Disclaimer: I don't own it. Fanfiction! Disclaimers really suck.
~*~ Hattiakourri ~*~
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By the Light of the Red Moon
The Vision
Grizzled Okaka could feel a burning in her blood, a powerful, heavy drowse that warmed her skin. It was a sign that a vision would make itself known to her this night. So the old seer had done what she had always done throughout her many, many years—she sat out on Overlook Rock, breathing in the scent of the burning gomorrah herbs, waiting for them to induce the vision with it's sweet smoke.
She was unsure of when the thought crept into her head—the herb had muddled her spotted memory. All she knew was that when the vision came to her, it took over everything else.
The sacred, scarred moon, Baseel, hung over the sky, full with mood and glowing crimson like a sparkling ruby. Under its rich light, the twisting minarets of the King's Castle seemed bathed in the drowsy ripples of shade, the rays bouncing off the ceramic tops like a sea of glittering sequins.
She could make out dark shapes on the cobblestone paths before her. They lay scattered and strewn everywhere, lying across one another like straws of hay. Their shapes remained indiscernible until a murky cloud gave way to the shimmering
Bodies, they were. A great battle had been fought here-- the air was thick and rich with the scent of freshly torn earth and clotting blood. No one had survived.
She followed the bodies to the throne room, where the door was dressed with entrails and strewn body parts, the white marble pillars stained with dark blood, the velvet runners smeared with grey matter. The red light suffused the room, gushing through the stained glass windowpanes, awakening an ominous gnawing in her gut that told her to flee…
She looked up to the throne, the mighty white marble seat smeared with a pinkish fluid oozing down the smooth surface. Sprawled over the surface lay an assassin, his skull crushed, viscous, mottled pink matter spilling forth from his eye socket, dribbling forth from his body in smeared runnels. He had long since dropped his ribbed blade.
-Has the king been murdered?-
She could make out a form upon the throne, swaddled in bloodstained linens bearing the sigil of the Royal House…
A child… a baby.
-An heir?-
The child's eyes flew open—
She was caught in a wave of head-splitting pain and she began shrieking as she was thrown from the vision, a horrible, piercing sting burning in her temples, screaming, throbbing…!
She fell limp as unconsciousness mercifully claimed her whole.
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"Okaka."
The old woman cracked open her eyes at the sound of a voice, comforting, masculine, and familiar. She looked upon the face of the village's doctor, who had found her as she lay prone out in the desert, and dragged her back to civilization.
"Okaka, you can't do that. You were lucky I had been around at the time, you crazy old bat—" the young man snapped. He should have been shaken. After all, he had her blood in him, somewhere.
"Brat, if my fate calls me, then it is my time."
"You had bleeding in your brain, Okaka. What purpose did you have wandering the desert in your condition? And smoking the rot-weed again?"
"I felt my spirit call to the Overlook, where I knew my vision was waiting—"
"Foolish, dying old bat! Visions, visions, always visions…"
"Silence mongrel pup! I brought you into this world, and weak as I am, I can still take you out of it!" the old woman snarled, uncannily viciously. "I saw a beautiful vision."
"What was it?"
"A S'riracha Prince, baptized on a throne of blood. Our future, lain out before my eyes."
*end ch1*