Uncaged Bird [Camus & Nyna]
@gradiivus I got the idea for this drabble/starter last night and couldn’t resist.
Three months had passed since the war ended and the Holy Palace fell into the claws of Dolhr. Three months since they’d shattered her army and scattered the pieces to the four winds. Three months since her father’s body was buried headless in a shallow grave instead of the royal cairn where her mother lay.
Three months had passed since Nyna had been imprisoned in the depths of her own home, and she refused to suffer through any more of this.
The interim occupation general, her kingdom’s ‘caretaker’, was insufferable. No sooner had he arrived than he’d banished Nyna to the dungeons, to be seen by no one except the guards who gave her bread and water. Occasionally he sent sycophants, spineless things who took pleasure in seeing their enemy’s princess wearing the tattered remnants of her dress, subsisting on scraps like a common dog. There was some truth in their jeering—she reeked like one, and sometimes failed to bite off an undignified growl—and that knowledge only made her angrier. It wasn’t long before she was snapping even at one of her former soldiers, who’d managed to cajole her guards into delivering her food, and also news of the world beyond.
Medeus had been bold, he told her, through scanty words and cleverly-disguised letters. He’d used an army of Khadeni mages to warp an outsized chunk of his army straight to the heart of her kingdom—a force large enough to maintain its siege upon Pales and fend off the halfhearted attacks of her supposed allies in the marches. It was clever in its unexpectedness, and cost the royal family their lives while sparing those of his loyal men.
And though her own life had been spared by the intervention of one man, Nyna refused to give him the satisfaction of ruling her. He’d claimed to feel sympathy for her plight and that of her people; but in this cruel interim his words were but lies on the wind. General Camus would be no different than General Blackguard, he who was slowly crushing the life out of her and her people. Archanea was suffering. Her people needed something to propel them to act, and though she was no warrior-general, she could still provide them that spark.
Princess Nyna of Archanea had no doubt that she would die before the year or even the month was out—but she would die on her own terms rather than her captors’.
And she wanted Camus to see her defiance, to see that even imprisoned, her wings bleeding, she would not bow before his unholy masters. She would become a martyr, fall upon the blade as her father’s men had done; and in her wake a thousand men would rise to avenge her name, to obliterate the scourge that was the unholy Empire of Dolhr.
Three months had passed since she made that promise. The day was fast approaching when he would arrive to take over the stranglehold on Archanea. Soon, she would meet him, and she would show him the depths of her hatred.
Her fingers closed over the shaft of her blade—a glassy thing that would break apart, leaving its other end buried irretrievably in her breast—and her brows tightened into a glare.Three months she’d waited. Her moment was nigh.
Come morning, they dragged her out of the dungeons and into her chambers to be made ‘presentable’ for the occupying general. She was so thin and weak from being confined that she stumbled and fell on her guards like a newborn fawn, so abandoned to the darkness that the mere feeling of light and warmth on her body pained her. But at least they did not search her, and she still kept her improvised obsidian blade.
She regained some semblance of her former strength in time, only to have it whisked away from her in the ensuing whirlwind of activity. In her chambers, one maid stripped her bare; another scrubbed roughly at her stains; another yanked the dress down over her head and haphazardly pinned her hair. When they were done, she scarcely recognized the woman looking back at her from the mirror pane, all sunken eyes and bony limbs and scraggly hair. They hadn’t even bound it in the Archanean fashion; so save for the exquisite dress that no longer fit her wizened frame, no one would know that she was this kingdom’s princess.
When they brought her before General Blackguard, he only gave her the barest of once-overs before waving her away, as if she meant less to him than the meanest of his servants.
How cruel it was that she crossed paths with Boah while being shuttled down these desecrated halls, he who’d first suggested that she seek General Camus’s aid and protection in these dire times. Few were the things she’d seen that could unman him, but when the bishop’s eyes met hers and he beheld the shadow she’d become, he sank to his knees and remained there trembling. “My child,” he quavered. “What have they done to you?”
(Her heart went out to him in this moment, but she did not give it voice. Instead, she let it fester inside her, that he and his had done this to so noble a man.)
Before long, she was standing before the gates of Pales, flanked on the left by her captors and on her right by General Blackguard. She could see a line of horses riding towards them in the distance, flying above them the flag of the Sable Order, and forced her breaths to slow alongside her heart. Here was the man who would rule Archanea in her father’s and her stead—a man she wholly expected to be as cruel and heartless as his predecessor.
The entire formation came to a stop in the royal courtyard, countless hooves churning up dirt and crushing flowers. General Camus dismounted and advanced towards them alongside four of his knights, halting roughly a meter away from Nyna and her captors. She glared rigidly at him for a solid minute, not even twitching until General Blackguard thrust a heavy hand into her back, forcing her to stumble forth and almost fall straight into Camus’s hands.
“The enemy princess,” he said without preamble before folding his arms across his chest, waiting.
