As usual I cannot be bothered to finish this. It's really just the introduction, but I do like some of the prose and how Malenia gets characterized, before she was a warrior. I would love to explore this story further but that may not be in the cards right now.
The scarlet perianth melded into visions of bracts bursting and spilling blood into a listless sea of red. This sea pulsed from beneath her, the threat of drowning into rot from which there is no return. The sense of a second presence then called from above, as if applying pressure down against this sea, suspending her in between. Her head compressed between the two. No matter how many times she dreamt her skull crumbling and eyes popping, it always sent her into the same panic. The panic would not bring her into waking. It would last, linger as barbed vines forked her veins until giving way to the pain that signaled the call of day.
She dragged her arm across the bedsheets, breathing softly. It was silent. Morning light streamed in through the open shutters, tinging her bedchamber gold. She moved to check the bandaging on her arm, how the rot there had progressed in the time she spent asleep. The splint was applied crooked and a loose strand of fabric dangled out along the edge of the wound, peeling back to reveal a tiny protrusion of red underneath. She lay there watching it, as if to catch its progression in the moments it didn't think she was looking. Like a tree that measures its life in centuries, the slow growth was always just beyond her capacity to detect. But she knew it would grow, as assured as the towering trunk that the tree becomes, outlasting her.
Sweat had soaked her neck. Her hair pulled off the pillow as she rose, each muscle in her body releasing from atrophy. Before her, specks of pollen floated in the sunlight, rising and falling in delicate motions, scenting the room with their fragrance. She watched them, their innocent movements briefly visiting her from the gardens in the city below. Tears began at her eyes before sudden pain stung from within and she squeezed her eyelids shut. There she returned to the blackness, counting seconds as the pain splayed out across her face. Moments later it vanished as quick as it appeared. She exhales and gently touches her remaining fingers to her skull, just above the eye socket. She pulls them back to stare at the blackened motes of flesh stuck to her fingertips.
She sat alone eating her breakfast. The hobbling servant slowly gathered the remnants of her meal and shuffled off. By now, this one too bore the rot on his skin. His wrappings were loose as well but he had not shown the motivation to secure them, not even for his own prolonging. His assignment was made in the absence of his predecessor, who had jumped from the balcony. This one cared so little, and what life he led before his service troubled her. It was a kind of punishment, to serve her. It was to be condemned, slowly executed. What had he done to bring himself to her presence? What sort of path had it been? The solemn quietude among all her staff spoke of tremendous resentment and deep regret. She tried to imagine herself as one of them, communing over their shared fate, as if she was not herself or herself was not her affliction.
As usual, the day had no schedule. It would not bring her farther than these few adjacent rooms that formed her chambers. Though she was supposedly allowed to travel freely throughout the capital, she knew her place was here, sequestered in isolation. She imagined the dread inspired by this corner of the palace, how they all feared and loathed her. Occasionally her worries were even proven true by the secret whispers she caught between her visitors. They called her a demon chained to a wall. A tumor upon the family. A failure of godhood. She never spoke out against it. She rarely ever spoke, except to him.
Sitting at that table, she began to dream of him. His soft, pale skin, perpetually unblemished. The golden locks that draped over his shoulders. She even thought of his figure, his small body which never grew past the days of their youth. It felt like an age ago, those days. They didn't know the meaning of it then. She hadn't become what she was now.
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