day zero; prologue
Applicable CW: Death, mentions of starvation, mention of cannibalism
"...from wretches you came, and to wretches all you shall be ..."
Filthy.
It's warmer here. Bits of gravel that had spent an eternity locked in a glaciers' tomb dislodge themselves as the temperature crests the freezing point. They tumble down, gathering more of their ilk in their wake, until the snow turns grey and picking grit out of claws goes from an occasional nuisance to a constant peeve. Aside from those muffled whines of pain, the three dragons making a go of the hostile landscape were silent. A Spiral kept near-perfect time with his Wildclaw companion at point; a Coatl padded softly behind. Too tired to fly, but with no option of return, they press on. The quiet allows plenty of time to reflect on the past six hours.
A failed coup, the swift banishment that followed...
Destroy beyond doubt all manner of their existence. Strike their names from every pike and obelisk until history forgets them. Let them know that spears will meet their heels if they ever stop running from this place.
An explosively loud Imperial's voice nearly made the marble pillars crack at the edict. Of course, the heavy majority cowered to the brute... even the ones sworn the sword of the coup. Bowed heads, folded wings, submission. Fogged, bated breath raised the humidity by another three percent in the glacial chamber. Yanya's glasses would have fogged, if they didn't lay in pieces four hallways away. Even blurred, she could see the only two moving figures-- of course, the enormous figure towering above all of them, but also a single, writhing spiral in the arms of a heavy-bottomed Bogsneak.
Sinew.
Not a sound came from the struggle-- the gags were sufficiently taut on their snouts, yes. No matter how much force Sinew threw into his guard, he didn't budge, and the emperor paid him no mind. A voice finally broke the heavy air after five full minutes of silence. A scribe, so petite a Fae that he was nearly lost among the court.
Death is the only end for such a punishment. They'll starve, or freeze... came the meek challenge, ...and to your own blood... the empire is afeared.
Death came so quickly for the boy that even the Icewarden couldn't catch his soul. Only a shriek from the back of the deathly quiet room heralded it, and the emperor was quick to wave the tiny corpse out of the room in the hands of the guards.
Then let them pick eachother's bone and hide.
Obviously, the answer wasn't for the scribe. Little more was said following, and Sinew's memory drifts to the stampede to get on with their exile-- a group of five was left three after a cavernous crack caused the ground to open beneath two. It swallowed them whole, but there wasn't a chance for a word of grief. Claws served as icepicks to slide down the gleaming walls, flying when possible... but that wasn't possible for long. They took to walking, making slow progress. So it carried until now, with only bones of their original movement left. The gleaming skyward empire was long out of sight, two weeks behind them.
Sinew crushes a block of ice in his teeth to suck the water out, an attempt to fill his empty stomach with something. He spits the razor-sharp rocks back to the ground. He, too, regrets the decrease in altitude. The trio stops at the first breakthrough of vegetation through the foot of the glacier, staring at the wide expanse of marshy, cold flatland.
"What are we going to do here?"
Zircon's soft, trilling tone causes Yanya to look over her shoulder.
"Here?" replies the wildclaw, "
Here, we build the empire of our birthright."
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