out of line again, even a little, they could do whatever they want to you and get away with it.

Chest tight, you allow the knight to guide you out, through a vaulted, high-ceilinged corridor with elegant stained glass letting tinted light filter in. To your surprise, you are not thrown into the chamber in which you are meant to be guarded. Perhaps they don't want to have to scrub blood off the walls here. It is a nice room. With two guards on the inside and two out, you have nothing to do but sit, cautiously, on the end of the cot in the corner. It must be a guest chamber, for dignitaries and representatives of the Empire's various cities. Clearly, it was not designed with prisoners in mind.

For the next several minutes, nothing happens, as expected.

Then a small, scaly head pops up from the bottom of the window. It is one of your... newer dragons. Less trained, more impulsive, and infinitely more stubborn. Your eyes widen. But the knights guarding you haven't noticed it. Yet. He licks his nose and then tilts his head in a way that is irritatingly cute. He wants to commune. In private. You shake your head.